Alpha Magic (The New York Shade Book 4)

by D. N. Hoxa

  Maybe I’d already died?

  I tried to move my fingers and they actually moved. I expected it to hurt…everywhere. Nothing did. I took in a deep breath, and the cold air made me feel like I’d swallowed a mouthful of tiny shards.

  Speaking of tiny…where was Kit and the little ones?

  My teeth chattered and my entire body shook while I tried to sit up and see where the hell I was. I lost count of how many times I tried then fell back down. My body was recovering. I could feel the energy returning to me. The reason why I wasn’t hurting was because I hadn’t actually lost consciousness fighting this time. I’d just given my magic away, which was why I was still weak. All that magic…I had the urge to touch my chest, just to make sure that I still had my essence inside me, which was stupid. Supernaturals couldn’t be alive without magic and I was still breathing. The cold air was a constant reminder.

  But I had given everything I could give to the Shade.

  I sat up. Where am I?

  High up, somewhere. I couldn’t see anything but the sky, but in the distance I could make out lights. Lots of tiny lights and lots of structures. My heart picked up the beating and fear gripped me by the throat—a nice distraction from my weak limbs and the cold air. The piece of asphalt I was sitting on was barely five feet wide, and around it there was…nothing.

  “Oh, my God,” I whispered to the night as I got closer to the edge and looked down to see that the ground was very, very, very far away—possibly over three hundred feet below me. My body no longer shook from the cold but from the panic. I don’t know why I even stood up, but I did. Fucking hell, I felt like I could touch the clouds from up here if I were brave enough to jump and reach out to them.

  I knew exactly what this was, and despite the situation, I laughed my heart out for a good minute. The Shade had saved me. I’d seen Adams in front of me, I’d felt his magic as it readied to devour me, and the Shade hadn’t let him kill me. It had brought me all the way up here instead, where even a vampire couldn’t jump to reach me.

  Vertigo hit me hard, but I had no choice but to look. A new wave of energy filled me when I saw the tiny green lights below me and realized that the Shade was still there. It was still alive, and it had destroyed that orange rock—I remembered it. I remembered the mad look in Adams’s eyes before he came at me.

  Now, all I had to do was go kill him. I could do that, couldn’t I? My weapons weren’t with me, but I still had magic. It was still there, even though I’d given everything I’d had to the Shade minutes ago.

  Or was it hours? I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious, but there would be a battle, and I was going to fight in it. Just as soon as I figured out a way to get down there without falling and killing myself first. Now that would be a bittersweet ending to this story.

  I searched for something—like stairs or a rope, all around the broken edges of the piece of asphalt I was standing on, but there was nothing there. Shit. I got down on my knees and touched my palm to the cold asphalt.

  “I need to get down there,” I whispered to the Shade, hoping maybe it would listen to me, since, you know, it had saved me.

  My body went into shock for the second time when the ground beneath my feet shook for a second and then began to fall. I had never been more scared in my life. I didn’t even realize that I had fallen down until my face hit the asphalt and my fingers were desperately trying to find something to hold onto. My eyes were squeezed shut and my breath held, and my heart all but beat straight out of my chest and into the asphalt.

  But then it began to slow down. I took in deep breaths and pulled my hands into fists to keep my fingers from shaking. I needed to get up, right now, because I had no idea where I was and who was around me. I needed to get a grip on the fear and just deal with it; otherwise the Shade’s effort to save me would have been in vain.

  I was still too far away from the ground when I managed to rise to my knees, but I could see a lot better now. Everything had gotten bigger again, and the lights no longer looked like tiny stars blinking in the distance. The ground moved slower and slower as it fell back in place, and I eventually made it to my feet. Something squeezed my chest, but it wasn’t panic this time. It was excitement. I was flying, and it was amazing.

  I turned around and took in the view as the Shade brought me down—all the buildings inside it, and outside the skyscrapers with tips that dipped into the dark sky, and best of all, the people. I began to notice more and more shadows with every second. A fight was already going on in the Shade, and that meant the people who’d been unconscious had woken up. Everybody was going to be okay. I repeated that to myself until the ground beneath me slowed down almost all the way. I was ten feet up now. A little more and I could jump without breaking anything.

  My body was no longer weak and my magic hummed inside me, alive. I held my breath and jumped off the piece of ground that had taken me to the skies, and I landed with both feet right next to it. It stopped moving altogether, no longer going inside the ground from where it had come out. The hole around it was twice as big, with cracks all around it, but it no longer scared me.

  Kit was running toward me from the fight happening right where Adams had been chanting at that huge rock before. Wolves and people were going at it, blood spilling on the floor. There were a few who still were unconscious but not many. And not Damian. Kit’s warm tail hugged the back of my neck, and he sniffed my cheek, squeaking. Another six hellbeasts ran to me from all sides, climbing my legs. Even Dalia made it all the way to my right shoulder.

  “I’m fine,” I told them, my eyes on the fight to see whom I could recognize.

  As if on cue, someone moved fast—faster than everybody else—and the next second, Amina practically appeared out of thin air.

  Her hair was no longer wavy and shiny—it was all over the place. Her eyes were just as dark, her fangs dripping blood. Fresh blood. Her clothes were torn, and her right thigh was on complete display now. She didn’t seem to mind when she smiled at me.

  Something else moved, just as fast as Amina had, maybe even faster. I looked to the side to see Damian, alive and standing, his sword in his hand, looking at me.

  Alive, I reminded myself. I could see him with my own eyes—he wasn’t dead. He was alive, and all we had to do now was keep it that way.

  “You just couldn’t stay away, could you?” he asked, his voice just as strong as it normally was. It relaxed me even more.

  “Eh, I’m the life of the fight, anyway.” I smiled at him. He smiled at me. It was more than enough.

  “You’re going to die, bitch,” Amina said, taking a step closer to me. Her eyes moved from Damian to me every few seconds, as if she didn’t know whom to attack first. But it was okay.

  Three men were coming for us, swords in hand. Damian hesitated.

  “Leave her to me,” I whispered to him, but he heard. He could deal with those men, but Amina was mine. It was time I put this woman to rest for good.

  “All right, beasties,” I said to my hellbeasts. “Thirteen seconds is what I need. Go make her miserable for me.”

  Kit squeaked loudly. Then he jumped and began to spin as he shifted into his original form again. By the time he hit the ground, he was no longer a squirrel, but a spider-like creature with bright red eyes and really sharp teeth. His mate and his little ones ran after him and toward Amina, who reluctantly took half a step back at the sight of them.

  I took in a deep breath. Damn it, I’d wanted to do this for such a long time that I was bubbling with excitement. Finding Damian’s essence was easy—he was standing barely ten feet away from me, fighting with only two men now. The third was on the ground, headless. But holding onto the essence was more difficult than it should have been, even for a Prime. I gritted my teeth and focused, ignoring the sound of Amina’s cries as the hellbeasts attacked her. They weren’t going to do any long-lasting damage to her, but that wasn’t the point. All I needed was thirteen seconds to take Damian’s magic.

  My ey
es closed on their own accord when my magic began to shift inside me, with a lot more difficulty than normal. Damian’s essence was a blinding white light, and my own stretched itself, twisted and turned, until it created an exact copy of it. I had to push a lot harder with my mind, and it did feel like the process went slower. My magic was still recovering itself, but it was working the way it should, even if a bit slower. It sucked in Damian’s essence, melded with it, until they became one. Then it spread all over me, consuming my every cell.

  The shift was very obvious inside me—more obvious than it had ever been before, and it all started with one last beat.

  Silence.

  It was completely silent inside me. My heart was no longer beating in my chest because I was technically dead. For the next thirteen minutes and thirty seconds, I wasn’t a sorceress. I was a vampire.

  My eyes popped open and the world was brand new. I’d shifted into a werewolf before when I took Carter’s magic, but this was something else entirely. The image was crystal clear in front of me, as if someone had removed a veil that had been in front of my eyes all my life. Every color, every highlight, every shadow was more. It was so easy to get lost in the details. I could see so much of everything that it was dizzying.

  And that wasn’t all.

  I could hear everything, too. The clash of swords, every time someone’s fist connected with another person, every growl and cry the werewolves let out, and even the movement of the little hellbeasts as they ran up and down Amina’s body, poking her with their tiny claws. Kit and Dalia were focused on her head, but she didn’t seem fazed, only annoyed as she tried to catch them and throw them off her. I could almost hear the thoughts running through her head with every movement of her body.

  But nothing beat the smell.

  It wasn’t everything—just the blood. So much blood. It was everywhere, wrapped in so many different packages, some with fur, some without—all of it so delicious. It was better than anything I’d ever smelled before in my entire life. My every instinct focused on it. I needed it. I needed it so badly that my stomach felt like it should have been howling right now with hunger, but instead it remained silent. Because it was dead now.

  But the rest of me wasn’t. I could feel it when my eyes changed—the view in front of me became a tiny bit darker. And my jaw was changing, too. I could feel my canines extending and the pain stabbed me like two large needles straight into my brain. My mouth opened and I wanted to rip it apart just to make room for the fangs because they seemed like they wanted to fucking grow out of me altogether.

  Still, my instincts were sharper than ever, and when Damian moved this time, as fast as he normally did, I saw it all. I heard it all. Every footstep, every movement of his body, every drop of cold blood inside his veins. He was in front of me and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me to him.

  “Focus,” he breathed, but I heard it like he’d been shouting it out loud. “Focus on me, little thief.”

  And that’s exactly what I did. I focused on him and I saw him better than I’d ever seen him before, which unfortunately wasn’t doing me any favors. There was a monster within me, all right, right where my magic normally was, tucked inside my chest. It came alive at the sight of his eyes that looked so much more than they ever had. There were greens and red specks in them that I’d never noticed before, and they were endless. They went on forever.

  He smiled as he looked at me, too, but I had no idea what he saw. I didn’t care—all I wanted to do was analyze every inch of him while the world around us caught fire. I could smell the fire, even though I couldn’t see it, and I had no idea where it was coming from.

  “You’re even more divine than I imagined,” Damian whispered, his lips close enough to devour me with a simple movement—which reminded me that my jaw no longer hurt. My brain didn’t feel like it was being pierced with needles anymore. My tongue moved, searching for canines. Instead, it found fangs. Really long fangs that didn’t feel any different from the rest of my teeth now. Damian noticed. He grinned, his own fangs on display. I wanted to kiss the hell out of him, but the fangs kind of made it impossible.

  I wasn’t as romantic as he was—maybe I should read more books in the future—but I could still tell him exactly what I thought. I already did that all the time, anyway.

  “I kind of want to eat you.” Huh. My voice sounded really strange, too. Sharper, somehow. A bit stronger, louder than I remembered.

  Damian’s smile grew. “Later,” he promised, then stepped back, his sword raised. I hadn’t even noticed that Amina was almost at me. I moved to the side to get away from her and almost fell on my face.

  Fuck, that was fast. How on earth could I move like this?

  I tried again, this time intending to grab Amina by the arm and pull her, but she saw me coming. Maybe I wasn’t as fast as I thought? Damian had stepped back. He looked ahead as somebody came for him—two somebodies—and they both had warm blood in their veins. Oh, how I needed it. I needed it so badly I almost lost sight of Amina as she moved behind me, arm outstretched, reaching for the back of my neck. I ducked at the last second and pushed my foot back, and I actually hit her in the pelvis. She jumped back but didn’t fall, and she came for me again at the same second.

  Wow. I could move fast. I jerked my arm and I couldn’t even see it. I only felt it when my elbow hit the side of Amina’s face. She fell back again and watched me as I laughed. This was so amazing. Why hadn’t I done this before? Maybe Carter was right. Maybe I should do this all the time.

  Being a vampire was incredible.

  But Amina didn’t intend to let me have my moment. Jealous bitch. And Damian was already fighting two men. One of them kept shooting light balls from his hands—a sorcerer—but the other was incredibly good with a sword. Damian could hold his own—I wasn’t worried.

  And I could hold mine against Amina, without magic or weapons. The blood in her veins, whoever she’d taken it from, belonged to me now. I charged her, but she had been a vampire much longer than me, so she knew when to jump and where to land. I heard her before her feet touched the ground, but I pretended I was confused and turned my head to the right. That was the only advantage I had—to make her underestimate me.

  And she did. Her hand was halfway to my throat when I grabbed her wrist and pulled her but never let go. Fuck, it was like my fingers were made out of steel. No way in hell could anything pry my fingers open as I held onto her, and she swung to the side, her balance lost. Then I jumped just like she had, her wrist still in my hand. Bone broke with a loud crack, or maybe it was just my new ears. Amina was still hissing when I landed right behind her. She tried to move, but it was too late. With my other hand, I grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back. She screamed. I sank my fangs in her neck.

  It was amazing how I knew exactly where her artery was and pierced straight into it with my fangs. Blood, cold blood, slipped into my mouth like it knew the way all by itself. It was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted in my life. Every cell in me came alive as it slid down my throat and into my stomach, filling me with life.

  It wasn’t enough. I had the feeling it would never be enough, but I knew there was something better out there—warm blood. Fresh blood, and even though I’d taken everything in Amina’s body, freakishly fast, I still wasn’t full. For now, I pulled away from her, blood dripping down my chin, but it didn’t feel disgusting. I licked my lips and grabbed Amina’s face in my hands. She was no longer moving, and she was only standing because I was holding her up. Her skin had turned white with a blueish hue to it, and it looked worse than a maneater’s.

  “You should have just left me alone,” I whispered in her ear. I wasn’t sure if she could hear me, but it was worth a shot. I slipped my fingers inside her mouth and pulled on either side with all my strength. My strength was a lot now, I kept forgetting, and the top of her jaw tore from the bottom as easily as a piece of paper.

  A second later, she fell to her knees, the top of her head
missing. I threw it to the side, and it rolled and rolled and slipped into the huge crack in the asphalt. Done.

  Now, I just needed to cross off Faron’s name from my list, and I’d feel mighty good about myself.

  All of my hellbeasts were already on my person by the time I turned around to see the battle. I could see everyone now—even Carter’s wolf fighting a man with two large swords to the right of the street. The ground groaned, but the glamoured crystals around us were burning a bit brighter than before, which could only mean that the Shade was coming back to itself. With all these people awake again, it would have no trouble taking magic from them. Damian had already killed the two people he’d been fighting with and was now in the middle of the crowd somewhere. Across from him was the man who’d done all of this—Alexander Adams.

  It was time I made my way to them.

  “Do as much damage as you can, guys,” I told the hellbeasts, and they all let out screams that made me wish I’d stuffed my ears full of cotton. Then, I ran.

  For the first time in my life, I realized that Damian didn’t move the way he did on purpose. I hadn’t imagined myself right behind the man fighting with his swords against a werewolf in the blink of an eye, but there I was. His head was right in front of my face, and all I had to do was grab it and twist it to the side, real fast. That was it. I don’t think he even realized what had happened. He fell to his knees and I grabbed him by the hair, pulled his head to the side, and bit him.

  Warm blood. Fresh blood. Let me tell you all about it. It wasn’t just sweet or sour or spicy or delicious or mouthwatering—it was everything combined, your favorite taste and smell and texture wrapped into one drop, multiplied by a thousand. It was the nectar of gods, and I had a whole body full of it, just for me.

  I took and took until there was nothing left to take. The man was already dead and he didn’t try to stop me or take me off him, so it made me wonder what it would be like if somebody did. Exciting? Maybe. I’d just have to find out.