Tempting Evil

His shadow-held fingers caught my hair, holding it away from my face. I sucked in a breath, battling the roiling in my stomach. "I'm a werewolf. Death is something we can smell."

"But you are not smelling this. You are feeling it, and that is completely different."

"I'm aware of that." Aware of that fact that he shouldn't be feeling what I was feeling. He might be an empath, but I had my emotions locked down as tightly as him. Or so I'd thought, up until then. I took another breath and carefully straightened. My stomach made threatening movements but didn't immediately rise. I closed my eyes and tried breathing through my mouth. It didn't seem to help. Death still rode the air, and its taste was foul. I swallowed heavily. "Can you read any of the guards? Do they know what has happened?"

He was silent for several minutes, but energy stirred across my skin, powerful enough to stand on end the hairs along my arms and neck.

"One of the guards reported the smell of gas several minutes before the explosion. They believe one or more of the stove jets may have been left on."

"So it was an accident?"

"It would appear that way."

I glanced in his direction. "Appear?"

"They are unsure where the spark that set off the explosion came from."

"It's a kitchen. They're full of pilot lights."

"True. Let's hope someone thinks to turn the gas off at the meter, or there will be more unpleasantness." He paused. "Is that one of Starr's lieutenants?"

I glanced down at the rubble. Moss was picking his way through the ruins, his hair and clothes disheveled and torn, his face scratched and bloody.

"Yeah, it's Moss. Damn shame he wasn't killed." I rubbed my arms. Though death still rode the night, the smell and taste of it was dying. Whether it actually was, or whether I was merely growing used to it was something I couldn't tell.

Qui

With the last of the chills being chased away by his touch, I felt a little better. As long as I didn't see anything resembling mashed humanity in the ruins below, I'd be okay. I hoped. "I imagine barely escaping a gas explosion would do that to a person."

Amusement spun around me, as bright and as enticing as the first dance of sunshine that broke the hold of night. "This is more than that. Can you hear him?"

"Not from this distance." I frowned. "Why don't you just read his mind?"

"Some form of psi-deadener is blocking me. I could break through it easily enough, but it would warn him of my presence."

"Then let's get closer."

"Are you up to going closer?" His touch moved from my back to my arm, his fingers sliding down my arm and under my elbow. I wasn't wobbly enough to need support, but I wasn't going to fight it, either. Not when the warmth that flared out from his fingertips seemed to keep the horror at bay.

"As long as I keep upwind of the building, I should be fine." Though if I saw bodies, or bits of bodies, it would be a totally different story.

I'd seen death, in various incarnations, a few times over the years and it had never bothered me like this. I'd seen one wolf ripped apart by another, and hadn't felt sick, much less puked. I'd witnessed Misha being eaten from the inside out, and though I'd been both horrified and sickened, I hadn't come close to losing my stomach. But in all those times, I'd never tasted the death. Had never felt as if the souls of those who were dying or dead were invading me, filling me with their shock and anger and pain.

I wish I hadn't felt it tonight.

I swallowed heavily and forced my feet to move, keeping my gaze on Moss more than what he was walking through. Or by. He stopped to talk to several guards who were hovering near the far edge of the remains. Moisture from the nearby sprinklers danced around him, covering him in a fine haze of silver. He cither didn't care or didn't notice, but there was something in his very stillness that was chilling. Deadly.

Merle might have felt foul, but he didn't scare me like Moss suddenly scared me. Just looking at him had trepidation ru

And I had to hope that the guard was right, that Moss and Merle didn't share, because there was no way on this earth I could cope with getting sexually close to that man.

So how did my brother deal with it? He regularly used sex to get information about targets—used it and enjoyed it, no matter what or who he was doing. Was it merely the fact I was psychic and he wasn't that gave him the advantage? If he'd been able to taste the foulness of the people involved, would he still be able to get intimate with them?

Somehow, I suspected the answer might be yes. Rhoan had never cared who or how many, as long as he was enjoying himself.

I'd always been a little more fussy—despite what Qui

We circled the ruined sections of building, and began to edge closer to Moss and the guards, all the while keeping the shadows close and the breeze to our front so that it blew our scents away from, not toward, the men below.

"No, sir," the shorter of the two guards said, his tone all military preciseness. "I saw no movement in the kitchen."

"And yet you were the one who reported hearing steps?"

"Yes, sir."

"How long before the explosion was this?"

"Ten, maybe fifteen minutes, sir."

Moss swore and snapped his gaze to the second man. "And you?"

"I saw a heat signature in the kitchen, but by the time I got there, the person had left through the window."

"And you didn't give chase?"

"I saw no person, sir. Only a fox sniffing out the rubbish."

Something in me stilled. A fox? Nerida was a werefox, and even a vamp couldn't tell the difference between the heat signature of a real fox to that of a shapeshifter or werefox. The guard was a shifter himself, so he should have been able to sense the difference, but if he'd been more interested in getting back to bed, maybe he'd simply taken what he'd seen at face value.

And while I had no doubt that real foxes did scavenge around the bins here nightly, it just seemed a little too much of a coincidence that this fox was sighted so soon after the guard had sprung someone in the kitchen. Fact was, most real foxes would have scampered at the first hint of movement. They certainly wouldn't have stayed there scavenging as a vampire approached. Most wild ones feared the undead almost as much as most humans did.

But what would Nerida be doing in the kitchen? Had she been involved in the explosion or was it merely a coincidence? Why would anyone want to blow this section of the house up, anyway? There was little here but the kitchen and dining areas, and the staff who ran them.

So what was Moss doing here? How'd he get caught in the explosion when he was supposedly talking to the new intake of guards?

"I want you to do a walk around the area. See if you can spot that heat signature again."

The words were barely out of Moss's mouth when I was dragged back then forced up the slight knoll and into a knot of trees.

"Why the hell did you do that?" I asked, shaking free of both Qui

Qui

"Given he wasn't even facing us, there was plenty of time to move."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it wasn't worth the risk of discovery." He paused, his gaze moving to the mess below us. "I think I'll follow Moss for a while. If you find Rhoan, let him know I am here, and that I will contact him later."