by Lola Dodge
He had a way of making himself at home in my life.
“Some breakfast before you jet?” His voice held an unfamiliar distance. I’d expected him to be clingy or joking or...something other than miles away.
Surely, his attitude was for the best?
I grabbed a banana. “The faster we do this, the better.”
Jag downed his cereal milk, rinsed the bowl, and set it in the sink. Why all the cleaning?
But no, I wasn’t worrying about him.
Instead, I peeled my banana and followed Jag down to the parking garage. An unlocked cabinet full of keys sat outside the elevator, which seemed like poor security. Though only someone with a death wish would break into the M-10’s stronghold.
After he chose a set of keys, he led us past the Ferraris, Teslas, and Maybachs to a row of regular-looking sedans. When the locks beeped, a beat-up Honda Civic flashed its lights. That was...surprising. “This is an undercover car?”
“We try to keep it low key when we’re on case. Hopefully the press won’t tail us.”
We squeezed in, and Jag took us up a level, past a flight of more average cars and through the employee exit. I didn’t see any reporters, but that didn’t mean no one was watching.
The ride passed in silence. I finished my banana and toyed with the peel as we crawled through Midtown traffic. It was the best opportunity I’d have to apologize. I just wished I didn’t feel so awkward in my skin when faced with this quiet jaguar. “About last night...” But where did I go from there?
“You think it was a mistake.” He didn’t turn from the road, and his voice was close to empty.
“It was.” And why wasn’t this easy? It wasn’t as if I’d planned to spend the rest of my life with him. “I’m dangerous. And I shouldn’t have risked using you to test my control.” The huntress side of me had wanted Jag so deeply, and I’d been willing to flip a coin and see what happened. “So I’m...I shouldn’t have done that.”
He threw the turn signal so hard the stick should’ve snapped. “You used me?”
“It was shameless. Things shouldn’t have gone that far.” They wouldn’t again. I’d see to this murder scene and slip away as soon as I could.
Before I could made things any worse.
“You kill me.” Jag leaned an elbow on the window and rubbed his head. “You’d deny yourself anything you could to fit this box you think is normal. Normal’s what you make of it, darling.”
I glared at the darling but let it hang. “I’ve never been normal.” Every day was a battle.
“Yeah, and if you really got with me, that would shatter your last chance at playing house.”
“Playing house? You think that’s what I’m doing?” Ice bunched under my fingernails, and I clamped my hands into fists to keep both the shards and my emotions from exploding.
“We’re the same, except that I don’t try to be what I’m not. And you’re attracted to that, but it freaks the shit out of you. When you’re with me, you can’t pretend either.”
“That is not true.”
“No? Enlighten me.” Jag finally glanced my way. Intense yellow glowed from his eyes, but I couldn’t read his expression. It was something more than confrontational.
I wanted to say something to that gaze, but what? My pulse thumped. I had no answer for him.
A cluster of police cars parked just ahead of us, their lights flashing. Officers milled, holding back press vans and curious pedestrians. “I’m leaving after this.”
“No.” Jag flashed an ID at one of the officers, and the man waved us through a barricade. I waited until we’d driven through to respond.
Otherwise, I would’ve blasted him with ice. “I’m sorry?”
“You need to be here.” He threw the car into park and unbuckled. “I want you to stay.” Jag gazed my way and his heart bled into his eyes.
It was something like the look Kevan had given me.
Total adoration.
I sucked in a breath.
That couldn’t be right.
So quickly? I had to be misreading him.
I needed to get out of the car, but my body wasn’t taking cues. Instead I sat frozen as an icicle.
Jag reached over and unbuckled me. The heat that seeped off his hands sparked a flashback to last night.
The heat of his body, pressed against mine, warming every inch of my flesh…
What we’d done should’ve satisfied my curiosity. If anything, my thirst had grown. And he was right, wasn’t he?
The moment I truly gave in to that heat, I’d be a wild woman again. I should’ve been able to resist, but my resolve melted every time Jag was involved. I’d always be on the edge of breaking if I stayed close to him.
The only other choice was to let myself break.
“You run and I’ll chase you.” He finally slid out of the car. “Let’s get this done.”
He’d chase me?
The goose bumps sprang back. Could he be any more tuned into my desires?
Pressing my thighs together, I bit back a groan. I’d never met such a dangerous man, and I needed to get away from him before I really did lose myself.
By the time I was collected, Jag was chatting with a detective. “My partner,” he said as I drew even with them.
“Hope you can find something we missed.” The man lifted the ribbon of yellow tape blocking the alley.
It was my first crime scene, but hardly my first kill. I was ready for gore, dismemberment—anything, really.
It couldn’t be easy to murder a super.
The body lay facedown, sprawled in a puddle. A man, middle-aged and a little chubby. Super hero wouldn’t have been my first thought, but then, appearances could lie.
The detective handed Jag a pair of rubber gloves and some forceps. When Jag crouched near the man, I followed suit. “You’ll have to have the lab confirm, but these look like the same stab wounds as the victims in LA and Houston.”
“Serial killer. With a super fetish.” Disgust dripped from the detective’s voice.
“Seems like it.” Jag shifted the man’s shirt out of the way with the tool, examining the wounds. “Same M.O. This wasn’t a knife, and there’s not enough blood. The body was dropped here.”
“Who was this man?” That had to be more important than how he’d died. Surely there was a reason he’d been chosen as a victim.
“Nicholas Harrington.” The detective shook his head. “The original Wolfman.”
“No shit?” Jag turned startled eyes the man’s way.
“I should know who that is?” I glanced between the gobsmacked men. Clearly, they knew.
“Probably not.” Jag bent back to the body. “Guy was a star in the ’80s on a sitcom about human shifters. Wolfman.”
“Ah.” That would explain why I didn’t know. No TV on the tundra, and I’d never been a fan of reruns. “Were any of the other victims celebrities?”
“Most supers are in the public eye. The two in LA were in TV and movies, but the two in Houston were heavy into their secret identities.”
The detective was jotting notes into his handheld. “So what’s the connection? Or were they randomly chosen?”
“Yes. What kind of powers did the others have?” I was probably being too cooperative when I was planning to run after asking my questions, but I couldn’t stand over the body and not do my best to avenge the man.
“The first victim was a cosmetic chameleon. Worked Hollywood in a ton of sci-fi movies without needing makeup, but she didn’t have any firepower.” Jag ticked his fingers as he listed them off. “Charmer was next, and he had a creepy affinity for snakes. We had to wade through a swath of the bastards to get to the body. Then Houston, it was a cattle rancher with a minotaur form and a flier with bird wings.”
My stomach roiled. All of those victims plus Wolfman made a disturbing trend. “They were all animal shifters.”
“Not really,” Jag said. “Only the minotaur had an alternate form. The rest were humanoid full-t
ime and our chameleon only did superficial changes. Charmer looked like a regular guy under all the snakes.”
“It’s the same.” However they looked, they were animal-tied. At least that was how I saw it, and if I did, so did others.
Oh, Goddess.
A sudden realization made my voice spike. “Has it rained?”
I’d been inside, but I should’ve felt more moisture in the air if I’d missed a shower. By the dread in my belly, I knew I hadn’t.
“Not in a few days.” Jag’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
I touched a fingertip to the tepid puddle and lifted it to my lips. The water had a sweet tang that was sickeningly out of place on a stretch of Manhattan sidewalk. “It was ice.”
“A little hot for that, don’t you think?” The detective’s eyebrows went up.
I ignored him. “The other bodies. You said you never found a murder weapon?”
“Never.” Jag pulled out his phone and started flicking through a display of crime scene photos. “But all of the bodies have had some kind of water nearby. You think...?”
Ice spears left their tips in most wounds. We never bothered to pull them out. They melted on their own.
“Kevan.” I’d stumbled into him, and the next morning there was a murder by ice? It was too much coincidence.
With awakened eyes, I took in the wounds. They clustered in the soft flesh of the man’s torso and at the ragged hollow of his neck. I’d never planned to take down a human target, but the marks had landed exactly where I would have attacked with a pack of hunters at my back.
Cold fury built up from my toes to my fingertips until all I could see was static. “We need to track them.” And how many of my people were hiding in New York?
“Them?” The detective asked. “You got a lead you want to share, partner?”
“This is my justice.” They were my people, even if I’d abandoned them. It was mine to make right for the senseless deaths they’d caused.
“Why?” Jag uncrouched without losing his coiled tension. “What’s the motive?”
“We’re hunters.” I’d feared that part of myself all along. The uncontrolled passion of the chase.
Once we had a target, everything faded away, and we didn’t stop until we knew the rush of the kill.
But we never killed humans for sport. Supers or not, that was what the victims were, and Kevan and untold others had crossed the line.
To track them, I’d have to tap deep into the well I’d been trying so hard to bury. The very abilities and impulses that had likely driven my tribesmen over the edge.
I had to do it. There was no question of that.
But would I be able to bring myself back afterward?
Eight
JAG
The morning should’ve been warm enough, but in the alley’s darkness, with the frigid wind spilling off Ivory’s skin, it felt like a winter midnight in Siberia.
I’d been trying my damnedest to focus on the crime scene instead of Ivory’s rejection, but shit. Frost climbed her arms like evening gloves and she had every sliver of my attention.
“I’ll find them.” Scary determination burned in that voice. Cold fire, but it seared just the same.
“I’ll call the team.” Tank was out of town, but as long as the other guys were around, we didn’t need to take on a pack of icemen solo. Hell, one text and Jet could join us on scene in about ten seconds.
“No.”
“So, what? You want to send me a fax when you get there? A smoke signal?”
“No. You come. You have to bring me back from the abyss.”
I turned cold as her skin. “What does that mean?”
“I can find them. Deal with them.” One of those wicked ice spears stretched between her palms. In her uniform, she was a vision of the huntress that had owned me since the flight to LA As fearsome as she was fearless. “But it might mean the end of me.”
Okay. Maybe not fearless. “What do you—”
I needed an explanation, but she took off like she was running from the cops. After a second, she was.
“Wha—” the detective called.
Poor dude. He sprinted until the first dumpster, but he was going to need an Olympic pedigree or a jetpack if he wanted to match Ivory’s pace. Finding neither, he jogged to a stop and grabbed for his phone.
Sticking close to her heels, I thumped the pavement. “Can’t we take the car?”
Maybe she didn’t hear me.
We ran south, weaving through some alleys but mostly in plain sight for all of New York to see. Luckily most New Yorkers were as disenchanted about supers as everything else. Every so often someone whipped out a camera phone, but more people glanced and got back to business.
It was a full-on sprint to Midtown. Ivory only stopped to...I didn’t even know.
She touched the sidewalk, stirred puddles, or paused to let the wind breeze through her fingers. Her icy sweet scent was strong enough in my nose, but I didn’t sense anything else similar. So what was she tracking?
I didn’t like it. We needed backup. And I needed her to not be suicidal, if that’s what this was. We weren’t playing like that, no matter what messed up past she was hiding.
Ivory was booking fast enough that I wanted to jaguar out, but if I shredded my pants, I lost my cell, and the first millisecond I could I was phoning this in.
Trees loomed at our right as we hit Central Park. It would be a great place to hide.
But nope. Not our final destination.
We veered off to the avenues of soaring apartment buildings with million-dollar views. So not where you expected to find a ring of super serial killers.
Were Ivory’s people really behind the murders? Ice boy hadn’t given off a psycho vibe exactly, but he’d showed his killer’s gaze when I challenged him. Even if he was plenty capable of killing, I wasn’t grasping the reasoning that had flipped Ivory’s switch from calm questions to huntress mode.
With the way Ivory was stalking, she had no doubts who our killer was. I would not want to be on the other side of that vengeance.
She wheeled down an alley, though the address was really too upscale to call it that. More like a path between two mansions. A wrought iron gate surrounded a micro-patio and the entrance to the high rise’s basement apartment. I ducked to try and peer through the sidewalk-level windows, but frost coated the inside of the glass.
We were in the right place.
Ivory gave a war-whoop that froze my blood, then leaped the fence and kicked in the door like Jean- Claude fucking Van Damme in a 90s action movie. I hadn’t planned on knocking, but a warning would’ve been cool.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
I’d started to follow as soon as Ivory moved, but that sound would’ve frozen me if the bullets hadn’t.
I reached for my neck.
Not bullets. Three feathered darts.
Shit. My vision blurred and my knees hit the sidewalk. Tranqs. Probably for big game if they worked this fast.
Even as the toxins worked their way into my blood, I growled fury. I couldn’t see Ivory, but if she was hurt...
When I came to, I was going to liberate a whole parade of throats from their owners’ bodies.
IVORY
Gunshots rang out, but the weapon wasn’t aimed my way. Kevan and four others stood inside the apartment. He did say they’d be waiting.
I stormed through them and grabbed Kevan by his throat, lifting him onto his tiptoes. “Tell me it wasn’t you.”
“Lady...Valdís...” Kevan choked out the words. “Please...can explain—”
“Start now.” I dropped him. Kevan fell into the same deep bow he’d practiced at the press social, though it wasn’t so smooth after my treatment. The other four followed his lead.
But where was... The gunshots. Jag. I’d been too caught in the hunt to look back, but now I did. He sprawled on the outdoor patio. No blood. I lunged for him, my pulse hammering in terror.
Darts. I yanked the things from his nec
k. Since when would my tribesmen stoop as low as tranquilizers?
At least Jag wasn’t hurt.
What to do with him now? I couldn’t bring Jag into their den, but if I left him limp on the patio, someone would call the police.
I compromised, propping him up against the wall. Assuming no one recognized him as M-10, he might pass for napping. It would have to do until I had my vengeance. Now I craved a second pound of flesh.
The men hadn’t moved when I reentered the apartment and shut the door behind myself. All five pressed their foreheads to the floor.
“Lady Valdís,” they muttered in unison.
“Kneel.” For once their obedience didn’t irk me. They rose to their knees and folded their hands in front of their bodies, perfectly respectful.
“You used tranquilizers on my creature.” My first question should’ve been about the murders, but they didn’t seem as important.
“Forgive us.” Kevan ducked his head. “We feared that he would keep you from listening.”
“I’m listening.” With a ready spear. “Tell me you haven’t been murdering humans.”
“Not murdering.” Kevan’s head jerked up. “Not humans.”
“But you’ve killed.” The truth was an icy knot in my stomach. They had no idea what they’d done.
“Yes. The queen wished us to seek out worthy targets. And she bade us give you her gift.” He waved at an ornamental chest set in a place of honor, at the center of the mantel.
“My mother? Why would she...” Care? Acknowledge my existence? Not try to kill me?
“May I?” Kevan asked.
At my nod, he rose. The others hadn’t twitched. They knelt, blond heads bowed, all five of them tall and close to identical. I’d craved my tribesmen’s company so much in the beginning, but I’d been gone too many years and this was nothing like a homecoming. I felt no kinship, no warmth, no connection to my people. They’d justified their inhuman actions to the point that I couldn’t recognize them as my own.
Kevan lifted the chest with care and eased open its lid. A white box sat on a velvet cushion, and I knew what it must contain.
A heart. To symbolize the one I’d ripped out of her and the rest of my people by leaving. Probably a vole or shrew or some rodent’s because I’d heaped that much more disgrace on my family by skulking away in the night. By rights I should’ve declared my intent to leave in front of the tribe and been executed for the betrayal.