Tempting the Enemy (28 page)

She blinked, giving the tiniest shudder as she refocused from the nightmare to the facts. “He took them from their beds. Snatched them right out of their lives, without warning. They woke up in the dark, naked on cold metal tables, already fearing him, even as they tried to curse him. It was no use. They were all powerless against him.

“Once he had them, he cut them while they were still alive. Bled them slowly,” she continued, her husky voice flat and emotionless. Nothing like the vibrant being who’d spent hours twining his emotions around her soft body.

“He took their
volos
first, to strip away the symbol of their power.”

The mark, he guessed, confirming it when she clasped her hand over hers.

“You’re not answering the question.” And it was an important one. He needed all the pieces to the puzzle if he were going to help her. Hell, to find out if he
could
. If not, he didn’t care who he might have to fight to take her somewhere safe. He’d kill each and every member of her damn Order if he had to.

Dee Tenorio

245

She sat perfectly motionless, keeping the lines of her body close. Ankles and knees pressed together, hands now lowered onto her lap. Her scarlet pose. Emotionless.

Peaceful. Eerily still. Pale closed his fingers into fists so as not to shake her. She couldn’t be his Wolf right now, no matter how much he wanted her to be.

“How can it be a man if males can’t use power?”

“Just because males can’t manifest gifts doesn’t mean they can’t
contain
power.” She lifted her head, pride sharpening every rigid line of her. “The Sibile are
meant
to be powerful beings, all of us. I don’t know if it was always like this or if the breeding practices made the men this way, but Sibile men are essentially empty vessels.

Empty vessels can be used. Sons are either mated, relegated to work, or cast out upon maturity. I believe a castoff has learned how to fill an empty vessel.”

Pale actually felt the color leach from his face.
The
women were drained… Our power is in the blood…

Jade nodded again, her golden eyes haunted. Now he knew why. “He’s cannibalizing them to fill himself, using stolen gifts to trap the next victim. And the next. And the next.”

Pale ran both hands through his hair, almost wishing nothing like this had ever crossed his path. But if it hadn’t, he wouldn’t have her… “How many gifts are we talking about here. Four scarlets…” Shit,
one
had decimated a stone compound.

“He’s taken more than four because he’d never have been able to get
them
if there hadn’t been others first.

These four were strong and they’d had no chance. The only way for him to handle that much power is if he’s a vessel the size of a Rouge. And before you ask, a Rouge’s range is…unspeakable.”

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Pale allowed himself a second or two to think. “Why is he killing Wolves, then? They can’t give him anything.”

Jade shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he kills the scarlets for the power that he uses to kill for pleasure. I think it’s safe to say he’s precognitive, though. It explains how he knew where they’d be on those nights. How he knew someone was coming for him.”

All those girls, killed for sport. It would fit with the killer’s tendency to abandon the bodies the way a child did his broken toys. That was almost worse than dying in the genocide. The prospect that they’d never had a chance to catch him didn’t make him feel any better. “Why would someone with that kind of…capacity—” the concept still sounded strange, “—be cast out?”

She didn’t seem to have any solid answers. “It’s difficult to say. The Order may have felt he wasn’t controllable or compatible. He might have had reproductive difficulties. There might simply have been too many males for the available females and he wasn’t chosen. There are a million reasons to reject a male.”

Pale almost felt a smile tug the corner of his lips. At least some things about women were universal.

But the thought wasn’t light enough to remove him from the grim truth of what they faced. Whatever this bastard’s reason, he was out there and he was hunting scarlets. Likely hunting
Jade
, whether he knew if she was on the case yet or not. He was waiting for the next scarlet and he’d been a step ahead of them every moment of this sick game.

Pale refused to allow his mate to become another victim.

Dee Tenorio

247

“Let’s get you back to your enclave then. You can tell your Tribunal what you’ve found. It’s a Sibile matter.

Let them handle him.”

She moved her head to the side once in each direction, her eyes telling him she knew what he was trying to do. “Even if they believed me, there’s no way of knowing how or when his justice would come. How many others of the Order will he kill before it happens? How many unsuspecting Wolves?” She tilted her head, a gleam in her eye just this side of feral. “You’re hunting him, making
you
his enemy. That makes you the Order’s enemy as well.”

He reeled back. “How the hell does that work?”

“The Tribunal will not allow you or anyone else to know anything about them, least of all something like this. If it got out that all any male needed to do was wait for a scarlet to pass and steal her life, our society would fall into chaos. This knowledge is sacred. They can never know that you understand what’s happened.”

She reached into a pocket on the side of her pants, pulling out a small cloth pouch he recognized from the day she’d set her hand on fire. It held the largest of her gems, a diamond so large, clear and flawless he wouldn’t have believed it was real if he hadn’t held it in his hand.

She held out to him. “My mother left this for me, she said it would protect me. I know you hate these, but I want you to keep it.”

The hair on the back of his neck lifted again, not in warning so much as awareness. The lights overhead flared, the elements inside starting to jangle with strain.

He knew the energy was coming from her, magnifying through the stone she wasn’t even really touching. The determination on her face left no doubt. “Why?”

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“Because you’re as hunted as me now. Either he’ll kill you or they will. I can’t let that happen. If this stone is as powerful as she said, with you is where it belongs.”

She raised the pouch higher. “Please.”

Hers to protect.

Pale circled the bed and picked her up in his arms.

Her cheeks turned his favorite shade of red as he kissed her, his heart full of so many things he couldn’t say. Not yet. So he kissed her again and felt the rest of his soul become hers.

Chapter Seventeen

Pale didn’t like losing arguments. He stalked through the police station looking ready to bite people. Jade followed, her face in shadow from the hood of her cloak.

Which was good because he wouldn’t appreciate her smile as she watched him lead.

They’d argued about her wearing it the entire way over from his house. The cloak made her a target, he’d insisted. The cloak was her strongest defense, she’d reminded him, adding that she’d already been seen by Kroft. Better safe than dead. Pale kept fighting her until she climbed on his lap after he parked in the police lot, licking his lips as she promised to remain at his side while he tried more traditional means to identify the Woodsman.

If she didn’t have to track him herself, she’d have less chance of becoming a victim. The offer didn’t pacify him, but he knew he didn’t have much choice if he didn’t want her out on the street as a blindingly red target.

The people in the department gave her a wide berth, wider than the one given Pale. She decided to keep that gratifying bit of knowledge to herself. For now.

He indicated the chair in front of his desk with a grunt. She took the seat as if he’d pulled it out for her, hands folded as was proper. From under the shadow of the hood, she could watch him, bemused. If he needed to be commanding so he could feel a little more in control of the situation, she could stand it. The unlikely calm was still in her, leaving her temper blissfully asleep.

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“What are we looking at?” she asked when Pale shifted a stack of files her way on the desk.

“
You’re
not looking at anything.” He moved another stack. She finally realized he wasn’t offering her the files.

He was clearing the paper away from a scuffed and slightly dented computer. “I hate these things.”

“I’m sure the feeling is mutual,” she replied, watching him begin to type with hammer force. They didn’t have computers in the enclave, but she’d read about them in the books and magazines others had returned with. Somehow she’d pictured something a little more…stylish. Then again, she thought with a wince, perhaps Pale’s older, sturdier model was chosen by necessity. “How many of these do you crush in a year?”

He snarled openly.

“Pale.” The warning was little more than a breath.

She searched the room, reaching with her gift for a sense of alarm from anyone. The signatures remained as stable as before. Various shades of browns, blues, deep greens and grays flowed around people, same as before. She avoided looking at Jorgensen, even with the ease of power in her. She didn’t like his aura any more today than she had when they’d met. What kind of people did that man spend time with?

Since all was well, she centered her attention on Pale again, sending calming colors his way. There was more than the Woodsman case on the line here. Being a homicide detective was his livelihood. A core part of his existence. It wasn’t his fault she brought out the Wolf in him, but he couldn’t keep risking everything because of her.

Dee Tenorio

251

“Sorry.” He didn’t sound as though he meant it, but she accepted with a nod. “I’m doing some reverse-investigation. We could never get anywhere with the case because we had no leads on the killer and no leads on the victims. Nothing to connect them. But now we know what the victims were, we can try to see how they might relate to the places they were dumped.”

“Not dumped.
Placed
.” She tipped back the hood to meet his gaze. “He
wanted
them found. He wants to send the city into a frenzy, enough to contact the Order and request another Sibile. He’s sick, but he’s smart. Assume every step he takes has been vetted for counter-tactics. He believes he’s untouchable and every move is designed to bring him to the next gift.”

Pale paused in his typing. She could feel new arguments welling up in him.

“Try it and I’ll lick you again.”

The small grin on his lips made her bounce a little in her seat as he went back to whatever he was entering into the computer. “Might be worth it to keep Jorgensen from hitting on you.”

Her lips twisted and she shuddered.

His smile grew, creating a wholly different feeling to course through her. God, but the man was stunning.

“Most women fall all over themselves whenever he’s around.”

She looked over Pale’s shoulder grudgingly, finding the brawny blond already watching her intently. She glanced away quickly, unnerved. “Yes, well, they don’t see what I see.”

“What
do
you see?” He was reading his screen, flicking his arrow keys and frowning. She stared at him, bemused. He didn’t have a clue about his effect on her.

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The brand he’d left on her heart warmed as she looked at him. “The better choice.”

His eyes shifted from the screen and for a small, perfect moment, there was no case, no Tribunal, no danger to either of them.

Too soon the moment ended, broken when the computer beeped loudly.

He frowned, switching his attention to the screen. He pointed at it for her. “The cases are here. The residence where the last victim was found was the address of a kidnapping, three years ago. The liquor store was the site of a rape and murder six years ago. The fountain was where a body was found eight months ago. Scarlets were commissioned for each of them.” He tapped the arrow button on the bottom corner of his keyboard. “None of these cases are closed.”

Jade straightened. “How many cases involving scarlets are still open?”

He did more clicking and typing. “Nine, spread over the last fifteen years since our county started consulting with them. Including the Woodsman.” He stared at the screen, but she knew he wasn’t seeing it. “Failed scarlets.

A rejected Rouge…” He turned to face her, the movement so sharp she moved backward in response. “He’s punishing them.”

“What?”

“Stripping them of their gifts, right? Removing the tattoo. He’s ensuring they suffer, helpless, even after they die. It’s punishment for failure. They were given gifts, accepted into the society that rejected him, but they weren’t worthy. He kills them, then he rewards himself with their power.”

Dee Tenorio

253

And like any other Rouge, any other member of the Tribunal, he needed no one else to justify his decisions.

“His decree is law,” she whispered. They stared silently at each other, the probability that he was right sinking in.

“But having an idea what he’s doing doesn’t lead us to him,” Pale grumbled. “Not directly.”

“You can build a profile.” She considered where to start. “He’s someone with access to police files.”

“Someone with a strong sense of anatomy. The limbs were all bisected at specific points and joints. Perfectly,”

he added. “No easy feat with an axe.”

“He’d need medical supplies to do the draining efficiently. Somewhere they could do the cutting that no one would hear the screams.” A shadow of what the other scarlets had gone through rippled over her. Remembered fear led to another thought. The white Wolf from the night before. “Has anyone questioned Mitch Kroft?”

Pale’s eyes widened. “He’s a bastard, but he’s no murderer. And he’s a Wolf to the bone. There’s no way he was cast out of a Sibile enclave.”

“Didn’t you say he’s not from here? He could be a half-breed, like me. He wouldn’t tell you.”

Pale shook his head. “There’s no one like you.”