Extraits

Chapter One

Sunday, August 31

1:15 a.m.

I don't like morgues. Never have, never will. My life started over again in a morgue, so naturally I have a pretty negative association with them—and with this one in particular, since it's where I was reborn. In the basement of St. Eustachius Hospital, not twenty feet from where I was standing, right behind that solid metal door.

Plus morgues smell to high hell and that's just never pleasant for anyone, especially a half-human, half-werewolf with an extra-sensitive sense of smell.

Not me. I'm completely human (well, kind of). The half-and-half I live with (he despised the word half-breed, so I gave him a nickname he despised just a little bit less) would be Wyatt Truman, my boyfriend, work partner, and also the guy creeping into the morgue with me late on a Saturday night. We never seemed to manage anything normal couples did together, like dinner and a movie, or even just a long walk in the park on a sunny afternoon. Our "dates" usually included any combination of hunting, capturing, questioning, killing, and breaking-and-entering. Normal has never been in our relationship description.

This particular morgue wasn't providing us with much of a challenge in regard to breaking and entering. The lower level of the hospital was nearly deserted at this hour, the corridor barely lit, and the only way I imagined we'd be interrupted during our little job was if a pileup on the city bypass resulted in a mad rush of casualties into the ER. And even then, our eyes and ears on the outside would give us ample warning.

Getting access to our objective was as easy as using the keycard we'd had copied for us the day before. In the dim corridor of the hospital basement, I slid the card down the door lock while Wyatt waited behind me, every muscle in his body tense and alert. Shadows made his black hair seem impossibly darker, and the telltale ring of silver around his otherwise black irises glimmered in the light of a nearby overhead. The silver was the only outward sign that he was no longer human—hadn't been for five weeks.

The lock light turned from orange to green, and something inside the door popped. I grabbed the handle, but didn't pull.