Cursed by Fire (Blood & Magic Book 1)

Cursed by Fire
Blood & Magic #1
Copyright © 2015 Danielle Annett

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the author.

This book is a work of fiction; all characters, names, places, incidents, and events are the product of the author’s imagination and either fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Cover Design: Regina Wamba with
Mae I Design

Editor: Sharon Stogner with
Devil in the Details Editing

Proofreader: Thomas Shutt with Main Line Editing

Interior Book Designer:
Shirley Quinones

It has been six years since the Awakening and peace in Spokane, Washington is still tenuous at best. The vampires and shifters are all vying for control of the city and the humans seem to be the ones suffering the consequences, or so it seems.

Aria Naveed has spent the last two years of her life fighting to make the many wrongs of the world right, but soon finds out that the humans aren’t as weak as they appear and may be a more terrifying foe than any of the other races combined.

When a stranger rolls into town with trouble on his heels, Aria finds herself trapped in the middle of a battle that could cost her more than she has bargained for as a fight for justice turns into an unexpected fight for her life.

For my daughter, Savanah.

Without you, I would have finished this book much sooner but perhaps this will teach you to always persevere.

And for Joshua. You will likely never read this but know that I love you.

A
ll I saw was blood. Blood soaked my hands and coated the walls. It stained the concrete flooring of the abandoned warehouse and dripped from fixtures that hung from the ceiling, trickling like a slow rain. My vision blurred as anguish filled me. How could this have happened? How could I have been too late?

I stared down at the lifeless body of a child. A boy. Kneeling in a pool of congealing blood, I ran my fingers through his chestnut hair, ignoring the now-cool moisture seeping into the denim of my pants. His face was unrecognizable. Gone was the child with the dimpled cheek and brilliant blue eyes. Left behind was a mass of flesh and bone—a ruined body drained of its life force at such a young age.

Reality snapped like an elastic band, bringing me back to the present as I sat at my desk in Sanborn Place. Ripped from the haunted memories of finding Daniel’s body.

The world was a cruel place. It was a fact of life and even though I knew it was true, I still had a hard time coming to terms with the atrocities people committed. The cruelties that for some god-forsaken reason, people thought were okay. Staring down at the wallet-sized photo now crumpled in my hands, I was greeted by a crown of chestnut hair, bright blue eyes, a heart-shaped face, and a brilliant smile; a single dimple on his left cheek. The face of an innocent seven-year-old boy, cut down like he was little more than a calf brought to slaughter. I found myself struggling to link the image of this smiling boy to that of the ruined body I’d found less than forty-eight hours ago.

Inside, a small part of me burned. My blood heated and a turbulent rage rolled through me, one I had to fight to contain.

“Ari, you’ve got to stop staring at the kid. He’s gone. Let it go,” I heard Mike say.

I couldn’t let it go. I didn’t understand how he could either. I looked up from the photograph and stared Mike straight in the eyes. He cringed but held my gaze.

“He was seven-years-old, Mike,” I said through clenched teeth. “Seven!”

I shook my head, the poor kid had barely lived, barely tasted what the world had to offer. I take that back, he’d tasted too much of what the world could give and it had cost him.

Ever since the Awakening six years ago when all things that went bump in the night decided to come out of the woodwork and play, safety had been tenuous at best and kids like this, like seven-year-old Daniel Blackmore, were suffering the price.

Vampires, shifters, mages, witches and many more creatures of the night so to speak had seemingly popped out of nowhere, deciding they were ready to integrate themselves into everyday, or night, society.

Daniel had been abducted by a rogue vampire. I’d found his mangled body, broken and discarded as if he were nothing more than a piece of trash and I was going to find the bastard that had killed him and make him pay.

“Ari, I know what you’re thinking and the answer is no.”

I looked Mike up and down. He was an older man in his late forties with a streak of silver in his otherwise midnight colored hair. The wrinkles around his eyes would lead you to believe he smiled a lot but I knew better. Those lines were from his ever-present frown. Dressed in black slacks and a grey button up shirt, his mid-section strained against the buttons looking like they could pop off at any moment, likely taking someone’s eye out in the process.

“I wasn’t asking for your permission,” I told him, my gaze going back to the photo.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if you were asking. I’m telling you, Ari, let it go! You can’t help him anymore. All you’ll end up doing is getting yourself hurt or worse, killed for your trouble.”

That was the problem with people who had lived through the Awakening. Their only concern was self-preservation. Nothing else mattered. Well, screw that because this little boy, he mattered. His life mattered and he deserved justice. I had scrubbed my hands after finding his broken body but couldn’t scrub the stain his death left on my soul.

I stood up from my desk and grabbed my keys and daggers. I sheathed the twin blades on either side of my waist, grabbed my leather jacket, and made a beeline for the door. Mike crossed the room to intercept me, arms folded over his chest blocking my way.

“Move,” I bit out.

“No.”

“I can move you.”

“You can, but you won’t.”

I ground my teeth together. He was being ridiculous. This entire situation was ridiculous.

“Mike, this isn’t some game. A little boy died. He died! Does that even matter to you? I couldn’t live with myself if I let this one go.”

“What’s your plan, Ari, you going to just storm into the coven and force them to tell you who did it? They won’t tell you. They protect their own and you’re one person against an entire Coven of bloodthirsty vampires. Even the kid’s parents know it’s a lost cause. They’ve dropped the case and are focusing on burying their kid. They’re coming to terms with his death. It’s over.”

I’d been hired by Jessica Blackmore, Daniel’s mother, a little over two weeks ago to find her son who’d gone missing one afternoon. He had been walking home from a friend’s, only five houses down from his own, but never made it to the front door. She’d thought it safe enough to allow him the small bit of independence but with paranormals about, it was never truly safe.

Mike knows I’m different. He knows I have pyrokinetic abilities and he knows I can take care of myself. This wasn’t reason talking, this was him being overprotective. Feeling the temperature in the room begin to rise I forced myself to inhale and exhale slowly. Trying to calm down and keep my pyrokinesis locked up tight. It wouldn’t help the situation to start a fire. All it would do is prove to Mike that I wasn’t in control and right now I was in no mood for a lecture.

“Look, Ari, you’re a mercenary. You take on a job when you have a client. There is no client so there is no job. We’re not the police. We don’t try to clean up the streets or bag the bad guys. We’re mercs.”

I couldn’t blame him for his way of thinking. Hell, two weeks ago I would have said the same thing, but this was different. He was just a kid and I couldn’t believe everyone was so willing to leave his murderer out there.

“Why don’t—”

Mid-sentence I heard the distinct buzz of a cell phone. Mike dug his phone out of his left pocket and answered it without looking at the screen.

“Hello,” he said. Mike’s face scrunched in confusion, a furrow forming between his brows. He listened for several moments and then with a grunt he hung up and stared me down. At six feet tall, he towered over me by a good five inches, but I didn’t back down. Lifting my chin and giving him my best
try me
stare. The one I knew drove him crazy.

“Looks like you’re getting exactly what you asked for,” he said.

“And what exactly is that?”

“That was Declan Valkenaar on the phone.”

Holy shit, the Pack Alpha. What the hell was he doing calling Mike?

“Turns out the dead kid is actually a shifter. His dad’s not so willing to let his death go unanswered. You’ve got yourself a client. The Pacific Northwest Pack.”

I raised an eyebrow and waited for him to continue. The Pack didn’t outsource work. It didn’t make any sense for them to hire me when they could handle the situation on their own and likely preferred to.

He sighed in irritation but went on anyway.

“Somehow the Pack heard about you and the waves you’ve made so far on the case. You worked it for two weeks straight and despite the fact that we were too late, your efforts showed. They want you. Your fee has already been paid. In full.”

I was shocked. What waves had I made? I searched for a missing child for two weeks and came up empty handed. The only wave I could think of making was that I hadn’t been very quiet in my search. I had banged on every door, knocked on every window, did everything I could think of to bring Daniel home. This was out of left field. My thoughts must have shown because Mike added one more bit of detail.

“Also, since we know the culprit is a vampire, the Pack is hoping to avoid any issues with the Coven so you’re supposed to prevent a war.” He grinned like it was funny.

I clenched my eyes shut and counted to ten. This was going to be a nightmare. The Pack and the Coven were always at one another’s throats and playing middleman between the two was going to suck.

At least the gig paid well. Hiring a mercenary like myself wasn’t cheap. Hiring any merc was expensive, but Sanborn Place had a solid reputation, not that I personally had contributed much to it. I honestly was pretty average. I got by with bravado and luck, and very little skill. How I’d managed to make my clients happy and keep myself alive still baffled me at time.

I would have done the job free but being paid meant Mike wouldn’t stop me from taking it on. He had to earn a living too and now that he worked behind a desk, he relied on the 10% cut he got from the rest of us. The raise in fee also meant I couldn’t gripe about being wedged between two factions of paranormals. I had a feeling that no matter how hard I tried, blood would be spilled. The relationship between shifters and vampires was too volatile to expect anything else. I just hoped it wasn’t mine.

At least someone out there was willing to take a stand. A lingering thought entered my head. This wasn’t adding up.

“Mike, we met the parents already and neither one of them was a shifter. I can see a shifter a mile away and the kid’s parents were one hundred percent human, without a doubt. Shifters have a way of moving, a predatory grace. Neither Patrick nor Jessica Blackmore had that.”

Mike ran his fingers through his hair giving his head a slight shake. “According to the guy on the phone, the kid’s mom remarried when Daniel was four-years-old and he’s had no contact with his biological father since the split. The mom wanted him out of the picture so he stayed away.”

Well if that was the case, why did he care now? He basically hadn’t seen his kid in what, three years and all of a sudden he cared about him? Just as I was about to voice the question Mike raised his hand to stop me.

“Before those gears in your head start turning, you should know that you won’t be working this one alone.”

I stared at him for half a beat. Did he seriously think he was up for this? I mean, he was great and all but he’d been playing desk duty ever since the day he hired me. And in those two years, Mike had visibly grown soft in the most literal way. A good twenty pounds of softness if you asked me. He was nowhere near the shape he needed to be in to hunt down murderous vampires. At best he’d slow me down, at worst, he’d get both of us killed. Having Mike along was a liability and he knew it.

“Mike, there is no way. You can’t do it and I won’t let you be stupid and try. What would Marian think?” I asked, knowing bringing up his wife should help to knock some sense into him.

Mike glared at me. “Well thanks for the vote of confidence, brat. I wasn’t talking about me. You’re going to have a Pack partner. This is an official Pack problem so play nice and don’t bring my wife into this. If I wanted on this case I damn well would be on it.” He puffed out his chest. He reminded me of a peacock, fluffing his feathers to make himself appear larger.

I smiled to myself as Mike lumbered back to his desk, his feathers officially ruffled. He grumbled under his breath about smartass women and something about no damn sense. Pretty sure that I’d gotten under his skin by bringing up Marian but she and I were on the same page when it came to Mike in the field.

Marian kept nagging him to retire, said the job was too dangerous and was better suited for people my age and frankly, I agreed. The fact that Mike was no longer active in the field did little to assuage her concerns when he insisted on tagging along, claiming he was only going for observational purposes. We all knew he missed the thrill of the chase, but despite the fact that Mike tagged along on our safer cases, there was always some level of risk. I knew retirement was around the corner for him, but the day Mike hung his hat would be a sad day. Even though he’d only been in my life for a little over two years, he’d become my rock. A fatherly figure in a way and I leaned on him more than I cared to admit.

With the need to rush out and bring vicious justice abated, I went back to my desk to organize all of our files on Daniel’s case.

I wasn’t thrilled about working with a partner. I wasn’t all that friendly and didn’t exactly play well with others. How Mike managed to tolerate me was a mystery but hey, I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Mike had found me slumming it on the streets a couple of years back just trying to survive. After the death of my parents I was alone. No family or friends to lean on and at the time I was only seventeen years old. I spent four years on my own, most of which were on the streets. The Awakening happened three months after my parent’s death. Talk about timing. Those four years on my own I barely scraped by and looking back, I’m surprised I managed to stay alive.

I was too young in the beginning for anyone to consider hiring me for a job. There weren’t many options for a girl my age so I did the only thing I could do aside from prostitution, which was the one thing I’d never stooped low enough to consider. I took on mercenary gigs. I got in touch with some shady people who didn’t care if I lived or died so long as they got paid and I did the jobs no one else was willing to do. They were near suicide missions, yet here I am. Alive and whole with just a few scars for my trouble.