Read Reluctant Adept: Book Three of A Clairvoyant's Complicated Life for Free Online Page A

grabbed mid-strike.
    No way. The idiot woman had dared to take a swing at me?
    Kieran's protective shroud surrounded us. Since the brunette remained on her feet, instead of collapsed into a bloody heap on the floor, her companion must have interfered before Kieran could unleash his corrosive shadow on her skinny ass.
    "Now, Eva," the man crooned in a deliciously cultured British accent. "What is it Americans say? Sticks and stones? Besides, that was a rather coarse thing to say, even if true."
    He was dissing Kieran's looks too? What was this—opposite day?
    Somehow, I'd stepped into that Twilight Zone episode where the model-perfect blonde laments the fact that her 'treatments' hadn't fixed her horrible facial disfigurement, and then the camera pans back to show all the doctors and nurses with pig snouts instead of noses. If these two thought Kieran wasn't much to look at, I couldn't imagine what their idea of a showstopper might be, although, the two of them weren't exactly hard on the eyes. Not a snout in sight. Maybe they had curly tails that I couldn't see. I almost snickered at the thought.
    Eyebrows creeping upward, I shook my head. This whole encounter bordered on the bizarre.
    The man tucked Eva's arm under his, stroking her still-clenched fist soothingly, easing her fingers apart. His graceful brown hands contrasted prominently with her fair skin, calling attention to his long fingers and smooth caresses. The sensuality of each stroke sent a shiver through me. When I glanced into his dark brown eyes, he stared back with an intensity that shot sparks of alarm clear down through my heels. This man might be a lot of things (intimidating, striking, and sexy to name a few), but I was fairly sure human wasn't one of them.
    In one swift move, Kieran turned into my one-armed embrace, pulling my shoulder firm to his chest. With a flick of his wrist, his magic sword manifested in his right hand. "She is mine," he said in a tone that was both calm and inexorable at the same time.
    It all happened so quickly, I didn't have time to gasp, much less issue protest.
    "Of course she is," the man replied, smiling with all the humor of a shark swimming in chum-filled waters. "Lovely party. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Nathan."
    My eyes widened at his elongated, sharply pointed canines.
    Oh shit. My first contact with the strigoi and Kieran acting like a possessive Neanderthal did not project the message I wanted to convey. I came close to jabbing him in the ribs with my elbow, but the ominous absence of party chatter finally permeated my indignation.
    I glanced around me. Julie and Steven hadn't moved. They stood riveted in place, both of them blinking slowly, eyes glassy. Glen, too, seemed to be some kind of trance. A glance about the shop revealed more of the same. Interspersed among the dazed partygoers, I spotted at least six other strangers, all of them eying me with cold malevolence and projecting tightly coiled menace.
    Nathan and his cohorts had mesmerized and taken control of everyone in the freaking room!
    No, not Jules! And Steven?
    Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit …
    I swallowed hard in a hopeless effort to control my skyrocketing alarm. There was a reason an unsolicited strigoi bite was a felony in most states. More powerful than the strongest roofie, strigoi venom acted on the central nervous system. Enhanced by magic, it produced a highly suggestive state that lasted indefinitely, without physiological side effects, other than being at the mercy of the vampire who wanted a meal and whatever else. Worse, its continued effect could only be countered by the strigoi's antidote. Victims could be told to go about their lives, just as my friends had been told to enjoy the party, but unless they received the anti-hypnotic or the strigoi died, they'd be forever compromised, unable to resist the call of whichever vamp had bitten them.
    I turned back to the British vamp. At least, he sounded British. For all I knew, he was a