Blaze of Secrets (Asylums for Magical Threats) (35 page)

assholes.

He moved down the street, keeping one eye out for Jacek and the other on the vendor stall. He was just

about to browse one of the stalls on his side of the street to keep up appearances when he noticed the rude asshole stop at the same stall where Cam had been minutes earlier. He was about to dismiss it as a

coincidence when the teenage boy in charge of the stall started gesticulating wildly.

When the asshole pulled out a gun, Marco cursed, and started picking his way toward the stall as calmly

yet efficiently as he could. If he drew too much attention, then the man would probably bolt. He didn’t want to chase an unknown enemy through the crowded mid-morning streets of Merida and blow his cover.

But when the asshole started motioning more fervently with his gun, Marco began pushing people out

of the way. Despite his apologies, one of the American tourists started yelling at him. The man with the gun noticed, and fled down the street.

Fucking fantastic.
Marco ran after him.

They were heading toward the Plaza Grande, the main town square. Once the man reached the square,

Marco wouldn’t be able to take down the man and question him. There were too many human witnesses,

and a fight could attract the
Feiru
authorities.

He wanted to use his elemental water magic to stop the bastard, but Marco wasn’t an idiot. The last thing he needed was to be tossed inside an AMT compound where they would drug him out of his mind, and do

who knows what to him. He’d never be able to help Cam or his family then.

The tourist crowds started to thin out, and with another turn, the streets were empty. The tops of the

buildings surrounding the main plaza were closer, and he decided it was now or never. He lunged for the

man.

He managed to grab the man’s legs, and they tumbled to the ground. But the man rolled out of his reach,

and Marco used his arms to lift his upper body and jump into a crouch.

He now stood between the man and the plaza. There was no way he was letting the bastard through, and

since they were now alone, with no humans in sight, Marco reached a hand to the west—the direction of

elemental water—in case he needed to draw on the elemental water particles in the air to do his magic.

But the man just stood there, not trying to get away or even bothering to attack. Marco knew that

inaction could be a tactic, so he kept up his guard, and waited.

Then the man did something Marco should have foreseen—but had overlooked—and crashed through

the window of an abandoned house to the left.

Marco grabbed the gun tucked into his waistband under his shirt and crawled through the broken

window, careful not to cut himself on the glass. Once inside, he rolled to the side and hid behind an

overturned couch that had seen better days. His finger near the trigger, he peeked around the edge, looking and listening for any sign of the man, or anyone else that might happen to be inside the abandoned house.

The coast clear, he inched his way toward the open door in the back of the building. There were

footprints in the dirt on the floor, leading toward the back door, but they simply stopped a few feet from the exit. The prints looked fresh, but no one could just disappear into thin air.

But then he remembered. He’d seen it happen once before.

The odds were long, but he could be dealing with a shadow-shifter.

Even with the sun filtering in through the threadbare curtains, the room was half engulfed in darkness.

Marco moved to stand in the light near the window and debated using his elemental magic. While streams

of water or shards of ice might draw the shadow-shifter out from his hiding place, it would also reveal

Marco’s abilities to his opponent.

And the last thing he needed was to destroy the cover he’d built up over the last eleven years by using

his magic in front of a stranger. Especially if the man somehow managed to escape.

Another option would be to throw something heavy at the first sign of suspicious activity and force the

shifter to return to his human-looking
Feiru
form. After what had happened in the States, Marco had learned that a shadow-shifter could only shift once every twenty-four hours. If he could scare the man into shifting back, it would give him a chance to catch and interrogate him.

Deciding to try the latter approach first, he circled around by degrees and checked the shadows for

movement, careful to keep his back exposed to the light. Then he saw it—a piece of peeled wallpaper near the ceiling that waved back and forth in the still air.

Marco did a quarter turn away from his target, placed a hand on an old kitchen chair nearby, and swung

it around, tossing it up at the spot on the wall where he’d seen the movement.

Right before the chair smashed against the wall, the man emerged from the shadows and rolled to the

ground, out of the way. Marco jumped after the man, but the shadow-shifter dashed out the back door and

slammed it shut. He heard a screeching sound of something heavy moving across the ground.

Marco pushed against the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

The bastard had blocked him in.

Left with no other choice, he made for the broken window he’d come through, and crawled outside.

He made his way around to the back alley, and saw the rusty metal display case sitting in front of the

door, but there was no sign of the shifter. After checking up and down the alley, looking into every possible hiding spot, Marco accepted that the man was long gone.

In case the shifter came back with reinforcements, he made his way back toward the street of vendor

stalls, careful to take a different route than the way he had come. He needed to find Cam and tell her what had happened.

Thanks to the appearance of an unknown shadow-shifter, he was now going to have to spend more

time with Camilla Melini than he’d counted on.

=================

Books by Jessie Donovan

Asylums for Magical Threats

Blaze of Secrets

Frozen Desires

Shadow of Temptation (June 2014)

Cascade Shifters

Convincing the Cougar (April 2014)

Acknowledgments

While writers spend most of their time alone, chained to a desk, the truth is that we wouldn’t be able to survive without our wonderful friends and family. I’d like to take this chance to thank them for all that they do.

First and foremost, without Michelle Cuadros, this book may never have happened. She’s read my

stories since we were teenagers, but when I became serious about writing in late 2008/early 2009, she

listened patiently to my ramblings about a 19th century logger in the woods and his encounter with fairies from an underground world. She even read the first early (and clunky) versions of my
Feiru
society.

Thanks to her support, those ideas slowly evolved until I had the world you saw in this book. I will be

forever grateful for her friendship.

Another person I wish to thank with all my heart is the world’s best beta-reader, Wendy Lynn Clark. Her

ten-plus pages of enthusiastic comments and questions not only helped fine-tune the overall story, but also helped make Chapter One better than I could’ve ever imagined. Thanks Wendy!

I also wish to thank Regina Wamba of Mae I Design for the beautiful cover, as well as a shout out to

James Archer for not only winning the gold medal for perseverance when it came to wanting a character

named after him (he bugged me for six years!), but also for being a great friend who listened to my story ideas despite never having read a romance book in his life.

And finally, I thank you, the reader. I hope you stay along for the ride, into the second book and

beyond. The
Feiru
universe is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, but I hope to make the journey worth your while!

About the Author

Jessie Donovan wrote her first story at age five, and after discovering
The Dragonriders of Pern
series by Anne McCaffrey in junior high, she realized people actually wanted to read stories like those floating around inside her head. From there on out, she was determined to tap into her over-active imagination and write a book someday.

After living abroad for five years and earning degrees in Japanese, Anthropology, and Secondary

Education, she buckled down and finally wrote her first full-length book. While that story will never see the light of day, it laid the world-building groundwork of what would become her debut paranormal romance,

Blaze of Secrets
.

Jessie loves to interact with readers, and when not traipsing around some foreign country on a

shoestring, can often be found on Facebook and Twitter. Check out her pages below:

http://www.facebook.com/JessieDonovanAuthor

http://www.twitter.com/jessiedauthor

And don’t forget to sign-up for her mailing list to receive sneak peeks and inside information. You can

sign-up on her website:

http://www.jessiedonovan.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Blaze of Secrets

Copyright © 2013 Laura Hoak-Kagey

Second Digital Edition

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner

without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Art by Regina Wamba of Mae I Design.

ISBN 13: 978-0989733601

• Contents
  
• Title Page
  
• Dedication
  
• The Feiru
  
• 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
  
• Chapter 30
  
• Chapter 31
  
• Chapter 32
  
• Chapter 33
  
• Chapter 34
  
• Epilogue
  
• Thank you for reading!
  
• Frozen Desires Excerpt
  
• Other Works
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• About the Author
  
• Copyright