Xander (The Nova Force Book 1)

by Vivienne Savage

  A jolt shot through my fingers, zipping down each nerve like a magical telegraph to my brain.

  Precognition wasn’t my specialty—it was actually my weakest fae talent—but when I touched my friend, a vision of the future flashed through me. I saw the doctor she had the potential to become, the lives she would save, and an overwhelming branch of positive outcomes like ripples across a vast ocean.

  It vanished, a mere soap bubble of possibility, and before my eyes, Mindi’s fate tore itself from its predetermined track into the hungry jaws of a vampire. I jerked my hand back.

  “You okay?” she asked, like I was the one who almost kissed sidewalk.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Far from it. My bestie was doomed to die in a grimy alley behind the town’s only pizzeria.

  Hot tears stung my eyes, but they couldn’t wash away the knowledge of what awaited the girl who used to share her lunches with me at school, shriek over horror movies with me during sleepovers, and enviously brush my hair any time she had the chance. For years, she’d thought Mom let me color it, ignorant to the truth that the teal, violet, wine, and gold streaks in my black hair were my natural colors. I hadn’t told her until I was a teenager that I was a faerie, because humans usually treated us different once they found out.

  Through it all, Mindi had accepted me.

  It wasn’t fair.

  In eighteen years, I’d only had the occasional vision, usually manifested as nightmares or a keen sense of intuition—common for faeries, but far from impressive when the most powerful of my ancestors could see every human probability strand in a great, arcing tapestry of fortune.

  But I was only a half-fae, the spawn of two other half-breeds rejected by their magical ancestors. I had no extraordinary gifts of foresight or clairvoyance—until now. The vision was the clearest to ever flit across my sight, but not yet etched in stone. Especially if I did something about it.

  I couldn’t tell her. According to some of my parents’ old textbooks, numero uno of dealing with prophetic visions prohibited telling the subject, and the consequences were murky at best. I could make things a thousand times worse.

  “I still can’t believe you’re going to Illinois for college,” she said, oblivious to my internal struggles. “And in a week. Summer isn’t even over. Why does magic school have to be so far away?”

  “Cause that’s where the fae own a whole crap-ton of land. They have acres dedicated for the university. God, I’m not going that far. You act like I’m leaving for Hogwarts.” Unable to shake the vision, I forced out a laugh. It barely trembled past my lips.

  “You may as well be going to the UK—or any other fictional setting for that matter. I won’t be able to hang with you. So, since you’re leaving and Jerome is headed off on a last-minute vacation, I’m thinking of taking over his shift at Hot Slices. They’re posting the job opening tomorrow, but his boss is giving me first dibs to come fill out an application. I’m gonna head over now.”

  “You shouldn’t,” I blurted. “It’s a crap place to work. Remember how Jake rage quit a month ago?” Her ex-boyfriend hadn’t lasted three months at Hot Slices.

  “He ate more pizza than he sold. Do you really think he was right to storm out because he lost his privileges to eat on the job?”

  I blew a wisp of dark hair from my face then groaned as the skies unleashed a misty bounty of rain. My ironed waves were ruined in seconds and reduced to a mass of springy curls. “Well, no,” I admitted.

  “It’s a decent job.”

  “What about Samantha? She burned her wrist real bad because those idiots never clean the floor, and she slipped on grease while pulling a pizza out.”

  “Yeah, she’s going to have a scar from that.” The resolve in Mindi’s voice wavered. “I’ll just be careful, I guess.”

  I hooked an arm around her shoulders and wove a mild Persuasion spell. Stronger faeries didn’t require physical contact, but I did. “Girl, you can do so much better than serving pizza to hungover drunks and rowdy football players. What about all that talk about volunteering at the vet?”

  “Volunteering won’t move me closer to saving up for a car. As great as it would be to gain some experience, I need to earn funds now.”

  “True, but a recommendation letter from Doc Taylor will look great on your Johns Hopkins application next year.”

  The spell backfired royally. Instead of taking my advice, she went on the defensive and shrugged off my arm. Her easygoing smile faded, and a scowl popped onto her face. “Why does it matter to you where I’ll work when you’ll be gone a thousand miles away? You have a free ride. A scholarship because you’re different.”

  I stiffened. She’d never brought it up before. Never uttered anything but warm acceptance. “Min—”

  “I have to go. Let’s forget the movie tonight. I can’t afford it anyway.”

  “I was gonna pay.”

  As Mindi rushed away through the rain, her voice carried back to me on the misty wind. “Don’t bother.”

  Crap. I’d really messed up. If I couldn’t sway her away, then I could at least get someone else who could.

  After sidestepping beneath the green awning of a thrift shop, I fished my phone from my purse and dialed the emergency hotline all paranormal beings knew by heart. For dilemmas of the mortal variety, Americans called 9-1-1, but people seeking paranormal solutions dialed 7-7-7 to solve life-or-death situations. In ten minutes or less, some wizard would appear to blow Mindi’s vamp into blood-scented dust.

  A recorded message warned that I’d contacted them during a period of high call volume but was welcome to try my call again later or remain on hold. When I phoned my mother, it went straight to voice mail as it often did when she was on the job.

  Trying the house didn’t work either. Although Dad was probably home in bed, he worked nights with his godchildren and usually ignored the phone when trying to rest.

  I tilted my head back toward the sky and closed my eyes. “Now what?”

  What the hell would my parents do in a situation like this?

  I could call the police, but they’d turn it into a bloodbath. As part of the Pact of 1977, mortals technically couldn’t intervene with paranormal affairs unless directly confronted by a threat—which meant most human law enforcement instigated a fight straight off.

  Under normal circumstances, local police officers couldn’t investigate supernatural disturbances, and our special agents, the sentinels, couldn’t put their noses into human law enforcement without an agreement.

  And then there were situations that brought the two factions together, when it behooved both sides to involve each other in a case, but that was rare and hadn’t happened in years since a warlock took a human cult under mind control and sent them into banks with explosives while he reaped the rewards.

  As the first rolling rumble of thunder boomed overhead, inspiration struck me. If I couldn’t persuade my friend to avoid the pizzeria, maybe I could talk her hunter out of his dinner plans and convince him it wasn’t worth having a death on his soul.

  Most vampires weren’t the jerks modern horror movies made them out to be. They didn’t cut a bloody, serial-killer swath through unsuspecting, isolated towns in Alaska or stalk high school girls a century their junior.

  They didn’t sparkle, and they had reflections. That nonsense about crossing holy ground? Absolute BS. Don’t wave a crucifix at a vampire unless you want him to shove it up your butt. Of course, most of those rules flew out the window once they succumbed to their thirst.

  Whenever supernatural creatures underwent the Change, they became a malevolent being called a darkling. In the case of a vampire, they transformed into nosferatu—foul, undead blood drinkers that smelled like rot and sickness.

  I was positive this guy wasn’t a nossie yet, but he was probably inching his way down the alignment spectrum toward the irreversible path of evil that would forever stain his soul with corruption. That’s where the myths came from.

  I
shuddered, the hairs raising on my arms and skin alight with static.

  A quick glance up and down the sidewalk guaranteed I was alone, so I pulled the shadows around myself like a cloak and weaved the rain into an Inconspicuous glamour. The mist made an ideal disguise and hid me from mortal eyes.

  I took every shortcut I knew through town as rain splattered around my ankles and the wind howled through trees bending beneath the onslaught. With luck on my side I’d arrive in time to chastise the vamp and be ready to salvage our girls’ night out before Mindi was through with her interview.

  And if I couldn’t talk him out of it, I could handle him. His impression felt young and hungry, not experienced and capable. A couple sparks of a Sunlight spell would chase him into hiding.

  The subtle drizzle evolved into a downpour as I reached the narrow alley behind the pizzeria. A light by the back door flickered and buzzed, staying off more than it was on.

  I frowned. The atmosphere couldn’t appear more ominous, like the Hollywood set of a slasher flick.

  “Hello?” I called.

  As my eyes adjusted to the dim environment, a dark shape shifted in the shadows between the dumpsters. Empty pizza boxes and other garbage spilled out from the overflowing bins.

  “Hey, look, I know you’re there, and I only want to talk. This isn’t the best place for hunting, so you should probably head out of town. The local sentinels are strict, dude.”

  His hunger permeated the air like a tangible force. While vamps weren’t expressly forbidden from hunting for a sip, underage snacks and murder were off the table. The king and queen of Hearts, rulers of the Sanguine Court governing all vampires across the world, had created a rigid set of rules to protect their people, and it was up to all of us to enforce it whenever we saw an infraction.

  “Hey, I called the emergency hotline,” I bluffed. “They know you’re here, but you didn’t hurt anyone yet. It’s not too late for you to go.”

  While dropping into a territorial posture, the vampire hissed and revealed his yellowing fangs, resembling a ravenous dog guarding his food dish. I skidded backward across the wet pavement and began to reassess my stance on negotiating. This guy didn’t want to talk. He was starved to the point of frenzy, little more than a beast in human skin.

  So I backed away, nice and slow, and pulled my phone from my pocket.

  “Faerie.” His low, smooth voice rumbled through the air. With the grace typical of all his kind, he abandoned his hiding spot and stalked toward me. “Fae is delicious. Sweetest most powerful blood.”

  “Crap, crap, crap.” I jammed my thumb down on the redial button, fumbled, and watched the four-hundred-dollar device tumble into a puddle. If I didn’t die, Dad would murder me for wrecking the phone I’d promised to cherish till the end of freakin’ time. “Crap!”

  Telling myself I could handle a vampire wasn’t the same as actually facing the dude. All that bravado and confidence melted in the rainy breeze. As he closed in, I twisted and ran for the mouth of the alley, feet pounding the pavement and water sloshing over the tops of my ankle boots.

  Before I could get far, the noise of flapping wings filled the alley, and a few dozen little bodies slapped against me. Biting. Scratching. Tasting. My attacker must have transformed. I shrieked and slapped the bats tangling in my hair, the initial explosion of terror making me forget one essential fact: I had magic. I wasn’t helpless, and I refused to let someone find my bloodless body facedown in a rain puddle.

  Light bloomed from my fingertips, and the tiny sparks multiplied in size until it seemed I held a cluster of miniature suns in my hands. The light released in a burst and illuminated the entire back alley for one moment of brilliance. Each individual member of the bat colony shrieked as my attacker was thrust from the swarm and back into the body of a man. A hungry, salivating man hurling himself at me in defiance.

  I threw punches. I kicked. I squirmed and struggled until he slammed into me and I crashed to the ground. Rain soaked through my jeans, and I tasted blood in my mouth. It couldn’t end this way. Not in a dirty alley, alone, with the smell of greasy pizza and garbage in the air.

  Now that diplomacy had failed, a single, risky alternative loomed before me. I could try to shadowstride and flee into the spiritual realm, but that was a risky strategy when other supernatural creatures could sometimes do it too.

  As I gathered my power and propped my weight on both palms, I prepared to leap to my feet and run for my life. The vampire rose above me, and to his rear, I saw a stately figure standing tall, shrouded by the weight of a black rain slicker.

  “This just won’t do,” the figure stated. He made his matter-of-fact commentary in a heavy baritone, each word ringing with power. Waves of energy fell over us with the vibration of a double bass drum as he removed a staff from beneath his coat. The crystalline tip of it flared with sustained light. My attacker shrank away from it and shrieked.

  From the opposite end of the alley, a sandy-furred shape streaked past my shoulder. It bounded over my huddled body and straight into the vampire. Jaws snapped, teeth gnashed, and I wasn’t sure which of them growled, but in the end, an enormous wolf stood above his prey with a set of powerful jaws closed over the vampire’s neck. With the Daylight spell flooding the alley, he couldn’t escape in bat form.

  “That will be enough, Sebastian.”

  Fur vanished, giving way to skin and clothes. The shifter put his boot where his jaws had been seconds before. He was a tall man, easily 6’2 or 6’3 with the build of a rugby player, and a crooked nose, like it had been broken multiple times but never set the right way to heal. He eyed me with shrewd blue eyes and grinned, half-canine teeth flashing in the light.

  The vamp writhed beneath the intense spotlight, and steam rose from his skin as the rain mellowed to a calm drizzle. He was closer to becoming a nosferatu than I’d predicted. Scratch that. Vampires never burned in sunlight unless they’d already taken human lives!

  I’d almost committed suicide by vampire. If I had been thinking, I would have charged into the pizzeria, ordered a large pepperoni, and held Mindi up until some adult gave us a ride home. But I hadn’t been thinking. I’d become emotional and impulsive.

  My parents would finish what the vamp began and kill me for him.

  “Skylar Corazzi?”

  “Um… yes?”

  The man reached down, grabbed my arm, and hauled me to my feet. Once he pushed his hood back, I saw a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper goatee and smooth, dark skin like he’d been carved from an obsidian block. His kind brown eyes calmed me. They were soft despite his chiseled features and the stern set of his mouth.

  “Chief Wizard Examiner Simon Bostwick,” he introduced himself. “I came to administer your test.”

  “This was my test?” My voice squeaked up an octave, so I cleared my throat and took in a deep breath through my nose. The placement exam was the paranormal world’s best kept secret, our relatives and older friends sworn to a blood oath never to utter a word about its details. Now I understood why.

  “Yes.”

  “Did I pass?”

  “Test results will be released by your guidance counselor during registration. Now, give me your hand.”

  I held out my left hand, and he pricked it with a deft stab from a knife I hadn’t seen in his hand. “Ouch.” Blood welled up from my thumb, and the vampire on the ground gnashed his teeth.

  “You are sworn to a blood oath, Skylar Corazzi. What you faced here shall never be shared with the uninitiated. Do you so swear?”

  “I swear.”

  Simon pressed my thumb to a yellowing page in an aged book. Energy zipped up through the small cut as a rune flared beneath the bloody print I made.

  “It is done. Head on home and get warm before you catch cold.”

  “What about him?” I nodded toward the vampire. Even from the ground he appeared ominous, his bloodshot eyes following my every movement.

  “Sebastian and I will take him to the depot where
he’ll be processed and delivered to the Sanguine Court for trial and punishment.”

  Which meant he was as good as dead. I’d heard the king and queen had become more intolerant to poaching in recent years, staking lesser vampires on the first offense whether blood was drawn or not.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled. After fishing my phone from the puddle, I scurried from the alley and beat feet home.

  Nothing had gone right. My friend thought I was a judgmental creep, I didn’t guide her to the appropriate path, and to top it all off, I had to be rescued from a vampire. So much for passing my test.

  And Dad was still going to rip me a new one for busting my brand new-to-me phone he’d bought used off Amazon.

  The Hidden Court is the first in a new magical university series, and you don’t want to miss it. Get your copy today.

  About the Author

  Vivienne Savage is the pen name of two best friends who write everything together. One works as a nurse in a rural healthcare home in Texas and the other is a U.S. Navy veteran. Both are mothers to two darling boys and two amazing girls.

  All of their work varies in steam level, so pop by the VS website for details on which series is right for you!

  For more information

  www.viviennesavage.com

  vivi@viviennesavage.com