“Vritra. Please. Come back to us. We need you.”
He blinked, slow and lazy.
Another step and I was practically feeding myself to him. He’d lost two people he loved in the space of a couple of days. This powerful dynamic man, who everyone relied on to be their anchor, was now adrift—slave to his grief and the beast within. He was shutting out the pain the only way he knew how. By manipulating him to shift back, I would be forcing him to confront the loss. I’d be offering him pain. But without it there was no moving forward.
I laid my other hand on his huge snout. “I loved her too. I loved Henna. She died to save me, Vritra. She died so I could live. You hear me?”
His eyes flared, the ember catching the light in a way that made them look like flames burned within. My body shuddered. What was I doing? Pissing off a dragon? But then maybe this was the only way to bring him back. I needed to make him feel something, to force him to turn on his humanity and confront me.
“I’m here and she isn’t. How does that make you feel, Vritra? Huh? Come on. Tell me.” He jerked away from me, knocking me on my arse and then rising above me, his huge serpentine body holding his massive head aloft as he gazed down on me with disdain.
“Come on Vritra. Your daughter is dead and you’re hiding down here while her body rots upstairs. Don’t you think she deserves more? Don’t you think she deserves better?”
A roar filled the chamber, battering my eardrums and rattling my bones. My dragon surged upward covering me in armor just as his tail swished round to slam into me. I was airborne for the longest moment and then hit the ground, skidding backward, scales scraping rock.
Vritra advanced, fury lighting up his eyes. Oh boy. I’d successfully rattled the beast and he was spoiling for a fight. And if it was a fight he wanted then … I let go of the reins and allowed my dragon to take over. The world bled into crimson and grew smaller, and then a freight train slammed into me, and darkness took over.
Flashes, images, talons, fangs, heat, and scales clashing, I was inside her head but locked up tight, safe from the trauma. What was happening? How was I doing? A flash of pain, a crushing weight, and then the darkness receded. The world was crimson for a moment but amber light took over.
I was back … On the ground and … naked? A breath caressed the back of my neck.
“Carmella … I’m sorry. So sorry.”
Vritra. He was holding me, my back to his front. It was over. I turned in his arms, wincing as pain lanced up my side.
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re back.” I caressed his stubbled jaw, looking down on him. “It’s all right.”
He stared up at me, pain etched into his face. “No. It’s not all right. She’s gone. My little girl is gone.”
My eyes burned with emotion. Vritra reached up to trace the tracks of tears on my cheeks.
“She left me,” his voice was a trembling whisper.
Something inside me cracked and melted. I pulled him closer, cushioning his head against my bare breasts. “I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
And then the asura dragon broke down, and I held him while he sobbed. Henna was gone. She’d given her life to save mine. She’d believed in me enough to sacrifice herself. I owed her this. I owed her my life. Her sacrifice would not be in vain.
Banner had manipulated events to take my magick. It was time to claim it back, to become whole. To become the person I was meant to be, and if someone came after me, then they’d have a fucking magick wielding dragon to deal with.
To be continued…
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1
“I wasn’t expecting a welcoming committee.” Melody said as we drew up to the terraced family home in Camden.
People lined the sidewalk, some dressed for work, others still in their pyjamas and slippers. A woman held a squirming baby on her hip, jiggling him every time he fussed. And a group of teenagers hovered on the pavement across the street.
A smartly dressed elderly couple exited the house and walked toward us just as the IEPEU vans zoomed around the corner and onto the tidy residential street. Citizens stumbled back as the sleek vehicles came to a halt, and operatives jumped out. Tech equipment was unloaded, and Melody and I exited her corvette to meet the couple who’d called this in.
Mr and Mrs Finch were the parents of Mr Stanley Finch, who until last night had been a resident at this address.
“Where are they? Where’s my family?” The woman demanded. If not for the tears in her eyes, I would have taken offense at her tone, but considering the circumstances, the poor woman had every reason to be upset.
“I assure you we will do everything we can to find out, Mrs. Finch.” My tone was deliberately confident and soothing.
The man snorted. “Like you did the last time, and the time before? How many families have to go missing before you people do something?”
A murmur rose up from the gathered neighbours.
“They were here last night,” the woman with the baby called out. “I saw Stan putting the bin out.”
“What’s going on?” someone else cried.
“It could be us next. The fucking government don’t give a toss.”
Great, the last thing we needed was an angry mob. I stepped off the kerb and into the road. “Please!” I held up my hands. “Everybody, go back into your homes and get on with your day. In order to solve this case we’re going to need your co-operation. An operative will be doing the rounds to speak to you all shortly. Please provide the operative with any relevant information. If you don’t have the time right now then we’ll make an appointment to speak with you. But please, allow us to do our job. The longer we wait, the colder the trail gets.
Stanley’s mother whimpered and her husband put his arm around her, pulling her close.
“Just do what you have to do,” he said. “Find my son, my daughter-in-law and my grandbabies.”
“Yes sir.”
Leaving the couple outside we headed into the house, knowing exactly what we would find but dreading it all the same.
***
The bare room stared back at me. Barren and clean, not even a mini dust bunny to say it had ever been lived in. The whole house was the same—picked clean. If not for the fact that the family had been here yesterday, they’d be no case. But this was the tenth vanishing in the city. Ten families gone—poof, overnight. Their relatives, friends, neighbours none the wiser. How? How could you move out all your shit in one night and clean the house and have no one notice? You couldn’t, that’s how? Guaranteed they’d be no trace of removal van hire, and the cars they’d owned were parked outside on the street—also picked clean. All this, coupled with the fact that Stanley’s parents had travelled down from up north to spend the week with them, suggested that this family hadn’t disappeared of their own volition.
There was some strange shit going on, and it was my responsibility to find out just what.
“Anything?” Melody strode in, scanning the room. “This is getting ridiculous.
“You’ve done a sweep downstairs?”
She nodded.
“Up here is clear,” I walked out into the hallway. “No basement. Attic? Did you check?”
“Harriet did. It’s empty.”
She headed for the stairs, but my feet remained rooted to the spot as my asura power expanded in warning. “Wait. We’re missing something.”
I exhaled and relinquished control to the power within. A few months ago my heart would have fluttered in panic at handing over the reins to the dragon inside. But over the course of the last six weeks we’d come to an understanding—I let her out to play now and then, and she respected my boundaries. My feet carried me to the hatch in the ceiling.
“You want to check again?” Melody asked.
“Yeah.”
I yanked the rope to bring down the steps. The dragon sensed something up there, and it wa
s rarely, if ever, wrong. Training with Vritra for the last six weeks, sparring with Gita and Kiran and the other asura—who hadn’t gone easy on me despite getting their arses handed to them by my dragon—had honed my skills. I made sure to leave the skein untapped in those matches. Hardly fair to double up on my opponent, besides it was the asura power I needed to master, the skein came naturally, and man, did it feel good to have it back. Once the coven discovered Banner’s deception, and checked out the enchanted chain he’d given me, there’d been no choice for them but to give me back my connection to the skein. Which opened up the question of who the heck had bound my powers and why? If it wasn’t to prevent me from doing dodgy things with the skein, then what was it?
At the top of the steps was a light switch. I flicked it on, but nothing happened. “Melody? You got a flashlight?”
She handed me her penlight. It would have to do. Climbing up into the attic, nothing more than a crammed crawl space, I swept the light over the boxes, and bags of old toys and Christmas decorations. Not so clean up here. What was I missing? Fuck. There had to be something. The dragon was never wrong.
“Anything?” Melody asked.
Shimming up into the crawl space, light between my teeth, I began moving the boxes and bags. A soft whimper caught my attention, closely followed by a strangled sob. My hand came into contact with something smooth and crackly, and then the mound moved.
I yanked my hand away. “What the fuck!”
“Carmella?” Melody called up the stairs.
It was a silver blanket. Like one of those insulation ones you used when backpacking, and something, no, someone was underneath it.
Keeping my voice low and calm, I reached for the edge of the blanket. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you?”
“Please...you can’t take it off. If you take it off they’ll find me.”
“I’m with the IEPEU. I promise you’re safe now.”
The body under the blanket quivered. “They took them. They took them all and it’s my fault. All my fault.”
“Who took them?”
Another sob. “The aliens.”
Oh lord. “I’m going to take the blanket off now and we can talk about this over a nice hot drink, okay.”
“No!”
I tugged the blanket off the body, and for a moment there he was, a pimply teenage boy with overly gelled hair and a heavy metal t-shirt, and then...he was gone.
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Book 3 in the Witch Blood Chronicles now.
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Other books by Debbie Cassidy
The Gatekeeper Chronicles
Coauthored with Jasmine Walt
Marked by Sin
Hunted by Sin
Claimed by Sin
The Witch Blood Chronicles
(Spin off to the Gatekeeper Chronicles)
Binding Magick
Defying Magic
Embracing Magick
The Fearless Destiny Series
Beyond Everlight
Into Evernight
The Sleeping Gods Series
Forest of Demons
Desert of Destiny
Novellas
Blood Blade
Books under the pen name Amos Cassidy
The Shadowlands Series
Shadow Reaper
Shadow Eater
Shadow Destiny
The Crimson Series
Crimson Midnight
Crimson Darkness
Crimson Dawn
Crimson Chaos
Standalones
Aurora
Hawthorn
Novellas
Raven’s Call
Scarlett’s Path
A Kiss of Silver
Tainted Snow
Ash Rising
About the Author
Debbie Cassidy lives in England, Bedfordshire, with her three kids and very supportive husband. Coffee and chocolate biscuits are her writing fuels of choice, and she is still working on getting that perfect tower of solitude built in her back garden. Obsessed with building new worlds and reading about them, she spends her spare time daydreaming and conversing with the characters in her head – in a totally non psychotic way of course. She writes High Fantasy, Urban Fantasy and Science Fiction. Debbie also writes dark, diverse Urban Fantasy fiction, under the pen name Amos Cassidy, with her best friend Richard Amos. Connect with Debbie via her website at debbiecassidyauthor.com or twitter @authordcassidy.
Defying Magick: an Urban Fantasy Novel (The Witch Blood Chronicles Book 2) Page 17