The scents that had
filled his head in the drive had been too many to count, but he had felt the
span of her borrowed power.
Hundreds.
“We need to think this
through,” she said as she accelerated. “I’ll take you to my place.”
A short time later Chris
led Jamys up the stairwell of an apartment building and into a flat on top
floor. She didn’t give him time to admire the neat red and black décor, but
guided him through it to her privy, which was done in stark, icy white. He
had stopped bleeding, but took care not to touch anything.
She left him and brought
back a small steel-backed chair with a black vinyl seat cushion. “Sit down.”
He wanted to tell her he
could clean up by himself, but she already had a small kit out and was
tearing open a packet of gauze pads.
“You’re a mess,” she
muttered as she dampened a pad and began cleaning the streaks of dried blood
from his face. “You shouldn’t have left your blades back at the club. I know
you guys are all about the honor and stuff, but that was dumb.”
He raised his brows.
“Don’t get all Kyn on
me,” Chris told him. “She could have blinded you.” She finished wiping his
face and carefully pushed aside what was left of his hair to look at the
wound. “It’s closed, but it’s not healed. You need blood.” She began rolling
up her sleeve.
Jamys caught her arm.
No,
Chris.
She glared at him. “It’s
part of my job.”
I
will not feed on you.
“The honor thing is
getting really old and tired now.” She yanked down her sleeve. “I keep some
bloodwine in the fridge for Sam. I’ll get you a glass.” She stalked out.
Jamys stood and looked at
his face in the mirror. Luce’s blade had hacked off most of the hair on the
side of his head; he was lucky not to have lost an ear. He searched through
the kit until he found a small pair of scissors and went to work on the
rest. By the time Chris returned with the bloodwine he had filled her small
trash can with cuttings.
“I liked it better long.”
She handed him the glass and took the scissors. Shadowed crescents rimmed
her eyes, and he could almost feel how exhausted she was. “Sit down and let
me do the back.”
Jamys sat and sipped from
the glass, closing his eyes as the rejuvenating warmth of the bloodwine
spread through him. His head felt oddly light without the length of his
hair, and the gentle brush of Chris’s fingers soothed him.
“It’ll probably grow back
in a week,” she said as she snipped. “I wish mine would. Last year I went
blonde, huge mistake, and then I tried to dye it over with this gorgeous
purple color. It ended up the color of sewer sludge.”
He drained the glass and
set it aside, but the taste lingered on his lips. He needed to leave and
hunt, but Chris’s luscious scent filled his head. When she came around to
stand in front of him he latched onto her wrist.
“Ouch.” She grimaced.
“Little sore there.”
He turned her wrist over
and saw the stained bandage she’d wrapped around it, and then looked at her
pale face.
What
have you done?
“I kinda lied to you. I
don’t keep any bloodwine in the fridge for Sam.” She tried to smile. “It’s
okay. I’ve got six pints, and you needed the boost.”
She’d bled herself for
him. If he could have cursed, he would have. He lifted her into his arms and
carried her out, looking this way and that until he found the room where she
slept.
“This is nice,” Chris
murmured as he placed her on her bed. “Just like in the movies.” When he
tried to straighten she tugged on his shirt. “I’m cold.”
He wasn’t, not with the
force of her blood coursing through him. He eased down beside her, gathering
her close and pulling the black and white geometric bedspread over her
shivering body.
“I’d really love to have
sex with you,” she whispered, “but I think I’m going to be criminally stupid
and pass out now.” Her eyelids slowly closed, and her body relaxed.
He checked her bandage to
make sure she hadn’t cut herself too deeply, then rose from the bed to stand
at the window. Sunrise was only a few minutes away. He glanced at the
telephone on the bedside table. He needed to warn Lucan about the Kyn who
had come here, but even if he could speak, he doubted they would believe
what he told them.
Behind him, Chris
whimpered, and Jamys went to her. He placed a hand on her forehead.
All
will be well, my little friend
,
he lied to her.
Forget what has happened tonight and rest now.
When he was sure she
slept peacefully, he found her car keys and slipped out of the apartment. As
he went downstairs, he didn’t see the girl in the sparkling red dress step
out of the shadows at the back of the landing.
Chapter Five
Sam eased out from under
the heavy weight of her sleeping lover, and took her clothes from the closet
before sneaking out of their bedroom to dress. She never needed to rest as
long as Lucan did during the day – one more oddity of her adjustment to
being made Kyn – and knew after the hours they’d spent making love that he’d
probably stay conked out until dusk. That would give her the time she needed
to follow up with Tenderson and see if there was any evidence linking Jamys
Durand to the victim.
She felt sorry for the
kid, but the last couple of years had taught her never to blindly assume
anything about the Darkyn. If she were wrong and Jamys wasn’t involved,
she’d apologize.
Evan Tenderson was just
finishing his shift at the morgue when she arrived, and grumbled as he went
back to his office to retrieve his preliminary autopsy notes.
“Virginia confirmed the
I.D., although the kid’s parents are dead and so are all the other living
relatives,” he told her as they walked down the hall. “According to their
FAX, the vic was reported missing in sixty-nine and declared dead in
seventy-six.”
“Did you find any trace?”
“Not so much as an
epithelial or an eyelash,” he said, pressing a square of gum from a foil
packet he took from his pocket and popping it in his mouth. “Considering the
condition of the body, it was extraordinarily clean,” he said as he chewed.
“Makes you wonder if Bundy had a little brother.”
She didn’t like jokes
about serial killers, but she could appreciate the reference. Ted Bundy had
kept the bodies of many of his victims for some time, amusing himself with
them as well as washing and grooming them. “Cause of death?”
“I can’t say by what
means yet. I didn’t find any blood or body fluids, so I sent hair, tissue
and bone samples for a tox screen.” He opened a drawer of his immaculately
tidy desk and took out a steno pad. “No sign of failure or trauma in the
internal organs or the brain, and the neck and wrist injuries were
post-mortem. Barring anything unusual from the tox, your vic probably died
of heart failure. I found a good-size blowout in the aorta. What I’d love to
know is why every drop of blood is missing. The heart for damn sure didn’t
pump it out.” He tried to blow a bubble with his gum and failed.
“Yeah, that’s a little
weird.” Sam kept her voice bland. “What else?”
“Something even weirder,”
Tenderson said. “Virginia advised me that Wilson Robert Carcher filed for a
name change before leaving the states. Birth certificate reads Wilma Rachel
Carcher.”
She would never have
guessed, looking at the corpse. “Wilson had a sex-change?”
“Nah. All she changed was
her name and wardrobe,” Tenderson told her. “She strapped down her boobs,
and kept a dildo in her drawers for appearances, but her body was never
altered. Your vic was a female.”
“When did he – did she –
die?”
“That’s what I don’t want
to put in my report.” Tenderson gave her an uneasy look. “Yesterday.”
“What?”
“I knew no one would
believe me, so I saved a sample.” He went to the small refrigerator beside
his desk and took out a vial filled with a thick red substance. “I pulled
this out of her sternum and checked it under the scope. From the condition
of the marrow, this gal was alive yesterday.”
Sam took the vial and
studied it. “Who else have you told about this?”
“Well, I thought about
calling Doctor G. up in Orange County,” he said, spitting out his gum into
the trash and replacing it with a fresh piece, “but somehow I don’t think
she’d want me to upstage her on her cable show.”
“Is this the only sample
you have?” When he nodded, Sam pocketed it. Before he could squawk, she
placed a hand on his neck and shed enough scent to make his eyes darken.
“Evan, I want you to forget about the bone marrow anomaly and the bite marks
on the body. Report that the victim died of natural causes. Arrange to have
the body released to the county, and send her to be cremated.”
“Forget. Report.
Arrange,” he said in a distant monotone.
“Try to give up the gum
and have a merry Christmas while you’re at it.” Sam ripped the pages of
notes he’d made from the pad and stuffed them into her pocket before she
opened the door to the office. “Thanks.”
The fresh air removed the
bemusement from the medical examiner’s face. “Yeah, yeah.” He removed the
wad of gum from his mouth and pitched it at the trash can. “Happy holidays
to you, too.”
Sam went down to
headquarters and reported to Garcia’s office, where she briefed him on the
case. After relating the details from the autopsy along with the startling
fact that the victim had been a woman, she asked, “Is it possible she was
killed by a Kyn lord because she was a cross-dresser?”
“Possible, but highly
unlikely. She could not have fooled a Kyn lord for long.” Garcia tapped his
nose. “They can smell our gender.”
“Okay. Could she have
been this Kyn lord’s
tresora
?”
Garcia, who like the rest
of his family had served the Kyn his entire life, frowned. “Also unlikely.
Our lords generally do not feed on us unless they have no alternative.” He
hesitated, and then added, “Over time a few
tresori
also serve
as
kyaran
, the mortal
companions. As such they provide our lords with blood, sex and affection.
But a Kyn lord would not wish to have his
kyara
dress like a male.”
Sam knew most of the Kyn
were remarkably conservative when it came to matters of sexuality. They were
still wrestling with the reality of modern alternative lifestyles. “Let’s
say he did. Why would he drain the body of blood and then dump it in a
public place?”
Garcia made an uncertain
gesture. “I cannot say, Samantha. Such intimate relationships between lord
and tresora are difficult to sustain, but they do happen, and sometimes
result in tragedy. The more often a Kyn lord uses a mortal, the more likely
he is to lose control, go into thrall and kill them. But had that been the
case, you would have found an unconscious Kyn beside the mortal.”
“Maybe it happened
somewhere else.” She waited as Garcia answered his phone, and then took the
receiver when he handed it to her. “Brown.”
“My lady, forgive me for
disturbing you at your work,” Herbert Burke said, “but I am concerned about
Christian. She did not come to the club today, and she does not answer the
phone at her flat.”
Sam thought of how upset
Chris had been after the confrontation with Jamys. “She’s probably pissed at
me, Burke. Let’s give her the day off.”
“Of course.” He cleared
his throat. “My lord Lucan also bid me to pass along a request that you
return to the stronghold immediately, for your own safety.”
She smothered a chuckle.
“I bet he didn’t say it like that.”
“No, my lady,” Burke
admitted, “and please don’t ask me to repeat his exact words.”
She needed to track
Wilson Carcher’s last movements, and that would take time. “Tell Lucan I’m
fine. I have to track down some information about the victim and see if that
tells us anything about this Kyn running around our territory. I’ll be home
in a couple of hours.”
Burke sighed. “As you
wish, my lady.”
Samantha hung up the
phone and took out the passport Rafael had found on the victim. “Before she
came over her, Wilson Carcher’s last stop in Europe was in the Netherlands.
Do we have any friends among the Dutch authorities?”
Garcia smiled. “We have
friends everywhere on the planet.” He jotted down a number and handed it to
her. “Rafael called while you were at the morgue. He lost Jamys Durand’s
trail downtown last night.”
That didn’t bode well for
Rafael or Jamys. “We need to find out where this kid is before any more
bodies turn up.”
“Rafael has summoned the
best trackers in the jardin,” Garcia assured her. “If he is still in Fort
Lauderdale, they will locate him.”
She left the captain’s
office and went to her desk, where she called their Dutch contact. The
senior inspector, who spoke beautifully-accented English, was able to access
and e-mail her the passenger manifest for the flight Wilson Carcher had
taken from his country to hers.