Playing Their Parts

“Son of a bitch,” Cassandra whispered beside him. “I guess I can see why the witness didn’t call an ambulance.”

“This couldn’t have been done by a Kindred.” Stone could hear the horror in his own voice. “One of my people would never do this to a female. Gods, she’s been tortured.”

“If you mean all the cuts all over her, she wanted him to do that.”

Stone whipped around to see the female witness—Amelia, that was her name—standing behind him. Her face was still pale and pinched but she seemed better in control of her emotions now, which was a relief.

Though to be honest, Stone was feeling less than perfectly in control his own emotions right at the moment. He was vacillating between horror at what had been done to the victim and fury at whoever had done it.

“What do you mean?” Cassandra asked the girl. “You mean you saw him cut her?”

“I was hiding in the closet. I saw all of it.” She looked like she might start crying again, which caused Cassandra to put an arm around her shoulders once more.

“Okay, look, my partner and I need to check out the crime scene first but then you’re going to tell us everything you saw. All right?”

“All right.” The girl nodded rapidly.

“Good, now did you touch anything in here?” Cassandra asked. She was already pulling a pair of shoe protectors out of her pocket and slipping them over her shoes. Mechanically, Stone did the same. He was trying mentally to divorce himself from the scene—to remain calm and logical. But almost all the homicide victims he and Cassandra dealt with were males. To see a female in this position was…difficult. To say the least.

“I only touched the side of her neck, to see if she had a pulse,” Amelia said and sniffed. “I was pretty sure she wouldn’t, after the way he was choking her, but—”

Stone wished he didn’t have to hear this. He supposed he might become accustomed to seeing female homicide victims if he worked with the regular, human homicide team but with the HKR squad, it wasn’t something he had to get used to. And this victim…well, she looked bad. Really bad.

He approached the body carefully. There was blood splatter everywhere on the expensive-looking tan carpet and a partial footprint as well—a big one—that he avoided. There were also a number of other things scattered around—a black whip, a leather riding crop, and a few other implements that looked like they were good only for giving beatings. Finally he was close enough to touch the body—if he wanted to.

Stone studied it, looking for clues—for evidence. He hadn’t known this female but he wanted to get justice for her just the same.

He’d seen worse, he supposed—rapists with their throats ripped out in an animalistic fury or attackers with their genitals torn off or all of their limbs broken in multiple places. A few of the bodies he and Cassandra had examined had even been completely decapitated. But all those victims had been male—and all of them had gotten what was coming to them, in Stone’s opinion. If you caused a Kindred warrior to go into Rage by attacking his female, you had only yourself to blame when he ripped off your head.

This was worse somehow—much worse. Because it was clear that whoever had killed this girl had not been in Rage. The knife wounds weren’t random looking or even very deep. They formed a neat, precise pattern on the girl’s arms and legs—almost as though the attacker had been feeling artistic, Stone thought, feeling fury rise like bile in his throat.

He pulled on a pair of gloves and lifted her head. Something grated in her neck and her head wobbled loosely. Her long black hair reminded him of Cassandra’s—a thought he pushed away immediately.

“Well, there’s no ID anywhere that I can find, so right now she’s a Jane Doe. Broken neck?” Cassandra asked, coming up behind him and nodding at the girl.

“Apparently. And look.” Stone pointed at the livid bruises around the victim’s slender throat. They had been made by hands as big as his own.

Kindred hands, whispered a harsh little voice in his brain.

No! Stone pushed back against the idea. All female life was precious—sacred. No Kindred would have done this. There were human males as big as his people—not many but a few. Most of them were professional athletes but he supposed that there were also some who dabbled in human pornography.

“He worked her over, all right.” Cassandra’s sweet voice was grim. “And it looks like he enjoyed himself while he did.”

Stone looked where she was pointing and saw that the victim’s thighs were slick with something that looked like semen. There was a puddle between her spread legs as well, which was inconsistent with his hope that the perpetrator had been a human. Human males only ejaculated a teaspoon or so of sperm when they orgasmed. Kindred males made ten times that amount or more—the better to bond the female they were making love to, to them.