Blood and Fire: An Urban Fantasy (The Marked Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  “The police will have removed the remains after the accident,” he said.

  “It wasn’t an accident.” If it was, my father wouldn’t have told me to run. He’d tell me to call 911. The house wouldn’t have burned down, either.

  “Either way, I don’t think we’ll find what we’re looking for here.”

  He was right about that.

  “I’m turning myself in.”

  The words sounded foreign to my ears. For four years I’d run away like my ass was on fire from anyone who’d recognized me, and now here I was, determined to see this through to the very end.

  But I didn’t have the power or the resources to do that, and neither did Logan.

  The Magian Ministry did.

  “Turn yourself in, where?” I wasn’t sure if he really didn’t understand or if he was just pretending.

  “To the MM.”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “No.”

  “I have to. It’s the only way I can find out where my father’s remains are and the only way I can talk to the last person in Sasha’s picture.”

  “We can get to him by ourselves,” Logan said through gritted teeth.

  “No, we can’t. Christopher Ford is probably better protected than the President, and even if he wasn’t, do you think he’d just let us get near him, just like that?” He wouldn’t. I was a wanted criminal, and it was his job to charge me.

  “So you think turning yourself in would make him change his mind? You won’t find anything from a jail cell, Ruby.”

  “I won’t find anything out here, either,” I said, my voice rising a bit. “I mean, look at us! How much longer do you think we can keep going? What else is going to try to eat us next?” I shook my head, angry at myself and at the entire world. “I’m just tired. I want answers, and the fastest way I can get them is the MM.”

  Logan stepped in front of me, and if the expression on his face was anything to go by, he wanted to grab me and shake me until I came to my senses. Luckily, he didn’t.

  “This is stupid, and you’re not stupid. They’re going to lock you in a cell, and they’re going to make sure you stay there.”

  “No, they won’t. I’ll ask to speak to Ford. He’ll have no choice but to come once I show them the picture.” At least I very much hoped so.

  “They’re not going to give you a chance to speak!” he growled.

  “They will!”

  “And what if they don’t? Do you really want to take that chance?”

  I did. “If they don’t, then you’ll just do what you do best.” Confused, he narrowed his brows. “You’ll come save me, Sparkle.”

  “I don’t want you locked up,” he said. Not even a smile.

  “I don’t want to get locked up, either, but there’s no other way. You said we had to make choices, and I’m making mine. This is bigger than just me at this point. A lot of people have disappeared, and I’m willing to bet they’re going to die soon if we don’t find them. That asshole needs to be stopped.”

  I said it for my benefit as much as for his. The idea of surrendering to the MM was scary as hell, so I needed all the encouragement I could get. And if Logan wasn’t going to give it to me, I’d just give it to myself.

  Logan closed his eyes and let go of a long breath. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Sure it is. And if it doesn’t, you have my permission to burn down the entire building.” I tried to joke, and he finally smiled a little. “And don’t even tell me you won’t enjoy it.”

  “Oh, I will. I’ll enjoy it very much.”

  “There,” I said, patting his chest. “That’s settled then.”

  “I’ll come for you if they don’t let you out,” he said, and I felt it deep in my bones. He meant every word.

  God, how I wanted to kiss him. The look in his clear brown eyes, the concern he didn’t even try to hide, felt completely genuine. He cared and he wasn’t afraid to show it. I was in awe. I wished I was as brave.

  “I know. I’ll be okay, Sparkle.” It’s what he’d said to me in the car. I just hoped he believed me more than I’d believed him.

  ***

  I called the MM and requested Dumont’s number, claiming that I had information about a wanted criminal. It wasn’t exactly a lie: I had information about where I was going to be, and I was a wanted criminal. Not that I would have lost any sleep over lying to the MM, anyway.

  The Magian Ministry had two stations in Richmond, and the bigger one was in the Museum District. That’s where I was going to go. Logan and I separated two blocks away from the building, and he was going to hide in a hotel and wait for my call. He was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to see my phone again, and I told him he worried too much.

  In all honesty, I didn’t know what was going to happen. All I knew was that if I didn’t act fast, Nana was going to die, and I couldn’t let that happen.

  So away I went, Collins’s folder tucked safely under my zipped jacket. I kept my head down and walked as fast as I could without running. I’d asked Dumont to meet me at the MM station through a text, signed with my name. I thought he’d try to call me or at least text me back. He hadn’t, probably because he thought someone was messing with him. I only hoped he’d be there; otherwise I was going to have to introduce myself to someone else all over again.

  The station was a two-story building, perfectly square on all sides, made of dirty-looking brown bricks and bars in front of all its windows. It wasn’t as big as some human police stations, but it had enough room to accommodate about forty MM officers and other staff, plus they kept a lot of vehicles in the garage underneath the building, too. They’d have plenty of room for me.

  I was two minutes away from the building when I heard that awful sound right behind me, just like I had the night before.

  I froze. I turned, slowly.

  “Come the fuck on!”

  They had to be kidding me. Those nasty, dog-like creatures again?

  There were three of them, and they were barely twenty feet away from me, looking like fucking shadows in the darkness. They all watched me, showing me their teeth, growling. The first person to scream was a woman just about to pass me by, heading in their direction. Needless to say she crossed the road running.

  She looked like a smart woman. In fact, she taught me a valuable thing in those moments: run. Don’t try to fight them. Don’t try to kill them. Just run, inside the MM station, where the Guard would surely not let the creatures in.

  So that’s what I did. I turned around and I ran with all the strength in my body, hoping to God I’d make it to the station before they got to me. I could hear their footsteps as they came, and they sounded closer and closer every second. No way was I going to turn around and see how close they were for fear instinct would take over and I’d stop to try to fight. Which would have been stupid. There were three of them, and I was on my own this time. No Logan to blaze them with his fire.

  When I could make out the MM building in the middle of a crowded street, a new wave of energy burst through me, giving me a bit more speed. Just a little more, I reassured myself. As long as I didn’t look back, it didn’t matter how many people screamed at the sight of the creatures or how close their growling sounded to me. I just had to get to the gates, and I was going to be okay.

  The gates were open, thank God. The station operated twenty-four seven, so I’d known it would be open, but when I saw a man standing in front of the open gates with his hands in his pockets, I almost cried out. It was Dumont, and he could see me. He could shut the gates as soon as I ran inside, and those creatures would have no chance!

  Except…

  “No, no, no, no…” I said to myself. Dumont was no longer standing there, watching me with his hands in his pockets.

  The asshole was running toward me.

  It all happened so fast, my brain barely registered it. Dumont didn’t care about who could see him. He ran toward me while I ran for him, and I saw it the second it began to happen. It was like his ey
es filled with bright light, just for a split second, and then the transformation began.

  I’d seen people shift before, in Nana’s Enclave. There had been five shifters in and out of her house during the time I’d lived with her, but to see Dumont now was a completely different story.

  One second his feet were touching the ground, and the next, he jumped and was suspended on air as his skin changed, his head grew, orange and black fur covered him completely, all at once, and by the time he landed on the ground again, all traces of the human version of Ryan Dumont were erased by a hungry-looking tiger with a roar that shook me to my core. I stopped running, afraid I’d bump into him because we were already so close, but he didn’t. He kept running, coming straight for me, so I fell down to my knees and watched in awe as he jumped over me in one clean leap.

  Growls and roars and people screaming. I stood up and turned to see the tiger going against the three dog-like creatures. It was surreal, like watching a horror movie live.

  “Goddamn it!” I shouted, and getting my whip out of my belt loops and a chakri, I ran back to them, cursing Dumont in my head. I couldn’t leave him all alone in a fight, could I? So much for running away now.

  The dogs were trying to get on the tiger’s back when I reached them and threw my whip onto the one to my left. The leather of the whip wrapped around one of its creepy, long back legs, and I pulled with all my strength. I wasn’t able to move it much, but I definitely got its attention, and when it turned to me, I dropped the whip and charged it with two chakris, aiming for its face.

  It was the night before all over again. Jaws snapping at my face, black, gooey blood all over the ground and on me, making a mess of my clothes, when I’d just washed them. The fucking assholes. I fought one while the tiger handled the other two perfectly, and I expected more armed MM officers to come out by then, but I was wrong.

  It didn’t matter, though. Two minutes in, and the dogs were retreating. I’d only cut the side of the neck of the one I was fighting, and last night, that hadn’t stopped them. Tonight, it did.

  I was shocked when the dog backed away when I tried to cut it, and its friends did the same. Whining and growling, not as angry as before, it seemed, they backed away from us, and I was perfectly fine with that. But the tiger wasn’t. It leaped in the air and bit one of the creatures on the leg. I was ready to complain again. Couldn’t he just leave it at that? They were leaving!

  But then the other two dogs didn’t come for us. It seemed this time, they weren’t going to help their friend, and the tiger hit it on the side of its face with a giant paw. The dog lost balance for a split second, and that’s all it took for the tiger to sink his teeth in the dog’s long neck.

  The dog went limp. I was still just as shocked as I watched.

  Then the tiger turned around and dragged it with his jaws all the way back to the station.

  ***

  I couldn’t look away from Dumont.

  He was back to being human again, but I just couldn’t look away. Why wasn’t there any gooey black blood in his teeth? His tiger had carried the dog creature back to the station and dropped it there in front of the doors before disappearing to the side of the building. He left me there to wait for other officers to come arrest me and take me inside and take the dog inside, too. I tried to tell them to be careful, that those things didn’t die. They came back, no matter how much you hurt them, but nobody listened. And when Dumont came back, he was dressed in new clothes because the old ones would have been ruined by the magic of his shifting earlier. He was perfectly clean, too, while I was a mess. It wasn’t fair.

  “I thought you were playing me,” he said as he approached me. He was a big guy, about six foot two, with really wide shoulders. He probably had to turn to the side to walk into normal-sized doors, but it would be rude to ask. His hair shone yellow under the lights of the MM station, and his eyes were still just as weird. He remained as hot as the last time I saw him from close up.

  “What the hell, Dumont? You could have just shut the gates in their faces and saved me the trouble of having to wash my clothes again. You see that?” I showed him my sneakers and jeans. Splattered with black goo everywhere.

  The asshole grinned. “So that’s your biggest concern? Your dirty clothes?”

  He did have a point. “Come to think of it, these cuffs aren’t very comfortable, either.”

  When two MM officers escorted me into the building, they put handcuffs on me first, right after taking away my chakris, my whip, my phone, and Lee Collins’s folder, where I’d also put his notebook and Sasha’s picture. I hadn’t refused because that was exactly what I expected, but now that Dumont was here, things were going to change.

  “So what, you decided to turn yourself in all of a sudden?” asked Dumont.

  We were standing in the middle of the round hall that led to a long reception desk with three clerks. Behind them was a glass wall that separated the rest of the room, which was full of wooden cubicles I couldn’t see the end of. Not many people sat in them at this time, probably only ten or so that I could see. The officers standing on either side of me while we’d waited for Dumont wore the standard black uniform of the MM, very different and much simpler than what the human police wore. They also didn’t have badges, but rings that represented their affiliation and responsibility to the Magian Ministry.

  Clearing my throat, I turned to the officers behind me. “I’d really like to speak to you in private, if I can.”

  “Sure thing,” said Dumont. “But you’re not going to try anything funny, are you?”

  I grinned. “What do you think?”

  He squinted his eyes at me for a second. “No, you wouldn’t. You know you’ll die a quick death if you do.”

  Asshole.

  I turned my back on him. “If you could get these things off me now.” I wasn’t kidding. The handcuffs were really uncomfortable.

  “You walk around with those round things on your wrists all the time, but you can’t handle handcuffs?” Dumont actually laughed.

  “I can move my arms when I have them on. That’s the difference,” I said and tried to raise my arms as much as I could.

  “Let’s just keep them on for a while longer.”

  I rolled my eye and turned to him again. “Come on, Dumont. I came here by myself. You didn’t make me. And I saw you go full Lion King on those dogs. I’m going to try not to piss you off, I promise.”

  “I’m a tiger,” Dumont said, as if that made any difference.

  “But they didn’t make a movie about the Tiger King, did they?” I turned around again. “Cuffs?”

  Finally, one of the officers walked toward Dumont. I couldn’t see what he was doing because he was on my left, but the next second, Dumont grabbed the cuffs, turned the key, and my hands were finally free.

  “Thank you,” I said with a sigh, rubbing my wrists. “My weapons, also.”

  Dumont laughed again. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Monroe. Follow me.” He waved a hand at the officers behind me, to keep them in their place because they’d wanted to follow me. Good. I seriously had no intention of trying to escape. Yet. I mean, did you see what the tiger did to those dogs? I’d rather keep my head attached to my body for now.

  “What’s up with the eye on your eye patch, anyway?” Dumont asked as he led me to the right of the hall, through a series of doors and corridors.

  “A special gift from a special person. It suits me,” I said. “You do know that those dogs don’t die, right? You put it somewhere safe, didn’t you?”

  The last corridor had only two doors side-by-side at the end of it, and Dumont took me to the left. It was an interrogation room, complete with a white table with a hook my handcuffs could be attached to, but since I no longer had those on, I wasn’t worrying. There were three chairs, cameras in the corners, and a mirror that took up half the wall on the right. The overhead light was bright white, and it made Dumont look like a ghost. Probably me, too. I checked the mirror.
<
br />   Yep. I looked like shit.

  Luckily, my appearance didn’t matter right now.

  “Very safe, don’t you worry about that,” he said.

  But I worried.

  I sat on one of the chairs, and Dumont sat across from me. He tried to play it cool, but I could see he was nervous. Tense. His shoulders were way too rigid, and though he smiled, I could see his alien eyes moving fast all over me, trying to catch a wrong movement. He still believed that I was going to try to escape, which was stupid. If I’d wanted to escape, why would I have come here?

  “Okay, I’m all ears,” he said, putting his big hands on the white table.

  “Right. So, I’m not actually going to tell you anything,” I said, fidgeting in my seat. “My request is to see Christopher Ford. I will tell everything I know to him and him only.”

  A second of silence. Then his laughter filled the room and my ears. He seemed to think I was awfully funny tonight.

  “Let me get this straight. You’re a wanted criminal, have a price on your head, and you turned yourself in so you can speak to the head of the Order of Magians?”

  He nailed it. “Exactly.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Monroe, but you’re not going to see Christopher Ford.”

  I grinned. “Sure I will.”

  “No, you won’t. Believe me, he’s not going to come down here to speak to you, no matter how many times you request it.”

  I shrugged. “But I’m a wanted criminal. I’m going to have to go to trial, won’t I? And he’ll have to be there because he’s the head of the Order.” I didn’t tell him that I wasn’t going to wait until then because I really was hoping that Ford would agree to meet me here.

  Dumont was no longer laughing. “Cut the shit, Monroe. You were at the crime scene of every kidnapping and attempted murder of the high priests in the city. If you think you’re going to somehow get away from all that, I suggest you think again.”