by L Ann
Bonded In blood
Tales of a Dark Legacy ~ Book One
L. Ann & L. Gene Brown
Copyright © 2016, 2017 by Crow Fiction. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
First Edition: October 2016
Previously released as Soul Bonded
Taz I’Ane – arrogant, irreverent, womanising – Heir Apparent to the House of Nikaris, the largest and most powerful House in the Vampire Nation.
Morganna Satori, top of the chain of the world’s deadliest and most feared assassins – as lethal and she is beautiful.
Two people who couldn’t be more opposite. And whose only connection to one-another is a torrid one night’s stand in Las Vegas, 6 months past.
Now they have been thrown together to investigate a string of grisly murders, perpetrated by what appears to be a homicidal mad man in control of a savage army of children.
The question is not whether or not they can survive their seemingly impossible assignment. But whether they will survive each other.
Other Books By L. Gene Brown
The Gemini Hustle (The Zodiac Files Book 1)
Two guys walk into a bar…
… but it's no joke when Zodiac agent Ray Slater's manhunt runs afoul of Harry Finn's undercover op, burning both men's covers—along with some of the local real estate.
Now the two men form an uneasy partnership, one that takes them from the depths of the planet Ócala's understreet dives to the pinnacle of its pleasure palaces, and straight into the heart of an interstellar crime syndicate.
Here, Ray and Harry find themselves entangled with two women gifted with psionic abilities—and burdened by secrets—who will change both men’s lives, forever.
Dedication
A special thanks to Jay Martin, Courtney without whom this book would still be gathering dust in a document somewhere. ~ L. Ann
To my cousins Bonnie, Jim, Selina, Marsha, and Jeff. And to the gang at Twin Creeks. ~ L. Gene Brown
Both authors would like to give a huge thanks to the Shadowfall Members for their unending enthusiasm and support.
Bonded In blood
Tales of a Dark Legacy ~ Book One
L. Ann & L. Gene Brown
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Glossary
Prologue
Seattle
Ravenna-Bryant Suburb, Lake Washington
9:17 A.M.
Two Weeks Ago
Another example of suburbia Americana. Jenny had experienced at least a hundred of them, some more than others, in the fifteen years since she’d joined the Seattle Police Department. And, with the rare exception of the odd ethnic personal influence, they seldom changed.
Well-tended lawns (fenced and unfenced), personalised mailboxes, roll-out trash bins (always green), basketball hoops over the garage doors, cracked driveways, a kiddies Big Wheel overturned near the front door. And on and on ‘ad nauseam’. They looked alike after a few years. Now they registered as little less than a blur in her awareness. Something Jenny Frost had, for a short while, shelved but not altogether forgotten during the past two and a half weeks on a much-needed family vacation. But now she was back and, as Detective Lieutenant Virginia Frost SPD Homicide, the sights; the scenery; and the memories associated with them returned in a flood of bitter, ugly images.
The address - 7037 16th Avenue – was at the end of the block. One good point, at least. Not enough to eliminate the ever-present mob of looky-loos the Detective saw, but at least the location kept them contained in one place; along with members of the local news media.
A pair of uniformed officers noted her arrival, and did their best to clear a corridor through the milling throng, lifting the yellow barricade tape to allow her entrance. A pair of familiar forms detached themselves from the clustered uniforms on the house’s front deck and moved to meet her approach.
“Jen! How was Florida?” Detective Sergeant William Moseley, her partner of the last three years, enquired.
“Florida wasn’t bad,” Jenny waggled her hand, palm-down, fingers spread. “Disney World, however, a pain-in-the-ass.”
Even as she spoke, her training and experience kicked in – like riding a bike someone had once described it–as though the last two weeks had never happened, and Jenny stared past Moseley to the front door. Her eyes scanned, assessed, and noticed besides the standard presence of latex gloves worn by those entering and leaving the house, there were also foot-coverings and surgical masks. And, for another, the ratio of uni’s to crime scene/forensic techs to coroner’s assistants was off, and heavily favouring the latter.
“Home invasion?” she jerked her chin toward the front deck.
“More like home slaughter,” Moseley answered, patting the pockets of his all-weather coat and the jacket beneath it, until he located and then produced a packet of cherry flavoured lozenges. “Take my word,” he offered her the pack. “The stench in there’s enough to make you hurl up yesterday’s lunch.”
Jenny accepted the open pack, shook two into her hand and popped them into her mouth as they climbed the winding staircase leading to the house’s front entrance. A young uniformed officer met them short of the front door, her face drained of colour, and she issued them masks and foot-coverings. An instant later she was sprinting toward the deck railing, one hand pressed against her mouth as she retched.
“Poor kid,” Moseley’s response sounded muffled through his sterile mask as they passed through the front entrance. “Only been on the job a couple of days.”
In the next moment, Frost had confirmation, full force, of the description her colleague had given her earlier. The stench was beyond overwhelming. Like walking into a slaughterhouse. But the smell was far from the interior’s most spectacular attraction.
From her vantage point at the edge of the entry hallway, Frost saw that the living room had been wrecked to the extreme: chairs and sofas overturned, broken, their upholstery ripped and torn out; tables, lamps and flat screen television smashed; a bookcase pulled down, its contents scattered. And, in the midst of it, half covered by a large wooden coffee table, a mangled and bloodied body.
“Who?” Frost enquired, her voice devoid of emotion.
“In there,” Moseley began, “the wife. Mrs—“
“All of them,” Frost interrupted.
“DeFranco, family of four,” Moseley read from his notebook. “Arthur and Helena. He was sixty-one, she was fifty-seven. Arthur was a Professor at Central Seattle College – taught Linguistics. Helena was a Real Estate Agent for the Hanover-Crowe Group in North Seattle. He’s upstairs in the master bedroom… all over the bedroom, matter of fact,” Moseley paused, throwing Fr
ost an apologetic glance for the irreverence of his last comment before he resumed. “Two children; fraternal twins – Michelle and Owen, age thirty-five. Neither lived with their parents. Michelle was visiting from out of town – Marysville; California, based on what forensics found in her room. Married; her husband is military, based at Beale Air Base and, according to his driving licence, Owen lives here. In the area, I mean. In Bellevue.”
Jenny nodded, her attention caught by one of the coroner’s assistants who beckoned from the living room. With Moseley lagging behind, she entered to find that the CA’s had uncovered Helena DeFranco’s body. A grisly sight, without exaggeration.
The woman’s clothing had been wrenched and torn from her body. And it was obvious, from the countless wounds and bruises, that she had received a savage beating with heavy, blunt instruments. So much so that her head was little more than a battered lump of blood-soaked hair.
Jenny pursed her lips, and sucked in gusts of breath through her nose, beneath the surgical mask, to quell her rising gorge.
“Any sign of what they used—“ she started and stopped when one of the CSU’s turned to display the contents of a sealed evidence bag. A large black metal candlestick.
“It probably wasn’t the only thing they used,” the Crime Scene Tech said. “But it’s all we’ve been able to find so far. And only because,” he glanced at the body, “they left it buried in her…” He left the sentence unfinished.
Jenny nodded and, with a lingering look at the deceased, turned to her partner. “They?” The CSU’s usage of the term wasn’t lost on the veteran Detective.
“You’ll see.” Moseley jerked his head in the direction they’d come and took the lead, heading to the kitchen. It was there that her earlier slaughterhouse comparison became a near spot-on reality.
Like the living room, the kitchen too had been trashed; refrigerator overturned, its contents strewn to hell and back; plates shattered, utensils scattered as were the contents of the cupboards. This scene, however, contained an element that could only be described as monstrous. A pair of bodies – carcasses hung upside-down – suspended from the ceiling over the kitchen island by what appeared to be electrical cord. Both were armless, their thighs and stomachs slashed open and their throats cut ear-to-ear.
“God Almighty,” Jenny whispered, her training as a police officer taking precedence over the human urge to turn, run out of the room and, as Moseley had put it earlier, heave up yesterday’s lunch.
“A couple of things with this,” Moseley said, his voice and his presence now the only things keeping her roiling stomach in check. “You’re gonna have to get closer, Jen,” he added apologetically a moment later.
Uttering a wordless grunt, she willed her feet to move.
“They – CSU, I mean – didn’t notice it so much with the husband and wife,” Moseley began. “Probably because of the secondary damage and both bodies being covered by debris. But in here,” he waved a hand at the kitchen island. “From what was done to the bodies, there should be a lot more blood. There isn’t.” Moseley called her attention to the few drippings and small pools on the island’s surface.
“Except for those,” he continued, pointing to the scattered clusters, overlapping in some cases, of hand prints. Remarkably small hand prints.
“I’m pretty sure I don’t need to tell you what that looks like. Or what the news cockroaches are gonna make of it.”
“No, you don’t,” Jenny shook herself, mentally, into SOP mode. “Release the bodies to the ME’s people. And have this scene locked down tight. Nobody, especially the press, gets in here until further notice.”
Chapter 1
Morgan steered the high-powered Mustang off the Interstate and up the slip road which led toward a small rundown truck-stop. The car rolled to a stop in front of one of the self-service gas pumps; she cut off the engine and opened the door to step out into the cool night air. Morgan took a moment to stretch tired muscles before she removed the gas cap and slid the pump nozzle into it then pushed a button to fill the tank.
She leant against the side of the car and gazed around the darkened forecourt. Other than the sound of the gas pump, the truck-stop was silent. She saw the lights flickering inside the small ‘stop and rob’ convenience store but couldn’t see any people.
Too quiet. When the pump clicked to show the tank was full, Morgan returned it to its holder, twisted the cap back on and headed toward the store. The closer she got, the more concerned she became. The doors slid open upon her approach and she set foot inside, nostrils flaring at the unexpected coppery smell that permeated the air. Where was the cashier?
“Hey, lady!”
Morgan turned, palming a knife from the concealed sheaf in her sleeve as she did. A young boy stood in the doorway, baseball cap on backwards, staring at her with bold eyes.
“You should leave,” he grinned. “Nice lady like you don’t wanna see what’s in here.”
“What’s in here?” she watched as his grin widened.
“Death.” He lunged forward and, had Morgan been a normal mortal woman, he would have sent her backwards into the shelves. But she wasn’t, and the boy missed as she stepped sideways and he was the one who crashed into the stacked shelves.
“Did you kill the cashier?” Morgan watched him struggle to his feet.
“You’re next, lady!” And he barrelled forward again, hissing when Morgan caught his arm and sent him spinning back into the shelves.
“I doubt that.”
The resulting fight was quick and dirty. The boy showed no concern for danger, throwing himself at Morgan with a snarl. Awareness that the boy wasn’t yet a teenager stopped Morgan from attacking him straight away and she tried to use defensive moves in the vain hope she would be able to stop him long enough to pin him to the floor. But the boy had other ideas. He produced a long hooked knife and dived to one side as he hissed and snarled unintelligible words and launched the blade at her as she moved. Morgan blocked the attack, but not quick enough and she felt a sting as the knife bit into flesh just above her hip.
“Okay,” she snapped. “Play time’s over!” She kicked the boy’s knife across the aisle, away from his grasping hands and stalked toward him. “Is this some kind of gang initiation?”
He said nothing, a sneer twisting his lips. When she was an arm’s length away, he sprang toward her. Morgan waited until he was almost on top of her and then raised her own knife. One quick move and she’d sliced his throat. The momentum from his body kept him moving forward and Morgan staggered under his weight when he landed on her, her head snapping backwards to slam against the shelving unit.
When she came to a few minutes later, the boy’s body lay unmoving across hers. With gritted teeth, Morgan shoved him off her, rose to her feet and stood, one hand pressed to her wounded side.
Bastard!
She aimed a kick at the unmoving body at her feet – he wouldn’t be taking a swing at anyone again and sucked in a deep breath when the action sent a sharp pain up her side. She lifted the hem of her shirt to examine the wound. Lots of blood, but not that deep, she told herself. It would heal before twenty-four hours had passed if she got it cleaned and stitched quickly. Satisfied that she would live, Morgan left the convenience store and headed back to her car. She knew someone would find the body soon enough, but there was nothing on it that would track back to her. And once she sent in a clean-up crew, not even the CCTV would give up her identity.
Dizziness enveloped her as she reached her car and she leaned against it for a minute to catch her breath and send a text to the nearest clean-up team.
She opened the door, slipped inside and started the engine, gritting her teeth against the pain.
That knife must have bitten deeper than I thought.
Sheer stubbornness would keep her awake and focused on the drive to Seattle and Shadowfall.
~*~
“Taz, be a dear and give me a hand.” The voice, echoing in the bathroom’s semi-enclosed space,
ripped over his nerves like fingers down a blackboard. He hesitated, steeling himself with a slow ten-count. It was that or allow his first impulse to send him running then bury her head in the bathroom mirror.
“Taz?” she called again. Christ! Voice like a mallard with a head cold.
“Darling, I need you to zip me. I just did my nails and I’m still tacky.”
He’d gotten used to a lot of things over the years. Hell – centuries. And all out of dire necessity. This, however – she – was not one of them... Neither something he’d become accustomed to, not quite at least, nor was it necessary.
Kayla Monroe, the face of KOMO-TV’s nightly ‘Celebrity Expose – who’s doing who and where’ program, stood at the relative centre of the spacious bathroom, cinnamon-brown hair piled high, with both hands held out at shoulder length, scarlet-tipped fingers spread to their limits. Their eyes met in the mirror as he stepped behind her, yanked up the zipper of her fashionable black dress and immediately departed.
“My, aren’t we in a mood tonight,” she commented. He knew she would follow and, sure enough, felt her presence advancing less than five seconds later.
“Is it me? I mean, something I said or did that I’m not aware of?” she asked.
Like boring me to death? “No, not really.” The speed with which he turned to meet her caused Kayla to halt in her tracks and recoil with a soft gasp. “I just have a few things on my mind.” He reached out to caress her cheek, an attempt to soften his words, and she lurched backwards.
“Sorry! My makeup.” She flashed an apologetic, though lopsided, smile. “You know I’m meeting with that producer from Montreal tonight.”
“Producer… Montreal, right,” he murmured with a glance at his watch. The gesture, if not the attitude she, of course, misread.