Loe raamatut: «Seduced by the Darkling»

Chapter One

Something dark whispered in the night.

As soon as the thought entered Jazlyn Adams’ head, she dismissed it. True the fog that was as thick and heavy as wet wool was a creepy addition to the crime scene that she was staking out. But that was a function of the weather, not something supernatural.

Still, the skin at the back of her neck felt as though icy fingers were dancing over it as she waited across the parking lot from the seedy motel that the police had just entered. She was part of a large group of media that had congregated, cameras and pens, tablets and smartphones in every hand. They were silent to a fault, muscles tensed, waiting for something—anything—to break the tension.

There was no need to talk—they’d all heard the same story on the police scanners they illegally manned. The skinny kid with the bad skin who manned the front desk had heard frantic screaming and cries for help coming from room 66. He’d been a brave kid, summoning up the courage to approach the door, even without knowing what horror lurked on the other side.

He hadn’t gotten there in time. Jazlyn was confident about that detail, because the kid in question was sitting on a concrete divider in the asphalt lot, dry heaving onto the gravel. A matronly woman in uniform crouched beside him, rubbing his back and speaking in a low murmur that Jazlyn couldn’t quite make out.

“Here they come!” The speaker was a portly man who stood chain smoking to Jazlyn’s right. He dropped his cigarette in his excitement, and Jazlyn tore her stare from the battered door across the lot to watch the ember flicker quickly from tangerine to ash. So easily extinguished—just like a life.

She squirmed uncomfortably and resumed her vigil. She was no stranger to the seedier part of humanity—she’d been a crime reporter for the Metropolis Gazette for nearly seven years and had peered into the black dregs of the human soul. But nothing had felt quite like this before.

Much as her rational reporter’s brain tried to reject it, her mind kept whispering the word evil over and over again in her mind.

Two police officers exited from the motel room, their faces grim. They conferred briefly with the woman attending to the witness, then removed their latex gloves and crossed the lot to where Jazlyn and her peers stood. There was a frenzy of movement as they each readied their recording devices.

Jazlyn smiled as she tugged her battered paper notepad and stubby pencil from the snug denim at her pocket. One of the cops was Ernie Loewen, her ex. She wasn’t sorry that their relationship had ended in her early twenties—he could be a mean son of a bitch. Why she had stayed with him for two years—why she had lived with him—she still didn’t know. He had had a change of heart, though, had softened up and even now had a wife and kid. That meant that he also felt guilt about how he had treated her, and so he snuck her extra info from time to time.

She expected that she’d get a little aside—a little extra information—after the official statement had been made.

“Unidentified female victim, dead on arrival. Death appears to have been caused by blood loss from trauma to the inner thigh, but this has not been confirmed. At this time, no motive or suspects for this crime have been identified, but it will be treated as a homicide. We urge any individual with information pertaining to this crime to come forward.” It was the taller man who spoke, and he was quickly barraged with questions from the ever-thickening crowd of reporters.

Word had gotten out, and everyone wanted a shred of the story.

Jazlyn caught Ernie’s eye and raised her left eyebrow in question. He nodded and gestured with his head for her to make her way to the left of the crowd. When she got there, he lifted up the yellow tape for her to duck under. The sticky side caught threads of her glossy brown hair, pulling the strands from her scalp.

“Ouch.” She winced as she straightened back up, her hand automatically reaching up to massage the tender skin.

“Are you okay?” Ernie’s hand was on her elbow instantly, his puppy dog-brown eyes full of concern, worry etching the lines around his mouth.

“I’m fine, Ernie.” Jazlyn sighed and hitched her massive leather satchel up further on her shoulder. She knew that he was just being nice, but sometimes he went a bit too far when he was trying to make up for their shady history. In fact, she sometimes suspected that if she even whispered the words, Ernie would leave his wife and child and come back to her just to right past wrongs.

It drove her a little bit nuts—and, perversely, now that he was nice she no longer found him attractive. It was her curse—she liked them tall, dark and dangerous.

Still, she forced a smile to her lips. He was being nice, and he was giving her story an edge that the others wouldn’t have—something that both she and they knew, judging by the grumbles that she could hear behind her, on the other side of the tape.

“So what’s up?” She stuffed her notepad back into her pocket. In her experience, recording devices of any kind made cops nervous. Even though they had a history, Ernie was no different.

“This is brutal. So brutal.” Ernie shuddered as he leaned in close to her. Jazlyn suspected that he sniffed the scent of her shampoo that clung to her hair as he did so, despite the dark situation surrounding them, and resisted the urge to shake her head.

“It’s like she was attacked by an animal. A big, wild animal.” Jazlyn watched her ex’s already pale skin turn even whiter. He shuddered, and his hand strayed to the gun that was strapped to his belt. The movement reminded Jazlyn of the icy fingers that had danced over her neck only moments earlier.

“Who is she?” This was the worst part of her job—putting a name to the body that had journeyed beyond life, and then later on a face and story to that name. The dead were never just stories to Jazlyn.

Ernie shook his head sadly, his fingers still tracing over the butt of his gun. “Jane Doe, for now. There’s no ID in the room, and she’s too mangled for an ID right now. We’ll have to check the missing person reports.”

“Wow.” Jazlyn had never worked a case where the victim was beyond recognition. There was always a face, a picture that could be shown around—even if the name took some time. “She bled out from the trauma, then?”

“No official word yet, but I can’t imagine that it would be anything else.”

“Anything else?”

“No. That’s it for now. You could call me later, see if there’s anything else,” he said in a hopeful voice. Jazlyn wouldn’t call him. The eagerness with which he broached the subject brought to mind thoughts of his wife and child and consequently made her sick to the stomach.

“Thanks, Ernie.” She held out her hand and cringed when he drew her into a stiff, one-armed hug that she retreated from as soon as she was able. “Maybe I’ll do that.”

Yeah...maybe. Or maybe not. Jazlyn shook her head as she made her way across the lot. It was time to head back to the office, anyway. She’d write up a quick article and send it to Bob, her editor, before she signed off for the night.

When she reached the edge of the parking lot, she looked back over her shoulder. The crowd of reporters was even larger now, and another cop had joined Ernie and his partner in the effort to satisfy their shouted questions.

One man drew her eye, and her feet drew to a halt as she caught his eyes. He stood at the edge of the crowd, his hands tucked deeply into the pockets of his long black peacoat. He was pale, so very pale, with hair black as night that hung lifeless around his face.

Though he didn’t fit in with the disheveled crowd of denim-clad rowdies who called themselves media, it wasn’t his attire that caught her attention. No, it was something more—the way he stood perhaps, so still that she wondered if he could be real. Or maybe it was the fact that he was watching her—watching intently—instead of trying to cajole more details about the dead woman from the police.

As she stood looking back at the man, her chin raised in defiance, she couldn’t help but feel the stranger was somehow responsible for the unease she felt. She took a few steps backward before turning and walking away as briskly as she could manage before breaking into a jog. No matter how she tried to shake it off, the sensation remained. She didn’t like it—she wasn’t easily spooked, and the feeling didn’t sit well with her.

She was distracted enough by it and by the man who seemed to have eyes only for her that she didn’t see the massive figure until she had walked right into him.

“Aah!” Jazlyn let loose with a shriek and swung her heavy satchel forward in defense. It connected solidly with a wall of flesh, and the person she had run into grunted.

Jazlyn looked up...and then up some more. The man standing in front of her was huge, and as she took in the incredibly well-muscled frame, the dark shadow on the strong jaw, the fall head of nut-brown hair, she couldn’t tell whether the spike of adrenaline fizzing through her veins was from the fright she’d gotten at finding that she wasn’t alone on the quiet street or from the wall of pure male that she had just smacked into.

He was looking down at her with the barest hint of amusement playing over the corners of his lips. She berated herself for being so jumpy.

“I’m so sorry. You just startled me.” Jazlyn crouched to retrieve the bag that now lay on the ground, scooping the pencils and loose change that had fallen out of it back into the depths of the leather. Embarrassment chased away her nerves, and she cringed as she realized that she had just assaulted a perfectly innocent person on the street.

“Apologies.” The barest hint of an accent that Jazlyn didn’t recognize caressed the word, and she had to focus hard on not drooling. She wasn’t in the habit of ogling strange men on the street, but this one was...wow. Just wow.

“It’s okay.” She heard the breathlessness in her own voice and cringed. She wasn’t a flirtatious woman, and never had been—she prided herself on being exactly as she presented herself. But then, she’d never come across a man who caused her to ache just by looking at him.

“You should be more careful.” The man’s voice held only the very slightest bit of chastisement, but it got Jazlyn’s back up.

“I already apologized.” Standing again, she swung her bag back over her shoulder and tried to look past the fact that she was very attracted to this man “My bad, okay?”

“Indeed.” There was that hint of amusement again. “I’m not referring to the fact that you don’t pay any attention to where you’re walking but to the neighborhood and the hour.”

Jazlyn squinted up into the man’s very nearly perfect face. His eyes were green, deep and dark but held no malice. As she scrutinized him, she realized that she felt none of the chill in his presence that she had when she’d looked at the black-haired man back at the crime scene.

“I appreciate your concern.” She couldn’t think of what else to say. “But I’m a big girl. I’ve got it covered.” The man didn’t reply—just continued to look at her as though he could see right into the very heart of her.

She didn’t like it, yet his very presence sent her hormones into a jitterbug. The combination was unsettling.

“K. Well. Sorry again.” Before she could make herself feel even more awkward, Jazlyn sucked in a deep breath and brushed past the man, though what she wanted to do was press him back against the building wall and wrap her legs around his waist while devouring his lips with her own. Heat suffused her skin as the image crowded her consciousness.

What was wrong with her? He was a stranger. A gorgeous one, yes, but she’d met many good-looking men in her life. Well, no matter. She’d never see him again.

She made her way straight home instead of heading to the office first—she was too shaken, and she could work from home. As the stranger had bade her, she was more cognizant of her surroundings than she had been. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was following her—or at the very least watching her.

No, she couldn’t shake that sensation, but as she reached the lobby door of her apartment building and slid gratefully inside, she realized that since she had run into stranger number two, she hadn’t been scared at all.