The vise around his heart squeezed tight with an invisible hand. Fire erupted in the Deceiver’s eyes, his jaw set hard, mouth thin. The oxygen Grayson had reserved in his lungs disappeared as his nerve endings fried. Tendons bulged underneath his skin and strained down his neck. Spots danced in front of his vision as darkness closed in around the edges. Muscles spasmed. Lungs refused to work. Had the Deceiver really saved his life last year just to take it himself? Kind of anti-climactic, wasn’t it? But then what would happen to Nika? Who would protect her from Isabel and the bitch’s old master?
“But I am stronger than you, Grayson. I made you what you are. I gave you your beast,” the Deceiver said through clenched teeth. “You bow to me.”
“No.” Now was his chance to buy Nika time. A combination of fury and adrenaline surged like ice water and flooded his veins. The floor bit into his knees, but the discomfort evaporated as hatred, rage, and any other emotion he’d suppressed over the last year bubbled to the surface. A growl ripped from his throat. The beast he’d caged for far too long vied for release. The invisible restraints that held him down strained as he pushed to his feet. The Deceiver’s eyes narrowed and his hold on Grayson’s heart intensified. Too late. Talons extended from his nails. His shoulders widened, teeth sharpened. The urge to protect what was his belonged more to the animal inside him than the man he’d once been, but, despite his tedious control since his resurrection, he didn’t give a shit anymore.
Destroy the threat. Protect Nika. His teeth and talons craved blood as he lunged.
He caught the small smile pulling at the Deceiver’s mouth just before he shoved his hands under the demon’s rib cage and vaulted him up against the opposite wall. The muscles in his back ached with the added pressure, his bones warping all the wrong directions. The beast wanted out and urged him to transform completely. Another growl vibrated up his throat. Hunger overwhelmed every thought. Kill. But he wouldn’t shift. Not yet.
“Let him out, Grayson. Show me your true nature.” The Deceiver slammed his elbows down hard into his forearms and dislodged Grayson’s hold.
His ears rang as one right hook and two lefts pounded into his head, faster and harder than he’d anticipated. His back hit the bathroom door and his knees threatened to collapse. Air stuck in his throat. His training with the FBI wouldn’t do a damn bit of good here. The Deceiver wanted to fight dirty? Fine. He could do that.
He swiped a full set of talons down that ridiculous pristine suit. Crimson stained the crisp, white linen and his prey swung at him. Grayson dodged the hit then returned another swipe.
The Deceiver caught his wrist and clasped his other hand around Grayson’s throat. He brought him in close, those black eyes steady and focused. Pinned between the demon and the door, Grayson couldn’t move. “You can’t win this fight unless you let the beast out. I gifted him to you. Why are you holding back?”
“I’m not a monster.” His voice shook under the pressure around his larynx. Too hot. Sweat gathered at his brow and the back of his neck with the rise in temperature. The beast’s strength and violence ebbed the longer the demon cut off his oxygen. He jerked a knee into the Deceiver’s mid-section. Once. Twice. Still, the bastard wouldn’t let go. Breathe. He could win. “I’m not like you.”
“Oh, but you are. More than you know.” The hand around his throat squeezed like a noose. Darkness clouded the edges of his vision a second time. Not yet. Couldn’t surrender yet. He fought to hear Nika through the door. Had he given her enough time to escape? His head pounded. His heartbeat echoed far off in his ears. He collapsed to the floor, the beast, his rage, dying with each passing second. His eyes grew heavy. Couldn’t surrender. For Nika.
The Deceiver’s voice deepened, grew darker. “Bring me Veranika Russo as we agreed. And this time, I expect her in my possession in the next twenty-four hours.”
The compulsion.
“No.” He locked his jaw hard. His talons pierced his palms as he mentally pushed back against the influence set on taking over his mind. Fight, damn it! Couldn’t let the bastard take control. He’d heard rumors of the compulsion’s power—never believed them—but he couldn’t latch onto his own thoughts as they slowly drained from the front of his mind. The rage that boiled behind his sternum disappeared. Where his protective instincts had fueled him, the urge to follow the Deceiver’s order fought for space in his head. The beast growled in protest, but shut down hard and fast. Everything he’d ever known about himself disappeared in the space of a few seconds.
The hand around his throat dropped and Grayson stood, back straight, ready to serve. Pain dissolved from the center of his core as the Deceiver put as much space between them as the small bathroom allowed. The thin smile chased the stone-like expression from the demon’s face. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, Master.” The words weren’t his own, but came from his mouth. Talons descended back into his nail beds. Heart rate smooth, breathing even, he returned the smile, all semblance of the man he’d been nearly destroyed. He’d follow his orders. He’d bring the Deceiver his target in the next twenty-four hours. Nika wouldn’t even see him coming.
Chapter Eight
A solemn vibe had settled over the 19th Precinct. A loss of one of their own did that. Uniforms focused on the paperwork in front of them. No one gave her a second glance as she swept her hand across her partner’s desk. Even Lieutenant Turner must’ve gone out to find Reynolds’s killer. He wouldn’t come back with anything definitive. How were they supposed to catch a suspect that shouldn’t even exist in the first place?
Reynolds’s desk still held his knickknacks and nameplate as though nobody dared touch his things. She didn’t blame them. He’d been a good cop and an even better detective. Moving them might violate his legacy somehow. Still, Nika couldn’t resist running her touch across the dented wood where her partner tapped his pen incessantly. She’d never have another chance to threaten him to stop or she’d shoot him or hear the slight hint of fear in his reply because he’d believed her.
“Are you okay?” a feminine voice asked.
She swung her attention up, her pulse rocketing sky-high. She locked her attention on Dr. Anderson. Not Isabel. Soft brown eyes assessed her as the coroner’s mouth thinned. She imagined her caught-off-guard expression and forced her features to relax. Dr. Anderson had a lead. That was why she’d come back here. Her heart receded from her throat as she swallowed back the adrenaline mixing with her blood. “Yeah. Sorry, I got distracted on my way to see you.”
“No, I mean, your bandage is bleeding.” Dr. Anderson lifted a hand and motioned to her shoulder. “What happened?”
Right. She didn’t have a chunk of flesh torn from her shoulder by a demon the last time she’d been here.
“Just a scratch. Nothing to worry about.” Staring down at her partner’s desk, she recalled bits and pieces of her and Reynolds’s last conversation. Not enough to remember him by. So much of her life had been built on not saying the things she’d meant to and the two people she should’ve confided in the most had died before she could. “It’s weird not seeing him here, telling me to get lost.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll be back soon.” The coroner moved the paperwork and folders leveraged against her forearm to her free hand and cocked her head over one shoulder. Toward the morgue. “Come on. I have something for you.”
Air caught half way up Nika’s throat. Dr. Anderson didn’t know about Reynolds. How was that possible? Grayson would’ve called the police about the murder. If not him, then Vdarra or Jacob. She checked her watch on her left wrist. It’d been two hours since they’d discovered the scene. The body should’ve already been delivered. She followed the coroner across the precinct’s white tile and down the stairs. Maybe Dr. Anderson hadn’t gotten a chance to examine him yet. Reynolds’s most likely got held up in one of the massive fridges until the coroner had time. Nika didn’t envy her that surprise.
The morgue’s florescent lights were overly bright as they submerged in
to the formaldehyde-scented sublevel. The table where Rachel’s body had lain had now been covered with a white sheet, but she knew what the good doctor had hidden beneath it for her sake.
Dr. Anderson set the files she’d carried downstairs onto a steel table next to her laptop. A bright smile crawled across her blemish-free red lips. “I’m glad you came. I wanted you to be the first to see what I found.”
“You seem awfully excited for someone who works with dead people all day,” Nika said.
“Wait until you see this.” The coroner swung around the desk. Her heels clicked on the white, tiled floor with each step. She riffled through a tackle box of some kind and produced the fingernail Nika had left for testing. Placing the fingernail beneath a nearby microscope, Dr. Anderson motioned for her to join her then centered the evidence under the microscope’s lens, expression bright. “Take a look.”
What could possibly get a coroner so excited about a fingernail? She hesitated a moment, attention glued to the microscope. But it wasn’t just any fingernail. It belonged to the demon that’d killed her sister. Flashes of the winged-monster that’d almost choked the life out of her pooled warning at the base of her spine. According to Grayson, demons worked hard to keep their existence a secret, but for some reason, Isabel had left evidence behind in Rachel’s apartment. Her blood turned cold.
Shit. Had she inadvertently put the coroner’s life in danger because of her own selfish need for answers? She forced her feet across the floor, one in front of the other, and pressed the bridge of her nose against the eyepiece. Browns, tans, and a splash of red from the nail polish cleared through the scope. Relief spread like wild fire through her system. Nothing out of the ordinary. A regular fingernail. Had to be Rachel’s then, but that didn’t fit either. Maybe the neighbor’s who’d reported her sister missing? “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“Looks like a normal nail, doesn’t it?” The excitement in Dr. Anderson’s voice sucked the air from her lungs. “Now, look at it at four hundred times magnification.”
The lens clouded for a moment as the coroner adjusted the magnification. Then she saw it. Black vein-like cracks ran throughout the nail and disappeared under the polish. Some took the jagged form of a lighting bolt, others soft ripples like a river. The longer she studied the nail, the harder it became to focus, but it wasn’t her vision having trouble.
The black veins had moved.
They danced and transformed, mesmerizing her with an inhuman ballet. She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What are those?”
“I don’t know, but it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before.” The excitement in Dr. Anderson’s voice reached a new level. “And I don’t know of any animals into painting their nails with OPI’s The Spy Who Loved Me. Lieutenant Turner is going to have a field day with this.”
She wrenched away from the microscope. No. She had to get the nail out of here. Destroy it. Do something to keep Dr. Anderson and everybody else on the case from diving head first into a demon’s path. Deja vu clouded her thoughts. A rough exhale ripped up her throat and her vision swam. Grayson had tried to protect her from the same thing. He didn’t want her to turn the fingernail over in the first place. He’d known what would happen. “You can’t do that. The person the nail belongs to is dangerous. We have to get rid of it.”
“Destroy evidence? Have you been suspended for too long or are you out of your mind, Detective Russo?” Dr. Anderson wrapped her index finger and thumb around the corners of the slide housing the fingernail and tipped them into an evidence bag. She sealed the bag closed and gripped it tight. “My findings go to Detective Reynolds and the lieutenant. You know that.”
“Detective Reynolds is dead,” she said.
Dr. Anderson’s brown eyes widened. “What are you talking about? I just saw him a couple hours ago.”
The morgue’s double doors slammed against the wall with an ear-ringing crack. She pivoted fast, drew her personal Glock from her ankle holster, and aimed. Grayson, all lean muscle and blazing sexuality, stalked toward them. Her lips tingled with a quick flash of their kiss in her bathroom and she lowered the gun to her side, but her instincts screamed for her to raise it again. His eyes. Something was different in his eyes. No longer the hypnotic green but darker. Almost black. Like Isabel’s. Confusion swept through her. “Grayson?”
His upper lip rose, exposing his teeth in a disheartening sneer. She tightened her grip on the gun and backed up two steps to shield Dr. Anderson. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the Grayson she’d met yesterday. The man she’d kissed in her bathroom less than a half hour ago had vanished. She hiked her arm parallel to the floor and hooked her finger over the trigger. “Stop where you are.”
He closed the distance between them in the span of two breaths. A single swing from his backhand knocked the gun from her hand. It slid across the tile as shock clouded her senses. Dr. Anderson’s small gasp of surprise barely registered. Son of a bitch. Pivoting forward, she positioned her weight onto her back foot in case she had to throw a punch. “What is wrong with you?”
He planted both hands against her collarbones and shoved. Hard.
Her feet came out from under her. She landed on her back and slid across the slick floor, the air knocked from her lungs. Dr. Anderson rushed to her side, but she still couldn’t breathe to warn her of the six-foot-two mountain of hostility over the coroner’s shoulder. In an instant, Dr. Anderson disappeared from her vision with a scream.
Grayson turned his back on her and approached the coroner as Dr. Anderson backed herself behind a piece of equipment on the other side of the morgue. “Where is the fingernail?”
Nika’s head spun. What the hell was happening? She shook her head from side to side. Her attention landed on her discarded Glock a few feet away. She had to take him down before he did anything stupid, but the idea forced bile into her throat. This wasn’t the FBI agent she’d spent the last twenty-four hours with. In a world filled with demons, heiresses to the Underworld, and fallen angels, something had corrupted Grayson. Isabel must’ve gotten to him. The bitch turned him against her. She was sure of it. But she’d bring him back. There had to be a way.
She rolled onto her stomach and clawed her way across the floor. Five feet. Two feet. Almost there. She wrapped her hand around the warm steel of the gun and poised her finger over the trigger.
She pushed herself onto shaky legs. Preoccupied with Dr. Anderson, Grayson didn’t hear her come up from behind on the balls of her feet. She swung her arm back over her shoulder, ready to knock him unconscious.
He spun on her, expression hard, and took a single step toward her. He seemed much wider than she remembered, somehow bigger and stronger. He towered over her a good foot. Definitely not what she remembered. How was that possible?
“Wait.” Her tongue dashed over her bottom lip in an attempt to stave off the fear turning her blood cold. She countered his advance, gun still raised. Her wound screamed with each inhale, her nerve endings on fire. A thump over his shoulder pulled his attention off her for the briefest of moments. Dr. Anderson had collapsed. She scanned the morgue for something—anything—that would help contain him. A pair of cuffs, zip ties. This was a police station for God’s sake. There had to be something to hold him. “Grayson, this isn’t you. You won’t hurt me. Tell me what happened. We can fix this.”
“Run, Nika.” His voice strained even as his hardened, lean mass advanced on her. His left hand closed around a small baggie. The fingernail. He’d taken it off Dr. Anderson. Gaze locked on her, he smiled, but it didn’t have the same effect on her blood pressure as it had in her apartment. “Get as far away from me as you can.”
Her gut clenched. She was right. He didn’t have control of his own body. He was trying to fight the influence Isabel had over him. How the hell had she gotten to him?
“No.” Her lower back connected with a long, steel table. Shit. She’d been pinned. Nowhere to run. But she still had the gun. Her lungs struggled to keep up with the fra
ntic beat of her heart as he closed the distance between them. He pressed right against her, chest-to-chest, her small frame facing off with his mountain of muscle. “You won’t hurt me. Tell me how to fix this so I can help you.”
“Can’t...help.” His irises lightened to the spellbinding green she hadn’t realized she’d missed until that second, but darkened again. “Compulsion...too strong. Have to take you to him.”
“What?” His strong arm swept her aside as though she weighed nothing. Pain shot through her as Nika landed on her injured shoulder and a groan tore up her throat.
He threw back the sheet that covered the steel table and exposed the body underneath. Rachel. Her stomach flipped. Ripping open the baggie in his hand, he divided the glass slides holding Isabel’s fingernail and dropped the evidence on top of her sister as well as Rachel’s case file.
“What are you doing?” The words left her mouth as a whisper. Panic gripped her heart as she shot to her feet, but too fast, the sheet caught fire and the smell of singed hair coated the back of her throat. “No!”
Grayson caught her around the middle. His nails dug into her midsection and she clawed at his hands. Engulfed in flame, her sister’s body burned faster than any cremation or logic could explain. A scream ripped from her throat as she fought for release, but he wouldn’t let her go. Hiking her over his shoulder, he headed for the double doors. Up to the main floor. Smoke rose toward the ceiling and set off the fire alarm and sprinklers. Large droplets of water doused the flames, but within a few seconds nothing remained. Soaked strands of hair plastered against her face and neck as water fell from the ceiling and the red emergency lights swept across her vision.
His Seductive Target (Afterlife, #2) Page 8