Blood Craft: The Shadow Sorceress Book Two (11 page)

Punching it had been a mistake. The face simply crumbled inwards beneath the blow, the waxy moist feeling of his skin beneath my hands sending my gag reflex into overdrive.

“It’s got Dex!” Victoria cried, her voice somewhere nearby as I fought against the creature that held me.

His grey film-coated eyes rolled in his head as I rammed my hand against his chest. The guilt I felt for what I would have to do was quickly overcome by my own instinct to survive.

Grabbing a thread of my own power, I drew it up and let it pour down, out through my hands. Feeling it hit the other man’s body sent a shiver of revulsion down my spine. I could feel every inch of him, feel the different parts that had, at one time, made him human … but not anymore. Now he was something else, something that lurked in the shadows, vile and putrid….

My power coiled around the core of his being and squeezed. His eyes rolled back in his head once more and he gagged, fighting for air as his body seemed to sink in on itself before swelling outwards. The grip he’d had on me disappeared as he rotted in front of my eyes.

I’d seen something like this happen on the TV and it had been pretty disgusting, then, but actually seeing it up close and personal? My stomach rebelled, churning uncomfortably as the smell of rot filled the room.

“Christ,” I muttered as he writhed, the wet sounds of choking escaping from him as his limbs became discoloured and his face mottled. The hiss of compressed gasses hit the air and there was an almost inaudible pop.

Fluids poured out from underneath what was left of his body and the gurgling of his laboured breaths came to an end. I scrambled back and hopped to my feet as the bloody mess that had once been the cop’s insides seeped across the marble floor towards me.

“Amber!” Victoria screamed, and I turned in the direction of her voice.

She stood in the middle of the now-clear space, surrounded by two others, but I could already tell from the way they moved towards her that they weren’t human anymore. Pulling my athame out of my weapons belt, I ran at the nearest creature closing in on her.

Ramming my blade in through its back, I jerked the knife upwards and simultaneously pushed a little power out through my hands. I felt the blade bite home, destroying the heart and what was left of the human side of the creature died instantly. Its breathing stopped and yet the body continued to thrash around on the end of my athame like a fish caught on the end of a hook.

My bright blue coil of my power found what it was looking for and strangled it, covering it completely until there was nothing left and the creature’s movements came to a shuddering halt.

Dragging my blade back out, a grunt of pain drew my attention. Victoria was busy dealing with the other creature—she didn’t have my power, but she did have a really long machete, and I had a feeling that the creature wouldn’t be fit to fight back if it didn’t have a head anymore.

My eyes scanned the area and the blood in my veins froze. Dex stood with his back to the wall, his feet no longer touching the floor as the woman that held him pinned in place pushed him a little further up the wall.

Dex’s hands scrambled at the grip, his fingers tearing into her flesh, gouging at her arms, but still she held him.

My brain screamed at my legs to move, but they were slow to react. When I ran, it was jerky and uncoordinated, like I was running through molasses.

The woman holding Dex opened her mouth and the same grey smoke I’d seen in the forensic tent poured out. Dex thrashed in her grip before growing limp, the grey smoke pouring down his throat and up his nose.

“No!” I screamed, reaching them as the last of the smoke disappeared into him and they both dropped to the floor.

The woman’s body had already started the rotting process as I dragged Dex away from her. He was a bit of a jerk, and threatening to blame me for everything that had gone down was a shitty move, but he didn’t deserve this.

Nobody deserved this!

His eyes opened, the brilliant blue dimmed as the grey film washed over them and he stared at me, unblinking.

“Dex…” I said, my voice quiet as I stared down at him.

His head tilted to the side as though he recognised my voice, but the second his hand closed around my throat, I knew it wasn’t him anymore. He was strong, much stronger than he had been before, and he slammed me into the floor.

I grabbed his hands, holding them as he put a little more effort into his grip, the force causing my throat to close. My power was within reaching distance—it would have been so easy to just use it, but how could I?

Perhaps it made me stupid, or selfish, or any number of other idiotic names that my oxygen starved brain refused to think up, but it was Dex. He was a friend of Graham’s. A good cop, one who wanted to help, to make a difference in this screwed-up world we were living in.

And I’d seen what my power had done to the others…. The thought of Dex rotting into nothing but a puddle of gore and viscera—well, it was more than I was willing to do.

“Fight, you need to fight….” I choked the words out, and his grip lessened almost imperceptibly, but suddenly I could draw a small breath, and that was all the reprieve I needed.

Drawing my arms up inside his, I snapped them apart, putting pressure on the inside of his elbows. His hold on me disappeared. A growl of frustration erupted from him as he slipped and I threw him off; rolling out of his reach, I started to move towards him once more. If I could knock him out, then maybe I could find a way to get whatever had possessed him out before it did any lasting damage.

Strong arms wrapped around my shoulders, dragging me backwards at force. It flung me against the wall, the blow ricocheting through my body and driving all the air from my lungs. I fought to clear my head, but something grabbed me once more and lifted me from the floor.

He was small, and something tugged at my memory as he pinned me to the wall. The man from the hall. The one watching everyone moving….

My eyes widened as his lips drew back and I caught sight of the grey smoke bubbling just behind his teeth. There was no way in Hell I was going to let him possess me with whatever that crap was.

“Doran, come!” A voice commanded, and there was the barest hint of power to his call.

The one holding me swallowed back the grey smoke and momentarily tightened his grip on my neck before jerking my head forward and slamming it back into the wall before I had the chance to move to protect myself.

Light burst in my vision, causing the room to disappear, and my legs buckled beneath me as the pain swallowed me whole.

I
floated
on a cloud of white that was broken by the sound of screaming and shouts. Opening my eyes, the world was cloaked in a haze of red, and my head throbbed each time I tried to move it.

Dex and Victoria…. I focussed, forcing myself to pick out the details in the room.

People were huddled in small groups. One of the female reporters was covered in blood, the front of her cream blouse ripped, two long tears running down across her chest. It was her screaming that pierced the fog my brain wanted to hide in.

Pushing up onto my hands and knees, I waited until my legs felt capable of taking my weight. Once back on my feet, the room spun in sickening circles, and the more I tried to focus in on all the things going on in the room, the harder it got.

Keeping my back pressed to the wall, I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath, drawing it in through my nose and releasing it slowly out through my mouth in an attempt to slow the spinning in my head.

Peeking out from beneath my lashes, the room was thankfully still, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t see Dex or Victoria anywhere among the wounded. Pushing away from the wall, I moved through the room, studying the people gathered, avoiding the putrid mess of human remains that had rotted where they fell. I could practically still feel the waxy moistness of their skin against my hands.

“Amber, where’s Victoria?” Jon shouted, cutting through the babble of voices that I’d blotted out as much as possible.

I shook my head, but the movement only made me nauseous and I fought to control the feeling once more.

“She was right here and then….” I trailed off, remembering the creature that had been holding me. He was going to possess me, or at least he’d given me that impression, right up until someone had called him.

I could still hear the male voice in my head, but I hadn’t seen who’d called out. The man holding me had blocked my view, making it impossible to see anything beyond his broad chest.

“Then what?” Jon prompted, the impatience in his voice making me angry.

“Then one of those things slammed my head into the wall. If you’re so worried, then where the hell were you? Why didn’t you come to help?”

Jon’s expression shifted, growing dark, but there was something else lurking in the depths of his eyes. He really was a coward.

“You hid, didn’t you? You hid like all the rest of them and now you want to blame me for what happened!” My words lifted and carried in the suddenly-quiet room.

“I didn’t say that, Amber, but you’re a trained Elite member; it’s your job to protect those who can’t protect themselves…” he said, keeping his voice as low as possible.

“And I did my best, but what did you do, Jon? What protecting did you do while the rest of us were down here, fighting those things?” I said, gesturing to the bloody mess that was left of one of the creatures.

It was wrong to think of them like that. It hadn’t been all that long since they’d been human just like everyone else in the room. Whatever had invaded their bodies … well, that was the creature, and now one of them had Dex, and by the looks of it, they had Victoria, too.

“I was….” Jon trailed off, his face twisting in anger as he met my gaze and tried to stare me down. “Don’t you dare try and blame this on me, Miss Morgan. I wasn’t the one who screwed up in the first place. If you and Officer Lance had done your job, then none of this would have happened….”

I gritted my teeth and dug my nails into my thigh. He was deliberately trying to piss me off. If I gave into my urges and punched him now, then he would have a room full of witnesses to condemn me for my actions. He would come out of it all smelling of roses the way he always did. Jon was a consummate liar, and if there was one thing he knew how to do really well, it was make himself look like the heroic victim in every situation.

“I’m not going to stoop to your level,” I said, keeping my own voice low. “We both know what went on, and while it won’t help the immediate situation, don’t think that I’ve forgotten what you did. I’m not going to let you get away with it.”

Jon smiled at me, an expression that was far from friendly. “I don’t think you’ve got a choice,” he said, wrapping his arm around my shoulders.

Shrugging free of his grip, I turned and raced from the room. There was no point in standing around, trading barbs with the man. He was a pig, a cowardly pig, and that was being unfair to the pig. The only thing I could do now was concentrate on what had taken Dex and Victoria. Dex wasn’t on my list of favourite people after what he’d threatened to do, but I couldn’t blame him. I had my issues with Jon, but I wasn’t afraid of him, and I sure as hell wasn’t worried about him taking my career away from me.

That decision, thankfully, wasn’t in Jon’s hands; if it was, then after our last big run-in, I would have been out of a job.

Reaching the hall, something silver caught my eye and I scooped it up. Dangling the delicate leaf necklace from my fingertips, my heart sank. They’d definitely taken Victoria and I had a sinking suspicion I knew why. There was only one place I could go to in order to get the answers I needed. As for the mood I was in and the cracking headache grating in my brain, I could only hope for Heddou’s sake that the answers he would give me would be the types of answers I wanted to hear.

“
A
mber
,” Nic called out to me as I raced down the front steps of the court house.

Pausing, I swung around to face him. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you down at the Elite office but they said you’d be here and by the time I was here, it was all over the news about the attack.”

Rolling my eyes, I tried to steady the anger that burned in my blood. Typical reporters—even when their lives were threatened, they were still trying to figure out how to break the biggest story before the competition.

“Yeah, we had some party crashers. I’m hoping it’s just related to the case down in the River Gardens and not that there’s a new set of bodies we don’t know about yet.”

“I want to help,” he said quietly, serious. From the moment I’d met him, Nic seemed like the type of guy to never spend a second of his life serious. He was a charmer and a complete player; Dex, by comparison, was a child playing at being a grown-up.

But as far as I could tell, that made Nic even more dangerous. He was the type who could easily manipulate me, and as much as I would fight against it, there was just something about him that I was drawn to. Probably had something to do with his bad-boy, Devil-may-care attitude. Despite every birthday marking me as a year older, I still hadn’t grown out of my pattern of falling for the wrong guy.

Would I ever?

“I’m not sure if you can. They’ve taken two people; Dex, one of the young detectives working on the case, and Victoria … she transferred into the Elite from New York.”

“Well, then you’re definitely going to need all the help you can get. Especially as this isn’t your only problem….” Nic hesitated, dropped his head back, and blew out a long breath.

My stomach dropped into my boots. Had something happened to Graham?

“What is it? Is it Graham?” I asked, the panic in my voice ratcheting up with every word.

“No, I haven’t heard anything about Graham. I was hoping you might have,” Nic said. “This is about the rogue shifter we killed last night….”

“What do you mean? He’s dead, right? We killed him, where’s the problem?”

“Yeah, he’s dead all right, and that is the problem. His pack is contesting the kill. They’re saying he wasn’t a rogue at all, that you had a personal vendetta against him and just made it look as though he’d gone rogue….”

“Seriously?” I shook my head and groaned. Why couldn’t life be simple? Why couldn’t I just work on my case and get it all out of the way, tie up the loose ends, and make sure no more people died because of whatever in Hell was going on? Instead, my life had to be complicated by the pack of a shifter who’d lost his mind.

My brain instantly conjured the memory of the night before, the feeling that had coursed in my veins, the urge to kill and maim. I’d wanted to rip him limb from limb. The feeling returned to me far easier than I would have liked, and it was an effort to bury it down inside myself once more.

The pack wasn’t right; the shifter had definitely started it all, but that didn’t change the fact that there was something strange going on with me. Something that left me more than a little uncomfortable and just a little bit afraid.

“Afraid so. I don’t think their argument is going to get them very far; he killed an Elite officer, there is no way the courts will view that as anything other than a rogue. But I know these guys, once they latch onto something, they’re like broken records. You need to watch your back with them….” There was a momentary flicker of tenderness in his eyes, and then it was gone, leaving me to wonder if I’d even seen it at all.

There wasn’t much I could do if the shifter’s pack decided to try and finish the job he’d started. All I had control over now was finding Dex and Victoria as fast as possible.

If I didn’t, then they were both dead—and even if I did find them on time, there was still a possibility that I wouldn’t be able to save them. I’d seen what the grey spirits had done to the others and I had no reason to believe that Dex would react any differently.

“I can’t focus on that now. I need to find Dex and Victoria; what this does to people….” I shuddered at the memory of what had happened in the courthouse, the putrid smell and the way they’d rotted while still being alive.

It had to be an excruciating experience. No one else could be allowed to suffer the consequences of it.

“Then where do we start?” Nic asked.

“A guy called Heddou, do you know him?”

Nic’s face changed, his usual cocky expression slowly draining away. “You mean the voodoo priest?”

“Yeah, apparently if I’m going to get any answers out of all of this, I need to go and speak to him.”

“Uh, have you spoken to Madeline? Wouldn’t she be better at figuring out this sort of thing? Everything that happens in this city goes through Sanctuary first.”

“Why are you so afraid?” I asked, peering up into his face. His reaction surprised me; I’d never met this Heddou before, and yet everyone’s reaction suggested he was important, and powerful.

“I’m not afraid, Amber—well, not in the way you think. Heddou is dangerous and unpredictable, and if he finds out about you, well—I don’t think you should take that risk,” Nic said.

“Nic, if there’s somewhere I can go to get answers, then I need to do it. This thing has taken Dex, it’s taken Victoria, and I can’t just leave them to their fate—it’s not right. How many more people have to die because I’m hiding what I am?”

He sighed and shook his head. “You won’t just try Madeline first?”

A memory of what had happened with Madeline the first time I’d gone to see her popped into my head. The look on her face, and the feeling as she’d attempted to suck the power clean out of me.

“No, I’m pretty sure that bridge is well and truly burned…,”

“Fine, then Heddou it is, but at least let me gear up first,” Nic said, his tone telling me he was less than pleased about the entire situation.

“Well, if you are, then so am I.”

Nic grinned, and his face relaxed for the first time since I’d mentioned Heddou. “I don’t think he’ll be expecting that; everyone is too afraid of his power to challenge him personally.”

I swallowed hard and attempted to school my features into an expression that wouldn’t give away the sudden jolt of fear I felt running through me. Madeline was scary enough, but Nic was behaving as though she was nothing more than a fluffy kitten in comparison to Heddou—a fluffy kitten with sharp teeth and claws, with a temper, and a control of her magic to rival any demon…. If Heddou was worse than that, then I was in way over my head.

It wouldn’t be the first time.