Dancer of Death Read online

  Gray didn’t seem particularly mollified. “Perhaps.”

  John crossed the room. “I thought you were good at waiting,” he said, settling a hand on Gray’s arm. “Didn’t you go years without hunting when you were staked?”

  “That was different,” Gray objected. “Then, there was nothing to be done. Now, there is no reason for me not to hunt.”

  Was that true? Or had inhabiting a living body, with all the urgency of pleasure and pain, worn away the edge of Gray’s inhuman patience?

  A thread of worry squirmed deep in John’s belly. Of course being in a living body, being with Caleb, had changed Gray. But it wasn’t the same sort of change that happened to other NHEs, exposed to human pain and fear and lust for the first time. Gray had a cushion of five thousand years of memories gleaned from the bodies he’d inhabited, and even if he hadn’t understood them fully, even if he hadn’t felt them, he hadn’t been a total stranger to mortal existence the way a therianthrope or wendigo would be.

  There was no need to worry. Gray just needed a distraction. And hell, at the moment, John could use one too.

  “Still, it hasn’t been all bad, has it?” he asked, leaning in closer, so his thigh brushed against Gray’s.

  The condo’s thick walls helped keep out the summer heat, but July in Charleston was always brutal. John had stripped down to nothing but shorts and an old t-shirt while he cleaned. Caleb had donned shorts before going out, more to blend in than because he felt the heat anymore, and bare skin whispered against bare skin. Gray’s nostrils flared, and John sensed the drakul’s full attention settle on him.

  Which could be a little disconcerting, like being stared at by a very large tiger. But in this case it was arousing, too. John slid his arms around Gray’s waist, his dick swelling as they pressed together.

  Gray kissed him. He didn’t kiss like anyone else John had ever been with. Gray did everything with a singular sense of determination, of purpose, which stole John’s breath. In that moment, it was as if he was the only thing in Gray’s world, or at least the only thing that mattered.

  John slid his tongue between Gray’s parted lips, exploring thick fangs. Gray’s hands settled on his hips, tugging him closer, and soon they ground together.

  “Not all bad,” Gray admitted, when their lips parted again. His long hair slid silkily over the backs of John’s hands, his fingers exploring the curve of John’s spine, his claws sheathed for the moment. John closed his eyes, enjoying the sensations—touch and smell and his sixth sense, the one which allowed him to manipulate etheric energy as an exorcist.

  That sense insisted he stood in the middle of a storm, in the arms of something much larger and more powerful than could be accounted for by Caleb’s tall, lanky body. Etheric energy crackled along his skin, arousing as hell. His breath grew erratic as his cock hardened.

  “Bed?” he mumbled against Gray’s mouth.

  “Yes.”

  John led the way up the tight spiral of the iron staircase to the second floor. The setting sun tinged the light in the bedroom a summer gold. The ceiling fan spread a welcome breeze over his skin as he stripped. Gray’s scent flooded the little space, especially with the windows shut, and John breathed deeply.

  Naked, Gray stared at him from where he stood on the other side of the bed. His gaze fixed on John, all of his attention focused, like a big cat stalking its prey. He was beautiful and dangerous, all long hair and fangs, eyes black as oil slicks. John’s heart pounded with anticipation, dick bobbing slightly in time with each beat.

  A slow grin curled one corner of Gray’s mouth, exposing a fang. He crawled onto the bed, his hair writhing over his pale back. His tongue flicked out, touching his upper lip, and his grin widened to reveal both fangs.

  John half expected Gray to grab him, yank him down on the bed, and pin him there. Instead, Gray turned around, ass in the air, spine curved, claws catching in the comforter. “Take us.”

  John wasn’t going to argue. He grabbed lube from the nightstand, then climbed onto the bed himself. Setting the tube aside, he ran his hands over Gray’s back, bent to kiss the base of his spine. He mapped the familiar contours of skin, over rib and down hip, across a lean thigh. He ran a firm stroke down Gray’s cock, cupping his balls with the other hand.

  Gray shot a growl over his shoulder, teeth exposed. The low, animal sound sent a rush of blood to John’s dick which left him feeling light-headed.

  “So impatient,” John teased.

  “There is a time for patience. This is not it.” Gray pushed back against him. “We want you. Now.”

  “Then you’ll have me.”

  The lube felt slick and cool against heated skin. Gray growled again when John pressed in. John gasped and bit his lip hard, distracting himself. There was the tight heat of Gray’s body, tugging him deeper, but that wasn’t the half of it. Etheric energy shivered over John’s skin, beneath the palms of his hands, against his thighs, and along every centimeter of his cock. His senses were saturated, overloaded with ecstasy, but he didn’t want this to end too soon.

  Gray shoved back to meet him, matching his thrusts. Another growl thrummed in the air, low and dangerous. “Is this good?” John gasped, shifting his angle slightly. “Tell me.”

  Gray threw his head back, and John glimpsed his face, lips drawn back from his fangs. “Yes. More.”

  Inspired, John thrust one hand into the seething mass of Gray’s hair, knotting his fist in it. Gray snarled, but the way he arched his back and pushed against John suggested he liked it. A lot.

  John tugged, gently at first, but then Gray said, “Harder. You cannot hurt us.”

  So he pulled harder. And Goddess, this was as insane as it was hot, fucking something like Gray. Something old and inhuman, which snarled as John pulled on his hair and drove into him, static singing along every nerve.

  John shouted, control slipping. He thrust in hard, pleasure cresting, lightning dancing behind closed eyelids.

  As soon as he was done coming, Gray pulled free of him. John blinked as he was pushed down against the bed. Panting and wild, Gray straddled him, and John opened his mouth for Gray’s cock.

  It didn’t take long; a couple of sucks before salty bitterness flooded his mouth. Accompanied by something else; a flash of etheric energy, and John drank that down too.

  Silence enveloped the bedroom, except for the sound of their breathing. The ceiling fan turned overhead, spreading a gentle breeze over exposed skin. John’s thoughts drifted, fragmenting, until the weight of a hand resting on his belly drew him back.

  He opened his eyes. Gray still manifested, lying beside him, black gaze fixed on John’s face. “Let us leave this place,” Gray said, his deep voice pitched softly for once. “Caleb says it is not so simple. But it could be. They cannot stop us. Let us leave, go elsewhere, where we can hunt demons. Where this sadness will disappear from your eyes.”

  Damn. Gray loved him, but John hadn’t thought the drakul had learned to read him quite so well.

  He rested his hand over Gray’s. “I wish it was that easy,” he said. “But Caleb’s right. It isn’t. SPECTR isn’t just going to let us leave.” The truth was bitter on his tongue, but he owed it to Gray to speak it. “You’re too powerful, darling. They can’t let you wander around and just hope no one gets hurt.”

  Gray’s eyes narrowed. “They are foolish,” and now his voice wasn’t so quiet any more. “I do not hunt mortals.”

  “I know. I do. But when things happen like Fort Sumter, or even the fight on the Cooper River Bridge, it attracts attention. You’re too…you’re too big,” he said helplessly.

  Gray withdrew his hand. “You forget how long I went unnoticed. Your SPECTR believed me a made-up story, an old superstition. And yet I have always been here. These things you speak of, these battles—I would not have chosen them. I would have bided my time, hunted in silence. They were chosen for me. Because of you.”

  John felt as though all the air had vanished from the room. “Gr
ay?”

  But Gray was gone, hidden again beneath Caleb’s skin. The etheric equivalent of rolling over and turning his back, John supposed.

  “Don’t mind him,” Caleb said sleepily. He scooted closer, draping his arm over John’s chest.

  “Is it true, though?” John asked.

  Caleb shrugged. “I guess. Look at it this way. Our mission is to stop NHEs from eating people, right? Gray didn’t care about that before. So yeah, he wouldn’t have made a big scene on the Cooper River Bridge. Mainly because it attracted attention, and it’s not convenient to have people trying to chop your head off all the time. He would have waited until he could track the raven mocker to its lair and eaten it there, where no one would know. And it wouldn’t have mattered how many people got their hearts devoured in the meantime.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” John said slowly.

  “He cares now, because we care.” Caleb yawned. “Look, don’t let it bother you. Get a few demons in him, and he’ll be fine.”

  “I suppose you know best,” John replied. Caleb burrowed in more tightly, and within a few moments was asleep, his head resting on John’s arm. But John lay awake for a long time, watching the ceiling fan spin, and wondering if Gray might have been better off never meeting either of them.

  * * *

  The insistent buzz of the phone dragged John reluctantly up out of sleep. Extracting himself out from beneath Caleb’s arm, he rolled over and slapped the nightstand a few times before finding the phone.

  District Chief Barillo’s number showed on the display, along with the time. Goddess, it was fucking three in the morning. They’d been stuck riding a desk, so why was Barillo calling at this hour?

  “Sir?” he mumbled into the phone.

  “Starkweather!” Barillo’s shout made John jump. “Got something for your team to look at.”

  John blinked. Were they back in the field now?

  Barillo never appreciated being questioned, so John just said, “Give me the details, sir.”

  “There’s a body in Brittlebank Park. Charleston PD says it’s one of ours. Get down there and confirm, or knock it back to PD.”

  “Yes, s—” But Barillo had already hung up.

  John shook his head and sat up. Behind him, Caleb stirred. “Was that Barillo?”

  “Yeah.” John switched on the lamp. “So get dressed, and I’ll call Zahira. We’ve got a case.”

  Chapter 3

  The street running alongside the park blazed with flashing blue lights. As John stopped the car at the end of a line of police cruisers, Gray rose to hover just under Caleb’s skin. A sensation of keen anticipation ran through them both.

  “We will hunt.”

  Down, boy. It’s not time to go off the leash yet.

  Gray didn’t reply, but all of his attention focused on their surroundings, his presence butting right up against Caleb’s, just a hair away from manifesting. It was a little annoying, but after the last few weeks, Caleb couldn’t really blame him. So he tried to ignore Gray as he climbed out of the car.

  The scent of river water hung heavy on the air, combined with a marshy rot. One of the cops puffed on a cigarette, and even at a distance Caleb’s nose started to itch. The sound of distant traffic drifted from the bridge over the Ashley River. Police radios barked and squawked. The surrounding area seemed quiet, though, the district more businesses than residential. Who had been wandering around out here to find a body at this time of night?

  An identical government-issued sedan pulled up behind John’s, and Zahira Noorzai climbed out. Despite the late hour, she looked annoyingly cheerful. “We have a case?”

  “Maybe,” John cautioned, although Caleb didn’t think a force existed strong enough to dampen Zahira’s enthusiasm. “We’ll go in, have a look, and let Gray take a sniff.”

  John led the way to one of the officers monitoring the perimeter. A quick flash of his badge, and she said, “The body is over there by the dock. Detective Tradd is in charge of the scene.”

  As they made their way over the short-mowed grass, Zahira asked, “Is Barillo putting us back in the field?”

  “He didn’t say,” John replied. “Just told us to come here and check out the scene.”

  “I hope so,” Caleb said to Zahira. “Before Gray drives me around the bend.”

  “You will not let me drive,” Gray complained. Caleb ignored him.

  Caleb’s enhanced sight easily picked out the curiosity brightening Zahira’s eyes despite the dark night punctuated by flashing police lights. “Gray doesn’t have to feed, right?”

  “Right. I mean, it definitely makes him stronger, but he won’t die if he doesn’t.” Caleb grinned. “Mainly, the enforced diet just makes him a pain in the ass.”

  Annoyance. “You mortals are the ones who make things unnecessarily complicated. If you do not like my sensible response to your behavior, you should behave more rationally.”

  “SPECTR?” a woman called. She stood just outside the inner ring of crime scene tape, looking as though she’d been waiting for them.

  “Special Agent John Starkweather,” John introduced himself with a handshake. “This is Special Agent Noorzai and Mr. Jansen, one of our outside experts.”

  That was one way to put it. The woman arched a brow, but didn’t ask. “Detective Marsha Tradd. How much do you know about the scene?”

  “Nothing,” John confessed.

  She nodded. “The body was discovered by a man who’d come to do a bit of night fishing off the pier. Caucasian female, mid-twenties, lying fully dressed near the edge of the river. Well, I say fully dressed, but her shoes are in tatters. So are her feet.”

  John frowned. “Was she in the water?”

  “No, so it wasn’t fish nibbling on her toes, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Tradd said. Her lips pressed together slightly. “I hoped we might be getting a break on our missing persons case, but her ID doesn’t match anyone reported missing. It still might tie in, of course, but I’m not holding my breath.”

  John nodded. “Understood. We’ll take a look. Can you pull your men back while we examine the scene?”

  She frowned slightly, but kept whatever questions she had behind her teeth. From what Caleb had seen, most cops didn’t want anything to do with a SPECTR case. “Come on. The body is over here.”

  As they approached, she barked a few orders, and the forensics team and cops moved back. Tradd herself stopped a good distance from the pool of illumination created by the portable lights the crime scene unit had brought in.

  The body lay centered in the stark white light. John strolled up, snapping on latex gloves as he did so, but Caleb hung back. He really fucking hated this part. Seeing the victims—or, usually, what was left of them—still filled him with a mix of nausea and horror. Would he ever get used to it? Did he want to?

  Zahira glanced back at him, so he forced himself to take the last few steps closer to the body. Delaying the inevitable wasn’t going to make it any easier.

  Whoever the victim had been in life, she looked fragile in death. Her hair hung around her face, a few bobby pins still snarled in it, as if she’d worn it pinned up before whatever had happened. The dark strands lay across skin gone the color of a fish’s belly, except around her swollen eyes and nose. Shorts and t-shirt clung wetly to her body, but Caleb’s nose confirmed what Tradd had said, and the dead woman hadn’t been in the river. It was sweat that saturated her clothes and hair, and tears that left slick trails on her distorted features. She’d cried for a long time before she’d died.

  “Goddess,” John murmured. “Her feet.”

  Her sneakers were held on only by their laces, the soles detached, the canvas worn through. Beneath showed feet turned purple and pulpy, their toenails gone, covered in blood and burst blisters. Bone gleamed through here and there, and Caleb’s gorge rose even as he started to salivate.

  Because the entire scene reeked with the stench of rancid sweat and clotted blood, of rotting bone and burn
ing hair.

  The stink of a demon.

  * * *

  Gray steps out of the pool of harsh light even as he surfaces. Black clothing and hair blend with the night, preventing the mortals from seeing him and panicking. River water splashes around his boots, and he breathes deep, every vein trembling, belly cramping with hunger at the delicious scent of the demon. Old memories flicker, of deep woods and high mountains. He has hunted this sort of demon before, long ago.

  He pivots in place, but the area is saturated in the demon’s smell. It was here for quite a while, perhaps toying with its prey. He moves along the bank, but the scent fades. The other direction yields the same results. So up, away from the river.

  The trail draws him away from the demon’s kill, across the short grass and amidst the brightly painted structures meant for mortal children’s play. The scent is strong here, as well—did the demon lie in wait?

  Flashlights cut across the swing set, throwing shadows, as John and Zahira hurry after him. He increases his pace, from a rapid walk to a jog, and then to a run. The demon may have fled already, but perhaps he might still catch it, might still feed. Might keep it from killing anyone else, and take the sadness out of John’s eyes.

  “It isn’t that simple.”

  It should be.

  The trail goes to the road, past a car which might have belonged to the dead mortal, cold and abandoned as the body. Then it stops.

  He growls in frustration, even as John and Zahira come up behind him. “The demon left in an automobile,” he says in distaste, because of course it did.

  “Then if the suspect is still driving, the forty days aren’t up,” Zahira says. “We can perform an exorcism.”

  Gray wants to growl again. Hasn’t he waited long enough? He doesn’t wish this hunt to end in an exorcism but in feeding. But he doesn’t give voice to his displeasure, because John and Caleb think he should wish to help the possessed mortal more than he wants to eat the demon.

  “No, you should want to help the faust because we aren’t like them. Because demons don’t give a damn who they kill and hurt. And you’re not a demon.”