"Damn."

Lieutenant Mackenzie Santos shook her head. In more than ten years with the Dallas Police Department, the last three plus in Homicide, she'd seen more than her fair share of dead bodies. Early on she'd been convinced the day would come when the bodies no longer bothered her. Now she knew better. That feeling of frustration, of fury at the senseless loss of life, was necessary. It meant she still looked as them as people, not just case numbers. The day a death failed to move her was the day she resigned from the force.

What did surprise her was how she kept thinking she'd seen it all. Drive-by shootings and revenge killings were nothing new. Arguments, often mixed with booze or drugs — or both — all too often escalated into deadly fights. Then there were the domestic disputes. She'd learned very early on to dread those calls. Too often they ended with one spouse or another being arrested for killing the other and usually over the most stupid of reasons — their dinner wasn't on the table at the right time, someone tripped over a shoe left on the floor or, heaven help her, the toilet paper didn't roll in the right direction. Yes, she'd seen all that and more.

The more had been a series of murders committed by a lycan hunting humans on the streets of Dallas. That investigation revealed a world she'd always believed was a creation of imagination, very bad Hollywood imagination at that. Now it was her world, like it or not. Just as it was her job to make sure that her world didn't encroach too much into the world of the normals, those who didn't realize monsters really walked amongst them.

But even those killings hadn't prepared her for this.

This could have been a scene right out of one of the latest hack-and-slash movies. It had that feeling of unreality to it. Too bright colors, too much blood, and two all-too-beautiful victims. The only thing missing was the eerie soundtrack rising and falling in the background.

"The uniforms have secured the scene and are keeping the press and gawkers well away from the entrance," Sergeant Patricia Collins reported as she joined Mac. "Holy hell," she hissed as she saw the crime scene for the first time.

"Yeah."

What else was there to say?

They stood just inside the door to a loft in one of the latest buildings to be renovated in downtown Dallas. The lights of Reunion Tower sparkled outside the wall-length window to their left. The sitting area was directly in front of them. A white leather sofa and matching love seat, complete with colorful pillows, sat on a snow-white rug. A huge plasma screen TV hung on the wall. A glass coffee table, or what was left of it, lay upturned in front of the sofa. Dark splotches of red stained the rug.

Blood or wine?

Mac glanced around the sitting area, her eyes missing nothing. The shattered remnants of a wine bottle dotted the floor near the far end of the sofa. She didn't immediately smell the wine, but that didn't surprise her. The smells of death already hung heavily in the air, masking any other odors that might be there. Still, smart money was on those particular stains being wine, not blood. But that couldn't explain the stains creating an abstract pattern on the walls, ceiling and floor of the sleeping area just beyond the sitting area.

Mac slipped a pair of booties over her running shoes and pulled on a pair of gloves before carefully moving further inside the loft. As she did, she pulled her recorder from her pocket. Something told her to be careful to document everything about the scene, but not yet. She needed to do one thing first.

After a quick look around to make sure no one besides her partner was there to see, Mac lifted her head and closed her eyes. Very carefully she eased her control. Almost instantly she felt her other form, a jaguar, stirring, called by the freshness of the two kills. It struggled for release, fighting against her control. Even as it tugged against her mental leash, she felt her senses expanding to match those of her animal form. Good. She wanted the advantage that could give her.

One thing she'd learned since her encounter with the lycan was to take nothing for granted. That had been a hard-learned lesson.

Face it, Mac, waking in the morgue will do that to a girl. So will turning furry on nights of the full moon.

She sniffed once, twice and relaxed a little. She'd scented nothing unexpected. The only shapeshifters she'd noted were herself and Pat. Good, very good. That meant the victims weren't shifters. She also hoped it meant the killer wasn't one of them. That was one complication she didn't want or need. This case would be bad enough as it was.

"Do we have an ID on the vics yet?" she asked as she slowly walked around the bed, being careful where she stepped.

"Not yet, but I'll lay odds on them being Cassidy 'Cassie' Dauber and Holden Caldwell," Pat replied. There was a series of quick flashes as she took pictures of the victims.

"Is this their place? And why are their names familiar?"

"To answer your first question, no, this isn't their place. According to the so-called security guard downstairs—" No doubt about it, Pat had been just as unimpressed with the rent-a-cop manning the security desk in the lobby as had Mac —"this place is owned by Tri-Creek Investments. It's used for their executives and visiting clients. There wasn't supposed to be anyone here this weekend according to the security guard.

"As for your second question, Dauber and Caldwell are part of Dallas Debs and Beaus, that reality show about the young, rich and single in Dallas."

Mac closed her eyes again and counted to ten. Wonderful. Just wonderful. That meant she'd not only have to face heat from the brass because the rich and powerful in town were putting pressure on City Hall to find the killers now, but also because the media would be all over the case.

God, she hated the media.

But that still left the question of how her partner knew the victims. "Pat, if no one was supposed to be here, why do you think our vics are Dauber and Caldwell?"

For a moment, her partner didn't say anything. When she turned to look at Pat, Mac didn't know whether to laugh or groan to see the blonde blushing furiously. Obviously, Pat watched the show those two were — had been — on. Interesting. She'd never have pegged Pat as a fan of that sort of reality show. Mac smiled slightly and filed the information away for later. There was most definitely some teasing ahead for her partner.

"Let's see if we can find some sort of ID. I want to tie this down ASAP. And make sure the uniforms know that the first whiff I get of anyone even thinking those names in the direction of the media will be busted down to the worst assignment I can find. Let's keep this out of the press as long as possible."

This was the bloodbath before them. The media feeding frenzy would be bad enough once the identities of the victims were released. If the press somehow got wind of the state of the scene. . . .

A large bed, one of the largest Mac had ever seen, occupied the middle of the sleeping area. A white comforter that probably cost more than Mac made in a month — or more — had been tossed onto the floor at the foot of the bed. Whether the victims had kicked it there when they went to bed or the killer had done it later, the comforter would never been the same. Blood dripped from the edge of the mattress onto it, forming rivulets that ran down to meet the blood seeping up from the pool on the floor.

Mac swallowed hard and turned her attention to the victims. They lay in the center of the bed, looking as if they'd soon awake from a good night's sleep — as long as you ignored the blood spattered on the walls and ceilings and soaking the floor. The male lay on his back, eyes closed and a slight smile on his lips. The woman lay with her head on his shoulder, her left hand on his abdomen. Like him, she looked like she might be in the midst of a pleasant dream.

Unfortunately, it was a dream from which neither would awaken.

"Okay, riddle me this, partner. How in hell is there this much blood and these two not only look like they slept through it but also just stepped out of the shower?" Mac carefully held the sheet away from the two, looking for wounds. Then she reached up and, with thumb and forefinger, turned the man's head to the right. "Damn it!"

She stepped back and stared. His neck looked as if someone — or something — had taken a huge bite of it. Skin and muscle had been torn away. No, it looked as if his neck had been gnawed on, just like a wild animal — or a shapeshifter in animal form — gnaws on its prey. Praying she was wrong, hoping there was a mundane explanation, Mac walked around the bed to check the female victim.

"Pat." She simply nodded to the woman's neck and watched her partner's face pale. "Could it—" She didn't finish the question. She didn't Dauber, not with their recorders both running. They couldn't risk anyone realizing they weren't exactly human.

Pat shook her head. She closed her eyes and, to anyone who didn't know better, it looked as if she was simply taking a deep, calming breath. But Mac knew better, Just as she had done earlier, Pat was easing her control on her other form, a cougar, and sniffing for anything that might tell them if another shapeshifter had been involved. When Pat shook her head again, Mac didn't know whether to be relieved or not.

"Make a note to tell the coroner to check them for anything that would explain why their bodies are so clean. That sort of wound should have left them — and their killer — covered with blood and not just the floor and walls."

"Will do."

Mac forced herself to focus on the job and not on the myriad of questions running through her mind. She'd seen wounds like those when hunting the lycan. But she trusted her nose, and her partner's, and neither of them had scented another shapeshifter. In a way, that was good. Good because it meant she wouldn't have to carefully walk that very thin line between doing her duty as a cop and doing her duty to the pride to make sure the normals didn't learn of their existence. She'd already had to cross that line once and she prayed she never had to again.

In another way, however, it was very bad. it meant they were looking for someone who had killed before. Worse, he'd killed and gotten away with it and, unless Mac missed her guess, he now had a taste for it. That meant he'd kill again.

Unless they somehow managed to find him and stop him.

"Who found the bodies?"

"The uniforms."

Mac's brow creased in thought. Damn, but she hated responding to a call without all the information. "Why were they here?"

"Dispatch received a 911 call about a disturbance on this floor. When the unis arrived, Security brought them up, bitching the whole time apparently because he hadn't received any complaints. When they got up here, they found the door to this unit open and made entry to investigate."

"All right. I want to talk to them before we finish up here."

As she spoke, Mac carefully moved around the bed once more. The carpet beneath her feet squished and she did her best to ignore it. Her shoes, and possibly her jeans, would be hitting the trash just as soon as she got to the station. Damn it. She really liked those running shoes and they were still what she'd consider new. Oh well. At least she'd learned her lesson long ago not to wear anything expensive to a crime scene.

"Mac, it's too clean in here. I have a feeling our perp cleaned up in here before leaving," Pat said from the door to the bathroom.

"Have the forensic techs go over it. If the perp's done this before, he probably brought a murder kit with him and it included his own soap and stuff. Maybe they'll find something to help us ID the bastard." She took one more look around. "Let's let the M.E. and tech boys in now. I want to talk to the uniforms and the rent-a-cop."

And I hope to God we find a nice mundane serial killer behind this and not something else.

Nocturnal Haunts is a slight departure from the other two titles in the series. It is more of a straight police procedural. It is also shorter, coming in at approximately 30,000 words.