Death Embraced: Death Touched #4 (Urban Fantasy Romance) E-Book

Mac Flynn

• Herausgeber: Crescent Moon Studios, Inc.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The end of the world approaches.  Nena can feel it in her bones.  It’s a deep ache that calls to her dead soul, pleading with her to avert the disaster that threatens to engulf everything in a horror the world has never known. Nena and her friends are the only ones who can stop the coming end.  The trail of information leads them through the Underworld and into the bowels of evil where more than danger awaits.  Another, more terrible truth lingers in the shadows.  It’s the realization that Nena must face her father for one last time, for one last battle, and she isn’t sure they’re both  going to come out of the confrontation.  Not without terrible changes, changes that might mean the end to both of them.

Leseprobe

Death Embraced

Death Touched, Book 4

Mac Flynn

Copyright © 2019 by Mac Flynn

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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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

Continue the adventure

Other series by Mac Flynn

1

“Above you!”

“Duck!”

“What a lousy shot!”

“Miss Nena, if you wouldn’t be so hasty!”

The screams and cries came from Nena’s friends. They stood in one of the lower floors of the Agency in a large, empty room the width and length of a football field. The walls were made of solid steel, the floor of two-foot thick concrete, and the ceiling was steel beams with concrete atop those. A single metal door stood in the center of one of the ends, the only entrance and exit for the room.

Nena stood on one end of the ‘field’ while her four friends stood opposite her some thirty yards away. They were Jack, Peter, Doc, and the newest addition to their team, the aged witch Catherine. The length of the steels walls and floor between them sported black scorch marks.

The old woman wore her usual black dress with a shawl, but the shawl hung askew over her shoulders and she had her dress hiked up over her tall black boots. “Terrible! That was all terrible!”

Nena was bent over and panting for unneeded air. She held her gun at her side in her limp arm, and a little bit of white smoke slipped out of the barrel. “This would be easier if you guys would just hold still!” she snapped.

“We’re supposed to be moving targets,” Jack reminded her.

“Perhaps you should aim the gun before firing,” Doc suggested.

Nena glared at her ‘friends.’ “How come I have no trouble hitting Scratch’s guys, but you guys are almost impossible?”

“Give us a little more credit,” Jack pleaded.

Catherine glanced at him and snorted. “I don’t believe you should be offered that credit, phantom.”

“The name is Jack, hag, and Nena hasn’t touched me,” he defended himself as he spread his arms out on either side of him to show off his unscathed clothing. “See?”

A sly smile slipped onto the old woman’s lips. “Would you like me to give you form for a few minutes to show how greatly she hit you?”

Jack cringed and dropped his arms. “Touche, hag. Touche.”

“We should be focusing on this training exercise,” Peter spoke up.

Nena straightened and winced when her body complained. “Why am I trying to shoot you guys again? I mean, if Scratch really is the one behind Project Endzeit than won’t I just have to deal with his goons?”

Jack’s humor fled from his face as he jerked his head toward the left hand wall of the large room. “You’ll have to deal with them, too.”

Nena followed where he pointed and winced. Along the wall were piles of tarry corpses the size of overgrown rats with concrete rubble all around them. They were the remains of Scratch’s eavesdropping pets. Their tar-like bodies left black stains on the floor, and above them in the ceiling were large holes in the concrete where Peter’s silver pieces had shot threw and ended their miserable lives.

“It is rather unusual that Scratch does not attempt to hide their existence from us,” Peter commented.

Jack shook his head as he drew a cigarette pack from his pocket. “It’s easily explained by the fact that he doesn’t care. That’s an ill-omen for us. A devil who doesn’t care thinks he’s holding all the cards.”

“How do you think he’s making them?” Nena wondered in a quiet voice.

“Take one little demon, add a touch of Corruption, and a dash of insanity,” Catherine mused.

Doc rubbed his chin in one hand as he studied the creatures from afar. “As far as Catherine and my research has shown, that is the gist of what Scratch does.”

“But have you figured out how he’s controlling them?” Jack asked him.

Doc dropped his hand and shrugged. “My professional opinion is that he retains the same control over them as he did the demons.”

Jack arched an eyebrow as Nena approached her friends. “Do you have another opinion?”

Doc raised his eyes to Jack and revealed a face of anger and disgust. “That he distorts their very souls to his image in a blasphemous imitation of God’s work.”

“Ah,” Jack replied as he lit the cigarette. “And on that high note I think we should end this for the day. We’ll pick this up tomorrow-” There came a knock on the door.

All eyes turned to the entrance. Jack strode over to the door and opened it. On the other side in one of the Agency’s many white hallways stood Azazel, lieutenant to the devil, Scratch. She had a sickly sweet smile on her lips and a small white envelope in her long, red-colored nails.

Azazel held out the envelope to Jack. “This came for you, Mr. O’Kent.” The addition of the title sounded more like a threat than an address.

Jack smiled back at her and bowed his head a little as he took the envelope. “Thank you, Miss Azazel.”

“You do know the rules about outside communications, don’t you, Mr. O’Kent?” she asked him.

Jack tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling as he tapped a corner of the envelope against his chin. “The rule escapes me.”

“As does a great many rules, Mr. O’Kent,” she mused. “But since I haven’t the time to wait for you to remember, I will remind you that I’m supposed to see the communication before you.”

He shrugged and held out the envelope to her. “All right. Knock yourself out. In the literal sense, of course,” he requested as she accepted back the message.

“You’re too funny, Mr. O’Kent,” she commented as she sliced the envelope open with one of her fingernails. The paper cut like butter beneath her finger and she slipped a folded note from the envelope. Azazel unfolded the paper and glanced at the contents. She arched an eyebrow before her eyes flickered up to Jack. “Mr. O’Kent, you have a strange pen pal.”

“It’s hereditary, now may I have my letter?” he requested as he held out his hand.

Azazel pursed her lips, but set the envelope and note in his palm. “Don’t let this happen again, Mr. O’Kent, or Scratch will have to intercede.”

“And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Jack teased.

The demoness’ lips tightened and her face hardened. She turned on the heels of her high-heels and marched out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

Nena wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “That was a cold conversation.”

“Let’s see what made her so angry,” Jack mused as he inspected the contents. A smile slipped onto his lips. “Just as I thought. We’ve got a lead on Archimedes.”

Nena’s eyes widened. “Then he really is alive?”

Jack rejoined the group and nodded. “Yeah.” He held up the folded paper. “According to this note, one of my contacts in the Underground swore he saw him the other day in one of the lesser-used sewer pipes.”

“Why didn’t that make Azazel mad?” she asked him.

He held the note out to her. “Take a look for yourself.” Nena accepted the note and studied the contents.

Hi Jack,

Thought you might want to know that I found a penny yesterday down by the under river. It was a little tarnished, but otherwise looked okay. Hope it brings you good luck!

- Tony

She wrinkled her nose before she looked up at Jack. “What is this?”

“Code for what I just told you,” he revealed. “The penny is Archimedes-”

Catherine tilted her head up and sniffed the air. “A mildly ingenious nickname for a tarnished man.”

“-and the ‘under river’ part means one of the sewer pipes near the river. They aren’t used as much since that place became more industrialized two decades ago,” he finished.

“How did you suspect he would be seen?” Peter wondered.

Jack shrugged. “I wasn’t sure, but since he’s still human I figured he had to eat, so I had all my contacts keep their eyes out for him.”

Nena held up the note and smiled. “So this is the detective work you mentioned after I woke up in the infirmary, isn’t it?”

He grinned. “Yes. Do you want to come along to a dirty sewer with a couple of undead guys?”

“It’s not the ‘undead’ part that worries me, it’s the ‘guy’ part, specifically one guy,” Nena quipped as she handed the note back to the guy.

Jack tucked the note into his pocket and bowed low to her. “I will endeavor to behave myself on this trip.”

“There is also the problem of leaving the Agency three weeks prior to our being allowed,” Peter reminded them.

Jack shrugged. “No problem. I’ll just have a talk with Scratch about letting us out early on account of good behavior.”

“Wouldn’t he like the opposite?” Nena pointed out.

“He wouldn’t trust the opposite, not from us,” Jack argued.

“You mean not from you,” Doc mused.

“What reason will you give for our going out?” Peter asked him.

Jack wrapped an arm around Nena’s waist and drew her against his side as he grinned at the others. “I’m going to tell him we’re going to use Nena as bait to catch Death.”

2

Nena spun around and gaped at him. “You’re going to do what?”

He shrugged. “It’s the best plan we have. Besides, it might even work out both ways. Death might actually come and save you.”

Nena narrowed her eyes at the spirit. “Save me from what exactly?”

He flashed a grin at her. “From us.”

She blinked at him and shook her head. “I don’t follow.”

Jack gestured to Catherine. “We’ll have Catherine set you in a hex circle and-”

Catherine’s eyes widened. “I will do no such thing with her!”

“But we’ve got to make it believable, and a hex circle is just the thing,” Jack insisted.

Catherine turned away from him and crossed her arms over her chest. “Find yourself another witch to put her immortal soul in danger.”

“Um, could I have some input in here?” Nena spoke up. She caught Jack’s eye and pointed at Catherine. “And what’s this about a hex circle and my immortal soul?”

Catherine pursed her lips, but her eyes flickered to the young woman. “A hex circle is a powerful spell that pulls a soul from a person’s body and bottles it to use it as a sort of limited djinn.”

“Djinn? Like a genie?” she guessed.

Catherine nodded. “Yes, but in this case the djinn doesn’t go from master to master after three wishes. After the wishes are granted the soul is destroyed. Forever.”

Nena swallowed the lump in her throat. “Like, no heaven or hell?”

“Nothing. It ceases to exist.”

Doc coughed into his fist. “If I might interrupt here, but I would rather not place Miss Nena in danger, mortal or otherwise.”

Jack’s eyes flickered over his companions. “Does anyone have any better ideas for getting out of here?” None of them met his gaze. “Then I’m seeing this as our best bet for getting out of here before the world ends, especially since-” He paused and glanced overhead at the ceiling tiles.

“The room is secure,” Doc assured him.

“And doubly so,” Catherine confirmed.

“Especially since it’s Scratch who’s making this trouble and not Death,” Jack finished.

“The Devil will not be easily defeated,” Peter mused.

“And he’s been cooking this trouble up since the beginning of time,” Catherine added.

“Yeah, but if this was easy for him he would have done it a long time ago,” Jack pointed out as he leaned his shoulder against the nearby wall. “So there must be some rules even he can’t break that would anger-well-” He pointed upward.

Nena scoffed. “You really think anybody’s up there making sure the Devil follows any rules?”

“Somebody’s stopping Scratch from using the Mort Detector to find Death,” he reminded her.

Doc rubbed his chin in one hand and furrowed his brow. “How very unusual that he should build such a contraption.”

Nena tilted her head to one side. “Why? It showed everybody that he was trying to find Dad-I mean, Death.”

Doc smiled at her. “You may use either title for him. He is your father, after all.”

Nena hung her head and held up her hands to study her pale palms. “I know, but-” She shook her head and raised her eyes to her friends. “Never mind.”

Catherine scoffed. “You have a mind, share it.”

Nena shrugged. “I just think there’s something going on, something we haven’t figured out yet.”

“You mean besides the end of the world?” Jack asked her.

She nodded. “Yeah. I mean, there’s that, but there’s something else going on. Like Dad and Scratch are playing two games that happen to meet in the middle.”

“How do you know this?” Peter wondered.

The young woman ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just a feeling.”

“Feelings are often a door to the truth,” Catherine mused.

“Well, whatever the truth is, we need to find it before Scratch wins his game,” Jack insisted. “And that means getting out of this place and finding the rest of those servers.” His gaze settled on Catherine. “So are you going to get us out of here?”

Catherine looked to Nena. “Only if she’s willing.”

Nena nodded. “I think we can try it. I mean, it won’t be for real, right?”

“I will perform the ritual as far as I dare, but even standing in the hexagram is dangerous,” Catherine warned her. “A wrong word or a misspoken line and the soul could be doomed.”

Nena cringed. “Well, maybe we won’t get that far. I mean, this isn’t really to capture my dad, right? We just need to get out of here and look for Archimedes.”

Jack folded his arms over his chest. “To be honest finding Death might not be such a bad idea. Your dad might have all the answers to our questions, so if we could get even ten minutes with him then we could figure out where to go and what to do to stop Scratch.”

“Death may not believe we intend to sacrifice Nena,” Peter pointed out. “What reason will we give among ourselves for performing such a dangerous ritual on an ally?”

“We’ll just say it was on Scratch’s orders,” Jack suggested.

“And how will putting my soul in danger help Scratch?” Nena asked him. “Why wouldn’t we use one of the agents or a stranger?”

“The agents are demons and thus have no soul,” Catherine reminded her.

“And your being a Death Touched grants you greater abilities for wishes,” Doc added. “There are certain rules a djinn can’t break, like murdering someone, but as one who’s Touched you may be able to kill someone. That makes you very valuable.”

“Don’t I feel lucky. . .” Nena mumbled.

Jack moved toward the door. “Let’s go see if Scratch is up for a hexing tonight.”

“I will have to bow out,” Doc announced as he stepped back from them with a smile. “My pets need some repairs otherwise Scratch will be sure to listen in on our plans.”

Catherine scoffed at him. “You just don’t want to get your hands dirty.”

He chuckled. “Perhaps not, but I wish you all good luck in your hunt, and-” his eyes settled on Catherine and his voice softened, “-return safe.”

The four exited the room and made their way down into the bowels of the Agency of Celestial Episodes. The elevator doors opened to the long hall that led to Scratch’s office. Near the elevator stood Azazel, her immaculate red outfit a matching fit for the predatory smile on her lips. Tucked under one arm was a clipboard with a few papers on it.

“It’s always a pleasure to see you all again,” she greeted the companions as they stepped out of the elevator. “Before I allow you to see Mr. Scratch, however, there are certain deficiencies in the security system which must be addressed.”

“We’re your dogs, not your eyes,” Jack reminded her.

She chuckled as she drew the clipboard from under her arm and read the contents of the documents. “It appears that surveillance is being interrupted wherever your group gathers. Do you care to explain why?”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe your cameras can’t handle my handsome visage.”

“And there’s been a great deal of damage done to our many important surveillance bugs,” she added.

“Probably a malfunction in their circuits,” Jack added as he glanced at Peter. “I bet Pete here could make better types for you.”

Azazel’s lips tightened together. “I’m sure he can, but I must insist that you stop with this wanton destruction. A surveyed company is a safe company.”

“Then send your surveys in paper format and we’ll fill them out,” Jack quipped as he strode past her. “And while you’re printing those out we’ll have a talk with Scratch.”

Azazel glared at the party as they swept by her, but she grudgingly followed them. Jack reached the door and waltzed into the office of the devil himself. The room was as dark and hot as usual, and Scratch sat in his chair with a smile on his lips and an infinite darkness in his eyes.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he greeted the party as they entered his domain. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

“We have a proposition for you,” Jack offered as he stood before the desk with the others at his back.

Azazel slipped past him and turned to stand beside the corner of the desk. “What sort of proposition?” she questioned him.