Life Cycle (Preternaturals Book 4) Read online

  “I’m still sorry. I wasn’t thinking about you when I acted like I did.”

  Anna nodded. “It’s okay.”

  “Do you remember Henry?”

  “That bird you had?”

  Tam got up to stretch her legs. “Yeah, only he wasn’t exactly a bird. He was a therian.”

  “Oh my god! Seriously? I changed clothes in that room when we were teenagers.”

  Tam chuckled. “Yeah, he thought you were hot.”

  “You better be glad I can’t be solid right now. I’d throw stuff at your head.”

  Tam grinned. Of all the things for her to get angry about. It wasn’t being lured into mating with an immortal demon, it was that a raven therian had seen her in her underwear. Anna was always obsessed with the wrong things.

  “Wait... how long do they live? How long was he with you?”

  “Centuries. From the late 1700s on. I’d dispersed from the rest of the coven and was lonely. The bird came to me. We were really close.”

  A lightbulb seemed to come on over Anna’s head. “That’s why you wouldn’t come out of your house for three weeks after he died. I thought it was a bit much mourning over a bird, but I didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, now you know. I still see him occasionally in dreams, but it’s not the same. He was my best friend besides you.”

  Now she was about to do the same thing to Anna that Henry had done when he’d died: rip up one of her anchors. But she had to. Anna would understand in time, and she wasn’t alone. She was surrounded by others like her, and she had Luc. It was different.

  Keep telling yourself that.

  ***

  Cain and Luc moved through the human dimension just outside the crime scene, invisible and noncorporeal. As demons, they could sense each other even if they couldn’t see each other.

  “It’s better to kill Tam,” Cain said. He couldn’t see his brother for a reaction, but he could guess at the disappointed and disgusted look he’d find if he could. Luc was so predictably good that way—hardly a demon anymore. He hadn’t been the same since Anna. It was too much humanity for Cain’s taste.

  “You promised you’d protect her... Though, I don’t know why I’m shocked at this revelation.”

  Cain bristled at that. He’d been loyal to Luc when he’d been trapped in a house by a curse, bringing him his meals. And he protected his own. It was a low blow for Luc to act as if he couldn’t be anything more than a Judas. He was still miffed about that. Hadn’t Cain been the first true betrayer in their history? And Judas got all the glory.

  “She asked me to kill her. She wants out. She thinks it’s safer, and I agree.” Cain felt Luc stop moving, so he did, too. He knew he could get his brother on his side if Luc knew it was the witch’s request.

  “So why isn’t she dead yet? You’ve had plenty of time alone with her. You didn’t take the opportunity to take her?”

  “I did.” Yet again he was glad for the invisibility that cloaked them. He couldn’t tell anybody this if they could see his face.

  “And she’s not dead because....” Luc seemed to be taking Cain’s decision to kill her well, especially since she was Anna’s best friend. In the end, Luc could be a pragmatist if need be, and he was always interested in the greater good. And they were brothers. Despite their differences, there were some issues they were one on.

  Cain fought with himself over whether to share the next bit, but the need to tell somebody won over the inner voice that urged him to keep quiet. “Lucien, she’s two thousand.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Nevermind.”

  They both materialized, hidden behind a copse of trees a few blocks from the small town Montana crime scene.

  “No, tell me what this is about,” his brother said.

  Cain looked off into the distance. “She’s just unique, all right? And she’s strong. Did you know she can resist my thrall even with her shields down? Not a lot, but enough to make snarky commentary.”

  Luc laughed, the pieces coming together. “You want to keep her.”

  “No! I do not want to keep her. She’s the enemy. I’m not you. I don’t fall for my food. I don’t get involved with witches. I’m just... not bored with her yet. She can’t come in and demand I release her from what she is. I don’t get that option. Why should she? Why should she get to do some magic of her own free will that makes her immortal and not have to deal with those consequences? I should torture the hell out of her for even asking.”

  Luc snorted. “Please. She’d drop your ass with that energy ball magic she does. You can’t take her if she doesn’t want to be taken, and you like that. I know you. You like a challenge.”

  “Can we please stop psychoanalyzing me now? I shouldn’t have said anything.” He couldn’t imagine spilling his guts to one of the other demons, not even Daria or Jackson. Daria would just blab. That succubus could be such a gossip.

  Luc clapped a hand on Cain’s back. “No, I’m glad you confided in me. It makes it feel more like old times between us—before I was trapped in the house, I mean. Not old times when we were human.”

  The demon leader laughed, the memory of their human days fuzzy by now. “I don’t know why I cared so much what the man upstairs thought about me. You know if it was down to him and you again, I’d pick you.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t tell Anna about any of this. That’s an official order.”

  Luc’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to give me an official order. I won’t say anything.”

  With that off his chest, Cain went invisible again. Luc followed suit, and they made their way through the trees to the house with the police tape around it. A group of reporters had gathered and were furiously taking notes, their cameras recording.

  Cain moved around the perimeter far from the mechanical eyes. Sometimes human cameras caught things—not a full demon, but moving streaks or balls of light, or what humans who were into ghost hunting liked to called orbs. Who knew why a demon should show up as light on a human camera? One would think it would be puffs of dark smoke or something else sinister, but if this thing was going where the TV reports he’d seen so far suggested, they didn’t need more clues to fuel the fire.

  The two of them passed through the wall into the house from the back, and made their way to the room where the body had been. The investigators were in the hallway.

  “Great, the body’s already at the morgue,” Luc said, not at all happy about it.

  “Probably not much of interest on the body, anyway. Let’s just search here. We might find something to give Anthony at the meeting tonight.” He hated working with a half-breed. Hated it. But the winds were changing. It felt as if something dramatically bad was about to happen. As much as he loathed the idea, he couldn’t afford to be too good to work with a vampire.

  The investigators in the hallway talked for a few more minutes, then went outside to face the reporters, locking the doors behind them. When they were gone, the demons materialized.

  “I’ll check this room,” Cain said. “You check the rest of the house.”

  Luc gave a curt nod and went into the hallway. Cain was glad for the peace. Maybe telling his brother had been a mistake. Of course, Luc was going to see it differently from how he meant it. He didn’t even know how he meant it. If he’d waited, in a week Tam would be dead. Nobody would have had to know about any of it. But it was lonely keeping everything to himself. Luc was the one demon he could confide in without feeling weak.

  Cain went through doors and closets, shuffled through some papers on the dresser, and took in the room in general. A Victorian-style lamp had been knocked over. Blood coated the bed. He moved closer. Something was off.

  “Luc!”

  The other demon yelled from down the hallway, “Yeah?”

  “She wasn’t killed here. It was somewhere else, then she was transported.” In this neighborhood, how would he have accomplished it? It wasn’t as if the house were isolated
. Some type of cloaking spell or glamour maybe? “I’m going to talk to the neighbor next door. You keep looking here.”

  Cain dematerialized and went back through the wall where he’d come in. The investigators didn’t seem to realize the body had been moved. The difference in how the scene would appear was subtle, but he’d seen thousands of years of human barbarism. Given the ritualistic nature of the killing, the blood patterns would have been different. It was a good misdirect, though. It would fool a human.

  The killer had brought her in, arranged her, then messed up the room to make it look like the struggle had happened here. Given how convincing the scene was, who would assume a second location? The more locations, the more chances of getting caught.

  Depending on time of death, anything that had happened more recently at the house might not have been considered important—assuming the police had worked their way through canvassing the neighborhood. Since they’d just finished with the house, interviews may not have started yet.

  He slipped over to the house next door, noting the investigators dealing with the media out front. Cain rang the doorbell.

  An older woman, maybe mid-seventies, answered and looked past him, confused by her empty front porch. “H-hello?”

  The demon pushed into the house, his hand clamping down over her mouth. “Shhhh, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  But his words did no good. Who wouldn’t be terrified of an invisible being grabbing them? When the door was shut, he materialized and put the whammy on her. It was better than a polygraph test.

  “Are you alone in the house?”

  “Yes. I live by myself since Joe died,” she said, relaxed, her eyes glassy and unfocused.

  “Has anyone been by to question you yet?”

  “Only you.”

  Good. “Did you see anyone next door at any point today?”

  “A delivery man. I was going to check my mail, but something made me stay inside. I looked out the window and there he was. He scared me for some reason, so I didn’t go out.”

  Perfect. Cain couldn’t read minds exactly, but the vampires could. Anthony could go directly into her mind and practically get a photograph of The Cycler. If that was the delivery man’s true identity. They could ask Tam for a description, of course, but Jack had no doubt changed his look over the years. What the woman had seen would be most accurate.

  His eyes fixed on the old woman’s. “You will sleep until I come for you. You will not wake up otherwise, no matter what happens.”

  The woman went unconscious, and the demon caught her before she hit the floor. He took her back to her room, laid her on her bed, and locked the front door before going back to the crime scene.

  “Cain? Is that you?” Luc called from downstairs.

  “Yeah. You won’t believe my luck. I found a possible witness...” As he spoke he moved toward his brother’s voice.

  A door popped open with stairs leading down to the basement. Luc’s eyes were wide when they met his. “I hit the mother lode.”

  Cain followed his brother downstairs. It wasn’t an exaggeration. The basement was filled with magical accoutrements of all sorts and an impressive array of books, some of them clearly from other dimensions. A few looked like some Cain had in the libraries of his own dimension.

  “When I first got down here, it was just a musty old basement, but then this all appeared. Who do you think put up the glamour?”

  “It had to be The Cycler,” Cain said. “Any glamour done by the deceased would have dropped as soon as she’d died.” Glamours took a lot of energy to maintain. It seemed a waste of good magical energy for the occupant of the home. “Why would Jack bother if he wants to reveal the truth to the world?”

  Luc’s eyes lit with excitement. “Because he’s having two different conversations. He left this clue for us. Maybe not us specifically, but someone from Anthony’s group. I’d put money on it.”

  In the center of the room, on a weathered wooden table, was a rolled out scroll of parchment. A magic book at the top and bottom of the scroll held it open and flat. It was a list of the members of Jack’s coven with a line drawn through each name and a date beside it. The names were listed in the order they’d been killed, with the newest addition at the bottom: a woman named Naomi.

  Underneath Naomi’s name were the names of the two remaining cyclers besides Jack. The last name on the list was Tamar. Little hearts had been drawn beside Tam’s name in blood—no doubt blood from the latest victim. Cain growled. Why were hearts beside Tam’s name?

  “Go look for a plastic storage bag in the kitchen—the kind that zips,” he ordered.

  While Luc was gone, Cain took in the rest of the basement. Would more investigators be by to find this? He couldn’t imagine how someone wouldn’t stumble upon it eventually. The basement had to be cleared out, especially the more esoteric books.

  Most of the other things looked like your average occult-shop fare. Though, with the possible outing of the preternatural world, a complete absence of occult objects would be safer. When Luc returned, Cain carefully rolled up the scroll and sealed it in the bag. Then the two demons dematerialized, slipped out the back of the house, and woke the old lady.

  “You’re a very nice looking young gentleman,” the old lady said, her fingertips trailing over Cain’s cheek when he woke her. “I bet you have a lot of lady friends.”

  The demon chuckled. “Ma’am, you don’t know the half of it.”

  Chapter Four

  When they got back to the demon dimension Cain said, “Take her straight to Anthony so he can get a picture of who she saw. I’ll be there soon.” He’d been in too many time zones today, but he was sure sunset would arrive soon in Cary Town. Either way, Luc could hold her at the penthouse until the vampire king rose.

  Luc led the old woman away, and Cain stopped off in his tent and wrote down the crime scene address. When he returned, about fifty demons waited with expectant looks. It was nearing feeding time, and some of them lived in the human dimension, so getting this many together had been a near miracle, courtesy of Daria.

  He handed the paper to the succubus. “Go to this address and make sure you go in invisible. We don’t need any witnesses. The victim’s basement is filled with occult tools and books, some of them highly sensitive. Clear out the basement and bring it all to my tent. I’ll deal with it. It’s too dangerous for the humans to find. I don’t want so much as a sage stick or jar of salt left behind. If any humans discover it, wipe their memories and relocate them, but don’t kill. We don’t need more attention.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.” She turned to the assembled demons. “Let’s move out.” The others followed her to the dimensional portal.

  Cain moved with purpose to Tam’s tent, the ziplock bag clutched in his hand, careful not to damage the parchment inside. The tent was empty, but Jackson and Mace stood guard anyway.

  “Where are they?” he snarled at Jackson as he fought with the tent flap to get out.

  “Anna went to Cary Town for the meeting. I don’t know where Tam is.”

  Cain felt the glow come to his eyes as the fire rose up in them. “Do you understand the concept of what a guard does? Nobody goes in or out without my say-so.” He had half a mind to put them in the caves, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Jackson was loyal. It wasn’t like him to defy orders. Cain took a deep breath and closed his eyes, willing the glow to go out of them so he could think straight.

  “Believe me, the last thing I want to do is cross you, but she’s too strong. We can’t control her. She threatened us with energy balls and curses. I could have rounded up more demons, but then we would have ended up hurting her, and you said not to. We figured it was better to let her wander and burn off some steam. She can’t get out of the dimension.”

  Cain looked to the other demon, who only nodded to confirm the story. “If she comes back before I find her, tell her to stay put. I need her for something.”

  He wandered the desert for over
an hour, moving at full demon speed but coming up empty. She couldn’t have moved faster or covered more ground in the time he’d been away. Had Tam somehow gotten a demon to help her? Because she wasn’t in his dimension. If she was out, The Cycler would find her and they were all fucked.

  There was only one place he hadn’t checked, but surely the caves were too foreboding for her to enter. It was Cain’s own private sanctuary, and the idea that the witch may have breached it made the fire glow in his eyes. Not only that, her magic stuff was there—she’d be armed. Or more armed than usual.

  He put on another burst of speed to get to the caves, stopping dead in his tracks when he got inside. The witch sat on the ground in a meditative posture. Though the caves were dark, a light glowed out of her. Her eyes were closed, her face peaceful and turned upward. She looked like an angel. There was no sign that she’d found her things, at least.

  Cain’s voice was a low growl when he spoke. “What do you think you’re doing in here?”

  The light that glowed around her faded and she jumped, her eyes opening wide as she scrambled back.

  He smiled. “Scared of me now?”

  She got to her feet and produced an energy ball too fast for him to react and tossed it, narrowly grazing his ear. “What do you think? I was deep in meditation. You startled me. This is the only place I can focus without interruption.”

  Cain concentrated and produced a ball of fire in his hand.

  Tam had another energy ball ready. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “I thought you wanted to die. I’m sure this counts as a magical death. We could find out if you like? Though I can’t blame you for not wanting to die by fire. I’ve seen my share of witch burnings. It’s a brutal death.”