“Rafael,” Samantha said, very patiently, “I’d love to hear about your dreams all day, but this blood on my hand isn’t Daniela’s. I think it belongs to the decapitated head sitting in your sink.”
He didn’t believe her, not until he saw it for himself. It was indeed a human head, that of a young woman with blonde hair. Garish jack-o-lantern earrings dangled from her lobes while her clouded eyes stared up at him, wide and terrified. Her mouth formed an unnatural, ghastly smile. The head had been placed so neatly in his sink that its fluids dripped directly into the open drain.
“Trick-or-treat,” Samantha muttered.
“Someone must have broken in and put it here while I slept,” he said. The decapitation, he saw from the condition of the neck stump, had been performed precisely and cleanly, with a perfectly level blade. “Can you tell where she was killed?”
Samantha placed her hand, scarred in the center palm from the bullet of a hired killer, into the small amount of blood rimming the drain. Her pupils narrowed to splinters of black, and a flush rose from her neck to race up her cheeks.
“Hanging blade, torture room,” Samantha said in a distant monotone. “Darkness. Walking down a narrow hallway. Darkness, wait, she keeps zoning out. Redhead in a maroon dress. Ugly pierced guy grinning. Darkness. Table, brown haired man. Hand on her hand and… oh, my God." Her face white now, she snatched her hand out of the sink and scrubbed at it with a towel. “Is that what he does? He makes them feel those things? Relive them? Want them? What?”
Rafael thought of Daniela and how completely she had given herself to him. “What did you smell before?”
“Who was this girl?” she countered. “Why did he kill her and bring her head to your apartment?”
“I am trying to find out,” he said through clenched teeth. “What did you smell?”
“Something gross, like an overflowing ashtray. Or Evan Tenderson. But I repeat myself.” Her mobile phone beeped, and it seemed to calm her as she answered it. “Brown.” She listened.
Rafael quickly searched the apartment, but found nothing and no one hiding in it. He went back to Samantha.
“Ten minutes,” she said as she ended one call and made another.
“What now?”
“Bad news.” Into the phone, she said, “Burke? It’s Sam. I need you to send some guys over here to Rafael’s place. To move the kidnapped nun I’m not supposed to know about to a safer place so the nutcase zombie vampire you’re not supposed to tell me about doesn’t kill her. There’s also a decapitated head in the sink. I’d appreciate it.” She switched off the phone. “Pack it up. We’ve got work to do.”
He didn’t wish to leave Daniela in the care of others. “Samantha—”
“Donatien hung the other part of this girl in front of Club Dominion. He left a note addressed to you. He wrote it in blood on the torso.” She tossed her keys to him. “I’ll wait with her until the men get here. You get down to the club before Tenderson does, read the message, and then get rid of it.”
Dani woke up to the smell of hot coffee, and found Detective Brown unlocking the handcuffs binding her wrists to Rafael’s head board. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying not to think of ways to off my partner.” She tossed the cuffs aside and checked Daniela’s arms, which were still somewhat bruised, and chafed her wrists. “I’m so sorry about this, Ms. Nieves.”
“It’s Dani. Don’t be upset, Detective, please. I’m not.” She smiled a little, thinking of the night she’d shared with Rafael. “I guess I should tell you that I’m not really a nun.”
“Rafael mentioned it a couple dozen times. I can’t say I’m not relieved.” Green eyes crinkled with a genuine smile. “Call me Sam.”
She looked over Samantha's shoulder. "Where is Rafael?"
“I kicked him out to go do some work.” Samantha began gathering Dani’s clothes, which were scattered all around the bed. “I need you to get dressed. We're going to move you to a safer place, keep you there until we can catch this guy.”
“Donatien is coming for me,” Dani told her bluntly. “I’m the one he wants.”
“Well, he can’t have you.” She straightened and sniffed the air. “Do you smoke?”
Dani could smell it, too. She had smelled it before, in the village, in the compound, in the jungle. The dead fires.
“It’s him. He’s here.” She jolted out of the bed, grabbed her clothes from Sam and began dressing frantically.
“Easy, honey,” Sam said. “Rafael searched the apartment before he left; there’s no one here.”
Dani shoved her feet into her shoes and then heard something moving in the ceiling. “You have to hide,” she whispered, dragging Sam toward the closet. “Don’t make any sound.”
“Waste of time,” Sam said, staring up.
Cold air poured into the room as a beautiful man dressed in sky-blue velvet lowered himself into the room from a gap in the ceiling panels. The ageless face had not changed, nor had the perfect proportions of his long, lean body. From the pristine suede of his shoes to the gentle waves of his caramel-colored hair, he might have been a living work of art.
“No.” Dani shoved Samantha behind her. “My – my lord, it is you.”
“At long last, we meet again, my pearl.” His lovely tenor seemed to make the air quiver. “I must say, you have not made my pursuit a leisurely one.” He eyed Samantha with interest. “Do introduce me to this delicious-looking Amazon.”
“I’m the woman who’s about to kick your ass,” Sam replied, drawing her weapon.
Donatien produced a smile so heart-breaking that Dani gasped. “Beautiful, spirited, and armed. Delightful.”
Dani reached out to him. “She is nothing, no one. I will come with you, my lord, and do whatever you want. Only leave her.”
“Shut up, Dani,” Sam snapped, aiming for Donatien’s heart.
“Of course you will, my pearl. That was never in doubt.” He approached Samantha, ignoring her warnings and smiling until she fired three times. “Now, dearest, someone should have told you about my fondness for copper.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out the flattened rounds, one by one, as if they had come from a pocket instead of the wall of his chest. “I’ve acquired something of a tolerance for it since the last time I died, so shooting me will only make holes in my jacket.” He caught Samantha in mid-lunge and lifted her by the throat with one hand, pressing his other to her abdomen.
“No,” Dani begged. “Not to her.”
Donatien ignored her to whisper against Samantha’s ear. “Such painful old wounds, Detective. And you, allergic to morphine. How you must have suffered.”
Samantha uttered a sharp cry, doubling over when he released her. She groaned, clutching herself as she fell to her knees.
“A newly-made Kyn, still vulnerable to talent. You would be Lucan’s sygkenis, Samantha Brown.” Donatien gave the top of the detective's head a fond pat before he addressed Dani. “You need not look so frightened, child. You know how much regard I have for you. Why, I wouldn't harm a single hair on your sweet head.”
“Take me, but leave her, I beg you.” Dani went to kneel before him, knowing he enjoyed that, hoping it would appease him. “I am the one you came for, my lord. Take me.”
“And leave behind a prize like the suzerain’s sygkenis? She will serve as our passport to anywhere.” Donatien grabbed Samantha by a fistful of her hair and dragged her to her feet. "Did you enjoy the Spaniard last night, my pearl?” he asked Dani. “I thought he might remind you of old times.”
Something cold and dreadful settled over Dani. “You came here last night?”
“Only to supervise your satisfaction, dearest.” As Samantha groaned, he glanced at the bed. “It was not as imaginative as it should have been, given my contribution, but something kept undoing my best efforts to inspire you.” He shoved Samantha at Dani. “Your gift, I presume. It does spoil so many things.”
“You did not make Rafael desire me.” She placed her hand on Samantha’s abdomen, but felt no physical wounds inside. “You could not. He is like you.”
“Quite right. What I made you do, my pearl, was feel his natural desire for you so acutely that you had no choice but to fuck him. I’m sure he was quite overcome by your passion.” The scent of dead fires choked the air as his eyes lost their focus. “It was why they killed me, you know, my pet. Pure, petty jealousy. I was beauty incarnate, and then I was beauty immortal. They knew no human or Kyn could resist me.” He smiled and lowered his voice to a murmur. “Now I will have both of you.”
“Rafael resisted,” Dani guessed. “Didn’t he? That’s why you want him. Because he rejected you.”
Donatien slapped her. “No one refuses me.”
Samantha clutched at Dani, jerking as if being tugged by a string.
“You see? It is so simple to stir desire, even where there was none.” He gestured toward Samantha, whose body shook. She put stiff arms around Dani and kissed her with cold, unmoving lips.
Dani hugged the other woman, looking into her horrified eyes. “I know,” she whispered against Sam’s lifeless mouth. “It is him, not you. Don't fight him, he will only hurt you more.”
“Now, dearest, you’re interfering with my pleasure again,” Donatien told Dani. “I do wish we had time for more than a mere kiss – I wager her mouth would look very fetching pressed between your legs – but the plane to Buenos Aires leaves in few hours.” He clapped his hands together, and a brown-haired man and redheaded woman came into the room. “Escort our new friends downstairs.”
“Where are you taking us?” Dani demanded, struggling against the man’s tight hold.
