Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1) Read online

  The double patio doors hung open, wrenched from their upper hinges, glass shattered. Claw marks scored both doorjambs. The kitchen table was partially embedded in the drywall to the right, likely jutting through into the laundry room. It had been thrown with great force.

  Blood splattered the lower cabinets and the tile surrounding the island.

  A pentagram had been etched onto the tile directly in front of me. Placed in a defensive position with direct line of sight to the front door and the back patio doors. The five-pointed star was marked out precisely with black marker, but the lines had been scorched on either side — likely when its magical protections were breached. It was large enough that two people could have stood within its center.

  I didn’t need to search the house any further to know that Christopher had been taken, along with Aiden. The pentagram, the baseball bat, the blood, and the absence of the constant hum of the clairvoyant’s magic were all the evidence I needed.

  What I didn’t know was whether either of them was still alive.

  They might have been forced into the house defensively. Or they’d been surprised. Christopher wouldn’t have chosen to fight in his kitchen.

  Wrapped in an emotion-numbing blanket of logic, I stepped onto the chilly tile, crouching by the largest bloodstain. I broke the surface tension of the liquid with my fingertips, feeling the hum of the magic — Aiden’s magic. The blood was cool, overflowing the edge of the pentagram. Whatever wound Aiden had sustained had happened after his barrier spell had been compromised.

  The sound of something being dragged across the kitchen patio drew my attention to the broken doors and the darkening night beyond.

  I straightened, raising the baseball bat defensively. I couldn’t feel anything magical approaching. But I was at least vaguely aware that I still wasn’t fully functional myself. A residual effect of the spell held in the doll, perhaps, or the shock of finding that Christopher had been taken. Christopher, who I’d devoted my entire life to protecting.

  Paisley’s blue-furred snout appeared at the bottom edge of the doorway. Then her dull red eyes, her ears and head. She hooked her claws on the edge of the doorjamb, struggling to pull herself over the threshold.

  I lunged across the kitchen.

  She was … savagely injured. Massively hurt. The trail of blood behind her was thick, viscous. Her entrails were exposed through an open belly wound, and caked in dirt.

  Her magic was dreadfully mute, draining from her.

  She was dying.

  Dying.

  Something broke inside me. A howl of pain tore through my throat. I crashed to my knees beside her, reaching for and gently cradling her head in my lap. She mewed, pained. She brushed a tentacle against my wrist, unable to curl it around and hold on. Her left eye had been clawed out. Her jaw was broken.

  I sobbed.

  Just once.

  Then I screamed.

  I screamed, releasing all the terror I’d been holding at bay. I screamed for what had been ripped from me without warning. I shrieked in frustration over everything that I’d allowed to happen.

  And then I howled all the vengeance I would rain down on the black witch.

  “Magenta …” I turned her name into a magic-laden curse.

  Soon she’d be the one with her guts strung across the ground.

  Soon she’d be the one mewing in pain.

  Soon.

  Paisley sighed, drawing in a rattling breath.

  Shaking with emotion I had no capacity to contain anymore, I placed my hand on her claw-scored head. Then, betraying every promise I’d ever made to myself, I reached down and dug my fingers into the open wound at her belly.

  She screeched, pained.

  But I could feel her heart fluttering. It was still trying to beat. It was still trying to pump blood — and her magic — through her wounded body.

  And I wasn’t about to let it stop.

  A long time ago, I had told myself I wouldn’t get involved. That I would allow life to unfold the way it was destined to, and without my interference. I would try to take myself out of the equation altogether. Promising to look after Christopher — my Knox — and Paisley, but nothing more.

  I had retreated.

  I had tried to build a quiet life free from all the death and destruction I was capable of wreaking.

  “If you want Amp5,” I muttered, “you’ve got her …”

  The black witch wanted an amplifier to play with?

  She could choke on me.

  I reached for Paisley’s power — the magic buried deeply within her, as well as the energy glistening in the blood trail behind her.

  I dropped every shield I normally held between me and the world. Power flooded from me, seeking the energy slowly seeping from Paisley. I twined my amplification through her magic, mirroring her energy, then bolstering it. Expanding it, pumping it up.

  My magic was a bottomless well that I’d only ever managed to completely drain once before. A power I had once hoped would never return. It had taken a year, but it had come back. Stronger than ever.

  The power to boost, to amplify.

  And with that power, I could also take.

  To have.

  To hold.

  To wield.

  The power to destroy everything and anyone magical in my path with a single touch.

  I channeled Paisley’s amplified magic back into her damaged body, forcing it to flow through her.

  She shrieked. She snarled.

  I kept pushing, building, boosting, amplifying. I was no healer, but Paisley had her own healing ability. Even I didn’t heal as quickly as she usually did.

  Her jaw widened, her head shifting in my lap as her broken bones enlarged, snapping back into place. Her double rows of teeth sprang forth. Thick, sharp, two-inch claws tore through her paws. Her legs lengthened, bulked up. Her muscles rippled, doubling her size.

  My hand was pushed from the wound in her belly as it attempted to seal. Her entrails slithered and slid, sucked back into her body.

  Then, on paws the size of my head, Paisley staggered to her feet. She stumbled, turning away from me until she was facing out into the dark yard, facing the night. Then she bellowed.

  I felt her vicious, snarling anger run down my spine.

  The sound faded, swallowed by the darkness that had enclosed the yard, leaving only her ragged, pained breathing. Paisley lowered her muzzle to the floor and began licking up the blood she’d left behind.

  I got to my feet.

  I was going to need my blades.

  Moving around in the dark — because this was my home, my place, and I knew every corner, every step within it — I stripped my bloody dress off just inside the door to my bedroom, tossing it to the side. I pulled leggings, a fitted exercise top, and a tight T-shirt from the drawers of my bureau.

  Walking while I dressed, I stepped into the bathroom. I brushed my hair into two pigtails, braiding each and securing them with doubled elastics pulled as snugly as I could get them without breaking them. I probably looked ridiculous. But I’d never gone into battle with long hair before.

  And yes, based on whatever had come for Aiden — whatever had fought its way past Paisley, along with Christopher and the sorcerer himself — I was walking into a battle.

  Back in my bedroom, I added a water-resistant nylon jacket to my ensemble. The jacket was intended for jogging in less-than-sunny conditions — tight fitting with stretch panels on each side — but was adaptable to wielding dual swords.

  I tugged on socks, then running shoes.

  I knelt beside my bed, pulling the wooden box that held my weapons out, then setting it on the quilt with its pattern of speckled roses. I flipped open the lid.

  One of the three raw diamonds set in the hilt of the blade nearest to me was glowing softly. Dark blue.

  Sorcerer magic.

  Aiden’s magic.

  A terrible pain ripped through my chest, clamping down on my heart and wringing it. I gasped, p
ressing my hand where there was no physical wound.

  Aiden had slipped into my bedroom, found the weapons, and shared his magic with me. Magic he didn’t have enough of to safely share.

  And now he’d been taken. Likely murdered or badly wounded in the process.

  I pressed my forehead to the edge of the bed, trying to get my emotions, my reaction under control. Reaching through the presumptuous grief for a detached rationale.

  The sorcerer needed me at my best. Therefore, the blades had needed sharpening. My skirmish with the demons sent to snatch Aiden had made that blindingly obvious. So it was far more likely that he had found a spell that would do just that. It would trigger when I touched the gem. He had probably intended to spell one of the gems in the second blade as well, but had run out of time.

  The ache that had settled in my heart refused to believe my mercenary assessment of the sorcerer’s gift. My heart had never been so irrational, so easily wooed.

  I picked up the blade, covering the softly glowing gem with the palm of my hand. Magic stirred at my touch as I raised the weapon before me. A wash of dark-blue energy flooded up its double edge, leaving a residual glow.

  I laughed darkly. Grabbing the second blade in its sheath, I jogged out into the hall and down the stairs. I had a witch to find, and the perfect weapon with which to decapitate her.

  Paisley had cleared the blood from every surface of the kitchen and patio by the time I made it back downstairs. The pentagram, the shattered French-paned doors, and the broken kitchen table remained as they were.

  So too did the claw marks on the doorjamb. Three deep slashes that had bitten deeply into the white-painted wood.

  Aiden and I both bore similar marks on our abdomens. Matching wounds — his still fresh, mine seven years old.

  I cinched my sheathed blades in place, so that the weapons were held crossed between my shoulder blades on my back. Then I crossed the kitchen to place three of my fingers on the gouges in the wooden doorframe. The marks from where a massive creature had pulled itself into my home, most likely fighting against whatever magic Aiden had called forth and thrown at it.

  When I factored in the black witch who’d had trouble holding onto the magic she was using to cloak her true face, my past clicked into place with my present, pointing to my immediate future.

  I knew what I was facing.

  A greater demon.

  A demon called forth by a witch who was powerful enough to cloak it in so much magic that it could stand the daylight long enough to incapacitate me. A demon that had hurt me so badly it had taken me three months to heal — and even then, I’d barely been able to get out of bed and walk five steps into the bathroom.

  But I had gotten a piece of that demon. I had wounded it enough that its summoner had vanquished it back to its own dimension. And after that, I had suddenly and inexplicably been deemed expendable. An unofficial kill order had been issued for me. Then for the other four.

  I had never figured out who I’d been ultimately up against then. I still didn’t know whose plans I’d disrupted when I successfully rescued Aiden’s father, Kader Azar. I honestly didn’t know whether that event was even connected to what was happening now.

  All I did know was that I’d failed some sort of test that day, that my empathy had been blamed for that failing, and that the Collective had been convened to discuss my fate. But as far as I knew, that meeting had never had a chance to take place.

  There hadn’t been time for questions, or an opportunity to beg for answers as to why my life was suddenly worthless. We Five had broken out of the compound, smashing anything and everything in our path, erasing ourselves — and destroying over a century of the Collective’s work toward creating the perfect Adept.

  I’d faced off against a black witch that day. A black witch more than capable of calling forth a greater demon.

  Another black witch had sat across from me in the diner just hours before, strong enough to bind me to a doll made in my likeness with a single drop of my blood.

  And now there were signs that a greater demon had broken into my home and snatched people under my protection from my kitchen. The same type of demon that had almost killed me, and that had marked Aiden.

  The two witches were one and the same.

  Silver Pine.

  I laughed harshly.

  I wasn’t supposed to have rescued Kader Azar. That was suddenly crystal clear, seven years later. Silver Pine must have had a grudge against the sorcerer. The demon summoning had most likely been meant for him. But we had gotten him clear of the roof that day in LA before the demon’s arrival, because summoning and binding a greater demon wasn’t a precisely timed magical art.

  I had stood between Silver Pine and her target — a target she had presumably helped the rogue shapeshifters kidnap in the first place.

  Based on her obsession with Aiden, Silver Pine still held a grudge against Kader Azar. And she clearly still held a grudge against me, because I’d inadvertently disrupted her plans. I’d gotten Azar to safety. Then I hadn’t died. The kill order had been her way of tidying up her betrayal.

  In the end, I had destroyed the Collective. I wasn’t certain how they’d run their organization, but it was an easy guess that the sorcerer Azar had stood between Silver Pine and something she wanted. Perhaps control of the Collective itself?

  So I had disrupted an internal coup, by way of destroying everything the Collective had created.

  That definitely justified a massive amount of animosity.

  I felt a little lightheaded.

  It was so simple. And I had missed it. Being on the run and fearing for your life could muddle things, apparently. But now I’d been dragged back into the middle of Silver Pine’s plans for revenge. Aiden was caught within those plans as well, even though he wasn’t aligned with — wasn’t even in touch with — his father.

  It was all a game.

  A power play.

  Between Silver Pine and Kader Azar.

  And I had killed so … so … many people. I’d destroyed kilometers of land and buildings.

  For a grudge.

  And when Silver couldn’t get her hands on Kader? Was that what had inspired her to take Aiden instead? Apparently, she’d been looking for me for the past seven years as well. And she had picked up a trace of me in San Francisco when Christopher had to reveal himself to save me. Then she found Fish through Mark Calhoun.

  And now she had found me.

  Her and her pet demon.

  Except that demon wouldn’t find me so easy to dispatch this time. Not because I was faster or stronger. In fact, I was softer and weaker than I had been then.

  But now I had something to fight for, beyond myself and my obligations to the Five.

  I had a reason to not just stand aside and let the future play out as it willed.

  Paisley climbed onto the patio, dropping what appeared to be the bloody leg of a brown cow at my feet.

  I sighed. “Is that the same cow?”

  She hunkered down, licking her chops, then nudging the leg toward me. Apparently I was supposed to eat it to recoup my strength. We were going to owe the neighbors another fifteen hundred dollars.

  “Thank you,” I murmured, kneeling in front of her so I could match her eye level.

  She had reverted to her large blue-nosed pit bull form, but her blue fur was crisscrossed with thick white scars. Her left eye had healed, but the flesh around the socket was likewise scored with claw marks. One ear was still missing a chunk of flesh.

  “I can’t ask you to risk your life for me,” I said. “But if you would try to lead me to Christopher, to Knox, I would appreciate it.”

  She regarded me without blinking.

  Magic shifted along my spine, announcing Daniel a moment before he climbed up onto the patio, leaning heavily on the railing. Lani had said that he and Paisley were looking for me at Meadow Lane Farm. Even as badly injured as she was, Paisley had made it back to me first.

  “You think
she wouldn’t follow you into battle?” he said. He’d been beaten badly, though the bruises were already darkening, healing. “You think any of us wouldn’t follow you?” He laughed harshly, scrubbing his hand over his head, then stretching his neck. “Hell, we’re all waiting to follow, Emma. Desperate to follow.”

  “This isn’t your fight, or Paisley’s. It wasn’t seven years ago, and it isn’t now.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You think it’s connected?”

  I straightened. “Yes.”

  He shrugged, and I saw pain flash across his face. His ribs were broken or at least badly bruised. “We were bred to be yours, weren’t we? Our commander and our warrior?”

  “We always had different interpretations of our roles,” I said stiffly.

  He smirked.

  I hardened my tone. “We aren’t controlled by our breeding.”

  Daniel snorted. “Keep telling yourself that, Socks.”

  “You left Christopher alone. Vulnerable.”

  “I was running around a pig farm looking for you! We headed back when Christopher texted, but Paisley and I got hit by demons on the way. Plus, how was I supposed to know your sorcerer was useless?”

  I ground my teeth, but now wasn’t the time for petty fights. “Are you coming with me or not?”

  “Yes. You never have to ask.”

  I leveled my gaze at him. “Did you know the witch was Silver Pine in disguise?”

  “What?” Daniel laughed. “She’s dead. I watched you kill her.”

  “You’ve been in touch with Christopher this entire time?”

  “Yes, of course. I wasn’t going to leave you all alone.”

  “I’m not alone.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I didn’t. “You led Silver Pine here.”

  “I did not.”

  “She spelled me this afternoon.”

  “How?”

  I shook my head. “A look-alike doll. A blood-triggered spell. I’m not certain, but I think I was supposed to kill myself.”

  “I’m surprised it grabbed hold of you at all. Magenta isn’t that powerful. Why do you think she wants the sorcerer to do her bidding?”

  So Daniel had known that Aiden was the witch’s objective before he’d shown up at my front door. Well, one of her objectives. “She’s obviously very skilled at memory charms. She has Mark Calhoun all tied up in one as well.”