Right.
I ate fast, grabbing a muffin I found in a small stack next to the coffeemaker, then I sipped coffee while I searched the Internet. There was almost nothing to go on to locate the brand’s markings within the seemingly endless streams of data on the web. I needed to confine my search. I needed to get into the OWEA’s database.
I grabbed my cell phone and hit Parker’s name on my contact list. Two rings, and a deep voice answered.
“Parker. I need your login info for the database.”
“I don’t know if—”
“It’s fine, Parker. Really. I just need to do some research. Nothing stressful. Promise.” I crossed my fingers behind my back.
The new recruit, still in his first year on the job, hesitated for a second longer, then rattled off the information. I thanked him and hung up before he could ask me any questions.
He was a good-enough kid, and a good-enough partner. A lycan in his early twenties. Enthusiastic about his job. A decent investigator. Easily led.
Guilt pressed against the back of my mind, but I ignored it. Yes, I was using my influence as his senior partner. It was an abuse of power. An abuse of the crush he so obviously had on me. But hell, I wasn’t asking for much. Nothing he could get more than a slap on the wrist for sharing.
The OWEA database access wasn’t fully enabled from a personal laptop hooked up outside of an OWEA office, but I could access the records I needed—the “Items, Mystical and Magical” database. I searched for branding irons first, but there were dozens of records, far more than I expected. I narrowed down the search further by adding in the term “ritual.”
Seventeen items remained. The first four proved to be standard irons, where the designs themselves weren’t important to the ritual in which they’d been used—it had been the pain that mattered. The next two twisted my stomach, and made me wish I’d never touched the muffin.
The designs weren’t important in those either, but the attackers had used their initials to brand their victims. I continued to click through the branding irons, stomach hardening at each picture, at each description. Finally, after looking at fourteen irons where the brand symbology didn’t seem relevant to the actual crime, I hit pay dirt.
The symbol of the brand used to mark a man in Butte, Montana, nearly a decade before wasn’t at all similar to the one Claude had had me touch, but the symbol was relevant—scratch that, necessary—for the ritual it was used to complete.
But it was the why that got me.
The symbol allowed the woman who branded him to drain him of his energy, like a vampire could do through a blood drain, or a succubus could do with sex. The woman who had branded him simply had to touch the branded flesh with a bit of her blood to activate the magic. A magic she could then activate whenever she wanted from a distance, with a bit more blood and a lot of energy.
My breath caught. A shaman.
But shamans didn’t tend to deal in murder. With their connection to living things, killing wouldn’t be easy for them. I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea of a shaman being involved in this.
The sound of a door clicking shut had me reaching for my sidearm—a weapon I no longer possessed, and wouldn’t have again until I was back on official duty.
“Beatrice?” Claude’s voice rang out, and my blood pressure dropped.
“In the kitchen,” I called back.
“I brought lunch.” He held up a bag from a local fast food joint, Wolfy’s, and I grinned. For a man who didn’t require food to live, he sure knew his local eateries.
“Thanks.” I pulled a hot dog out of the bag and eyed Claude, who had already started in on his French fries.
“I didn’t realize vampires ate so often. I mean—food-food.” Had he eaten so much before and I simply hadn’t noticed? No. We’d both been too distracted to eat much then. By the case and by each other. For a moment, it was as if I could feel his hand sliding up my side to caress my breast, his clever tongue slipping into my mouth to tease moans from my lips. My breath caught at the memory.
He bit off the end of his fry, flashing me just a tip of fang. “It doesn’t give us sustenance like blood does, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t taste good.” His eyes twinkled and his mouth turned up in a most distracting grin. “Besides, I’ve found it makes humans more comfortable if they see me eat when they do.”
As if I could forget he was a vampire.
“I guess I can see why. Not really any shame in drinking blood though.”
His eyes widened and their color struck me again. The man should not be allowed such lovely eyes. “That’s not the typical reaction I get. Humans tend to be…uncomfortable when confronted by the realities of my existence.” He hesitated, as if choosing his words carefully. “I mean, it’s different—witnessing it during an intimate—”
“There’s no shame in it,” I plowed on and pretended my embarrassment wasn’t obvious on my heated cheeks. I refused to let him finish that sentence. Red hair and the pale skin that accompanied it didn’t make hiding emotions easy, but I didn’t have to acknowledge it. “I don’t see people looking askance at a plant for absorbing energy in a way different from us.”
“True. But plants aren’t potential predators—not of human prey.”
“Touché.” The easy conversation warmed me, especially since he didn’t try to bring up anything intimate again, and we ate the rest of our food in companionable silence. Swallowing the last of my Coke, I closed my eyes.
The brand, orange and bright and full of malice, filled my sight.
Claude patted my back as I choked, coughing out the soda I’d inhaled.
“Are you all right?” His hand lingered on my back, soft pressure sending warmth into my center and bits of electricity up my spine. And I almost imagined I felt a soft brush of his thumb stroking me before his hand dropped and he walked back around to the kitchen side of the breakfast bar.
“Sorry,” I spluttered out from behind the napkin I’d managed to cough most of the soda into. I didn’t want to tell him about the vision echo, so I didn’t give him a chance to ask. It would only worry him, make him want to send me home. I’d lose any chance at finding out what had happened all those years ago to my brother.
And he’d be trying to take down Nicolas Chevalier alone.
“What do you know about shamans?”
He didn’t blink at the sudden change of subject. “As much as the next man who’s been around awhile, I guess. Why do you ask?”
“Was there an indication of shamanic magic on the brand? Wherever you actually happened upon it?”
“It’s rude to answer a question with a question,” he said, but amusement laced his tone.
“Did I ever claim to be polite?” I couldn’t help grinning at my jibe.
His smile widened. “Quite right. You win—yes, there was shamanic magic on the brand. Just a touch, but my partner is a sensitive, and quite good at her job.”
I ignored the twinge in my chest at his obvious affection for his partner, and the desire to ask him where she was in all this. If they were so close—and she was so good at her job—then why wasn’t she here helping? Granted, sensitives didn’t get visions from objects like psychometrists did, but they were able to feel the energy exuded by otherworlders—even traces left behind on objects.
Useful was hardly a strong enough word for them.
“So as to what I know of them, shamans are a varied lot,” he continued. “They’re all spirit-oriented—both human and animal. As a result they tend to be very tied into the energy around them. Empathetic.”
“Nature lovers.”
He laughed. “That too, I suppose.”
“I found something similar to your brand in the OWEA database. Well, similar enough. A brand used in a ritual with shamanic magic involved.”
His smile faltered. “I told you—”
“I’m not looking deep enough for anyone to get pinged or even be able to see I was there beyond a standard search. I just hit the general objects database. Of course, if we want more details about the case—”
“Not now. Not yet anyway. Tell me what you found.”
Bossy. I frowned at him, but didn’t argue. “I don’t think it’s directly related to what you found, but a brand was used by a woman practicing shamanic magic a decade ago. She branded a symbol into a man’s chest and used it to drain him of his energy.”
“That sounds unlikely for a shaman.”
“I Googled it after. According to news articles, she’d utterly lost it after her child was killed. The branding victim was responsible—DUI.”
“How did it work exactly?”
“Not enough detail in the general database file to be able to tell. But it wasn’t an overnight thing. She killed him over a period of months.”
Claude interlaced his fingers and stretched his shoulders. “Well, guess we may need to risk exposure to get the file.”
“Do you really think he might have spies in the OWEA?”
“I think it’s possible—hell, probable. Why wouldn’t he?”
I opened my mouth to tell him that he was wrong. That the OWEA stood for something, and the people in it were decent, hardworking law enforcement officers who wouldn’t sell out. I snapped my mouth shut and gave him a short nod instead.
A wistful smile touched his mouth. “For a second there, you reminded me of someone.”
My heart jumped, racing for no reason I could fathom. “Who?”
“A fiery redheaded rookie, who believed that justice would always prevail.”
“You’re wrong. I was never that naive.” Not since I was a little girl who’d lost her older brother. Not since the mystery of what had happened to him had gone unsolved. Not since I’d seen a vision of Luc Chevalier when I was ten years old, a vision everyone had told me was simply a nightmare. “And I’m not fiery.”