LITMIR.BIZ

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it was real. “How did you set up this blood bath?”

      “Just called Aquarius and told him Raithe was receiving a shipment of girls.”

      Aquarius should have known better, followed protocol and called Striker. It wasn’t the first time Aquarius had broken rank, only this time he’d paid dearly—with his life. “What has happened to you?”

      “I’m tired of being out in the field, risking my life and doing your dirty work for the measly pennies you drop my way.”

      “We invested half a million in your cover. That is a lot of pennies.” Striker’s voice turned low, soft and quite deadly. He envisioned wrapping his hands around her neck and squeezing…. “How could you betray B.O.S.P. like this?”

      “I don’t live and breathe the agency like you. I’m a free spirit. And who are we kidding? This is your vendetta, not B.O.S.P.’s. Raithe just helped me see I was on the wrong side.”

      “I will find you.”

      “You can try.” She cackled, her eyes gleaming bright blue with malice. Then the screen went blank.

      Striker thought of headquarters, and Mimi’s small angular face appeared in the screen. Anyone looking at her reflection could tell she was a dwarf. What her looks didn’t reveal was her penchant for voodoo. She looked bored until she noticed who it was. A grin spread across her face, and she batted her false eyelashes as she fluffed her curly blond hair. “Anything I can get you, boss?”

      Striker knew she was referring to something other than work, but he always ignored her advances. And this was no different. He went directly to the point. “I need the dossier on Culler. Send it right away, and see what aliases you can find that are not in our files. And use the psychics. I do not want one stone unturned.”

      “You got it, boss.”

      “Any sightings of Raithe?” Striker had recently upped the bounty on Raithe in the paranormal community, but as of yet no one was brave enough to collect the three million dollars.

      “No, sorry,” she said forlornly. She knew Raithe was on Striker’s top-ten wanted list.

      “All right, then. Waiting on the dossier.”

      He closed the device and shoved it in his pocket. He would apologize later to the queen. He didn’t have time for niceties or foreign diplomatic dinner parties. He had to find Culler.

      She had been his only hope. What had happened to make her turn? They had been so close to catching Raithe. Striker’s lip lifted in a tiny snarl as he thought of his nemesis. Raithe controlled much of the underbelly of the human and vampire races. He dealt in everything from drugs to prostitution to providing living victims for vampires to drain and kill. A real nice upstanding vampire was Raithe.

      Striker had been hunting Raithe for hundreds of years, and not once had he been able to get this close to him. It had taken ten years of undercover work, but Culler had finally gained Raithe’s trust. Striker didn’t want to think about the evils Culler must have endured and participated in to prove her fealty to Raithe. Culler kept assuring Striker that she was okay and didn’t need a psychological evaluation. She promised Striker she could locate Raithe’s den, but she needed more time. Through the years, she’d given Striker several leads on child-pornography rings and snuff-film makers, mostly throughout Europe, even a bordello filled with werepanthers Raithe tortured for his own amusement, but not the one thing Striker wanted: Raithe.

      Then Culler had turned on him and joined Raithe. At the thought of his nemesis, Striker felt his fangs jut out more and scrape his lower lip. He tasted his own blood and realized he and Raithe were more similar than he cared to admit. They were both ruthless in their own way, both unable to stop until the other was eradicated.

       Chapter 2

      Takala Rainwater stuffed the last bite of a ham and cheese croissant in her mouth as she saw the road sign for the Woodlawn Terrace subdivision. A cemetery name if she ever saw one. Right up there with Pleasant Green and Quiet Acres.

      She made an uneasy face as she turned right, finished off a can of Pepsi, and drove her MINI Cooper down the road. The streets of Fredericksburg looked like any other quiet residential neighborhood in February. Neatly groomed houses lined the block. Rows of dormant flower gardens waited for winter to end and spring to begin. Evidence of a recent snow still painted the lawns in a sheen of white. The pockmarked bodies of melting snowmen waved to her from some of the yards. The only evidence of death here was the name of the road.

      She grabbed the note lying beside her and looked at the address Blake had given her. Blake Green worked for the FBI’s Data and Statistics Department. A friend since high school. He gleaned information for Takala’s private investigating agency, and in return Takala sprung for his dinner at a four-star restaurant once a month.

      Blake had been searching for evidence of Takala’s mother for four years, since joining the FBI. Blake was a bloodhound when it came to finding information, and Skye Rainwater had become one of his obsessions. Finally he’d got a hit this morning. He had flagged the name, and someone must have been researching it, because the flag popped up. He had followed the electronic trail and called Takala all excited, telling her that he’d discovered information in the State Department database on Skye Rainwater. She had two aliases, Simone Poindexter and Lilly Smith. He also gave Takala Lilly Smith’s LKA (last known address) here in the States. Surprisingly, it was in Fredericksburg, Virginia, not seventy miles from the Patomani Indian reservation where Takala lived. He also added the usual caveat he did with all the leads he gave her: that the information might be bogus. In this case it could have been planted by the State Department to throw people off Skye’s trail. But it was a lead.

      Takala wondered how her mother was connected to the State Department, but that was still a mystery to her and Blake. She vowed to worship Blake for the rest of his life and buy his dinner every day for the next twenty years. Blake’s ego had seemed worthily pandered to and satisfied, and they had left it at that.

      Now Takala felt her heart pounding as she read the numbers. Forty-five was a couple of blocks away. This could be the moment for which she’d been waiting her whole life. Finally, she might meet her mother. Face-to-face. Up close and personal. No room to run.

      She had a lot of questions for her, and they were the kind you had to look a woman in the eye while she answered them, like how does a mother just drop three daughters on the doorstep of her mother’s home and leave? Even though it was forbidden to speak of anyone who had been abjured from her tribe, Meikoda, Takala’s grandmother, had felt Takala and her sisters wouldn’t stop asking about their mother until they heard the explanation of why and how they came to live with her. After warning them that she could only tell them once, she had gone on to explain that Skye had left them because she’d refused to marry the man predestined to be her husband—that’s how it was for Guardians. They married whomever the Maiden Bear chose for them. But Skye had refused, spit in the face of the creator of her tribe’s white magic. Skye had abandoned her family, her preordained station as the Guardian, and her standing in the tribe to marry for love. It had ended badly, and her husband, Takala’s father, had died prematurely of lung cancer.

      Meikoda said his death was Skye’s reprimand from Maiden Bear. And Skye wallowed in her grief, turning to drugs for solace, until she could no longer care for her own daughters. That excuse didn’t mesh if Skye had gone to work for the State Department. No, Takala wanted the truth, to hear it from her mother’s own lips. That was if she was still alive. This Lilly Smith could be a dead end.

      But Takala couldn’t dampen the hope stirring in her, or the dread. What if she found Skye, and it didn’t go well? What if she offered no explanation and resented Takala looking for her? Takala decided she’d cross that bridge when and if she ever reached it.

      She rounded a corner and slowed. Number forty-five was a modest two-story with a white picket fence. Even a Christmas wreath still graced the door. Real homey. Fit right in the burb-style neighborhood. Maybe Lilly Smith had a family of her own.

      At

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