Shadow Mage: (Witchling Wars: Luxra Echelon, Book 1) Read online

  I heard a groan from the opposite side of the living room followed by a loud clanking of plastic hitting wood. Liam was sitting on the couch watching television. That was until he saw me enter. The noise I heard was the remote control hitting the coffee table. He got up from the couch and headed for the back stairs to go to his room.

  “Liam,” William called his name. “I expect you to use more manners with Kayla in the future. The occasional pleasant greeting wouldn’t hurt you.”

  He stopped midway up the stairs to shout back down at his father. “No, but letting a half-demon into our home eventually will.”

  I winced at his words. Before I might have gotten defensive. Now I knew he wasn’t entirely wrong. His father was taking a risk by letting me stay with them in more ways than one.

  “Liam!” William cried out. “Stop right there!”

  Only Liam didn’t stop. He stomped all the way up the stairs and shut his bedroom door. I heard the distinctive click of his lock setting into place.

  William sighed and made a face that showed what he couldn’t express in words. He was mortified by his son’s behavior and he hoped I would forgive him.

  “Excuse me,” he said quietly before heading up the stairs.

  I didn’t want to get between the two of them. There was a history there that I knew nothing about and I wasn’t going to get in the middle of it. I was already circling their world and adding fuel to what was probably already a burning fire.

  I went over to the couch and sat down, ready to unwind a bit after the two heavy beers I shared with Fiona. Liam left the television on the local news station.

  I reached for the remote and got ready to engage in an activity normally very foreign to me. Flipping through TV channels until I found something mildly interesting. Fiona was the TV show enthusiast. Not me.

  I was just about to change the station when something caught my attention. Something I hadn’t expected to see. An image of Caitlyn’s mother leaving the memorial service along with Annette and Emily’s parents. They wept into handkerchiefs and tried to contain their emotions for the cameras. I was instantly furious. The media hounded families grieving for their children like it was just another news story. The wreck was terrible and it took the entire university by storm but Caitlyn’s parents didn’t need their grief displayed like it was entertainment.

  I was just about to change the channel when I caught the scrolling line of text at the bottom of the screen. It wasn’t just a snippet of the memorial service. It was a report on what was happening the next day. Annette, Emily, and Caitlyn were all going home. Their families would collect their remains and fly back home to bury them. It would all be over soon and the students at uni would get on with their lives.

  ‘Unless…’

  I sat up straight and continued staring at the screen until the reporter moved on to another breaking story. I was still trapped in the previous one.

  William told me not to use my magic tapping. He said it was dangerous. It could harm other witchlings. He said nothing, however, about it harming the dead.

  I felt for the cell phone in my pocket and pulled it out, ashamed of the fact that I was even tempted to do so. I shoved it back in and weighed my options carefully.

  Marek said that witchlings always ask for something. There was little doubt in my mind that if I asked him for a favor, he would eventually want something in return. I liked the idea of that just about as much as I liked the idea of going into student loan debt for my master’s degree. Which meant not at all. The very thought filled me with dread. But mountains of student loan debt didn’t stop me from applying to the University of Edinburgh. I wasn’t about to let my dread for what Marek might ask of me to stop what I had in mind.

  I didn’t want to break my promise to William. He seemed like a good-natured man who would always do his best to stay within the confines of the law.

  I doubted Marek was quite that honorable. Unfortunately, I needed someone slightly dishonorable for what I was about to do.

  I got up from the couch and listened at the stairs. William had managed to get Liam to open his bedroom door and was having some sort of low key argument about respect and decency.

  ‘As long as they’re distracted.’

  I reached for a pen on one of the nearby tables along with a sheet of paper.

  “Going out for another pint,” I wrote. “Be back later.”

  I set the paper on the coffee table where I figured William would see it and left through the back door as quietly as I could.

  William said his home wasn’t my prison. I was free to come and go as I pleased. This was as good of a test as any.

  The towering statues and trees inside Greyfriars Kirkyard loomed over me like spirits coming to taunt my very existence. Navigating it at night was a nightmare without a flashlight.

  Oddly enough, I had things going for me. The overcast sky lifted enough to show the full moon shining down on the mud and grass under my feet. Also, my eyes seemed to adjust to the darkness better than they ever had before. The moon didn’t hurt my eyes like the sun did now. In fact, I was rather shocked by how well I could see through the array of darkness covering the city.

  I took one step at a time, careful to avoid stepping on graves and knowing that it was damn near impossible. This cemetery was old. Very old. There were bodies everywhere I stepped. I only realized how ridiculous my precautions were once the irony of what I was about to do dawned on me. Which was right around the time I knocked on the tomb Marek brought me to the previous day.

  Lucky for me, he didn’t keep me waiting. But he did scare the hell out of me.

  “Back so soon?” His gravelly deep voice greeted me from behind.

  I gasped and turned around so fast that I nearly lost my footing on the step up to the tomb. My fingers latched onto the black railing just in time before I completely lost my balance.

  “What the hell?” I stood up straight again, trying to match his confident stature and knowing that I was failing miserably.

  Through the bright moonlight shining down on us, I saw a droplet of blood dripping over the front of his chin and getting dangerously close to spilling onto the collar of his long black coat. He had just fed on a human neck. The sight of blood sent a metallic taste straight to my mouth, reminding me of the awful way I gagged on my own blood in the ambulance just days ago. I looked away in repulsion.

  “Get used to it, little demon,” He took a few steps closer to me. There was nowhere for me to back away. He had me cornered. “You’d best get used to the idea of working with those you might consider scoundrels but don’t think for a single minute that you’re in a position to judge me.”

  I nearly scoffed until I remembered how fast he was. Nothing was stopping him from grabbing me if he wanted to. “I don’t kill innocent people.”

  “Innocent?” he cocked his head as if he found my naivety amusing. “If you call a cab driver that was trying to take a passed out girl in the back of his cab to his home where he could violate her innocent then I guess you and I have different definitions of the word.”

  My mouth opened. I stopped just shy of letting my jaw drop.

  “Those who feed me are never innocent, little demon. I hunt those who hunt others and I’m not ashamed of it. Now, what brings you back so soon?”

  He was standing mere inches from me. I could feel the icy chill from his skin even with my blood running colder than it used to. I imagined that was my magic’s way of making sure I knew what he was. A threat. But then again, he wasn’t entirely wrong. I knew now more so than ever that I was an equal threat to other people’s well-being. Including my sister.

  “There’s something that I want to do that involves questionable ethics,” I started to explain. “And given I already think highly of William I didn’t want to put him in a strange position by asking him to help me.”

  A sly grin crossed Marek’s face. “Ah. So you thought you’d ask the vampire who already engages in criminality to help you wit
h your cause, seeing as my life is more expendable.”

  “Are you going to pretend as if a police station could really hold you if you were discovered?”

  He didn’t immediately respond. He studied me, waiting to see if I would elaborate. “Perhaps there’s more of your mother in you than I realized.”

  “I haven’t even told you what I want to do yet.”

  “No. But she wasn’t one to respect the law either when she thought she knew best.”

  I bit my bottom lip. A rush of heat swelled up in the area surrounding my heart, urging me to get back in his face at the accusation that I was arrogant enough to think myself above the law. Only the sad truth remained. I needed to bend the law just this once and I couldn’t do it without him.

  “I want to break into the city morgue,” I said. “Given your particular standards for sustenance, I assumed you would be up to the task. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

  He stepped away and extended his hand outward, letting me know without speaking that he would lead the way.

  “Wait,” I said before following him. “Just tell me that what you want in return won’t be… you know.”

  He squinted at me. “No, I don’t know, little demon. I want to hear you say it.”

  I grit my teeth, realizing that I brought this little moment of awkwardness on myself.

  ‘I can’t move forward without knowing.’

  “I don’t know what sort of relationship you had with my mother but you won’t ever get close to me in any capacity beyond being allies. Is that understood?”

  He tucked his hand back in his coat pocket and made a face as though he was offended. “I like my women how I like my victims. Willing to put up a fight and engage in a little warfare. I don’t need magic in my veins to know that’s not you. Is it, little demon?”

  I was about to retort by telling him not to call me that god-awful name anymore. Instead, I stepped away from the tomb and headed out into the night with Marek walking only a few paces ahead of me. I wasn’t in a position to make demands. Only to ask favors. In my books, this was a huge favor. I dreaded learning what he would ask of me in return one day.

  15

  It took a surprisingly short amount of time to spill the beans on what I wanted Marek to do and why. He didn’t ask further questions and I didn’t elaborate. In a way, he lived up to his promise. He was making himself useful.

  What felt like ages later was probably no more than twenty minutes. Regardless, we stood before the city morgue. I stared down the door as if it were made of titanium and not just wood with metal brackets attached to the sides.

  Marek didn’t break the glass. He didn’t rip the knob from its place or even tear the hinges off the sides. He saw a man inside and made eye contact with him. The mortician must have just been finishing up because he was removing his white coat and hanging it on a stand when he saw Marek outside.

  The mortician didn’t smile. He grimaced.

  ‘Yep. He definitely knows him.’

  I watched as he put on a warm leather jacket with thick interior lining then pick up a backpack to carry out. He opened the front door and stared Marek right in the face.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Sorry Craig, but the lass here needs to get inside.”

  “Shit, Marek. What did you do now?”

  I shifted back and forth uncomfortably. Of course, Marek knew the local mortician. He probably knew all the local criminal investigators. He would have to in order to get out of murder charges for whoever he killed in the dead of night.

  “Did you kill her boyfriend like you did the last one?”

  Marek feigned offense and touched his chest as if he couldn’t believe what he was being accused of. “You know as well as I do that young man wasn’t good for her. He beat her on a weekly basis. Besides, her father and I go way back. I did her a favor.”

  “That’s not how she tells it.”

  “Well, we can close that case as a solid reminder that father knows best.”

  I snickered. Marek had obviously taken payment from a man to get rid of his daughter’s lousy boyfriend.

  “I don’t care what your excuse was,” Craig bickered. “I had to explain to the authorities how a perfectly healthy young man dropped dead without an ounce of blood left in his system and no blood trail to explain it.”

  “Moving bodies is something most criminals do, isn’t it? To hide it? I’m sure you came up with something plausible.”

  Marek wasn’t game for continuing to argue over whatever disagreement he and Craig had because he pushed by him and pulled out a large sum of money from his pocket.

  Craig shook his head. “You know I won’t take that.”

  “Fine.” Marek set the money down on a nearby table and beckoned for me to come inside. “Leave it for your assistant to find in the morning. I doubt your assistants get paid very well with the budget cuts the city made recently.”

  Craig stared at the money laying on the table. A struggle took place right there on his face. The classic fight of honor versus financial needs.

  Marek picked it back up and Craig pocketed it.

  “What do you need to look at?” Craig asked.

  “This young lady was in a horrific car wreck a few days ago. All her friends were lost.”

  Craig’s face went ashen. He couldn’t have been any younger than his mid-forties or early fifties. He undoubtedly saw a thing or two as a mortician. Even so, he went pale once he realized why we were there.

  “Please tell me you didn’t cause that monstrosity!”

  “Not this time,” Marek said calmly. “But you can help us figure out who did. This young woman has a special talent. She wishes to use it in an attempt to find out what really happened that night.”

  Craig hesitated before speaking again. I watched him raise a single brow once the realization struck him.

  “Good lord,” he muttered. “It wasn’t an accident was it?”

  “We don’t know that yet. But possibly.”

  “That’s a high profile case, Marek. If anything happens to the bodies my face will be all over the morning news. The bodies are scheduled for departure at nine in the morning.”

  “We’ll be gone long before then,” Marek reassured him. “The girls were already mangled in the wreck. Do you honestly think their families will see a difference if we do a little private investigation into what actually happened that night?”

  Craig sighed and walked by Marek, leading us into the back where a series of lockers lined a hallway with a window at the center of a tiled wall to the left.

  “You still have the keys, I take it?” Craig asked. “You can show yourselves out and lock up once you’re done.”

  I thrust my hands up in frustration. “Really? You had the keys to this place the whole time?”

  “Like I told you,” Marek said, following Craig through a door in the far corner. “Your mother found me very useful. You will too.”

  The wretched smell of formaldehyde struck my senses and made me scrunch my nose. I watched from where I stood as Craig and Marek went through the door. I was struck with near blindness as the impossibly bright ceiling lights flickered on when Craig hit the switch.

  My body might not have been nearly as sensitive to the cold anymore but that didn’t mean I wasn’t susceptible to fits of icy shivers running from the nape of my neck all the way down my back. The room next door had two metal tables, large ceiling lights, and metal boxes with numbers lining the sides.

  “Thank you, Craig,” Marek said once he had pulled out the trundles with three bodies all in a row.

  I left my heart a few feet behind me as I walked forward. I wasn’t even sure if it was beating anymore. My skin went cold, my sorrows heavy, and every single second of the car wreck came barreling back into my memory like an unwelcome plague.

  I shut my eyes.

  ‘Keep it together, damn it!’

  I opened them again to see Craig nod his head toward me. It was a si
lent sort of plea. One that said, please don’t get me into trouble.

  I sucked in a few deep breaths and forced myself to walk toward the white sheets covering the bodies of my friends. Young women who died far too young all so someone could force my magic to resurface.

  “This is what you wanted, little demon.” Marek startled me out of my self-induced trance. I was reminded that my heart was in fact beating when he spoke up and made it thunder inside me, pumping blood so fast that I got an instant headache.

  “I take it patience isn’t a quality you hold in high regard,” I spat at him. He couldn’t possibly understand what I was feeling at that moment.

  “I’m over five hundred years old, little demon. I know more patience than you could learn in your short lifetime. Now, what do you want to do with these?”

  These? Did he really just refer to the corpses of my friends as “these”? As if they were nothing more than mere objects?

  I had to quietly remind myself that their souls were no longer in their bodies. Only their vessels remained. I wasn’t even sure if this would work.

  Marek yanked away the white sheets over their corpses without any warning. I jumped out of my skin and backed up into the wall. Their bodies were mangled beyond imagining. Both of Emily’s legs were broken and half her face was bashed in, Caitlyn’s entire mid-section was severed in two, only connected by some loose hanging skin, and Annette looked like someone had put her body over a rack and plunge thick spears through her flesh.

  My hand reached for my chest and I looked away.

  ‘I was wrong. I can’t handle this.’

  A hand touched my shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. I didn’t even notice that Marek had moved across the room. My muscles tightened around my shoulder at the feel of his skin. Even with layers of clothes on I could feel how cold he was.

  “Tell me what you want to do and I’ll help you.” His voice didn’t mock me anymore. It was sincere. If not a bit empathetic. The little I knew about vampires came from Hollywood movies and old folklore. I guessed that he didn’t have a heartbeat. Even so, he showed me in that one gesture that he wasn’t completely devoid of understanding how painful this was for me.