Blood Hunt by Lucienne Diver Read Free Book Online Page A

twisted so hard I had to spin with it or wrench my ankle. I used the momentum and my wings to whirl me all the way around, catching her upside the head with my other foot as I twirled.
    She oophed and staggered to the side, and I landed hard on the ground as she let go of my foot a second too late for a smooth landing. My wings took the brunt, but I used them to kip back to my feet. She hadn’t fallen, but stood facing me, her eyes burning. Not like Hades’s with their natural hellfire. Not even with hatred. Bloodlust, I’d say. Or battlefire.
    It was the woman I’d faced off with for the right of way at the Roland crime scene. She was stunning. Not in a beautiful way, but in that way that would have been called handsome back in the drawing room days. Or fierce. She wasn’t tall. Maybe five foot eight. Her skin was mahogany, her brows arched in that perfectly manicured way some women came by naturally. Her hair was braided back tightly to her head into a dozen or so rows, so no grabbing possibilities there. She was outfitted in bounty-hunter black from head to toe, with some kind of padded vest, maybe Kevlar, over her chest with a shield and crossed arrows design in muted red, black and brown across the front. Very Hunger Games .
    Since she was so determined to stare me down anyway, I seized the moment. “Freeze,” I told her, putting everything I had behind it.
    I was stunned when she didn’t, instead becoming a blur of motion, coming for me. I didn’t have time for a sigh, though I certainly felt it. Instead, I countered, blocked, countered again, lashed out, was denied. We were a flurry of strike, counterstrike, each getting in our blows but never enough to disable the other. Finally, I was just a second too slow, and the next thing I knew I was pinned to the refrigerator, the handle digging into my chest and a knife to my throat.
    â€œNo fair,” I said before I could stop myself. Moving sound through my throat brought it into more direct contact with the knife, and I felt it bite into my skin. I wondered if it was enough to make me bleed and whether I could use that. My blood on the knife wouldn’t do a thing to me, but if I could turn it on her…
    If I turned it on her, she’d be stone and I’d never get any answers.
    â€œWho are you?” she asked, backing the knife off just enough to let me answer.
    â€œI’m Tori Karacis, a private investigator. I have ID.” I wasn’t stupid enough to reach for it. Not without her permission or an opening where I could take the upper hand.
    â€œShow me,” she said.
    â€œI’m going for my wallet,” I said.
    Slowly I did, reaching into the pocket of my jeans. When I had the wallet out, I flipped it open and cautiously turned to show her.
    She studied my license with so little interest I wondered why she’d asked.
    â€œI’ve heard of you,” she said, grudgingly, knife still at my throat. “Why are you here?”
    â€œI’m working a case,” I answered, replacing my ID. “I’m trying to find the Roland brothers. You know, the boys whose parents were killed. I saw you at the crime scene.”
    â€œIt’s too dangerous for you,” she said, pulling the knife away, but not sheathing it. “This is outside your expertise.”
    I slid out from between her and the refrigerator, toward one of the entrances so that there was nothing new for her to pin me against. Not without effort anyway. I’d gotten used to being a badass. I’d faced down gods, goddesses, plague demons—hell, even sea monsters—and, okay, I’d had help, but… I guess I’d started to take for granted that there was nothing I couldn’t handle.
    Being bested by a mere mortal… But wait, Neith hadn’t responded to the gorgon glare. The only beings I’d ever seen unaffected were the older gods. Surely she wasn’t…
    Oh crap.
    My phone buzzed