Here he saw the door breaking wide, a man and woman fighting for survival. The woman begging while sinister shadows loomed over her. The man writhing and screaming in agony. Death. The images were smudged in his mind, without enough clarity to make out the perpetrators. Unusual, because he normal y had visions clear enough to sear into his retinas.
Then a familiar face streaked through his mind. A woman with midnight hair and hazel eyes. She was nude, arched for him. The fire of his own desire made his skin feel as though it were too tight. Sweat beaded on his face as the woman whispered his name and reached for him. Irresistible. He wanted her.
Always he wanted her. Craved her. His cock hardened to the point of pain, and a shudder racked his body.
He groaned and pushed the image away. Not connected to this case. He’d seen her in his mind more times than he cared to admit, but she was a memory, not a vision. Chloe.
He became aware of reality by degrees, the smel of Selina’s perfume, the chil wind blowing in from the window. A storm was coming, despite the bril iant sky. His hand lifted as though to touch the woman in his mind. He snorted and shook the visions away, dragging himself back to the task at hand, shoving away the gut-grinding punch of lust before he embarrassed himself. He didn’t have time for a memory. He didn’t even know her last name. Hadn’t let himself look her up after she’d run out on their night together.
“You al right?” Selina’s hand clamped over his shoulder, stronger than anyone would guess by looking at her. He sensed she used magic to tighten her grip.
He swiped a hand down his face. “Yeah. I can’t get a fix on our perps.”
“Anything? Male or female?”
“Nothing solid. Here’s how it went down. Dawes answers the door, so someone had to knock. Maybe someone she knows, maybe not, but she opens the door for them. The perps force their way in, and things get ugly. They took their time with Raines—worked him over for hours, threatened his woman to get his cooperation. Raines eventual y snaps, there’s a struggle, Raines loses and takes a header out the window for some barbeque time on the way down to the street. That left the woman—”
“Medical examiner says it doesn’t look like sexual assault.” Selina dropped her hand from his shoulder.
“Not that I saw either,” he agreed. His gut tightened before he finished tel ing his partner what he’d seen.
“She was on her knees, begging, when she died.”
“They wanted something from Raines, but they already knew it wasn’t here.” Her conclusion was obvious even without Merek’s vision of Raines being questioned and tortured. The place was pristine. The only messes were the dead woman and a few pieces of furniture overturned in the struggle. There were none of the usual signs that the apartment had been tossed.
“Or maybe they didn’t want a physical object. Maybe information.” That felt right somehow, fit with his vision. His gaze swept the room again. “Stil , do we know if anything was taken?”
“A patrolman is bringing the parents in for questioning. They might be able to identify anything obvious that’s missing.” Selina slid her hands into her pockets.
He sighed and scrubbed the back of his neck. His nerves jangled from too much caffeine and too little sleep, but that was standard operating procedure for his line of work. “Vampires kil ed in a Conclave-owned building. I’m guessing a prominent vamp family. This is going to be fun.”
“Is that a premonition?” A rare grin tugged at her mouth.
“Cal it a hunch.” He mimicked her pose, shoved his hands in his pockets, and watched the crime scene analysts doing their job. Yeah, this was going to be a bitch of a case. He didn’t even need the visions jockeying in the back of his mind to tel him that simple truth.
“Kingston, I don’t know how you deal with that.” She shook her head, her look half pitying and half respectful.
“The same way we al deal with our premonitions.” Or, at least witches / warlocks, elves, and Fae.
Vampires and werewolves had other magical problems to contend with.
“Not al of us have it as bad as you.”
A smile curved his lips, but it held no amusement. His gift was often more of a curse, but he’d found a way to make it useful. “Aren’t I the lucky one?”
“Yeah. Lucky.” She snorted and led the way out of the apartment. “Let’s go talk to the parents.”
Two uniformed officers escorted Chloe into the police department downtown, and though it bustled with people and energy, it felt cold to her. Sterile and ugly.
She tried not to tremble in reaction as the officers flanking her led her to a set of double doors that required pass cards to get through. They stepped into a short, wide hal way. One side held a high counter topped by metal bars. A plump, middle-aged woman sat behind the cage and gave them a pleasant smile.
She motioned them toward another set of doors at the opposite end of the hal .
Chloe felt a short burst of magic flick from the woman’s fingers as she waved them on. It flowed over her, made the hair on her arms stand on end. A test for magic? Only Magickals would be able to access this area of the police department. The woman gave her a polite nod. “Welcome to the West Precinct’s Magickal Task Force Headquarters.”
The doors in front of Chloe parted on their own, spil ing them out into a frenetic office area. Uniformed police officers mingled with the occasional obvious werewolf or vampire. Some of the people in the room had a hard, scary edge to them. Criminals. Magic-wielding criminals. The flash of spel s from a doorway and an angry shout sent a shiver down her spine.
She blinked and tried not to stare too closely at anyone. What was she doing here? An hour ago she’d been hip-deep in work, utterly absorbed in experimenting with their current round of formulas that she felt to her bones were right. They just needed to perfect their project, run more tests, and it would be ready. They were so close.
They. But there was one less to count among the they in their research team, wasn’t there?
Damien was dead. Murdered, the officers had said. Damien. Murdered. Chloe stil hadn’t wrapped her mind around it. There was no love lost between them, for obvious reasons, but she hadn’t wanted the man dead. The whole thing was surreal, and her thoughts skipped around in mad little circles. Who would want to kil a scientist? Chloe had an ugly suspicion she was at the MTF Headquarters because they wanted to ask her that very question. And they thought the answer might be her.
Then everything inside her froze, reality once again taking a nasty turn.
Gray eyes met hers from across the room. Magnetic, they pul ed at her. Her dream from that morning, from so many mornings before that, flashed through her mind. It was him. Merek.
She didn’t even have time to hope that he wouldn’t recognize her, because the same involuntary heat that coursed through her body flickered in his gaze.
“Shit,” she breathed.
The officer on her left stirred to alertness. “Something wrong, Dr. Standish?”
She swal owed a whimper when Merek started toward them, his long, muscular legs eating up the distance. Both the officers escorting her snapped to immediate attention. “Detective Kingston, sir.”