Devon Monk - Magic in the Shadows

In the dim light of the warehouse, I could just make out the watercolor image of my father wavering in the air between Greyson and me. Dark business suit, gray hair, and eyes too much like mine, his face contorted by agony. He yelled, but even as I watched, he was fading, becoming less and less solid, his screams quieter and quieter as Greyson breathed him in.

Greyson drank his soul like the Hungers had drunk down magic. The disk at his neck pulsed with magic.

I was beginning to dislike those damn things.

With each heartbeat, my father faded, and Greyson slowly changed from the beast he was back into the man he had once been.

Long black hair fell around his rugged, long-featured face-one a model would kill for. He was taller than me, wide in the shoulders, his beastly form shifting into the scarred and muscled body of an athlete, a runner.

Yes, he was naked. Yes, even with my dad screaming and Tomi unconscious and possibly dead, I looked.

Very nice in that department too.

Allison

, my father whispered.

He will hunt. Violet. Please.

Here is the problem with being left in the dark about magic and the people who use it. I wasn’t sure if Greyson draining my father’s soul was a good thing or a bad thing. But I did know this: my father had asked me

please

only once.

And I also knew that even if Greyson had been Chase’s lover, he had also killed my dad.

That did not make us friends, no matter what I thought about my father.

Fuck.

I didn’t know how to break Greyson’s hold on my dad, but I might be able to stop him.

I traced a Hold spell and poured magic into the glyph. I threw it at him. Nothing.

Well, since magic didn’t work, it was time to get back to basics. I ran past my father’s ghost and swung the machete at Greyson’s head.

A sharp pain shot across my ribs and I groaned. Yep. Broken.

My swing fell a little short, pain hitching my reach. Greyson had good reflexes. He twisted away from most of the strike. Just the tip of the blade bit flesh, drawing a deep line of blood across his biceps.

My father wasn’t screaming anymore. There wasn’t much of him left to scream. Only the very faintest outline of him and two dark holes where his eyes should be were all that remained of his soul. I didn’t know how to get him back in my head, didn’t really want him back. But swinging at Greyson had broken his concentration.

I knew if Greyson got one more sip of him, he would have absorbed my father’s soul.

And if Greyson could carry around my father’s soul like I could, then Dad would be awake, aware, just like he was in me.

I did not like the idea of my father, and all the spells and training he had, being at the beck and call of Murder Boy over there.

Greyson opened his mouth, unhinged his human-looking jaw.

No time to think.

I ran to my dad’s ghost, ran

into

his ghost and inhaled, occupying the same space.

I didn’t know how to ask a spirit to possess me. So I did my best to clear my mind and concentrate on allowing my father’s soul, his mind, back into me.

I am a river and magic flows through me. Your soul is a part of that magic, a part of the magic I carry in me.

“Come back to me, Dad,” I said with enough Influence, I think even my willful father would respond.

A cool breeze, soft as a sigh, washed over me. I smelled wintergreen. Tasted leather. My father’s scents. But it was faint. So faint.

“Dad?”

No response.

And still no time.

Greyson yelled. That wasn’t good.

I turned. Threw both my arms up to protect my face.

A massive figure charged out of the shadows and hit Greyson like a one-ton truck.

Greyson rolled, but the beast kept after him. Greyson finally crumpled beneath the beast. And it was a beast. A very familiar beast.

Stone growled. His strange pipe-organ vacuum-cleaner croon now had a primal guttural rattle. He did not like Greyson. Not one bit.

I didn’t know where the big lug had come from, but I was really happy to see him.

He had Greyson pinned with one stone hand on his throat, and the other shoved in the center of his chest. Stone rocked forward, leaning a little more weight on each hand.

Greyson yelled.

So, here’s the deal. I had no problem with Stone making mush out of this guy. Maybe in man form Greyson could not only feel pain, he could also die. He sure hadn’t died in beast form when Stone messed him up before.

But I didn’t know if my dad was in me. I didn’t know if my dad was in Greyson. And the last thing Dad had asked him was who hired Greyson to murder my father. Greyson had answers to questions I wanted solved. Whether or not my dad’s soul was in me, in Greyson, or finally at rest.

“Stone, don’t,” I said. “Don’t kill him. Yet.”

The breathing boulder actually listened to me and eased up a little. Not that it did Greyson much good. He was bleeding, and from the angle of his arm and leg, broken. But bleeding and broken weren’t enough to make Stone let go of him.

And yes, Greyson’s wounds were already healing, just like they had in the alley, though I didn’t see dark magic filling him. No, just the disk that pulsed green at his neck.

A shiver ran down my sweaty back. Every instinct in my body told me the man on the floor was inhuman. Something that broke the rules of life and death.

Yeah, I know. So says the woman who keeps a dead man as a brain buddy.

Already Greyson looked less human. His face shifted into feral angles, his limbs bent and twisted into the form of the beast.

Maybe losing his humanity meant he no longer had my father’s soul. Maybe it meant I still had my father’s soul, what was left of it, inside me.

I’d cheer, but, really, who was I kidding? I had a couple problems on my hands here.

I shifted my grip on the machete. Cutting Greyson may not stop him, but large injuries seemed to slow him down some. And I was hankering to stab somebody until they told me what the hell I wanted to know.

“What did you do to Tomi?” I asked. “What did you do to my dad? Is he still in you? Did you kill him? Again? Did you fuck up Davy? Who hired you? Who put that damn disk in your neck? Why did taking my dad’s soul change you?”

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t move.

Yeah, I heard it too. Footsteps coming close to the shed.

The room suddenly flooded with light. Greyson looked over my shoulder.

I did too. That was stupid. Luckily, Stone was not at all interested in the light. He stared straight at Greyson and growled again.

Chase strode into the warehouse through the same hole in the wall I’d gone through. She held an orb, the source of the light, in her left hand. The fingers of her right hand curled around a snakelike glyph that I could see even without Sight.

“Allie?” she called.

“I’m fine,” I said even though I wasn’t. Because, really, right now I was a little worried that the kick-ass woman behind me was going to meet her undead, half-beast murderer boyfriend and oh, I don’t know, maybe the conversation would get awkward. If I understood her job description, it was a Closer’s duty, Chase’s duty, to Close people who used magic wrong, who used magic to hurt others. And that meant it was her job to kill Greyson.

The man she once loved.

The beast he now was.

Who might house my father’s soul.

Who might know who was behind my dad’s death.

Who might be impossible to kill.

Holy shit.

She strode over to me like she didn’t believe a word I’d said. Good instincts.

Greyson was still sliding into his mutated beast form, the disk at his neck pulsing toxic silver-green with every beat of his heart. He didn’t run, not that he could get out from under Stone’s grip. He didn’t raise his hands to cast a spell. He simply lay there. Watching Chase draw nearer. The rhythm of his heartbeat quickened, and the disk at his neck pulsed faster.