Sun Cursed (Shades of Blood Book 1)

by Megan Blackwood

  "Stay where you are!" I called back, praying he was somewhere near the estate.

  "I'm at the rose garden."

  Relief flooded through me and I crept forward, shuffling one foot in front of me with each step to be sure of the ground. The darkness kept coalescing around me until my gaze was filled with nothing but night.

  "Keep talking," I said, trying to keep the strain and exhaustion from my voice.

  "Uh... The foyer's cleared out, there aren't any remnants left and Maeve said they're gone now. We've started... Started accounting for our losses."

  Accounting. The word was sour, a purposeful word meant to drive a wedge between Seamus's emotions and the reality of the situation.

  "Keep going," I pleaded, the darkness so thick it felt like oil on my skin. If I had needed to breathe, I wasn't sure I could have. The Venefica's magic coiled around me like a python, and constricted.

  "Maeve's working on making the darkness go away, but she says the magic is waiting for something."

  I laughed, a low rasp, and pushed my fingers through the darkness, watching it swirl around my fingers like salt water. "It's me. The Venefica is trying to trap me out here. If I can reach the house, it should fade."

  "Oh," he said, his voice tight with worry. "Is she... here?"

  "No. I'd know."

  I did not want to tell him that I suspected she'd never been here at all, that she had used her powers to watch us from afar. That kind of thing could make a mortal so scared they'd jump right out of their skin. The moorland gave way to gravel—I was on the driveway, now.

  "Are you hurt?" Seamus asked.

  Weakened, exhausted, demoralized. Suffering a death from a thousand paper cuts, worn down to a skinny nub. All the things the Venefica had wanted of me—raked across the brambles of the moor and broken in body and spirit. I could see that, now. That if Ragnar failed to take me, she wanted me broken so it would be easier to capture me later. Fuck her.

  "I've had worse."

  The sharp-edged leaves of rose bushes brushed my arm, the Venefica's magic wavering as it collided with the magic that kept the garden in light during the day. The mist shaded to a ghostly grey, smudging the world at the edges. The shift was so sudden that I blinked, bringing a hand up to shade my eyes. When I brought my hand away, Seamus stood across from me, his arms wrapped around his torso, a lopsided grin on his face.

  "I'm having a hard time believing you've had worse."

  I sniffed and retracted my claws before pushing the hair off my forehead. It was sticky with blood. "How are they?"

  "Jumpy," Seamus said, glancing over his shoulder as if worried he'd be overheard. "DeShawn lost men. He's talking about bringing in the military, and Maeve... She didn't seem too worried about you."

  "But you were," I said.

  He shrugged. "Even badass goddesses can get beaten down."

  "Thanks." I squeezed his shoulder. "Now let's find out where they took Roisin."

  Thirty-Six: The Big Guns

  The foyer looked like it had been hit by a ballista. Slack-faced Sun Guard picked through the rubble, trying to find what was left of their friends between the broken stones and the piles of remnant bodies. A woman crouched beside the one-armed body of the woman Emeline had tried to save, weeping.

  I averted my gaze and made my way through the wreckage, careful to give the grieving a wide berth. Hot shame reddened my cheeks, compressed my chest. I had to clench my fists to keep from saying something, anything, to soothe their sorrows. My condolences were not welcome here.

  The gazes of those guard who bothered to look at me at all were hard. Not with hate, but something else. Some deeper disdain that no amount of atonement could shake. Attempting to apologize to lessen my shame would be a selfish act. I had asked too much of these people already. I could not ask them to ease my heart, too.

  Emeline sat on a table in the library, shards of multi-hued glass spread out all around her on the ground. Someone had gotten her a blanket, a blue-and-grey patterned thing that she kept hunched up around her shoulders. Such a human thing, to offer a blanket to those who were hurting.

  Her grey eyes snapped to me, and my steps faltered. What could I say to her? What could I do? I had failed. Failed so much.

  Her expression, stark emptiness, did not change in the slightest as she said to me, "I'm glad Seamus recovered you. We have much to plan."

  "You have nothing to plan." DeShawn paced the ground beside her, his heavy boots cracking candy-colored glass with each stride. "This debacle cost me men, cost you lives. The Sun Guard is a failed institution, and with the death of Adelia it is headless."

  "I am my mother's successor," Emeline snapped.

  "You're in no shape to lead this order. I'm sorry, girl, but it's over. I respect that you've all been around for centuries, or whatever, but you haven't advanced with the times. I don't care about your magic voodoo shit. That Ragnar man is off his head, and we need to wipe out him and all his lackeys. Whatever resources you've got, you can't mount a tactical strike. It's time to bring in the big guns."

  "Magdalene is the big guns," Maeve said, her voice cool with a warning.

  DeShawn snorted. "Sorry, Mags. You're tough as sun-dried shit, but I saw how things went down. You're fast, but you're not faster than an M5 rifle."

  "You would break The Accord," Emeline said, voice heavy with meaning. DeShawn looked at her with raised brows.

  "We're well past the veil. Remnants are running down country roads, for god's sake."

  "She's not talking about the veil," I said, though my voice dragged with exhaustion. "There's more to this world than sunstriders and nightwalkers. Did you really think magic ended with us?"

  "More?" His looked to the open library doors as if hordes awaited him outside.

  Maeve chuckled. "Come now. Here I am, a humble cottage witch, and out there lurks the Venefica. Truly you didn't think that there were only vampires in this world? There are other creatures beyond the magic users and the bloodsuckers, it's true. Greater creatures. But they are reclusive and scorn humanity, choosing to stay hidden. That is The Accord. Humanity ignores them, they ignore humanity. You do not want to give them a reason to change their minds."

  "You freaks are doing a poor job of ignoring us. If The Accord has been broken, it's not by humanity, it's by your people."

  "The Sun Guard," Emeline cut in, "is stationed between humanity and the most active faction of the supernatural. Some leeway is given to us, for the sake of peace between all. That same leeway is not extended to your forces, Inspector Culver. You do not want to see what shakes out of the shadows when humanity breaks The Accord."

  "I've seen it," DeShawn said, thrusting a finger toward the ruined foyer. "And I'm stopping it."

  He turned on his heel and stormed out of the room, shouting at his sharpshooters to gather their things and move out. Talia moved to intervene, but Emeline shook her head, stopping her in her tracks.

  "Let him go. He'll find his superiors less willing to throw the laws of our world to the fires."

  "Whatever he does," I said, "we must move first. Maeve, has the tracker picked up anything?"

  Maeve tugged her phone out of one of her dozens of pockets and poked a few times at the screen, humming to herself. "She's going down the road. Will probably be doing so for what—at least twenty minutes until the next turn off?"

  "We should follow," I said, "at a distance."

  "No." Emeline cut the air with the edge of her hand. "We stay put and regroup. You need healing, Mags. Maeve, you will not lose track of Roisin, will you?"

  "Don't be stupid." She scoffed and shoved the phone back in her pocket. "Like I even need an app. Could find her by sniffing, I could."

  "Good. Roisin is as safe as she can be, under the circumstances, and we need to lick our wounds. Especially you."

  I clenched my fists at my sides, hating that she was right.

  "And besides," Emeline said, shoulders going rigid beneath the shelter of her blanket. "We
need to bury our dead."

  Thirty-Seven: Smoke

  The false night cleared just in time for the evening gloom to roll in. We gathered what was left of our dead and laid them with care on a bier of hastily piled wood in the back garden of the Durfort-Civrac estate. Adelia lay on the top of the bier, her arms folded across her chest, a red scarf draped across her throat to hide the angry slash.

  Emeline stood nearest of us all, a torch wavering in her hand as the soft, natural mist turned slowly to a gentle rain. Talia had insisted this type of burial was illegal. Emeline had asked her how she'd planned on explaining the pile of corpses to the authorities. And that had been the end of that. The Sun Guard families would be notified. Ashes would be provided. Nothing more could be done.

  The blood of the dead saturated the wood, a copper-and-rot scent permeating the air. Silence hung between us all, thick with impossible words. There was nothing to be said to ease what had happened here. Not a word in any language that could heal this pain.

  Only time would heal these wounds. Or allow them to fester.

  One by one, the guard stepped forward, laying trinkets on a ledge of wood. Small coins, hastily scrawled notes growing damp in the rain. Someone lay a cookie, crumbling at the edges, on the wood and stepped away, stifling a moan. Talia lay a rose. Seamus, a message wrapped around a twig. I lay shards of the glass I'd shattered, a broken rainbow, across the wood. Emeline had nothing to give but her tears, and the fire in her hands.

  When we had all given up what there was to give, Emeline stepped forward. Her lips moved, whispering something not even my keen hearing could pick up. Maybe she didn't speak words at all. She set the torch into its place, wedging it between the logs over a heap of kindling, and stepped back as the flames whooshed up, devouring the fuel we'd soaked the wood in.

  Human figures vanished beneath the glow of fire, but I could hear their skin crackling and curling, their hair sizzling and the fluids of their bodies hissing free. The stench was too much. I turned away, hiding my face, not wanting the others to see the nausea threatening to overwhelm me.

  Seamus touched my arm. "Let's go inside," he whispered.

  I looked up, seeking Emeline, but she had already gone.

  Seamus, Talia, and I left that place, seeking shelter from the rain of the sky and the storm in our hearts.

  I was not sure if we did the right thing. I suspected that there was no right thing to be done in the face of the dead.

  Thirty-Eight: Cold Promises

  Basil's car shuddered over deep potholes. He'd taken Maeve's phone and stuck it in a holster on his dashboard, a little blip of red light that was supposed to be Roisin's tracker leading the way. We'd waited until the next morning, allowing me to heal and the nightwalkers to go to ground. During the day, they'd be at their most vulnerable. According to Maeve, that dot hadn't moved in four hours.

  The northeast streets of London flashed by, dour faces hunkered against the light rain as the locals saw to their business. The further we went, the more Basil's sleek car stood out. If not for the damage done by the remnants, we would have been obvious interlopers. As it was, our car drew few eyes. Most people probably thought it was stolen.

  "Nothing but old warehouses up ahead, ma'am." Basil said, slowing the car.

  "Roisin should be somewhere on the next block. Can you bring us around the back?" Maeve asked.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  The roads emptied, the ratio between people and bold graffiti shifting toward the colorful. Barefaced warehouses crowded the roads, garbage growing in the corners of their doorways. Somewhere, the heavy beat of music filled the late morning air.

  "This is the address," Basil said.

  I leaned forward, gripping the back of Maeve's seat. A flat-roofed warehouse covered the whole of the block in front of me. Grey plaster walls were strangely bereft of graffiti, the only entrance a set of wide loading bay doors, the steel streaked with rust. Narrow windows dotted the top of the walls, covered by cages of black iron.

  The road around the block widened, the sidewalks patchy with trash and weeds breaking through the cracks. A tall warehouse across the street towered over Ragnar's hive, throwing it in shadow. It seemed a likely place to set up reconnaissance.

  "What is that building?" I pointed to the tall one.

  Basil pressed a few buttons on the phone and frowned. "I'm not sure, ma'am."

  "We'll have to stake it out, see if we can get inside. What about that?"

  I gestured to a narrow building crammed between two warehouses. The door was painted a cheery green, a planter of petunias hanging from a hook just outside. A white sign painted with black letters declared: ROOMS. A smattering of windows looked out toward Ragnar's compound.

  "That's... a youth hostel," Talia said.

  "Can we go in?" I asked.

  "Sure," Basil said, hesitant. "You could rent beds there."

  "Good. Let us out there, those windows have a clear line of sight to both Ragnar's hive, and the tall building across the street. If anyone is surveilling the area, we'll be able to spot them from there."

  "B-but..." Talia fumbled her phone and lunged to catch it.

  All the faces around me were pinched. "What's the problem?"

  Maeve chuckled. "Talia's afraid it's the kind of place you rent by the hour."

  "That sounds economical," I said, baffled by Talia's deep red blush. Basil coughed into one gloved hand to hide his laugh and pulled up alongside the curb.

  "I'll find an out-of-the-way spot to park the car," Basil said. "You call if you need me, Miss Shelley."

  The foyer of the hostel was as large as my closet back at Somerset House. A tall counter jutted out from the wall, cloistering a bent old woman with her glasses chain reaching down to her collarbone. She peered up at us over the hornbill frames and sniffed.

  "Lot o' ye. This isn't a hotel, y'know. Nothing fancy."

  Talia straightened her jacket and stepped to the counter. "We only need beds for the night, and through mid-morning, I think. We'll pay whatever you need for our privacy."

  "Ye can have the third floor for a hundred pounds, no one's there right now, but the second floor is the one with the toilets. Got a handful of backpackers staying there." She lowered her voice. "Americans."

  "That won't be a problem," Talia assured her with a flash of a smile that just made the little old lady frown. Talia pulled a note from her wallet and handed it over to the woman. She pushed her glasses up and peered at it.

  "This real?"

  Talia flushed. "Y-yes, of course."

  "Don't be playing any games with me now, missy." She stuffed the note in her pocket and shoved a wire-bound notebook toward us. "Put yer names here, everyone. Tea's at seven, don't be late or I won't hold your food."

  "Do we need a key?" Talia asked.

  The woman rolled her eyes, slammed her notebook shut, and trundled through a curtain to some hidden back room.

  "Well." Talia said, shooting me a look as if this were all my fault.

  Narrow stairs creaked under our feet, leading us to a peaked-ceiling attic with six cots lined up on one side, and a smattering of chairs. Dust motes danced in the air as Seamus flicked on the hissing lights.

  "Uh," he said, "at least there are outlets." He swung his rucksack from his shoulder and tugged out a fistful of cables.

  I pushed my sunglasses to the top of my head and dragged a chair to the window. Maeve crouched beside me.

  "Wards on all the doors. I'd have to get closer to see about the windows, they're too small to sense anything from here."

  "Can you break the wards?"

  "Oh, that's easy. Your problem will be that the Venefica will know they're broken. Can't hide that."

  "I see. So there's no way to get in unnoticed?"

  "Well. Well. I didn't say that, now did I? Give me some time to poke around and think."

  "We can't be sure how much time we have," I said, clutching the arms of my chair.

  "I'm aware." She sniffed.
"Isn't that your man?"

  "My what?"

  Maeve pointed. I hadn't been the only one to mark the tall warehouse as good for a stake-out. On the street, a white van rolled up to its loading bay. DeShawn swung down from the driver's seat, wearing jeans and a polo shirt with an indistinct logo. He tucked a clipboard under his arm and strolled around to the back of the van. Four more men piled out, loading up crates on a too-new hand truck. One strode up to the loading bay door of the building and produced a key, sliding up the aged steel.

  Everything about their operation was too clean, too precise. Those crates weren't carrying anything but surveillance gear and weapons, I was sure of it. The centuries may have wrong-footed me regarding modern methods of infiltration, but I knew a fake when I saw it. That van was too clean, the crates too high end, the uniforms fresh from the wash. Working men didn't look like that, and neither did their equipment. Ragnar would see through it all in a flash. Time changed a great deal, but it didn't change dirt.

  "That idiot."

  "What is it?" Emeline stepped to my side, her face growing cold. "I see. I will have a talk with him."

  "Bad idea," Seamus piped in. "He might even try to arrest you or something."

  "That man has no respect for The Accord," Maeve said.

  "He will start a war that would destroy humanity," Emeline whispered.

  "I'll speak with him," I said, standing.

  "He might try to arrest you, too," Emeline said.

  I flashed her a grin. "I'd like to see him try."

  Thirty-Nine: Two Monsters

  I waited until they'd settled in for a long surveillance before slipping into the building. I wanted them at their best, on full alert, to show DeShawn just what he was toying with. If I could sneak past his perimeter undetected, then so could those he watched. Maybe it was a touch of ego on my part, but I needed him to understand why The Accord existed. Why the mortal world used intermediaries like me to deal with its supernatural contingents.

  I wrapped myself in sunlight, making myself appear little more than a shimmer of a mirage against the backdrop of the day. Guards kept a close eye on all the entrances, glinting camera faces watching the doors. I had no need of doors.