“Well, Neko,” the stranger said. “I must run. Thank you again for the service you rendered me today.”
She offered a withering smile. “You’re welcome.”
The man turned and left, and she realized with a pang in her chest that she hadn’t gotten his name.
In fact, while he’d extracted a wealth of information from her, she’d received nothing in return. What had he meant, when he’d said that shifter laws might soon apply to humans?
But there were to be no answers. He was gone now, and he’d hollowed her out, body and soul.
As she sat, silently gathering her thoughts, Neko wondered what the hell had just happened to her. His face had drawn itself on her mind, the image remaining in perfect detail. She closed her eyes, allowing herself to store it in her memory banks, to revel in the perfection of his features for a moment before letting them dissipate.
Opening her eyes again, she told herself that the stranger would have to fade into obscurity, just as the Lapsed had done. And just as everyone else in her life tended to do.
* * *
Umbra
Tuesday Morning, 9:45 a.m.
Neko’s eyes shifted around the diminutive office, her gaze gliding along its surfaces, stained from decades of neglect. A once white wainscotting now a tea-shaded mix of splotches from decades of questionable, no doubt disgusting, sources.
Opposite her desk, wallpaper peeled away from around the door frame, revealing further layers of even uglier wall coverings from generations past. And a series of deep cracks in the ceiling signalled a webbed threat that a mass of ancient plaster might tumble in on her one day before long.
As she leaned back, staring upwards, she ignored all of it, her mind steering itself once again to the man she’d met the previous day.
His face, his silken voice. Much as she’d tried to banish him from her memory, he’d won the battle, remaining locked firmly inside her. She’d wanted him. Desired his body, access to his mind, his psyche, his emotions. She’d craved the most profound intimacy with the stranger, to offer him every aspect of herself. And when she thought of him she still reeled, that feeling of drunkenness returning with a vengeance.
Now as she sat in wait for her client, she admitted to herself how much she’d been taken in. There was no shame in it; after all, the experience had been like acquiring an illness. An exquisite, sensual one, but an illness nonetheless, making its way invasively through her system. But what was the cure? There was no medication for such a thing, other than to convince herself of his lack of significance.
“He’s just a man—a bleeding shifter. A handsome, sexy man who’s no good for anyone. Particularly a Hunter,” she said, her fingers searching for something to occupy them for a minute. If she let her mind dwell on the beautiful stranger too much longer, she’d end up caressing her thighs, or worse, stripping off her clothing so that she could touch herself.
Damn it. There it was again; the sexual virus that he’d implanted, taking full effect.
She laid her hands flat on the desk, pressing into the wood. “Okay, Neko. Focus. You’re at work, for shit’s sake. Find a distraction.”
Pulling open a desk drawer, she noted that its contents were as depressing as the rest of the decrepit wooden relic: a gum wrapper. A broken pencil. A dust bunny, signalling that it had been years since a vacuum or cloth had seen the office.
Bertie had long since adhered a tiny set of googly eyes to the sphere of detritus, converting the dust bunny into the office mascot. As the months had passed, it had grown into something more closely resembling a rhinoceros than a rodent. And as it rolled in uneven circles its eyes stared up at Neko, pleading with her to euthanize it with a damp cloth or a blow torch on her next visit.
She closed the drawer, letting out a prolonged sigh. If an office could look like the physical embodiment of a hangover, this was it. On more than one occasion, Bertie had referred to the place as a grotty pile of shite, though Neko had insisted that it was homey. Her homey hell hole.
So, she thought, her eyes moving about the small space. This cramped room was what she had to show for two years of hard, sometimes perilous work at a job whose name she couldn’t even share with the general public. This was her thus-far legacy. But then, she wasn’t in the business to seek out fame and fortune.
Hunters like her didn’t hang around indoors much, anyhow. An office was simply a meeting place, an address to give anyone who wanted to see her face to face in a location other than a dank alley or a seedy pub.
Her sleeping quarters, off limits to clients and acquaintances alike, were far off in the countryside, in a small cottage that had once belonged to her parents. That place was her oasis, her escape from real life into a fairy land that lasted only through the hours between supper time and sleep.
After bedtime, of course, came the nightmares. Harsh visions filled with constant reminders of what she was and what she must therefore do. Scenes of the Lapsed, killing shifters because she’d failed to stop them. Slaughtering innocent victims before her helpless eyes.
And so her career wasn’t a choice. It was a duty, assigned by the deepest recesses of her mind. Her job title may as well have been tattooed on her heart. But instead, it was printed on her door. A small sign read:
Neko Sands, L.H.
Only her clients would know the meaning of the acronym. Lapsed Hunter. And only they needed to know. To anyone else, she described herself as “a Private Investigator of sorts.” Thankfully, that usually ceased their line of questioning.
* * *
At ten o’clock a knock sounded at the door. So, her new client was punctual.
“Come in,” she said.
The door creaked open, eliciting a wince on Neko’s part. She should get the bloody thing fixed, or take a sledgehammer to it.
The client walked in, his stride long, as were his legs. He was dressed in a substantial wool coat, his dark hair sleek, drawn away from a pale face by some sort of shiny product. If cheekbones could cut glass, his were a sure contender, and his lips were so thin that they looked like they’d been drawn on with a pencil that had been sharpened with the finest blade.
But, as with shifters, something about him was quite handsome. He had a look that could bring a weaker woman to her knees—but he was nothing to the man she’d met the previous day.
“Mr. Umbra,” she said, standing to greet him.
“Just Umbra, if you would.”
The man exuded a coldness that gave her a chill, one that pierced straight through her clothing. He was the polar opposite of Mr. Aqua Eyes; her coffee date with the scent that made her wet. Don’t think about him. Don’t, she told herself, cutting off all possibility of a straying mind.
“Umbra, then,” she said, seating herself behind her desk and making no move to relax as her large eyes narrowed, taking him in.
“Yes. May I?” He gestured to the ratty, ancient chair opposite hers.
“Of course.”
Sitting down, the man assessed his surroundings. “This is, I suppose, what I would expect from a Hunter,” he said. “Not particularly appealing, is it?”
“No. But then, I have no desire to encourage my guests to stay for more than five minutes at a stretch.”
The man’s lips curved upwards in an off-putting smirk. “No, I imagine that you don’t.”
“So what can I do for you?”
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are Dragons about London these days.”
“I’m well aware.”
“Then you should be hunting them, should you not? Isn’t that your job?”
“I hunt Lapsed, and the odd shifter. Generally for money,” she said. “And no one has asked me to track down a Dragon. I hunt what I’m asked to hunt. Besides, Dragons are a pain in the arse to locate. Much more difficult than the Lapsed, or the shifters who keep their feet on the ground.”
“So you’re saying they’re too difficult for you?” Umbra looked as though he might stand up and walk out af
ter the insinuation.
“Nothing is too difficult,” Neko replied, her tone curt. “But hunting in general is no easy task.”
“So why do you do it?”
“Because it seems that it’s my destiny. It’s in my blood. Some people are good at math, or real estate. I’m good at finding people who turn into wolves, bears or lions.”
“A gift, then.”
“A curse. Most shifters are clever enough to remain in human form, which makes them far harder to track, particularly when they’re good at hiding their true nature.” Something told her that he already knew perfectly well how difficult they were to locate. “It’s not the easiest job. But add to the equation that Dragons are rather dangerous, not to mention that I’m far from fireproof or claw-proof, and you’d be asking me to perform a duty above my usual pay grade.”
The man stood up and took a long step towards the wall, where he fingered a loose, yellowing corner of the sagging wallpaper before turning back to her. “However you regard your destiny, Miss Sands, I have been told that you’re a good tracker. And so I have a job for you.”
“Fine. What is it?” Tell me and then leave.
“There is a Dragon who is causing particular problems. He leads a Brotherhood of sorts, a legion of his kind, if you will. I want you to find him. Then I want you to kill him.”
Neko’s left eyebrow arched even as her internal organs began to attack one another. Fucking hell. An assassination? She’d never yet been asked to kill a shifter, and this would be a hell of a way to start. But if she didn’t do it, someone else would. And they would earn the payday.
“Killing costs a lot more than tracking,” she said.
“I don’t care. Money is no object. He must be located.”
“Fine. What’s his name?”
“His name is of no importance.”
“It is if you want me to find him.”
The man’s eyes focused on hers, checking her expression as he said the words.
“He goes by Lumen.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of him.”
“That’s because he’s one of the Kindred.”
Neko’s mouth dropped open in spite of her attempt at reserve. The Kindred were the stuff of legend, a myth passed down over generations. They were the subjects of tales told around hearths by someone’s mad uncle who’d drunk too much ale.
“Do you know of them?” Umbra asked, his cold eyes invasively studying her features.
“Yes. That is, I know the stories. It’s said that Dragons once bred with other shifters in…sexual ceremonies…known as Rituals. The legends say that they developed their powers over centuries to something well beyond flight and fire-breathing. Some were rumoured to have been time travellers, even. An impossibility, of course.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. There’s no such thing as the Kindred. And I can’t very well hunt what doesn’t exist.”
“They absolutely do exist, and quite a few have recently stationed themselves here in London. Lumen is their de facto leader, if in fact Dragons can be led. As I’m sure you know, they tend to function best on their own; they aren’t exactly the most social of creatures. So their banding together shows an act of desperation. Or else a plan for destruction. And either way, I fear that London is in grave danger.”
“So what is it that you propose? I look for the Dragon with ‘Head Arsehole’ written on his t-shirt, and take him down with my blades?”
“You look for the one whose scales are the brightest silver,” he said. “Almost iridescent. They say that he’s quite beautiful to look at, his Dragon’s flesh like liquid. His eyes are striking as well: light turquoise, like the sea.”
Again, an image flashed through Neko’s mind of the man she’d met on the street, the Lapsed’s intended victim. Those aqua eyes, piercing, a preternatural beauty to their depths. It seemed too much to hope that this was a coincidence, that he wasn’t the man that she was being asked to hunt and to kill.
Umbra spoke again. “I want you to slay the pretty, shiny creature and then report back to me. I will pay you twenty thousand pounds for the job.”
Neko swallowed. That was more than she normally made in three months. All for one slaying.
“Why do you want him dead?” she asked. “Normally when I hunt shifters, I’m not expected to kill as well. Most of my clients use me solely to locate a shifter who’s been unfaithful, or who’s gone missing for whatever reason. I’m not a hit man…or woman.”
“My reasons are my own. Suffice it to say that his existence threatens that of others. If he persists in living, he’ll undo the work of generations of my kind. There is a cruelty in him, and no telling when he might turn on the human population. I’m here to protect them from his kind. And you’re here to help me.”
“You mentioned your kind. What exactly are you?”
Umbra’s eyes narrowed for a moment, his features going taut. All right, so he didn’t like that question. “I’m someone who looks out for the greater good.”
“Right, then.” Neko rose from her seat for the first time. “I’ll see what I can do about your Dragon.”
“You have a week,” the man said as he handed her an envelope. “You’ll find a fifty percent deposit in there. The rest will come when the job is done. But I should warn you—I’ve asked one other tracker to find him as well. Only the one who successfully takes down Lumen will receive the remainder of the payment. That is, if either of you survives to report back to me.”
“Fine.” She took the envelope and tossed it into the top drawer of the desk, closing it abruptly. Competing in a race to kill wasn’t exactly her usual way of conducting business, but then, all of this was so far out of the norm that she wasn’t sure she was even awake. “I’ll see you in a week,” she said, rising. “Have the rest of the money ready.”
* * *
Syndicate
When Umbra had left, Neko sagged back into her chair, snatching the envelope from the desk drawer. She opened it and flipped through the wad of cash, contemplating her situation.
The client—Umbra—wasn’t human. That much she’d known the second she’d seen him. But he wasn’t a typical shifter, either. And he couldn’t be one of the Lapsed. They didn’t speak; their human forms were more hologram than solid. Their existence was half-assed, at best. Until they shifted into their déors, the creatures were little more than vapour, a mere projection of a person. Soulless, thoughtless servants to some unseen higher power.
But Umbra was capable of speech. He’d sat in the chair, risen, fondled the wallpaper. His body was whole and solid. Still, he was pallid-looking, his human body weak, even frail. And he lacked the more traditional powerful beauty of most shifters; it was as though whatever vitality their kind had had mostly been drained from him, and what was left was an emaciated shell. Still handsome in his way, but he was, it seemed, a man holding onto the last shreds of his humanity.
It didn’t matter what he was, though. The cash was real. The job was real. She had to find this silver Dragon and kill it. And the less she knew about Umbra’s reasons, the better.
She reached into a pocket and withdrew a long silver key. Bending low, she slipped it into the bottom desk drawer and turned until she heard a resounding click before pulling on the handle.
Inside were two long daggers, their handles made of onyx, their blades titanium. Hard enough to pierce the scales of a Dragon. And they would make quick work of a shifter’s flesh in his human form.
Dragon hunting wouldn’t be the most difficult job in the world; they were, after all, enormous. But this was the first Neko had heard of a silver Dragon with turquoise eyes, and he would need to be located, which would probably be no easy task. If he was in fact the man she’d met the previous day, one thing was clear: he wanted to remain hidden.
She had no choice but to start with a visit to the Syndicate: the association of Hunters where Bertie conducted business. If anyone had heard of him, or of the Kindred somehow bein
g real, it would be her.
Neko poked at her phone, sending a text message, picked up the cash and left the office, locking the door behind her.
* * *
“Kindred?” Bertie stared at Neko from behind her desk, mouth gaping in disbelief. “Are you quite certain?”
Her office was at the top of the Syndicate’s home base, in an old clock tower at London’s centre, refurbished to suit its modern-day surroundings. On each side of the square room stood a large, round window, the old clock faces now circles through which daylight flooded. Each of the circles was quartered by a cross made up of lengths of wrought iron.
“Yes, he definitely said Kindred.” Neko’s features were dead serious.
“Is this client of yours a crack smoker, by chance?”
“I know, I know. It’s like I’ve been asked by a demented lunatic to kill the Loch Ness Monster. But he seems confident—and unfortunately, he also seems sane, if a little odd.”
“Well, even if it’s true by some wild chance—and believe me, I can’t imagine that it is—you’re really willing to kill a Kindred? You’ve never turned a blade on a shifter, other than the Lapsed. But it’s not as though we count them.”
“There’s a first time for everything. And besides, this Lumen character sounds dangerous.”
“Everyone sounds dangerous if he’s described by someone who has it in for him. This Umbra has hired you for a hit, plain and simple. He should have asked a Hash.”
The Hashes were purebred assassins, their title taken from the original Arabic word Hashashin. They were known as cold-blooded killers, more than happy to slay for money, and the Syndicate hired them on occasion as freelancers to do the dirty work that others weren’t keen on.
Dragon Hunter Box Set: A Dragon Shifter Serial Page 3