Alpha Magic (The New York Shade Book 4) Read online

  Alpha Magic

  The New York Shade - Book 4

  D.N. Hoxa

  Contents

  Also by D.N. Hoxa

  SIGN UP TO D.N. HOXA’S MAILING LIST

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Also by D.N. Hoxa

  Copyright © 2020 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.

  Also by D.N. Hoxa

  The Marked Series (Completed)

  Blood and Fire

  Deadly Secrets

  Death Marked

  Winter Wayne Series (Completed)

  Bone Witch

  Bone Coven

  Bone Magic

  Bone Spell

  Bone Prison

  Bone Fairy

  Scarlet Jones Series (Completed)

  Storm Witch

  Storm Power

  Storm Legacy

  Storm Secrets

  Storm Vengeance

  Storm Dragon

  Victoria Brigham Series (Completed)

  Wolf Witch

  Wolf Uncovered

  Wolf Unleashed

  Wolf’s Rise

  Starlight Series (Completed)

  Assassin

  Villain

  Sinner

  Savior

  Morta Fox Series (Completed)

  Heartbeat

  Reclaimed

  Unchanged

  The Curse of the Allfather (Ongoing)

  Wicked Gods

  Wicked Magic

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  Chapter One

  Damian Reed

  The night was warmer than it had been the past week. I didn’t mind, except it seemed the whole town was out tonight. Far too many scents—people hadn’t held off on perfumes, it seemed. I could barely draw in air without wanting to feel nauseous, and that’s without the scent of the rivers surrounding us on all sides.

  “Everything okay over here?” the waitress said, keeping a good distance from my table, as always. Her cheeks were pink, even under her make up, and her eyes glistened a bit, as if she’d just been crying.

  “Everything is good. Thank you, Nadia.” I had a bottle of their finest wine on the table, and a glass to drink it. I also had the postcard that Nadia had delivered to me when I got here. It was from my friend Helen Marquez. How she’d found me was beyond me, but it didn’t really matter. I wasn’t trying to hide.

  “I hope that brought good news,” Nadia said, nodding at the postcard. It was a simple one with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the front. There were only five words scribbled in blue ink: I know what you did, and her signature below it.

  “It did. It’s a thank you note,” I told the waitress.

  A month ago, I’d given Helen’s mate Nikola, a fruit from the Treasure of Saraph, a plant that was supposed to grant immortality to mortal supernaturals. I hadn’t told them about it because I’d had no idea if it would even work. By the looks of it, it had. I was curious to know how, but I could always give them a call later, when I was done here.

  “Great! Right, then,” Nadia said with a nod, and stepped back. “Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat? You never eat.”

  “It seems like that sometimes, but I’m fine. I already ate.” Again, I nodded. “Thank you, Nadia.”

  She spun around and walked back inside the restaurant. I didn’t mind her—she’d been very polite every time I’d come here, and I’d been coming here a lot the past month. They served good wine. They were also in the very center of the most crowded neighborhood in town—just a wide street surrounded by bars and restaurants and shops of all kinds.

  I was in Canada, in a small town near Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, but I wouldn’t be there for long. I was almost done. It was a little past nine p.m. now, and my usual tails were with me. Of course, nobody would be able to tell—they wouldn’t be the best otherwise—but I could smell them just fine. I was used to the scent of both of them, and by now I could pinpoint their locations with almost complete accuracy.

  Hugh Clint was the first one they called for the job. He was a werewolf, Level Three, very good at tracking. Very good at staying hidden. Almost impossible to make out, especially when he looked like a kid barely out of teen-hood and had a very easygoing nature that disarmed people in the first five minutes of talking to him. Master manipulator, if I’d ever seen one—and so young. He was barely in his thirties, and it did make me wonder who he’d had to hide from all his life to become this good at it. I could have Ryan Asher, the Sacri Guild assistant, send me a summary of his life, but I wasn’t that interested. Or patient.

  For the moment, he was three buildings down, sitting at a bar with two men and a woman, pretending to be extremely interested in what they were saying. He never once looked my way. Not ever. It was impressive.

  The other, a vampire, went by the name of Ethan Chambers. He was young, too—eighty, if I remembered correctly. I didn’t know him very well. I didn’t even know he was working for the Guild until Asher told me his name. Apparently, he’d committed cyber crimes all over the States, stealing primarily from human banks, but supernatural banks, too. He’d managed to stay a step ahead of the Guild for almost three years before they caught him. That he was good at what he did was no surprise—the Guild didn’t offer deals to people they didn’t think they could use. And now they were using him to keep an eye on me.

  Chambers had a different style. I’d never actually seen him. He didn’t prefer to come out into the light—he stuck to the shadows. Right now, he was across the street, at the top of the highest building at my back, waiting.

  So far, things had gone exactly as they should. They pretended I didn’t know they were there, and I pretended they really weren’t. It wasn’t a coincidence that I’d come to this place. As I’d found out a month ago through Ryan Asher, the Guild believed that I was going to lead them to an Alpha Prime.

  Who was I to change their minds?

  Pity I didn’t know any real Alpha Primes who’d survived right now, or I’d have taken the Guild straight to them without hesitation. As it was, I had to improvise. I was pretty sure that the Guild didn’t know for certain that there actually was an Alpha Prime. They were just suspecting, even trying to convince themselves that there wasn’t an Alpha Prime alive in the worlds.

  And I was all too happy to convince them of it.

  Alexander Adams was a Prime wizard, one of the strongest I’d ever come across—completely by accident. There were a few reasons why I’d chosen to lead the Guild to him.

  The first was the obvious—he was a Prime, a very powerful wizard. Second, the Guild didn’t know about him. He kept himself well hidden and only operated in the dark, which suited my needs perfectl
y. But the third and most important reason was that he’d been in Manhattan for sixteen days a month ago—and it was easily proven. Ryan Asher didn’t have any difficulties finding camera footage of him in the City, and the rest of the Guild wouldn’t have any trouble with that either.

  They had Adams’s magic signature in their database, but for a wizard like him, it would be easy to spell his own magic. It had happened before and the Guild would believe it. They were already ready to.

  Tonight, they would be convinced properly.

  I took the glass of wine in my hand, sniffed it in hopes that it would rinse the smells of other people out of my nostrils, then took a sip. It didn’t reward me with taste, but I no longer expected it to. I no longer needed it to. I had plenty of things to ground me to reality.

  When Alexander Adams turned the corner of the street, I turned my head and looked right at him. He was too good to think that I wouldn’t know, and if I pretended with him, the deal would be off before it ever began.

  I’d followed him here and he knew it. It had taken him two weeks to come talk to me, and another week and a half to agree to meet with me again. To talk about what I wanted, something that he hopefully had by now.

  When we’d met almost two weeks ago, in the same restaurant, and I made my request, he pretended to be shocked. He tried to talk me out of it, even when I told him how much I was willing to pay him. The number ultimately made up his mind, just like I knew it would. Adams wasn’t a poor man by any means, but everybody wanted more power, and money bought you plenty of it.

  Choosing what to ask of him wasn’t all that difficult. There was only a short list of spells that were both illegal and so powerful that not even five percent of all Prime magic wielders could actually make them. One of them was a mind-bending spell, powerful magic you can use on anyone to change their mind about anything at all. There were a lot of drawbacks—like, you only had about ten minutes to plant the new or changed thought in someone’s mind, and you could only use it on one person. Needless to say it was hard to even find the spell for it, let alone make it.

  Judging by the smile on Adams’s face, he’d done both.

  He was a big man, only about an inch shorter than me, but twice as wide. He looked to be in his fifties, but rumor had it he was past his ninetieth birthday. Whatever spell he used on himself, it was apparently working. He stood straight, not a hint of age on his shoulders, and his crisp black suit with a dark red shirt underneath made him look even younger. He walked with one hand in his pocket, the other holding a small briefcase, half the size of mine that was on the ground right next to my feet. I didn’t get up to greet him when he approached—we were past formalities at this point.

  Adams sat across from me and put his briefcase on his lap, then offered me a smile. His eyes were small and dark blue, almost like they’d gotten darker over time, with a hint of lighter colors here and there. His skin was obviously spelled—like magical botox—but if I focused hard enough, I could see where his wrinkles would have been around his eyes and his mouth, even on his neck.

  “Reed, a pleasure seeing you again,” Adams said, his voice light as a breeze. He tried hard to get it to sound like that, and when people did that, it meant they were hiding something, something they thought would scare you away if you knew. Never a good thing, especially in deals such as this.

  “Likewise, Adams. Do you have what I’m looking for?” I said as politely as I could. Through the corner of my eye I could see Nadia making her way to our table. Adams must have noticed, too, because he didn’t speak at all until Nadia approached us to take his order.

  “Why not a glass of your finest whiskey, young one? I’m celebrating tonight,” Adams said, and when Nadia made her way back, he stared at her ass like a maniac. I could never stand such people, but I smiled at him anyway.

  “I’m guessing you have what I want?” I asked, already impatient.

  “I did, yes. It took me four days just to find the spell, and another three to make it,” Adams said, wrapping his fingers around his protruding chin as he analyzed me. “It’s a very powerful spell, Reed.”

  “It is indeed, which is why I came here looking for you,” I reminded him. I’d told him all of this the first time we met.

  “Not to brag or anything, but it was a smart choice. Nobody else out there could have pulled this off, I’m afraid.” He said it with a grin that was meant to say that he was kidding, but he also knew that I knew he wasn’t.

  “May I see it?” I asked. I knew the second I did, Clint and Chambers—my tails—would see it, too. They’d see it and it would be a matter of minutes before they figured out what it was. By then, I would hopefully be back in my room at the inn where I was staying.

  “You’ve gotten very impatient tonight, Reed,” said Adams, suspicion flashing in his eyes, but I’d already played his game for a whole month. I was done. He knew I had the money. He wanted the money; otherwise he wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t back off now.

  “I have been living in this place, waiting for that talisman for a month. I’m sure you can understand that I have better places to be right now, Adams. I just want to be on my way, and you probably do, too,” I reminded him. Pretending was only going to make things worse with him.

  Adams laughed, throwing his head back. “Yes, I can see why this town might be too small for you, Typhon. I was surprised you even lasted this long, to be honest.”

  I smiled. “There you have it. Now, can I see it?”

  “In a moment,” he said, and a second later, Nadia came out with a tray with Adams’s drink on it. Again, when she left, Adams watched her like a hawk, and I could see his thoughts clearly in his eyes. It even made the monster inside me stir. He looked like a madman.

  “I was hoping you’d be more open to sharing with me this time around,” Adams continued, his drink in his hand. “Who do you want to use this on?”

  “It’s personal,” I said, just like I had the first time he’d asked. “It doesn’t concern you, Adams. It won’t be for very bad things, I assure you.”

  That earned me another laugh. “The badder, the better, my friend. Cheers!”

  We clanked our glasses and drank, and then he finally took his briefcase from his lap and put it on the table. He didn’t hesitate to open it at all, only took a look around to make sure nobody was watching. That convinced me that he had no idea I was being followed by the Guild, and he didn’t notice Clint stand up from his table at the bar three buildings down. With his hands in his pockets, he started walking up the street, looking straight ahead. Chambers, who was hiding in the building across the street, would have gotten closer by now, too.

  “Here she is,” Adams said and opened the suitcase. He turned it toward me just slightly, and inside I saw a small black box with a steel band in it, as big as three rings put together, with a lot of precious stones around it in all colors. It was a talisman, a magical object that could hold spells as powerful as this one without absorbing any of the magic for itself—or leaking it or altering it in any way.

  Adams closed the lid of the suitcase and grinned. “Your turn.”

  I leaned down and grabbed my own briefcase, full of money, and handed it to him. There was no need to open it and show him. “It’s all there,” I said, and he nodded, his eyes glistening with greed now that he had the suitcase in his hands. I took the one with the talisman in it and leaned back, feeling a thousand pounds lighter.

  Done.

  “Adams, it was a pleasure doing business with you. Hopefully we meet again sometime.”

  I stood up. I didn’t need to be here a second longer. My life waited for me back in New York.

  “Oh, leaving so fast?” Adams said, his tone mocking me. “I was hoping we could celebrate properly.”

  “I would like that very much. Unfortunately, I have a plane to catch. Next time?”

  I offered him my hand and he shook it, tightening his grip around my fingers as if to warn me. I only smiled.

  “Safe fli
ght, Reed,” Adams called when I turned my back to him and walked down the street with the briefcase in hand. My tails, both Clint and Chambers, were watching me, possibly closer than they had in the past month. I wished I could tell them not to bother. In mere minutes, they were going to have all the evidence they needed to convince the Guild that Adams was the powerful supernatural I’d been in contact with in New York, the one they thought was an Alpha Prime. They were going to put Adams away for a very long time, and Sinea would no longer be in danger.

  I went back to the inn where I had stayed for the whole month, only three blocks away from the restaurant. I left the open case on the bed where Clint and Chambers could find it easily. I grabbed my bag that I’d left ready by the bed’s feet, and I walked out again.

  It was time to go home.

  Chapter Two

  Sin Montero

  It wasn’t even ten p.m. when I decided to call it a night. The movie I’d put on was just making me angry and I didn’t have anything better to do. I could always go see Jamie at the club, but I wasn’t in the mood for music and a crowd, so I just drank a couple of beers by myself and hit the sack.

  That’s why I thought it was a dream when I felt Kit’s claws on my chin, and his loud squeak filled my head completely. I knew that squeak. He only ever screamed like that when he really wanted my attention. It was the reason why I even bothered to open my eyes in the first place. And when I saw his tiny face in front of mine, claws on my skin, his tiny teeth practically biting the tip of my nose as he squeaked, I was wide awake in a second.