Intent to keep up the guise of a lone woman who didnât know she was being followed, Mori pushed open the tavern door and slipped into the cold night. The second she stepped outside, another blast of icy wind hit her in the face, and she grimaced with discomfort. Cricket shivered from his spot at the base of her neck, muttering curses under his breath.
Neither of them enjoyed the cold, but her older sister Tia had chosen this missionâand it usually didnât turn out well for those who disobeyed orders.
Mori, namely. She had never been too fond of rules.
Five silhouettes trailed after her as she headed toward an alley on the far side of the inn. As she watched them through the corner of her eye, firelight from a nearby lamp glinted off a silver dagger in one manâs palm.
These fools thought they could hunt an angel of death, and she would enjoy proving them wrong.
The weight of their eyes on the back of her neck made her skin crawl. It felt too familiar. It brought back the memories of her lost sisters and their screams, of their final moments, of the ash clouds as their bodies melted into the wind. She had lost so many of her kind to mortals, and this lingering weightâthis haunting sensation of being huntedâignited the furious hellfire in Moriâs veins.
A surge of white-hot rage flickered in her chest, and she took a steady breath to calm it.
She despised the sensation of being hunted, even by those with inferior skill and weaker skulls. It was what had pushed her to train. To hone her talent with her battleaxe. To strike without mercy, and to face any foe stupid enough to challenge her.
Mori had spent her life training to become the hunter, not the prey, and these men were in for quite a surprise.
As her boots crunched along the dirt road connecting the main shops and inns, she leaned into her enhanced senses and searched for the distant thud of the sheriffâs telltale gait somewhere inside. She caught the muffled melody of another barsong picking up inside the tavern, but otherwise, she couldnât detect the sheriffâs presence at all.
Damn. She couldnât risk losing the trail or missing any relevant information. She would have to make this quick.
âGet ready,â she whispered to her familiar.
âOoh!â Cricket hissed excitedly. âBloodshed?â
Mori glanced over her shoulder as the five men quickly closed the distance. âMost definitely.â
Her familiarâs quiet cackle filtered from the depths of her hair, and her fingers twitched with anticipation as she resisted the urge to grab the battleaxe on her back. She couldnât let them know she was on to them. Not until she could see the whites of their eyes.
They were still a little too far away, so it was time to set her trap.
When she turned down the alley between the tavern and a local tailorâs shop, two of the silhouettes broke away from the pack. They were circling around to cut her off, most likely, and that suited her just fine.
âItâs been a long night,â said one of the men behind her.
Now in the alleyâs shadows, Mori paused mid-stride and looked over her shoulder. Three of the goons blocked all light from the main road. Two of those silhouettes took up guard by the exit, while the third continued his confident swagger toward her. He took each slow and steady step with careless ease, as though the two of us had all the time in the world to chat.
A ploy to give the others time to block the other end of the alley, no doubt.
As he neared, Moriâs enhanced vision picked up details of his face despite the alleyâs heavy darkness. A pale scar on one eyebrow. A thick brown birthmark on his jaw. A sneer and a flash of white teeth as his eyes roamed her body.
âNow?â Cricket hissed quietly from the depths of her hood.
She didnât answer. The two of them had spent their lives together, and he knew her battle stances better than anyone. He was the only one who could sense every swing before it came. He was just egging her on.
That adorable little jerk.
âLook, darlinâ.â The thug gestured to the other end of the alley, where two silhouettes blocked the only other exit. âFive-to-one isnât good odds, even for someone with a pretty battleaxe. So, letâs make a deal. You make this easy on me, and Iâll make the rest of the night easy on you.â
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Mori flashed him a flirty smile. âPolite pass.â
His smile instantly faded. As he continued closer, he scowled at me with all the disgust of a man at the end of his patience. âDonât be stupid, little girl. Iâm warning you to go down easy, you hear me? Iâm not in the mood to deal with screaming.â
She gave him a halfhearted shrug, as though none of this phased her in the slightest. âThen donât scream.â
He was close enough to touch, now, and he reached out to grab her neck. âYou feisty littleââ
She didnât let him finish.
In a blur too fast to follow, she grabbed him. His arm broke with a loud crack, and he yelled in agony and surprise. With her grip still tight on his forearm, she swept his legs out from under him. His skull landed so hard on the dirt ground that it bounced. He froze, his skull submerged in a growing puddle of his own blood, and his eyes went wide with shock. Mori sank her knee into his gut to keep him pinned.
Didnât need this bastard squirming away, after all.
Like a flash of lightning, she tugged out the dagger hidden in a sheath on her waist and drove it into his heart.
The entire encounter had lasted seconds, and it was over before Cricket could even finish his dark little chuckle. That was the unspoken signal for her familiar to attack, and unlike this man, the little furballâs targets werenât going to get clean deaths.
Tiny claws pushed off Moriâs neck as he jumped off his perch, and her hood fell backward as he launched toward his prey. He shot into the darkness, little more than a bundle of jet black fur and glowing red eyes.
The two silhouettes at the far end of the alley wouldnât know what had hit them until those piercing fangs sank into their throats.
With a deft tug, Mori yanked her dagger out of the corpse beneath her and stood. Blood slid down the blisteringly sharp steel, leaving drips across their leaderâs face, and her intense glare shifted to the two stooges blocking the path to the main road.
They froze, their eyes wide as they gaped at the dead man at her feet. The taller of them started muttering incoherently about demons, but he was either too stunned or too cowardly to look her in the eye.
Mori didnât take kindly to being called a demon. A hellcat? Sure. A witch? Sometimes, depending on the context. But a demon?
Abso-fucking-lutely not.
With only a quick glance to aim, she threw her dagger at the taller manâs chest. The second it left her hand, he flinched at the sudden flash of light across its steel. Those broad shoulders of his pivoted in an attempt to run away, but her blade was faster.
He didnât even have time to turn his back on her. The blisteringly sharp blade sank deep into his chest, stabbing him clear through the heart, and he fell like an oak in the forest.
The thud of his partnerâs body hitting the ground snapped the lone survivor out of his daze, and he bolted. Mori grinned, satisfied that she would at least get a light workout from this, and darted after him.
Behind her, a manâs terrified scream filled the air, and Cricketâs guttural growl followed.
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Another gust of biting wind blasted through the narrow alleyway, and she suppressed a shiver. The howling winter air whistling past the buildings would mask the screams for a time, but they didnât have long before someone discovered the corpses.
They would need to move fast.
Her bloodlust built to a crescendo, and thin lines of golden light shimmered over the back of her hands. Raw power pulsed through her body as she reached into the depths of her being. As the flickering heat in her chest grew, her familiarâs snarl deepened. His voice darkened, mirroring her emotions as their connection shifted him into something deadlier, something even more brutal than before.
And the screams at the other end of the alley grew louder.
Focused as she was on her new prey, she didnât look back to see how Cricket was doing. That little devil could always hold his own.
Before her next victim could dart into the light and relative safety of the main road, she grabbed him by the back of his collar. her body tensed, and her heels dug into the ground as she slowed them both to an abrupt stop. A plume of dust kicked into the air, and she leaned into her enhanced strength to hurl the bastard over her head. He sailed above her, a helpless doll flailing in the alleyâs thick darkness, and he landed in the shadows with a hollow thud.
At the far end of the alley, a shrill scream ended with an abrupt gurgle. Something heavy thudded to the ground, and the air was once more silent. The happy patter of paws on the dirt neared as Cricket returned, and two glowing red eyes appeared in the darkness.
Time to go.
Though she rather wanted to milk this moment, it wouldnât be long before other mortals came to investigate the screams. She tugged her battleaxe free from the leather strap on her back, and the silver lines along its metal glowed brilliantly blue at her touch. The enchanted light cast an eerie haze across the lone survivorâs face, enough to reveal the blood streaming from an open gash in his temple.
He stared up at her in wide-eyed horror, and she raised her battleaxe to end this.
Before she could swing, however, the whistle of a dagger flying through the air behind her caught her ear. Without even peering over her shoulder, she tracked its movement, and time slowed as she sensed where it would land. She ducked before it could hit her, and she slipped out of range with moments to spare.
She tried to snare it with her open palm, but the blade was too fast. It slipped through her fingersâwhich could only mean one thing.
As the dagger landed in the lone traffickerâs head, she groaned with annoyance. He slumped backward, and she scanned the rooftops to figure out which of her sisters had stolen her kill.
Damn it.
This wasnât going to end well at all.