I never meant to kill her. It was an accident. I loved her. We just liked to play. I’m so sorry.
I looked sharply back at the body and saw the Beretta by his hand. “Shit. Looks like a suicide,” I said. “And I think he killed his wife.”
The dispatcher said something to me, but I didn’t hear it. My gaze stayed locked on Brian’s body as a wave of nauseating horror slammed through me. Images of dead nutria swam through my head as I desperately shifted into othersight, praying that I was wrong about what I was sensing.
But I wasn’t wrong. I could see the arcane fragments left behind, like sinew on a gnawed bone. Brian’s essence had been consumed just as thoroughly as the nutrias’ had been consumed by the demon.
THE ILIUS WAS MY FIRST PANICKED THOUGHT. THEN, NO. No. That’s not possible. I dismissed it. Didn’t I? My gaze stayed locked on Brian’s body as my mind whirled. It wasn’t possible. I had dismissed it. I was sure of it.
Then what had consumed Brian’s essence?
Doubt clawed at me as I pulled my eyes away from the gruesome sight of Brian’s body. The note. His wife. Focus on that now, instead of the horror that I was faced with. I tried to remember his wife’s name and failed. I’d met her a few times, but we’d never had more conversation than, So nice to see you again.
They liked to play … Shit. That implied some sort of accident during sex play.
It was risky, but I went ahead and did a quick sweep of the house. There was always a chance that she was still alive. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if it turned out that I’d sat back and waited for backup while she slowly strangled or bled out or something. Maybe Brian had been wrong. Maybe he’d only thought she was dead.
But I couldn’t find any sign of her. I returned downstairs to Brian, unable to bring myself to look at the body again and see that ragged hole where his essence had been torn away. Had the demon somehow escaped being pulled back through the portal? And would it have fed on a human?
I shook my head sharply. None of that made any sense. Even if the demon had somehow slipped my control, the place where I’d dismissed it was an hour’s drive from here. But they’re fast, and it could have beaten you here.
But why? I asked myself again in a mental wail. Why the fuck would it come here?
I took a shaking breath as I forced myself to logically consider possibilities. Perhaps the ilius had been drawn by the feel of the violent death and had escaped my control to consume Brian’s essence after death had loosened his body’s hold on it. Or perhaps there was something about suicides that attracted them—the willingness to die somehow making the essence easier to consume. I had no idea if that could be true. There was much that I didn’t know about the demonkind.
My mouth felt as dry as the Sahara as I tried to come up with something that made sense. Luckily, the sound of approaching sirens distracted me from further mental flailing.
I stepped outside just as two marked units and an unmarked came screaming up the driveway, and I felt a sudden spasm of guilt for worrying about the demon. It suddenly slammed home that a fellow officer was dead. Someone I’d worked with and joked with had decided to shove a gun against his head and pull the trigger. I scrubbed at my face as two officers rushed up, dimly surprised to see that my hand was trembling.
“I did a quick sweep to see if I could find his wife,” I heard myself saying, “but the house hasn’t been properly cleared.” Good, the professional part of me was keeping it all together, doing what needed to be done. I could fall apart on the inside and no one would know it. I looked past them to see Crawford’s stout form as he ran toward the house from his unmarked. I glanced back to the officers. “Please take care of it. I need to tell Sarge.”
The two officers acknowledged me and entered, guns at the ready. Just because there was a suicide note didn’t mean it was a suicide, and there was always that outside chance that a bad guy was hiding somewhere in the house.
I could see the anguish in Crawford’s eyes as he came to a stop before me, breathing harshly. “Kara, is it … is he …?”
My throat tightened up and I gave a jerky nod. His face crumpled into stark grief, and I could see that he was holding on to control just as hard as I was.
“Looks like he shot himself, Sarge,” I said, my voice coming out in a ragged croak. “But that’s not all.”
His expression was a brittle mask. “Dispatcher said his wife might be dead too?”
“That’s what the note says,” I said, then I shook my head. “But I did a sweep and I couldn’t find her.”
We fell silent in shared grief and pain until the two officers came back out a few minutes later. “Anyone else inside?” Crawford demanded.