Druggie?
Who was she kidding? She was a druggie. A black-magic druggie. She’d had one too many tastes, and now she was hooked. Just the thought of the familiar feeling of power racing through her body, supercharging her soul, sent a powerful shiver through her. She hurried down the alleyway out into the strip club’s parking lot and then to her car. Some part of her felt that if she slowed down for even one moment, the better half of her would win out again and she would end up going home, like she should. Back to the constant cravings. Back to the monotony of everyday life.
No. She couldn’t resign herself to that.
She quickly unlocked the door to her ancient Volkswagen Beetle and slid inside. She started the engine of the once-great piece of machinery, whose only flaw was having been driven for one too many decades more than it should have been, and peeled out of the parking lot. Damn, this was a dumb move. She wasn’t even really sure where she was going. Regular practitioners of black magic loved to be ridiculously cryptic. All her contact had given her was a general location. She would need to figure it out from there.
She drove across the city, singing so loudly that people waiting to cross the street could probably hear her—anything to drown out the “this is not a good idea” chatter in her head.
When she finally reached her destination in the heart of the city, she parked her car, and headed down the nearest empty alley. She stopped behind an overstuffed-and-smelling-of-rot Dumpster and removed her hands from the warm den of her jacket pockets. She held her hands out in front of her, closing her eyes with the certainty she was alone and allowing her white-magic power, the power she possessed within, to flow from the pit of her stomach, through her chest, down her arms and to the tips of her fingers.
A vibrant violet light pulsated from her hands, and she urged that light to lead her in the right direction. Glancing over her shoulder to ensure she was still alone and not being watched, she followed her instincts, slowly navigating the city’s back alleys until she reached a metal door with no handle. She allowed her magic to fold back in on itself before she balled her left hand into a fist and pounded on the metal door.
A young African-American woman with an afro poked her head out the door several moments later. She gave Vera the once-over, scanning her up and down with her shiny glossed lips pinched together, as if assessing Vera’s entire worth in a glance, before pushing the door fully open and gesturing her in.
Once Vera stepped inside, the woman closed the door behind her. The metal echoed, a loud, thunderous clang, like the door of a jail cell slamming shut, and Vera wondered if that perception was her conscience’s way of screaming, What the fuck do you think you’re doing? once again, as if the dingy haven’t-been-renovated-or-lived-in-since-the-sixties look of the place wasn’t enough to give her that vibe already. She couldn’t quite tell from the interior whether this was a gutted-out old business or apartment building, but she would venture a guess that there had been more than one waterbed in this establishment back in its day. The way the wooden floor creaked beneath her feet, as if it hadn’t been stepped on in ages, sent a slight chill down her spine. The creaking echoed courtesy of the equally wooden walls and wood coffered ceiling. How had termites not destroyed this building already?
“I’m Trista,” the woman said. The silver of her large hoop earrings glittered in the dim accent light of the hallway, along with the star-shaped diamond stud in her nose. She was beautiful in an exotic, high-sculpted-cheekbones and eyes-so-fierce-they-could-cut-you sort of way. “You’re here for the circle.” It was a statement, not a question.
Vera nodded. “Yeah.”
Trista scanned Vera up and down again. Her nose scrunched and her nostrils flared, as if she’d just put something distasteful in her mouth. “You have the look of a black-magic witch.”
The look? Vera frowned. Whatever the hell that meant. Whether insult or compliment when coming from the gatekeeper of a black magic coven, she wasn’t sure. She contemplated a weak Uh, thanks, but opted instead for silence. One thing held certain with black-magic witches: no matter what, any advertisement of your own weakness meant exactly that, you were weak. Taking a half insult to heart, or expressing an opinion of it in any way, fell straight into the category of things that might make her appear weak. She couldn’t allow that. She held Trista’s gaze. The woman might have had eyes that could cut, but Vera was no spring chicken in the world of black magic. She wouldn’t be easily intimidated. She was a powerful witch, more powerful than she looked.
Trista raised an eyebrow at Vera’s obvious lack of intimidation. Vera stood just the slightest bit straighter, eye to eye with the woman. She almost expected Trista to make a halfhearted threat, but the woman surprised her when she took a step back, gesturing for Vera to follow her down the dark wooden hall. As they approached the last door on the left, the sound of chanting filled Vera’s ears, and the familiar buzz crept into her veins. This was it. This was what she needed. Trista waved her forward, and Vera pushed open the door.
Black-magic paraphernalia—from Santeria-like candles to nightshade herbs to animal blood and bone-filled pestles—lined the walls of the dim candlelit room. In the center, eleven people sat in a circle, hands clasped together as they chanted in a tongue Vera didn’t recognize. As she and Trista entered, a pair of cold blue eyes snapped open. The leader of the circle broke his trance and fixed his gaze on Vera.
“Who are you?” he asked quietly. His voice cut through the ongoing chanting. The lit candles around the room flickered, as if a swift breeze had rushed through.
A chill shivered down Vera’s spine, though the room was comfortably warm. Aside from her own father, who had once been thought of as the most powerful warlock of the past century, this man, this warlock, was powerful beyond anything she had ever encountered before. That thought sent icy adrenaline through her veins like a well-placed IV.
“My name is Vera Sanders.”
“Sanders?” He rolled her name around on his tongue as if it was a sweet candy that could melt in his mouth. “You bear a striking resemblance to Johnathan Summers. Are you sure Sanders is your last name?”
The chill racing down Vera’s spine hardened to numbing ice. She froze. In all the time she’d been practicing black magic, no one had ever recognized her as her father’s daughter before. She had tried very hard over the years to keep that association buried. Her father had been a powerful warlock with plenty of friends and supporters, as well as enemies. She wasn’t sure she wanted to cross paths with either side.
“No relation,” she said, lying worse than Nixon during Watergate. She held his gaze. Though she was generally a fantastic liar, he’d caught her off guard, and if he didn’t recognize that, he wasn’t nearly as powerful as she’d originally believed.
“My mistake.” He gave her a crooked grin, and she knew, despite his words, that he didn’t believe her for a second. From the spark behind his eyes when her father’s name passed his lips, she knew he must have been either friend or foe, and there was a very, very thin line between love and hate. She wasn’t prepared to walk that tightrope. “My name is Nathanial.”
He held her gaze, and the tension escalated. Several long seconds passed. Finally, she forced herself to look away, even though it grated against every feminist fiber of her being.
His eyes...they were so predatory and unforgiving.
“Well, Ms. Sanders...” Her last name sounded like a hiss and made his disbelief clear. “What are you here for?”
“I’m just here for the magic, that’s all.”
He grinned again. Something about his stare and his crooked smile made her feel as if she were a small animal cornered by a gun-wielding hunter. “So would you care to know what spells we’re executing today?” The sounds of the chanting had become less than background noise to her, a humming against the quiet threat of his voice. He didn’t have to speak loudly for
his words to be powerful and all-consuming. Her father’s voice had been that way.
An internal war waged deep in her chest. The little voice inside her head screamed she should care to know exactly what she was getting herself into and what spell her power would be assisting, but another voice reminded her that she was already in too deep, that it was too late to back out now. Was ignorance bliss? The third and most dangerous voice, the voice of her addiction, reared its ugly head, making her skin crawl. God, she wanted it. She knew it was wrong, but she did. She’d been too weak to stop herself from coming here, and now, with it dangling right in front of her as if she were a starving person staring at her first bite of food in days, she found herself incapable of resisting.
When she’d refused to don the mantle of her father’s black magic legacy, he’d called her weak for her addiction, for caring more about the high than about the power she could wield. She certainly felt weak now.
You’re stronger than this. You’re worth more than this, Vera. You deserve better. She repeated the mantra over and over again in her head. But as she looked into Nathanial’s eyes, all she saw was the scared little junkie girl her parents had accused her of being all those years ago. The same scared little girl who would never amount to anything more than a trashily dressed bartender at a sleazy strip club, whose mind was always clouded by wondering when—or if—she would be able to get her next fix.
She sat down at the edge of the circle and joined hands. The voice inside her head fell silent, and as Nathanial smiled at her, she knew her father had been right.
* * *
IF ONE THING truly scared Shane out of his ever-loving mind—and rightfully so—it was the thought of being on the receiving end of his division leader’s wrath. He watched Damon, silently waiting for a response to the story he and Ash had recounted. Nothing incurred the wrath of Damon Brock, their leader and resident vampire hunter, more than two things: 1) having Execution Underground headquarters breathing down his neck, and 2) allowing civilians, particularly the Rochester PD, to get any inkling of their operations.
Someone in the division was usually on the receiving end of Damon’s anger, since it was his task to keep the ragtag group of alpha-male hunters in line. Shane just wasn’t accustomed to that person being him.
Damon’s voice remained eerily calm, easily filling the Rochester division’s small underground control room as he spoke. “You mean to tell me that the two of you allowed yourselves to be cornered by the Rochester PD, leading to the possibility of your faces being identified, just to dig up a grave with no body?” He examined them with blue eyes so cold they could make a man’s balls shrivel just by staring into them for too long. The tension in his stance indicated to Shane that the man would transform into a ballistic missile in about ten seconds if they didn’t manage to explain themselves first.
“Yep. That’s ’bout how it went down.” Ash crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles as he leaned against a desk.
Clearly, Shane thought, Ash’s balls were not quite as shriveled as his own at the moment. He couldn’t decide whether that was courageous or stupid. He was erring more on the side of stupid. Pissing Damon off was never a good idea, and part of being a good hunter was choosing your battles wisely. This battle was not wise.
“I think what Ash is trying to say is that there was no avoiding it. We took every precaution, and it was simply bad luck that the police showed up in the middle of us digging up the grave site. Since we were already so close to uncovering the body, once the officers were subdued it made sense to continue digging so we could complete the task. Nobody could have anticipated the missing corpse.”
The stiffness in Damon’s spine slackened ever so slightly, as if Shane had managed to placate his anger for the moment. Shane was thankful for small favors.
“So when you say no body, do you mean no casket, or there was a casket without a dead woman?” Trent Garrison, the division’s resident hunter of shape-shifters, asked from above the massive pile of papers on his desk and beneath the brim of his Red Sox cap. The Jersey native was purportedly an ardent fan, but Shane often thought his constant sporting of the cap had more to do with hiding his very obvious facial scar than his love of baseball.
“The casket was intact,” Shane said. “There was just no corpse.”
Nothing about this situation sat right with him. Dead bodies did not just get up and move on their own, nor did piles of bones. Unless...
“It was like she’d stood up out of her grave and moseyed away,” Ash said, his thoughts mimicking Shane’s own.
“Like a damn zombie? Shit. I don’t know whether that’s awesome or fucking horrifying.” Jace chuckled to himself. “Now that Frankie’s too pregnant to run the pack and Alejandro’s filling in, she’s catching up on The Walking Dead. Wait until I tell her she really better prepare for a fucking zombie apocalypse.” As the division’s werewolf hunter, it had been more than a little perplexing when Jace McCannon had fallen in love with Rochester’s first female werewolf packmaster. It had created one hell of a mess and a shitload of paperwork. If anyone was a thorn in Damon’s side, it was Jace. He was a hothead and played by his own rules in a way none of the other hunters dared. But Jace was damn good at his job, loyal to his friends and family to a fault and had calmed down considerably in the past several months with his girlfriend now expecting twin girls. Despite all Jace’s vices, Shane was proud to consider him a friend.
“Man, I love that show.” Trent grinned from ear to ear. The scar beneath his eye puckered and wrinkled.
Just as Damon opened his mouth to say something, the answer hit Shane like an oncoming freight train.
Black magic. The answer was black magic.
He had been racking his brain trying to figure out what would cause Mrs. Foley’s remains to go missing, and that was it. When he had read about Mr. Foley reportedly being haunted by his wife before his death, his first thought had been a poltergeist. That was where Ash had come in. His area of expertise was ghosts, including poltergeists, basically any spirit crossing over from the great unknown or who just hadn’t headed that way yet. But ghosts didn’t take their corporeal bodies with them, so once they had found her body was missing, the pieces no longer added up to a haunting.
Aside from the disgusting possibility of plain old human necrophilia—he shuddered at that thought—the only reason Shane could think of for the body being absent was if someone was using it for black magic, and that particular specialty ran right up his alley. If he was right, this case had just turned into something altogether different.
“I think I know why the body is missing,” he blurted out before he could stop himself.
All eyes turned toward him.
He stood just the slightest bit straighter, like he did when he was teaching a lecture hall full of undergraduate students. “I think it’s black magic. That’s the only reason I can think of for someone taking the time to dig up her body, even resealing the coffin to hide what they’d done. That could potentially explain why Mr. Foley thought his wife was haunting him before he was murdered, as well. It could’ve been a spell.”
His fellow hunters remained silent, but none of their faces registered disapproval.
Damon spoke first. “If you think that’s likely, the case is yours.”
Shane blinked several times, uncertain if he’d heard Damon correctly. This case, a major case involving a murder, was his? “Really?” The moment he said it he wanted to whap himself in the head for not coming up with a more eloquent response.
Damon nodded. “You’re likely smarter than everyone in this room combined, so I don’t doubt your judgment.”
Jace huffed. “Hey, I get the kid’s smart and all, but I resent that comment. Are you calling the rest of us idiots?”
Damon swiveled his chair toward Jace with a scowl. “You’re damn right, I am.” The w
ords came out almost as a growl.
Shane ignored the ensuing bickering between Jace and Damon. That kind of background noise was always there when it came to their meetings. He couldn’t help but feel a little stunned. Originally, he hadn’t expected to be involved much, aside from bringing the issue to the division’s attention. Murders were rarely something he dealt with in his particular role in the division, at least not as the head hunter on a case. He went over crime scene photos, assisted his fellow hunters in research and DNA analysis and provided general tech-support, but his fellow team members hunted down the killers.
His role as a hunter wasn’t like that. When it came to hunting witches, there was subtlety involved. Unlike most supernaturals, witches weren’t known for killing humans outright, at least no more often than murder occurred in the general population. It happened occasionally, but for the most part witches either kept to themselves or stuck to more bloodless crimes. In Shane’s mind, he liked to think of it as hunting white-collar supernatural criminals, while his fellow hunters took care of the less savory killing machines.
His job was more challenging than his fellow hunters’ jobs, but it was different. Their positions required calculated force, whereas his relied more on quick wit. They dealt with two different consequences, too. While they cleaned up dead bodies, he monitored the underbelly of Wall Street, making sure witches weren’t casting spells to let them embezzle money undetected or commit other sorts of unsavory crimes. He didn’t want to think about the numbers of big bankers and corporate executives who were practicing black magic.
Shane glanced toward Damon and Jace as they argued like two old women—two very large, muscular, hairy old women. “I’m going to need the official crime scene photos.”
Damon shot one last glowering glare at Jace before turning his sharp eyes toward Shane. “Done. Whatever you need.” He glanced around to the other hunters. “If that’s everything, you’re free to leave.”
Midnight Hunter (The Execution Underground Book 3) Page 2
