Insatiable Desire Read online

  Outside the moon shifted, slid behind the clouds, vanishing completely. A black emptiness crept over the room, beckoning. The wind suddenly roared, rattling the walls, and he tensed, his senses honed, warning him that the devil had risen again to wreak havoc.

  A second later, his cell phone jangled from the nightstand, saving him from the awkwardness after.

  He released the woman so abruptly she fell forward, still trembling with the aftermath of her release. He tore off the condom and climbed away from her, hating himself. God, what had happened to him back there? He’d imagined killing her.

  She caught his arm and tried to pull him back to her. “Don’t answer the phone.”

  He had to leave. It was the only way she’d be safe. “Duty calls.”

  Her eyelids fluttered wildly, and she ran a finger over his cock, raking a drop of come off the tip and sucking it into her mouth. “But I want you again already.”

  “Tell the criminals to take a night off, then,” he growled.

  She sighed, but he firmly ignored the disappointment in her eyes, the needy look suggesting that she wanted more than a lay, that she wanted to cuddle, to talk.

  Instead, he reached for the phone, silently relaying what he didn’t want to have to say out loud. She was an okay fuck, but anything else was not in the cards. No use telling a lie. She had simply been a momentary reprieve between cases.

  She clamped her teeth over her lips, then offered a disappointed smile and reached for that seductive skirt. Still he didn’t make excuses; he simply couldn’t give what he didn’t have.

  A heart.

  The silhouette of the woman’s skeletal remains swung from the Devil’s Tree in Clarissa King’s front yard.

  She shuddered, battling the urge to grab an ax and chop it down. She’d tried that before, but the tree was petrified and held some kind of supernatural power. The moment she cut off a branch, it grew back, yet no grass grew beneath it, and in the winter the moment snow touched the branches, it melted. Mindless screams echoed from the limbs, as well, the screams of the dead who’d died there in centuries past.

  The screams of Clarissa’s mother as she’d choked on her last breath in the same tree mingled with the others.

  Forcing herself away from the window, she hugged her arms around herself to gather her composure. Night had long ago stolen the last strains of sun from the Tennessee sky, painting the jagged peaks and ridges of the Smokies with ominous shadows. Wind whistled through the pines and scattered spiny needles, dried and brittle from the relentless scorching heat that drained the rivers and creeks, leaving dead fish floating to the surface of the pebbled beds, muddy wells, and watering holes.

  The grass and trees were starved for water, brown and cracking now with their suffering, and animals roamed and howled, searching for a meal in the desolate miles and miles of secluded forests.

  There were some areas she’d never been because the infamous legends had kept her away. The Black Forest was one of them. Stories claimed that in the Black Forest, sounds of inhuman creatures reigned, half animal, half human—mandrills with human heads, shape-shifters, the unknown.

  The few who’d ventured near had seen sightings of predators without faces, floating eyeballs that glowed in the dark, creatures that weren’t human. No light existed inside that forest, no color. And any who entered died a horrific, painful death at the hands of the poisonous plants and mutant creatures that fed on humans.

  The whispers of the ghosts imprinted in the land chanted and cried from its depths. And nearby lay the Native American burial ground where screams of lost warriors and war drums reverberated in the death-filled air, where the ground tremored from the force of decades-old stampedes and battle cries.

  Clarissa shivered and hurried to latch the screen door of her cabin that jutted over the side of the mountain. Useless, probably. The ratty screen and thin wooden door couldn’t protect her should the demons decide to attack.

  The year of the eclipse—the year of death—was upon them.

  Night and the full moon had brought them, stirring the devil from the ground, the serpents from the hills, the dead from the graves. Granny King—“Crazy Mazie” some had called her, God rest her soul—had taught her to read the signs. The insufferable heat, as if Hades himself had lit a fire beneath the earth, one to honor his kingdom. The blood-red moon that filled the sky and beckoned the predators to roam. The howl of Satan announcing his time for vengeance.

  Yes, her once-safe hometown was full of evil, and no one could stop it until the demons fed their hungry souls with the innocents.

  Yet the pleas of the women who’d died this week echoed in her head. She’d told the local sheriff her suspicions, that the deaths were connected.

  That they were murders.

  He’d wanted to know why she thought they were connected, and she’d had to be honest.

  The victims had told her.

  At least their spirits had when they’d visited.

  Thankfully, Sheriff Waller had known her family and hadn’t laughed but had listened. Her grandmother had had the “gift” of communing with the dead, and so had her mother. Granny King used to read the obits daily over her morning herbal tea and confer with the deceased as if they were long-lost buddies. Everyone in town had thought she was touched in the head. But she’d been right on so many occasions that most folks believed her.

  The rest were scared to death of her.

  Clarissa’s mother had also been a psychic and an empath, only the constant barrage of needy souls had driven her insane. So insane she’d finally chosen to join them in death . . . instead of living and raising her daughter.

  Bitterness swelled inside Clarissa at the loss, eating at her like a virus. She’d been alone, shunned, gossiped about, even called wretched names and cast away from certain families who thought she, too, was evil.

  Her mother had visited Clarissa once after her death, ordered Clarissa to suppress her powers. And she had done so most of her life, trying to be normal.

  She was anything but normal.

  So she’d returned to the one place a few people accepted her. Back to Eerie.

  Staying in her granny’s house seemed to have unleashed the spirits, as if they’d lain in waiting all these years for their friend to return, and she could no longer fight their visits.

  Outside, the wind howled, a tree branch scraped the windowpane, and ominous storm clouds hovered with shadowy hands that obliterated the light. Even with the ceiling fan twirling, the oppressive summer heat robbed the air, stirring cobwebs and dust that sparkled in the dark interior like white ashes.

  Wulf, the German shepherd mix she’d rescued last year after he’d been hurt in a collapsed mine, suddenly growled, low and deep as if he sensed a threat, too, then trotted to the window and looked outside in search of an intruder.

  Anxiety needled her as she contemplated the meeting she faced tomorrow.

  Vincent Valtrez was coming to town.

  She’d thought about him over the years, had wondered what had happened to him. Both outcasts, her because of her gift, him because of his violent father, they’d formed an odd friendship as kids.

  But when she’d offered to see if his mother had passed, had suggested she could talk to her from the grave, he’d called her crazy and pushed her out the door. He told her he never wanted to see her again.

  She couldn’t believe he was an FBI agent now. He probably wouldn’t be any more open to her psychic powers now than he had been back then.

  She had to talk to him anyway. Convince him to listen. She hadn’t asked for this gift, but she couldn’t deny it, either. Not when others’ lives were at stake.

  Because this killer wasn’t finished. And she didn’t want the women’s lost souls upon her conscience.

  Pan, the god of fear, studied the town of Eerie, his plan taking shape in his demonic mind.

  Six days until Zion rose from the dead for the coronation. Six days until their new leader assumed control.
/>   The underworld buzzed with excitement and preparations. Legend told that Zion would be the most evil leader they had ever known, that he showed no mercy upon any soul.

  Just as he hadn’t toward his wife and son.

  In anticipation of his rising, demons met to plot and scheme, desperate to ingratiate themselves into their new master’s graces and raise themselves from their lowly levels to higher realms within the underground. Others forged secret plans, vying to outbid one another to sit at Zion’s right-hand side.

  Pan had burrowed from his lowly chamber and accepted the challenge. A mere minion, punished to the fiery blazes of the lowest level, he had to collect enough souls to impress the new leader.

  Seven souls and he would win great favor.

  Mere days ago, fellow demons had fought the Twilight Guards, the ones who guarded the realm between mortals and the supernatural world, and had opened a portal for the demons. Pan had orbed through the dark planes of time and space, through the portal, and floated above the town of Eerie. There he’d watched the mortals and had chosen the face of one to borrow for his bidding. A face that no one would suspect hid a demon.

  Two women had died at his hands so far.

  One touch and he knew their greatest fear.

  Then he’d used it to kill them.

  Laughter bubbled in his parched throat. But killing the women and stealing their souls was a minor part of the larger picture. He’d specifically pinpointed the town where Vincent Valtrez had been raised, because he knew the local sheriff would call him.

  And he’d chosen Clarissa King to taunt with the voices of the dead, because she was Valtrez’s Achilles’ heel.

  As a boy, Valtrez had protected her from his father. She would be the perfect means to trap Vincent.

  Pan had already pressed his hand to her and knew her greatest fear: that the dead she communed with would drive her insane. He would target her friends for his kills, then use their voices to torment her.

  He raised his black palm and began to chant, to summon the demons to torture her:

  “I call to you,

  Spirits far and wide,

  Rise from the dead

  To the medium’s side.

  Let your cries

  Fill her head

  So she may join

  You and the dead.”

  If Valtrez still had a weakness for the woman, when she broke, he would try to save her.

  Then Pan would turn the Dark Lord and bring him to the new master.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Vincent picked up the phone, turning his back on the woman as she dressed and let herself out. “Valtrez.”

  “It’s McLaughlin. Sorry to disturb you, man, but you’ve got an assignment.”

  “Where to?”

  “A small town in the Smoky Mountains, Eerie, Tennessee. The local sheriff is recovering from a mild heart attack and requested our help, specifically yours. He thinks he has a serial killer in the hills, and the chief wants you to get up there first thing tomorrow.”

  The Tennessee mountains. Shit, that was the last place he ever wanted to go back to.

  “Why me?”

  “Because you grew up there. You understand the town, the area, the people.” McLaughlin coughed. “Said something about you going into the Black Forest and coming out alive. That no one else ever had.”

  Vincent rubbed a hand over his bleary eyes. Hell, yeah, he’d survived, but he’d blocked out what had happened inside the forest.

  But he knew evil lived in the mountains and that his father had been a violent man.

  Maybe it was time he did return, put his past to rest. He had a nagging feeling the blackouts he’d experienced lately had something to do with that hellhole he’d grown up in. With the memories he’d repressed . . .

  “Valtrez? You listening?”

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “How many murders so far?”

  “Two.” McLaughlin hesitated. “Although the MOs are different, Valtrez. They don’t appear to be related. The first one is a drowning victim, the second, multiple spider bites.”

  “Why does he think the spider bites are murder?”

  “There were multiple bites.” McLaughlin hesitated. “Dozens and dozens, as if someone had planted the spiders in the woman’s bed.”

  Vincent chewed the inside of his cheek, conceding that sounded suspicious. “What makes this sheriff think the deaths are connected?”

  McLaughlin hesitated again.

  “Spill it, McLaughlin. What am I up against? Some small-town morons?”

  A wry chuckle rumbled over the line. “Maybe. This guy claims their resident town psychic told him the women are being murdered.”

  Vincent scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Don’t tell me. Her name is Clarissa King.”

  “How’d you know?”

  Shit. “Everyone in the area knows about her family.” A childhood memory taunted him. Clarissa had been tiny and frail-looking in her homemade checkered dress. They’d forged an odd, awkward friendship.

  One day the kids had picked on him at school, and she’d taken up for him. He’d told her he didn’t need her help and stormed away. But she was a stubborn little thing and had followed him home.

  Humiliation washed over him. His father had found him wearing the angel amulet, yelled at him that it was for girls, and had ripped it off his neck. Then his father had caught Clarissa looking through the window and had snatched her up. Vincent had stepped in the middle to protect her. His father had laughed, shoved her outside, and told her not to come back—then he’d beaten Vincent senseless.

  “Look at it this way,” McLaughlin said, interrupting his thoughts. “You can meet with the sheriff, brush him off, then relax in the mountains for the weekend. Maybe go fishing.”

  Vincent laughed sardonically. He didn’t want to relax. Hell, he couldn’t. The only pastime he had other than work was screwing women.

  His gaze zeroed in on the blood the woman had drawn from his arm when he’d fucked her.

  Bad blood, bad blood, bad blood . . . He’d inherited it from his father.

  He couldn’t change what he was. A bad-to-the-bone bastard. He wouldn’t make excuses for it, either.

  First thing tomorrow, before he headed to Tennessee, he’d stop by BloodCore, that research center, and offer a sample for analysis. They were researching deviant and abhorrent behavior, searching for genetic markers to pinpoint and predict tendencies toward aggression, violence, and criminal behavior, specifically in sociopaths and serial killers.

  All in hopes of finding a cure, so doctors could change a person’s genetic makeup to alter that behavior.

  He hoped to hell they found one. Vincent would be first in line for treatment. It might be the only thing that could save him.

  An icy chill engulfed Clarissa. This morning she’d heard another cry. The woman’s spirit hadn’t gained enough energy to materialize yet, but Clarissa had been tormented by her distinctive wail of terror in the predawn hour. Wulf had heard it, too, and howled in recognition.

  She’d phoned Sheriff Waller immediately and asked him if anyone in town had been reported missing. So far, nothing.

  But they would. Her premonitions rarely failed her.

  As if Clarissa had summoned the spirits, a chill in the air swirled around her, a hint of jasmine mingling with the humidity.

  In the shadows of the woods behind her property, a ghostly image drifted toward her, then shimmered inside against the knotty-pine-paneled walls. Its tormented mass filled the silence with shock and the trauma of just being taken.

  She recognized the spirit immediately. Billie Jo Rivers, a teller at the bank. She’d drowned in Redtail Creek three days ago.

  Now, she stood pale-faced, a white skeleton with soaking wet clothes, drenched tangled hair, mud-stained limbs, and distorted features, lost in her own bed of horrors.

  Clarissa wanted to reach out and hug her in comfort, but that was impossible. But she could help find her kille
r so Billie Jo could cross into the light.

  Beside Billie Jo, another spirit appeared, shimmering against the darkness. This one, twenty-five-year-old church director Jamie Lackey. Her pale green eyes stared back, gaunt with pain and terror in her skeleton. Swollen and discolored patches marred her body, and her black hair swirled around her face, wild and tangled, a half-dozen brown recluse spiders crawling through the tresses, others spinning a web on her arms and legs.

  Clarissa shivered. She had to help the girls. Had to convince Vincent that she was telling the truth. That the people of Eerie needed help. That a monster was here, preying on women. But how?

  “I need more from you,” she pleaded into the darkness. “Some clue, something I can tell the police to help them find out what happened to you.”

  Both women’s spirits reached for her with outstretched brittle fingers, but when they tried to speak, only a strangled sound of agony pierced the air. It was too soon. They needed more time to acclimate into their astral spirits; then they would be able to communicate.

  Exhausted, and knowing she needed her strength for the next day, Clarissa climbed in bed, then closed her eyes and silently willed the spirits to rest and let her sleep. She didn’t want to see them anymore tonight. To hear their shrieks of terror.

  But hysterical laughter bubbled in her chest as she felt the whisper of the spirits’ breaths on her neck. Their cackles of agony splintered the silence. She’d never be free of them. No matter where she’d run these past few years or how hard she’d tried to escape, the spirits begged her to listen.

  Outside, the clouds shifted to hide the moon, and a sea of darkness engulfed the room, the whisper of more danger breathing through the air. In less than a month the eclipse would occur.

  The time when demons rose to wreak havoc.

  The people of Eerie had to be ready. Her destiny lay in helping those who needed her.

  Even if it meant she would be alone forever.

  And that she’d end up hanging from the Devil’s Tree just like her mother.

  Fear clawed at Tracy Canton. She was going to die here in the woods, alone where no one would find her.

  Bugs nibbled at her flesh, and tears rolled down her cheeks, mingling with the sweat and blood running down her face. Blood the monster who’d attacked her had smeared on her after digging the knife into her wrists.