She made a face. “Is that vampire flirting? ‘Cause. . .eww.”
Alec snorted but made no reply as they walked out of the manager’s office and back into the noisy club.
For a second, Diana felt the wild impulse to turn around and torch the expensive furnishings. But she resisted the urge and faced Alec instead. The deep bass of the current song made it hard to hear anything, so she gestured that they should leave. They were heading to the stairs when a sudden and very sharp shift in the balance hit her.
It was like a sudden drop in the barometric pressure, but its source was localized to someone in the crowd.
Somewhere in shifting mass of dancers, a murderer had chosen his next victim.
15
“What is it?” Alec asked. She had stopped so suddenly he’d almost crashed into her.
“Shh,” she said, turning her attention to the left corner of the dance floor.
Placing both hands on the rail in front of her, she let her vision unfocus. The disturbance and the person causing it became clearer. It was a man of average height and looks. But she could see the aura that was undetectable to others, and it was swirling violently.
Her quarry was focused on a small brunette who was happily dancing with a group of women. She looked completely oblivious to the men in the room.
It was obviously a girls’ night out. All the women were technically ignoring men, but this one didn’t even see them, not on this night. And that was probably the lure.
She turned to Alec. “I have some things to take care of before we go. Things not related to this case. Let’s split up now and meet at dawn.”
“Do you need back up?”
Hating she was that obvious, she turned away. She had to remember to put on a better front when she didn’t want him taking an interest in all of her activities.
“Diana?” he wasn’t going to let up.
“Not necessary,” she assured him.
“If you’re sure,” he said slowly. “I have a small plane I can pilot myself. Not one of the coven’s jets. I can fly us south. Can you track from the air?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. Where will we meet?”
He gave her the address of a small private airfield. “The coven doesn’t know about this plane. It’s not a fancy jet or anything. Just good for getting around without anyone knowing.”
She nodded. “Okay, I’ll see you at dawn.” She started for the stairs, then stopped short. “Hey, will you pack a lunch? Maybe some more of those fig things?”
Alec smiled. “Of course.”
He headed for the club’s kitchen and she headed for her new mark.
Diana blended in with the crowd near the bar, sipping a twenty-year-old scotch. She picked a dark corner and settled down to watch her prey stalk his.
By this point, the pretty girl was drinking and laughing with a group of men who had stopped by to chat with the women. None flirted with the brunette, but at least two eyed her with interest.
Diana checked on the mark, to see how he was taking the new development. She never knew what would make a killer lose interest. Sometimes her talking to another man was enough to cause a murderer to choose someone else. Sometimes it was why she was chosen.
The mark was angry. It had been fine when she ignored all the other men. Seeing her smile at one enraged him. In his mind, she was already his.
And you’re mine, asshole.
An hour later, the girls’ night out was breaking up. The pretty brunette got her wrap from the coat check and walked to her car with one of the other women. Carpooling complicated the murderer’s plan, but he wasn’t dissuaded. He got into his car and tailed both girls.
Diana followed at a distance on her bike, ducking behind cars to make sure her mark did not spot her. She needn’t have bothered; the murderer was too focused on not being seen by the women to notice her.
They arrived at a small two-story house on a quiet part of an otherwise busy street. After sliding into a resident’s-only parking space, they got out of the car, chatting animatedly. The mark idled just out of their eyesight long enough to register where the girls lived and then drove away.
The murder was not going to happen tonight. Diana started her bike and followed at safe distance.
Mister Average lived in a three-floor walkup in a large apartment complex built in the seventies. It was clean and functional, but not especially nice. Diana trailed him to his door, making sure she wasn’t seen. She was able to watch his door from underneath the stairwell leading to the floor above.
There was still a lot of noise in the building. She would have to wait till the building’s occupants had settled for the night. Once she was sure, she would enter the mark’s apartment and take him out quietly.
He would make history, another bizarre case of spontaneous combustion. It was an explanation few people truly believed, but given the lack of evidence she and others of her kind left behind, one that was accepted as an infrequent oddity. Most of the kills she made left no evidence, but she was in a hurry and didn’t have time to stage an accident that would explain why this man died and why the fire didn’t spread to the other units of the building.
Hours passed, and the mark’s neighbors were still going strong. Damn college kids, she grumbled to herself.
She was considering taking out the building’s electrical system when the door suddenly opened and her target came out. Ducking back into the shadows, she watched as he quietly made his way down the stairs.
It was past three in the morning. Perhaps he’d decided to go after the girls tonight after all. She followed him like a ghost, her Elemental nature masking the noise she would have otherwise made.
Her mark went back to his car and took off in the direction opposite his future victim. Diana was starting to get really annoyed with this guy. He wasn’t heading in the direction of a potential victim, unless he was working off a list. And he was in a reminiscing mood, apparently; satisfaction came off of him in waves.
Diana followed him for another ten minutes before he stopped at a self-storage place. She squinted at the location. It was fairly isolated and next to a highway. The perfect spot for a trophy room. Or a kill room.
The self-storage place was locked tight for the night, but that didn’t matter to the mark. He wandered to the left side of the lot, where chain link fence had been cut. The location of the opening was shielded from the street. After rolling back enough of the fence to crawl inside, he took the time to fix it so that it looked intact.
The mark disappeared around the corner, and Diana followed after him. She paused at the corner as he headed for the second row. As quietly as he could, he opened a door, but the mechanism needed oil. The grating metal sound made him look around nervously, but the area was completely dead at this hour.
A quick scan confirmed there were no security cameras. It was probably one of the reasons this particular storage place was chosen. She turned back to the man. He’d lifted the door only part way and had ducked inside.
Closing her hand into a fist, Diana followed him.
* * *
Inside the unit, Sam Levin turned on a small table lamp that ran on batteries. He had a chair and table there—a place where he could take out his trophies and relive how he’d gotten them. Not the most ideal spot, but he couldn’t afford better for the moment. Soon, though. He was saving.
Eventually he would buy his own house, far from other people. The long drive to work would be worth it for the solitude he would gain. Where he could be alone with his treasures.
He always took something different. The thing he associated with them the most. Usually their hair. Sometimes their beautiful eyes, which he would put in a jar. His forever.
The girl tonight was so pretty. And she’d had eyes only for him. He would take that hair and those eyes and put them here with the rest.
Once I’m done, those eyes wouldn’t look at anyone else, he thought happily.
A noise startled him out of his reveri
e. He turned around, surprised to see a beautiful girl with dark red hair in black leather standing near his shelf of keepsakes. She picked up one of his prize jars.
“Do you always keep their eyes?” she asked, her husky voice sending a frisson of sensation down his spine.
“Eyes are the window to the soul,” he said feeling slightly dazed. The night had grown very warm all of sudden.
“Kind of cheesy for last words,” the redhead said.
“What?” he asked, confused, just before he started screaming.
* * *
Diana called the fire, like she had thousands of times before, creating a ring of it around her mark. She made sure it consumed his lungs first, so he couldn’t cry out for long.
The fire cascaded down his throat, and he burned until there was nothing but ashes.
Her intense satisfaction ebbed slowly away as the fire died. It was nothing but a greasy stain when Alec spoke from behind her.
“Are you going to burn down the rest?”
She swung around, surprised. “How long have you been following me? Christ, you’re not supposed to be here!”
Alec looked uncomfortable, but he stood his ground. “I had a feeling about what you might need to take care of at the club. The way you zoomed in on that guy. I didn’t want you to go in without back-up.”
“I don’t need back-up.” Diana gestured to the pile of ash and grease, exasperated.
Alec put his hands up. “I know you don’t, believe me. I just. . .”
“Just what?”
“I don’t want you to have to do this alone,” he said quietly.
Diana chest tightened, but she ignored it and sighed loudly. “I’ve been doing this alone for a long time. And this thing,” she said, pointing to the greasy ashes, “had it coming.”
“That’s kind of obvious,” Alec said, glancing at the grisly objects in the room. “I’m not here to defend him or to criticize what you do. I only wanted to make sure no one surprised you or something. I’m sure you can take down entire armies, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to worry about you.”
Diana shifted her weight, hands on hips, staring Alec down. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
He smiled that little boy smile. “Accept it and let me be your back-up.”
Diana gave him an incredulous and puzzled look. “I don’t need your help. We don’t have back-up. None of us do, and Serin has a full-time man. He doesn’t tag along after her, worrying about her and getting in her way.”
“Then he must not love her,” Alec said slowly.
“Of course he does,” she snapped, but for a second, doubt crossed her mind.
She had wondered that herself. “Anyway, this isn’t about them.”
And it certainly wasn’t about love. “We need to get out of here. It’s almost dawn,” she said ducking out of the storage unit.
He followed her, noting that she didn’t bother to close the door. “You’re going to leave everything here?” he asked, looking back at the gaping door and ashes on the floor.
“The police will be notified sooner this way,” she said, leading him away from the grisly little gallery.
“And you’re simply going to let them find everything?”
He frowned in the direction of the now-distant storage unit as they reached the fence and climbed outside.
“Yeah, maybe they’ll be enough to tie his victims to him. The families might get some closure. If the victims have been missed that is. Not everyone is.”
“I don’t know that finding out what really happened to them would be a comfort. Especially if they never really connect the ashes to him and no one realizes he’s dead,” Alec said.
“It’s the best we can do. The job is simply to restore the balance, nothing more,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said with feeling in his voice as he trailed her to her bike.
“Why? Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t spend all the time it would take to check on each and every victim’s family. We have to be satisfied with the fact that there will be less victims in the future,” she said, echoing Gia and Serin more than herself.
“I’m still sorry. It’s not easy, what you do. It must be emotionally draining.”
He reached out as if to take her arm but stopped himself before making contact.
Diana shrugged. “Sometimes it is, other times it’s. . .energizing.”
Before he’d shown up, she’d still been riding that high. Although now his presence was starting to make her wonder about things she hadn’t really thought about before. Like how an outsider would feel about her job. She had a hard enough time deciphering her own feelings sometimes.
“I can see that. You get to turn monsters into toast. It must be satisfying. I simply think you could use some help is all.”
Diana climbed onto her bike. “I did let you help. You got more of those fig things, didn’t you?” she asked in a chipper tone, wondering why his solicitude was sweet now, instead of aggravating.
“Of course I did. You really liked them,” he said, as if no other outcome was possible.
“Then stop with the Boy Wonder act and follow me to the airfield,” she said, pulling on her helmet and starting her bike.
“Sure thing, Batman,” he said, heading for his car.
16
Alec arrived at the airfield in record time—mainly because he was trying not to lose Diana in front of him.
She drove like a maniac. Another reason to fear for her safety, even if she was fireproof. Would it make a difference if she hit the pavement? Maybe she could make a cushion from a fire’s drafts. It was the first thing he asked her when he finally caught up with her at the edge of the airfield.
“Is this the way you always are?” Diana asked with a furrowed brow.
“What way is that?” he asked, exasperated.
Being so concerned for someone else was tiring, and the fact she didn’t need or appreciate that concern was starting to grate on his nerves.
“So geeky and analytical. Kind of doesn’t go with the whole crown prince of darkness image,” she said with genuine curiosity.
“Well. . .I don’t mind the last part much. And yes. I’m a scholar. I ask questions,” he said with the tiniest hint of pride.
“So I’ve gathered,” Diana said drily. “Well, Boy Wonder, which one is your plane?”
“It’s in the private hangar on the left,” he said, trying not to be annoyed at being reduced to sidekick status.
When Diana saw the plane, she rounded on him. “I thought you said this thing was small!”
“It’s the smallest Gulfstream that can still fly long distance, and it’s been modified for a single pilot. Go ahead and get comfortable. I have to log a flight plan and make sure we’re fueled up.”
“We don’t really know where we’re going yet,” Diana said.
“I did a little more digging before I found you tonight. I have a pretty good idea of where we should be heading, a suspicion you’ll need to confirm once we are in the air.” He pulled the ladder up to the door and then hurried away.
When Alec got back from the hangar office, he found Diana inside the jet, peeking into the cockpit and examining the comfortable leather chairs.
“Have you ever been in a private jet?” he asked, watching her open and close drawers.
“A charter here and there, but not a nice one like this,” she said, poking around the well-stocked bar cabinet next to his seat. “It’s usually easier to get a lift from Logan than to get on a plane.”
“Logan?”
“The Air Elemental,” she said.
“Oh,” Alec said, skipping a beat. “You can travel in another Elemental’s medium? That’s fascinating,” he said, downplaying his reaction as he sat to wait for the pilot.
He wanted to ask a million more questions, but there were only so many he could safely ask before Diana clammed up. But if he was patient…
“Yeah, but it’s not always convenient since we ar
e sent in different directions most of the time,” she said finally, and Alec resisted the urge to punch the air in celebration before Diana continued. “Logan can cover a lot of ground, so I ask her for a lift every once in a while.” She waved toward the cockpit with a frown. “I hope you can make sense of all those little buttons and levers.”
“I decided to contact a private pilot from an agency to fly us down. We haven’t gotten a whole lot of rest lately, and I personally don’t want to fly the plane tired. I took the liberty of filing a flight plan under a pseudonym.” He paused, working up the courage to drop another little bomb. “I told the agency they were flying a Mister and Missus Collins to New Orleans for a little R&R.”
“Okay,” Diana murmured as she finally sat.
“What?” he asked, stunned.
An easy acquiescence wasn’t what he’d been expecting.
“I said that’s okay. Pseudonyms are a good idea. And we could pass for a married couple if I’m a much younger trophy wife,” she teased unexpectedly. “Although we lack luggage.”
“We don’t need it. Part of our cover states we have a house there. I can send out for anything we need.”
“Do you have a house there? Is that why you picked New Orleans for a starting point?”
“The coven has one, although they haven’t used it since those Anne Rice books got popular. Too cliché for them now. They rent it out. But since the staff would recognize me—and probably you by now, given how the grapevine works—I don’t think we should stay there. I actually have reason to believe J may be down there.”
“Is he part of the supernatural bandwagon since the town got an image makeover?”
“No, I think he might have been born there,” Alec said, crossing his legs.
“Damn, I wanted to call him out for being a trend-following douchebag as well as an asshole.”
Alec smiled. “You can go ahead regardless of what I think. You should kick the crap out of him simply for the name of his club.”
“That was already my plan,” Diana finished as the pilot walked in. “I promised Logan.”
Fire: The Elementals Book One Page 12
