Read Online To Kill a Sorcerer by Greg Mongrain - Free Book Online

long pauses in between. After several moments, her dark eyes found mine.
    “I always knew humans were the real monsters.”
    “Yes.”
    She turned back to the screen.
    I wandered onto the patio, the Pacific a soft roar in the distance.
    She was a twenty-year-old woman living in Paris when a vacationing vampire, Claudius, had been smitten by her extraordinary beauty. He had taken her into the coven of darkness that same night. Claudius was the most ancient vampire, with powers none of the others possessed. Though Aliena was young for a vampire at just over three centuries old, no one would dare harm her knowing Claudius to be her sire.
    That part of her history sounded storybook (like a dark princess) and attractive. Her unapproachable manner, however, did not have the same appeal. She had beguiled me for over a century, but I had learned at an early stage to maintain a certain degree of emotional distance. It proved difficult. Aliena had more than beauty and brains. She was immortal, a trait that held an obvious allure for me.
    It had been centuries since I had allowed my romantic self to even peek at a woman. Love was not a prudent emotion for me, particularly with a mortal. And with Aliena? I had tried to visualize my future with her and could not.
    The cab ride home tonight had been excruciatingly pleasurable. She had not been her usual aloof self all night. Upset over the pictures she had “found” of me, she had held my arm in front of Marcus, had left 49 with me, and had pressed against me on the backseat of a car, confessing that she had never had a lover.
    Aliena had played coy in the past, including stripping in front of me so she could use my shower, but it was bawdy stuff, not romantic—and not an invitation.
    However, even in the most clinical setting, watching her strip intoxicated the senses. Aliena is all womanly curves, breathtaking in the nude. You might think that after seven hundred years I had seen enough female bodies to be immune to such a simple thing.
    Not a bit of it.
    I went back inside. Aliena had finished the reports. She set the computer on the table and straightened up.
    “Did your police friends say anything about her lack of defensive wounds?”
    “Only that they didn’t know why she didn’t fight him,” I said.
    “That’s unusual. Unless these wounds are postmortem?”
    “No, the coroner confirmed she was alive when the first cut was made.”
    She gazed at the computer screen. “With the herbs and the removal of the heart, pointing her head toward the ground . . . what he did to her obviously goes beyond a simple murder. Oh, Sebastian . . . she looks terrified.”
    I clenched my hands, remembering. “What do you think about our killer?”
    “He’s a mature man with good emotional control. He took his time, so he has self-confidence. The way he tied her to the ceiling demonstrates he is fit and strong. For a mortal. As for the cuts, I agree with you. This has the earmarks of something ritualistic.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Based on the dearth of evidence collected at the scene, he plans well and is a perfectionist. If he continues, he will be difficult to catch. He is unlikely to make mistakes.”
    So far, nothing but bad news. “All the more reason . . .” I said, half to myself, forgetting that Aliena could have heard me even if she was on the roof.
    “Is this one of your special cases?”
    “If you mean do I intend to kill this murderer rather than turn him over to the police, I think so.”
    Although LAPD had me officially listed as nine of twelve, my unofficial success rate was 100 percent. That’s because I had killed the three men I had not helped the police catch. In my estimation, those three represented a continuous danger to unarmed citizens and always would. There was no point in the city of Los Angeles putting them through the system to prosecute them. They were not worth the world’s time, money, or attention.
    So I disposed of them, making their