Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance (21 page)
Read Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance Online
Authors: Jennifer Ashley,Alyssa Day,Felicity Heaton,Erin Kellison,Laurie London,Erin Quinn,Bonnie Vanak,Caris Roane
“Exactly my point,” she said. “This case has been handled badly from start to finish. If you help me, I can spring Brian and make a point at the same time. You don’t mess with people’s rights, not even Shifters’.”
Liam’s eyes grew harder, if that were possible. It was like looking at living sapphire. “I don’t give a damn about making a point. I give a damn about Brian’s family.”
All right, so she’d miscalculated about what would motivate him. “In that case, Brian’s family will be happier with him outside prison, not inside.”
“He won’t go to prison, love. He’ll be executed, and you know it. No waiting twenty years on death row, either. They’ll kill him, and they’ll kill him fast.”
That was true. The prosecutor, the county sheriff, the attorney general, and even the governor, wanted an example made of Brian. There hadn’t been a Shifter attack in twenty years, and the Texas government wanted to assure the world that they weren’t going to allow one now.
“So are you going to help me save him?” Kim asked. If he wanted to be direct and to the point, fine. So could she. “Or let him die?”
Anger flickered through Liam’s eyes again, then sorrow and frustration. Shifters were emotional people from what she’d seen in Brian, not bothering to hide what they felt. Brian had lashed out at Kim many times before he’d grudgingly acknowledged that she was on his side.
If Liam decided to stonewall her, Brian had said, Kim had no hope of getting cooperation from the other Shifters. Even Brian’s own mother would take her cue from Liam.
Liam had the look of a man who didn’t take shit from anyone. A man used to giving the orders himself, but so far he hadn’t seemed brutal. He could make his voice go soft and lilting, reassuring, friendly. He was a defender, she guessed. A protector of his people.
Was he deciding whether to protect Brian? Or whether to turn his back?
Liam’s gaze flicked past her to the door, every line of his body coming alert. Kim’s nerves made her jump. “What is it?”
Liam got out of his chair and started around the desk at the same time the door scraped open and another man—another Shifter—walked in.
Liam’s expression changed. “Sean.” He clasped the other Shifter’s arms and pulled him into a hug.
More than a hug. Kim watched, open-mouthed, as Liam wrapped his arms around the other man, gathered him close, and nuzzled his cheek.
Twenty years ago, shapeshifters of all kinds banded together and announced themselves to the world, only to be shunted to areas no human wanted (“Shiftertowns”). They are forced to wear Collars that control their hunting and fighting instincts (referred to by Shifters as "Taking the Collar").
Liam Morrissey is currently liaison between the Shifters of Austin, TX, and the humans of the city. Kim Fraser, attorney, finds herself in the unique position of having to defend a Shifter on a murder charge.
She ventures to Shiftertown to seek out Liam's help, and there stumbles across too many secrets the Shifters want kept secret. The un-mated Liam is forced to protect Kim against the wrath of his clan leader and his own father, and to his surprise he discovers a powerful attraction to the sassy, sexy lady.
New York Times
bestselling and award-winning author Jennifer Ashley has written more than 75 published novels and novellas in romance, urban fantasy, and mystery under the names Jennifer Ashley, Allyson James, and Ashley Gardner. Her books have been nominated for and won Romance Writers of America’s RITA (given for the best romance novels and novellas of the year), several
RT BookReviews
Reviewers Choice awards (including Best Urban Fantasy, Best Historical Mystery, and Career Achievement in Historical Romance). Jennifer’s books have been translated into a dozen different languages and have earned starred reviews in
Booklist.
More about the Shifters Unbound series can be found at
www.jennifersromances.com
. Or email Jennifer at
[email protected]
Find out more about Jennifer at:
Website:
http://www.jenniferashley.com
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Shifters Unbound Series
Pride Mates
Primal Bonds
Bodyguard
Wild Cat
Hard Mated
Mate Claimed
Lone Wolf
Tiger Magic
Feral Heat
Wild Wolf
And more to come!
by Alyssa Day
He’s a warrior, hardened by years of protecting his town from vampire attack. She’s a garden witch who sees the world in shades of sunshine and delight. Opposites don’t only attract, they go supernova in this sizzling tale of magic and mayhem.
Atlantis Rising - Preview Chapter
Poe’s Avenue, Virginia, FBI Paranormal Operations Division HQ
Alejandro cocked his shotgun and followed his teammate into the burnt and jagged opening in the side of the building, hoping that—for once—there weren’t any trolls.
He hated trolls.
“Clear,” Mac, already moving through the narrow hallway, called back to him. It was Mac’s turn to go first. They kept score.
Lately he’d been keeping score on a lot of things. Like time. The year, two weeks, and five days since he’d seen the sunlight outside of the academy, for instance.
Not that he was counting.
Anyway, the course at the FBI’s sister division, P-Ops, had kept him plenty busy.
“Shotgun! You coming or scratching your ass back there?”
“No, my friend, I was just thinking of asking your sister to scratch it for me,” Alejandro said, grinning at the nickname he’d won for obvious reasons. “She reaches all the itchy parts so well.”
“I will kick your ass if you get any of your itchy parts anywhere near my sister. Or she’d kick it for you. Jenny scares even me.”
The sound of Mac’s Glock firing three shots in rapid succession caused Alejandro to break into a run as he slapped his night-vision goggles in place.
“On my way,” he called, not bothering to try to be stealthy. “Save some for me.”
He caught the shifting glimmer of light in the corner of one eye and whirled around, aiming and firing in one smooth motion. Whatever it was, he missed. Too short to be a troll, so there was one mercy. If he were the type to have nightmares, he’d still be having them about the last one’s breath. Green, moss-covered teeth. What the hell was
that
about? Toothpaste was cheap.
“Shotgun! Could use a little help here!” Mac sounded just the slightest bit out of breath, which was unusual for the man who’d beat the all-time speed record for the FBI’s obstacle course at Quantico in an inter-agency competition. Alejandro had won a hundred bucks on that one.
He took off running, cocking the Remington as he moved. The vampire who jumped him five feet down the hall took a blast to the head. Alejandro vaulted over the disintegrating body, not wanting the acidic slime of decomposing vamp on his new shoes.
A high-pitched scream warned him of the approach from overhead of a deadly Mngwa, but he had a silver throwing knife at hand. One lethal toss later, a couple hundred pounds of mutant killer cat lay on the floor, blood gurgling out of its throat.
He skidded to a stop at the end of the corridor, not willing to rush headlong into a blind turn, and Mac called out to him again, his deep voice rough and strained. “Alejandro, if you’re coming, now would be a really good time.”
Alejandro instantly switched from student-taking-his-final-exam mode to deadly-predator mode. They had a code between them, he and Mac. They were only Alejandro and Maxwell to each other in the event of a dire emergency. Whatever faced Mac around that corner was no training-ground obstacle. Somebody had set a trap, and Mac was caught in it.
Alejandro was going to kick somebody’s ass for this one.
He dove for the floor, rolling to the side to protect the Remington, and did a modified army crawl around the corner. The natural expectation was to look for an enemy at man-height, not on the floor or the ceiling. It’s why the vampires and other supes who could climb down a building or fly always had the advantage. Nobody would expect a P-Ops rookie to come in at ankle-height.
Alejandro was far, far more than a rookie.
His first glance assessed the situation and told him everything he needed to know. A trio of wolf shifters surrounded Mac, and one of them had gotten in either a good swipe of his claws or a bite—Alejandro hoped it was only claws—and Mac was down and bleeding, his gun a crushed hunk of metal on the floor.
“Come out, come out, little human,” snarled the shifter who stood with one claw-tipped foot on Mac’s head.
Another was on all fours, his massive head hanging down near Mac’s struggling form. As Alejandro watched, that one’s long tongue snaked out as he licked blood off the side of Mac’s face.
“Yummy,” the shifter said in his garbled voice, and then he laughed.
It was the laugh that put Alejandro over the edge. Cool, clear-headed, Paranormal Operations training flew out the window. Hot, primal rage from years of battling murderous vampires in San Bartolo took over. He triangulated his shots in his head a split-second before he took them.
A couple of heartbeats later, three werewolves lay dead on the ground.
“Glad you talked me into that silver shot,” he said mildly, as if his partner hadn’t almost died and wasn’t now in danger of becoming a shifter himself.
Mac forced out a laugh and hauled himself up off the ground. “Damn wolves. I was so focused on the possibility of big, bad, and ugly that I missed the pitter-patter of little feet.”
“Brownies?”
“Leprechauns. Bastards tripped me up, and the wolves jumped me when I was down.”
Alejandro shook his head and then blasted a hole in the side of the building. Welcome sunlight poured in, and he stepped over the bodies of the shifters to reach his friend. “Let’s move.”
Mac nodded, but shrugged off Alejandro’s hand. “Thanks, but screw that. We’re going to walk out of here like it was no problem, and then we’ll get me to the infirmary after. I don’t want any of those punks laughing at us.”
“There are worse things than laughter,” Alejandro said, eyeing Mac’s wounds. Looked like claws. He hoped.
“Yeah. Fucking leprechauns.” Mac bared in his teeth in a grim imitation of a smile. “At least one of them won’t be tripping anybody else, ever again.”
He jerked his head to indicate the far corner, and Alejandro could just make out a small green shoe pointing at the ceiling.
Alejandro headed for the hole in the wall. He needed to get Mac to the infirmary before anything worse showed up.
“Could have been worse. Could have been trolls.”
Alejandro ducked his head to exit the building, so the huge wooden club smashed into the wall instead of his skull.
“Fee, fie, foe fucking fum, little Mayan,” the attacker growled in a voice deeper than the interior of a volcano and just as hot.
Alejandro hit the floor and swept a foot at the troll’s ankles, sending it crashing to the ground with a resounding thud. With anything that big, the trick was to go for the feet, ankles, or knees. Before he could cock the shotgun, Mac pointed his Glock at the troll’s head and shot it through one eye.
Alejandro stood up and nodded his thanks.
“I owed you one,” Mac said, but he was now noticeably leaning to the right, and the blood dripping out of his wounds wasn’t showing any signs of stopping.
Alejandro sighed. “Why is it always trolls?”
Garden City, Ohio
Rose Cardinal added a pinch of cayenne pepper for interest as she stirred a potion for sparkling conversation and tried not to glare at her mother.
“You didn't have to call P-Ops for a garden pest, Mom,” she repeated for the eighth or ninth time. “We could have handled it. Now they're going to put us in some kind of file as nuisances. Do we need to be in a governmental file? No. Look what happened when the sheriff wrote us up for indecent exposure for dancing sky clad at the solstice.”
“It's the law,” her mother reminded her, also for the eighth or ninth time. “Also, I took care of the sheriff, didn't I? His wife didn't speak to him for a month. Anyway, we have to report any occurrences of potentially dangerous supernatural activity. You can't say this isn't dangerous, after that incident yesterday with the paperboy who was trying to deliver the
Witchcraft Daily News.
”