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  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  SHADOW MAGIC

  First edition. June 6, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 Nazri Noor.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1719025053

  ISBN-13: 978-1719025058

  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The moon was my witness and accomplice as it cast shadows over the stuccoed walls of the hillside mansion. Long, deep shadows, perfect for hiding, for stepping into. I liked the darkness. It made my job easier: slip in, steal a witch’s book of spells, and slip back out. No sweat. I breathed in the sweet night air up in the hills, the city of Valero’s lights twinkling like stars in the valley below. It was a beautiful night for thieving.

  You read that right. I definitely said book of spells. Or a grimoire, as we called them at the office. I should have clarified. My name is Dustin Graves, and I steal stuff for a living. Dust for short. Not the most flattering nickname, maybe, but it kind of says everything about what I can do. Which, I’ve been told, is nothing short of magic. Okay, real talk: it is magic. But we’ll get to that.

  The things I needed to steal? Arcane curiosities, mostly. Magical items, occult trinkets, sometimes, even ancient, powerful artifacts. Every assignment was different, depending on what the higher-ups at the Lorica asked me to fetch for them. Sometimes it was a piece of ensorcelled jewelry, one time, a gun modified to capture poltergeists. As a job, it was stimulating, challenging, and often totally dangerous. In short, I loved it.

  See, there was a certain thrill to being a professional thief, this acknowledgement that I was being naughty and breaking rules on purpose. In fact, breaking into people’s houses was a large part of my occupation. I should have been nervous that evening, by rights, but I’d done it enough times to know how it would all go down. Just another day on the job.

  But I wasn’t a criminal, oh no. Far from it. Sometimes people needed to be relieved of the dangerous relics they kept around the house. Sometimes people didn’t realize that their fancy new earthenware pot was a shaman’s soul jar, sealed and filled to the brim with the enraged spirits of their enemies.

  I sifted around in my jacket’s pocket, looking for the most important tool in my admittedly limited repertoire. It was only a little glass bottle, by all appearances, but it was inarguably my favorite of the gadgets that the Lorica provided for field work. I pulled out the stopper and held it up as close to the wall as I could without triggering the security system’s sensors.

  I loved this part. It was fascinating to listen for the faint crackle and the low hum as the phial began to fill with tiny bluish-white sparks that swirled, surged, then coalesced into miniature bolts of lightning. A storm in a bottle, so close you could taste the ozone and the electricity, all the power in the compound sucked neatly into this crystalline baby. And yes, that included the backup batteries for every camera, sensor, even the security system’s main panel.

  Folks back at the Lorica were always warning me about how it was important to handle the phial with extreme care, because of how it stored a lethal dose of electricity in such a fragile space. It was never a problem for me, though. The crystal was pretty sturdy, and it wasn’t like I was ever dumb enough to hold it by the rim. There are lots of other less painful ways to die.

  But yeah, life’s been great since I became a Hound for the Lorica, thanks for asking. Exciting might be the right word. Maybe the stuff I did was a little riskier than I was used to – vacuuming electricity into a bottle teenier than a shot glass, doing my best not to trip security systems, one time even running from a pack of really, really pissed off dobermans. Still, I guess I was more inclined to take risks and try new things since I’d already been dead once before.

  We’ll get to that later. Promise. Because the actual magic comes next.

  With the system out of the way, all that was left was to actually infiltrate the grounds, to slip into the house unseen and unheard. Some of my colleagues used cruder methods to gain access, whether with a set of lock picks or a carefully cut-out section of glass. Me? I got to use my magic, or the specific brand of it that I was good at.

  I peered into the darkened house, picking out the right spot to enter. I didn’t need a doorway or a window, mind you, just a pool of shadow big enough to fit my body. Sounds weird, I know, but I work with what I have, and what I have gets me work. The moonlight streaming in through the floor to ceiling windows cast a nicely sized shadow, just by a large potted plant.

  Perfect. I rubbed my hands together and stepped into the shadow of the house on the patio outside. The cold of the night faded as my body shifted and slipped through the ethers. Once my skin began tingling with a faint warmth, I knew that I had made it inside the house. I emerged from the darkness, from the exact pool of shadow I’d selected over by the potted ficus. I patted myself down to check that I’d shadowstepped in one piece, and I smiled at the plant, as if in greeting.

  I wish I could explain how it worked. Shadowstepping was like teleportation, in some ways. I could move freely between two shadows, as long as they weren’t that far apart: pop into one, then step out of the other. My magic had gotten me out of more jams than I have the time to tell you, and it was also the reason the Lorica kept me around. That, and because I was cute.

  My boss Thea said that everyone at the Lorica had some natural aptitude for the arcane. Every mage was destined to polish their specialty – shadow magic, in my case – but it didn’t mean that they couldn’t expand their portfolio. It would take time, she said, and plenty of effort, but I might eventually learn how to shoot fire out of my bare hands, or even fly. Like a superhero, or a proper fantasy wizard. That sounded amazing.

  Not every person should do magic, though, especially not the normals. That was the whole point of my job: to keep the really dangerous stuff out of inexperienced hands. A jewel that changed colors? Pretty and wondrous, sure, but mostly harmless. But a grimoire owned and personally penned by an eighteenth century French witch who left specific instructions on how to bring back the plague? No bueno.

  Incidentally, that was the target for the night: an ancient book, ensconced somewhere in the confines of this enormous hillside Hollywood-wannabe mansion. According to the dossier I’d been given, the occupants were the Pruitts, a thirty-something couple who had made their killing off of reality television. The guy was a producer, the girl one of the stars. Yet even together, I was sure as anything that they couldn’t make up even half of a competent sorcerer.

  See, there’s really no telling who’s magical these days. I mean, it’s California. You see a guy with a beard, a walking stick, and a pointy hat, he could just be a
hipster, or maybe there’s a cosplay convention in town. Not that Valero gets a lot of those, but you get my point. You never know when it comes to modern magic. That barista who makes a face every time you ask for almond milk in your latte could be a talented elementalist, just as the lady behind the counter at your local bodega could be a bruja.

  But this couple? The Pruitts were nothing close to magical, and they just had to get their hands on a collector’s item, this deadly-ass book of summoning. That was like the arcane equivalent of handing a pipe bomb to a toddler. The book belonged back at the Lorica, preferably wrapped in chains and placed under bulletproof glass and, like, a dozen spells of protection. The grimoire had to be removed, and I was the guy to make that happen. That was why the Lorica sent in their handsomest Hound.

  From the vantage point of the potted plant I checked and checked again, making sure there wasn’t some miniature pet dog I had missed. The poor little guys were adorable, genetic mishaps aside – adopt, people, don’t support the shitty breeding industry – but they were yappy enough to wake their owners, and even small teeth could hurt like hell if the dog was agitated enough. Cats were even worse, little balls of fluff weaponized with tiny kitchen knives. I still had scars from a run-in with a Persian.

  The coast was clear. The house had that minimalist yet somehow still ostentatious furniture you found in the homes of the rich and kind of famous, which limited my potential hiding spots, but it looked like I wouldn’t have to resort to them anyway. There were no pets in sight, and no humans, either, which was arguably more important. That meant I could relax a little, take my time.

  But just to be sure, I reached for another phial, this one filled with a glittery pink dust. Hell, for all I knew it could have been actual glitter, but Herald said it was perfect for covering my tracks. Not that I ever left any, mind, but better safe than sorry. I tapped some out onto the ground, grinding my shoes into the dust. The stuff disappeared into my soles, supposedly making it even easier for me to move around without making any noise. Sure, why not. A little bit of fairy dust to help Dust out.

  I crept forward, taking care not to make a peep because, magical assistance or no, it wasn’t like I was invisible. I craned my neck in search of the witch’s grimoire, sure that the Pruitts had stashed it away in a highly secure safe or somewhere similar, when I noticed the sound of rustling, like something fluttering, only more dry and, well, papery. Ah, there it was, right on the marble kitchen counter, laid open and flat: The Book of Plagues. How anticlimactic.

  It was just as the Lorica had described, nearly a foot in length, the approximate thickness of a phonebook, and bound in a deep red leather. Demon skin, if my dossier was to be believed, though I was never quick to discount little tidbits like that anymore.

  Some of the Hands at the Lorica had told me about their experiences with demons, enough to tell me that I’d never want to run into one, and enough to tell me that the witch who handmade this grisly book of shadows was plenty powerful enough to take one down on her own. She probably skinned it herself, too.

  And this thing, the Book of Plagues, it wasn’t happy. It thrashed on the marble, as close to thrashing as an animated magical object could manage, its leather warping and stretching as it struggled unsuccessfully to work its way off the counter. To go where, exactly?

  “Relax, little buddy,” I said. “You’d just fall right smack on the floor. You’re better off waiting for me to extract you.”

  The book rustled its pages in defiance. Best not to make it angry, I decided. You never knew with these artifacts. Some, I’d been told, could be booby trapped, enchanted with failsafes by their crazy sorcerous owners. A rare few, the really sentient ones, could even cast spells on their own.

  I pulled out a third phial, this one filled with a dull purple dust. I know, lots of phials, and a hell of a lot of dust, but it certainly beat hauling around bags of gadgetry everywhere I went. This way Hounds could travel light. It made infiltration easier, and much safer, too. This bottle contained a recent concoction by one of the Lorica’s alchemists – Herald himself, actually – and I was told that it’d be perfect for neutralizing, shall we say, more belligerent targets.

  The stuff was designed for use on living things, but the way the book was writhing all over the counter I figured it might have a shot of working. I sprinkled some of it across the pages, wincing and holding my breath as the rustling blew some of it upward in a puff of lavender dust.

  Still, that seemed to do the trick. Within seconds the grimoire stopped struggling and fluttering as it settled into a quiet, temporary sleep, or whatever semblance of sleep an animated book of shadows was capable of.

  And with work out of the way I could take my sweet time, have a little snack. I needed the nutrients to keep growing, or at least that was my excuse. But maybe I’d stopped growing. Pushing six feet at twenty-four, so maybe that was tall enough, but I got hungry when I worked sometimes. Never enough to make myself a sandwich in a stranger’s kitchen, but if they had some food sitting out, hey, I wouldn’t say no.

  Incidentally, there was a bowl of fruit on the counter, and a little tray of chocolate truffles, each wrapped in foil. I helped myself to one – okay, three awfully juicy red grapes, and popped a truffle in my pocket. They wouldn’t miss just the one. No big deal, right? Just a couple of treats, nothing serious, or maybe I just thought that way since I had never been averse to a bit of casual thievery.

  It started when I was younger, when I learned how to sneak myself a few extra helpings of chicken nuggets at the dinner table while quietly discarding my brussels sprouts. Somehow that transitioned into palming and pocketing trading cards when I was pretending to just check another kid’s collection out at school. At most it turned into nicking a drink, hey, maybe a pack of smokes from a convenience store. The smoking never stuck, but the itchy fingers were there to stay.

  Which, I suppose, made me ideal for my current occupation. Still I tried not to swipe anything truly valuable from a scene. The worst was a bottle of beer, which got me into real trouble with my supervisor, who said that it was tantamount to drinking on the job, but come on. A guy could get thirsty. And it was one bottle. That was hardly theft. I mean, I got paid enough.

  The Eyes got paid better, though. The Hands, more so. You didn’t get much for being just a Hound, which was all kinds of weird since we did lots of field work. Maybe I just got less because I was new. But yeah, Hound work could get so dangerous, too. Sometimes that danger was a dog. Sometimes, if the homeowner was a little crazier, it was a loaded crossbow. But work was work. Just another day on the job. Sniff something out, fetch it.

  Speaking of sniffing, that was when it hit me. After the sweetness of the grapes had faded, I caught a whiff of something different in the air. This sharp scent, like metal, and underneath that, something sickly sweet. In retrospect, I should have sensed it earlier, this metallic tang. I figured that it might have been something the Pruitts had left out in the kitchen, but the reality was far worse. Grislier.

  I stepped past the kitchen counter, and there they were. Bodies, sprawled on the floor. Two of them, one male, one female, each haloed in mingled pools of blood that still burned angry and red in the gloom. Symbols were daubed on the floor around them, forming a ring in what I could only guess was a kind of ritual circle.

  My heart raced, and the inside of my throat went sour. What the hell had happened here? I only knew the Pruitts from studying their dossier, some preliminary web searches, and watching the videos the Lorica had linked for me, but seeing them splayed out like that, with their insides out on the kitchen floor for all to see? That was the kind of intimacy I didn’t need. Somehow all the research I’d conducted didn’t feel at all like an invasion of privacy, up until the point where I got to see for myself how much blood a person really kept inside them, or how much intestine there really was in the human body.

  The near-perfect hole blown straight through Jenna Pruitt’s stomach didn’t leave much to the imagination. N
either did the matching hole that went right through Hank Pruitt’s chest. His heart must have been in there somewhere, strewn amid the gore, one of the pulpier masses on the kitchen tile. It looked like someone had shoved a telephone pole straight through their bodies.

  I gagged, and I fought back the urge to retch right there. This wasn’t part of the job. I’d never seen dead bodies before. And that smell of rot? I didn’t know enough to gauge how long their corpses had been there, but I did know that they couldn’t have been dead long enough to start smelling that way.

  No, that stench came from the third corpse. The one that had a man’s body, but the unmistakeable dead red eyes, whiskered muzzle, and matted fur of a rodent. It was half man, and half giant rat.

  Yeah. Just another day on the job.

  Chapter 2

  “It’s a god.”

  No mistake. That was what one of the guys said, one of the team the Lorica had rushed over to the hillside house the moment I reported the corpses. And no joke, the very moment. The Lorica didn’t kid around with efficiency, and it put its best teleporters on the job.

  But we’re burying the lede. A god. The thing-man-creature with a rat’s head was a plague god from the Egyptian pantheon, originally from the Canaanites. Resheph. That was his name.

  The first surprise there, of course, was that it was possible to kill gods. The second was the fact that gods existed at all. I had a lot of questions for Thea, but that would have to wait until I got back to HQ. Until then I had to fake enough to pretend that I knew what was going on at all.

  Close to twenty men and women had blinked into existence mere minutes after I called in the dilemma. The Lorica’s Wings – mages who specialized in teleportation and transportation magic – worked fast.

  Then an hour slid by and the hillside house turned into the very picture of a regular crime scene, only – not at all. They were working double duty, collecting evidence, first of all, but also scrubbing the scene of any signs that might point to the crime being anything but achievable in the realm of humanity.