Perhaps it had been from the beginning.
No more secrets, no more lies.
She was telling him everything. Her eyes slit as she frowned up at the shifter. “When I’m done, if you want to lock me up, that’s fine.” She’d be out in less than ten minutes once she got a guard under her spell, but he could sure try tossing her butt in jail, if that made the big, bad cop feel better.
Gyth gave a slow nod.
She caught Todd’s hands. Because she needed to touch him again. Because holding him made talking about the past easier. “I-I had a sister once. A twin.”
A dark look passed between the cops.
“We were close. Always close. But so different.” The memory of Nina made her lips curve. “She was dark where I was light. Wild when I was careful. And she knew me. The hidden parts of me that even I didn’t fully understand.”
Not identical, but they’d been a perfect match. Nina with her long, straight dark hair and her golden skin. The smile that had always lit her face and the eyes that had shined, with and without glamour.
“It’s hard to kill my kind.” Her fingers tightened around his. “Damn hard because I’m a demon, and even harder because I’m a succubus.” Not the run-of-the-mill demon blood. So few knew that dark secret.
But he’d known.
“Nina started seeing a human. She fell for him.” A pause. “I thought he cared for her.”
Todd swore, obviously knowing where her story was headed. Hell, of course. Not to a sweet, happily-ever-after ending.
Demons didn’t usually get those.
The shifter remained silent, watching her carefully.
“I felt it when she died,” she whispered. “It was like pain stabbed straight through my soul, and in my mind, I heard her scream.” She could still hear it. Because in that last moment, her sister had cried out for her, helplessly, and Cara hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to save her.
She swallowed back the grief that wanted to choke her. Years had passed, but the wound was still fresh to her. “Her human killed her. The one she trusted, loved.”
Todd flinched.
And it was the shifter who asked, “How?”
It wasn’t a question she would normally answer, but these were far from normal circumstances. One of her kind was out there, killing, and the cops, well, they needed to know how to take the demon down.
“We heal fast,” she said, nodding her head toward Gyth. “Much like you do, I imagine.”
He said nothing.
“Gunshots, knife wounds—they’ll hurt us, but those weapons alone won’t kill a succubus or an incubus.” There was really only one moment when her kind became vulnerable. Her lips twisted as her gaze darted back to Todd. “I told you before, succubi believe that true power rests in the heart, not the mind.” Her power certainly did.
He gave a grim nod of his head.
She lifted her hand, touched his chest and felt the strong beat of his heart beneath her palm. “In that one moment when we take from others,” or give to them, but she wasn’t going to mention her ability to give power, not in front of that dangerous shifter, “we are at our most vulnerable.”
“Cara…”
“When I touch your heart,” her voice dropped, “That is the time, the only time, when I’m vulnerable.” When the power began to stir. That first moment, as the air thickened and magic fired her blood. Her hand never moved from his chest and her eyes held his. “In that instant, a human’s weapons—guns, knives—they can kill my kind. A bullet in the heart. A knife. In that one moment, you can destroy a succubus or an incubus, forever.”
As her voice trailed away, silence filled the room. Thick, heavy. Far too tense.
Her hand dropped from his chest and Cara stepped back.
“If Susan was working with someone…”
Cara stilled.
Todd’s gaze met Gyth’s. “A man—an incubus…if they were fighting and she was using her knife on him—” Todd broke off, shaking his head. “Shit. She had to be hitting close to his upper chest. You saw the spray—”
Gyth whistled softly. “You’re right. Damn it. She attacked him, got too close, and he couldn’t risk draining her. He had to kill her fast, to save his own life.”
“Uh, th-that seems likely,” Cara agreed quietly, her mind whirling. They thought an incubus had been working with the murdered woman?
She’d been the lure.
Her lips parted. Of course! A temptation to pull in the men. It made sense. They hadn’t been bound for kinky fun, they’d been tied so they wouldn’t fight when the incubus appeared.
No wonder she hadn’t felt the draw of another succubus in the city—there wasn’t another one around!
The killer was an incubus…
Oh, hell.
Cara took a deep breath. The men were still talking about the woman—Susan—and her death. “If she was working with an incubus, she might have known how to kill him, or maybe—maybe she just got lucky.”
Either way, she’d wound up dead and her killer had gotten away.
Todd and Gyth glanced toward her in surprise. Okay, so “lucky” hadn’t been the best word choice. She licked her lips then said, “Look, just remember what I’ve said, okay?. My kind—we aren’t vulnerable often, so if you have the chance to strike at the killer, well, you’d better take it.”
There. She’d done it. Given a human and a shifter the most prized secret of her kind. A secret they’d need in order to survive.
Todd’s fingers reached out and snagged her hand. Held tight. “What happened to the man who killed your sister, Cara?”
Ah, now this was the part she’d dreaded from the beginning. Todd had just started to look at her as a woman, and now he’d see the killer lurking inside of her pretty shell.
But perhaps it was time. She’d carried this secret for too long. Seven years.
“I went to him in his dreams.”
Todd’s expression didn’t alter. Those brown eyes of his were steady on her.
“I made him weak. Made him want.” It had been so easy. And she’d been so furious. He’d never met her, didn’t know that she and Nina had a bond beyond death.
Her sister had wanted vengeance.
Cara had given it to her.
“Did you know…” It was hard to say the words when he was so close, touching her. “That some can become addicted to the touch of a succubus?” Like a drug addict, needing a fix. If the magic was strong enough, the human was helpless.
She’d made Lance helpless. He’d come to her, eyes desperate, hands sweating. He’d tracked her to her home, screaming at her. Wanting her.
And she’d been ready for him. “I lured him to me.” So easy. “When he found me, I touched him.” She’d nearly drained the bastard dry. His skin had paled. His body had trembled. Tears rained from his eyes.
The rush of power from his body had been so strong. And so dark. Tainted. Twisted.
Lance had been evil. A monster beneath the flesh of a man.
He’d realized what was happening to him—too late.
His heart had lurched beneath her hand. So close to death. To the hell he deserved.
She’d held him there, suspended between the world of the living and the wisps of the eternal, and asked, “Why?”
He’d known what she meant. Knowledge had been in his eyes. He’d smiled at her. “B-be…cause the f-fucking…b-bitch wouldn’t…give…m-me…p-power…” Then, he’d managed to gather his strength—she still wasn’t sure how the asshole had done that—and he’d jerked a knife out of his back pocket. One of those stupid, small, Swiss Army knives that men always carried, and he’d plunged the blade right into her chest.
He’d missed her heart, but the attack had thrown her off guard and the bastard had gotten away.
For a time.
“Did you kill him?” It was Gyth who asked the question.
“Don’t—” Todd snapped, shaking his head. “You don’t have to say—”