by D. N. Hoxa
BLOOD AND FIRE
THE MARKED
BOOK 1
D. N. HOXA
Copyright © 2020 by D.N. Hoxa
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of
America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or
artwork herein is prohibited. This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely
coincidental.
More by D.N. HOXA
Winter Wayne Series (Completed)
Bone Witch
Bone Coven
Bone Magic
Bone Spell
Bone Prison
Bone Fairy
Scarlet Jones Series (Completed)
Storm Witch
Storm Power
Storm Legacy
Storm Secrets
Storm Vengeance
Storm Dragon
Victoria Brigham Series (Completed)
Wolf Witch
Wolf Uncovered
Wolf Unleashed
Wolf’s Rise
The Curse of the Allfather (Ongoing)
Wicked Gods
Wicked Magic
Starlight Series (Completed)
Assassin
Villain
Sinner
Savior
Morta Fox Series (Completed)
Heartbeat
Reclaimed
Unchanged
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For Happy
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
1
You know how I knew that things were about to get uglier than an ogre’s mother wearing a sparkly dress?
My name was being whispered.
I was paranoid, yes, and had broken a lot of teeth—sometimes noses, too—when I thought I’d heard my name being whispered before, but this was the real deal. I could read it on the lips of the man sitting on the other side of Pushka’s bar as he watched me.
One-eyed and hawk. Yours truly.
I casually spun around on the barstool and put my glass of gin down on the polished countertop. It was just my second, and I hadn’t drank it yet, but there was no way I was going to finish it now. Damn it. Money was a problem I had yet to learn how to fix. I put my hands under the countertop and counted the chakris around my wrists. All four of them were there, looking like gold-colored bracelets with square edges—right until you pressed the tiny button on the side. Then, the outer edges turned sharp all around, except for the handles that perfectly fit the size of my hand. Lucky for me, nobody ever saw them coming until it was too late.
Next, I checked my whip, safely tucked inside the belt loops of my jeans. I actually felt pretty clever to have come up with the idea when I was about twenty years old. That’s four years ago. Strange how I felt old, even though twenty-four wasn’t a big number.
To check my magic would be a waste of time, and I didn’t have time to waste. I might have not had access to it, but I had access to much more important information. I knew the position of every person in Pushka’s bar, especially the guy at the other corner, whispering my name to two of his friends sitting around the small, round table that barely fit their elbows. I adjusted my dark shades on my nose and took in a deep breath. The door was eleven feet away from where I was sitting, but my car was around the street corner. I knew how many people were in the bar, but I had no idea how many of them were magians. Some shifters were fast, and Sylphs were even faster. I didn’t want to take any chances, not now. I’d been on the run for a long time, and I had no desire to be found.
There were twenty-three people in the bar, including the bartenders, and I’d chosen the bar carefully. It belonged to Tomorr, an Albanian psycho with a penchant for violence, who took his magically enhanced rifle everywhere he went—even in the loo. He’d named his bar after it, too—pushka was Albanian for rifle. Nobody with a bit of sense in their heads, magian or human, would start a fight in there, not unless they wanted to die a quick death. Word around Nashville was that Tomorr never missed, and he always aimed for the head. Still, you never knew anymore. People went crazy as magic exploded in short bursts all around the world, touching ordinary humans, enhancing magians, sometimes fucking them up beyond repair, too. The guy speaking my name could have a screw—or several—loose in his head, and he wouldn’t care if he died. There was a bounty on my head. Only thirty thousand dollars, but people have killed for much, much less.
Slowly, I slipped off the barstool and focused all my senses behind me. A chair screeched as someone pushed it back, not bothering to take it slow. My eyes squeezed shut behind my shades.
“Hey, you!” someone called. I’d bet my good eye that it was the whisperer.
Taking in a deep breath, I turned around to face him. Just like I suspected, he was looking right at me. He was a big guy, square face covered in week-old stubble, the grey shirt stretched tight over his huge, ripped muscles. His fist was easily half the size of my head, and I could see the holster around his hips. Tonight’s not the night to get shot, thank you very much.
“I know you,” the guy said, raising his index finger my way.
Suddenly, everybody in the bar decided to stop talking. Twenty-three sets of eyes turned to me.
I offered a smile. “Don’t do it, buddy,” I said. It was naive of me to hope that he’d drop it, when in the dark of his eyes I could read the greed, the hunger, the need to prove how big and hairy his balls were.
His friends rose with him, both of them reaching behind their backs for their guns. Definitely human. If they’d had magic in them, they’d have turned to it by now.
“It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the One-eyed Hawk,” the man said, his voice thick with victory. He thought he’d already won. You stupid, stupid man. Had he no idea how many had thought that before him?
As if someone had pushed a button, whispers started around the bar. Some knew who I was, and they were telling the people who didn’t.
The sound of a rifle cocking came from my left.
“Sit your ass down, Crane,” Tomorr said. He was an old guy, probably more than sixty, but he stood tall, at least six foot five, and his white beard and hair did nothing to diminish the sense of danger emanating from his person. His rifle was in his hand, as always, and he had it ready to fire magical bullets that would kill humans—and most magians—in a heartbeat.
But this guy Crane didn’t look away from me. “I got you now,” he said, a snake-like smile stretching his full lips. Maybe he was a weresnake, though I could see no scales from where I stood. You could never tell with those.
I smiled, too. The hum of magic around me was on the other side of the boundary enforced by the rune on my shoulder. I still remembered how pieces used to fall into place in my chest like a puzzle while I focused on sources of electricity. My magic was pretty simple. I am what they call a light mage. Or at least I used to be in the old days.
Right now, I had a chakri in one hand and my whip in the other. I didn’t look away from Crane, who was probably not to be taken lightly, considering the bar owner knew him by name. Fury burned in his eyes, and I saw the second he put both hands under the round table in front of him and pulled it up.
I turned to the side and jumped on the stool and then up on the bar. Crane came for me with his buddies right behind him, and when he was halfway to me, I swung my whip toward him. I was a bit rusty, I’ll admit. I didn’t start fights, not anymore, but I fought when the occasion called for it. Unfortunately, that hadn’t happened a lot lately, so I was a bit scared I would miss, but I didn’t. Guess they didn’t call me the One-eyed Hawk for nothing.
The leather of my whip wrapped around Crane’s thick neck twice, and he barely even noticed as he came for me with his arms outstretched. I pulled him with all my strength and then stepped on the whip when he was close enough to grab me. His head slammed against the countertop and I put my foot on it.
Shots fired. One of Crane’s friends, stopped in his tracks and looked down at his chest, his white shirt quickly turning red with fresh blood. He fell to his knees and then facedown on the floor. The other stopped all by himself but not to give up. Instead, he raised his gun, but I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me or at Tomorr.
Apparently a lot of people thought he was going to shoot at Tomorr because suddenly those who wanted to get their hands dirty jumped out of their seats and began to fight with everyone. It was like a scene from a bad movie. Lots of shouting, breaking glass, blood—the usual.
Crane, whose neck was now covered in yellow scales that shimmered blue and green, tried to grab my ankle, so I squatted down and took his head between my legs.
Well, no, not like that. I was there to fight, not have sex. I put the sharp edge of my chakri on his neck, right below his earlobe.
“Steady, boy,” I said as he tried to free himself, but the harder he tried, the more my whip tightened around his neck and the deeper my chakri bit into his skin. His blood was red, just like mine, though we were nothing alike. He was definitely a weresnake, though I don’t know why people even called them that. When they shifted, they were more like lizards, with slimy-looking skin, a tail, and four short legs tipped with nasty claws.
But Crane wasn’t shifting, which meant he either couldn’t or he didn’t want to. It took a lot of mental strength to control the animal side of a shifter, and Crane didn’t look like he’d even gotten his brain out of the wrap yet. It was still brand new.
“I don’t want to kill you, but I will if you make me.” I had to shout because of the noise now. “So stay.”
Crane suddenly stopped moving, but I doubted he was going to give up. No, he’d just wait for me to let go so he could attack me.
Well, I wasn’t about to give him the pleasure. By the looks of it, the human police or officers from the Magian Ministry were going to be here any minute now, and I needed to disappear.
So I did let go of Crane, and I did it quick. I pulled up and put my foot over his head and pushed him as far as I could before I turned and ran on the countertop. Crane shot at me, and the bullet hit right next to my left foot. That was closer than I liked. I jumped from the countertop and landed two feet from the door, which had been left open by the people who’d run out of the bar. They’d stayed close by to see what would happen, but when I ran out and Crane kept shooting at me, they began to run, too, screaming like their tails were on fire.
As I ran, the cold October air filled my nostrils, chasing the little alcohol I’d had out of my system. Crane was after me—I could tell by the bullets that landed really close to my feet as he fired. Damn it, how many more bullets did he have? I was sure he’d already shot four, but they stopped when I turned the corner and he could no longer see me.
My car was a beat up, grey Honda I wouldn’t change for the world. People were still screaming when I shut the door behind me and turned the engine on. I hated running, but I hated dying more. I pressed on the gas, and the tires screeched as the car shot forward, taking me far away from the people who wanted to make a quick buck by beheading me.
“Not tonight, fellas!” I shouted to myself, a bit excited.
That was before I remembered what it meant that Crane had known who I was.
It meant that I had to leave. Again.
I rented an apartment in Hadey Park, possibly the worst part of Nashville, which suited me. People minded their own business, neighbors didn’t greet me in the hallway, and I got a three-bedroom apartment for a really, really cheap price. It helped that the neighborhood had just a few magians, none of them a threat to me or my secret. I should have just stayed inside and drank beer instead of going to the bar tonight. It had been three months now, and I was just getting used to the Nashville life. Now, I had to find someplace else to go because, if Crane knew I was here, so would everybody else, and that meant people were going to start looking. It was a matter of time before they found me, and I didn’t want to take that chance.
For tonight, though, I parked my car in front of my apartment building and exhaled loudly. I threw the shades in the passenger seat before I got out. They obviously weren’t doing their job. I wore them everywhere because it was pretty hard not to recognize a girl with a leather eye patch covering her left eye, especially when my nickname was One-eyed Hawk. It kind of hit you in the face. You’d have to be really stupid not to see the connection, especially if you knew about the bounty on my head.
My apartment building was made of grey bricks that had seen much better days. The windows of the apartment on the first floor were broken, and it constantly smelled like something had died in there, but the landlord refused to do something about it and nobody cared enough to complain. It was a quiet neighborhood, though there were always small groups of people hanging around, watching in silence, shying away from any trouble. My kind of place.
I lived on the third floor, behind a door that was far too easy to break, but I’d figured if someone knew how to find me, a reinforced steel door wasn’t going to stop them. I wasn’t eager to spend money as it was. I was working as a delivery rider here. It wasn’t the worst job I’d ever had by any means. The hours were flexible, I could do work without having to actually spend too much time with my supervisors who seemed to change every couple of weeks. I just showed up at one of the restaurants that were my boss’s clients, got the food, and the addresses where to deliver. I’d worked as a waitress, a bartender, a hostess, and I’d even tried some online gigs, but this had been the fastest way to make quick money when I first got here, and I kind of stuck to it. Easy to do when you had no plan for the near future. Or any future, really.
The hallways of the building were empty and dark, the walls dirty and full of drawings from people who had some time on their hands and thought they were direct descendant of Picasso. You could find everything on there: hairy balls, vaginas, tits, and lots and lots of dirty words in all colors and sizes. If I stopped to check them all out, I’d have to set aside a whole day.
They were enough of a distraction as I walked up the stairs to the third floor. Maybe that’s why I didn’t hear shit until someone spoke behind me.
“Ruby Monroe?”
At least he wasn’t calling me by my old nickname.
I froze mid-step and focused, a chakri already in my hand. What were the odds of two people recognizing me on the same night, thirty minutes apart? Whoever the man was, he moved too silently for my liking, and that was never a good thing. We were on the second floor. He’d probably been hiding in the darkness at the end of the hallway and had waited for me to turn my back on him before making himself known.
His footsteps echoed in my head, one, two ,three—it sounded like he was in a hurry. Pinpointing his location without looking wasn’t hard when you’ve had a lot of practice with your eyes closed, so I spun around and threw my chakri in the same second. Half of the perfect circle made of brass buried in the wall an inch away from the
man’s face.
I slipped another from my wrist into my hand without making a single sound—one of the reasons why they were my favorite weapons. My chakri were round and just big enough to pass for gold-colored bracelets. The Futhark runes engraved on both its sides resembled decorative vines. Nana, the woman who’d gifted them to me, had chosen brass over steel because she said it had better airfoil design and I could throw it 300 feet and still hit my mark. Turned out, she was absolutely right. Like always.
“Fuck,” the guy whispered, his eyes pinned on the chakri in the wall. He was about five foot eight, a little over an inch taller than me, and he had a heart-shaped face that would have made me look twice on any other night. The silver light of the moon streaming from the hallway windows on both sides made his dark hair look like silk, and the gray, almost white, color of his eyes reflected silver. He smiled, and it showed a dimple in his left cheek, which could have been natural but could have also been an old wound that never properly healed. If so, he was a lucky bastard because the dimple suited him. To the ordinary eye, his body was of average strength, but I could see the muscles in his arms when he moved. That kind of muscle was built only when you trained hard for a long, long time. Yes, he was much stronger than he looked, and that didn’t sit well with me because he was trying to hide it. His baggy grey shirt said so, and under it, who knew what kind of weapons he hid.
“Speak quick,” I said. “Who are you and what do you want?”
My patience had already vanished. My body had a mind of its own. There was only so long I could keep my wrist from flicking and my fingers from letting go of my chakri, this time to aim for his throat.
“I’m Marcus and I want to speak to you—in private, if possible,” he said with an easy smile. Apparently he’d already forgotten the chakri buried in the wall right next to his face.
I took in a deep breath through my mouth and analyzed him.
Most of the known species who lived on earth had distinctive features. Take ogres, for example. They were big, their skin whiter than an albino’s, which for whatever reason was extra resistant to spells and magic, and they almost always had bad teeth. I mean really, really bad teeth. If you somehow missed the size, you just really couldn’t miss the teeth. Big and crooked and brown…ugh.