Blood Craft: The Shadow Sorceress Book Two (15 page)

Shrugging, I grabbed the door and pulled it open, ushering her out into the corridor. Was I supposed to tell her that Steve was dead? How could I remind her of something like that? She needed to know the truth, but I couldn’t break that kind of news to her…. She already blamed me once—if I was the one who told her, the jolt to her memory would be too much. She’d probably remember everything and then I’d be back to square one all over again.

“I guess you went in to get something…. You’ve probably got baby brain.” I wasn’t even sure what the hell baby brain was, but I’d heard of it, and I was going to use it.

It was enough to draw a wide smile to her face once more. “I know. I keep forgetting where I’ve left my keys. Secretly, I think Steve takes them just to play with me. He says our son is taking up all my brain space, and he’s right….”

I nodded and gave her a tight smile. This wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. Steve was dead; everything was beyond messed up.

“Sonia!” A vaguely-familiar voice called out from the opposite end of the corridor.

She turned and grinned. “Thanks, Amber, for not making it hard. If it had been one of the guys in there, I don’t think I would ever have lived it down.”

She moved away from me and I let her go, the truth stinging along the tip of my tongue. Rachel, one of the other Elite officers and one of Sonia’s closest friends, stood watching and waiting. I knew from the confused expression she wore that she hadn’t expected to see Sonia hanging so amicably with me. She was probably also wondering why Sonia looked so damn happy.

Without a backwards glance, I spun on my heel and raced for the main entrance. The scream split the air as I hit the front door, my hands sliding off the door handle and slamming into the glass as I pushed out onto the street.

Another piercing scream, choked with sobs, and I let the door slam shut behind me, but the sound followed me. It wasn’t something I could just shake off, and I wasn’t convinced I deserved to just shake it off. Sonia’s screams would follow me into my nightmares and I deserved every second of it.

Reaching the street, I paused next to Nic and tried to calm my racing heart.

“You get what you needed?” he asked, eyeing me curiously.

“Yeah,” I said. “Now let’s get the hell out of here….”

He didn’t need to be asked twice and he didn’t ask for an explanation. All things I was beyond glad for.

“
S
o how does this work
?” Nic asked as he paced back and forth through my small living room.

“I need a map of the city, and I can use the thread wrapped around a crystal to scry; it should give me a pretty accurate location of where this guy is hiding out.”

Pulling the city map free from underneath my pile of old magazines, I stared down at the different lines and circles I’d drawn across its surface. My experiments with scrying so far hadn’t been particularly successful, but I was chalking it up to not having enough conviction. This time, I had a reason to scry, something I was genuinely seeking, and it made sense that I’d be able to find it, especially as I had something so connected to what I sought.

Grabbing the clear quartz crystal from the table, I tugged the thread from my pocket and wrapped it around the sparkling quartz before letting them both hang down from the chain.

It swung wildly over the map, but nothing happened. Closing my eyes, I imagined the quartz landing on the location I needed, but when I opened my eyes there was still a big fat nothing.

Sighing, I dropped back onto the floor and stared down at the map. Scrying was supposed to be one of the easiest things for a witch to master, and with my new power coursing in my veins, it should have been child’s play. Instead, I was left frustrated and confused.

“It’s not working…” I said. I’d risked everything to get the thread and for what? It hadn’t done me any good and the longer I sat here with nothing to show, the longer Dex and Victoria were out there, facing certain death.

I wasn’t particularly fond of Victoria, but I definitely didn’t want her to die. Leave and return to New York, maybe, but death wasn’t in the cards….

“Well, is there something else you need?” Nic asked, crouching down next to me.

“I don’t know, all of this,” I said, gesturing to the map and the crystal, “it’s all still so new. I don’t know if I’m doing any of it right, and I’m pretty certain everything I touch turns to crap.”

“That’s not true…” Nic said, kneeling next to me and cupping my face with his hands. “You can do this, Amber. You just need to let it happen and it will. For god’s sake, you summoned a demon to fight off your sister; this won’t beat you.”

His words washed over me, soothing the anger that bubbled within me. I was doing that an awful lot lately, getting angry for the sake of it without any real reason. Was it all part of the demon mark? Was it just one of the shitty side effects that I hadn’t completely figured out yet?

He was right, of course; I had summoned a demon to stall Lily and if I could do that, then what was stopping me from figuring this out, too? In the end, I was the only one standing in my own way.

Grabbing the athame from my belt, I dragged it free and Nic released me.

“Wow, what are you doing?” he asked, catching my hand before I could slice the blade across my palm.

“I need something to jump start the system, and blood works for everything else.”

He let me go, his gaze sceptical. “Do you really need to slice yourself badly? Won’t a little do the same job?”

I shrugged, running the wickedly sharp edge of the blade over my hand. It burned, the pain tingling and stinging as my blood welled in the shallow wound.

Clenching my fist, I held it over the map and the crystal, letting the crimson droplets run down, plopping onto the map with loud, wet sounds. It pooled around the crystal as though drawn to it and I gratefully took the cloth Nic handed to me, wrapping it around my hand as I watched the crystal seemingly soak up the small puddle of red.

The blood flowed around inside the crystal as though I’d poured it into water, swirling and dancing against its crystal cage.

“Shit,” Nic muttered, a low whistle escaping him as he watched the crystal drink every last drop of my blood.

Clearly, I’d been missing a pretty integral aspect of the scrying process and the fact that I hadn’t come across bloodletting as a facet of the process left me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I’d always known the Shadow Sorcerers were powerful—it was one of the reasons they’d been hunted to extinction in the first place—but no one had ever suggested their power was anything other than morally ambiguous; it was just power and, as such, could only be corrupt because of who wielded it. But blood craft was a serious magic and not the light and airy kind my mother practised. Was I dark?

Was that even a possibility? It certainly wasn’t something I’d really thought about before, but judging by what had happened with Sonia and all the rest, it was entirely possible.

Picking the crystal up, I let it swing across the surface of the map, the weight drawing it back and forth, each swing becoming wilder than the last until it started to spin on the end of the chain.

“What are you doing to it?” Nic said, watching its movements with a mixture of wary surprise.

“Nothing, I just picked it up,” I said, tightening my grip on the crystal as it swung wildly out of control.

Closing my eyes, I imagined it dropping onto the map over the location I needed, but my mind was still filled with thoughts of my dark magic, Lily, and the creep who’d taken Dex and Victoria.

There was a crack, like the sound of glass splitting, and the crystal stopped spinning. Opening my eyes, I stared down at the map as my blood poured out of the split crystal. It didn’t just drip down onto the map and pool in the centre the way I imagined it would.

Instead, it ran in a thin, steady stream, splitting apart the second it hit the map and running in two different directions. I watched it move, one side coming to a halt over a place just outside the city and the other….

“What is that?” Nic asked, leaning a little closer to the map. The blood on the opposite side was pooling into the shape of what looked like a small skull over Crescent Hill Cemetery. The place where it was pooling started to smoke, a tiny hole appearing in the centre as a small flicker of blue flame appeared.

“Lily,” I said. I wasn’t even sure why I said it or how I even knew it was her, but I was suddenly certain it was.

The blood smoked like it was made of acid, the flickering blue flame moving faster, following the trail back across the map to where the crystal was still trickling a steady stream of blood. It jumped and I released the chain as the flickering flame hit the crystal. There was a pop and the crystal shattered, the pieces exploding outwards like a tiny, sharp bomb.

Nic fell back on the floor, the pieces of crystal bouncing harmlessly around us.

“I know she’s supposed to be your half-sister, but we seriously need to do something about her,” he said, dusting some pieces of crystal from his hair.

I didn’t answer him; there was no point when I agreed with him. Leaning back over the table, I stared down at what was left of the map and the remaining puddle of blood. It sat proudly on the outskirts of the city, directly over the spot where King City’s oldest casino had burned down the year before, the blood already dried into the paper.

“At least she didn’t completely destroy the map,” I said as I climbed to my feet.

Lily was bad news and I wanted to find her, I needed to find her, to stop her. Whatever that meant. The last time I’d faced her, I’d barely gotten away with my life. She might have gone quiet, but I couldn’t imagine her really giving up—she just wasn’t the type. But, for this time at least, I couldn’t go chasing after her, not with everything else at stake.

“How do you want to do this?” Nic said, standing next to me.

“Save who we can and kill everything else.”

“Aren’t you supposed to call it in or something?”

“Not this time. I played it that way the last time and I’m not making that mistake again.”

Nic grinned. “Good, because the Elite are a bunch of stuck up assholes, always playing by the rules—no offence….”

“None taken,” I said, returning his smile with one of my own. “I was never a play-it-by-the-rules kind of girl.”

“Good, because rules ain’t my thing; they only get in the way. When I want something, I take it, no matter the cost.” There was something in his voice that told me we weren’t talking about the Elite anymore.

Nic’s grin widened and he pulled his machete from beneath his leather jacket. How he managed to carry it there without cutting himself wide open was beyond me. If it had been me, I’d be bleeding from the minute I picked it up.

“When this is over and done with, I’ll show you exactly what I mean,” his voice lowered and rumbled low in his chest, causing things low in my belly to tighten.

“I think I’d like that….”

I regretted the words the minute they left my mouth. They weren’t exactly the smooth reply I’d been going for and I cringed inwardly when Nic raised an eyebrow at me, his wicked grin turning my insides to molten lava.

Focus, Amber, think of the handsome man when everyone is safe….

I swallowed back the rampant thoughts in my head and slipped my hand inside my own jacket, pulling the small bottle Heddou had given me free.

“Let’s hope less is more, or this is going to be less search and rescue and more kill everything that moves….”

Nic’s grin instantly melted away, replaced with an expression I was coming to know as his serious and thoughtful gaze.

“It’ll be enough,” he said.

Tightening my grip on the bottle, I replaced it safely inside my jacket and zipped the pocket shut. God, I hoped he was right.

“
H
ow do
we know this is it?” Nic asked, as he killed the engine on his motorcycle.

“Technically, we don’t, but I’m almost positive it is. I mean, come on, he could hardly keep them locked up somewhere in the city itself. He needs space,” I said, fighting free of the helmet.

Climbing from the bike, I sat the helmet on the seat. I wasn’t any more used to the motorcycle but I had, at least, moved past the phase where my legs were complete jelly the second I stepped onto solid ground. Perhaps there was hope for me after all.

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket and I lifted it free, staring down at the screen and the unfamiliar number that pulsed across the front. Stabbing the green button with my thumb, I lifted it to my ear.

“Yeah,” I said, suspicion heavy in my voice.

“Amber.” His voice was hoarse and there was a breathlessness that I wasn’t used to hearing, but I’d have known his voice anywhere.

“Graham, you’re all right. When did you wake up?” My voice went up a notch and I didn’t care that I wasn’t fit to keep my excitement contained.

Nic shot me a surprised look and then returned his attention back to cataloguing the weapons he’d brought with him. From where I was standing, it looked a lot like he’d stored an arsenal in different places on his bike, places I wouldn’t even have contemplated looking.

“They extubated me an hour ago. I insisted on getting a phone call. This place is worse than prison; they didn’t want me to stress out by calling you.” Each word sounded like a labour of love to just get out, but the fact that he was awake and capable of talking … it was nothing short of a miracle.

“How can you be so alert? I came to see you a couple of hours ago … you were completely out of it, then.”

There was silence on the other end of the line and I felt my uneasiness crawling up the back of my throat. It wasn’t possible, none of it was.

“Nothing gets past you, dear sister…” Lily said, the disdain in her tone more than obvious. “You should be a detective or something.”

“Where’s Graham,” I said, grinding my words out from between my teeth.

“He’s here, still out of it, as you so aptly described. Isn’t it amazing just how fragile we are, as humans … that one little slip up here with a piece of machinery … all I’d need to do is unplug one and boom, your precious little daddy replacement is dead….”

“If you touch him, I will kill you!”

“Touchy, touchy, sis. If I wanted him dead, I’d have done it already. But there is something I want you to do for me….”

My grip on the phone became punishing and I could feel the blood in my fingers draining away as I struggled not to crush it.

“Why would I do anything for you?”

“Because we’re family….” Her laughter tinkled down the line and I cringed.

“We’ll never be family, Lily; you and I both know it.”

“Yes, well, that’s as may be, but I still want a favour.”

I opened my mouth to speak again, but she cut me off before I could even get the words out.

“Cut the goody two shoes crap, Amber. I want the blade Zeck is using….”

“Zeck?” I repeated. The name sounded so familiar, but I just couldn’t put my finger on why.

“Yeah! Mr Zeck, he’s a consultant, travels from place to place dealing with situations just like this one….” Lily herself trailed off and another burst of giggles escaped her. “Oh, this is too good, did the Elite bring Zeck in to help out on the case?”

My heart flipped in my chest and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Zeck was the consultant the Elite had used to clear the spirit out of Marcy Colton’s body. The memory of him standing in the medical examiner’s office, the look of sadness in his eyes, I’d honestly believed he was just highly empathetic about the victim. What an idiot I’d been.

“Lily, how do you know so much?”

“I’m keeping tabs on you, Amber. I’m not a fool; I know the power you’ve got, and I’m not going to make the same mistake twice. Summoning the demon wasn’t playing nice.”

It was my turn to laugh and Nic shot me another curious glance.

“Why is it the bad guys always think it’s unfair when the good guys turn the tables on them?”

“Is that what you are, Amber, are you really sure about that?”

I didn’t answer her; there was no point. She knew the kind of power I had. She knew it better than I did.

“I’m not going to get you anything, Lily. You can go to Hell.”

I could practically hear her shake her head on the other end of the line. “You don’t know the full extent of your gift. I guess if you did, then Graham wouldn’t be lying here so vulnerable. What if I said I could bring him back for you, heal him … would that change your mind?”

Her words sent a frisson of excitement racing through me. It wasn’t possible, was it? Anything, really, was possible; just because I hadn’t contemplated it, or been too afraid to attempt it, didn’t really mean anything.

“Bring me Zeck’s blade and I’ll bring Graham around. Call this number when you have it and I’ll tell you where to leave it.”

“And how do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“You don’t.” The line went dead and I stared down at the screen.

What was I supposed to do? In my head, the answer seemed pretty obvious. I wanted Graham alive and well, but at what cost? And how could I even truly trust Lily to keep her word and not do more harm….

“What was that about?” Nic asked, coming level with me.

“It was Lily—she wants me to do her a favour,” I answered, holding the phone in my hand as I readjusted my weapons holster.

“Your sister? What could she possibly have wanted?”

“She wants the blade Zeck is using….”

“Who’s Zeck?” Nic said, and I remembered he hadn’t been with me when I’d questioned Zeck with Victoria.

“He’s the guy doing all of this.” Nic nodded and moved to pull his berretta out. “He works for the Elite,” I said. and Nic froze mid movement.

“He what?”

“Yeah, he’s the guy who comes in and cleans up the magical issues…, Pretty much, we’re screwed.”

Nic took a second to think about it before shrugging, “I’ve had worse odds. Sometimes ‘screwed’ isn’t an unpleasant experience.”

“Nic, seriously, Zeck is powerful. I have to call it in, we can’t just go wandering in there and not let the Elite know that one of their own is corrupt.” I dialled the main office number—as I spoke, the sound of the phone ringing was suddenly drowned out by the rattling of a cargo door slowly opening on the side of the casino.

“Elite—” Jon’s voice droned over the line and I cut him off.

“It’s Amber, we’ve found the guy responsible—Bill Zeck, we’re…,” the phone hummed in my hand before it went completely dead and I was left staring down at the blank screen, my own face reflected back up at me.

“Uh, we’ve got a really big problem here…” Nic said, jerking my attention back to the casino and the shambling horde crossing the space towards us.

There were so many of them, far more than I’d been expecting. The bottle of antidote Heddou had given me wasn’t going to cut it. The horde moved at a relentless pace, closing the gap between us, and Nic raised his gun, his finger depressing the trigger.

Silence.

No explosive gun fire the way I’d expected—there was just a boat load of nothingness.

Pulling my own Glock free, I aimed it at the nearest rotted person and pulled the trigger. The bullet jammed, the trigger making one pathetic click as I squeezed it over and over before finally admitting defeat.

What was left of the dark-haired woman grabbed me, her flesh sliding away from the bones in her fingers, her nails snapping off as she struggled to get a grip on me. In her eyes, I could see fear, and it rolled my stomach.

Christ, she was aware—she knew what was happening to her, the same way the others had, but at least in their eyes, I’d just seen the blank stare of whatever spirit had possessed them.

“Fuck, the guns aren’t working!” Nic roared, using the butt of his gun to fend off the nearest person clawing at him.

The dark-haired woman clawed at my face, her face twisting as she mouthed, “Help me,” into my face.

There was nothing I could do for her; her body was way too far gone and I knew what would happen to her the second I crushed the invading spirit within her. I did the only thing I could do, grabbing her neck and head with both hands and simultaneously shoving my power into her rotted remains.

The spirit twisted in the grip of my power, fighting back as I crushed it. I jerked my arms, wrenching her neck to the side as bile crept up my throat. The human horror disappeared from her gaze the second I did it and the spirit screamed in frustration. At least she wouldn’t feel the next part.

My power wound its way around the spirit inside and crushed it completely, the body going limp in my grip. I let it drop to the ground, trying not to focus on the fact that it was already beginning to swell.

Glancing in Nic’s direction, I watched him hack through two shambling corpses that attacked him, his machete blade slicing through their swollen bodies easily.

“We need to get inside, we need to find Zeck,” I said, shouting to Nic over the sound of shuffling feet.

He nodded, his expression grim as he moved towards me. I didn’t wait for him and, spotting the break in the horde, I raced forward, crashing through the front door of the casino as another body careened into mine from behind. His weight rode me to the floor and air rushed out of my lungs as he crushed me against the scorched carpeting.

Rolling to the side, I knocked him from my back and hopped to my feet before he had the chance to come at me for a second time.

“Dex,” I said. The second I saw him, his eyes were grey and unfocussed, the skin on his face slack and sagging, but from what I could see, there didn’t seem to be any visible signs of rot.

He didn’t react to his own name, instead lunging towards me, his movements clumsy and uncoordinated. Whatever Zeck had summoned didn’t have the best command of the human body and part of me couldn’t help but wonder why.

“Dex, no!” I said, sidestepping his wild grab for me. How the hell was I supposed to get him to hold still long enough for me to give him the antidote?

Pulling the bottle free of my jacket, I lunged at him. If I couldn’t reason with him, then I had no choice but to use force against him. Crashing into his chest, it was my turn to ride him to the carpet. He wrapped his arms around my chest and squeezed, making each breath harder and harder to take.

Tugging the cork from the bottle, I leaned forward and jammed the top of it into his mouth, the blue liquid splashing against his lips. He drank greedily and his grip on my chest disappeared as he attempted to grab the bottle from my fingers.

I whipped it away, sliding the cork back into place as Dex growled at me. Rolling away out of his reach, I climbed to my feet and watched him. He flipped over and crawled towards me, his spine bowing upwards as the blue liquid began to work.

“Amber, look out!” Nic shouted, his words drowned out by the sound of Dex’s scream of agony.

I moved, but I was far too slow, my attention caught up in Dex’s movements as he bucked and heaved on the floor. Pain burned through my side and I screamed, the sound ripping from my throat. Agony roared in my body, every nerve ending on fire as the blade bit deeper in through my back.

It was a pain I recognised from when I’d walked the scene back at the River Gardens; agony like this wasn’t something you could wipe from your memory so easily. I took a shuddering step forward, but a firm hand on my shoulder halted me from moving off the blade.

“Don’t stop looking now, dear; you’ll miss the show…” Zeck whispered against my ear, and a wave of nausea rolled through me.

Dex coughed and choked, his body heaving as he started to retch, his fingers digging into the burned carpet. The grey smoke that I’d watched pour down his throat spluttered out through his mouth and into the air. He choked and retched, forcing it out until it pooled around him.

Zeck whistled low and the grey smoke whipped up towards us. I closed my eyes, sealing my lips shut, but Zeck twisted the blade in my side and I screamed again. The sound was instantly silenced and I felt the spirit force its way down my throat. Struggling to suck in a breath, I jerked and spluttered until the sound of static filled my ears.

The pain I’d felt seemed very far away, like the constant, dull ache of a tooth on the verge of catastrophe. Nic stormed towards me, but it wasn’t me he wrapped his arms around; my body wasn’t my own.

The spirit inside me probed at the power coiled in my core, but there was no response; my power was my own and there was nothing on this earth that could control it but me.

Heat spread across my chest and my body twitched. I was only vaguely aware of the movement. Being so detached made it all the more difficult to have any real thoughts, everything seemed to just run on instinct.

The heat turned to a fiery rage that flooded my veins and Nic’s grip on me faltered. I wanted to cry out to him, to ask him what was going on, but my mouth refused to cooperate. The demon mark flared to life and I wasn’t just instinct anymore. I was pain and fury and everything in between. The spirit twisted and fought against the mark, but the demon-infused gift had been with me longer; it had become a part of me and it wasn’t willing to let me go.

The world went black, my vision fading as my lungs ceased to expand and my heart slowed to a crawl.

At least if I died, it would be knowing the feel of my own body.