6

Late that night, Eavan slipped out of her apartment window. She wasn’t sure if she could get out the front door without Cillian noticing. Odds were that he wasn’t staring at her door, but she wasn’t sure about video feeds. He’d mentioned surveillance in the hallway, the breezeway, the parking deck, and the back lot. Safer to slip out the window. The drop wasn’t that far. She might be predominantly mortal—and intending to stay that way—but her genetic heritage still came with a few extra benefits.

After a surreptitious glance to assure that no neighbors were out on their balconies, she hopped up on the balcony rail so she had her back to her apartment and dropped down. The impact of the landing was muffled by the grass-covered ground.

No one the wiser.

With a satisfied smile, she crossed the lot and opened her car door.

It was good that her Z was home instead of still at Nyx’s, but when Eavan thought about strangers driving her car, it felt more like injury than insult. She hated the fact that he’d had some stranger drive her car home. She slid her hand over the wheel affectionately.

She left her car door slightly open, put it in neutral, and coasted to the bottom of the hill. Once she hit the intersection, she slammed the door and popped the clutch. The squeal of tires and almost-but-not-quite-out-of-control swerve as she slammed through the gears was exhilarating.

Driving was one of the passions she could indulge. No sex. No murder. No stalking. Okay, a little stalking, but no killing anyone. A woman needed releases for pent-up energy, and there was only so much workouts and toys could do to let off stress. Sometimes speed was essential to sanity.

On this, at least, Nyx had always been tolerant. She had reduced rates on a number of vices for the local police in exchange for looking the other way on Eavan’s driving habits. It had started as a sixteenth birthday present and evolved into status quo over the last eight years.

Eavan could navigate the streets of Raleigh and Durham and a number of cities within a four-hour radius. Having the I-95 corridor, I-40, and I-85 all but at her doorstep meant that her penchant for speed was easily indulged. Finding a mechanic who disabled Nyx’s GPS tracking toys regularly added a layer of privacy the past two years that had made Eavan feel almost like a normal woman.

Not now. Not with Cillian holding a leash. Eavan made her way to the beltline and just drove for a while before she headed downtown. It helped, but the anxiety was still riding her. She took a few side streets, turning at the last possible moment each time, focusing on the importance of control and precision. It’s not going to change a thing. I am not going to change how I live. This could be a short-term problem, a test to be passed. Or failed.

That was the real problem: Eavan felt herself getting closer and closer to crossing lines that she swore she’d never approach. This business with Daniel had become an obsession. It needed to end so that she could regain control of her life. It made control of both appetites feel precarious. If she could scare him away from the drug trade or find some information to get him arrested, maybe she could stop hunting him—because she was hunting him. She knew it, even if she wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, and she needed to get it in check before Nyx found out.

Eavan parked the car down by Moore Square and headed toward one of Daniel’s warehouses. It wasn’t any trouble to let herself inside the warehouse: she’d lifted a key one night flirting with Daniel. Soft-soled shoes muffled her steps as she crossed the concrete floor. This was what she did, who she was. Every instinct she’d had told her that she was where she should be—except the ones that told her that naked with Cillian was a better plan.

Equally unhealthy urges.

She could control them though. She’d been doing so for twelve years. A glaistig’s dual needs for sex and death—preferably together—coincided with the onset of menses. It had taken her six years to learn to smother those urges until they were just a whisper. She’d slipped and hunted a few times, but she’d never killed or fucked anyone. She’d walked away from every hunt before it became an obsession.

Until now.

Now, both of Eavan’s urges were screaming to life.

The smart move was to stay away from Daniel, to stay out of his clubs. Something there made all of her family uncomfortable—and made Eavan feel like electricity was battering all her synapses simultaneously. That sensation had never been quite as all-consuming as it was right now.

Because he’s near me.

She stood in the shadowed recesses of a room, half hidden by towering shelves, peering between the wooden crates that were stacked at the end of the aisle of shelves. In front of her in a bare bit of concrete in the center of a darkened warehouse stood Daniel—her prey. He wasn’t Other, but he was tangling with things that made him resonate like he was more than mortal. She could feel it. What are you doing? There was more to her reaction to him than the actions he’d undertaken. The taint of the magicks he used wasn’t enough to explain her compulsion where he was concerned, but she had no other explanation.

She did, however, know she couldn’t ignore what he was doing. Drugging women and selling them like chattel was inexcusable.

He needs to be stopped.

The.38 was heavy in her palm before she realized she’d reached into her bag. The stainless steel vein down the back of the grip didn’t burn her hands or weaken her as it would if she were truly a full glaistig. With her mortal blood still dominant, iron and steel barely gave her a twinge. Instead, the gun felt right in her hands; the desire to sight down on the tainted mortal was a compulsion inside that grew from a whisper to a roar.

As she watched, Daniel ground the child’s bones into powder. It was an odd sight: he stood in a business suit at a table alongside an average-looking barbecue grill. On the grill were bones, a child-size skull, and several small lizards. On the table were assorted plants, an empty mixing bowl, a glass jar of what looked to be blood, and a modern electric meat grinder. Daniel was barefoot in a pile of earth that seemed more out of place than all the rest.

Muttering something and gesticulating, he lifted the skull from the grill. Then he raised a large hammer, closed his eyes, said something in what she suspected was to be a reverent way, and smashed the hammer onto the tiny skull until it cracked. Shards of bone lay scattered in the earth.

“What do you want?” He didn’t look at her when he said it, so for a moment she thought he was talking to someone else.

She wondered if he could find her in that unerring way she had with him. They were bound together in a way that made no sense to her. Is it the magick? Is it because I’m hunting him? Something existed between them, and she wasn’t sure what it was—or if she really wanted to know.

“Eve?” He tossed the hammer aside and began picking up the bone shards. Once they were all gathered, he turned to stare directly at her. “What are you doing here?”

“I…” She didn’t have words for what she wanted, not words she wanted to share. She wanted to kill him, wanted to reorder the world, press down the chaos that buzzed in her skin before she crossed a line that would change everything. She wanted to end her hunt of Daniel with something bloody and satisfying. She settled for a socially acceptable statement: “What you’re doing is wrong.”

He was utterly nonplussed. “Praying?”

“That’s not praying.”

“Sure it is. It’s just an older religion.”

An older religion? All faiths had a place, but humans like Daniel were the reason mainstream humanity thought Old Faiths were evil. He was using the veneer of religion to sate his greed.