Nova Unchained Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  NOVA UNCHAINED

  DEMONIC MAGE, Book 1

  D.N. HOXA

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  Copyright © 2018 by D.N. Hoxa

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Also by D.N. Hoxa

  ———————————

  Winter Wayne (Ongoing)

  Bone Witch

  Bone Coven

  Bone Magic

  Bone Spell (Coming Soon)

  Morta Fox Trilogy (Complete)

  Heartbeat

  Reclaimed

  Unchanged

  Starlight Saga (Complete)

  Assassin

  Villain

  Sinner

  Savior

  Chronicles of the Demon Hunter

  A Soul's Worth

  Book Two (Coming Soon)

  Book Three (Coming Soon)

  Water Wielders

  Trapped

  Book Two (Coming Soon)

  Book Three (Coming Soon)

  Chapter One

  There was always that one guy who thought the whole club was his and every bartender served him only. Tonight’s asshole was worse than usual, because he’d spent the last two hours trying to hit on me. Two freaking hours. His fake teeth shone as he smiled at me, again, and when I accidentally met his eyes, he winked and licked his bottom lip. Ew.

  I was a bartender at a club, so people were going to flirt with me whether I liked it or not, but creeps like this guy were a whole other story. I could feel his eyes on me the whole time. It was two in the morning, for God’s sake. He could be dancing, hitting on girls who wanted to be hit on, and leave me the heck alone.

  “Meet me in the back in five,” someone shouted in my ear. If I hadn’t known it was Luke, I would have broken the bottle of tequila in my hand on his head. He had a nasty habit of sneaking up on me like that and no matter how many times I told him to stop it, he refused to listen.

  “What’s up?” I asked and he gave me the cheekiest grin I’d ever seen on him. I stopped pouring the shots for a second. Luke wasn’t usually that happy.

  “We did it,” he said. “I think we’re ready.”

  The loud music and the club around me disappeared completely. My whole being hung on those words and on Luke’s sparkling eyes. Suddenly, the world promised itself to me. All my troubles disappeared, and I could breathe easy for the first time in forever.

  “Are you…are you sure?” I doubted he heard my whisper over the music but Luke had spent a lifetime looking at my face, so he could easily read my lips, just like I could read his.

  “Meet me in the back,” he said and with a kiss on my forehead, he disappeared from behind the counter.

  “Hey! Where’s my drink?” a drunk guy called, the sound of his fists slamming the counter snapping me out of the trance. “Move, bitch!”

  Oh, he was far too kind, but that wasn’t why I smiled. “Coming right up,” I said and continued to serve, and to count the seconds in my head. Five minutes. I just needed to get through this for five more minutes, and then I could go talk to Luke.

  But those five minutes lasted five hours, or so it seemed to me. By the time I asked Jessica to cover for me for a break, I was a sweating, nervous mess. I couldn’t walk fast enough to the alley in the back where most club employees took breaks they weren’t supposed to take, to smoke, drink, do drugs, or all of the above.

  When I finally pushed the door open and the hot July air wrapped around my already sweaty body, I felt like, if I tried, I could fly. Luke was standing against the wall right next to the door, talking to another waiter. If you looked at him, you couldn’t tell that he was working for the ninth night in a row without a break. He always had that I-just-woke-up kind of thing going on with his swollen eyes and messy hair. When he saw me approaching, he nodded for me to follow him a little farther down the alley, away from the crowd.

  “Please tell me you weren’t kidding,” I breathed, but his smile said it all.

  “Absolutely not. With tonight’s paychecks, we’ll have ten thousand, four hundred dollars in our pocket. You know what that means,” Luke whispered.

  My eyes filled with tears. Yes, I knew exactly what that meant. It meant that that was it. What we’d been working for, for the past two years. What we’d been dreaming of ever since we were little kids.

  We were finally going to get the hell out of Mississippi.

  I jumped in his arms and hugged the hell out of him before he had the chance to stop me. Luke wasn’t the type to get touchy with anyone, but I was his cousin, damn near his sister, so he was going to have to suck it up and deal. Tonight was an exception, though, and you could tell by the fact that he hugged me back. The sound of his laughter drew out my own. I could hardly believe it. This was no doubt the best night of my life.

  “Let’s leave tonight.” Our stuff was packed a year ago. Our car was old and rusted but it was going to get us to Nevada. Las Vegas was our destination.

  “Not until we finish our shifts. We need tonight’s paychecks,” Luke said, his brown eyes glistening. “But as soon as we get off, we’ll go grab our shit and leave.”

  “By this time tomorrow, we will be far, far away from here.” As I said the words out loud, shivers washed down my back. There it was: our dream had finally come true.

  “By this time next year, we’ll buy our own house,” Luke said.

  “By this time five years, we’ll be t
raveling the whole world.”

  “Preferably with someone special by our sides.”

  “You’re special enough for me,” I said and kissed his cheek. Luke had changed so much from when we were kids, but his eyes had always remained the same. He was still that five-year-old boy trying to protect me from the world and from his father’s—my uncle’s—wrath. He was still my rock, and he always would be.

  “Let’s get back inside. Just a few more hours and the world is ours,” he promised and laughter bubbled from my throat. I was going to print those words on a piece of paper and carry them with me for the rest of my life.

  The music of the club and the drunken customers no longer bothered me when I got back behind the bar. On the contrary, they suddenly looked like the best people I’d ever met. The best people I’d hopefully never see again.

  I was born and raised in Mississippi, and I couldn’t wait to leave this place behind. My parents died when I was one year old. My only remaining family was my uncle, my dad’s brother. Luke’s father. He decided to take me in because that was the only way he could gain access to my parents’ money. Many times, I wished he’d just left me in an orphanage somewhere, preferably very far away, but I regretted those wishes immediately, because in his house, I at least had Luke.

  Luke was six months older than me. His mother left his father when we were three. Things took a turn for the worse then. My uncle was a drunk bastard who didn’t care about his own son. He beat us, locked us in the bathroom for hours at a time, refused to feed us unless we worked ourselves to death and gave him all the money we earned—even when we were just six years old and forced to get the trash for all our neighbors, and walk their dogs all day long. But that was nothing compared to the verbal abuse. I don’t think my uncle ever spoke once to either of us without yelling, or without telling us how useless we were, and how we’d ruined his life. How he was going to kill us in our sleep because all we did was drag him down.

  It was a hard twenty years, but Luke and I had each other. We held each other up and we were each other’s strength. It was us against the whole world from day one. He took care of me like I was his own sister and by the time we were ten, whenever my uncle beat us, Luke took me in his arms and turned his back on his father, and I rarely ever got any hits. He took it all for the both of us.

  Luke was the smartest person I knew. The kindest person in the world and I had no clue how he turned out this way. How his heart was still so pure. The life we lived had turned me into something really bitter, but not him. Never him.

  We were barely teenagers when we began to really plan running away. Now that we were twenty, we finally had enough money to actually do it. If it was up to me, we’d have left a long time ago, but Luke was nothing if not careful. He refused to leave this place just to live in worse conditions.

  “If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right,” he’d said.

  Getting it right took hard work, though, because his father took everything we made. No matter where we hid our money in the house, he found it. Took it. Spent it all on himself. Until we stopped taking the money to the house. We’d worked every job that came our way without question and we’d saved everything we earned. According to Luke’s calculations, we needed ten thousand dollars to start life somewhere else—and four hundred dollars for gas. After lots and lots of research, we decided that Las Vegas was the place for us. We had enough rent money for a year to get a relatively nice apartment, because he didn’t want to live “worse than the dogs in the streets”. We also had enough money for food for the first few months until we found the best jobs we could find. After that, we would save and save and save until we bought a house. Got a college degree. Traveled the world. Did whatever the fuck we wanted.

  Life was finally going to be ours.

  The noise coming from the entrance of the club that brought me back to the present sounded like music at first. Then, as it grew closer, everyone realized that it wasn’t the beat of the music. It was gunshots.

  The blood in my veins froze. People began to scream. If panic had smelled, it would have suffocated everyone in that place in seconds.

  “Everybody, out!” The voice came through the speakers on all sides of the club. The DJ didn’t bother to stop the music, so it continued to play while the people made for the door, running and screaming.

  “Luke,” I whispered, as if to remind myself that he was out there, too. I grabbed my small bag behind the vodka bottle in the shelf behind me and put it across my torso, then I slammed my hands on the counter and jumped to the other side. “Luke!” I called with all the voice I could muster but the music was too loud and the screams of the people inside louder. Nobody even turned to look my way.

  Everything happened so fast. I shot forward to look for Luke and the crowd pulled me toward the door. I had no control over my body for a few seconds and it took all I had to break free from the people on my sides. I used my elbows and my feet to kick whoever was around me, shouting for them to get off me all the while.

  But the gunshots didn’t stop, and so the panic only grew. The club we worked in fit three hundred people easily, and Saturday night was the busiest night of the week. It was going to take a while before the place emptied, especially when the door seemed to be stuck by too many people trying to get out at once.

  I called out Luke’s name again as I searched the pool of terrified faces running for the door, while I tried to make my way to the back of the club. Luke would have been at the VIP tables because those were his to serve for the night.

  When I finally caught a glimpse of his face, my heart sank. His left cheek glistened red and blood dripped down his chin, but he was on his feet. That meant he wasn’t hurt badly. It had to.

  Barely even breathing, I made my way through the crowd, not caring that the gunshots were coming from the VIP section. I called Luke again and he finally met my eyes.

  “Stop,” he said, and I read the word on his lips because I couldn’t hear him over the music. But I wasn’t going to stop. I pushed the last person between me and him to the side with all my strength, and then I ran without bothering to look around.

  “Luke!” I shouted. He was only ten feet away from me now, but when I expected him to start running my way, he raised both his arms toward me.

  “Stop!” he called again and this time, I heard the fear in his voice loud and clear.

  I focused on his eyes as I ran, trying to figure out what the hell he was doing, when something hard hit me on the chest and threw me back. I fell on my ass on the cold, wet floor of the club, unable to breathe. My ears began to ring. Blood hot pain enveloped my torso, starting from my chest.

  Cold hands on my cheeks. I blinked the darkness away as fast as I could until Luke’s blurry face came into view.

  “Nova, can you hear me?” he said but his voice sounded like he was speaking through a tube. I tried to nod but I wasn’t sure I managed. “You need to get up, right now!”

  But before I could find my voice again, Luke’s face disappeared. As the air went down my throat, it hurt like hell, but I still breathed deeply. I needed to get up, like Luke said. I needed to grab his hand then run out of there as fast as we could. We were going to leave. Tonight. Right now. Screw the last paychecks. No more waiting.

  That was enough motivation for me to make it up to my feet again. Just as I raised my head, the music stopped. My ears whistled. The view in front of me was still a bit blurry, but now, I could see. I could see, and I wished I couldn’t.

  A cry escaped my lips when I saw the two dead bodies on the floor right in front of one of the VIP tables. Around it sat a man with a black hat and a blood red tie on, a sickening smile on his face. Across from him, to my side, were three other men. One of them was looking at me and grinning, and I could only guess that he was the one who hit me on the chest and sent me flying back.

  The fifth guy was across from me, holding back Luke, who was trying to free himself with all his strength to get to me.


  “Let him go,” I said and took a step forward. I’d never fought before—Luke was always there to fight off the bullies at school—but I did have long nails. If I could do nothing else, I’d dig out his eyes with my fingers. I swore to God I would.

  But then, the man with the red tie sitting at the VIP table began to laugh. I’d watched all the movies with the meanest villains out there, but nothing compared to the sound that came out of his lips. It was the most seductive laugh I’d ever heard, so powerful, it made me want to beg him to do it again.

  Terrified of my own thoughts, I ran toward Luke—or tried to. The same guy that hit me on the chest before, grabbed me by my hair. A scream tore from my throat. This man’s hand was made of steel! My skull was on fire, and when he pulled me back and let me go, the pain didn’t stop.

  “No!” Luke called. “Just let her go. Please, I’ll do anything. Just let her go.” He looked at Red Tie with tears in his eyes, but that only brought a smile to the man’s lips.

  “You haven’t told me yet how you knew this man,” Red Tie said. His voice made me think of an endless piece of velvet fabric, even though I was scared shitless.

  “I didn’t.” Luke tried to free himself from the arms of his holder, but it was no use. “I didn’t know him. I was just helping him stand because he was hurt. I swear, I never saw him before.” He looked at one of the dead men on the floor, both with blood covering their chests and soaking their clothes. I looked away immediately. Not a sight I wanted to remember.

  “Such a human thing to do,” Red Tie said, shaking his head. “How about if I put a bullet in your girlfriend’s head? Would that make you tell the truth?”

  My knees shook. He was talking about me. It wasn’t the first time that people assumed we were boyfriend and girlfriend, but it was the first time that somebody was threatening to kill me.

  Where the hell were the police? They should have been here by now.

  “Please,” Luke said. “Let her go. I’ll do anything you want.”

  When I looked for Red Tie, he was no longer sitting at the VIP table.