Darkening Moon

by Gaja J. Kos

  Instinctively, I leaned into Afanasiy’s touch, allowing his arms to shield me from the wintery breeze that once more snapped into place as that bond between us released its grip. I shivered, and Afanasiy pulled me closer to him—then let go so quickly I staggered. I spun around, wondering what the fuck had gone wrong.

  The sight silenced my protests.

  Afanasiy was holding out his ankle-length black coat.

  My heart sped up. Not only was he damn fine-looking, but a gentleman, too.

  I slipped the coat over my jacket, Afanasiy’s gaze lingering on my bare thighs.

  The hunger between us turned from whispers into something tangible. It would have been so easy to back him up against the bench, straddle those muscular legs of his… With the coat as a shield, none would be the wiser if I had him right there, right now.

  And gods, I wanted to.

  But those elegant fingers of his closed button after button, leaving me cocooned in the tightly knit wool that carried his delicious scent and returning some, if not exactly all, of my senses.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, pushing away my annoyance at temporarily forgetting why I’d called him here in the first place.

  Yes, I had a werewolf’s sexual appetite, and the attraction I shared with Afanasiy went beyond anything I’d ever experienced… But seeing how easy it was to shove the rest of the world aside still rubbed me the wrong way.

  Afanasiy trailed a finger down the side of my jaw, looking every inch the man on the verge of kissing me. Fuck, if he did—

  His head snapped to the side, the softness gone from his features as if it had never been there at all.

  This was the Blade of Raya Bathilda had mentioned.

  “What happened?” He strode closer to the corpse.

  “I felt something in the water,” I said, my voice still a little shaky. From my discovery. But from him, too. “He’s one of the missing supernaturals.”

  I padded over to his side and placed my hand on his elbow.

  “I’ll need to alert ICRA. But I thought you might want to take an uninterrupted look first.”

  Afanasiy’s gaze met mine, hard and unreadable—save for that flicker of gratitude pooling in the depths of his eyes. “May I?”

  I nodded.

  As he went to examine the body, magic unfurled from his core and hummed through the air. I watched him for a moment, spellbound by the display—until I realized not all of it was wonder.

  I was stalling, too.

  Apparently, I was willing to drag a mangled corpse out of a lake, but a phone call went beyond the limits of my courage. Exhaling, I unlocked my phone and rang the one person I knew had to be on scene.

  “Yes?” Isa’s voice slithered down the line almost instantly.

  “I found a body in Olympiapark. It’s Manfred Weber.”

  “Fuck.” Her hesitation was heavy. “Is the body—”

  “Cut open?” I swallowed. “Yeah, it is.”

  “Send me your coordinates via text. I’ll get a team there ASAP.”

  I did as asked, then slid my phone into the pocket of my borrowed coat. Afanasiy straightened up when I joined him, violet eyes brimming with anger as he turned my way.

  “Is that…” His mouth tightened, and I knew what lay behind the reaction.

  “Yes, I felt it, too,” I confirmed. “A trace of the demonic.”

  But it wasn’t merely on the corpse. It was inside it.

  “This isn’t possible,” Afanasiy muttered under his breath.

  I motioned him to the bench set just a short distance away from the corpse where the terrain started to slope, desperately needing to sit down if we were to have this discussion. He filled the empty space by my side and draped an arm around me before tugging up the collar of the coat with his free hand. A soft smile spread across my lips as the gentle affection scattered some of the chill while the heat of his body battled the rest.

  A damn good position to be in.

  “I should take you someplace warm,” he whispered into my hair. “Make love to you until my scent was all your skin carried.”

  I groaned.

  Gods, I longed to go with him. But that was a desire I’d better bury in the cemetery of Things That Will Never Happen. Not with Manfred’s body lying on the bank.

  Not with what had been done to him.

  “He wasn’t a demon,” I said weakly.

  “No, he wasn’t.” Afanasiy’s voice was harsh, only confirming what I already suspected. What I dreaded. “The essence isn’t his.”

  “The essence shouldn’t be his,” I corrected.

  He looked at me, a blend of confusion and surprise cutting through the sharp edges of his features. I let loose a breath and shifted just enough so that my neck wouldn’t start hurting. I already had to give up the promise of sex. I wasn’t about to let go of our eye contact, too.

  It made me feel closer to him. And closer was definitely good.

  Since there was no easy way of explaining werewolf traits, I started talking in hopes that Afanasiy’s lengthy existence equipped him with sufficient knowledge to smooth over the gaps.

  “Werewolves can sense layers of a person’s being. Everyone has a core scent. That one, unchanging essence that eventually becomes lined with all the years they lived, the imprints life left on them.”

  Afanasiy nodded. “The same as one’s energy. It lays bare even what one might wish to conceal.”

  “Exactly.” I’d forgotten demons had a similar system to reading people as us. It was just the means that varied. “This trace of demonic… It isn’t something entwined with the rest of the layers, and it isn’t part of his core, although it is there. It—it reminds me of a permanent stain. Something that eroded the body’s essence, damaging it in the process.”

  Afanasiy’s fingers brushed down my arm, the touch absent as his features became drawn once more. “So it was thrust upon him?”

  “Shoved into him, more like it.” I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the pressing cold. “I think someone fucked around with his essence, Afanasiy. Someone tried to change Manfred’s core.”

  13

  Mercifully, Isa wasn’t with the first team that arrived on scene. And as it turned out, not all ICRA agents were bastards.

  They took one look at my half-dressed form and soggy hair and packed me off to the Zentrum. No questions.

  Of course, as I learned once my were escort left me at the entrance, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, which kind of ruined the moment. But I knew a Q&A session with ICRA was inevitable, and if I had the choice between doing so outside, wrapped in only Afanasiy’s coat, or at the compound a few hours later, the latter was obviously a clear winner.

  Besides, given the odds that it would be Isa who conducted the interview were high, I wasn’t complaining about the extra time to prepare myself. The Ice Queen of Fang and I were long overdue for a chat.

  Not wasting even a second, I reached out to Felix and asked him to grab a change of clothes from my office, then headed to the first of the two subterranean levels to shower. My office with its tiny en suite would have offered more privacy, but the locker room was closer. The sooner I got rid of the smell, the better.

  I stood under the spray of water until I felt a bit more like myself again. Gradually, the scent of wrongness that had clung to me all the way over to the compound diminished, then evaporated completely. But I didn’t climb out just yet. It was only when I was certain not even a whiff of that vile stench could reappear that I turned off the water. I wrapped a towel around my hair, another around my body, and padded into the main area of the locker room where Felix was waiting.

  With more than just the requested clothes.

  “I think you’re my favorite person in the world right now,” I muttered under my breath.

  The aroma of fresh coffee enticed my senses, and I snatched the cup from his hands before even sparing a glance at the bundle of necessities stacked neatly on the bench by his side.
>
  Felix smiled, but the concern that was so plainly evident on his face prevented it from reaching his hazel eyes. “Figured you needed a boost after that ICRA guy dropped you off.”

  I winced without wanting to. “Did anybody else see my grand arrival?”

  The last thing any of us needed was for more rumors about my bloody relationship with ICRA to sprout to life. But Felix shook his head. Good. At least something was going my way.

  Only…

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I pinned him with a hard stare.

  Looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable, Felix brushed a nonexistent piece of lint off his black-and-white raglan tee. “Someone came up to your office about ten minutes ago.”

  Well, crap.

  “Should have known ICRA wouldn’t be able to wait until I at least showered properly,” I grumbled under my breath, though not even remotely quiet enough for it to evade Felix’s werewolf hearing.

  “Not ICRA. Although someone just as equally well situated on your shit list.”

  For a moment, I contemplated walking straight back into the shower and not coming out until the world left me the fuck alone. It would have been the healthy, wise thing to do.

  Instead I only sighed. “Who, then?”

  The corners of his mouth tightened. “Linus.”

  “How dare you walk into my club, you doped-up piece of shit?” I roared the instant I kicked the door shut behind me.

  Linus whirled around in the chair he was occupying, but where I expected to find smug arrogance, there was nothing but a brutally honest display of regret. My next remark caught in my throat, the sight of this beaten-down version of Linus hitting me straight in the chest.

  He was a bastard. A cheat.

  But looking at him, seeing those magnetic blue eyes dimmed and handsome face ragged, it was hard to bring any harsh words to mind, let alone utter them.

  I walked across the space until I was standing behind my desk, but didn’t sit down. My sentimentality for the asshole might’ve been preventing me from lashing out, but I’d be damned if I didn't allow a faint display of superiority to slide by.

  Whatever he was doing here, the were needed to remember he was on my turf now.

  “Go on, Lotte, yell at me,” Linus said, a bitter laugh stirring the air between us. “I beat you up over a drug. I deserve it.”

  I snorted, wishing I could fling a shitload of nasty curses at his face, but what left my mouth was something else entirely. “You already got what you deserve. Suspension, right?”

  “And a month spent locked up in a cell. Along with a hefty fine.”

  I arched an eyebrow. A month?

  I knew ICRA had arrested him, but I believed it was one of those spend a night or two in jail scenarios.

  Werewolves and confinement in small spaces nature couldn’t penetrate weren’t the best of buddies. What they did to him was approximately equivalent to a human spending half a year in solitary.

  Not that I had any desire to let him know I thought the punishment didn’t fit the crime.

  “So what are you doing here now, Linus?”

  “Would you believe it?” He laughed dryly. “I’m here to ask for your forgiveness. And possibly a job.”

  Screw compassion. This time, it was purely the strength of my will that kept my fist from crunching his nose.

  “You want me to hire you? Do you have any idea what a shit reputation this club already has because of my former boss?” I held up a hand when he wanted to intervene. “And now you want me to risk what little good we’re still holding on to—for you?”

  “Yeah, that came out wrong.” Linus buried his head in his hands, then shot up from his chair.

  I tensed out of instinct, my body ready to fight and take him out if push came to shove. But he just stood there, looking utterly helpless and lost.

  I had never been big on empathy, preferring to maintain distance and assert things with a critical eye. Part of my werewolf and tennis training. But the urge to pull Linus into a hug nagged at my insides with a persistence I was unable to squash.

  I crossed my arms before I did anything I’d regret later.

  “Fine.” I exhaled. “Then tell me what you want. I’ll listen, but that’s all I can promise you.”

  Linus sat back down. He looked like he needed a moment, so I went over to the cabinet that doubled as a kitchenette with its mini fridge, bowls of fruit, and bright blue electric kettle, and poured us two cups of coffee. Felix must have boiled the water before he came downstairs because the temperature was perfect, and the rich aroma overrode the regret wafting off Linus in a matter of seconds.

  It wasn’t the exquisite stuff my assistant brewed in his nifty vintage percolator, but definitely came in as a close second.

  I handed Linus the drink, then plopped down in my chair. “Go on.”

  “I was an ass. And I know that no matter what I say will change the fact that I lashed out at you when you caught me using.” His muscular shoulders shuddered as he exhaled. “But I want to help. I already blew my career. My suspension will be over in a couple of months, but you know there’s no coming back from this, right?”

  I dipped my chin. If this club and my own story were any indication to what happened to those who were innocent, then there was no chance in all the realms Linus’s stain would be forgotten.

  “The thing is”—he sipped his coffee, a fleeting touch of bliss crossing his face—“I don’t want it all to go to waste. My knowledge. My experiences. If my fucking path is over, maybe I can still help carve someone else’s.”

  My eyes widened. “You want to coach the kids?”

  Linus was a lot of things, but I’d never thought of him as someone who worked with teens and guided them to greatness. He was the kind of person to snatch that greatness away and keep it for himself. Yet as I studied him, I sensed no insincerity. Not a single whiff of malicious or even less-than-honorable intent.

  The werewolf was serious about placing himself on the sidelines to help someone else shine.

  A proper consideration was the least I could give him.

  “I’m not saying yes, Linus.” I sucked in a breath. “But when your suspension’s over, drop by my office again. We’ll see where we’ll go from there.”

  His smile was fragile and filled with such innocent hope I couldn’t help but gag inwardly as a part of me swooned. I was a sap.

  A big, soft-hearted puppy.

  But watching Linus walk out that door, a liveliness to his presence that hadn’t been there earlier…

  It felt right, too.

  An hour or so after Linus left, the ICRA agent dropped by.

  Of course, it was Isa.

  The sharp, alluring notes of her scent preceded her arrival, but I forced my fingers to continue with their incessant typing. No point in wasting perfectly good minutes while Isa climbed the stairs at a leisurely pace. The sheer number of typos I made, however, exposed my fragile nerves.

  Clenching my jaw, I corrected the mistakes and pushed on.

  The vampire’s presence became impossible to ignore just as I finished booking two rooms in the center of Ljubljana for the tournament. I dimmed the display, met her gaze, then inclined my head in a silent invitation for her to enter.

  She looked absolutely stunning in a pencil skirt and tight jacket, her dark coat open and kicking around her ankles as she walked. But what surprised me the most was the utter lack of animosity on her features.

  And whether it was Linus’s visit that smothered the anger or something else entirely, I decided to go along. It wasn’t as if I felt like having an argument after the morning I’d had, anyway.

  “Can I offer you a glass of blood?” I asked.

  She shook her head, the waterfall of her black hair brushing against her shoulders. “I was thinking if we could go talk somewhere more pleasant.”

  “Huh?” The surprises just kept on coming. “I thought you came to conduct an interview?”

  “I did. But tha
t doesn’t mean we can’t turn it into a nicer experience.”

  There was no lie in her voice, just an edge of exhaustion.

  Quickly, I scanned the echoes of dark circles under her eyes the makeup tried its best to conceal, the way her piercing green gaze seemed somewhat haunted. Senior Agent Vogt was still a shark—but a shark that, by the looks of it, was currently playing a losing game.

  I rolled my swivel chair away from the desk. “Where do you want to go?”

  After a short walk through the park, we ended up at a small bar on the western side where greens gave way to concrete, and the snow hugging the ground had the decidedly bleak gray hue of exhaust fumes. There were only a couple of human patrons present inside the narrow rectangle of booth-divided space, and the establishment itself was more of a dump than anything else. Definitely not one of my top choices. But it offered us sufficient privacy—as well as a view of the slowly clearing sky.

  Sunlight poured through the windows in isolated rays, hitting Isa’s dark hair and caressing her features in a way that made me remember why being in her company wasn’t a good idea. The vampire stirred something within me, something that was far more than lust, and I really wanted nothing to do with that. I’d barely gotten her out of my system as it was.

  I took a sip of my green tea that was just on the wrong side of hot and forcefully hushed the roll of undesired emotions.

  “What I sensed on Manfred Weber—that essence of demonic—it was put there, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  We’d already gone through the basics of what happened on our walk over to the bar. I kept Afanasiy’s manifestation at the scene to myself, but disclosed everything else. Even the things it would have been kinder to erase from my mind.

  But for all the words I’d used, Isa had spoken in silence. Absorbing. Thinking.

  Now, I needed something in return.

  “It was.” Isa nodded. The emerald of her eyes became colder despite the golden light falling on her face. “This isn’t the first body we’ve found. And I expect it won’t be the last, given there were no improvements.”