The body had been discovered in Melton, a suburb on the very outskirts of Melbourne. It had a reputation for being a rough area, but as I drove through the streets heading for Navan Park, it looked no worse than any other suburb. But maybe this section of Melton was the so-called better area. Every suburb had them.
I drove along Coburns Road until I saw the Directorate van parked at the side. I stopped behind it but didn’t immediately get out.
Because my hands were shaking.
I can do this, I thought. I just didn’t want to.
There was a difference. A big difference.
So why did it still feel like fear?
I took a deep, calming breath, shoved aside the insane desire to drive away, and opened the door, climbing out. Dawn had given way to a crisp, cool morning, but the sky was almost cloudless and the promise of warmth rode the air, caressing my skin.
The scent of blood was also rich in the air.
I locked the car and made my way through the park gates, following the path up the slight incline until the blood smell pulled me onto the grass and toward the group of gum trees that dominated the skyline. The grass crunched under my feet, evidence of how little rain we’d had of late, and the sound carried across the silence.
A figure appeared on the hilltop above and gave me a brief wave before disappearing again. The sharp glint of silvery hair told me it was Cole, and while I might not have missed coming to bloody crime scenes, I had missed Cole and his men.
I crested the hill and paused to survey the scene below. The body lay to the left of the trees, half ringed by scrubby-looking bushes that would have offered the killer little in the way of protection. Several yards beyond the trees was a lake in which ducks and toy boats floated. Kids ran around the edges of the water, oblivious to the cops stationed nearby.
I watched one little girl laugh as she chased a red ball that was rolling along the ground. With her blond pigtails and pale skin, she reminded me of Risa, Dia’s daughter and the little girl who’d saved my life. She’d begun calling me Aunt Riley, and in my worst nightmares, I sometimes thought that this was as close as I was ever going to get to having a child of my own.
Because of my own inability to carry children, and because my soul mate was dead. The picket fence dream was dead. At least, the version of it that had carried me through childhood was.
I blinked back the sting of tears and forced my gaze back to the body, trying to concentrate on the business of catching a killer. The victim was naked, his flesh sallow and sagging—the body of an old man, not a young one. There were no obvious wounds from what I could see, but Cole was kneeling beside him and obstructing my view of his upper body.
I drew in the air, tasting death and blood and something else I couldn’t quite name. I frowned as I moved down the hill. Strong emotions could stain the air, and hate was one of one of the strongest, but this didn’t quite taste like that. It was edgier, darker. Harsher.
If I had to guess, I’d say it tasted more like vengeance than hate. And the killer had to be feeling it in spades for it to linger in the air like this.
Cole glanced up as I approached, a smile crinkling the corners of his bright blue eyes. “Nice to see you back on the job, Riley.”
“I’d love to say it’s nice to be back,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets so he couldn’t see them shaking,
“but that would be a lie.” I pointed with my chin to the body. “What have we got?”
My gaze went past him as I asked the question, and the method of our victim’s demise became starkly obvious. Someone had strangled him—with barbed wire. His neck was a raw and bloody mess, the wire so deeply embedded that in places it simply couldn’t be seen. That took strength—more than most humans had.
But why would a nonhuman want to strangle a human with wire? Hell, most nonhumans could achieve the same result one-handed.
Unless, of course, our killer didn’t only want death, but pain as well.
Which would certainly account for the bitter taste of vengeance in the air.
I knew about vengeance. Kye’s death had been an act of vengeance as much as it had been a requirement of my job. He’d been a killer—a ruthless, cold-blooded murderer. And yet he’d made my wolf soul sing, and she still ached for him.
Would probably always ache for him.
Cole offered me a box of gloves, forcing me to take a hand out of my pocket. If he noticed the shaking, he didn’t say anything.
“As you can see, he’s been strangled,” he said. “He’s probably been dead for about five hours, and there’s no sign of a struggle.”
“Meaning he was probably drugged beforehand.” I couldn’t imagine anyone not fighting such a death. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t conscious or feeling every brutal bit of it.
“Or,” Cole said grimly, “that he was killed somewhere else and dumped here. There’s very little blood on the ground.”
I snapped on a pair of gloves then walked around to the opposite side of the body, squatting near the victim’s neck. The bits of wire that weren’t embedded or bloody shone brightly in the growing sunshine. “The wire looks new.”
“Yeah. And we’ve got very little chance of tracing it back to the source.”
Not when barbed wire was still a staple fencing material for most farms—and Melton, despite being a suburb of Melbourne, was surrounded by farms of one kind or another. I touched the victim’s chin lightly, turning his head away from me so that I could see the back of his neck. The wire appeared just as deeply embedded at the back as it was the front. I wouldn’t mind betting it had severed vertebrae.
“Who discovered the body?”
“Anonymous phone call.” I raised my eyebrows at that, and he grinned. “Line trace said the call came from 12
Valley View Road. That’s the white brick house above the lake.”
I twisted around and looked at the row of neatly kept houses that lined the park. The curtains twitched in 12
Valley View, indicating we were being watched.
“Have the police interviewed the owner?”
“The police weren’t called first. We were.”
I frowned. “That’s a little unusual, isn’t it?”
He reached forward and plucked a bloody thread from one of the wires, putting it in a plastic bag before saying
“Not when you’re reporting that the killer is a red-faced demon.”
That raised my eyebrows. “Really?”
“Seriously.” His gaze met mine. “My normal response would be to suggest the witness’s alcohol intake might have been a little high, but Dusty found cloven hoofprints. Which supports the whole demon thing.”
A laugh escaped, then I realized he was being serious. “But demons don’t have cloven hooves.”
“That we know of. But there’s no saying there isn’t a branch out there that has.”
“I guess that’s true.” I shifted, my gaze sweeping the park. Neither Dusty nor Dobbs was in sight, and the morning was filled with the sound of children’s laughter. It was a happy noise that seemed so out of place given the brutality that lay at our feet—although we’d certainly seen far worse over the years. And done worse. Like shooting a soul mate. I bit my lip for a moment, using one sort of pain to control another, then added, “Anything else worth knowing?”
“Nothing obvious at the moment. I’ll send you the report as soon as it’s done.”
“Thanks.” I rose and pulled off the gloves.
And that’s when I felt it—the rush of power, the chill of death. There was a soul here.