Cause of Death: Unnatural (The Cause of Death Series) (4 page)

Over the years Em had come to learn that
Robert had quite a dark curiosity of his own for the underworld. In their line
of business you couldn't help but come in contact with the darker side of the
city - drug dealers, brothel owners, and kinky sex clubs were the least of it.
In the last few months, what with all the lower vampires that seemed to be in
the
neighborhood
, things had been darker than ever,
and Robert seemed always to be intrigued, engaged and interested. Not in a
ghoulish way, just ... curious.

Em knew he'd tried his fair share of illicit
substances. A risky move for anyone in a government position, let alone one of
such authority, but she also admired the way in which he'd done it. Just
experimenting, just enough so that he could understand the issue from a
personal point of view. She also had the sneakiest feeling he might have a
little habit of some sort.
Something that made his eyes just
a little rounder and blacker than they should be.
Not often, but enough
for her to wonder. Of course, if she really wanted to know, she could just
dissolve a little of her dark energy and send it whispering around his soul -
that would give her the answer soon enough - but she didn't. She could respect
a little habit or two, given her own needs. And she certainly respected Robert.

She respected him, she admired him and she
lusted after... his mind. She sighed. If this was another time and another
place, hell, even another dimension! Dark energy would suit Robert so well.
She'd take him through to the other side in a second. Their two energies would
fly across the world together and she could show him every dark corner of his
soul. They would burn through time and space and be unconquerable.

She was dreaming. Robert was standing on her
doorstep resting a hand lightly on her arm and looking at her with a hopeful
smile. Human mating rituals, Em thought with exasperation.
So
many nuances for so little result.

She decided to let him down gently. She
kissed him on the cheek then laid one hand alongside the other.

"Thanks for a great night," she
said. "I've got to sleep though.
Red wine and a movie
tomorrow?"

He nodded.
"Yeah,
sure.
That's fine." He started down the steps. "Take some
drugs," he said.

"What?"

"For
your headache."

And he was gone.

She knew he was there the second she turned the key in
the lock.

Her apartment wasn't empty. She knew it, and
he knew she knew it too. She didn't bother turning on the lights. There was an
orange glow coming through the window from the street light outside her
building. She heard Robert's car drive away and a siren in the distance. She
heard a breath, and felt the air move softly, slipping under a piece of paper
on her hall table and wafting it to the floor.

A shadow slinked from the corner of her
kitchen into the dark space at the end of the hall.

The human in Em sensed his hunger and his
violence and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. The vampire in Em
sensed his hunger too, and sneered at his weakness.

Em let out a long slow breath and pushed it
against the roof of her mouth so it felt like a growl. The shadow in the hall
coalesced into a black cat shape and hissed at her.

Em rolled her eyes and smothered a laugh.
Always up for sparring, that one, even when he was on her father's business.
Whatever that was this time.

"Okay, enough's enough,"
sighed
Em. "Come on out."

The cat crouched down low,
then
pounced directly at Em. In midair the cat seemed to fall apart into black smoke
and swirl for a moment. The mass of smoke grew larger and solidified into the
shape of a man standing taller than Em and so close to her there was barely an
eyelash between them.

He had black hair, dark eyes, a pale face and
a long black coat that swept the floor. There was just the right amount of
muscle in those shoulders to fill out the coat. Underneath there was a black
silk shirt unbuttoned at the collar. On his face there was a scar that ran down
his cheek to his jaw, but aside from that his complexion was smooth.
Beautiful.
A little clichéd perhaps, thought Em, but
stylish. He always chose this form, at first anyway. He knew she liked it.

He stared at her, his eyes inches from hers.

Em blew a piece of hair out of her face and
directly into his eyes. He stepped back with a satisfying fit of blinking.

Em allowed herself a smile and turned back to
locking the door behind her.

Jarek was here. Her father was lord of the
clan, but Jarek was his commander in chief.
And Em's one time
lover.
Powerful, ruthless, lethal and irresistible.

Em's smile slid a little as she wondered why
he was here.

Em walked down the hall to the kitchen but
stopped as Jarek stood to block her way. Again they were nose to nose. Em
froze. She felt Jarek breathe in. She saw the corners of his mouth turn up in a
long, slow smile. He tilted his head to gaze down at her body. The dress she'd
worn to the burlesque club was short, revealing. He raised a hand and with the
backs of his fingers brushed away the collar of her coat revealing more of her
throat. The hand moved again and a finger, cold as ice, trailed its way down
her chest to the neckline of her dress. His smile grew broader.

Em let go of her hold on her body's matter and
mass. She spun into smoke as quickly has he had, and walked directly through
him. It was like swimming in fog. Jarek's dark energy had none of the human
touches hers had. He was cold to the core.

She pulled her frame back together on the
other side, and walked into her kitchen. She switched on a light.

Jarek snarled and spun around.

"What are you doing here, lover"?
she
asked.

Jarek's form flickered a little, as if he was
having trouble holding it in. A few wisps of black smoke curled around his hair
- for a moment his eyes blacked out.

Em grinned. "Temper," she said.
"What did you expect? Two hundred years of silence and then you break into
my apartment."

Jarek watched her for a moment,
then
followed her into the kitchen. He prowled around it
restlessly, poking at the fruit bowl, fingering the knives in their wooden
block, frowning at the toaster. Em pulled some painkillers from the cupboard
over the microwave and popped a handful through their foil wraps.

Jarek exploded with impatience.

"What are you doing here, Em?" he
said. "What is all this... this...? Do you like this human stuff? What are
you doing hanging around people? Why are you doing this?"

A dart of his dark energy shot out of his
mind and flew at hers. It was a surprise attack, designed to cut through her
defences and open up her thoughts to him. But Em knew Jarek of old. She
shrugged off his thrust as simply as if she was brushing away a leaf that had
fallen on her shoulder. She'd always been a match for Jarek, no matter what he did.
It was something she didn't even need to think about. While others were
powerless in the face of Jarek's mastery of dark energy, Em was like a mirror.
It infuriated him, and excited him.

Em snorted. "Is this what you came here
for?
This old argument?
Jarek, we've been over this a
thousand times. I like it here. I like humans."

She waited. She knew this wasn't why he was
here. She guessed it would have something to do with Alina. Her father had
probably learned Alina was here and sent Jarek to bring her home. If that was
the case, both her father and Jarek would want to know why Em hadn't told them
his runaway wife was hiding out in her city. They'd want to know if Em was
sheltering Alina.

To tell the truth, she hadn't known Alina was
in the city. These headaches had masked her usual ability to feel out the dark
energies around her. The pounding in her head had been going on for week or so
now, maybe even three. Had Alina been down at the
harborside
all that time? What else had Em missed in that time?

One thing she did know, she certainly wasn't
going to explain that little weakness to the second most powerful vampire in
existence.

Jarek seemed to relax a little. He'd smiled
when she'd thrown back his attack at him. "Just like old times," he'd
said, and he'd reached over to the fruit bowl to select a plum.

"It's a nice town you have here,"
he said casually, all the silent challenges of the last few minutes seemingly
forgotten. "Love the view. The locals look friendly." He gave her a
pointed look and arched an eyebrow in the direction Robert's car had taken.

Em swirled her glass of water and downed her
painkillers. Funny, her head wasn't as bad now.

"So what do you do here, Emilia?"

"I have a job," she said bluntly.

Jarek gave a short bark of laughter. "A
job?" he said incredulously. "You are working for a human?
For money?"
His lips curled into a sneer. "Oh,
that is too much, even for you. The Lady Emilia, slaving for a mortal in one of
their crowded stinking cities, living alone in an empty apartment, and..."
he laughed as a look of realization crossed his face, "... and screwing
the boss!"

He crossed the space between them and took
the glass out of her hand. "What would daddy say?"

"What do you want, Jarek?" Em said
angrily.

Jarek's face turned expressionless, like a
blind covering a window. Em had seen that look before, thousands of times,
usually when Jarek was at his most vicious. She braced herself for whatever was
coming.

"Alina is here," he said, plainly,
and then he purred, "and you knew."

Em ignored the threat in his voice and the
promise of violence in his eyes. She smiled and leaned in to kiss the scar on
his cheek. He stiffened and his head tilted away from her ever so slightly.
Good, thought Em.

"Of course I knew," she said
injecting what she hoped was just the right amount of scorn into her tone.
"She's opened a club down by the harbor, though you probably know that.
And she's been terribly naughty. She's made herself a whole host of vampires -
her own little entourage."

"And she's been killing, outside of cull
protocols," said Jarek.

"Well, yes of course she has," said
Em. "Who doesn't?" She shrugged. "You'd like her little club,
Jarek. Some of her followers are just your style."

Jarek was still fingering the plum he'd taken
from the fruit bowl. "You know what the lord will do to her, don't you?
You know what he'll do to you if he thinks..."

"If he thinks what, Jarek?" said
Em. "That dear old Alina and I have been plotting to overthrow his rule by
raising an army of fan dancers and bar tenders? Don't be an idiot, lover. Use
your head. Alina and I have been trying to kill each other for how many hundred
years now?"

Em relaxed. She had him now. She could feel
his energies unwinding, his thoughts curling out to hers in the way they used
to do when they both wielded the power of her father's court.

"Alina turned up a few weeks ago,"
she said. "I've been watching her to see what she'll do, see just how deep
she'll dig herself. It's been amusing. Have you seen her lately? I was going to
call to you - give her just enough
leash
and
then..."

Em looked up to see Jarek smiling. This time
the smile was in his eyes and well as his lips. There
was
 
affection
there too, and a hint of all
the fun they'd ever had.

"Will you come home to witness her
punishment, my dear?" Jarek said, reaching out to brush her hair from her
eyes.

Em grinned back at him. "I might,"
she said, playfully.
"If you promise to make it worth my
while."

Jarek's form spun into smoke and curled all
around Em. She could feel his mind pushing at hers, his dark energy pulsing
around her willing her to join him in a different field of existence. Em tilted
her head back and allowed a part of her energy to spiral into the void where
her kind usually lived. Jarek was waiting there as he always had. Their two
beings twisted around each other in the old, familiar patterns. It felt so
good
, so right, thought Em. She had missed him, just as she
had missed the Family, her father, her life in the darkness.

Jarek tugged a little harder, pulling her
completely into nothingness. Together their energies entwined and exploded out
of the room, out of the apartment, across the streets and buildings of the
cities and over the thousands of mortals who lived and breathed beneath them.
They flashed across the land, Emilia and Jarek, one entity, feeling and testing
their old powers, the strengths in each other, their potential,
their
every heart's desire.

Jarek trolled around inside her mind,
grinning at the notion of forensics, smirking at Robert, laughing at Nick.
Jennifer, her friends, her favorite foods, her toothpaste, yoga
classes.
He brushed by her memories of the club, and playfully, she
pulled his mind away. No need for him to go there, she thought.