by Quirah Casey
THE BLUE DEVIL
* * *
(The Blue Devil Book One)
Quirah Casey
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2019 by Quirah Casey
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Design by Quirah Casey (Salvation Creations)
http://quirahcasey.com/
Editing by Talia Smart
https://www.editingissmart.com/
GLOSSARY
Amdridians: descendants of gods, but not enough blood to be considered gods or demigods.
Beatus: category of chöąt that includes gamics, supernaturals, and amdridians, all created by Greek, Slavic, and Celtic gods.
Byurtid: slave acquired through purchase/deal, provides anything owner wants/needs inc. sex, food, blood.
Caelestis: “other” non-human creatures, rumored to be descendants of gods and witches. Not beatus or raddäugs.
Charms: spelled stones and gems.
Chöąt(s): non-human.
Chöąt Defense Agency: law enforcement intended to regulate most non-human activity/crime
Drakes: first-made dragons, led the revolt against the god.
Gamics: non-humans who can procreate to multiply species, including dragons, witches, fae, pixies.
Irragyn: maximum-security prison for chöąts.
Kadar: chöąt alcoholic drink.
Nabesy: extremely potent poison that can be fatal to dragons.
Najeans: bands that channel warlock powers.
Onyx: a magical sword that can kill almost any creature.
Otmscheniye: sword of vengeance.
Palha: leader of a dragon denSiem form: form in between human and dragon.
Raddäug(s): creature(s) created by other gods, including the Norse.
Supernaturals: non-humans who multiply species through means other than being born, includes vampires and werewolves.
Svezhiy: marijuana for chöąts.
Tabe: secondary leaders in a dragon den./Head tabe: second in command below palha.
Tätowierungs: magical tattoos that can be brought to life.
The Synod: chöąt equivalent of the human Senate.
Urewt: byurtid owner.
Uytre: magical, locating device
Wyryn: member of a dragon den.
Yada: Russian cigar made for dragons with calming aphrodisiac effects.
Yonka: alcoholic drink for chöąts, imported from Russia.
Zhidkiy yad: alcoholic drink for chöąt so potent that it’s illegal in America, can only be found on black market.
COPYRIGHT
GLOSSARY
PROLOGUE
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
TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
For my mother and grandmother,
who have supported me in everything that I’ve done,
though I’ll never willingly let you guys read this.
“She was brave and strong and broken all at one.”
-Anna Funder
PROLOGUE
The second a person's name is sent to me in a black envelope, they’re dead. They never even stand a chance, immediately joining the legions of people who have lost their lives by my hand.
It’s never personal, just bad luck for the target. They’ve pissed off someone important, or they have information that powerful people don’t want getting out. Because I’m the best when it comes to silencing people, they land right in my lap.
All I know about each mark is their name, appearance, and location. I never allow myself to learn more. The moment you get invested in a mark’s life, you become compromised. It’s better not to risk it. Staying emotionless isn’t hard for me; it’s always been as natural as breathing. Even as a young girl, I found it easy to detach myself. It’s why I’ve always been good at this job, even before I was paid to do it.
Tonight, my hit is a warlock named Juhn Tyll. It’s quite a simple job: kill the man and make it look like his wife did it. I watch from down the street as he approaches his house. It’s quiet, all of Tyll’s neighbors locked away in their quaint homes, some gone to work. The stillness of the neighborhood isn’t unusual. Yet the warlock looks up and down the street as if he can feel the presence of a threat.
As if he knows I’m here.
His eyes narrow as he looks in my general direction, but I don’t worry about him seeing me. I’ve called upon the shadows tonight, and they hug me tightly like an old friend, making me invisible to the eyes of mortals and immortals alike..
Tyll’s lips pull inward as he fits his key into the door, the tinkling sound carrying in my direction as I draw closer. He pushes the door open, shutting it quickly behind him. That’s okay, though. Walking in the front door was never my plan.
A slight breeze blows a loose strand of my wavy blue hair into my face, the shadows unable to keep out the elements, and I push it back. I jump over the gate into Tyll’s backyard, making my way around to the rear window. Surprisingly, the warlock doesn’t have a lot of security around his property, human- or magic-made, and when I checked earlier, this window provided the easiest access. It only takes a twist of my hand to break the human-made lock and raise the pane.
I gently close the window behind me as I enter what appears to be a small guest room. It contains furniture of the bare-minimum variety: a perfectly made twin bed, a small chest of drawers in the corner. Everything is lined with dust.
The creaking of drawers echoes from another room, and then the warlock starts yelling, presumably into his phone. I know for a fact that there is no one else here.
“I am not paranoid, you jackass! They’ve caught up with me! Someone was watching me when I got home!”
I draw closer, shaking my head, almost pitying the warlock. He obviously knows he’s a marked man, that his number has come up. A marked man, but not a smart one. If he were a smart man, he would never have gone inside after he felt me watching him. He would have hauled ass, getting back in his car and burning rubber as he got the hell away from here.
“No, I didn’t see the person, but I felt them. They must be using some kind of ward, or an invisibility charm.” Something hits the floor, and the warlock lets out a loud, shaky breath. I pause in the hall, a couple of rooms still between us.
“I’m going to leave as soon as Sheryl gets here. She should be home within the next fifteen minutes.”
So that�
��s why he’s still here. Because of the wife. The revelation just confirms his foolishness. He’s letting his heart lead him to his death. He should have told his wife to meet him somewhere else, to avoid the house at all costs. It wouldn’t have stopped me from getting to him, but he could’ve had a few more hours to breathe.
I draw closer as he continues to talk on the phone. He’s in the bedroom, which is perfect for my plan. There’s a black duffel bag at his feet as he rummages through a drawer, the phone pressed between his ear and shoulder. Suddenly, he stiffens.
“They’re here,” he mutters, and he drops the phone, the sound of shattering glass traveling through the room. He turns, hands at his sides, and looks at the doorway, his eyes locking on the space above my head. Without a doubt, he’s expecting a male killer, someone taller than 5’8.
They always do.
“Reveal yourself, I know you’re there. I can feel it.” His najeans, the wristbands that channel warlocks’ powers, begin to glow as he moves his hands. I know he’s conjuring a spell, but that doesn’t scare me. His magic would surely be strong enough to incapacitate a regular nonhuman. But I’m far from that.
I drop the shadows, revealing myself.
His mouth drops open, and the najeans’ glow flickers for a moment as he falters.
“Shit.”
Shit, indeed.
His hand flashes out in my direction as his leg pulls back, a blast of power rushing over my skin like a strong gust of wind. It does no harm beyond sending my blue hair flying. Tyll’s eyes widen as he pulls a knife from its sheath at his hip, sending it hurtling toward me.
I catch the knife, a smile curling my lips.
“Really, most people don’t even try when they realize the Blue Devil was sent to kill them. I admire your passion and courage.” I chuckle. Even though his resistance is futile, it’s different from what usually happens, which is a lot of screaming and useless running. I’m entertained.
I walk toward him, but I’m in no rush. There’s nowhere for him to go. He tries to send another blast my way, but it easily rolls off my skin, only warming me as I approach. Tyll stands his ground.
“Sorry, bud. That’s not going to do anything but amuse me,” I tell him. Still, he tries one more time, planting his hands against my shoulders. I let him. What could he possibly have in his arsenal that he thinks will save him?
His najeans glow bright enough to blind a human as an electric charge goes through my body. I can feel the gems in my neck absorbing the power, rendering it harmless. I raise a brow at the warlock, and he stares at me, a combination of shock and fear in his eyes.
“That one had a lot of juice,” I tell him, mildly impressed. I meet his eyes, hold his gaze, and drive his own knife into his stomach. He tries to grab at it, his hands clumsily clutching air as I pull the knife out, plunge it into his stomach again, and quickly move away. This has to look like a crime of passion, like an unstable wife found out about her husband’s infidelity and just…snapped. I circle the warlock and stab him again, this time in the back. A jilted wife would stab her husband from behind first; he would see a front attack coming. Between how bad the authorities are at their jobs and how good I am at mine, they’ll never know that he was stabbed in the stomach first.
The warlock drops to the ground, and I watch the blood start to pool beneath him. I stab him again and again, warm blood splattering onto my face and clothing. At this point, it’s routine. I withdraw the knife for the last time, the warlock long dead, as I hear the creak of the front door.
“Juhn! Juhn! Juhn, honey, what’s going on?” A high-pitched voice tinged with worry resonates across the house.
I pull a charm from my pocket as I walk toward the foyer, calling upon the shadows once again. I need to leave the wife alive and ensure she goes down for this, so I can’t let her see me. She’ll know who I am the second her eyes set on my blue hair and the blood covering my body.
Sheryl Tyll looks around worriedly, her eyes gliding past me as she rushes toward the bedroom. Before she enters, I spring, placing the charm to her neck and chanting the words needed to activate it. I carry her unconscious body to the bed.
Unfortunately, the job doesn’t end with the killing.
Now I have to make the scene look real.
I remember when my job was much easier, before forensic technology became so advanced. Nowadays, I have to run through a whole process in the aftermath of a contract killing.
First, I pick up the knife, not worried about my fingerprints—I always wear gloves while I work. I curl the wife’s fingers around the handle in a few spots, making it look like she readjusted her grip several times. I leave the knife in her hand, suggesting she fell asleep with it still in her grasp. The blood is next. The cleanup would certainly be more difficult if I didn’t have a charm that could transfer the blood from my body and clothes to Sheryl Tyll’s in a mirror image. As technology advances further, so does magic.
Next, I wreck the bedroom. Then I walk through the house, knocking things over as I go. It’ll look like the fight started in the kitchen and progressed through a series of rooms, ending in the master bedroom. The bedroom where Sheryl killed Juhn.
I exit through the window, covered by the shadows. I use my last charm to fix the broken lock.
The last part of the job is the easiest.
I pull a burner phone from my pocket as I walk away from the house.
“This is the Chöąt Defense Agency emergency line, how can I help y—”
“I don’t know, I’m sort of freaking out!” I pitch my voice a couple octaves higher than usual, rushing my words together. “I was walking down the street and saw a couple yelling at each other, and they looked really, really angry. I thought about ignoring it, but I decided to call just to see if you guys could send an agent by to check and make sure everything’s okay.” I rattle off the address before the operator can respond, and then I hang up.
I turn the phone off and break it into two, dumping the halves in two separate garbage cans.
I don’t lift the shadows until I make it back to my hotel room. Even though the charm lifted the blood from my body, I still feel grimy, so I take a quick shower and change my clothes. Then I pick up my bag, head to the airport, and catch a flight back to Lobrooke, Oregon. The warlock and his wife have already begun to disappear from my thoughts.
It was just another successful day at work.
CHAPTER ONE
Olyvia Hynt.
She’s a pretty woman—at least through my scope. Long blonde hair, plump pink lips, a slender build, fair skin, and blue eyes shimmering with fear. She knows her time is winding down.
Interesting.
She moves swiftly down the street, clutching her leopard-print jacket tightly, her head popping up to look around every five seconds. She finally comes to rest next to a closed coffee shop, her head continuing to swivel. She’s waiting for someone.
That’s going to cost her.
I hate guns, but this job called for it, requested it. I don’t know why, and I don’t really care. I never question my employer. The only thing that matters is getting the job done. It’s been that way for decades.
The scope isn’t really necessary; I’m a dragon, so my vision is beyond perfect, even in my human form. Still, I use it, just to amuse myself. I glance at the time on my watch, finding that it’s just after midnight. If I get this done now, I can get back to Lobrooke and my club before it closes for the night. Hell, I can probably even get a couple of drinks in my system, pick up a couple of bedmates.
With that in mind, I look at my target one more time before squeezing the trigger. There’s a silencer on the gun, but I still hear the bullet splitting through the air, and it’s like music to my ears.
Another job done.
The woman goes down, but it takes me a second to realize it isn’t because of the bullet. No, it’s because someone pushed her out of the way, the two of them hitting the ground before the newcomer, a man, hurriedly pulls t
he target to her feet.
“Fuck.”
The man is already racing down the street, pixie in tow, at a speed that would only be possible for some kind of shifter.
I don’t bother packing my gun and supplies before I jump off the building. I’m already a good fifty feet behind the man and the pixie, but that’s fine. I love a chase.
Olyvia Hynt is having a hard time keeping up with her rescuer, but that’s no surprise—pixies don’t have the enhanced abilities that shifters do. The man barely breaks his pace as he picks her up and throws her over his shoulder. I watch as they turn into an alleyway.
I curse at the sound of screeching tires. I reach the alley just in time to watch as the man pushes Olyvia into a car, her dress billowing behind her. He slams the door, and the car speeds away.
The man turns to me. I can smell him now. He’s a shifter: a dragon like myself. His blonde hair is a ruffled mess, his dark clothing not faring much better. A strong jawline and cheekbones accentuate his sensual lips, which turn up into a smile as he looks at me, his golden eyes meeting my blue ones.
“I thought it would be harder to steal a mark right out from under the Blue Devil’s nose, but I guess not.” His strong English accent rings with mockery, his gaze trailing over my body, lingering. It’s the kind of perusal that you’d see in a club.
“I mean, I made a trip all the way to America for this, but if I’d known it would be this easy, I would have sent someone with less power.” The smile turns into a smirk now.
He’s a talker, but I’m not.
I call upon my tätowierungs, and Otmscheniye, my sword of vengeance, appears in my right hand.
The man raises a brow, his posture straightening and his expression becoming more serious. “Straight to the fighting, then? I like a woman who takes action.”
I charge him, aware that every passing second takes Olyvia further away. The man dodges me as I attack, turning, shifting from human to siem form as he does. His golden eyes narrow, snakelike, scales appearing along his neck and the side of his face as claws protrude from his nails and his skin changes from peachy to a golden yellow.
