The Blue Devil

by Quirah Casey

  “I do when I have shit to take care of. And now this.” I wave the package, already knowing its contents.

  A job.

  Usually, this wouldn’t faze me much—I’m used to the routine at this point—but right now, I already have so much to handle. The black envelope means I have to drop everything else.

  I need a fucking raise.

  “Maybe it will be a simple one.” Marie’s voice is soft but wavers slightly; I hear her guilt. If I hadn’t saved her life, I wouldn’t be caught up with my contractor, forced to take these jobs. But I’d do it all over again. Maybe I’d even be a little bit smarter this time.

  “These jobs are never simple. That’s why I have to do them: because no one else can.” Marie frowns. “Don’t do that, Marie,” I plead. “I’ve told you a thousand times that this isn’t your fault. I would’ve fucked up and landed in this predicament eventually, so stop making that face.”

  Marie and Melodiya are the only people who know about these envelopes. Neither of them know exactly what is inside—that would be too dangerous. But they know who the envelopes come from, and they know that I’ll be stuck in this deal for another sixty years or so—that is, if the darkness doesn’t kill me first. Decades ago, I was given a choice: I could serve as a personal assassin for a century, or I could go to Irragyn, the maximum-security chöąt prison, for five hundred years. And I have people who need me here. Really, it wasn’t much of a choice.

  But it was still one I made. And now I have to uphold my promise or face the consequences. I look at Marie, who’s still frowning. “Tell Mel to take care of my house while I’m gone. I’ll let you guys know as soon as I get back.”

  A crease forms in Marie’s forehead. “You’re going to be okay, right?”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  Marie’s always been a worrier, much sweeter and softer than the rest of us. She always gets anxious when I receive one of these packages, very aware of the fact that I could come home riddled with bullets, like last time. Or not come home at all.

  “I never asked—how was Ruthless?” I change the topic by referring to Marie’s most recent trip.

  “She’s good. Same as always.” Marie still looks close to crying.

  I pat her shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back in no time.”

  “In one piece?”

  “No promises.”

  ♚

  Europe.

  That’s where this job has sent me. I’m supposed to kill a man and take an object from him. The envelope contains a photo of the man, and the object is described as a piece of paper: manila, delicate, and old. It doesn’t take me long to figure out that my contractor has me chasing a map. A whisper of a memory appears in my mind, a sense of déjà vu overwhelming me, but it quickly disappears.

  Weird.

  I shake off the strange feeling, refocusing on the task at hand.

  The man’s location is also in the file, along with a warning: he’s dangerous, and I should approach with caution.

  As if I ever do anything cautiously.

  I’m also not supposed to open the map once it’s in my hands.

  I attack at night, slipping into the man’s home. The second I enter, I can feel his presence, his heartbeat calm and steady. The flow of running water echoes from the shower, the only sound.

  “The Blue Devil? That is who they sent for me?” I hear the man’s French-accented voice a second before he enters the room. His blonde hair is soaking wet, dripping onto his tan, bare shoulders. He has on a pair of pants, but his chiseled chest and abs are in full view. He’s calm, way too calm for someone who knows who I am.

  “I’m afraid that I don’t know your name.”

  “Yes, I am not surprised that they did not tell you who I am.”

  I raise a brow. “Are you going to tell me? Or do you want to move right to fighting?”

  He smiles, but his eyes are filled with pure sadness. “My name has not mattered for years. Only what I have.”

  He steps closer, and I take that as my cue.

  There is no vengeance here, only a job, two people fighting someone else’s war. I forgo Otmscheniye for Onyx, summoning it to my hand. The weapon is powerful, capable of killing almost any creature. It will get the job done tonight.

  The man dodges my sword, throwing his hand out. My body slams against the wall, and it occurs to me that the man have telekinetic capabilities, a hypothesis that is confirmed when a vase lifts off the desk at the side of the room and comes careening toward me. I swing to the side, keeping my left arm outstretched, and I hear a satisfying crack as Onyx connects with the ceramic, sending glazed pieces flying.

  “Now, that’s not fair, is it?” I say, sliding into siem form. A white-hot flame curls from my right palm and barrels toward the man. He dodges it, and while he’s distracted, I fall back, calling upon the shadows to hide me.

  “Mon Dieu! Vous êtes elle!”

  I don’t speak French. I ignore him, beginning my approach. To his eye, I’m invisible. I hold off until I’m closer, standing right at his back, and then I drive my sword toward his heart, dropping the shadows. The man moves an inch before Onyx can touch him, and she plunges into his shoulder instead.

  My feet come out from under me and I go flying back, Onyx still in my grip, as the man flexes his hand in my direction. He’s moving again, his shoulder healing up as mutters under his breath. A druid.

  I run at him, slamming him into a window that smashes on impact. We tumble through empty air; I hear my clothes ripping as my body expands, growing longer, wider, taller, heavier.

  The druid hits the ground with a dull thud, and I land on top of him, pinning him with my weight, crushing him into the dirt. I paw at him, my claws cutting him across the face. Before he can react, I bite him, my jaws taking away a massive chunk of his shoulder. The wound is too big now; he’ll bleed out before he can heal.

  The druid lets out a pained laugh. “There is no more honorable enemy to fall to,” he exhales, his eyes wide with awe as they take in my full dragon form. I pull the beast back into my body, my face flattening, shoulders narrowing, wings folding into my back.

  He presses a hand to his shoulder. “You must keep the map. Do not let it fall into the wrong hands. It is for you. They are waiting.” I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about—if there were ever wrong hands for something to fall into, they would definitely be mine.

  The druid coughs up blood, and I’m surprised to find myself pitying him. I pick up Onyx from the grass beside him, plunging her through his heart. Within seconds, the life drains out of him, his suffering over.

  As soon as I see his eyes go dim, I pick his body up and bring it into the house. I’m naked, but that isn’t my biggest problem right now; this scene got much messier than it should have. I need to get rid of all evidence that I was here.

  I do my best to clean up the blood that drenches the yard, regretting not having brought a blood charm. In the druid’s kitchen, I unfurl paper towels and mop blood from my clothes, hair, skin. When I’m no longer dripping, I head upstairs to search, finally coming across the map in the druid’s bedroom.

  Then I set the house aflame, starting with the druid’s body. I cut his gas line and call the shadows to hide me as I leave the house. I have no problem with nudity, but others tend to make a scene when they see a naked woman walking down the street, covered in blood.

  I walk back to my hotel, purchase a ticket for the next plane out of France, and run a hot shower, rinsing the crusted blood from my skin.

  When I emerge from the bathroom, I stare at the crumpled paper for a second. The druid was adamant that I keep it, but my employer was clear that I shouldn't open it.

  Fuck that.

  The second I unfold the paper, I recognize it. There’s no way in hell that I can hand this over to anyone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Back so soon?” Fran asks when I push open the door of her shop.

  “Yeah. Can we go to the back?” I ask
, noting that the shop is empty other than Fran and Baptise, who’s lounging on top of the counter, asleep.

  Fran frowns. “Sure.” She locks the shop door, flipping the sign to closed. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not sure yet.” The second I got off my plane, I came straight here, knowing that if anyone could answer my questions, it would be Fran. I shot off a quick text to Mel and Marie, letting them know that I made it safely back to Lobrooke, but I made no other stops on my way here. This map is my number-one priority at the moment.

  I follow Fran into the back room. The beaded curtain clatters as we walk through. Fran gestures for me to sit down at her table, which is littered with stones, cards, and runes.

  “What is it? I can tell that you’re unsettled—I feel it in your aura.”

  I dig into my bag, pulling out the map. Fran’s eyes widen at the sight of it, and she gasps when I spread it open on the table, showing her the blank page.

  “You know what it is?” I ask, wondering how she can identify the map when it bears no words or markings of any kind. If we didn’t both know better, we might take it for an old, blank piece of paper.

  “I do.” Her eyes meet mine cautiously. “Do you?”

  “No, but I recognize it. I dreamed about it a while back. There was a woman’s voice, telling me that it was important. The druid I took it from echoed the sentiment. Plus, I can feel its magic; it practically radiates.”

  “Why did you seek this map?” She holds a hand over the paper, awe spreading across her face. No doubt she’s bathing in the glow of its magic, magic that I felt as soon as I opened it.

  “I was hired to retrieve it, to kill the druid who protected it.” I tell her the truth.

  Her head snaps up, her eyes meeting mine with more passion than I’ve ever seen from her. “You can’t turn this over to anyone else.”

  The urgency in her tone worries me. “What is this, Fran?”

  She looks at me for a while, biting her lip. “This map…it's the most important artifact of your culture. A war amongst the dragons would break out if anyone knew that this existed.”

  “Fran, just tell me what it is.”

  “It’s a map to Cepae.”

  My mouth falls open.

  “That can’t be true. No such map exists.”

  Cepae is where the drakes reside. They were the first-made dragons, some of the most powerful creatures ever to exist. They championed the revolt against the gods that freed the chöąts, causing chaos and destruction under the leadership of the first-made dragon woman. The drakes initially celebrated their victory over the gods by spreading all over earth, but nearly half a millennium ago, they all retreated to Cepae, a land that they created with their magic. No one knows where Cepae is, how to get there, or why the drakes retreated, never to be heard from again. I’ve never heard of a map to the mysterious land. And yet…

  “It does exist, and here it is.” Fran lightly touches the paper, and I watch as it ripples for a second before settling.

  “What was that?” I lean in closer, waiting to see if the paper will perform the same trick again. It doesn’t.

  “This map was created by an ancestor of mine, with the help of the drakes, before they withdrew from the world. It is spelled so that it cannot be read without the magic of a witch from my line. It’s a very complex spell to reverse, though, and it’s believed that any witch capable of breaking the spell will die in the process. A precaution to guarantee that the spell is lifted only in the direst of emergencies. The map was passed on to the druids for protection, to make sure that it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. For centuries, only druids have touched this map.” Her eyes lift to mine. “Until you.”

  Fran pushes her chair back from the table and stands. “Tell me about this dream of yours.”

  “There’s not much more to tell.” I watch as she wanders around the room, then grasps the handle of a cabinet and closes her eyes. The handle glows green before the cabinet opens. “About a month ago, a woman spoke to me in a dream. I never saw her, but she showed me the map, saying that I had to find it and hold onto it. At the time, I thought it was just a dream. Could it have been an oracle?”

  Fran returns to the table with a glass jar in her hand.

  “Possibly.” Her tone conveys her doubt. “Just remember that not all dream messages come from sources that share your interests. They’re not all good.” She holds her hand out to me, and I place mine in hers. “It is your job to protect this now.” A blade appears in her other hand, and she slices it across my open palm. She holds my bleeding hand over the jar, which glows purple when my blood hits it and sizzles. When the wound on my hand closes up, Fran drags the knife against my skin once again, reopening the cut. I wouldn’t let anyone else do this to me, but after decades of friendship, I trust Fran.

  Finally, after my blood has filled half the jar, Fran releases me, passing me a rag to wipe up the excess blood. I grimace; for some reason, Fran refuses to use blood charms after her spells, preferring the old-fashioned method of cleaning up blood.

  She picks up the map, rolling it tightly before dropping it into the jar. The blood soaks through the bottom of the paper, and I watch as the paper absorbs it. Fran places the top on the jar, saying a few words. All the blood is gone now, pulled into the map, and yet the paper retains its manila color. Suddenly, the map itself disappears.

  “Touch it,” Fran directs, and when I do, the paper appears briefly before vanishing once again. “The map is now attuned to you,” Fran explains. “It cannot be seen or accessed by anyone else. If you ever need it, you can open the jar, cut your hand, and touch the map, and the paper will become solid again, visible. Still, you must put it in a safe place once you return home.”

  I nod, taking the jar and placing it in my bag. “What happens if I die? Will the map be lost forever?”

  She shakes her head. “No, but I’d have to do another spell to access it.”

  A brush against my leg alerts me to Baptise’s appearance. “Damn cat,” I mutter, glaring down at him as he lets out a meow. My phone rings, and my head snaps back up. I’ve yet to turn my earpiece back on since returning home, so I figure it must be Mel or Marie.

  “What is it?”

  “Blue.” There’s worry in Mel’s voice, instantly putting me on alert.

  I sigh, preparing myself for the bad news that I know is coming. “What happened?”

  “There’s another dead body.”

  ♛

  Mel found the body in the front seat of my car at the compound, where most of the den lives. Once again, none of our alarms were tripped and the surveillance cameras caught nothing. There weren’t any breaches in the gate surrounding the compound either.

  The only good news is that Mel is the only person who has seen the body. She locked off the garage until I got there, so we’re the only two who know about it; thankfully, we won’t have to worry about the CDA on this one.

  The body belongs to a young, male wolf. I have no idea who he is and neither does Mel, but she agrees to search our database. He has to be in there somewhere.

  Unlike the other two bodies, this one is still fully intact. Upon first glance, you’d think the man was just sleeping. And then you might notice that he’s not breathing, that his skin is blotchy and bruised.

  ♛

  “Remember, if you don’t keep your lips sealed about this, I’ll kill you,” I tell Zyut, a healer who owes me a favor, as I place the dead body on his steel operating table. This is the only way we’re going to find out what happened to the wolf, since his outside appearance gives nothing away. Hell, if he wasn’t found on my compound, in my damn car, I might’ve thought he died from natural causes.

  “This may take a while,” Zyut says as he interlaces his fingers, his dark gaze low.

  “Fine. Give me a call as soon as you know the cause of death. And—”

  “You’ll kill me if I tell anyone about this.” He winces slightly. “Got it.”

  I leave Zyut
’s place, going back to the compound to meet up with Mel.

  “I’m still thinking that this Stendahl’s work,” I say once we’re sitting across from each other in my office.

  “I still think you’re wrong.”

  “You’re right, it's not Stendahl. It’s Stendahl and Levitsky.”

  Mel puts a hand to her forehead, letting out a sigh. “I know your paranoia has kept us alive all these years, but I still think you’re wrong. I think that Agent Levitsky and London are: one”—she holds up a finger—“not working together; and two, innocent.” I open my mouth to argue but she cuts me off. “Maybe not innocent in general, Blue. But they didn’t have anything to do with this. They are not behind these murders.”

  A knock at the door stops me before I can speak. Mel leans over the desk, pressing the button to open the door. I glare at her. “It's just Marie,” she says, reassuring me as the woman in question walks in, carrying an overflowing file. The door closes automatically behind her.

  Marie sits down in the chair next to Mel. “I got the pictures you asked for,” she says, passing the file over to Mel.

  “And what pictures would those be?” I growl. This must be something that Mel chose to do on her own.

  She opens the file, her eyes scanning its contents. Her chin ducks in a brief nod, and the corner of her mouth turns up as she slides the file over to me. “Ones that prove London and Agent Levitsky have been nowhere near the club or the compound since the accident.”

  I open the file, finding pictures of London, his wyryns, and Agent Levitsky captured by street and store cams.

  “We know that the body was placed in your car sometime between six and seven this morning, and these pictures are time stamped within that window. So it couldn’t have been them. The pictures haven’t been doctored, but if you want to continue with this ridiculous bout of paranoia, we could always go confirm with the store owners.” I don’t miss the annoyance in her tone.

  Mel meets my gaze, her purple eyes burning with determination, the slightest bit of challenge. I should strike her down for opposing me so directly, but I won’t. I never have. She only does this when she strongly disagrees with me, and I take that seriously.