Page 35 of Unhallowed Murder
Ronnie looked up to Josef, who seemed uncomfortable, and then to Abbott. “Nathan visited Josef yesterday,” she told the Master Vampire. “It seems both our respective hierarchies feel the need to meddle. I’m glad Josef has people who care for him. I don’t know what kind of gathering we can plan for the two of you as well as Nathan and possibly Martin, but I’ll try to make something happen in the next two weeks.”
“I look forward to getting to know you,” Spence said. “Let me know what I can do to help, please. Drinks with hors d'oeuvres would be appropriate. I can help with the menu.”
Spence was so beautiful, he nearly took her breath away, but she didn’t want him. She only wanted Josef. “That would be nice. Thank you.”
Once they were inside, Josef telepathed.It’s best we keep Nathan and Abbott out of the same room.
Crap, how could she have forgotten? The two had negotiated a truce of sorts, but a friendly visit was asking too much.
I somehow forgot he wasthatAbbott. I mean, I knew, but it didn’t all come together in my head. Okay then, Martin and Abbott at one gathering, and then just Nathan for another.
I don’t know. If we manage it with care, we might bring the two of them back to a working relationship. Let me think on it.
Chapter Eighteen
Josef settled her overnight bag on a table in a secure sleeping room, and she pulled shorts and a shirt out.
“You’ll need more covering you,” he told her. “If we’re both to be under the covers, I’ll leach too much of your heat away.”
“It’s what I brought. I sleep hot, usually. We’ll see how it goes.”
She went to the restroom to change, and he was nude and under the covers when she returned. He’d pulled the sealed bag with her shirt out, and he opened it and smelled. There was no magic, but scent gave off an energy, and it couldn’t hurt to familiarize himself with the man in any way easily possible. He also looked over the rough-drawn map of the block showing where the jail was again, and then the rough sketch of the jail, with an asterisk showingwhere the prisoner was. She’d informed him it was her best drawing of an asshole.
He’d never again see an asterisk without thinking of how it resembled an asshole.
Ronnie curled into him, and he wrapped an arm around her. He wanted her to be comfortably asleep before he started. Thankfully, she was exhausted so it didn’t take long.
He’d found his target while she found sleep, and once her breathing evened out, it was time to get to work.
Mick Griffin was also asleep, which helped matters, but Josef still felt the rancid, oily residue of malevolence and evil while he probed the motherfucker’s memories.
Mick had made his first kill two days after his wife had filed for divorce — a young runaway selling herself on the street. He’d made sure no one would miss her before he’d killed her, and he hadn’t even bothered to find out her name. He’d knownCandywas a street name, and not real. He’d buried her in his backyard while his wife was in the hospital, and had installed a patio over the top of the grave the next day.
It took longer than two hours for Josef to dig through Griffin’s memory and be sure he’d found every murder. Seventeen women.
Josef chose three to make the evil motherfucker live through, and made sure he paralyzed the bastard’s body, so his thrashing and fighting wouldn’t attract anyone’s attention. Josef put him through hell three fucking times — right to the point of death, his body starved for oxygen intwo cases, blood in another, at the point of losing consciousness.
Finally, Josef put the suggestion in Griffin’s head that he’d have nightmares for the rest of his life, cycling through his victims every time he slept, until he confessed. The only way to keep from living what they’d felt, over and over, night after night, was to confess every crime. Josef woke him up, had him relieve himself and shake the dreams off, and then put him back to sleep so he could make him experience two more murders. When the dawn grew close, Josef left a note for Ronnie, and moved into a secure resting compartment before the dawn took him.
Chapter Nineteen
Ronnie awakened to her cellphone alarm and instantly missed Josef’s cool strength in bed beside her. He’d worried about leaching her heat, but in truth, she slept better with him beside her — like holding onto chilled granite, so she slept cool and not so hot.
She changed into slacks and a silk t-shirt, put her holster belt on, weaponed up, and slid her feet into dress shoes. As promised, a werewolf brought her a plate of eggs and bacon along with a pitcher of orange juice, and she sat out on the balcony to eat. She was only a block and a half from work, so she’d walk. She’d driven her personal car to Josef’s, and her county car was in the lot, if she needed it.
Josef’s note had been cryptic. “I want the murdering bastard to suffer through deciding whether to confess ornot, so he will confess in the next three days. The FBI is going to get him no matter when he confesses.”
She’d asked him not to give her details, so she’d question Griffin blind. Now, she wanted to know more, but knew it was better this way. As agreed, she ripped the note into tiny pieces and flushed it.
Once in her office, Ronnie hit the ground running, continuing the search to find people who’d entered Griffin’s life and mysteriously died or disappeared, and she found three more. A college girl he’d dated and broken up with, who three months later left Lee College on the way to her family in Townsend, and never arrived. He’d been questioned by the Cleveland police but had never been a suspect, since they’d broken up months earlier, and since he had an alibi — a new girlfriend who said he’d been with her the whole time.
He’d also gone on a missionary trip to South America with another church, and one of the women had gotten sick and died before they could get her into a town with a hospital. No reason to suspect him or anyone else. Cause of death was listed as dysentery. Had that been him? Ronnie didn’t know, and there was no way to prove it.
On the same trip, a woman was found while being eaten by a black caiman, which was apparently a giant crocodile. No one knew whether the animal had killed her or had found her dead. The church had ceased all missionary trips as a result.
Towards the end of the day, she decided to take another crack at him. She really wanted to be the one to get theconfession. Even if she had to hand him over to Graham, she wanted the confession first.
Ronnie needed to put this to bed forallthe women he’d killed. They mattered, dammit.
