Slayborn (Fae Shadow Hunter)
Eat, Slay, Love
Isabella King
Copyright © 2019 by Isabella King and Tempest Books
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
From the Author
Chapter One
You Don’t Have the Tits
The minute I’m done I roll onto my back, grab a pack of cigarettes, and stick one in my mouth.
When I snap the lighter to life, it illuminates everything the darkness hides. Drifts of clothes—lacy underthings and men’s boxer-briefs—draped haphazardly over piles of glass bottles and beer cans. Crumpled tin foil and white-dusted mirrors.
“Something stronger?” The man next to me sits up on the edge of the stained mattress under us, reaching for his shirt. I’ve already forgotten the guy’s name—Devon, maybe? Derek? Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Not with a body like that. I lean back, taking a drag and flicking the lighter back on so I can appreciate the ass I’ve tapped tonight.
“I got some nice stuff from that ogre under the bridge in Goldengate Park,” he continues, fumbling around for his pants. “Legit. Totally pure.”
Normally, that would be enough to snag my attention. Most of the Crux you find in the city is complete and utter shit. Cut with flour, baking soda, God knows what else. That’s the stuff I can afford. Pure Crux, though? There’s no way in hell I’m getting my hands on any of that. Not unless I find a dealer that accepts I.O.U.s.
Almost as if he can hear what I’m thinking, the guy—Derek, Dirk, Dink, whatever—pipes up again. “You know that half-fae down at the docks? Fawkes?” he asks, stepping into his jeans. I can’t help but feel a pang of disappointment. “I hear he’s looking for someone to clear out an old arcade on the pier. Guess he wants to revive it as like, an adult club, or something.”
“I’ll pass, gorgeous. I got all the adult entertainment I need right here.” I prop the cigarette between my lips and lean back, squinting and framing the guy with my fingers. “You just need to lose those pants again.”
He ignores me, yanking his fly up with a harsh zip. “Why not give it a shot? I heard you could use the cash.”
Asshole. I narrow my eyes and flop back onto the mattress. Dawn’s a long way off. I’m tempted to hit up the 24-hour liquor place down the block, grab myself a forty—but as much as I hate to admit it, Dink is right. My bank account is a joke. I don’t know if I can even afford a forty at this point.
Malcome is expecting me to take care of that gig in the kid’s park on 22nd. I’m sure it’s not gonna pay well—just a couple of riled up fenodyrees, by the sound of it. Hairy, ratty little fuckers that are about as much of a threat as a poodle. Not exactly my idea of an exciting evening, but still, I’d better get it over with before he passes the job off to someone else. Work’s slow these days—I’m not the only Slayborn that’s strapped for cash, a fact Malcome is well aware of.
“So? You want me to put in a good word, or…?”
I nearly jump at the voice beside me. Dink. I’d almost forgotten that he was there. I shoot him a glare and draw my knees up to my chest. Now that his dick is tucked back in his pants, he’s losing my favor fast.
“Why?” I snort. “Does your word mean something?”
He runs a hand through his hair, frowning. “You know, I heard you were a bitch,” he snaps. “But I figured, ‘Hey, she’s Anna and Conor Gallagher’s daughter. Old money. Figured I’d give you a chance. Guess I was wrong.”
I bark out a laugh. “You? Give me a chance? What a fucking riot.” I roll out of bed, digging for something that doesn’t smell like blood, Crux, or straight-up shit. I don’t find anything. “Look, bucko. You’re a good fuck and all, but I don’t need your charity.”
“Jesus, it’s not charity. You’re Slayborn too, right? I’m trying to do you a favor. Solidarity and all that.”
“You wanna do me a favor?” I ask, snatching a half-filled bottle from the nightstand and taking a swig. “Then shut your mouth—unless you’re planning on using it for something more enjoyable.”
At this Dink’s face pulls back into a grin and he saunters over, popping the button on his jeans back open.
“Lie down.”
I shoot the guy a look, but his expression is dead serious. I lift my eyebrows. “I got shit to do,” I say.
“I can make it quick.” He grabs the bottle from my hand, taking a long pull and jerking his head toward the mattress. “Trust me.”
“You have ten minutes,” I say, leaning back on the bed. He’s already crawling toward me, licking his lips, smirking as I spread my legs.
“Only need five, baby.”
Once Dink is out and snoring, I hop out of bed and shrug on the cleanest outfit that I can find: a big green army jacket with a curious stain on the right sleeve, a ratty baseball tee, jean shorts and a lucky find—fishnet leggings. I grab the only pair of shoes I work hard to keep track of, shitty leather combat boots, and carry them out into the hall by their laces.
Before my place basically became a fucking drug den, it had been a respectable establishment. Gallagher Manor. Height of modern Bay Area style. Envy of the neighbors. And now, a drain on the local property values.
My parents were pretty well-off in their day, both descended from lines of Irish Slayborn that go farther back than anyone bothered recording. With them gone, though, my last remaining relative is my grandmother. I’m sure she’s just as wealthy, and she’s probably done a hell of a lot better with her money than I did. Still, she lives off of basically nothing on a slice of green Irish countryside outside Dublin. She doesn’t own a car or a microwave or even a TV—just her own boggy little pit and a pair of ancient horses.
She’d shit herself dead if she saw the state of my parents’ place now. It’s been four years since they died in Dublin, half a world away. Scratch that—since they were murdered.
It had only taken a year for me to sell most of their stuff. Fancy antique armoires and gilded cutlery from their wedding that’d been passed down through eleven generations of Irish blood. I’d hocked all of dad’s nice suits. Mom’s finest jewelry.
The only thing I kept is her old claddagh ring, and only because it wouldn’t wash two bucks at a pawn shop. I keep it turned in so no one thinks I’m free. I doubt anyone would want me to be, or else they might be expected to stick around after we fucked. No pretenses, no promises, no problems. That’s my catchphrase. I should get it tattooed on my ass so I don’t have to explain myself every time I walk away.
“Crux run?” A waify girl with long black hair and smeared mascara emerges from a bedroom down the hall. I see a couple of guys, buck naked and passed out, sprawled over her—over my bed—behind her. “We’re out.”
“What do I look like, your fucking mom? Get your own drugs.” I light another cigarette, then jerk my head back the way I came. “Guy down there has good shit. Bet he’d share.”
>
Her eyes widen, hungry. Everyone is always hungry. A little Crux is never enough, and no human drug can fill the void it leaves behind.
“Yeah?” The girl asks. “From that guy in Goldengate Park?”
“Mhm.” I begin down the hall, but pause. “Oh,” I say over my shoulder. “Lose the panties. It’ll speed up the process.”
She scurries down the hallway, slipping into the room where I left Dink and latching the door shut behind her. I can’t help but shake my head. I never used to let people crash here. Not after my parents died. I wanted the house empty. No one in their room. Dust on all the furniture.
With no people around, though, the only thing to fill the house was ghosts. They moved in, relentless, as if they sensed the empty rooms and came to occupy them. And so instead, I started filling that emptiness with alcohol. Bump after bump of Crux. An endless parade of men and women, strung out, looking for sex, drugs, all trying to fill their own voids. All under the guise of keeping me—just another pitiful, pitiable,orphaned Slayborn—company.
Over time, I gave up trying to keep them out. If anything, I leaned into it. I’d throw huge parties, deal Crux to whoever needed a hit, ply the guests with enough alcohol to merit a call from the cops. And people would just stay over, sprawled on the floor, passed out in the yard or the bathtub. A night turned into a week, weeks turned into years. I probably know two people of the fifty in the house right now, and I just don’t have the energy to care anymore. I’d need a pretty elaborate roll sheet to keep track.
I tromp through the living room, bodies spread like corpses between a whirlwind of clothes, blankets, bottles. A couple of Slayborn halfsies sit playing cards in the light of a laptop screen. I stand and watch for a second, trying to remember what my life was like before. Back when they were still alive.
I’d been eighteen. Just weeks away from going into training at the Làidir’s Institute in Dublin. I was going to become a real Slayborn—traveling the world, killing brutes and beasts alongside others just like me. I was gonna be something, a somebody, just like my parents had been, and their parents before them. I was going to be more than myself. More than this.
But then...
My phone whistles from my pocket.
“Shit.” I whip it out, swiping to see the message.
Malcome asshole Dickface: taken care of our lil problem yet luv ?
I roll my eyes and tap away an answer.
Me: grabbin provisions then I’m on it, master
Before I can take a step, a reply dings.
Malcome asshole Dickface: better b or ur done w jobs get it ?
“Prick.” I shove my phone back into my pocket and pick my way through the piles of bodies strewn across my living room.
Down the hall, I find the front door so thoroughly barricaded with kicked kegs and empty beer boxes that I opt for an alternate escape route. I hoist myself over the kitchen sink, swinging my legs through the open window above and landing spry in mom’s half-dead, half-overgrown rhododendrons.
It’s a nice cool night, the bay leaving a misty haze settling over the neighborhood, obscuring the street lights so they look like orange cotton swabs. Mom and dad’s property is big and pushed back off the street, contained with a wrought iron fence and a gate long knocked off its hinges. One of the neighborhood teens beat the shit out of my mailbox a few months ago when a kegger kept him up on a midterm night. Little twat. I flick up the flag as I walk on past, continuing down the street toward the warm glow coming from the corner.
“Evening, Berkeley.” Ginger croaks at me from behind her cash register as the liquor store bell dings overhead. She holds a cigarette to her lips with shaking, gnarled fingers. “Burning the midnight oil again?”
“You know me,” I say, shrugging as I grab a bottle of Jack off the dusty shelf. “Workaholic.”
Ginger narrows her eyes. “What do you do again? You a dancer? Can’t imagine, tits like that.” She gestures at my slightly-below-average bust, ash falling from her cigarette and into the spare change bowl.
“Yeah, I’m a dancer,” I say. I grab a fistful of Slim Jims and a pack of Hubba Bubba. “Expensive. Special order-kind. For the Niners and the Silicon Valley dickheads.” I rub my fingers together. “Money, Ginger. I bring in the good shit.”
Ginger appraises me, looking somewhat impressed. She stubs her cigarette out on the counter, next to a dozen other identical burn marks. “You girls these days,” she says, standing on her toes to retrieve my usuals from the rack on the wall behind her. She slaps three packs down and rings me up. “No shame. Big bank accounts. Short lives.”
“Like Marilyn, baby.” I toss her a crumpled wad of bills and light a cigarette from one of the new packs, shoveling my provisions into the many huge pockets of my army jacket.
“Like I said,” Ginger answers, flicking open a tabloid. “You don’t have the tits.”
Down the block, the kid’s park looks innocuous, even at night. One of the swings creaks in the coastal breeze, stirring in the acacias so they look alive—like pale-faced little monsters. There’s a carousel squeaking around on its axis in lazy circles, and a slide complete with a puddle of piss at the bottom. Love you, San Francisco. You dirty, rouged-up whore.
Word on the street is there’s some kind of fenodyree tying little laces together and snipping off locks of hair. One kid even left the park without a pinkie finger. Needless to say, the suburban soccer mommies of the neighborhood are willing to pay out of pocket for an exterminator.
Not that they know exactly where their cash goes. They tell the cops, the cops tells a corner kid, the corner kid tells Malcome, and Malcome tells me. Well, sometimes. These days, with so few baddies to hunt down and so many Slayborn looking for work, I’m lucky to get a fucking fenorydee kicked my way.
“Here, fen-fen-fenodyree.” I peel my eyes, but even having the Sight my whole life, I’m starting to feel like it’s going. Nothing but a passed-out homeless guy and a mewling half-blind cat grooming itself. I light a cigarette and rip open a Slim Jim, sighing. “Why don’t you just come the fuck out so I don’t have to expend energy looking for you?”
When I was a kid, the fae were more common. Not everywhere, of course. But around. Especially the good ones, who left roses on people’s pillows and sprinkled gold flecks on your shoulder for good luck. They never had much to fear from Slayborn. Some were even our allies. We worked with them, defended them, protected them. The Seelie fae, at least. The Unseelie were a completely different story.
But those were the old days. Back before the Dublin attack. Back before the fae slaughtered hundreds of the Slayborn, murdered my people—including my parents. They all but wiped us out. And now, things are different. They’ll always be different. I yank another bite off my Slim Jim.
Snap.
A twig under a boot. A stab of ice down my spine. I whip around, ready to face the noise—ready to fuck up whatever asshole dares to sneak up on me.
What I’m not ready for is the knife I see in front of me—plunging directly toward my face.
Chapter Two
He Has Returned
I barely duck in time—I think the knife slices through a couple of stray hairs.
Christ.
He moves so fast I can barely get a good look at him. Black cloak, silver blade, hood up—he’s no fucking fenodyree, that’s for sure. Whoever he is—whatever he is—he’s about to meet his maker. No one swings a knife at me and gets away with it.
I strike, kicking the legs out from under my attacker, but he doesn’t go crashing to the ground like I had hoped. He’s quick, and he knows how to fight. When my boot connects with his legs he lands in a spry roll, lunging toward me again with that knife, fast as a boomerang. It’s a glint of silver against the pitch black of his cloak. I grab his wrist and redirect the blow away from me, hooking my boot around his ankle and shoving him hard.
Nobody ever taught me how to fight. No coach, no sensei, no classroom. I learned to fight by fighting, and it shows
. Not this guy, though. Whoever he is, he’s had League of Shadows, Ra’s al Ghul-level training.
He spins on one foot and whips toward me so fast I don’t manage to dodge in time. His boot clips my chin and I go back, losing my balance. I barely manage to stay upright, and as soon as I’ve shaken the shock of the blow, he’s coming back for me.
The glint of his knife gives away his next move. I strike out fast, hard, and kick the blade right out of his hand. He produces another almost instantaneously, bringing it down toward me. I catch his fist with both hands and yank him forward, twirling around so my back is against his chest.
I twist the knife from his fingers and spin out of his grasp, whipping around to stab him and—clink!
Our blades meet in the middle. His hood is still up, and in the streetlight, I can take him in more closely. Tall, lean, broad shoulders. He moves like a rogue, but I see how practiced he is, how careful. How trained.
Holy hell. He moves like my father.
But he’s not moving now.
We stand like some weird tableau Tarantino fight scene: knife to knife, shoulders squared, chests nearly brushing against each other with each violent gulp of air.
And then, at last, just as I’m debating knifing him in the face and calling it a day, he speaks.
“Well, well,” he murmurs, Irish brogue thick and distractingly delicious. “You’re as good as they say y’are, Berkeley Gallagher.”
I almost drop the knife. That would be a stupid way to die. I have no idea how the fucker knows who I am, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of asking.
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