Pride Before A Fall (Book 21 in the Godhunter Series)

by Amy Sumida

  A guy at the center of the horde paused a little longer than the others, watching me carefully as I sped past him. I had my chosen playlist on pause, my iPod hooked up to the car's stereo, and I hit the button as I raced alongside the golf course. Music blared: Fall Out Boy's “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark” going into its long intro. I shot up the drive before the club, and pulled the car to a screeching stop right in front of Cerberus.

  The door slammed open with my violent shove, and I leapt out. Music blasted out of the vehicle as I jumped on the hood. I could feel the beat of it in my bones, vibrating through the metal beneath my feet. I glanced back at Cerberus and winked, my eyes briefly catching the shocked expression of the man beside him. He was blond and a blooder. Had to be Cer's friend, Banning. Not that it mattered. I turned back around just as the lyrics began pelting my ears.

  I started singing absently as I thought out my battle strategy. I knew I'd have to rein in these mercenaries as fast as possible so that they didn't make a run for it before I could get to them all. I couldn't leave any alive to make a second attempt. That's just sloppy work.

  Fire would be perfect for forming a blooder-proof barrier. But I had to work up to it, wait for the words in the lyrics that would magnify my intent. So I started with the poor sods in front. My hand lifted to them as words shot from my mouth like bullets. Aggression blaring in my ears. Tension coiling in my thighs. The stuttering strength of the song cut through the cold air. Every blooder I pointed to exploded as if I'd blown their heads off with a missile launcher.

  The crowd behind me started muttering as Cerberus chortled.

  “Isn't she wonderful?” Cerberus sauntered up to lean over the top of the car and watch me work. “An artist. A true artist.” He laid his chin in his palm.

  I continued to slam out the vicious verses, ignoring Cer. The song was filling me, becoming a part of my being, and the strength of the spell was rushing around me. A tornado of charged molecules clambering for motivation. Waiting for me to give them a direction. An objective. I felt glorious, powerful enough to make all those mercenaries mine. And I did, I snatched up their minds. Their will. Then I used the next line to vent the brewing musical malice. The blooders before me turned on their companions, and started tearing them to pieces.

  “Holy fucking hellfire.” The blonde man moved up beside Cer.

  I sensed him there, felt his intense stare on me, but didn't have the time to look at him. Still, his face flashed in my mind–a picture of aloof male beauty. Strong jaw, regal nose, eyes glowing green in the shadows. Nice.

  “I told you!” Cerberus laughed harder as I continued to pour my lyrical rage over the mercenaries. “She's worth every penny.”

  The chorus came, giving me what I needed to manifest fire. I angled my hand flat, bringing it down like a blade with every sharp word. Each slice brought a line of flames surging up around the faltering army, causing many of them to shriek in terror and stumble back into their companions. The hand motions were more for me than the magic, like a conductor directing his symphony. This symphony didn't need me to conduct it. All the magic required was for me to picture the result I desired, and sing. That was it. So I let my arms fall limply to my sides as I screamed the cataclysmic conclusion to the chorus, and my fiery prison penned the blooders in. The ring closed, and the magic surged through me, responding to the triumph I felt.

  “Oh my god, I think I'm in love,” I heard one of the blooders behind me groan.

  “Of course you are,” Cerberus called back to him. “For fuck's sake, I'm rock hard right now.”

  The blooder who had watched my approach more carefully than the others rushed forward. He snaked through the terrified mass, but he wasn't trying to calm them; he was simply trying to reach me. I was obviously his biggest threat, and he was obviously a take-action sort of guy. It had to be Lincoln, coming to kill me before I could slaughter his entire army. It was a smart move, probably the best option available to him. Cut the head off and all that.

  Too bad it was useless.

  The song turned truly tragic, as if sensing my need. I looked right at Lincoln, directing the destruction at him alone. The merc leader flared up like a torch, blooders pulling back from him in horror. But the bonfire didn't last long. It burned so hot, so intensely, that it turned Lincoln into cinders within seconds. He exploded into sooty snowflakes, swirling down over his army. Blooders cringed away from the remains, hardened soldiers turning into bawling babies.

  The song surged on, and I spread my arms out in welcome to it. It was a confession now. A baring of what I had been born. A show of the hand that life had dealt me, and what I had done with it. What I had become. A creature of nightmares. A sorceress of songs. The villain no one could escape. The lyrics couldn't be more perfect for me. It was a declaration of pride in my own monstrosity, and a deep, secret fear of it. I let them see me.

  And that's when the real screaming started.

  It went on for another two songs, during which I killed every mercenary there in various lyrical ways. The blooders behind me were cheering, some of them singing along with me, and some even mimicked the motions I made. I had blooder backup dancers. Maybe we could take this act to Vegas. A song, a dance, and some magic. We were perfect for Sin City.

  By the time I ended the third song, I was trembling, on the verge of passing out. But it was okay; the threat had been eliminated. My fire-oriented playlist had kept the heat up, ensuring that no one escaped, and those within the ring were dead or dying. I let the flames die down as well, until the only illumination originated from the building behind me and the scattered lampposts. The soft glow gently lit a field of corpses, slowly turning into the ash of the undead. One good thing about killing blooders; there was very little clean up involved.

  The next song started to play. My shoulders fell in exhaustion. I turned to Cerberus and held my arms out to him like a little girl. Even with me standing on the hood of the car, he was still nearly as tall as I was, and he easily picked up my five-foot-four frame. Cer set me down on the road, but held onto me long enough to make sure I could stand on my own. He gave me a concerned look, blocking my shaking body from the cheering crowd. We never let others see our weaknesses. I nodded that I was all right.

  Cerberus gave me a kiss on the cheek, and backed away. “Thanks for coming, El.”

  “No problem, honey.” I smirked, then looked at the blond.

  “I'm Banning Dalca.” The blooder held his hand out to me.

  “Nice to meet you.” I went to shake his hand, but he did that suave, old-school vamp thing and kissed my hand in a way that was so much more sensual than a human could make it.

  “Thank you for your assistance, Ms. Tanager.” Banning smiled slowly at me, his eyes lingering over my face.

  “Just make sure my payment goes through by tonight,” I said abruptly as I pulled away.

  Banning's eyes widened, and he looked as if he was going to say something more. But I was too tired to deal with him. I needed to get out of there before I passed out.

  “I gotta run.” I looked back at Cerberus. “I'll wait for you at the place, babe.” I spoke vaguely on purpose. The last thing I needed was for an entire gura to know where I was crashing for the night.

  “Of course,” Cer said with a smirk, as if we were an item.

  I smiled back; it was our routine when some client flirted with me. Cer acted like I was his, and the guy usually backed off. This guy didn't buy it, nor did he back off. As I slid into the front seat, and turned down the music, Banning Dalca followed me. He leaned in, his eyes fading to mint under the car's interior light, and gave me a very unsettling look.

  “Please don't leave, Ms. Tanager,” he whispered. “I'd dearly like to speak with you.”

  This seemed way past some mere flirtation. It was weird, and it sent chills racing down my spine. The guy was hot, but I didn't sleep with clients, and I especially didn't sleep with blooders. Blooders were bad news.

  “Maybe ano
ther time.” I tried to reach past him for the door handle, but he didn't budge.

  “Please,” he said again.

  “Get away from the car, Mr. Dalca,” I said in a dangerous tone.

  “Ban,” Cerberus growled. “What the fuck, man?”

  “Five minutes of your time.” Banning tried once more.

  “No,” I snapped. “Now are you going to back away or do I have to make you?”

  “All right, Ms. Tanager,” he sighed, but produced a business card, and stuffed it into my hand. “Please call me after you've rested. I promise you, I have the most honorable of intentions.”

  “Uh-huh.” I slid the card into my bra. “Thanks; I got it.”

  Banning sighed again, then eased away, shutting the door for me. I gunned the engine and yanked the car about, but I couldn't help looking back at Banning as I drove off. He stared after me like I was breaking his little, undead heart. But the strangeness didn't stop there.

  Just as I hit the border of golf course turning into forest, I saw a movement in the shadows. A flash of skin. I was instantly alert, despite my exhaustion, and angled the car enough to shine the headlights into the area. There he was, a gods-damned fairy. One of the fucking Shining Ones was standing in the trees of Lawrence, Kansas, watching me like some otherworldly peeping tom. Instead of hiding when my lights hit him, he held up a hand in greeting.

  I nearly drove off the road.

  I didn't though. I veered back onto the asphalt and kept going. If a fairy waves at you from the forest, you don't stop for him. Heading over for a little chat is a great way to get yourself abducted. The Fey were generally considered to be the perverts of the paranormal world. They'd fuck anything, anywhere, anytime. A fairy's interest wasn't flattering; it simply meant you had a heartbeat and were within reach.

  Okay, so maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. The lesser fey–pixies, leprechauns, trolls, goblins, those sorts–would mount you in a heartbeat if you let them. Most would try even if you didn't let them. However, the elite sidhe, those who were known as the Shining Ones, were a bit more discriminating in their choices of bed partner. That didn't make them any less terrifying. In fact, the Shining Ones had all sorts of seductive spells on their side. They might not technically be rapists, but with that kind of magic, the technicalities blurred. And once they got you, they tended to keep you until you were completely used up. I've heard stories of all manner of debaucheries going on in Tír na nÓg. So it didn't really matter, lesser or greater, fairies were freaks.

  It was that whole hedonism thing. No one did it better than the Shining Ones. They lived every moment of their immortality to the fullest, believing that they shouldn't do anything they didn't want to, and conversely, they should do everything, and everyone, that they did want to do. They ate the best food, drank the finest wine, and wore the most luxurious clothes. They loved to mix it up too. They didn't care who created an item; if it was the best, they wanted it. Several of them lived this side of the Veil for that very reason, the luxury.

  The Veil is what we call the border between worlds. Planes of Existence. Realms. Again, take your pick. These places were laid on top of each other, separated by an invisible sheet of magic. If you were sensitive enough, you could feel the magic, and in some places the Veil was thick enough that even people who weren't so sensitive could feel it. But to cross it, you had to either be magically powerful or know someone powerful enough to take you through. Which meant that the fairy dude standing in the forest, waving at me like it was just another casual night in Kansas, was powerful. And very pale.

  I have good eyesight, okay? I caught a lot in that glimpse of flashing headlights. Though I didn't really need my advanced perception. The guy was really white. His hair was white. His skin was white. I couldn't see the color of his eyes, besides them being pale, so maybe they were white too. His delicate features and slim figure nearly hid the fact that he was a guy, but that he was definitely masculine.

  Not that his looks mattered. What mattered was what he was doing in those woods. Had he been watching me? Listening to me sing? Or had he been there for Banning? Maybe he'd been the blooders's backup, something more subtle to go in afterward on the off chance that the army of blooders didn't succeed. I almost turned around, but I knew I was too exhausted to be of any help. So I kept driving, and left the Shining One to Cerberus. If the dog-god couldn't handle one fairy, he might as well give up protecting people for good.

  Fairy-Struck

  Book 1 in The Twilight Court Series

  You can get this book for FREE every 10th day of every month.

  Chapter One

  Once upon a time, isn't that how all fairy tales begin? Except this isn't your average fairy tale. There are no charming princes or wicked witches within these pages and the fair maidens are more deadly than any big bad wolf. This is a fairy tale in the truest sense of the words; a story about fairies... the real story.

  My name is Seren Sloane and I'm an Extinguisher. That will mean nothing to you, I'm sure, so let me go back a little further. No one knows the true origins of the fey, I don't think even the fey themselves remember, but theories abound. One has them evolving alongside us but where we advanced in groups, banding together to become stronger, the fey morphed out of those outcast predators who were too wild for a pack. Those who don't believe in evolution, think instead that the fey issue from divine creations, angels fallen from God's grace. Yet another tale insists they were gods themselves, or demi-gods, led by a mother goddess named Danu.

  A final theory suggests they were not gods or angels or outcasts, merely nomads from an advanced civilization. The Scythians or Sidheans, from which the word sidhe originates. Myths tell of these talented Sidhe coming to Ireland where they flung about their magic and generally wrecked havoc until the aggrieved locals fought back and forced the fey to retreat into their raths, holy shrines now known as fairy mounds. History has disguised the raths as burial mounds even though originally, they were thought to be royal palaces for portal guardians. Although I cannot validate the rest of the tale, I do know this; the fey don't live under mounds of dirt. The original descriptions strike closer to the truth. The raths shrouded portals not corpses. Hidden paths to the fairy world, a realm laid parallel to ours and not at all underground.

  Anyway, we did just fine living side by side with them until humans started destroying the environment around those entrances to Fairy. Fairies don't like it when you mess with nature and when they stroll from their magical abodes to find that mess strewn all over their backyard, they get even more pissy. So they began to fling the mess back. All those old stories about fairies stealing babies and striking people with wasting diseases, stem from this time period. Things got real bad, so bad that those of us who had the gift of clairvoyance and could actually see fairies, joined together to defend the human race.

  The first Human-Fey war erupted across Eire, now known as Ireland, and the losses on both sides were staggering. After the third war, a grudging truce was finally attained and councils were created to mediate between the races and support the truce with laws approved by both sides. A good start to be sure but laws flounder and fail if they can't be enforced. Both councils conceded jurisdiction over their people to the other, agreeing upon the penalties to be meted out should someone be found guilty of a crime. Rules for determining guilt and administering justice were set into place and military units were sanctioned to carry out the verdicts of the councils.

  The fairies created the Wild Hunt. They gathered the fiercest, most terrifying of their people and trained them to stalk the shadows of our world, watching us like guardian angels until one of us breaks the law. Then the angels become devils who do much more than watch. Trust me when I say you don't want to ever meet a member of the Hunt.

  To police the fey, we created the Extinguishers. Formed of the five great psychic families who originally defended humanity, the Extinguishers inspire a fair amount of fear as well. Armed with clairvoyance among other talents whi
ch varies by person but can include; telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, and psychometry, we also have some serious combat skills. Most humans don't have the ability to see a fairy unless that fairy wants to be seen, so both council members and Extinguishers must at least possess clairvoyance. The Council keeps an eye out for humans with exceptional psychic abilities so they can recruit more into their fold but Extinguishers are born into the job. I'm one of those lucky few.

  Kavanaugh, Teagan, Sullivan, Murdock, and Sloane. The first five psychic families of Ireland. Over the centuries we've become a secret society so big it spans the globe, gaining strength by breeding only within the five. This has virtually guaranteed powerful psychic gifts in our children. I'm the product of a Sloane and a Kavanaugh. Over thirty generations of contrived breeding(not inbreeding, thank you very much) has given me abilities which rank me as one of the top ten Extinguishers of all time.

  I was trained from childhood to become what I am; an Extinguisher, a hunter of fairies, remover of the light of the Shining Ones. Childhood wasn't horrible for me but it was definitely not what most would consider to be normal. Bedtime stories were non-fiction accounts of Extinguisher heroism and instead of receiving platitudes that monsters weren't real, I was told most emphatically that they were and that when checking beneath my bed at night, I should always have an iron blade in hand. My only friends were children from other Extinguisher families and every game or toy had an ulterior motive behind it. Like the dolls my mother made me which showed what each type of fairy looked like... and had their weaknesses written on their backs in red ink.

  Still, I was a child and I knew nothing else. Life seemed magical to me, not just in the way that life is magical to all children but in a literally magic way. I was taught to move objects with my mind, create fire in the palm of my hand, and make things materialize anywhere I wanted them to(that's called apportation in case you're curious, not teleportation which is a thing of science fiction). When I got older, I was taught to fight and finally, to kill.