by H. D. Gordon
THE BLUE BEAST
THE ARIA FAE SERIES
BOOK 3
H. D. GORDON
Copyright © 2016 H. D. GORDON BOOKS
Published by H. D. GORDON BOOKS
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book.
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For my dearest Moo. She knows why.
PROLOGUE
The clipboard went flying from the doctor’s hand as Subject 413 arched off the table.
The straps containing S413—which were made of reinforced steel—broke with audible cracks. In one heartbeat, the subject had been contained, serene even, lying flat with his back on the observation table. In the next, the subject was loose, the table was tipped, and the doctor was doing his best to escape the danger that had so suddenly and completely taken over the laboratory.
Behind him, Subject 413 let out a sound that was not human, but rather the guttural growl of a beast. The sound rebounded in the doctor’s own chest as it rang in his ears. He jammed his fingers so hard on the escape button on the wall that he let out a little growl himself, but it sounded very much like a whimper when heard alongside the sounds coming out of Subject 413.
The doors containing the room slid open, but before the doctor could make an escape he was snatched off his feet and dragged back inside. Just outside this room, soldiers in SWAT gear were coming to the rescue, but as his body was slammed into the west wall of the lab, knocking over steel tables and glassware and all manner of scientific instrument, he knew they would not be quick enough.
No, he thought. They would not be quick enough, because this was retribution. This was the price one paid when they decided to play God, to mess with things men have no business messing with—even men who fancied themselves lords.
In his last moments, as the beast hulked over him, drool dripping from its once-normal mouth, veins pulsing in its now grotesquely bulging muscles, and crazy in the red streaks that had cut across the whites of its eyes, the doctor knew without a doubt that this was indeed the reprisal of all he’d done, of all he’d agreed to.
He saw now, in his very last moments upon Earth, that he should have just let the Man in the Shadows kill him rather than submit to these soul-damning experiments.
It was too late now to go spawning regrets. There was no time. He would die for what he had done.
When the response team made it into the laboratory, the doc was long dead. They shot enough tranquilizers into Subject 413 to take down a herd of elephants, but this had little effect, so they sealed the room and didn’t fret. In ten minutes or so, the subject would die anyway.
All the ones before it certainly had.
Men in white coats and others in tactical vests stood observing, but Subject 413 lived not for ten minutes, but for ten days before his body gave out on him. That was the worst part of it, visually, anyway. Once the subjects died, their bodies always reverted back to how they’d been before the Blue Magic was given to them—they always reverted back to normal.
By the tenth day, the laboratory was smashed to pieces. The high-tech walls had held, but by a margin of just barely. Everything inside the room was destroyed and coated with smeared saliva and blood. Subject 413 had slammed against the walls so many times that it had injured itself in the process.
Now, S413 was little more than the crumpled remains of a failed try, but this additional disappointment would not deter the Man in the Shadows. After all, S413 had lived for nearly ten whole days, and if that wasn’t progress, then he didn’t know what was.
Indeed, they were getting closer.
CHAPTER 1
“Do you see what a little effort can get you, Miss Fae?” asked the school guidance councilor, peering at me over the horned tips of her glasses. “Your grades have seen a significant improvement in the past month.”
Though I was no longer a Peace Broker, a solider in that particular army, I still couldn’t help the fact that my chest swelled with a bit of pride. You could take the operative out of the training, but it was a whole other matter removing the training from the operative. I liked to have my efforts praised, and since the Masked Maiden of Grant City was currently on a necessary hiatus, I’d been able to direct more focus on my schoolwork.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered. “Thank you.”
“Have you thought about college?”
I shifted in the chair where I sat before her desk, the small office too intimate for my liking. It was more like I’d tried not to think about it. With the Peace Brokers, I’d never really had to consider such a question, because all such decisions had been made for me. Since I’d been raised as an operative in the human world, I’d always figured I’d attend university to keep up with my public persona, but I’d never entertained the idea of choosing one myself.
Also, there was the small matter of money. Without the Brokers, I had all the choices in the world, and none of the funds required for choosing them.
“I don’t have money for college,” I admitted, the words more embarrassing to speak than I’d anticipated.
Mrs. Pete nodded, shifting through some papers on her desk, reading whatever was written upon them. “Well, I see that you haven’t taken on any extra-curricular activities since you moved here. Doing so can make a difference when concerning scholarships and grants, so is there anything you’re interested in doing outside of your schoolwork?”
Oh, you mean like running around the city in a hood and mask, rescuing people and getting blamed for my efforts?
Okay, so maybe I was a tad bitter, but I am half human, after all.
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“What’s your ethnicity?” Mrs. Pete asked. “There’s plenty of money up for grabs for minorities.” She looked down at the papers. “On all the forms, for ‘race’, you’ve checked ‘other’.”
Smiling, I said, “That’s right.”
Mrs. Pete was silent a moment, studying me over her horn-rims. “You look pretty athletic. You could probably get on one of the spring teams, maybe get noticed by a scout.”
I rubbed my palms on my jeans. I appreciated her efforts, but being a Halfling, with Halfling abilities, competing against humans in sports just seemed unfair. “I don’t… I think I’ll just have to take some time to think it all over, but I appreciate your help, ma’am.”
Mrs. Pete gave a sympathetic smile and nodded. “Okay, Aria, but we’re entering the last quarter of the school year. Summer is only a couple months away. You’ve got graduation, then what? What are you going to do with the rest of your life?” She paused. “There’s always student loans… Just promise me you’ll actually put some thought into it.”
I promised that I would, thanked her again, and promptly scooted out of her office, feeling as though the air were suddenly more breathable on the outside. I understood that the lady was just doing her job, but dang, could a girl get a few months without being forced to make a life-altering decision?
I realized with a start that I felt unprepared, that life with the Brokers, while ha
ving trained me for certain things, had left me utterly unable to direct myself. Perhaps that had been the point.
With these thoughts always came reflections of my former life, of what I’d given up to stay in Grant City. Of whom I’d given up. I’d like to tell you that I hadn’t thought much of Nick Ramhart since I let him step on that train out of town without me, but that would be a lie. It seemed that man would always hold a place in my mind. Or maybe it was my heart.
I wandered into the lunchroom, ready to eat my troubles. Once I’d grabbed some chicken tenders and a side of the school’s surprisingly delicious french fries, I found Sam in the courtyard, waiting for me.
She looked up from her iPad, ran her eyes over me once, and said, “Snap out of it.”
Laughing, I took a seat on the bench beside her, happy that spring was finally arriving and the weather was nice enough to eat lunch outside again. It wasn’t just the weather, though. Samantha Shy always had an immediate uplift effect on my mood.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
Sam continued to tap away at her screen. Without looking up, she answered, “I can see the turmoil turning in your head. I can see you slipping down into one of your moods, so snap out of it.”
Shoving some fries and half of a chicken tender into my mouth with what I thought was impressive synchronicity, I replied, “Gee, thanks, best friend. I feel totally better now.”
One side of Sam’s mouth lifted in a smile, and she pushed her glasses up on her nose. “You’re welcome, and don’t talk with your mouth full. It’s gross.”
Globbing on the ketchup, I shoved more fries into my talk-hole. Around them, I said, “Then I would hardly be able to speak at all.”
Sam’s blue eyes flicked over to me, mischief flashing behind them. “And that would be a huge loss. Like, huge.” Sam laughed, but sobered as she looked at me again. She gave me a nudge with her shoulder. “Dude, loosen up, I was just kidding.”
My shoulders had gone tight, my back rigid. It was not Sam’s jest that had caused this. It was the girl who’d just entered the courtyard. I’d only set eyes on her once, but there was no way to mistake her.
Her hair was a shiny jet black that flowed all the way down to her small waist, and her eyes were nearly as dark. Around those eyes, black liner made her gaze capturing, and her red-painted lips and super-swag way of moving had all the boys in the courtyard staring.
Sam followed my gaze. “Who’s that?” she asked.
“Her name is Raven,” I whispered, “and last time we saw each other, she told me to leave Grant City.”
I saw Sam’s aura shift as she recalled when I’d told her about Raven, the chick who’d threatened me and informed me that my identity as the Masked Maiden was known before taking off in a van full of kidnapping lapdogs.
“What’s she doing here?” Sam asked.
As Raven made her way over to us, I stated the obvious. “I’m pretty sure she’s here for me.”
CHAPTER 2
My teeth gritted as Raven approached the bench on which Sam and I were sitting and took a seat beside me, plucking a french fry off my plate and popping it into her mouth as if we were old friends.
I had to force myself not to snap my jaws at her hand like a rabid dog and jerk the tray out of reach. Unsurprisingly, this stealing of my food angered me almost more than the threat she’d issued a few months ago.
“Those are actually pretty good,” Raven said in her sultry tone, and reached for another.
Now I did jerk the tray out of her reach. “Then go get your own,” I snapped.
Raven’s full red lips pulled up, and she leaned in a little closer, the scent of her perfume making me pull back. “That’s not very nice,” she said, “especially from someone who calls herself a hero.”
My confusion was beginning to outweigh my annoyance. “Keep your voice down, you evil succubus.”
On the other side of me, Sam let out an involuntary giggle, and Raven shot her a look that had her swallowing it back down. This really hadn’t been a joke on my part. Raven was indeed of the Succubus race… It had taken me a little while after meeting her to figure it out, but as I studied her aura signature now, I knew I was right.
“I would watch the way you talk to me, fairy,” Raven replied, her voice low. “Unless you want everyone to find out who the Masked Maiden of Grant City is.”
“If you were gonna do that, you would’ve already done it,” I said, “so why are you really here?”
Leaning back and crossing her leather-clad legs, Raven tossed her dark hair over her shoulder and surveyed the courtyard. “To keep an eye on you, of course, and against my own recommendations, to try and get you to see reason.”
“Are you joking?” Sam asked, speaking up for the first time. “You can’t actually have come here to try and woo Aria to the Dark Side. You must be as dumb as you are crazy.”
Raven’s dark eyes flashed to Sam, swirling with a dark purple that made my best friend snap her mouth shut and swallow hard. Succubi were not known for their tolerance. “All that brain in your own head, human, and you still don’t know when to keep your mouth shut.”
I held my hand up, trying to maintain my cool. “Let’s not go threatening Sam,” I told Raven. “That won’t end well for you.” I let out a slow breath. “Why don’t you just leave? I’m never joining your team of evil nerds, okay?”
Raven rolled her eyes, relaxing on the bench beside me as if we were enjoying a picnic. “Instead, you join a team of wannabe crime-fighting nerds. You might as well have gone back to the Brokers.”
My hand reacted to this so fast and of its own accord that there was little I could do to stop it. The girl had pinched a nerve, and a subsequent knee-jerk could not be avoided.
I gripped Raven’s arm so hard and so fast that she didn’t even realize I’d moved until the pain flashed over her face. Through gritted teeth and red lips, she bit back a pained growl and said, “Let me go, fairy. That hurts.”
I continued my hold, just shy of strong enough to crack the bones beneath her flesh. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” I said, my voice strangely flat to my own ears. With some effort, I finally released my grip. An angry red handprint stood out on her creamy olive skin. I didn’t feel bad for it.
“You sure seem to know a lot about Aria,” Sam said. “What are you, a stalker?”
Without sparing Sam a glance, Raven said, “Is the human still talking to me? It sounds like she’s still talking, but it could just be the breeze.”
Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. I stood and brushed fry crumbs off my jeans, nodding my head for Sam to follow. “Whatever,” I said to Raven. “You want to hang around Grant City High School, have at it. Let’s go, Sam.”
As Sam and I walked away, Raven mumbled under her breath, knowing I would hear what she said with my sensitive ears, the smirk on her face to prove it. “You will join us, Aria Fae,” she said. “Or he’ll kill you. You should’ve run when you had the chance, but it’s too late for that now.”
Jaw clenched, I made my way into the school building, these words ringing in my head.
***
The school day seemed to drag on after this. I went to my classes, and was relieved when I didn’t see Raven in any of them. I could sound all bravado to her face, but the fact that she was here, watching me, knowing my secrets, had me on edge like a cliff.
The bigger worry, of course, was whom exactly she was working for. It seemed to me that since I’d arrived in Grant City, I’d tackled some bad guys, but never the bad guy. It was kind of like I’d been cutting the tops off the weeds, rather than ripping them out at the roots, and like weeds, as long as I kept doing this, they would only keep coming back and continue growing.
Who was the entity behind the kidnappings Dyson Gracie had been orchestrating? Who was the person who’d sent Raven here? Who was the hand moving the pieces around the game board of Grant City?
I didn’t have the answers to these questi
ons, but I was smart enough to know that there were indeed answers. I just needed to find them.
And manage to graduate high school and plan for college at the same time.
“You’re doing it again,” Sam said, approaching me at my locker, where I was shoving my books onto the top shelf with a touch too much vigor.
“Doing what?”
Sam pushed her glasses up on her nose as she leaned back against the locker beside mine. “You’ve got that contemplative look on your face that always precedes a depression. Snap out of it.”
“Easy for you to say,” I replied, grabbing my skateboard and shutting my locker.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I shrugged, pushing my way through the flow of students and feeling more annoyed with my best friend than I knew I should be. “You know what you’re doing with your life,” I said, trying not to sound snappy. “And here I am, lost at sea without a floatation device and bleeding from the chest, surrounded by starving sharks.”
Sam hurried in and around people to keep up with me. “Uh… Okay, Edgar Allen Poe, nice imagery, but a little dramatic, don’t you think?”
Stepping out into the open air felt good, and I tried to let the spring sunshine lighten my mood. Sam was right. Sam was pretty much always right, but that didn’t make any of this easier to swallow.
“I guess you’re r—” I began, but was cut short when I noticed Raven across the lawn, talking to one of the school coaches.
Sam followed my gaze, her aura spiking with apprehension as I dropped my skateboard to the pavement and rolled off toward Raven. There was little else she could do, so she mumbled a curse and followed after me.
CHAPTER 3
“Aria,” Sam called out behind me. “Slow down.”
I barely heard her. I was like a heat-seeking missile, locked on target. The sound of the wheels of my skateboard rolling over the concrete made Raven turn toward me. I stopped right in front of her, hopping off the board and kicking it up to my hand in one smooth motion.