The Darkest Kiss (Riley Jenson Guardian #6)(18)

He snorted. “Hell, yes. She paused and waved at me. There was blood smeared all over her hands and skin.”
“She was naked, then?”
He nodded.
Not only a killer, but a brazen one, who seemingly didn’t have any fears about getting caught. “Where were you?”
“Sorta standing in the middle of the road, a little shocked. I mean, it’s not every day you see your boss and a babe making out in the window.”
No, I guess not. “Were you the only one watching?”
“There was a drunk.” He shrugged. “Most of the traffic kept zipping by. One of them almost ran me over. People in cars generally don’t take much notice of what’s going on around them.”
And if they had glimpsed the naked woman, would they actually have believed it? Or would they have thought it a mannequin? “What happened then?”
“She jumped out of the display area and I presume she walked to the back of the shop. There were no lights on in the store, so I couldn’t be sure, but she certainly didn’t come out the front.”
“Did you enter the shop?”
He shook his head. “I called the cops, and waited out the front. If she could kill Frank—and he wasn’t responding to me banging on the window, so I had to presume he was dead—I wasn’t taking the chance of confronting her alone. I mean, I’m half Frank’s size.”
Wise man. I waited while he took a sip of coffee, then asked, “Is there another exit besides the front door?”
He shook his head. “Only the window above us.”
I looked up. The window in question was maybe one foot square in diameter, and wouldn’t have been large enough for a woman or a cat the size of a tiger to get through. But the latch was undone and the woman had gone, so this had to be her exit point.
Which meant we had a shifter who could actually alter the size of her beast. Interesting.
“Did you see her well enough to give us a description of her?”
He nodded. “She was tall and willowy, with large breasts and a lush mouth. Blondish hair, long fingers.”
I raised my eyebrows again. “Long fingers?”
“I’m a pianist. I notice hands.” He hesitated. “I’m sure she lives around here somewhere. I’ve seen her on the street a few times.”
“But you don’t know her name?”
“No. Sorry.”
I squeezed his hand then rose. “There’ll be another Directorate officer in here in a moment or so to take a full statement and work up an image ID, then we’ll send you home.”
He nodded. “Thanks.” 
I left him to his coffee and walked back into the main shop area. Cole looked up as I entered. “Anything useful?”
“He saw the killer, so we’ll need a full statement.”
“Does his description match that of the woman James was last seen with?”
“Only in that they both had blond hair.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “It’ll be interesting to see what the DNA comes up with then, because the MO is the same for both murders.”
“Except for the amount of bloodshed and the size of the scratches.” I walked over to the victim and squatted down, studying his neck. Like Gerard James, this man had three small scratches near the pulse point of his neck. But why—especially given that larger claws had been used on the rest of his body? I shifted a little, and saw the lipstick smear across his lips. It was the color of dried blood—not a very nice shade. “If it is the same woman, do you think we’re dealing with someone who can change the size of her animal?”
Cole raised his eyebrows. “It’d be rare.”
“But there are wolves who can alter their human forms, so why couldn’t there be shifters who can alter their animal one?”
“I don’t know. I’ll do a search and see if I can come up with anything.”
“Good.” I rose. “I think she escaped through a back window. I’m going to go around the back and see if I can catch a scent to track.”
Cole nodded, obviously not paying a whole lot of attention as he picked up a hair and carefully placed it in a bag.
I walked out the front and looked around until I found Kade, then walked over. I could smell the drunk before I got anywhere near them, and his unwashed, sour puke aroma had me stopping several yards away. Kade glanced over his shoulder, wrinkled his nose and made a face, then continued his interview for another few minutes.
“Well,” he said, when he finally joined me. “That was interesting.”
“Interesting because he had lots of information, or because he smelled like something the cat chucked up?”
He smiled. “Both, actually. Our killer is apparently into spanking—and he swears that while she was human, one of her hands was that of a large cat.”
“Which would at least explain all the blood and claw marks.” I touched his arm, tried to ignore the urge to caress his warm, bay skin, and added, “She apparently escaped through the back window. I’m going to try and track the scent.”
His steps matched mine as we headed for the small lane at the end of the group of shops. “He also said that near the end of the session, she seemed to be doing this weird sucking thing to his mouth, and that he suddenly seemed in great pain.”
I raised an eyebrow, amusement twitching my mouth as I glanced up at him. “Maybe she bit his tongue.”
“He seemed to imply it was more ‘oh my God I’m going to die’–type pain, but then, he’s as drunk as a skunk, so who knows what he was really seeing.” He took a mouthful of coffee, then tossed the container into the trash. “There are Japanese legends about soul-stealers—you think we could be dealing with something like that?”
“It would certainly explain why there’s no souls hanging about afterward.” Shadows closed in around us as we moved into the laneway. “But in the Japanese legends, the soul-stealers are foxes, aren’t they?”
He shrugged. “There’s no reason why there can’t be soul-stealing cats, as well.”
“True.” It was certainly an idea worth chasing.
The ripe scent of rubbish left a little too long in the sun began to flavor the air, jostling for prominence with the sweet scent of the yellow roses climbing the fence that divided the lane from the house next door.Kade stepped over a puddle, then asked, “You get anything useful from inside?”
“Cole thinks it’s the same woman and that she’s in heat, but the description our other witness gave us doesn’t really match the woman Gerard James was apparently last seen with.”
“Doesn’t mean anything. She could have been wearing a wig, colored contacts, or anything like that. My witness certainly didn’t get close enough to pick up those things.”
“Mine, neither.”
“Did he have small scratches on the side of his neck, like James did?”
I nodded and stepped over another brackish-looking puddle. “Same place, same size.”
“Then that’s our constant. For whatever reasons, she’s marking her victims.”
“But is she doing it before, or after? You know, for all the blood in this murder, there didn’t seem to be any blood related to those scratches. Yet they were open, un-healed wounds.”
“Maybe it’s some weird way of testing them before she kills them.” He shrugged. “We won’t know for sure until we catch the bitch.”
“Cats are queens. Only dogs are bitches.”
He snorted softly. “She takes female humanoid form, so therefore the bitch tag can apply. Trust me, I live with a household of them.”
I grinned. “And here was me having the image of you all being one big happy family.”
“Oh, we are. But where a group of females gather, bitching can be found. I’m sure it’s part of female DNA, just like the ability to sniff out chocolate wherever it may be hidden.”
“You could be right.” We reached the end of the shops and moved into the lane behind them. There were several cars crammed into the small space, leaving barely enough room between them and the brickwork to get through. None of the shops had rear entrances, which I would have thought would be against fire regulations. Even heritage-listed shops—which I didn’t think these were—had to have a fire exit. Maybe the owner was paying someone under the table to get away with not installing them.
I stopped at the shoe shop window and looked up. The sun hadn’t yet hit this wall, and the bricks were still damp from the early-morning dew. Small paw marks were visible, sliding through the wetness partway down the wall before disappearing.
“She definitely came this way,” Kade commented, then glanced at me. “You think you can track her?”
“We’ll soon see.” I stripped off my jacket and sweater, handing them to him before calling to the magic deep in my soul.
Energy swept around me, through me, changing me into the form that had found me at puberty. The form that was a part of me in ways the seagull shape—no matter how comfortable I ended up being with it—never would be. 
To my wolf nose, the world came alive with a myriad of scents and sounds. I trotted forward, loving the feel of cold dampness under my paws and the play of sunlight across my fur. The texture of the air was thick and rich, and after sorting through all the different and delicious aromas, I found the one I wanted.