Shades of Midnight: an Urban Fantasy novel (Chronicles of Midnight Book 4) Read online

  Shades of Midnight

  Debbie Cassidy

  Copyright © 2018, Debbie Cassidy

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover by JMN Art

  Chapter 1

  “Harker, wake up!” Ryker’s voice was saturated with urgency.

  I shrugged off the arms of sleep and rolled onto my back, wiping drool from my chin. “Waaa?”

  “Suit up, babe. We got a Code Shade.”

  I was instantly awake and alert. “Where?”

  “Black Wing Mansion is under attack.”

  My body was already in motion—out of the bed and scrambling for the clothes I’d discarded on the floor. “Time?”

  “Three in the morning.”

  Tidiness hadn’t been on my mind when I’d crawled into bed less than two hours ago, and now my trousers were missing. Shit. “Where are the others?”

  “We’re meeting at the van.” Ryker threw my slacks at me.

  “Thanks.” I pulled them on under my sleep-T and then gripped the edges of my shirt, ready to peel it off, but stopped just in time.

  Ryker averted his gaze. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  The door shut behind him, and I scrambled to finish dressing. This was the fourth Code Shade this week—a term coined by yours truly. The last three had been sightings by our operatives trained in spotting the signs. The Deep had been hit first, and several nephs and humans had been infected. After that, two residential areas had been targeted, but I’d managed to expel the shades rooted inside the five humans who were showing symptoms of disorientation and aggression. I’d killed the shades in the humans whose souls had been completely devoured. We’d learned to distinguish between the two. Fully taken humans developed crimson irises, nephs didn’t. For some reason, the shades couldn’t mask this aspect in a human host like they could in a neph body. So, red eyes equaled no human soul in residence. Killing a shade in a human host that still had his soul was not an option. In burning the shade up, I also burned through the soul. I swallowed, recalling the time I’d killed a shade in a human host whose eyes hadn’t turned yet—his screams had echoed alongside the shade’s as I’d burned him to a cinder. Now, the shades tended to scatter when I showed up, afraid I’d burn them out of existence, or expel them, but there was only one of me and hundreds of them. I couldn’t keep this up forever, especially when they chose to hit two spots at the same time. Fuckers knew I couldn’t be everywhere and neither could our officers.

  Asher hadn’t made a grab for me yet though, which was worrying. I’d killed two of his shades in the Order lair and many since, and yet, he’d stayed under the radar. I guess having the Order’s wards all over the MPD building and grounds helped keep the big bad at bay, but still, I kinda just wanted to get it over with—for him to come for me and for me to kick his arse and be done with it. He was a shade just like the rest. So it stood to reason I should be able to kill him, right? It was probably why he was playing coy and sending his minions at me instead. Probably trying to tire me out, and sod, it was working, just not in the way he was probably hoping. Deciding to keep the shade presence in Midnight quiet, deciding to deal with it ourselves, was proving harder and harder with each attack.

  My body was wrecked, out of balance, and simmering with power I wasn’t sure how to control. It was growing faster than I could use it, expanding within me, leaving my skin itchy and tight. Expelling the shades didn’t count, because for that I utilized my aether ability. The only thing that seemed to ease the discomfort was killing them. I hadn’t even needed to feed for the past two weeks.

  It’s all right, we’ll figure it out, my daimon reassured. Just like we’d figured out how her darkness had shrouded the light within me, and how my feeding had given her the power to keep my true nature hidden until the time was right. Now it was activated, there was no stopping it.

  The others were bound to notice how it was affecting me soon. It was getting harder to hide the discomfort between exterminations. My body was a pressure cooker needing to blow off steam. Thank goodness the fuckers were attacking—I’d get to release some of the excess power. We were coping for now, my daimon and I. No point officially stressing until we had to. Right now, we had a Code Shade, and if they were hitting the Black Wings, then we’d be dealing with soulless hosts controlled by shades—the perfect chance for me to relieve some of the tension.

  Zipping up my boots and grabbing my jacket, I headed out the door.

  Marika and a couple of the Order of Merlin members met me in the foyer. Ryker was in the doorway, letting the cool night drift in and ruffle my hair. Marika’s face was pale, and the dark smudges under her eyes spoke of lack of sleep.

  “Sit this one out.” I cupped her shoulder. “You may have access to the arcane, but your body is human.”

  Her lips tightened. “If Ava and her unit can help, then so can we.”

  More Order members jogged into the foyer. This was their home for now, and thank God we had the space for them. They’d moved in after the shit had hit the fan a couple of weeks ago, and then Ava and her unit had moved in last week. The mansion was quickly becoming operations central, but it wasn’t enough. We needed more boots on the ground. More help.

  I sighed. “Fine, but then you need to get some sleep. Promise?”

  She nodded, and gave me a half-smile. “Okay, Mom.”

  We poured out of the mansion.

  ***

  I’d never get completely used to the sensation of flying, especially when my defiance of gravity was dependent on another. Bane’s arms were solid bands of steel around me. We were almost at the cliff house. I just hoped we got there in time. The van far below carried Orin, Cassie, River, and Ryker. Another three vans followed, filled with the rest of our officers, the Order members, Ava, and several of her unit.

  If the shades were attacking the Black Wings, it meant they were confident in their numbers. It meant we were running out of time.

  I was no fan of the winged, but better the devil you know, right? The shades were aggressive and single-minded, and who knew what their real agenda was. Asher had said that they had no grievance against humanity, that their issue was with God and the winged, but what was stopping them from turning on us once the winged were gone? What was their end game, anyway? It was unlikely they’d just sit back and chill out once their objective was achieved. Right now, the winged were the only thing standing between humanity and the shades.

  “Your thinking is giving me a headache,” Bane said. His breath ruffled the hair at the nape of my neck.

  We were flying with his chest to my back. I liked to get an aerial view. “I just hope we’re in time to help.”

  His lips teased my earlobe. “The Black Wings are expert fighters. They won’t go down easily.”

  I suppressed a shiver. “And the shades predate them. Who knows what they can do. They wouldn’t be attacking if they couldn’t hurt or even kill the Black Wings.”
/>   Bane was silent, which told me he had come to the same conclusion.

  A horrific thought occurred to me. “You don’t think the shades can infect the winged, do you?”

  “If they could do that, then why attack to kill them? They would have just taken the Black Wings as hosts. The message that came to me was clear. The shades were attacking to kill, and a dead host is a useless host.”

  Thank goodness he’d taken it upon himself to fill the rest of the MPD in about his relationship with the Black Wings, otherwise explaining how he’d known they were in trouble would have been awkward.

  The screech of tires drifted up to us. We were losing altitude in preparation for landing.

  “The others are in,” Bane said. “It looks like the shades took down the gates. I’m going to drop you just inside. I need to get to the tower.”

  “The tower?”

  “Abbadon needs me.”

  He was communicating with Abbadon again.

  “Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Below us, the ground was a sea of bodies in combat, Black Wings against humans and nephs, fifty against at least a hundred. Asher wasn’t fucking around this time. He meant to take the Black Wings out of the picture tonight.

  Time to kiss the ground. “Okay, do it. I’m ready.”

  Bane dropped me from a twenty-foot height. I hit the ground in a crouch and was up and running into the fray a split second later. Ryker’s scent hit me from the left, and Rivers’s from the right.

  We surged toward the battle where Black Wings fought shades snug in neph and human skin: a young woman here, a teenager there, an old man, a young girl. It was disconcerting, and my feet faltered. The Black Wings must have been feeling the same distress because they were fighting, but not as hard as they probably could. They held back against the human hosts, their pledge to protect humans forcing them to pull their punches.

  I switched to aether-sight, and the human skins melted away, leaving only the powerful long-limbed shades, inky black, crimson-eyed, and lethal. A Black Wing, right ahead of me, jumped back to avoid the swipe of a teenage girl’s blade. He ducked and evaded while she slashed with the power of the shade she now was. There was no longer a human soul in that body, and the Black Wing needed to accept that and bloody fight back properly. There was nothing to save here, but he didn’t know that. He couldn’t see what I could.

  The girl laughed. It was a tinkling sound that cut through the grunts and clanks of battle. She made what would have been a lethal strike, but I was already in motion, sliding between her and her target. Her eyes widened at the sight of me, the thing inside her recognizing me for what I was. I slammed my hand onto her face and blasted her with the divine power inside me. Yeah, my daimon and I had made that connection a week ago. Malphas had told me that the weapons had been made from a drop of God’s grace, and if the power from the weapons was inside me, then …

  The shade screamed as it died, and the body of the girl dropped.

  I rounded on the Black Wing. “There are no humans here. Just shades. Did you see her eyes? Crimson. The human soul is gone. You get that?”

  His jaw tightened, and his eyes blazed with defiance, and for a moment I thought he’d strike me down, but then his wings unfurled, and he raised his head and bellowed, “Strike hard, strike true, there are no human souls here!”

  It was as if his words had unlocked the phantom shackles holding the Black Wings back. Shrieks and battle cries rose up like angry smoke. The shades fell under sword and whip and blade, and I set to work, burning them to death with my power one by one while they were incapacitated. They couldn’t die from their wounds, but what the Black Wings were doing was forcing them to consider retreat, and in the meantime, I was finishing them off.

  I caught a glimpse of Malphas, his face etched in steely determination as he parried against what had once been a Lupin. Shit. Lupins were higher-level nephs, and this was the first one I’d seen infected by a shade.

  Ryker appeared at my back, ready to swing his axe to ward off an attack by shades while I incinerated their brethren. Cassie and Orin worked together like a well-oiled machine in the periphery of my vision, and Rivers was to my far left, working back-to-back with a Black Wing while surrounded by shades inhabiting minor nephs. There was no hesitation on his part. Good.

  My body burned with power as I took out enemy after enemy. Ryker swung his axe in an arc to force back a wave of shades. Black Wings surged forward to help but ended up cutting us off from each other.

  I took out an old guy and then spun to counter the attack of another shade, but he skidded to a halt a meter away. I caught the flash of terror in his eyes as his attention went from the old guy’s body and back up to me. He turned and ran. Nope. Not getting away. I broke into a sprint after him, leaped, and tackled him to the ground. My hand closed on the nape of his neck and then he was gone, ash and cinder and death. The human shell relaxed beneath me. But there was no time to breathe because there was a shitload more of the fuckers to kill.

  Something landed on my back, taking me down, flattening me against the limp human body. Bones dug into my abdomen and chest, forcing the breath from my lungs.

  “Shade killer. Now you die,” the voice rasped in my ear.

  A blade bit my skin, bringing tears to my eyes. My daimon roared in rage, and then a shadow was hurtling over my head, slamming into my attacker and taking him down. I scrambled up to see the shade that had attacked me pinned under Drayton. My heart slammed into my rib cage, hand coming up to stem the blood flow from the snick at my throat. He’d saved me … Drayton was still in there. I’d been right!

  “Alive!” Drayton slammed the shade’s head against the ground. “Asher wants her alive, you moron.”

  “I’m sorry, Xavier. I lost my head,” the shade said.

  The bubble in my chest deflated. He wasn’t saving me. Well he was, but not for the reasons I’d hoped.

  Drayton climbed off the shade and stood to face me. He cracked his neck and smiled. And then he rushed me. It was unexpected, and my body froze for a fraction of a second too long. His hands wrapped around my waist, and then I was airborne for a moment before slamming back down onto his shoulder, too winded to do anything but dangle like a sack of potatoes.

  Fucking hell. He had me.

  I twisted and bucked, but he was strong, too strong, and moving way too fast. Shit. Wait. This was my chance. I could expel the shade. Get it out of Drayton. I pressed my hand to his back and slipped into the aether. The skin beneath me morphed into the black sinewy body of a shade, larger than the average, with power thrumming beneath its inky skin. This was … different. I delved, searching for a grip, but my ethereal hands slipped and slid against his essence.

  His laughter echoed in my ears. “That won’t work on me, shade killer. I’m a little too high up the food chain for you to expel. If you want me gone, you’re going to have to kill me, and that would mean killing him too.”

  My pulse skipped and jumped. No. Drayton was gone. Xavier was lying now to save himself. I delved deeper, and brushed against something small and bright and pulsing weakly.

  Shit. My eyes pricked. Drayton. Oh, God.

  The building rushed toward us. Xavier was taking me into the manor. Ryker? Where the fuck was he? Orin, Cassie, Rivers, anyone? But then we were inside the building, climbing stairs. What the fuck?

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To Asher.”

  Shit!

  Chapter 2

  Xavier carried me up the winding staircase to the top of the tower. Even though his body had been invaded, he smelled the same as Drayton, and that damn aroma told my body to relax, that it would be okay, even though my savvy brain knew different.

  I twisted one last time, trying to break free and failing. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Oh, but I want to,” he replied simply.

  What was I doing trying to reason with Asher’s general? But it wasn’t Xavier I was sp
eaking to, not really. A part of me was hoping to tap into Drayton—that light inside that was struggling to hold on.

  Oh, God. How much longer did he have left before Xavier took over completely? How had he survived this long? A chill ran up my spine. What if this was the way with all neph hosts? Cassie had held on for weeks, right? Why hadn’t I thought of that? What if neph souls took longer to die, which would mean I’d killed a ton of innocent nephs tonight believing their souls had been devoured.

  Xavier pushed through a door and entered the tower room. Cold air smacked against my ass, seeping into the fabric of my trousers.

  “Xavier, you brought me a gift.” The voice was mellow, chilled with an edge of dark humor.

  I’d only heard it once, but I’d recognize it anywhere. Asher.

  “Fuck, no.” This voice was rough and bone-tinglingly deep.

  Bane.

  Asher laughed. “Well. We have what we came for, so we’ll be on our way.”

  I twisted against fake Drayton’s back, trying to get a view of the damn room. The bits I could see were unfurnished and had arched, glassless, shutter-bordered windows. And shit, was that Abbadon crumpled on the ground?

  “Let her go,” Bane demanded.

  His voice came from behind me, to my left and out of view.

  “Harker? Harker, talk to me,” Bane demanded.

  “I’m okay.” I lifted a hand in a wave.

  Xavier slapped my arse. Hard.

  I let out a yelp of pain. That fucker was gonna pay for that.

  “She took out too many,” Xavier said. “We need to end this.”

  “And we will,” Asher said. “Just as soon as I get what is mine. Set her down.”

  Xavier dropped me. I landed on my side, hip scraping against bare floorboards. The bastard just smiled thinly, and it was easy to see him behind Drayton’s chocolate-brown eyes—soulless steel where there had once been warmth. And then I got a look at Bane. He was pinned to the wall by an invisible force, his shirt was torn, his head was bleeding, and his eyes blazed with murderous, impotent intent.