Oh… shit, Lassiter thought. He wasn’t in love with Rahvyn. He didn’t even know her.
Then again, wasn’t that how bonding worked?
“It’s okay, my dude,” the bouncer backstroked with a stammer. “Like whatever—”
“No,” Lassiter snapped. “It’s not whatever. And I’m not your dude.”
When the human tried to take a step back, Lassiter mentally held the bouncer right where he was, and as he began to tremble, the tables-turned power trip did what nothing else could. It brought Lassiter some relief, a cooling to his impotent rage, a focal point to release his tension.
Killing this random man, out here on the street, in the world of humans who were so much less than Lassiter was, who weren’t on his level in any way, who were like ants under his feet… was the only thing that felt right in what seemed like forever.
The itch scratched. The burn extinguished. The ache gone.
For only a moment, sure. But like he fucking cared about duration. A moment was enough—
“Say goodnight, you sanctimonious asshole,” Lassiter growled. “See you on the morning news.”
* * *
Back in the bookshop’s storage room, Erika had to lay her head down on her outstretched arm. As she did, she realized she was lying in a pool of the suspect’s blood, and she had a thought that this vantage point, of a floor, of the kind of puddle she was in, of the body beside her… was a version of what many of her homicide victims saw right before their ends. It was what her father, her mother, and her brother had seen.
The girl in the pink bedroom. The man down by the river, too.
With her eyes fluttering and her heart beating in an irregular rhythm, her fear ebbed and was replaced with a helpless sadness that seeped into her marrow. For so long, she had been fighting to find answers in the aftermath of violent death, but she had never thought about this moment here… this acceptance… that came when a person was about to die. And knew it.
It was shockingly peaceful.
Just before she passed out, she looked at her hand under the open wound. The glow of light in her palm was diminishing, fading away like an old-fashioned kerosene lantern when you turned the—
Thump. Thump. Thump…
Footsteps. Heavy ones.
Out in the shop.
Within a brief flare of energy, she tried to retract her arm and get to her service weapon. But then she couldn’t remember where it was. Had she dropped it? She didn’t know, couldn’t guess. What did it matter, though. She didn’t have the strength to point it at anyone.
Anything, that was.
The sounds of someone walking on the old floorboards got louder, and then it became obvious that there were two people out there among the shelves and the books. And she’d have had to be a different person, who’d had a different life, to believe that whoever it was was good news for her and the suspect—
The door to the storeroom reopened, the light from over the register streaming in on a slice that widened until it hit her face. As she blinked blindly, she heard a curse and then all kinds of illumination flared from what seemed like all directions. Someone had turned a ceiling fixture on.
Two men came in, and her first thought was that they were dressed in black leather, just like the suspect. The one on the left had a goatee and tattoos on his temple. The other was stockier, with a distorted upper lip. Both stopped and stared down at her as if they couldn’t understand what they were seeing.
“Help him,” she said in a guttural voice. “Save him…”
The one with the goatee turned his head to his shoulder and triggered a communicator. His voice was too quiet for her to hear what he was saying—but she prayed it was nine-one-one. The other man approached her and knelt down slowly, as if he were afraid of spooking her.
“Female, worry not. We shall take care of you both.”
His eyes bored in her own, and the steady confidence he projected made her vision go blurry with tears of relief.
“I’m trying to save him… he cut himself. With…”
His eyes left hers and locked on what had to be his colleague, his friend, his brother? When his lids closed briefly, it was as if he couldn’t hold in the pain he was feeling. And then he was leaning over her and laying his broad hand on his friend’s shoulder. The man started talking, but she didn’t understand the words, the language one that seemed to have words in common with both French and German.
She didn’t need a translation to know that he was rocked to his core.
“I tried,” she mumbled lamely, “to save him.”