The Darkest Kiss

"Mine, neither."



"Did he have small scratches on the side of his neck, like James did?"



I nodded and stepped over another brackish-looking puddle. "Same place, same size."



"Then that's our constant. For whatever reasons, she's marking her victims."



"But is she doing it before, or after? You know, for all the blood in this murder, there didn't seem to be any blood related to those scratches. Yet they were open, un-healed wounds."



"Maybe it's some weird way of testing them before she kills them." He shrugged. "We won't know for sure until we catch the bitch."



"Cats are queens. Only dogs are bitches."



He snorted softly. "She takes female humanoid form, so therefore the bitch tag can apply. Trust me, I live with a household of them."



I grinned. "And here was me having the image of you all being one big happy family."



"Oh, we are. But where a group of females gather, bitching can be found. I'm sure it's part of female DNA, just like the ability to sniff out chocolate wherever it may be hidden."



"You could be right." We reached the end of the shops and moved into the lane behind them. There were several cars crammed into the small space, leaving barely enough room between them and the brickwork to get through. None of the shops had rear entrances, which I would have thought would be against fire regulations. Even heritage-listed shops - which I didn't think these were - had to have a fire exit. Maybe the owner was paying someone under the table to get away with not installing them.



I stopped at the shoe shop window and looked up. The sun hadn't yet hit this wall, and the bricks were still damp from the early-morning dew. Small paw marks were visible, sliding through the wetness partway down the wall before disappearing.



"She definitely came this way," Kade commented, then glanced at me. "You think you can track her?"



"We'll soon see." I stripped off my jacket and sweater, handing them to him before calling to the magic deep in my soul.



Energy swept around me, through me, changing me into the form that had found me at puberty. The form that was a part of me in ways the seagull shape - no matter how comfortable I ended up being with it - never would be.



To my wolf nose, the world came alive with a myriad of scents and sounds. I trotted forward, loving the feel of cold dampness under my paws and the play of sunlight across my fur. The texture of the air was thick and rich, and after sorting through all the different and delicious aromas, I found the one I wanted.



Cat.



But it was mixed with the scents of orange, jasmine, and humanity. She'd fled in human form, not cat. Which was odd, because her feline form would have been less noticeable.



But it made her trail easier to follow.



Nose to the ground and tail held high, I followed, padding between the cars and out into the main lane. With Kade's shadow looming over me and his thick, rich scent teasing my senses, I ran back down the lane, leaping the puddle before moving out onto the main street.



The scent swirled, as if my quarry had waited and watched proceedings for a while before moving on. I ran down the street, following the trail over a road, past several more houses, then left into another street. The scent finally led into one of the houses.



I stopped at the gate and waited for Kade to catch up. The house was a small, brick affair that probably cost a fortune despite the fact it didn't look wide enough to hold anything more than a small bedroom and a hallway. The front yard was almost nonexistent, but nicely kept, filled with sweet-smelling roses and abundant lavender bushes.



I looked around as Kade approached, then hit the gate with my paw. He opened it without comment, and together we headed up the steps to the front door. The scent of cat became stronger, but mingled with it was the metallic tang of blood and new death.



Not again, I thought, and shifted back to human form. Without saying anything, I motioned Kade around to the side of the house, then held up two fingers. He nodded and leapt the side fence, disappearing quickly and quietly. I glanced at my watch, waited the two minutes, then slammed a shoulder against the front door. It might have had locks, but they didn't stand a chance against a determined werewolf. The door crashed back against the wall, denting plaster and sending dust flying.



"Directorate," I yelled, "come out with your hands up."



Chapter 5



No one bothered coming out, but the scramble of tiny claws against polished floors suggested our quarry had most definitely heard me. I ran down the hallway, following the sound of fleeing steps, trying to ignore the growing scent of death to concentrate on the smell of cat.



Hoping all the while she ran straight out the back door and into Kade's waiting arms.



The hallway ran the length of the long house, and finished in an open-plan kitchen-living area. Windows lined the rear wall, letting the sunlight stream in and lending the white room a warmth it wouldn't have had otherwise. I couldn't see Kade in the garden beyond those windows, but I knew he'd be near, waiting and ready.



I scanned the room, looking for the cat, and saw the flick of a black tail just before it disappeared through another doorway. I ran after it, heard a creaking noise and a soft thump, and got there in time to see the small window in the laundry room closing. A second later I barreled into the washing machine, leaving a huge dent in the pristine metal front. It didn't do my knees a whole lot of good, either.



I cursed, but scrambled - well, limped - to the back door and flung it open.



Kade was little more than a warm red and black blur as he leapt the fence into the neighbor's yard. I shifted shape again and followed, my belly barely clearing the top of the wooden palings.



Kade was nowhere in sight. I sniffed the air, finding both his scent and the cat's, and ran after them - across an overgrown back lawn and over another fence. Kade was standing in the middle of the next yard, his hands on his hips and his expression one of frustration.



A second later I understood why. The scent of cat had multiplied and the scent we were chasing wasn't strong enough to stand out amongst the other half-dozen cat scents now staining the air and the ground. I swore internally and nosed around, hoping against hope to catch the trail again. Instead, I found a white cat and a tabby, neither of whom were pleased to see me - a fact demonstrated by the way they hunkered down and hissed their little hearts out. I kept out of the way of their sharp claws and continued on, searching through the small garden bed and behind the old shed, but couldn't find anything.



I shifted back to human form. "Fuck, we've lost her."



"So it appears." Kade ran a hand through his sweaty dark hair. "I didn't even see her well enough to stop her kinetically."



I frowned. "She must have been moving fast if you couldn't freeze her. You can generally freeze vamps when they're blurring, can't you?"



"Yeah, but the trail of their emotions usually gives them away. I was getting nothing from her." He glanced at me. "Did you catch a glimpse of her?"



"Yeah. Her animal form is black, but she can obviously shift the size of her cat, because what we were chasing is not what killed that man in the shop window. Cole reckons her hands were at least tiger-size."



Kade frowned. "I didn't think it was possible for shifters or weres to alter the size of their beast, let alone partially shift."



"Well, up until recently, I didn't think there was a wolf pack who could alter their human form, either, so who knows what else is out there?" I shrugged and adjusted my bra. Luckily, I'd gone for one that was Lycra rather than lace this morning, and as a result it had come through the shapeshifts in wearable condition. Which meant I'd definitely have to buy more for work situations. Running around with a bra on was infinitely better than running around without. "We better get back and check what - or who - is dead in that house."



"Our shifter is obviously killing these women to assume their identities, which means she probably looks a lot like them to begin with."



"Not necessarily. Maybe she can alter her human shape as well as her animal. After all, her cat is black, and yet the witnesses said she was blonde." I shrugged and clambered back over the fence. "Or maybe she's not even a shifter to begin with. Maybe she's something else entirely."



"But what else is there that can shift?"



"Who knows?" But if the spirit of an ancient god of death could be called into this time to create havoc once again, there was no saying what else was out there.



Or what else could be called into being.



A chill ran across my skin and I rubbed my arms. Kade must have caught the movement, because he retrieved my sweater and tossed it to me. I pulled it on gratefully, then caught my coat. Wearing it didn't seem to ease the chill, though.



Our footsteps echoed through the silent house as we made our way back up the corridor. The death scent was coming from the first room, and my steps slowed as we approached. I'd seen a lot of bloodshed and killing over the last year - had even done my fair share of it - but it never seemed to get any easier to confront.



I hoped it never did.



I hoped the part of me that mourned the wanton destruction of innocent lives haunted my days - and nights - for as long as I remained in this job. Because it meant that I wasn't becoming my brother, wasn't becoming the unthinking killing machine that he could sometimes be, and that Jack wanted me to be.



We stepped into the room. A large bed dominated the small space. Like the rest of the house, everything was white - only here, the brightness was alleviated by dark red patches that adorned the walls, the bedspread, and the carpet near the bed.



Like the woman I'd found yesterday, this woman was lying half-undressed, slumped across the bed. Her lacy bra dangled from the stump of her shoulder, and her torso was crisscrossed with bloody gashes. Gashes made with claws bigger than your average black house cat.



"Christ," Kade said. "The press are going to love this. First James, then his lover, and now another member of Toorak's finest."



"The press won't get anywhere near the story if Jack has anything to do with it. He'll keep them focused on James."



"Press have a nose for these things."



"And Jack's had plenty of experience restraining them."



He grunted, but whether that was agreement or not was anyone's guess.



"She hasn't been dead all that long." He stopped near the body and looked down at her. "Why would the cat come back to this house when she'd already used the woman's face and knew she'd been seen?"



I shrugged. "Given that we're probably not dealing with a rational mind here, maybe she simply didn't think we'd trace her so easily."



I stopped beside him. Unlike her body, the woman's face was untouched, but the terror of her ordeal seemed frozen on her features. My gaze fell to her mouth, and I frowned.



"Is that lipstick?" I leaned closer to have a look. The odor of death and new decay overrode the metallic scent of blood, but the scent of cat and that vague, orange and jasmine aroma was present as well.



"Where?" Kade said.



I pointed a finger to the smear of red across the woman's top lip. "It looks like someone wearing lipstick has been kissing her. The shoe guy had the same color on his lips."



"So she kissed this woman before she killed her, then stole her identity and killed the shoe guy. Maybe we are dealing with a soul-sucker of some kind." He studied her mouth for a second longer, then stepped back and looked around. "There's an awful lot of fear lingering in this room. Fear and anger."



"Anger?" I raised an eyebrow. "Same source, or different?"



"The anger is older. Deeper." He frowned. "When I sensed it in James's office, it felt ancient and powerful. Now it feels even more so."



I'm glad he was feeling something, because I wasn't. And really, that was beginning to bug me. Four murders, and not one soul left hanging about afterward? Granted, the woman I'd found yesterday had been dead for so long her soul was unlikely to be still here, but with the other three, I should have sensed something. Hell, I might have wished more than once to go to a murder scene and not sense the dead, but the reality of its happening was prickling my radar. Something was very off-kilter.



And, at least with these cat killings, it really did suggest that we were dealing with some sort of soul-sucker.



Goose bumps fled across my skin. I resisted the urge to rub my arms and said, "So our murderer is somehow gaining power every time she kills?"



"That would be my guess, yes." His gaze met mine. "Which means we have to catch her soon, before she grows too powerful."



"If we can bring down a god of death, we can bring down this thing. Whatever she is." But I wished I sounded a little more confident. "What I don't get is why she's marking her victims first. I mean, why bother with three tiny slashes if she's going to cut them up so badly or rip off an arm? And why would she do that to this woman and the shoe guy, and not to James and the first female victim?"



"Maybe it was some sort of test that developed into something more violent." His gaze raked the woman's body, and distaste flicked through his warm eyes. "And she didn't only claw here. She's nibbled."



My stomach did an odd sort of flip-flop. "What?"



"Here." He pointed to a small area near the woman's left breast. The skin had been torn open, and globules of fat and flesh were evident. "Those aren't claw marks around the wound. That's teeth."



"Why on earth would she be eating the flesh now when she didn't before?"



"What better way to induce fear than to actually eat bits of your victim?" He shrugged. "She seems to be getting more violent with each murder, so perhaps this is all part of the escalation."