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Her smile grew. “For now. In the meantime, tell me what Janie’s like. What does she like to do?”
He rambled on about his niece as he ate his breakfast. Gwen didn’t say anything, just leaned back in her chair and watched him. He had an uneasy feeling she was still trying to figure him out.
And that she might just succeed where many had failed.
“You must see this kid pretty often to know her that well,” Gwen commented eventually. “Odd for a man who’s a professed kid hater.”
He finished his breakfast and leaned back in his chair with his coffee. He kept his face carefully blank, even though the old woman’s line of questioning was beginning to annoy the hell out of him. “She’s my brother’s kid. That’s different.”
“Can’t see how.”
He drank some coffee, then said, “I was talking to my partner earlier. It appears these kids are being kept alive for up to five or six days before they’re killed. They’d been drugged, but other than that, there didn’t appear to be any other form of abuse.”
Gwen frowned. “Were they dehydrated as well?”
“Mark made no mention of it.” And if it was in the autopsy report, he would have.
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
“Because starvation is often used as a form of cleansing when preparing for many forms of rituals. That they aren’t being starved suggests she’s using them for something else.”
He stared at her for several seconds, not really sure he wanted to hear anything more. “As in magical-type rituals?”
She nodded absently. “The question is, what else would she be using them for?”
“And if she does need them, why allow a werewolf to tear apart one kid, and a vampire to drain the other, after keeping them alive for five days?”
“Maybe she needs specific emotions for whatever it is she’s actually doing.” Gwen rose hastily. “I think I’d better go talk to Seline. If you want to meet Kat, she’ll be at the bakery down the road in another hour.”
She hobbled into the other room, and a few seconds later he heard her dialing the phone. He finished his coffee, then glanced at his watch and decided to go for a walk before he met Kat.
AT THE FOURTH FARM, KAT HIT PAY DIRT. SHE CIRCLED lower, trying to ignore the overwhelming sense of death as she looked for any signs of life. Or unlife.
An old Ford sat in the circular drive, but the cobwebs hanging between the steering wheel and the sun visor suggested it hadn’t been driven for at least a week.
The old farmhouse itself looked abandoned. Tin rattled on the ancient roof, shutters banged, and the strengthening wind whistled through a broken window on the back porch. Nothing moved, not even a mouse. The smell was coming from the barn, so she dipped lower and headed that way.
The haunting cry of the wind was sharper here, thanks to the decayed state of the barn. She touched down on a tree and moseyed out along the limb that reached toward the window. The barn was filled with dusky shadows, making it hard to see anything. She couldn’t see any movement, but that didn’t mean the zombies weren’t there. The reeking stench indicated something dead was near, even if she couldn’t see it.
She hopped skyward again and flew to the roof. It was in worse condition than the house, and there were plenty of gaps where a raven could squeeze through. She chose the largest of them and landed on a rafter.
The stench almost knocked her off the perch. It was ten times worse inside the barn than outside. She walked along the rafter, trying to see past the shadows gathering in the corners. There were no man-shaped lumps to indicate life. No rattle to indicate death drawing breath. Nothing but that awful smell.
She spread her wings and drifted through the barn. It was filled with all sorts of machinery, and might have once housed horses, but not in a very long time from what she could see. The smell was coming from the end stall. She set down on another rafter and peered into the darkness. And discovered death, but not the form she’d expected.
He was a dry old stick of a man who looked to have been in his mid-sixties. The smile frozen on what was left of his face, and the fact that his overalls and boxers hung over the old stall door, suggested he’d been having sex with someone when he died. As did the lingering remnants of ecstasy she could feel in the air.
And though he must have been dead for at least
a week, there was no rat or maggot activity to be seen on his body. Unusual, especially given the fact that he lay in a barn.
But the cause of death was easy to see—like the kids, his soul had been sucked free. Yet given that he was in the midst of orgasm at the time, he probably didn’t even feel death hit him.
She headed out through the roof and back to the house. The old man obviously hadn’t been too proud, because the place looked abandoned from the outside. And just as obviously, he didn’t go into town much, which would explain the cobwebs in his car and the fact that he could lie there dead for a week without anyone coming up to check on him. Small towns were usually far more aware of things like that than city folk.
But why had the soul-sucker killed him? Had she simply wanted to feed, or was there something more sinister behind her actions? Like using his house—a place obviously few people visited—as a base?
