Snow Slash: Crimson Hunter Book 1 Read online

  Snow Slash

  Crimson Hunter 1

  Fran Tullo

  For the many people who believed in me, even if it took forever to actually get this off the ground.

  Chapter 1

  Lexi

  A claw whistled over Lexi's head and she couldn’t hold back the laugh that fell from her lips. In his desperation to separate her head from her shoulders, the ugly bastard put himself way too close and totally off-balance. Her double axes separated with a soft click and he was suddenly a foot shorter. Or would that be a knee? Snickering at her own macabre humor, she stayed crouched, spinning on one foot to survey her surroundings.

  Eight unmoving bodies surrounded her, along with various body parts and a few bits and pieces she didn’t care to look too closely at. The ninth, who was still only missing his leg, was whining and howling pitifully until she straightened and pointed the edge of her axe directly under his snout. “Are there any more of your asshole buddies out there?” She always had a general feel of supernaturals in her vicinity. It had been disconcerting when she’d first become a Red, but it had kept her alive more times than she cared to admit, and she was thankful for it now. Unfortunately, adrenaline tended to shoot that all to hell. Better safe than sorry, and he was in no position to lie to her at the moment.

  He whimpered, shaking his head gingerly to avoid losing his nose as well as his leg.

  “Good boy.” She grimaced at him, lip curling. He was young by shifter standards, and if he’d stayed with his pack, he might actually be an attractive jackal. But once he’d severed ties, the magic that kept them clean and sane warped their bodies as quickly as it warped their minds. It was a damned shame. Reaching to the back of her belt, she unhooked the portable torch. Slamming her boot down on his bleeding thigh, she cauterized the wound, then kicked the unattached the stump farther from him. “A reminder for any more of you curs that wanna try to come after any of the nice supes living in the area.”

  She walked behind him, kicking him over and ignoring his reedy scream as she removed the disfigured tail at its base, cauterizing that with the same cold, clinical efficiency as before. “And that should remind you,” she crouched down, purring into his ear, “not to ever fuck with a Red. Ever. My name is Lexi Margati, and I will find you. And I will take more than a couple souvenirs next time.” She smirked as she tapped his nose with the bloody tail. “You have less than ten minutes to run… or hop, out of here.”

  Shoving herself back up, she turned her back on the single living jackal and snorted. Nine mongrels. Barely enough to work up a sweat, but she’d ruined yet another pair of pants. These were a favorite too, smooth leather that hid blood and made her ass look fantastic. There was enough slick on the outer thigh that meant one of them had gotten in at least one good shot. Dammit. Stitches first, then a shower, and bed.

  She made a quick call to the Cleaners; magically inclined fae who weren’t interested in the messy part of the killing, but also didn’t want to get the local normals caught up in their world more than necessary. Once upon a time, they were there to hide all supernatural activity from the normies, but after The Decision, it was just to keep the mess to a minimum. An hour from now, no one would know a fight ever took place. The jackal shifter was on his own with them. If he didn’t make it out of the area before they showed up, he’d be ‘cleansed’ too. He’d thrown his lot in with the bad guys, and it was her job to deal with the bad guys. His problem, not hers. Throwing her leg over her bike, she purred out of the area, clinging to her latest trophy. She’d have to figure out where to attach the newest tail. Maybe her boot. The irony made her giggle as she slid into her parking spot and headed up to her shitty apartment.

  Leather jacket on the ‘found’ couch, boots kicked off nearby and then she was leaving a trail of sweaty clothes and bloody footprints to the shower. The apartment itself was a simple and cheap studio that housed the bare necessities. The kitchen area was little more than a microwave, refrigerator, and a small counter big enough for a coffee maker. The living room doubled as a bedroom with a single mattress tucked in a corner, and a small bathroom with a shower. It was home for now, and nothing she couldn’t abandon at a moment’s notice if she needed to. Still, she’d managed to keep this one for over three years… she was considering getting a plant.

  She couldn’t get the young jackal’s face terrified face out of her mind, and she punched the shower harder than necessary to get the hot water running. It was like a pull on her soul after every fight. When the adrenaline left her, a heart-wrenching ache filled the space, like a wound that refused to close. The empty apartment, the battles by herself, the callousness of her fights… they weren’t exactly her even though they should be. At least that’s what all the books her Grandmother left her said they should be. Get in, get the job done, move on. She learned her lessons about getting attached way too early… Abram. Millie... gone.

  Millie, her Grandmother, was lost to a Death Squad, a group of well-trained mercenaries that were part of an underground movement to remove Reds and the rest of the supernatural law enforcers from power. They made the gang Lexi fought seem like a bunch of schoolyard bullies. She had fought well in the end, taking out two shifters on her own when they attacked. But a human, even one with as much knowledge and skill as Millie, wasn’t equipped to deal with a trained assault. Grandmothers only carried the knowledge, not the superhuman abilities that their Red charges had.

  She had called Abram on her way home from the airport, sixteen and full of herself after one of her first solo hunts. They had planned a ‘yay, you didn’t die’ celebration. She had even made him promise to grab dinner on his way over. Instead, she’d come home to a slaughter. Later, she realized that her brain shut down, but at the time, all she could think to do was grab the magic box that Millie kept all of her books and artifacts in, the one she’d always called her ‘oh shit’ box, jump back on her bike and take off. Revenge was the only thing compelling her fight or flight instinct.

  What she hadn’t done was call Abram. She didn’t even realize she was curled up crying on the floor of the shower as she thought of the way she sent her best, truest friend, to find their dead mentor and then vanished on him just as completely. Almost ten years on her own, sometimes doing fine, sometimes feeling like she was hanging on by a thread. She missed them both fiercely, but her pride refused to let her dwell on mistakes when more supernatural gangs roamed North America. She had an appointment in Alaska in two days with an earth of arctic fox shifters who were having some issues.

  Shutting her emotions down was never easy, but she finally stood and washed herself in the water gone long cold. Naked and only partially dry, she staggered out for her first aid kit; a bottle of whiskey, a couple needles, and medical grade thread. She rarely needed them, but it would take a bit for her enhanced healing to kick in, and she didn’t feel like scrounging for a new mattress. Taking a swig for herself, she poured the rest down her leg, nails digging into the wood of the counter top. Another swig and she managed to get herself stitched up with only a few curse words. It was definitely going to leave a scar, but she already had more than a few of those anyway… what was one more? Her bags were already packed for the morning, so she tacked the tail to her boot, and considered the walk to the bed for only a second before shoving everything onto the floor and crashing naked on the couch until her flight the next morning.

  Chapter 2

  Lexi

  Lexi was not a morning person. To be fair, she wasn’t much of a person at all, more of a living, breathing weapon. Despite her personal feelings, her pride refused to allow her to be anything but perfect in public. She groaned as her morning alarm went off, slapping her phone off the
table and rolling off to follow it onto the floor. The hard floor on her still tender leg made her wince and she briefly considered grabbing the blanket and going back to sleep where she landed. A patch of sun caught her just right across the eyes and she snarled before stretching like a cat.

  Too bad no one was around to enjoy the view. It was habit to stretch first before rolling into her morning workout routine. Unless someone was actively trying to kill her, keeping herself in top physical form was her highest priority. Of course, there was another part of her that was itching for a good workout, but she slammed a mental wall down on that particular need. She’d find a bar in Alaska when her business was concluded. She was attractive enough, and could dance well enough, that she could usually find a pretty one-night-stand that didn’t feel the need to get too clingy in the morning.

  It didn’t take her long to dress in a pair of black jeans and a red shirt with a laughing black skull on the front of it. She tossed her black leather jacket over it and grabbed her bag, heading outside into the bright morning light. Her Kawasaki Ninja gleamed in the sun, the shiny black paint reflecting her green eyes back at her as she strapped her bag to the back. She ran her fingers over the polished surfaced, her index finger tracing the drops of blood painted around the turn signals. She added one for every year she survived as a Red. Her bike was her one true joy in life and she handled all of the maintenance herself, unwilling to let anyone else near her precious baby.

  The trip to the airport was quiet as she whipped in and out of traffic. The highway was fairly clear and she kept her speed even; missing her flight because some cop needed to make his quota wasn’t going to endear her to the Alaskan shifters. She pulled her bike up into the smaller parking lot, flagging down an attendant and smiling.

  He gave her a once over in her leather jacket, short black hair with yellow and green streaks over her eyes, and black jeans tucked into heavy black and silver boots. None of that took into account the two silver lip rings, the bar between her eyes, and her eyebrow ring. Each ear was pierced seven times with esoteric symbols in them. In short, she looked like trouble, aside from the friendly smile and official looking ticket she was holding up. He gulped and walked over. “Y-yes’m?”

  Lexi chuckled and handed him the ticket. She knew what she looked like. Cultivated the look, thank you very much. “I was told to bring my bike back here if I wanted it flown with me. There’s a spare can to empty the gas out, I expect her in the same condition I got her in...” She leaned in with a playful wink, checking his name tag, “Martin.” She slipped him a tip as well and then patted the bike fondly before heading down to deal with the red tape of getting herself on the plane.

  As she walked into the airport itself, she bypassed both the ticket booth and the line of waiting passengers. She pulled a badge from her back pocket and an older TSA agent grumbled, but nodded, pointing to a side room. “You’re in there, Red.”

  When Lexi had been a little girl, werewolves, vampires, things that go bump in the night, they were all creatures of myths and legends. If you still believed in them, you were weird. The supes kept their heads down, they acted as human as possible, and the penalty for coming out to humans was almost always death. Lexi had dealt out a couple of those sentences herself, but thankfully, they were few and far between.

  Then there was The Decision. The supernatural powers that be got together with the normals in the know and decided that it would be better for the regular public if the supes were introduced slowly into the day to day life.

  It wasn’t. It was a clusterfuck of epic proportions. And it made Lexi’s work that much harder, and she didn’t even get an increase in pay to deal with it. At least the military, police, and other governing agencies had already set laws and actions in place for the mess. Once such action was the formation of the separate Supernatural Regional Transportation Security Administration. An off-shoot of the main TSA, the SRTSA mainly dealt with Reds having to cross country borders and the occasional border scuffle that wasn’t big enough to call a Red in for. They handled flight accommodations for rare pets and for supernaturals that had unique needs. They were also trained to detect and detain magical artifacts until proper paperwork could be obtained for them. Other than that, they weren’t much different from regular TSA; grumpy security that was tired of everyone’s shit.

  A real smile crossed her lips as she walked in and tossed her bag in the circle on the magically charged table, waving at Brianna Ambrols. Bri was one of the few agents who didn’t have a permanent stick up her ass, and a close friend and drinking buddy since Lexi had found her most recent apartment. “Yo, Bri, you get whirly bird duty today?”

  “Only cuz I knew yer pain in the ass was gonna be here. None o’ the boys wanted ta deal wit’ ya,” the large redhead laughed, pulling her into a hug. Brianna had giant blood in her veins, but she was mostly human; the only real proof was her six foot stature and Irish accent that came out more when she was angry or drunk. “C’mon, ya wag, out wit’ it. Where ya goin’ and why, so the magic snobs dun get their knickers in a bunch.”

  Lexi laughed and shoved her friend away, snapping to attention playfully. “Yes, ma’am, wouldn’t want your position in the middle of Bumblefuck, Nowhere compromised! Alexandra Margati, North American Red, requested by the Permafrost Earth for a parlay.” She settled back again with a shrug. “You can check the bag, it’s the same as always. I’m not expecting trouble, but it’s weird for the Permafrost foxes to ask for anything, especially from me. So, expect the unexpected, blah blah blah.”

  A blue line glowed around both the bag and Lexi and Bri nodded. “You’ve been approved, Red Lexi. Gods watch your path an’ bring ya home ta us.” There was something in Bri’s voice that made Lexi pause, giving her a sharp look. Giants and mischief was generally a bad combination. With a huff at Bri’s faux innocent face, she grabbed her bag and hugged her friend before heading out to the tarmac to board her plane. Just before the door closed, Bri called out after her, “Remember ta call the right Cleaners this time…!”

  “Aw, fuck off, Bri!” Lexi laughed and gave a one-fingered salute over her shoulder. Make one mistake with a country code and they never let you live it down.

  If there was one thing other than her bike that Lexi let herself enjoy, it was first class flight. She didn’t care about roach motels or shitty dive bars, but she and her bike traveled in style in the air. The flight from Allentown, Pennsylvania to Fairbanks in Alaska was a long one, but at least she had leg room, and food. And one of the things that the Decision made possible was better flights; no more endless layovers if you paid the right price. She woke up as the plane touched down, standing up carefully to test her injured leg. No pain, just a little stiffness. She grinned and grabbed her carry-on, following the other passengers back out onto solid ground. As soon as she disembarked, Martin had her bike wheeled out and the chrome was shinier than when it went onto the plane. It made her smirk and she handed him another $20, patting his cheek before she rolled the bike away from the plane. There was supposed to be someone out here to meet her.

  It took her a few minutes to actually spot her escort, and when she did, a scowl marred her features. The Permafrost Earth were known for their shocking coloring, and one of the young men heading towards her was obviously clan. White hair that darkened into pale gray tips brushed his slender shoulders as he walked, and his light blue eyes danced over her form, as if everything about her amused him. She was used to being eyed, but generally it was fear, contempt, or heat… amusement was not something she was used to seeing directed at her. His companion seemed to be an almost exact opposite, with spiky black hair and dark eyes that scanned the terrain around them, resting only briefly on Lexi before flicking around again. He frowned as deeply as the fox shifter grinned, folding his arms over an impressive chest when they got within talking distance.

  “You’re the Red, right?" Blue Eyes held out a hand, toning down his grin only slightly, though he did manage to tilt his head politely. "I'm
Jace and this is my yin, Braydon. We've been sent by my Elder to escort you to our lands."

  Lexi snorted and shook her head, taking his hand and shaking it. "Lexi... and what if I wasn't the Red, hmm? You just randomly spout that out to every girl who steps off the plane until you get the right one?" She tried to look stern, but that damned grin was infectious and she could feel an answering one tugging at her own lips. She glanced at Braydon and noticed that his lips were also quirking up in a slight smile, making it even more difficult to maintain her firm expression.

  "Hell nah. We waited for the bad ass to come down. And besides, you smell like magic. Like magic and leather and weaponry.”

  She snorted and shook her head, before giving them a quizzical look. “Yin? That doesn’t sound Aleutian…”

  “Nope.” Jace’s lips popped on the p, and he looked over at Braydon.

  The dark-haired man sighed as Jace grinned at him. “It’s a term of endearment that I stole from home. We’re mated, but Jace is… well, Jace.”

  Jace chuckled and nodded, motioning to their bikes. “So c'mon, Red Lexi. You came at a good time for riding that bike. The snow isn't too deep." Jace turned away, but Lexi could have sworn she saw a faint blush on his cheeks. She shrugged it off, blaming it on the slight chill and rolled her bike to theirs. "If you're any good on it, that is. We can go slow for you if you want."