“Aaron, go to Europe,” Lucian advised. “There’s a season of tremendous debauchery on the Cote d’Azur, so I’ve heard. Go— before I forget that I must defend all that we are and maim you myself.”

Aaron let out a hissing, snakelike sound of fury. But he was gone.

And Lucian, oddly quiet, hunkered down by Meg again. He reached out a hand once more. “I’m sorry, Meg. Honestly. Come. I command that you come.”

“No.”

He arched a brow. She wondered why she so stubbornly fought him, except that she was in such terrible pain. She had been existing in a sad delusion. She had told Aaron to leave; she had thought he had done so. She had so foolishly believed in her own power.

But Lucian was the king of their kind. She could fight Aaron and win. She could only hope to fight Lucian. She had learned strength from him. But he was older, stronger, still.

“My dear ...”

When he touched her that time, she allowed him, for a moment, to comfort her. There was something about Lucian. In his strength and power there was ego and a sense of absolute right, but he was not like Aaron. She clung to him, and shook with a long flow of heaving sobs.

Then she pulled away.

Lucian could force her, take her, bring her to him at his will. And she didn‘t hate Lucian. He didn’t expect their kind to be moralistic or ethical any more than he would expect a tiger to refuse meat. But, no, he was not like Aaron Carter. He had the wisdom of the ancients. He knew there must be rules. He had known about Sean, and he had allowed her the dilemma of loving a man she refused to turn into their kind, and so now, had lost. No, she despised Aaron, but she didn’t hate Lucian.

Still, she defied him. Because drawing from him, she saw the mortal remains of Sean, and she didn’t give a damn. Allshe wanted to do was cry. And hold Sean Canady while his life’s warmth remained, and dream of what might have been.

“Come,” Lucian persisted.

“No, I will not leave him now—”

“He’s dead!”

“I will not leave him.”

“Fine, foolish girl. Mourn your weak, pathetic, human remains. You‘ll come back to me.” Lucian lifted her chin. She stared into his eyes, and her own came alive with a stubborn fire. “You’ll come back to me,” he continued, “because I have the power, I am the power. I am the god of your world. And you’ll come back to me, whether you admit it or not, because you‘re a sensual little beast, and you need me.”

She was angry and she jerked from his touch. “You don’t begin to understand love!” He arched a brow, but allowed her the freedom. “You speak of love, but you play with fire,” he warned. “I repeat, ma cherie, I am your god, king within our world. I know the rules, and I see that they are kept. By right, you acted against one of our kind. I should have given you to Carter.

Remember our rules. Break too many of them, and you will suffer the consequences.”

“Because I refuse you when I want to die!” she whispered.

Curiously enough, she realized that Lucian was hurt as well as angry. “Maybe,” he told her quietly. “Careful, my love, don’t push me too far! I will damn you and do my best to see to it that you have a life so long you will beg for my forgiveness.” She leaned back against the tree, real tears raining down her cheeks.

There was another whisper in the air.

Another rustle of sound.

The smell of the bloody battlefield rose all around her. She was alone with her dead human lover.

Aaron Carter was gone. He would not have her.

And Lucian was gone. He had defended her, but now, he might not forgive her. It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

Because Sean was gone.

CHAPTER 7

The third body wasn’t found until Thursday.

Pierre estimated that the poor creature had been dead nearly a week, which seemed to mean that their killer had spent last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday on a spree.

“Nights of the almost-full and full moon,” Pierre noted glumly, which caused Sean to nod reflectively.

Nights when the moon had glowed strangely red over river and bayou alike.

This time, the victim had been found in the bayou. Water and animals alike had done damage to her ravaged body.

Her torso had been found in the morning.

Her head in the early afternoon.

Parts of her would probably remain missing forever, consumed by wild beasts, the muck of the swamp—or even her killer. The savagery with which this killer was mutilating bodies was growing disturbingly more reminiscent of Jack the Ripper.

The good thing about standing with Pierre over the gurney as he pointed out his findings was that the victim’s grotesquely ruined face was so grossly swollen and gnawed that it was hardly recognizable as human.

Poor Jack. He’d been determined. He’d come down to the morgue with Sean. He’d lasted ten minutes before he’d gone off to throw up. As Pierre explained that the tear marks on the neck indicated the same method of dispatching the head that they had seen before, Jack returned. He was nearly as pasty as the corpse. But he stood beside Sean, listening to the series of mutilations, what Pierre did know, and what Pierre didn’t know.

“Oh, man. We definitely have a big-time madman on our hands,” Jack said.

“Pure lunatic, I’d say—off the record, of course.”

Sean nodded, feeling ill himself. Monday, they’d enlarged the task force and had a two-hour meeting.

He and the chief and his men had welcomed the addition of two FBI men, a profiler and a physical evidence man, but not even FBI prowess was helping them. All leads had simply been exhausted.

Even the Maggie Montgomery lead. Both FBI men had interviewed her—and every person in her employ. Polygraphs had been given. No one knew anything.

Now, with this new murder, the tenuous link with Montgomery Enterprises seemed to be fading. There were no known possible witnesses. They believed they knew the victim’s identity, though her fingerprints and dental records were still being checked. She was a prostitute—with a child. Her neighbor had reported her missing when she hadn’t come for her four-year-old boy by midnight last Friday, as planned.

Poor Bessie. At some time, she must have been an attractive woman with a heart full of dreams.

According to the neighbor, yes, she had been in the business, but only with high-class clientele. She had wanted to make money and get out to raise her son elsewhere. She had worked through someone, though the neighbor didn’t know who. Bessie hadn’t been a two-bit hooker but a hundred-dollar-a-shot call girl.

Right now, it didn’t matter what she had charged her last John. She’d been the one to pay.

“What else can I tell you?” Pierre asked.

“Nothing, now. Cover her up, huh?” Pierre obliged. Once again, they’d be doing all matter of tissue and secretion samples. With any luck, despite the way the bodies had been destroyed, they could at least match sperm from the two female victims. Hopefully, they’d have a lot more.

As Pierre covered the corpse, Sean turned to Jack. “Get the guys together. I want everyone out on the streets. We’re going to keep this as controlled as possible, but there’s no way to exclude the press.

Everyone is to be very careful regarding what is said. I want meetings with the undercover guys in the French Quarter, I want the names of all known pimps and madams in the area, and I want the names of anyone even remotely suspected of supplying sexual services or escorts on the side, all right?”

“Gotcha,” Jack said, only too glad to leave the morgue.

“So, what are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to head out and interview the neighbor myself,” Sean said. “Maybe there’s some little piece of information that was missed. And when I’m done there, I’m going to find any possible—remote!—infractions and start combing the underbelly of our fair city for those dealing in human flesh.”

“Have fun,” Pierre told him.

“Yeah, right.”

The dead girl’s neighbor was a pretty, petite brunette, a fresh-faced young woman who admitted

“dabbling in the trade” herself. She had cried real tears for Bessie, Sean thought, and he felt an anguish he couldn’t quite help for the poor dead girl when he met her little boy. Four years old, shy and hesitant, he told Sean solemnly that “Auntie” Jeanne had told him Mommy had been called to heaven, and that she was safe and happy living with God. She just couldn’t be with him anymore. Auntie Jeanne Montaine then sent the little platinum-haired child into the den to watch a Disney video while she sat down with Sean, offering him coffee.

Jeanne smoked nervously and puffed on a cigarette. “God, I wish I could help you! How can anyone do such things to other human beings? It’s so horrible ... and poor Isaac! Oh, I know, lots of people will just think that Bessie was a whore and she deserved what she got, but... well, most of what she made, she put away. She dreamed of moving away from here one day. We used to lie around and try to think about the most remote place possible—a city big enough to blend in, small enough so that it was still rural America, you know? Somewhere to lead a new life. She might have been what some folks call immoral you know, but good folk, bad folk, black folk, white folk, I’ve almost never seen anybody love somebody like Bessie loved her boy.”

“Miss Montaine, I’m afraid I didn’t know Bessie, and I surely wouldn’t presume to judge her. We all do what we’ve got to do in life.”

Jeanne brightened. She looked at him, sighing, and with her sigh, she lost some of her defensiveness.

“Yeah, we do. I want to keep her boy, you know.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”

“I may make you keep your word on that,” Jeanne told him.

Sean folded his hands together, leaning seriously toward her. “Jeanne, I don’t judge Bessie, and I can’t help her now, but if I can help her son, I promise I will. And I may be able to help some other poor girl.