Ford Eliza

Cause of Death: Unnatural

Cause of Death: Unnatural

By Eliza Ford

The Cause of Death Series – Book 1

Em's head had been killing her all day. The three bodies lying on the ground in front of her weren't making it any better.

There was an itch at the back of her head, in a corner of her mind actually. A niggling, digging mental whine that had been growing in intensity all day. She knew what it was, she knew what it meant, and she sighed at the thought of what had to be done about it. But she couldn't deal with it now. These bodies needed sorting out first. It was nearly sunrise.

“Em!” Robert barked. “Get yourself over here.”

Em rolled her eyes. Robert was trying to be stern today.

Robert was head of pathology, a man who had worked with dead bodies for most of his career. Late nights in the chill of the morgue prising bodies apart for their secrets was all part of the job for Robert. He was an expert forensic pathologist with an insight that bordered on brilliance - and he was a sensitive soul. Em liked him. His fine taste in wine, the vintage cuff links in his shirts, the champagne they drank when he took her to the symphony, the dog-eared copy of War and Peace he kept by his bedside - all these things pointed to a man who knew who he was and what he liked. It was rare, Em thought, to find a man in this business who had managed to find the balance between the violence and ugliness of his work, and his own ideals. She admired that.

And she wasn't at all surprised to see that Robert had taken a step away from the bodies and had turned his back to them. He was talking to the cop who'd called it in, who was looking a bit green too. Even the most experienced crime scene technician would find this scene confronting. Perhaps that accounted for the sternness in Robert's tone - this had shocked him, and he was trying to find refuge in some officious rank-pulling. She nodded and decided to respect his little charade. The gore here was horrific.

Robert put his hand on the shoulder of the cop as the man finished his report and turned away. “Sit down for while,” Robert said to him, as Em stood at his side.

Robert looked at her with his eyebrows raised. It was a silent question that asked her if she was okay with all this. It was his only admission that what had happened here had upset him and he wanted to show his concern for Em without stepping over the professional line he respected so much. She loved him for it. He was such a gentleman. If only he knew... Em gave him a tight little smile.

“What do you think?” Robert asked her.

This was the question she hated. She turned back to look at the bodies again. It was a way of avoiding his glance. What did she think? Well, she knew it wasn't human, of course. Whoever, or whatever, made this mess it wasn't a gang, or a drug killing, it wasn't some prank gone wrong, it wasn't even some serial psychopath having a bit of fun. Nothing human had killed those boys. The perpetrator was more likely to have come from Em's realm, and probably had something to do with the whining noise still going on in the back of her head. But how could she tell Robert that?

Generally she had a standard answer to this question - for those cases where the victim had plainly been killed by a vampire or a wolf. She hated lying to him, but she was good at her job, and what he didn't know...

“I don't know what to think,” she said eventually. That sounded innocuous enough, didn't it? Surely this case was so violent that even with people like Robert turning away a comment like that wouldn't seem out of place. “I've never seen anything like it.”

That much, she thought, was true.

“Are we nearly done?” asked Robert. “It would be good to get them inside before daylight.”

“Yes,” said Em. “Poll has a few more photos and samples to do, but we're good. It would have been much quicker if Nick had been here,” she added.

Robert let out an explosive breath, more like a snort, and threw a hand up in the air in disgust. “Where the hell is he?” he said. “Did you call him?” Em stayed silent. This was all part of the officious rank-pulling, she thought. The bodies must have really bothered him. “I called him two hours ago,” Robert grumbled. “You think he might pay some attention to his boss.” He tugged at the cuffs of his jacket. “I'm heading back to the lab, Em. If you see him, tell him I'm going to kick his ass.”

He stalked off. Em watched him go and admired the elegance that Robert seemed to bring to everything he did. Even tantrums.

She sighed. There goes the weekend.

The pounding in her head seemed to kick up a beat as she turned back to the bodies. She pressed three fingers of one hand to the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes.

This was the problem with being partly composed of dark matter. The dark energy that flowed through Em's being didn't mind inhabiting human space, it didn't mind that she enjoyed hanging out with humans more than her own kind, it didn't even mind that she was half human herself, that she ate food and drank vodka and loved salsa dancing with a dozen drunken mates. What it did mind was sharing this town with the new dark matter being who had caused this mess in front of her. The being who was trespassing on her patch.

It wasn't one of the clan, this newcomer, that much was clear. Em was just over a thousand years old, and her father was lord of the clan. Em knew everyone in the Family despite it stretching over half the northern hemisphere, and she could recognize any member's signature mental touch. Like a fingerprint, or a pheromone, every dark matter being had an individual pattern of energy, a shape that defined their existence in the plane they preferred to inhabit. It was only Em who preferred to live in human space.

The Family, the clan, were the oldest beings on Earth, and their dark matter proclaimed their superiority over all other creatures both dark and human. Sure, there were plenty of common vampires, werefolk, other creatures half dark matter, half mortal, but the Family looked down on them all.

Em, being part human, had learned to live with the contempt of the clan, although with her father as lord, no one had ever dared show that contempt in front of him. Em had a unique position in the Family - honored and slightly feared for her father's sake, sneered at for her human mother's sake, held in awe for her ability to manipulate dark matter and often forgotten for her habit of living in the mortal world.

She'd found a place in one of the mortals' crowded cities. Humans had amused her at first, but a few hundred years later she had learned to love them. They had an endearing way of evoking feelings in her, feelings like love and hope and determination, and other delicious things like fear and suspicion and hate. A human soul was delectable, but Em had learned to live on more mundane flavours these days, with an occasional pint of blood, of course.

Forensics had seemed the perfect way for her to live in a human city. She could clean up the little messes made by the lower vampires before the authorities found them, and when she couldn't get there quick enough, in the lab she could hide those tell tale signs and make a blood killing look like a regular shooting. Whenever she felt the urge, a cull of the lower vampires provided some exercize, some entertainment, and kept her senses keen. And living surrounded by so much human death she felt she had learned a lot about human life, and she liked what she'd found there. Humans had a strength she admired.

The three dead men on the road in front of her hadn't been killed by any of the lower vampires, that much was clear. The common vamps were messy and ate like animals, but they certainly lacked the imagination for a kill like this. These victims looked like they had been mauled by a company of pit bulls. Pit bulls with talons like knives and teeth like ten inch daggers. But the energy signature said there was just one killer at work here.

Em was confused. She'd felt a new presence in town a few weeks ago, and she'd thought she'd known exactly who it was - one of her father's consorts, a ghastly woman known as Alina, someone Em had hated for a few hundred years or more. Em had felt Alina's arrival and almost shivered with a ghoulish joy. She was certain Alina had left her father's side without his permission. She grinned again at the thought. He would eat Alina alive as soon as he found her. And she completely deserved it. Em had just been waiting for the right moment to report back to the lord of the clan. She was biding her time, waiting to see what Alina was up to, and besides, she'd found she was reluctant to see her father again, hesitant about sinking back into her own realm. Too much time with the humans, she thought wryly.

She hadn't thought for a second Alina was doing something like this. And this throbbing in her head wasn't Alina either. It couldn't be.

She sighed again at the mess in front of her. They were such young men - fit, beautiful, full of energy. Whoever had done this had wasted them.

“Not pretty, is it?” said a voice behind her.

Nick.

Em looked at him. He looked crumpled, with a five o'clock shadow, like he hadn't slept at all. Anyone who looked at his rakish smile, his tussled hair, the way his upper arms so completely filled his shirt would think he'd spent the night at a club wooing some gorgeous young thing, but Em knew better.

Nick's sister had three young kids and the youngest was sick, really sick. When the littlest one and his mum were in hospital for days on end, Nick and the rest of his siblings took care of the other two, sleeping on the sofa, packing school lunches and delivering the pair to school and after school activities. Nick had obviously pulled the night shift tonight.

“Sorry I couldn't get here any quicker,” he said. “It was 3am. I couldn't get anyone else over to Lucy's to care for the kids.” He ran his hand through his hair and grimaced. “Is Robert mad?”

“Only a bit,” Em said. “I'll protect you.” She smiled, and Nick rolled his eyes.

“What the hell happened here?” he said. Em saw his expression tighten a little as he completely took in the scene. So, the violence here upset him too. In a way, the notion that both her men found this repulsive pleased her. She'd chosen them well. She just wondered who she'd choose if she had to choose between them.

“Something new,” Em said. “We'll figure it out. Can you work with Poll please, Nick. Robert wants us off the street by sunrise.”

Nick raised an eyebrow at her and shrugged into his crime scene jacket. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, with a slight smirk on his face. Em remembered how Nick enjoyed the dynamic of her being his superior in the workplace, how he enjoyed it in other locations too, but with this mental itch still tugging at her brain she wasn't in the mood to play along.

“Just do it, Nick,” she said. “I need to...”

Her phone rang. Em glanced at the screen and frowned. Jennifer? At five in the morning? What the hell?

“I've got to take this,” she said, and turned her back on Nick. She felt rather than saw him throw a hand in the air, in much the same way as Robert had done earlier, and stalk off towards Poll. At least he'd get some work done.

“Jenn?” Em said into the phone. “What's up?”

Her best friend was in an impressive state of hysterics. Through the sobbing Em heard, “We broke up. He dumped me. He said he never even loved me.”

“Who?” said Em, and then caught herself. She couldn't think with this pounding in her head. “He's a jerk, Jennifer. You're better off without him. Where are you? Jenn?”

There was more wailing on the other end of the phone. “We were at the Harbor Bar. It was supposed to be our anniversary.” She sobbed again and Em held her forehead again with her spare hand. “He's driven off and left me here. And...”

“What Jenn?”

“I haven't got any money for a cab.” Jennifer dissolved into tears again.

Em groaned. She told Jennifer to stay where she was and hung up. She'd take Jenn home, tuck her in and leave her to sleep it off. A gentle psychic nudge would set the girl up to sleep all day and Em would get a good day's work in at the lab. Now, how did the rest of routine go? Sometime in the afternoon, Em would take a tub of ice cream and a bottle of red wine over to Jenn's place. They'd watch Titanic and weep pathetically when Leonardo died (again), bitch and talk trash about whoever it was this time who had dumped Jennifer, and by the end of the night the girl would be as good as new.

“Gotta go,” Em called over to Nick. “Girlfriend duty.” Nick's expression asked the question, and Em's exasperated face gave him the answer. “I'll just get her home and safe, and I'll be in at the office soon,” she said. “Can you finish this one up without me?”

Nick looked affronted and Em cursed herself for stepping on his feelings. Men and their egos.

She checked to see if Poll was watching, then quickly dropped an apologetic kiss on Nick's cheek. “Sorry babe,” she said. “I'm not thinking clearly. This ...” She waved a hand at the mangled bodies. She saw that Nick thought she meant the carnage, and his expression turned from insulted to concerned. She kissed him again and then left for her car. “I'll see you later,” she called back.

She hadn't meant the carnage, she'd meant the whining pain in her head. Funny, it did seem to grow a little less intense the further she moved from the bodies. Almost like the entity who had committed the horrors had left the mental siren there like a calling card, a blazing trumpet of defiance. A psychic fuck you. Obviously not one of the Family, then. Alina? No, Em didn't think so. But what did that leave?

Em pointed her car toward the Harbor Bar and tried to remember the name of the ninth boy this year Jennifer was now calling a jerk.

It took three hours to get through the wine, the ice cream, Titanic and an angry tear fest. The better part of a box of tissues was strewn across the floor too. Jennifer was at the sniffing stage, and had moved so far through her little disaster that she could now think about things other than heartache and revenge.

“What about you Em?” Jennifer sniffed, and she slugged back the dregs of her wine. “What about the boys in your life? What about that gorgeous Nick?”

Em hugged her knees and shrugged deeper back into the sofa. Nick. What was she going to do about Nick? Jennifer was right, he was gorgeous, and he was fun too. In nearly a thousand years Em had never had so much … fun … with a lover. Sure, there had been lovers with greater skills, stronger bodies, darker desires, deeper passions, but Nick was … fun.

Em had a theory about this but it was a loose thought, one that had been flitting hopefully around her head waiting for Em to take it seriously. It was a tempting theory, and she was a little scared that if she gave it any considered thought, it might reveal itself to be something quite possible indeed. And she wasn't ready for that.

Nick was a good guy. Maybe the ultimate find. He was fit, he had arms that wrapped around her and crushed her to his chest, he had an ass she couldn't keep her hands off, and he had a laugh that made her grin like an idiot. He had a beat-up old car with a picnic blanket in the trunk, and laying in the sun in the park with Em with the weekend papers and some bacon and egg bagels was his ideal way to spend a Sunday morning.

Em thought it was his large family - the brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, as well as the older generation, and the care and love they all obviously had for each other - that had created in Nick a form of love that seemed deeper and stronger than any she had experienced before. When she watched him with his sister's kids she saw a man she realized she could love. Really love. She had to admit she hadn't done love before. Lust, sure, but nothing like the confident, selfless love she saw in Nick. It was so very tempting.

But it could only ever be a daydream, Em knew. What would Nick think of her if he knew what kind of monster she really was. Nick set up home with a soul eating, blood drinking dark creature over nine hundred years his senior? That kind of shit only happened in movies, and crummy teen novels.

Em shivered and put aside thoughts of Nick tangled in the sheets of her bed and decided to answer Jennifer's question another way.

“I was going out with Robert tonight, but things got messy at work,” she said.

Jennifer had the grace to look slightly guilty. “Have I ruined your date?” she cried. “Oh Em, I'd be really sorry, except... I don't think you should dating that guy. He's your boss!” The irony of Jennifer's moral outrage was completely lost on her. “And he is a bit of a nerd, isn't he? I don't know what you see in him.”

“Class, Jenn,” Em said. “Elegance. Intelligence.” Em tried not to sound too smug. Jennifer had an uncanny ability to attract men with an astonishingly low number of brain cells. Plenty of brawn, but no brain. It wasn't her fault, entirely, but Em knew she shouldn't rub it in. “And he's not a nerd! He's sophisticated.” She tried to sound playfully wounded in case Jennifer had caught the note of smugness in her voice.

Jennifer smirked and waved the bottle of red over Em's glass. Em nodded, and Jennifer muttered “geek” under her breath as she poured. They both laughed.

“And don't worry about tonight,” Em said. “It really did get busy at work. Robert had an invitation to that new burlesque club on the south side. We can go later, I guess, once we're a bit more clear at work.”

Jennifer's ears pricked up. “What's this new club?” she asked. “I can't believe there's a new burlesque club and I haven't heard about it!”

“Well, I don't know, actually,” Em admitted slowly. “It's in one of the old warehouse buildings down that way, but I haven't heard anything about it.” And that was odd, now she thought about it. She thought she'd had her ear to the ground, but this had slipped right past her.

“Weird,” Jennifer agreed. “How'd Robert find out about it?”

“He said he'd got a flyer in his letterbox.” Which was weird too, now she thought about it. “His home letterbox, not his work mail,” she frowned. “I've just realized how strange that is. I'd assumed it had been a work thing because there was a handwritten note on the back asking him to call for a meet and greet. I thought it was the club management trying to get in good with the police...”

Jennifer shrugged. “You guys are crime scene, not police, aren't you? And how did they know where he lived? That's kinda spooky, don't you think?”

Em found she had to agree. Why hadn't she realized any of this before?

“But he did call,” she said, “and they gave him a free admission plus one to tonight, which was supposed to be the opening, and to a behind the scenes tour, or somesuch.”

“Behind the scenes at a burlesque club?” giggled Jennifer. “As if you won't be getting enough tits and ass from the seats out the front! What do they think you are?” She snorted suddenly with a huge burst of laughter. “What do they think Robert is? I wouldn't have thought burlesque was his thing.”

“Oh, leave him alone!” Em laughed. “He's not that much of nerd. And if the tits and ass are worth paying to see the first time, who cares if we get to see them twice. It will be fun. We'll go tomorrow. We should be done with this case by then.”

“I still don't think you should be dating your boss,” Jennifer muttered into her wine glass, but with a decidedly cheeky grin on her face. “Especially when the geek is taking you to a strip club.” She giggled again, and Em threw a cushion at her.

“Shut up, Jenn. And I'm not taking dating advice from you, thank you very much. No one can eat this much ice cream, or drink this much wine!”

Jennifer looked placidly at the snowdrift of tissues and the empty cartons of ice cream on the coffee table. “I know,” she said with a sigh and a smile, and Em could see that she was okay now. “He was a jerk, you were right. Better luck next time, hey.”

Em was relieved. Jennifer had come through this one quite well. It had taken more ice cream and viewings of Titanic than Em cared to remember to get the girl to this stage. Jennifer was very good at flirting, exciting new sex and hopeless adoration, but absolutely dreadful at breaking up or putting her foot down. Em's coaching sessions had resulted in Jennifer finally being able to hang up on a boyfriend before he hung up on her, and being able to say “I hate you” like she meant it. She'd come a long way, and Em had high hopes for her yet. Jennifer was still a naive sentimental, and Em wished she'd slow down on the vodka, but there was a chance, just a chance she might score something more than a one night stand.

Baby steps, Em thought. Baby steps.

The doorman gave them a bored glance. It was a practised bored glance, Em realized. The club had barely been open a week, he couldn't really be bored. Not yet. The thick black eyeliner, the black bow tie and suspenders over his tanned and chiselled naked torso were all part of the same act. He had a thin face and a long nose. It made him look a little like a rat.

There was something else familiar about him too, Em thought, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Her headache was back. It had subsided a little over the last two days - an entire packet of paracetamol and half a bottle of scotch will have that effect - but the mental throbbing seemed to be back now, and twice as bad as before.

“Name?” said the rat-faced man, raising an eyebrow as he scanned Robert's jacket and shirt. He was a little overdressed, Em agreed, but that was Robert. What could you do?

“Robert Williams. This is my guest, Ms Emilia Ambrose.”

The doorman flipped through several pages of his list before he found Robert's name. When he did, he muttered something under his breath and turned to rummage through some papers in a small alcove in the doorway. He pulled out a red envelope, opened it and read its contents. His eyes flashed up sharply to meet Em's, then he lowered his gaze again and checked Robert's name off the list with a flourish.

When he looked up again his demeanour had changed entirely.

“Mr Williams,” he smirked. “Welcome to our humble little establishment. We are so pleased to have you, and Ms... Ambrose... was it?” He flicked a look in Em's direction again but didn't meet her eyes this time.

Em knew there was something about the man that she should be paying attention to, something about him that was... She ran her fingers through her hair and used the movement as an excuse to press her palm against the side of her head. The headache was getting worse by the minute. There was a ringing in her head that sounded like twisting, tearing metal. She could hardly think with the throbbing in her temples, but she smiled at Robert when he took her elbow and they walked downstairs into the club together.

They were seated at a small, round wooden table close to the stage and within moments a young blonde waitress came to take their drinks order. Em watched her carry her tray back to the bar, lean over, give their order to the buff young man mixing the drinks and saw the waitress nod her head in their direction. The man looked over quickly, and even across the darkened room Em saw his eyes widen and a predatory half smile curl his lips.

What was that? Em thought. She suddenly had the strangest feeling that she had forgotten something. There was something about the doorman and the man behind the bar that she should have recognized, but this headache! It's making me crazy, thought Em.

Robert was making small talk about the club and its patrons, Em realized, and she hadn't heard a thing.

“The owner is European, apparently,” he said, “Ukrainian, or something - or so I've heard.” He grinned a little disparagingly. “Well, that's what Eddie says. He'd know. Is there a club in town Eddie doesn't frequent?”

“Eddie?” said Em, a little stupidly.

Robert looked at her. “Eddie, the mortuary technician.” He paused. “Em are you OK? You look a little...”

Em reached across the table and laid her hand on Robert's. “I'm fine,” she said. “I've just got a bit of a headache. It's nothing, really.” That was an understatement, she thought, and then she noticed Robert was still frowning at her. Under the table she rubbed her ankle up the inside of his leg. “I'm fine,” she said again.

He still looked concerned. “If you're not feeling well,” he began, and the blond waitress interrupted with their drinks.

She placed a bourbon and coke in front of Robert, something tall and red in front of Em, and was gone.

“This isn't what I ordered,” called Em quickly, but Robert was talking again.

“If you want to go...” he said.

“Robert,” said Em. “Stop worrying. I'm OK.” She looked at her drink and shrugged. What could it hurt?

The lights dimmed and the show began and as she watched Em raised the red coloured drink to her lips. The second the liquid touched her tongue Em's head snapped back and she sucked in a deep breath of air. She knew that flavour very well. She spun her head round to look at the barman. He was watching her with a wide grin on his face and a smug expression. He raised an eyebrow at her and tilted his head. It was an invitation, but Em only snorted.

She knew what he was now, and the doorman. Lower vampires, but with a considerable amount of dark matter in their beings. The type of creature that is created when one of the family devours most of a human soul and fills the rest with dark energy. Alina has been busy after all, thought Em. She looked back to the stage and recognized a few more vampires amongst the dancers. Two tables away from her a dark haired man raised his glass to her, and his date smiled at Em suggestively and then bit her lip, slowly.

It was clear they all knew who Em was, and, she thought, it was clear they knew her status too. There was a grudging respect in their sidelong glances, but there was also an overt sense of playfulness. Em had a pretty good guess as to what that was about. If Alina and her entourage could entice Em into their little bit of fun, then Em was less likely to tell her father where his latest concubine had run to. A good play, but a risky one. Em hadn’t exactly been daddy’s little girl, but when the lord of the family is jilted in so public a manner it didn’t take an idiot to realize he was going to reign hellfire on anyone found harboring his runaway wench. Alina was out of her mind, Em thought. Either stupider than Em had thought, or more arrogantly confident than was good for her.

On the stage a group of dancers crawled on all fours to the front of the stage in a tangle of bodies and black leather. One slapped a palm flat on the floor directly in front of Em and Robert and snarled like cat. She was a vampire, Em noticed. Yes, the setup here was so obvious now. Why hadn’t she noticed it before?

Robert glanced over at Em and lifted his eyebrows and smiled. He was enjoying himself, and he obviously hadn’t noticed Em’s little moment with her cocktail.

She raised her glass to her lips again and took a long drink. Shutting her eyes and revelling in the flavour she smiled a long, slow smile. Watching Alina fall was going to be so enjoyable. Em was looking forward to getting her own back on Alina for this appalling headache the wench had visited on her this week. What surprised Em was how much the drink had cleared her head. She felt fantastic now, and the pain in her temples was nearly gone.

She shifted her chair closer to Robert’s and leaned her body up against his. He looked down at her quizzically and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She kissed the line of his jaw just above his throat, then she turned her attention back to the rest of the show.

*  *  *

When the last of the girls trouped offstage and a glittering silver curtain had splashed down from the ceiling, the lights brightened slightly and the blonde waitress reappeared at their table.

“Will you come this way please?” she said gesturing to a doorway at the side of the stage. The doorman stood there, his black hat perched jauntily over one eye, his hands adding flourishes to the mock bow he performed to show the way.

Robert stood up. “Our tour!” he said. “I’d forgotten. Are you coming Em?”

Em had enjoyed the show and now her headache was gone she was relishing the prospect of meeting Alina again. Em and Alina had been battling each other for five centuries now, give or take a decade or so. This far from her father’s side, and plainly acting without his blessing, Alina was in a rare position of vulnerability. Em held all the cards and she was going to enjoy playing them nice and slowly.

They followed the doorman down a dingy hallway, and then exploded into a busy room dazzling with mirrors, lightbulbs, sequins, feathers and lots of tanned flesh. Dancers flung themselves out of costumers and squeezed themselves into new ones. Long legs, fake eyelashes, loosely buckled pants, big boobs and impossibly defined sixpacks. It was intoxicating, and the mix of human blood to dark matter seemed to be about half. Em found herself grinning despite herself. Robert looked like a kid at Christmas.

From across the room came a screech and a large figure with hair piled high, a gold lame gown and a fox stole came striding through the middle of the chaos. Dancers and dressers made room for her - she seemed to glide across the dressing room as if she had wings.

“Emiliaaaa,” the woman drawled. “Daarling.” And suddenly Em was engulfed in a bear hug. “It’s so delicious to see you, my dear. How long has it been? Two hundred years?” She threw Em out of her embrace and caught Robert’s eye. She laughed as if she’d made a fabulous joke. Robert smiled back, bemused. “And who is this, my darling? Don’t tell me you’re married?”

Em pushed back from the woman and stared. “Alina?” This was not the Alina she remembered. The Alina she knew was thin and pale and smiled only when her lord commanded it. This Alina had packed on a hundred pounds and … gold lame? Em was incredulous. She suddenly became aware of Robert staring at them both and realized she’d have to play along.

“Alina. It’s, erm, lovely to see you again,” Em managed. And then, regaining her composure, “I didn’t know you were in town.”

Alina’s eyes narrowed slightly. She allowed a flicker of dark energy to whisper out of her being and into the brightly lit room. Em did the same and their energies met in the space between their bodies and battled for a moment. It was over quickly. Alina didn’t seem to have the half the strength Em remembered her having, and Em had to reign her energy in sharply as Alina’s collapsed in seconds. Around them, the vampires in the room froze for a moment and stared at them, looks of hunger on their faces. The humans noticed nothing and in a heartbeat the moment was past.

“Of course I’m not married,” said Em loudly. “This is my boss, Robert Williams. You invited him here, Alina. Remember?”

Alina flung an arm expansively in Robert’s direction. “Of course I do. Our local forensic pathologist. I had the chief inspector here last week. One must always look after the authorities, don’t you think? Mr Williams, how did you enjoy our little show? Did you find it enticing? Did you find it entirely divine?” Leaving him no time to answer Alina called to a well muscled man standing close by watching. “Raoul, my darling, we promised the delightful Mr Williams a tour. Show him the sights, will you, and do take very good care of him.”

Raoul and Robert bustled away and Em and Alina stood staring at each other.

“What on earth are you doing?” said Em at last.

Alina shrugged. “I’m enjoying myself, darling. I’m living my life the way I want to.” She looked at Em slyly from under long rhinestone lashes. “Not unlike yourself, Emilia.”

“And what about your … staff?” Em burst out. She flapped a hand at the room in general. “How many creatures have you made, Alina? You know my father isn’t going to be happy about that. What do you think this is, a free for all?”

“ My employees?” said Alina, grinning around the room. “My permanent staff?” She lowered her voice and stepped closer to Em. “Oh, it’s just a few, Emilia my darling. A girl’s got to have her fun. And look at them. Aren’t they simply delectable? My vampires are hand picked - the best of the bunch. And it’s not as if they’re going to go around draining anybody, not that it would matter if they did. They’re all very well behaved.” She smiled as if this was a huge joke.

Em was stumped. This new Alina was the very last thing she’d expected. And given the woman’s quite obvious weakness, there seemed little point in the blood battle Em had recently been considering. She was a little disappointed, if she thought about it.

“There was a killing last week,” said Em hotly. “Three bodies, not far from here. What do your hand-picked permanent staff know about that?”

Alina’s smile shut off like a light.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “You’re the crime scene investigator. You figure it out.”

Em gathered a small bolt of dark energy and was going to launch it at Alina when the older woman suddenly clapped her hands, all smiles again.

“You must meet some of my darlings,” she said ebulliently. “After all, Emilia, we are practically family.”

Alina hooked an arm through the elbow of the nearest dancer, a lithe woman in black leather hot pants and not much else other than tassels. “You know who this is, don’t you?” she asked the girl, indicating Em. The dancer looked at Em and an excited, predatory smile crossed her face. “We’re so honored by her presence - the daughter of the lord,” continued Alina. “Graced.”

Behind the dancer, a young man with a gorgeously sculptured torso snapped the elastic of one suspender belt against his chest and squeezed the ass of the girl in front of him making her jump, squeal and then melt back into his arms.

He purred at Em. “Thanks for … coming,” he said.

“Naughty,” said Alina, batting him with the tail of her foxfur. She turned to the other side of the dressing room. “Now this is who I want you to meet, Emilia. Come and meet Raeisa.”

Raeisa was a redhead decked out in a dress of green reptilian leather. When the girl turned around her deep green eyes glittered at Em and she stretched out a hand complete with long scaly fingernails that matched her dress.

“Raeisa is our star attraction,” drawled Alina putting a possessive arm around the redheaded girl's waist.

Raeisa leaned into Alina's embrace. Em wondered if she might disappear entirely into the folds of the larger woman's flesh, but Raeisa reached up and licked the side of Alina's face looking at Em all the time she did so. She smiled and revealed an impressive set of teeth. Too impressive. Em saw Alina freeze for the merest second, and then the woman burst back into character again hoisting that grotesque smile onto her face and shaking a finger at Raeisa.

“Isn't she sweet?” cooed Alina.

Sweet? thought Em. Alina was scared of this Raeisa, that much was obvious. But why? Raeisa wasn't a vampire. It was curious, but Em wasn't sure exactly what Raeisa was.

Em saw the redhead was still looking at her. Raeisa winked, and suddenly Em's headache pounded back into her skull. It was so fierce Em found herself blinking and frowning. She gave Raeisa a tight smile, turned back to Alina and put a hand to her forehead.

“Daaarling,” said Alina gleefully. “You look like you need another drink.”

* * *

Robert drove her home later and hesitated wishfully at her door but Em wasn't in the mood.

They'd left the dressing room at the club and headed back out to the bar with Robert plying her with questions about Alina.

“You knew that woman?” he asked, incredulous. “And you didn't even know she'd opened the club? What an amazing coincidence.”

“She's an aunt,” Em improvized. “A particularly obnoxious aunt. And she's changed a lot. She used to be much … quieter.”

Robert frowned. “An aunt? I'd heard she was Ukrainian. Your family are from Maine, aren't they?”

Em sighed. She should have known better than to try and pull such a lame story over Robert. He dissected alibis for a living, and she hated lying to him.

“It's complicated. Second marriages, this and that, you know how it is.” Em had slugged back a vodka shot and yanked Robert onto the dance floor, slinking her body around Robert's almost aggressively. Anger brought out her rough side.

Robert had had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. He looked pleased, actually. Em knew he'd had a very enjoyable evening.

She found Robert so interesting. Perhaps it was his scientific mind, his eagerness to experiment to get to the truth of things. She knew that Jennifer and most of the people at work thought Robert was a staid, boring thing who preferred his lab to the real world. They thought he preferred dead bodies because he was too timid to get out and about with living bodies. That was a little harsh. Sure, he had his quirks, but he was also one of the most confident men Em knew, and that had its own attraction.

Over the years Em had come to learn that Robert had quite a dark curiosity of his own for the underworld. In their line of business you couldn't help but come in contact with the darker side of the city - drug dealers, brothel owners, and kinky sex clubs were the least of it. In the last few months, what with all the lower vampires that seemed to be in the neighborhood, things had been darker than ever, and Robert seemed always to be intrigued, engaged and interested. Not in a ghoulish way, just ... curious.

Em knew he'd tried his fair share of illicit substances. A risky move for anyone in a government position, let alone one of such authority, but she also admired the way in which he'd done it. Just experimenting, just enough so that he could understand the issue from a personal point of view. She also had the sneakiest feeling he might have a little habit of some sort. Something that made his eyes just a little rounder and blacker than they should be. Not often, but enough for her to wonder. Of course, if she really wanted to know, she could just dissolve a little of her dark energy and send it whispering around his soul - that would give her the answer soon enough - but she didn't. She could respect a little habit or two, given her own needs. And she certainly respected Robert.

She respected him, she admired him and she lusted after... his mind. She sighed. If this was another time and another place, hell, even another dimension! Dark energy would suit Robert so well. She'd take him through to the other side in a second. Their two energies would fly across the world together and she could show him every dark corner of his soul. They would burn through time and space and be unconquerable.

She was dreaming. Robert was standing on her doorstep resting a hand lightly on her arm and looking at her with a hopeful smile. Human mating rituals, Em thought with exasperation. So many nuances for so little result.

She decided to let him down gently. She kissed him on the cheek then laid one hand alongside the other.

"Thanks for a great night," she said. "I've got to sleep though. Red wine and a movie tomorrow?"

He nodded. "Yeah, sure. That's fine." He started down the steps. "Take some drugs," he said.

"What?"

"For your headache."

And he was gone.

She knew he was there the second she turned the key in the lock.

Her apartment wasn't empty. She knew it, and he knew she knew it too. She didn't bother turning on the lights. There was an orange glow coming through the window from the street light outside her building. She heard Robert's car drive away and a siren in the distance. She heard a breath, and felt the air move softly, slipping under a piece of paper on her hall table and wafting it to the floor.

A shadow slinked from the corner of her kitchen into the dark space at the end of the hall.

The human in Em sensed his hunger and his violence and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. The vampire in Em sensed his hunger too, and sneered at his weakness.

Em let out a long slow breath and pushed it against the roof of her mouth so it felt like a growl. The shadow in the hall coalesced into a black cat shape and hissed at her.

Em rolled her eyes and smothered a laugh. Always up for sparring, that one, even when he was on her father's business. Whatever that was this time.

"Okay, enough's enough," sighed Em. "Come on out."

The cat crouched down low, then pounced directly at Em. In midair the cat seemed to fall apart into black smoke and swirl for a moment. The mass of smoke grew larger and solidified into the shape of a man standing taller than Em and so close to her there was barely an eyelash between them.

He had black hair, dark eyes, a pale face and a long black coat that swept the floor. There was just the right amount of muscle in those shoulders to fill out the coat. Underneath there was a black silk shirt unbuttoned at the collar. On his face there was a scar that ran down his cheek to his jaw, but aside from that his complexion was smooth. Beautiful. A little clichéd perhaps, thought Em, but stylish. He always chose this form, at first anyway. He knew she liked it.

He stared at her, his eyes inches from hers.

Em blew a piece of hair out of her face and directly into his eyes. He stepped back with a satisfying fit of blinking.

Em allowed herself a smile and turned back to locking the door behind her.

Jarek was here. Her father was lord of the clan, but Jarek was his commander in chief. And Em's one time lover. Powerful, ruthless, lethal and irresistible.

Em's smile slid a little as she wondered why he was here.

Em walked down the hall to the kitchen but stopped as Jarek stood to block her way. Again they were nose to nose. Em froze. She felt Jarek breathe in. She saw the corners of his mouth turn up in a long, slow smile. He tilted his head to gaze down at her body. The dress she'd worn to the burlesque club was short, revealing. He raised a hand and with the backs of his fingers brushed away the collar of her coat revealing more of her throat. The hand moved again and a finger, cold as ice, trailed its way down her chest to the neckline of her dress. His smile grew broader.

Em let go of her hold on her body's matter and mass. She spun into smoke as quickly has he had, and walked directly through him. It was like swimming in fog. Jarek's dark energy had none of the human touches hers had. He was cold to the core.

She pulled her frame back together on the other side, and walked into her kitchen. She switched on a light.

Jarek snarled and spun around.

"What are you doing here, lover"? she asked.

Jarek's form flickered a little, as if he was having trouble holding it in. A few wisps of black smoke curled around his hair - for a moment his eyes blacked out.

Em grinned. "Temper," she said. "What did you expect? Two hundred years of silence and then you break into my apartment."

Jarek watched her for a moment, then followed her into the kitchen. He prowled around it restlessly, poking at the fruit bowl, fingering the knives in their wooden block, frowning at the toaster. Em pulled some painkillers from the cupboard over the microwave and popped a handful through their foil wraps.

Jarek exploded with impatience.

"What are you doing here, Em?" he said. "What is all this... this...? Do you like this human stuff? What are you doing hanging around people? Why are you doing this?"

A dart of his dark energy shot out of his mind and flew at hers. It was a surprise attack, designed to cut through her defences and open up her thoughts to him. But Em knew Jarek of old. She shrugged off his thrust as simply as if she was brushing away a leaf that had fallen on her shoulder. She'd always been a match for Jarek, no matter what he did. It was something she didn't even need to think about. While others were powerless in the face of Jarek's mastery of dark energy, Em was like a mirror. It infuriated him, and excited him.

Em snorted. "Is this what you came here for? This old argument? Jarek, we've been over this a thousand times. I like it here. I like humans."

She waited. She knew this wasn't why he was here. She guessed it would have something to do with Alina. Her father had probably learned Alina was here and sent Jarek to bring her home. If that was the case, both her father and Jarek would want to know why Em hadn't told them his runaway wife was hiding out in her city. They'd want to know if Em was sheltering Alina.

To tell the truth, she hadn't known Alina was in the city. These headaches had masked her usual ability to feel out the dark energies around her. The pounding in her head had been going on for week or so now, maybe even three. Had Alina been down at the harborside all that time? What else had Em missed in that time?

One thing she did know, she certainly wasn't going to explain that little weakness to the second most powerful vampire in existence.

Jarek seemed to relax a little. He'd smiled when she'd thrown back his attack at him. "Just like old times," he'd said, and he'd reached over to the fruit bowl to select a plum.

"It's a nice town you have here," he said casually, all the silent challenges of the last few minutes seemingly forgotten. "Love the view. The locals look friendly." He gave her a pointed look and arched an eyebrow in the direction Robert's car had taken.

Em swirled her glass of water and downed her painkillers. Funny, her head wasn't as bad now.

"So what do you do here, Emilia?"

"I have a job," she said bluntly.

Jarek gave a short bark of laughter. "A job?" he said incredulously. "You are working for a human? For money?" His lips curled into a sneer. "Oh, that is too much, even for you. The Lady Emilia, slaving for a mortal in one of their crowded stinking cities, living alone in an empty apartment, and..." he laughed as a look of realization crossed his face, "... and screwing the boss!"

He crossed the space between them and took the glass out of her hand. "What would daddy say?"

"What do you want, Jarek?" Em said angrily.

Jarek's face turned expressionless, like a blind covering a window. Em had seen that look before, thousands of times, usually when Jarek was at his most vicious. She braced herself for whatever was coming.

"Alina is here," he said, plainly, and then he purred, "and you knew."

Em ignored the threat in his voice and the promise of violence in his eyes. She smiled and leaned in to kiss the scar on his cheek. He stiffened and his head tilted away from her ever so slightly. Good, thought Em.

"Of course I knew," she said injecting what she hoped was just the right amount of scorn into her tone. "She's opened a club down by the harbor, though you probably know that. And she's been terribly naughty. She's made herself a whole host of vampires - her own little entourage."

"And she's been killing, outside of cull protocols," said Jarek.

"Well, yes of course she has," said Em. "Who doesn't?" She shrugged. "You'd like her little club, Jarek. Some of her followers are just your style."

Jarek was still fingering the plum he'd taken from the fruit bowl. "You know what the lord will do to her, don't you? You know what he'll do to you if he thinks..."

"If he thinks what, Jarek?" said Em. "That dear old Alina and I have been plotting to overthrow his rule by raising an army of fan dancers and bar tenders? Don't be an idiot, lover. Use your head. Alina and I have been trying to kill each other for how many hundred years now?"

Em relaxed. She had him now. She could feel his energies unwinding, his thoughts curling out to hers in the way they used to do when they both wielded the power of her father's court.

"Alina turned up a few weeks ago," she said. "I've been watching her to see what she'll do, see just how deep she'll dig herself. It's been amusing. Have you seen her lately? I was going to call to you - give her just enough leash and then..."

Em looked up to see Jarek smiling. This time the smile was in his eyes and well as his lips. There was  affection there too, and a hint of all the fun they'd ever had.

"Will you come home to witness her punishment, my dear?" Jarek said, reaching out to brush her hair from her eyes.

Em grinned back at him. "I might," she said, playfully. "If you promise to make it worth my while."

Jarek's form spun into smoke and curled all around Em. She could feel his mind pushing at hers, his dark energy pulsing around her willing her to join him in a different field of existence. Em tilted her head back and allowed a part of her energy to spiral into the void where her kind usually lived. Jarek was waiting there as he always had. Their two beings twisted around each other in the old, familiar patterns. It felt so good, so right, thought Em. She had missed him, just as she had missed the Family, her father, her life in the darkness.

Jarek tugged a little harder, pulling her completely into nothingness. Together their energies entwined and exploded out of the room, out of the apartment, across the streets and buildings of the cities and over the thousands of mortals who lived and breathed beneath them. They flashed across the land, Emilia and Jarek, one entity, feeling and testing their old powers, the strengths in each other, their potential, their every heart's desire.

Jarek trolled around inside her mind, grinning at the notion of forensics, smirking at Robert, laughing at Nick. Jennifer, her friends, her favorite foods, her toothpaste, yoga classes. He brushed by her memories of the club, and playfully, she pulled his mind away. No need for him to go there, she thought.

Em felt around inside Jarek's thoughts. Memories of lovers since her, politics at her father's hall, the orgies of a recent cull, the precision of Jarek's mind, his determination, his ambition. It was a thrill to be with him again, a dark, guilty pleasure to be so carefree in her own form again.

But she stopped. There was a noise, far, far away. It was a familiar sound, but for a second she couldn't figure out what it meant.

Her cell phone was ringing.

She snapped back into her body, coming down from her higher energy field with a jerk that threw her head back. Beside her Jarek's black smoke coalesced into human form with a decidedly irritated expression on his face.

"What?" he said, impatiently.

Em ignored him and answered the phone. She realized she was relieved to hear it ring. She'd gone too far with Jarek just then.

It was Robert.

"Sorry to spoil your evening Em," he said. "Four bodies. You're never going to guess where."

Em shook her head to clear the last remaining affects of her fling with Jarek. She needed to concentrate. A crime scene. Work. Four victims.

"Where?" she said.

"The club," said Robert. "The burlesque club we only left a few hours ago. I can't believe it myself."

"I'll be there," said Em. "Will you call Nick, or shall I?"

When she hung up she looked back at Jarek and smiled a tight lipped smile. He growled.

"Thanks for the ride, lover," Em said, "but mama has to work now."

She was angry at herself for letting Jarek pull her back into her old life so quickly. She hadn't even put up the slightest resistance. What a tart, what a tramp, she berated herself.

She bustled together her phone, her handbag and then looked down at her dress. She ran into her room and tore off her coat and her dress. Jarek's black smoke flashed past her and her reformed lying down on her bed, propped up on one elbow. He looked amused, but resigned.

"Your master calls and you run," he said. "How endearing. Now if I could only get you to obey me in that manner."

"Shut up, Jarek," said Em pulling on jeans and a sweater. "There's something else killing down near the harbor, and it's not Alina. Haven't you noticed it? It's not one of the Family, it's not one of the other clans either. I don't know what it is."

Jarek sat up and looked suddenly interested. "You don't know what it is?" he exclaimed, "But that's your gift, that's what you do. You know everyone, everything." He sounded intrigued.

"Tell me about it," said Em. "And whatever it is, it's been giving me the most vicious headaches."

Jarek's eyebrows shot up again.

"I think it's just killed again, down near Alina's club. No, Jarek, no," she said, as Jarek stood up and rippled with a fierce black energy. "I think Alina might have something to do with it, but I also think she's scared. If you spook Alina, we might lose our chance of finding out whatever this thing is."

He grunted.

"You mean you want me to sit here like a good boy, while you dash off and have all the fun," he said grumpily.

"Yes. Yes, that's exactly what I want you to," said Em, heading back out into the kitchen to grab her bag. "You might fix me some dinner while you're waiting. And there's a vacuum cleaner in the cupboard," she yelled over her shoulder as she headed out the door.

As she closed the door to her apartment, it flew out of her hand as if a storm had blown it and slammed with noise loud enough to wake the dead. A flicker of darkness punched her hard in the stomach, then brushed up past her face like a caress.

"Bitch," it whispered.

Em grinned.

In a laneway not far from the burlesque club Robert and Nick stood over the bodies and began the process of collecting evidence. A photographer snapped the scene from every angle and a few police stood around waiting for someone from the coroner's office to arrive.

Em took a cop with her and went into the club to talk to Alina. After all the routine questions, she sent the policeman out and stood facing Alina as the older woman sat sulking on a lounge in her office.

"Just tonight, just a few short hours ago, Alina, you told me no harm was going to come from this little charade of yours." Em was fuming, and Alina seemed more interested in examining her nails. "You promised me nothing like this was going to happen."

"And you have no proof that any of my clientele are responsible. Or my staff," whined Alina.

"There are four dead humans on your doorstep, and your club is full of vampires. Don't try to tell me that's a coincidence."

"Four dead humans." Alina tossed her head. "As if that matters. And besides, did you see the state of that meat? Those bites were positively crude. You know I don't cater to riffraff."

Em sighed. That was probably true, she thought, wondering why it was her headache was back again. The mind itch in the back of her head was pounding. Maybe it was this place, thought Em. Maybe there was something here Alina was hiding. But no. Her head was killing her last week at the docks, hell, it had been hurting on and off for three weeks now. It wasn't Alina.

But Alina was definitely part of the problem here, and the headache was not putting Em in a good mood. She decided to pull a bit of law over the woman and see how that went.

"Alina, if you don't cooperate with our investigation, I'll have your club shut down until you do."

Alina was on her feet in a blink, teeth bared, breathing ice just inches from Em's face. Her skin was so pale it was almost white, her eyelids a pearly shade of blue, her eyes wide and black as night. Ah, this was the Alina she remembered. This was the Alina she'd sparred with for centuries. So she was still here, underneath all that fat, those vibrant colours, those garish earrings. Why the ruse?

"You wouldn't dare," hissed Alina.

Em gathered a small handful of energy and pushed it at Alina. As before, when Alina tried to meet the challenge with a thrust of her own dark power, it was weaker, far weaker than Em remembered it.

"What has happened to you, Alina?" whispered Em.

Alina breathed out suddenly, her shoulders slumped and she sat back down on the lounge. The last glimmerings of the power she'd just shown evaporated away and Alina raised a hand to her face and pinched the bridge of her nose. She sighed.

"What would you care, Emilia? Why haven't you turned me over to your father yet? Go on, that's what you're here for, isn't it?"

Em frowned. There was something here she was missing. Alina fled from her father's side, and sort refuge in a divey club that, out of all the cities to choose from, just happened to be in the same town as her master's only daughter. Her power seemed to be gone, she was plainly running for her life, and yet she settled in a place that made her only too easy to find.

Em watched her holding her face like that. Em recognized the gesture. She'd done it herself often enough these past few weeks with these shrieking headaches. Was Alina feeling the same thing?

"I'll have to tell him eventually," Em said softly. "Jarek's here."

Alina looked up quickly in fear. She masked it clumsily with a sneer and said, "I don't need your protection, Emilia. I don't need anything from you."

Em exploded. "Well, for heaven's sake Alina, you need to sort this shit out. I'm not going to protect you. I want to know what's going on here. Who is killing these humans if it isn't you and your little posse? I want some answers Alina, or I'll send Jarek in to tear you apart."

Alina's smarmy attitude was back. She smiled. "It's still so easy to push your buttons, Em. You have no self control, my dear, never have."

"Talk, Alina."

"I don't know who's messing up my neighborhood, all right? If I did, I'd ask them move along. I'm a businesswoman, darling. Bloodless bodies on the doorstep isn't good for anyone, though I don't mind the free publicity." She waved a hand airily and smirked.

"You don't know who's killing?"

"No, my dear, I do not."

But Em noticed a shadow flick over Alina's face, a tightening around her eyes. Either she was lying, or she was scared, and neither of those options was good news.

The door to the office opened and the girl Alina had introduced her to earlier walked in. Red head. What was her name? Raeisa. She was still wearing that same green dress with the snake print. She looked annoyed.

"Ah, Raeisa my dearest," cooed Alina. "Thank you for rescuing me from this boring woman and her tedious investigation. Look at all those people out there. All this fuss over four silly little bodies."

Raeisa climbed onto the lounge chair and sat on the back of it. She hooked one bare leg over Alina's shoulder and buried her toes in between the larger woman's thighs. She looked over Alina's head at Em and arched an eyebrow. The look was a challenge, the same brazen trumpeting she'd pulled earlier that evening.

Em ignored her. "We'll talk, Alina," she said and walked out.

She couldn't help but think the fear in Alina's eyes has just grown a little deeper.

* * *

It took until sunrise to get the crime scene properly processed. Robert was leading the team, as usual, with Em working as senior technician. Nick and Poll were doing photography and recording, and their usual medical examiner was late to the scene. They hadn't wanted to wait any longer and had started working the scene without him, but they couldn't move the bodies until he showed.

The victims were rather literally on Alina's doorstep, just a few yards down the adjacent alleyway. Em bent over the bodies and sniffed. She got nothing but the sickly sweet smell of sweat and cologne. It was too cold to smell even the beginnings of decay. The absence of any scent of blood was particularly obvious - the bodies were so pale Em was sure there wasn't a drop in them.

Despite everything Alina had said, all the signs were pointing her way. Four boys out for a good time getting a whole lot more than they'd bargained for.

And that was odd, when Em thought about it. Most vampires she knew preferred their victims to be female. Sure, they took the odd male every now and then, but on the whole, testosterone was considered a rather tasteless dressing. It was like the difference between hamburger and prime fillet steak. Vampires preferred the more expensive cuts. It was rare to find four males bled dry so soon after the last batch of lads met a similar end down at the docks last week.

"They're practically blue," said Nick. "But it doesn't look like they have a scratch on them otherwise. Why do we keep getting weird homicides down here near the harbor? Give me a simple shooting any day."

He'd just about finished photography and starting to bag evidence, not that there was much.

"Three Hispanics, one Caucasian," said Robert thoughtfully, talking to himself as much as to anyone else. "No known gang associations, no signs of a struggle, no major trauma and no blood either. There are no tracks, no marks, they've not been dragged here, but they didn't die here either. What the hell is this? And where is our medical examiner, for heaven's sake?"

Em put a soothing hand on his shoulder as she walked past him to examine the fourth body. "I can't even remember who was on tonight. He'll be here," she said.

Nick noticed the hand and said nothing, but gave Em a look. As soon as Robert was out of earshot he said to Em, "I know it's a bit early in the morning for something like this but, my sister's having a family barbecue on the weekend. Everyone's dying to meet you, and I promised I'd force you to come along."

He stopped as he saw Em sigh. "Of course, you don't have to," he said quickly, but Em interrupted him.

"I'd love to Nick, of course I would." Em was groaning on the inside. Dating Nick and flirting with Robert seemed even more crazy now that Jarek was here to complicate things. She cursed herself. You should have listened to Jennifer, she thought to herself wryly. Look at the mess you've got yourself into now.

Nick was looking at her with a worried expression. "You haven't still got that headache, have you babe?" he asked. "I think you're working too hard. Come on, come along on the weekend. It'll do you good to relax for a bit, take your mind off all this." He walked around behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. Em leaned into his strong fingers as he massaged the muscles in her neck. Oh he was good, this one. She remembered why she liked him so much.

"You're so tense, Em. What's up?"

She stepped out from under his hands and faced him. "Just work," she said. "This case and the other one. They're related and I can't figure out how. I can't..."

She trailed off. Over his shoulder she could see a man approaching the scene. He was tall, thin, slightly dishevelled, with messy British looking hair - the neo-quiff - and an ill-fitting suit. Converse shoes, a leather satchel slug over one shoulder and a long coat over the other arm. He had a slightly confused look on his face, but Em recognized him instantly. Jarek. What game was he playing now? Hadn't she told him to stay away?

"Can I help you?" she called, as rudely as she dared.

The man smiled gratefully at her and bumbled over. In her head Em heard Jarek's voice: Play along now Emilia. You don't want to spoil my fun.

"Jarek Edwards," he said, sticking out his hand awkwardly, shuffling his coat to his other arm as he did so. "Medical examiner on loan from London." He smiled a goofy grin. "My plane got in this morning and it was too early to check into my hotel so I came by the office instead. They said I'd find you here." He paused, and looked expectantly at Em.

Nick frowned, but shook the man's hand. "Em?" he turned to her. "I haven't heard about any..."

Em slapped her forehead. "The conference!" she exclaimed. "I'd totally forgotten. Sorry, Jarek, was it? We were going to have someone meet you at the airport, but, as you can see..." she gestured to the bodies, "we got a bit tied up."

Em turned to call out to Robert. As she did so she slipped her mind into both Nick's and Robert's. The rest of the team's too for good measure. A few false memories here, a neuron tweaked there, and viola - instant backstory.

Nicely done, said Jarek into her head.

I'm not finished yet, she answered. When was the last time you played 'medical examiner', Jarek? How about a crash course. And as roughly as she could she dumped everything she knew about forensic pathology into Jarek's consciousness with a jolt.

She was pleased to see him wince slightly.

Robert came over and looked confused but pleased to see Jarek. "Do you have your things, Mr Edwards?" he asked. "We were wondering why our usual guy wasn't here. I guess that explains everything then. Good to have you with us."

He lead Jarek over to the first of the bodies and began relaying the details. "We're just about ready to move them. If you can get your bit done with we'll be away."

Em watched with amusement as Jarek knelt beside the first of the bodies and rummaged in his bag for some gear. There was only one person Jarek knelt to. To see him working at the feet of her human boss, on the remains of a human victim was too much fun. She made sure Jarek could hear her laughter in his mind.

"I'd like to turn this one over," said Jarek. "Have you moved them yet, at all? I'd like to see what hypostasis there is."

Em was amused. He was playing the part well.

"I'm not sure that will help you," said Robert, joining Jarek on his knees beside the victim, a good dash of professional enthusiasm showing in his voice. "All four of them are exhibiting extreme pallor. We saw something similar last week, but with a great deal more violence. I'll be surprised if you find any coagulation at all." He stopped talking abruptly as the body was rolled over. "Good lord," he said.

Nick turned away and gagged. Em pulled face, and even Jarek looked disturbed.

The nape of the victim's neck had been... chewed... right down to the bone.

Em shuddered. There had been teeth marks in the flesh of the other victims too, but whereas they looked as if they had been mauled by pit bulls, whoever had snacked on this man had a very tiny and very precise mouth.

"Em? You still with us?"

"Hunh? I mean, yes," said Em, quickly taking a swig of her drink. It was a tall vodka and lime - the usual. Every Thursday the girls gathered at the Corner Bar after work. It had become a bit of a tradition and even the bartenders had the drinks lined up when they saw the group approaching. Jennifer was there and a few of the girls from the office - again, the usual. Em was thinking about Alina and the killings. Well, she was thinking about Jarek, and Nick, and Robert, and trying to think about Alina and the killings, but either way she was not paying much attention to the gaggle of girls sitting around the table.

"So, how was it?"

Em stared at Bec for a second. She gently slipped her mind into the recesses of Bec's memory and tried to read the question while it still lingered in her friend's mind. Something about the burlesque club. She couldn't escape it, could she?

"It was cool," said Em. "Flesh and feathers, muscles and leather - just what you'd expect. The show was actually quite good." She stopped.

"And?" said Bec.

"And the vibe was ... well ... I have to say it was pretty dark and mysterious." No point in lying, thought Em. The girls all looked at her. "It was a moody sort of place," she said.

"What does that mean?" said Georgia. "I get moody when I don't get enough chocolate. Is that what we're talking about?"

Em tossed a peanut at Georgia and grinned. "No, idiot. I mean there was an awful lot of eyeliner - on the blokes! You know what I mean. It was like Berlin in the 1930s crossed with acid techno. Or something," she finished vaguely. Really, with a thousand years more experience than the others she should be better at this kind of thing, but clubs had never been her scene.

"It's alright, Em," said Georgia. "You're just such a geek, honey. A pathologist on a date with her boss. Trust you to completely miss the celebrities who were there that night and instead give us a lesson on European history."

They all chucked.

"There were celebrities?" asked Em, but the girls were off again on a new flurry of gossip about Alina's club.

The news of four young men murdered on the club's doorstep didn't seem to feature in the gossip much at all. Strange, thought Em. The killings had hit the papers with a big splash, and had just the effect Alina had imagined. The place was suddenly the hottest ticket in town, with the nightly lines at the door snaking right down the laneway that the bodies had been found in.

Her girlfriends had asked her about the killings, knowing that she was likely to be working on the case, but there wasn't much she could tell them, and Em wasn't really sure they were especially interested in her answers anyway. They were collecting gossip, that was all. Em had told them she thought they should stay away until the killer had been found, but that advice had fallen on deaf ears too. What was going on in her life, wondered Em, when she, one of the darkest creatures of the wildness of eternity, should have more common sense than her human companions?

"Well, aside from all those gorgeous bodies that seem to be going there every night, have you heard the other news about the place?" asked Bec, her eyes narrowing and gazing at her friends conspiratorially. "I probably shouldn't be telling you..."

"Is it the sex room?" asked Georgia, with a quirky but definitely interested grin.

"There's a sex room?" said Em, and then ducked as Georgia tossed a peanut back at her.

The girls all groaned and laughed.

"You're unbelievable, Em," said Georgia. "I can't figure out how you don't hear this stuff. You're a crime scene investigator, for heaven's sake! Aren't you supposed to have your ear to the ground? And you were there last week, with a backstage tour!"

"It's just my innocent and trusting nature, I suppose," said Em, and then grinned as the groans started up again. They knew she wasn't that innocent.

"So, what's the scandal?" asked Jennifer.

"The club apparently has a resident dealer," said Bec.

Em pricked up her ears at this. Bec was dating a lieutenant in the narcotics division so she'd almost certainly be speaking the truth. A resident dealer could complicate things a little, thought Em. The balance of power between the existing gangs in this town was all based on who was selling what, and where, and a new dealer in town would certainly unsettle that balance. Enough for the gang heavies to start leaving bodies on the club's doorstep? wondered Em. Maybe, but that didn't explain the vicious nature of the killings...

Bec was still talking. "Apparently this dealer is just hovering at the very edges of legal. He's not pushing crack or meth or anything that would get the local dealer's upset, but things like steroids and morphine, and some rather quaint old stuff like opium and poppy tea."

"Poppy tea?" exploded Jennifer with a giggle. "That sounds ridiculous."

That sounds very, very interesting, thought Em. "Do you know if this dealer's got a name?" she asked Bec.

Bec shook her head. "Nope, but I hear he hangs out around the old warehouses up that end of town. Why, you looking to buy?" She smiled.

"No, but I might talk with your boy about it. It could have something to do with those bodies we found outside the club."

"Do you think you could get us in there?" asked Jennifer, her short attention span showing again. "Come on Em. You had a personal invitation, and now you've got a hundred excuses to go there whenever you like because of the case. Surely you can get our names on the door. I'm busting to see the place."

Em resisted rolling her eyes. She smiled and stood up. "I'm just going to the ladies," she said. "Get me another vodka will you please, Jennifer, and then I'll get the next round. I'll be back."

She needed to think. The women's restroom was empty. Em sank into a chair in the corner next to a potted palm tree and a small table with a selection of cheap perfumes. It looked like a suitably comfortable place for brooding.

So, Alina had a drug dealer who specialized in blood and its fixings, and who hung out in the old warehouses. Em was pretty sure she knew exactly who that would be. She was overdue to pay him a call, actually. It made sense that this might be the dealer Alina was in league with.

Will was one of those useful mortals who came from a long tradition of serving the darker energies of the Family and the lower vampires. There had always been humans like Will - procurers - even in the days when life was cheaper and vampires had no compunctions feeding off the general population. These days, people like Will were essential for any of the Family who chose to live around the edges of a mortal existence, and for the lower vampires who didn't want to spend their new lives running from the law.

Will was the local caterer, for want of a better word, and Em was one of his regular customers. Sure, she could get by without the red stuff, but a girl's gotta get her fix every now and then, right?

Alina and her host of dancing vampires had the same requirements. Poor Will, business must have exploded for him lately. She hoped he was keeping up with demand. Had Alina offered him a deal he couldn't refuse, or had she coerced him into the role? Em had no idea, and that brought her to the other mystery in this whole affair.

Until these headaches of hers had started a few weeks ago, Em could confidently say she knew everything that went down in this town, mortal or supernatural. To be laughed at by her own girlfriends for not knowing about Alina's new club and its kinky secrets was not just embarrassing, it was worrying. At first she'd thought the headaches were just that - headaches. And why would she worry? Vampires don't get migraines, they don't get brain tumors - she just thought she was working too hard.

But when it became clearer that someone, or something, was causing the headaches Em thought it would simply be a matter of finding out who it was. That was proving to be more difficult than she'd expected, and she wasn't used to being this ineffectual. It was irritating, and it was worrying. The more Em thought about it, the more she had to admit that there was someone in town who was more powerful than her. And that thought was very unnerving.

She'd have to talk to Jarek about it. Could he feel it too?

Talking to Will should definitely be the next step. Will would know Alina's secrets, he might even know who this new power was. She'd love to just show up at Will's, sort it out and close the damn case, but she knew that Bec's lieutenant and Robert would probably put two and two together soon enough and the team would all be down at the warehouses looking for Will anyway. She may as well do it all on the level. Explaining her hunch about 'the dealer' connected to Alina's would be easy. It would be more challenging to lead a search for his location without revealing that she goes there every few weeks herself. But what was she saying? She loved a challenge.

Em sighed. There she was planning to dupe Robert again. The man didn't deserve it. He might be a bit of a geek, but he was blisteringly intelligent, sophisticated, and, if she admitted it, had a sense of humor as dark as her own. She was beginning to realize his curious desires might plunge just as deeply into the dark. That was appealing. She probably owed him a little bit more than smart conversation and clever flirting. But he wasn't Nick.

Nick wanted her to attend this family lunch he'd invited her to. What was it? A nephew's Christening, or something? Now, that was getting serious.

And Jarek, of course, just messed up all of that...

The slam of the bathroom door hitting the wall broke into her thoughts. Em got to her feet. The sound of slightly drunken giggles and the scuff of stumbling high heels emerged from the other side of the doorway.

"Oops!" came Jennifer's voice, overly loud. Em went to help her friend before she walked into something pointy.

And then there was Jennifer, Em reminded herself, and the vodka. Gotta work on that too.

"Emilia, daaarling, you're back!" This evening Alina had squeezed her voluptuous frame into a metallic silver satin sheath dress with a split up one leg that revealed rather an off-putting amount of thigh. A black feather boa was draped around her shoulders and a ludicrously large tiara perched on her black beehived hair. The razor sharp retort that Em historically delivered whenever she met Alina died in her mouth as she surveyed the woman's outrageous outfit. Alina was just so different like this. Em doubted her father would even want her back.

"And who have you brought us, my dear?" Alina continued, eyeing Jennifer hungrily.

Jennifer had finally convinced Em to bring her along to the club, against Em's better judgement. It was late in the evening and Em was there to try to find Alina's live-in drug dealer, not that she was going to tell Alina that. She'd told Jennifer she could get her in, but she was on business. As soon as she was done, she'd be going. After that Jennifer had better behave herself.

"Yes, mom," Jennifer had said, rolling her eyes, and Em had felt slightly guilty.

"This is Jennifer. A friend of mine," said Em.

Alina shook the end of her boa playfully under Jennifer's chin. "And isn't she an angel. Where did you get her?" she said.

Jennifer looked pleased, and slightly bemused, but Alina threw an arm over her shoulder and squeezed her tightly. "Any friend of Emilia's is welcome here, my dear. May I steal her, Emilia? Let me give you the VIP tour, Jennifer. I'm sure you'll just adore my little place."

Jennifer had time to flash Em an I-owe-you-one smile before Alina swept her away to the bar and into the milling throng of the club.

Em flashed a tendril of dark energy into Alina's mind. She's mine, Alina. Don't you dare do anything to her.

In the distance, Alina waved a hand airily in Em's direction and the thought came back to her: Keep your knickers on, Emilia. I'm just having some fun.

Em sighed and turned to survey the club. The burlesque show had already finished, the music was loud, and the patronage were concentrating on their poisons of choice. The tables and chairs had been cleared away and the dance floor was full, grinding.

Em let her energy flow loosely across the crowd. She was going to search the room her own way. Soul-searching, she called it. Every soul was different, and most carried the marks and scars of their owner's lives. This drug dealer, she was only assuming it was Will, would feel different. Drug dealers always did. There were others in the general populace - doctors, butchers, lawyers, plumbers - who had some darkened corners on their souls, but they were just corners. In the soul of a drug dealer that darkness was a blackness that soaked through and through. They made their living from twisting the spirits of mortals, from buying slavery and addiction with bittersweet honey, and from hiding in the shadows. That left a mark on the soul that stood out like a beacon.

All the same, a room with this many bodies made the task a little more difficult, and Em was both annoyed and intrigued to find her headache had returned when she had entered the club. She wandered through the crowd, allowing her mind to ripple over every existence in the room. Just one gentle push at each and every mind, and then she'd pull right back if she didn't sense that dark and tell tale difference.

It was a motley group. Most were just civilians, a range of ages, but with some decidedly twisted tendencies showing. A good number were lower vampires - mostly Alina's staff, she guessed, and ...

Em had no idea what that was.

That mind wasn't human, nor had it never had been. It wasn't mortal, but it didn't feel entirely vampire either. It wasn't Family, and it wasn't wolf. It wasn't...

Em pushed a little further at the mind and shivered. Whoever it belonged to, it held more hostility than Em had ever encountered before. It wasn't a hostility based on hunger, or greed - it was hatred, Em realized. A hatred that made her decidedly uneasy. She pulled her thoughts back quickly, but even as she did, she was sure the mind had not been aware of her presence.

She scanned the crowd using her eyes instead of her mind, and began moving toward the corner of the room where she'd felt the ... whatever it was.

There were quite a collection of Alina's vampires there. Her muscled dancers were writhing together, all open shirts and tight jeans, and short skirts and bra tops. The doorman was there, standing to one side, a dark coloured drink in one hand, a girl pressed against his side. He stared at Em, and smiled thinly. He nodded toward the center of the group of dancers.

Em walked closer and then...

"Oof!" She'd walked right into a girl in a black net dress, who stepped aside to reveal Raeisa wrapped around - oh god - Jennifer.

Jennifer giggled, but Raeisa wiped a hand across her lips and started moving toward Em. Em felt the rest of the vampires in the group focus their attention on the pair of them. She heard Jennifer giggle again, and then, as Raeisa's fingertips brushed against Em's skin, the headache Em had been holding back exploded in a searing, burning burst of white hot noise so violently Em staggered and had to close her eyes.

She pushed out wildly and felt Raeisa stumble back. There was so much pain in her head, and then in one shocking instant, it disappeared until just the usual headache was left there, as if nothing had happened.

Raeisa stared at Em for a second or two, a very small smile curling around her lips. Em pushed with her mind again, and met the same unworldly hatred she'd felt earlier. Yes, there was no doubt about it now. Raeisa was the source of the hatred, and probably the headache too. But then Raeisa shrugged, and slung an arm around Jennifer, the two of them pulsing in time to the music. Had she even felt Em's mind touch?

The vampires in the group were still watching Em closely. Em glanced at the doorman. He looked at her darkly and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Em took one more look at Raeisa, and felt the tension in the watching vampires rise sharply. She turned away.

What the hell was that? wondered Em. What kind of bitch was Raeisa, and did Alina know what she was? Alina had introduced Raeisa as her favorite, remembered Em. But then she'd seemed nervous when Raeisa arrived during their talk after the killings. The vampires had seemed frightened just now. Of Raeisa? The red headed girl had seemed completely unaware of Em's searching energies pushing at her mind. Em had been pretty ruffled by whatever had caused that blast of pain in her head. The gentle push she'd been 'soul searching' the room with earlier was probably a less than subtle thrust when she tested Raeisa just then. Surely, any creature with any amount of power would have felt that! But Raeisa had just shrugged.

Em didn't have time for this right now. She was here to find this dealer. Raeisa could wait. She keep an eye on her, maybe send Jarek to sort her out. The dealer would be able to give her more information about Raeisa and Alina's relationship to her - so long as she asked him nicely, of course. Now she just had to find him.

She focused her mind, and the headache subsided to its usual dull murmur.

There he was. Not in a corner as she'd been half expecting, but right out in the open, leaning against the bar. Em pushed her way through the people gathered around him and suddenly stopped short. She hadn't actually expected her hypothesis to be right.

She did know this drug dealer. He was her dealer.

Em took a deep breath as the man turned a happily surprised smile toward her. "Em!" he exclaimed. "I've missed you. Let me buy you a drink."

Em stepped in and kissed him on the cheek. She whispered into his ear, "Will, we need to talk."

Em, Nick and Jarek stood outside an old warehouse at the end of a narrow alley. The alley ran down to the business end of the harbor. The marinas full of white super yachts, the boardwalk restaurants and cafes were way up the other end of the waterway. Down here it was all rotting fishing trawlers, barges spilling oil and old dinghies rocking against the seaweed covered harbor walls. There was a smell about the place, an old weary smell of things decaying. It was in the water, and in the buildings all around the water's edge.

Em had told Robert of her suspicions about a dealer associated with Alina's club. Her boss had quickly set the wheels in motion. A few meetings with Bec's lieutenant boyfriend and some others from the narcotics division and they'd all given the go ahead for a chat with Will. He wasn't the main picture, narcotics had said. Small fry compared to the meth heads and crack dealers in the main gangs. Talking with Will wouldn't disrupt any of their existing investigations, so pathology were free to step right in.

"Generous of them," Robert had muttered in disgust. He didn't do bureaucracy very well. "I'm glad to know our quest for justice and truth doesn't inconvenience their 'further investigations'."

He looked at Em over the messy collection of files on his desk. He was catching up on some paperwork.

"Take Nick and go pay this dealer a visit. See what he knows about Alina's club. We need a lead of some sort. We've got a morgue full of seriously mauled bodies and no clue at all as to what happened." He lowered his head into his hands and massaged his temples. He looked tired.

"Oh, and take that English guy with you, will you? What's his name again? Edwards. Jarek, wasn't it?" Em stiffened slightly. That wasn't going to be pleasant. She really didn't want Jarek and Nick anywhere near each other, but Robert was determined.

"He's after a full time role here, or a three year professional exchange, at any rate. Says he's got a girlfriend here and wants to live here eventually. He seems a nice enough guy, but check him out, will you? I can't offer him the role if he's not up to it."

Em had nodded. What could she do?

And so here they all were. One big happy criminology team - her human boyfriend, her demon ex-lover and the man who fetched her blood waiting just inside the warehouse door. Life couldn't get any more complicated, thought Em. She tried not to listen to Jarek's smug laughing inside her mind.

"It's locked," said Nick. "Damn. What a waste of time."

A look of intense scorn crossed Jarek's face and he turned to Nick with a sneer. "Since when is that a problem?" he hissed. "Are you as stupid as..." He stopped abruptly as Em whipped out a tendril of dark energy that smacked him upside his mind as thoroughly as if she'd punched him in the stomach.

Have you gone insane? she threw at him. British medical examiner, remember? You're supposed to be a dork.

Jarek's thoughts came back to her in a millisecond, his mind cool and dangerous in hers. Careful, my darling, he said. I'll tolerate this little game for you, but I don't like having to tolerate this ape you've dragged along.

His name is Nick, said Em hotly, and I'd appreciate it if you'd ...

You're sleeping with him, aren't you? Jarek's voice in her head was dripping with disgust. You've fallen in love with a mortal. You're weak Em.

Em yelled into his mind. Jarek! Save it. We're working.

Nick had taken a step back at Jarek's words, stunned and surprised, and not a little bit angry. A frown forced its way across his usually amiable face and he opened his mouth to speak when Jarek interrupted him.

Jarek coughed a little and shifted his feet. "I've watched too much American television I guess," he said with an sheepish grin. "I didn't think things like locks bothered you guys. Of course, if we busted a lock back in London there'd be hell to pay, but you guys do it all the time, don't you?"

Thank you, said Em, tartly.

Nick relaxed. "Yeah," he said, smiling back. "I mean, no! No, it's totally illegal, but I mean, sometimes..." he trailed off looking flustered, and didn't catch the sly sideways look Jarek cast him. He was looking instead at Em, who was crouched in front of the lock jiggling a pick inside it.

"Em!" Nick exploded. "What are you doing? We don't actually have a warrant."

"Mr Edwards did have a good point," said Em, working on the lock. "Since when is that a problem?"

Nick spluttered.

"Nick, we need to talk to this guy. We've got nothing in this case. Narcotics have given us this chance, and I'm damn well going to take it. Who is going to care whether we have a warrant or not? He's a drug dealer for crying out loud." Em felt the lock click. "Are you going to be ok with this?" she asked.

Nick stared at her. He looked at Jarek who had taken a sudden interest in one of the dusty windows to one side of the door. Em could feel Jarek's amusement and wished he'd shut up and go away. Nick looked at Em again, and Em was sure she could see disappointment in his eyes.

"Nick?" she said.

He was silent.

'This is OK, Nick," she said. "Robert told us not to come back without a lead. If anything goes wrong I'll take the rap. Nick?"

"Yeah," he said softly. "Come on then."

He pushed the door open, and they went in.

In the gloom inside the warehouse they could just make out the figure of a man leaning against a head-high wooden crate. He had his arms folded, and a slight smile on his face. It was fairly obvious he'd heard everything that had gone on just outside the door, and had come forward to greet them.

He threw his arms wide.

"Welcome!" he said. "Will's the name, blood's my game. How do you want it today? I can speed it up, slow it down, beef it up, thin it out, spice it up and serve it out. How may I be of service?" He had an infectious grin and gave a little mock bow.

Actor, thought Em affectionately. She couldn't help it, she really liked Will. When they'd met that night at Alina's Em had told him a team from crime scene would be coming to see him. She'd told him he needed to pretend not to recognize her. He hadn't liked the sound of any of that, but he'd said he'd play along so long as Em promised to protect him. She'd assumed he'd meant from the law. She was good with that.

Nick reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge. Em noticed Will was watching Nick closely, with his own hands casually on his hips, near his belt. Did Will have a gun? wondered Em. She didn't think so, but could see that this situation needed to be dealt with very carefully.

"We're from ..." began Nick.

"You're cops," said Will. "As if I couldn't tell. It's plain as day you're police." He didn't sound aggressive and he smiled to soften his words. "Well, you are, and you." He gestured to Em. "That one over there I'm not so sure about." He flapped a hand at Jarek and stared at him, and his eyes opened just a little wider as Jarek stared back.

"He's English," said Nick, shortly. "And we're forensic pathologists, actually. Not police."

Will grinned and spread his hands in an open gesture of give and take. "Hey," he said. "Even pathologists have needs, desires... I expect the English do too. A guy's got to make a living you know. I've got to try."

"We're investigating the bodies that were found out front of the burlesque club further up the shore there. We've just got a few questions for you..."

Em could feel Jarek's impatience behind her rising like the tide. He was ready to tear Nick apart, and chew straight through Will's mind and take what they needed. And he might still have that goofy self-deprecating smile on his face, but little cracks of dark energy were beginning to split out of him, and it wouldn't be long before someone as astute as Will began to notice. Already Em could feel the fear beginning to rise out of Will, and he was staring a little harder at Jarek than was polite.

Em decided to cut through Nick's routine questions.

"We've heard there's someone powerful in town," she said. "Someone with ... particular ... likes and desires. We've heard they spend a lot of time at Alina's club, and we've heard you're up there a lot too. Anything you'd like to tell us about that?"

Will had chatted politely with Nick up until now, but at Em's words he turned a little grey. He cleared his throat and crossed his arms across his chest. He looked Em straight in the eyes, but turned his own head a little to the side.

"Ah, that would be, ah, confidential information," he said quietly with a little upward twinge at the side of mouth that Em knew meant he really was sorry.

Behind them Jarek snorted and took a quick step forward.

Nick took a quick glance at Jarek and stepped forward as well, more to stake his own superiority at the scene than to express his impatience with Will. Jarek stopped short and snarled, not quite at Nick. Nick folded his arms, making sure to flex every muscle in his upper body as he did so.

Boys, thought Em. Always the testosterone.

Will, meanwhile, seemed to have shrunk a little. His face was pale and the whites of his eyes were showing. It was plain he knew exactly what Jarek was now, and he was frightened. But however frightened he was of Jarek, and Em for that matter, whatever truth they wanted him to speak frightened him even more.

Nick seemed determined not to notice the odd tension in the air between Will and Jarek.

"Is that the best you can do?" Nick said. "'Confidential information'? We may not be police but we can still take you downtown for a chat, you know. How would you feel about sharing your 'confidential information' with the narcotics division?"

"You can take me anywhere you like, pal," said Will angrily. "I can't tell you, OK? You think I wouldn't tell you if I could? I've got a business to run here. I don't need pigs like you stepping in messing things up. I..."

"Woah," said Em. "Alright Will, if you can't tell us, you can't tell us. Take it easy." She felt bad for him. He was scared alright. But of what?

"Well," said Nick, taking a breath and slowing things down a little. "There's a new club in town and your client demographic must have changed a little. New customers, new supplies, new venue. You've got your old customers and a bunch of Alina's new ones, yeah?" He paused and Will eyed him warily. "So, how do you manage all that? Do you keep spreadsheets? Do you write it up a little black book?" Will said nothing. "What about your phone? Hand over your phone Will, and let me take a quick look. If you don't want to tell us anything, why don't you let me have a look for myself?"

Will threw his hands up in the air and turned away. Em could feel the turmoil inside him. He'd obviously been scared or threatened into silence, but he had enough respect for Em to want to tell her something. His mind was boiling, and Em felt sorry for him. Sorry for her friend. But she needed something from him now, not just a lead to take back to Robert, she needed to know what was going on at the club, and who was slaughtering humans for the fun of it. With Nick about pull out the handcuffs and march Will down to the station, and Jarek about to spin into another dimension and rip Will's mind through time and space, she was running out of time. She had to get Will to talk. Now.

She also needed to keep Nick away from Will's phone. If Will was stupid enough to keep a record of his customers her name was likely to be on it. Nick didn't need to see that.

"Nick," she said. "Search the rest of the warehouse, will you? See what you can find." She wanted him out of the way for a while.

"Yeah," he said, and slowly walked away after a last hard look at both Will and Jarek.

Em motioned to a crate nearby.

"Sit down, Will," she said. She motioned to Nick walking to the other end of the warehouse. "He's not going to find anything, is he?" she asked softly.

"No," said Will, and he sucked in a big breath of air and let it out slowly. "I'm sorry, Em. I really can't tell you."

"I get it, Will," she said resting a hand on his arm. "You can give me a hint though. Take your time. Think about what you can say. I'm not stupid, you know. Give me something that isn't going to incriminate you, something that I can use. I'll figure it out."

Will nodded, and looked at Jarek. "He's Family, isn't he?" he said. "Not English?"

Jarek chuckled. "Not English," he said. "And you're safe from me, Will. Em tells me you look after her. You're hers, as far as I'm concerned."

Will nodded again, and Em could tell he had relaxed and was beginning to think through his dilemma. He was sifting through a lot of information, mulling over what to say and what not to say.

Em looked at Jarek over Will's head. He gave a short nod.

Em stretched out a tendril of dark energy toward Will's mind. She slipped her mind into Will's like a mist and floated there carefully, not wanting to do anything to let Will know she was there. She watched Will thinking, and let the feel of Will's thoughts become obvious to her. Then she slowly adjusted her own mind to match the patterns of Will's thoughts. She was wrapped around his mind like a blanket. Every thought he made she could feel, every memory, every hope and every desire.

She drew in her breath as the power of it rushed through her. Will's thoughts bathed her in a thousand sensations at once, and her human body buzzed as her vampire half sorted everything out. There was a section of Will's mind that was pulsing with fear. Em hovered in it, amongst it, and revelled in the emotion. Fear was like a rich red wine and her darker self drank it in, while her human body quivered with the thrill of it, excited despite herself.

There it was. A building by the water, another old warehouse. Em could see it in Will's mind's eye, but Will's thoughts refused to take her any closer to it. His fear was welling up, throbbing. She swam through it playfully, loving the delicious paralysing chill of it, and then she remembered where she was and who she was doing this to. Will was her friend, she chided herself. Pull yourself together Em.

Above her Jarek smiled a long slow smile that twisted up at one corner. He knew what she was doing in there. He knew she was enjoying it.

It lasted just a moment, and then Em drew away. Will's rough voice shook her back to the present. He seemed unaware of what had just happened in his own mind.

"I can tell you this," he said. "But it's not much."

Nick wandered back over and stood just outside their little circle watching with his arms folded.

"The, erm, newcomer you're looking for doesn't take no for an answer. From anyone. Not even Alina. Has a big, erm, appetite, and needs to store things away from public view, if you know what I mean."

Will looked up at Em. She nodded encouragingly.

"You need to look for a warehouse." Will looked up sharply at Nick's derisive snort. "Another warehouse. Closer to the water than mine. Conveniently close to the water." He paused again. "This warehouse is going to have a history, that's how you're going to find it. A history..."

He stopped. He actually looked like he was in pain, Em thought. Poor thing. This was brave of him.

Nick grunted. "A warehouse with history," he said. "Oh yeah, that's really helpful."

"Shut up, Nick," said Em. "Thanks, Will. Thanks for talking to us." She stood up and tilted her face so that Nick couldn't see the wink and the grateful smile she gave to Will. "If you think of anything else you can tell us..."

"Yeah," said Will. "I know where to find you."

Em had the spoonful of pasta halfway to her lips when Jarek materialized suddenly next to her on the sofa.

"Ugh," she said, juggling the bowl on her lap and clutching at the glass of red wine which had been balancing on the cloth arm of the sofa and was now tottering precariously. "What was wrong with the door?"

A few trails of black smoke pulled themselves into Jarek's figure. He had dropped the visiting English medical examiner form and returned to his favourite muscles-and-black-silk persona. Em was glad. That weedy British thing had been getting on her nerves. So not her type.

Jarek peered dubiously into her dinner and raised an eyebrow.

"It's pasta sauce," said Em. "Made with tomatoes. You should try it sometime."

Jarek snorted.

He stretched his legs out and rested them on the coffee table next to hers. His shoulders shuffled back into the cushions of the sofa. When he turned to look at her their eyes were level. Em held his gaze and felt him push out a subtle but demanding wave of dark energy toward her.

Em considered him. She allowed his mind to flow right up to the gates of her own then carefully strengthened her defences against him. Slowly and gently Jarek intensified his mental thrust until the weight of his existence swelled and swirled darkly against the edges of her mind. His eyes stared into hers and threatened to pull her into the deepening dark energy that pulsated between them.

She thought about how inviting that seemed - how exhilarating it would be to let herself fall.

She smiled, blinked, and with that Jarek's carefully constructed advance disintegrated and vanished, like a flurry of dandelion seeds in the breeze.

Jarek snarled. He unfolded himself from the sofa angrily and flopped down in an easy chair on the other side of the coffee table. Em's smile widened into a grin. He could be such a boy sometimes, and how easy it was to provoke him.

"It isn't funny, Emilia," Jarek said eventually. "Your father sent me here to bring Alina home to face her doom. You too if I decided you'd been aiding her. I'd have dragged you both off without a thought if it was anyone but you. You told me to wait, Emilia." He leant forward in his seat and rested his elbows on his knees, feet wide apart, shoulders square and strong. "I've played your silly game, lover, and I'm tired of it. This embarrasses the Family, it embarrasses your father, and it embarrasses me the longer you drag this out. My patience is nearly at an end."

Em sighed. She'd known this was coming.

After letting go of her hold on Will's mind she'd slipped into Jarek's - a skill she'd realized she had hundreds of years ago. Jarek couldn't enter her mind without her invitation, but she could penetrate his in a heartbeat, sometimes without him even knowing. It infuriated him, and she'd spent some very enjoyable centuries exploiting her talent and his weakness shamelessly. Perhaps now hadn't been a good time to remind him of that weakness, but she'd asked him, in his mind, to visit the warehouse location that Will had given her. She and Nick had to follow protocol and find the warehouse the hard way, the human way, but Em wanted to know now, and she'd sent Jarek on an errand. No wonder he'd come back in a foul mood. He didn't take orders meekly.

"I told you, Jarek, there's something bigger happening here. Alina's part of it, somehow. You don't want to go running back to his lordship with the wrong fish on the hook, do you?"

He said nothing.

"What was at the warehouse? Who was there?"

"Nothing," said Jarek, petulantly. "No one. Oh, there was a mess alright. Someone had been there recently, but there was no one there at all."

"No one?" said Em. "Not even Alina?"

"No one," said Jarek, sighing suddenly and leaning back in the chair again. "In fact, there wasn't even the scent of anyone, other than humans, of course. And you say this 'bigger fish' you think is out there is not human? Not Family?"

"Of course it's not human. And it's definitely not Family. I'd know if it were Family," said Em.

"Yes." Jarek seemed to be considering the problem. "So what is it?"

Em ran a hand through her hair in exasperation. "I don't know, Jarek." She was aware she was wailing slightly. This problem, and the headaches that went with it, had been bugging her for too long. She wasn't used to this level of helplessness. "Don't you feel it?" she asked. "I've had the same headache for weeks now. It just doesn't go away. And I'm sure it's connected."

Jarek frowned.

"I don't feel it, Em," he said. His voice sounded flat, but his eyes glittered at her. He didn't believe her.

"It's real, Jarek. And it's ... strong." Em wondered how much to say. "I think it's pretty powerful, I mean, if you can't feel it..."

Jarek let out an explosive breath and turned his face to one side. The scar on his cheek pulsed as he clenched his jaw. "Well, it must be a human thing then," he said derisively. He sneered. "My energy is pure, yours is mingled with the human blood of your filthy whoring human mother. Maybe you can only feel it because you're weak, a halfling, tainted..."

Em unleashed a burst of energy that picked up Jarek's human body and the chair he was sitting on and threw them both against the wall. Jarek didn't even have time to assemble his thoughts and spin his body into smoke. His head connected with the corner of the door frame and split crazily spilling dark energy into the room in a messy cascade of black mist, stars and swirling nebulae. As he recovered from the shock of the attack and collected his thoughts, Em spun into smoke and flew across the room to engulf him in her fury.

Not even caring, or even noticing, the barriers he'd suddenly erected around his own mind she pushed through his defences and howled inside his very being.

"How dare you?" she screamed. "How dare you?"

She gathered up every tendril of the headache that had been plaguing her for weeks and bundled it into a tightly wound ball of energy. Then she pushed it with all her strength into the deepest part of Jarek's being that she could reach. And when it was there, she kicked it.

"A human thing, is it?" she spat. "Is that human, Jarek? Is it?"

Jarek was barely holding on to his human form. He'd tried to spin out into dark energy to avoid the worst of Em's attack, but she'd held him in the material dimension. His form was splitting and cracking and dark boiling tempests of blackness were spilling out of him, laced with stars, crackling with electricity. He threw his head back and choked out a cry as his human form screamed in pain and his vampire self howled in outrage at being overpowered.

"Is this filthy tainted human hurting you, Jarek? Am I, Jarek?" Em's being seethed through a handful of dimensions at once, and coiled around the writhing man contorted on the floor of her lounge room.

She pulled her human form back together and stood before him. He wrapped his arms around his head and knelt at her feet.

She let him go. Her anger faded as quickly as it had arisen. She pulled the pain out of his being and drew back entirely. She sighed. And watched him.

Jarek staggered to his feet. In a blink his form was perfect again. His ripped silk shirt was repaired, the rents in his skin were healed, the chair was back in its place in the middle of the room. His chest rose and fell as he sucked in air and his black eyes regarded her coldly as she walked back around the coffee table to sit again in the sofa.

She picked up her bowl of pasta, refilled her wine glass and went back to her dinner.

Jarek slowly returned to his seat.

"There is no one in all of creation that I would tolerate that sort of treatment from but you, Emilia," he said darkly.

Em sniffed. "I don't think 'tolerate' is the right word," she said. "You didn't 'tolerate' that. You suffered it, because you had no choice but to endure it. And that is because you don't have the power to stop me." She picked up her wine glass and held it with her lips just brushing the glass. "You know that, lover."

Jarek stared a few moments longer, and then smiled.

"Come home with me, Emilia," he said. "You and I are meant to be together. We are powerful, ruthless, lethal together." His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. His voice was deep and seductive. "We are perfect..."

"I know," said Em, simply. "And I miss that, Jarek, I really do. But I'm here now. And I like it."

"But..."

"And that's it, Jarek. That's it."

They stared at each other. Em found she was the first to drop her gaze. She was tired.

"Do you want some wine?" she said, standing up to grab another glass from the kitchen. "And I have chocolate...?"

Jarek followed her into the kitchen and took the glass from her hand. He laid it on the counter and stepped close to Em until they were almost touching. With a finger, he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. His eyes travelled over her face, and the finger traced a line down her cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth, the rest of his hand curling around her neck. His other arm reached around her waist and pulled her into him.

He sighed, and she rested her head on his chest while his hand stroked her hair.

"If you ever change your mind," he said.

They stood there in silence for a long moment. Em felt the coldness of his body, the lack of heartbeat in his chest. She thought about Nick.

"It wasn't human, was it?" she asked.

"No," said Jarek. "You were right. But I ..."

In her handbag on the counter, Em's cell phone rang. Neither of them moved for a moment and then Em dragged herself out of Jarek's embrace.

"I have to get that," she muttered, allowing her hair to fall across her face again, not wanting to meet his eyes.

It was Nick.

"What's up?" she said. "It's late. You're not still at the office are you?"

"I was thinking about what that dealer said." Nick sounded wired. He usually got this way when he thought he'd cracked something - when a case started coming together. Em felt the little flutter of excitement she usually got in the middle of her chest when this happened. Nick's enthusiasm was infectious.

"This warehouse with a history he was going on about," he went on, talking at top speed. "I was googling stuff about... Forget it, doesn't matter. And then I realized I was being too literal about it. He didn't mean ancient history, just a history. So I hit the crime maps, and the one place kept coming up. It's a pretty random history - all sorts of jobs there over the last couple of decades, almost like the place has some kind of criminal attracting vibe..."

"Nick," Em broke in. "What are you talking about?"

"I think I've found it. The warehouse. Well, I've found something we should look at. Shit, I've been drinking coffee out of that crummy machine for hours. Em, do you want to go and check it out?"

He sounded so eager. Like a puppy with a stick.

Em looked at Jarek. He had a resigned expression on his face. He shrugged.

"Yeah, I've got time," she said into the phone. "Meet you at the lab?"

Em made Nick stop for pizza before they headed off to the warehouse. She knew what that coffee machine in the office was capable of, and if Nick hadn't eaten he'd be strung out for hours.

She also knew, thanks to Jarek's little re-con mission, that they were unlikely to find anything usable at the warehouse, even if Nick had found the right one. If she thought about it, she had to admit she'd chosen to come along on Nick's little adventure at such a crazy hour of the night because she wanted his company.

She shared his meat-lovers with extra cheese, sucked down a Coke and watched Nick eat. He ate like he worked - with determination and with enjoyment. She envied him.

He looked up at her and caught her watching him.

"What?" he said smiling, a string of melted cheese stuck to his chin.

She grinned. "Nothing." She reached across and brushed it off for him. He smiled goofily and kissed the inside of her wrist as she drew her hand back.

"It's past midnight, Em. I hadn't realized. I totally lost track of the time. Sorry if I've spoiled your evening. You should have said no. We can always check it out tomorrow."

"It's fine. I wasn't doing anything."

"That family do I mentioned is on tomorrow - I mean, today. You still want to come with me?"

That puppy dog look was back on his face, Em noticed. She loved it. He really wanted her to go.

"Sure," she said lightly. "Of course I do."

After the pizza, they'd set off for the harborside again, passing Alina's club with a line out the door.

The warehouse was the one they were looking for, the one Will had 'told' her about. Em was impressed with Nick's sleuthing. Nice work, given he had so little to go off. She wondered what this 'random criminal vibe' was he was going on about.

The building was tucked away at the end of a battleaxe block, nearly wall to wall with the surrounding buildings except for one narrow, dirty alley running along its south side. Whoever was using it certainly didn't have to worry about visibility.

They found a door padlocked with a lock that looked so old Em was certain it would fall apart if she breathed on it. She dug a pick out of her handbag, and reached out to grab the lock. The instant her hand made contact with the metal, the all-too-familiar headache roared to the front of her mind. Em immediately pulled back her hand as if she'd been burnt. She stumbled back a little.

"You okay?" Nick peered at her in the dim light.

"Yeah," said Em, pushing back the hair that had fallen into her face. The headache had retreated as soon as she pulled her hand away. It was still there, throbbing in the back of her head, but the sudden flare up seemed to be over. "Yeah, it just ... there was a sharp bit, that's all."

Nick looked dubious. Em didn't want to touch it again and she held the pick up for Nick. He ignored it, took a few steps back and then gave the door a good hard kick. It swung open.

"Urgh!" Em immediately covered her nose. The stench that washed over them was almost unbearable. It was like a hot wave, the air thick with decay. In the back of her head, the headache pulsed and then bloomed like a rose, full and ripe all through her mind.

Em stepped up behind Nick and buried her face in his shoulder in an attempt to filter the air. He turned to her and they stood there, one hand over their faces, their other arms around each other, surveying the carnage in front of them. They could both handle a few corpses, but this, this was much, much more...

The warehouse floor was lined with bodies. Every single one of them was male, every single one of them was drained dry to an ashen grey pallor. Em shivered. No one vampire would ever have an appetite this large.

'A bit of a mess' Jarek had said. A bit of a mess? Surely even the Family's commander in chief would have thought this worth mentioning. At the very least it was a gross violation of the Family's cull protocols.

But this wasn't vampire...

"What does this mean?" said Nick, appalled.

Em could only shake her head. This wasn't a cull. This was mass murder.

The next twenty four hours were hell.

Nick called it in - it was his research that had found them the crime scene after all. Em stood with her back to the carnage and listened to him speak.

"It's a warehouse. Back of Darkes Lane, the northern end," he said into the phone.

There was a silence then which stretched out for longer than Em thought was normal. She looked at him. He had stepped out of the warehouse door to make the call, but was now staring in at the bodies with his eyes a little wider than usual and his expression blank.

"I don't know how many," he said. "No," he was shaking his head, "no, I don't know how many, okay? We're going to need a few teams..." He trailed off. "Sorry, Robert. I haven't seen anything like this before. It's big. It's a mess. You'll see what I mean."

Em felt sorry for him. She guessed this evening hadn't turned out the way he'd expected. He'd had a little triumph at the research, called Em and expected to have a fun-filled evening with a tinge of adrenaline as their little excursion confirmed his theories. Em hadn't expected this either. She'd thought they'd end up having some drinks together and moving onto bed and a different kind of adrenaline. The remains of the psycho killing spree spread out on the warehouse floor in front of them was not on either of their wishlists for the evening, she thought dryly.

They waited outside the crime scene and watched for the first of the professionals to arrive. Nick paced back and forward across the narrow alley way. Em sat on the edge of the gutter tucking her coat up behind her knees. Her head was pounding. It was the same headache of old, but it seemed brighter here. The bodies in the warehouse were amplifying it. Like a heady perfume that sets off a migraine, the bodies carried the scent of whatever it was that was causing Em's pain. Now there were so many bodies, the pain was all the stronger.

She sighed and pressed both her palms into the side of her head.

Nick saw her and came to sit next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close.

"You okay?" he asked.

His voice was gentle and caring and all of a sudden Em wanted to dive into it. She didn't care any more about anything. Let Jarek take Alina back to the Family, let her father descend in all his fiery rage, let whoever was draining the city's most gorgeous young men dry drink their fill. She didn't care, so long as she had Nick's arms around her and the warmth of his chest to lean against.

She wanted to run away with him and spend the rest of her life in bed with him. She wanted to take his hand and fly like fury through the dimensions and show him the chaos and wonder of the universe. She wanted to wake up every morning to coffee and bagels and him. She wanted the both of them to live together. Forever.

"I'm okay," she said, slipping her arm around his waist and smiling up at him. "I'm fine."

And then the first of the squad cars arrived.

Things got busy after that. The entire scene, the warehouse, the alleyway, all the approaches, had to be researched, sketched, photographed, tagged and bagged. There were thirty seven bodies altogether. Robert had to assign three pathology teams to the job, never his favourite way of doing things, but they needed to get these bodies to a morgue as soon as possible. Some of them had been there for quite a while.

When Robert arrived he saw Em and Nick working side by side as two professionals should, but when Em looked up to greet him, she saw that Robert had noticed something else as well. His eyes flicked from one to the other and he frowned slightly. Em couldn't help being impressed. She'd hidden her relationships with both the men from the other, and she'd always thought she'd done a good job of that. But something had just given her away. She wondered what it was.

They worked through the rest of that night and most of the next day as well. By lunchtime the last of the bodies had left the scene and Robert looked at his watch.

"Okay," he said, calling the teams around him. "We still have a lot to do here, but I need some of you back at the lab to start processing what's back there. You, Nick, and you, Em - you're out. Go home." He looked down at his notepad and turned to some of the others.

"I don't need a break," said Em, interrupting him. "I'm fine. I can keep going here..."

Robert stepped closer to her, gestured for Nick to come over and lowered his voice. Em thought he'd been annoyed at them - his tone had certainly been curt - but now she could see he was concerned for them.

"You've both been here since midnight last night. And you pulled long shifts the day before."

"So?" said Nick. "It's not like we haven't worked long hours before."

Robert put a hand on his arm. "I mean it, Nick. This scene hasn't been easy on any of us today. We're all going to need a break at some point, and you two have been here the longest. We've got a long way to go on it still, and they'll be plenty to do back here tomorrow in the light." He nodded quickly as Nick began to interrupt again. "Go home and get some rest, both of you. I'll need you refreshed and on the ball tomorrow."

"Come on, Nick," said Em, looking closely at Robert. Robert looked back at her, his face inscrutable. Em had the strangest feeling Robert was letting her know he was okay with her and Nick. Em let one of her eyebrows twitch a question at Robert, and in return Robert gave the smallest of nods. Interesting, thought Em.

Robert turned back to the rest of the pathology team and Em took Nick by the hand and lead him out of the warehouse.

Naturally, they were late to Nick's family barbecue.

The event was a tentative celebration. Nick's sister Lucy's youngest son had passed some milestone in his treatment. With luck it meant fewer long-term hospital stays in the future - and that meant everyone in the family could relax a little. It also meant Nick had more time to spend with Em, he had whispered to her in the car on the way. No more taking the other kids to little league on a Saturday morning for Lucy when she was stuck in hospital.

"So, little Jack being home from hospital means I get to spend more time in bed with you?" said Em as Nick grinned at her. "Well then, this really is a celebration, isn't it?"

But Em found the atmosphere at the gathering a little curious. Most human parties she'd attended had been wild celebrations of life. There'd been alcohol, party drugs, laugher, loud music, the usual. Here there was an almost melancholy tone. This was a family celebrating one small life that clung on precariously. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and kids all smiled and laughed but with a certain wariness, and weariness, the adults in particular not sure if they should relax completely. Em was intrigued, and the slight tiredness about the mood suited her current state of mind completely.

Lucy came by with a small boy in her arms and a careful smile on her face. She kissed Nick on the cheek and turned her smile to Em. Em could see she looked older than her years with an age old fear dancing close behind her eyes.

"Nick, I'm so glad you could come," she said. "Jack was asking after his 'Nunkle Nick'. Busy day?"

Em raised her eyebrows at Nick over Lucy's shoulder as the woman leant close to her brother to allow the kid in her arms to kiss his uncle. 'Nunkle Nick?' she mouthed with a grin.

"I wouldn't have missed it," said Nick, taking Jack out of Lucy's arms and tossing the boy high in the air.

Jack squealed, but Em noticed it was a subdued little squeal. She looked at the boy again. He was about three, bald as a button, with eyes older than time. Em looked deeper and saw the death lurking inside the child's blood. She realized in a second how pointless this celebration was. No, not pointless, she corrected herself, there was love here and that should always be celebrated. She sighed. She was surrounded by death today. Thirty seven pointless deaths in the warehouse, and one sweet little death still to come in front of her now. How did humans cope with this?

“And you must be Em," Lucy was saying. "I'm so pleased to finally meet you. Nick's told me so much about you." The smile Lucy gave Em was warm and genuinely happy. Em's insides twisted as she thought of how that smile would shrivel and die when the death in Jack's blood finally won the battle. Lucy seemed like such a nice person, Em thought. She doesn't deserve this.

Em allowed herself to be introduced to the whole family. She was a little surprised at the generous welcome she received - what had Nick been telling them all - but she was touched as well. Of course they would greet her so kindly. If this was the family that had produced Nick then of course they were good people. The comparison between this beautiful kind-hearted group of humans and the cut-throat competition of her own Family didn't even bear thinking about.

Em watched Nick. He'd dived in to play a complicated game of tag with his nieces and nephews in the back garden, and the kids yelled and laughed around him. The smaller ones simply climbed him like a tree and at one point she noticed four children hanging off him, from his arms, from his shoulders, wrapped around his legs. He looked like a boy himself. Em could feel his happiness from where she watched inside the house with a gaggle of sisters and aunts who scoffed thick slices of desserts and sweet tea.

“So, how long have you been going out with my goofy brother?" said a voice behind her. Lucy was there, pressing another glass of champagne into Em's hand.

Em smiled politely. She didn't really want the champagne. Damn it, she didn't know what she wanted. She was feeling almost overwhelmed by a whole range of feelings that had her confused and anxious. She was scared, she realized. Scared of whatever had caused the mess in the warehouse, whatever was causing her headaches. She was scared that Jarek's tempting darkness might lead her home. She was scared that she'd somehow ruined whatever was between Robert and her, and she was scared that if she didn't grab Nick and hold him tight to her right now that she might lose him forever.

She looked at Lucy, and realized most of the other women were waiting on her response. So, this was a test, she thought.

"We've been working with each other for a few years now," she said smiling and sending out a whisper of dark energy through the window and out into the garden. She was searching for one of the children. "But I guess we started seeing each other, you know, properly, about two years ago."

There he was. Jack. Her dark energy found him where he was sitting to one side of the group of older children and Nick still playing wildly together.

"Though I must say I had no idea how good he was with children," she said. "Hardened crims and drug dealers, sure, but who'd have thought he'd be such a pushover with kids."

The women laughed, and Em's dark energy flowed inside the boy, through his blood, around his heart, into every cell.

Lucy gave Em a sly look. 'It's attractive, isn't it? A bloke who's so good with kids..."

The other women groaned. "Oh, for heaven's sake Lucy," one of them said. "Give the girl a break. Your matchmaking pitch needs a little work!" They were all laughing again.

Inside Jack's blood Em found what she was looking for. The blood was thin and boiling with chemicals, but there it was. One cancerous cell that had found a way to survive the drugs. One cell with the potential to start the cycle of the death all over again. Just one little cell.

Em met Lucy's eyes and smiled. She raised her champagne glass.

"Yes," she said, meaningfully. "Very attractive."

She clinked her glass against Lucy's and inside Jack that one little cell turned to ash.

Later she found Nick and leant up against him.

"Remember how you asked me if I was okay?" she said.

He nodded.

"I'm not."

Nick's face softened and his hands took her by the shoulders and turned her around to face him.

"The warehouse?" he asked. "Or do you still have that headache? How thoughtless of me. I can't believe I've made you suffer through my whole family when you're still feeling so bad." He shushed her as she tried to defend his family. "No, my fault, I'm sorry sweetheart." He hugged her. "How about we just get you home, ok?"

* * *

Nick was a good guy, Em thought, but not so good he wouldn't fall for her big eyes, a few well timed sighs and her fluttering lashes. She didn't even have tug at his hand all that hard when she dragged him over her doorstep and into her bedroom.

Her dress was off before either of them knew it, and soon Nick was in nothing but his socks too. He kissed her hungrily, she pulled him down onto the bed and they wrapped themselves around each other.

Em was close to tears. Everything that had been going on recently had upset her more than she liked to admit. She wasn't used to feeling so out of control and she certainly hadn't liked Jarek turning up to remind of her the contrasts between this life and her old one. A beautiful afternoon watching Nick play with his family had just about topped it off. She was a wreck. She felt a little guilty using Nick for sex just to cheer herself up, but...

That thought made her feel even sadder. As their bodies writhed around each other Em discovered she'd opened up her heart and was leaving little whispers of dark energy all over the place. Small clouds of energy clung to their skin, to the sheets. Em pulled Nick into her and held on to him fiercely.

"Em, babe," Nick whispered. "I've never felt this close to you before."

And finally, there it was. Laid bare willingly in front of her. Nick's soul.

Em was astonished. Nick's soul was beautiful. In all her nine hundred years, she thought, she'd never seen a soul so beautiful. Then she realized why. All the souls she'd drained up til now had been taken forcibly from their owners, ripped apart in Em's hunger. She ate their fear, their despair and their horror. The only flavours she'd ever known.

You're a monster, Emilia, she told herself.

Nick's hands were on her face, brushing away her tears.

'What's the matter, babe?"

She kissed him and nuzzled into his neck. His throat. She realized she was lost. She was a creature of the dark, a member of the Family above and beyond everything else. How could she possibly have even dreamed of a normal life with Nick? How could she have imagined a life with children and laughter, and Sunday barbecues? And what the hell was she doing today, saving the life of his nephew like some guardian angel or a fairy-godmother? She was a monster - the daughter of one of the oldest and cruellest monsters alive.

Who had himself loved a human woman.

Em sighed. Life was never easy, even for the immortal. Is this what being human was all about? Doubt and confusion.

"Babe?" said Nick.

Em reached out for Nick's soul. She wrapped it slowly and carefully in a thin veil of her own dark energy. Nick shivered a moment.

"Nothing," she said soothingly. "Nothing's the matter. Everything's fine."

Nick stared at her and smiled, and Em looked deep into his eyes and loved his simplicity. How trusting he was, how confident, how ... loving. Feeling like a bitch she allowed the veil of energy to become thicker, stronger. She felt Nick's soul begin to flutter against the edges of the embrace she'd wrapped it in and she tilted her head back as the feeling spread like butterflies through her chest and down into her belly.

Nick cuddled her closer and shivered again.

She wasn't sure why she was doing this. When she'd chosen to live amongst humans she'd also realized she didn't have to take souls to sustain her own life. She did though, from murderers, drug dealers, pimps and rapists, the lowlifes she met around the city who had never deserved a soul in the first place. Had she drunk too much hatred and filth lately? Was it rubbing off on her?

But here was Nick's soul still open and trusting, and pulsing gently against the walls of dark energy she'd built around it. She was so, so tempted to tear that soul away and gorge herself on it and enjoy the goodness she knew she'd find in it. Could she do that? Could she do that to Nick?

She looked at his face and the kindness that glowed out of it. No, she decided, of course she wouldn't do that to Nick. She loved him. What a mess she was in. She was more rattled by this headache and Alina's mystery killer than she thought. She was losing her grip.

She smiled at him and he kissed her, and she couldn't help herself. She slipped.

It was divine. Nick's soul was a million times deeper than fear, sweet in a way that revenge could never be, richer and fuller than hatred, more luscious than any horror she'd ever known. So this was what love tasted like. She couldn't stop herself. She drank and tugged hard at Nick's soul, pulling it into her.

Suddenly Nick stiffened in her arms. His body straightened out in a rictus of pain, he moaned low and frightened, and in her mind his soul suddenly screamed in fear.

The sudden taste of fear in her mouth was hideous. That old flavour she'd grown up with suddenly tasted like ash. What had she done?

She sprang away from Nick, letting both his mind and his soul fall back into his body.

'I'm sorry," she said, without thinking. "I'm sorry, babe. I was never going to hurt you. Are you okay?"

His body relaxed, and he sucked in a lungful of air, then curled onto his side like a baby. When he looked at her, it was with fear still in his eyes.

"What was that?" he said, his voice hoarse and low. And then a horrified realisation dawned in his eyes. "You're sorry? What does that mean... You did that?" He sucked in the air in big petrified gulps. His fear was physical, heaving at his chest. "What did you do?" He looked at her like he didn't know her. He looked at her like she was a monster.

Em hated herself.

She reached out a hand to touch his arm and he jerked his body away retreating to his side of the bed in a panic of movement.

She stretched out her mind again, letting her dark energy uncoil a little less subtly than before. She could clean this up, she thought. She jumped into people's minds all the time and rewired things to suit her. She could do it now. She could make Nick forget this.

He was rolling over to get away from her and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Her mental energy hit him like a wall and he stopped moving and sat staring at the window on the opposite side of the room.

Inside his mind she smoothed out some memories. She gathered up the fierce bundle of anger, fear and disgust that had formed at the front of his thoughts and gently massaged them until they subsided into confusion.

"Honey," she said softly, projecting all the calmness should could into her voice. "Everything's fine. Come back to bed."

She could feel his emotions beginning to yield, his mind beginning to listen to hers again. Now he was open to her once more she could rewrite the story the way she wanted it to go. His mind became easier to shape.

The tension went out of his back. His shoulders slumped and his breathing slowed. With a sigh he turned his head back to her and slowly laid back down on the bed.

She reached out to touch him, and with a few more mental nudges she made him want her again. He grabbed for her and began kissing her greedily, almost violently. She decided she didn't mind at all. She had him now.

She relaxed her hold on his mind just a little and stretched out in the bed, her arms above her head, her body rising to his heat.

She let go.

He kissed her for a moment longer and then she felt something snap back into place inside his mind.

Shit.

"Em," he said, his voice low with horror again. "What are you?"

She threw Nick out after that. She'd been on the verge of saying something dumb, revealing her true nature, but as she opened her mouth to explain she'd realized there wasn't anything she could say that made any sense. "I'm sorry darling, but I'm actually a thousand year old vampire halfling and I just needed a snack" wasn't going to go down very well. She'd stuffed up, and she knew it.

All she could do was apologize, which she did over and over again as she gathered up his clothes, pressed them into his arms and pushed him out her apartment door. She couldn't stand the look of disgust in his eyes, but she leaned up against the door after she'd closed it on him and listened for a long time. He pulled on his clothes and left. She slid down the door and sat there with her face resting against the wood and sobbed.

What an idiot she'd been.

When Jarek found her she was still there. He materialized in front of her, the hem of his coat trailing black smoke and smelling of the void between the worlds. With his strong hands he dragged her to her feet, then picked her up and carried her to bed.

He pulled the covers up to her chin, and kissed her forehead. She snuffled at him, still in tears.

"You poor stupid thing," he said gently. "You're your father's daughter, that's for sure."

And then he was gone.

The alarm went off at seven in the morning and she dragged herself out of bed, only to stand staring at herself in the bathroom mirror for far too long. Her cell phone bleated in the kitchen and she let it ring, but the noise did a lot to haul her back into reality. She showered, dressed and drove to work still feeling numb, dreading seeing Nick.

At the door of the lab, Robert pulled her aside. He held her arm tightly and whispered angrily.

"I can handle being just a side show for you, but I would have appreciated being told about it. I thought I entirely respected what you and Nick have together, but now I see you've gone and used him too. What the hell have you done to him? He looks terrible, and you don't look any better."

She said nothing, and he squeezed her arm a little harder. "You don't get to do this to people I like, Em. Sort this mess out with Nick and then stay away from him. That's an order."

She shut her eyes and pressed her lips together in a thin line to stop them from shaking. Robert glared at her for a moment and then strode into the lab.

It was a long day.

Nick wouldn't meet her eyes and Robert wouldn't work next to her. They had thirty seven bodies to process and they did it almost entirely in silence. The support technicians and assistants raised their eyebrows at each other and escaped from the room at every chance they could. The atmosphere was poisonous.

Em was on her own.

Toward the end of the day she found herself alone in the lab. The three bodies she was processing were laid out on the stainless steel benches, white sheets draped over their torsos leaving their head and shoulders exposed. All the damage, on all thirty seven victims, was in the neck area, and although she was obliged to double check every victim to make sure, the damage was all the same. Teeth marks.

Em turned to the third of next batch of bodies and was stunned to realize it was female.

A woman? That wasn't right. Em knew she hadn't been paying a huge amount of attention to anything that had been going on today, but she didn't know that there had been one female victim among the thirty seven bodies they'd found in the warehouse. She must have been working on something else when they'd bagged this one. Maybe she'd already left with Nick to go to his family's party. How did she miss this?

She took a closer look at the victim. It was a woman of about twenty three years of age. Slim, attractive, blond. She appeared to have died only a few days ago, definitely much more recently than some of the other bodies in the collection.

This was not good. So far, all the victims in this messed up case had been male. Now there was a break in the pattern, and that meant the killer was getting restless. Bored. And a bored psychopath was never a good thing, human or otherwise.

Em bent down to take a closer look at the victim's neck wounds. Something glistened there. Was it an earring or something mashed into her throat?

Em grabbed some tweezers and prized the sparkling thing out of the gaping hole that was all that remained of the woman's neck. She had it. It looked like a false fingernail, she thought incredulously, as she ran it under the tap to wash some of the blood off it. She lifted the sheet to look at the victims hands. No, no falsies there.

Taking the nail over to a scope Em took a closer look. It was actually organic, she realized, not plastic at all. It seemed to have some kind of reptile print over it, a green snakeskin pattern...

She had the funniest feeling she'd seen this before.

Her cell phone rang, the noise interrupting her train of thought. She tore her gloves off, fished the phone out of her pocket and looked at the screen. Jennifer. Em snorted with impatience. Typical Jennifer. She always rang in the middle of work. Em knew she couldn't cope with Jennifer now. If this was another boyfriend disaster Em had enough of her own to worry about. Jennifer could wait. She dropped the phone back into her pocket and let the call go to voice mail.

Before she'd even had time to turn back to the scale-thing under the microscope the phone rang again. Em groaned with frustration. This had better be important.

"Jenn," she began, but Jennifer was already talking. She was practically screaming.

"Em, Em, I need you please, please come and help me, please." She was panting, sucking in huge gulps of air and choking, choking on something.

"Jenn, what's happened?" said Em urgently. She suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. "Tell me what's going on Jenn."

"She bit me!" said Jenn hysterically. "She's not...  she's not..." Jenn's breaths turned into coughs.

She?

Em's eyes flashed to the green reptile scale under the microscope. She knew exactly where she'd seen it before.

"Jenn, where are you?"

"I don't know. It's dark, like a warehouse or something. Em? Em..." Jennifer's voice started to pitch upwards again. "She said she's coming back."

"I'm coming Jenn," said Em and she dropped the phone beside the scope and spun herself into smoke.

Em flew over the city.

With her mind she searched for Jennifer. She threw her energy ahead of her, skimming through the souls of people all over the harborside area. Streets, cars, pubs, clubs, people at work, people at home. She wasn't gentle. She had the most awful feeling she was going to be too late.

She almost missed Jennifer when she did find her. Jennifer's soul was just a whisper, just a flicker, so faint Em nearly passed right over it.

Em landed beside Jennifer, the black smoke of her dark energy snapping back into her usual form in the blink of an eye. Jennifer was lying in the damp corner of a dark laneway that ended at the door of yet another dilapidated warehouse. Her cell phone had fallen out of her hand. It was still on, Em noticed, the call still connected to Em's phone back in the lab. It had only been a few moments since Em had left the laboratory, but for Jennifer it must have seemed so much longer. The cell phone's bright screen spilled a sad and incongruous light over the dying woman.

"Jennifer," Em said, quietly. She knelt quickly and put her arms around the woman, pulling her onto her knees. She hugged her close and looked sadly at the deep gashes and bruises over her friend's body.

Jennifer stared up at Em with a puzzled look on her face. Em could see Jennifer's eyes were deeper than they'd ever been, her soul was close to the surface, twisting gently and slowly like a single autumn leaf on a twig. Jenn was cold, very cold, and it wouldn't be long now.

"Em?" said Jennifer. "How did you..."

"Shhh..." said Em quickly. "Don't worry about that. Everything's going be okay now." She rocked Jennifer gently back and forward, slowly and lovingly, wishing with all her heart it didn't have to be like this.

"It was that girl," said Jennifer urgently, "from the club." She coughed and Em felt a gush of blood run out of Jennifer's neck and over the arm Em had around her shoulders. "She's not ...."

But Em shushed her. "I know, Jennifer. I know all about her. And don't worry, she'll pay for this Jenn. I promise you that."

Em realized a tear had landed on Jennifer's forehead.

"I'm going to die, aren't I?" said Jennifer.

Em said nothing for a moment as a few more tears fell onto her friend. She nodded.

"It hurts," said Jennifer in a small voice. She sounded like a child, and suddenly Em knew what she had to do.

She allowed a little wave of dark energy to ripple softly over Jennifer. It was like a mist, or a fog, and it curled around Jennifer's body until it covered her completely. Em strengthened it a little, gently, so as not to hurt her friend, and then she commanded it to settle deep down within Jennifer's body.

Jennifer shivered for a moment, and then her eyes cleared a little. The energy absorbed her pain. Em could feel it, stabbing and burning. She gathered up the pain and stored it away for a while. She had a feeling she might find a use for it later.

She brushed Jennifer's hair back from her forehead, tucked it carefully behind her ear. Then she gently wiped away the tears that had begun to pool in the corner of Jennifer's eyes. From the hollowness and emptiness she felt in the pit of her stomach Em searched for a smile to give her friend. She hoisted the smile onto her face and tried to shine all her love right through it.

Jennifer's chin quivered. "I'm frightened," she said.

Em hugged Jennifer one more time and then smoothly pushed her energy into her friend's mind. She filled Jennifer's mind with warmth and light and whispered softly, "It's going to be okay, Jennifer. You'll see. It's going to be beautiful."

Em found the single silken thread that kept Jennifer's soul tethered to her body. She wrapped her mind around it. She reached back into Jennifer's thoughts and pulled forward all the happy memories she could find - childhood memories, her mother's embrace, the teddy bear she slept with till she was twelve, the flowers her grandmother grew, the roses her first boyfriend had bought her, a beach party, a favorite dress, the smell of warm fresh bread, the taste of chocolate, good times with friends...

Em looked down at Jennifer. Her face was calm, her breathing had slowed. There was the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

Em cut the thread.

Jennifer's soul flew up and out of sight, and Jennifer's mind shut down. Em choked back a sob. She lay her friend's body carefully back down on the ground and stood up.

"Raeisa!" she called, with all the fury she could summon.

* * *

Raeisa slithered out of the warehouse. The dress of reptilian scales had gone. It appeared to have dissolved into skin and spread to cover her entire body. She was naked, covered from head to toe in green scales, and her red hair tumbled loosely down around her shoulders. The snake patterned fingernails had hardened into long, sharp claws. Raeisa was still human in shape, but she was plainly more lizard than she was girl. She was also taller than she was before, and she swung her naked scaly hips with careless seduction. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

"You didn't even take her, did you?" she said scornfully, stepping over Jennifer's body without even a glance. She walked in a slow circle around Em, smirking as she took in the redness in Em's eyes and the sorrow on her face.

"You didn't even feed off her soul. A beautiful, fat, stupid soul like that one and you just let it go." Raeisa laughed and touched a finger to the blood that was running from her lip. She opened her mouth as she wiped off the smear and then, walking around to face Em over Jennifer's body, she licked the blood from her finger and looked at Em through half closed eyes. "Don't you find it dull, Emilia?" She strung out the syllables in Em's name mockingly. "Or do you like playing by the rules? Don't tell me you never indulge on a weakling every now and then?"

"What are you?" said Em, quietly.

Raeisa smiled and put her hands on her hips. "I'm a halfling," she said. Her smile quirked downwards into a lewd smirk and she drew out the next words slowly watching Em closely to see if they had the desired effect. "Just like you."

Em sucked in a quick breath. She was going to devour Raeisa, but she wanted to know a little more first.

"How did you do it?" she asked.

"Do what?" said Raeisa, in an amused tone. "Oh, you mean drain my way through the sweetest tasting men this city has? Used to have, I mean." She giggled. "I started small, of course. I believe you met my first few meals."

Em snorted. "You mauled them."

"I was a little messy at first, I will admit. It took me awhile to figure out where the nerve centers were. And then I made an interesting discovery... All that lovely heat that comes out of the human body when it's aroused. Very warming for a lizard like me, and it concentrates the energy in the soul in such a delicious manner..."

"You're sick," spat Em.

"I am what I am," Raeisa spat back, suddenly angry. "It's not my fault they made me this way."

They? Em stiffened. They who? Not the Family, no one she knew about. And if 'they' had made Raeisa, they might have made others like her. Where? How?

Em shook her head. She couldn't think about that now. Raeisa was strutting around her again, widening the circle, inviting Em to take a place out in the middle of the lane, setting the field of battle. And she was licking her lips with too many kinds of hunger. Em's patience ran out.

"You're nothing like me," spat Em, and gathered her dark energy for the attack. It took only a millisecond, but somehow Raeisa was quicker. The lizard girl blinked and suddenly the headache that had been plaguing Em for weeks exploded into agony inside her head. It was like Raeisa had thrust a burning poker through her eye. The front half of her mind was on fire and Em's hands rose automatically to clutch at her forehead.

Raeisa sprang, claws on both hands and feet out and pointed at Em's torso. Em was blinded by the pain in her head and Raeisa's attack caught her completely off guard. The lizard's talons plunged deep into her human flesh and the weight of the girl pushed them both back into the gutter. Em's head hit the pavement with a bone crashing thud. Raeisa stepped casually off Em, planted her feet solidly on the ground and raked her claws downwards through Em's body, an unholy smile twisting her face as she did so.

Em screamed and felt the human side of her boil with pain. Breathlessly she scrabbled around re-gathering her energy, and as Raeisa raised her hands for a second strike, Em dissolved into smoke and flew out of her grasp.

The pain in her head was so great she was forced to take human form again within moments and she reappeared a few meters behind Raeisa.

The lizard looked confused for a moment as her prey disappeared beneath her talons, but she turned around with a haughty smile and began to walk slowly towards Em again.

"Nice trick, vampire," Raeisa purred. "Don't think it's going to save you though."

Em sucked in air and blinked madly as if it could help clear the pain behind her eyes. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten about the headache. She couldn't believe she hadn't seen what was right in front of her all along. Raeisa had been there every time this headache had become unbearable. And like an idiot Em had flown to her best friend's rescue without even thinking that Raeisa would be waiting for her.

Her eyes flicked to Jennifer lying on the pavement behind Raeisa. In a second she bundled up the pain she had taken from Jennifer just before she died. It took far more concentration than it should have. The throbbing agony in her mind was making even breathing difficult. Em knew she had to stop this headache or she would never be able to fight back properly. Her human form was useless, her dark energy hampered by whatever power Raeisa was wielding.

Raeisa was standing in front of her now, a look of triumph on her face, her hand raised, claws outstretched. This was it, thought Em.

Em drew in every atom of strength she possessed and threw the tightly wound ball of Jennifer's pain at Raeisa. She staggered as it left her. She stumbled forward, held out a hand to catch herself and with the other hand still clamped to her forehead could only hope that it had worked.

Above her Raeisa groaned, and a second later the pain in Em's head flickered out like a candle.

Em's eyes snapped open. It was like drinking in pure oxygen, ice cold water flowing through her veins, white hot power cursing up her spine. Instantly, Em's dark energy pulsed out like an explosion and sucked in power from every solid thing around her. Utterly recharged and rippling with energy, Em grinned.

Slowly, Em stood up straight and raised her eyes to meet Raeisa's.

The lizard girl stared back for a moment, her green eyes still defiant. Then way, way too late, Raeisa read the dangerous message written in Em's eyes. Her face changed as is someone had slapped her. The smugness fell away and was replaced by an empty kind of horror. She whimpered.

"Bites, doesn't it?" said Em, softly.

The girl took a few steps backwards, panic beginning to build in her body. She stumbled, her hands flapped at her sides, her head shook from side to side as if she didn't want to believe what she was seeing.

"Run," breathed Em.

Raeisa lunged away from Em in terror, but Em slipped into dark matter and encircled the lizard girl in exactly the same moment. It was like squashing a bug, thought Em, as she wrapped her dark energy tighter and tighter around the squealing girl.

Part of Em watched Raeisa's struggles dispassionately. She intensified the layer of dark energy around the lizard girl, pushing all the fear and pain she could into the net that entrapped her. Raeisa was howling, spinning and twisting in agonized horror, her own supernatural energy beginning to glow under the torture that Em was forcing on her. Em dragged her energy deep into Raeisa's being and ripped and tore her way through to the girl's core. There was her soul at last, an ugly black thing pulsing at the center of Raeisa's existence. Em gathered her power and sharpened it ready to attack. She wanted Raeisa to feel every single one of the gashes that had rent her friend Jennifer's body.

Jennifer.

Suddenly Em stopped. She looked at the being that twisted in pain in front of her, and she looked at the body of her friend lying in the damp blackness of the road.

Em sighed, then snorted wryly. Look what you've done to me, Jennifer, she thought. You, and Nick, and Robert. Humans, in general. What am I doing? I'm a monster.

In a moment, all the lethal, vicious revenge dissolved inside Em. Sure, the hatred was still there, and she was still going to waste this psychopathic lizard hybrid in front of her, but the fun suddenly went out of it. Em realized she was tired. Tired of all the death she'd seen lately, all the pointless, stupid deaths. She'd been dealing in death for nearly a thousand years, and it had taken a bunch of mortal human friends to teach her that life was more important. More ... enjoyable. More ... meaningful.

Did that make her human? Em wondered. Is this what my mother felt? Is this why her father had loved her human mother? Is this why Em was even alive in the first place? Em stopped at that thought. That was way too much to deal with right now. But the thought warmed her. I'm becoming more human, she thought. I like it.

Em dropped Raeisa onto the road, reached into her chest and pulled her heart out.

Em watched Raeisa's blood ooze slowly down the road tracing a crack in the old bitumen. She drew in a long, slow breath, shut her eyes and tilted her head back. Raeisa's life force, or what passed for her soul, was still hanging around her flesh. Em's dark energy sniffed at it. It really was as hideous as Raeisa had been in life. She thought about devouring it, and then found she couldn't. She didn't eat junk food.

She had a better idea.

Em spread out a net of dark energy, a web of black smoke and snagged the monster's soul as it tried to pass. Raeisa's essence rippled and fought against the net, but Em hauled it tighter and tighter until the thrashing soul was compacted down to a sphere about the size of Em's fist.

Em held out her hand and the soul sphere dropped into it. Green and silver streaks of color swirled around inside it. There was a malevolence about it still, but Em frowned at it and the sphere hardened into a shining ball of black glass.

She tossed it once into the air and caught it lightly. She'd give it to Jarek. Let him take it home to the Family and see what they made of it. Let Jarek prize the soul back out again and tease Raeisa's secrets from her. Perhaps she'd give away her masters then. Em knew Jarek and her father could be very persuasive.

Footsteps suddenly echoed further up the alleyway. Em sent out a flicker of energy to see who was coming, then sighed and began drawing in the rest of her dark matter.

Robert and Nick both exploded around the corner of the alleyway, and skidded to a stop a few meters from Em. Both men had worn expressions of intense concern on their faces as they turned the corner, but Em found herself almost amused by the speed at which those expressions spun through concern, confusion, alarm, surprise, disbelief and bewilderment as they took in Em and the body on the ground in front of her.

She smiled at them. "Hi boys," she said lightly. She knew she was still trailing bits of dark energy, and she knew she was covered in blood, but what did that matter when there was a dead lizard-woman at her feet?

Nick's eyes were flicking from Raeisa to Em and back down again, the frown on his face growing deeper and deeper.

"You're covered in blood," he said.

"Yeah. I know."

"What happened?"

"I stopped the killer," Em said simply.

Nick's eyes went back down to the lizard at her feet, and she saw his face crumple as his mind tried to accept what he saw there. Poor Nick. This was a long way from his comfort zone, further even than his girlfriend trying to drink his soul. It had been a rough few days for Nick. She kind of felt sorry for him.

She turned her eyes to Robert. For some reason Em found she was worried about what Robert might think. He'd managed to get his expressions under control, and was looking at Em carefully, studying her face, his eyes moving out to gaze at the air beside her head.

"You're ... bleeding," he said, gesturing at the side of Em's head, though his eyes were focused on something in the space next to her face.

"No, I'm not," said Em. "All this blood is from her." She nudged the body with her toe.

"I don't mean blood," Robert said, pointing again. "You're ... leaking."

Em put a hand up to the side of her face and realized she'd been scratched. Not her physical body, but her dark matter had been ripped. She could feel it now - a rent in her matter and form that she hadn't noticed in the heat of the fight. She smothered a sudden giggle. The gash in the side of her face was probably spilling black smoke and the stars and darkness of the void. No wonder the two men looked so freaked out.

Her hand cupped the side of her face and healed the wound. When she pulled her hand down the gash was gone. She saw the surprise in both men’s expressions.

'It's fine," she said.

Robert took a step toward Raeisa. He was bending down as he moved. Em could tell he was busting to examine the creature and smiled to herself.

"No," she said, quietly. "Sorry Robert." And with another nudge of her toe she disintegrated Raeisa's body and scattered her atoms with a little kick. "Can you imagine the paperwork?" she said.

Neither man returned her smile. Em sighed. She didn't want to leave this little life she'd made for herself, she'd been so comfortable here, but this was looking like a total disaster. Even if she hadn't thoroughly offended both men this week, this scene was likely to make them both run screaming. She ran a hand through her hair and began gathering her energy. She'd have to re-write a few things in their minds...

"So, what's a bit of paperwork?" said Nick slowly. He was looking at Robert with one eyebrow raised. "We do paperwork all the time. Paperwork for this, paperwork for that. We could do a little more, couldn't we, Robert?"

Robert was still staring at Em, but he had tilted his head toward Nick as he listened to him. There was the glimmer of a smile around the corners of his lips. It was a wry smile, Em noticed, but it was a start.

"My speciality, actually," said Robert. "Though I'm not entirely sure any paperwork would be needed in a situation like this."

"No paperwork?" asked Nick.

"Well, there's no body, is there? There's a fair amount of blood of course, but if Em..."

He glanced down at the blood and then meaningfully up at Em. She stared for a moment and then smiled broadly. With a whisper of dark energy the blood on the road was gone. So was the blood on Em's clothes.

"Oh, l must have been seeing things. There's no blood after all." Robert paused for a moment and then took a step closer to Em. "You have a bit of explaining to do Em, but maybe that can wait for a while. That was your friend over there, wasn't it?" He nodded toward Jennifer's body where it lay just outside the warehouse door.

Em felt a huge rush of emotion well up somewhere between her throat and the back of her eyes. Yes, Jennifer had been her friend. And Em was thoroughly ashamed of herself for underestimating Robert and Nick. They had both just shown themselves to be stronger and truer than she had imagined. This was the side of humanity Em found so difficult, but so desirable. Friendship and loyalty. She'd worked hard to earn both, trashed them in selfish moments of her own stupidity, and then somehow won them back again by revealing her true self. It made no sense to her. Humans! This was why she loved them. Perhaps she did have a home here after all.

Robert put a hand on her shoulder.

"Go home, Em. Get some rest. Let Nick and me do this. We'll talk about it all later." He paused. "If you want to."

Em nodded. Wonderful Robert, she thought, ever the gentleman. I don't deserve this.

"How did you find me?" she asked.

"You left your phone on in the lab," said Nick gently. "We traced your last call. When it pointed here we knew something was wrong."

"Thanks," said Em.

"Now go!" Robert ordered.

Em grinned, spun herself into smoke and laughed at the boys' expressions as she flew down the lane.

* * *

Jarek was waiting for her in the darkness above the city.

"You could come back with me, you know," he said with a tone that seemed to indicate he knew she wouldn't.

She didn't answer him. She took the black glass sphere out of a pocket of time and space and gave it to Jarek. "Have fun with that," she said. "When you find out where she came from, I want to know."

Jarek purred. "My pleasure," he said. "You'll be waiting for me when I return?"

Em laughed and threw a punch of energy at Jarek that sent him spinning backwards through the blackness. She laughed again as he recovered himself and sped back to her, encircling her completely in his energy, whirling her around then gripping her tight.

"We're meant for each other, Emilia," he growled. "You and me for eternity."

She shrugged. "Maybe." She smiled to soften the blow. "Now get out of here."

Note from the Author

Thanks for reading Cause of Death: Unnatural. I hope you enjoyed it!

About the Author

Eliza Ford lives in Sydney, Australia with her daughter and a cat called Kwazee.

With a gaggle of non-fiction books under her belt (under a different pen-name), this is Eliza's first foray into fiction since her high school days.

She's currently busy writing the next book in this series – Cause of Death: Supernatural. It's coming soon.

If you are interested in receiving emails when she releases new books, please sign up for her mailing list by visiting www.elizaford.com  and leave a note on the 'contact' page.

Copyright 2013 – Eliza Ford

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

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Ford Eliza Cause of Death: Unnatural