Mallory's Hunt

by Jory Strong

"You were in the house?" she asked.

  "Yeah. I thought you'd be here sooner."

  The grasshopper scent of curiosity reached her.

  "It took time to find the guy I needed, then time to meet up with him."

  "You get what you were after?"

  "Yes and no."

  "There's a clear answer."

  Reality was a wind cooling hope and banishing fanciful possibility. She tried to imagine telling him about the dead and Rahmiel, couldn't. "What about you? Anything in the house?"

  "No porn. No souvenirs. No pictures or incriminating diaries. Nothing, and I did a thorough search. Looked for hidey holes but didn't find anything."

  "Could be a long night then."

  He cranked the seat back, reached over and snagged her hand. "Maybe you could tell me more about yourself."

  Her heart did a traitorous roll. A part of her wanted to. "And you'd do the same?"

  "Good question."

  Caleb brushed his thumb across her knuckles. Dangerous question. On so many levels. But Jesus, if he could turn her, maybe get her an immunity deal…

  "Why'd you leave the dog behind?"

  "He wanted to stay."

  His heart kicked up a beat. The times he'd noticed how little she treated Dane like a dog, at how little Dane acted like one, congealed with the memory of eyes turned red by moonlight and blood.

  "You're right to be scared of him," she whispered, dark eyes finding his. "You're right to be scared of all of us."

  "Even you?"

  "Time will tell."

  Hayden's words coming from her mouth.

  "Because you're all killers?"

  His hand tightened, keeping hers prisoner when she tried to pull away. "Don't," he said, carrying her hand to his chest and pressing it against his heart. "I'm already deep into this thing with you."

  And it went beyond the job.

  "Hayden's not wrong. The less you know, the less involved with us, the safer you'll be. You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't even know about this." Her eyes dropped to his lips. "We shouldn't be doing this, whatever this is. It's a mistake. For you. For me."

  Yeah, it was. But the best he could do was to say, "Maybe," and even that didn't sound heartfelt.

  She glanced in the direction of the pedophile's house. "From what I can see, there's no alarm system. I could have gotten in and out on my own."

  "With nobody watching your back?"

  "I'd have gone back for Dane."

  Meaning she knew what the junkie intended?

  Caleb couldn't help but see the Russian that Dane had taken down, his throat torn and gaping like a bloody shout. Couldn't stop the kick and sudden race of his heart.

  He tried to cover it by asking, "What's your brother going to think when he gets back and finds you named your dog after him?"

  "He'll be okay with it."

  "You got any other brothers?"

  "Only one in L.A."

  His gut tightened at the implication, that there were others elsewhere, probably in some cult compound with the man who'd fathered then kidnapped her. It was the only thing that made sense given the brands they all wore.

  "That brother going to show up at the bar?"

  "No. Bastian's in jail, awaiting trial on three counts of murder."

  "Justified?"

  She moved closer, close enough that a tip forward and he'd taste her lips again. "Can murder ever be justified?"

  "I can think of cases."

  She tilted her head toward Cleary's house. "Like in those cases?"

  "Yeah." The word puffed out of him. "Yeah, but I'd let the cops handle it before I risked a murder rap. I'd let him be found guilty and do the time."

  Easier for him to claim because it didn't matter if things went sideways. His badge allowed him to make a righteous kill. His rifle and his oath and his orders had given him that same right overseas.

  What would he do if the girl involved was Grace?

  He wouldn't stop until he found the guy.

  And then?

  Could he stop?

  He knew what it was like to take a man's life, to live with having done it.

  Mallory's slight smile said she'd read something in his eyes, his scent, his body. It sent heat curling through him when it should have killed the attraction.

  She wouldn't flinch away in horror if he told her the number of men he'd killed, if he admitted that he had the death of innocents on his conscience too. In war, the distinctions weren't always clear until after, until it was too late to change anything, leaving survivors stumbling around empty or grieving or lost.

  The brutality required in his last undercover assignment wouldn't send her running or have her backing away in revulsion. She could know it all and accept him.

  Don't go there.

  But the strength of his desire to tip forward, to obliterate thought and end conversation with the press of his mouth to hers was like the clang of arrival bells announcing he was already there.

  "And yet Cleary isn't in jail," she said, not letting the conversation drop.

  "If he's guilty. Nothing in there proves he is. There's no going back after you've taken a life."

  "You've taken them. Overseas? While you were in the service?"

  "Yes."

  Her fingertips stroked him through the shirt, tiny circles sending streaks of fire downward whether she meant them to or not.

  Cleary's Subaru turned onto the street.

  Caleb's body protested the loss of her touch.

  "So does he have a security system?" Mallory asked.

  "No. He's relying on locks and barred windows."

  Every house on the street had the same. This was a neighborhood where dogs served as alarms and a gun in the nightstand stood for the police.

  "Garage is full of junk. He can't pull in."

  "There's a back door?"

  "Into the kitchen."

  "You go in that way, I'll go in through the front."

  Cleary pulled into the short, narrow driveway.

  Mallory's hand dropped to the Jeep's door handle.

  He grabbed her arm. "No killing."

  "We've got killing in our blood."

  "Bullshit. Tell me you don't really believe that."

  Cleary let himself into the house.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 22

  Matthew's hand tightened around her arm like a manacle. "If your plan tonight is to kill him, I'm not going to let it happen. If it's just to scare him, I'll play that game, but it only goes so far."

  "I hear you," Mallory said. The time for being soft was over. The translucent globe in her jacket pocket had become the weight of one of her choices.

  She could have kept Iosif alive if she'd acted on what Hound senses told her, if she hadn't done the human thing and allowed him his pride.

  She wouldn't fail again. She'd use terror if that's what it took. She'd been bred to deliver it, conditioned in Hell to know its sound and scent and taste.

  She opened the door, pulled from Matthew's grip and shoved the 9 mm into her waistband so it rode at the base of her spine. "He'll be alive when we leave."

  Dead in this world, if he was their prey, he wouldn't satisfy her sire's desire for an Earthly hunt. Dead, and Dane paid the price.

  Matthew crossed the street and disappeared from sight. She gave him a few minutes more before going to the front door.

  The scent of sex clung to the air, left there in Cleary's wake.

  She pounded with a cop's authority, her hearing keen enough to know Cleary was on the other side of the door.

  She pounded again, felt his gaze through the peep hole and knew he'd see what he was scared of seeing, someone working sex crimes or Vice.

  "Open up. Now."

  The deadbolt clicked.

  A second lock snicked.

  He cracked the door open.

  She shoved it into him, forcing her way into the house.

  He cried out, a squeak of protest, kept from escalating by Ma
tthew behind him, his hand against Cleary's pale, vulnerable throat, his voice rumbled menace. "Don't yell. Don't scream. Don't resist. Understand?"

  Cleary nodded.

  Matthew used the grip to guide him deeper into the house, stopping in the kitchen and tugging a chair away from the table, turning it and forcing Cleary to sit.

  Mallory pulled a second chair and positioned it in front of the pedophile.

  Matthew hadn't found evidence of guilt, but she read it in the stink coming off Cleary in waves. Felt the truth of it in the way her skin stretched tight, muscles and organs and bones aching to bunch and change, to shed human form and become Hound.

  The purple-haired teen selling her body for drug money had tagged him accurately. Sweat beaded and rolled down a round, long face, wider through the jaw than at the forehead. Eyes too close together darted nervously above a prominent, bulbous nose with a scrap of a mustache beneath it and over thick lips.

  Mr. Potato Head. But she'd just call him scum. Scum of the Earth.

  In the eternity of Hell, she'd chased men who smelled the way he did. If he wasn't her sire's prey, then she'd make sure the police got him.

  She'd watch and wait. She'd be ready for him when the sick craving for children overpowered tonight's terror.

  She tugged the gun from her waistband and Matthew's free hand twitched as if he'd go for his own to keep her from killing. She pointed the weapon at Cleary's crotch.

  The pedophile's upper body bobbed down as if to protect his genitalia. Up when that brought the gun's muzzle closer to his face.

  Her hand brushed against the globe in her jacket pocket as she retrieved a picture. A flick of her wrist and the photograph of Caitlyn was in his lap. "What did you do with her body?"

  He pressed against the chair back, trembled violently enough that its metal feet chattered against the cheap linoleum.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Truth.

  She dropped the picture of the Satanist's daughter onto his lap.

  He whimpered.

  "Look at her. Have you ever seen her?"

  Sweat dripped from his chin onto his shirt. His tongue darted out, too dry to wet his lips.

  "Maybe. Maybe. I can't be sure."

  Truth.

  "What about these two," she asked of Zinaida and Kseniya.

  "I've never see them."

  The smell of his fear lessened.

  She'd purposely saved Amanda Edson's picture for last.

  She dropped it into his lap.

  Fear scent flared again, this time accompanied by a spontaneous burst of pheromones marking remembered pleasure.

  "I don't know her."

  "You're lying. I can smell the rotted meat stink of it."

  She stood and he rocked backward, whimpering.

  "You picked her up. You took her somewhere. You paid her for sex."

  "I thought she just looked young. I thought she was eighteen."

  Her stomach churned.

  Despite the gun she had trained on him, it was the knife she pressed against his neck, slicing through skin.

  Blood ran down his throat, small shallow streams that could so easily become a river, a fountain.

  Matthew's hand locked around her wrist. Numbness spread toward her elbow and into her fingers.

  "You picked her up. You took her somewhere. You paid her for sex. You killed her. Where's the body?"

  "I didn't kill her. I swear, I didn't kill her. I took her back to the corner she works. I haven't seen her since the last time."

  There wasn't even the smallest whiff of carrion.

  "Truth."

  Mallory let Matthew force the knife from Cleary's throat. She asked, "How old do you think the girl you picked up tonight is?"

  "Twelve. Thirteen," he whispered.

  Her body vibrated with the desire to change form, to send him running so she could chase him as she'd done so many just like him in Hell. And if she couldn't do that, to lunge forward, substituting the knife for a Hound's bite.

  Her vision wavered. A thousand memories overlapped, the Reaper Lord's conditioning gaining purchase.

  "We've got what we came here for," Matthew said, something in his voice pulling her from dark forests and bloody images.

  Her eyes met his. The desire to rid the world of a sexual predator was in them, but the desire to do what many considered morally right was stronger.

  His strength shored up her own.

  She wiped the knife clean on the pedophile's leg, close enough to the juncture of his thighs for his breath to catch and his body to go rigid.

  The blade closed with a snick. She slid it into her pocket and once again jammed the 9 mm into her waistband at mid-back.

  Picking up the pictures of the girls, she said, "I'm ready."

  They left Cleary trembling violently, too afraid to move from the chair.

  At the Jeep she slid her arms around Matthew's waist, inhaled his scent and let his warmth chase away the chill. She could have easily killed Cleary. She would have regretted it less tonight than this morning. Her humanity was slipping away with every act that would meet with the Reaper Lord's approval.

  Matthew rubbed his cheek against her hair. "He'll get what's coming to him."

  She shivered. "Yeah. Yeah, he will."

  Matthew touched his lips to hers. "You're going to the Brass Ring?"

  "I'm stopping by long enough to tell Hayden that Cleary's a dead-end. I'll be in and out in a couple of minutes."

  She hated the necessity of lying. But there were things Matthew couldn't learn or witness.

  "You'll call me if Hayden's got anything new?"

  "He doesn't, or he would have texted."

  "You're dodging the question."

  "I'll call, if there's something new." If there's something we can't do without you.

  Disbelief scented the air, just a hint of it to accompany the taste of jalapeno that arrived with the hard smash of his mouth on hers, the rough thrust of his tongue.

  She met his aggression with aggression. The pent up longing escaped to turn his anger into deepened kisses, into the hard length of an erection grinding against her, into the lush, intoxicating scent of soul-deep desire.

  They parted, each of them breathing hard.

  She wanted to tell Matthew that she'd come to his apartment when she was done.

  She didn't. She couldn't. Giving in to the temptation would only pull him further into her world.

  She wouldn't do that to him. She wouldn't be the cause of his death.

  "I can't," she said. The words that acknowledged the need and denied the possibility of acting on it felt torn from her throat.

  His laugh was rough, edged with husky regret. "Yeah, I know. Getting involved isn't smart."

  She forced herself away from him.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," she said, hoping that by then Hayden would have a lead and they wouldn't have to pursue the one Matthew claimed to have.

  He nodded and headed in the direction of the Harley.

  Mallory dropped into the driver's seat. She sent Nathan a text that Cleary had picked up Amanda Edson, and at least one other underage girl hooking, then she went to the Brass Ring.

  Mikhail slept in the middle of the ring. Dane lay curled in a corner, head on a boxing glove. Both opened their eyes and looked at her.

  "Anything?" Hayden asked, leaning back in his chair, stretching, his eyes bloodshot from so much time in front of the laptop.

  "He trolls for young girls and he had sex with Amanda Edson, but he didn't kill her."

  "Prey, but not the one we need to produce."

  "What about you, anything useful in the files or on the computers?"

  "Nothing."

  "What about the school uniform the Jane Doe wore?"

  "No solid suspects. No possible ID on her. You got into the morgue?"

  "Yes." She pulled the orb from her pocket.

  Hayden was on his feet in a heartbeat. His chair crashed to the fl
oor.

  "Where the fuck did you get that?"

  She decided against telling him about the party, about what had happened with the dead in the morgue. "Rahmiel. Smells like sunshine and date trees and sand. Looks like a desert sheik."

  "Fuck, Mal. First a human and now this?"

  "I didn't go looking for Rahmiel. He came to me. He said Iosif's soul was his to claim."

  "You know that saying, The enemy of my enemy is my friend? It's bullshit, Mal. Pure bullshit."

  "I'll take my chances."

  "Yeah? Well thanks to your new friend, there's no summoning Iosif for answers. Get a fucking jar, Mal. Get the horse."

  So much for the truce.

  But she couldn't rail against Hayden's anger. He was right, Iosif had been turned into a dead-end. Even collectively, they didn't have the power to free Iosif's soul from the orb any more than they did to free one from their sire's jars.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Her fingers closed reflexively on the orb.

  What would it mean for her in this world, if she knew more about the Reaper Lord's world? About what it meant to be his daughter? Would it allow her to better protect the ones she loved?

  She opened the box, her wrist brushing against the worn blue velvet dress of Kseniya's doll.

  Too late. Too late. Too late.

  They didn't know that for sure.

  She placed the orb next to the jar with the Jane Doe's trapped spirit and picked up one of the remaining four. They couldn't risk a summoning if there was doubt. Combined, their magic was strong enough to draw and trap a soul, living or dead. But choose one of the living, and the body became a vessel ready for possession.

  She picked up the small horse she'd stolen from Caitlyn Lawrence's backpack. It'd meant something to her, enough that she'd taken it to school. Maybe it'd been given to her by the classmate who disappeared at the same time.

  Bile rose. Mallory swallowed it. She curled her hand around a second soul jar then joined the others at the ring, taking up the same position she had in the cemetery.

  Hayden handed her the knife, saw the two jars. His smile became as sharp as the blade. "Getting pragmatic, Mal? Shedding some of that wasted conscience?"

  "Go to hell, Hayden."

  He laughed. "Been there, done that. Haven't we all?"

  He put the horse and red candle in the center of the ring. The ceremony was similar, the words only subtly different, but the magic was powerful riptide and heart-shrieking whirlpool.