Stolen Magic (The New York Shade Book 2) Read online

  To avoid her eyes, I turned around and looked at the crowd. She was going to make me say yes eventually if she kept looking at me like that, like she was really that desperate. She wasn’t—she did just fine without her Talent, but now that the idea had gotten into her head, she refused to see it.

  I looked at the many faces on the dance floor as bright lights fell on them, so fast it made me dizzy. And I searched. Lately, I was always searching.

  Cavalieros wasn’t exactly Damian Reed’s scene, but every time I came, I still searched for him, even though I knew he wouldn’t be there. He could be on the other side of the world for all I knew. I hadn’t seen him in over four months, and it was for the best. It didn’t even make sense that I missed him. I’d only known him for like a week, and I’d gone to bed with him like a fool. Now, the memory was there every time I closed my eyes. Ugh, I felt pathetic. He probably didn’t even remember me at this point. He’d moved on, and so would I.

  I turned to Malin again. “Okay,” I said because, if I kept refusing, I would only be delaying the inevitable. She was my best friend. If she needed my help, I’d give it to her, no matter what.

  “Okay?”

  “If you find the spell, I’ll do it—if I think it’s perfectly safe and it won’t hurt you.”

  She laughed and jumped from the stool to hug me. She squeezed me tightly. “She’ll do it!” she shouted at Jamie.

  The vibration of the phone in my back pocket made me pull away. It was probably Sonny. He tried to call a few times a week after classes, and I didn’t realize that it was too late for him to call until I saw the name on the screen.

  Lucas Cook.

  “I have to take this,” I told Malin.

  “Sure. I’ll be right here,” she said with a wink, her mood visibly improved. I avoided the crowd as best I could until I finally made it outside and looked at the phone again. Still ringing. Lucas Cook and his friends, Kyle and Merlin, were mercenaries, like me. They hunted hellbeasts for the Guild and got paid for every head they brought in. He was also the guy who’d helped me that night in Virgin Square. I racked my brain for a reason why he’d call me, but I came up empty-handed, so I picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Sin,” Lucas said with a sigh, as if he was surprised to hear my voice. “So glad you picked up.”

  I walked farther down the sidewalk to avoid the people coming into Cavalieros. “What’s up, Lucas?”

  “I’m in a…situation,” he said, and if I wasn’t mistaken, his voice sounded a bit hushed. “I need your help, Sin.”

  This sounded bad already. “What kind of a situation?”

  “A maneater situation.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. Maneaters were the same species as the hellbeast we hunted, but they were different. They had humanoid forms, looking like zombies rose from the dead, and they ate people raw. There was a special division in Hellbeast Affairs that handled them—and for a reason.

  “So call the Guild,” I told Lucas. To hunt maneaters, you’d need a team of four people because they weren’t exactly easy to kill. I’d fought with more than a few of them before, but they hadn’t been true maneaters. They’d been possessed by a darkling sorcerer, and they were only as good as his control. But true maneaters were a nightmare come to life.

  “I can’t call the Guild,” Lucas said. “I called you. We’ve cornered them. They aren’t going anywhere, but we can’t attack. They’re too strong.”

  “Lucas, I’m a mercenary, just like you. I kill hellbeasts,” I reminded him.

  “You called me when you needed my help, didn’t you?” Goddamn it. It seemed everyone was suddenly remembering that night and the favors I owed them. “Look, it’s just three of them. You can kill them.”

  That was beside the point. “The Guild needs to know about this, Lucas. You have to call them.”

  He let out a long breath that made my ear whistle. “They’re like them, Sin. They’re like the maneaters from that night. They’re possessed.”

  Goose bumps rose on my arms. What were the odds? “Are you sure?”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “I am. They’ve got the same look in their eyes, but they’re more powerful, and they’ve barricaded themselves inside a room. We can’t get to them without revealing our position. They killed three people, Sin. And it sounds like they’re trying to break the fucking house down.”

  Cursing under my breath, I squeezed my eyes shut tightly. “Send me the address. I’m on my way.” I hung up the phone and went to look for Kit.

  Chapter Two

  The address Lucas sent me was in Washington Place. I thought about taking a cab when I left the Shade, but with this traffic, it was going to take me twice as long to get there, so I ran instead.

  I got there in fifteen minutes.

  The house was three stories high, pristine maroon bricks setting it apart from the grey houses next to it. The gate was closed, and from the street, you couldn’t see or hear anything unusual. I stopped in front of the gate to catch my breath for a second and to wait for Kit. He’d followed me, and he was normally faster than me, but he probably got distracted by food along the way. Soon, he turned the corner of the semi-crowded street. I pulled the gate open.

  The ward that protected it was broken almost all the way. It didn’t hold me back, barely warming my skin as I passed through. It would only be minutes before it disappeared completely, and then everybody, human or supernatural, was going to know what was happening. We needed to kill those things fast.

  The banging noise that came from somewhere high up in the building indeed sounded like somebody was trying to break it down to the ground. I rushed up the three stairs to the dark brown door as Kit climbed up my leg and all the way up to my shoulder, wrapping his tail around the back of my neck. He normally didn’t bother to come with me when I hunted hellbeasts, but this time, he’d been curious when I told him there would be possessed maneaters. Good thing, too. He was small, but he was fast, and he could always help when he wanted to.

  The door opened and the banging from upstairs intensified. Nothing seemed unusual in the grey-tiled foyer. I saw a strange-looking, colorful figurine of a bird on the left and a sun-shaped mirror on the right., and ahead, dark wooden spiral stairs led upstairs. Behind the stairs were two doors. I didn’t stop to check. I ran up the stairs right away.

  The second floor was quiet, the large white kitchen perfectly intact. The banging came from a floor above. I was halfway up when I saw Lucas sitting on the floor with Kyle by his side, their backs against a dark blue couch, as if they were hiding. Lucas raised his finger to his lips to tell me to keep quiet.

  Ducking down, I proceeded up the stairs slowly, as quietly as I could, until I reached the floor. That’s when I saw the beast standing to the right of the room, not bothering to hide. It stopped me cold for a second.

  The wolf was massive, about five feet eight inches to the shoulders. His pitch-black fur looked like smoke surrounding his body, and only a bit of white was mixed in around his big ears and the tip of his tail. He was bigger than even Emanuel, the werewolf who worked with Damian.

  I looked at Lucas as the wolf studied me with his clear amber eyes, but he only shook his head and waved for me to approach. The banging sounded again and shook the floor beneath me as I made my way to the back of the couch on all fours. To the left was Merlin, Lucas’s other friend, hiding behind a wooden stand.

  They were all bloodied and wounded in several places that I could see, but it didn’t look serious.

  “Thanks for coming,” Lucas said. I nodded. “They’re down the hallway, to my right. They’re trying to break through the wall with something, but I have no idea where or what they’re trying to get to. There’s two of them, and the three bodies are in the room.”

  I looked at the black beast standing to the side. “And the wolf?”

  The black wolf growled at me. Kit hissed at him.

  “Carter Conti. He’s working with us,” Lucas said.

  Good to know that I wasn’t about to get attacked by him, too.

  “Alright, I’m going in.” I took out a dagger from its sheath. I was going to need my other hand for magic. “You need to call the Guild, Lucas. They have to get here, in case things don’t go as planned.”

  “You got this, Sin. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t believe it. Just…do your thing.”

  My thing. Such a nice guy. “Stay here,” I told them, and I raised my head a bit to look at the other side of the room. It was some kind of a living room, with two couches on either side and a glass table that had broken to pieces in the middle. The paintings were no longer on the wall, but on the floor, torn. Broken lamps and figurines. The hallway behind it was dark, and it looked like it went both ways. Nobody was in it. Taking in a deep breath, I slowly stood.

  Calling forth a ward wasn’t going to help me. It would just keep me from using spells because wards held back magic, and maneaters didn’t have magic. They had brute force and enhanced senses. I reminded myself that these were not on the loose. They weren’t conscious—they were possessed. It would slow them down, just like it had the first time I fought them. With that thought in mind, I walked to the hallway.

  The massive black wolf was very hard to ignore, and when he stepped behind me, I almost attacked him with my dagger. A low growl came from his closed jaws. He was coming with me.

  “Carter, stand down!” Lucas whispered, but the wolf pretended not to hear him. “Carter!”

  The wolf kept coming. What the heck. It’s not like I was trying to hide at this point. Lucas had already seen me using magic in Virgin Square.

  The banging continued. The maneaters were trying to break down a wall, no doubt. The floor shook every few sec
onds as I made my way down the hallway toward the open door at the end. Kit was on my shoulder—he was going to come with me all the way, it seemed—and the wolf was right behind me. Though he was massive, easily three hundred pounds, his footsteps were more silent than mine.

  When I was close enough to see inside the room, my heart skipped a long beat.

  Lucas hadn’t been kidding. The smell of blood assaulted my senses and made my stomach turn. Three dead bodies were on the king-sized bed, thrown one on top of the other. All male, all torn so badly, I could barely see their skins or clothes. Something had torn into their stomachs, and now their organs were hanging out in the open—literally. I couldn’t look for a second longer. Good thing there were three other things to keep me distracted from the slaughter.

  The first maneater was looking right at me. His eyes glowed red, his greenish skin covered in what looked like brown pelt. His face was deformed and dark hair sprouted only on the left side of his head. Behind him, the other maneater was holding a huge hammer in his hand, made of stone, and was slamming it into the wall behind the bed with all his strength. He’d already made a hole the size of a football, and the wall was coming off in bigger pieces now, revealing a pink light on the other side. The third had been behind his friend, but now he was slowly turning to me.

  Both of them hissed at me while the third kept on going with his hammer. Here goes nothing.

  “Now,” I told Kit, and he jumped off my shoulder as I started to run into the room.

  The first maneater met me halfway. I swung my dagger at his face and spun around. The words of my attack spell left my lips in a rush. I’d gone straight to Aunt Marie’s spells this time—forget the Guild standards. This was a maneater, and he was not going to kill me tonight. He attacked fast, his fingers stretched out, aiming for my throat. I let him grab me, his slimy skin wet against mine. I whispered out the last words of the attack spell as he pulled me to his face, his mouth wide open, full of sharp teeth. I covered it with my free hand, my fingers glowing purple, and the spell hit him straight in the mouth.

  He fell back as if somebody had sucked him in from the other side, but he didn’t go as far as I’d hoped. Black blood came out of his mouth as he threw up, holding onto the edge of the bed while the pain consumed him. The other maneater was already coming for me, but before he could get to me, a large shape moved lightning fast from my side and slammed into the maneater, sending it tumbling to the ground. The wolf. Nice. He went after the maneater, who was struggling to stand on his feet, black blood glistening on his chin and chest.

  The other one who’d been by the bed had already recovered, and by the time I got to him, he swung his fists at me full force. I moved away as his fist whooshed past my face, then spun around and kicked him on the side of his head. He moved to the side, and I stabbed him in the chest with my dagger. It seemed to hurt him because he jumped back with a hiss, but before I could finish him off, the wolf appeared by his side out of nowhere, his huge jaws wrapping around the maneater’s knee, and he pulled him to the side fast. The other maneater the wolf had been fighting still wasn’t dead, but he was barely standing at the corner of the room, holding his stomach that seemed to be torn open.

  It looked like the wolf had it covered, so I went after the third maneater who was slamming his hammer at the wall, his back turned to me. My whisper was overrun by the growling of the wolf and the hissing of the maneaters fighting behind me, so he didn’t hear me. Or so I thought.

  I was two feet away from him, my spell almost finished, when he raised his hammer toward the wall but then spun around and swung it at my face. I didn’t see it coming. I was sure he couldn’t hear me. The spell died as I jumped back, holding my breath. If that hammer hit me, it was going to break my jaw.

  Good thing it didn’t. The maneater swung it all the way, and I almost lost my balance and fell trying to get away from it. The magic that was gathered by the unfinished spell had disappeared, so I had to start from the beginning. Purple light made my fingers glow, and it reflected on his black and red eyes as he watched me, so hungry. His mouth opened wide and he let out a hiss, as if to show me what would happen to me if I let him win. No better motivator in the world. I jumped at him, speaking out the spell, no longer bothering to keep quiet, and I swung my dagger at his face at the same time. He moved to the side and tried to hit me again with his hammer, but bright light shot from my fingers, wrapped in purple fog, and it hit him on the side of his chest, sending him back until he hit the wall he’d been breaking.

  I jumped forward while magic was still inside him, making him weaker, and I cut a clean line on his face before he thought to move back. Not good enough. I kicked him in the stomach, then in the jaw, but had to move back when he swung his hammer at my leg. He didn’t stop. He spun around and hit the wall once more, breaking another huge piece, making a hole big enough to fit him through. I ran to him, shouting a spell, attacking him with my fist and dagger, but he was already recovered. Too fast. He moved down and slapped me with the back of his hand as he came back up, sending me to the side. Pain exploded in my brain, raising every alarm in my mind, and I only had time to look to the side to see the hammer coming for me. I moved, but I wasn’t fast enough. It hit me in the shoulder and sent me back until my feet caught on something and I fell back.

  No, I sat back. I sat on one of the nightstand tables at the side of the bed. The maneater came at me again, and I conjured my spell once more, this one more powerful than the last. He brought his arms up, holding the handle of the hammer tightly, and ran to me. Something moved on his back, and Kit appeared on the top of his head, and pushed his sharp claws into the maneater’s eyes. He liked doing that very much.

  The maneater stopped running, letting out a high-pitched sound that made me want to cover my ears. My fingers glowed brighter and brighter, and the magic vibrated through me, rushing to my arms and out of my skin in a blinding ball of light. Kit jumped off the maneater’s head a split second before my magic reached him. He was still holding his eyes when the spell hit him in the chest and sent him flying back, this time all the way down to the floor.

  I stood up again, trying to ignore the pain in my right shoulder. It felt like a car had driven over it, and if my bones weren’t broken, I’d call it a fucking miracle. I ran to the other side of the room, close to the windows, where the maneater had fallen, only to see that he wasn’t there anymore.

  Kit squeaked from behind me, looking at the hole in the wall, burning pink. I only saw the corner of the maneater’s hammer before it disappeared into the wall.

  “Stay back,” I told Kit and turned to check on the wolf behind me.

  Both maneaters were still alive. One of them was on the wolf’s back, biting down on his neck, while the wolf fought the other, as if he didn’t even notice that he was being bitten. As I watched, his jaw closed on the maneater’s arm, and the wolf pulled him down. The maneater couldn’t hold back. He leaned down and the wolf bit his neck, moving his head to the sides until the head cut off from the rest of the maneater’s body. Whispering the same attack spell again, I approached them slowly while the wolf tried to get the maneater off his back. I wanted to shout at him not to move, but if I did that, I’d have to start from the beginning. I raised my hand at them and my magic exploded in bright purple light. It hit the maneater on the wolf’s back, but it hit the wolf, too, because he moved up too fast. They both fell to the side and against the door, the large body of the wolf breaking it almost all the way. Shit.

  With my dagger raised, I walked to them, grabbed the maneater by the hair on the side of his head, and stabbed him in the temple. Dead.

  The wolf whined. I squatted in front of him, trying to see his face. I hadn’t meant to hurt him, but he’d moved at the wrong second. His amber eyes were wide open, and he was trying to get up, but he couldn’t. It didn’t matter—he was alive. And he was a werewolf. He would heal soon.

  “Stay here,” I told him and ran across the room and into the hole in the wall.

  It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. The room was square, medium-sized, the floor set with white tiles. There was no light in there, except the pink glow that was coming from some sort of a capsule made of glass on the top, and white plastic at the bottom, filled with pink water. It was big, about six feet wide, with two white pillars on either side, and the one on the left had a screen on it. Or maybe it was something else—I could barely see.