A Grave Magic: The Shadow Sorceress Book One

by Sheehan, Bilinda

  It made sense, and I wasn’t surprised by his declaration. The only thing I was surprised about was his complete honesty. He had to know that by giving me this, he was giving me a weapon I could use against him, and yet I could see from the look in his eyes that he just didn’t care anymore.

  “Run along now, Amber, you’ve got a raid to get geared up for. Everyone is waiting for you,” Jon said, before he turned on his heel and disappeared back into his office.

  “What did he say?” Graham asked, stepping in close and keeping his voice low enough that it wouldn’t be overheard by anyone else standing nearby.

  “He wants me out of the way, one way or another,” I said, shaking off Jon’s little speech.

  Just because he wished me dead didn’t mean it would happen. I’d wished to win the lottery more times than I could count and it hadn’t happened yet, despite being a witch and coming from a very powerful line of witches. There were just some things in life that couldn’t be gotten, not without interference.

  “He wants you dead?” Graham asked, turning to face me, his blue eyes filled with surprise. “I know the man doesn’t like you, but isn’t that a little extreme?”

  “If you knew everything that had happened between us, you’d be wondering why he was even bothering to send in a Clean-Up crew alongside us.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “That bad,” I said, scanning the crowd.

  There was no sign of Anthony Barbossa and the usual crew he hung out with, which could mean only one thing.

  “Shit,” I said again, this time louder, catching Graham’s attention as I started to duck and weave through the crowds of angry officers.

  “What is it?” he said, following close on my heels.

  “It’s Anthony. You saw how mad he was. You and I both know he’s led every single raid this Force has ever performed and he is damn good at it.”

  “Yeah, I saw he was pissed,” Graham said.

  “Well, he’s not here anymore and neither is the rest of his crew. They’re already gone, and if we don’t catch up to them soon, then whatever little plan Jon has worked out for me, they’re going to walk straight into it.”

  “You can’t honestly believe he plans to have you killed?”

  “I think he would do anything to keep certain things a secret, Graham. He’s dangerous and unpredictable, and while some of it might just be the hope that, because I’m a rookie, I’ll mess up myself, he’s still willing to send a lot of good men into a nest under my leadership, despite his hopes that I’ll end up dead.”

  My words were enough to make Graham pause, and as I broke free of the last stragglers, I dashed across the foyer and down the hall toward the locker areas and the weapons storage.

  I wasn’t about to let Jon get Barbossa and his men killed. They were a pain in the ass, and way too macho, but they were good at their jobs, and at the end of the day, Jon’s problem was with me, not them.

  Chapter 29

  Sitting in the back of the second truck, I urged the lumbering piece of metal to move faster. Anthony and his men apparently had quite the head start on us, and that was a problem. I knew he wouldn’t hang around, that as soon as he got to the scene, he would take the nest.

  And all of that sounded great, except I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that had slid in through my veins and coiled in my stomach.

  The very last thing I wanted to do was arrive on the scene and discover I was right, that Anthony and his men were hurt—or worse, dead. It wasn’t something I was sure I could live with.

  “Morgan, this isn’t your fault. Anthony and the guys, well they’re trained, they know what they’re doing.”

  “Not if they walk straight into an ambush, they don’t.”

  “And you have no way of knowing if what you think might happen will actually happen. Jon isn’t going to want to risk losing men as good as Anthony just to settle some petty vendetta with you.”

  “He made a pass at me last night,” I said, releasing a long sigh as the tension I’d been carrying in my shoulders released a little.

  “And you think that’s enough to make him….”

  I cut Graham off with the shake of my head. “No, I’m so conceited to believe that because I rejected him, he’s going to endanger a crap ton of innocent men. Jeez, Graham, nice to know you don’t think I’m some sort of hysterical woman.” The sarcasm in my voice was unmistakable and I watched as Graham’s face took on a scarlet hue.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, through gritted teeth.

  “No, it’s exactly what you meant, but it doesn’t matter. He made a pass at me, some crude comment about me knowing my place and that if I wanted to work at Elite and work in the field then I needed to give him some incentives.”

  The rosy colouring in Graham’s face faded, blanching from him as anger filtered through his eyes.

  “That lying piece of scum-sucking shit.”

  I nodded. “It gets worse. Apparently, this is how all the women on Elite get to work in the field. I’m not his first.”

  “So what did you do to him?”

  “Nearly broke his arm….”

  Grahams face grew whiter still, and I could see the emotions in his eyes at war with one another.

  “It’s not possible,” he said, more to himself than to me, but I couldn’t let a statement like that lie, especially after what I had just confided in him.

  “What’s not possible?”

  “It’s nothing, forget I ever said anything.”

  “Graham, how can I forget? If it’s important enough for you to sit there, now, looking like you just saw a ghost, then it’s important enough for me to know.”

  “We’re here!”

  The call went up from the front of the truck and my stomach flipped nervously as I edged to the door and shoved it open.

  The warehouse was on the edge of town next to the docks; the labyrinth of buildings surrounding us was going to be a massive problem. There wasn’t enough of us, and the best team had clearly already gone on ahead without us, I realised, as I spotted Anthony’s abandoned truck.

  Hopping down onto the gravel-covered road that weaved its way between the dark and empty warehouses, I searched the area for any sign that would tell me what direction the Clean-Up crew had taken. But there was nothing; Anthony was thorough and I knew he wouldn’t risk the vamps picking up his trail and ambushing him.

  “We need to find Anthony, before….” I trailed off as the sound of semi-automatic gunfire ripped through the mid-morning air. “Before that kind of crap starts happening,” I finished, before starting off in a dead run towards the sound of the gunfire.

  I wasn’t going to let innocent people get hurt because of me. If I hadn’t threatened Jon, if I’d just ignored his shitty little games and let him demote me—although, what ranked below rookie, I had no idea—then none of this would be happening.

  Even if I’d just quit then none of this would be happening.

  I could have flounced out of the office, with my honour intact and my head held high. And then the others would be safe…. A terrible thought side-swiped me and it took all of my might just to keep running towards the sounds of the fight. What if Jon was involved in the death of Mo and Julian? He’d said he would contact them, they were off the case, and yet why were they out investigating a lead?

  How could Jon be so certain it was them ripped to shreds when we were still waiting on the dental and DNA I.D.? There was something far more sinister at play, but I had no idea what it even was, let alone what I was supposed to do to fix it all.

  Graham caught up to me and swung me around to face him, the look in his eyes was one of fear and it caused my steps to falter.

  “We need a plan, Morgan; we can’t just go racing into the dark or they will eat us alive.”

  “I don’t expect you to go racing into the dark, I want the rest of you out here to secure the perimeter. Nothing comes in or out,” I said, turning to start back towards the gunfire. />
  “And what are you going to do on your own in there? You already believe Jon wants you dead, isn’t this just playing straight into his hands?”

  I smiled, but I knew it wasn’t pretty, and it sure as hell wasn’t a kind one. Graham took a small step back and it only served to widen my grin.

  “Jon doesn’t know one vital piece of information about me, Graham; he doesn’t know what I am and he doesn’t know what I’m capable of.”

  “But you told me you don’t have any power, not really.”

  He was right, that was what I’d told him; it was what I’d told Nic, it was even what I’d told myself, but after what had happened with the vampire and the black magic signature on the ceiling of the apartment, I was beginning to wonder if I’d been lying to myself all along.

  There was something different about me, there always had been. My magic was not the same colour as my mother’s, or her mother’s, or a generation of ancestor witches that had come before me. I was something else, and the sooner I learned to embrace it, for better or worse, the sooner I would begin to understand my place in the world.

  The signature might have been one for black magic, but that wasn’t who I was. I was good; I would be good no matter what side of the line my magic fell on, all I needed to do was embrace it.

  “I don’t know what I have, Graham; all I know for certain is that, right now, I’m probably the best chance for getting those men out of there alive. Even if that means simply taking their place. I’m the target of this, that vamp that attacked me last night—none of this is a coincidence.”

  I jerked free of his grip and started back into the warehouse nearest to me, the darkness sliding in around me like an old friend before Graham could try and change my mind once more.

  Chapter 30

  My heartbeat hammered in my chest.

  Whatever was watching me from the darkness would hear the sound of its frantic beating without issue, I was simply a game to them. My life, my loves, what I held dear, my hopes, and my dreams, were nothing more than a simple plaything to whatever stalked me through the warehouses.

  I could feel it close, its presence prickling along the back of my neck, causing all the cat hairs to stand on end.

  I swung around in the darkness, my shotgun poised and filled with silver cartridges. Heart shots were the only thing that would matter with vampires, unless, of course, I could figure out a way to sever their heads, but that was notoriously difficult. No vampire wanted to oblige by standing around long enough while their heads were hacked away from their bodies.

  I moved into a wide space, my booted feet barely making a sound against the cement floor.

  Silence crept in around me and I froze.

  Where was the sound of the gunfire? The frenzied shouts of the men as they’d called to one another and fought for their lives. My blood turned to ice in my veins as I continued forward.

  It couldn’t be over already. Anthony and his men, they were trained just like Graham had said; they knew what they were doing and this wasn’t their first raid, it wasn’t even their tenth raid. They’d done hundreds of them, and not one of them had ever come out of it fatally wounded.

  “Amber….” The sound of his voice rang in the darkness and I paused.

  The echo of the warehouse was enough to make picking out a location for the vampire calling to me almost impossible. The voice just bounced off the walls, making it sound as though the voice was coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

  “Amber….” Another voice, another male.

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled to life once more and I swung around, my gun going off as something lunged towards me. It grabbed for my weapons belt but only succeeded in grabbing my radio. Jerking it free, the vamp smashed the plastic black shell against the ground, pieces of it bouncing high into the air.

  Taking aim, the vamp didn’t make a sound as the gunshot blasted a hole through the centre of its chest. I pumped the barrel and the empty cartridge hopped free and clattered to the ground.

  “Why kill the Master of the City? You know you don’t have enough power to rule,” I said aloud to the laughter in the air.

  The giggling stopped instantly, the silence that swirled in once more didn’t bring me anymore comfort. In fact, it was stifling, and crowded. This wasn’t the place I wanted to die in. I wouldn’t die here, not like this, and not at the hands of something so utterly pathetic as a street vampire who thought he could fight his way up through the ranks.

  “Power isn’t everything,” he said, the voice easily recognisable as the vampire who’d attacked me.

  “When you’re Master of a City it is. You’re not a fool, or at least I don’t think you are, and yet you do something so stupid. What’s going to happen to you when the Vampire Council finds out what you’ve done?”

  “What they always do: send an emissary and wish me the best of luck in my new territory.”

  The cacophony of laughter started up once more and I sucked in a deep breath as my foot brushed something solid and bulky on the ground. Peering down into the darkness, I felt the tension in my gut tighten further as I recognised the Elite uniform. The top of the Kevlar vest was torn wide open as though it was little more than the seal on a packet of popcorn, and what was left of the man’s neck and chest spilled from the hole.

  “You’ll have to forgive the mess; we had some not-so-unexpected guests.”

  “You know the second the Vampire Council finds out that you’re nothing more than a street vamp that got lucky, they will kill you. You’ve got no special gifts, nothing to bring to the table that could potentially make this city great, to make this city yours.”

  I wasn’t lying; as soon as the Council found out, they would send assassins to kill him. King City was important enough of a territory that whoever ruled it needed considerable strength. The vampire I was talking to now wasn’t strong enough to have even perfected his gaze, never mind rule a city. The line he would sire within the city walls would be weak, powerless, and that wasn’t the Council’s idea of a growing force to be reckoned with.

  “And you’re warning me of this because you care?” His tone was mocking.

  “I’m warning you of this because whoever it is that you’re working for is setting you up to be nothing more than cannon fodder. If you’re too stupid to realise that, then you deserve everything the Council gives you.”

  Silence reigned once more and I continued deeper into the warehouse, but nothing moved. There wasn’t even the sound of rats scurrying, and that worried me more than anything else.

  If the place was so bad that not even the rats would infest it, then it wasn’t the type of place I should be spending any real time hanging around in.

  The darkness shifted once more and I swung around, discharging a silver cartridge straight into the chest of another vampire.

  It didn’t make sense. Why were they practically throwing themselves at me? They knew I was going to hit them, especially if they kept on coming at me one at a time.

  They’re running you out of ammunition.

  The thought was a sickening one, but it was true. That was exactly what they were doing. It was probably what they had done with Anthony and his men too. If they were capable of doing that, then it could really only mean one thing: that there were far too many of them here for just one Clean-Up crew.

  How had a vampire so weak managed to amass such a group of vampires—suicidal ones, at that?

  The sound of a low, guttural moan caught my ear and without thinking I moved forward. Keeping low, I peered into the darkness ahead of me.

  There was a body on the ground with something crouched over it. I watched it sink its fangs into the thigh of whomever was on the ground and the low guttural moan came again, the pain and agony of their suffering piercing my ears.

  I pumped the spent cartridge free and took aim. The creature that was crouched low over the body was too close. If I fired, then the spray was going to pepper whatever poor soul was o
n the ground, too.

  The sound of the shotgun sliding another cartridge into place had the vampire raise its face from the mess it had made of the guy’s leg. Shock rooted me to the ground and I stared over at her, her face a twisted mess of fury as she chewed on the flesh she had just ripped away with her fangs.

  What the hell was going on here? Vampires didn’t do this. They didn’t eat their victims—they drained them of blood, but they were neat and tidy about it. The gore of flesh, muscle, and tendons was something the vamps left to the ghouls and the zombies.

  I stared at her a little harder. Was I wrong? Maybe she wasn’t a vampire after all….

  She hissed at me, her razor sharp fangs telling me that I wasn’t wrong. She was definitely a vamp.

  She lunged across over the body she’d been feasting on and I was far too close to her to side step. She careened into me, the force of her blow sending us both toppling to the ground as she grappled with me for the gun.

  She was stronger and the bite the other vampire had given me the night before made my arm ache as she pressed against me, my hold on the shotgun weakening as she snarled and tried to force it down under my own chin.

  Her grin made me sick as I attempted to hold her off and prevent her from getting the upper hand.

  Releasing my hold on the gun, I slipped my hand down the side of my body, the athame was just out of reach and the vamp shifted above me moving it even further away.

  Reaching into my pocket, my fingers closed around the pointed edges of Jessica’s chain, the one Graham had given me in the hopes I would have a vision of his daughter.

  Bringing my hand up fast, I jammed the cross between the vamp’s eyes, the smell of burning flesh tickling my nose, and I winced as my own hand burned along with hers.

  It was a Holy item and it was silver.

  Double whammy.

  She screamed and flung herself away from me, clutching at the place where I’d left the crosses imprint on her forehead.

  I didn’t let her go; she writhed on the floor, her keening cries shredding the darkness, and I climbed over, aimed the shotgun straight into her chest, and pulled the trigger.