Grave Intentions (Beyond the Veil Mystery #2)

Chapter 1

It was all Angel’s idea. The hell week of hazing—or, as it was officially known, training for Tactical Field Work—left me sore, tired, and grumpy every night.

Which lasted about as long as it took Angel to convince me to let him massage away the aches.

Okay, so the man had magic hands, and I sort of melted when he touched me.

Was it a mate thing, or an Angel thing? It didn’t matter.

The coming promised three-day weekend—mandatory, as we’d be on call for a seven-day TFW rotation—looked like paradise, if I could get through this final rescue drill.

An unknown teammate hid inside a haunted, abandoned warehouse across the Veil, waiting to be rescued.

The smiley face logo was even creepier in a world filled with ghosts and supernatural monsters.

How did I know it was haunted? Because the fucking ghosts were everywhere and loud.

Did they bother the rest of the team? No.

Was I allowed my mate and lover at my side?

Again, no. Angel wasn’t my target. Rather, he was the opposition, poised to keep me from completing my mission. And I hated every minute of it.

I crouched behind a stack of moldy, long forgotten storage containers, hounded by shades of wavering white. A headache formed behind my eyes.

“They keep walking through me,” one ghost complained.

“It stinks like people in here,” another groaned.

“You could point me in the direction of my target,” I told them, annoyed at the constant bitching.

These weren’t like TV show ghosts looking for a guide to help them crossover.

Nope, this was like Karen Central. Everyone had something to bitch about and no interest in fixing anything, not even to get me out of their hair sooner.

At least the noisy bastards wouldn’t alert the team to where I hid.

If I was rescuing Remi again, I’d have to punch someone.

He’d doused me with glitter last time, which meant I was still picking pieces off of every part of me three days later.

The victory of rescuing him had been short-lived after the confetti bomb, as the team had slammed us both to the floor, and we lost, due to the distraction of sparkling bits not at all related to magic.

Alone, I could focus. Or at least I tried to.

My power buzzed under my skin, restless and hungry, reacting to every supernatural presence in this godforsaken warehouse.

The shades chattering like magpies, the building saturated with supernatural energy, and the nearby grumbling of bored hellhounds set as my guards.

The most entertaining and terrifying fact about the hounds was their ability to vanish into shadows, unseen by anyone, even most NHVs, Non-human Variants.

I could sense them, my demon magic alighted by their presence, but the rest of the team couldn’t.

My earpiece snapped and crackled. “You’re running out of time, Holt,” Angel said, sounding smug. “T-minus seven minutes to secure your target before we come in guns blazing.”

They were armed with paintball guns. Protocol demanded caution at all stages of training, especially across the Veil, but they’d pepper me with the colorful splats, not caring that they bruised, to prove a point.

I was HV, a human variant, and not a physically strong one at that.

That my boyfriend, a shifter who could climb walls like Wolverine, took pleasure in catching me, even while I was guarded by supernatural fire dogs he insisted I have on duty made me want to bite him, hard. And then maybe kiss him stupid.

“Eat glitter, Mao,” I growled into the mic, barely above a whisper.

“I have,” he teased back, reminding me that he had, in fact, found glitter in my ass crack.

“Flirt later,” Ezra snapped across the line. “T-minus four until we arrive, Holt.”

I exhaled, long and slow. Right. Target. Rescue mission. Professionalism.

The ghosts chose that moment to start shrieking like a flock of seagulls fighting over abandoned French fries. Someone was coming.

I stretched my senses and let the building’s energy wash over me.

Somewhere to my left, a pipe dripped with the rhythm of a bad R his mouth stretched in a silent scream.

Then the thing vanished, the force of the eruption of smoke and shadow exploding the crates around me in a thousand shards of rotted wood.

I curled into a ball, praying to save myself from becoming a pincushion, but everything bounced off an invisible shield, my little fae dragon friend coming to the rescue.

I breathed hard, heart racing, gaze following any movement around me as the dust fluttered, showing the cleared warehouse, every bit of debris having exploded into a battlefield of wood daggers lodged in every surface. I hoped the rest of the team was okay.

“Jude!” Angel’s voice cut through the panic. “Babe?”

A half dozen pairs of boots tromped my way as I wheezed and stared at the scorch mark on the concrete where the thing had been. Hitting anything twice with a Taser should slow it down—it was why our guns had two cartridges. Apparently, it wasn’t enough for a shadow god and his minions.

Ezra skidded into view; real gun drawn. “What the fuck was that? Angel, he’s here.”

“A visit from a shadow god,” I coughed. “Not part of the drill.” I waved away the smoke, eyes stinging from all the dust. Angel owed me a shower and life-affirming sex after this crapshoot.

Angel skidded to a halt behind Ezra, with Wade, and Bobby on his six. He hauled me up, his hands scanning for injuries. “Are you hurt?”

“Shield up,” I said, still coughing on wood dust. “So much for your hellhounds.” I couldn’t sense them anymore. “He scared them off, I think, or maybe took over one of their forms? It morphed.” Not once, but twice. “And I saw Cassidy.”

A beat of silence. Even the ghosts shut up.

“Say again?” Bobby was the first one to ask for clarification.

“There was a shift in the shadows, and I saw Cassidy’s face underneath the darkness before it turned to smoke and blew up everything in the warehouse.”

“How?” Wade asked.

Remi’s voice erupted over our earpiece. “Guys, how immortal are vampires?”

“What?” Ezra snapped into his headset.

“Look up.” Remi crossed the warehouse in hurried strides, gaze pointing toward the ceiling.

Victor swung from the rafters above us, wrapped up in shimmering black tendrils like a shadow spiderweb.

Game over, whispered a ghost, then hummed the Mario Bros. end-game theme. Duh duh... duh-duh-duh duuuuhm.