Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Sorcerer.

  Weapons specialist.

  Former commanding officer of my extraction unit.

  The one time I’d had sex with him was the night before I almost died. We had known each other — as much as I’d known anyone outside the Five — for over two years prior to that evening. Feeling freed from the confines of the compound, I’d knocked on the door to his hotel room. I’d climbed into his bed without more than two or three words exchanged, and he had followed me. I’d never slept with anyone but Fish up to that point. And the sorcerer had been different, so different. His magic warm, inviting. Not chilly like the feeling of touching Fish, nothing like his ever-present nullifying power.

  “I’m sorry, dear.” Melissa stepped around the counter toward me, holding a menu. Her blond curls tumbled around her face, laugh lines crinkled around the edges of her blue eyes. “I didn’t know you were coming in. Your usual spot is occupied. Would you like to sit at the counter? We could have a chat?”

  “No.” My lips felt weirdly numb. “I … I’m … I’m joining someone.”

  “Oh? Really? Lani?”

  I shook my head, staring at Mark Calhoun. The sandy-haired sorcerer slipped out of the booth, standing to one side. He was wearing a worn light-brown suede jacket over a tight T-shirt and jeans.

  I stepped past Melissa, remembering to smile at her so she didn’t know that something was wrong with me, that everything was jumbled in my head. Moving forward was the only way to work it all out. It was always the only way. Standing still was practically the same as dying, unless you were lying in ambush for someone. But I was the one being hunted now.

  Halfway to the booth, to Mark, I stopped walking. The tile under my sneakered feet suddenly felt as though I had somehow transitioned to walking barefoot on cold concrete. The seven-year-old scars across my stomach flared with pain. My chest constricted.

  I wasn’t breathing.

  In my mind, in my memories, I was somehow back in the corridors of the compound, slowly being gassed to death. And my body was reacting to that recollection. My mind was somehow overriding years of training, years of threat assessment, of overcoming impossible odds with ease.

  How that was even possible, I didn’t know. But it was happening, coming in waves, and I couldn’t seem to keep it dampened, to keep moving through it.

  Mark Calhoun’s face swam in front of me, seven years younger in my mind’s eye, and filled with a fierce, determined fear. His gun was in his hand. Magic rampaged down long concrete corridors, pressing us back, stopping us up.

  I was having a panic attack.

  Yes. A panic attack.

  And somehow, figuring that out, acknowledging it — no matter that it should have been impossible to rattle me to that extent — loosened my chest. It allowed me to take a full breath, then another.

  My past had caught up with me. But I wouldn’t go quietly. I was actually incapable of walking away or sacrificing myself. Such action would have gone against everything I knew myself to be on a fundamental level. When faced with an impossible situation, I would fight. And now, even more than the last time I’d laid eyes on Calhoun and Jackson … now I had so much more to lose.

  The sandy-haired sorcerer removed his jacket, draping it over the back of the booth in an exaggerated motion. So that I could see both his sides and back. So I could see he wasn’t armed.

  He had misunderstood my hesitation.

  And somehow, that allowed me to continue to breathe steadily, and for my mind to reboot in a much more rational, useful mode.

  I was about to be manipulated somehow. About to be played. Mind games weren’t my forte, and human interactions and relationships were often baffling to me. But it took a lot to bring me down. I knew that Jackson and Calhoun wouldn’t risk the wrath of those who governed this territory by creating a disturbance — specifically, the coven based out of Vancouver on the mainland.

  Rumor had it that the witches wouldn’t tolerate anyone or anything operating outside their authority. Ironically, that had been a plus when I’d first chosen Lake Cowichan as a place to try to settle. The witches were far enough away that Christopher, Paisley, and I might go unnoticed, but were close enough to potentially keep others away.

  So whatever attack was about to be leveled my way would have to be subtle, localized. Likely specific to me.

  And that I could handle.

  I stepped forward, finding that my limbs obeyed me once again.

  Smiling tentatively, Calhoun reached for me as if he expected some form of physical greeting. I stopped just out of his reach.

  “Calhoun.”

  “Emma.” His tone was low, warm, intimate. As was his hazel-eyed gaze. I didn’t know whether Daniel or Jackson had told the sorcerer my new name, but I didn’t like hearing it from him. I didn’t want ‘Emma’ claimed by any part of my past.

  That was a ridiculous thought. So I blamed it on the residual reach of the panic attack and slid into the booth. My back was to the door because Calhoun had claimed the other side.

  I glanced out the window, spotting Daniel and Becca Jackson still chatting. Lani had left.

  “You look … amazing.” Calhoun shook his head. “Your hair. I mean, I knew it was red, but —”

  I looked at him.

  Brow furrowing, he stopped talking.

  “Daniel says you have something to tell me?”

  “No. I mean, I have a client in need of your services.”

  “What services?”

  Calhoun glanced around, but no one was paying any attention to us. At least no one within earshot. “We’re working on a project for a witch.”

  “Magenta?”

  “Yes.” He twisted his lips wryly. “Big pockets. Big goals.”

  “And she sent you here?”

  “No. I’ve been working with Daniel on and off for the last three years or so. I contacted him about you specifically.”

  “When?”

  “About three months ago.”

  “And he told you that he wasn’t in contact with me.”

  “Right. But then I got wind …” He frowned as he trailed off, as if forgetting what he’d been saying.

  “Got wind of what?”

  “I’m … of you. So I contacted Daniel.”

  “And he brought you here?”

  “No … I …” He shook his head.

  I leaned toward him, scanning him for any obvious charms. I wasn’t sensitive to magic, so he might have been wearing something without me picking it up. But all I could feel was the normal hum of his sorcerer power. “And the witch, is she proficient in memory spells?”

  “Memory spells?” he echoed.

  A woman laughed from somewhere to my right.

  Calhoun and I both glanced over.

  There was no one seated at the section of the counter nearest us.

  I was about to get blindsided with my eyes wide open. I placed my hands on the table, palms down, fingers spread.

  “Emma?” Calhoun whispered.

  “Have you got a no-kill clause in your contract, Mark?” I asked casually, needing to know if his employer would sacrifice him to get to me.

  “Yes. Of course. Why?”

  “What are the ramifications? A curse?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you see the witch sign it herself? Did you see her draw the blood?”

  “Yes. And … no.”

  As swiftly as I could, I slid out of the booth, stepped across the aisle, and sat on the empty seat to my right. At the same time, I grabbed the arm of the witch hidden under an obfuscation spell on the stool next to me. She’d been raising her hand to cast something.

  I clamped down on her rising power, stifling it but not grabbing for it. I had no idea what the spell was, so taking it for myself might have been her intention. Because I had to admit, she’d been one step ahead of me all the way so far.

  The still-invisible witch laughed again, her voice sounding like discordant tinkling bells. The noise crawled
up my spine and embedded itself into the base of my brain — some sort of magic. I fought back a sudden instinct to run, to flee.

  The witch was powerful.

  I twisted her invisible wrist in my hand. Not enough to break her arm, but enough to hurt it, enough to break her focus.

  The obfuscation spell dropped with a snap. And for a moment, the appearance of the witch was muddled — blond hair over a dark backdrop, clear blue eyes over black orbs, creamy complexion over pale skin.

  I blinked rapidly.

  A petite, voluptuous blond sat before me. The witch’s wrist was still captured in my hand, somewhat hidden beneath the counter.

  To our far right, Melissa dropped the mug she’d been about to fill with coffee, pressing her hand to her chest. “Oh, my goodness,” she cried. “I didn’t see you there before. Everything okay, Emma?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “I’ll be right over for your order.”

  “No rush.”

  The witch smiled at me, power writhing under her skin. “Are you going to drain me, amplifier?” she whispered playfully.

  A chill settled deep in my stomach. The list of people who knew what I could do was an exceedingly short one. Though with the reappearance of Jackson and Calhoun, I had to add two more names to that list. Or three, counting the witch in front of me now.

  A fissure of betrayal cracked open, situated right around my heart.

  “Oh, dear.” The witch laughed again.

  I had to stop myself from trying to brush the sound away as it tinkled and crashed around me. It held too much power. Way too much power. The witch was on the edge of losing it. She was combustible.

  Draining her would have been a service to the world.

  “You know men,” she said, grinning manically. “Unable to keep a single secret once you’ve got them in hand.” She leaned toward me. “One look at you, darling, tells me you know exactly what I mean.” She winked.

  I caught another glimpse of the other witch, the face behind the one she was currently presenting to the world. Dark hair, black eyes, pale skin.

  I blinked.

  The witch leered at me in her blond aspect. “I’ve been dying to meet you, Emma.”

  There was something in the way she said my name that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. And I didn’t like that she was wearing some sort of additional masking spell, or whatever was going on with the second aspect I kept catching glimpses of. But I loosened my hold on her nonetheless.

  I wasn’t in a position to judge her, let alone to mete out preemptive justice. I would do what I needed to do in order to move the witch along, to divert her attention. Then she’d be someone else’s problem.

  “What is going on?” Calhoun hissed tensely. He’d stayed seated in the booth but was turned toward us.

  The witch waved a hand at him dismissively without looking away from me. “Get Emma and me some tea. And pie. Pumpkin if they have it. With whipped cream.”

  Calhoun stood, frowning and glancing between us. He leaned back and grabbed his jacket, then stepped up beside me. “It’s good to see you, Emma. I’d like to … do so again.”

  I nodded, not taking my gaze off the witch.

  “You had Mark, did you? And he wants another taste?” The witch swept her gaze over me, then chuckled huskily. “I can see why. Think of the burst of power you must deliver each time you orgasm.” She lowered her voice. “Can’t keep it so tightly coiled then, can you? What sorcerer wouldn’t want to bed you?”

  Mark, who hadn’t moved, opened his mouth angrily.

  I shook my head, just once, falling into our old mission shorthand.

  He hesitated, then stepped away.

  The witch eyed him appreciatively as he did. “I wouldn’t mind having him on a leash. But I never mix business with pleasure.”

  But she’d implied that she’d been sleeping with Calhoun earlier, hadn’t she? I glanced to my left, looking for Daniel. He and Jackson weren’t by the Corvette.

  “Ooh, you are smart,” the witch whispered. Then she stood up, stepped across the aisle, and slid into the seat Calhoun had occupied. She patted the table. “Join me, Emma.”

  I moved to sit down across from her. I didn’t have much choice. Not yet.

  “You apparently know my name,” I said.

  She tittered that annoying laugh, but its effect on me had eased. Definitely some sort of magic, but perhaps she simply leaked it. Or maybe it was an odd resonance of the image-enhancing spell she used. Either way, my natural immunity was mitigating its effects. Another twenty minutes and I’d probably start seeing through the cloaking spell as well.

  “I am Magenta,” she said magnanimously. “But I doubt we actually needed to be introduced to each other, Emma. We already know each other, don’t we?”

  Melissa hustled over, depositing two mugs of tea, a tiny pitcher of milk, and a single piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream.

  “I asked for two pieces of pie,” the witch snapped, suddenly on edge. Nasty.

  Melissa calmly placed a set of utensils rolled in a paper napkin beside the pie. “Emma doesn’t eat pie.”

  As the witch eyed Melissa, her magic flickered again, like a light bulb shorting out.

  I considered reaching across the table and killing her. She carried a lot of magic, but if I took enough and was quick about it, it wouldn’t escalate to a fight. It would look like a heart attack.

  The witch looked at me.

  Her eye twitched.

  Melissa patted my shoulder and walked away.

  I added milk and a packet of sugar to my tea. I couldn’t drink Melissa’s regular Earl Grey black.

  Magenta unrolled the utensils, lining the fork, teaspoon, and knife up beside her pumpkin pie, making certain the bottoms of each were only an inch away from the edge of the table.

  I smiled. She had just provided me with weapons of opportunity and a bit of insight into her psyche. Compulsive tendencies were easy to exploit.

  The witch’s gaze flicked to me as she carefully selected the fork, then took a bite of the pie. She chewed, frowning, then pushed the plate away. “I don’t know why I bother. I never like pumpkin.”

  I raised my mug to my mouth, sipping tea slowly as I glanced outside. Calhoun crossed by the window, leaning against the streetlight to the right of the diner and pulling out his phone.

  Magenta followed my gaze. “Let’s trade.” She smiled at me with overly straight teeth and empty eyes.

  I didn’t respond.

  She leaned across the table, speaking conspiratorially. “You’ve collected my wayward sorcerer, amplifier. I want him back.”

  “He got your message.” His name. Carved into the chest of a snatcher demon.

  The witch laughed that ridiculous laugh, waving her hand at me. “A love note. You know how it is.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’d like to buy a favor.”

  I waited.

  Frustration flitted over her face, but she suppressed it. “You did a job in San Francisco for an … acquaintance.”

  And that so-called acquaintance was now dead. By Christopher’s hand, moments after he’d broken our contract and tried to hold me against my will.

  “An amplifier is one thing,” she mused. “But backed by a clairvoyant? So, of course, I knew who you were. One of the Collective’s experiments run wild.” She eyed me hungrily. “Power like yours shouldn’t be hidden away.”

  She knew too much, or she had access to too much information. And it was idiotic of her to parade that knowledge in front of me. Now I had no choice but to kill her.

  Finding I wasn’t at all displeased with the notion of ending the witch’s life, I settled back against the booth, dropping the pretense of sipping my tea. “Oh, yes? It should be used to boost your own?”

  She laughed.

  That was getting irksome.

  “I sent you the sorcerer,” she said. “To see what you’d do with him. To test your … inclinati
ons.” She glanced pointedly at Calhoun out the window. He was standing sideways, still leaning against the lamppost and pretending to be looking at his phone, but obviously keeping an eye on us and the street.

  “And I already had an idea what … who would turn your head.”

  “You just indicated that you had no idea Mark and I had any kind of previous relationship.”

  Her face blanked, but she recovered quickly. “Did I? Well, it was a good guess.”

  “And what’s the end game? With you and the sorcerer you deposited on my doorstep?”

  “Did you power him up for me, amplifier? My beautiful, passionate, irresistible boy?”

  “Why?” My tone had turned dark. I didn’t like her claiming any kind of ownership of Aiden. “Are you planning on draining him again?”

  “Of course. His magic is … potent. And he is open to suggestions, open to experimentation. As I’m sure you’ve discovered.”

  “Make your request, witch. So we can move on.”

  Another spike of frustrated anger glitched out whatever cloaking spell Magenta was holding around her, and I caught another glimpse of her true face. There was something familiar about her, but I suspected I was still feeling the effects of the panic attack, and muddling the unexpected arrival of Daniel, Jackson, and Calhoun with hers.

  I wasn’t surprised that a summoner of her power level would go to great extents to hide her true face. Black witches weren’t pretty, creamy-skinned blonds with crystal-blue eyes.

  Magenta got herself sorted out and her mask firmly back in place. “Would you be amenable to having me join you and the sorcerer? Just the three of us, him fully powered by you, one night. In bed.”

  My jaw unhinged, dropping before I could snap it closed.

  Magenta smiled, magic gleaming from her eyes.

  “That’s it? That’s all?” I asked, covering my initial shock by mocking her. “You want me to boost the sorcerer and then have sex with the two of you? So you can … what? Summon some greater demon, bind it permanently against its will? How … common.”

  She curled her lip in a snarl. Her magic rose up around her, black overwhelming her irises. But I kept pushing, keeping my tone conversational.

  “You say you know me, witch. And what I can do. Yet you request magic that any morally flexible amplifier of any power level could cast. Why go to the trouble of tracking me down? Of dumping the sorcerer on my doorstep? Of placing the memory spells on Calhoun? Games within games. And you lead with sex?”