City In Embers

by Stacey Marie Brown

  ALSO BY STACEY MARIE BROWN

  Darkness of Light

  (Darkness Series #1)

  Fire in the Darkness

  (Darkness Series #2)

  Beast in the Darkness

  (An Elighan Dragen Novelette)

  Dwellers of Darkness

  (Darkness Series #3)

  Blood beyond Darkness

  (Darkness Series #4)

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and her crazy friends. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It cannot be re-sold, reproduced, scanned or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Copyright © 2015 Stacey Marie Brown

  All rights reserved.

  978-0-9890131-6-1

  Cover Design by Victoria at Whit & Ware (http://main.whitandware.com)

  Edited by Hollie (www.hollietheeditor.com)

  Edited by Chase Nottingham (www.chaseediting.com)

  Formatting by www.formatting4U.com

  Table of Contents

  Also By Stacey Marie Brown

  Dedication

  City of Embers

  Thank You

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  Sneak Peek of Aurora Sky

  For my readers.

  I hope you enjoy this new series as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

  Thanks for riding this crazy rollercoaster with me.

  ONE

  The pavement came up, slamming against the soles of my shoes. My legs stretched farther, leaping over a garbage can. Trying to slow me, the entity I ran after hurled another container to the ground, which crashed loudly in the narrow, grimy lane. My breath held in my lungs as I sailed over the bin, keeping my pace through the dark, shadowy maze.

  “Zoey!” I heard Daniel call my name. My head swiveled to see his outline point down an alley, splitting off from the one we were in. I gave a nod and turned my focus ahead. We had been working together for almost three years, and I knew even by the lift of his eyebrow what he meant. We knew every inch of the alleyways in downtown Seattle by heart. The one he went into now eventually turned and intersected this one.

  Breath pumped radically in my lungs as I sprinted after our target. This one was faster than most. He slithered around a dumpster, veiling his position. My fingers wrapped around the grip of the gun harnessed on my right side when the guy came back into my view. It was a dart gun, filled with a high dose of chloroform. The real gun loaded with special fae-designed ammo was attached to my left side and was only used in emergency cases. In my three years, I only used it a handful of times. Hopefully, tonight was not one of those occasions.

  The long, lean body cut around a corner, disappearing from sight once again. I rounded the bend and down the alley in pursuit when a trash lid came hurtling at my head like a Frisbee. With a squeak, I threw myself onto the uneven terrain. The metal rim grazed my head, hitting the wall before it clattered to the pavement.

  The man’s lip twisted in a scowl as he took off running. Scrambling up, I tore after it. It. Him. Whatever. In reality, he was fae. And fae meant vile, threating, loathsome creatures.

  “Dammit,” I mumbled as the figure hopped onto a dumpster and bounced up to grab the building’s escape ladder. Aiming my dart gun at his back, my fingers twitched on the trigger. I only had one dart. If I missed, it would be all over, and Daniel was too far away. Our target would slip through our fingers. Shoving the weapon back into my holder, I scrambled up the bin. My jeans tore on a bent piece of metal, slicing deep into my knee. Sucking in a hiss of pain, I jumped for the fire escape, climbing the rungs to the roof.

  A massive element came rushing toward my head. What the hell? First a trash lid. Now a satellite dish? This guy really wanted to decapitate me. I dipped below the building as the object skimmed my hairline, tumbling to the ground with a loud crack. Pieces of plastic, metal, and wiring scattered.

  I peeked over the ledge. The spot where he had been standing was empty.

  Hell...

  My arms pulled me onto the roof, my feet scaling over the last two steps. I had barely landed when something sprang at me, knocking me down. A fist came for my face. I twisted, his hand grazing my ear, hitting the surface.

  “I know what you are.” His voice was more high-pitched than I expected. A forked tongue darted between his front teeth. The canine teeth had grown into long, spiky points, dripping with venom. Great. A snake shape-shifter.

  No wonder Dr. Rapava was anxious for us to collect this fae. It was a rare find. Being close, I could see his eyes were a bright golden brown, his nose was stumpier than a normal man’s would be, and his skin had a smooth, scaly look to it. Like a reptile’s. His hair was black on top and tan on either side of his head. A tattoo of a cobra was inked on his neck.

  “And I know what you are, too. Awesome. Introductions are over.” I kneed him in the groin. Snake or not, he was still a man. He wilted, contorting, giving me time to scuttle back onto my feet. He spit on the ground and curled up, striking out for me. His mouth open, his teeth ready to sink deep into my skin. Why couldn’t he be a cute garter snake?

  I ducked, hitting him in the stomach. A long hiss broke from his lips. He spun and lunged for me, his knuckles contacting the side of my mouth. Pain burst up my jawbone, traveling behind my eyes. I stumbled back, my ankles knocking into some piping, and I fell on my butt. His tongue darted, venom seeping out of his mouth. “This should be extremely painful.” He snapped his teeth and jumped for me, aiming for my neck.

  A whoosh sound disturbed the air, resonating in my ears. Snake-man’s body stilled before crumpling onto the roof, revealing Daniel standing on the building across the narrow alley, his dart gun pointed in my direction.

  “About time.” I smiled coyly, trying not to show the relief sliding off my shoulders. I got to my feet.

  Daniel tilted his head and shook it slightly. “How many times have I told you not to engage without backup?”

  “Today? Or a general roundabout number?” I blotted at the blood pooling on my lip. A strand of my long chestnut brown hair escaped its ponytail and clung to the wet matter.

  “Zoey, I am serious.” Daniel holstered his weapon. “You are young and think you’re invincible. We aren’t dealing with normal humans here. They’re fae. They have powers and strengths we don’t have. Some we might not even know about yet. You can’t simply take them on by yourself.”

  My eyes rolled as he lectured me. I’d been hearing this type of speech since I began training with him. I wasn’t very good at listening, but I’d gotten much better. I used to be extremely resistant and hot tempered, but those qualities didn’t work in a business where those behaviors could get you killed. In the moment it was hard for me to remember. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s get him out of here before someone discovers us.” Daniel walked to the ledge of the building where the ladder hung. “I’ll get the van and back it up below you. He should stay unconscious...”

  “Yes, Daniel, I know the drill.” I grinned and waved for him to go.

  A smile stretched across his handsome, clean-shaven features, his blue eyes catching mine. My heart fluttered in my chest. This man had me so twisted inside I didn’t know which way was up. The fact he was almost twenty years my senior didn’t alter my feelings for him. If anything, it made me like him more. Experienced in life. I usually got along with people older than me.

  My life hadn’t been easy. I’d been raised in foster car
e, growing up tough and fast. My experiences made me relate to people not in my age group. I never dated guys who were my age. They always were five to ten years older.

  Daniel didn’t seem to feel the same. From the beginning he shut down any advances I made. He stressed our age difference or commented on my youthful twenty-two years. He could discourage me till he was eighty, but it was too late. I was already in love with him.

  I watched his body easily scale down the fire escape and jump to the ground. At the age of forty, he was more fit than most twenty-year-olds I met. With his military background and present training, he cut a nice figure. He was about five-eleven, but his trim muscles made him appear taller. Perfect for me since I was only five-five.

  A groan came from near my feet and broke my attention away from Daniel and back to our captive. We referred to them as the collected. For the last three years, I worked for a secret branch of the government, the Department of Molecular Genetics—DMG. I also called it HQ for headquarters.

  During my first semester at college, we were given a test in my psychology class. To the teacher and most students, it looked like a quiz on social behaviors and mannerisms. Pictures were flashed on the screen, and we were asked to describe what we saw. I learned later the government was testing us for “the sight” and to see if we were sensitive to the paranormal—humans who could see through the veils of glamour fae put around themselves to blend in.

  Seeing creatures was always something I could do. When I was a child, I thought it was normal. It wasn’t until I was seven when I found I was different. People around me never experienced what I saw. I blocked it and turned away when I saw a glow or a creature. I got so good at obstructing my sight I started to think I made it all up—that my imagination, in desperate need to escape my own reality, caused me to see things. With my past, it was believable I would make up another world.

  Over time, I let my walls slip. It was probably why I hadn’t obstructed my sight during the test in class. When they showed a woman sitting on a lawn, I saw a leopard with glowing brown eyes. I didn’t know till later when I was brought in to the DMG I was the only one who saw it—a shape-shifter. Fae.

  Fae was the general term for them, like calling all of us human. There are different races and species under the fae umbrella: shape-shifters, fairies, demons, incubus, leprechauns, gnomes, sprites, and the list goes on and on. There were the Dark side (Unseelie) and the Light (Seelie). They once lived among humans until the world turned against magic, saying it was the devil’s work. Some fae went into hiding in the Otherworld, but other fae inhabited the Earth, as they needed humans to live. Humans were a buffet to the Dark. They stole our life forces through sex, dreams, sins, and other ways humans expended energy. There were even some who ate us. We were nothing more than food to them.

  Learning of fae and their existence had not been a simple switch but probably easier for me than most because I’d been seeing things since I could remember. It was like finding out The X-Files was really a documentary, and the government really had been hiding the existence of another species. Fae were not aliens in the way people thought. They were not from outer space. No little green men with large eyes poked you in the butt, although there was a fae species with a green tint to their skin. If caught without glamour, they could easily be mistaken for aliens, which is how I feel the whole alien thing started.

  Understanding the information I acquired about fae was important. I needed to know what I was dealing with to collect them. The more I learned, the more I hated them. They treated humans like nothing more than cattle and used us for their own benefit. We were an endless Mickey D’s drive-thru to them. Easily discounted and tossed aside. Their disregard for us made me feel the same about them, if not stronger. What the DMG performed benefited humans. We captured fae to test and research.

  Dr. Rapava, the director of DMG, had made a discovery fifteen years earlier showing the value of fae cells in helping humans. Our testing had advanced finding a cure for things like cancer and birth defects. Imagine someday no child would die from cancer or suffer from a birth defect.

  Like my sister.

  Lexie wasn’t my real sister. She was a fellow foster kid, but the closest thing I could ever imagine to having a sibling. The thought of her stuck in a wheelchair the rest of her life made me crazy. It was not her fault her mother was a druggie, which may have been the reason Lexie had been born crippled. If there was a chance I could help her walk someday, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do.

  Tires crunched as Daniel backed the nondescript, black windowless van down the passageway. As I watched him, I thought how much my life had changed. Three years ago I would never have imagined I’d be hunting and collecting fae, going to college, and working for the government. Actually earning money legally.

  It had taken Daniel a long time to break me of old habits and reactions. Stealing to get by was normal to me. It was an adjustment to butt heads with an ex-special ops military man who didn’t look kindly on breaking rules. When you grew up on the streets, it was hard to see beyond what you knew. But he made me look at life differently. Want more. I could escape the harsh world and free myself from poverty and the dark events from my past.

  The brakes squeaked as he halted the van next to the ladder. Daniel quickly got out, his short dark brown hair streaked with silver glittered under the streetlight. He jumped onto the dumpster, climbing his way toward me. His arm muscles flexed under his black sweater. Damn. I shook my head, looking away. I turned and gazed down at the body at my feet. The thin, lengthy form stretched out. Getting this fae back to ground level was not going to be easy.

  Daniel’s head popped over the rooftop. My foot tapped, peering angrily down at the creature. “Yeah. It would have been nice if he stayed below. If we could only throw it over the side.” He sighed, climbing over the wall. “But you know Dr. Rapava would be mad as hell if we brought the specimen back damaged.”

  “It will heal.” I shrugged. I was only half joking. It was true. Fae could mend wounds and broken bones in a matter of hours.

  Fae were virtually immortal. They weren’t immune to death, just extremely hard to kill. If you wanted to exterminate a fae, and make sure it stayed that way, it was safest to slay it with a special fae-welded metal, like the bullets in my gun. Goblin-crafted weapons were the best. They were poison to them. I heard rumors that at certain times of year, when the layer between our worlds was at its thinnest, fae were susceptible to both human and fae ways of dying. I also heard beheading, breaking their necks, or continuously cutting them so their skin never has a chance to heal and they bleed to death, were others.

  But our job didn’t entail dispatching them. We were here to collect.

  Daniel frowned as he squatted next to the creature. “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Whatever we do, we need to do it quick. With the racket this guy made, I’m sure someone called the cops.”

  Three years after I left my shady lifestyle, my name was still on many police lists. At the age of nine, I was recruited to be in a group who liked to unburden people of their personal items: wallets, phones, credit cards. I was little and cute with big eyes. No one suspected me until it was too late. Pickpocketing was my introduction into the unethical world I became a part of. It was survival of the fittest, and I had to work extra hard because I was a tiny sweet-looking girl.

  The police never caught me, and I didn’t want them to now. Avoiding the cops at all costs was still a mantra I lived by. The DMG would get me out, but I still had a natural fear and avoidance of law enforcement.

  Daniel nodded at my comment. He sucked in a deep breath and slung the fae over his shoulder. “Good thing this one isn’t too muscular. Tall but thin.” His voice still strained under the weight.

  “He’s a snake-shifter. Be careful of his mouth,” I warned.

  Daniel frowned with disgust at the fae. Keeping the shifter’s venomous fangs away from his skin, he lifted himself and the fae over the wall. With a grunt,
he slowly moved down the metal rungs. With one last look around the rooftop for any evidence left behind, I swung down, following close behind Daniel.

  TWO

  Dr. Boris Rapava looked up from his desk as we entered his office housed far below the city streets. “Mr. Holt. Ms. Daniels.” He gave a curt nod. “Excellent job, as usual. The specimen you retrieved tonight was one I have been hunting for years.”

  Dr. Rapava was born in the territory of Georgia, but his family moved to Russia when he was young. When he was twenty, he came to the States to further his education in genetic science. He had always done research in the unknown and unexplained, basically X-Files type of exploration. Twenty years ago, when a secret branch of the government discovered his work in fae mutant genetics, they came to him to officially ask him to head the DMG in Seattle.

  For some reason, Seattle had continuously been a hotspot for the fae. Dr. Rapava once explained to me about these doors or windows connecting our world with the Otherworld. It was how the fae traveled between realms. I didn’t understand the nuts and bolts of how they worked, but the gist of his statement was Seattle, Sedona, and New Orleans had the highest number of these “doors” and magical presence per square mile than New York had rats. European cities, like Prague, Edinburgh, London, Paris, and all of Ireland had the greatest quantity in the world, but in America, Seattle ranked extremely high.

  When they recruited me, the DMG only had thirty employees, but something changed in the last year. Rapava heavily recruited anyone with the sight. Like me. He never told me what had made the government so nervous, but I sensed if they were recruiting and expanding, there was a larger level of threat coming from the fae. My mind kept picturing Independence Day, and we were being invaded by these creatures. The ones I’d come in contact with thought themselves superior to the human species. Their arrogance was probably how we captured a lot of them. Fae didn’t believe we could match them.