Page 2 of The Fate of Black Hearts

The chill settling into her skin indicated she’d confront something revolting around the back of the building. With little effort despite wearing a dress, she scaled the pointy metal fence. On the backside of the concrete monstrosity, an ornamental gardensprawled over several acres.

Around a row of manicured pine trees, a human scurried into the light. Black eyes, head cocked at an odd angle, and drool trickling down one side of its mouth… So undignified and cliché for a demon possessing a human. It made an odd choking noise before darting her way.

“Prihaja po vas,” it rasped out. Her mind was slow to translate the Slovene:He’s coming for you. Who was coming?

“Not tonight.” With a grin, she fired.

Boom.

She cradled the gun against her body. The shotgun’s kick had ricocheted down her injured arm. Blowing off a demon’s head hadn’t felt as fantastic as it should’ve, not with pain vibrating her upper body. She watched the being closely. It remained dead. Its otherworldly ash vacated its now dead human host, which meant the new potion she’d infused into the bullet had worked to send the creature back to hell. Regular bullets weren’t enough, or so she’d discovered long ago.

Boom.

With a jolt, she flattened to the ground and rolled to see who shot at her.

A second demon lay a few feet away. Where its head used to be was now a pulpy mess.

How careless of her not to scan for more demons.

She’d never hear the end of it from Roman about being old and reckless after this. Slowly, she rose, ready to face a lecture from one of her kids. But it wasn’t a lycan she faced. Above the stench of demon, she picked up the smell of her watcher.

A huge shadow slung a shotgun across his shoulder. This someone had remarkable arm muscles. She couldn’t make out his details beyond that but heard a soft laugh as he strolled away.

She shot the now incapacitated demon with one of her own bullets to make sure it departed this world. The inky smoke of the demon left the body.

Her watcher was nowhere in sight.

He wouldn’t escape her this time. She scaled the fence again, picked up her bag on the other side, and reacquired his scent.

She pulled off the dark cap covering her hair and put on a long-haired brunette wig. Once more she stowed the rifle bag behind a hedge near the bar he’d entered. Time to blend in. Her hunt took her inside a low-lit packed bar. In this goth club, her natural blonde hair would’ve stood out like a pear on a walnut tree. Her heart thrashed hard with the need to locate her prey, but she forced herself to relax. She conjured an adequate glamour that would make her less interesting to humans. Without it, they’d either stare or be terrified of her inner predator to the point of panic.

Against her breast, her phone buzzed its reminder she should be on her way to the rendezvous. There, she’d regroup with the boys and locate the missing warlock. Then she could board her plane to fly home to Spain. In forty-eight hours, her daughter turned five. A precocious kid, Lyra hadn’t wanted her to go on this trip, claiming she’d had some sort of vision. With Lyra, she could never tell if it was something real or the product of an overreaching interpretation of one of her dreams.

Aha!The smell…

She ducked down a back hallway that led to a low-lit gaming room with a large bar.

There.

Even seated at the bar with his back to her he commanded all the space around him. He, too, must have a glamour in place since no human gave him more than a cursory glance. Women would normally flock to a being so well put together with his wide back and long legs encased in dark pants. She couldn’t make out his arms in the leather jacket, which, like her coat, probably hid several weapons. Dark hair interwoven with fine strands of gray curled against his collar.

Was he the person to whom the demon referred?

She slid onto the stool next to him and signaled the bartender. “Martini. Extra dry. Two olives.”

With the slightest head shift, he viewed her thoughtfully out of the corner of his eye. His stubbled chin suggested fierceness. And stubbornness.

How could she know that from a chin?

Her mind filled in that description as if he were…familiar.

I need to remember him.She ground her molars and pressed her brain hard. A dig of her finger into the temple opposite him didn’t alleviate the pulsing pain from the push to remember. Not a single memory emerged.

With deadly focus, she detailed everything about him.

He wasn’t beautiful, but rugged to the point of harsh. Spiral sigils covered his neck, which were the side effect of a certain type of magic not accessible toany creature other than a mage. The symbols meant he was an ancient magical creature. It also meant he let her catch him.

A shiver worked its way across her shoulders. This being had an agenda that involved her.