by D. N. Hoxa
There he was, much closer to the entrance door than I thought he would be. He was taller than me, about five foot nine, and the black tee-shirt he wore melted onto his torso, giving away all the lean muscle in his chest. His shoulders were wide and his arms big enough to be considered weapons in their own right. His hair was the kind of black that shone blue, just like the night, and his blue eyes on his tan skin gave him an alien look. He smiled when he saw me, just the left corner of his lips pulling up in a smirk as if he had me right where he wanted me—in front of his gun.
“There she is,” he said, almost under his breath. The muscles on his shoulders tensed when his eyes took in the chakris in my hand. He knew who I was, which meant he knew what my weapons could do. That’s probably why he was holding that gun on me.
“You’re trespassing. I suggest you get going now before you get hurt,” I said, keeping my voice light. Guys like him didn’t scare me. I’d killed bigger and meaner men before.
“And you’re a wanted criminal. I suggest you put down your weapons and slowly step outside with your hands up.”
I laughed. He was a funny guy.
And then I saw his ring. It was on the index finger of his right hand, the one holding the gun. The thick shank was made of white gold, topped with a perfectly round purple and white piece of marble—the color of the Magian Ministry. And that would be the reason why he could get into the Enclave without the Guard throwing him out. Every high priest or priestess designing a Guard was obligated by law to give a free pass to anyone wearing that piece of marble.
Ah, shit. I was screwed.
I had two seconds to decide. By the looks of it, the man was alone. He had a gun which would do him no good, but I was ninety-nine percent sure he was a shape-shifter. If he grew fur and claws, I’d have my hands full, and I’d have to break a sweat, but I’d put him down soon enough.
On the other hand, if I played nice and did what he asked, I was going straight to jail, and the last time I checked, you couldn’t investigate kidnappings from a barred cell.
It was a quick decision, but his eyes must have caught the change in my face. I jumped to the side, back behind the door, the second he pulled the trigger. The bullet missed me, flying inside the house and burying itself in the stairway somewhere. I debated closing the door but then I wouldn’t hear him if he decided to come in around back. Because he was coming in, of that I was sure. I left the door open and pressed my back against the wall behind it, untying the whip in my belt loop. I hung it around my neck with the handle close to my right hand where it would be very easy to grab if I somehow lost both my right chakris.
Then, I closed my eyes and breathed deeply to calm my racing heart. I needed to do whatever it took to either get away from this man or kill him, because I was not going to jail.
The thought calmed me, and my muscles relaxed. Adrenaline rushed through my veins, warming me up. I heard the man’s footsteps as he came for the half open door. The hallway was empty, and this was my territory. I knew the house much better than he did, so I had the upper hand, even if he turned furry.
The barrel of his gun pressed against the wood of the door, and he slowly pushed it open all the way.
Putting one of my chakris back on my wrist, I grabbed his hand and twisted before he even stepped inside the house. I twisted and pulled him as hard as I could, but he was stronger than I’d hoped, so I couldn’t slam him against the wall. He grunted and tried to get his hand back, and I used my chakri to cut a straight line over his fingers right below his knuckles. He hissed in pain, and the gun slipped from his hand. I watched it, instead of him, so when his fist connected with the side of my face, I could do nothing but fall back, blinding stars taking my vision away. Damn it, the asshole was strong.
“You just attacked a Magian Ministry detective. A very bad idea,” he said, grinning, the gun on the floor forgotten. He was going to fight me with his hands.
I smiled. I was never much of a talker, so I just jumped into action right away.
I fell on my hands and tried to kick him in the face with my heel, but he dodged to the side, way too fast. He tried to grab me while I jumped back to my feet, and I let him. The second his fingers wrapped around my arm, I cut him with the chakri in my left hand all over his forearm. Dark blood rushed out like a painting creating itself on the canvas of his skin, and when he still didn’t let go, I used his arm’s strength to lean back and kick him on the side of the head.
The tip of my sneaker connected with his temple, making a very satisfying sound, but he let me go too fast and I fell on the floor on my back. He’d underestimated me, and he was realizing it, too. A low growl came straight from his throat as I jumped to my feet, too close to him. He hit me in the face again, and I was too slow to move away, so he hit me a second time. I fell back and hit the wall as he came for me, wild with anger now, his blue eyes shining like two sapphires. He tried to grab me by the throat, and I moved away but his thumb grazed my collarbone. Playtime was over, it seemed. And his nails were sharp as claws. The cut burned—it had gone deep, but not deep enough to stop me. I spun around and tried to kick him in the back again, but he saw it coming and turned, catching my leg in midair. He was bigger than me, possibly twice my weight, so he had no trouble throwing me to the other side of the room. I hit the floor on my side, a moan of pain escaping my lips.
“What a pleasant surprise,” I said as I stood up again, slipping my chakri in my hand. No more playing nice. “It’s been a while since I’ve been thrown across the room like this.”
Even though his eyes burned with fury, he managed a smile, which made him look like a psycho. A very hot psycho, damn him.
“Don’t get your panties wet just yet,” he said. Too late, I thought.
“The only one wetting himself in this house is you.” I looked down at his arm, his blood still dripping to the floor, though his wounds had already begun to close. Then, I winked, and threw my left chakri right at his face.
I knew he’d dodge—we were ten feet away from one another. My chakri hit the wall, and while he moved to the side, I ran as fast as my legs could carry me and kicked him in the gut. Slipping another chakri in my hand, I swung my arms at his face and torso. He was too fast for a guy his size. He managed to duck out of the way every time, and when I raised my hand to try to cut his cheek, maybe even get his eye, he leaned down and hit me right below my ribcage. Air left me in a hurry, and my face met his fist once again. He came for me again, and I raised my arm to defend myself. His strength was incredible. It made this game that much more exciting. He tried to grab me, but this time I didn’t give him the satisfaction. I rolled on the ground to put some distance between us, just for a second so I could slip one of my chakris back to my wrist and grab my whip.
I raised my hand and swung the whip when he was just a step away from me, and the long, leather whip wrapped around his neck four times.
He stopped moving. “Should we just take this to the bedroom already?” he suggested.
What a great idea. I mean, a man who could fight like that was probably a monster in bed—the good kind of monster, one that can make you call out the Lord’s name and touch the sky with your bare hands.
But as much as I’d have liked that… “And skip the foreplay?”
I pulled the handle of my whip with all my strength, and he wrapped a huge hand around the thong before doing the same. I tried to hold back, but my sneakers betrayed me. They slid on the wooden floor, offering me to him on a silver fucking platter. I tried to spin and kick him in his forearm to motivate him to let go, but he caught me with his other arm and suddenly my back was slammed onto his front. My breath left me once again, this time for a completely different reason. I was right, his arm could wrap around my waist all the way. Why couldn’t he have been just an ordinary guy whom I’d meet at the bar one night and take back home with me?
No, he had to be a detective for the MM who wanted to bring me in front of his idea of justice.
I sla
mmed my head back, aiming for his nose, but he moved away.
“Easy, th—”
That’s the thing when your opponent expects you to try to butt him in the head. He never expects you to try a second time, and that’s exactly what I did. The back of my head connected with his nose. I went blind—well, completely blind—for a long second as my brain tried to fall back in place.
But the shifter let go of me and I took my whip back. My head felt like it was on fire still, but he was the one who absorbed most of the force, so his pain had to be twice as intense. Just to be sure, I kicked him in the face, once, twice, and he fell back a couple of steps but didn’t go down.
I didn’t want to kill him and not just because he was one of the most handsome men I’d ever come across. He was the Ministry, and I had enough heat on me as it was. So I was going to have to give him—and myself—a chance.
Moving around him, I dropped my chakri, grabbed his left arm and pulled it behind him. He shook his head as if to clear his vision, but by then, my whip was tied around his wrist and I pulled his right arm behind him, too. I spun my whip twice before he tried to pull because I already knew that he was stronger than me in that department. I’d never be able to hold him. So I gripped the handle of my whip tightly with both hands, and I slipped between his legs, coming up in front of him. Then I pulled the handle up toward his chest. Hard.
His eyes widened as the thong of the whip pressed against his balls. He stopped trying to free his hands. I smiled and pushed him back—much harder to do than was reasonable, or perhaps the fight had spent me more than I realized—until he hit the wall. Then, I slipped one of my chakris into my free hand and pressed the sharp edge under his chin.
“I don’t want to kill you.” Please, please, don’t make me.
He tried to free his hands again, and the thong of the whip pressed harder against his crotch. My fingers were sweaty, and the handle was going to slip from my hands if he tried hard enough, but he wouldn’t. It would hurt him too much.
“I don’t want to kill you, either.” He tried to smile but couldn’t. The way he looked at me with those crystal clear eyes had me shivering.
“You want to take me in. I can’t let you do that.”
“You’re a wanted criminal. It’s my job to—”
“No, your job is to go after real criminals, people who hurt other people for the pleasure of it,” I said through gritted teeth. It was his fault that I’d had to do what I did. His and all others like him.
“Oh, so you’re not a real criminal?” This time, he did smile, which reminded me to bring the whip farther up, just a bit so he’d feel it.
“The high priestess of this Enclave has been kidnapped. Tell me, what are you doing to find her?”
A big fat nothing, that’s what.
His eyes suddenly widened. Then, he slowly turned his head to the side as if to look at his surroundings. I didn’t move my chakri away, but he managed not to cut himself in the process. He could see the blood on the floor, the ruined stairway. He’d probably seen it all before.
“I’m going to get you out of this house so you can be on your way. If you try something funny, I will kill you. You have my word.” Maybe it was crazy to even consider such an option, but I planned to be gone from that place ten minutes later. All I needed was a little time to get into Nana’s quarters, grab everything I could find, and leave. It would take the MM reinforcements more than ten minutes to get here. Hopefully.
“You’re a damn liar,” the shifter said, returning his eyes to mine. The playfulness was gone, and he looked like a different man altogether.
I pressed the chakri to his skin. “Don’t call me a liar.” I wasn’t one and I wouldn’t tolerate being called it.
“You’re a wanted criminal who got her magic locked away by the high priestess, and now you’re back for revenge. If Tanana Kaur isn’t here, it’s because you killed her.”
I stared at him for a second. “Nana has been missing for a week. I wasn’t here a week ago.”
“Impossible,” he said but didn’t make the mistake of trying to free his hands again.
“Very possible,” I spit. Why the hell was he looking so confused? “You knew about this. You’re the Magian Ministry—you had to know.” Marcus wasn’t dumb. He’d found me—the MM offices were pretty easy to spot downtown.
“We didn’t,” he said, just as coldly. “Tanana Kaur was never reported missing.”
Shit on a stick. What the hell?
“So who took the bodies?”
“What bodies?”
I nodded my head toward the stairway. “Those bodies that bled to death!” He could see the dried blood even if he couldn’t smell it. What the hell kind of a shifter was he?
“Are you expecting me to believe that it wasn’t you who did this?”
Goddamn it. I pulled the handle of my whip higher. “I didn’t do this, you fool! If I did, why would I hang around here a week after? You can smell the blood. You know how old it is.”
“Then who did it?” The suspicion in his eyes almost suffocated me. He was so sure that it was me, I doubted anything I said would change his mind.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Why?”
Why? Because this Enclave was my home once. Nana was my family. But how could I speak those words out loud?
I couldn’t. Letting go of the whip, I slipped back toward the door, never moving my eyes from his, and grabbed the gun he’d dropped to the floor. It was a good gun, Glock 19, and it would fire a bullet straight through his head. He might have even healed from it—shifters were a pain in the ass to kill—but before he could, I could stab him through the heart with a kitchen knife about a hundred times.
“I’m telling you the truth. Whether you believe me is your problem, but I will not let you take me. You can either leave right now, I can make you leave, or I can kill you. Take your pick.”
He smiled bitterly. “So many options.”
I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a generous person by nature.”
With his now free hands, he took the handle of my whip and brought it in front of him to analyze it. “We were never notified of the disappearance of Tanana Kaur, yet you know about it.”
“Because one of her students found me and told me about it at her request. I don’t know where he is, but he’s in the city somewhere. You might want to find him and ask him why he failed to mention this to the MM.”
He made no attempt to approach me. He stayed where he was, and once he was done analyzing the whip, his eyes turned to me again.
“Miss Kaur was cursed. She couldn’t leave this house,” he said, and I knew exactly what he was trying to say.
“She’s not dead. Whoever took her was stronger than her, possibly stronger than whoever cursed her because he took her anyway.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Because I am.” Because I knew that I’d have felt it if Nana was dead. She put a spell on me to lock my magic away, and when mages who made spells by drawing power from their own bodies died, their spells lost most or all their powers. Since Nana locked my magic, she used her own to block mine. And that’s why the spell of the mage who cursed her hadn’t disappeared after that mage had died because Nana’s own magic source was used to create it.
Also, the Guard around the house was still solid, and it had been like that even before Thurman keyed it to me.
“Say I believe you. How are you planning to find her?”
How? “I’m going to look for her.” I realized I’d just admitted to him that I had no idea how I was going to go about finding Nana, but it was already too late.
“You have no resources, no power.”
“Trust me, I have plenty of power.” Maybe not magical, but I had the power of my body. And my chakris and whip, all of them marked with runes by Nana herself. They were all the help I needed.
“The Magian Ministry can find her much faster,” he said,
making me want to laugh again. “All you have to do is turn yourself in and prove you didn’t do it.”
“I don’t need to prove anything.” I was done proving myself a long time ago.
“You don’t understand. This is a high priestess we’re talking about. The Ministry will not rest until they find the person responsible, and I don’t need to tell you who their first suspect will be.”
Good ole me.
“No, they’ll throw the case over to the humans and sit back on their asses all day.”
The shifter gritted his teeth. “If you don’t give yourself up now, they’re going to catch you.”
“Consider me warned.” I waved the gun at the door. “Leave, or I’ll make you.”
His eyes shifted for just a second, but I saw it. His jaw clenched and his hands pulled up in fists. The muscles in his arms twitched. He was going to go furry on me. Shit.
I waited for him to transform into the animal that hid inside him. I could have shot him, but I didn’t want to, not until I had no other choice.
But he didn’t shift.
He closed his eyes and let go of a deep breath. When he opened them, he no longer looked like a man about to lose control. I held back a sigh.
“I don’t want to kill you, Monroe, so I’m going to leave, but they won’t send me here again.”
Thank God for that. “I think I’ll manage.”
“You’ve got one chance to get out of this clean.” He already knew what I was going to say, but good for him for trying one last time.
“Goodbye, furry.”
He showed me his teeth. “Goodbye, Monroe.”
I stepped to the side, and I watched him walk toward the door. He was a predator, and he was eyeing me like I was his prey. Not entirely a bad feeling if you were to mistake the need to kill me for the need to…do other stuff. Lucky for me, I didn’t tolerate mistakes, so I held his eyes and watched him disappear outside the door before going to it.
“It’s been a week, but you might want to bring in your Seer to find out more!” I shouted against my better judgment. But he was right—the Ministry did have better resources. And if they could find Nana before I did, well, that would sure make my life a lot easier.
