A Grave Magic: The Shadow Sorceress Book One (16 page)

W
e passed
by the body of the first vamp I had taken down and my pace increased. I could hear voices up ahead, lights and the sound of weaponry being geared up.

Stepping into the ring of light that surrounded Graham and the other Elite officers, I paused, my lungs refusing to cooperate as it took all of my might to keep Anthony on his feet.

Graham saw me first, the relief that filled his eyes making me feel somehow lighter. I’d been so certain that he hated me for keeping secrets from him, that my refusal to tell him what had happened to his daughter had damaged our fragile work relationship.

He crossed the floor and moved beneath Anthony’s other arm, taking the bulk of the weight from me. I sucked in a deep breath, allowing my lungs to fill with the crisp air that flowed in through he wide open warehouse doors.

“I thought you weren’t coming back out, when I couldn’t contact you on the radio….” He trailed off and helped me walk Anthony over to the waiting medics on standby.

“Yeah, it was broken in one of the scuffles; the place is crawling with vamps. I think we’re going to have to send in an extermination crew.”

Graham’s face went pale, a stark contrast between his skin tone and the black of the Kevlar vest that sat high up around his neck. He motioned for me to step away from the other men so we could talk privately.

“We don’t send them in, in case there are civilians. How can we guarantee we won’t be killing innocent…?”

I cut him off with a shake of my head, “Graham, whatever is in there is far from innocent. They’re vampires, but different; I watched one of them rip into Anthony.”

“That’s what vamps do, they’re vicious,” he said, scrubbing his hand across his face.

“Not like this, I watched the vamp tear into him like he was a prime rib steak and they hadn’t seen food in a month. They’ve gone feral or something, I don’t know. All I do know is that whatever is going in there, we need to stop it before it spreads.”

“I hope you know what you’re asking for, here, Amber.”

He used my first name again. I was beginning to notice a pattern. He used my first name when he thought I needed to be treated with kid gloves, when he wasn’t sure I was really paying enough attention to what he was saying and I needed to be stopped, forced to listen to reason.

Well, in this instance, he was wrong. I’d seen them; I’d seen what they’d done to Joanna, and it had been far from normal, but now I’d seen it firsthand. Perhaps if I hadn’t, I would have been just as sceptical as Graham was acting now. But he was the one who needed to understand the truth. He needed to trust me.

“I do….” I trailed off, my gaze tracking Graham’s expression as he suddenly cocked his head to one side as though straining to listen to something only he could hear.

I tried to listen along with him but I couldn’t hear anything; there didn’t seem to be anything to hear. And yet, Graham stood stock still, his eyes fixated into the darkness.

“What is it? What can you hear?”

“You don’t hear her calling me?”

“No.” I shook my head as a feeling of dread washed through me. “Graham, stop listening to it, it’s a mimic….”

But it was as though he couldn’t hear me at all.

He took a trembling step forward and I grabbed his arm, halting him in his tracks.

“Graham, listen to me,” I started to say, but he looked at me with pure anger and impatience.

“It’s her, it’s Jess; she’s alive, Morgan, she’s really alive.”

“No, she’s not, what you’re listening to is a mimic.” Of course, I couldn’t be sure that it was a mimic. It was entirely possible that it really was Jessica calling out to her father. But no matter what it was, the thing that was calling to him wanted only one thing, and that was to spill his blood.

“I need to go to her,” he said, attempting to jerk out of my grip.

“Graham, no, it’s not Jessica; she’s gone, she’s a vampire!”

My words had their desired effect and he paused long enough to glare back at me. “She’s what?” he asked, the beginnings of his heartbreak mirrored in his eyes.

“She’s a vampire. I saw it, I saw her….”

“Where, where did you see her?”

“In a vision; she was with the vamp that killed Joanna Sidwell, the one that took Christina.”

Graham shook his head; the shock on his face wasn’t something that could be faked and I wanted to reach out to him, to apologise. I should have told him sooner, then maybe….

“Daddy!” A voice pierced the air, wet and gurgling.

Graham’s eyes went wide and wild and before I could stop him he’d jerked free of my grip and was racing across the floor to the girl I’d seen in the pictures hanging in his apartment, the girl I’d seen hold Christina back as her lover snapped Joshua’s neck.

She clutched at her neck, but the blood gushing from between her fingers was unmistakable.

It was a trap, it had to be a trap.

“Get everyone else out of here!” I ordered to the men, watching the scene unfold.

They stirred as though roused from a sleep and suddenly launched into action.

Following Graham across the warehouse, I raced into the darkness after him. The only thing guiding me through the darkness was Jessica’s incessant calling for her father’s help and Graham’s steady pace as his boots hit the cement floor.

“Graham!” I called out to him, but he disappeared around the side of a large grouping of containers and then the calling stopped.

Picking up my pace, I swung my pump action shotgun down from my shoulder and gripped it hard. The silence had converged once more and now I couldn’t even make out the steady pace of Graham’s progress.

Just like before, it was the silence that made me nervous. Nothing was supposed to be this silent, not even the grave.

Creeping around the edge of the containers, I peered ahead, my eyes making out Graham’s crumpled form on the ground, his daughter bent over his body.

“Get the hell away from him,” I said, stepping out from my observation point.

Jessica glanced up at me, her beautiful face marred by the blood that had been smeared up onto her chin. Someone had slit her throat…. Not that it really mattered; she was a vampire, the amount of damage they could sustain and still survive it was astounding.

But then, that came with the territory of already being dead.

Her eyes met mine and there was nothing, no pull of power.

Just nothing.

It was eerie; I’d never met a vampire that didn’t have some sort of pull to its gaze. Granted, I hadn’t met many vampires, but this was a whole other ball game.

“He’s not dead, yet,” she said, her voice hoarse, no doubt from the long slit that ran across the front of her throat.

“Why are you doing this? He loves you; even though you’re a vampire, he’d still accept you as you are….”

She shook her head and stared back down at her father, there was a tenderness in the way she stroked her fingers through his hair, but when she returned her gaze to me, her gaze was that of a predator.

“No, he wouldn’t. He says he would but really….” She trailed off.

“So what are you going to do to him? I presume you have a plan.”

“I can’t do anything to him, even if I wanted to; he’s not mine to touch.” There was a strain in her voice that I hadn’t detected before, almost as though she was fighting against something.

“I don’t understand,” I said, answering honestly. I didn’t understand, her words didn’t make any sense. She’d lured him out here for a reason. Whatever that reason was, well, she had to know.

So why was she being so coy about it all?

“We want you, and if you’re good and do as you’re told, then he gets to live.” There was definitely a strain to her voice now, almost as though the words that were coming out of her mouth were not her own but someone else’s.

“Who is
we,
Jessica?” I said. If I could get her to crack then maybe I could figure out just what was going on here.

“It’s not time…” she said, dropping to her knees next to her father’s unmoving body.

“Jessica, don’t you dare, that’s your father! Don’t you touch him!” My voice went high as I moved in towards her, the shotgun aimed squarely at her chest.

She glanced up at me and snarled, the way an animal would when its hunt was interrupted. Her fangs were fully extended and she’d dug her fingers into the cement in the floor, leaving little indentations that proved just how strong she was.

“Mine,” she snarled and dropped on top of Graham; I settled my finger on the trigger and suddenly the world shifted around me before going completely black.

M
y stomach rolled
and I swallowed back the bile that crept up the back of my throat. Hurling whilst wearing a black hood over the top of my head didn’t feel like the best plan.

Bile crept up the back of my throat once more and I gagged.

Something had happened; there was a reason I felt like someone had decided to electrocute me before dragging me through the bushes, backwards, after a night of heavy drinking.

Hungover
didn’t begin to cover how I felt.

My hands were bound behind me, the ropes burning against my skin the way salt burned in an open wound. What was happening?

I let my fingers brush back and forth on the ground; the grass was soft, if a little long, and I seemed to be propped against something hard and cold.

My stomach fought to rebel again and I moaned to myself.

I would not get sick. I refused.

I’d look like a right idiot if I managed to allow myself to get kidnapped only to vomit all over myself. It wasn’t something I would live down at the Elite if it happened.

Memories washed back over me: Graham on the ground, unmoving, and his daughter Jessica watching him … no, scratch that, salivating over him.

I’d started to pull the trigger and then nothing. Well, nothing until now, wherever now was.

I shifted against the ropes and winced, the pain momentarily blinding me as they cut even deeper into my wrists. What the hell were they made from? It cut like razor wire and yet felt like rope.

“She’s awake.”

I recognised the voice instantly. The vampire’s tone wasn’t something I would forget in a hurry, especially as he’d been the one to try and kill me in my apartment. We hadn’t spent much time together and yet, with the visions I’d had of him, I couldn’t help but feel as though I knew him personally.

“Take the hood off her so,” another voice said. This time, it was female, and there was nothing familiar about it.

The hood was yanked from my head and my eyes struggled to adjust to the scene surrounding me. Christina sat across from me, her eyes wide and filled with terror; the gag in her mouth had rubbed the sides of her face raw and I could just make out the tracks of her tears on her cheeks. She still wore the nightdress she’d been wearing the night they took her.

She, too, sat on the grass, propped against an old and crumbling tombstone, her legs out in front of her and bound at the ankles. She watched me with large, expressive dark eyes and I felt my chest constrict with her panic.

“It’s going to be all right, Christina, we’re going to get you out of here,” I said, my voice low and soothing.

Something wrapped its fingers in my hair, jerking my head backwards, forcing me to look up into its eyes. Jessica stared down at me, the blood dried onto her chin and face—but the wound, no doubt self-inflicted, was gone, the skin unmarred as though it had never even existed.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said, sneering down at me.

“I don’t intend to,” I said, keeping my tone flat and emotionless despite the pain her fingers wrapped in my hair caused.

She released me with a snarl, allowing me to continue surveying the scene. Graham was propped against a tree, his body tied in place with the same rope I imagined was wrapped around my hands, it was thick enough, and certainly coarse enough, to be the same. But he wasn’t moving and he wasn’t conscious.

There was blood dried onto the side of his neck, but his shirt was dark and I couldn’t tell how much he’d actually bled.

Jessica wandered into my line of vision and I glared at her. How could she do that to her own father? He loved her, raised her, cared for her, and even now, he would still accept her back into his embrace despite everything.

I dragged my gaze away from Graham; there was nothing I could do for him while I was tied up. What I needed was a plan, a way out, but my head ached and it was difficult enough to focus in on the other people gathered in the cemetery without also trying to work out a plan of escape.

“I’m sorry we had to meet like this.”

I jerked my head around in an attempt to see over my shoulder but the woman who had spoken was too far behind me for me to see her clearly. From the position I sat in, when I craned my neck, I could just make out a fuzzy human shape.

“No, you’re not. If you were, then we wouldn’t have met like this,” I said, trying to wriggle my hands through the loop on the ropes.

Each time I moved my wrists, it bit a little further into me and it was a struggle to keep the pain from showing on my face.

The stranger laughed and stepped into view. Her dark hair fell across her face, her fringe heavy, a blunt cut that on most people would have looked out of place but on her looked as though it was created just for her sharp facial features.

She watched me with dark eyes lined with heavy black kohl, and when she smiled, her blood red lips parted slightly to reveal teeth that would have rivalled any Hollywood smile.

She wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense, but there was something about her. Something that made me want to shake free of the ropes binding my wrists and crawl across the grass towards her before I debased myself at her feet.

As though she knew exactly what was going on inside my head, her smile widened and she planted her tiny hands on her narrow hips.

“Amber, I think you and I would have been the best of friends,” she said, moving towards me.

“What gives you that impression?” I asked from between gritted teeth.

The pain of the ropes burning through my skin was the only thing allowing me to keep a somewhat clear head around her. How was she making me feel like this?

“Because we belong together, like two peas in pod,” she said, and this time there was an edge of power to her voice. Power that made my bones ache and teeth chatter in my head.

“What are you?”

My question seemed to surprise her and she stared at me, her expression genuinely quizzical. She was probably trying to work out whether I was being sarcastic again, or if I really didn’t know what she was.

And I didn’t know what she was. I had an inclination, but it was the type of thought that the moment I’d had it, I’d immediately forced it into the darkest recess of my mind and locked it in place.

What she was simply wasn’t possible.

“I’m your sister…” she said.

She spoke so matter-of-factly that for a moment I just stared at her; the cogs in my brain had ground to a halt, refusing to move past the words she had just spoken.

Sister? She couldn’t possibly mean it in the literal sense. I didn’t have any sisters; I was an only child. Was she just speaking in riddles and she meant she was a witch just like me?

Laughter bubbled up from my throat and spilled out across my lips, before dancing on the night air.

Her expression changed, darkened, as she watched me carefully, and I cut my laughter off as I watched her fists tighten.

“What exactly do you find so funny?”

“You’re not my sister. I don’t have a sister; I don’t have any siblings at all.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong. I’m not your mother’s daughter, but I am your father’s daughter, which makes you and I half-sisters. But sisters none the less.”

I felt my mouth drop open and I was utterly powerless to stop it. “My father didn’t have any other children,” I started to say, and then I paused, something tugging at the far recesses of my mind. Something put away that I wasn’t supposed to remember.

The memory of my father filled my head: the night he had watched me receive my academic achievement award, the pride in his eyes as he’d watched me step down off the stage….

My mind flicked forward, and I remembered standing outside the school entrance, his hand on my shoulder as he told me he was leaving. That….

“Oh God,” I said, my voice a broken mess as my mind continued to play the memory out in my head. The memory my mother had hidden from me, to keep me safe. Just as she’d hidden my magic, forcing me to believe that I was powerless in this world….

“He was leaving my mother for yours,” I said, my voice cracking over the words.

The other woman standing in front of me nodded, her lips a thin line as she continued to watch me carefully.

“He loved you, but not your mother; he was leaving to be with us…” she said, finishing the thought for me and utterly shattering the memory I had of my father.

“He was going to rip our family apart all because he’d fallen in love with someone else,” I said, my voice a hollow shell of what it had been.

“We don’t chose who we love, Amber. You must have figured that out by now.”

She crouched down next to me and stared into my eyes, eyes that somehow seemed familiar. They were his eyes; I’d gotten my eyes from my mother, but this woman crouched down in front of me had my father’s eyes.

It didn’t feel right. He was dead; I shouldn’t have felt as though I was staring at him.

“You know why you’re here, don’t you?” she asked, her voice soft, practically a feather-light touch that gently brushed against my skin.

I shook my head and watched her reaction carefully. There was a moment where her eyes darkened and I could see the gathering storm reflected in her gaze. And just as quickly as it had arrived, it was gone again; a smile curled her lips and, without warning, her hand darted out and closed around my shoulder.

“Allow me to enlighten you, then,” she said, her smile still in place, but her voice was anything but friendly.

My head slammed back against the tombstone as power surged through my body, making it almost impossible to breathe, let alone think clearly.

She pumped her power down inside me. Like a pressure hose cleaning the dirt from a car, I felt her clear away every magical defence that I’d ever created within myself, and some I hadn’t put in place, but I could feel my mother’s fingerprint all over them.

I wanted to scream, to somehow stop what she was doing, but the surge seemed never-ending and my body continued to drink down every last drop she poured into me.

Her hand fell away from me and I stared at her, my vision clouded by magic, hers and mine. The sound of her breathing heavily next to me told me it had taken more of a toll on her to do what she had, and part of me couldn’t help but wonder if she’d expected such a price to be paid.

“What have you done to me?” I asked, my voice strange and hollow to my own ears.

“Now there can be no secrets or lies between us. You will know what I know; you will know the truth.”

I tried to shake my head, to shake whatever spell she had cast over me off, but it was no use.

“Remember what you did, Amber, remember that night.”

I sucked in a deep breath and bit down hard on the inside of my cheek as I fought to fight the memory. There was more to the story, things I didn’t want to remember, things that would do more harm than good if I knew….

My father’s eyes were filled with pity as I pleaded with him, and still he shook his head.