Embraced By Darkness

were expecting someone else?'

'Hoping for someone else would be more accurate.' He reached inside the car and pulled out a bag. 'Someone with less propensity to foul crime scenes.'

'Well, I'm afraid it just isn't your day.'

'Apparently not.' He glanced briefly over his shoulder as the two other men climbed out. One was a cat- shifter, the other a bird-shifter of some kind. I'd seen both of them at a crime scene with Cole previously, but had no idea of their names. Nor did Cole seem inclined to introduce them.

'Get the gear, guys. I'll head inside,' he added, then glanced at me. 'Are you all right? You actually do look a bit of a mess.'

'Let's just say I'd rather be home than here, but Jack's given me no choice.'

'Jack's like that. And I'm actually surprised you're not in there already.'

'Just got off a plane from holidays and was shunted straight here. Hence, no ID.'

'And you're here because Jack's hoping you'll find a little lost soul?'

'That, and the fact we're short on guardians who can investigate day crimes.'

'Guardians aren't investigators. They're hunter-killers.'

Which was totally true—up to a point. 'Let's not get into that argument when there's a victim waiting.'

He almost smiled. Almost. 'Fair enough. Follow me, then.'

I followed. The cop allowed us through after a quick inspection of Cole's ID and a brief explanation. Cole then handed me a set of gloves, donned a pair himself, and lightly pushed the front door open.

Surprisingly, given all the repairs it had undergone, the door didn't creak as it moved. The long hallway beyond was shadowed, and the silence thick. Even the whispering wind made little sound as it slid past our legs and scattered the dust bunnies lying on the worn, wooden floorboards.

The air escaping from the house was rich with the scent of blood and death, but there was something else here, something that had the hairs at the back of my neck rising.

An evil so vile I had to clench my fists against the urge to run.

I licked my lips and forced myself to remain calm. If I could face the god of death, I could surely face whatever remnants of evil lay waiting in this house.

'The death still smells rather fresh,' I commented, glad my voice sounded so normal when I was shivering inside.

'The neighbors reported it less than two hours ago. The cops called us straight in.'

I nodded, and narrowed my gaze a little. There was a deeper blob of darkness down at the far end of the hall, but it didn't look big enough to be a body. It looked vaguely like a lump of wood, only there didn't seem to be any missing from the walls or doorframes. I switched to infrared, and the fading glow of life leapt into focus.

It wasn't a lump of wood. It was a leg.

A leg that still wore a shoe.

This was going to be bad.

Cole pulled a flashlight from his bag and flicked the switch. The bright beam of light swept across walls splattered with blood and chunkier bits of God knows what. Then it caught the limb and stopped.

'Nice shoe,' he commented.

'Yeah.' It was a silver stiletto, with sparkly bits around the toes. The sort of shoe worn to parties or dances, not abandoned houses.

'I'd better set up a mobile recording unit here.'

'I hope you have more than one in that little black bag of yours. I'm thinking we're going to need it.'

'I'm thinking you could be right.'

He assembled then pressed what looked to be a small black globe against the ceiling, waited until the suction took hold, then hit the record button. The unit whirred to life, and one of the lenses behind the black glass sphere did a circuit of the hall before coming back to rest on the two of us. From here on in, any movement and all conversation would be tracked and recorded.

He handed me a pair of those paper-thin shoe-covers supposedly designed to stop further contamination of the crime scene. Once I'd slipped them over my heels, we moved inside, carefully avoiding the blood and gore. Two bedrooms led off the hallway, but a brief glance through the doorways revealed nothing out of the ordinary. The destruction seemed to have swept past them.

The stink grew richer, stronger, the farther we moved into the house. It wasn't just death, but age, mold, and urine. This house smelled like it had been abandoned for some time—and if the cloying scent of piss was anything to go by, it had been claimed as a squat for the homeless for almost as long.

So what would a woman who wore costly, sparkly shoes be doing here?

The eye-witness report hadn't mentioned anyone being forced into the house. Just a shadow breaking into it.

We stopped near the limb. I stared down at it, seeing the obvious tearing at the end of her leg, in the muscles and flesh. Someone had ripped this leg from her body. Not cut it, not bitten it, but literally pulled it free.

That took incredible strength. Which meant we were definitely dealing with something preternatural.

Cole glanced back to the mobile unit. 'Zoom and record all floor elements at current location.'

'Scanning.' We waited, and after several seconds, the unit beeped. 'Area scanned and recorded.'

We moved on carefully. Footsteps from behind indicated the two other shifters had entered the house, but Cole didn't acknowledge them and neither did I.

The room beyond the hallway was a living room. Chunks of plaster were missing from the walls, and the grubby window to the right was smashed, allowing the light and the wind to swirl into the room. The smell of urine was stronger, almost masking the scent of death.

Almost.

There were more body parts here. An arm thrown casually on top of the fireplace. A shoeless foot leaning at an angle in a corner. And blood. Lots of blood, splattered in haphazard patterns across the walls and across the ceiling.

Shallow breathing wasn't helping any. The aroma seemed to be seeping into my skin, making my stomach curl.

'Don't move while I place another scanner,' Cole said, his voice matter-of-fact.

'How do you manage it?' I asked, my gaze on the kitchen entrance and the shadows and death and thick evil that waited there.

It almost felt as if whatever had caused this destruction was waiting for our reaction. Reveling in it.

I shivered and rubbed my arms. My imagination really needed to be shoved into a box and left there, otherwise I was going to have a whole lot of trouble getting through days like this.

Cole pressed the black globe against the ceiling, then said, 'Manage what?'

'The sort of detachment you have. How do you get through day after day of confronting this sort of destruction?'

He shrugged as the scanner whirred to life. 'I imagine I cope much the same way you do. You do what you have to, and deal with the consequences later.'

No matter how casual he seemed, it had to be a whole lot harder for him. He saw the destruction of good people day after day after day, but he had no hand in the final resolution. Didn't have the satisfaction of seeing yet another murdering psycho removed from society.

I did.

And it was at times like this—when I was confronting such useless devastation—I was fiercely glad that fate had made me a guardian. I mightn't have wanted the job—and I might still be reluctant to kill on order—but if I could help take out the monsters who wreaked this sort of havoc, then hey, I could live with a bit of blood on my hands.

The scanner beeped, confirming that the initial scan of the room had been completed, I moved forward, my gaze on the kitchen. The smell of death and the sense of evil seemed to be concentrated there, and a large part me didn't want to go anywhere near it. But that wasn't an option. If there was a soul to be found, then that was where I'd find her. With the major parts of her body, not her bits.