I drew a short, sharp breath. I’d never seen Cody like this—implicitly dangerous, yet at his most vulnerable. It stirred a complicated mix of emotions in me. I wanted to ease the twigs from his tangled hair. I wanted to stand guard over his sleep. I wanted to curl up behind him and bite his earlobe to wake him. He was lying on his side, and beneath his skin I could see the oblique muscles of his rib cage expand and contract with his slow, steady breathing. While I watched, a muscle in the hollow of his bare flank jumped and twitched in a restless dream.
A sound escaped me. It may have been, “Eep!”
The next part happened fast. Cody’s eyes snapped open, phosphorescent green behind the amber. Baring his teeth, too many teeth, he lunged from his nest of woolen blankets and took me down, all naked skin, lean muscle, and werewolf speed.
I hit the floor hard, the impact driving the breath from my lungs. Thank God for shag carpeting. Cody pinned me, then snarled in pain and raised his torso as dauda-dagr’s hilt seared his bare skin. His face hovered above mine, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled my scent. I saw recognition dawn in his eyes.
“Daisy,” he growled, his fingers digging into my biceps. “You shouldn’t be here. Not now.”
“Why not?” I whispered.
It’s funny how desire can hit you out of nowhere like a ton of bricks at the most inappropriate times. Maybe it was the glimpse of Cody’s true innermost self in an unguarded moment. Maybe it was born of my long-standing crush, maybe it came from the loneliness I’d felt after breaking up with Sinclair. Maybe it was a combination of guilt and anger and frustration, or maybe this had been coming ever since the night of the satyr-funk orgy.
All I knew was that I wanted this. Here and now. Cody’s eyes were gleaming above mine, his naked skin was hot, hotter than a human’s. And I knew, beyond a doubt, that he wanted this, too.
“It’s not safe.” His breath was warm against my skin.
To hell with the Seven Deadlies, to hell with duppies and zombies and grave robbers, to hell with safe. Cody wasn’t human and neither was I. I wanted this moment. I wanted his wildness. I wanted his fierceness. Wrenching one arm free, I reached between us and plucked dauda-dagr from its sheath, tossing it several feet away on the carpet.
“I don’t care,” I informed him, twining my free hand in his twig-tangled hair and yanking.
He kissed me.
It wasn’t sweet and it wasn’t nice. It was hungry and primal, and there may still have been a few too many teeth involved. If I’d been thinking in words, words like ravaging and plundering would have come to mind, but I wasn’t. Lowering his head, Cody nuzzled my neck, the bronze stubble of his chin rasping against my skin, nipping at it with strong white teeth. I bit his bare shoulder in response, laughing when he snarled at me.
He pushed my thighs apart, hands fumbling at my underpants, human hands turned rough and clumsy with need and the full moon’s lingering imperative.
I helped. I held him off long enough to shrug out of my leather jacket and unbuckle my belt, to peel off my panties, strip off my dress, and unfasten my bra, until I was as naked as he was in his nest of blankets.
I felt molten inside, my heat rising in answer to his. I raised my hips as Cody settled between my thighs.
With a wordless, guttural sound, he pushed himself inside me.
It felt good.
Again and again and again, mindless and primordial. Somewhere in the back of my mind, my father, Belphegor, was laughing.
Somewhere, maybe, God in his heaven frowned in disapproval, and ranks upon ranks of angels, thrones and powers and dominions, nodded their heads in sorrowful agreement.
I don’t know. The only entity beyond the Inviolate Wall ever to speak to me was my father.
Somewhere beneath us on her throne of antique saw blades, Hel gazed into the mists of time. A goddess diminished, but a goddess nonetheless.
Cody arched his back and howled.
Shuddering, I came.
Thirty-seven
It should have been awkward, right? The aftermath, I mean.
It wasn’t.
I lay on my belly in a tangle of woolen blankets, my head pillowed on my arms as I told Cody what had happened and why I was there. Outside, the rain had turned into a downpour, complete with thunder and lightning. Inside felt safe and warm. He listened silently, stroking the length of my spine from the nape of my neck to the tip of my tail.Yeah.
Okay, I know you’ve been wondering. For the record, my tail is approximately nine inches in length, tapering to a point from a diameter of about two inches wide, although it’s broader and flatter at the very base, where the big muscles attach to the coccyx. There’s a fine ridge of pale blond hair that flares out from the base and runs atop it, and it stands on edge and prickles when I’m alarmed, just like the hair on the back of your neck does.
I know, I’ve omitted that point until now. Sue me. Anyway, otherwise it’s hairless. I’m not sure if it qualifies as prehensile. I mean, I don’t use it like monkeys do to grasp objects . . . but I could. Like now, curling it around Cody’s fingers.
And the best part was, he thought nothing of it. He just tweaked it in response, then scratched the base idly. Now I knew why dogs wiggle their butts when you scratch them in just the right spot. It feels ridiculously good. I guess a werewolf ought to know.
“All right,” Cody said when I’d finished my explanation. “Let’s go take a look at the scene.”
Sitting upright, I gestured at the two of us. “Are we going to talk about this?”
“Eventually,” he said. “At the moment, I don’t have the first idea what to say about it, and we’ve got a grave robbery to investigate. So I figured maybe we’d just get to work. You okay with that?”
I thought about it. “I wouldn’t mind something to eat first. And maybe a shower.”
“Well, I suppose another hour’s not going to matter to the Tall Man.” Cody got to his feet, shedding a few pine needles. “I’ll get you a towel and go look in the fridge.”
The only other time I’d eaten at Cody’s, it had involved very, very rare steaks and nothing else. “How about I look in the fridge, and you shower first?”
His mouth quirked. “Fine.”
Less than an hour later, we were on our way, clean and scrubbed, with full bellies. Venison sausage and scrambled eggs, for the record. Cody’s refrigerator didn’t contain anything remotely resembling a vegetable.
Now it started to feel awkward. Pemkowet didn’t have the budget for take-home cars for its officers and since Cody wasn’t scheduled to work that day, there wasn’t a spare cruiser available. It was strange seeing him in uniform behind the wheel of his pickup truck, and it felt strange as hell sitting beside him, my nether regions still pleasantly swollen and tingling. I didn’t know where to look or what to do with my hands. Plus, I’d discovered in the bathroom mirror that I had a couple of serious love bites on my neck. There wasn’t anything I could do about it except turn up the collar on my jacket.
The storm had passed and the rain was easing by the time we reached the mausoleum. Ken Levitt had cordoned off the scene with police tape. Normally, there would have been gawkers alerted by the grapevine, but between the heavy downpour and the early hour, the looky-loos weren’t out yet.
Cody’s nostrils flared as he surveyed the scene, sniffing the air. “Not much left of a scent trail after the rain. Even if there was, there were too many other people’s scents muddling the scene here.”
“What about inside?” I suggested.
“Good idea.”
Unfortunately, the door of the mausoleum had been left open, and wind-driven rain had sluiced into it, dispersing the trail there, too. The scent of decay emanating from the coffin made Cody gag. “Sorry.” He pressed the back of his hand against his lips and gave me an apologetic look. “My sense of smell isn’t as keen as a scent hound’s, and the scent of the Tall Man’s remains is masking anything else. I’m pretty sure the perp wore gloves.”
I shuddered. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Good point.” He shone his flashlight at the floor. “I’m thinking maybe those grease stains are from a jack. It would have taken a lot of leverage to lift that marble slab.”
“So we’re looking for a physics student?” I said.
Cody shrugged. “Could be. Could be someone who works on cars.”
After Cody had determined there was nothing more to be learned inside the mausoleum, we went back outside and did an informal grid search of the surrounding crime scene. If there had been an identifiable set of tire tracks, which wasn’t likely given the amount of traffic there in the past twelve hours, the rain had obliterated them. The groundskeepers were pretty diligent, so despite the popularity of the Tall Man’s resting place among high school students on the make, there wasn’t a lot of trash. A few cigarette butts and a gum wrapper, all of which looked at least several weeks old, and a more recent coffee cozy from Mrs. Browne’s Olde World Bakery.
I winced when Cody held it up on the end of a stick, remembering that I’d seen a member of the coven with a to-go cup of coffee last night. “Yeah . . . I think that might belong to Sheila Reston.”
“From the tattoo parlor?” he asked.
Busted. I’d been careful not to name anyone until now. “Uh-huh.”
Cody smiled wryly. “It’s okay, Daise. You know I’m the last person in Pemkowet about to call anyone out against their will.”
“I know.”
We had a little moment then, gazing at each other through the lingering rainfall, which was more like a heavy mist at this point. It occurred to me for the first time that I didn’t know how I felt about being with someone who felt the need to conceal his membership in the eldritch community. Not that we were together—I wasn’t foolish or desperate enough to attach any significance to this morning’s unexpected and impulsive hookup—but it was something I definitely hadn’t thought through. I know Cody felt he had the Fairfax clan to protect, but I had an ideal to uphold, too.