chapter 5
Staring at her outstretched hand, Frenzy didn’t know whether to laugh or to smack it away. He couldn’t believe this petite thing was making demands of him.
But he’d make the deal, because she didn’t need to know he had no intentions of following through with it. Shaking her hand, he nodded. “Deal.”
A visible shudder raced through her. “Good.”
“Here.” He tossed her the squirrel, his lips twitching when she snatched it out of the air, but instead of ripping into it the way any newly turned monster should have, she stared at the carcass with a look of both disdain and desperate longing.
As her pink tongue slid along her still-blunt incisors, Frenzy wondered which hunger was most prevalent—the need for meat or for blood.
“Monk,” he boomed, causing George to jerk.
“What?” he stuttered.
“The lady obviously does not wish to appear crass in public. Set a chair and table and whatever utensils you have so that she can hang on to the last dregs of her humanity.”
Turning, George went to set up a table he probably rarely used himself.
“I’m fine.” Her anger beat at him.
Smirking, Frenzy lifted his brows. “Truly? That why you’re looking at the rodent like you want to rip its head off and tear into it, or toss it away like last week’s garbage?”
Nose curling, she held it out by the tip of its tail, as far away from her nose as possible. “I don’t want to eat.”
“You say that.” His gaze rolled across her white-knuckled grip. “And yet you’re holding on to it so tight I doubt I could yank it from your cold, dead—”
Screaming, she threw the body of the animal against the farthest rock wall. “You’re right, I am dead.”
Snorting, he took a step toward her. “What’s the matter, blondie? Afraid of the desires you feel now? Didn’t you know tangling with a vampire might wind you up in just this situation?”
“I didn’t tangle.”
“Oh yeah”—his upper lip curled—“that’s why I found you in a known crack house. What were you doing? Buying drugs?” He chuckled. “Don’t tell me you were out for a late-night stroll through the Tenderloin, because we both know that’s not the case. You don’t walk on that side of town without knowing exactly why you’re there.”
From the corner of his eye, Frenzy saw George bend over to retrieve the badly broken body of the squirrel.
“You smug, arrogant faerie!”
Laughing, he grabbed both her wrists as she began flailing them at his face, pinning them tight to her side. “Yes, I think that part’s been well established. How about you start telling us the truth? We’ve danced around this long enough. Why were you there?”
Her chest heaved up and down, whispering like a breath against his own, and though he didn’t want to be affected by her touch, her smell, his entire body flared to life. His nerves tingled and he realized that though she infuriated him and made the beast inside stir, he didn’t actually hate it.
In fact…
Her lips parted when he dragged a tendril of her luscious blond hair through his fingertips.
“Let me go,” she whispered, but there was heat behind her words, and though her lips said one thing, her body betrayed her as she leaned farther into him.
A horrible smell rolled through the room. Realizing what he was about, Frenzy took a step back, feeling more discombobulated than he knew he should, dropping his arms from her immediately.
Charred flesh and singed hairs stunk up the cave. He was already annoyed, and the scent only ratcheted up his emotions. Frenzy curled his nose, glaring at George, who was rotating the body of the squirrel—which was now stuck on a spit—through flame.
Gagging, Mila tipped her face down. As bad as the smell was for him, it was likely magnified a thousandfold to her now–highly sensitive olfactory senses.
“Tell me, woman, or I’ll toss you back to those vampires you suddenly seem so afraid of being sired to.” Idle threat, but she didn’t need to know it.
The way she looked at him made dormant emotions inside of him rise up from their long slumber. Emotions like humor, curiosity, and something darkly sensual.
“You know about me. About George.” He jerked his head toward the old shifter, who was still doing something that looked a lot like cooking. “About the Great Wars. You’re what? Twenty-four, twenty-five at best?”
“Thirty-two, you arse. I’m no child.”
Thirty-two, that surprised him. Taking another long look at her, he studied the firmness of her skin, the rich gold of her hair, and her rosebud lips. When mortals became vampires, they didn’t become suddenly modelesque beauties. However they looked in life, they’d now appear in death. That was why there was the occasional elder or child amongst the fangers’ ranks. His lips quirked.
“Interesting.” He grabbed her wrists, bringing her back to his side. He couldn’t seem to help but want to touch her.
Face scrunching, she tried to yank out of his grip. She was a new monster; her strength was nowhere near the level of his, and by the sudden widening of her eyes, she now realized it.
Rubbing his thumb along her smooth inner wrist, he lowered his voice, easing his thigh between her legs. Not because he needed to do it to restrain her, but because he sensed that as much as she fought, she was not immune to him.
“Are we going to speak truth now? Or will I have to return you to your sire? I got a good look at him. Blue eyes, melted face, long-ass fangs.”
Her breathing hitched, and now instead of throbbing awareness, there was burning fear staring back at him from the depths of those exotically familiar amber eyes.
Releasing her wrist, he splayed his large hand against the base of her spine and pulled her farther into his body.
“You…you promised.”
“I promised you nothing, babe.”
“But…but you said, I tell you and you’ll give me a kn—”
His smile was full of teeth. “But you’ve given me nothing. All you do is sit and bristle like a ruffled porcupine. So tell me, what’s it going to be?”
Holding her so close, he felt the slight tremors coursing through her. Saw the way her big eyes held his look. She was terrified, but she wasn’t going to back down. Frenzy wondered if her panic was preventing her from really seeing the truth.
She was terrified of being sired to a vampire. But George had already told her she wasn’t. In her fury she’d obviously failed to register his words. But if she would just stop fighting a moment, she’d realize what was right in front of her.
Even her smell was different. Vampires smelled of traces of metal, of warm blood. Shifters smelled of warm earth, fallen leaves. Of the crisp scent of nature. She smelled of both. But maybe she wouldn’t know that, since a human’s sense of smell was pathetically limited, and though she’d obviously studied his kind, did the mortals know that each species carried their own scent? He doubted it.
George’s bite had definitely infected her, and the way she’d been eyeing the rodent…it wasn’t just for the blood that had now congealed inside its body.
It made him curious as to what she truly was. She was a very rare hybrid species; what were her limitations and strengths? He’d never heard of another vampire/shifter mix ever, since the two classes had a violent distaste for one another. What could she do? That was a mystery he desperately wanted to solve.
As she closed her eyes, he knew the fight had finally left her. Slumping in his arms, she nodded slowly. “You have to understand. This isn’t easy for me. I took an oath and I took it seriously. Telling you, it breaks every promise I ever made.”
Tucking a stray curl of hair behind her ear, he waited until her molten gaze met his before saying, “You died. That vow you made, it broke the moment it happened.”
A loud scraping, like metal on metal, raked through his ears. George was moving a small fold-out table into the center of the room.
“Dinner is served.” He spread his arms and, with a large smile, pointed at the charred remains of the body that no longer resembled a rodent so much as a black stick.
Grabbing two fold-out chairs, Frenzy jerked his chin to the one sitting in front of the blackened food. “Sit.”
Swallowing hard, Mila pulled the chair out and took a seat. She delicately toyed with the tip of the black lump in front of her.
“Eat it,” George whispered. “It’s okay, I cooked it.” His smile was full of crooked teeth.
“Clearly, it’s been a while since last you cooked, old friend.” Frenzy snorted.
Shrugging, the monk covered her hand with his own, his slightly bluer than hers. There were obvious differences between the two of them. Pale as she was, she still looked more alive than him. Not like a walking corpse full of veins and riddled with damage to the flesh.
Apart from the scars across her cheeks, she looked flawless. Frenzy’s heart raced.
“As I’ve tried to tell you before,” George said, “you are not sired. In fact, you are not even a vampire.”
That statement caused her brows to drop. “What?” Holding out her wrists, she rubbed her fingers along the smoothness of her flesh, along the places on her body that had been most savaged while the vampires had been on her. “They bit me. Everywhere. They turned me.” Touching one of her cheeks, she inhaled deeply. “They’ve ruined me.”
Ruin was a matter of debate. The scars were nothing to Frenzy; he’d seen worse, and in fact it gave her a macabre appeal he found oddly exciting. The flaws on her intrigued him in a way that the classic perfection of his kind failed to do.
“They’ll come looking for me. They’ll find me.”
“Without a sire bond, it will be next to impossible.” Frenzy tapped his fingers on the table. “Why do the vampires want you?” he asked again, trying to be patient, but his patience was definitely beginning to wear thin.
Jaw clenching, he read the internal debate waging in her head as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud. Whatever she’d done in her previous life, the brainwashing had been absolute. Even in death she didn’t want to crack.
“Tell me how you know I’m not sired.” Her voice trembled.
“No.” He shook his head. “You first. No more games. Start talking.”
Closing her eyes for a second, she nodded. “But you’ll tell me what I need to know, right?”
Lifting a brow, he didn’t answer.
With a defeated sigh, she began. “Do you know what the CIA is?”
George looked blank, but Frenzy nodded. “A branch of your government?”
Wiggling her hand, she nodded. “Yes. An elite branch and incredibly secret. I’m not CIA, but I’m the equivalent of them. CIA deals with human threats, terrorism, drug cartels, gangland type of things. I do too, but with monsters instead of humans.”
He smiled, but it lacked warmth. “I’ve met Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer—do not doubt that there are monsters within your kind as well.”
“Obviously. But that’s not the type of monster I was referring to.” She huffed impatiently. “I’m talking about the others. You guys.”
George cocked his head. “That is how you knew me on sight, and knew what Frenzy was?” He jerked his thumb at the reaper.
“Frenzy?” She said the name like a question, tasting it, sounding it out, and the way she did it made his pulse throb.
His name sounded good on her tongue. It’d been a long time since he’d indulged in the fantasy of being with a woman.
“Hmm.” Amber eyes narrowed into shrewd slits. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”
Shrugging, he continued to drum his fingers on the tabletop. “So you are a sect of humans studying us?” Getting the topic back to what was important, refusing to be distracted again. “To what purpose?”
“Just because San Francisco opened its borders to you guys, doesn’t mean that it’s going to just let you run roughshod on them. From the moment your kind stepped out of the closet, we’ve been keeping tabs.”
His gut told him they’d done more than just stay informed. “That’s not all you did. Tell the truth.” Setting his face into a hard, implacable mask, he stared her down, letting her know without words that he wasn’t playing.
Shifting in her seat, she picked at the charred remains of her dinner in front of her. “Look, we did what we had to do.”
“I haven’t walked this earth in some time.” Frenzy quirked a brow. “But I can tell that humans have grown more powerful. They have more knowledge of us than at any other point in history. How?”
Closing her eyes, a look of consternation flashed across her features. His question had hit a nerve and he couldn’t help but wonder why.
“Hmm?” he prompted, forcing her to stare at him again. “How are they learning so much? You knew I was a reaper before you even saw my hand. You knew George wasn’t merely a shifter, but that he was also a lone wolf—how?”
Scratching the back of her ear, she shrugged. “And this is why you found me as you did tonight. I’m very valuable.”
Nodding slowly, he perused her for any telltale sign of anxiety. It was much harder to spot on the undead. Where a human would be sweating or visibly shaken, she was cool and still as only a walking corpse could be. “How?”
“How what?” Her eyes were wide and without guile. It seemed to him she was being as honest as she could be, but he needed to make certain.
“How did humans learn of us? You have knowledge. How much? It’s not easy getting close to us. We tend to be a segregated bunch, preferring our own company as opposed to that of others. What did you do, little mortal? How did you get on the vampires’ radar?” Flinging one question after another at her, he waited to spot the cue. The giveaway that he’d hit on a nerve, but her demeanor didn’t falter.
“I’m a seer.”
George whistled. “And now it all makes so much sense.”
She nodded.
A seer was rare. Humans rarely held the gift; most of the gypsies and fortune-tellers he’d ever come across were nothing more than charlatans. The best he’d ever seen seemed to have a gut instinct when it came to reading a person’s emotions and drawing assumptions based off them. But a true seer, that was a precious commodity many of his kind would kill to possess.
“I don’t believe you.” He licked his incisors. “The lines are rare and few; in fact, so rare there are only two.”
“Aye, you bloody fool.” She spat. “The O’Hares and the O’Fallens. Including me.” Touching the spot above her heart, she raised a brow and his lips twitched, beguiled by the brogue that only seemed to come out when she was having a bout of temper.
The woman had spunk. He kind of liked it.
“If you are truly a seer, then you’d know to toss that knowledge around is tantamount to a death sentence. So what did you do, woman, to let those vampires in on the secret?” Frenzy asked.
“I’m aware of that. It’s why I was so protected. Only very few within HPA knew who I really was, let alone that I even existed. I was perfect in keeping my secret; no one knew and that’s the way it would have stayed, if not for what I did.”
“And what is HPA exactly?” George interjected, lips twisting into a macabre version of a smile that showed slightly rotted teeth along the gum lines. For a four-hundred-plus-year-old lone wolf, he was miraculously well preserved. Without the pack magic to aid in regeneration, most loners died within their first century of excommunication.
Tucking a blond curl behind her ear, Mila wet her lips. “Human Protection Agency. HPA. Not the most creative acronym, but it got the point across.”
“And mortals wonder why we can never take them seriously.” Frenzy rolled his eyes at the absurd name. “So what exactly did you do? If you made it to thirty-two without alerting anyone before, you must have known better.”
If she’d still been human he knew her cheeks would have pinkened. Notching her chin high, she gave him a withering look that caused his pulse to stir. “Look, I didn’t pick the name. Fact is, we’re learning a lot about our backyard neighbors, most of it bad. You all may feel you have the final say on power structure, but Earth belongs to us, and we’ll defend what’s ours. As to what I did, it no longer matters. What matters is that my cover is forever blown.”
Snorting, Frenzy shook his head. “‘Us’? Dear girl, you are one of us now.” He waved his thumb between them, intensely curious about what she’d done, but recognizing her show of temper to be nothing more than camouflage for embarrassment, he suffered a rare moment of sympathy and decided not to press that. She was right: what she’d done was inconsequential to the matter at hand.
Nostrils flaring, upper lip curling back, her look was savage and volatile. The air danced with the electric energy of her emotions.
“I’ll never be one of you. Even if you don’t kill me now, they will—they’ll find me and take me out.”
“The vampires?” Frenzy scoffed. “You can fend off a couple fangers now.”
“I’m not talking about those parasites. I’m talking about HPA, about the shadow. Pick your poison. Either one will have a go at me.”
Brows forming a question mark, Frenzy’s lips thinned. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. HPA…because I know too much, I don’t doubt they’ve already sicced a tracker on my arse.” She shrugged as if that one were inconsequential. “As to the shadow, well…that is the seer’s greatest enemy. The O’Hares and O’Fallens never did learn of its origins; everything about the creature is steeped in mystery. The only thing I know to be fact is that it will not stop until it has consumed every last seer left.”
“What? Why?” George’s heavy lisp grew more pronounced, each word more a puff of breath than anything.
“I don’t know.”
Frenzy rubbed his jaw. “So are HPA and the shadow connected?”
She shrugged. “I doona know. But I doubt it. The creature has haunted my people down for centuries. It’s why my life is a constant game of hide and seek. I never lay roots, and rarely stay in one place long enough for anyone to even learn my true name. It’s the only way to escape it, to always stay one step ahead. I was doing fine, until recently. Did you hear of the Candyman killer?”
He frowned. “Candyman?”
“Aye.” She nodded. “The killer leaving bodies of women contorted into grotesque positions with a candy ring on their ring finger?”
He had heard of something like that. “I may have. Why? What does this have to do with either the shadow or HPA?”
“Everything. It’s why I was leaving the organization. I was set to flee again; if the vampires hadn’t found me I’d have been gone tomorrow morning.”
He frowned, still not connecting the dots.
Sighing, she tossed up her hands. “The bodies bore the shadow’s killing stamp.”
“And that was?”
Her lips thinned and he could read her indecision, that there was more to be said but she wasn’t willing to say it.
Switching tactics, he approached from another angle. “How do you know it was the shadow? Are you implying the Candyman and the shadow are the same?”
“No, I’m not…” Her words trailed off before pinning him with a hard glare. “I’ve told you all I will about that. Make no doubt, the shadow will find me and it will take me out. So either give me a knife now or not. But it will kill me and you won’t be able to stop it from happening.”
This wasn’t making sense. Did the woman have a death wish? Or was she speaking the truth? In all his years he’d never heard of a killing shadow. He was death; he should know of anything death-related, and yet the unmistakable quiver in her voice led him to realize that at the very least she believed what she was saying.
Her lips thinned and she turned her face to the side. Clearly she was done speaking, but he wasn’t done asking.
“What did you do to make the vampires aware of you?” Yes, he said he wouldn’t ask, but now with this shadow thing in the equation, maybe what she’d done was tied in after all.
She jutted her jaw out, something cold and raw flashing through her resinous gaze. “I did something I shouldn’t have, betrayed years of silence and blending in by one stupid, stupid…” Sighing, staring heavenward, she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Frenzy suspected that maybe it did. He was just about to badger her more about it, but George cut in first.
“But what I don’t understand is why the vampires were trying to kill you. If you truly are a seer, and they knew that, why did they not keep you?”
Her smile was small and bitter. “Because there is only one part of me worth keeping; the rest is dispensable.”
Finally he understood. Why she’d hesitated earlier and sealed her lips, looked away. Because it was her one weakness. “Your eyes.” Frenzy waited until she turned that familiar gaze on him. The look in them heated every nerve ending inside him. So similar to Adrianna’s, and yet, there was a hardness and rawness in these he’d never seen in his lover’s.
Nodding as if reluctant to do so, she said, “Yes.”
But something was nagging at him. Something he couldn’t put his finger on. Things still weren’t adding up completely. A seer was rare, exceedingly so. Such a gift was invaluable to whoever possessed it, and yet by her own admission, not only were the vampires coming for her, so was this shadow creature. Why? Keeping a seer seemed the better route than simply taking her eyes and hoping to make sense of the visions on your own. Without a seer to decipher the truth, reading the future was a lot like trying to watch a blurred satellite image.
“What aren’t you telling me, Mila O’Fallen?”
Lips pouting prettily, she shook her head. “How do you know my name anyway? I never gave it to you.” Rubbing her forehead, she seemed deflated, defeated. As if this was merely a change of subject but not an answer she was particularly keen on learning.
“Lise gave it to me,” he said, intently studying her features. What was she keeping from him?
“Yeah.”
He had no idea what that “yeah” was for. It was almost as if she wasn’t even listening, not really.
“But why kill you? That smacks of counterintuitiveness,” Frenzy blurted out with frustration. “A seer is vaunted, treasured. They should have done anything to take you.”
“They were pumping me full of venom. I do honestly think their intention in the beginning was to take me, but I”—she twisted her lips—“I goaded them to a killing frenzy. It was my one hope of them not getting what they wanted from me. You don’t technically need a seer around to see the future, so long as you have our eyes. Though it’s definitely easier to keep us than to kill us. I’m pretty sure they didn’t much care by the time I was done taunting them.”
He snorted. That he could believe.
She poked at the squirrel, a heavy sigh spilling from her. “I hate to admit this, but I’m starving. Could I…” She swallowed. “Could I have a knife? Just to cut it up?”
“Use your fingers. You’re no longer mortal, so stop trying to hang on to human conventions.”
She hissed. “You think I don’t know what sort of abomination I’ve become?” A stiff wind to blow through her hair and she’d remind him of Medusa with her poisonous locks.
Getting up, George walked over to a wooden shelf where he kept his plates and cutlery. “Sometimes hanging on to any vestige of our old selves helps to keep us sane.” While his words were directed at Mila, his censorious gaze was directed at Frenzy.
Returning a moment later, he sat the sterling silver butter knife in front of her. Thanking the shifter, she took the knife in hand and tapped the body of the blackened meat.
Jerking his head to the side, George shambled off to a corner of the room, in clear invitation for Frenzy to join him.
After one last glance at her, Frenzy walked over. “What, monk?”
“I suspect she’s lying.”
Frenzy’s lips thinned. “About which part? Are you claiming all she’s said isn’t the truth?” Because he didn’t honestly believe it. Frenzy was pretty sure she’d told them mostly everything.
“No.” George shook his head. “Most of it was true. HPA does indeed exist.”
“If it exists, then why did you ask her what it was?”
Wringing his hands together, he sighed. “To test her. HPA is a human watch group, and they do learn about the society of others. They keep eyes and ears open on us and know much.”
“And you know this how?” Frenzy growled, casting a quick glance at her. She was still tapping on the meat.
“I’m old; there isn’t much for someone like me to do. I cannot live among the mortals, I’m a target on all sides. So much time on my hands, I learn things. I keep my ears and my eyes open. I first heard of HPA twenty years ago.”
Rubbing the bridge of his brow, Frenzy shook his head. “Stop circling the wagons, George, and just spit it out.”
“HPA are mainly watchers. Rarely do they involve themselves in our world. And only to investigate potential homicides directly related to the killing of mortals. I doubt very much they will come seeking her out to kill her as she implied. They seem to take a very hands-off approach. They’re scholars, not killers.”
“Then she is insane?” He looked back at her. She was no longer playing with her food, just gazing at it intently with a pent-up, glassy-eyed stare.
“No, I suspect she merely mentioned them to throw you off the true scent. I believe she plans to escape you at some point.” The monk shook his head violently. “Her true threat comes from this shadow, and if I’m right, she’s in serious danger.”
Brows lowering, he frowned. “Why have I never learned of a shadow?”
Looking pointed, George growled. “Because you’ve kept yourself locked away in faerie land for so long you know little of the dangers living in this world now.”
Second time tonight someone had told him that. First Lise, now George. Shoving his face to within inches of the monk’s, he said in a low-pitched voice, “Then tell me.”
“Irish folklore speaks of a beast born of the wild hunt.”
Frenzy knew of the wild hunt; it was the faeries’ equivalent of a wild, raucous party. A time when all fae, no matter how strong or weak, came together to revel in the wonder and splendor of faerie—when magic was powerful and potent. He’d run in the hunt for decades alongside his queen, reveling in the godlike power bestowed upon all during it.
“And what beast is this?”
“Its origins are hard to trace exactly, but the times I’ve seen it referred to in text, it’s only ever called by two names. The shadow, or drochturach.”
The wild hunt was a time of madness and chaos, birth, death, and magic. But Frenzy had never heard of this one.
“What does it do?”
“It finds and destroys seers. That is why they are so rare. The creature has been very thorough.”
“So it kills them? Slices off their heads?” He ran his hand across his neck.
“Much worse.” George swallowed convulsively. “It consumes them. Their physical bodies may die, but their souls stay forever trapped within it in a perpetual hell.”
Grimacing, Frenzy wondered how he’d never learned or heard of this creature—this killing shadow.
“Not only that, but from what I’ve gathered, each death makes it stronger.”
The possibilities were staggering. The potential for what it could be boggled his mind. “How many has it killed?”
George shrugged. “Stories vary. Some say ten, others three. I couldn’t say for certain. All I can say is this creature is dangerous and unpredictable.”
The pieces of the puzzle were slowly starting to come together: why Lise had been so insistent he keep Mila safe. Not because she had plans for Frenzy and Mila to become the next Romeo and Juliet, not even because she wanted to save her life. Mila was valuable. A rare treasure and a possession that even Lise would crave to own.
“Then I will just take her to faerie, keep her there for a—”
“No.” George shook his head hard, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose again. “The wards of faerie will not protect against this creature. It was born in your lands; there is no place it cannot go. Your only hope of keeping her safe is running, keeping low, and never letting her tap into her powers.” He tapped his forehead. “Every time she uses them, it’s like a dinner bell to the monster. It can track her off them.”
Muscle in his jaw ticking, trying to make sense of all this information, Frenzy opened his mouth, ready to ask how the vampires were involved in all of this, when he heard a loud clatter and then a dull thud.
Turning on his heel, he spotted Mila slumped on the ground with the hilt of the knife poking up from her chest.