Magic Awakening: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Spirit War Chronicles Book 1)

by Stephen Allan

  It was a portal to the spiritual realm, and it was all but a guarantee that someone had taken Nicholas across—or Nicholas had stumbled into it while on Devil’s Eye. Either way, I was going back to the realm and was likely to face more demons and monsters.

  At least I’d giddily laugh while fighting.

  I drew out Ebony and Ivory, seeing absolutely no point in having the guns tucked away, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the portal.

  It felt like jumping into a deep pool. When it reached my neck, I closed my eyes and clutched my guns tightly. The last thing I wanted was some demon taking my guns and forcing me to pull out my Krav Maga skills. Fortunately, moments later, I could breathe fine and still had my guns. I opened my eyes and was in the same stall.

  But in the spiritual realm, I knew physical similarities meant nothing. I prepared myself for the worst. I didn’t have to wait long.

  On the stall door, written in blood were the words “Come no further, Sonya.” The blood continued to trickle down until the words became incomprehensible, now just smears of blood.

  It should have terrified me and given me pause, but I never listened well when someone told me what to do without ever explaining why. I could listen and do what others said, sure—but not without reason, and certainly not if some underworld being used blood to tell me so. If anything, I’d become more determined to snap some necks and shoot some demons.

  I held my guns at the steady and kicked the door open, lurching to the main area of the bathroom, ready to unleash blue energy rounds into—

  Nothing.

  My guns remained targeted directly in front of me. The sound of whispering and footsteps outside kept my muscles ready to fire. “Sonya’s here.” “Take her.” “She shouldn’t have come.” “She looks delicious.” The words steeled my resolve. I’d show them who shouldn’t have come to me.

  I also told myself that whenever I saw Nicholas, I’d have to kick his sorry ass for ever thinking it was a good idea to do Devil’s Eye. It sounded funny when I was stoned in the human realm. It sure wasn’t funny now.

  I stepped forward carefully, mindful of my surroundings, watchful for any demons appearing out of the ceiling or the urinals or even the sink—I couldn’t be too careful. I stared at the mirror and saw eyes flicker behind me, but when I turned around, there was nothing. Just to be sure, I pressed my body against the wall and slid forward, making sure nothing could grab me from behind.

  Well, nothing normal, anyways.

  I reached the main door and kicked it open. As usual, the structure of the building remained the same, but the entire place was devoid of people. The lights which were here in the human realm had also vanished, replaced by a dull red glow that barely illuminated my surroundings. I could see directly in front of me, and I could see the outlines of hallways and pillars, but I could not clearly see more than about ten feet in front of me. I sure could still hear the whispers and cackles, though.

  Even as a trained CIA agent who had gone behind some of the most dangerous enemy lines on Earth, I had to admit this was just a little bit creepy. Just a tad, though.

  “Nicholas?” I said, a statement I regretted as soon as I made it. Never give your position away.

  Even if, truly, they already know you’re here.

  But as soon as I said it, I could hear what sounded like multiple legs skittering, paws racing somewhere, and hooves clopping. I turned Ebony to my left side and Ivory to my right, ready to take on enemies from multiple directions as needed.

  “Sonya!”

  The loud cry, which ended abruptly and did not echo, came from the bottom floor. I glanced over a railing and saw Nicholas’ hand disappear into a room directly beneath me. The drop was about twenty feet, a bit much for me to do without risking debilitating injury, so I ran to the stairs, took about a third of them, and then leaped down, dropping to my knees when I collided with the ground. I heard snickering and looked up.

  Two burly demons, each with their hands up, holding red fireballs of energy, faced me with obnoxious grins on their faces. They had dark, caved-in red faces, veins on the outside of their skin, claws for fingers, and incisors for teeth.

  “Fine, Mom always said die doing what you love,” I said, and I cocked Ebony and Ivory at each one, yanking the trigger.

  But they disappeared before I could hit them, vanishing into thin air as my shots slammed into the wall. They had left behind a double door, one just slightly ajar, with only darkness on the other side.

  “Sonya!”

  Damnit, Nicholas. Your stupid ass deserves this for disappear—

  I felt something sharp and massive slam into my lower back as if someone had taken a pickaxe and driven it into my lowest vertebrae. I gasped and lost control of my guns, falling to my knees. Then something round and thick slammed into my jaw, and I fell to the ground, woozy, lightheaded and spitting up blood.

  “This is what the Dark Lord wanted?” a warped voice said, sounding like it was a hundred miles away. “The two of us took her down without even trying!”

  “Don’t question what the Dark Lord wants!” the other said, her—her? The demon looked too burly to be a her—voice sounding like a hissing snake. “Our Lord has his reasons. If she is the one—”

  “We get rewarded, I am well aware, Slythera. I just imagined that he would have wanted something a bit more… intimidating.”

  “Don’t ask questions, you fool! Come, Nuforsa is waiting.”

  I felt two firm hands grab me, lift me up, and drag me across the ground. I could not fight back, I could not curse them out, and worse of all, I could not keep Ebony and Ivory. A few moments later, the blood loss became too much, and I passed out in the demons’ hands.

  ***

  I woke to the sounds of intense screaming, the kind that you would usually hear from a tortured hostage as a terrorist lifted up his fingernails and slid a knife across him.

  Remarkably, I was unchained and unbound. I was on a surprisingly lukewarm, wooden floor, in a room about the size of a small hotel lobby. The room was better lit, albeit still dark—the light from the ceiling had the same brightness as a room full of candles would. In front of me was a simple wooden door with a wolf’s head for what I assumed was the handle.

  I turned and saw two thick demons—the ones who captured me—blocking my view of another demon, wearing dark red robes, torturing a naked human. I saw the human’s curly hair and grimaced in horror as I saw Nicholas strapped to a table, enduring something that I felt grateful I could not witness in its entirety. His screams continued as the demons stood like statues.

  Then I saw on the wall behind all of them, displayed like trophies, my two guns, Ebony and Ivory.

  Hopeful that the demons had not noticed my awakening, I rushed through ways that I could rescue Nicholas and get us the hell out of here. I still had my martial arts skills, useful against enemies of all sizes and types. I could probably leap up and grab Ebony and Ivory, and once I had those, I was back in business. I didn’t have to defeat all three enemies head-on—just kill one and use the element of surprise on the other two before they could comprehend what was happening.

  I looked around the room for any other elements that I could use, but I didn’t see anything. This room was as plain as possible—it didn’t even have windows. I wasn’t entirely sure, really, if the door led anywhere. I didn’t know the rules of the spirit realm, and it’d be foolish for me to assume that the rules carried over from the human world.

  I slowly rose, deciding that moving while Nicholas cried his loudest would give me the cover I needed to execute my plan. I took three steps forward when Nicholas screamed again, leaving me about five feet from the first demon. I waited quietly, cruelly hoping that the demon in the robes would continue to harm the young Brit. I felt terrible that this is what it took, but better one of us alive and one of us in a horribly tortured state than both of us dead. Especially since no one else knew where we were.

  And even if they did, I couldn’t co
unt on them to conduct a successful rescue mission.

  Nicholas screamed again, intensely so—I didn’t dare think of what the robed demon had done—and I threw myself at the neck of the first demon. I snapped its neck and killed the demon. The monster crumpled to the ground and turned to dust.

  “What the fuck!” the other demon growled, the one with the distorted male voice.

  I didn’t have time to surprise it, but a swift kick to the stomach left it doubling over. I uppercut it in the jaw—how you like that, asshole—and then broke its neck while it was stunned. I sprinted to the last demon, but it casually raised its wrist. I felt like a tidal wave had crashed into my body as I slammed me into the wall.

  “I was wondering when you would awake,” the demon said, its voice feminine yet haughty. “My soldiers told me that you were not the one that the Dark Lord fears, but I knew otherwise. What you don’t know can hurt you, but once you know what something is, it rarely hurts you.”

  I struggled to my feet, determined to try a new approach. I had to stun this wicked woman, grab Ebony and Ivory, and then kill her. But… how?

  “Don’t bother planning anything. You can’t do anything in this room,” she said. “I’m just trying to spare you the trouble, Sonya. You see, I know everything that you can do, and then some. So your best bet is to just sit there quietly and enjoy the last few pain-free moments of your life before I finish up with this… human.”

  “And what exactly does that mean? You’re gonna kill him?” I spat.

  “Hahaha, hell no, when the Dark Lord needs soldiers? This boy may not have the skills you do or the fitness you possess, but once I break his soul and turn him into a shifter… although his soul is stronger than I expected, I suppose I should give—”

  Figuring the woman was distracted with her own rants as she examined a bloody knife in her hand, I quickly made a dash for Ebony and Ivory, about a dozen feet away from me. I weaved at about five feet out, figuring the demon might cast a spell on me, and then jumped. I grabbed Ebony and Ivory—

  And I didn’t fall down.

  She hadn’t hung the guns there. She’d welded them to the wall. They would not fall with me—I hung with them.

  Was this even physically possible?

  Didn’t matter. The spiritual realm played by its own rules.

  “I should have figured you wouldn’t listen, Sonya,” the demon said sardonically.

  She laughed maliciously at her own words. I felt my temper flare, and just to see what the hell would happen, I pulled the trigger on Ivory. I felt a scalding burn run on my hand and I immediately dropped from the guns, holding my hand and shaking it as much as I could as I groaned in pain. I didn’t want to groan, but…

  “Sigh,” she said, actually saying the word. “You’re too bullheaded for your own good, Sonya. I tell you what your best option is, and—”

  “Shut up,” I snapped. “I am going to figure out a way out of here, I am going to kill you, and I am going to make you suffer before I kill you.”

  “That’s cute,” the demon said, her voice even-keeled but with a definitive tone of condescension. “But you will learn soon enough that you cannot escape. You are trapped here.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  The demon, perhaps tired of my small talk, cast a spell on Nicholas that appeared to have the effect of freezing him. He stopped whimpering, moving—even breathing. The demon, whose face was hidden by the thick red robes, walked over to me, stopping about three feet in front of me. I stood up and saw she was about my height, assuming her hair was about as thick as the hood over her face.

  “Dearest Sonya Ferguson, there is so much you don’t know yet,” she said. “I will tell you something you can know now. Do you know why you will not kill me?”

  I folded my arms in disgust, refusing to answer.

  “It’s because I know everything there is about you, Sonya, and I can break you mentally before you even raise a finger. I could go with the basics, like how you never knew your father and how your mother died when you were seven years old. Or, I could go a bit deeper and note that your psychological complex is based almost entirely on how you want to break free of your brother’s grip and how desperately you want someone to love you without leaving you, but you know you never will have those things.”

  It was rare for me to bite on attacks like this. During CIA training, we’d undergone some of the most brutal, psyche-breaking words a human being could ever hear.

  Unfortunately, those were the tests I struggled with. And at this moment, I could feel the heat in me rising, and it wasn’t from drugs or sickness. I was losing control of myself.

  “Or should I talk about how you take such pride in being a CIA agent—such a badass woman—and yet you did so because you felt alone in life, and so you decided if you can’t be a part of anyone’s world, you’d just spy on them all?”

  “Save it, you know that’s full of shit,” I said, but this bitch was reaching into places I didn’t even venture myself.

  “Is it? Who are your friends besides your brother?”

  I bit my lip, trying not to give this demon the satisfaction of what she wanted. But there was an element of truth to her words. Brady and I hung out with each other almost exclusively outside of the rare dates we had because few people understood us or could ever know of our full lives.

  “Strange, for someone who has such a smart mouth and is willing to claim she’s so independent, you sure do seem awfully silent and incapable of defending yourself right now.”

  That was enough. I raised my leg to kick her.

  But to my horror, she grabbed my leg, brought me closer, and decked me in the jaw. She wasn’t kidding. Only someone trained in martial arts could have executed that move as smoothly as she did.

  “Who the hell are you?” I said as I rubbed my jaw.

  “I was wondering when you would be polite enough to ask about me,” she said. “My name is Nuforsa. I am Mundus’ second-in-command. And I am your worst nightmare.”

  Nuforsa then lowered her hood, and to my surprise, she did not possess the blood red body that every other demon I’d seen had. Instead, she had pale white skin—almost deathly pale—brown eyes, an extremely gaunt, almost impossible long face, and dirty blonde hair. She looked like something out of a Renaissance painting—she would’ve been beautiful if not for the fact that she was a goddamn demon who had just kicked my ass.

  “See, most people believe that to hurt someone, you do it literally. You hit them in the head, you break their bones, you cut them, and so on. But that’s so short-sighted. Scars will heal, and even when they don’t, they’re worn as badges of honor. I know you won’t disagree with me. The man you want to be your fuckboy is hot to you for that exact reason.”

  I hated this, I hated this, I fucking hated this.

  Nuforsa was getting to me. She was pissing me off. Controlled anger was good. Uncontrolled anger was like holding dynamite—if I threw it away before it exploded, it could create some major damage, but if I didn’t, I’d be the one paying the price.

  And the only emotion I felt was uncontrolled anger.

  “Besides, as it is, I have strict orders to keep you alive. The Dark Lord would not much appreciate it if I brought his prized possession to him dead.”

  “Who, Mundus?”

  For the first time, I saw Nuforsa’s eyes go wide. She kicked me in the gut and left me doubling on the ground, coughing up blood and gasping for air.

  “Don’t you dare let me hear you use the Dark Lord’s name again, am I clear?!?”

  When I did not respond, Nuforsa kicked me again. This one hurt less, but only because I think my body was beginning to shut down my nervous system.

  “OK, damn, I get it, I get it, I won’t say his name again… Mundus,” I whispered, but Nuforsa must have heard me for she sent one more foot into my face. “Way to make my so-called ‘fuckboy’ want to never see my face again.”

  “That’s cute that you think it’ll get
to that point. And besides, I know you. You don’t actually want him to just be a fuckboy. Oh, don’t give me that look. You may tell yourself you aren’t in a position to date or that you don’t want to date, or some other bullshit excuse like you’re in Europe and you won’t get entangled, but you know what you want. You know that at the very least, you want to spend more time with him. And you want there to be more.”

  How… no, she’s not right. I’m here on vacation, and I met DJ in that way.

  And yet…

  “Now then, let me tell you what you are, Sonya. You are an orphan who has gotten this far only because her brother has nothing else going for him that he has to raise his sister.”

  “Brady is not like that!” I shouted.

  “Oh? Why do you think he dropped out of college after just a semester?”

  “Because he wanted to watch me and make sure I wasn’t getting into the shit that he got into in high school!”

  Nuforsa just smirked and folded her arms, a look of unbelievable amusement on her face. I was still too weak to rise, but damn did her ugly face give me a little bit of extra energy… not enough to stand, but enough that one further insult might get me on my feet.

  “Really? Really. Think about it, Sonya. You and your brother weren’t particularly close before he went to college. Sure, he took care of you, made sure you got to school, all good. But was it not until he came back that you two became close?”

  “You’re full of shit,” I spat, but the truth was, her words were striking a disturbingly accurate chord.

  “I am full of many things, Sonya, but shit is not one of them. Your brother did not have the discipline to survive a single semester at college, and thus came back, kicked out for poor academic achievement after he nearly became an alcoholic like your mother. And then what? He joins the CIA, tells you he’s setting an example for you… except in reality, it was the only route he had left. I will give your brother this—for as much as he doesn’t tell you, he does at least take good care of you.”