Witch's Shadow (The Hemlock Chronicles Book 1)

by Emma L. Adams

  Keir stiffened. “They know we’re here. They can smell us.”

  “Bring it.” I stepped back from the wall, my hands shaking, wishing I could squash Evelyn’s sick fascination with the dark magic. Turning to the sloping tunnel, I called, “Are you too much of a coward to attack me in person?” My voice echoed back at me, Evelyn’s magic humming in tune with the echoes.

  Rustling sounded, and a fury crashed into me from above in an explosion of talons. I gripped the bloodstained wall for balance, pain tearing through my arm as its claw ripped into the skin. Shit. My spirit sight hadn’t warned me the bastards were right above me, and apparently, neither had Keir’s.

  Releasing a cry, a second fury flew at us with its talons outstretched, and the candle fell from my hand as I grabbed my knife.

  I sank the knife into the first fury’s side as Keir engaged the second one, dealing a blow with his own knife. One-handedly, I worked one of the bracelets Isabel had given me down my injured wrist. The wound was deep, rendering my left hand almost useless. At least I was right-handed.

  “Duck,” I warned Keir, and threw one of Isabel’s explosives.

  A blast went off, sending the fury careening sideways into its neighbour, and the two of them hit the wall hard enough to shake the whole tunnel. The fury I’d hit recovered quickly, detaching itself from the wall with eyes like dark glowing pits, a chunk of flesh missing from its face. Damn. The spell hadn’t killed it? Its scaly skin must be made of cement. My arm throbbed with pain, and I’d used my best explosive.

  The beast dived at me, another cry ripping from its lungs. Should have aimed for the talons, Jas. I dove to the bloodstained stone floor, and its claws narrowly missed taking a slice out of my face. Keir stabbed it in the side, but his long knife barely dented its scales.

  Sudden bolts of white energy burst from my palms, crashing into the furies with more force than an explosive spell. Scales scattered as the blast tore into their concrete skin, and I ducked to avoid getting hit. Might want to give me a warning next time, Evelyn.

  Keir shot me a dumbfounded look, then went in for the kill, sinking his knife into the nearest fury’s neck and slicing off its head. I ran to his side, stabbing the other fury in the eye. The beast’s flailing stilled as the knife reached its mark.

  “Ugh.” The blue-tinged blood staining my clothes shimmered, showing me the candle I’d dropped. I carefully picked it up, both hands still soaked in the blood from the wall. It’d need a serious hosing down before being used in necromancy again—heaven knew what those monsters’ blood would do if allowed anywhere near a summoning circle.

  “We’re not alone,” Keir murmured, his face pale under the blood.

  My hands tingled, and a faint breeze stirred my hair. “The summoner,” I whispered. “They’re close.”

  Magic hummed in my skin, burning in my bones, filling every shadow. Keir tensed beside me, and he raised his knife, its gleam reflecting his bloody face.

  “Show yourself,” he said.

  A woman with filthy, matted blond hair staggered into view. She’d have been quite pretty if not for the mud caking her face and the unnatural grin stretching her cheeks. “There you are, Jacinda Hemlock.”

  “How the hell do you know my name?” I’d never told my real full name to anyone. Not even Keir.

  She laughed, a deep, rattling sound that echoed off the glyph-covered walls. “Who doesn’t?”

  “Really creepy,” I told her. “Seriously, you should star in low-budget horror movies rather than screwing around with the dark dimensions.”

  She pushed her hair from her face, still grinning. “It’s an honour to meet you, Jacinda. Are you ready to die?”

  “I’m a necromancer. Always ready to die, never keen to make it permanent. Which coven are you from?”

  The witch’s hands glowed white-blue, and a wave of energy blasted Keir and me off our feet. I threw out my hands to break my fall, the impact jolting my injured arm. I gritted my teeth, my vision swimming. She’d hit us with kinetic energy—necromancy. She must be part witch, part necromancer. Not a combination I wanted to face while incapacitated—but unlike the furies, she wouldn’t be immune to necromancy herself.

  I raised my hand and sent my own kinetic attack at her, but she barely flinched. An alarming amount of blood soaked my arm, and Keir didn’t look to be in spectacular condition, either. Now would be a fine time, Evelyn.

  The spirit realm unfolded without warning, sending me plunging into the grey. I floated above my body, looking down on the cave as I—Jas—rose to my feet.

  I wasn’t inside my body at all. She’d shoved me out.

  “What the hell, Evelyn?” I yelled.

  I floated, watching helplessly as my body moved of its own accord, aglow with necromantic power. Through the grey, the witch’s body shifted. Wait—in the spot where her spirit should be was a gaping hole, and threads of blue magic.

  She’s a vampire. No—there’s one controlling her. Her body wasn’t alive at all, and someone was using her as a mouthpiece. That meant the only way to kill the enemy was through the spirit realm.

  “She’s a vampire!” I shouted at Keir, wincing as another blast of necromantic power took my body off its feet. Pain shot through my skull, drawing me back into my own skin again. I grimaced and crawled to my knees, a bolt of pain in my leg making my eyes water. The witch-zombie had thrown me into my own knife, and Evelyn had helpfully withdrawn to leave me to suffer the pain alone. We’re supposed to be a team, dammit.

  “There will be no running for you, Jacinda,” whispered the witch, grabbing me by the throat.

  Cold hands gripped me through both the waking and spirit world, and my body numbed. Shit. Evelyn was nowhere in sight. Maybe she’d let the enemy drain my soul, leaving her to take my place.

  Keir collided with the witch from the side, delivering an impressive right hook to her jaw. She flew backwards off me, and I crawled away, pain shooting up my leg again.

  “Thanks,” I gasped to him.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said. “Banish her, Jas. She’s stronger than the others.”

  He didn’t need to tell me twice.

  I shifted into Death, reaching for the blue threads connecting the vampire to the witch’s body, and pulled as hard as I could. Banishing words rose to my mouth, and Keir shouted a warning as she hit out at my vulnerable, mortal body.

  Bolts of magical energy surged from my hands. Evelyn’s magical attack tore through the witch’s body, ripping through skin and bone, and the threads of the vampire’s control began to slip away. Don’t you dare.

  In the spirit world, I gripped the vampire’s trace with my fingers, and he appeared before me as a shadowy outline.

  “Go through the gates of hell,” I said, then shouted the words of banishing.

  The vampire’s presence slipped away as the gates of death loomed above me, and I blinked back into my body. The witch-zombie lay sprawled, shredded by magic beyond mortal hands.

  I crawled over to Keir, biting pain reminding me of the stab wound in my leg. “Can you walk?”

  He exhaled in a noise that probably meant yes but didn’t sound optimistic. He managed to push himself upright with one hand, the other bleeding heavily. Blood dripped down my leg, while my left arm was all but useless. We more or less leaned on each other to retrace our steps. His harsh breathing echoed my own.

  “Some use I am as a defender of this realm, if I couldn’t even stop an oversized chicken from cutting me up,” I said, between breaths.

  He choked on a laugh, then swore. “Don’t make me laugh. I think I might have cracked a few ribs when they threw me in here.”

  “Knew I packed two healing spells for a reason. Better get away from the ritual before using them.”

  “I need more than a healing spell.” He staggered forwards another few steps. “The vampire drained me dry before he met his unfortunate end.”

  “What, you mean… he sucked out your soul?” No wonder I hadn’t been ab
le to sense him in the spirit realm from outside. “You need to feed on someone. Right?”

  “You have a spare soul.” He half leaned against me to walk uphill.

  “She wouldn’t take kindly to you taking a bite out of her.”

  “And would you?”

  I didn’t spare him the dignity of a response, mostly because he was leaning so heavily on my shoulder that I worried he’d actually collapse on me.

  Once we’d left the ritual room behind, I paused and dug in my pocket for the two healing spells. As I activated my own, the pain disappeared from my arm and leg. While I was still dizzy from the blood loss and adrenaline, I could stand upright without keeling over.

  “You okay?” I asked Keir.

  “Better.” He pressed a hand to his forehead. “I haven’t been drained like that in years.”

  “Is the only way to recover for you to drain someone else’s spirit?”

  “They do call it a curse for a reason,” he said, with a chuckle. “I think I can make it home, but anyone unfortunate enough to run into me is likely to have an unpleasant experience.”

  “Can you even walk home in that state?” False bravado aside, we were both covered in blood, and if I went to Isabel for a cleansing spell, the last thing I needed was him offering to drain my friends’ souls. “All right, I’ll do it. No messing around.”

  He faced me. “You or her.”

  “Hmm.” I bit my lip. After the stunt Evelyn had pulled, I was kind of tempted to offer her to him as bait, even if she had saved our lives. “Best not risk her magic cutting you to pieces like that witch. What exactly do I have to do?”

  “Just keep still.” He moved closer to me, his breathing harsh and ragged despite his lack of visible injuries. “You feel… different, to other spirits. I think it’s the shade. I’ll only draw from you, not her.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  His hands grasped my shoulders, and a tickling sensation ran down the back of my neck, sparking shudders down the length of my spine. Pleasant tingles sparked in my fingertips, unexpectedly. Oh. This isn’t so bad.

  Then, coldness. My body locked to the spot, my fingers numbing, then my hands. My pulse slowed, and the pressure lifted from my shoulders. He spoke into my ear, but I didn’t quite catch the words. His lips were inches from my neck, and a wild impulse urged me to arch my neck and cover that last inch between us, but he got there first. His lips trailed down my neck, his hands gripping me—but not my physical body. He might be feeding on my soul, but it felt more like he was giving something to me.

  And I wanted more.

  Uh. Jas. What the hell are you doing?

  I tugged myself free and pulled back from him. “Done? Now we need to get out of his hellhole.”

  Keir caught his breath. The colour had come back to his cheeks—if anything, he was flushed more than usual, and the glint in his eyes sparked an inexplicable rush of heat deep inside me. No wonder humans let vampires drain them without screaming and panicking. I hadn’t known it felt that… intimate.

  “Didn’t you enjoy yourself?” His mouth quirked, and I found myself wondering if kissing those lips would feel quite as good as letting him feed on my spirit. Then I mentally slapped myself. He might be fairly attractive, but I’d like to think I had a little more self-respect than to make out with a vampire inside a den belonging to someone who’d used a witch as a puppet to summon horrible monsters. It wasn’t like we’d ever see one another again after this whole sorry business was over.

  It only felt so good because he sucked part of my soul out. Think about that, Jas, not his lips on your neck. He’d probably done the same to a thousand people. I highly doubted it’d been a notable experience for him—just another day as a vampire.

  “Let’s keep this purely business,” I said to him. “Also, you should probably know the door might have locked itself behind me.”

  “I imagine that magic of yours can get us out, Jas.” Under the blood and dirt on his face, I detected a trace of… disappointment? That couldn’t be right.

  “Better hope it can.” I turned to walk up the last stretch of tunnel.

  “By the way,” he added. “I wanted to thank you for not leaving me to die down here. I doubt I could have made it out without your help.”

  Well, well. He had some humility after all.

  “No problem.” I turned back to him. “Just shout a little louder next time. I almost missed you. Or you know, give me your phone number.”

  He grinned. “All right. Do I put you under ‘Jas Lyons’ or ‘Jacinda Hemlock’?”

  “Too soon,” I muttered. “Way too soon, mate. Come on. Lloyd’s probably called half the guild by now.”

  16

  Isabel took one look at Keir and me as we walked up to the café to meet her, and rolled her eyes. “You’re as bad as Ivy. Both of you. Please tell me you haven’t been walking around human-friendly places covered in all that blood.”

  “We walked through the mercenaries’ district,” I said, pulling out a chair next to the same table as before. “Nobody batted an eyelid. They’ve seen worse shit from their own windows.” I’d spent the walk back bringing Lloyd up to speed, and texted Isabel with brief details asking her to meet us at Cassandra’s Café.

  Isabel passed me a cleansing spell. “Wait, does some of that blood belong to the witch who attacked you?”

  “Yes, but most of it’s the furies’. And mine. Oh, and the vampire who was unlucky enough to turn into a human sacrifice.”

  “You need to stop getting attacked when I’m not around to help,” said Isabel.

  “It wasn’t exactly planned. Why did you ask about the witch’s blood?”

  “I might be able to use it to identify the witch’s coven. Then I can find out pretty quickly whether she was in on the enemy’s plan or an innocent bystander.”

  My gaze snapped up. “Seriously?” I inwardly shuddered at the memory of the bloodstained glyphs on the cave wall. Blood magic… dark magic. And entirely too similar to the raw power that had blasted from my hands, ripping the witch to shreds.

  Keir accepted another cleansing spell from Isabel and took a seat on my right. While unlocking the tunnel door using magic had gone a way towards ridding me of the echo of his touch, his closeness stirred a spark to my hands gain. Considering thinking of Evelyn’s magic made my skin feel slimy, I’d rather focus on the vampire’s touch instead, but he was distracting in a different way. Not an unpleasant one, but the last thing I needed was a diversion.

  Lloyd scowled at him. “You’re staying with us, too?”

  “I’m intrigued to see what your friend does with that blood,” he answered. “Witch magic has never interested me before, but now…”

  “If you think about drinking my blood, vampire, you’re out.”

  Keir gave him a cold look. “That’s not how vampirism works. Pity the guild neglected to keep you up to speed.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Stop bickering, you two, and order some damn food so the people in the café stop staring at us.” I didn’t blame Lloyd for being pissed off that I’d run into the tunnel to rescue Keir and nearly died for it, but still.

  Keir climbed to his feet. “It’s clear I’m not welcome here, so I’ll leave. Jas, you can catch up with your friends. Or, if you’d prefer, you’re welcome to come with me, and we can continue our conversation from the tunnel.”

  Did he just hit on me in front of my friends, in public? Yes, he did. “No thanks,” I said. “I’ll stay.”

  “If you’re sure,” said Keir. “Stay safe, Jas.”

  I jumped when his fingers brushed the back of my chair, lingering just inches from my neck. He couldn’t possibly know the effect his touch had had on me, right? A smile played on his mouth, but he turned away before my gaze could linger for long.

  Bloody vampires.

  “Leaving?” asked Lloyd. “Some ally he turned out to be.”

  “He was chasing the person who tried to attack the hotel when he got captured,” I
said. “Lloyd, sorry I ditched you. Isabel, sorry I didn’t invite you along for the ride, too. What do you need to do with this blood? Because I can’t say it’s… clean.” Especially the blood that had been on my hands when Evelyn had unleashed her magic. Blood was a source of power, so did that mean it’d given her a boost? No way. Witches use blood in tracking spells all the time. Okay, they didn’t normally use it to tear people to ribbons, but nobody said my coven was remotely conventional.

  “An identifying spell will do.” Isabel held out a hand as I pulled off my necromancer coat and handed it to her, before applying a cleansing spell to my skin.

  “I forgive you,” Lloyd said, “but you owe me. I have a zombie shark movie marathon planned for the weekend and you’re going to be there.”

  “Done,” I said. “I didn’t mean to run in there alone. I wasn’t sure if I was actually picking up on Keir or not. They nearly killed him.”

  “Would that be such a tragedy, though?”

  I elbowed him in the ribs. “Knock it off.”

  He poked me in the arm in retaliation. “What’s so great about him?”

  I dropped my gaze. “He saved my life at least twice, for a start. Also, he stopped Evelyn from taking over my mind.”

  And he probably kisses like the devil, supplied a voice in the back of my head, which I studiously ignored.

  “Right.” Lloyd rolled his eyes. “Never underestimate the skill of stopping a mad spirit. He kind of is one, technically.”

  “Vampires aren’t the same,” I said. “I know it looks like they’re all villains, but that wouldn’t be giving Lady Montgomery much credit for keeping the peace. Keir had a point when he said knowledge passes quickly in Death. That’s how they found me. Someone said my name in the wrong place, and the next thing you know, hemlock poison.”

  Isabel looked up from where she was in the process of siphoning the witch’s blood off my coat. “The witch was definitely dead? And her ghost wasn’t around?”

  “Definitely dead,” I said. “And no, her ghost was long gone.”

  “Got it,” she said. “I don’t using blood spells when the person’s still living, but it’s not like she can do anything now she’s dead.”