Fallen Angels 03 - Envy (6 page)

Hel l l l o, big boy.

Ifont sio many ways to count.

“Stop thinking about it . . . stop thinking about—”

Closing her eyes again didn’t help: If she’d reluctantly noticed before how wel he fil ed out his clothes, now she knew exactly why. He was heavily muscled, and given that he didn’t have any hair on his chest, there was nothing to obscure those hard pecs and that six-pack and the carved ridges that went over his hips.

Matter of fact, when it came to manscaping, al he had was a dark stripe that ran between his bel y button and his . . .

You know, maybe size did matter, she thought.

“Oh, for chrissakes.”

In an attempt to get her brain focused on something, anything more appropriate, she leaned forward and looked out the opposite window. As far as she could tel , the house directly across from him had privacy shades across every available view. Good move, assuming he paraded around like that every night.

Then again, maybe the husband had strung those puppies up so that his wife didn’t get a case of the swoons.

Bracing herself, she glanced back at Veck’s place. The lights were off upstairs and she had to hope now that he was dressed and on the first floor, he stayed that way.

God, what a night.

She was stil waiting for any evidence that came from the scene, but she’d made up her mind already about Kroner’s injuries. There were coyotes in those woods. Bears. Cats of the non–Meow Mix variety. Chances were good that the guy had come walking through there with the scent of dried blood on his clothes and something with four paws had viewed him as a Happy Meal. Veck could wel have tried to step in and been shoved to the side. After al , he’d been rubbing his temples like he’d had pain there, and God knew head trauma had been known to cause short-term memory loss.

The lack of physical evidence on him supported the theory; that was for sure.

And yet . . .

God, that father of his. It was impossible not to factor him in even a little.

Like every criminal justice major, she’d studied Thomas DelVecchio Sr. as part of her courses—but she’d also spent considerable time on him in her deviant-psych classes. Veck’s dad was your classic serial kil er: smart, cunning, committed to his “craft,” utterly remorseless. And yet, having watched videos of his interviews with police, he came across as handsome, compel ing, and affable. Classy. Very non-monster.

But then again, like a lot of psychopaths, he’d cultivated an image and sustained it with care. He’d been very successful as a dealer of antiquities, although his establishment in that haughty, lofty world of money and privilege had been a complete self-invention. He’d come from absolutely nothing, but had had a knack for charming rich people—as wel as a talent for going overseas and coming back with ancient artifacts and statues that were extremely marketable. It wasn’t until the kil ings had started to surface that his business practices came under scrutiny, and to this day, no one had any idea where he’d found the stuff he had—it was almost as if he’d had a treasure trove somewhere in the Middle East. He certainly hadn’t helped authorities sort things out, but what were they going to do to him? He was already on death row.

Not for much longer, though, evidently.

What had Veck’s mother been like—

The knock on the window next to her head was like a shot ringing out, and she had her weapon palmed and pointed to the sound less than a heartbeat afterward.

Veck was standing in the street next to her car, his hands up, his wet hair glossy in the streetlights.

Lowering her weapon, she put her window down with a curse.

“Quick reflexes, Officer,” he murmured.

“Do you want to get shot, Detective?”

“I said your name. Twice. You were deep in thought.”

Thanks to what she’d seen in that bathroom, the flannel shirt and academy sweats he had on seemed eminently removable, the kind of duds that wouldn’t resist a shove up or a pul down. But come on, like she hadn’t seen every aisle in his grocery store already?

“You want my clothes now?” he said as he held up a trash bag.

“Yes, thank you.” She accepted the load through her window and put the things down on the floor. “Boots, too?”

As he nodded, he said, “Can I bring you some coffee? I don’t have much in my kitchen, but I think I can find a clean mug and I got instant.”

“Thanks. I’m okay.”

There was a pause. “There a reason you’re not looking me in the eye, Officer?”

I just saw you buck naked, Detective. “Not at al .” She pegged him right in the peepers. “You should get inside. It’s chil y.”

“The cold doesn’t bother me. You going to be here al night?”

“Depends.”

“On whether I am, right.”

“Yup.”

He nodded, and then glanced around casual y like they were nothing but neighbors chatting about the weather. So calm. So confident. Just like his father.

“Can I be honest with you?” he said abruptly.

“You’d better be, Detective.”

“I’m stil surprised you let me go.”

She ran her hands around the steering wheel. “May I be honest with you?”

“Yeah.”

“I let you go because I real y don’t think you did it.”

“I was at the scene and I had blood on me.”

“You cal ed nine-one-one, you didn’t leave, and that kind of death is very messy to perpetrate.”

“Maybe I cleaned up.”

“There wasn’t a shower in those woods as far as I saw.”

Do. Not. Think. Of. Him. Naked.

When he started to shake his head like he was going to argue, Reil y cut him off. “Why are you trying to convince me I’m wrong?”

That shut him up. At least for a moment. Then he said in a low voice, “Are you going to feel safe tailing me.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

For the first time, emotion bled through his cool expression, and her heart stopped: There was fear in his eyes, as if he didn’t trust himself.

“Veck,” he said softly, “is there anything I don’t know.”

He crossed his arms over that big chest of his and his weight went back and forth on his hips as if he were thinking. Then he hissed, and started rubbing his temple.

“I’ve got nothing,” he muttered. “Listen, just do us both a favor, Officer. Keep that gun close by.”

He didn’t look back as he turned and walked across the street.

He wasn’t wearing any shoes, she realized.

Putting up the window, she watched him go into the house and shut the door. Then the lights in the house went out, except for the hal way on the second floor.

Settling in, she eased down in her seat and stared at al those windows. Shortly thereafter, a massive shadow walked into the living room—or rather, appeared to be dragging something? Like a couch?

Then Veck sat down and his head disappeared as if he were stretching out on something.

It was almost like they were sleeping side by side. Wel , except for the wal s of the house, the stretch of scruffy spring lawn, the sidewalk, the asphalt, and the steel cage of her Crown Victoria.

Reil y’s lids drifted down, but that was a function of the angle of her head. She wasn’t tired and she wasn’t worried about fal ing asleep. She was wide-awake in the dark interior of the car.

And yet she reached over and hit the door-lock button.

Just in case.

A
s the demon Devina wandered up and back across cold concrete, her path was not straight, but ful of curves. Winding in and out of rows of bureaus, the discordant
tick-tock
ing of hundreds of clocks drowned out the
clip-clip
of her Louboutins.

Everything had been given a place here, her col ection safely moved into the basement of this two-story office building. The location was perfect, just outside of Caldwel ’s downtown, and to appear legitimate and uncontroversial, she projected an il usion that a human resources firm took up the space above where she was pacing: As far as people were aware, a hustling, bustling business had rented the place to accommodate its expansion.

Stupid humans. As if in this economy anyone was hiring or could afford hand-holding when it came to fil ing jobs.

Pausing by a Hepplewhite bow front that had been made in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1801, she ran her hand over the mahogany top. The original finish was stil on the piece, but then again, she’d kept the thing safe from sun and water damage since she’d bought it over two hundred years before. In its drawers were baskets ful of buttons and rows of spectacles and jumbles of rings in boxes. The other bureaus had similar objects, al personal items fashioned out of various metals.

Aside from her mirror, this col ection of hers was the most precious thing she had. It was the tie to her souls down below, the tethering security she needed when she felt insecure or stressed-out here on earth.

As she did now.

The problem tonight, however, was that for the first time since she’d started hoarding aeons ago, she was not calmed, nor reassured, nor eased.

Walking around this repository of objects, she was summarily unaided by the addiction that had long proved to e so useful.

And what seemed even worse? This evening should have been “a seminal moment,” as her therapist cal ed them, a time to center herself and savor her accomplishments: She had won the last round against Jim Heron, and even though he and Adrian and Eddie had infiltrated her previous lair, she had safely gotten her things instal ed in this new, secure facility.

She should have been fucking ecstatic.

But shit-on-a-shingle, even the scent of fresh death drifting over from the bathroom gave her no pleasure: To protect her mirror, she needed so much more than what ADT or Brinks monitoring had to offer, and the new sacrificial virgin she’d strung up over her tub was bleeding out nicely—getting ready to be useful, not just decorative.

Everything was going her way, at least on the surface, and yet she felt so . . .

Ennui, she believed it was cal ed . . . and what a lovely name for such a crappy, unmotivated state.

Maybe she was just exhausted from setting everything up after the move. She had about forty bureaus ful of acquisitions from al eras of humanity, and whenever she was forced to reestablish herself in another place, she was compel ed to touch every single object one by one, reconnecting with the essence of the victim that lingered in the metal. She had yet to start on the contact ritual, however, and was a little surprised at herself. Usual y, she could focus on nothing else until she fractured time, stepped into the space between minutes, and completed the lengthy process.

She supposed her therapist would have seen this as progress, considering the compulsion was typical y prompt and undeniable: These precious items, from ancient Egypt to Gothic France to the Civil War and the present here in the States, were what tied her to home when she was so far away.

Stil , there was no panicky rush to snuggle up with what was hers for eternity. Al she seemed to want to do was mope around and pace.

It was al Jim Heron’s fault.

He was just too defiant. Dominant. Extraordinary.

He had been chosen by her and that supercilious sonofabitch Nigel because Heron was equal parts good and evil—and as she had learned through the ages, when it came to mankind, evil always won. In fact, she’d assumed that drawing him over to her side would be nothing but a tedious bore, the kind of thing she had done to men and women since time had cast its first hour so very long ago.

Instead . . . it was she who had been sucked in and seduced.

Heron was just so . . . unownable. Even when he had turned himself over to her and she had been playing with him, her minions swarming him, her true nature revealed . . . he had been unbowed, unbending, unyielding.

And that strength made him unattainable.

She had never known that before. From anyone.

The thing was, it was in her very nature to take over: She was a perfect parasite, niggling her way in and replicating her essence until what she had entered became hers forever.

Heron’s chal enge to her was intoxicating, a slap in the face, a breath of fresh air. But it also seemed to deflate the importance of everything else.

Pul ing open a drawer, she took out a thin gold bracelet that had a little dove charm dangling off of it. The inscription on the inside was in cursive and just precious. Fromparents to a daughter. With a date from the year before. Blah, blah, blah.

She hated the name Cecilia. She real y did.

That irrelevant virgin . . . what a thorn in her side. The purpose of that Barten girl had been to protect the mirror. Now the little shit had some kind of connection with Jim—

Just as she was going to crush the fragile memento, a waft of warmth went through her, as if a lover’s touch had passed not just over her flesh, but through to her very bones.

Jim.

It was
Jim
. Cal ing to
her
.

Ditching the bracelet, she hip-checked the drawer closed and ran down the row to an ornate floor-length mirror that functioned only to check her appearance. As she went, she changed her form, assuming the body of a gorgeous brunette who had gravity-defying breasts and an ass with more ledge than a bookshelf.

Fluffing her hair, she smoothed her black skirt, and decided the hem was too long. Wil ing it upward, she pivoted and flashed her smooth thighs and perfect calves.

Suddenly, she was
alive
.

Wel ,
alive
wasn’t technical y correct. But that was what it felt like: In the space of a moment, her mood had gone from buried to flying.

Except she was not going to be stupid about this.

Confident of her hemline, her neckline, and her hairline, she went into the bathroom.

“How do I look?”

She did a little twirl in front of the young man who was hanging upside down over her tub. Except he didn’t have anything to say, even though his eyes were open.

“Oh, what the hel do you know.”

She bent down and dipped her fingertips into the blood that had been steadily draining out of his carotid artery. Impatient with the delay, she quickly traced around the doorjambs and the floor, going back and forth to the tub to get more. The purity of his essence formed a seal that was better than any security alarm any human could ever create—plus, the process rid the world of one more mortal creature.