by Devin Hanson
Shadow of the Ghoul
Halfblood Legacy #2
Devin Hanson
Shadow of the Ghoul
Halfblood Legacy #2
Copyright © 2020 Devin Hanson
Published by Hudson Indie Ink
www.hudsonindieink.com
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it wasn’t purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referred to in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorised, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Shadow of the Ghoul/Devin Hanson - 2nd ed
ISBN-13 -
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
Authors Note
About the Author
Also by Devin Hanson
Other Works from Hudson Indie Ink
A special thanks to the women who helped me with the female perspective. You know who you are.
Without you, this book would not have been possible.
Chapter One
A sudden, sharp pain in my hip jolted me awake. I snapped upright, a yell rising from my throat. I was alone. Or nearly alone. Grim pulled his claw from my hip and gave me a reproachful glare before dropping off the side of the bed.
I groaned and dropped back into my bed. The angle of the sunlight coming through the window suggested it was some ungodly early hour in the morning. Well, I was awake now. The remnants of adrenaline from my abrupt awakening still pulsed in my chest. I wasn’t going to fall asleep again.
Grim gave a deep yowl from the hallway, threatening further action if I didn’t get up and feed him. I sighed and rolled out of bed. I could have sworn I had shut the door when I had gone to bed. Not that it would have stopped Grim. Sometimes I thought the cat was smarter than some humans. It wasn’t much of a stretch to assume he had figured out how to open the lever-style doorknob.
I worked a crick out of my neck as I stumbled into the kitchen and put some coffee on. Grim came over and jumped up on the counter, where he regarded me with barely contained hostility.
“I’ll feed you,” I muttered. “Calm yourself.”
Grim’s tail lashed at my words and his glare was relentless. I found Grim’s bowl where he had knocked it into a corner of the kitchen and dumped the last of the kibble into his bowl. I set the food in front of the cat and watched as he tucked into the offering.
The cat wasn’t mine. Grim had come attached to the place I now called home and had begrudgingly accepted me as a roommate. Last October, I had taken a job working for David Caradoc, an ancient and eccentric billionaire. The building that used to be Fire Station 76 had been David’s idea of a suitable reward for a job well done. Lacking any other options for suitable housing, I had moved in.
Two months had given me time to grow accustomed to living in the old fire station. The place was ludicrously oversized for a single female, but now that I had had time to get over the strangeness, I found I quite liked all the open space.
An apartment would have been more reasonable, but that was out of the question. My twenty-first birthday had changed everything about my life. I wasn’t fully human. My mother was Mahlat, Daughter of Lilith, and the Succubus of Lust. I was lilin, granddaughter of Lilith, half-angel and half-human.
I couldn’t sleep under the same roof with anyone else or I would siphon away their energy. I had almost killed one of the few friends I had that way. I couldn’t have a meaningful relationship with anyone. What man would be satisfied with sleeping under a different roof than his wife? Not to mention that repeatedly having sex with someone had the very real possibility of driving them insane.
Being a succubus wasn’t all bad, though. My mother was the embodiment of lust, and I had inherited some of the positive side of her nature as well. I drew energy from others feeling lust toward me. It made me strong, tough, and I healed from wounds with supernatural speed. The bursts of energy never lasted very long, but they had seen me through a few sticky situations.
My coffee finished brewing and I poured myself a mug. I sipped it black and closed my eyes as the caffeine worked its way through my body. There was a thump from the front of the station as the front door shut. I looked up in surprise and Grim stopped eating. The fur of his ruff puffed up and his tail twitched.
I froze. Cold fear crawled up my back and I tensed, readying myself to fight or run.
“Hello?” A male voice called from the lobby, then the connecting door swung open and a man stepped into my living room.
He was tall, a few inches over six feet, with broad shoulders and sandy blonde hair. He was wearing jeans and a canvas jacket, and had a rucksack slung over one shoulder. He had blue eyes and a closely trimmed beard, or maybe just stubble.
“Wow. Uh. Sorry.”
He turned his back on me and I glanced down at myself. I was wearing skimpy underwear and a cutoff sleeping shirt that barely reached my ribs. And that was it. I could feel the trickle of lust coming from him and it stirred me from my paralysis.
“Who are you? What the hell are you doing?!” I grabbed at a kitchen towel to attempt to reclaim some modesty, but it was a lost cause.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to…” He glanced over his shoulder at me, then jerked his gaze back. “Jesus. I’m Ryan, I—”
“Get the hell out of my house!” I shrieked at him.
“Your… what? This is a fire station, not your house,” Ryan said.
“Out!”
Ryan held up his hands in a gesture of submission and went back out to the lobby and shut the door behind him. I left my coffee where it was and ran back to the office I had converted into a bedroom. The two rooms that had been barracks were too large to be comfortable and my queen-sized mattress felt lost in them. It was much more comfortable in the converted office.
I dressed in a hurry and grabbed my wooden bat from where it leaned against the wall next to my bed. Then I went back to the lobby. Ryan was leaning against the reception desk, staring out the window at the traffic going by on the street.
“You’re still here,” I pointed my bat at him. “What part of ‘get out’ didn’t you understand?”
“Look, lady,” he frowned at me. If he was worried about me threatening him with a bat, he didn’t show it. “I’ve come a long way, and I don’t know what game you’re playing at. This is Fire Station 76 isn’t it?”
“It was. Now it’s mine. It’s my home, and you’re trespassi
ng.”
Ryan scratched at his beard and eyed me. “I don’t understand. You bought the station?”
“It was a gift, if you must know. Why are you here? Wasn’t the door locked?”
“It was.” He cleared his throat and for the first time looked embarrassed. “I, ah, had a key.”
I crossed my arms. “Well, you better give it to me then. This isn’t a government building anymore.”
He nodded and dug through his pockets until he found his keys, and separated off a matching key to my own. “Sorry. It never occurred to me that the city would sell the station.”
“They got an upgrade,” I accepted the key from him and pocketed it. “I’m curious now. Why did you have a key?” How many other people might have keys that could just barge in on me? I really should get the locks changed. It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be extra keys just floating around the outside world.
“My father was the station master here,” Ryan sighed. “I was hoping to find a place to crash for a few days while I found my feet in the city. Trade on my father’s memory for a little charity and do odd jobs until I found something permanent.”
“I see. Well, I’m sure they’ll need oil changed or whatever at the new station.” I walked over to the front door and pulled it open. “I’m not big on charity.”
Ryan stood up from the desk and opened the door to the garage. Station 76 had had room for only a single fire engine and new apartment buildings going up in the area required a ladder truck to reach the higher stories. The old garage wasn’t large enough to hold one of those, which is probably why they had upgraded to a new station.
“This place holds a lot of memories for me,” he said as he stepped into the garage, ignoring the door I was holding open for him. “I spent a lot of my childhood running around in here.”
“Hey,” I called after him, “you can’t just… ugh.” I followed Ryan into the garage and found him poking around in the piles of junk against the back wall. I hadn’t had time to clean it out yet and there was probably a full dumpster’s worth of random metal parts and other trash.
“This place needs a lot of work,” Ryan said absently as he turned about, looking up at the walls. “Do you have a handyman working for you?”
“Let me guess,” I growled. “You want a job?”
He looked at me in surprise, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him. “I’d much rather fix this place up than chase after whatever scraps the firemen at the new station have to hand out. I’d work for room and board, no need to pay me anything. Just until I find a job.”
I shook my head. “You can’t sleep here.” Why was that my objection? I should be throwing this guy out or calling the cops, not negotiating with him.
“Really? There must be room in one of the barracks.”
“No, that’s not it. There’s no furniture, and—”
“Not a problem. I’ve got a sleeping pad in my bag. It won’t be the first time I’ve slept on a bare floor.” He grinned at me. “This is going to be fun!”
I glared at him. “No. I don’t even know you! Why would I let you sleep in my home?” There was a knock on the front door and I stabbed a finger at Ryan. “Stay there. I’ll be right back.”
I crossed the lobby as the knock repeated and hauled the front door open. “What do you—Sam!”
“Hi, Alex. I wasn’t sure you were going to be up this early, but…” he trailed off as he saw the frustration on my face. “What is it?”
Sam was a homicide detective for the LAPD, one of the only straight humans I knew that I trusted enough to expose to the supernatural world. I grabbed the sleeve of Sam’s sports jacket and dragged him into the lobby and through to the garage. I pointed my bat at Ryan. “There’s an intruder in my house who won’t leave.”
Ryan gave a charming smile at Sam and stepped forward with his hand extended. “Hi, you must be a friend.”
Sam shook Ryan’s hand and gave a wry smile. “I like to think so.”
“Detective Friday,” I said pointedly, “I’d like you to meet my intruder who is just about to leave.”
Ryan lifted his eyebrows. “Detective! Awesome, I always wanted to be a cop. I was just explaining to the lady here that I was hoping to get some work as a handyman.”
“Oh, really? I’ve been telling Alex she should get some help taking care of this place. It’s a lot of square feet to manage by yourself.”
“Sam! You’re supposed to be throwing this guy out!” I planted my fists on my hips and glared at both of them.
“Right. You got an ID?”
“Sure. One sec.” Ryan patted around, found his wallet and handed over the card.
Sam looked it over and shrugged. “Army, huh? You finish your term of service?”
“Last week. I told… Alex, right? I told Alex that my father used to be the station master here. I spent a lot of my childhood running around this place with scabs on my knees and engine grease on my hands.”
Sam chuckled. “Well, Alex, what do you think? You could do worse than having a vet around giving a hand with building upkeep.”
“He walked in on me in my pajamas,” I scowled. “You’re supposed to be on my side, Sam.”
“I did say I was sorry,” Ryan said. “It was an innocent mistake.”
Sam frowned a little. “Ryan, can you respect Alex’s privacy while you’re working for her?”
“Of course! Honest. I thought it was still a government building otherwise I would never have let myself in. I even gave Alex my key.”
Sam nodded. “Okay. Alex, can I talk to you for a moment?” We went back to the lobby and Sam shut the door to the garage. “Okay, spill. What’s your real beef? You said yourself you needed help with painting.”
I folded my arms and glared at the floor. I had hoped Sam would have thrown Ryan out on his ass, not take his side. “He wants to sleep here. I can’t have anyone under the roof with me, even if I was cool with having a total stranger sleeping in my other room.”
“That’s because of your, uh, mother?”
I had given Sam a CliffsNotes version of my heritage, so he understood my reason for not wanting anyone else living with me, he just didn’t believe it. “Yeah.”
“You’re not worried he’s going to… you know…”
“Rape me?” I snorted a laugh. “No.”
Though, now that Sam brought it up, I realized I hadn’t felt any lust coming from Ryan after our initial encounter. Hell, I got more from Sam than I did from Ryan. I was used to it; my mother was the embodiment of lust itself, and not to brag, but I had a body that lived up to expectations. Lust was something people felt for me as a matter of course. There were exceptions—my gay photographer friend didn’t seem to get turned on by anything not already in digital form, but individuals like him were rare. Most days, I felt lust coming from everyone old enough to know what sex was, man or woman, gay or straight.
And as far as rape went, if Ryan tried anything, I’d break him in half and string him up by his intestines in the hose drying tower out back.
“Well.” Sam sighed and scratched at his head. “Why don’t you give Ryan a chance? If it doesn’t work out, let me know and I’ll remove him myself.”
I nodded reluctantly. It would be nice to have someone else around. The last couple months had been pretty lonely… and Ryan wasn’t terrible to look at. Beneath that canvas jacket of his, he moved like he was fit. And it had been over two months since the last time I had gotten laid.
“Bad Alex,” I muttered.
“Sorry?”
“Never mind.” I pulled the door to the garage open and led the way in. Ryan stood where we had left him, his hands in his jacket pockets. “Good news,” I announced, only a little irritated, “Sam talked me into it. You can work as a handyman for room and board for however long you need to find yourself a permanent job.”
“Really? Thanks, Alex!” Ryan grinned at me. “I promise you won’t regret it.”
“If I do, I’ll have Sa
m arrest you,” I glared at him.
“Cross my heart.”
“Right. Well, you can start by painting the front of the building. I have cans of paint, rollers and other supplies in the workshop. Pick a room, there are plenty that aren’t used, and make yourself at home. Do you have any other stuff you need to move in?”
Ryan shook his head. “Just what I brought with me on my back.”
“Fine. I use the private shower and bathroom, so you can use the locker room and showers there.”
“Sounds good. I know where they are.”
I nodded. “Oh, I almost forgot to ask. What’s your full name?”
“Halsin, Ryan Halsin.”
I blinked. My father’s last name had been Halsin. He had named me Alexandra Ascher in an attempt to throw off my mother’s attempts at locating me, and as far as I knew, Halsin was not a common name. But my father hadn’t been a station master, so it was just a coincidence. “Okay. Uh, great. Do you have any questions for me?”
Ryan shrugged with another smile. “Nope. Not at the moment. I guess I’ll get started, then.” He walked out of the garage and left with a last nod to Sam.
“That worked out, I think?” Sam shrugged. “I think it will be good for you. Maybe you’ll end up making a friend.”
“Thanks, dad.” I rolled my eyes. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“I hope you don’t have a job right now. We could use your help.”
“We, as in the police?”
“Who else? We’ve got bodies turning up, and no answers.”
I swallowed and felt a pang of regret that I had agreed to work as a consultant for the police department. “You know my rates went up?”
