Lycan Unleashed (4 page)

No. The personal angle wasn’t going to help me. I had to come up with something else—something that would convince him beyond a doubt that he had to let me in. Even better, that he had to have me working alongside him. My mind rebelled at putting myself into a situation that would almost certainly put me more out in the field than I was used to, or comfortable with, but I couldn’t stand idly by while my career came to a screeching halt.

I parked on the street in front of Mason Sanderson’s sprawling house. Steeling my spine, I walked up his driveway. Light from small lamps lining the drive reflected off the concrete, creating odd shadows as I trudged to the flagstone walkway leading to the front door.

Mind racing, I made my way up the steps and lifted the knocker and let it drop back onto the door twice.

Should I ring the doorbell, or would that be too obtrusive? I crossed my arms, blew a large sigh into the chilled air, and watched it puff around me. Surely he wasn’t sleeping already?

My heart dropped into my stomach. What if he had someone else here? What if he didn’t live alone anymore? Hell, he’d worked for the OWEA for a couple of months, and IA for a year before that. A lot of news made its way through the police grapevine, but not everything. Mason Sanderson could be married now, for all I knew.

Just as my mind was making the leap from wife to possible children, the door opened. Framed in the doorway, Mason stood stiffly. His expression was still hard, but somehow less distant than it had been at the station.

For a beat, I just stared at him, unable to yank my gaze from his. The gray eyes I’d seen soften only once, in passion. They’d reflected under the moon the night he kissed me. The mouth that now formed a hard line had softened so perfectly against my lips. Brushing against his forehead, his hair was still damp from his shower. And the way the black T-shirt stretched across his muscular chest made my mouth dry.

“What are you doing here, Astrid?” he asked, breaking me from my spell.

I cleared my throat and stared at the hardwood beneath his sock-covered feet. “I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t think that’s a good—”

“Please,” I said, glancing at his eyes quickly before returning my gaze to the floor.

“All right,” he said gruffly. “Come in.”

I scanned Mason’s hallway. I’d never actually been here before, and I prayed that he didn’t ask me how I knew where he lived. I’d looked him up once. Not long after the kiss.

Dumb
.

The place was impressive, nearly as nice as the house my parents lived in. The house I had been banished from at far too young an age. I pushed back a rush of anger at that memory, and concentrated on my surroundings. Mason’s home was warmer than my parents’. Browns and other natural shades covered the surfaces of his furniture and walls, and the decor was simple. It was too nice for a cop’s house, especially in a nice suburb so close to the city.

Were our backgrounds as dissimilar as I’d always thought? Mason had never struck me as well off. Something about his gruff exterior, plain clothes, and two-day old shave always made me think blue collar. Not in a bad way, but in a rough, manly sort of way.

Get a grip, Astrid.

We reached the living room and Mason stopped and turned to me. “I can’t get you back to work, if that’s why you’re here. Vasquez doesn’t listen to me if he doesn’t have to. And I have no jurisdiction over what the Chicago PD does anymore.”

“Do you think I took the coin?” I asked, hating the way the break in my voice gave my emotions away.

“No.”

Relief flooded through me at his hesitation-free answer. A small piece of me had wondered if he thought so little of me, but his simple response pushed my battered confidence up a bit. “Thank you.”

He shrugged and watched me.

I struggled to meet his gaze. “I want you to bring me in. Let me investigate with you.”

“Not a chance.”

I had the inexplicable urge to ask him why, even though I already knew the answer. “I can help you.”

His eyes narrowed. “How? The OWEA has sensitives I can call in if I need to. It would have been…easier to use you. But I can get someone else.”

“Maybe. But have any of them handled the coin?”

He gestured for me to continue and then crossed his arms.

“I held the coin. I should be able to identify the owner,” I said, the lie pressing against my throat, trying to choke me.

“You managed to get a strong enough reading off that coin to be able to do that without physically touching it?” he asked, eyebrow raised. “I thought you said you hadn’t touched it with your bare skin when we talked at the hospital.”

Mason wasn’t an idiot. He knew how rare that would be for a sensitive, even one as strong as me. “I told you, the owner held that coin—probably almost constantly on their person—for decades, maybe centuries,” I evaded. Not a lie. Not exactly a lie, anyway. I suppressed a cringe. When Mason found out about the omission—and there was no doubt in my mind that he would eventually—I didn’t think he would care that the lie was omission-only.

“It’s not a good idea.”

“I need to clear my name.” I swallowed hard and put strength into my voice. “It’s my reputation on the line. Maybe my badge. I should have that right.”

Mason took a deep breath and stared at me. I struggled not to squirm under his steady gaze. Finally he nodded. A short quick motion that seemed more to himself than to me. “You’ll do what I say, when I say it. And you will have to work as a consultant. It’s highly irregular, but I do need a sensitive for this case. I can make it fly if I have to. But you’ll follow my orders to a T. And you won’t breathe a word of it to anyone.”

Elation rushed through me, tempering my annoyance at his tone. He wasn’t asking me to bow to his demands; he was stating them as if my choice in the matter was nonexistent.

“Deal.” I held my hand out and Mason stared—as if it might turn into a snake—for a few seconds. I almost withdrew, but finally he took my hand with his own. His lycan energy rushed around me, made all the more clear and distracting because of our physical contact. I dropped his hand, and an expression flashed across his face too quickly for me to identify. But any expression on the man was a rarity.

It suddenly struck me that I might not be the only one who still thought about that kiss.

Chapter Three

O
vercast skies still hung low over the city when Mason came to pick me up Sunday morning, and snow barriers surrounded the slushy roads. The air was cold when I stepped out of my house after his curt knock, but not biting like it would be when the clouds cleared. I clutched my to-go coffee mug against my coat and locked the deadbolt.

“We got an ID,” he said without preamble as we walked down the sidewalk.

“Good.” I reached for the door handle but Mason beat me to it. He opened my door and gestured for me to get in. I blinked at him dumbly for a few seconds, then hopped in the SUV. He shut the door soundly behind me.

He wasn’t hitting on me. I was certain of that. Was he just being polite? I knew that Mason was a bit old school with certain things, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a man open a building door for me, let alone a car door.

“The name’s Jake Stone. His wife ID’d the body last night. She’s expecting us this morning.”

I nodded and decided this wasn’t the best time to ask about his chivalry. I could feel him next to me, and his power was a little distracting. I’d get used to it—hopefully sooner rather than later. The first week I’d worked alongside Claude, I’d been hopelessly distracted by his power signature humming along beside me. But I’d gotten used to him, so his aura had faded into the background, leaving me free to pay attention to the rest of the world. But Mason’s was still fairly fresh and new, and very different from the vampire’s. Wild and glinting, not dark and controlled. And the fresh, outdoorsy scent of his energy comingled with his scent as a man in a very delicious way.

“What?” I asked, feeling stupid. Distracted again.

“I said, make sure to let me do the talking. I don’t want word getting back to Vasquez about the little sensitive coming to question witnesses with me.”

The “little” comment made me want to respond with a biting retort, but I calmly replied, “Okay,” instead.
Polite over spite
, my mother’s voice intoned in my head.

I took a sip from my to-go mug. The coffee—thick with cream and sugar—slid smoothly down my throat. Familiar, soothing, and a wonderful distraction from Mason’s energy.

The vampire’s wife lived in the city. Up and coming was how a real estate agent would describe the neighborhood. Nice, but with decay and age lingering along the edges and coating a few of the buildings not yet renovated. I chewed on the inside of my lip and tried to get my mind around a middle-class vampire.

“What is it?” Mason asked, taking in my expression after parking on the street.

“Nothing. It’s just—” I waved my hand around. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a vampire who wasn’t rich.”

Mason snorted. “Well, many of them have been around long enough to accumulate a lot of wealth. Maybe this one’s younger.”

“Maybe.” That would also fit his very ordinary power signature. While most never got truly powerful like Claude or the Magister, the older ones tended to feel more unique. I suspected age played no small part in that truth.

We crossed the slushy street and Mason lingered near me. No doubt at the ready in case I slipped in the slush and fell on my butt. The man was far too chivalrous to live in the modern day. A sexy, broad shouldered antique.

The house we approached was one of the nicer on the street. Although it was difficult to see the differences with everything covered in snow, the paint job was a bit newer. And all of the original windows had been replaced with energy efficient ones.

I paused at the door, and Mason reached around me to knock. His arm brushed mine, and even though we were both covered—me in my thick winter coat and him in a much lighter jacket—I could feel his power caress me. My heart raced, and it annoyed me that he could probably hear it.

“You should let me feel places out before you do that,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Claude always has me check out buildings with my powers before knocking or entering.”

“Well, I’m not Claude,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice.

I glared at him from under my eyelashes, but before I could come up with an appropriate response, the door opened.

The woman’s beauty and pure sexual force would have told me what she was, even if my sensitive powers weren’t on high alert. Her energy tasted like strawberries and my fingers tingled—both sure signs of a succubus. Hair as dark as coal draped her face and hung all the way to her waist. Hazel eyes, rimmed in red and swollen from crying, peered out at us. She licked her full lips before she spoke. “Yes?”

“I’m Agent Sanderson, and this is Astrid Holmes. She’s helping out on your husband’s case,” Mason said. “We spoke on the phone last night?” His voice had lowered to its least menacing growl, but the man still sounded like a predator.

She flinched almost imperceptibly and stepped back. “Of course. I’m Mary Stone. Please come in.”

We walked through her Pottery Barn-decorated home and sat at her dining room table. I had to hop in a most unsophisticated fashion to get onto the tall chairs surrounding the large table, and annoyance flashed through me as the tall succubus sat gracefully. Then Mason started in with the questions.

“I know that this is a rough time, Mrs. Stone, but if you could run us through the last day you saw your husband, it would be helpful.”

Mary nodded and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. The succubus managed to be beautiful even after crying. “It was just a normal day. Jake got up and went to work and so did I. He said he had to go out at around seven and he left.”

“He didn’t tell you where he was going?” Mason pulled out a notebook from the inside of his jacket and made a quick note.

“No. I assumed it was for work.” Eyes wide like a frightened baby animal, she looked every bit the innocent. I wasn’t sure I bought it, and a slight narrowing in Mason’s eyes made me think he didn’t either.

“Your husband worked in a law office, as a paralegal?” Mason asked.

“Yes.”

“Did he have to work nights often?”

She took a sip of water from her glass, hands trembling. “No. He didn’t usually work nights.”

“Did he go out in the evenings like that a lot? Without telling you where he was going?” Mason pressed.

“No, but I—”

“Then why didn’t you ask him where he was going?” Mason said, the aggression in his leaning stance growing more pronounced.

The succubus was the same height as Mason, within an inch or two, but as he shot out questions that she struggled to answer, she seemed to shrink, and he appeared to glower over her. Their energy pulsed around me, and I got lost in it for a few moments, missing some of his questions. Tears built behind the woman’s eyes, but Mason didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m just having a hard time understanding why you’d let him walk out that door without knowing where he was going, Mrs. Stone,” Mason said. His voice was still low, but I could feel the danger lurking there. Controlled violence. And Mary Stone could obviously feel it too. Her face crumpled and she drew back into herself like she expected Mason to strike her.

I stood, hopping off the pub-sized chair in as dignified a manner as I could manage. “Thank you, Mrs. Stone. We appreciate your time. We understand that you’re grieving right now and probably have funeral arrangements to make, so we’ll come back another time.” I held out my hand to the succubus and she shook it, her clammy hand flimsy and weak against my firm grip.

“Thank you,” she gasped, trying to control her tears, which were fast dissolving into outright sobs.

Mason gaped at me for a second before he snapped his mouth and notebook shut. “Thank you, Mrs. Stone,” he muttered, and then he followed me to the door.

“
What the hell was that?” Mason asked after we were back in his car.

I shrugged, still in shock that he’d opened my door for me yet again, even though he practically radiated anger. Courtesy must have been driven into him as much as acting politely had been driven into me. “She wasn’t going to give us anything.”

“I had her ready to crack.”

I eyed him levelly. “No. You had her scared and stressed, and even less likely to tell you anything. The woman just lost her husband. Don’t you know how to question people without scaring them witless?”

He shoved his key into the ignition and the SUV roared to life. “Intimidation is a proven questioning technique.”

“Yes. And one you’re undoubtedly good at,” I said dryly. “But it’s not the only technique and not the best one for questioning a woman who just lost her husband. A woman who isn’t even a suspect.”

His brows drew together and he pulled out onto the street. “Close family—spouses in particular—are always suspects.”

“Yes. But it isn’t exactly likely that she nailed him to that wall. Last I heard, succubi don’t have super strength.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t do it with help.”

I crossed my arms and glared at him. “I’m not saying that she doesn’t know more than she’s letting on. And she might well be involved. But coming at her with a bit of compassion and kindness would have gotten us more information.”

“If you hadn’t butted in—something I specifically told you not to do—we might have more information right now,” he said, but doubt touched his voice.

I didn’t press the issue. He’d just dig his heels in deeper. Stubborn ass. Instead, I asked, “Where to now?”

“We’ll question some of his coworkers.” He gave me a sidelong glance, full of meaning. “And by we, I mean me.”

It took every bit of my considerable self-control not to roll my eyes at him.
Think like a sailor if you must, my dear, but you will speak like a lady if you want to be treated like one
. My mother might have been right, but Mason sure tempted my control.

Jake Stone’s direct supervisor and the two co-workers we spoke to didn’t know of any projects that would have required Jake to leave his house that evening. The firm was vampire-owned—by the Magister’s own company—and run by his son Nicolas. And I got the distinct feeling that even though Jake was a paralegal and not an attorney, his vampire status gave him a lot more leeway in his position than he would have gotten if he were a human. Even in the world of vampire companies, sometimes it came down to who you knew, not what you knew.

We headed to lunch after leaving Jake’s law office. It was almost one thirty by the time we arrived at The Grill House, so the crowds were thinning and we were seated quickly.

Mason eyed me over his menu from across the booth. “So, what do you think?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He raised his eyebrows. “No theories?”

“Sure. But I’m trying to keep an open mind.”
Never assum
e. I didn’t always stick to the first thing Claude had taught me when I was assigned as his partner, but I tried.

Mason folded his menu and placed it on the table, flush with the corner. “I think we’re probably dealing with some sort of vampire turf war.”

“Perhaps.” I focused on my menu. It was difficult to pay attention to Mason and the food choices at the same time as we were in such close proximity to several other oh-dub patrons. A salamander was nearby—I could feel the signature heat. And if I wasn’t mistaken, a selkie was close too. The scent of saltwater came through subtly, mostly overpowered by the smell of fresh air carried by Mason.

“Well, we have a dead vamp who belonged to the local Magister. He was displayed at the Magister’s place of business.” He leaned forward and caught my eye. “And he was killed in a manner that matches the M.O. of other vampire murders across the country.”

I dropped the menu on the table. “When did you make that connection?”

He frowned. “Even before I got to the scene. I mentioned it to Mac. You were there.”

“I was distracted.” God, he probably thought I was incompetent.

“You’re distracted a lot.”

I opened my mouth to tell him where he could stick his attitude and then snapped it shut. I didn’t have to explain myself to him, didn’t owe him an explanation for the bits of conversation I missed. My issues with paying attention were my own.

The waiter saved us from an awkward silence. The bright-eyed young man asked for our orders with a big smile on his face.

“Steak,” Mason said. “Salad, and baked potato,” he added. “Coke to drink.”

“How do you want it cooked?”

“Rare,” he said, and his gaze flashed back to me.

Shivers ran down my spine at that look. He could have been talking about sex instead of food for how my body reacted to his gaze.

“And you?” the waiter asked me.

“I’ll take a Coke too. And a burger and fries.”

“We’ll have that out for you soon.” The perky young man dashed off to his next table.

“You said there were other victims?” I said, bringing the conversation back to the case before Mason could derail me. “What are the similarities?”

“Vampires with their throats cut for one. And they were all killed by another vampire—or more than one—as far as we can tell. And no bite marks on the bodies. Whoever is killing these vamps isn’t feeding off of them.”

My stomach dropped. For any other species, killing by cutting a person’s throat wouldn’t necessarily be enough to tie murders together. But if a vampire killed them all, the likeliness of the same killer increased exponentially. Vampires craved blood like addicts craved drugs. And the scent could be overwhelming for them—particularly the smell of their own kind’s blood.

It was why there were almost no vampire doctors or nurses. Not because it was illegal—that would be discriminatory—but because the vampires themselves would not allow their members to be put into such precarious positions. The control it would take for a vampire to resist a small bite with someone pouring their lifeblood out right in front of them…it was difficult to imagine.

Especially if the vampire had cut the throat of the person bleeding to death in front of them—morals wouldn’t be a factor.

Mason simply watched as I considered the implications, and I wondered if he could read my thoughts on my face. Claude swore it was an easy thing to do, so I’d worked at schooling my expression. But so often, I simply forgot. Sensory overload did that to a person.