The Amplifier Protocol (Amplifier 0)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  “I ain’t disturbing you.”

  “You do disturb me. But there’s an easy fix.”

  He frowned, blinking at me and swaying slightly on his feet. Then he purposefully straightened, raking a heated gaze over me. His lips curled disdainfully. He was wearing a school jacket from a university I would have bet he’d either never attended or had failed out of in his first year.

  A lusty grin slowly stretched across Tyler’s face. There was something nasty in the expression.

  Good.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked, puffing up his chest and swaying slightly.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” I said, closing the space between us until he was within easy reach.

  He blinked at me again. Then he grinned. “Really? You want some Tyler, eh babe?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  He nodded. “I’ve got beer if you’ve got a bed nearby.”

  I grinned. “How do you know Hannah hasn’t pressed charges? Did your daddy tell you it was okay to come back into town?”

  He stopped smiling. “What do you know about it, bitch?”

  I took a step closer, our noses practically touching. “I know that you deserve to take everything you ever did to Hannah Stewart. Every slap, every punch, and more.”

  “Yeah?” he jeered. “And who’s going to deliver it?”

  “Me.”

  He snorted.

  Paisley, still appearing to be a regular pit bull, stepped out of the darkness right beside me, mumbling discontentedly. Probably because I hadn’t waited to include her in the threatening part of the proceedings.

  Tyler flinched, stumbling back until he was pressed against Hannah’s door.

  I sighed.

  “You crazy bitch,” he snarled, his gaze flicking between the pit bull and me. “You can’t just walk up and threaten someone like that.”

  “No? What if our genders were reversed? Then would it be okay for me to threaten you? To beat you up? Chase you into the forest?”

  He straightened, fighting through his inebriation for some bravado. “You know what? Maybe it’s you who needs to be put in your place.”

  I smiled. “Are you the man to do it, Tyler?”

  “Hell yeah, I am.”

  He stepped forward.

  I let him grab me.

  He wrapped his hands around my upper arms, trying to yank me off my feet. He didn’t even manage to move me.

  “You’re stretching my sweater. I like this sweater.”

  “What the fuck?” he muttered. Then he stepped back and swung for me, openhanded.

  I grabbed his arm midstrike. Then, quite deliberately — so he could see me do it — I snapped his wrist.

  He howled in pain, hunching over. His open can of beer hit the landing, fizzing all over.

  Paisley knocked him all the way down with a lazy swipe. He keeled over, then scrambled back to press himself against the door again, hunched over and holding his arm.

  I glanced around. No lights flicked on in any of the nearby apartments or houses behind us. I stepped closer, leaning over Tyler. “Care to try again?”

  He kicked out.

  I broke his ankle.

  He shrieked.

  Paisley chortled.

  I straightened to survey the neighborhood again. Still quiet. Though honestly, I had no doubt that even if the neighbors were inclined to report a disturbance, the local law would back any version of any story I related to them.

  Tyler broke down into mewling sobs.

  “Really?” I asked. “That’s all it takes to make you cry?”

  “You’re crazy,” he muttered wetly. “I could call the cops.”

  “And I could have just killed you.” I crouched beside the sniveling coward, grabbing his face and twisting his head to force eye contact. “Couldn’t I, Tyler? I could kill you right now. Then I’d pack you into the trunk of your own car, drive you home, and feed you to your father’s pigs.”

  He sniveled, wiping his nose with his uninjured hand. “Why don’t you then, bitch?”

  “Because I’m not that sort of person anymore. Or … to be completely accurate, I don’t want to be that person anymore. Unless I’m pushed. Do you want to push me, Tyler?”

  He shook his head sharply.

  “I can’t hear you. Do you want to push me?”

  “No.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “Leave Hannah alone.”

  “Hmm. Actually that doesn’t seem good enough, does it? So how about this. If you ever raise your hand to another woman ever again, I’ll know it.”

  “That’s not possible. What are you going to do? Devote your life to tailing me?”

  I grinned at him.

  He flinched.

  “I just might. You’ll never know, will you? And if it isn’t me, you’d better believe that someone will be around to beat your ass.” I reached forward so quickly that he wouldn’t have seen me move. Then I paused. Watching the terror dawn on his face, I flicked his nose.

  He peed his pants.

  Well, that was disgusting. And honestly, he’d folded a little too quickly to fully satisfy my desire for vengeance.

  I sighed, straightening to pull Christopher’s cellphone out of my pocket. Then I texted Tyler’s location to Jenni Raymond as I wandered down the dark exterior stairs and into the back parking lot. I eyed his car while I waited for a reply.

  “Hey, Paisley,” I murmured. “You want to puncture some tires?”

  Chortling quietly to herself, the demon dog slunk around the car, systematically shredding each tire.

  The cellphone pinged.

  >I’ll be right there.

  He isn’t going anywhere quickly.

  I tucked the phone in my pocket and wandered back toward the Mustang. I could have given the RCMP officer a heads-up the moment Tyler triggered the perimeter spell. I could have — I should have — stayed out of it. But there had just been too many other times that I’d been forced to walk away. Too many people who’d died because I couldn’t or wouldn’t save them.

  Hannah Stewart wasn’t going to end up on that list.

  I wasn’t certain Jenni could persuade Hannah to press charges. But now the RCMP officer’s efforts would be backed by mine. By me.

  I drove home, ignoring the series of text messages that pinged through on Christopher’s cellphone as Jenni Raymond peppered me with questions. Unless Tyler told her differently, the RCMP officer would think Christopher had broken his wrist and ankle. And Tyler Grant was never going to admit that a woman beat him.

  That was fine by me. On both counts.

  The house was dark when I arrived home. I climbed back into bed, burrowed under the quilt, and fell asleep contentedly.

  Please enjoy a preview from Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1).

  September 2018.

  A sorcerer pushed open the door of the diner, both of his hands on the metal handle that bisected its glass. Holding himself upright. He raised his shockingly blue eyes, seeking out and pinning me into place in the red-vinyl booth situated at the far corner.

  My heart fluttered oddly, even as my rational mind immediately snapped to assessing the situation.

  Three exits.

  The first required a vault over the stools and the laminate counter, then a quick dash through the kitchen beyond. This had the added advantage of putting me within reach of the shotgun gathering dust under the cash register. A shotgun I was fairly certain was illegal in Canada. I hadn’t researched the country’s gun laws, though, because guns rarely worked against the magically inclined. The Adept.

  So even with his magic as drained as it felt, a gun might backfire if I tried to use it against the sorcerer currently blocking the second exit.

  His hair was dark brown, his chiseled jaw shadowed with stubble. His black suit and rumpled white dress shirt were streaked with dirt. No tie. No objects of power on him. Not that I could feel, anyway. But I picked up magic in people
more consistently than I did in artifacts.

  The sorcerer looked as though someone had tortured him, drained his magic, then just tossed him from a vehicle and sped off — including a scrape on one of his cheekbones that was so sharply defined it might have cut glass.

  Cheekbones? Cut glass?

  That was an absurd thought.

  The second exit was through the sorcerer himself. And by the way he stumbled as he stepped into the aisle between the booths along the windows and the red-vinyl-topped metal stools that lined the counter, he was slow. Likely so drained that I’d be on the sidewalk before he even reacted to my passing.

  He placed his hand on the back of the nearest booth, earning a disconcerted glance from Harry Morris, co-owner of Cowichan Kayak and Tubing. Harry had just started eating his lunch — a burger with all the fixings, including bacon. He ordered the exact same thing every Friday.

  The sorcerer straightened, visibly reining himself in, smoothing his demeanor. But he stood out among the small-town locals even more than I did, and I’d put a lot of time and energy into being accepted, even if I couldn’t truly fit in. He was going to draw the attention of everyone in the packed diner. And then I’d be forced to make a choice, instead of just sitting in the booth and gazing at him as if in awe. As if struck by … something.

  It was his magic, or lack of it, that intrigued me.

  Yes. That had to be it.

  Of course, that didn’t explain the way I felt. Amped up, stomach churning, heart rate spiking. But at the same time, sedate, easy … languid.

  He flexed his hands. His fingers were long and unadorned, though distinct tan lines indicated that he’d recently worn rings on each finger, as well as spent significant time in a sunny climate. The rings had most likely been filled with his power. Practical adornments that had been stripped along with his magic.

  I forced myself to focus on everything that was wrong about the situation and what my options were, now that I’d allowed the sorcerer to close the space between us. I was down to my third possible exit. I could go through the window. A relatively easy move, which would in no uncertain terms let every Lake Cowichan local currently lunching in the diner know that I was more. More than human. More than I wanted them to know.

  It would draw far too much attention, though it wasn’t the mundanes — those without magic — that concerned me. Rather, such actions might allow the powers that enforced the secrecy of the Adept world — or the members of the Collective themselves — to become aware of my continued existence. Gaining the notice of either would mean a prison sentence. Just not necessarily one that came with a barred cell.

  All three exits required me to run. Through the town, north along the lake, all the way home. Grabbing our go-bags, climbing into the Mustang, and leaving.

  Leaving.

  Leaving everything I’d spent the last ten months cementing, the previous five years making possible — risking exposure, and occasionally my life, to earn the money necessary to build … a new life. An actual life.

  The sorcerer took two more steps my way and his expression shifted, causing him to falter as if he’d just gotten a read on my magic. He had just figured out that I represented everything he’d lost, every iota of power that had been stripped from him. He stumbled, resting his hand on the back of another booth.

  “Can I help you?” Mary Davis asked him, still chewing a bite of her chicken salad. Mary, along with her husband, Brett Davis, was a local real estate agent. They had held the listing on the property I’d purchased over eighteen months ago, even before the disastrous job in San Francisco that had nearly been my last.

  The sorcerer ignored Mary. I was his sole focus. His sole desire.

  In his obvious state of need, he might kill me to get the power running through my veins. And I realized with something like shock that I was fully capable of just stepping out of the booth and letting him have me. Letting him consume me.

  At that ridiculous thought, my strange physical reaction to the sorcerer’s appearance resolved into unmistakable, unbidden desire. That warmth curled through and settled in my lower stomach, informing me instantly that I’d only ever felt a shadow, the barest hint, of lust before.

  I knew I should have been reacting. I should have been moving. Instead, I was just sitting there, staring at him as if he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. As if his beauty had knocked every rational thought right out of my head, dampening every instinct.

  Behind the long counter, Brian Martin, co-owner and operator of the Home Cafe, paused after placing a piping hot plate of tuna casserole in front of Lani Zachary. The ex-air force technician, now a mechanic, had cropped her dark hair short at the beginning of the summer, and her bangs were just long enough to brush her eyebrows now. She was perched on her habitual stool, eating at the counter. Brian, a barrel-chested and balding, soft-spoken man in his early fifties, frowned at the sorcerer, wiping his hands on his white cotton apron.

  Lani swiveled on her stool, following Brian’s gaze. Her hazel eyes narrowed as she traced the sorcerer’s focused intent back to me in the corner booth.

  I was going to have to act. I was going to have to make a choice. Otherwise, people were going to get hurt. Hurt in a way that would draw unwanted attention.

  I wasn’t ready.

  I just wasn’t ready. I’d wanted more than ten months. I’d been hoping … thinking that we might be able to stay. That Christopher, Paisley, and I might be able to put down roots in this small town, tucked away from all the powerful Adepts who’d want to use us, to control us if they knew we existed. If they knew what we were capable of doing.

  The sorcerer was five steps away. He didn’t seem quite so unsteady on his feet now.

  Was this what looking into your future was like? A slow, torturous stroll punctuated by indecision, and yet … desire? A dreadful aching desire to reach forward and embrace what was coming, no matter where it took you.

  “Can I help you?” Brian asked from behind the counter.

  Lani plucked her napkin from her lap, placing it down beside her plate. Her own latent, untapped magic was coiling within her, but so quietly that the sorcerer wouldn’t be able to feel it under everything emanating, beckoning from me.

  I naturally and continually dampened my magic, of course. But a sorcerer of his power level would be able to trace any residual, even subconsciously. He could have followed the path I’d inadvertently laid along the roads I walked every few days in my almost obsessive need to create habitual routines.

  Lani was going to reach out. She was going to touch the stranger’s shoulder, holding him back from closing the space between us.

  Then the violence that the sorcerer was barely keeping contained was going to explode all over the diner — taking those with whom I was building tentative relationships with it.

  I set down my soup spoon, unaware that I’d still been holding it. I slid out from the booth.

  The sorcerer hesitated, sweeping his hungry gaze down to my ankles and white sneakers, then up all the five foot ten inches of me — pale bare legs, sundress, wide shoulders. Long neck and green eyes, and red hair that fell in a straight sheet down to the middle of my back.

  “Hello.” I spoke as if I knew him. As if I’d been waiting for him.

  And for the moment that the word hung between us, I thought it might just be true. I might have known him forever, though I was just meeting him for the first time.

  Brian and Lani exchanged glances, their combined concern easing from protective to simply wary.

  Oblivious to everything around him, the sorcerer closed the space between us far quicker than he’d been moving previously. He was taller than me, maybe six foot one. I had to tilt my head to maintain eye contact.

  He reached out, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck, his thumb across my throat. His grip was harsh.

  But though I was completely unaccustomed to being touched, even gently, I didn’t break his hold. I didn’t try to step away.
<
br />   Frustration, restlessness, and a fierce need filtered through his touch, picked up through my latent empathic ability. I kept my gaze locked to his, slowly raising my hand and hovering my fingertips by the road rash on his cheek. “You’re hurt.”

  His frustration turned to confusion. Then, as he felt the magic that hummed through my skin no matter how tight a rein I kept on my power, it shifted into amazement. Even awe. He gasped, his pupils expanding and his expression softening into a different sort of hunger.

  A hunger much closer to the need, the desire, that was already brewing in my lower stomach.

  “Hey!” Brian shouted.

  “Are you here to kill me?” I asked in a whisper. “Or am I supposed to kill you?”

  The sorcerer frowned. His grip loosened, hand falling away from my neck, severing our empathic connection. “I’m … I don’t know.”

  (END OF PREVIEW)

  To continue reading be sure to pick up

  Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  * * *

  For Michael

  Tattooed. On my heart.

  * * *

  With thanks to:

  * * *

  My story & line editor

  Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  * * *

  My proofreader

  Pauline Nolet

  * * *

  My beta readers

  Didi Brady, Michelle Burdan, Karen Hunt Colvin, Anteia Consorto, Terry Daigle, Angela Flannery, Gael Fleming, Stacey Mackes, Beth Patterson, Megan Gayeski Pirajno, and Heather Pesaresi.

  * * *

  For their continual encouragement, feedback, & general advice

  SFWA

  The Office

  The Retreat

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  * * *