Chapter Fourteen
Asher
Death was never easy to see. Especially a malicious death. The energy in the air from seeing the woman on the floor in a puddle of her own blood was messing with my feel of the room.
Echo talked to her superior, who was eyeing me with a curious scowl but turned his attention to her while speaking about the woman.
Amanda Johnson. Twenty-six years old, volunteered at her church in the early mornings, then worked during the day shift as a nurse at Seahill Hospital in the psychiatric wing. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she pulled a night shift as a waitress at a seafood joint by the bay. She was just a young girl trying to make it in the city. Seahill was not cheap, but she seemed like she was doing okay. Her one-bedroom apartment, but it was nicely decorated. Tidy, but something didn’t feel right, and it wasn’t the woman on the ground giving me that feeling.
Echo put on some gloves and examined the body, hopefully able to gather something more with her animal instincts.
“When did the death occur?” she asked a red-haired woman with thick-rimmed glasses, who was jotting down notes.
“This morning. I’m going to go with about nine thirty. She was supposed to have dinner with the pastor’s wife today, but she missed her morning volunteer time at the church and didn’t show up for work. After a few calls with no answer, she was worried, and came to check on her. Found her like this.” She looked down at the woman with sadness in her eyes, but there was a distance in her emotions that most didn’t have. In this line of work, she saw a lot of bodies, best to think of them as bodies instead of people, in cases like this, I guessed.
“Obvious cause of death—she bled out. The small cuts are deep and were strategically placed over arteries where they would do maximum damage.” She continued talking, and I looked down, feeling bad for the poor girl. I didn’t know her but the energy around her apartment was good and clean. She had positivity around her, so how did she attract such evil?
“Whoever did this is skilled with a scalpel, and I can’t be one hundred percent positive until we test it back at the lab, but I see no signs of struggle, so I’m guessing that she had been drugged or something to make her still so the killer could slice her up like this.” The redhead wrote down some more things on her little pad, and then walked off to look around.
“That’s Serenity, our forensics specialist,” Echo clarified for me. Makes sense.
“Catching anything that others may not see?” I leaned in and whispered my question against her ear. I felt a shiver come from her body at the contact of my breath but didn’t let it move my train of thought. Now was not the time.
“There’s a scent that seems unnatural to the rest of the apartment, but I can’t put my finger on it. Other than that, the killer is patient and organized. This doesn’t read like a crime of passion. It’s too methodical.” She looked around for anything that would give her a clue as to who the killer was, but there wasn’t anything abnormal to me.
“I know this sounds crazy, but even though it’s pretty neat in here, something feels chaotic.”
“I feel it too. Hard to pinpoint, though,” I admitted, and she looked at me with a face that said she was stumped.
We stayed for another thirty minutes, looking around for anything significant, talking to neighbors about Amanda. She was well-liked by them all. She kept quiet and didn’t bother anyone. Not a loner, but usually was just tired from working so much.
“We’ll go talk to her coworkers and church friends tomorrow. See if she had any enemies, or if something was going on that the neighbors didn’t know of.” Echo guided me toward the elevator; I guess we were done here.
She was tense the whole way back to the bar, her hands gripping hard then relaxing in a steady rhythm.
“You wanna talk about it?”
She looked at me, and then focused back on the road.
“I feel something inside me wants out. It’s hard to hold it in, sometimes. Animals are very instinctual, and apparently, I should have used a certain instinct while at the scene.” Her words made sense. It made me curious as to which animal thought it was needed.
She parked in front of the bar and hopped out of the car, standing by the front door impatiently, waiting for me to unlock it for her.
Once she was inside, she tossed her jacket to the floor seconds, then kicked off her shoes before her clothes shredded before my eyes.
“Holy shit.”
Even though I knew what her powers were firsthand, it was still a shock to see a big-ass lizard in the spot where a beautiful woman had just been standing.
The giant Komodo dragon flicked its tongue out and walked around, tasting the air around it. I knew Echo was the lizard, but I stood very still nonetheless, watching her do her thing.
It was maybe three minutes after she changed that the lizard’s body started to lengthen and ripple, turning back into a human woman. Instantly I grabbed her discarded leather jacket and placed it over her bare shoulders.
“Thanks. Sorry to do this again, but could I borrow some clothes?” She sounded slightly out of breath.
“You don’t need to change into an animal to be naked around me. No need to be so dramatic,” I teased, and it worked to ease the tension in her posture.
“I’ve got some new sweatpants calling your name.” I helped her stand. I walked up the stairs first, so I wouldn’t be staring at her bare ass in a leather jacket the whole way to my apartment. My control over the need to touch her could only take so much. Just the thought of seeing her in nothing but the leather was hurting my brain and other anatomical bits.
She knew her way around and went straight into my bedroom.
And me, being the dumbass I was at the moment, followed her in.
She shucked off her jacket, not caring that I was there, taking in every inch of her beautiful tan skin, committing it to memory.
She was mine. Her eyes, her hair, her skin, her animal spirit—it was all meant for me, and I was hers. I felt it deep in my soul. She was my match in every way.