Playing Their Parts: A Kindred Tales Novel

by Anderson, Evangeline

  Luckily her very curious partner hadn’t come up with any more personal questions. He had critiqued the porn, however, pointing out again and again how The Beast’s technique differed from what a “real Kindred” would do.

  He didn’t think The Beast was tender or patient enough and he definitely didn’t like the gagging scenes, where his female costars were forced to gag themselves on his enormous cock.

  “This is disgusting and wrong,” he growled, glaring at the screen. “He is hurting her again and she gets no pleasure at all from the act. Look at her—she is weeping.” He pointed to the way the girl’s mascara was running down her cheeks.

  Cassie thought it was more likely that the girl’s eyes were watering from being forced to choke on The Beast’s huge dick, than that she was actually crying, but she could tell the scene really bothered Stone a lot.

  “I don’t like it either,” she admitted.

  “Then why do your people have this kind of entertainment—I still don’t understand.” Stone shook his head.

  “Why do humans have porn? Seriously? Why do you think? Because it turns people on. Not this, necessarily—I mean, not all porn turns all people on but…” She shrugged. “I mean it’s porn—it’s pretty much found in all human societies.”

  “Most of this does not ‘turn me on’ at all,” Stone growled. “Most of it turns my stomach.” He glared at the screen where the girl was still gagging on The Beast’s enormous shaft. “This is not normal or right.”

  “So…are you telling me that the Kindred don’t do porn? Not at all?” Cassie had a hard time believing that. Most Kindred were male and males were visually aroused, weren’t they?

  “Not like this.” Stone made a face. “Well…” He frowned. “The Twin Kindred do dabble in this kind of vid-scene a bit, but their vids are always made with a mated threesome and only depict loving and consensual mating.”

  “And the rest of the Kindred? They don’t do pornography at all?” Cassie demanded.

  “We do, but it isn’t visual,” Stone told her.

  “Not visual?” She frowned at him. “What other kind of porn is there? Auditory? Do you like to listen to recordings of women moaning or something?”

  “No, although now that you mention it, that would be most arousing—as long as it was clear the women being recorded were not in pain,” Stone remarked, looking thoughtful. “But most Kindred pornography is Olfactory.”

  “What?” Cassie looked at him in confusion. “Do you go around sniffing women or something?”

  “We do not,” Stone said with dignity. “But we do buy scent books, which have the scents of aroused females preserved within them.”

  “Wow…” Cassie shook her head. “I knew you guys had much sharper senses than we humans but I had no idea scents could be so, uh, arousing for you.”

  “They can be, though,” Stone growled softly. “When I am attuned to a female, I can pick out her scent, even in a crowd.” He looked at Cassie intently. “I could find you, for instance, with my eyes closed, Cassandra. No matter where we were.”

  Cassie’s heart sped up and she felt her cheeks get hot.

  “Even someplace really crowded?” she asked softly. “Like the Lady A concert we were supposed to go to before this case came up?”

  Slowly, Stone nodded.

  “Even there. Your scent is burned into my brain.”

  Things were getting a little intense. Cassie attempted to get back to the subject at hand.

  “The idea of, uh, smell-porn sounds really strange,” she said, trying to make her voice light. “But I guess it can’t be any stranger to me than our kind of porn is to you.”

  “Human porn is disgusting for the most part.” Stone made a face. “At least if this is any indication.” He nodded at the laptop.

  “It’s not all like this,” Cassie assured him. “There’s actually good porn out there—tasteful porn. Most of it’s made by women, for women. Of course…” She shrugged. “Porn is really subjective, it just depends on what turns you on.”

  “Oh?” Stone looked at her with interest. “And what exactly turns you on, Cassandra? I mean, what do you consider to be ‘good’ porn?”

  Cassie found herself squirming in her seat yet again. How had they started talking this way when they had so carefully avoided any topics of conversation that were even remotely sexual for the past two years?

  “I, uh…” She cleared her throat. “Like I said, there’s porn made for women by women which centers more on the female’s pleasure.”

  “Meaning there is tasting in it?” Stone sounded intensely interested.

  Cassie nodded. “Well, yes. I guess so.”

  Actually, that was her favorite thing to watch, when she did get in the mood for porn. There was a site online called SheComesFirst.com that almost exclusively showed clips of men going down on women.

  But she wasn’t about to tell her partner that.

  “This porn made especially for females sounds interesting,” Stone remarked. “I would like to view it sometime if you would show it to me.”

  “Maybe later,” Cassie said. “Right now, we need to get back to the business at hand.” She pointed to the laptop.

  “Fine, but I cannot watch any more of this,” Stone growled. “We have all the information we need on this witness—let’s go on to the next one.”

  “Sure,” Cassie agreed readily. “Let’s skip to the next scene.”

  But the next scene turned out to be one of The Beast tying a girl down to a four-poster bed. When her arms and legs were spread helplessly and there was no chance of escape, he had pulled out a long, silver knife.

  Cassie felt Stone tense beside her and a low growl began to rise in his throat. Her own heart was drumming against her ribs.

  Oh God, if he hurts her…I really don’t want to see him cut her!

  But to her relief, The Beast hadn’t so much as scratched the girl. Instead, he proceeded to cut off her clothes—which were skimpy to begin with—and then fuck her within and inch of her life.

  “Look at that—again he failed to prepare her!” Stone sounded disgusted, but no longer dangerously angry, which was good as far as Cassie was concerned.

  “You mean he didn’t, er, ‘taste’ her?” she’d asked, casting a sidelong glance at her partner.

  “Exactly. He should have tasted her and given her at least one orgasm with his tongue before he started shoving himself inside her.” Stone shook his head. “Even if we hadn’t seen that he has no Mating Fist, his sexual technique—or lack of it—would be enough to brand him as a fake.”

  “Glad to know it,” Cassie had remarked, not sure what else to say. She was trying hard not to picture her partner going down again. So hard, in fact, that Stone’s next words had caught her by surprise.

  “Actually, I think I can see some of the appeal in this scenario,” he had remarked.

  “What?” Cassie had been surprised. “I thought all this ‘human’ porn left you cold?”

  “I’m talking about the idea of tying your female down—as long as she wanted to be tied, of course.” Stone had sounded thoughtful. “I think I would enjoy tying her down and tasting her until she moaned for me and came on my tongue.”

  “Geez, Stone.” Cassie had shifted in her seat again. “Tell me all your darkest fantasies, why don’t you?”

  His eyes had suddenly gone half-lidded and he had murmured,

  “Do you really want to know what I fantasize about, Cassandra?”

  “Uh, I…” Cassie swallowed hard. “Of course not—I was being sarcastic, you big idiot!” she finally got out, giving him a playful elbow to the ribs, to let him know she was just joking.

  What had gotten into her cool, logical partner tonight? She would have sworn that Stone didn’t even have sexual fantasies and here he was offering to share them with her like they were lovers instead of partners!

  “All right. I’ll keep my desires to myself, then. But I find myself wondering…” He had nodded at the scre
en. “Did you ever allow your ex-mate to restrain you like that?”

  Cassie shook her head.

  “No, I…I never really trusted him that much, I guess. I didn’t like the idea of not being able to get up and leave if I wanted to.”

  Her ex, Keith, had had a mean streak, and though Cassie hadn’t really been afraid of him, she had been wary of letting herself be vulnerable with him. Although to be honest, he would have been more likely to tie her down and say cruel things to make her feel horrible about herself than to actually hurt her physically.

  Either way, Cassie had never wanted to let herself be helpless with her ex—not even when she thought she loved him.

  “So you didn’t trust enough to let him tie you, or respect him enough to let him dominate you,” Stone had rumbled thoughtfully, breaking into her thoughts. “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you Join with him in the first place?”

  “You might as well ask—you’ve asked me everything else,” Cassie pointed out. Then she sighed. “I don’t know why I married him. I was young and stupid and I thought I was in love.” She shook her head. “Then I spent the next six years trying to convince myself I hadn’t made a huge mistake. Which of course, I had.”

  “If you were Joined to a Kindred, you would have no such doubts,” Stone had murmured, catching her eyes. “Once you form a soul-bond with a warrior, you can hear each other’s thoughts and feel each other’s feelings. There is no room left for doubts.”

  “I…didn’t know that.” Cassie’s heart had been thumping again for some reason at that point. “Really? You can hear each other’s thoughts? Like…all the time?”

  Stone shook his head.

  “No, it’s more like you can communicate mentally.” He sighed. “I long for such a connection with the female the Goddess has chosen for me. Such closeness. Such openness. Being an unmated male is…very lonely at times.”

  Cassie patted his arm awkwardly.

  “Geez, Stone, I didn’t know you felt that way.” And here she had been selfishly hoping that her best friend never found the “one” he was looking for, just so she could keep the big Kindred all to herself. It made her feel like a real jerk.

  “I don’t feel it so much when I am with you,” Stone told her, putting his big hand over her own. “When I am with you, Cassandra, I don’t feel lonely at all.”

  “I…I don’t feel lonely with you, either,” Cassie had breathed. What was happening between herself and her partner?

  They were looking into each other’s eyes and Stone’s lips were slightly parted. She could see the long, sharp tips of his fangs and she couldn’t help wondering if he could kiss her mouth as gently as he had kissed her hand and arm, so that she barely even felt them…

  At that point, the girl on the laptop started screaming so loudly that Cassie’s attention was jerked away from her partner. The scene had changed from the girl tied up on the bed to something completely different.

  There was a new girl now—a tiny petite one with long brown hair and wide hazel eyes. She looked terribly young, but maybe that was only because of her size.

  Cassie hoped so, anyway.

  It was this new girl who had screamed and Cassie didn’t blame her. Because what was happening to her looked like some kind of awful rape fantasy. The Beast was holding the girl down while she fought and struggled and screamed for help that never came…

  The worst part is, we don’t know if this is scripted or real, Cassie thought, feeling abruptly ill. He might really be raping her and they’re filming it for profit. Assholes!

  Stone made a low sound of fury in his throat and stood abruptly. He began to pace, running his hands through his hair.

  “Stop it,” he said in a low, choked voice. “Turn it off. I cannot bear to watch such cruelty!”

  So the mood—whatever it had been—had most definitely been broken.

  And now, as she sat in Captain Perkin’s office and tried to attend to the early morning meeting, Cassie wondered if she might have imagined it all. Because this morning Stone was as cool and collected as ever and he hadn’t said a thing to her about all the kinky things they’d seen and talked about the night before.

  “So I thought you two would like to know we got an ID on your victim.”

  Captain Perkins’ voice cut through her thoughts and recalled Cassie to the business at hand.

  “Oh yeah?” she asked, attempting to look alert. “How?”

  “An abandoned car was found down one of the side streets off of Bayshore,” Captain Perkins said. “One of the residents living in the neighborhood reported it—said it was ‘unsightly’.” She made a face.

  “By which they meant it wasn’t a Lexus or a Tesla,” Cassie said dryly.

  “Something like that. Anyway, there was a purse in the trunk with a driver’s license and some pictures on the phone that matched the picture of the victim we put out. Turns out her name was Brittany Harkins and she was a student at the University of Tampa.”

  “Was there any trace of The Beast?” Stone asked, frowning.

  “No trace of him in the car, no. We’re still waiting for the lab report on the DNA he left pretty much all over the scene,” The Captain said.

  “We have evidence to prove that he is not actually a Kindred. Or at least, not a Beast Kindred, Captain,” Stone said. He explained about the lack of the “Mating Fist” and Captain Perkins nodded shortly.

  “All right, that certainly puts a twist on things. I’ll let you know when we get the DNA analysis—it’s going to be interesting to find out exactly what the hell this bastard actually is, if he’s not Kindred.”

  “We need to be looking for the toxicology report too,” Cassie put in. “To find out what exactly he shot the victim up with before he killed her.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out for that too.” Captain Perkins nodded. “For right now, I want you two to talk to the victim’s roommate and then track down the other girls this “Beast” worked with. Somebody has got to know where he went—he couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air!”

  “Somebody breathing down the back of your neck on this one, Captain?” Cassie asked her.

  Perkins nodded shortly.

  “Several somebodies, as a matter of fact.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “I have the press wanting to know if this guy is some kind of Satanist serial killer because somebody leaked the dirty details of the murder. Then I have the Mayor wanting me to catch the bastard as soon as possible because having a grizzly murder in town is bad for tourism.”

  “Doesn’t the Mayor have a house on Bayshore herself?” Cassie asked.

  Captain Perkins nodded.

  “Exactly. She said, and I quote, ‘Catch him because I’m not going to be able to sleep at night until you do.’ And of course, the Kindred at the HKR building have been calling and wanting to know what they can do to help. The whole idea of a Kindred torturing a human female to death is extremely bad press for them.”

  “You’re not kidding,” Cassie said. “They’re supposed to be the good guys.”

  “We are the ‘good guys’ as you say, Cassandra. A true Kindred would never hurt a female. What did you tell them, Captain?” Stone asked, frowning. “I already asked that extra samples of everything be taken and sent to the Mother Ship for more in-depth analysis than you can manage here on Earth.”

  “I told them I had my best detectives on it.” Captain Perkins gave them a piercing stare. “So prove me right, you two—catch this bastard.”

  “No one wants to catch him more than we do,” Stone growled, looking menacing.

  “Catch him and bring him in,” the Captain emphasized, giving him a hard stare. “I mean it, Stone.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re planning to do, Captain,” Cassie assured her quickly. “Come on, Stone—let’s start with the roommate and then track down The Beast’s co-stars. One of them must know something.”

  “I certainly hope you’re right,” Stone growled as they rose and nodded at the Cap
tain. “Because he needs to pay for what he’s done. Especially since he pretended to be a Kindred while he was committing such atrocities.”

  Fifteen

  But it seemed like no one had any idea of The Beast’s whereabouts.

  They visited their victim’s roommate first, but all she knew was that Brittany hadn’t come home the night before, though she had called and promised to pay her half of the rent with money she was getting from a “new job.”

  “But she never said what the job was,” the roommate’s eyes were red from crying. “I could have covered her half of the rent! I wish I would have told her so!”

  “This is not your fault,” Cassandra told the girl firmly. “Don’t blame yourself. And please let me know if you think of anything else,” she added, giving the girl her card.

  Methodically, they went down the list, speaking to the females who had “worked” with The Beast in the pornographic scenes they had viewed. Many of them seemed frightened when his name was mentioned, Stone thought. And none of them had worked with him twice.

  Either Yarrow liked to keep bringing in fresh talent, or he couldn’t get a female who was willing to put up with the rough treatment The Beast dished out more than once. Stone was inclined to think it was the latter explanation rather than the former. What female would want to be used and abused so roughly? The thought of it still made him angry and ill.

  Finally, they came to the last witness on their list. Stone hoped she might be able to tell them something the others hadn’t or couldn’t.

  Unfortunately, it was not to be.

  “No, he never told me where he lived or where he stayed.”

  The small human female they were talking to was the one from “the rape scene” as Cassandra had called it, which they had viewed on the confiscated laptop. She looked tiny and fragile to Stone—much too small to withstand the harsh treatment The Beast had dealt her.

  There were still dark bracelets on her bird-thin wrists—bruises the bastard had made while holding her down. And when she looked up at Stone, he could see the fear and distrust in her shadowed eyes. It twisted his heart to know that she was looking at him that way because he was a Kindred—because of what that bastard The Beast, who she also thought was Kindred—had done to her.