Rogue Belador: Belador book 7
Read Rogue Belador: Belador book 7 Online
Authors: Dianna Love
Copyright © 2016, Dianna Love Snell
Electronic EDITION
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Cover Design and Interior format by The Killion Group
This book is for my Dianna Love Street Team who keep me sane while spending so many hours deep in the cave!
(Be sure to read the message to you at the end)
The Belador series is an ongoing story line,
so you may want to read the books in order:
~*~*~
Midnight Kiss Goodbye (novella in DEAD AFTER DARK)
Tristan’s Escape
: A Belador Novella
Firebound
(Free story of how Evalle found Feenix)
~*~*~
*To keep with all the Belador books, click the “Follow” button under Dianna’s photo on her Amazon page
here
.
Evalle muttered, “It’s been thirty minutes and I don’t see anything to kill.” She hugged her leather motorcycle jacket tighter against the chilly night air and glanced over at Reece “Casper” Jordan.
“It’s only been twenty minutes. Patience, Sunshine,” Casper murmured.
“It’s too cold for patience. And don’t call me Sunshine.” She had zero appreciation for January in Atlanta. The sun had set over five hours ago and the temperature had to be in the low thirties by now. Intermittent snow had started accumulating enough to leave footprints. Unlike the northeast corner of the country, this city saw little snow, and a one-inch dusting would empty stores of milk and bread.
The bread companies and dairies must have cut a deal with the gods of winter.
Huffing out a frosty breath, she announced, “I’m not hanging around all night and freezing.”
He grinned.
She quirked a threatening eyebrow at the VIPER agent who loved to get under everyone’s skin, but he was looking away and failed to notice. Plus, she wore special sunglasses and he couldn’t see that well in the darkness anyway.
She could. Born with glowing neon-green eyes, she was capable of seeing in almost total darkness. It was one of the few benefits of being an Alterant, a half-blood Belador. But of all the strange preternaturals who belonged to the VIPER coalition, she’d never met another being exactly like her.
Sure, the other Alterants had bright-green eyes, but she knew of none who possessed her body’s deadly reaction to the sun.
Casper had lifted his chin to stare into the night at the tops of trees in Candler Park.
She’d always felt at home in this section of town. It was close to Little Five Points, where she ate at restaurants like The Vortex, a good place to chow down, and made an occasional stop at Psycho Sisters when she had a rare urge to shop.
Neither was an option tonight.
Not with a demon, or some other creature, stalking this vicinity. Evalle had fought a demon two months ago in Stone Mountain Park, up on the northeast side of metro Atlanta. Few had been sighted since then.
Maybe she and her sidekicks for tonight weren’t actually hunting a demon. Might just be someone stealing dogs. She could see a report getting blown out of proportion until it changed from dognapping to an invisible force dragging dogs away.
That didn’t sound like a demon in her book.
Tracking down a dog thief was a human law enforcement issue, but since VIPER also watched over humans, they’d assigned this to her, Casper, and Lucien Solis.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Casper muttered. He’d just returned from scaling the tallest oak tree in this wooded section to view the area from a high point. Better him than her.
She liked her feet planted on solid ground.
But Casper had first shifted into his ghost form, then basically floated to the top. He’d once told her his ghost form couldn’t actually fly, but he could levitate above anything solid, including tree limbs.
“I’m ready to go as soon as Lucien gets back,” Evalle announced. She’d hiked all over this place and the nearby neighborhoods, hoping to catch whoever had been stealing domestic pets. “This is a crap assignment.”
Inclining his head, Casper frowned. “Agreed. I don’t see squat. Did you hear where the intel came from?”
A fair question, since she’d taken the call from her Belador superior then rounded up Casper and Lucien to join her. “Supposedly a troll reported seeing something dragging a pack of dogs into the park after midnight.”
“Aw, hell. Might be a troll stealing the dogs. They eat about anything.”
Eww.
“I wouldn’t point a finger at a troll right now if I were you. That’s all it’d take to crank them up again after that mess with a warlock using trolls to power a spell to create fake demons.”
“You’re right. The trolls are still complaining that VIPER didn’t do enough.”
Since trolls weren’t members of the coalition, they had an agreement with VIPER that allowed trolls to live in the city, as long as they didn’t hunt here.
Translation: Don’t kill humans.
Some trolls were good people, but as a race they were predators and not exactly at the bottom of the food chain.
With the exception of a rare few, humans had no idea nonhumans existed and cohabitated in this world, but if demons kept popping up, it wouldn’t be long before that changed.
“This is bullshit,” Casper grumbled. “I’m with you. I’m done with being a damn dogcatcher.” He crossed his arms, then looked to his left as Lucien emerged from the darkness, seeming to do so without even disturbing the air around him.
The two men partnering with her tonight were from opposite ends of the spectrum.
Casper hailed from Texas. He had snakeskin boots and jeans to go with his southern drawl. He wasn’t overly bulked up, but at six-two he took up plenty of space and filled out a denim jacket with a mile of shoulders. Standing with his legs apart, he looked ready for a showdown.
Lucien’s black hair curled at the collar of his wool peacoat, just adding to the mysterious look of the Castilian who kept to himself. He spoke in a smooth voice, rich with his unusual accent. “I may have found something.”
Evalle wanted to groan.
Casper did. “I didn’t see a thing from up top. What’d you find?”
“I’m not sure yet. Every time I got close,
it
moved. I think whatever it is detects my power.”
“And just what is that power?” Evalle asked, not expecting an answer since Lucien shared little with his teammates. Call her crabby, but cold weather brought out that side of her.
Snowflakes sifted through the air. Again.
Great. Just great.
Lucien studied her for a moment as if sizing up his reply. “When I first met you, I had no idea what an Alterant was, other than a half-blood Belador. I know little more than that now.”
She got what he was saying.
Back before she’d learned the ugly truth about the other half of her blood, Lucien had never hesitated to partner with her on a mission, even when other VIPER members balked. Also, he’d never questioned her background, as long as she wasn’t a witch. “Point taken.”
His lips quirked with a smile and he gave a slight nod.
If he’d shared that slight smile with a room full of single women, the next sound would have been panties hitting the floor. Thankfully, she had a natural immunity to his dark and sexy allure.
She had her own hot man at home. “Then what are we doing?”
Lucien turned to Casper. “Want to see if you can get close to whatever it is in your other form?”
She and Casper had been teamed up before in the past, too. She’d often wondered if that had been because neither of them fit into the usual nonhuman categories.
They were unknown, or
other
.
She’d graduated to
known
since she discovered that she carried the blood of two sworn preternatural enemies—Belador and the Medb coven. The cowboy, on the other hand, had gained his nonhuman status by accident. Years back, during a trip to Scotland to trace his family roots, Casper had been struck by lightning.
On the plus side, he’d survived the electrical charge.
On the not-sure-how-to-gauge-it side, he now shared his body with an ancient Highland warrior, and could morph into a shadowy image. When Casper decided to hide, he was harder to locate than a flea on a Saint Bernard.
There had to be more to his Scotland story, but when pressed for details he’d give his good-old-boy chuckle and say something like, “Ya’ll don’t have time for all that. Now, let me tell you about the rodeo I won in Houston ...”
Casper scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “I’ll give it a try. This’ll be my second time changing shape in less than an hour. I don’t know how long my ethereal form will hold.”
After Casper returned from his recon on top of the trees, it had taken him almost a full minute to shift back to human. He was vulnerable to attack during the change, and this one would be even slower.
Lucien said, “I understand. We’ll stay close enough to cover you. Let me locate whatever it is again, and I’ll give you a signal for which way to move. Don’t engage unless you think your ghost form will scare it to death.”
“Roger that.” Casper lowered his arms, and his body slowly turned translucent.
Lifting her spelled dagger from where it had been tucked in the sheath at her side, Evalle nodded at Lucien. “I’ll cover the rear. Lead the way.”
She trailed far behind Lucien as he led them from the thick oak grove to the public pool she’d already searched once. Casper allowed his form to glimmer next to her.
Evalle gave him thumbs up that she had him in sight. Then his glimmer dimmed to the point that even her sensitive eyes were tested to see him as he moved ahead of her.
They kept their distance from Lucien to allow him a chance to locate the creature.
She glanced up at the unlit security lights. They’d been functioning when she’d hiked through here a half hour ago. She couldn’t inform these two about that without speaking since neither one had the telepathic ability she shared with other Beladors, and all three of them knew to be silent at this point.
When Lucien reached the first corner of a one-story building connected to the pool by a fenced enclosure, he lifted a fist as the sign for them to stop. Without looking back, he signaled for Casper to move out to the right toward the pool.
Casper’s translucent figure dissolved into the night.
Evalle moved in the same direction Lucien had gone, but she stepped very slowly. She amped up her Belador hearing until the silence became a shirring noise of snow falling and small creatures scampering around.
Then a crunching sound stopped her.
There wasn’t enough snow on the ground yet to make that crispy noise.
She looked around to locate Lucien. He was out of sight again. How was she supposed to know if he’d made that sound or if something else had?
Lucien appeared far to her right and Casper’s glimmer caught up to him. They raced off into the darkness.
Seriously? What the heck did Lucien want her to do? Working as a team meant communication, dammit.
Releasing a pent-up breath, she eased forward another step. Might as well give this place one last thorough look.
The sound of a door opening at the other end of the building turned her around. Had something drawn Lucien away, then it backtracked, thinking no one had stayed behind?
Evalle turned slowly, taking in the huge tree overhanging that end of the building, and crept up to the corner that was smothered in darkness.
She started to move around the corner but froze at a sound she couldn’t identify. Sounded like someone had crossed a bullfrog with a cricket. The thing made a low, rumbling frog noise that ended in a smothered chirping. If not for powering up her hearing a moment ago, she would have missed it.
A flash of movement on top of the building drew her gaze upward.
The clouds had parted, and with a half-moon shining now, Casper’s translucent form picked up just enough light for her to discern his outline. When had he returned?
He motioned that he was staying up top to keep an eye out.
At least one teammate kept her informed.
Evalle made it around the street-side end of the structure and stuck her neck out barely enough to look past the corner, then ducked right back.
Crap. Right around the corner, a door stood ajar.
That would be a clue, Sherlock
.
Leaning out further this time to look inside the room, she counted at least eight dogs huddled in a tight group. Something invisible corralled them. There might actually be more than eight animals. It was so dark inside there that, even with her vision, she could only separate the light-colored ones.
Crud. So much for Casper’s theory about being relegated to freakin’ dogcatchers.
Something was holding those animals, but what? And what about that strange noise? If the gods were in a good mood, it was nothing more than a mutant bullfrog with no fear of freezing.
As she strained to see into the corners of the room, the animals became agitated and began moving around, howling and barking. The sound wasn’t loud even to her ears. Weird. Their invisible constraint apparently also deadened the sound. Whatever held the dogs in place had muffled the noise to where no human security or maintenance person would hear it.
Checking over her shoulder and scanning the surrounding yard, she held her breath, listening for anything else.
Nothing. But the rest of the area was now pitch-dark. Even her exceptional night vision failed to penetrate it. What had happened to the moonlight? The clouds were still AWOL, so the moon should be right above her.
Heading around the corner, she’d made one step toward the door when the pack of animals backed away as far as they could, still huddled as a group.
Not one of them made a sound now.
That couldn’t be good.