Dark Side of the Moon (Dark-Hunter 9)

So in effect, Gina would achieve her dream. By dying she'd save thousands of lives and she'd bring health care to those who couldn't afford it...

The human race was an amazing thing. So few people ever realized just how many lives they inadvertently touched. How the right or wrong word spoken casually could empower or destroy another's life.

If Ash were to accept Tracy's invitation for coffee, her destiny would be changed and she would end up working as a well-paid bank officer. She'd decide that marriage wasn't for her and go on to live her life with a partner and never have children.

Everything would change. All the lives that would have been saved would be lost.

And knowing the nuance of every word spoken and every gesture made was the heaviest of all the burdens Ash carried.

Smiling gently, he shook his head. "Thanks for asking, but I have to head off. You have a good night. "

She gave him a hot once-over. "Okay, but if you change your mind, I'll be in here studying for the next few hours."

Ash watched as she left him and entered the shop. She set her backpack down at a table and started unpacking her books. Sighing from exhaustion, Gina grabbed a glass of water and made her way over to her...

And as he observed them through the painted glass, the two women struck up a conversation and set their destined futures into motion.

His heart heavy, he glanced back in the direction Cael had vanished and hated the future that awaited his friend. But it was Cael's destiny.

His fate...

"Imora thea mi savur," Ash whispered under his breath in Atlantean.

God save me from love.

Susan leaned back against the wall as she sorted through files on Jimmy's computer. "Dammit, Jim. I'm just a reporter, not a mind reader," she said, feigning a Bones McCoy quote from Star Trek. "Couldn't you have at least left me an obvious crumb to follow? Is one loaf of bread too much to ask?"

Sick to her stomach, she decided to take a break and clicked on the photos folder.

A bittersweet pain lacerated her chest as she flipped through pictures of him and Angie at a party last year. God, what she wouldn't give to hear Angie tell her she was five by five again. To hear Jimmy's raspy voice teasing her about being too uptight all the time.

"You okay?"

Startled, she jumped at Ravyn's deep voice as he entered the room with that silent cat walk of his. "You scared me..." She paused to watch him come closer. Honestly, he was the best-looking thing she'd ever seen in her life. He had his hair pulled back in a ponytail and even though his shirt was untucked, it didn't disguise the fact that he was ripped with sinewy muscles. Distracting herself from that thought, she indicated the laptop with her chin. "I was just spying on Jimmy's pictures."

He handed her the coffee he'd gone upstairs to get for her. "Maybe you should close the file." He sat down beside her so that he could look at the screen, too.

"No, it's okay. I just found this one set of pictures from Jimmy's Halloween party at his precinct last year. He went as Frankenstein and Angie was-"

"Bride of Frankenstein?"

"No... she went as a Holy Cow." Susan smiled at the memory. "She was always a bit offbeat that way."

Ravyn laughed as she showed him the picture of Angie in a cow suit with a halo suspended above her head and a giant wooden cross around her neck. He'd only seen her a couple of times in the shelter while they'd held him, but the woman had seemed decent enough.

But his smile died when Susan flipped to the next picture and he saw the people in it.

It couldn't be. Surely he was mistaken...

Susan flipped to another.

"Wait! Go back."

Susan frowned. "Why?"

He set his own coffee aside and frowned as he examined the picture of a tall blond woman who was dressed as a classic campy Hollywood vampire, complete with all-too-real-looking fangs, standing with her arm around Angie. "I know her."

Susan gave him a less than pleased glare. "For the record, Puss in Boots, I hope you're not speaking biblically. Because if you are-"

"No," he said, interrupting her tirade, even though a part of him was flattered that she felt that way. "She's a Daimon... or was. I killed her."

Susan scoffed at him. "Not her you didn't."

Ravyn looked again and studied the woman's sharp patrician features. In the back of his mind, he could still see her dressed in a black pair of slacks and a red blouse as he found her standing over her victims. The sight had sickened him as she had wiped the blood from her mouth and laughed about it.

"It was her, I'm sure of it."

Still Susan had doubt in those blue eyes. "How would you know? Do you memorize the face of every Daimon you snuff out?"

He gave her a droll stare. "No, but I remember her."

" 'Cause she's a bimbo?"

He shook his head. "Because she didn't run from me. She actually dared me to kill her. She said that she had a get out of jail free card and that unless I wanted every Dark-Hunter in Seattle to die, I'd leave her alone."

Susan was unamused by that. "So naturally you just had to kill her."

If a dry stare could mutilate, she'd be in several pieces on the floor.

"She'd just taken the life of a pregnant woman and her small child outside of a Laundromat. I had to kill her to release those two souls or both of their souls would have died. "

"While fascinating and gross, that can't be this woman. "

"How do you know?"

"Because she's the wife of Paul Heilig, the chief of police. And she died in a car wreck in Europe. I saw the photos of it."

Ravyn went cold at her words as they confirmed his suspicions. "What?"

"You heard me." She flipped through the pictures until she got to one of the Daimon with two very tall blond men, who were also dressed as Bela Lugosi vampires, and a short, pudgy man with dark hair, highlighted with gray, and glasses, dressed as an explorer. The man appeared to be around the age of fifty, with thinning hair and sharp gray eyes. "That's her, her sons, and her husband."

Ravyn narrowed his gaze on them before he looked up at Susan. "Don't you think it odd that the chief of police is married to a woman who looks to be the same age as her children?"

"Plastic surgery, baby. Some of the best surgeons in the country live right here."

"Yeah, and so do some of the best Daimons."

Susan went cold as she stared at the woman, and her emotions sobered. It all made sense now. "It's just what you said, isn't it? He married an Apollite who turned Daimon, and now he's using his position to keep them safe."

"Except for the wife I killed. No wonder they wanted to torture me in the..." His voice trailed off as he remembered something the half-Apollite vet had said.

"Paul wants to see this one suffer...."

Since he didn't know who Paul was, he'd completely forgotten that. But now he understood. Paul was Paul Heilig. Chief of Police and father of two Daimon sons.

They were screwed.

"When did you kill her?" Susan asked.