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CHAPTER1
The music pulsed through Caro Kavenaugh, the heavy bass thumps rattling her spine and vibrating her brain. The excruciating volume made her want to curl in on herself to escape the assault to her eardrums, exactly like the flashing lights made her want to rip the strobes from the ceiling.
With a quick, terse mental reminder of why she stood at the darkened end of the bar, she took a performative sip of her drink and grimaced at the intense alcohol spike which lingered on her tongue.
Damn her vampire senses. None of them were left unaffected here. In her nasal passages mixed the coppery tang of humans with the lingering funk of sweat, piss, vomit, beer, lust, and fear. The miasma clung to her senses like muck, and bile rose in her throat.
Steel stiffened her spine and banished her desire to find a quiet hole to climb into and pull the dirt over her head. Hopefully, the intelligence she’d garnered from her contact at Hebert Security would pan out. With any luck, the bastard would come back here, overconfident by his successes.
Her gut tingled with the certainty she would score tonight, a holdover from her human days when ignoring her sixth sense had meant bad things would happen. She drew her tongue over her fang, delighting in the prick of the lethal point against the soft tissue.
Of course, the information would be correct. Just like Hebert’s intel expert, Cheese, had found the warehouse for the clan’s biggest blood smuggler. Never had destroying someone’s livelihood felt so good. Next, she’d find and target his farm, the place where he housed his imprisoned humans and human paranormals to steal their blood. She’d already found two other blood smuggler’s farms and freed the captives, turning them over anonymously to the clan’s security. That no news had leaked outside the king’s law enforcement unit of the horrors perpetrated within those walls bitterly offended her sense of justice.
She took another sip of her drink, the bitter tang better than the sour taste in her mouth. King Kriann claimed he wanted to eradicate the abuses clan members made against what many believed to be weaker, less worthy beings. Yet neither he, his security arm, nor the King’s Blood Authority wanted to publicize what she’d allow them to take credit for, as if freeing nearly five hundred humans and human paranormals then gift-wrapping the evidence was nothing.
Capturing the demon or vampire perpetrator at this club should be no problem, but how long would she wait for the asshole to show? She’d been here since eleven, when the patrons were beginning to arrive, confident the killer would use the volume of bodies to hide the crime. She pulled her phone from the bag which she’d slung cross-body. Dammit. One thirty-four. The place would close soon.
She swept the patrons once more, searching with her predator senses for the tell-tale lack of an aura a paranormal would exhibit. She wouldn’t mind the differentiation, except now she had a personal heat-identification unit for humans and human paranormals she couldn’t turn off. When she had asked her supervisor after she transitioned how to manage the effect, the bastard laughed and asked why she’d want to give up one of the gifts she’d been given to hunt for her food.
He’d been the second vampire she’d killed.
Half-way down the circular bar, her gaze snagged on a human who eyed her with appreciation. After the sweep of his eyes lingered on her body, he returned his focus to her, and he raised a glass.
She had no time to waste on a man when she came out tonight to identify and stop a cold-blooded paranormal killer, no matter how tall, dark, and scrumptious the human might be. No matter how his lazy perusal of her body made her breasts tingle with anticipation of the way his firm lips might kiss and tease them. Or how they might feel against her pussy. No. Later, maybe, she could return to the bar to see if he was a regular, control his mind to not see her fangs, and she could find out if his promise lived up to action.
The dismissive glare she sent him didn’t seem to work like with at least a dozen others over the course of the last couple of hours. He rose from his barstool and approached her.
Cold reality brought her to attention.
She’d been wielding a façade designed to ward off humans from approach by making them believe she’d cruelly rebuff them out of hand. Thus far, her mental ability extinguished any interest. Yet her mind control efforts didn’t work on him, a being her senses lit up as food.
He may not be from Clans Sanguis, Fae, Magic, or Shifter, but he presented no less a threat. If her glamour didn’t deter him, then he must be from Clan Human Paranormal. She could still feed from him—in fact, HPs’ blood was a demon or vampire’s nosh of choice. However, he had unknown psychic powers which could affect paranormals. Telekinesis? Truth detection? Clairvoyance? The power to compel others? Those and more could all be found in the clan’s ranks. To avoid disaster, she needed to be ready.
She assessed him during his approach. The white button-down he wore highlighted his tanned skin and contrasted against the elegant blazer over top. His graceful gait and hungry gaze reminded her of a jungle cat who eyed a tasty meal. She returned the favor, taking in his form in a long sweep she designed to appear flirtatious.
No bulges under his armpits and the slacks at his ankles didn’t hitch, which indicated he probably didn’t strap weapons at those locations. Damn his blazer. He could easily conceal a gun with spelled bullets, ones which could temporarily incapacitate a vampire, or even a fae silver blade, which could kill her for sure by removing her heart.
Dammit. He could be the lure for the demon or vampire who attacked these women. She put a lid on her simmering frustration. She’d have to deal with him to determine if she owed this encounter to chance or purpose.
She had to act the prowling female role in the past and this would be no different. If he could see past the bitch mask she wore, at least she’d chosen a long, auburn wig to cover her wavy, honey-blonde hair and bright green contacts to cover her dark brown irises.
Her gaze sharpened on his own eyes, an even darker brown than hers. The color almost matched his pupils, a suggestion he had demon heritage mixed into his human. Made sense if he hung around the North American Clan Sanguis capital, though demons didn’t usually acknowledge their bastard offspring, especially HPs.
The whole survey took less than five seconds while he moved from his position to stand in front of her. The aura of his power surrounding him buffeted her at this proximity and brought her to a DefCon One alert. The energy also seemed to trigger an unconscious reaction in others, since the man who’d been crowding her earlier gave the HP a good three feet without even sparing a glance.
Caro couldn’t show her tension to him. She hid her uncertainty by draining the bourbon in the glass she’d been nursing. The hunger in his gaze as she watched him over the rim shot a little thrill straight to her core, heating her to a liquid state. She gave herself a mental shake and hardened her barriers. Her immediate sexual reaction to him must mean he could plant suggestions. Even more probability he could be a suspect in the murders which Clan Sanguis’s Security or the King’s Blood Authority didn’t want to acknowledge occurred.
With a hardened heart, girded loins, and an even more fortified mental wall, she placed her empty glass on the counter. On her lips she formulated a small, sexy pout.
He leaned close to her ear, and she fought the urge to take him down. The image of her landing atop him, straddling those narrow hips, had to be shoved from her mind.
“Looks like I arrived just in time. May I buy you a drink?”
His rough, suede voice, pitched low enough over the thumping music to require such proximity, sent hot shivers spiraling through her. Instead of melting into a puddle of goo, she sent a siren’s smile over her shoulder. “Bourbon. Up.”
Without breaking eye contact with her, he flicked two fingers from where they rested on the counter. From her peripheral vision, the bartender hustled over. “What can I get you, sir?”
The HP’s gaze bored into hers, seeming to strip her bare without touching her. Nerves danced across her shoulders and shimmied down her spine. She broke the intimate contact, something she’d never done before with a mark, turning her attention to the bartender.
