Daimon - DANIELLE BOLGER (best fiction novels TXT) 📗

Ryan clenched his fists, restraining his emotions. “Stop it, Jane! How is it that you have this way to make me wanna spill everything I'm thinking and feeling? If I tell you any more, then I will have said too much!”

I placed a hand on his, resisting the allure of the throbbing radial artery there. His hand was clenched and cool but relaxed at my touch.

“I told you, tonight I am nothing but a friend, or...sister, I suppose,” I smirked softly. “I promise. I'm not here to get information out of you— just to reconnect, and maybe we can soothe each other's souls in our time of darkness.” I lied so smoothly it surprised even me.

“A friend, hey? So, not a damn dirty reporter?” he said, skeptically.

“No,” I smirked. “However, I could be a damn dirty ape.”

Finally, there was a glimpse of glee as he chuckled mutely. He turned and looked into my eyes as if trying to pierce through them. Then he settled for a sigh. “I'm struggling with following orders.”

“I never pinned you as a follower.”

“I would happily follow if I believed in the cause; if I believed in the result, but... what they’ve asked me to do is not what I signed up for.”

“What are they asking you to do?” I prodded.

“To...back off on the Valentine case.”

I was so shocked I could not even think to restrain my gasp, but I did manage to keep a wide gratified grin at bay. “Why?”

“I can't say any more, Jane, but I think you know anyway.”

I finished it off for him in my mind: The Foxes are telling the cops to lay off.

“Do you know why?”

“No, but it does give me one clue: whoever this psychopath is, he's got money.”

For a moment, dread filled me. I thought he was honing into my financial state until I realized the real assumption. “You think he's buying them off?”

Ryan didn't say anything, but from the tension in his jaw, I could tell he was gritting his teeth.

Our hands were still touching. His warmth flooded into my body, enticing. I could still feel the shallow artery in his hand, moving up and down subtly. I felt an overwhelming urge to lick this, at least, to taste it, and as my head started to lower I snapped it back up suddenly with alarm.

Seeing this movement, Ryan's expression softened. He brushed a hand across my waist, pressed his torso against mine snugly and sank his lips into mine. These were furiously warm, radiating more heat than any other part of his body, and as he pressed them onto mine, they scorched with passionate desire. I felt a gentle slimy touch of his tongue in my mouth, caressing my own with soft vivacity. His breath was hurried and his heart eccentric. Each thud was deliberate, full of intent.

I tore away from his lips, but I remained intertwined with his body. “What are you doing?” I husked. I knew he was tempting me, but I did not know into which act it was. He was readying himself to follow his carnal desires and I was dangerously being lulled in also, but my desires did not end just wet, but red.

Ryan suddenly let go. “I...I don't know. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. Shit, I'm really sorry. My best friend's sister, fuck I'm an idiot!”

He left the sofa and strode into the kitchen that overlooked the lounge room, paced to the fridge, poured water from a jug and skulled it down as if it were an antidote to a lethal poison.

“It's getting late,” He stated flatly over the kitchen counter. “I'm going to go to sleep. You can have my bed, I'll sleep on the couch here.” As he all but ran from the room, he did not look at me again.

Eventually, I followed him down the hall and discovered two doors, opposite one another. One was open and displayed a neatly made bed and a desk with papers cluttered over it in large, disorganized stacks. The other was closed, emitting light from its edges and the noise of a shower running. This quelled the sound of his fervent heart beating and the succulent scent of his skin. I remembered his ocean-blue eyes, that stood out all the more for his dark brown hair, and felt myself wanting to be lost in them. My chest panged with longing.

As I lay on Ryan's bed and entangled myself in the sheets, I drew their aroma in deeply. Within moments, I felt myself float away and be swept into a great sea; first blue, then swiftly transforming into a magnificent crimson. I could almost taste the wonderful flavor of the water.

****

When I awoke, all I saw was darkness. Within a few moments, my eyes adjusted and sight was returned to me. I turned down to my wrist-watch which dictated the time as 3.52am.

My eyes diverted to the sole source of light in the room; a tiny blue flicker on a computer tower. I crawled out of bed, reached for the wireless mouse and gave it a jiggle. The hum from the large black box increased as the fan kicked into action. However, no image was displayed from the monitor. Feeling around the frame of the screen, I found a button and applied pressure. An adjacent green light came to life and then an image of one of Blue Coast's beaches formed the desktop background. As I clicked onto the Documents icon the sound penetrated so sharply through the air I felt sure that Ryan must have heard it from the lounge room. I preened my ears through the walls; I heard no stirring.

My eyes scouted another folder labeled Valentine. This was further broken up into dates traveling back three years ago. There were several of these, dozens, possibly a hundred even. Far more than the fifteen murders the press had covered. I wondered, were the other dates murders too, or just simply incidences that lead to significant information about Valentine? Curiosity piqued, I double clicked on the first folder.

This showed pictures of murder number one. The victim was a girl with deep purple hair and tattoos covering her body. The crime scene was in a cornfield, where she laid motionless on a coffin-like slab of rock. The girl had her eyes shut, and would have looked as if she were merely sleeping if it were not for the hole in her chest. A close-up shot showed an ebony rose rising from the red-rimmed cavity. Short candles marked the perimeter; their flames had been snuffed out long before. An attached report speculated the motivation to be part of a lover's quarrel being that the estimated time of death coincided with Valentine's Day. The boyfriend was taken into custody for questioning but was released after a few days when no proof could be mounted against him. Interestingly, however, the female showed a criminal record, detailing that she had done prior time in a juvenile detention center. This followed a fire that she admitted to causing, when she was just a child, which resulted in the death of her baby brother.

The next folder showed another murder, one in which I could not recall. It occurred just two days after the first, situated in an otherwise picturesque vineyard. This victim had no criminal history, but her body showed faded scars on her wrists and legs. The medical report recounted depression closely following a teenage abortion. There were a few onlookers captured on the film, perhaps owners of the vineyard, but miraculously no reporters. There was a doll-like little girl standing amongst the thin crowd and I wondered if she had been living on that property with her family. Her eyes were vacant, already scarred at an age no more than twelve. She cowered behind a young man who, with his dark hair and similarly empty eyes, looked like her older brother.

The next date related to a supposed attack by Valentine where the victim swore that she escaped the hold of the notorious killer. This was later downgraded to an attempted rape, and the perpetrator deemed unrelated to Valentine. The succeeding accounts took place in a nursery, then an observation point on top of Summit Mountain just northwest of the city.

Then a popular beach site followed. This one I recalled being blasted through the news, as it was a Japanese couple that found the body. It was discovered just before midday when the husband and wife sought a shady location on a beach under the cover of some trees. They had, at first, thought the girl close by was simply napping, until they saw the congealed blood on her chest. They began screaming and crying out for help, but bystanders avoided them like they were mad since all their rants were in a foreign language. Finally, it was a high-schooler who had studied Japanese that managed to translate the horror.

I scrolled over several files and clicked on an account of a florist who was robbed of his entire stock of roses. They ruled out any association with Valentine, despite his fetish for the flower. The next folder contained another young woman claiming that she escaped Valentine, but this time, he raped her repeatedly before attempting murder. Later investigations revealed that the woman was a con artist who only feigned the attack to gain exclusives with numerous reporting agencies for an easy cash gain. This woman was charged with obstruction of police investigations and for lying to authorities, but she was excused for her deception after a psychological report proved that she was mentally unbalanced. Like that would be unusual in this cursed city.

Skipping to the bottom, I saw Mr. BMW lying in the woods. The report told me his name was Brian Dalton. He had a wife and three children, and was having an affair with a woman fifteen years his junior. The report concluded that this homicide did not appear to be perpetrated by Valentine, but by a copycat. Though there were numerous similarities to the Valentine cases, the fact that the victim was a male suggested a new killer. Of course, that did not rule out other possibilities, such as an adapted killing style or the initiation of an apprentice. Two different samples of blood were found: the first was, unsurprisingly, the victim's, but the second type had no match to any existing data. However, it was affirmed as a female with type O positive blood. Dark brown hair fibers were recovered, natural pigmentation, but there were no matches to those in the database. The blood was sampled for any markers that could indicate environmental influences. These showed the person of interest to have been involved with cannabis, among other substances, between four and eight years ago. It also indicated that the female resided in a metropolis over, approximately, the last three to four years due to signs of air pollution.

It was a relief that there was no information directly linking me, but it was still unsettling that they managed to pull up so much data just by some blood and hair alone. I had never been under suspicion for any crime— well, nothing more serious than a few misdemeanors, which was why the DNA matching all showed negative. I had to keep it that way. I had to stay out of the limelight, out of the murder scenes. Otherwise, they would have more samples, and more chances to discover my true identity.

I sighed as I closed the Valentine file, and searched around for some whiff of last night's activities. I could find no data relating to yesterday; no recently added files in relation to Mack's murder, and following with a broader search, nothing at all relating to Devil's Eden. I realized it was true; that Paradise Grove really had been swallowed up by the gangsters and was solely under their control. The police gave the Foxes the district to run as they pleased so long as relative peace was maintained throughout the rest of the city.

“Cowardly pigs,” I snarled.

I heard a murmur through the walls. It was nothing but a minor stir. Perhaps the verbalizations of conflicts within a dream, but the growing light filtering in through the window threatened that early birds were to emerge from their slumbers shortly.

I checked my watch, 4:29. Damn. How I wished I lived in a state with daylight-savings then.

I opened a browser, typed in the address to my email account and was just about to log in until I realized the potential footprints I would leave. Every part of me wanted to email a zipped version of the Valentine investigation to myself, before deleting the browser history, but I rejected the idea. I knew despite covering my tracks on the browser, there were still ways to trace a user's whereabouts. I did not know how to skirt those measures myself, but someone like Zach did. He had, on occasion, helped me out of jams in the past, when I required a little extra assistance in my endeavors. I did not think Ryan would have had the same knowledge with computers, but decided I could not afford the risk. I cleared the browser history, eradicating the simple page of my email server, and returned the computer back