Shaedes of Gray: A Shaede Assassin Novel

sharp steel blade, but all I managed to slice was thin air.

My target, vulnerable only a moment before, vanished just as effectively as I had. I spun around to guard my own back when a large, strong hand seized me by the throat.

“Who sent you?” Xander Peck asked, a little too calm for someone who’d almost lost his head.

I should have been more shaken, but his voice distracted me, draped over me like a red velvet blanket. I wanted to wrap myself up naked in that voice. The next thing—and it should have been the first thing—I noticed was the way his form quavered in the artificial light. He was almost . . . transparent.

I hadn’t encountered anyone like me in close to a century. In fact, I’d been sure I was the only one left. But there he stood: tall, blond, and angry, and a natural-born Shaede.

“Who sent you?” he asked again, his grip tightening on my throat.

“I’m hired,” I rasped in a flat, icy tone.

“Then who hired you?”

He almost sounded amused, but he wasn’t going to be when he got his answer.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I never meet the clients.”

“Well, then, you’re not much use, are you? Maybe I should kill you.”

“You could try.” I didn’t have to pretend to sound defiant or confident. Even a born Shaede would need a special blade to kill me.

He laughed, and the sound of it caused a spasm of pleasure to ripple from the top of my head right down to my toes. His grip on my throat disappeared with his body, and in a waft of dark air, he reappeared on a small sofa, very much at home.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Darian,” I said, throwing it out there like I had nothing to lose.

“Darian,” he repeated. “So, Darian . . . who do you think would want me dead?”

“How the hell should I know?” I asked, maybe a little more indignant than I ought to have been considering the circumstances. “I guess you must’ve really pissed someone off.”

“You think?” I couldn’t blame him for mocking me. Hell, I was there to kill him. “Now, why would anyone send you to kill someone that you couldn’t kill?”

I hadn’t thought about that. Didn’t care. Thinking wasn’t part of my job. The client had to have recognized something inhuman about Xander Peck. Born Shaedes did have the ability to dazzle, glamour—whatever—a lot better than I could. They could convince humans that they’re made of something more solid. Still, the “otherness” that exists in us has a tendency to set a person on edge.

“My guess,” he said, resting an arm over the back of the couch, “is that you were set up.”

That thought knocked the breath right out of me. Adrenaline pulsed in my veins. My heart hammered against my rib cage. Who would set me up? And why? Who, besides Tyler, knew—truly knew—about me? And, more importantly, who knew I wasn’t the only one of my kind? I choked up on the dagger, the guard digging uncomfortably into my hand for a brief moment before I slid it into the sheath at my thigh. I’d been alone. The only one. Only. One. God, it didn’t sound convincing even as I thought the words. Had Azriel known? He couldn’t have. He never would have kept it from me. Or would he? His words, spoken long ago, haunted me. We are alone in this world, and you have nothing to fear. My head swam, feeling as though all the blood had rushed from my brain to my pounding heart. Not alone. I am not alone. The situation demanded a little more thought and a lot more caution. If anything, I needed answers from someone, and there happened to be only one someone on my list.

For the first time in my long existence, I left a job unfinished.

I sought the shroud of my shadow self for a stealthy escape and fled the town house. But when I gazed up at the window, Xander Peck stood at its center. He bowed his head deeply and vanished.

Chapter 3

“Meet me at The Pit in thirty minutes,” I growled into my cell, “and if you’re even fifteen seconds late, I’m going to slice you open like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

Tyler was five minutes early.

The Pit isn’t a prize to behold, but it’s my favorite haunt. The stale smell of beer never went away and mingled with hundreds of different perfume and cologne samples into an olfactory nightmare. But the dim lighting and the warm air made me feel safe, no matter how bad it smelled or how many times I had to send an overeager guy on his way.

Lucky for me, I like the heat. And the club happened to be seven different kinds of hot that night. But I couldn’t take the duster off; it hid my saber and covered the dagger. I’m sure I looked like a Goth kid’s wet dream, sitting in my black sex-kitten outfit, sipping a rum and Coke, exuding little to no emotion on the outside while my insides writhed like angry vipers.

Despite the fact that I’d all but shut him down the night before, Tyler gave me one of his lusty once-overs, and if I hadn’t been so jacked up I would have smiled or even welcomed the attention. Ty was easygoing and had a tendency to bounce back even when things didn’t exactly go his way. Apparently, he wasn’t willing to give up on me quite yet. But my encounter with Xander Peck had been more than a message, and more like a slap in the face— just what I needed to keep my mind focused on the business at hand. And I wanted answers.

“Who’s the client?” I shouted over the thumping club music that tuned out the private conversations I couldn’t help but overhear.

“How should I know?” he shouted back, giving me his most charming smile.

I reached across the table and grabbed him by the collar, drawing him as close to my face as I could without biting his nose right off. “I’m not playing fuck-around, Ty. Who is it?”

His eyes narrowed, fixing me with a shrewd and calculating stare. But then his eyes softened as he studied my face with an expression of . . . could it be . . . concern? My stomach churned as I fought a wave of emotion, and I hate to admit that I dropped my gaze first. Ty glanced down at his shirt and slowly back to my face. I released my hold and he sank back in his chair. He ran his fingers through his thick coppery hair and continued to study me as if trying to crawl right into my thoughts. Maybe he was wondering if I was still thinking about what had happened between us last night. Right now, though, I didn’t have the luxury of mulling over my love life. And, really, at this point, neither did he.

My nerves hummed, wound as tight as a trampoline spring. Though I’ll admit to being arrogant at times, I realized now I wasn’t the only unnatural thing on the planet. Of course others like me existed! I wanted to bang my head against the table. How could I have been so blind? I probably couldn’t even pick one out of a crowd, though once or twice I’d sensed a different kind of energy surrounding someone who, for all intents and purposes, looked human. I’d let Azriel’s words lull me into a false sense of security. I minded my own business and they minded theirs.

But now I truly worried that someone hadn’t read that same memo. Someone who knew me as a Shaede had chosen to put me in a very precarious position.

“I never met the guy,” Tyler said after a passing silence. “I talked to him on the phone and we arranged drops for the money. He called me, but his number was blocked.”

“Did he ask for me specifically?” Tyler had a tendency to hire freelance professionals, even though we both knew I was the best.

“Yeah. Said he’d heard about you. Said you were the only one for the job.”

I’d been set up. At least now I knew why the client didn’t want to pay up front.

But that also prompted another interesting question. How had the client known what I was? If he knew about Shaedes, he would know we aren’t so easy to kill. Food for thought.

“I want you to set up a face-to-face with this guy.” I didn’t care that it wasn’t the norm. I wanted to look the bastard in the eye, let him see that I wasn’t a helpless target.

“Are you crazy?” Tyler’s voice rose above the din of the music. “That’s a huge liability!”

“Can you arrange the meeting or not?”

The muscles in his jaw flexed. “This isn’t a good idea.” His voice strained as he fought for control of his temper. “I’m the middleman for a reason, Darian. Your anonymity protects you. If you meet with a client, it puts