Cursed by Fire (Blood & Magic Book 1)

by Danielle Annett

  “Ms. Naveed, I apologize for the late hour but my name is Jackson Harris and I’m with the HPED. I believe we may have some information related to the Daniel Blackmore case.”

  I took a seat on the arm of the couch and waited for him to continue. HPED was the Human and Paranormal Enforcement Division and them calling wasn’t a good sign.

  “There’s been another murder with a similar MO. The victim is a shifter with significant blood loss, lacerations across the neck and fang marks on the wrist.”

  Shit!

  Another vampire attack?

  “I’m on my way,” I told him as he rattled off directions. “Have you notified the Pack yet?”

  “Not yet. We attempted through their main contact line but have received no response.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I told him, already planning on calling James in.

  “And one more thing Naveed,” he said, right before I hung up the phone. “There’s a second victim.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. The way he said it, I knew that whoever the victim was, it was going to really complicate things.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “A second body was found ten yards away belonging to a female vampire. The body is already turning to ash since the victim is completely dead, she must have been old since the desiccation moved quick, but before it disintegrated, our people were able to get close up photographs of the body and the damage.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Visible lacerations, consistent with claw-like patterns. Final cause of death, the heart was removed from the body.”

  I thwacked my head against my hand. Could this really get any worse?

  I arrived at Charley’s, a local dive bar, fifteen minutes after the call. The surrounding area was cordoned off with yellow caution tape and a swarm of individuals in black uniforms milled around, some taking samples from the parking lot, others writing in their notebooks. The area was devoid of onlookers. Most of Spokane’s population knew that when trouble came, it was best to scatter than hang around in case trouble chose to strike again.

  It took me several minutess to track down Jackson, most of the people I asked waved me off, too busy in their own work. He was six feet tall, with an average build and sandy blonde hair. He easily blended in to the crowd, dressed in standard HPED blues, but when I finally found him, we quickly got to work.

  Jackson took me straight to the first body, a young woman in her late teens, possibly early twenties. She had long blond hair now matted with blood. I crouched beside her cold form and gently turned her head left, then right. Looking for any clues that may have been missed. While similar to Daniel, her throat was visibly less mangled than Daniel’s had been.

  Examining her wrists, I pulled out a small ruler and measured the distance between the marks. These were about two centimeters wider than the ones found on Daniel. That was strange. Could there be a copy-cat killer so quickly? Or maybe whoever murdered Daniel worked with a partner or group.

  I visibly shook at the thought. If we were tracking more than one person, it was going to make finding the culprits that much more difficult. Having called James on my way to the scene, I wasn’t surprised when I felt him crouch down beside me, dipping his fingers in the small puddle of blood pooling around the body before bringing them to his nose and inhaling deeply. An HPED employee tried to stop him, scolding him for contaminating the crime scene but one growl and a flash of fang on James’ part sent the man off in a different direction. If the victim was a shifter then the Pack had ruling jurisdiction.

  “Shifter?” I asked.

  James nodded his head. “Her name was Emma, a werelynx who lived on the outskirts of the city but came into town from time to time to bar hop with her friends. She was young, twenty-two I think.”

  “Do you know what she was doing here? If she was with anyone?”

  James shook his head. “No, but I’ll put in a call to Ethan, our head of security. Now that we know who she is, I’ll have him question her friends, see if they were out with her this evening. I have a hard time believing her friends would leave the bar without her, had they been with her.”

  “They found the body of a vampire as well. Rebecka will be notified shortly but aside from the photographs the MEs took earlier, we have no way of confirming the identity. The body already turned to ash. A small team is supposed to start sweeping the pile into a containment vessel any minute now.”

  James swore, a vicious growl following his expletive.

  “How the hell could this happen? Are they sure of the cause of death for both victims? Something isn’t adding up here Ari.”

  I couldn’t agree more. Something was definitely off about this particular murder. The strangest part being that the vampire was in this location to begin with. Shifters and vampires had a boundary line of sorts and neither crossed it. It was an agreement between the two races and the vampire who had perished was on the wrong side of the proverbial tracks. What the hell had she been doing over here in the first place?

  “If we don’t figure this out, and soon, we’re going to have a war between the Pack and the Coven. There will be no avoiding it at this rate,” James said.

  I frowned. We couldn’t let things escalate to that point. Regardless of who the battle was between, everyone would face casualties, humans included.

  I gave James a quick rundown of the differences I’d discovered between Emma’s injuries and those found on Daniel, and then gave him some space to go over the scene with his shifter senses in the hopes he caught something everyone else may have missed. The probability was doubtful, now that so many people had passed through the space. It would be difficult for James to pinpoint anything particular but it was still worth a shot.

  Jackson had headed in the direction of one of the HPED vehicles while James and I were talking so I went to follow when a dark shadow to my right caught my attention. I stared off in the direction of the shape and noticed the figure move, pulling further back into the dark alleyway from which it came.

  Pulling my daggers out I cautiously made my way towards the mouth of the alley, making sure to keep my eyes on the now still, shadowed form. When I got closer I called out.

  “Show yourself!” Surprisingly, he did.

  A shock of recognition thrummed through me as I came face to face with the man I had run into outside my apartment just the other day. Brows furrowed, I considered what his involvement might be. A slow buzzing sensation began in the back of my skull as I studied him from my position.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He looked off in the distance, as if debating what to say before returning his gaze to mine.

  “I’m watching over you,” he said, shrugging. Great, I have a crazy stalker. Just what I needed.

  “I don’t need anyone to watch over me and I don’t know you so why don’t you cut the crap and tell me why you’re really here?”

  I felt my temperature rising as my irritation got the better of me, but still within a range of control I let myself feel the heat roll over my neck and shoulders. The sensation was soothing, though the insistent buzzing in my head made concentration difficult.

  “You know, I can see the fire within you. Even now when it’s buried deep below the surface, your eyes still have that orange glow.”

  Mouth hanging open and eyes growing wide, I took an involuntary step back. How did he know? Shock coursed through me, quickly replaced by a jolt of fear at the implications. My father had taught me to keep my abilities secret. He had said my powers, in the wrong person’s hands, could have catastrophic consequences and he’d been right. Over the years I’ve moved whenever anyone discovered what I could do. Mike and James are the exception. People always wanted to use me and my abilities to further their goals, and I wasn’t one to allow myself to be used as some pawn.

  A million trains of
thought ran through my mind. Going over each instance I’d used my abilities, examining my surroundings each time to see if I’d missed something, missed someone watching me. Even if anyone had seen me, they should suspect that I’m a witch, nothing more. Nothing different. Witches had the ability to toy with the elements to some degree.

  “You’re wondering how I know, right? If I stumbled upon you one day when you were reckless.” I didn’t bother answering, too dumbfounded to even know what to say.

  “You weren’t reckless, Aria,” he told me. “But I know you’re a Psyker because I am too.” And then without any more explanation he opened his palms and showed me three small metal spheres. Before I could blink all three floated in the air a few inches above his palm. Rapidly they started spinning clockwise and my gaze was transfixed on their movement.

  All too quickly, he released whatever hold he had on the spheres and snapped his hand closed, hiding them within as he shoved his hand in his coat pocket.

  “You’re not like me,” was the first thought that tumbled out of my mouth and inwardly I curse my stupidity. Telling him he wasn’t like me only confirmed that I’m not human. Way to go, Aria.

  “No, not exactly. You’re a pyrokinetic, I’m a telekinetic. Our abilities are different in how they work and what we can do with them, but we’re Psykers. That buzzing in your head you hear,” he said, “you hear that because I’m close to you. Anytime a Psyker is near, a faint buzzing persists, alerting you that another is close.”

  Well that certainly would have been good information to know. I could have avoided ever meeting this guy in the first place.

  I heard James call my name in the distance.

  “Look I a….” I throw a glance over my shoulder. “I need to get back,” I told him, slowly backing away from the alley. He laughed.

  “Go ahead, run away.”

  “I’m not running,” I snapped.

  “Sure you’re not.” I glared at him. Maybe I was running but what was I supposed to do? A stranger just told me he had psychic powers. I didn’t know who he was or what organization he belonged to, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. My father had warned me when I was a girl to avoid Psykers and I was going to head that advice.

  “Look I’m not running and it was nice meeting—” Wait, I didn’t even know his name?

  “Inarus,” he said. Wait, what? I stared at him in confusion. “You were wondering what my name was, it’s Inarus.”

  Okay, that was creepy. Was he a mind reader or something?

  “And to answer your next question, no. I can’t read your mind. I just figured you’d want to know.”

  “Right,” I said, skepticism heavy in my tone as I turned to leave.

  “Look, if you’re up for it, why don’t we grab coffee sometime? We can talk.”

  “Sure,” I said, waving him off. “Sometime.” I needed to get far away from him, not closer. There was no way in hell I’d be meeting him anywhere in the foreseeable future. I made a hasty retreat, leaving Inarus back in the darkened alley. The more steps I took, the fainter the buzzing in my head became until finally it ceased.

  “Anything?” I asked James as I came closer. James shook his head in irritation, his entire focus on the scene before us. I wasn’t surprised he’d missed my brief absence. When he was on a hunt, he was wholly focused.

  “No, the entire area is coated in a fine layer wolfsbane, I can’t smell anything.” I considered telling him about my strange encounter when his words sunk in.

  “Wolfsbane?” I asked, needing the confirmation. James nodded again. “Why would there be wolfsbane here?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine but someone added it and made sure to cover not only the bodies but a perimeter extending thirty feet in each direction. This is smelling more and more like a set-up, Ari,” he said in a grim tone.

  I pondered everything I knew for a moment. Daniel Blackmore had gone missing a little over two weeks ago. When we found his body, he had had twin fang marks on his wrist, a slit throat, and his mutilated body had been dumped not far from the invisible border separating the Pack and the Coven territories. Emma’s death looked similar: a slit throat, fang marks, but hers were caused by a different vampire and her body was in much better condition than Daniel’s had been. Aside from the slit throat and fang marks, her body was unblemished. No broken bones or ripped-open flesh.

  Fangs also don’t widen in a vamp’s mouth so the likelihood that Daniel’s murderer was the same as Emma’s was doubtful. Our third victim we didn’t have much on. Aside from being a female vampire, age unknown, name unknown. And cause of death was consistent with an animal or shifter attack. The final thought gave me pause.

  “Hey James.”

  “What?” he asked, not bothering to look up from his crouch on the ground.

  “Could Emma maintain warrior form?” I asked. I wasn’t an expert on shifters by any means but I did know that if a shifter died in animal form, they didn’t revert back to human; they remained animals. If a shifter died while in warrior form though, they did revert back to human. If Emma couldn’t maintain a warrior form, then it was doubtful that she’d been able to cause our other victim’s injuries.

  James shook his head. “No, she was too young to have acquired the skill. She could only shift to her full beast.”

  “Is there a way for you to tell if Emma had gone, you know, furry or not? And whether she shifted back before her death?”

  James quirked a brow. “What are you thinking, Ari?”

  I began pacing in the street, letting my thoughts tumble out of my mouth. “I’m thinking this was all a set-up. That maybe Emma and whoever our unknown vamp is over there didn’t actually have any sort of altercation. Jackson showed me the photos of the body before it turned to ash, it has claw marks without a doubt and the heart had been ripped from the victim’s chest, but what if Emma wasn’t the one that did it? What if our unknown vamp didn’t kill Emma either?”

  James’s eyes lit up. He was following my train of thought.

  “Don’t you see?” I continued. “Why else would someone sprinkle the area with wolfsbane? Someone is trying to cover their tracks, but this,” I said, waving my arms in the direction of the two bodies. “This screams set-up, and if Emma can’t maintain a warrior form, how did she kill our vampire victim and then die in human form?”

  James was nodding his head and the gears in my mind were spinning. The sound of vehicle motors starting up caught my attention and James and I each watched the HPED begin moving out.

  What the hell?

  “What’s going on?” I asked Jackson, jogging over to him as he climbed into his black SUV.

  “We’ve been called off. This isn’t a human problem so we’re pulling out,” he said.

  You have got to be kidding me. “What about the bodies?” I asked, indicating the scene. Jackson shrugged his shoulders.

  “Half the vamp is already gone, the rest will float away in the breeze by morning and your friend there,” he said, indicating James, “will take care of the shifter girl.”

  I gritted my teeth. This was so like the HPED. They’d come to scope things out and then, if it wasn’t a quick and easy job, they bailed and moved on. This was why crime was so high in our city, why things had yet to stabilize after the Awakening. No one wanted to get their hands dirty.

  Stomping back to James I filled him in. On a curse filled with disgust he pulled out his cell and dialed a number. I assumed he was calling the Pack to have Emma’s body picked up. Still frustrated over the situation I went and pulled my HAZMAT kit out of my trunk. The four-by-three-foot steel case housed virtually everything needed to collect evidence. In addition to the case I pulled out a gallon-sized glass container and a battery-operated mini vac. You could never be too prepared. With my items in hand I lugged them over to the vampire remains and started opening up my case and unscrewing th
e glass jar container.

  “What are you doing?” James asked over my shoulder, having ended his call.

  “Cleaning up,” I said as I pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. He eyed my mini vac skeptically. It was probably in poor taste to vacuum up the dead but well, it isn’t like I had many options and frankly, a vacuum was going to be much more effective compared to a broom and dustpan.

  “What did the Pack say?” I asked, pulling several chemical light sticks from my case and cracking them until they offered a faint glow. I placed one inside of the glass jar and placed the other two near the pile of ash-coated remains. The glow sticks did little to illuminate the space, forcing me to rely on the dim street lights but what they did do was cast the vampire remains in a blue glow separating them from typical dirt and debris so nothing was missed.

  “Devin and Brock are five minutes out. They’ll be here to pick up the body and then I’m supposed to go and report to Declan.”

  I nodded my head as I used a small wooden stick to poke around at the remains. James made a coughing noise mixed with a gag and I turned around to look at him, a wry grin on my face.

  “You doing okay there, buddy?” I mocked.

  “That’s disgusting,” he said.

  “It’s all part of the job,” I told him. James wrinkled his face and took a few steps back. Small particles of the vampire’s body had risen and hovered eerily in the air. Sifting through the remains I pulled out several pieces of bone too large for my vacuum to suck up and tossed them into the glass container. The fact that large remnants remained meant the vampire wasn’t that old. No more than fifty undead years. As I continued sifting, the roar of a vehicle sounded and James and I looked in the direction of the approaching Hummer. The vehicle parked a few yards from us and two large men exited.

  The driver wore formfitting jeans that hugged his thighs and a navy blue t-shirt showing off his massive bulk and broad shoulders. Wearing a grim expression, he made his way towards us and if I had to guess, he looked to be in his mid-thirties. The passenger was younger, maybe mid-twenties at the latest, with boyish features, a full mouth, and long limbs that had yet to fill out completely. The two men approached on silent feet. James inclined his head towards both men, offering a small greeting before leading them to Emma’s body.