Deadly Desire (Riley Jenson Guardian 7)

"Around. He works the streets during the day. Safer than at night, even if it doesn't pay as well."

I wasn't sure whether he meant working in the prostitution or stealing sense, and wasn't about to ask. "You think you can get him to talk to me?"

"That depends."

I didn't ask on what. We both knew what he wanted out of the deal. "There's two hundred in it," I said. "That's twenty bucks cash for everyone here." And enough money to buy meals for the next couple of days if they were canny.>He snorted softly. "You're such a bitch."

"And you should be helping your mares out. It takes two to create babies, and two to look after them."

"The whole point of having a large herd," he said, voice holding a hint of irritation, but the gleam in his warm chocolate eyes countering it, "is the fact that there are plenty of mares to share night duty. The breadwinner has no need to get involved."

I snorted derisively. "Sable makes more money in a week than you do in a year."

"That is beside the point." He took a sip of coffee and sighed in pleasure. "Damn, this is good."

"The Directorate's probably saved a fortune since the shop upstairs opened." Certainly we hadn't used the coffee machine much since they had. I took a sip myself, then added, "What's happening?"

"Cole's sent a prelim report in for the zombie killing last night. General impressions and identifications, nothing more."

It was surprising he'd managed to get that far. Between riding to my rescue and then being called over to Armel's, he'd been kept pretty damn busy.

"Any initial similarities to the first murder?"

"Other than the fact they're teenage girls who had their throats slashed and blood drained, no." He reached forward and turned the monitor around enough for me to see. A pretty young blonde dominated the screen. I quickly scanned the report underneath as he added, "Last night's victim was a street kid with convictions for theft and drugs."

The first murder had been Amy Prince, a seventeen-year-old kid who'd recently left high school. There'd been nothing criminal about her. "There's no apparent connection between the two sets of murders?"

"Nothing obvious that we can see. They don't even look alike. The victims appear to be selected randomly."

"But random just doesn't feel right."

Kade raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because these murders are being committed by zombies, and zombies do not rise on their own," Iktar said. "Nor do they practice revenge. Only the living do so."

I looked at him. He was still reading, looking engrossed, but obviously not. "What makes you think these are revenge killings?"

He met my gaze, his all-blue eyes striking against the darkness of his featureless face. "Zombies have no thoughts or feeling of their own. They are mere receptacles for the desires and hatreds of others."

"So?" Kade said.

"So, if mere murder were the motive behind these killings, then why raise the dead? There are a thousand different ways a person with the sort of power needed to raise the dead could cause death, but she chooses decaying flesh to be her instrument. To me, this suggests not only that she wants our attention, but that she has a powerful motivation. Revenge is one such emotion."

"So is hatred, or bloodlust," I murmured, and yet I couldn't disagree with him. These killings were linked somehow, I could feel it, and revenge was certainly one possible connection. Revenge for what was the question. "Why would anyone actually want to attract our attention? That's just suicidal."

Iktar shrugged. "We won't know that until we find the person controlling the zombies."

I glanced at Kade. "Maybe we're tackling this from the wrong angle. Maybe we need to discover if there's any connection between the zombie and the dead people."

"It's still hard to imagine a connection between a street kid in Fitzroy and a former Broady high school student."

"Street kids weren't born that way. Maybe they all went to the same school or something." And it wouldn't be the first time we'd dealt with the bloody need to avenge injustices done at school. Hell, Liander-the love of my brother's life-still bore the scars after one such episode.

"Has anyone talked to the kids who shared the squat with last night's victim?"

Kade shook his head. "They scattered when I tried earlier this morning. I think I looked too much like a cop for their liking."

He looked about as much like a cop as I did. It was probably more the fact that he was a big, imposing male who looked ready to handle any sort of trouble that had them running.