Lycan Unleashed Read Online Free Page A

and button-up shirt.
    The body was covered. Had he already completed the autopsy? In record time, if so.
    “Detective—excuse me, Agent Sanderson. Detective Holmes.” He nodded to us in turn. The consummate professional. “I just completed the autopsy. No toxicology yet, of course. But I do have COD for you.”
    “Slit throat?” I asked.
    “Yes, Detective. To put it succinctly. Though it wasn’t what I’d call a clean slice. We have repeated cuts, and some damage that I can’t say for sure came from the knife. But it’s difficult to say considering how much they cut into the neck. I’ll be taking a closer look at the wounds.” Dr. Martinson paused to gather his thoughts, no doubt to offer us a level of detail that would make our eyes glaze, but Mason interrupted.
    “Anything unusual about the death? The state of the body?”
    I had to give Martinson credit; he didn’t even blink at Mason’s questions. “Other than the fact that he was staked to the wall with large chucks of wood? Yes, several things. First, he was hung post-mortem, although it wasn’t long after his death. He also appears to have been tortured before he was killed.”
    “Tortured how?” I asked.
    The doctor tugged at the cloth covering the victim, revealing his skin down to his waist. The gaping wound in his chest, left from the stake used to hold him in the wall, was the first thing I noticed. Dark circular shapes were the second.
    I took an involuntary step forward and my breath caught in my throat. The circular marks—three of them—had been burned in a symmetrical curved line below his collarbone. One, perfectly centered on his sternum, was directly below his neck. The other two also fell below the collarbone to either side. And I recognized the shape.
    “The coin,” I said.
    Mason leaned in to examine the coin marks, and to Dr. Martinson’s obvious disgust, sniffed the victim’s chest.
    “Are you sure this is from the same coin?” Mason asked.
    “Or its twin.” How many super-old coins exactly like the one we’d found could there be? Two of the burns showed the front of the coin, while the third in the center revealed what I assumed to be an angel on the back. “But these…these are more detailed. Strange. It’s like the detail that was rubbed off the coin is showing perfectly here.” I could see the lines in the wings, as detailed as the day the coin was minted, if I had to guess.
    “Can you sense anything else? Magic? Anything odd like you sensed on the coin?”
    I took a deep breath and glared at Mason. It wasn’t his fault, but I so hated touching dead people. I placed my hand on the chest, with part of it grazing the coin-shaped wound. Then I closed my eyes.
    The oddly cold feeling of the flesh under my fingers faded as I concentrated on my other senses. I did my best to ignore Mason, though his power flashed behind me and constantly filled my nose with a fresh, wild scent. I forced my attention to the vampire.
    The taste of coffee filled my mouth right away, and I saw the shadowy energy of the vampire on the body, as dead as the vampire it belonged to. Everything about the man’s energy was generic, and I grimaced. Put this man in a crowd of average vamps and I’d never be able to pick him out.
    Some otherworlders—powerful ones especially—were distinctive in their energies. My partner Claude’s power tasted like coffee, but with a touch of mocha. The Magister tasted like cream with a touch of coffee added. His son, Nicolas, had energy so bitter that after I’d met him I’d stayed off coffee for days.
    The victim’s energy swirled beneath my fingers, moving very little, like a stagnant pond. That, if nothing else, would have told me he was dead. But a foreign energy intruded. Heat touched my fingertips, and I almost pulled my hands back, but the slight burning sensation wasn’t physical, and I knew from experience that it wouldn’t hurt me. Nonetheless, I bit my lip and concentrated on keeping my hands