Shades of Blood(Warriors of Ankh 3)

Infuriated, Eden delighted in the sounds of his rapid footsteps - they thudded louder in her ears as she closed the gap between them. His heavy puffs of breath made her heart pound harder, adrenaline riding her like a roaring, purring Harley. The smell of his cologne hit her nostrils moments before her hand reached out and gripped his collar. She yanked him back to a stop before cutting to the left, pulling him with her into the dark alley behind a florist. She shoved him into the black with a force that sent him careening. The clatter of metal on concrete echoed loudly around them and she winced as she realized she’d thrown him into trash cans. Even less subtle.

Eden was on him before he could get to his feet, his pale eyes startling in the dark. Her katana unleashed, Eden gave into the disappointment that tonight couldn’t be much of a fight since they’d already attracted enough attention. She brought her sword down with hatred and frustration, the lethal blade slicing through the soul eater’s neck. The thick, smothering stench of copper filled the air, a smell that no longer kicked her gag reflex into action.

With a sigh, Eden stood up, wiping the blood and gore off her blade with her black coat. That would be the third coat she’d ruined doing that.

Pulling out her smartphone, Eden grimaced as she got blood on the screen. Idiot. She wiped it against her coat, accidentally calling Cyrus instead of Terrence, the Head of Security. Cyrus went to voicemail anyway so she tried Terrence.

“Eden,” his deep, no-nonsense voice answered.

“I need a clean-up a.s.a.p. And I mean a.s.a.p. I left a number of witnesses in my wake chasing this piece of crap down.”

“How many?”

“Dude, I was too busy running with the wind to notice how many civilians eyeballed me.”

He sighed. “I meant how many soul eaters.”

“Oh. One. Only one, but he made a lot of a noise going down so I need you guys, like, right now. The alley behind the florist on Cedar Lane Way.”

“On it.”

The line went dead. Eden grunted, shoving her cell back into her pocket. “Bye to you too. And you’re welcome.”

With one last glance over her shoulder at the mess she’d made, Eden slipped out of the alley, wiping her face to make sure she had no blood on it. She looked left and right, double checking no one was watching her. It was pretty late and the streets were quiet so she was almost sure no one had seen her drag the soul eater into the alley…where she cut his head off with a samurai sword.

God, she loved her life.

Pity it hadn’t been more of a fight though.

Rolling her neck on her shoulders, Eden was about to take a step back up Cedar Lane Way and towards Noah, a contented smile on her face for having rid the world of one less asshole, when a buzz shot up the back of her neck. She froze, not sure why or what it was. The only name she could give it was… familiarity. Frowning, Eden turned on her heel and walked silently in the opposite direction.

A familiar soothing voice whispered towards her ears and she grew still again.

Val?

Of course. She’d chased soul eater loser guy into Val’s patrol area.

Eager to see Val in action, Eden quietly followed the feeling.

Her heart literally stopped in utter confusion at the sight that greeted her when the feeling found Val. Huddled in the dark, down basement stairs at a residential redbrick townhouse, Val crouched in the shadows, her elegant hands clasping the face of a young soul eater whose huge grey eyes stared up in horror into Val’s face. Eden saw the tension in the back of Val’s shoulders as she spoke soothingly to the girl, she saw the imperceptible tremor that shook her mentor’s muscles and was about to take a step down towards her when the unimaginable happened.

The girl made a frightened, croaking sound from the back of her throat, her chest rising and falling in unnatural shudders as the grey in her eyes bled out into dark brown. Eden’s sharp eyes blinked.

No way.

She looked harder.

Sure enough. The grey was gone.

Before she had a chance to triple check, the girl’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she passed out. Val sighed, leaning back. She slipped her cell out of her back pocket. All the while Eden never moved, never made a sound, as her brain tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.

“Cyrus,” Val whispered into her cell. “I got one.”

Fear caught in Eden’s throat and she must have made a noise because Val whipped around so fast Eden barely had time to blink before ducking the dagger that was thrown at her.

“Eden!” Val whisper-shouted. She shook her head in disbelief and pressed the cell back to her ear. “We have a problem. Did you hear?” She shut her eyes in weariness. “Yes. OK. West Cedar Street.” She snapped her cell shut.

Heart pounding, Eden somehow made her way down the steps towards Val, her eyes glued to the girl slumped unconscious on the ground. “What the hell did you do?”

For a minute she thought Val might not answer, there was such pain and concern in her dark, exotic eyes. Finally, she heaved a massive sigh. “I did what only the Unforeseen can do. What only you and I can do.”

Afraid to ask, Eden’s eyes did it for her.

The ancient warrior bent down to the girl, two fingers on her neck checking for a steady pulse. Satisfied, she looked up at Eden. “I turned a soul eater into a human.”

Chapter Three

What Will Never Be

“Seriously, what happened?” Noah asked her for the fifteenth time as he drove them back towards the mansion. He’d had a little more trouble with his soul eater than she had, especially when two more park rangers turned up to check out the disturbance. Thankfully, the soul eater chose that moment to run so when Noah finally caught up with him it was in the shade of trees where the park rangers couldn’t see him decapitate the monster. Of course he’d then had to knock the rangers unconscious so the clean-up crew could get in and out of the gardens undetected.

Tonight had not been a quiet, under the radar, patrol. Good thing they had a number of Neith in the Boston Police Department, as well as the Mayor’s Office, who could make any eye-witness accounts and complaints disappear.

Eden shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat. She was still reeling from what she herself had witnessed tonight. It couldn’t be real. It just… couldn’t. If it was real…?

A dark, ugly pain began to form into a knot in Eden’s chest.

“Eden?”

“Nothing happened,” she replied quietly, hating to lie, but Val had specifically told her not to say anything to Noah. “I’m just kind of unnerved that there were so many people about tonight. Not the coolest takedown ever.”

He didn’t say anything but she could feel him frowning at her.

“Eyes on the road.” She smirked but still couldn’t meet his gaze.

The tension between them grew thicker as she buried herself in the painful what ifs of Val’s revelation. As for Noah, she could tell he was pissed off at her for shutting him out of whatever was going on with her - it was pretty obvious when he flipped the song playing in the car from Barcelona to Buried Alive by Love by H.I.M.

Eden rolled her eyes. Back at you, dude.

They pulled up at the mansion, stopping at three security gates for the requisite checks. Finally the last gate swung open, the guards standing aside to let Noah drive up towards the huge garage.

“Eden…” he sighed as they walked side by side out of the garage, along the cold corridor and up the small staircase that led them into the entrance hall of the mansion.

She tensed but before she could say anything Cyrus was before them.