Shade Cursed: A Druidverse Urban Fantasy Novel (The Shadow Changeling Series Book 1)

by M. D. Massey

  One day, the entity would not be so easy to subdue. Perhaps it would be when I was injured or under duress. Then, I might regret having such easy access to power all these years—but that day had not come yet.

  You will obey, as always, I replied as I exerted the full weight of my will against it, using my resolve to psychically squeeze it with vise-like pressure.

  -Perhaps. But not in time to fulfill your command.-

  So distracted was I with subjugating my shade, I’d taken my eyes off the conflict in front of me. Cursing my lapse of mental focus, I glanced up just in time to see the manticore strike.

  As the manticore’s stinger whipped out at Belladonna, she leaned just far enough out of the way to avoid being impaled. Simultaneously, she hacked downward with her sword in a cross-body slash that caught Xanthe’s tail as it snapped back. Her sword wasn’t magical, but it was razor-sharp, and it neatly severed the manticore’s aculeus and poison vesicle from the rest of its segmented tail.

  “Arrrghh, tail!” the creature shrieked.

  Xanthe’s reaction was more from anger than horror. The segment Belladonna had cut off would grow back, eventually. However, losing it in battle was an insult the manticore would not abide.

  I wasn’t exactly happy that Belladonna had injured my guardian, but she hadn’t been herself since she’d been transformed into a lamia. She’d moved to the United States specifically so she could avoid being forced to accept La Anjana’s magic. Moreover, she deeply resented being tricked into becoming something she despised, which of course had led to some deep self-hate that she kept hidden from others.

  But she couldn’t hide it from me. I’d been taught to carefully observe the weaknesses of others, all the better to exploit them when the opportunity arose. Although I’d never use Belladonna’s self-hatred against her, I didn’t stop her from sabotaging her relationship with Colin over it, either. Clearly, we both had our issues. Perhaps that was why I was determined to win her back.

  Still, I couldn’t allow her free rein to destroy that which was mine. That she’d kill my pet, I had no doubt, if I didn’t step in to stop her. Rather than interfering on her side of the battle—which she’d be loath to forgive—I acted to restrain Xanthe instead. Simpleminded as he was, he’d forget about it in a few days.

  Enough, I commanded as I slammed my will down, shattering any resistance the shade had given. I’d pay for it later, but in this moment my patience had worn thin. Now fully in control of the wraith’s powers, I drew its magic into me, reveling in it for no more than the span of a heartbeat before bending it to my will. With a thought I channeled it outward, casting a large puddle of sticky, tar-like shadow magic around Xanthe’s feet.

  The manticore roared in rage and frustration as it became trapped in my spell. Predictably, Xanthe fought to free himself, but he only became further entangled the more he struggled. All the while, Belladonna looked on while wearing an amused, somewhat repulsively venomous grin.

  “Treachery,” Xanthe growled as he glowered at me.

  Several shadow tentacles sprouted from my torso, lifting me high enough so I could look down at my servant. As usual when I channeled shadow magic, my eyes were two black, empty pools, and a halo of negative energy darkened my features. I imbued my voice with power as I spoke, returning the manticore’s accusing stare with a disapproving glare of my own.

  “You disobeyed me, Xanthe,” I said in a voice so low as to require enhanced senses to hear. Only fools yelled at their subordinates—quiet calm was much more intimidating. “Consider yourself fortunate you still live.”

  The manticore met my gaze for a moment, then he lowered his head in submission. “Sorry, master.”

  What he was saying he could not convey in words. However, I understood that he felt remorse at displeasing me and regret that he’d acted more from instinct than logic. That was the curse his kind lived under, their human side longing for the intellectual capacity to be civilized, while being subjugated by the feral nature of their animal and insect DNA.

  Did I pity him? Of course I did, because I knew exactly how Xanthe felt. Yet, my face displayed neither empathy nor kindness as I sent him away.

  “Go, then,” I said, releasing the spell. “But know that next time I will not be so forgiving of your disobedience.”

  “Yes, master,” he said, taking time to snarl at Belladonna before trotting off with his tail curled low between his legs.

  I sighed as I turned to my former lover. “Could you not simply wait for me to come to the gate?”

  She shrugged. “I wanted to see if I could bypass your wards.”

  Belladonna had gained certain magical powers when she became a lamia, not the least of which was the ability to thwart passive magical defenses. Initially she’d felt quite a bit of reticence at exploring the limits of those skills, until I pointed out how useful such skills could be. Unfortunately, she had a tendency to test her newfound powers against my own, and the results of her experimentations often became the source of my own chagrin.

  “And so you have, momentarily at least. But be advised that the spells I use to guard this place are designed to learn from past trespasses. If I were you, I would not attempt to break through or sneak past my wards again.”

  “Sí, gran mago,” she replied with a roll of her eyes. “No voy a joder con tu magia.”

  I pursed my lips and clasped my hands behind my waist, ignoring her barb. “Are you hungry?”

  “Starved,” she replied with a slight pout of her lips. “Shifting always makes my stomach grumble.”

  “When you’ve changed and dressed, meet me in the tower. I’ll prepare a light lunch for us both.”

  “One thing I’ll say for you, Crowley,” she purred as a nictitating membrane blinked over her vertically-slitted snake eyes. “You certainly know the way to a girl’s heart.”

  If only, I reflected as I headed for my domicile.

  I’d just placed a tomato and spinach quiche in the oven when Belladonna breezed through my front door. A platter with brie, berries, raspberry jam, and rustic crackers sat centered on the kitchen table, along with a carafe of orange juice. Two places were set, complete with placemats, silverware, and glasses, although I rarely ate breakfast.

  “Oh, yum,” she said, licking her lips while I tried not to notice.

  “Please, sit. And pardon the lack, but this was the best I could do on a moment’s notice.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Lack? Crowley, breakfast for me is usually half a Pop Tart and coffee from the Stop and Stab.”

  “As needs must do, I suppose, when one lacks even the most basic culinary skills.” I pulled out a chair. “Now, sit, and eat.”

  “Sí, papi.” Belladonna flounced herself down, pouring herself a glass of juice while I served her a double espresso in a white china coffee cup. She wasted no time dumping six sugar cubes in it, after which she stirred it with a soup spoon. “Mmm, delish.”

  I was just about to pull my own espresso and join her when a nasally voice echoed from the stairwell. “Hey, man, I don’t want to be a bother, but did you ever scare up that opium?”

  I exhaled heavily, cradling my chin with my thumb as I knuckled my lips. Belladonna gave me a quizzical look, then she dashed upstairs with superhuman speed.

  “Crowley, why do you have a vampire strapped to your autopsy table?” she yelled from my laboratory.

  I massaged my temples, wondering why I hadn’t thought to cast an obfuscation and silencing spell on the courier before admitting Belladonna to my tower. Taking the steps two at a time, I walked into the lab with my hands in my pockets, a neutral expression on my face.

  “It’s an examination table,” I stated. “He’s being examined.”

  “Don’t mind me, I’m just here for the drugs,” the courier interjected.

  Belladonna gave me a disapproving frown. “Um, can I speak to you downstairs?”

  “In a minute. I need to access my apothecary table, then I’ll be right down.”

>   “Hot damn, that means I get my opium,” the vampire exclaimed.

  Belladonna looked back and forth between me and the vamp, shaking her head. “Right. On second thought, I’ll be waiting outside when you’re done.”

  She walked out of the room, stiff-backed. “Do mind the quiche…” I called out as an afterthought, only to be cut off by the sound of my front door slamming. “…so it doesn’t burn,” I finished under my breath.

  “She’s hot, dude,” the vampire observed. “I’d hit that.”

  I scowled at him. “I’ll be right back with that opium.”

  Minutes later, the vampire was singing quietly to himself, drunk on poppy milk, and I was exiting the tower to look for Belladonna. She hadn’t gone far—just across the driveway, in fact. There she stood, facing away from me, her arms crossed and her left boot tapping a rapid cadence against the crushed gravel beneath.

  “He’ll not be a bother, if you’d like to finish your meal,” I offered.

  Belladonna spun on me, her small hands curled into hard fists at her sides. “Crowley, you promised me that you’d stop all this mad scientist gilipolleces.”

  “I did—for the most part.”

  “¡Y una mierda!” she exclaimed with a stomp of her foot. “Then why do you have a vampire tied up in your tower?”

  “He’s a stray. I was merely saving Luther the trouble—”

  “Aye, carajo—stop lying, Crowley. If Luther knew you were cutting bloodkin up for spare parts, he’d have a shit attack, and you know it.”

  I crossed my arms and shrugged. “Then we’ll simply have to make certain he doesn’t find out. Besides, this simpleton really is a drifter. He has no ties to the local coven, he was operating in Luther’s territory without permission, and he’s a killer. I only found him after he murdered a vagrant, at which point Templeton tipped me off to the vamp’s presence.”

  Templeton was a sorcerer who lived on the streets of downtown Austin. Quite a few of the homeless that inhabited the city were possessed of not inconsiderable magical talent. Yet, the supernatural powers that be overlooked them, as did the mundane population. But not me. Mother had taught me to cultivate networks of spies and informants, and even though I no longer worked for her, I routinely checked in with my contacts.

  Belladonna considered my words, and by the slight shift of her shoulders, I could tell she’d inwardly conceded—although she’d never admit it. “Whatever. Just make sure you don’t drag me into your bullshit when Luther finds out. The way things are going with Colin, I have a feeling the factions are going to be looking for a few freelancers who don’t ask questions.”

  “You mean to fill in for a justiciar who is preoccupied with avoiding his own premature demise?” I scoffed. “They should never have come to rely so heavily on his services.”

  “Yeah, well. I guess it’s damned convenient to have a neutral third party take out the trash.”

  “And will you be willing to do their dirty work as well?” I asked.

  “I need the money. Some of us aren’t loaded like you are, cabron.” She glanced up at the tower, then at her phone. “Speaking of which, don’t be late tonight. If I screw this up, Maeve’ll never hire me again.”

  Ah yes—I was supposed to assist her with a stakeout. It was fae business, which I avoided as a general rule of survival. But what Belladonna asked of me, I could not refuse.

  “I’ll be there, never fear.” I nodded toward my tower. “Now, at the very least allow me to pack your food for later.”

  “Fine. But if anyone asks, I never saw that fucking vampiro, entiendes?”

  “My lips are sealed,” I said as I turned an imaginary key over my mouth. I proffered her my arm with a rakish smile. “Shall we?”

  She scowled and took my arm. “Crowley, if you weren’t so freaking weird, I might consider dating you again.”

  Sadly, I had nothing to say to that.

  4

  By the time I’d seen Belladonna safely to the gate, my shade had become unruly, rattling his chains and shaking the rafters of his metaphorical prison.

  -Release me, wizard. Let me feed.-

  I ignored it, preoccupied as I was by my concerns with Belladonna’s opinion of me. As I walked back to my tower, the wraith attacked suddenly with a direct, concerted assault on my psyche. The entity had been mustering its reserves for some time while I was distracted, and it unleashed its fury against my mind and will all at once.

  I staggered and fell to one knee as pain exploded inside my head. My heartbeat fluttered while my gut wrenched and roiled, causing me to empty my stomach contents onto the ground as the shadow wraith attempted to break free from its prison. It was all I could do to avoid losing consciousness from the physical and psychic agony created by the shade’s assault.

  For the entity, this was a struggle for freedom, while for me it was a life-or-death altercation. If the shade succeeded in battering down the prison walls I’d created to contain it, my mind might shatter. Then the entity would be in complete control of my person, while my spirit languished in mindless slavery to the shade, likely for all eternity.

  As I fought to regain control, one of the psychic chains that restrained the shade crumbled into so much aetherial dust under the onslaught. This allowed the wraith some freedom of movement as I lost partial control over the integrity of its confines. As a result, a shadow tentacle whipped out from my torso, stretching some fifty feet across the pasture to snatch a squirrel from an oak tree. The shade sucked the life force from the animal until nothing was left but a dried, empty husk, which it discarded by tossing the carcass across the field.

  -More! I hunger.-

  No, I replied as I slammed my open palm against my chest, shattering a crystal vial that hung from a silver chain around my neck. Jagged shards of crystal pierced my skin, allowing the contents of the vial to seep into my flesh. Micro-doses of concentrated elixir entered my bloodstream, flowing through my veins to my internal organs and brain.

  Within seconds, the pain receded, my heartbeat strengthened, and the fog in my mind cleared, leaving me in a state of razor-sharp focus. Deep within where the entity had been grafted onto my spiritual core, I slammed psychic walls down around it, slicing that single shadow limb off at the source. Simultaneously, I wrapped the shade in metaphysical chains, building them link by link from magic and pure resolve.

  Within moments, the wraith was so fully restrained that I would need to loosen its bonds if I wished to access its magic. That suited me fine, so fully mentally and spiritually drained was I after engaging in a psychic battle with a shadow prince. I took a few moments to get my bearings, taking deep, slow breaths as I steadied myself by placing a hand on the grassy earth beneath me.

  Soon I felt the soft nudge of a cold nose at my elbow. Opening my eyes, I turned my head to find Xanthe lying on his stomach next to me, his eyebrows knitted with concern. The manticore had pulled his massive, clawed forepaws under his chest so he could nuzzle my arm without crushing me.

  The beast was hideous and dense as rocks, but loyal. I cracked the slightest smile as I reached up to scratch behind his leonine ear. “I apologize for my anger earlier, Xanthe.”

  He closed his eyes as his human face scrunched up in a most cat-like expression. “Master is kind. Forgive Master,” he purred.

  No one had ever called me kind, and that Xanthe did so was empirical proof of his simplemindedness. I was honorable, certainly, but not kind—and there existed a huge gap between the two. However, far was it from me to expose the inaccuracy of his assessment.

  I patted the manticore on his thick, furry neck. “There are six wild hogs in the cage trap on the northeast side of the property. You have my permission to feed—but do not eat them all at once, else you’ll be up all night with a stomachache.”

  “Kind master,” he purred, nuzzling me hard enough to knock me over before he bounded off across the field.

  “No,” I said to myself as his tail disappeared over a distant rise. “I fear
I know nothing of kindness at all.”

  After spending several hours meditating inside my thaumaturgic circle—shoring up the mental walls of the wraith’s prison—I visited my laboratory to check on my guest. Alas, it was time to start slicing him up.

  Frankly, I had more empathy for Xanthe than I did for the vampire, although they were both natural-born killers. Xanthe acted on instinct alone, and he possessed several redeeming qualities. Loyalty, steadfastness, empathy, and courage, to name a few.

  Vampires, on the other hand, were creatures of higher intelligence who chose to kill despite their ability to reason and apply logic to a given dilemma. Not only did they hunt other intelligent species, but they also reveled in the taking of intelligent life. And for all his idiotic, stoner quirks, I wasn’t lying when I told Belladonna that this one had killed indiscriminately.

  McCool sympathized with the local vampire coven, likely because he saw them as a marginalized population. He of all people should know that you cannot evaluate the merits of a supernatural species while viewing them through the lens of human convention. Vampires were sociopaths who felt no remorse for ending the lives of “lesser” species, all for the sake of their own continued existence. They were serial killers, every last one.

  Certainly, Luther was the most benevolent of all the bloodkin I’d met, but whether it was due to necessity or choice, I had not a clue. Austin’s vampire coven leader led the druid to believe that his coven fed only on volunteers, but I knew that the empirical data could not support that supposition. A mature vampire required a liter of blood a day simply to maintain their physiology at rest—and that requirement would increase at least threefold if they were wounded or highly active.

  There were over one-hundred vampires in the local coven. The average human body contains four to six liters of blood. Exsanguination occurs at a loss of two-and-a-half to four liters, and it takes four to six weeks for the human body to regenerate the erythrocytes lost from donating just a pint of blood. If the average active vampire were to meet their nutritional needs by feeding on multiple humans, a single vampire would require, at a minimum, a stable of one-hundred-eighty humans from which to feed on a rotating basis.