by E. A. Copen
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Playing
With Fire
E.A. Copen
COPYRIGHT
Playing with Fire
A Judah Black novel
ISBN: 978-1977907790
COPYRIGHT © 2017 by E.A. Copen
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Cover Art by Ravenborn
Published in the United States of America.
The author respects trademarks and copyrighted material mentioned in this book by introducing such registered items in italics or with proper capitalization.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, persons, places and incidents are all used fictiously and are the imagination of the author. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or locales is coincidental and non-intentional, unless otherwise specifically noted.
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Chapter One
The fireball missed me by an inch.
My bare feet slid over cool, slick tile as I dodged right and snarled. I raised my arm in a protective gesture, gathering my willpower and projecting it forward in a concave shield of spinning black and orange kinetic energy the size of a dinner plate. It was the best block I’d managed all day and it still wasn’t enough to stop the second fireball. It sailed through the air and slammed into my pathetic shield, the force of the impact shoving me back. I pushed everything I had into the shield, grunting with effort as sweat stung my eyes and slid down my back. I slid one foot back, intending to bear down and push against the force of the spell.
And, of course, I lost my footing.
With all the grace of Wile E. Coyote, I fell forward, feet scrambling against damp tile in true cartoon fashion. My chin slammed into the floor along with my chest and the rest of my front. But especially my chest, which was surprising considering how unendowed I was for a thirty-something woman.
A hard smack to the boobs for me is a lot like getting kicked in the balls if I were a guy. At least, I think so. I couldn’t tell you for sure, as I’ve never had balls to kick. It feels like a getting hit with…well, a floor. The whole floor. If it were made of angry hornets.
Stars danced in my vision as the shadow of my attacker closed, gripping his weapon in his hand. I tried to push myself up on my elbows, but didn’t get that far before he placed a foot on my back.
“Aye, lass, ya call that a shield?” He leaned into the leg he held on my back. “I seen pixies put up a better defense.”
I pushed up against his foot with a grunt. The move surprised him enough that he lost his balance for a moment, throwing all his weight on the foot he still had on the floor. I reached out and grabbed him by the ankle, yanking it out from under him. He fell to the floor with a loud, “Oomf!” The carved, wooden staff that served as his focus clattered next to him and then rolled away.
With a frustrated growl, I sprang up, jumped on top of him and threw a punch at his throat. If I’d wanted to, I could have focused the strike with enough force to collapse his windpipe and kill him. Lucky for Creven, we were only sparring. I pulled the punch at the last second, leaving my fist to rest against his throat, my chest heaving and damp from effort.
Creven’s indigo eyes flickered and a sly grin spread across his face, the tips of his pointed ears turning a purplish shade of crimson. “Why, Judah, if ya wanted me on me back, all ya had to do was ask.”
I rolled my eyes and stood. “Pervert.”
“Cheater,” he answered.
“It’s not my fault you made the mistake of closing the distance before the finishing blow.”
I backed away and Creven did an acrobatic flip to stand. Damn him. Even in defeat, he was better than me. “Marcus hired me to teach you magick, lass, not karate.”
Every Thursday night for the last nine months, I’d showed up at the gym Shauna co-owned just after close to spar with Creven. Creven was an elf and easily one of the most powerful practitioners I’d ever met. About a year ago, he’d helped me take down an ice giant. While we didn’t make short work of him and a lot of people got hurt along the way, he’d been essential to making it work. His specialty was defensive magick, which he was slowly teaching me.
I wasn’t particularly good at defensive magick. The fact that I managed it at all was impressive. Mostly, my abilities focused around manipulating auras. Still, if I was going to fight a Faerie King named in the old Irish legends, I’d need every edge I could get when my year and a day was up.
Of course, he hadn’t actually said he’d fight me. He just promised to make my life hell. Given that Seamus was a fae necromancer, he might just decide to summon spirits to haunt every cup of coffee I drank, the monster.
“I don’t technically know any karate,” I told Creven. “They teach aikido and krav maga at the academy.”
“Love it when you speak Greek at me.” Creven winked and pulled a towel down from where it hung on the retractable bleachers. He toweled sweat off his pale face.
The gym was a world-class affair, complete with two floors, an Olympic style swimming pool, two boxing rings, a whole lot of exercise machinery, and the basketball court we stood in. I was a little surprised the first time Shauna showed us into the gym and flipped on the lights, telling us not to wreck the place. That’s why Creven and I had spent the first two sessions warding the place against the ill effects of things like fireballs.
I walked back to where I’d dropped my gym bag under one of the basketball hoops and chugged a bottle of water. The gym was air conditioned, but only during business hours, which meant it was a sauna when we were in there working. Creven barely seemed to notice most days, while I looked like my back and armpits had stood in a rainstorm.
“Come on, then,” Creven urged. “You up for another round? My turn to land on top.”
“Watch it, elf,” snarled a deep voice from the doorway.
I hadn’t heard the doors open, but then I didn’t always hear Sal when he came in. He could be shockingly silent when he wanted, one of the gifts of being an alpha werewolf, I suppose.
Sal was tall, well muscled, his skin just on the brown side of bronze from all the time he was spending outdoors recently. Half Shoshone Indian, he had a love affair with the sun that I was intensely jealous of, since I couldn’t soak up any color but red. And I could afford to be a little jealous of anyone he was spending more time with than me, even if it was a celestial body. The only body he
was supposed to be paying any attention to was mine. Not that I’m a jealous woman. I just don’t like to share.
My fiercest competition for Sal’s affections let go of his hand and toddled forward full speed with a toothy grin, her curly pigtails waving behind her. “Ju!” Mia screeched her version of my name. Halfway across the gym, her right leg turned inward and she fell, throwing her chubby hands forward to catch herself.
She never touched the ground. Creven stretched out his hand and sent a small wave of energy at her. Mia landed on a cushion of air several inches off the ground. Without his focus, it was more difficult than normal to achieve, but Creven managed it with nothing more than a small grunt of effort. “Now, now. What’s this? A new challenger?”
Mia blinked. When she realized she wasn’t going to fall, she decided Creven should turn her into an airplane and fly her around, putting her arms forward and stiffening her legs into a Superman pose. All the while, his fingers wove through the air as fluid as if he were directing a choir.
Creven put her down. “I’ll do ya one better if ya fetch me staff.”
Mia screeched, wiggled free and went after it, bringing it back. As soon as it was in his hands, Creven spun it once and touched the knobby end to Mia’s nose. Mia giggled wildly as she floated a few inches up off the floor, safely inside a protective bubble.
I watched Sal’s face carefully as he strode across the gym toward me. The first time Creven had done that, I thought Sal was going to have a heart attack. Today, he didn’t look the least bit concerned. He stopped next to me, leaned down and planted a gentle kiss on my lips and then turned to snort at Creven. “You sure you don’t want me to send Shauna to keep an eye on him?”
“Relax,” I said, touching his arm. “You know Creven. He doesn’t mean anything by it. Flirting is as natural to him as breathing.”
“Well, I’d appreciate it if he’d tone it down some before someone gets the wrong idea.” Sal said it loud enough that Creven was sure to hear, but the elf didn’t turn away from the ball of ice he was forming between his fingers.
“Nobody here but us.” I stood on my tip toes, which put me just tall enough to kiss him because of how he was slouching. “Besides, I know who I’m going home with.”
“I still don’t like the idea of you training with him. He’s sworn to Kim Kelley. Isn’t there someone else you could train with? Someone from BSI?”
I grunted at that and turned back to my gym bag, shoving my water bottle back inside. BSI, the Bureau of Supernatural Investigations and my employer, was one arm of the United States Government. Sal and I lived constantly in the agency’s shadow on the Paint Rock Supernatural Reservation in Concho County, Texas. I wasn’t supposed to be fraternizing with my constituents because that created a conflict of interest, but I also should have registered my fourteen-year-old son, Hunter, with them. He was a werewolf and a member of Sal’s pack, but he was my son. If BSI knew, they would separate us. It was thanks to Marcus Kelley, local vampire philanthropist, that Hunter had stayed off the radar. He had a lot of friends in high places.
“I’ve already had all the training I’m going to get from BSI,” I said. “And I don’t trust them. As soon as they catch wind of Seamus, they’ll cut him a deal. They’ll play into his plans and put my back against the wall. If you want me to call BSI, you might as well ask me to cut my arms off.”
My phone chirped in my duffel bag and I glowered at the sound of a text coming in. It was probably Hunter asking us to bring home pizza again, which was the last thing I wanted to do. Puberty had hit him hard over the last few months. For human boys, that means cracking voices, pimples and weird body hair. Werewolf puberty is ten times worse. Teenage moodiness was nothing new, but Hunter’s mood shifted with the moon, alternating between fits of intense apathy and dangerous anger. He could also eat his weight in pizza and not gain an ounce. Sal said it was something to do with high metabolism, high body temperature…something like that. It was expensive, that much I knew.
I fished the phone out of the bottom of the bag, put in the lock code and frowned when I realized it wasn’t Hunter texting me. It was Sheriff Tindall.
Need you here ASAP. Possible arson. Suspect resisting arrest. Violently.
He sent a second text with longitude and latitude numbers. When I put them into my map app, it showed the middle of a field off State Route 765, roughly halfway between Eden and San Angelo.
I frowned at the end of his first text. He wouldn’t call me to come out to just any old arson where a suspect was resisting arrest. Tindall had to be dealing with something supernatural.
“Duty calls?” said Sal, looking over my shoulder.
“Sheriff needs a consult out near Eola.” I dropped the phone back into my bag along with my clean clothes and zipped it up. I’d planned on taking a shower in the locker room but that wasn’t going to happen. Given the number of grammatical errors in Tindall’s text, he’d sent it in a hurry. I needed to get there yesterday.
I picked up my bag and tried to remain casual, since I didn’t want Sal to worry. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
On Thursdays, Sal and I drive separately. The truck was too small to fit me, Mia’s car seat, and Hunter, and my car is a 1968 Firebird, a sleek and sexy black, two-door coupe with no back seat. Well, it was sleek and sexy black in the seventies. Now, I’d had to replace so many parts that it was a Franken-car. The doors were red, the antenna bent, the interior a faded gray.
In the last few months, Valentino Garcia, my mechanic and Sal’s second in the pack, had replaced enough parts that I basically had a new car, save for the exterior. He’d offered me a paint job to cover the mismatched parts, but I declined. The sad truth was that the Firebird wasn’t a family car and I was looking to sell her to buy something bigger. I loved my car, but hauling two kids around demanded something bigger, a family car. I say car because Hell will freeze over before I buy a minivan.
Sal refused to let me go around after dark alone. Between the Vanguards of Humanity, vampires and faerie necromancers, I’d made enough enemies that he was worried. I’d told him repeatedly that I could look after myself, but Sal saw himself as my protector, and it was easier just to indulge his protective instincts than fight about it. I was sure that, even with him as back-up, I wouldn’t stand a chance against anyone that wanted to kill me. Still, it was nice to know back-up was always right there with me.
Sal came out of the gym and buckled Mia into her car seat while she babbled. Then, he leaned against the door while Mia babbled behind him. He’d parked right beside me.
“You shouldn’t come with me,” I said as I threw my bag behind my seat. “Tindall implied it’d be trouble and it’s past Mia’s bedtime.”
“He wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t trouble,” Sal answered. “Besides, what bedtime?” he snorted. “You know as well as I do what Mia thinks of bedtime.” He pushed my door closed after I climbed into the drivers’ seat and leaned in the open window. “I’ll follow you out to Eola and let Tindall take over. Hopefully, she falls asleep on the drive home.”
“Put on one of Hunter’s CDs. She’ll go right to sleep.”
Sal wrinkled his nose. “No thanks. I like my eardrums.” He kissed me on top of the head.
I turned over the engine and let it purr a minute, waiting for him to get into his truck before I revved it once, threw her into reverse and pushed the gas to the floor and left him in the dust.
Speeding is dangerous and stupid, and I don’t do it often except to get away from Sal’s escorts. I didn’t want them following me out to the crime scene, as that was no place for kids. Besides, half of the police force under Tindall already saw me as weak and incapable. If I showed up with my boyfriend as a chaperone, that would just re-enforce those whispers.
Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t kick their asses. It did mean I had to work extra hard at projecting an image of strength and professionalism. It’s stupid and wrong, but that was the way of the world, especially for
women in law enforcement.
I pushed the car up to fifty in a thirty-five before sliding onto the exit ramp out of Eden toward San Angelo. There weren’t any headlights behind me, so I assumed Sal got the message and set my attention to driving through the desert in the dark.
The coordinates Tindall had sent me were way out in the middle of nowhere. The land between Paint Rock and San Angelo was mostly ranching land and almost all of it was for sale. Has been ever since I moved out there. I didn’t have much occasion to drive out to Eola, which was an unincorporated community that had been dying in Eden’s urban chokehold over the last decade. What struck me most about the area was the absolute darkness. You don’t get that in cities. The glow of San Angelo lit up the sky in the distance but, between me and the city, there was nothing but utter darkness.
Except for the flashing lights of emergency vehicles and the hungry, orange light of a dilapidated ranch house in flames.
I saw it from the state route, even though it was down another side road and a long driveway. Not many trees in central Texas to obscure the view, especially out there. As I got closer, I counted two fire engines, three police cruisers and two squads.
The problem was evident the minute I parked behind Tindall’s Cadillac and climbed out. The police cruisers had torn through the field to park in a semi-circle a hundred yards back from the fire, lights flashing. Cops squatted behind the safety of their bullet-resistant doors, guns pointed forward. A silhouette staggered back and forth in front of the fire, swinging what looked like a sword back and forth.
I pushed the door closed and jogged closer, pausing when a hair-raising howl pierced the night. A werewolf hunting howl. I broke into a run, closing on the line of police cruisers just in time to see a skinny, black werewolf leap through the air. The swordsman, whose face I still couldn’t make out because it was caked in ash and mud, caught the bite with a forearm and kicked the werewolf away.
“Black,” Tindall said and trotted around the back of the nearest cruiser to crouch next to me. “Thank God you’re here. This whole thing is nuts. These two were going at it when we pulled in. I didn’t know if he was one of yours or a stray, and nobody here has any clue who has what to do with the fire. I’d shoot the suspect down, but last time we tried, he sent a fireball at us. I figured we’d wait until we heard from you. Your jurisdiction, seeing as magick’s involved.”