Soul Stripper (21 page)

He seemed to mull that over for a second, and then finally he pushed off of the cabinets, away from my body. “George,” he called, “come on out.” He turned to gather his weapons, putting them back in their appropriate holsters.

George entered and looked at me carefully. I sent him a smile. I felt much better after slapping Damien.

“So,” Damien said after suiting himself back up. “You two want to see the other crime scenes?”

I
felt pretty safe with Damien by my side. Maybe it was the fact that we now had another supernatural man on our team. Maybe it was because not even my
house
felt safe anymore and being outside was a relief. Whatever the reason, I was glad to have the extra muscle around.

Damien drove one of those giant luxury trucks with four doors and leather seats. I sat shotgun and George rode sprawled out across the backseat. We drove toward the north end of town, and Damien pulled into a swanky luxury apartment complex.

Putting the truck in park, he said, “Well, here we are. Victim number two.”

“Does victim number two have a name?” I searched my purse for a stick of gum. With the amount of men kissing me lately, I needed to ensure fresh breath.

“She does, but I don’t recommend calling her by it.”

I let my purse fall into my lap, pointedly. “She was a
person
. Not just some victim.”

“She was a succubus, not a person. Besides, the more you connect the victim to humanity, the easier it is to mix fact with emotion.”

“Just tell me what her fucking name was.” I found my gum at the bottom of my bag and popped a piece in my mouth. “And succubi are people, too, you know,” I said more quietly.

He tossed me a file, which landed in my lap on top of my purse. “Not
human
people, but sure. Why not? Succubi are ‘people,’ too.” His tone was quiet and snarky. It made me want to slap him again.

I pushed the desire to inflict pain on Damien aside and instead opened the folder. The crime scene pictures weren’t anywhere near as gory as Savannah’s, but they
were
more disturbing. The top of the file had her name. “Lyla Swan,” I said aloud. “The porn star?”

Damien tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel. “Yep.”

George perked up from the backseat. “No shit!” He leaned over my shoulder to examine the file with me. She was naked when she died. Her hands were tied behind her back, and she was lying stomach-down on the bed. Her face was turned to the side, lifeless eyes staring into the camera lens. She looked more gorgeous than she ever did on camera. Her skin a flawless porcelain, her hair dark blond. The only signifier that she was dead was a small trickle of blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, down her chin. I shivered and shut the file. “How did she die?”

Damien looked at me from below his dark eyebrows. “It’s all in the file.”

I handed it back to him. “I don’t want to read. I want you to tell me.”

He smirked, tucking the file under his arm. Without answering me, he pulled his keys out of the ignition. “In that case—let’s walk and talk.”

We stepped into the dingy elevator and Damien pushed the button for the third floor. Damien had his hands in his pockets again, leaning against the marble elevator walls. “We know that Lyla had sex more than once on the day she was murdered. And we think that the murderer might have tried to rape her—it’s a major inconsistency from the other crime scenes. A postmortem rape kit confirmed tearing and bruising around the vaginal walls.”

“Ick.” George scrunched his face.

“Gross,” I said at the same time as George. We looked at each other. “You sound like a doctor or something.”

Damien sighed and unbuttoned the top button on his shirt, pulling it away from his neck. “This is why I don’t bring civilians to crime scenes.”

“The last thing either of us wants to hear from a hot guy are the words
tearing, bruising,
and
vaginal walls
in the same sentence. Ugh.” George looked at Damien, whose eyes narrowed.

“Why would it matter to you?” Damien asked. His eyes roamed over George, and for the first time since I met Damien, I saw a look of surprise cross his face. “Oh.” Recognition hit as he soaked in George’s style. Skinny black jeans, a plaid button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and a striped tie tucked into a gray suit vest. Paired with his bowler hat and hipster (nonprescription) glasses, it’s a wonder it took Damien this long to realize. “You’re gay,” Damien said matter-of-factly.

I took a protective step in front of George out of instinct. “Seriously? You couldn’t tell?” I gestured up and down George’s outfit.

Damien shrugged. “I just thought he had a great sense of style.”

“I
do
have a great sense of style,” George said, arms crossed in front of him.

“As do I.” Damien smirked. “I guess I didn’t realize that was a prerequisite to being gay.” George and I continued staring at him. The elevator chimed and opened on the third floor. Damien sighed and stepped off, holding the door for both of us. “Calm down, you two. I just gave him a compliment and you’re acting as if I have a white cone hat on my head and a firebomb in my hand.”

I stepped off the elevator, my eyes still skeptically on Damien. George followed behind me. I saw his face soften, which made me immediately relax, too. “I just always expect the worst out of habit,” George said.

Damien gave a nod of understanding and unhooked the crime scene tape. We entered Lyla’s apartment with much less fanfare than with Savannah’s home. The dark mahogany hardwood floors were pristine—waxed to perfection. We walked in; a large marble kitchen was to the left and straight ahead was a spacious living room.

“Damn,” George said. “You should change careers, Monica.”

I considered this for a moment—porn isn’t respectable by any means, but I would have access to men who were deserving of losing their souls. I shook the thought from my mind. No way. I can barely stand taking my clothes off for money. I’d never succeed in porn.

Damien leaned over, speaking close to my ear. “You were considering it for a moment, weren’t you?”

“No,” I lied.

He chuckled as I walked deeper into Lyla’s apartment. “So, I’m guessing based on the picture that she was found in her bedroom?” I entered through French double doors, and the bedroom, too, was large and luxurious. Though not quite as clean as the living room and kitchen.

The boys followed behind me as I walked over to the bed. There was an imprint of what looked like a body in the duvet. “However, we think she tried to run. Was actually poisoned here”—Damien pointed to a different taped-off area on the floor near the doorway—“then placed back on the bed in the sexual position you saw in the picture.” I looked over at George, who had barely entered the bedroom.

“And what did the elements tell you?”

He shrugged. “Not much. Either this guy had prior knowledge of elementals being involved in the Las Vegas Police Department or he’s really careful. He made sure to put enchantments on everything. There’s very little they can tell me about the evening in question.”

I crouched down to the floor where she was assumed to be killed. “Was there any hint of magic?” I asked.

Damien shook his head. “Unlike the first crime scene, this place held no traces of the arcane on the night she died. He most likely did it by hand. Could have even been a human. The first time, the magic we felt could have only been her magic.”

“So Lyla didn’t even use magic that evening?” I asked.

“Nope,” he answered.

That meant Savannah hadn’t lost all her powers yet but Lyla’s were entirely gone. He somehow messed up Savannah’s murder. I thought of the night before and how a twinge of power purred through my body.
Like he maybe messed up mine, too.

I stood up and circled the bedroom, doing two more laps before I stopped in front of Damien. I crossed my arms over my chest. “This is the most boring crime scene ever! There’s nothing here to see!”

His gaze settled on mine. “Because most of the time, evidence has already been bagged.” He shoved the file back toward me. “Hence the reason you have to
read
. And look at the pictures.”

“Well, fine. Just tell me what I missed.”

He pulled out one of the pictures from the file. “You should have noticed the condom wrapper in the trash can.”

Crap. “Well—maybe I did see it in the picture. She is a porn star. I didn’t really think that much of it.” I paused, holding his gaze.

“So, the murderer used a condom?” George asked, still standing in the doorway.

“Maybe.” Damien started pacing around the room. “All corpses associated with the case so far are essentially human for all intents and purposes. They all had either very little or no magic left in them and were all some form of a sex worker.” He took a moment, hesitating before using the phrase “sex worker,” glancing at me.

“Savannah . . .” he continued. “Our first victim had consensual sex within a few hours of her time of death. However, with a succubus, I hardly see how that’s much of a clue.” He said it with a smile. As if speaking only to piss me off.

“So the murderer was a human. If he was immortal, he wouldn’t have needed protection,” I said.

“Perhaps.” Damien put his hands on his hips and stopped walking around the room. “But the man she had sex with using the condom might have been someone other than the murderer. If it was our killer and he was a human, he still must have known she was a succubus in order to successfully carry out these murders. Which means he would have known condoms were unnecessary.” He turned, looking directly at me and licked his lips. “And trust me—no man would wear a condom if it wasn’t needed.”

“Or,” George continued for Damien, “it could have just been some random person she had sex with prior to her death.”

Damien nodded. “Exactly.”

“So—if so far all the murder methods are different, what is there even connecting them?”

“You mean other than the fact that both victims were succubi?” George sneered.

“LVPD doesn’t know that. From an outsider perspective—why would someone think they were connected?”

“Now you’re thinking like a detective.” Damien pointed at me with his forefinger and then allowed it to rest on his lips. It was weird seeing him in business mode. He took on a different demeanor . . . still a dickhead. But a more professional dickhead, at least. “Obviously, we have more information than your average cop. We know the link is that they are both succubi. We know that they both were stripped of their powers. Victim number—uh . . .” He shot a glance at me and put both hands up in front of him in a surrender stance. “Lyla more than Savannah. Lyla was most likely stripped entirely of her power. She had filmed a scene earlier in the morning, and it was pretty obvious that she wasn’t able to shift herself to look good. When we talked to the makeup artist on set, she said that for the first time in her career, Lyla did not arrive camera ready.”

“You watched the porn from the day she died?” A pang of jealousy stabbed in my chest at the thought of him watching another succubus at work.

His lips twitched. “
That’s
what you took from all that information?”

I ignored his smug smile and shrugged. “So, if I was an LVPD cop, why would I think these were linked?”

“That was a bit tricky.” He slumped against the wall. “My partner and I had to convince our captain that two women within twenty miles of each other were killed by the same man. We went for demographic—both women were in the sex industry. Savannah worked for an escort service, Lyla was a porn star. They were brutal murders, worked out to punish the victim. It was a stretch, but we were supported by the chief, so no one really questioned it.”

I stared at the bed a few moments, and I swear that I could still see the outline of her body weight on the bedspread. I could see her torso, the curve of her hips, waist, ribs . . . I felt a stronger urge to sit down on the bed. Breathing was becoming suddenly harder. It felt as though something was on my chest, sitting there.

The heaviness faded away, and when I came to, I was resting in someone’s lap. I opened my eyes and Damien had both hands cupping my face. He was crouched in front of me, worry lines digging deep around his eyes.

“This happened last time. . . .” George’s voice sounded far away, and I looked up to find him cradling me in his lap, rocking me gently, stroking my hair while talking to Damien.

I touched the side of my face, a trickle of blood sliding out of the corner of my mouth.

His eyes studied me a moment longer. “You’re connected to the victims?”