Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,100

Monsters clan laughed softly, but it sounded a little like sad laughter, filled more with regret than anything else. Conall looked from one of their overtly handsome faces to another, wondering if the body language he was reading from them was accurate. They actually seemed to care.

Did these guys genuinely like or even respect the human race?

Conall Tiarnahn had experienced a hell of a day. In the course of twenty-four hours, he’d had to keep bottom-feeding supes from a human serial killer’s crime scene in Pennsylvania – that one chalked up to the same man Conall had personally threatened to stay the hell away from his warden – until the werewolf detective in charge – that being Detective Hendrix James – could come in and see to it. Then he’d had the very same woman, the one his clan considered their guardian angel kidnapped by a member of another clan, and not just any clan but the Monsters clan. Then he’d learned that the entire Monsters warden clan lived up to their names in a very literal way. Not a single one of them was even remotely human.

He’d been pulled into the circle of trust on this secret when Faith was taken, and the head of Monsters naturally had to meet with Conall to deal with it. Coming to truly understand the depth of the situation was impossible if Conall wasn’t made aware of the long-standing relationship between Antares Mace and Annaleia Faith. By long-standing, that was fifty years. Give or take.

It was then a natural domino-deduction for Conall to put two and two together and come up with the realization that it wasn’t just Mace who was non-human. Memories of rumors came back to him, accompanied by things people had noticed, such as the fact that the Monsters clan had never failed at a job, not once. Nor could anyone remember ever seeing any of them sustain a mortal wound that necessitated a sentinel. In fact, no one could remember ever seeing a Monsters sentinel at all.

Then there was the name of course. Monsters.

And the cincher was Cain himself. An enigma if ever there was one, and most assuredly not human. It was just that people were literally afraid to admit as much out loud.

Cain had spared him the dicey prospect of asking point-blank by simply coming out and telling Conall that yes – they were monsters. The lot of them. He’d even said it as if it were no big deal.

So now Conall looked around at the men in the massive garage and had to wonder if to them, it really wasn’t. He wondered if to them, supernatural beings were no more or less important than mortals. They’d chosen to be wardens, after all. Wardens protected those who couldn’t protect themselves, such as humans.

It bore some consideration, and it also influenced Conall’s perception of the man who would be working in his clan for two months when this was all settled and done.

Or if.

“So what is it exactly that Victor Maze is doing with this Price guy?” Conall asked. He wanted to know exactly what the crazy son of a bitch who’d butchered a bunch of women to make them somehow appear like Annaleia Faith was going to do with his warden, and what Victor Maze’s interest was in that.

“We think he’s using him as a source of….” Crow trailed off as he tried to think of a proper term, then shrugged and settled on, “food.”

“How exactly?”

“Well, once Detective James placed Maze and Price at the same scene together, we wondered the same thing,” said one of the Monsters members who hadn’t spoken until then. He was very tall, but they were all tall, and Conall realized he appeared taller because he had excellent posture. He also appeared to have perfectly coifed gold-brown hair as if he’d just come from a stylist. His eyes were notable, and now that Con knew none of these men were human, he was wondering what honest-to-god gold eyes made a man. What manner of monster are you? he wondered to himself.

“I’m something you’ve probably never heard of,” the man told him with a small smile. The other clan members began to smile as well, all of them watching Conall with eyes that knew so much more than he did. Frankly, he felt like a wounded seal in a sea filled with circling sharks.

“What would that be?”

“Nathan’s an Aurum,” said another man, the one Con recalled going by the name Sharpe. But he