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  WITCH’S NET

  A Blood Revelation Novel

  Crystal-Rain Love

  Witch’s Net : A Blood Revelation Novel

  By Crystal-Rain Love

  Copyright 2013 Crystal-Rain Love

  Smashwords Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Prologue

  He walked along the harbor, a fine mist of water blowing up from the bay to caress his skin, renewing his tired senses. He should go home. He knew he had a woman and child who needed him there, but still… something called him. Something stronger than his sense of duty.

  He breathed in the salty water scented air as he scanned the area, searching for whomever or whatever it was that beckoned him, but the source feeding his curiosity remained hidden, as it had been doing for the past several weeks.

  It ended tonight. He couldn't take any more. The dreams, the night sweats, the strange music that popped in and out of his head at random, the voice which seemed to stroke him intimately, inducing hard-ons at the most inconvenient times. The sense he was doing something wrong to his girls although he hadn't actually done anything. But he'd thought about it. The voice in his head made damn sure he thought about it.

  He continued forward, ignoring the suspicious looks he received from the fishermen out working in the wee hours of the night, or morning, depending on how you looked at time. He realized what they had to see, the wild look in his eyes, the hair that had been left in spiked tufts from where he'd dragged his fingers through it a thousand times. He was strung out on a drug he'd never even touched. He didn't even know what it was but his craving for it was fierce.

  A hand gripped his arm and he jerked around to see an old fisherman with a scraggly white-flecked beard shaking his head at him. “Don't go to her, boy. I've seen too many of you young ones leave with her and not come back,” he cautioned.

  “Who?”

  A feminine chuckle caught his attention and he turned his head to see a woman bathed in moonlight, her hungry gaze locked on him. Tall and sexy with long dark hair and a body women would pay to have. She laughed again and he swore he heard piano keys being struck.

  “Go home, young man,” the fisherman warned him again. “You're not the first that's come down by the water searching for something, all wild-eyed and desperate. They leave with her and they don't come back again.”

  He heard the man's words but they had no effect on him. He couldn't pay any attention to anyone else while she stood there in a long, slinky champagne-colored dress gloving her ample breasts, slender waist and full hips like a second skin. Her red lips were full, her midnight eyes luminous behind thick lashes which she batted coyly as she opened her mouth again and sang an aria which sent shivers down his spine.

  “She sounds like an angel.”

  “That's no angel,” the fisherman said but he paid him no attention.

  The woman crooked her finger, instructing him to walk the few feet that would bring them together and he had no power to resist her call. She smiled as he approached and although something predatory lurked in her gaze he couldn't turn back. She reeled him in like a fish on a hook.

  She smelled of the sea, of salt and fish and ocean breezes. The dark color making up her irises seemed to swim inside her eyes and the lips she touched to his were cold and clammy, causing him to jerk back long enough to remember he had a woman at home, a woman who was warmth to her coldness.

  “She's not right for you, lover,” the woman whispered, her strange melodic voice blowing out like wind. “If she were, you wouldn't dream of me.”

  He started to deny her remark but she started to sing again and all images of his woman were dispelled from his mind, replaced with images of him and the strange woman with the beautiful voice. They were naked, entwined together as they swam in the sea, mating in the water as a group of fish swam nearby. He saw them on the beach, the sun glistening off their exposed flesh as she did things to him he wouldn't have the guts to ask of another lover. And she did them well.

  “Who are you?”

  She smiled, turned, and started to walk away, her voice wafting back to him as she sang a song with no words. It pulled him to her.

  It came back to him that he had a woman at home, one who had given him a child and had been there for him more times than he could count, but he couldn't stop following this woman. Her song stroked him like a phantom hand, bringing him to the brink of orgasm but holding him in check so he couldn't topple over the edge. The pressure kept building and he wanted desperately to release it.

  “What she doesn't know won't hurt her,” the woman called back to him as she led him inside a dark building quite a distance from where he'd met her.

  That's right, he thought, following her to the center of a dark room. She stopped, pivoted and licked her lips. Damn, she was fine. Just a little taste was what he needed and he'd never see her again. Nobody would know a thing.

  “Good work, love,” a rich, masculine voice said from behind him and he felt a vice grip on his shoulders seconds before white-hot pain seared the flesh of his neck.

  Malaika jerked into a sitting position, sweat drenching her body as her heart tried frantically to burst from the wall of her chest. She gazed down beside her and saw the small child who had crawled into her bed during the night. Her light brown head rested peacefully upon her father's pillow as she held her favorite teddy bear close to her chest.

  “Oh, baby,” Malaika whimpered as she smoothed a hand over her sleeping child's braided hair, knowing the girl would never see her father again.

  She'd just seen him die.

  ONE

  Jonah waited for the barricades to be parted long enough for his car to be allowed through and pulled the vehicle to a stop outside the building.

  The murders had started a month ago, on the first day of the year. The calls were the same, either someone reported hearing a person screaming horrifically or they'd get a call of a body found, the throat and most of the chest torn to pieces, bite marks all over. And nobody ever saw a thing so they had diddly-squat to go on.

  He glanced over at his partner, Veronica “Ronnie” Reilly, and she shook her head before opening her door. They both knew they wouldn't find anything except a torn body. No fibers or blood coming from any source other than the victim, no footprints, no witnesses. Nothing. Multiple bodies had been found weekly for the past month, but they didn't have jack when it came to figuring out a suspect or motive. A month wasn't a long time, but with ten bodies found during that period, something should have stuck out by now.

  He stepped out of the car and looked at the foreboding building closed off with crime scene tape. He’d grown tired of finding bodies but no answers, and of his fears that whoever or whatever was killing these people wasn't human, not even a normal animal. He wished he could go back in time before he knew the truth about what lurked in the night… before the night he'd been hung on a wall by a demon-possessed man, kept captive in a basement with a vampire.

  Ronnie stepped in front of him, saying something but although her lips moved, he didn't pick up any sound. A strange feeling, a buzzing electricity, tingled along the back of his neck, drawing his attention to the crowd which had formed outside the police barrier. The faces of onlookers blurred together as he scanned the mob, his gaze passing over all but one. She stood near the front, her familiar face stricken with despair as she stared at the building.

  “Hey Joe, you with me?”

  Jonah turned back toward his partner, who was looking at him curiously. “Ten o'clock
in the crowd, light to medium-skinned African-American female, cornrowed hair pulled back into an afro-puff, pink sweater, nice body.”

  “Nice body? Is that a professional assessment or are you just jonesing?” Ronnie quipped as she cast a covert glance in the direction he'd given. “Shit. Yeah, I recognize her,” she said, turning her green gaze back to his. “She was at the last scene and if I'm not mistaken, she may have been at the first one.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Killers often come back to view the aftermath.”

  “You really think she could have killed these people?”

  “Stop thinking about the nice body, Joe, and use your cop head.”

  “I am,” he said, a little anger mixing in his tone. “Think about the carnage we've found so far. Throats torn out, bodies ripped to shreds like they'd been attacked by animals. Bite marks from something eating their flesh. You really think she could have done all that?”

  “Somebody had to do it, no matter how unbelievable it was.”

  Yeah, and I'm betting that somebody couldn't stand in pure daylight, he thought to himself, wishing his partner knew the things he knew. It would make things a lot simpler. “I just don't see her doing it. She's barely four inches over five feet. Some of these vics were big guys.”

  “She could have had help.”

  True. She could be just like the man who'd hung him on a wall, she could be a devil-worshiping psycho. With the devil in your corner there was a lot of sick shit you could do.

  “One thing's for sure,” he said with an air of certainty, “there has to be a reason behind her being at multiple crime scenes.”

  “Shall we find out that reason?”

  “I think we shall,” Jonah decided as he gestured for Ronnie to precede him to where the young woman stood with the rest of the crowd beyond the barricade. He studied her harder as they made their approach, taking in her smooth skin, cute little nose and full, juicy lips. Her chest was a little on the small side but he'd always been more of a butt man himself, and she definitely filled out her low slung jeans which showed off a flat, toned stomach and trim little waist. She was attractive but his focus wasn't on the pretty face or great body, it was on the anguish he saw in her caramel-colored eyes as she stared at the building, oblivious to the fact she was being honed in on by two homicide detectives. She was definitely connected to the case in some way. What a shame it would be if he'd have to put a bullet in that pretty little package. The thought of causing her pain twisted his gut and tugged at his conscience. Jonah frowned at the odd reaction.

  As they got closer he realized she was speaking softly and upon closer inspection he was surprised to discover she was praying, which knocked out the idea she was working with the devil. The fact she stood in broad daylight without the slightest visible hint of discomfort told him she wasn't a vampire either. Then it hit Jonah that he was becoming more like his brother, Jake, searching for evil in everyone he crossed.

  They came to a stop before her and he cleared his throat, drawing her attention but before he could speak she let out a startled cry, her eyes growing wide as she looked directly at his partner. Ronnie looked at him in confusion and he shrugged, not understanding the young woman's response either.

  “I'm Detective Porter,” he said after an awkward moment with the three of them just staring at each other passed, “and this is Detective Reilly.” He paused long enough to motion for the officer standing nearby to move the sawhorse before the woman just enough to allow him to guide her past it, his hand under her elbow. He was struck again by familiarity but wrote it off to having spotted her at other crime scenes. Just how many had she been at? All of them? The woman in question didn't utter a sound, too focused on staring at his partner with a strange intensity in her eyes. She looked frightened out of her mind. Jonah shared a baffled look with Ronnie and continued speaking. “We've seen you before, outside of another crime scene. Is there something you'd like to tell us?”

  She licked her lips, then chewed lightly on the bottom one as she redirected her gaze toward the building once more. She shivered visibly before turning her attention back to Ronnie. “You can't go in there.”

  Ronnie and Jonah shared a look before she asked the woman why she would say that.

  “Just trust me. You can not go inside that building.” Her voice shook and something about it raised red flags in Jonah's gut. She was too adamant, too horrified.

  “What do you know that we don't?” he asked her, ignoring the look he received from his partner, who undoubtedly believed the woman was a loon. Ronnie didn't know the things he knew, though. She hadn't had the experience of being big brother to a vampire hunter. Jacob Porter had killed vampires, witches, vengeful spirits and things Jonah didn't even want to know about. And he'd taught Jonah that when your gut was screaming at you that something abnormal was up you'd damn well better listen to it. And right now his gut was outright screeching.

  “Detectives!” A young uniformed cop with reddish brown hair and a deep tan approached them, his scowl giving away the fact he was eager to get things rolling. “The M.E. is here and he's anxious to get the body in the lab.”

  “You can't go in there!” The woman shook, her eyes blazing with determination. “You'll die if you go inside that building!”

  “Is that a threat?” Ronnie asked, her tone cool and deadly.

  “No,” the woman responded, taken aback.

  “How do you know she'll die if she goes in there?” Jonah asked, raising a hand to silence Ronnie before she could criticize him for being taken in by the woman she obviously thought was a nut-job.

  She looked directly at him for the first time and he felt drawn in by her caramel colored eyes and for a moment his mind was filled with images he had no business thinking about while questioning a possible suspect at the scene of a crime with some poor soul's body decaying nearby. “I just know it. Keep her out of there.”

  “This is nonsense,” Ronnie exclaimed irritably as Jonah found himself getting lost in the woman's gaze. “Let's see some ID.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we're taking you in for questioning. ID, now!”

  The woman reached into her back pocket and took out her driver's license, handing it to Ronnie with a trembling hand. “I've done nothing wrong.”

  “Except threaten my safety and hang in one crime scene crowd too many, Miss Jordan,” Ronnie replied, glancing at the ID before handing it to the officer who'd recently approached them. “Detain Miss Jordan, please.” She turned toward Jonah, annoyance clearly displayed in the lines of her bronzed face. “Let's go check out that body so the M.E. can do his stuff.”

  “No! You can't go in there! Please!”

  Jonah stared at the woman as she yelled out her warning, tears filling her eyes. She didn't even know Ronnie, yet she was adamant something was going to happen to her if she set foot in the building and whatever it was terrified her. Jonah's gut told him she knew what she was talking about.

  “Hey, Ronnie, stay back while I go in,” he suggested as they neared the door which would lead them into the abandoned warehouse.

  Ronnie turned to look at him, clearly bewildered. “Oh come on, Joe, don't tell me you're listening to that woman! What do you think she is, some sort of psychic or something?” She managed to look amused and irritated at the same time which made Jonah feel like a damn fool but he knew stranger people than psychics walked among them.

  “It's been known to happen before.”

  “What?”

  “Deja Vu, Nostradamus, hair raising on the back of your neck when—”

  “Jonah Porter! Have you gone crazy?” Her question came out as a harsh whisper as she drew closer to him, careful to avoid being overheard. “I know the creep who got the jump on you believed he was Satan's little helper but that stuff isn't real, neither are psychics. You know this, Jonah.” She backed away, satisfied she'd gotten her point across and turned toward the building. “This place is crawling with cops. Nothi
ng is going to happen to me.”

  Unable to think of anything he could say to his mule-headed partner to convince her that her life may be in danger, anything that wouldn't make him sound like a quack, he gave in and followed her inside the building. He'd just have to stick to her like glue in case something bad did pop off.

  The stench hit them as soon as they set foot in the door. The victim had been murdered in the center of the first room. Like the others, his throat was torn out right down to the bone and a huge cavity rested in his chest. The M.E. squatted over him, peering closely into the cavity.

  “Looks like his damn heart's been munched on,” he said, glancing at Jonah and Ronnie as they neared the body.

  “That's a bit different,” Jonah commented, pulling on a pair of latex gloves before squatting on the other side of the body, so close to Ronnie their hips touched. She looked at him with narrowed eyes, then rolled them, realizing what he was doing and thinking it was stupid. Jonah didn't care. If his partner was in danger he was staying by her side whether she liked it or not. “The bite marks look the same,” he added, pushing aside a piece of fabric to reveal one of the marks on the man's abdomen.

  “The same damn bite marks that I can't identify,” the gray-haired medical examiner, Hank Bonner, grumbled. “I've sent digital photos to colleagues all over the states and to a few overseas. Not a one can identify what type of creature would leave these imprints.”

  Jonah studied one of the bite marks, observing what had been eluding the M.E. The print left behind indicated that what or whoever had eaten off of the man had a jaw like a human but with far sharper teeth. Some of the other marks were closer to looking like that of a wild dog or a coyote. It was as though the killer was both man and animal, or a man who allowed his pet to feed on the bodies of his victims.

  “I just can't understand the lack of blood,” Ronnie muttered. “These vics should be lying in pools of it but it's as if it nearly all got sucked out of them before they were fed on.”