Alpha Magic (The New York Shade Book 4)

by D. N. Hoxa

  Trying not to look at the people on the ground, passed out, proved harder than I thought. I wanted to stop and check their pulse and make sure that each and every one of them was alive, but there was no time. Whatever was happening here, it was bad. So much worse than when the vampire Helen Marquez had spelled the humans a month ago. I didn’t understand what the hell was going on, but I trusted Kit with a lot more than my life, and I followed his lead as fast as my legs could carry me.

  I’m not sure how long I ran. My mind was still completely blank, but eventually, I began to see light. Orange light, like there was a fire burning in the distance. Kit and Dalia had already slowed down. The next second, they stopped altogether, looking down the street to our right. They were both standing perfectly still and I understood why as soon as I reached them, and I saw where the orange light was coming from.

  I was frozen solid. Even my heart seemed to stop beating as I looked at the view in front of me. People, wolves, more people sprawled on the ground, all around me. Blood coated the asphalt. The smell of it was heavy in the air. There were two-story buildings along the sides of the wide street, all of them completely dark.

  But here, some people were standing, too.

  Something that looked like a podium made of black glass seemed to have come out of the ground. It had broken the asphalt all around it, and the more I looked at it, the more it felt like I was looking at outer space. It was black and shiny, shimmery with a billion tiny stars shinning on its surface. There was a rock over it, full of rough edges, the size of a basketball and it was pulsating bright orange light, like lava was burning on the inside.

  Behind it were two people I recognized, and a third, a man with his hands over the rock, eyes closed, head lowered. I couldn’t see his face, but I was willing to bet an arm that it was Alexander Adams. Well, I’d do the betting after this was over because I had a strong suspicion that I would need both my arms for this one.

  To the sides of Adams were just the people I wanted to see: Amina Gray and Faron, the Spring Fae. Behind them were a whole bunch of people, too, but it was too dark to see their faces. And…maneaters. A lot of maneaters were among them, standing perfectly still, looking like they were trying to impersonate tree trunks.

  But all thoughts of maneaters and the entire army standing behind Adams left my mind when I thought to look at the bodies on the ground a second time. I recognized Moira’s silver hair first. She was lying face first on the ground, arms spread by her sides, her sword inches away from the tips of her fingers. Next to her was a wolf—a brown wolf I’d recognize anywhere. Emanuel—and this was the first time I saw him so perfectly still. I took a step forward, unsure of what the hell to do, and my eyes searched. I saw John and I saw more wolves I didn’t recognize, just lying there on their sides, and then on the other side of the street, I saw Damian. His eyes were closed. He looked like a statue rather than a man, never moving a single inch, because he didn’t need to breathe. I had never seen him so still, either, and it did something to me, broke me in ways I didn’t even know I could be broken. The thought of him dying was worse than anything the Guild, the Uprising, the entire fucking world could do to me.

  Kit was on my shoulder, scratching my cheek, squeaking, and then another set of claws were on my other cheek. They were different, smaller, sharper, and they stung like hell, which was why I could focus on them, and see Dalia right next to my face. She’d climbed on my shoulder, too.

  They both wanted me to look ahead because Amina and Faron were no longer standing by Adams. Instead, they were both looking at me, smiling, and walking really slowly.

  I didn’t dare look at Damian. I didn’t dare think where Malin and Jamie and Carter were at all. If I did that, I was going to lose focus again, and I needed my focus now. My daggers were in my hands before I realized it. It had become a reflex. I looked at Amina and I saw her lips move when she put her hand on Faron’s shoulder.

  “She’s mine,” she said, and even though she was too far away from me to hear her voice, I could hear it inside my mind.

  Kit jumped off my shoulder, squeaking like he was mad, and the next second, he began to shift into his true form, spinning around too fast for anyone to make out details. It only took him two seconds, and Amina was still only halfway to me. He squeaked and pulled at my jeans, jumping up and down, as if he was trying to point me to the ground.

  The ground.

  I looked up at the sky—dark. I looked around the street—no lights at all. No glamoured crystal, no electricity inside the buildings. No people conscious.

  Something occurred to me in that moment—a story Damian had told me not too long ago, about how he’d almost drunk a nine-year-old girl dry while he’d searched her memories for her mother. Now, that might make you think he was a worse monster than people realized, but he did it because the girl asked. She had gone to him at first with a glass half-filled with her blood, and she’d demanded Damian drink it and find her mother.

  But Damian hadn’t done that because he said he’d need the blood straight from the source—and a conscious mind to connect with his magic. Magic was dormant when the person carrying it was unconscious, just like everybody in the Shade seemed to be right now. Except for the Uprising, locked tight in a ward so powerful, I could feel it all the way here.

  And when magic was dormant, the Shade couldn’t take it. It couldn’t feed, and in turn, it couldn’t hold up glamoured crystals or electricity or protect itself or do…anything. The Shade couldn’t exist without magic.

  I knew exactly why Kit wanted me to focus on the ground. The Shade would never let this happen. Whatever that rock was, or that black glass coming out of the asphalt, the Shade would never allow it to exist.

  Unless it couldn’t. Unless it had no magic to respond to this.

  As if on cue, the ground groaned. Asphalt broke from the hole already made in it, and it shot toward me, the sound deafening. I’d seen this happen in movies, but it had looked so slow on screen. Now, it was too fast to even see the cracks. Even Amina almost fell to the side trying to get away from it, and me? All I could do was watch as it came closer and closer, spreading to the sides like branches on a tree, and the line broke right between my feet. I couldn’t breathe or blink. All I could do was watch, completely frozen, and wait for the hole to swallow me, take me underground.

  But it didn’t. It was no more than two fingers wide—and it wasn’t the only one. Asphalt was breaking all around us, and in the next few seconds, the buildings to the sides began to groan, too. Glass broke. Everything shook.

  I looked at Amina, who was still looking around at the buildings slowly falling apart. The rock over the black glass had grown a bit bigger and it shone brighter. It was filling up. With magic. From the Shade.

  Dropping my daggers to the side, I fell to my knees while Kit and Dalia squeaked at me, trying to tell me something, but there was no time to listen. I couldn’t stop all of them even if I was a Level Ten magic wielder. There were too many, too powerful, too fast.

  But the Shade could. All it needed was magic.

  For the first time since that night we’d been ambushed, I was actually glad I’d touched that amulet for this moment. I didn’t know if it would be enough, but it was the only thing I could think to do. I slipped my fingers as deep inside the crack on the asphalt as I could, and I called for my magic.

  Please work, I prayed in my mind as my hands began to glow bright purple. I didn’t need a spell for this. I just needed to let out as much magic as I could.

  Take it, I begged the Shade. Take my magic. Take all of it.

  If it worked, I couldn’t tell. I heard noises, voices screaming, and I opened my eyes to see the light of my hands spreading, the color dark, like the inside of that blueberry pie Malin always made. It spread up to my wrists and hid under my jacket, but I felt it climbing over my skin like it wanted to consume me completely. I focused on my breathing and my magic, pushing it harder, faster, letting it all out without limit. It was the
first time I’d ever done it in my life, and it felt exhilarating. I’d always had the impression that my magic had a mind of its own, and it had never tasted freedom such as this before. It liked it, and it rushed down my arms, slipping out of my fingers like it couldn’t wait to take over the world.

  But it didn’t last long. The good feelings stopped soon. Pure agony took their place.

  I looked up to see Amina with her fangs extended, barely four feet away from me. It occurred to me that that was the first time I’d ever seen her wearing pants. My mind wasn’t functioning properly, thoughts cut in half, my inability to remember what the hell I was doing a clear indicator of how much energy I’d already spent. I kept my eyes on her all the same, the light of my magic reflecting on her face, making her black eyes look purple, as if she needed help to look scary.

  “Take it,” I whispered to myself, over and over again, begging the Shade to take everything I was going to give it, before Amina reached me. When she did, it would be over. I was in no position to fight her, or even stand up at that point, and it was getting worse by the second.

  But then I noticed the light.

  Glamoured crystals were shining around me, weakly—but I could see the green lights twinkling through the corners of my eyes. The ground groaned once more, and I thought the crack in which I’d stuffed my hands was going to swallow me now, if Amina didn’t get to me first. She jumped, and she was close enough to land right in front of me.

  She landed behind me instead.

  I heard her falling close to my back, too close, but I couldn’t turn. Every second I gave my magic to the Shade counted, and she was going to kill me anyway. Every hair on my body stood at attention as I imagined her reaching out for me.

  When she did, I got a sense of deja vu. I didn’t feel her hands on me, just her fangs sinking on the side of my neck.

  A hiss left my lips involuntarily. My eyes squeezed shut and every muscle in my body locked tightly. Blood left me and all I could do was stand still. My mind screamed at me to get up, do something, stop her somehow, but I couldn’t. I was completely paralyzed and the magic inside me was practically nonexistent. I thought it was going to take forever for death to reach me. I thought I was going to have to feel it all, every last drop of blood being sucked out of me, but it barely lasted a few seconds.

  Then Amina let go of me. I fell on the ground hard but couldn’t even feel the pain. One of my hands slipped into the crack on the asphalt. My neck throbbed and burned where her fangs had been a second ago. Amina growled like a wounded animal and then something splashed against the asphalt. I wanted to turn and see so badly, but I still couldn’t move a single inch.

  “Bitch!” Amina hissed from behind me. She sounded angry. Mad.

  That’s when I remembered the potion I’d drank before leaving Chris’s house. The Biter’s Poison. I’d drank it, and now my blood was poisonous to vampires. Of course. I wanted to laugh and cheer for this small victory, but I knew it was only a matter of seconds now. Amina had spit out all the blood she’d sucked out of me, and this time, she wasn’t going to try to bite me. She was going to just break my neck instead. It wouldn’t even take a full second—or any true effort from her. I heard her footsteps. She was right behind me. My eyes closed. She was going to grab me again now…

  Instead, she screamed. My eyes popped open. A small wave of energy from the surprise made my chest vibrate, and a bit more magic slipped from my hand and into the cracked asphalt. I could see very little but I realized that Kit and Dalia were nowhere near, and the five little ones were no longer hanging onto my jacket. Amelia screamed again.

  “By the gods!” she cried, and I could hear the squeaks over her voice, too. If I could have, I’d have smiled.

  But my energy was leaving me. I could no longer see at all. I was dying to look at Adams and the rock that burned orange, but black dots were in front of my eyes, blocking the whole thing. In mere seconds, darkness sucked in the entire world before my eyes.

  My magic kept going, so very little of it left now. When it started, it was a thick ribbon, running smoothly as if it were made of satin, and now it was merely a thin, weak thread. I no longer had anything to give.

  At some point, something slammed against the back of my head lightly, turning it to the side. Cold slipped onto my cheek, as if trying to shock me awake, but I couldn’t even move my eyelids. Screams, shouts, squeaks. I could hear them as if they were coming from a mountain away, their echoes filling my head. It all felt surreal, like being inside a horror movie, the ones where they never show you the face of the monster and you always feel like the characters are stuck in the dark.

  An explosion shook me to my core. I had no idea where it came from or from which side it hit me. All I I felt was my body rolling. When I stopped, I was on my back. My stomach twisted, but my body didn’t have the energy to throw up. By some miracle, I could move my lids. It took forever to open them while the noise and the rumble played in the back of my mind like drums. It felt like the moment before they revealed the monster on screen.

  There was light around me. Green light, not orange. Shade light. At first, the black dots were there still, but the more I blinked, the clearer my vision became. Eventually, I could see with semi-clarity.

  I could see a man about fifteen feet away from me, on his knees in front of a hole in the ground. He was grabbing pieces of grey rocks and throwing them to the sides, as if he was searching for something buried underneath them.

  The first thing I noticed was that he wasn’t happy at all.

  The second thing I noticed was that his eyes were the eyes of a madman, and now he was looking straight at me. Every instinct in my body wanted me to get up and start running. Go, go, go! my brain screamed, but my body couldn’t obey. Someone must have poured cement over my limbs because I couldn’t move them a single inch. All I could do was watch the man standing up, then come to me, slowly at first, then fast. Beside him was the Spring fae, but before they reached me, someone else stepped into my view. Amina’s black leather boots were right in front of my face.

  “No!” a man shouted. I didn’t recognize the voice. “Let me.”

  Didn’t I feel special. Everybody wanted to be the first to kill me. The gods of luck must have smiled upon me.

  Amina stepped to the side, and I didn’t need to see her face to remember the hatred she had for me. She wouldn’t get to kill me after all, now that her boss was here. Too bad.

  But Adams would. He wanted to, so badly. I could see it written all over his face. He crouched down just a couple feet away from me and gave me a sick smile.

  “I should have killed you first,” he said, his voice almost robotic, or maybe it was just my imagination.

  How I wished I could flip him off. It’s not like that would make him want to kill me more. The Shade was there again, and it had already destroyed…whatever the hell that rock had been. He was mad with rage, and now he got to take it all out on me. Bliss.

  I kept my eyes on his face when he raised his hands and started chanting. Kit and Dalia and the other hellbeasts were too busy with Faron and Amina to get to him. Everyone else was still unconscious.

  This was it.

  I waited for my happiest childhood memories to come rushing to my mind, but then I remembered I didn’t have any of those. Instead, I thought of my brother, the proud smile on his face as he left for college, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. Happy tears. He had ambitions. He wanted to make something of himself, and that was all it took. Just the want. That’s how I knew he was going to be okay.

  I thought about my best friends who’d become my family somewhere along the way. I was going to miss them wherever I ended up after this. I just wished I could hug them one more time.

  And I thought about Damian. His face was the clearest in my mind, like the brightest star in the sky taking up all the attention. There was no reason behind what I felt for him. I hadn’t known him long enough to hurt so badly at the thought of not being with him,
but there I was. Maybe feelings weren’t supposed to have reasons, anyway. I thought of his laugh and I let it replay in my mind, like a broken record. I like to think it helped.

  Magic in the air. I felt its heat moving toward me, warming my face as it slowly left Adams’s hands. Whatever he was chanting, it was long, and it was going to hurt like hell before it killed me. I could hear Kit’s squeaks and the others while they tried to get to me, but I couldn’t look away from Adams. He was all I saw. My end.

  I held my breath like I wanted to save the air inside my lungs as a token from this world, if there even was another after it.

  The funny thing is, I didn’t die.

  It happened fast—so fast even Adams didn’t see it coming. Even Amina couldn’t stop it.

  The ground vibrated just a bit, and I felt it only because I was lying flat on my back. And then it exploded.

  No, not exploded. It rose. And rose—with me on it. One second Adams’s magic was right in front of me, coming to serve me my end, and the next, I no longer felt the heat. I was flying up, still unable to move, and all I could see was the limitless sky, barely any stars in sight from the dark, angry clouds. I focused on breathing—it was hard to do because I was going up too fast. It felt like my ribs were going to crack any second now from the pressure, and I’d become one with the surface below me.

  I had no idea what the hell was happening, but it was no longer possible to hold onto my consciousness. Too much pressure, too difficult to breathe, too stunned to move.

  Eventually, I gave in to the call and closed my eyes.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I came to, everything that had happened came back to me in a rush. My head was buzzing by the time I managed to open my eyes. At first, I thought I’d gone blind. There was nothing but darkness around me. Darkness and an open space with absolutely nothing in sight on either side of me.