Obsidian Magic (Legacy Series Book 2) Read online

  OBSIDIAN MAGIC

  (LEGACY SERIES BOOK 2)

  MCKENZIE HUNTER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  McKenzie Hunter

  Obsidian Magic

  © 2017, McKenzie Hunter

  [email protected]

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Cover Artist: Orina Kafe Artworks

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  ISBN: 978-1-946457-93-6

  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

  MESSAGE TO THE READER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOOKS BY MCKENZIE HUNTER

  MOON TORTURED (SKY BROOKS SERIES BOOK 1)

  CHAPTER 1

  Three times I picked up the phone to dial the number only to stare at it without making the call. What would I say to Gareth? Was it my imagination or did Gareth, the head of the Supernatural Guild and member of the Magic Council, know that I was a Legacy? No, I hadn’t imagined it—he’d whispered my real name in my ear. I took a deep breath. He’d made it seem like he would keep it a secret. And I was sure that might have been his intention, but he had responsibilities and an obligation to protect people from the likes of us, of me.

  This time when I put in the number, I pressed send before I could talk myself out of it again.

  Gareth answered in a deep, velvety voice. “Ms. Levy Michaels,” he purred. How did he make his voice sound so sexy and haughty at the same time? “I didn’t think it would take two days before you contacted me. You are a strange woman, aren’t you?”

  “Do you expect me to say yes to that?”

  “I was just making an observation. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  Really? Fine, I will play your game. “I was just wondering if you were going to the Harvest Festival,” I asked in a cloying voice. “I hear it’s going to be really nice.” Each year I went out of my way to miss this, and I had a feeling it probably wasn’t on his list of things to do this weekend.

  “Hmm. I hadn’t thought about it. Should I? I went a couple of years ago. It’s a good opportunity to try out the best bakeries in town. Have you tried the persimmon pie? They only have it around this time of year. And apparently, Claire’s Bakery makes the best zucchini bread money can buy; it’s at a special price at the festival. Maybe I should go and buy a couple and freeze the rest for later. Ah, and the pumpkin …”

  “You win. I didn’t call you to discuss pies, bread, and cake, but I’m sure you know that.” He wasn’t lying. It was a mystery how Claire could take the most disgusting vegetable ever grown and make it into the best bread I’d ever tasted. “We need to talk.”

  “Well, you know where my office is. What time should I expect you?” he asked.

  “Is it safe to discuss sensitive matters there?”

  He laughed, a melodious rolling sound. “Levy, if you want to meet me privately, please don’t be coy. Just ask.”

  I had forgotten about his arrogance and narcissism but when I heard them in his voice as he spoke, I got a much-needed reminder. “I’ll be there at eleven.”

  “You want to do lunch, I guess? Again, Ms. Michaels, if you—”

  “Give me an hour; I’ll be there.”

  He was frustrating. I shrugged on my back sheath with sai in place and grabbed my jacket. I didn’t make it far from my room before I found my roommate, Savannah, sprawled out on the floor on a yoga mat with her body contorted into an odd position. She must have decided to do double duty with her worship. I teased Savannah that her obsession with fitness was very cultlike. She paid tribute to Bikram and Vinyasa. And worshipped the false idol Lululemon. Between her full-time job as an administrative assistant and yoga and Pilates, I rarely saw her in the morning and on her days off she seemed to feel the need to offer the gods additional tribute.

  “What time are you going to work?”

  “Later; we have several pickups and then we’ll have to go through them.” This was the most boring part of antique acquisitions—picking up boxes of things that we either learned about from someone contacting the company or various ads on the web and Craigslist. Usually we would find a few magical objects, but there was a higher incidence of just finding plain old junk. But that was a risk we were willing to take, because when we did get a good box, it was usually damn good. People called claiming they had antiques they wanted to sell. And we didn’t just pick up a box or two. They pretty much waved their hand over a cluttered shed, garage, attic, basement, barn, or whatever and let us scavenge it. This happened more when it was the child of a deceased parent. I guessed their thinking was that all the valuable things were probably in the main part of the house. Many people had been wrong about that. But they essentially used us as a trash-hauling service. We gave them a flat fee and claimed possession of everything in the space named.

  Over the weekend, we’d acquired a barn. We were called in by the granddaughter of the deceased who sounded as though she just couldn’t be bothered with any of it. I figured it was going to be a big job.

  “I fixed breakfast,” Savannah said in her typical morning voice, which was a lot perkier than mine even after I’d had several cups of coffee. I smiled but groaned inwardly. I didn’t want her egg-white-only, no butter, sautéed vegetable food. I wanted bacon, the whole egg, and waffles with mounds of butter and syrup. And just to keep it healthy, I’d add blueberries on top.

  “Muffins,” she offered. My smile bloomed and my mood changed in an instant. Meeting Gareth still weighed on my mind, but life was always better with muffins.

  Except for these muffins. Walking toward the table, I frowned. I reclaimed my mood, too. What the hell is this?

  “They’re egg-white muffins and only forty calories each. You can have a several of them, guilt-free.”

  Really, can I have all of your tasty muffins?

  “Mmm. Yay.” Since she was watching me, I took two and wrapped them in a napkin.

  “I’ve known you long enough to know your sarcastic ‘yay,’” she said and shifted herself into another position. I remembered her calling it the Warrior II pose but I simply called it the Dying Crane.

  “And yet, this is what you decided to serve me for breakfast.”

  She grinned, displaying the small dimples at the corners of her lips. Her pale blond hair was gathered into a messy ponytail, and I glanced at her neck looking for marks. Savannah loved vampires. She was an utter and total fangirl with an obsession that reduced an assiduous and pragmatic woman to a blustering vampire admirer prone to bouts of swooning whenever she was near one. And after having dinner with Lucas, the Master of the city, she was enthralled and enamored by him specifically.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To meet Gareth.”

  “Oh, give
me a minute to shower and dress.”

  “Savannah, I’m going alone. I’ll tell you everything when I get back. Maybe we’ll go out for drinks, I’m sure I’ll need one.”

  She stood, stretching; lithe grace commanded her movements. With each change of position it was obvious that Savannah was a dancer. “Good, we’ll go to Devour. Lucas is expecting me,” she offered.

  “Why is Lucas expecting us at his vamp bar? Savannah, you know how I feel about that place.”

  “You’re paranoid. It’s fun.” Only to Savannah. There were two clubs where mostly vampires hung out. They were also frequented by the locals who thought it was cool to party with the undead and occasionally be their meal for the night and sometimes more. Crimson was where the new vampires hung out; it was safer to me. Nothing more than a bunch of brooding young vamps who had watched too much Angel, The Originals, Vampire Diaries, and Buffy to be anything more than entertaining. Most of them were still trying to find themselves, adopting their sulky, angsty, tortured soul personas as they spent the majority of the evening trying to out brood one another. Some of them were seductive enough and played the role of the tempter quite well, but they were new, easily rebuked or ignored. And in my case, mocked.

  But Devour’s name was very appropriate. The moment you walked in there wasn’t any doubt that you were on the menu whether you wished to be or not. The older vampires frequented this club. Most of them had had hundreds of years to perfect the art of seduction, and they were good. Very good. It was illegal for vampires to compel but it didn’t hurt the older vampires’ ability to find a willing donor. Their mannerism and words charmed you better than any spell could and before you knew it you were enthralled, giving in to anything they wanted and it was done legally and without the use of any magic.

  Devour was also the residence of Lucas, one of the oldest vampires in the world. The night we’d had dinner with him, Savannah had been beguiled and I wasn’t sure she had control of any of her own desires. I wasn’t affected, not because I was immune to their charms, but because I’d come into his den of sin battle ready. He kept offering me alcohol to try to get me to relax. But I couldn’t, I had to be on guard for the both of us. When he’d asked if we would join him for dinner again, I had to speak up before she committed us to another meal. I was convinced that this was a prelude to one of us ending up as the entree. Despite my repeated objections, he seemed to have only heard Savannah’s gracious acceptance.

  “Well, don’t go without me,” I said.

  “Oh stop, you’re being silly.”

  “I’m serious. I really want to go. I love the food there, and all the drinks are top-shelf without having to ask.” And cheap. I guessed that not only did it relax us but drunk humans made uninhibited prey, which was good entertainment for them.

  Us. I frowned at the thought. There wasn’t an us because I wasn’t human. I’d been hiding for so long I had assumed the human persona as part of who I was as much as I’d taken to my assumed name, Olivia—Levy—Michaels. That was who this world knew me as. Anya Kismet was me in a former life, when I was a just a child. Before Trackers came after us and I realized my life was going to be different than most people’s.

  “Don’t leave without me,” I repeated before heading out the door to my car. It was nice to be confident that when I started my car it was more than likely going to work. A new feeling for me, because in the past I’d refused to spend the money to have everything repaired, so my car had been temperamental. If it had been too cold, hot, or rainy, it hadn’t seemed to want to start. Relying on public transportation or Savannah’s car if mine failed had ceased to be an option. It had taken a chunk of my savings to make the repairs but had still been cheaper than buying another car. It left me more money to use to hide or disappear if things ever got too bad. I had no idea what would come of Gareth knowing my birth name or whether I would need to leave for good.

  I should have left the sai in the car, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. They were enchanted weapons that could be used to prevent shifters from shifting, rare magical objects that they weren’t immune to. The need for self-preservation and to expect the unexpected had been ingrained in me to the point that going unarmed into a building with some of the most elite shifters, mages, faes, and witches in the city to discuss me being a Legacy—someone most were taught to kill on sight—seemed ridiculous. Even if I was only there to talk to the head of the Supernatural Guild, I couldn’t be without them.

  “Who are you here to see?” asked the disinterested young man at the reception desk, barely lifting his eyes from his phone to make contact. I was used to the kind elderly woman who’d greeted me on previous visits. Her bright smile and welcoming personality were contagious and it didn’t hurt that she was a fae. If her personality didn’t put you in a better mood, her magic could. Cognitive manipulation was against the law but if you worked for the people who enforced it, there was probably some leniency.

  He leaned back in his chair, his emotive, stormy blue eyes sweeping over me, his tousled walnut-brown hair pulled into a messy man bun. The metallic blue shifter rings that danced around his eyes were livelier than he was and probably more excited about the job.

  Where the hell did they get this guy?

  “Your name,” he breathed as though the very act of requesting the information was the last thing on his extensive to-do list, right after doing nothing.

  “Olivia Michaels.”

  “I don’t have an Olivia Michaels.”

  “What about Levy?”

  “Oh, yeah.” His eyes flashed. He said my name over and over and then gave me a long, assessing look. I wasn’t sure if he knew me as the Olivia “Levy” Michaels who had been charged with three murders a little over a week ago or the one who had been exonerated. The confusion was understandable. The supernatural community went to such lengths to put a nice spin on its activities and to maintain the harmonious relationship with the humans that they were justifiably cynical about the news they read or heard.

  He picked up the phone. “Uncle Gar, she’s here. Do you want me to send her up?”

  I couldn’t hear what Gareth said on the other line, but it made Nephew Man Bun scowl. “Fine, you just want her to stay down here? What’s the purpose of the meeting if she’s going to stay down here? Doesn’t make sense to me, but you’re the boss.” Gareth grumbled something loud enough for me to hear his growl but not to make out his words. Again, Nephew Man Bun continued to grin when he answered his uncle. “How was I supposed to know you were being sarcastic? You didn’t sound sarcastic.”

  Gareth said something else but once again I couldn’t make out the words. “Calm down, Uncle Gar, it’s not my fault you’re not funny.” Whatever Gareth was ranting about didn’t matter because his nephew had pulled the phone from his ear and stopped listening.

  “Go on up. Fifth floor. He’s in a mood, good luck.”

  With a simper, I said, “Thanks for putting him in that mood.”

  He chuckled. “You’re welcome. Anytime. It’s what I do.”

  Gareth wasn’t in a mood. In fact, his trademark crooked grin was nestled on his face. His handsome face, and I hated that I kept noticing it. And he looked as though he knew that I was noticing it. Crystalline blue eyes had fastened on me the moment I’d started through the door. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the features that were as defined as his arms, which his short-sleeved shirt exposed.

  You’re so sure of yourself, aren’t you?

  “Are you going to come in or do you plan to stand in the doorway gawking at me?”

  “I wasn’t gawking. I’m just trying to see the family resemblance. Where’s …?”

  I waited for him to interject a name. I couldn’t believe that I’d been at the Guild numerous times and hadn’t learned the name of the woman who was usually at the front desk. I waited and Gareth stood with the little kink in his lips, letting me squirm. “Sorry, I don’t know her name.”

  “It’s Beth. So, Ms. Michaels
.” He stepped closer. An intense smell of oak and masculine musk inundated the small space between us. I loved the way he smelled. I inhaled and then took a step back, increasing the space between us. He quickly closed the distance as soon as I did. He glanced at the ends of the sai sticking out.

  “Are you expecting a fight?” He made a noise. “I guess someone like you would have to be a little more cautious than most. Right?” Then he went to the door and closed it. “After all, people are quite afraid of you, aren’t they?”

  “There isn’t a reason to be,” I said softly.

  “Are you sure? After all, your kind nearly killed everyone in the world, or at least the United States. I think it’s a little naïve to think you, a Legacy, are totally harmless.” His voice changed, becoming cool and level. Professionally distant.

  “I’m not able to do anything like that on a wide scale.”

  Gareth began slowly walking around me, and it made me nervous. I craned my neck to follow him as closely as possible. It was at this moment that I was aware that he was a predator, Panthera leo spelaea, cave lion. An animal that predated man. A massive creature with the ability to take down prey with a single swipe of his huge paw. And even with that to his advantage, I was probably a bigger danger to him than he was to me. That had to bother him. Legacy magic was the only kind that affected shapeshifters.

  When he was back in front of me, I said, “Let’s cut the games. We need to talk.”

  Again, he swallowed the distance between us and when he spoke his warm breath wisped against my lips. “Then talk.”

  “How did you know?”

  “You have a shield on your foot.” He grinned. “Remember when I checked for it in your hair? You were calm because you knew I wouldn’t find it.” He leaned into me, his voice dropping to a low purr. “As I said before, the body will always betray. Your heart rate increased and so did your breathing when I asked you to take off your shoes. I knew I would find it there before I even checked. But it was cute watching you think you got away with it. Only people who are hiding something pretty bad have them. You weren’t in our records as committing a crime that would have caused you to have your magic restricted and I’m sure I would have remembered you, if I had encountered you before. I didn’t know why you would have a reason to hide that you possessed magic. I figured there had to be a reason why you were hiding that you were a magic wielder. Then our conversation about things being extinct bothered me. You seemed to want me to really believe that. It didn’t take long for me to get to Legacy.”