by Dianna Love
They loved Gibbons. She’d named her dog that because his furry beard reminded her of the guy in ZZ Top. More tears spilled down the side of her face. She’d never been a pussy when it came to getting hurt, but ... this time her heart hurt.
Gibbons was the first pet she’d ever had. Would he understand when she didn’t come home? That she’d abandoned him to prevent risking a demon from following her home and harming her loyal sidekick?
Her muscles tightened up. Here came the paralysis.
The stars overhead turned into a swirling blur of motion.
Her heartbeat slowed to a thump ... thump ... thump.
A bird landed on her chest.
Big freaking crow. Raven. Whatever.
She hissed, “Get. Off.”
It stepped around on her chest. The other birds circled closer and closer until they flew so fast they sent a beam of light down.
Of course, the damn crow would get the spotlight when it was her death.
Something else hit her chest. If it was crow poop she was going to do her best to come back as the biggest flying predator ever known. But she doubted beings like her were sent back to live again.
She’d probably turn into dust and—
The crow walked toward her belly button and dragged something up her shirt until it touched bare skin on her chest.
She forced her head up, but only made it an inch, just enough to see a disk two inches across. Not bird poop.
Her inner energy started buzzing again, but this time it sent tendrils sizzling through her chest to touch the disk. She could feel the minute her energy connected with it.
The disk sparkled a bright gold.
Her energy. Was it back under her control? Could she use it to heal?
Evidently not, since the paralysis was continuing to spread through her body. Colors flashed through her aching head and light sparked in her vision.
The big crow on her chest walked up close to her chin and stared into her eyes.
She grumbled, “What?”
It spoke in a throaty voice, “You have been summoned.”
Yáahl.
Spent and hurting, Reese dropped her head back, giving up. “Just kill me now and be done with it.”
Chapter 3
Downtown Atlanta, Georgia
Walking briskly along Piedmont Avenue in downtown Atlanta, Quinn countered Evalle’s argument before she could take it further. “No. If Isak’s black ops group gets involved we’ll have a greater risk of collateral damage in a confrontation. I want to find out who’s killing the Medb as much as you do, but this is strictly a preternatural issue. We don’t need humans involved.”
Yeah, the irony of patrolling these streets late on a Friday night to protect his people’s deadliest enemy wasn’t lost on Quinn. A blinking time-and-temperature sign in front of a bank contradicted him. It was actually closer to one Saturday morning.
As the current Belador Maistir over North America, he had no choice but to guard the damned murdering Medb witches and warlocks until he found out who was trying to set up the Beladors.
“Isak is not your average human.” Evalle paused to swig her water. She raked a hand over her face, shoving loose, black hairs from her ponytail off her damp skin. Wet from one-hundred-percent humidity.
Rain slickers kept most of it off, but Quinn had been in it so long his clothes stayed wet anyway.
All day and night. Strange weather for this early in the year.
Steady rain had fallen nonstop for four days, keeping everyone perpetually drenched. The only good news was that the constant rain had apparently brought a warm front with it. Temps in the upper seventies were much nicer than the cold and snow they’d had only days earlier. Warm spells were not that unusual for Atlanta in January, but still ... this weather was flat out peculiar. And muggy as hell.
He was actually starting to miss the cold, since it had come along with some sunshine.
Evalle asked, “Why are you being so unreasonable about Isak?”
Was he?
She might have a point.
Even more telling was that she questioned his judgment, which she’d have never done at one time. At just short of six feet tall, Evalle had always been strong on the outside, and she was no longer a woman who accepted the status quo.
Not since meeting Storm, her Skinwalker mate.
Quinn couldn’t be happier for her.
Still, Evalle and Tzader had tiptoed around him for weeks. His two best friends had been supportive and understanding of his loss. He knew they wanted to keep him from sinking deeper into a bottomless hole of guilt, but it was his own doing. He owed them for being true friends. Neither had judged him when he’d carried the body of a Medb priestess, a powerful enemy, out of Treoir. He’d taken Kizira to Atlanta and buried her there, instead of burning her body as he should have.
Now he couldn’t.
Not before the Tribunal meeting.
But Evalle deserved better than his brittle attitude.
Quinn explained, “Isak may not intend to create a problem, but we don’t even know who is behind these deaths. With every finger pointing at the Beladors, I don’t need Isak adding to the death toll accidentally. I know he’s your friend and he’s been a Belador ally in recent times, but we can’t have him in the middle of this. Until we know for sure who or what we’re hunting, I’m not taking any chances.”
If he didn’t uncover evidence to prove who was behind this insanity, and stop them, the Beladors and the Medb coven would go to war. They’d danced close to it on more than one occasion, but with a new leader in charge of the Beladors and their former goddess, Macha, gone, anything could set off a massacre.
There’d been supernatural skirmishes around Atlanta in the last four days, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away to humans as gang problems.
Hiding an all-out war between preternaturals from humans, who were presently oblivious to the powerful beings living among them, wouldn’t be possible.
Evalle yanked off the dark sunglasses that shielded her glowing green eyes and wiped them with the tail of her soggy T-shirt. She consulted her watch again, and slapped her leg. “Where’s that blasted witch? She said she’d be here after midnight. I should have made her be more specific.”
“Adrianna? Is that why you’re checking your watch?”
“Yes. I told her I was headed over here to walk this section of Piedmont with you. She agreed to meet me before I went on patrol. I wanted her walking with me tonight, because I’m thinking with her Witchlock ability she might pick up on something we’re missing. All three killings have been in the area most densely populated by Belador families, where the Medb have also been infiltrating. That’s not a coincidence.”
That was why Quinn had patrols specifically in or near Midtown. “Good thinking. I thought you were waiting on a call from Storm?”
Evalle’s face softened at the mention of her mate. “He texted a little while ago and said he was still tracking. If I don’t see Adrianna before we reach Midtown, I’ll text her when I split off from you for my patrol. How many agents do we have in that area tonight?”
“Me, you, and Devon are the only Beladors. Casper is helping us. And Adrianna, if she shows.”
Evalle lifted her face to him, shock evident and lips flattened into a line. “That’s all? I knew we were shorthanded, but what the heck?”
“I felt it was necessary. The best way to confirm that Beladors aren’t behind this is to lock down everyone and watch Midtown for any new attack. Trey is staying home to coordinate telepathic communication for us, as usual. If someone besides the three of us is out here, then it’s an unauthorized Belador. If another attack happens, I want to be able to prove without question that it’s not one of ours at fault.”
She grumbled, “This rain is driving me batshit crazy. I wish it would dump all at one time and be done with it. I hate this freaking drizzle. Let’s take the side roads. We’ll ge
t there faster at hyperspeed and no one’s going to see us this late at night with the rain.”
“Good point.”
She took off and Quinn fell into step with her, fully appreciating her frustrated tone. Weather aside, he’d been one tight wad of irritation since teleporting out of that blasted Tribunal meeting with a deadline hanging over his head.
Taking long strides at the speed of a human running, Evalle asked, “About Isak—”
Quinn growled at her. “Hell, Evalle, I’m not arguing just to be contrary. What if he walks up on a fray between preternaturals and the good guys get blown to smithereens?”
“Isak will be sure before he shoots anyone or anything.”
Quinn wasn’t as convinced, but he let it go. “We’ve had zero usable intel other than the single fact that Medb witches and warlocks are being tortured, then killed. The only power residue we’ve found is too much like Belador to deny. I’ve racked my brain to figure out how someone could be planting that residue. The simple answer is that either a Belador is aiding the killer, or we have a vigilante. We’re lucky the Medb don’t keep track of their people any better than they do or VIPER would be in the middle of this by now.”
“I almost feel sorry for the Medb. Almost.” She cut her gaze at him, her eyes filled with concern. “How soon before you have to report this?”
“I should have informed VIPER already, but the coalition turned its back on us when we were losing our powers.” Damn coalition. The whole point was to police preternaturals and protect humans. When the Belador power base had been damaged months ago, leaving Beladors vulnerable to Medb attacks, VIPER hadn’t lifted a finger to help.
Quinn shook his head. “As Maistir, the Beladors are my first responsibility. We need to find answers first, or any Belador fingered by the Medb would be dragged in to face a Tribunal. If the killer is one of ours, we’ll handle it then tell VIPER. That’s why, until then, the fewer people involved—humans especially—the better.”
She squeezed water from her ponytail that had been slapping her back. “I hear you, but here’s the bottom line on Isak. We’re not going to be able to keep him out of this anyhow. Wouldn’t you rather we know what he’s doing and utilize his resources? We need as many friendly feet prowling Atlanta as we can get right now. It’s getting tougher to keep our world hidden from humans, Quinn. We need to develop some human allies.”
“True. If it turns out to be a Belador at fault in this, it could be the tipping point that exposes all of us ...” He sighed, not wanting to give voice to the chaos and bloodshed that would follow.
“Have you heard anything from Trey recently?” she asked, jumping topics.
“Not a word in the past three hours.” They all depended on Trey to keep communication flowing between Quinn and other Beladors during a mission. Trey’s telepathic reach was unmatched, making him mission central.
“Did you convince Devon to use his cell phone tonight?”
Quinn grunted. “Finally. He knows there’s no room for ego in the middle of all this. He wasn’t happy about admitting his telepathy sucks, but he did.”
Just like I suck at being Maistir. Tzader had been a far better one for many years, but he deserved the break he was currently enjoying with Brina.
Tzader had entrusted Quinn with the position while he was gone and what had Quinn done? Pissed off the powerful Medb queen and now they might have a vigilante Belador on the loose.
Evalle waved her hand at some thought. “Our real friends are standing with us ... if Adrianna would get a move on and show up. That’s another reason Isak is going to be underfoot.”
“Why? With the exception of you, he hates nonhumans.”
She let a scoffing sound slide out. “He seems to have taken an interest in Adrianna.”
“Really? A witch?” Although calling Adrianna just a witch was an understatement now that she controlled the ancient power known as Witchlock.
“Yep, but she’s not making it easy for him.” Whatever thought had prompted that comment drew an evil smile on Evalle’s face.
“What if one of our people kills Isak or someone on his team, Evalle? Collateral damage works both ways.”
“First of all, we’re bound by an oath that penalizes the Belador and everyone in his or her family if we break it by killing when unprovoked. Number two—”
Quinn interrupted. “We gave our vows to Macha. We’re no longer responsible to the goddess now that Daegan booted her off of Treoir Island. We have yet to find out what he wants. He hasn’t shown his face in the human realm.” That rubbed Quinn. He still hadn’t gotten over the shock of learning that Macha was gone. Not that he wasn’t glad after hearing the whole story about Daegan, their new dragon king, but where was their new leader?
Quinn had been informed of the regime shift just after he’d left a Tribunal meeting, dazed over what had occurred. He’d been given a deadline to deliver Kizira’s body to Queen Maeve less than two days from now.
Then Evalle had informed him that the dragon throne, which Tzader, Evalle, Storm, Tristan and their resident Sterling Witch, Adrianna, had snuck into Tŵr Medb to steal, had turned out to be an actual dragon ... once Adrianna broke a curse Queen Maeve had used to imprison him.
Daegan was actually the two-thousand-year-old Treoir ancestor of their Belador queen, Brina.
Her uncle, to be specific.
Evalle cleared a big water puddle and kept going. “As I was saying, I also pointed out the risks to Isak when I tried to keep him out of this, Quinn.”
“Really?”
She turned a sour look on him. “I’m not so hardheaded that I wouldn’t try to first talk Isak out of joining this fight. I don’t want any of my friends harmed, but Isak said he and his team were soldiers. They’re human, but they train to fight nonhuman predators. He was doing that when I met him. He even offered us access to his extensive intelligence network, which right now might be far more useful than Nightstalkers. Including Grady.”
Evalle meant her favorite informant who generally produced the best intel. He was a ghoul she’d named after Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta, where he hung around.
“Just think on it,” she said, lifting her watch and muttering something ugly about an irritating, pint-sized diva. “I’m gonna split off and head to my patrol. You want to touch base near daylight?”
Evalle had a deadly reaction to the sun, a side effect of her strange mashup of DNA that marked her as an Alterant, a genetic mess of both Belador and Medb. She might possess a screwed-up mix of blood from both sides, but her heart belonged to the Beladors.
“Let’s meet at your place right after daylight,” Quinn suggested. “Maybe we can sort through intel with Storm.” Quinn couldn’t keep putting off what he had to tell her and Tzader. He added, “Even if Daegan is coming to the human world at some point, I think it’s time to bring Tzader here at least for a briefing.”
Quinn, where are you? Trey McCree’s voice shouted telepathically in his head so loudly, Quinn slapped his hands over his ears. Like that would help?
Trey understood his telepathic power and normally took care not to explode someone’s ears with the sound.
Quinn held up a hand for Evalle to let her know he was communicating with someone telepathically. He replied to Trey, I’m with Evalle on my way to Midtown. What’s wrong?
Devon Fortier called and he sounded bad, but that could just be his faulty telepathy. I only got his location and two words—Belador and attack—before he went dark. I can’t reach him by phone either. He’s not far, but I have no one to watch over my family. I’m not leaving them unprotected. With three warlock deaths, this could be a trap by the Medb to get us to leave our homes.
Quinn’s neck muscles tightened.
Devon wouldn’t have tried telepathy if he hadn’t been in dire straits. Quinn said, Stay where you are, Trey. Give me Devon’s location.
Trey gave him directions.
Rain started p
ouring down now, like impatient fingers tapping at Quinn to do something.
“What’s going on, Quinn?” Evalle’s body language changed from exasperated to attack mode in an instant. “My empathic ability is nothing like Storm’s, but I can feel your stress.” She whipped her head around, searching the area. “Who’s in danger?”
He shouted, “Follow me,” over the clamor of rain on every surface. With little chance of being seen by humans, Quinn headed back to the main road for a direct route to Midtown. He sped up even faster than the pace they’d set earlier, but Evalle had no trouble hanging with him.
If someone did notice, all they’d see in this flood would be two blurs sliding through the night.
Quinn repeated what Trey had told him.
Evalle had the stride of a gazelle. She asked, “Devon was patrolling Midtown?”
“No. He was supposed to be in an area two miles away. He might have followed someone, or something, and got made.”
“Trey’s not coming out here, is he?”
“No and I don’t want him to leave two women and a baby alone.” Quinn kept seeing the body of a female victim in his mind. A human who had happened into this mess. That was one image he’d like to unsee. Human police activity had hampered Storm’s and Lucien’s ability to process the preternatural parts of the crime scenes. One Belador within the Atlanta Police Department had been aiding those two in allowing as much access as possible.
Evalle nodded. “Trey’s wife and sister-in-law might be badass witches, but I agree. The Medb are going to demand retribution for these killings once they find out about them. Any time now I expect them to use it as an excuse to start attacking our people. I wouldn’t have left the twins or Feenix alone at our place if not for the ward Storm put around our building.”
She and Storm had opened their doors to a pair of eighteen-year-old male witches. They also had a room for Lanna, Quinn’s teenage cousin, but she was at another location recovering from a brutal attack by a mage, who was now dead. Good thing, or Quinn would rip him apart by hand. Mother Mattie, an elderly white witch, and her Fae half sister were watching over Lanna for him.
