Big Demon Energy E-Book

Deborah Wilde

• Herausgeber: Te Da Media
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

She’s just a demon, standing in front of a vampire, trying not to punch him.

Aviva Fleischer has a secret life.

To all appearances she’s a paragon of the magic community. She’s from a respected family and has become a top supernatural operative policing crimes committed by magic humans. In fact, Aviva is about to be promoted to head up her own unit, all by the age of thirty. Exactly as planned.

But should anyone ever learn that she’s a half-demon—an infernal—her entire life will go scorched earth. In her world, vampires are celebrated like rock stars, but demons, their kissing cousins, are reviled and hunted. Talk about a double standard.

Then a rash of bizarre murders break out and the Powers That Be opt to make her co-leader of a special new squad. One that mixes humans with their vampire counterparts—investigators who hunt down rogue vamps and demons.

Co-leader? Seriously? That major wrench in her leadership plans is bad enough, but even worse? She’s being partnered with Ezra Cardoso, jet set vamp and playboy extraordinaire. Aviva should know—he broke her heart six years ago.

Ezra is also the only one other than her mom who she's trusted with her secret. Will he betray her to get ahead? Try it: she’s got a wooden stake with his name on it.

Featuring a smart, funny heroine and a second chance vampire romance, this wickedly addictive urban fantasy will keep you reading way past bedtime.

Dive in now for a demonically good time!

Leseprobe

BIG DEMON ENERGY

Bedeviled AF #1

DEBORAH WILDE

Copyright © 2023 by Deborah Wilde.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Cover by: Covers By Christian.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN: 978-1-998888-22-1 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-988681-71-9 (epub)

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

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Chapter1

After five months, dozens of sleepless nights, and enough caffeine to fuel a large city, we were so close to capturing our targets, I could almost taste it. The storm clouds had even parted, the full moon beaming its golden light upon my partner and me in encouragement.

That’s when a vampire blew in and wrecked our momentum. Unnecessarily gaunt, with nails sharpened to mini spears like some beauty influencer, and black hair lacquered to his skull, all he needed was a drop of blood at the corner of his mouth and he could star in his own B movie. See the Creature of the Night prowl! Scaaarrrrrrry!

“Get thee behind me, asshat!” I splashed through a puddle, waving the irritant away from the entrance to this abandoned laundromat in East Vancouver.

Sachie Saito, my best friend and fellow operative on this investigation, snickered, jumping a piece of loose asphalt in our parking lot mad dash. “Bleh bleh bleh.”

Hissing, the vampire cracked his neck and bodychecked me. “I’ll bleh you first, bitches.”

Rude. I regained my footing, ready to take him out, but Sachie was on it.

“Bring it.” Sach ripped a thin wooden stake free of its thigh holster and dropped into a fighter’s crouch. She looked like a tall warrior pixie with her gamine spiky cut and the stretchy dress she’d worn to the office that morning that matched her fire engine red hair. “Then I’ll see how many of your holes I can shove this into in thirty seconds. My current record is seven,” she added helpfully.

The vampire furrowed his heavy brow, counting under his breath. He got to three—holes, presumably—then snarled, snatched the stake away, and snapped it with a chilling smile.

We’d had enough bumps in this case without this jerk throwing us off course before we’d reached the finish line. Those two humans we’d been chasing had a slim head start, but every second spent dealing with the bloodsucker added to the odds of them getting away.

I flashed my gold ring identifying me as a Maccabee. “Listen up. A) You have no authority to stop us or demand shit, which the undead landlord of this joint knows, and B⁠—”

Sach grabbed a broken piece of wood back from the vampire and staked him in the heart.

His jaw went slack, his body paralyzed, then he fell apart like puzzle pieces and crumbled to ash.

I wrenched the cracked glass door open from its bloated frame. “B) Never take your eyes off the one with the stake.”

“Rookie,” Sach spat, barreling inside with a trail of powdery footprints. “We should ask the Spook Squad to find out who his boss is and remind him not to fuck with our portal access.”

I shook my head. “It’s such a simple concept, yet so hard for some of these vamps to understand.”

We raced over dirty cream and mint tiles, sidestepping the broken metal table lying on its side. Fluorescent light fixtures hung down like stalactites between exposed pipes while a lonely washing machine missing its glass was tagged in layers of paint.

Employees of the undead landlords who controlled this three-block radius were already scurrying past the small houses nestled close together and local businesses like the popular taqueria to tattle on the two Maccabee operatives who’d killed a minion and were headed through the rift. Information was power, in the human and supernatural worlds, and the vamps in charge probably had files on us with details down to my shoe size. I filed it under “know thy enemy,” but it still freaked me out if I dwelled on it.

My only consolation was that if they knew my biggest secret, the one that could unravel my life, they’d have used it against me by now.

I shielded my eyes with a hand against the harsh glare of sunlight spilling out from the back office. “It’s a balmy ‘Satan’s asshole is steaming’ day in the Brink, folks.”

“Let’s stay safe, partner,” Sach said. “And if we can’t stay safe, then let’s crawl back out before we die. Better benefits for our loved ones.”

Closing our eyes so we wouldn’t be permanently blinded, we jumped into the rift, a portal to a liminal wasteland called the Brink that served as a barrier between earth and Babel, a vampire-controlled alternate reality.

There were about a dozen or so rifts worldwide; ours had been the last to be discovered about a hundred and fifty years ago, back when Vancouver was a fledgling city. They weren’t painful to traverse, more like a tight hug from a clingy relative that you wanted to get away from.

Happily, it only took a couple of seconds to get free of its embrace. I stepped into the Brink and took a deep breath, the arid atmosphere scorching my lungs, and let my vision adjust.

Heat shimmered off cracked earth which stretched into infinity. Suddenly, bent, wiry husks of trees with needle-sharp ragged bark exploded from the baked dirt, spraying soil and wood chips that almost took out my eyes. In less than two breaths, a dense forest with no protective canopy had been created.

The Brink always kept me on my toes. It presented different challenges each visit, even through the same portal. Last time I’d dealt with snowdrifts. Jury was still out on whether the needle-trees would be better. Both options were such delights.

Sach ran her fingers up the back of her neck, flicking sweat out of her hair. “I feel like I’m being punished for your sins.”

“Only six of them,” I said mournfully. “Lust hath forsaken me.”

“Why dost thou speak old-timey today?”

“I’m a whimsical woman.” I pressed the hollow above my left ulna, triggering a steady electric signal paired to my partner’s matching implant. It was the best communication solution we’d found since there was no cell reception in the Brink and the chaotic magic reduced walkie-talkies to a staticky nightmare. “Got a signal?”

“Confirmed,” she replied. “Happy hunting, Aviva.”

“You too.”

We split up, Sachie heading left through the tree graveyard while I went right. Unfortunately, there were no footprints to follow or scents of desperation to track.

Coming into the Brink was akin to Theseus entering the Labyrinth—except without any thread to find my way out again. That said, it was a freaking alternate reality, how could I not be enticed? Like the best seductions, it provided a heady emotional cocktail with complex flavors: a shot of disorientation, a generous pinch of anxiety, and a heavy splash of excitement, all shaken and poured into a glass crusted with sweet temptation.

I whipped off my navy suit jacket and draped it over my high, dark brown ponytail, attempting to form a makeshift visor with minimal success. Twenty steps later, my ankle boots and the hem of my slacks were already coated in dust.

I kept catching movement out of the corner of my eye, however, each time I spun to investigate, I came up empty. Just a trick of the light. I hoped. “Heloise, Clément,” I called out. “Turn yourselves in. Even if you make it to Babel, it’s hardly sanctuary.”

Our female suspect was Eishei Kodesh, a human with magic, but her husband had no powers. Not that it mattered; humans didn’t survive in the megacity of Babel without iron-clad contracts or protectors. Sometimes not even then.

I tilted my head, straining to hear a reply, but there was nothing save for the low moan of wind. That would have been fine had there actually been any hint of a breeze and not simply an evil, creepy taunt. I pressed forward, determined to find the married couple before anything else did, and wrap up this case.

The Toussaints had been running cons on the art world on three different continents, but my chapter had caught the case because they’d relocated to our city a couple of years back, believing that no one would look for them in Vancouver.

As far as cons went, it was simple: Heloise used her white flame magic to drive up emotions and thus prices on Clément’s Z-grade pieces. Not entirely unsurprisingly, what had started as a fraud case had gotten white-hot very quickly, ending in a spree of murders over ownership of a painting that looked like a feral cat vomited chalk on a dirty blackboard.

Sach and I fought to remain the prime investigators. We’d been on this assignment from the start, knew the ins and outs better than anyone, and we’d lived in their heads. This was our chance to prove ourselves on a complex investigation with high stakes, yet we wouldn’t have pushed so hard if we’d believed anyone else was more suited to catch the Toussaints.

There’d been a lot of grumbling from more experienced operatives when the director had granted our request—on a probationary basis. Step by step, Sachie and I had built our case and narrowed in on the Toussaints despite every obstacle and red herring they threw our way.

If we lost the fugitives now? I shook my head, refusing to imagine the icy follow-up with our Vancouver chapter head and the massive derailment of our career goals. Failure was not an option.

Not when we’d come this far.

Wiping sweat off my brow, I crept forward, my eyes darting throughout the ghostlike trees, seeking any signs of movement. It would have been great to have water or be wearing cooler clothing, but when Sach and I had arrived at our fugitives’ last known location in Vancouver’s swanky Shaughnessy neighborhood, we discovered they’d fled to the Brink. There wasn’t time to stock up on provisions, let alone change out of our business attire.

Survival would come down to my wits and my blue flame magic.

I pulled my shirt away from my slick skin, sweat rolling between my boobs, and my jacket now a warm, damp weight on my head. Blech. Suddenly, my shoulder blades prickled and my skin was dotted in goose bumps like I’d jumped into a cold swimming pool. My heartbeat sounded like footsteps growing closer, but despite the feeling of being watched and the sense of unease that settled in my gut, no one was there.

No one I could see, at least.

Spinning around for a third time and finding nothing, I touched the brushed gold pillbox ring on my right index finger for confidence. The top of its round compartment featured an embossed flame, the design circled by five tiny gems: one each in red, orange, yellow, white, and blue.

All human Maccabees received their rings upon graduating from Maccababy to level one operative, and we never took them off. The part of our initiation ceremony that meant the most to me was the moment we slid the rings onto our fingers and pledged the Maccabee motto: Tikkun olam. My vow to fix the wrongs in the world.

A large dark shape swooped down with a low, raspy screech, and I ducked, cursing. Supe-vultures were the only creatures native to the Brink. They’d been reported by operatives no matter which rift they came through. However, like everything else in this place, the birds’ appearance was random. They might show up seven visits in a row in one location, no matter what the weather or physical environment held, and then not be seen again for the next six months.

Supe-vultures were beady-eyed, sharp of claw, and had feather-free heads—all the better to keep from being matted with blood when they reached inside a carcass. They operated on a cycle of feed, hasten the death of anything that moved too slowly, and feed again. Eerily sentient, they were a by-product of the constant clash in this realm between demon magic and Mother Earth. What a gift.

Three birds circled above, showing their lack of respect with dinosaur-like cries and a strip of white shit that splattered less than two feet away, while the sun beat on me like a crotchety grandma with a wooden spoon greeting her husband, who was late for dinner—again.

Every step was a nightmare of cramping in my leg muscles. I licked salty moisture off my cracked lips, dimly aware that bad as this heat exhaustion was, the next step was full-on heat stroke, then death. Best to live in the moment.

A high, thin cry pierced the air behind me. Pulse spiking, I called out for Sach. When she didn’t answer, I tapped my subcutaneous implant, changing it from a single pulse to two rapid pulses followed by a pause. Rinse and repeat.

Three heart-hammering cycles later, the signal returned to its original beat, and I gave a relieved sigh. Sachie was fine. She’d probably desiccated one of the supe-vultures with her orange flame magic.

I glanced up at the birds, tripping over a tree root that hadn’t been there ten seconds ago and bashing my shoulder on a listing tree. My jacket tore; my skin didn’t. I took the win.

Plus, my pain was rewarded. Sort of.

A badly sunburned Heloise and Clément Toussaint stood defiantly on either side of a doughy vampire, who sheltered them all with a golf umbrella made of some shiny iridescent material. It generated its own breeze and moved incrementally as its users did, so it always provided maximum shade.

The vamp smirked and spun the umbrella, showing off its amazing recalibrating abilities and generally flaunting the incredible technology he’d brought from Babel. Even low-level vamps had access to things humans wouldn’t see for ten or more years.

I narrowed my eyes. The vamp’s presence complicated things. I couldn’t easily slap magic-nulling cuffs on Heloise with him acting as her protector, and I didn’t dare pull the small stake from my boot when I’d also have to contend with Heloise’s powers.

I surreptitiously tapped my wrist, changing my subcutaneous electric signal to a fast vibration. Code for “Get here now,” it lasted about five seconds before reverting to the regular signal, which Sach could follow back to me.

Then I let my magic out to get a better read on the human pair. All Eishei Kodesh were synesthetes. We Blue Flames saw our magic, though neither the synesthetic quality nor the magic itself was visible to anyone else.

My particular talent was illuminating people’s weaknesses. Got a scarred liver? A nicotine craving tightening your chest? If I studied a person with my magic sight, their vulnerabilities were illuminated in blue. They weren’t all physical, but those were the most basic tells.

Heloise and Clément were awash in blue due to their sunburns. Colored dots rapidly beat at their wrist and throat pulses, and there were navy splotches on the crowns of their heads. Heat stroke, what did I tell you?

A journey that took ten minutes one time in the Brink could take an hour or a day the next. By the looks of the couple, they’d been in here a lot longer than I had before meeting up with the vamp.

Heloise’s all-silk ensemble was a ruinous mess of dirt, pit, and crotch stains—ew—while Clément looked like an escapee from an old film noir in his linen suit, complete with cravat and a gold stick pin. Sorry, a villainous escapee. Interesting that for a supposed artist, there were no traces of paint or gesso on his hands, not a single callus, and no sign of skin damage from handling solvents. His nails were buffed to a high sheen, and his skin was pink and plump. Much like the rest of him.

The vamp could have been one blink away from keeling over, but I’d never know. Blue Flames couldn’t illuminate the undead.

I crossed my arms. “This is cozy. Did you bring a picnic basket? I enjoy a creamy brie on these outings, but I also prefer it lightly melted, not bubbling liquid, so let’s rain check that.” I nodded my chin at the vamp. “Hand the humans over and we’ll be on our way.”

More supe-vultures joined the party with loud, raucous cries.

“Willem is our escort,” Clément said in a heavy French accent.

“Like an undead Boy Scout? Cool.”

Willem hissed at me, his fangs descending, but even with vamp magic, I could tell he wasn’t a skilled fighter like me. We Maccabees worked damn hard to achieve our high level of physical conditioning. I didn’t have the muscle mass of some operatives, but my limbs were long and lean, both from training and all the running I did.

I unfurled a cruel smile and beckoned Willem forward. “Want to play?”

Maccabee protocol gave me leave to kill any vamps standing in the way of an investigation—though not at the expense of human casualties. Given that the Toussaints had brought the vampire into this, however, their well-being became a gray area.

Gray areas were such fun.

Willem tensed but didn’t move. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Only nippers, new vamps, shepherded humans through the Brink, which meant that he didn’t have the clout or connections to kill an operative and get away with it. Yet.

Lucky me.

Heloise fanned out her grimy silk blouse, her loose wisps of hair blowing around her face. “Give up, Maccabee.”

A sorrow as vast and dark as a sea swept through me. I crashed to my knees, my body hunched over, and wrapped an arm around my middle. She was right. What was the point of continuing? I’d never win. Not the war that mattered most. I was a fool to think otherwise.

“Pauvre chérie,” she cooed. “Thinking you stood a chance when you are—what is the word?” She snapped her fingers. “A mosquito playing with lions.”

A distant part of my brain insisted that I not let them get away, but who was I to stop them? I knew how the world saw me. Or would if the truth came out. Maybe I was better off lying down to die on the parched, brittle ground?

“Bien.” Heloise laughed. “Allons-y.” Heloise pivoted, and her heel snapped off. She stumbled, cursing.

A fog lifted off my brain like it had been vacuumed away, my confidence and determination to bring these two to justice flooding back in.

Oh, you cow.

White Flames were all about burning passions; they could amp up an emotion in another or follow their own all-consuming desire. There were a lot of con artists in this group, though it was also where many of the greatest scientists and artists were found.

Heloise, busy slipping her other shoe off and tossing it on the ground with its broken companion, didn’t glance up when I pushed to my feet.

“What do you think is going to happen when you get to Babel?” I said.

“Money opens many doors.” Clément gave a very Gallic shrug.

Before he finished speaking, I’d lunged for the umbrella.

Willem yanked the titanium handle into his chest, briefly tipping the canopy down and blocking me from his view.

That second was all I needed. I pushed hard on the canopy, sending Willem and Clément stumbling off-balance, while with my free hand I grabbed the magic-nulling cuffs out of my pocket and slapped them on Heloise.

Too bad that when the umbrella shifted, Willem didn’t sizzle like potatoes hitting the deep fryer. Sunlight didn’t affect vamps here in the Brink like it did to varying degrees back in the normal plane of existence.

“Whose money would that be?” I said genially. “Heloise’s? Vamps aren’t as susceptible to cons as humans are, Clément, so what would she need your shitty skills for anymore? You don’t even have magic.”

“How dare you? We didn’t con anyone.” Clément blustered like a puffer fish, but my synesthete magic vision revealed his true state: the blue circle over his heart pulsed faster.

A curl of excited energy unfurled inside me.

“My husband is a genius. I would never abandon him,” Heloise said loyally, rattling her cuffs like she could shake them off.

The signal between Sach and me grew stronger, indicating my partner was close. I swallowed down my nausea from baking alive out here, conscious of the scavengers circling us like we were the coveted seats in a game of musical chairs.

“You’re sticking with Clément through thick and thin?” I stroked my chin, pacing back and forth so I didn’t appear too near death. “Then why is Willem standing closer to you than to your husband, his body turned in toward yours? That’s not something a stranger does. Got some undead action happening on the side?”

Clément swung his head toward the vampire and his wife, his mouth slackening. Then he narrowed his eyes and clenched his hands into trembling fists.

To be clear, I was incapable of manipulating other people’s emotions or self-perceptions, but feelings were weaknesses, and in certain situations like this one, easy to decipher without my magic.

His wife reached for him, but he turned away.

“I would have gotten away with this if it wasn’t for you.” Still cuffed, Heloise walloped me with a right cross.

“Fuck!” I staggered back a couple of steps, gingerly probing my eye. Come on! The Scooby Gang never suffered bodily harm.

On Heloise’s follow-up swing, I grabbed the chain between her cuffs, twisted her wrists over her head, and yanked them down behind her back, though not hard enough to break anything.

She mewled like a kitten.

I pulled harder, practically drinking down the vivid blue rippling off her straining shoulders. “Hit me again and I won’t show such restraint. Dislocated shoulders don’t only affect the immediate area, you know,” I said conversationally. “They can impact muscles, veins, even blood vessels. And if arthritis sets in?” I made a “yikes” face. “Popping and locking aren’t just break-dance moves.”

A blue splotch flared up over Heloise’s heart, accompanied by a silky blue swathe along her side closest to Willem, while Clément’s entire body flushed navy. The space between him and the pair lit up in a vivid blue.

Fascinating. Heloise might have held the purse strings, but she was scared to lose Clément and mistrustful of Willem’s faithfulness, while her husband was jealous—not only of an alleged affair, but because he saw his human body as inferior to the vampire’s dadbod.

“T’es folle,” Heloise whimpered.

I forced her arms down behind her back another half inch. “I haven’t taken French for a long time,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure we’re not at the familiar form of address stage. Now, if you’d insulted me with respect, I might have stabilized your pulled shoulder with tape.” I patted myself down with one hand. “Except, damn. I didn’t bring any.”

Heloise was wheezing, her breathing labored like a child who’d run too far. Her torso pulsed with such a vivid blue that it almost hurt to look at; I had her on the ropes.

I pulled her cuffs taut, our skin brushing, and I jumped, zapped by an electric shock of static current. Pure adrenaline coursed through me like wildfire, my dizziness retreated, and my headache dialed down from Riverdance to a soft shuffle.

“As for Willem?” All I had to do was strain Heloise’s shoulders one more tiny inch and she’d tip over into a glazed agony. My body tightened in anticipation of that final rush. “He won’t stick around, vamps never do. And speaking frankly, this one doesn’t look like the sharpest tool in the shed.”

Gritting my teeth, I slackened my hold on her chains. No broken shoulders today.

Willem dropped the golf umbrella and sped toward me.

I shoved Heloise away, dropped into a low crouch, and headbutted the vamp in the gut.

Grabby Hands seized my hair in his fist and lifted me off the ground.

I scrabbled on tiptoe, smacking at his hand, and trying to save my poor scalp.

Suddenly, Willem contorted in a series of jolting movements. His skull warped and twisted, his arms shriveled into T-rex-like stumps, and he dropped me.

Ooh, nice. Sachie was using her heat magic to suck the moisture from his body.

Orange Flames radiated heat into or out of things: people, a log, the air, anything really. Sach could force my body heat to radiate out of me to the point of giving me a lethal case of hypothermia. That said, she couldn’t freeze a lake. Luckily, few Orange Flames were born with that level of power or had the years of training it would take to unlock widespread popsicle abilities. Which was good, because who wanted some Jack Frost wannabe icing cities?

She twirled a finger, magically pulling heat from the atmosphere to direct it into Willem. Her powers weren’t visible, nor did I feel the synesthetic temperature changes that my friend did from her orange flame talents, but the end results were plain to see.

Willem’s skin flushed a hot, angry red, and his body curled like bacon sizzling in a pan.

I rubbed my poor, throbbing head. “Cutting it close there, my friend.”

“Please. You had a good two or three seconds before your scalp came off.” Sachie winked, her cheeks merely flushed pink and not burned, thanks to the bubble of cool air she’d magically encased herself with.

“Try anything funny on the way back and you’ll get the same treatment.” I pointed from the Toussaints to Willem, who was making gurgling noises, bits of blackened flesh dropping off him.

The supe-vultures swooped down to feast.

Heloise vomited.

Jumping out of splatter range, I pulled a stake out of my boots and tossed it to my friend. “Don’t say I never gave you anything nice.”

“I’m the luckiest girl alive.” Sachie grinned, both her cheeks dimpling, then stabbed Willem in the heart, killing him for good.

“Do you plan to behave?” I said to our fugitives.

Clément nodded, his face draining of all color, though Heloise’s caterwauling caused my left eye to twitch.

“Good. Mission accomplished,” I said, picking up the golf umbrella. I stepped into the welcome coolness of its shadow and gave the handle a dainty twirl. I sighed deeply as the assault of the direct sunlight melted away into nothing. Vampire technology was truly something else.

Sachie wrangled a pair of cuffs onto Clément.

My physical relief was sweetened by the taste of victory.

Two vamps down, two bad guys apprehended, and two well-deserved promotions secured. Once the director congratulated me with the news, I’d treat myself to a great steak, and then, as a level three Maccabee, I’d be placed in charge of a tantalizing new investigation soon enough.

Leader. I breathed in the molten air of the Brink and smiled. It had a nice ring to it.

Chapter2

Co-leader.

The word rang in my ears, twisting around and around in my brain, failing to fall into anything vaguely resembling me becoming a level three operative. I’d sacrificed any semblance of a personal life, taken on extra training, and pushed myself hard to hit the top rank by the age of thirty. That had been four long months ago.

Today was the day that was supposed to change everything, not make it worse by leaving me a level two, paired up with an as-yet-undisclosed operative who would treat me like a subordinate on whatever case the director had in mind for us.

Numb, I followed Chapter Director Michael Fleischer into the spacious lobby of the Vancouver Maccabee headquarters. Our five-story building occupied an entire city block on the border with Burnaby. Below the surface, it even boasted a secret basement and subbasements.

The place had begun life as a garment factory in the late 1800s, but when that business went belly-up in the Great Depression, the local Maccabees took it over. Thankfully, the previous techno-futuristic interior design popular with dot-com start-ups in the ’90s had finally been renovated to give us a comfortable working environment. Gone were the modular plastic furniture not designed for human asses and all the stark white that conveyed the vague impression a Clockwork Orange–style reprogramming was imminent.

I’d timed my arrival at HQ today to Michael’s, and admittedly, straight up pestered her for her decision, despite her telling me it could wait until we’d gotten to her office.

“Stop gogging. It’s unseemly.” Michael wore her customary outfit of a severely tailored pantsuit, today’s number softened with an emerald blouse that matched her green eyes. Her silver hair was pulled back into a chignon and hammered gold earrings shaped like leaves dangled from her lobes. Yes, she was stylish, but the long pins securing her hair were lethal projectiles, and the points of her earrings could slice zip ties—or flesh.

I rubbed a faint scar at the base of my thumb. “‘Gogging’ isn’t a word,” I said dully.

“It’s not?” She paused midway through the lobby to pull out her phone and look it up.

I scrubbed a hand through my wavy hair, then did my breathing exercises—counting to twenty, inhaling through my nose, then exhaling hard through my mouth. 

It didn’t help.

I glanced around in hopes of finding something to calm me down enough to continue this conversation in a professional manner, because if I let my emotions get the best of me, it was game over.

My pickings were slim. The reception area looked more like it belonged to a corporation than a magic police branch. Large abstract bronze sculptures flanked the glass doors to the part of the building accessible to the general public. It handled all concerns from processing Eishei Kodesh criminals to magic community members paying parking tickets.

Everything from the walls to the marble reception desk to the concrete floor and bolted-down plastic chairs in the waiting area was cream.

The only blaze of color was the enormous mural dominating one wall depicting five flames: red, orange, yellow, white, and blue with the words “Tikkun olam” across the top.

The Hebrew phrase and Maccabee motto was originally a mystical approach to all mitzvot, or good deeds. Broadly, it referred to the responsibility of Jews, now extended to all operatives, to fix the wrongs in the world, while the flames represented the magic of the Eishei Kodesh, or, translated from the Hebrew, the Holy Fire People.

Humans hadn’t always had inherent magic abilities, though thousands of years ago Jews had played around with spells and power words to very limited success. Much more notable was when innate fire-based magic came into being around 150 BCE. There was only one type at first, and it didn’t have a color classification.

The magic spread over the centuries through other races and religions, and, like many a trait, changed and evolved. Maccabees catalogued the new powers using a system of colors seen from largest to smallest in a flame: red (the original power), orange, yellow, white, and blue. They coincided with the order of the most common power to the rarest, and from the least skill involved in using an ability to the most.

Jump forward to the 1700s, after the Salem witch trials.

Magic had become prevalent enough, and witch hunting was out of control. The Maccabees, who’d taken their name from the heroes of the Hanukkah miracle—honoring them and their flame that formed the basis of our magic—stepped out of the shadows as a formal global organization to police humans with abilities.

There were days I’d dreaded coming through the doors, others I’d sailed in all smiles, but not once in the seven years since I’d passed the test to become a Maccabee had I regretted my decision. Not even today, though if Michael figured this was a done deal, she was badly mistaken.

“Oh, ‘gogging’ is a word all right.” Michael tapped her screen with a slight shudder, continuing toward our receptionist, Vera, with a smile and a wave. “I suggest you never search it.”

I followed her, gripping my employee lanyard hard enough for the edge of the plastic laminate to dig into my palm.

Vera, a perky young woman with blond hair and cornflower blue eyes, nodded at us, busy filling out a courier slip while on the phone. She wasn’t only our receptionist, but a very capable Red Flame. That magic devoured matter and burned things away. Instant incineration—provided users could touch their target.

It was very useful for destroying shedim (or, as most civilians called them, demons), the creatures who wanted to devour humans and the reason magic was first introduced into the world by a group of Jews, since humans had no way of fighting shedim without it.

Every Maccabee HQ, and most pro-magic corporations, placed Red Flames in lobbies as the first line of defense, because even ones who could barely set a piece of paper ablaze could cause a lot of damage. A couple memorable office rampages had proven that. That’s why they were the most highly trained in terms of control. They remained the majority of the magic community to this day and had the only powers visible to the naked eye. Sadly, it had become depressingly common to also see Red Flames safeguarding medical clinics with any focus on reproductive health.

I stalked behind Michael, my hands half curled into claws. “Getting back to this co-leader status?”

The director pressed her thumb against the scanner on the wall behind Vera’s desk with a short, sharp gesture, and the door to the employee-only area buzzed open. “I’m not sure what there is to discuss.” She strode into the corridor, not bothering to check if I’d followed.

The door clipped me on the shoulder, making me wince, but I hurried over to the elevator and jabbed the call button six times, imagining it was Michael’s head. “Any other level two who’d shown the same commitment to their job as I have and had the same excellent record of case closures, especially after this last investigation, would have been promoted immediately.”

Michael preceded me into the car. “Not an operative with the number of complaints against them that you have. Mrs. Toussaint ended up with a hairline fracture in her shoulder.”

“After she gave me a black eye.” I pushed the button for the fifth floor. “Would you like the receipt for the extra-strength concealer I had to purchase until a healer could slot me in for an appointment?” Cry me a river. “No suspect likes being brought in. Every single one of us ends up with a charge of excessive force at some point.”

“It’s not just one though, is it?” She didn’t even spare me a perfunctory glance, her attention on the riveting sight of the doors closing. “We all deal with aggression; I’ll allow you that much. But it goes further than that with you.”

Ladies and gentlemen, my mother. Never one to pull punches.

My stomach twisted with the knowledge of why I’d never be promoted—danced around and alluded to by Michael—but never spoken out loud. No, the reason was best kept hidden, like a snake coiled in the shadows. My jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles twitched beneath my skin.

My mother was a Yellow Flame, their talents predicated upon the cleansing properties of flames. Specifically, they cleansed complicated ideas and systems, anything ranging from the body or brain to an alloy, a building, or water. Unsurprisingly, a lot of them became healers or went into research on viruses and pathogens.

Unlike me, they couldn’t see weakness or illness; their synesthesia was scent based. Kind of like dogs who could sniff out cancer, though they despised the comparison. Software development and engineering were also big draws for that crowd.

Michael had used her purifying magic to root out a decades-long systemic corruption here in Vancouver, becoming a director with the reputation of being a bastion of righteousness, fighting the good fight on every front.

Well, every front except one: I remained her greatest failure.

The thing about Yellow Flames? Any impurity they couldn’t cleanse, they became masters at hiding. Perfectionism at its finest.

I stepped in front of her, my light brown eyes clashing with her green ones. If I sought any sign of myself in her more patrician features, it was only for a second. Other than our full lips and thick wavy hair, there was no obvious resemblance. I was broader through the shoulders with a heart-shaped face, she had narrow hips and sharper cheekbones. My entire life I’d been subjected to an endless loop of people’s surprise that we were related, but unlike when I was younger, I no longer bothered to insist that yes, she was my mom.

“Come on, Michael,” I prompted snarkily. “You can get more specific than that. Why is it more than aggression with me?”

The elevator stopped on the third floor, and a young female operative came in. She gave a nervous head bob to the director, then kept her gaze fixed on the doors until we reached the fourth floor, and she hurried out.

I rolled my eyes. That level one would get less anxious around Michael. Eventually.

As the doors closed, leaving us alone once more, Michael gave an impatient sigh. “The charges themselves are dismissible, but more than one complainant has reported on your willingness, no, your eagerness to push things further than necessary.”

“Say it.” My voice was tight.

“I’m not unaware of your leadership potential,” she said in the oh-so-rational tone of voice she’d used on me when I was a kid that still made my shoulders tense up and my teeth grind together. “But if you want to lead,” she continued, “you’ve got to sort out this tendency to inflame people.”

“Targets, not teammates.” I clenched my fists. “I have never used my magic to read a partner’s weaknesses unless they were injured so badly that they couldn’t speak, and I had to know how to help them.” It was a hard and fast rule that I’d never broken, and Michael damn well knew it. “Say it,” I growled. “For once in your life, be honest about what’s going on. You owe it to me.”

The elevator slowed to a stop on five and the doors opened.

“I owe you?” Michael said in a mild voice that sent warning bells screaming in my head. She motioned for me to move aside.

I smacked the button to close the doors again. I’d already jumped off the metaphoric cliff. Might as well fully say my piece before I smashed into the ground. “You can’t stand to admit it, can you? You had a wild night with some dude, then he skipped town, and you were pregnant.”

It was almost impossible (and gross) to imagine my mother having a crazy sex-fueled hookup, but shedim excelled at encouraging people’s animal desires to win out. Vamps, despite their strength and brutality, had a reputation for being refined and elegant, where demons were unhinged abominations who coerced people into behaviors that they never would ordinarily engage in.

What a bunch of bullshit. Shedim weren’t unearthing any desire that a person didn’t have inside them to begin with. For some these urges were already close to the surface, and for others, they were deeply buried within their subconscious, but they didn’t spring out of nowhere.

Generally, if you knew where to look, these desires weren’t even that hard to spot, so a demon would have no trouble tapping into them. Take my mother, for example. I didn’t develop my love of those 1970s punk goddesses like Blondie and Joan Jett because I was on some retro musical kick.

My mother wore out the grooves playing her favorite songs like “Bad Reputation” and “One Way or Another” on repeat and teaching me the lyrics to the adrenaline fueled, female driven, transgressive anthems.

I often wondered if shedim chose their victims because they sensed which people would be most receptive to their particular persuasion. After all, the demon who’d trysted with Mom hadn’t incited her to violence or into conning other people, and I doubted one could. He’d simply coaxed her bad girl side out for the first and only time in her life.

I wasn’t defending shedim. They toyed with people for their own sick amusement, and never left them better than they found them. They also had the power to work their evil mojo on a large scale and were behind some of the worst atrocities in human history. I just didn’t believe their targets were free of those impulses to begin with.

“The extra-special surprise that your baby daddy was a shedim didn’t get revealed until later,” I said.

“That’s because most infernals don’t survive past the first trimester,” Michael lobbed back. “Who could have known that you’d be the rare exception?”

My mouth fell open. The fact that most half demon, half human fetuses didn’t make it to birth wasn’t news to me, but she’d never voiced it, and certainly not with a dryness that made my pulse speed up and my hands get clammy.

“Would I be standing here now if you’d known what he was? What I was? After the first trimester, that is.”

Michael shook her head, an annoyed expression on her face. “Don’t talk nonsense.”

Was it though? She hadn’t referred to my half-demon side at all since I was a teen.

My mother had raised me with a tough-love curriculum, training me to keep my shedim nature hidden while constantly pressing home the danger should I be found out. When I turned fifteen, however, she announced she trusted me to keep it under wraps on my own.

Or she simply wished to ignore the entire business by that point.

She’d taught me well; I’d give her that.

I was a master at hiding the fact that I was a half shedim. No one suspected that my “tendency” to occasionally go too far was due to anything other than my ability to illuminate weakness combined with Blue Flames’ reputed lack of control. And according to some people who weren’t fans of mine, a reckless personality.

Michael reached past me to hit the open-door button, then walked briskly onto the executive floor in a tease of citrus and vanilla that my brain would forever associate with the smell of power. It complemented the tasteful art and furniture upholstered in muted colors.

I stomped behind her, waiting for some surge of perverse satisfaction that I’d gotten her to broach the topic. All I felt was a dull, hollow ache.

We passed a couple of hush pods—soundproofed glass modules with two cushioned benches and a table. One was empty, but in the other, our HR manager was explaining something to a slightly bewildered young man gripping a coffee mug like a lifeline.

Too bad my mother wasn’t amenable to a good bribe. I’d have brought her a London Fog to start her day. To be fair, she was generally open to a well-thought-out appeal, but if you failed, you’d be speared with the Look. The one that sent tough-as-nails level three operatives and vampires scurrying to do Michael’s bidding.

The Look expressed a bone-deep disappointment that even if you saved the world seven times over, Michael would still think less of you. The last time I’d received it was six years ago when I’d asked for her to intervene with a particularly harsh trainer who was helping me focus my blue flame magic.

Blue Flames were the illuminators of the magic community. Essentially, we shone light on that which was hidden, applying our powers to everything from mineral veins deep underground to flaws in existing physical structures or technology. Some even illuminated esoteric concepts like personal boundaries. (Popular with Blue Flames working in mental health.)

As Eishei Kodesh, we had only one area of expertise each however, and mine was people. I illuminated their weaknesses, anything out of the ordinary whether physiological or mental.

The limited shedim powers I had were totally separate.

I wouldn’t ordinarily have asked Michael to intercede on my behalf—I’d signed on for the training after all—but I was in a very raw place at the time, and the pace and depth of the training was more than I could handle considering getting dressed was a major accomplishment. I’d merely wanted to let up on the full-tilt pace a bit, and I’d thought… I’d hoped…

I shrugged. It didn’t matter. The request was refused, and I never asked again.

However, I wasn’t asking for a handout or a favor now. I’d earned this promotion.

Michael warmly greeted her executive assistant, Louis, making a joke about the stack of files and phone message slips in his arms. Louis was my mother’s guard dog and he bristled whenever anyone he perceived as a threat got close to her. Including me. We gave each other cool chin nods in acknowledgment.

Michael asked me to give her five minutes, disappearing into her office with him. How did she expect me to wait when everything I’d worked my butt off for hung in the balance?

Co-leader. No power, no respect. Not good enough. Michael was throwing me scraps, and I wasn’t going to take them.

I snapped a thread off the hem of my skirt. Anger wasn’t uncommon when it came to our relationship, but this was ridiculous. If she was placing her Starbucks order while I simmered out here, I would lose my shit.

“Psst. Aviva.” Sachie beckoned at me dramatically from around the corner, a shock of fire engine red hair falling into her face.

Despite my roiling emotions, I smiled at the memory of my best friend’s one and only theatrical experience. Sach had imbued her role of zucchini in our grade three play to Shakespearean heights. A framed photo of a swooning fuzzy vegetable with chubby cheeks hung in her parents’ hallway, next to the one of Sachie in a kimono when her family went back to Japan for her coming-of-age ceremony.

Michael’s door remained shut, so I headed over to my friend, who was with another level two, Gemma Huang.

My bestie leaned in, her voice lowered. “Can you find out more about the new guy from Michael?”

Operatives were a gossipy bunch—it was a miracle that anything was kept secret.

“Get us the first intel on the fresh meat,” Gemma said, doing squats while in a skirt and heels. I’d never seen her simply stand like normal people did.

Sachie wrinkled her brow. “Do vamps count as fresh?”

“Depends if anyone has broken him in yet,” the other operative said.

“This isn’t about sex.” Sach planted her hands on her hips.

Gemma shrugged and stretched out her hip flexor. “It would be better if it was. I’ll never understand why you want to be transferred to the Spook Squad.”

There were far fewer vamp Maccabees across the globe than human operatives, and they weren’t designated levels. All undead operatives went into a general pool at their chapter called a Spook Squad. These squads were given cases to investigate, same as any operative, but they focused on rogue vamps and shedim activity, not policing Eishei Kodesh.

Unlike the rest of us, Spook Squad operatives got to combine all the fun challenges of solving crimes with more fighting and stabbing. Plus, there weren’t the same strict protocols around arrests since their targets weren’t human. All of that appealed to my bloodthirsty bestie, who’d been working on a transfer to Vancouver’s Spook Squad for some time now.

“Why willingly expose yourself to shedim?” Gemma gave an exaggerated shudder.

“To keep the world safe by tracking them down and killing them,” Sachie said. “It’s not like I’m licking lepers.”

I’d been around anti-shedim sentiment my entire life; I even shared it. But it never got easier hearing it from my best friend. I wanted to scream that not everything shedim-adjacent was bad, but since I couldn’t go there, I went for the argument I could make.

“You’re such a hypocrite,” I said to Gemma. “Hot for vampires and death to shedim. Some vamps, hell, some humans are as evil as demons. But the wicked among the living and the undead get fetishized, while demons remain despised.”

“Because they’re pure evil.” Gemma switched her stretch to her other leg. “We don’t get a lot of absolutes in life. This is a real easy one. All demons are bad. They’re nasty freaks. In the streets, not in the sheets like vamps.” She fanned herself.

“Way to miss the point,” I snapped.

Sachie stared at me, her brow furrowed at my tone.

I shook my head. “No one evil should be admired. Not demons, vamps, or humans, but there’s a double standard. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Whatever,” Gemma said, throwing me a dirty look. “Check if he’s hot. Us hypocrites want to know.”

“We hypocrites,” I said sweetly.

“Don’t be a bitch, Fleischer,” she retorted, finishing her stretch. She smoothed down her skirt. “I know the genes are against you, but do try.”

If only she knew what genes I had to fight against in that moment. They sure as hell weren’t Michael’s.

Sach made a scoffing noise. “I don’t care if this new operative is the world’s biggest schlub⁠—”

I pressed my hands against my heart. “Look at you dropping Yiddish words. I’m all verklempt.”

“If you would all give me two seconds to speak,” Sach said, crossing her arms. “The rumor is he’s been given carte blanche.” She pressed her hands to her cheek with a dreamy two-dimple smile. “Will you find out for me? I want to join whatever case brought him to town.”

“A vamp with carte blanche.” Gemma snickered. “Michael is going to love that.”

“Love what?” Michael had snuck up on us, an amused sparkle in her intelligent gaze.

Thanks, Gemma. You spoke her name and she was summoned. Like a demon. Sadly, saying Michael’s name three times à la Beetlejuice didn’t send her away. I’d tried.

Not that I wanted her sent away. Necessarily. It was just that she’d dropped the co-leader bombshell on me, then made me wait, and now she’d startled me. I had to get back into the zone.

“Can we get on with our meeting now?” I said.

“I’m all yours.”

And that was the problem. Of all the DNA donors I could have gotten in this life, I’d ended up with one who’d pulled a runner and the other who was, well, Michael.

I guess this was why they said to never work with family.

Chapter3

Michael sat across the wide expanse of desk from me. “Despite the childish fantasies you’ve woven starring me as the villain, Avi, I’m not.”

My mother hadn’t used my nickname in… I furrowed my brows. It was long before I’d joined the Maccabees, before my wayward teen years even, back when she was still my protector and the mom who’d fight the world to keep it from hurting me. That version of her seemed like a distant memory now. It felt like forever ago that she’d switched sides, trying instead to keep me from hurting the world.

“I’m not the villain either,” I said, as collected as I could make myself. “You saw how hard I worked on that case. Sachie and I handled an escape attempt that even level threes would have found challenging. You know how much time and effort I put into closing it, and you know I deserve better than being named co-leader with whoever you plan to pair me up with.”

Michael tapped her silver pen against the desk in a rapid staccato. She was generally unflappable, so this was the equivalent of her running around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off. “Gossip certainly made the rounds quickly about the new vampire. What did Sachie and Gemma say?”

Why was she avoiding the subject of my co-leadership? Oh fuck, she wasn’t planning to stick me with Jesse, that humorless black void, was she?

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my ankles, trying to find a semblance of calm. I was a genius at compartmentalizing my identity, but my emotions, not so much.

Everything in this office was designed with serenity in mind, but nothing was helping. The row of living green bamboo reeds against the left wall? Nope. The plush light gray throw rug that my heels sank into? Nope. The framed parchment on the exposed brick wall certifying Michael Hannah Fleischer’s appointment as director? Definitely not.

“All Sach knows is that some vamp is here on a big case and he has carte blanche.” I left out that Sachie saw this as her opportunity to work with him. Michael was aware of my friend’s ambitions.

“Have you ever heard of that happening before?” My mother stopped tapping the pen and started clicking it. “I mean, with anyone, much less a vampire?”

I swallowed a groan. Barely. Did she really think now was the time to indulge in her love of questions and teachable moments? Though it was more insulting if this was a stalling tactic to calm me down, like my perfectly reasonable frustration was an off-the-charts demonic response.

However, once my mother had settled on a plan of action, she was nothing if not committed, so I sighed and went along for the ride until I could get a concrete answer about who I was being partnered with.

“No,” I said. “Maccabees love their structure and rules.”

Carte blanche was unheard of. For anyone, but especially vamp operatives.

“Exactly.” Her clicking grew faster and more annoying.

“Michael,” I said, frustrated, and nodded at the pen.

She looked down at her hand like she’d forgotten she was holding the writing implement, then tossed it on the desk. “Anyone working out of a chapter office, even visiting operatives, answers to the director.”

Okay, enough was enough.

“No disrespect,” I said, “but I neither give a damn about this vampire nor need you to explain how your job works. I’m aware. Right now, I deserve more of an explanation for you kiboshing my promotion than you’ve given.”

Her office phone buzzed.

I gripped the armrests.

Michael held up one hand while she picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, then said to alert her the moment he arrived. When she hung up, she closed her eyes, strain etched on her face.

One day I’d separate out our relationship as director and operative from mother and child as effectively as she did, but today was not that day. “Mom,” I said softly.

She opened her eyes.