Part 1 (1/2)

OF LOVE AND DARKNESS.

Twisted Fate Series.

TAMI LUND.

To Tami's Tarts .

the best street team a girl could ask for!.

Acknowledgements.

I am an incredibly lucky person in that I have a fantastic support network. Thank you to each and every one of my friends (and that includes family) for being just that. And an extra special thank you to the ones who swear up and down they love my books, and not just because they know the author. I'd also like to acknowledge my editor, Mary Harris. It was a pleasure working with her, and this book is as good as it is in large part due to her guidance.

Chapter 1.

There was a reason humans feared that which went b.u.mp in the night. Shadows in dark alleys, the rustling of dried leaves on an otherwise still night. Bas.e.m.e.nts and dark corridors.

Because the monsters were real.

Gavin Rowan knew this because he was one of the monsters.

Used to be. He used to be a Rakshasa like the rest of them. A shape-s.h.i.+fter who hunted humans for sport, hunted rare s.h.i.+fters called Chala because that was what his kind were born to do.

Now, thanks to a two-hundred-year-old curse, he hunted his own kind and protected the Chala. If there were even any Chala left to protect. The Rakshasa had done an impressive job over the course of the last millennia, and as far as Gavin had been able to tell, it was likely there were no more Chala to hunt or protect.

So he protected the humans instead. He'd made this area his turf, this urban landscape desperately in need of some sort of champion.

I don't want to be a champion.

Yet he knew he had no choice. The curse saw to that. Every day, he fought the battle in his head-the need to kill, to torment the humans against the need to protect them, and to destroy those who would otherwise torment them. He should have gone mad long ago but the one who cursed him had known what she was doing and she knew d.a.m.n well he would live forever with this internal torture.

So he persevered, because to go mad was to let her win and he would never, ever do that.

Tonight was a good night for his particular plight. There had been a gathering at the convention center, and humans were pouring into the streets, well after dark on a winter's evening. Gavin knew the Rakshasa were waiting, hiding in the shadows, ever ready. And the humans were so foolish, so hopelessly nave. They would walk in pairs and singles, and they would tell themselves the shadows weren't really moving, that the monsters did not really exist.

Gavin drained the last of the coffee in the cup and slipped from the booth. He stretched, pulled a ten out of his wallet, and dropped it onto the table. Silent as a cat, he left the diner and disappeared into the shadows. It was time to do what he did best.

It was time to hunt.

Chapter 2.

Sydney Amataya hated working conventions when they were located downtown. Especially by herself. She was a d.a.m.n good event planner and was even a decent salesperson. But when it came to directions, she was ten times lousy.

Getting here from the suburbs had taken two full hours, when the GPS said it should have only taken forty-five minutes. Yes, she'd even used a GPS and still had issues.

Then she parked her car on the street instead of in the attached parking garage. She told herself she was saving her employer twenty bucks. It always took them forever to reimburse her anyway.

When the convention was over, she packed up her tabletop display, piled her supplies onto a cart, and wheeled it down to the main lobby. She left it there to go in search of her car, with the intention of pulling it into the circle drive in front of the ma.s.sive convention center, loading her supplies, then heading home.

It felt like hours since she'd wandered outside on this quest for her vehicle.

She was lost. In downtown Detroit. Alone. With the sun quickly sinking behind the towering old buildings that felt as though they were pressing in on her. Shadows appeared quickly when one was surrounded by high-rises.

She was certain she had parked her car right here. Or maybe here? Or there?

Yep, she was lost. She threw her gloved hands into the air and blew out a frustrated sigh. Her breath came in a puff of white and then quickly dissipated.

Her stepbrother William was going to harangue her endlessly when she got home. If she got home. She couldn't even use her cell phone to call him to come rescue her, which would normally be her first choice-well, after she worked up the nerve to admit she was lost in the first place. She had stubbornness issues, and didn't like to admit when she was wrong.

But her phone was dead. She'd taken too many pictures and sent too many texts while at the convention, and the phone charger was, of course, in her car. Which she couldn't seem to find at the moment.

She dug the keys out of the pocket of her thick downy coat and began walking again, pus.h.i.+ng the panic b.u.t.ton on the key fob, as she'd been doing for what felt like hours already. Her knockoff Uggs were ruined from walking in the dirty gray slush covering the sidewalks. A heavy, wet snow had fallen while she had been inside the convention center, and now the sidewalks were treacherous and sloppy. At least she could derive some comfort from the fact that she had chosen to buy thirty-dollar knockoffs instead of the two-hundred-dollar real thing. Plus, they were three years old, so she'd certainly gotten her use out of them.

Small comfort.

She stared down at said boots, forcing herself to admit that they truly were no longer salvageable, when the most peculiar feeling washed over her, so intense that she actually came to a stuttering halt and lifted her head, looking around sharply. She had wandered into an alley, she realized with a spike of fear.

I'm never coming downtown alone again.

Sydney tried to decipher the source of the sensation flooding her body, the sense of . . . awareness. Her nerve endings tingled. Her body was on fire. In the middle of January with temperatures in the teens, she was half-tempted to shed her coat and thick woolen sweater.

She unzipped her coat but the action did nothing to cool the strange feeling. Her body seemed to be warring with itself. Run. Stay. Run.

Run?

”You lost, little girl?” The drawling voice was deep and rusty, as if the owner had just rolled out of bed and had not yet had that first cup of strong, black coffee.

Sydney turned around to face the owner of that voice, and the person whose presence was setting her nerve endings on fire. How she knew he was the source of this strange feeling, she did not know. But it was he.

Knew it.

She wrapped her arms around her middle as she watched the man step out of the shadows of the building to her left, and into a pool of yellow light cast by the streetlamp at the mouth of the alley. He was tall and lean, had a swimmer's build. His shoulders were wide, his waist narrow, and she could see the outline of sharply cut muscle under his dark T-s.h.i.+rt. Mid-January in Detroit, and he wore nothing more than a T-s.h.i.+rt, well-fitted jeans and a thin black leather jacket. His spiky hair was inky black, his skin olive. His eyes, strangely enough, almost appeared to be . . . glowing.

Sydney blinked several times and cleared her throat before saying, ”I was just on my way back to the convention center.”

”From where, exactly?” The amus.e.m.e.nt in the man's voice irritated her and helped to tamp the fire in her nerve endings.

”None of your business.” She deliberately turned away from him, praying he wasn't a rapist or murderer, since the closest thing she had to a weapon on her person were her car keys, and she doubted they would be much use against this guy.

”Lost little girls can get eaten in this area, you know.”

An image of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf leaped into her head, and she firmly shook it to dislodge the unsettling picture. She was not helpless, she told herself. And this guy certainly wasn't a wolf.

Although he's way too s.e.xy to be human.