“You fucking guy,” I growled, stepping into the few feet separating us. With a right hook, I landed my fist on his good cheek. He stumbled back, reaching for the spot I’d just assaulted and glared at me.
I glanced down at my shaking hand—sore from the impact—and spotted the talons that were starting to protrude from the tips of my fingers, the skin around them thickening and covering with scales. But it was my razor-sharp vision and the hiss coming from my throat that told me I was about to be born into the dragon, and I liked it. For the first time since I knew what I was, I felt myself trapped somewhere between Katie and the beast, like I couldn’t decide which one to be. It had always been me or the dragon, but tonight it felt like there was no separation between us. The dragon was just another limb being controlled by my brain. I was different tonight.
“In,” I whispered, ordering the beast back inside. And you know what? It listened. My talons began to recede and draw back inside the soft pale skin around my fingers. The scales vanished as quickly as they’d appeared, and the burning in my eyes lessened as the serpent green faded back to blue.
“Well, that’s just fucking great,” he scoffed, turning to walk back to the bar. “A fucking shifter.”
My head snapped up in disbelief. “What did you just say?”
He turned back around and glared at me with contempt. “You shifter chicks are nothing but drama. I kind of like my balls intact, though, so I’m just gonna leave.”
By the time I came back to earth and processed what he’d just said, I heard his bike start up. He was halfway down the block by the time I came back around to the entrance. The owners of the other two bikes came through the front door and noticed their missing comrade.
“What did you do to the poor guy, tattoo girl?” the lanky blond asked, recognizing me from the shop. “Now we have to go chase him down before he does something stupid.” He was bleeding from his hairline but appeared relatively sober for a guy who’d just participated in a nasty pub brawl.
I looked them both in the eyes but didn’t care to engage them in conversation. Tipsy bikers mixed with pissed-off women usually ended up with someone getting their feelings hurt. And besides, what happened behind that building was no one’s business. I just hoped Jackson felt the same way and knew how to keep his mouth shut.
Fiona was reorienting a few overturned chairs when I walked inside. Johnnie—cook and mediator of brawls—was having a come-to-Jesus with one of the drunk guys slumped in a chair next to the pool table. Disheveled with a few cuts and welts that would turn black and blue by morning, the other guilty participants were already calling it a night, leaving only me and the half-comatose guy in the chair.
“What the hell was that all about?” I asked Fiona when she came around the bar and started pouring me a glass of Talisker.
She set it down in front of me. “On the house. Compensation for pain and suffering for that knot on the back of your head. Please don’t sue my granddaddy.”
“I’ve had worse done to me,” I said. “So, MacPherson’s is a rowdy biker bar now?”
“They didn’t start it.” She flicked her head toward the guy being counseled by Johnnie. “Einstein over there thought it might be a good idea to piss off a bunch of bikers three times his size. Kept calling them Rapunzels.”
“I guess he got what was coming to him,” I said, feeling oddly protective of my new clients.
“Mike’s just trashed. Decent guy, but he can’t hold his liquor. He’ll be in here Saturday night apologizing left and right. And then he’ll get the bill for the damage.” She grinned and set a bowl of peanuts on the bar. “In Jackson’s defense, he did warn Mike half a dozen times to lay the fuck off.”
Johnnie called across the room. “I’m heading out for a few minutes, Fiona. I need to get Mike home before he gets any foolish ideas about getting behind the wheel. Can you handle the place for a half hour?” He lifted the very drunk and bruised Mike out of the chair and headed for the door.
“A pub with a designated driver,” I commented. “You are a pillar to your community, Fiona.”
She grinned and waved Johnnie off with his lump of half-dead weight under his arm. “Mike is his cousin. Can’t have your kin driving drunk.”
I agreed and then got back to our discussion. “You know Jackson?”
“A little. They’ve been in here a few times over the past couple of weeks. Drove down from Atlanta about a month ago.” She put down the bar rag and did that boob leaning thing she’d mastered. “Why?” she grinned, sticking that red straw in her mouth again. “Do you know Jackson?”
“Did you notice that fresh ink on his arm?”
Her brow raised. “Your work?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Fiona bent down to grab something from under the bar and I found myself staring into the tattoo on the top of her head, the one of the Horned God.
“Fiona,” I casually asked, “have you ever heard of Blackthorn Grove?”
She stood back up and eyed me carefully before answering my question with another question. “What do you know about Blackthorn Grove?”
It was obvious she’d heard of it. Why else would she react in such a suspicious way? For various reasons, I chose not to mention the Crossroads Society. “Nothing. That’s why I asked. I met one of their priestesses the other day and I was curious.”
“Really,” she said, diving back under the bar. “Which one?”
Which one?
“Emmaline—” I suddenly realized I didn’t know her last name. Fin never mentioned it when he introduced her to me. “I don’t know her last name.”
Fiona shrugged. “I know who she is.”
“Would it be out of line if I asked you to come home with me?” someone purred in my ear, grazing a pair of soft lips over my lobe.
I swiveled to my right and looked at Christopher. “You have awful timing, but I’m so glad you’re here.” We gazed at each other for a minute and I decided not to play the game tonight. I was too worked up after the events of the evening, and all I wanted to do was lose myself in him before Jackson Hunter had a chance to fill my head again. Jackson and I needed to have a conversation about what he saw and subsequently said to me in the rear parking lot, but right now there was nothing I could do about it. “I’m ready,” I said with a double entendre. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Fiona glanced at Christopher and then back at me. “You two have fun now.”
Christopher Sullivan was one of those neat freaks who couldn’t stand to see a dirty dish sitting in the sink or a stack of books that weren’t squarely aligned on the coffee table. Women always said men like that made great husbands, but I kind of liked my men a little less fixated on perfection. I mean, if I misplaced a magazine would it send him off the deep end? What would a lazy Sunday afternoon lying on the couch with ice cream bowls and empty cups scattered around the room do to him?
I glanced at the newspaper on the edge of the entry table and the plastic sleeve it was delivered in crumbed on the floor. Before I could tease him about living dangerously, he grabbed me around the waist and pushed me against the wall, rattling the picture that was hanging to the left of my head. He kissed me deeply, and Jackson Hunter was no more. His fingers found the hem of my skirt and worked it higher as he ground his hips against mine.
“Christopher,” I managed to say around his hungry mouth, “slow down.”
I was all for abandoning thoughts and unleashing our pent-up sexual desire, but pacing ourselves had always been part of the game. Christopher was an expert at foreplay. He knew exactly what a girl needed, to the point of making me question just how many he’d slept with to get him to his level of expertise.
He pulled away and took a step back, his breath rapid with his brown eyes fixed on mine in a thoughtful way. “Too aggressive?” A faint grin edged up one side of his face as he cocked his head, a sharp cracking sound coming from his neck as he snapped it upright again. “Wine?”
“Got any sc
otch?”
“Anything for you, baby.” He ran his thumb over the curve of my chin and peered into my eyes like he couldn’t wait to devour me. “Neat or with ice?”
I huffed at the question. “Really, Christopher? Ice?” I’d never taken my scotch with anything other than a drop of water. Ice was sacrilege, and he knew it.
As he headed for the kitchen to grab the drinks I studied him, trying to figure out if it was a change in the way he styled his hair tonight or if he’d changed his cologne. Maybe it was just his eagerness to get down to business. It didn’t take much to get Christopher going, but he was the one who usually had to be encouraged to speed it up—a girl’s dream.
I sat on the sofa and looked around his impressive but sterile house. Everything in it was modern and new, mostly metal and glass, with only the leather and fabrics of the furniture to soften it up a bit. My place was full of eclectic things I’d collected from flea markets and garage sales. I liked my stuff nice and old, to have a history. My house was a little cluttered but clean, despite the dust on my blinds and boxes of old books that didn’t fit on my packed shelves. The thought of having a real relationship with someone like Christopher was unrealistic, a recipe for a nightly argument. And don’t get me started about his allergies to anything with fur.
My cat had seniority.
A glass appeared in front of my face as he reached over me from behind the sofa. “Thank you, Mr. Sullivan.”
“You’re welcome, Miss Bishop.”
He sat on the sofa next to me minus his own glass. Christopher liked to drink. I wouldn’t call him an alcoholic, but on our game nights he always had a glass in his hand. I think the buzz opened him up a little more and allowed him to be what he couldn’t be in the halls of justice where he wore a mask of civility.
“Not thirsty tonight?” I asked, noticing his intense stare and a slight twitch in his right eye.
Without answering, he put his hand on my shoulder and moved it up the side of my neck, stroking the hollow between my clavicle bones with his thumb. His other hand landed on my thigh and quickly moved up my skirt. “Finish your drink,” he ordered, his sternness all part of the game. I complied and polished off the scotch, relaxing from the smoky heat it created down the back of my throat. Taking my hand, he led me toward the kitchen.
“The kitchen,” I said. “That’s a new one.”
He turned around and lifted me off the ground, moving me onto the kitchen island, shoving my skirt up to my hips in the process. He wedged my thighs open and pressed into me as far as the granite countertop would allow, gripping my breast aggressively with one hand while the other jabbed between my legs.
“Jesus, Chris, take it easy.” Suddenly it came to me, the difference about him tonight. The eyes staring back at me were brown, but Christopher’s eyes were blue.
I shoved him but he barely budged. “Stop it, Christopher. You’re hurting me!”
Ignoring my protests, he buried his face in my neck and pulled his hand away from my breast, circling it around to my back. His other hand kept working deeper inside of me until his probing turned painful. I screamed and fought harder, but he was too strong. Suddenly both of his hands were on my shirt, tearing at the neckline until it was split down the center. He gripped me around the back of my ribcage and pulled me tighter against him, running his tongue and mouth over the skin above my right breast. And then I felt his teeth sink in, pulling at my flesh, sucking.
The counter trembled like a small earthquake was cracking the foundation of the house. My eyes burned and I could feel my skin start to split, making way for what was fighting to come out of me. My hands were bound behind my back with one of his, but I could feel the tables turning as the talons of the beast broke through my fingertips and ripped through his constricting hand as if it were made of soft butter. It was like watching a movie through the eyes of the dragon as I took hold of Christopher’s arms and began to pull. A growl came from his mouth, his teeth still buried in my flesh as I yanked his arms away, ripping them from his torso.
A glistening string of saliva mixed with blood stretched between us when he pulled his mouth away from my broken skin and leaned back to look at my face. “I wasn’t going to kill you,” he said with a shocked looked in his eyes. “But I couldn’t resist.”
The horror of what was happening hit me in the gut. I was caught somewhere between the human and the beast, my repulsion dominated by a more powerful surge of excitement, triggering the urge to vomit and flick my tongue at his face at the same time.
I glanced at his limbs gripped in my claws and let them fall to the floor. He fell back against the kitchen wall, his mouth smeared with blood while his eyes tracked back and forth across my face. He laughed in a short burst, and then his mouth froze in a grimace as his skin started to shrink. Christopher was shriveling before my eyes.
“Katie,” he whimpered, cocking his head in the direction of one of his severed arms, his expression locked in shock while he bled out on the kitchen floor.
I looked away as Christopher’s eyes turned back to blue and pleaded with me. But it was too late. Mercifully, his eyes went dead as the spirit finished sucking the life out of him, then slipped from his body and floated up in an incorporeal mist that snaked across the ceiling and then began to disappear.
My vision blurred for a moment and then cleared as the dragon receded, leaving me to deal with the pain and guilt of watching Christopher take his last breath. A wave of grief washed over me, and then panic set in. I stumbled across the room, relieved that the blinds were closed. Then I found my purse and pulled out my cell phone to call Fin Cooper.
13
I nearly jumped out of my skin when Fin knocked on the glass patio door with two men wearing jumpsuits and gloves. When I opened it, Fin took one look at my swollen eyes and released a shuddering breath. An hour had passed, allowing more than enough time for me to have a meltdown over what had happened. But my pragmatic side kicked in as I unlocked the door and motioned them in.
Fin glanced at the body. “I take it this was your doing, Miss Bishop?” He showed no repulsion or shock from the sight of the shriveled remains sprawled on the kitchen floor.
I nodded. “He attacked me. The dragon—”
He raised his hand to hush me. I’d changed into a T-shirt from Christopher’s drawer, which only made me feel worse because the cotton still smelled like him under the scent of laundry detergent. “Self-defense,” he said. “Unfortunately, the courts won’t see it that way, seeing how the man has no arms or insides left.”
“Who are these men?” I asked, watching them haul a large trunk through the door. “Are they planning to put him inside of that?”
“They’re the cleaners, Miss Bishop. They’ll be handling the body.” He shook his head and headed for the kitchen. “It’s best you don’t know the details.” After rummaging through one of the drawers, he pulled out a metal rod—a knife sharpener—and walked over to the shriveled body that resembled a deflated blow-up doll. Carefully, he lifted it on one side. “Gentlemen, turn him over.” The two men wearing gloves flipped the body to exposed Christopher’s back. Fin used the rod to move the shirt out of the way and exposed what he was looking for.
“My God!” I gasped, recognizing the faint outline of the tattoo I’d placed on Victor Tuse’s back, and confirming what I already knew.
“Looks like the spirit found himself that new host.” He stood back up and dropped the metal rod into the opened trunk and looked at me questioningly. “Miss Bishop, what is this man to you? Which leads to my next question: Why are you here?”
“We were friends. Christopher and I . . .”
“Had a romantic relationship?” he asked, finishing what I was having trouble saying.
I corrected him. “I wouldn’t call it romance.”
“If I may be blunt, Miss Bishop, and I believe under the circumstances bluntness is warranted. You and Mr. Sullivan were engaged in a purely sexual relationship?”
With a n
od, I confirmed his statement. “How do you know his name? I didn’t give it to you over the phone.”
“Property records. Rule number one when cleaning up a murder scene—know whose house you’re walking into. You just killed yourself an assistant DA for Chatham County. This little mess is gonna take some serious cleaning to keep you out of jail, Miss Bishop.”
I nearly broke down again when he said the words murder and jail. If the police connected me to the crime, I was going to prison, which sounded a lot worse than jail. I’d probably get the death penalty because of the brutal nature of the crime. But then again, what sane person manages to deplete a body of its internal organs by sucking it dry? Maybe my defense team could argue insanity.
“Miss Bishop? Miss Bishop?” Fin repeated, interrupting my distracted thoughts. “Did you hear what I just asked you?”
“Sorry. What?”
“I asked if anyone saw you with Mr. Sullivan tonight?”
The nail had just been hammered into my coffin. Christopher showed up at MacPherson’s after the place cleared out, and after Johnnie left to take his cousin home, but Fiona knew exactly who I left with.
“By the look on your face, I take it there were witnesses that saw you with him tonight?” he asked. “Where’s your car?”
“Parked behind MacPherson’s Pub. The bartender—” As soon as I said it, I feared for what he might do to protect his golden member of the Crossroads Society. I was the key to helping them find the rogue spirit. They needed me, and I had a feeling they’d go to extreme lengths to make sure I stayed out of jail.
“Fiona MacPherson?” he asked.
“She’s a friend, Fin. I’ll turn myself in before I let you hurt her.”
“Don’t you worry about Fiona. Nobody will be laying a hand on a MacPherson in this town.” He refused to expand on that, just offering me his word that no harm would come to her. “Now I need you to tell me exactly what happened tonight.”
Crossroads of Bones (A Katie Bishop Novel Book 1) Page 12
