The Curse Read Online Free PDF Page A

the waist, twisting to the side to avoid the chain as it spun inches above her face. The thick links slapped the ground behind her with a heavy kathunk .
    The troll had used that only as a distraction.
    He kept coming at her and got within two steps of reaching her with his mouth open to bite when she whipped her body from right to left, swiveling at her waist as if she intended to cartwheel away.
    He adjusted, thinking she was running.
    She didn’t run from anyone.
    Using the momentum, she scissor-kicked her legs. The blades in her boot soles sliced horizontally across the troll’s forehead and beneath both eyes.
    Landing on her feet, she swept around and punched the top of his head with her fist, knocking away the frontal lobe and half of his face. The air reeked with stink like a bad sewage drain.
    The troll’s mouth locked in a silent scream as he fell backward onto the ground.
    Tzader ran up to her, yelling, “Are you okay?”
    She rubbed her neck and squeezed words out of her raw throat. “Yeah. But is that thing a troll or not?”
    He didn’t look down at the body, just took a deep breath and shook his head. “You scare the hell out of me some days.”
    As if the night hadn’t been full of enough surprises, her other closest friend, Vladimir Quinn, reached her next. She hadn’t seen him in weeks. Two men couldn’t look less alike than Tzader and Quinn. Tzader was an ebony Adonis sculpted of lethal edge and cut muscle that stretched his gray T-shirt at the chest, where fair-haired Quinn’s deadly air had a certain elegance set off by a black cashmere sport coat and crisp slacks. Only Quinn could look pristine after a battle.
    Russian by birth, Quinn spoke with a British accent gained through an Oxford education. Right now that accent held undisguised fear, clearly for her. “How badly did he hurt you, Evalle?”
    “I’m good. My throat will be sore for a day or two, but he didn’t crush my windpipe.” She took in Quinn’s narrow face, thinner now than when she’d last seen him. She hadn’t seen or heard from him in three weeks, other than a brief e-mail right after her release from VIPER prison, saying he was glad she’d been freed. Tzader had told her only that Quinn had gone away to heal from a particularly bad mind lock he’d performed for an investigation.
    Quinn let out a gush of air and ran his hand over his hair. “I had no idea this was going on or I’d have tried to return sooner.”
    “How long have you been back in town?”
    “Just got in. I was on the way from the airport to my hotel when I heard Tzader’s call to arms.”
    She wanted to ask him where he’d been and why he’d disappeared without letting her know before he left, but in her evil mood the questions would sound too much like interrogation.
    Speaking of the reason she’d been in a foul mood for weeks, she hadn’t heard a word from Storm either , not since she’d gotten a vague e-mail that same night Quinn had vanished.
    And Tzader wondered why she’d been so pissed off for days?
    Storm had partnered with her on several VIPER missions … and had stirred up her emotions. She harbored doubts about whether the blunt e-mail she had received from Storm had actually been from him.
    Maybe sent from Storm’s cell phone, but not typed by his hand. She couldn’t think about him right now. Not without risk of exposing how every one of the past twenty-two days had been a challenge to get through without giving up hope of ever hearing from him again.
    Evalle shoved those thoughts away so she could function. She had another question for Quinn—something that had haunted her since the last time she’d seen him—but that would have to wait until a better time, too.
    More Beladors crowded around them. Devon Fortier’s face popped up nearby. The Cajun was headquartered in Savannah, but Tzader had pulled in as many Belador assets as possible to supplement VIPER teams in Atlanta when the gang wars erupted.
    Devon whistled low and