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I startled at the voice, spinning around and coming chest to chest with Emmett. He dwarfed me in height, and when I glanced up at his face, his square jawline was covered in a sexy mess of days’ old stubble. His dark brown hair was messy atop his head, soft strands blowing in the breeze. This close, every breath I took was a lungful of his scent, homey and clean and warm. Clothes fresh out of the dryer. I avoided looking down at his thighs, because my cock would be hard as a rock if I did. They were thick as tree trunks, so much pure power for when he fucked me into the mattress.
Fuck, I was hard anyway.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, resisting the urge to place my palms on his large chest. Or, gods forbid, hug him. I tried to will my erection down, hoping he didn’t notice the faint bulge in my pants.
“Body washed up far enough from the club that I’m not at risk of dying,” he said, fingers grazing my lower arm. “For once, I’m not completely useless on this case.”
“You’re useful,” Shan said, picking his way across the rocks to view the body from a different angle. “Dealing with your atrocious research is the comic relief.”
Emmett gave him the finger, peeking over my shoulder at the body. I hurried to sidestep out of the way. Ultimately, I was the useless one. Especially here.
The sun beat down on us from overhead, making beads of sweat form on my skin. Summer wasn’t my favourite season. I may have grown up in the south, but there was a reason I’d left. The area wasn’t fitting for a snow fae. Emmett was unbothered, used to being outside in the heat of summer. He crouched beside where the body floated, inhaling deeply. My nose scrunched up in sympathy for what he must be scenting. I’d avoided deep breaths.
“Being in the salt water did a number on the scents here,” Emmett said. “Murderer knows what they’re doing. I can barely get anything. There’s a hint of something that I caught on the last couple of bodies, though. Can’t quite place what it is.”
“Any scent profile is going to help once you get back into the field,” Shan said. He gestured to the coroner. “You can take him out now. Take some samples of the water and swab the rocks he’s been bumping up against, just in case.”
She went off to get her team and tools, suited up to wade into the shallow water. We trekked back up to the road to wait for the extraction to be done. We’d take a better look at the body then. I sat down on a fallen log and Em sat a bit too close to me, considering the work environment, but I would never complain. Shan stayed standing.
Whenever we came to a scene to look at a body, my thoughts took a dark turn. Back to a night a hundred years in the past, right after I’d moved out of my parent’s house, striking out on my own. My first kill.
Killing gave me a burst of energy, same as what I got during sex, but it was fleeting. Instead of sating me, energy coming from murder wore off within hours, leaving me empty. Starving. Willing to kill for another hit. I’d researched when it first happened, my first kill being spur of the moment in a life or death situation. This wasn’t an incubus trait, or anything mentioned in any books. The bloodlust was exclusive to me, likely a result of my unique genealogy. I’d been born defective. Lucky me.
“Why do you think they do it?” I asked, the question bursting out unbidden. “Do you think there’s a purpose behind the killing, or do they do it for the thrill? Maybe they steal energy.”
Shan cocked an eyebrow at me, blocking the sun from shining where I sat. “I’ve debated that question a hundred times, but we don’t have enough information yet to have a solid answer. What do you mean by ‘steal energy’?”
My cheeks went pink, and I wiped the sweat off my forehead, trying to blame the reaction on the sun. I’d never told Shan about my bloodlust. Or Emmett. Or anyone. It was a secret I held close to my chest. No one needed to know I was even more of a freak.
“You know, like, steal it,” I said. “Death energy.”
“As far as I’m aware, the only ones who feed on death energy are creatures that reside in the depths of Zemterra. If our case involved one of them, we would have been on the case a hell of a lot sooner. Our killer may feed off blood, though, or drain energy from their victims like a succubus can if not careful.”
Emmett’s knee pushed over to brush against mine, and I shot him a grateful glance. He was looking at me curiously, not with confusion over my line of questioning like Shan was. While Shan was smart, he wasn’t attuned to emotions like Em and I were. The differences were part of why our partnership worked so well, though it led to tension at times.
“We’ve never heard of anyone feeding on death energy, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” Em countered. “With a case like this, we shouldn’t rule anything out. No one’s been able to find of anything on this killer and that might be because of confirmation bias.”
“You make a valid point,” Shan said. “Hopefully, our newest body gives us something. Is tech working on an ID?”
“They’re on top of it, as usual. Might need more from the body before they find him in the system, though. He’s fae, but no one from the Earth Immigration Department is going to recognize him, considering his current lack of a head,” Emmett said.
I would bet he’d been deported and weaseled his way back through to Earth, or never gone through immigration in the first place. Plenty of people did, and the killer targeted them. We didn’t know whether it was because of vigilante tendencies, ease of access to prey, or some other reason. Secretly, a part of me didn’t want us to ever complete our task. The killer was doing good work. Improving the realm. Since everyone who’d been connected to the case was the type of person who’d sneer at my very existence, sometimes I pretended they were protecting people like me.
Silly. The thought gave me warm and comforting feelings in my chest, though, and always brought a smile to my face.
“We’ve got him out of the water. Come take a look,” the coroner called out from down by the water.
Practically sliding down the rocky embankment to the flat area where they’d laid the body, I avoided clinging to either of my teammates. Barely. If possible, the man looked paler removed from the water. There were wounds on his sides that had been hidden underneath the waves, but most didn’t look intentional. A side effect from being in the water for weeks. However, the one on his arm stood out.
The coroner lifted the arm and turned it over, revealing two tiny marks, close together. “Could be vampire teeth,” I said. “Not that I know what I’m talking about, but the body doesn’t look like it has much blood left.”
“There isn’t much blood left,” the coroner agreed. “But I’m not convinced it’s the work of a vampire. The teeth marks are too close together, indicating a smaller mouth. We’ve seen this before on bodies connected to this killer, but they were all found on land, so we assumed they resulted from animal predation. That’s less likely in a water disposal site. Also, none of the other bodies had this level of blood drainage.”
“What can you infer from those facts?” Shan asked when the coroner trailed off, dropping the man’s arm back onto the sheet.
She shrugged. “Baby vampire? An animal under the control of someone? Shifter, possibly, but a small one.”
Shan grit his teeth at the unhelpfulness of her list. Too generic. Though maybe Emmett had a point about our confirmation bias. The killer might be weaker than we thought. A young vampire with out of control bloodlust was uncommon, but could wreak havoc. Then again, they wouldn’t have the faculties to dispose of the bodies and cover their tracks if they were that far gone. Some fae controlled animals, which didn’t explain the lack of blood but accounted for the small teeth marks.
