A soft whistle, barely audible, carried down the street on the chill wind. The tune was of a piece with the neighborhood—old and timeworn.
Many of the residents would have smiled in recollection to hear “Lili Marlene” again.
The tension left the girl as she swung around the lamp-post by one hand to face the direction of the whistle. She waved, and a welcoming smile warmed her eyes.
The whistler stepped into the edge of the circle of light. He, too, was dusky of eye and hair—and heartbreakingly handsome. He wore only dark jeans and a black turtleneck, no coat at all—but like the young woman, he didn’t seem to notice the cold. There was an impish glint in his eyes as he finished the tune with a flourish.
“A flair for the dramatic, Diana, mon cherie?” he said mockingly. “Would that you were here for the same purpose as the lovely Lili! Alas, I fear my luck cannot be so good. . . .”
She laughed. His eyes warmed at the throaty chuckle. “Andre,” she chided, “don’t you ever think of anything else?”
“Am I not a son of the City of Light? I must uphold her reputation, mais non?” The young woman raised an ironic brow. He shrugged. “Ah well—since it is you who seek me, I fear I must be all business. A pity. Well, what lures you to my side this unseasonable night? What horror has mademoiselle Tregarde unearthed this time?”
Diana Tregarde sobered instantly, the laughter fleeing her eyes. “I’m afraid you picked the right word this time, Andre. It is a horror. The trouble is, I don’t know what kind.”
“Say on. I wait in breathless anticipation.” His expression was mocking as he leaned against the lamp-post, and he feigned a yawn.
Diana scowled at him and her eyes darkened with anger. He raised an eyebrow of his own. “If this weren’t so serious,” she threatened, “I’d be tempted to pop you one—Andre, people are dying out there. There’s a ‘Ripper’ loose in New York.”
He shrugged, and shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. “So? This is new? Tell me when there is not! That sort of criminal is as common to the city as a rat. Let your police earn their salaries and capture him.”
Her expression hardened. She folded her arms tightly across the thin nylon of her windbreaker; her lips tightened a little. “Use your head, Andre! If this was an ordinary slasher-killer, would I be involved?”
He examined his fingernails with care. “And what is it that makes it extraordinaire, eh?”
“The victims had no souls.”
“I was not aware,” he replied wryly, “that the dead possessed such things anymore.”
She growled under her breath, and tossed her head impatiently, and the wind caught her hair and whipped it around her throat. “You are deliberately being difficult! I have half a mind—”
It finally seemed to penetrate the young man’s mind that she was truly angry—and truly frightened, though she was doing her best to conceal the fact; his expression became contrite. “Forgive me, cherie. I am being recalcitrant.”
“You’re being a pain in the ass,” she replied acidly. “Would I have come to you if I wasn’t already out of my depth?”
“Well—” he admitted. “No. But—this business of souls, cherie, how can you determine such a thing? I find it most difficult to believe.”
She shivered, and her eyes went brooding. “So did I. Trust me, my friend, I know what I’m talking about. There isn’t a shred of doubt in my mind. There are at least six victims who no longer exist in any fashion anymore.”
The young man finally evidenced alarm. “But—how?” he said, bewildered. “How is such a thing possible?”
She shook her head violently, clenching her hands on the arms of her jacket as if by doing so she could protect herself from an unseen—but not unfelt—danger. “I don’t know, I don’t know! It seems incredible even now—I keep thinking it’s a nightmare, but—Andre, it’s real, it’s not my imagination—” Her voice rose a little with each word, and Andre’s sharp eyes rested for a moment on her trembling hands.
“Eh bien,” he sighed, “I believe you. So there is something about that devours souls—and mutilates bodies as well, since you mentioned a ‘Ripper’ persona?”
She nodded.
“Was the devouring before or after the mutilation?”
“Before, I think—it’s not easy to judge.” She shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
“And you came into this how?”
“Whatever it is, it took the friend of a friend; I—happened to be there to see the body afterwards, and I knew immediately there was something wrong. When I unshielded and used the Sight—”
“Bad.” He made it a statement.
“Worse. I—I can’t describe what it felt like. There were still residual emotions, things left behind when—” Her jaw clenched. “Then when I started checking further I found out about the other five victims—that what I had discovered was no fluke. Andre, whatever it is, it has to be stopped.” She laughed again, but this time there was no humor in it. “After all, you could say stopping it is in my job description.”
He nodded soberly. “And so you become involved. Well enough, if you must hunt this thing, so must I.” He became all business. “Tell me of the history. When, and where, and who does it take?”
She bit her lip. “ ‘Where’—there’s no pattern. ‘Who’ seems to be mostly a matter of opportunity; the only clue is that the victims were always out on the street and entirely alone, there were no witnesses whatsoever, so the thing needs total privacy and apparently can’t strike where it will. And ‘when’—is moon-dark.”
“Bad.” He shook his head. “I have no clue at the moment. The loup-garou I know, and others, but I know nothing that hunts beneath the dark moon.”
She grimaced. “You think I do? That’s why I need your help; you’re sensitive enough to feel something out of the ordinary, and you can watch and hunt undetected. I can’t. And I’m not sure I want to go trolling for this thing alone—without knowing what it is, I could end up as a late-night snack for it. But if that’s what I have to do, I will.”
Anger blazed up in his face like a cold fire. “You go hunting alone for this creature over my dead body!”
“That’s a little redundant, isn’t it?” Her smile was weak, but genuine again.
“Pah!” he dismissed her attempt at humor with a wave of his hand. “Tomorrow is the first night of moon-dark; I shall go a-hunting. Do you remain at home, else I shall be most wroth with you. I know where to find you, should I learn anything of note.”