Sweet Last Drop. Melody Johnson

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      The sight made Jillian stir inside my mind. I could feel her struggle on the opposite end of the mental twine connecting us; she hadn’t fed in weeks, not since I’d entranced her to save Dominic from her betrayal. She and her partner, Kaden, were supposed to have been executed for their crimes against the coven, for their crimes against me, but despite Dominic’s assurances that their sentences had been carried out, I could still feel her.

      One last, frayed thread still connected our minds, and she wouldn’t let go.

      The sweltering burns over Jillian’s body singed mine, as if we were imprisoned inside an oven, roasting in its confinement. I could feel her rage, as searing as the surrounding heat, as she envisioned and reveled in the thought of Dominic’s slow and gruesome death.

      Examining Lydia’s remains was disturbing on many levels, with or without Jillian stirring my thoughts, but worse than the brutality of Lydia’s injuries was my reaction to them. Gazing at her blood made my throat convulse in a dry, scratchy swallow. My skin itched from the inside, like I’d resisted a hit and needed a fix, except instead of narcotics, I’d found a gruesome crime scene. God help me, there shouldn’t have been anything here to resist.

      I glanced at Walker and Berry to see if they’d noticed my distraction. With Lydia center stage, no one was looking at me.

      Berry placed two fingers on her neck, but it was a perfunctory measure. Lydia didn’t have a pulse. We could see through the right side of her neck and the shredded tissue of her esophagus to the glistening stacks of her spinal column. Her blood was not pumping. Berry glanced at his watch briefly and stood.

      “Time of death, 2000 hours.”

      Walker let a moment pass before he spoke. “How would you like to start?”

      Berry cleared his throat. “I have a container as well as the body bag. Let’s get as much of her as possible on the gurney and go from there.”

      Although some of Lydia was still whole and recognizable, not much of her parts were still attached by sturdy tissue. Walker and Berry lifted her upper body, left arm, torso, and left leg into the body bag in one smooth motion, but mid-move, half of her palm and three fingers fell to the ground. Walker picked up the fallen appendage and placed it gently in the container with her other severed body parts, but watching a piece of her physically detach from the whole was somehow worse. Berry couldn’t stomach it. He left for a five-minute break, which Walker and I both encouraged him to take, but honestly, I just wanted to finish as quickly as possible and get the hell out of the woods.

      If Berry had been a cop, his squeamishness would have been poked and prodded at by his fellow officers until they had either razzed it out of him or he found a new occupation—I’d witnessed Harroway’s interaction with some of his new partners and experienced it several times myself from covering cases with him and Greta. Luckily for Berry, he wasn’t a police officer, and Walker and I would give him all the time and support he needed. Unfortunately for Walker’s animal attack theory, people don’t lose their cookies over scenes they witness regularly. Animal attacks might be more common here than in the city, but something was obviously different about Lydia’s attack, something which—despite Walker’s misgivings—I intended to find out.

      Forty-five minutes later, Lydia was safely transported into the back of Berry’s van. Berry turned to shut the back doors, and I could see the dread in his expression at the thought of having to reopen them at the morgue. Walker was scanning the ground for anything we may have missed, so before I lost the opportunity for a one-on-one with Berry, I sidled up to the van and slammed one of the doors shut for him.

      “Thank you, ma’am. I’m much obliged,” Berry said in the same slow, warm drawl as Walker. He slammed the other door shut, so it latched into mine.

      “You’re welcome. Walker’s a good friend, and I’m happy to help.”

      Berry adjusted his John Deere baseball hat. “I heard the two of you survived a dangerous case in the city. Something about a gang war?”

      It had actually been Jillian leading the vampire uprising, but until I figured out how to reveal the existence of vampires without subjecting everyone to their mercy, I just nodded. “Something like that.”

      “I heard he was glad to have you around then, so we are certainly glad to have you here now.”

      “Thank you.” I took a deep breath. “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

      Berry smiled. The movement creased and cracked every plane of his weathered face. “I can’t say that Walker didn’t warn me.”

      I raised my eyebrows. “Did he?”

      “Yes, ma’am, he did.”

      “Whatever you say can be off the record, if you’d prefer.”

      Berry’s smile widened. I hadn’t thought that his face could further wrinkle, but it did. I couldn’t help but smile back. “Ask your questions, Miss DiRocco,” he encouraged.

      “Just ‘DiRocco’ is fine.”

      He nodded.

      “How long have you been a coroner?”

      “Goin’ on twelve years now. My daddy was the coroner and his daddy was the coroner before him. I grew up in the business and wouldn’t have it any other way. People in this town often fill in their parents’ shoes, and I wasn’t much of an exception, I suppose. And proud of it.”

      I nodded. “It sounds like you enjoy your work.”

      “In general, yes. There’s a lot of great folks in town, and helpin’ their loved ones pass, helpin’ them grieve, has been more than a business. It’s my life’s work.”

      I shared his smile and then deliberately made my face somber, knowing that he wouldn’t appreciate my next line of questions. “In all your twelve years of experience, how many animal attack victims do you suppose you’ve had to pronounce dead?”

      Berry’s smile wilted. “Little more than a dozen, likely.”

      “Just over one per year then?”

      “I’d have to check our records to be certain, but I’d say that sounds about right.”

      “Do animal attack victims usually sustain such severe injuries, or would you consider Lydia’s injuries exceptionally severe?”

      Berry crossed his arms. “Now, Miss DiRocco—”

      “DiRocco is just fine.”

      He shook his head. “If Walker thinks Lydia was attacked by an animal, than she was attacked by an animal.”

      I opened my mouth, but Berry held up his hand.

      “To you that may sound presuming, but to me, it’s a testament to Walker’s abilities and fine work ethic. I know without a doubt that Walker will research the tracks, determine the animal, and find it. If he determines the tracks are not animal, he’ll tell us that, too.”

      I nodded. “I understand. I feel the same assurance about Walker’s work ethic from my brief time working our case in the city, and you’ve been working together for years.”

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