Wicked Magic (7 Wicked Tales Featuring Witches, Demons, Vampires, Fae, and More)

by Deanna Chase

  ‘Arzo, who knew about my assignment at Wiltshore Avenue?’

  ‘Myself and Tam. Why?’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  He doesn’t hesitate. ‘No. We kept who was responsible for which assignment quiet, Bo. Loose lips sink ships. Besides, it caused less rivalry between you lot that way.’

  ‘Tansy didn’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about Boris?’

  ‘How would he have known?’ He sounds baffled.

  A wrench hammers into my heart. ‘When I was in the ceiling, right before you were attacked, Boris came in to see Tam. He told him I was wanted for questioning because of what happened at Wiltshore Avenue. Some contact of his had been in touch. Or perhaps it was the police scanners he’d been listening to.’ I’m irked that I can’t remember this salient detail.

  ‘Right. Boris spent a lot of time listening to the radio call-outs and cultivating police snitches.’ He sniffs disdainfully. ‘They rarely came up with the goods though.’

  ‘Arzo, he knew the assignment was to do with a daemon. He said as much to Tam. Then he left, Tam called you in and the vampire attacked.’

  I can feel Montserrat’s eyes on me but I stare down at the desk. Arzo sucks in a breath. ‘He couldn’t have known. The only people who know O’Shea is a daemon were you, Tam and myself. Even the police wouldn’t have worked it out that quickly. They’d have had to send his blood to their labs first.’

  ‘The police would have known if whoever tipped them off told them.’ My voice is quiet while I wait for Arzo to connect the dots.

  ‘Boris wouldn’t have known unless the tip-off told him too.’

  ‘Or he was the tip-off.’

  Arzo is silent.

  ‘Tam called you in to the office because Boris couldn’t have known that detail about O’Shea and me unless he was involved in some way that he shouldn’t have been.’

  I picture Arzo nodding to himself and stroking his chin. ‘He was a canny man, our boss. He knew something was wrong.’

  I close my eyes for a moment. I’d taken that overheard conversation as proof that Tam was involved in my set-up. It was actually the opposite. There’s a loud noise from the other end of the line. ‘I’m going to kill that bastard myself.’

  I take a deep breath; it’s about to get worse. I tell him about the YouTube video. Arzo is confused. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘As a waiter, he’d be in a perfect position to drop a little something into their glasses.’

  ‘But Gully and Stuart are fine. Some of their lower-level vampires have been involved, of course, but not the Heads.’

  ‘He must be biding his time. Waiting for something. He’s not the one in charge, Arzo. We know that’s a woman. But he’s got himself into a position where he can do what he needs to when he needs to. A trusted Family servant.’

  Montserrat has pulled his feet off the desk and is no longer leaning back. His whole body is tense. He takes the phone from me. ‘I need a photo of this Boris now. We need to circulate it to all the Families, especially Gully and Stuart.’

  I look at him. ‘You can’t kill him, Michael. We need him alive.’

  He nods sharply. Arzo says something else then hangs up. I look at Montserrat with anguished eyes.

  ‘It’s Boris. It’s all Boris. He’s the reason I was framed for O’Shea. He’s the one who sent that crazy vampire after everyone at Dire Straits too. I can’t believe I didn’t think about him conveniently leaving before that vampire showed up. Or that I didn’t talk to Arzo about what he’d said to Tam.’ Tears spring unbidden. I’ve wasted all this time running round in circles chasing my tail when the answer was right in front of me all along.

  ‘He’s not the person in charge of all this, Bo,’ Montserrat says quietly. ‘Even if you’d worked out earlier that he was involved, it might not have changed anything.’

  I look at him angrily. ‘Stop trying to make me feel better! If only I’d…’

  He holds my hands and forces me to be still. ‘Bo. Every single one of the five Families, who are more powerful and far-reaching than you could ever imagine, have been trying to find out who is responsible for this. This isn’t about you. It’s about all of us.’

  A single tear escapes and tracks a slow path down my cheek. Montserrat brushes it away with his thumb while I grit my teeth and nod. ‘We need to find him and we need to find him now.’

  He gives a small smile. ‘We will, Bo. So help me God, we will.’

  He bends down and kisses me chastely on the lips. I’m so surprised that I don’t have time to react. Then he picks up the phone and galvanises the entire Montserrat Family into achieving one goal – finding Boris.

  ***

  It takes less than sixty minutes for teams from each of the Families to break into Boris’s apartment and ransack the place. It’s obvious that he’s long gone. Apparently the food in the fridge, what little of it there is, is mouldy and rotten and it was difficult to open the door because of the pile of junk mail, bills and letters behind it. But there’s no clue as to where Boris has run to.

  Although he’s not seen hide nor hair of the burly prick for almost a fortnight, Lord Gully confirms that Boris has worked for them on and off for the past two years. All of us are horrified at that. This operation has been planned for a very long time; no wonder we’re constantly on the back foot and always playing catch up.

  Montserrat gives me detailed files with photos taken from every angle of Boris’s flat, as well as photocopies of everything they could scan. The results are chilling. There are notes on every one of the Families, including lists speculating which Family will be the most likely to start early recruitment. It brings me back to Lady Bancroft’s words that a recruit or a human could be behind everything that’s happened. The thought that one of my fellow wannabe bloodguzzlers could be the perpetrator makes my stomach churn. And that’s nothing compared to the file on me. Boris knows everything: details about my grandfather and my parents; my vulnerabilities, including my apparent naivety; he even questions how I managed to rescue O’Shea when I lack the, in his words, ‘gut instinct to sense when there’s trouble’. I search desperately for a clue that might lead us to him or his mistress. Other than a constant tone of enmity and bitterness in everything he’s written, there’s nothing I can use. The Families’ own investigators have come to the same conclusion. After the rush of adrenaline caused by having a suspect who might know something worthwhile, the soul-sucking desperation at our inability to locate him casts a pall over everyone.

  ***

  Thirty-six hours later, there’s still no sign of him. Whatever the vampire equivalent of an all-points bulletin is, it’s certainly in force. But Boris has gone to ground and the frustration of being unable to find him is overwhelming. I hold Beth’s hand while she finally – sadly – drinks three pints of gloopy blood and makes the eventual slide into full-blown vampirism. I try to look engaged during various training sessions with Ursus, Ria and a whole host of others, before giving up and going back to re-read the files on Boris for the umpteenth time. I pace up and down the corridors of the Montserrat mansion on more occasions than I care to mention.

  Even with the mysterious powder which is keeping the worst of my bloodlust at bay, I feel the desperate cravings. With only two days to go until the end of the lunar month and the full moon, I’m sure I can make it. It’s not easy, though. One moment I break into cold sweats, then hot flushes the next. More alarmingly, my hands have developed an almost permanent tremor which makes holding anything, even a glass of water, incredibly difficult. I’ve not slept for what seems like weeks. I have no idea whether that’s down to guilt for not identifying Boris’s role sooner, or whether it’s a result of the cravings. Either way, I’m getting weaker by the day.

  I’ve been to see Michael several times, both to check on the progress of the hunt for Boris and to plead with him to let me go outside to join it. He appears sympathetic but remains adamant that I need to be kept inside for m
y own good. One look at my shaking hands is enough to remind me of that. It occurs to me that by joining the ranks of the Montserrat Family I’ve become much more emasculated than I ever was under my grandfather’s thumb or working for Tam.

  The lack of progress becomes more terrifying when I go to visit Matt. After almost two weeks of slipping in and out of consciousness, he finally seems to be recovering. Recovering from his hanging, though not from the twisted version of O’Shea’s spell. When I see him, he’s sitting on an infirmary bed flicking through what appears to be a children’s book.

  ‘Hey, Matt,’ I say softly.

  He looks up and gives me a huge grin. ‘Bo! It’s so good to see you!’

  I’m taken aback by his genuine happiness. ‘You look … pleased,’ I tell him cautiously.

  ‘Lord Montserrat told me I should be less grumpy.’ His grin stretches wider. ‘So now I’m not grumpy at all.’

  ‘What else did he tell you?’

  Matt shrugs. ‘Not much. He wanted to know why I’d said your name when I woke up.’ His grin turns beatific. ‘You were singing the Bee Gees and I wanted to hear more. I wanted you to come and sing more.’

  I have an appalling singing voice. Sympathy for the large, muscled ex-soldier builds inside me. ‘Matt?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If I asked you to do twenty push-ups right now, what would you do?’

  It is a rhetorical question but Matt doesn’t treat it that way. He springs off the bed and drops to the floor to start pumping out push-ups. He’s reached three before, horrified, I stop him.

  ‘I can keep going, Bo. I’ll do as many as you want.’

  Sickened, I turn away. The tentacles of the passivity spell have wormed their way into his psyche. As much as I disliked him before, my pity for his condition now is overwhelming. He’s acting like a brain-damaged child. I wonder if he’ll ever recover.

  Montserrat is kind when I bump into him a few minutes later as I high tail it away from Matt’s room and back to my own quarters. It seems he’s been looking for me, because he’s not in the habit of wandering the recruits’ corridors. It is hard to ignore the zing I feel in my heart at that thought. I immediately put it down to the annoying side effects from having been turned by him personally and move quickly towards him to express my anxiety at Matt’s condition. Unfortunately I’m hit by a sudden wave of dizziness that makes me stagger and fall. He reaches out with lightning-fast reflexes, catching me before I hit the ground, then pulls me to his chest. The top of my head barely reaches his chin.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  I step back out of his embrace. He offers no resistance. ‘I’m fine.’ I’m embarrassed to appear so weak.

  He stares down at me with a mixture of empathy and frustration, then opens his mouth to say something. Abruptly he closes it again, leaving me wondering. ‘Good.’ Without saying any more, he turns and leaves.

  I remain where I am, gazing after him, thoroughly confused. He obviously wanted something and thought better of it. The frustrating thing is that I have no idea what he was after.

  I find myself wandering through the crooked paths of the Montserrat garden a couple of hours later. I’m looking up at the pregnant moon, as if I can will it to reach full status, when I’m interrupted by Ursus and Ria. I wait for them to come close then paste on a smile.

  ‘The professor and the PA,’ I say, in an attempt to be charming.

  Ursus’s expression doesn’t flicker although Ria raises a single eyebrow. ‘The recruit with a well of hidden secrets.’

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t be secrets if they weren’t hidden,’ I murmur. She doesn’t look impressed.

  ‘We want to know what’s going on,’ Ursus says, ignoring the byplay between Ria and me.

  I shrug. ‘Ask Lord Montserrat.’

  ‘He’s been closeted in a meeting all day with the other Heads. This is our Family. You’re not even a proper vampire and yet you have access to information that we need to keep our Family safe.’ Ursus takes a threatening step towards me. ‘You’re going to tell us what you know.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’ I inquire mildly.

  A twisted snarl crosses Ria’s face. I can empathise with them. Despite their relatively youthful exteriors, they’ve probably been trusted members of the Montserrat inner circle for decades. Now vampires are going missing from all the Families, and they’re being kept out of the loop. But doubtful as it seems, there is still the danger that one or both of them is involved in the treachery. It’s certainly not my place to tell them what’s going on. But it must be frustrating for them to see me, a complete nonentity, with their Lord’s ear. I’d like to tell them it’s simply my bad luck that has put me in this position but by the look on their faces, I don’t think they’ll accept that.

  ‘You’re going to begin by telling us how you escaped the bloodlust.’

  I was wondering when that little matter would come up again. I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of it before now. ‘You’re the experts,’ I say. ‘I was pretty much out of it. I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Nobody’s ever come out of the bloodlust. In fact, within hours of it starting, we normally give the sufferers blood to bring them out. Lord Montserrat wouldn’t let us give you any.’ Ursus’s eyes are hard. ‘Why?’

  I feel a rush of warmth towards Michael at that little titbit. He must have known it would be almost impossible for me to survive the cravings once I fell unconscious. And yet he hung on, avoiding forcing me to drink blood because he knew I didn’t want to become a real vampire.

  ‘Not just that,’ Ria adds, ‘but there’s not been an intake since the eighteenth century where there were still three recruits who’d not drunk less than forty-eight hours before the full moon.’

  ‘Nicky and Peter are nothing to do with me,’ I say, although I ponder her words carefully. It is strange that they remain in the odd twilight world of half human and half vampire. I’ve got my magic powder to help me: what do they have?

  ‘We’ve been through your stuff. Are you Christian? Is that it?’

  I frown. They’ve nosed through my belongings? ‘What do you mean, you’ve been through my stuff?’

  ‘You don’t think we just throw away the things you enter with, do you?’ Ursus leans forward until I can feel his hot breath on my face. ‘Why do you have a crucifix?’

  Oh. I suddenly remember that I scooped up Peter’s after he left it behind during that first meeting with the Family. ‘It’s not mine,’ I tell them.

  ‘You’re just keeping it for a friend?’ Ria is sarcastic.

  ‘Actually, yes. And what in the hell are you doing going through my things?’

  ‘You’re one of us now. What’s yours is ours.’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think that works in reverse,’ I mutter.

  ‘Where’s the daemon?’

  I honestly have no idea. I’ve not seen or heard anything of O’Shea since my recruitment. He’s probably still holed up in Michael’s palatial penthouse.

  ‘Who’s this Boris fellow?’

  Ursus grabs my arm. ‘Has he been killing our friends?’

  I pull back. Enough is enough. ‘You’re asking a hundred questions that I can’t answer. Like I said, if you want to know what’s going on, ask Lord Montserrat.’

  ‘We’re asking you.’

  Something in Ria’s eyes snaps. I recognise her loss of control just in time and flip right to avoid her attack. ‘We’re Family members now,’ I say, keeping out of her reach. ‘Are you supposed to attack your sister?’

  ‘You’re no sister of mine. You’ve not drunk yet, remember? That makes you fair game.’

  Fear runs down my spine. Ria’s words may be melodramatic but I can sense the anger in them. And people – or vampires – who are hurt and angry don’t think straight. And I’m no match physically for them .

  Realising that I’m not going to be able to talk my way out, I opt for flight. Both Ursus and Ria can outrun me, but they won’t dare make a m
ove in the presence of others. I need to get back inside to the relative safety of the mansion where other people might be wandering the corridors. I open my mouth as if to speak, then bolt, scarpering past them towards the door. Instead of a direct line, I zigzag in order to throw them off.

  It takes less than a couple of heartbeats for the pair to react. I don’t turn round but I hear Ria’s hiss of frustration. I run as fast as my legs will carry me but with all the symptoms of the bloodlust coursing through my body, I don’t make it very far before one of them grabs hold of my jumpsuit collar and yanks me backwards. I know instinctively that neither of them genuinely want to hurt me. Indeed, if they were thinking more rationally they wouldn’t be trying this on in the first place. Out of options, I let my body go limp. If defensive thanatosis – playing possum – works in the animal world, I’m going to make it work for me too. I roll my eyes into the back of my head and slow down my breathing. Then I hope for the best.

  To begin with, I don’t think it works. With my vision obscured, one of them – I can’t tell which – body-slams me. It takes every ounce of self-control not to cry out at the pain. I just about manage it, hopeful that they might leave me alone, when I hear a grunt of dissatisfaction.

  ‘She’s out cold,’ Ursus says, in a deep and unhappy rumble. ‘This was a stupid idea. He’ll be pissed off if he realises we confronted her.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have compromised himself by sleeping with a fucking recruit.’

  I have to concentrate to keep my body still at those words. They must think I’m winning myself favours by sleeping my way to the top. I should be flattered, I suppose, that both Ria and Ursus believe my feminine wiles are so alluring. Instead I’m rather annoyed that they think the only way I can be in Lord Montserrat’s confidence is by shagging him.

  ‘What should we do with her?’

  ‘Leave her. She’ll wake up sooner or later. With any luck, she won’t go blabbing about this.’ I hear some of the tension leave Ria’s voice and relief trickles through me.

  ‘That’s not going to happen. This was a stupid idea, Ria.’