Destined (War of the Covens 2)

“I thought you were just a lykan.” Panic swirled in her eyes.

Jae shrugged. “I am.”

“Was that magik?”

Her question received another shrug. Truthfully, Jaeden didn’t know what her telekinetic abilities were. Her greatest fear, in fact, were those abilities … and whether it meant, as she suspected, that some of Ethan’s malevolent energy had transferred to her during her captivity and torture.

“Hey …” The vamp giggled a little hysterically. “Why don’t we just forget about this? I’ll go home, you go home, and I’ll never come back to your turf again, okay?”

No. Not okay.

“See that guy?” Jae pointed to the dead teenager who lay slumped against a gravestone. His neck had been ripped open so horrifically, it was a wonder his head was still attached to his body. She concealed a shudder, turning away from the gruesome and tragic sight. “Did he suggest the same thing to you when he first felt the bite of your teeth? Did you listen? Apparently not.”

Blondie spluttered, “He’s just a human!”

She snorted in response. “Yeah, well, weren’t we all once?”

“I have money.” The vamp backed up as Jaeden drew closer with the ax. “Whatever you want.”

Jeez, when were these chicks ever going to learn?

“This isn’t a negotiation. You kill humans … you pay the price.”

The ax was spinning through the air before she finished her sentence. It sliced through wind and then straight into the vampyre’s jugular. Her eyes popped wide, and she made an awful choking, gurgling sound. Her legs gave out, and the choking worsened as blood poured from her mouth.

Jae didn’t even flinch.

She strode toward the vamp, knelt beside her, and put pressure on both ends of the ax until it cut right through, crunching and squishing until it hit the muddy ground beneath, her head completely detached from her undead body.

Silence.

Jae pulled at her ax and then wiped the blade clean on the girl’s cashmere sweater, using her own scarf to wipe the blood splatter off her face.

A quick glance at her watch. 5:20 a.m.

The sun would rise in fifteen minutes, burning the body to nothing. No one would ever know she had been there. That was funny, she mused, standing up and turning away from the consequences of her soldiering—a vampyre could walk around in the day no problem. But once their undead bodies were really … well … dead … the sun did a cleanup job.

Legend had it this began after Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, had a child, Asclepius, who pissed off Hades by bringing the dead back to life with his healing powers. Since the dead were Hades’ charge, he went to his brother, Zeus, who had Apollo’s kid killed. In revenge, Apollo killed the Cyclops, enraging Zeus, who caught up with him and threatened to send him to Tartarus. With a little sweet-talking from Leto, Apollo’s mama, Zeus lessened his punishment, with the proviso that Apollo help him keep the deadly creatures a secret from humankind by cleaning up their bodies when they died. Apollo gave the job to the sun, and the rest is ancient history.

Jaeden’s attention settled back on the boy. She hated to leave him like that, but she couldn’t be involved. He would just have to be found by a human in the morning. It was a large, central cemetery. It wouldn’t be long. Not that that made her feel any less like a monster for walking away.

Before she had walked into this new life with Reuben, she hadn’t known much about other supernaturals. Pack Errante, being so small, was protective of their kids, and only a few of them really knew much about the world outside the pack. Learning that for the past few centuries vampyre bodies had evolved because of the goddess Demeter’s fertility curse, and had begun to die by the time they reached three or four hundred years old, made Jaeden feel somewhat better that they weren’t overpopulating the world, thus making the job of tracking down rogues even harder.

But there were still a few out there whose bodies hadn’t evolved, and if the legends were true, a rare number who were second-generation vampyres: the first to be born, after Hades stole Persephone (Demeter’s daughter) and made her Queen of the Underworld, thus enraging Demeter enough to curse Hades’ vampyres with fertility. The ability to have children gradually changed their natures over time. They became less aggressive, more human. Well … in general. Jaeden shuddered at the thought. If there was still a vamp out there from that time, it was probably a feral killer with the survival skills of a god.

She pushed the folklore meant to scare small vamps around the campfire out of her mind and wandered back to her basement suite. With her head lowered, she bumped into some late-night revellers. The closer she got to the apartment, however, the quieter the streets became. The sun had risen, and soon those quiet streets would buzz with city slickers who had no idea they shared their world, their jobs, and sometimes even their homes with supernatural beasties such as her.