Immortal Distraction (10 page)

“Yes, I know. And I’m enjoying the feel of my cum in your sweet, tight pussy immensely.”

“I’m not on birth control, and who knows what you…”

“Relax, sweetness. You needn’t worry about pregnancy or health concerns. I’m not nearly
human
enough to be a threat to you in either regard.”

When she suddenly pulled away from his body, and his fingers slipped from her pussy, he let out a long and defeated sigh. He was going to have to work for every last touch and taste he could get from her.

“What are you saying?” She looked confused, and more than that, suspicious.

“You’re the one who thinks I’m less a man than I ought to be. How about you answer that question.” He was smirking. He was hoping it would lighten her mood, but he knew well enough at this point that was a pipe dream.

“I didn’t say less than human. I said inhuman. There’s a difference.”

“Then what am I, Brit? Tell me what you think you know.” He stood by naked with his arms crossed on his chest as he studied her.

This was how his kind dodged these questions when erasing a mind wasn’t possible … or desirable. Challenging a person’s suspicions until they couldn’t quite wrap their head around it was a very effective way of misleading humans. He knew regardless of how strong-minded Brit was she’d eventually give up trying to reconcile the impossible with the possible. The drawback: she’d end up thinking she was the crazy one and not him.

“I have to go. I can’t do this.” Her head dropped, and he watched as the fire went out in her eyes. She may well want him, but she wasn’t willing to go any further with him on this night. He stood back and watched, and as she fixed her clothing, he said nothing. He had no intention of arguing with her at this point. It would serve no purpose, and while he may want to beg her to stay and give into him again, he had enough pride to keep himself from doing it.

Chapter 10

Brit arrived home to the light blinking on her answering machine. No one had tried her cell, so she knew it couldn’t be too important, and at the moment, she was entirely too busy going insane to listen to messages. What the fuck had just happened? Brit paced, sipped wine, stopped the moment a trill of ecstasy ran through her body, and then started pacing again. Of course, her absolute repletion wasn’t the only thing on her mind, though it seemed to dwarf everything else. She couldn’t shake the thought that Angus was just not quite as human as he ought to be, and there was no ignoring that fact … even if she couldn’t stop the warm pulse of need running through her body straight to her groin every time she imagined his face, his sound, his touch. But what the hell was he? In one moment she thought she might be onto something profound, and then she started pacing again when she realized her epiphany also meant she was a lunatic.

He was human. Of course he was human. What the hell else would he be? There was nothing else. There was only human; nothing else existed beyond that. Brit didn’t believe in make believe. She didn’t even believe in ghosts, though every other show on cable tried to convince her she ought to hire a medium, speak to her dead grandfather, and explore old ramshackle prisons in the middle of the night just for the hell of it while videotaping herself trying to start a fight with phantom spirits. Still, Brit didn’t believe. She didn’t believe in psychics, she didn’t believe in ghosts, she didn’t believe in mind control, and she sure as hell didn’t think she was a lunatic.

But she’d seen it. She’d watched him do … do … something she couldn’t explain. And she wasn’t even sure what that something was. It was as if he’d controlled Michael’s mind, and just like that, given it right back to him. There was no doubt in Brit’s mind that Michael was sane—as sane as she was in fact. There was also no doubt in her mind Angus had been responsible for whatever it was that had happened to Michael.

And then she had sex with him. What the fuck … and another pulse of electric arousal coursed through her veins at nothing more than the thought.

Was that mind control too? No, if it was it wouldn’t explain her desire to sleep with him from the moment she first met him. Would it? This was just the culmination of wanting him for too long. Wasn’t it? So, why did she do it? Being attracted to him wasn’t enough to get her in bed with the man. She was stronger than that, more controlled than that for sure. But she’d crumbled.

The moment she felt the power behind his body as he pushed her against the wall, the turgid length of his arousal pressed harshly against her body, and the desperate need in his movements that matched her own desire, she wanted to give in, and she finally did. Brit didn’t ever
want
to give in. But when she was with him, it was all she ever wanted to do. She wanted to melt into his strength and turn off her hypervigilant brain. There was a safety to him that made no sense whatsoever given what she’d just witnessed.

If he wasn’t a man, she wasn’t sure she cared.

* * * *

Brit’s phone rang at one in the morning. This was the part she hated the most about her job. She could never get used to being woken from a dead sleep in the middle of the night much like the mother of a newborn. Only she woke to dead bodies and not sweet crying babies. When she answered, it was dispatch. When they said teenager, Brit’s heart sank. She wasn’t immune to devastation, and children did it every time. It had destroyed her emotionally on more than one occasion for months, and she dreaded every mile that took her to the waiting crime scene in Jamaica Plain.

The night was as cold as any, and her breath fogged and hung like a cold crystal cloud in front of her mouth as she exhaled, waiting for Humphreys to arrive. Every inhalation felt as though her nostrils might freeze shut, and the best thing she could say about a winter crime scene was there was rarely a smell associated with it. Preservation was made far easier of course, but with that came an almost indeterminable time of death unless someone happened upon the body immediately after it was dumped. But she could at least rest easy, knowing she didn’t have to smell death even if she had to look at it.

When Humphreys finally arrived he looked the way she felt—tired, ugly, and crabby as hell. He grumbled his greeting to her, and said nothing else as they made their way down to Jamaica Pond on the well-trodden walkways. It was too cold for anyone to be out for a stroll at this time of night in the dead of winter, and yet, there was a witness.

The man sat on a bench with an officer beside him. He looked rough. He was obviously a street punk, dope dealer, who knew. But this was his element. His eyes shifted constantly and held no one’s focus for longer than half a second. He was likely high as a kite, but he’d stuck around. She had to give him credit for that much at least.

Crime-scene techs were already on site down by the water’s edge in the outcrop of trees that the body lay in. They made way for her and Humphreys, and the moment she was within a couple feet of the body, she was hit with it. This was a fresh kill. It didn’t reek of rotting flesh, but it had the strong, hot smell of iron. The blood had already soaked out to the surrounding snow, and it was exactly what she’d feared. Shredded.

This body was small and young. The estimate of a teenager was likely dead-on. The clothes, what she could see of them that weren’t torn to shreds or saturated in blood were rough, old, dirty, and grimy and likely secondhand. A street kid like the others—albeit younger than the last. She didn’t linger long at the scene. Her heart was groaning and begging her to have a meltdown and get it over with. There would be parents to notify, parents to watch languish over their loss. Even street kids belonged to someone.

When she made it back up to the officer and witness, she wasted no time introducing herself. “What did you see?” She didn’t want to sound too harsh, but she also didn’t want him getting nervous and clamming up on her.

“Blood. On his face… I don’t … I don’t… He wasn’t human, man. I don’t know what he was, but he wasn’t… No…” Now he had her interest. Hell, hadn’t she just accused a man of being inhuman already today? The witness was shaking his head. He was incredulous, dumfounded. She understood that feeling well.

“I’m going to need you to come to the precinct and give a statement.”

“Oh man… I have to come in? Can I just…”

“No. You witnessed a murder. We need a statement, and we need one now. Don’t worry. No one here gives a shit what you were doing wandering around in the middle of the night in a deserted park.”

When she finally managed to get the witness into an interview room, he was shaking, pacing, and he looked like a startled rabbit that might stroke out at any moment. Yeah, he was an addict, and right now, he’d do just about anything to get a fix. Poor man witnessed a murder most likely while he was out drug seeking. That’ll sure put a wrench in his drug habit.

“So tell me more about the person you saw.” She sat back and settled into listen. She wanted to hear every last detail he could remember. This was as close as any living subject had gotten to her suspect, and she was practically drooling in anticipation.

“He was biting her. She was screaming at first and then … nothin’. She was just a kid … just a kid. I mean … like … she wasn’t a kid kid like a little one or nothin’, but she was young, and he just … he just…” He was raking his hands through his hair as he paced. Brit stayed seated in the chair, trying to appear as calm as possible. He didn’t need to see her anxiety, her excitement. He had plenty of adrenaline pumping through his veins already. Humphreys was in the next room watching. He was shockingly good at sitting back and observing the nuances and body language when Brit interrogated a subject, and he nearly always shed light on the easy to miss cues that she’d overlooked during the interview.

“He just what?”

“It was like watchin’ some damn public television show where the lion is tearing the throat out of some poor animal. You know thems gazelles that’r always gettin’ themselves killed off? She didn’t have a chance, that poor one. No chance…” His head dropped, and he was shaking his head back and forth.

The man looked as stunned as any witness she’d ever spoken to. His words were rambling and disjointed, but she listened. She could ask questions later. Right now, she wanted his mouth to have full run of the room. “She was choking, likes she was choking on water… Probably just her blood, and then he saw me. I’d come up on the path behinds him. I heard her screaming for a ways off, and I was just checking it out’s all. But he saws me, and that’s when I gots scared, man. He had teeth on him like nothin’ I ever seen before. Brightest moon I seen in a long time, and I tell you those teeth was white and damn near glowing out there.” More head shaking as he collapsed into the chair. “They wasn’t teeth though. Not real ones. They was fangs. Looked like some movie actor from a horror film. His face was covered in blood, dripping from his chin. He was eating that poor thing alive. I ain’t no perfect man, but I just … I just can’t imagine anybody doing that to a kid.”

“After he saw you, what happened? Did he threaten you? Did he say anything to you at all?”

“Nah, man. Would have though. I think he would have killed me for sure. There was a group of kids suddenly shouting and carrying on by the street. They wasn’t close, but it startled him and he ran. Didn’t say nothin’, just run off. And he run fast too, man. Like way faster as I can run. Just gone. I tried to help the girl, man, but she was gone. Like eyes open dead gone. Couldn’t do nothin’ for it. Ain’t never gonna forget those eyes, man. Just open wide and dead.” He was back to shaking his head. He was staring at his lap and just shaking his head back and forth over and over again.

“Could you pick him out of a photo lineup?” She wanted to cross her fingers, say a prayer, hold her breath, and anything else that might make this desperate wish of hers come true, but she sat stoically calm as she waited for his answer.

“Yeah. Shit yeah. I ain’t gonna forget that face.”
Hallelujah!

Kissing the witness would be inappropriate, so instead she offered him a pop and excused herself from the room. Humphreys had a smug smirk on his fat, pudgy face; it was as close to a smile as the man owned, and it had her grinning from ear to ear.

“Well we may not be able to find our perp, but I’m guessing after tonight, we’ll at least have a solid witness on record that can finger him for it. It’s as close to victory as we’re going to get right now.” She couldn’t get the grin off her face.

“Got that right, Sutton. I’ll get the photos lined up. You owe that man a pop.” Hell, she’d pack his crack pipe for him if she could.

Brit didn’t get to sleep that night, and by morning, they had a positive ID on their suspect—one Driscoll DeMarco was seen devouring the neck of a fifteen-year-old runaway by the name of Ruby Pierson. She had no business being in that park at that hour. She had no business running away from home two months prior. And she sure as hell had no business dying a brutal death before she ever had the chance to get clean and live a life.

Brit was exhausted. And while she’d not forgotten that her suspect had cannibalized the victim or the wild tales of long-fanged canine teeth or even the swift moving phantom in the middle of the night, those details had taken a back seat to the fact that she had a witness that could place her suspect at the scene with the victim. It wasn’t until Brit finally got home late morning and sacked out on her couch that those revelations, those likely drug-starved paranoid ramblings, caught up to her once again. And Angus came to mind.

She drifted off to sleep, still wearing her jeans and shirt. It would only be a short nap, but she needed some sleep if she was going to be worth anything at all later on when she and Humphreys were to meet at the precinct. She drifted off to the tick of her wall clock and the occasional sound of tires crushing through snow outside on the street.

When a hand touched the top of her thigh, she moaned and warmth was flowing through her body. She heard his purring voice as his body moved up along hers, but she was too comfortable enjoying the touch to open her eyes. She wanted to feel him. His voice was warm and deep as he spoke in her ear, but she couldn’t hear his words. She was entirely too focused on his hands that were gently pushing up under her shirt.