Black Dawn Read online

  Jessie listened as several of the men left the room and started to move through the house, she could hear them quite clearly as they moved around upstairs.

  Jessie cursed to herself, what could she do? She felt helpless and knew she’d be discovered in a matter of moments should just one of the men in here head towards the small kitchenette.

  As it stood, her friends were beyond help, from her at least. She’d only recently become a Magi and had not progressed beyond the rank of Apprentice yet. Taking on however many Inquisitors that were in this house, all of them heavily armed would be suicide. She could surrender herself she thought, and maybe she’d survive this. Maybe.

  Hell, who was she kidding, this was the Inquisition, she felt fairly certain that her friends would be dead in a matter of moments.

  No, she knew then, she needed to get out of here, to find Amanda and warn her that the Inquisition was in town. Looking up, just across from her the glass patio doors at the back of the house were invitingly close. The key rested there in the lock, waiting to be turned and the doors opened.

  But she couldn’t just walk up to the doors and unlock them, she’d be seen within moments and likely be killed.

  Scared and frustrated she looked round the edge of the Island again and saw her friends, helpless in the clutches of the Knight Inquisitors.

  As she watched, another man, dressed similarly to the others walked into the house.

  ‘Report,’ the man said.

  ‘Three witches apprehended sir. The rest of the house is being searched.’

  ‘Our Intel said there were four here. Where’s the other one?’

  Jessie shivered, they were talking about her. She needed to get out of here now.

  As she watched, she suddenly noticed that Alex was looking in her direction. His face hadn’t moved, but his eyes looked right at her. Suddenly she felt a faint, gentle presence start to slowly press on her mind. It might have been there for a while but the casting had been so subtly done that she just hadn’t noticed it. It was Alex, he wanted to create a mental link with her, and he’d been careful to make the working as covert as possible to avoid detection. It had worked so far. Had she not seen him looking at her, she wasn’t sure she would have noticed it.

  Jessie opened her mind and allowed Alex to Link with her.

  ‘Jess, you have to get out of here,’ Alex said in her mind.

  ‘I know, but, how?’

  ‘I’m going to create a diversion, the moment I do so, get out through that door, keep low and run like hell. Trust no one and find Amanda, they have to know about this.’

  ‘But, what about you?’ Jessie asked.

  ‘Forget about us. Just get ready, ok?’

  Jessie shifted her crouch to one she could move from quickly, ‘Ready.’ She said.

  She peeked around the corner once more, wanting to see her friends one last time. She saw the man she assumed to be the leader step forward, pull a gun and put it to Roxy’s head.

  ‘Where’s the other one?’ the man said.

  ‘What other one?’ Hayden replied, defiant.

  Jessie felt a sense of pride that her friends were being so strong and standing up to these bullies, but she knew the Inquisitions reputation, and she knew what was probably about to happen.

  ‘So it’s like that is it?’ The man said. ‘Well, consider this your final warning.’

  She could see Alex had closed his eyes and knelt there frowning. He had started to psych himself up for creating a distraction, and he probably knew what this would mean for him.

  The man continued to speak, ‘I’m going to ask once more and then I will start to redecorate, understood?’

  ‘Crystal,’ Hayden said, as Alex suddenly stood up and with a surge of Magical energy, sent out a shockwave of kinetic force at the men about him.

  It wasn’t too strong, and it only caused the Inquisitors to stagger backwards away from him. Had he tried to boost his Magic’s power and make it stronger in the lead up to the blast, it would have been noticed and he probably would have been shot.

  As it was, the shockwave blasted through the room in a heartbeat and smashed most of the windows, including the glass in the patio doors that fell out into the garden. Shouts of shock and surprise sounded in the room from the men while gunshots rang out.

  Jessie didn’t look, she just ran for the patio doors as hard and as fast as she could. She slipped through them, catching her arm on a shard of glass still in the doorframe that sliced her arm open, but she didn’t stop.

  More shouts and gunfire rang out as the door behind her got shot up moments after she’d gone through it.

  They’d seen her.

  In the garden she bolted towards the nearby fence and stepping on some garden furniture, she vaulted over it as more gunfire from the silenced weapons sounded behind her and peppered the fence as she disappeared over it.

  Located in the heart of suburbia, their home had houses on either side of it, each with a good sized back garden. Their back gardens backed onto other gardens of the houses on the next street over, which is where Jessie planned to go. She figured the best way to lose these guys would be to pass through as many gardens as possible and spend as little time on the streets as she could, only crossing them to reach more back yards.

  She heard shouts and movement behind her, back in their own garden as she sprinted for the fence at the rear of their neighbour's yard. She glanced back and saw one of the men rise into view, no doubt stood on the table that Jessie had used to vault the fence.

  Jessie didn’t think, she just let her Magic flow and do its thing, so all she had to do was to follow her instincts, letting her Magic show her the best route for her to take.

  She adjusted her course and got some cover from the well-maintained bushes and trees in this garden as bullets that hummed with Magical energy zipped past her, hitting the trees and mud about her.

  She jumped the next fence and landed in another garden with a house at the far end and the road parallel to her own just on the other side of it.

  Jessie veered right as a dog started to bark at her. She didn’t hang around, instead she vaulted the next few fences and hedgerows before heading to the street. She had no time to think, so with a glance down the street, she ran to cross diagonally, following her instinct still. Suddenly she knew she should turn left, which she did just as a car turned onto the road behind her, it’s wheels screeching as it fought for grip. She caught a quick glance at it as she moved, seeing someone lean out of a window and fire their silenced weapon at her. She ducked behind a car sat on a driveway, the shots from the gun slamming into the sides of the vehicle she used briefly for cover with metallic bangs.

  She didn’t stop running though and dashed down the side of the house and started to leap fences once more.

  Jessie kept her strange route through the streets of Brooklyn for as long as she could, but didn’t see any more of the Inquisition men that had been in her house.

  As soon as she could she hailed a taxi and rode it into Manhattan, heading for the Jade Palace and hopefully some protection.

  Amanda appeared beneath a tree in Brooklyn just opposite the house Jessie had fled from a couple of hours before. Amanda had been at her townhouse when the call from Stella at the Jade Palace had come in saying that one of the new Magi in the city had come to the Palace in a state of shock and that Amanda should come down to see her.

  Jessie had been upset, but not as distraught as Amanda had feared, given the situation. She had sat and listened and comforted Jessie, taking in everything she said. Amanda had remained calm and done her best to be supportive and yet measured in her response. She wanted Jessie looked after while Amanda undertook her own investigation before being placed inside a new Coven if that’s what she wanted.

  She left those details to Stella though, she wanted to check out the house that had been attacked.

  Looking at it now, on the calm street with no one about, it looked fairly innocuous, apart from a few blow
n out windows on the ground floor.

  Gathering Essentia to her, she Ported over the road and appeared on their front porch, right next to the front door, which now she stood next to it she could clearly see had been forced open and would not close anymore.

  She walked inside and into the open plan living area. Slightly off to her right, close to the front of the house were several bloody marks, no doubt where the rest of Jessie’s Coven had been killed.

  To her left, at the rear of the house and the main living area was the kitchen and the shattered Patio doors just next to it. The whole room looked a mess with broken glass and furniture scattered about while bullet holes perforated the walls everywhere you looked.

  The bodies of Jessie’s Coven were missing, but Amanda knew the Inquisition well enough now, by both personal experience and reputation to know that they preferred to burn the bodies of their victims if they could. The cleansing fire would purge the body of the demon within, or so they believed.

  Amanda needed to see what she was up against, though, so just looking around the house was not enough. She concentrated and pulled on the threads of Essentia once more, and cast her mind back through time to watch the attack take place.

  Part way through she paused the action and sent her senses around the building to count up the number of men who had been here. She wanted to know the size of the problem.

  She counted sixteen men, both in and outside the house and a few left in the vehicle they had arrived here in. As she watched the rest of the confrontation play out, she became fairly sure that none of the men in this group were Magi, they all seemed to be Initiated but they carried Magical items that would allow them to take on Magi such as Jessie, especially when they were caught by surprise. As they left with the dead bodies of Jessie’s Coven, an Aegis sprang up around their van, blocking it from Amanda’s Scrying Magic so she couldn’t follow it back to their base.

  Amanda scowled. She’d learnt to hate these delusional Magi early on when one of their number, someone she later learnt was called Mary Damask had killed Liz’s sister, Francesca and Fran’s boyfriend Stephan on the train in France. That seemed like a lifetime ago now. But they had hunted down that Magical Gold Book with a single-minded determination that had been scary to see. She’d also since learnt that one Inquisitor had interviewed and even tortured some of her old friends from the streets of New York to find out more about Amanda and the night she had been attacked by the Scion Horlack in a New York back alley.

  She had foiled Mary Damask’s plans for the Gold Book that day, and although Mary had fled the scene, she felt sure that Mary might one day try to exact her revenge. Given that her presence here in New York had been made public to the Magi community and with Lucian’s death making New York a place of interest to Magi all over the globe, she felt fairly certain that Mary would have heard about her presence here.

  It had always just been a matter of time, and now the Inquisition were raiding Coven’s here in her city. So she naturally suspected that Mary had a hand in this.

  Finishing her sweep of the house and satisfied she had seen everything she needed to, Amanda walked out into the back garden through the Patio door.

  News of the Inquisition had made Amanda think back to her beginnings as a Magi, to the last time she had encountered them, and she suddenly realised she had never visited the Alleyway where she had been attacked since that fateful day.

  Curious to see it again, she pulled the ambient Essentia to her and Ported from Brooklyn to a familiar alleyway in one of Manhattan’s red light districts. She looked around her, and in the darkness of the New York night, flashes of memory came back. She’d been walking past this alleyway on her way to the shop at the end of the road when she’d been grabbed and thrown down the length of the passage, rolling through dirt and puddles, ending up covered in scratches and terrified by the huge demon thing that she saw before her.

  Some Magi are introduced to Magic and monsters gradually and with time to take it in. Amanda had been thrown into that world without warning.

  She’d been living illegally in the USA, making some money from selling herself on the streets of the city after falling into that lifestyle due to befriending a streetwalker two years before. She wasn’t your typical prostitute, most Pro’s don’t look so good, they get hooked on drugs and are exploited by those around them. Not Amanda though, her connection to Essentia and Magic always gave her a sizable measure of good luck. Her ambient Magical luck didn’t control her life or make choices for her, but it did offer her the best outcome of most situations. She’d chosen her life on the streets, and her Magic, although she didn’t know it at the time, made sure that her life wouldn’t be too bad.

  The ambient luck of other Magi and Magical creatures usually cancelled each other out, so if something wanted you dead, such as Horlack, your inherent luck wouldn’t save you by itself.

  Walking down the alleyway she arrived at the scene of the attack and of her Epiphany when she first used Magic.

  The alley widened out here, and Amanda came to a stop next to where Stuart, her protector and pimp while she worked the streets had died. Punched by the twelve foot tall, hideously powerful Scion Horlack into the wall, he’d been pulverised into nothing and buried beneath crumbling brick from the wall he’d been stood against. Amanda looked at the rebuilt section of wall and floor, it’s colouring different to the brickwork and concrete surrounding it. She wished she could have saved him, Stuart was a good man and didn’t deserve to die in such a horrible way.

  She turned and looked round at the last remains of the burn mark on the opposite wall where she had blasted Horlack with an outpouring of raw magical energy, and remembered the intense fear and gut-wrenching terror she had felt that night.

  Seeing that Electrical energy shoot from her arms had been both a miracle and, at the time, scary as all hell. But she had destroyed Horlack, vaporising him into nothing it seemed, leaving only a burn mark on the wall behind where he had stood.

  ‘You alright there little lady?’ came an old sounding voice from behind her.

  She turned and looked at the bearded face of a homeless man sat amongst rubbish piled up beside a huge bin on casters. He’d made a little den for himself and peered out from it, looking curiously at Amanda, no doubt wondering what a young girl like her might be doing wandering an alleyway at night. ‘Hmmm?’ she answered him.

  ‘Are you ok? You look lost,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘No, I’m not lost, just… remembering a few things.’

  ‘Well, creepy alleyways are no place for pretty girls like yourself.’

  She could see he had no connection to Essentia, he was a typical Riven Mortal and no real threat to her. ‘Thank you,’ she said and walked over to him.

  He looked scared as she approached as if he expected her to attack him or something. Instead, she scanned his mind telepathically and quickly knew him to be just down on his luck. He wouldn’t be any threat to anyone and really just needed some help to get back on the horse again and live his life.

  Working a bit of Magic in her jacket pocket she conjured a suitably large roll of cash into her hand. ‘Peter is it?’ She said.

  ‘Uh, yeah, how did you know?’

  ‘I’m your guardian Angel and I’m here to help you.’

  ‘Yeah right.’

  Amanda pulled out the roll of cash and offered it to the man.

  ‘This is a joke, right? This is a joke. You’re not offering me that, are you?’ he stammered.

  ‘It’s yours. Here, take it.’

  Gingerly, Peter reached out and offered his hand, into which Amanda dropped the roll of money.

  ‘Promise me you will go to the bank and deposit the money and start to get yourself sorted,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I promise, I will.’

  ‘You’d better. I’ll check back on you tomorrow and if you have started to sort yourself out, I’ll double it with a deposit into your account,’ she said, smiling. ‘Deal?’

&nb
sp; ‘Deal!’

  She smiled at him once more, and in full view of him, Ported away, leaving him aghast at what just happened.

  Amanda appeared in the basement garage of her Brownstone house in Greenwich Village with a soft pop of air being displaced.

  She really did hope that Peter sorted himself out, she’d be checking in on him.

  But there were other more pressing matters for her to deal with, and she needed to speak with Shaun.

  She approached a frosted glass door to one side of her basement, passing her custom Fireblade Motorbike and a couple of cars they kept down here. The room beyond these modern glass doors had been created by Amanda only a few months ago to Shaun’s specifications. She stepped inside to hear the hum of Computers and servers working away in this pristine space, the door swinging silently shut behind her.

  To her left several cabinets held more computer power than most spy organisations had, while to her right, the wall had been covered in banks of monitors, below which sat several workstations where Vanessa sat in her large leather office chair that looked very comfortable.

  At the back of the room, opposite the door Amanda had come through, Shaun sat behind his desk, facing her and engrossed in something on his trio of screens. She couldn’t see his face, only the top of his head, distinguished by the ridge of bone that ran over the top of it.

  Amanda wandered in, waiting to be acknowledged by these latest additions to her Coven.

  Vanessa turned around first, ‘Hi Mandy, how’s things?’ she asked, slouched in her office chair looking utterly relaxed. Both Shaun and Vanessa had expressed stipulations about joining her Coven, the main one for Vanessa had been to deal with a Criminal Gang that wanted her dead because of some Hacking she did before she’d ever met Shaun. Amanda had managed to call off the gang for Vanessa, meaning she could walk the streets safely once more.

  ‘Hiya, I’m grand thanks, although things out there are becoming a little troubling,’ she said, waving her hand absently towards the street.