by Tracy Sharp
Silver and Shadows
A Halfmoon Investigations Urban Fantasy Book 1
Tracy Sharp
Contents
Silver And Shadows
1. Ezra
2. Candace
Ezra
Candace
3. Ezra
4. Candace
Ezra
5. Candace
Ezra
6. Ezra
7. Ezra
8. Ezra
Candace
9. Candace
10. Candace
11. Ezra
Candace
Ezra
Candace
12. Candace
Ezra
13. Ezra
14. Ezra
15. Candace
Ezra
Candace
Ezra
16. Candace
17. Ezra
Candace
Ezra
18. Candace
19. Candace
20. Ezra
21. Candace
Ezra
22. Candace
Ezra
Candace
Ezra
23. Candace
Ezra
Candace
Ezra
Candace
24. Ezra
Candace
Ezra
Candace
25. Ezra
Candace
26. Ezra
Candace
Ezra
Candace
27. Ezra
Candace
Also by Tracy Sharp
Acknowledgents
About the Author
Silver And Shadows
A Halfmoon Investigations Urban Fantasy
Book 1
Tracy Sharp
Silver and Shadows
A Halfmoon Investigations Urban Fantasy
Book 1
Tracy Sharp
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2017 by Tracy Sharp
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Edited by Dragonfly Editing. Cover Design by Book Cover Artistry.
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Summary
Demons, vampires and shifters are all in a day’s work for occult detective, Ezra Silver. But when a cop friend comes to him with a problem of shade demons devouring the locals in the small town of Halfmoon, things get a little hairy. Ezra has his hands full juggling a possession case, an arsonist sorcerer conjuring fire devils, and an unsealed portal to hell letting some nasty demons crawl out.
With the help of a powerful Conjurer, some bad ass weapons, and a dash of magical talent, Ezra needs to find and stop the rogue sorcerer from burning up the entire town, and seal the portal before all the demons of hell are unleashed.
1
Ezra
Approximately 90,000 people go missing each year. Some of those are missing by choice and don't want to be found. Some are accidental deaths. Someone drinks too much and decides to go for a midnight swim and drowns, or goes hiking and steps off a ledge in some remote area, where they're found later by a hiker or jogger. Lots of dead bodies are found by joggers. They should be paid a finder’s fee. Seriously.
Which brings me to the next reason people disappear. Foul Play. Maybe they pissed someone off, maybe they met a psycho.
Or maybe they met something else.
That's where I come in. My name is Ezra Silver, and I'm the guy that gets called when it looks like something other than human is involved. I'm not talking about animal life. I'm talking about monsters. The kind you thought weren't real. Vampires, werewolves, demons, ghouls, and whatnot.
You wouldn't believe what's out there, hiding in the shadows. And we want to keep it that way. Otherwise, panic and chaos would ensue, and that would make things so much worse. The monsters wouldn't just pick one of us off here and there. It would be a free for all. A complete supernatural blood bath.
There’s a lot of freaky deaky stuff going on just beneath the normal world.
Presently, I stood over a black, stinking substance, wrinkling my nose. It looked like a puddle of oil from someone's leaky vehicle, but it stank like rotten vegetables, only much worse. A sports watch and cell phone lay in the puddle. The only things left of the guy the thing had consumed. Bones and all.
"So, what the hell is it?" Candace is a detective with the town of Halfmoon. She’s the only cop looking into occurrences which go beyond the ordinary. The stuff not explainable as regular, run-of-the-mill-crime. And she had her regular cop duties to contend with on top of that. The strange incidents don’t happen every day, so she can squeeze the freaky stuff into her regular work day. So far. But I had a feeling things were changing. I just felt it in my bones.
Candace (or Candy to her friends, of which she had few. Well, one. Me) held the back of her hand over her nose. Her eyes watered and she took a step back. One hand rested on the butt of her .38 detective special, as if she thought the oil puddle would jump up at her.
She wasn't all that far off. And the rank slick was just the remnants of what had come before it.
I knew this kind of monster. You had to be extra careful with it. If the poor bastard the monster grabbed had managed to tear pieces off it while fighting for his life, those pieces could form another one. The situation could get out of hand in a hurry.
“What is that thing?” Candace tried not to breathe from her nose, resulting in a nasal, Elmer Fudd kind of voice, as if she had a bad cold and her nose was all plugged up.
"It's a shade. They act like shadows." I dug a small box of matches from an inner pocket of my duster and pushed it open. I have a lot of pockets, and each one holds something I need to battle monsters. Some hold gum. Gum helps me to think. I pushed a stick of bubble gum into my mouth now, crushing the paper wrapping and shoving it into one of my pockets.
"I don't know about you, but my shadows don't leave smelly puddles behind." Candace's face was lovely even when she scowled. She pulled a Ziploc bag and plastic gloves from her pocket and began tugging a glove on.
A warm wind ruffled the hair out of my eyes. I needed a haircut. I have curly blond hair and when it grows too long I start looking like a poodle. Not a very impressive look when fighting evil. "You're not going to want to reach toward that thing."
She froze and stared at me, wide-eyed. "O-kay."
"Stand back. Sometimes they rear up."
She gave me a disbelieving, horrified look, and took a few steps back, gripping the butt of her gun even harder than she had before. Candy is a south paw. She shoots lefty. I’d seen her in action and she’s a force to reckon with. She has almost supernaturally accurate aim.
My respect for her is endless, and the crush I have on her renders me weak and tongue tied sometimes. It’s like an affliction I have no control over so why fight it?
The police star clipped to the left side of her belt glinted in the mid-day sun. Her star was her talisman. Her good luck charm. I'd seen her give it a quick, light caress more times than I can count. I don't think she's even aware she does it. She did it now, as her clear, blue eyes moved from me to the slick. "You're kidding me."
"Nope." I removed a match, flicked it with my thumb, and tossed it
onto the slick.
A half second later, the center of the slick shot upward, long, black, rope-like fingers reaching for her.
She jumped back. "Holy hell."
"Hell, yes. Far from holy," I murmured. "Sweet. It likes you."
A second later the shape fizzled and dropped back into the sizzling slick.
"I'm not looking for a pet." Candace took a cautious step forward, staring at the bubbling puddle. "That's nasty."
"You have no idea," I told her.
"So, tell me," Candace said, as we walked the jogging/bike trail back to our vehicles. The parking area was a mile away, so we had time to talk. It was a weird feeling. Her calls sent me into a tailspin of both dread and happy anticipation. The former because I knew I'd have to deal with something really bad. The latter because I've been crushing on Candace since I met her two years ago. She'd sought me out at the pub I frequently brood at, having heard about what I do by word of mouth.
That first look at her from my window seat, sauntering across the parking lot. Wow. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I realized she was walking over to my table. In fact, I didn’t believe it until she stood over me in faded boot cut jeans and a plain white tank top. That had been it.
I've seen a lot of incredible things in my life, but she's hands down the loveliest. And it isn't just the ocean blue eyes and the caramel hair with gold and auburn highlights. Or the athletic legs that go on for days. Or even the curve of her smile, with the sexy little mole just above the left side of her upper lip.
Really, I could go on forever.
It was that look in those ocean blue eyes that told me she was tough, smart, and took no shit. It was the spark I recognized from that first sight of her. She's a lightning bolt wrapped in a cheerleader’s body. And she's sharp as hell.
She turns me into a silly joke-telling idiot, or sometimes I’m struck silent by the way the light catches her hair just right, turning it different colors all at once. Or by the intent look of concentration on her face when she’s working out a problem.
She doesn't always laugh at my dumb jokes, but she usually grins.
Let me tell you, that grin undoes me every time.
Sadly, she also made it clear with one steely look after seeing puppy love on my face that she wasn't into me.
So, my love goes unrequited, and will forever more, so she says.
Ah, well. That's my luck.
"Ezra." Her voice brought me back to the here and now
I looked at her, raising my brows. "Yeah?"
She widened her eyes and cracked a grin. "Do those nasty puddles suck brain power out or something? Where are you?"
I shook my head. "Right here. Sorry. Just thinking."
"Care to share? I kind of feel like I should know what's eating the people in my town." She smacked at a mosquito and studied the sky. A flock of geese were noisily making their way across it.
"The shades are a kind of demon. An evil entity that hides in or disguises themselves as shadows, but when you're not looking, they peel themselves from the shadow, attach themselves to their victim, and then they consume the victim whole."
She looked warily around us. "Oh, great. There are shadows all around us. How long before it gets hungry again?"
"Usually, at least a couple of hours. Sometimes a couple of days. But..."
Her face swung toward me. "But what?"
I scanned the area, which was pointless. You couldn’t see the things. That’s what made them so deadly. "There could be more."
"More? Like how many more?" Her hand rested on the butt of her .38 again as her eyes skimmed the area warily.
I felt as jumpy as a cat, but I didn’t want to let on, so I tried to keep my voice even, but even I could hear the fear in it. "Well, if we're lucky, it'll just be the one. Or maybe a few."
Her head kept swinging this way and that, trying to look everywhere at once. "That's being lucky? Wonderful. What if there're more than one or a few?"
I gave her the worst case scenario. "Then we're dealing with an infestation, and it could be hundreds.
Her face was a study in alarm and mounting panic. "You're kidding me. Please say you're kidding me."
"I wish I were. They multiply pretty quickly. Hence, my use of the term infestation."
She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. "Ok. What do we do? How do we kill them all? Set the town on fire?"
"There's a way. But it won't be pleasant."
"Neither is letting those things eat our entire town, one by one."
"True." I wanted to take her hand, because I felt protective of her, but I knew it wouldn't be a wise decision. I might end up with a black eye or two. "We have to attract them, draw them all into the same area, and then we torch them."
"How do we draw them into the same area?"
"Bait them with something they like."
"What's that? Their snack of choice? Like have a big celebration and invite the whole town?"
I squinted, considering. "Too dangerous."
She ran a hand over the top of her head. Her hair was tied in a ponytail, and she had a habit of smoothing the top of her hair when she got nervous or bothered. "Well then, how? Talk to me, Ezra."
The wind lifted the papaya scent of her shampoo to my face and I breathed it in, trying not to get dizzy with it. I was scared shitless, but still managed to be intoxicated by her hair. She’d smack me if she knew. And I’d let her. Her hands smell lovely, too.
“Ezra.” She watched me, her face now serious as hell.
It was a serious as hell situation.
Right. Time to get a grip. "Get their attention with something shiny. They like things that glitter, sparkle, and shine."
"Fireworks?"
I nodded. "Fireworks. Lightening. An electrical spark show. Anything bright."
"What if they don’t show?"
I thought about it. "Then I'd assume there was only just the one. Maybe a tiny bit of substance had lain dormant for years, and for some reason it just woke up."
She gave a single nod. "Okay. Let's do it."
2
Candace
The call came in just as Candace climbed onto her Harley. It was a homicide, and from the sounds of it, it was bad.
She drove to the crime scene, a dirt side-road off the main drag, which, because of its obscure, lonely location, got a lot of traffic by the town’s teenagers. Tar road was also used by the occasional fisherman during the warmer months, and ice fisherman during winter, because of its close proximity to Lonesome Lake, just a quarter mile from the road.
Lonesome Lake was a small thing, but it is said to have excellent pike. Candace wasn’t into fishing, so she didn’t know if that was true or not.
But she did know about the teenagers, because she’d scooted her share from this particular side road more times than she could ever count.
She’d scooted these two out of there just last night at dusk. It was the same red Honda Civic.
Obviously, they’d driven off, waited a few minutes until Candace’s cruiser was out of site, and then went right back to the same spot, figuring they’d have a little time before Candace came back.
The Crime Scene techs were combing over the bodies in the small car, which was now marred with burned and peeling paint. Smoke still billowed out of the open front doors, reaching Candy’s nose, and making her gag and turn away. A body was half in and half out of the driver’s door. Another lay about five feet away from the open passenger door, still on one knee, both arms extended outward on the ground.
They had tried to crawl away from the car. Candace blinked. Her eyes burned.
Brodie, her partner, walked over to her. His face somber. “These kids were only seventeen. The girl just got her driver’s license. The Honda was a graduation gift from her parents.” He glanced at the smoking car and then back to her. “Someone set them on fire.”
Candace shivered inwardly. “Jealous boyfriend, maybe?”
He sniffed. “Or girlfriend. Wom
en can be just as vicious as guys. I know that first hand.”
Brodie was going through a divorce, and he wasn’t happy about it. Candace had endured more than her share of ex-wife bashing. But she’d heard women do the same. Divorce was an ugly business, no matter how you sliced it.
“Could also be a nutter. Taking his anger out on the couple Son of Sam style, but using fire instead. Was there an accelerant used?”
“Shylo is still looking over the bodies.” Brodie tipped his head toward the medical examiner.
Shylo Hollis was the new medical examiner, taking charge six months after the old one, eighty-two year old George Penderlock, finally decided to retire. Penderlock was a cranky old fart, but he knew his stuff. Candace would miss him.
