No Love for the Wicked

by Powell, Megan

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2013 Megan Powell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47 North

  PO Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781477807637

  ISBN-10: 1477807632

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013935321

  TO MY MOM AND DAD—A TRUE EXAMPLE OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

  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

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  Six months of smoking cloves, and I still couldn’t blow a smoke ring. Best I could manage was a big ball of gray puff. I held the cigarette between my berry-glossed lips, inhaled deeply, formed a little O with my mouth, and tried again. Puffball. Whatever.

  A swell of techno music filled the air, then cut away as the club door across the street opened and closed. Holy shit, it’s cold, the emerging woman thought. I rolled my eyes. What did she expect? It had been snowing for two days now. She pulled her fake-fur wrap tighter to her chest and scanned the street. No taxis. Pulled out her cell phone. Dead battery. She pushed a few buttons anyway and started walking. The click-clack of her heels feigned purpose as she made her way down the icy sidewalk. “Hey, sorry I’m later than I thought, but I’m on my way now,” she said, and then paused. There was no voice coming through the other end of the phone. She was pretending. Smart girl.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who saw through the ruse. The man looked respectable enough, camel trench coat over dark pressed pants and thick-soled loafers. He emerged from the shadowed entry of a neighboring club. He’d been waiting. Not for this girl in particular, but for a type. He wanted a very specific prey.

  So did I.

  OK, this was it. The final test. I could do this. Dropping my cigarette, I instantly became invisible. It was so easy, I smiled. I’d been able to go invisible for years, but now using my powers was like any other natural function. Breathing, blinking, turning invisible. It felt good to have this much control.

  I stepped out at the same time Trench Coat Guy did. He lit a cigarette and kept his distance from the woman. She didn’t sense him yet, but her defenses were still up. Her voice intentionally carried through the cold air. “Yeah, headed there now, so I should be at your place in, like, ten minutes.” She laughed. “Sure. Tell you what. If I’m not there in exactly eleven minutes, call 911.” Impressive.

  I stayed on the opposite side of the street, a block behind the guy. I heard him chuckle behind his cigarette as she picked up her pace. He had seen her try to turn on her phone in front of the club, then watched her struggle to walk with a don’t-mess-with-me attitude. He watched her now, the swivel of her hips under that tight little skirt. He had all kinds of pictures in his mind about lifting that skirt and listening to her screams.

  I stumbled and closed my eyes to his thoughts. What the hell was wrong with people? Being with a man wasn’t supposed to be like that. The bittersweet scent of musk and metal wafted through my senses. Theo’s dark smirk flashed in my mind. Quickly, I pushed the image away. No distractions tonight. I needed to get through this and stay focused. When I opened my eyes, Trench Coat Guy was almost two blocks away. Shit.

  The next instant I was across the street, right behind the guy as he strolled into a parking garage. The woman’s voice faded as she hustled up the garage’s enclosed stairwell. When the sound of a door opening echoed through the stairwell, the man started running, taking two, sometimes three steps at a time. I didn’t bother keeping pace. I just met him at the door. He slowed when he reached the landing. His eyes darkened, and a smile crept across his face. My breath caught. I’d seen transformations like this before. Much, much worse than this, actually, but the effect was still the same. It was a slight shift in features—a deepening in his eyes, a curl of his lip—but it was the same as if he had pulled off a mask, removed the handsome facade to reveal the monster that really lived there. Playtime was over. He reached for the door handle. I dropped my invisible shield.

  “What the fuck!” he shouted as I body slammed him face-first into the door. He was a whole foot taller than me, so I jammed my shoulder into his lower back to keep him in place. He wriggled against my hold, but I barely noticed. I had to concentrate. Turning invisible, listening to other people’s thoughts—those abilities were nothing. But this newest power had taken me months to hone. If I could totally control it now, I knew I’d be ready. I curled my nails into his lower back and focused my power into my hands. The bones popped and stretched as they transformed into leathery, elongated talons. Claws. I twisted my wrist and sliced through his coat and shirt until I felt the warmth of his blood tickle my fingertips.

  He saw me from the corner of his eye, and his knees buckled. I brought my face up close to his. Blood dripped onto the floor around us. His flesh and the door behind him darkened to a deep shade of pink. I paused. My eyes were turning again. Damn it, I still couldn’t completely control that one.

  No matter. It was an emotional thing, that’s all—a warning that my pissed-off was quickly turning to real anger. I inhaled a deep, calming breath and narrowed my gaze. His pupils dilated under my compulsion. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Mitchy. You’re going to walk out of the garage and go home to your wife. You’re going to wake her up, tell her what an incredible woman she is, and then you are going to spend the rest of your miserable life making sure she never has to question your devotion to her. It’s going to be a real-life happily ever after.”

  His mouth opened and shut without sound. I pressed my claws in deeper. I could feel the blood trickling down to my wrists now. His eyes bled to black.

  “I will walk out of the garage and go home to my wife. I’m going to wake her up, tell her what an incredible woman she is, and then I’m going to spend the rest of my miserable life making sure she never has to question my devotion to her. It’s going to be a real-life happily ever after.”

  The pink receded, and my vision returned to normal. I slowly withdrew my claws from his back. Still holding him against the door, I pressed the long, narrow palm of my hand to the deep wounds I had worked into his back. I pushed my energy into his flesh and felt the heat as his wounds knit themselves back together. Then I erased the bloodstains on our clothes. The tears on his jacket could stay—let him wonder a little.

&nbs
p; When he was all neat and healed, I stepped back and flipped my hair. Shooting him the bright, innocent, twentysomething smile I’d been practicing in the mirror, I said, “So this is my floor. I’m parked just by the door. Thank you so much, Mitch. I just hate walking by myself at night. Oh, watch your step. It looks like someone spilled their wine.”

  He blinked twice, looked down at the puddle of blood at our feet. “Uh, yeah. No problem.” He straightened his lapels and ran a hand through his hair. “If you don’t mind, I need to get home. My wife’s waiting up.”

  “Oh yeah, of course.” I reached around him for the door. “Thanks again, Mitch.”

  He nodded as I stepped past him. I had barely pulled the door closed behind me before Mitch’s footsteps pounded down the stairs in a sprint. I looked down at my hands. Back to normal. The only sign that any transformation had occurred was a slight redness at my knuckles and cuticles. I’d done it. I’d stayed focused, completely controlled the transformation, and stopped a bad guy all at the same time. It may not have been as planned out and executed as a Network mission, and Mitch was just a run-of-the-mill serial rapist and not a supernatural terrorist with powers similar to my own, but I’d set an objective, stayed on target, and completed my assignment. Just like any other Network agent.

  I was finally ready to rejoin my team.

  CHAPTER 2

  No one ever plowed the old county roads. The barren cornfields and skeletal woods glistened in the same perfect white as the long road ahead of me. It all looked so serene. Like some icy fairy tale. Of course, when I was growing up, my family’s estate had always looked like that in winter too. And God knew that place was no home to happy endings. At least not for me.

  I shifted into four-wheel drive as I approached the old tractor path that cut through one of the unused cornfields and disappeared deep into the woods at the field’s edge. The small farmhouse at the end of the driveway was still too far away to see, but already my spirits soared. This was home. Not the sprawling estate of limestone luxury and immaculate gardens where I’d lived for the better part of my life. This was the small, neglected farm Thirteen had given me when he’d asked me to train his Network team. There was no fear here, no pain or sadistic relatives ready to attack me at every turn. Here I had felt comfort and peace for the first time in my twenty-three years of life.

  I’d found the transfer of ownership papers packed in my bags a few months back. I still needed to sign on the dotted line, but it was all mine now. And after six months away, I was back.

  I slowly crept forward, my stomach growing tighter with every inch. Up ahead the motion-sensor porch lights peeked through the frosted trees. I was ready for this, I reminded myself. Not only to reconnect with the Network, but to return to this life. I’d gained so much while I was away, and not just in control over my powers. I’d socialized, lived on my own. Normal emotions and relationships weren’t confusing to me as they’d once been.

  Finally, I drove past the last line of trees. There it was. The wide clearing sparkled. The lingering clouds parted so the moon could spotlight the small house. Faded black shutters, cracked cement wraparound porch, stained white siding—it was beautiful.

  I pulled up along the side of the house and breathed in the feeling of homecoming. I never parked in the back parking area where everyone else did. The house wouldn’t be mine if I didn’t have my own parking space. God, it was just like I remembered—so small I could race around the entire exterior in the blink of an eye. If I stretched my neck, I’d see a living room through the front windows, jam-packed with mismatched sofas and ottomans. And if I went to the back door…

  My smile vanished. Whispered voices carried over the low growl of my idling car. There were people inside my house. I’d been distracted pulling up the drive, but with my heightened senses, I heard the murmured voices now. I cut the engine. I hadn’t told anyone I was coming back—not Thirteen or Heather or…Theo. The house and the hundred-plus acres surrounding it were mine. It never occurred to me they’d continue using the place after I’d left.

  I used my mental feelers to do a quick brush through the house and froze. Four people—three guys, one girl. This wasn’t my old Network team. I didn’t recognize a single one of them. Thirteen would have never let another task force use this place, not after he’d signed over ownership to me. So who the hell was in there?

  Rage whipped through me hot and fast. Strangers in my house? Oh hell no. The porch lights shattered as my power stretched past the bounds of my car. I could tell from their thought patterns that the four inside were nervous but armed. Probably some local drug dealers or something—tough-minded plebes happy to have found an abandoned house to process their product. Bastards. In a blur, I exited the car and moved up the porch steps. They had turned off all the lights. As if I couldn’t find them in the dark. Of course, random squatters wouldn’t know it was someone like me showing up in the middle of the night. Most people had no clue that people with powers like mine even existed in the world. If they had, they probably would have hightailed it for their cars the moment I’d pulled in the drive.

  My powers took care of the locks, and I pushed open the front door. The small foyer was dark, and when the door shut behind me, it became even darker. Someone hid in the shadows at my right. Two more in the kitchen ahead. I stepped forward toward the narrow kitchen. Anger simmered through me, but I kept a tight rein on my powers. I reached out to my intruders’ minds once more. The click of a gun cocking sounded at my left. The fourth guy had emerged from the living room. “Stay right where you are,” said a deep, accented voice behind me.

  Yeah, right.

  The overhead light came on with blinding brightness. I blinked the corridor into focus. A man with tight dreads and a woman with too-bright green eyes stood in the hallway before me. Both were frowning, and both had guns aimed at my head. At my left, the guy from the living room moved his cocked gun a few inches from my temple. Bad move.

  My vision turned red as I moved on instinct. The cocked-gun guy went first. I broke his hand with a quick twist and took him to the ground with a heel to the knee. The guy with dreadlocks came next—a gut-kick that had him barreled over and coughing blood. The chick got off a shot, but I moved way too fast for her to get a target. I gripped her ponytail and slammed her face into the wall, dropped her to the floor. With all three moaning on the ground at my feet, I turned on Accent Guy. Shock and anger twisted behind the blank expression he tried to keep in place. My power had him pinned to the foyer wall—his shoes a good three feet off the floor—so I didn’t blame him for letting a little anxiety slip past his careful guard. I sauntered toward him, stepping over one of his whimpering friends along the way.

  “I’m going to give you one chance and one chance only,” I said quietly. My fingers strained—the urge to shift to claws just waiting to be let go. I clasped my hands behind my back. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my house?”

  Accent Guy’s eyes widened into bright circles, but his lips pressed together into a tight line. He wasn’t going to tell me anything. Oh well. I’d warned him. Letting loose just a hint of my anger, I tore into his mind. Telepathy didn’t have to be painful, but fuck him. Break into my house? His body convulsed violently. He screamed in pain. I flipped through his thoughts with excruciating ease.

  Colin St. Pierre. Thirty-four years old. Single, but nominally interested in some woman named Danielle. He was English, Oxford educated, trained with British Special Forces for five years. I saw more military training, but no longer with Special Forces. He was in the desert, one of more than a dozen men and woman fighting with swords, guns, hand to hand. Then he was in a classroom, the same dozen people sitting in desks around him. On a drop screen at the front of the room, mug shots and criminal profiles flashed one after another.

  Al-Hassan Ilmudeen: illegal arms supplier to known terrorist organization Haldan Boi. Murder, assault, rape, kidnapping, illegal weaponry. Known abilities: telekinesis, pyrokinesis.


  A man entered the classroom. Bodybuilder huge, his muscles stretched the crisp pin-striped shirt that squeezed tight at the collar around his thick neck. His hair was pulled back in a long silver ponytail, and the sharpness in his eyes couldn’t hide the kindness in his crinkled smile. Thirteen. My vision instantly returned to normal as I pulled back and let Colin drop to the floor with a thud.

  Well, screw me. These weren’t squatting drug dealers I could kill for breaking into my house. They were another Network team.

  CHAPTER 3

  I leaned back in one of the hard kitchen-table chairs, spinning my glass of whiskey between my fingers and demonstrating remarkable patience. Colin was in the great room, whispering to his chief on his cell phone. Like that would keep me from hearing both ends of the conversation. The other three agents glared at me from their different positions around the kitchen. Their minds buzzed with questions, but no one had spoken a word.

  “So, Luce,” I said conversationally to the woman seated across from me. At twenty-eight, she was even younger than she appeared. Her light hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail that emphasized her almond-shaped green eyes and sharp cheekbones. Add to that the military-style tank and cargo pants, and she exuded a rough persona. Just like she wanted to. “How long have you been an agent for the Network?”

  She flinched. She hadn’t expected me to be a mind reader as well as a kick-ass fighter. Slowly she drew the ice pack away from her broken nose. The double black eyes were painful, but she wasn’t too upset. The injury was a war wound, proof of her toughness against a true supernatural threat. Maybe now she’d gain a little more respect with her male teammates. Not that I was holding my breath for a thank-you or anything. She leaned forward, curled her lip in a sneer. But before she could berate me with a series of well-thought-out quips about my deficiencies as a human, the guy leaning against the wall behind her cleared his throat. Luce’s hands curled into fists. She sat back and replaced the ice pack on her face.