Sharon Ashwood - Unchained

Wednesday, April 1, 10:30 p.m.

Fairview Botanical Gardens

Evil lurked in public bathrooms.

It wasn’t just the bad lights and weird green soap. Predators loved hidey-holes where folks could disappear from view and no one thought anything about it. Any slayer worth her salt—and Ashe Carver was a pro—knew to look for monsters in those boring, ordinary, deadly places.

Ashe hugged the outside wall of the brick building, her boots sinking into the carefully tended tulip beds. It was dark, damp, and cold. She could smell the green tang of the crushed plants mixing with an antiseptic stink leaking from the vents. The washroom had been recently cleaned, probably just after the Fairview Botanical Gardens had closed for the night.

Thankfully, lurking evil had waited until late to pay a visit. On any day of the week, thousands of tourists came through the Gardens’ rose-decked gates, swilled overpriced soft drinks, and headed straight to the rest-rooms. Tonight, timing alone saved them from an encounter with worse problems than an empty towel dispenser.

Around nine fifteen that night, something had eaten the concessions clerk. He’d been identifiable by the name embroidered on the pocket of his candy-striped shirt. Security guards had dialed 911. Police had called a supernatural expert—aka Ashe’s vampire brother-in-law—who had called Ashe. As he put it, carnage was her thing.

First stop, she had looked at the body. In a word, ick. She’d never seen bite marks quite like that, but bet on a werebeast of some kind.

She cursed the flowering bushes that obscured the ladies’ room entrance. The blooms were pale in the dim light, and blurred into the shadows like watercolor stars. Pretty, but a security no-no. She crept toward the entrance one step at a time, eyes and ears tuned to the slightest disturbance. The problem was that the garden clamored with bugs, birds, bats, rodents, and a dozen other noisemakers, even at night. Most predators could hide beneath that rustling chaos.

The human noises were worst. Even from a distance, voices and motor sounds carried in the dark. She’d called in her location and switched off the radio the guy at the gate had given her. If there was something lurking around the corner, a sudden spew of static could give her away. Besides, she’d been born a witch. A bad spell had broken most of her powers when she was a teenager, but she still had a sixth sense that had saved her backside time and again. Electronics messed with that.

Ashe stilled, straining to pick up the slightest whiff of Nasty Critter. A light breeze chilled the sweat along her hairline. Her heart hammered hard, but her thoughts were clinically calm. If you were going to kick the ass of anything bigger than a garden sprite, discipline was key.

Another two steps, and she was behind the door-guarding rhododendron. The petals kissed her skin, the cool, soft touch making her shiver. She shifted her grip on her Colt automatic—a custom make loaded with the best silver-coated ammo she could afford—and smacked open the bathroom door with a sideways kick.

Her foot blammed against the wall, the noise meant to shock her quarry into revealing itself. Her gaze went first to the ceiling—you just never knew—then scanned across the long rows of sinks and stalls. It looked pin-neat, gleaming, and empty. Ashe shuffled inside, crouching, gun ready, letting the door swing shut behind her.

The echo of the door slam faded to the buzz of a faulty light ballast and the drip-drip of a tap. The suggestion of water made Ashe lick her lips. Her mouth was dry because of her nerves, but that was okay. Fear made her careful.

A quick look told her no feet showed beneath the stall doors. Of course, any high schooler knew that didn’t mean a thing. Next, she would have to go banging open each door in the double row of stalls, which meant the monster in the last stall could jump her while her back was turned.

That had happened once. That was so not going to happen again.

Ashe took one long step onto the countertop, and from there cautiously pulled herself up the metal side of the first toilet stall. Yup, it was empty. With a heave, she hooked one leg over the side and used the wall for balance. In a very few seconds, she had gained a good aerial view of all the stalls. They were empty. Too bad; from up there it would have been like shooting fish in a barrel.

Werewolves in a can? She winced at her silent joke.

So the bathroom was a bust. Time to move on. Carefully, Ashe twisted to look behind her, gauging the distance to the countertop. She caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror against the wall. Heavy boots, black-on-black clothes, blond hair straggling out of her ponytail. Yep, she was workin’ the black ops chic. While dangling from the side of a toilet stall.

Good to know she’d put those junior high modeling classes to good use.

Ashe dropped back to the counter just as the outside door swung open and someone walked in. In a flash, she aimed her gun in a two-handed grip.

Then she froze. Oh. My. Goddess. But she let her surprise last only a microsecond. Her eyes on the new-comer, she hopped to the floor. “What are you doing here?”

Captain Reynard gave a slight bow. “I am looking for you.” His so-English accent sounded like something off Masterpiece Theater, but that baritone voice was pure seduction.

“Oh.” For a moment, her mind hydroplaned. Looking for me?

The last and only time she’d met Reynard, he’d taken a battle-ax to the gut. He should have died. At best, he should still be moving like a cripple.

Now Reynard looked more than fine. No, that didn’t cover it. He was Sleeping Beauty’s dreams made flesh. The gold braid of his scarlet uniform glinted in the light. He wore his dark, thick hair pulled back into a neat queue, showing the angles of his lean face. His steel gray eyes were guarded, promising a thousand secrets, and enough bad boy lurked in the set of his mouth to make any red-blooded woman lick her chops in anticipation. If she was really, really naive.

Ashe turned her mental sprinkler system onto cold-shower mode. The guy looked her age, but for all she knew, he might have been three hundred. Reynard wasn’t human anymore, but some kind of immortal. Who knew what that scrumptious packaging hid?

The muzzle of her gun was still aimed squarely between his eyes. He just stood there, ramrod straight, and made no move to draw his sword or raise the long firearm he carried. The piece looked like it belonged with the uniform—several hundred years out-of-date.

“I trust you are well?” he asked blandly.

She dragged her gaze away from the weapon and back to his face. “I didn’t think you could leave the Castle, Captain Reynard. From everything I know, you shouldn’t be here.”

Reynard gave a smile more lethal than any gun. “Do you think this is a demon wearing my appearance?”

“Can the charm. I don’t know. I don’t know what happens when you leave your prison—and something deadly is stalking these grounds. Sue me for being cautious.”

He glanced at her Colt, and a slight flicker of expression showed both amusement and annoyance. That annoyed her right back. He didn’t think, or didn’t care, that she would shoot. He didn’t go for his own weapon—gun, knife, or anything else. No one was that cool unless they were crazy or a liar.

He met her eyes. Liar. Crazy. Iceberg. She couldn’t read him. He was granite. Damn. Reynard studied her, his body nearly as still, as not there, as that of a vampire.