Dylan's Witch: 10 (Supernatural Bonds) (10 page)

Camille drove on, going through all of the French fries before pulling the hamburger from the bag. The music ended with an announcement of impending news. She let it run because she enjoyed hearing what they made of Nicole Harper’s death and their rehashing of the past. If only they knew the full truth about that cold, arrogant bitch and her self-important husband.

She took a bite from the hamburger. The flavor changed in her mouth when the woman newscaster said, “We’ve got breaking news on two bodies found in the swamp earlier today by Conner Stern, the homicide detective involved in yesterday’s shooting of a teen suspect and currently on leave pending investigative review. An exclusive, confidential source has confirmed the identity of one of the bodies as Robert Katcher, a police department clerk. These same sources indicate the second body discovered several yards away was skeletal remains, suggesting it was dumped weeks ago, possibly months, and begging the question, do we have another serial killer loose in our city?”

Flavor returned in an explosion of taste as a little thrill rushed through Camille, accompanied by the imagined feel of Lucifer’s Blade in her hand. Wouldn’t it be fun to have the city buzzing because of her?

She chewed, swallowed. Frowned at realizing Mistress wasn’t going to be pleased with the news.

They’d planned this carefully, waiting until poor, pathetic Robert could take his two weeks of vacation so he wouldn’t be missed. Helene had wanted as much separation as possible between his disappearance and probable death and Nicole Harper’s very visible one.
Oh well
.

She smiled. Blood and sex went hand in hand for Mistress. After tonight’s sacrifice and the capture of a high-ranking demon lord, all would be forgiven. And truthfully, she had no desire to return to the swamp.

Camille finished off the hamburger and continued her hunt. Blocks away from where she’d spotted the pair of redheads and where the Hispanic hooker trolled, a car slowed and a strawberry-blonde got out, no doubt stinking of sex and semen after doing a trick.

Something clicked.

This was the one. For tonight anyway.

Beautiful face and figure. A lush mouth, the chic thin body of a heroin user and yet the drug’s effects hadn’t destroyed her attractiveness.

Mistress would be pleased with this offering,
by
this offering, stretched naked on the altar, aware, because by then the cocktail of sedatives would have worn off.

Camille felt the stab of jealousy at imagining Helene taking Lucifer’s Blade from its box and touching it to tender flesh.

Don’t think about it.Tomorrow it will be your turn to hold the blade.

Chapter Six

Dylan let himself into his apartment. It was too quiet but he just hadn’t been up for the bar scene tonight, and besides, this late, the pickings would be slim.

He shied away from counting just how many times both of those situations had arisen lately, and how hard it’d be now after stepping out of the bar and finding Seraphine there. Christ. Jesus. He scrubbed his hands over his face as if he could wipe the vision of her from his memory and eliminate the impact she had on his cock. It didn’t help, not after seeing her again this morning.

How long has it been since you’ve gone in naked?

Damn Trace for putting that question out there. Payback was hell and he’d just gotten a bit of his for setting Trace up that night at Lily’s. It was supposed to have led to sex, period. More like trying out a different flavor, something other than badge bunnies, not meeting your mate—or heartmate as Storm would say, trying to make him squirm.

No good deed goes unpunished, though it pissed him off to be quoting his old man. Then again, maybe that’s what he needed to slam the door on fantasies starring Seraphine. He’d be lucky if he didn’t wake up with twisted, semen-coated sheets.

He ditched the suit jacket and tie, tossing them across a chair back on the way to the kitchen. Fatigue settled in.

The day had been a complete and total bust. They’d started with one body of interest and not even a case they had to work, only to end up with two dead, one of them their own, though Katcher wasn’t a cop. On top of that, the fucking low-level hum in his head and body hadn’t gotten better.

He rubbed the back of his neck as he opened the fridge. Beer bottles lined the front edge of the top shelf like soldiers guarding the food rations. He relieved one of them from duty, popped the cap off and returned to the living room to plop into his recliner and catch up on sports news.

Damned if his big head didn’t go right back to the place the little one was most interested in—Seraphine.

Been there, done that, he reminded himself, thinking of another redheaded witch, one well in his past, and good riddance.

Why did he keep thinking about this one?

Because he was scared.

The thought arrived like a matador stepping out in front of a bull.

Hell no he wasn’t scared. With everyone around him hooking up and shacking up permanently, he was just out of sorts. Nothing wrong with him that time and a few good lays wouldn’t sort out.

The sports news became a drone of background noise accompanying the hum.

He threw in the towel and went to bed.

A nightmare sucked him under, accompanied by tortured screams and terror-inducing whispers. He struggled to rise from it but couldn’t move, heard the thunder of his heart beating in his head and felt it slowly fade, draining away through his wrists.

In panic he jerked awake, sitting in the darkness.

Fuck! What the fuck was that.

The screams and whispers were echoing in his ears, so loud it took a moment for him to become aware of the sound of his harsh breathing and his wet palm.

The cut was open again.

He shook his head, trying to clear the lingering sounds of torment.

They wouldn’t go.

His heart rabbited in his chest. Fear clawed through his gut and iced his skin.

Goddamn Seraphine for telling Trace a cut by the blade would create a link to the demon realm and insisting Trace pass the warning on. The seriousness in which Trace had delivered it had set hooks in his psyche, that was all. Or that, accompanied by today’s discussion of witchcraft and curses and finally admitting to himself his partner had gone over to the dark side when it came to believing in supernatural shit.

Dylan twisted the ring off his finger and slammed it on the nightstand. He should have done it earlier because wearing it was like a constant reminder of the witch.

His hand felt bare without it. He remembered the quiet joy in Aislinn’s face when she’d given it to him, the teasing that had preceded it.

Shit. He couldn’t hurt her feelings by not wearing it.

He slammed it back on, denying his reason for doing it was an excuse. That thinking about it at all was an attempt to distract himself from the whispers and wailing that had taken the place of the low-grade humming.

Fuck. He scrubbed his hands over his face, forgetting about the cut until he felt it weeping, leaving blood on his skin.

Reaching over, he hit the switch on the bedside lamp, flooding the immediate area with light.

Shock seized his lungs.

It looked as if he was sitting in the middle of a murder scene where the victim had bled out. The sheets were soaked on both sides of him.

He scrambled out of bed. Rubbed his hands over his face again as if he could wipe away this nightmare.

It remained.

He flashed back to sitting at the bar the night before, when this shit had started with the buzzing in his head. First thought—someone had slipped something into his drink, probably the blonde who’d made her play after he’d drunk some of the beer.

He’d dismissed it, ignoring a cop’s read because he was sitting in a cop bar owned by a former cop, for Christ’s sake. But now…

Jesus. He wanted to press his hands to his ears and block out the slithering whispers and chilling screams in his head.

When he found whoever had laced his drink and fucked his head he was going to… What? Murder them?

He turned his back on the bed scene and staggered to the fridge. The row of beers greeted him.

Jesus. He needed one.

He reached, dropped his hand before making contact.

Not going there
. Too many cops did as a way of drowning out the horror they encountered on the job and easing the stress, becoming alcoholics along the way.

He parted the beer bottles, pulling out ingredients for a power shake. He’d lost a lot of blood, which probably accounted for some of the noise clinging to the inside of his head.

Except he didn’t feel all that weak now that he was moving around. He refused to examine the thought.

He downed the shake then returned to the bedroom, stripping the bed. Blood had soaked through the sheets and into the mattress. Enough so he’d have to get rid of it. He couldn’t imagine lying down on it again, even if he flipped it over.

He tossed the sheets into the washer then returned to the bedroom. He tugged on pants and shirt, restless, figuring to hit a place serving pancakes, sit in bright lights and around people, go through some case notes. Do something normal, surround himself with normal and maybe this would all go away, because Jesus…

His heartbeat ratcheted up again. The screaming had gone away but the whispers were burrowing through his brain like some kind of toxic, parasitic invasion. On the surface now, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t go deeper. Fuck!

Maybe he should track down his loser old man and see if schizophrenia ran in the family. Yeah, that was a lovely thought on a couple of counts.

His phone and all the pocket junk he carried was on the dresser. He dropped the cell in his shirt pocket, gaze snagging on the charm Trace had managed to slip into his possession when they were working the Anita Vorhaus murder.

It’d fallen to the ground when he’d retrieved his notepad in the presence of Nicole Harper. Her reaction to it had led to them looking harder at her, delving deeper to see if she was involved in the practice of black magic.

He picked it up. The whispering stopped. Or mostly stopped. He had to really listen, concentrate hard to experience the insanity.

“This is fucking not happening.”

Mental placebo effect, that’s all.

But his heart said otherwise. It threatened to pound its way out of his chest and make its escape.

His hand closed around the charm, fisting it when his mind said
put it down and see
.

He compromised, telling himself just carrying it should be enough to keep the placebo effect going. He jammed his fist into his pocket, held it there for several long seconds before forcing it open and releasing the charm.

The whispers returned like someone had turned the dial up.

Sweat broke out on his skin, icy cold instead of sunshine warm.

He retrieved the phone from his pocket, scrolled to Seraphine’s number. Keeping it after they’d put the Vorhaus and Harper murders to bed was another one of those things he didn’t want to look closely at, especially since consulting witches wasn’t standard operating procedure for solving homicides.

Survival instinct kicked in. He grasped the charm again.

What would it hurt to call the witch? Hear what she had to say about this shit?

His thumb hovered over her name and number.

Retreated.

Call her and he’d only get sucked into this shit even deeper.

Coward
.

That was the little head doing the talking. Because the only thing that’d kept him from slamming his mouth down on hers and taking her to the floor for a good hard fuck that day he’d been at her place had been Trace’s presence.

He set the phone on the dresser, trying to ignore the way he was using his nondominant hand to collect the stuff he usually carried and get it stashed in the correct pockets—the last item the twenty-five dollar chip he’d won in Vegas at the Luxor and that’d brought him good luck in Atlantic City.

“Don’t go there,” he muttered, stuffing it in his pocket. But it was too late, because what was the difference between believing in the power of the chip and the charm he didn’t want to let go of?

My sanity
. But a glance at the bloodstained mattress had him retrieving the phone, thumb hovering over Seraphine’s number. Retreating. Hovering until he slammed the phone into his shirt pocket.

He couldn’t do it like this. He’d do the breakfast thing. Immerse himself in normal and then…

Only as soon as he pulled away from his apartment, he blew off that plan like his body was on autopilot and didn’t give a fuck what his mind said and didn’t care the sun wasn’t up or that the lights weren’t on at her house, or even that a knock on the door this late, or early depending on viewpoint, usually meant trouble.

He did it anyway, relief washing through him as the porch light went on. Desire slamming into him when Seraphine opened the door.

Fuck. What had taken him so long to come back here?

He released the charm, leaving it in his pocket because now he needed his hands free. There was a second to notice the absence of sound in his head, and then there was only heat, blazing lust as skin met skin, his palms and fingers on her upper arms, jerking her to him.

He slammed his mouth down on hers, both of them moaning at the contact. Her nipples stabbed into his chest, her cunt pressed hard and tight to his screaming dick.

Oh yeah, this was what he needed. This would cure what ailed him.

Nothing worked better than sex. There was no better way to block out all the weirdness than to lose himself in a woman’s body, in this woman’s body. He was so fucking tired of fighting this.

He plunged his tongue into her mouth. Kicked the door shut behind him before maneuvering her backward, trapping her against it though she was a willing prisoner.

She met lust with lust. Her nails scraped down his back and his hips bucked in response.

The need to get out of his shirt went head-to-head against the bliss of maintaining full body contact as tongues and lips battled for supremacy.