Ruby Shadows Read online

  You’ll have to read Cardinal Sins to find out. Coming soon in the Born to Darkness series…

  EXCERPT:

  “That’s it girl, one more for the road before I go.” I pulled another shiny red apple out of my pocket and held it out to Jenny.

  The pregnant mare snorted and lipped the apple out of my palm eagerly before messily crunching it in half. A good chunk flew wide and landed in the straw of her stable and she went for it at once, moving pretty fast despite how big she was getting.

  I eyed her critically—she was going to drop that foal any time now. In the next week or so I’d have to start sleeping in the stable to be sure I was here in case she needed help. Maybe even tonight?

  I put a hand on her rounded side and felt the foal push back against me. Little guy was eager to get out and about—he was probably feeling pretty cramped up inside his mamma right about now. But just feeling him wasn’t going to give me an idea.

  Closing my eyes, I let myself go and reached out with my magic. Witches use a lot of paraphernalia and chanting and rites and rituals to do their magic. With warlocks, it’s different. We can do the rites and rituals and often as not I do them for clients who want things to look all officially magical. But they aren’t really necessary—not for someone who knows what he’s doing. And I did—after all, I’d been doing magic since the age of fourteen.

  What my magic sense was telling me now was that the foal was still a good week off, at least. So I could relax and sleep in my own bed tonight.

  Or at least I thought I was going to get to relax. Little did I know I was in for a surprise—a big feathery surprise. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  I gave Jenny one last pat and went back to the house, whistling a little as I went. It had been a long day but a good one—filled with what my Granddaddy would have called “honest work.” Doing chores around the house… mending one of my barbed wire fences around the edge of my property—a forty acre ranch just north of Austin, Texas—mucking out the stables and making sure Jenny was settled well. All of it good, hard manual labor that makes a man sweat. And aside from checking on my pregnant mare just now, I hadn’t had to use my magic once. Like I said, a good day.

  Inside I stripped off and got in the shower, letting the steaming water wash over my sore muscles. I wished I could end every day this way—I much preferred honest work to making a living with my magic. Unfortunately, ranching wasn’t very profitable unless you had a thousand head of cattle or you wanted to run one of those tourist orientated “dude ranches” that caters to idiots who want to come play cowboy for a week at a time. Either of those options required working with people—something I generally tried to avoid if I could help it.

  Of course I dealt with people when I went out on a job—couldn’t help that. But I liked to keep my home private, which is something I couldn’t do if I had to keep a bunch of ranch hands to run cattle or a staff to cater to whiney tourists. And since the ranch wouldn’t pay for itself, magic was my only option.

  You’d think I’d be glad to use my gifts to make a living but you’d be wrong. It hadn’t used to bother me but lately I’d been rethinking things a little. The last job I had taken, down in Tampa, Florida, had been a bad one. It involved working for a Three Star Vampire who wanted me to help sacrifice another vampire in order to steal her powers.

  I didn’t think the job would bother me. After all, I’d had to do some dark things in my day. Not only that but I’d gained a certain reputation for doing them well and thoroughly. It also didn’t hurt that I was the strongest warlock in the southern US—maybe the entire US, depending on what you wanted done. My reputation drew clients like honey draws flies and some of them were willing to pay a hell of a lot—like the vampire I mentioned—Celeste was her name.

  Anyway, Celeste wanted to drain the blood and power from one of the vamps she’d spawned which sounded like a pretty straightforward deal to me. Of course, she hadn’t told me that the vamp she was looking to drain was a female. I don’t take jobs that involve hurting women—for personal reasons. By the time I found out who the victim was, it was too late to back out and I was bound by the magical contract we had signed. I tried to get out of it early but Celeste was having none of it. Still, I figured one vamp killing another was no big deal. Hell, it’s like one snake swallowing another, or one spider draining another one dry, right? The bloodsuckers are vermin—who the hell cares what they do?

  But I found myself feeling sorry for the victim—a pretty little gal by the name of Taylor. She wasn’t your usual vamp, all hard, cold corners and nasty sharp edges. She seemed like a pretty decent person which made what I had to do even harder.

  Plus my client, Celeste, was a real bitch and I’m not saying that to be sexist. I mean she was a piece of work—a cold as ice and cruel as they come. You pull up a rock and look under it and you’d find nicer critters crawling there in the mud—she was that bad. I couldn’t say I was sorry when the spell went south and she wound up getting ripped apart by a cursed werewolf.

  I still wondered about Taylor, though. The last I’d see there was a witch—one of the strongest I’d ever felt—working on her and trying to bring her back. Whether she succeeded or not, I wasn’t sure but she’d been damn foolish to try what she had—opening a door into the Abyss. That part of the Underworld or Hell, as most people call it, is a place that goes beyond dark and into pretty damn scary. I couldn’t help thinking at the time that the witch, whoever she was, must have cared a hell of a lot for Taylor to try something so risky to bring her back.

  I tried and tried to put the whole experience out of my head but the job continued to bother me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the part I’d played and thinking that my Nana—who was a full fledged witch—would have been ashamed of me for playing it.

  Should have checked it more carefully before I agreed. Should never have taken a job from a vamp in the first place. I normally avoid vamps like a plague but this one had offered so much I’d let the dollar signs in my eyes overshadow my good judgment. Well, never again, I vowed to myself, but the promise didn’t make me feel one bit better. I kept feeling like it wasn’t over yet—like the rash decision I’d made to get involved with a vampire was going to come back and bite me in the ass. Maybe there were consequences coming…consequences that I couldn’t see yet but would be damn hard to pay when they finally caught up to me…

  I tried to shake off the dark thoughts as I toweled off and threw on a pair of jeans and an old black t-shirt. There was a T-bone in the fridge calling my name and I fixed it just like my Grandaddy had taught me, on a flat iron pan over the gas stove.

  The steak hit the spot and I paired it with a salad, more because I knew I ought to eat a few greens than because I liked rabbit food. After dinner I had a glass of whiskey—just one, to aid digestion as Granddaddy would say—put on a pair of worn but comfortable cotton pajama pants and settled in bed with an old Louis L’Amour novel.

  It was the perfect end to a perfect day and if my conscious hadn’t still been nagging me about the job in Florida, I would have drifted off to sleep with no problem. Funny how that works—you probably don’t want to know all the awful things I’ve done—but not a one of them had ever bothered me before. No many how many men I’d killed, I never lost a wink of sleep. But that night I tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position.

  About an hour past midnight I was just closing my eyes and getting comfortable when suddenly a door opened in my ceiling.

  Of course, I didn’t know it was a door or what the hell was going on. All I knew was that a brilliant light was suddenly shining down from above and I could hear voices talking to each other—or more like yelling at each other. Several of the voices were light and high—female. But one was deep and angry and not human—not human at all. Maybe demonic? The thought made my jaw clench. I didn’t know how I could tell it was the voice of a demon I was hearing, but even half asleep, I knew it, right enough.

  Then something big and wh