Marked For Death: A Dark Urban Fantasy Novel

by Becca Blake

  Casey hissed and flew into the air. More spikes grew from her body as her flesh continued to morph into a demonic corruption. Sharp claws broke free from her fingertips. With one smooth movement, she swooped down and slashed at me.

  My attempt to dodge the blow wasn’t quick enough. Pain shot through me like wildfire as her claws raked across my ribs.

  I hardly had time to reposition before she dropped into another dive. Again I attempted to avoid her attack, but she was still too fast. Four daggers sliced diagonally across my hip.

  I gripped my sword tighter, breathing through the pain as I waited for her to come for me again. Realizing what I meant to do, she stayed airborne, flapping her wings to keep well out of my reach.

  “Jacob!” I shouted over my shoulder. “You have to get up.”

  I hated how weak my voice was, how uncertain I sounded. But I couldn’t do this alone.

  Not again. Not after losing Ayla.

  If I could just wake him up, we might have a chance.

  But my unconscious partner didn’t move.

  Above us, Casey released another blast of the electric blue energy. The electricity crackled around her hands and shot in my direction. Her attacks while she’d been human had been impressive enough, but her magic was even more intense now that she’d transformed.

  I raised my blade and touched my fingers to the steel. The electric bolts hissed as they connected with my ward and dissipated.

  Casey’s eyes widened in surprise. “Are you hunters? From the Arbiters of Shadow?”

  Her voice was twisted and deeper than it had been before. It echoed in her throat as she spoke, but even through the distortion, it carried a hint of curiosity. Maybe even fear.

  Had she never encountered any of us before?

  I kept my ward up, in case Casey decided to use another sudden blast of dark magic, but it wouldn’t withstand a diving attack. She would crash right through it.

  Then again, she only seemed to know dark magic. If she hadn’t encountered magical wards before, she might not know how they worked.

  It was a long shot, but I didn’t have many options.

  “You can’t get through this barrier. So, why don’t you just tell me what you want?” I asked, hoping the bluff would stall her long enough for Jacob to wake up and help me out.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Maybe I can help you.”

  “You’re not here to help me, hunter. You came here to kill me.” Casey let out an inhuman screech and dove again.

  This time, the blunt force of Casey’s fist slammed into my face instead of the dagger-sharp claws on her fingertips.

  My sword slid across the floor as Casey pinned me down. A black claw closed around my throat, and I gasped for air. The edges of my vision began to darken.

  I kicked and flailed under her crushing weight as I dug frantically at the hands around my neck. One of my fingernails broke against the hardened tissue. My gun dug into my back as I struggled, and I cursed myself for not remembering it sooner. I could have shot Casey right out of the sky. Pinned beneath the ground and my body, it was useless.

  So much for proving to Orion that I was ready to be back in the field. I was going to die on my first job.

  No.

  I would not die like this. Not now, not here in this warehouse at the hands of this demonic bitch.

  All my bitterness and grief from Ayla’s death, all the disdain I felt for this woman, the anger I felt at my new partner and the Council members who’d paired me with him… it all exploded out of me in a blinding rage. With whatever air I had left in my lungs, I screamed.

  Power surged through me and pulsed magical energy through my body.

  The fury felt good.

  Magic had never felt like this before. It had always been controlled, clinical. This magic surged within me, an unrelenting wildfire of emotion.

  This was exquisite. Exhilarating.

  Casey writhed in the air as the flames surrounded her. With a nightmarish screech, she dove for me, turning herself into a plummeting fireball.

  Still on the floor, I rolled for my weapon just in time to thrust it upward. Steel carved through sinew and bone as I severed Casey’s left wing from her body.

  She veered to the side in an effort to regain control of her flight, but her momentum pulled her into a violent collision with the ground. She whimpered as she dragged herself toward the emerald.

  Ignoring the pain throbbing from my various injuries, I let adrenaline carry me forward. I didn’t know if the gem could do anything to save Casey, but I wasn’t about to give her the opportunity to try.

  “No,” I snarled. My self-control was long gone as I succumbed to the surging rage. Flames erupted from my fingertips as I kicked the gem under a nearby car.

  Now hidden from the moonlight’s reach, the emerald glow faded, and Casey’s demonic form receded. Only her nude human body was left slumped on the floor, curled up into a pitiful ball. She howled in agony. Though the wings had disappeared along with the rest of her demonic traits, a chunk of flesh was missing from her left shoulder.

  “Who are you? Where did you get this emerald?” I pressed the tip of my blade against her neck. I wanted to press harder. I wanted her dead.

  “Just kill me,” the woman wailed.

  As the magical fury raged through me, I resisted the urge to comply.

  I needed information first.

  “Answer my questions first. Tell me who you are, what you’re doing here, and what this emerald is.”

  “Riley?”

  The familiar male voice that called my name pulled me right out of the moment, and a sense of dread froze the flame inside me.

  Chapter Six

  Orion ran toward me like something out of a dream I couldn’t quite comprehend. He had his sword out, and he wore the blank expression that came with blocking his emotions to use magic.

  What was he doing at the warehouse? It wasn’t like he could stop by quickly to check on us on his way to his next meeting. Omaha was more than a little out of the way.

  Before I could put my questions into words, he placed his hand firmly on my shoulder. “Move, Riley.”

  My mind reeled as I stepped aside. How much of the fight had he seen? If he’d been standing there for all of it, he would have stepped in to help sooner, wouldn’t he?

  Had he seen how I stopped Casey? I still wasn’t even sure what that was.

  Or maybe I knew exactly what it was and just didn’t want to admit it to myself.

  Orion pushed the toe of his boot into Casey’s side and nudged her. She rolled onto her back with a pained groan.

  “The lady asked you a question,” Orion said, his voice a low growl. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

  Casey let out a broken, pathetic noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I just want you to kill me.”

  He stepped on her left shoulder, pushing the fresh wound into the dirty floor, then repeated his questions.

  Casey’s shriek interrupted my attempts to regain control over my mind. I had to rebuild the mental barriers that would steady my racing heart.

  Her cries turned into a choking laughter. Despite the excruciating pain she appeared to be in, and her hopeless position, she spat at Orion’s feet. “Nothing you can do to me can compare to what Raxael would have done if I hadn’t tried to stop it.”

  “Stop what?” I asked. “And who is Raxael?”

  It sounded like he was their boss—and probably a demon. That meant he was our next target.

  Orion cut off her reply with a blade across her throat. Her head drooped to the side as blood poured from the wound.

  The mental barriers I’d been rebuilding in my mind crumbled. My fingertips warmed as I watched Orion with something between anger and disbelief. “That’s it? You just kill
ed her? She was about to talk!”

  “She wasn’t going to talk. She was just going to continue spewing useless garbage at us. Besides, she told me everything I needed to know.” He pulled out a cloth from his pocket and wiped his sword clean before returning it to its sheath.

  This was nothing more than business for him—just another day at the office for a demon hunter. Hell, I’d been ready to kill her myself. Still, something about the way he killed her felt wrong.

  “So, do you know who Raxael is?” I asked. “You didn’t give her a chance to finish talking.”

  “Are you hurt?” he asked, ignoring my question.

  Thanks to the rush of adrenaline and power during the fight, I hadn’t noticed my injuries. The reminder brought the pain back with a fierce intensity that made my entire torso feel like it had been set alight. I looked down at my waist and peeled my shirt away from my skin. The top had been shredded in multiple places, and what was left of it was now soaked with my blood.

  “A bit,” I said.

  “We need to take care of those.” He moved toward me with his hands held out, as though he wanted to show me he wasn’t a threat. “Let me have a look.”

  I turned to the side. “Those claws hurt like hell.”

  Orion lifted the shreds of my shirt and examined the slashes that marred my torso. “She didn’t get you very badly. Nothing too deep, anyway. Looks like you got lucky.”

  “Lucky. Sure.”

  “Well, you’re not dead.” He retrieved a small glass jar from his bag. After dipping two fingers into the gooey green mixture, he spread it over my skin.

  I hissed at the sting from the healing herbs.

  “Stay still, dammit,” Orion said.

  I tried to stop myself from moving, but I couldn’t help the way I flinched away from his touch. My skin burned from the healing solution. The pain always got worse before it got better as the skin knitted itself back together.

  It sucked, but it was better than the pain of waiting for injuries to heal naturally.

  When he finished applying the magical herbs, he tore his shirt off and wrapped it around my waist as a bandage. “That should work until we get back home to Haygrove and can have someone look at you.”

  “Wait. Why are you here?” I blurted out. “Were you following us?”

  “We got more intel that there might be something more going on here. I thought this was a false alarm, but I guess with all the demonic activity in the area, we should have known better.”

  “It really didn’t sound like anything serious. You couldn’t have known.”

  “As soon as I found out there was more to it, I tried calling to get you to turn around, but you didn’t answer your phone.”

  I patted the pouches strapped to my thigh. “I must have left it in the car.”

  “What exactly happened here?”

  “Tell me who Raxael is first.”

  “I’m your commanding officer, Riley. Maybe show at least a little respect?” He wasn’t angry. He just sounded tired.

  “You sent us in here blind,” I said. “And you killed our only lead without letting her talk. An explanation is the least you can do.”

  If I was talking to anyone other than Orion, I wouldn’t even dream of speaking that way to my superior. But after the night I’d had, I was exhausted, and I wanted answers.

  “I’m sorry, Ry. I didn’t intend for this to be a real mission. I was just trying to get you and Jacob to spend some time together before throwing you into something life-threatening. The two of you had some issues to work out.”

  That was the damn truth. And this mission only made that problem worse.

  “Wait, where is Jacob?” Orion asked.

  “Oh, crap,” I muttered.

  After the hit he took, I had no idea if he was even still alive. In all the chaos, I hadn’t thought to check on him. I ran over to the stairs where I left him and knelt down. His chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, but his eyes stayed closed.

  “What happened to him?” Orion asked.

  “The girl blew a hole in the ceiling. It all came down around us and knocked us both over. I got up, but he didn’t.”

  Orion crouched down next to Jacob and touched his face. Taking care not to jostle him too much, he pulled his head away from the stairs to get a look.

  At the contact, Jacob’s eyes fluttered open. He groaned as he tried to push himself upright. “I’m fine, sir.”

  “Like the infernal hells you’re fine. You’re bleeding all over the floor. That gash on your head is pretty deep. Even with the help of healing herbs to do most of the work, it looks like you’ll need stitches.” Just as he’d done for me, Orion applied the healing solution and wrapped the wound.

  “Thanks,” Jacob mumbled to Orion as he helped him up.

  “Did you see any of the fight?” Orion asked. “Or were you out for all of it?”

  He sent a worried glance my way. He must have seen what happened with my magic, though he hadn’t said anything about it yet. I had to hope Jacob had remained unconscious for the whole fight.

  I was confident that Orion would cover for me. But Jacob… he hated me, and he’d made no secret of not wanting to be my partner. There was no way he’d keep this from his father.

  Using dark magic was punishable by death. It wouldn’t matter if it was an accident.

  “No, sir. I didn’t see anything,” Jacob said.

  That was reassuring, but it did little to relieve the pressure in my chest.

  While Orion helped Jacob out to the car, I hunted down the cloth that Casey had used to hold the emerald. I used the piece of fabric to pick it up, careful not to let the magical artifact touch my skin. I didn’t know if it still held any energy, and I didn’t want to make the mistake of finding out.

  I walked away from the moonlight and looked it over, still being careful not to touch it. The emerald was uncut, its surface rough and unrefined. Without the glowing magical aura, it appeared to be completely mundane.

  Orion returned, and I wrapped the emerald back up in the cloth.

  “What is that thing?” he asked.

  “I think this is how she transformed.” I passed him the bundled gem. “I think you should keep it away from the moonlight. That’s what seemed to set it off.”

  Orion nodded. “We’ll get the folks at headquarters to check it out.”

  “Great.” I leaned back against the hood of an old car with a heavy sigh. My entire body and mind ached with exhaustion. I was looking forward to finding the closest trashy motel and crashing for the night—or what little night we had left, anyway.

  “You still haven’t told me what happened here. And don’t even think about trying to distract me with another question,” Orion said.

  “Jacob and I were alone when we got here. It didn’t seem like we were going to find much, but we decided to stay the night to be sure.”

  “And she showed up?”

  I nodded.

  “She was acting alone?”

  “Now that you mention it, there was another girl with her.” After everything that had happened, I had completely forgotten about Alexis. “She went down after Casey—the woman with the emerald and the demonic power—attacked her. I don’t know if she’s alive or not.”

  I led Orion over to where I’d last seen her. The ground where she collapsed was empty. There were no obvious signs of escape, no footprints or conspicuous trails of blood. Orion and I did a quick sweep of the area, but Alexis didn’t appear to be hiding in any of the surrounding cars.

  “I guess she got away while we were distracted,” I said.

  “I’ll note that in my report. We’ll track her down.” He lowered his voice and stepped in closer to me. “Listen to me carefully, Riley. You cannot tell anyone how you defeated this woman.”

  “You saw that?”<
br />
  “What you did, that was elemental magic. Dark magic. If word gets back to the Council…” He shook his head. “You can’t let that happen. They don’t make exceptions.”

  “I know,” I said, swallowing back the heavy lump that had formed in my throat. “What are we going to do?”

  “I’ll work with you so you can learn how to stifle it better. In the meantime, we’re going to tell them I got here in time to save you. We’ll say she knocked out both of you, and I was the one who stopped her,” Orion said.

  “I don’t understand how this happened. I’ve never used dark magic before. I don’t even know how it works,” I said, burying my face in my hands.

  “Dark magic comes from raw emotions, which is why we’re so careful about shutting them off while we fight. When people accidentally use dark magic for the first time, it’s usually either an emotional response to loss or the fear of an intense life-or-death situation. It’s something they can’t control.”

  I certainly hadn’t been able to control it earlier. I got angry, and the magic exploded out of me.

  “Why doesn’t this happen more often? Not everyone has perfect control over their emotions when they’re about to die.” My voice quieted as the realization fully struck me. “I was about to die.”

  “This is my fault.” Orion pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Your fault? How?”

  “I should have never cleared you for duty so soon. You weren’t ready.”

  “That’s not true. I made it through my month of mandatory leave.”

  “No. This is exactly why we still have to clear you for duty after the death of a partner, even once you’re out of the waiting period. Emotions are more volatile in a time of upheaval. When you’re grieving, your barriers are weak. You have to work to rebuild them. You hadn’t healed yet from losing Ayla.”

  “She was my friend. How am I supposed to move on like nothing happened?”

  “You don’t have to forget her,” Orion said softly. “But you do have to accept that she’s gone. And you have to stop blaming yourself for it. That’s the only way you can get your emotions back under control.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that,” I said.