Shade Cursed: A Druidverse Urban Fantasy Novel (The Shadow Changeling Series Book 1)

by M. D. Massey

Over the course of thirty minutes, they divulged nothing of interest, nor any information that might indicate they were somehow involved in trafficking humans. I could’ve entered the house and tortured them, but I had no idea whether they were working for the fae under duress or under the influence of a geas or glamour. Having been a victim of the fae myself, I held some sympathy for humans who were caught in their schemes.

  For that reason alone, I left the humans unscathed, promising myself I would return at a later date to investigate them further—just in case they deserved a quick and speedy trip to death’s door.

  The third address I drove to was a long, low mansion constructed in the mid-century style, high on a hill in a ritzy section of Austin. Neighborhoods like this were filled with homes that were priced many multiples beyond their apparent value, because real estate in this town was more valuable than gold. The neighborhood was probably full of attorneys who were partners in their own law firms, surgeons and specialist physicians who ran their own practices, and a variety of entrepreneurs, CEOs, and executives in the tech industry that made Austin the economic powerhouse it was.

  I cared not one whit for the local neighborhood nor its denizens, as my only concern were the people who might be living in this house. And I used the term people graciously, for it was clear to me that the fae occupying this home were less than human—far less, in my opinion. When I arrived at the house, I saw several persons standing at the front doorway—a small cluster consisting of six tall, lithe, humanoid figures.

  A passing human might have mistaken them for a group of fashion models, or actors and actresses perhaps. However, I recognized them for what they were: Fae disguised as humans. I drove by without changing my speed, noting the individuals I recognized as I passed.

  One of them was one of Maeve’s most valued fixers, a fae named Brandon who was skilled in both mind magic and the sort of magic that was useful for cleaning up messes. He was one of the individuals the Queen relied on to hide the bodies, as it were. Why he was here, I could only guess.

  I pulled around the corner and parked my car, casting a “look away, go away” spell on it that would hopefully deter any fae departing the area from recognizing my vehicle. Once again, I cloaked myself in shadow, sneaking through backyards until I reached the back terrace of the house. From there, I used my shadow magic to lift myself to the rooftop. I snuck to the peak, looking over the edge of the low roof so I could listen in on the conversation below.

  Brandon was in a heated discussion with two other fae, with three more of the Queen’s soldiers at his back. Apparently, my conversation with Maeve had stirred up a hornet’s nest of activity in her court. She had sent her people out to determine who was involved with the vampires locally, intending to force them out of her territory immediately.

  That was all I gathered from their conversation during the short time I listened in. Of course, one of the fae arguing with Maeve’s people was the wizard known as Griff, and the other was one of the lesser fae royalty from some house of high repute in Underhill. While I wanted nothing more than to leap down into their midst and tear Griff and his royal companion limb from limb, I decided instead that discretion was the better part of valor.

  As silently as possible, I slipped down the back side of the house, finding a window that was open and poorly warded against entry. I slipped through that window into a long hallway in the rear of the house that connected bedrooms, bathrooms, and utility areas. Soon I found what I was looking for: a bathroom that had been recently used.

  Using magic and much good haste, I collected any and all DNA I could find from the facilities. It was a thankless task, but one that would prove useful in the hours to come. Once I had what I needed, I slipped out the back window and into the shadows of the garden, where I would wait to see if any of the fae lingered after Maeve’s people had left.

  18

  I remained hidden, waiting for something to happen, and soon sensed magic being cast inside the home. By the time I sprinted from cover and reached the back door, the pair of fae were gone. I opened the lock with magic and entered the house, only to find the residue of a recently cast portal and nothing more. My quarry had vanished.

  Cursing my failure to watch them more closely and gather more information on their operations, I headed out the door, determined to return to my tower where I would have the necessary spell components to cast a powerful tracking spell. I was in my car and halfway home when I received a text from Belladonna.

  Urgent. We need to meet. Let me know when you get this.

  I tried calling her back to see what the emergency was, but received no answer. That was quite unlike her, so instead of heading home, I drove straight to her apartment. My agitation increased with every mile, as I had no idea what sort of trouble she’d gotten herself into.

  Belladonna was a careful and skilled hunter, with a great deal of combat training as well as experience being raised around powerful fae. Anything that could get her this riled, well… It had to be something serious. By the time I reached her front door, my anxiety levels had hit an all-time high.

  I banged on her door repeatedly with my fist, screaming her name. “Belladonna! Belladonna! It is Crowley, open up!”

  The door opened to reveal Belladonna standing there, bleary-eyed and confused. “¡Ay, joder! What the hell is your problem?”

  “I was concerned,” I said, recovering my composure. “The nature of your text—you said it was urgent, and then I couldn’t get you on the phone.”

  Belladonna gave me a grin that was a cross between sheepishness and sly surprise. “I had my ringer off, Crowley. Sometimes a girl needs her beauty sleep, you know? Plus, I figured you’d text me back, not come barging over unannounced.”

  I nodded, feeling like a fool for overreacting. “That… well, that makes sense.” I looked around her apartment, which was a mess as usual. “So, what did you need to speak to me about?”

  Belladonna looked down at her bare feet and legs, fingering the hem of the long T-shirt she wore as a nightgown. “Tell you what—give me a minute to get dressed, and we can talk about it.”

  She was gone into her bedroom before I could reply, and I couldn’t help but glance at her retreating form as she went to change. The woman was my weakness, the one soft spot in the hard exterior I’d created over years of being forged under the watchful eye of my adoptive mother. She was my Achilles heel, and I knew it. All it had taken was a simple text, and I came running. I wondered to myself whether that weakness would someday be the end of me—or the end of Belladonna.

  A few minutes later Belladonna emerged from her bedroom, dressed in boy shorts and a more fitted T-shirt that said, “girls kick ass too.” She motioned that I should follow her to the kitchen table, pointing at a seat and then bustling off to the kitchen to put on a pot of water for some tea. She soon returned with two cups, teabags, and the pot of water. After setting them within easy reach, she sat across from me, leaning on the table with her hands clasped together, avoiding eye contact.

  “Belladonna —”

  “Hush,” she said emphatically. “I’m trying to gather my thoughts, so I can say this right.”

  I sat in silence, expecting the worst but hoping for the best. Then again, I was horrible at reading social cues—especially those that came from the opposite sex that were related to romance. I made my tea, sipping it quietly and waiting for Belladonna to speak. Soon she looked up at me, brow furrowed and eyes knit in an expression that told me she was struggling to find the right words.

  “Crowley, you know how we used to work together?”

  “Yes, Belladonna—I remember it well.”

  “And you know how we made a good team—at least, I thought so, before things got…”

  “Complicated?”

  “Yes, exactly. But we did make a good team, right?”

  “Indeed we did. As I recall, we were one of the most successful teams working for the Cold Iron Circle. We closed many cases in the short months that
we worked together.”

  Her eyes lit up, and she banged her fist on the table. “See! That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “I am at a loss here. You’ll have to be more specific about what you’re referring to for me to comment on the topic at hand.”

  “Fíjate, cabron. I want to work with you again—as partners, I mean, and not anything else.”

  My heart rose and sank instantly as she continued.

  “You see, since I got kicked out of the Cold Iron Circle, I’ve been struggling to find my place. And I don’t want to fail. If I do, that’ll give my mother all the ammunition she needs to call me back to Spain and have me working for the family again. I can’t do it, Crowley,” she said. “I just can’t.”

  “Belladonna, what are you asking me?”

  “Well, it’s like this—I want to start an investigation agency, and I want you to be my partner.”

  I sat in shock for a moment, not certain how to respond. I wasn’t sure what I had expected when Belladonna told me that she wanted to talk. I had calmed down quite a bit since I arrived, but this was so far out of the realm of expectation for me, I was at a loss for words.

  “I’m sorry—you want to what?”

  “I want to work with you, Crowley. I want us to be partners. We worked well together, before we got romantically involved—if that’s what you want to call it.”

  “Belladonna—”

  “Just hear me out. We start this agency together, and we’ll be the only outfit in the Austin area handling investigations for people in The World Beneath. You know what that means? Everybody is going to come to us for help when they have work they can’t handle themselves.”

  “Dirty work, you mean. The kind that the local factions don’t want to handle on their own.”

  She snapped her fingers and pointed at me. “Exactly. Just look at what they’ve had Druid Boy doing since he took on that role as justiciar for the local area. They’ve had him busier than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Now that he’s preoccupied with personal concerns, he can’t handle all the work they’re throwing at him. Plus, the factions have gotten used to having him at their beck and call. It’s the perfect storm for starting an investigations business.”

  “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say that we start this investigations agency, and it turns out to be very successful. I’m not exactly a people person, Belladonna. Are you willing to be the face of this thing? And when I have, shall we say, other work to attend, will you be able to pick up the slack on your own?”

  Belladonna rolled her eyes and sighed. “Crowley, ever the worrier. Why don’t you just let me worry about that, and you can handle all the wizardry stuff. Deal?”

  “It’s not a deal yet,” I said as I studied the wood grain pattern on the table. “I have personal matters at hand, the kind that I can’t ignore. So, I’m not certain that I’m willing to decide just yet.”

  Belladonna did a great job of hiding her disappointment behind a forced smile. “That’s okay, I can wait. But don’t make me wait too long. A girl’s gotta eat and pay the bills, and lately, it hasn’t exactly been an easy time doing either.”

  “If it’s money you need—”

  Belladonna shook her head emphatically. “Don’t even start. You know how I feel about that, even though I know that you’re loaded to the gills. Don’t tell me how, ’cause I don’t want to know. Anyway, I pull my own weight. I’m not here to borrow money from you, and I certainly don’t need a sugar daddy. Understood?”

  “Of course, but if it were an emergency, you know you can count on me. Money is not a concern for me. It never has been, and it never will be.”

  “Well, good for you,” Belladonna said, her voice dripping with friendly sarcasm. “If only things were so easy for the rest of us, Crowley. Wouldn’t that be something.”

  I reflected on my childhood and the torture I’d gone through to survive while I was being molded and shaped into an assassin. I thought about what I’d sacrificed of my humanity to learn the dark arts of fae magic, as well as to master the shade that had been planted inside me. Then I thought about how I was being hunted, and how my adoptive parents would never let the personal slight of my betrayal go.

  I only had money because I took from those I killed, as I’d been taught. Money was necessary to fund operations, and my targets often had it in excess. It wasn’t something I was proud of, and given the choice between wealth and being one of Mother’s experiments or poverty and being a normal human, I’d choose the latter.

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. Most people aren’t willing to pay the price.” I stood from the table. “Belladonna, all I ask is for a few weeks to tie up some loose ends. Again, personal business, not something I wish to discuss nor anything I would like to involve you in. These things are best handled alone.”

  “I get it. I have family problems as well—or did you forget? Don’t worry about it. I can wait a few weeks for your answer. But meanwhile, you know I’m going to be busy doing the groundwork and figuring out how to get this thing going. Because, with or without you, it’s happening.”

  I gave her the warmest smile I could, under the circumstances. “Of that, I have no doubt.”

  After my conversation with Belladonna was over, I bid her farewell and headed back to my tower. Once there, I began preparations for a rather complex tracking spell. Any wizard worth their salt could cast a simple tracking spell. It was merely a matter of having the right materials, something personal to the target of the spell, and some method of scrying or divination, like a bowl of water or a map, or another means of indicating where the person was.

  Many of these methods were inaccurate and easily detected by the target, if the target was also skilled in the magical arts. For that reason, I decided I would need to cast a much more advanced form of the spell, one that would be difficult to detect but still highly accurate. After I gathered all the required tools and components, I cleared off a table in my lab and laid out a large, very detailed map of the Central Texas area.

  As I began to prepare the spell, I noticed my shade was starting to act up. It had been some time since I had fed it, and unfortunately, it was beginning to try to break out of the prison in which I had placed it, deep within my soul.

  I ignored the shade’s protests, as well as the whispers and suggestions I heard in my mind, prompting me to commit various acts of murder, torture, and other felonies. Instead I focused the entirety of my concentration and efforts into casting the spell. The spell components I used were actually rather simple, and merely a method of focusing my mind and my magical abilities into the spell itself. These were common items like salt, iron filings, the DNA material that I had collected from the house, and also various magical plants that I burned to clear the air of any latent magical energies that might interfere with the spell.

  After I had the map laid out and the incense burning, I poured two small piles of spell components onto the map. One was a pile of salt, the other a pile of iron filings. Then, I sat cross-legged on the floor near the map, entering a meditative state before I began to chant aloud.

  It took roughly two minutes before I felt the emanations of my magic begin to interact with the map and the salt and iron filings that I had placed atop it. I could feel the spell working as it sought out the rest of the DNA that matched the sample I had taken from the safe house. With this type of spell, like attracted like, and the map, salt, and iron filings would act in accordance with my will to indicate Griff’s location on the map—if he was, indeed, still in the general vicinity.

  Something told me he was, because a wizard of his abilities and powers—one strong enough to attract a familiar as powerful as a star vampire—would not so easily accept being routed in the way that I had on our first meeting. In other words, he would want a rematch, and I would be more than delighted to give him the same. I continued to meditate and chant, directing my magical energies into the map and the spell components as the spell did its work. On
ce I had determined the spell had been completed, I stood and stretched before turning my eyes to the map.

  There I saw two lines, one made of salt, the other of iron filings. Just as I had suspected, there were two sets of DNA in the samples I’d taken from the house. One set was a hair, the same color as Griff’s. The other was a blonde hair, more than likely that came from one of the fae Griff had been working with. The line of salt represented the fae’s DNA, while the line of iron filings represented Griff’s.

  Both lines trailed away from the location of the house where I had gathered the DNA earlier that evening, winding off to different parts of the map. The salt trail led to an area of the Hill Country that I knew to be forested, remote, and full of caverns—the sort of terrain where the fae loved to place their gateways to Underhill. They never hid them too well, however, as they found it humorous that humans would stumble into concealed portal, only to find themselves lost in a strange land—Underhill. It didn’t often happen, but when it did, the fae went to great lengths to make the lost individuals’ time in Underhill as horrid as possible.

  I put such thoughts out of my mind. They brought up memories of witnessing my fellow humans being tortured and humiliated in Underhill, with me as a changeling prince being nothing more than an impartial observer, not by choice, but by necessity. Instead, I turned my attentions to the line of iron filings, which also traveled away from the safe house, winding themselves through the streets of Austin. The spell was still doing its work, as Griff appeared to be on the move. The iron filings vibrated into a continuous line that traced his pathway as he traveled to his next destination.

  I suspected the two lines would intersect at some point, and I wanted to be sure that the location I traveled to next would take me directly to the wizard. Certainly I could go after the fae, who were involved in trafficking humans, but Griff was my target. He was the key to all of this and would have the answers I sought as to why the fae were working with the Vampire Nations.