Insatiable Desire Read Free Page B

had died at his hands so far.
    One touch and he knew their greatest fear.
    Then he’d used it to kill them.
    Laughter bubbled in his parched throat. But killing the women and stealing their souls was a minor part of the larger picture. He’d specifically pinpointed the town where Vincent Valtrez had been raised, because he knew the local sheriff would call him.
    And he’d chosen Clarissa King to taunt with the voices of the dead, because she was Valtrez’s Achilles’ heel.
    As a boy, Valtrez had protected her from his father. She would be the perfect means to trap Vincent.
    Pan had already pressed his hand to her and knew her greatest fear: that the dead she communed with would drive her insane. He would target her friends for his kills, then use their voices to torment her.
    He raised his black palm and began to chant, to summon the demons to torture her:
    “I call to you,
    Spirits far and wide,
    Rise from the dead
    To the medium’s side.
    Let your cries
    Fill her head
    So she may join
    You and the dead.”
    If Valtrez still had a weakness for the woman, when she broke, he would try to save her.
    Then Pan would turn the Dark Lord and bring him to the new master.

CHAPTER TWO
    V incent picked up the phone, turning his back on the woman as she dressed and let herself out. “Valtrez.”
    “It’s McLaughlin. Sorry to disturb you, man, but you’ve got an assignment.”
    “Where to?”
    “A small town in the Smoky Mountains, Eerie, Tennessee. The local sheriff is recovering from a mild heart attack and requested our help, specifically yours. He thinks he has a serial killer in the hills, and the chief wants you to get up there first thing tomorrow.”
    The Tennessee mountains. Shit, that was the last place he ever wanted to go back to.
    “Why me?”
    “Because you grew up there. You understand the town, the area, the people.” McLaughlin coughed. “Said something about you going into the Black Forest and coming out alive. That no one else ever had.”
    Vincent rubbed a hand over his bleary eyes. Hell, yeah, he’d survived, but he’d blocked out what had happened inside the forest.
    But he knew evil lived in the mountains and that his father had been a violent man.
    Maybe it was time he did return, put his past to rest. He had a nagging feeling the blackouts he’d experienced lately had something to do with that hellhole he’d grown up in. With the memories he’d repressed . . .
    “Valtrez? You listening?”
    “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “How many murders so far?”
    “Two.” McLaughlin hesitated. “Although the MOs are different, Valtrez. They don’t appear to be related. The first one is a drowning victim, the second, multiple spider bites.”
    “Why does he think the spider bites are murder?”
    “There were multiple bites.” McLaughlin hesitated. “Dozens and dozens, as if someone had planted the spiders in the woman’s bed.”
    Vincent chewed the inside of his cheek, conceding that sounded suspicious. “What makes this sheriff think the deaths are connected?”
    McLaughlin hesitated again.
    “Spill it, McLaughlin. What am I up against? Some small-town morons?”
    A wry chuckle rumbled over the line. “Maybe. This guy claims their resident town psychic told him the women are being murdered.”
    Vincent scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Don’t tell me. Her name is Clarissa King.”
    “How’d you know?”
    Shit. “Everyone in the area knows about her family.” A childhood memory taunted him. Clarissa had been tiny and frail-looking in her homemade checkered dress. They’d forged an odd, awkward friendship.
    One day the kids had picked on him at school, and she’d taken up for him. He’d told her he didn’t need her help and stormed away. But she was a stubborn little thing and had followed him home.
    Humiliation washed over him. His father had found him wearing the angel amulet, yelled at him that it was for girls, and had ripped it off his neck. Then his father had