Dark Heir Read online

  Praise for the Jane Yellowrock Novels

  Broken Soul

  “Steamy, violent, and hinting even more great things to come, Broken Soul is a series highlight. . . . Jane fans will be delighted.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “The story is fantastic, the action is intense, the romance sweet, and the characters seep into your soul. At the end of Broken Soul, I smiled, closed the book, and hugged it. I loved this one.”

  —Vampire Book Club

  “Intense action scenes, shocking revelations, and Machiavellian plotlines keep readers on their toes, though it’s the steady world building and dynamic characterization that keep readers returning.”

  —Smexy Books

  Black Arts

  “Faith Hunter returns with a bang. . . . [Her] mastery for writing suspense-filled chapters that keep the reader on pins and needles turning pages shines through.”

  —SF Site

  “Black Arts is possibly the best Jane Yellowrock book to date. With a perfect balance of action, relationships, magic, and healing, fans will love it, and new readers will get sucked in.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “An action-packed thriller. . . . Betrayal, deception, and heartbreak all lead the way in this roller-coaster ride of infinite proportions that will keep readers twisting and turning until the very last page.”

  —Smexy Books

  “A fascinating story [that] showcases Jane at both her most vulnerable and most kick-ass. Faith Hunter has outdone herself.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Blood Trade

  “In Blood Trade Jane comes back with a vengeance . . . a perfect blend of dark fantasy and mystery with a complex and tough vampire-killing heroine.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock series is a high-octane urban fantasy that follows its own rules and keeps you guessing until the very end.”

  —Smexy Books

  Death’s Rival

  “A thrilling mystery with epic action scenes and a kick-ass heroine with claws and fangs.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “Holy moly, this was an amazing read! Jane is the best urban fantasy heroine around. Death’s Rival catapulted this series to the top of my must-buy list.”

  —Night Owl Reviews

  “A wild, danger-filled adventure. The world building includes a perfect blend of seductive romance, nail-biting action, intriguing characters, and betrayal from all sides.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Raven Cursed

  “A lot of series seek to emulate Hunter’s work, but few come close to capturing the essence of urban fantasy: the perfect blend of intriguing heroine, suspense, [and] fantasy with just enough romance.”

  —SF Site

  “A super thriller. . . . Fast-paced, Raven Cursed is an exhilarating paranormal whodunit with several thriller spins.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  Mercy Blade

  “There was something about the Jane Yellowrock series that drew me in from the very beginning. . . . Mercy Blade is top-notch, a five-star book!”

  —Night Owl Reviews

  “I was delighted to have the opportunity to read another Jane Yellowrock adventure. I was not disappointed but was somewhat overwhelmed by the obvious growth in Faith Hunter’s writing skill.”

  —San Francisco Book Review

  “Faith Hunter has created one of my favorite characters ever. Jane Yellowrock is full of contradictions . . . highly recommended.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Blood Cross

  “Readers eager for the next book in Patricia Briggs’s Mercy Thompson series may want to give Faith Hunter a try.”

  —Library Journal

  “In a genre flooded with strong, sexy females, Jane Yellowrock is unique. . . . Her bold first-person narrative shows that she’s one tough cookie but with a likable vulnerability . . . a pulse-pounding, page-turning adventure.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Skinwalker

  “Seriously. Best urban fantasy I’ve read in years, possibly ever.”

  —C. E. Murphy, author of Shaman Rises

  “Stunning. . . . Plot and descriptions so vivid, they might as well be pictures or videos.”

  —SF Site

  “A fabulous tale with a heroine who clearly has the strength to stand on her own . . . a wonderfully detailed and fast-moving adventure that fills the pages with murder, mystery, and fascinating characters.”

  —Darque Reviews

  “A promising new series with a strong heroine. . . . Jane is smart, quick, witty.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  More Praise for the Novels of Faith Hunter

  “The world [Hunter] has created is unique and bleak . . . [an] exciting science fiction thriller.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Entertaining . . . outstanding supporting characters. . . . The strong cliff-hanger of an ending bodes well for future adventures.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Hunter’s distinctive future vision offers a fresh though dark glimpse into a newly made postapocalyptic world. Bold and imaginative in approach, with appealing characters and a suspense-filled story, this belongs in most fantasy collections.”

  —Library Journal

  “It’s a pleasure to read this engaging tale about characters connected by strong bonds of friendship and family. Mixes romance, high fantasy, [and] apocalyptic and postapocalyptic adventure to good effect.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Hunter’s very professionally executed, tasty blend of dark fantasy, mystery, and romance should please fans of all three genres.”

  —Booklist

  ALSO BY FAITH HUNTER

  The Jane Yellowrock Novels

  Skinwalker

  Blood Cross

  Mercy Blade

  Cat Tales (a short-story collection)

  Raven Cursed

  Have Stakes Will Travel (a short-story collection)

  Death’s Rival

  Blood Trade

  Black Arts

  Broken Soul

  The Rogue Mage Novels

  Bloodring

  Seraphs

  Host

  ROC

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Faith Hunter, 2015

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  ISBN 978-1-101-63622-0

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Also by FAITH HUNTER

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  CHA
PTER 1: Twist Your Lil’ Bobblehead Right Off

  CHAPTER 2: Warp My Sexual Development Forever

  CHAPTER 3: Not My First Time at This Rodeo, Sugar

  CHAPTER 4: I Am the Keeper

  CHAPTER 5: I Will Cut out His Heart . . . I Will Bring It to You

  CHAPTER 6: Can Anything Survive Without a Heart?

  CHAPTER 7: You Wet Your Pants?

  CHAPTER 8: Eye of Newt

  CHAPTER 9: A Lot of Blood and Some Magical Mojo

  CHAPTER 10: I Have the Scratches to Prove It

  CHAPTER 11: A Sleepover with My Bestie, Adrianna

  CHAPTER 12: So Many Things I Couldn’t Say Aloud

  CHAPTER 13: Manis and Pedis and Gossiping About Boys

  CHAPTER 14: She Blew Blood Bubbles

  CHAPTER 15: By the Fluids of His Undeath

  CHAPTER 16: Silver Motes of Power Slo-Mo-ing

  CHAPTER 17: Broiled Vamp-Flesh, Still Rare

  CHAPTER 18: The Stench of Barbecued Vamp

  CHAPTER 19: Too Much ’Tude and Not Enough Manners

  CHAPTER 20: His Most High Toothy-ness

  CHAPTER 21: You Are Going to Prick My Temper

  CHAPTER 22: Cast into the Day

  CHAPTER 23: Ashes and Shattered Bones

  CHAPTER 24: Doing the Big Nasty

  CHAPTER 25: We Could Play . . . Strip Poker

  CHAPTER 26: Dressed Like a Man of My People

  CHAPTER 27: Medium-Well-Cooked Meat

  CHAPTER 28: I Smelled Onorio Blood

  CHAPTER 29: I Don’t Give a Rat’s Ass Who’s Getting Pampered

  Excerpt from BLOOD OF THE EARTH

  About the Author

  To my Renaissance Man,

  who can fix anything, who has an open mind-set,

  a generous heart,

  and who puts up with my still being

  “such a strange little girl”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Let’s Talk Promotions at www.ltpromos.com for getting me where I am today.

  Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency for guiding my career, being an ear when I need advice, and working your fingers to the bone.

  Isabel Farhi of Roc for keeping tabs on me through review time.

  Eileen Chetti, copy editor, for the fine work at catching all the boo-boos!

  Cliff Nielsen . . . for all the work and talent that goes into the covers.

  Mindy Mymudes for beta reading. For being a fount of knowledge. For being a great friend.

  Lee Williams Watts for being the best travel companion and assistant a girl can have!

  Joy Robinson for holding my hand through two travel crises.

  Beast Claws! Street team extraordinaire!

  Poet and writer Sarah Spieth for giving me Jane’s medicine bag. It is perfect!

  Margot Dacunha for help on the French lines throughout the book.

  Richard Copeland for gun stuff (all errors being mine, of course).

  Mike Prater for letting me be a pest with the odd questions.

  As always, a huge thank-you to Jessica Wade of Roc, the best editor I could have. You make me into a much better writer than I am capable of alone. I don’t know how you keep the high quality up, book after book, especially now, with the Kicker kicking things around. You are extraordinary.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Hi, all. I’d like to touch on a few ways in which Jane’s world is different from ours. In Dark Heir:

  The Coliseum Place Baptist Church burned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In reality, it was demolished after being burned, but in Jane’s world it still stands, scorched but intact. It became, in Jane’s world, sacred ground, but no longer a place of worship. There are small storefront churches everywhere in the South, offering sermons and worship in multiple languages and offering to help the community, just like The Church in this novel.

  Tech: Inevitably, in a long-running series, technology will catch up with a writer and a character. In order to keep Jane and her world fresh and believable, I’ve tried to look ahead, into the future, to see what might be real in just a few years, and to incorporate that into the Yellowrock world. I hope I’ve been successful, but (ha-ha) only time will tell.

  When it comes to guns: Jane is not a shooter, US military, or even a dedicated hunter. Unlike Eli, she doesn’t think about guns and weapons in proper military vocabulary or formulas. She thinks “point and shoot” and prefers idiotproof weapons. Her terminology was created for that mind-set. I hope the military and shooters out there will remember that when they evaluate the weapons sequences.

  Dark Heir is book nine of the Jane Yellowrock series. YOU, the Beast-fans, are the reason why. You have my “forever thanks”!

  CHAPTER 1

  Twist Your Lil’ Bobblehead Right Off

  I stood against the wall, nursing a busted knuckle, watching my sensei try to recover. Daniel held a black belt, second dan, in hapkido, had a black belt in tae kwon do, and a black belt in tai chi—the combat martial art, not the pretty forms that hippies and old people do on beaches at sunrise. (Not that I had anything against pretty martial arts, hippies, or old people. I’d outlived all of the people who were alive when I was born, so I was old. Real old.)

  Daniel hadn’t competed in years, however, believing that competition was for sissies and martial arts were for fighting and killing. He was probably a lot more dangerous than most people who did compete. And right now he was on his back on the practice mat, trying to figure out if his lungs still worked. It had been only about thirty seconds since I’d thrown him to the floor, knocking the breath out of him, but that can seem like a lot of time when you aren’t breathing.

  “I’m not kissing him,” Eli Younger said, still gasping, sweat dripping off him onto the mat in little splats. My Beast and I had been sparring with both of them. Admittedly, it was a little too wound heavy to be just sparring, but testosterone and the urge to defeat the skinny girl were powerful motivators, keeping them coming back for more when they should have stayed down. And Beast had been having fun.

  “Artificial respiration isn’t technically kissing,” I said, watching as Daniel fought back the natural panic of the air starved, arching his back, stretching his throat, trying to force open his airway.

  “Still not kissing him. Sorry, bro,” Eli said, toeing Daniel’s shoulder. “Been nice knowin’ you.”

  Daniel sucked in a breath that sounded like rubber bicycle tubing being stretched out by a couple of disgruntled sumo wrestlers. Strained. Very strained. Eli laughed. Faster than most humans can manage, Daniel whipped his arm around, his fist catching Eli on the outer knee joint. If Eli hadn’t already been bending into the direction of the hit, his knee would have buckled and Eli would have needed a brace or vamp blood to heal. Daniel was powerful, even flat on his back.

  As it was, the guys rolled across each other like high school wrestlers, but punching and stabbing with fingers, kneeing below the belt. They separated, rolled to their feet, and engaged again. All I needed was popcorn and a beer and it would have been perfect. Delighted to sit this one out, I slid down the wall to the wood floor, my sweaty back to the wall, knees bent in a half lotus, and relaxed. The guys were really going at it, fists, kicks, sweat flinging, with a little blood mixed in. I had to wonder if something was bothering them, because this was starting to look real.

  My sensei’s style was perfect for me, because I had always studied mixed disciplines and never went for any belt. I trained to stay alive, using a fast, violent amalgam of styles geared to the total annihilation of an attacker. My fighting style had best been described as dirty. Daniel and Eli, my partner in Yellowrock Securities, both fought dirty. I winced as Eli took a boxer’s blow straight to his chin and wobbled on his feet. But either he recovered fast or it was only a feint, because he kicked out, catching Daniel in the solar plexus. In fighters’ terms it wasn’t a low blow, but since I had just hit Sensei there, it wasn’t exactly sweet either.

  Daniel skipped away, his breathing pained. I wondered wheth
er he’d broken a rib.

  The dojo was in the back room of a small jewelry store on St. Louis Street, the store specializing in faceted gems, vintage styles and settings, and real antique pieces. The dojo was down a narrow service alley, thirty inches wide, damp, and dim, and was open to the public only after store hours. I was one of a select few students Daniel saw during the day. I had my own key.

  Eli took a fast series of punches to the ribs, bounced off a white-painted wall across from me and into the mirrored back wall. Daniel nearly got his boy parts crushed by a kick, but he jumped back, caught one of Eli’s ankles, and twisted it hard and fast, putting torqueing pressure on the knee. Eli was expecting the move and leaped off the floor into a twirl and kicked Daniel in the side of the neck with his other foot. They both went down. Daniel out for the count. Idiots. Eli was wheezing with pain. The hand he supported himself with had left a bloody print on the mirror.

  The long room had hardwood floors, two white-painted walls—one now stained with blood—one mirrored wall (ditto), and one wall with French doors that looked out over a typical New Orleans–style enclosed courtyard planted with tropical and semitropical plants. Three cats, tails twitching, lounged on a low brick-stucco wall near the splashing fountain, which was designed in the fashion of a mountain stream, with the small pool at the bottom filled with plants. The cats, looking bored and hot, were watching the humans fight. The enclosed courtyard was surrounded by two- and three-story buildings and was overlooked by wrought-iron galleries dripping with potted vines and flowering plants. Sensei lived upstairs in one of the apartments, and he usually dropped down using a rappelling rope and climbing gear. I had a feeling he’d be going back up the hard way, one slow step at a time.

  Since Daniel was rolling over, marginally awake, and it looked as if the fight was over, I shifted my weight and clapped slowly, the sound ringing brightly off the unadorned walls. “Danny boy, I think you got your butt beat,” I said.

  “Maybe.” He winced as he rolled to his backside and stood upright, stretching muscles that had to have deep bruises. “But it took two of you. Tag team.” Daniel was average height, had muscles like rolls of barbed wire and a face no one would remember for two seconds. A man no one would notice.