Magic Hunter: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Vampire's Mage Series Book 1)
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“Vengeance for what?”
A wave of guilt washed over her. “I mean, because of what we did in the interrogation room. His eyes looked so much like the inc—”
“You did nothing wrong in that interrogation room,” Josiah cut her off. “The Brotherhood need us to act quickly. The mages have infested half of New England now, and something terrible is coming. Worse than the Boston Slaughter. If we show them weakness, they win. It’s that simple.”
A sigh slid from her. “Something is definitely coming. And I want to be on the side of the Brotherhood when it comes. It wasn’t just the shadow mage on our campus tonight. There was a sea mage, too.”
“Did you see him?”
She shook her head. “No. He must have been further away, but his magic smelled of the ocean.”
He swore under his breath. “I shouldn’t have allowed you go out alone tonight.”
The comment hit her like a slap in the face. “Of course you should have. I’m a Hunter. Going out alone is part of the job, and you know I can fight.”
“Your combat skills are incredible, but mentally you’re not battle ready. You can’t let your emotions get the better of you.” He shook his head. “You need to master your fear, or the demons will see you as prey.”
She flinched. “We’ve been over this. It’s why you singled me out for that special session downstairs.” She took a deep breath. She had no clue why she’d made it out alive at all, and now, she just needed Josiah to get to the point. “So what’s the deal. Am I fired?”
“The Chamber will review the case, but it’s not as if you’re the first novice to screw up. The Brotherhood won’t want to lose you. You’ll be giving them intel about two mages on the Thorndike Campus. No one else can sense them from so far away, or with such precision.”
“I’ve had an excellent teacher.” She exhaled slowly. He wasn’t an unreasonable Guardian, and he always seemed to have her back. On top of that, Josiah was one of the best Hunters the Brotherhood had ever trained. Randolph Loring had promoted him to Guardian at only twenty-three years old.
Her relationship with him should have been awkward after the break up, but she’d quickly stopped thinking of him in a romantic way—even if his chiseled physique excited all the other female novices.
“It’s not just your hunting skills that make you valuable,” he said, eyes flicking to her neckline. “With your Computer Science degree, the Brotherhood will want you to work on their security systems.” He pulled out a small, iron pendant, inset with rubies. “I still have your chalice.”
“Next time.”
His eyes met hers, and he handed it over. “Take it. You’ve earned it, anyway.”
She forced a smile. It was sweet of him to try make her feel better, though she didn’t deserve this. “Thank you, Josiah.”
He pulled out an iron flask, etched with Latin phrases, and handed it to her—ambrosia, the sacred drink of the Hunters. “This will help clear you of the stain of magic.”
She took a sip of the sweet liquid, and instantly her aching muscles relaxed. The stuff was addictive.
“Better?” He lowered his eyes. “You know I only had to end it with you because the Brotherhood wouldn’t allow us to be together.”
She handed him the flask again. “I know, Josiah.”
“I’ll still protect you.”
Her father’s message flashed in her mind. I can’t protect you. “That reminds me.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket, bringing up Mason’s text. “Any idea what Mason is talking about?”
His brow furrowed, Josiah stared at the phone. “How should I know? Why don’t you ask him?”
“He’s not answering. He shut off his phone.”
Josiah arched an eyebrow. “Great parenting.”
“He’s not really a… parent,” she muttered.
“I have no idea what he’s talking about, but like I said, I’m here to protect you. Get some rest. I’ll let you know when you need to come before the Chamber.”
The blood drained from her head as a horrible thought struck her. “Will I need to go in front of Randolph Loring and everything?” He was the flame-haired leader of the Brotherhood. His family’s power stretched back centuries. The man was at least ten times as intimidating as Josiah.
“Relax. Randolph has better things to do than listen to a novice.”
Rosalind rose, but Josiah touched her hand. “Don’t think about the mage. Whatever he said to you, he was just trying to screw with your mind. And stay out of trouble tonight. If a mage has marked you for some reason, you need to stay hidden. You know how much they’d love to take you as a slave for their own disgusting purposes. He’ll want to rape and feed on you. Or turn you into a monster like him.”
She winced, thinking of how easily the shadow mage could lure someone into a trap. His beauty and sensual aura were all the weapons he needed. “I’ll be safe. Thanks, Josiah.” She curled her fingers around the chalice pendant.
“Lux in tenebris lucet.”
She smiled. “Light shines in the darkness.”
As she left the Great Hall, she tried Mason again, but the call went straight to voicemail. At the sound of his clipped voice on the recording, her muscles tensed. It was hard not to remember him calling her an “abomination.” Hard not to think of him tying her to a chair to beat her legs every time he lost his temper. She had no idea why he’d wanted to adopt her at all.
As she walked through Harvard Yard, she shoved the images from her mind and tried to imagine her life before Mason. Before the vamps ripped her life away by slaughtering her parents. She could remember only glimmers. Buttery sunlight. Someone patching up her knee. Toes sinking into the sand on a beach. Her parents giving her periwinkle and yellow wildflowers on her birthday. Her own face, smiling.
She could have sworn someone else lingered at the edges of the memories: a boy.
With a jolt, she remembered his eyes, pale and gray—not unlike the shadow mage’s.
Chilled to the bone, she hugged herself tight.
Of course, it wasn’t like gray was such an unusual color.
Yep. That mage definitely messed with my head.
Chapter 4
By the time she returned to Thorndike’s campus, the rain had slowed to a light drizzle. Rosalind stalked across the quad, trying to sneak through the shadows undetected. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her. At least she had her weapon belt if the mage planned to stalk her.
Once inside her dorm building, she released a breath. Demons and mages could enter here, but their magic wouldn’t work within the walls.
After the monsters had come out of the magical closet five years ago, Thorndike’s buildings had been refitted with aura detectors that sprayed iron dust. At least the building would keep her safe from the lethal spells of a psychotic mage.
She strode down the hall to her room and unlocked the door. After pulling off her coat, she flicked on the light.
She gasped. Two men in black suits stood in her room—one thin, with impossibly long legs, and the other roughly the size and heft of an industrial fridge. What the fuck?
Instantly, her hand flew to her vial of dust.
Fridge smiled. “Well-trained, I see. But that won’t work on us.”
“We’re from the Brotherhood,” said the long-shanked one. “We don’t use magic.”
Her mind turned from confusion to horror. She really was in trouble. “I just saw my Guardian. I thought everything was going to be okay. What are you doing in my room? And where’s my roommate?”
Longshanks tilted his narrow head, studying her. “Randolph Loring sent us.”
Randolph Loring knew who she was? She wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or terrified. “Is this about the mages? How did you hear about that so fast?”
Fridge licked his pale lips, edging closer. “I’m sure we will enjoy hearing about the other mages. But no. This is about you, Rosalind.”
“I want to see Josiah,”
she managed. “I just gave him intel about two mages on campus. You should be hunting them.”
“Josiah can’t help you now,” said Longshanks.
Fear crawled up the back of her neck. “Josiah is my Guardian. I need him here for this conversation.”
Fridge smiled, his long teeth like a row of tombstones. “No. You don’t.”
She took a step back, her mind burning with panic. She shouldn’t be afraid of her own people, and yet… “Why are you here for me? I haven’t done anything wrong. There’s a shadow mage and a sea-mage stalking the campus, and you’re here harassing me.”
Longshanks edged closer, and Rosalind took another step back—right into another body. A quick glance behind her told her the third person was a woman—a very large, muscular woman. Her heart clenched. There were three of them, trapping her in the dorm room.
“We know you’re a mage,” the woman whispered in her ear. “And I know you’re not stupid enough to resist us.”
A wave of horror slammed into Rosalind. A mage. Now that wasn’t possible, even if she didn’t know who her birth parents were. Unlike the other monsters, mages were made, not born. To become a mage, you needed to actually commit to learning magic. It could take years to learn Angelic, the magical language. It wasn’t like it happened by accident. “You’ve made a mistake. I’ve never learned a spell in my life.”
“The Brotherhood doesn’t make mistakes,” Fridge said. “Cuff her.”
The woman gripped Rosalind’s arms, and Rosalind’s adrenaline surged. Once the Brotherhood had someone in their sights, they didn’t tend to change their minds easily. She didn’t know what they did with convicted mages, but she was pretty sure no one arrested by the Brotherhood made it into the daylight again.
Tammi was right about one thing: the Brotherhood didn’t do trials.
A survival instinct—pure panic—blazed through the ancient part of her brain. Run, Rosalind.
Before the woman could finishing cuffing her, Rosalind reached back, grabbing the woman by her neck. She locked her arm around the woman’s neck and, using her body weight as leverage, flipped the woman over her shoulder and onto the floor. Free, Rosalind rushed for the door to the hall, slamming it behind her.
By the time Fridge busted through, she’d pulled her gun from her belt, already loaded with silver bullets. She pointed it at the Hunter’s head. The bullets were meant for werewolves, of course—not other Hunters—but they’d still kill a human.
Was she pulling the dumbest stunt of her life right now? Probably—but it was too late to turn back. She just needed to get down the stairwell, and out the door, then find a quiet place to get in touch with Josiah. He’d help her sort this out. He had promised to protect her.
Fridge paused at the edge of the doorframe, blocking in the others. He raised his hands, his face reddening with rage. “The mage has a gun.”
“If I were an actual mage, I wouldn’t need a gun. But like I said. I’m not a mage.” It wasn’t like she was going to use it on him, but he didn’t need to know that. Slowly, she backed away from him, edging closer to the stairwell with her gun trained on the Hunters.
When she reached the stairs, she bellowed at the top of her lungs, “Streeaaaaaak niiiiiiiiiight!”
Within moments, hallway doors slammed open. Rosalind didn’t wait around to watch her classmates strip off. She was already gunning down the steps. The horde of naked college students would cause just enough chaos to let her slip outside undetected.
With a racing pulse, she burst through the front doors, careening for one of the dark alleys between the campus’s brick Victorian buildings. She knew exactly how to hide on the Thorndike campus, and slipped past some recycling bins into an unlit passage. From there, she could sneak through to the football field and jump into a cab.
She’d have just enough time to call Josiah—assuming he could help her at all. Maybe she’d just watched her entire life blow up before her eyes.
From the alley, she sprinted past the darkened, tree-lined tennis courts, heading for the football field. Fear blazed, giving her extra speed, until a rhythmic noise stopped her in her tracks.
Rotors beat overhead, and a circular light danced over the tennis courts. Search helicopters. Were they for her? When the light swerved over the football field, she saw men, swarming the grass in dark clothes. The light swerved again, and she caught a glimpse of flame-red hair, and the glint of an iron chalice pendant. A chill gripped her spine.
Randolph Loring. He’d come for her, leading the hunt.
Seven hells. What the fuck was going on? The Brotherhood had brought down their whole damn army, searching for her. Her body buzzed with panic. This is all wrong. She belonged with the Brotherhood—not fighting them. It was her destiny to become a Guardian.
Yet here was Randolph Loring, hunting her.
Tendrils of a cold, ancient magic tickled her body, and she whirled, nearly jumping out of her skin. Someone was coming right for her on a sleek, black motorcycle.
The shadow mage.
Her mouth went dry as he pulled to a stop beside her. “Get on the bike or you’ll die.”
She wasn’t sure if that was a threat or a rescue attempt, but his commanding voice was awfully convincing either way. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
As if he’d tell her the truth.
“I already told you what’s happening. They know about you. I told you to run, and you didn’t listen.”
She shook her head. “But—”
“You don’t have time. You can come with me, or let the mage-Hunters murder you. Your choice.”
She wanted to throw up. She couldn’t believe she was even contemplating the advice of a shadow mage, yet Randolph Loring was hunting her. There would be no trial, no chance to explain herself.
Gunshots rang out, and an unholy pain splintered her shoulder. She screamed, instinctively dropping to a crouch, hands clutching the bleeding wound. The pain ripped her chest apart, taking her breath away.
I need to get the hell out of here before they slaughter me. Trying to block out the pain, she jumped on the bike and wrapped her arms around the mage’s waist. With her face tucked in close to his leather jacket, she stifled a scream as he took off.
The helicopter swerved above, and another hail of bullets ripped through the night air. She flinched. She would die, slaughtered by her own people before she got the chance to defend herself.
The mage sped through a roundabout. A powerful wave of magic vibrated over her skin as he chanted a spell.
The gunshots fell silent, and the helicopter wavered in the night sky before careening off course. Was the mage actually controlling the goddamn wind?
Horror punched a hole in her gut. She’d just been shot by the Brotherhood and taken up with a powerful monster—one capable of murdering a whole legion of Hunters. Tears pricked her eyes, and she clamped them shut, trying to gain control. She couldn’t let herself fall apart.
As they raced through Cambridge, the wind rushed over her skin, making her shiver. Or maybe she was shivering from the certainty that the rest of her life would be spent as a fugitive. She’d end up as the mage’s sex slave, or a vamp’s blood-bag, until someone decided to reap her soul for the god of night.
The searing pain in her shoulder stole her breath. Think of something calming. That was what she always did when the world seemed in danger of shutting her down. The beaches in England, the hawthorns, blue and yellow wildflowers.
It wasn’t working.
Nauseated, she heard the sorcerer chant another spell—and gaped as both their bodies glimmered out of view. Gods, the invisibility is a mind-fuck.
That’s it, then. She’d just hurled herself into the dark side, and now she couldn’t help but second-guess her choice. Had Randolph Loring really come for her? What if this was some sort of test—one that she’d failed, wretchedly? Or what if it had been a horrible series of accidents, and she’d just thrown herself at a seductive shadow mage?
At least, they’d always been right until now.
Now, even Josiah wouldn’t be able to help her. Kind of hard to claim you were innocent of magic when you ran off clinging to a shadow mage’s chest.
Her dark hair whipped wildly around her head, and the wind stung her skin through her blood-soaked shirt. The mage had offered to help her, but there would be a price. With mages, nothing was ever what it seemed.
She forced herself to block out the agony. They raced down Mass Ave, heading for Harvard Square—the location of the Brotherhood’s Chambers. Why the hell would he take her to the Brotherhood? But as they wove through Harvard Square’s congested intersection it was clear the mage had other plans. He was probably ushering her to his demon harem right now.
She felt sick. Her life was over, and she didn’t even know why. Sure, she’d screwed up tonight, but she was innocent.
If anyone had answers to this catastrophe, it was the shadow mage. She wanted to ask him everything he knew, even though he turned her stomach in knots of fear.
“Why do they think I’m a mage?” she shouted as they tore down Brattle Street.
He ignored her.
They zoomed past a row of old Victorian mansions before veering sharply left—heading right for wrought-iron cemetery gate. It swung open just as they approached.
At the sight of the gently sloping paths and marble graves, she shuddered with cold recognition. He’d taken her to Mount Auburn Cemetery. The place wasn’t so much a graveyard as a full-blown Victorian necropolis—a walled city of the dead, complete with street names and towering mausoleums.
And this was the point where she’d learn how she would die.