by MJ Kraus
Death Magic
The Makeshift Wizard Series
Book 0
By
MJ Kraus
© 2017 MJ Kraus
www.MikeKrausBooks.com
[email protected]
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.
I’d like to extend my very profound gratitude to Alexander, Anna & Konstantinos for their assistance with creating the initial Russian, Latin and Greek translations for the spells used in the Makeshift Wizard series.
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Books from Mike Kraus
Mike originally started as a writer of post-apocalyptic fiction in 2012. After taking a few years off, he returned to post-apocalyptic writing in early 2017 and has started to expand to Urban Fantasy and—soon—space opera/military scifi books. If you enjoy books in the Urban Fantasy or Post-Apocalyptic genres, check out Mike’s other books below!
Final Dawn: The Complete Original Series Box Set
Clocking in at nearly 300,000 words with over 250,000 copies sold, this is the complete collection of the original bestselling post-apocalyptic Final Dawn series. If you enjoy gripping, thrilling post-apocalyptic action with compelling and well-written characters you’ll love Final Dawn.
Final Dawn: Arkhangelsk: The Complete Trilogy Box Set
The Arkhangelsk Trilogy is the first follow-up series set in the bestselling Final Dawn universe and delivers more thrills, fun and just a few scares. The crew of the Russian Typhoon submarine Arkhangelsk travel to a foreign shore in search of survivors, but what the find threatens their fragile rebuilding efforts in the post-apocalyptic world.
Surviving the Fall
Surviving the Fall is an episodic post-apocalyptic series that follows Rick and Dianne Waters as they struggle to survive after a devastating and mysterious worldwide attack. Trapped on the opposite side of the country from his family, Rick must fight to get home while his wife and children struggle to survive as danger lurks around every corner.
Prip’Yat: The Beast of Chernobyl
Two teens and two Spetsnaz officers travel to the town of Prip’Yat set just outside the remains of the Chernobyl power plant. The teens are there for a night of exploration. The special forces are there to pursue a creature that shouldn’t exist. This short thriller set around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster will keep your heart racing right through to the very end.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
Author’s Notes
Chapter 1
Movies and television make picking locks look easy. You use a couple little tools, fiddle for a few seconds and bam, you’re in. I guess that might be true if you’re a locksmith or someone with nothing better to do than spend days on end practicing. For an amateur, though, it’s a little more challenging.
That’s why, as I hunched over a doorknob in the dimly lit hallway of an apartment that smelled like potatoes, I muttered under my breath as I struggled to jimmy the lock and gain entry into the residence beyond.
“Holy tap dancing monkey balls!” One of the picks snapped off inside the lock from the force of trying to turn the device, and I stepped back and balled my fists in frustration. I wanted to just charge the door and knock it down, but discretion was the entire reason I was wasting my time with lock picks in the first place.
I had heard a rumor a few days prior about a pair of rogue vamps who had set up a bleed farm in the apartment building and were bringing in folks off the street to “contribute.” Bleed farms had been negotiated out of existence by the Council a hundred years ago, but there was always someone looking to bend or break the rules. I wasn’t exactly on good terms with the Council or the wizarding world in general, but a bleed farm is something that affects everyone—Normals and Touched alike.
I took a minute to calm down before I went back to the door and knelt down in front of the knob. I could see the broken piece of metal inside the lock, just out of reach, and I shook my head. “Well then. Time to do this the easy way.”
I put my fingertips on the knob, glanced around for safety and then whispered a quiet, short spell.
“Kálesma pyrós.”
The effect was immediate. Heat poured from my fingertips into the doorknob, and I fought to contain it, keeping it restricted to the metal of the knob and lock without letting it escape into the wood and catch fire. I pushed on the door gently as the heat continued to pour forth until, finally, the metal was soft enough that a quick push was all I needed to get inside. I released the spell and the red-hot metal began to change back to its original color.
The smell of the heated metal and wood was enough to distract me, but when I had pushed the door closed again and took a deep breath, nearly gagged. The smell of putrefaction clung to the air like a wet blanket, though it was only the start. Sweat, body odor, feces and a strong undertone of copper mixed in, causing my eyes to water and my throat to feel like it was on fire.
“What the hell happened here?” My eyes started to water and it took a few seconds for me to fully take in the contents of the apartment. When I did, though, it was clear that I had come to the right place.
Empty plastic bags—remnants of makeshift blood packs—littered the floor, each with a slight dark red and black stain on the corners. Long strips of rubber tubing were strung up from lights, draped across chairs and coiled into piles. A small trash can full of syringes was in a corner near the couch, which had been pushed up against the wall and was covered with unidentifiable stains.
The centerpiece, though—the bit that really brought the room together—was in the middle of the living room. Six long, narrow tables had been set up in two rows and their feet had been nailed down into the floor. Handcuffs dangled off of a few of the table legs and supports, and both the tables and handcuffs were covered with deep red and black stains as well.
The whole scene looked like something out of a horror movie, but it made one thing crystal clear: there had been a bleed farm in the apartment.
“Damn!” I stepped through and over the piles of refuse and debris on the floor, searching the room before I started moving toward the closest bedroom. “These stains have to be three, maybe four days old. Dammit. They moved the bleeders out, probably to a new farm somewhere.” I had only seen one bleed farm in person before, but I knew a fair amount about them due to my childhood habit of eavesdropping.
Vamps that set up bleed farms don’t care about the humans (or sometimes animals) that they’re draining. They only want one thing: as much blood as fast as possible. They set up their farms quickly, brought in people they kidnapped off the street, bled them as much as they could and then disappeared to set up a new farm before they were caught. By the time the smell caught up to them, they were already on to the next place, leaving no trace of their future dest
ination behind.
“Poor devils.” I brushed my fingers against one of the tables, picking up residual traces of vampire magic. Humans who were taken into bleed farms rarely lived for more than a week. I looked out the window of the living room into the alley below and shook my head. If the garbage trucks hadn’t come around already I was pretty sure I’d find several desiccated corpses in the bottom of one of the bins out back. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t have to look right then, as much as that would have been a fantastic idea.
No, instead I went into the next room and turned on the light, grimacing at the sight of several more tables. I was just about to check the closet for the room when I heard the telltale squeak of the front door open, following by a pair of footsteps and heavy breathing. I moved quickly and quietly towards the wall next to the door and stood there, waiting as the pair slowly walked around the living room for several seconds before one of them shouted.
“NYPD! If there’s anyone in here, come out now!”
Shit. I glanced at the window, guessing my chances of escaping before one or both of them came charging into the room and ventilated my body before I had a chance to put up a defensive shield. With the way Lady Luck had been treating me lately I decided not to chance it and instead sighed, tucked my gun away out of sight and raised my hands.
“Don’t shoot! I’m coming out!” As I shouted I could hear both men whirl around to face the room I was in. A pair of clicks told me their safeties were now off. Great. Maybe I should have just risked the window.
I stepped around the corner slowly, hands raised. The pair leveled their guns with my chest and the larger of the two shouted at me. “Get your hands up! Up where we can see them!”
“Dammit, Wilson, it’s me!” I shouted back, waving my hands around above my head. “And my hands are up, you idiot!”
Both of the cops lowered their guns as they recognized who I was and looked confusingly at each other before turning back to me. “Silver? William Silver?” Wilson shook his head. “What the hell are you doing here? You’re on the morning shift this week.”
Before I go any farther, I should mention that I’m actually a beat cop in the NYPD. I should also mention that I’ve only been on the force for eight months, most of my fellow officers don’t like me and the reason they don’t like me is because I like to go way outside my job description. Being in a bloody apartment in the middle of the night in civilian clothing is an excellent example of this.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” I lowered my hands and shrugged. “I heard some guy yesterday talking about some strange noises in this apartment. I came up to check it out, the door was open, I happened to uh… trip in the hall and fell inside. I saw all this and was about to make a call down to the precinct.”
Wilson and his partner, Hanley, stared at me, not believing a word of it. I kept a straight face and crossed my arms, though, and simply stared back at them until they relented.
“You’re a beat cop, Silver.” Wilson said. “What is it you think you’re doing going around investigating?”
I shrugged. “Department’s got manpower issues. I couldn’t sleep. Plus I took a couple of classes on evidence collection and—”
“Shut up, Silver.” Hanley shook his head at me. I raised my hands in protest.
“Hey, whoa there, I just—”
I was interrupted again, though the second time it wasn’t by Tweedledee or Tweedledum, but by a noise in the next room. I glanced out the window as the glass in the next room over broke and saw a red blur charge up the fire escape towards the roof.
“Dammit!” I ran into the next room over, across from the one I had started to check earlier, and jumped through the window. Behind me, Wilson and Hanley called out in protest.
“Silver! What the hell are you doing?”
“My job!” I shouted back as I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. We were already on the third floor of a five story building, and it didn’t take more than a few seconds for me to reach the top. The figure I was pursuing had made it up far faster than I, though, and was crouched at the other end of the building, eying the apartment on the other side of the street below.
“Hey!” I yelled as I charged forward at the figure. “Stop! Don’t you do it!”
A pair of white fangs and yellow eyes glistened as the figure turned back to glance at me, giving me a smile that would have made my blood run cold had it been under any other circumstances. As it was, though, I was royally pissed. Pissed that I had arrived too late to do anything about the bleed farm, pissed about Wilson and Hanley showing up and extremely pissed at what I knew the vamp was about to do.
With a cold snarl, the vamp, sprung from his perch and soared through the air, arcing high above the glow of the lights below. He landed with a slight thud on the edge of the building beyond in a typical “one knee on the ground” pose and I could feel his smug satisfaction from across the street.
Not one to be outdone, I didn’t bother slowing down as I raced along the roof, even as I heard Wilson and Hanley behind me, huffing and puffing up the stairs. I guess they’ll get a bit of a show tonight. I paid no attention to their shouts and focused on my running, trying to predict where my right foot would land on the ledge.
As I finished my run and sprung into my own jump, I whispered to the air itself.
“Levitatsiya.”
The spell was simple. Trivial, even. Some would even call it crude, given what I was trying to do. But what the hell do I care? If it works, it works. And it worked—barely. My legs and arms churned as I struggled to keep from spinning around in the air as I soared above the street and my face was a twisted contortion of concentration.
The look on my face was nothing compared to the look on the vamp’s face, though. That was doubly true when I landed square on his chest, knocking the wind from his lungs and throwing his head back against the rough brick roof. Although the sharp crack of bone hitting brick sounded bad (and would have been fatal for a Normal), vamps have incredibly tough bones. The most he would have gotten from a blow like that would have been a mild headache for a few minutes.
What mattered most, though, was that I suddenly had the element of surprise. And I used it to my full advantage.
“Nepodvizhnost’.”
The binding spell, like the levitation spell I had cast upon myself during my jump, was crude but effective. The initial fight that the vamp started to put up went out of him and his body went limp. I adjusted my position, pinning him down with my knee on his sternum, and took several deep breaths as I tried to recover from the brief chase and jump.
Behind me, on the roof of the first apartment building, Wilson and Hanley stood slack-jawed for several seconds before Wilson cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. “Stay there, Silver! We’re coming down and across!”
Great. I rolled my eyes and turned back to the vamp. “Good news, friend. You’ve got about five minutes until that pair of Normals is up here asking a lot of uncomfortable questions about you. I’d rather avoid those kinds of questions, though, so I’m going to make sure you’re gone in about three minutes. Now here’s the kicker—you can choose whether you leave on your own two legs or have your ashes dumped into a tray of kitty litter. Understand?”
The vamp’s eyes didn’t lose any of their fire as he stared back at me, not speaking until I finally remembered the spell. “Oh. Right. Here.” I manipulated my fingers and loosed the spell from his head. I instantly regretted that decision as soon as he opened his mouth.
Higher vampires are extremely eloquent in their speech. That’s part of the whole Dracula lore, and it’s actually accurate. Their speech contains a fair amount of magic in it, and they use it to be extremely seductive and get what they want.
Vamps, though. They’re different. They’re the foot soldiers in vampire clans, and their speech is decidedly not elegant. If higher vampire speech was a glass of the finest scotch, vamp speech would be like pissing into a boot, pouring said piss into a bowl, mixing in some ro
tten eggs, boiling the mixture and then chugging it down.
I had forgotten how loud the screeching from a vamp can be, and I swear I felt my left eardrum pop from the sound. He was going on in some language—I couldn’t make out what it was—and talking a mile a minute. The rest of his face was still frozen, which made reading his facial expressions impossible.
“Dammit, shut up for a second, will you?” I clamped my hand down over his mouth and glanced around. We were still alone on the rooftop, but I fully expected Hanley and Wilson to come bumbling through the door to the roof at any moment.
I looked back at the vamp, who was snapping his jaw open and shut in an effort to bite my hand, and rolled my eyes. “Really? Come on now, you assholes aren’t exactly the cream of your species’ crop, but you’re not feral. I’m not that stupid.”
The vamp stopped mid-chomp, rolled his eyes and sighed. “Mrmph ur ut lmphnt.”
I took my hand off his mouth and wiped my palm on my pants leg. “Come again?”
“Who are you?” The vamp’s voice was notably calmer, though his eyes were still wide.
“Your worst nightmare if you don’t start giving me answers. Let’s start with the basics – where’s the bleed farm now? It couldn’t have been moved more than twelve hours ago. But there wasn’t any trace of where the other vamps or the bleeders went. Where did you all move it to?”
The vamp snorted as best as he could under the circumstances. “Do you really think I would tell you where a vampire blood farm is located?”
I shrugged and put my hand against his chest. I felt energy surge through my body and I redirected it into the vamp’s body in the form of electric fire. “I don’t care and I don’t have time for games. So either tell me or I’ll turn you to ash.”
I eased up on the fire and the vamp’s face relaxed slightly. He broke into a grin as his eyes flitted toward the rooftop doorway behind me. “Looks like your friends are here. Goodbye, Mr. Wizard!”
