Dark Embrace (Principatus) Read Free

to her feet before he could land another blow. He jack-knifed himself up off the road, fangs bared, chin and lips glistening with blood, demonic stare locked on her face. “Gonna fuck you—”
    Inari snapped out a swift sidekick before he could finish, aiming her booted heel for his unbeating heart.
    The vampire jerked to the right, blocking her kick, his arm swinging in a dark blur to strike her ankle with a crunching blow. White pain shot up her leg, but Inari didn’t falter. She spun into a back kick, driving her heel high against his chest. He flailed backward, face distorting in stunned fury.
    And turned and fled down the street.
    “At least he’s smart enough to know he should run away,” she muttered, fixing his back with a level stare. She flicked the human crumpled on the sidewalk a quick look, grim relief filling her at the sight of his moving chest. She’d reached him just in time. Now to end the vampire’s existence.
    She took off after the escaping vamp, her own speed matching his. Which meant she’d hurt him when she’d crash-tackled him to the road. Unless she transformed into her Principatus form, she couldn’t outrun a vamp. No matter how many hours she spent working out at the gym.
    Focus locked on the sprinting—albeit, sprinting with a limp—vampire, she pushed more power into her legs, letting the force of her assassin’s soul seep into her muscles. Blistering heat surged through her, scalding the walls of her veins, scorching the cells of her body. And still she ran faster, holding back the Principatus buried within her even as she leached its power, drawing closer to the fleeing vampire. Closer.
    She leapt without a sound, landing on his back and driving him to the ground a second before he could cut right and disappear into a narrow, unlit alley.
    He hissed, but the furious sound was cut short as she snatched a fistful of his hair and smashed his face against the sidewalk. Again and again. He flailed beneath her, scrabbling at her wrists, his fingers turning into claw-tipped talons with every swipe. She snarled, ducking each one. Curse it, if she wasn’t careful he’d rip her T-shirt.
    Then stop messing around, woman.
    She slammed his head to the ground once more, drove her knees between his shoulder blades and snagged his left wrist with her right hand. “This is going to hurt, fucker.” She yanked his arm to the side, pulling it until his armpit was stretched taut.
    “Going to kill you, bitch,” he blustered, writhing under her knees. He was strong even with his injury. But Inari was stronger.
    And seriously ticked off.
    “Yeah, yeah.” She curled her lip, jerked his arm a little straighter and ground her weight into his back. “Whatever.”
    She closed the fingers of her left hand around the grip of the long, silver dagger sheathed in the lining of her boot, withdrew it in a single, fluid motion and sank it to the hilt into the vampire’s armpit. Straight into the side of his unbeating heart.
    A screeching wail tore from the vamp’s throat. He thrashed once, twice and then Inari was kneeling on the footpath, a man-shaped smudge of oily dust staining the concrete under her knees.
    “Eww.” She crinkled her nose, the stench of instantly decomposed vampire turning the air putrid. Climbing to her feet, she slid her dagger back into its hidden sheath and stepped away from the residue of terminated vamp. “Why are bloodsuckers always so smelly?”
    She bent at the waist, casting a disgusted look at the knees of her leather trousers, and straightened immediately when the back of her neck prickled with heat.
    Someone was watching her. Again.
    Demon .
    The word whispered through her head. She squinted into the blackness around her, seeing nothing. Why would she? It was one in the morning on a moonless night, and she was standing on the sidewalk of a quiet side street far from the bright, flashing lights of the main strip. Not even the ten-buck hookers and crack users wandered so