Mallory's Hunt

by Jory Strong

  The dog sat and Caleb's skin iced at witnessing the exchange.

  "Let's go," Mallory said.

  Hayden's gaze followed them to the door. "Don't say I didn't warn you, Mal."

  Outside the bar, she said, "I need to deal with something else first; meet you at Cleary's."

  "Related?"

  "Yes. That's all I'm willing to give you, Matthew."

  He grabbed her upper arms, pulled her close and she made it closer still, her body heat bleeding into his. "How long until you show up?"

  "I don't know."

  He wanted to push, wanted to find out where she was going and why. His gut told him not to, same as it told him the dog staying with the junkie meant something else was going down.

  "I'll meet you there." And Jesus, he couldn't stop himself.

  His hands transferred to her sides. The shirt was no barrier against the need that slid from her body into his. It poured into his bloodstream.

  Her lips parted. Her tongue welcomed his. Thrust and parry and glide were invitation and honest desire blotting out reality.

  It was becoming harder and harder not to imagine this going further. Not to feel desperate to take it there.

  He pulled her tighter. That first kiss merged into a second, a third, a fourth.

  His hands tugged her shirt upward. Sought and found soft skin over toned muscle. Explored the length of her spine as he fought against unhooking her bra and cupping her breasts.

  Pleasure shuddered through him with the grind of her pelvis to his, the stroke of her fingers against the stud he wore in his ear, part of the persona he'd adopted the first time he went undercover.

  Enough that sane part of him urged, trying to remind him that he was undercover now, but it took another kiss, and another before he could stop.

  "We should get going," he said, lips still against hers.

  "I know. Be careful."

  "You too."

  He released her, stepped back before guilt could rise and get tangled in the attraction between them, before it could change his plans or alert her to them. He drove away first, swapped the Harley for the car he'd stashed nearby and returned to watch the Brass Ring.

  He didn't have long to wait.

  The junkie came out, Mallory's dog at his side.

  Caleb's guts burned. His chest burned.

  Was she in on this?

  She hadn't called Dane to her. Hadn't looked back, hadn't acted as if she even owned a dog.

  Mikhail and Dane got into Hayden's Jag.

  Their probable destination crept up on Caleb when business signs began appearing in both English and Cyrillic. They were close to the strip club where Iosif and a homeless man had been murdered.

  Just how good was Dane? Good enough to track Iosif's killer? By now there'd be scent on top of scent, cops, crime scene techs, coroner, followed by the curious.

  Blocks ahead of him, Mikhail pulled to the curb.

  Caleb made a quick turn then parked and got out, automatically pulling his gun. He'd have to be careful of the dog. The warning signs were there and now Mallory wasn't.

  He got eyes on Mikhail and Dane just as they entered an alley, probably the kill site.

  In less than a minute they emerged.

  The lack of a leash made him itchy. The dog was out front, as silent and deadly as a Delta Force operator on a mission.

  In a few blocks, they'd reached the strip club. It was a standalone place, squat and ugly with no pretense of being a gentleman's club.

  To the left of the door the outline of a naked woman flashed on and off in red neon, to the right a martini glass did the same.

  Mallory's dog peeled away from the junkie, disappearing into the night like he was made of it.

  Adrenaline pumped into Caleb's system, reaction to the times Dane had stared at him, muscles bunched with impending attack.

  Mikhail entered the club.

  One minute slipped into two, into three and four and five like a slow spread of black ink.

  Jesus. Go in after him?

  They'd never buy that he was worried about their junkie brother, so worried that instead of heading where he'd said he was going, he'd staked out the Brass Ring and tailed Mikhail.

  Come on, come on. Get out of there.

  It took another seven minutes before Mikhail emerged. He'd barely cleared the parking lot before a man exited the bar. An enforcer. No question. Russian mafia not just a paid bouncer.

  The guy moved quickly.

  Where was the fucking dog?

  Mikhail ducked into an alley.

  The enforcer pulled his gun, entering the alley fast.

  Gunfire punched through the night.

  One shot followed instantaneously by a terror-filled shout abruptly silenced.

  Caleb's hindbrain woke with a start, icing his skin and urging him to turn and run.

  Combat training, hours of drills and conditioning kept him moving forward.

  Close to the alley he heard the junkie's voice and chill sunk deep, spreading through his chest and gut and threatening to freeze his heart.

  Mikhail wasn't speaking Russian, wasn't answering questions at gunpoint. His words rose and fell and melded together like the chanting the kids had done at the Satanists' temple.

  Jesus.

  He didn't want to look, but duty compelled him to.

  He edged forward, breath held but heart hammering.

  Mallory's dog had taken the enforcer down, ripping out his throat.

  No doubt about cause of death.

  Mikhail knelt next to the body.

  Dane sat across from him, eyes trained on the corpse.

  There were no defensive wounds. The gun the enforcer had entered the alley with lay against his palm, fingers loosened but angled enough for Caleb to make out the skulls tattooed above the knuckles.

  Maybe it would be enough to ID him, either that or he'd have to come back for a closer look and prints. Somehow he couldn't see them cramming the dead man into Hayden's Jag.

  He eased away, but not smoothly enough.

  The dog's attention jerked from the corpse, eyes a glowing red for a split second.

  Caleb froze. Not breathing. Not blinking. Not swallowing.

  He'd have stopped his heart if he had the choice.

  Dane slowly stood and it was as if Caleb were thrown back to caveman days. As if thousand-year-old instinct and images had been hard-wired so the dog was more than a dog, more than simply another predator, more than something that was flesh and blood. So the dog became the embodiment of primal menace, of the things that went bump in the night, the things that couldn't be explained and yet they killed all the same.

  The junkie's voice rose.

  Caleb's skin crawled.

  Something in the cadence, the rhythm, forced the dog's stare back to the junkie and the corpse.

  Caleb retreated, gun hand up.

  If the dog came at him, he'd shoot.

  A step.

  Two.

  Three.

  Near euphoria hit him at reaching the car, at having steel between him and them.

  Christ.

  A breath.

  A second.

  The adrenaline started dumping out of his system.

  He swallowed against the urge to vomit. Pride kept him from opening his door and puking—that and the possibility the dog would separate itself from the darkness and tear out his throat like a hound from hell.

  Jesus. He needed to get a grip.

  Whoever was behind this investigation should never have named it Operation Hellhound. His imagination was starting to fill in the blanks, turning a dog into a red-eyed specter, turning a junkie's rambling into weird, ritualistic chanting.

  Distance allowed more rational thought.

  Had Mikhail lured the guy into the alley to question him? Or just to kill him?

  There was no way of knowing without asking, and no way to ask. But his gut told him the Russian would never have left that alley alive. And as he headed t
oward the pedophile's house, he hated thinking Mallory might have known what the junkie intended, and left Dane with him, accepting that he'd kill.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 21

  Jonathon met Mallory at the morgue door. She'd always known she would end up calling in this favor.

  He was still as pale and thin as he'd been when he'd hired her a year ago to find his missing niece. She didn't ask how the girl was doing; she'd seen her since, naked and high beneath a hairy biker, one of Hunter's skips.

  Mallory matched Jonathon's hurried pace, the air getting colder and thicker until she expected smoky puffs with each exhale, her lungs compressing until she wondered if she'd pass out the way she had in the columbarium.

  Scent assailed her. Disease and rot mixed with perfume and shampoo and body wash.

  There were places in Hell that smelled similar, that had the same stench without the overlay of industrial cleaners, where some of those claimed by her sire were reanimated and lay suffering for days and months and years.

  Her skin grew clammy. She swallowed against the bile, against the memories, the fear that had once haunted her, that she'd grow hungry enough, desperate enough to slink into those living cemeteries to end the ceaseless cramping of an empty stomach.

  "First time in the morgue?"

  "Yeah."

  "You're not going to puke are you?"

  "Probably not."

  "Probably?" Jonathon's voice was an octave higher.

  "No. I'm not going to puke."

  She covered her mouth and nose, creating a filtering hollow with her palm. Matthew's scent lingered on her skin, the subtle mix of man and motorcycle.

  It chased the morgue cold away with a curl of heat, with riotous hope. She wanted him. She shouldn't but she did.

  He's already a dead man walking.

  Her lips pulled back though Hayden wasn't there for the warning.

  She and Jonathon entered the room where autopsies were performed.

  They headed toward the banks of stainless steel drawers where the dead waited. Where Iosif waited.

  The pressure around her built with each step. And though she couldn't see the wraith-like souls, she was aware of them in a way she'd never been in this world.

  Mallory shivered at remembering the brush of the Reaper Lord's finger across her cheek in the ring room.

  In front of her, spirits gathered like a mob. They bunched like a cold front unrestricted by physical barriers

  The mass of them pushed against her as if to drive her back.

  They thickened as if to freeze her in place and keep her from reaching them.

  And then it was as if she'd crossed some unseen line.

  The mob burst and scattered in an explosion of movement, in a hurricane swirl of souls. They tore around the autopsy room, their terror beating against her, driving her heart into a frenzied race.

  Translucent faces appeared, mouths open in silent screams, eyes wide with the fear of being sent to Hell.

  Papers lifted off desks and counters.

  Collection containers and instruments hurtled through the air.

  Jonathon shrieked and spun.

  She ducked a tray.

  It slammed into him. Bounced and hit a table with a clang.

  Jonathon collapsed to the floor and didn't move.

  "Stop!"

  But acknowledging her awareness of the dead only made the air vibrate and the walls crawl with their terror.

  She bent down. Found Jonathon's speedy pulse then grabbed his arms to drag him from the room before the random poltergeist effect became a concentrated, collective assault.

  A foot.

  Two.

  A scalpel spun toward her face.

  Instinctively her hand lifted to protect, to deflect. Instead it felt as if she'd latched on to one of the souls, as if she could draw it to her, as if she could do more, absorb some of the energy pulsing against her palm and use it as she'd seen her sire do. She didn't know if it was the soul's frantic struggle or her use of it, but something slammed into the scalpel and sent it sideways into a wall.

  Calm descended with the scent of sunshine and sand and date trees.

  "I see you're starting to discover that you're your father's daughter," Rahmiel said.

  There was just the slightest emphasis on the word daughter, confirming horrifying suspicion that she could feed on the dead.

  Mallory released Jonathon. She straightened and turned to find Rahmiel leaning against an autopsy table.

  Black hair caressed a white shirt left unbuttoned and parted to reveal a strong throat and smooth chest. He tugged a crumpled pack of Camels from his pocket, tapped it against his palm to eject a cigarette to capture between sensuous lips.

  "Really?" she asked.

  "Too much time among humans. I don't suppose you could help me with a touch of fire?"

  "You'll want Mikhail or Hayden for that."

  "Too bad. They don't interest me at the moment."

  "And I do? Why? Because I'm my father's daughter?"

  "Let's just say I'm attracted to the unusual."

  The glimmer of beautiful teeth and glitter of oasis-green eyes revealed his amusement. He stuffed the pack of Camels into his pocket. Speaking around the unlit cigarette, he murmured words from his realm, though their cadence and sound wasn't so different from those spoken in Hell.

  The dead returned to their bodies like haunting sentinels.

  Rahmiel pushed away from the table and crouched next to Jonathon. Strong, burnished fingers touched Jonathon's forehead. "We've got a few minutes before he wakes with nothing more than a headache."

  He stood. A sweeping hand indicated her original destination. "Shall we?"

  If the dead remained aware of her, they no longer tried to prevent her from reaching their bodies.

  Rahmiel took the cigarette from between his lips and used it to tap a drawer before casually leaning against one of its neighbors.

  "You should exercise more," she said. "You'd have more energy."

  His smile was a flash of temptation, honeysuckle nestled among poison ivy.

  Mallory opened the door, grasped the morgue tray handle and pulled.

  The scent of his killer rose from Iosif's corpse, faint, like drying flowers left at a graveside.

  She reached into her pocket for baggie and knife.

  "Don't bother," Rahmiel said.

  Like a magic trick, he held his open hand above the corpse, closed it, opened it to reveal a translucent globe similar in size to the spirit jars that had clattered against the desk after her sire's arrival.

  "His soul was mine to claim but I'm feeling generous. This one I'll give to you."

  He tossed the pale blue orb into the air as if he could cast it into a different realm.

  It spun and sparkled like a snow globe.

  The orb dropped.

  Mallory snagged it above Iosif's body, expecting cold but finding heat that seared her palm. When she glanced up, Rahmiel was gone, leaving behind the scent of a desert oasis.

  She pocketed the orb and closed Iosif's corpse into its refrigerated compartment.

  In the autopsy room, Jonathon moaned. His eyelashes fluttered then remained open.

  He sat, fear invading his scent at seeing the papers and instruments and trays on the floor, but that scent was quickly washed away by denial and then resolve.

  He touched his forehead, grimaced, looked around him again and said, "The air-conditioning fans must have gone on the fritz."

  She understood his desire not to believe, not to acknowledge, not to allow an alternate reality to disturb a carefully preserved one. She helped him to his feet then helped restore order, afterward allowing him to lead her to the refrigeration units and show her Iosif before escorting her out of the morgue.

  The glass sphere in her pocket gained weight beneath star-laden sky and bright moon. Images from her nightmare crowded in along with the gut-wrenching fear that she'd be too late to save Iosif's daughters and t
heir mother, too late to save the next victim of the man they were hunting.

  I won't be. But she hadn't convinced herself it was the truth by the time she reached the pedophile's house.

  She circled the block without spotting Cleary's Subaru, though she saw Matthew's Harley.

  Hayden would have dug into Cleary's financial records by now, looking for hotel charges or some connection to the Russians. Even angry over her choices, even suspicious of Matthew, he would have called if he'd found something.

  It was possible that Cleary had always trolled for underage prostitutes and paid cash, and that's why they'd only gotten him on possession of child pornography instead of catching him molesting one of his students.

  He'd be even more paranoid now. He'd done time. He wouldn't want to go back.

  Teens came and went from nearby houses, getting in and out of cars, bursts of music and the squeal of tires marking their movements.

  She grabbed a parking place a short distance away and on the opposite side of the street, the perfect spot for watching, though she wanted to kick Cleary's door open and rush into the house.

  Her hand strayed to the globe in her jacket pocket. It pulsed against her palm like a heartbeat, speeding hers as her thoughts returned to the morgue, to the feel of the soul struggling in her grasp. She shivered despite the orb's heat.

  Matthew appeared several blocks down, walking toward her. He cut through the night as if he owned it, with the confidence of a man who didn't know humans carrying guns and knives weren't the only things that roamed it.

  A flutter went through her stomach. Her body tightened in anticipation, with the need for touch and connection even though now there was more reason to resist the attraction, more reason not to draw him deeper into her world.

  He dropped into the passenger seat. Leaned forward, and rational thought fled as their lips connected in sensual collision. Parted for the slick rub and glide of tongue against tongue.

  His hand fisted her hair while hers pushed beneath the biker jacket. His heart thumped against her palm, strong and sure and steady. And despite everything, being with him felt right, natural instead of impossible.

  A moan escaped, pleasure. And then a second, in protest when his mouth left hers and he retreated fully to the passenger seat.