Supernatural Shadow: An Urban Fantasy Novel

by Fatima Fayez

  My body tingled as I remembered all the places where Rafael had stolen kisses the night before. Pleasured washed over me. It had been a while since I had felt that good. Everything about the previous night had been incredible. I thought about waking Rafael for a repeat performance of what we had done just hours earlier.

  I resisted the temptation and silently slipped out of bed. I padded over to the window and closed the curtain completely, shrouding the room in darkness. I waited until my eyes adjusted to the dimness, then walked to the door. Doing my best to remain quiet, I left the room and softly closed the door behind me.

  In the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of orange juice and headed over to the couch. I took a sip, the taste bitter in my mouth.

  I sat down and picked up my laptop. Maybe Noor was right. I had an attractive man in my bed, and instead of being with him I was checking for my next job. I clearly had issues.

  The website loaded quickly, and I browsed through the listings. Nothing seemed interesting.

  A low sound made me raise my head. Noor emerged from the hallway in a t-shirt that fell to mid-thigh, her hair disheveled and eyes bleary. She blinked at me as she took in my pose: I was sitting cross-legged on the couch with my laptop in my lap.

  "You've got to be kidding me," she said. She turned back, glancing at my closed bedroom door. "Did he leave?"

  "No.”

  Her eyes widened. "You mean he's still in your bed and you're out here on your laptop?" She was outraged. Noor placed her hands on her hips. "Are you insane? You are insane. I'm living with a madwoman, aren't I?"

  "Hush, you'll wake him up."

  Her arms fell to her sides and she marched over to me. "What is it? Wasn't he good? Did he want to do weird stuff? Do you need me to get rid of him?" Her exasperated smile turned serious.

  "It was good." I allowed myself a satisfied smirk. It had been more than good.

  She threw herself on the couch beside me and pulled her knees to her chest, stretching her t-shirt over them. She faced me, eyes sparkling. "Where's my thank you?"

  "Thank you, Noor." I resisted rolling my eyes.

  "You're welcome." A smug smile appeared on her face.

  "What happened with Leroy? Did you leave him in your bed?" I asked her.

  She sighed, throwing her head back. "Unfortunately, not all of us are fortunate in love."

  "Why? What happened?" When Rafael and I had left them at the club, they were dancing up a storm.

  "His ex happened."

  "His ex?"

  Noor shrugged. "Yeah. She showed up and started causing a scene."

  "Why? When did they break up?"

  Noor raised her head and stared at me silently.

  "No." I shook my head. "He was cheating on her?"

  She let out a heavy sigh and threw her head on the back of the couch again. She draped an arm over her eyes. "Why does this always happen to me?"

  It was true. I might complain about my ex-boyfriend, but for a hopeful romantic, Noor had the worst luck with guys. She claimed the half-demon side attracted the bad boys to her. Despite her less-than-ideal encounters with the opposite sex, she never allowed her bad experiences to sour her faith. She was ever the optimist.

  "She was still his girlfriend?" I had to make sure.

  "Yes, at the time." Her lips twisted into a grimace. "Now she's his ex."

  "How did you meet him again?"

  "He kept coming back to the store and flirting with me. He's been asking me out for some time after he got his tattoo." She couldn't quite hide the note of disappointment in her voice.

  "His girlfriend never showed up with him?"

  Noor shook her head. "No, and he didn't mention her at the time. I kept turning him down. He's not entirely my type. You saw the way he kept smirking at everything, but after harassing you for not dating, I thought, 'Why not give him a chance?' and I asked him to find a friend for you."

  "Thank you?" I felt bad that my date worked out and hers didn't.

  "Dating sucks," she said.

  "Yeah, it does." Despite what happened last night, my opinion regarding dating hadn't changed.

  She lifted her head off the back of the couch. "So, seriously, how was last night?"

  "The truth?"

  "Yes," she said excitedly.

  Before I could answer, I noticed movement in the hallway and saw Rafael standing there.

  "Good morning," he said. He walked over to us, smiled at Noor, and bent down to give me a long kiss. My heart was racing by the time he broke it off. I stared at him with all thoughts knocked completely out of my head.

  "Thank you for yesterday. I had fun." He gave me a crooked grin. "I'd love to stick around, but unfortunately I have to go to work. I left my card on your bedside table. It has my number. Call me."

  “Okay.” I nodded as he turned and left.

  Noor turned to me and tilted her head.

  Rafael gave me one last smoldering smile before he closed the door behind him.

  Noor opened her mouth to speak. I picked up a cushion and smacked her in the face before she could comment on our exchange.

  "Ouch." She caught the cushion as it fell from her face. "Fine, I won't say anything, but you just allowed a sexy-as-sin man to leave. Are you going to call him?"

  "I'm not sure." I raised my fingers to my lips and traced where his met mine. The little nip at the end of Rafael's kiss reminded me of certain other love bites from the past.

  "He's wasted on you." Noor narrowed her eyes at me. "You're thinking of your ex, aren't you?"

  "Yes," I admitted.

  "This won't go the same way your last relationship did," she assured me.

  I hoped not, for Rafael's sake more than my own.

  I had killed my ex-boyfriend.

  Chapter Twelve

  "So you killed your ex-boyfriend. That doesn't mean you should put yourself on a permanent dating ban," Noor said.

  I just looked at her.

  She raised her hands in frustration. "Why do you insist on punishing yourself? Sebastian was horrible. I still don't know how you stayed with him for an entire year. I would have killed him myself if I didn't think you'd come after me."

  My reason for staying with him was simple: he had met me at a weak moment. I was emotionally vulnerable at the time and grateful for the affection and attention. As a result, I turned a blind eye to his shortcomings. By the time I came to my senses, I was too entrenched in the relationship and thought it was best to stay with him because it was comfortable. I didn't want to start over with someone new. It happened more than women cared to admit.

  “I’m in my thirties. You think I’d be better at this by now.”

  Noor shrugged. “Relationships are weird. Sebastian was obnoxious, but you were too deep in the relationship to see how patronizing he was. He was the first guy in a while to accept that you were stronger than he was. It made you blind to his flaws.”

  “I guess,” I conceded. It still chafed at me how I had allowed myself to be in that relationship for so long. I had killed him for the good of the world, more than for myself. Or that’s how I reassured myself, anyway. “I don’t think he believed I was strong enough to kill him.”

  “But you did and it’s the best thing you’ve done. I’m loving you sharing your vulnerable side but, alas, work calls and I need to take a shower.” Noor winked at me. “We can have another session when I’m back.”

  I threw a cushion at her. She ducked away, got off the couch and disappeared into her room.

  The smile stayed on my face, as I returned my attention to my laptop, skimming the job listings for one that would be a challenge. There were a couple of CEOs and requests that they be found dead of heart attacks. I scrolled past them.

  The average person wouldn't think that assassinations would be in very high demand, but they'd be wrong. There were always angry people in the world. And vengeance was a powerful emotion.

  My path to becoming an assassin was a twisted one. My mother had intr
oduced me to this world when I was young. She’d taught me how to continuously find the website as it jumped from server to server on the dark web, constantly evading the authorities. The website was simply another training exercise for me. It was a tool she used to locate targets for me to kill. She always selected demons because she had a focused hatred for them. Looking back, I realized she had an irrational enmity toward the creatures. Unfortunately, the effects of her hatred had trickled down to me.

  Her hatred of demons helped me identify demons in whatever guise they wore. It made me excel at hunting them down. I never knew how they had offended her. Her driving force was her burning desire to annihilate as many demons as possible.

  After she disappeared, the website became an easy way for me to earn money. The people sending me payments had no idea how old I was. They had no idea that the assassin who took the job was a teenager at the time. The website helped me survive.

  As time went on, I established my own rules about choosing a target. My targets were no longer exclusively demons — any supernatural was fair game. The first rule was that the target couldn't be underage or too young. We all made stupid mistakes when we were teenagers, and young people were usually the targets of other young people, who created the bounty on impulse and would later regret their decision. I couldn't remove the listing from the website, but I would never accept the job.

  My second rule was that the target had to have some sort of criminal record. I needed to know that I was doing some good in the world. The road to hell is paved with good deeds. I had no illusions about what I did, but I needed to know it was justified in some manner.

  The research helped me easily filter jobs that I wanted. One time I had seen a "humanitarian" on the website, and after doing my own research, I learned that he had a hidden appetite for children. I took on the job pro bono.

  I kept scrolling. On the fourth page, I found something unusual: a listing for a vampire hit.

  Noor stepped into the hall holding a towel. Her hair was wet. She raised the towel to her head and rubbed it dry. "Found anything?"

  "There's a vampire on here." I clicked on the listing.

  "Vampire? That's strange, isn't it?" She made her way over to me.

  "Yes, it is." It was more than strange. Vampires didn't normally outsource. I hadn’t given my last job a second thought, given the events of the previous night, but I now realized it was strange indeed for those vampires to be at the drop-off location. What was going on?

  "Who is he?" Noor peered at the monitor.

  A photograph of a blond vampire with dark eyes flicked onto the screen. It named him as Sloan Nicholi. I scrolled past his photo to see how much the job paid. I switched to a different window and logged into a criminal database Hubert had given me access to. "It says here that he's got a criminal record dating back to the 1920s."

  A whistle escaped Noor's lips as she read some of the charges. "Wow, not a great guy, is he?"

  "Why do you think he's on here?" I studied the listing. "It has six hours until it expires. Think it's a setup?"

  She shook her head. "I think people get mad at vampires the same as everyone else. This guy just probably didn't think of the fallout if someone actually found out that they were the one that placed the hit. Or it's another vampire that doesn't want it traced back to them. You know what their politics are like. It could be somebody from their own bloodline."

  “So, should I take the job?”

  “Do your research. If it’s legit, then yes, take it. It pays well.” She continued to dry her hair.

  I stared at the vampire and committed his features to memory. With thoughts of Sebastian in the forefront of my mind, I knew what my answer would be. I would take the job. It was time to go vampire hunting.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tracking vampires was tricky, and there were two types of vampires: they either went underground and disappeared for years, or they were everywhere and taunted you.

  I wondered which kind this vampire, Sloan Nicholi, would be.

  After Noor left for work, I finished having breakfast and walked across the street to the Barcelona Cathedral. The tourists moved like ants as they took their photos, mingled at the many cafes, and sat on and around the stone blocks lined up in front of the cathedral. A lone guitarist played for the crowd, and a few children strolled over to his guitar case, dropping in spare change. It wasn't the busiest time of day yet, but it was still noisy.

  I made my way around the cathedral until I stood under the bridge, looking up at Mateu.

  Within moments he had a partial invisibility spell wrapped around himself and he scrambled down near me. A partial invisibility spell meant humans couldn't see him, but supernaturals could. He winked at me.

  I leaned against the wall. "You can stop asking around about that demon."

  "Found him, have you?" Mateu almost looked impressed. "That was fast. I hadn't turned up anything useful, but okay. Let me guess, you're interested in getting information on somebody else?"

  I nodded.

  "Who is it this time?"

  I opened my mouth and ran my tongue over my incisors. I didn't want to say vampire out loud with the other gargoyles so close. Their ears would be listening. I couldn't afford to have the other vampires catch wind of what I was doing and then descend on me like a plague of locusts.

  Mateu went silent for a couple minutes. I spent the time listening to the guitar player around the corner. He was so good that the crowd of tourists spilled out to where we were standing. Mateu finally spoke. "I heard there's a new lounge in Eixample. Have you heard of it? It opened a few weeks ago. You'll need an escort to get in."

  An exclusive vampire club. That sounded promising. Most vampires had a deep desire to peacock whenever they had the opportunity. It had to do with their competitive hierarchy. I was working blind on this job, so I would take what I could get. "You think I'll make new friends there?"

  Mateu knew vampires as well as I did, if not better. "I would guess so, but be careful. I don't have a good feeling about this."

  "Do you want to hear about who I met recently?" I asked him. He'd love this gossip. "You'll never guess."

  "Is it the man you were seen with last night?" Mateu asked slyly.

  I gaped at him. "How do you know about that?"

  The gargoyle cackled at my expression. "Was there a man? I just made that up."

  My face flushed at how easily I had given myself away. I remembered how Rafael and I had stumbled to my apartment. In our haste, I hadn't taken the usual precautions to ensure that I wasn't being followed.

  I changed the subject. "No, this was a new person that I never expected to meet."

  The gargoyle's eyes lit up in anticipation. "Who was it?"

  "Shall I give you three guesses?"

  Mateu grinned. He loved games. "Describe this person in three words."

  I thought about it. "Hmm…tall."

  Mateu rolled his eyes.

  "Scary."

  The gargoyle looked surprised. He hadn't expected me to use that word. His expression turned thoughtful.

  I continued. "Works for someone scarier."

  "The Enforcer," Mateu guessed instantly.

  I laughed. "That was good. I hadn't expected you to get it so quickly. Was it the scary part?"

  "Yes." Mateu smirked. "You can't get things past me. How did you meet him?"

  "Long story. Short version is we're meeting again."

  Mateu opened his mouth, then snapped it shut with a click. I could almost see the wheels turning as he thought over my answer. "Do you want to meet him again?"

  I shrugged. "I think it would be interesting to see what happens."

  "Can I be there when that takes place?" The gargoyle almost hopped. I'd never seen him so excited. He wanted to be there front and center for any showdown that would occur between me and the Enforcer. All the gargoyles would die of envy if they found out that Mateu had access to gossip on Diego's man. Mateu would have talk for ages.
>
  "Depends. Who are you cheering for?" I raised an eyebrow.

  "You'll find out when I'm there." Mateu cackled. His laughter was infectious.

  "No, I'm not accepting that as an answer."

  He refused to tell me who he'd support, and the gargoyle was still guffawing as I walked away.

  I wandered over to watch the musician and thought about my next move. It was time for me to set up my ticket to the vampire lounge. I had an acquaintance who acted as a low-level informant from time to time, but I couldn't ask him to accompany me. It would expose our working relationship to all the other vampires, and I'd lose an asset.

  The only other option was to ask Ibrahim. I walked through the winding paths along the cathedral and emerged onto Via Laietana. I stroked my dagger absentmindedly. There was a chance I could find Ibrahim at Miguel's. I'd make my way there before I tried his home, since the restaurant was closer.

  Despite rumors to the contrary, vampires could indeed handle the sun. The older the vampire, the stronger their ability to remain out in the sun for extended periods of time. New vampires were drained faster and therefore preferred a shaded spot under a tree on a sunny day.

  And this sunny day appeared to also be my lucky day. I had saved myself a long walk. As I approached the restaurant, I saw Ibrahim at his usual table in the corner. It overlooked the street. Ibrahim always said that the years may pass but people never changed, and he enjoyed watching them stroll by him.

  "Good morning," I greeted him, slipping into an empty seat. The morning crowd was sparse at Miguel's. The busiest times were lunch and dinner. There were still a few people seated, but they didn't appear to be shifters, so I knew I could rely on a modicum of privacy with the vampire.

  "Good morning, Aisha." Ibrahim’s gray eyes studied me. His high cheekbones gave him a regal look. The dark-purple shirt he wore offset his fine brown locks perfectly. Not for the first time I wondered who he had been before he was turned.

  "I need a favor." There was no need to engage in small talk.