by Cynthia Eden
A police cruiser circled the parking lot. Shit. He made a quick slide back into the shadows.
Damn it. It shouldn’t have happened this way. The plan had been different.
That poor bastard hadn’t even been on the list.
A door opened to the left. A young girl peeked out, then pushed a cleaning cart forward.
Perfect.
“Excuse me, miss . . .”
The girl let out a quick squeak of surprise.
He stepped into the light. The cops were gone. It was safe now. For the moment, anyway.
“I want to ask you a few questions.” Power pulsed beneath the words.
The girl’s eyes went blank. She wouldn’t remember the questions later—so she’d get to live.
“Y-yes, sir . . .”
And he would get his questions answered.
Because before he dealt out his punishment, he had to be certain of the crime.
Good partners were so very hard to find.
Only a few women enjoyed the bittersweet mix of sex and death.
“Tell me about the body you found. Every. Single. Detail.”
The girl began to talk and his hands balled into fists with every slow word that she uttered.
He’d known, of course, the instant he’d learned the man’s name.
But when the sweet young thing before him started talking about the blood and the knife that the cops had found ...
Fuck. The last betrayal he’d expected.
By the one woman he’d trusted.
Oh, yes, he was gonna make the bitch pay.
She’d been his perfect bait.
Pity.
Now he’d have to add her name to his list.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he told the girl softly, and bent to give her a light kiss—and to steal a wisp of power.
The girl swayed before him.
He stepped back, left her. He couldn’t very well kill her—finding a woman’s body wouldn’t fit the MO he’d created.
Not that the last murder fit, either—because of that whore.
But he’d show her. He’d find her, and make the bitch beg. Let her know that, before the cold hell of death, there could be such sweet, hot pleasure.
Chapter 7
“I need to know,” Colin told Emily as he paced the small confines of the precinct office. “Just how many supernaturals out there can kill with a touch.”
Emily kept her gaze on the crime scene photos. “You’re certain a more . . . human method wasn’t used to kill these men?”
He sighed. “Hell, doc, I don’t know.” He came behind her, settled his warm, strong hands on her shoulders and began to gently knead her flesh. “The tox report isn’t back yet on the last victim.”
Oh, God, but his hands were skilled. She closed the folder. Tried to stop picturing the dead. “What about the first two victims?”
“Smith was out. Phillips ruled ’em natural causes. Heart attacks.”
“But you don’t think that’s what happened?”
“Michael House has a handprint on his chest. Not a bruise, an actual outline of a hand. His heart—his whole body, according to Smith—was in perfect condition. No reason for a guy like him to up and die.”
“Unless he was given drugs or—”
“Or one of our local supernatural assholes has decided to start fucking with the humans again.”
She had to wince at that because, technically, he was a supernatural who happened to be, ah, fucking with a human.
“Tell me what supernaturals out there can kill with a touch,” Gyth repeated, his voice hardening, “and I’ll start tracking those bastards down.”
Yes, he was very good at tracking. Hunting. It was the nature of the beast he carried. Her lover was a wolf shifter, a fierce breed, and once he started hunting his prey, he wouldn’t stop until he’d run the killer to ground. “I’ll need some time to think, to check my books and—”
“You already have suspicions, doc.” He wheeled her chair around, crouching at the same time so that when the chair’s wheels stopped moving, she found herself staring straight into his bright eyes. “So spill it.”
Her lips tightened. “There are . . . several beings who could potentially murder this way.” Potentially was the key word. Just because the Other could kill that way, well, it didn’t mean that any of them had.
One black brow lifted. “And they are?”
She had to be careful here. She couldn’t break her client confidentiality, but she had to give him as much knowledge as she possibly could. Fighting monsters was never easy. Her shifter knew that. “An incubus. A succubus. Both could—”
“Wow! Wait!” His eyes widened. “The sex demons?”
A slow nod. Most Other had heard of the incubi and succubi. Even if they hadn’t had, er, personal contact.
Because once a being had personal contact with one of that particular breed, well, it was said that the experience was unforgettable.
And, unfortunately for some, very addictive.
“I thought those two were supposed to get high off pleasure.”
Emily frowned at that. “They don’t ‘get high,’ as you put it.” She sniffed. “They literally live on it. Like vamps and blood.”
“Shit.” He rubbed his chin. “So how do they go from pleasuring someone to killing ’em?”
Not an easy move. “Most of them don’t,” she said, placing deliberate emphasis on most. “But, sometimes, certain succubi—or incubi—” though from what she’d learned the females were reputed to be far more dangerous than the males, “well, they can get ... carried away in the heat of the moment.”
His gaze dropped to her lips. “Yeah, that can happen.”
Her heart rate sped up. “No, ah, not like that. The power they get through sex isn’t enough for them. It’s really ... more like stealing life. The pleasure they get, it’s life. It’s power. Energy. If the succubus or incubus doesn’t shut off the flow of power, if they keep linking with the prey,” not the best word choice, probably, but it was all she had, “they can literally drain every last drop of life from the body—”
“And leave a dead man in the bed.” A muscle flexed along his jaw. “Hell.”
“Succubi and incubi are generally mid-level demons. Fives or sixes. They can only kill like this when sex is heavily involved.” Normally, humans didn’t have too much to fear from the lower-level demons. It was the all-powerful level-tens that made real nightmares into reality for humans.
“Trust me,” Colin said. “Sex has been heavily involved in these cases.”
Yeah, she’d kind of figured that from the naked bodies and bondage. But... “A level-nine or -ten demon could also do something like this—with the right set of circumstances, anyway. You know they can control minds—”
“Assholes like Niol? Yeah, I know they get off on playing with humans.”
“—but they can place a suggestion in a human’s mind, literally, for death.”
He huffed out a hard breath. “You’re telling me a level-ten can tell a person he’s going to die, and then the poor bastard would just keel over?”
“Theoretically, it should be possible. The body would temporarily mimic whatever suggestion the demon gave—whether it was a heart attack or a stroke. The victim would think he or she was truly having the attack. And if you think it, well, sometimes that can just be enough to kill you.”
Colin stared at her in disbelief. Poor guy. For a supernatural, he still didn’t quite understand the way the world worked. She tried to reassure him. “But I-I’ve never known of an actual case like that.” Though just the thought of that much power scared the hell out of her.
“But you do know of a case where a sex demon has killed someone.” He pounced on what she had said, and what she had not.
Emily stared straight at him. Now this was the hard part. Colin was her lover, the shifter she loved, but he was also a cop, and she wasn’t about to break her professional standards. “I really couldn’t say.”
“Then, baby, you’ve just said enough.”
Her back teeth ground together. “There is another who could kill this way. The cazador del alma—”
“What? What the hell is that? Spanish?”
“Yes, it roughly means soul hunter. The cazador has the touch of death. He finds those whose time has run out. He touches them—”
“And he fucking kills them. Just great.” Colin shook his head. “So I’ve got some hunter out there who can kill humans at will—”
“Cazadores don’t usually kill humans,” Emily felt obliged to tell him. “They usually are the ones who go after Other when they go bad.” Though the cazadores were extremely rare these days.
“These vics were human.” Absolutely certain.
“Then they wouldn’t be a cazador’s usual prey.”
“Not unless the guy is just another crazy bastard—which is a definite possibility. Shit.” Colin glanced back at the table and the closed file. “I need to know which of these assholes is in my town.”
“They aren’t going to advertise their presence.” The deadliest beings often kept the lowest profiles, striking out only when necessary. “Look, there could be others, let me research—”
“Oh, you do your research, baby, and let me know everything you find out. In the meantime, I’m gonna start hunting and—” His eyes widened. “Sonofabitch.”
“Colin?”
He growled. The sound more wolf that man. “We fucking had her in the station.”
“Who?”
He jumped to his feet. “A succubus. I’d bet my life on it. I could smell her—damn, the scent alone was enough to—” He broke off, rather wisely, Emily thought.
But she still had to ask, “Enough to what?”
“Enough to make me back the hell away from her, fast. Because she wasn’t you.”
Oh, very good answer. She rose quickly, grabbed his T-shirt, bunched it in her fist, and dragged him close for a hard, deep kiss.
One good thing about wolf shifters. Their loyalty was sacred to them, just as sacred as a mate.
The bad thing, well, that would be that some of them were psychotic. Luckily for her, Colin was as sane as they came, just with a decidedly aggressive streak that made him perfect as a cop.
“I’ve got to call Brooks, let him know—”
Now here was the problem. “Just what, exactly? That you think you have a suspect and she’s a demon?” Emily hesitated. “He still doesn’t even know the truth about you yet, does he?”
A fast shake of his head.
“So how do you think he’ll take the news of a demon stalking the streets?”
Not very well. They both knew that answer.
Colin exhaled. “I’ll talk to the captain. See if he wants me to work this case on my own.”
She didn’t like that idea one bit. “Partners are supposed to watch each other’s backs. You’re not supposed to be out there chasing down killers on your own.” A cold knot lodged in her stomach. Emily knew that Colin was physically one of the strongest supernaturals around, but he wasn’t invincible. As far as she knew, no one was.
So she’d feel much better if someone was out there patrolling with him while he hunted.
“You can’t keep him in the dark forever.” They’d had the same argument before. “I know your last partner screwed you—”
“No, baby, he tried to kill me when he found out what I was.”
“Brooks isn’t Mike, okay? You don’t know what he’ll do.”
“It’s not just my call, Em. Once Brooks finds out the truth, the shit will hit the fan about everyone.”
Yes, it would.
“I’ll talk to the captain,” he repeated, “and see what he wants me to do. But I’m also going to have another chat with the succubus.”
“She might not be involved.” Her voice was carefully expressionless now. “You should wait for the tox screen—”
“Oh, I’ll wait for the results, but I got the feeling she knew exactly what I was—”
“When you backed away, she knew.” She could tell him that much.
“Hell.” Disgusted.
Emily cleared her throat. “Shifters have such an overdeveloped sense of smell that her pheromones came off smelling too sweet to you. When you retreated, she knew what you were.” Humans and demons always went closer, eager for more of the heady scent.
But not her shifter . . . he’d acted just as the others of his kind had done before him.
“You sure seem to know a lot about the sex demons.” His head cocked to the right. “How certain are you that the info you have is accurate?”
Since her knowledge had come straight from the mouth of a succubus, pretty damn certain. “Something else you should know,” she told him, knowing she had to tread carefully. “Sex demons—they are very, very territorial. I’d be surprised if there are more than a few in the city.”
“In that case, I’ll damn well be having my little talk with Cara as soon as possible.”
Cara.
The name rang in her ears.
Oh, damn.
The rising sun shot streaks of pink and purple across the sky as the lights filtered though the clouds and illuminated the horizon.
Cara paused in the swimming pool, her body easily staying afloat. This was really her favorite time of the day, when the shadows had to give way to the light.
She turned slightly, and dove deep, heading straight to the bottom of the pool. The water was warm—she always kept it heated—and it closed around her like the arms of a lover.
Todd.
She’d left him sleeping upstairs. A smile had been on his lips. Cara had kissed him, a soft, light kiss before she left.
A part of her was afraid that would be the last kiss she ever gave to him. It was easy to pretend you didn’t care about reality in the heat of passion. When pleasure was only moments away, it was fine to focus on the moment. Hell, she did that all the time.
But Todd was a cop, and he wasn’t just going to ignore the ... peculiarities of the night before.
Of course, she had been holding back on the guy. Things could have gotten so intense that she could have had the man begging.
Or screaming with his pleasure.
Though they’d both come pretty close to that.
When she touched the bottom of the pool, Cara pivoted and shot toward the surface. Her eyes were wide open as she swam, and she saw the outline of a man standing near the edge of the pool.
Todd. Her heart rate kicked up a notch. Her head broke the surface and she sucked in a deep breath of air. Tendrils of steam rose from the water.
He’d dressed in the rumpled clothes he’d worn last night. His hair was tousled, and there was a hard set to his mouth.
“Do you always leave your lovers at dawn?” He asked her quietly.
She swam to the edge of the pool. Slow, unhurried movements. She reached for the wall. Curled her fingers over the edge and stared up at him. “Do you always whisper my name when you sleep?” He had, right after she’d kissed him, and that soft sound had pierced straight to her heart.
Fool. He’s not going to care when he knows the truth. They never care.
In fact, humans were usually horrified when they found out what she really was.
Narrow-minded jerks. Okay, now she was starting to think like Cameron, but it wasn’t as if she could help the way she’d been born. She didn’t blame humans for having skin that could injure too easily or—
“Lately, yeah, I probably do.” He crouched down, his powerful thighs bunching. “I missed you when I woke up this morning.”
The guy sure knew how to say just the right thing.
She swallowed. “I, uh, usually swim at dawn.” Oh, jeez, could she have sounded more like a stuttering fool and less like a calm, cool demon?
“I’ll remember that. Maybe I’ll join you one day.”
“You could ... join me now if you wanted.”
His gaze heated at her words.
/> Cara lifted her hand, pointing to the high privacy fence that surrounded her yard. “Don’t worry about a suit. No one can see us.” Though she wouldn’t have really cared if they could. Modesty had never been a particular concern of hers.
“Damn, but you tempt me, woman.”
Yeah, that was the point.
His hand reached out, caught her by the back of the neck and his lips took hers, pressing tight in a fierce kiss. His tongue moved swiftly to claim hers, stirring the hunger she’d thought was temporarily sated.
Her wet hands wrapped around his arms. When his lips lifted from hers, she whispered, “Come into the water with me.”
His gaze was so dark. So intense. Todd pulled away from her. Rose. Stared down at her with a face drawn tight.
She wanted him so badly that her body trembled.
And the light of dawn was beginning to glow brighter.
His hands went to his shirt. Only a few buttons remained, thanks to her frantic efforts last night. Slowly, he unhooked them and dropped the shirt onto the cement.
He kicked off his shoes, tossed away his socks. Then, gazing down into her eyes, he stripped off his jeans and boxers.
Oh, yes. The man was absolutely perfect to her. She licked her lips. Her stare raked down his chest. Over the sculpted abs and down to the narrow flare of his hips—and to the broad shaft of arousal that jutted toward her.
This might just turn out to be the best swim she’d ever had.
“How deep?” He asked, and for a wild, hungry moment, she thought he was talking about sex.
Then she was actually able to think past her lust. “Uh, twelve feet here and—”
He dove into the pool, arching his body and cutting straight into the water with an economy of splash.
She spun around, wanting to catch him when he came up and feel all that bare male flesh against her body. She was in a bikini, but it would be easy enough for him to pull away the spaghetti straps and—
He caught her around the waist. Tugged her beneath the water. Her hands flew out, slid over his shoulders, and she found him staring at her, body perfectly poised, eyes blazing with need.
Oh, but she liked the way he played.