Arrest, Search and Séance : Book 1 of the Fringe Society, R.D. Hunter [good english books to read txt] 📗

back to this bar, until the contract expired or he was released. Even if the place caught fire, he’d be right here as it fell down around his ears, mixing cocktails.

“Whose contract?” I asked, although I had a sneaking suspicion I already knew.

“My contract,” a smooth, feminine voice said from behind. I turned and found myself looking into the cool, deep eyes of Isabelle, the leader of the Gilded Moon Coven.

No one knew Isabelle’s last name. In fact, very little was known about her at all. She appeared to be a woman in her mid-thirties, but the rumor was that she was actually must older. She was tall, with straight, dark hair down to the middle of her back and a buxom figure that was enhanced by the low-cut dresses she always wore.

She came on the scene in Atlanta a little over a decade ago, and quickly rose through the ranks of the Gilded Moon due to her cunning and considerable magical talents. Seducing and sleeping with the former head of the coven didn’t hurt matters either, and her enemies and nay-sayers always had a bad habit of turning up dead, if they turned up at all. She was a ruthless and dangerous adversary, and now she was smirking at me like a cat who’d backed the mouse into a corner.

“Isabelle,” I said, nodding my head in a show of respect, “you need to get your people out of here. An attack is coming.”

“You mean from your friend, Darren Hawkins? Oh, I know all about that.” My open mouth must have been amusing, because she gave a little titter of a laugh before saying, “My Dear, this is my city. No act of considerable magic happens here without me knowing about it. Congratulations on your recent re-dedication, by the way. We’ll have to talk about the unexpected visitor who showed up at a later date. As you can see, I’m otherwise occupied at the moment.”

A man and woman, both gorgeous and wearing only a thin, leather loin cloth, came up to her on either side and began nuzzling into her neck. She laughed again and arched her back, obviously enjoying the attention.

“Relax, Ladies,” Isabelle said. “Everything is prepared. Even though you were not invited to this event, I am willing to extend to you the full measure of my hospitality this night. Grab a drink, a man, or a woman; hell, grab all three, and enjoy yourselves. You’re in for quite a show.”

“What now?” Lacey asked as we watched her stagger off to a mound of pillows with her two companions.

“We get as many people out as we can,” I said. “Try to limit the number of targets…”

The sound of an impact, heavy enough to cause bits of plaster and dried wood to fall from the ceiling. A second blow landed, this one heavier than the first, and landed like a crack of thunder. Hawkins had arrived.

“Everybody out!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “You have to get out of here now.”

No one moved. No one even acknowledged that I was speaking. The music had faded to nothing by this point, and the flashing strobes of light had settled into an intense glow. A tense hush had fallen over the crowd, as if they were waiting for an expected event or a guest of honor.

“Is this some kind of spell?” Lacey asked in confusion.

“Worse,” I said. “It’s confidence.”

Hawkins came in through the east wall. Not the door in the east wall, just the east wall. It blew inward in a shower of rubble that fell just short of the crowd. Now I understood while the festivities had been arranged in the center of the massive room. It meant that, whichever way Hawkins chose to enter, there was ample room between him and his first victims. Isabelle was clever.

The smoke cleared, reluctantly at first, then a great gust of wind pushed it to the side, and I was able to get my first good look at Hawkins. It was horrifying.

The crystals had continued to grow all over his body as his life energy fed and nourished them. Now, spiky protrusions could be seen all over his body, leaking blood onto the floor around his feet. One of his legs barely bent, causing him to limp forward like something out of an old horror-movie. His left eye was completely gone, a shard of garnet taking its place and trailing down one cheek. And as he smiled when he looked around, I could see that all his teeth were gone, having been replaced by jagged pieces of quartz that seemed to grow before my very eyes.

It was obvious that his body was running out of time. No human could function long under such torment. And, as I watched him scan the room, picking out those who would die first by his hand, it became equally obvious that he didn’t care.

“Why aren’t any of you running?” he called, his voice hoarse and full of gravel.

“Probably because we aren’t afraid of you,” one of the party goers spoke up. He was a young man in his twenties, shirtless and wearing a leather mask with a zipper for a mouth.

Hawkins fixed him with a glare from his one, good eye.

“Well, let’s see what we can do about that.”

He leaped forward, moving quicker than I’d have ever believed possible. He was obviously using the energy of the crystals to increase his physical prowess, which meant that, at the moment, he was probably the strongest man alive as well as the fastest. It was a damn dangerous combination.

But the spoken word is quicker, especially when it’s coming from a prepared mouth. In this case, that mouth belonged to Isabelle. As soon as Hawkins charged forward, his hands outstretched and going for the speaker’s throat, she yelled in a commanding voice,

“Encircle