The Dark-Hunters (241 page)

“Hey, Tabby, killed any vampires lately?”

She looked up to see Richard Crenshaw coming toward her. A waiter at Mike Anderson’s Seafood, which was just a couple of doors down from her own store, had a bad habit of coming in whenever he got off work and hitting on the strippers who ordered custom-made costumes from her.

As usual, he was laughing at her. That was fine. Most people did. In fact, most people thought she was insane. Even her own family had laughed at her for years … until her twin had ended up married to a Dark-Hunter and had faced a vampire who had almost killed her.

Suddenly her family realized that her preternatural stories over the years weren’t total hallucinations or fabrications.

“Yeah,” she said to Richard, “I dusted one last night.”

He rolled his eyes and laughed at her as he walked on past.

“You’re welcome, Dick,” she said under her breath as he kept going. The Daimon she’d killed had been hovering around the back door of Mike Anderson’s, where Richard was known to take out the trash right before he got off work. If Tabitha hadn’t killed the Daimon, Richard would most likely be dead now.

Whatever. She didn’t really want thanks for what she did and she certainly didn’t expect it.

She kept walking down the street, feeling extremely lonely tonight. How she wished she could live her life blindly, never knowing what was out here.

But she wasn’t blind. She knew, and with that knowledge came the choice of either helping people or walking away. Never in her life had Tabitha been the kind of person who turned her back on someone in need. Her powers as an empath were too much for her sometimes. She felt the pain of others even more deeply than she felt her own.

It was what had drawn Ash to her in the beginning. Over the last three years, he had taught her several tricks to dampen down others’ emotions and to focus on her own. He’d been a godsend to her and had done more for her sanity than anyone else. Still, his tricks didn’t silence them totally.

At times it was all completely overwhelming. She was so bombarded by intense emotions that it set off hers and sometimes caused her to lash out verbally just from the stress of it.

So here she was, by herself, spending another lonely night walking the streets as she risked her life for people who mocked her.

Patrolling was certainly much more fun when she’d done it with a group of friends.

Tabitha forced herself not to remember Trish and Alex, who’d both died in the line of duty. But it was useless. Tears filled her eyes as she touched the jagged scar on her face that the Daimon Desiderius had given her. The worst sort of psycho, Desiderius had been out to kill her twin sister and brother-in-law. Luckily, Amanda and Kyrian had survived. Tabitha just wished she’d been killed that night instead of her friends. It wasn’t right for them to pay such a high price when Tabitha had been the one to talk them into helping her in the first place.

God, why couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut and just left them alone to live out their lives in ignorance and peace?

It was why she fought alone now. She would never again ask anyone to risk their life to do what she did.

They had a choice about this.

She didn’t.

Tabitha slowed down as she got the familiar tickle down the center of her spine.

Daimons …

They were behind her.

Turning around, she knelt down and pretended to tie the laces on her boot. Meanwhile she was well aware of the six shadows that were closing in on her …

*   *   *

Valerius pulled at the edge of his right leather Coach glove to straighten it as he walked down the virtually abandoned street. As always, he was impeccably dressed in a long black cashmere coat, a black turtleneck, and black slacks. Unlike most Dark-Hunters, he wasn’t a leather-wearing barbarian. He was the epitome of sophistication. Breeding. Nobility. His family had been descended from one of the oldest and most respected noble families of Rome. As a former Roman general whose father had been a well-respected senator, Valerius would have gladly followed in the man’s footsteps had the Parcae, or Fates, not intervened.

But that was the past and Valerius refused to remember it. Agrippina was the only exception to that rule. She was the only thing he ever remembered from his human life.

She was the only thing
worth
remembering from his human life.

Valerius winced and focused his thoughts on other, much less painful things. There was a crispness in the air that announced winter would be here soon. Not that New Orleans
had
a winter, compared to what he’d been used to in D.C.

Still, the longer he was here the more his blood was thinning, and the cool night air was a bit chilly to him.

Valerius paused as his Dark-Hunter senses detected the presence of a Daimon. Tilting his head, he listened with his heightened hearing.

He heard a group of men laughing at their victim.

And then he heard the strangest thing of all …

“Laugh it up, asshole. But she who laughs last, laughs longest and I intend to belly roll tonight.”

A fight broke out.

Valerius whirled on his heel and headed back the direction he’d come from.

He drifted through the darkness until he found an ajar gate that led to a courtyard.

There in the back were six Daimons fighting a tall human woman.

Valerius was mesmerized by the macabre beauty of the battle. One Daimon came at the woman’s back. She flipped him over her shoulder and in one graceful motion stabbed him in the chest with a long, black dagger. The Daimon burst into a golden dust.

She twirled as she rose up to face another one. She tossed the dagger from one hand to the other and held it like a woman well used to defending herself from the undead.

Two Daimons rushed her. She actually did a cartwheel away from them, but the other Daimon had anticipated her action. He grabbed her.

Without panicking, the woman surrendered her weight by picking both of her legs up to her chest. It brought the Daimon to his knees. The woman sprang to her feet and whirled to stab the Daimon in his back.

He evaporated.

Normally the remaining Daimons would flee. The last four didn’t. Instead they spoke to each other in a language he hadn’t heard in a long time: ancient Greek.

“Little chickie la la, isn’t dumb enough to fall for that, guys,” the woman answered back in flawless Greek.

Valerius was so stunned he couldn’t move. In over two thousand years, he’d never seen or heard of anything like this. Not even the Amazons had ever produced a better fighter than the woman who now confronted the Daimons.

Suddenly a light appeared behind the woman. It flashed bright and swirling. A chill, cold wind swept through the courtyard before six more Daimons stepped out.

Valerius went rigid at something even rarer than the warrior-woman fighting the Daimons.

*   *   *

Tabitha turned slowly to see the group of new Daimons. Holy shit. She’d only seen this one other time.

The new batch of Daimons looked at her and laughed. “Pitiful human.”

“Pitiful this,” she said as tossed her dagger at his chest.

He moved his hand and deflected the dagger before it reached him. Then he slung his arm toward her. Something invisible and painful slashed through her chest as she went flying head over heels.

Dazed and scared, Tabitha lay on the ground.

Horrible memories ripped through her of the night when her friends had died. The way the warrior Spathi Daimons had torn through them …

No, no, no.

They were dead. Kyrian had killed them all.

Her panic tripled as she struggled to right herself.

She was dizzy, her vision blurry as she pushed herself to her feet.

*   *   *

Valerius was across the alley in microseconds as he saw the woman fall.

The tallest Daimon, who stood even in height to Valerius, laughed. “How nice of Acheron to send us a playmate.”

Valerius pulled his two retractable swords from his coat and extended the blades. “Play is for children and dogs. Now that you have identified which category you fall into, I’ll show you what Romans do to rabid dogs.”

One of the Daimons smiled. “Romans? My father always told me that all Romans die squealing like pigs.”

The Daimon attacked.

Valerius sidestepped and brought his sword down. The Daimon pulled a sword out of nothing and parried his attack with a skill that bespoke a man with years of training.

The other Daimons struck at once.

Valerius dropped his swords and swung out with his arms, releasing the grappling hooks and cords that were attached to his wrists. The hooks went straight into the chest of the tallest Daimon and the one he was fighting.

Unlike most Daimons, they didn’t disintegrate instantly. They stared at him with hollow eyes before they burst apart.

But while he was distracted by them, another Daimon retrieved his sword and cut him across his back. Valerius hissed in pain before he turned and elbowed the Daimon in the face.

The woman was back on her feet. She killed two more Daimons while he killed the one who had wounded him.

Valerius wasn’t sure what had happened to the others; in truth, he was having a bit of trouble moving because of the vicious pain of his back.

“Die, Daimon snot!” the woman snarled at him an instant before she, too, stabbed him straight in the chest.

She pulled the dagger out instantly.

Valerius hissed and staggered back as pain ripped through his heart. He clutched at his chest, unable to think past the agony of it.

Tabitha bit her lip in terror as she saw the man recoil and not explode into dust.

“Oh, shit,” she breathed, rushing to his side. “Please tell me you’re some screwed-up Dark-Hunter and that I didn’t just kill an accountant or lawyer.”

The man hit the street hard.

Tabitha rolled him over onto his back and checked his breathing. His eyes were partially opened, but he wasn’t speaking. He held his jaw clamped firmly shut as he groaned deep in his throat.

Terrified, she still wasn’t sure who she had mistakenly stabbed. Her heart hammering, she pulled up his turtleneck to see the nasty-looking stab wound in the center of his chest.

And then she saw what she had hoped for …

He had a bow and arrow brand above his right hipbone.

“Oh, thank God,” she breathed as relief poured through her. He was in fact a Dark-Hunter and not some unfortunate human.

She grabbed her phone and called Acheron to let him know one of his men had been hurt, but he didn’t answer.

So she started dialing her sister Amanda until her common sense returned. There were only four Dark-Hunters in this city. Ash who led them. Janice whom she had met earlier. The former pirate captain, Jean-Luc. And …

Valerius Magnus.

He was the only Dark-Hunter in New Orleans she didn’t know personally. And he was the mortal enemy of her brother-in-law.

She hit the cancel button on her phone. Kyrian would kill this man in a heartbeat and bring the wrath of Artemis down fully upon his head. In return, the goddess would kill Kyrian for it and that was the last thing Tabitha wanted. Her sister would die if anything happened to her husband.

Come to think of it, if half of what Kyrian said about this man and his family was true, she should just leave him here and let him die.

But then Ash would never forgive her if she did that to one of his men. Besides she couldn’t leave him here, not even she was that heartless. Like it or not, he had saved her life and she was honor-bound to return the favor.

Wincing, she realized she was going to have to get him to safety. And he was just a little too large for her to handle on her own. She dialed her phone again and waited for an answer that came in a slick, Cajun drawl.

“Hey, Nick, it’s Tabitha Devereaux. I’m in the old courtyard off Royal Street with a man down and I need help. Any chance you want to be my knight in shining armor tonight and lend a hand to a damsel in distress?”

Nick Gautier’s smooth laugh rippled in her ear. “Why,
chèr,
you know I live for such moments. I’ll be right there.”

“Thanks,” she said before she gave him precise directions and hung up.

A New Orleans native like herself, Nick had been an acquaintance of hers for years since the two of them frequented many of the same restaurants and clubs. Not to mention, Nick had brought a few of his girlfriends in to browse some of the racier outfits that Tabitha sold in her adult boutique, Pandora’s Box.

A charming rogue, Nick was about as handsome as any man she’d ever seen. He had dark brown hair that tended to stay in a pair of eyes that were so blue and seductive they really should be illegal.

And when it came to his smile …

Not even she was entirely immune to it.

She’d been stunned to learn at her sister’s wedding three years ago that Nick actually worked for the undead. Rumors on the street had always abounded on what Nick did for a living. Every native who haunted the Quarter knew the man had a ton of cash and no real job that anyone could discern. When he’d shown up as best man for Kyrian, she’d been completely shocked.

But since that night, she and Nick had forged an odd alliance as drinking buddies and partners-in-crime who lived to rankle the Dark-Hunters. It was really nice to have someone she could talk to who knew that the vampires were real and who understood the dangers she faced every night.

Tabitha sat down on the cobblestoned walk to wait on Nick. Valerius still wasn’t moving. She cocked her head to study Kyrian’s great Satan. According to her brother-in-law, Valerius and his Roman family had been the worst sort of bastards.

They had killed and raped any- and everything that came into their paths as they led bloody campaigns across the ancient world. She would have taken Kyrian’s aspersions with more grains of salt if it wasn’t for the fact that other Dark-Hunters concurred.

To her knowledge, no one liked Valerius.

No one.

But as she watched him breathing lightly, he didn’t look so ominous.

Probably because he’s practically dead.