Blazing Glory

Evernight
Publishing ®

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright©
2014 Angelique
Voisen

 
ISBN: 978-1-77233-152-3

Cover Artist: Jay
Aheer

Editor: Tricia
Kristufek

ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this
copyrighted work is illegal.
 
No part of
this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written
permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are
fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

To my readers, I hope you enjoy reading Blaze and Levi’s story.
To Anna, for inspiring me to write this new series.

BLAZING GLORY

Havoc’s
Crew, 1

Angelique
Voisen

Copyright
© 2014

Chapter One

Figures on the dance floor whirled
in front in their finery. Elegant gold and silver hues clashed with the bright
and daring colors of emerald and crimson, making Levi Black’s head spin.

The room’s elaborate, circular
architecture made it worse. Schneider Tower wasn’t the most impressive or
tallest building in Lyon City, but it certainly boasted one of the best
ballrooms.

Elegant spirals were the common
motif in the Purple Room, the tower’s
highest
point.
They were everywhere, from the swirling marbled floor to the golden walls and
the impressive stained glass on the mosaic-domed ceiling.

Levi could stare dumbly at the
ceiling above him for minutes on end, unaware of the comings and goings around
him.

The honey champagne served on
stalks of elegant glasses didn’t help his throbbing head either. Was that his
fourth or fifth glass? Bear shifters—or for that matter, shifters of any
kind—didn’t get drunk easily, but they still got drunk.

Whoever decided to serve champagne
laced with expensive grade A honey at a party guarded by bear shifters was
either stupid or doing it intentionally.

All Levi could do was
rely
on his ferocious girth and appearance to continue
guarding the door he was being paid to guard. Towering over six feet and built
like a brick, Levi wasn’t a small guy by any means, so his size was enough to
make even the drunkest asshole wise up.

Well, most, anyway. The very drunk
man tottering toward him was an exception. Normally Levi was within his rights
to toss the drunk out, but he hesitated. Levi’s metaphysical bear reared up on
its hide legs, making his human half sniff the air.

The drunk wasn’t an exceptionally
large man, but he was built well enough under his monkey suit and was handsome
enough to have any women in the room.

It was the ink that made Levi
pause. Fine lines of ink coiled beneath the man’s disheveled copper-red hair,
eyebrow, behind one ear, and wrapped round his neck like a scarf.

“Wizard,” Levi snarled.

More ink on his arms. The fierce
lines forming flames there finally told Levi what kind of magical idiot he was
dealing with. He breathed through his nostrils.

The
asshole’s a bloody pyromancer. How wonderful.

The last thing Levi wanted was to
roughen up someone who could manipulate flames just as easy as he could trade
his human skin for his bear.

His skin prickled the closer the
man came. None of his bestial instincts were ringing alarm bells in his head,
though. They ran another sort of tune, one that made him feel hotter than he
already was in his rented evening wear.

Levi sniffed the air eagerly,
easily parting the tantalizing scent coming from the impressive buffet table
and the sweet scent of the attractive pyromancer.

Shit.
This isn’t good. How am I supposed to guard this damn door when I’m distracted
by this pyromancer?

“You there.
No one is allowed through this door,” Levi growled.

“Don’t you know who I am, bear?”
the young man slurred, eying with contempt the silver pin of a bear’s claw
pinned to Levi’s jacket. He tried shouldering past Levi’s large frame, but Levi
only gave him a gentle shove back. The
pyromancer
grunted and glared up at him. “I’m Blaze, from Havoc’s Crew, and the best
pyromancer in the city, so let me through, you big furry bastard.”

“Heard of
Havoc’s.
It’s supposedly the place you go to if you want to destroy
something huge. I haven’t heard anything about anyone named Blaze. Besides,
what kind of name is that?” Levi asked in skeptical tone. “Let me guess, you
chose it for yourself?”

Insulting a drunken
pyromancer
was one of the more foolish things Levi could’ve
done. The very air seemed to thin, making it a little hotter than usual. Balls
of flames danced above Blaze’s palms like a great party trick. When they grew
to the size of watermelons, Levi realized Blaze was the real deal.

Levi ducked his head at the very
last second. The flames hurtled past him and hit the door he was being paid a
thousand dollars an hour to guard.

Yelping, Levi threw himself away
from the spreading flames. Anger prickled across his skin, and a roar of challenge
emerged from his throat. He and his bear had shaken off whatever dulling
effects the honey champagne had caused.

“Fucking
pyromancer
,”
Levi growled. “I’m not going to warn you again.”

Hesitation flickered across Blaze’s
handsome face. Levi was beginning to enjoy the taste of the other man’s fear
when he, too, heard the savage series of shrieks from the room he was guarding.

“Fire!
The buildings on fire!”
The rest of the room was in an
uproar. People shouted and elbowed each other to leave the Purple Room, but he
couldn’t care less about them.
 

“What the hell have you been
guarding?” Blaze demanded, sounding much more sober now.

“Some sort of biological weapon or
some shit. How the hell should I know? I’m paid to guard, not think,” Levi
hissed, cursing when Blaze hurtled more flames at the open door.
“Watch where you’re throwing those things, asshole!”

“Get away from the door, then, damn
bear!” The lines of Blaze’s face were tight with anger, doing little to soothe
Levi’s enraged bear. “Can’t you smell it? It smells like the dead in there.”

Frowning, Levi inhaled. He coughed
at the smoke beginning to fan out the room. The smell of rotting corpses made
his stomach queasy. While the undead weren’t his specialty, he’d come across
them now and then. They were hard sons of bitches to kill, and he’d rather
avoid them all together.

“Something doesn’t smell right,”
Levi pointed out. He flexed his hands, ready to shift.

Blaze snorted. “Oh, you think?”

A loud, rumbling, inhuman howl tore
from the opening, followed by the heavy thump of footsteps. Levi’s bear let out
a nervous snarl and all the hairs on his back stood. He’d never heard anything
like that. No shifter could make a sound like that. What the hell had he been
paid to guard?

What he told Blaze was true. He and
his clan needed to eat, and they didn’t question where the money came from or
who his employers were. Now he wasn’t certain that was such a wise policy.

“What the hell could sound like
that?” Blaze asked, the arrogance in his voice giving way to caution.

“Beats the hell
out of me.
You’re asking the wrong person.” Levi’s entire skin twitched
nervously despite his offhand reply.

He and Blaze were backing away from
the door and slowly edging their way to the elevators. Spidery line cracks
appeared across the walls, and then plaster began to fall in chucks. The wall
shuddered once and then stopped.

Blaze nervously clicked his tongue.
“I think the door had a magical seal on it to keep the creature in its prison.
You were just an extra precaution.”

“What creature?” Levi’s voice faded
when pieces of the wall crumbled, giving them a glimpse of the nightmare they’d
just unleashed. He jabbed his finger into the elevator button repeatedly,
praying silently to the gods that the machine would come up soon.

Flecks of plaster flew and dust
from the fallen wall obscured most of Levi’s vision. He saw the enormous
hulking outline of a vaguely humanoid shape over fourteen feet tall. The smell
of a dozen corpses wafted under his nostrils, making him nearly gag. Dirty-yellow
reptilian eyes devoid of humanity stared back at him.

Then the elevator
pinged behind them. Levi grabbed at Blaze’s sleeve. “Come on. We’ll come back
for it with reinforcements.”

To his
astonishment, Blaze flung his hand away. “No. I let it out. I’ll deal with it
myself.”

Levi scrambled
into the lift and shouted, “Don’t be fucking stupid, and come on. We’ll get
more people and deal with this monster properly.”

Damn it all! It
served the wizard right if Levi just left him there, but his natural protective
instincts and morals reared their ugly heads. He knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t
let anyone just stupidly run to his death. Besides, his bear had imprinted
Blaze’s smell on some instinctive level. Levi didn’t have the luxury to examine
why his beast did such a thing. Not now, at least.

Levi was about to
stride out and simply toss Blaze over his shoulder when the pyromancer let
loose a small ball of flame in his direction. Cursing, Levi ducked, and by the
time he recovered, the elevator doors were hissing shut.

“Wish me luck,
bear,” Blaze said, his back turned toward Levi.

Levi glimpsed the
horrible monster one last time and cursed the pyromancer again. “Fuck you,
man.” It was a weak curse, though.

All Levi could do
was slump against the wall in defeat. His thoughts fled back to the sweet scent
surrounding Blaze, and he knew why his bear had taken interest.

If he wasn’t
mistaken, he’d just let his fated mate die.

Chapter Two

A Few Months Later…

Levi indignantly sniffed at the
overwhelming smell of rotting fish heads and vegetables before checking the
address he hastily scribbled on his arm again. They matched.

The noses of most shifters and
supernatural beings in Lyon City were particularly sensitive to even the
faintest repugnant scent. Levi had a feeling Havoc situated his office just
above the busy market on purpose.