Destined Darkness Read online

  Oh, shit.

  I dodged one, but two more seized my leg. I hit the asphalt, managing to protect my face with my hands, and was tossed back down the alley toward the monster’s two victims. Half of my back and right shoulder slammed into the alley wall and searing pain screamed through my chest and neck. My knees hit the ground and I fought to stand and run. Hell, I fought to just breathe past the agony.

  The monster swept toward me, and I scrambled back, unable to get up on my feet, and instead falling onto my butt. My hand slapped into something warm and sticky. The blood from the crushed victim. Bile burned my throat, but now I was within grabbing distance of the gun.

  Two more tendrils swiped at me. I threw myself to the side and snatched the weapon as the tendrils seized me around the chest. The monster jerked me up and agony screamed through me, threatening my consciousness. I gasped for air. The buzzing in my body joined the screaming pain and I felt like I was going to light on fire.

  The monster jerked me closer, its writhing mass licking against my body, curling around my neck, and sliding over my face. I gasped out the spell that summoned a divine light strike. My very human level of power warmed the palm of my free hand and I slapped it against the tentacle around my chest.

  White light snapped from my hand.

  The monster hissed, the blast not even strong enough to make it cry out, and it slammed me against the alley wall, shooting agony through my chest, then jerked me close again. Its sense of power and darkness grew, and so did the buzz within me.

  I fought to breathe, to think past the pain, but I couldn’t break free. What little divine power I possessed wasn’t strong enough. The only thing I had left was the gun. At least I was at point blank range. Please, God, let a normal bullet kill it or something, anything.

  I fired.

  The darkness screamed and more smoke swept around me, pouring into my mouth, suffocating me. I fired again and again and again, pulling the trigger even though I knew I was out of ammo, but the thing kept pouring into me, choking, engulfing, and making me want to scream and vomit. Except I couldn’t get enough breath for either.

  Far away, someone yelled.

  A gunshot roared.

  The monster screamed and jerked.

  Three more shots, louder and closer, and the monster howled.

  The darkness surged out of me, dropping me to the ground, face-first into the viscous puddle of blood, and flew away.

  My stomach churned, the creature’s nausea and darkness clinging to me, and the alley around me spun.

  Two sets of feet pounded toward me, but I couldn’t raise my head high enough to see who’d come to my rescue.

  “Shit, Shaw.” That sounded like Brant Keels, an officer in my precinct. “I couldn’t see you behind it. If I’d known you were there, I wouldn’t have fired.”

  Brant’s partner, a rookie whose name I couldn’t remember, knelt beside me and called for EMTs on his radio. His pale eyes were wide. He reached to touch me, his hand shaking, but stopped as if he was afraid to. “What was that?”

  “I have no idea,” I gasped. And I had no idea why it hadn’t bashed my brains out like it had with the robber. Which scared the shit out of me.

  Chapter 2

  Ten minutes later an ambulance arrived and so did a horde of officers from my precinct — it being the closest one to the pharmacy. They swarmed the area, my captain sending out teams to search for the monster while Detectives Snyder and McLellan examined the scene.

  Shaking and sliding in and out of consciousness, I was lifted onto a gurney. My chest was on fire, my stomach queasy, and my head spinning and spinning and spinning as I was rushed to the hospital.

  I flirted with unconsciousness and didn’t try to fight it. If I was unconscious, I wasn’t feeling pain and I couldn’t feel the buzz. It had eased, back to its normal non-nicotine level, but that was still painful.

  I wasn’t sure how I ended up in a hospital gown, but one minute I was in my blood-soaked clothes, the next I wasn’t, and I was fuzzy on if I’d had X-rays taken or not. All I really remembered was feeling gentle hands, hearing a soothing voice, and looking into warm brown eyes in a devastatingly handsome face.

  I woke with what felt like the worst hangover of my life — and I really wished it had been because I’d been an idiot and partied too hard last night. The buzz crawled in my skin and pain stabbed me in the chest and neck every time I took a breath. I was in a hospital bed, an intravenous needle in the back of one hand attached to a bag of something clear — saline? — with my other hand captured in a sling immobilizing my arm. My light brown hair hung loose, tickling my cheeks, and I was grateful someone had taken pity on what was probably a tangled half-ponytail and taken out the elastic. Above and beside me, a heart monitor beeped, sure and steady, and beside me sat the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. Correction, demon. Little horns poked through his stylishly disheveled hair, indicating he was a supernatural being from the Realm of Celestial Darkness.

  He slouched in the bedside chair, one leg up — ankle on his thigh — his attention on a folder of papers in his lap, his posture doing nothing to diminish his aura of lithe sexual danger. He reminded me of a cat, sprawled and half asleep but ready to pounce. From what I could see of his face, he looked young, mid-twenties, but being a demon, he could be much older. His black hair hung low, veiling his eyes and curling around his ears and the base of his neck, the color a stark contrast to his pale skin. He wore a black T-shirt stretched tight across a chiseled chest and muscular arms, leaving little to the imagination save for maybe what all that muscle would feel like under my hands or wrapped around me—

  His gaze rose as if he could hear my thoughts. Heat flooded my face, and I was captured by his warm brown gaze, so unlike a typical demon. My pulse stuttered and the heat turned sultry, sinking low into my chest.

  And then I remembered those eyes had been with me when I had entered the hospital, and I was certain now that he wasn’t a doctor. Had he been there for my change of clothes? I shifted, trying to secretly determine if I still wore underwear. Had he seen me naked? I didn’t know if I’d been in that blood pool long enough for it to seep through my pants and into my undies. God, that would be mortifying. If he was going to see me naked, I wanted to be conscious for it.

  Which, jeez, shouldn’t be something I was thinking.

  It had to be the buzz, and the pain, and whatever medication I was on.

  “You’re awake,” he said, his voice sliding over me like silk.

  My brain stalled.

  He closed the folder and leaned forward. “Officer Shaw, I’m Kol, an agent of the Joined Parliament.”

  …

  “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  …

  …

  He pursed his lips and my brain jerked back into gear.

  “Questions. Right. Yes.” It made sense the Joined Parliament would take over the investigation into whatever it was that had attacked me. At least three rounds of department-issued enspelled ammunition hadn’t taken it down. The officers in my precinct weren’t prepared to deal with anything like it. My division had less than ten percent of supers living within its boundaries, and the most we had to deal with was the odd witch or minor demon causing trouble.

  The door eased open, revealing an angel, the soft glow in his eyes giving away his divine nature. His wings were hidden, somehow absorbed into his body — that was part of the magic that made an angel an angel — and he wore a pale blue button-down — matching his eyes — and black slacks. His blond hair was perfect, not too short to look military, but not too long to look sloppy, and his chiseled jaw was clean-shaven. With broad shoulders — broader than the hot-as-hell demon — and narrow waist, he looked like the poster boy for angels: handsome, strong, divine, even if most of the angel population wasn’t blond-haired and blue-eyed.

  “Finally,” he said, his tone brusque and edged with frustration. He strode into the room and turned his attention to Kol. “Has she
said anything?”

  “I was just about to,” I said, pissed that he didn’t bother to ask me. Typical angel. I knew they’d risked everything to save humankind, but they still acted like dicks around us. I was still an officer of the law, even if I didn’t make everyone follow the rules as strictly as an angel did. Sometimes there really were shades of gray on the spectrum of right and wrong. Good thing most of the angels had returned to the Realm of Celestial Light after they had ensured the war was over and the humans and supers were playing together nicely. “And gee, sorry I got the shit beaten out of me and couldn’t answer your questions right away.”

  Kol smirked, a hint of red hellfire flickering in his eyes.

  The angel glared at me. “Ms. Shaw—”

  “Officer,” I corrected, unable to stop myself even though it was smarter not to draw unnecessary attention to myself.

  “Been a beat cop for five years,” Kol said. “She’s not a rookie.”

  The angel shot him a dirty look. “Could have fooled me. What made you think you, a human, could take that perp on your own?”

  “I hadn’t been given much of a choice.” I bit the inside of my cheek, yanked my gaze away from him, and glared out the window. Clearly the angel was a part of Kol’s team, probably the boss, and I wasn’t an idiot. I didn’t just jump into danger thinking I was invincible. I’d already learned that lesson the hard way. That was why I’d taken the advanced combat training for dealing with supers and discovered I could summon a bit of divine light with one of the combat spells — and yes, I realized there was a risk of someone discovering my true nature by my being able to summon any kind of magic. But after a disaster that had nearly gotten me and my partner killed four and a half years ago, I wanted every tool in the toolbox so that never happened again.

  The training had only taught me that I hadn’t wanted to go up against that thing. And while my nephilim nature let me heal a little faster than the average human, it wasn’t that fast.

  I was also smart enough to remember to not piss off JP agents, even if the buzz and the pain and nausea were making it hard to concentrate. Especially if that agent was an angel.

  Outside, it was bright, but there was almost no sunlight streaming through the glass onto the floor. Which meant the sun was high and it was around noon. Almost six hours since I’d walked into the pharmacy and thought I could stall a junkie long enough for backup to arrive.

  I drew in a breath, trying to calm myself, but pain sliced into me, forcing me to take shallow, quick gasps. “I was in the alley before I knew the perp was there,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’d been working on getting a hopped-up junkie with a gun away from civilians when things went sideways.”

  “That was the second body in the alley?” the angel asked.

  “Yeah.” I shuddered, the memory of the monster’s essence churning my stomach.

  The angel looked like he was trying not to roll his eyes at me, probably thinking I was shuddering over the gore. If I was smart, I’d let him continue believing that, no matter how much it grated on my nerves. Honestly. I was smart.

  “You know you’re lucky to be alive,” Kol said, his voice tender and sensual and drawing my attention back to him. He leaned even closer to me. The warmth in his eyes and the heat gently radiating from his body made my heart flutter.

  My thoughts stalled and for a second there was only him, no pain, no angel, and no worry about being discovered, then everything evened out. I could think, and while both the buzz and pain were still there, they’d been relegated to the back of my mind.

  “That better?” he asked.

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about,” the angel said before Kol could answer. “Now I need you to give a detailed description of the perpetrator. The other officers didn’t get a great look at him, but you were up close.”

  “Him? It could have been female for all I knew. I’m not even sure what it was.” And God, I’d had it pouring down my throat.

  I shuddered again, making myself gasp in pain.

  “Stop thinking about the bodies and concentrate on the killer,” the angel snapped.

  “I’m not thinking about the bodies,” I snapped back. “I’m thinking about the smoke tentacle monster who cracked a man’s head open with one swing and crushed someone to a pulp. I’m thinking how I have no idea how the hell I’m still here, how it didn’t rip me apart or crush me or just beat me to death against the wall when it had me in its grasp or when I managed to shoot it.”

  The angel’s eyes widened. “It held you? For longer than a few seconds at a time?”

  “Yeah.” Why hadn’t it killed me?

  Someone knocked on the door, opening it without waiting for an answer, and a massive man entered. He was bigger in every way than the angel, with shoulder-length light brown hair pulled back at the nape of his neck. The intensity in his dark eyes was breathtaking, captivating me as much as the demon beside me but in a different way, and his black calf-length duster made him look just as dangerous but more like a Wild West outlaw than a JP agent.

  He moved to stand beside the angel, allowing another man behind him to enter, and my heart skipped a beat with a stuttering bleep on the heart monitor, my breath stolen.

  “Marcus.”

  My thoughts stalled on his name. It had been four and a half years since we’d worked together. And four and a half since the biggest mistake of my life, which had gotten Marcus bitten by a werewolf, and the reason I’d taken the advanced training for supers. There’d been a one in a million chance that he’d be susceptible to lycanthropy, so the odds had been in his favor that he’d gotten through my fuck-up okay, but he’d still demanded a transfer and left. He hadn’t even cleaned out his locker or said anything to me. Not a word after the incident. But then I’d been the rookie who’d nearly gotten him killed. I wouldn’t have wanted to talk to me, either.

  His beautiful green eyes narrowed, a muscle in his jaw twitched, and the temperature in the room rose.

  Yeah, four and a half years wasn’t enough for forgiveness, and given that my empathy had instantly connected with it, his anger toward me was still strong. Not that I deserved forgiveness. The next time, if I hadn’t outright killed him, he could actually have been infected or enspelled with something that would have taken his humanity and turned him into a super. And while there was a small percentage of the population who wanted that, most didn’t, and Marcus hadn’t struck me as someone who did.

  He eased his lean-muscled body against the doorframe and crossed his arms, not even willing to step all the way into the room. God, he was just as handsome as I remembered, rich skin tone, piercing green eyes, his perpetual five o’clock shadow darkening his cheeks and making him mouth-wateringly sexy. Not to mention the way his gray T-shirt stretched across his muscular chest and his jeans hugged his narrow hips.

  There’d been something between us. Hell, there’d been a whole lot of something. An attraction that had sizzled and stolen my breath the moment we’d first met. Every time we’d worked together the temperature had always been a little too warm, a little too sultry, whispering to me that he felt the connection, too. But he’d always kept his emotional and personal distance, and I’d messed everything up before fully establishing a working partnership, let alone the intimacy the attraction promised.

  Except that sizzle was still there, instantly flaming a need for him within me that I thought had long been snuffed out, as if four and a half years and the biggest mistake of my life had never happened.

  “Are we done here, Gideon?” he asked, his attention turning to the angel.

  “No. We need to transfer Ms. Shaw—”

  I glared at the angel. “Officer.”

  “—Officer Shaw,” Gideon said. “We need to transfer her immediately to Operations. She’s survived extended contact with the perp, which means we can examine her memories and get his essence.”

  My pulse picked up, the heart monitor revealing my fear. Shit.
If I went into the Joined Parliament Operations Building and let them read my memories, they could learn the truth about me and I might never come out. “I’m a human. I can’t sense magical essence.”

  “You don’t have to,” the Wild West guy said, his voice a deep rumble, his gaze jumping from me to the heart monitor and back again. “You’re alive, so your memories are, too. The lethe demon will be able to sense details your mind isn’t able to register.”

  “A memory demon?” I made my voice crack — I didn’t have to work too hard at it — hoping it would make them think that was what I was afraid of, and then pulled the heart monitor’s sensor from my finger.

  The monitor squealed.

  Marcus winced. But at me or the monitor? “She’s clearly refusing consent.”

  “You saw what this thing can do,” Gideon said, and a hint of emotion, fear and need, seeped through his chilly expression. The emotions weren’t enough to shift my empathy from Marcus’s anger, but it did surprise me. Angels were warriors who knew how to lock their feelings away and do what needed to be done. It made them efficient officers of the law, but not overly compassionate. Which meant whatever this monster was, whatever it had done, was enough to break through his icy emotional shield.

  “She said she doesn’t want to do it,” Marcus said, his voice low.

  Why was he trying to protect me? Except the moment I thought that, I was sure he wasn’t protecting me, he was probably trying to get the hell away from me. Taking me to the Joined Parliament Operations Building meant spending more time with me and he’d made it perfectly clear after that horrible night that he wanted nothing to do with me. Which, if I was being honest, still hurt.

  “Technically she hasn’t refused, just had a panic attack about it.” Kol turned off the screaming heart monitor, leaned forward again, and captured my hand. Heat pulsed from his grip like a heartbeat, sending a wash of warmth up my arm, adding to the heated emotion in the room that no one else could feel. “The lethe demon isn’t that scary. It won’t hurt. It’s just like—”