Dead Man Running (Raised Book 1)

by Stevenson, Sharon

  “He didn’t help before.”

  “He got everyone out of there,” Mickey stuck up for him.

  “I was this close to killing Britt,” I seethed, “and that prick stopped me.”

  “You were? But… that would have killed you.”

  “So what? She wouldn’t have had the chance to grab Kit again.”

  “He thought he was doing the right thing.”

  I snorted. Timmy Wallace and doing the right thing were like oil and water. They could be right on top of each other but they’d never mix.

  Mickey got up, stretching and groaning. “He’s not like he was at school.”

  “I’ll believe that when hell freezes over.”

  “Maybe it already has,” Timmy said behind me.

  I turned and frowned at him. He was all superior faced and expensively dressed and I wanted to punch his smug face in until I bloodied up his nice clothes.

  “Why would you even want to help us?” I was suspicious just thinking about it.

  He shrugged. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  “That’s not an acceptable answer!” I frowned at Mickey. He shrugged and kept his head down. He was so freaking naive. I breathed a hefty sigh.

  “Look, you need someone to get you there and I can do that. Take it or leave it.”

  “Why did you stop me from killing that bitch before?”

  “You have no idea what would have happened if you did that. It’s not all about you and what you want, Pete. Screwing with the balance of magic is a dangerous thing to do. Killing a high-level user does more than remove their magic from their Animates. That much extra energy in the atmosphere makes people crazy. You could have started a war.” He didn’t look like he was joking, but forgive me if I’m not convinced. This is coming from the man who used to put pencil shavings in my lunch for shits and giggles.

  “Right then,” I said.

  “You need to hear me, Pete. I’m not sending you until you get it.”

  “Piss off then.”

  He glanced at Mickey. My cousin put a patient smile on his face and looked at me.

  “He knows what he’s talking about, Bro. You should listen.”

  “Fine,” I said. I could listen. It didn’t mean I had to obey. “I need to get there, hear that crazy bitches demands out and do whatever the hell she wants to get Kit back. I doubt she’ll let her go no matter what I do, so I need a back-up plan in place. You’ll need to come for Kit if the bitch goes back on her word.”

  He thought it over and nodded. “I can give you a magic word. Say it, and I’ll come and get Kit.”

  “Okay. Good. This could work.” I looked down at William, who was silently listening and cocking his head. “I think I’ll need to leave you here to wait for her.”

  “What about Nick?” Mickey made a good point.

  I looked at everyone. “We tell Nick nothing. He might try to stop me. I don’t want that.”

  Mickey nodded slowly.

  Timmy looked at me. “Ready?”

  “Let’s do this.”

  Forty-Nine - Kit

  “Your little bird better deliver my message.” Britt was in her white silk robe drinking again. I was getting pretty tired of the sound of her voice, but she clearly wasn’t done listening to herself prattle on.

  “Why are you messing with him like this?” I shouldn’t care that she’s got a vendetta against Pete. It should only be pissing me off that I’m stuck here listening to her again. I couldn’t help it. All the shit he’d pulled and the words he’d slung so carelessly when he was alive, it wasn’t enough to warrant this kind of obsessive behaviour from a psycho-bitch out for blood. No-one deserved this, not even Pete.

  “What do you care? He’s just the horrible little creep who called you names and took home all the pretty girls instead of you.”

  I suspected she was reading my mind. She probably had been all this time. My pity for Pete was clearly amusing her, but having my thoughts read were the least of my worries.

  She smirked at me and kept right on drinking.

  “I wouldn’t sleep with him if he was the hottest man on the planet.”

  “I’m not sure I’d be so mean if I were you,” she said, lounging back in her seat. “If he knows your true feelings he might not be so quick to sacrifice himself to save you.”

  She was going to kill me if Pete didn’t sign his sorry ass back over to her. She’d been tricked into destroying his contract, and she was pissed as hell about it. He’d need to be crazy to let her get him back in her psychotic clutches. I hoped he wasn’t coming. I’d rather die thinking he was an asshole than live with the idiot sacrificing his ‘life’ for mine.

  “What makes you so sure he’ll even show up?”

  She laughed. “He tried to kill me. I’ve gotten under his skin, and he knows it. He won’t just stand back and let me hurt his beloved Kit.”

  “I’m not his beloved,” I snapped. It was doing my head in. She needed to stop staying it.

  “Oh, but you are. Whether you wanted to or not, you’ve won his lifeless heart. What a tragedy that is.” She drank and sighed, swimming in the satisfaction of her own making. She was so smug I could throttle her. If only I could move. That’s it. If I ever make back home, I’m going to a magic protection shop and buying every charm I can get my hands on. This isn’t getting to happen again.

  “The real tragedy is how happy this shit is making you. What’s wrong with you? Isn’t all the fame and fortune enough? Is it that no-one really knows the real you? That’s it, isn’t it? Poor little rich girl no-one understands. Wah, wah. No-one knows me, no-one will ever love me.”

  She didn’t seem impressed. Damn. If that didn’t push her buttons, I wasn’t sure what would. Let’s see I could insult her intelligence, he looks, her talent… I think I’ve tried those already. She really doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks of her, much less someone like me.

  “Don’t try to analyse me, Kitty-cat. I’m not human anymore. Such things are meaningless to me.”

  I knew talking was getting me no-where, but it was all I had. Beating the hell out of her was currently out of the question. I didn’t think she’d drop her spell for a fist fight. I was pretty much guaranteed to win. It told me one thing for sure, she didn’t like to lose.

  Fifty - Nick

  The only thing that made my new level even better was that fact that I could use it at my gig tonight. I got up and started getting ready for the day. How awesome would I look, levitating above the crowd doing a guitar solo? I couldn’t wait.

  I shoved on my clothes and headed across the hall. Pete’s first and let’s face it, main, duty was to go to all of my gigs. It would freak people out. Oh, look there’s a dead guy over there by the stage. If dead people like this band they must be awesome. Let’s mosh out. Bam, new fans! Groupies, maybe even.

  The door wasn’t locked so I walked right in. “Pete!”

  Something banged in the living room. I rushed in and found Mickey looking a little bit shaken, picking himself off the floor, and the ginger guy from the castle standing near him, oozing the calm confidence of a high-level User.

  “What the hell was that? And where’s Pete?”

  They both just stared at me, silently. Something was going on.

  “What have you gone deaf?”

  “Go home,” the ginger guy said. If he thought he could boss me about, he was sorely mistaken.

  “Eh, I don’t think so, ginger-nut. I’m talking to Mickey. Where the hell is Pete?”

  Pete’s cousin drew me a guilty look. He glanced at the ginger guy as if he was waiting to be told what to do. I glowered at them both and folded my arms.

  “I’m going no-where until someone answers me.”

  “That spell Britt cast on you,” ginger-nut said, smiling creepily. “I think it’s a lesson you need taught.”

  He hit me with a spell before I could even duck. I tried to teleport, and I couldn’t. I tried to launch the coffee table at him with my
mind and that didn’t work either.

  “Oh, piss right off!”

  “No, I think that’s what you should do.” The second he said it I knew he was sending me someplace nasty.

  The dark cold room wasn’t so bad. It was the cage I was in that was the pain in the ass, quite literally. I was sitting in a hanging cage in some weird dungeon looking place. I stared into the darkness. It wasn’t a dungeon, though I could easily have been forgiven for the making the assumption if I hadn’t been able to see the bar and the dance floor beyond that. I was in some kind of night club. There didn’t seem to be a way out of the cage, so I resigned myself to it. It’s not like it wouldn’t be easy to talk someone into letting me out when someone eventually showed up. It was the waiting that was going to kill me. I’d likely miss my gig. Groaning, I cursed that ginger cunt and adjusted my position until I was a bit less uncomfortable.

  Slowly, I pondered my situation. I knew I didn’t need magic to survive. I had smarts. It wasn’t about that. My greatest fear had to be rooted in something else. It took a little while but I figured it out.

  The magic needs to be used. I was afraid it would stop needing me. I wasn’t afraid I’d lose it at all. I’d been afraid it would go off to pastures new, looking for someone with the power to use it to its fullest extent. It was a foolish fear to harbour and one that was completely unfounded. Not only that, but I’d been better than I’d thought and I did have the power to use it to its fullest extent. I’d already been using magic at level 10 without even realising it. Getting through Britt’s security with my teleport and making her think I’d really killed Mickey only proved that. As soon as I realised all of that, I knew I’d had my epiphany. I teleported out of the cage and poured myself something from the bar, levitating the bottles across to me. The final check was teleporting a kitchen knife from my house directly into my hand. I was ready.

  If Pete thought he was getting out of my contract he was sorely mistaken. I planned my entrance and adjusted my teleport to match my fiendish plan. A smile hit my face as I put the glass down on the bar. The bitch would never know what hit her.

  Fifty-One - Mickey

  I felt hollowed out and helpless. The whole thing was making me ill with worry. I paced the living room until Tim told me to sit down. I took a seat beside him after a few minutes of standing there staring. He was on my side of the couch. It felt weird taking the right side.

  “I can’t stand this.” The thought that I might never see Pete again made me feel sick. He wasn’t just my cousin; he was like a brother and he always had been. It was bad enough everything that had happened to him. I didn’t want to lose him completely.

  “Everything will work out fine,” he assured me, as confident about it as he was about everything.

  “What happens if he doesn’t use the magic word? How will we know he’s not in trouble?”

  “You worry too much. Pete’s perfectly capable of making his own choices. If he chooses to remain there there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  “But she’s a complete psycho,” I argued, not content to let it go.

  “He’ll be okay. He knows what he’s doing.”

  I tried to take that thought and hold onto it. I wished there was more beer. My nerves were frayed. I couldn’t hang on much longer not knowing. I tried to think of something else, anything. I remembered the way Tim had rushed back to the King before and that thing he’d said he’d had to do before he could help me.

  I looked at him. “What was it you had to do before? For the King, I mean, because Pete got taken by Britt?”

  “Let’s not talk about my job.”

  Right. He raised recruits for the Royal Guard. He must have been out hunting down another, to replace the one he’d failed to… “When did you raise Pete, exactly?”

  “I’d rather not…”

  “I need to know.” He’d come to the club I’d been drinking in when the bar closed, the night Pete went home with Angie. The usual happened, and we ended up getting a hotel room for the night. The next thing I know I’m waking up feeling conflicted because that happened again. I managed to sneak out while he was sleeping and by the time I got to Pete’s place he’d called me like a dozen times and Pete… Well, Pete was already an Animate by then. It didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense. “How did you know he was dead?”

  “It’s all magic, Mickey. I can explain it but you won’t understand because you’re not a User.”

  “Explain it. We were together that night. When did you get a chance to raise him?”

  “I didn’t,” he said with a sigh. He had a hint of that harassed panic he’d had when I’d told him Britt had signed Pete up. There was something he wasn’t telling me.

  “Then who the hell did?”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “In what way?”

  “I knew he was going to die,” he said. “There’s nothing I could have done to stop it. I just knew. He was marked. I cast the spell to raise him before he died.”

  “You knew?” I got up; I had to get away from him. “You knew my only cousin was going to die and you didn’t fucking tell me? Who says you couldn’t have stopped it? If I’d known…”

  “This is why I didn’t want to tell you.” He slumped on the couch.

  “We are so over.”

  He sighed again. “No-one could have stopped it. I raised him because I knew you couldn’t handle him not being around. Maybe I should have told you. It went against my training, so I didn’t. It’s not like we ever do a lot of talking, Mickey. You never give me the chance.”

  “Did you know how he was going to die? Did you know it was going to be Angie?”

  He shook his head. I wanted to believe him, I did. Pete wouldn’t and that was the problem.

  “You and Pete never got along.”

  “We were friends,” he said, but it was far from his usual confident tone.

  “You did all that stupid prank stuff to him. You snogged one of his girlfriends, for fucks sake.”

  He opened his mouth and closed it again, pausing before he gave his reasons. “You two were close. I might have resented it a little bit.”

  All he was doing was giving me reasons not to believe him. I hesitated. There was nothing I wanted to say back to that. He’d been honest, but it had only made him look guilty. I still couldn’t sort it out in my head. I didn’t want to let my feelings distort what he’d done.

  He got up and stood in front of me. “I’ve been in love with you for the last eight years. Yet you always run from me like I’m some kind of villain trying to turn you evil or some damn stupid thing. I’d never do anything that might hurt you. You’ve got to know that by now.”

  He was back on form for being convincing. I didn’t want his words to get to me, but they did. He gazed at me and I backed away. “I don’t know.” He’d still known Pete was going to die, and he hadn’t told me. He had to know how much that would hurt me.

  “What do I need to do to convince you? Honestly, Mickey, I’d do anything at this point.” He was cracking again. I was making him crack. He folded his arms. “You don’t trust me. You don’t love me. You tell me I’m fucking with you. You’re the one fucking with me. I’m an idiot for taking it.”

  I didn’t trust him. I couldn’t. Not completely, not after the way he’d been with Pete. His job didn’t help either. It had to be one of the worst things a User could get into, but he’d chosen it. He liked it. I knew he was screwed up. I shouldn’t feel anything for him, but I couldn’t seem to help it.

  “I’m not casting any spell on you,” he went on when I didn’t say anything. “I know you think I am. I wasn’t even a practicing User until I was eighteen. I wouldn’t have had anywhere near enough power for that kind of screwed up spell until now.”

  “I know,” I said, admitting out loud something I thought I wouldn’t ever. I’d known from the start I was attracted to him: looks, personality, the whole lot. As messed up as it was I couldn’t seem to
turn it off. His voice could even turn me on. I’d never felt anything like it in my life, but I knew it couldn’t be blamed on something as simple as a spell. Occasionally, I’d find some random guy hot but never enough to risk a brush off if he wasn’t interested. Tim was the only guy I risked anything for.

  “You know?” He seemed surprised.

  “I know. I just didn’t want to admit to myself… I was attracted to you.”

  He’d never heard me say anything like this before. I knew he could read my thoughts if he wanted. He was high level enough and sometimes he’d say or do something and I’d just know he was doing it. It didn’t bother me. He’d used it for some pretty good reasons.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m feeling honest. I love you… I just don’t know how much I trust you.” It felt like I was giving him what he wanted with one hand and taking it away with the other.

  He blinked. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

  “Well, I’ve said it.”

  “Say it again.”

  He was ignoring the bad part, clearly. Selective hearing or just not giving a damn, I wasn’t sure.

  “No.”

  “You meant it. Why won’t you repeat it?”

  “We’re waiting for Pete here. Our whole thing can wait.”

  He smiled wryly. “Of course. What was I thinking?”

  Fifty-Two - Pete

  I appeared in Britt’s penthouse, magic word at the ready. She was sitting with Kit by the coffee table. I made my way over and Britt stood up.

  “You came.” She glanced around as she came closer, no doubt magically checking for additional guests. “Alone, like I asked. Good.”

  She stopped in front of me and stared me down. “You were going to kill me.”

  “You were talking about killing my friends. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to say. Anger sparked in her eyes.

  “You’re my Animate, and you obey me and me alone.”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Did she know I’d signed another contract? I shot a glance at Kit, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “What exactly do you want?” I wanted to know her demands before I gave into them.