Blood Gamble (Disrupted Magic Book 2)

  Table of Contents

  Start

  By Melissa F. Olson

  Disrupted Magic series

  Midnight Curse

  Boundary Magic series

  Boundary Crossed

  Boundary Lines

  Boundary Born

  Scarlett Bernard novels

  Dead Spots

  Trail of Dead

  Hunter’s Trail

  Short Fiction

  Sell-By Date: An Old World Short Story

  Bloodsick: An Old World Tale

  Malediction: An Old World Story

  Also by Melissa

  The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery

  Nightshades

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

  Text copyright © 2017 by Melissa F. Olson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542045834

  ISBN-10: 1542045835

  Cover design by Mike Heath, Magnus Creative

  Cover photography by Gene Mollica

  “Ah, well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!”

  He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity:—

  “Not so; alas! not so. It is only the beginning!”

  ―Bram Stoker, Dracula

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Pasadena, CA

  Four years ago

  The girl in the cell paced and paced, trying to ignore the new signals from her body. Everything hurt, and the blasted emptiness in her belly cried out—for food, of all wretched things. She screamed with frustration, smacking her palms against the bars of the cage, but that hurt too. How did anyone do this? How did those fragile little humans survive in these soft shells of skin and blood? She hated it.

  She sat down once more on the bed, huddling under the thin cotton sheet. The cold was another old-new experience she now had to endure. The basement cells weren’t damp, she had to give him credit for that, but they were eternally cold—as the grave, she thought manically, and laughed at her own joke. They had given her a plain shift to wear, little more than a glorified sheet, but it was better than the torn and shredded cocktail dress she’d arrived in, which lay discarded in one corner, still covered in blood. Blood that now meant nothing to her. It no longer knew how to call her name.

  It was all his fault. He had come to her several times, her John—she refused to call him by the name he now used. Each time, he would silently draw her blood into syringes, check her pulse and her pupils, and depart without a word, leaving behind a tray of food, like a final slap in the face. At first she refused to cooperate, kicking and scratching with her frail human body, but he’d calmly pressed her mind to make her obedient. Imagine that—being pressed by a vampire! Was there no greater humiliation? She had decided she would rather be still than be used as a puppet.

  But whether or not she submitted, her time was running out. When he completed his tests, she knew that her long, turbulent life would end. All those years . . . the days and nights spent with distinguished men, the child she’d borne, the efforts she’d made, first to be with greatness, and then to be great herself. She had had so many adventures, so much passion! She had saved vampires from themselves; she knew she had. But no one would give her any credit, and now they never would.

  After that, after her one heroic attempt to alter the current of history had ended in a sort of meaningless success, there had been years and years of sulking in her rotting mansion, trying to devise a way to regain relevance. Then an opportunity to stage a coup had fallen into her lap, and there’d seemed to be a sort of poetry to it. After all, John had brought her into all of this. He had been her maker. Wasn’t it only fair that she unmake him in return?

  She had come so close.

  She lost track of time in her cell, of course—her body suddenly required sleep, like a common animal. But after perhaps three or four days, John came again, with no tools this time, no tray of food. She knew he would be able to smell the fear that this provoked in her, but she held her chin high. She would show him nothing.

  “So you’ve had enough of playing mad scientist?” she said crisply. “Did you figure out what that . . . that creature did to me?”

  He looked at her with eyes that hadn’t aged, but which had become ancient all the same. “You know what she did, Claire,” he said in his quiet way. “She’s cured you.”

  She snorted. “Cured. Cured. I cannot believe you would say such a thing after all we have been through, as humans, and then as vampires. After all I have done for you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Be very careful, Claire. The last thing you did for me was try to kill my wife in my presence.”

  She waved a hand. “I was upset. You were being unreasonable.”

  He just looked at her, his face etched with sadness. To her disgust, she felt her lower lip begin to tremble. Would this body never cease to betray her? “If you’re waiting for an apology, it will not come,” she snapped, meeting his eyes. She knew it was dangerous, but what did it matter now? “Feeding Stoker the book united us. It pushed us past the infighting and forced us to find order—choosing cities, taking care with our prey. Kill me for that if you must, but I regret nothing. I saved us.”

  He regarded her with an expression she could no longer read. She fought the human desire to squirm. She would not show him a prey response, not now. “Maybe you did,” he said at last. “And maybe not. Either way, that is not why you will die today.”

  She tossed her hair out of her eyes.

  “Why, then?”

  He smiled then, the old wry smile she had known forever. “Because you lost.”

  In the end, he pressed her mind, so that as her spine twisted sideways and snapped, she felt nothing but a pleasant daze. She didn’t particularly deserve such mercy, Dashiell knew, but he did it more out of respect for the past than respect for her. He had been Claire’s maker, and i
n many distasteful ways, she had been his.

  He never told anyone that he pressed Claire before her death, not even his wife. Instead, as he returned to her he gave the appearance of a man who had just taken the garbage to the curb. His wife probably suspected, of course, because of all those who still walked the planet, she alone knew that he kept the fading ember of a Romantic still alive within him. But she had kept that secret for a very long time, and would keep this one for longer still.

  Chapter 1

  On a Thursday evening in the middle of March, I was sitting on the floor of a werewolf’s condo, delivering on what might be the world’s most awkward favor.

  I couldn’t leave my spot on the carpet, but I’d at least come prepared, with big-ass headphones, magazines, and snacks. Shadow, the enormous bargest who had decided to adopt me, was draped across my feet, her head turned to watch the bedroom door. Her body language was sort of amused-but-puzzled. Even a regular dog could have figured out what was happening in the next bedroom, and Shadow was miles from a regular dog. Every now and then she would tilt her head backward to check my face, as if to say, “I know we do some weird shit, but . . . really?”

  Each time, I just kind of had to shrug.

  Two weeks earlier, my friend (and knife trainer) Marko had brought up a personal problem, for probably the first time since I’d met him. Marko was a werewolf, and werewolf magic causes its victims to become sterile. He and his (human) wife really wanted a baby. They couldn’t afford options like international adoption or IVF with sperm donors, and they were both in their early forties now, running out of time.

  Which is how I ended up being the only one who could help. As a null, I don’t have any particular magic powers—just the opposite, really. I negate all the magic within a certain radius around me, creating a magic-free bubble that has me as its center. In theory, if Marko stayed within that area, I could keep him human for a short time, and he and his wife could make a baby the old-fashioned way. Assuming, of course, we could all get past the extreme awkwardness that would be involved.

  It was weird, but it was far from the weirdest thing I’d done lately. The leaders of the Los Angeles vampires, werewolves, and witches all paid me a retainer to clean up supernatural problems that arose in the city. When things were quiet, as they’d been for the past couple of months, I was free to pick up freelance work.

  Most of the time this involved shepherding vampires around during daylight activities, but two weeks earlier, I had been paid to attend a witch’s beach volleyball tournament so I could make sure her opponent wasn’t using magic to cheat. A few days before that, I’d accompanied a crowd-shy werewolf to a taping of his favorite sitcom, to help him stay calm in the midst of all that teeming humanity. I might have actually enjoyed that outing, except the sitcom was one of those “fat slovenly husband vs. shrill anorexic wife” crapfests. Freelance work could be kind of a gamble.

  Compared to that, sitting around with loud music and magazines wasn’t exactly hard on me. “Besides, it’s not like I had anything better to do,” I muttered to myself, causing Shadow to briefly raise her head and look at me inquiringly. Whoops. I’d probably said that a lot louder than I meant to. It was true, though: since I had split up with Eli, my werewolf ex-boyfriend, I’d had an awful lot of free time. I exercised (reluctantly), ran security drills with Dashiell’s daytime (human) crew, let my friend Jesse drag me to the shooting range to practice with his stupid guns, and hung out with Molly, my vampire roommate. Occasionally someone would make a mess in the Old World, and I’d go clean it up. But I had what currently boiled down to a part-time job, exactly two friends, and zero romantic interests. And, insult to injury, most of my TV shows were going on hiatus.

  I was bored.

  My phone buzzed, cutting off Courtney Barnett’s voice in my ears. The screen showed a smiling picture of my brother, Jack. Ignoring the sounds behind me, I picked up the phone and hit Answer.

  “Hey, Scarbo,” he said cheerfully. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Jack,” I said, really hoping the sounds of sex weren’t audible through the headphone mic.

  “I can hear the eye-roll in your voice, you know,” Jack replied. And I could hear the smile in his. “Are you working tonight?”

  Jack thought I was a professional house cleaner who specialized in preparing homes for big events—hence my need to work nights. “Uh, sort of.” I was busy, but I wouldn’t be taking any money from Marko for this. He was a friend, not to mention the only member of the Los Angeles wolf pack who wasn’t currently treating me like something smelly they’d stepped in. That’s what happens when you break up with a beloved pack member. “But look, you don’t have to call me every other day to check on me,” I said to my brother. “I’m fine.”

  “I know,” he insisted. “But it’s still hard to go from being in a committed relationship to being single, under any circumstances. I just want to make sure my baby sister is okay.”

  For just a second, an old hurt resurfaced. What about the year after our parents’ deaths, when Jack had basically ignored eighteen-year-old me so he could grieve alone? I’d been so vulnerable, and being alone then had led to some bad things later.

  But I reminded myself that I wasn’t being fair. Jack was here now, and he was trying. “I know. But I really am fine. How are Juliet and the kids?”

  After years of awkward singlehood, my shy, gangly big brother had recently gotten married, to a widowed guidance counselor from Bakersfield. Juliet was lovely, and her two kids had taken a shine to me. The feeling was mutual.

  “They’re great,” he chirped, and we spent a few minutes talking about how he was coaching Riley’s soccer team. The image of quiet Jack running up and down a field screaming at preteen girls made me grin.

  “And Logan?” I asked. “Are the billing people still being a bag of dicks?”

  “Ugh. Don’t remind me.” Jack’s new stepson, Logan, had spent almost a year in the hospital being treated for tumors on his spinal cord. That was how my brother had met them, while he was on rotation in the children’s cancer ward.

  Logan was in remission now, and his prognosis was excellent, but Juliet had had really shitty insurance when he was diagnosed. Now she and Jack were dealing with a ridiculous amount of debt for Logan’s medical care. He wouldn’t tell me how much it was, but I got the impression that it ran into six digits.

  I had been quietly stashing away most of my freelance money to give to them, but it wouldn’t make much of a dent yet. “I’ll take that as an affirmative on the dick-bag scenario,” I said mildly.

  “Yeah,” Jack grumped. “Anyway. I was gonna ask you—” The phone beeped again, and when I looked at the screen, I saw Dashiell’s name above a cartoon Dracula image. Great. Molly had been messing with my phone again. If Dashiell ever saw that picture, I’d suffer the Glare of All Glares. “Hey, Jack, I gotta go. Work call.”

  “Okay, gotcha. Real quick: Can you come for dinner Sunday night?”

  “I don’t need your pity invite.”

  “I know, I know, it’ll hurt your antisocial street cred, but Juliet’s making those hot dog things you like,” he wheedled.

  “With the bread around them?” I said hopefully.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then I’m in, as long as you promise never to use the phrase ‘street cred’ ever again.”

  Smiling, I clicked over to Dashiell without giving Jack a chance to respond.

  “Good evening,” I said in a fakey vampire voice.

  There was a pause, and then the cardinal vampire of Los Angeles said formally, “No, that has not gotten any funnier since the last time you said it.”

  “It’s funny to me,” I replied, but I kept my tone light. Even if I could push Dashiell a little further these days, I was still not a moron.

  “Indeed,” he said, his voice dry as dust. “If you’re quite finished, I’d like you to come to the mansion.”

  “Really?” I checked my watch. Eight thirty on a Thursda
y night. It wasn’t an unusual time for me to get called to work, but usually Dashiell just texted me an address. Before I could check myself, I blurted, “Please tell me you didn’t kill anyone at your own house. That’s just tacky.”

  I expected him to snap at me, but he just said in the same brittle voice, “No. I want to offer you a freelance assignment.”

  He couldn’t see it, but my eyebrows climbed up into my scalp. Dashiell barely approved of me taking “unofficial” jobs at all; I certainly hadn’t expected him to offer me one. Despite myself, I was intrigued.

  At the same time, I had made a promise to Marko. He knew I might have to leave for an Old World emergency, but I wouldn’t ditch him if I didn’t have to. “Can you give me an hour?” I said into the headphone mic. “I have a previous obligation.”

  There was another brief pause—don’t listen to the noises behind you, Scarlett!—and then Dashiell agreed that it could wait an hour.

  Which set off a red flag all on its own. In Los Angeles, the three branches of the supernatural share power more or less equally, and I’m considered a partner, which means that in theory I’m on the same level as them. But for the really important, life-threatening stuff, we all look to Dashiell. I can’t help but think of him as my boss, and as a cardinal vampire, he’s used to getting what he wants, the moment he wants it. Which meant that Dashiell being accommodating might be an actual sign of the apocalypse.

  Or a sign that I was about to get myself in serious trouble.

  As previously arranged, Marko just texted me a brief Thanks, Scarlett! when he and his wife . . . no longer needed my services. My feet had fallen asleep thanks to the hundred-eighty-pound bargest on top of them, so I shook them out, packed up my stuff, and took off for Pasadena.

  When I finally arrived at the enormous Pasadena mansion that Dashiell shared with his wife, Beatrice, Shadow trotted off into . . . well, the shadows. It’s not just a clever name. Dashiell’s place was secure and spacious, not to mention completely fenced in, so it was one of the few places where the bargest could comfortably wander around, taking in smells and organizing a contained squirrel genocide. Which worked out well for everyone, since Beatrice didn’t really like having Shadow around. This may or may not have had something to do with me encouraging her to poop on the fancy Spanish tiles in the driveway.