Shadow Born: A Joseph Hunter Novel: Book 1 (Joseph Hunter Series) Read online

  My heart hammered in my chest. A cold sweat broke out over my body and beaded on my face. “A distraction from what?” I asked, voice trembling. But he didn’t need to answer. As soon as I’d had asked, I knew. The woman in the shadows had told me. Without hesitation or thought, I whirled around to face her. I replaced the hunting knife for the Glock once again.

  “Mel,” Xander responded, though I barely heard him speak my daughter’s name.

  I emptied the remaining magazine into the woman, but the darkness had swallowed her again. I hit nothing but pillars, creating cement chips and gray clouds. Peeling my fury from where she stood, I faced the remaining Ravens.

  Xander fired again, striking one creature in the back. It lurched forward, and a plume of smoke rose from its shoulders from the radiant blast. A second later, it collapsed onto the ground in a steaming mess.

  “Fuck them,” I said, sprinting toward the remaining two Ravens. I didn’t plan to fight, but to flee the scene and get to Derek’s house. To get to my daughter.

  One of them stepped in front of me, arms spread wide, talons long and gleaming, fangs bared. Xander pulled off another shot. Like the other Raven, it burst into melting steam before crumpling to the ground. Xander dropped one of his guns back into the chest holster he wore, then dug into his pocket and tossed me a set of keys.

  “Go,” he said. “I’ll deal with this last one.”

  I didn’t even hesitate.

  In the grand scheme of things, vampires weren’t as powerful as legend made them out. They worked in two ways. If they had a steady diet of blood and could remain in their human form, they attacked from darkness, usually preying on unsuspecting women or children. If they hadn’t fed in a while, and their demon broke free—as with the five Ravens in the garage—then they acted more like zombies, primitive and controlled by their desires, rather than thoughtful and strategic. With only one remaining in the basement, I didn’t doubt Xander’s ability to dispatch of it quickly. We had fared far worse odds overseas, and we had always made it out alive.

  I sprinted up the ramp. For a terrible second, I had to stop and reorient myself in the darkness. Where had I entered? Noticing a sliver of moonlight beaming through a propped-open side door, I ran to it and swung it open.

  The misty rain had grown to a shower, coating the night in a liquid darkness. Thankfully, Xander had moved his car across the street from the propped door. Not so thankfully, three more Ravens loitered around the vehicle. They had shredded the car’s tires to strips of rubber, broken the glass, and scraped the body to ribbons.

  I halted, standing in the pouring rain, staring across the street at them. Water plastered my hair to my face and poured off my nose and chin. Magic coursed through my entire body, riding the wave of my anger and panic, threatening to burst through my skin and into the world.

  I reached for the untapped power storming within me. Mel was in danger, so I didn’t care who caught a whiff of my usage—even if it was Hephaestus. If someone wanted to hunt me down, they could deal with my wrath, too.

  The Ravens across the street had schemed in kidnapping my girl, they had tried to murder me, and as a last resort, they had torn apart my only means of travel. I barked laughter at their misfortune. Speaking the language of the Nephil, I called upon fire, and flames ignited in my palms. The rain steamed and hissed over my hands.

  The Ravens stalked toward me, seemingly unaware of the power I held.

  I threw both of the flames like a baseball, one after the other, at the creatures out of hell. Both pitches missed wildly. One hit Xander’s company car, exploding what remained of it. The other landed on the sidewalk, shooting flames in every direction, but not catching anything on fire.

  I cursed my magical rustiness.

  To help with my next assault, though, the Ravens had narrowed the distance between us, making my throws a little easier. I created two more projectiles, hurled them both, and two Ravens exploded into flame. I felt another burning sensation as a new ball of fire formed in my hand, replacing that which I had lost a second ago. I shivered with anticipation and power. For a breath, I entertained the idea of allowing the remaining Raven to run, to escape, to warn its friends and its Nephil about me. But it was so close that I could have reached out and touched it. Besides, I didn’t have the patience to speak. I underhand lobbed the third ball of fire at the Raven, and the ugly creature smoked out of existence. Not even the driving rain could save it.

  “What the hell?” Xander shouted from behind me.

  I broke into a wild grin, soaking in the flaming chaos I had created. “You asking about the car or my magic?” I shook my head. “The answer to both of those questions is more Ravens.” I swallowed, trying to harness the high that coursed through my body. “We have to get to Mel.” I turned to face him. The last Raven from the basement level of the garage stood in front of Xander, its monstrous talons cuffed behind its back.

  “Where is she?” I asked it, shoving my nose right up to its face.

  “Not now,” Xander said, removing his cell phone from his pocket and turning the Raven from me. He put his phone to his ear and glared in my direction. “Davis,” he said, “I need a car on my position five minutes ago.” Ending the call, Xander regarded me with wide eyes. His lips parted, as if he might say something, then they shut again.

  “What the fuck is this?” I asked, pointing at the detained Raven. “This is my daughter we’re talking about. Not your fucking monster-crusading job.”

  “Before you smoke him,” Xander said, his tone calm, “know that he’s our witness to this night.”

  “He? Fuck that. It. Don’t humanize that piece of shit.”

  Xander frowned. “It’s our only connection to Mel. We keep it alive. You understand that?”

  I did, but I wanted nothing more than to slaughter it, to reach back into myself and burn the Raven to ash. That’s the thing about using magic, it’s addicting as hell. The Nephil will often choose their Acolytes based self-control as well as raw power.

  Gripping my wedding ring, turning it around my finger to help me focus my thoughts, I asked, “What happened to her?”

  “More Ravens,” Xander said.

  I swallowed and gripped the prisoner’s arm and squeezed. “Is she okay?” My magic pressed against my palm, ready to incinerate it. “Is she fucking okay?”

  Xander wiped rain from his face. “Easy,” he said. “Just breathe, Joey.”

  I ignored him and tightened my grip on the Raven’s leathery arm, allowing the heat to radiate from my hand and burn its skin. It squirmed at my touch. “Is she okay?” I asked again slowly, so its idiotic mind could understand me.

  “They took her alive,” the Raven said in a voice filled with gravel and shards of glass—a rough, low-baritone whisper.

  My entire body felt weightless, like the next strong gust would blow me into oblivion, like the rain would pound me into the cement, and I would wash into the sewers and out of existence.

  “Took her where?”

  The Raven stared at me with black eyes. It said nothing, even as its skin steamed into the night from my grip and the smell of burning flesh caught the wind.

  Looking up at Xander, I said, “Where did they take my daughter? Why did your men not follow them?”

  He shook his head. “Reinforcements called me. They told me everyone was dead. All my men. Derek and Marie. I hung up to meet you in the garage and told you what I know.”

  Headlights burned through the rain and glared off the storefront windows. I turned, hoping a horde of Ravens would leap out of the car. I needed to kill something. The vehicle sped along the slick asphalt, skidding to a stop before us.

  I shook my head. “I’ll get what I need from the Raven,” I said, pulling on its arm. “You go back to the house if you want, but I’m not wasting my time when it can tell me where she is.”

  Xander ran a hand over his head and sighed. “Joey, listen to me.”

  “She’s my daughter,” I said. “Not yours.
So you listen—”

  “You’re not fucking thinking,” Xander said. A pregnant silence settled around us. His usage of the f-bomb caught my attention, shut me up for a second. “You would have killed every Raven down there. Yeah? Then we wouldn’t have had a witness to interrogate. The information it has is fixed. It’s not going anywhere. The house, though—it’s a hot crime scene. We only have so much time to track any spent magic or find evidence before local law enforcement gets involved. You understand?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “Fuck, man. It’s Mel. My daughter.” I swallowed back all the panic and anxiety that coursed through my blood, and I breathed. Xander was right. I had to defer to his logic on this. My emotions would cloud any decision I made.

  “I know,” he said. “We’ll get her back. Don’t worry.”

  I stepped forward and opened the driver’s door. “Out,” I snarled, stepping aside for the driver to exit. “Or I throw you out.”

  “You might want to listen to him,” Xander said.

  The man scrambled from his seat, and I jumped in. I didn’t wait for my three passengers to shut their doors, let alone buckle.

  The back tires fishtailed on the slick asphalt, and we shot into the storm like a fired bullet.

  5

  To begin the day, I had awoken to a cloudy sky, sprinklers on Derek’s green, manicured lawn, and shit smeared across my face. Now, that night, I stood in the same spot I had lain that morning, though rain showered down around me now instead of sprinklers.

  I stared at the Anderson’s porch, unable to move.

  The patio light illuminated the scene. The front door lay in shards on the cement. Nothing else appeared out of place or unusual. Just that front door—the symbol of safety and peace. It lay splintered and shattered. With nothing there to guard the threshold, rain beaded into the front entryway, wetting the hardwood and spraying across the walls.

  An aura of spent magic covered the entire property. I allowed my magical senses to roam. I had already accessed my power, and I would now need it to find my daughter. The aura continued north, back toward Sacramento. I had a feeling I would be spending more time in the city I had abandoned five years ago.

  Behind me, M.I.S. vehicles parked in the street, barring traffic from both sides. Some of the employees had set up cones and tape to cordon the scene’s perimeter, while others moved in and out of the house without the trivial effort of opening a door.

  A comforting hand squeezed my shoulder. I didn’t have to turn to know that Xander stood beside me. I swept my fingers through my wet hair, trying to think of something to say. I had nothing.

  “I’ve convinced the other investigators to let you walk through the house before they move anything.”

  “And the Raven?” I muttered.

  Xander hesitated, before saying, “I had some people escort it into the garage. The restraints are inscribed with runes, so it can’t break them, no matter its strength.”

  “She’s seven,” I said, swallowing a lump of remorse. Why hadn’t I realized the distraction earlier? It had never even crossed my mind. I never should have allowed Callie’s ghost to return and haunt me. I should have stayed close to Mel, as I always had. I should have been around to protect her. “It’s my fault.”

  “Joey,” Xander said. “The scene is still hot. There might be something in there that points to her abductors, to their location, to something. This isn’t cold evidence like we had with Callie. We have options. We just have to act quickly.”

  “You ever see a Raven stand still and not attack?” I asked.

  “Only when controlled by a Nephil,” Xander said. What he hadn’t said spoke ever louder.

  “So, we’re dealing with one of those shit-heads?” I spoke my thoughts aloud, voicing an unsettling piece of suspicion lodged in my mind—like old meat stuck between your teeth. “What Nephil would want to kill Callie and return seven years later to finish off me and Mel? It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

  “They’re eternal beings, Joey. They live by their own time and their own rules. What’s seven years to something that can’t naturally die?”

  “I know, but still… it feels way too coincidental.”

  “You think seven years means something?”

  I shook my head, not knowing what I thought or how to go about it. “I don’t know. Forget it,” I said. “We can figure it out later.”

  Having built enough courage to investigate the house, I stomped through the grass and onto the cement, tracking mud. I stepped onto the porch and stared at the front door that lay broken at my feet, then I entered the home.

  Derek’s pale body was sprawled off to the side of the entryway. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Both his arms were broken—bent so far in the wrong direction that it almost looked natural. Blood caked his pallid face, and he had bite marks across his entire body, as if devoured by a wild beast.

  The Ravens had beaten him, broken his arms, and sucked him dry. The evidence of a Nephil orchestrating this operation piled on me. Ravens not serving a Nephil didn’t work in packs like wolves, and they worked sloppy. And normal vampires—those full on blood—preferred a quiet life of blending into the world and premeditating their kills. They chose and selected their prey as if for a higher purpose. If given a choice, they didn’t participate in mindless barbarity.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Derek’s corpse. His blood stained my hands. I had sought him out and tied him to my affairs. With nothing left to give him, I moved around his corpse and ventured deeper into my daughter’s home.

  From the entry, the living room expanded. A wall of windows overlooked a dark backyard. The living room bled into the kitchen, only a bar separating the two rooms. I shuffled through them, looking for any evidence that would lead me to Mel, but getting distracted by signs of her existence in the house. A doll sat on the couch with a small blanket wrapped around it. In the kitchen, Mel had a toy kitchen set. A plastic frying pan with plastic eggs and bacon inside it remained on the plastic range. Had she cooked dinner with her adopted parents that night?

  Moving on, I found myself in a stairwell. Derek’s wife lay at the bottom of the stairs. Her head faced the wrong direction, and bite marks littered her body as well. After apologizing to her, I moved upstairs.

  I found Mel’s room after peering through the second door in the upstairs hallway. I hesitated before entering, grabbing my wedding ring to prevent my hands from shaking—to give me strength. With a deep breath, I walked in.

  She hadn’t made the bed that morning, and a mountain of stuffed animals sat piled atop the mattress. One of them was the monkey I’d bought for her shortly after her birth, before I had to give her up. I picked up the ragged animal. It was missing a beaded eye and the fur had faded to a soft brown. Stealing the creature from her room, I shoved it in my coat pocket.

  Papers lay scattered around the floor. Bending over, I picked them up and looked through them. Most possessed nothing more than black and red scribblings, as if she had taken two crayons and dragged them back and forth across the page. But one was a depiction of Mel and Marie and Derek sitting around a fire in a forest. For a second, I held the picture in trembling hands, staring into the cartoonish red and orange flames. After a time, I folded the drawing and stuffed it into my back pocket. I ignored the remaining jagged, scribbled pages.

  I shuffled around her small room, scanning the titles on her bookshelf, sifting through the toys in her chest, opening the drawers to her desk—it was an investigation to find evidence about Mel, not her captors, but I couldn’t help myself. This was the closest I had ever come to knowing my daughter, to seeing who she really was.

  She had a coloring book and loose crayons and blank paper spread across her small desk. A family portrait stood on the corner of it, framed and propped. I picked it up. The three of them smiled, and my breath hitched. I blinked rapidly to clear my vision, to see the picture better—to see Mel’s smile. She had Callie’s beauty—pure joy and life highlighted
by dark hair that curled on the ends and a splatter of freckles beneath her dark eyes.

  I tried to recall the last time I had smiled, truly smiled from happiness and excitement, and I couldn’t. For me, smiling was the biggest lie I could tell another human. The closest I ever came to happiness was the bottom of a bottle filled with a clear, fiery liquid—and that’s only because it let me forget about my life for a brief amount of time.

  Setting the picture down, I dragged my feet to Mel’s nightstand and opened the drawer. I removed a spiral notebook that read MEL’S JOURNAL in sloppy block letters. Apparently, she had acquired all of her mother’s looks, but my handwriting skills. Opening it, I flipped through the pages one by one. Most of them contained drawings—the same black and red scribblings as the papers I’d found on the floor. Some of the pictures had captions beneath them. Other pages lacked any artwork at all. Instead, she had written capitalized text down the entire page.

  I sat on the edge of her bed and read the journal from front to back, stopping once to read a single sentence about a thousand times. She had written it near the middle of the notebook. A drawing took up half the page—the cereal aisle of a grocery store, with a tall man and young girl standing in front of the Cheerios boxes. Beneath the image, Mel had written a caption in purple crayon: Maybe he can save us.

  I tore that page from the journal after memorizing every detail about it. What did she mean? Save us from what? And who was us? I shoved it into my pocket with the other drawing and exited her room, returning downstairs.

  I saw Xander in the kitchen. He leaned over the counter and scrolled over his phone’s screen.

  “Any security cameras around?” I asked, joining him. “Neighbors see anything? 9-1-1 calls? Fuck, man. Anything?”

  “Not that we’ve seen or heard,” Xander said, clicking off his screen and setting his phone on the counter. “I’ve instructed some technicians to look for hidden security—like nanny cameras—but nothing has come up yet. One of the neighbors called emergency services. Reported, and I quote, ‘Something strange happening over there.’ A police cruiser showed up about fifteen minutes ago. He was pretty upset that we didn’t immediately notify his department about the double homicide and kidnapping.” Xander shrugged. “M.I.S. has precedence on supernatural matters, though."