He tried to force her to open her eyes, but she kept them sealed shut, running blindly for the bathroom. She waited until she knew she’d passed Jake to open them and find the door, slamming it closed behind her before Jake could do something stupid like step in front of her.
Jake called out to her as she fumbled with the lock. “Are you all right? What’s wrong with you?”
“Shut up!” she snapped, quickly turning on the faucet and letting the gushing water drown him out.
Satisfied that Jake was as safe as she could make him for the moment, Nyla stood before the bathroom mirror, her hands gripping the edge of the sink, and lowered her shield just enough to allow Demarcus enough access to see through her eyes.
She didn’t have to feel his presence to know when he accomplished this. She looked at her reflection in the mirror and saw him the moment he was there. Her eyes were the same shape, the same shade of purple, but Demarcus had turned them bitter and cold, full of his evil.
“Stay away,” she ordered him, her voice low enough that Jake couldn’t hear from the other side of the bathroom door, but it was still filled with the ferocity of a mighty roar. “You can’t have him, and you can’t have me.”
As she glared into her own eyes, she could feel his anger, his determination to destroy her, and she used it against him.
She borrowed his darkness, his deep hatred, and combined it with her fear, her anger, and her determination to protect the man she loved. She rolled those emotions into a ball and laced them with her own power, both vampiric and therian. She used the produced energy from those emotions to cast Demarcus out of her mind with one last, parting remark delivered through clenched teeth, “Go. Back. To. Hell.”
Nyla opened her eyes, and the first thing she realized was she was on the bathroom floor. The second thing she realized, as she looked up into Jake’s concerned gaze, was that Demarcus was truly gone from her mind.
Jake was speaking to her, asking her what happened, but she couldn’t think straight enough to formulate an answer.
He scooped her into his arms, and that’s when she noticed he’d kicked in the door to get to her. Then she became aware of the fact she was in his arms, and she immediately began to struggle for release.
“Stop it, crazy woman,” Jake commanded, fighting against her while she kicked and squirmed, trying to get out of his hold. He managed to hold on to her until he reached the bed and dropped her none-too-gently on top of it. “There. Now, what the hell is wrong with you?”
That was a good question. She’d just been squirming in Jake’s arms, and now she was on his bed, in his motel room. If the Heat had still been raging inside her, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. The fact that she wasn’t ripping off his clothes told her the Heat was gone. No, not gone. It was never truly gone. It was inside her somewhere, waiting, but, thankfully, for the moment she wasn’t under its control.
She felt Jake’s hand on her forehead and quickly jerked away, afraid his touch might reignite the flame. The moment she looked back into his eyes, she regretted the reflexive action. He almost looked hurt.
“I’m not going to do anything to you, Nyla. I was just checking your temperature. You’re running a fever.”
“How can you tell that by touching my forehead?”
“It’s either that or you’re The Human Torch.” He must have recognized the confusion on her face. “One of the characters from The Fantastic Four. His whole body can turn to flame.”
Nyla blinked and nodded slowly, realizing her eyes were burning. She was running a temperature. She was used to running a fever while in Heat, but the Heat wasn’t burning through her now. It had to be an aftereffect of forcing Demarcus out of her mind.
“I’m fine, Porter. I must have a little bug or something.”
“I’ll call room service for some aspirin. You should eat something too. You’re not going to be much help to me if I have to keep scooping you up off the floor.”
The statement brought her head up, and her gaze locked with his. “You mean that? We hunt together. No more fighting?”
“I can’t guarantee the part about no fighting. I hear I’m a real pain in the ass.” He grabbed the room service menu off the nightstand and sat next to her. “What do you want to eat?”
“Steak.” She didn’t need to think about it. Apparently the power she’d used to cast out Demarcus had pushed down the Heat, but the power and strength she’d used up in doing so had awakened another hunger. It was just starting to make its presence known.
Jake picked up the phone to call room service after setting the menu aside, apparently having decided what he wanted. “Well-done?” he asked.
“Bloody.”
He wrinkled his nose. “That’s gross.”
“Then don’t watch me eat it.”
The look of disgust on his face indicated he wouldn’t. He placed their orders, including aspirin with the food, and placed the receiver back in its cradle.
“What’s in the box?” Nyla saw her gun and knives, still in the sheaths, sitting on the table across the room. In front of them lay a medium-sized box.
“I know a guy who makes some pretty high-tech gear. I lost my last vamp gun, so he rushed an order to make me a new one.” Jake rose from the bed and strolled across the room to the table.
“A vamp gun?”
“It uses special UV bullets,” he explained, sitting down to log on to his laptop. “My brother is supposed to send me pictures of the first victim, assuming he can weasel them out of someone in Louisville’s homicide department. Ah, whaddaya know. He did it.”
Jake picked up the laptop and brought it with him to the bed. “Are you sure you’re up for this?” he asked, seeming to study her a little too intently for comfort. “You were out cold for a moment in the bathroom. If you do that on a hunt you could put us both in jeopardy.”
“I’ll be fine, Porter. I have to help you catch this guy and end this thing. It’s important to me.”
“I know,” he said, his frustrated expression stating that he recognized her determination. “But why is finding the other Dunn twin so important to you?”
Nyla held his gaze for a long minute, as she searched for an answer. Finally, she realized that the best lie would be the truth. “They nearly killed someone close to me.” She wasn’t lying. She was referring to his brother, Jonah. In the sixteen years she’d been with Jake, she’d gotten to know and care for Jonah too. Besides, she wasn’t about to tell Jake that a little voice in her head was telling her he was in danger. He’d decide for sure she was nuts.
Jake nodded, seeming to understand her reasoning, which came as no surprise. After all, it was his revenge for his friend Bobby that had set him on this monster hunting path. “Why do you need my help?”
“You found them before I did. You had at least some part in taking out one of them. I’d be an idiot for not joining forces with you.”
He leaned back against the headboard and seemed to think about that. “The vampires killed Carter Dunn. Actually, they didn’t kill him. They destroyed him.”
“Is there a difference?” Nyla didn’t have to fake her curiosity. She hadn’t actually entered the Dunn residence with Jake and the vampires, so she had no idea what had gone down that night.
“Apparently so. Seta, the female vamp you saw with me that night, fought against him with magic, and I believe she would have just killed him if she could. It was Christian, the pastor, who took care of him in the end.”
“He’s the pastor who brought you there?”
“Yeah,” he said, and something akin to fear, but not quite as strong, washed over his face for a second. “He just prayed. Nothing special, no holy water flinging or spiritual seizures. He just prayed and poof—Carter Dunn was destroyed.”
“What do you mean by destroyed?”
“
It was like he blew up, not just his body, but what was in it. His charred body was left behind. Whatever was in it completely disintegrated in this blinding light.”
“You’re talking about the demon that possessed him?”
“Yeah . . . or his soul or something. Everything just exploded in the light.” The deep frown on his face suggested he was reliving that night in his mind, but before she could comment, he gave a sharp shake of his head and returned his attention to her. “Anyway, my brother, who’s a detective by the way, sent me all the intel he could gather.”
Jake clicked on the email waiting to be read, but before he could read it, there was a knock on the door followed by an announcement that room service had arrived. “I’ll grab that.”
Nyla admired his backside as he rose from the bed, heading for the door, but remembering that the Heat could rise again at any time, she quickly looked away. She decided to focus on business, and she started to review the e-mail Jonah had sent, downloading the attached files, which contained pictures of the first victim.
Sure, she was about to eat, and bloody meat at that, but she had panther in her blood. She could stomach the sight of blood and rigor mortis and still manage to hold down her dinner.
She viewed the pictures while Jake took care of the food. “Come on and eat, Nyla, before you pass out again.”
“Uh, Jake, you need to see this picture.”
“You’re looking at those now? Before you eat a bloody slab of meat? Damn, woman, you’re cold.”
She let the comment go as she stared into the victim’s eyes, eyes a shade of amber no normal human would ever achieve. She swallowed hard when she saw the claw-like nails still protruding from the young waitress’s fingers.
“Jake, forget the food for a second. I think the first victim was a shifter.”
Chapter Seven
“THAT SADISTIC BASTARD,” Jake bit out while pacing the floor.
“Maybe the nails are fake,” Nyla offered. “The eye color could be the result of special contacts.”
“Does it look fake to you?”
“No,” Nyla conceded, moving from the bed to the table. They were still discussing the girl, but the smell of bloody bovine was calling to her. “However, a true shifter looks human in death. The claws should have drawn back in once she died.”
Jake turned toward her the exact moment she plunged a red-tinged chunk of meat into her mouth. She watched him visibly fight the urge to gag while she savored the bloody juices sliding over her tongue.
“Damn, Nyla. You could have warned me you were going to do that.”
“It’s my dinner, Jake. What did you think I was going to do with it, play a couple rounds of canasta?”
He shook his head before taking a seat across from her, carefully avoiding looking at her plate. It made Nyla grin. He picked up his chicken breast, looked it over for a moment, then set it back down, opting for a French fry instead.
“You slice up and behead vampires on a regular basis, but you can’t look at pictures of dead people before you eat meat or watch someone else eat rare steak. It’s almost cute.”
“Shut up,” he said irritably. “Let’s stay on the subject.”
“Fine. If the victim was a were-something, why didn’t her claws retract upon death?”
“Maybe they couldn’t.”
“Explain that.”
“What do you know about Carter Dunn’s laboratory?” Jake asked, daring a glance at her.
“Unfortunately, not much,” she answered, which was true. She’d traveled with Jake to Baltimore, but she’d been hit with the bloodlust once they arrived, a case so bad it was unbearable, even in cat form. She’d thought Jake was just going to meet up with Jonah to discuss some possible vampires in town, so she’d headed out to find a donor. By the time she found Jake later that night, he was hog-tied over Christian’s shoulders. The windows and doors to the house had been sealed up so tight with spells after they’d gone inside that she hadn’t been able to find a crack to mist through, so she’d had to wait outside, praying he made it back out alive. “I know that Carter Dunn was behind the murders in Baltimore and somehow managed to completely drain his victims of blood.”
“He had a lab in his basement,” Jake said as he continued to eat his food, “and he liked to perform experiments. There was a vampire chained to the wall of that lab. He’d been there for months. Alfred Dunn had a personal vendetta against him.”
“Alfred Dunn was Curtis and Carter’s great-grandfather, correct?”
“So you’ve researched the family?”
“Of course.” Nyla finished off her last bit of steak, letting the bloody juices sit on her tongue a moment before swallowing. “I know the twins’ grandfather was murdered, and they were fathered by the man who raped their mother.”
“Their grandfather, Patrick, was killed by a vampire named Eron, the same vamp they had pinned to a wall. Alfred Dunn knew Eron had killed his son, so he spent most of his life searching for him in hopes of killing him. He eventually made a pact with the devil, and because of that pact, his own granddaughter was raped by a demon, and he and his son were reincarnated as Curtis and Carter Dunn.”
Nyla leaned back in her chair, resisting the urge to lick the pinkish juice from her plate, and pretended to mull over the information she’d just been given. She already knew the reincarnation part, thanks to her superior eavesdropping skills—and the fact that people talked so openly around cats.
“This confirms my theory that the twins are demons.”
“Carter, definitely. Curtis seemed to be struggling.”
“Struggling how?”
“When Aria Michaels, whom Carter had kidnapped as his next victim, was chained up in his lab, his brother Curtis said something about being two souls fighting.”
“So he has a good side and an evil side battling inside him?”
“Something like that.” Finished with his meal, he pushed his plate away and handed Nyla the packet of aspirin she’d overlooked. “Don’t forget to take these. That fever needs to come down.”
“Thanks.” She opened the packet and downed two pills with the help of the bottled water Jake had ordered for her. Being a shifter, they wouldn’t help, but they wouldn’t hurt her either. “It seems as though the evil side of Curtis is winning since these murders have started back up.”
“It would appear that way.”
“Something in your tone says you aren’t convinced that’s what’s happening.”
Jake shrugged as if to say what he believed wasn’t important.
“Tell me what you think.”
Jake seemed to ponder the question for a moment, then nodded, dedicating himself to the task. “I don’t think these were normal demon possessions, as in cases where demons temporarily control a person. I think Carter Dunn had no soul, but was instead a real live demon encased in a human shell.”
Nyla sat back, considering. “And Curtis?”
“From what he told Aria while she was captured, it seems that something happened when he was reincarnated. The demon Alfred Dunn became in Hell was reborn into a human body . . . but a new soul somehow made its way into that body, too.”
“Two beings in one body? Alfred, the demon, and Curtis . . . the newborn soul.”
“Yes.” Jake flexed his fist. “But I’ll show no mercy to Curtis Dunn. He was in that body, and he did nothing while women were murdered, and while my brother was beaten nearly to death.”
“So that’s why this is personal for you.”
“Yes, and it’s why Curtis got away. My brother had been beaten badly and was hanging on a wall when I got there. I was too focused on rescuing him and the woman bleeding to death on a lab table, as well as the fight between Carter and the vamps, to pay attention to Curtis. While all of the good guys were preoccupied, he got a
way.”
“I see, but what has this got to do with the shifter murdered here in Louisville? You said maybe her claws couldn’t change back to normal.”
“Right, because of the experiments Carter performed on the vampire.”
“Carter is dead. We’re after Curtis.”
“They’re identical twins, so Carter probably wasn’t the only one handy with a chemistry set. They kept Eron alive because they were working on a serum to give them immortality without having to become vampires.”
Nyla sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “I get it. You think Curtis is experimenting on shifters now.”
“Yes. Maybe he did something to her system before killing her, something which would prevent her claws from retracting, hoping to attract the attention of shifter hunters.”
“He left fang holes again, too.”
“Dunn would love nothing more than to see the vampire race wiped out. Any time he can expose them he will take that opportunity. He’s trying to kill two monsters with one stone now.”
Nyla let the remark go, although it cut her deeply. It emphasized that no matter what she did, she’d always be a monster to Jake, could never belong to him in the way she wanted. She needed to accept it, secure his safety, and move on. The question was, could she move on without him? Or would she be condemned to follow him around until the day he died?
She ignored the questions, knowing that only time would tell, and asked, “So, did you find out anything useful about the victim while you were schmoozing the waitress at The Crimson Rose?”
“Did you find out anything while you were cuddling up to the bartender?” he shot back.
Nyla was taken back by the sharpness of his tone, but even more so by the glint of anger she saw in his eyes.
“I had to do something while you were picking up a hottie. One of us had to get information.”
“Did you?”
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