Shawdow Detective Box Set, Vol. 2 [Books 4-6]

by Massa, William

  Shakily, I lurched toward the mausoleum’s exit. I kicked the crypt’s steel door open. Fresh night air greeted me, and I greedily inhaled. To my surprise, the cemetery around me had returned to its original appearance. All signs of the dark fortress had vanished. I was standing at the center of an ordinary, rundown cemetery, surrounded by rings of tombstones. All was as it had been this afternoon…with one crucial difference. Closer inspection revealed that the glyphs and runes were gone. The previously dormant black magic had been released.

  Things were back to normal. Or as normal as they got in the Cursed City.

  “Isn’t there something you’re forgetting?”

  Cyon’s voice made me flinch. I had forgotten about the book. Even though every instinct told me not to return to the nightmarish place I’d just escaped, I found myself heading back into the crypt. Archer was in the process of getting up and helping Jennifer do the same. She eyed me curiously as I brushed past her and stepped up to the central coffin. The sarcophagus had stopped glowing, nothing left to hint at the casket’s previous occult power.

  I gave myself an inner push and popped the lid. The empty, lifeless eyes of the ghoul peered back at me. The creature’s skin had turned a dull grey, the phosphorescent glow of its inhuman skin now extinguished for good. I had killed this monster once before and only the cemetery’s dark magic had revived it. With the magic gone, death had claimed the beast at last.

  My eyes shifted from the creature’s haunting face and locked on the tattered, mud-covered trench coat. I rifled through it, fighting back my disgust. Even in death, the ghoul gave off a stomach-turning stench of mold and decay.

  The first pocket was empty, but I had more luck when I went through the coat’s inner pockets—my searching fingers found a leather-bound book. The Daemonium Maleficuum. The book that would allow me to conjure Morgal. I had taken one step closer toward Cyon’s revenge.

  “Our revenge, Raven” the demon corrected me.

  I quickly liberated the grimoire from the dead ghoul’s smelly coat and pocketed it. To my surprise, the leather cover felt cool to the touch. I had expected it to give off some sort of hellish heat but for now, its black magic remained securely locked away within its mysterious pages.

  I was about to turn away from the casket when I heard the familiar metallic click of a safety being removed. I turned toward Archer, who was pointing her crossbow right at me. Shock flickered over Jennifer’s features as she looked between us with big, uncomprehending eyes.

  “What did you take from his pocket?” Archer demanded.

  I decided once more honesty was the best approach. I held up the book so that Archer could see it.

  “It’s a book of magic that will allow me to conjure Morgal.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “The demon and I must face Morgal so we can go our separate ways.”

  Archer raised a brow. “And what happens to the book when you’re done with Morgal? You can’t know what the demon’s real plan is. Raven, you can’t trust this monster, no matter how seductive his words might sound.”

  By now, my relationship with Cyon went beyond trust. We had bonded in a symbiotic way. I didn’t have to trust the demon; I knew him. Understood him. Or was that just something I was trying to convince myself to believe? Could I still trust my own thoughts and feelings?

  I fought back the doubt Archer was seeding and took a defiant step toward her. “Lower the crossbow.”

  Her aim never wavered, her eyes narrowed with dangerous determination.

  I pressed on. “I saved your life, Jane. I’m not a monster, no matter what Skulick thinks.”

  “Back off, Raven,” she said.

  I took another step toward her. “Remember how you felt when you first started hunting vampires?” I asked her. “Nothing could stop you. There was a fire burning inside you. It still burns to this day, doesn’t it?”

  I took another step. The crossbow tracked my advance, but at least Archer hadn’t pulled the trigger yet.

  “What does that matter?” she asked.

  “Morgal was conjured to murder my parents. As long as the archdemon lives, I won’t be at peace. This book will allow me to destroy Morgal once and for all. Once I’m finished with the demon, Cyon won’t have much use for me any longer. I’ll be free.”

  “That’s what the demon wants you to think,” she said. “Damn it, Raven. Why can’t you see it? There’s a monster inside you.”

  “There is a monster inside of me. But it’s not Cyon. It’s the memory of the little boy who saw his parents slaughtered right before his eyes.”

  I was now almost upon Archer. The hand holding the crossbow was shaking. Would she do it? Would she kill me in cold blood after everything we’d been through?

  I didn’t think so.

  Our faces nearly touched, her lips so close…so tempting.

  “What are you doing?” she murmured.

  My answer was swift and succinct as I kissed her. To my surprise, she hungrily returned the kiss, the crossbow finally dropping to point at the floor. We had both faced death and had managed to walk away from the horror in one piece. For a beat, everything else ceased to matter. I cast aside all thoughts of monsters and demons, of death and destruction. This kiss was a celebration of life, a reminder of why I had to keep fighting the good fight.

  Like all magical moments in life, it unfortunately wasn’t meant to last.

  We both pulled away at the same time. Her gaze remained transfixed on the ghoul’s book, but she didn’t bring up her crossbow again as I stepped away from her.

  “Where are you going?” Archer asked.

  Good question. What was my next move? I had Demon Slayer, I had the ghoul’s grimoire. The endgame was to bring Morgal to our world and strike him down, but was I ready to finally end the mad journey Cyon and I were on? I didn’t have the answer. Only time would tell. The only thing I knew with any degree of certainty was that I couldn’t go on like this anymore, always paranoid and looking over my shoulder with both monsters and monster hunters on my tail. I had to convince Skulick I was still one of the good guys. I needed my friends to be in my corner as I faced the ultimate evil.

  I turned from Archer and walked away without looking back. Would Archer come to her senses and drive a stake into my back? No, she wouldn’t, at least not this time, not after all we had been through tonight.

  Not after the heat of our kiss.

  I stepped out of the mausoleum and navigated the cemetery. The mist was gone, and it was a beautiful, crisp October night. I hadn’t gone far when I ran into Cormac. The psychic froze, not quite sure how to react. He was afraid of me and afraid of the bad news I might have for him. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to ask the question. I decided to put him out of his misery and said, “Jennifer will be alright. She’s with Archer in the mausoleum. Go to her.”

  The psychic’s eyes went wide, his lips turning upward into a smile. Seeing his unbridled expression of pure joy lifted some of the darkness in my own heart and soul.

  “Isn’t there one thing you’re forgetting?”

  Cormac studied me for a beat before he eyed the Star of Solomon which had saved him from turning into a zombie. He slipped off the ring and handed it back to me.

  “Thank you.” I took the ring back and shot him a worried look. Are you going to be okay?”

  “Don’t worry about me. Just go find your girl. She needs you.”

  Hoping Cormac and Jennifer would find well deserved happiness in each other’s arms, I brushed past the psychic.

  A great weight seemed to lift from my shoulders as I passed through the cemetery’s open gate a minute later. Stunned clubgoers roamed the streets and my grip tightened on Hellseeker, knowing the White Crescent had to be near. Luckily, I didn’t run into Cabrera or his men as I walked up to my car. My aching body was in no mood to engage the exorcists for another round.

  I fired up the engine and floored the gas.

  There was one mo
re battle to be faced tonight—and this one might be the hardest of them all.

  I was headed for the loft, ready to face Skulick. I needed my former partner to join me for the next phase of the plan.

  “You’re making a mistake, fool. He will never team up with us.”

  I feared Cyon was right. But I had to try to win Skulick over. I owed our former partnership that much.

  I drove in silence and forced my mind to go blank. Thoughts would paralyze me at this juncture. It would be way too easy to twist the wheel and head in the opposite direction.

  I was halfway to the loft when it started raining. You could almost set your clock to the downpours in the Cursed City. The Crimson Circle had weakened the barrier between our world and the dimensions of darkness beyond. It had turned the urban sprawl into spook city, a playground for supernatural forces. It had also messed with the weather, turning the formerly sunny metropolis into a gloomy, shadowed place. Would the ghoul’s black magic have worked in the same manner anywhere else? I somehow doubted it.

  I planned to make the supernatural forces coursing through this city work to my advantage. It would the perfect place for my showdown with Morgal.

  I arrived at the warehouse and almost immediately realized something was terribly wrong. As I pulled up to the entrance to the parking structure, I noticed that the protective wards were gone. Strange, new glyphs had replaced them. My heart sank as I recognized these symbols. I had seen them before. In the park the other night, carved into the trees. These were the signs of a witch’s coven.

  The full horror set in. The witches had launched a direct attack against our base. While I was fighting the ghoul, Skulick had been fighting for his life.

  “Be careful, Raven!” Cyon admonished me as I drove into the garage. There was real fear underlying the demon’s warning, which echoed the nervousness I had detected in his voice back in the park earlier. The presence of witchcraft strangely unnerved the otherwise implacable demon.

  I silenced all my questions and rushed toward the elevators. Less than a minute later, I stormed into the main floor. To my relief, Skulick was where he belonged, reclined in a wheelchair facing a bank of flickering TV and computer monitors. The city’s guardian doing what he did best.

  “Skulick, what happened?” I said.

  The figure in the chair didn’t react. The feeling of terrible dread returned as I slowly circled the chair. I knew without a doubt something was horribly wrong.

  A heartbeat later, my worst suspicions stood confirmed. Skulick’s face was a blank mask, his eyes rolled back all the way, revealing twin white orbs.

  I reached out and touched my partner. He was alive. There was a steady pulse even though he didn’t acknowledge or respond to me at all. My mentor was reduced to a statue, trapped in some sort of terrible trance or coma-like state.

  I took in the strange glyph etched in blood across his forehead. It was the same mark of a witch’s coven I’d earlier encountered back in the park.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked Cyon out loud.

  “His soul is gone. The witches took it.”

  There was an eerie certainty to Cyon’s words. Who had made the demon an authority on witchcraft all of a sudden? Between his earlier fear and confident assessment of Skulick’s situation, I knew this couldn’t be the demon’s first run-in with twisted spellslingers.

  I had come here to make peace with my partner. To win over my most trusted ally before the showdown with my nemesis.

  But another enemy had thwarted my plan. Witches had decided to attack the Cursed City. They had violated our base. Stolen my best friend’s soul.

  My demon claw tightened around the arm of Skulick’s wheelchair, and metal twisted under my grip. I vowed that these black magic users would come to regret their decision.

  They had chosen the wrong city to mess with.

  Mike Raven and Cyon return in

  Witch Wars

  Available now!

  If you enjoyed this novel, please consider writing an Amazon review—they really help.

  I’m an indie writer and anything you can do to get the word out to other readers is deeply appreciated. Thank you for your support and your time! You can follow this direct link below:

  http://www.amazon.com/review/create-review/ref+cm_cr_dp_wrt_btm?ie=UTF8&asin=B076PW6TT5

  Want to get an email when the next SHADOW DETECTIVE title is released and receive a free novella? Subscribe to my newsletter!

  Click here to get started: http://eepurl.com/Ki8QH

  About the Author

  William Massa is a produced screenwriter and bestselling Amazon author. His film credits include Return to House on Haunted Hill and he has sold pitches and scripts to Warner, USA TV, Silver Pictures, Dark Castle, Maverick and Sony.

  William has lived in New York, Florida, Europe and now resides in Venice Beach surrounded by skaters and surfers. He writes science fiction and dark fantasy/urban fantasy horror with an action-adventure flavor.

  Writing can be a solitary pursuit but rewriting can be a group effort. I strive to make each book better than the last and feedback is incredibly helpful. If you have notes, thoughts or comments about this book or want to contact me, feel free to contact me at:

  williammassabooks@gmail.com

  Hope to hear from you soon!

  Also by WILLIAM MASSA

  THE SHADOW DETECTIVE SERIES

  Cursed City

  Soul Catcher

  Blood Rain

  Demon Dawn

  Skull Master

  Ghoul Night

  Witch Wars

  Crimson Circle

  Hell Breaker

  THE OCCULT ASSASSIN SERIES

  Damnation Code

  Apocalypse Soldier

  Spirit Breaker

  Soul Jacker

  THE GARGOYLE KNIGHT SERIES

  Gargoyle Knight

  Gargoyle Quest

  STAND ALONES

  Fear the Light