Amanda frowned, sheathing her fangs for the moment. I knew the look of disappointment. There was a truly heartless, vicious quality about Amanda. She reveled in their pain and the violence that our kind was capable of. Yet it was more than that. While Knox saw to the night-to-night workings of my domain in many ways, Amanda was an enforcer for me among the fledglings. She saw it as her duty to keep the young ones in line, and somehow Lauren had slipped by her. Amanda felt responsible, and now she needed to be a part of Lauren’s demise.
“Mira, please.” Amanda’s plea came out in a wavering whisper.
Slipping my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, I nodded. “Help him clean up.” I watched as Amanda and Knox ushered Lauren to a hallway toward the back of the nightclub where they would destroy her in the basement. As the trio disappeared behind a door, Adam appeared at my elbow. With another nod from me, he ushered Kari and Bridgette from the club. There was such a thing as guilt by association in my world. While they may have been innocent, I simply didn’t want to look at them.
I settled into the back corner of the empty booth and set my crossed feet on the low table as I waited for Knox. Something twisted in my stomach as I listened to Lauren’s screams just under the throbbing beat of the music that had once again started. The dancing seemed a little more frenzied as the occupants of the nightclub either enjoyed the rush from her painful end or fought to block out her death with music and dancing.
Our world was a delicate balancing act. We held these amazing powers in the palms of our hands, but in a moment of carelessness, we could lose everything to the humans that surrounded and outnumbered us. Over the long centuries, we created a series of rules and laws that we all had to abide by, from fledglings to the Elders in the Coven. But I’ve seen these rules crush those they were attempting to protect just as frequently as I’ve seen them save us.
Lauren broke our most sacred rule of never informing a hunter of our existence. Even if she hadn’t attempted to have me killed, she would have been dead tonight.
Bishop sat down at the table and handed me a linen tablecloth. With a grateful nod, I pressed it to the line of claw marks Lauren had scored on my right arm. He gazed at the assembled crowd, a frown teasing at the corners of his mouth.
“Didn’t quite accomplish what you set out to, did you?” I announced, drawing his gaze back to me.
“I can still take you back to Venice with me,” he threatened, his dark eyes narrowing on me.
“No, you can’t. I’d never willingly go, but it might have been easier if I had been mentally or emotionally broken by the events here.” Drawing a deep breath, I lowered the napkin that was stained with my blood. I was sore and tired from the various fights that had filled my night, but this one was going to be my most dangerous. “Were you the one to introduce Lauren to the Daylight Coalition member or did you handle that all by yourself?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blandly said.
“Of course you do. You’ve been in town for months now, watching and listening. I know what’s happening in my own domain. Only the urging of someone older and stronger would have gotten a fledgling to actually plot out my death. Involving Justin Ravana’s family was a nice touch, though. He never actually contacted the Coven, did he?”
“No,” Bishop finally admitted, flashing me a smile full of fangs and menace, as he realized that I had figured out his part in this plot to end my existence. “Fledglings are meant to be used.”
“And Ravana?”
“I didn’t want to deal with him when I take over your domain.”
“Which you get if I go back to the Coven.”
“Or simply die.”
Bishop lunged across the short distance between us, as he drew a small wooden stake out of his pocket. I grabbed his wrists, but he was bigger and stronger than me, and I was already weak from the night’s encounters—something I’m sure he was counting on.
The chunk of wood bit through my flesh as he put his entire body weight behind the stake. Pain lanced through my body as it dug into my chest, grinding closer to my heart as I pushed against him.
A part of me didn’t want to kill him. I thought I had known Bishop, but I had been wrong.
“Don’t do this,” I cried in a pained voice.
“It’s too late to plead for your life,” he said past gritted teeth.
“I’m not. I’m pleading for yours.” Bishop increased the pressure on the stake so that the tip punctured my heart, winning a scream from me. Closing my eyes, I conjured up flames so that they instantly consumed his body. I continued to hold his wrists, trapping him in the booth with me. His screams rose above the music, add their own unique chorus to match Lauren’s screams coming from the next room. When he was reduced to ash, I removed the flames and opened my eyes. With a grunt, I pulled the stake from my chest and grabbed the napkin to once again stanch the bleeding.
I looked up in time to see Knox crossing the dance floor toward my booth. Fresh blood was splattered across his clothes and skin. Knox’s eyes glowed with an almost frightening light as he stepped back onto the main floor. Dropping the napkin on the table, I slowly pushed from my seat and walked toward him, meeting him in the center of dance floor. Energy vibrated from his slender form, born from the rush of killing another creature in what I was sure was a brutal death. Valerio would have taught him well.
Cupping his head with my right hand, I stepped close and ran my tongue along his neck and up his jaw, drinking in some of Lauren’s blood from where it had sprayed across him. A shiver ran the length of his body, and his right arm locked around my waist. “Dear God in heaven, Mira,” he uttered in a husky voice. “You can’t do that.”
I simply chuckled as we began to sway to the beat of the music, his body hardening against mine. Knox tightly wrapped both arms around me, pulling me tight against him as he buried his face in the crook of my neck. His fangs scraped the bare, tender skin there, lifting a sigh from my parted lips.
The murder was solved and the plot to dispose of me had been unraveled. We could relax for a few minutes before the next disaster hit, threatening to tear apart our fragile world. We could afford this moment to forget about it all as we stood safe in our own sanctuary listening to music that pulsed through and around us.
Did she tell Franklin anything else about us? I silently asked after a couple minutes.
Nothing. His right hand squeezed my waist in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture. Just the address of where to find Bryce and to kill anyone that came to the house that night.
Barrett and the lycanthropes would see to Franklin. We would need to watch for anyone else during the next few months looking for Franklin or any signs that he had sent information to his companions at the Daylight Coalition. We still weren’t out of the woods, but we could see moonlight at the end of this dark journey.
“Bishop?”
“Disposed of.”
After the song ended, I pressed a kiss to Knox’s cheek and started to pull out of his arms, but he stopped me.
“I got a call while you were away looking into Katie Hixson’s murder,” he began, erasing our light moment of relief. “It was from a contact I have up in Cincinnati. She said that a hunter rolled into a town a few days ago looking for you.”
“By name?” I asked. It was extremely rare for anyone to know me by name outside my own domain. Most simply referred to me as Fire Starter. Any hunter that knew of me would know me by that moniker.
“Yes.”
I understood why the call was being made. Knox’s contact was looking for permission to send the hunter my way and get the person out of that domain. A dark grin spread across my face. “Tell your friend to send him my way. I’ll be ready for the hunter.”
TWO LINES
MELISSA MARR
To J, Vicki, and Mark,
for far more than I can ever say. You’re the best.
1
Eavan pushed through the crush of dancers at Club Red: swea
t-slicked, alcohol-saturated prey swayed and gyrated in time with the music pulsing out of a wall of speakers. It was—as it had been every other night—tempting, but lately, Eavan had been letting herself be carried away by the crowd, enjoying the too-brief touches of strangers, near-drunk on the energy on the dance floor. But tonight wasn’t for indulgence. Daniel was in the club. She’d felt it the moment he crossed the threshold, felt him in an unacceptable thrum under her skin. For reasons she didn’t know, she could find him in a crowd without looking.
He was moving through the room, a beacon among the waves of swaying bodies. In another life, she would’ve run away from—or perhaps to—him. Instead, she waited, proving to herself that she still held some measure of self-control. Each time she caught him mid-crime, she whispered a silent prayer that he’d stop poisoning girls, that he’d become innocuous, but hoping and praying were no substitute for action—not that action was proving particularly effective, either. Trying to single-handedly rescue the worst of Daniel’s zombies was futile. For every one she saved, there were a dozen more she couldn’t reach.
He was only a few bodies away from her now. Tiny electric zings bounced over her skin as she came closer to him. He was tempting enough that it hurt. And he knows.
Foam poured onto the dance floor as Daniel took a far-too-high girl into his arms, and the time for waiting passed away. Swirling violet and crimson lights gave an ethereal cast to the humans who squealed and writhed around them as the dance floor became a slippery mess. A predator’s banquet. The question of which of them was the better predator wasn’t one Eavan wanted to answer: either answer meant she lost.
Daniel glanced back at her and then moved toward a side door with the girl. He cut through the crowd with an ease that made him seem Other. He wasn’t though.
He’s just another mortal. She had repeated that assertion every night these past six months. There was nothing particularly exceptional about him. Except for the way he provokes me. Putting a final end to him made good sense, but she couldn’t be the one to do it. There were two steps needed to wake up her maternal heritage—sex and death. So far, she’d avoided both, but if she did both in the same month, she’d become a full-blooded glaistig.
In another few moments, he’d be out of the club, out of reach, and the girl would be lost.
Not this time.
Some nights, she’d lost their quarry. Many nights, she was at the wrong club. Once in a while, she found his prey before Daniel could. Tonight, she’d decided to step up the confrontation.
She intercepted Daniel and grabbed the hand of the barely conscious girl.
“Chastity!” Eavan squealed her name with false excitement, an act for the crowd around them. She had no clue what the girl’s real name was. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Eavan was taking the girl from Daniel. The two men on either side of him stepped closer. If they wanted to, there was a good chance that they could take the girl out of reach. Eavan was banking on Daniel’s dislike of scenes.
She smiled at him, a flash of teeth that animals still understood as aggression. She didn’t bother glancing at his employees. Daniel waved them away as usual when she was near. He either didn’t see her as a true threat or was amused by her efforts. She hadn’t figured out which it was, but she knew that he preferred to be alone with her when he had a chance.
Once the men vanished into the sea of bodies, Daniel stepped closer to Eavan. He didn’t let go of the girl, but he didn’t do anything obvious to keep her out of reach, either. “She’s with me, Eve.”
“Is that what you really want?” Eavan let her conservative habits slip farther away and turned her full attention to Daniel. It wasn’t a hardship to look at him: he was a pretty specimen, wrapped up in Armani and attitude.
For a few heartbeats, he said nothing, but he wasn’t immune. Real humans never were.
“She’s not meant for my bed.”
“I know,” Eavan admitted, enjoying his momentary meekness. “I know your taste, Daniel. Unconscious isn’t it.”
“So tell me, little Eve, what is my taste?” He came closer, still holding the barely standing Chastity. “Say it aloud for a change. Give me that much.”
It was painful to let those tendencies come closer to the surface; hungers best left unfed were already omnipresent when he was near. Eavan sized him up openly, caught and held his gaze just long enough to be too-bold. “You look good tonight.”
He smiled then. “Admitting you’re tempted?”
Ignoring that challenge was hard, but Eavan had been too close to the edge with him for weeks. If she didn’t know he was a monster, she’d want him. I do anyhow. If she had been thinking clearly, she wouldn’t be talking to him at all. I’d miss it. If she didn’t want to stay human, she’d take him to her bed and kill him tonight. I am not a monster.
She reached out and lifted the girl’s eyelid to peer into her extremely dilated pupil. “I’m taking her with me.”
“Fine.” He relinquished his hold on the girl. “There are dozens more just like her.”
Chastity was swaying, barely sober, and soon to attract attention. She was so far gone that Eavan wasn’t convinced she could be saved. Anger threatened to surface—at herself, at him, at the inability to make a real difference.
Daniel stepped closer, invading the bubble of personal space she usually kept between herself and regular humans. “You need to start saying hello when you arrive at the clubs, or say good-bye and come home with me…”
Despite her growing anger—or maybe because of it—Eavan enjoyed his aggression. Something about him made her want to push the rules a bit further, made her want to see how close to forbidden she could get without crossing over. Nice girls don’t hunt; human girls don’t like murder. She knew the boundaries; she knew she wanted to stay on the right side of them. He’d be such fun to kill though.
Daniel’s smile made clear that he sensed her interest, even though he undoubtedly read it as merely sexual. He was close enough that she could taste scotch on his breath. “Can I give you a lift tonight? Anywhere you want to go. Or we’ll call someone for her so we—”
“No.” She moved so the girl was farther out of his reach, so she was farther out of reach too. Glaistigs drank down a mortal’s last breath. He’d sweetened his with a peaty scotch.
I’m not hunting him.
“We could go to the Chaos Factory.” He reached out and ran a finger over her bare midriff. “Tell me what you want, Eve. What’s it going to take to get you home with me?”
“It would be a bad idea,” she said—not a lie, but not an answer. She stepped backward, retreated from him. Not everything was about dominance. She’d rescued Chastity; she’d taken the prey from his hands. Now she needed to get away.
“So we’ll do this another night.” He leaned in and brushed a kiss over Eavan’s lips, unknowingly teasing her with his sweetened mortal breath. “Unless you’re planning on running already?”
“I’ll be back.” She couldn’t do otherwise, and they both knew it. “I’ll be at your clubs.”
“And I’ll find you.” And then he vanished into the crowd of feverishly dancing mortals. It was easy to see why people came willingly to his feet. He was everything a man should be—dangerous, sexy, and just ever-so-slightly aware of it. In many cases, he’d be the alpha predator.
Which is why I want to kill him.
Logic insisted that her macabre fixation on him was basic animal law, but it was outside logic to stalk Daniel. He dealt in magicks that made the Other community—at the prompting of Eavan’s own matriarch—set a geis, a ban forbidding fraternizing with him. That ban on contact with Daniel was as law for Others.
But Eavan wasn’t purely Other. Glaistigs were female only, each one born of a human father and glaistig mother. Unless she crossed the two lines into adulthood, she was technically mortal—with a few extra traits. Geasa don’t apply to mortals. That was her excuse, at least. Not that I’m going to “fraternize” with Daniel. No
sex. No death. I can do this.
2
Muriel opened the door before Eavan could knock. She didn’t quite scowl at the sight of the mostly unconscious girl in Eavan’s arms. Her usually welcoming expression vanished, but she kept her tone light. “For me? You spoil me.”
“I’m sorry.” Eavan carried the unconscious girl inside the apartment. “She’s…I know better. I know we talked about it…I just…Daniel had her and—”
“Later.” Muriel’s blue robe was the only color in the black and white room. It made it impossible not to stare at her as she closed the door. The generous bit of bare skin didn’t help matters.
“I had to,” Eavan whispered.
“I know. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Muriel took the girl and carried her into the den.
As with every other time, Eavan went to the kitchen and fixed herself a drink. She couldn’t drink on the hunt, but afterward she was shaky enough that she needed a few fingers of whiskey. Tonight was worse than usual. It had been growing worse every time she saw Daniel.
Chastity whimpered.
Muriel’s voice was too muffled to make out the words, but the tone made clear that the words were some comforting lie. Muriel could do that, lie at will. Eavan didn’t have that luxury: partially fey things could lie sometimes, but it wasn’t a predictable sometimes.
After glancing toward the closed door of the den, Eavan emptied her glass.
If Chastity survived, she’d be slipping into withdrawal soon; if she didn’t survive, she’d still be better off than with Daniel. Girls like Chastity went to bidders with sadistic habits that Eavan couldn’t bear pondering…not when so many Chastitys had been sold already. They had no control over their sexuality. Drugged to the point of being zombies, they were reduced to nothing more than sex toys to be used until they were destroyed. The beauty of sexuality was something she cherished—and couldn’t have; to have it sold for base coin was beyond intolerable.