Ten minutes later Jamison pulled into the parking lot at Harmon Medical Center. She still had no answers concerning the stranger, but there were more important things to worry about at the moment. She'd actually managed to arrive a few minutes early. Locking the doors to the vehicle, she pocketed the keys and headed for the basement level.
The air conditioning caressed her skin as soon as Jamison entered the building and she resisted the urge to shiver. Like most of her species, she didn't care for being cold. It amazed her that Laura Paul, the Harmon County Chief Medical Examiner, could work down here every day.
She passed through the outer corridor and into the morgue offices.
Speak of the devil, Jamison thought as the medical practitioner came into view.
She saw the M. E. at the same time that Laura looked up at her. The doctor's eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled and a predatory look came over her face. Her pheromones changed from her normal floral scent to unabashed desire. She practically flowed across the room toward her and Jamison, knowing what was about to happen, was happy they were alone. It was like this every time she ran into her and Laura had the opportunity to make a pass. Laura had never been shy about letting her interest in the dominant Panthera show.
"Hi, Jami. You're looking well." Laura purred in her rich, low tones. "Are you finally here to take me up on my offer?"
Doctor Paul was small in comparison to Jamison, her head just at chin level. The artificial lights gleamed off her red-gold hair and brown eyes twinkled as she invaded Jamison's personal space. Jamison could feel the heat from the body only inches from her own. Caught up in the moment and still affected by her response to the stranger on the road, she allowed the passion to sweep over her.
Red lips rose and Jamison lowered her head until Laura's mouth was only inches away, her own already parted. She raised a hand to brush Laura's face. Her thumb was millimeters from caressing a full lower lip when Laura caught her hand.
"Not that one, darling. It smells like asphalt. Try this one."
An image of shaking hands with the tire-changing woman went through her mind and out again as Laura grasped her left hand and pressed it against her tight frame. Heat skated over Jamison's senses as her fingers teased down Laura's stomach, headed for the arousal between the doctor's thighs.
Laura's teeth grabbed her bottom lip and she moaned low in her throat, her eyes half-closed. There was nothing wrong with having sex with the eager woman. For Jamison there would be no strings attached and it had been quite a while since she'd blown off a little steam.
Jamison's nipples hardened against the fabric of her shirt as Laura rubbed against her. Again, the stranger's sea-colored eyes blazed in her mind. Abruptly the arousal faded as though it had never been.
She pulled back a little and said breathlessly, "Actually, I'm here on business. Hank wanted me to look at the bull."
Laura chuckled. "Your sweet talk could use a little work."
"Stop fooling around, Kessler. We all have other things to do."
Jamison jumped when she heard the irritating male voice. Anger and hatred threaded through the words and she didn't need to see the person to know it was Aaron Dalton. Undoubtedly he was one of the team leads that had been assigned by the Council, and the one Hank hadn't wanted to tell her about. Her annoyance was quickly replaced with pleasure when the other three group commanders followed Dalton into the room. These people would be submissives to her and dominants to their own individual packs.
Travis Rooker was a blond Panthera in his mid-twenties. He wore a scruffy beard that he seemed to have trouble growing and his left ear was pierced with a small diamond stud. Although inexperienced, he was intelligent, a good tracker and always willing to listen. His older sister, Andy, owned one of the cafés in Harmon and served the best steak in town as far as Jamison was concerned. Travis smiled when he saw her and quickly directed his gaze to the floor out of respect.
Next was Hal Walker, and he couldn't have been more dissimilar to the younger hunter. His hair was salt and pepper with age and he walked with a limp. His left foot had been caught in a bear trap as a youth and he had never recovered. Jamison counted herself lucky to have the wise old hunter among the group. He wouldn't go off half-cocked and had the patience to deal with teaching Travis while at the same time ignoring Aaron's rude comments about his handicap.
Jamison nodded to him respectfully, but it was the fourth and final member of the betas that held her attention.
"Dinah." Jamison smiled and reached out to embrace her sister.
Though they were twins, they were as different as night and day. Dinah Kessler stood at a modest five and a half feet, her hair a dark auburn. Her skin was gently sun-kissed and she had a perpetual smile on her face. In contrast to her calm exterior, Dinah was a dynamo of activity. On any given day she could be found whitewater rafting at Hudson River Gorge or flying around in her helicopter just taking in the scenery.
"It figures the Council would pick you. They couldn't have made a better choice."
"Thanks," the redhead responded, stepping away after returning the brief embrace. "I'm not surprised they put you in charge of the whole detail, either."
"Yeah, yeah," Dalton interrupted. "Now that we're over the mutual admiration thing, can we get down to business?"
Jamison narrowed her eyes at the man. Muted gray met her gaze head-on and he showed no sign of bowing to her status as the dominant feline. Aaron had tried to pit himself against her since adolescence and usually came out on the losing end. Rather than admit she was faster, stronger and more capable, it just seemed to make him more determined than ever to best her. In their current situation, with an unknown killer running around the forest, she couldn't afford for him to undermine her authority. The whole idea made her hackles rise and she'd just opened her mouth to put him in his place when Dinah beat her to it.
"Stowe it, Aaron. With things like they are, the Council needs the best of us leading this investigation, and trust me, that's not you."
To Jamison's surprise, Aaron flushed and looked away rather than confront Dinah in his normal belligerent way. She caught the desire in his eyes as he glanced furtively at her sister and realized he wanted to be intimate with Dinah.
Eww.
Desperate to get that image out of her head, Jamison focused on the youngest member of her new crew.
"Hey, Travis," she said, making it clear that the incident was behind them and that speaking more to Dalton on the subject was beneath her. "Who'd you bribe to get on this little detail? Or did you have Andy promise the Council free steaks for the year."
His pale eyebrows shot up, clearly horrified that she'd think he had try to influence the elders. "No, of course not, Pieta. I hope they picked me because they trust me."
She smiled and rested a friendly hand on his shoulder. Travis always addressed her with respect, using the old tongue word for leader. "I'm sure they do, and this will be a good learning experience. How is Andy, by the way?"
"She's great, for an overbearing, overprotective sibling." If she hadn't heard the affection in his voice she might have thought he was complaining.
"Anything good on the menu tonight?"
"She's got a great side of beef going right now. Andy had just put it in when I left and the scent is already starting to sweeten the east side of town."
"Sounds good. I think I'll stop in later. For now, let's get down to business. Laura?"
Laura had been silent throughout the incident with Dalton and Jamison greeting the rest of her troops but now it was her show.
"Follow me."
She walked out into the hallway and led the group four doors down from the morgue offices. Laura had the only code to the cipher lock on the wall outside the room. Her body blocked their view as she input the numerical string and the door opened with a hiss.
Jamison had always thought it odd that no one questioned such high security in a morgue. Did people just assume this was where Doctor Laura kept the dan
gerous zombie corpses?
They walked into the cold room and although the Belted Galloway was nowhere in sight, the scent of the bull was overwhelming. Jamison knew a human would never have noticed the smell over the hospital disinfectants, but they were Panthera. Their sense of smell was as acute as that of the animals they shifted into. Her mouth watered and her stomach chose that inopportune moment to grumble noisily.
"Jamison!" Dinah chuckled and slapped the back of her hand across her sister's stomach.
"Sorry, munchkin. I didn't have lunch," Jamison murmured, more enthralled by the smell of raw steak than was entirely appropriate.
Travis laughed along with Dinah and Hal grinned. Only Dalton remained silent and Jamison glanced at him curiously. His expression was oddly intent. She decided it would be best to get this over with as quickly as possible and see what clues they could decipher.
"Let's do it, Laura."
Doctor Paul walked toward the back of the room and opened a cold drawer easily four times the size of one that would be used for a person. Considering what they were, Jamison realized the Panthera colony had to be prepared for every contingency. In seconds the body of a black and white, sixteen hundred pound bull was pulled out on a slab.
The six of them quietly gathered around.
The animal smell pervaded the room and wasn't altogether pleasant. Blood had coagulated beneath the flesh and Jamison detected the scent of encroaching decay. It reminded her of the odor she'd picked up in the woods outside the Paul Smith's Center. She'd discovered more than one dead animal while patrolling the Adirondack Park forest and the stink of death was familiar, but there was also something here that didn't belong. It was the smell of a predator. Her nostrils flared and Jamison's lips parted slightly as she tasted the scent. After a minute she knew all that her senses could tell her about the carcass. She raised her eyes to look at the members of her investigative team. All of them had partially shifted, including herself.
Their pupils had narrowed to that of jungle cats. A light dusting of tawny fur covered everyone's arms except for Jamison's. Her pelt was midnight black. Just as with the more mundane jaguar species, she was part of the six percent with a melanistic mutation.
Dalton's mouth was open because his canine's had extended and his fingers were curled into claws as he fought the urge to completely assume his animal side.
"Well?" Jamison's voice was gruff, her changed vocal chords having difficulty forming words.
"Definitely cat," Aaron said.
Jamison was disgruntled by such an obvious statement. "Well, I didn't think a dog hauled him thirty feet into the air. If it had been that simple, Hank wouldn't have bothered to assign someone to look into the mystery."
Dalton raised his transformed eyes to meet her gaze in challenge. "Hank?" he rumbled furiously. "That toothless old buffalo is useless. He should be torn apart and used for fertilizer. Make room for someone more powerful."
It was too much. First he had treated Jamison with disrespect and cast nauseating looks toward Dinah. Now he had the nerve to make contemptuous remarks for someone she respected, an elder with the Council. Additionally, her body was still tight with unexpressed desire and the smell of the disemboweled animal had her beast riding close to the surface.
Her canines erupted in a flash and Jamison loosed a powerful growl as she leaped over the stainless steel gurney and the bull. Three-inch claws tore through her nail beds as she flew through the air, her knees catching him in the chest. She shoved him into the wall behind him so hard that a few of the tiles shattered. Dalton had been caught off guard and she had him by the throat before he knew what was happening.
Aaron struggled against the crushing weight, shoving back. He outweighed her considerably, but she had martial arts training that he didn't and easily countered. Using his weight against him, Jamison executed a standard hip throw and slammed him to the ground. Before he could move she was on him, one of his arms trapped beneath her body. Jamison grabbed the other wrist in her free hand and held it on the floor. Tendons stood out in sharp relief as she readily held him down.
"Masule." Jamison growled the command for Dalton to yield and emphasized the order by squeezing his larynx until his eyes watered. Then she released her grip slightly to allow him to breathe and either give in, or die.
Killing another of her kind was not something to be taken lightly, but neither was his continued challenge of the natural order. Jamison was a more dominant cat, his better. Hank Morgan was an elder, and although it was true that he was passed his prime, Dalton had no right to treat him with so little regard. The sooner he submitted to that truth, the sooner they could get on with their task.
For a moment Dalton fixed defiant eyes on her, but slowly he seemed to understand that she'd never back down. He had no other choice if he wanted to live.
"Ma...masule."
"Jami, stop." Laura Paul knelt next to her. Her tones were deliberately quiet and gentle. She made no attempt to touch the enraged Panthera, only to reason. "There are humans everywhere in this building. We can't afford to expose ourselves."
Jamison released Dalton at once and stood without a backward glance. She faced the cadaver and grasped the steel gurney, taking slow measured breaths to calm herself. She needed only seconds to regain her composure.
"Anyone have anything?"
Hal spoke for the first time since the meeting began. "I've seen wounds like this before and the scent is slightly familiar, though it's not quite right. It reminds me of a lion."
"What would a lion shifter be doing up here?" Dinah asked.
Travis spoke at the same time. "They wouldn't dare."
Dalton was wisely silent, but Jamison's thoughts had leapt far ahead of Hal's suspicion. "The Felidae Coalition is over forty miles west of here and Frank Chiesel keeps a tight rein on his pride. He wouldn't allow this."
"Not if he knew about it." Dalton had carefully regulated his tone, for the moment.
Jamison bit her lip at his audacity for speaking so soon after being put in place by his pieta, but she couldn't dispute his logic.
"I'm not sure," she said. "It doesn't smell like pure lion. There's something else mixed with it."
"Maybe another kind of shape changer helped the killer?" Travis said.
That suggestion set everyone talking at once. The thought of such a possibility smacked of a conspiracy and was worse than anything that had been considered by the Council. Jamison stepped in quickly to quiet her betas.
"That's good thinking, Travis, but it's not likely. If there were two of these things running around there would be a lot more killing than there has been. Two or more suspects would have an agenda to create terror and watch us chase our tails trying to figure it out. I think it more likely that whoever is doing this is going to great lengths not to be caught and that tells me it's only one hunter."
Dinah said, "Dragging that bull up a tree and leaving it hanging there is subtle?"
"Think about it," Jamison said. "From our own instincts we know that predators don't look up into the trees. Feline shape changers hide quarry in them so they can come back later and feed, knowing the kill won't be disturbed."
"Yes, but the other half of our souls has higher reasoning than the beasts we become. That side would realize that such a tactic would be disastrous with humans running all around the woods."
"Not if the reasoning side of this killer has been altered," Jamison said.
Dalton looked at her like she'd lost it. "Are you saying this hunter is crazy?"
"Crazy? Injured? Damaged? I don't know, but something isn't right. If this creature were a normal shape changer, the scent wouldn't be so confusing. Until we find this thing, we're wasting our time guessing the motivations. For now, we can at least assume that it's dangerous."
"Perhaps you could have your mother speak to the Council of Elders," Laura suggested into the silence. "They can contact the Felidae Coalition and ask if any of their lions have gone rogue or been banished."
/> Travis cleared his throat and suggested shyly, "She could even call Chiesel herself, since she is a Council member."
"It's a good idea," Jamison agreed. "For now I want patrols going around the clock. Dinah have your team start this evening. Dusk and dawn are going to be favorite hunting times for any predator. Dalton, I'm assuming you have your usual gang as your hunters?"
"That's right." The challenge was back in his voice, but he carefully looked away.
He still hasn't learned anything.
"Your team will alternate tomorrow night. Hal will take the shift in the morning and Travis' team will follow up the next day. I want all teams to rotate every other day so we all stay fresh. Keep your cell phones close to you and call me if you find anything or hear any rumors that might help. Questions?"
There weren't any and everyone filed out. Jamison stood in quiet thought for a second before she realized Dinah was waiting for her. The siblings walked down the hall and Jamison noticed when Dinah looked into Laura's office to see what she was doing.
"What?"
Dinah's eyes held a mischievous twinkle. "When are you going to have your wicked way with her?"
"With the Queen of the Dead?"
"Please," Dinah snorted. "I saw the clinch you two were in when we arrived. You know she's always wanted you. Why not have some fun?"
"I might if all she wanted was a little cat and mouse."
"That's really cute. You've been hanging out with humans too long."
"Meaning?"
"Look, Jami," Dinah said in what Jamison thought was pure drama. "Shape changers aren't human. We don't put taboos and restrictions on something that's a normal biological process. Sex is healthy."
Jamison turned to her as they stepped into the sunlight. "All I'm saying is the kitty has some sharp teeth."
"And? When is a little biting out of the ordinary for jaguars? It's part of what we do when we grapple."
"Because she wants to sink her teeth in and not let go."
Dinah's eyebrows went up. "She wants to mate with you?"
Under the Midnight Cloak Page 4