She's No Faerie Princess

by Christine Warren

  Fiona peered closer at the exposed bottom of the rib cage and then glanced back at Annie. "You're sure nothing was missing?"

  The other woman blinked at her, looking surprised. "As sure as I can be. It's messy, but I really think it's all here."

  "What about the heart?"

  "The chest cavity is the biggest intact part here. You can see that nothing went in through the ribs or the sternum."

  "But what about something going in from below the ribs?"

  Annie blinked again and raised her eyebrows. "I didn't even think to check that."

  Hunkering down beside the corpse again, Annie pulled the sleeves of her already-spattered sweatshirt up with her teeth, bunching the fabric just above her elbows. Pressing one gloved hand against the body's chest for balance, she reached down to the space between the two pieces of torso with the other and guided her hand up through the rib cage, her brow furrowed in concentration.

  "It's like someone carved a tunnel in here," she muttered, finally stopping when the inside of her elbow bumped up against rib bone. Her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose and she blew at a strand of hair that flopped in front of her face. "She's right. It's not here. The heart is gone. But I don't get why anything strong enough to tear all the way through the body wouldn't just reach in from the front and grab it. It would be a lot more efficient."

  "Demons don't worry much about efficiency," Fiona sighed. She had really, really wanted to be wrong.

  The female Lupine blanched. "A demon? You think this was done by a demon?" Her eyes flew to the alpha, seeking reassurance.

  Graham nodded grimly. "It's possible. One was spotted in the city recently. We were hoping to be able to track it down before something like this happened."

  "But there hasn't been a demon attack around here in… forever," Annie protested. "How did it get here? And I thought demons were basically stupid and brutal. How could it possibly have figured out a way to make its kill look like an Other attack?"

  "Demons can only enter this world at the behest of a summoner," Fiona explained. "They have to be called. And once they've been called, they're bound to the summoner until they're released or banished. If a demon under the control of a summoner were ordered to kill someone before feeding, it would have to do exactly that, and splitting the body in half certainly did enough damage to qualify as demon fun time. Once the body was split, going after the heart from below was probably just easier."

  "Not that I wanted it to be an Other," Graham said, "but the fact that it isn't makes things a hell of a lot more complicated."

  "I don't know. Having one of our pack turn rogue during the middle of the negotiations would have been pretty messy, so maybe you should look on the bright side."

  Graham ignored Annie's suggestion and looked back at Fiona. "What would it take for you to be able to pick up a trail for us?"

  Fiona shrugged. "Not too much. The Fae are said to have an inherent connection to things demonic. It shouldn't take all that much energy for me to pick up on one, which I guess is why we won the Wars."

  "Shouldn't? You're not certain?"

  She made a frustrated face. "Like I said before, there hasn't been a demon sighting where I come from in a couple millennia. I'm working from what I've heard, not from personal experience, but I'm pretty sure that's more than you've got to work with."

  "So what do you need to do?"

  Fiona did a mental inventory and winced. "Well, I need to gather up some more energy. I've used everything I came from Faerie with, and I haven't been able to gather any since… since the last spell I cast."

  "And you can only get the energy by taking it from someone like Walker?"

  Oh, how Fiona wished Missy were there to give her mate another swift kick, this time a bit higher than the shin. "I don't take anything from someone like Walker. Fae don't steal energy from other folk; we take the energy that is manifest around us. The energy I got from kissing Mr. Grumpypants came from the kiss itself, not from him. It's fate's cruel joke that the attraction between us is the one energy source I seem to be able to tap into on this plane. I certainly didn't ask for it."

  Graham frowned. "So you're not feeding off him?"

  "Do I look like a vampire to you? Sheesh, are all werewolves so paranoid or is this just my lucky day?"

  Annie muffled a laugh. Walker just watched her, his expression brooding.

  "It's certainly not hers." Graham gestured to the body. "So if you can help us find out what killed her and where we can find it without hurting anyone else, you're going to do it." He turned to Walker. "Kiss her."

  "What?"

  "Kiss her. Now."

  "You've got to be kidding me!"

  The alpha growled. "Do I look like I'm in a joking mood, Walker? I can make it an order if you prefer."

  "Oh, please do," Fiona grumbled under her breath. "That would just do wonders for my ego."

  "I don't have time to kick your ass over this," Graham said, his eyes narrowed and seeming almost to glow in the darkness around them. "Not that it wouldn't give me a great deal of pleasure, but every second we waste fighting about this is a second colder that the trail is growing, and a second longer that whatever killed this girl has to kill someone else. So shut the hell up and kiss the goddamned princess."

  Fiona didn't have a chance to protest her amended title. With a muffled curse, Walker spun around, grabbed her by the arms, and yanked her into a furious, aggressive, bone-melting kiss that had her lighting up like Rockefeller Center at Christmastime.

  She felt as if she'd turned into a giant lightbulb, with her head glowing bright enough to illuminate all of Central Park. It staggered her every single time that one touch of this obnoxious, stubborn, narrow-minded werewolf's lips on hers could turn her entire world upside down. She came from a long line of sidhe, the royal race of Faerie, and every single drop of blood in her veins should have been as fickle as theirs. The magic she felt with Walker should have amused her fleetingly and then left her ready to move on to greener pastures and other lips, but the idea had her stomach doing that unpleasant little dance again. She didn't want anyone else to kiss her, didn't want anyone else to touch her, didn't want anyone else's taste clinging to her lips and filling her mouth with honey and coffee and warm, rich male.

  Damn him to the pit and back.

  When his tongue finally finished marking its territory inside her mouth and his lips finally lifted from hers, Fiona knew she was glowing like a radioactive isotope and wearing the expression of a three-year-old at bedtime. She didn't even bother to glare at Walker, just spun on her heels and stomped two steps closer to the body, hunkering down beside it to get a better look.

  It took a couple of minutes for her blood to cool from a boil to a simmer and for her to remember the simple revealing spell that would expose any traces of demon taint on the corpse. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and willed the energy from the kiss into the correct shape and brushed it delicately over the dead woman and the ground around her. Fiona figured this poor human had been through enough and deserved at the last to be handled with care.

  The indrawn breath and muttered curses around Fiona told her before she opened her eyes that the spell had worked. She looked up and bit back an oath of her own. The entire body crawled with the sickly green light of the demon taint. The wounds were the worst, seeming to writhe and heave with the remnants of the demon's energy. It had desecrated the woman and driven her soul so far from her body that not a shred of the person she had once been remained. She had become nothing more than hunks of meat glowing sickly in the darkness.

  Fiona shuddered in revulsion at the knowledge of what she needed to do. The idea of getting any closer to the demon's foul magic than she already had filled her mouth with bile, but she had no choice. They needed to know. Blowing out a slow, hissing breath, she quickly diverted some magic to shore up her inner shielding and reached out a hand to touch the contaminated flesh.

  She heard a low, strangled groan and wo
ndered vaguely if it came from her. The demon magic felt like slime and burned like acid. It flared at her touch, and for a few seconds Fiona could see a pattern of symbols burned into the corpse's skin. Swearing violently, she jerked her hand away and fell backward, landing inelegantly at Walker's feet.

  "What the hell was that?" he demanded, reaching down to haul her to her feet.

  "Demon marks. And an explanation for why Annie thought someone wanted to make this look like an Other kill."

  Graham growled. "That really was deliberate?"

  "Absolutely." Fiona looked around and found a stick about as thick as her finger and as long as her forearm. She turned to a bare patch of dirt and began to draw a series of lines and curves that looked like a kind of exotic and obscene alphabet.

  "Since I'm not drawing with blood, I can show you the symbols without actually casting the spell. There are five altogether. These," she pointed out the first two, "signify the demon's name. It won't be its full name, and maybe not even part of its real name, but it will be a designation set up by the summoner to use for spell work. Real demon names have power over them. It's how the summoners control them, so the real name is spoken out loud when the spell is cast, but when the sigils are written down, symbols are substituted in their place. There are thousands of naming sigils, and I'm not familiar with what these particular ones translate as. I'll have to do a little research on it. The third and fourth ones are the command. The third is a death sigil, meaning that's the third command—to kill."

  "And the fourth?"

  "It means mimicry and deception. The demon was supposed to make whoever found this body think that an Other had made the kill." Fiona raised her eyes to the alpha. "Whoever did this knows about the negotiations and wants to see them fail."

  "Shit," Graham swore.

  "What about the last symbol? You said there were five."

  Fiona looked back at the dirt instead of at Walker while she answered his question. "The last one is the signature of the summoner, but not the kind of signature you're thinking," she said before he could ask for a name. "It's not like it says, 'Bob Smith, Sorcerer, Chelsea.' It's a symbol, like a family seal. It doesn't have a name, just representative images. This one happens to depict power, death, fire, and air, which could mean absolutely anything about anybody."

  "So then you're saying we have nothing to go on?" Graham shoved a hand through his hair and stalked off a little way, his frustration glowing nearly as brightly as the demon magic.

  "No, I didn't say that. I'm not saying I know where to find the demon or its summoner right this very minute, but we do know more than we did half an hour ago, and we do have copies of the symbols. There are places I can look these up and get some more information. Even though the demon naming symbols are unique to each summoner, they do have to follow certain conventions in order to make them applicable enough that the demon has to obey. That ought to give us something."

  "Barely."

  Annie shrugged and peeled off her rubber gloves, turning them inside out as she did so. "It's better than the alternative, right?"

  "Sure, the way steamed Brussels sprouts are better than boiled." Graham gritted his teeth and hooked his fingers together behind his neck. "How much time will you need to trace the symbols?"

  Fiona winced. He had to ask. "I don't know. A couple of days, maybe. It depends on what sources I can find."

  His eyes flashed. "Find them fast. Walker will help if he can." He glared at the other Lupine as if daring him to argue. "Whatever problems you two have with each other, you'll just have to set them aside and do your jobs."

  Walker's own eyes flared fiery gold, but he only gave a curt nod.

  "Fine," Fiona said. She wasn't sure it would be, but she was sure that Graham didn't want to hear that.

  "Good. Walker, take her home. Both of you need to get some sleep. Annie, I need you to stay here with the body. I'll call Adam at the hospital and ask him to come straight here when his shift is over. He'll have the body brought to the morgue and do a proper autopsy. Maybe he can find something we missed."

  "It's worth a try. At least he's actually an M.D. In this case, that trumps my Ph.D. Both of them."

  Fiona glanced down when Walker's hand closed around her elbow.

  "Come on," he said gruffly. "We're going home."

  He didn't sound like he had to struggle to keep his hands from wrapping around her throat, and Fiona eyed him suspiciously. This didn't strike her as the werewolf she'd come to know and suspect. She opened her mouth to voice her suspicion, then decided not to look this particular gift wolf in the mouth.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 13

  The trip back to Walker's apartment passed nearly as quietly as it had the first time. When the front doors were locked securely behind them, he waved Fiona toward the stairs and followed her up to the living room. He could feel her curiosity. She didn't quite know what to make of his civility or his lack of hostility, but she seemed reluctant to test the waters and ask him. He was glad of that, because he really didn't want to have to explain himself. Not when the answer made him look like an even bigger jerk than she'd probably already labeled him. Because in the end, his mind hadn't changed as a result of her well-reasoned arguments or an ethical epiphany or even because the circumstances of being ordered to cooperate by his alpha made his attitude both unwieldy and vaguely ridiculous. His mind had changed because he couldn't get enough of the taste of her. That last kiss had been a revelation for him. That one hadn't taken him by surprise, and it hadn't been the princess in control. It had been his kiss from start to finish, and now that he'd taken it, all he could think about was taking more.

  At the top of the stairs, she stopped and turned on him. He was two steps behind her, but the height difference still put her just below his eye level. She didn't seem to notice, though, judging by her glare and the way she crossed her arms protectively over her chest, as if she could ward him off.

  "Okay, I've been a good little Fae all the way here, but I can't take it anymore. I want to know what in the blazes' names you're up to."

  Walker tore his eyes away from the swell of her breasts rising above her forearms and affected a look of wide-eyed innocence. "Who? Me?"

  Fiona didn't look like she was buying it. "Yes, you, Mr. Split Personality. The only times since we've met that you haven't been either yelling at me or glaring at me have been when I was out of ear- and eyeshot. This new restraint you seem to be practicing is making me uneasy."

  "You heard Graham," he said, shrugging and manfully resisting the temptation to lean forward and lick that little furrow that appeared between her eyebrows when she scowled at him. He'd noticed it before, but when had it become so enticing? "We need to work together. I figured that might be a little tough if we kept acting like we hated each other."

  "Hey, you were the one hating me, bub. I was just trying to take a little vacation and, failing that, to get back home in one piece. You're the one who had to go and get all aggressive about it."

  "What can I say? I'm Lupine. Aggressive is programmed into the DNA."

  Had that little flutter of pulse at the base of her throat always been there, begging for the stroke of his tongue? He felt his mouth begin to water.

  "You're right. It's not so much the aggressive I have a problem with. It's the bad tempered."

  "Right. Bad temper is bad."

  His powers of intelligent speech were melting rapidly away from him. All he could think about now was the taste of her mouth, the feel of her skin. The way her slim, naked body had pressed snugly up against his the first time they kissed…

  The fit of his jeans altered suddenly and he bit back a groan.

  "Thanks for clarifying that complex point I was trying to make," she drawled. "Now that we both realize you've been acting like a werewolf with a wounded paw, maybe we can work something out to make sure it doesn't happen again?"

  His hormones took that as a direct invitation and expressed their approval of the idea w
ith a surge of energy and a low, rumbling growl. "Okay."

  He was on her in one surging leap. Her feet swept out from under her as 250 pounds of excitable Lupine slipped free from a battered set of psychological fetters and took her to the nearest available flat surface, which happened to be a hardwood living-room floor. Walker thought he heard a squeak, but it barely registered above the roaring in his ears. Besides, he already had her mouth soundly beneath his, thus eliminating the possibility that she might make any sound other than the squeak. Though if he had his way, she'd be adding a few groans and whimpers to her repertoire real soon.

  She tasted even better than he remembered, sweet and spicy. Exotically floral, enticingly hot. His tongue swept in to gather the flavors, and he felt the top of his head threaten to lift off like a moon lander. Christ, how had he resisted her for so long? She tasted like heaven and felt like home, and he must have been out of his mind not to spend the last day and a half with her pinned between him and something solid. Going forward, he wouldn't make the same mistake again.

  His hands raced over her sleek curves, filling themselves with the warm, soft weight of her. He found himself wishing fiercely that he knew magic, so he could do that little trick of hers that had ticked him off before and just will their clothes away. Since he didn't have that kind of luck, he settled for grabbing hold of the collar of her shirt and turning it from a pullover to a buttonless button-down in two seconds flat. He felt as much as heard her indignant yelp, and he sure as hell felt the hands that fisted in his hair and yanked his head back, breaking their lip-lock and nearly giving him whiplash.

  "Just a damn minute," she said, doing a very creditable impersonation of his own snarl. "Are you the same jerk who all but accused me of rape like three times in the last thirty-six hours? Are you the one currently pinning me to the floor and ripping off my clothes?"

  Did she honestly expect him to understand words at this point? His overtaxed heart struggled to divert the flow of so much as a drop of blood north of his waistband, succeeding just enough for him to growl, "You can't tell?"