He sank his sharp fangs deep into my flesh where my neck and shoulder met. Pleasure shot through every nerve in my body until I thought I might pass out from the overload. “Patrick, I’m coming,” I screamed, as pleasure washed over me in mind-numbing joy.
He thrust into me, again and again. The sensation of his swelling shaft rippled through me until he exploded in his own release.
Patrick licked the last drops of blood from my skin and I rested my head on his shoulder, panting and exhilarated.
“That wasn’t so bad,” I mumbled into his suit jacket. “We probably ruined your pretty suit though.”
“I’ll buy another,” he grumbled against my ear. “We definitely ruined your dress.” He chuckled and my insides tightened at the soft rumble in his chest. I vowed right then and there to make him laugh more.
“You can buy me another,” I parroted in the same tone. He laughed again and I hugged him a little tighter. “I love you, you know,” I whispered so low I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.
He didn’t respond, and I picked my head up to meet his dark, cautious gaze.
“I don’t care about any of this, you know. We could disappear tomorrow and leave all this behind; the power, the politics, everything and I would be just as happy.”
“I needed to hear that,” he whispered.
“You knew all of that already,” I quipped as I loosened my grip around his waist with my legs. Sliding down the front of his body, my feet touched down and my legs wobbled just a bit.
“I did. However, I do appreciate hearing it from your own lips,” he said, suddenly serious.
“I don’t tell you enough how much you mean to me,” I admitted to both him and myself.
“There are ways to address that deficit in your character,” he offered with a sly grin, fingering the spaghetti straps of the white silk dress.
I rolled my shoulder, letting the soft silk of the strap slide down my arm. Then the other. The dress slipped down the length of my body and pooled on the floor around my feet, leaving me naked. I peered up at him from underneath my lashes with what I knew was an invitation.
“Then let’s get started.”
Chapter 16
“Shit,” I said, panting. The hot summer sun beat down on the back of my neck and shoulders like I stood directly beneath a heat lamp. The air was thick with the humidity of mid-July and I was already sweating. I’d pulled my hair up into a ponytail and had already taken off my suit jacket. I’d needed it for the office but I’d left it in the car. The tank I wore over a pair of jeans and heels was already soaked through with sweat. I hated summer.
“Exactly,” Derek said, still in his suit.
I didn’t know how he could stand it but he seemed as cool as a cucumber. Too calm by half.
“How many?” I asked.
Greenlawn Cemetery was a mess. The grounds were more than disturbed, they were fucked up. Mounds of dirt and grass were strewn about, hiding grave markers, until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. My brain reeled with the knowledge I would have to step on one of those graves because I couldn’t determine where they were. Now that I knew what we were dealing with, the idea of one of them reaching up and grabbing me didn’t seem so silly anymore.
“Twenty, maybe thirty. We’re having some issues distinguishing which graves have bodies still in them and which don’t.”
I stepped from the road winding through the cemetery and onto the short, thick, green grass. Stepping delicately through the destruction of what was supposed to be a peaceful resting place, I tried to take it all in. This morning, Greenlawn was anything but peaceful. As I drove through to the crime scene, I’d noticed the wrought-iron gate. The fence and gate were old, well formed, and high enough to keep even the most dedicated hooligan out. The fence surrounding the behemoth cemetery wasn’t something to idly ignore.
“How’d they get in?” I asked.
“There’s a section of fence missing on the east side.” Derek pointed over the hill, beyond some trees that blocked the cemetery and Brown Road on the other side of the fence from sight.
“That’s a long way to come into the cemetery for what there’re doing. Why’d they come in so far?”
“Dunno, Kid. That’s your job.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
Stopping several graves away from Derek, I crouched down. There was no way I was getting grave dirt on my jeans by kneeling on the ground. Running my hand through the blades of grass and the overturned dirt, my fingers came away covered in white glistening salt crystals. He’d been closer to the graves this time. Maybe because there were so many or to stay out of sight. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t tell.
“We found six unidentified fresh bodies, skeletons really. The coroner has already taken them away,” he said, apologizing with a quick shrug of his shoulders.
I couldn’t be mad at him. It was hot as hell out here and the smell of dead bodies still lingered in the air. I couldn’t imagine what they would’ve smelled like baking out in the summer sun waiting for me. I should probably thank him.
“Skeletons?”
“There wasn’t much left. I’ll send the pictures to Jade?” he said, scribbling a note on his phone.
“Warn her first,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder into the blaring sun. “She doesn’t like those kinds of surprises.” I smiled and winked at him.
“Sure, Kid,” he said as he tucked his phone in his jacket pocket and walked away. Maybe this was just a little too routine for him at this point which probably wasn’t a good sign. I took out my phone and dialed Jade.
“Hey D, what’s up?” she chirped.
“Derek’s sending you some pictures. They’re probably pretty gruesome,” I said.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She chuckled. Her stomach had gotten much stronger since I’d met her but she still didn’t like the surprise of opening a digital file full of gruesome, dismembered, bloody body parts. I didn’t blame her. “Hey, am I going to see you today?” she asked.
“Doubt it.” I stood up and scanned the chaos disrupting the cemetery. “I’m booked solid.”
“Okay, then I’m just going to tell you,” she blurted out. Her voice went up an octave as her words jumbled together in a heated rush of excitement.
“What?”
“Kurt and I are getting married.”
I stopped. The uniforms and lab techs processing the crime scene talked and worked, ignoring the silent statue that had frozen solid in the middle of everything.
Married?
“I’m really happy for you,” I managed to say once my shock had subsided and my heart slowed to a reasonable pace.
“Really?” she asked, and I realized that she sounded skeptical. Maybe I hadn’t sounded as sure as I thought.
“Absolutely,” I said, forcing conviction in my voice. I was happy for her. But I was also worried. “I love you both and I want you to be happy. If this is what you want, then it’s what I want.”
“Kurt has to ask permission since I’m not Pack.” She snorted.
Jade didn’t like asking permission for anything but at least she wasn’t standing in his way. See. Progress. After living with Kurt, Jade understood more than anyone how Pack politics worked.
“I wanted you to hear it from me,” she cooed, and I heard the smile in her voice.
“Congratulations,” I said, meaning it. “Really, Jade. I’m happy for you.”
“Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, what’ve we got?” Her voice and her tone reminded me of an old movie gumshoe’s dame.
I smiled to myself as I approached the Trevelyan Dean Construction Company truck I’d had to borrow.
“A lot of empty graves, six dead bodies and another salt circle,” I answered, clicking the alarm off on the tru
ck.
“I’ll see if I can find anything new in the previous searches but I have a hunch of my own I’d like to follow up on. So, I’ll get back to you,” she said. The consistent rattle of her fingers pounding on the keyboard was like music to my ears.
“Okay, but be careful,” I said. I didn’t like Jade out on her own, following up leads and I sure as shit knew Kurt wouldn’t like it.
“Not you too,” she whined.
“Yes, me too. Be careful. I’ll talk to you later,” I said and opened the truck’s driver side door.
“Yes, Mom!” she hissed and hung up the phone.
Turning the ignition over in the truck, I headed deeper into the cemetery. I wanted to see this hole in the fence. As I drove and the truck wound around the edge of the property, the graves grew older, more dilapidated, and the grass taller as it became more difficult to maneuver the mower around the uneven stones. There were sections of newer stones from the 30’s and 40’s with one grouping from the mid 1970’s but the rest were more than a hundred years old. Headstones littered the grass in haphazard rows, no steady, formed lines. Some were even turned over by tree roots. Most were impossible to read as the names had been worn away by time and the elements.
Stopping the truck, I got out, leaving the blissful air conditioning behind. The break in the fence was just ahead and bordering on Brown Road. On the other side of the street, a shabby old house set in a row of other dilapidated older Victorian homes sat framed by the trees along the edge of the cemetery.
Trudging through the grass, I made my way to the section of missing fence and onto the berm of the road beyond. Cars whizzed by at 45 miles per hour and faster as I waited for my chance to cross. A small break in traffic gave me enough time to sprint across the street in my heels and up onto the front porch. The steps were rickety, unstable, and I was fairly certain I’d fall through at any moment if I stood in one place too long.
Paint had peeled from the wood siding long ago, leaving behind a muted gray stain from years of weather exposure and neglect. The cheapo storm door barely hung on the hinges, the screen was slit, and the once white aluminum had been stained black from exhaust fumes and dirt.
Carefully tugging the screen door open, I knocked on the shabby plywood door behind it. I waited a few minutes then knocked again. A thump sounded on the other side and the chain rattled before the door creaked open just enough for the security chain to catch. Two big eyes blinked back at me from behind large Coke-bottle glasses. Silvery white hair was pulled back in a tight bun at the nape of her neck as her wrinkled dark-brown fingers clutched at the open door.
“Good Morning, Ma’am,” I said, giving her my best nonthreatening smile.
“Whatever yer sellin’, I don’t want any,” she said, starting to slam the door in my face. I jutted the toe of my heel in-between the door and the jamb before she had a chance to shut me out. “Hey!”
“Ma’am, I’m not selling anything. I was wondering if you saw anything unusual last night.” The pressure on my foot lessened as she eased her weight off the door.
“Whatchyou mean . . . unusual?” she asked, narrowing her gaze on me.
“There’s a break in the fence over there. Since someone disturbed a few graves in the cemetery after it was closed, I thought that’s probably how they got in.”
“You the police?” she asked, making the word police sound like two separate words, po-leece.
“No, ma’am,” I said, distancing myself from the cop accusation. I wasn’t a cop, so it wasn’t a lie. I feared that if she thought I was the police, she wouldn’t answer my questions. Some areas in this city weren’t cop friendly. By the gang tagging on the houses and dumpsters, I knew this was one of those areas. “I consult for them though, when the cases are of a particular nature.”
“What kind a nature?”
“Gruesome. The police call me in when the scenes are particularly gruesome.”
“Why? You some kinda psychic?” she scoffed.
“That’s what’s going around,” I admitted under my breath.
Derek, from his first case as a detective where several women had ended up dead—mutilated actually, by werewolves, had called me in to consult. Knowing I knew much more about monsters than he did, he needed my help. So when Jackson had hired a pair of werewolf assassins to take me out and they’d started killing innocent civilians as a message, Derek needed an excuse to get me to the crime scenes. He’d told everyone I was a psychic and I’d had to deal with the snickers and backhanded comments of all the uniforms present. But Derek closed cases so no one said anything directly to him. They just said it loud enough for me to hear them.
“If you’re a psychic, how come you don’t know who did it or how they got in?” she spat at me.
“I’m afraid I’m not that kind of psychic,” I said, attempting to keep the smile from my lips. I often wondered the same thing.
“Oh yeah, then what kinda psychic are you?” she asked, slamming her frail hand down on her hip.
“The kind that senses when bad things are happening,” I answered. Her dark eyes evaluated me for a long minute, searching my face for the truth. What she found there, I couldn’t say but she closed the door. The rattle of the chain clanged as she unlocked the door and reopened it, standing aside for me to enter.
I stepped inside, only a few strides as I waited for her to close the door, lock it, and catch up to me on slow arthritic legs. Random streams of light filtered through the room, illuminating specks of dust in the air. The lace curtains were uneven and torn in spots. She probably hadn’t changed them in years and the house smelled as if it had been closed up, with a musty odor permeating through everything, even her.
She trudged by me, slightly hunched over but steady. Her housecoat was a crisp yellow cotton with little white pansies dotting the fabric and I couldn’t help but notice how much that simple splash of color made her seem less worn, less defeated.
“Well, come on, girl. I don’t have anything to offer you but I’ll answer your questions if it helps someone,” she said as she made her way around to the tweed armchair on the far side of the room. It sat near a window and as I stepped closer, I could see why she perched there. The backyard was filled with neighborhood children, laughing and playing. A small smile crested her crinkled lips as she watched and I wasn’t sure she wanted me to notice.
“Are they your grandchildren?” I asked, sitting in the armchair on the other side of the coffee table.
“No. My boys died a long time ago. They never had children.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, discovering that I actually meant it.
“Nothin’ to be sorry ’bout. It was probably before you was born,” she said, finally turning to meet my gaze. “Ask away, I need to get back to my chores.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry to take up so much of your time.” I sat on the edge of the chair, suddenly feeling like I was in trouble. I couldn’t explain the feeling but the way she glowered at me with that extremely perceptive gaze, even through glasses that were half an inch thick, I felt small. “We think that whomever disturbed the graves over in Greenlawn Cemetery last night, got in through the break in the fence across the street from your house. I realize that it was probably very late and you might have been asleep but if you remember anything, sights, sounds, smells. It might help.”
“You mean the white box truck that was parked outside that fence for a good 40 minutes last night around 4 a.m.?” she asked, her gaze sharp and her tone clear.
“Well, yes,” I answered in surprise. “Do you remember anything about the box truck or the driver?”
“No markings like a business but by almost 5 a.m., a man opened the back of the truck and a bunch of people strolled up the ramp. Didn’t look like they were sober. Probably just a bunch of drunk kids. You know, they stumbled a lot as they got into
the truck.”
I could only thank her good sense for not going outside to either check up on them or yell at them. Considering the glare she was giving me, I was pretty sure she would’ve yelled at them if she’d thought she could get there in time.
“Did you happen to see what the driver looked like?”
“No, honey, sure didn’t. You know, I’m up a couple of times a night with these water pills the doctor has me on and I didn’t see any sense in puttin’ on my glasses until it was too late and the truck was already drivin’ away.”
“You saw him?” I asked, still astonished that something had gone right. Even if she hadn’t seen him, she’d seen the truck and maybe Jade could track that down through a rental or purchase here in town. It was a long shot but it was something.
“Yes, honey, but I’m sorry I didn’t put my glasses on. These kids have no respect anymore.”
“No, Ms.—” I started but realized I’d never asked her name. Talk about disrespectful.
She grinned at me. “Octavia, honey, Octavia Martin.”
“My name is Dahlia Sabin, and thank you. Your information has been more helpful than you could imagine.” I got to my feet and smiled down at her. Reaching in my pocket, I handed her a business card for Trevelyan Dean Construction. “If you see anything else or need help, call this number and someone there will know how to get in touch with me.”
She glanced down at the card between her index finger and thumb, moving it back and forth to find the spot in her vision where she could see the tiny print.
“My home number is on the back if it’s after hours. Call me. Day or night, Ms. Martin.”
She turned that same evaluating gaze up at me, watching for something only she could identify before she nodded curtly.
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