Free MacRieve (Immortals After Dark) by Kresley Cole Page A

Kill her!
    From her backpack, the witch produced a white, nearly transparent nightgown.
    Chloe preferred to wear loose jerseys, looser shorts. Now she was supposed to wear a see-through gown?
    Belee appraised her with a critical eye. “Pretty face.”
    Chloe wanted to spit in hers.
    “Shame to cover it up, but . . .” From her pack, Belee also drew out a black silk bag. “We need to remind everyone why we’re here, Daughter of Webb.”
    “At’s no mi na!”
    “It is your name. You just didn’t know it. Your father, Dustin Todd, is also known as Preston Webb. The commander of the Order. You’re the daughter of the most hated man in all the Lore. . . .”



SEVEN
    I never scented him,” Will muttered with a chin jerk toward a centaur in the distance, past row after row of parked cars at the demon crossroads. Centaurs aligned with the Pravus, the evil side of the Lore.
    “Probably because I dialed down your nose,” Munro said, his mood improved. Tonight they’d received a lead on Webb, a daughter of his for sale. Which meant there was possibility , after weeks of nothing.
    Munro had a bloody spring in his step.
    The centaur in question had a nymph pressed up against the side of a sports car and was rutting her with zero-to-sixty thrusts.
    The ride was a Mustang. Fitting.
    “We’re no’ to fight them,” Munro said. “From the sound of it, there’s an honest-to-gods truce going on tonight.” Not far in the distance, they heard scores of immortals peaceably milling.
    As they strode by the couple, Munro muttered in Gaelic, “Did one—or both—of us do that nymph?”
    “Odds are,” Will said casually, though he made a point of remembering, so that he never bedded the same one twice.
    Twice was too close to three times, and to this day, he had a phobia about that.
    Munro’s question was answered when the nymph waved happily at the brothers; the centaur shot them killing looks and thrust more aggressively. Between his angry shoves, she gasped: “Hi, guys . . . unh, see you . . . unh, later?”
    “Ah, sure thing, sweet,” Munro said.
    Nymphs were easy and pleasant bed sport, seeking nothing but mutual pleasure. Unlike seed-feeding succubae.
    Munro told Will, “Perhaps a comely nymph is just what you need to get back in the saddle? I know it’s been weeks for you.”
    Try months.
    “You could burn off some . . . aggression?”
    Munro also knew all about Will’s many sexual hang-ups and peculiarities. Though Will had long since recognized his “relationship” with Ruelle for what it was—a violation of a young mind and body, a nightmare—the scars remained.
    “I’ve no time for that. Come on, we’re late.” Will had taken scant seconds to change, plucking clothes from his floor, an array of garments that appeared less worn/dirty than others. “It’s nearly midnight.”
    Munro had driven his brand-new Range Rover turbo here, topping the thing out on old Louisiana county roads. “Does no’ matter if we’re late,” he said. “I doubt we can win this auction. I could only drum up a million-dollar wire on such short notice. And the lowest number on the witches’ bidding app —I shite you no’—was one mil.”
    “What good is it to be rich if we canna scrape up the scratch to buy a political prisoner on a whim?”
    Past a line of pecan trees lay a wide-open field packed with Loreans. Understandable. Webb had upended countless lives, and this capture was the first lead on him since the prison break.
    As Will and Munro strode into the crowd, they saw all manner of immortal species, even a few gypsy and berserker humans who lived on the fringe of the Lore.
    Most immortals here belonged to one of the two major alliances, Pravus and Vertas. Amazingly, the temporary truce between them was holding. But then, they had a common enemy: the Order.
    The brothers passed a group of young Vertas shifters—fox, wolverine, and cheetah—that Will recognized from the island. While the Pravus