Trinity Blue Read Online Free Page A

bestial himself tonight. They were in Jen’s woods, behind Jen’s house. He didn’t want them here, didn’t want them anywhere near her.
    The trinity sped to him, black shadows in the night.
    “No,” he said, wanting this fight to be his, needing to know he was the one keeping her safe. Jen. Something about her reached inside him and fanned the embers of emotions he had thought charred to ash. The way he felt about her was primitive, elemental. He
would
keep her safe.
    The
hybrids
came at him, one from each side, claws raking his flesh. He welcomed the pain, welcomed the burn of cold fury that burst from deep inside. With a snarl, he lunged, speed and power. Sweat dripped from him. His skin and clothes grew wet with blood. His—red. Theirs—black.
    In the end, he stood, breathing heavily as their remains bubbled and hissed and disintegrated into sludge.
    At his call, the trinity came to him, sinuous smoke, dark shadow, and for a moment, the night flared bright with cold, blue flames.

Chapter Three
     
    The following morning, Jen sat in the kitchen with Sheriff Hale answering a whole mess of questions. Actually, it was more like he asked and she sat silent and frustrated because she didn’t have a shred of information to help him find that poor woman’s killer. What was she supposed to say? That weeks ago she’d looked out at the woods and had the ugly sensation that something watched her with inhuman eyes? Yeah, that’d be a good move. Hale would think she’d lost her mind, and it wouldn’t bring him a step closer to the killer.
    “So tell me about this handyman you have working for you,” Hale prodded.
    “His name’s Daemon Alexander.”
    “Where’s he from?”
    Jen opened her mouth, then closed it. She had no idea.
    “I’m from Oregon, originally.”
    She jerked, catching the look of surprise on Hale’s face as they both turned. Daemon stood by the kitchen door, leaning one shoulder against the jamb. She hadn’t heard him come in and from Hale’s sour expression she gathered that neither had he.
    “What about you, Sheriff Hale?” Daemon asked, his tone lazy and smooth. He shrugged out of his scuffed leather jacket and hung it on a peg behind the door. “Where’re you from?”
    Hale’s face darkened to a dull red. “Right here. Born and bred.”
    “How fortunate for you.” There was a wealth of the unspoken behind those words, an implication that strangers were a convenient scapegoat.
    Jen watched Daemon cross the kitchen to the coffee pot and pour himself a cup. His dark hair was still damp from his morning shower and a hint of stubble shaded his jaw. A gray T-shirt stretched tight across his shoulders and chest, hanging loose at the waist. She frowned at the tattoo on his forearm. She could swear that it had been on his bicep last night.
    “You okay?” he asked, then lifted the mug and took a sip of coffee, studying her over the rim.
    She was acutely aware of the sheriff watching them, so she just nodded and left it at that.
    “He start around this time every day?” Hale asked with a glance at his watch.
    “He’s usually here around 8.”
    “And you let him just walk in like that? You give him a key?”
    Jen narrowed her eyes at Hale’s tone. But, of course, that was exactly what he wanted, to get a rise out of her or, more likely, to get a rise out of Daemon. “No, he doesn’t have a key. Yes, he just walks in. I unlock the door in the morning before I put on the coffee.”
    “He leave for lunch?”
    “He—”
    “Can answer for himself,” Daemon said gently, but his eyes glinted with a hard light as he settled a look on the sheriff. “I have lunch here. I leave when the day’s work is done. And I didn’t kill anyone. That about cover it, Sheriff Hale?”
    Hale lifted his hat off the table, then set it back down with methodical care. When he looked up again, his expression was as hard as Daemon’s. “Jenny, you mind giving us a few minutes, man to man?”
    For some