Til Darkness Falls, page 14
She hated this time more than all the others through which she’d lived. The fast-paced soullessness that technology had brought to the world made her long for the elegance of days past. Once she’d worn silks and exquisite jewels. She’d danced the complicated steps taught by masters and watched as men fought over her in deadly games played with swords and, later, pistols. She’d ridden in golden chariots and on magnificent steeds and had enjoyed all the wonders of the ages as civilizations rose and fell around her.
But this world was lacking in both beauty and taste. For all of the conveniences of “modern life,” it bored her. The shabbiness of the clothing, the tastelessness of the food, the horrid banality these people called music. She sometimes wondered how the human race had survived instead of dying out beneath its own hideous inconsequence.
More than anything, however, she hated the men of this time. They were weak, vulgar louts who barely knew how to scratch their own balls, let alone how to truly satisfy a woman. When she thought of the magnificent specimens of masculinity she had known across the years, it was enough to make her weep. How could the pitiful creatures that dared lay claim to the masculine gender compete with the likes of Hannibal and Julius Caesar, Richard the Lionheart and Peter the Great? Emperors, kings, and knights of untold beauty and power had once hung upon her every word, fighting for her favors and submitting to her slightest whim. But now she was reduced to this.
She cast a derisive eye over the tawdry décor reflected behind her in the mirror. Thinking of what awaited her in the next room, her mouth twisted in revulsion. How poetically tragic the twist of fate that doomed her to follow two particular men through time, sacrificing everything that she might make of her endless lives in order to spend all of her time attempting to thwart their base relationship.
But she couldn’t stop. She could never stop. The threat of what awaited her should she fail pressed her ever onward down her unending path.
Through the vagaries of her curse, she was destined to stumble across at least one of the men whom she’d hated enough to sacrifice eternity. If she discovered one, she never had to worry about seeking out the other, for they would find each other without fail. Her desire for vengeance had carried her strongly through those first incarnations, and she’d taken great delight in destroying her perceived enemies. But after her first few lives, she had grown weary of the evils she was obliged to commit as she facilitated the lovers’ betrayal and ultimate destruction. She’d tried to outsmart Set, who had eventually fallen out of consequence to the people of the world. Ignoring her oath, she’d lived as she pleased without giving the slightest thought to her curse. But as she had quickly realized, avoidance was impossible. As in every lifetime, one of the men crossed her path, and as though Set had thrown black stain on her soul, her ire had compelled her to fulfill her promise. She quickly realized that, although the dark god might have become nothing more than a myth, there was no escape for her as long as his frightful power continued to hold true.
And so it was in this incarnation as it had been in all the others. She’d enjoyed a brief respite for the first twenty-one years of her current life, but when she suddenly found one of the men she was doomed to hunt, the innocent normalcy of her life came to an abrupt end.
She’d stumbled across her target while visiting a boyfriend at his college campus. A senior herself, she’d barely given the skinny freshman a second glance when he nearly bowled her over while rushing off to some activity or other. But even with only that brief look, she’d seen past the fleshy trappings of his body to the true form of his soul. Rather than a medium-toned, brown-haired young man of average height, his pretty green-hazel eyes wide with embarrassment as he apologized to her profusely, she’d seen an image from a far distant past. Hatred and hopelessness had churned in her gut in sickening turns as she realized that the time had come, once more, for her to play her part in her never-ending tragedy.
She’d followed the young man that day, learning that his name was Brian Macon and that he was studying criminal justice. Working on a hunch, she applied to the police academy the very next day. She’d shown a surprising aptitude for police work, and by the time Macon made detective, she was already rising quickly through the ranks, her natural intelligence and a three-year head start giving her an edge. When an opening for captain came in the homicide unit at his precinct, she was poised to exploit the opportunity. Her quarry was now firmly under her thumb, where she could set the stage for his downfall when the time came. All she had to do was to wait for him to find the soul to whom fate had bound him, and when he did, she would be ready to destroy them both.
But before she could discharge her duty to the bloodthirsty god, she was forced to this disgusting expedience.
The bathroom light flicked out, and Gio watched hungrily, licking his lips as the beautiful woman emerged wearing a lacy black number. He’d given it to her as a gift, and seeing her in it got him going every time. “About damn time, babe. You know you can’t keep a stud like me waiting.”
Hayley walked over to the bed, pausing as she looked down at the man who was her sometime lover. She schooled her features with long practice, hiding her disgust. “You know I’m worth it, darling.”
Gio loved it when she talked to him like some tawdry movie starlet from the early years of cinema. It was an easy persona for her to portray. Those sultry vamps of the silver screen had been the last women she’d truly admired. She slipped into bed, gritting her teeth as he immediately grabbed her ass and pulled her close to his sweaty body. At least he wasn’t completely hideous. He was over eight years her junior, and sometimes she wondered if he realized how old she was. She took great pains to hide the passage of years, that being the one thing that continued to rankle no matter how many lives she lived.
Hayley feigned interest as he planted sloppy kisses over her neck and chest. Digging her fingers into his thick hair, she held him in place as he nudged the neckline of her negligee below her breasts and went to work. Her stomach turned as he licked and sucked over the full mounds. “So tell me, honey, have you decided on your friend’s next target?”
“Aww, babe, you wanna talk shop now?”
Her lips tightened with impatience. Gio generally didn’t mind when she wanted to talk about his business. He thought it extremely amusing that he was fucking a police captain. She’d met him shortly after taking over Homicide. He’d been walking out of Central Booking, brash and cocky from beating some petty rap using his uncle’s influence. When she’d learned who he was, she’d decided to introduce herself by accosting him in the back room of a nightclub and allowing him to fuck her. Long experience had taught her to never let a possible pawn to go unused, and Gio had proven to be a particularly valuable stooge. She sometimes wondered if he ever stopped to think how little sense their relationship made. Probably not. He rarely thought with anything except his fists and his dick. Gio’s favorite topic, besides himself, was his latest project: wiping out the Cosminos. He was thrilled with the man he’d found to do his dirty work. He thought he’d been turned on to the German assassin by an associate of his uncle’s.
Hayley smirked as Gio indulged himself with the ripe, brown peaks that puckered beneath his tongue. She ran her long, sharp fingernails over his scalp as he sucked at her nipples, noting his shiver with nothing more than clinical interest. Never in a million years would Gio have guessed that his hired killer had, in fact, been deliberately dangled in front of his nose by his new girlfriend.
Abandoning her breast for more tempting prospects below, Gio slid down her stomach, his wet cock leaving a disgusting trail of slime along her leg. She found it within herself to forgive him, however, when he pushed up her negligee and buried his head between her legs. A throaty sigh slipped from her lips as he quickly hit his stride, licking and sucking the tender folds of her sex, his tongue fucking her with eager jabs. She relaxed as her body reacted despite her intellectual repugnance. If he had to be good for something, it might as well be this. Even though she selfishly enjoyed Gio’s eagerness to go down on her, it rarely made her come. Still, she would make him service her until she was satisfied. It was the least he could do to thank her for the privilege of letting him touch her at all. Tightening her grip on his hair, Hayley smiled as he grunted in pain. Disgusting lout. She moaned when he hit a particularly good spot.
As her body hummed, she allowed her mind to drift pleasantly with thoughts of the day when Macon or the German, or preferably both, were dead. Those times when she managed to make them kill each other were always her favorite. If she finished them off soon, she’d have years left to enjoy the benefits offered by the power and prestige of her job. Hell, she might even find a man she could tolerate long enough to get married and have a kid or two.
But she was getting ahead of herself. First, Macon and the German had to be dealt with, and when it was all over, she’d take immense pleasure in slitting Gio’s throat and watching him bleed out like the squealing little pig he was. He groaned as she dug her nails deeper into his scalp, the vibration making her shiver.
“That’s right, pig,” she whispered. “Squeal.”
Chapter 6
“WHERE are the pictures from the scene?”
“Forensics hasn’t sent them up yet.”
“What the hell are they waiting for? I’m not a damned psychic.”
“Psychics see the future, dumbass.”
“Shove it. My point is that I can’t visualize the crime scene just by closing my eyes and saying ‘Abracadabra,’ can I?”
The entire station was in an uproar, and it wasn’t just their precinct. A city council member’s daughter had turned up dead in an alley the night before, a rookie patrolman stumbling across her in the wee hours of the morning. Preliminary reports indicated that she’d been robbed and then raped before being stabbed to death. It was nasty and high-profile. The media was all over it like wolves on a kill, and the distraught councilwoman was harassing the mayor, demanding to know how something like this could happen to her precious baby in her very own city. The mayor hadn’t been slow in shifting the blame.
Harried detectives rushed back and forth, shouting at each other as they tried to piece together the few scant clues they had. The dank alley where the girl had been found hadn’t yielded much, and they were down to grasping at straws.
Brian stayed out of the fray as much as possible, but since every available body had been pulled into case, he wasn’t having much luck. The victim had been a freshman at the local college, so he was currently looking through the girl’s high school yearbook, trying to determine if any of her schoolmates looked like they might turn into a rapist within a year. The brains over at the FBI’s criminal behavior unit had recently put out a book of guidelines for profiling suspects, and the commissioner was a big proponent of using them. Rule number one for rapists: it was usually someone the victim knew.
“This is pointless.” Brian slammed the book closed. “She was probably just out clubbing and ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Doesn’t the captain know that we’re up to our ears in that other small, insignificant matter she’s so interested in?”
“As if she cares,” Angela replied. She was engaged in her own pointless task, going through the victim’s half-dozen social networking profiles. “The commissioner is leaning on all the brass to find somebody to hang for the girl’s murder.”
“So the captain’s just sharing her pain, huh? Great.” Brian looked up to see his partner staring at him with a raised eyebrow. “What?”
Angela remained silent as she continued to smile at him serenely.
“Angie, why are you staring at me?”
“Because once again, my dear boy, you’re positively glowing. Get too much sun? Or maybe just enough of something else?”
“Do you kiss your sons with that mouth?”
She laughed. “Don’t play the prude with me, mister. How do you think my boys got here? Storks?” Her expression grew thoughtful. “So, it’s really going well, then? I know how reluctant you’ve been to get involved in a real relationship.”
Brian glanced down at the cover of the yearbook. He thought of his own, which was hidden in the back of his closet, and the picture of a certain person that had never been included. “You were right, Angie, as usual. It’s time I put the past behind me and moved on with my life. Dennis wouldn’t have wanted me to live like I have been, closing myself off to anyone who might cause me to feel something.” He rubbed a palm over the embossed logo of the dead girl’s high school. “Life’s too damn short. If anyone should understand that, it’s me, right?”
Angela nodded at him. “What you’re doing now, what you’ve dedicated your life to, he couldn’t have asked any more than that. Every time you help bring a killer to justice, every time you help give a family some closure, you’re honoring Dennis’s memory. He’d be proud of you, sweetie.”
Brian felt something warm expand in his chest. Maybe, just maybe, he did still give a damn about this job.
“It’s been nearly two weeks now,” Angela said, interrupting his thoughts. “So, what’s he like?”
Brian frowned, wondering why his partner was whispering. “What’s what like?” he asked in kind.
Angela rolled her eyes. “What’s he like in bed?”
Brian stared at her in disbelief at her nosiness, his face flaming as he wondered whether to be offended or whether he should brag. But before his blush could grow any brighter, the door separating the Homicide department from the rest of the precinct burst open with a loud bang. Captain Preston swept in, her long legs rapidly eating up the distance between the door and her office. She looked royally pissed and ready to take it out on anyone who crossed her path. As no one was feeling suicidal, the hum of conversation in the room fell to nothing.
“Guess the meeting with the mayor didn’t go so well.”
Brian pretended that he hadn’t heard Angela’s low-voiced mumble, deciding that he lacked her courage. He turned his face toward the wall beside his desk as the captain passed by, unwilling to risk catching her gaze. Studying a brown spot where one of his predecessors had used the wall to hastily extinguish a cigarette, Brian waited until he heard the click of her high-heels recede to a safe distance. He was just releasing the breath he’d been holding when the captain’s voice rang out into the silence.
“No one had better even think about going home until this case has been solved. Consider yourselves on lockdown.”
“Shit,” Angela cursed as she reached for her cell phone. “Better tell Todd and the boys not to expect me home at a reasonable hour. Good thing Jonathan has recently discovered that not only girls like to cook. I swear, Todd and Sam would starve if it weren’t for Jon.”
Brian chuckled. “Because it’s not like you can boil water.” He nimbly dodged a hastily wadded-up piece of notepad paper as the man who had groused about the lack of photos passed by his desk. Sympathizing with his impatience, Brian stared after him absently as he left the department, presumably to go and harass Forensics in person. There really wasn’t much they could do until the ’scopes processed the evidence they’d collected at the scene. The mayor and councilwoman’s expectations aside, solving cases didn’t happen by magic and wishful thinking.
The thought naturally brought to mind his own pending investigation. Of course he felt awful for the poor girl who’d had her life cut short so tragically, but there was still a killer out there that he needed to find. His thoughts fully occupied by two very different mysteries, Brian jumped when his cell phone buzzed, the vibrations making it skip across the surface of his desk. He snatched it up before it could bounce off and hit the floor.
“Macon.”
“I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”
Everything going on around him seemed to fade away as the deep voice purred in his ear. Brian spread his legs unconsciously to accommodate the sudden bulge between his thighs. “Not really. What’s up?” Brian realized that this was only the second time he’d spoken with Alrick over the phone. That would have to change. The German was wasted as a journalist or whatever the hell he did. He was born to be a phone sex operator.
“Well, I would tell you, but I believe you have phone decency laws or some such thing, ja?”
Brian laughed as much at the recognition that he was flirting over the phone like some love-struck adolescent as at the suggestive joke. “Yeah, you’re right. So keep it clean. I’m at work.”
“Ah, then I hope you will be leaving from there before eight o’clock tonight.”
“Why, what’s going on at eight?”
“I have to critique a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the city college tonight. I’d love you to join me, if you’re interested.”
Brian hesitated, his heart speeding up at the question’s implication. “Sounds like you’re asking me on a date.” He laughed nervously, unsure whether he should just past it off as a gag.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Do you not wish to go?”
Crap, he’s serious. Brian bit his lip, ignoring the curious glance Angela shot him as she talked to her husband. Come on, he scolded himself. What’s the worst that could happen other than falling asleep during the middle of the show? “I didn’t say I didn’t want to go. But I’m not entirely sure I can get away tonight from work. There’s a lot going on.”
Brian wasn’t sure why he hadn’t told Alrick he was a cop. It wasn’t as if he was ashamed of what he did for a living, but something made him leery of revealing his occupation. Maybe he was just afraid that someone as cultured as the German would think his job was a little too blue collar, never mind that he had a college degree.
“Ah, I see. Well, I suppose our first date will have to wait until another time.”
Brian felt a flutter in his stomach as he heard the disappointment in the blond’s voice, hating that he’d put it there. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to make Alrick smile again. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure something out. Just tell me where I should meet you?” Brian imagined the grin that lit up the other man’s face.
