Whatever Clan this man belonged to would want answers. I was just afraid of who they would hurt to get them.
If Liam and his enforcers were the ones conducting the interview, I wouldn’t be too concerned. It was Dominick’s presence, and his right to sit in on any interrogations, that I was worried about. If he got involved, there was no telling who would get hurt in the end.
“There’s something you need to see inside,” Dahlia informed me. “That human is strange. I don’t trust him.”
Dahlia pushed open the door and froze.
“What’s wrong?”
The smell hit me a second later. The sharp tang of blood. This time without the addition of smoke and ash. The scent of something familiar was woven throughout. Like old, fertile earth that had been buried for eons.
Under it, the odor of death. And oddly, life.
A whine came from Caroline. She hunched over, cowering from whatever waited in the bar.
There was a sharp inhale of denial from Connor as he shook his head. His eyes blazed with power as he snarled.
“You dare!” Dahlia’s voice carried the toll of a bell, the sound a low reverberation that warned intruders to stay away. Dahlia’s mask slipped, leaving a being of incomparable beauty and terror standing in her place. A goddess of death and destruction who also happened to be my friend.
It was instinct to slip into my other sight.
Smoke snaked around Dahlia’s body, a haze that blurred her figure from eyesight. Whispers invaded my ears. The rustle of feathers against stone. They grew louder, nearly shouting.
My ears popped. Liquid oozed down my neck.
“Enough!” Dahlia snapped. “Aileen, if you are not ready to see, then you should not look.”
Her voice was the push I needed to escape the whispers. I dismissed my other sight, feeling shaky and a little scared. If she hadn’t intervened, things could have gone very badly for me.
When my vision returned, I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by smoke. I held carefully still, waiting until Dahlia dismissed the ribbons.
“Aileen,” Caroline whispered.
Her hesitation and fear made me hold my questions about what had just happened with Dahlia. Something much worse than a murdered human waited in the bar. Whatever was in there terrified Caroline’s wolf.
“Wait here and watch Jenna. If things sound like they’re going south, get Jenna and yourself out of here,” I ordered.
Some of Caroline’s uncertainty faded. “I will.”
This was why we were friends. Terrified as she was, she’d still put her life on the line to see Jenna safe.
Forget someone who’d bury a body with you. I’d take a friend who’d protect your nearest and dearest any day.
I left Connor to hand Jenna over to Caroline and stepped into a scene out of a nightmare. If I’d thought the charcoal briquette vampire was bad, this was worse.
The red headed man was skewered in the abdomen to the ceiling with a broken chair leg. The other pieces of the chair had been used to pin his hands and legs in a spreadeagled position. The skeletal creature from last night clung to the ceiling next to him, his face buried in the man’s neck.
Any doubt I had that my stalker was a vampire vanished with the squelching sounds he made as he fed.
Terror showed in the human’s face as his lips moved. The groaning moan close to a death rattle as his pleading gaze locked on us.
Death crouched over him—and he knew it.
Connor entered the bar, going still at the scene in front of him.
Sensing our presence, the vampire lifted his face. He flashed fangs the length of my forefinger, longer than I’d ever seen, at us. Blood coated his chin and mouth. Drips of it fell to the floor with loud splats.
Now that he’d moved, I could see the human’s neck. The raw edges of the wound looked like they had been savaged by a wild animal.
