Marked For Death: A Dark Urban Fantasy Novel

by Becca Blake

  “So why did they do it this time?” he asked.

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out,” I said. “How’s that infernal wound doing, by the way?”

  He rolled his shoulder. “A bit sore, but not too bad. It wasn’t as deep as it looked. I’m sure they wouldn’t have let us get any serious injuries,” he said.

  “Plenty of people did, from what I heard. Some of them died. The same could have happened to you.”

  Jacob had nothing to say in response to that, but when I stole a quick glance at him, he looked unusually pale.

  The last hour of the drive dragged on, stretching into what felt like forever before we finally crossed the river and found ourselves in Omaha. Jacob put the address for the old warehouse into his phone, and the GPS directed us twenty miles south of town.

  I turned into the parking lot of a run-down gas station down the road from the warehouse. The pumps were rusted and filthy, and someone had broken out one of the store’s windows. The plastic wrap that covered the hole fluttered with the gentle breeze. If not for the shiny blue pickup truck parked in front and the red open sign flickering in the doorway, I would have assumed it closed years ago.

  I stepped out of the Cavalier and stretched my legs. It was only four o’clock, so we had plenty of daylight to work with before we would need the flashlights I kept in my pack. I checked the bag a final time, then slung it over my shoulder.

  “I’m going to run into the shop here before we head over. Do you need anything?” I asked.

  “No, I’m good.”

  The inside of the gas station was almost as neglected as the outside, so I didn’t waste much time browsing. When I was ready to check out, I found the cashier resting against the wall, a hat covering his eyes as he slept.

  I cleared my throat and dropped the two bags of chips on the counter in front of him.

  He mumbled an apology as he started ringing me out. “We rarely get customers all the way out here.”

  “Didn’t a kid go missing over this way recently?” I asked, trying not to sound too interested.

  “Yeah, they found him at that old warehouse a few days ago. The police have been in and out of here. Waste of time, if you ask me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Kids are always breaking in there to shoot up. It was only a matter of time before someone got hurt. I’ve been trying to get the county to tear it down for years.”

  I stuffed the chips into my backpack. The more we learned, the more it sounded like we were dealing with a mundane case that involved drugs, but we’d still need to check out the warehouse to do the job right.

  “So you haven’t seen anyone unusual or anything, then?”

  “Not really, other than the two girls who keep coming around. Just more teens sneaking around for a good time, I suppose.”

  I thanked the man for his help, then joined Jacob outside. He was leaning back against the car with his hands in his pockets, but he straightened up as I approached.

  “We can walk to the warehouse from here.” I grabbed my sword from the back seat and adjusted the buckles on my harnesses. “If there is anyone there, we don’t want to drive up and alert them we’re coming.”

  “You don’t think we’ll actually find anything in there, do you?” Jacob asked.

  “Honestly? No, I don’t. But we have to be thorough and have a look. If that doesn’t give us any leads, we can spend tomorrow tracking down the kids who supposedly saw this stuff happen. Most likely, it was a load of crap, and we’ll be able to go home tomorrow night.”

  We followed the back road that led to the warehouse. The bright afternoon sun beat down on us as we walked, and I wished I hadn’t decided on wearing my full gear to a dead-end mission.

  “Should we go in with invisibility up?” Jacob asked.

  It was probably an unnecessary caution, considering how unlikely we were to find anything, but this was our first mission together. We needed to do things the right way.

  “That’s not a bad idea. Do you want to do the honors?”

  Jacob shook his head. “I’m not the best at holding my focus.”

  I thought back to the failed sleep spell he’d used on the hellhound during the evaluation. It worked great at first, especially for such a complex spell, but it hadn’t lasted long. If he’d had a normal evaluation without a dangerous encounter, would he even have passed? I didn’t much care for the thought of being partnered with someone who couldn’t hold up a simple invisibility spell.

  “No worries,” I said. “I can take care of it.”

  I waited for a car to pass us by on the main road, then sealed away my emotions. The annoyance I’d felt earlier disappeared, replaced by the familiar cool and collected sense of tranquility. I channeled my energy into the spell, letting it wash over both of us. The air shimmered around us like summer heat on the pavement, then returned to normal.

  I couldn’t see Jacob anymore, but thanks to our connection from sharing the spell, I sensed his presence beside me when I pulled away my hand.

  “We’re good?” he asked.

  I nodded before realizing he couldn’t see me anymore. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  The front door of the warehouse hung lazily off its hinges, whining as the wind pushed it back and forth. Graffiti covered the building’s exterior, complete with language that was as colorful as the various hues of spray paint. Though the building had been abandoned for a long time, the disturbed dust and dirt everywhere made it obvious that people had passed through recently.

  “Let’s scout the outside first,” I whispered.

  We made our way around the perimeter slowly, careful not to make any loud noises that would give us away. There were no cars parked anywhere nearby, though that didn’t necessarily mean it would be empty; I hadn’t pulled my car up to the building, either.

  “Looks clear,” I said. “But I’ll hold the invisibility until we’re inside, just in case.”

  We ducked under the police caution tape that blocked off the door. The husks of old vehicles, long since stripped of any usable parts, crowded the bottom floor. The warehouse must have once been an auto repair shop or a used car dealership that no one cleared out after the business shuttered.

  Jacob and I moved through the bottom floor, weaving between the cars as we searched for any sign we weren’t alone. The back doors to a van that may have once been white were wide open, and another strip of police tape covered the entrance. Other than the lingering stench of weed that seeped into the van’s cushioned seats, they left no evidence behind.

  I wrinkled my nose and backed out of the van. There didn’t seem to be any traces of a fight. It was looking more and more like this was a freak accident that the kids had lied about. Or maybe they were high enough that they really believed someone with electric hands killed their friend.

  Either way, this recon mission was a bust.

  Satisfied that we were alone, I dropped the invisibility spell. My head hummed with a dull ache as the emotions I’d been holding in returned.

  “Hey, what’s this?” Jacob asked.

  I followed the sound of his voice to find him crouching beside what remained of a pickup truck.

  The metal was warped and twisted at the bottom, and a black scorch mark twisted its way from the fender to the ground below, ending near Jacob’s feet.

  “That could be what we’re looking for,” I said, running my finger over the blackened dirt. There was no way to be certain the marks were magical, but they looked recent.

  “How did the police miss these?” Jacob asked. “I mean, they look fresh.”

  “I doubt they were taking the claims of electricity hands seriously in their search. They seemed to be focused on the kids’ drug hideout over there.” I pointed at the van. “We’ll need more than this to be sure there’s something that concerns us, though. We should keep loo
king.”

  A piece of paper stuck to the windshield of a nearby car caught my attention. I snatched it and looked it over, frowning. The receipt from the gas station had yesterday’s date printed across the top.

  “The kid died a few days ago, didn’t he?” Jacob asked, looking over my shoulder. “This place has been a crime scene.”

  “Right,” I said. “There shouldn’t have been anyone here yesterday.”

  “Do you think they’ll come back?”

  I bit my bottom lip. “I’m not sure. We should stick around for the night to see if anything happens. If not, we’ll head out tomorrow morning to question those kids about what they saw.”

  “We could just go home in the morning and say we questioned them,” Jacob said. “A few burn marks and a receipt won’t be enough to convince HQ something magical happened here, and I doubt the civilian kids have much to say beyond what was in that blog post.”

  “Maybe, but Orion will know if we half-assed the job. We’re not doing that. Come on—let’s go find somewhere to crash.”

  The rooms on the upper level had once been offices, but only piles of garbage and moth-bitten furniture were left in them. I pulled out a blanket from my pack and laid it out on the floor instead of covering the ratty couch in the corner. I could only imagine what sorts of activities had taken place on that couch, and the opened Trojan wrappers strewn around the room were enough to tell me I didn’t want to know.

  The floor would do just fine.

  “It’s getting dark. Do you want to take the first watch?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  I tossed Jacob one of the bags of chips from my backpack. “Hungry?”

  At first he looked irritated, as though he might refuse, but his expression softened. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Come get me in a few hours,” I said as I lay back on my blanket. It surprised me to find that the hard floor wasn’t all that uncomfortable. Or maybe I was too tired to care.

  Just as I began dozing off, a loud banging sound came from the lower level, and a high-pitched scream cut through the air.

  Chapter Five

  “Casey, wait!”

  The female voice from the lower level startled me to my feet. I crept toward the doorway, trying to find an angle to see what was happening downstairs.

  Across the balcony where he’d been standing watch, Jacob dropped low and crawled toward me. He kept his head down and moved slowly, trying not to make too much noise.

  When he made it to me, I touched his arm to cloak us both in another invisibility spell, then peeked over the balcony’s railing.

  The front door, which had barely been hanging onto its frame earlier, had been torn from its hinges. That explained the loud banging, at least. A car’s headlights streamed in through the entrance, casting a spotlight over the lower level of the building.

  “At least we didn’t park out front,” Jacob whispered beside me. “Good call.”

  Not that I had any time to appreciate it, but that was the closest he’d come to giving me a compliment since we met.

  I followed the bright light across the floor, to see the silhouettes of two women, one chasing the other. The pursuer was short and slender, with what looked to be fair skin and blond hair. The woman she followed—Casey, I assumed—was taller, with jet black hair and a fuller figure. Casey walked away from the other woman at a brisk pace, holding something bundled tight against her chest.

  “Leave me alone, Alexis!” Casey came to an abrupt stop at the center of the warehouse and spun on her heels to face the other woman. A blast of power laced with electric energy burst free from her outstretched palm, and the force of it flung Alexis away. The window shattered as she crashed into it.

  I tensed as my hand drifted to the hilt of my sword. We’d been told not to get involved in anything unless we had to, but with someone channeling dark magic beneath us, it was possible we wouldn’t have a choice.

  Jacob stirred beside me, and I held out my arm to stop him.

  “Hang on,” I murmured. “We’ll wait to see what happens.”

  He froze, but I could feel the tension in his muscles, his eagerness to get down there and start a fight. Truthfully, after a month away, I was just as eager as he was. But this was my first mission back in the field, and I would do as I was told. This wasn’t the right time to push boundaries.

  Alexis struggled to push herself upright, though her left arm now hung useless at her side. “You don’t know what that thing is or how it works. For all you know, it could kill you.”

  “So what if it does? We’re going to die anyway. We can’t stop Maki without it, and Raxael will come after the entire coven as soon as he finds out he’s been betrayed. He won’t care who was faithful to him and who wasn’t.”

  “Raxael doesn’t even know who we are. If we just run before it happens—”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Casey said, almost too softly for me to hear as the anger in her voice faded. “Even if we can get away from here, you know he’ll hunt us wherever we go.”

  Alexis stumbled forward, extending her good arm out toward Casey. “Please, don’t do whatever you’re thinking about doing. There has to be a better option.”

  “Back up!” Casey took a few steps back to maintain the distance between them.

  Alexis ignored her warnings and continued walking. “I won’t let you do this.”

  As she backed up, Casey tripped over a piece of scrapped metal. Another blast exploded from her fingers, this one even more powerful than the last. She looked down at her hand, eyes wide.

  This time, Alexis was silent.

  “Alexis?” Casey knelt down next to her, touching her face gently with one hand. With the other, she continued to hold the strange bundle close to her chest. “I didn’t mean it, I swear.”

  From our distance, it was impossible to tell if the girl was still alive.

  There was a soft clink of steel next to me as Jacob drew his blade.

  “Hang on,” I said again, more sharply this time. We had no idea what she had in that bundle or what it could do, and rushing in blind wouldn’t help anyone. After seeing Casey attack her friend twice now, I wanted to avoid a fight we weren’t prepared for.

  Orion’s instructions had been clear: this was strictly a recon mission. Not a hunt.

  “I’m sorry,” Casey said to Alexis’s motionless form. She choked back a sob. “But I have to do this.”

  She unwrapped the fabric around the object and held it up to examine it. A multifaceted stone the size of her palm caught the light from the car outside and glimmered a beautiful, deep green.

  “What is that thing?” Jacob asked, keeping his voice a low whisper.

  Aside from the obvious answer that it was some sort of magical artifact, I couldn’t say. “Not sure. It doesn’t look good, though.”

  Without giving me any warning, Jacob jumped up and ran for the stairs.

  “Wait, no—”

  Frustration slipped through my mental barrier as he ignored me. My hold on the spell cracked, and our invisibility faded away.

  If Jacob realized he was visible, it didn’t stop him from rushing down to confront Casey. She spun around to face him, holding the gem back to protect it from him.

  “Who are you? Are you with the coven?”

  “Give that to me, and no one has to get hurt here,” Jacob said as he approached her.

  An ugly, derisive laugh escaped from Casey’s lips. “Yeah, right. You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

  I did my best to rein in my emotions as I sprinted after him. If we were going to run headfirst into a fight we weren’t prepared for, after giving up our tactical advantage, I would need my magic back. I leapt down the last few steps and took my position at my partner’s side.

  I could chew him out for blowing me off later. Right now, we nee
ded to be a team.

  “You heard him,” I said. “Hand it over.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Casey raised her hand, and I instinctively lifted my blade to summon a ward. Instead of aiming at us, though, she pointed her palm upward and set free a blast of energy. The old building shook and groaned as Casey’s magic tore a hole in the roof.

  “Watch out!” Jacob yelled.

  He dove for me as pieces of the ceiling fell around us. A metal beam crashed down where I’d just been standing. As we tumbled to the floor together, Jacob hovered over me, shielding me with his body.

  “We’re even now,” he said as the building’s rumbling settled.

  Moonlight poured into the warehouse through the new opening, highlighting Casey’s pale, wide-eyed face and the emerald she held. Reacting to the light, the gem glowed a bright green for a few seconds, then set all of its energy free.

  The explosion flung us against the stairs. I sucked in air as my elbow cracked hard against a corner and my head slammed into the railing. A trickle of blood rolled down my cheek, and the coppery taste wandered into my mouth. As I reached blindly above my head, my hand found the railing. I pulled myself up, legs shaking beneath my own weight. A ringing noise echoed in my throbbing head.

  Jacob was on the ground in front of me, sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs.

  He groaned as I shook his shoulder. As I rolled him over, I got a better look at the blood that covered the side of his face, soaking his dark hair. He looked around with unfocused eyes, his eyelids fluttering.

  I was on my own.

  As the smoke cleared, Casey stepped out from the shadows. The raven-haired girl was no longer recognizable as human. Bat-like wings had sprouted from her shoulder blades, and spiky black flesh protruded from her body, leaving her clothing torn to shreds at her feet. She’d nearly doubled in size, and what had previously been a bitter laugh turned into hideous cackling.

  The emerald clattered to the floor, and its glow flooded the warehouse with eerie green light.