who got off on killing for the sake of killing. “I hopefully won’t be here that long to have to deal with it.”
“I mention it because the murder took place outside the club near your hotel. I hacked into police records, and they think it’s the work of a serial killer that’s been killing women across Europe. Always near a nightclub the female victim was reported to have been seen at. Usually found in an alley near the club with neck wounds and drained of blood. They’re working with Interpol on this one.”
“Bloody hell,” Fionn muttered. That probably meant undercover police at the clubs. “Right. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“No movement on An Breitheamh, FYI.”
And that was one of the reasons Fionn put up with Bran. The vampire was young in the grand scheme of things. Only ninety-five years old. He was also brilliant. He managed Fionn’s intelligence system and directed the many contacts Fionn had amassed all over the world.
Moreover, he was the only being that Fionn trusted.
“I want to know if the Blackwoods step a foot in Zagreb.”
“On it. Speaking of the Blackwoods, you asked me to keep an eye on Thea and Conall MacLennan …”
Alert, Fionn stiffened. The Blackwoods wouldn’t dare meddle with the MacLennans after they promised not to.
If they had, their ruin would be their own damn fault. Arrogant swine. If it were a perfect world, he’d have nothing to do with that magical family.
Unfortunately, he owed the Blackwood Coven even more than he had ever owed Eirik.
It was that debt that stayed his hand against the witches and warlocks who desperately sought to open the gate to Faerie. Not to take down the bitch who had ruined Fionn’s existence but to forge an alliance with her. To live among the faeries, to imbue their magic with pure power at the source.
The Blackwoods were an old, very large North American coven. They were also naive, sycophantic arseholes, and there was no telling them that the fae would destroy the humans. He had to keep one step ahead of them at all times.
Fionn had slipped up with Thea Quinn. The Blackwoods knew of her existence before he did, and they’d arrived in Scotland before he could. Layton Blackwood had met with him in Inverness, a city an hour and a half east of the werewolves’ home in Torridon.
The obnoxious warlock, son of the coven leader, had lounged across from him in the hotel bar. “Thea Quinn is a werewolf and mated to Conall MacLennan.”
It had taken a moment for Fionn to process this. After all, the information he’d gathered suggested the woman in question had survived numerous attacks over the years, many of them in just the past few weeks.
One of them by Eirik Mortensen, the oldest living vampire in the world. Fionn knew that for a fact, for he had known Eirik for over two thousand years.
Of course, that was until Thea had wiped out Eirik and fourteen of his vampire brethren for attacking Conall MacLennan.
Who was obviously Thea’s mate, Fionn had mused.
Only a mate could turn fae into a werewolf without the bite killing her. A little-known secret he’d learned while enslaved to the Fae Queen.
Matings were not supposed to happen between the fae and the supernaturals born from their magic and interference with the humans. Yet, somehow, vampires and werewolves found themselves mated to fae. It had been rare. It had been forbidden.
But it happened.
And when the Fae Queen, Aine, learned that a werewolf bite could turn fae from immortal into a powerful but very mortal werewolf so long as the pair were mated, she decided that connection between the once-human supernaturals and the fae-borne was too dangerous to allow to continue. She’d banished the supernaturals from Faerie, sending them back to the human world.
All except Fionn.
Instead, she’d defied her own laws to turn him into the thing he hated most so she could keep him.
But he’d outwitted her and used Eirik to return.
To go home … to Aoibhinn.
The pain that had once been so intense it was crippling was now just a flicker in his gut.
“We’re considering killing her anyway,” Layton had said, pulling Fionn from his memories.
He had flicked a glance at Liza and Lori, Layton’s sisters. They’d shared a displeased look.
Clearly Layton was being a little too liberal with the contraction “we’re.”
“Killing her for what?” Fionn had asked blandly. “You were mistaken. She’s a wolf. A mated one at that.”
“But was she always a wolf? The pack says so. They