***
Heavy metal blasting in my ears, I didn’t notice him come in until I felt his amusement. He’d been watching me jam out. Pulling hard on the cord, I yanked the buds out of my ears.
“How’s my favorite canoe maker?” A familiar deep voice greeted me.
Yeah, we opened them up and scooped out the insides… hardy har har.
“Busy, Detective Welch.” I dismissed his pleasantries, tapping the papers hard on my desk, straightening them. Filing was my least favorite responsibility, but it was still better than dealing with the cops.
He felt somewhat worried for me, so I knew the questions were coming. “I’m going to need a statement about last night.”
I shut the cabinet hard before opening the next. “Why? I thought no one believed me.”
“Sorry about this morning,” he tried but didn’t sound sorry enough.
“Why would you be sorry?” Just because he was always the detective bugging me, and I’d done him more than a few favors in the last six months I’ve been working here? Not to mention, we’ve been on one date, albeit it was weeks ago without an encore in sight. I didn’t know why I assumed he’d be the one to show up this morning.
Dunkan Welch, no, Detective Lieutenant Dunkan Welch, Head of Special Crimes leaned on the doorframe, looking completely gorgeous as always. No man should be allowed to be so fine looking before I finished my coffee. He never wore a tie—it made him look younger even though he was probably in his mid-thirties. I hadn’t asked his age, and he hadn’t asked mine either. He had great hair, the same dark brown as mine, not too short but then again very masculine. Thick lashes framed his light eyes. I had to put on three layers of mascara to get the same effect. He had a good amount of dark stubble too like he could grow a beard by morning.
His perfect lips opened. “Officer Menendez shouldn’t have been so quick to judge.”
I slammed another drawer. “You’ve got yourself a real winner. He didn’t even bother to check the security footage—assumed I was on drugs—like I could bite myself.”
He raked his hand over his glistening forehead. It was hot in here again. “I know you’re upset, but you’re going to have to walk me through it.”
That was the problem, I didn’t know if I was upset or if it was his anger I was sensing—something else no one would ever believe, something second nature to me, I’d had to keep secret, something I’d rearranged my whole life to hide. Stilling my breath, I tried to find the apathy I clung to when dealing with other people’s emotions. Some people were worse than others, projecting every sentiment until I was an emotional mess myself. Detective Welch, he was usually so easy, unfeeling bastard he was. It was no wonder I always dated assholes.
He stood with his hands in his pockets, still leaning, not looking my way. Instead, he eyed everything but me. I jerked open another drawer, asking, “Have you seen the footage?” Another sore spot, security refused to let me see it when I’d gotten to work.
He spoke carefully, “There’s no footage from last night.”
“No footage. How’s that possible?” My voice came so loud it echoed through the morgue.
“Budget cuts,” he answered flatly.
I huffed but halfheartedly because that’d made sense.
“You’ll have to walk me through it.” He stayed calm, making me feel like I overreacted.
I inhaled, soothing myself. “I was on call last night when your office ordered an autopsy of a John Doe, the gunshot victim.”
He bowed his head for me to go on.
Touching my neck, the bandage, I made sure, “You did have a gunshot victim last night?”
“Yes,” he assured me, but his brow furrowed. “A man shot over in the sticks.”
“Aren’t you going to write this down?”
“I’m listening.” He smiled sideways at me, really looking at me for the first time since he’d arrived.
My breath quickening under his gaze, I glanced down at my hands folded in my lap. “I’d just gotten him on the table.”
“You?” He interrupted, sounding surprised.
My head shot up. “Yes, me!”
“Impressive.”
Remembering not everyone knew what my job entailed, we didn’t have hydraulic tables here, I pacified myself again with another deep breath. “It’s just part of the job.” We have to be able to get the bodies on the table. With my small stature, it’d taken me the first three months in the gym, lifting weights, but I had no problem now.
“It’s still impressive.”
“Wouldn’t be if I were a man.”
He nodded his concession, walking over to the examining table.
I went on, “Then I went out to the balcony.”
Still studying the table, he didn’t glance up as he asked me, “Why?”
Continuing to flip through files, I raised a shoulder. “Just wanted to.”
He strolled to the window, the same one in which I’d seen the moon. Standing with his hands clasped behind his back, he gazed thoughtfully toward the balcony. “Do you smoke?”
“No,” I answered curtly, taking offense. Some at the hospital did, but they didn’t have to see a dead smoker’s lungs.
He spun, his mischievous blue-grey eyes meeting mine. “Meeting someone?” He sauntered over and took a seat on the edge of my desk.
My heart raced. I licked my thumb to unstick the next file and wished I hadn’t as Dunkan’s eyes lingered on my lips. I stuttered, “Like an office affair? No. I just wanted to look at the moon.”
“So, at what time did you decide to go outside to look at the moon?”
I remembered checking the clock in the hall last night. His eyes were still on my mouth so I turned my head, opening another file. “It was ten, same as now.”
“Do you usually take a break at ten?”
“No,” I snapped, becoming aggravated with all the questions. Once Brenda arrived, we’d have worked nonstop. That alone would’ve been a good excuse for me to have stepped outside, but that hadn’t been it. “Brenda wasn’t here yet. She’s always late because she lives out in Farrimore.” I stopped, not liking how that’d sounded. “It’s her right. She’s the boss and all. I saw the moon out the window and decided it’d be a good time to get some fresh air.”
He seemed to take in my explanation without a hint of judgement or he was ignoring me completely. I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t get anything off him. Then he hopped up from the desk like someone pinched him. “Come on.”
I followed him down the hall and up the stairs as he retraced my every move. Dunkan opened the door to the balcony for me, revealing the moon dangled in the sky even larger than it had last night, just as orange and magnificent. I immediately went to the edge of the balcony, enthralled by it.
“Ruiz,” he barked.
Realizing he’d been asking me questions and I hadn’t been listening, I turned my head toward him.
“Ruiz.” He never called me by my first name, not even on our one date.
“What?” Slowly, I came out of a fog. I shuddered, perplexed.
He hadn’t made it out the door yet. Squatting, he studied the tile in front of the door. “Do you come out here every night?”
“Lately.”
He rose and turned on the single caged bulb.
“Turn it off,” I abruptly ordered then explained, “I don’t like the moths.” If I left my porch light on, there’d be a pile of dead moths in the light shade by morning.
He flipped off the light and shut the door behind him, stepping out in the dark beside me.
Again, the moon had my full attention. It wasn’t even a full moon anymore. That’d been two nights ago. Regardless, I absorbed the blissful mood it created, the heavenly disposition I knew for absolute certain was my own.
After a few minutes of silence, Welch’s voice came to me gently, “Do you know why moths are attracted to the fire, to the light?”
I blinked, realizing I’d never thought about it. “Why?” I turned
to him, finding him too close, us face to face. Dunkan Welch was drawn to me all right but not like the moths to the light. It was more like he was the hunter and I his prey. I gulped as a yearning rumbled through me, mine or his, I couldn’t tell.
Welch leaned in a bit and down, him being so much taller than me. “Moth’s pheromones are luminescent, they glow faintly.” The moonlight illuminated his face against the sky like it was the only thing in the whole world that existed. He almost whispered now as he explained, “They’re overwhelmed and fly to the light looking for a mate.”
“Too bad it usually ends up killing them,” I mumbled more to myself.
His lips hovered over mine now, his warm breath tempting me to lick my lips as he breathed, “Yes, it’s unfortunate.”
A deep sense of elation shook me before his lips tasted mine. I opened my mouth, letting his tongue in as I tried hard to feel nothing at all myself. If I felt nothing, at least I’d know what I was truly feeling. Nevertheless, my heart thudded in my chest. I felt breathless and weak under the spell of his kiss. He tasted of stale coffee with a sweetness underneath, but none of that mattered. The softness and newness of his kiss mixed with a heaping of tension released and renewed sent thrills all over me. His hand snaked around my waist, and I jumped, my heart quickening again at his electric touch. He pulled my body against the length of him, causing my mood to grow into a more carnal craving. Just as I started to kiss back in earnest, the door opened, flooding the balcony with offensive light. Welch stepped away as Brenda stepped out.
She eyed us knowingly and couldn’t help herself. “Don’t let me interrupt anything.”
“Doctor Downey.” Welch nodded a greeting.
“Detective Welch was just taking my statement,” I said, sounding so ridiculously out of breath it was downright embarrassing.
She snickered. “Is that what you kids are calling it these days?” She was going on sixty-five, but you’d never know it. With long buttery hair flowing down her back in stylish layers and plenty of Botox everywhere else, she was still hot. Believe me—she told me every day someone or other told her how incredibly young she looked or seemed in bed. Her heels clicking on the cement, she moseyed out in between us, studying us further.
Just a bundle of nerves and frustration, I stammered, “I really should finish my statement, inside.” Looking to Welch, I began walking away so he’d follow.
Brenda grabbed his arm, stopping him. “For future reference, the examining table is not that uncomfortable, even has straps.”
I rolled my eyes. TMI was Dr. Downey’s middle name. I walked down the hall faster than I ever had before. Dunkan kept up, entering the room just after I had. I sat behind my desk on purpose, so he couldn’t get close to me again.
“Where was I?” I asked, trying not to smile at him.
Welch smirked, his deep voice rumbling, “I’d love to pick up where we left off.”
I felt the same, I’d thought at first. The excitation zipped through me, dancing with his desire but was clearly different. He didn’t feel the same about me as I did him. He wanted me more. A crushing urgency lurked within him and unexpectedly terrified me.
“Ruiz,” he tried because I’d zoned out again, overwhelmed by all the emotions I supposed.
Playing it off like nothing had happened, I went on with my story, “Out on the balcony, I’d gotten a text from Brenda saying she’d be late because of a wreck on St. Peter’s Bridge. I hurried back in to get to it.”
“What time?” Welch seemed calmed down now, barely an emotion in him, almost like he’d forgotten about me.
I pulled out my cell to take a look at Brenda’s text even though I remembered. “10:30”
He motioned for my phone, so I handed it over. Scrolling through it, he asked, “So, he was just how you left him?”
“Yes, the dead man was still very dead so I proceeded to…” I paused. Thinking of undressing the dead guy made me thing of the detective naked, wonder about it anyhow.
“You’re sure he was dead. Did you take his pulse?”
“No,” I grumbled. Mac our technician had taken him in, taken him to x-ray before he’d gone home. “But, I know how dead he was, thank you.”
“Was he stiff?”
Oh, that made me think about Dunkan, too. Blushing, I cleared my throat. “Not yet.” I was sure the detective knew as much as I did about rigor mortis. I didn’t need to tell him the absence of it hours later didn’t mean a thing.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Dunkan asked, disbelieving I could be so adamant—like if he asked one more time, I’d waver.
Sure, I was new. I’d only worked here six months, but I was by no means naïve. “He had a pretty large hole in his chest and had lost a lot of blood. I’ve seen plenty of corpses. I may not have taken a pulse, but I know a dead man when I see one!”
“So, you’re insisting he was dead and then attacked you.”
“Yes!”
His voice was completely serious as he asked, “Are you suggesting he’s a vampire?”
I laughed a, “No.”
“A werewolf?” He wasn’t laughing, but I felt like he must’ve believed I was crazy.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” It sounded irrational, but I knew the man had been dead.
“He’d been pronounced at nine-thirty-eight p.m. by a paramedic, a Giles.” I opened up the chart on Mr. Doe to show him.
Welch, laying my phone on my desk in front of me, snatched up the file. He grabbed Brenda’s rolling chair and straddled it backwards, ever so sexy like before he rolled over beside me. His head down, he read my notes with our elbows touching. The air around me heated, being so close to him. My body remembered being pressed against his just moments ago and longed for the sensation to return. My lips felt dry as a dessert. I licked him tasting his stale coffee.
“You proceeded to…” He was asking me to continue my story.
I skipped the undressing part. “I was getting ready to take a sample when my recorder fell—I’d assumed. I bent to retrieve it, and he was alive again, on top of me.” Fear visited me all over again, something I didn’t want to feel. I trembled, and my throat tightened like I would cry. I hadn’t felt like that since I was a child, well, until six months ago.
He immediately stole my hand beside his, meaning to comfort me—I could sense it. He looked up. Not looking at my face, he removed the bandage on my neck. The fear still present, I recoiled at his touch. My neck ached despite the painkillers, a dull echo of how it’d felt last night when the man bit me.
“Be still.” His words were curt. Detective Welch all the sudden grew angry at whoever bit me, I could feel his rage like I’d never sensed anything before. Even so, his rough fingers tracing the bite lightly, somehow, soothing it. “He was alive when he did this, but won’t be much longer,” he threatened under his breath, a wrath brewing in him.
“You’ll catch him?” Certainly, he didn’t mean he’d kill him.
Abruptly, like something bit him on the ass again, he moved away from me to stand, leaving me to clumsily try to fix my bandage. His back to me, the detective became void of emotion once more.
I relaxed, swimming in only my own being for a moment until I remembered and busted out excitedly, “I took pictures.” I pointed proudly to the digital camera charging in the corner. The device was so old the battery was always dying.
“I’ll need your camera, your tape recorder too,” he told me as he paced.
“Okay.” I moved to retrieve them and handed them over quickly.
He pocketed them and seized my file too, placing it under his arm. “I’ll be back before you go home. Give you a ride.”
“You think I’ll need a ride home?” For the first time, I worried about walking out of here alone.
“I may have some news,” Welch answered in a distracted tone as he hurried off.
“Okay. I’ll be here,” I called down the hall after him. He’d left before I could tell him exactly when I got off work. There wasn’t a
n exact time, but I’d told the front desk, I’d be here until four a.m. I guess he already knew, being a detective and all. And why would I be in any danger?
Smiling, I remembered him grabbing my phone and scrolled through my phone contacts. Yes, the detective had entered his number under his first name, Dunkan.
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Sneak Peek:
Marked By Sight
By
Melissa A. Smith
“Just as each new dawn brings the sun,
One day soon she will come.
Come she will under a crescent moon,
As memory fades the time is now opportune.
Long hidden soon you will know,
Not as neighbor but as foe.
Surrounded by fire and consumed by flame,
One day soon you will hail her name.
Stop and take care and cast no stone,
Open your arms and welcome her home.
Just as each new day brings the light,
One day soon she will rule by right.”
-last vision of The Oracle Sallin
A New Beginning
Pain wrapping its fingers around her belly caused Marla to drop the platter she was carrying to the table. She gasped as warm fluid trickled down her thighs. Shocked by the timing, she sucked in a great lungful of air and squealed, “The baby! The baby comes!”
After many, many years of praying and hoping for a child, and believing herself barren, her wishes were finally granted.