Slayer's Kiss: Shadow Slayer, Book 1

by Cassi Carver

  The man glanced down at Kara’s shorter form and threw his head back laughing. His breath reeked of cheap booze and breath mints. He obviously thought Abbey had meant it as a joke.

  Hurry, Kara.

  Kara didn’t have time for this. She looked into his eyes with a feral glare an instant before she raised her boot and slammed the chunky heel into his foot with all her might. When he released her with a howl and bent to grab his loafer-encased toes, Kara drove her knee into his face. His four front teeth snapped at the roots with a sound like cracking twigs and his head rocked back, blood spurting from his mouth. He crashed to the ground and rolled over, instantly unconscious.

  His friend stumbled back. “He was kidding, you crazy bitch!”

  The other friend fell to his knees and grabbed the unconscious man’s head in his hands. “Someone call 911!” he yelled, his eyes frantic.

  Kara felt a sudden pang of conscience. He probably hadn’t truly intended to hurt her. She would have felt it.

  Abbey grabbed her hand and towed her in the direction they’d been running. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”

  Yeah, they did. When the police showed, Kara wasn’t sure who they’d side with—the unbruised woman or the man in need of an ambulance.

  Kara brought her hand to where his fingers had encircled her arm, wishing there was a mark there—a welt, a scratch—anything to justify her reaction. “He grabbed me, Abbs. You saw. It wasn’t my fault.” Now Abbey would think Kara was even more unstable.

  “Hey, I’m not going to argue with you, Kare-bear. Either way, we can safely say he probably won’t try that again anytime soon. You kicked his teeth in.” She put two fingers over her grimacing mouth, like two broken buck teeth, to illustrate her point. “Nasty—but I’m not judging you,” she added hastily.

  “Maybe I wasn’t in real danger, but if he’d done that to a normal woman, she could have been the next victim. You never know.”

  Abbey smiled at her as they jogged. “See these lips…?” She made a zipping gesture.

  Damn, Kara hated it when Abbey was the sensible one. Day to day, she could never tell which of them was going to have their head up their ass and which was going to have to reach in and pull it out.

  Street after street passed. When Kara glanced again at her oldest friend, Abbey’s breath was huffing in and out with the exertion. “You okay?”

  “Either we start taking my car or I need a gym membership. Apparently, sex isn’t the only exercise I need.” She winked.

  “It’s so strong, I didn’t know it would be this far,” Kara told her, though she wasn’t winded. Even as a child, she’d felt as if she could run forever.

  The sensation of peril redoubled once they finally got out of the Gaslamp and crossed over the trolley tracks, heading toward a vacant parking lot. The damp ocean air made her skin goose-bumpy.

  Suddenly, Kara stopped and grabbed her head, a whimper escaping her throat. “No. No. No.” This was worse than usual. Way worse. It went beyond strange dark feelings and nausea. This hurt. “It’s something bad.”

  She raised her head, scanning the vacant lot. “Not just lust and anger. This isn’t going to be a typical neuter job, Abbs.” Her voice sounded like she’d swallowed glass.

  Whatever they were tracking was an evil Kara hadn’t encountered before. There was no way she could allow Abbey to get any closer until she knew what they were dealing with.

  With a casual gesture, she reached in her waistband and depressed the syringe’s plunger. Then she stopped and made a disgusted face. “Shit! The manza leaked all over my skirt.” She pulled out the syringe and held it up to the dim streetlamp. “There’s nothing left! Cheap-ass diabetic needles.”

  “Oh, crap.” Abbey squinted at the empty syringe then ran a hand over Kara’s saturated hip. “At least it didn’t poke you. I mean, I love you and all, but I can’t carry you home from here.”

  Kara touched the sticky leather and shook her head. “Can you make more?”

  Abbey paused in thought, taking in a quick calming breath then letting it out again. “Yes. I have the herbs and the purified water, I only need a few drops of red wine and some salt. I can do this.”

  “There was a liquor store a couple blocks back.”

  Abbey grabbed the syringe from Kara’s fingers then turned and headed in that direction. “Come on,” she whispered over her shoulder.

  “No, I don’t want to get any farther from the trail. The violence is fading, but so is the woman’s energy.”

  Abbey stopped and poked a finger at Kara. “Fine. But don’t you move from that spot until I’m back.”

  “I’ll be right here.” Kara gave her a thumbs-up, but as soon as Abbey was gone, she turned back down the street and cast out her mental net, straining toward the darkness.

  She drew in the stale scents of city sidewalks and smog and found something else tickling her nose. Something metallic that made her hair stand on end. She followed her nose down a small street, old brick businesses on one side and a construction site surrounded with chain link fence on the other.

  She couldn’t see much better than the average person, so she was thankful the moon splashed a pale yellow glow into the shadows. Except for sight, she had more acute senses than the other witches she’d met, and she was a hell of a lot stronger. She would have traded those little perks, though, for the ability to mix a spell. Even as adults, Abbey’s circle of witchy friends politely snubbed Kara because of her defect. In high school—they’d been outright cruel.

  Kara wrinkled her nose and glanced around, sensing a shift in the energy. A large dumpster was against the wall to her left and the scent of blood wrapped around it, permeating the night air. When she walked past the edge of the dumpster, she saw a man dressed in jeans and a gray hoodie standing over a body on the ground, his face angling down and his hands moving busily in front of him.

  “Hey!” Kara shouted, heading straight for the man. “Get away from her, you son of a bitch!”

  He glanced up in surprise. “Wh—huh?”

  She couldn’t sense the evil in him, but by the look of his blood-streaked hands, he was as guilty as hell.

  “You like to play rough with ladies?” She stopped a few feet from him and gestured to her chest. “Here I am.”

  The man glared at her with bloodshot eyes, his greasy brown hair peeking out the edges of the hood. “You’re crazy. I wasn’t hurting her. I was just looking for a cell phone to call the cops.”

  When Kara glanced down and got a good look at the woman for the first time, her blood ran cold. The unconscious brunette’s face was badly bruised and oozing from several spots, as if she’d been beaten with a blunt object. Her crimson-stained white shirt was hiked up and her stomach looked like she’d been splashed with wet paint. Blood welled deep in the tracks on her skin—curved lines radiating out from a perfect circle, all carved into the tender flesh below her navel.

  Kara had seen some crazy stuff, but this was flat-out insane. “What did you do to her?”

  “Me? I didn’t touch her, lady. I was trying to help.” The man stuffed a wad of bills in his pocket before chucking the woman’s wallet to the ground. “I was looking for ID.”

  “Tell it to the police, you sick fuck.” Kara took a step toward him, but the man jumped back and pulled a small gun from the front pocket of his hoodie.

  He cocked his hand sideways, and the barrel of the gun trembled slightly as it aimed toward Kara’s head. “Listen, bitch, you should have walked away and kept your mouth shut. Now I have to shut it for you.”

  Kara’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think so.”

  He blinked. “You really think you can take me? Not only do I have a gun, you’re a fucking scrawny woma—”

  Kara didn’t wait for him to finish. She leaped forward and spun, kicking her right leg out in a wide arc and snapping the gun from his hand hard enough to send it flying into the brick wall in a pink puff of brick dust.

  The man cried out and cl
utched his right hand to his chest. “You broke my hand!”

  Kara crouched in front of him, careful to avoid the battered woman beside her. “Lie down and lace your hands behind your head. I’ll only tell you once.”

  The woman moaned and Kara glanced down. The man launched himself in her direction. They both went tumbling to the asphalt, bits of trash and grime meeting the side of Kara’s cheek as the man brought his elbow down hard on the center of her face.

  Pain shot through her as her nose shattered. Blood spurted from her nostrils. The man grabbed her wrist with his left hand and hoisted it above her head, settling himself over her body. It took Kara a moment to realize she was pinned under him. Vile images flooded her mind of the time a man had held her down like this when she was only a teenager. But she was nobody’s victim anymore.

  “You shoulda minded your own business. Now look what you made me do,” he said.

  Kara smiled, flicking her tongue out to lick the blood from her lips. “Forget calling the cops. You won’t be around that long.”

  With a sudden burst of strength, she pushed out at the heavy man and sent him flying back against the brick wall. He hit with an oof and crumpled to the ground beside his gun. Kara rose and stalked over to him. “Pick it up.” She nudged the gun closer to him with her boot.

  He opened his clouded eyes and blinked at her. “Huh?”

  The blood running down the front of Kara’s shirt slowed. As the man watched, she took her nose between her hands and snapped it back into place. She felt the abrasions on her cheek tingle and knew what he was seeing—her skin knitting itself back together before his very eyes. “If I have to cut my cheek open tonight to dig out gravel, I’m not gonna be happy.”

  “Kara!” Abbey called, her shoes slapping against the pavement at a dead run. “You were supposed to wait!”

  Kara didn’t dare glance away this time. “I couldn’t let him finish what he started.”

  Abbey gasped. “Oh my God. Look at her. He cut her up. Look at all the blood.” Her voice sounded muffled, as if she had a firm hand clutched to her mouth.

  “Look away, Abbey. Keep it together.”

  “I didn’t do it!” the man whined. “I swear.”

  Kara’s heart and breath slowed, as though everything were in slow motion around her. “Pick up the gun.”

  The man gazed at Kara like she’d come to collect his soul. “No. I don’t want to pick it up.”

  Kara kicked the gun harder, sending it tumbling into his lap. “Pick it up. Try to shoot me. Come on. One free shot.”

  Abbey stepped beside Kara. “What are you doing? Let the police handle the rest. You’re scaring me.”

  Kara heard Abbey’s words, but she couldn’t stop the black ribbons streaking her vision. She couldn’t stop wanting to kill this man. “Let him do it. He deserves it.”

  “Don’t move,” Abbey snapped at him, stooping over the man to jab the refilled syringe into his thigh. She only depressed the plunger halfway, then pulled it out.

  “Ow! Shit, that burns. What are you doing?” He rubbed his grubby jeans where Abbey yanked out the needle.

  “I may be saving your life.” She met Kara’s eyes. “Or maybe not.” The man’s head lolled to the side, but he fought to keep alert. “Ask him, Kare-bear. Don’t do anything you’d regret without being sure.”

  Kara’s lips curled back. She usually liked her friend, but in this moment, Abbey was a thorn in her side trying to keep her from administering justice. “He held a gun on me and pinned me down. He carved this woman like a piece of Play-Doh. There’s nothing else to say.”

  Abbey’s red hair caught in her mouth and she spit it out. “Damn it, Kara. Get the truth. Don’t ask me to watch you kill a man who claims he’s innocent when you can ask the flippin’ question.”

  Kara’s breath rushed through her teeth in an angry hiss. “Fine.” She knelt down, noting the boneless way he drew his limbs around him. Abbey could sure mix a spell. “Look at me.” She yanked his hood back and his gaze locked onto hers. “Did you hurt this woman?”

  He shook his head vehemently. “No.”

  Kara flexed her fingers to keep from wrapping them around his throat. She wanted to call him a liar, but she knew it would be impossible for him to resist the herbs unless he was a powerful warlock, and he wasn’t anything more than a grubby lowlife. “Why are your hands bloody? Tell me the truth.”

  “I was looking for money. Got to get my fix. I mighta called the cops for her. Maybe.”

  Abbey frowned and glanced around the empty street. “It wasn’t him. He’s still out there.”

  Kara blew out a breath and glanced at the mutilated abdomen of the woman. For the first time, she felt like she was out of her league. “We have to get the ambulance out here now. Make the call.”

  Abbey took out the disposable cell phone and dialed. Before anyone answered, Abbey drew her fingers over her throat as if she were plucking at spider webs and said a quick chant. When she spoke to the operator, her voice sounded like a fifty-year-old man. It still astonished Kara every time she heard it.

  When Abbey hung up, she looked at the man. “Wipe him and turn him loose.”

  “Are you kidding me? He was pick-pocketing a rape and torture victim. He’s scum.”

  Abbey nodded. “Yes, he’s scum, but he didn’t do this. If they find him with her blood on his hands, he’s going to jail for the rest of his life.”

  “Hold on.” Kara turned back to the man. “Have you ever raped a woman?”

  “No,” he replied, managing to look slightly horrified even in his stupor. “Never.”

  “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  “No.”

  She narrowed her brown eyes at him. “Shot, stabbed, maimed or injured?”

  His shoulders sank. “I broke your nose and knocked you on your ass tonight, right before you picked me up and threw me into the wall. But I wasn’t going to shoot you.”

  “Shit,” Kara mumbled. “You never saw us. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re free to go. Give the lady back her money and anything left in your wallet, then get your ass home.”

  “Okay.”

  “And stay off the drugs. You hear me?”

  He picked up the wallet, stuffed the bills inside and put it back in the woman’s purse before turning to leave. “Go home and stay off the drugs,” he mumbled as he disappeared around the corner.

  Kara crouched over the woman and pressed a hand to her cold forehead. “Her energy is running low, Abbs. I don’t think she’s gonna make it.”

  It cut her heart out to look into the victim’s battered face and know she couldn’t fix the damage that had been done. The best she could do was beat the shit out of the person who did it. No matter how much they wanted to help, even Abbey wasn’t skilled enough to do serious healing magic.

  Abbey joined Kara, kneeling on the other side of the woman and placing her hand over Kara’s. “Don’t give up on her, Kare-bear. You of all people know it’s possible to beat the odds. Maybe she’s a survivor, like you.”

  Kara nodded slowly. No, she wasn’t giving up. Not on this woman. And not on catching the man who did this.

  Kara wasn’t sure how she managed to keep upright that morning on the trek back to Abbey’s house in Golden Hill. The two friends slunk through the streets, at once alert for signs of a sadistic rapist and numb to their cores from the atrocity they’d discovered.

  By the time they made it through the front door, Kara was shaking so hard, her knife rattled like a diamondback as she laid it down on the cluttered entry table.

  Abbey’s tiny, two-story house wasn’t in a great neighborhood, but it had a certain shabby-chic charm, from its rustic wood floors to its old sofas with floral slipcovers. It was the same aging, pine-green home it had always been, but no one teased Abbey about the red door and trim anymore. She refused to paint it, choosing to leave it just as it had been when her parents were alive.

  Abbey glanc
ed at her cell phone when it lit up. “So…I guess we’ve had our world rocked enough for one night, huh?”

  Kara’s head shot up. “Don’t you dare answer.” What was Abbey thinking? Couldn’t she take one stinking night off from men?

  Abbey regarded the number and let out a tired chuckle, dropping the phone to the couch. “Calm down. I wasn’t going to invite anyone over.”

  “Sorry.” Kara sighed and massaged her fingers over eyes. “We need to call Tray.”

  “No. Please,” Abbey moaned. “The woman’s at the hospital by now. There’s nothing else we can do.”

  “Yeah, there is. We can call Tray.”

  When Abbey turned toward her and gave her the evil eye, Kara had to smile. A hacked-up woman couldn’t get Abbey down, but mention her ex, Tray Oaks—the San Diego P.D. detective who’d dumped her—and heaven forbid, look what happened.

  “I don’t want him here,” she was still saying two hours later at 5:30 a.m. when Tray knocked.

  Kara opened the door and regarded her old nemesis—the tanned, blond-haired man who Abbey still loved. At least, he had been her nemesis when he was taking all Abbey’s time and Kara was alone. Now she just felt bad for him because she suspected he still loved Abbey, too.

  Tray gave Kara a tired look and ran his hand over his short buzzed hair. He was handsome, but his blue-gray eyes had dark smudges under them as if he hadn’t been sleeping well lately. As the head of the Special Victims Unit, he had his own nightmares to contend with. When he’d met Abbey that first night, questioning her and Kara for hours after seeing them crowding over a rapist’s unconscious body, his eyes had been empty. And now, sadly, Kara could see that same emptiness creeping back in.

  “What’s up, Kare-bear?” He stepped toward Kara and gave her a kiss on the forehead. Okay, maybe not her nemesis, exactly. “You keepin’ my girl out of trouble—or getting her right back in it?”

  Kara sighed and pushed the door shut behind him. “We were hunting tonight…and we found the woman by the construction site.”