The Flawed Legacy (Legacy of the Shadow’s Blood Book 1) Read online

  The Flawed Legacy

  Legacy of the Shadow’s Blood™ Book 1

  E.G. Bateman

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2020 LMBPN Publishing

  Cover by Fantasy Book Design

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, September 2020

  (Originally published as a part of Legacy of the Shadow’s Blood)

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64971-134-2

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-135-9

  The Flawed Legacy Team

  Thanks to our Beta Readers:

  Erika Everest, Nicole Emens, Jim Caplan, Mary Morris, John Ashmore, Kelly O’Donnell, Larry Omans, Michael Baumann

  Thanks to our JIT Team:

  Dave Hicks

  Deb Mader

  Debi Sateren

  Diane L. Smith

  Dorothy Lloyd

  Erika Everest

  Jackey Hankard-Brodie

  James Caplan

  Jeff Eaton

  Jeff Goode

  John Ashmore

  Lori Hendricks

  Micky Cocker

  Misty Roa

  Paul Westman

  Peter Manis

  Rachel Beckford

  Veronica Stephan-Miller

  Editor

  SkyHunter Editing Team

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  The Bound Legacy

  Author Notes - E.G. Bateman

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  The Fugitive Legacy

  Other LMBPN Publishing Books

  Other Books from E.G. Bateman

  Connect with The Authors

  Dedications

  Phil, for not only believing in me, but for hopping aboard this crazy train.

  Michael Anderle, for your support, mentorship and above all, patience.

  Craig Martelle, for being an inspiration and providing a place for me and so many others to grow as authors.

  Erika Everest, Kate Pickford, Anne Lown, Natalie Roberts and Charles Tillman - For your support, time and kindness.

  And… for the readers, always for you.

  — E.G. Bateman

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  To Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  To Live The Life We Are

  Called.

  — Michael Anderle

  Chapter One

  “Two Eighteen… Two Nineteen…”

  Lexi walked along the balcony of the seedy Palm Springs motel and spun the room key around her finger as she counted off room numbers. She stopped, turned, and looked over the balcony and down toward the office.

  Yep, the twerpy admin guy was checking out her leather-clad ass.

  She gave him her best I-will-cut-you stare. He did a one-eighty and walked away from the window.

  Smart man.

  As she continued past the rooms, a car moved along slowly below her and matched her speed. She stopped at a door and raised her hand without bothering to look down, and the vehicle pulled into a parking space directly beneath the room.

  When she’d opened the door, Lexi assessed the space. They usually stayed in shitty hotels but Dolores had outdone herself booking this one. It was super-shitty.

  “Wow! This one’s super-shitty.” Scott materialized at her shoulder and voiced her thoughts.

  Lexi jerked to the side and her head snapped toward him.

  “Holy crap, can you not do that?”

  He raised his arms. “What? You want me to walk up the stairs with these bags?” His wavy blond hair flopped into his eyes and he blew it away.

  “Just…” She drew in a measured breath before she puffed it out. “Announce yourself.” Her glance swept around. “And be more careful in public.”

  She could feel his shrug. “I was being careful. I waited until you scared the office guy away with your…you know, face.”

  He tried to shuffle past her to enter the room, but she blocked his path with an upraised arm.

  “I have to check it’s safe first.” Lexi pulled a blade from…well, no one was ever quite sure where they came from, and that was how she liked it.

  “Oh, right, of course.” He vanished from beside her and appeared inside the room. He dropped the bags and reappeared beside her again, dusted his right sleeve, and picked distractedly at a thread. He looked up and made a shooing motion with his left hand. “Okay, go ahead.” He returned his attention to the errant thread.

  She stared at him, then closed her eyes. A succession of tiny jerks of her head coincided with the multitude of responses her brain flicked through and discarded. Most of them involved breaking bones. She opened her eyes, sighed, and moved inside.

  Lexi walked through the room. There wasn’t much to search. Two single beds stood on the left, a dresser and mirror on the right, and a door directly ahead. She opened it and stuck her head into the bathroom but pulled it back sharply and wondered, based on the overpowering smell of bleach, if she’d found a murder room.

  Quickly closing the bathroom door, she turned to the motel room doorway to find it empty. A further turn revealed Scott lying on one of the beds and her eyes narrowed.

  “It’s safe, you can come in,” she snarked.

  His green eyes looked left, then right as if searching for a successful excuse, and he finally looked at her with a small grin. “Oh, sorry.”

  As he shifted, a spring pinged loudly. They looked at each other and simultaneously rolled their eyes. He opened the top drawer in the bedside table, pulled out a Gideon Bible, and felt around it. Finding nothing else, he returned the book and closed the drawer. “It smells funny in here. Kind of like vomit—if a dead person threw up.”

  “If we’re lucky, we will get the job finished today and we won’t have to be the main course in this revolting bugfest of a room tonight.” Lexi lifted the rest of the bags onto the other bed.

  “How do you want to handle it?” Scott swung his feet onto the floor and stood his duffel between his knees.

  “Dolores is still gathering info, but the businesswoman
being harassed for protection money wants it dealt with rapidly and quietly. I think this will be a quick in-and-out.”

  “She’s a shifter, though, right? I don’t understand why she doesn’t get the pack to deal with it.” Scott pulled underpants from his bag and sniffed them.

  Lexi looked away with a shudder. “According to Dolores, the client doesn’t want to involve the pack.”

  Scott raised an eyebrow. “In my experience, involving you won’t necessarily make things any quieter.”

  “This is only our third job together. You don’t have enough experience to make a judgment. Anyhow, this might simply require subtle negotiation.” She pulled her cosmetics bag out and dropped it on the bed. Even with her back to him, she could still feel him staring at her. “What?” She turned to scowl at him. “I can be subtle.”

  He nodded as though he agreed. “So that’s what you think will happen?”

  “No. I’ll find the gang, smack them around for a while, break some stuff, and make an example out of one or two of them, then get the hell out of this shithole.” She snatched her cosmetics bag up and took a step toward the bathroom.

  “What about the local resource?” he asked.

  She halted and turned. “What local resource?”

  “Oh, I might have forgotten to mention we got an update.” He grinned awkwardly.

  Lexi stared at him while she counted in her head. “Perhaps you should fill me in.” She could feel her eyebrow twitching.

  “What would you like to know?” he asked, picked his cell phone up, and tapped in a code.

  Rather than respond immediately, she gritted her teeth, then forced her jaw to relax. “You can start by telling me who our local resource is.”

  Scott scrolled through his phone. “I’m checking. It’s a private investigator. Oh!”

  She sent a prayer up. Lord, give me patience, and I want it now. “What?”

  His mouth opened once, shut again, then opened a second time. “Well, you’ve worked with him before. He has a great track record.”

  Lexi took the few steps necessary to close the motel room’s door. “I’m not playing Twenty Questions, Scott,” she stated as she turned the paltry lock. “Who is it?”

  “William Levin.” He swallowed.

  She spun to face him, a question written on her face. “William? I haven’t worked with—” Her face lost the question. “Levin? Dick Levin?”

  He ignored her as he read the file on the phone. “It says here he gets results.”

  “What else does it say?” She leaned against the dresser and folded her arms, waiting while he read.

  “It says you tried to kill him six…” He looked up. “You tried to kill him six times? How is he not dead?”

  “He is.” She sighed and pushed away from the dresser. “What are Dolores’s other notes?”

  “She wrote that one at the top of the file. I think it was supposed to remind her to keep the two of you away from each other.”

  “Get her on the phone.” Lexi shook her head.

  Scott put a hand up. “I can’t. There’s no signal. Hang on, I’m still reading.” He paused for a moment to decipher the hen scratches. “There’s a note at the bottom. It says, ‘Alexa, there’s no one else. Suck it up, and don’t try to kill him again.’” His gaze darted to her. “Hey, your name’s Alexa? Like the music thing?”

  She pointed at him. “You are never to call me that. I’ll be talking to Dolores about this.”

  He continued reading as he asked his questions. “So, what’s wrong with this Dick guy—and if his name’s William, why do you call him ‘Dick?’”

  “It would be faster to ask what’s right with him. He’s rude, arrogant, dishonest, a monumental pain in the ass, and I’m sure you’ll get the name eventually.”

  His finger pushed the display up to see more of the file information. “Yeah, but you can’t kill a guy for that. And how come you keep failing to kill him?”

  “He’s a vamp. They’re hard to kill.” Lexi shook her head in disgust.

  Scott sat up. “He is? I love vamps. They’re so interesting. They know stuff from, like, the past.” He could see she wasn’t feeling the love, so he returned his focus to his cell.

  “How many vamps have you met?” she asked as she sat on the corner of her bed.

  “A few.” He waved his hand in a vague manner.

  She stared at him and held it relentlessly.

  “Okay, one. I’ve met one vampire. But he was one of the old ones, hundreds of years old and really interesting. Anyway, I still don’t understand why Dick’s not dead. I haven’t seen you fail to kill anything yet.”

  Lexi looked around and located a new remote that apparently went with the old-as-hell tv. She picked it up. It was light—no batteries, obviously. She returned it to the dresser and turned her attention to Scott again. “Well, this vamp doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. At least you two will have that in common.”

  “It’ll be fine. We probably won’t even see much of him.”

  “I wonder what he’s doing here? I thought he was based in Chicago.” She spoke more to herself than to Scott.

  “So, tell me more. You don’t talk about yourself much.”

  She sighed. “My last partner died under horrible circumstances. I try not to get too close.”

  “Really? Wow! Because Dolores told me you didn’t work with a partner before me.” He smirked.

  Thanks, Dolores.

  “Well? What happened between the two of you?” Scott put his cell phone down, which signaled that he now gave her his undivided attention.

  Lexi deliberated on how much to tell him and decided a fairly short version would be for the best. “After I left Kindred, they hired him to find me, which he did. At the time, I was beating the snot out of a nasty little witch. She’d cursed a girl with the misfortune of liking the same guy that she did. Then he—”

  “What kind of curse?” he interrupted.

  “The girl’s hair and teeth had fallen out.” She took a silver-tipped shuriken out and began to rotate the little four-bladed throwing star between her fingers like a fidget spinner.

  “Gross.” He screwed his face up in disgust.

  “It wasn’t only her looks. The curse had aged her from the inside out and her heart was failing. It was a death sentence.”

  “Did you make her reverse the spell?”

  “She said it wasn’t possible. Shouldn’t you already know this stuff?” Lexi stopped spinning. She was genuinely surprised by Scott’s question.

  “You know witchcraft is different than the sorcery I practice. There are all kinds of magic and I don’t know them all intimately. That’s why I’m asking. If I had cast a spell to do that, I could undo it. I’ve no idea how she did it. It probably involved chicken guts and dirt or something.” He shuddered.

  “I told her to find a way to stop it or I’d come back and kill her. As I walked away, she threw something at me. I’d sensed something was coming and ducked out of the way, just as Dick appeared from nowhere and pulled me in the opposite direction. I almost took his head off, I was so pissed.” She shook her head at the memory.

  “What did she throw? Did it hit you?”

  “It was a spell pouch. It hit Dick and burst on him with a poof.” Her hands sprang open.

  “Gross! What was in it? Did it do anything?” He took a book from his bag and put it on the dresser.

  “It smelled like mouse droppings and it really messed his Gucci suit up. Otherwise, it did nothing. God knows what it would have done to me.” She shuddered.

  “What did you do to the witch?”

  “I took her head off and dropped her into the river. Dick bitched about his suit all the way to the nearest bar. We sat, and he told me he’d been hired by Kindred to track me. I told him why I left them, and he agreed to give me a head start. Then he went straight back to them and told them where I was. It was close. They almost caught me, but that was the day I met Dolores. I still can’t belie
ve my luck. She got me out and I’ve worked for her ever since.”

  “What about Dick? You tried six times?” Scott leaned forward, engrossed in the story.

  “After the dust settled, I spent a few days tracking him. I threw silver knives and tried to drop a silver net on him, but he’s a slippery fucker, so I kept losing him. I finally managed to surprise him coming out of a jazz club, and I broke his neck and dragged him into an alley. I intended to finish him off, but I decided it would be worse for him to wake up in a dumpster.”

  “Worse than death?” He looked doubtful.

  “You’ll get it when you meet him. He’s a real snob. I’m kind of surprised he’s prepared to work with me. And I’m damned unhappy about working with him.”

  He picked the phone up and scrolled further. “Well, Dolores trusts him and I trust Dolores. It says here he’ll meet us at sundown.”

  “What’s the update on the job? Why do we need Dick the Douche?”

  Scott read the details to her. “Kate. Shifter female. Owns a bar down the street from here. It says, ‘further information is now being sought from a local contact.’ We need to speak to Dick before we see the client. Then it confirms what Dolores already told us—that her business is being targeted by local thugs. That’s funny, I thought shifters were the local thugs.”