T
he longer she slept, the better. Eventually her screams would excite him, but until he was ready, he preferred silence
.
Breathing, sounds of the idle, automatic push and pull of air in unsuspecting human lungs raised bubbles of hysteria in his throat.
On it went, unaware that it would soon be silenced. Before long, the human woman would begin her final, endless sleep.
The itching began.
He opened his mouth wide, inhaled long and slow, to hold back the noise that wanted to erupt. His skin grew thicker and the thickening made his body larger. He felt himself swell, felt his spine grow supple and bend forward. Already he wore the loose, hooded black robe he could adjust to cover him completely, no matter how hulking his form became.
Power flooded his bulk and he swayed, reveled in the loose, heavy swing of his limbs.
Fingernails became talons, gradually lengthening, curving, hardening to points as capable of wounding as ice picks.
Beneath the cracked and crazed hide that was replacing skin, his raw flesh stung. Beautiful pain. Agony inflamed his muscles, his nerves, but his purpose only intensified.
Until yesterday, it had been more than two years since he fed his need for fresh death. Far too long. Ah, yes, where
he came from, deep beneath this earth in Embran, they fought and killed for supremacy daily. Only the strongest survived and their number were replenished by the young—those of them considered worthy of a chance to live.
But it was here, not in Embran that he wished to remain, among the luscious flesh of humans where sex with them increased his power and destroying those he no longer wanted brought him the deepest satisfaction of all.
His kind were only allowed on earth one-by-one. The Supreme Council feared losing control of the pack if they didn’t keep them together. To earn passage to the surface, a man- or woman-Embran—for the only common element they shared with humans was their sex—the one who got to come had to defeat all who competed for the honor. Some, severely wounded, gave up. Many more ceased to exist.
He had won the prize thirty years earlier and lived among his beloved victims disguised as one of them—except when he needed to resume his rightful form to perform a kill.
Warnings had started to surface from below, telling him it was time to return and report what he had found out that might be useful. But he ignored the warnings. It was too soon to give up the wonder of all this.
The signs were there that he could be weakening and should return home for regeneration, but he was the strongest of them all and he would find a way to restore himself and stay where he was. How unfortunate that he was not a puppet prepared only to study the reasons for Embrans’ increasing difficulty in keeping deterioration of their bodies at bay. That’s what the Supreme Council wanted from him. He should find out what had happened all those years ago in Belgium, when a woman-Embran had returned below, taking with her some disease visited upon her by her ungrateful human husband.
He would get to all that—but not when he was finally enjoying himself again.
Two years ago bad luck had forced him to give up the
ultimate pleasure of the kill. Before that he had savored countless delightful terminations until he had been unfortunate enough to come upon a series of seven victims who forced his temporary seclusion. Those seven had come to him willingly, as their kind did once they were promised money for their time. But all seven, each one in a row, had lied in saying they had no one who cared where they were and what they did. And so their disappearances were reported to the police by their wretched survivors and New Orleans became too dangerous a hunting ground for him.
But at last certain events had caused him to return to his natural ways and, in particular, the woman he left in the river earlier had reminded him of all he missed. He had perfected a new system to cover his tracks and that woman was only the beginning—a decoy to keep any attention away from what was really happening.
For as long as he stayed safe he would continue. Then he would retreat again, and watch the silly little humans scurry in search of what they would label a monster, while never knowing who he was and having no means of pursuing him.
How he had hugged himself with glee at the sight of the so important policeman trying to quiet the citizens of New Orleans from a television screen, even as his own fear showed in his eyes. They found the one in the river faster than he’d expected, that much he admitted.
“Who’s there?”
Damn, the captive woman was waking and he hadn’t completed his transformation. His head was always slow to resume its magnificent and rightful form. Quickly, he shuffled back into the shadows. His vision had changed and he saw her through a film of red. The slashes that were his pupils elongated her. This next prize was a gift from a fool who crossed him and broke his rules. But to be fair, the fool had also brought him renewed vigor.
Sounds broke from deep inside him, muffled, baying
roars. He tossed his head. His mouth stretched open wider, and even more wide. A muffled snap and fiery spears darting into his brain warned him that his human jaw had dislocated. Not long now.
From his mouth, a broad, slime-coated nose and lipless jaws thrust out. They slid steadily forward and he rocked his human head, felt it fold back on itself to make way for the final, full exposure of his authentic self.
“Where are you?”
the woman moaned.
“Why am I here?”
As if he would tell her, the foolish creature. She had wanted too much, but she would get nothing. He would take everything away from her.
Slowly, he stepped toward her. She lay on a heap of cushions in a corner. The switch he flipped sent the cooling system into rapid mode. Icy mist curled upward and the woman shivered.
He needed to bite, but must contain himself. It was the bites that killed, not the scratches since only his teeth secreted poison.
Even if he’d been unable to see at all, he would still have known the instant when she saw him. Her breathing stopped, for a long time, before it started again, wheezing, high-pitched, punctuated with choking shrieks.
Don’t die before I can kill you,
he thought
.
I hate it when one of you dies from shock. I want to taste warm blood in my mouth. I want your heart to beat until the final strike.
“Oh, my God,”
she whined
.
Pale now, her eyes wide and staring, her mouth an ugly, stretched hole, she scarcely looked like the same woman who had come to him.
He tossed his head and bayed. And he parted the robe, let it fall.
Her scream convulsed her. Back and forth she scrambled, dragging hair from her face to search for escape.
Then she was on her feet but staggering on the soft pillows. She pushed herself as far from him as she could, shoved into the wall as if she could make it open and swallow her.
She might be swallowed if the idea appealed to him, but if he ate her whole she was too large not to disrupt his digestion. He would only have to regurgitate her.
A button he pushed flooded pulsing pink light over him, and her. He knew that she would see his eyes as gouges filled with blood and his mouth, a cavern lined with great, slathering, needle-tipped teeth.
He hooked his talons beneath the neck of her dress and opened bloody gashes that stretched the length of her body by the time he had torn off her clothes.
Too bad she was too terrified to attempt to cover herself. He savored the futile efforts of a victim who clung to conventions that would never have meaning to her again.
“Don’t,”
she whispered, and that surprised him
. “You’re a man. I know you are. I’ve already made sure someone knows where to find you and what to look for.”
She lied.
Welts and scarlet scratches violated her white breasts, her belly and thighs.
At last his own trembling began. Sexual demand sprang in his loins. He swelled, and lunged, took hold of her legs and yanked her feet from the ground. She crashed down like a disjointed doll, struck her head and shoulders on the hard floor.
His one regret was that the hide that sheathed him dulled feeling and when he fanned his claws over her breasts, he could only imagine the texture of that flesh.
No matter.
Wild, stronger than he had expected, the woman struck out at him, tried to push her nails into his eyes.
A fine idea.
Two talons returned the favor, only he didn’t miss. He
pushed through her eye sockets until he felt sinew tear and small bones break inside her head.
Damn.
Dead.
He should have held back but she was dead and much too soon. He shrieked and rocked over her, picked her up as he could have a child, and shook her broken body.
For a few moments he clutched her against him and sobbing sounds of misery tore from him.
He cradled her with exquisite gentleness.
G
ray increased the pressure on Danny Summit’s shoulder and stared into Marley’s shocked eyes. He couldn’t look away. The bunching muscles in his back had less to do with his flexed arm than what he was thinking about; he wanted to touch her, just touch—for a start.
He hadn’t been surprised to see her here.
But he should have been—he should have been amazed.
“Hey, man,” Danny Summit said, squirming. “You’re killing me here. I need that arm.”
Gray released his hold on the other man, who muttered under his breath, gingerly opening and closing his fingers. He stared from Gray to Marley, managing to convey confusion, suspicion—and physical pain—at the same time.
Too bad.
“Are you okay?” Gray repeated to Marley. The way she looked at him suggested he’d grown horns—or worse.
“Yes, I am, thank you.”
“That’s great, then.” His attention was split between Marley, who visibly shrank away, and Sidney’s voice from behind him. “You got a problem, Danny?” he asked.
“Yeah, I reckon I do. There’s something going on here. You two know each other.”
Gray raised his brows. “Why would that be a problem? I came to meet up with Marley. She’s a friend.” He looked into her very green eyes, willing her not to call him a liar.
Freckles showed plainly over her nose. Such white skin, but he guessed that went with the red hair. He hadn’t known many redheads.
“You’re late,” Marley said.
She narrowed her eyes slightly and he figured he’d probably have to pay for her cooperation. An interesting thought. What could he have that she wanted? Must be something.
“I shouldn’t have touched you,” Danny said to Marley. “I don’t usually lose control like that. Sorry.”
“What’s with you?” Gray said to Danny before Marley could respond. He took off his jacket and slung it over a shoulder. Unless you stood in front of icy blasts from air-conditioning vents, the place was tight with wet heat.
Danny started to walk away, but he stopped. “She won’t tell me why she’s asking questions about Amber,” he said, nodding at Marley. “You understand what that means to me. You know what Amber means to me. She hasn’t come back. I haven’t even had a call from her. I don’t know what to do next.”
Gray didn’t know Danny was involved with Amber, or he hadn’t until now.
“You could start by coming clean with the police,” Marley said, then she wouldn’t meet Gray’s eyes.
“I’m not having them poking around in her things,” Danny said to Gray. “And it’s none of their damn business how I feel about her.”
“Danny,” Gray said. “How long have you known Amber? You know what I mean—personally?”
“Why would that matter to you?” Danny bristled. “I should be the one asking you questions. Two of the people you were supposedly writing an article about have disappeared. Liza Soaper and Amber were doing just fine till you showed up.”
“Coincidence,” Gray said, knowing that in the other man’s place, he’d be coming to some of the same conclusions. “I’ve written about a lot of people.”
Then he noticed Marley’s face.
Stunned
. She clutched the edge of the table.
Damn, if Danny hadn’t opened his mouth she still wouldn’t know about his connection to Liza and Amber. It hadn’t been mentioned in front of her at Nat Archer’s office. She didn’t have to say a word for him to know she was connecting dots and drawing an ugly picture of him. At least she wasn’t linking him to Pipes Dupuis, or to the Cooper woman’s death—yet.
Danny sat on the end of the banquette across from Marley. He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand back and forth over his mouth.
Gray met Marley’s eyes. She had already collected herself and shut away whatever she felt.
“Do either of you know anything?” Danny said. “If you do, for God’s sake tell me. I don’t know where to go for help.”
“Did Amber live with you?” Marley said.
Gray watched Danny’s reaction.
“That’s it,” he said, getting up again. “I know when I’m being taken for a ride. You two have got your own agendas and they’re not about helping Amber or me. The only people I’ll be talking to are the police. And don’t think I won’t tell them to take a long look at the two of you.”
Just what I need
. “That’s up to you,” Gray said. “But don’t forget I like Amber. She’s got a lot of guts and she hasn’t had it easy. I’ve got no reason to wish her any harm. If you point the cops in my direction you could make yourself feel better, but you’ll only be taking their time away from the case.”
“I gotta go,” Danny said. He shook his head slowly all the way back to the bar.
“You know Liza and Amber?” Marley asked softly.
Gray puffed up his cheeks and studied his shoes.
“You do, don’t you? You’ve been writing a story about them. And now they’re missing. When I showed up, Detective Archer must have been questioning you about it.”
“Congratulations,” he said. “You don’t waste any time getting your wild guesses together. If Nat had brought me in for questioning, we wouldn’t have been lounging in his office when you arrived.” Not entirely true, but Nat hadn’t seen any reason to hold him, either.
Marley Millet still wore the white cotton dress she’d had on earlier, but with a short pink sweater that tied beneath the breasts and a filmy, multicolored scarf around her neck. Everything about her appealed to him and he didn’t like the idea of her being alone in Scully’s at almost one in the morning. There weren’t many sober patrons around.
The glass of green-something Marley picked up shook slightly on the way to her lips. She barely touched the liquor, but continued to hold the glass in both hands.
“I know where you live,” he told her, and almost bit his tongue when he saw what she thought of that announcement. “You gave your name at the station and you said you lived on Royal. I put it together with J. Clive Millet. The antique people. I worked in the Quarter a long time—I probably know just about every business around.”
“You followed me here?” she said.
“No. I didn’t know you’d be here. I came for the same reason as you, to see if I could get a lead on Amber. This is the last place I know she was seen. I don’t expect her to walk through those doors, but I keep hoping.”
Marley raised her chin, but abruptly her eyes lost focus on him. She seemed…distant, as if she was listening for something. Or
to
something.
Gray looked around, but didn’t see anything different. When he glanced back at Marley, she had rested her chin on her hands and closed her eyes. Tingling crept up his spine, and he got that sensation of heat in his lungs and belly again. There was fear in this woman, and urgency. She needed and wanted to do something but couldn’t, not without help.
The flicker of a memory shoved into his mind. He didn’t
allow himself to go there to that place where a small boy was tormented for being “different.” The boy had made the mistake of knowing when bad things were going to happen, and trying to warn the other children. He had been that boy.
No, that was a long time ago. Whatever he’d thought he knew was dumb kid stuff.
Marley was so still, he could almost imagine she wasn’t breathing. Under the low lights in the room, her hair glowed a deep, shocking red. Her brows were fine and feathered and even her lashes were dark red. She fascinated him. He’d never considered himself a masochist, but he must be if he was excited by Marley of the laser tongue who walked into a precinct house and announced she could travel without her body!
She was concentrating on him again and he almost said, “welcome back.” This time sanity prevailed. “You look really nice,” he said.
Sanity?
With a grin, he added, “You do, but I’m also trying to soften you up. It would be good if you could like me a bit. I’m a decent guy, honestly. Just a journalist trying to make a living and having problems right now.”
Her stare never left his face.
The same sensation he’d had in his fingers yesterday afternoon slipped into his head. The very tips of his fingers were still affected. Numbing cold.
“Tell him he should go home.”
Who said that? He frowned. Not Marley, but he heard it.
“If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll leave now.”
A man’s voice.
Was he losing it?
“Marley, did you say something?”
She shook her head and looked past him toward Sidney, who was making moves to start another set. “You should go home,” Marley said. “Excuse me.”
Shoot, had he heard someone giving her instructions just now?
Gray pushed his shoulders back and watched her through narrowed eyes. She disturbed him, yet he didn’t want to leave her. Could someone really choose to leave their body and go “traveling”? That he would even ask himself the question worried him.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave,” Marley told Gray.
Gray held his breath. She sounded like a soft echo of the male voice.
Marley couldn’t concentrate. Her attention was split. Uncle Pascal had never, ever communicated the way he was doing now. He had located her mind—just found it and started talking and telling her what he wanted her to do. And he’d come because he had sensed danger, sensed her alone out here and with a man she knew little about. Did it mean her uncle could find and transmit to any mind—at will? Had he simply never chosen to do so before tonight? That was incredible. She considered herself a strong talent, but her own telepathic abilities were mostly short range and by mutual invitation.
Marley wondered what Gray would think if he knew she and her uncle were talking about him—in a manner of speaking.
“Who is he?”
Uncle Pascal asked.
“Do you know anything about him?”
Marley responded in thought: “Not really. He’s a journalist who used to be a policeman. I’m not sure what to think, but he could be okay. How did you find me?”
“All you need to know is that I can.”
Gray sat opposite her and reached for her hands. She was too surprised to pull away in time.
“I…I’m not sure, but I think I’m feeling something weird,” he said. “Did you hear a voice? I mean…someone talking without being here? Are you cold?”
“Uncle, he’s picking something up from us.”
The last thing she would have expected was for Gray to mention being cold.
“He can’t be.”
“Can you hear what he’s saying?”
Marley asked.
“No. I’m aware of a man with you and what you feel about him. You feel threatened.”
She didn’t want to discuss that.
“He’s a sensitive. I don’t think he even knows it yet, but he could be a problem eventually.”
“Get home to me. Has something happened, something you haven’t told me about? I think you’ve traveled recently.”
Marley worked hard to close her uncle out. She must think unobserved for a while.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Marley, do not shut me out. I must be in contact and know you’re safe.”
He could find and enter her mind, but not see where she was. That was something.
“Be patient,”
she told her uncle.
“This man is hearing parts of our communication. Not much—or I don’t think so—but he’s getting caught up in the open channels between us. We should stop now.”
“Marley—”
With an effort that left her weaker, she shuttered Uncle Pascal from her. What he’d just done was unheard of, at least in reputable psi circles. He had simply found her telepathically. She didn’t like it and from now on, she would make it as hard as she could for him. Safety was one thing. Fear of being spied on was another. But he would always make his presence known, wouldn’t he? That was one of the family’s rules of honor. They didn’t just sneak in and out of each other’s heads.
How had Uncle Pascal known she was in the middle of something bizarre?
“You look so serious, Marley.”
“Could have been just a fluke this time,” she said carelessly, still feeling his hands holding hers.
“What?” Gray said.
“Um. You asked me if I’m feeling cold?” She couldn’t
risk involving him in her world. His fingers were icy. Apparently he was too cold to know her hands were also deeply chilled. “Are you sick?” She didn’t know what else to say and looked at the way he held on to her, at his big, well-used hands and the way they covered hers.
“I’m not sick,” he said.
He was a man who would be noticed wherever he went. Marley decided she would certainly notice him and felt uncomfortable with the idea. She stood up, pulling away from him as she did so. “I have to talk to someone,” she said. Rather than starting another set, Sidney was getting ready to leave.
“Sidney?” Gray said. “You want to talk to her before she leaves.”
Marley didn’t respond. She didn’t have to, but was it an easy assumption that she would try to talk to Sidney before she left. Or had Gray picked up on her intentions again?
Hurriedly, she left him and walked the length of the club.
Sidney was much taller than Marley, who had to look up at her.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Marley Millet. Could we talk for a few minutes?”
“I don’t think so,” Sidney told her in a slightly nasal, purely upper-crust New Orleans accent. “Maybe another time.”
“It’s about Amber,” Marley said. “And you, of course.”
That earned her a more interested look down Sidney’s elegant nose. She took the card Marley offered, but barely glanced at it.
“You’re with Gray Fisher,” the woman said.
“You know Gray?”
One shoulder rose, causing the front of a black dress to gape.
Sidney laughed low in her throat. Her lashes fluttered. “I suppose he’s decided I’m good enough for his little story now.”
“That’s not what I wanted to ask—”
“You were always good enough for a story, Sidney,” Gray said, joining Marley and cutting off whatever she had been
going to say next. “You’re in my lineup. Or I hope you’ll agree to be.”
Sidney watched him through narrowed eyelids. “Would I have been in your lineup if you hadn’t lost two of your preferred interviews already?”