Throne to the Wolves: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Spell Slinger Chronicles Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Sanchez Miller?” I squeaked, barely able to keep myself from hyperventilating. “Oh my God!” Mission: failed.

  “None other than,” he said, walking toward me with an easy gait. Even though he was older than Morgan Freeman, he moved like he was still twenty years old even though he didn’t seem supernatural in the slightest. Must be all that fruit juice he was rumored to drink. “You must be the consultant Justin told me he was hiring.”

  He reached out and took my hand. His touch was warm and just like I’d thought, he wasn’t even vaguely supernatural. As he brought his lips to the top of my hand, I realized I’d been holding my breath. I let it out in an explosive burst of air.

  “Sorry for hitting your star, but he was being a jackass,” I said or tried to say. My voice was way too high-pitched to actually be audible. My heart did little backflips in my chest as he released my hand and smiled. He wasn’t tall, maybe five and a half feet, but he still seemed to take up the entirety of the space. His eyes shifted from me to Justin and back again.

  “Don’t I know it?” He grinned and shook his head before spinning on his heel and moving down the darkened hallway. “Come. We have much to discuss.”

  “We do?” I asked, following him like he was the pied piper and I was the child of a parent who had forgotten to pay up. I almost couldn’t believe Sanchez Miller was here. I mean, okay, Justin was a big deal, but this was like meeting Michael Bay. Only better because his movies sucked way less and had at least twice as many explosions.

  “Yes. We need you to find out who killed Loraline so these cursed werewolves will let me resume filming.” He gave a dismissive wave. “Honestly. Holding up my movie because of one little murder. Why when I was shooting Requiem for a Vampire, we lost at least fifteen people a day, and that was considered a low body count.”

  The utter callousness with which he said those words made me stop in my tracks. Justin must have been following really closely behind me because he actually bumped into me, and I barely noticed. Hell, I’d have fallen to the ground in shock if he hadn’t grabbed me by the shoulder. He steadied me as I turned horrified eyes toward him.

  “Is he being serious?” I asked, unable to believe he thought of Loraline’s death as only a minor setback.

  “Yeah, he’s a class S A-hole,” Justin whispered, leaning close to my ear as he spoke like he expected Sanchez to hear him. “I was super excited to work with him. Thought it might be my big break. You know, going from crappy B-movies to big budget crappy B-movies, but then I met him.” Justin swallowed hard. “It was sort of like meeting your childhood hero and finding him a chain-smoking drunk who bums twenty bucks to pay off a hooker.”

  It was exactly like that, only kind of worse because I’d been trying to ignore Loraline’s death. I mean, in the car ride, I’d gone over the contract as well as I could. As far as I could tell, I was only home free if we caught the killer, so if she wasn’t dead, I was ten kinds of screwed. Still, I’d sort of been waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out and punk me because a life without Loraline was almost not worth living. Okay, that was a touch extreme. It more made watching YouTube not worth watching.

  Before I could reply to Justin, Sanchez opened a door, spilling bright sunlight into the hospital. He snapped his fingers at me. “Chop, chop, reader. I haven’t got all day.” He turned a wistful look at the slowly falling sun. “This light is perfect for the final fight scene and now we’ll have to delay.” He glared past me at Justin. “When we resume tomorrow, you’d better be able to throw the car like you said, otherwise I’m just going to Call Ryan Reynolds and use an industrial crane.”

  “Is he being serious right now?” I asked as Justin ushered me past the director and into the front of the lot. I’d expected more people, but only a handful were here, all of whom looked like they’d been pulled straight out of the secret service.

  There was lots of equipment, but I guessed most everyone had been sent home. It made sense, but shouldn’t there have been cops?

  “Yeah, I can throw a car,” Justin replied, gritting his teeth even though he knew I knew how strong he was. No, I’d been inquiring about Sanchez’s lack of empathy.

  “You know that isn’t what I meant,” I replied, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the bright light.

  “Yeah, he is serious. He didn’t want me in the movie, so this is just the excuse he needs to get me kicked off.” He tried to smile, but it didn’t quite seem to reach his eyes. “Come on. Let’s go see Loraline.”

  “You’re coming with me?” I asked as he took my hand and marched me toward a trio of trailers set off in the distance. It was weird because I was pretty sure he hadn’t done it in the “Oh, we’re holding hands” sort of way, but it felt intimate nonetheless, and what’s more, I liked the feel of his hand in mine way more than I should have.

  Especially given his status in the pack.

  Even if the contract was real and we found the killer, the chances of anything more than a one night stand were really unlikely. I could already tell if I let that much happen, I might not recover from him leaving.

  “If I don’t accompany you, one of them might kill you.” He gestured at the security guards. “And that’d upset me.”

  5

  Justin stopped just shy of one of the trailers. A big, ugly-looking guy wearing a backwards red baseball cap stood guard just outside its door. A wicked scar traced down from beneath the brim of his cap and disappeared beneath his striped skater polo. As I looked over his huge muscles straining against the polo, I got the impression he was the type of guy who would toss a shot of Jäger into his protein shake.

  For a moment, I thought Justin had stopped because of the bruiser, but when he turned to me, I knew that wasn’t the reason. Justin’s lips were pinched together and all the blood seemed to have drained from his face, making him seem older than he was. He swallowed so hard his adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and his cornflower blue eyes seemed content to look anywhere but at me.

  “What’s up?” I asked, trying to make eye contact, but it was hard because Justin kept looking away from me.

  “Um…” He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “You know, I was thinking, you don’t have to see the body.” He took a deep breath and met my eyes. There was pain in them, and part of me wanted to reach out and hold him. To tell him it was okay. I didn’t, but I wanted to. Instead, I pulled my hand from his and stuffed it into the pocket at the front of my hoodie.

  “Why is that?” I asked. Did he think I couldn’t handle it? I’d seen plenty of bodies thanks to his kind. One more wasn’t going to bother me. Well, probably. You never knew with things like corpses. Sometimes it only took one to break the camel’s back. I’d seen it happen during battles before, seen people wade through a house full of corpses and get undone by one that didn’t seem particularly different from any other.

  “It’s not because I don’t think you’re tough.” He held his hands out in front of himself like he was trying to surrender. “It’s just… you mostly need the object, right? You don’t need to see Loraline like this. Trust me. You don’t want to see her like this.”

  “Uh, huh,” I said because he was only kind of right. I didn’t need to see her. I could just take the object and try to read it, but I also wasn’t a true reader. My powers were based on belief. If I didn’t see the body, it might be hard for me to believe the object in question had killed her. It might make everything harder, and I didn’t want things to be harder, not when I could just poke my head in and take a peek.

  “Is this where you tell me you’re going in anyway?” he asked, and the defeat in his voice was made more obvious by the way he turned toward Tall, Scarred, and Ugly. “Well, I tried, eh, Jimbo?”

  “You did,” presumably Jimbo replied in a surprisingly Californian voice. “It’s a shame.”

  The way the big guy shivered after he spoke made me wonder if maybe I didn’t need to look after all. Still, I’d pushed it, and I had to go. I wasn’t tough by any means
, and I didn’t need to whip out my proverbial dick and show it off, but at the same time, if there were any werewolves around, I didn’t want them to think I was scared of anything. Contract or not.

  “Step aside, Jimbo,” I said, holding my chin up and marching toward the trailer. I’ll admit, it came out a touch ruder than I’d have liked. “I’ve got a case to solve.”

  A smile that chilled me to the core broke across Jimbo’s face as he swept himself sideways and made a fanciful gesture. He expected me to fail. Well, fuck him. “After you, Miss Reader.”

  “Thanks,” I said, moving to push the door open. “You can wait out here if you want, Justin.” It was mean, but I was annoyed. Still, the way relief spread across his features made my gut twist. Was it really that bad inside?

  As soon as I touched the door, a wave of slimy energy washed over me, sticking to my skin and making me shiver. I wasn’t sure what the frak had happened inside this trailer, but from the way the door felt, I was in for a big shock. My stomach tightened in anticipation as I pushed it open, preparing for the worst.

  It wasn’t even close. The entirety of the trailer was covered in glistening bits of red goo. Thicker bits were splattered across the ceiling and walls. Loraline lay in the center of a cheap Formica table in that spread-eagled pose Da Vinci had made so popular. Only it looked like someone had peeled her chest and stomach open and stapled it to the table while she’d been alive considering the way her flesh had healed over the staples. Each of her organs had been removed and had been placed around her body like macabre numbers on a clock.

  The smell was even worse. It smelled like death, wet dirt, and boiled sausage, and I was willing to bet the last scent was because her heart looked like it’d been burned as some sort of sacrificial offering. To make matters worse, a tiny clay figurine sat in the spot in her chest where her heart should have been. Was that what they wanted me to read? The figure?

  I took a step closer, desperately trying to ignore the sound of blood dripping onto the ground from the table. I went into calm, compartmentalized Annie-mode. The same mode my master had taught me to use on the battlefield. The one that let me wade through fields of corpses and not blink.

  My footsteps squelched in the blood as I approached Loraline’s corpse. There was way too much blood for it to all have come from her, but then again, she was a werewolf. Shifters tended to bleed more than a regular person because their bodies kept trying to heal, and consequently created more blood long past when a normal person would have bled out. Still, this was a lot.

  The figurine was made of green clay and had a lock of fake green hair stapled to its head with the same staples used to butterfly Loraline so it sort of looked like a crude version of the Incredible Hulk. Was it some kind of Voodoo doll? I wasn’t sure, but it seemed reasonable.

  I leaned in close to it, wondering if I should touch it, but before I could, the door to the trailer opened. I turned my head to see Justin peering in. I wasn’t sure if he was checking on me or not, but from the look on his face, it’d taken a lot for him to even look in here. Good for him.

  “The prop is on the seat of the couch,” he said, motioning to my left. “She was in here practicing with it when she died. It will probably give you the best shot at what was going on if you don’t want to touch the statue.”

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to smile at him. I wanted to tell him I would try both, but I didn’t have time before he nodded and pulled his head back outside.

  I heard the door shut as I looked toward the couch. Later, I’d wonder if he thought I was too callous and cold, but for the moment I had a job to do, and the less time I had to stay in here, the better. It wasn’t a warm day by LA standards, but the inside of the trailer was muggy and humid, and the thought of why that was made me shudder.

  The prop on the couch looked like a weapon, just not one I’d seen before. For one, it had three blades poking out from the front in the same direction sort of like bayonets, only they had chain-link running over them like a chainsaw.

  In the center of the tri-blades was a huge cannon, or at least that’s what it seemed like. The rest of it was gunmetal and black matte with blue LEDs all over it. The entire thing was covered in blood like Loraline had tried to use it as a club against her enemies. It looked like a hell of a weapon, but it also looked fake as hell. So why did it smell like it’d recently been fired?

  6

  The prop was heavier than I expected, and as I hefted it with both hands, I felt like I was straight out of Gears of War. All I needed was some Locust to chainsaw in half and I’d be good to go. It was sort of funny because Gears was a post-apocalyptic shooter, and I’d once read an article where the author had wanted to live in the world of Gears of War.

  I wasn’t sure if he was just brain damaged by machismo, but as a refugee of a clan of mages who had been violently murdered, I had wanted to reach through my computer screen and smack the fuck out of him. I mean, who in their right mind wanted to live in a post-apocalyptic world on the brink of annihilation?

  That said, I had to admit this tri-bladed blaster rifle was pretty cool. All I needed was a silver chainmail bikini, and I’d be ready to go. I smirked and pushed away the thought. Now wasn’t the right time to do this. I slung the gun over my shoulder by its strap and as I did so, was immediately thankful it wasn’t covered in bits of Loraline.

  I crossed the room and headed back toward the table even though I didn’t want to. I sucked in a deep breath, immediately I wished I hadn’t, and shut my eyes, steeling myself. When I opened them, I was calm and centered. I touched the figurine in Loraline’s gaping chest.

  It was cold to the touch, and sort of felt like a rough clay flowerpot. Even though I was already regretting it, I called upon my power, then hesitated. Part of me wanted to take the figurine outside, but I didn’t want to disturb the crime scene any more than I already had.

  “Time to put on your big girl pants, Annie,” I mumbled and sent a surge of magic into the tiny statue.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t nothing. Like seriously. This was the complete absence of anything happening at all.

  My power slid off the statue in a way I’d never experienced before. It was almost like someone had expected me to read it and blocked me. Only that was impossible as far as I knew. Even if it wasn’t, who the hell planned for an animator like me to touch something?

  Sometimes objects had wards or whatever to block a real reader, but they didn’t usually bother me because I wasn’t a real reader. Objects didn’t talk to me. No, I talked to them.

  This object didn’t talk to me at all. It gave me the magical equivalent of a brush-off from a pretty girl at a bar. No, it was worse than that. As far as my magic was concerned, it wasn’t even there. For that to be the case, someone would have to have expected someone like me, and if someone expected someone like me…

  I gulped. This was a trap.

  I spun on my heel and made it about three steps toward the door when the entire trailer rocked violently. A wave of fire and death blew the door inward with enough force to throw me from my feet. I flew backward and landed on top of Loraline’s corpse. I think her general squishiness was the only thing that saved me from a concussion as I scrambled off the table and ducked beneath it.

  My hearing was shot through with ringing and everything was moving in slow motion as flames spread across the interior of the trailer like they had a mind of their own. That’s when the screaming started. I heard the cries of onlookers moments before Jimbo’s half-shifted body slammed into the front door as he tumbled inside. Flame rippled across his body as he tried to get to his feet but wound up slipping in his own guts and crashing into the counter.

  His entire torso was blown open in the same way Loraline’s had been, and while I didn’t know why, I was going to find out.

  “You okay?” I cried, moving toward him as quickly as I could. I wasn’t sure what was out there, but if possible I wanted Jimbo on my side.


  “Yeah, just a flesh wound,” he snarled through gritted teeth. His eyes had gone full on amber, and I knew he was trying to shift. He should have been able to do it, but his body was too busy trying to keep him alive to do so.

  “What’s out there?” I asked, crouching down next to him and stuffing his entrails inside his gut and trying to hold the wound closed to assist his healing factor. Hot blood flowed through my fingers, and I realized it was going to be no use. I should have been able to feel him healing, feel the magic swarming through his cells and kicking them into overdrive. Hell, his flesh should have been hot to the touch, that’s how you knew you’d killed one after all, their flesh went cold.

  It was none of those things, and as his breathing grew ragged and labored, I realized whatever he’d been hit with wasn’t letting him heal. Holy fuck. No wonder Loraline had died! Werewolves were notorious for taking damage since they could heal nearly anything. It was why people like me could kill them so easily. They never expected my bullets to hurt them until it was too late.

  What if someone had a weapon that could stop a werewolf from healing? They’d get blown apart thinking they’d heal, and consequently, they’d just die. Panic seized me. What if Justin was out there? What if he was as stupid as Jimbo was?

  “Would you believe me if I told you Darth Vader?” he said, but his words were so labored, I almost didn’t hear him. The image made me shudder. My brother had been obsessed with Darth Vader, and sometimes, even now, the sight of the villain made me think of him. It was why I had a Darth Vader lightsaber after all. Still, who would send a bunch of people dressed like Darth Vader when Richard Nixon masks were so readily available?

  “Are you being serious?” I asked as another blast of fire hit the trailer, and this time the entire thing tipped over onto its side. I fell, slamming hard into the side wall moments before Jimbo landed on top of me, smashing Loraline’s organs into me.