Plans, plans, plans.
Ah, but there was a monkey with a wrench, she thought as she started walking. At least with attracting new owners.
Wait, was that the saying? Or was it . . . a wrench in the works? No, that wasn’t right, either.
Goddamn, she needed some sleep.
About six doors down, she came up to a uniformed CPD officer standing at attention, and he immediately opened the door for her.
“It’s in the bedroom, Detective.” Like he was a museum docent.
“Thanks, Pellie,” she said as she slipped a pair of flimsy blue booties over her black Merrells.
Inside the condo, her first impression was all iGen new money. There were digital picture frames all over the place, the images showing the same couple in the same cheek-to-loving-cheek, super-happy pose with different Instagram-worthy backdrops: tropical, mountainous, desert, stream. The sofa-and-chair setup was natural fiber, the knobby rug was clearly hand-loomed, and speak of the downward dog, a pair of lavender yoga mats were laid out side by side in the open area by the galley kitchen.
Kitchen was nothing special, except for the drug paraphernalia left out on the granite countertop next to a juicer the size of a bathtub and a bowl full of no-doubt-organic fruit.
Looked like the pair were not as faithful to the body-is-my-temple stuff as their social media might suggest.
MDMA was definitely not sold at Whole Foods.
Following quiet voices down a thin hall, she started to smell the rot, and the death bouquet really bloomed as she came up to the open door of the bedroom.
Three or four days, she thought as she snapped on nitrile gloves. Maybe close to a week.
Over on a queen-sized bed, the man and woman from the photographs were laid out naked on their backs, their heads on the pillows, their gray faces angled toward each other. There was extensive blood loss from both, due to centralized wounds in their chests, and the bedding underneath had soaked up the moisture.
They were holding hands, their loose, unresponsive fingers locked in place by what looked like dental floss around their wrists.
Detective Andy Steuben, who was taking notes by the headboard, looked at Erika. “I don’t have the heart to mention how sad this is.”
Erika rolled her eyes. “We’re good without the commentary. Thanks.”
Striding across to the bodies, she got a good look at the mutilations. Both the man and the woman had had their hearts removed, and not in a neat-and-tidy surgical fashion. The cavernous wounds were ragged on the edges, and fragments of bone dotted their abdominals and the bed-covers. It seemed like whoever had done the extractions had reached in with their hand and ripped the cardiac muscle out.
Except that was impossible.
“CSI is on the way,” Andy announced.
Erika already knew this, but just as Steuben had a reputation for being a smartass, she was the division’s resident cold bitch, and she didn’t feel the need to stoke that gossip by one-upping the guy on a not necessary.
Running her eyes around the room, she noted the bureau had all its doors closed. There was a laptop and camera equipment out on a desk. Wallet and purse were next to them. Bedside table on the left had a silver dish with a bunch of gold jewelry and a heavy watch in it.
Erika rubbed her aching head. “I gotta go make a phone call.”
“You pulling in the feds?” Andy asked.
Erika walked up to the rough wood headboard. Above it, in cursive, a four-letter word had been screwed into the wall.
L O V E.
“This is the third set of victims,” she said grimly. “I think we’ve got a serial killer.”
Back at the moment Sahvage’s throat was slashed, he had one, and only one, thought going through his brain: Maybe he was finally getting off this fucking train.
That’s what he was thinking as he went down on his knees and felt the warm pump of his blood breaking through his fingers and falling free to soak into his pants and pool on the concrete. As the fight crowd bolted, his brain started slowing down—so he had some hope, some optimism that finally, after all these years—
Who knew that human had it in him.
And speak of the stupid, the skinny guy with the knife in his hand scrambled out from under and tore off like his life depended on it. Sahvage let the fucker go. The quick bastard deserved the bid for freedom given that slick move with the hidden blade. Although if that female hadn’t been such a distraction—
Before he lost consciousness, Sahvage’s brain ordered his head to turn to where she’d been standing. But things were draining rapidly, energy, awareness, cognition. So he didn’t make a lot of headway with that. Instead, the world went on a whirl, spinning around him.
The funneling sensation ended with a clapping impact, something cold and hard hitting the side of his face—and he wondered who had swung a frozen salmon at his jaw like a baseball bat. Except no, it wasn’t a pescatarian assault. It was the concrete floor he’d been standing on rushing up to grab his body and hold it down.
Wait, that didn’t make sense.
And wasn’t that great, he thought as his vision tapped out, even though his eyelids were still open.
Maybe this time, he thought with an exhausted anticipation. Maybe . . . this . . . time . . .
He was momentarily surprised as his vision got back with the program, but then he recognized that another brilliant, blinding light was calling him to attention. At first, he thought it was the Fade, but no. The source of it swung away. And then there was another. And another—
The cars that had lit the fighting area were getting out of Dodge.
And someone was standing over him.
That female . . . the one who had shouted at him. And even as he bled out, he took note of her.
Which was so much better than having his life flash before his eyes.
She was tall, and dressed simply, her jeans and thick sweatshirt out of place with the elaborate, revealing shit that the humans wore. Her hair was pulled back, so it was hard for him to tell what color it was, and her face was angular, the cheekbones high, the jaw strong, the hollows between the two suggesting she was hungry some portion of the time.
What the hell was she doing in a place like this?
As another car took off, its blue-bright headlights streamed over her and her wide, scared eyes.
“Go,” he told her. “Leave me.”
When she didn’t move and didn’t acknowledge his words, he wondered if he’d only spoken in his head—
Sahvage started to cough, but it was weak because there wasn’t a lot of air in his lungs. And goddamn, his mouth was full of copper.
The female looked around, and that was when he saw her ponytail. Dark hair, but with blond streaks. Then she was down on his level and her mouth was moving.
What the hell was she doing? She needed to take care of himself—
Herself. She needed to take care of herself.
Just as he was getting ready to stand up and push her over the side of the fucking parking garage, she straightened to her full height and took one last, long stare at him. She seemed pained. He wanted to tell her not to bother.
Even if they’d been intimates, he wasn’t worth that. And they were strangers.
Eventually, she disappeared into thin air, the space she had inhabited vacated, the last of the cars that had been used to light the fight, a boxy black SUV, squealing its tires and passing right through where she had been standing.
The thing nearly ran him over. He wished it had finished the job for him.
As the last of the lights faded, and the sounds of the humans became silence, and the temperature of the night grew colder and colder, Sahvage smiled in the pool of his own blood.
Finally, a female who did what he told her to when it really counted. As opposed to . . .
• • •
Old Country
1833
“You cannae save me.”
As his charge, Rahvyn, spoke the words, Sahvage was struck with a terrible temper at the female who sat before him in the meadow grass. Verily, had his first cousin laid her open palm upon him, she could not have offended him more.
“What say you,” he growled deep within his chest. “I am your ghardian. ’Tis my honor and duty to ensure you—”
“Stop.” She placed her pale hand upon the rough leather of his sleeve. “I implore you. There is no more time.”
Determined not to let loose his tongue at her, he thus looked away from where they were sitting across from one another. In the midst of the quiet meadow just awakening unto spring’s warmth, beneath the splendor of a clear, starry night with a partial moon, it was unseemly to argue. It was ever unseemly to argue with Rahvyn. Yet his nature was what it was.
And she was alive because of that.
“Sahvage, you must let me go. It serves no betterment for you to fall before—”
“It serves ev’ry betterment! Have you no sense, female—”
“Let them have me,” she whispered. “You shall survive, thereafter. I promise.”
Sahvage fell silent. And could not return his gaze unto her. He stared forth whilst seeing naught, his blood seething, his urge to fight unserved with a target, for he could never hurt her. Not by deed. Not by word. Not even by thought.
He cursed. “I gave my vow unto my uncle, unto your sire, to protect you. You have already insulted my black daggers, now shall you move on to my honor?”
He glowered at the tree line and the distant cottage in which the two of them had lived ever since her side of the family had been left for dead by lessers. His sire and mahmen had already died off. Without Rahvyn, he had no other in his direct bloodline.
When she did not say aught, he had to look upon her once more. Her hair, as black as the wings of her namesake, curled outside of the hood she had drawn up upon her head, and her pale face gleamed in the moonlight. Her eyes, black and mysterious, refused to lift unto his own as she twisted her hands in her lap, and her preternatural concentration upon the nervous movements stiffened his spine.
“What have you foreseen?” he demanded.
In response, there was only a silence that braced his resolve even as it threatened to break his heart.
“Rahvyn, you must tell me.”
Her stare finally rose to meet his own. Tears, luminous and tragic, trembled on her lower lashes.
“It will be easier for us both if you leave. The now.”
“Why.”
“The time of my rebirth is nigh. The trial I must go through is prepared for me by destiny. To find my true power, there is no other way.”
He reached out and wiped the one tear that fell. “What madness do you speak.”
“The flesh must suffer so that the final barrier may burn away.”
A chill went through Sahvage. “No.”
Off in the distance, there came a clamor of hooves upon the packed dirt road that skirted the open field. Torches, held high and much agitated by the driven gaits of powerful horses, came ’round at a war-like speed.
It was a guard bearing Zxysis the Elder’s colors.
“No!” Sahvage jumped to his feet, outing his black daggers and facing the attack. “Save yourself—I shall hold them!”
The count of the males upon those steeds was a dozen. Perhaps more. And behind them? A horse-drawn cage of steel.
“Rahvyn,” he barked. “You must go!”
When she said nothing, he glanced over his shoulder—
Sahvage lost all track of thought. A glow had coalesced around his cousin, and as his eyes adjusted, he was confused, for he saw that stars had eschewed their placement above for an orbit about her as their sun. How was this possible—
No, not stars. They were fireflies. Except . . . ’twas the wrong season for them, was it not?
Sitting in their midst, in her black hooded cloak, her ashen face lifted unto the moonlight, she was a living virtue, purity vested within mortal confines.
“No . . .” Sahvage’s voice cracked. “Do not let them take you.”
“It is the only way.”