Moon Burn
The Half-Demon Rogue Trilogy (Book 3)
D.N. Erikson
Watchfire Press
Copyright © 2017 Nicholas Erik. All rights reserved.
Published by Watchfire Press.
This book is a work of fiction. Similarities to actual events, places, persons or other entities are coincidental.
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Cover design by Yoly Cortes
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Moon Burn/Nicholas Erik. – 1st ed.
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Blood Frost (Book 2) Recap
This is a refresher of the key events in Blood Frost that lead into Moon Burn. Obviously there are spoilers, so if you haven’t read Book 2, go do that first.
Blood Frost kicks off in the dogged heat of August, around two months after the finale of Demon Rogue. Kalos Aeon is living in a trailer park, on the lam because of the crimes he committed in Demon Rogue to stop Athena the Goddess Killer’s plans. He’s alone, spending all his time poring over the Journal of Annihilation: an ancient leather-bound tome somehow tied to his destiny.
The book details five essential magical objects of untold power that, if controlled by a single person, will allow that individual to control all of the world’s essence. Kalos is aware of two of the objects—the Remkah Talisman and the Carmine Chain, both of which are currently in the Inonda PD’s evidence lockup—but, despite his long career as a retrieval specialist, has no leads on the two others (The Sabre of Immolation and Lion’s Totem). The fifth object will only be revealed when, according to the book, “those of magical blood walk freely amongst the mortals.”
He’s interrupted in his trailer by a magical artifact collector named Sam Reynolds. Reynolds wants him to track the Talon of Frost, which disappeared during the Ice Age. Kalos initially refuses, but Reynolds has already called the police. If Kalos works for him, however, all the charges from the events in Inonda will disappear. After a brief standoff, Kalos agrees. In the police cruiser, Kalos swears he sees a snowflake drift down from the sky.
Returning home after two months, Argos and Kalos head to the druid forest near the apartment. They encounter a strange tattooed woman of tremendous vitality named Ziva. She hugs Kalos, telling him “you’re the demon I’m looking for.” Kalos collapses and passes out.
Kalos awakens in his apartment, pain shooting through his chest. Ziva is an oread with a tremendously old aura—a valley nymph—but doesn’t possess the offensive magic necessary to fell Kalos. She explains that the spell is called the “Destroyer of Former Lovers”—Isabella Kronos is unbinding their essence and literally breaking his heart in the process.
Assuming that Marrack the Demon King and Isabella are testing his heart for two reasons—to call his bluff at the gas station about having her blood, and because they’ve finally come to believe that his destiny is important—Argos and Kalos pore over the Journal of Annihilation.
There are two blank pages at the end of the Journal of Annihilation, which Kalos assumed meant the scribe had run out of information. Argos, however, reveals that the next-to-last page actually has a magical cloak on it and unveils it with a potion: a sketch of a woman with the five magical items seamlessly fused to her being. The fifth unknown object is still not pictured. According to the sketch, to attain this state of magical evolution, the woman must max out the essence gauge.
Kalos, having imbibed a significant amount of essence during his life, tests his own blood, registering only halfway up the scale. The Journal’s final page has a different sort of spell on it that Argos can sense, but has no information on, it having appeared nowhere in his research.
Frustrated by the cryptic non-answers found in the Journal, Kalos decides on another plan of defense against Isabella’s attacks: retrieve Isabella’s impounded blood at the Inonda evidence locker.
On the way, Nadia confronts Kalos after not speaking with him or answering his calls after he lost her mother’s necklace (The Carmine Chain). Nadia tells Kalos she’s willing to go “all the way to Hell” for answers about her mother’s death. They head to the Inonda precinct to break into the evidence lockup, but find a wendigo inside. The two manage to escape with the evidence from Kalos’s case: his phone, ankle blade, .45, Remkah Talisman, Carmine Chain and an eye-drop container filled with Isabella’s blood, from when he shot her in his office in Demon Rogue.
Kalos heads to the Haelstrom-ruined shantytown that’s overtaken part of Inonda. Marrack confronts him, announcing that they’ve been eliminating Kalos’s lifelines and old allies, as Kalos did to them during their 1,000-year exile. They fight. Marrack tells him that he knows about the Journal, and that it will belong to him. Marrack is called back and disappears when the teleportation effect wears off from the magic stone he’s using.
Hurting from the fight and Isabella’s continued attacks, Kalos meets with Kitsune, a shapeshifting fox. She tries to con him, but he sees through it and enlists her aid in exchange for help removing a tracking chip in her skin.
That night, Kalos and Ziva infiltrate the masquerade auction, where it turns out that his lawyer, Tina Chen, is the head of the Demon Jägers, an organization of demon hunters. Tina Chen reveals she hired Sam Reynolds as the liaison because the Jägers accidentally revived the wendigo and were unable to control it.
The next morning, Kalos talks with Argos. Kitsune dropped off Isabella’s blood and also relayed information on Detective Scott: he has an archive of files on Kalos that he’s about to publicly release. Kalos and Argos set out to make a potion called the Life of a Thousand Cuts with Isabella’s blood. In the middle of making the potion, Nadia knocks on the door, carrying her injured father, Javier, a wizard. The older Santos has been attacked by the wendigo, and requires magical intervention to survive.
Isabella’s attacks intensify, weakening Kalos as he goes to Charon’s loft, which he inherited. He saves Javier by getting him to drink Ambrosia hidden in the walls.
Kalos determines, from the fact that the wendigo didn’t kill the wizard, that it’s being controlled by the Crimson Conclave using Haelstrom—a feral wendigo would cause much more destruction.
Argos calls to let them know the Life of a Thousand Cuts potion is complete: catch is, they need to wait until the moon is out, and need to drink it in a cemetery to draw on the tragedy and sadness. Unfortunately, Kalos isn’t going to make it that long. Kalos decides to search for some Haelstrom in the shantytown. He drinks multiple vials and recovers, since it’s non-fatal to demons.
Tina Chen calls, informing him that all charges have been officially dropped due to the evidence disappearing. She also confirms Kitsune’s previous intel: Detective Scott intends to release a file of information on Kalos to the public.
Nadia and Kalos head over to Detective Scott’s; midway over, a snowstorm starts, indicating that the Blood Frost has begun. They reach the apartment, but Scott interrupts them and threatens to shoot Nadia if Kalos doesn’t turn himself in. Kalos takes a bullet for Nadia in the shoulder.
They escape, but Kalos reads a text from Argos informing him that this is the start of a violent and chaotic new Ice Age, and the Talon of Frost is a trophy from the proto-wendigo Ingi (progenitor of the entire species), who is responsible for the blizzard and disruptions in Inonda.
Kalos suspects Marrack is trying to reveal the fifth and final magical object from the Journal of Annihilation by using the Demon Jägers’ funding to bring back the wendigo. But Kalos also realizes that Marrack isn’t in complete control—Ingi isn’t responsible for the blizzards; someone else has the Talon of Frost.
Kalos flicks on the TV to find that Tina Chen is holding a press conference announcing that a cloned wendigo is terrorizing Inonda. She reveals her organization discovered the beast in the Antarctic ice, pointed there by the Crimson Conclave. Tina requests the public’s help in finding the Talon of Frost, which can end the Blood Frost.
Ziva is waiting for him at his apartment, where she reveals she was hired by the Sol Council to keep the Talon of Frost away from him—she reveals she picked it up after it was severed from Ingi thousands of years ago, and then accidentally caused the first Ice Age. She used it this time as a misdirection to steal the Journal of Annihilation and essence gauge from Kalos for the Sol Council.
Ziva gives him the address where the Talon of Frost and Argos are locked up, but tells him that the Sol Council owns him, since she took some of Argos’s blood.
Kalos and Argos go out into the blizzard and are attacked by Ingi. In desperation, Kalos stands his ground as the beast charges, channels all his magical energy into the Remkah Talisman and Carmine Chain and then uses it to hurl the Talon of Frost at the beast, killing him.
Kalos gets to the graveyard and drinks the Life of a Thousand Cuts potion. Hatred and bitterness pour out of him in a geyser of massive flame. Kalos falls asleep after the effort; wakes up two hours later and uses Talon of Frost to end the Ice Age, after which it shatters into dust.
The Blood Frost ends, although the melted snow floods Inonda, including Kalos’ apartment. Gunnar retrieves Ingi’s body for melting down at a later date. The media is in a speculative uproar over the blizzard and Tina Chen’s press conference. She texts Kalos, indicating that she’s going to disappear. Kalos decides against releasing Kitsune from her tracker, which means she has to stay in Inonda. The next day, Kalos finds that an Ambrosia-addicted Javier has left the loft.
Nadia hasn’t slept, having spent all night reading Charon’s journals, where he reveals that he killed her mother to get back in the Conclave’s good graces. Nadia wants revenge; makes Kalos promise that he’ll help. He promises; she then asks to be granted magical powers. He refuses, breaking his promise. Afterward, Kalos goes to his ruined apartment and takes Argos for a walk in the druid forest, wondering how everything surrounding the Journal of Annihilation, Sol Council and his old enemies Marrack and Isabella will play out over the coming days and months—and whether the supernatural will finally be revealed.
1
“The Senate’s Special Investigatory Subcommittee on Supernatural and Occult Affairs released a damning report today, citing ‘significant’ evidence of potentially hundreds of magical events over the past year—”
I slammed my fist down on the remote, muting the broadcast.
Senate subcommittees. Never a good thing.
Especially when you were the target of their witch hunt.
I cast occasional wary glances toward the silent television as I thumbed through Charon’s last will and testament. Forms to sign and notarized inventories of artifacts I’d never seen—nor really cared to see. But his attorney, Remington Landry, had been insistent about the paperwork.
I might have died of boredom if the media frenzy hadn’t kept escalating during the last four months. The start of another year didn’t look ready to change that trend.
Especially not with the release of this report.
If time travel was a possibility, I’d have gladly erased several recent events from the historical record—paradoxes be damned. Even after seven thousand years above ground, the past six months could only be described as difficult.
Someone more prone to hysterics might’ve dubbed them a total clusterfuck.
Marrack the Demon King and Isabella Kronos had returned from the depths of exile after over a thousand years of banishment—with predictably chaotic results. Athena the Goddess Killer had tried to end me. A wendigo had gotten loose in Inonda, bringing an August blizzard along for the ride.
And, amidst all that bullshit, the Sol Council—spurred on by the cyanide-laced carrot of total control of the world’s magical essence—decided it was primetime for supernatural creatures to walk amongst the mortals. Openly. I knew those bastards were behind some of these evidentiary leaks, since they’d stolen the Journal of Annihilation right from my apartment.
Every day, a different talk show exposé.
Faeries: the truth behind the wings.
Angels—what’s heaven really like?
A date with death: my husband was a zombie vampire!
And on the stories went, like the drip-drip-drip of water torture. It wasn’t the first one that killed you; it was the ten thousandth that finally bore the hole through your skull. No matter that half of the people were loons, or that no one had released absolute proof. The reveal was coming.
I was only left to wonder what was taking so damn long. Even a simple shift—from, say, a person into a goddamn dog—on a Sunday morning interview would’ve done that trick.
No subcommittees necessary.
Instead, things were simmering into a boil. And that meant the chaos, once unleashed, would wash over the world twice as fast—and hotter than hell.
Something to look forward to.
My phone rang, and Argos stirred, chasing imaginary rabbits in his sleep. Head swimming in legalese and inheritance jargon, I slammed the manila folder shut and wondered why Gunnar was calling.
A vamp isn’t awake at two in the afternoon unless something’s seriously wrong.
His voice was thick with the fog of sleep.
“Are you okay, my friend?”
Somewhat uneasily, I answered, “Why?”
I cast a paranoid eye about the two-story loft. No gremlins materialized from the stainless steel fixtures or unfinished brickwork. Still, given all the nonsense I’d put up with recently, a sense of gnawing anxiety rumbled in my stomach. After the Blood Frost and Tina Chen’s impromptu supernatural press conference on live TV, things had been too quiet.
Allow me to rephrase: quiet for me. The world was obviously going to shit, but the little rundown supernatural sliver of it that was Inonda had remained strangely placid. In fact, my most exciting project during the past four months had been sorting out Charon’s estate.
The calm, the storm—all those old clichés played heavily on my psyche.
“You haven’t heard?” the ancient vampire asked.
“Heard what?”
“Your office is on fire.”
Okay. I should mention that quiet is a relative term. Once the ramshackle town you call home almost plunges into supernatural anarchy multiple times, minor events like common house fires turn into illegible footnotes.
“And how would you know?” It wasn’t like the vamp could sit on a park bench in the daylight and surveil the joint for suspicious activity.
“My network of sources.” There was a long pause. “The Council will come for you, sooner or later.” I heard him take a puff on his e-cig. “My currency is on sooner, yes?”
“I won’t help those fucks.” But there might not be a choice. I watched the border collie’s ears flick back.
“Your old apartment, then your office.” Gunnar sighed. “The attacks are getting bad, my friend. Messages are being sent.”
“Even a blind man can see that,” I said. “The apartment was ruined when the Blood Frost melted, anyway.” Turns out the runoff from a near second Ice Age produces a hell of a lot of water. The summer Texas blizzard was just one of the many things the news enjoyed discussing these days.
Number one, however, remained my ex-lawyer, Tina Chen, and her little press conference
revealing wendigos, the Crimson Conclave and magic. The debate raged: was she a crackpot, or did her announcement contain long-hidden truths? No one could ask her, since she’d simply disappeared. But I could thank her for the subcommittee and constant stream of I think my neighbor’s a werewolf, brah, posts flooding social media.
Look, if your neighbor was a werewolf you’d either be oblivious—like you’d been for the past million years—or realize it too late to type out three characters, let alone a hundred forty. Because it’d be a damn full moon, and your throat would be missing.
But fear didn’t stop morons from descending on Inonda like a biblical plague with their conspiracy theories. Amateur sleuths, news crews—it didn’t matter. Everyone wanted to crack the story of the century.
So, like I said, quiet. There were no flesh-eating cannibalistic monsters running around. But admittedly, it was the kind of quiet where you heard the tick-tock of the timer attached to a payload of Semtex.
“You cannot ignore the Council forever,” Gunnar said, stating the obvious.
“I’m around if they ever want to talk.”
“Yes, I am sure you have fielded all their calls.” Gunnar snorted on the other end of the line. “Be careful, my friend.”
I looked at the .45 in my waistband. “Just get some sleep.”
I hung up and let out a deep breath. The Sol Council had made it clear, after the Blood Frost, that I was their bitch. Along with the Journal of Annihilation, they’d taken the essence gauge and a sample of Argos’s blood. The first two items could lead them to absolute power.
And the blood would make me help them with their dirty work. The ultimate leverage: the threat of making my oldest friend suffer. Or worse.
But I wouldn’t help them. Hence the continued escalation. Only fools believed creatures of light essence were benevolent. These pricks had caused me more recent grief than Marrack and Isabella combined.
Which was no easy feat, mind you.
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