Fireborne Read online

  FIREBORNE

  (RAVEN CURSED BOOK 1)

  MCKENZIE HUNTER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  McKenzie Hunter

  Fireborne

  © 2019, McKenzie Hunter

  [email protected]

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

  Cover Artist: Orina Kafe

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  ISBN: 978-1-946457-01-1

  Contents

  ABOUT FIREBORNE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  MESSAGE TO THE READER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT FIREBORNE

  Fireborne has some scenes from Death’s Kiss (a novella available in an anthology and available for free); but, don’t worry you are in for a brand new adventure, with unexpected twists and exciting new characters. Welcome to Erin’s world, I hope you enjoy it.

  CHAPTER 1

  “Come out, come out wherever you are. There’s a crimson martini waiting just for you.” I peered through my night vision binoculars. Crouching behind the thick manicured shrubbery and planted flowers that enclosed the rooftop café allowed me to keep a careful eye on the front and side entrances of Kelsey’s, the city’s premier restaurant for the supernatural elite—or those who’d like to appear to be.

  They say pride cometh before the fall, but I beg to differ—the indulgence of an overpriced drink available only at Kelsey’s would be Grayson’s fall. Ridiculous.

  Two things I knew about my bounty: He was arrogant, which would surely lead to his capture, and undoubtedly he was enjoying the chase more than I was the hunt.

  What the hell was he thinking stealing the Crelic? He was thinking the way he always does. He wants, he takes. Toddler rules. Except this particular man-toddler grab required careful planning and high-end equipment to get in and out of the heavily secured location, to get to his desired toy.

  Trouble was, it wasn’t some toy he took but a magical object banned by the Supernatural Task Force. In the wrong hands it could be deadly. That’s the last thing I wanted my sister to have to deal with. If the Crelic was used to commit a crime, that old debate about supernaturals needing to be policed by human police, not the Supernatural Task Force, would reignite. It always did when things like this hit the media. The rationale baffled me—supernaturals with access to magic from all denizens and technology couldn’t prevent the theft or misuse of magical objects, but humans with only technology at their disposal could?

  The theft wasn’t public knowledge and it needed to stay that way. The STF were good about keeping supernatural secrets and mishaps quiet, but leaks happen.

  Shifting to a more comfortable position, I continued to watch the procession of people filing into Kelsey’s, the alabaster stone building that stood out among the surrounding rows of brown and tan buildings. Floor-to-ceiling windows in the front gave passersby a peek of what they were missing. A mere glimpse was all you were afforded, because carefully placed artworks prevented a full view of the establishment and gave the patrons privacy. If the swanky exterior hadn’t tipped me off, the doorman should have.

  If I tagged the bounty, the money paid to the manager for my rooftop location was well spent.

  I did another quick equipment check and made sure my rifle with scope was close.

  Doubt reared its head after ten minutes had passed. Bounty hunting had taught me to never underestimate a person’s arrogance and that their desire to satisfy their id made them careless. I was counting on both to be true about my mark . . . but what if I was wrong?

  I gave a quick shake of my head. I was rarely wrong about this sort of thing. Grayson thrived on his id and satisfying his self-entitled desires. He was just the type of person who’d steal a priceless magical object on Tuesday, catch a movie on Wednesday, have drinks with the fellas on Thursday, and be truly shocked that someone dared to apprehend him. Grayson was a man-toddler with an Amex black card.

  The appearance of a tall, self-assured figure had me grabbing my rifle in a reflexive response to the anger that rose immediately at the sight of the man. He was talking into his phone a few feet from the side door of the restaurant I was watching, complying with Kelsey’s no-cellphone rule. It was one of the few rules he followed. He wasn’t my mark, but someone I wanted far worse.

  Asher. I hissed his name like a curse. If only the rifle had rubber bullets instead of a tranq. The shots wouldn’t be fatal, but they’d hurt like hell. I wanted him to hurt.

  Asher slowly scanned the area, as if he’d heard my furious whisper into the darkness. He ended the call, tilted his chin up, and noticeably inhaled the air. His silver eyes narrowed, glinting like an animal’s. He pushed a hand through a tuft of wavy russet hair, his lips easing into his signature smile, charismatic and disarming. He used his smile like a weapon. It allowed him to be blatant with his improprieties and crimes without fear of being questioned or apprehended. I wondered how many illegal and rare magical objects he had in his possession, ones that were never found during warrant searches but that everyone knew he had. Getting these items was a game to Asher, even though he, like all shifters, didn’t possess the ability to use their magic for anything other than changing to his animal. So acquiring the objects was just a flagrant disregard for rules and laws and to see what he could get away with. As far as I was concerned, he got away with way too much.

  His smile moved into a smirk. And his look said it all: “Yeah, I did it. And?”

  Jaw clenched, I relived that day. It was my job. My find. I did all the work, and he poached it from me. The worst part was that I still hadn’t figured out how he did it. I leveled the tranq gun at him. I wanted to shoot him for no other reason than to see his face twist into a grimace of pain and astonishment.

  Mr. Arrogance’s tongue moved lazily over his lips, but his gaze wasn’t homed in directly on me, just in my general direction. Could he see me or was it just his predator’s instinct, sensing someone was near? His need to be the hunter and not the hunted.

  Clearly amused, he slipped his phone into his pocket, relaxed his arms at his sides, and widened his stance.

  Is this jackass posing?

  It made me want to shoot him not once but twice, and possibly junk punch him. My voice of reason told me I was above such behavior, but when it came to Asher, I wasn’t. I glared at him through the scope of the gun.

  He mou
thed, “Hello, Erin.”

  The urge to race across the street to knee him in his man berries was almost irresistible.

  As if he sensed my intentions, his brow hitched up and he gave me a lazy two-finger salute before backing his way into the restaurant. As he turned around, he pulled out his phone and started tapping at the keys. Moments later, I got a text notification. I glanced at him and saw the grin he was giving me over his shoulder. If he knew how perilously close he was to being shot in the back with a tranq, that smile would have vanished. I didn’t have a lot of rules—it’s hard to in this line of business—but shooting someone in the back was a no-no. But for Asher, I could make an exception.

  Could he see me, or did he sense me? Was it my scent? Shifters were good at tracking people by their scent. That was one of the innumerable things about them I found annoying. My hair couldn’t have been seen, too dark, but to be cautious I’d twisted it into a messy bun and covered it with a black slouch hat.

  The leather pants I was wearing were an occupational requirement, but I still scowled at the cliché of being dressed in all black and leather, complete with a tote crammed with weaponry and my violent little toys. Black washed out my olive-colored skin, so I didn’t like to wear it, but what should I have worn to catch Grayson? I couldn’t just bring handcuffs, a winning personality, and a smile to a fang fight. I would have loved to be wearing a comfortable pair of jeans and a t-shirt or tank top that allowed easier movement, but black blended with the night, and it only took being dragged across concrete once to know I needed leather pants. I scowled again. Dealing with Grayson, being dragged down the street was the least of my worries.

  Knowing that I now had a message from Asher made it difficult to ease out of my Asher rage. A wave of embarrassment swept over me. Each time I allowed him to get to me like this, he won all over again. I couldn’t let that happen. I deliberately released his taunting look from my mind, refocused on the job, and peered through the binoculars again.

  He’ll show up. Whatever it was about Kelsey’s, it called to people’s pleasure centers. Grayson would answer the call and risk capture just to have a sip of the crimson martinis he loved so much.

  “My indulgences do get in my way.” The smooth, rich voice came from behind me.

  “Grayson.” I whipped around, grabbed my projector pistol—better for shorter distances—aimed, and shot. The dart whirled through the air and was plucked out of the air by his deft hands before it could touch him. Crushing the dart in his hand, he then tossed it aside.

  “I broke your toy,” he mocked, moving slowly to the right out of my line of sight.

  “No worries, I have more.” In a flash, I snatched up the other projector pistol, that I had stored on my right side, and shot. I knew it was going to miss. It was a distraction. While he was busy picking it from the air, I lashed my whip out at him. It wrapped around one leg, and with a tug, I sent him crashing to the ground. Vampire speed was fascinating to watch but infuriating when on the receiving end of their mesmerizing graceful swiftness. Grabbing hold of the whip, he tugged me several feet closer to him. I released my hold on it so when he yanked on it again, the loose end snapped back in his direction and narrowly missed hitting his face. His contemptuous glare bore into me.

  He was on his feet, my whip ripped in half, and the left side of his mouth quirked into a smile as he waved me forward, inviting the ass kicking I was so ready to deliver. Yes, now I could vent my Asher aggression on him. He grunted when a round kick caught him on the left side of his jaw, hard enough to make his head jerk back. He flipped backward out of reach before I could deliver another.

  The magic he’d stolen was obviously still new to him because that would have been a perfect time to use it.

  “Strawberries and Riesling,” he purred into the silence, reminding me of how he’d described my scent on more than one occasion. Why were vamps and shifters always smelling things? Didn’t they realize how disgusting that was? He casually looked me over, the leer on his face reminding me that we’d seen each other naked, far too many times. It was a tactic to throw me off, and another time it might have worked. But I was too focused on the stolen magic that wafted off him. I shuddered.

  He slowly rounded me. I shuffled back a few steps, keeping my attention on him and trying to anticipate his next move, which was nearly impossible. With the exception of his fascination with whatever was in Kelsey’s, Grayson was unpredictable. His impulsiveness was thrilling and made for some memorable nights. Vampire bites were exhilarating, intoxicating, and a great distraction from thinking about my curse. I refocused. Tonight he wasn’t a fun distraction—he was a bounty.

  “I hate when we’re on opposite sides,” he said, his voice velvety smooth. “We play so well together.”

  That we did.

  I wasn’t sure if the smile that bared his fangs was an invitation or a threat. I remembered the feel of them against my skin, the prick of them against my body, the adrenaline that rushed through my veins at being so close to death. The endorphins from the bites. The combination was hard to resist. I’m not proud of my response.

  A harsh breath pushed out of me, along with the desperate need. Do the job, Erin, I scolded myself. This was the story of my life. Bring me close to death, set me in the middle of a disaster with little to no chance of survival, send me on a job where I’m not likely to return, and I feel alive. Adrenaline was a poor substitute for what I really craved, but adrenaline was all I could go for because the other was forbidden. Magic. I couldn’t have magic, so I was left to find inadequate substitutes.

  I yanked out the gun from behind me and shot. He moved back, dodging the first bullet, then jerked to the left to avoid the second. I was a menace to anyone who didn’t have vampire speed; to Grayson, I was merely an annoyance. When the final round had been shot, he turned, tugging at his shirt to straighten it. Bullets didn’t kill vampires, but they did make them bleed. There was too much paperwork when a bounty’s blood was spilled. It was a real pain in the ass.

  “How much?” Grayson asked.

  “You can’t buy your bounty.” Really, the man was exasperating. “What were you thinking?”

  He shrugged. “That I wanted the Crelic to see what all the fuss was about.”

  “What the fuss was about!” Screw it. I snapped the grenade from the belt and lobbed it at him.

  His shock at the sight of the explosive gave me enough time to run at him and snap one cuff end on him and the other on me. I jerked him to me. He was hissing at the pain from the rune-spelled cuffs. They weakened him enough to make apprehending him manageable. Silver weakened shifters, iron wreaked havoc on fae, iridium rendered witches and mages magicless, and zirconium worked against vampires, but they made horrible cuffs and came with a hefty price.

  “I guess that thing was a decoy,” he murmured, looking at the green pineapple-shaped object on the ground. Why do people keep falling for that trick? I thought it would have gotten around by now. “Hey, she uses a fake grenade to distract you—don’t fall for it.” Yet they all fell for it.

  “Grenade? It would have killed me too and destroyed the building. That would have been reckless.”

  Taking advantage of our proximity, he leaned in. “But you are reckless. That’s the most alluring thing about you. Every moment with you an adventure, isn’t it?”

  I ignored him. “Of all the things you have taken, the Crelic is the one you should have left where it was.” Grayson was a young vamp—or younger, just under a century—and hadn’t quite settled into the insipid life of immortality. Really old vamps just existed, afraid of true death but bored by the banality of vamp or pseudo-human existence.

  “What fun would that have been?” Grayson’s smile was roguish. This was him in all his glory. If he wanted something, he took it with expectations of impunity. And before my sister took on her position at the Supernatural Task Force, he might have been able to donate the right amount of money or schmooze the necessary person to get away with whatev
er it was he wanted.

  He studied the manacles, looking for a weakness in them, I was sure. I was in the presence of a fellow adrenaline junkie, so his theft was about more than just obtaining the Crelic. It was about the thrill of it, the joy of getting away with it, and for the past two days—the chase. Of course, I wasn’t going to rule out good old-fashioned self-indulgence and arrogance, too. Never underestimate how much of those qualities vampires possess.

  “Whatever the bounty is, I can double it,” he told me.

  I considered it. Double the amount? Did he know how much it was? That’s probably what added to the excitement of the chase. The chase could have gone on for several more days, but he sacrificed it for one night at Kelsey’s. What the hell was it about that place?

  Sensing my resolve faltering, he grinned. “I can triple it.”

  That got my attention. No one would have to know I came this close. I could tip the STF off that he’d return to the very place that led to him nearly getting caught the first time. But would he? Erin, you took the job, so do the damn job.

  “No.” My rejection wiped the cunning smirk off his face, replacing it with a moment of surprise. He was about to be taken in. Actually punished for one of his reckless acts. It was probably a first.

  Because he wasn’t used to magic, I saw on his face the moment he realized he might be able to use it to help him escape. His intention showed in his eyes and I felt the energy of the magic suffuse the air. He opened his mouth to speak the spell, and in haste I invoked my words of power, inching in closer to him with each word.