Stormfront (The Storm Chronicles Book 9)

by Skye Knizley

  The right of Skye Knizley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it was published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by: Dreams2Media

  Edited by: Elizabeth A. Lance

  Copyright© 2017 Skye Knizley

  All rights reserved

  Raven Storm™ Aspen Kincaid™ Mason Storm™ and The Storm Chronicles™

  property of Skye Knizley.

  Released through Vamptasy Publishing

  www.vamptasy.com

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  The Storm Chronicles™

  Stormrise

  Stormrage

  Stormwind

  Shadowstorm

  Raven

  Storm

  Aspen (Occurs chronologically between Stormrage and Stormwind)

  Night Raven

  Stormfront

  Deadly Storm

  Stormcry

  Ravenblood

  Other Storm Chronicles™ Novels

  Fresh Blood

  Blood Highway

  Storm Mage

  Other Skye Knizley Tales

  Requiem

  Winter Cove™

  Havoc™

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  THE STORM CHRONICLES

  Forget what you think you know about the world. There is another world, a world where true evil exists, lurking in the darkness. Vampires, Lycans, Demons, the Bogeyman and all the other things that go bump in the night walk among you, rub shoulders with you…and feed on you.

  I’m something different. I was born to a pureblood vampire and an Immortal. I have a vampire’s strength and abilities and almost none of their weaknesses. They call me Dhampyr, or day walker. And that’s when they’re being nice.

  I used to be a Chicago cop, homicide division. Now I’m with the FBI, Section Thirteen. Don’t ask. All I can tell you is when darkness comes crawling out of the pit, I’m the one who sends it screaming back to hell.

  I am the Night.

  I am Raven Storm.

  PROLOGUE

  Raven Storm lay on a dirt floor so hard it was almost concrete. She could smell old manure, kerosene, death and blood, scents that made her feel weak and queasy. She opened her eyes and looked up at a sliver of light that hung just a few feet away. As her mind cleared she realized it was Muldoon’s Mirror, but it couldn’t...shouldn’t be here. It had blown up in Riscassi’s office, she was certain of it.

  Raven climbed to her feet and wiped the blood from her eyes, clearing her vision. She was in an old barn, beaten by time and weather until the boards were as thin as paper. They creaked in the wind and cast shadows of moonlight on the floor and an old tractor that sat nearby leaking oil onto a new-looking canvas tarp. Other tarp-covered oblongs were arranged in rows that stretched to the back of the barn. Raven counted more than a dozen, and she didn’t need to see them to know what they were, her nose told her they were corpses, rotting away.

  A sound from behind caught her attention and she turned. The mirror was rocking back and forth on its nail, reflecting the light of the moon. In the glow, she saw the faces, hundreds of them. They were stretched and nailed to the wall on either side of the mirror.

  “They’re your trophies, you sick bastard,” she muttered.

  “Not trophies! Every soul must be honored. Every soul, even one as depraved as yours!”

  The clown rammed into her from behind and she felt his blade bite deep into her chest. She cried out in pain and pulled away, taking the blade with her. When she turned, it was to see the clown, covered in her blood. He was smaller and less sinister than he’d appeared in the mirror.

  Raven raised her pistol and leveled it at him. “You’re back in my world, and your ass is under arrest. Get your hands up!”

  The clown smiled. “My job is done, God is calling me.”

  He raised his arms and Raven saw it wasn’t just her blood covering him, but his own. All the places she’d struck him were bleeding, including the two holes in his chest.

  Raven sank to her knees, the blood pouring from her back was making her lightheaded. “Sorry, pal, that isn’t God you hear. Tell Riscassi, Storm sends her regards.”

  The look of joy on the clown’s face faded, to be replaced with one of fear. He drew a breath, and pitched onto his face, dead. Raven watched him for a moment then rose to her feet and pulled the knife from her back. She tossed it down beside the clown’s body and retrieved her phone out of her pocket. It was still working, but there was no signal.

  “Swell, where the hell am I?”

  The barn door behind her opened and a familiar voice said, “You shouldn’t be here!”

  She turned and shielded her eyes from the headlights of a car sitting in the field beyond.

  “Dad?”

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Barn, Somewhere Outside Chicago

  There was a stillness in the night. The wind still rustled, playing with dead corn somewhere beyond the walls and whistling through cracks in the barn, but it was muted, as if the Universe was somehow waiting for the other shoe to drop. Raven stared at the man in the doorway and let her eyes adjust to the light. It was her father, Mason Storm. She would know him anywhere, she’d spent her youth crying to his photo. He’d shaved his beard and his hair was longer than she remembered, pulled into a ponytail that hung above the collar of his trench coat, but it was him. He was dressed in a grey suit with black tie and a fedora that hung around his ears like a bonnet, wet from the rain.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he repeated.

  Raven glared at him. “How did you know I was here? Are you following me?”

  “I didn’t know you were here, I came for the Harlequin. I’ve been tracking that bastard for two weeks,” Storm said.

  He entered and looked closely at Raven. He took her chin in his hand and moved her head back and forth then nodded, as if satisfied, and let go.

  “I thought I knew all the predators in town, what’s your name?”

  “Did you hit your head or something?” Raven asked.

  “Look, kid, I don’t have time for this. You aren’t supposed to be here, we both know it. I’m guessing Harlequin pulled you out of that damn mirror and was going to serve you up on a platter, only he didn’t know he’d grabbed a vampire,” Storm said.

  He turned and looked down at Harlequin and the broken mirror. “You left enough of him I
can cover up the kill, but you have to get out of here. If Karayan finds you out here without permission, he’ll skin you alive.”

  “Dad, what the hell are you on about? You know perfectly well what my name is and that I am not a vampire,” Raven snapped.

  Storm raised an eyebrow. “Why do you keep calling me ‘Dad’?”

  Raven glared at him. “Is this one of Sable’s stupid jokes? It’s her kind of humor. Knock it off, I just want to go home. Where are we, anyway? It smells like Cleveland. I hate Cleveland.”

  Storm opened his mouth to reply, but something caught his attention. He cocked his head and listened. Raven caught the faint sound of sirens, but they sounded…odd. Tinny, almost like the hand-cranked variety used on fire towers.

  “Backup is almost here. Go wait in my car and for God’s sake don’t let anyone see how you’re dressed. You should be ashamed of yourself,” Storm said.

  He pushed Raven toward the waiting car. Raven spun and grabbed his lapels, her temper flaring. “I don’t care about your backup, I’m a Fed, I outrank them! I’ve been dressing like this since high school, which you would have known if you’d stuck around with Mom, and I don’t take instruction very well. What in the blue hell is wrong with you?”

  Storm’s forehead creased and he reached down to pry Raven’s hands from his coat. Raven was surprised at the power in his hands, enough that she let go without further struggle. He’d never raised a hand to her, not even in anger. The look in his eyes was…strange. There were hints of red in the depths she’d never noticed before.

  “We can talk about this later, you need to get out of sight. Nobody is going to buy that a woman is a Fed, least of all my partner. Please, will you just do as I ask?” Storm said.

  Raven rolled her eyes. “Fine. But we’re getting into this when you’re done.”

  She turned and strode to the waiting vehicle, which she recognized as a 1930s V12 Packard. It was a two-door roadster painted maroon with whitewall tires and a beige convertible top sagging from Illinois winter. Raven pulled the door open and plopped into the passenger seat just as three black and white’s pulled to a stop near the barn. She rubbed her tired eyes and tried to focus. At first she’d thought the cars were simply old Fords, but these were Plymouth sedans from the 40s, decked out with red emergency lights and wailing sirens. Uniformed police swarmed from them and formed a perimeter outside the doors, while a plain clothes detective approached Storm.

  Raven leaned back in the seat, which smelled of Old Spice and gunpowder. It didn’t seem possible, but the scene playing out in front of her was like a colorized version of a noir drama. She expected Bogey to step out at any moment and call her sweetheart like only he could, or Nazis to run by looking for Dr. Jones. It couldn’t be real, could it?

  The officers continued to talk, huddled in their coats against the cold and the rain. Once or twice they glanced at Raven, but none seemed to have any particular interest. Raven realized they couldn’t see much through the frosted windshield and that somehow made her grateful. If what she thought was going on had happened, it was best they didn’t take much notice of her. They might ask questions she couldn’t answer.

  Storm stepped back into the rain to talk to one of the officers. He motioned to the body and the car several times, pointed back into the barn, then tipped his hat and strode toward the car and opened the door. His hat was tossed into the back and he looked at Raven for a moment. Then, without comment, he turned the ignition key in the middle of the dash and pressed the starter button with his thumb. The V12 engine rumbled to life and he began to guide the car down a muddy dirt road barely visible in the lights. They were in the middle of a farmer’s field surrounded by trees and a house so old it had probably seen refugees from the Civil War.

  “What year is it?” Raven asked after a moment.

  Storm’s hands tensed on the wheel. “I thought that might be the case.”

  Raven looked at him. “How did you know?”

  Storm shrugged. “You aren’t the first victim who wasn’t from around here, though you’re the only one I found alive. It’s 1943 and you’re about an hour outside Chicago.”

  It was surreal. She knew what he was saying and could see the evidence with her own eyes. An hour outside Chicago was still, basically, Chicago, or at least urban sprawl. There should be houses and buildings, businesses, manufacturing, not fields and trees as far as she could see.

  She closed her eyes and tried to focus. “You aren’t joking, are you? This isn’t some kind of weird gag, this is real.”

  “As real as it gets, kid. Where are you from?” Storm asked.

  “Chicago, I was born and raised here.”

  She felt his eyes on her. Raven opened hers and met his gaze. His blue eyes were warmer than they had been, but still colder than those of the father she’d loved and mourned for years.

  “How far in the future?” he asked.

  “Too far. I have to get back, Dad. I left my wife, my job…Mom,” Raven said.

  Storm sighed and fished in his pocket. He pulled a cigarette from a Lucky Strike pack and lit it with a battered Zippo he opened with one hand. When he was done, he snapped the lighter closed and stuck it back in his pocket.

  “Two things,” he said from the cloud of smoke. “First, did you say ‘wife’?”

  Great, my father’s a closet homophobe. Isn’t there a rule about never really getting to know your parents? He’d never expressed any sort of bigotry, but then this was seventy years before, times had changed.

  She shrugged. “Yes, things aren’t so uptight where I’m from. What of it?”

  Storm waved a hand. “Nothing. I’m just surprised, you don’t seem like the marrying kind. I mean, since when does a vampire do more than shack up with a familiar or three?”

  Raven’s anger flashed in her eyes. “There you go again. I am not a vampire.”

  Storm glanced at her again. “So I see. You’re immortal, then?”

  Raven bit her tongue and turned away. How much could she say about her life? She wasn’t much for science fiction, but she’d seen enough movies to know it was usually bad to change the past.

  “It’s okay,” Storm said. “I mean, I can guess. You keep calling me ‘Dad’, your eyes glow green when you’re angry and you have my jawline. I thought it was coincidence, at first, but it isn’t, is it? What’s your last name? Mason, Wolfe or Storm?”

  Raven rested her head against the cool window. It was beginning to ache. Time travel and a younger version of her father was outside even her realm of weird. “My name is Storm. Raven Storm.”

  Storm took a long drag on his cigarette and blew it out through his nose. “I haven’t used that name in a while. So when does Mack Mason die?”

  “I don’t know,” Raven said. “In my lifeline I just now found out you were still alive. I only ever knew you as Mason Storm.”

  “That figures.” He rolled the window down and tossed his cigarette into the night.

  “You’re being awful blasé about all of this,” Raven said.

  “This isn’t my first rodeo, kid. Meeting a half-vampire immortal daughter who hasn’t been born yet isn’t the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” Storm replied. “It isn’t even in the top five.”

  He pulled the Packard onto a two-lane blacktop and accelerated. The movement jarred Raven, who opened her eyes and saw the lights of a city she knew had to be Chicago, but it looked smaller and so much darker than it did in her time. On the lake were lights she wasn’t accustomed to, as well. It looked like some kind of Naval vessel, but she couldn’t be sure. It looked big, with a tall central conning tower, two smaller towers on the foredeck and a third aft.

  “What’s that thing?”

  Storm looked where she was pointing. “Eurydice, a research vessel, or so Roosevelt claims. She’s paired with a Destroyer to protect against U-Boats in the lake. One sank the
Milwaukee II six months ago. Damndest thing, no one knows how it got all this way, the locks should be off limits.”

  Raven chewed her lip. Something about that bothered her, rang a distant alarm bell. It certainly didn’t look like any research vessel she’d ever seen. It looked like a destroyer with two deck guns and some kind of rocket launcher.

  “There’s nothing like that in the history books,” she said.

  The Packard accelerated as the rain lessened. “Trust me, kid, history is written by the winners. They tend to edit out the less favorable parts. If a U-Boat in the middle of the United States looks bad, it will vanish from history like it never happened.”

  Michigan Avenue, 11:00PM, Oct 30, 1943

  The streets of Chicago were nearly deserted at this hour and the Packard cruised unmolested through the city to a large hotel on Michigan Avenue. The sign above the lobby entrance read, “The Stevens.” It was a brick and concrete building with a well-lit entry and sidewalk, awning for guests to relax out of the weather and an outdoor restaurant that would be open during spring and high summer. Most of the windows were dark and Raven assumed the hotel was mostly empty. During war time, most people couldn’t afford to take vacation.

  Storm parked on the street and Raven looked up at the building. It still stood in her own time, though it was now owned by one of the major hotel chains. She’d even been there a time or two, though she found it far too stuffy for her taste. Tequila shots should come with neither umbrellas nor fancy little cocktail napkins. They should come with salt and a slice of lime.

  “What are we doing at a hotel?” she asked.

  “This is my place. You’re stuck with me until we can figure a way to get you home,” Storm said.

  Raven made a face. “You live in a hotel? What about an apartment, a nice bachelor pad or maybe a house somewhere?”

  Storm shrugged out of his coat and hung it over her shoulders. “Room service, laundry service, maid service and the best shoe shine in the city. Besides, with the war on its practically empty, they can use the business.”

  Raven tugged on the coat. It smelled like him, like she remembered from her childhood. Old Spice, gunpowder and sweat. “And this? What’s this for?”