Paladin (Graven Gods 1) Read Online Free

if only in my vivid fantasy life.
    “ That’s not saying much. The kid couldn’t find your clit with GPS .”
    “ He didn’t care enough to look .” And he’d had gall, bitching about Paladin as an indicator of my shaky grasp on reality when he’d been jealous of a guy who didn’t even exist.
    Hi, Glass House, my name is Brick.
    Sitting down at the desk with a mug of coffee and a cookie, I contemplated the phone’s little screen. Tension coiled in my stomach as I put my hands on the Bluetooth keyboard. I wanted to find out what happened next.
    “ No, you really don’t ,” Paladin told me grimly. “ But you’re not going to be happy until you do .”
    Calliope leaped weightlessly onto the desk and eyed me with feline disapproval. I ignored both of them and got to work.
    * * *
    Gerald Moss was a couple of inches taller than Paladin, wiry rather than muscular, with long, ropy arms and hands that looked almost feminine. If he had power tatts like Paladin’s, they were concealed by the windbreaker he wore over his dirt-encrusted jeans.
    His narrow face was fringed with a scraggly beard that did an inadequate job of camouflaging his thin mouth and crooked teeth. His red hair was buzzed short enough to show his sunburned scalp.
    Moss’s eyes were the only thing about him that wasn’t standard issue redneck. His lashes were as long as a girl’s, and his large eyes were a clear, lovely blue. Unfortunately, their expression was pure addict: flat and calculating, as if he went through life looking for his next fix.
    Except what he was addicted to wasn’t crack or meth. He was one of Valak’s acolytes, and he was hooked on killing people.
    Killing women, to be exact.
    Women like Jamella Brown, whose daughter, Chantel, had hired Paladin to solve her murder. Valak’s spells had convinced the cops her father was the culprit, but Paladin wasn’t so easy to fool.
    He found Gerald Moss feeding his addiction at Diamond Don’s, a strip club on the outskirts of Graven. It was four in the morning, early enough that a woman’s screams might not attract attention in time to do her any good.
    The killer had pinned his latest victim to the cracked pavement behind the cement block building, not far from the dumpster he probably intended to throw her into. The air stank of rotting garbage and rang with her shrieks.
    Paladin headed for them, rage lengthening his strides.
    The little blonde flailed and bucked as Moss held her down, jerking at her short pleather skirt. Her face was white with terror, eyes wide and crazed. She’d managed to claw his face with her leopard-print manicure, and he cursed her with blood rolling down his cheeks.
    Power burned from the base of Paladin’s brain, sizzling down his neck and into his arms, spilling along the amplifying channels of the tatts. Magic exploded from his right palm with a hissing crackle. It was no sparkler spell, either. This was a merciless hammer that slammed into the side of Moss’s face. He went flying to hit the strip club’s wall so hard, his head thumped like a melon against the cement blocks.
    Unfortunately, Moss bounced back to his feet almost immediately, blood pouring from his nose and a howl twisting rat-thin lips. He punched the air, clawed fingers glowing bright blue, as if his bones were flashlights.
    Paladin’s left hand shot up, and the attack exploded in a rain of impotent sparks off the protective spell tattooed on his palm. He needed good magical shields, given the many murderous fucktards he was always pissing off.
    Moss didn’t get a chance to try again. Paladin went after him, mouth tight and blue eyes burning.
    The killer threw up both hands, palms burning bright enough to make even Paladin wince. “Get back, you fucker!”
    “Yeah, no.” Paladin drove a vicious right into Moss’s jaw, sending him reeling. Paladin kept after him, ramming punch after punch into his head and gut, relentless as a jackhammer.
    Which nearly got him shot when Moss pulled