The Darkest Kiss (Riley Jenson Guardian 6)

"She hasn't been dead all that long." He stopped near the body and looked down at her. "Why would the cat come back to this house when she'd already used the woman's face and knew she'd been seen?"

I shrugged. "Given that we're probably not dealing with a rational mind here, maybe she simply didn't think we'd trace her so easily."

I stopped beside him. Unlike her body, the woman's face was untouched, but the terror of her ordeal seemed frozen on her features. My gaze fell to her mouth, and I frowned.

"Is that lipstick?" I leaned closer to have a look. The odor of death and new decay overrode the metallic scent of blood, but the scent of cat and that vague, orange and jasmine aroma was present as well.

"Where?" Kade said.

I pointed a finger to the smear of red across the woman's top lip. "It looks like someone wearing lipstick has been kissing her. The shoe guy had the same color on his lips."

"So she kissed this woman before she killed her, then stole her identity and killed the shoe guy. Maybe we are dealing with a soul-sucker of some kind." He studied her mouth for a second longer, then stepped back and looked around. "There's an awful lot of fear lingering in this room. Fear and anger."

"Anger?" I raised an eyebrow. "Same source, or different?"

"The anger is older. Deeper." He frowned. "When I sensed it in James's office, it felt ancient and powerful. Now it feels even more so."

I'm glad he was feeling something, because I wasn't. And really, that was beginning to bug me. Four murders, and not one soul left hanging about afterward? Granted, the woman I'd found yesterday had been dead for so long her soul was unlikely to be still here, but with the other three, I should have sensed something. Hell, I might have wished more than once to go to a murder scene and not sense the dead, but the reality of its happening was prickling my radar. Something was very off-kilter.

And, at least with these cat killings, it really did suggest that we were dealing with some sort of soul-sucker.

Goose bumps fled across my skin. I resisted the urge to rub my arms and said, "So our murderer is somehow gaining power every time she kills?"

"That would be my guess, yes." His gaze met mine. "Which means we have to catch her soon, before she grows too powerful."

"If we can bring down a god of death, we can bring down this thing. Whatever she is." But I wished I sounded a little more confident. "What I don't get is why she's marking her victims first. I mean, why bother with three tiny slashes if she's going to cut them up so badly or rip off an arm? And why would she do that to this woman and the shoe guy, and not to James and the first female victim?"

"Maybe it was some sort of test that developed into something more violent." His gaze raked the woman's body, and distaste flicked through his warm eyes. "And she didn't only claw here. She's nibbled."

My stomach did an odd sort of flip-flop. "What?"

"Here." He pointed to a small area near the woman's left breast. The skin had been torn open, and globules of fat and flesh were evident. "Those aren't claw marks around the wound. That's teeth."

"Why on earth would she be eating the flesh now when she didn't before?"

"What better way to induce fear than to actually eat bits of your victim?" He shrugged. "She seems to be getting more violent with each murder, so perhaps this is all part of the escalation.">"Mine, neither."

"Did he have small scratches on the side of his neck, like James did?"

I nodded and stepped over another brackish-looking puddle. "Same place, same size."

"Then that's our constant. For whatever reasons, she's marking her victims."

"But is she doing it before, or after? You know, for all the blood in this murder, there didn't seem to be any blood related to those scratches. Yet they were open, un-healed wounds."

"Maybe it's some weird way of testing them before she kills them." He shrugged. "We won't know for sure until we catch the bitch."

"Cats are queens. Only dogs are bitches."

He snorted softly. "She takes female humanoid form, so therefore the bitch tag can apply. Trust me, I live with a household of them."

I grinned. "And here was me having the image of you all being one big happy family."

"Oh, we are. But where a group of females gather, bitching can be found. I'm sure it's part of female DNA, just like the ability to sniff out chocolate wherever it may be hidden."

"You could be right." We reached the end of the shops and moved into the lane behind them. There were several cars crammed into the small space, leaving barely enough room between them and the brickwork to get through. None of the shops had rear entrances, which I would have thought would be against fire regulations. Even heritage-listed shops - which I didn't think these were - had to have a fire exit. Maybe the owner was paying someone under the table to get away with not installing them.

I stopped at the shoe shop window and looked up. The sun hadn't yet hit this wall, and the bricks were still damp from the early-morning dew. Small paw marks were visible, sliding through the wetness partway down the wall before disappearing.