Of Blood & Magic: Blood Descent Book 1

by T. L. McDonald

  “There’s only one problem with your plan.” There’s a light-hearted smile, playing over Sebastian’s lips, belying the cold, calculating contempt held within his narrowed eyes. There’s not one part of him fearful of the situation we’re in, and I don’t know whether to be frightened by that fact, or assured by it.

  “Is that so chaser? Do tell.”

  “I’m going to kill you all before you can touch a single hair on her head.”

  “You can try, but we both know how this will end.” Dye Job’s fangs lengthen, the tips jabbing into his bottom lip. Fresh bubbles of blood rise to the surface. He licks them away with a smile.

  The circling vampires surrounding us become a blur of motions keeping us trapped where we stand. Sebastian jumps straight up and rips off two small branches from an overhanging tree with ease. He hurls them into the circle of speeding vampires, hitting two of them dead center in the chest. They come to an immediate stop, dropping to the ground. An insane amount of blood sprays out of their bodies as their skin shrinks inward, mummifying them on the spot. If I weren’t currently terrified out of my mind, I’d probably be dropping my jaw.

  “Who’s next?” Sebastian breaks off two more branches, then takes a defensive stance beside me. The other two vampires speeding around us slow to a crawl.

  Dye Job watches from the sidelines, assessing every move we make with a calculated look to his eyes.

  He’s waiting…

  Planning…

  Working out the perfect moment to strike.

  My stomach falls into my feet as I watch him, my heart pounding so hard it might actually rip free of my chest. Everything is happening too fast, and too many thoughts are running through my head to concentrate on any specific thing. All I can successfully do is stand fixed to the ground where I am, locked inside the restraint of my own panic. Darkness creeps around my vision while everything else sharpens into focus: sights, sounds, the taste of fear on my tongue, the way the air feels brushing over my skin, the itching of my nerves urging my body to react in any other way than frozen.

  The two vampires charge straight for Sebastian. His hands tighten over the branches in his hands, the rest of his body loose yet primed for the fight to come. The corners of his mouth draw upward, the expression etched onto his face self-assured and eager, as he shoves me behind him.

  My body rejects being moved, causing my joints to jerk at being forced from my petrified position. I trip over my own feet and end up hitting the ground, my face inches from the jogger. His empty eyes stare up at me through the shaded veil of death. The remaining blood left in his body pools on the ground at the side of his neck, a puddle of shimmery red inching toward my hands. The sight sparks renewed macabre thoughts of seeing myself lying there in his place. Dying before I’ve ever really lived.

  I don’t want to die.

  I shift my gaze to Sebastian. He’s battling against the two vampires with ease, anticipating their every move. They strike, he blocks, and together they dance around in a flurry of swinging arms and legs. He’s completely caught up in the fight, distracted by it, which I now realize was probably the plan all along.

  I turn my attention to the leader. His face lights up with a knowing smile as he stalks toward me. He has me right where he wants me.

  “And so it’s just us.” He kneels down; the joggers body the only thing between us. “It doesn’t have to be painful. Your death is inevitable. Why not make it enjoyable? Surrender and let the rapture take over.” He holds his hand out for me to take. His pupils dilate, undulating in the glow of his irises.

  Part of me wants to listen to what he’s asking of me, to reach out and accept my death. It would be so easy.

  But then…

  The outer edge of the jogger’s blood makes it to my fingertips. I jerk my hand back though not fast enough to keep them clean. The stain of crimson on my fingers snaps me back to reality, igniting magic from somewhere deep inside my core. This jogger’s death is my fault. He died because they wanted to scare me, because they wanted to get to me, because they think I’m easy prey. Maybe they’re right, maybe I am, but if I dig down deep, maybe I can find enough strength to not let this innocent jogger’s death be in vain.

  I take the vampire’s hand, allowing him to pull me to my feet.

  “You’ve made the right decision.” He tugs me forward so I have to step over the jogger’s body.

  “I know I have.” I slide my hand down over his palm then grip his wrist. “It’s just not the one you were expecting.” I whisper the words of a spell I’d read earlier in the Book of Shadows I got from Books and Brew. Deep down I know it’s rooted in darkness, but in this moment, maybe darkness is what I need. The charm Ivy gave me warms my skin with every mumbled word tumbling from my mouth as though it approves.

  “What are you doing?” The vampire tries to jerk his arm away without success.

  Wind whips through my hair, tearing strands of it loose from my ponytail. A clap of thunder echoes across the sky, the clouds above growing darker and darker, mirroring the swirl of emotions raging through me. I squeeze his wrist tighter as the final words of the spell slips past my lips. He doubles over with a scream, then jerks straight up, his body held by a force beyond his control. Blood pours from his ears, his eyes, his nose, and his mouth. His throat fills with so much of it he chokes while the veins trailing along the inside of his arms begin to split apart. Skin tightens over bones, prying his veins open even further. Blood gushes to the ground like a waterfall, draining him dry.

  It runs over my hand, the sensation warm, wet, and… wrong.

  A haze clears from my eyes.

  What I’m doing is wrong.

  My stomach heaves, leaving the back of my mouth filled with the awful taste of vomit and something else I can’t quite describe. Something linked to the magic flowing through me from the spell I’m casting. Its taste is bitter and cold and yet so full of temptation. It promises to give me everything I want if I embrace it.

  I let go of the vampire, breaking the spell as I take a step back. He drops to the ground as the clouds above burst open and rain pelts the earth. His blood swirls in the streams of water flowing down the jogging path, washing it all away. He stares up at me with wide eyes. The glow of his irises a narrow ring around expanding pupils.

  He’s afraid of me.

  I am too.

  The cold touch of darkness slithers within my veins at what I’ve done, and I take another step back.

  A bolt of lightning crashes into the tree behind me. Flashes of bright white light bursts outward in a shower of sparks. I’m too caught up in what I just did to even flinch. The vampire, however, vanishes in a blur of movements, leaving me alone in the aftermath of my actions.

  A hand clamps down on my shoulder and I swivel around, my arms thrown up in defense. My insides vibrate as a rush of air swirls around me. Momentarily weightless, the solidity of the ground vanishes beneath my feet. The intensified splash of thousands of raindrops hitting the pavement after a rushing descent to the earth assaults my ears seconds later. I shiver in their coldness against my skin, my arms shaking as I slowly lower them down from my face. My ragged breaths hitch and cease as I gaze out over a mostly empty parking lot. My eyes bounce around the lot in search of anything familiar when I spot Sebastian’s car parked in the far corner near the jogger trails.

  How did I get here?

  Vibrations course up and down my arm, inciting a fresh wave of panic to flood my veins. Every nerve ending on edge, I jerk and fall, landing hard on my butt. Pain shoots from my tailbone all the way up my spine. My arm vibrates again, bringing forth a scream, tearing its way out from the depths of my lungs. The pounding rain only drowns it out. I scoot myself backward. Tiny rocks on the pavement scrape and stab the palms of my hands in my haste to move away from whatever horror is about to befall me now. Be it another vampire or another unexplainable jump to some other location.

  No attack comes. The scenery remains the same.

  C
onfusion sets in before I finally realize the vibrations are coming from my phone. I unclip it from the jogging band around my arm and slide my thumb across the screen at seeing Sebastian’s name displayed. His labored voice fills my ear.

  “Indi, where are you? Are you okay? What the hell happened back there? You just disappeared.”

  “I-I’m okay.” Physically. Mentally and emotionally…that’s a whole other story. “I’m in the parking lot.” My hands shake, as I lower my arm, not bothering to end the call. Sebastian shouts for me on the other end of the line, his voice being drowned out with the storm.

  Icy cold rain, washes over me, saturating me to the bone as I sit in the middle of the parking lot with my knees tucked to my chest. Forever passes in its cold embrace, my mind stuck in all the horrors playing out within my head before I finally see Sebastian exiting the path. Soaking wet, his hair plasters to his forehead, his clothes to his body.

  Halfway across the parking lot, Sebastian increases his pace. Rainwater splashes up around his shoes and legs with every puddle he runs through until he reaches me. Dropping to his knees, his eyes roam all over my body, looking for I don’t know what. Injuries maybe? A reason for how I disappeared from the path and ended up here in the parking lot stamped in bold on my forehead? Clues perhaps to determine if I’m turning into something evil after what I did to the vampire back there? Reasons that could make me become one of the chased and no longer one of the protected?

  He pulls me to my feet, then wraps his arms tightly around me, holding me close. I don’t dare move; too afraid that if I do everything will fall apart. He takes a step back; keeping one arm still snaked around my lower back. His fingers brush over my cheekbones, pushing wet strands of hair out of my face. “What happened while I was fighting off the vampires? Did the ringleader with the badly dyed hair go after you? Did he hurt you?”

  So he doesn’t know what I did?

  He turns my head to the side looking for bite marks, and then it’s my wrists, and any other exposed parts of my body. “He was gone after I’d dispatched the rest of his friends. Did you stake him? Or use magic to set him on fire like you did the vampire on the night we were heading to the football game?”

  I shake my head. I wish I had staked him, or used my elemental magic. At least then it would have come from some place true and pure and not from somewhere dark and corrupted. If I’d let the spell finish knowing it was dark magic…

  A shudder runs through me at the thought of what kind of mark it would have left behind. A dark stain of evil on my soul I could never wipe clean. An infection left to spread until it consumed every part of me until I too became a monster. Providing I’m not already becoming one for even doing the spell at all. There’s a reason that particular Book of Shadows called to me the way it did in Books and Brew. What if there’s already darkness inside of me from being bitten by Seth and it recognized it? I did ingest some of his blood and I did die, even if it was a temporary death.

  “He got away,” I finally say when I realize Sebastian is still waiting for an answer.

  He glances out over the parking lot as though the vampire might still be out there somewhere. After what I did, I doubt he’ll ever come back. It should be a good thing, but the reason behind it won’t let me find relief.

  Moving his arm up my back, Sebastian leads me across the lot. “Let’s get you out of the rain.” When we get to his car, he opens my door like a gentleman, helping me inside before he rushes around the other side to climb in behind the wheel. Reaching into the back, he pulls out a towel from a gym bag sitting on the seat. Instead of handing it to me he leans over the middle console and begins drying off my face and hair. “How did you get to the parking lot?”

  “I don’t know.” I stare down at the water collecting on the leather seats. “But, it’s not the first time something like that has happened.”

  When I don’t elaborate, he hooks a finger under my chin, lifting my face until our eyes meet. “Tell me about it?” There’s no underlying threat or fear of what I’m becoming evident in his voice or in the way he’s looking at me. But I can’t help but think maybe there should be, that he should be afraid of me. Because after what I did to the vampire with the sanguinary spell, plus the storm raging around us I know I’m probably creating, the way I compelled my aunt and uncle to do my bidding, how I defied natural law by bringing him back from the brink of death, and how I can somehow now…teleport from one place to another, I’m afraid of me.

  The touch of his rough thumb wiping my tears away pulls me from delving further into the dark thoughts skirting around the edges of my mind while the openness in his gaze sparks a tiny flame of hope within my chest.

  “Please tell me. I promise I only want to help you.” It’s what he always tells me, and I want so badly to embrace it as the truth and squish the part of myself holding onto doubt. The part that fears he’ll wake up one day and change his mind about the sides we’re on, considering he’s a chaser and I’m a hybrid nephilim witch who may or may not have inherited vampire abilities—who may or may not have darkness somewhere deep inside waiting to be released in another act of unforgivable magic. Because truth is, I need him and the hope he’s offering. A hope that promises I can be something better than all the things my nightmares whisper.

  I watch the rainwater accumulating on the ends of his hair until they grow heavy enough to drop, as I contemplate what to say so I don’t sound as crazy as I feel.

  “It was the day you found me passed out in the library.” With a deep breath, I fill him in on everything that happened in the vending machine alcove. How my skin crawled with the feeling of being watched when no one was there. How the glass of the machines exploded all around me one moment and how I found myself suddenly back in the library the next. How all the destruction I saw take place was completely gone as though it had never happened to begin with when I went back to check. “What do you think it means?” I chew on my lip, both terrified and hopeful as I wait to hear what he has to say. Wondering if he’ll have an explanation for what happened to me then and for what’s happening to me now, or if he’ll be in the dark about it just as much as I am.

  “I don’t know a lot about nephilim, but I remember reading once how they have wings. Short of teleporting—which is not an ability any witch has—it could explain how you went from one place to another so fast.”

  I blink several times, words caught somewhere in my throat. I open my mouth, forcing them out. “You think I have wings? That I flew from the vending machine alcove to the library and the jogger path to the parking lot?” My fingers itch to touch my back in search of even the slightest sign he could be right. I shove them under my legs and resist. Even contemplating the idea of having wings—despite him saying witches can’t teleport—is crazy. I mean, I would know if I had wings. Wouldn’t I? Besides, if I did wouldn’t they have to rip through my shirts? As far as I know none of my clothes have giant holes in them.

  “Why not?” Sebastian shrugs his shoulders like the possibility is no big deal. “Angels have wings and you’re half angel so it’s not that far of a stretch to think you might have them too. It would be pretty awesome, actually, if you did. As for the incident with the vending machines and feeling like someone was watching you, it sounds like magic. Maybe whoever was there was testing you, trying to figure out what your abilities are? Were there any marks left behind after everything was put back together? A chip in the glass perhaps, or something out of place?”

  I close my mouth, which had been hanging open. He thinks having wings would be awesome? More like it would make me even more of a freak. How could he be so nonchalant about it? It’s weird, and frankly, a little scary. I mean, wings?

  “Are you listening?” Sebastian asks, pulling me from the thoughts in my head.

  “What? Right, the vending machines,” I say, vaguely aware he’d asked me a question. “There was a crack in the glass at the corner. Why? Does it mean something?”

  “It might if it proves
magic was used. Magic isn’t always perfect. Sometimes it leaves scars behind, and sometimes, those scars are left intentionally. If it was a spell, whoever cast it may have wanted to scare you, or mess with your head while they assessed your reaction. Make you question your sanity.”

  “They definitely succeeded in the scaring me department. But why is the Croí Dorcha, or Dark Heart, or whatever their coven name is doing this? If that’s who even did it. It could be another witch, we don’t know. Point is, I’ve never done anything to incur their wrath, or any other coven, or magically inclined person’s wrath. I didn’t even know this world existed until a vampire tried to kill me. I get why the angels want to take me out, being a forbidden love child with the potential for unprecedented abilities or whatever, but what are the motives behind the vampire and witch attacks? Am I really that big of a threat and if so why? Is it because I’m an angel witch hybrid? How would they even know that? My aunt and uncle erased everyone’s memory—including my own—after taking me in. They kept me magically hidden and suppressed for years. I should have been invisible. So why wasn’t I?”

  He lays a hand over my bouncing knee. “I don’t know. But I promise we’ll figure it out. Speaking of being invisible, what did Bottle Blonde vampire mean when he said he couldn’t trace your scent?”

  The charm Ivy gave me heats up against my skin, her words whispering in my mind. For it to work as it’s intended, you must tell no one about it and keep it hidden at all times from anyone who possesses magic or is supernatural in nature. “Um, I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with the protection spell I had Liv and Jack cast to keep me off of the supernatural radar. Kind of like the one my aunt and uncle cast, but without suppressing my abilities or wiping my memories.”