Shadow Magic (Darkling Mage 1)

“Don’t you speak of the Eldest so lightly,” Carver sneered. Ah. So he did know. “Those things existed before any of us did, even be

fore the gods of myth. They reach everywhere. They hear everything. They see all.”

“You seem to know so much about them.” I admit, I was more than a little smug that my gambit had gotten him to spill. “So you do worship the Eldest.” It was him, then, him and Sterling and Gil, and all those other men in bronze masks. They were my murderers.

“You need to stop speaking of things you do not understand. Who in their right mind would worship the primal forces of madness, chaos, death? I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Graves.” He ventured a step forward. “And I’m sure you don’t, either.”

I raised the knife again, woefully aware that it wouldn’t be much help against Carver, whatever he was.

“Oh, I know all right. You’re just like that servant of yours. A vampire. You saw what happened to him. All I have to do is tell my mentor.” I reached for the gem dangling from my neck, deliberately not touching it with my fingers, aware that I couldn’t call on Thea’s help again. I prayed that he would call my bluff. “She’ll send more sunlight to burn your vampire ass.”

Carver’s laugh was smooth, like whispers of warm desert wind, like sand tumbling across dunes. “Me, a vampire? No. I’m different. Older. More powerful.” He sent his gloved hand out, reaching for my pendant. “Let’s just eliminate this nuisance, shall we? It’s only getting in the way.”

In a panic, I scrambled away, backing up against the last few inches of space I had to retreat into, then hurling the knife as hard as I could. I watched as it streaked towards Carver’s throat, the tip of it glinting in the moonlight. He held up one hand, fingers outstretched, then closed it into a fist. In midair the knife shattered into a puff of harmless metal shavings, a cloud of glittering dust.

I gaped. “Well fuck.”

Carver cracked his knuckles. “Indeed.”

My hands groped at my body of their own accord, desperately seeking anything else to use as a weapon. I cringed when I patted at my pockets and felt my cellphone – just something else for Carver to obliterate – but my fingers probed in my jacket and found something else. It was tiny, cold, glassy: the bottle of lightning that I’d used to kill the power at the Pruitt mansion.

Carver beckoned. “Give me the pendant, Mr. Graves. No one needs to be hurt tonight.”

“You and your people tried to kill me once, and that didn’t work. You just came to finish the job. Sorry. Can’t let you.”

I threw the bottle at Carver, harder than I’d thrown the knife. Maybe it would hit him before he had time to react. His eyes did widen in surprise at the sight of it, but that was quickly overtaken by a look of boredom.

He raised his hand again, the gemstones on his rings glowing, then clenched his fingers into a fist. The bottle disintegrated into a sparkling mist of razor dust – but the lightning needed a place to go, and his body was the closest thing.

Carver’s screams curdled my blood. The room lit up as his entire body became a beacon for all the electricity that had been stored inside the crystal phial. The tiny box of my apartment filled with the smell of cooking flesh. I didn’t dare look at Carver’s face, and maybe I felt a momentary swell of pity for how painful his death had to be, but this man – he had tried to kill me. An eye for an eye. I ran for the door and threw it open.

And while the sound of sizzling didn’t cease, the smell of burning hair and meat still wafting through the room, Carver had stopped screaming. I was almost tempted to turn and look if he really was dead, but I didn’t have to – he spoke.

“Feisty,” he groaned. Outside in the hall shouts and footsteps thundered, the neighbors alarmed by his screams. I didn’t know why I bothered, but I dared to look him in the face. I really shouldn’t have.

Carver’s skin, whatever was exposed of it, was a burnt, molten mass of disrepair, his left eye fused shut, his cheek a slurry that looked likely to run right off his jaw, his mouth a ragged, pulped mess. I bit my tongue, fighting the urge to vomit right there.

He shouldn’t have survived that. Carver, whatever he was, couldn’t possibly have been alive. I zipped up my jacket, slung my backpack over my shoulder, and turned to run.

“Graves,” Carver burbled from the remains of his mouth. Something in his voice, a bizarre, distant authority in spite of his ruination, made me stop long enough to listen. “Why are you so afraid of what you are? Come to me if you want true knowledge. Come to me if you want true power. Come to me if you want the truth.”

Chapter 18

My heart pounded against my chest. Had I been wrong all along? The Lorica really did want to help me, and that thing with the dagger, it was all a misunderstanding. Wasn’t it? My brain pounded in time with my heart, one threatening to explode out of my skull, the other from my chest.

What else was I supposed to do? Who else could I go to for help? The police? Hah. The thought of Carver disintegrating bullets in midair, or a gun out of someone’s hands – hell, he could probably do it to people, too, turn them into fine mists of blood.

Besides, the Lorica hadn’t sent anyone to hound me yet. Didn’t that mean something? That they knew I was coming back, that things were going to be okay? I hurried onward down the block, looking over my shoulder for any sign of Sterling, Gil, or worse, Carver.

God knew what Carver was, but I had a horrible feeling that it wasn’t going to take him long to reconstitute and come after me. It was him, then, the Black Hand. I should have known all along, and I should have known that Sterling was lying about not harming me. And now he knew where dad lived, too. Awesome. Great job, Dust.

Finally, the Lorica building loomed into sight, its silhouette in the gloom squat and misshapen, but just then it was heartening, like a fortress from another time. Safety, I thought, or something like it. I held onto my backpack, focused on a patch of darkness on the asphalt, and shadowstepped.

It was cold and creepy as always, in the Dark Room, but it was still a damn sight better than trying to bypass the security system. I needed to talk to someone, and fast. Herald, but that would take too much explaining for why I ran out in the first place. It would have to be Thea. Did she even stay this late? Should I have contacted her via gemstone first?

Not that it mattered anymore. My feet hit wooden flooring as I emerged from the shadows. I didn’t spot anyone in the Lorica when I arrived, or no one who mattered, anyway, the lower level filled with the quiet murmur of grunts pushing paper. I made a beeline for Thea’s office, throwing the door open and dashing in.

“Thea.”