Night Games by Crystal Jordan Read Free Book Online

her—and jogged back into the house.
    The bathroom was tidier than she would have guessed for a bachelor living alone, but she wasn’t about to question that bit of good fortune. She twisted the knob to turn on the water and spent a few blissful minutes under the hot spray while she soaped, lathered, and rinsed. Wrapping a towel around herself, she fished a toothbrush and comb out of her bag and made quick work of her teeth and hair. One of the things she loved about modern hairstyles was that she could wear it really short. Easy and low-maintenance. So much better than when women had had to keep it long and wear it coiffed.
    On her way out the door, she grabbed a travel mug from the kitchen cabinet, filled it to the brim with the coffee Jack had left, and screwed on the lid. Within moments, she’d keyed in the security code to lock the doors behind her, and she was in her car, heading for the address she’d been given. Taking a swig of coffee, she sighed when the caffeine began to buzz through her system. She’d have liked a little more time to sit and enjoy it, but no such luck.
    “Crime waits for no man. Or woman.”
     
    The place was pristine. The living room was freshly dusted, the wood floors polished to a high gleam.
    Usually there was an air of something not quite right about a crime scene, but this apartment? Was spotless. Nothing looked out of place.
    Until Jack turned the corner into the hallway. There, the house turned into a gruesome mockery of the cleanliness he’d seen before. Here, the stench of blood assaulted his nostrils and he coughed. Broken pictures dangled from nails on the wall. A large round hole showed where something had been shoved through the drywall. If he were going to hazard a guess, he’d say it was someone’s head that got slammed through. A tooth had been knocked loose from someone’s mouth and lay in the middle of the gore-splattered carpet runner.
    Whatever had happened here had been unmistakably brutal, with unspeakable rage behind it.
    In the bedroom, he found he was right. Crime scene analysts swarmed the room, collecting evidence. Hairs, fibers, fingerprints. Every inch of the place would be gone over, using human technology and Magickal spells to decipher any clue that might tell them who ... or what ... had done this.
    But Jack’s gaze skimmed over the other agents and went straight to the bed. A petite blond woman’s dead body lay sprawled facedown on the mattress, her pajamas soaked in her own blood. The damage in this room was even worse than in the hallway. She’d been shot twice, and that was just the start of her wounds. Twin puncture wounds scored the side of her neck, with dried crimson stains trailing down from the gaping holes.
    Her face seemed locked in an expression of horror, her blank eyes open and staring.
    One of her front teeth was gone, a bloodied socket in its place. Her lips were split and swollen, and huge bruises slashed over the pieces of skin he could see. The rest of her flesh was sickening in its ghostly paleness. A blackened mark was burned into one bare arm, and Jack knew the sign of dark, evil magic when he saw it.
    “Welcome to the party.” A redheaded woman shot him a glance as she set down a kit to collect evidence and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. Tess Jones, the MCU’s new medical examiner. Also the maid of honor at the wedding the day before, though her finery had been exchanged for sensible pants, loafers, and a jacket emblazoned with FBI on the back.
    She was probably one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, and she was smarter than she was pretty, which was saying something. Still, when she’d stood next to Selina in the wedding party, he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off of the slender elf.
    “What happened?”
    The redhead arched her eyebrows. “I just got here, but it looks like a vampire drained her. Completely.”
    “Black magic.” He nodded to the mark he’d noticed.
    “Yeah, I saw that.”