Read Online The Dark Side by M. J. Scott - Free Book Online Page A

last time I’d have to smell it. My stomach swirled uneasily as a breeze stirred the ashes.
    “Can you identify anything from that?” I said, hoping conversation would distract me and stop me disgracing myself by puking at Dan’s crime scene. If a suicide was considered a crime scene.
    Dan shook his head. “Unless there’s something in the car, it’s pretty unlikely. No one’s ever been able to extract DNA from vamp ash. Burns too hot to leave any bone fragments.” He stared at the car, face twisted in a frown. He smelled nervous. “Anything from Jase?”
    I shook my head and walked to him, wanting to breathe Dan-scent instead of dead vampire. I moved slowly, peering at the car, hoping that maybe there’d be something useful like a ‘hey, I’m not Jase’ sign left behind by the mystery vamp. Nothing. Just various degrees of heat damage and stink. I took another step and a glint of silver by the front tire caught my eye.
    “I think there’s something down there.” I pointed.
    “Where?”
    Dan crouched down to look. I squatted beside him to stay close, filling my nose with his comforting smell.
    “What the hell is that?” Dan straightened and yelled for some gloves and an evidence bag. Guess it was treated like a crime scene after all. One of the cops jogged over with the stuff Dan had asked for.
    When Dan straightened the second time, he held a charred brownish lump. The top of it was partially covered with twisted silver. The whole thing stank like the burned remains of God knows what.
    Dan’s nose flared with disgust and he held it away from his body. “I have no idea what this is but maybe it will help.”
    The partially melted silver had formed the sort of angles that could give Escher a headache but something about them tugged at my memory. I leaned closer.
    “Ash? Do you know what this is?”
    I studied it, trying to make sense of the silver, trying to undo the damage done by the fire and imagine the thing whole and untwisted. Angles. Points.
Teeth
. An image of the muzzled vamp from the club flashed in my mind and I jerked backward.
    “Ash?” Dan repeated, waving the burned lump near my face.
    “There was a vamp at Maelstrom,” I said as the returning memories sped my pulse. “He wore a mask, like a muzzle almost. Brown leather with silver fangs over the mouth.”
    “You think this could be that?” His voice went deep.
    I looked up to meet his gaze. There were shadows under the silver eyes. Shadows in their depths too. Worry. Fear. My fault. Guilt added another thread to the knotted emotions riding my gut. “Honestly? I don’t know. Maybe.” It could be but the damage was pretty extensive and I’d only seen the muzzled vamp for thirty seconds or so.
    Dan frowned. “You saw this vamp last night? At Maelstrom? When?”
    “When we first came in, just after that bald guy got in my face.”
    “Was he alone?”
    I closed my eyes, searched for the memory again. “There was a woman with him. Holding his leash.” Dark hair. Dark eyes. Black painted lips blowing me a kiss. The image in my head made my spine crawl.
    “Did you know her?”
    “I don’t know anyone who hangs out in dark clubs.”
    The frown lines between his eyebrows deepened as he stared down at the muzzle—if that was what it was. “I don’t like it. It’s too much of a damn coincidence. First you see a vamp in the club wearing something like this, then there’s a vamp suicide right outside your office.”
    “There must be close to two hundred people who work in my building,” I pointed out. “And thousands more in all the buildings round here. What makes you think this has anything to do with me?”
    “Instinct,” he said shortly. “I’m going to get the security tapes from the club.”
    Esteban was going to love that. But Dan’s expression suggested he wasn’t going to be dissuaded. A legitimate excuse to rattle Esteban’s chains added to the suspicion that this suicide had something to do with me would make