PROLOGUE

Present Day

England

“Ow. Ow. Ow. And did I mention ow?”

Kestra chuckled as she hurried to help the enormously pregnant woman trying to squeeze herself and half a dozen books and scrolls out of the Demon archives situated in the basement of the Demon King’s castle. Said Demon King, Noah, being Kestra’s mate and said castle being their home.

“You would think,” groused Isabella, a Druid/human hybrid, “that becoming half Nightwalker, a powerful, supremely gifted, fast-healing species, would allow me to avoid things like an aching back and swollen ankles. But noooooo.…”

Kestra was used to this complaining and took it as good-naturedly as it was meant. And Kestra forgave Bella for whatever parts of it were not lightly meant. She could understand. Bella, like her Demon husband, Jacob, was an Enforcer. Normally it was her calling to go out and kick ass, take some names, and keep errant Demons from breaking Demon law. But because of her present enceinte state, she was relegated to staying home and playing with her daughter or hanging out in Noah’s library and playing with ancient scrolls and manuscripts. Bella’s overprotective Demon husband, in his usual high-handed way, wouldn’t hear of her stepping one foot outside the Demon King’s protection while he was away doing his job.

Jacob, Bella, and their daughter, Leah, had permanently moved into Noah’s enormous castle a few months back when Bella had suffered horribly debilitating side effects fighting the poisonous magic of Necromancers, the beginning of a great battle culminating in the final capture of the traitor Demon Ruth, who had long been a thorn in their sides. Now Ruth was imprisoned for all time in a crystal ball, which was no doubt adorning Jasmine the Vampire’s dressing table that very moment, and Bella was recovering … but in the interim, it had been decided the family would continue to remain there as Bella moved from the vulnerability of recovery into the vulnerability of late pregnancy.

Bella was not always as upset about it as she pretended to be. After all, she had the enormous Demon archives and library at her fingertips. Which was basically heaven for a woman who had, seemingly a lifetime ago, been a librarian. Also, one of her Druid abilities was to read almost any language once exposed to it long enough.

“You shouldn’t be carrying the heavy ones. I told you, Jaleal could help you with that.”

“It’s not all that heavy.” Bella dropped a book on the table, the weighty smack of its landing echoing into the rafters and sending a plume of dust eddying in all directions. “Anyway, I wanted to show you this weird little scroll I found.”

She tried to belly up to the table, exhaled in exasperation, and thrust the scroll at Kestra instead. Kestra helped her out, spreading open the scroll and using objects from the table to gingerly hold it open. It was extremely old and had not weathered time very well. She suspected it was from what had once been the poorly protected Nightwalker Library, a damp cavern trove newly rediscovered only a few years earlier. It was destroyed now, thanks to Ruth, but whatever had remained had been relocated into the Demon library archives, where it would be safer … better protected from both the ravages of time and … others. Had it been one of Noah’s historical Demon scrolls from the archives, it would have been much better cared for.

“These are … what is this? Egyptian hieroglyphs?”

“Yup,” Bella said, as though reading hieroglyphs were an everyday event for anybody. She leaned forward. “Okay, let me read.”

“Please do,” Kestra said dryly. Though she too was a Druid, her gifts were very different from Bella’s. If someone needed to blow something up, she was your girl, but this was way out of her league.

The Lost Scroll of Kindred … And so it will come to pass in the forward times that the nations of the Nightwalkers will be shattered, driven apart, and become strangers to one another. Hidden by misfortune and by purpose, these twelve nations will come to cross-purposes and fade from one another’s existence. In the forward times these nations will face toil and struggle unlike any time before, and only by coming together once more can they hope to face the evil that will set upon them. But they are lost to one another and will remain lost until a great enemy is defeated … and a new one resurrects itself. . . .

“What do you think it means?” Kestra asked carefully.

“Hell if I know. I mean, it sounds like a huge war between all the Nightwalkers or something. Scary thought, considering. But I’m not interested in playing guessing games. The part I found interesting was ‘twelve nations.’”

“But there’s only six. Demons, Lycanthropes, Druids, Vampires, Shadowdwellers, and Mistrals.”

“Are natural witches a nation? That would make seven. And what if, like originally with natural witches, we just don’t know about others?”

They looked at each other, then both snorted out laughs over the unlikelihood.

“More likely these others are now extinct,” Kestra said.

“Other nations would explain all those books in quite a few unfamiliar languages that we found in the Night-walker Library,” Bella posited. “And surely if they were still around, whoever they are, we would have had some sign of them by now.”

“Other than the books? Yeah.”

“How sad,” Bella said, her violet eyes filling with immediate tears.

“There, there,” Kestra comforted her hormonal friend, pulling her as close as she could and laying Bella’s cheek on a shoulder covered in Kestra’s sugar-white hair. “It all happened a long, long time ago. None of it has anything to do with us now.”

“No,” Bella agreed. “None of it has anything to do with us now.”

CHAPTER ONE

Saugerties, N.Y.

Docia huffed out a frustrated sound as she just missed spilling coffee on the tops of her shoes, jumping out of the way of the car that careened close to the curb she had been about to step off of. It was a miracle she didn’t get killed, kept most of her coffee in her cup, and managed to keep her cellphone from hitting the pavement.

“Hello? Jackson?” she said quickly. “I didn’t hear that last part.”

“Nothing important, Sissy. Just bitching about Landon. I think I’m going to jail for murder soon.”

“Nah, you can’t do that,” she countered. “You know what they do to cops in prison?”

“Ah, crap. You’re right. I’m totally fucked.”

Docia bit her lips, trying not to laugh. Despite his play at humor, she could tell her brother was seriously put out. Seriously off his game, too. He had been ever since his partner, Chico, had taken a bullet to the brain six months ago. Jackson was grieving in his own way, and that way seemed to be one of a lot less patience for a micromanaging boss than he would usually have. Unfortunately, Landon wasn’t a touchy-feely type who would understand Jackson popping off and punching him in the head. It was crucial she help her brother refocus a little.

“So, how’s Sargent doing?”

Jackson paused. “He’s undisciplined and a pain in my ass. He keeps running away.”

“Yikes.” That wasn’t good. If Jackson couldn’t control Sargent, that could mean a lot more trouble down the line. But her brother had a special touch with these K-9 pups. No dog would ever be able to replace Chico in Jackson’s heart, but Docia believed there was room for him to move over and share. The trouble was, Jackson might not be ready to think the same way. It was probably too soon for him to have the new dog. He should have waited. Given it more time. But as one of only two K-9 officers in the Saugerties Police Department, he didn’t have the luxury of waiting too long to replace a downed officer. Especially considering how much time, money, and effort went into training a dog. The department needed the dog badly, and they needed him to be well trained. They also knew that Jackson was the best man to do it. “Well, you’ll get him under control,” she said, not a hint of doubt in her mind. “He’s only a year old.”

“Yeah, well, at a year I had Chico heeling with a snap.”

“Yes,” she said, stepping off the curb once more, “but he’s not Chico, honey. It’s not fair to him to expect him to be. You’ve only had him for a short time.”

Again there were those beats of silence. Docia could almost see him nodding firmly to himself in agreement. Jackson was logical, dedicated, and very ambitious. It wasn’t in him to accept defeat. He just had to get his heart in the game.

“I know,” Jackson said simply, but making it clear by his tone that he had heard his sister’s wisdom. “So where are you?”

Docia smiled at the turn of topic. He needed a little space now, and she would give it to him. She was just happy that he was talking it out with her. He’d been in a very dark place when Chico died. Some people huffed and called him “just a dog,” but Chico was every inch the partner a human might have been for Jackson. Almost none of those scoffers were his fellow cops. They all respected Chico for the officer he had been. Even the irritating chief Avery Landon.

“Well, I just passed Kiss My Feet not too long ago, which reminds me that it’s been far too long since I had a pedicure. Or a waxing.”

“Okay, that’s a need to know, Sissy. And I didn’t need to know.”

“Pfft,” she huffed. “Like you don’t like a girl with all her”— she used her coffee-filled hand to gesture in a circle over the front of her body as if he could see her— “landscaping trimmed.”

“I’m not talking about my sister’s landscaping!” he choked out.

“Wuss.”

“Brat!”

She punched a button, chuckling as she hung up on him. She loved leaving him flustered like that. It amused the bejeezus out of her. Well, he’d wanted the change of topic. So he had gotten exactly that. She stuffed her phone in her bag, a cute little pink-and-gray pouch she’d seen at a local resurrection boutique. That was what she liked to call thrift and secondhand stores. Only in her dreams could she own a brand-new designer bag. No one noticed the slightly worn edge on the bottom, and it looked darling with her winter jacket and its faux fur–lined hood. She would wear the set the entire winter because she couldn’t afford to change it up, but she was perfectly content with what she had and didn’t waste time and worries on what she didn’t have. Although she didn’t have much time to worry about anything at all lately.

She studiously kept her eyes forward as she walked past Krause’s Candy. The red-and-white-striped decorations on the columns were just screaming at her, begging her to press her nose against the glass and pretend she could smell all those pounds of delicious chocolate. But she persevered. She was late enough as it was. She had a tiny little office to get to and a grouchy boss of her own to deal with if she showed up late.

After a few minutes she was stepping onto the green steel bridge, its concrete retaining walls set about waist level, safe enough but also low enough to allow her to see the water of the Esopus River as it rushed to empty and join with the larger and more majestic Hudson River. The current was stronger than usual for this time of year because they were having such unseasonably warm weather for winter … if you could call forty-three degrees warm. But it wasn’t freezing, so the Hudson on her left didn’t have so much as a single ice patch, and the river beneath her feet wasn’t slowed down in the least as it journeyed a short distance before smashing down over deceptively warm-looking tan–and-gray boulders. It was nothing compared with what it would be in the summer, though. The rushing rampage of water would spit out at a violent velocity that would have much more in common with a volcano venting in an angry upheaval.

She was romanticizing and daydreaming, she realized, picking up her pace over the bridge. The bridge itself was a throwback from a time when automobiles rushing around the curve that led onto it weren’t capable of great speed and drivers wouldn’t disrespect signs and logic and take the turn and narrow bridge a bit too dangerously. That equation hardly left room for even a pedestrian to make it safely across. However, it was the only way for her to get to work, seeing as how her clunky little Volvo had choked to a halt last week and refused to budge without a new alternator. That was a hearty two hundred and fifty bucks she wouldn’t have until her paycheck made its appearance on Friday. Happily, that was only a day away.

“Bad Boys,” the theme to the TV show Cops, burst to musical life in her purse just a few steps shy of the bridge’s midpoint. Docia expertly snatched the cell from the depths of the little bag and put it to her ear.

“I thought I skeeved you out talking about my landscaping,” she said, stifling a giggle when the reminder made Jackson stutter over his next words.