Slayer's Kiss: Shadow Slayer, Book 1 (13 page)

With the lights on and the door open, it was like stepping onto the set of a horror movie. Kara could see every detail of the man standing in the kitchen, baseball bat in one hand while the other hand raked through his balding brown hair. “You bitch,” he moaned. “Why’d you make me do this? You cheating bitch.”

His wife—judging by the gold bands on their fingers—lay in a puddle of blood, her black hair matted to the side of her temple where the skin was broken and weeping. Her face was a collage of old bruises and new, but Kara doubted her husband had ever taken it to this level before, for the simple reason that the woman would have been dead by now.

Not taking her eyes off the man, Kara felt a rush of wind at her shoulder and heard Abbey’s frantic whisper. “What’s wrong with you? Two guys in two days and now you’re breaking the fourth rule? Are you having an early-life crisis or something?” Then Abbey must have seen what Kara did, because she breathed out, “
Oooh, shiiit
.”

Just then, the woman began coughing and rolled to her side. Kara could see the exact moment the man realized he hadn’t finished the job and at the same time, his evil intent spiked through the air and sliced into her like a dagger. She scanned the kitchen for less than a second. Immediately spying what she needed, she bounded up the steps, threw open the screen door and headed straight for the stove.

Kara knew how some women berated themselves for not keeping the house clean enough, not cooking good enough meals, etc., etc. But little did the woman know when she fried her dinner tonight that leaving the heavy cast-iron skillet on the stove might save her life.

Kara grabbed the skillet by the handle and came at the wide-eyed man, clocking him upside the head with a staggering blow. The last thing he would have seen was a frying pan flying through the air of its own volition. Before he could even finish his “What the fu—”, he was face-down on the linoleum, out for the count. Kara wasn’t sure how badly she’d hurt him, and truth be told, she really didn’t care. But the woman was in bad shape.

Abbey leaned over and heaved, her cheeks puffing up with air like she was going to blow, but then she clenched her fists and straightened her spine. “How is she?”

Kara walked to the woman and touched her forehead, testing the thrum of energy in her veins. She smiled when she felt the force of will reach up to meet her palm. “Strong.”

Abbey nodded. “We can’t get Tray involved in this again.”

“We won’t.” She lifted the woman’s limp hand, wrapped it around the handle of the frying pan and set both down gently on the floor. Next, she grabbed the cordless phone, dialed 911 and set the phone within easy reach of the woman’s body, careful not to touch the blood or grease splattering the floor.

“
Oh…
” Abbey mouthed silently, giving Kara the thumbs-up.

When they were safely outside, gloves off and purses in hand, jogging down another street they hoped wouldn’t intersect the path of the patrol cars, Kara felt the cloak slip away. When she finally heard the blessed noise of sirens in the distance, she smiled. “We did all right tonight—and we didn’t even need to call Tray.”

Abbey’s grin stretched ear to ear. “You’re a frickin’ superhero, you know that? You looked like a dragon slayer going to battle in there. But, you know, with a frying pan instead of a sword.”

Kara laughed. “A slayer, huh?”

“Yep. Bad guys and hot tenants beware! The slayer is here.” Abbey thrust her hand out, striking the air with her imaginary blade. They were both walking with a little pep in their step. Breaking a rule had never felt so right.

“Hey, you gave me the idea with your smart-ass frying pan comment. That makes you a hero, too. And you’re getting so fast with those spells.”

“I am. Aren’t I?” Abbey fired back, smiling as she fiddled with the taser in her pocket. “So you’re okay with going home without finding our target?”

Kara shook her head. “If he was out here, I would have felt him. Besides, we may have saved a woman’s life. Hopefully, her husband is going to jail for a very long time. Yeah, I’m okay with how it turned out tonight.”

“Me, too. Let’s celebrate!” Abbey reached into her pocket for her cell phone and punched in a number. “Hello? Antonio? This is Abbey. Meet me at my house in an hour. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Abbey shoved the phone back in her pocket and Kara rolled her eyes. Some things never changed. “Sorry, Abbs, I don’t think I can take another night hanging off your couch. I’m gonna chance it at my place.”

As they turned down another road, heading back toward Abbey’s car, an electrifying chill ran from the base of Kara’s neck all the way down to her toes. She glanced around, wrapped her hands over her cold arms and kept walking.

The shadow regarded the two women from his perch on the nearby rooftop—his dappled wings folded and brushing the backs of his leather-clad thighs. He’d been filled with lust for his brown-haired beauty when he saw her battle the weak man and strike him down with one blow. She was a rare and worthy adversary, but his alone.

If the man had raised a hand to her, he would have torn the human to bits and left him in small pieces for the rats. As it was, it only took a moment to punish the fool once Deanna’s daughter and her red-haired companion had fled.

There were few benefits of leaving the Shadowland to visit this realm, but one was the exquisite thrill of the game and the other was the beautiful simplicity of taking a human’s mortal life.

Watching them exhale their last breaths as their corporal bodies ceased to struggle against the inevitable was one of the few pleasures the shadow could still feel. And tonight, though it had been brief, it had been sweet.

Chapter Nine

By the time Gavin materialized in the living room of his new apartment, he had almost calmed his trembling. He’d hated traveling to the Mercury Clan tonight and leaving Julian alone with Kara, but it wasn’t as if the other lord was going to volunteer to go in Gavin’s place—not when he had a female all to himself for the evening.

Still, Gavin trusted Julian to do the right thing. He was sure he’d talked some sense into him about responsibility to the clan and not getting attached to Kara Reed. He knew Julian would hold back. Gavin had even promised Aiden it wouldn’t be a problem when he’d seen him tonight.

He was so convincing, he’d even begun to believe it himself…right up until he saw the elegantly appointed table and smelled the essence of Demiáre sex in the air over the staler scents of beef, chocolate and red wine.

Gavin stared at Julian’s closed bedroom door. He couldn’t describe the sensations pounding through his blood, but his eyes began to glow, casting a dim blue light into the room around him. He couldn’t kill Julian, not if Kara was sleeping beside him.

Gavin closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, sensing only Julian in the bedroom. He expanded the circle and found Kara wasn’t next door, either. He didn’t worry much for her safety. Their scouts hadn’t detected Aniliáre in the city, and she could handle any conflict with humans. Her own species, though, was proving to be a problem. One he planned on dealing with himself.

Gavin stalked across the living room and shoved his hands into the door without slowing his pace. The wood splintered and the door flew open to bang against the wall. He saw Julian lying in the rumpled sheets and went to the bed, grasped the mattress and flipped his friend onto the floor in an explosion of bed linens and flailing limbs. “Get up!”

Julian cracked open his lids to glare at Gavin, then he grabbed a pillow and put it over his head as though he had no trouble going back to sleep on the floor. “Fuck off,” came the muffled growl from beneath the feather stuffing.

“
What have you done?
” Gavin demanded, sifting through the sheets, looking for evidence that Julian had pulled out. The veins in his temples throbbed as if they might explode, and he couldn’t mask the blue fire in his eyes even if he wanted to.

Julian threw the pillow off his head and rose to his feet. He was completely naked and his shaft hung limp and content over his balls. “Put my sheets down, you sick bastard. It wasn’t a group activity.”

Gavin ignored him as he searched for the milky fluid, praying Julian hadn’t spilled his seed in Deanna’s daughter. He couldn’t be jealous. He couldn’t want to rip his oldest friend’s head from his fucking shoulders over a woman. It wasn’t that he wanted Kara for himself, it was the
clan
Gavin worried for. It must be. “Please tell me you kept your word.”

The strange thing was, if Gavin was furious, Julian looked positively hateful. He glared at Gavin as if he were the enemy. “It wasn’t my word. It was my
plan
. The plan changed.”

Gavin sucked in a breath and dropped the sheets, his hands fisting at his sides. He had to swallow before he could speak. “You came inside her?”

The muscle in Julian’s jaw twitched. “Yes. But it was more than that…there was a coupling between us.”

Gavin stepped back and laughed. Now he knew Julian was just being an ass. “Oh, really?”

“Yes.”

“She hasn’t reached maturity yet, Jules. She’s not even thirty years old. You’ll have to do better than that to fool me.”

Julian’s eyes hardened, and he took a step forward. “I make a sire’s claim. Until her next cycle, when we know whether or not she carries my child, no other man shall have her.”

Gavin laughed again—a small puff of breath as the smile slowly melted from his face. The surge of blood in his temples made it difficult to understand what Julian was saying.
Sire’s claim?
“Impossible. She’s not in season. She hasn’t even made the transition.”

Julian smiled. “It happened. I’m not sure how. She was amazing, brother. She took all of me, buried me to my balls in her tight, hot channel. She couldn’t get enough. And you should have seen her sweet submission when I locked into her. Don’t be upset. She needed a man willing to breed her, and I was happy to oblige.”

What Julian was saying was bad enough, but something in his eyes taunted Gavin, stabbing the truth into his brain with a molten poker when a gentle touch would have sufficed. And Gavin finally lost it.

Kara couldn’t say she was actually tired—she could walk forever and didn’t think it would wind her—but her joy over saving the woman was short-lived. Someone worse was still out there roaming the streets. As she took the elevator up to her apartment, all she wanted to do was lock Pibb in the bathroom again and go to sleep, praying she would have sweet dreams. Well, not
too
sweet.

But as she passed Gavin’s apartment, she heard a loud crash, like a tornado had descended upon the top floor and was tossing the furniture around like dollhouse toys. At the same time, the air felt thick with a rush of anger and violence. It wasn’t the same as the evil she sensed hunting with Abbey. This was more like righteous indignation, but it was lethal all the same.

“Gavin!” she shouted, pounding on the door. “Gavin! Are you all right?”

The husband and wife in the apartment across the hall poked their heads out. “Is everything okay? Do you want me to call the police?” the man asked.

Kara felt a sudden shift in the air and the anger subsided like a storm cloud scattered on the breeze. She frowned. “No, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. Everything’s okay. Sorry about the disturbance. I’ll talk to the new neighbors about the noise.”

“Well,” the man said, “you can talk to them, Kara, but if that keeps up, I’m going to have to call somebody.”

His wife glared up at him. “Don’t report them, Ted. Next thing you know, they’ll report you and your friends during football season.” The man shrugged and his wife pulled him back inside. Kara turned back toward Gavin’s place as the door cracked open.

“Yes?” Gavin barely opened the door past the width of his head.

“What happened?” Kara’s heart beat against her ribs. “Is Julian okay? Did something fall?”

Gavin paused, then nodded briskly. “Yes. The table…collapsed. I guess we didn’t put it together right.”

Kara’s eyes bulged. “All that noise was from one table?”

“Well…the chairs were under it at the time. They were crushed.”

What kind of bullshit was that? “Can I talk to Julian, please?”

Gavin ran a hand through his blond hair and his nostrils flared. “Of course.” The strained smile on his face made Kara uneasy. “Julian, Kara Reed is here to see you.”

Suddenly, the door opened a little wider and Julian’s head appeared next to Gavin’s. “You’re back!” His smile shined down on her like a beacon as he quickly wiped his nose with the back of his hand, smearing an ebbing stream of blood from his nostril to his cheek.

“What happened?” She stepped forward and took his face in her hands.

Julian leaned into her touch as Gavin backed away. “I noticed the table was a little rickety tonight at dinner, so I was tightening the bolts. Gavin stood on it to hang a picture, not realizing I was under there.”

Kara dropped her hands. “He’s six-seven in an apartment with eight-foot ceilings. Why would he need to stand on anything? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Exactly!” Julian laughed, throwing up his hands. “That’s what I was trying to tell him. Stubborn idiot. And now he’s mad the table is broken.
It wasn’t his in the first place
.” Julian cast an angry glance at his roommate. “
Nobody has wronged him
.”

Gavin faced Julian and squared his shoulders. “
I
was the first to eat at it.
I
know how to care for furniture so nobody gets hurt.
I
won’t turn my back on my family, no matter how comfortable the flaming cushioned seats are.”

Kara looked back and forth between the two men. Holy crap, were they on drugs? She couldn’t deal with this tonight.

“Sorry you got hurt, Julian. I gotta go to bed. Try to keep the noise down,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away.

“Kara.” Julian rushed out the door and grabbed her shoulder. “I—”

She turned to see he was wearing nothing but a blood-speckled sheet and her brows shot up. Seeing him still naked from their encounter, it suddenly hit her what might have happened.
She
was the idiot. “Did Gavin punch you? Over
me
?”