He gave the murder scene before us an all-appraising glance, like an artist surveying the latest creation of another. I knew the things that he’d done in his time. I saw them through my own eyes. Arys had done so much worse than this.
I started at the foot of the bed, unable to look at her face yet. I could only recognize Belle’s bleached blonde hair, well, what remained blonde anyway. Most of it was stained a tragic red.
Blood covered the duvet on the bed as well as the wall behind it. I wondered how Belle had that much blood. A trail of splatters fell in a line across the expensive grey Berber carpet. Even her pretty, pink toenail polish was dotted with scarlet smears. I was dying to take a deep breath but the air was rank with the sickly sweet scent of werewolf blood.
Two gaping wounds caused the entire mess. One ran straight down, from her surgically enhanced br**sts to her pubic region. Although exceptionally straight, a few jagged tears indicated that a clawed human hand had created the slice.
The other wound was in her neck. Her throat was torn wide open, exposing gruesome tissue and bone. Her vacant blue eyes had rolled up to stare at the ceiling.
“Oh God, Belle.” The words slipped out, and I reached to touch her but didn’t.
I stared at Belle for a long, silent moment. Finally, I pulled the blood stained sheet to hide her nakedness. My hand lingered, and I trailed it through her silky locks simply because she was one of my own. As I gazed down into her dead stare, I was livid. Someone dared to take what Raoul and I protected. His human lovers weren’t mine, but Belle, she was pack. Somebody was going to pay for this.
“Tell me what you feel,” I breathed.
“You don’t feel anything?” Arys asked and stepped nearer.
“I feel a lot of things. But, there’s so much here, and the smells are overwhelming.” The energy in the room created a swarm of sensations, a fuzz inside my head. I waved a hand to indicate the carnage around us. “I’m not quite sure what I’m feeling. Something is off.”
He studied me as he slowly walked the room’s perimeter. “The blood scent overpowers your Alpha’s fear, but the rage… It lingers everywhere.”
He stopped near the bed and looked down at Belle. He saw something that I couldn’t see, which created a metaphysical itch that ate at me. His thought taunted me like an idea on the tip of my tongue.
“Who would do this?” I asked, not expecting an answer, but I felt the weight of Arys’s questioning stare.
“Somebody with a serious vendetta. Your Alpha has been a really bad boy. You really can’t pick up that energy?”
“He’s not my Alpha.” I crossed my arms over my chest, which only drew the vampire’s eyes to my br**sts. “Yes, I can feel something, Arys, but I can’t identify it. I have been around for two and a half decades. You’ve seen centuries. Don’t make me feel inferior just because I don’t know what I’m sensing. It smells human, but it doesn’t feel that way. It’s hard to pick out anything beneath the blood and death.”
His hands came to rest on my forearms, and he gazed deep into my eyes. The now familiar heat within my core began to grow at his touch. He pulled my arms apart despite my childish resistance and gave me a slight shake.
I frowned. “Arys, what are you-,”
“Shh.” He placed one finger lightly on my lips to silence me. “Loosen up. Concentrate. Seriously, Alexa, listen to me.”
I wanted to listen, to allow his voice to draw me in. I leaned into his touch and savored his cool power.
“Shake off the need to be wolf,” Arys continued. “Smell, sound, sight…these things won’t serve you here. You have to go beyond those senses. Tap into what makes you more than wolf or woman.”
Even amid the death and destruction, my eyes closed of their own accord. The overpowering smells that crowded my sensitive nose seemed to dissipate as I saw the world through an aural haze. I opened my eyes, and Arys’s midnight blue aura shone faintly around him. My own yellow gold surrounded me. I gave a small gasp. The two energies reached for one another. They formed a small arc between us like a rainbow of swirling golden blue.
I shook off the fascination of our entwined auras and concentrated. I was able to clearly isolate the remnants of energy left behind by both Belle and her killer. I felt Arys. He shielded me from the trauma that danced among the energy shadows. I could see nothing, but I didn’t need to see her because I could feel her. The killer I sought was female and neither human nor wolf but both. The energy was new to me, but with Arys’s touch, I found the idea: Hybrid.
I must have said the word aloud because Arys nodded and repeated it. I blinked a few times, and my link began to fade. I lost sight of our auras.
“Did you see that?” I asked with a giddy excitement in my tone. “Our auras joined together like some twisted, poison vine? I mean I’ve seen it in the color of my psi balls but that was crazy.”