“Well, I’m freaked the fuck out, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said, hands trembling as I slid the dagger back into my sheath. “What the hell was that?”
Dorian’s face rippled as he clenched his jaw. “I don’t know, but it’s not a good sign.”
“What do you mean?” I shoved my hands into my black leather jacket and shivered, both from the cool night air and the encounter with the demon.
“What are the odds that these are the only demons out there like this?” He raised his eyebrows. “How many more are there?”
I gaped at him. What the hell would we do if there were more? And how would we even begin to fight them? It didn’t make any sense. As far as I knew, there’d never been a case where a mage couldn’t banish a demon, not unless the demon killed the mage first. And sure, sometimes it was difficult to complete the banishment if the demon was a particularly strong one. But never impossible. Not like this.
“What’s going on?” Juno asked, taking timid steps toward us. Her face still glistened with sweat, and her hands were clenched tight together. The wrench trembled where she pressed it against her stomach. Clearly, she’d overheard that something went wrong. I hated to tell her that we’d failed.
“Don’t panic,” I said, glancing at Dorian, “but we weren’t able to get rid of it. At least not yet.”
As much as I hated to walk away from this, there was nothing we could do right now. We’d have to try again after we regrouped and formed another plan, but we didn’t have a shit ton of time. The longer the demon was here, the weaker the veil between realms would get. And then a couple of immune demons would be the least of the entire world’s problems.
If the veil weakened enough, we’d be thrust back into a supernatural war.
“You mean, it’s still in there?” Juno’s voice cracked and tears sprang into her eyes. “Zoe, I can’t go back near it. I just can’t. I swear, it felt like it was ripping me to pieces.”
“It’s okay.” Softly, I took her hand in mine and squeezed tight. “You don’t have to go back in there. Just shut the shop for a couple of days until we figure out what’s going on.”
“I have clients,” she said. “Cars to fix. Jobs to fulfill. This could ruin my business.”
“We’ll fix it,” Dorian said. “It just might take a couple more days.”
Back at Dorian’s apartment, I plopped into a leather recliner we’d picked out at a second-hand shop when I had convinced him that normal non-vampire people liked to have places to sit. Otherwise, his home was as bare as it had ever been. It was a tiny basement apartment with a single room that had been divided into two sections, one half hidden behind a thick curtain. I knew from earlier visits that it was his bedroom, even though he didn’t sleep. He said that sometimes he liked to lie down and stare up at the ceiling, pretend he was the mortal he used to be.
I always wondered what that man had been like. Was he anything like the Dorian Kostas that I knew now? The one-hundred-year-old vampire with a warlock soul?
“There’s no time for you to sleep in my recliner. Get up,” Dorian said, flicking his fingers at his desk. “We need to get started on research and see if we can find anything to explain how these demons resisted our magic.”
“Hand me a book.” Without budging from the chair, I held out my palms and gave him a cheeky smile. He scowled, tossing a book my way. It fell heavily into my palms, the faded leather smooth and soft against my fingers.
“One would think you’d be less inclined to lounge in a chair after what just happened.”
“One would think I’d want to catch my breath.” I flipped open the book and fanned the pages, the musty scent of age-old paper filling my nose. “Trust me, I don’t want to lounge, but that took a lot out of me. Did you feel your magic snap or was that just me?”
“That happened to me as well,” Dorian said with a nod, grabbing another book from the impossibly tall pile. “I drew the rune and began to cast the banishment, but it felt like the demon ripped the entire spell to shreds.”
“Do you think they, I don’t know, consumed our power or something?” Frowning, I tried to imagine what that might mean. It would be deadly for us all if they’d figured out how to do that. A demon by itself was terrible enough. But a demon with mage powers? Specifically shadow magic? The world would never be the same.
Dorian strode closer, dropped down to meet my eyes, and placed his hand on top of my own. The spot where our skin touched suddenly felt overwhelmingly hot, even though Dorian Kostas had the coldest hands of anyone I’d ever met in my life. I sucked in a sharp breath and forced myself to keep my gaze locked on his, convinced something huge was about to happen. He’d rarely touched me like this, not since we’d wrapped together in an embrace in Vincent’s house three months before. And I hadn’t dared do it myself.
My heart throttled at top speed, making my breath tremble in my lungs.
Dorian’s lips spread into a wicked smile. “Want some answers, Zoe? Time to put your head down and read the fucking book.”
My face flamed, irritation and embarrassment waging war inside of me. I couldn’t believe I was dumb enough to think he’d come close to me for some other reason. Dorian didn’t have those kinds of feelings for me. And I didn’t have them for him, either, I had to remind myself. We were merely Enforcer partners and nothing more.
“Yeah, I got it,” I said in a clipped tone. “No rest for the weary.”
“I thought the phrase was, ‘No rest for the wicked.’” He raised his eyebrows.
“Same thing,” I said in a sigh. “But if you’re going to keep me working all night, the least you can do is feed me.”
Once again, my face flamed. Every time I thought about eating in Dorian’s presence, my mind drifted back to the moment when I’d sipped his vampire blood. It had tasted far better than I wanted to admit, and his power had hummed in my veins for days. It was intoxicating, to say the least. No wonder people got addicted to the vampire lifestyle, frequenting Slayerville every night of the week. Even though they didn’t drink vampire blood, they did drink their elixir, and Laura had explained just how intense it had felt to have a vampire’s fangs in her neck.
Everything about them was addicting, even if there was nothing more to it than that. It was a fact I could never forget.
An hour later, Dorian returned with a bag of fast food. He dropped the salty goodness onto my lap and pulled his desk chair over to my side, lowering his chin onto his fisted hands.
“Here’s your food,” he said. “Now, what did you find in the book?”
I dove my hand into the bag and pulled out a cluster of french fries. “Not much. There were a few passages that mentioned demons being visible to humans, but they didn’t go into much detail. And they didn’t say anything about immunity to mages.”
“Hmm.” Dorian frowned. “We’ll just have to keep looking. Some of the other covens have access to more research material than we do. It might be worth reaching out to the Blood Coven headquarters since we’re helping an offshoot of theirs. See if they’ve heard of anything like this.”
“Speaking of,” I said as I popped a fry into my mouth, “what are we going to do next about that case? I feel like we aren’t any closer to solving her murder than we were before.”
“I found this in Sylvia’s apartment,” he said.
Dorian reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring. He slid it across my lap where it glittered underneath the pale moonlight streaming in from the window behind me. I frowned and flicked my gaze up at Dorian. His eyes held an intensity that I didn’t understand, like the object meant something to him that I couldn’t see myself.
“Why’d you take her ring?” I asked. “Does it mean something?”
“Something about it caught my attention when we were there,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t know why, so I thought I’d bring it with me in case I needed to compare it to an image of something else.”
“And did you?” I asked.
&nbs
p; He nodded. “I found it earlier today. In this book, actually. Flip to page seventy.”
I followed his orders, skipping to a page I hadn’t quite made it to yet. “You could have waited for me to come over before you researched this, you know. I want to be involved in this case as much as I can.”
“You were at Blue Moon Tavern,” he said with a shrug. “And I knew you were dealing with a lot regarding that. Angry customers, cops, dogs that won’t stop scaring people off. I thought I’d wait for a better time to bring it up.”
“And while I’m munching on french fries is a better time?” I asked with a laugh.
He shrugged and smiled. “At least I know you’re happy when you’re eating.”
“Hey now.” Laughing, I punched his shoulder in mock-irritation. But really, I felt warm inside. When we’d first partnered up on the case to clear my name, Dorian never would have considered my feelings. Sure, he’d been kind—at times—but he’d been impossibly bossy, and we always did our investigation on his terms. Never mine. If I was busy? Too fucking bad.
The fact he’d done research on his own because he thought I needed the break? Well, it made it difficult to remember why I was so against the idea of having feelings for the guy.
“So, here’s the ring,” he said, holding up the diamond-encrusted gold. “And here’s a drawing I found.”
He tapped the page, and I drew my gaze from his eyes to the drawing. He was right. It was an exact match as far as I could tell. A smooth gold band with diamonds lining the entire surface. A dark stone sat on the very top, holding a pool of midnight blue.
“Right. So, this blood mage had a magical ring. That’s not too out of the ordinary, is it?” I grabbed another batch of fries and popped them into my mouth.
“Not until you understand what it does,” he said. “I know you can’t read Latin so I’ll translate it for you. The ring in question was designed to protect the wearer from a supernatural creature.”
“Protection?” My eyebrows popped to the top of my forehead. “Okay, so I see what you mean. If it was supposed to protect her from something, then maybe she was worried she was in danger. But from what?”
“That’s just it,” Dorian said, tapping the page again. “The ring was supposed to protect her from werewolves.”
“From werewolves?” I gasped, accidentally knocking the bag to the floor where the fries scattered across the concrete surface. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I’m afraid not,” Dorian said.
Werewolves. If this were true, it opened a whole new can of supernatural worms. Ones that I’d thought were under control. There were a few packs in the United States, but they were few and far between, and the wolves among them had been careful not to kill humans for decades. They mostly kept to themselves, and that was how they liked it. It was how the rest of the supernatural community liked it, too. Because vampires and werewolves? They didn’t get along. Werewolf venom was the only thing, other than a stake to the heart or a demon to the soul, that could kill a vampire dead on sight. Anything else only wounded them temporarily until their healing power patched up their immortal bodies.
“When was the last time you came across a werewolf in Boston though?” I asked. “They mostly like to keep out of the city.”
Dorian sighed and dragged a hand down his face. “Everything seems to be shifting, Zoe. Like I said before, I don’t think we can count on what we know to be true anymore.”
“Is that why you said that?” I asked. “You weren’t just referring to the demons. You were talking about the werewolves.”
“The Daywalkers, too,” he said. “I know you’re counting on the alliance holding, but the fight we had three months ago changed things between us all. We need to tread carefully where they’re concerned. I wouldn’t put it past them to attack us again, especially while our council numbers are so low.”
With a sigh, I leaned back into the chair and ran my mind over what we already knew about the blood mage’s death. “It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? The claw marks on her neck. And in her apartment.”
“Plus, it was a full moon,” Dorian said.
I leaned forward and frowned. “It all adds up, but I have a question. If she thought a werewolf was after her, then why wasn’t she wearing the fucking protection ring?”
Dorian shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Dorian’s phone beeped from his pocket, and he stood with a frown when he glanced at the caller ID. He held a finger to his lips, answering with his standard, “Kostas here.”
A few moments passed as he listened to the voice on the other end, his face clouding over with every passing beat. My gut churned, unease and dread slithering through my stomach like hungry snakes. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t good. Just like the past twenty-four fucking hours.
When Dorian hung up the phone, he wrapped his hands around my waist and lifted me from the chair. “We’ve got to go. There’s been another blood mage death.”
Chapter 9
Blue lights strobed against the dark sky as we approached the scene of the crime, which was about two blocks away from Descent, a goth club where I’d found more than one willing customer back in my con artist days. The alley had been sectioned off by yellow police tape, and the body was hidden from view by a beige tarp. We climbed out of the car, and Dorian flashed his federal agent badge at a woman holding a clipboard. She motioned us through without another word.
As I glanced around us, confusion rippled through me. What the hell was going on? And how had we gotten a call? While the Bone Coven had worked with the human authorities from time to time, it was a rarity of epic proportions. Most mages, including those who sat on the council, very much did not want humans to know we existed, much less work with them when it came to a murder of one of our own.
So, this was…strange, to say the least. And I felt uneasy as hell.
“Dorian.” A man with graying hair at the temples and an FBI badge pinned to his suit approached us, clapping my partner on the back in an eerily normal display of bro-type greeting. “Long time, no see.”
“Rick.” Dorian pounded the man’s back in response, his face loosening into an easygoing smile that looked alien on his typically stony face. “Good to see you. This here is my partner, Zoe.”
“Your partner, eh?” The man winked. “You lucky dog. Bet she makes those long nights on surveillance a hell of a lot easier to take.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t I know it.” Dorian cleared his throat and shot me a look. Don’t make trouble, it said. But this guy was grating my nerves already, causing my shadow magic to swirl deep in my gut. “Now, tell me what we have here.”
“Well, you told me to call you if we ever came across a murder of one of yours. Someone with one of those marks on his neck.” The man’s face turned from lighthearted to serious in less than a beat. “We’ve got ourselves one here. A man in his mid-twenties. The cause of death is strange, to say the least.”
“Strange?” I asked. “In what way?”
I ignored the look Dorian shot me. I was probably supposed to sit down and shut up in the presence of human authorities, but I was so caught off guard by all of this that I had to say something.
“Well, it almost looks like a wild animal attacked him.” Rick frowned, emphasizing the lines around a tired pair of eyes. “There are five deep cuts down the neck. I probably wouldn’t have noticed the mark if I wasn’t looking for it. The wound is pretty nasty, Dorian. Left the skin in really bad shape.”
“Thanks, Rick.” Dorian gripped the man’s shoulder, stepped in close, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “You were right in contacting me. That’s definitely one of ours. You think you can set it up so that we can take it from here?”
“No problem.” Rick nodded and turned to go before holding his finger in the air. “Just remember. You get any more Frank Bennett cases on your hands? You send him my way.”
“What’s
he talking about?” I asked in a furious whisper when the FBI agent left us so he could gather up his crew. “What does he mean by more Frank Bennett cases?”
“He’s the one who took your dad off the council’s hands, Zoe,” Dorian said. “He works with us from time to time. He hands off cases involving mages, particularly assaults or murders.”
“And, in exchange, you give him people like my dad. That guy?” I curled my hands into fists. “Does this mean you helped put my dad into prison?”
“No. Of course not. You know I didn’t become an Enforcer here until after all that happened. I had nothing to do with your father getting arrested. He did that all on his own.”
I stared at him, anger boiling in my veins. My shadow magic rose up inside me, twisting and turning in my gut. The darkness crept into the corners of my eyes, whispering dangerous suggestions into my ears. Dorian was behind it all. He was working against you all this time. He wasn’t trying to help me at all. He was trying to hurt me, to tear me down and rip apart my life.
I blinked, and as fast as it had risen up inside me, the darkness disappeared. Shit. It had been three months since I’d let it take over my mind, and I couldn’t let it happen again, regardless of how pissed off a random FBI agent made me feel. Dorian had only ever tried to help me. And he’d put up with a lot of my shit. I couldn’t let my shadow magic control me like that. If I did, I knew it would lead me to do something I would live to regret.
Because I’d already done that once.
After the authorities had vacated the scene of the crime, only then did Dorian and I ease further into the alley to crouch beside the body. Pressing my hand to the cool concrete, I braced myself. I knew what we’d see before we pulled the thick material aside, having witnessed what Sylvia Anderson had looked like only moments after her death.
But that didn’t stop the horror from filling my gut. This man’s wounds looked just like the first. Deep claw marks sliced through soft skin. Blood everywhere, coating his hair and his clothes. Tears sprung into my eyes, and I clamped my hand tight over my mouth. How could someone do something like this? Even a werewolf? Despite their predator tendencies, they were still very much human. And they were aware of every move they made in wolf form.
Witch's Storm (The Bone Coven Chronicles Book 2) Page 6
