The Darkest Kiss by Keri Arthur

Riley Jensen is a half vampire, half werewolf who has been tapped to be a guardian, one of the supernaturals who keeps other supernatural creatures in line. In the past, she has dated the vampire Quinn, but they broke up over her inability to have just him as her lover. He wanted to be her one and only, but she wanted kids, even though her screwed-up physiology made it unsure if she would ever have kids or not. So they parted ways, but Riley is still feeling lots of things for Quinn.

In "The Darkest Kiss", Riley is assigned to look into the death of a businessman who was also the head of the nonhuman rights league. Not only has the man been killed, but clawed by what looks to be a cat. Looking into Gerard James' background reveals he was squiring around a member of the local rich girls' club better known as the Toorak Trollops. The TT are ex-wives and daughters of local nobs who better themselves by offering themselves as high-class dates, lovers and mistresses to anyone who can afford to keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed. Although they are supposed to be friends, there is subtle game of competition and one-upsmanship amongst them as they compare the men they have caught to the ones the others have, and the one with the highest-status man "wins".

But now the Toorak Trollops seem to be dying along with the men they dated and fought over, but the question is, why? All the killed seem to share is dying in increasingly bloody ways, as well as the cat claw marks somewhere on their bodies. Could the killer be a cat-shifter? Or given the size of some of the cuts, a Tiger-shifter?

Meanwhile, Riley is called in by a wolf-shifter friend of hers to the site of an attack on a friend of his, and is just able to save another friend from being slain in his apartment. However, the apartment building he lives in is infested with vampires, at least 40 of them. This is strange because it seems impossible for young vampires to live together at all, but these vamps are different, living off emotions instead of blood, which apparently allows them to circumvent some of the restrictions that bind blood-drinking vampires.

Riley goes and talks with the leader of this vampire group, a woman named Vincenta Castillo. She was willing to allow whatever tried to kill Ivan, the friend of Riley's club-owning friend Ben Wilson for a payment of money, and because Ivan is undergoing the process of being turned into a vampire, and even if he was killed, he wouldn't die. She's willing to tell Riley what she knows in exchange for a kiss on the lips, which Riley reluctantly allows, but the information doesn't allow Riley to track the man down.

She discusses the case with her twin brother Roan's mate, Liander, who says the man's name sounds familliar, but he doesn't know where from. Then, there is another attack on Ivan, and this time, his head is ripped off, which allows for no resurrection, even that as a vampire. Riley attempts to track the creature that did it, but it gets away from her.

As she continues to try and track down the killer, Riley attends a function where her old ex-boyfriend and lover Quinn is attending, along with a member of the TT she needs to talk to. She and Quinn hook up, but when she goes to talk to the woman, there is something wrong about her, and she discovers that the killer is using the appearance of the TT to get close to the others. The chase leads to the home of the TT, who is found slain. Whoever the killer is, they are becoming more and more unhinged and violent with each murder. Quinn helps Riley interpret the clues and discovers that the killer is a Bakoneko, a demonic cat-like creature. It seems that the creature blames the TT for its mistresses death, and has been slaying not only them, but the men who supported them. But since it can take on any form, how can Riley track it down and kill it?

Meanwhile, Liander has found out why the name of the murderer Riley seeks is familliar... it's the name of someone who was in his class in the 10th grade. But then something bad happened to him and the rest of the class seemed to fall apart, and the kid's parents moved away. Riley does some checking, and everyone who has died in the case was in that class. But when the killer abducts Liander, can Reilly and Quinn help Roan keep it together while they go after the murderer who keeps him hostage? Or will Roan lose his mate, go insane, or lose all will to live and simply give up and die? Or can she and Quinn keep that from happening?

I enjoyed this book a lot. The action and the story whipped along, carrying the reader along with it, and yet there were no mistakes, or bad writing that act as a stopping block to knock you abruptly out of what I was reading. There was also nothing that made me think to myself, "Riley would never do that," or "That's so out of character!"

Keri Arthur continues to improve as a writer, and seeing Riley and Quinn get back together now that she has no hope to have children was nice, as was the fact that they appear to both want to work to rebuild their relationship from the ground up. if this will work for them to actually both be happy together... well, we'll see.

I can't wait to read more of this series, and I am already waiting for the next one with a sense of anticipation. This series is a good read you'll have a hard time putting down. I highly recommend it!