“Thank God!” I breathed.
I yanked open the door and was immediately pummeled. I heard the unmistakable crack of bone on bone and felt the searing pain of a head butt. Whoever had thrown himself at me had done so with all their strength, and I was pinned to the floor under his weight—his solid, dead weight.
I struggled underneath the body, and the skull that bonked mine lolled over my chest and gazed up at me with milky, sightless eyes. I howled and started kicking, skittering—anything to get the dead guy off of me.
“My God, my God!” I was panting when Parker and Nina ran down the hall and found me on the floor, my eyes wide.
“What in the hell is going on here?” Parker shouted.
“Get him off of me! Get him off of me!”
Parker rolled the body over, and I scrambled to my feet, rubbing my arms to get the dead off of me. “Don’t touch it!” I screamed at Parker.
Parker was kneeling next to the body, his fingers pressed against the guy’s neck. “Yup.” He nodded. “Definitely dead.”
“Of course he’s dead!” I said, exasperated. “Live people don’t fall out of closets and pummel … other live people!”
Nina sniffed at the air. “And he’s fresh, too.”
Parker grimaced. “Well … that’s handy.”
Nina knelt down next to Parker. “Do you know how he died?” she asked.
Parker slid the sleeves up the man’s arms, and I wanted to barf. He checked the man’s neck for bites, and my knees started to quiver. “You guys, I need to get out of here.”
“No bite marks,” Parker told Nina, both of them ignoring me.
Nina gave the man’s veins a once-over. “He’s bleeding though.”
I looked at my own heaving chest. “Oh, God, so am I.”
Nina and Parker stood up and rushed to my side, examining the heart-shaped smear of blood on my chest. Nina dragged her index finger through it and then sucked heartily. “Not yours though,” she said finally.
My heart skipped a delighted beat, and then my mouth went dry. “Should I be concerned that you know what my blood tastes like?”
Parker fell back on his knees, pushing the dead man’s leather jacket aside. “Here. He’s been shot. Looks like through the back with a small-caliber rifle.”
“So what does that mean?” I asked. “A dead man, shot, stuffed in the closet of a demon bar?”
“It means that this isn’t the work of a demon,” Nina said, hugging her elbows.
Parker sat back on his haunches. “It means this is probably not our guy.”
“Because we’re dealing with a demon,” I said slowly. “Right?”
Parker’s eyes flashed, locked on mine.
“Maybe,” Nina said.
“So far we know that our killer drinks blood,” Parker said.
“Takes blood,” Nina corrected. “We don’t know what he did with it.”
“Okay,” Parker continued, “a killer who takes blood, tears one of his victims to shreds, removes the heart of a third. A shooting victim for number four just doesn’t add up.”
“And the eyeballs,” I said solemnly. “Don’t forget the eyeballs.”
“So, blood, eyeballs, heart, gunshot wound? No. Definitely doesn’t make sense.”
I sat back. “It certainly seems like we’re dealing with more than one killer. And our dead guy …” I glanced down at him, sprawled on the floor, mouth gaping open and I blinked.
I knew those vacant eyes. The pale skin, the meager attempt at a mustache.
“That’s Officer Franks!” I said, pointing. “From the front desk at the PD! Don’t you recognize him, Parker?”
Parker crouched down, studying. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”
Nina stooped over, feeling for Officer Franks’s wallet and badge. “Yeah,” she said, once she retrieved them, showing them off. “Officer Kevin Franks. Kind of cute.”
Parker felt around the body, and I winced. “But he’s not carrying,” he said finally.
“So we’re pretty sure it’s not our killer. The MO is totally different, right? Maybe it was just a case of the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Nina wagged her head. “No, the clientele at Dirt is too smart for that. No one kills in a public place like this, and even if they did, with a gun?” She looked disgusted. “Wouldn’t happen.”
“All the other murders have been demon-human, right? Or at least seeming that way.” Nina and Parker both nodded. “So I guess the real question is, what’s a norm doing hanging out at Dirt?”
“No,” Parker said, handing me Opie’s wallet. “The real question is, what’s a police officer doing hanging out at Dirt?”
Chapter Fifteen
“I need a shower. Stat,” I moaned the second I sunk my key into the lock. By this time the blood had dried on my chest and flaked off in a brown shower every time I moved. Also, though I was doing my best not to think about the dead guy who was rolling on me less than an hour ago; my skin still crawled and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had dead-guy cooties seeping into my pores.
“Need help?” Parker asked.
“Charming,” I said, slamming the bathroom door in his face.
I melted into the hot water, starting to lather up, but every time I closed my eyes Opie’s milky, vacant eyes floated into my mind. When I tried to blink the image away, it was replaced by the heartless dead woman from the day before. I shuddered, my skin prickling with goose bumps in spite of the hot water.
And then I remembered that I had kissed Parker Hayes.
The goose bumps prickled again, but this time the feeling could only be described as effervescent—or maybe delicious—and my mouth started to water. I blew out a long, exasperated sigh and decided that Parker’s kiss—his tasty, pressing, passionate kiss—was the lesser of the two evils to think about, and I savored the memory of his lips crushing against mine, of the way his chest felt pressed up against mine, of the way his hands found the perfect spot at the base of my neck, the spot that made the erotic touch of his fingers send shivers from my neck to my head, right down to my toes and back again.
When I padded into the living room Parker was sprawled on the couch eating a slice of leftover pizza and Nina was perched on the floor in front of her open laptop.
“Did you get all the dead guy off of you?” Parker asked with a grin.
I raised an eyebrow and took a slice of pizza from the box. “Mmm,” I said, taking a big bite. “This is the best pizza ever. I can’t remember the last time I ate.”
“Nina and I are trying to figure this thing out,” Parker said, crumpling his napkin.
I sat on the arm of the couch. “Since when did you get interested in police work?” I asked Nina.
She glared over her shoulder at me. “Number one, I’m not that interested. Number two, Coptastic over there is bonding with our couch and I’d like to have it back someday soon. The sooner this guy is caught, the sooner I can stretch out and watch
Parker glowered at her. “Don’t you have a coffin you should go sleep in?”
Nina narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you have a donut to eat?”
I jumped in between Nina and Parker, breaking their daggerlike stares. “Guys! Come on. You can deeply offend each other later. We’ve got a case to solve. Let’s get to work.”
Both Nina and Parker let out long, resigned sighs. Nina went back to scanning her laptop, and Parker snaked
