Storm Warning

by Sydney Somers

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  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, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Storm Warning

  Copyright © 2008 by Sydney Somers

  ISBN: 978-1-60504-192-6

  Edited by Lindsey McGurk

  Cover by Anne Cain

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: September 2008

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Storm Warning

  Shadow Destroyers Book Three

  Sydney Somers

  Dedication

  As always, a special thank you to my husband. I couldn’t have written—much less imagined—a hero as wonderfully supportive as you are.And thank you to my sister Ryan for your incredible insight during the brainstorming stage of this one, and to my awesome editor Lindsey for always pushing (and pushing, and pushing) for my absolute best—I’d be lost without you.

  Prologue

  “I thought you liked it rough?”“Rough is fine. Wet—not so much.” Drew jerked his sword up to deflect the sacrificial dagger that slashed much too close to his throat.

  Fog curled around him like a constricting serpent, making it harder to see Quinn. Between the claps of thunder loud enough to rattle his teeth, he could hear her fighting one of the hostiles somewhere behind him. The sound of metal striking metal was dampened by the pouring rain that had already soaked his clothes and ran in cold rivulets down his face.

  He pivoted around, driving the storm demon back with the length of his blade. If anyone had passed the hostile bent on using the temperamental weather to evade him, they wouldn’t have noticed anything remarkable about the female’s frizzy brown hair and scholarly wire-frame glasses. They might have even been too quick to dismiss the baggy khaki pants and faded navy T-shirt to notice the demon’s black, red-rimmed eyes.

  But they sure as hell wouldn’t have missed the look of depraved longing that contorted a demon’s expression from innocent to merciless the second it isolated its prey.

  The storm demon dodged his next strike, and Drew’s heightened senses and speed were the only things saving him from getting smoked by the bursts of lightning that arced through the night sky to lick the ground. Most storm demons tended to avoid confrontation, choosing to flee rather than stand and fight. Tonight this pair, the last of a group of four he and Quinn had tracked to a condemned apartment building, used every bit of the dark magik they could wield to hold their ground.

  And there could only be one explanation for that. Sacrifice.

  Quinn took a hard shove that sent her skidding across the wet pavement by Drew’s feet. She regained her footing before the second hostile managed more than half a step in her direction.

  Quinn scowled. “I just bought these pants.”

  Drew cringed. If the perpetrator was anything but an emotion-hungry Shadow Demon with its sight set on more sacrifice victims, he might have felt a pang of sympathy for the object of Quinn’s imminent retaliation.

  Another streak of lightning struck the fire escape overhead, the resulting sparks quickly extinguished by the drenching sheets of rain. Drew sidestepped, bringing his sword in a wide arc that caught the storm demon’s thigh. The hostile hissed, and scrambled back.

  Drew didn’t let up, relying on his hearing when it retreated to the alley’s shadows. Even in the dark, his vision was significantly better than the average person’s, but the rain, fog and sporadic bursts of lightning worked to the hostile’s benefit. He took his time, filtering through the surrounding sounds—someone running to catch a bus already pulling away from the curb, a phone ringing non-stop in the next building, a couple bickering nearby about the last time they had sex.

  “Speaking of sex,” Quinn began, grunting a moment later as the triumphant thud of fist on flesh echoed in the alley.

  “We weren’t,” he said, darting forward to intercept his storm demon before it changed its mind and decided to run after all.

  Drew’s clothes were plastered to his skin, his stomach rumbled in protest from the meager piece of cold pizza and the handful of half-stale pretzels he’d relieved Quinn of a few hours earlier, and he was pretty sure the sticky feeling along the inside of his arm was blood. He wanted this over with.

  “Ah, come on. It’s not like I want to talk about mine and Braxton’s sex life.”

  If he could’ve put his hands over his ears and still held onto his sword, he would have. He cursed Quinn under his breath, and she laughed. A moment later a body thumped on the ground behind him.

  One hostile down…

  A sharp punch clipped Drew’s jaw, and he bit his tongue. Blood seeped at the corner of his mouth. He gritted his teeth at the metallic taste and lashed out with his blade, managing to impale the storm demon.

  The hiccupping shudder of a crying child separated from the other background noises. Without taking his eyes of the hostile, he sifted through details to identify where it was coming from.

  A flare of blue flames permanently vanquished the demon Quinn had tangled with, giving the hostile he had cornered one last desperate burst of energy. Distracted by the little girl’s terrified crying, Drew was slow to respond to the kick that nailed him in the kneecap.

  Son of a bitch.

  Thrown off balance, he stumbled back, clenching his jaw at the pain that clawed up his leg. The pelting rain and explosions of thunder did nothing to drown out the crying that flooded his mind. His heart thumped faster and he forced back the unexpected snap of panic that caught him hard in the chest.

  Emotions were checked at the door when it came to tracking and slaying Shadow Demons. Every agent knew that—lived by it. To do otherwise gave the hostile exactly what it needed and got you killed. Cursed and imprisoned thousands of years ago, Shadow Demons hungered for the human emotions they’d been stripped of. The more intense and aggressive the emotion, the more a demon got off on it.

  Remembering that, Drew struggled to focus. The crying was coming from somewhere inside the building the storm demons had been holed up in. Had the child been their next sacrifice victim? Panic gave way to anger, and he tried hard not to picture her face, not to imagine the fear that would have filled her eyes when one of the bastards went after her.

  The storm demon would have bolted if Drew hadn’t caught the back of the hostile’s shirt and slam it against the wall.

  “What did you do to her?” he snarled, closing his hand around the demon’s throat. His anger had surpassed smoldering and burned like acid in his veins. “Did you hurt her?” Had they taken her off the street? Ripped her from her father’s arms? Let her watch while they first tortured and then sacrificed her parents?

  They were capable of far more than that, whatever it took to let them feel again, and tonight that knowledge pushed Drew the closest to the edge he’d ever come. He knew it, knew it in the way his fingers tightened, itching to crush the hostile’s windpipe in his bare hand. Knew it in the way he wanted to pound the demon’s face until there was nothing left of the creature that manifested its human body to pass as one of them.

  Knew it—and didn’t care.

  The hostile’s lips twisted in a cruel smile.r />
  Drew grunted, compressing the demon’s throat until the perverse expression of pleasure on its face was dulled by pain.

  “Drew?” Quinn’s voice was barely audible.

  He wasn’t sure if she intended to be that quiet or if the little girl’s shuddering cries drowned everything else out. The fingers he clenched around the hilt of his sword twitched.

  “Even now the child wishes she were dead,” the demon taunted. The hissing undercurrent that ran beneath the feminine voice proved the human façade couldn’t disguise the evil it masked. That it bothered to speak at all was merely a demonstration that it would do anything to get the upper hand.

  Like the other warning signs, Drew swept it aside. Weeks of denial, frustration and anger—fear—steamrolled deep inside him and he drove his blade into the demon’s stomach.

  The bloodless demon howled first in agony, then crowed in pleasure.

  “Don’t let it get to you.”

  Drew didn’t acknowledge Quinn. Didn’t want to. The crying raked his raw nerve endings until he wanted to shout at the intensity of it.

  A hard shove knocked him to the right. There wasn’t time to recover before Quinn smoothly decapitated the hostile, her lips moving to the ancient chant that vanquished the demon’s aura, preventing it from returning to the prison realm it had escaped from.

  “What was that about?” Her long black hair, complete with thick streaks of blue, was plastered to the sides of her face. There was no accusation or annoyance in her voice, just bafflement.

  The rain was already letting up, a fact he was surprised he processed at all. He couldn’t think beyond the child’s cries that echoed in his head. He wanted to be furious with Quinn for denying him the kill, but instead of forcing the words out he turned and sprinted toward the building, taking the fire escape up three floors.

  He assumed Quinn was already following him through the condemned building’s sagging doorways and around the sections of rotting floor that probably wouldn’t support a rat’s weight.

  He slowed outside a partially closed door nearly dangling from its hinges. The crying ceased the second he pushed the door open, flakes of peeling paint crumbling under his palm. Quinn remained behind him, though he was certain his urgency had become hers.

  The room’s two windows had been boarded up long ago and only shards of moonlight slipped through the cracks from the rushed job. The dim interior made no difference to either of them, yet he almost missed the misshapen bundle trembling in the corner, lost in a heap of dilapidated furniture left by previous tenants.

  Huddled beneath a dirty blanket, the child began crying again, soft whimpers now as though she was terrified of being heard but unable to help herself.

  Drew crouched in front of her. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “You’re safe now.”

  The child screamed and recoiled from him, dislodging the blanket until a tangled mop of short blonde hair and frightened green eyes stared back at him. Careful not to give the girl a reason to fear him, he held out his hand, waiting for her to look at his eyes. “The bad people are all gone now. You’re safe.”

  The child’s nervous gaze darted back and forth between him and Quinn.

  “I promise we won’t hurt you.”

  Next to him, Quinn tensed. He didn’t need to turn around to see on her face that she could relate to the child’s trauma, knew intimately the nightmares the little girl would be plagued with after tonight.

  The child, who couldn’t be more than four or five years old, clung to her blanket. Another tear tracked down her cheek, leaving a wet trail in the dirt smeared across her skin.

  Quinn crouched. “Let us take you home.”

  Uncertain, but no longer trembling quite so hard, the little girl took a hesitant step toward Quinn, then turned at the last minute and launched herself at Drew. He closed his arms around the child. She locked her hands around his neck and began crying again, sobbing for her daddy.

  His chest ached so damn bad he couldn’t drag enough air into his lungs. “It’s okay,” he managed before his throat closed up on him.

  Drew felt Quinn’s unwavering gaze, but she didn’t say anything. He was thankful when she turned and led the way back toward the fire escape they’d used to enter the building. He doubted she trusted the building’s structural integrity any more than he did, and it was better odds taking the same way out that they’d come in.

  Quinn stopped long enough to withdraw a tiny camera from her pocket and photograph some of the sacrificial symbols the demons had painted on the walls and floors. There were no victims staked down in the middle of the room, and he took what comfort he could in knowing that whatever Scion the hostiles had been looking to bring into this realm, it wouldn’t be crossing over today.

  Drew turned to go, then stopped, drawn by an unfamiliar symbol on the wall. The child buried her face against his throat as he moved closer.

  “I’ve never seen this one before.” He raised his hand as though to trace the geometric lines and meshed circles, stopping at the last second when he remembered the crimson slashes had been drawn in blood. Had the demons not felt compelled to scribe their symbols in blood—and they didn’t always—it would be impossible for his senses to identify at least four other sacrifices having taken place here.

  He gave the girl in his arms another reassuring squeeze. She might very well have been the last victim the storm demons needed to open a gateway for a Scion. Considering how his last brush with a master demon had gone, he wasn’t in a hurry to face another one.

  Quinn stepped up next to him and took a few more pictures. “I don’t recognize it either. Maybe Braxton has seen it before.”

  Most active agents knew the history of their enemy and the millennia-old blood feud between two ruling brothers that ripped apart an entire civilization, but few made it a habit to memorize every ancient symbol and nuance of the language. In Drew’s mind, slaying Shadow Demons was more important than analyzing their sloppy handwriting.

  Drew’s pocket vibrated, and he withdrew his cell phone. He glanced at the caller display, brushing his thumb across the screen regretfully. He replaced the phone without answering it, his turbulent emotions still riding too close to the surface.

  Quinn studied the child, then him, her gaze a little too perceptive. “You okay?”

  He turned toward the window that led to the fire escape. “I will be.”

  Chapter One

  “Could be a bogus tip, you know.”“Wouldn’t be the first.” Undeterred, Blair Murphy scanned the top of her cluttered desk for a pencil, nudging aside the notes she’d jotted down for another story. She wanted to get all the details on paper while they were still fresh in her mind. Wasn’t every day she got a tip on potential government corruption from a source that had proven reliable in the past.

  Whitney perched on the edge of Blair’s desk, toying with her inhaler before tucking it into her purse. The humidity earlier in the day had no doubt played havoc with her asthma. She cocked her head and looked pointedly at Blair.

  “What?”

  Her former college roommate rolled her eyes and tapped her finger to her temple.

  Blair reached behind her ear and discovered the pencil she’d stashed there earlier. She’d trained herself in college to keep one directly on her person, a necessary habit after routinely losing them within an hour of taking them out of her backpack.

  “I think it has to be bad karma for a journalist to be constantly misplacing her writing instruments.”

  Blair grinned. “Then it’s a good thing we live in a digital age.”

  “One you seem reluctant to embrace.” Whitney gestured to the hand-held organizer sticking out from beneath a pile of folders that looked ready to topple at any minute. Good intentions aside, no matter how hard Blair tried, she couldn’t get back into the habit of using the gift Whitney had bought for her months ago.

  Maybe if she hadn’t lost her last one during a meeting with a source in the wee hours of the morning. A meet
ing she should have known better than to attend. The less-than-reputable part of town might have deterred her if she hadn’t been so damn hungry to prove herself. She may have gotten the information she went looking for that night, but for a while, she’d questioned whether it had been worth nearly getting shot. Not to mention losing all the information she’d painstakingly entered into the PDA, a device she wouldn’t have guessed to be such an impressive hand missile. Still, all she had to do was glance at the award she’d won for the resulting article on the corruption of a local prison warden and she could almost mourn the loss of her PDA with a smile on her face.

  “You sure you trust your source? How well do you know this guy?”

  Blair gave Whitney a coy smile. “Who said it was a guy?”

  With a look of mock outrage, Whitney crossed her arms. “I can’t believe you’d think I’d try to weasel that out of you.”

  “I’m sure it has nothing to do with using that kind of information to crack a story before me in the past.”

  “Once,” Whitney grudgingly conceded, the subtle inflection of hurt betraying how miffed her friend might get if she lingered on the subject. “And besides, haven’t you always said a healthy amount of professional rivalry is why we’re still friends?”

  Blair snorted, pushing away from her desk. “We both know I only hang out with you because you’re good at luring in decent-looking men whenever we go out for drinks.”

  “Playing to my vanity—”

  “Is why you hang out with me,” Blair put in, managing to keep a completely straight face for a whole two seconds.

  “You’re such a bitch,” Whitney growled affectionately. She followed Blair as she wound her way through the maze of mostly abandoned cubicles. Nearly eleven o’clock, the majority of staff reporters had either gone home to work or had better places to be than behind their desk on a Friday night.

  Whitney pushed her hands through her long brown hair—so straight Blair’s flat iron was jealous—and pulled it back into a flawless ponytail. “You never did give me any details on how your date went earlier this week.”