Demon's Kiss. Maggie Shayne

mind received, taking her time. She had all night, after all. She filtered out the joy, the love, the anger, until she’d eliminated everything but the fear. And then she explored still further, until eventually she felt something promising.

      Cold, stark fear. And pain with it. There, yes, she felt it, and homed in on it, focusing, shutting out everything else now.

      Not far from here. Not far at all. Topaz opened the car door, got out, clicked the lock button and turned, scenting the air now, in addition to following her sense of the woman. And then of the man causing the fear and the pain. Yes. This way.

      She moved, enjoying the click, click, click of her three-hundred-dollar Italian stilettos on the sidewalk. As she got closer and the signals came clearer, she moved faster, faster still, until she was only a blur of motion to mortal eyes. And then she stopped, standing beneath a fire escape, staring up at an open window. He was there. And he was busy.

      Topaz bent her knees and pushed off, soaring upward, landing on the fire escape right outside the window with barely a sound or an effort.

      She stared into the apartment. A woman was lying facedown on a pretty white carpet, while a man humped her from behind. He had a knife in his hand, and it was near her throat.

      Topaz climbed through the window and stood there, four feet from the couple on the floor. “Are you about done, there, pal? We have some business, you and I.”

      He stopped humping, swung his head up, met her eyes. His own registered shock. “How the hell—” And then anger. “Get the hell outta here, bitch, or you’ll be next.”

      “Oh, do you promise?” she asked in a higher than usual voice. “Come on, baby. Do me right now. I want you bad.”

      His eyes narrowed. The apartment was neat, and scented with vanilla. Probably a pleasant place, until this asshole had come to fill it with terror and strife. Topaz wasn’t enjoying her visit here. She didn’t intend to hang around any longer than necessary. “Put the knife down and let her go.”

      “I’ll cut her. I’ll cut her fucking throat if you don’t get out of here.” As he said it, he gripped a handful of the woman’s hair and lifted her head. The blade was pressed to her neck. She had a little too much makeup on, and some of the mascara was running under her pretty blue eyes. Big earrings, big hair, tiny skirt, and a top that was about the size of a Band-Aid. Probably a prostitute, a classy one, judging by her good looks and her apartment. But to jerks like this guy, a whore was a whore, and this one deserved whatever she got.

      “I’m out of patience.” Topaz lunged forward so fast that he could not possibly have seen her move. To him, it must have seemed that she just disappeared, then reappeared an instant later right beside him as his knife went sailing across the room and right out the window. It cleared the fire escape, and by the time it clattered to the ground below, Topaz was picking him up off the woman, one hand clasping him by a large handful of his thick head of hair.

      The woman tugged her tiny, tight skirt down as she scrambled to her feet. She ran to the door and was out of there without bothering to say thanks. But that was okay. Topaz had her prize.

      She turned the man to face her. He wasn’t struggling. He was scared. Clearly, he’d picked up on the fact that she wasn’t exactly human. Finally. It had taken him long enough. But at long last he knew something was off.

      “What the hell do you want?” he asked.

      “I want you to look me in the eyes and say you’ll never hurt me.”

      He frowned. “I won’t.”

      “Say it.”

      “I’ll n-never hurt you.”

      “Tell me I can trust you.”

      “You can. You can trust me, I swear.”

      “Tell me you love me. Call me baby.”

      “I love you, baby.”

      “You fucking liar.” She jerked him to her, and sank her teeth into his throat so deeply she scraped bone. She didn’t drink, she gorged. She feasted. She tore his flesh, and she enjoyed every minute of it.

      As she drank she saw them, the women he’d raped in the past few years. There were dozens. Most of them alive. But he’d killed the last three—no, two. Only two. The one tonight was supposed to have been number three.

      Well, no more.

      When she’d drained him, and his warm blood was flowing through her, soothing her, easing her rage, she felt every tense muscle in her body uncoil. She felt release. Relief. And it was good.

      She flung his considerably lighter corpse over her shoulder, anchored him there with one arm and swiped her lips with the back of her other hand. Then she climbed out the window with him, jumped easily to the ground and headed back toward where she’d left her car. If anyone saw, they didn’t speak. It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people were likely to butt in, and she was moving so fast it was unlikely mortal eyes would be able to tell what she was carrying.

      She flicked the button on her key ring, and her trunk popped open. Then she tossed the body inside and slammed it closed. She knew a nice swamp where he would sink out of sight and probably not emerge for a good century or two—if ever.

      Topaz got behind the wheel, started the engine and said, “That could only have been better if it had really been you, Jack.” She tried really hard to visualize herself ripping into his jugular and sucking him dry.

      But instead she imagined sinking her teeth into him in passion, not anger, and sipping from him while he slid his cock into her and drove her wild. God, it had been so good with him. It had never been that good before. She didn’t imagine it ever would be again.

      And instead of feeling better, she just felt more pain. Oh, the rage was gone. She’d sated that. Temporarily. But not the hurt. Nothing could ease the hurt. How could she still want him, even while wanting to kill him?

      “Maybe I’ll just have to kill him, then. Thanks to that gossipy bitch, I have a pretty good idea where he is.” Unfortunately, there wasn’t time for traveling tonight. It would be daylight by the time she dumped the body in the swamp and made her way to the safety of her home.

      She put the car into gear, spun the tires a little as she pulled away from the curb and cranked the volume on the MP3, choosing the playlist she’d named Madder than Hell. The first song to come on was Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughtta Know.” Fitting.

      …you told me you’d hold me until you died—till you died—but you’re still alive!

      She was going to do it, she thought. She was going to find him, hunt him down and make him pay. Make him suffer the way he’d made her suffer. Sure, she’d been too devastated at first to think of vengeance. But that part was over. Now she was just fucking angry.

      She was going to kill the bastard, and while she was at it, she was going to get her money back. Tonight, just as soon as the sun set and darkness fell, she was going on the hunt for Jack Heart, to make him pay for what he’d done to her. No one treated her that way and lived to tell the tale.

      No one.

      4

      Roxanne O’Mally was twisted into what a nonpractitioner would have called a human pretzel when the broomstick standing beside the front door tipped over. Well, tipped over wasn’t really what it did. It hurled itself to the floor as if bent on suicide.

      She frowned, then slowly untwisted, rose from her yoga mat and padded barefoot, not to mention stark naked, to the broomstick, bent and picked it up. “Company coming,” she muttered. But the emphatic nature of the message seemed to suggest there was more to it than just the traditional signal of a toppling broomstick.

      Roxy would have told herself she was being overly