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  Mocker of Ravens

  (SPECTR Series 2 #1)

  Jordan L. Hawk

  Mocker of Ravens (SPECTR Series 2 #1) © 2015 Jordan L. Hawk

  ISBN: 978-1-941230-12-1

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art © 2015 Jordan L. Hawk

  Image credits: © iStockphoto.com / Gerber86

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Edited by Annetta Ribken

  Chapter 1

  John Starkweather was not having a good night.

  “Stop! Federal agent!” he bellowed. Not surprisingly, the figure currently fleeing arrest didn’t obey.

  Thunder grumbled off to the west, barely loud enough for human hearing to register. The oppressive heat of the July night had him perspiring even before the chase began. Now his suit stuck to his skin, and sweat ran into his eyes, stinging them with salt.

  He blinked rapidly, not daring to look away in case he lost the suspect. A series of brutal murders had ripped through the homeless population, and the mauled flesh and half-eaten bodies showed all the earmarks of late-stage lycanthropes. The guy running from John might or might not be one of those responsible, but his yellow eyes, snarling mouth, and superhuman speed suggested his innocence wasn’t very likely.

  On a straightaway, John would have had no chance of keeping up. Fortunately, they ran through a residential district on Charleston’s lower east side, not far from the waterfront. Houses loomed close against either side of the narrow street. The wildly uneven bricks making up the sidewalk would have been hazardous even without the frequent steel utility accesses jutting up through them.

  Forget about keeping up—John would be lucky not to break his leg.

  The suspect scrambled over a narrow iron gate between two of the old houses. Without pause, John clambered over after him, the gate’s decorative swirls offering plenty of handholds. He dropped to the ground on the other side and found himself in a driveway barely wide enough for a single car. His shoes sent echoes up from the mix of bricks and pavers making up the driveway. Did the lycanthrope live here? Or had he just hoped the gate would keep John out?

  Either way, the suspect had made a mistake. The driveway opened out into a tiny courtyard, surrounded on all sides by thick green hedges, which abutted the wooden siding of the houses. The smell of green growing things and damp earth flooded the small space. Gas lanterns, installed throughout Charleston’s historic district, illuminated the little courtyard. A window unit air conditioner hummed to life overhead, water dripping from it into one of the hedges.

  The runner stood waiting for John. The soft light of the gas lanterns revealed the acne-pocked face and scraggly moustache of a teenager.

  A teenager whose eyes were a terrible, baleful yellow, and whose mouth turned up into a grin showing off inhumanly sharp teeth.

  There came a scuff of claws on ancient brick from behind John. He spun, heart hammering. Two shapes made their way up the driveway behind him. Unlike the first suspect, these had made the full transition to werewolves: their bodies covered in matted fur, their lips straining around jaws filled with oversized teeth, their bestial eyes wild with the need to kill, to rend, to devour.

  “You Specs think you’re so smart,” the teen sneered. “But you ran right into our trap.”

  John shook his head. “No. You ran into ours.”

  A dark shape dropped a heart-stopping three stories from a nearby roof. Boots thudded on the old brick paving just a few feet behind the two lycanthropes.

  The newcomer surged to his feet. The gas light revealed a thin, white face, surrounded by a cloud of black hair whipped into a frenzy even though no wind stirred. Eyes black as the abyss fixed on the lycanthropes, their depths lit up by little flickers like lightning. Lips twisted back into a snarl, revealing deadly fangs.

  Drakul. Or vampire, if one wasn’t picky about the terminology.

  “Oh shit!” the teen screamed, the NHE inside him recognizing a much larger predator. The lycanthropes were trapped, with Gray between them and the only exit. Howling madly, they both charged the drakul, who eagerly leapt to meet them.

  Damn it. John couldn’t risk firing on either of them without hitting Gray. True, it wouldn’t kill Gray, but it would certainly hurt him.

  “Stay there!” John barked at the terrified teen crouching against the side of a building like he meant to claw his way through the siding to safety. Drawing his silver athame, John ran toward the fray.

  Gray hurled himself on one of the lycanthropes. It clawed at him, but the long elk hide coat he wore foiled its grip. Gray had claws of his own; he sank them into the werewolf’s shoulders, trying to get an angle to bite down on the thick vein pulsing in its neck.

  Unfortunately, grappling with one werewolf left the other free to wreak havoc. It attacked Gray from the side, snarling furiously. Its claws slashed across his forehead, wrenching his head sideways. Blood flew everywhere, and Gray snarled in pain and fury. While he was distracted by the second lycanthrope, the first used the opportunity to try to sink its teeth into Gray’s shoulder.

  John buried his athame to the hilt in the second werewolf’s back. The silver-plated blade struck bone—he’d missed the heart—but the NHE howled in agony and loosened its hold on Gray.

  Gray tore free in another spray of blood. This time he managed to get a grip on the first werewolf’s head, jerking it to the side hard enough to snap the vertebrae and sinking his fangs deep into the creature’s throat.

  Perhaps seeing its chance for escape, the second lycanthrope broke for the alleyway’s entrance. John dropped his athame and brought up his Glock. His shot caught the werewolf in the hip, spinning it around.

  Instead of hitting the ground, though, it surged back at him, the pain maddening it past the point of self preservation. John glimpsed jaws full of teeth and smelled the fetid breath as it bore down on him.

  Then a dark shape stepped between them. Gray slammed into the werewolf, bearing it to the ground. It thrashed like a mad thing, but the drakul ignored its claws in favor of sinking his teeth deep into its throat. A few seconds later, the werewolf went still beneath him.

  Gray rose lithely to his feet. Although tall, his build was slender. With all the black leather and hair, he looked like the sort of pretty goth boy John might pick up in a dance club, instead of a badass demon-killing vampire.

  Or a god of storm. But John didn’t let himself think about that part very often.

  “John. Are you unharmed?” Gray asked in a deep voice underlain by a bass roll of thunder that rattled John’s bones. He strode toward John, wiping the blood from his mouth. The wounds on his face and body had already healed, fueled by the etheric energy carried in the blood of those possessed by Non-Human Entities.

  “I’m fine.”

  “There is one more.” Gray’s obsidian eyes went to the quaking teen. “It sought to lure you into a trap.”

  “Yeah.” And that alone was odd. Ghouls might run in packs, but unlike real wolves, werewolves seldom appeared in groups. Then again, ghouls were opportunistic parasites who possessed the weak—homeless people, usually, or the desperately lonely. Summoning a lycanthrope, on the other hand, took deliberation. Which meant more than one faust in an area willfully trying to become possessed, and finding each other before an exorcist had the chance to catch them. “But he can still be exorcised.”

  Just because someone became possessed didn’t automatically put them beyond hope. Non-Human Entities could be exorcised within forty days of the initial summoning. But any longer, and the NHE took over completely. N
othing remained but to put them down like dangerous animals.

  “So I see,” Gray said, not sounding at all pleased about it.

  John stifled a sigh. He had joined Strategic Paranormal Entity ConTRol—more generally known as SPECTR—to protect both NHEs and humans alike. An exorcism was a victory.

  Gray’s interest in other NHEs, on the other hand, seemed limited as to whether or not he could eat them. Nowadays he refrained from devouring the poor souls still able to be exorcised, but John suspected he would never be entirely happy about it.

  “Hold him while I work,” John said as they approached the teen.

  The kid tried to bolt, but Gray was far too fast. A moment later, the teen dangled flat against the wall, feet kicking as Gray pinned his shoulders to the old brick. The faust screamed, yellow eyes rolling, inhumanly sharp teeth bared. A wet patch appeared on the front of his jeans.

  At one time, John would have put him in silver cuffs and dragged him back to HQ. Exorcists relied on circles and chants to sharpen their focus and give them the power to remove an NHE from a faust. Now, he simply stepped up, reached past Gray, and laid his hand on the kid’s forehead.

  John imagined a thick rope, covered in hooks, extending from his palm. He sank it deep into the teen, felt it snag on something, like a fish on a line.

  The lycanthrope didn’t want to emerge, fighting and snarling, but these days John had power to burn. He wrenched it out, caught a glimpse in his etheric sight of something like a horrid parody of a wolf, its lower half as unformed as a tadpole.

  The storm front of etheric energy pouring off Gray crackled—then the NHE vanished, devoured by the drakul.

  The kid went limp. Gray carefully lowered him to the ground. The etheric energy brushing John’s skin vanished, folding inside even as Gray’s long hair came to rest over his shoulders. A moment later, the badass vampire was gone, leaving behind just an ordinary guy.

  Well, no. Nothing about Caleb was ordinary, so far as John was concerned. Caleb was smart, sexy, and brave as hell. His entire existence had changed completely last February when Gray inadvertently possessed him. Most people would have ended up curled in a ball in the corner and screaming, not hunting down dangerous NHEs at John’s side.

  “Oh God!” the teen gasped. His eyes—light brown now, with no trace of yellow—went wide with horror. “I didn’t think it would be like that! Wh-what we did. We…oh God, did we eat…”

  Caleb stepped hastily back while the kid emptied his stomach. “Poor bastard,” he remarked.

  “Yeah.” Why the kid thought it a good idea to summon NHEs, John didn’t know. It wasn’t his business. Other people would decide whether charges would be brought; his part of the job was done. Well, almost. “Let’s get him back to HQ.”

  Caleb reached down and hauled up the sobbing kid. “Come on, wolf boy. Hope you like orange jumpsuits.”

  “Caleb,” John warned. For all they knew, the teen had been a victim, forced or pressured to agree to possession by his two friends. Compassion was the watchword.

  “Yeah, sorry.” Caleb glanced at the sky, then back at John. “Storm’s got me antsy.”

  “Getting closer?”

  “Oh yeah.” Caleb’s sly smile turned John’s question into something far more suggestive than he’d ever intended. “So let’s get this guy back to lockup, so we can wrap up for the evening. I need something to take the edge off.”

  * * *

  Gray watches through Caleb’s eyes as John finally pulls the sedan to a halt in front of their home. The storm has ridden in on the wind, and its power speaks to him, and his to it. They are one thing. Lightning sizzles in their blood.

  And if Gray feels it, then so does Caleb. Gray hovers just beneath their shared skin while Caleb sucks on John’s neck, the taste of salt filling their mouth from the dried sweat. His other hand is on John’s crotch, massaging the stiff erection beneath the barrier of cloth. The car smells of hot skin and musk, mingled with leather and the last fading traces of John’s cologne. Rain pelts on the roof. Thunder growls overhead. Gray wants to growl back, but their mouth is otherwise occupied.

  The vehicle safely stopped, John turns to kiss them. His hands frame their face, and his tongue swirls into their mouth, swiping away the last traces of mint from when Caleb brushed their teeth clean of blood.

  John drags his mouth free and gasps, “Inside.”

  Yes.

  “Yeah,” Caleb agrees, his voice gone ragged with the lust choking their throat.

  The roar of the rain against the car roof is replaced with the drum of it against the concrete sidewalk and iron fence. John catches their hand, and they run together to the door. He swears, fumbling for the correct key as the rain soaks them both. Lightning flickers, followed by thunder a second or two later.

  The night is alive around them: dark and rain and lightning and power. They could run for hours, could jump and climb, for the sheer joy of it. Of this living body.

  But there are other bodies, and other things to be done for the joy of it.

  “Take over for a while,” Caleb suggests as they follow John through the open door.

  Gray has no wish to argue. He manifests, Caleb receding to the presence watching now through his eyes, avid and hungry for what is to come. Gray pulls John to him, kissing him deep, and John moans and rubs his erection against Gray’s thigh.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” John says, when he can speak again. “I want you to fuck me until I beg to come.”

  As soon as they hit the bedroom, Gray seizes him. Claws snag in John’s clothes, and John stiffens slightly. “Claws in, darling.”

  Gray leaps back, claws tight in their sheaths, putting as much space between them as the small room will allow. “I hurt you?” He would not intentionally harm John, not ever. But mortals are so fragile, and he fears making some mistake and bringing unintended pain.

  John shakes his head. “No, no. Of course not. But I kind of need this suit for work, and if you rip it up, I’m making Caleb come clothes shopping with me.”

  “That’s hitting below the belt,” Caleb complains.

  Perhaps it is best to let John remove his own clothes. Gray does the same, hastily unbuckling heavy boots. Before he can slide off his leather pants, the lights flicker and die.

  “Damn,” John says. “I like looking at you.”

  John cannot see in the dark, but Gray can, perfectly well. “Other people can’t see, either,” Caleb suggests slyly. “And the garden is nice and dark…”

  Their shared heart beats more quickly at the thought, further stiffening their cock. “Come,” Gray says, and takes John’s hand.

  John’s expression is confused, but he follows willingly. Gray pauses beside the bed just long enough to pick up the lubricant, then flings open the balcony doors and lets in the storm.

  The smell of rain grows stronger: damp earth, ozone, and lush vegetation. Lightning crashes not far away, sending a tingle along their nerves. He pulls John out on the balcony with him; instantly, they are both soaked.

  John moans a little when they kiss. His cock pushes hard against Gray’s hip, insistent and wanting. Gray licks his lips, wanting to taste…but his fangs have a tendency to get in the way.

  John takes a step toward one of the wicker chairs, but Gray has other ideas. He catches John’s wrists—gently, so as not to harm him—and pulls him to the balcony railing. “Hold on,” Gray says, wrapping one of John’s hands around the iron.

  “Um, is this safe? Metal in a thunder storm?”

  We are the storm.

  Caleb is still uncertain, but subsides. John doesn’t question at all, simply wraps his hands around the railing and bends over it, his legs spread eagerly.

  The lube is warmer than the cold rain. John moans and lowers his head as Gray pushes in. The rain is cool against their skin, but John is hot and tight and slick.

  The wind howls, palmetto trees thrashing from the force. Lightning dances again, accompanied by a boom of thunder. The wild ni
ght surges through Gray’s veins and along his nerves, whispering of running and hunting.

  But this is better than hunting. He grips John’s hips, careful not to use too much of his strength, and slides his claws free of his fingertips. John gasps at the light pinpricks, the sound almost lost beneath the roar of rain, even to Gray’s inhumanly sharp hearing.

  They move together, John pushing back, Gray surging forward, and Caleb, his other self, right under their shared skin, shivering with pleasure. Gray closes his eyes and tips his head back, lets the rain kiss his face. More lightning, and the tang of ozone. His heart beats in time to the storm, or perhaps it echoes him, or perhaps they are simply one thing. John gasps out strings of words, incoherent with pleasure, “Fuck, yes, Gray, yes, don’t stop.”

  So he doesn’t, only lets the sensations wash through him: John’s body tight on his, the tingle of distant lightning on his skin, the surge and power of the storm in his blood. John’s movements quicken, one hand shifting from the railing to tug on his cock, his gasps and grunts coming faster.

  “Gray!” he cries suddenly, body pushing back. His muscles quiver beneath Gray’s hands as his orgasm takes him. Gray lets himself go as well, the storm quickening around him, the moan of wind around the cornice like a lover’s cry, static gathering and gathering until it explodes in a lightning strike so close the thunder is instantaneous. Gray roars into it, the sound turning into one, white light behind his eyes as he climaxes.

  For a moment, there is nothing but ecstasy, keener even than feeding on demon blood, before it slowly uncoils into a different sort of pleasure. Warmth and closeness, the smell of John’s skin and semen, washing away in the rain.

  “Damn,” John mumbles. He’s beginning to shiver, though, so Gray gathers him up and carries him inside to the bathroom to towel off.

  This is something he has never known before, although he walked the earth for thousands of years. Before, he inhabited only corpses, understood the world only through the colorless memories gleaned from the decaying neurons. Pain and pleasure were distant, dull things, and love nothing but a concept.