Wolves Don't Cry (Otherworld Crime Unit Book 2)

by Nova Archer

  Ever since they had met, Lyra could always sense his moods. If the forensic team was a family, Lyra would be his little sister. They never missed a chance to rib each other, but when it came down to it, he knew he could always count on her to be there for him.

  More cops were standing around as they moved through the rundown house. Jace hoped they hadn't contaminated the scene and that they were just there for a show. He hated when the cops traipsed through evidence without realizing what they were doing. It was a tough enough job collecting the primary evidence when they had to pick through all the irrelevant stuff left by clueless law enforcement personnel.

  The smell hit him like a sledgehammer in the face when he followed the rest of the team into what would've been the living room of the gutted house. Blood. Death. Despair. And something else that he found odd. Sulfur. It was faint, but it was there.

  Spotlights had been set up around the room in a triangle. All of light pointed in one direction, up, toward the center of the room. Jace heard Lyra's gasp and knew she had looked at the primary crime scene at the same time he had.

  The victim, a young woman, was suspended from the ceiling upside down by a rope wrapped around her ankles. Her slender arms hung lifeless, the tips of her long blond hair skimmed the wooden floor. Her throat had been slit. Magical symbols adorned her naked torso. No blood pooled on the floor beneath her. It had obviously been drained from her and taken away. Just like in their last case.

  Jace stepped in closer to the scene and stood next to Lyra. They were waiting to get the go ahead from Caine to examine the scene. The chief was talking to another man, a human. It was Captain Morales from the San Antonio crime lab. He had been Eve's boss when she worked for the humans.

  Behind him, stood a couple of uniformed cops. The stoic looks on their faces radiated a sense of rivalry and territoriality. Something Jace knew quite well.

  Caine shook Morales's hand. "Good to see you, Hector."

  "You too, Caine." He turned to Eve. Smiling, he shook her hand. "You look good, Eve. I wish it were under different circumstances, seeing you again."

  "I think we all do, Hector," she answered.

  Hector turned toward the crime scene. "Does this look the same?"

  Caine nodded. "Except for the elevation. Our guy siphoned the blood with rubber tubing for quicker results. Draining the blood this way would've taken a little longer. A couple of hours, I'd say."

  "Well, he would've had it. This neighborhood is mostly abandoned. A few residents live in the apartment complex across the street. But none that would speak up even if they did hear anything."

  "Any ID?" Caine asked.

  "No. Nothing on her. We'll run her prints at the lab."

  "How was she discovered?"

  Hector sighed. "Some young girl came in here to smoke up, must've seen the body and ran out screaming. A patrol car almost hit her, a block over, when she jumped out in front of it waving her arms and sobbing."

  "Where's the girl now?" Eve asked.

  "At the hospital. The patrolman said she went into shock."

  "I'll go to the hospital to see if she's talking," Eve suggested.

  Caine nodded. "Good idea."

  "Do you have someone that can take me, Hector?"

  Captain Morales nodded, and then glanced behind him to the female officer. "Officer Sanchez, take Eve with you to the hospital."

  Jace could hear the officer mumbling under her breath. It was in Spanish, but he didn't need to know the language to understand the meaning. He glanced over at the others to see if they could hear her. Caine's steely eyed gaze convinced Jace that he had heard her loud and clear.

  Before Eve could take two steps, Caine grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. He hugged her tight, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Jace knew he did it as a show of possession. Showing everyone in the room that if anything happened to Eve someone would pay dearly.

  It was a purely lycan thing to do. Jace had always wondered how much of him, if any, had rubbed off on Caine. Obviously, something had over the years.

  Eve followed the reluctant cop out of the room. Before she passed through the doorway, she looked back and nodded to Jace and Lyra. "Good luck."

  Lyra raised her hand to wave. Jace just nodded back, the sounds and smells swirling around him too intense to do much else. He wanted to get at the body. The urgency to do his job sent pulses like electricity through him.

  "Do we have a TOD?" Caine asked.

  Hector nodded. "The corner pronounced time of death to be between 9:00 p.m. and midnight."

  "Are you sure we're not stepping on your toes, here?"

  "Hey, this is way out of my league, Caine. The minute I saw her, I knew you had to come in on this. Don't worry about stepping on anything, as long as we get this one solved." Hector scratched his chin, a five o-clock shadow was starting to sprout. "The sheriff has given me some leeway. I've managed to quadrant off a section of the lab for your team. You'll have a couple of techs to do the grunt work, but you'll have plenty of privacy."

  "Thanks, Hector. I appreciate that."

  Hector nodded. "Also, one of the officers discovered a metal drum in the backyard. Looks like something was burned in there recently."

  "Okay. We'll start with the body and work our way out back."

  Caine turned and looked at Jace. He could sense Jace's impatience. Caine nodded. That was all the acknowledgement he needed to start moving. Setting his kit on the floor, Jace took out gloves and plastic shoe covers.

  Once he took a step forward, Lyra followed suit. She was outfitted in two seconds flat and went straight to the body.

  "Can we bring the body down, please?" Lyra asked.

  Already anticipating the request, one of the uniforms rolled a scaffold ladder toward the victim so he could lower her corpse to the ground.

  Jace started his evidence collection around the body, in a circle. Burnt black candles made this direction easy to follow as they were placed two feet from each other in seemingly perfect symmetry.

  Taking up his camera that had been around his neck, Jace snapped pictures of each candle as he walked around the scene. Sulfur came to his nose again. Maybe it was just the result of the matches used to light the candles. But for some reason, he didn't think so. Matches did have a certain sulphurous scent, but not like this. Not this strong.

  He glanced at Caine. "Do you smell that?"

  "The sulfur?"

  Jace nodded.

  "From matches, maybe?"

  "I don't know." Jace stepped back to his kit. "I wish we had something to collect the scent, an absorbent agent."

  "Your nose is good enough, Jace. I trust it."

  Once they had the corpse down, they moved it away from the actual crime scene and onto white sheeting they had placed on the floor a few feet away. Lyra took her pictures then raised her hands over the body and felt for a magical signature.

  While Lyra was doing that, Jace bagged the candles one by one. When he picked one up on the northeast side of the circle, he found something imprinted on the floor in wax. He fixed his flashlight on it. It was a partial shoe print.

  Setting a measuring card beside it, he snapped off a couple of pictures. "I got a shoe print."

  "Can you lift it?"

  Jace shook his head. "I'll have to cut out the floor and take it with us."

  Reaching into his kit, he took out a sharp pocket knife, opened it up with his thumb and cut a six-inch square around the wax imprint. He lifted out the thin plywood and slid it into a paper evidence bag, labeling and sealing it.

  "Good eyes, Jace," Caine said from his perch beside the head of their victim. He was busy inspecting the neck wound. "There's no evidence of bite marks. If this was a vampire's work, he wasn't thirsty." He poked at the neck with his finger. "These look like slash marks."

  Jace's head came up. "What?"

  "Take a look." Caine stood as Jace came around the body and crouched.

  His stomach flipped over as he inspected t
he deep slash in the victim's neck. It indeed looked like a claw mark and not a knife wound.

  He cursed. "This looks bad, Chief."

  "I've got a signature," Lyra said as she took a step away from the body and put her hands on her hips. "It's the same."

  "Are you sure?" Caine and Jace asked in unison.

  She nodded, and then rubbed at her nose with the back of her gloved hand. "I'm positive. I memorized that signature. The feel of it is the same."

  "But that's impossible," Jace remarked. "We got the guy remember? Mel Howard confessed to the murders and he's dead."

  She glared at Jace. "And I'm telling you it's the same."

  Caine raised his hand to stop the impending argument. "Okay. We'll file it as evidence and see what we get with the rest. There's an explanation and we'll find it."

  Nodding, Jace went back to searching the floor grid, but he couldn't shake the sensation of dread rushing over him like adrenaline. If it was the same magical signature then something was going on that none of them had faced before. Something even outside the Otherworlder realm. Which was not a comforting thought at all. If they were supposed to be the monsters, then what in hell had killed that girl?

  Bending down to bag a dark fiber, the hair on the back of Jace's neck rose to attention. A charged sensation skimmed the surface of his skin. He'd experienced feelings like this before, but only within the confines of Necropolis. And usually when he was around his lycan pack.

  He stood and waited for the sensation to pass, but it didn't. It seemed to intensify with every passing second. Was there a storm in the area? The sky had been clear when they drove into the city.

  Glancing around, Jace tried to determine where the sensation was radiating from. He looked at Lyra. Was she doing a spell? Is that what he was sensing, her magic? But when he watched her, he noticed that she was busy pulling fibers and whatnot from the mouth and nose of the victim, not incanting a spell.

  So if not magic, what?

  Captain Morales stepped into Jace's peripheral and cleared his throat. "When you're done and need to go back to the lab, I have your police escort here. She's on loan from another department." He glanced behind him. "This is Tala Channing."

  A lithe young woman stepped around Hector and nodded toward the team. Her generous green eyes flashed like emeralds in the glaring spotlights.

  Jace found he couldn't breathe.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Not prepared for the situation, Tala Channing watched in rapt fascination as the members of the Otherworld Crime Unit gathered around the lycan as he dropped to his knees. Was he having a heart attack?

  She had read up on lycan physiology, well, as much as she could find in the meager pickings of local libraries, and every text had claimed that lycans were physically superior and healthy. That they rarely ever suffered from sickness. They couldn't have heart attacks, could they?

  Jace Jericho certainly didn't look like a man that would suffer from heart problems. He had a powerful body. Even in the shadows of the house, Tala could tell he possessed a fine form. His t-shirt clung to his wide frame. His arms bulged with muscles, as did his legs even under the faded denim of his pants.

  Not that Tala had been staring at him. Her gaze had fixed on his for only a brief moment. It was just that he was very hard not to notice.

  The petite, dark haired woman, the witch on the tea, Tala assumed, put her hands on Jace's forehead and on the back of his neck and closed her eyes. Tala thought the touch looked very intimate, something a lover would do. Not that she cared. She didn't even know the lycan, let alone harbor any feelings toward him.

  But deep down inside, a tiny flare of jealousy ignited.

  "What's wrong Jace?" The vampire chief investigator asked.

  Jace shook his head. "I don't know. I feel strange."

  "Is it a spell, Lyra?" Caine asked the witch.

  Opening her eyes, she removed her hands. "No. I don't feel any conventional magic." Her gaze swept the room and locked onto Tala.

  Tala had the urge to back away. The witch's stare was penetrating. But what was she looking at her for? Tala hadn't done anything. She was merely following orders.

  Jace pushed to his feet and rubbed a hand over his face and into his hair. "I'm fine. Must be all the smells in here."

  "Gather all the evidence you collected and put it in your kit. You can take a look at the barrel in the backyard. That's probably where the perp burned her clothes. Then you can head back with Lyra to the lab and start processing with the lab techs Hector loaned us," Caine suggested.

  "I said I'm fine," Jace growled back.

  The hairs on Tala's arms rose with the lycan's words. His voice made her shiver and not in an entirely unpleasant manner. There was a certain power in him and it affected her. She supposed she should've expected it.

  "There's nothing more here to collect. I'll go back with the body." Caine clapped Jace on the shoulder then turned to go back to the victim. "I'll see you at the lab."

  Avoiding everyone's gaze, Jace retrieved his bagged evidence and shoved it in his kit. He marched past the crowd, who were trying not to look at him, toward the back door.

  Tala watched him leave. She could feel the anger wafting off him like steam from a scalding shower. It floated over her, making her skin prickle.

  She knew her assignment was going to be tough. As a transfer from another department, she expected a certain amount of razing. It didn't help matters that unflattering rumors about the reason for her transfer followed her like a bad smell. Being a woman also didn't help. However much integration police departments had gone through over the years, and the publicity surrounding equality, it was still a boys club.

  This babysitting assignment was just an example of the kind of thing she knew she would be subjected to. Tala was told to prepare for animosity and strange activities and mood swings. That the Otherworlders might be difficult to handle. Difficult seemed like such a tame word to describe Jace Jericho.

  Feral.

  That was the one word that popped into her head when she first saw him. His chiseled face had been stern in concentration and his dark brown hair looked windblown, unruly, as if he had just come back from a hard run. Wild and untamed, he had that look about him. As if nothing or no one could pacify him.

  Tala thought she had mentally prepared for this assignment. The minute after she was handed the order, she rushed out and did as much research she could on each of the members of the OCU. The vampire and the witch, she'd known wouldn't be problematic.

  It was the lycan that worried her.

  Tala snapped back to attention when the little witch approached, her eyes wide, and a small knowing smile on her face. Why did she get the feeling the woman knew something that she didn't?

  She looked Tala up and down, then stuck out her hand. "I'm Lyra Magice."

  Tala took it in hers. "Tala Channing."

  Lyra held on a little too long. Tala got the notion the witch was testing her for some reason. Tingles of something swept over her arm. After a long pause, Lyra squeezed her hand then let go.

  "Now that the niceties are over we can get to work." Lyra grabbed her kit and made her way through the living room and out into the hall toward the front door without another word to anyone.

  Flustered, Tala glanced around the room at the others. Everyone was staring at her. Some of the officers had smug smiles on their faces. She suspected they knew she'd been transferred from the narcotics division as a form of punishment. It didn't matter to them that there was no proof to the allegations being tossed around the department like wads of useless paper.

  Anger flowed over her and she turned her gaze from them, settling it on Caine. He was studying her with one perfect eyebrow raised.

  "Don't let Jace and Lyra rattle you. They're not nearly as scary as they seem."

  "Are you trying to say that their bark is much worse than their bite?"

  "Hell, no. I'd be lying then." He smiled, his fangs winking at her in jest.
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  Ignoring the urge to return his smile, Tala straightened her shoulders, raised her chin and walked out of the room following in the wake of her new charges.

  She knew she had her work cut out for her. The Otherworlders were obviously not going to make it easy. But she'd never backed down from a fight before and she wasn't about to start.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "You're okay, right?"

  Jace snarled at Lyra again as he prepared the piece of wax-imprinted wood for shoe-print scanning. This was the third time she'd ask him that question in the past hour, and he was tired of answering.

  "Would you quit asking me that?" He spun the wood around to get a better angle for the machine. "I said I'm fine."

  As she leaned over his shoulder, he could see her pert little nose scrunched up. She was thinking about something. "It's just that I've never seen you incapacitated before."

  Straightening, he reached over and pressed the switch on the scanning machine. "I wasn't incapacitated."

  The machine's metal arm with mounted laser swiveled around and passed over the square of wood that Jace had cut out of the floor of the crime scene. The infrared light was taking a picture of the black wax shoeprint. He hoped it would give them a lead. If not, at least it would give them the type of shoes the killer wore. Hiking boots, running shoes, or loafers could tell them something about who they were after.

  "Jace, you were on your knees trying to breathe." She snorted. "You were out of it, my friend."

  "Yeah, well, I'm good now," he told her without making eye contact. He didn't want her to see how on the edge he truly was.

  When he had exited the house and walked out into the dark of the early morning, he thought the sensation would abate. It had for a while. But the sight of the full moon cascading her glorious moonlight on him only ignited new sensations, a new itch.

  He had sifted through the ashes in the metal drum and found a swatch of denim, a partial zipper, and one half-charred red pump. No purse or ID to identify the victim, but maybe an idea of what she had worn the night she died. It would help build a picture of the murder. Just like all the other evidence.