Magic Hunter: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Vampire's Mage Series Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  Manipulating Josiah was easier than she’d thought. In fact, a kernel of an idea began to bloom in her mind—a way to free every captive in the building—if she could manage to get out of there alive.

  She lifted her eyes to his, letting them glisten. “I don’t know anything about an army. But please, Josiah—”

  With a tight smile, he stared at her ring. “I’ve wanted to see what would happen when the spirit takes over you.” He dropped her other hand to slip off the ring, but he didn’t get that far. As soon as he let her hand out of his grip, her hand flew to his throat. Within moments, she had both hands around his neck. She dug her thumbs into his Adam’s apple. His eyes bulged, but she wouldn’t be strong enough to choke him out like this. She just needed more of his rage to break her out of this chair.

  “The truth is, Josiah, you could never satisfy me like an incubus could.”

  His face contorted with rage, and his fingers dug into her wrists before he ripped her hands from his throat. Snarling, he kicked her hard in the chest with one of his boots. The chair flew, slamming against the wall. The blow knocked the wind out of her, but it also had the desired effect. The crash splintered the chair into dozens of pieces.

  She was free.

  With an exultant smile, she grabbed a fragmented chair leg. When Josiah rushed for her, she jammed the splintered end into his thigh. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but he wouldn’t put up much of a fight after that.

  Stunned, Josiah stared at her and staggered back—right into Caine, whose muscular arm tightened around Josiah’s neck.

  Where the hell did Caine come from?

  “Caine?” she shouted. Wood splinters pierced her back, and at this point, she was sure half her ribs were broken. “How did you get out of the chains?”

  His black eyes were fixed on Josiah. Instead of answering, he tightened his grip. Shit. She was quickly formulating a plan, but it was one that required Josiah to be alive.

  “Caine!” She shouted. “We need him to live.”

  Caine’s midnight eyes, as dark and empty as the opening of a cave, met hers. She wasn’t getting through to him.

  “Caine!” Panicking, she rushed forward and slapped him across the face.

  He dropped Josiah, whose body landed on the ground with a thud. Rosalind knelt next to the Hunter and felt for a pulse. Blood still pumped through his veins. He was alive, but unconscious. Assuming someone found him before he bled out from the stab wound, he’d pull through.

  Caine looked down at her. “You’d better have a very good reason for asking me to leave him alive. If this is sentimentality again, I’m going to kill him.”

  Pain wracked her body as she rose. “I know how we can use him to save the others, but we need to get out of here first. We won’t be able to free them from their cells until I can get to a computer.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I need you to trust me.”

  “Fine. Josiah was an idiot to underestimate you, and I won’t make the same mistake.” He eyed her torn shirt. “Hang on.”

  He stripped off his blood-stained shirt, tossing it to her. She tried not to stare at his muscular chest. Focus, Rosalind. They needed to get the hell out of there.

  A voice crackled over Josiah’s walkie-talkie. “Agent Endicott. Please tell us the captives’ status.”

  Rosalind slipped into Caine’s shirt, and it nearly hung to her knees. “Thanks.”

  “What’s the best way out of here?” Caine asked.

  She closed her eyes, trying to visualize the building. “Right now, we’re underground. There are no secret tunnels, and there’s no way to get out discretely. We’re going to have to blend in. We’ll need better outfits.”

  “Since you didn’t let me kill Josiah, I’m feeling a bit unsatisfied. I’ll be happy to divest some guards of their clothing.”

  Josiah moaned, and Caine kicked him in the head.

  The walkie-talkie crackled. “Agent Endicott. Please report immediately.”

  “Let’s go,” Caine said.

  Rosalind eyed him. “I still don’t understand. How did you get out of the iron chains? I didn’t even hear you escaping. The iron should have sapped your power.”

  “No. That’s succubi. We’re different creatures. Like I said, the Brotherhood gave you a lot of misinformation. We don’t have time to get into that now. Let’s go assault some guards.”

  Her pulse raced. “The chains didn’t weaken your strength?”

  “No. They did nothing, really. Not that I want the Brotherhood to know that. The less they know, the better.”

  Her pulse raced. “So—that whole time I was being tortured, you could have stopped it?”

  His eyes remained black as pitch, cold and bestial. “Yes, but it would have been a tactical error.”

  Whatever he meant by that, one fact burned through her mind: Caine had sat there and watched Josiah beat the shit out of her. He’d let her think she was about to die. He could have stopped it, but he’d sat there impassively, watching it like a spectator. The betrayal burned. She rushed at Caine, shoving him hard in the chest.

  “You watched me get tortured when you could have stopped it?” she shouted. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Did you not see him drowning me? I thought I was going to die.”

  Caine’s voice was low and controlled, and he grabbed her wrists. “Stop shouting, if you want to get out of here alive. You’re supposed to be a soldier. That’s what you signed up for when you joined the Brotherhood, even if you joined the wrong side.”

  Seething, she ripped her wrists from his grasp, just barely restraining herself from snatching another wooden fragment from the ground and ramming it into Caine’s neck. “Half my ribs are broken. Josiah ripped my shirt off like a sex offender. He punched me in the face, kicked me into a wall, prodded my bullet wound, and practically drowned me. You’re just lucky I didn’t give up any real information to him.”

  “I was planning on killing him, so that wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “I see. But apparently the state of my broken bones wasn’t enough to move you off your ass. How much would you have let me endure?”

  “Did no one ever tell you that war could be a bit uncomfortable? General Loring seemed to think you were familiar with the interrogation room, so I can’t imagine that its unpleasantness is news to you.”

  “Agent Endicott. I’m ordering you to report your status immediately. Your video monitor has been disabled.”

  His words stung, and tears pricked her eyes. He’d wanted her to get hurt. “I get it. So that was revenge.”

  The black in Caine’s eyes faded. “No, that’s not it at all. The point was—”

  An alarm sounded, and Caine’s eyes flicked to the door. “We need to go.”

  She pointed to the circular scanner. “We can’t get out without a retina scan.”

  “What about Josiah’s eyes?” Caine asked. “I’d be perfectly happy to cut one out and aim it at the thing.”

  She shook her head, grabbing two shards of wood from the ground. “The scanners sense small movements. They won’t work for an unconscious eye. We need to wait until the guards come in here. We’ll kick the shit out of them and steal their clothes.”

  “Fine.” Caine walked over the spotlight hanging from the ceiling. He reached up, crushing the light with his hand, and darkness fell on the room. “They’re coming,” he whispered. “Stand against the wall.”

  A buzzer sounded at the door, and a guard kicked it open. Four guards rushed in, guns ready. Rosalind threw one of the stakes for the door, jamming it open slightly. Pain screamed through her chest. She was in no condition to fight.

  “Agent Endico—” A guard’s words were cut off by the crunch of bone and the sound of a gun hitting the floor. Only a faint stream of light illuminated the room, and she struggled to see in the dark. Bodies whirled around her, and the room filled with the sound of fists slamming against flesh. Someone unleashed a hail of bullets, but a cracking sound
cut the assault short. The sound of a bone snapping, maybe. After a few moments, silence descended.

  “Rosalind?” Caine said. “I’ve disabled them.” He handed her a bundle of fabric. “Put these on.”

  Her breathing came sharp and fast as she pulled off her boots to change her clothes. It was a small mercy she could get out of her piss-soaked pants. “Did you kill them?” she whispered.

  “Of course.”

  She slipped out of her clothes. She was now an accessory to the murder of four humans—people who had once been her colleagues. “You couldn’t have just knocked them unconscious?”

  “They signed their death warrants when they volunteered to work in torture chambers,” he said.

  She’d worked in one of these rooms by Josiah’s side, an instrument of misery.

  The walkie-talkie crackled again. “Agent Endicott, we sent reinforcements. Please let us know your status.”

  She buttoned the new uniform as Caine began speaking into the walkie-talkie. “This is Agent Endicott.” It was an exact replication of Josiah’s voice. “The reinforcements have arrived, but you didn’t need to send them. I have everything under control. The interrogation continues. Lux in tenebris lucet.” He dropped the walkie-talkie.

  “Please report to the head offices, Agent Endicott.”

  “Are you ready, Rosalind?” Caine asked.

  She pulled on the guard’s hat before crouching down, groping around for a discarded gun. “I’m ready. Just keep your eyes down.” A fragment of wood still propped the door open, and she pushed it.

  The alarm continued to blare, and red lights flashed from the ceiling, pulsing over iron walls that stretched far into the distance. This corridor covered nearly half a mile beneath Cambridge’s streets—a dizzyingly long line of cells, each filled with a monster—or, so she’d once thought. Now, she knew ordinary people like Tammi were locked in here, too.

  “You’re walking like you’re injured,” whispered Caine.

  “I am injured, no thanks to you.”

  She had to mask her pain, or the guards would see it in her limping walk and rasping breath. Josiah had promised to break her body, and he wasn’t far off. She felt as if she was breathing through a tiny straw, and pain ripped through her limbs.

  She was out of the cell, but not ready to celebrate just yet. She was fairly certain several of her ribs were broken. She had a bruised tailbone, a wrist fracture, and she remained stuck in the bowels of an institution that wanted to torture her to death.

  She swallowed hard, trying to block out the pain as they drew closer to the corridor’s end. What hellish torments had the Brotherhood unleashed behind those doors in the name of humanity?

  Miranda, Tammi, and Aurora were just a few feet away from them right now, but there was nothing she could do about it. It wasn’t like she could break through six inches of metal door without getting caught; even Caine couldn’t do that.

  At last, they reached the end of the hall. Two guards flanked another set of metal doors, and Rosalind slowed, letting Caine take the lead. She couldn’t let the guards see her face. Even if they didn’t recognize her features, the raw pain written in her eyes would spook them.

  A tall, dark-haired man nodded at Caine. “What’s going on with the traitor?”

  “Interrogation got messy.” Caine kept his eyes down and mimicked Josiah’s voice. “It’s still going on, but the others are handling it. Lux in tenebris lucet.”

  The blond guard pushed a button, opening the metal doors. “You get your hands on that bitch? I want a turn on her when they’re—”

  Fury rushed through Rosalind, and before she could stop herself, her leg swung up, and her boot connected with the man’s face. His neck snapped back, hitting the wall, and a fraction of a second later Caine slammed his elbow into the other guard’s skull. The two men slumped to the ground.

  “Unconscious,” Caine said. “At your request.”

  “Thanks.” She gripped her ribs, suppressing a moan.

  The door had swung open into the older part of the chambers—a brick hall that opened into a stairwell leading to the ground floor.

  “We’re almost out,” she said through labored breaths, climbing the stairs. She tried to catch her breath, her lungs still burning. She held on to the rails, gasping for air. What she really needed was a goddamn hospital. Caine glanced at her before slipping an arm around her waist.

  “Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m alive.”

  At the top of the stairs stood another set of doors. While these doors required scans to get in, there was nothing to stop them from leaving. Rosalind pushed open the door, trying to project an air of confidence as she strode past the guards into the central hall. A sigh slid from her. They were now clear of the maximum security part of the Chambers, and they just had to make it through the lobby and onto Oxford Street. She cast a quick glance around at the lobby’s towering ivory columns, the busts of famous Hunters, and the crimson walls lined with portraits of the Brotherhood’s most illustrious members: King James I, Cotton Mather, and England’s witchfinder General. This had felt like her home once.

  Was it only a week ago that she’d strode through here, certain that her future was secure in this building, that she’d one day lecture to a crowd of students in the Chambers’ old Mather hall?

  Her heels clacked over the marble floor as they crossed the lobby, striding past the wooden security desk to the glass doors, illuminated by streetlights outside. So close to freedom, her heart pounded harder.

  Still, guilt tightened her throat. She was leaving Tammi and the others at the hands of the psychopaths.

  With a final glance at Caine, she pushed on a glass door, but it didn’t budge. What the hell?

  Caine pushed another door, with the same result.

  Locked.

  The security guard’s voice broke the silence. “You gotta use the scanner. When the alarms are going off, no one can leave without scanning.”

  Chapter 28

  “Of course.” Caine kept his voice even when he spoke to the guard. “The scanners.”

  Any minute now, they’d be found out. She couldn’t let herself imagine the torture they’d endure after an escape attempt that left a trail of bodies.

  “Get ready to run,” she whispered to Caine.

  She took a few steps back before pulling the gun, aiming it at the glass doors. If she couldn’t scan her way out, she’d have to shoot her way out. She squeezed the trigger and broke into a sprint. Glass shattered all around them. Shards blasted against her skin as she bolted to the pavement outside. They cleared the door’s entrance just as the guard unleashed a round of bullets. Caine pulled her out of the crossfire, taking shelter behind the building’s brick facade.

  He folded her in an embrace and pulled off her ring. In the shadows, he began chanting in Angelic. The mage joined in as their mingling auras whirled through her body. Panicked shouts echoed from within the building, but the magic was already rippling over her skin, and a thick, protective mist enshrouded them.

  Caine slipped the ring back on her finger, and the mist thinned. Rosalind let out a long, slow breath. They stood in Mount Auburn Cemetery, dwarfed by Abduxiel Mansion. Blood streaked Caine’s neck.

  Pain splintered her shoulder. She pressed her fingers to her collarbone, wincing. “I’ve been shot three times in two days. This is not how I imagined my life turning out.”

  Caine slipped his arm around her waist. “Let me get you inside. I’ll heal you.”

  As they approached the tall oak door, it swung open, revealing a cavernous hall. Moonlight shone through a stained glass window—an image of an angel. Twinkling lights hung suspended in the air like stars, flickering over an empty marble floor. If she weren’t half-dead, she might actually enjoy this place.

  Orcus rushed from a darkened archway. “I tried to keep her here. She wouldn’t listen,” he hissed. “Are you injured, Master? And what is happening with Bileth?”

&nb
sp; “I’m fine, but she’s badly hurt.”

  Orcus pulled off his hood, revealing black eyes and a pale, bald head the color of bone. “Take her into the celestial room. Try not to get blood everywhere. I’ve just cleaned up. I’ll draw a bath in the adjacent washing room.”

  She leaned into Caine, and agony burned through her shoulder. He led her through an archway, pushing open a door into a candlelit room. Midnight-blue wallpaper, marked with silver stars, surrounded them. A silky, blue bed stood in the center of the room, and a twinkling chandelier hung from the ceiling.

  “Lie down,” instructed Caine. “You’re walking like you’re in agony.”

  She pulled off her boots, wincing as she bent over. Nice of him to notice. She lay on the soft bed, barely able to restrain the tears welling in her eyes. “I am in agony. And what about you? You’re covered in blood.”

  “I was shot in the neck, and the rest is from the glass.”

  Her stomach clenched. “Shot in the neck? Why aren’t you dead?”

  “I can’t be killed that easily, not unless it’s a hawthorn stake.”

  A hawthorn stake—so that was why Malphas had been weakened. Her sense of relief at their escape was crushed by the weight of guilt—not just because of Malphas, but the friends she’d left behind. “What about the others? What if Josiah and Randolph punish them for what we did? We need to get back there.” Miranda probably looked exactly like her, and Josiah would be sadistic enough to act out his most depraved revenge fantasies on her.

  Caine eyed her with concern. “You need to calm your breathing. You won’t heal as well if you’re panicking. We’ll save them, but I need to heal you first. And then you can tell me about your plan. Open your shirt, please.”

  She unbuttoned the front of her shirt, grimacing at the pain when she moved her arms.

  Caine brushed his hands over her sternum, chanting in Angelic. His aura seeped into her skin, soothing away the pain. He trailed his fingers lower, lingering lightly over her broken ribs and lung, before they moved to her neck and face, lanced with shards of glass. With each stroke of his fingers, the pain began to ebb, leaving behind only a dull ache in her muscles.