Haunted by Shadows: Magic Wars: Demons of New Chicago Book Two

by Carpenter, Kel

  I hadn’t recognized her voice when I first heard it that day I was taken. It’d been a few hundred years, but her scent—that was something I knew. I remembered.

  Black cherries and mulled wine. Rotting flesh and spilled blood.

  She smelled like an oxymoron, which was fitting for what she was.

  It was the reason I knew this was the end.

  Piper had all but stripped me of my powers, leaving me open to the lion waiting in the shadows. And then she sprang.

  “Who was the caster? Can you tell?” Nathalie asked after a long moment. I wondered if she would ask what she was. If she would give in to that curiosity I could see burning in her eyes. She didn’t, and it said a great deal.

  “Morgan Le Fay.”

  For centuries, that name had caused near as much terror among supernaturals as my own. She was almost as infamous. Twice as bloodthirsty. Madder than a hatter, and more possessive than even a demon could be.

  She was a witch, but she’d stripped herself of all humanity in order to become more. She cast off her human beginnings, and all but killed that side of herself to be immortal.

  Most witches would have turned and run at her very name. But not this one. And that intrigue I felt—that pull toward her—it strengthened and took form.

  For the second time, she surprised me.

  Because she smiled.

  “My family must really think so little of me. It would be insulting under different circumstances.”

  “And it’s not insulting because?” I trailed, partly because words were becoming harder to form the more the iron burned. Fire seared my flesh and scented the air.

  “Because I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” she said, pulling up her sleeve and extending her wrist. She placed it on my lips, warm and inviting. “Bite me.”

  The scent of jasmine and lilac made my mouth water.

  “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” I murmured, lips skimming her heated skin. My tongue darted out, the tip trailing over her pulse. I felt it skip, and her skin pebbled.

  “Bite me, but don’t take too much. I need blood to smear over the chains. It should be enough to release you.”

  My heart jolted.

  “Are you sure?”

  “No,” she replied in an honest, shaky laugh. “But I think it will work. I’m related to Morgan Le Fay. Weak or not, her blood runs in my veins. There’s a chance the magic will take.”

  No, there wasn’t. I might not have studied witch magic, but I did create the first witch, and another dozen or so since then. I knew enough to know that what she wanted to try . . . it was a long shot. An impossible shot.

  Even for her.

  But with her skin pressed to mine and fire burning through me, I felt want and desire beyond a passing fancy for the first time in a long time. I wanted to kiss every inch of her skin and feel her writhe beneath me. I wanted to see what made her jump and learn what made her moan.

  That wasn’t an option, though. I knew that.

  So I took the next best thing she offered: her blood.

  My fangs pressed down, and she held her wrist firm as I pushed them into her skin. Copper blossomed. Sweet ichor touched my tongue.

  The initial taste was sweet and crisp, like a breath of fresh air. But it was what lived beneath it that came after; the very magic in her veins that lurked like a secret hidden in the night. I pressed my lips to her wrist and took a hard pull. Her magic, while weak, still pulled at me. It wasn’t the fire that Aeshma and Piper boasted. It wasn’t boisterous or loud.

  It was a gentle breeze. The sun on my skin. Snow melting to make way for new life, and a lullaby that gently guided you into sleep.

  “Lucifer,” Nathalie’s voice said in a hoarse cry. “Lucifer, you need to stop. I need to get your chains off.”

  I didn’t want to stop.

  In fact, it was the last thing I wanted to do.

  But if I took more, it could actually kill her.

  My jaw opened on its own, and my lips parted, releasing her. Blood ran freely for a few seconds, dripping onto my lips. I ran my tongue over them, feeling more clearheaded than I had in days. I opened my eyes to stare at her, almost entranced by what I’d just experienced.

  But she wasn’t even looking at me.

  Hunched over, she swiped her wrist over each of my chains and muttered words in languages I’d learned and forgotten ten times over. Determination pushed her brows together and sweat dotted her temple. The heat coming from the chains was reaching an all-time high. That bitch Morgan really knew how to get to me, but I didn’t let it.

  Instead, I focused on Nathalie Le Fay with everything in me.

  It was easier than it sounded since I was hard as a rock from drinking her blood.

  “Motherfucker,” she grunted. “Son of a bitch. Peace of sh—”

  “I told Mother we should have tied you up,” another voice said. “You never knew when to leave well enough alone.”

  I didn’t look because it didn’t matter. I’d never let myself truly hope there was a way out, so I continued to focus on the witch even as her whole body went taut. The muscle in her cheek twitched, and I wondered if she bit it.

  “Katherine,” she said through gritted teeth. Blood touched her tongue, so she must have. “I’m going to assume you’re not just here to gloat.”

  “Unfortunately not,” the other one said. She sounded like her, but the voice was all wrong. The tone. The inflection. I didn’t find this other person half as agreeable. “I’ve been told I get the honor of preparing you.”

  “Preparing me?” she asked, and to some it might have seemed innocent. Stupid, even. But there was intelligence in her eyes and a lilt to her voice. She was fishing. Despite being caught, she still looked for a way out.

  It was no wonder I couldn’t hold on to her and Piper. The two of them together . . . I really had no chance, as much as I hated to admit it.

  “Yes, dear sister. You wanted to claim your birthright so badly. It looks like you’ll get your wish,” the other voice sneered.

  “My wish?” Nathalie lifted an eyebrow defiantly.

  “To lead the coven,” Katherine said, pausing for dramatics. “You’re going to perform the sacrifice and open the portal.”

  “Open the . . .” Her voice trailed off. Her eyes took on a faraway stare. “Where are they trying to open a portal to?” She spoke softly, then. Quiet. Like she knew but hoped she was wrong.

  “Hell, of course. We’re going to find the source of magic.”

  22

  Despite the exhaustion weighing me down, sleep didn’t come easy. Dressed in the thin excuse for a dress, the cold of January in New Chicago bore down like a hungry beast. I rubbed my stiff hands together, prickles of pain shooting through them. They’d lost feeling more than an hour ago. The skin turned red, then white, but blue was edging its way around the tips. I healed fast. Faster than a mortal. I wondered if hypothermia would have already set in had it not been for the magic coursing through my veins. I rolled again, groaning from the stiffness in my shoulders. My knees came up to my chest, and I wrapped my arms around them, trying to conserve warmth.

  If I died like this when I could have burned that bitch to ashes, I would haunt them. Morgan. The Le Fays. And Ronan. I’d haunt him most of all for stopping me when I could have ended this.

  The buzzing in my head intensified. While I couldn’t see much in the dark room, black spots appeared in my vision. Heaviness dragged me down, and as much as I wanted sleep, I fought it—because I worried I wouldn’t wake up.

  After being unconscious for a week, then put under again via a sleeping spell, then brutalized, starved, and now left in single-digit temperatures, I didn’t have a choice. There was no strength for me to pull on. No reserves of energy that could power me through. Hatred burned in my soul, but it wasn’t enough.

  The darkness claimed me, and my only consolation was that it wasn’t the darkness I thought it was. Instead of whatever lay beyond this exis
tence, I stepped into a memory. Or at least part of one.

  To anyone else, this would just be a street in the middle of nowhere. A road just outside of New Chicago. But I wasn’t just anyone, and this place wasn’t just a spot on the side of the road.

  It was where my life as Piper Fallon ended, and where the Witch Hunter was born.

  “This is where your parents were killed,” a voice said behind me.

  Death may have been waiting in the wings, but it was Ronan who joined me.

  I stared at a spot on the pavement, and while there were no bodies now—I remembered what they looked like then. The odd angle of my mother’s neck. The twin bites on her throat from a client that had been too rough the night before, the purple bruising illuminated by the sun.

  Humans were taught to be scared of the dark, but the worst day of my life took place at ten in the morning.

  Part of me wondered if that was why I never feared the night like I was supposed to.

  At least there I knew the monsters were waiting. I blended in with them, and that day, I became one of them.

  “How are you here?” I said without turning. “She said the chains confined your magic.”

  “My magic,” he replied, voice like gravel. I sensed him behind me, his presence like a shadow that followed wherever I went. “Not yours.”

  My eyebrows lifted in acknowledgement, but I didn’t turn. I didn’t say anything more. There was nothing to say. Nothing to—

  Calloused fingers wrapped around my jaw, pulling my gaze away from the five-foot section of asphalt that chilled me to the core. He faced me toward him, planting his feet in front of me, his height and wide shoulders blocking everything else from view.

  “Look at me, Piper.”

  I pressed my lips together, debating the merits of ignoring him. After all, if my magic brought us here, I should be able to leave when I wanted, right?

  The thing was, I didn’t know how to control that part of it. My visits to Lucifer showed that much. So instead of acting like a petulant child because I couldn’t mentally walk out, I lifted my chin—and I let him see my anger. My fury. My hate.

  He didn’t blink in surprise or appear taken aback. If anything, the lack of reaction pissed me off more because it was almost like he expected it. Yet, he showed no guilt or remorse.

  His eyes were all steel and winter nights. Not an ounce of apology.

  For all that I’d told myself I couldn’t trust him . . . that he would ruin me . . . that it was just magic, and nothing more . . . part of me had started to think there might be more to it.

  Maybe.

  He hadn’t hurt me before, not truly. But this? It cut deeper than any knife could.

  All at once, that rage—that fire that burned so bright—simply died out.

  I turned away, or I tried to. But Ronan held my jaw in his grasp.

  “You bastard,” I said, wheeling toward him, feeling out of control as my hands went flying. Punches landed, and he took them all without a wince. “You coward. How dare you—”

  His second arm came up to wrap around my waist and pull me inward, and despite the struggle, our chests pressed together. My breath came in hard pants as I twisted against him, trying to land another punch.

  “I didn’t break your trust, Piper.”

  His words stopped me cold. My body went limp. I tilted my head back to look at him, to accuse him of being a liar. The word was on the tip of my tongue when he spoke again.

  “If she killed you—if you die—I will lose complete control. My magic . . . it’s more than this world can handle, and it will lash out at the loss of its atma. I couldn’t stop myself from doing it, even if I wanted to—which I won’t. So before you call me a liar, that’s the truth of it.”

  My heart hammered. My breath came quick. Part of me, the smallest sliver, unwound at his words, but I wouldn’t give in to that. Give in to him.

  “You’re weak,” I spat, wrenching myself away. This time he let go.

  I stumbled back, ignoring his angry gaze. I sensed a storm brewing there, and maybe if I got him angry enough, he’d do something about it. Or, in all reality, I was angry with myself and taking it out on him.

  “Weak?” he repeated. An unspoken threat never sounded so sensual. “I’m many things, atma. Cruel. Brutal. Unforgiving. We’re well met in that, you and me. Which is why I know this is you lashing out. You feel weak. You feel cowardly. You—”

  “I think I’m immortal,” I said. The words came out as a whisper, but I had to stop him. I couldn’t hear it anymore.

  It was one thing to know my own faults; to have the self-awareness to recognize what I was doing, even if I didn’t try to stop it or change. It was another to watch him pick me apart so acutely. He’d always had the power to unsettle me, but this ran deeper.

  The truth always did.

  Because the fact of the matter was—the only one that ever seemed to lie in this relationship was me.

  This relationship?

  I might have laughed at myself if Ronan hadn’t spoken then.

  “What makes you think you’re immortal?” he asked, our prior conversation left on hold, if not forgotten. I didn’t believe he’d leave it. He liked to poke and prod at the weak points in my armor. He liked to cause pain, but it was a different kind of pain. Not born out of cruelty, but something else.

  “The second blood exchange. It did something to me,” I started slowly. “I noticed when I woke up after the crash. It wasn’t the same as the previous times. It was easier. Then I stepped on glass in the pits, except when I went to remove it later—the wound had healed. I had to reopen it to get it out.”

  “And that wound?” he prompted, his attention fully engaged by the prospect that I might not be mortal anymore. He probably liked the idea. I would be harder to kill and live . . . longer than I cared to think.

  “Healed within seconds. Just like yours. You know what this means, right?” I turned, and he was further away than I’d expected. I looked down to see I’d wandered over to the spot where my parents died. “Morgan’s curse might not kill me.”

  Ronan’s expression darkened. “Might,” he said. “That doesn’t mean—”

  I doubled over, pain erupting in my stomach.

  My knees would have hit the pavement had Ronan not been there.

  Strong arms wrapped around me.

  “What’s going on?”

  My insides twisted. Fire coiled around my organs, as if they were being pulled apart. I gasped.

  “I don’t know.”

  The vision started to fade. The pavement beneath my feet crumbled. I still felt Ronan’s arms around me, and his voice in my mind telling me to breathe and not do anything rash, when a loud crack jarred me fully awake.

  My bittersweet vision dissipated, leaving me in the cold dank cell where I’d been before.

  I lifted my head, putting a hand to my temple. It pounded like a jackhammer was being taken to it.

  “Get up. The Morrigan desires your presence.”

  I was certain there were worse things to wake up to, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a single one.

  23

  My feet dragged across the concrete floors.

  “Hurry up,” the man behind me grunted. Since Rafi, my werewolf guard, had failed to escape with the rest of us, I’d been assigned a new jailor. One that made Meatface almost seem friendly. A hand slammed into my back, and I stumbled forward, catching myself on the edge of a doorframe. The walk from my cell had been excruciating. The burning in my stomach ever-present, but thankfully not any worse. I wouldn’t have been able to walk at all if it were, and I could all too easily imagine what would happen then.

  I brought a hand down to press on my abdomen, taking a slow steady breath.

  My eyelids fluttered as I lifted them to the scene before me.

  My airway constricted, and if dread could have filled me anymore than it already did, it would have. But at a certain point, there was only so much stimuli the body c
ould take. Even as my situation went from bad to worse.

  “Ah, entertainment,” a sultry sweet voice said, making me cringe. “Just in time for dessert.”

  “I told you to hur—” the man behind me said. I lunged forward, sheer will keeping me on my feet as I entered what could only be described as a party. The room wasn’t particularly large, but only a few couches and a king-sized bed took up the space. A dozen or so witches and warlocks were scattered around like accessories. Their bodies positioned on overstuffed pillows and draped languidly across the furniture. Only a few stood, and judging by their mostly naked bodies that were adorned with enough jewelry to pay for my apartment ten times over, it was likely they were pleasure slaves.

  And yet, I was the entertainment.

  This was going to suck.

  “Apologies for the delay, Morrigan. The human is slow.”

  Slow? I gritted my teeth against a retort about how slow he’d be if he were starved and left in the cold without his thick jackets and fur-lined boots. Not to mention injured and enduring whatever was going on with my stomach.

  I clenched the hand pressed to my belly, and it twisted in the fabric. I had to be careful not to tear it.

  “You’re dismissed,” she replied with a wave of her hand. A door slammed shut behind me, and then it disappeared. I peered over my shoulder at the blank wall where it should have been.

  She’d either cast an illusion or transformed it without words. Just a flick of her wrist.

  The kind of power she must wield . . .

  I straightened my spine, sensing eyes on me.

  “Come, Witch Hunter, join us. If you behave, I’ll feed you.”

  My feet were leaden as I slowly turned my cheek. She sat on the singular armchair, one bare leg draped over the arm, the other hanging loosely over the male chained at her feet.

  Ronan.

  My heart thudded.

  The fire in my stomach lurched, threatening to suffocate me. Despite the hunger gnawing at my insides, I was fairly certain I couldn’t eat even if I wanted to.

  Still, I made my feet move and tried my damnedest to blank my face.