A heated argument between two witches, over a male they both desired, broke out on the dance floor. No one noticed yet, but he knew. That was part of his skill. He’d always know what, when, where, and how his victims would die. And this was how she was meant to go. An unfortunate casualty to another’s greed and lust.
The words were quickly escalating to something wild and heated and with it a simmering threat of violence. Dancers nearest the women began to notice and take pause.
A few cleared the floor. His dark witch was still unaware.
She slipped the lip-gloss back into the velvet drawstring purse on her wrist and like a flame to flesh he felt her. Her gaze, it was on him. On his face. She smiled and whispered, “hello”.
A physical warmth spread through his body with rocketing speed. He couldn’t rip his gaze from hers. Transfixed by her gentle beauty. As if her smile was connected to the center of his being, and for a brief moment in time, the darkness inside him washed away at the beauty of it. In her exotic golden gaze he read the truth.
She saw him through eyes without revulsion. To her he was only a man. Not a monster. Not a despised fae. His breath stuttered and his fingers clenched, to know that gaze for the rest of his life would be a small miracle.
The emotions were powerful and foreign and not his own. That’s when he suspected these were not his feelings but hers. She had to be a projecting empath. A being capable of transferring their thoughts and emotions onto another.
One minute ‘til midnight.
The screams in the center of the dance floor rose to cacophonous levels. His witches gaze ripped from him to the disturbance, little knowing she watched the beginning of her end. Her human male sidled up to her side, gripping her elbow with a worried frown.
Thirty seconds.
Cian turned, gazing at a brunette and blonde witch glaring with fury at the other. Panic fluttered desperate wings in his throat. His witch would soon die and with her the smile that ripped through his soul.
Some protective instinct snapped to life inside him. Not pausing for thought, he pulled his glove on over his skeletal hand.
The brunette witch lifted her hand and hazy red curls of power undulated between her fingers. She screamed, “...you’ll never have him!”
From her fingers shot a shaft of pulsating ruby colored energy. People yelled and fell to the floor. The intended target, the blonde, was barely nicked on the arm.
He didn’t think, merely reacted, and threw himself in the path of blast. They never glanced up from the scene before them. The energy ripped through his back, sizzling through the flesh, even as he knocked his witch and her human to the ground. He landed with a hard grunt on top of them.
Then there was chaos. An explosion of sound erupted behind him and Cian bowed into the pain. Sweat stung his brows. The pain ate at him like flames licking at a pig’s carcass, the hot sizzle of burning flesh reached his nostrils and he grimaced.
Undulating waves of heat seeped through the front of his shirt. He glanced down, expecting to see blood. A glowing bubble of silver encased his witch and her mate. She’d thrown up some type of shield.
It wouldn’t have helped. She’d thrown it too late.
He had only seconds before the invisibility left him. The moment for death had passed. Using essence—the magick inherent in all his kind—he weaved a net of illusion around himself. He wanted no one to witness the blood staining his back.
He also didn’t want to stick around long enough to turn visible. Fast, as only an immortal could, he picked himself up and ran out the club. Every step was agony, ripping the wound open further, causing him to grit his teeth against the dizzying pain.
Only then did he realize what he’d done. The irrevocable action he’d committed tonight. He’d broken the single most important rule of the reaper. Spare none. The Morrigan, his Queen, had preached that with threat of torture to any who dared to disobey.
She would want his blood, unless he fixed this first. Frowning with resolve he turned and fled. He must return.
They had to die.
But not tonight.