Cursed at Dawn

Book 3: Blackbird Trilogy

by Heather Graham

Genres: Police Procedurals; Romantic Suspense; Paranormal; Vampires; Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

A paranormal mystery spin-off of the Krewe of Hunters series by bestselling author Heather Graham.
When serial killers run rampant across Europe it’s up to Blackbird, the Krewe of Hunters’ international operatives, to stop them.

Dracula lives—and he’s hunting for his bride.

Vampires may not walk among us, but FBI agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter know real monsters exist. They’ve witnessed firsthand the worst humankind has to offer. They’re still catching their breaths after the apprehension of two such monstrous killers when they’re met with horrific news: Stephan Dante, the self-proclaimed king of the vampires, has escaped from prison, followed only by a trail of blood.

All too familiar with Dante’s cruelty, Della and Mason know the clock is ticking. But as Dante claims more victims, a chilling message arrives. The vampire killer seeks his eternal bride—Della herself. Playing into Dante’s desires might be the only way to stop the carnage once and for all, assuming they can outwit him. Della is confident the agents have the upper hand, but Mason knows every gamble runs the risk of not paying off, and this time, the consequences could be deadly.

The Blackbird Trilogy

Book 1: Whispers at Dusk
Book 2: Secrets in the Dark
Book 3: Cursed at Dawn

Release date: August 22, 2023

Publisher: MIRA Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

Prologue

Yes, he was bleeding.

No, he didn’t care.

He’d replace the blood soon enough. Because for now...

They were rushing to make sure that the bleeding was stopped. He lay with his eyes closed, waiting. The right moment would come. They checked his heart, they monitored his breathing...

The medical profession offered people who were rather pathetic. They took their Hippocratic oath, and then they were bound to save every man. Of course, many of them tended to think that they were gods, that they had the power of life and death. Arrogant gods, but gods could fall. Like Dr. Henson. But all around him, people were rushing to save the life of the prisoner who had been plugged with a shiv in the dining room.

Rather foolish! That prisoner might well get the death penalty from either the federal government or the state of Louisiana, not to mention the other places he faced charges.

But, of course, his intent was to live.

And he had faked the riot in the cafeteria, with a little help from his friends.

He was good at making friends. He was such a nice guy.

“Steady,” the nurse said, issuing a sigh of relief. “His blood pressure was so low...but it’s climbing. One-ten over seventy. I think we’ve got the bleeding stopped.”

“I guess whoever hates this guy hasn’t got the best aim in the world,” the doctor said, shrugging. “Well, I guess he’ll make trial. Or trials. I understand that the charges against him are massive and that a lot of people want a piece of him. We have provided the whole so they can all have their pieces. Sometimes... Yeah, well, we’re here to save lives, right? Even if they don’t deserve to be saved. Yep. We save lives. I’m going to get the guards to get back in here—we’ll keep him in the infirmary, but I want him cuffed to the bed.”

“He may not make it yet, Doctor!” the nurse murmured. “I saw the floor where he was lying when they dug out the pile of prisoners. He’s lost so much blood—I hope that the transfusions are enough—”

“I want him cuffed. Hold tight.”

It was going just the way that he wanted—the way the axe murderer, Justin Miles, had said that it would. So much for high security! Guards outside? But then he’d been a dying man, and they’d worried so to save his life; it wasn’t good for prisoners to die in the penal system!

The doctor went out. And it was a piece of cake.

A stab of the needle into the nurse, who was so shocked she never let out a peep. Then a very brief wait for the doctor. He hid behind the door, seizing the man in a neck lock the minute he walked back in, cutting off his breath...

Cutting off any chance of him screaming.

High security, right. Men running around, armed, all ready to keep prisoners under control!

When the first two guards walked in, they naturally assumed that he was the doctor and then...well, then they were easily dispatched—dead or dying, he wasn’t sure. He arranged the room so that the bodies couldn’t be found quickly and the stage was set. The nurse was out of the way in the closet. The doctor was on the table in prison garb, ready for a transfusion because of the massive amount of blood found with Dante’s fallen body.

Except, of course, there was no chance that any amount of blood would help the man.

With the doctor’s wallet, keys and clothing, the rest was easy.

Accused of so many horrendous murders! Expected to receive the death penalty.

And there he was, smiling and waving as he walked out into the sunshine. And freedom.

He could already envision his next...transformation. A beauty, of course, sleeping in eternal peace, immortal in beauty.

He could almost see it.

He could almost taste it.

He truly was king.

One

“I still don’t see how it was possible,” Della said. They had worked so hard, taken such risks, to arrest and incarcerate Stephan Dante, the self-proclaimed “king of the vampires,” that it was unimaginable that he had managed to escape while awaiting trial.

They were headed back to the United States, ready to meet with the horrified warden of the jail where Dante had been awaiting trial. They were both exhausted but wired, as they hadn’t slept since they’d heard the news that the man was back on.

Just days after they’d finally caught up with one of his protégés—who had shed the concept of competing in the vampire field to become “king of the Rippers”—they had learned that Stephan Dante had somehow managed a miraculous escape. He had killed the doctor who had assumed he was desperately trying to save his life, sent the nurse to intensive care, where she remained, and had killed one guard and seriously wounded another on his way out. He’d walked easily into the sunlight, having taken the doctor’s clothing, identification and keys—and therefore, he had simply driven away. The most bizarre thing seemed to be that it was on tape, though Dante had managed—through a tech friend he’d met while incarcerated, Della believed—to create false images of the infirmary while he had carried out his attacks with a scalpel.

They hadn’t been “vampire” assaults and kills.

They had just been murders and attacks that had been expedient. He had his way of killing that he considered unique and special. But he was also a cold-blooded killer who would rid himself of anyone who got in his way by any means necessary.

“Dante continues to carry out the impossible.” Mason Carter, seated at her side in the FBI’s Blackbird plane that was rushing them back to the States, shook his head, staring straight ahead as he spoke. “He manages to befriend every criminal who can do something he wants done or provide something he needs. I’ve never seen a criminal as capable of accruing funds and forged documents in the way that he has managed.” He let out a sigh. “I’ve been conflicted on the death penalty all my life. You execute the wrong man—or woman—and you can’t fix it if you’re later proved wrong. You let a man like Dante live and...others have already paid the price.”

“He never made it to trial, Mason,” Della reminded him. “Mason, this is horrible, but it isn’t on us. And we will—”

“Get him again,” Mason said.

He was still staring straight ahead. She wasn’t worried about Mason as her partner—no inner conflict would interfere with his abilities as an investigator—or as a man to have at her back. He was adept at numerous martial arts, with a knife, and was also a crack shot who could move with incredible dexterity, speed and quiet when necessary. He had blue eyes that could appear as dark as the deep blue sea—or as piercing and cold as shafts of ice. It didn’t hurt that he was a dark-haired man who stood at a good six foot five, but as they all knew, a bullet or an explosive could kill, no matter your size or expertise.

He had told her once that a good agent’s mind was the greatest weapon they could carry.

She just worried about whatever torture he might be putting himself through. He’d been military before the FBI, been responsible for the apprehension of some of the country’s most heinous killers and seen his last partner gunned down before him. He had grown weary of killing and he’d been working solo until he and Della had met on a case in a Louisiana bayou, taking down a serial killer there before becoming the first chosen agents for Blackbird, a unique unit created to help when the very specialized assistance the Krewe of Hunters could give was needed in Europe.

They had worked with local law enforcement from Norway, Scotland, Ireland and France. Their liaison from Interpol, François Bisset, as well as French Detective Jeanne Lapierre, English Detective Inspector Edmund Taylor and Norseman Jon Wilhelm, would be joining them the next day.

Their sixsome had followed Dante, in one way or another, through France, Britain and Norway, then back to the States.

They’d all expected to be here; Adam and Jackson had set up a meeting for the group of them at Quantico, one to debrief and the other for a chance to discuss the future of their new unit—within the Krewe of Hunters.

Della wondered if Jackson and Adam knew things about their team that they didn’t know

themselves. They had discovered that Edmund, a striking and formidable-looking man in his thirties, could converse with the dead. As always, very few among the spirit world chose to communicate with the living for their own reasons. But she didn’t know about Wilhelm, François or Jeanne. Law enforcement might often speak about protocol, especially within different countries, but in meeting people one seldom just asked bluntly if their fellows could see the dead.

They were back in the States. But with Stephan Dante on the loose, they could be heading anywhere in the world in the days to come.

“Mason, we can’t second-guess anything,” she said quietly. “We take oaths. And you and I both believe in standing up and honoring our oaths. We follow the law,” she reminded him.

He smiled and turned to her. “Of course. I just...I just thought that we were done worrying about him. And seriously? It was nice being tourists in London. For what? All of three days.”

She grinned back at him. “They were good days, though, right? They had to end because we were due back here anyway. And I talked to Jackson earlier. When we get Dante locked up again, we get a month, he promised.”

“Right. Unless something else happens,” Mason said.

She shook her head. “I know Jackson and Adam. They’re busy building up Blackbird and in time, we won’t be the only American representatives.”

He nodded, pulling up his tablet. “Not sure if all this is the order in which it occurred, but this is still just... I don’t see how... All right, according to the reports, Dante was bleeding out so badly that it was assumed he wouldn’t make it. He wasn’t shackled to the bed because everyone thought he was all but dead. He caught hold of the scalpel when the doctor and the nurse were urging quick care, ordering blood for transfusions. People ran out of the infirmary, he downed the nurse and then the doctor and stole the doctor’s clothing, wallet and keys. Two guards walked in and he took care of them. He had apparently already gotten someone to somehow get him a fake MD’s identification and all the right certifications to slip into the doctor’s wallet. How the hell did he go from bleeding to death to slashing others and escaping in the blink of an eye?”

“Well, he isn’t a vampire,” Della said flatly. “The problem with Dante is that he doesn’t use force as much as he uses charm and wiles. He is extremely clever, an intelligent man. I believe that he’s one of those people who constantly studies online. And, of course, as we’ve known, he’s great at making friends among the killer elite.”

“Killers, forgers, bank robbers... I doubt if he bothers to befriend those who can’t do anything for him, but to others... I don’t understand. Then again, I still don’t understand how Jim Jones got nearly a thousand people to drink poisoned Kool-Aid. The power of the mind is incredible.”

“Beyond a doubt. We’ve said it before—people believe because they want to believe. They grasp on to concepts and ideas that work for them because they’re down and out, because they’re bitter or because they’re in pain. Some are too smart to be swayed, but I believe that

our Mr. Dante recognizes those he can control and those he can’t—and he wastes no time on those who aren’t going to fulfill any of his needs.

“The power of the mind!” Della murmured, continuing. “I spoke with our friend and colleague Special Agent—Dr.—Patrick Law. He warned everyone that Dante might well pull something. They believed that they had him in control, that they had so much security that he couldn’t possibly escape.”

“They tried to save his life,” Mason murmured.

“They’re bound by their oaths, too, Mason. For those in law enforcement, oaths similar to those we took. And for a doctor...”

“I know. I know. The Hippocratic oath,” Mason said.

“No choice,” she reminded him.

“So, of course, we know that he’s out. We will learn more on the particulars of how he did it. But he is out—so his escape isn’t the question.”

Della nodded and looked out the window. They would be landing soon. She rested her head back against the comfort of her chair, wishing they’d managed to sleep.

Smiling grimly, she turned to Mason.

“He has escaped. He escaped in Louisiana and we know that he does love the bayou country, and who doesn’t love New Orleans? So he escaped here, but the main question remains,” she said quietly. “Just where will he strike next?”

---

When a man managed to escape when he was known as high risk, he had to have had help, Mason believed.

While Della headed to the intensive care unit at the hospital to interview the nurse who had a slim chance of surviving the assault, he worked with the warden, a man named Roger Sewell, still in disbelief that such a thing could have happened.

“I’m sure you have already heard the particulars, but I’ll go over them again,” Sewell told him as they walked along the aisle where prisoners spent short incarcerations or awaited trial.

“It started in the cafeteria with the riot. Ridiculous thing, of course. No matter how hard anyone tries, there’s always a pecking order in a facility like this—you wind up with rival gangs within the walls themselves. Someone hit someone else in the face with a spoonful of grits. Then all hell broke out with food flying back and forth, crowd insanity followed, several guards were injured and Stephan Dante was found on the bottom of a pile of men with a blood pool the size of Texas under him. Naturally, we rushed him straight to the infirmary, calling the doctor, warning that the prisoner might exsanguinate within minutes.”

“You found him in a pool of blood,” Mason said. He imagined the scene—and why guards and a smart man might be fooled.

“With a toothbrush

shank still in him.”

Warden Sewell was a serious man, known for having handled the facility in his charge with diligence, running a tight ship while recognizing human rights as known in the country and the state. His guards respected him; there had never been such a serious incident before during his tenure. He continued disgustedly with, “Food fights happen. Gang members gang up on a target and break his nose. But this food fight...ridiculous food fight...escalated into disaster.”

“It wasn’t a ridiculous food fight,” Mason told him, pausing along with the warden at the cell where Dante had so recently resided. “It was planned. And that pool of blood didn’t belong to Dante—some of the blood, sure. But you’re going to find that you have one or more other inmates who lost pools of blood in that fight.”

“Wait, you’re trying to tell me that Dante planned a food fight to escape? But he didn’t attack any of the guards, he didn’t—”

“He planned to get to the infirmary,” Mason told him. “Just as he found someone—someone here on a more minor charge—to rig it so that Dante’s assaults on the staff weren’t seen on the cameras. One of your prisoners is a damned good tech guy who breached the system.”

“No. That’s not possible—”

“Warden, I’m not throwing any stones here, trust me. This man has taken all of us in one way or another. But I doubt your guards were all asleep at the wheel. And when the police ran the security tapes, they saw nothing but a nurse moving back and forth across the infirmary. We know that Dante assaulted his caretakers. And the guards who then tried to stop him. And then—caught on camera—he used the dead doctor’s identity and clothing to escape. Oh, yes, Dante was shanked. But he’s a man who made sure that he drew blood without hitting any vital organs—”

“You think that he shanked himself?”

“I do. Or he had a friend hit him in just the right place in just the right way.”

“But the blood—”

“The ‘pool the size of Texas’ belonged to one or more other men. And a forensic crew would find DNA so mixed that it would be worthless. But, trust me, the entire escape was planned from the time the first spoonful of grits went flying,” Mason told him grimly.

“What do you need from me now?” Sewell asked him. “What the hell can I do now to help?”

“Interviews. I need to speak with anyone who was close to or friendly with Dante in any way.”

Sewell suggested, “Start with his cellmate?”

Mason nodded. “Have him brought to an interview room. I’ll observe him a few minutes before going in. What’s the man’s name and what is he in for?”

“Terry Donavan. His third DUI in a month involved a vehicular manslaughter charge.”

“Sounds like an alcoholic and not a cold-blooded killer. Interesting that he was in with Dante.”

“Overcrowding in the system, I’m afraid. Special Agent Patrick Law had suggested that we keep Dante in solitary and we were planning on moving Dante to follow the suggestion.” Sewell paused, wincing and shaking his head. “We were planning to do the right thing—just waiting on the move. We have some hardened folks here,

 awaiting their days in court. One man is accused of killing his entire family—for the life insurance payouts. Another in here is presumed guilty of five robbery/invasion homicides. Sometimes it’s hard as hell to see the forest for the trees.”

“Gotcha,” Mason assured him.

“Observation here,” Sewell said, stopping by a door. “Entry to the interrogation room just down a few steps.”

“All right. Tell the guards not to shackle the man. I’m going to have to build up some trust—get past whatever blind faith he might have in believing whatever lies Dante might have told him.”

“You think Terry Donavan might be involved? He’s... In my mind, the man is a pathetic waste of what he might have been. In here, he’s polite, agreeable and, so it appears, truly remorseful for what happened. Went through hell when he first came in—in fact, the doctor Dante killed helped get Terry through the worst of withdrawal when he came in here. If the kid—”

“Kid?”

“Sorry. He’s just twenty-three,” Sewell said.

“Right. If he’d had help and embraced it, he wouldn’t be where he is,” Mason said.

Sewell nodded. “Step on in. I’ll get Terry in there,” he said, pointing to the stark interrogation room.

“Would you mind seeing if you can arrange coffee and water for us both? Sounds like he’s the type who just might help if I can reach him.”

Sewell nodded. Mason stepped into the observation room and looked through the glass at the room with its simple table—equipped with attachments for shackles when necessary—and gray walls and flooring. That was it. The table, the walls, the floor. Planned for focus.

A minute later, he saw a guard bringing Terry Donavan in to sit. The man sat. But he wasn’t shackled and after he’d been left a few minutes, he began to pace the floor.

He did look like a kid. Short hair still showing something of a rakish and shaggy appearance, movements nervous, eyes caught in a concerned face as he walked the few feet within the room.

The guard returned with two cups of water and two cups of coffee. That seemed to perplex the young man even further.

Mason waited another few minutes. Then Terry Donavan sat again, looking suspiciously at his cup of coffee before sipping at it, then letting out a sigh as he apparently decided that it hadn’t been laced with any kind of poison. ...