Blackhearted Betrayal (2 page)

I grabbed his arm before he could strike. “Down, boy; it’s Serise.” The only Harpy neither of us would attack on sight. Normally, when a Fury—like me—became so overcome by Rage, she couldn’t control it and
Turned Harpy, which was bad news. But Serise had earned my trust enough that I’d programmed my magical wards to allow her inside without raising a dozen alarms. Something I was very much starting to regret.

“Somebody had damned well better be dead,
Your Majesty
, or you may well soon be, baby bump or no.”

She blinked yellow-green eyes and laid a protective hand upon her stomach. “Have I interrupted something important?”

Trust a Harpy to completely miss any and all social cues, like the half-naked couple
getting busy
on the sofa. She might be slightly saner than her sisters thanks to her status as Queen, but that didn’t make her any less socially awkward. “Seriously, Serise, you have like five seconds to get to the point before I kick you
out
of my house.”

“Nobody is dead, but I believed the two of you would wish to know about the man I caught shadowing me after I dropped off your nieces at their home.”

My hackles rose in a more figurative sense than those of my Warhound lover beside me. “You let some strange man
follow you
to my brother’s home?”

Serise finally seemed to clue in to the absurdity of conducting a serious conversation while Scott and I were half-naked in the living room. “Perhaps you would prefer to clothe yourself before—”

“Gods damn it, Harpy Queen, are my nieces in danger?”

“Of course not.” She actually sounded offended. “Firstly, I never claimed the man was unknown to me. Secondly, you should know I would never be so clumsy as to allow anyone to trail me while on guard duty, especially not my children’s sisters.” Serise’s children—the
one already born, Rinda, along with the unnamed bun in her oven—shared the same unknown father’s DNA as my adopted niece, Olivia, who was a biological cousin to my niece, Cori. In Serise’s eyes, both girls shared kinship to her own children, which meant they were to be protected. Came in damned handy, considering all the recent abduction and assassination attempts aimed at my family.

“Furthermore, this man was already at your family’s home in Salem. He followed
me
back to Boston, where I led him on a fruitless chase until I knew the wedding reception would be over and you would be home.” We had just come from the wedding of Scott’s old flame. Of course, a serial killer had almost gotten in the way, but that was another story.

I leaned forward with narrowed eyes and yanked the afghan up when it started to slip. “Who the
hell
do we know that would follow you from my family’s home into Boston without trying to talk to you?”
Or, as was more likely since most arcanes hated Harpies, to kill her?

Serise’s disconcerting gaze moved from my face to Scott’s. “The man you’ve been looking for since the night your sister Fury died, the missing Warhound, Sean Murphy.”

THE UNEXPECTED REVELATION HIT ME LIKE A
combat boot to the stomach; and yes, I knew how
that
felt from personal experience. My duties as both member of the Sisterhood of Furies and Chief Magical Investigator for the city of Boston came with hazard pay for good reason. With everything I had experienced over the years, few things took me completely by surprise anymore, but hearing that Scott’s baby brother had transformed
from missing person to Harpy stalker managed to wallop me right upside the figurative head.

Sean had vanished in the chaos when I led a group of allies against the mortal scientists who’d been experimenting upon arcanes like Vanessa, my childhood friend and sister Fury who died giving birth to Olivia. We’d believed Sean to be captured by the brainwashed Sidhe serving the scientists, but shadowing Serise from Salem to Boston indicated he possessed at least a modicum of freedom. Considering we’d been turning over every stone we could to find him for months and he hadn’t had the courtesy to let us know he was still alive, that didn’t sit too well in my stomach.

Scott’s sudden growl hinted he didn’t like the sound of it, either. “You saw my brother tonight, and you’re
just now
telling us?”

Serise gave a careless Harpy shrug. “I did not recognize him until I circled back to shadow
him
for a time.”

Scott clenched his fists, and I could just picture him counting to ten beneath his breath so he wouldn’t lose his cool. Hound tempers may not have anything on the supernatural Rage that fueled both Fury and Harpy magic, but they came in a
close
third. “Did you talk to him? Are you
sure
it’s him?”

“I did not approach lest I scare him away before
you
could speak with him. I did, however, memorize the address of the building he went into.”

She scrawled the details onto a piece of paper, and Scott frowned like it personally offended him. I touched his arm. “Problem, sugar?”

He shook his head and looked up at Serise. “Thanks for the info. Can you do me a favor and keep this between us?”

“Of course, if you feel that’s the wisest course of action.” Her gaze grew suddenly fierce as she curved her hand against her belly again. “Provided you inform your brother that continuing to shadow
me
will be extremely hazardous for
his
health. Only the fact I recognized him as your kin kept me from eliminating the potential threat to my children.”

Scott nodded. “You have my thanks for sparing him, Your Majesty.” He nodded to the door in a not-so-subtle hint, not that his lack of tact would particularly bother the Harpy. “Do you need an escort home?”

Serise shook her head. “No. Two of my sisters accompanied me tonight and await me outside.” Then, without further ado, she made good her escape. Not too big on niceties like
hello
or
good-bye
, that one.

I let the afghan drop once the front door clicked shut and snatched the scrap of paper from his hand. Reading the numbers and letters didn’t shed any light, however. Years of working Boston’s streets helped me identify the address as being inside the city’s magical Underbelly, but that wasn’t terribly revelatory. “Spill it, Murphy. I know that something about that address has you spooked.”

He dropped back onto the sofa and shook his shaggy auburn hair. “Not spooked so much as surprised. We’ve got a job scheduled at this address starting tomorrow night.”

By
we
, he meant the Shadowhounds, a group of mercenaries founded by his father, Morgan, which Scott now led. At least until his big sister, Amaya, recovered enough from her run-in with those aforementioned mad scientists to resume her position as Shadowhound
Numero Uno
. At which point I planned to recruit him to the MCU.

“Okay, no way is
that
mere coincidence. Who’s the job for?”

His expression grew slightly sheepish. “An Anubian priest.”

I forced myself not to scowl from the reflexive disgust that swept over me anytime someone mentioned my least favorite immortal, Jackal-Faced Anubis. Just my typical bad luck that the one god who detested me also happened to be my lover’s patron deity.

Back when my best friend, Vanessa, had first disappeared, I’d crashed Anubis’s slice of the Underworld and gotten the
tiniest
bit snippy with him. Okay, maybe a whole lot of snippy, but who could blame me? My closest friend in the world had been missing for months; I couldn’t find any sign of her
or
a body and had been convinced her narcissistic ex-lover had murdered her. In order to bring him to justice, I needed confirmation that she was indeed among the deceased, and Anubis could have given me that very thing. Instead, he’d become a whole lot of divinely wrathful with my ass and kicked me out of the Underworld. Scott didn’t know just how bad the blood between his deity and me ran, but he
did
know Anubis was nowhere near being on my Christmas-card list.

Not that I was ever organized enough to send
those
out on time.

“Do you think Sean is trying to ambush you via the priest?”

Scott’s generous lips tugged downward. “Now why would my brother want to
ambush
me, Riss?”

Because he was getting kinda crazy stalkerish with me before he disappeared? Because he started acting like he kinda hated you and wouldn’t be too sad to see you out of the picture?
Not exactly suggestions I could
pose to Scott at the moment seeing as how I’d never found the right time or words to come clean about the things his brother had done and said in the time leading up to his disappearance.

“Er, by ambush, I mean ask you for help without letting anyone else know he needs it.”

His expression changed from annoyed to thoughtful. “That would make sense. I mean, if he’s in trouble and can’t risk bringing it back home, the Anubian temple is a damned good choice to arrange a rendezvous.”

His sudden distracted air had me letting out an inner sigh. If Serise’s abrupt appearance hadn’t already killed our amorous mood, his brotherly concern would have hammered the last few nails into its coffin. Not that I could blame him. One of the things we had most in common was our deep love of family.

“You may as well go back to your place tonight, then, so you can get an early start on figuring out what the heck is going on with your brother.”

Sheepishness gave way to a look of gratitude mixed with guilt. “You sure?”

I brushed a kiss on his lips. “Of course I am. I’ll be busy all day tomorrow getting Trinity up to speed for my leave of absence, anyway.”

“That’s right; Cori all ready to swear her oaths to the Sisterhood?”

My fifteen-year-old niece had finally Fledged as a Fury after several anxious years where we waited to see if she would follow in both her aunts’ arcane footsteps or instead remain a magical skip like her parents. “More ready than you can even imagine. Mom’s meeting us the day after tomorrow to make sure no little
accidents
happen during the trip to the Palladium.”

The Palladium existed in the slice of the Otherrealms controlled by the Sisterhood of Furies and was where we conducted most official business. It also happened to be one of the few places in the Otherrealms not currently debilitated by a strange supernatural plague. The fact that the Otherrealms were slowly but surely dying off was the primary reason arcanes had traveled en masse to the mortal realm several decades ago, which nowadays kept me gainfully employed as Chief Magical Investigator in charge of all crimes committed by or against arcanes.

Scott wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. “You afraid of another attack?”

Discord had broken out among the Furies in the past months, pitting sister against sister in deadly strife, something I once would have thought impossible. “It would be foolish not to anticipate that as a possibility. I’d rather be prepared and not need to be than the alternative.”

“That’s what I like most about you, baby. Always thinking ahead.”

I shifted against him, pressing my bare chest against his own suggestively. “Really?
That’s
what you like most about me?”

His earlier distraction faded, and golden Hound eyes glowed with rekindled desire. “
One
of the things I like most.”

“Oh, yeah? What
else
do you like?”

“I can think of at least a few things.” His voice grew husky, and his warm, callused hands caressed my lips teasingly. “Like your beautiful smile.” Those amazing hands moved several inches lower. “And your delectable neck.” He leaned forward and nipped the sensitive flesh in question, before trailing his fingers down to the serpent
heads tattooed onto each of my shoulders. “Not to mention your sensitive shoulders.” I moaned when he dragged his fingernails across them, then down to my quivering chest. “And most especially your perfect, gorgeous breasts.” His mouth soon followed caressing fingers, and I was most gratified to discover that the Harpy Queen hadn’t been a
complete
buzzkill after all …

THE OBNOXIOUS SOUND OF “WHO LET THE
Dogs Out?” had me clawing for my cell phone and cursing Cori’s prankster ways at an hour that felt
way
too early the next morning. One of these days I was going to learn how to prevent her from changing my ringtone when I wasn’t paying attention. “This had
better
be important,” I barked into the phone after my bleary eyes registered it wasn’t even 7:00
A
.
M
. I’d gotten used to sleeping in until the decadent hour of 8:00 ever since I’d hired Kale and Mahina, the husband-and-wife Night Owls who oversaw the Magical Crimes Unit’s night shift, meaning I rarely had to pull eighteen-to-twenty-four-hour shifts anymore.

“Now, is
that
any way to greet the loving mother who was only restored to you a few short months ago?”

My lips twitched upward, and I relaxed back into the plush pillows behind me. “It is when she wakes me up more than an hour before my alarm goes off.”

“Oh, is it
that
early in the mortal realm?”

The feigned innocence in her tone made my lip twitching turn into eye rolling. “You know damned good and well what time it is here.”