Ties That Bind: The Bellum Sisters 3 (paranormal erotic romance) (37 page)

EPILOGUE

Twigs and leaves crunched under his boots.
Crunch, crunch, thump
. He managed two more steps before he collapsed against a tree, panting.

His chest felt like it’d been shredded, ravaged from the inside out. His fingers prodded his chest expecting to find black blood, but alas, his skin was whole. It was his heart that hurt. That seemed to make every inch of his body heavy and ache with pain.

With heavy steps, he kept moving. Going further and further into unknown lands, out of the
shahoulin
territory. He kept seeing her. Alive one moment, gone the next. Blood-pumping rage pulsated inside him, demanding someone’s blood. Surprisingly, it wasn’t Telal’s he wanted.

He shook his head. That couldn’t be right. His mind was messed up, not acting correctly. He’d seen Telal’s spell tear into his Arianna, saw the life die from her eyes. He choked, tears wetting his eyelashes. He stumbled, tripped, and fell hard to the ground. He grunted, and pulled out a rock from beneath him that had jabbed against his hip.

Rolling onto his back, he stared up at the sky. Night had come. How long had he been walking?

“Arianna…” He choked on her name, saying it seemed to squeeze the pain around his heart even tighter until it reached an unbearable level. He wanted to curl on his side and cry until every ounce of his strength was sapped. Leave himself there to die. Let the animals get him. He didn’t need to live. He was a monster.

No. He had to move. Bracing one hand, then the other, he slowly sat up, put one knee on the ground then the other and pushed himself up. He wobbled but he kept walking. His mind was the only thing he had in the silent woods. And his mind was working overtime.

Telal hadn’t killed him. God, he wished he’d done it. Ended his unnatural, dark existence once and for all. Was that why he no longer felt anger at him? No…no. His thoughts spun, twirled, and came together slowly as he walked further and further, the sky growing hazier with night.

No, only one person deserved his wrath. Only one person was the cause of all this. The master manipulator using him, turning him from who he used to be. If not, then he’d still had enough goodness in him to heal Arianna.

I could have saved her
.

His arms flexed, bunching hard until pain flared up. He gave a harsh shout and slammed his fist into a tree. The whipping crack and broken branches that rained down over him relieved his anger—if only slightly.

His eyes cleared from the tears. He stared off into the night with a clarity he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. The realization was so sudden, he quickly glanced down at his hands, wondering if they’d be golden again.

His hands curled into hard fists at the sight of the dark black color. No, it wouldn’t be that easy. Nothing was. His mother. She was the answer to everything. He had to find her, and he had to kill her.

A garbling sound, crackling like teeth clicking together stole his attention. Alrik’s head whipped to the side his ears twitching to hear. A high-pitched cry tore through the air, then running steps came straight towards him.

Fuck. Alrik tore off to the side running as fast as his weak body would take him. The sounds, the cries came closer.
Idummi
. He focused as his chest pumped hard and his lungs burned. Four of them, eight feet stomping into the ground after him. He had no goddamned weapons on him or he’d relish the fight. Alrik slowed at the thought. A fight…the thought brought him to a stop, turning around.

With Arianna’s death fresh in his mind, he stood, waiting and let them come to their death.

Read on for a sneek peek at Alrik’s book—
The Fallen King
. Coming in 2012!

The body lay lifeless on its back facing whoever ended her life, left arm bent curved around her head, right knee bent out towards the street.

“All right, Krenshaw, do your thing,” Abbigail’s supervisor, Mike Waxell said.

Abbigail took a deep breath and let it out through her nose. She already had her latex gloves donned and cloth booties over her shoes. The booties weren’t always necessary, but in this case, there was so much blood, they all had to wear them. Everything would have to be processed, with stabbing victims often the murderer cut himself too. Some of this blood might be the murderers.

First, Abbigail took in the scene just as the detectives would do. It helped her to get an idea of how the attack took place, then she could better tell the detectives how the attack possibly happened. She was knew at this, still had a lot to learn, but she was pretty good. She’d had an excellent mentor who’d trained her under his wing and helped her to get this job. God, she missed him.

The girl, already determined to be a shapeshifter from a local pack who’d gone missing two nights before, was found at the back of this alley between two brownstone city apartment buildings. The residents of the Green Tree apartments peered down at her and the team from their little windows up above and from behind the yellow tape closing off the crime scene; their faces illuminated in the blue and red sweeping lights from the officers’ cars.

The alley was typical. AC units and small windows faced each other from both apartment buildings. This path was only really here for maintenance men who needed to work on the AC units or for the utilities men to check the power lines. A six-foot tall fence stood at the back of the alley. The girl’s body was found right in front of it on a patch of concrete.

Abbigail looked back down the path where the faces watched with morbid, avid fascination and noted the alley to be only about twenty feet wide with the AC units taking up a good four of that from either side. A small pathway. She’d spotted the large community-sized dumpsters as she’d pulled into the lot. Why hadn’t the killer just dumped her in there? Did he want the body to be found? Did he get interrupted and had to be quick about it? If he just happened upon her here and killed her, that’d make sense, except that a shapeshifter being out this far away from pack alone, didn’t make any sense.

Abbigail squatted beside the girl. She had blonde hair, the natural kind that had hints of brown from being out in the sun. Her eyes were open, face tilted towards the alley. The majority of the blood had spilled from a major neck wound, possible throat cutting or garroting but more blood covered her abdomen, wetting her brown cowboy sloganed t-shirt to her skin. One shoe was off; they’d found it at the beginning of the alley. She’d struggled; the shoe probably came off during.

As medical examiner for the paranormal unit of the Fort Collins Police Department, Abbigail got to touch the body first. She shouldn’t even have the job she had, was too young. But she’d graduated high school early, gifted classes, then went through a special FBI program, a brand-new unit on studying supernatural cases. She’d been surprised to find her classes not filled to the brink. Who wouldn’t find learning about the supernatural beings of the world utterly fascinating? Apparently many. Then she’d met Stanley Haubermann, a middle-aged detective  and behavioral profiler who’d started the program. He’d taken her under his wing and taught her everything he knew. Not that she was that special. He’d done it to a few other members from her graduating class. She was just the only one to already have a job practicing his teachings.

Abbigail gently pushed the victim’s head back, left, and right. The cut was deep and clean. Not a serrated blade, not thin enough to be a garrote.

“Definitely a blade,” she called out. “Rigor mortis has set in. She’d been here at least four hours probably no longer than 12.” Her skin had already begun to turn a purplish hue; her muscles already  tightening.

The detectives quieted and came closer. Her supervisor, Mike, leaned down next to her, his keen eyes professionally scoping out the body. Abby pressed her fingers around the neck to feel for splintered or broken bones but found none. She lifted the shirt and the detectives leaned over to peer.

“Got her a good four times, then took out the neck, I bet,” Mike said.

“That’d be my guess,” Abby agreed, eyeing the deep red cut into victim’s abdomen. “Arm bent up that way, he was holding her from behind, she’d been reaching back to try to get his hair, pull his arm away, something. That’s when he slit her. She fell down just like that, still reaching for him.”

“Check her hands,” Mike said.

Abby sidled to the victim’s head and lifted each of her hands, paying specific attention to her nails and palms. “Defensive stab wounds.” They happened during knife fights or on victims of knife homicides. The victims throw out their hands to try to dodge or block the swinging blade, cutting their own hands in the process. Blood was caked under the victim’s fingernails making them look murky brown.

“What age do you put her at? The Alpha of the shapeshifters said the girl their missing is about seventeen.”

“Yeah, I’d say that’s right judging from the size of the body, the facial features, her teeth. Definitely a teen. I’ll know more once we get her back to the lab.”

Mike stood, pulled out his notebook and scribbled down some notes. “Anything else for us?”

Abbigail looked back down the path. “Definitely killed here. He dragged her here, lost her shoe in the struggle. She fought back, maybe even got away from him for a few seconds when he started slashing at her giving her the wounds on her hands. Eventually he got her turned around and slit her throat for the final killing blow.”

“All right, we’ll have the body sent down for processing. Let me know if you get anything else.”

“Will do.” Abbigail walked down the path then removed her bloodied booties and gloves, handing them over to another crime scene investigator with a trash bag held open.

“Any luck?” he asked.

Abbigail shrugged. It was too soon to say.

She headed to her car and saw that it wasn’t even ten in the morning yet. Time to head home and try to get a quick nap in before they  got the body down to the lab. She let out a jaw-cracking yawn then took off for home.