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  Destined Blood

  Nephilim’s Destiny: Book 2

  Tessa Cole

  Contents

  Destined Blood

  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

  Destined Fire

  Other Books By Tessa Cole

  Destined Blood

  Tessa Cole

  Like it or not, she’s part of the team… come hell or fiery demon.

  Barely a week after a searing wraith battle left me with amped-up supernatural abilities, I’m back to my cover as Essie Shaw, “normal” beat cop. My frostbite-inducing empathic gift and enhanced hearing, I can work with. My combat spell — weak at best — still comes in handy. But it’s the 24/7 glowy eye thing that’s toughest to hide.

  When an encounter with a feral vampire nearly kills my partner (déjà vu, anyone?), the chief of police gives me a make-or-break assignment — join the JP team. Yeah, good luck bridging the aching gulf that’s divided us since that near-fatal fight with the wraith. There’s Gideon, who electrifies my soul; Jacob, who commands it; and Kol, who tempts it. Then there’s Marcus with his ferocious, pulse-pounding energy, who left without even a goodbye.

  Amid lingering tensions, we investigate who’s creating an army of twisted, insatiable feral vampires. The truth will extract a terrible price from us all — body, magic, and soul.

  Destined Blood is the second book in the Nephilim’s Destiny series, an action-packed full-length paranormal romance with four irresistible guys and a kick-ass heroine who doesn’t have to choose.

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  Destined Blood

  by Tessa Cole

  Copyright © 2018 Tessa Cole

  Cover Design by Melody Simmons

  ISBN: 978-1-988115-68-9

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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

  Chapter 1

  I could hear the couple yelling at each other the moment I got out of the cruiser even though I was outside on the residential street and they were, from the muffled sound of it, still inside their apartment building. I could also hear the traffic on the busy street five blocks over, the buzz from the streetlight fifty feet away, and, if I concentrated, the calm steady breathing of Hank, my partner, who stood on the other side of the car from me.

  The woman screamed something incomprehensible, but my partner’s expression didn’t change, which meant he couldn’t hear it, proving that my senses had in fact been enhanced.

  I hadn’t been sure of it when Amiah — the head of the medical team at the Joined Parliament Operations Building — had released me from her mini hospital. Of course, it had been hard to think past anything with my painful, grating buzz clawing under my skin, but even after I’d managed to medicate that down to a manageable level — now requiring two nicotine patches at the same time — I hadn’t been sure.

  Yeah, there’d been moments when I’d suspected, but nothing quite as definitive as this. With its surprisingly subtle only-seeming-to-appear-when-I-concentrated manifestation, it had been easy to keep myself distracted and to pretend that life as I knew it hadn’t completely changed two weeks ago.

  In a way, it hadn’t. I was back in my apartment — and the skylight and hole in the wall had been fixed — and I was back to my job in the Union City Police Department. And yet…

  I couldn’t deny that, core deep, everything had changed. And that scared me.

  Yes, I’d survived having an unnatural angelic mating brand forced upon me by an archnephilim — a monster that was part archangel and part demonic wraith — and having his power tear through me as he’d tried to rip out wings I was sure… well, pretty sure I didn’t have. But I hadn’t gotten through that unscathed. My buzz was stronger than before, feeling more like I was in constant contact with a medium-voltage electric fence and not just a low-level one. Not to mention my eyes still glowed from blasting a massive amount of divine light into myself to stop him.

  And it was my eyes that worried me the most. I couldn’t pretend to just be a human if my eyes were glowing. I’d purchased enspelled contacts from a shady witch who’d promised discretion, and they were supposed to hide the glow until the divine light left my body.

  But even after a week and a half the light hadn’t faded, and I feared it was still around because I was a nephilim and blasting all that magic into me had somehow awakened the angelic part of my DNA. To make it worse, I was sure my essence — readable by those supernatural beings who could sense magical essences — still said I was human, which made the angelic glowy eye thing look really suspicious.

  Add to that my enhanced hearing… oh, and the ability to see in the dark… and my goal to live as a nothing-to-see-here human just serving and protecting my city had become nearly impossible.

  It was only a matter of time before someone started asking questions, and those questions could get me imprisoned, experimented on, or killed. Probably all of the above.

  At least I could attribute my enhanced senses to Jacob’s vampire claim on me. The claim, at least, would go away… eventually… I hoped. But I wasn’t sure how long the effects would last, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask.

  At least none of the guys had tried to contact me in the week and a half I’d been gone from Operations, so the risk of being revealed wasn’t as great. I hadn’t expected Marcus to. He’d been adamant in respecting my wishes to have nothing to do with the supernatural world, and had been gone before I’d even woken in Amiah’s hospital. Jacob and Kol hadn’t contacted me either, and much to my surprise, neither had Gideon, even with his angelic mating brand on my arm permanently bonding us together.

  And I was going to ignore the empty ache in my chest over him— over all the guys. It had been growing within me from the moment I’d returned home.

  It would go away.

  Just like the effects of Jacob’s vampiric claim.

  Really.

  “Dispatch said the call came in for unit one-o-seven,” Hank said, adjusting his duty belt at his slightly paunchy waist as we headed for the apartment building’s front door. “That must be at the back or maybe they’ve resolved their differences and have stopped yelling.”

  Glass shattered and the woman screeched something else, her voice still too muffled with the building between us for me to make out her words even with my enhanced hearing. Hank still didn’t react, but I was sure as soon as we got inside, he’d be able to hear them as well.

  The building was a tired six-story structure that had been built in the 60s or 70s. Its utilitarian construction hadn’t aged well and the owner had done little upkeep. Through the filthy glass front door, the vinyl tiled floor was scuffed with at least a quarter of the tiles missing. Hole
s and graffiti scarred the walls and paint peeled from the ceiling.

  Three homemade missing person flyers were taped to the window beside the door, two for guys who looked like they were teenagers or in their early twenties, and the other for a middle-aged woman. The number of missing persons — all over town, with the exception of the precinct in the downtown core — had spiked in the last month and a half, and no one in the department had a clue as to why. Although I suspected it was probably one of the many after-effects of the war. Michael’s slaughter to exterminate all humans and supernatural beings had only ended twenty-three years ago and most of the world’s population was still coming to terms with what had happened. Some people dealt with that by running away.

  Hank opened the door, not bothering to buzz the superintendent to unlock it. Every few months or so we’d get a call to this building, and, for as long as I’d been with this precinct — just over five years, which was as long as I’d been a cop — the building’s door had been broken.

  A man’s angry voice roared around me as we entered. If I hadn’t known I had enhanced hearing, I would have sworn the guy was standing in the hall with us.

  “Hunh, guess they’re still at it,” Hank said, and he headed down the hall, his walk quick but his body language calm. Thankfully, not much bothered the middle-aged cop, or he was able to keep his emotions in check, which was good given how my next-to-useless weird empathic magic reacted to strong feelings. He had almost nine years of experience on me, and while he hadn’t been happy to be partnered with the rookie who’d gotten another cop seriously injured, he hadn’t tried to make my life difficult.

  Of course, he hadn’t tried to become friends, either. Four and a half years together and our partnership was still awkward. Which, given that I was trying to stay under everyone’s radar, was better than a partner who wanted to know everything about me and stick his nose in my business — like why I didn’t have a social or dating life.

  My nerves, however, thrummed with adrenaline and fear. This wasn’t my first domestic call and it wouldn’t be my last, but even with experience, I couldn’t help but worry about how dangerous the situation could get.

  The temperature rose as we drew closer to apartment 107, turning the early summer evening that was already unusually warm and muggy even warmer… at least it did for me because my empathic magic manifested as temperature changes and not something useful like being able to actually sense emotions.

  Another glass something shattered, sounding like it had been thrown against the wall, and the man yelled obscenities at the woman. The woman screamed back.

  Hank reached up to knock on the door, when a gunshot exploded inside the apartment.

  My pulse leaped into a fast tattoo, and Hank’s eyes flashed wide.

  We drew our sidearms, and our gazes met for a split second, confirming we were good to go.

  “Police,” Hank yelled, and he kicked in the door.

  Inside lay a living room filled with garbage — empty pizza boxes and beer bottles, food wrappers, and crumpled clothes — along with old, chipped, dented, and even broken furniture. We stood at the far end of the unit, which ran parallel to the hall, and while from my position I could see fully into the room, if both of us wanted a clear view of the entire room — and more importantly a clear shot — someone was going to have to enter.

  I gritted my teeth and hurried inside. This situation was all human. There wasn’t a super in sight. I had nothing to worry about.

  At the back, near the closed patio door, stood a brawny man with swarthy skin in his twenties, wearing a black wife-beater and navy cotton-knit shorts with frayed ends. He pointed a Ruger 9mm at a short curvy woman, also in her twenties, with bleach-blond hair and a dingy yellow sundress. The guy had fingernail marks on his cheeks and arms — nothing supernatural looking about them — and the woman had a black eye and a fresh bruise in the shape of a handprint on her left biceps. She didn’t look like she’d been shot, but both had ashen complexions and wild eyes.

  They stared at us for a tense second and their expressions twisted with rage.

  The room’s temperature shot up another ten degrees, and sweat instantly slicked my body, making my uniform stick to my skin.

  On the floor between them lay a spilled bag of little purple pills, and I inwardly groaned. Zip. Again? Jeez, this was twice in just over two weeks that I’d had to deal with someone high on zip. Except given their expressions, I was pretty sure they weren’t high. They were starting to come down. And that meant aggressive mania and violent hallucinations enhanced by magic.

  Just great. I pointed my Glock at the guy. “Police. Drop the weapon.”

  The guy snarled.

  “Drop the weapon,” Hank repeated.

  The woman screamed and lunged at the guy. He fired two shots as she slipped on a half-empty pizza box and crashed to the floor. I dropped to the floor as well. The guy’s rounds slammed into the wall above me, and my pulse jumped with the knowledge that I’d almost taken two in the vest.

  “Drop the weapon,” Hank yelled, not taking a shot because the woman was climbing to her feet and in the way.

  The guy snarled and lunged toward the patio door. He wrenched it off its hinges with a burst of zip-enhanced strength and bolted outside, gun still in hand.

  “Shit.” I scrambled to my feet and gave chase. Hank followed close at my heels and called the change of situation in to dispatch on his radio.

  The guy raced across the building’s uneven parking lot and onto the street. This neighborhood had been old and tired before the war and had yet to see any revitalization money. Only half of the streetlights worked, making footing on the crumbling sidewalk dangerous, and the farther we went down the street, the fewer buildings had lighted vestibules or front doors that weren’t boarded up.

  I pumped my arms, trying to keep up with the guy. He ran with bursts of wild speed that came and went, making him jerk and stumble, but not enough to let me catch him.

  Hank’s footsteps pounded behind me, getting farther away. He was starting to trail, but I knew he wouldn’t give up. He might not have the physique of any of the guys on Gideon’s JP team, but he wasn’t completely out of shape, either.

  The guy stumbled, his arms windmilling to keep his balance, and he skidded into the narrow alley beside a seven-story building with a boarded front entrance.

  My nerves thrummed stronger, more fear than adrenaline. The last time I’d run blindly into an alley, I’d gotten the shit beaten out of me and been branded by a serial killing archnephilim.

  I gritted my teeth and pushed on. I couldn’t let this guy get away. He’d already tried to kill his girlfriend, still had his weapon, and was in the middle of coming down from a magically induced high. He was a danger to others and himself, and I was pretty sure the violence-inducing hallucinations hadn’t started yet.

  The alley was narrow, not even wide enough for two people to walk side by side, and smelled of stale urine. A flashlight beam hit my shoulder and spilled against the alley walls on either side of me. If Hank had brought his light out, the alley was too dark for him to see properly, which meant it was supposed to be too dark for me.

  Shit. I was supposed to be hiding my enhanced abilities. I could only pray that with the heat of the fight and the crazy zip addict with a gun, Hank wouldn’t think much about my running down the alley without light.

  Hank’s light rose a little higher and caught the back of the guy we were chasing. The guy reached the end of the alley, crossed the street, and ran to a boarded-up entrance. With a roar, he ripped off one of the boards and darted inside.

  I barreled out of the alley. Ahead of me stood a three-story partially-standing condemned school. The guy’s footsteps pounded inside, drawing farther away. If he thought enough to slow down and hide, he might be able to slip past us while we searched the school.

  I pulled out my flashlight, even though I didn’t need it, waited a beat for Hank to get closer, and rushed inside. This had been a si
de entrance to the building and it opened into a gymnasium, the space vast and empty, smelling of mold, dust, and decay as if an animal, or more than one animal, had died there. The sound of the guy’s footsteps headed straight away from me but didn’t echo, so he was already through the door and into the hall across from me.

  Then his steps changed to the rapid patter of going down a set of stairs.

  “He’s in the basement,” I told Hank, and put on a burst of speed.

  I ran into a hall lined with metal lockers, their doors a mix of closed, opened, and missing, all tagged with graffiti on top of graffiti, while electrical and lighting boxes hung precariously from the walls and ceiling, their wiring scavenged for reuse. The smell of dead animal had thickened and a heavy layer of dust, marked with dozens of different footprints, coated the floor.

  I hurried down the stairs into a dark corridor running right and left and stopped, nearly choking on the reek, the smell of death clinging to my nose and the back of my throat. More footprints trailed in both directions, and I couldn’t tell if any of them were fresh.

  Crap.

  I really didn’t want to lose this guy.

  Hank reached the top of the stairs and clattered down, but I ignored him and drew a steadying breath. If the guy was still running I should be able to hear him.