Cassie frowned. This was not the usual reaction her partner drew from the opposite sex. Most women were all over him in a matter of minutes but this girl seemed frightened—her eyes were wide and her breathing was shallow as she looked up at Stone, who towered over her.
“I am, yes,” he said quietly.
“What do you mean by ‘a Kindred too’?” Cassie asked her.
“The other guy—the one who rented the house to film porn—he was a Kindred,” the girl said. “But a different kind—the ones with gold eyes and black hair—you know.”
“A Beast Kindred?” Stone asked.
“Yes—yes, that’s the one! That’s even his name. ‘The Kindred Beast,’” the girl said, making air quotes with her fingers. “That’s what he calls himself,”
“Where did he go? Is he still here?” Cassie asked.
“Oh, no!” The girl shook her head rapidly. “He left after he…” Her face twisted. “After he killed her.”
“You need to show us where the victim is,” Stone said urgently. “How do you know she’s really dead? Maybe she needs medical attention.”
“Did you call an ambulance?” Cassie asked.
“No, because she’s dead. She’s really, really dead!” And the girl burst into tears.
It was no good having a hysterical witness. Cassie put an arm around the girl’s shaking shoulders. She was always the one who did the comforting—Stone never touched a female witness if he could help it, though he had comforted Cassie herself on more than one occasion. Other than her, though, he seemed to want to keep his distance from women.
“Look, Miss…” she began.
“Hawthorn,” the girl sobbed. “I…I’m Amelia Hawthorn. And I’m going to be in so much trouble if my parents find out about this!”
Cassie didn’t have the heart to tell her she might be in even more trouble. Depending on how things had gone down, she might be an accessory to murder. But there would be time for that later.
“Just show us,” she said gently, giving the girl’s shoulders a squeeze. “We’ll take it from here. Where is she? And who is she?” she added. “Did you know her?”
Amelia shook her head.
“The Beast never said her name. He just kept calling her ‘sweetie’ and baby-doll’.”
“We will see if we can find any identification on the body,” Stone said grimly. “Where is the victim?”
“In there.” Amelia pointed with a shaking finger towards the interior of the house. “In…in the drawing room. That’s where they set up the scene they were filming.”
Cassie raised her eyebrows. The drawing room? Who the hell had a drawing room in their house anymore? It sounded like something out of a Jane Austen novel. But whatever.
“You stay here—we’ll have a look,” she told Amelia. Then she nodded at Stone and started in the direction the girl had pointed.
“Wait—let me go first.” Stone put a hand on her shoulder and pushed Cassie protectively behind him.
“Stone, come on…” Cassie couldn’t keep the exasperation out of her voice. Her partner was way overprotective at times.
Stone arched an eyebrow at her.
“She says the perpetrator is gone but what if she’s wrong?”
“Then you present a much bigger target than I do,” Cassie pointed out. “Not that I’m skinny but you’re massive, Stone.”
“I am Kindred and if the perpetrator is also Kindred, I need to be the one to confront him.”
Cassie sensed this wasn’t an argument she was going to win.
“Fine—go ahead. We’re wasting time.”
Stone nodded and went deeper into the house with Cassie following, feeling irritated. She appreciated that her partner wanted to keep her safe but honestly, sometimes he crossed the line from protective to aggravatingly male. After all, they both had guns. A bullet could take down a Kindred assailant, no matter how big he was. They—
“Merciful Goddess!”
Stone’s hoarse exclamation stopped Cassie in mid-thought. Her partner had apparently found the drawing room and he was standing there, blocking the doorway with his muscular bulk so that she couldn’t see a thing.
“Stone?” She pushed at his broad shoulder gently. “You wanna move and let me see, too?”
Wordlessly, he stepped aside, his eyes wide with horror. Cassie shot him a worried glance—Stone never reacted this way at crime scenes. He was always the three Cs—cool, calm, and collected. But the naked horror she saw on her partner’s face was soon explained when she looked into the drawing room.
It was even worse than she’d thought and the girl was most definitely dead.
Six
Stone stared in horror at the human female hanging suspended from a wooden contraption at the far end of the room. It was shaped like a giant letter X and her arms and legs were strapped to all four corners of it. She had been stripped naked and blood from multiple wounds was running down her arms and legs. Her head lolled limply to one side, her long black hair obscuring her face, like the petals of a flower with a broken stalk.
“Son of a bitch,” Cassandra whispered beside him. “I guess I can see why the witness didn’t call an ambulance.”
“This couldn’t have been done by a Kindred.” Stone could hear the horror in his own voice. “One of my people would never do this to a female. Gods, she’s been tortured.”
“If you mean all the cuts all over her, she wanted him to do that.”
Stone whipped around to see the female witness—Amelia, that was her name—standing behind him. Her face was still pale and pinched but she seemed better in control of her emotions now, which was a relief.
Though to be honest, Stone was feeling less than perfectly in control his own emotions right at the moment. He was vacillating between horror at what had been done to the victim and fury at whoever had done it.
“What do you mean?” Cassandra asked the girl. “You mean you saw him cut her?”
“I was hiding in the closet. I saw all of it.” She looked like she might start crying again, which caused Cassandra to put an arm around her shoulders once more.
“Okay, look, my partner and I need to check out the crime scene first but then you’re going to tell us everything you saw. All right?”
“All right.” The girl nodded rapidly.
“Good, now did you touch anything in here?” Cassandra asked. She was already pulling a pair of shoe protectors out of her pocket and slipping them over her shoes. Mechanically, Stone did the same. He was trying mentally to divorce himself from the scene—to remain calm and logical. But almost all the homicide victims he and Cassandra dealt with were males. To see a female in this position was…difficult. To say the least.
“I only touched the side of her neck, to see if she had a pulse,” Amelia said and sniffed. “I was pretty sure she wouldn’t, after the way he was choking her, but—”
Stone wished he didn’t have to hear this. He supposed he might become accustomed to seeing female homicide victims if he worked with the regular, human homicide team but with the HKR squad, it wasn’t something he had to get used to. And this victim…well, she looked bad. Really bad.