Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) (22 page)

She tilted her head, bringing her mouth to his. Lips to his. And she laughed softly, a sound that was pure desire, a purr of need and want, vibrating through him.

He felt it to his core. An electric flame sped through him, hot as a flash fire. He pulled her to him and kissed her as she laughed, rising on her toes, pressing hard to him. Her laughter softened as his tongue touched hers. Standing in the silent, empty bar, he danced a different kind of dance, pouring everything he knew about love and need and desire into the kiss. His body responded, growing hard. Demanding.

He dropped his hand and cupped her bottom, lifting her closer, pressing himself into the heat of her.

And her cell phone rang. It was a simple chime but insistent. She sighed into his mouth, a soft moan of longing and frustration. Without breaking the kiss, she pressed his chest away while reaching back and removing the cell from her back pocket. And she broke the kiss. Her eyes held his as the cell chimed, and she smiled, her lips full and slightly bruised. She answered the call.

“Jane Yellowrock.” And she turned away, moving to the front door of the Royal Mojo Blues Company and out into the sunlight.

Yes. He'd have her. Of her own free will and her own need and her own trust. And this one he would share with no one. No one at all.

Golden Delicious

Rick's face was still tender, though the bruising was already yellow and the scabs had fallen off, revealing pink, healed skin. When he was human, it would have taken days to reach this stage of healing, but it had been less than twenty-four hours since he was sucker punched. There were very few good things about being infected with were-taint, but fast healing was on that short list.

“He was trying to hurt you, yet you held back.” Soul glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. “It didn't go unnoticed.”

He pushed on his teeth. They were no longer loose. “I'm betting he was a bully in high school,” he said. “Not used to a guy forty pounds lighter and three inches shorter taking him down.”

Soul's full lips lifted slowly. “Without breaking his jaw, his knees, or dislocating his shoulder, all of which you could have done.” She made a left, turning onto a side road. Shadows covered them in the dim confines of the company car. “You taught him a valuable lesson. There are things out there that are bigger, faster, and won't care if he carries a PsyLED badge.

“Speaking of things bigger and faster than human, walk me through it again,” she said, shifting their discussion as easily as she shifted gears.

“Human sense evaluation, initial technology, followed by enhanced senses,” Rick said. “Then the pets and more tech as needed.”

From the back, Pea twittered and Brute growled. Pea was a juvenile grindylow, Rick's pet and death sentence rolled up in one neon green–furred, steel-clawed, kitten-like cutie. The werewolf taking up the backseat was stuck in wolf form, thanks to contact with an angel, and he didn't like being called a pet, which meant that Rick did so every chance he got. The wolf hated leashes, his traveling cage, and eating from a bowl on the floor, but it wasn't like he had a choice. Since Brute couldn't shift back to human
and had no thumbs, he had two choices: accept the leash and being treated like a dangerous dog, or sit in a cage all day. He'd gone for the partial freedom route, which meant partnering Rick LaFleur. Rick, who hadn't been human in two months himself, was at the training facility for the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security—called PsyLED Spook School by the trainees.

The three composed a ready-made unit, a triumvirate of nonhuman specialists. If they could learn to work together. So far that didn't look likely. The werewolf might not be responsible for Rick's loss of humanity, job, and girlfriend, nor for the total FUBARed mess his life had become, but Brute had been part of the pack that kidnapped and tortured him. Rick didn't like the wolf or want him around, but like Brute, he had no choice right now. PsyLED had specifically requested them together, and had refused to accept Rick as a solo trainee. It was a package deal or no deal.

Soul said, “Treat this as if it's a paranormal crime and you're the first investigator on-site. If you spot something out of the accepted order, hold it for the proper time. You'll find that by training your investigative skills to work to a specific but fluid formula, you'll actually gain a freedom of thought processes that will work well in the field.” Soul pulled into a driveway.

“This training site is the most difficult you will encounter during your time here. In the last two months, three students signed their quit forms and left the program after seeing the site.” Her eyes narrowed, the skin around them crinkling. “And I can't explain why this particular crime scene has been so difficult on them.” She turned off the car.

The small ranch house was dark, crime scene tape over the sealed doors, plywood over the windows. The grass was six inches high, the flower beds needed weeding. “Assuming that the grass was cut in the week prior,” Rick said, “we're looking at maybe eight weeks since the crime.”

Soul looked at him strangely. “You're the only one who even looked at the outside of the house.”

“I was a cop,” he said, feeling the loss in his bones. “We look at everything.”

Soul grinned, losing years and making him wonder again about her. She could have been thirty or fifty, tribal American, gypsy, mixed African
and European, or a combo. “I knew getting an undercover cop in this program was going to work. That's why I asked to be your mentor.”

That was news. Soul was one of the top three mentors at Spook School, and Rick hadn't known how he'd been paired with her.

Soul opened her door, using the interior lights to twist a scrunchie around her platinum hair to keep it out of the way. “The neighbors called nine-one-one when they heard screaming and a dog howling. It was the second night of the full moon, nearly eight weeks ago. The first officers on the scene secured the area, called medics, made arrests based on the evidence, and then called PsyLED.”

Rick stepped to the driveway and opened the back door for the pets. Brute leaped out—leash-free this time because there were no humans around—his white fur bright in the nearly full moon. Pea clung to his back, smiling, showing fangs as big as Brute's. Most people saw a green-dyed kitten when they saw her. It. Whatever. Pea was playful as a kitten and could get lost chasing a ball of twine for hours, but if he or Brute stepped out of line and risked passing along the were-taint to a human, she'd kill them without hesitation. That was her job.

“You stay by the door until I'm ready,” Rick instructed. Brute scowled and emitted a low growl. This wasn't the first time they'd been over this. The last time Rick had brought it up, Brute had walked over to his instruction manual and lifted a leg. Rick had just barely saved the manual from a nasty drenching. Now, he held the wolf's eyes as the growl began to build.

Eventually, they'd have to deal with the question of who was in charge, and the wolf would have to accept beta status, acquiesce to Rick as alpha. Soul looked down at the wolf. “You're part of Rick's investigative team,” she said, her tone cold. “I will not have silliness.” Brute dropped his ears and whined, submissive, and Rick shook his head, wishing he knew her trick. Soul lifted her long skirts above the dew-damp grass and led the way to the door. She unlocked it and stood back, her fingers laced together.

Rick pulled on a pair of black nitrile gloves and flipped on the inside light. There was no furniture in the room, but it was far from empty. “It's a witch working, salt circle, internal pentagram composed of feathers, river-worn rocks, tiny moonstones, and dead plants. Two pools of blood in the pentagram suggest a blood rite, but it's an odd combo for one. Blood
rites usually require full, five-element mixed covens.” He stepped away from the front door, moving sun-wise, or clockwise, a foot outside the circle, to avoid activating any latent spells. “We have five practitioners, from four of the elements—air, water, two moon witches, and oddly, the death-magic branch of earth witches.” Blood magic was rare, little known, and almost never practiced. Adepts were considered dangerous by other witches, because they used dying things to power workings, and when nothing around was dying, they would steal the life force of the living. In Spook School, he had learned how they worked. They were not nice people.

In the corner, standing with Soul, Brute was growling again, the basso so deep it was more a vibration on the air than actual sound. His mentor put a hand to the wolf's head, and Brute hunched, his shoulder blades high. Pea was staring at the circle, her eyes wide, one paw finger at her mouth. It was the animals' first crime scene, and Rick could imagine how awful the sights and smells must be to them.

“The composition of practitioners made for a lopsided but feasible working,” Rick said. “The death witch was coven leader, sitting at the north, with a moon witch to either side, and air and water at the base, which made for the best balance the coven could get in during the full moon.

“The scorch mark in the center of the circle suggests they called up a demon, likely one that was moon-bound. If they called up a demon, it was for something bad, and I haven't heard of anything happening that might be demon-born.”

Soul tilted her head, acknowledging his analysis but not giving him more information.

“The salt ring is broken in three places, which suggests that the working was completed or was interrupted in such a way that there's no residual power remaining. If this was a fresh crime scene and no one had been into the room, the first thing I'd do is verify with the psy-meter that the working is not active. Do you want me to go ahead and do that?”

Soul said, “Not now. Proceed.”

Rick studied the circle. “Because of the blood magic, I'd call in Psy-CSI to take trace matter and blood samples to be held for possible DNA in the event that we have humans to compare, and in the event that this was a fatal crime.”

Soul nodded, expressionless. “The investigators did so.”

“Photographs, samples of each of the elements used, fingerprints, blood splatter workup . . .” Rick stopped. He was standing at the air point, studying the blood pattern. It was smeared and splattered over a large area, maybe four feet, but not puddled, as it would have been had the witch collected the blood in a bowl and then spilled or poured it. He bent closer and saw hairs in the blood. There were three, with more in the blood in the center of the circle, a lot more, some in small clumps. Stress caused some animals to lose hair. “. . . and speciation of the hairs,” he finished after a brief pause. “Then I'd search the rest of the house. Shall I bother? It smells empty.” Spook School knew everything about his situation, had tested his sensory perceptions extensively during his interview phase. Soul knew he had much better senses than a human, even in his current state.

Soul shook her head.

“End of human eval.” Rick dropped to one knee in a tripod position, weight on knee, feet, and one hand. He sniffed in short, quick inhalations. An electric shock slammed through him, triggering the memories. Werewolf. He gasped, the jolt of pain and terror whipping through him. He managed a breath, then another, breathing deeper, forcing the fear and panic away with each breath. The witches had sacrificed a werewolf on the full moon. Rick opened an evidence packet. With a pair of tweezers, he picked up the hair closest. “Each hair is three inches long, pale at the root, fading to gray, and black at the tip.”

Soul watched, assessing his reaction. She had known. Of course she had known. Except for Brute, this was the first were he had scented since the attack, the kidnapping, and the subsequent torture by the Lupus Pack in New Orleans. And his reaction to it was part of what would make or break his qualification and acceptance into PsyLED.

Slowly he lowered the hair into the evidence bag, fighting down the panic attack. He had thought he'd conquered the PTSD. Not so. The scars and the mangled tattoos on his shoulder and upper arm ached, feeling blistering hot, though they weren't. He forcibly relaxed, breathing slowly to decrease the fight-or-flight response brought on by the scent. The words clean and concise, his brain actually still functioning, Rick said, “Presumption: speciation of blood in the center of the circle was revealed to be werewolf blood. Second presumption: it bit the air witch, badly enough to transmit the were-taint.”

At the words, Pea launched herself from Brute's shoulders and scampered across the room, leaping, crabbing sideways; she disturbed nothing. Brute followed slowly, but outside the circle, the overhead light throwing odd shadows, the darkest ones pooling under the werewolf. His growl, until now only a vibration, grew in volume. Rick realized that Brute had already detected the other werewolf, had known what had happened here from the moment they entered the room, and had been kept calm only by Soul's hand on his head. Rick would have to learn to read Brute in the field—assuming they passed the training.

Pea stopped at the center of the circle and scraped at the dried blood with one scalpel-sharp claw. She brought it to her nose and sniffed. She sneezed hard, covering her tiny mouth with a paw, then raced to the dried blood at Rick's feet. Brute and Pea stood nose-to-nose, sniffing.

Slowly Brute moved to the center of the circle and sniffed again. His ears went back and the vibration of his werewolf growl filled the room, seeming to bounce off the walls into Rick's chest. Brute's pale, crystalline eyes stared up at the former cop, his growl increasing in volume before falling away into a whine. If Rick hadn't known better, he would have thought the wolf was feeling worried, concerned. But three seconds spent with an Angel of the Light could have been no cure for Brute's cruelty.

Pea stepped over the salt circle and put her forelegs on Rick's jeans-clad shin, staring up at him. Her tail twitched, her face mournful. “Yeah,” he said to her, stroking her once in comfort. “We're too late. Maybe weeks too late.” He looked at Soul. “Did the witch turn?” Soul pressed her lips together and didn't answer. Rick figured that info was need-to-know, and trainees were the lowest on the information ladder.

On his knees, Rick circled the room, sniffing, letting the scent signatures settle into his brain, new memories, new associations. Rick turned to Brute. “You're up.” The werewolf held Rick's eyes with a predator's intensity. This was something they had worked out the first day of school, a Q and A to keep them from having any Timmy-fell-down-the-well moments of attempted communication. “Take scent signatures of the subjects.” Brute snarled at him but walked slowly around the circle, sniffing at each spot where a witch had knelt during the working. When he was finished, the wolf sat down again, waiting for the confirmatory questions.

“All the witches were female,” Rick said.

“You can tell that by scent?” Soul interrupted, surprised.

Rick held up a finger, watching the wolf. There weren't many male witches because they tended to die at puberty, but it was always wise to confirm. The wolf nodded, which was a strange gesture on the animal.

“Were all the witches related?” Rick asked.