Furyous Ink

Furyous Ink

Saranna DeWylde

Marcus Kage has four dead women on his hands. As a detective, he knows that’s more trouble than his city needs. As a Lycanos, he knows that’s more trouble than his city can handle. A tattoo found on each vic identifies them as Amazons, and Athena’s tribe of warrior women need half an excuse to start a war on a
good
day. A clue leads him to the artist who tattooed the victims—and suddenly Marcus can barely keep his horny beast at bay.

As a Fury, Megaera Eumenides can see straight to the soul of a man, and she likes what she finds in the strong, honorable Alpha. They claim each other, mark each other, and with every heated mating their bond grows stronger.
Life would be just about perfect if they didn’t have a supernatural assassin to avoid…and Marcus’ past haunting him…and Meg’s secrets to overcome…
and
a murderer on the loose.

Furyous Ink

Saranna DeWylde

Chapter One

Detective Marcus Kage stepped out of his sleek, black Dodge Charger near the intersection of Broadway and Westport Road. He inhaled the scents of early morning, a heady onslaught of rain, oil and exhaust. But it was the undercurrents he was looking for—blood, decay, stale pheromones and adrenaline.

The closer he got to the body, the stronger the scents became. Sometimes bits of the past, fragments of memory, could be stored in certain scents. Marcus knew before he saw the body that the victim would have a detailed tattoo of a fierce great horned owl clutching a dying tarantula in its talons.

This would be the fourth such victim in as many months.

All of them had been Jane Does. Women with no ID and no families or friends to claim them.

After the second vic had been found with the same tattoo, Marcus’ first hunch had been a cult, but neither the KCPD, KBI or FBI had any intel on recent cult activity in the area.

He’d hoped the Lycanos part of his brain would be able to decode something, anything, about these women and their deaths. He didn’t want his last case with the KCPD to be one that went unsolved. He’d been on the force for twelve years…people were going to start noticing he didn’t age. Even though he loved Kansas City, he’d made his peace with moving on.

Marcus hadn’t scented disease on any of the vics, none of the bacteria that infested most humans. But none had smelled like any of the known supes in the area either. There’d been a certain tang filling the air around them, and while he couldn’t name it, he knew it was some kind of toxin. Although nothing had shown up on the tox screens. It was something supernatural.

“She just like all the others?” Kage asked his partner, Ian Spinner.

Ian nodded, black hair falling in his face, which did little to hide his gaunt appearance.

“You look like shit.” Smelled like it too. But only to Kage’s overly sensitive nose.

“And yet,” Spinner grinned, showing off white teeth, “I still got laid this morning.”

“Doesn’t count if you pay for it.” Marcus slid easily into their usual banter as he inspected the body more thoroughly. He knew to the layman the chatter would seem irreverent, but it was a coping mechanism. Something to keep them detached from the horror they dealt with on a daily basis.

This woman was younger than the rest, there was a certain exuberant youth to the way she dressed—the knee-high purple Doc Martens, the denim bag that lay next to her, covered with environmentalist pins. Save the Whales. Proud Treehugger. Recycle.

The tattoo was on her forearm, and fairly new; it was scabbed over and had been recently covered in some kind of balm. Smelled like A+D Ointment.

“Your mom didn’t have change for a five. So it was on the house,” Ian said as he tapped on his iPhone.

“Your sister know you’re stepping out on her?” Marcus volleyed half-heartedly, his attention focused on his task. He pulled a pen from his jacket pocket as he crouched near the dead girl and used it to ease the edges of the denim bag open wider. There was no wallet, no ID, just like all the others. But he saw the glossy red edge of a business card.

He reached in and carefully pulled the card out.

“Furyous Ink” was embossed in a black calligraphy print, the silhouette of three women imprinted to the left in silver. All that foil embossing made for an expensive card.

He flipped the card over and there was an address on Westport Road, within walking distance. Finally, a lead. Tattoo parlors were required to do age verification and consent forms with a copy of the person’s driver’s license.

If she’d gotten her tattoo there, maybe all of the other vics had as well?

“I’ve already talked to the owner of Furyous,” Ian said without looking up. Instead, he scrolled on his iPhone, accessing his notes. “Yeah, I talked with…uh…Megaera Eumenides. She didn’t know anything that could help us.”

Marcus blinked, as if that would change the writing on the card.

F
ury
ous Ink. They were Furies.
Sonofabitch
. “That’s a mouthful.”

“So is the woman herself. You should see the way she fills out a pair of red leather pants. I’d love to get a piece of that pie.” Ian looked up from his phone with a grin.

No, Marcus was pretty sure he wouldn’t. Not if she was truly a Fury. That would explain why she hadn’t told Spinner anything. She’d be hunting the culprit herself. Especially if the vics were all supes too.

The Furies were Greek, same origins as his own. Marcus started skimming through his knowledge of all the Greek supes—and awareness slammed into him hard and fast. He felt intensely stupid for not realizing it before.

The owl was the symbol of Athena.

The women being murdered were Amazons.

He didn’t want that kind of heat in his city. The Amazon Nation would kill everything that got in its way in retribution if he didn’t find out who was doing this.

Unless it was already waging a campaign and this was fallout?

“I’m going to talk to her anyway.”

“Why do you think her answers will change when she talks to you?” Ian arched a dark brow in question.

“It’s a Greek thing.” Marcus smirked. “Text me if you get anything on the vic.”

“Will do. I’ll catch up with you back at the station.”

Marcus walked to the address on the card. He was sure there wouldn’t be anyone there this early in the morning, but it would give him a chance to scope the place out.

He stopped in front of a two-story brick building. The lower level bore a neon sign—
FURYOUS INK
—that was turned off, and Marcus couldn’t see much through the windows. He darted down the alleyway and behind the building.

The upper level was obviously a residence. There was a large wooden deck covered in flowers and green growing things. Marcus could smell fresh figs and bacon. He lifted his nose into the air, scenting something else. Something feminine and blatantly sexual.

Suddenly, inexplicably, his cock was hard enough to hammer steel and the beast inside him clawed at his human veneer, demanding he find this woman, take her. Mark her.

“Looking for
me
, Lycanos?” a sultry voice asked.

He looked up to see a woman leaning over the quaint verdigris fencing around the small haven, her lean, toned forearms resting on the rounded scrollwork and her hair a silver-gold tumble falling over her shoulder. He couldn’t make out the details of her tattoos, but her left arm was a full sleeve and her right, a half. The tight tank top revealed she was muscled like a featherweight fighter, but her curves were definitely feminine. He forced himself to keep his eyes on her face and not on the hard nipples straining against her tank.

“Are you Megaera Eumenides?”

“I am.”

“Then I’m looking for you.” He pulled out his credentials and flashed his badge. “Detective Marcus Kage, KCPD. Can you spare a few minutes?”

“Anything for the law,” she drawled. “Come on up.”

He pocketed his badge and ascended the stairs, keeping his manner casual. “Sorry to bother you so early, Ms. Eumenides.”

“I think we can dispense with human formalities, don’t you?” She cocked her head to the side and offered him a plate of fresh figs, bacon and sliced tomatoes. Under normal circumstances he would have refused, but among supes, the offer of food was a bond of trust. “Call me Meg.”

“Meg, then.” He accepted the plate and took a bite of bacon as he sat on the lounger nearest hers.

She smiled and the expression made her look years younger. From down in the alley she’d looked hardened and cold, but now that he was closer, he could see the youth in the smoothness of her skin, the fullness of her fig-stained lips.

The man in him wondered which was the glamour and which was real, but the animal in him wondered if the rest of her was as pale and perfect as fresh cream. What her tits would feel like weighed in his hands as she rode him on the lounger—

Damn it! He had to keep his head in the game.

She licked her lips and appraised him coolly. “So what brings you to see me, Marcus Kage?”

“A tattoo. I’ve got four dead women with the same tatt.”

“Ah, the owl and the tarantula?” She leaned back on her lounger, crossing her long, bare legs. “The sigil immortalizes Athena’s triumph over Arachne.”

He already knew that, but he suspected she knew as much. She was making him work for it, but that was okay. He’d jump through any flaming hoops she wanted to get information. “What else can you tell me?”

“The women have no other family to notify. They’re Amazons.”

“The girl we found this morning—” he began.

“
Woman
, Detective,” Meg interrupted with a sour look on her face. “She wasn’t a girl.”

“No, you’re wrong there.” Marcus shook his head grimly. “She was just a girl. A child.”

Meg closed her eyes and took a deep breath, dread scrawled on her features. “How new was her tattoo?”

“Still smelled of A+D.”

Her knuckles were so white they were almost blue as she clenched the arms of the lounger. “What was she wearing?”

Marcus knew his answer would change things irrevocably for the Fury. By the way she’d asked the question, it was obvious she already knew the answer, but she needed to hear it from him to make it true.

This was the part of being a cop he didn’t like. Telling people their loved ones were never coming home, that their hopes and dreams were nothing but dust and ash.

“Knee-high Doc Martens. Purple.”

When Megaera Eumenides opened her eyes, her blue irises had turned red. Tears of blood streaked down her pale face and her silver-gold hair erupted in flames. She was all Fury.

And all her power and rage disappeared almost as soon as it manifested.

“Her name was Galatea. This was going to be her first mission.” Meg inhaled then exhaled slowly. “She was so proud of herself for how far she’d come. The High Priestess said she was too small, too soft…”

“I’m going to catch him, Meg,” he promised.

“Then what? Then he’ll go to prison where he gets three square meals a day and cable?” She stood and began pacing back and forth. Marcus could almost see the rage gathering again under her skin, rippling into her muscles and drawing her skin too taut.

“No. This isn’t a matter for human laws. I’ll turn him over to the Amazon Nation.”

She turned to look at him. “How do you know it’s a
he
? What if it’s a woman? Will you turn
her
over to the Amazon Nation?”

“Yes,” Marcus agreed easily.

“You’re a strong, honorable alpha male. I can smell it on you. But I can also sense you have a White Knight complex. You’re all about saving the damsel.”

Marcus met her penetrating stare easily. Allowed her to see inside him with her Fury sight. “There is nothing and no one worth the wrath the Amazon Nation will bring down upon my city. Now, tell me. Why do you think it’s a woman?”

“The rivalry between Arachne and Athena is legendary, Arachne bragging about her talents as a weaver and Athena turning her into a spider for her hubris. And just as Athena has her Amazons, Arachne has her own tribe of warrior women—the Arachnae. They’re diametrically opposed and always on the brink of war with one another, if not actively
at
war. The most obvious culprit would be an Arachnae. They have the same tattoos as Amazons, but reversed. The tarantula is perched on top of an owl, its hairy legs caging its prey.”

They could damn well keep that feud out of his streets.

“Do you have names for the other victims?”

Meg shook her head. “I didn’t know them. Just Galatea.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Yesterday around noon. She stopped by the shop for more ointment.” Meg continued to pace.

“How long was she here?”

“I don’t know, we were busy. Ten minutes, maybe?”

“Did she say where she was going after she left?” Marcus watched Meg, the pulse in her throat, the micro expressions on her face; he even listened to the cadence of her voice. She was hiding something…but she wasn’t lying. As his gaze was drawn down to her breasts, he told himself he was monitoring her heartbeat as she spoke, the surest lie detector test of them all. Although Furies weren’t in the habit of lying. Concealing, shifting perhaps, if it was in pursuit of a higher justice. And since this Fury knew the last victim personally, Marcus was sure she’d be out for blood.

“She only said she was on her way to meet with a new friend who could help with the mission, but she wouldn’t say more.” She stopped pacing. “I should have made her tell me.”

“Do you have an address for her?”

“Come back tonight after the shop closes and I’ll take you there,” she offered, the invitation in her voice sounding as if she were offering so much more than a guided tour of an Amazon safe house. The invitation struck the chords of lust with a master’s skillful fingers.

“Tonight isn’t so good for me, Fury.” The moon would be full and bright and his beast would be too near the surface for him to trust himself with this woman. Not when her scent brought visions of rutting on a bed of loamy earth, of surrendering completely to every base animal desire.