The Devil's Pride (Wild Beasts Series) Read online

  Detective Cam Waters stood inside of a bloody circle – his strong, lanky frame, medium-length, blond hair and pale skin a contrast to the dark night and the shallow pit he stood over. His dark brown eyes gave away his sadness and anger, and in the right light, those eyes had flints of gold that made any emotion he was feeling seem that much more intense. He’d seen a lot in his life and in his time as a cop, but as a new Detective for the Montville, New York PD, he’d never seen anything like this.

  Four bodies were lined up, side by side, in a shallow grave. The forensic kit lights had been set up, and their obscene fluorescence caused the bodies to appear even more gruesome. The local coroner, Caty Rios, had told Cam that if she wasn’t mistaken – and she never was – all four had died from blood loss.

  Cam didn’t know how Caty could tell that from just looking at a body, but when he’d asked, her thickly Guatemalan accented “Osteonecrosis…but not… Hmmm…” was the only reply. Without sparing Cam a glance, she’d gone back to her work.

  Cam and the beat cops guarding the perimeter knew to stay outside the circle of blood while her team worked the scene. The state park was a popular place especially as the winter turned into spring, but the only bodies currently filling the newly thawed, almost spring forest were the officers and the forensic personnel disturbing the normally solemn, quiet escape.

  Cam scanned the area, and despite his experience and his outwardly calm demeanor, his stomach clenched and his mind rebelled at the sight of the blood forming a circle around the bodies that lay peacefully ravaged in the grave. He recognized the man as Professor Loren Anderson from the Graduate Anthropology Division at Montville University. Montville itself wasn’t a large town, and what life did exist was in the form of small business owners, a few townies, and the college population – teachers, administration, and students.

  Cam peered more closely at the blood pattern of the circle, noticing now that it had dried in varying degrees.

  “Son of a bitch,” he half-whispered to himself, and his temper flared. He took a deep breath to calm down. Something was coming to him, a tingling under the skin that signaled he was about to break ground on an important clue. Fuck, he hated that tingling feeling, but he trusted his instincts. He’d been a cop long enough to know that there was nothing unusual about having a gut reaction.

  “Language,” Caty said, but her curiosity got the better of her. She stepped out of the shallow grave, and stood next to Cam. “What’s wrong?”

  “He made them watch,” he said, stricken. His skin tingled more and he became alert. That feeling, as much as he hated it, always let him know he was on the right track. “One by one, he made each member of the family watch.” He started pointing toward each of the four different patterns of dried blood from the circle. “DeForest, be useful, and grab a camera from the kit. We need pictures of the drying pattern.” He looked at the young cop, and added, “And don’t be a smart ass. I know we already have pictures. I want these specifically.”

  Cam took Caty and Officer Andy DeForest around the circle, showing them the drying patterns of the blood that were near impossible to distinguish against the backdrop of stone and dirt. But they could all see the pattern.

  DeForest followed Cam around the circle, his face slightly pale and green, but Cam didn’t coddle the officers. They all had to overcome their squeamishness in this job. When he looked over at Caty, though, she was her usual stoic self. Even when he’d been a teenager under her roof, she’d never let anything ruffle her feathers.

  “All we know is they died at different times. We don’t know that he – or she – made the other family members watch, or that the dried blood is from each separate member,” she said giving Cam a hard you-should-know-better stare before climbing back into the shallow grave. “However, the fact that they died at different times is correct. I can verify that by time of death. In fact, it appears, from temperatures and lividity that each individual was not only killed here in this park, but they were each killed less than an hour apart. Each family member appears to have been drained over a long period. They would have been in severe pain.”

  The officers around Cam gasped and sucked in breaths at Caty’s analysis. Cam just let the facts slide over him.

  “So, we were watching the professor’s phone, and it came back on at about 7:30. I’d say that phone wasn’t turned on that much later than the end of the murders.” Cam clenched his fists. The killer was playing with them, like a kid chasing and stomping on ants. He didn’t like being the ant. “With each murder victim being drained for about an hour, we could say the murders took place from about 3-7 pm, give or take an hour.”

  “Sounds about right. I’ll have more evidence tonight and during tomorrow’s autopsy.”

  Cam regarded the coroner as she continued working. Caty was about fifty years old with long, thick black hair she would pull back in a ponytail while working, and the body and face of a thirty-year-old. She was the mother of Cam’s partner and best friend, Danny, but she was a mother to Cam as well. When Cam had been in his senior year of high school, she’d taken him in after an incident with his adoptive father. Fuck, Cam thought, don’t go there. Some monsters belonged in the past.

  “It’ll be interesting to discover if anyone saw anything,” Cam said. “The winter chill is still in the air, but with the thawing of the snow early this year, the park should be used pretty regularly… But we’re looking at anywhere from three to five hours of torture, and there are no witnesses?” He felt another tingling that bowed his back a bit. He’d find a witness. He just knew it.

  Caty continued taking samples and Cam waited, knowing she would have more information for him soon. He understood her reasoning behind wanting to wait, but he also knew in his gut that he was right. He liked picturing the scenes when he was getting the tingling, and so he allowed images to enter his mind. He could see the scene. He imagined a dark figure – maybe more than one figure – completing the deed, making the family members watch. He also imagined the dark figure taking his or her time as they slowly drained each body, making sure the circle was separated into four sections of different blood. He wrote down the number four in his notebook, feeling its significance. He hated that word: feeling.

  Years ago, his twin brother, Devon, would have called the images he was seeing in his mind’s eye a feeling, maybe even a gift, but Cam had stopped using such mystical words when Devon had left, and then later, when other areas of his life had gone to shit. When he’d seen how monstrous the world could really be. The images he got weren’t magic; they were his imagination and his evolved human instincts working together. Nothing mystical there. He tried to think about what type of person committed such crimes and about how the punishment the killer would suffer wouldn’t be enough for what he had done to this family.

  “They killed the mother first,” Caty noted, clinically. “Then the father—”

  “His name was Professor Loren Anderson.” Cam’s voice was deathly quiet. He could be cold and focused, sure, but when Caty was on a case… Fuck, but Caty knew them. How could she be so cold? “And his wife, Marilyn, owned the travel agency next to Trappe’s Bar where my girlfriend and your intern, Mindy, work. We knew these people, Caty,” Cam said with a hard tone that had Caty returning with her own hard stare.

  “Detective Waters,” she said, using Cam’s last name with the force only a woman in her 50s, a mother, and a woman who had known him since he was a gangly teenager could muster. “These are victims now. They aren’t friends. If you let me do my job, maybe we can catch whoever did this instead of getting caught up in the fact that we knew this family. You know we can’t do that. You’ve got to take a step back, Cam.” She ended on a soft tone before she returned to her work and got back to the facts. “So, from the data I’ve collected, the oldest daughter was exsanguinated after the parents, and the youngest was last.” She paused a moment. “Ay Dios Mio...”

  “What?” Cam asked gruffly, finally finding his voice.

 
; “How could we have been so stupid?” Caty asked, pulling out her old flip phone. Cam puffed out a breath to show his exasperation. She looked up. “The youngest isn’t the youngest. We didn’t even think—”

  “Oh, fuck! I’ll give Danny a call. He was on his way, but he’s got to check on Kayla. I can’t believe we forgot about Kayla! How’re we going to tell her that her whole family has been murdered?” Cam was already dialing as he finished his question.

  His partner, Danny, picked up.

  “What’s up? I’m only a couple minutes away. I was getting coffee for you and Ma,” he said, sounding rushed.

  “Listen, you’ve got to stop by Professor Anderson’s place and check on Kayla.” Cam paused. “She’s the only survivor...if she is a survivor,” he finished, hoping Kayla wasn’t lying in a fresh circle of blood at the Anderson home. When Danny was quiet for a minute, Cam knew he was thinking the same thing.

  “All right,” he finally said. “But I’m taking backup. I’ll get Jeffries and Milligan to meet me. It may take them ten, twenty minutes to get there, but hold tight.”

  Steady. That’s what Danny Rios was, always had been. His friend had been there for some of his toughest moments, had been there for him that night…that night that still haunted him. But he pushed away thoughts of the past and focused on the present.

  “I thought Jennifer Milligan wasn’t giving you the time of day since you stalked her after a one-night stand she wanted to keep a one-night stand,” Cam asked, smiling slyly to himself. Caty heard the comment, and saw the sly smile, and she chuckled from the shallow pit.

  “Oh, Danny boy—”

  “You said that in front of my ma?” Danny yelled from the phone. Cam hadn’t heard the rest of Caty’s comment, but she was laughing louder.

  “She already knew, Danny. Who do you think Officer Milligan spoke to about how to get you to stop calling?” Cam asked, smiling.

  Cam heard silence on the other end of the phone and smiled even more. He and Danny had been friends since they were in high school. Cam had been a pale, gangly kid until he was about seventeen, but a lot had changed since then. One of those changes had been more energy to burn off since his feelings had gone haywire around that age, and he’d had no desire to deal with anything mystical or different. He’d only wanted normal. So, when he had started lifting weights and running every day to burn off that extra energy, he’d quickly added some muscle onto his lanky frame. He wasn’t a beast, but he could hold his own now.

  “Fuck. Shit. Damn...” Danny loved to throw around the four letter words, and Cam couldn’t help but crack up at the image of the suave, Guatemalan immigrant, with his caramel eyes and skin, and his dark brown hair, hitting the dashboard and swearing about the fact that everyone on the force apparently knew about him and Officer Milligan.

  “I’ll calm the waters here for you, man. Just go check on Kayla.” Cam needed to know she was okay, and he also decided showing some pity toward Danny wouldn’t go amiss.

  “All right, shithead,” Danny said. “I’ll go check on the girl. But you tell them I wasn’t stalking her.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I know man.” Cam hung up, and his eyes went back to the pit and the bodies within. The laughs stopped and he was once more battling to calm the shaky control he’d been trying to achieve all night, but he’d needed that moment with Danny on the phone to break up some of the heaviness of his job, especially when kids were involved. Having a friend like Danny as his partner helped him deal with the ugliness of murder investigations. Talking about other stuff, however brief, and joking around, made the deaths of the innocent not so harrowing. Those on the outside wouldn’t understand, but he felt human again.

  The night sky was covered in a blanket of stars that pulled him into their abyss. A person could drown in that darkness. Cam shook the dark thoughts from his mind, and made his way back over to DeForest and to the tech van, so he could examine the crime scene photos that had been put on the Mac laptop for viewing. As he walked, he made a vow that if she was alive, Kayla would get to laugh again.

  Death.

  Devon Waters could smell it everywhere he went courtesy of the animal inside him. He couldn’t escape Death. In fact, his own family had called him Death before he had run away to the town of Dunham at the age of fifteen, over fifteen years ago. The Waters had been a well-to-do family with a large estate handed down for over twelve generations. They’d also always been lucky. No matter how much money was spent – or how many crimes were committed in making that money – the Waters family never failed. They only seemed to get richer.

  When he and Cam had been brought into the home at ten, the family had been at their prime. Because of this, they had felt the need to give back to the community, and Devon and Cam were awarded the honor of being their community service.

  Two twins had never been so different. Where Cam was pale, lanky, and blond, Devon was dark – and not Mediterranean dark. His skin was near the color of a good cup of coffee laced with just a little milk. Devon was also built like a beast, all muscle and strength and broad shoulders. He was the brawn. Always had been. And although Cam now worked out often, and had the muscles to prove it, Devon’s twin’s talents were more mental. Cam had a keen sense about the world – the kind of sense that raised goose bumps on a person’s arms.

  A genetic test had been done to confirm that Devon and Cam were actually twins, and blood work didn’t lie. Although the Waters family had only wanted one child, they had ended up with two. To take just one might have looked bad.

  By the end of their first year in the home, the Waters family had probably wished they hadn’t taken either. From the moment they were adopted, he and Cam were treated like kings. They had their own large rooms, sports equipment for every activity imaginable, big beds to jump up and down on, and Cam was especially fond of the “ginormous plates of food.” Devon smiled grimly, thinking about their first few weeks at the Waters’ home. His smile died quickly.

  When Leslie Waters had suddenly ended up with an unidentifiable disease, though, and all but one of the family accounts was emptied by unknown persons, the Waters’ had attributed their run of bad luck to the new family additions.

  A week after the boys turned thirteen, they were put into one room, their sports equipment was taken away, and future meals were brought and left outside the door. They were allowed out only for school, which was required by the state they had once been wards of. If they were ever late coming home, the help was instructed to give them ten lashings with a belt. On the rare occasion they were late – because of rain or other issues – Devon always took the blame. He had the scars to prove it. Scars that still remained even with the regenerative abilities he’d gained as a Clan member.

  More debt accrued, the family’s convenience store businesses went belly-up, Leslie died, and the help started to leave, whispering about “evil spirits” and “bad juju” and other such nonsense. But Matthew Waters agreed. He agreed there was an “evil spirit,” and he’d believed the evil spirit was Devon, the brother he hadn’t wanted to take in, but that his Leslie had insisted on. He’d always let her have her way, and now he was paying for her mistakes.

  In November of Devon’s sophomore year of high school, he was suddenly pulled from his bottom bunk. Cam had woken up the instant he’d heard his brother’s protests, and went to turn on the light.

  “Mr. Waters?” Cam asked. Matthew Waters had always insisted on being called Mr. Waters. Never Matthew. And definitely not any name that would suggest a familial bond. That’s probably why the both of them insisted on calling him by his full name now; that is, when they actually talked about him, which was honestly never. “What are you doing with Devon? Why are his things packed?” Cam had been looking around the room, and he noticed the emptiness. Devon was too busy fighting off the person he thought was attacking him.

  “I need to get this evil thing,” Mr. Waters spat, “out of my house!” He was bleeding, blood falling from his reddening eye where Devon had pu
nched him in the struggle. Devon was at a loss for words. He’d heard the help talking about “evil spirits,” but he’d never really thought that his adoptive father thought he was evil.

  “Devon’s not evil! How could you even think that?” Cam wailed.

  “Get out of the way, Cam. I know you’re the good one. If we had just taken you, like I wanted, none of this would have happened. But no, we had to take you both. Leslie had to have you both,” Mr. Waters continued talking as Devon crept slowly away from him. He hadn’t even noticed Devon taking the bag with his clothes and memories. Devon had backed away knowing in that moment that he needed to leave. He would never be welcome there. But he knew that Cam would be. Cam would survive just fine without Devon there to bring the “evil” everyone thought he had brought. So, he slowly backed up, opened up their shared bedroom window, and swung himself down from the tree.

  Cam had been trying to calm Mr. Waters down and had almost missed his brother’s exit, but at the last moment, Devon heard Cam’s cries of, “No! Please don’t leave me!” Although Devon hadn’t wanted to abandon his brother, he’d also known he couldn’t stay there. Fifteen years later, he hated himself for what he’d done.

  While Devon had found a home in Dunham and even started his own woodworking business, Cam had grown into a respected man in the community of Montville. But Cam had also developed a hardness to him that he hadn’t had at fifteen. They’d kept in touch because Devon had always sent letters or pieces of smaller woodworking projects he’d made over the years.

  Recently, Cam had changed. Devon thought a good deal of that change could be attributed to his girlfriend, Mindy, but he didn’t care what or who had changed Cam’s mind. He only cared that a few months earlier, they’d started talking about seeing each other again and maybe catching up in person.

  Cam had forgiven him. That was something Devon had never expected, something he still didn’t feel he deserved.