AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Fuck.” I pushed myself up to a sitting position. “Get that, would you?”
Morio opened the Circle, stepping over the flames as he did so. He grabbed my phone out of the purse and answered. “Hello?…Morio.” After a moment, he motioned to me, his expression shifting from lusty to solemn. “Here, you need to take this. I’ll start gathering our things.”
“Bad?” I didn’t want to hear. I really didn’t.
He nodded. “Bad.” And with that, we were out of the Circle, back to a reality I didn’t want to face. But the fact was, reality was growing more and more deadly with each week that passed.
“Camille?” Chase sounded out of breath. The detective was physically fit, so the fact that he was panting worried me.
“What’s going down? Where? And how bad?” I didn’t spare any words. Phone calls like this were always terse.
“Robbery at one of the graveyards. And we have a handful of bone-walkers running around.”
“Robbery? What the fuck are they stealing—and are the bone-walkers the ones doing the looting?”
Chase growled. “No. There’s more to it—I can’t explain now…” He paused and sucked in a lungful of air with a grunt. So not a good sign. Chase was in great shape for an FBH—full-blooded human. Or rather, an FBH with a tiny hint of elf in his long-distance background.
“Dude, are you okay? Talk to me.” Collateral damage in this demonic war had hit us hard, and all too often, as of late. I found myself panicking over late-night calls.
“I’d be fine if I weren’t hiding out from a fucking bone-walker who wants to break my neck. Or anything else it can latch onto. I’m playing hide-and-seek with it in Wyvers Point Cemetery, and unfortunately, I’m not the one doing the chasing.”
“Let me guess…the cemetery is in the Greenbelt Park District?” If I never heard of that area of Seattle again, it would still be too soon.
“Yeah…Fourth and Hyland Streets. Get over here as soon as you can. And can you call the others?” He was whispering now. “I’m worried, Camille. Two of my men are lost somewhere in the graveyard, but I don’t know where. We’re all on the run. Tell you more after you get here and help me get the fuck out of this situation. And Camille…I’m hurt. I can’t run.”
“How bad?” I held my breath, waiting.
“Well, I’m not going to die from the injury, but I might from the bone-walkers because I can’t run away from them.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can. Just hold on, dude.”
I punched the End Call button and turned to Morio, who had been gathering our things. “We’ve got another graveyard to pay a call on and we’d better hurry or Chase is going to be on the dinner menu. Bone-walkers on the loose, two of his men are missing, and he’s hurt.”
As Morio tossed our ritual gear into the back of my Lexus, I called home. We were closer to Wyvers than my sisters, so we’d get there ahead of time. But we’d also expended a lot of energy tonight on our magical practice, and we couldn’t take on a full force of undead miscreants without help.
I quickly filled Delilah in on what was going down. “Get over there, now. Chase is hurt, two cops are missing. Gear up for a bone-walker fight. And who knows what the hell else.”
“Menolly’s at the Wayfarer. We can call her if we need her once we’re there. I’ll bring Smoky, Shade, and Vanzir. We’re booking it out of here now.” Delilah punched off and I texted her the location.
Sliding into the driver’s seat, I clicked my seat belt shut. While I waited for Morio, I grabbed a candy bar out of the glove compartment and scarfed it down. I desperately needed the energy, so I polished off the chocolate caramel and then went for a protein bar. By then, Morio was swinging into the car and I took off as he slammed the door.
“We couldn’t expect the quiet to last for long.” Morio pulled his hair back into a ponytail, then yanked off his short kimono. Beneath it, he was wearing a pair of tight black jeans that curved around his butt in an oh-so-flattering way. As he fished a deep blue turtleneck out of a backpack, I managed a glance at his glistening chest.
Morio was buff—not a muscle man, but definitely buff—and I got wet just looking at him. One of my three husbands, he was Japanese, a youkai-kitsune—or loosely translated, a fox-demon, though he wasn’t the kind of demon that we were fighting. Together with Smoky, my dragon, and Trillian, my alpha lover and Svartan—the dark and charming Fae—we made quite the quartet.
We’d been in a refreshing lull over the past five weeks, since Menolly and Nerissa got married, and we’d savored every minute. We’d used the time to bone up on our fighting techniques and magical skills, to stockpile weapons, and to hunt down as much information as we could on Gulakah, the Lord of Ghosts. Unfortunately, so far, we’d accumulated a whole lot of nothing in that regard.
We’d also done our best to keep tabs on what was going down with the impending war in Otherworld. When I thought about it, we actually hadn’t had any downtime, per se. Just a short break from the continual fighting we’d been embroiled in for months now. But even a few days here and there meant the difference between being run ragged and regaining our equilibrium.
Morio finished changing into the turtleneck and fastened his seat belt as I took a turn a little too sharply.
“Try to keep at least two wheels on the road, babe.” His eyes twinkled as he dove into our hoard of candy and protein bars. “We’re probably going to arrive about ten minutes before the others. So let’s take stock of what we’ve got for a fight, other than magic.”
“I have a short dagger. I’ve started carrying it with me wherever I go. It’s strapped to my thigh. But that won’t be much help against bone-walkers.” I felt better carrying a weapon now, even if it was more of a pacifier than anything that would cause some real damage. “I left the Black Unicorn horn at home, of course.”
About a year ago, I’d received a gift—the horn of the Black Unicorn—along with a cloak made from his hide.
The Black Unicorn was the father of the Dahns unicorns, and like the phoenix, he reincarnated every few thousand years, shedding his old body. Eight or nine horns and hides were rumored to exist, and I possessed one set. I was careful to keep that information under wraps, because any number of sorcerers and havoc-mongers would have torn me limb from limb to get them. The artifacts were incredibly powerful, so I was cautious where I took them.
