Layla is caught between a Stone and a hard place.
Witchcraft, nursing studies and the gig economy are wearing Layla down. Luckily, she has her guys to help—a cuddly angel, a romantic ghost, an ornery incubus and her sweet werewolf boyfriend. Unbeknownst to Layla, Cal’s planning on popping the question, assuming Ink doesn’t pawn the ring before he can ask her.
A knock at their door pulls Layla from Cal’s proposal dinner. A dying Stone, the witch hunter who’d once kidnapped her, falls into her arms.
Raul Stone is having a very bad day. After his mentor, savior and boss shot him in the heart, he’s had to go crawling to the witch that escaped him. No matter how many healing potions he takes, the hole in his chest won’t close. Dying on the werewolf’s pizza-stained couch, Stone can’t do anything to stop the incubus from threatening to kill him for good. His final Hail Mary is revealing that the witch hunters—and his boss—are now in cahoots with Mr. White.
Why are the witch hunters working with a Horseman? What are they doing in the woods with giant boulders and blood? Can Stone be trusted, or is this all an elaborate trap by Conquest to make good on his promise to catch Layla? Will Layla’s caring heart finally doom her, or can she and her guys outsmart them all…and save Stone in the process?
General Release Date: 1st August 2023
None of this is right.
No matter how hard I stared at the data, none of it made sense. Conquest arriving here was an ill omen, but unsurprising. He’d been believed to have resumed his activities to a world-encompassing crescendo thirty years prior. What had me snapping pencils at my desk were his known accomplices. He’d only worked with humans before. Now there were demons, werewolves and sins approaching his marked residences at all hours.
Why?
“You’re gonna give yourself eye cancer.”
I didn’t jerk at Detective River’s booming shout.
“That’s a myth,” I said, sitting back in the office’s ergonomic chair and closing my pile of notes.
River picked up one of my pens and gnawed on the end. “Maybe that’s just what they want you to think.”
We’d worked together for nearly ten years, and I had yet to learn his first name. It was easier that way. Besides, I didn’t need a name to know the make of a man. He was infuriating with his conspiracy theories, but solid in the field. I could deal with a laugh about the earth being pomegranate shaped as long as he had my back.
“Wha’ ya working on?” he asked, his drawl slipping out. Those years of training to suppress any hint of our individual history had never seemed to take with him. “Conquest? Really?”
“He is a being of unimaginable power. I am keeping tabs,” I said, locking down my computer to the best of my ability while being aware of the IT djinn that watched over everything.
“And Zimmerman told you to cut it out.”
Even if other agents were trailing Mr. White, there was no reason not to have all hands on deck. Besides, the distraction kept me too busy to deal with other matters. As I gathered up the broken pencil bits, I noticed the middle folder in my stack. In the day’s shuffling, a bikini picture had fallen out.
“Who’s this?” A hand lashed out from behind and snatched up the image. I spun in my chair to find Drake leering at the image of a potential witch in a very form-fitting bathing suit.
On the back of the cheap printing was an old form for a ghost exorcism. We tried to recycle even while keeping everything as physical as possible. I focused on the line about telling the homeowner to leave a salt circle outside the door instead of Drake’s sharpening eyes. “They let you keep naughty pictures around, Stone? That’s not fair.”
“It is not—” I ripped the image from his hand, tearing it at her neck in the process. “It’s for the job.” Returning it to the pile, I slammed the folder to the back of my in-pile, which I should have done earlier.
“You telling me that’s a green skin?”
“Potential,” I said.
He whistled without a care, setting off the werewolves in the maul tank. “If she turns out to be a wicked witch, I call dibs.”
My hand found its way into my pocket. I didn’t realize until my palm clenched around the familiar curves of the scuffed-up keychain. No one else remembered her. Perhaps an occasional flash of familiarity would appear in their eyes, but no one knew her name. No one knew she’d escaped from our labyrinthian jail and fled into the night. No one but me.
“You can’t call dibs,” River argued back.
Drake glared at him. “What? You think you got a shot? She looked pretty young. Gonna need someone to fill her up soon.”
“You cannot stake a claim when the Council will decide where to use her.” River set down his chewed-up pen and turned from Drake.
Drake pried at my folders, hunting for the photo. “I wouldn’t need long to get the job done.”
He jerked when I slapped my hand down on his. “That’s a boast certain to send all the girls running,” I countered. “If you will excuse me, I have work to get to.”
River nodded, then told me that, should we need to head out, he’d be ready. Drake pouted. “We need to fill you with tequila and set you loose. Work that two-by-four out of your ass.”
Pinche mamón.
As I turned my back on the idiot, both he and River stood at attention.
“Gentlemen.”
The voice caused me to leap to my feet without question, slamming the pull-out keyboard into my thigh. I ignored the pain with a smile and faced Director Zimmerman as he hustled through the open office. An unknown woman in the same black suit and skinny tie walked just behind him. He slapped Drake on the back and pointed a finger to his office suite. “We’ve got a meeting. Spur of the moment. Just bring your ass…and a pen.”
Drake nodded, took the director’s hand in his and shook it. Zimmerman stared with a laugh perched on his lips. He didn’t let it go, but he looked over the brown-nosing man to me. “Stone? You made any progress on that witch?”
“Ah…not yet, sir.”
“It’s been a month.”
I frowned deeper. This farce couldn’t go on much longer. I’d either have to pull her in for a second time and do an encore to our song and dance, or dispose of her on my own. “I’d prefer to be thorough and slow, than quick and fail,” I said.
Zimmerman smiled and slapped me on the back. “Good man. Come on. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
As I tugged open my drawer for my notebook, my gun rattled to the front. For a brief flash, I almost reached for it. My heart pounded in my ears as I stared at the cold steel, but I wouldn’t need a gun for a meeting. We were Animal Control, not the NRA. Closing the drawer and leaving my piece behind, I followed Drake and River into the chief’s office.
The last time I’d been here, we had been fighting off a complete containment disaster. One we still hadn’t determined the cause of. My gaze darted to the secret escape hatch behind the director’s desk when the mystery woman stepped in front of it. She folded her arms and tipped her head low enough that the plain sunglasses slid down her nose. Eyes of purple burned at me.
Strange. Not without precedent for the AC to work with creatures in disguise. But it was also highly rare.
“A-hem,” Zimmerman coughed. The woman shoved her glasses up with her middle finger and fell back into place.
“Please, take a seat,” the director said, waving a hand to the two chairs. There were three of us, but River slipped in beside the woman without pause. Almost as if he had known this meeting was going to happen.
And he didn’t think to tell me? Rude.
“Sir, if this is about the incident in the break room, I can assure you that rusalka came on—”
Zimmerman raised a hand to silence Drake. “This is a matter of utmost secrecy. What I am about to reveal cannot leave this room. Understand?”
I flipped to the level-five-clearance pages of my notebook. They were charmed so only my eyes could read them. Jerking my head, I held my pen poised above the pages. “Ready, sir.”
He did not launch into his laundry list of requests. Instead, he gazed down at me with an expression I’d never seen on his weathered face. For as long as I’d known him, he’d had enough wrinkles to put a bulldog to shame. But they had always lifted with a warmth and lightness, reminding me more of a grandfather than my abuelo did.
“Stone? Catch this.”
I barely had a chance to drop my pen before he flipped a flat coin my way. It landed in the middle of my palm and a flush of pain burst up my arm. I kept my face neutral, using every second of training to hide the agony. Revealing the pain was an opening for most monsters, and some grew stronger from it.
“Sir?” I asked, my voice level even as my skin began to blister. Whatever charm this was, it was powerful.
Zimmerman reached over and plucked the coin from my palm. On instinct, I slammed it shut, but not before we both caught the oblong redness burned into my skin. He stared into my eyes and sighed. For a flash, his lips opened as if to speak, but the director pulled it back and pocketed the coin. He looked to the woman, who nodded.
I prepared myself to learn what was so dire. No doubt this had to do with Conquest and whatever he was planning. I held my pen above my notebook, ready for the answers.
In one fluid motion, Zimmerman extracted a silenced gun, held it to Drake’s head and pulled the trigger.
“What!” I jumped, uncertain who to protect in that moment. Drake’s brains splattered against River’s suit, the man staring down at the gray matter staining his shirt. Before I could even pivot out of the chair, the muzzle turned on me.
It took all my focus to look up from the deadly metal pressed against my heart and into the eyes of the man holding it. “I’m sorry,” Zimmerman said. The pressure struck first, then the sound. I collapsed backward, my body and the chair slamming to the carpeted floor. Pain spidered across my chest, my lungs filling with my blood.
No! Drake dead. River… Numbness leadened my limbs, but I could still dig my fingers into the ground. Tugging, I tried to pull myself as if I could protect him.
My partner of ten years wiped off the brains of one of our fellow agents and nodded. The director, the man that’d saved me from murderous creatures in my youth, pocketed his gun as if nothing had happened. Cold seeped into my chest, the pain unbearable. I’d faced down the worst monsters the realms could throw at us, but I’d never known this agony that was ripping my lungs to wet tissue. Each breath filled them with more of my blood. And with every heartbeat, a small slug pressed tighter and tighter against the only organ keeping me alive.
Zimmerman scooped up my notebook, now stained with my blood and Drake’s brains. He flipped through before pocketing it. With a jerk of his head, he led the two remaining people out of the door. Before walking away, he said, “Tell Mr. White,” and slammed the locked door.
No one would come in, not even if I screamed, but my voice was drowning in blood. I reached into my pocket, trying to find any salve to slap on the gunshot wound in my chest. My numb finger snagged on a ring, and I wrenched out that cat keychain. It flew out and landed in a puddle of my blood.
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