Deadline

by Jennifer Blackstream

  Deadline

  Blood Trails, Book 1

  Jennifer Blackstream

  Skeleton Key Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  Summary

  Also by Jennifer Blackstream

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Dear Reader

  DEADLINE

  A Blood Trails Novel, Book 1

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  JENNIFER BLACKSTREAM

  Website

  Mailing List

  Facebook Fan Page

  Deadline

  ©Copyright Jennifer Blackstream 2016, Skeleton Key Publishing

  Edited by 720 Editing

  Cover Art by Yocla Designs © Copyright 2015

  * * *

  This is a work fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form without the written permission of the author. You may not circulate this book in any format. Thank you for respecting the hard work of all people involved with the creation of this ebook.

  USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Blackstream unveils a new action-packed urban fantasy series…

  As a witch with a dark past, Shade Renard knows the Otherworld isn’t always successful at policing itself. Humans don’t believe in magic anymore, and their ignorance renders them easy prey. So when an FBI contact hires her to consult on a possible haunting in a missing person case, Shade seizes the opportunity to see justice done.

  The investigation takes an unexpected turn when an undead crime lord shows up on her doorstep. A bold thief stole the vampire’s little black book of secrets—and he’ll pay a lot more than an FBI consulting fee to get it back. To collect, Shade will have to confront a rogue sorceress—or two, a vengeful wizard, and a lethally seductive fey, with only her wits, her growing magic, and a sarcastic pixie familiar.

  Success means bringing a killer to justice and taking the first step to redemption. Failure means a war between humans and the Otherworld.

  No pressure.

  ALSO BY JENNIFER BLACKSTREAM

  * * *

  Join my mailing list to be alerted when new titles are released.

  * * *

  Urban Fantasy

  * * *

  Blood Trails Series

  Deadline

  Monster

  Taken

  Corruption

  Book #5 (May 2019)

  * * *

  Paranormal Romance

  * * *

  Blood Prince Series

  Before Midnight

  One Bite

  Golden Stair

  Divine Scales

  Beautiful Salvation

  Bonus Novel: The Pirate’s Witch

  * * *

  Blood Realm Series:

  All for a Rose

  Blue Voodoo

  The Archer

  Bear With Me

  Stolen Wish

  * * *

  Join my mailing list to be alerted when new titles are released.

  * * *

  Short stories are not listed here, but can be found on my website here.

  “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

  Henri Bergson

  Chapter 1

  “Mrs. Harvesty, I told you, I cannot call your cat Majesty. It sets a bad precedent for the relationship.”

  My knees screamed in protest from holding a crouching position for too long, and I winced. Squatting on the floor behind the driver’s seat of a parked Ford Focus just wasn’t something a person over the age of eight was built for. I kept my cell phone pressed to my ear, careful not to mash the red end call button as I shifted from foot to foot. The pain persisted.

  “But that’s his name!” Mrs. Harvesty insisted, her voice cruelly amplified by the phone. “And he’s such a beautiful kitten, when you see him you’ll understand why I call him that. If you could just come over now. Please?”

  “I will not call him Majesty.” I leaned my head against the back of the driver’s seat, resisting the urge to use a healing spell to give my aching knees relief. My mentor, Mother Hazel, would burst into flames if she learned I’d used magic for something as ridiculous as personal comfort. “Mrs. Harvesty, I’m very sorry your cat isn’t feeling well, but I can’t come over just this second.”

  My familiar, Peasblossom, shot me an amused glance from her position on the dashboard. At six inches even, she was an average height for a pixie, though she could seem bigger when she was mad. Right now, she was playing lookout, the morning sunlight glinting off the gossamer wings humming behind her back. It was February, and since we were outside in a cold car, her wings vibrated constantly to keep her warm, filling the air with a low buzzing sound. I raised the slim dagger clutched in my right hand and jabbed it toward the windshield. Peasblossom scowled, but returned her attention to the river ten yards away from where we were parked at the edge of the tree line marking the southern border of Dresden Park.

  “But I’m only a few blocks away!”

  This is Dresden, Ohio. Everyone is only a few blocks away.

  “I see it!” Peasblossom gave a little hop as she pointed out the windshield. “It’s there!”

  A trickle of adrenaline leaked into my bloodstream, chasing back the discomfort in my knees. I gripped the dagger, the hilt a familiar weight against my palm. “I’m sorry. I have to go. I can come over tomorrow.” I unfolded myself from the floorboard to sit on the edge of the back seat.

  “First thing tomorrow? The very first thing?”

  I let my head fall forward, my long, dark hair cascading around me in a shroud, mourning the death of my resistance. “Yes, fine. First thing tomorrow.”

  “Oh, all right. Goodbye then, Mother Renard.”

  A tiny snort was all the warning I had before something snagged hold of my hair and used it like a climbing rope. I rolled my eyes to the side and glimpsed tiny pink hands. After the electronic beep in my ear assured me Mrs. Harvesty had hung up, I scowled and let the phone thud to the floor of the Focus. “It’s not funny.”

  “It’s a little funny.” Peasblossom snickered, feet bracing against my skull as she shimmied the last few inches. She sat on my head with a light thump, sliding her fingers through my hair to hold on.

  “I have asked her numerous times not to call me ‘Mother’ Renard. I told her, Shade is fine, Ms. Renard is fine.”

  “Mother Hazel won’t like to hear you say that. ‘Mother’ is the proper title for a witch.”

  “A few centuries ago,” I muttered. “Now it just makes people look at me funny.”

  “Well, Mother Hazel is old. Set in her ways.” Peasblossom snickered again. “Too bad for you she took the time to introduce you before assigning you this village.”

  I gritted my teeth. Yes, she had. And unfortunately, when Mother Hazel told people to do something, they did it. Whether it was to take the “medicine” she’d given them, stop doing something she said they oughtn’t do, or call someone by a seemingly ridiculous title. Of the one thousand or so people who made Dresden their home, only a handful truly believed I was a real witch, and understood the title. The rest just thought I was strange.


  Mrs. Harvesty was the former.

  “It needs to stop. I can be a proper witch without the antiquated title whether Mother Hazel thinks so or not.” I peered out the windshield to assess my prey’s progress out of the river. A shiver ran down my spine, and it had nothing to do with the car’s cold interior.

  The eurypterid dragged its body out of the freezing brown water of the Muskingham River, brittle legs scuttling over the hard-packed dirt of the riverbank. A cross between a lobster and a scorpion, the beast was four feet long from the base of its tail to the pincers curving from its jaw. It stabbed into the muddy riverbank with a spike-tipped, swollen claw big enough to take a child’s head off—children being a favorite meal of the opportunistic aquatic predator. Beady black eyes glittered from an armored face, and small, arched legs pushed it forward. Morning sunlight reflected off its midnight-blue, segmented body, highlighting the long stinger tipping its knobby tail.

  “What are you waiting for?” Peasblossom said. “Make with the magic and let’s go home! I’m cold.” Her wings vibrated harder for emphasis.

  “One lobster dinner, coming up,” I murmured.

  Power warmed my insides as I called my magic, drawing it like water being pulled from the depths of a natural well. I pressed my lips together and hummed, the vibration twisting the energy into a cone. Pressure built in my lungs, up my windpipe. I inhaled slowly, deeply, making room for it to expand. I held the creature in my sight and jerked the car door open. Rising in one smooth movement, I held on to the edge of the car door and braced one foot on the frozen ground. The vortex struck my voice box and I screamed.

  Sound waves spiraled outward in a piercing sound that only my target would hear, striking it in a whorl of red energy before it could register my presence. The hard shell of its body cracked under the force of the spell, the scream flowing past my lips vibrating its exoskeleton until it shattered. The force of it was more than I’d expected, and my control slipped. Pain sliced into my throat, filling my mouth with the taste of copper as the magic drew blood its way out. I choked, the sound ending in a wet gurgle.

  “Are you okay?” Peasblossom asked, worry pushing her voice higher.

  “I’m fine,” I rasped. I winced and swallowed more blood. It wasn’t much, but even a few drops felt like a mouthful. For a few seconds, it was all I could do not to vomit.

  “Serves you right for thinking you could do a spell like that without any gestures or the proper materials to focus. A little mint oil rubbed on your neck in a spiral would have saved you the sore throat.”

  I slammed the car door behind me, ignoring my heaving stomach. She wasn’t wrong. Casting a spell meant harnessing my magic, bending it to my will. There were a variety of ways to focus that energy, words, gestures and materials. Casting the spell without said foci was akin to catching a wild horse by tackling it out in the open. It could be done, but the experience was often painful and significantly less dignified than the alternative.

  “I need to practice controlling it with my will. I won’t always have the luxury of time to get my materials ready, or draw out the proper gesture.” I held the dagger ready as I crept closer to the broken corpse of the eurypterid. I didn’t think it could have survived, not when I could see the damage even from several yards away, but better safe than sorry.

  I needn’t have worried. As I stood over the monster, I noted that shards of its own body had punctured its guts, turning its internal organs into so much putrid meat. Brackish blue blood seeped onto the frostbitten ground, giving the surrounding dirt a cerulean sheen in the morning sunlight.

  “Ew, it smells like rotten eggs floating in rancid milk.” Peasblossom shifted on top of my head. “Talk about an appetite killer. I should have eaten breakfast before we left.”

  I didn’t bother pointing out I’d said as much before we’d got in the car this morning. I-told-you-sos rolled over a pixie like water off a mermaid’s back. Instead, I tightened my grip on the blade and knelt to cut off the stinger.

  “I thought these things were saltwater creatures?” Peasblossom said.

  “They are.” I gripped the tail, careful not to cut myself on the broken pieces of exoskeleton protruding inches from my knee. “Either this one made the impressive journey from the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River, across the Ohio River, and into the Muskingum River…” I sighed. “Or someone’s pet grew too big and they tossed it in the river.”

  “Probably an ogre. Or a troll.”

  “Any species might have done it.” I put the tip of the blade between the metasomal segments of its tail just below the stinger. “No one says no to children anymore.”

  “Is that really necessary?” Peasblossom asked.

  “Waste not.” I held my breath and shoved the blade through the plastic-like chitin of the eurypterid’s armor. It tore with the dull cracking sound of a shrimp being shelled. I tried to block out the smell of the creature’s bodily fluids as I severed the stinger from the end of the tail. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been in warm weather, but even the winter air couldn’t protect me from the putrescence when I was kneeling right beside it. A particularly stubborn piece of exoskeleton halted my dagger, and I put more weight into my efforts. My center of weight shifted, and I lost my balance, catching myself with a knee on the ground. Something wet soaked through my leggings. I cursed. Make that kneeling in putrescence.

  I pulled hard on the stinger, cutting through the last of its tail with one final grunt of effort. Peasblossom wrinkled her nose at my leggings.

  “You’re going to have to— Look out!”

  Pain erupted in my thigh and all the air left my lungs on a gasp. Peasblossom screamed. The stinger and my dagger fell from my fingers, and for a second all I could do was stare in shock at the six-inch stinger piercing my thigh.

  The eurypterid hadn’t been alone. Its mate crouched behind me, hissing as it reached for me with monstrous black claws, ready to tear off hunks of flesh in a mad rage. My heart lodged in my throat, blocking the scream bubbling up my windpipe. Venom burned my thigh, and already I couldn’t move my leg. I lunged forward onto the ground, closing my mouth on a scream as the stinger pulled free of my leg with a wet sucking sound. I tried to roll, desperate to avoid the first grab of its claws, but something caught on my leg, keeping me from turning.

  “Shade!” Peasblossom shrieked.

  “Get back!” I clapped a hand over my thigh to staunch the flow of blood. I didn’t have time to heal now, I had to stop it before it struck again. If it managed to inject its venom into my neck, or my chest…

  I raised my free hand, magic tingling in my fingers and the words of a spell forming on my lips. The eurypterid jerked me back with enough force that my face hit the ground.

  Pain radiated from my cheek and I grunted, my magic dispersing as my attention faltered. Panic turned the air in my lungs to shards of broken glass as I realized the eurypterid had snagged my ankle. It should have hurt, but it didn’t. The venom had already rendered the entire limb numb.

  I sucked in a startled breath just before the monster dragged me off the bank and into the river. The frigid water ripped a gasp from my lungs as it sucked the heat from my body. My heart pounded and my muscles tightened, violent shivers rolling over me. I flailed, but it was no use. I snapped my mouth shut a second before the water closed over my head.

  A cold, dark death waited for me at the bottom of the river, rushing to meet me as the aquatic beast pulled me deeper. The icy water made it hard to move, my body already sluggish, not wanting to obey my commands. I shoved my hand down, desperation barely enough to force my fingers against the claw around my ankle. I concentrated on the feel of that limb, digging my fingers into the pockmarked exoskeleton. I centered myself as best I could with my instincts screaming at me that I needed air now.

  Glatio.

  My teeth chattered and I pressed my lips harder together to keep water from seeping into my mouth. I thought the word for the spell in my mind, imagined mys
elf saying it, pictured my lips moving. I visualized green light flowing down the monster’s body, freezing the water around it.

  Energy pulsed from my hand, biting the tips of my fingers as ice formed over the eurypterid. Elation shot through me, fighting back the shock threatening to render me motionless. I kept my hand on the claw, my lungs burning, warning me that, victory or not, if I didn’t get to the surface soon, I would drown. I poured more energy into the spell, thickening the magic. Triumph filled me as the buoyant ice rose to the surface—dragging me with it.

  The first breath hurt, as if my lungs had already resigned themselves to death and were caught unprepared by this sudden demand for breathing. I gasped and maneuvered onto my back with my would-be assassin still attached to my ankle, floating until I could regain the strength to swim to shore.

  “Shade!” Peasblossom stomped on my forehead.

  “Hey!” I shouted, lifting my head to keep my face from being dunked underwater.

  “You’re alive!”

  “Not for long if you keep pushing my head underwater.” My teeth chattered violently. It should have hurt my jaw, but I felt no pain. That was bad. The ice-cold water had slowed the venom’s progress and kept me from bleeding out from the wound in my leg, but now I had hypothermia and a neurotoxin working against me. I needed to get out of the water, and I needed an antidote. Now.