Watcher Untethered

Duty. Honor. His brothers. That's all he has.

Wounded in battle, Zander wakes in a daemon feeding ground, bound to a human female. The origins of the restraints are unknown and the woman, a risk for Otherworld exposure. In the midst of the violence of his world, and with relationships punishable by death, Austin tempts a part of him he fought to lock down his entire, miserable existence.

Kidnapped and handcuffed to a dangerously sexy man, Austin is helpless to fight the attraction to her savior. The darkness of his world terrifies her, yet the rich timbre of his voice triggers a bizarre form of synesthesia. After a decade of being blind, what Austin sees when she's with Zander, threatens to destroy them both...

“This asshole’s head is mine. I mean it, Tanek.”

Zander swerved the truck down a shadowed side street,
the squeal of rubber on road echoing off brick buildings. The dark fury in his
blood had him lit to explode. That he could even drive astonished him. He
couldn’t believe any Otherworlder—Dark or Light—could be so massively stupid.

“He’s headed for that alley, Z. Get closer.” Tanek
popped the passenger door open and swung out onto the step bar. “Man, this
one’s quick.”

Quick? The pro-wrestler build of their bad guy was deceiving as hell, because
boots to asphalt, the daemon ran Usain Bolt fast—even with the added weight of
an unconscious blonde slung over his shoulder.

A growl rumbled deep in Zander’s chest. Nothing ranked
lower in his playbook of evil than daemons who preyed on innocent females,
except maybe a daemon who preyed on innocent females who happened to be at his
nightclub.

Zander strangled the steering wheel as his foot ground
harder on the gas. As the Navigator’s engine revved, he banked a hard left down
the alley. The tires screamed into the night and he almost lost Tanek. The
space between the buildings was tight, the walls zipping past on both sides of
the truck in a blur.

There wasn’t much in life or death Zander cared
about—except maybe pissing people off. Celestial guardian. Soulless assassin.
Despised bastard. Meh, all the same.

He was Nephilim, and this daemon would be schooled in
what it meant to provoke a Soldier of the Choir.

“My club is a safe zone, Tanek. My house. My kill.”

“Victori spolia,” Tanek said, launching off the
side of the truck. The guy’s size fourteens landed heavy, his momentum pitching
him into a run.

“To the victor goes the spoils, my ass.” Zander
stomped the brakes and slammed the shifter into park. He bailed out and tore
down the alley after his commander. The guy’s leather vest flared like a cape
behind him, the Nephilim runes etched into the back, glimmering silver under
the lights of the sleeping city.

Lost in the shadows, Tanek unsheathed his blade and
Zander followed his lead. Three a.m. in an industrial section of Toronto’s
fashion district left few humans to witness the excitement, but it only took
one industrious looky-loo with a cell phone, and the Otherworld was exposed and
going viral on the internet.

“She isn’t human,” Tanek said, over his shoulder. “Could
be worse.”

Zander checked the sightlines from the rooftops and
wondered how Tanek did it. The guy still spouted optimism and he’d been trapped
in this thankless existence longer than any of them. They barreled through
another back alley and spooked a pair of scavenging raccoons. The rotund little
bandits scattered in a flurry of hostile chatter.

Yeah, a human would be worse.

One tenet galvanized all members of the Otherworld. It
had nothing to do with character alignment or their feeding needs, whether blood,
flesh, spirit, or fear. It had everything to do with the food source.

Humans must remain oblivious.

The two of them hurdled overgrown boxwoods, their
boots propelling them through backstreets, around graffiti-covered dumpsters,
and over broken wooden skids littering their path. Most nights, obstacles kept
the chase interesting, but tonight, Zander wanted to skip the calisthenics and
get straight to the decapitating part.

Shit. They’d lost visual.

Tanek vaulted over a concrete barricade and signaled
for Zander to flank left and cover the next building. Zander changed course.
They weren’t out of this. The only place the daemon could take cover was in the
cluster of dilapidated, two-story warehouses ahead. Working a quick and dirty
grid, they melted into the overcast night, cranked door handles, and eyeballed
what windows they found.

Zander focused his energy and summoned his gift. With
a low-level current arcing within his cells, he scanned the area, his senses
heightened. He itched to detect the acrid scent of daemon. He strained for any
movement shift or the faintest rustle in the distance.

He sensed—nothing.

August air hung deathly still and heavy in his lungs;
no breeze to carry scents and no sound of movement to point them in the right
direction. He wiped a wrist across his brow and cursed. The storm brewing over
Lake Ontario flashed angry strobes and threatened its wrath.

As he ghosted across the next loading ramp, his
electrical mojo did its thing and his head cranked around. Zeroing in on a
piece-of-shit factory two units over, the hair on the nape of his neck stood at
attention. Gotcha.

Zander whistled for Tanek to follow and pistoned
forward.

The building stood an inspired tribute to post-war
ramshackle and as he back-flatted against the red brick, clay detritus crumbled
onto the walkway. He sidestepped toward the metal door and sucked in a lungful—

Fuck. The stench of death and ode-to-campfire tunneled into his sinuses—the
all too familiar mix of rotting flesh, terror, and brimstone. A daemon
kill-zone.

Now, the trip into industrial-landia made sense.
Isolated after dark. No nosy neighbors to hear baleful screams from within. And
no way for him and Tanek to guess how many of Hell Realm’s army lurked inside.

While his lungs sucked in more incentive to
decapitate, Zander retrieved the Moonstone from his vest pocket. In the
heartbeat it took Tanek to join the party, Zander brushed a thumb across the
feldspar and uttered the words to fire the ancient runes to life. Heaven’s
light erupted from the stone and sliced the darkness.

Good to go. Well, aside from having no idea what
species of daemon they faced aaaand the fact that this whole
snatch-and-chase scenario made his skin tingle.

And not in a good way.