Chapter Eight
David's hand trembled almost imperceptibly as he accepted the glass of cold tap water. He held it to his forehead for a moment as he gathered his calm, then sipped it and set it on the solid ash coffee table before us. "Thank you," the small man said, then put his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands.
I patted his shoulder and eased farther from him on his couch. Kisten was standing next to the TV, back to us as he looked over David's collection of Civil War sabers in a lighted, locked cabinet. The faint scent of Were tickled my nose, not unpleasant at all.
David was a wreck, and I alternated my attention between the shaken man dressed in his suit for the office and his tidy, clearly bachelor town house. It was the usual two stories, the entire complex about five to ten years old. The carpet probably hadn't ever been replaced, and I wondered if David rented or owned.
We were in the living room. To one side past the landscaped buffer was the parking lot. To the other through the kitchen and dining area was a large common courtyard, the other apartments far enough away that it granted a measure of privacy by pure distance. The walls were thick, hence the silence, and the classy wallpaper done in browns and tans said he had decorated it himself. Owned, I decided, remembering that as a field adjustor for Were Insurance he was paid very well for getting the true story from reluctant policy owners trying to hide the reason their Christmas tree had spontaneously combusted and took out their living room.
Though his apartment was a calm spot of peace, the Were himself looked ragged. David was a loner, having the personal power and charisma of an alpha without the responsibilities. Technically speaking, I was his pack, a mutually beneficial agreement on paper that helped prevent David from being fired and gave me the opportunity to get my insurance at a devastatingly cheap rate. That was the extent of our relationship, but I knew he used me to keep Were women from insinuating themselves into his life.
My gaze landed on the fat little black book beside his phone. Apparently that didn't slow him down when it came to dating. Dang, he needed a rubber band to keep the thing shut.
"Better?" I said, and David looked up. His beautifully deep brown eyes were wide with a slow fear, looking wrong on him. He had a wonderfully trim body made for running, disguised under the comfortable suit. Clearly he had been on his way to the office when whatever threw him into such a tizzy happened, and it worried me that something could shake him like this. David was the most stable person I knew.
His shoes under the coffee table shone, and he was clean-shaven, not even a hint of black stubble marring his sun-darkened, somewhat rough skin. I'd seen him in a floor-length duster and dilapidated hat once while he had been stalking me, and he had looked like Van Helsing; his luscious black hair was long and wavy, and his thick eyebrows made a nice statement. He had about the same amount of confidence of the fictional character, too, but right now it was tempered with worry and distraction.
"No," he said, his low voice penetrating. "I think I'm killing my girlfriends."
Kisten turned, and I held up a hand to forestall the vampire from saying anything stupid. David was nothing if not levelheaded, and as an insurance adjustor he was quick, savvy, and hard to surprise. If he thought he was killing his girlfriends, then there was a reason for it.
"I'm listening," I said from beside him, and David took a slow breath, forcing himself to sit upright, if still on the edge of the couch.
"I was trying to find a date for this weekend," he started, glancing at Kisten.
"For the full moon?" Kisten interrupted, earning both my and David's annoyance.
"The full moon isn't until Monday," the Were said. "And I'm not a college Werejockey high on bane crashing your bar. I have as much control over myself on a full moon as you do."
Obviously it was a sore spot, and Kisten raised a placating hand. "Sorry."
The tension in the room eased, and David's haunted eyes went to his address book by the phone. "Serena called me last night, asking me if I had the flu." He looked up at me, then away. "Which I thought strange since it's summer, but then I called Kally to see if she was free, and she asked me the same thing."
Kisten chuckled. "You dated two women in one weekend?"
David's brow creased. "No, they were a week apart. So I called a few other women, seeing as I hadn't heard from any of them in almost a month."
"In high demand are you, Mr. Peabody?"
"Kisten," I muttered, not liking the reference to the old cartoon. "Stop it." David's cat was peering at me from the top of the stairway. I didn't even try to coax it down, depressed.
David wasn't cowed at all by the living vampire. Not here in his own apartment. "Yes," he said belligerently. "I am, actually. You want to wait on the veranda?"
Kisten raised a hand in a gesture of "whatever," but I had no trouble believing that the attractive, mid-thirties Were had women calling him for dates. David and I were comfortable leaving our relationship at the business level, though I found it mildly irksome that he had issues with the different-species thing. But as long as he respected me as a person, I was willing to let him miss out on a good slice of the female population. His loss.
"Apart from Serena and Kally, I couldn't reach one." His eyes went to his black book as if it were possessed. "None of them."
"So you think they're dead?" I questioned, not seeing the reason for the jump of thought.
David's eyes were haunted. "I've been having really weird dreams about them," he said. "My girlfriends, I mean. I'm waking up in my own bed clean and rested, not mud-caked and naked in the park, so I never gave them much thought, but now..."
Kisten chuckled, and I started wishing I'd left him in the car. "They're avoiding you, wolfman," the vampire said, and David pulled himself straight, ire giving him strength.
"They're gone," he muttered.
I watched warily, knowing that Kisten was too savvy to push him too far, but David was erratic right now.
"Either they don't answer their phone or their roommates don't know where they are." His eyes slipped to mine, haunted. "Those are the ones that I'm worried about. The ones I couldn't reach."
"Six women," Kisten said, now standing at the window wall that looked out on a small patio. "That's not bad. Half of them probably moved."
"In a month and a half?" David said caustically. Then, as if galvanized by the admission, he went to the kitchen, his pace fast with nervous energy.
My eyebrows rose. David dated six women in as many weeks? Weres weren't any more randy than the rest of the population, but remembering his reluctance to settle down and start a pack, I decided it probably wasn't that he couldn't keep a girlfriend but rather that he was content playing the field. Playing the pro field. Jeez, David.
"They're missing," he said, standing in his kitchen as if having forgotten why he went in there. "I think... I think I'm blanking out and killing them."
My gut clenched at the lost sound of his voice. He really believed he was killing these women.
"Well, there you go," Kisten said. "Someone found out you're a player and called the rest. You've been stung, Mr. Peabody." He chuckled. "Time to start a new black book."
David looked insulted, and I thought Kisten was being unusually insensitive. Maybe he was jealous. "You know what?" I said, spinning to Kisten. "You need to shut up."
"Hey, I'm just saying - "
David jerked as if remembering why he had gone into the kitchen, popping open a tin of cat food and shaking it onto a plate before setting it on the floor. "Rachel, would you refuse to talk to a man you'd slept with, even if you were mad at him?"
My eyebrows rose. He hadn't just dated six women in six weeks, he'd slept with them, too? "Uh..." I stammered. "No. I'd want to give him a piece of my mind at the very least."
Head lowered, David nodded. "They're missing," he said. "I'm killing them. I know it."
"David," I protested, seeing a hint of concern on Kisten's face, "Weres don't black out and kill people. If they did, they would've been hunted into extinction hundreds of years ago by the rest of Inderland. There's got to be another reason they aren't talking to you."
"Because I killed them," David whispered, hunched over the counter.
My gaze drifted to the ticking wall clock. Two-fifteen. I'd missed my class. "It doesn't add up," I said, coming to sit at a barstool. "Do you want me to have Ivy track them down? She's good at finding people."
Looking relieved, he nodded. Ivy could find anyone, given time. She had been retrieving abducted vamps and humans from illegal blood houses and jealous exes since leaving the I.S. It made my familiar rescues look vapid, but we each had our own talents.
My motions shifting the stiff barstool back and forth slowed. Since I was here, I ought to see about taking the focus home with me. Anyone who cared to look it up would know that I belonged to David's pack. Being a loner and trained to react to violence, David was a hard target. Anyone he worked with, though...
"Oh, shit," I said, then put a hand to my mouth, realizing I'd said it aloud. Both Kisten and David stared at me. "Uh David, did you tell your dates about the focus?"
His confusion turned to a soft anger. "No," he said forcefully.
Kisten glowered at the smaller man. "You mean to tell me you nipped six women in six weeks, and you never showed them the focus to impress them?"
David's jaw clenched. "I don't need to lure women to my bed. I ask them, and if they're willing, they come. Showing them wouldn't have impressed them anyway. They're human."
I pulled my elbows off the counter, my face warming in indignation. "You date humans? You won't date a witch because you don't believe in mixed-species parings, but you'll sleep around with humans? You big fat hypocrite!"
David pleaded with me with his eyes. "If I dated a Were woman, she'd want to be a part of my pack. We've been over this before. And since Weres originally came from humans - "
My eyes narrowed. "Yeah, I got it," I said, not liking it. Weres came from humans same as vamps, but unlike becoming a vamp, the only way to become a Were was to be born one.
Usually.
My thoughts zinged back to yesterday morning and being woken by a demon tearing my church apart looking for the focus. Oh-h-h-h, shit, I thought, remembering to keep my mouth shut this time. Missing girlfriends. Three unidentified bodies in the morgue: athletic, professional, and all with a similar look. They were brought in as Weres, but if what I thought happened had happened, they wouldn't be in the Were database but the human. Suicides from last month's full moon.
"David, I'm so sorry," I whispered, and Kisten and David stared at me.
"What?" David said, wary, not distraught.
I looked helplessly at him. "It wasn't your fault. It was mine. I shouldn't have given it to you. I didn't know all you had to do was have it in your possession. I never would have given it to you if I did." He looked blank at me, and, feeling nauseous, I added, "I think I know where your girlfriends are. It's my fault, not yours."
David shook his head. "Give me what?"
"The focus," I said, my face wrinkled in pity. "I think... it turned your girlfriends."
His face went ashen, and he put a hand to the counter. "Where are they?" he breathed.
I swallowed hard. "The city morgue."