New York Times Bestselling Author(s)
MARATA EROS
TAMARA ROSE BLODGETT
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2015 Marata Eros
Copyright © 2015 Tamara Rose Blodgett
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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Cover art by: Willsin Rowe
Proofed by: Corinna
Chapter 1
Narah
My legs are kicked up on the desk, the toes of my left combat boot stacked on the heel of my right. I lean my feet a couple of inches to the left and look at my boss.
Kinda wish I hadn't.
The tongue-lashing was going to be brutal, and not the fun kind. I just barely hold back a snort of self-serving comedy.
“Narah,” Casper leans into the desk, edging a butt cheek on the only part not covered by my assortment of shit. My eyebrow cocks. Perturbed doesn't cover it. If I wanted a butt on my desk, I'd ask.
“What?” I bark with anticipation.
A vein in Casper's forehead throbs and I dial it back some. No need to bring the guy to heart failure.
“What?” I repeat more good-naturedly, though both of us know I'm nothing of the sort.
He sighs, scrubbing a palm over his face. Hair almost as white as swan feathers glows under the LED lighting in my tiny office, and his glacial eyes tighten, fighting for a view of my face over the top of my boot.
I jack my feet down and stuff them underneath my desk. My fingers itch to go to my smart phone. Anything to not commit to this conversation.
“You know we appreciate your skill set.”
Blah, blah, stinking-blah.
“But we can't have you pulling firearms on all your bounties.”
My bottom lip pops out in a pout. “It was a very small gun, Casper.” I put my index and thumb almost touching.
“Using manstopper ammunition?”
He might have a small point.
“Outlawed in 1898,” Casper adds.
I shrug a bare shoulder, my tank top skin-tight against my small frame. I find loose clothes are handles to make a bludgeon against me easier. I nail the targets but if there's nothing for them to grab onto, so much the better.
“I like antique weaponry and ammunition,” I say with deliberate nonchalance.
“Really?” Casper says and I wince at the sound of his voice. “Let's run down the list of target fatalities.”
Hmmm.
“Target 103, lethal stabbing.”
I lean back in my chair and cock my neck back, staring at the dingy ceiling. A water stain has spread out from the center in a pattern of copper lines that somehow resemble a flower opening.
It's sort of like watching clouds outside, but inside.
“Narah!”
I sigh, answering the ceiling. “Yeah.”
“Target 424, beheading.”
Yeah, that'd been messy.
“Again, I was in fear for my life,” I say, not sounding defensive.
At. All.
“Thirteen times?” Casper asks softly.
My chin snaps down and I meet his eyes. Mine are big and golden hazel like a cat's, and that's why I hide them behind my aviator shades. The sun hurts like hell. I've always been sensitive to sunlight.
I shrug. It'll get me nowhere to fight with Casper. Who has the nickname in the office of, The Ghost. No one says it to his face though. I fight a snicker.
“We are the last profession for use of lethal force, you know. It's not goddamned 2015, when everyone thought all physical force was necessary in some capacity.”
I'm in the wrong era, I muse with regret.
“We are the last stand against the criminals of our time. When the police can't nail them, then it's up to us. But Narah,” Casper scrubs his head, his crewcut bristling from the contact, “we can't have you killing all the targets. They must be brought to justice.”
And of course, if I kill a target, Casper doesn't get credits. That's what this is really about. I bring in the most targets in our office. I get results and he gets credits for my hard work.
We stare at each other. I won't break and Casper knows it. “You're the finest bounty hunter we have. Your instincts are uncanny, and you never let being a woman get in your way...”
I lunge to my feet and Casper jerks to his, eyeing me warily.
Good, my desk is finally free of his ass.
“Nothing about me being a woman comes into play here.”
Casper shoots out an exhale like a cannon. “Everything about it matters. You're smaller, you're vulnerable to things a man could never be.”
Rape is the clear inference.
“You think a man can't be raped?” I bark out a laugh. “You think that my looks don't disarm. They do, Cas.” My eyes laser down on him and his shift away. “You know I'm a proficient, Level Ten.”
“Nothing to sneeze at,” he concedes and opens his mouth to add more, perhaps dig his grave a little deeper.
I raise my palm. Nothing to sneeze at. I can feel a royal conniption fit brewing. “No. If I've killed while gunning for a target,” Casper frowns at my wording which causes me to grin, “then they needed dying. Period.”
Casper walks to my office door. “I'm sorry, Narah, I've done what I could, but the law states that there can't be more than ten sanctions in one quarter. You have thirteen. I got the bonus three waived.” He whips his palm in the air like he's performing a magic trick. “Now you'll have to go before the magistrate.”
Fuck. They'd plug me a second ass after a first class reaming. If—if I could even bounty again.
I jerk my leather jacket off the back of my chair and sling it on. A bright headache, a new friend of mine of late, settles into my temples with zeal. I press my fingers against my head.
I hate not having a target. The chase is the one thing that makes my life worth living. No longer an outcast—always in the game.
Now the rules are being threatened.
And all I want to do is play.
Chapter 2
Aeslin
Edan jerks a thumb my way, throwing a towel I deftly catch. I dab at the sweat running like a river from my scalp and making its way to the waistband of my work out gear.
“Corcoran's asking for you.”
I look at him, narrowing my eyes.
“Hey man, don't kill the messenger,” Edan's hands spread away from his body.
He'd look so much more innocent if he had even one spot of bare skin. Edan's tatted from head to toe. Well... that's not entirely accurate. Don't think his feet hold the tats of our species. Or his face.
Turners are required to be marked.
It's grounds for immediate execution to civilian vampires if they touch us. After all, we're the only savior of our dying race. They can't miss our marks. In the human world, tattoos no longer stand out. We hide in plain sight now.
I flick irritated eyes to him. “I'm on leave, Edan.”
He shrugs. “You know the drill. If a female comes on the radar, we're all on alert.”
I throw the damp towel in the soiled laundry hamper. I'm bone tired. Not physically—mentally. So many scouting expeditions and coming up empty handed has taken its toll. I rub a hand on my nape, trying to make a raw spot. “I've worked a solid quarter—nothing.”
My eyes meet his. Edan's looks are unusual for a Turner. Most of the sub-sect of vampire Turners possess dark coloring. Our only unified feature are silver eyes. Edan's are amber. So
me kind of genetic throw back. My own hair is a deep chestnut, more red than what is considered fashionable. And if we want to enjoy female vampire company, it matters. They're few and far between. If they can't be our mates, it's only for release. And that's become an empty vessel.
“But what if we have a live one?”
I smirk at his words. “You mean undead, right?”
Edan throws up his hands. He's muscled, like the rest of us. Mandatory training makes our bodies at battle readiness. Last month we'd just missed a female by minutes.
She'd been sterilized. Technically, it'd been on our watch.
The loss had brought the entire team down and morale had not recovered.
Edan spoke my thoughts, “We need this, Aeslin. We need a female. They're so vulnerable to the Hunters...”
I toss my palm up. “We've been over this. It's a race against them. And they got to that female first.” I see guilt on his face and know mine looks the same.
“Then why can't you see that every lead should be followed?”
Tired of fucking losing, that's why. Or just tired.
My eyes feel like they're on fire when I glare at Edan, a Turner I've fought shoulder to shoulder beside. “You don't think it haunts my fucking every thought that she could have belonged to one of us?”
“Does it?” Edan asks in soft disbelief.
“Yes,” I hiss defensively.
“Then join us.”
I don't want another dead end. Another disappointment. “I'm not rested.”
“So when has that ever mattered?” he asks.
Since that female was lost, I think but don't say.
*
Corcoran stands at the window when I walk into his office and shut the door.
He doesn't turn.
Corcoran is a Noble.
A politically correct word for being in charge of the Turners. But he became a Noble the hard way, having been a Turner first and struggling through the ranks to prove himself invaluable to the cause. Now he rules over the Turners of our region with an iron fist.
Hell, in his day, there was a female turned every month. Now we were lucky to turn one a quarter. However, there was one biological advantage. A human female with vampire blood once turned, was always meant for her biological other half. Lucky bastard. It meant offspring.
A chance at happiness.
With Hunters killing off every vampire they could, our numbers continued to dwindle. In the last half-century, one in two females who possessed enough of the blood of our kind had been sterilized before they could be turned, negating their vampire ancestry and the ability to have children.
A Turnersʼ goals were two-fold. Find the hybrid vampire females before the Hunters did, and determine how they were setting their sights on the rare females.
Easier said than done.
“Aeslin,” Corcoran said as greeting.
I remain silent.
Corcoran turns, eyeing me up. “You look rested.” He sounds hopeful. We both know I've had only four days respite.
I need a month.
I haven't taken enough blood, had enough sex, slept inside the ground as I should. A lot of have nots on the short list of my exhaustion.
I lift my shoulders in an answer that isn't one. It will do no good to rehash the discussion I had with Edan.
Corcoran says something under his breath. It sounds suspiciously like a curse.
“You're the best I have, Aeslin,” he says quietly.
“Let Edan take it. Hell—Jaryn could...”
His gaze darkens. Eyes not the common light gray of the Turner are pewter in a face devoid of emotions. Corcoran's gaze is a coming storm.
“I need you on this.”
That's just what Edan said. “I mean no disrespect...”
“Yes, you do,” he says with the barest bit of humor.
My lips thin. “Yes.”
“She's a Turn, Aeslin. I know it.” Corcoran closes his fingers into a fist.
My breath leaks out of me in defeat. “Okay.”
I simply don't believe anymore. There's been so many dry runs I can't remember the last one that wasn't.
“She's sending out pheromones like a distress signal.”
“Who called it?”
His face closes down. “Torin.”
Corcoran and Torin don't see eye-to-eye. I say nothing, waiting. I'm not political and won't immerse myself in it now.
Corcoran slams a fist against the wall that bisects the bulletproof windows. “She's bounty.”
His frustration gets my attention. Hell, her occupation stalls me and I unlace my fingers and straighten my posture. “What?”
“Damn,” he grits through his teeth, knowing full-well the risks of this acquisition.
I tell him anyway. “Too high profile,” I state, hands going to my hips.
“She's manifesting.”
Dammit.
“Is Torin sure she's a Turn?”
Corcoran exhales in a rush, taking a rough palm down his face, nodding.
I suck in a deep breath. “I'll do it.”
Corcoran looks relieved. “You know the risk?”
Hell yes. But another sterilized female? That we don't need. Can't stand.
“Yes,” I answer.
If Torin's got a bead on her, then so do the Hunters.
The thought of a female out there and vulnerable tightens my guts. This is the part of my job I hate. However small, the emotion is there in my suppressed emotional makeup. The hardest to squelch, the most damning.
Hope.
Chapter 3
Matthews
Rio raises the paper in the air. “Right from the top, Matthews!”
I snap my head up, my back on the bench as I flick my eyes to Rio then back to the bar. My arms shake from exertion but I can't take my eyes off the weights I'm pressing. Not unless I want my body as a pancake.
“Spot me, asshole,” I grit.
“Right! Sorry hoss.”
I'd roll my eyes if I wasn't so fucking plowed from fatigue.
Rio appears upside down and above me. His hands hover over the bar, I lift, as I take the last rep by storm. I heave another.
“No clanking,” Rio chimes.
Gonna kill his ass.
Beads of sweat roll, burning into my eyes as I gently set the bar on the brackets. It's almost soundless.
Rio smirks.
He whips the paper around and I duck out from underneath the three hundred pound weighted barbell set.
“God damn—you're a beast, Matthews!” Rio chortles.
“Give that to me and stop with the verbal diarrhea.”
Rio's face tightens. “Fine, fuck. You need to get laid if you're going to get your jock strap in a bunch all the time.”
I jerk the paper out of his hand and read the words.
Assignment thirteen.
I smile.
Thirteen is my lucky number.
I give the paper back to Rio. “Gonna save the world, brother.”
“On your life.”
“I hope not,” Rio winks and begins to walk off.
“Specs?” I yell after him.
“Same delivery as usual.” I shouldn't ask, it's protocol but I like to hear the words anyway. It makes me uneasy when things are changed. I like routine—crave it.
I sit on the weight bench, thumbing the missive. A thrill races through my body.
I'm a Hunter.
And being a Hunter is bigger than me.
It's for humanity.
People walk the streets; eating, sleeping, shitting and humping. They never realize there's an entire underworld of supernaturals vying for the top of the ecological heap. They're oblivious to the danger that sweeps past them like an unrelenting current.
Hunters have been in place since ancient times. Our opposition have the same sorcerer’s blood that we possess.
Druid.
Both sides descend from priests of the highest order.
But instead of ex
terminating the vermin, they are saviors of those that would harm who we're sworn to protect. They believe in perpetuation, and we believe in sterilization.
The Harborer's are the nemesis of our kind. Brothers by blood, enemies by deed.
The sooner we wipe out the supernaturals, the sooner the threat to mankind will end. And we're making steady progress.
I move through the expansive gym where all Hunters hone their forms, turning sideways to pass between the heavy equipment. I've worked myself so bulky I'm at the point of losing grace. However, no Hunter wants to be distracted by their own lack of strength when they've got an assignment to fulfill.
I'll get the details of my next sanction and be done. Hopefully it's another kill. Nothing gets my rocks off more than nailing one of the fangs myself. A larger threat would be a Harborer showing up for the same assignment. But they are fewer in number than Hunters. Vampires are the greater threat.
Even a skilled Hunter full of quality bloodline magic can find himself in the death embrace of a clever fang and poof—dead meat. The ultimate threat of being turned by one of them hangs over every one of us.
No Hunter wants to deal with that potential. Get in, kill the fuckers, and get the hell out.
Simple.
*
I run my high security keycard through the slot and the door to my penthouse suite whispers open. I move through and the door slides closed behind me. The midwestern skyline bleeds a purple and red sunset over downtown Sioux Falls as it colors my floor like beaten fruit.
I stretch and the vertebrae in my back give a satisfying round of pops. I toss my car keys in a low bowl of Mexican pottery that sits on top of a table hugging the jog out in the foyer.
The floor plan is one of my choosing. It's narrow in the entrance and widens to an open living room and kitchen combination.
Not that I do a shit ton of cooking. My lips pull at the thought of cooking as I cruise to my fridge. I open it, and true to form, there's no food, but plenty of beer. I grab one and pop the lid using a sterling band on my right ring finger. It's hell on beer caps.
I take a hard pull, taking the frosty beer to half empty and move to the view seen through my floor to ceiling glass windows.
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