My fingers wrapped around the goat-headed medallion that hung between us. I yanked it forward, stretching the cord that secured it around her neck. The tendons in my hand seized as magick burned along the skin of my palm. The knife under my arm filled my other hand. Slashing up, the razored edge sheared through the cord. The medallion came away in my hand.
She looked down as the sorcerous fire sputtered out on her arms and the dome of magick over us began to dissolve like a popsicle on a summer sidewalk.
“What . . . ?”
I slashed the knife in a vicious backhand. It sliced up under her soft chin, parting the high lace collar of her dress and the pudgy skin underneath. Blood sprayed out over my hand in a hot arterial wash. Her legs went out from under her, dropping her to the floor in a tumble.
I stood over her as she crawled through the pool of her own blood. One hand clutched her throat, crimson welling up around pudgy fingers. This made her list over to one side as she pushed and pulled, trying desperately to get away. Long, once-glossy hair now hung limp, dragging through her life’s blood, sticking in clumps to the rough wooden floor. Her eyes rolled up at me. They were wide, corrupted green pupils shining fever bright. Her jaw worked, trying to speak, trying to conjure words through her ruined voice box. It came in a wet rasp.
Pulling out my pistol, I knelt down to hear.
Air wheezed in through both her mouth and the gape in her throat. It had an undertone of wet bubbling. “I . . . I . . . curse you . . . De-Deacon Chalk.”
“Funny words coming from a dead witch.”
Her laugh caught in the blood in her throat, coming out in a big blood bubble that burst on her face like a child with a wad of chewing gum. She choked air back inside. “It . . . is . . . done. Things . . . can-cannot be . . . undone.” Her voice sputtered, growing thicker, more guttural. Her witch voice. “You will . . . face . . . yourself and . . . on that . . . day . . .” Her voice had lost all humanity, becoming a growl. Magick rolled out of her in a mist of corruption that made my power jangle inside my skin. Lips pulled back to show teeth stained with her own blood, she spat, “On that day Death will stalk you.”
The barrel of the Colt .45 pressed against her temple. Poison eyes rolled around, trying to look at it. “Maybe so, but you won’t be here to see it, you bitch.”
My finger pulled the trigger.
The gun roared, bucking in my hand. I let the jolt of the recoil make me stand.
Damn I was tired. I staggered out of the pentagram. Durendal and The Witch Breaker both hung heavy around my waist. My feet dragged through the blood on the floor, squelching and sticking. Adrenaline was dumping out of my system in a rush, leaving behind a queasy stomach and a woozy head. My blood sugar was gone. My side was a spike of agony where I had been stabbed by a soulsword. Everything hurt under my skin, all my nerves burnt and inflamed. Micromuscles all over my body were twitching and spasming.
I felt like I had been cut apart and stapled back together.
I was halfway to the door when it slammed open. Light from the dawn outside poured in with twenty people in blue windbreakers. They all had guns pointed at me. One guy stepped to the front, his gun shoved forward over a rounded paunch. What little hair he had was gray over an unlined face the color of bitter chocolate.
“O.C.I.D. Hands in the air!”
The calvary had arrived. Right on time.
Yippie-ki-yay.
56
The door shushed closed behind me as I flicked on the overhead light. Blair jerked awake, sitting up in a blur of inhuman speed. Her head twisted unnaturally, crystal blue eyes widening as she saw me. The connection between us jolted to life, sliplocking into place.
In a blur of motion she was on her feet. A wrist-thick steel chain slithered off the bed, links clinking together onto the floor. It was attached to the cross-covered steel ring clamped around her waist, the other end to a ring in the floor. The weight of the chain dug the edge of the circle into her lush hips.
I held up a Tupperware bowl. It sloshed. “I brought you dinner.”
“Thank you.” Blair’s fingers brushed over mine as she took the container and the spoon from me. Her touch was cool. Not cold, room temperature. Vampires are coldblooded; they take on the temperature of the environment they are in.
She pried open the lid, filling the room with the smell of rich and rusty iron. She used the spoon to gently poke at the chunks floating in the bull’s blood. “What’s in here today?”
“Liver and raw sirloin. How is it going with keeping solid food down?”
“I still need the blood, but I haven’t thrown up in three days.”
Vampires don’t eat solid food. They subsist only on blood, preferably human. Blair had been craving food, raw meat specifically, for the past two weeks, so we had been including it in her daily feedings. It wasn’t the only strange thing that was happening. Her fangs were shrinking, drawing up into the roof of her mouth. Her own blood ran red instead of black and dead like most bloodsuckers. Her heart continued to beat; I could hear it in my head if I spent too much time around her.
She was still a vampire, but since she and I had been linked she had been changing. The connection between us remained, even though the symbols that had been carved into her throat had healed over and were now dark pink scars instead of cuts and slashes. She still obeyed direct commands, which is why I kept her chained in a locked room instead of outright killing her.
“Can I ask you something?”
“I might not answer, but you can ask.”
“Why didn’t you do your original plan?”
I looked at her. During the showdown with Selene and her coven, I was going to get the kids free and then use my power to set off the bomb inside Blair’s chest. I was going to use Selene’s weapon against her. Blair had read this through our connection. “Things just worked out differently.”
“You didn’t change your mind?”
“No.”
Her head dropped, big blond curls falling around her face. They hung low enough to almost brush through the bowl of blood on her lap. She looked down at the floor. “Where does this put me? What are you going to do with me now?”
“I don’t know. I’ll probably keep you around as long as I can control you.”
“You don’t think that’s dangerous?”
“I know it’s dangerous, but dangerous is what I do.” I looked at her, hard. “I will never forget what you are, Blair. No matter how useful you are as a weapon, I will not hesitate to dust you if I think for even one second that you could be a threat to one of my people.”
“So I’m not one of your people?”
“You’re not people at all, you’re a vampire.”
If she had been human, the look on her face would have broken a tiny part of my heart. I walked away, shutting and locking the door behind me.
Ronnie stood in the hallway.
She was wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt. Thick, brunette ringlets piled on top of her head, held there by a wide headband. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup. Two translucent spiders sat on her shoulders, the others were somewhere out of sight. “You know, you don’t have to be a dick to her.”
“And you don’t have to be nosy, but for some reason you are.”
“She’s different now, Deacon; surely you see that.”
“She’s not different enough. Don’t ever forget that. She’s still a vampire. Vampires are not to be trusted. They’re deadly creatures, and you would do well to remember that.”
She stepped forward, forcing me to look down at her. She was over a foot shorter than me. The spiders scurried away, zipping up hair-thin web lines to the ceiling as she drew close. “She’s not the only deadly creature you have living in this house.”
She was right.
Ronnie had changed too. She had lost a lot of spiders in the explosion at Polecats. Now she was down to only a dozen or so of the little murderous yo-yos. Since the other spiders died, Ronnie had shown signs of abilities th
at were not human. She was stronger than she should be. Not as strong as me, but a lot stronger than a human woman her size should be.
She was fast too. Not run a mile in a minute fast more blink-your-eyes-and-you’ll-miss-it fast. It showed up in small ways, just everyday movements that she would perform so quick it was spooky. Way faster than human. Faster than me. Her movement had also taken on a rigid kind of grace that reminded me of Charlotte, my friend the Werespider.
I would have to call her soon and get her opinion of what was going on with Ronnie.
George lived here too. He had cleaned up and was going to AA, staying sober one day at a time. He was back at work, being an engineer of all things, and took regular confession and Communion with Father Mulcahy. We weren’t risking him being open to possession again. Next time I might have to put a bullet in his head, so we were taking preventative measures.
Those three plus me and Tiff in a house on the outskirts of town and we made one strange family.
Family.
Ronnie rose up on her tiptoes, planting a quick kiss on my cheek. “I just feel sorry for her. Think about being nicer to her for my sake. I’m off to bed.”
“Where’s Tiff?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Good night, nosy.”
“Good night, mean-ass.”
She moved past me, heading down the hallway. Reaching the end, she went inside her bedroom, shutting the door.
I didn’t turn to the locked door behind me when I spoke.
“I know you heard that. I’ll admit you’re changing in ways I don’t understand, but I stand by what I said. She might be right about you one day. One day, but not today.”
It was silent behind the locked door.
Turning on my heel, I walked away and down the hall.
Rounding the corner, I entered the center of the house. It was a square meeting of the three hallways. It wasn’t a big enough house to call them wings, just hallways. One to a set of bedrooms, one to the master bedroom, and one to the common areas like the kitchen and living room. It was a nice house, older model, brick, set on a few acres far enough out to not have visible neighbors. In my line of work, neighbors are just potential innocent bystanders.
I stopped at a little table that sat in the corner. It was a small thing, hardly taking any room at all. Tiff and I had found it at Goodwill when we were furnishing the house. It had a smooth top over a small drawer and the legs had small rosettes carved into the wood. I had painted it black and varnished it.
On it sat a Sacred Heart of Jesus candle, a small statue of the Virgin Mary, and a small framed picture of Kat.
It was a picture that one of the girls from the club had taken. Kat had been captured in front of her computer screen, leaned forward, brows pulled together, bottom lip captured as she concentrated on figuring something out, hunting down and ferreting out some piece of knowledge the Internet was trying to hide from her. I had seen that look on her face countless times. It wasn’t a glamour shot, it was a real shot. It was the essence of Kat.
Because of how she had died, and with the club gone, there wasn’t anywhere else to memorialize her.
It had been two months since the chaos with Selene. Two months. I missed my sister, and even though we were putting things back together, there were still moments that I would turn, expecting to rely on her, only to realize she wasn’t there. On the job, my fingers still hit the button on my phone to call and ask her a question, ringing before I would realize Kat wasn’t going to answer.
My fingers touched the edge of the picture frame.
Eternal rest grant unto Kat, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace.
I made the sign of the cross.
Amen.
I turned toward the kitchen.
Warm, yellow light spilled through the doorway. From inside came the sound of movement and the smell of coffee being brewed. I crossed the threshold to find a beautiful woman in a well-tailored suit.
Her back was to me as she leaned into the refrigerator looking for something. I stopped short, admiring. It was a very well-tailored suit.
Standing straight, Tiff turned, holding a container of milk. She smiled at me, moving to the counter to set them down. Her suit was black, matching tie stark against the white shirt she wore. The jacket was open, revealing the handle of the Taurus Judge that hung under her arm.
“How are you tonight, Special Agent Tiff?”
“I’m fine, and it’s Agent-in-Training Bramble, thank you very much.” Stepping over, she slid into my arms.
“Sorry, I forgot, you just look like you would be in charge.”
“Soon I will be.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it.”
Her lips were warm against mine.
After the brouhaha with Selene and her coven, we had all been taken in for questioning by the O.C.I.D. Once the dust settled we walked away with job offers. I turned them down flat, I don’t play well with others, but Tiff had said yes.
She had been training with them the last few weeks, as soon as her leg had healed. Now we both worked mostly nights. Sometimes we even worked together.
“Is Special Agent Heck back on the job?”
“Yep, we went to the site earlier today.”
“Any luck on tracking the rift?”
“Not so far, but we have people on it.”
The rift that Selene had opened stuttered in and out of existence. It kept moving, sometimes only a few feet, sometimes miles and miles away. The O.C.I.D. was trying to find a way to close it and, until then, to track it.
“Anything else come through it?”
“A flock of blood-drinking butterflies and an undead squirrel. Nothing big or unmanageable. If that happened, the agency would call you.”
“They better.”
The O.C.I.D. had taken me on retainer, available to help them when my expertise was needed. It let me be there whenever Tiff had a really dangerous case. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but for now it worked just fine.
Tiff stepped back, not far, just enough to turn and pour two cups of coffee. Her hip still touched my thigh in a warm, gentle curve. Handing me a cup, she pushed the sugar my way.
I love coffee but only with cream and sugar. In my opinion, coffee smells amazing and tastes like crap. Cream and sugar make coffee live up to the promise of how it smells. Tiff disagreed, taking it black and bitter.
I added three spoonfuls of sugar and a healthy splash of chocolate-flavored almond milk. Once it was right, I took a sip. “I heard from Sophia today.”
“How are her and the kids doing?”
“Fine. The boys still haven’t switched forms yet.”
“They could come down to the agency and have one of the lab guys look them over to see if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
“I don’t think Sophia would trust them to a lab.”
What I didn’t say was that I didn’t blame her. Tiff may work for the O.C.I.D., but that didn’t mean I trusted them completely. Her? With my life. Them? About as far as I could throw them collectivly.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out just as Tiff reached into her pocket for hers. We both looked at our screens.
She looked up at me. “Silas?”
“Oh, it’s Silas now?”
“Don’t be silly. Special Agent Heck, then.”
“Yep.”
“Want to ride in together?”
“Only if we take my car.”
“Of course.”
I chugged down my coffee, burning the roof of my mouth. Tiff dumped hers in a travel cup.
“They tell you what we were going to be dealing with?”
“The message just said ‘mummy.’”
“I’ll grab the charcoal starter fluid from the garage, then.”
This job never ends.
Thank God.
Dear Loyals and True Believers,
Well, we have had a helluva ride, haven’t we? Thank you so much for you
r love and support. It is really heartwarming how much you all love this series.
This book was CRAZY, wasn’t it? This book is the game changer. From here on out things only get wilder in the Deaconverse. I definitely want you to hold on tight.
Thank you for all the times you have mentioned this series to your people. I appreciate it, I truly do. Thank you for all the times you have spread the word. You are the greatest.
You keep reading, keep reviewing, keep spreading the word about Deacon Chalk and these books, and I will keep writing all the mayhem that is the Deaconverse.
You mean the world to me.
James R. Tuck
Table of Contents
BLOOD AND MAGICK
Acknowledgments
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
Afterword
Blood and Magick Page 25