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CHAPTER ONE
Where are you, Ekkbar? Show yourself so I can send you back to the flames of hell that birthed you.
Trey McCree raised his head and visually swept the room filled with Goth partiers out for some early action on the night before Halloween. He telepathically listened to snippets of conversation from the partygoers’ private thoughts as well.
Hey, loosen up, babe ….I want a man tonight …what a loser…
When the woman he followed moved again, Trey pushed ahead through the tangled mass of patrons decked out in sinister black outfits, blood red accessories and silver studs pierced through some interesting places. Most of the clientele visited in cozy corners on several levels, but that still left a packed dance floor of writhing bodies. Unconcerned over blending in with nose rings and scary hair, Trey had donned black jeans, a matching long sleeved turtleneck and a leather jacket.
He was here for one reason alone.
The Black Fairy nightclub in a renovated midtown Atlanta warehouse near a historical cemetery had piqued the interest of a woman he was not letting out of his sight--Sasha Armand.
Not with Ekkbar visiting this millennium.
Calf-high black boots pranced twenty feet away, a silver cross-and-skull zipper pull at her boot cuff flicking with each sexy step. The liquid movement of Sasha’s derriere swayed erotically in time with the pulsing music, reminding Trey of why he couldn’t stay in Atlanta beyond this week. Temptation was easier resisted from a distance.
Sasha was better off without him anyhow, if she’d stay out of trouble, dammit.
A wave of dark energy rippled through the room. Trey’s skin pricked with warning. He slowed, immediately on alert. He surveyed the crowd for Ekkbar, but the eight-hundred-year-old servant of a Kujoo warlord melded with the jumble of noise before Trey could detect him.
Ekkbar had almost exposed himself. He was a dimwit, but a lethal one to an unprotected human like Sasha.
As a strong empathic, Trey avoided crowds until learning how to filter telepathic noise to prevent sensory overload. He now closed the gateway to his mind within a blink, watching.
That flash of metaphysical energy had either been Ekkbar catching Sasha’s hunter scent or another unworldly entity who could recognize Trey’s physical signature as a Belador warrior. There was no way the magician had picked up on his presence. Unlike the Hindu warlord Ekkbar served or one of the warlord’s elite Kujoo soldiers, Ekkbar didn’t possess combat powers necessary to detect a Belador. But he was a magician who could hurt a human woman.
Sasha paused across the room, swiveling her head left. Blue, green and pink lights shimmered along the straight black hair pouring across her shoulders and back. She narrowed her eyes at something and then blinked. A thick ruffle of lashes kissed her cheek before she continued on.
Trey had kissed that same cheek when she wore tattered jeans and a ponytail that fit with her girl-next-door smile. Maybe if she’d kissed him like just any girl next door they might not have ended up in his bed having explosive sex, or on his back porch at midnight with her homemade whip cream or…damn, he’d never forget the night at the lake with water cascading over her moon-kissed body when he lifted her high in the air.
He’d come close to reconsidering his future as a Belador right then. But he hadn’t and couldn’t change the past now.
Careful not to let her catch sight of him, Trey moved forward again breathing the bitter smell of incense mixed with hot skin damp from dancing. He had to figure out what to do about Ekkbar without creating a disaster. Since accepting his destiny, Trey had been warned against ever engaging the warlord cursed to live beneath Mount Meru. A river of blood had been spilled once centuries ago when Beladors faced off against the Kujoo. Since then both had upheld an unwritten truce.
If he disturbed the fragile peace between the two, he’d open the gates to a war like none before.
Leave it to a woman to ruin a two-week sabbatical from his contract work with VIPER--Vigilant International Protectors Elite Regiment--where he defended this world against supernatural predators. Gathering intel on Sasha had been a major pain in the butt since he’d been forced to use conventional methods. Any other time, he’d just read a person’s thoughts, but he’d never been able to read Sasha’s mind and had no idea why not since he refused to ask other Beladors. No warrior ever admitted a deficiency to another one.
Tapping her phone line worked, but the only inkling Trey had gotten into this fiasco had been when Sasha left a message on her home phone for her sister that she was out working and hoped to locate Ekkbar at the Black Fairy tonight.
A tall blond female in an outfit that would bring the devil himself to heel stepped in front of Trey’s path, blocking his path. She eyed him like a new soul to devour. His gaze danced over the very revealing red and black lace jumpsuit sending his mind to search her thoughts out of natural curiosity.
No words. Just erotic images of what she envisioned doing...to him...naked...tied to a bed.
He snapped his mind shut, smiled politely and sidestepped her, then glanced ahead to make sure Sasha remained in sight.
When had she morphed her business from researching family ancestries to becoming a private eye?
Who had hired her to find a creature that should still be living beneath a mountain?
A roar on the dance floor drew his attention. When he turned back to track Sasha the crowd had swallowed her. He stretched up, searching.
No Sasha. His palms dampened, something he rarely experienced during an op, but those missions didn’t involve a defenseless woman facing a monster.
Heart pounding sharply with each thump of the music’s concussive base, Trey rushed forward, parting the sea of macabre costumes. He reached the far side of the wide room just as a pair of thigh-high boots with a dangly zipper pull headed through a hallway then out the rear door. He could move fast as light when necessary, but not in public without good cause. At the back exit, he caught the bouncer monitoring activity distracted and blitzed past in a rush of air.
Outside, Trey stepped onto an empty back street and took a breath of fresh air, enjoying the brisk late October chill. He caught a familiar tap of footsteps clipping along the sidewalk in the direction of the cemetery.
Next to woods where rapes had occurred in the past.
Where the hell was Sasha going?
Moving cautiously now, he tuned his senses to his surroundings. Survival in his unusual line of work depended on always being prepared. A half-block down, Trey stopped next to the cemetery, trying to pick up the sound of her steps again. He felt another body taut with animosity move into his zone, the area ten feet away. Trey spun around, hands flowing together into a blade-like move that would take off a man’s head.
He stopped barely a half-inch short of Sasha’s lithe neck.
“What are you doing here?” Her blue-black painted mouth pursed with irritation and all he could think about was testing her lipstick to determine if it would smear.
“How ya doin’, Sasha?” He pulled his hands away and straightened to his full height. From what he could see, she was doing exceptionally well in the black vest split open ten inches wide down the center of her front and laced with leather. A link of chain swung from the tip of one breast to the other.
Trey forced his tongue to remain inside his mouth and not slide along his lips.
“I’m fine. Now, what are you doing here?”
“Checking out the Black Fairy.” He flipped his palms up in a “what else” motion. “What a surprise finding you here. Thought you hung up your spikes years ago.”
Her eyebrows flinched in a self-conscious frown.
Oops. That might have sounded like a reference to her turning thirty in a few months, but she had nothing to worry about based on that bunch of hardtails inside the nightclub giving her the once over. Trey should have sent an air slap across a few heads, but the petulant act would have caused a disturbance confirming his presence.
“Thought what I did was of no interest to you. And there was a time you wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like this, so why the sudden interest?” Egyptian-shaped hazel eyes boldly outlined with an artist’s touch sparked with challenge.
“To tell you the truth, I was looking for someone.” He hoped the coy answer would keep her talking and buy him time to find out who sent her to hunt for Ekkbar.
“So was I until you spooked him.”
“Me?” There was no way Ekkbar could have detected him, but Trey couldn’t very well admit that. “Who you looking for?”
“No one you’d know.”
“So how could I have spooked him?”
“You look clean cut for this place. The glasses are new and maybe you were going for a professor look, but they won’t camouflage what you are. You stand out like you’re a cop. Or a Fed.” She snapped her fingers. One of her perfect eyebrows lifted in a sarcastic arch. “Oh, but that’s right. You do work for the FBI or CIA or do something for national defense you couldn’t explain or then you’d have to kill me, right?”
Not a conversation he wanted to be sucked into right now. The glasses were made of an optic material not found in standard eyeglass outlets. Rather than improve his vision, they protected his power that was directly related to his eyesight.
“You were searching for a felon?” Trey asked.
Sasha’s brow puckered with a look that said she should have kept her mouth shut.
He held a mask of blank emotions in place rather than grin at her slip. “What are you doing down here this late at night hunting for someone afraid of law enforcement, huh?”
“I’m working, so how about not interfering.”
Now he was getting close. “What sort of work?”
She drew a deep breath that brought her leather outfit to life then exhaled an aggravated huff. “What makes you think you’re entitled to know anything about me or my life?”
“Look, I’m just worried about you.”
She laughed, deep and scoffing. “That’s good.” Sasha shook her head with a flip of disbelief. Hair the color of sin washed over her shoulder and brushed the smooth body Trey had spent many a night dreaming of freeing from clothes...again.
“It’s true, Sasha.”
She stilled, her eyes slanting up at him, all business. “You lost the chance to worry about me a long time ago, so don’t start now. You have your life just the way you want it and I have mine, which doesn’t allow room for past mistakes.”
He had a life, not necessarily the way he wanted it, but that was his fault, not hers.
Trey felt several predators draw close. He spun to stand in front of Sasha and cursed his carelessness. A trio of twenty-somethings with matching jackets, matching dagger-and-blood tattoos and matching cocky attitudes. Gang bangers. He should have been paying attention to more than Sasha.
“Why don’t you boys move on down the road, huh?” Trey assessed the one holding a gun, the leader. Stringy blond hair raked his thick shoulders and heavy rings on each finger of one hand like a modified brass knuckle--a big question mark.
“Start walking into the cemetery, quietly,” the leader ordered, his acne-riddled face devoid of any emotion.
Trey entered the leader’s mind and heard, I’m going to enjoy making you watch me hump yo’ bitch.
This night only got better by the minute. Trey growled under his breath. He couldn’t use his supernatural powers to hurt these guys. The Belador code required he only use force equal to what he was dealt.
Sasha stepped up beside Trey and he shoved her back.
“You need my help,” she whispered sharply.
“No, I don’t,” Trey answered softly. “If you get in the way, you’ll get someone killed.”
“Do I have a choice in who gets killed?” she muttered.
“You gonna’ make me use this?” stringy blonde asked, waving the gun. Pretty confident pointing a weapon at someone unarmed.
“If your plan was to piss them off, it worked beautifully,” Sasha grumbled. “Either give them money or let me help.”
“No.” Trey rolled his eyes. Didn’t she realize he had enough to deal with without her jumping into the fray? He loved her tomboy side that thankfully kept her from freaking out in a crisis, but now wasn’t the time to play tough girl. |
