Night Games

3

She bolted upright in bed when an air raid siren went off. For a second, she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming about being a nurse back in World War II. But she was clearly awake and the siren kept wailing. “What the fuck?”

Shoving her hair out of her face, she tried to figure out where the hell she was. A door flipped open, flooding the room with light. She flinched back from the brightness, throwing a hand up to deflect the glare.

“Ah, shit.” Jack jogged out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and snatched up his cell phone. “Laramie.”

It was all she could do not to drool, watching those muscles flex as he moved. He was freshly shaven, and she wanted to feel that smooth skin against hers. His dark hair was damp and disheveled, beads of water slipping down his flesh and clinging to his chest hair. She’d seen hundreds of gorgeous men in her life. Thousands, even. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d reacted this strongly to one of them.

It was delicious.

It made no sense, but she didn’t give a damn because it felt great. Last night had been a lot of fun, and that was something she didn’t have much of anymore. She grinned and let herself enjoy the view.

His blue eyes darkened as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Yeah. Okay. Got it. I’ll be there.”

Tapping the screen to end the call, he gave her a wary glance. She snorted. “I’m not going to freak. I’ve had work interrupt things before. You have to leave now?”

“Immediately, if not sooner.” He flashed a relieved smile, then bent and scribbled something in a small notebook on the nightstand. He tore off the sheet and handed it to her. “The security code that will lock the house up behind you. You don’t need to rush out. Feel free to sleep in, shower, grab some coffee before you go. I have a pot brewing in the kitchen. I’m really sorry about this.”

“You’re trusting me with your alarm code?” Her eyebrows arched, and she couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her voice.

His grin widened. “I’ll change it when I get home. If I’ve been robbed between now and then, I know where to find you for questioning.”

“True enough.” She lay back in bed and folded her hands behind her head. The blanket slipped so that her breasts were bared, but she didn’t bother to straighten it.

A low growl rumbled up from his chest, and he bent down to draw her nipple into his mouth. She choked on a breath, her torso arching under the sudden lash of pleasure.

“Jack!” She drove her fingers into his hair, twisting tight.

His hand closed over the other breast, the calluses on his fingers rasping against her sensitive flesh as he tweaked and twisted the tight crest. His tongue swirled around her nipple, then he sucked hard and bit down. She sent a pleasure spell streaking down his scalp, and he shuddered and released her breast.

“You’re a dangerous woman.” His gaze glittered with hard lust, his thumb still chafing her nipple. “I have to go. I don’t want to, but I have to.”

“I understand.” She did. She’d been called in before in the middle of sex, not just the morning after. That had been awkward. Yeah, that guy had never graced her bed again, more because he’d been an ass about it rather than his unwillingness to sleep with her.

Jack pinched her nipple, recapturing her attention. “Have dinner with me tonight. I want more of you.”

She thought about it for about a half second. This wasn’t supposed to be anything other than a one-nighter, but the chemistry was great and he’d made her laugh. Why not let this thing ride for a bit? Good sex was hard to find. She’d had enough bad sex to know.

“Sure. Give me your phone.” He handed it over with no hesitation. She punched her number into his cell, which set hers to ringing in her purse ... which was out in the living room somewhere. “There. Call me when you’re done and I’ll let you know if work hasn’t messed with my day too much.”

“Perfect.” He bent down to brush his mouth over hers, the kiss soft. He tasted like minty toothpaste and sexy male. Not a bad combination. Drawing back, he shook his head. “And here I had plans to get up and make some breakfast for us before going another couple of rounds.”

“Hold that thought for tonight. You can make me dinner.” Why bother going out when they both just wanted to get to the main event? Might as well get down to getting down.

“Do you like French toast? That’s about the only thing I can cook well.” His grin was self-deprecating as he shucked his towel and pulled on clothes.

She yawned and nodded, soaking in the sight of all those muscles before he covered them up. “Sounds good to me. I’m not picky.”

“I’ll see you later.” He kissed her lightly on his way out the door.

“Okay.” Her body hummed from the aftereffects of sex. She grinned and stretched before she sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed. Time to get up and get home. Despite his offer to sleep in, she didn’t care to stay here while he wasn’t.

Her cell phone went off, and she jogged into the living room to fish it out of her purse. She punched the button to answer, pressing it to her ear. “Yes, sir?”

“The FBI just called. Kingston’s got a crime scene he wants you to look over.” The captain’s voice was rusty from sleep, and he sounded grumpy as hell. Then again, he always sounded pissed off. “Something you worked on before, I take it. Go see what you can do.”

He rattled off an address, which she scrawled on a notepad Jack had on his coffee table. “I’ll be there in half an hour, sir.”

“Good,” he barked before he hung up.

She had no idea what case she’d worked on with Merek that he might need her help with. Her former partner could handle himself in any situation. But what was he doing at a crime scene on his wedding night? Curiosity got the best of her, which was one of the reasons she’d done well as a detective. She liked a good puzzle, a challenge.

Getting back into her skintight dress was a bitch, but she didn’t bother to zip it all the way. She hustled out to her car, grabbed the gym bag she always kept in her trunk—or at least since the first time a junkie suspect had thrown up on her—and jogged back into the house.

The bathroom was tidier than she would have guessed for a bachelor living alone, but she wasn’t about to question that bit of good fortune. She twisted the knob to turn on the water and spent a few blissful minutes under the hot spray while she soaped, lathered, and rinsed. Wrapping a towel around herself, she fished a toothbrush and comb out of her bag and made quick work of her teeth and hair. One of the things she loved about modern hairstyles was that she could wear it really short. Easy and low-maintenance. So much better than when women had had to keep it long and wear it coiffed.

On her way out the door, she grabbed a travel mug from the kitchen cabinet, filled it to the brim with the coffee Jack had left, and screwed on the lid. Within moments, she’d keyed in the security code to lock the doors behind her, and she was in her car, heading for the address she’d been given. Taking a swig of coffee, she sighed when the caffeine began to buzz through her system. She’d have liked a little more time to sit and enjoy it, but no such luck.

“Crime waits for no man. Or woman.”

The place was pristine. The living room was freshly dusted, the wood floors polished to a high gleam.

Usually there was an air of something not quite right about a crime scene, but this apartment? Was spotless. Nothing looked out of place.

Until Jack turned the corner into the hallway. There, the house turned into a gruesome mockery of the cleanliness he’d seen before. Here, the stench of blood assaulted his nostrils and he coughed. Broken pictures dangled from nails on the wall. A large round hole showed where something had been shoved through the drywall. If he were going to hazard a guess, he’d say it was someone’s head that got slammed through. A tooth had been knocked loose from someone’s mouth and lay in the middle of the gore-splattered carpet runner.

Whatever had happened here had been unmistakably brutal, with unspeakable rage behind it.

In the bedroom, he found he was right. Crime scene analysts swarmed the room, collecting evidence. Hairs, fibers, fingerprints. Every inch of the place would be gone over, using human technology and Magickal spells to decipher any clue that might tell them who ... or what ... had done this.

But Jack’s gaze skimmed over the other agents and went straight to the bed. A petite blond woman’s dead body lay sprawled facedown on the mattress, her pajamas soaked in her own blood. The damage in this room was even worse than in the hallway. She’d been shot twice, and that was just the start of her wounds. Twin puncture wounds scored the side of her neck, with dried crimson stains trailing down from the gaping holes.

Her face seemed locked in an expression of horror, her blank eyes open and staring.

One of her front teeth was gone, a bloodied socket in its place. Her lips were split and swollen, and huge bruises slashed over the pieces of skin he could see. The rest of her flesh was sickening in its ghostly paleness. A blackened mark was burned into one bare arm, and Jack knew the sign of dark, evil magic when he saw it.

“Welcome to the party.” A redheaded woman shot him a glance as she set down a kit to collect evidence and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. Tess Jones, the MCU’s new medical examiner. Also the maid of honor at the wedding the day before, though her finery had been exchanged for sensible pants, loafers, and a jacket emblazoned with FBI on the back.

She was probably one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, and she was smarter than she was pretty, which was saying something. Still, when she’d stood next to Selina in the wedding party, he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off of the slender elf.

“What happened?”

The redhead arched her eyebrows. “I just got here, but it looks like a vampire drained her. Completely.”

“Black magic.” He nodded to the mark he’d noticed.

“Yeah, I saw that.” Tess’s gloved hand motioned to it. “Usually the fanged races can’t cast spells very well, but it could just be the darkness of the Magickal who did this.”

“Magic can be funny that way.” And the vampire would have to be one dark SOB to leave that kind of mark behind without casting a spell. Jack tugged a pair of gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on. Stepping closer, he crouched down to get a better look at the body. The woman appeared to be in her midthirties, but age in Magickals could be deceiving.

Aside from the dark mark, the blisters down her arms and legs were obviously from one of the Magickal allergies. Werewolves reacted this way to silver, vampires to sunlight, witches to bronze, and Fae and elves to iron. The scorched, broken flesh over her body meant she’d been worked over pretty thoroughly. A few puncture marks indicated she might have been stabbed by the metal she was allergic to.

Her nails were broken and bloody, multiple bruises standing out on her too-pale skin. She’d put up one hell of a fight.

“Are we looking at sexual assault?” She wore clothes, but those could have been put on postmortem.

Tess took a breath. “I don’t think so, but I won’t have anything conclusive until I run some tests.”

“Luca said over the phone that the FBI was called in because she’s a federal official. A bureaucrat, not a field agent, though. He didn’t give me a name. What do we know about her?” He turned to look at one of the CSUs who was dusting for prints. The man nodded and silently handed over a wallet that had been sealed inside a plastic bag. Washington State driver’s license. Credentials that said she worked for the Bureau, but he’d never met her. “Mary Winston. Age thirty-three. Or so this ID says.”

“She’s not thirty-three, that I can tell you.” Tess scraped whatever skin cells there were out from under the victim’s fingernails. She might have clawed her attacker in the fight, which would give them some DNA to work with. “The Bureau database and the All-Magickal Council will have her real age and any other aliases they’ve issued her to cover her real identity from the mere mortals of the world.”

Jack cast her a wry glance. “Well, this mere mortal will run down her information with the FBI and the Council later.”

“I was a mere mortal not long ago.” The redhead flashed a small, tight grin that showed a hint of an extended werewolf canine.

“I know.” He refocused on the body decomposing before them. “What race of Magickal is she?”

Not one of the fanged races, he didn’t think. She would have healed too quickly to still be showing this amount of damage. Not an elf, because her ears didn’t have that subtle point to them. Since there were only five races of Magickals, that left witches and—

“Fae.” Luca stepped into the bedroom. “I’d guess Fae. That’s what her blood smells like to me.”

A palpable tension filled the room, as it always seemed to when Tess and Cavalli were in the same vicinity. On the one hand, Tess was the best coroner Jack had ever worked with, so he could see why Luca had insisted she be assigned to the Magickal side of the FBI rather than let her stay with the Normals. On the other hand, there was a certain level of masochism on his boss’s part that Jack didn’t even want to contemplate. As long as it didn’t affect their work—and both were too professional to let that happen—Jack tried to ignore it. The rest of the unit was doing the same, as far as he could tell.

He didn’t even want to think about the way Peyton had been holding her on the dance floor the night before.

Jack broke the heavy silence first. “This tells us two things. First, whoever did this knew her well enough to know she was a Magickal.” He lifted his fingers to tick off his points. “Second, he knew what kind of Magickal she was, because he used the metal she was allergic to.”

Tess looked away from the big vampire and met Jack’s gaze. “I can tell you he also used rounds made of the metal she was allergic to.” She indicated the flesh around the bullet holes. “See how it’s blackened at the edges with some blistering? Regular Magickal bullets wouldn’t do that. They have a shell casing that looks like a normal bullet. They’re explosive and armor-piercing rounds with fragments of all the allergen metals, as well as loaded with a sunbeam spell to fry the vampires when they explode. So Magickal ammunition wouldn’t have caused an allergic reaction until it burst inside of her. This bullet was made of iron.” The redhead shrugged. “That’s all I’ve got for you for now. I’ll be able to tell you more once I get her body back to my lab.”

“Good.” He rose to his feet and stepped aside. “Let me get out of your way so you can work.”

“Appreciate it, thanks.” Tess dug through her kit and turned away, her mind already on the task at hand. “I’ll let you know if I find anything worth mentioning. Check back with me later this afternoon.”

“Thanks.” He jerked his chin to indicate Cavalli follow him out into the living room.

Faint amusement showed on the vampire’s face, but other than a last glance at Tess, he did as Jack wanted. “Afraid I’ll distract her?”

“If by ‘distract’ you mean ‘irritate, annoy, and/or piss off,’ then, yes, that’s what I’m afraid of.” Jack gave him a pointed look, which only seemed to amuse him more.

“Fair enough.” Luca nodded, his face falling in to more somber lines. “I brought Kingston in first to read the scene, and he’s just finishing up.”

Disbelief wound through Jack. His boss was kidding, right? “Merek is on his honeymoon.”

“Not for another couple of hours, he’s not.” Luca rolled his shoulders in an expressive shrug.

The man was a machine, that was all Jack could think. Even for a vampire, that was cold-blooded. He shook his head. “That’s fucked up.”

“That’s the job.” Not an ounce of remorse showed on his boss’s face. “It’s not as if I’m having him cancel anything. He’ll make his flight.”

“Chloe might kill you if you dicked with her honeymoon. If she didn’t, her aunt definitely would.” He might not know either woman that well personally, but they were Standish witches. Enough said.

Cavalli snorted, but he didn’t argue the point. “It’s your case when Kingston leaves, so I’d suggest getting everything you can from his reading before he goes.” Cocking his wrist, he looked at his Rolex. “I have another case to check in on. One that’s going to have the media crawling all over it. I would imagine there’s a press conference in my very near future.”

“Have fun with that.” Jack folded his arms over his chest. “What makes the case a media magnet?” People died every day, and it might make the paper, but it hardly called for a press conference. Or involvement from the FBI. Most murders fell under the jurisdiction of the police.

“That Karsen actor guy was murdered at a sex club last night. Naked and doing some things that most humans find a little disturbing. The police asked us to step in and provide them with a little extra manpower considering the media frenzy shit storm that’s coming.”

“You going to be okay out there? The sun’s bright today.” The Pacific Northwest was probably one of the more hospitable environments for vampires on the planet. The amount of fog and cloud cover they had annually made it more likely vamps could go out during the day. Today was not one of those days.

“My car is in the garage here, and the club has underground parking.” Luca shrugged and didn’t mention the heavily tinted windows on his vehicle. “I’ll do the press conference indoors.” He nodded toward a door off the living room. “And here’s Kingston.”

The door swung open, and Luca flinched as the light flooded in from the backyard. He took a quick step back when a shaft of sunshine hit his shoes. Peyton, the werewolf agent Jack had seen with Tess the night before, stepped in. His cool gaze took in Luca’s movements, but he said nothing, which was his normal operating procedure. He nodded and moved aside for Merek.

The warlock’s face was pale, his mouth pinched. Jack arched his eyebrows. “As trite as it sounds, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Merek grimaced. “The ghost of Christmas future, maybe.”

That sobered Jack up, and he pulled out a notebook to write down anything the other man might have to say about the situation. Merek’s precognition was the most powerful anyone had ever heard of, and Jack had quickly learned to pay attention when the man spoke about his visions. “You saw another victim coming?”

“Not exactly.” His smile was nothing short of dour. “I did see a few interesting things about our guy, but not much.”

Surprising. Kingston was usually spot-on and clear when he had a vision. This was the first time Jack had ever heard him say he wasn’t certain about the details. He wasn’t sure what to make of that, but he filed that piece of information away for examination later. It might be important to their case, whether he knew it yet or not.

“I need to go.” Luca checked his watch again. “I’ve called in Grayson, as Merek requested. We’ll have her for as long as we need her, or so your former captain assured me. He was most accommodating.”

If anything, Kingston looked even grimmer. “Good. She needs to be here.”

“Grayson? Detective Selina Grayson? As in, Merek’s old partner?” As in, the elf Jack had spent the night screwing like a mink in heat? The reminder sent a wave of lust rolling through his body. He’d been actively not thinking about her since the moment he’d left her, and that had only been made possible by the knowledge that he’d have her in his bed again tonight.

“The one and only.” Luca turned for the door that led to the garage. “She should arrive within a few minutes. Her house isn’t that far from here.”

Neither was Jack’s, thankfully, since she wasn’t at her place right now.

Possibilities nagged at Selina the entire drive over to the address the captain had given her. The FBI wanting to see her was not how she liked to start her day. Law enforcement agencies more or less played well together, but generally speaking, she liked batting for her own team and having everyone else stay out of her way.

Then again, how often did anyone ask her what she wanted? In this job, she went where she was told, but since it gave her something constructive to do with her old age and let her bust bad guys for a living, she’d take it. A century ago, this career path hadn’t even been an option for a woman. She sipped from the cup of coffee she’d swiped from Jack’s house. It had either been shower and steal his coffee, or not shower and stop at Starbucks on the way.

Reeking of sex when there were werewolves in the vicinity was not something she was willing to do. She had no shame in her sex life, but there was no need to advertise. Especially when many of these people knew the scent of the man she’d been shagging.

Pulling up to the curb behind a long line of police vehicles, she draped her badge from a chain around her neck and stepped out to survey the crowd that gathered outside the yellow caution tape. Nothing out of the ordinary besides the Normal gawkers, but the police and /or FBI would have a few telepaths listening in on human thoughts to see if anyone had seen something they shouldn’t. Tweaking Normal memories was standard operating procedure in cases like this—it kept everyone safe.

A uniformed officer with the Seattle PD recognized her and held up the caution tape for her to pass under. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem, Detective.” He grinned at her, rolling his eyes. “The Feds have swooped in and taken over already.”

“I know. They called me in to assist.” She shrugged, not returning the smile. She’d found that offering too much familiarity at work caused problems in the male-dominated world of law enforcement. After the cracks everyone had made about her dress last night, she definitely wasn’t thawing out anytime soon.

She met Merek outside the door of a neat little Victorian cottage. He did not look happy to see her. She arched her eyebrows at him.

“You rang, dear?”

“Shut up.” Merek snorted and rubbed a hand down his face. His blond hair was mussed and his gray eyes bloodshot. “This one reminds me of something you described once. From back when you first became a cop. Looks like the same M.O.”

She sipped her coffee, considered offering him some, but then rejected that thought. She might like Merek more than any other partner she’d worked with, but this was coffee. A girl had to have her priorities. “For a man who’s supposed to be enjoying his wedding night, you look wrecked.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” He gestured to the house. “I don’t want you here.”

“Why?” She walked around him and headed inside, following the trail of cops to a bedroom. The hallway was a bloody mess, so she figured whatever had taken place in the bedroom wasn’t going to be pretty. Tess was beside the bed, collecting evidence. She bent to pick something up, blocking Selina’s view.

When the redhead shifted out of the way, Selina got a good look at the body, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. It was like taking a hammer blow to the chest. Her heart stopped, and her lungs seized. Blood, death, destruction. She swayed on her feet and had to grab the doorjamb to remain upright. Not because she’d never seen anything this gruesome before, but because she’d seen this before. Memories swamped her, overlaying the picture in front of her. Only it wasn’t some nameless victim, it was Bess. The younger cousin whom Selina had helped raise, who had danced with so much boundless joy at her wedding, who had grown up to become her confidante, her closest friend.

Selina’s stomach revolted, and for a moment, she was certain she was going to vomit. Acid bile burned its way up her throat, tears stung her eyes, and her fingers tightened on the door frame, her nails scoring the wood. Oh, gods. Oh. Gods.

Bess’s killer was back. It had been decades since she’d been murdered, and now he was back.

“You know why I don’t want you here,” Merek growled behind her.

His words slapped her back to reality, and a frosty numbness began to harden within her. It was almost a relief. At least it was familiar. She’d felt this numbness, this nothing, since Bess had died. Since she’d failed to catch the killer. That still had the power to rip open a hole in her soul. Her cousin’s murderer had never been caught. It had been her case, and she had failed when it meant the most.

So, yeah, she knew why Merek didn’t want her here, and he also knew why she had to be here. For Bess. Selina glanced at her former partner. He didn’t want her here because his visions had been predicting this for quite some time. This was going to be the case that killed her. Her very long life was going to hit its inevitable end. He hadn’t known specific details, just that she would die on the job. Soon. And it would be a bloody, gory exit for her.

“Yeah, New Orleans. The serial killer who got away from me thirty years ago. It’s funny how things come full circle.” She huffed out a small laugh, even as icy fingers gripped her heart. The same iciness that had frozen her since she’d seen her baby cousin sprawled across a bed, tortured by iron, drained of all blood, and marked by black magic.

“You don’t have to get involved.” Merek crossed his arms, looking big and rough and intimidating.

She cut him the kind of glance reserved for simpletons. “And let the bastard get away, knowing I could have done something this time? No. You know I have to be involved. This is me. I don’t walk away, and I sure as hell don’t back down.”

Not once in four hundred plus years. It had gotten her into a lot of trouble before, too, and she still didn’t back down. She figured at this point in her life, she was too damn old to go changing habits now. And even if she wanted to—this evil bloodsucker had killed Bess. No. There was no walking away from this.

He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t like this.”

“You don’t have to like it, Kingston. It is what it is.” She’d had a nagging feeling in the back of her mind for over a year now. Huge change was coming, looming over her like some creeping, insidious shadow. The end of life as she knew it. All of it would be over. She’d heard that older Magickals could often sense when the finish line drew near, and this was it. She’d come to accept it, even if Merek hadn’t. Then again, the control freak in him didn’t like that he couldn’t save everyone. He’d get over it eventually. There were some things that could be controlled, and others not so much. Death was not one of those things. It had come for Bess far too soon.

Selina sighed, shaking her head at him. “If one of us shouldn’t be here, it’s you. You’re supposed to be leaving on your honeymoon. Don’t let this hold you back.”

“Cavalli wanted me to get a read on this before I skipped town, so I came by. All my precognition showed me when I got here was you.” He swallowed hard. “Dead.”

A chill went though her at that one simple word. She’d known it, but it was one thing to see a live bomb, and a whole different thing to be holding the bomb in her hands. It hit her once again.

Boom.

Here it was. This was it. The case that would end all cases. Also the case that had stolen the last person she had ever loved, the last person in her family who’d given a damn about her. Now they were all gone, whether they loved her or loathed her. Some lines had flourished over the centuries, but not the Graysons. Selina was the last, and there would be no more after her. If she could give her cousin’s afterlife a little peace before she went, she’d take it and be grateful for the chance to get some justice for all this bastard’s victims.

Including herself, it seemed.

She cleared her throat, casting about for something else to talk about. “Chloe is a very understanding woman for letting the FBI interrupt her wedding night.”

He grinned, his face relaxing for the first time since she’d arrived. “I’ll make it up to her later.”

“You do that. Now tell me what you know.”