Chapter 1
EIRA
New Orleans
I drop from the fire escape without breaking stride, boots hitting wet concrete as the shifter bolts across Dauphine Street and clips a trash can hard enough to scatter bottles.
It’s past midnight. The Quarter is loud, with music leaking from doorways, laughter rolling through the humidity, tourists drunk on neon and sugar and the promise that nothing bad ever happens on streets this bright.
My quarry uses that.
The Revenant Agency’s brief said elusive, violent when cornered, fond of crowds.
It didn’t say clever, but that part was implied.
‘Stop,’ I warn him, because sometimes that works. Sometimes instinct overrides arrogance and the right tone makes a creature remember consequences.
It doesn’t tonight.
He shifts on the run, shoulders rolling, bones setting wrong beneath skin, glamour slipping just enough that the people nearest him step back without knowing why.
Fear recognises its own.
‘I just wanna talk.’
‘Yeah, right,’ he snaps.
Sigh. It was worth a try.
My phone vibrates against my thigh.
I ignore it, cut left, vault a wrought-iron fence, and come out ahead of him at the mouth of a narrow alley that stinks of old beer and rain.
He skids to a pause, recalculates, snarls.
The sound carries a warning that has nothing to do with volume and everything to do with what he is. A low-level vampire. I feel the old prickle along my spine that used to mean danger before I learned to master, then overcome it.
He reaches for me with his mind, sloppy and desperate. The compulsion hits like cheap cologne, obvious and badly applied.
I crush it instantly, fire the agency-issued pulse dart into his shoulder, then trigger it and watch his confidence disintegrate.
‘That all you’ve got?’ I ask pleasantly. The glamour collapses with a hiss of static. ‘Nice try,’ I tell him as he staggers. ‘Hotter deviants than you have tried that. None of them walked away either.’
‘Why the fuck are you chasing me? I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘Bullshit. You know why, Andre. You fled your sire while still bound by oath. You drained two human witnesses to conceal it. And you attempted to trade your sire’s territory maps for immunity.
That’s just for starters. I could go on but I’m tired and hungry and you’re getting on my last nerve,’ I say.
‘You’ve been a bad boy. I’m here to bring you in. ’
He snarls and lunges.
I meet him with a baton to the ribs that would shatter human bone but merely slows him, then a hook to the jaw that snaps his head back and drops him to a knee.
He comes up swinging.
I catch his wrist, twist until tendons complain, and drive my knee into his thigh. His roar rattles glass and draws eyes.
I don’t want eyes.
I want this done.
My phone vibrates again. Then a third time.
I grind my heel down on his foot, feel something give, then step inside his guard and wrap a silver-threaded cuff around his forearm. He bucks, claws scraping sparks off brick. I clamp the second cuff onto his other wrist and murmur the words that lock the weave.
He slams into the wall and slides down, glamour gone.
The cuffs bite.
Good.
He twists his head to see me better in the dark and exhales sharply. ‘You’re Eira Cross.’
I flash him a grin. ‘In the flesh, unfortunately for you, buddy.’
His eyes are too bright, pupils wrong, the telltale shimmer of a predator who thought New Orleans would forgive him anything.
He spits at my boots and tries to shift again. The cuffs hum in warning. He slumps.
I glance towards the curious faces at the far end of the alley, then at the bartender leaning out his door with a towel in hand and a question in his eyes. I give him a look that says handled.
He nods, already forgetting.
The phone vibrates again.
I swear under my breath and haul the vampire up by the chain connecting the cuffs, dragging him towards the van idling around the corner.
He resists until I press two fingers to the hollow of his throat and let a sliver of power bleed through the glove.
He stills.
He knows what I’m capable of even though he’s too much of a chauvinist to accept it. That part always amuses me.
The colossal underestimation until the truth punches them in the throat.
‘You’ll be comfortable if you stop squirming like a worm,’ I lie. ‘Or… you’ll be alive,’ which is the part that matters.
After securing him in the back, I run a quick scan to confirm containment, and shut the doors.
Then I lean against the bumper and finally pull my phone free.
Three missed calls.
A fourth buzzes through my hand.
I let it ring out and take a breath I don’t need. The night presses in, thick and familiar. New Orleans likes its monsters close. It feeds them and teaches them manners.
It taught me well too.
The Revenant Agency taught me the rest.
I didn’t start here, or anywhere that would make sense if traced back far enough. I learned to disappear before I learned to hunt, to make my name a rumour that never stuck, to move through rooms without leaving a mark.
The agency liked that.
They like results more.
Tier Seven doesn’t come with applause, just heavier files and longer nights. My handler calls me reckless because it’s easier than calling me effective. My peers call me untouchable because it keeps them from asking questions.
I don’t believe in destiny. I believe in contracts, clauses, and power that answers when you knock in the right places. I believe in getting paid and leaving before the mess cools.
My phone buzzes again.
For fuck’s sake.
I glance at the screen, and my stomach tightens in dread.
It’s the Revenant Agency – New York Office.
Some calls change the shape of a night. Some change everything that follows.
‘You’ve been summoned.’
There was a time when those three words would’ve turned my bones to water. Back when I still flinched at authority and before I grew into this skin I built for myself. Before I learned to wear my reputation like armour instead of a target.
I lean back in the chair and prop my boots on the edge of the desk, thick-soled Blackthorn Vectors, matte leather, reinforced toe, custom order, paid for in blood money and bad decisions.
I ignore the glare aimed my way and pick at a nail with the tip of my Widow’s Fang.
The blade hums faintly, the way it does when I’m bored or irritated or both. Long, curved, shadow-tempered steel, runic veining barely visible unless you know where to look. It doesn’t drink breath like the stories say.
It drinks intent.
Whatever wants me dead sharpens it. It’s balanced so perfectly it feels less like a weapon and more like an extension of my hand, and when everything else fails, it always comes back to me.
Some weapons are tools. This one chose me.
I roll it between my fingers, briefly considering the rest of my kit out of habit.
Bonebreaker knuckles for idiots who think fists are enough.
Arachne wire coiled tight at my wrist for when walls and wards get in the way. Revenant bolts tucked neatly in my thigh rig for anything that pretends it has a soul.
And the Mercy Pin threaded through my hair, slim and innocent, because nothing unsettles an enemy quite like realising too late what they missed.
‘Let me guess,’ I say lazily. ‘Some overeager billionaire misplaced a pet. Or a problem. Or a mistress who stopped being entertaining. Maybe a senator’s son grew fangs on spring break and someone wants it handled quietly before the press catches wind?’
Across the desk, Maribel Knox doesn’t smile.
She never does when she’s deciding whether to let me hang myself or step in first.
She’s third in line to the head of the New York office, late fifties, iron-grey hair pulled back so tight it looks painful, eyes sharp enough to cut glass.
Her desk is aligned down to the millimetre, except for three pens currently out of order, and the only reason she hasn’t fixed them is because she’s focused on me.
‘No,’ she says flatly. ‘This isn’t frivolous.’
That gets my attention.
I flick my eyes to her face, still relaxed, still playing careless.
‘That’s disappointing. I was hoping for frivolous. Frivolous pays well and screams less.’
‘This is a serious request, Eira,’ she continues. ‘One you need to take seriously.’
I snort. ‘That’s adorable, Maribel. You know I don’t do “summoned” unless someone’s bleeding or a retrieval has torched the neutrality clauses. So which is it?’
Her mouth tightens. She exhales through her nose and finally realigns the pens, one by one.
When she looks back up, her gaze is steady. ‘You’ve been asked to meet Don Valentin Moretti.’
My fingers slip. The tip of the knife nicks my skin.
‘Shit,’ I mutter. Then, quieter, ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’
It isn’t the pain I barely register.
It’s the blood.
The bead wells at my fingertip, bright and traitorous.
I bring my finger to my mouth and suck the cut clean, copper flooding my senses for a split second before I pull away and wipe my hand on my jeans.
‘Well,’ I say lightly, forcing my voice into shape. ‘That makes this easy. Answer’s hell no. Thanks for thinking of me, though.’
Maribel’s brows shoot up, then pull down into a suspicious scowl.
‘You don’t look busy. And since when do you turn down a lucrative gig? Did you find a pot of gold when you chased down that errant leprechaun in Ireland last month? You know any recovered treasure has to be reported and handed over to the agency.’
I roll my eyes, relieved she’s latched onto the wrong thread.
‘Reports of leprechaun loot are wildly exaggerated. That idiot didn’t even have a cracked pot to piss in. Why do you think he was running a Ponzi scheme in Galway in the first place? Desperation, Maribel. It’s always desperation.’
She grunts and straightens a stack of files that don’t need straightening.
‘Whatever you’ve got going on will have to wait. These orders came from way above my pay grade, requesting you specifically.’
Relief dies fast and ugly.
I breathe through the spike of dread, then sharpen my irritation and let that surface instead. Her features twitch.
‘I’m your top bounty hunter,’ I say. ‘True or false?’
‘Don’t start this with me, Eira,’ she warns.