Bone Hunter

by Thea Atkinson

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  Chapter 37

  Isabella Hush

  Bone Hunter

  Copyright 2018 Thea Atkinson

  Published by Thea Atkinson

  Edited by Margo Bond Collins

  Cover Art and Design by Christian Bentulan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  CHAPTER 1

  I tasted blood.

  As surprising as it was to have the metallic flavor tease my tongue, I didn't panic. Not at first. The taste of blood was something I got used to over the years living with Scottie. Part and parcel of the lifestyle as it were. Like many women caught in a tangle of love and fear, I got normalized to so many things, not the least of which was the feel of a cut lip and the taste of blood. I knew the coppery tang against the insides of my cheeks as intimately as I knew the curve of my lover's thigh.

  It's not something a gal easily forgets when it's an almost weekly occurrence.

  Trouble was, I'd left Scottie years ago.

  And I hadn't bitten my tongue.

  Except for the cat sitting on the kitchen counter, swiping at the mounds of bubbles that filled the sink, I was alone in my brownstone apartment.

  Alone.

  I had to repeat that to myself. I was alone in a building glamored by someone from the supernatural community to keep out mortal men like Scottie and every manner of extraordinary creature that might want to do me harm.

  Not the least of which was the incubus I'd blackmailed in order to attain the glamor.

  It wasn't an honest acquisition of the safeguard, but it was a safeguard, and I'd never been obsessive about gaining things in an honest way.

  I still wasn't quite comfortable knowing a supernatural world seethed beneath my feet, but I felt safer than I had in years when the glamor went on the brownstone.

  Which was why it took me a few moments of reflection to feel afraid.

  Even so, fear is a tricky thing. It does what it wants, slips into hidden mental crannies where it shouldn't. It kicks in the door whether it's reasonable or not. And despite my rationalization of knowing I was alone and hadn't been struck by a meaty fist, I had to clutch the edge of the counter to keep from bolting the way instinct screamed at me to do.

  That too, came from normalizing very un-normal things.

  I ran down the reasons I shouldn't be afraid again, just for good measure, and this time came up with an explanation that could explain exactly why a gal in her kitchen, doing a few dishes, could so vividly taste the tang of blood.

  I'd been letting my mind wander because I hated the chore. And I'd been thinking about Scottie.

  Struck with boredom and filled with a loathing for scrubbing two-day-old restaurant lasagna off the fourth plate, my mind had decided to play hooky and had slipped back to a night when I'd still loved him, and he'd lost a half a fortune to a petty thief who convinced him he was better at breaking into unique locks than any young slip of a girl could be.

  Scottie hadn't trusted the guy the way he trusted me, but he was greedy. The thought that he might have an additional jimmy-jammer on his team was too much to resist, even for the careful and OCD Scottie.

  He'd sent the new guy out on a heist, but the kid never came back.

  I was no more to Scottie in the moment he found out he'd been had than a reminder to him that he had been duped.

  Scottie hated being conned. I suppose every con man does.

  The difference between a regular criminal type and Scottie was that Scottie had begun his career as muscle and built his empire on the con men he acquired through that muscle.

  Thinking about it had probably set some dormant dormouse synapse in my cerebral cortex into overdrive. Like fear, memory can be a powerful thing. Vivid and visceral, even. It had a taste all its own.

  I wiped the back of my soapy hand across my mouth anyway. Looked at it, certain I would see the telltale blot of red against my skin, but nothing except soapy bubbles met my eye. Several of them popped along my wrist without making a sound.

  It did nothing to make me feel better because dammit, that was just plain strange. And the taste had been so clear. Was still clear.

  I ran my tongue along my palette, testing. Yes. Blood. Copper and electrode-tainted zinc with a bite that was like sticking your tongue on a battery.

  I wiped my hands on a towel and probed inside my cheek with my finger. No tooth broken that I could tell. No sore spot on my tongue. I leaned toward the window over the sink, trying to catch my reflection in the glass.

  The kitchen light hummed overhead. It sizzled and flared and then finally went out. I was in darkness for a full heartbeat before everything came back on again with a high-pitched keening of electricity.

  "What in the hell," I said out loud to the cat.

  She eyed me as though she thought I was going to splash her with hot dishwater.

  "It's interesting that you mention hell," said a voice from behind me.

  In that one second, every sense of safety fizzled into nothing.

  A hundred red lights went off inside my head. A dozen alarms. My heart hammered against my ribcage twice in rapid succession at the sound of another voice. One that shouldn't have been there. It took me too long to swing around to confront the intruder.

  The cat fell into the sink with a yowl and a splash that covered my shirt with hot water. She was scrambling back out even as instinct sent my hand searching for something, anything close to hand that I could use for protection.

  She streaked across the floor toward my bedroom, a wet little bolt of fur who yowled as she went, and I, soaked and terrified, spun on my heel, clutching my weapon in front of me.

  I moved so quickly I swept a glass from the counter onto the floor. It shattered into a spray of crystals across the tiles. I flinched in reaction and caught my breath.

  I saw nothing.

  The first floor was open concept and I could see all the way through to the bay windows in the front. There wasn't anyone in plain sight. That meant whoever it was might have sneaked up the stairs that led to the empty apartment upstairs. It had been closed off by the landlord when I moved in, but that didn't mean someone hadn't crept in and made their way silently up the treads in wait. Might even be hiding there now.

  I wasn't alone. Not by a long shot.

  "Shit," I muttered beneath my breat
h and then immediately bit down on my lip.

  Maybe I could imagine a voice out of long-buried memory, but the cat couldn't. If the cat heard it, then someone was there.

  The question was: Where?

  I had no idea how he got in, or who he was, or even where he was, but I knew I was exposed and vulnerable. My skin prickled with the knowledge.

  Standing in my kitchen, at least I had the counter to my back. My bedroom was to my left, along with any number of more deadly weapons that could take a man out without having to be in close range like a knife required.

  I was little, but I wasn't stupid. At least not all the time.

  I tried to crane my body to see if there was a telltale shadow on the stairs, but I wasn't at the right angle. I wasn't even in the right spot to see much without taking a noisy step on the aged floorboards.

  I most decidedly did not want to move. Not one hair.

  There was no way I was bolting for the front door. Not until I knew the escape route was clear.

  Not until I could figure out exactly where the voice had come from. As terrifying as the thought might be, I needed another sound to orient myself to where it came from.

  I felt like a coward but the wimpy girl within knew she hadn't managed to survive Scottie and a nasty sorcerer plus a fae assassin from any sort of natural bravery. Bald courage was a thief's undoing.

  But it wasn't going to be my undoing.

  I swallowed, tasting the blood again. I could hear my own breathing. My heart raced fast and hard enough in my ears to drown out someone else breathing.

  I listened hard, trying to hear the telltale sound of someone standing on the stairs just out of sight.

  I considered bolting to the bedroom. The door locked from the inside. If I had to, I could dig into my heist bag and lift out the Ruger LC9 I'd purchased after my last run in with Scottie.

  Glamor was all well and good, but a gal didn't stay in her apartment 24/7. I never really knew what happened to my ex-paramour after I'd left him alone to face down Finn the nasty-ass sorcerer.

  Nothing else moved. No other sound came. I stood stock still for at least four minutes without one more sound giving away a potential intruder.

  I knew a thief could wait silently for at least twenty in an attempt to fool an occupant and make her believe that nothing was amiss, but even so, my fingers started to relax their grip on the knife's handle. My breath let go with a wheeze.

  That was when I realized something--some sort of shadow--was smudging the sofa. A shadow that had nothing to do with the setting sun outside the window falling behind the rooftops of neighborhood houses.

  A man-sized shadow that was slowly being poured out of the light spilling through the Eastern window and onto my sofa.

  I watched in a kind of stupor as it solidified into a man-shaped body. His hair had a salt-and-pepper quality even if his face showed no sign of age. There was keen intelligence in that face. The eyes sparked purple for a second then settled into an icy blue.

  Not human, my mind whispered.

  He was splayed out against the cushions, with one arm stretched across its plaid-patterned back in a way that indicated he had been sitting there for several moments, waiting for me to notice him and was surprised I didn't.

  But at least he didn't look like he was about to pounce. If he'd come to kill me, he'd have tried something by now.

  My fist clenched on the knife handle as I tried to figure out what he was. Another sorcerer like Finn? Had Scottie found a way to send a supernatural minion to claim me? Had he been stalking the outside of my apartment, watching me climb invisible stairs and disappear into a solid wall all these weeks?

  Whoever he was, I knew it was entirely too late to run.

  CHAPTER 2

  I decided in light of the way I was already standing with a knife in my hand, and him on the couch looking far too comfortable, that the best plan of attack was attack. Like a small dog facing down a bigger one, I put a lot of bark in my tone.

  "What in the hell do you want?" I demanded.

  At least my voice was somewhat calm. If there was a tremor in it, a hitch at the last syllable, he might mistake it for indignation instead of terror.

  I wasn't about to take a chance on that though.

  I stuck the knife out in front of me.

  "Just what do you think you're going to do with a butter knife?" he said.

  Long fingers tapped a short rhythm against the back cushion. Small puffs of dust rose to the air.

  I took a careful step sideways, aiming the admittedly useless butter knife at him nonetheless. My stomach felt clammy from the wet t-shirt.

  I tried to keep my voice steady. But I knew its tenor too well to know I wasn't succeeding. I just hoped he wouldn't know.

  "Who are you and what do you want?"

  He cocked a silver eyebrow above a gaze that shifted from blue to red and blue again.

  "If you must use a name," he said. "Then you can call me Colin."

  "Well, Colin," I said, edging even more toward my bedroom. "You best tell me what the hell you're doing here and how in the hell you got in."

  "Who do you think put the glamor on this seedy little building?" he said.

  I eyed him through narrowed lids. "I'm guessing that would be you," I said.

  He placed a long finger against his nose.

  "It still doesn't tell me why you're here."

  "Doesn't it?" he said.

  My mind went alight with possibilities. I had blackmailed a hedonistic little incubus to get that glamor, and now I wondered if maybe all that karma had come back to roost. Maybe he had paid a rather lazy assassin to glamor the building for me, lull me into a sense of safety, then swoop in to take me out.

  But that didn't seem right. The incubus Errol wouldn't be that cunning. He was more of a grope first ask for permission later sort.

  I swallowed down the taste of blood and hitched the back of my hip against the counter for support. I had to think. This invader knew my house and the fact that I'd had it glamored. I imagined Errol the incubus could have sold that information, but I doubted it. I had too much on him.

  I chewed the inside of my cheek thoughtfully as the man on the sofa watched me working my way through the dilemma. He even smiled a little, which did nothing to relieve my anxiety.

  It was about then that the cat pushed her way through the crack in my bedroom doorway, dragging along her disgusting little flannel receiving blanket. The smell of wet fur hung in the air as she headed past me and jumped up into the intruder's lap.

  At sight of it, my grip on the handle of the knife relaxed somewhat. She obviously was perfectly okay with him. And while she rarely made an effort to be liked by anyone, she was already arching her back against his fingers, commanding in her arrogant way to be idolized.

  So much for worrying I was about to be murdered. My cat was not the petting type.

  I felt my shoulders sag, but I didn't let go of my grip on the knife. Not yet.

  I looked him over, trying to work out exactly what sort of creature he was. He looked far too human to be something like a Golem, too damn handsome to be a troll. Not that I would know them if I saw them. I was still new to the world of otherworldly creatures. But I reasoned that if he had regular sized canines he couldn't be a vampire either. There might have been a sharp elongation to his jaw, but I had no idea what that meant. The best I could describe him was that he was shimmery.

  Shimmery and handsome. Like flat-out beautiful.

  And it was there that my knowledge of all things supernatural ended. My interest moved to more important things. Like what the hell he was doing in my apartment, trespassing the heck out of it, in fact.

  "You might have glamored my house, but it doesn't give you the right to door-crash it."

  "I didn't..." he started to say, then shrugged with such elegance that I might have liked him. "I don't know what door-crashing is," he admitted.

  I clenched my fists next to my side, undeterred. "It me
ans you've entered where you have no rights. This is my home. Mine."

  He grinned, showing me a set of teeth that glittered like crystal.

  "Technically, it's my home," he said. He buried his face in the cat's fur and she purred loud enough to make me glare at her.

  "Come again?" I said.

  "Glamor isn't really a specialty," he explained. "It's a cheap trick and nothing more. The problem with something being glamored is that it still exists exactly as it is."

  He shrugged casually at the words but there was nothing unassuming about it. It was a deliberate affectation, as though he was working hard at seeming human.

  "Errol asked me for glamor. I gave you glamor," he continued. "For about three days. Then I gave you something more lasting." He paused for a moment. "Something safer."

  He stressed the last word.

  "Doesn't seem so safe to me," I said, jerking my chin at him to indicate how safe I thought it was if he could just stroll in.

  He ignored the implication.

  "Should someone stumble upon your little apartment door in your world, the magic might not have been enough to keep them fooled. I had to do something far more permanent. For your safety, you understand."

  "My safety," I repeated. The skin on the back of my neck prickled.

  He inclined his head ever so slightly. I thought I could smell warm toffee.

  "No doubt this safety comes at a cost," I said.

  He rubbed the cat's ears until she leaned against him, greedy for the touch.

  "Doesn't everything?" he said and stretched out his legs as the cat rolled over, trying to lay enough scent on him to claim him as hers.

  I cursed out loud and resisted the urge to scoop her from his lap.

  "So if my building isn't glamored," I said, "then what is it? Some sort of spell?"

  His brow wrinkled, and I guessed I'd agitated him with the word spell.

  "It's very specific magic," he said with a tightness to his voice that told me I was right. "The house itself is still settled nicely in the ninth world. But the interior you are in--that we are in--exists in my realm. The Fourth world. Much older than yours." He flashed that crystal grin again. "Should someone else come into your building in the mortal realm, they will see what you expect. A dank stairway. A disgustingly cluttered apartment. Lots of socks and shoes strewn about."