Blood Craft: The Shadow Sorceress Book Two (14 page)

“
I
just need
to see him for a few minutes, you won’t even know I’m in there,” I said, hating the pleading tone in my voice as I attempted to bargain with the nurse standing guard on Graham’s door.

“I can’t let you in there. You’re not family and his wife said nobody else was allowed into visit….”

“We work together, he’s my partner, please, just a few minutes….”

She shook her head and placed her hand on my arm, turning me from Graham’s door. I’d come so close to getting inside—if she’d kept her back turned for just a few seconds more, I’d have snuck straight past her and she’d have been none the wiser. Instead, here we were, walking away from Graham’s door.

My steps faltered. I didn’t have to walk away, I just needed to convince her that I’d given up. If I could do that, if I could make her believe I was leaving, then I’d be free to do whatever I pleased.

Coming to a complete halt, she sighed impatiently next to me and tightened her grip on my arm. Without hesitation, I swung my free hand up and laced my fingers around her wrist, spinning her out in front of me.

“What are you—”

“You’re going to go back to your desk. I’m leaving and you’ll never have to see me again….”

Confusion clouded her vision and I swore softly under my breath. The books I’d been reading weren’t enough. There wasn’t exactly a guide on how to be the best Shadow Sorceress you could be. In fact, the best I could do was find some vague history books that spoke about the powers witches possessed when it wasn’t an immediate death sentence to be one.

Mind control had been one such gift, but it wasn’t for everyone and I was quickly beginning to understand that.

“You haven’t left, you’re still here…. Really, I must ask you to—”

I shook my head and rolled my shoulder back, letting the tension in my body melt away. “Go back to your desk; I’m not here.” I thrust as much authority into my voice as I could muster without sounding utterly ridiculous.

“But you are, I….” She started to speak again and anger threaded its way up into my chest.

“Silence.” There was a hollow ring to my voice that hadn’t existed before, and the nurse instantly fell silent. She opened her mouth to speak but no sound emerged and she stared at me in panic.

“Calm,” I spoke again, keeping my commands as simple as I could, and her face went slack, the panic slowly melting out of her eyes.

Turning away, her hand on my sleeve halted me, the grip she had suggested that she still wasn’t giving up on making sure I didn’t go and visit her patient without her consent. Untangling her fingers from my sleeve, I took a step back and she moved to follow.

“Stay,” I said, and she froze.

Staring at her, I searched her face for any sign that she knew what was going on, but I couldn’t see any. Of course, if someone came alone and found her standing here like some sort of a creepy mannequin, then I was screwed. The faster I got in and out, the better it would be for all involved.

Hurrying away from her, I crossed the floor and paused in front of Graham’s door, squaring my shoulders as I prepared myself to open it. The memory of him lying in the bed, hooked up to the life support machines—it took all of my strength to push open the door and slip inside.

The warm smell of electronics invaded my senses along with the smell of disinfectant. It was the smell of a hospital, but at least it in here it didn’t have the distinctive overtones of lingering torment and death.

Graham lay on his back, seemingly in the exact same position he’d been in the last time I saw him. He was so still; the only movement was each breath the ventilator pushed into his body forcing his chest to rise and fall.

Moving up alongside the bed, I peered down into his face. His skin was no longer ashen, the colour in his cheeks causing tears to fill my vision. A dying man wouldn’t look so healthy….

“Graham, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I just wanted you to know that I’m here … I’m going to stop this son of a bitch, and I’m going to do it for you….”

I gripped the edge of the sheet, suddenly afraid to touch his hand. What if I disturbed the machinery? What if I accidentally knocked something out and killed him? It was probably impossible, but “probably” was still far too uncertain for me to risk it.

“Jon is being the usual pain in the ass. He assigned me a new partner, a woman from New York, but….” I trailed off—how much was I supposed to tell him? If he could hear me, maybe telling him that my new partner had been kidnapped along with Dex might not be the best idea.

I watched his steady heart rate as it bleeped across the screen, the line unchanging as it created perfect little spikes. I wasn’t a doctor, but everything looked pretty good, so then why the hell wasn’t he awake yet?

“I saw Jessica. I know you wanted me to. She’s so angry, and I don’t blame her … but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do to help her when she’s so remorseless over everything that happened.”

Graham’s heart rate fluttered slightly and I paused, letting the rhythm fall back into a normal steady pattern once more.

“Graham, we need you. I need you to wake up … I think there’s something wrong with me.”

There was no flicker of reaction from him again; everything continued on as it had before and I sighed. What was I expecting? He wasn’t going to just wake up because I willed him to. If life worked like that, miracles would be a hell of a lot more commonplace.

And I wasn’t lucky enough to get a miracle now.

Turning from Graham, I made my way to the door. There was nothing I could do now but try and kill the thing that had caused all of this and that was exactly what I would do.

Moving out into the main hall, I stared at the nurse. She was still standing where I’d left her, her chest rising and falling with each breath she took, but her gaze was blank and unseeing.

Pausing next to her I pressed my hand to her shoulder and whispered in her ear: “Forget.”

She started as though I’d slapped her, recoiling away from my touch, a confused look filling her eyes. “What are you,” she said.

“I was just leaving. I’m sorry I bothered you,” I answered and stalked away, the feel of her confused gaze boring holes in the back of my head as I disappeared out through the doors.

T
he sound
of my cell phone ringing as soon as I stepped out through the front door of the hospital made me jump. Slipping it from my pocket, I glanced down at the screen and my heart skittered in my chest.

“Hello,” I said, answering it quickly and pressing it to my ear.

“Miss Morgan, this is Callum Sydney from the medical examiner’s office. You wanted me to call if I found anything out about the bodies that came in this morning.”

“What have you found out?” I asked, catching sight of Nic across the parking lot.

“Well, nothing has come back on the black stone substance found beneath the victims, but something interesting did come up in the thread samples we sent for testing.”

I waited for him to continue but there was silence on the other end of the line. “Callum, what did you find?”

“Right, well, the thread is a mixture; the main component seems to be wool and the rest of it is hair.”

“Hair?” I repeated, my stomach flipping excitedly. Hair was something we could work with. I didn’t know much about forensics, but in every cop show I’d ever watched, on the television, they could always track down the identity of their perp if they had hair to work with.

“Yes, human hair, to be exact,” he said.

“And have you tracked it, run it through the system, is there a hit?” My words ran into each other, desperate to get out fast enough; the faster I spoke the faster I would have my answers.

“No, the hair has been extensively treated with as yet unknown chemicals. I’ve got to wait for the toxicology report to come back on that, plus whoever the hair belongs to took forensic counter measures….”

“What do you mean, forensic counter measures?”

“There is no root or follicle on the hair, no way of testing it for DNA.”

My heart sank; no way of testing meant no way of figuring out who the hell the sicko was. Unless of course….

“Thanks, Callum….” I hung up the phone and practically skipped across the parking lot to Nic.

“You look happy. Is he awake?” Nic asked, staring at me curiously.

“No, he’s still out of it….”

“So, you’re grinning like a maniac why?”

“Because I know how to find the guy who caused all of this, but I need to make a quick stop at the office first.”

“Are you going to let me in on the secret?” Nic asked, readjusting his gun holster beneath his leather jacket.

“You’ll see,” I said, unable to tear my gaze away from the tightening of his T-shirt across his muscled chest. The movement left very little to the imagination and it took all of my will power to keep my hands to myself.

Get a grip, Amber. You do not have time for this,
the voice in the back of my head piped up, and it was right. I really didn’t have time to stand around drooling over Nic.

Lifting my gaze, I wanted to kick myself as I caught his smug smile. No, I definitely didn’t have time to feed his ego. An image of Dex flashed through my head, the way the creature had pinned him, spilling the grey smoke down his throat. Guilt gnawed at my guts, and it must have shown in my face because Nic’s smile disappeared, replaced with a far more serious expression.

“I’m going to end this once and for all,” I said, climbing onto the bike behind Nic and wrapping my arms around him. I just had to hope and pray that I wasn’t too late.

L
eaving Nic at the curb
, I hurried towards the front door of the Elite office. Bud pushed out through the door, his broad shoulders taking up the entire space, making it impossible for me to slip past him as he paused.

“How’s Graham doing?” he asked, his deep baritone rumbling in my bones. I knew from seeing him around the office that Graham had worked with him on a couple of cases before we’d caught the Sidwell case.

“Still out of it,” I said, eyeing the door impatiently.

The faster I could get in there, the better it would be. The last thing I needed was to get held up, especially when what I had planned was so dangerous. If I was caught stealing evidence, it would lead to questions I couldn’t answer.

“That’s too bad, he was a great guy,” Bud said, his expression one of pity.

“One of the best….” I smiled politely and edged forward.

“Uh, sorry, I guess I’m holding you up and you want to get on and catch the guy that did this to him….”

I nodded and side-stepped him as he moved away from the door.

“Listen, I know you didn’t want for any of this to happen, I know it’s not your fault, no matter what Sonia has to say….”

“What does Sonia have to say?” I tried to keep my voice as steady as possible, but it was hard. She’d promised to make me pay, that I would be sorry, and I could understand her pain. But blaming me for something that wasn’t my fault was something I wouldn’t stand for. I didn’t deserve that; my flaws were many, but I hadn’t wanted Steve to get hurt, and I definitely didn’t want him to get killed.

“She’s angry and looking to blame someone, anyone really. It’s not her fault, but I just want you to know that no one is taking her seriously. We’ve got your back, Amber.”

His declaration was so sincere that the back of my throat closed with tears. I’d always been an outsider in the Elite, and Jon certainly hadn’t made me feel welcome, Graham had been the first to take a chance on me. And now to hear something like that out of Bud—well, it meant something to me.

“Thanks, Bud, I….” I trailed off, my voice growing a little choked. I couldn’t ruin it all now by breaking down. That was the last thing I needed to do; the Elite was all about being the toughest, the most unbreakable. If I cracked now and cried, it would only set me back to square one.

Bud nodded, his expression shifting, and there was a tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there moments before. Coughing, I cleared my throat. “It means a lot to know I’ve got your support,” I said, finding my voice once more and crushing the tears down inside.

Relief washed over his face and he clapped his hand across my shoulders, hard enough to send me stumbling forward toward the front door. “You’re one of the good ones, Amber,” he said.

“Thanks, Bud.”

He strode away down the path without waiting for me to answer; he was clearly relieved that I hadn’t burst into tears on top of him. I bit back the smile that hovered on my lips. I could only imagine what his face might have looked like if I had. He’d have never recovered after the mortification and he definitely wouldn’t ever have spoken to me again.

Hurrying into the building, I kept my head down as I made a bee line for the evidence room and crossed my fingers in the process. Something had to go right; we were overdue for a win.

Scooping my keys for the evidence room out of my pocket, I shoved them into the lock and pushed the door open. The room was dark, the musty smell of boxes and papers tickling the back of my throat and nose as I stepped inside.

Flipping on the light, I cringed against the harshness of the strip lighting as it hummed and buzzed before finally deciding to click on. It lit up the stark white walls, which were lined with shelving units. Having an evidence room was just the Elite’s way of trying to be as close to the police as possible; it was a way of normalising what we did, even if that was impossible. The mundane evidence didn’t need anything special; it could be kept in boxes along with the case files.

But the other types of evidence, the stuff deemed preternatural that had a power all of its own, well—that went out of the city to one of the Elite storage facilities. I’d never been to one and I never wanted to go; the thought of being around that much raw power filled me with panic. I had enough problems to deal with without worrying about what might happen if I came in contact with something morally ambiguous that had a will of its own.

The door dropped shut behind me and I crept down between the stacks to the table at the back of the room. The newest evidence came here, awaiting cataloguing or the closing of a case. The evidence bag lay at the back of the table, the thick, black thread coiled within.

A tremor of power ruffled across my skin as soon as I reached out to pick up the bag. Why hadn’t I felt it back at the crime scene? There hadn’t been anything there, the absence of power the biggest clue that something freaky was going on. Of course, if I’d known just how freaky, I’d have tried harder….

Maybe if I had, then Graham wouldn’t be in the hospital, fighting for his life. Guilt ate at me again and I pushed it aside. It wasn’t going to help right now; there would be plenty of time to wallow later, when this was all over and done with. Until then, I had a job to do.

Popping open the bag, the air pulsed with energy and I sucked in a deep breath. Wrapping a piece of the thread around my fingers, I pulled a strand of it free and quickly snapped it off. Jamming the rest of the thread back into the bag, I dropped it onto the table and turned towards the door. I froze, the blood in my veins turning to icy sludge as my gaze met Sonia’s.

Her arms were folded across her chest, her petite frame tense with unspent rage. Her eyes focussed on my hand and the thread dangling from my fingers.

“I knew it,” she said, the triumph in her eyes sending my heart spinning into my stomach.

“Knew what?” I asked; my only choice was to claim innocence. There was nothing else I could do. Finding me stealing evidence was bad enough, but if she suspected what I wanted it for, then I was done for.

“I’ve known from the second you started here that there was something off about you. You let Steve die and now this? What are you going to do with the evidence? Are you using it to cover your tracks, hide your incompetence? Because it won’t work; I’m going to tell everyone what you really are….”

“And what might that be, Sonia?” I said, taking a small step towards her. I tightened my grip on the thread, balling it into my fist as I moved deliberately towards her.

The demon mark itched and it was a struggle not to scrub my hand across it. It would be so easy to shut her up … permanently. She was nothing but a thorn in my side anyway, running around the place like she was the only one to ever lose someone. If she blew my cover, all those innocent people would die….

The thoughts whirled in my head and the demon mark throbbed as I closed the gap between us.

“You don’t frighten me, Amber. I can take you, I always was better in the ring….”

My hand shot out, my fingers closing around her throat as I slammed her back into the door. Her eyes widened and, for the first time since I’d met her when I started working for the Elite, I actually saw the first glimmer of terror in her eyes.

Shit, what the hell was I doing?

I released her as suddenly as I’d grabbed her, my hand automatically going to the demon mark. There was definitely something wrong with me, something dangerous and dark lurking inside me, and I had no idea how to control it.

First the urge to rip the shifter apart, to glory in the spill of his hot blood across my hands; I’d known, deep down inside, that I could take him if I just gave into the darkness I harboured within. I could have ripped his still-beating heart from his chest and it wouldn’t have cost me a second thought.

And now this….

God, what would I have done to her?

“What are you?” Sonia was babbling, the fear in her voice dragging me back to the shit storm I found myself in the middle of. “Your eyes, they glowed? You don’t exist anymore, they wiped your kind out….”

Double shit!

If she was putting the pieces of the puzzle together, then I really was screwed.

Shoving the thread into my pocket, I did the only thing I could do. Placing my hands either side of her face, I leaned in towards her. Sonia struggled in my grip, lashing out with her arms and legs as she fought to get out of my hold.

“Forget,” I said, my voice taking on a familiar hollow sound. Energy wound its way up through my body and out through my hands.

Sonia went limp in my grip, but I could still see the fear reflected in her gaze. Her hatred for me was well and truly embedded inside her, wrapped up in her memories for Steve. How could I make her forget what she’d seen when her mind was in such turmoil? How could I be sure it would work without wiping everything clean?

“Don’t kill me…” she whimpered, and the sound tore at my heart.

“I won’t, but I need you to forget … forget everything you saw … stop looking for ways to catch me out….”

“You killed Steve…” she said, but her voice was a little distant and empty.

“Forget…” I said again, delicately plucking through her thoughts in an attempt to pick out everything connected to what she had seen.

“Steve…” she said, and I jerked my hands away from her face. There was such confusion in her voice and that wasn’t meant to happen.

Sonia slid down the door, landing on the floor without so much as a sound. Crouching down next to her, I gazed into her blank stare.

“Sonia?” My heart hammered in my chest as I spoke to her, but she stared past me as though I wasn’t even there.

Grabbing her shoulders, I shook her gently—her head lolled back and forth on her neck, but her eyes cleared a little.

“Amber, what are you doing?” Her voice was groggy, but she knew who I was and my heart soared.

“You had a fall…” I said; it was a lie but it was vastly better than the truth.

“I fell?” There was doubt in her voice, but I ignored it; at least she wasn’t back to accusing me of killing Steve. “Why would I fall? If Steve finds out, he’ll go mental—he’s so afraid I’ll hurt the baby….” The rest of her words were a blur to my ears.

She didn’t remember he was dead. I’d wiped his death out of her mind—how was that even possible? I hadn’t touched anything I wasn’t supposed to. As far as I knew, I’d only interfered with her memories of seeing me stealing evidence….

She pushed up onto her feet, swaying gently, forcing me to keep a hold of her. What was I supposed to do? If she didn’t remember…. It was just a giant mess, and the longer I hung around, the greater the risk of getting caught.

“Why was I in here?” she said, staring around at the stack of evidence crates.