The Fire of the Fated (The Chosen Series Book 3)

by K. C. Hamby

  “Where is Snake?” the blond male Poacher asks.

  “Snake is currently preoccupied,” the masked guy hisses. I don’t recognize his voice as any I have heard on Olympia. It’s deep and dangerous, booming like thunder. “Can’t be too careful with eyes everywhere.”

  I swear the masked man looks up at us with a flash of electric blue eyes.

  “Do you have the money Snake asked for?” he asks, looking back at the group in front of him.

  “Do you think we would come here without it?” the blonde, older female snarls.

  The masked man chuckles, not fazed by her lewdness. “Girl, someday you’re going to regret the bile falling from between your teeth,” he rolls, and it seems to push the woman back a step. “Hand it over.”

  One of the Poacher guys throws a thick, manilla envelope to him. “It’s all there. Counted twice just to make sure.”

  The masked man rapidly checks the amount in the envelope and nods. “I’ll be sure Snake gets this.” He backs away, not taking his eyes off the group until he disappears into the shadows without a sound. The Poachers grumble to each other, a wee annoyed with the odd encounter.

  “Weird,” Nina whispers and I tilt my head in her direction. “I tried to push into the masked guy’s head to see who Snake is, but I was blocked. Like I ran into a wall or something. Wait.” She grunts her frustration and squints down at the fools in the alley. “I’m blocked from all of them.”

  “Ah, fuck,” Falen curses and rubs her temples with the tips of her fingers. “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?”

  “Deep shit, probably,” Ashy tells her, sighing his own vexation. “As usual.”

  I can’t help but nod my agreement. I think we are always in the shite, but that’s just me.

  Falen roughly braids her hair down her back, her fingers quick and practiced. She rolls up the sleeves of her white dress shirt and shoves them up her arms. “Stay here. I’ll be right back,” she tells Nina and the lass nods.

  I wink at her. “Aye, this won’t take long.”

  And by some unspoken signal, we all fall into the alley.

  I land on the wench with the fire red hair, dropping her to the ground. Her face bounces off the cement with an odd sound and vibration, cracking at least her nose and the front of her skull.

  “Surprise,” I whisper and grab a fistful of her hair. Sometimes I can’t hold back my dark humor in these situations. Especially not when these daft monkeys are involved. I pull her face off the ground and run my knife through the front of her neck, reveling in the jolting rip of her skin as it catches on the serrated edge of my knife.

  No one screams. The only sounds are the dropping of bodies on the pavement, snapping of bones, and the trickle of blood running out of Poacher flesh as a thick stream of fading life.

  Lilith stands before me, blood dotted on her skin and the green tank top of silky fabric, mixing with the freckles dotted all along her body. She smears the sticky redness across her face with the back of her arm before twirling her daggers in her stained hands. “That was extremely satisfying,” she announces, sniffing haughtily when she looks down at her lifeless prey, one hole in the back of his neck and one in the middle of his chest. She wipes the blood off her daggers with the Poacher’s shirt and shoves them back into her boots.

  “Lass, you seriously have a problem.”

  “You know,” she sniffs, glaring down her nose at me now as if I’m a peasant at a queen’s feet with daring audacity to speak to her, “people really should be thankful for the effort I put in to not be a serial killer.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” I grumble. So, she knows she has a problem, then.

  Corin dusts off his hands and straightens his shirt, chuckling all the while at his demented Mate. There is no blood on his Poacher, not even the smallest drop.

  I gesture to the body with my knife and furrow my brows with a question on the tip of my tongue.

  He smiles wide, holds up his hands, and wiggles his meaty fingers. “When you’re this good, you don’t need a weapon.”

  I snort. He never has been privy to weapons. He is much more efficient with his hands. With the size of them, I don’t doubt it one bit.

  Looking down the alley, Falen and Ash are cleaning off their knives with the clothes of their fallen Poachers. Ashy winks when he notices me watching and I raise my brows as I bite my lip.

  Falen pushes her braid over her shoulder, not one drop of blood on the fancy shirt, and looks up to the roof.

  “All done, babe,” she calls. “I’ll be…”

  Nina drops two stories and lands on her feet, crouched right beside me. “No, need. I’m a big girl.” Her smile is smug when she glances at a wide-eyed Falen. “What? I’m a bad ass sometimes.”

  I cough out a laugh and pat her back once. She is tense beneath my hand, but no one needs to know jumping down scared the lass. “Aye, I’d say.”

  “Well, let’s get this cleaned up and get on our way,” Ash announces, pulling our attentions back to the cement in front of us, blood slick as oil as it coagulates in puddles beneath corpses. “And hope to hell we figure out who this Snake is before they infiltrate our shit.”

  “Probably would have been wise to spy on the masked man first,” Nina mumbles in the stretching silence and the sound cuts through the thick scent of copper. “To catch the snake person, you know.”

  I twist my lips as my chest deflates. Aye. That’s…a good idea and one we didn’t think of because of our bloodlust.

  Thinking with our maws instead of our minds, so to speak.

  “Oh, my god, what the fuck?”

  We all freeze at the scream reverberating off the alley walls and slicing through the pleasurable satiating of our need for spilled blood and look to the end of the alley.

  “Son of a bitch,” Fal snaps what we are all thinking.

  A human man stands, pocketknife in hand, at the end of the alley with a stark white face. His wide eyes roll over the blood on the ground, the bodies, us…

  “I..I’m calling the cops!” he screams and fumbles with his phone in his hand while pointing the wee knife at us.

  Metal whirs past my ears and a blue-stoned dagger digs into the screen of the phone, knocking it out of the human’s hands and onto the cement. He screeches and shakes out his fingers from the hurt of the hit.

  “I don’t think so,” Fal snarls, walking toward the terrified lad.

  “Sorry you had to see this,” Lilith coos and walks closer too, daggers sliding out of her boots once more with the gleam of death in the blades. “Because now you have to die.”

  “What? No!” he screams and falls to the ground crawling backward and scraping his hands, opening up fresh wounds throughout his palm by the smell of fresh blood suddenly flowing through the air. “Wait, I won’t tell! Please!”

  Lilith stands above him, ready to make his death quick and nearly painless with one swipe.

  We cannot have humans knowing about us. Especially not in this deep shite of a situation. Blood and bodies litter the alley, almost as if they are leading right to us. We are killers and most humans are morally against such. So, this is dangerous.

  “Wait!” Nina screams and runs to stop Lilith with a firm hand on her shoulder.

  Lilith raises a brow, blades halting in her hands for a moment.

  “I think I can fix this,” Nina insists, slowly kneeling by the man as if he is a scared stray she wants desperately to help.

  “Fix it?” Lilith mutters, sliding her daggers back into her boots. To her benefit, she’s not pissed about being held back. She seems to be genuinely curious about Nina’s unspoken plan.

  The human is frantic and terrified, shaking near to death with his pungent fear. By the sharp scent in the air, he has wet himself. He seems to not even know Nina is beside him until she insists, “look at me.”

  After a slight pause, his eyes meet hers when she tilts his chin with small, sure fingers and…

  “What the hell?” Ash whisp
ers from behind me and lightly places a hand on my waist.

  I shrug as I watch, mystified as all the others in the alley. The human is completely still, stuck in Nina’s gaze like he is hypnotized and waiting for instruction.

  “You didn’t see this. You’re not going to remember the last ten minutes. Instead, you are going to go home and sleep off the headache you are about to have. Your lapse in memory is because you drank too much, and the headache is your hangover. You lost your phone in your drunken stupor and will have to go get a new one. Now, go,” Nina commands.

  The man stands without hesitation and walks away, eyes relaxed and body no longer shaking.

  Did she just…? I start to whisper into Ash’s mind.

  “What…the fuck did you just do?” Lilith asks a lot quieter than usual as she stares off after the man. There is a bit of guilt in her clove scent, like there were so many innocents she has had to kill over her years as an assassin because it’s the law. And now she’s seeing there is an alternative.

  Nina stands, knees popping with the action and sways a bit, blinking away what could be fog in her mind from what she’s just done.

  I’m not surprised it took something out of the lass. I cannot imagine how much mental stamina it would take to control someone’s thoughts and memories like that. Enough to give a raging headache, that’s for sure.

  Falen is right by Nina’s side in an instant, steadying her.

  “I took his memories,” she whispers, eyes squinting. “I figured if I could give people thoughts, I could also take them away. I was right. I just dissolved the memories, I guess. They just no longer exist. I’ve done it before, just never on a human and never that amount.”

  “Yeah, it’s weird to be on the receiving end,” Corin adds, nodding when Lilith turns to him with raised brows.

  “Holy shite,” I mutter and watch Nina. She’s unsteadied on her feet and her eyes are drooping, exhaustion taking over. “That’s a useful trick.”

  Her eyes brighten at that.

  “Uh, Cori and I can go after the secret, masked stranger,” Lilith announces after a long bout of silence. She looks up at Corin and he smiles softly, grabbing her hand.

  “Yeah, we’ll see if we can track him. Catch you guys later and congrats again, Nilen,” Corin announces and waves to us before him and Lil disappear into the shadows.

  But not before Lilith gives one more sad glance at Nina.

  “Nilen? He’s given us a couple name, really?” Nina groans, leaning heavily against Falen.

  I chuckle because of course he has given them a couple name. The bastart loves fooling around like that. When I look at Falen with an amused smile, she’s got her brows down-turned and stares at the ground.

  “I think I need a run later,” she mumbles after a minute or so.

  There is something…not quite right with the way she’s holding herself as she wraps her arms around Nina. She’s twitchy and wide-eyed, brows furrowed like she’s angry with herself again. Darkness thickens around us and she swallows hard before meeting my gaze.

  “Oh, I could go for that,” Ashy agrees and squeezes my side.

  I pull my mind back to my Mannie after Falen glares at me like she knows I know something is wrong.

  “Let’s go, then. Back to the island,” I call, and dial the number of the Voίtheia I keep on speed dial for situations just like this one with mass casualties.

  “Oh, yay. A run,” Nina grumbles and buries her face into Falen’s shirt.

  Chapter 27

  Falen

  After getting back on Olympia and letting Nina nap for a few hours, Eddie, Ash, Nina, and I make our way to the clearing.

  I’m on edge and I’m not the only one who noticed. I know Eddie could sense it. I could tell in the way her wary eyes searched my face, evaluating the darkness I’m sure was swirling in my eyes and soul.

  It hits me at the most random of times. I’ll be fine one minute and then I’m drowning in myself, lost to the light of the surface just beyond the reach of my outstretched hands. I sink, the lower I drop, the colder and darker it becomes until Nina throws me a lifeline and yanks me to the surface. Only long enough for me to catch a breath before the next plunge.

  I let a long sigh leave my nose as my teeth worry at the inside of my cheek. Thank goddess I have Nina. I would be dead at the bottom of the ocean of my mind by now if I didn’t.

  I glance down at her as she keeps pace beside me, hand in mine, but it’s fidgety. And she is quiet. Unusually quiet.

  My wolf pushes me to console my Mate; she needs me to find out what is wrong so we can fix it.

  You okay?

  Nina looks up at me with her doe eyes shining. Those aren’t tears on the edges, are they?

  I guess.

  Is it the Poachers? I thought she was okay with the whole killing thing now.

  No. I don’t care about them. I’m just feeling a little left out is all.

  I squint and turn my head like a curious puppy. I thought you didn’t want to kill like we did in the alley.

  She sighs, almost annoyed. That’s not what I was talking about.

  Is it the whole memory snatching thing?

  She flinches, eyes finding the ground beneath her bare feet. No. That was…weird, but it’s not that, either.

  “A’rite, let’s get furry,” Eddie yells and shifts, interrupting mine and Nina’s silent conversation. When Eddie lands, she dances gracefully across the ground like she has practiced a routine. Her all gray fur is shining, reflecting the bright full moon.

  Ash shifts right after her and the ground shakes a little when he lands. He puts his front legs out in front of him and stretches, groaning a super dramatic yawn before standing and shaking himself.

  Eddie immediately grabs at one of his white-socked feet with her teeth and pulls it out from under him. His grunt when he hits the ground is enough to have me laughing.

  I glance at Nina as I shake my head at their annoying yet wholesome play. She’s still solemn.

  “Go ahead,” she whispers and gives a small smile. “I’ll be right here.”

  I know there is something bothering her, but I also need to shift badly. My mind has grown a bit feral in the days since my last shift and I can’t help Nina if I’m being a snappy asshole.

  I squeeze her hand before taking off in a run. I leap and shift, landing softly on my black paws. A yip immediately pops out of my mouth.

  After seeing the Monster in the alley with us, I needed my wolf.

  You love killing, don’t you? She had said. You’re a monster. Just like me.

  Look how strong your little Mate is. You don’t deserve her.

  She’ll get annoyed with you being Lupi. She will resent you because she will never shift.

  She will leave you. And you’ll have no choice but to be with me for all eternity.

  I shake my head of the memory and pound around the clearing, full speed. My claws dig into the dirt with every step and propel me faster and faster.

  I’m rocked on my left by a big, furry asshole, and we both go tumbling in the grass. I shove Ash off when we finally stop rolling and pull his tail with my teeth, snorting at the yelp he gives in response. He turns in a dramatic circle, grabbing his tail in his own mouth to protect it before growling at me.

  That’ll teach you, asshat.

  Eddie trots up beside me with a wolfy grin, staring at Ash with humor in her gold eyes.

  I always forget Eddie and I are the same height in our wolves.

  Ash’s head pops up suddenly and he glares at Eddie with a playful growl, letting his poor, hurt tail fall from his teeth.

  Ah. They’re using the bond to talk. I figured it popped into place when I saw their wordless exchange at the bar. Good for them.

  I throw my head over my shoulder to my own Mate and see a lonely Nina, sitting in the grass, fingers twitching against the blades, face downturned and streaks of liquid salt staining her rosy cheeks.

  I run over, stopping a few feet away,
and drop down on my belly. The pads of my paws press and pull against the soft grass as I crawl across the ground until my big head plops in Nina’s lap.

  Maybe my wolf can help her more than my person can right now.

  “What are you doing?” she giggles, wiping the tears from her skin, and shifts beneath me to accommodate the weight. “You’re going to get all dirty.”

  Nina always loves when I joke around with her. I might as well try that, too.

  A low rumble echoes in my chest, vibrates up my throat, and through my teeth. I may be joking, but…

  I can be dirty if you want.

  “Fal!” Her cheeks burn a stunning red and her hands cup them to hide their color from me. “Don’t flirt with me when you’re a big dog.”

  I snort. I’ll show you a dog.

  My tongue drops out of my mouth and I roll on my back, asking for belly rubs by exposing my stomach. The most vulnerable part of my wolf. Nina’s fingers dig into the fur on my chest, and I grumble without meaning to. Her scratches are heaven and glitter laced on the tips of her fingers.

  Wanna ride?

  “Fal, I just told you not to flirt with me while you’re furry. It’s weird.”

  My cheeks flame beneath my fur.

  I wasn’t…I was asking if you wanted to hop on my back. Like a horse…

  Her mouth falls open, those glacier eyes widening and entire face blazing red. “Oh, geez.” Her hands cover her face and I protest with a yip, pawing at them to make her look at me.

  I’m serious.

  Her icy eyes turn wide and hopeful. “I mean, okay…”

  I stand up and shake the dirt from my fur before getting back down on my belly. I’m way too tall for Nina to get on while standing. Not only is she short, but I’m also not exactly small. She grabs my fur and hauls herself onto the broad part of my back with little effort as if getting on the back of a giant wolf is a normal ordeal for her. When she seems secure enough, I stand again, slowly this time as not to jolt her. She squeaks and grips hard onto my fur.