Demon Born Magic (Ella Grey Series Book 3)

by Jayne Faith

  “I can’t really see it,” I said.

  “Hang on.” He pulled up to a stoplight, switched on his phone’s flash, and handed me the device. He twisted around so I could get a better view.

  I used his phone like a flashlight and saw an impossibly intricate, slightly raised geometric design about the size of a nickel just above the neck of his t-shirt.

  The light turned green, and he let go of his collar so he could drive.

  “Each one is slightly different, like a fingerprint,” he said.

  “Did it hurt?” I asked.

  “It didn’t tickle. It’s fast, though.”

  Awesome, I was going to get branded.

  “So what’s the draw of the underworld?” I asked. “Why did you join up?”

  “I was looking for a way out,” he said. “I thought I might find someone who had the answer.”

  It took me a second to realize what he meant. “Obviously you didn’t find what you were looking for.”

  “No.”

  “What about for others? Why do they want into this club?”

  He shrugged. “Exclusivity makes it desirable, of course, like with any other human club. And there’s a lot of opportunity for networking with people who are knowledgeable, rich, powerful, you name it. Another thing humans seem drawn to.”

  We were heading up in elevation on Bogus Basin Road, which led to a recreation and ski area. But about halfway up, Rogan took a turn onto an unmarked dirt road.

  “This place is pretty wild,” he said. “You ever play Dungeons and Dragons?”

  I gave him a baffled look. “Um, no. When I was a kid I was too busy working and trying to keep my brother from doing anything too stupid.” A slight grin formed on my lips. “You play Dungeons and Dragons?”

  “I dabbled, decades ago.”

  “What does D and D have to do with anything?”

  “Let’s just say the owner of the place we’re going is very wealthy and has a penchant for the fantastical. You’ve been warned.” He gave a low chuckle.

  We were winding along a well-groomed dirt road through the trees, our route giving no clue as to what waited ahead.

  When the trees parted and revealed a clearing, I expected to see either a medieval castle, based on Rogan’s warning, or a log mansion tastefully designed to blend in with the natural surroundings.

  What I saw was neither. It looked more like a huge, modernized Egyptian tomb. A roughly pyramidal shape, except with the peaked top lopped off, it was all smooth stucco surfaces and sloping lines, with no discernable roofline and few windows. There were two large lit torches marking the entrance. It looked like something from a Disneyland set.

  Half a dozen cars were already parked off to the side. As Rogan pulled up next to a late model Hummer, I thought I saw something moving through the trees just beyond the light cast by the torches. I shaded my eyes, peering into the forest. I could have sworn it was a person.

  “Ready?” Rogan asked.

  I turned and followed him toward the entrance, where the front door was set so far in it was almost like a cave. There was no bell, but a camera was mounted over the ten-foot tall, bolt-studded, wood plank door.

  He flipped a little wave at the camera, and a moment later there was a mechanical thunk. He reached for the metal handle that bore rune carvings and pushed the door open.

  Inside was a corridor lined with smaller glass-enclosed versions of the torches we’d seen out front. I couldn’t imagine the ventilation system that kept each individual sconce free of smoke.

  The walls were painted with scenes that did indeed look like they were lifted from fantasy video games and fairy tales. A bearded sorcerer standing on a mountain. An armored knight on a black stallion. A maiden with long golden hair sitting beside a pond and trailing her fingers in the water. It would have been beautiful if not for her ridiculously huge breasts spilling from her corset. A mural of a battle scene featuring dragons, elves, trolls, fae, vampires, and just about every other supernatural creature I could imagine stretched for a dozen feet.

  We passed a handful of heavy-looking wood doors that were scaled smaller than the front door but still oversized enough to make me feel like I was walking through a giant’s house. They were all closed and bore keyed locks.

  The floor began to slope downward, and I couldn’t help imagining an honest-to-god dungeon waiting somewhere below.

  What I actually found brought the start of a grin to my face. The corridor ended at a room that could have held about ten of my apartments. It was part pub, part man cave, and all fantastic whimsy. A bar lined a good portion of one wall, but it wasn’t like any bar I’d ever seen. The entire thing was upholstered in gaudy gold vinyl. An iron sculpture of a dragon’s skeleton hung suspended from the vaulted ceiling like a dinosaur display at a natural history museum. Medieval weapons mounted in glass cases decorated the walls. A giant TV screen hung like a dark window, with three rows of recliners set up like movie seats below it.

  There were three pool tables, one of which was in use by a woman with gray-streaked dreadlocks and a guy who I could only describe as swashbuckling. He wore a loose-fitting white shirt, dark leather pants, tall boots, and a red bandana around his head like a sweatband.

  Half a dozen men and women were gathered at the far end of the bar. One of the women was dressed in flowing fabric and a headscarf that made her look like a palm-reading Gypsy wannabe.

  A clean-cut man in his late fifties with neat salt-and-pepper hair and a paunch that hung over the front of his pants strode forward. He was wearing an actual velvet smoking jacket and held a lit cigar in his left hand. He looked vaguely familiar.

  He extended his free hand. “Ed Jensen. Welcome to my playground.”

  Ah yes, the third generation owner of Jensen Motors, a huge local car dealership.

  I grasped his hand. “Ella Grey.”

  “We’ll get started in just a few minutes,” Ed said. He made a sweeping motion with his cigar. “Please, make yourself at home.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Ed drifted back toward the bar, and I turned to Rogan.

  “Is he on the council?” I whispered.

  Rogan shook his head. “Nah, he’s just a member like me. He likes to play host.”

  I looked around at the others.

  “Only one council member is local,” Rogan said. “Well, aside from Zarella. The rest will send their proxies. The other ones gathered are part of the society membership.”

  “Okay, let’s get this over with,” I said and headed toward the group at the bar. Rogan trailed after me.

  The Gypsy lady was the first to notice us.

  “It’s the guest of honor,” she said in a thick Eastern European accent that sounded genuine. Maybe the Romani costume wasn’t a costume after all. She took one of my hands in both of hers. “I am Florica.”

  I shook her hand, and to my relief, Rogan stepped up and introduced me to the rest of the group, an eclectic mix of people who at a glance I would have assumed had nothing in common.

  Mark, a slight pale guy with thinning hair and glasses, who reminded me of a junior high math teacher, went around to the other side of the bar.

  “What’s your poison?” he asked.

  I didn’t really feel like a drink and nearly waved him off, but everyone else was holding a glass or a bottle. It dawned on me that this crowd was probably much more my style than the tea-and-mulled-wine drinking coven.

  “A lager?” I said.

  “Oh no, you must have something stronger than beer,” Florica insisted. “Give her a swig of Ed’s Five Points.”

  Mark gave a little heh-heh laugh and reached under the counter. He produced a clear bottle, with nothing but a pentagram on the label, and a shot glass.

  “Ed’s potato vodka. He distills it right here.” Mark poured a generous shot.

  I tilted my head and eyed it. “This isn’t going to make me go blind, is it?”

  Everyone chuckled.

  “Ed
would be walking around with a seeing-eye dog by now if that were a danger,” someone said behind me.

  “I heard that,” Ed called from a few feet away, where he was talking on his cell.

  I picked up the shot glass and raised it. “Salud.”

  I knocked it back, and my eyes bulged as fire hit my throat. The vodka was flavored with something spicy enough to make me want to dunk my head in a bucket of ice water. I coughed, and someone clapped me on the back.

  “Cinnamon with a dash of jalapeno,” Florica said.

  “Why would anyone do that to perfectly good vodka?” I choked out.

  She laughed good-naturedly as Mark popped the top off a bottle of beer and slid it across the counter to me. I caught Rogan’s broad smile—a rare sight, but one I wouldn’t mind seeing more of.

  I downed half the beer in a couple of gulps just to put out the flames.

  By the time Ed began rounding us up, my head felt pleasantly warm and thick.

  He led us to a door at the back near the pool tables, which opened into a small, round room with a domed ceiling and high stained-glass windows. The room was empty, the only real decorative flourish besides the windows was a many-pointed star integrated into the design of the marble floor. There was nothing overtly religious in sight, but the space had the feel of a chapel. The low conversation of the group hushed.

  The room was dim when we walked in, with only a strip of tiny lights around the edge where the floor met the wall, so it took my eyes a second or two to adjust. I’d entered at the back of the crowd, and it also took me a moment to realize that our numbers had grown.

  Too-still figures stood at intervals around the star on the floor. When I got a little closer, I sucked in a breath, automatically reaching for my whip. They were zombies. My vodka and beer-induced buzz vanished in a bolt of adrenaline.

  Rogan placed his hand on my arm. “They’re the proxies,” he said quietly.

  I’d seen zombies plenty of times on the news or in pictures on the internet but never in person.

  The scent of burnt sage had already crept through the room. It was the aroma of the strong magic that up to that point I’d only heard of. It kept zombies from smelling like grave rot. There was an underlying note to the smell, something wild and fleshy that I preferred not to dwell on.

  A door opposite the one we’d used to enter cracked open, and I nearly jumped as another zombie slipped in.

  They were sometimes called braindead-undead, which was bluntly accurate. NECR2 kept its victims’ bodies stubbornly alive, but the person inside was gone—lights were on, but nobody was home. It was like viral life support. And the virus was tenacious as hell in its purpose. Zombies could be killed only by incinerating their bodies to ash. As a general rule, all were put down because they were cannibals and obviously dangerous if left to roam free, not to mention the risk of infecting more people with the virus.

  But some were kept for study, and there were rumors that others were occasionally acquired illegally by private citizens. I was presumably looking at twelve such specimens, controlled remotely by necromancers. The memory of the figure stealing through the forest outside flashed through my mind—I’d bet money it was one of these creatures.

  “You’re in the middle.” Rogan gestured to the center of the star. He stepped close and whispered in my ear, “Just embrace it. You’re going to be a great underworlder.”

  I flicked him a grateful glance and then turned sideways to move between two of the zombies, cringing internally. Contrary to how zombies were often portrayed, real ones didn’t have special strength and weren’t particularly fast. I could kill one before it had a chance to bite me. Still, the things were damn creepy, standing there dressed in regular clothes with vacant looks in their glazed eyes, staring at the floor.

  One of them looked up, right at me. It opened its mouth and spoke with perfect enunciation. “Nice to see you, Ms. Grey.”

  I shuddered. Zarella. It wasn’t his voice, but they were his words. I gave him a tiny nod of acknowledgment.

  Twelve zombies were arranged around the star’s points. To my surprise, Mark took the final position. For some reason he was one of the last I would have expected to be the one human representative of the underworld council in attendance. Rogan and the other non-council members lined the walls.

  I couldn’t help comparing this gathering to a coven circle. Zombies preceded by vodka shots at the bar versus witches and mulled wine around the kitchen island. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the power of a coven. But it was painfully obvious that I seemed to fit in better in one scenario than the other. I wasn’t exactly comfortable with that light-bulb moment, seeing as how the underworld gathering included animated corpses and Phillip Zarella as part of the leadership.

  Ed joined me in the middle of the room.

  “Death-touched necromancer Ella Grey joins our ranks today,” he said, his voice carrying with a master-of-ceremonies tone to it. He winked at me. “It’s going to pinch a little. Just stay right here.”

  He pointed to the starburst that formed the center of the larger design in the floor. I moved over so the soles of my boots nearly covered it as Ed stepped out of the zombie circle and went to the wall.

  I inhaled slowly. Time to get the mark of the underworld.

  Chapter 14

  FLORICA TOOK A step away from the wall and raised her arms like a conductor ready to signal the first note of a symphony. The fabric of her flowy dress trailed from her arms, her garb adding to the drama of the moment.

  I saw her magic glowing in strands that stretched between her hands. Half expecting her to zap me with it, I braced myself. But instead, she sent it upward to the domed ceiling, where the colored streams seemed to play and dart for a moment like fish in a bowl. Then the magic gathered at the apex and arrowed down on me like a bolt of lightning.

  My entire body stiffened as hot pain lanced through me. The sensation swam through my veins and then retreated to a point at the back of my neck. It was like a hundred electric shocks concentrated in a single point. I squeezed my eyes closed and dug my nails into my palms, refusing to wince or reach up to touch where the pain was centered.

  Then in the next breath it was gone.

  I inhaled slowly through my nose and opened my eyes. The room was filled with the sounds of chanting, and it took my still-crackling brain a second to realize that I didn’t recognize the language. I watched the jaws of the zombies move mechanically as their drivers spoke through them.

  I stayed where I was until the chant ended. Rogan stood at the wall directly ahead, and the slow smile that spread over his face sent a thrill of heat through me.

  Actually, my entire body felt hyper-awake and sensitized, as if a Roman candle had been lit inside me and its sparks surged through my blood.

  I looked around, and everyone seemed to relax. Amid smiles and a few cheers, the underworlders clapped. I couldn’t help a grin as my body buzzed. I hadn’t felt this alive since I lost my magic.

  A few people came up to shake my hand or clap me on the shoulder, and everyone began filtering back into the game room. I lingered, still getting my balance after the brief but powerful slap of magic. I reached up to touch the back of my neck. The skin was smooth but so sensitive my eyes widened.

  “The sensation will fade some after a while,” Rogan said. He lifted his chin, indicating something behind me. “Looks like someone wants to talk to you.”

  One of the zombies—Zarella’s—was crooking its pointer finger at me, beckoning me closer.

  Rogan stayed close as I moved toward the creature.

  “I need to speak to Ms. Grey alone,” Zarella’s zombie said.

  I nodded at Rogan. “I’ll see you in there.”

  The zombie waited until the room had cleared. My eyes slid over the leathery skin, and I fought the urge to take a step back.

  “Welcome to the underworld,” the zombie said.

  “Jacob wants it,” I whispered urgently. “The thing you hired
us to get for you.”

  “He does, he does.” The zombie nodded, seemingly unconcerned.

  I raised my hands “So? Doesn’t that present a problem? Damien and I can’t take the job if Gregori is going to be on us like white on rice.”

  The zombie folded its arms and then lifted a hand to tap at its chin, as if thinking.

  “As I told your partner, you don’t need to worry about that,” Zarella said finally.

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t think this is going to work,” I said. “Sorry, but the job’s off.”

  “Well, it would be your choice to not fulfill with my request. Of course, that would mean your partner would not receive the thing he desires.”

  “He’ll get over it,” I said.

  The zombie chuckled. “I doubt that. In any case, you have fulfilled the first part of your obligation by joining us here, and I owe you something for it.”

  The zombie reached into the small satchel that was slung over one shoulder and across its body. It produced a tiny canvas drawstring bag the size of a coin purse.

  “It contains what you seek, something that will keep your reaper from consuming you completely,” Zarella said.

  I grasped the bag. It felt like it had a few marbles inside.

  “And what’s the catch?” I asked.

  “No catch, Ms. Grey. I’m confident I will get what I need without any trickery.”

  I eyed the zombie but of course couldn’t read anything in its expression that might enlighten me to its driver’s sincerity. I didn’t believe he would purposely do me mortal harm. There was no benefit to him if I died.

  There could be some other catch in the future. But the fact was, I had to try Zarella’s fix even if it ended up having unwanted consequences. I had no other choice.

  “I want to know about Damien’s part of the deal,” I said.

  The zombie tilted his head in a gesture so normal and human it gave me the willies. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the price he’d pay. If he went through with it and got the power he wants, what would happen to him as a consequence?” I was trying to be as clear as possible. Zarella struck me as one of those people who could get slippery with language, finding loopholes in the semantics and the spaces between words.