In slow motion, he turned to the open doorway of the bathroom. Helania was lying on the tile floor, her naked body facedown and spread out, the bath mat shoved aside as if she were seeking to cool as much of herself as she could.

Even from across the way, he could see her sex gleaming—and the wave of lust that came over him was so great, it brought him to his knees.

As he hit the floor hard, she tried to shut the door and mumbled something.

“Oh . . . God,” he said under his breath. “The needing.”

Driven by an instinct to protect her, even though there was nothing he could do to stop the surging hormones of her fertile time, Boone dragged himself back to his feet and stumbled toward her, his legs sloppy and uncoordinated, as if he were drunk. Bumping into the couch, he threw out a hand to a wall, to a table, to the doorjamb, to whatever he could find—until he fell again and had to crawl on all fours.

“Helania—”

“Shut me in . . . shut me inside . . . leave if you can . . . I didn’t know, I swear to it . . .”

Putting out his arm, he stopped the door from hitting one of her legs, the position of which seemed to be unknown to her. Then he flopped back against the doorjamb and tried to connect to his rational side through his own nearly overpowering hormonal response.

Vampire females were only fertile about every ten years or so, and that was a blessing. When their needing hit, as Helania’s clearly had, they suffered terrible sexual cravings, the torture so great that most, if they were not trying to become pregnant, asked to be drugged. The only other solution, outside of being put out of their misery medically? A male had to service them by easing their cravings in the carnal way.

Filling them up over and over again.

“Go . . .” she mumbled through her tangled hair. “I’m so sorry, go . . .”

“I’m not leaving you.” And not just because it was daylight. “Do you want me to call the doctors?”

As a human, Manny could drive over. Bring drugs. Ease her suffering—

No, wait. Doc Jane. Yes, a female would be better.

When Boone went to get up, he didn’t have enough coordination to make it to the vertical, so he crawled back into the bedroom. Finding his slacks, he fished through the pockets. No phone. Where was his fucking phone? He’d had it when he’d come in the apartment because he’d been talking to her on it, for fuck’s sake.

On all fours, he went back out into the living area, shuffling along the floor, bunching up the throw rugs, trying to ignore the way his cock bobbed while gritting his molars against his own sexual need. He went back to the sofa. Patting around, he searched through the needlepoint cushions—

When he finally found the goddamn thing, his hands were shaking so badly, he struggled to pick it up and hold it. And then he realized he didn’t have the number to the clinic.

“Motherfucker!”

* * *

It was strange how you could miss the living sure as if they were dead.

As Butch sat by himself in one of the training center’s interrogation rooms, he was at a table that had been screwed down to the floor. The chair he’d parked his butt in, on the other hand, was moveable—although only because he’d released it from its own four-point tether with a Phillips head. There were three other ass palaces, and he was prepared to offer a similar liberation as a courtesy to anybody who came down here to join him.

The fact that he was alone in this makeshift think tank was what made him think about his former partner, José de la Cruz.

Or, like, miss his former partner. Or, fine, maybe the word was more “mourn.”

“You should be here, José,” he said out loud.

Refocusing on the opposite wall, he let his eyes wander around the gruesome display he’d made on each of the killings at Pyre. Going from left to right, he’d started with killing number one. Under that roman numeral, he’d Scotch-taped the articles that had been in the CCJ sequentially, with the most recent one at the top. No photos. No real notes.

See, if he’d still been with the Caldwell Police Department, he would have the incident report and all the attendant documentation to work with. The crime scene photographs. Evidence taken in. Names of witnesses, suspects, etc.

Hell, maybe he’d have been the one assigned to the case.

But nope.

Under roman number II, he had some details about the second killing listed: “Female, Isobel, blooded daughter of Eyrn, found by ???, in storage room ???. Removed by unknown female(s). Body buried ??? (public land). Call to dispatch logged following night from Helania, other blooded daughter of Eyrn.”

The question was whether they needed to go so far as to request permission from Helania, as next of kin, for an exhumation. The problem with that, assuming a typical civilian Fade Ceremony had been performed, and the body wrapped only in layers of cloth, was that the remains would be severely degraded by now. There wouldn’t be much more than bones left.

The other problem with that idea was that he had to weigh any potential for evidence against the trauma on Helania. If there was a chance of finding out anything material from whatever was left of the remains, he would do it in a heartbeat—and go so far as to force the issue with a decree from Wrath if he had to. But he didn’t know what the hell he was looking for or could hope to find, and the ground was frozen. So it just seemed cruel.

Roman numeral III was the column with the glossy, gruesome photographs. Starting at the top, he had the same kind of basics: “Female, Mai, blooded daughter of Roane, found by Helania, blooded daughter of Eyrn, January 23. Fourth storage unit on the right. Remains removed by V.”

The black-and-white images that Butch had put up included some of the ones taken by Vishous at the scene: The facial close-up that showed the hook. The full-length of the hanging body. The storage room through the open door. And then there were ones Butch himself had taken in Havers’s morgue: The slices in the throat and cuts to the wrists. The bruises. The abrasions from her having been dragged. That little nail Boone had noticed.

As he’d told his shellan, Mai’s family had agreed to an autopsy and Havers was going to do it at nightfall once he worked his way through his surgical schedule.

So right now, it was just a waiting game.

Balancing his chair on its back legs, Butch crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the board he’d created.

He had done exactly this with José countless times: Put everything they knew about a case up on a wall so they could stare at the shit until something clicked. God . . . there had been so many deaths that they’d investigated together. So many lives lost that they’d tried to redeem in some small way. So many family members that they’d had to deliver bad news to.

Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. Grandparents. Aunts and uncles and cousins.

And meanwhile, he’d been busy trying to kill himself with the drinking.

José, on the other hand, had been a family man. A good Catholic who loved his wife and his children.

“Wonder if you could see what I’m missing, José,” he said into the still air.

There was so little to go on, and the familiar churn of his brain as it chewed over what he had and what was not yet found, what he knew and what he wondered about, was a gateway to a ten-year span of his former life. As a human.

The great shift in his existence, in his very identity, did not seem weird anymore. Probably because he liked everything about being a vampire: His shellan. His friends. His work, his purpose, his lifestyle.

Contrary to the fables about those with fangs, he was one of the very rare half-breeds who had been “turned” from what was essentially human into something that was wholly not. In the real world, a bite from the “undead” didn’t condemn a pious virgin to an eternity of bloodthirsty stalking. You were either born of the species or you weren’t. Except in his case, and that of a mere handful of others.

And just as that species divide was a hard line not crossed, so, too, were the two worlds that separated Homo sapiens from vampires. So . . . when he came over to this side, he hadn’t been able to take José with him. And he hadn’t been able to say goodbye. Or explain where he had gone or what had happened to him.

One of his biggest regrets in life was the fact that he had disappeared on his former partner. He had always imagined that José hadn’t been surprised, though. Given the way Butch had been living? Only an idiot wouldn’t have seen the coffin headed his way.

Butch stared at the photograph of Mai’s remains and felt guilty. As horrible as a dead body was, as soul-shattering and terrible as it was for a loved one to see that or hear about that from an officer of the law, the only thing that was worse was nothing. No answer to the “where.” No clue as to the “how” or the “why.” No opportunity to begin the mourning process and therefore no way of ever working through their grief to some kind of peace.

He hated the fact that undoubtedly José would have showed up at that shitty apartment Butch had been living in—just like the guy had always done when Butch had been too hungover to get out of bed—and found absolutely nothing. No partner smelling like scotch, passed out on the bed. No cranky bastard in the shower who was cutting himself while shaving because of the DTs. No off-balance asshat trying to put his pants on one leg at a time.

Nothing.

No body. No note. No answers.

And the thing was, José had been the kind of guy who would have been eaten alive by that. God knew, Butch had seen the man’s commitment to strangers. For his own partner? Who he had, for some unknown reason, cared about for years?

José would have searched for answers.

Seriously. For quite a while.

On occasion, even though it was a bad idea, Butch went out at night and put himself in the position of almost running into the guy. There was even one evening when he and Marissa had gone to a fancy restaurant and José had been there, across the way.

Butch had gone over. And spoken to the man.

Then reworked some of José’s memories.

But it didn’t feel like enough. And it wasn’t enough when it came to moments like this, when he wished he could call the guy and work through an issue or . . . in this case, a murder. Or two—assuming the first hadn’t been part of it all.