His own heart rate quickened at the once-again realization of what he’d done and he felt weak in the knees. She was a werewolf now. He had turned her.
My God, he thought. I never imagined…. Suddenly, he felt overwhelmed with fondness for this precious woman beneath him, this priceless, rare creature who was everything he had ever wanted, and who was everything his people needed. He slowly pulled out of her, which drew a moan of protest from her parted lips; her brow drew into a delicate “V”.
He smiled. In a moment, he had re-buttoned his jeans. It was the only disrobing he’d bothered with before he couldn’t wait any longer and had to be inside of her. His smile didn’t waver as he gently rolled her onto her side and lay down behind her, pulling her smooth, naked form up against his chest to spoon her.
He noticed the inside of her right arm then, and its lack of a blue mark. He glanced at his own left hand; his mark was gone as well. They were longer needed.
Her hair smelled like lavender and felt like silk against his cheek. He gently kissed the side of her neck, just above the marks he’d left. And then he pulled her covers over them both, not even bothering to remove his boots.
He was too satisfied. Too content.
Nothing mattered now but laying here and holding the woman he loved.
And hoping that she would grow to love him back.
Chapter Sixteen: Cold Case
It was the sound of his cell phone beeping that drew Daniel out of his deep, comfortable slumber. He raised his head and peeked over Lily’s still sleeping form. His phone was resting on the side table against the opposite wall. He wanted to ignore it, but he knew who it was from by the ring tone. This would be too important.
With a deep sigh of regret, Daniel placed another gentle kiss on his mate’s cheek and snuck out from beneath the covers. He picked up the phone, muted it, and with one last longing glance at Lily, he left the room, closing the door gently behind him.
Once out in the hall, he realized that Tabitha and James were not home; they’d most likely gone out long ago. He popped the cell open, noting the ungodly hour: 4:25 a.m. He pressed “talk” and listened.
“Chief, I’m afraid there’s been another one.” It was detective Knight’s voice. He sounded strange. It took Daniel a moment to recognize that tone, and when he did, the warmth he’d been wrapped so deliciously in began to chill and drop away.
“Who was it, Aiden?”
Knight took a long time to answer. “I’m sorry, Chief. You need to come see for yourself.”
With that Daniel’s heart sank. There could be only two reasons that the detective would hesitate in filling Daniel in on the murder victim’s identity. One – it was family. Or, two – it was a friend.
He thought of Tabitha, and then shook his head. No. She was with James Valentine and he was very strong. He would protect her. But his voice said, “It’s not Tabitha –”
Knight cut him off. “No, Chief.” The detective quickly gave him the address and hung up. Daniel dialed Tabitha’s number. It went to voice mail.
He hung up again and peered over his shoulder at the closed door that led to his sleeping mate beyond. He took a deep breath and sighed, pocketing his phone. Leaving Lily at this point in time was just about the last thing he wanted to do. She needed him now. He’d just turned her; she would wake up a different person and she would feel that difference. She might have questions. It was the most basic thing in the world for him to want to hold her, to comfort her, to help her through this transition.
Quite suddenly, for the first time in fifteen years, Daniel hated his job. He wondered why he’d ever wanted to go into it in the first place.
With great effort, he forced himself to find a piece of paper and a pen and he left Lily a note. He would return as soon as he possibly could. He only hoped that it wouldn’t be as long as he feared it might be.
As it was, the Mayor and his family were dead and their killer was loose. The Mayor had been a good friend to Daniel and to the Kane family, and Daniel had yet to mourn his death, much less track down his killer. Now this….
If this new murder was committed by the same person, then they not only had a killer on their hands – they had a serial killer on their hands. One was worlds worse than the other. And one involved the Feds. As it was, they already wanted in on the case since it involved the killing of a man in political office. They were chomping at the bit and Daniel had a feeling that his city was going to be overrun by men in cheap suits and plastic dress shoes before the week was out.
With the stealth befitting of his kind, Daniel left the house, locking the door behind him. He mounted his motorcycle and donned his helmet just to set a good example; he was the Chief of Police. Then he started up the bike and pulled out of the lot.
Well, that’ll wake her for sure, he thought, with a bemused shake of his head as he hit the blacktop and twisted the throttle. At least I left a note.
He was at the address given to him by his detective within five minutes. Out front, a carnival of blue, white and red lights flashed hari-kari, slicing the early morning darkness into tell-tale, ominous pieces. The world would know that something had gone wrong here.
Yellow tape had already been stretched around the fence in the front yard. Daniel drew the bike alongside another squad car and shut it down. He pulled off his helmet. Instantly, his blue eyes began to glow. He had to force his fangs back into his gums. Nausea roiled in his stomach. No… It couldn’t be.
He recognized the stench of death at once, and beneath it, as one sensed what was worse than the worst, Daniel caught the scent of family. Had Knight lied?
Daniel was off of his bike and moving through the crowd with determined speed. When he was spotted by the members of his pack, they approached him quickly as if to surround and protect him. And to protect everyone else from him.
Detective Knight was the first by his side. “Chief, I’m sorry. But you need to reign yourself in.” Aiden Knight gestured smoothly to the glow in Daniel’s eyes, and Daniel stopped in his tracks. With a hard, shaky breath, he concentrated on forcing down the terror and bile rising in his throat, attempting for all he was worth to get himself under control. When he finally felt the wolf in him retreat and found the breath to speak, it was through a growl that he barely suppressed. “Who, Aiden…”
“Your uncle,” Knight told him, plainly.
Major Jordan Stark moved ahead a little and stood in the doorway of the house as if to block his boss’s entrance. “I want to warn you, Chief. It’s worse than you think,” Stark said.
That, Daniel had already figured out. It wasn’t just his uncle. As he’d approached the unfamiliar house, the scents around him had grown stronger and separated. There was the blood that he now knew was his uncle’s blood. But there was other blood as well. Daniel recognized it as somehow more than human. As far as Daniel knew, there was only one kind of creature that was somehow more than human and yet not a werewolf . A Dormant.
“Christ, Jordan,” he said, his voice cracking the slightest bit. “Get out of the way.” Daniel looked at his friend beseechingly.
Beside him, Lieutenant Michael Angel nodded at Stark, and the two exchanged ready-or-not looks. Daniel knew that they figured he was going to lose his shit. He wasn’t so sure they were wrong.
Jordan moved to the side. Daniel steeled his nerves, as he ritualistically did every time he entered the scene of a homicide. Then he stepped into the lit entryway beyond.
Already, there was blood. There was blood and there were, as of yet, no bodies. Daniel followed the garish, red trail through the living room, down the hall, and into the bedroom at the end. There was a queen-sized bed in this room and, atop it, two bodies.
William Kane had been shot. This was apparent only because there were at least a dozen bullet-sized holes in the front of his shirt. That wasn’t what had killed him, of course. He had also been beheaded.
A single bullet however, had been more than enough to kill his mate, who lay a few f
eet away from his body, atop the blood-drenched mattress. Even in death, she was beautiful. Her long, chestnut colored hair spilled over the side of the bed and soaked up the werewolf’s blood as if it were thirsty for it. Daniel could see, even from where he was standing, that she’d been shot through the heart. One bullet, point-blank.
Just as the Mayor and his family had been killed.
Daniel’s gaze flitted from her lovely face, which appeared for all the world to be in the quiet repose of sleep, to the beheaded body of his uncle. And then to his head, which lay on the floor a few feet from the bed.
William Kane had been a fairly young man, by werewolf standards. He’d been ten years younger than his brother, Daniel’s father, and due to the way that werewolves aged, though he was forty-five years old, he appeared only a few years older than Daniel.
Daniel was more grateful than he would have admitted that his uncle’s face was turned away from him at that moment. His blue-black hair was cut short, unlike Daniel’s, and the tell-tale tattoo of a Grumman Goose on the back of his neck marked him for who he was. He’d always loved planes, loved flying. He’d made a living out of it.
Daniel was beyond feeling at that moment. A strange sort of numbness was climbing up his legs and spreading across his belly. At the same time, his heart sank into his stomach and his fingers went numb. And through it all, his blood boiled. It roiled and churned, hot like acid. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.
He’d found his mate, Daniel thought, absently. He was claiming her, changing her when this happened.
William Kane had been lucky enough to find the woman he loved, the woman who was destined to spend a werewolf forever with him and even bear his children. It was what every werewolf desired more than anything else in the world. And he had found her seconds too late. Someone had taken this rare and precious gift from him at the final hour.
That killer had known full well just what William Kane really was. The beheading was evidence enough or that.
Beside Daniel, detective Knight leaned in close. “Wound in the Dormant matches the wounds in the Mayor’s family,” he said, softly. “The bullet was carved out of the crown molding; same make. Glock nine millimeter.”
A thousand thoughts chased each other through Daniel’s fevered brain at that moment. However, two of them were stronger than the others, as if written in bold and all-caps, as they floated willy-nilly before his mind’s eye. Someone in Baton Rouge was killing people who were close to Daniel. And that person knew that he was a werewolf.
“Lieutenant, where are Jennings and Mayfield?” he asked.
Michael Angel, who was still standing by his side, pulled his smart phone out of his pocket. As he did, he replied, “It’s Jennings’ day off, sir. But Mayfield is on traffic.” He waited, his phone ready as if knowing his Chief would have him make a call.
“Get Mayfield to Tabitha’s house right away. Have him shadow Lily,” Daniel said. He didn’t have to tell his men that the murders had become personal. They were well aware of it already.
As Angel made the call, Daniel pulled his own cell out of his pocket and dialed a number. Lily didn’t answer. He left her a message, wondering all the while where her cell phone even was. He didn’t remember it being on her when Valentine had pulled her out of Cole’s territory. She’d been through a lot in the last few days and, in all probability, the phone had been lost somewhere along the way. He hung up when he’d finished the message and then dialed Tabitha again. She still didn’t answer. He left her a message, mentally cursing women in general, and hung up.
“Mayfield is on his way, Chief,” Angel told him, hanging up and pocketing his phone. “I also called Jonathan. He said he’d head over to your sister’s place as well, just in case.”
Daniel thanked him. Then the lieutenant turned toward the other men in the room and joined the forensics team. It would be his job to make certain nothing untoward wound up in the coroner’s office – nothing that would give away who and what they were.
Stark nodded once to Daniel and joined Angel, leaving Daniel standing with Knight.
“You gonna hold up?” Knight asked him, turning to face him completely.
Daniel eyed his friend for a silent moment. There was no correct answer to that question, of course. But Daniel nodded anyway, clapped Knight once on the shoulder, and then turned and left the house, not looking back.
* * * *
Lily rolled over in the bed and instantly felt the emptiness where Daniel had been the last time she’d rolled over. Her eyes flew open and she sat up.
He was gone.
She blinked, her brow furrowing. She looked down at herself and the covers. She was still naked and the sheets were wrinkled. She blinked as memories came rushing back to her.
Then she raised her fingers and brushed the sides of her neck. The wounds were obvious to the touch and still tender. But, as she felt them, she also felt her lips curl into a smile.
She took a deep, cleansing breath and sank back down onto the bed, wrapping her long legs around the blankets with the languid grace of a sated cat. “Daniel Kane, you’d better have a damned good reason for leaving my bed,” she muttered quietly, still smiling.
After a few luxuriously lazy moments in the bed, she stretched again and got up. She needed a shower. She could feel a stickiness between her legs and she wanted to clean the wounds on her neck.
She made her way to the guest closet. Luckily, she’d stashed a few changes of her own clothes in here long ago, so it was no problem to pick out an ensemble and take it with her to the bathroom.
Without reservation, she opened the door and walked, still completely unclothed, into the hallway beyond. For some reason, she simply knew that she was alone in the house. She heard no one else in there. No breathing. No heartbeats.
At that thought, she paused, stopping in her tracks.
No heartbeats? I can tell that there are no heartbeats.
She listened. She could hear the kids playing in the back yard across the street. They were talking with each other. No, they were whispering, and yet, she could hear them.
She could hear a man watering his lawn, using his fingers to spray the water from the nozzle of the hose. She recognized that method of watering and knew it was Mr. Broden, five houses down.
She could hear a humming sound, like the buzz of electricity. It ticked. Ticked again. And then switched and a higher-pitched buzzing starting up where the other had stopped. She knew, without having to check, that it was a traffic light. She’d heard them up close. She knew what they sounded like. But the nearest traffic light was a block away.
“Oh my God,” she muttered. She could hear everything.
And she could smell things, too. Someone in the neighborhood had put their trash out a day early. Tabitha’s neighbor was falling off of her non-smoking wagon. Tabitha’s other neighbor was burning scented candles. Some animal nearby had just given birth; she could actually smell the placenta. And the cherry blossoms a few houses down were ripe and in bloom.
She could even smell Daniel. On her own skin.
She flushed hot at the thought and a small part of her didn’t want to shower – didn’t want to wash him off. She felt somehow sultry. Like an animal in heat.
What was happening to her? Instinctively, she once more brought her fingers up to the marks on her neck. “He changed me,” she said, aloud. As if saying it out loud gave the verity of it real substance, she reeled from the shock and found herself against the wall, using it to help her remain upright.
“I’m a werewolf.” With that, she blinked a few times, pushed against the wall to straighten herself, and continued to walk, almost on auto-pilot, down the hall. She felt sort of numb, as if stuck in a kind of dream that she could never wake from. It had only been a few days ago that she’d even learned werewolves actually existed.
And now she was one! It would be enough to rattle anyone’s nerves.
At the same time, though she was overwhelmed by the un
realistic turn that real life had taken, she couldn’t deny she also felt… good. Like, really good. She felt stronger. She felt as if she could punch a hole through the wall if she wanted to. Or rip a door off of its hinges.
Lily rounded the corner of the hallway and walked into the living room. She would never admit this out loud, but the truth was, she also felt beautiful; the way a super model might feel. Or Wonder Woman. She felt sexy in that special way that usually only came in dreams, where no man could resist your charms and every guy wanted to ask you to dance.
She smiled a slow smile and shook her head. A note on the coffee table caught her attention. It was written in a man’s hand, printed in all-caps. It was definitely not the curly cursive that Lily had long associated with Tabitha’s writing.
Lily strode to the table and picked up the note, moving all of her clothes into one arm as she did so. She read the words slowly, a frown furrowing her brow by the time she was finished. She read it again.
Instantly, she felt sad. But not for herself. For Daniel.
“That’s quite a life you’ve made for yourself, Chief,” she spoke softly. Any kind of job that yanked you heartlessly, out of your lover’s bed and threw you directly into a murder scene was one hell of a vocation. She felt very sorry for him.
She was also worried. Was it always going to be like this? Baton Rouge wasn’t Chicago or Detroit or New York City, but it wasn’t Hanalei, Hawaii, either. It had its fair share of crime and a good amount of that was violent.
With a heart-felt sigh, Lily dropped the note back on the table and headed toward the bathroom and its shower.
Thirty minutes later, she was clean and dressed and she’d combed her long, gold hair out with her fingers. She pulled the toothbrush out of the drawer where she’d left it while she’d been visiting Tabitha and squeezed out a good-sized dollop of paste onto its bristles. Then she used her free hand to wipe the fog off of the mirror.