In life, he would have been imposing. In death, he looked small and sad.

Especially with his head and legs separated from his body.

The blood I'd smelled had pooled mostly near his legs, but there wasn't a whole lot of it. Not a body's worth, anyway. Someone had cut them off and bled him out before he'd killed him. This in itself wouldn't have completed the job of killing him, simply because a vampire could survive wounds that would kill most nonhumans. Even breaking a vampire's neck wouldn't actually kill him, though it would incapacitate him, and this in itself could be deadly. But completely severing the head was a different matter altogether-no vampire could recover from that. Not even one as old as Armel.

I glanced around the room. Beyond the open safe, which only had a few scattered papers in it, the room seemed undisturbed.

The windows were locked, and the sunlight streaming in through the gla.s.s highlighted the darkening pools of blood and little else.

There was hardly anything in the way of mess and yet something felt very wrong here. Not just the death, and not just the fact that there didn't seem to be any reason for it, but something in the air itself. An energy that felt powerful, and yet very wicked.

I shivered and rubbed my arms. Armel might have called Jack about spirits, but I doubted a ghostly apparition had been responsible for this. Besides, how would a ghost cut off someone's legs or head?

This mightn't have started off as a proper Directorate case, but it sure was now.

I stepped around his body and walked over to the safe. Beyond the few scattered papers, there was nothing inside. I doubted Armel would have had a safe installed if he didn't actually put things of value in it, so it was a fair bet that this had probably been a murder-slash-robbery. The safe didn't appear to be tampered with in any way, so either Armel had opened it for the thieves, or he'd caught them in the midst of the job.

But if that was the case, why was there no sign of fighting? No vampire went to his death willingly, and I couldn't imagine Armel simply lying still while someone hacked off his legs and head.

So what the h.e.l.l had happened?

Frowning slightly, I stepped away from the safe and walked across to one of the large windows. I had to squint against the brightness of the sunlight streaming in through the gla.s.s, but it did little to warm the chill from my flesh. Shivering, I dug my phone out of my pocket and called the Directorate.

Sal answered. "What's up, wolf girl?"

"I need a cleanup team sent to my current location."

She didn't say anything for a moment, and when she did, there was a slight catch in her voice. "Armel's dead?"

"Yeah." I hesitated. "You knew him?"

"He was one of my lovers."

That surprised me. Not the fact that she had more than one lover-vampires couldn't survive on each other's blood, so while they often had vampire lovers, they also kept a harem of other races. And while some of them, like Quinn, preferred to keep their harems to a minimum, many did not. What did surprise me was the fact that Armel was one of Sal's men. Given that she had the hots for Jack something bad, I would have thought that f.u.c.king his best friend was a bad idea. Friends didn't take from friends-and Jack, from what I could gather, was more of a traditionalist like Quinn than the free-for-all man Armel had apparently been.

"I'm sorry to be the bearer of sad news, Sal."

"I figured it was bad when Jack rushed out of here." She hesitated. "Was it at least quick?"

I looked across at the decapitated body, at the blood pooled near the remains of his legs. "I don't think so."

She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "Get the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds for me, wolf girl. Make them pay."

"I think I'll have to beat Jack to that task."

Her laugh had an edge that spoke of barely controlled pain. "Yeah, you probably will. I've rea.s.signed Cole and his team. The boss will want the best on this one."

"Thanks, Sal."

She hung up. I shoved the phone back into my pocket, then grabbed the nearest curtain and pulled it closed. The sunlight retreated from Armel's body, keeping him whole for Cole and his team when they got here.

I walked back out into the hall then stopped. The air out here was no fresher, the scent of blood seeming to drift everywhere, but that wasn't what I was looking for. I sorted through the differing scents, recognizing and discarding a dozen or so before I found the odd one I'd sensed in the study. The scent of wrongness. Of wickedness.It was strange that such a thing could have an actual scent, but then, fear and anger did, and they were often stronger than life- affirming emotions like l.u.s.t and happiness.

I followed my nose and ended up in one of the bedrooms. It had to be Armel's-the color scheme and furniture were very masculine, although the four-poster bed and accompanying draperies were not.

The scent stopped midway into the room. The owner of that scent had stood here, possibly staring at the bed but going no further. My gaze shifted to the nightstand. An expensive gold watch sat there, as did a wallet. If robbery was the reason for this murder, why not take those as well?

Frowning, I continued on to the disheveled bed. The dents in the pillows suggested that Armel had not been alone. I couldn't smell the other person's scent, but maybe its sheer evilness was overwhelming everything else. Because I certainly couldn't smell Armel in here, either, and I should have.

I picked up his wallet, blew off some dust-which was also odd-and had a quick look. Beyond the thick wad of cash, there were credit and ATM cards, as well as a collection of cards-both business and personal.

And the thief, who'd come in here and stared at the bed, had left all this sitting here.

This was definitely a weird one.

I turned around and walked back downstairs, checking the other rooms as I went and finding nothing out of place and no indication that someone else had been in the house. Except for that out-of-place scent and the dent in the pillows, Armel seemed to have been alone.

I walked to the front door to wait for Jack. He arrived in a dark van a few minutes later. The driver crashed through the carefully constructed garden beds as he maneuvered the van as close to the front entrance as possible. The van's side door opened, and I had a brief glimpse of Jack before he blurred and raced toward the door.

I stepped back out of his way, then slammed the door closed once he'd entered, stopping the sunshine from streaking into the hallway.

"Where's the body?" he said, face and bald head pink with sunburn despite his efforts.

"Upstairs." I hesitated. "Boss, it's not pretty-"

"I didn't expect it to be." He glanced up the stairs, his expression hard and grim. "Has a cleanup team been called?"

"Cole is on his way."

He grunted. "You need to get back to the Directorate and write up a report for last night. And check break-ins for this area, to see if we've got a pattern occurring."

Normally I would have argued, not only because I hated leaving crime scenes before I got a first impression from the cleanup team, but because I didn't like being stuck in the office doing paperwork. But the pain so obvious in Jack's green eyes suggested he wanted time alone to grieve for his friend.

I turned to leave, then hesitated. "Boss, there's an odd smell in both the bedroom and the study upstairs. You might want to call in the magi to investigate it."

He nodded and I left without another word.

The roads were still clogged with traffic, so it took longer than it should have to get back to the Directorate. I bought four coffees from Beans, the little coffee shop that had opened next to the Directorate building, then headed down to the level that held the guardian division's main office area and the cell we called a squad room. Sal was sitting at her desk in the main room, so I walked in and offered her a coffee. She took it with some trepidation, taking a sniff then saying, "Hazelnut?"

"Cures all hurts, if only temporarily," I said, and headed out.

I'd almost reached the door when she said, "Thanks, Riley."

I gave her a half-wave and continued on to the squad room. Both Kade and Iktar were there, the horse man squinting at the computer and the spirit lizard sitting in the corner, the outline of his body fading into the shadows. It was somewhat disconcerting to see, but given that Iktar preferred to study his case files that way, we'd almost become used to it.

Almost.

I handed them both a coffee, then plonked my b.u.t.t down on the corner of Kade's desk. Of course, this bought me into close proximity to the heated scent of him. Kade might be out of bounds-thanks to both Jack's rules and my own desire to remain as true as possible to Quinn-but that didn't stop desire from stirring, especially when the moon was heating my blood.

"I think you'd better get your eyes checked. Your squinting is getting worse."

"It's not my eyes, it's lack of sleep," he said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing a hand across eyes that were bloodshot and baggy. "It's the f.u.c.king babies. They won't sleep."

I grinned. "Well, you're the one who wouldn't keep his little swimmers to himself. I have no sympathy for you."

He snorted softly. "You're such a b.i.t.c.h."

"And you should be helping your mares out. It takes two to create babies, and two to look after them."

"The whole point of having a large herd," he said, voice holding a hint of irritation, but the gleam in his warm chocolate eyes countering it, "is the fact that there are plenty of mares to share night duty. The breadwinner has no need to get involved."

I snorted derisively. "Sable makes more money in a week than you do in a year."

"That is beside the point." He took a sip of coffee and sighed in pleasure. "d.a.m.n, this is good."

"The Directorate's probably saved a fortune since the shop upstairs opened." Certainly we hadn't used the coffee machine much since they had. I took a sip myself, then added, "What's happening?"

"Cole's sent a prelim report in for the zombie killing last night. General impressions and identifications, nothing more."

It was surprising he'd managed to get that far. Between riding to my rescue and then being called over to Armel's, he'd been kept pretty d.a.m.n busy.

"Any initial similarities to the first murder?"

"Other than the fact they're teenage girls who had their throats slashed and blood drained, no." He reached forward and turned the monitor around enough for me to see. A pretty young blonde dominated the screen. I quickly scanned the report underneath as he added, "Last night's victim was a street kid with convictions for theft and drugs."

The first murder had been Amy Prince, a seventeen-year-old kid who'd recently left high school. There'd been nothing criminal about her. "There's no apparent connection between the two sets of murders?"

"Nothing obvious that we can see. They don't even look alike. The victims appear to be selected randomly.""But random just doesn't feel right."

Kade raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because these murders are being committed by zombies, and zombies do not rise on their own," Iktar said. "Nor do they practice revenge. Only the living do so."

I looked at him. He was still reading, looking engrossed, but obviously not. "What makes you think these are revenge killings?"

He met my gaze, his all-blue eyes striking against the darkness of his featureless face. "Zombies have no thoughts or feeling of their own. They are mere receptacles for the desires and hatreds of others."

"So?" Kade said.

"So, if mere murder were the motive behind these killings, then why raise the dead? There are a thousand different ways a person with the sort of power needed to raise the dead could cause death, but she chooses decaying flesh to be her instrument.

To me, this suggests not only that she wants our attention, but that she has a powerful motivation. Revenge is one such emotion."

"So is hatred, or bloodl.u.s.t," I murmured, and yet I couldn't disagree with him. These killings were linked somehow, I could feel it, and revenge was certainly one possible connection. Revenge for what was the question. "Why would anyone actually want to attract our attention? That's just suicidal."

Iktar shrugged. "We won't know that until we find the person controlling the zombies."

I glanced at Kade. "Maybe we're tackling this from the wrong angle. Maybe we need to discover if there's any connection between the zombie and the dead people."

"It's still hard to imagine a connection between a street kid in Fitzroy and a former Broady high school student."

"Street kids weren't born that way. Maybe they all went to the same school or something." And it wouldn't be the first time we'd dealt with the b.l.o.o.d.y need to avenge injustices done at school. h.e.l.l, Liander-the love of my brother's life-still bore the scars after one such episode.

"Has anyone talked to the kids who shared the squat with last night's victim?"

Kade shook his head. "They scattered when I tried earlier this morning. I think I looked too much like a cop for their liking."

He looked about as much like a cop as I did. It was probably more the fact that he was a big, imposing male who looked ready to handle any sort of trouble that had them running.

"Then maybe that's what I need to do next." Jack might have told me to write up a report, but solving this case was infinitely more important. Besides, talking to the street kids got me out of the office and away from Kade's delicious aroma. I might be strong willed, but I wasn't a fool. Even the saintliest werewolf could succ.u.mb to temptation during the moon heat, and I certainly had never been a saint. "Could you do me a favor?"

"Look out, Kade. We're about to be asked to do something she was asked to do."

I glanced across to Iktar. "Hey, I bought you coffee. Be nice."

White teeth flashed-an odd sight in his all-black face. "I was. I didn't tell him to say no, although that is what he should do."

"Why don't you just go back to your reading?"He chortled softly. "If Kade didn't want to get back into your bed, he would say no."

"Kade knows there's no chance of that."

He met my glance with a raised cup. "Doesn't stop me from hoping otherwise, of course. What's the favor?"

"Could you run a check for break-ins in the Toorak area? One of Jack's friends was murdered this morning during a robbery, and he wants to see if there have been any similar occurrences."

"That explains the explosion of anger I felt just before he stormed out of the squad room."

Kade, like Quinn, was an empath, but he was also kinetic, which had definitely come in handy when fighting many a bad guy.

"And it means he'll be in a foul mood for days to come." I hesitated, then grinned. "Another reason for me to be in the office as little as possible. You know how easily I can annoy him."

He snorted softly. "Go. I'm stuck here anyway. The lizard and I have to cross-check the details of everyone in that emo nest you found to make sure there's no illegals or underage turnings."

The emos were a large group of vampires I'd discovered while investigating a previous case. Rather than living on blood, emos fed off emotion. Which, according to Jack, made them even more dangerous than blood suckers, simply because they could amplify emotions like hate and rage, and feed off the resulting chaos.

Not that this nest of emos had done anything like that as yet, but it paid to be cautious. Especially when we hadn't even known they'd existed until I'd stumbled upon them.

"The lizard has a name," Iktar said mildly. "Kindly use it."

Kade grinned. He loved teasing Iktar, and I had a fair idea Iktar enjoyed prodding back-although it was hard to tell because very little expression showed on his face. "I'll stop calling you lizard when you stop calling when me horse boy."

"Can it for five minutes, will you?" I shook my head and took another sip of coffee. "What happens if you find illegals or underage emos?"

"From what Jack said, the vamp responsible will be given a warning and fined, and then the vampire council will get called in to keep an eye on her."

I raised my eyebrows. "I thought the vampire council preferred the Directorate to deal with such matters." h.e.l.l, we cleaned up the rogues, and that had once been the council's job.

Although if Quinn was to be believed, the council was still very much involved in such duties, only its cleanups involved vampires far worse than anything we ever saw. Which was a scary thought considering some of the psychos we dealt with on a regular basis.