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  Cursed Relic

  Witchling Wars: Vampire Echelon Book 1

  Shawn Knightley

  Copyright © 2019 by Shawn Knightley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Newsletter

  Message to the Reader

  Witchling Wars Glossary

  About the Author

  Also by Shawn Knightley

  1

  “Voice mailbox is full.”

  I looked down at my cell phone and punched in the number once more.

  “Voice mailbox is full,” it repeated back to me in that god awful monotone voice.

  ‘Damn it! Tobias, where are you?’

  I peered over the large rocks and watched as people started filing in through the gates and down the stairs. The sun was setting over the distance. It gave the Red Rocks Amphitheater an orange hue as it started slowly descending from the sky, allowing the stars to pierce through the darkening horizon.

  I tried Tobias’s cell phone for the third time as more and more people started walking in and finding a place to sit for the concert to begin. I got the same irritating message. The one that told me everything I needed to know. Tobias didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to help me. Or worse, he was actively working against me. And the vixra.

  ‘Fine. Have it your way. I’ll do this one by myself. Then I’ll delight in telling Arthur you’re doing everything you can to disobey him.’

  It wasn’t long before the people chattering below me started to get louder and louder, waiting for the country music singer giving the concert to come out and start singing. They cheered every single time one of the crew came out on stage to adjust something, thinking that the concert was about to begin. When it finally did and the lights came on highlighting a man with shoulder-length blonde hair, a cowboy hat, and an acoustic guitar, they all stood up and started screaming. An annoying scream that nearly busted my eardrums.

  I unconsciously felt for the .380 Browning firearm at my side, holding onto the handle and feeling the cold metal send goosebumps straight up my arm. I loved the feeling of the metal on my skin. Firearms had come so far in the 20th century. The power they held gave me a thrill that I never felt when holding a knife.

  I squinted through the harsh stage lights and started scanning the crowd, searching for vampires I suspected might be lurking in through the dense cluster of people. Too drunk and too innocent to realize any one of them might soon be hunted for an evening meal.

  Vampires love concerts. Especially if the concert venue has a pit. Things tend to be wild and chaotic in the drunken fog of fans dancing through the aisles and out of their seats. The Red Rocks Amphitheater was a perfect feeding ground. Once the sun went down, vampires could blend in with the rest of the screaming crowd. Everyone was distracted. The noise was too loud for anyone to know the difference between a scream from elation or a scream from complete terror. And let’s face it, most people at concerts are screaming.

  ‘If I were a vampire, this is where I would hunt. They have to be here.’

  Not that vampires particularly cared whether or not they were caught out in the open. So few had any control over their impulses and cravings for blood. The ones who had long enough memories knew better than to leave a trail behind. Meaning any vampire I found here had their wits about them and could control their cravings long enough to pick a victim in the chaotic mess of the crowd. I had to be on my guard.

  Everything was calm for the first twenty minutes. I watched people in the crowd start dancing to the country music between the aisles in their cowboy boots and hats, swaying with their girlfriends in their arms. Some were drunker than others. And that made them a target. Not that they would know it. Humans didn’t fear things such as witchlings or vampires anymore. It had been beaten out of them as some sort of strange occult-like superstition. Age-old myths that people from a different time believed because of religious fervor.

  ‘Or perhaps they knew something that people these days conveniently forgot.’

  I watched the crowd near the stage from the high rock on the side, trying not to focus on the way the noise made my eardrums feel as though they were vibrating.

  A tingling danced in my palm. I looked down at my hand on the large rock. There was a gold light seeping through my skin. My magic had come out to play, telling me that danger was near.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the energy traveling through my hand and into my arm. I might not possess control over my magic like other powerful witchlings but I had many years to perfect wielding what little magic I could harness. Even if I was a kruxa. A low-tier witchling by anyone else’s standards. Except for my own.

  I stood on top of the rock and peered down at the people in the amphitheater. Then I lifted my hand into the sky and cast a gray shadow charm over my body, covering me from the view of the people below as I jumped from the height of the staggering rock to the stairs below. My magic slowly let me down and I landed gently on my feet. Once I was down I removed the gray shadow over me and started to push through the crowd of people in front of the stage.

  The air was warm yet crisp. The fresh mountain breeze was laced with the scent of booze and smoke barreling from the stage. I looked down each and every aisle as my magic touched the tips of my fingers, hoping it wouldn’t come out in full view of everyone around me. It would tell me when I had found the vampire I was searching for but only at the expense of potentially exposing me. Kruxa magic is like that. Unpredictable and not entirely controllable.

  A man came up from behind and grabbed me by the waste.

  “Are you looking for a dance partner, sweetheart?” he said in my ear. I could smell the stale scent of beer on his heavy breath.

  He didn’t give me the chance to say no. He tried pulling me into his sweaty chest. I was about to strike him with my elbow before he managed to swing me around by my arm as if he was trying to spin me.

  ‘Thanks for the better angle.’

  I pushed my palm right into his ribs. He must have thought I was saying yes because his hand came up to take mine. My magic shot right into him and he went stumbling backward, colliding with another couple dancing in a nearby aisle. I stepped away and disappeared before they had a chance to see where he had come from and the ball of magic still weaving in my hand.

  I kept pushing through people dancing on the stairs to the twangy beats of country music and stood on my tip toes to see through the myriad of cowboy hats, girls in heeled cowboy boots, and jeans far too short for any respectable lady to be wearing. But then again, this was a different time from the one I was raised in. A time when being a lady meant maintaining a certain amount of respectability and a virtuous reputation. Not dancing in jeans shorts with a beer in one hand and a bare-chested man with an unbuttoned flannel t-shirt in the other.

  ‘Call me old-fashioned but I always assumed its what a man can’t see that made him work a little harder for it.’

  Once I was only a few rows from the front my magic threatened to come tumbling out of my hand. It took every shred of control I had to keep it inside my palm. Which meant only one thing. There was a threat nearby.
But not just any common threat. A vampire.

  A female vampire with curly blond hair and bright red lipstick was standing only twenty feet away from me. Once I saw her, my eyes were locked and my magic ready to take aim. She didn’t tear her eyes away from mine as she reached for a young man only inches away from her and pulled him backward. Only she didn’t sink her sharp fangs into his neck. The more adept vampires learned long ago that such tactics only created questions and a very inconvenient trail that could lead to discovery. And inevitably, more people to kill as a result which only leads to more questions that humans couldn’t answer. This vampire knew better. She withdrew a pocket knife from her jeans and snapped the blade open, ready to dig it into the young man’s neck and begin feeding. He didn’t try to fight her off. On the contrary. He looked taken with her. If not entranced.

  ‘She must be luring him.’

  She leaned down and kissed his neck as if she was begging for him to seduce her.

  ‘He probably thinks they’re star crossed lovers.’

  She knew exactly what she was doing. Perhaps she even knew who I was. And what I came here to do.

  The only way to stop her was to shoot my magic through the air and expose myself to all the people around me. Otherwise, she would sink the dagger into the young man’s throat and feed on him right in front of me. Her teeth glistened as the stage lights swooped through the crowd of people. A new song was starting and the audience roared in delight once they recognized the melody. The perfect cover if the young man tried to scream once she stabbed him in the throat so there wouldn’t be any teeth marks left behind. If he was even capable of making any noise. If she stabbed him deep enough the blade might cut his vocal cords.

  There was only one option if I was going to save his life. I had to make a scene. One that could have consequences. Or I could let her stab him and risk him bleeding out after she had a taste of him and ran out of the amphitheater. Or worse, she might go after more victims. If she got away with it once she might be foolish enough to think she could do so again.

  ‘Not tonight. I already have enough tragedy haunting my conscience.’

  I lunged downward and slammed my magic into the ground below the stage, letting it rip straight through my hands. A thundering sound discharged through my palms and sent a shock wave through the ground. Along with the bright gold light of my magic shooting up into the sky. It may have been a bit over the top but I had to make it look like a proper earthquake. Only in this case, it looked more like an explosion.

  ‘Okay. So maybe taking vixra blood before I came wasn’t such a good idea.’

  It was only supposed to be enough to shake the floor and distract the vampire long enough to save this random guy from becoming her dinner. Only it looked more like a bomb had gone off.

  The music stopped. There was silence at first as my magic dissipated and I crouched on the ground. Everyone around me was thrown back at least ten feet. Some were in the rows of seats. Others went flying into the sidelining trees and slammed into the rocks. But when I got back up and looked around, I saw the young man the vampire had in her clutches sprawled out flat on his back. The upside was that his neck hadn’t been torn open by the vampire’s blade. The downside was I could see bone popping through his arm. It was definitely broken.

  ‘Better injured than dead. You can thank me later.’

  I stopped her from turning him into her evening meal. Only now I had an even bigger problem. The scene looked like some sort of terrorist attack. There were burn marks seared into the stage, a few trees on fire, and not a single person near me was standing on their own two feet.

  The vibrations from my magic dissipated. There was silence. Muttering. Shuffling. Then the screaming started. And not the elated kind. People trampled over one another to get to the exits once they realized what was happening. Or what they thought was happening.

  ‘Great. What if someone gets trampled by the crowd rushing out?’

  I searched the opposite side of the amphitheater for the one face I wanted to find. But it was too late. The vampire was gone. The chaos that ensued created the perfect environment for her to make a run for it.

  The sound of screams and rushing footsteps leaving the amphitheater filled my ears as I ran out alongside everyone else, doing my best to look like a potential victim as I limped along the way.

  ‘Damn you, Tobias. I needed you here.’

  Once I reached the top of the stairs and peered out over the crowd I saw the full scale of the damage I had done. There were eighteen people knocked completely unconscious along with the lead singer of the band and a huge black hole where I had slammed my magic into the ground. With the help of some of the most powerful witchling blood in the world circulating in my system.

  ‘Arthur will never trust me with his vixra blood again.’

  The nearby trees were burning into the sky as the stagehands dragged away the country music star by his arms. Even a few rows of seats were crumbled to the ground and the side speakers by the stage were completely destroyed.

  ‘Good lord. The vixra will kill me.’

  I rushed down 16th Street Mall with the wind at my back. I must have had a look on my face like I would murder anyone who got in my way because people started swerving around me with each hastened step of my feet on the sidewalk. The streets were buzzing with people filing in and out of the bars. The locals were taking full advantage of the nice weather. I could smell the scent of craft beer being sipped by everyone from college students to groups of young men gathering to watch the local sports event on the TVs in the bars.

  ‘Tobias won’t be in any of those. A man as old as him would think of modern day sports as a joke. A cheap replacement for any true sense of comradery among people.’

  He preferred the older bars. Ones that were more rustic and snobby about which liquors they served. I knew the one he would be in. He didn’t know it but I had ways of watching where he went after we parted from our hunts. Or at the least the few he actually showed up for, which wasn’t many these days. And this time was no different.

  I peered into the sky to see a red-tailed hawk sitting atop the brick building of an Irish pub. It cawed down at me as I reached for the front door and let myself in, pushing through the slog of late night bar hoppers until I could see him at the front of the bar, sipping on what looked like whiskey but I knew was full of human blood. Disguised in a way only he knew how to pull off to the average onlooker. For a thousand-year-old vampire, he was such a walking contradiction. He always had to have the best of modern cars, the best of modern apartments, the most exquisite art, and yet when it came to his bars he wanted a taste of the old world surrounding his senses. A world that only existed in ghastly historical representations in Hollywood films that butchered the larger details while obsessing over the finite ones.

  “Tobias!” I hollered even though I was only a few feet away. I honestly didn’t care if I embarrassed him.

  He slowly turned to glance in my general direction, making his apathy well-known to everyone else in the bar. He looked at me as if I was a rat and he was a snake. If he opened his mouth I wondered if venom would seep from his fangs.

  ‘It’s not like I enjoy being tethered to a vampire. Don’t act as though I’m any happier about this arrangement than you are.’

  It wasn’t becoming of our kind to work together. Vampires and witchlings were enemies since the dawn of the Changing.

  “Where were you?” I demanded.

  “I’ve been right here. Doing exactly this,” he said as he slugged down his last sip of blood in a shot glass.

  “We had plans tonight,” I scolded him, trying my best to avoid stating what those plans were. It wasn’t like I didn’t stand out already. I was never able to shake traces of my Scottish accent. Not since the day I left over two centuries ago. I could cover it. But traces of it always remained. “I couldn’t do it alone. I needed you there!”

  “Obviously,” he said.

  It was then that I too
k a peek at the television behind the bar. It wasn’t playing the local sports game like all the other bars. It was playing the evening news. Shots of the catastrophe at Red Rocks Amphitheater were displayed all over the screen. The chaos of people running out of the venue and nearly trampling one another, various camera angles of the wreckage I caused, along with live footage of people being carted away in ambulances. There were even a few being interviewed by local television stations. But that wasn’t what startled me. It was the headline at the bottom of the screen.

  TERRORIST BOMBING AT RED ROCKS COUNTRY MUSIC CONCERT

  “None of this would have happened if you had been there,” I practically yelled at him.

  He got up from the bar seat and took me by the arm, dragging me out of the front door and down the street until we reached an abandoned dark alley. I could hear the hawk cawing above us, watching each second go by and keeping guard.

  ‘Not now, Kitty. I don’t want him noticing you.’

  “Hold your tongue while we’re in public,” he sneered at me, finally letting me go and shoving me into the brick wall of the filthy alley. The smell of empty beer cans, trash, and vomit made my nose curl.

  “I have certain expectations of you if we’re going to make this work,” I said. “If we’re going to be forced to work together, we have to create a system. A routine. One that keeps us alive.”

  “We’re already immortal. What exactly do you think is going to happen?”

  Now it was my turn to sneer. He loved reminding me of our state of being. The state was forced on both of us for completely different reasons. He gained immortality by being turned into a vampire nearly a thousand years ago. I gained it by angering the most powerful family of vixra witchlings in the world. Neither of us found it particularly enjoyable. Humans often lust for immortality like its some sort of prize. I only knew it as an eternity to live with my conscience. And the knowledge that I might never be free again.