Twilight Crook

  Twilight Crook

  Book 2 in the Flirting with Monsters series

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  First Digital Edition, 2020

  Copyright © 2020 Eva Chase

  Cover design: Yocla Book Cover Design

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989096-76-5

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-989096-77-2

  Contents

  Free Book!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Next in the Flirting with Monsters series

  Dragon’s Guard excerpt

  About the Author

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  1

  Sorsha

  I hadn’t always wanted to end the world, even after it’d started to seem that a significant portion of the world wanted to end me.

  The specific people who’d been after me most recently might still be lurking on the other side of the plywood wall I was now eyeballing from the sidewalk across the street. I couldn’t see much other than the skeleton of steel girders rising up above it.

  Construction workers perched in their neon vests at various points across that skeleton. That was new. Before, it’d looked like the construction site that hid my enemies’ secret facility was just a front. Surprise, surprise: apparently all those beams and boards were actually going to construct a building.

  “Okay,” I murmured. “I’m going in.”

  If you were watching, it’d have looked as if I crossed the road alone. I was counting on my monstrous companions—four of them now, up from a trio to a quartet—slinking after me through the shadows. More properly called “shadowkind,” beings like them had gotten the name both because of the darkness of their natural realm and their ability to sink into and travel through the darkness in ours. Which also conveniently meant they could leap out of that darkness and tackle anyone who tried to tackle me.

  We were pretty sure the crew of monster hunters and torture-happy scientists we’d faced off against wouldn’t attack me in broad daylight with multiple witnesses, but I wasn’t tossing all caution to the wind. Three cheers for supernatural bodyguards!

  The buzz of a saw carried from deeper within the construction site. As I walked over to the half-open gate where the workers had driven a couple of trucks in, the tang of fresh-cut pine wood in the warm summer air tickled my nose.

  I’d kind of hoped that simply strolling in would get me where I wanted to go. A lot of the time, looking like you knew you were allowed to be someplace would convince everyone around you of it too. No such luck today.

  A guy with a gray helmet, an orange vest, and a moustache so bushy a squirrel could have borrowed it as a substitute tail stepped into my path and held up his hand. “Where do you think you’re going, Miss?”

  For those of you taking notes: you can get good mileage out of a well-placed giggle too. “Oh,” I said with a little laugh. “I’m sorry. Something of mine blew over the fence—I just wanted to grab it.”

  A couple of the other workers sauntered over. Mr. Moustache glanced around. “Do you see it here? I didn’t notice anything.”

  I tapped my lips, pretending to scan our surroundings. “No, maybe it drifted farther in. Couldn’t I just take a quick look around? It doesn’t look like you’re doing anything at the moment that’d make me fear for my life.” I raised my eyes to the girders above.

  One of the younger guys chuckled, but the moustache dude shook his head. “Sorry, Miss, but we could get in a lot of trouble if we let pedestrians wander around. What is it you lost? You can give us your contact information, and we’ll keep an eye out for it.”

  It needed to be something that could have easily slipped from my hand and been caught in the wind. The words tumbled out before I’d given them much thought. “It was a napkin. A paper napkin with a phone number on it.”

  Did they look skeptical? I folded my arms over my chest and put on my most convincing tone. “It was from a really hot guy, okay? I don’t want him to think I couldn’t be bothered to shoot him a text.”

  The guy who’d chuckled now waggled his eyebrows. “We could give you a few phone numbers to make up for the loss.”

  Very funny. In reality, I was getting more than enough action these days. Sure, it was from men these dudes wouldn’t believe existed, but that was part of what I liked about my new lovers.

  Before I could answer, Mr. Moustache handled the come-on for me. “We haven’t got time for this messing around. After all the delays on continuing construction, they’ll hand us our asses if we don’t get on with it.” He bobbed his head to me. “If you give me your phone number, I promise I’ll only call if one of us turns up your napkin.”

  I sighed dramatically. “Oh, well, if it’s drifted off that far maybe it’s just not meant to be. Can’t fight destiny! Thanks for your help, though.” I sauntered out without waiting for their response.

  Since it wouldn’t exactly do for the regular mortals to witness my monstrous companions emerging from the shadows as if appearing out of thin air, I couldn’t confer with them until I reached the dim alley a few blocks down the street. A trash bin farther down the narrow space was baking in the summer heat, giving off a lovely bouquet of broiled kitchen scraps. I wrinkled my nose and glanced around to make sure no one human had followed me between the looming concrete walls.

  A moment later, four figures solidified around me like smoke condensing into physical form.

  “A hot guy’s phone number on a napkin—really?” Ruse teased, his hazel eyes twinkling beneath the fall of his rumpled chocolate-brown hair. “Or have you already gotten bored with the pickings here?” The incubus gave me his typical smirk, which cracked a dimple in his roguishly gorgeous face. I’d “picked” him a couple of times already, and I was happy to report that getting it on with a sex demon was everything you’d expect from the package and more.

  Next to Ruse, Snap’s forehead had furrowed, barely putting a dent in the divine beauty that made him look like a youthful sun god. “The napkin was made up,” he protested in his bright voice, and turned his moss-green gaze on me. “It was made up, wasn’t it?”

  I patted his slim arm. “A total fabrication. I have no phone numbers whatsoever, nor do I want any.”

  The devourer made a pleased humming sound and stepped closer—not to touch me, but as if he simply wanted to soak up my presence. I’d also gotten it on with Snap not that long ago, in a tamer if no less satisfying fashion while he eased into the whole concept of physical desire. What could I say? I’d been busy lately… although wit
h a whole lot more than getting busy, I promise.

  Waking up Snap’s carnal awareness had also stirred up a possessive instinct I hadn’t counted on but couldn’t help finding kind of sweet. He might stand a full head taller than me, but he was about as frightening as a gamboling fawn. Of course, at this point I knew more about the feel of his body than why the others called him a devourer, which was still a mystery to me. Whatever his greatest power was, just the idea of it made him shudder in terror, so he hadn’t exactly been eager to chat about it.

  As usual, the third member of my original trio was all business. “It didn’t appear as though you got close enough to make out anything of the inner facility, m’lady,” Thorn said somberly. The ruggedly handsome hulk of a man, a smidge taller even than Snap and filled out with muscles galore, had never met a subject he couldn’t approach with grave severity.

  He could be plenty intimidating without even trying, although right now his imposing air was impaired by the little dragon squirming from one broad shoulder to the other, displacing Thorn’s long white-blond hair with little snuffles of discontentment. Pickle hadn’t spent much time around anyone other than me since I’d rescued him from a collector ages ago. It’d taken a lot of coaxing—and quite a bit of bacon—to warm the lesser shadowkind creature up to Thorn enough for him to let the warrior carry him into the shadows, out of mortal sight.

  “I couldn’t see anything,” I agreed. “But it seems like a bad sign that construction has started up again. I can’t imagine the sword-star group would let the workers wander around the site if there was anything incriminating left to see.” The covert group of hunters, scientists, and who the hell knew what else we’d spent the past week battling marked some of their equipment with a symbol like a star with sword blades for two of its points, which was the only way we’d found to identify them so far.

  The fourth shadowkind in our group—the one I’d only met last night after we’d broken him out of the facility that’d been hidden in the construction site—shifted on his feet. His voice held a ring of authority as cool as his icy blue stare. “I think you should hold off on making sweeping assumptions until we’ve had an actual look inside the place.”

  I wasn’t totally sure what to make of Omen, the guy my trio referred to as their “boss.” He shouldn’t have stood out in the bunch—not as tall or as muscle-bound as Thorn, not as languidly sensual as Ruse or as breathtakingly dazzling as Snap. Other than those piercing eyes, he was attractive enough with his tawny, short-cropped hair and sharp features, but hardly otherworldly. I hadn’t determined what monstrous feature he’d been unable to shed in his mostly human form, either. No shadowkind could pass for fully human on close inspection, as Thorn’s crystalline knuckles, Snap’s forked tongue, and the curved horns that poked from Ruse’s hair could attest to.

  All the same, Omen radiated power and menace with every movement of his body, every word that fell from those Cupid’s bow lips. When we’d opened his cell last night, he’d lunged out more beast than man—he’d slaughtered two of the guards in a blink. That capacity for violence lurked somewhere beneath the controlled façade he was presenting now. At least with Thorn, who could be monstrously brutal too, the warrior frame and the scars lining his face served as plenty of warning.

  Thorn adjusted that frame now, giving Pickle a careful nudge to keep the tiny dragon from tumbling right off him. “We could slip through the shadows right now to survey it. Two of us go and two stay to watch over Sorsha.” He’d already smashed through an apartment building and torn heads from men’s bodies to keep me safe—he took his self-assigned job as my protector even more seriously than he took most other things.

  Omen had held up his hand before the warrior had even finished speaking. “No. Whatever we find, we’ll want our devourer testing it to see what he can glean, and he can’t do that while there are human witnesses around.” He glanced at the sky. “It’ll be a little longer before their work day is finished. Since we’ll want a vehicle of our own to rely on as we proceed, we may as well take the opportunity to pick up my car and then return.”

  He definitely lived up to the title of boss—as in, bossy. Since we had just met, and I wasn’t confident he didn’t have some supernatural power that would eviscerate me if I pissed him off too much, I meant to keep my mouth shut and go along with his plan. The trouble was, the next words out of his mouth were to me, with a slight sneering edge: “Since you can’t travel through the shadows, I’ll give you the address. You can meet us there.”

  I blinked at him. “You’re telling me to head across town on my own?” The other three had refused to let me out of their sight for more than a few minutes since they’d shown up at my apartment, even when I’d wanted them to let me handle one thing or another alone.

  Omen gave me a narrow look. “I would have thought a woman of your many supposed talents could manage a simple cab ride.”

  “Well, yeah.” But the sword-star crew had a bad habit of showing up unannounced, weapons blazing. I was only alive thanks to the efforts of my trio—my shoulder throbbed dully where I’d taken a bullet yesterday before Thorn had yanked me out of the way of one that would have blasted straight through my heart. It was still daytime, though, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Bossypants make me look like a weakling.

  “Here’s a thought,” Ruse said, smooth as ever. “A cab can whisk any of us across town much faster than we can flit through the shadows. Why don’t I charm a driver into zipping us to our destination as one happy family?” He slung a playful arm over my shoulders and grinned at Omen.

  Omen frowned, but even he didn’t have the authority to change the fact that motorized vehicles offered superior speed. “Get on with it then,” he said with a flick of his hand toward the street as if it’d been his idea in the first place, and rattled off the address.

  He must have made some other gesture of command, because as Ruse strolled past us, Snap and Thorn faded into the patches of darkness that lined the alley. Omen lingered a moment longer, eyeing me with an intentness that set my nerves twitching, and then vanished as well.

  The boss had put Ruse on his team for good reason. It took all of a minute before the incubus had a taxi driver eagerly beckoning us into the back seat of his cab as if we were great friends and letting him give us a ride was a huge favor to him. Ruse swept his arm toward the open door. “Ladies first.”

  The other three stayed out of sight, but I assumed they hopped from the shadows along the street into the darker corners of the cab. We couldn’t see them, but from what I understood, they’d be able to see us just fine. I doubted Omen would eviscerate me in full view of at least one unknowing mortal, so this seemed like the perfect time to pay him back for his obvious disdain for my presence.

  “Nicely done,” I said to Ruse as the cabbie hit the gas, and scooted over to grasp the silky fabric of his shirt. The incubus flashed a brilliant smile before meeting me halfway for the kiss I’d planned to claim.

  The moment his mouth caught mine, it was definitely him doing the claiming. Holy mother of mistletoe, the guy could kiss. Sure, bodily pleasures were his stock and trade, but still, mark this one A with a thousand pluses.

  For a few seconds, I forgot where we were. I forgot the onlooker I’d meant to piss off. I was lucky I remembered my name. My lips parted for Ruse’s sly tongue, and my body melted into his, my skin sparking where he trailed his fingers down my side.

  Why had we put a hold on our very enjoyable nighttime escapades again? Oh yeah, because he’d broken his promise and used his paranormal voodoo to take a peek inside my head. But he’d told me why with an explanation I could believe, and he’d been on excellent behavior since. I should definitely look into rewarding that behavior soon, shouldn’t I, especially since the reward would be gratifying for both of us?

  The driver gave a little cough, and that broke me out of the bliss enough to ease back. Heat crept over my cheeks. Ruse shot me another smile, but I’d swear even he looked a tad fl
ushed. I gave myself a mental high five. If Omen was fuming right now, especially since he couldn’t actually tell us to knock it off, so much the better.

  The cab took us to a derelict storage facility on the outskirts of the city. Most of the garage-style doors were dented and rusted, many of them half-open with only dust and litter scattering the cement floors beyond. But the place must have been at least somewhat operational, because the unit Omen strode straight to had its lock in place and no sign of deterioration. He jerked up the door to reveal…

  “You drive a station wagon?” I said, unable to keep the incredulous note out of my voice.

  Omen shot me a frigid glance and patted the boxy brown hood. “Betsy here is as reliable as they come, and when evading one’s enemies, that matters much more than glitz. She’s also got a glamour on her windows that gives a false impression of who’s inside, courtesy of a former fae associate of mine. I do also have a motorcycle, but that’s kept elsewhere.”

  And it wouldn’t really lend itself to carting all five of us around town, at least not when the others were in physical form. But seriously—he’d named his car Betsy? I held in a snicker, but the sharpening of his glare suggested he’d noticed the twitch of my lips. I did have to admit that the glamour spell would be awfully useful for keeping the pricks we were up against off our backs.

  Thorn peered into the darkness of the storage unit, where wooden crates and metal chests were stacked along the walls around the car. “This space could also serve as a place for Sorsha to sleep—out of the way, and—”