Mind Sweeper (Mind Sweeper Series Book 1)

by AE Jones

  Mind Sweeper

  Mind Sweeper Series Book 1

  AE Jones

  2013 RWA Golden Heart® Winner, Mind Sweeper

  An angel, a demon and a vampire walk into a bar. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but it’s just another day in the life of Kyle McKinley.

  Kyle was born with the ability to erase memories, and the inability to keep her opinions to herself. She and her teammates—a vampire who looks like a sexy pirate with fangs, and a Shamat demon with a penchant for Italian pastries—provide supernatural damage control when humans see too much. Today’s problem? A sword-wielding angel and a demon had a supernatural smackdown during happy hour in a Cleveland bar, leaving behind a headless vampire and a dozen human witnesses.

  This latest supernatural slip-up is attracting all kinds of attention. So much attention that the police step in, and Kyle has to deal with Joe Dalton, a know-it-all human with the sexiest turquoise eyes she has ever seen. Kyle has no room in her life for yet another human who will treat her like a freak. However, Dalton definitely makes her naughty parts sit up and take notice, and it’s more than mutual. But before they can act on their attraction, they must join forces to solve a dangerous puzzle. And when they uncover the truth, the apocalyptic ripple effect forces Kyle to make a choice. Learn to trust again, or risk losing everyone she cares about, including Dalton.

  Mom –

  You instilled your love of reading in me. And you told me every day growing up that I could do anything I set out to do, as long as I was willing to work hard.

  Know that this book and every one I write going forward will always be for you.

  I miss you.

  Chapter 1

  An angel, a demon, and a vampire walked into a bar. No seriously, they did. And all hell broke loose. Then I got called in, or rather the team got called in, to handle supernatural damage control. My job was to manipulate people’s memories. Don’t ask me how. I was born with it, and, like someone born with double joints or the ability to flip their eyelids inside out, I just do it and hopefully not freak out too many people in the process.

  On this particular night, I was destined to spend the evening in a bar with no chance of getting lucky. Dead bodies tended to put a damper on romance.

  Not that I was dressed to attract men—my jeans, graphic tee and black work boots didn’t exactly fit in with the skimpy dresses and three-inch heels worn by the other women in the bar. But then I had missed the class about fitting in, so this was nothing new.

  I held open the door, and the muggy Cleveland night invaded the air-conditioned bar, steaming up the door window. Pasting on a flight-attendant smile, I barely restrained myself from muttering “buh-bye” as the witnesses filed out calmly. Calmly, because I had spent the past twenty minutes implanting them with new memories.

  Instead of a demon and a vamp facing off, their recollections featured a brawl between a biker and a drunken fraternity boy. Crisis averted. Now the rest of the team could get to work.

  Jean Luc peeled the tablecloth off the corpse he’d stuffed in the corner during my shtick with the patrons. Even though moving the body had meant disturbing evidence, we couldn’t very well keep a dead vamp—especially a headless dead vamp—lying around when minds had to be scrubbed and altered to believe nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Humans don’t do well with different. So our team’s job? Clean up the mess.

  I studied our potential publicity nightmare—the headless body in a rumpled suit. Dead vamps always surprised me. Every movie I’d ever seen showed the vamp disintegrating. Stab him in the heart, instant ash cloud. Chop off his head, get out the dust vac. It wasn’t until I met Jean Luc that I learned those movies were bunk. And since he’d been a vampire for the past four hundred years, he was the foremost authority in my book.

  “What do you think happened?” I asked.

  Jean Luc grinned slowly. “Well, Kyle, I would say he was decapitated.”

  I frowned at him. “Thanks, Dr. Obvious. I meant why the supernatural smackdown in the middle of the happy hour and hot-wings crowd?”

  He shook his head. “Supernaturals are not normally this careless. There must be a compelling reason why this happened when it did.”

  “Have you ever seen an angel before?”

  “Yes, but never one that revealed himself to humans this blatantly. Nicholas will be watching us closely until we figure this out.”

  I bristled. “Nicholas can chill. If he’s worried we’re not doing our jobs, he can come here and supervise us himself. Did you find the vamp’s head?”

  “No.”

  I didn’t want to think about why someone would take it. “Where’s Misha?”

  “Talking to our supernatural witness in the back room.”

  Since the place had been busy, odds were good at least one supe would be in the crowd, and we had hit pay dirt. There’d been a shifter working as a bartender.

  “Hopefully we can get a credible story from him.”

  I walked through the kitchen door. It was quarter-wing night and the sweet-smoky smell of barbeque sauce hit my nose. My stomach growled like a pissed-off Haltrap demon. Definitely a crime scene faux pas, perusing a dead body one second and drooling over mesquite the next.

  I hurried through the kitchen and into the storage area. Misha glanced up when I pushed open the door and then turned back to the bartender, who was cowering nervously in a chair.

  The pencil-thin shifter bounced his leg so hard his teeth were chattering. He pushed his dark hair off his forehead in a jerky motion which made me wonder what type of animal he could change into—a monkey? One of those yappy little Chihuahuas? Of course, having Misha breathing down his neck didn’t help matters.

  Six-foot-six and two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle, Misha looked like a Browns linebacker. With short, blond hair and ice-blue eyes, he was intimidating when he smiled and terrifying when he scowled. The little guy didn’t stand a chance. I stayed close to the door, not wanting to interrupt the interrogation.

  Misha’s bass voice, laced with a thick Russian accent, rippled across the room. “So what happened?”

  “The vampire came into the bar first and was acting weird.”

  “Weird how?” Misha scrubbed his perpetual five o’clock shadow.

  “You know vamps, normally nothing fazes them. This guy was actually nervous. He kept looking over his shoulder. Even asked me if there was a back way out. Then the demon came ripping through the front door, and the vamp took off at a dead run.”

  “What kind of demon was it?”

  The shifter paused for a second before answering. “He wasn’t a Shamat like you.”

  Misha stiffened. He did a good job of suppressing his demon side when he was out in public, but a shifter’s nose could sniff out anything. “Then what kind was he?”

  “I couldn’t get a good whiff of him at first. It wasn’t until later, when the angel got here, that he transitioned into his demon form—purple skin and yellow eyes. Then I knew he was a Pavel.”

  I gasped like a little girl. I couldn’t help myself. Demons didn’t show their true selves in public, ever. And a Pavel demon? Even by supe standards they were badasses.

  Misha scowled at me before returning to his questions. “What happened before the angel arrived?”

  “The demon tackled the vamp. The vamp bared his fangs and sank them into the demon’s arm and the normals wigged out. After a couple more seconds, the room started to vibrate. My hair stood on end and all the humans froze. That’s when the angel appeared. Then it got really weird.”

  Misha’s gaze held mine for a second. His left eyebrow rose as if saying How in the hell could it get
any weirder? He composed his face. “Go on.”

  “Like I said, the angel showed up, and the demon changed and stood between the angel and the vamp like he was protecting him.”

  Misha frowned. “So you’re telling me the demon, who had just been fighting the vampire, was now protecting him from the angel?”

  The shifter shrugged. “Hey, I know it sounds crazy. I’m just telling you what I saw. The angel and demon circled each other. At first they seemed pretty well matched, until the angel pulled out a sword. The vamp tried to make a run for it, but before he got to the door he was dead.” The shifter gulped and fidgeted in his seat again.

  Misha prompted him to explain. “Who killed him?”

  “The angel.”

  I stepped forward, interrupting. “What?!”

  “You heard me.” He glanced up toward the ceiling, his voice lowering to a frantic whisper. “The angel killed him.”

  Misha continued unperturbed. “What happened to the demon and the head?”

  “The demon ran out the back door, and the angel followed him. I don’t know what the hell happened to the vamp’s head.”

  I stood still, even though my nerves were firing off warnings to find the nearest exit. An angel decapitated a vamp… What the hell was going on? Angels rarely showed themselves, and an angel killing another supe in front of witnesses was unheard of.

  The shifter gaped as if seeing me for the first time. His nose wrinkled for a second as he tried to sniff out what I was. After another second, his eyes widened.

  “You’re that freaky human with powers. The Mind Sweeper. Kyle something…Kyle McKinley, right? You need to scrub my brain. Now!”

  My fists clenched. You’d think I would have gotten used to being called a freak, but each time was like another dose of salt in a festering wound. “Why should I?”

  “How long do you think I’ll live after what I saw? If you scrub my brain,”—he looked up at the ceiling again—“they’ll know I can’t remember and leave me alone. Please.”

  “You don’t know anything else?” Misha interrupted.

  “I swear. I told you everything.”

  Misha nodded and I stepped forward cautiously. The shifter was skittish as a colt, so I placed my hand on his damp shoulder and pushed calming thoughts toward him. Scrubbing supes was not easy. Some didn’t respond to me. I closed my eyes.

  I pictured the fight he’d described and changed it in my mind. I replaced the vamp’s image with a drunken fraternity boy. The glowing-eyed demon morphed into a leather-clad biker and the angel turned into a cop. Warmth prickled along my forehead and I reached mentally for his consciousness, easing the new images into his agitated kaleidoscope of a brain.

  His shifter senses resisted my intrusion, so I backed off, leaving the new memories hanging in the ether between us. After a couple of seconds, his brain calmed down, and the energies swirled in a fixed pattern instead of bouncing around haphazardly. I tried merging with him again. A yellow haze blinded me, and for the briefest of moments I lost myself in the connection. Almost as quickly, I severed the link, my thoughts snapping back into my brain like a taut rubber band. My vision cleared and the shifter’s scared expression relaxed. The transfer of new memories was complete.

  Misha and I walked out of the room toward the front of the bar. Both Jean Luc and the body were gone, but I wouldn’t have to worry about erasing anyone else’s memories. Jean Luc would have avoided witnesses by using his vampire speed to load the body into the van. Misha strolled out the front of the bar and opened the van door. “Jean Luc’s not here.”

  I went in search of him behind the building. Jean Luc stood in the middle of the alley with his arms outstretched and his head thrown back, concentrating. Not a muscle twitched. I held my breath, hoping my presence didn’t disturb him, and watched him silently.

  Normally, I wouldn’t have used the word beautiful to describe a male, but in Jean Luc’s case it was more than appropriate. With his dark brown eyes and long, black hair tied back with a leather strap, he reminded me of a sexy pirate with fangs. Women had a tendency to drive their cars off the road when they saw him on the sidewalk. Somehow I’d managed to avoid succumbing to his charms.

  After a few moments, he dropped his arms. “I do not sense anything. They did not continue the fight here.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Jean Luc, you’ve been speaking English for over a century. Don’t you think it’s time to embrace contractions? What about a slang word here or there?”

  His eyes narrowed. “When you learn the seven languages I speak, I will consider it.”

  I bowed. “Touché.”

  We spent a few more minutes checking the alley to make sure no evidence was left behind. I didn’t expect to find the angel’s bloody sword thrown in the dumpster, but it pays to be thorough. When we returned to our van, we found Misha sitting in the back scanning surveillance equipment worthy of the FBI.

  “I just did a sweep. There’ve been no other weird reports in the city.”

  Who would have thought Cleveland, Ohio, would be a hotbed of supes? Maybe the lake attracted them, or the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Either way, it kept us hopping.

  Jean Luc chose to drive, as always, and pulled away from the curb, or rather screeched away. He drove like a vamp possessed, but his reflexes hadn’t failed him in four hundred years, which I constantly reminded myself about every time he took a corner too fast.

  Misha smirked at me as if reading my thoughts. He could be a smug bastard.

  Frustration bubbled to the surface and burst from my mouth. “What are you grinning about? All hell’s breaking loose.”

  “Really, little one, you can be terribly melodramatic,” Misha answered in a condescending tone, which didn’t sit well with me.

  “Excuse me? You don’t find it somewhat ominous that an angel descended from heaven and killed a vampire in front of human witnesses?”

  “You’ve been sucked into the hype, my dear. Angels are not babies with wings. They’ve been alive for millennia. For every artistic rendering of fat cherubs, there are just as many angels depicted with swords. Many are soldiers.”

  I needed some backup. “Jean Luc?”

  “Misha is right. Angels are soldiers, and soldiers do what they are ordered to do.”

  My mouth opened like a fish chasing a worm. “You don’t think”—I poked my finger toward the roof of the van—“He ordered the vamp killed?”

  Jean Luc shook his head. “Not directly. Remember, heaven is a hierarchy. Someone lower probably ordered it.”

  “Holy crap,” I responded, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans.

  “Stop worrying, ma cherie, we will figure it out.”

  I must have looked pretty freaked out for Jean Luc to pull out the French. He thought it helped calm me down when I was about to lose it.

  It wasn’t working.

  Chapter 2

  Seven a.m. and I inhaled my third cup of strong black coffee, hoping the caffeine overload would keep me awake. After we left the bar, and Jean Luc had dropped me off at home, sleep had been out of the question.

  I wasn’t surprised when I got the call to come in ASAP for a briefing. I ran my fingers through my straight, chin-length, currently black hair and pulled on a pair of black pants, a gray short-sleeve T-shirt and a vest. I gravitated to black and gray clothes, since they matched my gray eyes and, more importantly, always went with whatever color I decided to dye my hair. Black was really beneath my creativity level, but I didn’t need to call attention to myself for the time being. This case was a potential ticking time bomb. I had never even seen an angel before, let alone a sword-wielding one.

  While running last night’s events through my sleep-deprived brain, I tripped over Booger, my cat. I liked to believe he followed me around because of his undying love for me, but after briefly circling my legs, he proceeded to stand by his empty food dish and glare. At least I knew where I stood with him. No need to worry about an ulterior motive, anyway. Opening his food
bin, I groaned out loud. It was empty. Damn. I rummaged through the cupboards for a substitute and pulled out two cans. I held them up in front of him.

  “Tuna?”

  He stared at me indignantly.

  “Chicken?”

  He circled my legs again and meowed, leaving a trail of hair behind. “Okay, chicken it is. I’ll stop at the grocery store tonight before I come home, I promise.”

  He gave me the I’ve-heard-that-one-before look.

  “Be good today.” I maneuvered around the couch to the window and pushed it up just enough for him to get onto the fire escape. Locating my keys and phone, I locked up, ran down the stairs, opened the apartment building door, and scanned the street for my car.

  I was glad to call Little Italy home, with its wonderful, close-knit neighborhood and turn-of-the-century brick buildings, but parking was a bitch, especially with my weird hours. Just before I resorted to clicking my key fob like a loser to locate my car, I spotted it across the street. I jumped in and took off, grateful I at least hadn’t had to spend ten minutes scraping snow off my car. The joy of August in Cleveland.

  Normally, my morning routine included buying Italian pastries for Misha, but I didn’t want to be late. Depending on traffic, it could take fifteen to thirty minutes to drive downtown to work. Our office was on the third floor of the Smithson Building. Our cover story was that we were a detective agency, which wasn’t too far from the truth. We did investigate weird happenings and solve crimes; they just weren’t your garden-variety adulterers or deadbeat dads. We worked for the Bureau of Supernatural Relations or BSR for short. Most of the time we were called the Supe Squad, which was a bit too Scooby Doo for my taste, but the name had stuck.

  When I stepped into the office reception area, it was empty. I glanced at my watch. Dolly wouldn’t be in for another half hour, which meant the coffee, if there was any, had been made by Misha, or, God forbid, Jean Luc. Why he insisted on making coffee when he couldn’t drink it was beyond me.