Page 2

Chapter 2

The Black Cat

Boston

Modern Day

“ T he target in question has been a thorn in the side of the High Council for far too long,” Grand Master Onfri de la Roche snarled. “I want him dead, as soon as possible.”

The black-clad enforcers lining the room made it clear to Fenric that their cover was going to be blown by gratuitous bloodshed if the Grand Master didn’t calm himself and his excessive feelings. De la Roche’s cover was that this was a business meeting and the enforcers were getting amped up for violence, ruining the cover entirely with their demeanor. The High Council was trying to hide their activities from the Boston Bloodclan and their spies, a fairly useless endeavor but one Fenric was temporarily indulging. At least until someone got too twitchy. This fancy hotel wasn’t built to handle bloodstains in the quantity Fenric was capable of generating.

“The target?” Fenric asked, though he wasn’t stupid, nor did he live under a rock. He was heading to Boston regardless, and when his handler texted him a potential client meeting, he should have said no. Saying no would have saved him time, but at least this way he had proof if the target needed it. Not the first time he fucked off a contract kill—he was too old and had lived too long for every contract to go smoothly—not to mention he was perfectly capable of thinking for himself, and he was entitled to change his mind. He wasn’t so precious about his reputation in assassins’ circles that he couldn’t change his mind about a contract once he’d taken it on. He knew too many assassins who refused to fail on a contract, including one infamous vampire assassin, and they frustrated Fenric whenever they had the misfortune to meet on the job.

Some people deserved to live, even the villains. Even then, one person’s villain was another person’s hero.

“The Necromancer of Boston,” the Grand Master declared with a grimace. That expected answer made Fenric wish he’d gone straight to his original destination and hadn’t taken any detours. Living forever was expensive and difficult without a permanent place to call home—taking a job for ready cash while he was in town to see if the rumors were true had turned out to be a bad decision. The supernatural communities around the world were abuzz with crazy tales, rumors, and half-truths about a High Court Sidhe going insane and killing people, and then his own mysterious death and the subsequent disappearance of his body. The news media had reported about Cian Brennan going on a killing spree, so that part was true, but as for the rest of it, Fenric was determined to sort out fact from fiction. Although, he should have done a bit more research on the new Grand Master of the High Council of Sorcery—his impulsiveness might bite him in the ass.

He wasn’t destitute and should have known better, but his curiosity got the best of him.

Again.

The High Council of Sorcery had lost a devastating amount of enforcers in the last few weeks trying to take out the Salvatore clan. The leader of the clan, Angelus Salvatore, was a necromancer of some infamy and renown. The city was braced for a war, a resurgence of violence not seen in over a decade, ready to hunker down and try to wait out the coming conflict.

Fenric had no idea how the Council thought an assassin would get the job done when dozens of enforcers were dead, had been run off, or were languishing in jail, all at the hands of the Salvatores, the Boston Bloodclan, and their allies.

Fenric was in town for those allies, or at least, the promise of one in particular.

He also needed to get out of this meeting without losing his head. Two enforcers stood right behind him where he sat across from the Grand Master of the High Council of Sorcery in a swanky parlor in an even more luxurious hotel.

Those two enforcers were armed with swords, both blades drawn, and within striking distance of Fenric’s neck. It was the last time he was taking a minimally researched job on the fly like this—clearly he needed a new handler.

He tended to outlive them, and got a new one every time one of them got killed, retired, or died of old age. Though to be honest, since he began his contract killing career, one had yet to die of old age. But it was a possibility.

His latest handler wasn’t going to last much longer, given how Fenric was in a locked room with a blood mage and half a dozen enforcers all ready to kill him if he said anything other than ‘yes’ to the job offer. They would try, but he doubted they would succeed—but he didn’t want to chance it.

“My fee is triple for the necromancer,” Fenric stated calmly.

“Triple? Hardly. How do I know you’re even capable, let alone worth triple?” the Grand Master scoffed.

“You came to me,” Fenric said, leaning forward, making direct eye contact, dropping his glamour as he did so—then smiling when the practitioner jolted at the sight of Fenric’s eyes. They were a bright green and slit like a cat’s, usually glamoured to a normal mortal hue and appearance, but he was done playing. Let this man see who he was trying to fuck around with.

“You came to me, sought me out,” he said softly with a hiss through his fangs. “I am too old for this fuck around and find out session. I’ll kill everyone in here if I have to prove a damn point.”

De la Roche waved a hand in negligible concern. “You cannot defeat us all.”

Fenric grinned, his double set of fangs bared. “Don’t get confused. I’ll start with you, fuckface, then play football with your head while I slice up your entourage into cat food.”

He knew better than to face a blood mage in an open brawl—the chance of getting wounded and bleeding were too high. A blood mage with access to an opponent’s blood ended fights quickly. Better to kill the mage in an ambush and be done with it, or merely be faster than his opponent. He did tend to be faster.

“Another vulgar soul,” de la Roche lamented, shaking his head with a sigh. “How disappointing. You’ll take the job, or die now.”

“You won’t kill me—you need me,” Fenric said calmly, outwardly unconcerned. “Whether to kill the necromancer or for a sacrifice, I’m too good to waste on killing. How often does a blood mage get a supernatural being for a sacrifice?”

De la Roche shifted a bit, glowering slightly. Fenric smiled, all teeth. He likely forgot, as most practitioners did, that other species had far more acute senses, and a miasma of blood spoor hung around the Grand Master like a cloud.

“Don’t get so ruffled. You stink of blood,” Fenric said, taunting him just a bit. He sat back in his chair, relaxed, ignoring the armed enforcers at both shoulders. “I’ll take your job, but for triple my usual fee. No exceptions.”

“Damn shifters and their cursed noses,” de la Roche replied with a sneer. “Fine, I accept your terms. Triple your fee for the necromancer’s head. You have one week.”

One week to fuck over the High Council of Sorcery and kill as many assassins heading for the Brennan twins and their friends as possible.

He was game.

“Excellent. Tell me everything you know about the Necromancer of Boston,” Fenric leaned forward a bit, a predator intent on his prey. “Starting with his friend, the High Court Sidhe.”

Fenric

Fenric left as quickly as he could without making it look like he was running away, despite very much running away.

“Danu-spawned hellions and their twice-bedamned matching-set-twinsie bullshit!” Fenric muttered to himself as he ran down an alley in Back Bay, dodging trash cans and puddles. Two enforcers were trying to shadow him, but he was just too fast, and had every intention of losing his tail—not his literal tail. The enforcers had no business being in his business and all he needed was a blind corner to lose them entirely. The Grand Master likely had concerns about his intent to follow through on the job.

He rounded a corner and thankfully the street was short, empty but for parked cars, and he was able to duck between a couple of cars and then he shifted. He pulled in the shadows as he knelt, obscuring his transformation from any chance eye catching him using his magic. A matter of seconds, and the short, wiry, compact human-appearing man disappeared, and a large, fluffy black cat jumped from the swirl of darkness, as black as the abyss but for his peridot green eyes and a small white spot on his chest.

He ran under a car parked along the sidewalk and hid behind a tire just as the enforcers ran out from the alley, pausing as they tried to catch their breath and find their target. Fenric could see their booted feet in matching uniforms from under the car, but not much else.

“Do you see him?” one asked, breathing heavily.

“No. He might be hiding, check behind the cars,” the other enforcer said, and Fenric watched as the enforcers split up and walked down the street in either direction. He waited until his ears told him they were far enough away to restrict their casting at a moving target, and he shot out from under the car, bolting across the sidewalk and back down the alley in the direction from which he and the enforcers had come.

He manipulated the shadows in the dark alley, the buildings on either side too high to let the sun shine directly into the space between them, and he used that to his advantage, slinking along the wall of one building, covered in shadows. Anyone looking down the alley would see nothing but inky blackness, and that was what he needed. His natural abilities gave him limited control of any shadows he could find, and came in handy when trying to hide.

Thankfully the day was overcast and the ground a bit damp, discouraging people from being out and about, even in the city, and the residential areas of Back Bay were quiet, everyone at work. No one was around to notice the large black cat covered in shadows, slinking through front gardens of townhomes and snaking through black iron fences as if made of water. He left no trace behind, neither paw print nor magic, as he headed east to Beacon Hill.

Fenric

He kept up the glamour that cloaked him in shadows, not willing to let humans or supernatural people see him in his current form—a large, fluffy, eighty-pound black cat that was much too large to be a domestic housecat and gifted with fangs long enough to tear out a person’s throat. He could take the smaller, more adorable housecat form, but it wasn’t as fast and was more vulnerable to stray dogs and mean teenagers looking to pick on an animal. Especially as a black cat. He’d rather risk alarming a few people with his larger cat form than endanger his own tail by traveling across the city as a tiny housecat.

Though if he needed to be a regular cat, it was no problem, except for how it felt to be that small; it made him feel vulnerable and he disliked the feeling. But thankfully he was not a regular cat, but one of the cait-sidhe , an Elder fae species of shapeshifters that were older than dirt. As Elder fae they were rare, though not as rare as the High Court Sidhe, their peoples distantly related through Danu and one of her siblings, the progenitor of the cait-sidhe, a distant figure long gone from the world.

Transmutation, to change oneself, was difficult and out of reach for most mortals, unless they were shifters or werewolves of some type. Those animal shifters and werewolves were blessed human lineages with hereditary magic that evolved beyond the loose parameters of the original divine blessing from Danu and her siblings.

The exception to transmutation were the cait-sidhe; they could change their physical form while remaining mentally intact—remain themselves no matter what form they took. Magic was mutable, ever changing, evolving naturally, and the cait-sidhe were the essence of that mutable aspect of magic as a whole.

Fenric prided himself on his adaptability, open-mindedness, and endurance, all things he attributed to his birth-people. Over many eons his people decided upon a preferred form, that of the large black wildcat with a rangy form and strong limbs, long fangs and a big head with strong jaws. Over the years the cait-sidhe gave life to the legends of the Kellas cat in Scotland, and many other large cat legends in the British Isles. Most of his people still lived in Scotland, haunting the highlands and forests, scaring tourists and charming locals. Though they made sure to be seen rarely; better to avoid giving away the identities of their human forms and their homes.

The fae had not been persecuted in Scotland for nearly fifty years, but their memories were as long as their lives and they were cautious as a result, keeping their true numbers hidden from humans, appearing to be nearly as rare as the High Court Sidhe.

Elder fae species were going extinct.

Magic was evolving past them.