Seduced by the Darkling. Lauren Hawkeye

      Chapter One

      Something dark whispered in the night.

      As soon as the thought entered Jazlyn Adams’ head, she dismissed it. True the fog that was as thick and heavy as wet wool was a creepy addition to the crime scene that she was staking out. But that was a function of the weather, not something supernatural.

      Still, the skin at the back of her neck felt as though icy fingers were dancing over it as she waited across the parking lot from the seedy motel that the police had just entered. She was part of a large group of media that had congregated, cameras and pens, tablets and smartphones in every hand. They were silent to a fault, muscles tensed, waiting for something—anything—to break the tension.

      There was no need to talk—they’d all heard the same story on the police scanners they illegally manned. The skinny kid with the bad skin who manned the front desk had heard frantic screaming and cries for help coming from room 66. He’d been a brave kid, summoning up the courage to approach the door, even without knowing what horror lurked on the other side.

      He hadn’t gotten there in time. Jazlyn was confident about that detail, because the kid in question was sitting on a concrete divider in the asphalt lot, dry heaving onto the gravel. A matronly woman in uniform crouched beside him, rubbing his back and speaking in a low murmur that Jazlyn couldn’t quite make out.

      “Here they come!” The speaker was a portly man who stood chain smoking to Jazlyn’s right. He dropped his cigarette in his excitement, and Jazlyn tore her stare from the battered door across the lot to watch the ember flicker quickly from tangerine to ash. So easily extinguished—just like a life.

      She squirmed uncomfortably and resumed her vigil. She was no stranger to the seedier part of humanity—she’d been a crime reporter for the Metropolis Gazette for nearly seven years and had peered into the black dregs of the human soul. But nothing had felt quite like this before.

      Much as her rational reporter’s brain tried to reject it, her mind kept whispering the word evil over and over again in her mind.

      Two police officers exited from the motel room, their faces grim. They conferred briefly with the woman attending to the witness, then removed their latex gloves and crossed the lot to where Jazlyn and her peers stood. There was a frenzy of movement as they each readied their recording devices.

      Jazlyn smiled as she tugged her battered paper notepad and stubby pencil from the snug denim at her pocket. One of the cops was Ernie Loewen, her ex. She wasn’t sorry that their relationship had ended in her early twenties—he could be a mean son of a bitch. Why she had stayed with him for two years—why she had lived with him—she still didn’t know. He had had a change of heart, though, had softened up and even now had a wife and kid. That meant that he also felt guilt about how he had treated her, and so he snuck her extra info from time to time.

      She expected that she’d get a little aside—a little extra information—after the official statement had been made.

      “Unidentified female victim, dead on arrival. Death appears to have been caused by blood loss from trauma to the inner thigh, but this has not been confirmed. At this time, no motive or suspects for this crime have been identified, but it will be treated as a homicide. We urge any individual with information pertaining to this crime to come forward.” It was the taller man who spoke, and he was quickly barraged with questions from the ever-thickening crowd of reporters.

      Word had gotten out, and everyone wanted a shred of the story.

      Jazlyn caught Ernie’s eye and raised her left eyebrow in question. He nodded and gestured with his head for her to make her way to the left of the crowd. When she got there, he lifted up the yellow tape for her to duck under. The sticky side caught threads of her glossy brown hair, pulling the strands from her scalp.

      “Ouch.” She winced as she straightened back up, her hand automatically reaching up to massage the tender skin.

      “Are you okay?” Ernie’s hand was on her elbow instantly, his puppy dog-brown eyes full of concern, worry etching the lines around his mouth.

      “I’m fine, Ernie.” Jazlyn sighed and hitched her massive leather satchel up further on her shoulder. She knew that he was just being nice, but sometimes he went a bit too far when he was trying to make up for their shady history. In fact, she sometimes suspected that if she even whispered the words, Ernie would leave his wife and child and come back to her just to right past wrongs.

      It drove her a little bit nuts—and, perversely, now that he was nice she no longer found him attractive. It was her curse—she liked them tall, dark and dangerous.

      Still, she forced a smile to her lips. He was being nice, and he was giving her story an edge that the others wouldn’t have—something that both she and they knew, judging by the grumbles that she could hear behind her, on the other side of the tape.

      “So what’s up?” She stuffed her notepad back into her pocket. In her experience, recording devices of any kind made cops nervous. Even though they had a history, Ernie was no different.

      “This is brutal. So brutal.” Ernie shuddered as he leaned in close to her. Jazlyn suspected that he sniffed the scent of her shampoo that clung to her hair as he did so, despite the dark situation surrounding them, and resisted the urge to shake her head.

      “It’s like she was attacked by an animal. A big, wild animal.” Jazlyn watched her ex’s already pale skin turn even whiter. He shuddered, and his hand strayed to the gun that was strapped to his belt. The movement reminded Jazlyn of the icy fingers that had danced over her neck only moments earlier.

      “Who is she?” This was the worst part of her job—putting a name to the body that had journeyed beyond life, and then later on a face and story to that name. The dead were never just stories