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The memories simply didn’t exist.
It was as if someone had taken a knife and sliced them away.
I released my fingers from either side of his head and pushed out of the protection circle. I landed on my butt, and for several seconds, didn’t move. I simply sucked in air and tried to make sense of what I’d felt at the very end.
While telepaths certainly could erase or rearrange memories, I knew from Belle it wasn’t possible to create such an utterly clean break. There were always tells—memory fragments and odd bits of fuzziness that gave the game away.
But this man’s memories hadn’t been erased—they simply didn’t exist.
“Which suggests,” Belle said, “he was unconscious when his soul was ripped from him.”
“But if that were the case, there shouldn’t be so much horror and pain in the air. An unconscious mind isn’t capable of feeling, and surely wouldn’t emote as strongly as this man has.”
“Under normal circumstances, that’s probably true, but this situation isn’t normal. I’m betting his soul would have fought like hell even if his flesh couldn’t.”
“Who fought like hell?” Ciara said, as she stepped into the rotunda. “It certainly wasn’t this wolf, from the look of him.”
Like most wolves, she was tall and rangy in build. Her short blonde hair gleamed silver against the night’s shadows, and her eyes were—like Aiden’s—a deep blue rather than the usual amber of a werewolf. But then, the O’Connor pack were also gray wolves, a color that tended to be somewhat rarer amongst Australian packs. Most were brown, red, or black; the O’Connors ran the full gamut from silvery white to a blond so dark it was almost a dirty brown.
“Looks can be deceiving,” I replied, even as Belle hastily deactivated the protection circle.
Ciara stopped near the stranger’s feet and frowned down at his body. “What were you doing to him?”
“I was trying to read his memories before death claimed them.”
“You can do that?” She glanced at me, her tone incredulous. “Seriously?”
“Sometimes, if the death is fresh enough.” I pushed upright. The rotunda briefly spun, and an ache started in the back of my head, one fierce enough to make my left eye water. A result of reaching too far, I knew. At least my stomach remained steady; I suspected neither Ciara nor Aiden would be happy if I puked all over the body. “We recorded the whole thing, so we can post you the file if you want.”
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“Aiden will want it. I’ll rely on more old-fashioned methods to find out what killed him.”
“Good luck with that,” Belle murmured.
Ciara raised her eyebrows. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning the reason this man died is because his soul was stolen from him, and I’m doubting science has yet devised a means of uncovering an event like that.”
“How on earth is something like that even possible?”
“Simple—we’re dealing with something that’s technically not of this earth.”
“Meaning what?” she snapped. “At this hour of the night, I’m really not in the mood for games.”
I couldn’t help the smile that touched my lips. In that brief moment, she sounded scarily like her brother.
“It means this reservation seems to have gained a soul eater.”
Her gaze went from me to Belle and back again. “You’re serious.”
“Totally.” Belle’s voice was flat. “If you thought a vampire wanting revenge was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“Fuck.” Ciara’s gaze swept the darkness beyond the rotunda. “Is it still nearby?”
“If it was, we sure as hell wouldn’t be standing here yakking to you.”
“Are you sure?”
