A Touch of Brimstone (Magic of the Damned Book 1) Read online

  It wasn’t long before I found myself at the scene of our first meeting, in Books and Brew, sitting at the counter people watching and sipping coffee under Emoni’s questioning gaze. Secrets. I now had them from her. Did I tell her? The coffee shop was busy, which diminished my guilt about keeping yesterday’s events to myself. I couldn’t burden her with it until I knew what was going on. Come on, Dominic.

  Increasingly restless, I went to the bookstore. Nothing says you’re living your best life than hanging out at your place of employment on your day off. After perusing the newly released and books on my to-be-read list, I purchased five books. It took effort to ignore Lilith’s “Really?” look as she rang me up. It was less a look of incredulity than more along the lines of a “you’re a pitiful loser” look.

  With a weak smile, I paid. It wouldn’t seem odd to her that my purchases included an epic fantasy, a psychological thriller, and a YA coming of age book, along with books about Wicca and witchcraft. My taste was rather eclectic.

  “You changed your ring,” Peter acknowledged, his head tilted to the side as he examined it with a frown.

  I nodded, the urge bubbling in me to say, “No, a book bit me, a lot of strangeness happened, and now I have this plain-ass ring covering marks on my finger. And now I have to play amateur sleuth to find the person I think is responsible.”

  He closed the thick hardback in his hand to get a closer look. “Same style. This one fits you better.” He gave me that half curl of a smile that had entrapped so many people into unrequested history lessons. His eyes dropped to my bag of books. He took a look at me in my Converse, jeans, Baby Yoda t-shirt, and messy ponytail that displayed the minimal effort I put into styling it.

  “If you’re not in a rush, do you want to have coffee?” He flashed me his wayward smile, which I quickly realized wasn’t as unintentional as I’d previously assumed. He was setting out bait. Not today, Mr. History Man. Not today.

  “Maybe another time. I have a ton of errands to run. I just needed something to read tonight,” I lied. Although listening to Peter’s lecture would have been a good distraction to keep me from looking at my phone and waiting to hear from Reginald or pursuing my quest to find Dominic.

  Blind determination, wariness, and obstinate curiosity led to me trawling the area where I’d seen Dominic. I even went back to the bar where he’d threatened Jackson. Desperation wouldn’t allow me to rule out any possibilities. I wished there were dark, dangerous, and broody Bat Signals I could deploy. Maybe if I left a trail of ristretto…

  Standing on the middle of the sidewalk, I was planning where to search next when a hand girded my waist, pulling me against a firm body. Coolness wove around me, engulfing me.

  “Close your eyes,” the stranger ordered.

  I didn’t. Dropping the bag of books, I clawed at the stranger’s offending arm and stomped indiscriminately, aiming for his foot, until the building that surrounded me and the distant view of people several blocks away disappeared. I was plunged into darkness.

  When the arm released me, I doubled over until my head stopped spinning. When it eased to tolerable, I straightened up to find four people seated at a semicircular conference table, watching me.

  “I told you to close your eyes,” someone said from behind me. “You never really get used to it unless you’re the one zoning.”

  I spun around to get a look at my abductor, who honestly should have been cast in stone and placed in front of a museum. Tousled umber-brown hair, parchment-colored skin, aquiline nose, broad pronounced cheeks, and generous rose-tinted lips. My eyes fixed on the unnatural contrast of his opal-colored eyes.

  He was too close. When a person abducts me off the street, they aren’t doing it out of politeness. I shoved him back. “Personal space.”

  His taunting smile widened, exposing sharp canines. Vampire. One hard blink. I convinced myself that when I opened my eyes, he’d be gone.

  He wasn’t. Standing just a few inches from me was a vampire.

  A vampire.

  “I like her. Perhaps a taste before we proceed.”

  A perverted vampire who wanted to taste me. There wasn’t time to process it. My only goal was to protect myself. Come out of this alive. More optimistically—unscathed.

  “Try it and you’ll never taste anything again,” I shot back, demonstrating a bravado I didn’t feel and touting abilities I didn’t have. How would I stop a vampire? If he tried to get a “taste,” I’d do what I could to make good on my threat. The only weapons I had were my knees, which were going straight into his groin, and my fingers into his eyes. Damage be damned, I was going to smack him across his head with the phone in my back pocket.

  He dismissed me with an exaggerated flourish of a bow.

  I looked around. The creepy vampire wasn’t the only person I had to worry about.

  “I see the appeal. But as you know, the fiery ones tend to cause the most trouble. And this one has caused a great deal,” said the woman seated at the middle of the semicircular table.

  The vampire was still too close for my liking.

  “Kane, step away from her,” the woman instructed.

  After he moved back several feet, her calculating hazel eyes homed in on me. Her narrow face took on a more severe appearance and her lips thinned into a tight line. I was willing to bet the lines that crinkled as she drew her brows together weren’t from excessive smiling. Warm ivory skin was a stark contrast to her cool and aloof countenance. Her dark hair with hues of purple was coiled into a crown braid and the back in a low bun. Dressed in a blue suit complemented by a pearl silk shirt, she seemed to be in charge—or perhaps the role was self-appointed. The cool discernment in her eyes led me to believe she was older than she looked.

  It felt like I’d been dropped into the middle of a conversation and couldn’t figure out the right questions to ask. Whatever they were convinced I was guilty of had made me their enemy. I divided my attention between the people, the room, and the view of the city, compliments of the floor-to-ceiling window that took up the entire back wall of the room. I wasn’t on the main floor. Maybe the third or fourth.

  When I pulled my attention back to the people, I found the woman who’d called me trouble looking down her pert nose at me. Hazel eyes that bored into me with revulsion came from the younger woman to her right. Maybe enemy was being optimistic. The man seated to her left had the same luminous violet eyes as the woman with Dominic that day at the coffee shop. A colorful sleeve of tattoos covered each of his arms. Through his teal V-neck t-shirt, I could see the outline of more ink. He observed me with a gentler look as his fingers twined around strands of his ear-length reddish-brown hair.

  “What do you wa—”

  My question was cut off by the light padding of feet. Slowly approaching me was a lion. A lion. A huge lion. When he licked his lips, I began calculating how long it would take to make it to the door. The occupants of the room appeared totally unconcerned that an unbidden apex predator was just traipsing into the room as if it happened every day. Maybe it did. Sitting down for lunch, bam, a lion walks up and takes the steak off your plate.

  I tensed as it moved around me, its nose brushing along my leg and then along my balled hand. Before I could gather a plan, it shuddered, and a man—a naked man—was on all fours at my feet. He stood, his lips quirked at my effort to hide my shock, which was something he definitely expected and wanted.

  I needed to get away from this den of freaks.

  “Lance, must you make a spectacle of yourself at all times?” the regal woman chastised. With a wave of her hand, a gust of wind pushed in my direction, followed by a swirling of golden lights that ensorcelled the human lion, and when it disappeared, he stood before me fully clothed in a fitted t-shirt, relaxed jeans, and flipflops. Unruly chin-length sandy-colored hair, his skin coloring just a few shades lighter. Predaceous, emotive golden-brown eyes and a long oval face. He was his animal incarnate.

  He cast a look over his shoulder at the woman
who’d clothed him. “Madeline, this isn’t a witch,” he announced.

  Thank you. Listen to the shameless man who—oh dear fates—was a lion a minute ago. It hit me like a brick. He was a lion just moments before.

  All eyes went to the man with the violet eyes. “She is the one I saw,” he confirmed. He leaned forward in his chair; his elbows rested on the table as he steepled his hands. Wary interest entered his kind eyes. “She tasks me. This is the one I envisioned before seeing the empty Perils. How can this be if she has no magic?”

  Madeline’s frown deepened. “I thought she was shrouded in a cloaking spell, which was why I couldn’t sense it.” She directed her attention to Lance. “But a cloak doesn’t work on shifters. You’re sure she’s human?”

  It wouldn’t be hard to determine that I wasn’t a witch, if everyone with magic gave off such foreboding dynamic energy. It prickled at my skin, plucked at my nerves, and made it very apparent that I was in the presence of something other. With all of Reginald’s declarations of being a witch, nothing about him felt like this. Surely, nothing about me hinted at it, either.

  “Yes, I am human,” I offered before anyone else could. “So there’s no need for me to be at… whatever this is. I don’t know, the Meeting of the Weird and Scary?”

  No one seemed to find me amusing.

  I started backing away, but the shifter’s sharp predatory scope stopped me in my tracks. A warning. “She’s human,” Lance confirmed.

  Madeline looked unconvinced. “But does it make her innocent?”

  “As far as her role in the Perils being compromised, she is,” confirmed a deep, rich, commanding voice.

  “Dominic.” Madeline’s eyes snapped in the direction of the voice, as did mine and everyone else’s. The vampire’s lips furled, displaying fangs.

  “You can put those away because you’re definitely not going to use them on me,” Dominic told him, as he and the two people who were with him at the coffee shop moved toward the table. Speckles of blood stained the sleeves and front of Dominic’s white shirt that clung to the muscles of his chest and arms.

  The man whose face I hadn’t been able to see at the coffee shop was in full view. Fawn-color complexion; I guessed Middle Eastern descent. His light-hazel eyes appeared to have undertones of green. The angles of his face were diamond sharp and he had a strong, well-defined jaw and cheeks. The roil of danger that came off him made holding his gaze hard. Initially distracted by the sword secured against his back, I eventually let my eyes trail to the scar that ran across his cheek.

  As they moved farther into the room, two things became overwhelmingly apparent. The cadre behind the table didn’t like Dominic, and he was wholly unconcerned by that.

  “You have no reason to be here,” Madeline asserted through clenched teeth.

  A smirk flitted along Dominic’s lips as he cocked a brow. “Yet here I am.” Once standing next to me, he fixed Madeline with a hard look. There was a fine line between admirable confidence and unrepentant jackass, and from the cocksure look on his face, he precariously straddled that line.

  “Were the sentries to entertain me or stop me?” he asked with a darkly amused smirk.

  Anger swept over Madeline’s face. “Are they alive?”

  “If that was a concern of yours, you shouldn’t have ordered them to stop me,” he countered, returning her glare.

  I took that as confirmation that I needed to get away from him and this hot mess as soon as possible, but curiosity had me too intrigued to run at that moment. Desperately needing to find out what was going on and how I had mistakenly been pulled into it, I remained for an explanation.

  Madeline stood, leaning into the table. The magic roiling off her changed the pressure in the room, stifling the air with minacious energy.

  “You tell us that the Perils has been compromised, the prisoners escaped, and the worst of our kind are at large, and you expect us to do what? Sit around and wait for them to exact their revenge on us—the people who allowed them to be incarcerated there?” she barked. “Our seer confirmed that she is involved.”

  “I expected you to take the necessary precautions for you and yours to stay safe. To lie low and not impede me while I remedy the situation. And I damn sure didn’t expect you to try to stop me from attending meetings. Tell me, what are your plans for this human?”

  Not loving the wording of that comment, but I’d ignore it if it got me out of there.

  Madeline’s jaw set as they held each other’s gaze. I was wrong; they didn’t dislike him. They hated him with a fiery passion that was amply displayed on all their faces but more profoundly on Madeline’s.

  “The seer informed us that she’s the one involved. We plan to handle the matter.”

  Before Dominic could respond with something that I guessed would further agitate Madeline, Dominic’s violet-eyed companion directed a question to the man whose eyes resembled hers.

  “What did you see, Callum?”

  His gaze slid to me. “Her, empty cells and…” He picked up the phone, unlocked it, then turned the screen to her. I moved with her to get a glimpse.

  Damn. It was so similar to the markings on my finger. I was thankful that they were hidden by the ring. Not similar. Exactly the same. My breath hitched.

  “You plan to kill her?” Dominic concluded.

  “That’s the spell that freed them. Obviously, you weren’t able to break it or you wouldn’t have been placed in the position of telling us our lives are in danger. We’re being proactive. Defending ourselves. Kill the caster, break the spell. She is the caster.”

  Murder is proactive?

  “Ah,” Dominic mused, a little too casually for a discussion of murder, in my opinion. “She’s not a witch. We can all see she doesn’t possess any magic. I can assure you not one time were you at the forefront of this matter. I’ve met Luna twice before.” He waved a dismissive hand in my direction while I made an attempt to hide my finger without looking suspicious. “Nailah”—I assumed he was referring to the woman with the odd violet eyes—“was presented with the same. I performed an ostendo spell on Luna to disarm any cloaking spells and she is not a witch and does not have the ability to cast such a spell.”

  My heart raced. Technically he was right but… I was involved. However, in a room full of people whose game plan was to kill me, I wasn’t going to disclose that. Taking slow easy breaths, I waited for things to unfold.

  “Madeline,” Dominic drawled. “Do you still plan to kill her?”

  Stop suggesting that. It’s not an option. What about: Hey, she’s innocent, let her go? Has that not crossed your mind?

  “Situation like this, it is best to err on the side of caution.”

  It was irritating how casually they were discussing my murder, like they were deciding whether to sprinkle a little salt on their avocado toast.

  “Murder of an innocent human? Isn’t that the very thing that you all sentenced others to the Perils for?” Dominic offered.

  Kane growled. “You said the Perils is nonfunctional, that it had a global spell cast on it that won’t allow even you to use the same spell on another confinement. The most ruthless and cruel of our kind who can’t be subdued or imprisoned with basic magic are free, and you’re asking us to let you handle it. Three days. Your handling isn’t efficient enough. Don’t you dare lecture us. We will do what is necessary to protect ourselves and right this.”

  Dominic’s lip lifted into a cruel smile. “And I’ll do what I need to punish you for that. Perhaps we’ll return to our old ways, the ones you all perceived as too barbaric. Torture then murder—a seemingly appropriate penalty for killing an innocent.” His eyes darkened in warning.

  Is this some type of murder cult? Why is murder Plan A for these people?

  Screw this, I was out. Inching back slowly, I hoped I’d be undetected while they discussed murder in the casual manner of sociopaths.

  “If she’s so innocent, then why is her heart beating a mile a minute? It w
asn’t before,” said another man who could only be described as silver. Grayish-silver hair despite appearing to be in his early thirties, fierce platinum eyes, and a sinewy lean body that put me in mind of a greyhound. His eyes possessed Lance’s predatory keenness.

  “Do you think it has anything to do with you all casually discussing murdering me?” I huffed.

  He looked unconvinced. Eyes narrowed as he leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. The black t-shirt stretched over lean, taut muscles. “Are you a witch?”

  “No.”

  He licked his lips but not in a seductive way. Rather, in the manner I’d seen predators do before pouncing on some poor unsuspecting prey. I swallowed and squared my shoulders, refusing to be intimidated, especially by a lip lick. How weak was that?

  “Were you responsible for the destruction of the Perils?”

  That I couldn’t answer with complete certainty. None of this was coincidence. Me finding the book, the pages biting me, the spell I must’ve unintentionally evoked, or the indelible markings on my finger. I took his question to mean did I actively and knowingly do it. And I absolutely did not have anything to do with that. I was a passive participant and therefore not responsible.

  “No.”

  I wondered if the next question would be about the sigil Callum showed us. It was shock that kept me rooted in place when I was faced with a man one second and a massive wolf with bared teeth lunging at me the next, allowing me just enough time to shriek and try to ward off the attack with my arms. Out of reflex my eyes closed. When I managed to pry them open, there was a flash of movement from my left and then a thud. Dominic’s scarred companion was straddling the wolf, one hand around the wolf’s throat, the other holding a knife at the jugular.

  “Anand, let him live.” The “for now” was laden in Dominic’s voice as he scanned the room. “Leave me with Luna. If she is to be questioned, it will be by me.”