by Elle James
“Creepy,” I muttered as I stepped out of the wire-caged elevator onto the professionally stained concrete floor. Only one door led off the long corridor and it had the right number.
I knocked. No response. I tried the handle, but it was locked and the door looked like reinforced steel.
“Here, let me.”
“You have that super strength talent goin’ on?”
“Some, but that’s solid steel. Fortunately, I’m really good with locks.” He pulled a multi-use pocketknife from his pocket and inserted one of the many tools into the lock, jiggled it a few times until the lock turned, and the door swung open.
The smell hit me first. A combination of formaldehyde and death, the same stench that preceded my encounter with the zombie on my fire escape at the start of this whole adventure.
I glanced across at Blaise, glad I had him with me. Something about this place gave me the willies big-time.
We entered into a sterile white living area with tall ceilings and exposed metal beams, all part of the decor. I took the right door leading off the main room and Blaise took the left.
“Bedroom’s clear,” Blaise called out. I could hear his footsteps crossing to the door I’d gone through. My Glock led the way into what could only be described as a mad scientist’s lab with Bunsen burners, electrical gadgets, tubing and an operating table right out of a horror movie.
And next to the operating table on the floor, lying in an awkward and decidedly unnatural position, was the good Dr. Henke himself.
Dead.
I stepped around the table and bent to feel for a pulse.
“Careful.” Blaise grabbed the insulated part of a loose electrical wire hanging down from the ceiling, and held it away from me. “I think this is live.”
As suspected, Henke was dead, his hands blackened as if he’d had an electrical shock so strong it blew out the tips of his fingers.
Another scent lingered in the air. One I’d smelled the day before. “Do you smell that?” I straightened, sniffing again, trying to disassociate the formaldehyde and death from the other aroma making the inside of my nostrils itch.
Blaise tipped his head back and shook his head. “No. I can only smell rubbing alcohol and formaldehyde. What is it?”
“Perfume.”
“Think Henke was into reanimating dead women?”
“No, I don’t think so. So far the zombies have all been male.” I glanced across at Blaise and spoke as the thought came to my mind. “But he might not have been working alone.”
“Rachel Trent told us that Victor overheard Felding talking about a cash deal.”
My fingers bunched into a fist. “With Rico Mendez.”
“Mrs. Felding’s apartment looked trashed, like someone had been searching for something.”
“Maybe a stash of cash?” My eyes narrowed as the trashed room in the Felding’s swanky penthouse apartment came to mind, along with the memory of the perfume that had made my nose and eyes itch the entire time we’d spoken with her. Adrenaline raced through my system. I hated to admit it, but I liked the way Blaise and I bounced ideas off each other…like partners. Damn, I was beginning to think of him as a permanent fixture, not just a one-case-wonder.
“I suspect Gordon was the only one who knew where a certain wad of money was hidden. I wonder if someone decided it would be in their best interest to jumpstart Gordon’s brain to find it?”
I hurried after Blaise, my blood humming. I didn’t have to ask where we were going. He knew where I was headed and I knew exactly where to go.
Blaise pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed. “Detective Thomas, Dr. Henke’s been murdered. Send a forensics team here immediately.” He gave the address. “Detective Danske and I are headed to the Felding apartment in Manhattan. We will need backup.”
For once, New York City traffic cooperated and we made the drive in less than twenty minutes, arriving at the fancy building, parking in the street out front.
After flashing my badge, I had the security guard in the lobby lead the way up with a master key that would get us inside the apartment without having to use Blaise’s skill as a locksmith.
As the elevator arrived at the top floor and dinged open, a scream echoed through the walls.
Blaise grabbed the keys off the frightened security guard and got the door unlocked in no time flat. He flung it open to a scene from a slasher movie.
A dull gray Gordon Felding had Ivana smashed against the wall, his hands gripping her neck, squeezing so hard Ivana’s face had turned a startling shade of blueberry. The woman had a plain canvas bag dangling from her fingertips.
“Gordon!” Blaise shouted.
The zombie didn’t respond and his grip never slackened.
Blaise gripped his fists together and swung hard at Felding’s head.
The former CEO of F&L, Inc. threw back his head and roared, the sound so inhuman it made me shiver, but he didn’t let go of Ivana Felding’s neck.
Blaise jumped on the dead man’s back and I threw myself at the back of Felding’s knees. Between the two of us, we toppled the creature to the floor, his hands still clinging to his widow’s throat, Ivana flopping around like a rag doll. When he hit the hard tiles, his fingers loosened and Ivana bounced two feet away.
As Mrs. Felding slammed onto her back, the canvas bag dropped from her fingers and slid across the granite tile. The bag hit the corner of an occasional table’s leg, spinning it sideways, slinging dozens of bills across the expensive Persian carpet.
Gasping for breath, Ivana rolled up to her hands and knees and crawled toward the money. She snatched it up and struggled to her feet, heading for the door.
I tackled her before she got there, landing hard on her back, knocking her flat on her face.
Gordon roared again and fought against Blaise’s attempt to pin him to the ground.
With superhuman strength, the dead man flung Blaise to the side like a dirty shirt and lunged after Ivana.
Blaise scrambled after him.
Gordon reached me first, yanking me up by my hair.
Blaise plowed into Gordon, knocking him to the side. Since Gordon had hold of my hair, he took me with him, slinging me against the couch.
Gordon released my hair and swung at Blaise, clipping his chin, knocking him against a solid mahogany cabinet. The dull thud of skull against wood sent a sickening lump to the pit of my belly.
The dead man lurched to his feet, his face contorted, the skin sagging and gray-blue.
Ivana blubbered, sitting up, clutching the bag of money to her chest, her lip bleeding, her normally beautifully coifed hair knotted and standing on end. “Bastard! You couldn’t even die right. All I wanted was enough to live on, but you couldn’t even leave me that in your stinking will.”
Gordon flung himself at his wife, knocking her back so hard her head smacked against the granite and her eyes fluttered shut.
That’s when I remembered the ornamental Samurai sword hanging over the couch I lay against. I staggered to my feet, my head swimming.
Blaise held onto a drawer handle of the mahogany cabinet and dragged himself up.
The reanimated man flung his hands out to the side and gave a blood-curdling cry, then ducked and charged into Blaise as if he were a water buffalo on the savannah, defending his herd.
Blaise slammed against the wall. The creature wrapped his hands around the demon’s throat and shook him so hard, Blaise’s teeth rattled.
My heart banged against my ribs. That was my partner—hell, my lover—getting the living shit choked out of him. I couldn’t let that happen. Wouldn’t let it happen.
A rush of adrenaline spiked in my veins, clearing my head. I leaped up on the white leather sofa, ripped the Samurai sword from its perch on the wall and dropped to the ground, racing toward the creature from hell. I swung the blade with as much force as I had when I’d been attacked the first time by a zombie.
The sword sliced clean through Gordon’s neck, severing his head from his body. It dropped to the floor and rolled toward Ivana, bumping against her thigh.
The woman blinked her eyes opened, took one look at the blank stare of her dead husband, screamed and passed out.
The hands clenched around Blaise’s throat had locked in a death grip, the jumbled messages from the brain no longer there to signal release.
I tore at the cold, waxy fingers until they broke free of Blaise’s throat.
The headless body seemed to turn to rubber and dropped to the ground.
Blaise’s hand circled my waist and he dragged me against him. “Thanks, Danske. You saved my life.”
I leaned into him, not caring that our partnership would soon end, just wanting to feel his warmth against my skin. “I thought demons were immortal.”
“We are, unless someone does to us what you did to that zombie.” He grinned and pressed a quick kiss to my lips. “I’m glad you didn’t miss.”
I leaned up on my toes and pressed my lips to his. “Me too. I’d hate to have to train a new partner. You were hard enough.”
“Honey, I’m getting harder by the minute. Something about an adrenaline rush gets me hot.”
My pulse ricocheted off the insides of my veins, my own desires spiking with our close connection. “Our backup should be arriving soon.”
“Later then.” He kissed me hard, his tongue delving between my teeth, sliding along mine, warm, wet and teasing.
My core tightened, growing slick with juices even as I pushed away from him and straightened my shirt.
I glanced around to find Ivana limping toward the door, the bag with the remaining cash clutched to her chest.
By the time she reached for the doorknob, the police backup burst through, knocking her back on her ass.
I laughed out loud as I nodded toward Ivana. “Arrest her. If I’m not mistaken, she killed Dr. Henke.”
“I can explain,” she cried.
“Talk to someone who gives a damn,” I said, stepping over Gordon’s head to get to the door. My eyes itched and my nose tickled. “And buy a different perfume, for Pete’s sake.”
An hour and a million questions later, the story unraveled.
Rico Mendez had given Gordon Felding a million dollars cash for one round of the reanimation drug. The gangster had wanted to use it to revive his dead brother long enough to convince his opposing cartel that all was well in his familia. When Gordon died of natural causes, an honest to goodness heart attack, the drug hadn’t been delivered—and all development on it halted before it could be made ready for consumption.
Ivana Felding had also overheard her husband’s conversation with Rico discussing the million dollars in cash that the man was to deliver to their apartment. Only Gordon had hidden it somewhere Ivana couldn’t find. When he died suddenly, Ivana realized the terms of her husband’s will would leave her destitute. She spent days searching her apartment without finding the cash Rico had given her husband.
She’d turned to Dr. Henke, promising to split the bankroll if he helped her reanimate her husband long enough to get him to show her where it was.
The hitch was getting the reanimation formula to a point where it worked well enough to reanimate the brain function to full potential with sufficient lucidity to follow orders.
The first few attempts only created monsters so high on adrenaline and hormonal injections, they wanted to kill anything in their paths. Henke had directed the attack on the secretary as a show of his commitment to Ivana—a kind of revenge for the woman’s affair with Mr. Felding. The attack on Mrs. Felding had been Henke’s attempt to reassure her that his experiments were getting closer. Henke had been able to direct the reanimate to Ivana. Only it had backfired and the dead man had almost killed Ivana and had been caught on video, thus requiring a visit by the police.
Once Ivana started talking, she wouldn’t shut up. Even when her lawyer arrived and told her not to say another word, her sense of injustice wouldn’t let her put a lid on it. She felt as if Gordon Felding owed her for all the years she’d put up with him.
When Henke had demanded more than half the money for his work with the reanimation, Ivana had killed him in a fit of pique, unwilling to share another dime with anyone. Then she’d taken off with her reanimated husband to find the money stashed in her apartment.
Gordon had gone right to the hidden location, but when Ivana had her hands on the cash, she no longer had a use for a zombie husband and attempted to pull the plug on him. Coherent enough to realize what she was doing, Gordon fought back…that’s where I’d come in.
After hours of documentation, I headed to my apartment. Blaise had disappeared before I’d finished up at the station. I didn’t like that I had no idea where he’d gone and whether I’d see him again.
“Detective Danske, are you still interested in returning to the Fifth Precinct as a street cop?” Detective Thomas cornered me in the corridor on my way out the door.
“Why?” I asked.
The older man sighed. “I threw you into a case without giving you sufficient training. I realize it wasn’t fair. Maybe I want to make it up to you by letting you have your choice.”
“How generous.” I chewed on my bottom lip.
“Would you like to let the situation ride as it is and see if you like it any better in a week?” Detective Thomas face remained poker straight, no emotion giving me a clue as to whether he really wanted me to stay or go.
“It hasn’t been so bad,” I admitted reluctantly. “I’ll give it another week.”
Thomas nodded. “I have a different partner in mind for your next assignment.”
My hand rose in protest. “No. If I stay, I don’t want to break in a new partner. Blaise Michaels was hard enough on me, I don’t relish training another.”
The detective’s lips twitched, but to his credit, he didn’t laugh out loud. And a good thing. I might have had to punch my new boss, and that wouldn’t have looked good on my record, should I ask to return to the Fifth Precinct.
“Okay, then, get some rest and report in early tomorrow morning. I have another mission for you two.”
I left the station and headed back to my apartment, still too hyped up on adrenaline to even think of sleep. And where the hell was Blaise?
As I stepped through my apartment door, I sensed another presence.
The demon who’d been on my mind since I’d left Detective Thomas. I flung my jacket on the couch and called out, “I don’t know what you did to piss off Detective Thomas, but he’s given us another assignment and I’m stuck with you as my partner, again.”
“I’ve ordered out Chinese,” he said from inside my bedroom.
I leaned against the doorway, my heart skipping several beats as I stared at his naked body sprawled out on my comforter, a carton of Kung Pao chicken open beside him.
“Sure of yourself much?” I queried, my hands drifting to the buttons on my shirt, flicking them open one at a time.
“Figured you’d have to come home sometime.”
“As long as you understand.” The last button flicked open.
“What’s that?”
Holding the edges of my shirt closed, I gave Blaise a narrow stare. “I don’t do commitment well.”
Blaise shrugged. “You didn’t kill zombi
es well, either—before this week. You’ll learn. Besides, we were meant to be together.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You and I both feel it every time we touch.” He skimmed a finger along my arm, sending a frenzy of shocks across my nerve endings. “And we haven’t resolved the issue of your father.” Blaise pressed a kiss to my forehead, the touch burning all the way to my core.
I fought off the buzz-kill of the mention of the man who’d deserted my family. “Leave him out of this,” I warned.
Blaise nodded. “For now…but we will talk, eventually.” His fingers found their way beneath my shirt to curl around my waist.
I wanted to argue the point—but I had to admit, I wanted everything in that bed a whole lot more.
I slid the shirt over my shoulders, unhooked my bra and dropped it to the floor. The boots and jeans were next. When I climbed onto the bed, naked, I knew I’d gone a step farther than I’d made it before. But I didn’t stop to analyze feelings or try to figure out why I was attracted to a demon, I just accepted a bite of the chicken. Then I slid my body over his, mounting him with every intention of riding off the passion that had built throughout the case. I figured it might take all night, the way he made me feel.
I could work with that. In fact, there was nowhere I’d rather be.
*
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