Autumn Bones

thinking, just a deep, primordial desire to copulate, to be a part of the whole wet, slippery, thrusting celebration. Cody’s mouth covered mine, his urgent tongue pushing past my lips. His hands dropped to my hips, jerking me against him.

My tail shivered with pleasure. I wrapped my legs around his waist and slid my hands up his arms, lacing them behind his neck and pulling his head down. There was definitely too much fabric in the way, not to mention his utility belt.

Not good. I wanted bare skin. I wanted more. My fingertips trailed over the bronze stubble of his cheeks, finding the collar of his dark blue uniform shirt. I yanked it open with strength that would have surprised me if I’d been capable of rational thought, buttons flying. Cody reached between us to unbuckle his utility belt, letting it fall before pulling me against him again.

Yeah, better; much better. I could feel his erection straining beneath his trousers, pressed hard against my core. My hips thrust involuntarily as I ground against him. Cody was kissing me again, and I found myself moaning into his mouth. Om-mani-fuckme-hum, baby. He pushed up my tank top, hands gliding over my skin, fondling my breasts with an eager roughness that made me arch my back. . . .

Against my waist, I felt a rill of pure cold so intense it jolted me into awareness. Cody made a strangled sound deep in my mouth, jerking away from me.

“Shit!” he said fervently. There was a scorched-looking patch of skin on his bare torso, faint wisps of frost rising from it.

Dauda-dagr. I dropped my hand to its hilt, the hilt of the dagger no one but one of Hel’s agents could touch with impunity. Its coolness was bracing, further clearing my thoughts.

Cody, on the other hand, was beginning to look glassy-eyed again. He shook his head and started back toward me.

“Whoa! Down, boy.” I drew dauda-dagr and held it between us, surreptitiously tugging my tank top down over my exposed breasts. “Cody!” I shouted over the music. “Take my hand. Just be careful not to touch the dagger.”

With a shudder, he reached for the dagger’s hilt, wrapping his fingers around mine. The glaze lifted again. “Daise? What the hell’s going on?”

“I wish I knew.” My wits more or less functioning, I glanced around the bar.

Whatever was going on, it definitely centered around the dance floor, and around one guy in particular. Tall, well built, strongly etched features, a pointed tangle of beard, a grin plastered to his face, and . . . well endowed.

Like, really, really well endowed. His glistening, um, endowment jutted forth from his crotch, bobbing above the dance floor before an enthusiastic orgiast dropped to his knees before it, obscuring my view. There appeared to be a waiting line for the privilege. Staring at the grinning recipient, I felt the telltale tingle that identified him as a member of the eldritch community.

Cody leaned forward, his lips brushing my ear. “He’s one of ours.”

It was enough to set me abuzz with lust all over again. Clutching dauda-dagr’s hilt, I suppressed it. “Yeah, I know. But I don’t know what he is or why this is happening. Do you?”

“No,” he admitted. “Not a clue.”

The kneeling orgiast backed away, a long strand of . . . Okay, never mind. Part of my brain said, “Eww!” Another part . . . didn’t.

“Daisy.” Cody’s fingers tightened over mine. “We’ve got to put a stop to this. Any ideas?”

“One,” I said. “But you won’t like it. Any sign of Bart Mallick?”

“No.” He looked around the bar. “Oh . . . shit. Yeah.”

I followed his gaze. “Oops.”

Longtime patrol officer and family man, married father of three teenaged kids Bart Mallick was . . . You know what? It’s not important. Suffice it to say that I doubt his wife would have approved.

Taking a deep breath, Cody let go long enough to retrieve his utility belt and buckle it feverishly around his waist before grasping my hand again. “Can you get him out of here?”

“I think so.”

We edged our way through the orgy toward the dark corner where Bart Mallick was . . . doing what he was doing. With, let me add, a very willing partner.

“Bart. Officer Mallick?” I touched the tip of dauda-dagr’s blade to the nape of his neck. His spine straightened with an involuntary jolt. He turned his head, glazed eyes clearing slightly. “It’s Daisy Johanssen and Cody Fairfax. Can you hear me? I need you to pull up your pants, take my hand, and come with us, okay?”

He nodded.

With their hands atop mine and mine wrapped around the dagger’s hilt, I managed to haul Cody and Bart stumbling over myriad writhing bodies into the parking lot, away from the immediacy of the driving, incessant beat and the pervasive, compelling funk.

Officer Mallick slumped against his patrol car looking dazed. “Oh, Jesus, fuck me. Fuck me sideways!”

“Bart!” Cody took him by the shoulders and gave him a shake. “Whatever happened in there? Not your fault. Right, Daisy?”

“Right,” I agreed. Total lie. There are rules governing the eldritch world, and one of them is that desire, genuine desire, can’t be compelled. Pleasure and infatuation, yes. But genuine desire? No. It’s like true love. “Everyone okay? I have to make a call.”

Cody eyed me suspiciously. “You’re not calling—”

My finger hovered above my phone’s screen. “Look, I told you that you wouldn’t like it.” I jerked my chin toward the door. “It would take all night to use dauda-dagr to escort everyone in there out here by ones and twos, and we still wouldn’t have any way to contain patient zero in there, or the first notion of why this is happening. Do you have a better idea, Officer Down-low?”

He shook his head, and I hit the CALL button.

Although I hadn’t talked to Stefan Ludovic in more than a month, he picked up immediately. “Daisy. What is it? Are you . . . all right?”

A wave of self-consciousness washed over me. Of course, Stefan would suspect. He was a ghoul, or as they call themselves, one of the Outcast, condemned for eternity to exist on the emotions of others. And because I’d given him permission to taste mine, he was attuned to them. He couldn’t have missed that giant preternatural spike of pure lust.

“Um . . . yeah, I’m fine, but we’ve got a situation. Do you have enough people you trust to defuse an orgy without losing control?”

Stefan didn’t hesitate. “I’ll be right there. You’re a mile or so to the north?”

“Rainbow’s End,” I confirmed. “Parking lot.”

“I’m on my way.”

Not that long ago, ghouls and biker gangs were two things I’d go out of my way to avoid. That was before Stefan Ludovic came to town. He’s done a lot to improve the image of the Outcasts, which, by the way, is the name of the biker gang—or motorcycle club, to use the polite terminology—to which most of the local ghouls belong, and related to but not entirely synonymous with being one of the Outcast. Okay, it’s confusing.

Anyway, after taking over Pemkowet as his turf, one of the first things Stefan did was issue a ban on selling drugs, particularly crystal meth. Since that had been a big component in establishing a cycle of human dependency and misery that sustained a lot of ghouls, what he did was actually pretty huge. Of course, it touched off a rebellion that led to a great deal of unpleasantness, but again, long story short, Stefan came through.

So why had I been avoiding him since? One, he held out an offer so tempting it scared me, a promise that he could show me ways to experience the full intensity of my super-size emotions without risk.

Two, I’d seen him die. And not just die—die and come back. That’s what happened with the Outcast. They’re condemned to the mortal plane because neither heaven nor hell would have them.