Keri Arthur: Circle of Desire

She pushed past him, the flashlight's bright beam dancing across the graffiti-strewn walls as she crossed the empty expanse. He caught her at the stairs.

"Damn it, woman, there's something dead up there."

Her gaze met his, her eyes wide and haunted. "Believe me, I know."

She began to climb. He shook his head and stayed beside her. The smell was worse on the first floor landing — sharper, fresher, and ripened by the aroma of urine and excrement. He tried breathing through his mouth, but there was no avoiding the foulness of the place. She swung left and he followed. Moonlight filtered in through the broken windows, highlighting the bottles and syringes and shit lining the base of the walls. If this warehouse was some kind of refuge, where the hell were the dregs of humanity who lived in it?

When they entered the small room at the end of the hall, they found the kid. Not that anyone would have guessed the bits strewn over the floor had ever been a child. His stomach rose, and it took every ounce of willpower not to lose it right then and there.

There was bad, and then there was bad .

This was worse than either of those.

Kat made an odd sound in the back of her throat, and he quickly looked at her. She had a hand against her mouth and was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She wasn't looking at the remains that lay scattered around them, but was staring off into space. Her eyes were wide-open and filled with such horror and pain it tore at something deep inside him. He didn't know what the hell was going on, but he was sure of one thing. She couldn't stay in this room.

He swept her up into his arms and raced back down the stairs. She didn't protest, didn't say anything at all, her eyes wide and glassy. Sweat sheened her skin, but her flesh was so cold he might have been holding ice.

Once outside, he set her down on a pile of bricks and thrust her head between her knees. "Breathe deep."

She obeyed. After a few minutes the trembling eased, but moisture began to splash the concrete underneath her. He thrust his hands in his pockets and waited. He didn't know what else to do.

She sniffed, then wiped a hand across her eyes as she sat up. "It wasn't — " "No," he agreed softly. "It wasn't." But it was still a kid up there, a kid who didn't deserve to die the way he had.

"I have to go back up." Had to check what he thought he'd seen.

She nodded. "I'll wait here. I don't need to feel anything else right now."

Feel? That was an odd word to use. "Will you be all right here?"

A ghostly smile touched her lips, though it failed to lift the fear from her eyes. "Fine. Just don't be long, because I'll have to call your people in."

He nodded and went back. It was no better the second time around. He breathed though his mouth, but the smell still coated the back of his throat, so that he swallowed death with every intake of air. He fought nausea and mounting horror as he carefully studied each of the remaining body parts. He hadn't been mistaken before.

Something big had chewed through the bones. Something like a dog.

Or a wolf.

He rose and went back to Kat. She looked no better than she had twenty minutes before. "You calling the department?"

"Just did."

"Then I'll have to go. I'm supposed to be on leave."

She didn't seem surprised. "Take my car." She handed him the keys. "I need to go to the beach after I finish here, so you can meet me down in Florence , if you like."

"What do you hope to find at the beach?"

"Cleansing." She looked past him. "You'd better go. I can hear their sirens."

So could he, and they were a distance away. Her hearing was as good as his — and his was moon enhanced.

"Florence is a reasonably big place, with lots of ocean frontage. How are you going to find me?"

"I'll find you, believe me."

Oddly enough, he did. "Will you be all right?"

She looked at him. Deep in the green depths of her eyes he saw a suffering so deep he had to fight the urge to reach out and comfort her.

"We both have curses we have to live with," she said softly. "And in many ways, mine is much worse than yours."

Nothing could be worse than losing your soul to an animal every full moon. "What do you mean?"

She rubbed a hand across still-damp eyes. "I'll explain later. You need to go. Right now."

What he needed was an explanation. But the sirens were drawing closer and Benton 's blood pressure would go haywire if he found Ethan here.

"I'll see you at the beach," he said, and walked away.

Kat waited until the rumble of the Mustang's engine had faded, then dialled the hotel. Gwen answered on the third ring.

"I'm sorry, Kat," she said. "I wish I could have warned you."

No amount of warning could have helped ease the horror of what she'd felt in that room. Bile rose and she closed her eyes, fighting the need to vomit, fighting the tears pressing past closed eyelids. "I needed to go in without any preconceptions. We both know that."

Gwen sighed. "So what did you feel?"

What didn't she feel? God, the room was a menagerie of the dead's emotions. "He died a lot slower than Daniel.

The soul sucker let a werewolf play around with him for a while before she sucked his essence away."

She tried not to think of the bits of humanity strewn across that room. Tried not to remember the blinding fear and agony that had savaged her mind and cut through her soul. She failed miserably at both. But it was what had followed those emotions that had sickened her the most.

The smells and sensations of sex. The soul sucker had mated amidst all the carnage.

"Hang on," she said and hurriedly put the phone down, staggering away to the fence to lose the little she'd eaten for dinner.

She was wiping her mouth with her hand when the cops came in. Benton took one look at her and ordered an officer to go get a bottle of water.

"Where?" was all he said to her.

"First floor, to the left."

He nodded and walked away. The ordered water was hurriedly brought back, and she swilled some around her mouth then spat it out. Once all the cops were inside, she went back to the bricks and picked up the phone.

"Sorry, Gran."

"The cops are there, I gather?"

"Just arrived."

"Then it'll be an hour or so before you get back here?"

"Probably more. I need to cleanse. I feel the dead right through me."

"Of course you would, after walking into that room and soaking up their emotions." Gwen sighed. "Get us both some breakfast on the way back. I'll contact Seline and ask her to research what exactly this soul sucker is. Now that we know what this thing looks like, it should be easier to track her down."

"It'll be nice to know what will actually kill this thing before we confront it."

"Yes, it would."

Kat glanced up as Benton came out of the warehouse.

"Gotta go. It's question time."

"Make sure you bring your werewolf back with you."

"He's not my anything," she said flatly. "And why do you want him back?"

"Because we're all going to need to protect each other in the near future."

A chill ran down her spine. "Why?"

"I'll tell you later."

The phone went dead. Kat shoved it back into her pocket and looked up at Benton . And knew it was going to be a very long couple of hours before she could fly to freedom.

Dawn had begun to paint the sky pink and orange by the time Ethan sensed her. He sat halfway down a grassy knoll, watching the waves shimmer across the sand as he listened to her approaching steps.

She smelled like no one he'd ever met. Fresh, airy, like warm summer rains and crisp spring winds. It was an alluring, almost erotic combination.

She stopped several feet away on his left. The stiffening breeze tugged at her hair, throwing the dark strands across her face. Her hands were thrust deep into her pockets, but even from where he sat he could see the trembling.