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“No, it’s your last rodeo, Alex,” Amy huffed aloud. “You’re very last after an incredibly long and illustrious career as the Goddess’ Assassin, as a matter of fact. You are her Chosen – the Black Fairy who always gets her Mark. You’ve never failed. You’ve never declined a job. You’ve done anything and everything asked of you. You always check, double check, and triple check everything before enacting a sentence. You’re the only Black Fairy to find and correct a wrong decision. The Justice of the Morrígan given at the end of your blade has always been righteous. That’s why you’ve got to get this last job right. Then you can go back to Valentine…”
“Yes, I know. I was there.”
“I know you were there,” Amy shot right back. “Just think, Mated to the one the Universe made for you, living happily ever after and making babies in a house with a white picket fence. It’s gonna make the last thousand years so much more worth it than you ever imagined.”
“Oh yeah, I can’t wait to have kids.”
“At least a couple,” Amy snickered. “I mean, it is what makes the world go round, right? Maybe not the having the kids, but the practicing to get them. Heck, if mom and dad hadn’t – well, it’s gross to think about but it’s the truth. We…”
“…wouldn’t be here.”
“Exactly!”
“So, you think I should light a candle, sprinkle it with saffron and pray to the Goddess Aíne that the Dragon Paladin Warrior I met last night just accepts what I’ve been doing for the last nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine years?” Alex growled. “How do you think he’ll react when I tell him that I’ve killed some of his own kind? Okay, not many. Goddess knows they’re the most upright and good guys around, but damn it all to Hell,thisMark is a Dragon, isn’t he?”Not even taking a breath for fear her sister would chime back in with yet another reason why she needed to run back down south and make with the seduction of a Dragon, Alex abruptly changed the subject.
Eyes rolling up, she glared at Amy as her fingers kept fiddling with the firing mechanism on her weapon. “There’s nothing wrong with this rifle. I have no clue what happened. It felt like…”
“It felt like you are bad Chinese food, drank three too many bottles of tequila, and downed a gallon of sour milk,”Verity ground out. “I know because I can feel it, too. I didn’t want to believe it, but this is a pile of shit I can’t escape. Something is wrong in all the worse possible ways. It’s way stronger than the Mark in Minstrel’s Hollow. This is….”
“Horrible,”Alex hissed.“I need to….”
“It felt like what?” Amy demanded.
“Like….”
But her younger sister wasn’t listening - something that was happening more and more as of late. Instead, Amy ordered, “Shove that stuff aside, just like you told me you have to, get that stupid black SUV back in your sights, put a silver bullet between this guy’s eyes the minute he steps out the door and into the light of day, then let’s head back south to spend more time with the Sampsons.”
Not commenting,for fear she would scream like a Banshee in the middle of a battlefield, Alex snapped both legs of the bipod out with a single flick of her fingers. Setting the cushion-covered, shock-resistant feet on the cement blocks she’d placed there upon arriving before the sunrise, the Black Fairy positioned the middle of the barrel exactly four centimeters above the grout line between the forty-fifth and forth-sixth brick.
Finger barely hovering over the trigger, she inhaled deeply. Opening her senses as wide as her Fae Magic would allow, the sense of eminent doom, unrelenting regret, and sorrow unlike any other nearly drove her to her knees.
Inhaling deeply through her nose and exhaling slowly through her mouth, she pulled on the ancient Magic of her Fairy and her Frolick. She had to see the Mark. Had to lay eyes on him. Then – and only then – she would know if the sentence she was ordered to deliver was justified.
Tuning into the conversation taking place in the SUV she had in her sights, Alex enveloped herself in a Magical bubble of silence. She had to focus. Had to be sure. Had to know what she was doing was right.
Slowly, the exchange of the passengers became clear.
“I’m not quite sure what the Secretary of Defense and the Council wants to speak to me about. I’ve been out of the military longer than most of them have been alive. Any clue what I’m here for? I get why you two, but me?” His deep, full voice resonated within Alex’s soul, making her temperature rise, and Verity whistle,“Hey baby, break me off a piece of that. You’re here for me, right? You want me.”
Ignoring her alter-ego, trying with all her might, Magic and strength, Alex catalogued the voices of all three Supernatural beings in the vehicle. Every piece of evidence was crucial at this point. She couldn’t miss anything.
“Not a one,” another male responded, his accent thick and from somewhere deep in South America. “My presence,mi amigo, like yours, was requested without the option of declining.”
“Me too,” came the third male’s voice, so full of Magic and power it damn near knocked the breath from Alex’s lungs. “And at exactly the wrong time. My Pearl…”
“Your lovely Mate,” the Latin chuckled. “Do you purposely speak of her just to make me wish my own would at least take my calls?”
“Who? Me?” The third man laughed out loud. “I would never do that. I was just…”
“While I love the friendly banter and the little catch-up,” the first man - the one whose voice made both Alex and Verity hot and bothered and thinking about forever – chuckled. “What are we waitin’ for? I’ve got a Force to run, people waiting for me to answer their calls, about a million things I would rather be doing than talking to some four-star general and a Council of Others about things only the Great Goddess knows about?”
“Not to mention, nurse a monster hangover and chase down your Mate,” the one with all the Magic teased.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the sexy voice sarcastically chuckled. “Everybody gets to have a lapse in judgement every couple of hundred years. Mine came last night and at the bottom of a bottle.”
“Indeed,” the one with the accent snickered.
“Okay, since we all agree,” sexy voice laughed out loud. “Can we at least get the hell outta this SUV and get inside the building? It’s hot as hell in this sun.”
