Dark Fates (A Paranormal Anthology)

by Carrie Ann Ryan

  Tyler stirred first, easing off her slightly and cupping her cheek with a trembling hand. “You okay, sweetheart?”

  All she could do was smile at him, drunk on lust, love, and blood.

  With a chuckle, Tyler tried to shrug Sargon off his back. “Get the fuck off me. You almost tore my damn throat out.”

  “You’re just used to Lisabetta’s kitten fangs sipping from you,” Sargon replied with a sleepy murmur. “This time you suffered the bite of a lion.”

  Tyler grunted and gave up trying to push Sargon off. “I feel so weird. Good, really good, but weak and dizzy. It’s like my heart is having a harder time beating, but that’s not really it either. I felt the good buzz before from drinking from Lisabetta, but fuck, Sargon, your blood is like aged whiskey versus light beer.”

  She splashed some water in Tyler’s face, getting Sargon as well. While both men grumbled and rolled off of her, she gave Tyler a mocking glare. “Light beer?”

  He moved onto his back and pulled her onto his lap. “Sorry, baby, bad analogy. More like a delicious wine. Still potent, but I can take more of you without passing out.”

  Sargon moved through the water so he lay next to them, putting one arm behind Tyler’s head to cushion his skull from the hard marble and the other around Lisabetta’s hips. She turned to look at her Maker and loved the relaxed, almost joyful look in his dark eyes.

  She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “Thank you, both of you, for not giving up on me.”

  Tyler kissed the top of her head. “I was born to be yours.”

  With a small smile tilting his lips, still stained by Tyler’s blood, Sargon said, “And you, my beautiful girl, were meant to be mine.”

  For once she didn’t argue with Sargon, couldn’t. The truth of his words rang in her soul like a bell, and for the first time in six hundred years, she was able to let the past remain in the past. She would never forget her family, never forget what had been done to her, but she could let it become part of her history rather than her future. Turning in Tyler’s arms, she lay across his chest, listening to his heart’s slow beat as she reached out and caressed Sargon’s cheek. He smiled at her then cuddled closer so his head rested on Tyler’s shoulder while he held them both close. Closing her eyes, Lisabetta whispered, “I love you, both of you.”

  “I love you too, baby,” Tyler said in a sleep voice.

  Sargon caressed her back with his large hand in a gentle motion. “I will love you for all of eternity.”

  She smiled and allowed herself to sink into their embrace, no longer alone and incredibly blessed.

  Forbidden Rescue

  A Watchers Novella

  By Heather Long

  Forbidden Rescue

  Fox Arada needs a couple days off from the daily battle of his life. Instead? A terrified woman appeared at his hotel door followed by the men trying to kill her. Fox—a kitsune, and the best Watcher at Enoch, Kincaid, and Sage—reacts with deadly force against the men, but in doing so reveals his secret to the woman. Now, they must both face the consequences of his forbidden actions. Reluctant to kill or turn her in, he kidnaps her until he can determine why she fascinates him.

  Jubilee Spector wanted her brother off drugs. Ratting out the local drug dealers and busting their operation seemed like a good idea until one of them attacked her and she had to run for her life. When the most gorgeous man she’s ever met cuts down the dealer with tooth and claw, she’s introduced to a dark and dangerous world where demons, nephilim and humans work together to preserve the balance between heaven and hell.

  Neither knows that she holds a secret so dangerous it will change the world of the Watchers forever…

  The Watchers

  Fox Arada – Kitsune, sworn to Enoch and born of the nephilim’s blood.

  Aja – She-cat, coordinator for clean-up teams. She’s known for her temper.

  Cara – Healer and dove shifter, she is relatively young and new to the Watchers.

  Enoch – A nephilim and part of the triumvirate that leads the Watchers.

  Kincaid – A demon and part of the triumvirate that leads the Watchers.

  Sage – A witch and part of the triumvirate the leads the Watchers.

  Jubilee – A human who is saved by Fox and proves to be housing a colossal secret that indicates a change in the stalemate of the war.

  Glossary of terms

  Blood-bonded – The exchange of blood with a nephilim or a demon that transforms a human into something more. Some abilities are exchanged, and longer life is bestowed. The bonded can also call upon their patron; it is a power exchange and a guarantee of shelter on both sides. With the help of a witch, the final transformation allows the blood-bonded to become shifters as well. The type of animal is not predetermined, though all cats are blood-bonded to nephilim and all wolves are blood-bonded to demons.

  Watcher – Nephilim, demons, witches, and blood-bonded humans sworn to avoid all-out war between heaven and hell. They stand as the gray line between the two divine worlds.

  Nephilim – The children of heaven’s sons and humans, they possess divine gifts and broke with heaven.

  Demons – The children of hell’s sons and humans, they possess divine gifts and broke with hell.

  Witches – Powerful non-humans, most often female, though male witches exist, they owe allegiance to the natural world and not to heaven or hell.

  Kitsune – Japanese fox shifter, associated with chaos. Only one Kitsune exists within the Watchers.

  Cat shifters – The blood-bonded of the nephilim.

  Wolf shifters – The blood-bonded of the demons.

  Chapter One

  Jubilee stared at the numbers of the elevator as they continued to climb. Why had she gotten into an elevator going up? Worse, why had she gotten into an elevator in which someone had pressed several upper floor buttons at random? Damn kids. She needed to get to the first floor and out of the hotel. When the elevator continued past the twentieth floor, her stomach bottomed out. Fisting her hands, she bounced from her heels to her toes and back again.

  “Come on. Come on.”

  The chant didn’t speed the elevator up, but, when it halted, she squeezed through the doors before they’d finished opening and ducked out onto the twenty-seventh floor.

  After looking one way and then the other, Jubilee dashed down the quiet hallway and straight for the stairwell. Sweat slid down her spine, and her heart hammered. Her old beat-up leather coat was too damn hot, but she didn’t dare take it off. She needed her hands free.

  Thank God, she didn’t run into anyone in the hallway. Pushing the stairwell door open, she paused and listened. Hearing nothing suspicious, she raced down the stairs and winced every time her boots skidded on the metal lips. She was making an ungodly amount of noise. A door thumped open below her, and she froze.

  A man's voice snarled. “Go up,” she heard him say. Then he said something else, but she couldn’t quite make out the words. She didn’t have to, though. She recognized the voice. It was Andropov, her brother’s dealer and a cold-blooded killer. If he caught her…well, she’d be lucky if all he did was slit her throat.

  “Find that fucking bitch.”

  Yeah, she didn’t think she would be lucky. Footsteps pounded against the stairs. They were coming up and getting closer.

  Fuck Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck.

  Backing up the stairs, Jubilee tried to climb more quietly, but how the others couldn’t hear the thunder of her heart she had no idea. One level up, she found the door to the twenty-third floor and got it open. As soon as she put her feet on the hallway carpet, she began running. An older couple, dressed in clothes that probably cost more than she could make in a month, came around the corner ahead of her, and she forced herself to walk. It didn’t surprise her when the woman stared askance in her direction and the man nudged his wife to the side.

  She knew what they saw, what everyone saw—a scrawny girl with black spikey hair, too much makeup, a hollow face wit
h too-sharp cheekbones. Then there was the black. From her lace top to her leather jacket, careworn jeans, and motorcycle boots, Jubilee looked exactly what she was, a street rat who did not belong in the expensive part of Manhattan.

  Well, fuck them.

  Lifting her chin, she kept a steady pace and strode down the hall. The elevator was a bad idea but preferable to being in the stairwell with Andropov and his goons. A ding sounded from ahead, and she halted. In the middle of the hallway, she had nowhere to hide, and she dropped the relaxed act and darted down a cross hall. The hotel was laid out like a big rectangle.

  Running, she made it to the next hall and around the corner before she glanced back.

  Two men strode in her direction. She didn’t know who they were, but she recognized the type.

  Shit.

  Where to? All she saw behind her was another endless hallway filled with closed—and locked—doors.

  Daring to look back at her pursuers, she found them closing in. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. They’d seen her, and they broke into a run. Cursing, she spun and ran like hell. She made it to the end of the hall and flung herself around another corner. This would bring her right back to the first hall, and maybe she could make it to the elevators.

  A hand fisted her jacket and yanked her backward. Screaming, she whirled and let her momentum propel her into Thug Number One. He was huge, but she’d been fighting bullies her whole life. Slamming her steel-reinforced boot down on his foot, she was rewarded by his grunt, but he didn’t let her go. The other guy was there, and he got hold of her around the middle. Kicking out with her legs, she struck the first man over and over, finally landing the money shot.

  It was his turn to curse as he went down. Steel-toed boot to the junk had to hurt. Her captor slammed her into the wall, and the world went spotty. Blood filled her mouth, and she turned in time to catch the back of his hand across her cheekbone. Pain exploded in her face, and she fell, but she was also free.

  She scrambled to her feet and started running.

  “Fucking bitch!” The man was after her again, but Clutches-his-Nuts was still on the ground. Ahead of her, a door opened. Jubilee didn’t have time to think. She hurtled straight toward it, squeezed through the opening, and slammed it shut even as Thug Number Two hit the door bodily. The thud vibrated the wood.

  Three things struck her at once. A very muscular Asian man wearing only a towel filled her view, he was dangerous, and she was alone with him. She jerked her gaze up from his rippling pecs to meet the most darkly handsome face she’d ever seen. But his eyes…they were cool and appraising and fierce. Her stomach cramped, and terror swamped her. He filled the room. His presence occupied every inch of the available space.

  If Andropov and his goons scared her, this guy filled her with panic. She had to get out of the room. Whirling, she grabbed the door handle and twisted. Somehow, between dashing into the room and seeing its occupant, she’d forgotten how close behind her pursuers had actually been.

  The two goons filled the doorway, and she was face to face with a gun.

  I’m going to die. The thought barely had time to crystallize before she flew backward and landed with a bounce on the bed. The man in the towel was suddenly between her and the goons. Acting on instinct, she rolled off to land on the floor on the other side of the bed.

  They were going to shoot him, but the gun didn’t make any sound, at all. Crawling on her hands and knees, she peeked around the edge of the bed and froze.

  The man with the gun lay on the carpet—dead. His face. Oh, my God. His face. What was left of it had been torn from his forehead to his cheekbone to his throat—not that he had a throat left. It’d been sliced wide open, and blood soaked the carpet beneath him. His mouth was twisted in a rictus of horror. A thud echoed through the room, and she glanced up to find the second thug dangling from the towel man’s upraised arm, his head canted at an odd angle. The door to the hallway was closed, but it didn’t matter. Her erstwhile rescuer stood between her and the only avenue of escape.

  As if reminded of her presence, he let Thug Number Two drop and pivoted to look down at her. His eyes had turned a deep topaz and seemed lit from within. She opened her mouth to scream and a squeak escaped. Retreating, she ducked behind the bed like a child in the hope he wouldn’t do to her what he’d just done to Thug One and Thug Two.

  The whisper of movement rasped over her nerves, and she braced her back against the wall and pulled her knees up to her chest. Somehow, she wrapped her hand around a power cord and tugged the alarm clock off the table and into her hand. As weapons went, the clock wasn’t much, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  Tall-Hot-and-Deadly squatted down a foot away from her. All the moisture in her mouth fled because he’d lost the towel, and, if his chest was a work of art, his thighs and his… Don’t look. She jerked her head up to meet the considering gaze in his topaz eyes.

  “Hello, little one.”

  His voice rolled over her like creamy butterscotch, and her panties went wet. She felt her eyes widen, and all the oxygen backed up in her lungs. A person could drown in that voice.

  “Are you hurt?”

  No. She was just fine. As long as he kept talking. She loosened her death grip on the alarm clock. “What?”

  He extended his arm and brushed two fingers against her bruised cheek. Electricity flooded through her, and her face pulsed at the contact. She flinched, and he withdrew the touch.

  “It might be broken.” He was so calm. “We’ll have to get that looked at. Did they hurt you anywhere else?”

  He looked her over, and, belatedly, she realized his manner reflected true concern.

  “Bruises.” One word. It fit. She hurt where they’d slammed her into the wall. And her stomach ached from being squeezed in the hard band of Thug Number Two’s arm. Thug Number Two with the broken neck. Fear soured the shivers of lust quaking in her system, and she bit her lip.

  “Are you going to rip my face off?”

  Would it be insane to ask him to kiss her before he did? The unbidden thought popped into her head, and she shuddered. Clamping her knees together, she tried to think of a reason why she wanted him to kiss her, beyond the obvious sexy-as-sin body. She dipped a look down to his cock. It seemed to stiffen under her regard, and her fingertips tingled with the urge to touch.

  She was a street rat, not a streetwalker. Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought.

  “No.” He chuckled, but the amusement on his face faded almost as quickly as it appeared. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with you.”

  Somehow, the response was a lot less comforting than she’d hoped. Jubilee swallowed and tried to look away from the gorgeous man, but that left her staring at the torn-open throat of Thug Number One. Sour bile filled her mouth.

  “Don’t look at him, little one.” He rose with a fluid grace. The muscles of his thighs flexed, and he turned.

  She forgot all about the dead men. His ass was a sculpted work of art, all tight and hard, and she bet she could bounce a quarter off it, but she’d rather bounce on his thighs. Her sex clenched, and a fresh wave of dampness escaped.

  The pace of her heart escalated. The man reached for the coverlet on the bed and yanked it off with a swift gesture. It took her a moment to realize he’d done so to wrap it around the body on the floor. Gratitude waded into the fray of her conflicting emotions, and, when he was done with the first body, he turned back and stripped the sheet from the bed.

  A little hysterical giggle bubbled up in her throat. She was alone in a hotel room with the hottest naked guy she’d ever seen while he dealt with the bodies of two men he’d killed. Killed.

  Reality crashed in around her, and she bolted to her feet. Why the fuck am I still sitting here? Getting the hell away from the psychopath—granted, exceptionally sexy psychopath—made a fuck-ton more sense than sticking around to become Body Number Three.

  She’d almost made it to the door when those hot arms closed around her and caged
her back against his naked body. The warm, tangy, masculine scent of him coated her, and she stopped struggling immediately. Hell, she could feel the weight of his cock pressed right against her ass, and she wanted to rub against him.

  “I’m losing my mind,” she moaned.

  “Shh.” His voice wrapped her up more snugly than the linens he’d used to shroud the dead men. He stroked a hand over her short, spikey hair, and she wished she’d had time to shower. It wasn’t fair that she was all dirty and sweaty and pressed up against that wall of muscle.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, little one. But it’s not safe for you out there.”

  His lips were pressed right up to her ear, and every word stoked a fresh shiver of anticipation, so much so that she didn’t quite process the words. “But you killed them.” Oh God, he’d killed them. She was locked in a room with a killer, and she was running from drug dealers. How the hell had she gotten herself in this mess?

  “I can hear others out there, and, from their conversation, they are looking for you.” He stroked her hair again, and the tension began to bleed out of her. “How many were there?”

  “Four?” She didn’t know, not really, and she didn’t care. “Andropov probably has an entire posse with him. This hotel is his favorite, and word on the street is he keeps a mistress here. I just wanted him to leave my brother alone.” The confession poured out of her.

  “I can make that happen,” and it was a sensuous promise. He carried her over to the bed and set her down. “Stay put, I’m going to make a call.”

  She wanted to weep when he let her go because he took all that delicious heat with him. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The need to flee had been supplanted by the need to do exactly as he’d said.