Dark Cravings [Claiming Series, #2]

- 1 -

Soren Larsen sat in the outer office of Peres Investigations, amusing himself by watching the swirl and flow around him. Asher Peres had been his friend for years, but only recently had he become comfortable enough to spend a lot of time in Asher's office, surrounded by mortals like Julie, Mackenzie, and Jay.

It was a vampire thing. He and Asher had cemented a friendship that crossed the final barriers of territoriality that most of their kind felt, often to an extreme degree, when Asher had risked his life to eliminate the evil that had nearly killed Soren's great-granddaughter.

But spending much time in the company of mortals could still be painful because they smelled so damned tempting. As the years passed, however, his self-control became easier, and over the past months, since Asher had mated with a mortal, Julie, he'd learned he could enjoy their company and control his hunger well enough.

Julie was absent this evening. As an assistant medical examiner, she often had to go out at night to crime scenes. Mackenzie sat at her desk, wearing her signature punk-cum-stripper get up, her hair dyed black and worn in spikes. She topped the whole image off enough black eye makeup to keep a cosmetics company in business, and bright red lipstick

Across from her sat Jay, a gifted demon hunter of about twenty-five, blond and blue-eyed, and casually elegant in a scruffy sort of way. The two of them often argued like siblings.

Soren enjoyed listening to their spats. Once, long ago, he'd had children, and he'd been forced to watch from a distance as they grew old and died. When Mackenzie and Jay got going, he inevitably grinned and watched the show.

Asher, however, had no such background with kids and had a great deal less patience.

"Will you two cut it out?" he called from his inner office. "I'm trying to think."

Both Mackenzie and Jay fell silent but continued to shoot fiery looks at one another.

Sitting here, Soren felt more "normal" than he had since his change. Which was probably why he was spending more and more time in this office, as his own job allowed.

He put a hand over his mouth to hide a smile and continued to watch the dagger-staring contest. As usual, Jay wanted to plunge headlong into something dangerous without even grasping how dangerous it was, and Mackenzie displayed enough common sense to be twice her twenty-five years. And keeping quiet was obviously stressing their self-control.

Asher, his fellow vampire, appeared in the door of his office. As always, he was dressed in a perfectly tailored black silk shirt and slacks. Most vampires preferred black because it helped them blend with the shadows. Soren himself wore black slacks and a black turtle neck sweater. He didn't share Asher's taste for finer clothes.

Asher was slightly above average height, three inches shorter than Soren, and right now his eyes, golden from recent feeding, were not quite golden enough. He was irritated or disturbed.

Asher looked at Mackenzie and Jay. "Have you two concocted a plan for how we're going to deal with this?"

Neither answered him.

"I thought not," Asher said, sarcasm edging his tone. "All that arguing and no plan. Why doesn't that surprise me?"

"Because you know us," Mackenzie said with a toss of her head. "Look, boss, you ought to just let Jay go do what he wants. Then we won't have to deal with him anymore."

"Hey!" said Jay. "How do you know I'm not right?"

"Because you suggested it?" Mackenzie arched one brow.