Ever Strange

by Alisa Woods

  Ever Strange

  Legal Magick 1

  Alisa Woods

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  READING ORDER

  Dot Com Wolves

  * * *

  Claiming Mia (Book 1)

  * * *

  Saving Arianna (Book 2)

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  A Christmas Wish (Book 3)

  Riverwise Private Security

  * * *

  Jaxson (Book 1)

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  Jace (Book 2)

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  Jared (Book 3)

  Wilding Pack Wolves

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  Wild Game (Book 1)

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  Wild Love (Book 2)

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  Wild Heat (Book 3)

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  Wild One (Book 4)

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  Wild Fire (Book 5)

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  Wild Magic (Book 6)

  Fallen Immortals

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  Kiss of a Dragon (Book 1)

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  Heart of a Dragon (Book 2)

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  Fire of a Dragon (Book 3)

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  Chosen by a Dragon (Book 4)

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  Seduced by a Dragon (Book 5)

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  Touched by a Dragon (Book 6)

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  Loved by a Dragon (Book 7)

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  Marked by a Dragon (Book 8)

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  Claimed by a Dragon (Book 9)

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  Of Bards and Witches: Leonidas’s Story (Book 10)

  Fallen Angels

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  Tajael (Book 1)

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  Oriel (Book 2)

  * * *

  Asa (Book 3)

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  Razael (Book 4)

  * * *

  Micah (Book 5)

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  Tempted: Tajael’s Story (Book 6)

  * * *

  Kiss of an Angel: A Christmas Story (Book 7)

  Legal Magick

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  Ever Strange (Book 1)

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  Mercy Strange (Book 2)

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  Verity Strange (Book 3)

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  Ever Strange (Legal Magick 1)

  Copyright © 2019 by Alisa Woods

  March 2019 Edition

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. For information visit: Alisa Woods

  Cover by BZN Studio

  Ever Strange (Legal Magick 1)

  It takes a monster to catch one.

  ZANE WALKER—FBI, Magickal Crimes Division

  There’s a reason the bureau sends me undercover with the worst drug cartels in the world—my magick is as illegal and dirty as the enhancers they peddle. Just the kind that "Pennies" Machnik—Dziki crime lord—likes to use on his enemies. Being his enforcer lets me keep my own monster locked up while I build a case against him. If I can bring Pennies in, maybe I can finally put the stigma of what I am behind me. But when people start overdosing on his street drugs, a beautiful witch storms in, making demands she thinks she can back up with magick. I have to make a split second choice... and the monster comes raging out.

  EVER STRANGE—CEO, Strange Medical Technologies

  Someone has killed my father. They made it look like an overdose, but Asher Strange, the world-renown researcher of medical magick, never took an illegal drug in his life… much less tawdry magick enhancers. I run the family empire, but no one was more proud of the Strange family name than my father. A long line of us stretches back to the first days of High Magick—no way he would throw that away chasing a quick high. But before I can get an autopsy, my father’s body disappears… and being a Level One mage and one of the richest women in the city means I will get answers.

  Someone’s putting deadly magick into street drugs… and it’s killing people all over Chicago. Zane’s magick is monstrous, and Ever’s power brings out his beast. But she insists on finding her father; and keeping her safe has suddenly become his job—on top of stopping an epidemic of overdoses that just might be cover for a serial killer. Together, they work to stop the dark magick that’s stalking the streets of Chicago… and try to keep their own secrets from consuming them both.

  Chapter One

  Zane Walker hunted monsters.

  And Jakob “Pennies” Machnik was standing close enough to kill.

  Pennies was the kind of man who strung up street kids on chain-link fences, drained of their magick-infused blood—the only thing they had of value—as a warning to the others to move his magick-enhancing drugs faster. It was cruel, literally bloodless, and terrifying—the Dziki cartel’s signature style—and Pennies was known for his savage accounting of the smallest slight. The FBI’s Magickal Crimes Division started building a case against him a year ago, when he began consolidating the Chicago street gangs into a cartel, but it was Zane who’d brought the bureau their biggest break. His years of undercover work in Arizona had earned him a rep and a nickname, The Lover… and a convincing string of bodies attesting to his Talent.

  Because he was a monster, too.

  Just the kind Pennies would want as an enforcer.

  The operation in Arizona netted seventy-two arrests, but all that got pinned on another mole, keeping Zane’s cover intact and conveniently putting him on the market right when Pennies was scaling up. Six months ago, the mob boss brought him in, tested him, and decided he was just the right tool for the job. Which was how Zane found himself standing beside the monster, vowing to protect him instead of bringing him in… for now.

  Today’s job was another “negotiation”—this time with the leader of the Midnighters, the last of Pennies’ competition in the illegal enhancer market. They were meeting on neutral territory—the back of the only Polish bakery in Chicago that wasn’t a front for peddling drugs. Pennies’ relentless consolidation had brought the territory of one street gang after another under the Dziki cartel—either incorporating their operations or literally burying them. Zane had never witnessed the kills, other than the ones he was responsible for, but he suspected the rest had their ashes fertilizing the grounds of Pennies’ opulent North Shore estate.

  The cartel boss was careful that way. Meticulous. Never got his hands dirty.

  That was Zane’s job.

  Pennies sneered toward the doorway to the front of the bakery. “As soon as that charmer walks through the door… you do your thing to Jankov.” He lifted his chin to Zane.

  Michal Jankov. Leader of the Midnighters.

  “No negotiations, then?” Zane tugged off his short black gloves. Pennies knew what he was capable of. If Jankov was a charmer, as rumored, he’d stand no match against Zane. Then again, no witch or wizard could.

  “Just give him a taste.” Pennies turned his cold blue eyes to Zane. “I want him… unsettled.”

  Zane nodded. His Talent had that effect… among others.

  Pennies returned his gaze to the door. His normally pale cheeks had a flush of heat. They’d been that way since they’d left the estate. Excitement? Drugs? An invigorating round of sex? This was as amped as he’d ever seen the man. It was unnerving.

  “Let me hav
e him,” Pawel complained. He was Pennies’ brother, and it was just the three of them in the back room of the Czerni bakery, waiting.

  “I want him to live a little longer,” Pennies said, his gaze still fixed on the door.

  Pawel, aka Berzerker, nodded, but the movement had a twitch to it. He stood to Pennies’ left, his eyes dilated like he was seeing into a darkness that wasn’t there. Too much wild magick and drugs—maybe some blood-drinking as well. The effects of that could be disturbing. Pawel was dressed like an adept—everything black and leather, as befit one belonging to the magickal class, although definitely in the industrial style that signaled a more illegal kind of magick. Pawel’s black-leather trench was long like Zane’s, although the mobster had a simple black shirt and trim pants underneath, whereas Zane went full-aggression-mode with his metal-strapped jerkin and riveted combat boots. He might be undercover, but his clothes were an accurate reflection of who he was—a true adept and a criminally dangerous one at that. Pawel’s understated clothes belied his true nature—the man was a magickal short circuit.

  In general, adepts were like a walking gravity well, disturbing the background field of wild magick as they went. Zane could feel the tremors they made, given his Talent was a subclass of mental magick. But Pawel didn’t make tremors—his mere presence made the whole thing unstable. Magickal energy gathered around him like he was a magnet, but he couldn’t draw on that power and control it like any wizard worth his training. Pawel was a lightning rod, a short in the magickal storm, piping energy direct from the wild with no predictability. No throttling.

  Pawel’s Talent was simply mayhem—his wild-eyed, constantly-twitchy affect was a persistent counter-point to his brother’s steely control. But Pennies wasn’t even a broken adept. He was simple—non-magickal, no Talents, not even a charmer—and it burned a fiery hole in Pennies’ gut that he’d lost the genetic lottery with that. Which explained why the man was never caught in the kind of clothes an ordinary simple would wear. His leather jacket today had more gunmetal spikes than a robotic hedgehog. Zane was sure it was the cutting-edge fashion for the criminal underworld—Pennies did nothing second-class—but it was also a form of intimidation. And gave the illusion that his power came from magick, not the cunning and ruthless cruelty that undergird every move the mob boss made.

  Zane knew everything about the man… just not enough to put him away. And he was stuck doing Pennies’ dirty work until he could get something solid—something to send Pennies to Underwood Correctional for life.

  They waited among the massive dough-mixing tubs and metal bread-braiding machines with the twitchy energy of an execution. Racks of loaf pans lined up against the white enamel-brick walls, and the ovens gaped at them with their coffin-shaped holes. Like a damn morgue for bread. The place smelled of paska but tasted of magick—not the illegal kind, just the remnants of a heating spell clinging to the black-mouthed furnace. Probably the family recipe for a magickally-perfect sourdough crust passed down through every generation since High Magick began.

  Any other bakery would have bags of “dust” stacked next to the flour, ready to mix into every sweet treat that went out the door. The low-grade enhancer would illegally boost your Talent or give you a chance at developing one. Magick-enhancing Babka. Dust was mostly sugar with a tiny squeeze of mood-altering spell. The heavy stuff was dealt in back—an apothecary of delights where your dollars would get you whatever illegal magick you were trying to score. Or whichever high. Lately, they moved a lot of skitter—the newest cocktail of enhancers a hundred-fold more powerful than dust with a bonus side of hallucinogens—but the cartels would provide anything the pharmacies wouldn’t. And everyone was buying, from the hyped-up kids at Northwestern trying to ace their Talents exam to the traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange bidding on futures of magick-reinforced steel. Everyone was looking for an edge. Not that the enhancers did much. Even skitter didn’t work that well, but the high could convince you otherwise.

  “You think he’ll put up a fight?” Pawel asked Pennies, breaking the tense silence. The wait was obviously fraying on his already-thin control. He drew his hand across his mouth, wiping the drool.

  Pennies’ gaze never wavered from the door. “I think Jankov’s late.” He narrowed his eyes, and the muscles between Zane’s shoulders twitched. It was the kind of slight Pennies wouldn’t let pass. Which meant he wouldn’t just want to unsettle Jankov—if he didn’t immediately kowtow, Pennies would want him dead. Another kill would pump up Zane’s rep, but he didn’t need that—he needed information to bring Pennies down. Murder was a capital crime, more than enough to bring Pennies in, but not enough to dismantle the rest of his operation. And especially not if Zane was the one ordered to do the hit.

  The small tinkle of a bell riveted all three of them. It was the front door of the bakery. The bell jangled twice more, then stopped. Pawel’s left eye went hyper-twitchy, but Pennies was unnaturally still. Zane clenched his teeth and felt for Jankov’s tremors. The scuffle of boots beyond the door said he’d brought friends. The others must be simple, given Zane couldn’t sense them, but Jankov… Zane could taste his magick. Charmer. With an emphasis in stone works. Probably had a Talent for good luck charms, which wasn’t exactly helpful to a ruthless cartel boss. No wonder he hid it. And that wasn’t the only secret Zane would soon know about the man. He braced himself, and when the door opened—

  He reached into Jankov’s mind and turned it loose.

  “What the fuck—” Jankov stumbled through the doorway and clutched a six-foot rack of loaf pans. Zane’s eyelids fell half closed as the feedback pulse hit him, flooding him with the energy and pure, unadulterated lust he’d unleashed in Jankov. Zane could barely see the others fan out, guns drawn, panicky looks to their boss as he moaned and dropped to his knees. Shouts and threats and guns waving surged panic through the room, but Jankov and Zane were locked in their own private realm—one filled with Jankov’s most erotic fantasies. Images of women with ample behinds bent over and taking Jankov’s thrusts mashed with a montage of three women fighting over the right to have him. Jankov was engulfed in it—the bakery was only a haze now. Zane was just a lurid spectator, but a sigh escaped his lips as the magick surged through him, powering him up, providing its own erotic energy. It was repulsive, what he was doing. He knew that more clearly than his victims. But the monster inside him lapped it up, reveling in the feeding of his addiction, a high better than any drug Zane had ever found.

  And he’d tried them all.

  Tried to fight the addiction. To not be what he was.

  “Enough.” It was a whisper from Pennies, but it felt like a lightning crack through Zane’s ears. He pulled back, snapping the connection between him and Jankov and severing the flow of magick that satisfied his deep, hungering need. A need that never slaked. Never went away. Never had a substitute that was anything but a pale reflection.

  Jankov staggered to his feet, face ashen, eyes wild—he’d just awoken from the hottest, most confusing dream he’d ever had straight into the middle of a gang standoff. Whatever mild magickal Talents he’d had were drained, plus a whole lot more. He was sapped physically. Had Zane kept going, he could have taken it all. He wanted it all. Even now. Even as he held back. Jankov’s gaze cast around, his mind instinctively knowing he’d been attacked even as he struggled to put together the pieces.

  He was definitely… unsettled.

  His gaze landed on Zane, and a look of pure disgust unfolded. “It’s true,” he gasped. “The rumors.” Then he coughed and waved away his three men who had sprung into action to protect him… only they had no clue Zane could reduce them all to orgasmic idiots before they could think of pulling the trigger.

  Zane said nothing.

  Pennies’ smile twitched at the corner. “The rumors that I have an incubus in my employ? That he feeds on whoever I choose, draining them, all while they’re begging him for more? Yes. All true.”

  Energy vibrated through Zane, the taste of Jank
ov’s magick still on his tongue—he was half-drunk with it, and Pennies’ words surged up the disgust he always felt after. Zane still had to beat back the dark force inside him struggling to rise again. The one that wanted to feed on everyone in the room, consequences be damned. The one he barely controlled through his own brand of meditation, exercise, focus training and something akin to self-flagellation… at least, that’s what it would look like from the outside. But it kept the demon inside, under his control. So he could use his Talent for something other than killing innocent young girls.