Burned by Magic: a New Adult Fantasy Novel (The Baine Chronicles Book 1)

by Walt, Jasmine

  “I had no idea she’d died of silver poisoning,” I murmured, tracing the outline of her face with the tip of my finger. She’d been part of a crew, whereas I was a solo mercenary, so our paths didn’t really cross. But she’d always struck me as frank and dedicated, one of the true diamonds amongst a sea full of rhinestones. And now she was gone.

  Comenius said nothing, simply laying a hand on my shoulder as I read the article. It said that she’d been found in her apartment on a Friday night, dead on her living room floor. The Mage’s Guild was conducting an autopsy, but there was no conclusive evidence pointing to a cause of death, murder weapon or killer, for that matter.

  “They wrote her off,” I muttered, my fingers curling so tightly around the edges of the paper that it started to shred. “I remember now. The Guild said she’d died from some kind of fucking heart failure.” Which was incredibly rare amongst shifters, especially one who was as healthy and in shape as Sillara had been. Magorah, why hadn’t I seen it? I should have questioned it, should have suspected something… but of course, I’d been too wrapped up in my own problems, and I hadn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” Comenius said gently, rubbing his thumb along the edge of my shoulder. I wanted to lean into him, to sink into the comfort he offered, but I couldn’t – someone was killing off shifters, and I needed to find out who.

  “Do you think the mages might be in on this?”

  I glanced up at Noria, who’d spoken. “You think the Mage’s Guild is responsible for the murders?”

  Noria shrugged, lines bracketing her mouth as she scanned another one of the articles. “I can’t say for sure, but it seems like someone’s definitely trying to keep all of these hush-hush. I mean, usually the papers are quick to connect cases like this, and yet we have six issues here, spread across three months, and not a single peep from the media. What gives?”

  “But this is the Shifter Courier,” I argued. “These stories aren’t published by the Mage’s Guild.”

  Noria shrugged. “Race doesn’t seem to matter when someone shoves a pouch full of gold in your face. They probably bribed the editor or something.”

  Even though as a hybrid I wasn’t fully part of the shifter community, my gut still twisted at the idea one of us was a sell-out. Sure, I’d had to take down my fair share of shifter bounties, but it was still tough to admit we were just as susceptible to the same weaknesses as any other race.

  A gloomy silence descended as we all pondered the possibilities. So far, the beginnings of our theory suggested human involvement with mage cover-up, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense because there was no reason I could think of that the mages would want to cover up for humans. I’d searched Roanas’s house for clues while I’d been waiting for the Enforcers to show up and hadn’t found anything helpful, but that didn’t mean nothing was going on. I had a feeling that even if we were on the right trail, we were only scratching the surface, and things were going to get a whole lot messier the deeper we went.

  “What about your cousin Rylan?” Comenius asked. “He might have heard some rumors about this underground.”

  “Huh.” I hadn’t thought of that. “I haven’t heard from him in a long while, but I should ask.” Rylan was a member of the Resistance, a ragtag band of humans and shifters who lived on the outskirts of civilization and worked tirelessly to overthrow the mages. He was the only one of my cousins I was close to, which was ironic considering that I worked for law enforcement. Unfortunately, his way of life meant I didn’t get to see him much.

  “I think that’s a good idea.” Comenius paused. “Are you going to be alright?” he asked, his voice gentling. “I mean, if you lose your job at The Twilight –”

  “I’ll be fine,” I cut him off, not wanting him to worry. For all of his self-preservation instincts and tendencies towards conservatism, Comenius could become a freaking mother hen when it came to keeping his friends safe. “I’ll figure out a way to make ends meet.”

  “You haven’t come to me for amulets in a long time,” he said quietly. “Which means that you haven’t been going after any new bounties. That Talcon fellow has been giving most of them to the Main Crew, hasn’t he?” His brow darkened.

  “Com, stop.” I rose to my feet, agitated now. Most of the Enforcers Guild was made up of small crews – eight to ten people, usually – but there was always a Main Crew of at least forty people who got the best bounties. Unfortunately, since the Main Crew didn’t have to work so hard to get their bounties, they were also pretty half-assed when it came to their job – and Brin and Nila were part of them. “There’s no need to worry about this, because I’m going to change it.”

  Comenius sat back, skepticism written all over his face as he crossed his arms and looked up at me. “And just how are you going to do that?”

  “By solving these poison murders,” I declared, jabbing my fist in the air like a torch. “If I can show up the current Main Crew by catching this murderer, Galling will add me to the Main Crew roster and I’ll get access to better bounties. Then Talcon will have to show me some respect.” The thought of pressing a proverbial boot to Talcon’s neck brought a fierce grin to my face. He wouldn’t dare mess with me if I was on the Main Crew.

  “Hmm.” Comenius appeared to give the matter serious thought. “The idea definitely has merit.”

  I was about to roll my eyes when a loud buzzing sound filled the room as my Enforcer bracelet, a tiny bronze shield charm threaded through a brown cord, vibrated against my wrist. “All nearby Enforcers to 228 Garden Street,” a tinny voice blared, projected by the bracelet. “Rogue shifter out of control.”

  “Well, shit.” I patted my legs down to make sure my weapons were still strapped on me – chakram pouch on the right leg and crescent knives on the left. “Sounds like there’s trouble in Rowanville. Gotta go!”

  I sprinted out the door and down the pier toward my bike, the thrill of the hunt racing through my veins. Emergency calls paid high, and were first come, first served, so if I took down this guy there was no way Talcon could skimp on paying me the bounty. Jumping on my bike, I started up the steam engine and raced out of the pier. My wheels screeched as I skidded onto the main street and blew past two mages coming out of a shop. I laughed as their robes flew up around their ankles and flipped them the bird as they shouted after me.

  I didn’t care about them, didn’t care about any of my other troubles right now. All I knew was that I had a bounty to catch, and I was going to cash in on it even if it killed me.

  Chapter Three

  I heard the screams long before I skidded to a stop in front of 228 Garden Street, a nice little one-story family house in one of the suburban Rowanville neighborhoods. The high-pitched wails of children curdled my gut, but I sucked in a breath and steeled myself for whatever nightmare I was about to face. I got off my bike and approached the woman sobbing hysterically in the front yard. Her dark hair was a wreck, the once-nice dress she wore shredded in places, and her leg was bent at an odd angle. Inside the house, I could hear loud thumping and crashing; the rogue shifter must be wreaking havoc in there.

  Anger bubbled up inside me as I touched the woman’s shoulder to get her attention. Why the fuck was nobody helping her? It had taken me nearly ten minutes to get here from the Port. There had to be an Enforcer in the area who could have gotten here faster.

  “Ma’am,” I said as Noria’s bike pulled up behind me – she’d grabbed a protesting Comenius and insisted on following me here. “My name is Sunaya Baine, registered member of the Enforcer’s Guild. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “Please!” the woman shrieked, grabbing my arm with bruising force. Her powder blue shifter eyes were crazed with fear, and my nose told me she was a rabbit shifter. “My babies are still in there! You have to get them out!” Tears poured down her raw cheeks as her body trembled.

  “Can you tell me what’s in there with them?” I asked, my heart pounding. “What kind of beast?”

  “It’s a rhino shi
fter,” she sobbed as the house shook behind her. “He charged in, all wild and crazy, and went for me and the children. I couldn’t get to them, so I came out here for help… but…”

  “Naya.” Comenius dropped to his knees beside me, his voice urgent. Compassion flickered in his eyes as he took in the sight of the woman. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a rampaging rhino shifter inside the house, and there are children in danger.” I rose to my feet slowly, dread weighing down my movements. I wasn’t equipped to handle a rhino shifter by myself, especially not one who was crazed with anger. But there was no one else around to back me up. “I have to go and get them.”

  “Are you crazy?” Noria snapped. “He’ll kill you!”

  “There are children in there,” I said firmly, my gaze fixed on the house. “Com, you heal the mother. I’m going in to rescue her cubs.”

  “Like hell,” Comenius snapped, rising impatiently to his feet. “You’ll never make it out of there. I’m going in with you.”

  “You should help the woman –”

  “I have some spells that could calm the rhino down.” I shut my mouth at that. “If you can distract him long enough, I’ll cast a sleeping spell on him that should stop him in his tracks so you can get the children to safety.”

  “Fine.” Much as I didn’t want to involve my friends with this, I knew I couldn’t do it alone. I needed magic, and I couldn’t use my own. But there wasn’t any time to dwell on the irony – I needed to rescue the children.

  I charged through the door first, my crescent knives clutched in my fists in case the rhino was on the other side. No, they wouldn’t do much good, but I was a little more confident with the weapons in my hands. I brandished them like talismans as I followed the scent of the baby rabbits, creeping through the war-torn living room and down the hallway. The walls had been reduced to little more than rubble, so there wasn’t much cover, and I had a clear sight of the rhino hard at work demolishing what had once been a very nice dining room.

  Creeping across the tile floor as silently as I could in my boots, I followed the scent across the room and beneath the remains of a dining room table, where two baby bunnies were huddled together in beast form. They were absolutely adorable, little black fuzz balls the size of sugar melons, their eyes wide with panic above their little chins and pink noses. “Shhh,” I whispered soothingly, reaching for them with outstretched arms. “I’m here to save you.”

  I reached for the bunnies, and the rhino shifter chose that moment to swing his head around. I froze in utter terror as his crazed eyes made direct contact with mine – blood was flowing freely from his flared nostrils. What the fuck was going on with this guy?

  “Time to go!” I shouted, more to distract the rhino than to tell the bunnies. Thinking fast, I flipped the table in the rhino’s direction, then grabbed both the bunnies by the scruffs of their necks and tossed them out the window and into the backyard.

  The rhino bayed so loudly the sound shook the remaining walls of the house and made my eardrums throb. He charged me, his huge horn splintering the glossy dining table I’d thrown up as a makeshift battlement, and I dodged out of the way and raced down the hall, past Comenius who was frantically putting together a spell in the living room. I couldn’t run outside, not while the mother and babies were still on the lawn, but I could lead the bastard on a chase until Comenius finished concocting his sleep spell.

  “Any minute now, Com!” I shouted over the deafening sound of the rhino’s crashing footfalls. The sound of crumbling drywall told me that he wasn’t far behind, his huge body knocking down the walls, and I ducked inside the nearest bedroom, hoping that his momentum would carry him straight past me.

  I was wrong. Somehow, the hulking bastard managed to make the turn along with me, and his huge snout crashed into the middle of my back. I went flying across a little girl’s room, with lacy curtains at the windows and dolls covering the shelves, and slammed face-first into the pink wall.

  Stars burst across my vision as I slid to the floor, flopping onto my back. The whole world felt like it was shaking apart around me, though really it was just the floor rumbling as the rhino charged me again. Fear choked me in its cold, vice-like grip as the beast reared up on his hind legs to trample me, having no other way to attack me in the small space. I threw out my hands instinctively, as if my comparatively twig-like arms had a chance of stopping the rhino’s tree trunk legs.

  But just before the rhino’s legs came down on me, a surge of energy ballooned in my chest, rippled down my arms and blasted out of my hands in the form of a huge ball of blue-green fire. It crashed into the rhino, who bayed so loudly that my teeth rattled inside my throbbing head. There was a sizzling sound, like meat cooking, and then the rhino disappeared in a flash.

  I lay there as flecks of ash rained down on my face, the edges of my vision darkening. Shouts and footfalls echoed in the hallway, and a horde of people came crashing in through the doorway, Comenius in the lead and Noria close behind.

  “Naya!” He skidded to his knees beside me, his eyes wild. “Are you alright?”

  “Fine,” I wheezed.

  “Where’s the rhino?” My fuzzy vision managed to pick out Brin, the Enforcer who’d responded to my call at Roanas’s house, as the source of the question. He stood just inside the door, his burly arms crossed over his chest, a suspicious scowl on his face.

  Curling my lips back in a sardonic grin, I slid my hand through some of the ash coating the ground, then lifted a fistful of it into the air. “Right here.”

  “Oh Naya,” Comenius whispered miserably, taking my filthy hand in his. “This is so very, very bad.”

  He was right, of course. I had just used my magic to kill a shifter. While responding to a distress call. In front of a whole lot of witnesses. I was royally fucked no matter which way you looked at it, and the silver murders didn’t have a chance in hell of being solved if I was executed. But as they all stood over me, arguing about whether I should be jailed, sent to the hospital, or crowned Queen for a Day – Noria’s idea – the last bit of energy that might have allowed me to care left my body, and without it to anchor me there I sank into a blissful sea of darkness.

  Chapter Four

  The next time I woke up, I found myself lying on a cot that must’ve been made of concrete, it was so damn uncomfortable. And that wasn’t even counting the aches and pains running through my face and body from being smashed into a wall by a four-ton rhinoceros.

  Was I in the hospital? Where was my damned nurse?

  Opening my eyes, I twisted my head around and catalogued the iron bars surrounding my little room on three sides and the concrete wall behind me. Fear sprang to life in my gut as I confirmed that I was, in fact, in a jail cell and not a super-shitty hospital room like I’d hoped. Fuck. How was I going to get out of this mess?

  “Naya? Are you awake?”

  Noria’s voice startled me from my state of semi-awareness, and I jolted upright and looked around for the source. My heart sank as I found it – she was sitting on the cot in the cell next to mine, her pale face pinched and her coffee-colored eyes round with concern.

  “Shit,” I muttered. My friend’s little sister was in jail with me and a throbbing tattoo beat against the inside of my skull. “Noria, what are you doing in here?”

  Noria smirked a little. “That asshole Brin threw me in here, to teach me a lesson after I punched him in the nose. But don’t worry; I’ll be out on bail in a little bit. I’m just glad you woke up before my family gets here.”

  Yeah, well I’m not, I thought grumpily, biting the words back as they would only hurt Noria’s feelings. But by Magorah, I was so not looking forward to having her mother shoot death glares at me through the bars of my cell when she came to pick up her daughter. The idea was almost scarier than the fact that I was in jail.

  Almost. After all, there’s little else in this world more terrifying than an impending execution.

  “So,” I sighed, slumping
against the concrete wall and trying to ignore the panic skirting the edges of my mind. “What’d I miss?”

  “Aside from me punching Brin in the face?” Noria said proudly. I sent her a death glare of my own, and she deflated a little. “Oh, alright, alright. Nothing much, really. Com and I tried to argue with those other Enforcers about letting you go on account of the fact that you were just doing your job and you didn’t hurt anyone aside from the rhino. The rabbit shifter lady defended you too. But unfortunately you Enforcers don’t seem to have any respect for each other within the ranks, so they tossed both of us in here.”

  I winced at Noria’s cutting words. “Yeah, well unfortunately the Enforcer’s Guild is a highly competitive workplace. The less competition, the better your docket.”

  Noria was silent for a long moment as she pondered this. She’d declared a long time ago that she wanted to follow in her sister’s footsteps and become an Enforcer, and I hoped my words would help dissuade her from that treacherous career path. Even though I loved what I did most days, I also didn’t have too many other career options given my skill set and secrets. Noria, with her smarts and techie skills, had the entire world as her oyster. I really, really didn’t want her to end up on the same path I was.

  Especially since, at the moment, my path looked like it was coming to an end a lot sooner than I wanted it to.

  “Would you do that?” Noria finally asked.

  “Do what?” I blinked.

  “Turn somebody else in who didn’t deserve it, just so you could eliminate the competition.” She bit her lip as she studied me.

  “No. I wouldn’t,” I admitted with a sigh. For the most part I actually believed in justice, true justice. Not the half-assed, corrupted version practiced in society today.

  As expected, Noria rewarded me with a huge grin. “That’s exactly what I thought,” she crowed. “You’re way too far above that crap.” The grin faded a little as a troubled look entered her eyes. “Naya?”