The best detective minds in major cities hadn’t been able to come to that clear a conclusion. Hailey was surprised and impressed by the woman’s deductive reasoning skills. But it made a sort of sense. It was easy to get lost in big, crowded cities. People fell through the cracks every day; they just disappeared and were never heard from again. Most went unnoticed. A single body turning up in the midst of everyday city life wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.
So what if there were claw marks? Maybe a stray dog. Maybe someone with costume claws and a grudge. One dead person. And hundreds of thousands of citizens in need of protection. No one would look too closely unless someone ordered it. And for a handful of nobodies, who would bother?
But here, there were no cracks to fall through. Here, everything was seen and heard.
Here, it was easy to spot the monster.
Hailey left the grieving woman’s window and made her way around the crowd to where the body had been found. The smell of fear was strongest here and it took her a while to tune it out so she could focus on the others. She smelled blood and death, dozens of people who had been there since the murder. But no Jeremy.
Hellcat reveled in this. It was a game with a prize at the end. Hailey knew better. Jeremy hadn’t been taken to tea and cookies. Every second wasted here could mean his death.
She needed Pixie. If anyone knew whether or not Jeremy was still alive—
“You called?”
Damn telepaths… “Is Jeremy still alive?” She said it without emotion, all business, predator on the hunt. It wasn’t personal. She just had her prey to stalk and kill in unimaginably painful ways. But that could wait. It had to. If she let herself think about anything other than the hunt right now, she’d never find him.
“Yes. He’s awake, but he doesn’t know where he is, and he shut me out. The bad guy is with him … someone called Arthur Glenn. Do you know him?”
The name didn’t ring any bells.
“Well, he knows you.”
Whatever. “I need a clue here. Nothing in this place smells familiar. I need a place to start.” At the very least, she needed Jeremy’s last known location.
“Hold, please.”
Hailey wanted to growl.
“Did you check the Patio?” Pixie asked.
Of course she had. That was the first place she’d checked. There were too many people even now to make anything out. “Trail was cold,” she told the girl.
“Okay, he refuses to tell me anything. Said to tell you to stay away.”
“Oh, man, I’m gonna kick his ass so much when I find him…”
“Yeah, whatever,” Pixie retorted. “Circle the square. That’s the last thing I managed to pull out of his memories. Somewhere near the stage was where he was taken.”
Hailey went straight for the stage. It was empty now, with just an overturned throne and some confetti on the ground. She hopped up there and looked over the town square.
This was impossible. She could see at least a hundred places from which a person could be taken unnoticed. In a crowd, a thousand. If there’d been a commotion, like, say, when the body had been found, he could have been standing right in the middle of the damn stage and no one would have noticed him being taken.
“Just focus,” Pixie said. “You have five senses, use all of them.”
She could do that. “Okay. Shut up for a second,” Hailey told her. She needed to concentrate. With her eyes closed, she could sort through the scents better. Stuffy perfume … an older female. The scent came from the throne. Hailey hopped down off the stage and crouched low. More people, now mixing with manure and piss. Fantastic.
Hailey pushed to her feet and inhaled deeply.
There!
Just there; just a hint of something familiar. It wasn’t Jeremy. It was blood.
Hailey followed the scent away from the square and into an alley. Blood. Just a little. Maybe a few drops. Not enough to be seen readily, but enough to give her a trace to follow. It enraged Hellcat and the leopard went off the deep end.
Hailey fell against the wall and slid down to the ground, her mind in a haze of feral tumult. She couldn’t hope to pierce through that rage.
The world spun around her and all she could do was hang on, wait it out, and hope to hell she didn’t start to change. Her leg muscles jumped, Hellcat asserting herself and demanding Hailey move. Hailey held her ground. Braced herself and gritted her teeth against the torrent of adrenaline-laced aggression.
When she couldn’t stand it anymore she screamed inside her head so loud it gave the leopard pause. In that split second of silence, Hailey shoved Hellcat back in the dark cave and sealed it shut. My mind, my rules. She knew it wouldn’t hold. Every second was precious now, so she pulled herself back up and curled her fingers into tight fists to make herself focus again.
She could see marks on the ground.
There were footprints in the dirt. Men’s shoes with a smooth, worn bottom. Loafers of some sort.
Hailey’s mind picked out the design the shoe had imprinted into the sand and looked for more of them. The tracks led farther away from the square and seemed to circle around in some parts but Hailey was able to pick up on the scent and follow it when the tracks were unreliable.
When she reached the edge of town, the stomped dirt road ended in tall grass of a field and the trail just … disappeared.
No!
How was that possible?
Hellcat wanted out. Badly. But the leopard must have learned her place because she didn’t demand or attack. She … pouted.
“What the hell do I do now?”
“Hold on,” Pixie said again. Hailey was getting used to the girl talking in her head by now. A scary thought.
“Why isn’t Jeremy talking to me?” She’d have thought it would have been him in her mind, giving orders.
“I’m keeping him out.” Pixie was sad.
“What? Why?”
“Because he’s being an idiot. He doesn’t want you to look for him, and if I let him into your mind, he’ll try to make you go back. It would be painful. For everyone involved.”
That just figured.
“Okay, your sister’s here, doing some fancy thing with the computers. She says there was a taxi there not long ago. It’s a long shot, but she can get it to repeat the trip.”
“Send it.”
“She also says not to do anything stupid. You need to come back to the lab for your last shot.”
Hailey ignored that.
The taxi took its sweet time getting there at minimum speed. It left Hailey with nothing to do except think. Restless, furious, scared, she paced and growled. Her teeth started aching, and her fingers itched. Fangs and claws. Should she test them out? Could she?
Yes! Hellcat wanted that. That was a good plan.
Hailey was going crazy doing nothing. Don’t think. Just shut down. Focus.
Easier said than done. She needed something to focus on.
Hailey decided on her right hand. She closed off her mind as best she could, shut out all external stimuli, and just focused on her breathing. Breathe in. Breathe out. See her skin change color. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch fine fur erupt along the back of her hand. Breathe in, breathe out. Feel bones shift to make a paw.
It hurt.
So much so that she thought her bones were shattering all at the same time. Sensing an opening, Hellcat sprang forward, driving the change farther, fighting to be let out. Hailey’s paw flexed, fur spreading up her arm to her elbow. Her eyes watered but she bit back any sound and tried to breathe through it. She fought Hellcat back into submission, taking the pain and shoving it out of her mind as best she could. Tears leaked out of her eyes, but she was winning.
Fur receded back to her paw. Breathe in. Breathe out. Reverse the bone shift. Breathe in, breathe out. Her human hand was back. Stiff and bruised, but whole.
Just in time for the taxi to arrive. Weak and shaken already, now Hailey had to pull herself up into the transport.
<
br /> “Hailey!” Jeremy’s voice in her head startled her just as she was perched on the edge of the cabin in the precarious position of being neither in nor out, and she fell flat on her back. “Stop,” he shouted. “It’s you he’s after. Go back. You have to go back!”
Hailey felt him try to manipulate her, like snakes twisting in her brain. She couldn’t keep from crying out; he’d momentarily replaced her control with his.
Then he was gone and Hailey was left gasping on the ground.
“Whoops,” Pixie said. “Sorry about that. Tiny slip. Won’t happen again.”
Hailey picked herself up and crawled into the taxi. “What did he mean, it’s me he’s after?”
“Nothing,” Pixie said. “Just go get my brother.”
Her head was pounding. It didn’t bode well. She checked the navigation screen and manually raised the speed to maximum. When the taxi took off, Hailey was thrown back against the seat.
A muscle spasm made her torso go rigid like a statue. Her body, from her knees up to her shoulders, was one giant charley horse and while it lasted she couldn’t move at all. It ebbed slowly, leaving her stunned and trembling. Even Hellcat was surprised.
What the hell was that?
No time to think about it now. The taxi was nearing its destination somewhere in English Village. She had a to-do list now and worrying about side effects wasn’t high on it at the moment.
Task 1: Find Jeremy.
Task 2: Kill the bastard who took him.
Those were her highest priorities.
Anything after that was a bonus.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You can’t just kill me.”
“And why not?”
Good question. “Pixie! Damn it, get Hailey back to the lab.” She was letting Jeremy sense just enough to know that Hailey was on her way, but he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. And now on top of that Pixie was ignoring him. “Are you trying to get us both killed?”
No answer.
Shit.
Jeremy twisted his hands behind him, trying to loosen the rope binding his wrists. Knots weren’t exactly his specialty. The more he struggled the tighter the knot seemed to get. And he didn’t just have his wrists bound at the back of the chair; the rope was somehow looped through it so he couldn’t even move away from the damn thing.
“Your silence is answer enough,” Arthur said. “I knew you’d be a coward.”
The guy was polishing his claws for some kind of sick poetic justice. He actually had claws on a thick leather glove. It looked heavy and stiff, but sturdy. And the added weight would make each point slide through flesh like butter.
The glove, the demon references, his obsession with Hailey…
Christ.
The animal attack files mentioned microscopic traces of metal in the wounds. The medical examiners had written it off as coincidence; all attacks had taken place in large cities, in or near the industrial districts where air pollution could easily have coated the ground. Metal coats animal claws, which then transfer traces to the victims’ wounds.
It was a logical assumption. The same way a blindfolded person touched an elephant’s trunk and called it a snake. Occam’s Razor dictated that the simplest explanation was most likely the correct one. Except it didn’t explain the lack of saliva in the wounds. Not a trace. Not on any of the victims.
That’s what he’d been coming to tell Hailey in the first place. The reason the investigation was stalling was that no one could identify the animal responsible for the attacks. There were only claw marks, always inconclusive as evidence, since there were a number of things that could inflict such damage. But animals didn’t just rip into their prey and run. And they certainly didn’t exist in a vacuum. An animal would have left clues, some kind of DNA or organic material that could narrow the search down. Saliva, hair, dirt to point to its previous location—something.
A dozen police officers in different districts, on different worlds were investigating this case. How the hell could all of them have overlooked that? Jeremy knew the answer. The police were trained to see what was there; to look for the smallest clues and give them meaning. More often than not, they didn’t even notice what wasn’t there. And he’d grown so complacent in his new, quiet life, he hadn’t noticed either.
The clues he’d been missing this whole time fell into place. This was the killer the police were looking for. The blood trail leading to Hailey—it was following her. Because Arthur followed her wherever she went. It was a compulsion to him, his obsession demanding that he stay close. His life had no meaning without Hailey.
And everything he did, he did for her.
Jeremy remembered the night of the procession on Reynard Colony. Hailey had sensed a threat even then. She’d scented another, a stalker, following her from world to world. She’d been afraid. The son of a bitch had been trailing her, killing innocent people and making it look like Hailey’s handiwork.
If Hailey found out…
He had to do something.
“You can’t kill me because I am a demon,” Jeremy said, pulling the lie out of his ass. From there, it just rolled off his tongue as if he’d rehearsed it. “All your toy will do is kill this shell and set me loose. You think your pretty girl is troubled now? Wait until I settle in her mind completely. She’s strong, that one. I could do well with such a vessel.”
The sound Arthur made as he came to his feet was pure madness and rage. He kicked viciously at Jeremy’s head but Jeremy managed to twist just enough that the blow caught his shoulder instead and dislocated it instantly. Still, better his shoulder than his skull.
“I will kill you for this!” Arthur was shaking now, and when he screamed at Jeremy his words were barely discernible.
Jeremy forced a laugh but it came out pained. “You can’t win,” he said. If he could just break the chair somehow, get loose, he could get out of this.
Arthur screamed again then turned away. He was almost hyperventilating though making an obvious effort to compose himself. One shaking hand smoothed back his hair in a compulsive gesture. “I will protect her,” he said quietly, more to himself than to Jeremy.
When he faced Jeremy a long moment later there was no more rage. Just cold, calm malice. He pulled Jeremy up, righted the chair. With his hands on Jeremy’s shoulders—Christ, that hurt!—he spoke as if nothing had happened. “You will not touch her again, demon. I will keep you here as long as it takes. I will beat you, cut you, burn you…whatever I have to do. And eventually you will tell me how to kill you. By then, you’ll be begging for death. Of that, you can be certain.”
Note to self: provoking a mentally unhinged serial killer—not a good idea.
Clearly, logic wasn’t getting him out of this and playing into his delusion was just making a bad situation far worse. Jeremy was running out of options here.
A piercing scream shattered through his mental shields. Female. In such pain, Jeremy felt it too and screamed with her. Everything turned black and he couldn’t see Arthur anymore but he heard him drop to the ground.
Hailey!
But it wasn’t her. Not Hailey.
Dara.
Something was wrong. The birth was taking too much out of her; she was projecting everything and not just to Jeremy but to everyone capable of receiving the signal. Everyone she’d created a connection with, or had ever touched telepathically. Pixie would feel this. So would Hunt and Amelia, and many others here.
The connection severed abruptly, leaving him cold.
Arthur struggled to his feet. “More of your tricks?” he growled. There was far more energy in his voice than seemed to be in his body. He was unsteady, stumbling to his chair.
Jeremy ignored him. He searched for any hint of a connection with Hunt and called out to him. “Is Dara okay?”
The answer was wordless, terrified.
No, Dara was not okay.
Jeremy broke off contact. There was nothing he could do now, for either of them.
; Arthur reached for his glove, put it on. His hands were shaking enough that it took him a couple of tries to get it right. He tightened the straps and rested his hand on his knee for a moment as if he was too weak to hold it up for long.
When he looked Jeremy in the eye, it was with such depth of hatred that there was no question as to what would happen next. The claws caught what little light there was and gleamed.
Keep fighting, or give up?
Jeremy let his mouth pull into a sneer. “Didn’t like my gift? Just a hint of what I am capable of. What I can do to you. And to her.”
Arthur rose from his seat, came forward with slow, unsteady footsteps. He never even blinked as he raised his gloved hand; never made a sound, except for his heavy breathing. Jeremy didn’t dare lower his shields completely but he did relax them a little.
A tingle of fear raced up his spine and exploded in his head like fireworks. “No,” he whispered. Not because of the glove. He didn’t give a damn about that. No … not now. Not here. “Run!”
The glove rose an inch more and came down.
“What did I miss?”
The tips brushed across Jeremy’s shoulder, barely catching on the fabric of his shirt. Arthur stared wide-eyed at a point behind Jeremy, his mouth hanging open.
“Get. Out. Of. Here,” Jeremy ground out. Arthur was volatile. Unstable. He could turn on Hailey any second. Especially if she provoked him.
“Hailey.” Arthur breathed her name in benediction. Jeremy wanted to kill him just for looking at her, talking to her. “It’s you.”
Rule number one when dealing with obsession: never, ever put the obsessed in the same room with the object of their interest. In Arthur’s mind, he and Hailey were meant to be. He was blaming Jeremy for Hailey’s indifference because if not for that she would surely fall into his arms in gratitude.
If that illusion broke, if something caused Arthur to lose faith in that, both Hailey and Jeremy were good as dead. Hailey didn’t exactly play nice. “Damn it, get out!” he snapped, unable to turn his head enough to look at her.
She ignored him. “Yeah, me, who’da thunk it?” Her tone was completely dry and uninterested and Arthur’s brows twitched in a quick frown.
Blood Trails Page 27