Please no blood. Please no blood.
Hand shaking, I checked my fingers and palm. Nothing except sweat and dirt. That was close.
Skipjos were rather useless concerning magic, but they could poison you if their teeth broke your skin. It seemed that I’d lucked out.
Where’s the businessman who shifted into a demon?
I turned to my right and found him hauling ass down the alley, barreling toward a group of people passing by. It was too dangerous to launch some long-distance magic, so I chased after him. Just as he was about to exit the alley, he stopped and shifted into human form, wearing the gray suit.
He took off up the street and blended into a pack of men in business attire before I could even get out of the alley. It killed me to let a demon get away and possibly cause damage in the city, but I wouldn’t be able to track him down in human form.
A woozy feeling suddenly set in and my heart started pounding. I assumed it was just from the mini-sprint until my legs gave away, and I fell flat on my face. As I made it to my knees, the world began to shake.
Off-kilter, I fell back down, and the earthquake continued for another ten seconds. I couldn’t believe there was an earthquake in Pittsburgh. As I lay on the ground, I saw a three-dimensional holographic image projected in front of the brick wall.
A tall, bald man in red robes spoke in a deep voice, “Get your ass up, Mike. We need to hurry. You’ve been poisoned by a skipjo.”
It was my guardian angel, Artoise. He’d been tasked with protecting me, which meant he had to watch my life constantly as if it were a TV show. If I got in danger, he jumped in to help me out. Failure meant he lost his own life too, so the investment was high.
Unfortunately, he liked to drink. A lot. Too much, some like me would say. So he wasn’t always reliable. The only rules I knew were that the image disappeared after one minute and Artoise could only visit me once in a twenty-four-hour period.
“Glad to see you’re sober. Good for you,” I commented, delirious.
“No time for chitchat. You need to get your ass to the Rite Aid on the other side of this alley.” He pointed to the street I had come in from. “You need to go down there, take a right, and make the first right on Negley. Third store on your right. Get up. Get up.” Unable to provide physical help, Artoise usually became frustrated easily. Up to this point, he’d only helped me after a few mishaps in the laboratory.
Despite the encouragement, the poison coursed through the inside of my body, rendering my movements useless. I began to fade in and out of my conversation with Artoise.
Then, horrific visions entered my head. Demonic creatures sat around an onyx supper table, devouring their own forearms and taking huge, messy bites out of their own bodies. It was as if I had entered the depths of hell with Dante and Virgil. The demons turned to me with bloody faces and pushed me into the corner of the room. They poked and pulled at my skin, pinching me with blood-crusted claws.
The first wave of hallucinations crashed, and my mind started to clear out. Slowly.
Artoise screamed, “See. Might. See. You need—see. You don’t have long. Might. See.”
The image faded and disappeared. With my head in better shape, it was time to get to the Rite Aid, but I didn’t know what to do after that. I lumbered down the street, dragging my rubbery legs. My numb hand pushed the glass front door to get inside. Locked.
Oh wait, it was a pull door. The wave of poison was building inside, readying for another jolt. I got inside the store, which had about twelve shoppers scattered around, and went straight for the section with the pills and supplements. However, I didn’t know what I needed.
What had Artoise said?
The rush of skipjo poison kicked in again, acting like needles that were pricking my entire body. I pushed the sleeves to my hoodie up to counteract the overwhelming internal fire. Sweat glided down my forehead and across my brows and trickled down my cheeks before landing on my hoodie.
I looked at my forearm and noticed rough, scaly skin with red splotches. And it was getting worse by the moment. My gums felt like they were on fire, and I rubbed them, unintentionally adding to the irritation. I pulled out a bloody finger, and realized the problem. I needed Vitamin C. At least three or four pills of it.
I grabbed the box off the shelf and went to the counter as the hallucinations started to creep back in. There were two people in front of me. They both turned into dragons, taking to the air and spitting liquid fire at each other. The red and green dragon flew around the store setting everything ablaze. I was astonished everyone was just letting this happen.
An old, cranky voice broke my concentration. “Next. Come on up here, son. You aren’t looking too good.”
I shook my head, realizing the dragon fight was only a hallucination and slammed the Vitamin C on the counter. Pain attacked my chest, like something had clamped my arteries and veins. I dropped to my knees, convinced it was a heart attack, but the old clerk didn’t seem concerned in the least.
The woman behind me helped me to my feet. Despite the demonic visions, I pulled all the money out of my back pocket and threw it at the clerk.
He grabbed the bills, counting them slowly, and said, “You’re two dollars short.”
The woman behind me yelled, “Look at him. He looks like he’s about to die.”
The old clerk shook his head. “We got too many people trying to get free stuff in here. He probably just needs to stop the drinking and smokin’ them drugs.”
My blood slowed to the pace of a snail, coagulated, and finally stopped pumping. Good night.
Chapter 3
I HIT THE GROUND, SWEAT dripping from every pore in my body.
The woman behind me slapped two dollars on the counter, ripped open the box and popped off the top of the bottle. She used a long, lavender nail to bust through the thin aluminum safety seal, spilling pills on the floor and me.
She rolled me onto my back, stuffed three pills in my mouth, and pushed them to the back of my tongue. I gagged first, almost shooting the pills out of my mouth, then I chewed and swallowed the pills as best I could, setting off an internal battle that caused me to black out for a minute. (I hoped it was only a minute.)
The next thing I knew, I was sitting on a bench outside the Rite Aid as the hustle and bustle of an early Pittsburgh morning unfolded in front of me.
The woman who’d saved me was standing in front of me. She said, “I’m just glad you’re safe now. That stupid jagoff was going to let you die. Said he thought you were faking it. What’s wrong with people these days?”
I just shook my head, trying to clear all the cobwebs.
She continued, “Well, you take care of yourself now. Make sure you’re taking all your vitamins, although I’ve never seen anything that severe. Oh, there’s my bus. Take care now.”
“You too. Thank you.”
She ran to catch the 5A, and I checked out my arm. All the dryness and red patches were gone and my head was returning to normal. As I sat there, panic snaked through my extremities, numbing them at the realization that I had almost died due to my inexperience. That was why I had a guardian angel, and even he could barely save me.
That was what Artoise had said. C, not see. Vitamin C, not might see. Several deep breaths couldn’t stop the buzzing in my chest or the shaking in my hands. I’d just kicked some major demon ass, a worthy cause for celebration, but I could have died from that one little chomp.
Relieved that my magic had worked when I needed it to, I worried about the innocent people of Pittsburgh who could be in danger with a demonic shifter on the loose. I was supposed to keep everyone safe, not unleash a predator on the public. If it wasn’t for that last ambush by the skipjo, I would have killed the demon shifter and everyone would be just fine.
It hurt me to know that innocent people were in danger. Even though I had only been ten years old, and everyone had told me there was nothing I could have done to prevent it, I still felt somewhat responsible for my mothe
r’s death. There had to have been something I could have done. Should have done.
That guilt will stay with me until the day I die, but having the chance to keep the people of Pittsburgh safe gave me a chance at redemption. A chance to make my mother proud of me. That was why I took my oath so seriously.
Figuring out how the shifting had occurred still confused me.
Had the demon shifted into a human, or had the human shifted into a demon?
And what was that guy babbling about? Harold? The box?
This encounter had created more questions that it had answered.
Shifting during the early morning hours in dim sunlight didn’t make any sense either. As I regained more composure, I got up from the bench and headed to my cancer support meeting. This was the first time I’d ever run into demons since moving to Pittsburgh over a year ago and I worried that this was only the pinhead tip of an enormous iceberg.
Why would the devils from the Red Cavern send skipjos? They were the lowest form of demon fighters, which on second thought, made me think this wasn’t part of a bigger problem.
Why were they trying to hide that big demon? What the hell was that big demon?
I could dismiss this as a random occurrence and leave it at that, or I could start asking some questions.
Hmm. What shall I do?
Time for some action. I entered the building for my meeting. As I was already late and still needed to get refreshed in the bathroom, I decided to text my associate on the Pittsburgh Police after the meeting.
I hung out near the entrance for a few moments, trying to make sure the shifter hadn’t run into this building.
Chapter 4
AFTER SLAPPING SOME cold water on my face in the bathroom, I lingered in the lobby. I heightened my senses to detect dark forces. Satisfied the building was clean, I let my magic subside back down into the reservoir.
I entered the meeting room and said hello to the other members. I had sworn an oath in front of the Celtic Gods to protect Pittsburgh from demonic entities. In exchange for my oath, Dian Cècht, the druidic physicians and healing witches had cured my lung cancer, which made me feel like I had an unfair advantage over my fellow group members.
The Gods had also promised to turn me into a powerful wizard, awakening the bloodline I shared with Merlin, but I was only twenty-three, beginning a lifelong journey of magic.
We sat on folding chairs set up in a horseshoe configuration. The early morning sun crept through a set of cracked blinds, casting long shadows across the burgundy carpeting. A small table in the corner had a pot of coffee and pumpkin-spiced rice crispy treats on it. The heat kicked on, creating a competing aromatic swirl of java, perfume and cologne.
A woman with a gaunt face and red handkerchief covering her bald head stood up. “I’m Stacy and I’m a cancer fighter.”
We all rang out, “Hi, Stacy.”
Stacy scratched one of the moles on her pale cheek with a trembling thumb and sniffled through her flared nostrils. “I’m doing better, but not out of the woods yet. I’ve been given a forty-percent chance at survival.” Tears formed in her reddened eyes and she produced a used tissue from her pocket. She blew her nose and everyone waited patiently. Her soft voice cracked as she continued, “I know that’s not the greatest odds, but I’m going to beat it.” She barely got the last few words out.
The rest of the support group started clapping and I jumped up from my chair. I took four steps forward and wrapped my arms around Stacy. Her forehead hit my clavicle and her tears meshed into the fabric of my hoodie with Merlino Detective Service in cursive writing across the chest.
I hadn’t known her before she had walked through that entrance door about an hour ago, but when you’re fighting cancer, we all fight under the same flag.
I felt the warmth of her body, but it wasn’t complete warmth, almost an artificial heat. She was in pain. Her outer shell carried the heat and hid the icy glacier just beneath the surface. Fighting cancer could do that to a person. You could lie to everyone else about it, but deep down, you could never fool yourself.
It didn’t take a wizard to sense her pain. The group leader, Sharon, cleared her throat for several seconds. The stubborn phlegm didn’t want to come up. It was like centuries of collected cobwebs that she wildly swatted away with a broom, only to create a tangled mess on the bristles and tire herself out in the process.
She finally wrestled the obstruction loose, chewed it up, took a swig of her Diet Dr. Pepper, and swallowed it. Sharon said, “Thank you for sharing, Stacy. I know it’s difficult right now, but you have this group behind you. If you ever need anything, we have a master list of everyone’s phone numbers that you can take with you.”
It’s hard to explain what it had been like to hear the diagnosis, once the words finally seeped through the thick layers of shock and denial. Everything had changed. I’d heard almost all those words during the diagnosis a million times before, but not in that particular order. And not that one particular word. Cancer.
I remembered what it was like at first. Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Everything faded, became dull, jejune, vapid, pallid. Like there was nothing there. Everything was stupid. Everything sucked. I was simply waiting to die. A skeleton of bones waiting for the flesh to waste away. Some would say I’ve had a rough ride in life, and they would be correct.
It was important to have people invest emotionally in you when your head was in that state. For me, it was Alayna, the wingless faerie, my savior and my mentor. I loved her more than my limited vocabulary could properly express. She had taken me to the druidic underworld known as the Deep Burrow and introduced me to the Celtic Gods.
Some of these survivors didn’t have anyone to turn to, anybody to give a shit about them. You needed somebody, and I wanted to be that somebody that everyone could lean on.
I had an amazing advantage fighting my cancer, and even then it was a great struggle. I wanted to be there for the fighters who didn’t have a strong support system. I let go of Stacy, looked encouragingly into her crying green eyes, and we both returned to our seats.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I slid it out just enough to see who it was. Lieutenant Gretchen Meyer of the newly formed Pittsburgh Police Department of the Occult. I checked the message and it said she needed to talk to me. Strange. She never wanted to talk to me unless she desperately needed help.
My mind immediately shifted to the demon fight before the meeting. Did the shifter hurt someone after our brawl?
I had been providing detective work, even though I didn’t fully understand the craft, for the past year to pay rent and bills.
I texted Lieutenant Meyer back and let her know that I was in a meeting. My phone immediately buzzed again with one word in all caps. URGENT. Gretchen, who hated it when I called her by her first name, was never one for one-word messages.
Considering I was her right-hand man concerning anything supernatural or paranormal, I had a pretty strong idea of what this was about.
I had taken on several cases over the last year, only to have them turn out to be paranormal hoaxes and the alien attack had turned out to be nothing more than a rabid barn owl, so I hoped I would finally have the chance to take on a real case and keep Pittsburgh safe.
I texted her back to pick me up at the meeting. I had left a few meetings before they ended, but I always felt terrible about it. These survivors were now my battle brothers and sisters and I wanted to be there for them, as they had for me, for the entire meetings.
Unfortunately, the meetings weren’t going to help with rent to ward off my mentor/angry landlord, Alayna.
Ten minutes later, another text came through. Gretchen was waiting outside, so I apologized and slipped out the gray door with the square slab of glass at about head level. I stepped out into the chilly autumn day and threw my hood over my head, pulling the strings to tighten it.
Chapter 5
I OPENED THE PASSENGER door of the ’98 Jeep Cherokee. Gretchen had never
picked me up in a squad car. I hopped in and was met by her stiff face and pursed lips.
G.M., another nickname I had given her that she hated, scratched her firm chin. I assumed she was in her mid-forties, short and stout, filling out the black police uniform. Her German roots had given her amber eyes, short, sandy-blond hair, bronze skin with light freckling, and a tough-as-nails attitude.
She pulled out onto the main road and jammed down the gas pedal. “What do you know about animal shifting?”
“What is your real question, G.M.?”
She turned and stared at me as she flew down 5th Avenue. “What did I tell you about that? We’re not in some fraternity together, dude, so show me respect and call me Lieutenant. All right now. Who in this city is capable of shifting into a demon-like creature?”
Paranormal activity had been on the rise in Pittsburgh for the past decade. However, I kept quiet about the brawl from this morning. “Off the top of my head, that’s a little difficult to say. I’d first probably say it could be the McNights.”
“They are a huge family. I assume the McNights from the goth bowling alleys? Harold and Raquel?”
Holy shit. That was who the shifter was talking about. I still had to hold that card close to the vest. “Those are the ones. I’ve received a few stories that they are connected to demons from the Red Cavern. Not sure if I believe it and I can’t get close to them because I don’t have any proof other than hearsay.”
Gretchen turned to me again and let the car veer toward oncoming traffic. The blaring car horns alerted me to grab the wheel with some of my mental magic and jerk it back into our lane.
She peeked over a few times, trying to keep her attention on the road. “Are you sure? Any corroboration you could provide?”
She knew that the underworld of demons named the Red Cavern was real, and they had been linked to the McNights, but she didn’t want to believe it. Nobody did. Not even me. For heading a specialized department dealing with the occult, G.M. hadn’t the slightest interest in the paranormal and had taken the job for the pay raise only.
Bloodline Awakened Supernatural Thriller Series: Books 1-3 Page 2