Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

Isabel swore. “Someone else got here first.”

  “No kidding.” I made myself step forward. The other two changelings’ bodies lay beside a five pointed star roughly chalked onto the road.

  “Oh fuck,” I said.

  As though in response to my words, the star’s edges lit up in blue and a giant furry body leaped out, landing on four giant paws. Its huge head swept to either side. Sniffing out human prey.

  “Oi,” I yelled. “Over here, you great hairy bastard.”

  I had an explosive spell at the ready, but the hellhound leaped into the air before I could throw it. I took up my blade instead, slicing across the dog’s thick hide. Blood spilled out, but not enough. I lunged for the throat and felt it give way, crimson spattering the road.

  “Ivy, run!” yelled Isabel.

  The explosive spell flew past my face towards three other hellhounds which had materialised in the road. The spell had begun to spark already, ready to deliver some serious pain.

  “Run!”

  Wisely, I ran, as the spell detonated with the force of a firework. Not only did it send the hellhounds flying back, it blew an impressive chunk out of the tarmac, too. The summoning circle disappeared beneath, blue lights swallowed up in smoke. I blinked, trying to see through the haze. Bloody pieces of hellhound littered the road. Had she got them all?

  Isabel screamed. I whirled around and the stinking breath of a hellhound hit my face. Teeth snapped inches from my nose, and I brought the sword up, slicing its forehead open. As I swung my blade, a blast of icy fear froze the breath in my lungs.

  The hellhound snarled. My body locked up, breath coming in sharp gasps, throat going dry. Isabel made a choked sound and dropped to the pavement, shaking all over. She’d never been hit by a fear spell before.

  But I had. Rage rose inside me. Oh no. I was not going to let these blasted faeries control me again. Or hurt Isabel. No way in hell.

  Blue light flared from my hands, pushing against the wave of fear. I inhaled, icy air filling my lungs, and shoved back, blue tendrils of light swirling into patterns and filling me with a fresh wave of strength. I flung myself at the hellhound, my knife carving bloody furrows in its face until it plunged into the beast’s eye.

  The hellhound fell.

  The road lay quiet, but the carnage remained. Clean-up were going to have a situation on their hands.

  “I’m getting the impression someone’s fucking with me,” I said.

  “No kidding.” Isabel limped over, wincing. “I think one of them bit me.”

  Shit. Faerie dog bites could be poisonous. “Come on. You need a healing spell. We’ll leave this for Larsen to clear up.”

  Unless he’d caused it. The changelings were dead. Had he sent me after them on purpose? Considering he’d almost got me killed once already, maybe I wasn’t being paranoid.

  Right. I’d help Isabel first, then go after my soon to be ex-boss.

  As the smoke cleared, a blue pinprick of light showed me Isabel’s tracker spell, discarded on the ground.

  “Hang on.” I crouched down beside it. “This thing’s still active.”

  Without stopping to think, I held my hand over it and let the hellhound’s viscous blood dribble into the spell circle. Fresh blue tendrils of light fanned out from the spell to my hands, and images drifted into my head.

  Familiar images, of a place I’d seen recently. A graveyard behind a fence.

  “They came from the necromancers’ headquarters,” I said.

  “What?” Isabel stared, then stumbled. Blood seeped down her leg, red tinted blue from faerie blood.

  “Never mind. Let’s get you out of here.”

  My heart beat a steady rhythm in my ears. They’ll pay for this. I’ll kill them.

  Chapter 16

  Isabel looked like living death by the time I’d helped her back into the house and onto the sofa. Worry fluttered in my chest, tempering my growing fury at the necromancers. And Larsen.

  My hands shook as I knocked spells everywhere in an attempt to find the first aid kit on the side table. We always kept it well stocked and within easy reach, but I’d never treated hellhound poison before.

  “This one,” said Isabel, grabbing at a small bottle. Pale veins stood out on her hands. Not good. The poison was spreading.

  I grabbed the bottle and applied the salve to the puncture wounds on the side of her leg.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it bit you?”

  “Because another one was trying to eat your face at the time,” said Isabel shakily. “Everything’s gone blue.”

  “Oh, shit.” That probably wasn’t a good sign.

  Isabel giggled. “You’re blue, Ivy.”

  “Try to hang on.” I set the salve down. The wounds still looked an angry red colour, and blood continued to ooze, though it began to clot. I set up a healing circle next, snapping the spell around the sofa, while Isabel snickered to herself.

  “Blue, everywhere. You look like one of those half-bloods.”

  I shivered. Could she temporarily have the Sight? I’d heard of it happening, but I’d thought the faeries’ poison was gone. Some of the colour had come back into her face, anyway.

  It’s fine. It’ll be fine. I’d done everything I could. Once she was back to her usual self, Isabel was the healing expert. She’d always taken care of me, not the other way around.

  I waited until the wounds closed before I leaned over and whispered, “I’m going to make sure we haven’t left a trail outside. I don’t want anything else coming after us.”

  Isabel didn’t respond. Her head lolled against a cushion, but her pulse was steady, so she must have fallen asleep. I felt like I betrayed her to leave, but I had to make sure the hellhounds were really gone.

  I set up extra wards around the house, both inside and outside. Then I walked down the road. At the sight of a familiar crowd gathering, I paused. Larsen’s clean-up crew were here.

  “Hey,” I said to one of them. “Those changelings—Larsen asked me to bring them in.”

  “I got here first,” said a surly-looking mercenary. Gregor. Bastard always wanted to take credit for other people’s work.

  “Larsen ordered me to bring the changelings in.”

  “So? That’s your problem.” He squared up to me. “Larsen said you’re in league with the faeries.”

  What? “Larsen’s deluded.” He also tried to have me killed.

  “Should say that to his face.”

  “Oh, I plan to,” I said. “But those changelings are my responsibility. Larsen specifically requested I be the one to—”

  I stepped back as he pulled a knife out. “This is my kill.”

  “What, you killed them?”

  He snorted. “No. But Larsen won’t know any better.”

  “They were killed by—” I stopped. I didn’t actually know who’d killed them. Whoever summoned the hellhounds. “He asked for them alive, not dead, so feel free to lie if it makes you feel better.” I gave his knife a cool look. I didn’t care how many kills he had: he didn’t scare me.

  “Watch what you say,” said the merc. “Otherwise there’ll be worse than fire imps torching your place.”

  What? “How the hell did you know?”

  His face said it all.

  “Larsen told you. Were you the one who threw away my iron barrier, moved my ward spells and sent those fire imps after me?”

  I pulled out my own blade, vaguely aware we’d drawn an audience. I didn’t care. The more people knew what Larsen had done, the better.

  “No. I don’t work with the faeries.”

  “But you moved the wards? Did Larsen ask you to?”

  “Larsen? No.” He shook his head. “He didn’t. Some new client did. I don’t think Larsen even knew what he’d asked us to do.”

  “Asked… what? A new client wanted you to take my wards down?”

  The faeries. Hell, might even have been a half-blood. Of course Larsen didn’t bother vetting all his clients.

  “Th
e guy offered a bonus to anyone who could get past them and leave a message on your doorstep.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “I didn’t get any message. He was trying to knock out my security. Who the hell was he?”

  “Some half-faerie.”

  “I knew it.”

  The merc cringed as my blade knocked against the bare skin of his neck. “Don’t you touch me with that.”

  “You nearly got my friend and me killed,” I said. “And you can tell Larsen exactly why I won’t be working for him again. If I see you near my house, there’s a dozen magical tripwires set to make your balls shrivel up and fall off.”

  The guy winced. “I get it, I get it.”

  “No, you don’t.” I lowered my blade. “You blindly follow client orders, don’t you? What did the half-faerie look like?”

  “Silver hair. He carried a blade… not like a metal sword. Like wood.”

  Ash. A shiver ran up my spine. Alain used the same description…

  “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  I cursed. “Dammit. Right. I have to be somewhere else. Don’t go near my house if you want to keep your sensitive anatomy where it’s supposed to be.”

  He gaped after me as I stormed away. Fucking mercenaries.

  Fuming, I turned my attention to the image from the last tracking spell. It was time to take out my anger on the necromancers.

  I pulled the tracking spell from my pocket. I’d left it active though the spell itself had shrunk to a palm-sized band again. When I slipped it onto my wrist, an image of the tracker’s path came into my head, showing me to the place the hellhounds had come from.

  The spell hadn’t lied. My path took me on foot through the same route Vance and I had driven down on the way to necromancer territory last time. The squat sooty-bricked building looked the same, except a sign adorned the front gate, written in cursive: “Summit in progress. Do not disturb.”

  Great.

  The tracking spell flared up again. I stopped. It led behind the gate at the building’s side. To the graveyard where the people killed in the invasion were buried.

  Oh, crap.

  A blue glow surrounded the gate, immediately making my heart sink. Faerie magic had been used here recently. Walking behind the gate when there might be worse than hellhounds lurking out of sight was an idiot move, but someone clearly wanted to draw my attention. Why else would they send hellhounds right down the road from my house?

  I couldn’t expect any help from Larsen. Vance had his own issues to deal with. I was on my own.

  I approached the wrought-iron gate, weapons ready. Iron usually kept faeries out, so if any enemy waited, it’d be of the undead variety. Like at the factory.

  The gate, however, remained locked. I’d rather not cause any more damage than I had to, so using an explosive spell to blast the doors off wouldn’t be a wise move. Instead, I picked the lock using a lock pick I carried for the times Larsen sent me into places I wasn’t usually allowed. Only now did it hit me how much I’d let him control how I spent my time. I took every job, without question.

  Not anymore.

  I’d worry about my financial future later. Surviving was more important. As was revenge.

  The gate swung open, revealing a fancy headstone with my own name written on it in bright blue. I squinted at the words underneath.

  “Watch yourself, human.”

  “Real original,” I said, aloud. “Not to mention disrespecting the dead—”

  I stopped. That bright blue colour wasn’t ink but something transparent. Faerie magic.

  Only people with the Sight could see it. Someone had left the message for… me. They knew I was Sighted.

  How could they know? I’d drawn attention, all right—the worst kind. But why the hell would a faerie have left the message here?

  The faeries had invaded our world near here. They’d caused all these people’s deaths.

  Collateral damage. That’s what the official statement had said. The faeries ripped open the Ley Line to save humanity. What did a few thousand casualties matter?

  The spell flared up in lines of blue light, illuminating the carved text beneath the message. I squinted to read it.

  Swanson was the family name on the grave.

  I stared. His family were necromancers? Three generations back, by the look of things. He had necromancer blood. Even though he’d denied having any magic in his family. Maybe he didn’t know. This place was totally closed off.

  I stared around at the carved headstones like the answers lay beneath the ground. Hell, maybe they did. Even the necromancers rarely disturbed the dead here.

  Perhaps unwisely, I moved away from the Swanson family grave and deeper through the rows of headstones. They appeared to have been arranged with the necromancers buried closest to the Guild, but further out, the others who’d died in the invasion must be buried. Including my parents.

  And me.

  I’d actually seen the headstone before, when I’d paid that necromancer to call my parents. I was listed as one of the dead, as I’d disappeared right as the invasion began. I shoved the memories back, teeth suddenly chattering. That’s why I never came here. No point in walking on my own grave.

  “Is anyone here?” I called into the empty spaces between graves. Unusually for a cemetery, no flowers or other tributes lay anywhere, and little grass grew. It looked abandoned.

  Clearly someone was screwing around with me, from here. The tracker ended at the Swanson grave.

  I turned that way, and a figure materialised out of thin air.

  Shockingly, I jumped, nearly tripping over the nearest grave. The ghost’s features were blurred, but not enough that I couldn’t see his silvery hair glowed, almost transparent, and his angular features left no doubt what he was.

  “Who the hell are you? Why can I see you?”

  More like ‘who were you?’ The half-faerie was dead. For me to see it meant something was rotten in necromancer land.

  “The veil is thin here,” whispered the ghost. “It gives you spirit sight you wouldn’t normally have.”

  I’d guessed as much. “You didn’t answer my other question.”

  “Who I am is not important.”

  “You’re a half-faerie. And you’re dead.” Way to state the obvious, Ivy.

  “I am.”

  “Any particular reason you’re hanging around here?”

  “To make you an offer.”

  “Of what?”

  “Immortality.”

  “Faerie blood.” This must be the connection. Faeries were immortal, but half-bloods could die like the rest of us. They, like others dying in this realm, would want a shot at immortality.

  The ghost tilted his head. “You know of it?”

  “I’m capable of putting two and two together.” I narrowed my eyes. “So you’re the one offering immortality to half-faeries and faeries who’ve been stranded here since the invasion?”

  The half-faerie smirked. “I knew you’d be a good choice.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I glared. “Whatever your interest is in me, you’ve managed to piss me off. You kidnapped part necromancer children, replaced them with changelings, and then killed the changelings and set hellhounds loose near my house. And then you left a trail leading me back here. Big mistake.”

  Blue tendrils of smoke wrapped around me, and my hand tightened on my blade. But of course, I couldn’t harm a ghost, with magic or otherwise.

  “I’m not the one you should be angry with,” said the half-faerie. “I am no longer part of the world of the living. I’m only an observer. But if you help me, I will give you everything you desire.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “You haven’t said what you need me for.”

  “Immortality,” he whispered. “And I can offer the same to you. I can give you the same immortality all true faeries have when the doors to our realm open again. Once you open the doors.”

  Oh. I gaped at the half-faerie, graspi
ng his plan in one heart-sinking moment.

  They needed my magic. Not me. The magic I’d stolen, and used to escape Faerie. They wanted to use that magic to tear open a way back.

  “No.” I spoke louder. “No. I won’t. I reject your offer.”

  “You’re making a mistake. Faerie blood started this disruption. Faerie blood can end it.”

  “Faerie blood started what? I’m not a faerie.”

  “No, you’re human.” The half-faerie smiled. “But you’re alive. You’re mortal. And you have our magic.”

  And that’s why they need me.

  Well, shit.

  “Who wants to do this? Who’s the mastermind?”

  “The one who waits between, in the place where the sun never shines. The Grey Vale.”

  I knew it. I freaking knew it.

  Backing away, I watched the half-faerie fade out. And that’s when I realised I was stuck in the necromancers’ yard with a few thousand bodies surrounding me.

  A scratching sound made the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Any noise in an empty cemetery is usually bad news. Sure enough, the noise came from behind a nearby tomb decorated with carvings. No fewer than three pale figures stumbled out, bringing the stench of decomposing flesh.

  I snatched up my salt with my free hand before one of them grabbed at me. Hands reached out, grasping, and glassy eyes stared into mine.

  Jumping out of range, I swung my sword, decapitating the first one. Idiotically, it turned out, when its hands continued to grab at me even with its head hanging limply at its side. I beat it aside with the edge of my blade as another two appeared. Every strike had the effect of hitting a rampaging hydra with a water pistol. Nothing could hurt them.

  Then a whole line filed out from behind the neighbouring grave, decaying hands grasping, sunken eyes staring.

  Damn. These must be higher undead—the type that never stopped no matter how much damage you dealt them. The only way to be rid of them would be with a necromancer’s help binding them. Of course, the necromancers—every last one of them—were unhelpfully absent.

  Which left me with one person to call.

  I threw myself behind the tomb, sprinkling salt in a circle around me. It wouldn’t kill the undead, but would keep them away for a couple of minutes. Then I grabbed my phone and called the one person I might be able to count on.