Page 1 of Shadow Caster
One
THEN
“Indie! Indie! Indie!” The crowd was going wild.
Blood, sweat, and more blood speckled the sawdust. Probably a few teeth too. Not mine, though, because that was the sound ofmyname they were screaming.
Mine.
This fight was mine.
The moonkissed, hairy bastard glared at me through his remaining eye. I’d gouged out the other one. No biggie. It would grow back. And now he bared his fangs and charged.
I held my ground, boots planted firmly in the dust. One. Two. Three. I leapt, scaling his frame easily to land behind him. He hit the barbed fence, howled, and spun to face me just in time to receive an epic uppercut.
His eyes rolled back in his head, and he went down.
“Whooo!”
The pit was filled with a deafening roar. Time to take my signature curtsy—pouted lips and fluttering lashes.
The crowd whooped in appreciation of the petite nightblood with the delicate features who kicked ass like a prime-alpha. Not that any prime-alphas had been seen or heard of for a long while. Still, their fighting prowess was legendary.
And so was mine.
Leaving the moonkissed unconscious in the dust, I strode out of the pit.
Ned greeted me at the gates. “You did good, kid.” He hopped from foot to foot.
He was a good-looking creature with a golden mop of hair he liked to hide beneath a stylish flat cap. His leprechaun blood made him small in stature, but the ladies who’d been invited into his bedroom loved to discuss how he made up for any shortcomings in height with impressive expansions in other areas of his anatomy.
And me? He’d shoved me straight in the off-limits zone when he’d started calling me kid. Maybe I just wasn’t the horny fey-blood’s type.
Shame.
“And look at ya.” He raked me up and down. “Not even a scratch on ya.”
I grinned down at him. “I healed faster than he could injure, is all. And look, the crowd’s nice and warmed up for you.”
“You ever going to let me pay ya?” He canted his head, one eye closed in a wince-wink.
It was his come-on-give-in-to-me look, but it didn’t work on me.
I tapped the lip of his cap. “Letting me in that pit is payment enough.”
Besides, if I took his money, I’d never burn through daddy’s little trust fund. No matter how much I spent, it kept getting topped up. I’d tried cutting myself off, going dark, and living off the tips I made working at Ned’s bar, but my father always found me.
Power gave Baron Justice eyes and ears everywhere. Well, let him hear about this—his only child hanging with the dregs of supernatural society. A high-born nightblood slumming it with the rabble in an area of London we liked to call Dark Market, a large area filled with supernatural dives mostly tucked away from human eyes.
Ha. Take that, Daddy Dearest.
I turned my head and spat out the blood gathering in my mouth. It was all very well when the blood was someone else’s but not so yummy when it was my own.
Ned’s dark eyes gleamed. “Got a pressie for you in your cubicle.” He winked. “Hope you like it.”
My stomach grumbled. “You, my man, are a legend.”
I wove through the crowd, the cheer of the pit rising behind me as a new fight began. Body odors mingled, sweet and sour, heartbeats competed in tempo, and I allowed my senses to open and enjoy the cocktail of smells and sounds pressing in on me. They grounded me. The regulars knew better than to accost me after a fight. Trying to hit pause on a hungry nightblood was asking to be bitten.
