Broken Moon by Laken Cane

Chapter Seven

She thought I could destroy my old alpha and take his place. She thought I could become alpha.

What did I want?

I had no clue. Things were happening too fast—and I needed to put some of them on the backburner for a while. I loaded my kit into the back of my car with my case of belts and holsters, and then I was on my way to pay a visit to Jessie’s ex.

My cell rang not five minutes later, and Detective Rick Moreno’s name popped up on the dash screen. I sighed. He never called unless he needed me to look at a case in which he believed the supernatural to be involved. He also worked in homicide, so his call likely meant someone had died.

Not many cops—or humans—believed in the supernatural, but Moreno had seen me at work. He believed. Though we’d had a rocky start, things were now cool between us. For the most part. I tapped the button on my steering wheel. “This is Kaitlyn.”

“I’m going to text you an address,” he said without preamble. Moreno was always straight to the point. “I need you at the scene.”

Great, and me with an impatient alpha and a wife-beating asshole to visit. “When?”

“Now.” He hung up.

I glanced at my phone when he texted the address, then decided to put off the visit to Jessie’s ex until after Moreno and definitely after the alpha. “Call Jared Walker,” I said, and he surprised me by answering on the first ring.

“I might be a little late,” I told him. “A detective with the police department called and I need to take care of that. I’ll be there when I can.”

“Of course,” he said smoothly. “The humans and their troubles must take precedence.” He ended the call without another word.

“Fuck you too, buddy,” I muttered.

It took me ten minutes to arrive at the address Moreno had given me. I parked along the street, then opened the center console to pull out my laminated ID badge, though the initial investigation was done, and no one remained at the scene except for the detective.

I dropped the lanyard over my head and stared up at the old apartment building before crossing the sidewalk and then walking across the small postage stamp yard. Moreno was waiting at the entrance, his hands on his hips, impatience in his dark eyes.

He hadn’t called me until everyone else had gone, something he tried to do as much as possible to avoid complications. He didn’t want people knowing he called in a “medium” or “little spook” as they mockingly called me when I showed up at a crime scene. Moreno knew I could see things other people couldn’t, but that’s all he knew. He had no idea I was a wolf. As far as I knew, it wouldn’t have occurred to him that we existed.

We rode the creaky elevator in silence, and I leaned against the wall, crossed my arms, and studied him. He wore a black suit, white shirt, and blue striped tie, his jacket cut with a little extra fabric around the waist to better accommodate his gun and gear. His badge was clipped to his belt. Rick Moreno was a good-looking man. Sexy in a dangerous and angry but blank and reserved sort of way. He was also married, but I knew little about her other than the fact that her name was Beth.

Despite the neatness of his attire, his eyes were bloodshot, and his face sported a few new lines. “You look like you need a long vacation,” I said.

He swung his dark brown eyes in my direction. “As do you.”

I laughed. Moreno wasn’t a talker, but that was okay. Neither was I, usually. “What happened?” I asked, my mind back on the crime he’d called me for.

“I’ll show you.”

I sighed. That was all I was getting from him.

A few seconds later we got off on the fourth floor, walked down a dimly lit and clean but old and rather battered hallway. The place could have used a refresh. He pushed up the yellow barrier tape and opened the door to apartment 408, then motioned me inside.

Even before I stepped across the threshold, I felt something. A cold chill swept across my body and I touched my demon blade, quite unintentionally. “Whatever it is,” I murmured, “it’s still here.”

He stiffened. “Tell me what you need.” He didn’t draw his gun, but his fingers twitched.

“When I know,” I answered.

He followed me in—when he’d first began using me as a consultant on these cases, he’d attempted to protect me from whatever might have been inside. He’d insist on going first, his gun out, because one, his instinct was to protect the civilian, and two, he thought he could protect the civilian.

But when it came to supernaturals, the detective and his gun didn’t have a chance. I was the protector, and he’d learned that lesson early on.

I slid my demon blade into my hand, and its warmth caressed my palm. Just holding the thing made me feel more powerful. I walked into the living room and he stood silently beside me, giving me time to do my thing.

I didn’t see the supernatural responsible, but I felt his presence. The room was a mess—the recliner was on its side, the glass coffee table was shattered, a plate of someone’s dinner upended on the thin carpet. Blood was…everywhere. The floors, the walls, even the ceiling. A bloody handprint decorated the large window, and there were clumps of things I didn’t want to look at too hard scattered over the furniture.

The smells were overpowering, especially to my wolf nose. The place smelled of death—guts, blood, and horror.

The apartment had a particular quietness about it, a stifling, thick silence and a heavy darkness relieved only by the waning light coming through the windows—another sign a supernat had been here. Bulbs had blown, electronics had stopped working, and there was not so much as a refrigerator hum to break up all the quiet.

“Okay,” I said, finally, relieved to hear my own voice, “tell me what happened.”

He told me, his voice matter of fact and his face blank, but I could see the emotion hiding beneath the surface. Four people had died there, hacked to pieces by two butcher knives. The murder weapons had been left stuck inside two of the victims. He didn’t go into detail, but he didn’t have to. I had a very vivid imagination.

“It was quick,” he said. “Neighbors heard screams, and the ones who called it in all said they called within five minutes. Less than ten minutes after the first call, we were on the scene. They were already dead and the killer was gone.” He looked at me then, and his eyes were full of rage. “Tell me what did this, Kaitlyn.”

“What made you call me?” I asked. “Why did you think a human didn’t do this?”

He flicked his light on and played it over the ceiling. When I looked up, I gasped. The entire ceiling of the little room was painted with blood. Flowers, moons, what looked like hellfire, and smack dab in the middle of it, the single and somehow sinister word wolf.

“One of the victims exploded,” Rick said. His voice was soft and gentle. Too gentle. “That’s how I knew.”

I swallowed hard and concentrated for a few seconds on my unending pain. It centered me, calmed me, gave me focus.

Then I pulled my bag around and reached inside for a vial of holy water. Holding the silver blade in one hand and the holy water in the other, I opened myself to the evil, lingering spirit, and I began to hunt.

He was here. I felt him like a piece of ice lodged in my throat, and the more open I became, the larger the ice shard grew. It spread through my body and left ice crystals in its wake, overwhelming my usual wolf’s pain. The wolf’s pain was red and hot. The pain caused by the malevolent spirit was frigid, and when it finally reached my head, I wanted to run from the apartment to get some relief. It was like a giant brain freeze, and I thought it might push my eyeballs from my skull.

I would like to go just one day without pain. But before I could fall too deeply into self-pity, I told myself sternly to suck it up. Fight like a warrior. At least I was alive to feel pain, unlike the four who’d been hacked to death just hours earlier.

And then the spirit I was hunting flew screaming from the darkness, the fires of hell surrounding him, and I went immediately from icy to on fire. I didn’t scream or panic—the panic would come after the crisis. I realized immediately what—and who—the spirit was, and that knowledge sat like a bloated, grinning toad in the back of my mind, waiting for me to have time to take it out and look it over.

Right now, I could only fight.

My wolf helped me. Her rage and madness took over my body, and I let her. Not that I could have stopped her, not then. Every whirl, lunge, leap, and dodge had her behind it. She was behind every thrust of the blade, each dash of holy water.

She—and I—were fighting for our lives. Then I unlocked my jaw and I did scream, but only to warn the detective. “Rick,” I yelled, “get out!”

I heard the door slam as he immediately obeyed me. I’d been keeping the spirit occupied, but I knew suddenly what had happened in that room.

The supernatural being had possessed one of the victims. He’d forced him to kill his family, and then turn the blade on himself. Not unheard of.

Why the pain, little girl?

“No,” I cried, finally.

The spirit in the apartment was the demon boss whose blade I now held.

I’d believed I’d killed him, but I had not killed him, and I hadn’t sent him back to his world. I’d simply freed the enraged, malevolent demon to take out his vile inclinations on the humans of my world.

And I had no earthly idea how I was going to stop him.

I wasn’t sure I could even survive him.