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ChapterOne
Winter was a cruel and spiteful woman, scraping her icy fingernails over New England. She pummeled, battered, and decimated—plants and creatures alike—happily destroying those who wouldn’t bend to her will.
Despite the chilled temperature of my room, my body was slicked with sweat, and the last dregs of a nightmare filled my belly with a heat so intense I curled up in a ball on my damp mattress to protect myself against the pain. The stench of smoke and burning flesh was trapped in the back of my throat, and every breath was a struggle.
I was used to death. Between my family and my job, I came in contact with it much too often—often enough where the sight of wasted life didn’t bother me as much as it used to. As much as it should have.
Icy rain pelted against my windows and the wind howled into the straining glass. I looked at the glowing red numbers of the clock on my bedside table and saw it was just after midnight. I’d barely had more than an hour of sleep. It was all I was likely to get for the foreseeable future.
I was too late to save her—the woman from my dream. By the time the visions came, I was always too late. But I got out of bed anyway and headed into the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face and dried off quickly without looking at myself in the mirror. I was afraid to face the terror I was sure would be looking back at me.
I grabbed a pair of worn jeans and a black sweatshirt from my closet and slipped them on before using the house intercom to wake my assistant.
“Rise and shine, Cal,” I said. “We’ve got a body. Meet me at the car in five, and don’t forget my bag.”
Cal mumbled something unintelligible, and I clicked off. I pulled on thick socks and my old black boots. The ground was muddy where we were going. I brushed my long black hair into loose knot at the base of my neck. I didn’t bother with a coat. The nightmare I’d just witnessed was enough to keep me warm for a while.
They’d killed close this time. Practically in my own backyard. But I couldn’t think about that now—about what it meant for me.
My name is Rena Drake, and I’m the closest thing to a cop the Drakán has. They call me an Enforcer. I keep law and order, and right the wrongs of any crimes my people commit—meaning I bury the bodies and erase the evidence. I’ll occasionally accept a job from a human just to keep things interesting. But humans are easy.
For the past two months I’ve been hunting one of my own. The problem is, dragons are really good at not being found. And they’re even better at killing. In all honesty, it isn’t the killing that bothers me so much. Killing is in our nature, and it certainly doesn’t violate any of our laws.
The hardest part of my job is being the one responsible for keeping our people a secret, making sure we blend in with the human world. But this rogue group was making it very, very difficult to fulfill my duties.
They’d become unnecessarily violent, and the feedings were happening more frequently. Feeding wasn’t even the right word. We were all meat eaters, and some of our kind preferred only human flesh. But this group of Drakán wasn’t eating for survival. They were simply out to destroy. And now here they were, less than a twenty-minute drive from my house. They were running out of chances. I was going to have to draw up a contract to execute if they didn’t lie low for a while. They were putting our entire race in danger.
Cal was already seated in the passenger seat of my dark green Land Rover by the time I made it to the garage. The heat was on full blast and the windows were fogged over with the humidity. I shot out of the garage, barely clearing the still-opening garage door, Muse blaring from the speakers.
The icy rain turned into sluggish drops, then nothing at all, so I flicked the windshield wipers off. I drove fast, and I didn’t take it personally when Cal cringed in the corner of the passenger seat as I hit a patch of ice and slid close to the ditch.
“Maybe you should slow down a little,” Cal said, eyes still closed.
“Relax, Cal. A car crash won’t kill you.”
“That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.”
“You should have a little faith. I’m an excellent driver.”
“You’ve wrecked three cars in the two months I’ve been working for you. That doesn’t qualify you as an excellent driver.”
“The last one doesn’t count. I was in Mexico. Everybody drives like they’re insane in Mexico. And I had the right-of-way.”
Calvin Rutledge was a distant cousin of some sort on my father’s side. I liked Cal. He was young—still less than a century old—but he had a sharp mind and knew how to follow orders, which was more than I could say for my last assistant, whose ashes resided on the fireplace mantel in my formal dining room.
The threat of more rain concealed the moon, and the night was completely black except for the beams of my headlights against the asphalt. But my vision was perfect. I watched a wolf chase a small rabbit through the adjacent forest, and it made my pulse jump in anticipation and my mouth water with need. There was nothing like the hunt, but I reeled myself back in. Now wasn’t the time.
I pressed the pedal to the floor and sped along the winding road. A thick copse of trees stripped of all its leaves hunched over the road like bony arms, and the weight of ice on the breaking limbs echoed like gunshots.
I heard the crime scene before I saw it—the slurp of boots as they sucked against the mud, the murmur of voices, coffee being poured into Styrofoam cups. My senses were primed as I stopped the car at the edge of the road and turned off the ignition.
“There are more than a dozen cops,” I told Cal. “You take half.”
“But what if I don’t get them all?” He chewed on his bottom lip nervously. “I don’t want it to be like the last time.”
There was a small part of me that felt somewhat maternal toward Cal. Maybe it was the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, or the mop of curly white hair. His eyes were guileless and pure onyx—so dark his diamond-shaped pupils were barely visible. He was naïve despite his age, and he lacked the instinct that was needed for this line of work. In all actuality, I was scared to death I was going to get him killed.
I put the sympathy away and answered him like I would have anyone in my employ. “Speak with confidence. Don’t break eye contact. Don’t second-guess yourself. And don’t screw up.” I gave him a hard smile and got out of the car. He followed behind me, lugging my equipment, and I relaxed a little. He wouldn’t screw up this time.
