by Keri Arthur
God, she'd never been so aroused in her life.
"I need you," he repeated, then claimed her lips, his kiss harsh and urgent.
"Then take me," she said, when she could.
He did. Up against the wall, driving deep, so wonderfully deep, until it felt as if the rigid heat of him was trying to claim every inch of her. Her blood boiled through her veins, and every breath seemed a struggle, the air too thick with need and desire to breathe easily. The low down pressure began to build under the rush of passion and the sweet assault of pleasure, and all too quickly it reached the boiling point. They came as one, his roar getting lost in her howl, his body slamming into hers so hard the whole wall seemed to shake.
Then it was over, and she was trembling, sweating, her limbs so weak they seemed barely able to support her weight. She took a deep, shuddery breath, and released it slowly. "Sweet Lord, can it get any better?"
He dropped a kiss on her spine, then withdrew and turned her around. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her close and said, "I sure as hell want to hang around and find out."
His words made her knees want to buckle. She somehow managed to keep them locked and closed her eyes, listening to the wild beat of his heart, knowing her own raced just as badly. The smell of sweat and sex stung the air, and her nose twitched. "I think I need a shower."
Yet she couldn't move. The odd weakness was still flowing through her veins, and she was feeling more and more tired.
"I think you need sleep," he said, his breath brushing warmth against her ear.
As if his words were a trigger, she yawned. "God, I thought it was usually the man who rolled over and went to sleep after sex."
His smile shimmered through her. "It's been a long, and strenuous, night." He pulled back, but kept one arm around her, supporting her. "Where's your bedroom?"
She waved weakly to her right. It seemed a huge effort to do even that.
"Then let's get you over there."
She nodded and walked towards her bedroom, only her feet didn't seem too inclined to follow directions, and she was stumbling more than she was walking. Only his grip kept her upright.
And through the midst of tiredness, alarm rose. This shouldn't be happening. Something was wrong.
She licked lips that suddenly seemed dry, and said, "Grey-"
"Here's your bed. You'd better lie down."
"No. There's something wrong. Something's happening to me."
He pressed her down on the bed and pulled the covers over her. "Nothing is wrong," he said, voice soothing. "You just need to sleep. To rest."
And suddenly she remembered the feeling that he had an ulterior motive for coming into her apartment. His insistence that they come here. That he come here.
It wasn't to love her. It was to stop her.
"How?" she murmured, the anger surging through her lost in her sleepiness and not showing in her voice.
"The coffee. I'm sorry, Eryn, but I can't let you near that place tonight." He brushed a kiss across her fingertips, then released her and stepped back. "Hate me if you will. I'd rather that than be faced with your death."
"You're damn well dead when I wake up."
He gave her a sweet half smile. "Better that than you dying. Sleep tight."
Bastard, she said again, but the words stayed locked inside. The last thing she remembered was watching him walk out the door.
* * *
Chapter Six
"Eryn!"
The voice was distant, but familiar. She murmured in annoyance, turning onto her side, wishing the sharp voice would just go away and let her sleep.
"Damn it, Eryn, wake up!"
"She can't hear you properly," a strange voice stated. "The drug is still in her system."
"Can't you give her something to counteract it?"
"I have, but it'll take a little more time."
"We haven't got time." Footsteps echoed, pacing from one end of her room to the other. To her sensitive ears, those steps sounded as loud as a herd of elephants.
She groaned and flung herself around, grabbing her spare pillow and dragging it over her head. Why wouldn't they just leave her be? She needed to sleep. Needed to forget.
Something stirred through her mind.
Forget?
Forget what?
Fury.
The need to chase, to bring down her quarry and get answers.
She frowned.
Chase who?
The man who'd betrayed her trust.
Grey.
Bastard.
With that word echoing through her mind, she flung the pillow off her head and sat upright.
And, at that point, realized there were men in her room. Two of them, to be precise-one of whom she didn't know.
"Thank the Lord..." The elephant steps grew closer, and suddenly Jack appeared in her field of vision.
She blinked owlishly at him. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here?" he repeated, looking as frazzled as she'd ever seen him. "Don't you realize what's happened?"
She blinked again, remembering, then replied, in a voice low with anger, "Grey drugged me."
"Yeah, and it's now ten after ten. When you didn't report for work, we thought the worst."
"He didn't intend to hurt me." She reached for the glass she always kept on her bedside table, hoping the water would chase away the last cobwebs of sleep.
"We had no way of knowing that." He sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed the sheet, offering it to her. "So why did he drug you?"
She pulled the sheet up around her. She wasn't bothered by nudity and she didn't think Jack was, but she could hear other people moving about her apartment. Maybe he didn't want them finding excuses to catch a glimpse of the free breast show. "He wanted to stop me from going to the bar tonight."
"Why?"
"He said if I went there tonight, I'd die."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "Do you believe him?"
"Do I believe that he believes he's telling the truth? Yes. If you're asking if I actually believe I'd die, then no. I can't see how the killer would get me past security and all of you."
"But why does he think you'll meet the killer tonight?"
"The government mob he works for has psychics on the team. They say seven people will die before the killer is caught. They even gave him the victims' names."
"You'd think having all that information he'd be able to stop the damn killer."
She grimaced. "The killer is a face shifter. Grey has the same trouble tracking him down as we did tracking Grey."
"So why didn't they watch the victims' apartments and vet everyone coming in or out?"
"Can you imagine the ruckus that would have caused if they'd stopped and questioned every single person coming in and out of the victims' apartment buildings? Besides, this is a secret government organization he works for. I don't think they'd be too happy with the sort of interest actions like that would raise."
Jack frowned. "You sure he's not just spinning you a line?"
"He's not. He gave me his full name, by the way. You can cross-check it against your search for high-society murders."
He dug an electronic notebook out of his pocket. "We came up with ten possibilities. Tell me his name and I'll cross-check now."
"Grey Harrison James McConnell-the third."
He grinned as he entered the name into the notebook. "Now that's a moniker you could hang your hat on."
"Ain't it just." She finished her glass of water and put it back on the table. "If you're here, who's running the show at the bar?"
"Bob and Henry are watching the screens. They'll give me a call if they spot anything odd."
But how would they know, given no one had any idea what their killer looked like? Except maybe Grey, and he certainly wasn't telling.
Anger rolled through her. Damn it, he was going to get it when she saw him again. She'd trusted him, and he'd drugged her. The fact that he considered it for her own good
was beside the point. She'd trusted him, let him into her sanctuary, and he'd gone and done that.
Disappointing, to say the least. And a sharp reminder that no matter what might be going on between them, he was first and foremost a government man.
"What about the two women I saw at the bar last night?"
"One of them was Genny Jones, as you suspected. We've got a team staking out her apartment building. The other woman we haven't been able to trace."
She frowned. "She'd have to have credit records, wouldn't she?" And all credit cards had photo ID's on them these days.
He grimaced, though his gaze was still on the notebook. "You'd think Grey would have a credit ID somewhere, too, but apparently not."
The ice in her stomach stirred again, and her frown grew. "But that doesn't make sense."
"Nothing in this case is making a lot of sense." He paused. "Bingo. It appears your mysterious lover was telling the truth about his name."
He handed her the notebook. She quickly scanned the story, taking in the gruesome facts about the murder of his parents by rogue vampires, and the gutsy escape by him and his younger sister. Her gaze fell on the picture of the two of them. Grey was shielding his sister from the cameras, and the careful neutrality was in his eyes even then. Or maybe it was the blankness of shock. It couldn't have been easy to watch vampires tear your parents apart, then have to fight for yours and your sister's lives. Especially when you were barely ten years old.
She handed the notebook back to Jack. "What's the bar owner's name?"
A smile touched his lips. "Elizabeth Jane Magee-formally known as Elizabeth Jane McConnell."
"His sister." At least that explained Grey's certainty that the owner would not throw them out if security caught them doing the sexual tango on the dance floor.
Jack nodded. "She obviously didn't trust our ability to solve this case and called in her brother."
"Well, in some respects she was right, because we're really no closer now than we were at the beginning." They might have a scent, but a scent wasn't much good if you couldn't find the source.
"No-" A beep cut across the rest of his words. Jack stopped and pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket. "Senior detective Jack Turner speaking."
He listened, his expression getting darker with every passing second. The ice in Eryn's stomach grew tighter. She knew, without even asking, what had happened.
She closed her eyes as he hung up, and wished she could just block her ears. She didn't want to hear what Jack was about to say. She really didn't.
"The killer has struck again," he said softly. "Genny Jones was just found dead in her apartment."
* * * *
Even with full shields up, the smell of death and blood and sheer evil was so thick in Genny Jones's apartment that Eryn had to fight the urge to spin around and walk out. She was no stranger to death, had seen it many times-and in many forms-in her years at the coroner's office, but these deaths had the power to get to her. Maybe because the killer was taking away the very things that made the victims women-and that was something any woman would react to.
She followed Jack into the bedroom. The forensic team was still here, so she stopped at the door, keeping her hands in her coveralls even though she wore gloves. Genny Jones's body had not yet been taken away, and like the previous victims, there was enough evidence in the rumpled state of the bed to indicate lovemaking had occurred. Eryn suspected that the samples being taken from the body would confirm this, and that the DNA would match that found on the previous victims.
Her gaze skated from the shocked expression frozen forever on Genny Jones's face, to the bloody remnants of what had once been breasts down to the gaping hole in her stomach. Though she'd seen this all before, it had been via photos. No photo on Earth could ever really convey the sickening reality. Bile rose, and she swallowed heavily.
Grey had suggested that the killer was going after these women because they had what he could not-love, acceptance. Why, then, did the killer mutilate them like this? It didn't make any sense. This was the act of someone who hated women-or at the very least, hated the things that made them women.
Jack stopped in the middle of the room and turned to face her. His expression was grim. "The scent the same?"
She nodded. "It's stronger than before. He can't have been gone all that long."
"Time of death was ten thirty-five. My people got here at ten forty." Jack's hand rose, as if to thrust his fingers through his hair before remembering that he wore the coveralls and plastic hood. "Damn it, we were watching all the entrances. None of the men Genny Jones had been seeing entered or left the building."
"Remember what he is. He could have assumed the shape of anyone living in this building. All he'd have to do was brush past him."
"Problem with that is the fact that the only men who entered were accompanied by women. Those men live here with the women that accompanied them. We've checked. They're all here, and none of them moved from their apartments."
"Then how did the killer get in without being seen? Or out?" She glanced toward the window.
"Not via them," Jack commented, obviously guessing her thoughts. "They're locked. Besides, we have cams in the building opposite."
"And you didn't see the killer?"
"Blinds were drawn in the bedroom."
"What about infrared?"
His expression, if anything, grew grimmer. "It shows them making love. It wasn't until the bedroom team made their regular check-in that anyone realized the man making love to her hadn't been seen walking into the building."
"You obviously got people over here quickly."
"But not quick enough." Jack's cell phone beeped, and he paused to answer it.
A prickle of unease skated across her skin as his expression became slightly incredulous. She crossed her arms, waiting as he told whoever was on the other end of the phone to wait where they were and he'd be right there.
"What?" she said, the minute he hung up.
He shook his head in disbelief. "One of my men has just interviewed a women four apartments down who swears a naked and bloody Genny Jones attacked her-two minutes after Genny Jones apparently died."
Eryn blinked. "Impossible."
Jack's smile was wry. "Normally, I'd think so too, but nothing in this case would surprise me any longer. Let's go talk to her."
He waved her forward, and she turned, leading the way out of the apartment, relieved to be leaving the scent of death and blood and evil. A detective stood at the door four apartments down, and he gave them access without saying a word.
Eryn paused, allowing Jack to head in first. But she'd barely crossed the threshold when the smell hit her.
The killer had been in this apartment.
She bit her lip, holding back the information as Jack questioned the old women. He got the same information his detective probably had-Genny Jones had knocked on the apartment, begging to be let in, stating that there was a man in her apartment trying to kill her. The old women had let her in and was promptly attacked and knocked unconscious. By the time she came to, there was police everywhere. Eryn rubbed her arms and met Jack's gaze. "The killer used this apartment to clean himself up."
"Probably. That doesn't explain how he escaped. Or why Genny Jones walked into this apartment a few minutes after she'd apparently died."
"No." She hesitated. "I think we need to look at the tapes." Because she had a horrible suspicion about what was going on.
And if she was right, then Grey had lied to her.
Again.
Jack studied her for a moment, then nodded and moved past her, leading the way out of the apartment and across to the truck parked discretely in a shadowed alley.
"Which tapes," he said, sliding a chair across to her while he sat in the other spare one.
"Try the entrance tapes, twenty minutes before the bedroom team report in."
Jack raised an eyebrow, but all he said was, "John?"
One of the men man
ning the com-screens nodded. After a few seconds, images appeared on some of the screens above them. She watched silently. About ten minutes in, she saw what she was looking for. "Freeze it," she said, and rose, pressing a finger against the screen. "Recognize her?"
Jack frowned. "Yeah. It's the woman Genny was talking to at the bar last night."
"The woman who apparently doesn't exist," she said. "Now, retrieve the tapes of the building for around the murder time, and show them on a different screen."
The young officer did. A few minutes in, she again found what she was looking for. "Freeze it," she said again, and silently pointed to the image on the screen.
"The old women," Jack said, expression incredulous. "Walking away when she was supposedly knocked out. What the hell is going on?"
"Grey told me that our killer is a freak even among the freaks. He wouldn't explain it, but I think I now know." Her gaze went back to the screen, studying the woman who was neither old nor a woman. "Our killer is a face shifter, all right, but he's something no one thought could exist-a hermaphrodite. A shifter able to take on both male and female form."
"And he's killing these women because he hates his female half," Jack said flatly.
"At a guess, yes. Why else mutilate these women the way he has?"
Jack scrubbed a hand across his face. "This doesn't exactly help us catch him."
She bit her lip, staring at the frozen image of the dark-haired woman entering the building. "Maybe it does," she said slowly. "Look at her. Doesn't she rather resemble her-his-victims? What if that's her true form? What if she's only killing women who look like her?"
"Then we may finally have a picture to circulate. John, get us a good, close shot. And keep playing the second tape. Let's see where the old woman goes." Jack glanced at her. "If Grey was telling the truth about the number of victims, this only leaves us one-you."
She crossed her arms and began watching the tape. The fake old woman toddled up the street. "I was 'volunteered' into this to play bait. I still think that's the way to go."
