Page 1 of Kiss of Light

One

It was her third whisky in less than an hour. Good job she didn’t get drunk. The room was dark and dingy, the late afternoon sun fighting a losing battle with the grime over the windows.

The general gloominess was deliberate. This was a hunter bar, a place where mercenaries like her hung out. The pervading air of menace was intended to keep ordinary folk at bay.

Even now, a young couple pushing their way through the door took one look at the denizens within and retreated hastily to find a brightly-lit gastropub.

Tala grinned. Humans. So predictable.

She tucked a stray strand of blonde hair back under her cap and scanned the room for familiar faces. The bar was a good starting point for trackers. Information on the quarry’s main haunts would be circulated here, plus any useful tips about recent sightings. Right now, the same details were being shared in similar bars across the world; London, Paris, Moscow, Sydney.

The only advantage of being here in New York was that this was where the target usually hung out. By tomorrow, the city would be crawling with hunters looking for the vampire.

She took another hit of whisky, her mood souring.

Fucking vampires.

She supposed she shouldn’t call them that. Technically, they were Vetali. A species from the same supernatural realm she herself hailed from. They were alluring and deadly. Beautiful psychopaths who enjoyed drinking blood rather too much. If they had emotions, they kept them well hidden. They didn’t do feelings.

She hadn’t met many, but the ones she’d run into had unnerved her. And she didn’t scare easy.

Fucking vampires.

“Hey, Blue-Eyes.” A large man with a scar over one eye took the stool next to her and motioned to the bartender. “Two more whiskies, Mike.”

Tala glanced at him. She knew his dark floor-length coat wasn’t just to keep the cold out. It also concealed several blades and a Glock.

“Hey, Blake. You on a job?”

“Same one everyone’s on. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To scope out the competition?”

“Any use me telling you the job’s a scam?”

“I hear you’ve been touting that around.” Blake shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. A contract’s a contract.”

“But it’s a lie. The bounty wasn’t put up by Lord Shadeed. Someone’s trying to frame him.”

“Sweetheart, I don’t care.” He paid the barman and slid one of the whiskies over to her. “Anyway, the hit’s for a vampire. I thought you hated vampires, so what’s the problem?”

Tala studied the mercenary next to her. He was attractive, with his dark hair and stubbled jaw. He’d earned the scar that bisected his right eyebrow in a knife fight early on in his career. It gave him the rakish air of a pirate.

He was an arrogant son-of-a-bitch, but she didn’t hold that against him. He was also one of the few humans who knew about the supernatural underworld. It wasn’t a big deal to him. He was a bounty hunter, he’d go after anyone or anything as long as it paid.

She was pretty sure they’d slept together once, after a drunken night in this very bar. She vaguely remembered him trying to kiss her on the mouth, which she never, ever, did. Not with anyone. He’d tried a couple of times and she’d had to punch him to get the message through.

But then she’d woken up next to him with his arm slung over her and their clothes buttoned up all wrong. So she assumed they must have worked it out at some point.

He was the hunter she was closest to, if closeness meant exchanging more than two words. But she didn’t trust him one bit.

She took a gulp of whisky, savouring the liquid fire as it ran down her throat.

“Who else is in the running?”

“The usual. A bunch of ex-military. A couple of trolls. And the fae twins over there.”

Tala nodded. She’d already seen the red-haired elven in the corner. Seraefa and Kaeron always worked together. And they were good. They’d beaten her to a mark more than once.

She had yet to spot another demon, but that meant nothing. A shaitun could be in the bar with them right now, hiding in another’s mind, peering out from their bodies, seeing what they saw, hearing what they heard. And she knew Ravij wouldn’t be far away.

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