"I guess that makes us hot stuff," Justin said and laughed at his own joke. It even brought a smile from Anders as he finished lifting the body he held and sent it into the retort after the head. Anders wasn't known for a sense of humor, so the smile was the equivalent of a belly laugh from anyone else, Justin thought.
A shuffling sound and a moan drew his attention around to a woman standing at the corner of the cooler. She was short and rounded with a wave of raven black hair pouring over her shoulders and down her back, a shiny black mass against the tan trench coat she wore. She also had one hand pressed against the cooler wall as if to hold herself up, and her complexion was positively green as she stared at the puddle on the floor where the head had been just seconds ago. Justin was pretty sure she'd witnessed the whole head-rolling-off-the-table-onto-the-floor bit. No doubt a gruesome sight for someone not used to dealing with the dead. Hell, he had to do it on a semi regular basis and it had been gruesome to him.
Her eyes lifted reluctantly to him and Anders now and Justin noted that they were a lovely pale blue. She had nice lips too, full and kissable, and the cutest little slightly turned up nose . . . and she was looking at him and Anders with a sort of mindless horror.
"I have the mess on the floor to clean up, so you get to deal with our tourist here," Anders announced grimly.
"Thanks," Justin said sarcastically, but didn't really mind. He loved women, always had, and this one was a cutie. The only shame was that he wouldn't get to play with more than her mind. Once he took control of her and wiped her memories, he'd have to avoid contact with her again to avoid those memories returning. Ah well, plenty more in the sea, he thought and concentrated his gaze on her forehead, trying to penetrate her thoughts.
"Well?" Anders asked after a moment. "What are you waiting for? Take control of her."
Justin blinked, confusion sliding through him and then said weakly, "I can't."
"What?" Anders asked with surprise.
"I can't read her," he clarified, hardly able to believe it himself. Her thoughts were a complete blank to him.
"Seriously?" Anders asked, eyes narrowing.
"Seriously," Justin assured him, aware that his voice sounded as dazed as he felt. Damn. He couldn't read her. That meant--
"Well, then I'd get after her if I were you," Anders suggested and when Bricker just stared at him in blank confusion, he gestured to where the woman had been just a moment before and pointed out, "She's running."
The closing of the door to the hall told him Anders was right before he could turn to see that she was no longer in the room. Cursing, Justin burst into a run. He'd be damned if he was going to let her get away . . . and not because of what she'd seen. He couldn't read her, and that might mean she could be a life mate for him. Finding a life mate this early in life was pretty damned rare. If he lost her, he wouldn't be likely to find another for centuries . . . maybe millennia, and Justin had no desire to wait millennia to experience what it was like to have a life mate.
She was quick, he noted with admiration on reaching the hall to see her disappearing through the door at the other end. But then panic could be one hell of a motivation and he had no doubt what she'd seen had raised panic in her.
The thought made Bricker frown as he went after her. He would have a lot of explaining to do once he caught up. He'd have to calm her, and then somehow explain that he wasn't some murderous bastard destroying evidence of his dastardly work . . . and all without the aid of mind control. That ought to be interesting, he thought unhappily, and his worrying over that made him move more slowly than he could have. He wanted to work out how to explain things before he caught up. He wanted to do it right the first time, calm her quickly, and gain her trust. He couldn't convince her to be his life mate if she was terrified or suspicious of him. The right words were needed here.
The problem was, Justin didn't have a clue what those right words were and he was running out of time. It did seem a good idea to stop her before she actually left the building, though, and at that moment she was racing through the last hall, flying past the chapels and columbaries, headed for the exit. Letting go of the worry about what to say, Justin picked up speed and caught her arm just as she reached the door. When he whirled her around, she immediately swung her free arm at him. Expecting paltry girly blows, Justin didn't react at first and only spotted the scissors she held a heartbeat before they sliced across his throat.
Justin sucked in his breath and released her as pain radiated through him. He saw the fine mist of blood that sprayed out and splashed across her tan coat and immediately covered his throat. The small amount of blood that had showered her told him it wasn't a deep wound. He was more surprised by the attack than anything else. Still, by the time he turned his attention back to the woman, she'd tugged the door open and was slipping away. Cursing, he ignored his stinging throat and quickly followed.
The woman--his woman--glanced over her shoulder at the sound of the door opening and Justin's mouth tightened at the sight of her wide terrified eyes. So much for winning her trust, he thought, and then cried out as she stumbled. She had been looking back rather than where she was going and that was her undoing. It left her unprepared for the sudden step down in the sidewalk and she lost her footing. She fell flat on her face. It wasn't much of a fall though and he fully expected her to pop back up fighting and with feet moving, but instead she lay prone until he reached her side.
Concerned by how still she was, Justin squatted and turned her over. He spotted the bloody gash on her forehead first. She'd obviously hit her head on the sidewalk as she fell. It was a good bump, but not that bad, he noted with a relief that turned to horror as he then spotted the scissors protruding from her chest in the small space where the loosely done up coat didn't meet. Even as Bricker saw that, her eyes opened and then widened with pain and fear of a different kind now. She no longer feared him, at least not as much as she feared for her life. The hell of it was, he was afraid for her life too. It looked bad.
"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to run with scissors?" he said shortly, ripping her coat open to reveal a pink pajama top with white bunnies. The sight startled him enough that he paused briefly, until he noted that those bunnies around the scissors were quickly growing red with the blood bubbling up from her wound. He was sure the presence of the shears in her body was the only thing keeping that blood from spraying out in a fountain. It looked like a mortal wound to him. He was going to lose his life mate before even learning her name.
"Screw that," Bricker muttered, and jerked his sleeve up to tear into his wrist with the fangs that slid forward in his mouth. He wasn't losing her.
Two
Holly smacked her lips together and ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. She then grimaced at the serious case of morning breath she had. A truly serious case, she thought with disgust, and opened her eyes, expecting to see the canopy of her bed. Instead, she found herself staring at a somewhat clean white ceiling in a beige room. Her bedroom wasn't beige.
Pushing herself up on her elbows, Holly glanced around with confusion. There was a desk and chair, a wardrobe with a television in the upper inset, black-out curtains, two chairs set on either side of a small coffee table to the left of the bed she lay in, and a perfectly dreadful print on the wall. It all spoke of one thing . . .
"A hotel?" Holly breathed with surprise. "What the devil am I doing in a hotel?"
Sitting up, she started to swing her feet out of bed, but then froze and snatched up the sheet and blanket as they fell away to reveal that she was naked. Holly never slept naked. She held the bedclothes briefly to her chest, her gaze shifting around the room in search of her clothes, but didn't see them. That was distressing. Even more distressing though was the fact that she had no recollection of how she'd come to be in this state.
Her gaze slid to the clock on the bedside table, and Holly sucked in a startled gasp of dismay. Seven o'clock. Dear God, she'd been out all night. James would get home soon a
nd wonder where the hell she was. He'd worry and want to know what had happened. Only she didn't have a clue what to tell him, because she didn't know herself.
Getting home before him seemed like a good idea, but getting dressed and getting out of this bed was an even better one, she decided, and got up, dragging the sheet with her. The blanket tried to come too, but eventually gave up the game and slid free to lie in a heap on the floor. Leaving it there, Holly moved to the closet and opened it to peer inside. Black filled the small space; black jeans, black leather pants, a black leather jacket and even black T-shirts hung neatly in the closet.
Someone was definitely fashion challenged, one part of her mind thought. The other part, however, was having a bit of a panic attack. These were not her clothes. They weren't even women's clothes. They were a man's clothes, and not a man she knew. Holly couldn't think of a single person she was acquainted with who would wear these items . . . and whose bed she should be naked in. At least, not that she could recall . . . although, for some reason, the sight of the clothes raised fear in her.
Suddenly desperate to get out of there, Holly quickly turned to tug open the drawers in the dresser along the wall, hoping for other clothing options, but there was nothing but a bit of dust. Not even boxers or briefs. Apparently the mysterious man who liked black also liked to go commando. She tried not to think about that as she moved back to the closet and pulled out a pair of black jeans and a matching T-shirt.
The pants were big on her, but she fixed that by rolling up the bottoms and making use of a belt she found on another hanger. The T-shirt was large as well, blousing out over the puckered waistband and hanging down almost to her knees. Holly caught the hem and tied a knot in it at her side to make it more of a shirt and less a dress. She then pulled on the leather jacket to hide the mess she was wearing.
Holly headed for the door, only to pause when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she passed the open bathroom door along the way. Dear God, Holly thought with disgust, if she were to wring the grease out of her hair there would be enough to fry something. On top of that, it was a horrible mess, sticking out in the back in a forest of knots. It was the hair of a woman who had been thrashing her head around during crazy, hot, monkey sex.
Not that she'd ever experienced crazy, hot monkey sex . . . that she recalled, Holly tacked on grimly as she glanced toward the bed. But her roommate at college had always looked like this in the mornings after her boyfriend visited. She claimed it could be blamed on her boyfriend for being so good at "doing the nasty."
Holly tried to tame her usually sleek black mane with her fingers. When that didn't work, she quickly searched the bathroom for a brush. There wasn't one, of course. Why would anyone have a hairbrush when she needed it? Rolling her eyes, she gave up on that and instead began to search for something to wrap around her head to at least hide her bad hair. Holly was afraid if she went anywhere like this, she'd be locked up as a madwoman. Certainly, she'd draw attention to herself, and at that moment, she was thinking the less attention the better until she knew exactly what had happened and how she'd got here.
A hat or bandana would have done the trick, but apparently the mysterious man in black didn't have either of those. Blowing her breath out on a sigh, Holly shifted briefly from foot to foot, and then snatched another T-shirt off its hanger and began tearing at it until she had a nice, sleeveless square. After quickly wrapping that around her head and tying it, Holly once again headed for the door.
She needed to figure out where she was, how to get home from here, and then . . . well, once she was safely home she could sort out what had happened and what, if anything, she should do about it.
"Her name is Holly Bosley," Lucian announced.
"Yeah. Anders told me that the first night, when he got back with her purse," Justin said impatiently. He was only in Lucian's room because the man had insisted he had to speak to him. Lucian wasn't someone you refused. But Justin didn't want to be here; he wanted to be back in his own room across the hall with the woman presently in his bed. She'd been sleeping restlessly for two days and nights, something that had worried him. Every other turn he'd witnessed had gone more quickly, with the turnee thrashing and screaming their way through.
Justin had been very concerned at first by how silent and still Holly was . . . until Lucian had told him that Stephano Notte's turn had gone just as quietly and had taken several days. Oddly enough, Stephano's turn had been preceded by his being stabbed in the chest too. Lucian had speculated that it was possible the wound decided the tempo of the turn.
Justin didn't care. All he cared about was Holly surviving and waking up. He had no idea when that might happen, but he wanted to be there when it did.
Hoping to speed this conversation along, Justin now added, "There was a car in the cemetery parking lot with a purse in it. Anders broke the car window to get to her purse, searched it and found her driver's license. Holly Lynne Bosley. There were no car keys though, and she didn't have any keys on her, so Anders had to hotwire the car to get it back here to the hotel."
"He went back to the cemetery last night and found the keys near where she fell," Lucian announced. "I put them in her purse."
Justin glanced to the purse sitting on the table when Lucian gestured to it and found himself shaking his head. He still couldn't believe she hadn't been sleepwalking. He'd been sure that must have been the case when he'd spotted those pajamas of hers. The lack of anything like keys or a purse had just seemed to back that up. But it seemed she'd had both, just not on her. What the hell had she been doing at the cemetery at that hour of the night in pajamas?
"Holly is a temp, presently working in the office at the cemetery," Lucian said as if that might explain it.
To Justin it didn't and he pointed out dryly, "Yeah, well she wouldn't work in her pj's."
Lucian shrugged. "She must have recalled something she left behind and returned to collect it after already preparing for bed."
"That makes sense," Decker commented, drawing their attention his way. The dark-haired man dressed in Enforcer black was reclining on one of the two beds in the room.
"After midnight? In her pajamas?" Justin asked dubiously.
Lucian shrugged. "She probably didn't expect to encounter anyone at that hour."
"She was in the crematorium, the only place there would be anyone at that hour," he pointed out.
"So she was," Lucian agreed and then pointed out, "Only she can answer these questions."
"She might have been bringing down paperwork," Anders said, entering the room through the open connecting door.
When Lucian raised one questioning eyebrow it was Justin who explained, "The shuffle of papers and a moan are what drew our attention to her presence. Once I saw she was in pajamas though, I just assumed the papers had been lying on the floor and she'd kicked them or something as she walked."
"Or she could have been bringing them down for the guy working the ovens and dropped them when she saw us," Anders said now.
Lucian considered that and then nodded slowly. "That's possible."
"But she was in her pajamas," Bricker repeated, unable to get past that fact. The pajamas had been flannel, for God's sake, and she'd had on fluffy furry slippers too. He'd tossed the offensive items out once he'd got her back to the hotel and stripped her for the turn. No woman of his was wearing pink flannel pajamas and fluffy slippers.
Shaking his head over her apparel, he glanced to Lucian to note that he stood unnaturally still, his head cocked. "What is it?"
"She's awake," he announced with a frown.
Bricker was on his feet at once and headed for the door.
"Wait. Bricker! There's more you need to know," Lucian growled, but this time Justin didn't listen. His life mate was awake. He needed to get to her, and not even Lucian Argeneau was stopping him.
Holly opened the door and rushed out only to come to a startled halt when the door opposite opened and a man was suddenly before her in the hal
l. He appeared so quickly she almost wondered if she'd blanked out for a moment. No one could move that fast.
"Oh, hello. You're not just awake, you're up." The man's words brought her wide eyes to his face. He sounded surprised, but no more surprised than she was at his words. He acted like they knew each other, but she hadn't a clue who he was . . . Had she encountered him when she'd come to the hotel? If so, maybe he could tell her what condition she'd been in and who had brought her. That thought uppermost in her mind, she murmured, "I--Yes."
Holly then simply stared at him. He was definitely attractive, with dark hair and laughing eyes. He was dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt. Copies of the clothes she was wearing, she realized as his eyes dropped down over her borrowed ensemble.
"My clothes don't quite fit you, do they?" he asked with amusement.
"Your clothes?" she asked with alarm. This was the owner of the room she was presently occupying? And apparently the one across from it too, since he'd just come from there, she reasoned.
"Yeah." He grinned. "Don't worry, though. I'll go out and pick up something more appropriate for you later, after we talk."
"Oh, no, no that's not necessary," Holly squeaked, hustling quickly backward when he began to move toward her. She realized her mistake at once. She had backed farther into the room she'd been trying to exit, allowing him to enter. Now he was between her and the exit. It only got worse when he closed the door. Somehow his presence in the room seemed to make it shrink.
Biting her lip, Holly continued to back up until she bumped into the desk chair. She promptly dropped to sit in it, her gaze skating nervously around the room before returning to him. He'd said he'd get her more appropriate clothes after they talked, but she was less interested in clothes than she was in talking, or at least in getting some answers. Holly had about a million questions floating around in her head right now. Little things like, who was he? How had she got here? Who had removed her clothes? Why had she been naked in the bed? Had she been alone in the bed the entire time she'd been in it? How long had she been in it? Where were her clothes?
They went on from there, but that pretty much covered the main ones she'd like answers to. She peered at him warily, and asked, "Who are you?"