Prologue

From the shadows, Gavin Johnston watched the play of expressions cross the girl's face as she struggled to stay awake. He knew what thoughts tugged at her through the haze, knew that the alley spun and darkened as she struggled to focus, shape and form dancing beyond her grasp.

He'd tried three of the common drugs on himself first, just so he'd know what it was like. GHB, Rophypnol, ketamine. Rohypnol turned blue when he dropped the pills in liquid, which made it less than ideal for his use.

He liked GHB best. No odor. No color. He'd used it on a dozen women in recent months. The last one had died. Not his fault. She'd choked on her own vomit.

The girl on the ground moaned as her head lolled to the side. Her eyes moved slowly from left to right. He thought she must be wondering what she was doing out here. Or perhaps she was too far gone for that.

Did she remember staggering to the bathroom? Did she remember that he'd looped her arm across his shoulders and half carried her out the back door to the alley, laid her down by the dumpster beneath the dark night sky?

The rancid stink rising from the dumpster slapped him. She must have smelled it, too, because she tried to roll away, but only managed to shift from her side to her back before her body betrayed her.

He smiled, finding humor in her distress. Did she wonder how she'd gotten so drunk on only a single glass of wine? Or did she realize that he had put something in her drink?

Her eyes opened, drifted shut, opened again, focusing on him. She was pretty. Very pretty. Olive skin. Dark hair, sleek and smooth, fanning out against the ground. Great body, encased in a tight little skirt and low-cut top. No bra.

"Are you woozy, pretty girl?" he asked with a nasty laugh, knowing she was. Enjoying the fact that she was weak and vulnerable.

Earlier tonight, he'd been the one who was weak. Vulnerable. He'd been the one tormented.

It had been a mistake, allowing himself to be in that position, but this was his opportunity to remedy that, his chance to be strong.

The bare bulb over the back door of the bar cast a yellow circle of light, and he had no liking for that. Grabbing her under her armpits, he dragged her along the pavement into the shadows. A quick glance up and down the alley confirmed they were completely alone.

Hunkering down beside her, he stroked her hair back from her face. She stared up at him, her eyes wide, and for a moment they looked far too lucid for his taste. Then her lids drifted shut, and he relaxed.

He undid the button of his jeans, then the zipper, metal sliding over metal with a dull rasp.

The girl's eyes flicked open, pinned him with a hard, cold gaze, dark and glittering. Fever bright.

He froze, the first lick of unease touching him like the flicker of a flame.

"Don't stop now," she whispered, her lips curving to reveal animal-white teeth as she dropped her gaze to his crotch.

Whoa. Gavin's thoughts skidded one against the next, slamming into each other. She shouldn't be speaking. The drug...She shouldn't be able to speak-

"I told you not to stop," she murmured.

The air around her shimmered, like heat rising off pavement. He caught glimpses of talons and incredibly long teeth, and he jerked back, suddenly afraid that he'd given the drug to himself by accident.

Unease turned to icy fear, even though he couldn't say why. She was just a girl, a drugged girl, lying on the cold ground. Only...she was something more, something...dark. His heart slammed against his ribs and his blood pounded hard in his ears.

What the hell? What the fucking hell?

He wanted to tell her to fuck herself. He wanted to get up and run. But his muscles wouldn't obey his command and, against his will, his hands stayed on the open fly of his jeans.

All he could do was kneel by her side as she reached for him, escalating fear congealing in his gut. All he could do was gasp as she tore his shirt open from neck to hem, then tore his skin, her nails raking him to leave four deep furrows on his chest.

With a low hum of pleasure, she brought her bloodied fingers to her mouth, licked them clean.

Her teeth...what the hell was with her teeth?

She wasn't human. He could see that now. Oh, God, she wasn't human.

He was going to be sick. The fear inside him kindled and swelled until it grew to a roaring blaze.

He was still on his knees at her side, and he swayed, dizzy with fear and horror, desperate to get up and run, to be anywhere but here. Only, his limbs wouldn't do what he told them, wouldn't obey the commands of his mind.

"Not a very nice feeling, is it?" she asked, her voice so incredibly sexy, making him hard even through his terror. And that frightened him even more until all he knew was the great crashing waves of his panic.

She kept talking, low murmurs of encouragement and reassurance.

With a smile, she struck, her fingers curled like talons. Pain rocked him, sharp and deep.

At first, he thought she'd punched him.

The breath whooshed out of him in a quick exhale. He doubled over, feeling as though not just his breath was dragged from him, but his life in one great, sucking pull.

He looked down. Stared at his belly in mute horror.

She hadn't punched him.

Blood spurted over her wrist, her forearm. His gut was ripped open, her hand inside him. Inside him. His head jerked up and he looked into her eyes, the swirling depths of her too-black eyes.

Wrenching agony exploded inside him.

Rearing up, she cupped her free hand against the base of his skull, pressed her mouth to his and swallowed his agonized screams.

 

Chapter One

He was alone, horny, and in possession of a partially scorched demon bone. Perfect.

Only the last of the three problems was new, but it sure wouldn't provide a solution for the previous two.

Dain Hawkins raked his fingers back through the shaggy layers of his dark hair and gave a low, mordant laugh. Moon-spun purple shadows and pale gray light sliced across his denim-clad thigh, then fanned along the row of brick, stucco and marble vaults of New Orleans' oldest cemetery. St. Louis #1.

He crouched, waiting, hidden by the white Greek revival tomb at his side-the voodoo queen's tomb. It was covered in small x's drawn there for luck, and festooned with the offerings of the faithful: votives, flowers, hoodoo money-coins left to buy favors.

But Dain wasn't here for voodoo magic tonight. As a sorcerer, he didn't need that kind of help.

He was here for hybrids, brutish creatures that had been human once. Faced with death, they had chosen to allow demon will to overtake their souls, to become slavish minions of the Solitary, a malevolent demon of immeasurable power that wanted only to cross the wall between dimensions and turn the human realm into his own personal feeding farm.

Dain smiled mirthlessly. Not while he breathed.

The air was crisp with a hint of winter chill. He smelled the faintest trace of brimstone, sensed the ripple of evil that hung over the graveyard, a fetid mist.

Yeah, he'd come to the right place.

He rose, the material of his long, black coat flowing behind him, an undulating shadow. Walking to the end of the row, he turned and moved on through the city of the dead. Some rows were straight, some twisted, and still others led to blind ends in a tangled maze of family tombs: miniature houses for the dead, complete with low iron fences. Many tombs had been restored since the hurricane; others still bore their crumbled corners, decimated by time and storm, jutting out like barren bones.

Bones. Dain's lips twisted. He was here for more than the hybrids. He was here because of the blackened bone that sat heavy in the pocket of his long coat, burning through the layers of cloth into his skin like a brand. He hated the feel of it, the revolting aura that was so strong it sucked the breath from his lungs. Demon stink clung to it, and terrible demon power.

Weeks past, Dain's contemporary, Ciarran D'Arbois had slammed shut a portal between the demon realm and the dimension of man, and in so doing, he had maimed the Solitary. The demon's foot had been severed when the doorway closed, leaving the powerful demon trapped in the pit that had spawned it. Dain had found all that remained in the human realm, a single burnt and blackened bone that carried vestiges of horrific, dark magic.

Since that night, he'd kept the thing locked away in a vault in his home, but he'd dared not leave it unattended while he came to New Orleans. Still, he wondered if he was crazy to carry it about.

Choices, choices. No one to trust but himself. That lesson had been hard learned.

The outline of a cross reflected in the smooth surface of a puddle, and the round bright shape of the moon. Dain looked up at the top of a nearby vault, at the cross there, and at the statue of the weeping woman on the tomb next to it. His booted feet scattered the reflections as he walked on.

He made no effort to hide his progress. Let them hear him. He was spoiling for a fight, had been for weeks, ever since the night the Solitary had almost crossed over. That night, Dain had learned that the Ancient, the oldest and most powerful of the Compact of Sorcerers, had betrayed them, choosing to ally with the demons. The Ancient had been his mentor, his friend.

Now, his enemy.

Following instinct, Dain navigated the maze of vaults and low iron fences. At length, he came upon a wider space with a lone, black tomb, brick and plaster torn open to reveal a musty, gaping hole. An old, rotting casket had been dragged out into the moonlight, the lid ripped off, and around it crowded a half-dozen hybrids, casting long, menacing shadows.

Their clothing was stained, mottled, heavy with the metallic scent of fresh blood. Dain could tell they had fed recently. Not on the long-decomposed remains from the casket. No, they had hunted and killed before coming here to the cemetery. Hybrids liked their prey live. Their meat bloody.

And human.

It was the only thing that offered even a temporary relief from the endless physical pain of their existence-a small matter that the demons invariably failed to mention when they tempted the dying to become hybrid.

With narrowed eyes, Dain studied the group. They had no idea he was here. Normally, they would have sensed the herald of his light magic long before this, but the malevolent power of the charred bone he carried was so great it obscured much. Hell, he was slathered so thick with the demon aura, they probably mistook his presence as just another of their own.

A valuable stealth tool.

Problem was, he was having trouble sensing them as well. The longer he carried the bone on his person, the more inured he became, less attuned to the current of demon magic. A danger, to be sure, but one that could not be avoided. Hybrids were robbing graves all over the world without subtlety or discretion, but with what Dain suspected was a definite plan. Until he figured out what the hell was going on, the scorched demon bone wasn't going anywhere without him.

Yeah, him and his bone, inseparable.

Hanging in the shadows, Dain clenched his teeth, battling the urge to call his full power and step into the circle of hybrids. While a fight might relieve his tension, it wouldn't get him answers. He'd wait and watch just a little longer. Whatever the hybrids were after, it had something to do with the Solitary, and with rotted human corpses.

With a high cackling laugh, one of the hybrids yanked something from the open casket before him: a bony forearm and hand, stripped of flesh by years and inevitable decay, held together by fragile remnants of desiccated tissue. Dangling from the moldered fingers was a tattered and rotting cloth pouch.

Frowning, Dain stepped closer. A voodoo gris-gris? A charm bag buried with the dead?

Whatever was in that pouch had demon stink all over it. The damned bone in his pocket heated, the sensation burning through coat and jeans into the skin and muscle of his thigh, bright, hot. Evil called to evil.

The hybrids were after that charm bag, which meant so was he.

Dain stepped forward into the moonlight. One of the hybrids jerked its head back, and spun to face him.

So much for the covert approach.

The thing lunged with a feral cry. In a smooth execution of movement, Dain tucked, rolled and rose, avoiding the creature that attacked, coming up next to the one that held the gris-gris. He plucked the cloth bag from the hybrid's grasp. It was red velvet, stitched with red thread.

Old. Very old. Bound by spells to protect the contents and stave off decay in the moist heat of New Orleans. Dain felt rank evil ooze from the small bag into the flesh and bone of his hand. The continuum, the dragon current-an endless river of energy that flowed between dimensions-shifted and writhed in protest of the unnatural shift in balance.

With a howl, the hybrid he'd robbed swiped at him, a rake of clawed fingers. Dain jerked aside, shoved the pouch into his pocket-the one that didn't hold the demon bone-and leaped back so he was at the edge of the open space, a tomb at his back.

The hybrids advanced on him in a loose semicircle.

Dain called up a little more of his power, enough to let the hybrids sense his magic, let them know for certain that he was a light sorcerer. That was his warning to them, his single offer of reprieve. They could flee and he would not chase them, or they could attack and he would cut them down.

They hesitated, confused by the impossible mix of light magic and demon aura that clung to him, darkness oozing from the scorched bone that had become his constant companion.

He conjured a six-foot staff of acacia wood, ancient, deadly, and he waited.

Snarling, the closest hybrid fell on him like a rabid dog. Declining to summon more of his magic, Dain fought, preferring for the moment the physical release of punch and thrust and kick, even when they piled on him, six-to-one.

Claws sank into his chest, raking deep, and a fist to the jaw rocked his head back. He gave as he got, a jab with his staff, and then he tossed it high in the air, twisted a hybrid's head from its neck, snapped out his hand to catch his staff on the descent, his fingers slick with black blood.

The hybrid's remains bubbled and hissed and, finally, disintegrated in a stinking gray sludge.

Another hybrid moved into the place of the first. Dain let emotion take him, rage and pain at the Ancient's betrayal, the memory of his mentor's treachery still cutting sharp as a finely honed blade. Grief was there, too, and a centuries' old hatred of demons and their ilk, feeding his actions until there was a thick morass of bubbling ooze at his feet.

A single hybrid backed away, the only one left standing. It stood shivering, frozen in terror, then fell to its knees before him. Dain stared at it, chest heaving. The charred bone in his pocket heated with a gruesome energy, a forbidden magic, and the continuum writhed at the insult.

Temptation wheedled through him, and with it came a foreign and ugly craving for just one more kill.

Kill, kill, kill.

That was new.

What the hell was wrong with him?

The bone, the goddamned demon bone.

Well, it would be disappointed if it wanted to lure him to the dark side. Sorcerers were guardians, not indiscriminate murderers.

Pressing a hand to the deep gouges that scored his chest, Dain spat blood. He was breathing heavily, and his pulse pounded a hard beat in his ears.

"Go," he snarled, and the hybrid didn't wait for a second invitation. It scrabbled back like a crab, then rolled and stumbled to its feet, weaving as it ran through the graveyard, the sound of its footsteps echoing hollowly.

Copyright © 2008. Eve Silver. All Rights Reserved.