The Keepers Story 01 - The Gatekeeper

of an “entertainer.” She wore a plain white terry robe, her hair sleek and curling around her shoulders.
    She was tall, perhaps five foot ten. Elegant in build, and supple, as he’d already seen when she’d danced.
    She moved so fluidly that she seemed to float slowly across the room.
    She wore no makeup. Her eyes, which seemed to gleam with a hypnotic beauty, were unadorned by shadow or mascara. Her lashes were rich and thick all on their own, her face pure perfection.
    When she spoke, her voice was a husky alto that teased his senses. “So, you have come just for me, I hear?”
    “Yes.”
    She smiled and came closer. “And what is it that you desire? A dance? Ah, but you’ve already seen me dance. Perhaps you’re looking for something more intimate, more...personal?”
    She stopped directly in front of him and slid her hand up his shirt. Then she placed both hands on his chest, the subtle pressure of her body pushing him toward the bed. The backs of his knees met the mattress, and he held steady for a moment.
    “What are you offering?” he asked her.
    It was difficult to maintain his composure in the face of her pure sensuality. She seemed to offer the wildest and most intimate and intriguingly carnal pleasures the mind could imagine.
    And he was Elven.
    Also a cop—trying to stop a murderer.
    He let himself fall back on the bed, wondering what her next move would be. In seconds she was straddled over him, and his wrists were imprisoned by her long fingers as she stared down at him.
    “Elven,” she said.
    “Yes.”
    “And a cop,” she added.
    He smiled. Time to turn the tables. She wasn’t prepared when he flipped her over and straddled her, pinning her wrists to the bed.
    “Werewolf,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Hunting your way up the Strip and through the desert.”
    Her eyes widened, and she stared back up at him. “What?”
    “You heard me,” he told her, but his gut told him that she had nothing to do with the rash of deaths.
    He was fighting to keep his responses to her in check, but he could feel her beneath him with every fiber of his being.
    “Elven cop, yes,” he said. “And I intend to stop the death and insanity before more innocents die and their deaths bring our entire supernatural society crashing down.”
    She was still staring up at him, and her frown seemed real. “Get the hell off me,” she told him. “Unless you...can’t.” Her suddenly seductive tone told him exactly what she was thinking.
    “Don’t flatter yourself. You invited me here, after all.”
    “Don’t flatter yourself, Elven. I had to know what you were up to.”
    Those golden eyes studied him, reached into his soul. Then they suddenly cleared and turned innocent—even vulnerable.
    “Just what do you think I’m doing?” she asked, making no attempt to hide her annoyance.
    “I have no doubt that you entertain your audience. I just worry about how many pieces your audience is in when you’ve finished your performance.”
    “Don’t be a fool,” she told him. “I’m here to stop what’s happening. I’m not causing it.”
    He stared down at her. How the hell do you trust a woman who could torment a man to insanity with her eyes alone? “Why should I believe you?” he asked.
    “Because of Angie,” she said softly.
    He waited for her to go on.
    “Angie Sanderson.” He could have sworn that tears glistened in her eyes. “She disappeared six weeks ago, right after Carl Bailey gave her a job singing at one of his casinos. She had the voice of a lark. If you’re a cop, you must have seen the report.”
    He had.
    And he had suspected that her disappearance was related to the case he was looking into—he’d said as much to Monty.
    True, lots of beautiful, talented young women came to Las Vegas, and plenty of them ended up disappearing. Some simply gave up on their dreams and left. Some were consumed by the city, finding work but not the glittering careers they had come in search of. Some changed their names when they vanished into the city’s seedy underbelly, because they didn’t want their families in Kansas or South Carolina or whatever wholesome place they came from finding out what they were really doing.
    But Angie...
    He could remember the “Missing” posters that had gone up all over town.
    She was blonde and blue-eyed, young and innocent. She had done her shift one night, singing her little heart out—and been reported missing when she hadn’t returned to work the