Shadow Born (The Dark Shade Book 1) Page 2

  “Nothing,” I muttered. Tom was a nice guy—a werewolf without a pack who’d arrived in New Orleans just months ago, but that was about everything I knew of him. Or wanted to. “It’s over, anyway.”

  Zahara raised her brow, and it was strange as hell on her face. “When did it even begin?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be a bitch, Za. I’m trying, okay?”

  “Fucking random guys is not trying,” she said, jumping inside the tub. It was big enough to fit all of her comfortably.

  “It wasn’t random. Viv introduced us, remember?” I insisted, even though she was right. Tom had been as random as it can get.

  “Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid. But do you really think you’re going to find what you’re looking for in somebody’s pants?”

  Yeah, Zahara didn’t bother to sugarcoat things. She was as straightforward as it gets, and most times, it was pretty annoying.

  I showed her my middle finger. “I don’t sleep at night. And what the hell do you know? You’re a shadow.”

  She grinned, and it looked scary as hell, but before she could say anything else, I turned on the blow dryer and focused on the mirror.

  I didn’t do much makeup, but I did like some black lipstick on my lips. Zahara claimed it made me look like a ghost, but I still put it on before leaving the bathroom.

  My sword was by the door—a monstrous thing, and it was incredibly heavy, too. The reason why I’d left it like that, unsupervised, was because even if someone broke in here, they wouldn’t see it. Only when I grabbed the handle and the sword made contact with my skin, would it turn visible to the rest of the world. A special sword for good ole me.

  Once the sheath was securely strapped to my back, I wrapped my black shawl around my head.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Zahara said as she followed me to the door lazily. Even though there were no lights on, I still saw her perfectly. She was magic, and that was very hard to miss.

  “And what does that tell you?” I teased, and my stomach growled. I’d need to eat something on the way to the bar because I was starving. Even though the sex hadn’t really felt like anything, I’d still lost some energy.

  “That you don’t want to answer me?” she guessed, unamused.

  “Bingo.” The door to the left of the entrance still gave me the chills whenever I walked by it, even though I tried to ignore it. It must have been the guilt—I hadn’t touched it at all in the past month.

  Not yet, I told myself and walked out of the apartment.

  “Is that your attempt at humor, Kallista? Because it’s pathetic,” Zahara said.

  “At least I’m not a panther made of shadows.”

  She laughed, and her voice was like the wind. Sometimes it was powerful. Most times it was hushed, and her laugh sounded evil as fuck. I think she did it on purpose.

  “But you know what’s really going to be funny?” I asked.

  “When you lock me in again?” By the sound of it, she didn’t find it as funny as me.

  “Party pooper.”

  The echo of her evil laugh stayed with me even after I sucked her back inside my hand.

  Two

  The man who walked inside the bar was no man at all. He was over six feet tall with a square head and dark hair that stuck to his cheeks and forehead, desperate for some attention. Mainly from clean water. His dead eyes searched the bar, every face and every back he could see. He didn’t give me a second glance, which was exactly like it should be. But I saw every movement of his body, and I knew exactly what would happen before it did.

  He walked over to the middle of the bar with determined strides because he had found the man he was looking for, and now he was desperate to show the world what happened when someone messed with him. It was just a guess, but a damn accurate one. I’d been watching people for years. I knew how they thought. It wasn’t all that hard. Everyone was looking for trouble in some way. How else are they going to keep things interesting, live day after day without a purpose?

  When the stranger reached the man he was looking for, he put a huge hand on his shoulder and spun him around violently, almost knocking him off the stool.

  Everyone in the bar stopped talking. Over sixty people—some annoyed, but most excited because we were all regulars here. We all knew what happened next, what happened every time someone wanted to start a fight in Whiskey Garden.

  “Where is it?” the stranger demanded, and now that only the music played in the background, and nobody else made a single sound, we could all hear it. He had the poor man by the jacket and was bringing him closer and closer to his face.

  The man was so scared, he was shaking. I didn’t blame him. I’d have probably looked as terrified, too.

  You could find all kinds of supernaturals around here—witches, sorcerers, shifters, vampires, fae, elves, as well as much more unusual creatures—like me. But this guy here was a ghoul, and ghouls were not a pretty sight to see. They were technically dead, and they needed raw flesh to survive, and it all showed in the dead of their eyes, the blue tint of their skin, the smell in their mouth.

  “I don’t know, Jordan,” the man said, trying but failing to push the ghoul’s hand off. The guy who’d been with him silently slipped off the barstool and distanced himself to the right.

  “Don’t play games with me, Noah. You stole it—I know you did. Tell me where it is or I’m gonna fucking eat you,” the ghoul spit, and his words rang true. I believed him.

  The man put his hands in front of his face. I could only imagine the smell that was assaulting him. “I didn’t! I would never steal from you, I swear! I don’t have it,” he cried. If he had ever had any ounce of pride, it had fled his body the second that ghoul touched him.

  Was he a wizard, I wondered? Maybe a sorcerer? Why hadn’t he turned to his magic yet?

  Because his buddy Jordan there would break his neck before he finished chanting a spell, I figured.

  “You fucking—” the ghoul started, and the crowd was just getting heated up, but that was as far as his show would go on.

  “That’s enough,” said a voice from the left of the bar, and all eyes turned to the shadows.

  Shadows were my friend. The best spells in my arsenal spoke to them, and sometimes I could see through some. That’s why I saw Elijah Marden before anybody else. His brows were narrowed, his square jaw covered in a week-old stubble. There were rings on his fingers, all with some version of a skull on them. The corners of his lips turned upward before he stepped into the light shining over the bar.

  Yeah, Elijah wanted trouble, too, even though he was about to claim that he didn’t.

  “Fighting is not allowed in Whiskey Garden. Let him go,” Elijah ordered and moved closer to the middle of the bar where the ghoul watched him wide-eyed.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked the owner of the bar. Only a Prime sorcerer with a Talent that had most people running out the door when they heard about it. It was an unusual magical Talent, to say the least. And I had the feeling that we would all witness it soon.

  “The man who’ll take you to meet your maker if you cause trouble in my bar,” Elijah told him, showing the ghoul all his yellowing teeth.

  “I haven’t done anything, I swear,” Noah kept whispering, looking at Elijah as if he were asking to be saved. I smiled, the rim of the glass still pressed to my lips. What a fucking idiot.

  “Stay out of my way, old man,” said the ghoul but not as bravely as he’d threatened Noah. “I have business with him.” And he jerked his head to the side. His hair was so greasy, it didn’t even move.

  Elijah froze for a second. I put the glass on the table and dragged myself to the edge of my seat. This was going to be good. I wished Zahara could see it, but I didn’t often let her out when there were people around—only if I absolutely had to.

  “Old man?” Elijah asked with a sick smile on his rough face. “Do you know how many of your kind I’ve killed, dead man?”

  “No, please—
” Noah cried, but it was already too late. The ghoul had taken a bottle of beer from the bar top. He was probably planning to throw it at Elijah’s face, but he wasn’t even able to move his arm back before it happened.

  Elijah’s Talent was called Teleportation, except it wasn’t a traditional teleportation power. He could swap matter with it—any kind of matter within seconds. That is why, one second, the ghoul had a beer bottle in his hand, and the next, he was holding a heart. A dead heart that hadn’t pumped blood in the gods knew how long.

  His own heart.

  Any other creature would have already been on the floor, but not Jordan. He had experience with being dead, so he actually got to see the sight of his heart in his hand, and he even looked down at his chest. If he could see the inside, he’d find the beer bottle right where his heart used to be.

  The sound of his body hitting the floor made his friend Noah jump, scream, and run for the door. But Elijah Marden was not someone to be fooled around with. Everybody in the Shade knew not to go to his bar when they had trouble coming for them. The man collapsed two feet away from the door. His left sneaker was missing. Next to his toes was his heart, still red, still pumping, as if it didn’t know it wasn’t inside a body anymore.

  With a sigh, I leaned back on my chair and continued to drink my whiskey. Everybody else went about their business, too. The show was over. Elijah retreated into the shadows and through the door at the end of the bar that only he ever used.

  Soon, two men who worked for him, and even tended the bar some nights, came out with plastic bags and mops to clean up the mess and take out the bodies. The music still played, the people went back to chatting and singing and dancing.

  Just another night in the New Orleans Shade.

  I turned my attention back to the other side of the bar and to the two men who sat around the table at the opposite corner. I knew one of them, and he was in the same line of business I was. The problem was, even before that ghoul arrived, he’d put a ward around his table to keep prying ears like mine away. He was a wizard, only Level Two, but the Shade we were in could reinforce wards easily. All it would take was a little bit of magic and all your inconveniences would go away.

  The Shades were strange creatures. There were twenty-three of them spread all over Earth. To the naked eye, they didn’t look any different from the neighborhoods in whatever city they took root—with asphalt and buildings and trees and people.

  But the Shades were so much more than that.

  At first, the gods created them as guardians of the Gateways to other worlds. Soon after, they became safe havens for supernaturals of all kinds. Human eyes couldn’t see them at all, couldn’t get through the barrier they wrapped themselves with. But everyone else was free to be who they were in a Shade. And the more supernaturals who lived inside one, the bigger and more powerful the Shade became.

  They were conscious beings, even though they looked just like any other part of whatever city they were in. They didn’t allow cars inside, but who needed cars when you could slip some magic—any kind of magic—into the ground and ask a Shade for a shortcut to wherever you were headed? Even I could be in the other side of the New Orleans Shade within seconds, if I ever bothered to connect with it. To give it my magic. To ask it for favors.

  People loved it. Everyone I knew loved the Shade. It took magic and gave you anything you asked for in return—shortcuts, light, darkness, wind, scents. You could even make a new building sprout from the ground if you were powerful enough. A place full of wonders—just not for me.

  I lived minutes away from the New Orleans Shade. It existed in the middle of the French Quarter, and it was one of the bigger Shades of the world, but nobody knew exactly how big it truly was, when it kept changing shapes for anyone who asked. I came here every single night—sometimes in the day, too, to meet my friends—but I never felt close to it. I never gave it magic. I wasn’t a resident of it—just a visitor, always gone come dawn, and I wasn’t sure why.

  Maybe because the Shades knew who you were once they tasted your magic. My friend Viv said the Shade knew exactly when she was sad or happy or in need of something specific. That terrified me—to open up to a stranger like that was not something I was comfortable with.

  Or maybe it was because of my memories of the Dark Shade—a Shade that seemed to exist only inside my mind because nobody knew of it. Nobody had heard about it. I’d searched for it every day for the past five years, and it was getting so hard to trust my own mind, my own memories. I had never met a single person who’d even heard the name—and I still had no other choice but to keep searching.

  Because the Dark Shade did something to me. It filled me with darkness, and it took my memories, and it left nothing but emptiness behind. Wherever it was, I was going to find it—or die trying.

  The familiar sense of panic was ready to take over me if I allowed it. So, before I lost myself to those thoughts and wasted the night away, I forced my attention back to the wizard wrapped up in his ward. I could still see the excitement in his face, and the way he was gesturing all over with his hands told me that whatever he knew, it was worth something.

  Elijah Marden was still there, just a door away from trouble, and I was perfectly aware of that when I reached out my hand under the table and chanted my spell. The words were clear in my mind, and everything else came to a halt while I focused on the magic slipping from my fingers, soundless, invisible, aimed at the ward that protected the wizard. It wasn’t an all-out attack spell, and all it did was open a small circle on the surface of the ward—which was the reason why I’d dared to whisper it in the first place. The wizard wouldn’t know. Nobody would know, least of all the bar owner.

  Once I heard the wizard’s voice, I pulled my magic back inside me and put all my focus in my ears. Nobody would be able to tell that I was spying because nobody could see my face. The shawl I had wrapped around my head held my magic, a spell that cast shadows all around it. Very few creatures could see through it, and nobody was even looking my way. So, I just held onto my glass of whiskey and listened.

  “I’m telling you the information is legit. The Guild took out three of them just to get it,” the wizard said to his friend.

  “Who were they?” asked the friend.

  “I don’t know. Who gives a shit who they were? They’re all the same to me!”

  “I don’t know, man. The Guild is already involved. That’s bad news all around,” the friend said, more skeptical than before—and he was right.

  The Sacri Guild was the body that governed the supernatural communities on Earth. They called all the shots, made the laws and enforced them. People were scared shitless of them and with reason—the Guild had enough men, magic, and equipment to cause trouble for most of us. Except for people like Elijah—the bar owner. Rumor had it he was involved with the Guild somehow, and that was why they kept away from him, no matter that at least two people died in his bar every month. Nobody asked questions. Nobody came for statements. Nobody dared to try and arrest Elijah Marden, whatever the reason.

  But the wizard and his friend didn’t have the Guild’s favor. And now I was even more curious to know what they were talking about.

  “So what that they’re involved? Are you telling me you’ve never stolen from the Guild before?” the wizard said.

  “I have, but—” The wizard didn’t let him finish.

  “And you’re still here. C’mon, this thing is worth a lot of money. It’s legit—otherwise the shifters wouldn’t have even had it.”

  Shifters. He was talking about werewolves.

  “But why were the bloodsuckers involved? What the hell is it?” the friend asked, and I held my breath. Vampires were involved, too?

  Oh, wow. This was even better than I thought.

  “Because it’s powerful!” the wizard said. “I’m telling you, it’s worth it. Just think about the money, man!”

  He said the words so loudly that the two couples sitting at the table next to them turned
to look. The wizard and his friend noticed. Their smiles fell, and they basically turned to ghosts in a second. They both stood up at the same time, almost knocking their chairs over in the process, because they knew that their ward was broken, and people could hear them.

  Shit.

  I kept my eyes on them, but they didn’t see. They searched the many faces around us, trying to figure out who had been spying on them. Was it too much to hope that they would sit back down and continue the conversation? Because I hadn’t heard enough. Whatever that thing was they were talking about, it would make me money, but would it help me find out more about the Dark Shade?

  It was the reason why I’d gotten into this line of business in the first place—steal and sell all kinds of illegal things. Because if even the Sacri Guild didn’t know anything about the Dark Shade, the only people who would know something would be the kind of people who sold illegal things for a living.

  So far, I hadn’t had any luck, but I’d saved a lot of money for Plan B, at least.

  Plan B were the Crimsons—a witch and wizard couple, the best trackers money can buy. They were extremely expensive, and I still needed more, but every cent would be worth it when they found the Dark Shade for me.

  Unfortunately, this wizard and his friend weren’t planning on sitting down again. They made for the door immediately, leaving their drinks unfinished, not daring to even ask who had broken their ward. We were in Whiskey Garden, and unlike the ghoul Jordan and his friend Noah, they knew exactly who the owner was, knew that he wouldn’t give a shit whose fault it was or who started it.

  I sighed, a bit annoyed. It looked like I was going to have to do some chasing tonight, too.

  But before the men made it out the door, the ground shook. It was just a little bit, and most people didn’t even notice, but I was on my feet the next second. There were no earthquakes in the Shades—unless they were cleaning themselves. They did it every year—with strong winds and rainstorms that lasted hours, but the New Orleans Shade had already cleaned itself for this year back in May. Which meant whatever was making the ground shake like that, it wasn’t natural at all.