Page 1 of Slay All Day

1

Denica

Aplethora of supernatural creatures went bump in the night. They weren’t all bad, but my job was to take down the vilest of them—vampires—when they went rogue. Like the male I was currently hunting. After draining a young couple who’d parked in the lot on a cliff overlooking the small town where teenagers went to make out, he had headed into the surrounding forest. My enhanced sense of smell made it easier for me to track him through the woods, and I tapped into my inner dragoness to kick my speed up a notch.

The vamp had a thirty-minute head start on me, but it didn't take me long to narrow the gap. The arrogant bastard wasn’t rushing and apparently had no concerns about being caught after killing two people. When I got within fifty feet of him, he slowed his pace even more. If it hadn’t been the dead of night and he hadn’t been dressed in a suit, he probably would’ve tried to pass himself off as a regular guy hiking in the woods as he turned to face me.

The vamp smiled, revealing white teeth with the slightest hint of sharp points. I would’ve thought my imagination was running wild if I hadn’t known what he was. Especially when he flashed me a charming grin. “Well, hello there. Are you lost?”

He had the slightest hint of a French accent, and there was an underlying tone of compulsion in his words. Luckily, my shifter blood made me resistant to his gift. “Nope, not even a tiny bit.”

Taking a couple of steps toward me, he gestured with his hand to the forest surrounding us. “That wasn’t the answer I was expecting, considering where we are. But in the end, your reason for being here doesn’t really matter. Just that you are.”

“I think you’ll find you’re mistaken about that.” My pace was leisurely as I moved closer, and my hands were in my pockets. I projected an air of relaxation, even though every molecule of my body was prepared for the battle ahead. I had the element of surprise on my side, and I wanted every advantage I could get.

“That’s right, my dear. Come to me.” The vamp’s entire focus was on me as he pushed more compulsion into his command.

If I was human, I wouldn’t have been able to withstand his power. Even with my natural protection, I felt the pull. He was stronger than I expected after seeing how sloppy he’d been in his killings. There had been a lack of details about the vamp I needed to hunt down when I’d been assigned this mission, but the death toll was too high to hesitate. My plan had been to do some investigative work when I got there, but that strategy was blown to smithereens when I’d been circling the town from the air under the cover of the night and had picked up the unmistakable smell of recent death below me. After discovering the young couple the bloodsucker had recently killed, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to follow his scent trail. It was a good thing I had trusted my instincts. Without a doubt, this vampire would’ve wreaked a lot more havoc in his wake if even another day had passed before I faced off against him.

Keeping my expression blank so he didn’t catch on that I wasn’t under his influence, I cut the distance between us in half before coming to an abrupt stop. I was downwind from him, but I didn’t want to get too close yet in case his sense of smell was heightened enough to catch my shifter blood from a distance. Slowly shaking my head, I feigned disorientation—widening my eyes as I darted my gaze around me and lifting my hand to my forehead. “How did I get here? Who are you?”

“I’m Louis. We’re great friends. Don’t you remember?” His voice dropped another octave, and the compulsion in his tone tugged faintly at me. He stretched his arm out, palm up. “Come closer, my dear. Let me help you.”

I held back my snort of disbelief. The only thing Louis was interested in helping me with was draining all my blood and leaving my corpse to rot in the woods. He was in for the shock of his life—which had to have been a long one based on the strength of his compulsion—because he was going to be the one to die here tonight. Stumbling a few steps in his direction, I mumbled, “Yes, please help me.”

He glided closer to me, almost within reach. Slowly dropping my hands through the slits in my pants pockets, I wrapped my hands around the daggers that were strapped to the outside of my upper thighs. Since my green eyes swirled with flames when I drew upon my fire magic, I dropped my gaze to the ground. Hunching my shoulders, I tried to make myself look like the victim I was supposed to be while I ran through fight strategies in my head. When he took those last few steps to bring him within striking range, I breathed deep and drew his scent into my lungs. If there had been any doubt about his guilt, it would have been eliminated when I recognized the life’s essence he’d drained from the young couple. With how recent his kills were, the odor was unmistakable.

Lifting my head so my aim would be true, I acted swiftly—drawing the dagger in my right hand and flinging it toward his heart. I quickly followed it up with my second dagger, which landed in his chest directly beneath the first. Louis screamed, rearing back in shock as blood and spit spewed from his mouth. Our gazes met, his eyes glowing red with evil intent. It felt as though time went into slow motion as his hands went to his chest. While he pulled the daggers out, I chanted under my breath to draw upon my fire magic. Flames sparked to life and wound around my body.

“Dragon shifter,” he spat, leaping toward me. I pricked my finger before letting a third dagger fly, catching him in the chest again. He staggered back, howling in pain as a drop of my blood hit the ground, strengthening my spell.

“Between my blades and fire magic, the outcome of this fight is already decided. You’re going down, vampire,” I promised.

“Not today,” he yelled, swiveling around to run in the other direction.

I couldn’t let him get away from me. Louis needed to die, here and now, before he could take more innocent lives. Racing after him, I urged the flames surrounding me to flare in his direction. I was completely calm and focused as they stretched from my body to his, striking him in the chest. Of the different methods to kill a vampire, burning them was my favorite. Some people might think that my ability to call upon fire magic due to being a dragon shifter gave me an unfair advantage over the evil creatures I hunted, but anyone who’d served the Eliminate Vampire Influence Everywhere organization would disagree. As an E.V.I.E. slayer, I would use whatever tool I needed to ensure I took down each and every bloodsucker bounty I was given without feeling an ounce of guilt.

My fire moved more quickly than both of us, and the flames started circling his torso. “No,” Louis shrieked, dropping to the ground to roll around.

A giggle—which was seriously inappropriate, considering the circumstances—bubbled up my chest as I shook my head in disbelief. The stop, drop, and roll routine children learned didn’t do any good when it came to fire magic, something a vampire of his strength should definitely know. I pushed more power into the spell, and the flames swiftly engulfed his body. His shriek echoed through the forest, and then he burst into ashes. A huge plus to how vampires died was the lack of cleanup when the kill happened outdoors, meaning I could head out of town tonight. With Louis dispatched within less than twenty-four hours of receiving his bounty, there was a good chance I’d be able to enjoy the comforts from home for a little longer than usual.

2

Trey

My alpha summoning me to his house was the last thing I wanted after spending the night in my tiger form, trying to run off the restlessness that had been bothering me for the past week. Not that Connor was a bad guy. I wouldn’t be part of his streak—let alone his enforcer—if he was. We had known each other too long for him to have not noticed something was going on with me, though, and I wasn’t ready to talk about it since I didn’t know what the fuck was up with my tiger. He was moody as hell lately and didn’t want to be around the other members of our streak. Tigers tended to be solitary creatures due to their volatile nature but not antisocial—which was where mine was headed if something didn’t change soon.

I rapped my knuckles on his door before walking in, more out of habit than anything else since Connor would have heard me as I walked up the steps to his house. He was hunched over his laptop at the kitchen table with a plate of cookies and a glass of milk set off to the side.

“Hey.” I headed straight to the fridge to pour myself a glass and snagged a few cookies, dropping them on a paper towel in front of me as I sat down with a chuckle. “Your sister has the strangest sense of humor.”

Connor shrugged as he reached out to grab a cookie. “You know how much she likes to tease me.”

I wasn’t sure where Carmen had gotten the recipe for the tiger cookies, but the combination of chocolate, crushed frosted flakes, and whatever else she threw in there was delicious. “I wouldn’t call it teasing. More like yanking your chain in the nicest way possible to remind you that she still remembers when you couldn’t shift into a six-hundred-pound beast.”

“Yeah, but as long as she keeps feeding me while doing it, I’m not going to complain.” He shoved an entire cookie in his mouth, and I grabbed a couple more before they were all gone.

After stacking the rest of my haul in front of me, I asked, “What happened over the weekend that you needed to see me before morning?”

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