Dark Seduction. Brenda Joyce

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СКАЧАТЬ promising her that she’d be back in five minutes. She’d never come home.

      Claire tried not to remember about that endless night. She’d been a fanciful child, believing in monsters and ghosts, annoying her mother to no end with her claims that creatures lived in her closet and beneath her bed. That night, she’d seen terrifying shapes in every shadow, every drifting drape.

      That had been a long time ago. Still, she missed her mother. To this day, she wore an odd pendant which her mother had never taken off—a highly polished pale semiprecious stone set in four arms of gold, each arm intricately detailed with an obviously Celtic design. Whenever Claire felt particularly sad, she would clasp the pendant in her palm, and her grief would ease. She didn’t know why her mom had been so attached to it, but she suspected it had something to do with Claire’s father. The stone was the dearest memento Claire had.

      Not that she had a father. Her mother had been painfully honest, explaining that there had been a single night of passion when she had been young and wild. His name was Alex, and that was all Janine knew—or said she knew.

      After her mother’s death, Claire had gone to live with her aunt and uncle on their upstate farm. Aunt Bet had welcomed her with open arms, and growing up, Claire had become close to her cousins, Amy and Lorie, both near her own age. When Claire turned fifteen, Aunt Bet had sat her down and told her the gruesome truth.

      Her mother hadn’t been murdered for the money in her purse or her credit cards. She’d been the victim of a pleasure crime.

      That knowledge had changed Claire’s life. Her mother had been murdered by a perverted madman. It confirmed her worst fears—bad things were out there and they happened at night.

      And then, in her sophomore year of college, her cousin Lorie was murdered while leaving a late-night movie not far from campus. The police had swiftly determined that Lorie had been the victim of yet another pleasure crime. That had been five years ago.

      She didn’t know when the nation’s oh-so-clever press had first coined the phrase pleasure crime, but it had been around for as long as she could remember. Social commentators, psychiatrists, liberals and conservatives alike all claimed that society was in a state of anarchy. Eighty percent of all murders were now sexually related, and every year it was getting worse. Lorie had died like a thousand others. She’d had sex. Bodily fluids had shown that she had been very aroused and that the perpetrator had climaxed several times. There had been no struggle, and to this day, the police had no clue as to who Lorie had been with. A witness had seen Lorie leaving the theater with a young, handsome, athletic-looking man. She had seemed happy, even smitten. A police sketch had been circulated but no one recognized him and, as usual, there was no match in the FBI’s criminal database.

      But that was why pleasure crimes were so shocking and disturbing. These perverted murderers always seemed to be complete strangers, yet they somehow seduced their victims, and to this day, no one knew how. There were all kinds of theories. Cult theory claimed that the perps belonged to a secret society and used hypnotism to entrance the victims. Sociologists called the deaths a pathological trend and blamed it on everything from video games, rap and the culture of violence, to broken homes, drugs and even blended families. Claire knew it was bull. No one knew how and no one knew why.

      It almost didn’t matter. Every victim was young and attractive and died in the same way. Their hearts simply stopped beating, as if overcome by the excitement and arousal.

      Ever since her cousin’s murder, Claire had made certain she was strong enough to do some damage should one of the city’s criminally perverted think to assault her. Amy had decided to take martial arts, too. In fact, Amy had been the one to suggest the self-defense course and she had encouraged Claire to learn to shoot. Both young women kept guns in their homes. Claire was glad that Amy’s husband was in the FBI, even if he sat behind a desk. She felt certain he did have some inside information, because Amy was always talking about how evil the crimes were. She never said more and Claire suspected she wasn’t allowed to. That was okay. Pleasure crimes were evil. Maybe there was a sick cult after all. Claire kept her gun loaded in her bedside night table. No one was ever going to hurt her, not if she could help it.

      Her packing almost concluded, she decided to make herself a light supper. She smiled at the cat, who was curled up on the pillow she slept with. “Rascal, not my pillow, please! C’mon. You can have some catnip while I eat. A glass of wine is definitely in order.”

      As if he understood her perfectly, the black cat leaped from the bed and approached.

      Claire bent to stroke him. “Maybe I should keep you. You are such a handsome thing.”

      The words were barely out of her mouth when the motion detectors chimed and someone began banging on the front door of her shop.

      Claire jumped a foot and then froze, instantly flooded with adrenaline. The pounding continued. She glanced at the clock by her bed. It was half past nine. This was either an emergency or a loon. And she damn well wasn’t opening the door to a crazy. There were too many madmen on the loose.

      Claire ran to the nightstand, taking her Beretta from the drawer. Sweat gathered between her breasts. Her two neighbors had her number, just in case there ever was an emergency. This had to be a stranger. She started barefoot down the stairs.

      She tried not to think about all the heinous crimes being committed in the city.

      She tried not to think about her neighbor, Lorie or her mother.

      “Claire! I know you’re in there,” a woman cried, sounding pissed off.

      Claire faltered. Who the hell was that? She didn’t recognize the voice. The person who was so impatient to get in that she was rattling the door, as if to break it off its hinges. That, of course, was impossible. The door was thick as all hell and the hinges were cast iron.

      There was a small hall with a console table at the bottom of the stairs where she always kept a single desk lamp lit. Her office was across the hall. To the left of the stairs was her kitchen, with its breakfast area, and to the right, the large room that served as her store. Claire entered the store, hitting the light switch and flooding the shop as she did so.

      The black Venetian blinds were drawn. “Who is it?” Claire demanded, not going to the door.

      The banging and rattling stopped. “Claire, it’s me, Sibylla.”

      Claire tried to think. She was almost certain she did not know anyone named Sibylla. She was about to tell her to get lost—in a polite way, of course—when the woman spoke. “I know you have the page, Claire. Let me in.”

      Claire wasn’t curious, not now, not with a loony stranger banging down her door, not when it was black as Hades out. “I have twelve thousand books in stock,” she said tersely. “At four hundred pages on average, there’s a lot of pages in here.”

      “It’s the page from the book of healing.” Sibylla was sounding very annoyed, dangerously so. “It’s from the Cladich and you know it.” She pushed the door open and stepped inside, something snapping as she did so.

      For one second, Claire was in shock. Only the Terminator could break her door open that way, and the red-haired woman stepping determinedly into her shop was not the Terminator, not by any stretch. She was of medium height and frame, no more than five foot six, probably not much more than a hundred and ten pounds. Claire realized she was dressed all in black, like a cat burglar, and that she had clearly picked her state-of-the-art locks.

      Tomorrow she СКАЧАТЬ