Midnight Hour (Shadow Falls: After Dark #4)(102)

Holiday put her hand on Miranda’s shoulder. “I did some research on mystic witches.”

“Don’t tell me they deal with ghosts. Please.”

Holiday gave her shoulder a squeeze. “It’s not common, but not unheard of.”

“Oh, mother cracker!” Miranda took a deep breath. She popped up and went to the window again. It was as if the trees performed for her. They

dipped, swayed, and leaned side to side. Their limbs reached up, down, then toward her.

Something about it was … oddly comforting. She inhaled deeply, her lungs now open, and she took the air. With oxygen, she found a little

clarity—enough to realize she was being a self-centered little witch. Her fear over a ghost was the least important thing happening right now.

The ghost had given her that address for a reason. And the doom…? Premonition or not, it had felt like a message. And not a good one.

Could it be about Tabitha? She tied another knot in the robe’s sash. If this was about Tabitha … was the blood a sign?

Fear for her sister had a chemical reaction erupting in her body and made the air taste bitter.

“Have you heard back from Burnett yet?” she asked, looking away from the window.

“They are on their way to the address now.”

“I’m scared what they are going to find.” Miranda looked up at Holiday, and then Kylie and Della. She waited for them to assure her that it

wasn’t going to be bad. That she was overreacting. How much harm could a little blood bring?

They didn’t say a word.

*

Perry, Burnett, and Chase flew to the address penned in blood on Miranda’s bathroom mirror. Perry had wanted to call her so badly, but time

hadn’t allowed it.

The only Dairy Lane they found was one in Tomball, Texas, about forty miles from Fallen. The house, a run-down home built up on blocks, stood

on about ten acres all to itself. If not for the lights on in the front of the house, and one old Chevy pickup truck with a couple of hay bales

in the bed, he’d’ve assumed it was abandoned.

They landed in the back of the house in a patch of trees near a broken down Ford Falcon. They faced the wind, so hopefully it would whisk their

scents away.

Perry morphed into human form. Burnett and Chase were crouched down behind the old car that vines had smothered. Perry moved in. Their eyes

grew brighter by the second. He’d been around Burnett enough to recognize the different shades of color. This shade screamed blood.

Someone in that house was bleeding.

They both lifted their noses in the air.

“Vampire, shape-shifter, and Wiccan,” Chase whispered so low Perry almost missed it. The younger vamp took in another noseful of air. “Shit.

”

Burnett nodded and his eyes lit up with anger. “Tabitha and Anthony.” He tilted his head to the side as if listening. “Three, maybe four.”

He stared at the house as if pulling together a plan.

“We might need—”

“Let me shift and go in,” Perry whispered.

Burnett looked at him. “They might have meters checking for shifters.”

Perry inched closer. “I don’t think so. Not here. Jax wouldn’t live in a place like this. This might be where his men stay, but he wouldn’t

supply security.”

Burnett nodded. “In and out. Tell me what we’ve got. I’m coming in in five minutes.”

Perry considered his shift and went with a rattlesnake. Not his favorite, but one that wouldn’t look out of place.

He slithered through the overgrown brush and slipped under the house. A mouse squeaked and scurried off, not wanting to be dinner. Spiders

scattered and some pulled their webs up into the dank corners of the house’s foundation. Others ignored him, too busy sucking the blood out of

their latest kill.

In the far corner of the front of the house he saw some rotted wood that could allow entry into the home. He inched that way, his scaly

underbelly rolled over gravel.

He slowed down when voices echoed. Footsteps pounded the floor above him, flakes of old wood and dirt showered down. The scales over his eyes

protected him from the specks of dirt.

He listened, hoping to make out what was being said. Hoping to hear Tabitha’s voice. Needing to believe she was alive.

Muffled voices continued—he counted three different ones—coming from the front room of the house.

Fitting his triangular-shaped head in the hole, his underbelly muscles pulsed and contracted to pull himself up. Once inside the house, he

slithered beneath an old cabinet. Curling up to make himself smaller, he eased his head out to see two men sitting on a sagging sofa. A third

was in an old recliner eating chips. A gun rested on the side table.

Perry checked their patterns. Mixed-breeds. Not that it meant they weren’t dangerous, but it definitely made them less concerning.

“Someone needs to bury the first body,” one of them said. “He’s starting to smell.”

Perry’s scales crawled.

“I don’t want to dig two holes,” the bigger one on the sofa said. “Did Jax give us the go ahead to finish the other one?” the guy in the

chair asked.

“He said he’d send someone over tomorrow to try to get more information out of him.”