Circle of Desire (5 page)

T
HE RUMBLE OF THE
M
USTANG
’
S ENGINE WAS THE ONLY
sound to be heard. It wasn’t the sort of car Ethan had expected her to drive, but nothing about Katherine Tanner was what he’d expected.

He shifted and studied her profile in the moonlight. Her features were slightly sharp, and her hair short, but thick and wavy. It tended to stick up at angles, reminding him oddly of night-colored feathers. She wasn’t slender, nor was she fat. Just a woman with lots of curves she wasn’t afraid to show.

He let his gaze slip to her wonderfully full breasts. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and the ridiculously small T-shirt left little to the imagination. Her nipples hardened as he watched, stretching the faded cotton to its limits. The moon might be raging through his system, but he wasn’t the only one who hungered tonight. He could smell her desire as clearly as he felt his own.

Perhaps he wouldn’t have to go far to satisfy his needs. Maybe he’d found the perfect release right here with this woman. He certainly intended to keep an eye on both her grandmother and her anyway, if only because they seemed to have a better idea of what was going on than either he or the rest of the department.
If he wanted to find his niece and catch the bastards behind these kidnappings, these two might be the key—however unorthodox their methods.

And in many ways, he had no other choice. He didn’t have the time to search for another partner, and with the full moon drawing close, it was getting harder and harder to control his hunger. If she knew what he was, she undoubtedly was aware of the effect the moon had on his system. And she was certainly outspoken enough to tell him to back off if she wasn’t interested.

But right now, his needs—and hers—would have to wait until they’d searched the warehouse.

He looked out the side window. It was nearly three in the morning, and the streets in this section of Springfield were crowded with the usual mix of night-crawlers. The city had recently set up “exclusion” zones to keep the drug users, prostitutes, and other problem types out of the downtown area, which was successful in itself, but in reality had only shifted the problem to another area. And while police crackdowns usually kept the streets clean for several weeks, everything eventually drifted back. He’d long ago come to the conclusion that it was all a waste of time, and that those in the government hadn’t the political will or the knowledge to truly tackle the problem.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly. He loved being a cop, but sometimes the sense of futility was almost overwhelming. No matter what he or Mark or the others did, it just didn’t seem to make a difference. The pros still hawked their wares, people still got killed, and maniacs still kidnapped innocent little girls and did God knows what to them …

“You got a name?” Her voice was sharp, as if she’d sensed the turn of his thoughts. Given the events of the night so far, nothing would surprise him. She continued on, her voice a little softer. “Or are we keeping this strictly formal?”

He could hardly keep it formal when he intended to have sex with her. “Ethan. You?”

“Kat.”

“Suits you more than Katherine.”

A smile tugged her generous lips. “You’re not the first to note that.”

He supposed not. He let his gaze linger on her lips for several seconds, then said, “What was wrong with your grandmother’s hands?”

“Arthritis. The visions make it worse.”

“Then why doesn’t she stop?”

She glanced at him, green eyes bright in the moonlight. “Can you stop the effects the moon has on you?”

“I can control it. Up to a point.” Up until the night the moon bloomed full.

“Exactly.”

“But she has a choice—”

“No, she doesn’t. Neither of us does.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

She took a deep breath, then puffed out her cheeks. “You’ll see soon enough.” She stopped the car. “We’re here. There’s a flashlight on the backseat.”

He grabbed it, then climbed out. The warehouse was at least six stories high and, like the warehouse in which they’d found the last kid, had been fouled by vandals, time, and the elements. His gut clenched. He
didn’t want to see what he knew he’d find in there—be it Janie or the other missing kid.

Kat came around the car, her face pale as she studied the warehouse towering above them. He was half tempted to tell her to wait here, but he very much suspected she’d tell him exactly where he could shove such a suggestion. So he handed her the flashlight and said, “Keep behind me.”

She didn’t argue, which surprised him—especially after her stubbornness earlier. They pushed through a hole that had been cut into the chain-link fence and walked across cracked concrete littered with weeds. The wind moaned through the window’s broken glass, and tin flapped. Somewhere a door creaked, creating an uneasy soundtrack that very much belonged in some B-grade horror movie.

He pressed open the door and looked inside. Though the darkness was complete, he had no trouble seeing. The moon sharpened all his senses, and his sight was wolf-keen. There was no one here.

But the metallic smell of blood hung on the air, mingled with the aroma of rotting flesh. He had to go on, had to see, but there was no reason for Kat to do either. “Why don’t you go call—”

“Don’t even think it.” Her voice was terse. “You want to call the cops, then you go do it. Right now, I have to go up those stairs.”

She pushed past him, the flashlight’s bright beam dancing across the graffiti-strewn walls as she crossed the empty expanse. He caught her at the stairs.

“Damn it, woman, there’s something dead up there!”

Her gaze met his, her eyes wide and haunted. “Believe me, I know.”

She began to climb. He shook his head and stayed beside her. The smell was worse on the second-floor landing—sharper, fresher, and ripened by the aroma of urine and excrement. He tried breathing through his mouth, but there was no avoiding the foulness of the place. She swung left and he followed. Moonlight filtered in through the broken windows, highlighting the bottles and syringes and piles of shit lining the base of the walls. If this warehouse was some kind of refuge, where the hell were the dregs of humanity who lived in it?

When they entered the small room at the end of the hall, they found the kid. Not that anyone would have guessed the half-chewed fragments strewn over the floor had ever been a child. There was enough, however, for him to realize it was a boy, not a girl. The surge of relief was intense, but it was swiftly replaced by fury. No one deserved this sort of death, let alone an innocent little kid. His stomach rose, and it took every ounce of willpower not to lose it then and there.

There was bad, and then there was
bad
. But this was worse than either of those.

Kat made an odd sound in the back of her throat, and he quickly looked at her. She had a hand against her mouth and was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She wasn’t looking at the remains that lay scattered around them, but was staring off into space. Her eyes were wide open and filled with such horror and pain it tore at something deep inside him. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he was sure of one thing: she couldn’t stay in this room.

He swept her up into his arms and raced back down the stairs. She didn’t protest, didn’t say anything at all, her eyes wide and glassy. Sweat sheened her skin, but her flesh was so cold he might have been holding ice.

Once outside, he set her down on a pile of bricks and thrust her head between her knees. “Breathe deep.”

She obeyed. After a few minutes the trembling eased, but she still did not raise her head. He thrust his hands in his pockets and waited. He didn’t know what else to do.

At last she looked up, her cheeks stained with tears. She sniffed, then wiped a hand across her eyes. “It wasn’t—”

“No,” he agreed softly. “It wasn’t.” But it was still a kid up there—a kid who didn’t deserve to die the way he had. “I have to go back up.” Had to check what he thought he’d seen.

She nodded. “I’ll wait here. I don’t need to feel anything else right now.”

Feel?
That was an odd word to use. “Will you be all right here?”

A ghostly smile touched her lips, though it failed to lift the fear from her eyes. “Fine. Just don’t be long, because I’ll have to call your people in.”

He nodded and went back. It was no better the second time around. He breathed though his mouth, but the smell still coated the back of his throat, so he swallowed death with every intake of air. He fought nausea and mounting horror as he carefully studied each of the remaining body parts. He hadn’t been
mistaken before. Something big had chewed through the bones. Something like a dog.

Or a wolf.

He rose and went back to Kat. She looked no better than she had twenty minutes before. “Did you call the department?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll have to go. I’m supposed to be on leave.”

She didn’t seem surprised. “Take my car.” She handed him the keys. “I need to go to the beach after I finish here, so you can meet me down in Florence, if you like.”

“What do you hope to find at the beach?”

“Cleansing.” She looked past him. “You’d better go. I can hear their sirens.”

So could he, and they were still a distance away. Her hearing was as good as his—and his was moon-enhanced. “How will you get there if I take your car?”

She shrugged, as if it wasn’t important. And maybe it wasn’t. Or maybe she simply intended to hitch a lift from someone.

“Florence is a reasonably big place,” he added, “with lots of ocean frontage. How are you going to find me?”

“I’ll find you, believe me.”

Oddly enough, he did. “Will you be all right?”

She looked at him. Deep in the green depths of her eyes he saw a suffering so profound he had to fight the urge to reach out and comfort her.

“We both have curses we have to live with,” she said softly. “And in many ways, mine is much worse than yours.”

Nothing could be worse than losing your soul to an animal every full moon. “What do you mean?”

She rubbed a hand across still-damp eyes. “I’ll explain later. You need to go. Right now.”

What he needed was an explanation. But the sirens were drawing closer, and Benton’s blood pressure would go haywire if he found Ethan here.

“I’ll see you at the beach,” he said, and walked away.

K
AT WAITED UNTIL THE RUMBLE OF THE
M
USTANG
’
S ENGINE
had faded, then dialed the hotel. Gwen answered on the third ring.

“I’m sorry, Kat,” she said. “I wish I could have warned you.”

No amount of warning could have helped ease the horror of what she’d felt in that room. Bile rose and she closed her eyes, fighting the need to vomit, fighting the tears pressing past closed eyelids. “I needed to go in without any preconceptions. We both know that.”

Gwen sighed. “So what did you feel?”

What
didn’t
she feel? God, the room was a menagerie of the dead’s emotions. “He died a lot slower than Daniel. The soul-sucker let a werewolf play around with him for a while before she sucked his essence away.”

She tried not to think of the bits of humanity strewn across that room. Tried not to remember the blinding fear and agony that had savaged her mind and cut through her soul. She failed miserably at both. But it was what had followed those emotions that had sickened
her most—the smells and sensations of sex. The soul-sucker had mated with the werewolf amidst all the carnage.

“Hang on,” she said and hurriedly put the phone down, staggering away to the fence to lose the little she’d eaten for dinner.

She was wiping her mouth with her hand when the cops came in. Benton took one look at her and ordered an officer to go get a bottle of water.

“Where?” was all he said to her.

“Second floor, to the left.”

He nodded and walked away. The water was hurriedly fetched, and she swilled some around her mouth, then spat it out. Once all the cops were inside, she went back to the bricks and picked up the phone.

“Sorry, Gran.”

“The cops are there, I gather?”

“Just arrived.”

“Then it’ll be an hour or so before you get back here?”

“Probably more. I need to cleanse. I feel the dead right through me.”

“Of course you would, after walking into that room.” Gwen sighed. “Get us both some breakfast on the way back. I’ll contact Seline and ask her to research what exactly this soul-sucker is. Now that we know what she looks like, it should be easier to track her down.”

“It’ll be nice to know what will actually kill her before we confront her.”

“Yes, it would.”

Kat glanced up as Benton came out of the warehouse. “Gotta go. It’s question time.”

“Make sure you bring your werewolf back with you.”

“He’s not my anything,” she repeated flatly. “And why do you want him back?”

“Because we’re all going to need to protect each other in the near future.”

A chill ran down her spine. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

The phone went dead. Kat shoved it back into her pocket and looked up at Benton. And knew it was going to be a very long couple of hours before she could fly to freedom.

D
AWN HAD BEGUN TO PAINT THE SKY PINK AND ORANGE BY
the time Ethan sensed her. He sat halfway down a grassy knoll, watching the waves shimmer across the sand as he listened to her approaching steps.

She smelled like no one he’d ever met. Fresh and airy, like warm summer rains and crisp spring winds. It was an alluring, almost erotic combination.

She stopped several feet away on his left. The stiffening breeze tugged at her hair, throwing the dark strands across her face. Her hands were thrust deep into her pockets, but even from where he sat he could see the trembling. Tiredness, or a continuing reaction to what they’d walked into?

“I have to swim.”

She
was
nuts. “That’s the Pacific out there, not a sheltered cove.”

“I know. And it’s perfect.” Her gaze met his, as remote as her voice. “Given your current state, I suggest you wait in the car.”