Darkfire Kiss Read Free

Chen or Erik or Jorge, thousands of miles from any of them, the waxing moon influenced another change. Deep in his hidden lair, almost forgotten by his own kind, the Sleeper stirred.

Chapter 1
     
    Washington, DC
December 20, 2010
     
    E thics were so inconvenient.
    Melissa Smith had worked with many people who either had no ethics or could easily ignore them. She’d never been that way, even in pursuit of a story.
    No matter how much was at stake.
    She parked her car on the street, not too close to the house she’d driven past a hundred times, and took a deep breath. It didn’t help. She was still freaked out. She closed her eyes and saw the wreckage of Daphne’s body, as vividly as if she were still standing in the morgue.
    She wondered whether it was time for a change. In a real sense, her principles were all she had left. Melissa had lost her husband, her house, her dream job, her health, and her future. Her confidence had taken a pretty big hit, too. All she had left was the chance of restarting her career, in the hope of bringing truth to light. A legacy of truth was the only thing she could hope to build.
    And maybe those ethics were the only thing standing in her way.
    Did she want justice for Daphne enough to bend her own rules?
    Daphne, Melissa knew, would have told her to make her own luck.
    Melissa frowned, unhappy with the available options. She pulled out the note from Daphne one more time. It was terse, just as Daphne had always been, and just reading it made her feel her obligation to the girl.
    It was her fault….
    The note had come two days before, in the mail as if it were no more important than a credit card bill. Enclosed with the note had been a key—a numbered key, likely to a storage locker.
    Melissa had spent the whole day trying to guess where that storage locker might be. She hadn’t really believed that Daphne was dead. The girl was a consummate liar, albeit one with a good heart. She’d had to deceive to survive on the streets of Baghdad, which was where Melissa had first met the engaging, pretty, opportunistic girl. Daphne had had a charm about her, and she’d been reliable in unexpected moments.
    Melissa had lost track of Daphne when she’d returned stateside again. She’d thought of the beggar girl often, worrying about her when she should have been worrying about herself.
    No one had been more surprised than Melissa to encounter Daphne again three years later in the most unlikely of places—right in DC, dressed to the nines and on the arm of an affluent older man.
    Magnus Montmorency.
    It couldn’t have been a coincidence; Melissa had known that immediately. Montmorency had been the rumored power behind illicit arms deals in Baghdad—every trail led to his vicinity and stopped cold. Melissa had wanted to get that story more than anything. She had wanted to reveal Montmorency for the villain he was, but she’d run out of time.
    In more ways than one.
    Still, she would have known him anywhere. Seeing Daphne with Montmorency hadn’t reassured Melissa at all. She didn’t like that Daphne had become his mistress; that she had used Montmorency as her ticket to the future.
    And it really didn’t help that Melissa had once asked Daphne in Baghdad to find out more about Montmorency’s connections. That had been before she’d realized how brutal he was.
    She had a responsibility….
    The sight of Daphne’s body flicked through her thoughts again, as if the dead girl would taunt Melissa with her obligation. Montmorency must have killed Daphne. Melissa suspected as much but couldn’t prove a thing. It was the past all over again—the trail led to Montmorency’s vicinity and stopped cold.
    But Daphne had provided the inside intelligence Melissa needed. If she had the guts to use it. She eyed the letter and tried to summon her resolve.
    Melissa had done her homework, checking all the angles before she leapt into trouble. She’d always been thorough, instead of running with half a