combine to keep him balanced when the deadly magic threatens to tip him toward darkness.
Earthly enemies Iago—The leader of the Order of Xibalba, Iago is a mage of extraordinary power, capable of
“borrowing” the talents of other magi. Iago hopes to gain additional power by allying himself with the might of the bloodthirsty Aztecs through the soul of their mighty god-king Moctezuma.
Do you like bad boys, big magic, and high stakes? Then don’t miss the next sizzling
installment in Jessica Andersen’s Nightkeepers series,
Dez and Reese’s story is coming to you from Signet Eclipse in June 2011.
Reese Montana had always thought wedding venues were tacky as a rule, but this one took the freaking multitiered, pink-frosted cake.
As if the velvet sombreros and striped serapes plastered on every available surface of the hotel lobby weren’t bad enough, when she followed a series of cringe-inducing signs to the wedding chapel, she found the entryway decorated with what she suspected was meant to look like an ancient Mayan temple, but came across as papier-mache gone horribly wrong. Inside the chapel, a faux-stone archway took the place of the usual flower- and-lattice bower, the aisle was lined with fake palm fronds, the rank-and-file chairs were wearing parrot-hued slipcovers, and the rollaway screen behind the main stage was painted with an art student’s version of Chichen Itza in its heyday, with the city intact, the temple ruins unruined, and people thronging in the foreground, staring at the stone archway with creepy, goggle-eyed intensity.
Thank Christ the room was empty. It was bad enough Reese was semicrashing. Be worse if she laughed her ass off during the “I dos.”
“Not exactly what I was expecting,” she murmured. Then again, it was her own fault that the moment she had opened the FedEx to find a plane ticket to Mexico and a request for her to come talk about a job, her brain had gone to a tropical fantasyland far from Denver’s drab gray winter. Hell, it was probably just a run-of-the-mill deal for an aging paterfamilias who had lost track of a kid and was feeling depressed about it amid the sib’s wedding prep. Typical locator gig.
But it still paid better—and was way safer—than her old job.
Following the low drone that said “The party’s over here,” she crunched across the fake leaves, tucked herself into the shadows, and took a look through the back door, to where a couple of dozen bodies thronged in an open-air dining area.
She stilled as the sight in front of her refused to look run-of-the-mill.
Twenty or so people, a fairly even mix of men and women, were knotted together on one side of the room, the men in decent suits, the women in an eclectic mix of high-end, with no rent-a-tux’d groom or Barbie-doll bride in evidence. Six of them were small and compact, their gestures quick, their eyes always on the move. Overall, they weren’t too far off from ordinary.
The rest, though . . . whoa. Not ordinary.
All in their late twenties, early thirties, they were uniformly huge—in height and muscle, with zero flab— gorgeous and somehow
So did the realization that they all moved like fighters.
Suddenly, accepting the anonymous invite south of the border started seeming less like an adventure and more like a dumb idea. But even as her new self said she should do a vanishing act, the woman she used to be planted her feet, because what if they were trying to locate someone worth saving? She’d seen it before. Hell, she’d
The stone patio was surrounded by a high vine-covered fence, and the overhead latticework was decorated with a gazillion fairy lights that failed to disguise the fact that the hotel was smack in the middle of a bunch of other hotels. There was only the one door, which didn’t make sense. Crowds like this always had an exit strategy. Unless she’d misread them? She didn’t think so.
She should walk away. Call Fallon. Let the pros handle things.
Instead, glad that she’d gone with her first instinct and stopped at a local pawnshop to buy a piece on her way to the hotel, she stepped out of the shadows and into the light.
Within seconds, every one of them had marked her—their eyes flicked to her, then to one another, and there was a subtle shift in the room as some jackets got twitched aside and other bodies got out of the line of fire. But they didn’t draw down. Disciplined or cocky? She didn’t know.
She held out her empty hands as her pulse up-shifted another gear. “I’m not looking for trouble. I was invited.” Sort of.
A pretty blond-and-blue off on one side glanced at the big brown-haired man beside her, and said, “We didn’t invite you.” Okay. Bride and groom weren’t the prospective clients. Didn’t look like newlyweds either. Renewing vows, maybe? Or was this whole thing a setup? She didn’t know, but she wasn’t moving away from that door.
“I invited her,” said a big guy on the other side of the room. When he spoke, the others gave way a little, telling her that he was the boss of this outfit. He was built like a bouncer, and had shoulder-
length hair and a jawline beard that made her think of a Renaissance fair. And he was vaguely familiar, but not from her present life.
He gave her a once-over with brilliant blue eyes. “Where’s all the leather?”
She was wearing glossy silver-toed boots, trim black pants, and a subtly studded blazer. “Dog’s TV show turned it into a cliche.” Which was too bad. She had liked her old working outfit. “I’ve still got the thigh-high boots if you’re interested.”
“He’s not.” A smaller blond-and-blue moved up to his side and shot her a look.
Reese knew that look. Fallon had hit her with it often enough. “You’re a cop.”
The ID eased her nerves a degree. Granted, there were cops who crossed the line, but fewer than the TV made it seem. More, she wasn’t getting the “bad guy” vibe off this crew, and although her instincts weren’t infallible, they had a pretty good record. So who were these guys? A task force working the wrong side of the border? If so, why did they need her? And why not go through channels?
Unless they had, and Fallon had told them to fuck off. That, she could believe.
The cop nodded. “And you’re the bounty hunter.”
The others relaxed a smidge and the bride’s mouth went round in surprise. Reese stayed focused on the big guy in charge. “I used to be a bounty hunter. Now I’m strictly private.” She paused. “You’ll have to help me out here. Where do I know you from?”
“Three years ago, in a burned-out warehouse in Chicago.”
“Three—” She broke off as her stomach knotted on a sharp stab. Keeping the poker face that had saved her life more times than she wanted to count, she nodded and breathed past the pain. “Right.
Strike. I remember.”
Would’ve been better if she could forget. She still had nightmares where she was back in that warehouse shell, breathing stale smoke as she crept up on the two men, one dangerous, one an unknown who had a gangsta name but wore normal duds and showed up in a rented minivan. With the other, more deadly hunters closing in faster than she had anticipated—a warning that she had already wasted too much time trying to eavesdrop on the meeting—she had nailed the dangerous one from behind with her souped-up Taser and had her two quasi bodyguards drag his ass back to lockup. Not letting herself think about what she had just done, she had chased the other guy—this guy—back to his rental, labeling him harmless.
