Into the Darkness Read Online Free PDF

and
    the search for her birth mother—like why she’d suddenly
    become bug and bird bait, how Rene’s partner had known
    about the changes occurring to her body, and why Chessa and
    Simon had been arguing.
    Rene closed his cell phone with a snap. Chessa hadn’t picked
    up. Whatever “arrangements” she was busy making were
    ones she didn’t want to communicate, and that was just fine
    with him. The strange occurrences of the past few hours fit
    squarely in Chessa’s dark realm. They simply underscored
    the fact he was better off keeping the hell away from Natalie
    Lambert.
    Lying on the sofa in the living room, he listened to the
    creaks of the house settling after the heat of the day. The overhead fan stirred the air, but did little to cool his agitation.
    Although he’d stripped off his jacket and shirt and removed his shoes, he still couldn’t get comfortable enough to
    let his mind wander away from the blonde in his bedroom.
    Chessa had been right about those “fuck-me pheromones”
    the woman oozed. Why else would he be hard as a rock hours
    after he’d touched her soft skin?
    Distance. Miles of it. That’s what he needed. As long as he
    was down here and she was up there, he’d be fine.
    Just a few more hours and he could hand her over to Chessa.
    However much the woman in his bedroom intrigued him,
    he’d seen enough in his time to know she was trouble—the
    kind he was better off leaving to his partner and her kind to
    handle.
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    Chessa had known straightaway something was up, and
    her instincts were always dead-on.
    Although they’d been partners for over four years, Rene
    wouldn’t say he knew her. While he didn’t have a bead on who
    the real Chessa Tomas was because of her spiny public demeanor and secretive private life, he knew what she was.
    If the fact they were the only detectives assigned permanent
    night shift hadn’t clued him in, the first time he’d seen her take
    down a perp the size of a Saint’s linebacker clinched it.
    Having a vampire for a partner did have its perks. Street
    punks tended to squeal like piglets as soon as Chessa
    flashed her fangs. And they had a certain autonomy within
    the department to take on “special” cases—like Natalie
    Lambert’s.
    Only Chessa wasn’t usually so uncommunicative concerning the nature of an investigation.
    When the call had come from the Memphis PD that Natalie had left the area, and they suspected she would return
    to familiar territory, the details of the case hadn’t rung any
    bells with Rene. However, Chessa had immediately noted
    the similarities with this crime and several in the “cold case”
    files. Crimes dating back over forty years. Young women,
    twenty-two to twenty-five years old, and everyone living
    with them—all savaged and drained of blood.
    So the murderer was either pulling Social Security or not
    human.
    Since he’d worked “otherkin” cases with Chessa before, her
    current reticence bothered him. Something bigger and probably closer to the real Chessa was at stake.
    She’d said she wasn’t certain what Natalie was—but he’d
    into the darkness
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    sensed hesitation in her answer. Certainly, all signs indicated
    something extra -natural was going on here.
    Chessa had nailed it when she’d said the girl was a temptation he’d find hard to resist—because he’d thought of little
    else other than sinking inside her moist depths since the moment he’d swept her off the bench in the park. He’d been in a
    constant state of arousal since he’d felt the first brush of her
    skin and breathed in her fresh lemon and apple scent. And
    that wasn’t like him—he wasn’t a pimple-faced kid. He could
    find plenty of sexual partners to take care of any urges he
    found too compelling.
    He preferred to keep his personal life and his work separate. Never had he been tempted to break that rule. Not
    until today. Now, he felt like a silken tether bound him to the
    woman standing naked in his