The Black Veins (Dead Magic Book 1)

by Ashia Monet

  The teenage girl doesn’t even glance at them as she heads out, and Katia follows—but she pauses in the doorway, looking over her shoulder at Blythe.

  “We’re in room 302, down from yours,” Katia says. “Pop in when you’re ready.”

  It takes all of Blythe’s resolve not to curse the cockiness right out of that woman. But once she’s gone and Blythe has snatched her keys from the desk, reality starts to sink in.

  Katia is right. Blythe hasn’t considered what Electric City could have in store for her. It’s a city that has been attacked by the Black Veins army—it’s not Disneyland. Her whole mission could be a disaster. She could end up dead.

  A staircase leads up from the parking lot and straight to the door of her motel room. It’s a ridiculously cramped space, but Blythe can’t be picky.

  She showers the mud from her skin and scrubs it out of her clothes. But her mind spins the whole time.

  If Katia’s right, Blythe can’t make it through Electric City on her own. But she can’t just leave for Frost Glade. Her family is waiting for her. She has to find them. She has to.

  The bed doesn’t give under Blythe’s weight; it feels like concrete. But her body aches, her heart thumps against her ribs, and she is too weary to care.

  Drowsiness fogs her mind, drifting into unconsciousness…

  Blythe snaps awake. She never locked the van. And the shard is still in there.

  She snatches the van keys from the nightstand and heads to the top of the staircase. Thankfully, her van is in the same parking spot, untouched.

  At the end of the street, where two dark roads intersect, is a figure just outside the reaches of the orange streetlights. A blue-eyed man in a suit.

  Blythe can feel the heat of his gaze. He is watching the motel. He is watching her.

  Goosebumps prickle along Blythe’s skin. She has not seen that man since she was thirteen years old. She didn’t think she’d ever see him again.

  The Erasers are here. They found her.

  Blythe locks the van. She hurries back to her room, locking that door too. She goes to the only window in the room and shuts the curtains. It’s all for nothing. Locked doors and closed windows won’t stop the Erasers. Nothing can stop the Erasers.

  Blythe sits on the concrete mattress. But nothing happens. The night is silent and still.

  Why have they appeared again after three years? Why now? Blythe hasn’t broken any rules. She’s kept magic a secret, done everything the Erasers could ever want her to do. Is it about Jamie’s moms? But she lied, she didn’t tell the truth.

  Cold chills race up her arms. Her head feels light. Blythe could go to Katia—it’s her job to protect Blythe, after all. But Blythe refuses to walk in there, tail tucked between her legs, like the powerless child Katia sees her as.

  Blythe left home to find her family. She won’t give up just because she’s scared. She can’t. What she needs to do is sleep, wake up energized and refreshed, and hit the road again.

  Blythe slips back into bed.

  It takes her a while to fall asleep.

  “Get up.”

  Blythe rapidly blinks her eyes open. The golden light from the streetlamps sneaks in-between the curtains, outlining Katia’s form in the darkness.

  She stands over Blythe, arms akimbo, stoic. “Get up and get under the bed,” she whispers.

  Blythe has to press her hands into the mattress to keep from rocketing out of bed. “What the hell?! How did you get in here?”

  Katia wrinkles her nose. “Can you not ask questions?!” she hisses. “Get. Under. The Bed.”

  Of course Katia would just waltz in here and bark orders. Of course. “Fuck. You,” Blythe growls. “And if you don’t get out of here, I’m calling the front desk.”

  “What? I’m an Imperial Advisor for the Sages of the Black Veins, what the hell is Candice gonna do?”

  “Send you to jail for breaking and entering!”

  Katia looks like she’s about to pop a vein. “I’m the one paying for the room!”

  Across the room, the wallpaper beside the bathroom door ripples. As if something is coming through the wall. The thought of seeing the Erasers in her motel room chills Blythe. But it isn’t them at all.

  The humanoid form floats like a weightless ghost. Its skin is alabaster white, from its oversized head to the shoulders that end in rounded, uneven stumps.

  The only features on its white plain of a face are two red, bulbous eyes, bulging from their sockets.

  Blythe doesn’t ask what they are. She doesn’t wait for Katia’s instructions. She does something her father calls African American Survival Instinct—she runs.

  Katia shouts after her as she rushes out the door and the stairs. Blythe isn’t amazingly fast on her feet, but she can get some distance on them, and once she reaches the van—

  Blythe realizes, too late, that her foot has caught between two stairs.

  She plummets down, stairs piercing into her body as momentum carries her forward. Her hip hits the concrete, and finally, she is still.

  This is definitely not good.

  A humming grows behind her. It is an inhuman sound, like rattling bones. She’s barely caught her breath before a red searchlight lands on her, bathing the world in crimson.

  She can feel that thing behind her. Coming closer.

  A second light hits her. The humming grows louder. There’s more than one.

  Blythe pushes herself to her feet—a hot, stinging pain shoots up her leg. She winces; a slice down her calf drips blood onto her ankle. Perfect. Amazing.

  The creature hovers down the staircase, two identical beings flanking it on either side. They have no legs; from their hips are the scaled black bodies of snakes, slithering down each stair.

  Their eyes shine like beacons, six beams of piercing red light straight onto Blythe.

  Blythe shifts her weight onto her good leg and limps to her van. The red lights stalk her, and all she sees is red, red, red.

  She tries to open the door. It won’t give. It’s locked. She locked it before she went to sleep. And the keys are in the motel room. “Mother of fuck,” she whispers.

  One of the creatures shrieks. It is a high, pained sound. Blythe whirls around.

  The things have gone still at the bottom of the staircase. Jutting through the middle one’s chest is the pointed end of a knife.

  Black blood leaks from the wound like tar, creeping down the creature’s white skin, catching no light as it falls. The creature has gone still, its mouth frozen in a soundless wail.

  And its eyes melt. Blythe gags as they drip red down the creature’s chin, swirling into its blood.

  A second knife spears through the one on the left—and another through the one on the right. They are three bleeding statues, mouths wide, eyes crying.

  The middle creature collapses like a ragdoll. And there, standing on the balcony, is Katia.

  Katia’s eyes are steeled. “I said: Hide. Under. The bed.”

  Blythe can barely catch her breath. “How was I supposed to know you meant ‘hide under the bed because there are monsters’ and not ‘hide under the bed because I’m a weirdo pedo or something’?!”

  Katia looks at Blythe like she’s gone insane. “Do I look like a pedophile?!”

  “Pedophiles can be anybody! We learn that shit in first grade!”

  “Hey!” A gravelly voice booms.

  Leaning over the third floor balcony is Candice, a shotgun aimed in her hands. “You bring trouble?!”

  Katia doesn’t even blink. “It’s over, Candice. It’s been taken care of.”

  Candice sucks her teeth as she lowers her weapon. “Too bad for me,” she huffs. “I wanted to shoot.”

  Something wet brushes Blythe’s feet. She didn’t put on shoes before she ran out, and now the creature’s red and black liquids are running like a river down the asphalt and pooling across her toes.

  She clamps a hand over her mouth, holding back the sounds (and vomit) threatening to
rise from her throat. Tonight has been a night that no amount of rest could ever help her recover from.

  Katia watches her from above, arms crossed, hip jutted out. Blythe catches her eye. But Blythe doesn’t have a sarcastic retort for her. Not this time.

  “Can I…” Blythe’s voice trails off before she can speak the words. “Sleep in the room with you guys?”

  And Katia smirks.

  Katia’s room is only slightly larger than Blythe’s own, but Blythe is still peeved about it. Two queen sized beds are squished inside, with a whole nightstand between them (why couldn’t Blythe get a nightstand?).

  The teenage girl sleeps in the bed closest to the door, sheets pulled up to her shoulders with a pink, silk mask hiding her eyes. If Katia’s job is to bring the Guardians to Frost Glade, then this girl is either her assistant or another Guardian.

  Blythe has never met another Guardian before. In all honesty, she hasn’t even thought about them—what they looked like, what their lives were like. And now one of them is, potentially, in the same room as her.

  “Did she just sleep through all that?” Blythe asks.

  “Thankfully,” Katia huffs. “You’ll have to take the floor. Not a good idea to share a bed with her—she bites.”

  Blythe recoils. “Like, for real?”

  “No, but she will bitch and yap until your ears bleed,” Katia says. She turns on the bedside lamp and the room turns yellow. “And I actually like my ears so please, for God’s sake, don’t wake her up.”

  Knowing Katia, this is definitely an exaggeration.

  Draped over the edge of the free bed is a black cloak. Katia’s hands seem to disappear into its folds as she reaches into its pocket, pulling out a spool of bandage, a salve, and a small vial of what looks like alcohol.

  “Give me your leg,” Katia orders.

  Katia dresses the wound with skilled, careful hands. She eyes the burn on Blythe’s arm. “I know the wraiths didn’t do that, so where’d that come from?”

  Blythe hesitates. “A small…altercation. I handled it.”

  “Of course.”

  Blythe stops herself from rolling her eyes.

  “Do you know what those things were?” Katia speaks again.

  “No,” Blythe doesn’t feel bad about her answer. It’s impossible to know everything about magic; people attend magician colleges to major in thaumology, the study of magic, and certified thaumologists spend years perfecting their practice. It’s incredibly extensive—and Blythe is no thaumologist.

  “They’re a species of Calling creature,” Katia explains, carefully dabbing the dried blood from Blythe’s skin. “Calling is a difficult spell that requires a lot of energy, but it allows you to summon a few creatures of an otherworldly species to follow your commands.”

  Blythe wrinkles her nose. “So like…summoning demons?”

  “Almost, but less hell-ish. There are hundreds of species of Calling creatures; thaumologists think they come from an alternate dimension, something like that, but it has nothing to do with…forces of good and evil. They’re just creatures. It’s the intent of the magician that shapes what they’re capable of.”

  She winds the bandage across Blythe’s leg, pulling tight. “What you saw tonight were Wraiths,” Katia continues. “They’re like walking cameras. Whoever summons them can choose to look through their eyes, seeing everything they do—or they can have them report back and replay everything they’ve seen like a projector.”

  Blythe grits her teeth. The list of people who could have sent them after her is too extensive. The Trident Republic? Those motorcycle bikers? The Erasers?

  “And,” Katia continues. “I sent them.”

  “What?” Blythe blurts. Anger boils hot in her chest. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

  She tries to snatch her arm back but Katia holds her in place, her grip tight and her gaze unflinching.

  “You weren’t in danger,” Katia says. “Wraiths can’t hurt people, they just watch and cry when you kill ‘em. Wanna know why I did that?”

  “Because you’re an asshole,” Blythe spits.

  Katia ignores her. “Because the Trident Republic specializes in Learned Magic—including Calling. Which means Electric City is crawling with Calling creatures ten times worse than the ones you just ran from. Let that sink in.”

  Blythe holds Katia’s gaze but says nothing. Because she has no defense. Katia is right.

  If the Trident Republic plays dirty, they probably use all kinds of magic to protect their capital…including Lovecraftian creatures that could crush Blythe without a thought about her existence. If she charges headfirst into this city, she will not make it out alive.

  “You didn’t even run away correctly,” Katia adds.

  Blythe grumbles. “Now you’re just shitting on me.”

  “You fell down the stairs.”

  “Okay, alright, Jesus Christ! I get it, you get it, we all get it.”

  Blythe remains silent as Katia secures her bandage. But Katia’s bedside manner sucks, because she nearly shoves Blythe’s leg off of her as she stands.

  “So,” Katia sighs contently. “Can I expect you to join us in the morning?”

  As much as Blythe was to storm out and return to her own motel room, rejecting Katia wouldn’t be wise. Going to Electric City, with the lack her lack of knowledge and lack of magic, is a ridiculous plan.

  Blythe’s best bet is to stick with Katia and learn what she can—then escape when the time is right.

  “Momentarily,” Blythe mumbles. “Where are you headed after this?”

  “Montana.”

  Blythe sighs. They’re going northwest and she needs to go south.

  “You could just join us for breakfast,” Katia says. “We’ll talk about what we can do for your family, see if we can figure something out.”

  It certainly sounds better than Montana. And Blythe isn’t going to pass up free food. “Okay, fine,” she relents. “We’ll get breakfast.”

  Katia tosses Blythe a pillow and blanket from her own bed. Blythe makes a space on the carpet, and it isn’t much, but when the lights are turned off and the world feels still, she tosses and turns for a few hours until she manages to finally drift into sleep—

  “Rise and shine, Rugrats!” Katia yells. “We’ve got places to be and not a lot of time to get there!”

  Blythe groans, squinting against the light. Outside the window, the sky blooms golden. “What time is it?” she asks.

  Katia hovers in the bathroom doorway, dressed in a pair of skinny jeans and a white blouse, outlined in sickening electric light. “Six thirty!”

  “Jesus Christ…” Blythe rubs her eyes. Her brain doesn’t wake up until noon.

  Katia’s voice is piercing. “Gooooooood morning, Cordelia!”

  Over on the second bed, the teenage girl is slowly sitting up. Her eye mask rests on her forehead, revealing shadowy brown eyes cutting Katia a sharp glare. Without makeup, her face is a bit plainer, but just as stunning.

  “Don’t,” she growls.

  But Katia ignores her. She’s watching her reflection pull her hair into a topknot.

  “Oh right, you guys haven’t been introduced,” Katia says. “Blythe Fulton, meet bratty Barbie supreme, Cordelia Deleon.”

  Blythe smiles sleepily and waves—but Cordelia misses it because she’s still glaring at Katia. “That joke wasn’t funny the first three times you said it,” she snaps.

  “Wasn’t a joke,” Katia chuckles to herself. “You guys can be friends or ignore each other, I don’t give a shit. Either way, we’re out of here in fifteen minutes.”

  “Fifteen minutes…?” Blythe repeats. It’s gonna take her fifteen minutes to sit up, let alone be ready to go.

  “Blythe, we’ll take your throwup van to the diner,” Katia continues. “Go get your stuff and we’ll meet you in the parking lot. God, I need a haircut.”

  Blythe wrinkles her nose. “Why don’t you guys have your own car? And if you want to use my va
n you can’t call it a throwup—”

  “Your fifteen minutes are dwindling!” Katia shuts the bathroom door as if to shut Blythe up.

  Blythe and Cordelia are left to early morning silence. Cordelia slips out of bed on graceful feet, picking up a pastel pink, name brand backpack.

  Blythe feels like she should say something. “So…are you a Guardian? Or do you work for Katia?”

  Cordelia turns to Blythe with the same splintering glare she gave Katia. “You think I’d willingly employ myself under that woman?”

  Rough start. “Sorry, I just…figured I’d ask.”

  Instead of replying, Cordelia rifles through her things, pulling out a pair of round Gucci sunglasses and an off-the shoulder mini dress.

  Blythe tries again. “Did you…go up to your roof too?”

  “Of course,” Cordelia answers without looking at her. “After a bit of fighting, I got free. Didn’t you?”

  Blythe absolutely did not. The only thing that saved her was her father. But Cordelia stopped the melody through sheer willpower?

  Blythe almost doesn’t want to admit the truth. “...no.”

  Cordelia’s perfect eyebrows raise. She fishes out her Zadis phone and drops the bag to the carpet. “Well,” she says, already more invested in her notifications. “I suppose that’s the difference between you and I.”

  The words are sharp—almost too haughty and cutting to be real. But they were indeed real, Blythe heard them, and Cordelia is no longer acknowledging Blythe’s existence, so Blythe sees no reason to continue this conversation.

  Blythe spends her remaining fifteen minutes throwing on a fresh set of clothes and returning her room key to Candice. Cordelia and Katia are already waiting outside her van when she enters the parking lot; Cordelia’s gaze is still glued to her phone, while Katia watches Blythe approach with folded arms.

  Blythe tries to climb into the driver’s seat. Someone grabs her collar and drags her back.

  “Wh—what the fuck?!” she sputters as Katia climbs in. “Who said you were driving?”

  Katia arches an eyebrow. “Do you know where we’re going?”