Read Online Life Cycle by Zoe Winters - Free Book Online Page B

had
gathered and were furiously taking notes, their cameras
recording.
    Cain moved around the perimeter far from the
mechanical eyes. Sometimes human cameras caught things—not a full
demon, but moving streaks or balls of light, or what humans who
were into ghost hunting liked to called orbs. Who knew why a demon
should show up as light on a human camera? One would think it would
be puffs of dark smoke or something else sinister, but if this
thing was going where the TV reports he’d seen so far suggested,
they didn’t need more clues to fuel the fire.
    The two of them passed through the wall into the
house from the back, and made their way to the room where the body
had been. The investigators were in the hallway.
    “Great, the body’s already at the morgue,” Luc said,
not at all happy about it.
    “Probably not much of interest on the body, anyway.
Let’s just search here. We might find something to give Anthony at
the meeting tonight.” He hated working with a half-breed. Hated it.
But the winds were changing. It felt as if something dramatically
bad was about to happen. As much as he loathed the idea, he
couldn’t afford to be too good to work with a vampire.
    The investigators in the hallway talked for a few
more minutes, then went outside to face the reporters, locking the
doors behind them. When they were gone, the demons
materialized.
    “I’ll check this room,” Cain said. “You check the
rest of the house.”
    Luc gave a curt nod and went into the hallway. Cain
was glad for the peace. Maybe telling his brother had been a
mistake. Of course, Luc was going to see it differently from how he
meant it. He didn’t even know how he meant it. If he’d waited, in a
week Tam would be dead. Nobody would have had to know about any of
it. But it was lonely keeping everything to himself. Luc was the
one demon he could confide in without feeling weak.
    Cain went through doors and closets, shuffled through
some papers on the dresser, and took in the room in general. A
Victorian-style lamp had been knocked over. Blood coated the bed.
He moved closer. Something was off.
    “Luc!”
    The other demon yelled from down the hallway,
“Yeah?”
    “She wasn’t killed here. It was somewhere else, then
she was transported.” In this neighborhood, how would he have
accomplished it? It wasn’t as if the house were isolated. Some type
of cloaking spell or glamour maybe? “I’m going to talk to the
neighbor next door. You keep looking here.”
    Cain dematerialized and went back through the wall
where he’d come in. The investigators didn’t seem to realize the
body had been moved. The difference in how the scene would appear
was subtle, but he’d seen thousands of years of human barbarism.
Given the ritualistic nature of the killing, the blood patterns
would have been different. It was a good misdirect, though. It
would fool a human.
    The killer had brought her in, arranged her, then
messed up the room to make it look like the struggle had happened
here. Given how convincing the scene was, who would assume a second
location? The more locations, the more chances of getting
caught.
    Depending on time of death, anything that had
happened more recently at the house might not have been considered
important—assuming the police had worked their way through
canvassing the neighborhood. Since they’d just finished with the
house, interviews may not have started yet.
    He slipped over to the house next door, noting the
investigators dealing with the media out front. Cain rang the
doorbell.
    An older woman, maybe mid-seventies, answered and
looked past him, confused by her empty front porch. “H-hello?”
    The demon pushed into the house, his hand clamping
down over her mouth. “Shhhh, I’m not going to hurt you.”
    But his words did no good. Who wouldn’t be terrified
of an invisible being grabbing them? When the door was shut, he
materialized and put the whammy on her. It was better than a
polygraph test.
    “Are you alone