A Grave Magic: The Shadow Sorceress Book One (9 page)

I felt Madeline smile against me and it dawned on me why it had all been such a mistake. This had been her plan all along. She wanted to steal my power, steal my very essence.

Under normal circumstances, I would have found it funny to think someone like Madeline would need power from someone as pitiful weak as me. I wasn’t powerful, I wasn’t something to be feared, not the way she was. Hell, I could barely light a match with my gift and I’d brought my family nothing but disappointment.

Yet, there was no denying the power that surged up through me. I felt it touch my lips, a cold icy wave before it poured out of me and into Madeline’s mouth.

There was a moment of nothing, where the world itself seemed to hang in suspension, time paused and unmoving as it waited for the balance to be restored.

Madeline’s eyes widened. I watched as the blood red ruin that was her iris seemed to pulse as though everything inside her had its own separate heartbeat.

She flung me away from her, sending my body spinning up into the air and backwards into the darkness as the magic she had tried to steal crammed itself back down my throat and into its hiding place deep within.

Madeline howled, the sound shaking the very foundations that made this place. I hit the ground, stunned, my body aching as though something had tried to rip out my insides. In a way, that was exactly what had happened.

“
W
hat the hell
did you try to do to me?” I demanded, climbing to my unsteady feet.

Madeline glared at me, her red eyes still a little wider than they should have been.

“I just wanted a taste but you,” she jerked her finger in my direction. “You come into my house and insult me in that way. I should strip the skin from your body.”

I shook my head and gripped my athame, the feel of its sturdy hilt in my hand giving me more confidence and steadying my nerves.

“You can’t be serious. You cheated; you and I both know that, Madeline.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but I shook my head.

“Don’t try to deny it. You screwed up; what happened is simply pay back. You don’t mess with someone else’s magic. As a Fae, you should know that only too well.”

She didn’t try to deny it, but I could practically feel her anger pulsing against my skin. She wanted me dead, hated me, because her plan to steal my power had somehow been thwarted. I wasn’t sure how it happened, but I certainly wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Ask me your questions and then get out.”

“What murdered Joanna Sidwell?”

“A vampire,” Madeline answered, her tone filled with boredom.

“But she came back. She wasn’t a vampire, and she wasn’t a zombie. I’m not even positive I know what she was….”

“It was a zombie,” Madeline said, sounding utterly convinced. The only problem was I’d seen Joanna; what had animated her was more than some sort of zombie voodoo.

“Why did it take her daughter?”

Madeline grinned and shook her head. “Now, that is something I won’t share with you. You finding the truth out for yourself will be far more entertaining.”

“You said you’d answer my questions,” I reminded her, tightening my grip on the athame.

“I said I would if I had the answers. I don’t have the answer to this.”

“Why not? If it was a vampire, then you would have the answer….”

“The one who holds him doesn’t want someone like me interfering too much in their business.”

“There is someone else involved?”

“I’m bored, now, and done answering your inane questions. All you are, Amber Morgan, is a child wandering in the dark, and you have no idea what lurks out there waiting for you to trip up. And you have no idea of the plans some have for those of your kind….”

Her words weren’t making sense anymore, but she was still the best chance I had at getting the answers I sought. I couldn’t let her walk away now, not when this might be my one and only opportunity to get to the bottom of the matter and get Joanna’s daughter home safe.

“Madeline, you are oath bound to answer my questions…” I called out to her, but her laughter rang out, sending shivers of fear racing up and down my spine.

“Only the light Fae are oath bound, Amber; I am dark. I owe you nothing.”

Her voice caressed my skin like a lover’s fingers and I tried to jerk away from it, but no matter where I turned in the encroaching dark, I couldn’t escape her touch.

Darkness swarmed around me—I’d been so caught up in getting my answers that I hadn’t noticed it creeping in closer—and Madeline herself was gone from view.

I spun around as something tangled in my hair, the athame out in front of me.

“Get out,” Madeline said, appearing in front of me out of the darkness.

She lashed out with her arm as I tried to slash at her with the dagger. Her blow hit me and I was no longer sure if it was physical or if she’d side swiped me with her magic.

Not that any of it mattered, it all ended up in the same way.

Darkness closed in around me as the ground rushed up to meet me once more. Pain flared in the back of my head and the last thing I heard before the darkness swallowed me whole was the grating sound of her laughter ringing in my ears.

“
W
ake up
!”

The voice filtered down through the pain-filled fog of my mind, the pressure of someone’s hand against my shoulder letting me know that I was at least, for now, still alive.

“Get off me,” I said groggily, forcing my eyes open.

The alley I’d entered through was gone, replaced by an alley just like it, only this one smelled a hell of a lot worse. Madeline it seemed had a sense of humour after all.

“So you’re alive, then?” The familiar male voice said to me, and I turned and stared up into the stranger’s grey eyes.

“It would seem so,” I said, pushing up onto my knees and grimacing as I realised exactly where I was lying and why it smelled so bad.

“Shit, she just had to dump me out in the garbage,” I said, picking my way gingerly out from among the black bags and spilled food waste.

“I wouldn’t take it personally; this is the back door,” the stranger said, eyeing the alley carefully.

“Who the hell are you, anyway, and how do you know this is the back door of Sanctuary?” I said, climbing onto my feet and brushing the dead banana skin bits from my hands.

He grinned at me and straightened up. “I’m Dominic, or Nic, as my friends like to call me.”

“Why don’t they call you, Dom?” I said.

“Too
Fifty Shades of Grey
, and that’s not my style…” he said, with a slow smile.

“So you know about Sanctuary how?”

“All the Hunters do. It’s where we get most of our work and our best leads….”

I felt my eyes widen a little. I’d never met a hunter before, but there was a first time for everything, and it really had only been a matter of time before I’d met one.

But I’d never imagined a hunter to be anything like Dominic, or was I supposed to call him Nic?

When I thought of hunters, I pictured them older with more scars … not young, muscled, and drop-dead….

I cut my own train of thought off. There I was, going again, letting my mind run away with me when what I needed to do was concentrate on the case in front of me.

“You’ve never met a hunter before, have you?” he said, a smirk playing around his lips.

“Nope, and I don’t particularly want to meet one now, either, so beat it.” I started down towards the mouth of the alley, but Nic caught my arm and twisted me around to face him.

“What’s your problem?” he said, the smile gone from his face.

“I have no interest in spending time with someone like you,” I said, and quickly regretted my words.

How was he supposed to know what my true problem was? He wasn’t a mind reader and I was being beyond unfair to him; he had, after all, helped me get inside Sanctuary.

Without him, I would have been forced to sign my name in blood or leave empty handed. Not that I’d truly learned a whole lot from being in there. Well, the only thing I’d really learned was that Madeline wasn’t to be messed with.

But I’d already been warned about her, so it hadn’t come as a surprise to find out it was true.

“Someone like me?” he parroted back to me. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“Look, you don’t know me and….”

“I know what you are and I haven’t turned you in yet,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

“What is it with everyone knowing what I am? Do I have a neon sign flashing above my head or something, advertising it for the world to see?”

“No, but it’d be kinda cute if you did,” he said, this time with his smile firmly back in place.

“Listen, Nic, you must agree that you and I hanging around together is a bad idea. If you know what I am, then you know we don’t mix, and for good reason.”

“I know my kind hunt your kind,” he said, but there was something in his voice that made me take extra notice of what he was saying to me.

There was no joy in him over what he had revealed, no pride. And that was something I hadn’t expected. Every hunter I’d ever read about back home took their jobs seriously, loved their jobs, and the only thing that would prevent them from carrying it out was their untimely demise.

Most of them didn’t make it to collect their hunter pension.

“Then you know why I want nothing to do with you,” I said.

“I’m not like the rest of my kind. Fine, yes, I hunt, but not without reason, not without cause. I wanted to join the Elite, but the family business kind of prohibits that.”

“You tried out for Elite?”

“Yeah, they turned me down as soon as they found out who I was. You see, you think you’re the one who has it so hard, you think being what you are stops you from doing everything you would like to do. But it does the same for me….”

“Being a hunter doesn’t mean you have a secret to keep that your life depends on,” I said, the bitterness in my voice unmistakable.

I would have given anything in that moment to be able to hide it, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t fit to and I knew why.

I was in King City for a reason and it wasn’t because my life-long dream had been to become an Elite. I was here to find out what had murdered my father, track it down, and take its heart.

Unlike the rest of my family, magic wasn’t my forte, but I could fight, and I was good at it. It had been one of the ways I’d managed to ace my Elite entrance exam.

But in order to do that, I needed to make sure my cover with Elite stayed intact. If I was compromised, then it was all over, and the promise I had made to my mother, to my dying father, would all have been for nothing.

I would have failed. Again.

“You’d be surprised what it means,” he said and he sounded just as bitter as I was.

“I have to go,” I said, giving a pointed look at the grip he had on my arm.

“You should let me help you,” he said as he released me.

“No can do.” I turned on my heel and fled from the alley as fast as my legs would take me.

There was something about him, something that got beneath my skin and made me want to forget the real reason I was here. And that was something that, at all costs, I needed to avoid.

H
urrying down the street
, I contemplated calling Graham. What little I had learned about the case I could share with him; despite what he had done and the anger I’d felt at the time, he could help me.

The only problem was that we were both off the case.

Officially, of course, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t do my own out-of-hours legwork.

Scooping my cell phone from my pocket, I stared down at the screen. It would be so easy to call him, to let him apologise and to accept it.

He’d endangered me; there was a limit to my abilities and the last time I’d allowed myself to become completely burned out, I’d very nearly lost my own life.

It would have been easier if the magic had taken me. It certainly would have been easier to deal with—well, there wouldn’t have been any dealing. I’d have been dead.

Pausing across the street from Elite, I stared up at the building and swallowed back the bitter memories that fought to surface. The last thing I needed to do right now was let my masquerade slip because I was too emotional.

The tight rein I had on my emotions needed to remain very firmly in place.

Shoving the cell back into my pocket I crossed the street and pulled open the front door.

The offices were quiet and very empty.

Glancing down at my watch, I swore silently. The offices were quiet because there was no one here; they had all gone home, the thing I should have done as soon as I finished with Madeline.

The evening had closed in and cast odd shadows across the walls as I crept through the silent office towards my desk. Dropping down into the swivel chair, I flipped on the computer screen, the glow lighting up my workspace as I rifled through the files.

The Sidwell case hadn’t been a random vampire attack, that I was now positive about. I’d been pretty certain before; what I had seen in the vision when I’d walked the scene had set off alarm bells in my head.

The only problem was that what the Elite could do with their spell to help them walk the scene and what I could do with a vision, well, the difference between the two may as well have been chalk and cheese.

I couldn’t very well come and say that the vampire had known Joanna by name. If I did that then they would know there was more to me than just rookie officer.

However, I couldn’t ignore it either, and I needed to find something, anything, that might point me in the right direction.

Typing “Sidwell” into the search bar only brought up the crime scene photos, not that I needed to see them again. The memory of Joanna and her family was seared into my brain.

The blank look on Joshy’s face….

Pushing aside the memory, I continued to search.

Madeline had mentioned that the other person involved had a hold over the vampire that had murdered Joanna, but from everything I’d learned about vampires, nothing could control them.

Not like that, anyway.

A hand clamped down on my shoulder, making me jump, and I spun around on the chair.

Jon stared down at me, his expression a mixture of irritation and something else I couldn’t place.

“What are you doing here so late? I thought you went home hours ago,” he said, his eyes studying my face carefully.

“I did. I came back; I’d forgotten to input my report properly,” I said, silently praying under my breath that it would be enough to make him go away.

“I think perhaps we need to have a little chat,” he said, with a sigh.

His hand fell away from my shoulder and he grabbed another chair from behind one of the empty desks next to mine.

“Why did you join the Elite, Amber?”

I stared at him. I’d been working here for months, wasn’t it a little late to be asking me those sorts of questions?

“I want to make a difference, to help both the humans and the non-humans that need it.”

He nodded thoughtfully and steepled his fingers up in front of his face. “And what do you think of them?”

“Them?” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Oh, you follow all right; you think they’re monsters, don’t you?”

I shook my head again and dug my finger nails into the palm of my hand. “No, I don’t. When they commit crimes, when they murder each other and humans, then they’re monsters. But they’re no worse than humans who murder each other.”

“Amber, I know what you really think of them; you don’t need to hide it from me. You and I, we’re more alike than you realise.”

“Sir, I don’t think….”

He placed his hand on my thigh, cutting my words off. He’d lost his mind, officially let all of his cheese slip off his cracker. This was the man who hated me, at every turn made my life as miserable as he possibly could, held me back from entering the field.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I said, my voice dropping several dangerous octaves.

I’d had enough with people and things manhandling me today to last me a lifetime. If he thought I was going to let him put his hand on my leg and do nothing….

“I’ve tried to protect you from them, but I know now that was wrong of me. I heard about what you did to Joanna Sidwell; I know you finished her off, that you’re capable of looking after yourself out there against them.”

“Get. Your. Hand. Off. My. Leg.” I said, gritting the words out from between my teeth.

“Don’t be coy, Amber. I’ve seen the way you watch me; I know you want to get out into the field more, I know you want to get back on this case, and….”

I didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. Grabbing his hand, I twisted it around, pushing him up and back, forcing his hand up higher, bending the bones in directions they weren’t made to move in. He went with me, the expression on his face flipping to one of pain as he struggled in my grip.

“What are you doing, I….” He trailed off with a howl of pain as I jerked his hand up again, bending his fingers back on themselves.

“I am nothing like you, and I have no interest in being blackmailed into getting back on a case.”

“I thought….”

“You thought wrong, Jon,” I said, taking a sliver of satisfaction from the expression on his face as I twisted his arm a little harder. “Now, this is going to go one of two ways: I can either twist your arm around until it snaps like a twig….”

“Or?” he said, gritting his teeth.

“Or you can you let me and Graham back on the case, no questions asked….”

Jon nodded, the first couple of tears beginning to trail down over his cheeks.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard that?” I said, tightening my grip.

“Fine, you’re back on the case. I’ll inform Mo and Julian,” he said, his voice taking on a higher pitch.

I released him suddenly and he collapsed backwards over the swivel chair he’d been sitting on. The urge to hop around the place and punch the air was almost overwhelming, but I held it inside.

“You’ve made a huge mistake here, Amber,” Jon said, his beady-eyed gaze never leaving my face as he nursed his arm from his position on the floor.

“I don’t think so,” I said, gathering up my stuff from the desk and stepping over his legs.

“The other women knew their place, Amber; they knew when to bend. They knew that making friends was a far better plan than making enemies, and I promise you now, you have made an enemy of me.”

His words made me sick to my stomach, not because he was threatening me and certainly not because he was declaring me his enemy. It was what he had insinuated about the other women on the Force.

The Elite was made up predominantly of men, and it was very much a man’s world, there had never been any question about it. The other women on the Force always had to work twice as hard, be twice as tough, and twice as smart as their male counterparts. That was the world we lived in; not a fair one by any stretch of the imagination, but it worked in its own lopsided off-kilter manner.

But to think Jon had been using his position of authority to bribe the other women, that he had been using his authority to manipulate and coerce the other female rookies….

It left a nasty taste in my mouth and it took all of my strength not to bend down and break his arm just for sharing the information with me.

“I could have you kicked off the Elite for what you’ve shared with me,” I said, staring down into his pain-filled face.

“Who the hell is going to believe you? You’re just a pretty face; I’ve been here the longest and I’m in charge of this division.”

Turning on my heel, I made it as far as the door before he called out to me once more.

“I’m going to make you wish you had taken my offer, Amber, and before I’m done with you, if you’re very lucky and beg very nicely, I might just take pity on you.”

His words sent a flare of revulsion and anger ruffling over my skin.

Who the hell did he think he was?

Fine, the Elite was mostly a man’s world, and fine the majority of them seemed to have their ‘asshole-o-meters’ turned up high but Jon was in a whole league of his own.

He was a dangerous creep and something needed to be done about him. I just needed time to come up with a suitable punishment.