us.”
I closed my eyes, willing my pulse and heart rate to slow. Then his
strong arms were around me and Maximus’ scent was everywhere. “I’m sorry,
Jessa.” He held me tight enough to cause discomfort and I knew by the way he
continued to shake that he was full on freaking out.
“It’s okay, Max.” Braxton was behind us, I could feel him. “You stopped,
you didn’t hurt her.”
“I could have killed her,” he moaned.
I opened my eyes, meeting the deep brown of Maximus’. His anguish was
visible.
“Stop,” I said. “It was my own stupid fault. I know better than to jump
in between you all fighting.”
“Yes, you’re in big fucking trouble, Jessa.” Braxton’s voice had that
edge; he was close to losing control again. “And you are going to tell us what
happened with your parents. Clearly, it was something bad enough to make you
suicidal.”
Maximus still hadn’t put me down; he seemed unable to let go.
Jacob burst into the room then. All of our heads swiveled in his
direction.
“There’s been another death,” he said. “Someone killed a vamp.”
I exhaled. The quads might let me get away with my hedging on what had
happened with my family in the forest. Murder was a pretty big distraction.
As the
five of us ran toward the gathering in the forest, Braxton quizzed his brothers
hard, trying to determine the reason they’d decided to use each other’s faces
as a punching bag. The most we got out of them was that Maximus was defending
Mischa’s honor and Tyson was feeling a little distrustful toward the new
arrivals. Our stilted conversation halted as the stench of death reached us. We
were still a hundred yards from the scene. As we moved closer, the crowds came
into view; already there was a crowd of onlookers.
I found it a little odd that there were so many people around the corpse.
Generally the council would have cleared the evidence by now. I pushed through
the masses of supernaturals who were gathered in a circle around the kill zone.
I cursed as the scene came into focus. What the hell was going on? Vampires
were notoriously hard to kill. The constant influx of new blood gave them amazing
healing and regeneration abilities, but someone had cut off the victim’s head.
The body was slumped against the large roots of the redwood, and a long machete
had been speared through the skull, pinning it to the trunk.
“Is that Markus?” Jacob cursed. “Shit, he was like a hundred years old.”
Which meant whoever killed him had been strong and powerful, able to
resist his vampire compulsion. Not to mention crazy-as-hell, judging by the
scene we were seeing. Which was a scary concept.
“No blood and no bite marks.” Braxton was sidling closer for a better
look. “This is not the kill scene. He was moved.” He lowered his head close to
my ear. “Do you scent anything strange?”
I closed my eyes and tried to focus my nose on the scene, filtering out
all of the scents which had nothing to do with the murder. The most demanding
smell was still that of death. It was a recent kill so there wasn’t an
overpowering smell of decay and excrement, but it was still there. I wrinkled
my nose, moving past that to anything else strange. Forest smells and …
coconut.
“I smell coconut oil and something flowery,” I murmured as I opened my
eyes.
Braxton nodded, “Yes, coconut and lavender.”
He was right, they were was the underlying scents.
Why was that ringing with some familiarity in my head? That combination
was something I’d smelled before. I turned and saw Tyson. “Didn’t one of the
spells you used – to find the prison – use those two ingredients?”
“Yes,” Tyson bit out. “And it’s a spell I created. The scented oil was
designed as a trail marker to take us to the prison.”
I twisted my head back to the morbid scene. “Does that mean someone has
left us a trail to lead to the killer? Or are they trying to implicate Ty as
the killer?”
“Fuck!” Braxton
I closed my eyes, willing my pulse and heart rate to slow. Then his
strong arms were around me and Maximus’ scent was everywhere. “I’m sorry,
Jessa.” He held me tight enough to cause discomfort and I knew by the way he
continued to shake that he was full on freaking out.
“It’s okay, Max.” Braxton was behind us, I could feel him. “You stopped,
you didn’t hurt her.”
“I could have killed her,” he moaned.
I opened my eyes, meeting the deep brown of Maximus’. His anguish was
visible.
“Stop,” I said. “It was my own stupid fault. I know better than to jump
in between you all fighting.”
“Yes, you’re in big fucking trouble, Jessa.” Braxton’s voice had that
edge; he was close to losing control again. “And you are going to tell us what
happened with your parents. Clearly, it was something bad enough to make you
suicidal.”
Maximus still hadn’t put me down; he seemed unable to let go.
Jacob burst into the room then. All of our heads swiveled in his
direction.
“There’s been another death,” he said. “Someone killed a vamp.”
I exhaled. The quads might let me get away with my hedging on what had
happened with my family in the forest. Murder was a pretty big distraction.
As the
five of us ran toward the gathering in the forest, Braxton quizzed his brothers
hard, trying to determine the reason they’d decided to use each other’s faces
as a punching bag. The most we got out of them was that Maximus was defending
Mischa’s honor and Tyson was feeling a little distrustful toward the new
arrivals. Our stilted conversation halted as the stench of death reached us. We
were still a hundred yards from the scene. As we moved closer, the crowds came
into view; already there was a crowd of onlookers.
I found it a little odd that there were so many people around the corpse.
Generally the council would have cleared the evidence by now. I pushed through
the masses of supernaturals who were gathered in a circle around the kill zone.
I cursed as the scene came into focus. What the hell was going on? Vampires
were notoriously hard to kill. The constant influx of new blood gave them amazing
healing and regeneration abilities, but someone had cut off the victim’s head.
The body was slumped against the large roots of the redwood, and a long machete
had been speared through the skull, pinning it to the trunk.
“Is that Markus?” Jacob cursed. “Shit, he was like a hundred years old.”
Which meant whoever killed him had been strong and powerful, able to
resist his vampire compulsion. Not to mention crazy-as-hell, judging by the
scene we were seeing. Which was a scary concept.
“No blood and no bite marks.” Braxton was sidling closer for a better
look. “This is not the kill scene. He was moved.” He lowered his head close to
my ear. “Do you scent anything strange?”
I closed my eyes and tried to focus my nose on the scene, filtering out
all of the scents which had nothing to do with the murder. The most demanding
smell was still that of death. It was a recent kill so there wasn’t an
overpowering smell of decay and excrement, but it was still there. I wrinkled
my nose, moving past that to anything else strange. Forest smells and …
coconut.
“I smell coconut oil and something flowery,” I murmured as I opened my
eyes.
Braxton nodded, “Yes, coconut and lavender.”
He was right, they were was the underlying scents.
Why was that ringing with some familiarity in my head? That combination
was something I’d smelled before. I turned and saw Tyson. “Didn’t one of the
spells you used – to find the prison – use those two ingredients?”
“Yes,” Tyson bit out. “And it’s a spell I created. The scented oil was
designed as a trail marker to take us to the prison.”
I twisted my head back to the morbid scene. “Does that mean someone has
left us a trail to lead to the killer? Or are they trying to implicate Ty as
the killer?”
“Fuck!” Braxton
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