New Spark (Dark Magic Enforcer Book 3) (15 page)

This wasn't like the zombies though. This wasn't done by trolls, it was something else entirely.

Vampires.

Shifter Revolt

A troll stood at the end of the street, bathed in orange from one of the few intact streetlights. Most were blown out, or toppled from whatever had gone down. Looking past it, I stared, mesmerized and unbelieving at the poorly lit scene, ready to run, fight, or both. But the troll simply stood there, slapping at the side of its head like the gremlin had, as if trying to dislodge an ache.

It looked repeatedly at its hands, fumbling in the pockets of a green designer sweatshirt—another oversized invention because of increased intelligence was my guess. No way were they made that big.

It seemed harmless though, just grunted at me and said, "All dead. Not troll. Feel funny." Then it walked away, knocking into lampposts that crumpled at dangerous angles like plastic straws, the reason most were strewn across the street now obvious. Seems the trolls didn't have an infinite supply of smart pills, so they were reverting to normal. Hopefully, it would be the same everywhere else, otherwise we'd all be wiped out if they turned nasty.

My eyes inevitably drew back to the massacre in the street. This was true horror. These were real people, not people who should by rights be dead like the zombies, but true living human beings, just with a slight difference. There were grown men, teenage lads, even women—thankfully no children—and as I walked down the road, numb and dazed, I caught glimpses of the terrified eyes of children peering out of windows, frightened and now all alone.

There had been a terrible fight here, no doubt, but judging by the number of wounds, both from teeth and claws of the shifter and vampire kind, it was clear that the vampires had utterly overwhelmed the shifters. From cats to bears to wolves, the communities had finally come together in their time of need, but it still wasn't enough.

Picking up the pace, magic brimming from my ink so strongly it lit my way, my body felt old all of a sudden, like I'd pushed it too far, done too much too quickly, taken my recovery for granted and exceeded the boundaries. I gave myself a good talking to. This wasn't the time for anything but strength. I had to snap out of it. There was a lot more to go yet—this was just the beginning of the sickness permeating the city and its Hidden.

Flinching as I got ready for the sickness, I let some of the magic retreat, but it hardly touched me. No doubt remained. I was definitely turning a corner, the real sickness now apparently only claiming me once I got perilously close to my limits.

Staying aware, senses expanded, I made for Plum's house. I felt vulnerable walking down the center of the road, strange sights of normality making it feel even more otherworldly. Smoke drifted from chimneys lazily, as if all was well in the world. Curtains were drawn and cars were neatly parked at the curb, but everywhere were broken and smashed bodies, blood staining potholed and badly repaired asphalt always at the bottom of Cardiff Council's to-do list.

Plum's modest home was impossible to miss—it was the only one with the door open. Sat on the step, there she was, head down, silken hair hiding her features. As I got closer, a huge hulk of a thing moved from the shadows against the wall. Barrack, the bear shifter. He growled, but took to his human form, not that there is a great deal of difference—he's still just as shaggy and definitely as ugly.

Plum looked up with the saddest eyes I think I have ever seen. What I saw broke my heart. She looked beaten, empty inside, face aged a thousand years in a single evening, eyes haunted. Yet there was more.

"Show me," I said, knowing platitudes were pointless. She looked up, and after a moment I seemed to register in her awareness. She sprang to her feet, making me jump with the sudden speed and intensity of the movement, like a cat pouncing on prey in the undergrowth.

Plum almost fell into my arms. She clung to me like a child that thought it had lost her mother and was all alone. She clawed at my t-shirt with rigid fingers, clutching bunches of material, pinching skin and raking nails, tighter and tighter, soaking my chest with tears that grew in intensity as her grip eventually eased.

Still not uttering a word, she finally relaxed and wrapped her arms around my middle. I held her tightly while she sobbed and wailed and great racks of despair broke the silence of the night.

The screaming was all gone, so was everyone else. It was just her, me, and Barrack, our faces ashen, illuminated by the light spilling through the open door of the small house. The interior a scene of devastation, broken furniture, glass all over the place, no longer a home. Something that was all-too-familiar. I knew how she felt, only too well.

"Fucking vampires," she said, when the tears were spent and only one thing remained. Revenge. Something else I know about only too well.

"It was them?" I asked, looking down at her. Somehow she appeared smaller than usual. I've always had a few inches on her, but she's always been such a larger-than-life character that Plum always seemed tall. I guess I've always made her bigger in my mind, if you know what I mean—all those curves. Now such childish obsessions felt paltry. Another me; another life.

This was the truth about our world. We lived amongst those that would kill for fun, for their own power, for sport, for petty rivalry, for money, for mild grievance, but most of all, for power.

Plum released me and brushed hair back from her soaked face, then words came out in a rush, fast and like she had to hurry or she'd never speak again. "Yeah, the vamps. Trolls too, for a while, but then something happened. I heard they had got smart, but something in them snapped. They were with the vamps, maybe just for a minute or so. They dragged us out of our homes, Spark, women and children, too. Everyone was screaming, going mad. We were all in the street, the trolls making sure we went nowhere, but then they kind of reverted to their usual selves, and they wandered off just as the vamps arrived."

"This is just nuts. What the hell is happening?"

"Hundreds of them, Spark, both ends of the street. There was nowhere to go. Others of our kind came running from the other communities, to help, or running away, maybe both, it was madness. They let the children go, thank god for that, but then..." Plum trailed off, eyes settling on one brutalized corpse after another.

"Show me," I said again, and this time Barrack stepped forward. He put a protective arm around Plum and I moved aside. We stepped over the dead, moving down the street, checking for survivors, leaving the children alone for now until we knew it was safe for them to come out.

Street after street, community after community, it was the same. These were shifter-only places, forming a tight knot in the city where Regulars never came, the whole place so full of magic it was like it never even existed. An invisible world in plain sight, kept safe and away from the rest of the city that went about its business oblivious to what lived in its midst.

Probably just as well, otherwise it would be teeming with police and trying to make even a little sense of it would have been impossible.

Already I felt it changing. The magic was dissipating. It wouldn't be overnight, but give it a week or two, and the place would be just another series of streets, with people scratching their heads at the lack of people, the empty houses, the feeling that something bad had happened, that it wasn't quite right.

Burglars would come, taking what little some of the people had. Families that had struggled to make their way in a world they didn't quite belong to, where they did what they could to survive, not always on the right side of the law, never hurting anyone either.

It was all gone.

It would be swallowed up by the city, claimed back and changed forever. But that night, there and then, the streets were filled with magic and blood and tears and anger.

And the promise of vengeance.

Plum out of Luck

It took a while, much longer than I was comfortable with, but we rounded up the kids, and in a few shifts I took them to Grandma's. Where else could I take them? Back to mine seemed like a bad idea, as trouble was never far behind me when I was in Black Spark mode, and I still had that feeling that things weren't quite right at home, even though I somehow knew Kate was fine, wherever she was.

I prayed she wasn't caught up in the mess, knowing she would get herself into trouble, doing her all to stop it.

Grandma, in her usual stoic and unflappable way, listened, nodded, tutted, said she had known it all along and had a "feeling" it wasn't really the witches' fault. She said she'd had several visitors saying things had gone silent with a number of them.

I told her what I could, held some things back just to make life easier, otherwise I would spend the entire night explaining things, and she took in the children.

There were a lot of tears, a lot of frightened faces, and a lot of inadvertent shifts to animal form because they were scared. Plum helped calm them, and Barrack, a man I had never got along with and had broken his nose the previous year, was like a different person, showing a side I had never seen before.

He was kind, considerate, and moved between comical lump and tickler of bellies, to taking charge and corralling them when they got out of hand. He knew exactly what to do. It was a revelation, and he went up in my estimation enormously that night.

The children clearly all knew and trusted him. I guess it isn't until they get older that they take sides, prejudices forming, rather than accepting each other as equals. Yeah, sounds familiar, right?

Grandma made a few calls, and although there were a lot of unanswered phones she contacted many witches, all of them agreeing there was something seriously amiss. Lots of "feelings" were aired, and they rallied round, promising to come help. I think they wanted the comfort of their own kind more than anything—their world had been thrown into turmoil too, and they always did like to moan in groups.

We left Barrack and the children with Grandma. Plum and I headed into the night.

In my panic, I'd forgotten to get a phone from Grandma, didn't even know if there were phone boxes anymore, and couldn't remember seeing one. Anyway, I knew a call wouldn't put my mind at ease.

We drove back to my home. I had to get Kate, and figured she might be there by now, or maybe it was wishful thinking. Everything was crumbling around us, moving too fast, getting way too out of control.

This wasn't some play for power by the witches. Whatever it had started out as, it went way beyond that. This was an uprising, an attempt to wipe human Hidden out. Take us all down and pave the way for something else, something new. Something dark and terrible.

Plum was still in a daze, but the empty stare was gone, replaced with a clenched jaw and a determined look I'd seen before. When she is on a job—I've worked with her a few times over the years—she gets this look to her, one of total focus and determination. You can almost see her planning her next series of moves, anticipating what will happen and acting accordingly. She is always fluid, easily able to accommodate new events, change her plans and still succeed.

That wasn't what I saw. What I saw was sheer bloodymindedness, the need for vengeance.

"Tell me," I said, as we drove through the dark city, people in their homes watching TV, laughing at their shows, getting an early night, holding each other in the dark. Crying, laughing, making love, tending children that had woken up with bad dreams. Living their lives, unaware of what was happening all around them. Of the hurt and the suffering, the lengths people once like them would go to, the pain we endured, the heights of ecstasy we experienced.

At that moment I no longer felt like any of it was worth it. Once this was done I'd stay home, master chicken whispering, grow vegetables, and stay damn well away from this insanity.

I thought Plum had either not heard, or was just ignoring me, so I didn't push it, but she brought me from my dark thoughts and said, "It was a massacre, Spark. They came in such numbers, totally overwhelming. There were trolls, like I said, but then they lost interest. Then the vampires came, hyped up and crazy, out of control like I've never seen them before. You know how they get?"

"When they have the hunger? The thrill of the chase?"

"Exactly. I've seen them like that countless times, when they are like animals. I know the look, I know the feeling, because of what I am, but this was different. There was an intensity, a coldness that was extreme even for them. They were fixated, lost to the hunger and the need to kill like never before."

"But they spared the children."

"Thank god they did. You could hear the screams, Spark, from streets away. Others came to help, or to warn us. They were terrified. Some had changed, plenty were still human, and they were all chased down. The vampires just waded through us all, like it was a job, you know?"

"How do you mean?"

"Like it was co-ordinated and they were working against the clock. They just came at us fast and hard, swept through us like things possessed. There were so many of them it didn't matter how strong we were, they came in their hundreds and they massacred us. Like cattle."

I glanced across as Plum went silent. She'd said all she could. Tears soaked her face. Her perfect, beautiful face. It was ruined forever. She would never lose that haunted look, that depth to her eyes that told you here is a person who knows real pain, real sorrow, consumed by nightmares all too real.

"Were there witches?"

"Witches? No, whatever their involvement in this is, if there ever was one, it didn't extend to obliterating my people. My friends. My family."

"Good, because we just left the children with one."

"Spark, it's Grandma."

"I know, but if they were involved then it puts her and them in harm's way. I don't think it is them. Not in the way I first thought at any rate."

"Spark, what the hell is happening? Why is this happening?"