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

  ‘Did I break the lock?’

  I pushed the door and it swung right open for me. I stepped inside and reached for the light switch. A clinking sound reached my ears. It was coming from something under my foot.

  “Shit!”

  I stepped on broken glass. I slammed the door shut and leaned up against the wooden door to examine the damage. It didn’t break the skin, thank god. But it did draw my attention back to the shard of glass on the floor. It wasn’t the only one. My entire room had been trashed.

  Of all the lowly things for a human being to do I couldn’t even fathom the balls it took to steal things from someone stuck in a hospital with potentially fatal injuries. Or much less from the dead. Annette’s room was directly beside mine. We shared a living space. Both our rooms were left in tatters. The curtains were ripped, the mattresses were flipped over, the sheets were torn away, our clothes were shredded, our dressers ripped open, my piles of books were thrown about the room with pages torn out, both our windows were shattered, and worst of all, the walls looked like someone took a sledgehammer to them.

  I carefully walked around the broken glass and tried to make sense of the mess. I found the lower right drawer to my dresser and removed the coat I stole from the nurse’s lounge. After carefully dressing myself and trying not to disturb anything else, I noticed my small box with spare cash and a few precious pieces of jewelry were still there. My white gold bracelet with my name on it and tiny chip diamonds lining the edges was still there. I reached for it and rubbed my thumb over the stones.

  ‘What kind of thief doesn’t take the valuables?’

  I put the bracelet on and touched it over the front of my wrist. It settled right under the space where Dr. Stewart checked my pulse on the operating table.

  A wave of grief struck my insides. I held my arm over my stomach as if I could stop my aching guts from spilling out and making a worse mess of my room.

  I thought over everything I would need. I was smart enough never to take my wallet with me when we went clubbing. I always pinned some extra cash inside my blouse with a safety pin in case I needed emergency cab fare. Unfortunately, I learned the first night Annette insisted on taking me to a pub crawl that Scottish men could spot a foreign student as easy as they could a tourist. I ended up slapping a man who touched my thigh as if he was trying to flirt. I knew better. He was trying to pickpocket me after I had a couple of drinks, thinking I was too trashed to notice.

  My wallet was right where I left it, inside my favorite pair of jeans. A single credit card was still there along with fifty quid. Whomever was in my room and Annette’s wasn’t trying to steal money or valuables. They were looking for something else. Something that obviously meant more to them than it did to me.

  I fished around the trashed floor for my socks and shoes. Within minutes I no longer looked like a homeless person aside from the hair and mud hiding under my jeans. I wrapped one of my heavy coats on and backed up into the wall.

  A flash of bright blue light lit up our living room space. I blinked a few times and stared down at my hands. They looked normal. No light broke through my skin.

  My heartbeat quickened. Someone was in the room with me.

  I waited to see if they would walk into my room but they didn’t. All I heard was the low sound of footsteps trying to navigate the floor the same way I did. I had no weapons and I felt weak after walking so far from the hospital. If this was another home invasion I couldn’t fight off my attacker.

  I frantically searched about the room, desperate to find anything I could use as a weapon. I reached down for a long shard of glass from my shattered window, holding it tight while not slicing my hand open.

  The room grew dark once more. Electricity wove a web in the air and made the tiniest hairs on the back of my neck stick straight up. I covered my ears, waiting for the sound of screeching to assault my eardrums once more.

  ‘No! Please! Not again!’

  Shadows seeped through the cracks of the walls and funneled out of the holes like clouds of smoke, bringing in a rolling fog to hurt me again.

  A figure appeared from around the corner and walked into the room with me. If the nurse couldn’t see the shadows, I was sure that the thief that just let himself in couldn’t see them either. There was no getting away. I was trapped.

  My body froze. Nothing would move. I collided with the emptied chest behind me and fell to the ground. I was completely paralyzed. The shadows loomed over me and sunk toward the floor.

  “Fuck off, you bastards!” The thief raised his arm. A brilliant blue light exploded from his hand and struck the shadows so fast that they evaporated into thin air. Air rushed in and out of my lungs as I watched them expand then disappear completely. A loud crack exploded in my ears the second they disappeared.

  When the thief approached me, I held my breath. If he was the cowardly sort this was the part where he would kick me. But he didn’t. He wasn’t even a thief by the looks of him. It was the young man from the holistic pharmacy. Scruffy hair and all.

  The same light that shined through my hands back at the hospital was beaming from his hand. The only difference was that the light wasn’t glowing from his palm. He was holding a stick in his long bony fingers.

  “Sorry about this,” he said, pointing the wooden stick in his hand directly at my face. Light burst from the tip and shot directly into my lips. I could move my mouth again.

  I let out a huge gasp. If he was the thief then he was after one thing. The medicine I picked up for Annette. He probably wanted to get rid of any sign that it came from his family’s pharmacy. If it was linked to Annette’s death in any way her family might sue their shop. Car accident or not, she had something bad in her system. That’s the only reason we were driving down that motorway in the first place.

  “Please,” I begged him. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “Kill you?” he scowled down at me. “I just saved you, moron. Why would I go through the trouble if I meant to kill you.”

  He knelt closer to me and aimed the stick just below my back. More light flared beneath my body. I was floating.

  “I knew you were trouble,” he muttered. “From the second you stepped foot in our shop I knew you’d be trouble.”

  Trouble? What the hell was he talking about?

  I didn’t have much time to consider his words. A burst of nausea hit my stomach and consumed my head. My breaths came in shallow gasps. Pricks of tingling heat spread all over my forehead.

  “Just close your eyes,” he whispered to me. “It doesn’t hurt if you let it happen naturally.”

  My eyes shut. The only thing I could feel was the gentle stroke of a breeze breaking through the shattered window and tiny strays of my hair wisping over my face.

  I had enough of this nightmare. I wanted to go home.

  7

  The first sense that came back to me was the tingling in my fingers and toes. Almost like my circulation was cut off. It quickly traveled up my arms, over my shoulders, and through my chest. My right thigh jerked when the tingling rolled up my pelvis and weaved around to my back.

  My eyes opened. But only slightly. I could see a light hanging over me. It swayed back and forth. A light breeze hit my face. The light was attached to a fan making a faint squeaking sound as it rocked back and forth.

  I blinked a few times, trying to get my vision back so I could assess the damage. When I did, everything was glazed in the same icy blue hue. The room was glowing with light. It grew brighter and brighter. Then darker before disappearing completely.

  “It doesn’t look like her wounds go too deep.” A husky voice said.

  The tingling dissipated. The room wasn’t blue anymore. At least from what I could view of it.

  “She brought this on herself.” That voice I knew by now. It was the young man from the holistic pharmacy. The thieving little prick that ransacked my residence back at uni.

  I rolled my head to the side, feeling weaker than I did when I first woke up
in the hospital. The room was lined with wooden panels from floor to ceiling. Shelves hung from nearly every corner with a glass bottle filled with vibrant colored liquids. The scent of roses and honey wafted into my nostrils.

  “Don’t talk like that. It’s beneath you.” The man’s tone bordered on scolding him.

  All fuzziness disappeared. I no longer saw a vague silhouette of just anyone. I knew him. And not in a way I wanted to know anyone. It was the man watching me outside the nightclub. He stood in the shadows and tried to remain hidden from view. But I saw him. He knew that I saw him. This was no normal snatching.

  I tried to sit up too fast and was greeted by a rush of acid bursting into my throat.

  “Lay down, Kayla,” he said to me, pressing a hand into my shoulder and softly forcing me back down.

  There was a pillow under my head, a cotton quilt covering me up to my waist, and a cool compress over my forehead. It fell to my lap before I lay my head back down.

  The man took it into his hands and sunk it into a bowl of ice water next to the bed. Then he wrung it out and placed it back on my forehead with the sort of gentleness kidnappers and thieves aren’t exactly well known for.

  ‘Definitely the weirdest snatching ever.’

  I swallowed the acid in my throat and opened my mouth enough to speak. “I saw you,” I muttered under my breath, barely able to summon my words above a whisper. “I saw you outside the club.”

  His mouth quirked to the side. “Yes,” he said softly. “I’m sorry if I gave you a fright.”

  My hand wandered down to my side. Something sharp pricked my finger. I flinched. The man must have taken my reaction to mean I still wasn’t completely aware of my surroundings because he pressed the cool compress a little harder into my forehead. Lucky for me he didn’t see that I still had the shard of glass from my room. It must have fallen into the folds of my coat after I fell.

  My fingers gripped around its edges. I did my best not to show any pain in my face as I readied it.

  The second he turned away and back to the bowl of ice water I struck. Only my aim wasn’t as perfect as I would have liked. I missed his neck entirely and shoved the shard of glass deep into his shoulder. It wasn’t until I was sitting upright that I realized how tall he was. I couldn’t have reached his neck even if I hadn’t been hit by a car hours ago.

  He yelled and stood up from the chair next to the bed. I sat up and tried to scramble away from him to see the nearest door to get the hell out of there.

  “What did I tell you?” The young man complained from the side of the room. He pulled out the long wooden stick I saw him carrying before and pointed it in my direction.

  “Don’t!” the man shouted. “She’s just frightened.”

  I didn’t see any doors. Not even a window. I was trapped in a room with a stalker and a thief. Nothing good could come from this.

  “That’s no excuse. She’s no better than-”

  “Be quiet, Liam!” The man raised his voice.

  I watched in horror as he lifted his hand to the shard of glass and yanked it right out. He reached into his trousers and pulled out an equally long stick from the material. The tip glowed with a bright sapphire hue before shooting a beam of radiant light into the gash I created in his flesh. It healed within seconds.

  My mouth dropped. That was when I knew what the tingling feeling had been. I looked down at my body, felt my cheek, and reached behind me to feel the skin on my back. The wounds the shadowy beings created were all gone. He healed me.

  My body shook with fear. My bottom lip trembled. My limbs grew warm as if I had dipped them in a pool of hot water.

  The man removed his jacket and examined the blood staining his white button-down shirt. He shook his head and looked back at me.

  The young man glared at me. “If you make me keep you still, I will do so.”

  The taller one sighed and put the stick away. “Settle down, Liam.”

  The young man put the stick back in his trousers and leaned against the wall, watching me like I was an intruder. I was fine with leaving if they would give me the chance. I wanted out of this country.

  The older man took a wooden stool away from a table that looked like a mad chemist’s workspace and placed it beside the twin size bed I sat on. His eyes leveled with mine through his glasses, communicating his meaning without speaking. They told me he wouldn’t hurt me, I wasn’t being kidnapped, and I needed to listen.

  “You’re Kayla Waggener.” He set his arms on his knees and leaned in closer. “You arrived in Scotland last fall to study archeology. Your mother is Brigit Waggener. Your family resides in Dallas, Texas. Your mother had you by a man you never met but you consider Keith Waggener your true father even though you’re not related. Three years after your mother married Keith she gave birth to your half-sister Fiona. Your mother sheltered you for most of your life, perhaps more than necessary because she feared for your safety. You died on the operating table in the hospital. And when you did you stepped outside your body and saw a strange blue glowing liquid consume your skin and absorb into your flesh. Shadows appeared through the walls and watched as death came for you. But it wasn’t until you woke up that they attacked you.”

  I wasn’t shaking anymore. He had me curious. “You stalked me?”

  He shook his head. “No, Kayla. I didn’t stalk you. I observed from a distance.”

  “That’s the same as stalking.”

  “Stalking is when a stranger stealthily follows a person presumably with ill intent. I’m not a stranger to you and I don’t have ill intent. I was one of the first people to hold you in my arms after you were born.”

  ‘He’s got to be delusional!’

  I eyed the cloth sitting on the bed. He took the time to soothe whatever fever was running through me. Although, it wasn’t working. My skin was still hot to the touch.

  “What were those things?” I asked.

  His eyes focused on me hard. “People have called them different names over the years. Some call them demons, others call them incubus. Just know that they’re not natural, they’re not of this world, and from this point forward, they will never allow you to live your life in peace. They will follow you where ever you go.”

  “What happened to me?” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Because you were young when your mother left Edinburgh.”

  I tilted my head. That didn’t make any sense. My mother didn’t travel until she met Keith. And even then, she restricted everything to road trips. It took a decade for my step-dad Keith to talk her into a cruise. She was scared to death to go anywhere. Especially to fly. A quality she passed onto me over the years. There was no way she knew a man in Scotland. Or that this guy held me in his arms when I was a baby.

  “My name is William,” he went on. “This unruly devil behind me is my son, Liam. We run this business below our house. Outsiders know it as a holistic pharmacy. Few know the true purpose.”

  He stopped speaking. I waited for him to continue, unsure of what madness would come out of his mouth.

  “We create potions, Kayla. Infused with a special form of magic.”

  I eyed his son leaning over against the wall. He rolled his eyes, probably sensing that I was convinced they were both crazier than I was.

  William reached for my hands and held my palms upright. I let him, seeing as I couldn’t exactly getaway.

  His palms lit up with cobalt blue light. The same light I saw consuming my body on the operating table, the same light that was shining from inside me when the shadowy things slashed me, and the same light that flowed out of my hands when the car hit me outside the hospital. His light pierced into my hands, triggering something tingling deep inside my flesh. After only a few seconds, the same brilliant light appeared in my hands, wafting around my fingers and rolling up the length of my arm.

  “Your mother was a witchling named Brigit McKenna,” he said, breaking me out of my trance. “
Your true name is Kayla McKenna. Her witchling blood runs through your veins. She fled to America to protect you after she trusted the wrong man. A man that caused her to get thrown out of her coven. She begged me to wipe her memory clean of all things about the witchling world before she left. She wanted to shield you from the consequences of her decisions and give you a normal life. But magic has a way of directing us back to where we truly belong with or without our consent.”

  I watched as the dancing light turned into smoke billowing toward the ceiling only to disappear entirely. He lowered his hands away from mine. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the lines on my palms. I was fixated on them.

  “You erased my mom’s memory?” I tore my eyes away from my hands and watched as he leaned back into the wooden chair.

  “Begrudgingly, yes. It didn’t matter in the end. You found your way back into our world and she didn’t know any better to stop you. Like I said, magic has its way whether we want it or not. And your magic wanted to return to the land of your birth.”

  “I wasn’t born here. My birth certificate says I was born in Fort Worth.”

  “You are Kayla McKenna. Your mother was the shadow mage of the Roganach-Ciar coven of witchlings.”

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I did die on that operating table. I never woke up. I was in some sort of limbo area. My personal purgatory where I never got any real answers and I was left wandering Scotland for all eternity.

  Liam scoffed. “She doesn’t believe you.”

  “Would you?” William raised his voice at him. “Have patience, Liam.”

  “You know her being here isn’t safe. She clearly doesn’t want to be here anyway. We’ve healed her. Let that be enough and send her back home. Give her a memory potion like you did to Brigit and let the past die.”

  “Liam!”