Immortal Distraction

Immortal Distraction

The Immortals, Book 2

Elizabeth Finn

Published 2013

ISBN: 978-1-93176-163-5

Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509 Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © Published 2013, Elizabeth Finn. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Liquid Silver Books

http://LSbooks.com

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

Blurb

Detective Brit Sutton is the epitome of difficult. As a homicide detective, she learned early on that being a woman in a man’s world required a strong backbone, a harsh tongue, and nerves of steel. But when one of her cases leads her to Angus Scott, she’s finally met her match.

Angus is the head of the council of vampires for the eastern region of the United States, and it is his responsibility to run interference with her investigation when the prime suspect in a string of murders is one of his own. But Brit is a determined woman, and as much as she’s met her match, Angus has as well.

When his toying games turn from intense attraction to all out obsession, will he be able to stay his course? And when her life becomes threatened by the very suspect Angus is trying to shelter, will he abandon his need to distract her in order to protect her?

Chapter 1

Seventeen Years Ago

“Loser, loser, loser.” They were chanting again, just like the crowds of people always did at the football games, but these chants were mean, and these chants were for her. “Brit’s a loser.” Their words were sung in a well-used tune. This wasn’t the first time they’d done this, and before she knew it, the chant had morphed again. “Brit’s a hooker. Brit’s a hooker. Brit’s a hooker.” They were still singing as she stood clutching her books to her chest in the corner of the school corridor. She was biting the inside of her lip to the point she could taste the blood filling her mouth. But it was the only way to keep herself from crying.

“Why do you smell so effing bad?” The girl was her archenemy. She was blonde and beautiful, even at fourteen. She was everything Brit wasn’t. But she was a bitch. “I mean, don’t you fucking shower? Even hookers shower—didn’t your whore mother teach you anything?” The blood was now filling up the space between her teeth and lips, and she focused on the taste. It wasn’t the first time she’d bitten the inside of her mouth to keep herself from sobbing in front of them.

And then another one of the pretty girls chimed in. “No, Char. Her mother didn’t teach her anything, remember? She had to repeat the seventh grade because she’s so effing stupid. She’s stupid; she smells…” She was ticking off Brit’s best traits on her hand as though she was tallying them up for the group of kids that had her cornered in the deserted hallway. “And she’s disgusting…”

“And she’s ugly as a dead dog on the side of the street that’s been run over like a hundred times.” The boy was Gavin, and he was laughing and elbowing his buddies as he spoke. They all snorted out their laughter as though they were the funniest group of pricks in the world. Gavin was the male version of Char. They were the popular ones. Brit was definitely not.

Brit thought junior high had been bad; being held back was supposed to be the biggest hurdle she’d face. That’s what the counselor had said. But then she got to high school. What a friggin’ nightmare. She’d actually been dumb enough to look forward to it. She’d thought her past wouldn’t follow her. Most of the kids were from different junior highs, and she was hoping the school would be big enough that those who were once her classmates and who moved on without her wouldn’t even realize she was around. She was wrong.

“What’s it like being the daughter of a hooker? I mean, do you watch? You do don’t you, you dirty bird” This was uttered by Chelsea. She had a deceptively sweet face and voice that had fooled Brit into thinking she might actually be nice once upon a time. Chelsea was not nice, and falling into that trap once was all it took for Brit to know it was better to steer clear. “Are you going to be a hooker too, Brit? You’re too ugly to be one, but I suppose dirty old men don’t really care do they? So, fucking nasty…” And then the tears came. It didn’t matter that her mouth was damn near full to the rim with blood or that Brit still had her teeth sunk into the inside of her lower lip. The tears were pricking, and soon, they’d be falling.

She sunk to the floor with her back to the corner where the bank of lockers met the old painted cinder-block walls. The group was in front of her, and she could go nowhere. She couldn’t stop the tears that were welling up, and her throat was tight in her effort to stop from crying. When her butt hit the concrete floor, she tucked her head down to hide her face between her chest and the books she still held clutched in her arms, and she cried. She tried to be quiet, but the sobs took her over, and they ratcheted through her body one after another as the group laughed and kept taunting.

When the singsong chanting returned, she was almost relieved. It was easier to tolerate than the individual attacks for some reason, and she silently prayed the warning bell would ring soon. She’d have to wait for every last one of her hecklers to leave for class before she could escape to the bathroom and fix her face. She knew she’d likely end up with detention again for being late. But what was one more detention? Sometimes the counselor took her out of detention and let her serve her time in her office. She liked Brit for some odd reason, perhaps the only person in the world who did. She would likely spend the hour talking to Brit about her future, where she wanted her life to go; she’d hand her pamphlets and college booklets. She’d bore Brit to tears, but she’d be nice to her. She was at least nice.

When the bell finally rang, sounding the two-minute warning, Brit let out a deep, steadying sigh as she listened to the crowd break up and disperse. But just as Brit started straightening, she was shocked to the point of letting out an inadvertent yelp when her books were torn from her arms and thrown down the hallway. Papers flew from her folders, and her books skidded across the dirty concrete. She tucked her head down to her knees again. Looking up would only make it worse.

When it was finally quiet and safe, she climbed back up to her feet and peered out the small side corridor she was in to the large main hallway. After collecting her papers and books, she crept down the hallway to the bathroom. The bell rang, and she hung her head. It would definitely be another detention for being late to class, but as she reached the bathroom door, she was stopped in her tracks.

“Brit. Brit!” It was the counselor, and as Brit turned to her, she sucked in a quick breath. Beside her was a police officer. He was tall, but he had gentle eyes and a kind but serious expression. Cops were always nice to her. “Brit … it’s your mom.” Brit took a deep breath. She’d been at this place before, and there was nothing for her to do but wait for the words. “She’s in jail … again.” Brit clenched her jaw, and her gaze flitted between them. “I’m so sorry, Brit.”

“What for? You’re not the whore; she is.” There were no tears to cry for her mother. She’d wasted them all on herself and the crowd of hecklers. The mascara that no doubt streaked down her cheeks was all the evidence needed. She shouldn’t even bother wearing the shit anymore; it’s not like it made her any prettier, and more often than not, it ended up on her cheeks.

Just another day in paradise.

Chapter 2

Today

The morning was cold, and Brit was likewise. Humphreys was beside her in the car, and they were ignoring one another as usual. They rarely spoke, and fortunately, they were effective enough at doing their job that no one pushed back too much on their unwillingness to work with one another more than minimally necessary. He was a fat, ugly, old man with a bad attitude and bad breath to match. She didn’t actually dislike the man; in fact, his attitude reminded her very much of her own. Sour, dour, and just plain frustrated the better portion of the time.

When Humphreys pulled to the curb, he left her to wade through a rather deep drift of snow.
Stupid fuck
. And it didn’t help she was wearing heels. She should just give it up and dress like a man. It could only help her. When she managed to get past the mound of snow with only a small amount of snow in her shoes, she was met with her greatest pet peeve in the flesh. “Miss. This way.” Nobody called Brit “
Miss
.” What the fuck gave the young, stupid-looking officer standing in front of her the right to call her anything but detective? He should know better. Brit made sure the men, even the other detectives, called her detective. But this fuck just didn’t seem to know who the hell he was talking to.

“Detective.” She sneered at the man as she muttered the word. He froze midstride and only barely managed to look at her. Humphreys glared at them both. He didn’t give a shit what they called her.

“Sorry, Detective.” He led her and Humphreys to the spot behind the Dumpster where the body lay nearly frozen. She let her focus travel up the body from the feet to the head. It was how she approached every dead body she encountered. Frost covered the visible surface of the body, and the red of the torn flesh glistened frozen in place. There was a lot of red. It wouldn’t be pretty when it thawed out, that was for sure.

Brit was exhausted. She’d only gotten three hours of sleep before dispatch had called her to the crime scene. She was getting sick and tired of the bloody-ass dead bodies that looked like they’d been shredded to pieces. It was looking like a serial, and she really didn’t want to commit to a serial, regardless of how glamorous Hollywood made them sound. It was like committing to a long-running TV drama. It took time, care, stress, worry, and in the end, she was likely to be disappointed with how the whole thing wrapped up. She wanted to nail the fucker before it could turn into a
Dallas
or
M*A*S*H
marathon. She was going for something to the tune of the short-lived
Heroes
series. That was more her speed.

This was the fourth body found in this state in the past three months. Shredded. Given the victims’ lifestyles, drugs were a factor, but that knowledge wasn’t proving helpful in solving the damn case. The alley was cordoned off, so she and Humphreys had the run of the space, and as they walked carefully through the scene, they studied every last inch of ground. It had snowed overnight, and any footprints were long gone, aside from those left by the street kid who’d found the body. There was no evidence of how the vic had met his death in the alley or even if he’d died there at all or been dumped thereafter. There was no visible blood spatter to support his dying where his body lay, and aside from a small amount of blood that pooled beneath the body, she was guessing the vast majority of blood was just plain missing—much like the others. The skin was a grayish blue and had the sickening look of death to it.

They didn’t stay in the alley long. The crime-scene techs arrived, and there was little else they could do at the scene. She already had a lead she was running down, but the damn thing was, the lead was a fucking ghost. He’d shown up on video surveillance with two of the previous victims, and he’d been ID’d by someone in the area. Brit was certain he was involved in some way. The man was Driscoll DeMarco, but while she had a name, she didn’t have a location, and she couldn’t get her damn hands on the man. She’d tracked him as far as the building where he supposedly lived, though no one was willing to corroborate that information, but she dead-ended there. She’d been allowed to enter the building; that was as much as she could say for it. She’d been met by an uncooperative man by the name of Gregory Langford that seemed intent on giving her grief more than any positive help. Come to find out, DeMarco was somehow related to the vast majority of the residents—explained their tight lips apparently. DeMarco had no criminal past, little past of any sort that Brit could find, and now she had another dead body and a suspect who was a ghost.

The next uniform that approached didn’t call her “Miss,” but Brit’s hackles were up regardless and left her fighting to maintain her dominance. She knew it likely wasn’t warranted, but she didn’t care. It was the attitude she liked to maintain. When she responded, she sounded stern… She was always stern. It was the very best way for her stay in control, in charge of the situation.

God hadn’t blessed Brit with a masculine voice or a masculine build, and more often than not, she found she had to force her voice to lower and speak louder than what was natural for her. She made her steps strut and stalk to hide the lithe graceful steps that came more naturally to her. She was a woman in a man’s world; it was just her plight.