by Wendy Stone
Published by Phaze Books
Also by Wendy Stone
Beastly Intentions
A Gamble Worth Taking
Messages of Love
Endless
A Fall from Grace
Bound by Love
Pick of the Litter
Captive of Love
A Strange New Breed
This is an explicit and erotic novel
intended for the enjoyment
of adult readers. Please keep
out of the hands of children.
www.Phaze.com
Charisma
an erotic novel by
WENDY STONE
Charisma copyright 2009 by Wendy Stone
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Phaze Production
Phaze Books
6470A Glenway Avenue, #109
Cincinnati, OH 45211-5222
Phaze is an imprint of Mundania Press, LLC.
To order additional copies of this book, contact:
[email protected]
www.Phaze.com
Cover art © 2009 Debi Lewis
Edited by Will Belegon
eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-60659-040-9
First Edition – June, 2009
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Chapter One
The blade almost seemed to sing, flashing silvery-blue under the harshness of the street lamps. The crowd gathered around the two combatants took a few steps back as one body fell, tripping over his own feet, a nick spouting blood that dripped to the cement in quarter-sized globs.
“You pissy little cunt,” the man on the ground shouted. “You fucking stuck me.”
The girl was half his size, her sword almost longer than she was tall. She smirked, innocently bringing her hand to her mouth and looking at him with guiltless green eyes. “Oh, mister, I’m so sorry. Are you okay, mister? Maybe I should have just stood here and let you attack me?”
“Bitch!” the man said, bracing his sword against the pavement to help him up. He drew the tip around him in a semi circle, the blade causing sparks to shoot from the cement. “I’m going to kill you.”
Charisma Snow drew back a single step. She nodded at the blue and red colored lights headed rapidly in their direction. “You might want to change your mind about that.”
“When I tell Hood what you’ve done,” the man began, his tone threatening, “there’ll be nowhere for you to hide.”
Charisma opened her mouth and a few words of song fell from her lips. She glanced around the crowd as she continued to sing, noting the dazed looks growing upon the face of those she sang to. Stepping closer to the man who’d tried to take her, and would have if she hadn’t looked up at the right time, she hit a high note. His eyes fogged and a small drop of blood appeared from his nose. Going closer, she stood on tiptoe to reach his ear. “You’ll never tell anyone anything, fuck wad,” she sang straight into his ear.
She stood back, watching him fall, his eyes still open but growing blind with death’s arrival. Then she left, running down the alley and out the other side. She couldn’t afford another run in with the cops.
Sliding her sword inside the long black leather duster she wore, she climbed up the fire escape quickly and easily, taking it to the roof. These roofs were fantastic for getting away. The buildings had been built so closely together that only a small leap was needed to get from one to another. She should know, she’d been living and surviving in this section of the city since her parents were murdered, fifteen years earlier.
On a whim, she backtracked to the place where the fight had been, staring down at the cops who’d cordoned off the “crime scene” and were talking to witnesses. A smile touched her lips because each would give a different accounting of the assailant, from a seven-foot black male to a three-foot midget. No one would be able to describe her with any accuracy. The order to forget had been in her song.
* * * *
“Why the fuck we got to go down when the cops are already there?” Marcus complained, rubbing his eyes like a tired child. Dating a vampire meant sleeping during the day and he hadn’t quite gotten used to the change in hours.
“Because,” Shadow began. “The cops have no clue what they are up against. So when Sergeant Bittle called to ask for our help, I couldn’t tell her no.”
“Bittle’s going to be there?” Marcus said, his eyes brightening.
“Oh I better not have heard the tone I thought I heard, Wings.” Angel barged into Shadow’s office, blue eyes glowing as she stared down at her winged God. “I’d hate to pluck you like a chicken and then…”
“I know, I know,” Marcus said with a grin, grabbing Angel around the hips and pulling her close despite her protests. “You’d boil me into soup for the homeless. You know no one can turn me on the way you do, baby.”
“I might get sick,” Callie said, following Angel in. She grinned over at Shadow, giving him a wink. “So what is this with Bittle?”
“We won’t know until we arrive. She’s getting us full access to the crime scene.” He rose, shooing Marcus and Angel ahead of him before dropping a quick kiss on Callie’s full lips. “I missed you this morning,” he growled in her ear.
“Couldn’t be helped,” she sighed, enjoying the way his hand ran over her body, even on top of the leather suit she wore for ASP, The Agency for Supernatural Police. It fit her body like a second skin. She groaned when he found her zipper, sliding it down just a bit to let him cup her breast. “Daddy is still upset about Dorian Amante and Aidan Kent.”
“And unhappy about you carousing with your boss as well, I’ll bet,” Shadow said, giving her nipple one final squeeze before zipping up her suit.
She turned, her hand sliding down the front of his pants to where a long, hard ridge showed his interest. “Great Aunt Sally’s granny panties aren’t going to do anything for this, my love.”
“Callie Anne Wolfe,” he growled, his eyes narrowed. “You are going to undermine my authority if I can’t stop getting hard-ons around you.”
“Aww, that was the sweetest thing you’ve said to me all day.” She let him go, turning and putting a defiant swish to her hips as she walked out of his office in front of him.
Shadow stood where he was for a second, thinking of the case, of Daniels, of anything beside Callie. In the end, he settled for gathering his coat around him and followed her out.
* * * *
The scene was illuminated by the revolving lights of the cop cars spiraling around and around, flashing on faces and highlighting the lonesome alley. Shadow stepped out of the ASP SUV, his confidence and authority so apparent that the officer at the crime scene tape didn’t bother to ask for a badge, allowing the team through. He spotted Bittle, the tall, long-legged Sergeant dressed standing next to two plain-clothes detectives.
“Homicide,” he said, nodding toward the two.
“Easy to spot,” Callie said. “They always act like they’re doing something import
ant, even when standing with their thumbs up their asses.”
“Not nice, Cal,” Angel said, grinning wide enough to show her fangs.
“Keep those covered,” Shadow growled. “We don’t need anyone knowing what we are, got me, Marcus?”
“You got it.” Marcus gathered his own coat closer around him. His chest was bare under it, but his wings were covered and that’s all that mattered. Working with humans could be tricky, he thought.
Sergeant Bittle lifted her head, her intelligent brown eyes lighting up when she saw the four of them. She hurried over, pushing her hat down on her upswept sable-colored hair when a gust of cold wind threatened to tug it away.
“Am I glad to see you,” she said. “This is the third murder we’ve had like this in the last six months. We’ve got nothing. This killer comes out in plain sight and kills in front of a whole crowd of witnesses and no one can tell us anything.”
“Some kind of mass hypnosis?” Angel asked. “I mean, it would fit.”
“Do they remember the murder at all?”
“Oh, yeah. They can give you everything about the vic, even his last words. But on the perp, we got nothing.” She turned and gestured to a sixty something year old man who was talking to one of her officers. “That guy said the killer was a ten-year old boy,” she gestured towards a woman just stepping off the curb and heading under the tape. “She said he was a three hundred pound transvestite wearing a strapless mini-dress. Makes you wonder where he hid his sword, doesn’t it?”
“Not really,” Shadow said, shaking off the thought before it could grow roots in his mind. “Why do you think sword?”
“Our Medical Examiner. He said the body definitely had a few slices cut out of it. Nothing fatal, but all pre-mortem.”
“Has he given cause of death yet?”
“Not officially, but he’s seen it before. He worked on the other two victims. Both were males, both in their mid-thirties to early forties, like this guy. Both had massive damage to their brains, as if someone reached in with a paint stirrer and gave it a good going at. He said their frontal lobes were little more than mush. That’s why I got the okay to bring you in on this.” Bittle handed Shadow two files. “This is what we have on the other two victims. My captain wants to bring in the FBI on this. I stalled him some, but he isn’t going to wait if we get another victim.”
Shadow handed the files to Callie who tucked them under her arm. “Do we have an ID on this one yet?”
“That’s the other strange thing. No identification, not a driver’s license, social security card, not even a single fucking credit card.” Bittle pulled up the lapels on her coat as a chill wind blew through the alley. “Fucking cold.”
Shadow felt Callie’s small hand against his arm. “What is it?”
“A strange scent,” the brunette werewolf whispered. “Not human, not were, not vampire. I can’t quite place it.”
“Do you know from where?” Shadow said, turning toward her.
He watched as Callie lifted her beautiful face to the wind, then his eyes hopped from person to person outside the crime scene tape. It was an almost inhumanly cold night in December. Most of these looky-loos were shivering. Not a single one of them gave him a pop, not even a ting.
Callie opened her eyes, catching the scent again. Above her, on the roof of the five-story building, she saw a girl. Her duster-style coat flapped in the wind, the huge moon at her back shadowing her face. She was small, dressed in black with bright red hair that flew around her head. That was all Callie caught before the girl stepped back and was gone, leaving nothing but that provocative scent.
“She was up there,” Callie said, pointing furtively at the rooftops.
“She? You can tell sex by scent?” Bittle asked, intrigued despite herself.
“Well yeah, but I just saw her up there.”
“Call your teams back, Bittle. Let us get her. Once we figure out what she is, we’ll know what to do with her.” Shadow motioned for Angel and Marcus, drawing them forward. “The roofs,” he said.
“You got it, boss,” Marcus said. He took off at a run, Angel keeping up with him easily. As soon as they disappeared into the alley, Shadow knew Marcus would ditch the coat and take to the air while Angel would almost seem to fly up the buildings. If any ASP team member could catch their fugitive, it would be those two.
“They’ll round her up. We’ll take her back to ASP.”
“What am I supposed to tell my Captain, Shadow? He wasn’t happy about me calling you in and now you’re just going to take our suspect? These are homicides.”
“Your victims’ prints weren’t in the system anywhere, were they? There’s a reason. These guys ain’t all human,” Callie snapped. “Take a good look at this guy. Look at his eyes. Do they look a little off to you? That’s because they have an extra set of lids. Your ME is slipping, Bittle.” Callie knelt down next to the figure that hadn’t been loaded into the van yet. Carefully running a finger around one ear, she pulled gently, exposing what looked like a gill. “Fuck, Brian, check this out.”
Shadow knelt beside her, his hand touching hers as he pulled the gill loose. He turned the fish man’s head and found another gill on the other side. “This is one of ours, Bittle. We’ve got to take him back with us.”
“Shit,” Bittle said. “Next time you want to fuck me, Shadow, kiss me first okay? My Captain is going to blow.”
“I can have Daniels call him if that would help,” Shadow said.
“He didn’t want me calling you anyway. Now you’re taking not only my suspect but my body as well? I might as well bend over to make it easier for him to ream me. Christ!”
“Shadow?”
Shadow lifted the communicator from the small pocket on the front of his suit. “Go Angel.”
“No sign of our suspect. Is Callie sure about what she saw?”
Brian glanced over at Callie, catching her nod. “Yeah, keep looking.”
“Tell butterfly up here to quit his bitching and I will.”
Marcus’s voice came over the communicator. “I’m not bitching. It’s just not all of us are as cold blooded as you.”
“You can say that again,” Callie hissed.
“They were easier to handle before they started…” he shut up realizing that Bittle was still there and looking at them. “Callie, go get a bag from the back of the SUV. We’ve got to get him bagged now, before the wind carries away any more evidence. I’ll call base and get the new doctor out here.”
Callie’s cheeks, reddened by the wind and the cold, grew even redder. “Yeah, thanks, dig that one in just a little deeper, okay?” she muttered. She turned to do as he bid, her eyes lighting upon a figure in a dark brown leather jacket passing the crowd by with only the quickest of looks at the cops and the body. He looked familiar, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of who he could be. Shrugging it off, she opened the back of the SUV and dug into one of the boxes, pulling out a brand new body bag.
Carrying it back to the body, she knelt beside him, tipping his face to the side. Blood seeped from his ears and from his nose, leaving small puddles of blood on each side of his head. His eyes were blood shot. Mottled bruises showed on his face, which seemed sunken from its appearance minutes before. “Shadow?” she called.
Brian came, kneeling down beside her. “This is something different.”
“Yeah. Can I get a hand with this?”
They put down the bag, wrangling the body inside without difficulty. His body felt strange, almost like a bag of skin where the muscle and bones were liquefying. Callie had seen a lot, dealt with more, but the feel of that body almost made her gag. “I think we should put a rush on this one,” she whispered to Brian.
“Yeah,” he said, putting in the order at central.
* * * *
Charisma watched the two chasing her as they raced past where she was hiding. The longhaired female was a vampire, she’d recognized her pretty easily. You had to do that when you lived on the streets.
The other guy though, the one with the wings? She had no fucking clue what he was.
He was pretty though, if she’d been interested in a man. Curls of golden blonde clung to his finely shaped head and his eyes were even a brighter green then hers. He was made for sin, with a body that rippled with muscles. It would almost be worth a night in the jail to get a closer look. Almost…
Finding the door that led down into the deserted building, she closed it quietly behind her. Vampires had incredible hearing when they concentrated. They could hear the heartbeats of their prey from a very long distance. They could detect the tiniest difference in emotion, from fear to anger, just in the way a heart sounded. She wouldn’t give the pretty blonde a chance to rip hers out.
When did the cops start working with vampires and winged whatever? She couldn’t help but wonder about it as she jogged down the stairs. Pushing through a fire door, she closed it carefully after her and moved to where she’d hidden her worldly possessions. The mattress had been here already, a left over from a drug house. It held stains and spots that she didn’t even want to guess what they were. She sank down on it now, drawing the duster close as a shiver of cold, or fear, trembled through her body.
She had one blanket and one very thin pillow. Curling up, she drew the blanket over her, her head resting on the pillow. She was tired. It was exhausting to live on the streets. Now that Hood thought she’d double-crossed him, it was even worse. Trying to find food had been bad enough before Hood’s goons started scaring away anyone who would help her.
A self-pitying tear slipped down her cheek and she brushed it irritably away. It wasn’t her fault that Hood had a thing for redheads. If she could, she’d dye her hair black. She’d paint huge shadows under her eyes and make herself look like death. She’d do anything to get off Hood’s radar.
Maybe it was time, she thought, stifling a yawn behind a balled fist. Maybe she should leave, just pack up everything she owned and start walking. She could go where no one knew her. She could sing at bars for money. Of course, no one here believed she was over eighteen. It was a curse of her size. They thought she was some high school kid out looking for trouble and wouldn’t give her a chance.