Chapter 04: The Common Factor
Heather stood in the center of the dark living room in a quiet house in the middle of the night just listening to the quiet sounds a home makes when its owners are away. The ticking of clocks here and there throughout the house, the quiet whisper of the air conditioning unit and the rattle of things disturbed by the flow of air. Small fan noises from the computers in the spare room turned into a part time office. The quiet hum from the compressor under the fridge in the kitchen.
All the million and one sounds a lived in house makes that fade into the background of peoples lives.
The house felt lived in and loved, it was tidy but not obsessively so, clean but with areas of chaos. The couple of dishes in the sink, mail gone through but not sorted and put away on the coffee table. The open book laid on the bedside tale under the small lamp waiting for its owner to finish it and replace it in the shelf above the headboard.
People lived here, laughed here, loved here. They ate and shared meals and spent quiet time together in front of the TV or computer or alongside each other in bed while reading or making love or sleeping.
So why did the house feel so empty?
There were no signs of violence, nothing broken, no blood. Two cars in the garage, doors and windows locked, alarm set. Yet there was nobody home.
Heather caught a brief flash of movement from the backyard. Just a hint of an animal slipping through the bushes, seconds later the sliding glass door opened and a creature, half human half animal slipped into the room.
It spoke in a sort of half growl half spoken language, "Nothing, no trail at all in the past two days anywhere around the outside."
"Thanks for checking. Get changed. Your bags over by the front door."
The figure slipped past Heather becoming more human as it moved past her, by the time it reached the door a naked human female stood shivering in the night air.
"Why does changing back always leave me cold, while changing into the wolf feels like I'm on fire?"
"I have no clue; I'm a vampire not a veterinarian." Heather watched as the pretty brown haired woman pulled on a black tee shirt over her small breasts and tugged a set of black jeans over her slim hips. Heather smiled remembering several months ago before the first change how Lynn complained of the weight she had put on, not a problem anymore. Werewolf metabolism was so high, that the trick was to eat enough calories each day to keep her from looking like one of those anorexic models that partied at the casinos. Lynn was devouring a protein bar even as she pulled on her boots and jacket.
"We done here?" she asked as she zipped up her clothes bag.
"I guess we are. I can't think of anything we missed. They are just gone, like the other five families. Poof!"
The two women slipped out the back door, Heather reset the alarm, and they eased over the back wall and walked down the sandy dirt road to their van.
Once on the road Heather began to go over the case out load. "Five families, now six, disappear, no signs of violence, no more than the usual money problems, no indication of domestic problems. No notice to family or friends or co workers or employers. Just gone. Cars, money, clothes, everything left behind. No indication of where they went, nobody hears from them. Nothing."
Lynn's face flashed in and out of the street lights as she reclined in her seat. "That about sums it up. Cops got nothing. Nothing related about the families. Different jobs, different schools for the kids, different areas of the city. Different religions, backgrounds, ages, lifestyles."
Heather sighed. "That's why the cops have nothing. Six different areas, different jurisdictions, and nothing to connect the disappearances. With no violence and no one making a lot of noise, it just vanishes into the background of daily calls."
"So how did it end up on our radar?" Lynn sat up in her seat and studied her friend as they drove home.
"A friend of mine is best friends with the third family that went missing. Someone she knows mentioned that another family had also just gone missing." Heather glanced at Lynn. "She went to the cops, who were less than interested, and then she started checking news reports and found other families gone. She came to me because I helped her out with another problem last year and here we are."
"Yeah but where are we? So far we got nothing."
"We need to find the common factor, a link between these families. Then we can turn it over to the police through a detective I know and let them handle it."
Heather pulled into the underground parking at their condo. Moments later they walked into the penthouse condo they shared. Lynn had stopped to get the mail, sorting it as she walked into the living room.
Heather saw her grin as she tossed Heather a letter. "What's so funny?"
Lynn laughed out loud. "Sorry, I just get a chuckle every time I see a letter addressed to you. I mean, how perfect is it to have a vampire named Cross?"
Heather returned the laugh, thinking how lucky she was to have Lynn in her life. A vampire lives such a long time that unless one was very careful to stay involved with the society they were living in, it was easy to become an anachronism. Lost in the styles and expressions of the past and sinking further and further away from the now. Lynn not only provided a fresh and up to date look at the world, but she saw it from young and fresh eyes and was able to give that perspective to Heather.
Heather tucked the letter away on her desk to read later. She turned on her vamp speed and slipped in behind Lynn, sliding her hands under the werewolf's tee shirt and cupping her breasts. Her thumbs found Lynn's nipples and began rubbing the small tips until they stood up high and proud. Lynn leaned back against the taller woman, pressing her ass against Heathers crotch. She raised her arms over Heathers head and locked her hands behind her neck.
Heather cupped Lynn's breasts, squeezing and pulling them. She licked the side of the woman's neck just behind her ear and nipped her earlobe playfully. A low growl started deep in Lynn's chest and she turned her head for a kiss. The two women turned until they faced each other still locked in a deep kiss. Heather pulled the woman's tee shirt up and off as Lynn undid and pushed the vampire's jeans down to the floor. They sank together into the deep pile rug on the floor.
Neither woman was strictly gay or heterosexual, they both enjoyed sex as a full body contact sport. Lynn found that while she enjoyed rough sex before she became a werewolf, now she had a body that could take whatever punishment her partner could dish out and cum back for more. The ability of Heather to heal almost instantly meant she didn't have to hold back either. It gave a whole new dimension to the term rough sex although it was rather hard on the furniture. In the months since they had been exploring how hard and how rough they could play they had destroyed two coffee tables, one overstuffed chair, and the headboard on Heather's bed.
Not that they always played rough, sometimes it was the gentle caresses and the touching, stroking and holding they kept them intertwined either on the bed or curled up on the floor with a comforter.
Tonight it was the comfort of being together as they wrapped around each other kissing and hugging. The missing families affected them more than either woman would care to admit. The feel of another naked body held against one's own was an indulgence they both needed.
Lynn's fingers searched out the fold of her friend's pussy splitting the delicate skin and reaching for the pink bud within. Heathers pussy was already becoming wet and slick as her questing fingers spread the moisture around the rapidly hardening clit. Lynn used two fingers to expose the inner most sensitive skin at the top of her bud and her tongue licked and teased the top of her clit until Heathers body arched under her manipulations. Lynn rode the thrusting pelvis, never stopping her assault on the clit until Heather cried out and flooded the valley of her vee with juices as she came.
Heather grabbed Lynn and using her vampire strength tore open her jeans splitting them between Lynn's ass cheeks and around to the buttons in the front which popped and scattered throughout the room. Lynn's delicate panties didn't stand a chance and the tattered remains were left floating across the room as Heather pushed two fingers into the warm wet tunnel of Lynn's exposed cunt.
She pumped her fingers into the women arching her fingers to press against the sensitive g spot and using her other arm to lift Lynn's back and ass to position her in the most open and vulnerable way. Heather added another finger as her lovers tunnel open under her manipulations and just as she started to quiver into orgasm, popped her thumb into the tight ring of her asshole. Lynn's came screaming and twisting in heather sure grip until they both sank down on the floor spent and loose. They cuddled there on the floor kissing and stroking each other.
Lynn slept in late the next afternoon. She had only been up a few hours when the sun set and Heather awoke. Lynn set at the computer arraigning the files she had been researching as Heather slept.
Heather always went for the kitchen first, taking a bag of blood from the special fridge in the cupboard and dropping it in the warming pan of body temperature water that sat on the counter. Three minutes to bring the blood up to body temperature then poured into a thermal mug that would keep it warm as Heather enjoyed her breakfast.
"My, you have been a busy little wolf." Heather looked at the stacks of paper arraigned on the desk.
"I've been looking for the common link and I may have found two."
"Two?" Heather was suddenly intensely interested in looking at the stacks.
"It's not in there." Lynn pointed at the papers. "That's just the crap I waded through to find out there was nothing there. However, what I did find is interesting." She turned the computer screen towards Heather. "All the family homes are bordered either in back or on the side by large areas of open space." She flashed through a series of captured images from the Google Earth program showing aerial images of each of the six homes."
"Ok, that's a common factor alright, but it's also a common factor to thirty five percent of homes in the outlying areas."
"Yeah. I kinda discounted that one myself, although it might account for the way the families disappeared."
Heather shrugged.
"The other weird thing I found is that each of the six families had a girl child seventeen years old."
"Again statistically weird but not uncommon enough to be helpful."
"That's what I thought until I looked up the girls on My space and facebook and other kid sites. All the girls had dark brown hair worn long, were tall and thin, and in every case looked nothing like the rest of their families."
