Scorched [Pain & Love 3] (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Read online

  Pain & Love 3

  Scorched

  Lydia McKinney is a fierce Dragon soul. With her sisters, Jade and Daria, she makes up the last Dragon clutch in the United States. Dan Richardson, her former lover, is a reformed Fallen Angel who left her once without warning. He has returned almost ten years later to protect Lydia as a vampire army begins to swell in numbers and strength. While the feral creatures swarm Dan and Lydia’s town, they have to find trust their hidden natures have previously prevented, strength they never expected to need, and a love they couldn’t have guessed could be theirs.

  Previous acquaintances become battle allies as the flames of a potential apocalypse begin in their home town. Will they be able to quench the inferno, or will they be forced to fight with fire of their own?

  In the conclusion of the Pain & Love set, prepare to be Scorched.

  Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal

  Length: 48,623 words

  SCORCHED

  Pain & Love 3

  Ashlei D. Hawley

  ROMANCE

  www.BookStrand.com

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  A SIREN-BOOKSTRAND TITLE

  IMPRINT: Romance

  SCORCHED

  Copyright © 2015 by Ashlei D. Hawley

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-045-9

  First E-book Publication: March 2015

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  For the man who offered to fill my tank on a bitter winter night. Thank you for reminding me people can surprise you with their goodness, as well as their darkness.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  SCORCHED

  Pain & Love 3

  ASHLEI D. HAWLEY

  Copyright © 2015

  Chapter One

  Vampires who didn’t burn to ash in the sunlight. Lydia McKinney had accomplished the previously impossible feat with two old pieces of gold jewelry, ancient family magic, and a piece of her Dragon heart burned into the metal. Because one of them had been willing to break her neck in a hissy fit, Lydia hadn’t been too keen on giving the vamps such an advantage, but she agreed with her sister, Jade: the last remaining Dragon clutch in the United States needed the help of the vampires to face off against the Hunters if they were going to make their territory safe.

  The Hunters were Fallen Angels, confined to Earth since the time of the Great War between the factions of Heaven. This town was their town, and had been for too long. Lydia and her sometimes uneasy allies had joined together in order to force them out, or destroy them altogether.

  Lydia had been surprised to discover that the vampire who hated her guts, Mallory Wright, was the granddaughter of the wisewoman Lydia and her sisters sometimes sought for advice. Lydia’s mother, the previous Dragon matron, had been close with the wisewoman, Heddy, even though her daughters never had been.

  Mallory was psychic, as was her grandmother. Lydia wondered since becoming closely acquainted with the new vampire if her psychic abilities had been affected by her transformation. If they could be in the same room without snarling at each other, maybe it was something she could ask her about.

  Instead of meeting with Dan Richardson as he wanted, Lydia wiled the day away. She found it preferable to spend the day with Heddy and the vampires at the old woman’s lake house.

  Lydia and Jade watched while their youngest sister, Daria, frolicked in the water with Mallory and Leigh. The ancient maker was a puppy dog with his youngling and splashed around with abandon. They raced to the raft that bobbed on the waves they made a few yards out from shore, played with a Frisbee, and watched in delight as Daria worked her unique magic. Unlike Jade and Lydia, who called on the power of flames, Daria was a water Dragon. In the lake, she was submerged in her natural element, which came to her call and under her control with beautiful purity.

  Leigh’s masculine laughter rolled over the lake, drawing a smile from Lydia every time she heard it. The two of them together were adorable, but she’d never tell the smoky-eyed vampire how sweet he was with his youngling. When Daria’s high voice joined in the peeling sound of amusement, Lydia couldn’t help but feel the world was right, though she knew the exact opposite was true. The lake had been a part of their childhood. It was right they were back as adults, especially in one of the most important times of their lives.

  An episode of great amusement presented itself while the small group of not-quite humans sat around a hearty campfire. The flames leaped around and smoke billowed, both familiar friends to Lydia. She didn’t want to be mean, but she couldn’t help the smile that sprang to her face when Mallory joined the group. She hissed in pain as she sat on one of the folding lawn chairs.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” the young vampire complained as she pushed her golden hair away from painful-looking pink cheeks. “I must be the first vampire in freaking history to have to suffer a damn sunburn.”

  Daria gave Mallory a frown of sympathy, but Lydia couldn’t bury her smirk under a considerate expression to save her life. The irony was hilarious to her.

  “Though I don’t enjoy it as much as Lydia obviously does, you have to admit it’s pretty funny,” Jade said as she nudged her sister. Lydia shrugged—her
closest attempt at an apology. Mallory rolled her eyes in response to Jade’s words and Lydia’s gesture.

  “It’d be funnier if it wasn’t me,” Mallory muttered.

  Leigh brushed a soothing hand down Mallory’s long hair, and she murmured her approval of his touch. Lydia openly admired the affection between them. She curled her legs up on the chair and threw small pieces of sticks into the fire.

  “Should we talk about the Hunters?” Daria asked. “Or do we each have our individual plans on how to handle things from here?”

  “I can already tell you think having separate plans is dumb,” Lydia pointed out, reading the undertones in her sister’s softly spoken words.

  “Well, of course, it would be dumb,” Daria retorted in a matter-of-fact voice. “I was trying to keep from saying it so bluntly, but there you go. We should plan together. We’re the strongest creatures in this town. If anyone can do anything about the Hunters, it will be us. It should be us.”

  Lydia frowned. She didn’t want her youngest sister anywhere near the Hunters. She especially didn’t want her mixed up in the inevitable fight they’d be bringing.

  “Dan indicated in his letter that he knows something about the Hunters that would be useful to me. We should wait to plan until after I’ve talked to him.”

  Jade scoffed and stuffed a marshmallow in her mouth without toasting it. “That pervy teacher you banged back in high school?” she asked. “What the hell would he know about them?”

  Lydia’s brow furrowed with her quickly rising fury. She glared at Jade and snapped, “It was after high school. And I obviously can’t know until I talk to him, can I?”

  “He just wants to get laid, I bet.”

  Jade had decided to bait her, Lydia knew. It was a horrible habit her sister had. “Then he wouldn’t have mentioned the Hunters, you dipshit,” Lydia growled back. Her hand wandered upward, intending to snatch her glasses away from her golden eyes in case she burst into flames. She didn’t have enough spare pairs to waste another one.

  “I guess we’ll see,” Jade said sweetly and popped another marshmallow in her mouth. Her baiting attempt over, she turned on the uncooked hot dogs.

  Mallory gave her a look blended in equal parts of disgust and amusement. “I think we planned to roast those first.”

  Jade shrugged and bit into the first hot dog. “No need to cook them for me. I like them fine either way.”

  “Amazing,” Lydia said, skewering a hot dog on a stick. “You’re equally annoying whether you’re talking about Hunters or hot dogs. Maybe you should just shut it.”

  Jade’s vibrant green eyes sparkled with laughter as she gave her older sister a one-fingered salute. “Maybe you should blow me,” she retorted.

  Even with their bickering, Lydia was glad when her hot dog caught flame, not her. Things were looking up.

  Chapter Two

  Getting under the skin of the sultry, sometimes overconfident Lydia McKinney had been Daniel Richardson’s greatest accomplishment of the month. Grinning as he sat in his beat-up Dodge Neon, which he preferred to any of the Hunters’ shiny new behemoths, Dan made himself comfortable in the driveway two houses down from where Lydia slept in the house shared by her sisters, Daria and Jade.

  Or perhaps she wasn’t sleeping. Dan knew for a fact he’d irked her. Lydia had a hard time sleeping when she was annoyed. He’d known when he sent her the letter detailing his before now unknown involvement with the Hunters who threatened everything she loved that he’d get a rise out of the lovely Lydia. Very close to the top of the list of what the Hunters sought to take from Lydia was her life, and Dan would not let that happen. He reviewed the letter in his mind, hoping he hadn’t implicated himself in any way with the painstakingly-chosen words.

  Lydia, he’d written. No dear or lovely, as he’d frequently addressed her letters with when he’d written them embarrassingly often before.

  I hope this letter finds you well. I didn’t know if you moved or not, but I see your sisters here often, even if you come around so rarely. I knew the letter would get to you eventually this way. No time for casual chat, I’m afraid. You’ve pissed some people off, and they’re going to be moving Heaven and Hell in order to make you pay up. You need to call me, because I think I can help you. I want to help you. Miss your face, kid.

  No, he didn’t think he’d put himself in too familiar a context with the Hunters for her to make him think he was one of her many enemies. He already had a plan for the lie he’d have to tell her when it came to how he’d become involved with them in the first place.

  Sipping from Styrofoam cup filled with cold pop from a gas station, Dan kept one wary eye on the house the Dragon sisters were currently sharing. He didn’t taste the pop, because he didn’t taste any food or beverage he imbibed. His body needed nourishment, per se, but not in the same way most normal human bodies did. He could easily go weeks without eating or drinking anything. He could just as easily binge eat for a month, shoveling twelve thousand calories into his face each day and his body would not outwardly change. It would, however, become harder to control the facets of what Dan considered his external body, a visage invisible to any normal human.

  If he didn’t give the human body fuel to continue its charade, his ethereal skin would begin to crawl, trying to part from the mortal form. His wing stumps would burn and itch as though infested with moving, writhing insects beneath the unseen flesh. The life of a Fallen Angel, no matter how many times it was repeated on the little blue planet, was never without its difficulties.

  Dan wished the human body he’d been given to utilize this time around would change. He wanted the perfect russet hair to muss, the unfailingly neat and tailored appearance to suffer damage of some kind, the attractive but unremarkable looks to become somehow different. Though physical injury could definitely be inflicted on his kind, they were just too outwardly perfect for his liking, especially considering the internal rot occurring beneath the flawless skin of most of them.

  This was the first lifetime he’d been invited to join the elite ranks of the Fallen on Earth known as Hunters. He’d been a fence-sitter ever since The Fall, so he couldn’t really fault the others for not wanting him to be a part of their most secret and prized operation. Dan hadn’t really cared either way. He wanted to do his time and stay out of the way for those who actually sought to have an impact on the universe. How fast could eternity pass, he often wondered. He wasn’t fantastically happy living among the humans, but neither was he pissed off at their continued confinement like some of the other Fallen had been for centuries. In fact, he’d come to appreciate and respect them throughout his many lifetimes lived among them. That wasn’t even counting the interesting life forms such as the amazingly beautiful Dragon named Lydia.

  Dan had first realized that he wouldn’t be meshing well with the Hunters when he oversaw an interrogation. The human woman had been fragile and scared, and her power wasn’t even something spectacular or dangerous. She was a palm reader who could actually read people—big deal. Before Jerry slit her throat, the woman had given up the names of psychics in the area who were actively working against the Hunters.

  As he rolled down the windows, irritated with the heat that still lingered into the night, Dan wondered how the Wrights fared. The palm reader had given the name of a cop who was a psychic, his wife and son, both normals, and their daughter, who was another psychic. He had to go off the radar after what had happened on his first, and last, mission, so he’d been unable to approach and warn them. From what he’d seen of Lydia’s comings and goings, the Wrights were all still alive, if not doing quite well.

  Dan leaned his head back. It had been almost four hours on his watch and he hadn’t seen any threat, from the Hunters or anything else. He knew something big had begun to brew, and he’d be damned if he let Lydia be tossed into the crossfire he’d helped create. She put herself in it often enough as it was.

  Closing his eyes, Dan willed his stupid human body to rest for a while. L
ydia hadn’t been followed home, as far as he could tell, and he would sense it if another Hunter approached, even if he were sleeping.

  Instead of drifting off into dreams, Dan found himself replaying the images in his mind he’d been trying to forget. The mission. The target. The end result had been blood and brutal death and him running. He hadn’t known that kind of beast was in him. Leave it to the Hunters to bring out the worst of their fellow Fallen. With his eyes closed, his mind moved relentlessly, Dan remembered the events of two days past.

  Joe sat to the left of Dan. Dan’s mentor was crouched and facing halfway from his partner-in-training. He jiggled one leg and flipped a large gold coin over and over again in his right hand.

  “For this target, two darts to the chest should be enough to take her down,” Jerry said. “Long distance like this is usually kill, not capture, but we need this one brought back to base. Usually in this position it would be head and heart, one shot to each.”

  Dan rolled his eyes. How many times would the seasoned Hunter remind the trainee of the target specs? “Leg and ass, got it.” Dan’s sarcasm was met with a stern glare.

  “Some of them are too dangerous to bring in unless they’re knocked out and restrained.”

  Joe’s droning voice made Dan want to turn the tranquilizer rifle he was holding on himself. He stifled a groan and pretended to listen.

  Jerry clutched the thick metal handcuffs and bunch of zip ties tighter, as though going through the exact process he would need to observe in order to subdue the target quickly and efficiently. “When we have to hit them in the open, it has to be quick, neat, and without mistakes. As soon as this one’s done, we have to go get her sister. Both of them are too dangerous to approach.”