Sherrilyn Kenyon: No Mercy

“Well, if you’re right, let’s hope this is just an anomaly and that he burned up three seconds after he left here.”

“Here’s hoping for miracles.” He picked the headset up from his shoulders and placed it back over his ears. It was peculiar to her how any man could look so sexy with that contraption on his head, yet he somehow managed.

Totally weird…

Dev gestured to the door. “You’re safe to go in. There aren’t any other Dark-Hunters inside.”

She appreciated his warning. Not that she needed it. While being around another Dark-Hunter would drain her powers, hers were so great that the depletion was basically a joke. Not to mention she had serious battle skills that few could touch with or without her Dark-Hunter powers to back them. That was what made her one of the machiskyli…the Dogs of War. The Daimons had their elite fighters and the Dark-Hunters had the Dogs. Men and women who lived for battle and who took their only joy in cutting the hearts out of their enemies.

It was a badge she wore with honor. And tonight she felt the Daimon presence deep in her bones. She just had to pinpoint it, grab it by the throat, and strangle it until she felt better. Which meant leaving the enticing bear at the door and heading in to do her job.

“I’ll catch you later, Bear.”

He inclined his head to her as she walked through the doors into the dark interior. Since it was only seven in the evening, there weren’t many people in the club. A few humans eating at the front tables. Two more sitting at the bar that was being tended by a wolf were (so called because he was a wolf in human form) and another bearwere who bore a striking resemblance to Dev. It must be one of his identical brothers.

She sauntered over to the wolf and ordered a longneck.

“You want any food to go with that?” he asked as he popped the top on one and handed it to her.

Sam shook her head and ignored the curious stare he directed at her gloved hands. Food wasn’t really her thing and she hoped that she could sip this beer in peace. She started to pull out her wallet, but the wolf stopped her.

“I remember you from the fight. Your money’s no good here.”

His pain reached out to her as she had a flash in her mind of his past. A past that left him with a profound sense of guilt. He was the one Nicolette Peltier had died protecting and he felt like he’d taken the mother from the woman he loved—it was a bitter ache that stayed buried deep inside him and burned like a coal. He was a good man to care so much about his wife. “Thanks…Fang.” His name popped into her head as clearly as the images from his past. Images that would be heightened to a brutal level if she touched his body in any way.

He inclined his head to her. “Anytime.”

Sam moved away before she took in any more residual emotions and images from him. She hated that power so much. It might not be so bad if she had some kind of control over it, but she didn’t. Instead, other people’s emotions often tangled with hers until she had a hard time deciphering her feelings from theirs. It was why she tended to avoid people as much as possible. And why she couldn’t touch anyone with her bare hands or flesh.

If she did…

It was horrifying.

Why couldn’t I have the ability to fly? Or something really useful like pyrokinesis?

But no. She had the wienie powers of empathy and psychometry….

For that “gift,” she’d like to choke slam Artemis. But she also had telekinesis, which definitely came in handy, especially in a fight. So it wasn’t a complete knicker twist since she’d had remote control long before Eugene McDonald at Zenith had ever conceived the first clicker.

Sipping her beer, Sam wandered through the club that was nice and dark—easy on her light-sensitive eyes. And as she passed through, she caught glimpses of a thousand different events that had taken place here over the last century and a half.

While there were unhappy moments, the overwhelming base emotion for Sanctuary was warmth and homecoming. No wonder it was so popular among the preternatural community. While most wouldn’t have her powers to see what she did, they would still pick up on the sensation of love and safety that emanated from every object here. This entire place was filled with the care and devotion of the bear who’d built it.

“May the gods bless and keep you, Nicolette,” she whispered. As a mother herself, she knew the absolute agony of losing her children. The pain that no amount of time ever healed. It was something no one should ever experience.

She flinched as an image of Agaria’s face flashed through her mind. Even now the thought of her daughter could bring her to her knees and it brought a tidal swell of potent rage that still wanted to be appeased. That fury was what made her such a great fighter. The Daimons had taken everything from her and no matter how many of them she killed it just wasn’t enough to make up for what they’d done.

To make up for the life that had been brutally cut short.

“You look pissed off tonight.”

She cocked her head as she recognized the softly accented voice behind her.

Chi Hu.

Sam turned around slowly to face the delicate Chinese woman whose long black hair was secured into a tight braid down her back. But that fragility was extremely misleading. While Chi barely broke five feet in height and was as thin as a pencil, she was a skilled warrior who could take down anyone dumb enough to mistake her for an easy mark. Dressed in a tight pair of jeans and a black shirt and vest, Chi was exquisitely beautiful. The kind of perfect beauty Sam had ached for when she was human. But over the centuries she’d learned that that kind of beauty was as much a curse as a blessing.

Hence why Chi was now a Dark-Hunter.

Sam smiled. A fellow Dog of War, Chi was the only friend she’d allowed herself to have in the last five thousand years. She still wasn’t sure how it’d happened, but Chi was a hard person not to love—once you broke through her icy defenses. “What are you doing here?”

Knowing better than to touch her, Chi gestured around the club. “Same as you. Scoping Daimons. Looking for a good fight to take the edge off. Did the bear at the door tell you about their great hallucination of a Daywalker?”

“He did indeed.”

“What do you think it was?”

Sam shrugged. “Maybe a demon they mistook for a Daimon.”

Chi nodded in agreement. “Makes sense. They are sometimes hard for the untrained to differentiate.” And Chi would know since she was an expert in demonology. “There are several subspecies of demon that are very Daimon-like. One of those could be mistaken by a Were.”

Maybe, but Dev had seemed pretty sharp. Then again, Chi was the expert, which made Sam wonder why Chi was here in New Orleans. “When did they relocate you?”

“Three weeks ago.”

Sam cocked her brow at that. “Why didn’t you tell me you were being relocated too?”

Chi tsked at her tone. “Ditch the suspicion. I wanted to surprise you, jie jie . Nothing more. Nothing less. Had I not come across you tonight, I would have called. This is my first trip in to look around and I was hoping I’d stumble on you, which I did.” She grinned. “I wanted it to be a surprise. That’s all.”

Sam inwardly cringed as Chi called her “big sister.” In her world “sister” was an insult. And she knew Chi was being honest about the moving and not telling her—another blessing of her powers. Sam was a walking lie detector. “It’s really good to see you again.”

Chi wrinkled her nose. “Let’s just hope this time is not as bloody as the last.”

Sam laughed. “Like you don’t relish the fight as much as I do. Some days I think more so.”