Mages and Masquerades: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Magic Blood: The Warlock Book 2)

by Katerina Martinez

  “Tank, let’s go,” Ivy yelled, her voice echoing through the vaulted room, but Tank wasn’t listening, and so she had to call out to him again, and again. By the time I reached the front door, the manor had been abandoned, or maybe the security staff had been pulled back to protect the remaining guests from being attacked. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was, the cold night felt like a blessing on my hot skin.

  “Just like old times, huh?” Mason said, but I hadn’t properly heard him.

  “W-what?” I asked.

  “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

  As we ran along the grounds, following the road, I noticed several bodies strewn on the grass. There were at least three, the coppery smell of blood mingling with the earthy scent of freshly cut grass. The night throbbed, darkened, brightened, darkened again, then turned to black altogether, all sounds and smells and light disappearing to nothing.

  A moment later, I was in the back of a limousine, barely aware of a face looming over me. My head was pounding, my eyes almost useless, and my right arm was burning, but I was alive, at least for now.

  “She’s back,” Ivy said, turning her head slightly and alerting the others.

  “I’m… what?” I asked.

  “You’ve been unconscious for about fifteen minutes.”

  “Fuck… fuck, that hurts.”

  “Keep still, Tank patched your arm up, but there’s nothing he can do about what’s been done to your head.”

  “My head? Shit, Cerberus.” I tried to get up, but my body cried out in protest, a shriek emanating from the spot where the neck meets the skull.

  “Woah, keep still there,” Mason said, “You’re gonna blow another gasket.”

  “Another? When… did I blow the first one?”

  “Fuck, you’re really out of it,” Levi said, “What did he do to you?”

  I went to shake my head, but the pain stopped me in my tracks. “Gave me a taste of my own medicine,” I said, grimacing, “I’ll be fine.” I had no real guarantee that was the case, though. Cerberus’ magic had been potent, probably the strongest thing I’d ever been hit with. If I didn’t forget everything I knew all of a sudden, I’d be impressed. “Did you get his book?”

  Mason looked over at Levi, then at Ivy, then back at me. “No,” he said, “I only have this one.” He tapped his jacket pocket. “But that’s something at least.”

  “Fuck. Fuck, fuck. So, one of those books is still out there.”

  “Yeah,” Ivy said, “Looks like it.”

  I had a look around the limo. “Where’s Tank? Oh my God, did he—”

  “No, he’s fine, we just couldn’t have him sit in the limo all covered in blood like that. He went for a swim in the river—he’ll meet us back at Nerve.”

  “A swim… in the Thames… in November…? That’s gross… like, really gross.”

  “Like I said, he’ll be fine. Just worry about yourself.”

  I allowed my head to rest, but I didn’t shut my eyes. Everything I knew about head injuries, or any serious injury, could be boiled down to don’t fall asleep, so I made sure to follow that piece of advice at least. Even though it felt like my brain had turned to wet cake that was likely to slip out of my ears at any point, thoughts of what had just happened wouldn’t retreat, wouldn’t relent. I saw Cerberus in my mind, saw him with the book, envisaged him opening another Hell Hole right here in London. There were demons present tonight, and that meant they existed in England too, they were just better at hiding themselves than they were in the US.

  But there was something I couldn’t understand. When the bullets started flying, the demons were nowhere to be seen. Considering we were fighting over the key to unlocking more Hell Holes, I’d have thought one or two would have thrown their lot in, if not to help one side or the other, than at least to steal the book fort themselves. Then again, demons weren’t capable of using the magic inside a Grimoire, so stealing the books for themselves would have been pointless.

  Having even a single demon or two fighting on Cerberus’ side, though, would have made all the difference. I wouldn’t have made it out of there; not with both books, or even with one. Something had either spooked them, or had prevented them from engaging in a violent manner, and that alone was a big enough thought to bother me, even if I was thankful for it.

  “It was for nothing,” I said, staring at the roof of the limo.

  “Not nothing,” Mason said, “Let’s not forget I did just bankrupt myself to acquire this little bad boy.”

  “But there’s still one out there, and we have less than a week before the next lunar eclipse.”

  “Let’s worry about that tomorrow, yeah?” Levi said, “You need rest. We all do.”

  “I’m gonna agree with that,” Ivy said, “I could do with a fucking cheese burger and a good shag after this, I don’t know about you.”

  Mason perked up, grinning. “As long as you can pay for the former, I’m happy to help with the latter.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Mace, don’t be gross.”

  He turned his eyes on me, then. “So, it’s back to Mace, now, is it?”

  “Mace, Mason, whatever. Cerberus is getting away, we can’t—”

  “—we already did. He’s gone, bolted as soon as Tank showed up. We have no idea where he is, or where he’s headed.”

  “He has the book…”

  “I know. Right now, there’s nothing we can do about that. The best thing to do is lick our wounds and get some rest, so I suggest you do that because you need it way more than we do.”

  I sighed, lowering my resistances and letting the tension slip from my body. “Fine… fine.”

  I tried to fight the urge to fall asleep, but the motion of the limo and my own dizziness made that impossible. Sleep came, and with it came awful dreams of eyes opening, children screaming, and garbled voices speaking dead languages in guttural tones. I needed to find that book. This wasn’t over yet.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  We had gathered at Nerve, all of us arranged around a dining room table that just about fit in the room. Upstairs, Tank was showering off the muck he’d tracked with him from the river. I hadn’t been able to thank him for basically saving my life yet, the stink coming off him had been as incredible as the idea of him jumping into the Thames at near freezing temperatures, but we’d gathered without him, and were all staring at the little black book resting quietly on the table between us.

  “I’ve never spent so much money in one place in my life before,” Mason said.

  “Yeah, I didn’t know you had so much money to begin with,” I said.

  “I’m a man of many surprises, but I won’t be pulling that rabbit out of the hat anymore. That auction destroyed me. I can barely afford the hotel I’m staying in.”

  “You’re telling me you have zero dollars left?”

  “I’m telling you I’m fucked. I came into this country on a portal, I’m not even legally allowed to be here, but I also can’t pay to get a portal back home, so I’m also stranded here until further notice.”

  “Sorry…”

  He shrugged. “Not your fault. By the way, you owe me a shit-ton of demon blood for this… but hey, at least we got one book, didn’t we?”

  I scanned his face for obvious signs of sarcasm, and found a smirk plastered across his face.

  “But there’s another one out there, isn’t there?” Morpheus said, “And the eclipse is still happening in five days, which means another Hell Hole is gonna open and we don’t know where Cerberus is, let alone where the ritual is gonna happen.”

  “Assuming it’s going to happen at all,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did anyone ask him what he wanted with the book?”

  “No, but…” he trailed off, not finishing his thought.

  Silence moved between us like a dark cloud. “We do have a lead, you know…” Levi said, his voice low.

  I looked at him, pain pulsing through the back of my neck from the effort. “Huh
?” I asked, wincing.

  “Delilah… she told us she’d summoned the demon from her place, right?”

  “Okay?”

  “Which means the Hell Hole has to be nearby. Well, nearby is probably a stretch… what was it you said? It was probably a hundred square mile radius?”

  “That’s fucking huge,” Ivy said.

  “I know,” Levi said, “But it’s a lead, right? We just have to try and learn what we can about Hell Holes, see if we can figure out a pattern to their locations, and use that information to hunt for the one near her house.”

  “Again, near is a stretch,” I said. “This thing could be anywhere, and it’s probably going to be underground. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s nothing but trains running under London.”

  “Which will either making finding one incredibly difficult, or incredibly easy,” Morpheus said.

  I shut my eyes and pressed my thumb and forefinger against the bridge of my nose. “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “So, if there’s nothing but underground tunnels underneath us, then at the very least that could make accessing one pretty easy.”

  “Unless it’s sitting in an inaccessible spot.”

  “But that can’t be right, because then how do the demons crawl out of it?”

  My eyes opened. “You’re right…” I looked around. “No, you’re totally right. They have to crawl out of the thing, physically crawl, and then they have to come up to the surface—then, once they’ve fed, they can use their teleportation powers to move quickly between places.”

  Morpheus smiled, happy with himself. “There we go,” he said, pushing his glasses against his nose again.

  “Okay, so, it has to be in an accessible spot,” Mason said, “We’re still talking about, if you’ll pardon the cliché, finding a needle in a haystack with only a single clue of where to look for it—and that’s assuming Delilah’s house happens to be sitting directly above the Hell Hole. This is gonna take time, and we have, what, five days?”

  “Less, now,” I said. “That just means we have to get to work.”

  Ivy was shaking her head. “We’ll never do it…” she said, “I mean, I don’t wanna be a downer, but we’ll never do it. There are only a few of us, how are we supposed to pull this off?”

  I stared at them all. “You’re the Eyes, right? You watch London, you see. If there’s anyone who can find this thing, it’s you.”

  “Right, but we’re talking about finding the Hell Hole that’s already open—what about the one Cerberus is going to open?”

  “That’s assuming again. We don’t know what he wants with the book, because by the sounds of it he’s already summoned plenty of demons from the portals already active around London. Why would he want to open more? There could be another spell in the book he’s after, but without the book I have no way of knowing. I only have this one, and…”

  “What is it?” Levi asked.

  “Mason didn’t spend many more millions of pounds than we’ll ever see in our lifetimes for nothing.” I opened the book, and a cold chill filled the room. Tapping a page, I looked around the room. “This book doesn’t just open them, it closes them, too.”

  “Closes them?” Mason asked, “Are you serious?”

  “I didn’t think it could be done, but it’s here.”

  “What if it’s a fake?” Morpheus asked.

  “It could be, but it reads like a legitimate spell, and if it’s real, then maybe we can get to work on shutting some down while at the same time tracking Cerberus down.”

  “That’s a ton of stuff you just put on our plates,” Ivy said.

  “The stuff has already been on our plates, I’m just pointing it out.”

  Levi reached for the book, pulled it to him, and examined the writing. It was handwritten, with a fountain pen or a feather quill, I wasn’t sure. Some of the pages were worn at the edges, but the writing was entirely legible. “Okay… so, how do we find a Hell Hole?” he asked.

  “This is gonna sound weird, but Hell Holes are like animals,” I said, “They’re usually clustered up, maybe you’ll get ten in a single city, and then none for hundreds of miles around it, then three or four, and so on. They also… communicate.”

  “Wait a second… what?” Morpheus asked. “Communicate? How?”

  “Psychically. These things, they’re not just gashes in the ground. Demonologists have, for a long time, considered them sentient things, capable of not only thought, and want, but also of communication. How do you think they reach out to mages in the first place, seducing them to say the words that’ll open them? If I can find one of them, I can maybe use it to listen out for the others—even dormant ones, meaning we might find the next one Cerberus may open.”

  “Won’t that be intense for you?” Levi asked, “I mean, you’re putting your ear against Hell’s back door.”

  “It won’t be a walk in the park, but unless you’ve got another Warlock up your sleeve I’m the only one of us who can do it, and I want to. As long as you’re all still in this with me, I’ll do it.”

  Ivy looked over at Morpheus and Levi. Neither of them spoke. “Well, shit,” Mason said, throwing his arms behind his head and leaning back, “I’m stuck here for a while anyway, so I’m in.”

  I nodded. “Thanks, Mace.”

  “Me too,” Levi said, “I’ll help.”

  Levi won a smile from me, a smile which turned into a grin when Morpheus and Ivy agreed to help. “What about Tank?” I asked.

  “Is there likely to be another fight sometime?” Morpheus asked.

  “We’re going up against the forces of Hell, so… yeah.”

  Ivy shrugged. “Then he’s in, as long as he gets to bash something.”

  “Okay…” I said, staring around the room, “Well, then, in that case, we’d better get to work, huh? Levi, could I talk to you for a second?”

  “Me?” he looked at me like I’d just asked him to hand in homework he hadn’t prepared. “Oh, yeah, sure.”

  Levi got up, and I got up with him, following him into the kitchen where we could have a second alone. I shut the door behind me, then took a circle of the small place before looking up at him, folding my arms in front of my chest.

  “So, that—”

  “Your hair is—”

  We spoke at the same time. I smiled, he smiled, then I shook my head. “What were you saying?”

  “Only that your hair… you’re you again.”

  I ran my fingers through it. “Look at that, you’re right. Magic must have worn off.”

  “Okay, now you.”

  I took a breath, smiled again. “That kiss…” I said, exhaling and tilting my head to the side.

  His cheeks brightened. “Right… yes. I remember.”

  “So… what was that about?”

  “Oh… I… I needed to, I don’t know, I guess I didn’t want Cerberus to think you were alone? Maybe if I did that, he’d think twice about taking you away.”

  “Taking me away… where?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea. I wasn’t thinking, I just wanted to preserve the masquerade.”

  My smile started to shrink. “Right… so, that’s all it was?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, what else?”

  I swallowed. “Oh, nothing. Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to, y’know, address it. I don’t just kiss people like that.”

  “Neither do I, I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”

  “You didn’t,” I said, but I was already walking toward the kitchen door, arms still folded in front of me.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  I left the room, pulling the door shut and heading back into the dining room where the rest of the group was filling Tank in. Putting on the best smile I had in my arsenal, I sat down with them and listened as they talked, ignoring the narrow stare Mason was giving me from across the room, hoping he wouldn’t be able to see through the façade, but knowing full wel
l he probably could anyway.

  I would miss this when it was over, but right now, that’s all I wanted.

  To Be Continued…

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  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Katerina Martinez is a widely known author who writes supernatural fiction with a creepy, thrilling, and romantic bent. A veteran of many years of writing, she is the author of Dark Siren, the first book in the breakout Half-Lich Trilogy which became an instant bestseller in 2016. She continues to expand her back-list with books such as Magick Reborn, The Dead Wolves, and Smoke and Shadows. Though she took a brief pause during 2018, she is now back with her brand new Magic Blood series, which she intends to expand into a huge universe of interconnected novels and characters.

  Tansey Morgan is an up and coming author of Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy novels with a REVERSE HAREM twist. Having published 11 novels in less than that many months, Tansey has quickly made a name for herself in the space. If your kind of books have magic, danger, strong, powerful females, and more hot guys than you could sink your teeth into in one sitting, then you've come to the right place!

  Also by Lee Dignam & Katerina Martinez