Blood Secrets-Valorian 1 (14 page)

It was too fast. She wanted to slow down. Panic surged through her as he bit at her throat again. Did she really want this? She had no idea what would happen if he bit her. She hadn’t read anywhere how vampires turned their victims, or even if they could. She’d just read how blissful their bite could be.

Writhing underneath him, Eve tried to push him up, but he was too strong, too involved in what he was doing to respond to her nudges. With bile starting to rise in her throat, she tried again to push him up off her. Instead, he grabbed her arm and held her still, nuzzling harder at her throat.

“Caine,” she panted. “Please.”

He must have misinterpreted what she was asking for as he nibbled harder on her skin.

The plea in her voice must have sounded like desire and not rising panic.

“Stop. I don’t want you to bite me.”

“Don’t be afraid, Eve. It will only hurt for a minute,” he breathed, his voice thick with arousal.

She shook her head, and shoved at him. “I don’t want it, Caine. Please don’t.”

But her words were cut off when he plunged into her simultaneously between her legs and at her throat.

A sensation she’d never experienced before exploded through her. A delicious mixture of pain and pleasure seared her flesh, and her mind. She suddenly went deaf and blind to everything around her. The only thing she could discern was a loud rushing sound like water surging over a fall.

It was her blood pumping through her body. And filling the mouth of her lover…

Gasping, Eve jerked out of her sleep. Her heart was racing like a jackhammer. She put a hand to her chest. It had all been a dream…

Sitting up, she glanced around her. Caine slept only a foot away from her on the sofa. She sighed, and dropped her head back onto the cushions. It had seemed so real. Pain still ticked at her throat, like someone had snapped her with an elastic band. And a deep throb pulsed between her legs.

She brought her hand up to her neck and tried to rub away the sensation. It tingled over her skin, but it wasn’t all that unpleasant. None of it was. And that was what scared her the most.

Fear swirled around her, but despite it all, she still wanted Caine, and everything that came with him.

After taking a few deep breaths, her heart slowed. She closed her eyes again, and tried to relax. She still had a case to solve. Maybe if she concentrated strictly on that she could forget about the emotion swirling inside her. She wouldn’t do anyone any good if she was unfocused.

Being around Caine was becoming dangerous. She wanted him with a desperate heart, but knew it would do neither of them any good. They were too different. They had completely separate destinies. Their lives could never come together. She was foolish to think otherwise.

It was just too damn bad that being foolish could feel so damn good.

T he high-pitched clamor of his beeper jolted Caine awake. Yawning, he sat up, dug into his pocket for it, looked at the number on the digital display and swore under his breath.

Another dead body.

Stretching out his arms, his hand brushed against warm smooth skin. It was then he realized that he was curled up next to Eve on the sofa in her hotel room.

The last thing he could remember was feeling out of control and restless. He had left the room, hadn’t he?

Glancing around, he spied an empty plastic blood bottle, a small one that a vampire could easily buy in a vending machine. He must’ve left the hotel room, wandered down the hall to the utility room and bought a bottle hoping it would soothe his caged beast.

As Eve still had her clothes on, he assumed it must’ve worked.

He had dreamed of her, though. An intense vision of making love to her. Even now the tips of his fingers tingled with the memory of her skin. How soft and pliant she had been under his body.

He hadn’t meant to enchant her, to project their lovemaking into her mind. It was something vampires did to seduce their potential mates or victims. The lock on his desire must be tentative at best if he was projecting without a concious decision to do so.

Thankfully, she had stopped him before he could bite her. That would be something he couldn’t take back. It would be the first step in turning, and that was the last thing he ever wanted to do.

Before he could move, her eyes fluttered open and she yawned. Realizing his close proximity, her cheeks flushed a bright pink.

Pushing to his feet, Caine smoothed down the wrinkles in his pants, and cleared his throat.

“We have another DB.”

“How long were we asleep?”

Caine glanced at his watch. “About five hours.”

Eve rubbed her hands over her face, and then pushed to her feet, avoiding looking directly at him. “Well, at least we ate.”

Caine smiled as he surveyed the two room service carts. They had managed to eat most of what was on the trays. “That we did.”

Avoiding his gaze, Eve padded across the room and grabbed her purse. “Are we ready to roll?” She continued to the door and opened it.

He hesitated, feeling like he should say something, anything, to defuse the tension in the air. However, he couldn’t think of the right words. Everything that came to mind would be inappropriate and only cause more problems. Therefore, without anything further to say, Caine nodded and followed her out of the room.

By the time they reached Darkfall Avenue and Main Street, there was a small crowd gathering behind the yellow perimeter tape. Caine parked along the street behind a police cruiser. They jumped out of the vehicle, grabbed their kits, flashed badges to the officers standing at the yellow tape and wandered down the alley toward the area where Mahina and a few other officers waited.

“Nice day for a dead body.” Mahina smiled but there was no humor in her expression.

Sunglasses shielded her eyes, but Caine didn’t need to see them to know that this body was a whole lot different from their usual DBs.

On the ground next to a large green Dumpster, Givon crouched beside a naked form.

Caine approached him cautiously, his eyes downcast on the cement looking for anything out of the ordinary. When he was next to Givon, he stopped, set his kit down and surveyed the situation.

“Lividity is fixed. Rigor has come and gone. Liver temp normal, and you got some bug activity.” Givon stood and jotted his notes in his book. “So, I’d say he’s been dead over twenty-four hours.”

“Thanks, Sil.”

The coroner nodded, and then said without humor, “Have fun.”

He brushed past Eve as she sidled up next to Caine, setting her own kit next to his. Caine heard her intake of air.

“Where’s his head?”

“That’s a good question,” he answered, glancing around the area near the body.

Crouching down next to the body, Eve started her evidence collection. “There’s a lot of transfer on this body.”

Mahina stood at the victim’s feet. “He was found in the Dumpster.”

“Oh, great,” Eve commented, as she went into her kit and came away with a camera. She started taking pictures of the body.

Caine motioned toward the two officers standing over a derelict slumped on the ground, his hands cuffed behind his back. “Is he a suspect?”

“Officers found him chewing on the body. He claims he found it in the Dumpster then dragged it out to chow down.”

“He doesn’t look strong enough to drag a dead body.”

“He’s a lycan. They found him in wolf form.”

“Ah.” Caine nodded. Lycans were extremely strong. Some stronger than the average vampire. Long ago, he had a tussle with one and barely defeated him. Caine still had the scars on his back to prove it.

He glanced back down at the body then up at Mahina. “Monty’s on shift now. Why did I get the call?”

Mahina handed him a clear plastic evidence bag. He took it and sighed. Sealed inside was a Crimson Strain poster.

“I found it near the body, under the Dumpster. I don’t believe in coincidences. Do you?”

“No, not particularly. Thanks for catching this.”

“That’s what I do. Catch things.”

“Do you think it’s one of the band members?” Eve asked as she scraped under the victim’s fingernails into a paper collection envelope.

“We won’t know until we get the corpse back to the lab and run fingerprints. Until then, we process this like every other body, with care and precision.”

“I’ll have a little chat with our suspect at the station,” Mahina said, nodding to where the filthy bum sat shivering.

“I don’t think he’s our killer, but he might’ve seen something.” Trying not to breathe in the rotting odor from the trash bin, Caine looked down at Eve while she processed the body, bagging every fiber and item still clinging to his skin. “We’re going to need his head.”

Glancing up at him, she quirked one brow. “Where do you think it is?”

Caine motioned toward the green trash bin.

Eve stood and put a hand on her cocked hip. “Who’s going in?”

Mahina smirked. “Better let the boss do it. It’s much too messy in there for—”

“I’ll go in,” Eve blurted out.

“No, it’s all right, Eve. I think it’s best I do it.”

She blinked at him several times, and he could see a twitch in her cheek. Waves of hostility rolled over him. It tasted like licorice on his lips. Interesting. He rather enjoyed the flavor.

“You don’t think I can handle going into a Dumpster to do my job?”

“I didn’t say that,” he protested.

From beside him, Mahina smirked again. “I think you put your foot in it, Valorian.”

Eve turned on her. “And you can put your foot in it, too, Captain Garner.” She stripped off her gloves, shoved them in her pants pocket, picked up her kit and started back to the vehicle. “I’m going to go put overalls on, then I’m going in the Dumpster to find the damn head.”

She pushed past them both with an indignant sniff of her nose and lift of her chin.

Caine turned and watched her march down the alley.

“She’s got spunk. For a human,” Mahina commented.

Caine nodded, trying to hide his amused smile. “I’ve been noticing.”

The horrid smell of rotting food and unmentionable garbage nearly did Eve in as she tossed another black plastic bag out of the trash bin to Caine.

For the past hour, she’d been methodically chucking out complete bags of garbage for Caine to inspect, while she dug deeper into the bin looking for anything resembling a head. So far, she’d come across several fish heads, and a decomposed cat, but no human head.

Sweat dripped down her forehead and from under her ponytail, ran past the collar of her blue overalls and down her back. Careful not to rub her face with the soiled latex gloves she had on, Eve dabbed at her face with the sleeve of her uniform. She was definitely going to need a shower. Probably two of them.

She was regretting opening her big mouth—once again—and landing herself in a situation she was not able to deal with. Digging around in rotting waste was not likely the best way to prove herself to Caine. He probably wouldn’t have thought any less of her if she had refused to go in. However, she would have.

“Any luck?” Caine popped his head up over the rim of the trash bin.

Startled, Eve stumbled. Tripping on a broken wooden chair leg, she fell backward. She twisted in the air, putting her hands out to break her fall and ended up on her stomach, face-to-face with a waxy, pale visage. The crowning piece from their dead body.

Sucking in air like a fish out of water, she scrambled to her knees to get away from the decomposing head of their murder victim.

Stretching out with his hand, Caine tried to reach her. “Eve, are you all right?”

Swallowing the rising bile in her throat, Eve nodded. “I believe I found what we were looking for.”

“Can you grab it and hand it to me?”

“Yeah, give me minute.” Licking her lips to stifle the gag reflex, Eve shuffled closer to the head. Carefully, she removed the trash surrounding it. Once the surroundings were pushed back from it, she took hold of a hunk of black hair and gently pulled it out of its snug resting place.

Bits of paper, cloth and other debris stuck to the gory neck wound. It almost looked like streamers hanging down from a hot air balloon. That was if the balloon had split lips, sharp fangs and a bullet hole in its forehead.

Trying not to look at it, Eve stood and handed it off to Caine. She set it in his hands then eagerly grabbed the edge of the green bin so she could get out. But she found that she was in too deep. She couldn’t lift herself out.

Again, she hooked her hands over the rim and tried to push her body, scrambling against the metal side of the bin. She was too tired, or too weak, to be successful. Defeated, she dropped back down and let out an angry huff.

“Need some help?” She heard Caine’s soft chuckle as he appeared above the rim again, and he offered her his hands. “I’ll pull you out.”

With an angry glare, she took his hands and allowed him to pull her up so she could swing her leg over the edge. Once she had her right leg over, she yanked her hands from under his and dropped to the ground. Unfortunately, the motion made her slip forward and she banged her knee on the metal bin when she landed.

Caine was there again, reaching out to her, touching her shoulder. Not that she didn’t want him to touch her. She did, desperately. But she didn’t want him to think she needed him to. She wanted him to believe that she was a strong, independent woman. Not some whiny, hopeless person who had to have a man tend to all her problems.

She knocked his hand away. “I’m fine.”

“It’s all right to ask for help, Eve.”

Stripping her gloves off, she pushed back the hair sticking to her sweaty face. “I’m not an invalid, you know. You don’t have to treat me like I’m so fragile,” she huffed. “I’m a strong person. I can do this job. Even in this city.”

“Okay,” he said staring at her.

“Would you have stopped Lyra from jumping in that Dumpster?”

“No.”

“Then why me?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but obviously thought better of it and stopped. Licking his lips, he sighed. “It won’t happen again. You’re right. You’ve proven yourself. You don’t need me to protect you.” Reaching down, he picked up the head encased in plastic and tucked it under his arm. “From now on, I’ll treat you like the rest of the team. No special treatment.”