Шеррилин Кеньон - Dark Side of the Moon

For the entire team at SMP for all the hard work you guys do on my books. I have no idea what I'd d without you, and I don't want to find out.

For Monique, who definitely needs an award for going above and beyond the call of duty. Thank you. And for Merrilee, who had no idea what she was getting herself into.

Most of all, I want to thank all the readers and fans who visit the Dark-Hunter.com bbs and loops. You guys are always a joy to see. To my RBL women, who never fail to entertain and inspire. And to my personal friends, who give me encouragement and strength when I need it most: Janet, Brynna, Lo, Carl, Loretta, and Christine.

And last, but most definitely not least, my family, and that includes my brother Steve, who wanted to be named. I love all of you. Thank you so much for making my life what it is and for taking this journey with me.

Wales, 1673

The air whispered with psychic electricity. It was a sensation that could only be felt by a particular nonhuman sect or by humans with highly developed senses.

Ravyn Kontis was most definitely not human. He’d been born into the world of nocturnal predators who commanded the hidden magicks of the earth—who ruled its darker arts—and he had died as one of their toughest warriors…

By the hand of his own brother.

Now Ravyn walked the earth as something else. Something soulless. Something ferocious and even deadlier than what he’d been before. There was no heart left inside him. No pity or compassion. Nothing but a pain so deep, so profound, that it lacerated what little humanity he had until there was nothing left but a beast so feral that he knew it would never be tamed again.

Leaning his head back, he roared the cry of the angry beast that snarled inside him. The stench of death encircled him just as the blood of his enemies coated every inch of his human flesh. It dripped from his hair and his fingertips in slick rivulets that dappled the battle-trampled earth at his feet.

Still it wasn’t enough to appease the rage that lived inside him.

Vengeance was a dish best served cold…

He’d foolishly expected it to ease some of the crippling grief that haunted him. It hadn’t. It only left him even colder than the betrayal that had caused his death.

Ravyn winced as he saw Isabeau’s beautiful face in his mind. Even though she’d been fully human, they had been chosen as mates. Thinking that she loved him, he’d trusted her with the secret of his world.

And how had she repaid him? She’d told the humans of his small clan of brethren and they had attacked the women and children while he and the men had been out on patrol.

No one had been left alive.

No one.

The males of his clan had returned to find the smoldering remains of their village… the scattered bodies of their children and women.

They had turned on him then, not that he blamed them. It was the only time in his life he hadn’t fought back. At least not until his last breath had come.

As it had rattled in his chest, his fetid rage had taken root and grown into a monster, feeding the darkest part of his nonhuman being. His human soul had screamed out for vengeance against those who had destroyed his people. The anguished cry of both man and beast had echoed in the sacred temple of Artemis far away on Mount Olympus—so loud and demanding, it had summoned the goddess herself to him. And there in the faint light of the waning moon, he’d taken her bargain and sold his soul to her for the one chance to return the favor to Isabeau and her people.

They were dead now, by his hand… all of them. Just as he was. Just as his family had been.

It was over…

Ravyn laughed bitterly at that thought as he clenched his bloodied fists. No, it wasn’t over. It was only beginning.

Seattle, 2006

BOY EATEN BY KILLER MOTHS.

Susan Michaels groaned as she read the headline for her latest story. She knew better than to read the rest of the article, but something inside her just wanted to feel kicked this afternoon. God forbid that she ever took pride in her work again…

Bred in a lab in South America, these top secret moths are the next generation of military assassins. They are genetically engineered to think their way into an enemy’s lair where they bite the neck of the target and infect them with a concentrated poison that is completely undetectable and that will render the victim dead within an hour.

Now they have escaped the lab and were last seen heading north, straight for the central U.S. Be on guard. They could be in your neighborhood within the month…

Dear Lord, it was worse than she’d imagined.

Her hands shaking in anger, she got up from her desk and headed straight into Leo Kirby’s office. As usual, he was online, reading some poor slob’s blog and making copious notes.

Leo was a short, lean man with long black hair that he always wore in a ponytail. He also had a goatee, cold gray eyes that never laughed, and a strange spiderweb tattoo on his left hand. He was dressed in a baggy black T-shirt and jeans, with a giant Starbucks travel mug at his elbow while he worked. In his mid-thirties, he’d be cute if he wasn’t so damned annoying.

“Killer moths?” she asked.

He looked up from his notepad and shrugged. “You said we were going to have a moth invasion. I just had Joanie rewrite the story to make it more marketable.”

She gaped in total astonishment. “Joanie? You had Joanie rewrite the story? The woman who wears tinfoil in her bra so that the people with x-ray vision can’t see her breasts? That Joanie?”

He didn’t flinch or miss a beat. “Yeah, she’s my best writer.”

Talk about insult to injury… “I thought I was your best writer, Leo.”

Sighing heavily, he swiveled his chair to face her. “You would be if you had any imagination whatsoever.” He held his hands up dramatically as if to illustrate his point. “C’mon, Sue, embrace your inner child. Embrace the absurd that lives amongst us. Think Ibsen.” He put his hands down and gave another weary sigh. “But no, you never do, do you? I send you out to investigate the bat boy who lives in the old church belfry and you come back with a story about moths infesting the rafters. What the hell is that?”

She gave him a droll stare as she crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s called reality, Leo. Reality. You should stop shrooming long enough to try it.”

He snorted at that before he flipped to a blank sheet of paper on his notepad. He set it beside his coffee.

“Screw reality. It don’t feed my dog. It don’t make my Porsche payments. It don’t get me laid. Bullshit does that… and I like it that way.”

She rolled her eyes at his beaming face. “You are such a toad.”

He paused as if an idea had struck him. He reached for his pad, where he quickly scribbled something. “‘Employee Kisses Toady Boss to Discover an Ancient Immortal Prince’… better yet, a god. Yeah, an ancient god”—he gestured at her with his pen—“a Greek god who’s been cursed to live as a sex slave to women… I like it. Can you imagine? Women all over the country will be kissing their bosses to test the theory.” Then he looked back at her with a wicked grin. “Shall we try the experiment and see if it works?”