Magic Bound: Bound Series, #2

By V. J. Devereaux and Valerie Douglas

Homicide Detectives Sasha Gutierrez and Rafaela (Rafi) Stratford (Blood Bound) are investigating a series of murders that appear to have been committed by paranormals. A werewolf himself, Sasha knows neither his people nor vampires were the killers, despite the evidence. Desperate for clues they turn to Rhian Lewis, the proprietor of an occult bookstore...and a witch. What she discovers turns them all into targets...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Valerie Douglas
• Release date: Nov 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781540183569

V. J. Devereaux

V.J. Devereaux is a prolific writer and a genre-crosser, much to the delight of her fans. A fan of authors from almost every genre - she is the author of five star rated contemporary and paranormal erotic romance novels, including Cooking Class, Demon's Kiss and the Night Owl Reviews Top Pick, Cherry's Jubilee. As Valerie Douglas she's the writer of the Kindle bestselling fantasy novel The Coming Storm, but she writes fantasy of all kinds - classic, epic, historical and contemporary - as well as romance, suspense and horror novels. Who knows what will pop up down the road!Happily married, she's companion to two dogs, four cats and an African clawed frog named Hopper who delights in tormenting the cats from his tank.For more information on this author, please see her website www.vjdevereauxbooks.com.

Book preview

Chapter One

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The weather was gorgeous, sunny, and warm, but the humid breeze promised there would be thunderstorms later. It was definitely too beautiful for murder. Violent death was rarely neat and clean, but this one was worse than usual.  Blood and offal were splattered all over the narrow confines of the alley. The scent had Sasha’s hackles rising and his blood singing. His instinct was to protect. This was his city, his territory, and someone had violated it. Again.

It’s getting worse, he said in an undertone to his partner as they waited for the technicians to finish processing the body of the young woman.

Rafi nodded, her jaw tight as she answered the same way. The reporters will have a field day.

They would.

With so many listening ears around, he knew she couldn’t say much more, but then she didn’t need to.

Neither could ignore the ramifications of the deaths for the paranormal community. The media would talk about how this death looked like a wild animal, or something like it, had murdered the girl, but wild animals didn’t produce such waste. As Sasha knew all too well.

By something like it they meant werewolves. They would blame this death on his people – on werewolves – as they had blamed the last on vampires. Worse still, even though both he and Rafi knew neither had done it - not and risk bringing the wrath of the normal world down on their people – the questions had to be asked.

He knew how much it had hurt Rafi to go to her partner Julian – sort of chief of the vampires – and ask those questions. Nor would his kind have done this any more than vampires would have done the last. Since the first paranormal had come out – a werewolf – there was plenty of willing prey for both. If nothing else there were nightclubs in the seedier sides of town that catered to that crowd. For those of his own people who needed to hunt there were deer and rabbits aplenty.

It wasn’t that this murder didn’t bother them – as homicide detectives, murder was their business – and they stood for this victim as they did for all others. These deaths were different. Like the two others before it, it looked as if the killer was a paranormal, although the media had yet to link the first to the second. That was something they were both worried about.

The real problem was that the victims weren’t paranormal, they were normal humans.

Most normal humans didn’t care if paranormals preyed on each other, or if those who frequented the clubs were killed, but a high school administrator? A well-known college football player?

Some of them would say it had been only a matter of time before something like this happened, as if the existence of paranormals hadn’t been the stuff of horror stories for centuries. It was only the reality of them that had been sudden. They’d only been hiding their true natures from the rest of humanity. Even Rafi’s partners still kept a low profile, their wealth offering them only limited protection as they’d discovered the hard way a little more than a year before when they’d both been kidnapped and nearly killed. To no surprise, there had been little outrage at that crime. Few normals had taken notice, and most of those who did had been on the receiving end of discrimination.

Like many of his people, Sasha also kept a low profile.

All he’d ever wanted to be was a cop and particularly a homicide cop. But paranormals were still banned from some professions. One of those was police officer. It was felt that his greater strength and speed gave him an unfair advantage over both the perps and his fellow cops, while some still believed the old fairy tales and movies about his kind and feared he would go into ‘rages’ stirred by the full moon or blood lust. Neither of which was true. Certain moon phases or super-moons could aggravate his wolven – not lupine, that was a normal word implying his nature was more animal than man – side, but on those days he either escaped to his cabin in the mountains, to Julian’s estate to hunt, or he locked himself in the cellar of his house. Meditation helped at those times, soft music or drumming did, too. Some of his old pack had other methods. He didn’t have those options.

Rafi covered for him where possible.

Brains and brawn – as some of the other cops described him and Rafi – but it wasn’t entirely true. Still, Sasha respected his partner’s skills. She had an instinct, an almost sixth sense when it came to murder.

The technicians stepped back to give him and Rafi room to examine the body.

As lead investigator, Rafi took point.

No ID on her, Rafi, one of the techs said. Time of death was probably late last night. We can give you better information once the coroner gets her on the table.

Rafi nodded acknowledgment, but Sasha knew most of her attention was on the body, as was his.

The victim had been young, probably just out of high school, maybe in her first years of college. Her eyes were wide with terror, so she’d known she was being hunted.

Looking at the body as he knelt by it, the softness of her face revealing her youth, Sasha felt a rush of pity go through him, followed swiftly by a burst of rage. She’d been pretty in life, with big brown eyes that were starting to haze over. He bit back a growl.

Who had done this to her? Had she been out at a party or one of the local bars? They’d canvass them to see if anyone remembered her.

What have you got? Rafi said softly, calling him back to himself.

That was Rafi. Victim, perpetrator, or partner, although she hadn’t been born the least paranormal herself, she just got it. More so now that she was paranormal herself in a way, thanks to her partners, Julian and Nico.

Neither he nor Rafi touched the body. They didn’t need to.

It might look as if the killer had eaten the girl – and the news would cover it that way – but Sasha knew the person who had murdered her hadn’t. None of the signs were there. All her organs – the usual target of predators – were in place. It was just...carnage.

Sasha took a deep breath, feeling his wolven nerve synapses firing as they picked up the various odors. It was harder in this alley. The other victims had been found in more aroma-less circumstances.

He shut out the sour smells of rotting, wasted food, oil – both cooking and machine – and the sharp vinegar scents of urine one by one while Rafi, her eyes narrowed, studied the condition and position of the body.

Candles, he said, catching the now-familiar odor. Blood. Not the victim’s. Somehow a part of the candles themselves.

The scents were too mixed.

Just like the last two, but he’d wanted to be sure. The combination was puzzling.

But not the scent of a werewolf, he added.

Just like there’d been no scent of a vampire at the last death.

The odors were distinctive because of their protein rich diet, although a little more muted than they’d once been as most types of paranormals had learned to eat more normally.

Rafi’s blue eyes were dark, focused. She gestured.

This was deliberate. All of it. Look at the position of the body relative to the entrance to the alley. He could have hidden her, but he wanted her found, and he wanted the condition he’d left her in to be noticed, to be impossible to ignore. He wants to be seen. To be noticed.

Scanning down the alley, Sasha saw what she meant. He saw something else. Something the techs had missed.

Footprint, he said.

It wasn’t theirs.

Since Rafi had taken Julian Lüceanu as one of her mates, Julian had taken charge of her wardrobe. Now Rafi wore designer clothes adapted to her career, like the heels she wore with their steel toes, or the skirt with hidden pleats that allowed her to do side-kicks if needed.

Although Sasha wasn’t fond of regulation footwear – it constricted his feet too much – he still wore it.

The footprints weren’t theirs, and the techs had been wearing their protective paper booties.

He gestured to one of the techs, who swore at having missed it before circling around it to take pictures.

Big, Rafi said, studying it. As big as you or Julian, but not as light as Nico. And not homeless to judge by the sole, since it’s not worn down. It’s fresh which likely makes it our killer. If we get a suspect, we have something to match to him.

We can check out the shoes too, Sasha said. The wear pattern on the soles will be distinctive – circumstantial evidence, not proof.

It’s something. It’s too much to hope that they’re custom. Good catch, Sasha.

Rafi nodded to the techs who moved in quickly to bundle up the body for the coroner.

The thought of Julian and Nico eased the cold ache around her heart as she watched the techs trundle the body away.

Which only reminded her of the second death – a fit young man with his throat torn out as some believed vampires still did. A notion that was belied by the tiny white marks around her own throat, and wrists...

The first death had been the strangest.

It was as if the woman had been scared to death, as if she’d seen a ghost – or worse – her face frozen in a rictus of terror at death. Either she’d been thrown at the window or else she’d thrown herself at it until the broken glass had cut her throat. Or the killer had done it for her.

So far, the press hadn’t put that death together with the last one, but Rafi and Sasha shared the same gut instinct that the first death in the series had been that one.

These last two deaths have been deliberately staged to look as if paranormals committed them, she said as she and Sasha walked back to the car.

Only that first didn’t fit, but she was sure there was a tie somehow.

Her words only confirmed Sasha’s own thoughts.

We have a serial, Sasha said, as he got behind the wheel of the police issue vehicle.

In a high-speed chase, he’d have put his money on Rafi and given her the keys, but she drove that way all the time. Rafi only had two speeds, fast and stop.

A serial killer only we know about, at the moment, she said, giving him a significant look. There’s nothing to tie the three victims together that we’ve been able to find. A serial killer who’s targeting normal people but making it appear as if paranormals killed them.

Until the next victim, Sasha added.

There will be one, we both know it. I can feel it in my gut.

It’ll be open season on us once the media thinks they figured it out, Sasha said.

They will, you know they will, Rafi said.

There had been outcry enough against the vampire community after the last murder and a few ugly confrontations.

Yeah, Sasha said, hearing the fear, anger, and frustration in her voice. He shared them. His people would be next. Unless we stop it first.

It took a couple of days to chase it all down. They finally identified the victim. By all reports, Corrine Jordan had been an average college sophomore still trying to find herself. No enemies. Her only connection to the previous murder had been the college they both attended. They hadn’t shared any classes, or the same dorm, and it was a big campus. She’d been out with some friends at a local bar and had intended to hook up with one of the guys she’d met there. Or so the guy had hoped. When she hadn’t shown up, he’d assumed she’d changed her mind, so he’d gone on-line. All of which they confirmed.

The shoeprint was a wash, a commonly sold brand that would only help them if they had a suspect. They didn’t.

All that tied the deaths together otherwise was the scent of candles with their strange aroma of old blood.

Some of the media were calling for werewolf blood, and – as had happened after the last death – there had been some random attacks on those in the community.

What is it with the candles? Rafi asked, as they drove back from yet another dead end. It’s not much, but it’s the only thing we have.

Most cops would have blown off his impressions. Not Rafi. But then, she’d seen him change. He and Sid, the night they’d helped rescue Rafi’s mates.

Thinking of Sid, though...

I don’t know, Sasha said, but I know who might, or at least might know someone who does know.

Even before he’d become a cop, Sasha had put distance between himself and the werewolf packs. He wasn’t ashamed of his heritage, but he didn’t want to be labeled by it either. Like the idea that every time the moon was full he lost control. He knew other cops could lose their tempers and no one would say anything. If they’d known he was a werewolf, though, every emotion he displayed would have been chalked up to his heritage. So, he kept a certain distance from the paranormal community.

Who’s that? Rafi asked.

Sid Barnes, he said. Sid was the only pack member with whom Sasha stayed in contact.

Rafi straightened a little in her seat. She remembered the tall, lanky cop well. After all, he’d helped rescue Julian and Nico that terrible night nearly a year before. She owed the seasoned cop and werewolf a debt she couldn’t begin to repay, but she also knew he considered it just part of the job.

It had been a sign of Sasha’s trust in her that he’d told her the truth about Sid, although there had been rumors, but Sid was so well-respected no one had dared ask.

Rafi didn’t take Sid or Sasha’s trust lightly. She wasn’t a true paranormal, although her marriage – vampire style – did give her some ties and protections.

I’ve got him on speed dial, Sasha said, tossing her his cell phone.

Rafi dialed, put