Ivory (Manhatten ten) (9 page)

I owed Panther an apology before I stole away.

After my wash, I peeked into the bedroom, but no jungle cats or big men were waiting for me. I stopped halfway to the walk-in closet. Why had Panther bothered to make the bed?

I shook my head. Panther couldn’t be my concern right now. I dressed in the flight attendant’s uniform that Angel had had pressed and twisted my hair into its bun. The familiarity eased my nerves. I was going to fly apart if I didn’t get back to myself soon. I took a very deep breath before I could open the door to the living space.

Panther had also found a shower and some fresh clothes. He sat at the breakfast bar, busily spooning a bowl of Lucky Charms. I wasn’t surprised. He had a way of making himself at home in my life.

“Some breakfast before you jet?” His voice held an unfamiliar distance. I’d expected him to be clingy or joking or…something other than this.

I grabbed a banana. “The faster we do this, the better.”

Panther downed his cereal milk, rinsed the bowl and set it in the sink. Why all the cleaning? But no, I wasn’t worrying about him.

Instead, I peeled my banana and followed Panther down to the parking garage. An unlocked cabinet full of keys sat outside the elevator, which seemed like poor security. Though only someone with a death wish would break into the M-10’s stronghold in the first place.

After he chose a set of keys, he led us past the Ferraris, Porsches and Maybachs to a row of regular-looking sedans. When the locks beeped, a beat-up Honda Civic flashed its lights. That was…surprising. “This is an undercover car?”

“We try to keep it low key when we’re on case. Hopefully the press won’t tail us.”
 

We squeezed in, and Panther took us up a level, past a flight of more average cars and through the employee exit. I didn’t see any reporters, but that didn’t mean no one was watching.

The ride passed in silence. I finished my banana and toyed with the peel as we crawled through Midtown traffic. It was the best opportunity I’d have to apologize. I just wished I didn’t feel so awkward in my skin when faced with this quiet Panther. “About last night…” But where did I go from there?

“You think it was a mistake.” He didn’t turn from the road, and his voice was close to empty.

“It was.” And why wasn’t this easy? It wasn’t as if I’d planned to spend the rest of my life with him. “I used you to test my control.” The huntress side of me had wanted Panther so deeply, and I’d been willing to flip a coin and see what happened. “So I’m…I shouldn’t have done that.”

He threw the turn signal so hard the stick should’ve snapped. “You used me?”

“It was shameless. Things shouldn’t have gone that far.” They wouldn’t again. I’d see to this murder scene and slip away as soon as I could. Before I could make things worse.

“You kill me.” Panther leaned an elbow on the window and rubbed his head. “You’d deny yourself anything you could to fit this box you think is normal. Normal’s what you make of it, darling.”

I glared at the
darling
but let it hang. “I’ve never been normal.” Every day was a battle.

“Yeah, and if you got with me, that would about shatter your last chance at playing house.”

“Playing house? You think that’s what I’m doing?” Ice bunched under my fingernails, and I clamped my hands into a fist to keep both the shards and my emotions from exploding.

“We’re the same, except that I don’t try to be what I’m not. And you’re attracted to that, but it freaks the shit out of you. When you’re with me, you can’t pretend either.”

“That is
not
true.”

“No? Enlighten me.” Panther finally glanced my way. Intense yellow glowed from his eyes, but I couldn’t read his expression. It was something more than confrontational.

I wanted to say something to that gaze, but what? My pulse thumped. I had no answer for him.

A cluster of police cars parked just ahead of us, their lights flashing. Officers milled, holding back press vans and curious pedestrians. “I’m leaving after this.”

“No.” Panther flashed an ID at one of the officers, and the man waved us through a barricade. I waited until we were past to respond. If I hadn’t, I would’ve blasted him with ice.

“I’m sorry?”
 

“You need to be here.” He threw the car into park and unbuckled. “I want you to stay.” Panther gazed my way and his heart bled into his eyes.

It was something like the look Kevan had given me. Total adoration.

I sucked in a breath.
 

It couldn’t be. I was misreading him.

I needed to get out of the car, but my body wasn’t taking my cues. Instead I sat as frozen as an icicle.

He reached over and unbuckled me. The heat that seeped off his hands sparked a flashback to last night. All of that dark skin, so hot underneath me as we both bucked in passion.

What we’d done should’ve slaked my curiosity. If anything, it had grown. And he was right, wasn’t he?

The moment I gave in to that heat, I’d be a wild woman again. I should’ve been able to resist, but my resolve melted every time Panther was involved. I’d always be on the edge of breaking if I stayed close to him.

“You run and I’ll chase you.” He finally slid out of the car. “Let’s get this done.”

He’d chase me?

The goose bumps sprang back. Could he be any more provocative? Just imagining it…

Pressing my thighs together, I bit back a moan. I’d never met such a dangerous man, and I needed to get away from him before I lost myself.

By the time I was collected, Panther was chatting with a detective. “My partner,” he said as I drew even with them.

“Hope you can find something we missed.” The man lifted the ribbon of yellow tape blocking the alley.

It was my first crime scene, but hardly my first kill. I was ready for gore, dismemberment—anything, really. It couldn’t be easy to murder a super.

The body lay facedown, sprawled in a puddle. A man, middle-aged and perhaps a little chubby. Super hero wouldn’t have been my first thought, but then, appearances could lie.

The detective handed Panther a pair of rubber gloves and some forceps. When Panther crouched near the man, I followed suit. “You’ll have to have the lab confirm, but these are definitely the same stab wounds as the victims in L.A. and Houston.”

“Serial killer. With a super fetish.” Disgust dripped from the detective’s voice.

“Seems like it.” Panther shifted the man’s shirt out of the way with the tool, examining the wounds. “Same M.O. This wasn’t a knife, and there’s not enough blood. The body was dropped here.”

“Who was this man?” That had to be more important than how he’d died. Surely there was a reason he’d been chosen as a victim.

“Nicholas Harrington.” The detective shook his head. “The original Wolfman.”

“No shit?” Panther turned startled eyes the man’s way.

“I should know who that is?” I glanced between the men. Clearly, they knew.

“Probably not.” Panther bent back to the body. “Guy was a star in the ’80s on a sitcom about human shifters.
Wolfman
.”

“Ah.” That would explain why I didn’t know. No TV on the tundra, and I’d never been a fan of reruns. “Were any of the other victims celebrities?”

“Most supers are in the public eye. The two in L.A. were in TV and movies, but the two in Houston were heavy into their secret identities.”

The detective was jotting notes into his handheld. “So what’s the connection? Or were they randomly chosen?”

“Yes. What kind of powers did the others have?” It struck me that I was being too cooperative when I was planning to run, but I couldn’t stand over the body and not do my best to avenge the man.

“The first victim was a cosmetic chameleon. Worked Hollywood in a ton of sci-fi movies without needing makeup, but she didn’t have any firepower.” Panther ticked his fingers as he listed them off. “Charmer was next, and he had a creepy affinity for snakes. We had to wade through a swath of the bastards to get to the body. Then Houston, it was a cattle rancher with a minotaur form and a flier with bird wings.”

My stomach roiled. All of those victims plus Wolfman made a disturbing trend. “They were all animal shifters.”

“Not really,” Panther said. “Only the minotaur had an alternate form. The rest were humanoid full-time and our chameleon only did superficial changes. Charmer looked like a regular guy under all the snakes.”

“It’s the same.” However they looked, they were animal-tied. At least that was how I saw it, and if I did, so did others.

Oh, Goddess.

“Has it rained?” I’d been inside, but I should’ve felt more moisture in the air if I’d missed a shower. By the dread in my belly, I knew I hadn’t.

“Not in a few days.” Panther’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

I touched a fingertip to the tepid puddle and lifted it to my mouth. It had a sweet tang that was very out of place on a stretch of Manhattan sidewalk. “It was ice.”

“A little hot for that, don’t you think?” The detective’s eyebrows went up.

I ignored him. “The other bodies. You said you never found a murder weapon?”

“Never.” Panther pulled out his phone and started flicking through a display of crime scene photos. “But all of the bodies have had some kind of water nearby. You think….”

Ice spears left their tips in most wounds. We seldom bothered to pull them out. They melted on their own.

“Kevan.” I’d stumbled into him, and the next morning there was a murder by ice? It was too much coincidence.

With awakened eyes, I took in the wounds. They clustered in the soft flesh of the man’s torso and at the ragged hollow of his neck. I’d never thought to take down a human target, but it was exactly how I would have attacked with a pack of hunters at my back.

How many of them were in New York?

Cold fury built up from my toes to my fingertips until all I could see was static. “We need to track them.”

“Them?” The detective asked. “You got a lead you want to share, partner?”

“This is my justice.” They were my people, even if I’d abandoned them. It was mine to make right for this senseless death.

“Why?” Panther uncrouched without losing his coiled tension. “What’s the motive?”

“We’re hunters.” I’d feared that part of myself all along. The uncontrolled passion of the chase. Once we had a target, everything faded away, and we didn’t stop until we knew the rush of the kill.

But not humans. Supers or not, that was what they were, and Kevan and untold others had crossed that line.

Tracking them meant tapping into the well I’d been trying so hard to suppress. The very abilities and impulses that had likely driven my tribesmen over the edge.

I had to do it. There was no question of that.

But would I be able to bring myself back?

Chapter Eight

Panther

The morning should’ve been warm enough, but in the alley’s darkness, with the frigid wind spilling off Ivory’s skin, it felt like December. In Siberia.

I’d been trying my damnedest to focus on the crime scene instead of Ivory’s rejection, but shit. Frost climbed her arms like evening gloves and she had every sliver of my attention.

“I’ll find them.” Scary determination burned in that voice. Cold fire, but it seared just the same.

“I’ll call the team.” Tank was out of town, but as long as the other guys were around, we didn’t need to take on a pack of icemen solo. Hell, one text and Jet could join us in about ten seconds.

“No.”

“So, what? You want to send me a fax when you get there? A smoke signal?”

“No. You come. You have to bring me back.”

I turned cold as her skin. “What does that mean?”
 

“I can get to them.” One of those wicked ice spears stretched between her palms. In her uniform, she was a vision of the huntress that had owned me since the flight to L.A. As fearsome as she was fearless. “But it might mean the end of me.”

Okay. Maybe not fearless. “What do you—”

I needed an explanation, but she took off like she was running from the cops. After a second, she was.

“Wha—” the detective called.

Poor guy. He sprinted until the first dumpster, but he was going to need an Olympic pedigree or a jetpack if he wanted to match Ivory’s pace. Finding neither, he jogged to a stop and went for his phone.

Sticking close to her heels, I thumped the pavement. “Can’t we take the car?”
 

Maybe she didn’t hear me.

We ran south, weaving through some alleys but mostly in plain sight for all of New York to see. Luckily most New Yorkers were as disenchanted about supers as everything else. Every so often someone whipped out a camera phone, but more people glanced and got back to business.

It was a full-on sprint to Midtown. Ivory only stopped to…I didn’t even know.

She touched the sidewalk, stirred puddles or paused to let the wind breeze through her fingers. Her icy sweet scent was strong enough in my nose, but I didn’t sense anything like it. So what was she tracking?