‘I’ll just – I’m going for a jog.’
He stepped closer. ‘Nicole, I’m all right.’
‘Let her go,’ Verin said softly.
She was out of the room before much more could be said, but a few moments later – long enough for a human to miss maybe, but not her – she heard Verin say, ‘She needs to hunt, Ronan …’
And yet the words brought a different blood-soaked memory.
‘You were made by the Goddess of Death. And She does not sup once,’ Lynch had told Nicole back in Estwood. No,taunted.
Right before she had ripped off his head.
It had been a warning: that once she transformed, the Goddess of Death’s touch and her divinely given Empyrean powers wouldn’t let Nicole kill just once. That it would be her life, from that point on.
She’d thought it a blessing at the time, in the euphoria of a successful hunt.
Now, she just hoped she could get a handle on it in case someone else got hurt.
Or worse, she tripped up and exposed them all.
CHAPTER THREE
Kyan
THE NARROW, SHADOWED BAR WAS NEARLYDESERTED WHENKyan stalked inside, his boots tracking a thin residue of gore inside, his skin tight and new from a receding transformation.
He’d had to layer a sheen of Influence over himself to draw less attention. To stop others noticing the hulking, six-foot-four immortal warrior with a recently unshakeable air of menace. Instead, he appeared shorter and milder, his reflection flickering in the silver, mirrored bar. Still, he didn’t miss the wary glances from the bartender, whose bottles of supernatural liquids glinted in the sunlight beaming low into the long room.
Kyan headed to the red, curtained-off booth at the back beside a door to the kitchen. Scents wafted towards him: hot oil; fresh fries, and the whisky of the owner’s drink.
The supernatural man was in his late forties. His slicked-back black hair, tattooed arms, and slim frame gave him enough of an edge to hide the essence of the inhuman about him.
Kyan placed down a card with the Wake’s iridescent, circular logo.
‘The Wake thanks you for your tip and cooperation.’ The words nearly dried out his mouth. He’d said them for so long it had never bothered him.
But now?
The older man looked up from the bills and accounting books on his table. ‘Already? You were only in here an hour ago.’
Kyan gave a grim smile. ‘I’ve been doing this a long time.’
The Spectre had been easy to find and easier to kill: drawn by the heavy emotions of those leaving the bar. Killing it had felt, in those quick, visceral moments, like a do-over for Estwood and penance for how distracted he’d been.
Enough that Nicole had suffered the consequences.
Even now he could recall her newly-transformed scent. If they hadn’t bound themselves to one another to suppress his oath, he knew the burning in his scar wouldn’t have stopped for weeks with the need to hunt her.
The owner took a deep breath. ‘I’ll be damned.’ He shook his head, half admiring, half wary, as if only now realising the calibre of immortal killer the Wake had sent. ‘Well, my customers’ll be pleased they won’t get lured to death on their way home at night.’
Kyan allowed that to mute some of his disgust at doing another job. But there was blood on his hands, a near snarl on his mouth, and impatience tapping his chest and under the oath on his arm. So, without saying another word, he stalked back through the bar and into the sun-drenched docklands.
It had been six months and three days since the binding at Lanhydrock and he was as taut as a fucking slingshot.
He’d thought after centuries that he was immune to this type of distraction. That his training with Scáthach on the stark, wind-bladed Isle of Skye had beaten his mind into submission. Or the years he’d been a gladiator for the Wake – killing in the arena to show off their might – had honed his focus, so he didn’t think too hard about what he’d been asked to do. Or the missions afterwards, hunting in a haze all over the world, had taught him how to concentrateon the goal and nothing else.
And yet here he was, focus shot.
