Chapter 3

BASH

SIX A.M. WAS TOO EARLY FOR DEATH.

Hell, no hour was good for death.

Yet, here he was, en route to Magnolia’s bar to investigate the first unnatural mage death in over six years after another shitty night of tossing and turning, trying to get the vampire out of his mind.

Bash put his car into park and hopped out of the front seat with a sleepy scowl on his face, then stopped.

Four police cars, two ambulances, and several onlookers huddled just outside of the alley adjacent to the bar.

Fuck.

The Normals were on the scene.

Even worse, the mages who reported feeling one of their own passing violently into the next world were long gone instead of keeping them at bay. This was going to be a nightmare.

It was imperative humans never found out about mages, magic, or any other supernatural entity in the city. And having a mage in their custody would prove deadly if they started an autopsy before someone completely syphoned their magic. The trace magic would rebound with enough force to flatten downtown if there was no one there to absorb it.

He sped up and dialed his embed at the medical examiner’s office. He’d purposefully appointed mages like him at every human municipality in the city to ensure their secrecy. If anyone even breathed a word about supernatural occurrences, they would expunge it before it left the building. Chief would handle this situation without the Normals becoming aware.

“M-Mr. Wade?” Chief’s raspy voice filled the speaker as he fumbled in the background. “It’s six in the morning.”

“We have a problem. One of our own is being taken in to the morgue.”

After a beat of silence, Chief swore. “Who?”

“Don’t know yet. I need you to intercept and clean the body before the Normals get their hands on it.”

“Clean? I’m not a syphon…” He began, but stopped abruptly when Bash’s jaw audibly cracked in annoyance. “I… uh…” the medical examiner cleared his throat, then sputtered, “W-What I meant to say was: I-I’ll take care of it.”

“Let me know when it’s done,” he hung up and set his gaze on the gathering crowd.

Flossing a hand through disheveled hair he didn’t bother to comb, he made quick work of weaving through a crowd of onlookers who were hoping to glimpse what lay beyond the yellow caution tape cordoning off the alley. So far, it looked like two Normals were busy further up the alley as they hovered over a distinct shape on the soiled asphalt.

Two Normals weren’t bad, considering the number of witnesses around him. He could handle controlling two minds to find out what they’d discovered and force them to route the body to his embed without killing himself in the process. He hadn’t completely healed after pushing so hard into Danica. That vampire was unsettling. She fought him on every question, then when he forced her to respond, she skirted him, using loopholes to answer, and shredded his mind in the process.

When it looked like the coast was clear, he plucked the tape and bobbed underneath.

“Hey!” An officer emerged from the shadows, fishing for his attention. He froze. “What are you doing in here? No one comes behind the tape.”

He turned to the officer. The cop had rookie all over him, right down to the trembling trigger-happy fingers laying against the holster at his hip. In a split second, the officer gripped his weapon. Before the rookie unholstered it, he pushed into his mind.

Bash’s brain split in two. One part of him experienced what the cop did, time slowing down to a trickle as they talked in the deep recesses of his mind. The other half saw time as it was, ticking on. To the outside, it would look as if they were deep in conversation.

The officer’s mind wasn’t hard to penetrate. Outside of the vampire on the plane, few were.

He’d been pushing inside of minds since he was six-years-old, a gift he’d developed out of nowhere, but one that became useful in his line of work. Especially when he needed to mingle with humans to keep a tight rein on his city. He focused on the officer and bore into his cobalt eyes. The rookie’s face slackened.

“You’re going to let me in.”

“But I can’t. No one’s allowed in without credentials,” the cop protested, but his fight dwindled.

“I am.”

“What about your ID?” The officer glanced at the group huddling over the body, then back to him.

“I don’t need one.”

“You’re right.” The officer nodded, removing his hand from his holster, and motioned for him to go ahead. “Go on.”

He stepped around the officer and paused. “Tell me, who’s in charge?”

“Rawlings is the site lead.”

Bash nodded and released the cop’s mind. A dull pain settled inside his skull. As he watched the rookie’s glassy gaze return to normal, his head throbbed, warning him to tread carefully. Pushing into too many minds too close together would shred him from the inside. He pushed that thought away as he walked to the detective.

Rawlings was a thin man with a balding comb over, dark eyes, and a mouth that looked like it spent most of its life sucking on cigarettes. When Bash approached, Rawlings’s eyes bobbed over to the cop at the front, then narrowed as he looked him up and down.

“Who the hell let you in here?” he sneered.

“It’s my first day. I was told to meet someone named Detective Rawlings,” he lied.

“You’re new?”

Bash nodded, watching the detective’s suspicious gaze dart around the tattoos peeking out from under the top of his turtleneck sweater. When the detective frowned, he readied himself to push into his mind.

Instead, Rawlings groaned. “Just like Sarge not to tell me anything. I’ve been at this too long for him to send me a rookie.”

“It’s not official yet. He wanted to see how I performed in the field.”

Rawlings checked a water-proof department store watch on his left wrist before he groaned again. “Whatever. Stay out of the way and observe. I don’t have time for a rookie today.”

He was tempted to push into the detective’s mind and make him apologize, but the throbbing hadn’t stopped.

“We have a two for one special,” the tech crouching under Rawlings explained, pointing to the bodies in the street. The mages hadn’t mentioned two bodies. Only one.

“There aren’t any apparent markings, no wounds, as far as I can see.” The detective straightened, allowing him to see the first body. He held in a string of swears when he recognized her.

She’d been from one of the most powerful mage families in the city, holding the title of sole heiress to the largest real estate conglomerate on the western hemisphere. What the hell was she doing on this side of town? The heiress should have known that her money didn’t buy her access to the East side.

Every mage knew the rules. The border law had been written as a Blood Oath between clans for more generations than he could count. Everything west of the river belonged to the Order. Anything east, the Sunder mages ruled. Neither were supposed to cross territories without the pain of death.

And it looked like someone brought it to her swiftly.

She should have been more careful. Ever since her mother died three years ago, she’d had a big red target painted on her back. Especially since she’d stopped the family tradition of funding the Order. The Order mages wouldn’t be happy one of their own had been murdered in Sunder territory, but seeing as they’d assume full control of an empire she’d been holding hostage to party with, they weren’t likely to lose sleep over it. But they might demand an eye for an eye from Sunder to settle their blood debt. Unless…

He glanced down the alley at the second body. Ten feet from the first, another mage lay in a heap of awkward limbs. If it were a Sunder mage, he’d pass it off as some tragic Romeo and Juliet love story, leaving both sides to mourn without inciting a war.

He walked over and craned to view the woman whose face was tucked under her bicep. When he saw her face, he staggered backward like he’d been burned.

Grommey?

Disbelief scattered his thoughts. This couldn’t be her. Sure, she had Grommey’s features—a round, kind face, naturally light hair dyed pink, button nose—but her spark had dimmed. Her once vibrant eyes had paled as they stared off into the eons.

He closed his eyes to shake the image free, then opened them again, but her face didn’t change. It was her. His heart twisted. Sorrow and rage crept into his throat.

“Is this your first body?” Rawlings asked, gnashing his teeth. “Back up. I don’t need your breakfast all over my crime scene. Get him a bag.”

The crime scene tech zipped away to a duffle bag he kept next to the scene and dug through it. Bash stared at Grommey in shock.

They met as teenagers when they both worked for Zina, one of the most lucrative madams in Clide. He as her bookkeeper and Grommey as one of her girls. Back then, he was green to everything and somehow Grommey took pity on him and showed him the ropes. They’d spent an entire summer checking off everything on his virgin bucket list. She’d become his first everything. First crush. First Kiss. First love. He even thought about marrying her one day. But that was before the streets of Clide City had hardened them off.

Before Sol Dust turned her into a junkie and him into a monster.

He’d lost track of her over the years. But, deep down, he held onto the hope that maybe one day things could be different.

His lashes whipped against his cheeks as he fought the hurt and anger rising inside of him. Whoever did this to her was going to answer to the full weight of his wrath.

“Bag, detective?” The tech offered a plastic bag toward Rawlings, who took it and held it out to him.

“I’m fine.”

“They all say that. Take it.” Rawlings thrust it into his chest.

Involuntarily, he took it, resisting the urge to sucker punch him in the jaw. Now was not the time to beat a human bloody because he was angry. He needed to set aside his grief and focus on the consequences of the deaths at their feet.

He wasn’t too concerned with the heiress. Her parents’ estate plan had contingencies upon contingencies of who would take over in the event anything happened. Once the Order mages had control of her money, he’d convince them to leave it be. But Grommey… His jaw hardened.

Her death would spark a war.

She was one of Zina’s girls and Zina was lethal to any who messed with anyone in her employ.

He needed to pay his former employer a visit. If he didn’t get to her, she’d take it upon herself to enact justice. He wanted revenge too, but a turf war wasn’t the right path forward. Especially not when he had a vampire creeping around in his city.

“Rawlings, I’ve found something.” The tech crouched near Grommey and gently tugged a thin plastic bag from under her elbow.

Between his forceps, he squeezed a crumpled plastic button bag with a black streak smeared across the front of it.

His eyes narrowed in on the bag.

It couldn’t be.

“Let me see that,” he ordered.

Startled, both men looked at him. Rawlings frowned, annoyed that he wasn’t keeping to the background as instructed, but Bash didn’t have the time or patience to keep up the pretense. Against his brain’s objection, he pushed into both men’s minds before either protested. He focused on the tech holding the forceps. “Give that to me.”

Vehemently, the tech thrust the forceps at him.

“Don’t touch—” the detective began, but he cut him off.

“Quiet.”

The detective stopped.

He turned back to the baggie, plucking it from the crime scene tech to examine it up close. Ink smeared across it, but it was the same as the one he’d seen in the hands of the vampire on the plane. A thick circle with a heavy line slashing through it. While hers was closer to what college kids used as a caffeine-like stimulant, the sallow substance in the bag in his hands was unmistakable.

Dread made his shoulders stiffen.

They’d buried this demon six years ago the exact moment a jury handed over a life sentence to his former mentor Vega.

Sol Dust was the most dangerous magic enhancer ever to come across magekind. It boasted the most unimaginable highs to any who experienced it and a hefty price tag to match. Mages flocked to taste its power and his Vega was there to sell it to them. No matter how many bodies it left in its wake. And there were many. Which was why he made it his mission when he took over Clide City to kill it at its source and rid the city of every trace of it forever.

A task that was successful until he saw the vampire on the plane with a bag like this one. He had his right-hand run it to ground, searching for the dealer who used to use the moniker. Nothing turned up, so he chalked it up to being an old ghost. He knew better than to be that naïve.

Anger tightened the little bag within his calloused fists.

“Shit.”

“What is it?” the tech asked, curiosity widened his eyes through the dazed look.

“It’s nothing,” he told the tech, looking at the drug in his hand, then over to Grommey. She’d been addicted to Sol Dust in its heyday. And from the look of it, that demon never left her. His molars dug into each other.

He tried to piece together the scene in front of him. Was this a deal gone bad? His thoughts flickered to the vampire on the plane.

It’d been days and there had been no sign of Danica anywhere in the city. He’d tasked a team to search for her, but the girl was a ghost. She’d been seen only once since she’d landed and not a trace since. He’d even kept tabs on the human police scanners to be sure no suspicious bodies had turned up. He couldn’t even find her roommate, Kelly Santana. It was as if neither of them existed, but looking at the baggie in his hands, he needed to find them.

“I’ll be taking this,” he said to the detective.

“That’s evidence!”

“There is no evidence,” He stared the detective in the eye, tightening his hold on Rawlings’s mind.

“No, there isn’t,” Rawlings repeated in a daze.

He looked at the tech. “Agreed?”

The tech nodded.

“Good. You’re done here. Clean up and take these two to the medical examiner’s office to see Chief Daniels. No one touches them except for him. Understood?”

Each of the men nodded.

“Excellent,” he turned to leave. “One more thing. I was never here.”

He held onto their minds as he moved from the crime scene, past the crowd of bystanders, and back to his car.

Once inside, he let their minds go. Fatigue draped over his shoulders and made his head heavy against the steering wheel. He could sleep for a week, but he had much bigger problems. Drained, he pulled his phone from his pocket and called his right-hand man.

“Boss?” Lix’s sleep addled voice said over the line.

“We have a serious fucking problem. Where’s my vampire?”

“Boss?” he asked, his voice a little louder. “We’re still searching.”

“Search faster.”

“Why? Did something happen?”

“Sol Dust is back.”

Lix quieted on the other end, and a bubble of anger simmered under Bash’s skin. He’d ordered Lix to run it to ground, and he said there was nothing. It was clear he hadn’t done his job.

“That’s impossible,” Lix’s deep baritone lilted in surprise. “I checked. The streets were clear.”

“Then tell me why I’m holding it in my hands and have two dead fucking mages to prove it.”

“Fuck. Do you think the vampire is behind it?”

“She’s the only lead I have right now.”

“I’m still working on her location.”

“I gave you a location.”

“Weston’s a big campus.”

“It’s seven campuses. How long does it take to sweep seven campuses?”

Lix quieted. “I’ll arrange another team. We’ll have something by week’s end.”

“Make it twenty-four hours.”

“Yes, sir,” Lix’s voice was thick with incredulous shock, but his right-hand hadn’t known who laid in those body bags.

He couldn’t leave Lix to this task alone. Not with a vampire on the loose and a war to settle before it sparked. He needed to talk to his Zina. She dealt in information. If anyone would know about the vampire, it was her. She was also the one who he needed to stop before she took revenge with her own hands.

His head popped up in time to watch them wheel the first mage, wrapped in a black bag from the alley and into the back of the ambulance. Grommey was in one of those bags. His grip tightened into iron against the steering wheel.

He needed to find that vampire fast. And if she had anything to do with flooding his city with drugs, she was going to suffer a fate worse than Grommey’s.

CONTINUE ON TO CHAPTER 4