Kim Harrison - Hotter Than Hell

They were all alike, every one of them. Except Danny, and Danny was gone. Selene’s jaw clenched, her teeth grinding together.

Come on. Quit puking so I can work.

He did put her in a police car, mumbling something about her safety and a report, and she closed her eyes, settling back into the cracked vinyl seat. Finally. What did you eat for dinner, anyway, it certainly stank…oh, God, what am I going to do now? Danny.

Tears pricked behind Selene’s eyes. Quit it! Focus! She pictured the hallway leading into Danny’s living space, the foldout bed and salvaged wooden shelves of books and curios and the blood—

Her concentration guttered, came back; her ability to visualize under stress had plenty of practice. Don’t fail me now, she thought, and dropped through the floor of her own consciousness, into the place where she truly lived. Her breathing stilled, her heartbeat paused. An onlooker would have thought she was sleeping, or just sitting with her eyes closed, head tilted back, mouth slackly open. In shock.

She dove into a black blood-warm sea, her concentration narrowing to a single point. Pulled on the threads of the Power she’d spent warding Danny’s apartment. The defenses recognized her, left the place in the world where they had been bleeding free, and leapt for her.

Selene “caught” the energy, folded it deftly. The resultant mass shrank, a small bright star to her mental vision, taking on more mass as she compressed it. Selene’s body arched upward, gasping for air. The energy she’d taken from the hyped-up rookie drained away. Her skin was prickling and her lips wet, her hips rocking forward slightly, tensing, tighter, tighter, aching for release.

She couldn’t afford to let it spend. She had to find something physical to hold the Power until she could take a closer look. Her fingers dipped into her black canvas shoulder-bag and found smooth wood.

My athame. Christ. Here I am in the back of a police car with an illegal-to-carry eight-inch ritual knife. Why did I have to be born a tantraiiken?

Training brought her focus back and the star of Power drained into the knife, leaving her sick and shaking, her entire body aching for completion. The pain was low between her legs, and it would torture her all night unless she found some way to bleed off the pressure.

The whole event had taken less than five minutes. The rookie was gesturing to an ambulance crew. Lurid light from the cop cars and stuttering flashes from the ambulance painted the street in gaudy flickers. The entire street was now swarming with cops and emergency personnel. Selene slumped down against the cracked vinyl and peered out the window, her senses dilated, looking for a dark blot or a breath of anything that didn’t belong. Nothing. Not even a shimmer in the air.

Was Nikolai gone? She couldn’t be that lucky.

Danny. The numbness was still there. Whatever was locked inside her athame would give her a direction, somewhere to go…hopefully. At the very least, she would see how her brother died.

The how might tell her who , and once she knew she could start planning. There weren’t many things she could take on as a tantraiiken, she was worse than useless in a fight since pain and fear turned to desire and swallowed her whole.

But she could give it a try, couldn’t she? Nikolai wouldn’t help, he would be too interested in getting leverage on her. One more dead human wouldn’t matter, even if it was the brother of his semi-pet sexwitch.

I hate you, Nikolai. The hate was a bright red slash across the middle of her mind. She closed her eyes, set her jaw. Her fingers itched to unzip her jeans, slide down, touch the slick heat between her legs. Hate you. Hate you. She felt her face contort into a screaming mask, tears spilling down her cheeks.

The door creaked open, letting in a burst of chill rainy air. “Hi, princess,” Jack said. “Get your ass out. We got a hot date with some paperwork.”

Selene blinked, her fists curled at her sides. She let out the breath she’d been holding. Her cheeks hurt, so did her lower belly; her eyes were hot and dry.

Jack didn’t mean to be cruel, he was just used to treating her like one of the boys. If she had been waiting to join another investigation, he would have acted the same way. Selene would have had an equally brisk response for him. She searched for something sharp and hard as a shield to say.

Instead, her throat swelled with grief. “Danny?” she whispered. It was stupid, she knew it, Nikolai would not have lied and her own eyes had told her the truth. But still, she had hoped. Hope, that great human drug.

Jack’s face turned milk-pale. He was thin and stooped, except for his potbelly straining at his dingy white shirt. His lean hound-dog face under its gray buzzcut was almost always mournful, now it was actively sad. “Lena…Jesus, I’m sorry. Nikolai was supposed to keep you from seeing…any of that.”

I have a right to see what happened to my brother, Jack. Selene slid her legs out of the car. She had to catch her breath as the material of her jeans rasped against swollen tissues. She needed , and there was no way to fill that need tonight.

“Nikolai can go to hell,” she rasped around the obstruction in her throat. That helped—it sounded like the old Selene, the tough Selene. “I’m sure it’s where he’s bound sooner or later.”

She twisted her hands together. Her palms slid against each other, damp with sweat. The image of Danny’s apartment, framed by a shattered blood-painted doorway, rose up again. Numb disbelief rose with it.

Her jeans were uncomfortably wet, and she was starting to sweat under her arms. Her neck prickled, and she was suddenly aware of empty hunger. She was starving.

How can I think of food at a time like this? Jesus.

“I’ll do your report up for you. Come by, sign it in the morning. Look, Selene—” He offered her his hand and she took it, nervous sweat slicking her palm. He pulled her to her feet. The car’s windows were frosted with vapor. How long was I in there?

He also firmly took his hand away from her, tearing her fingers free.

Selene would have kept his hand, run her thumb along the crease on the inside of his wrist, wet her lips with her tongue. Her eyes met his. She needed , and he was male. Women were also good for what she needed, but there weren’t any around.

God. Look at me. Look at what I almost did. I’m a whore, and my brother is dead.

“I’m sorry,” Jack continued awkwardly. He was starting to sweat now, too, looking down until he realized he was looking at her chest, then staring up over her shoulder at the circus of lights and people in uniforms milling around. “Christ, I’m sorry. Lena…I’m so sorry.”

Selene crossed her arms, cupped her elbows in her hands. Jack took her upper arm, kicked the cruiser’s door shut, and steered her away from the hive of activity the street had become. People were starting to peek through their windows, lights were coming on. The cops were too busy to pay much attention to one lone woman being led away by Detective Pepper—especially when some of them recognized her as his tame spook, the woman that had broken the Bowan case last month. Just how she did it nobody knew—but then again, nobody wanted to know. The girl was just too weird. And Pepper was starting to look a little weird himself. The joke was that he’d apply for the new Spook Squad soon, just as soon as he could get his head out of a bottle and quit working hopeless freezer-cold homicide cases.

Selene shivered, hugging herself, their easy dismissal of her roaring through the open wound she was becoming. I’ve got to get home before I start to scream. I’m in bad shape.