I was still a bit shaken, but didn't believe I was in any real danger, which might have been foolish, but didn't change the situation. I looked to the bed, wrinkled by my wallowing, and let it ground me. I then turned back to him and let heat fill my eyes. My body did still want him, and that was all I needed to think about. I made the mewing sound I had used to calm Rocko, and that turned the creature's head back, his eyes wide and puzzled. I stretched myself before him, rolling my body in a display of my own, showing muscles in places humans simply didn't have. Heat flared his eyes inhuman again and that almost growl spilled from his lips. He reached for me, but stopped himself, his hands working empty air, his power filling the room like a furnace. He wouldn't take that step, but his eyes begged me, raw with need, to come to him.I gave myself a moment, my breathing suddenly unsteady, and examined the wisdom of the situation I had put myself in. That he d

 Aithusa’s POVIn this job I've seen it over and over, a corpse is a corpse unless someone who loved them enters the room. That's when the atmosphere changes, when the clean up crew starts to feel the trauma. Mostly they deal with it later in macabre humour - the hit and run victim is "roadkill" and the stabbing victim is a "pin cushion." It isn't that they don't care, more that they have to find a way to do their job and still function as spouses and parents...I went directly to the crime scene as Mac had told me. He had said that this was no a scene that everyone could tolerate, so I had to be pretty strong enough internally to take on the scene and then begin my investigation. I already knew who or what had done this crime, and even though I had no lead on how they were on earth when they should be in the bowels of hell being torn apart for eternity by hell hounds. But I was not going to tell

 Aithusa’s POVI watch them scurry in the approaching twilight; lively as a herd bent on an evening drink with the stink of nervousness in the updraft, teasing them softly with faint whiffs of danger as the night begins to drain the power of day. Observing from my balcony high above them, they do not see me watching through bored eyes, tired eyes, eyes that have seen too much and yet not enough. Eyes that once held the gift of innocence and youth but gave it away for a moment of revenge, eyes that no longer cry over the silly haunting of a love that never really was or mourn the loss of the soul they once framed. I am my own creation, that is to say, I am what I created. Jealousy is the bamboo of the emotional world, growing in leaps and bounds overnight, twisting and turning itself into a tangle of half-lied truths and honest lies. A wall of ill-content and self-induced delusions with no beginning and no end:

 Aithusa’s POVI had come back to Nevada since Hannabelle did not like me to be out of time for more than a few nights. She told me that she had lead on the succubus and incubus duo who had caused the bodies to burn up in that grotesque manner. I had informed Hannabelle that if she wanted me to work on disgusting sights like this then she needed to pay me. Full time…And strangely, she had agreed. It had not taken a lot of hassle to get her to agree what I wanted.I had told the vamps and Rook that I would be meeting Jared first and then I shall be taking him to meet the crew. And that too in the evening so that it looked like we were just hanging out like a group of friends. I did not want to spook him out at the first unofficial meeting that they were having. I wanted to know this man…the one who kept penetrating her thoughts even when I was with other men

 He recalled that when they were courting and had separated for the summer, time would slow to a trickle and those sunny weeks were an age. Now he would give anything to go back and find away to spend that time by her side, savouring those moments instead of wishing them away. As she lay dying in his arms time flooded through his fingers with no regard for his feelings. He wished he could just stop moving forwards and exist in that moment together. Not thinking. Not breathing. Just not apart. Then he lay next to her just to feel her body heat and bring his head close to hers.He read out the lines from his latest book in pin drop silence in the book store as every one was hearing to his voice with rapt attention.Aithusa was standing at the back and was making sure that she did not have to be bothered wi