The Darkest Kiss (Riley Jenson Guardian 6)

"Not necessarily. Maybe she can alter her human shape as well as her animal. After all, her cat is black, and yet the witnesses said she was blonde." I shrugged and clambered back over the fence. "Or maybe she's not even a shifter to begin with. Maybe she's something else entirely."

"But what else is there that can shift?"

"Who knows?" But if the spirit of an ancient god of death could be called into this time to create havoc once again, there was no saying what else was out there.

Or what else could be called into being.

A chill ran across my skin and I rubbed my arms. Kade must have caught the movement, because he retrieved my sweater and tossed it to me. I pulled it on gratefully, then caught my coat. Wearing it didn't seem to ease the chill, though.

Our footsteps echoed through the silent house as we made our way back up the corridor. The death scent was coming from the first room, and my steps slowed as we approached. I'd seen a lot of bloodshed and killing over the last year - had even done my fair share of it - but it never seemed to get any easier to confront.

I hoped it never did.

I hoped the part of me that mourned the wanton destruction of innocent lives haunted my days - and nights - for as long as I remained in this job. Because it meant that I wasn't becoming my brother, wasn't becoming the unthinking killing machine that he could sometimes be, and that Jack wanted me to be.

We stepped into the room. A large bed dominated the small space. Like the rest of the house, everything was white - only here, the brightness was alleviated by dark red patches that adorned the walls, the bedspread, and the carpet near the bed.

Like the woman I'd found yesterday, this woman was lying half-undressed, slumped across the bed. Her lacy bra dangled from the stump of her shoulder, and her torso was crisscrossed with bloody gashes. Gashes made with claws bigger than your average black house cat.

"Christ," Kade said. "The press are going to love this. First James, then his lover, and now another member of Toorak's finest."

"The press won't get anywhere near the story if Jack has anything to do with it. He'll keep them focused on James."

"Press have a nose for these things."

"And Jack's had plenty of experience restraining them."

He grunted, but whether that was agreement or not was anyone's guess.

"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."