Feral Passion (9 page)

A humming sound started in the back of her
mind. She wished she hadn’t have called him, hadn’t have rejected
his offer to stay with him. God, she was fucked up in the head.

“I’m tired, Ulrich. Thank you for coming over
and checking up on me.” Even to her own ears her voice was distant,
entranced by horrific thoughts that didn’t seem to want to
leave.

He hesitated, forest green eyes worried.
After a moment, he sighed and she watched as his shoulders dropped.
“Okay. . . The people for the security system will be here
tomorrow.”

Mary nodded, avoided looking at him.

“See you tomorrow,” he said quietly, walking
out of the room.

She waited till she heard the car back out of
the drive way, then fell to her head, sobbing quietly.

Chapter 14

Chase and Raff walked to their rooms in
silence, trying to place the facts that they had learned. The girl,
Ashlyn, had been ruthlessly murdered. The body, though charred to
the bone, had been identified by her parents and when the Acutos
doctor has seen the blood red signs he had burnt his hand touching
her.

Raff had no clue how the runt of a
half-breed knew all of this, but he was grateful for the facts. On
the car ride back, he had asked Chase to look into
veneficae,
meaning witch, or magic.
Anything that might connect to the red symbol that had seemed to
be. . .burned into her skin.

Mitch had seen firsthand the evidence of the
incriminating signs. When Michael had pulled out the photos, he had
been more than shocked. In the past, he had seen some horrible
things. Bad enough to give him permanent nightmares, enough to keep
him awake at night when they got bad enough.

But what he saw in the picture, it had just.
. .scared him. Pissed him off to no ends. Made him feel as if the
world was crumbling around him when he applied that to Mary. Chase
had turned away sharply, coughing and cursing.

The deformed picture had brought back
memories, brought back the feel of blades in his palm, the feel of
blades in his skin. Life had taken a horrible turn for him when he
had realized that his father had lied, had run, had used him.

When he had been assigned as leader of
the
pacchetto
, he had been. .
.disinterested, only slightly angry. As a child he had been told
the day would come, but before that happened he had been recruited
as a monster, or at least that’s what he had thought of himself at
the time.

“I’ll text you when I’m up,” Chase let him
know, before closing the door to his suite. Raff walked to his,
unlocked it, and stepped into the dark room, flipping on the light
switch.

Raffaele sighed, staring around the room.
Lately, he had been more relaxed. It was an off and on sensation,
but after his meeting with Mary it had kind of. . .lasted. Like a
while. Till he had gotten to the bar, that is.

He pulled out his phone, sitting at the
bar in one of the high chairs. He had four texts, two of them from
his
beta
, the other two being
his secretary. He also had seven missed calls.

Raffaele groaned with irritation, knowing
that with the time difference they would still be up and about.
Well, at least his secretary would be. The woman never slept, at
least in the closing your eyes sense.

The phone was picked up on the first ring. “I
tried calling you five times! What are you up to that you can’t
answer the phone?” Hannah asked, exasperated.

Raffaele’s eye twitched. “I had things to
do,” he said vaguely.

“Oh, and like
what?
Because I’m here running your “business”
and you can take time off to get a good lay? Mr. Jaques, I will
quit!” she threatened, the mental image of her stabbing a finger in
the air coming to mind.

“I’m. . .sorry?” he tried.

“Well, it’s too late now! If you had answered
your phone sooner, this could have been avoided,” she chastised,
sounding much like the hyper chipmunk that she looked like.

“What could have been avoided?” he asked,
eyes crossing.

“Your
“beta
” as you like to call the wormy bastard,
came in here saying that you had faxed him estate papers. I’m
guessing he thought that I wouldn’t bother to read them, but I
did,” she said, catching her breath.

Raffaele froze. “Do you still have the
papers.”

“Yes, I have them locked up in your safe
right now because I wanted to double check. He came back here
spouting that he needed them now and I said that that the printer
broke and that the fax order was stuck till it got fixed,” she
explained, voice affronted.

“I want you to email me photocopies of them
to my private email. If he comes in again asking for the documents
and mentions anymore that he sent, contact me immediately and draw
call my lawyer. I also want you to start making statements.”

Silence.

“You’re really serious, aren’t you,” she
said, then mumbled under her breath. He heard the word “ass” and
several other things that he felt he shouldn’t have heard. Finally,
she said on an aggravated sigh, “You make me do so much work, I
swear I should be getting a raise!”

“Hannah, you have probably the highest paying
job you could ever get. Don’t push it.”

A sigh. “Fine, I’ll make sure to warn my
assistant to let me know if he comes in again and I’m taking copies
of the documents right now.”

“Alright, talk to you tomorrow.” He ended the
call, trying not to punch something.

He should have figured that his
beta
would try something while he was
away. Of course, he had been too focused on his uncle at the time
to make any restrictions on the man, and he was really regretting
it now. Raff hadn’t even bothered to ask what the property papers
were for; he already knew.

From the beginning, everything about
Calvin had been nagging at him. As soon as he had been turned into
the
pacchetto
leader, he had
wanted to change his
beta
. He
couldn’t share knowledge for fear that his feeling of unrest would
be correct, he could barely place simple duties to the
man.

Instead, he had to raise the pay of one
of the most annoying, commanding secretaries he had ever had and
make
her
do all of the things
that Calvin should have been trusted to do. Neither of them had
minded, in the end they had both found that the system they had
started worked out very well.

Calvin, of course, hated the woman. She had
threatened to quit, once again, when he had come into the office,
spewing rumors and lies about the woman, hoping that the taint to
her image would get her fired with him up in the status again.

The end result of the accident had been with
Calvin limping to the hospital. No one liked him, no one never had.
And the fact that he had been limping away, bloody and bruised, had
only made his people like Raffaele more.

The only reason that the bastard was
anywhere near his board and
pacchetto
was because his father had made a
secret contract for more life. The contract had been found out when
he had been killed, and Raff had been put up for
pacchetto
leader.

He forced the thoughts of his families
betrayal out of his mind. There was no use in getting angry over
something that he couldn’t help. He sat down heavily in the leather
couch, listening to the creaks and grabbing the remote.

As soon as the TV was on and CSI was playing,
he put his head down and promptly passed out.

Chapter 15

He held the girl down, annoyed at the
struggling and the faint whimpers that escaped through the gag. Her
blue eyes held a desperation to get free and he smirked with the
knowledge that he wouldn’t tell her that that wasn’t going to
happen.

Claws dug into his skin, causing him to
grimace faintly. The jacket that he had on was thick enough that
her nails barely pricked him. He was grateful that he had
remembered to bring the collar this time, the powers it held
causing her shift to prolong long enough till she died.

“Please,” he heard distantly, coming back to
the present. The muffled plead was audible, which he found. .
.aggravating. If anyone should hear her, he would be screwed and
her death would be quick—not painful and slow as he normally
intended.

Of course, it had to be slow in order for her
energy to travel properly into his domain. If it went to fast, it
would stray from the thread and he would have wasted a body worth
use.

The young woman's legs kicked out, and he
brought his fist up, preparing to slap her.

“Don’t worry, whore. Soon you won’t
feel
this
pain, but another.
One so great that you will wish you had my dagger digging deep into
your heart to end your useless life,” he sneered quietly in her
ear, flipping her onto her stomach and clasping her hands behind
her back, straddling her to keep her still.

“No!” she screamed, the sound faint. She
shook with more vigor, trying to escape his painful hold.

His fingers threaded into her hair, wrenching
her head back as he held her body down close to the ground. He
heard a faint creak, and smiled down at her.

“Feel free to scream all you want, the sound
is pleasing to the ears and no one will hear it anyways,” he
murmured, releasing her with one hand and reaching into his back
pocket. He pulled out a small lighter and grabbed onto a piece of
her hair, holding the died blackness between his fingers
gently.

He flicked the thing on, revealing in the
shadows that danced around them. Blue orbs of fear latched onto his
from the corner of her eye, and while it wasn’t that big of a flame
at all, she knew what was going to happen and had obviously heard
about him.

He grinned, pleased. “You know, don’t
you?” he asked, sickly sweet, rubbing the burnt piece of hair. “How
much of this will hurt, how much of it you’ll cry through. What you
don’t know is what will happen after. . . But you will.
Soon.
”

The rope that sat beside him was ready for
use, so he set to tying her from one of the rafters from above him.
Airy as it might seem, the construction site was only two blocks
from where he really wanted to be and perfect for tonight's
ritual.

Above him, the full-moon loomed eerie, clouds
hardly covering the giant ball of light that he was coming to
detest. The aura of the night was peaceful, almost. . .sedate as he
threw the end of the rope after the rafter and securing it
tightly.

Almost like a fairy-tail, he thought with a
snort.

Beside the steel rod there was a pile of
everything that he would be using on the girl. A can of gas,
matches, black charcoal mixed with the blood of his last victim,
and lavender leaves. While some thought that lavender was calming,
there was also an underside to them.

They eased the soul into the underworld with
quick precision.

A couple more minutes and the girl was tied
securely from the rafter, black hair brushing the ground. He made a
ring around her with the gas that he had brought, putting five
petals on four sides of the circle.

When he went for the charcoal, her body
wiggled in mid-air, knowing that the ritual was finally about to
start.

He drew the dark red charcoal up the middle
of her face, tore her shirt and pants off with the pocket night in
his jeans, and finished the line at her feet, drawing an extra “X”
at the center of her stomach.

The lighter ignited.

And the screeches began.

Chapter 16

The call Mary got when she was dressed and
dried for the day chilled her. She was in the middle of doing her
hair and make-up with hard boiled eggs on the stove when Romero
called. At the same time, her brother and then her father
called.

She answered Romero’s first, knowing
that her family was just going to annoy her and try and involve
themselves in her life. Mary wanted to go with her brother, the
threat to her life and the dream last night had made it clear that
she was
not
safe at
all.

But. . . she couldn’t.

If someone was after her, she was not going
to endanger her family by staying with them. As much as she might
wish she could lean on someone, she wasn’t going to let herself
trust anything right now.

The separation was soon to be out in public,
and the threat of the killer was still out there, haunting her. She
had decided that the nightmare last night had been because of
stress, and had no significant meaning.

Of course, though, she didn’t believe it.

Mary had always thought of Kevin as
dark-haired and pale skinned. What she had seen though, had been
disturbing. The man, or creature, had been pure white. His skin,
his eyes, his hair, his clothing. All of it had been white, just as
the place that he brought her to in her dreams was also.

Her skin chilled when she heard Romero on the
other end. “I want you to come down here for a bit,” he told her.
“The site is about two blocks down from yours, on Paxton. You know
that construction site?”

She swallowed, nodding even though he
couldn’t see. “Yeah, I know.” She walked to the kitchen slowly, in
a daze. The bowl that she now held felt cold in her fingers.

“I want you to meet us all down there so that
you can see this,” he said, his voice hard because of the
events.

“When?” she asked, putting her hair in a
ponytail with the phone between her shoulder and ear.