Black Spark (Dark Magic Enforcer Book 1) (12 page)

I nodded, and the agreement was made. Nothing more was needed.

We got back to the business at hand, and I ignored her shaking hands—you think going cold turkey with the booze is tough? You know nothing.

In both her previous life, and her new one, Kate worked freelance as one of those miracle-makers with video. She's not exactly a special effects person, neither is she a game designer, but rather, she works with fringe outfits making short snippets for promotions. Be it bands, bloggers, or the latest guru of this or that craze, and when she gets low on jobs—which is seldom—or wants to get creative, she can put together a short sequence that is almost guaranteed to gain a little notoriety and earn her revenue as it gets shared around the Web and picks up money from clicks on ads served alongside her creation.

She had excelled herself for me.

As I watched, mesmerized by her skill, the power of modern technology, and the ability for online content to spread around the globe faster than the Welsh gossip grapevine, I knew I was saved.

Kate had manipulated a number of recorded deaths that had occurred that very day around the world, of which there were countless. It was a mean thing to do, messing with people's last breath like that, but it saved the world, and that was more important.

She had added everything from lightning bolts coming from the fingers or eyes of people stood watching as terrible accidents happened, to dark and menacing black clouds of death full of spectral ghosts appearing from out of people's mouths and attacking unfortunate souls who keeled over and died.

On and on it went, over twenty of them in total, spreading around the globe at the speed of light and making my indiscretion of the morning insignificant and lost amid a sea of nonsense. The number of views was staggering, let alone the comments of the crazies that believed or disbelieved what they were seeing. Most knew the score in the age where anything could be manipulated, but it didn't stop them being shared on every possible social media platform and the regular news.

The finale was one she had just created and sent less than ten minutes ago, showing world leaders from the US, the UK, Russia, and Korea all performing one kind of magical act or another in quick succession and looking entirely believable, followed by a mash-up of all the clips she had created playing fast but in reverse, recordings of her work environment showing exactly how it was done.

"You are a lifesaver." I went to kiss her, then thought better of it and instead half punched her arm—don't you dare laugh.

She looked at me like I was a complete idiot then smiled, shook her head in exasperation and giggled.

"I like you too."

"Of course, why wouldn't you? Dark Magic Enforcer, Faz Pound has a way with the ladies."

Kate thumped right back, only hard.

Vampires have some serious power behind them, and she knocked me right off my stool and halfway across the room. I slammed into the spotless wooden floor like I'd been hit by a wrecking ball.

"See, smooth." I groaned as Kate jumped down off her stool and was at my side faster than you can say, "Vampires are really fast," concern on her face.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, Faz." She burst out crying.

I held her there on the floor for a while. It wasn't the first time. Her life took a lot of getting used to, and when the tears dried up we got up and left, coffee forgotten, the work she'd done to cover up my accidental revelation of magic put out of our minds, only one thing now the focus.

Kate needed to feed, so we had to go find someone she could kill and still find a way to carry on living with ourselves afterward.

Such is the life of a vampire and the friend of a vampire. But I'm Faz Pound, Dark Magic Enforcer, Puncher on the Arm of Hot Vampires, Slayer of Erotic Moments, Destroyer of Intimacy, Ignorer of all the Signs, the Dolt who Rules all Dolts, and all round muppet, but what I am not is someone who abandons friends or turns from helping them kill someone to drink their blood.

Why?

Because Kate and I made a pact the first day she awoke in Grandma's house after I saved her and she understood who she was—she only kills people that deserve to die. It's a win-win situation.

Hunting Bad Guys

We have a list. Actually, I have a list I let Kate peek at as and when needed. No point putting temptation in her way, and besides, she's intelligent enough to know it's best not to have so many addresses to hand. It's much better to have the information when it's needed—it makes us both sleep better at night, or usually day in her case.

Nobody wants to know what their next meal is all the time—you need the element of surprise—so she's no different in that regard than the rest of us.

"I'm sorry about this, Faz."

"About what? Hey, I'm here for you, always. You just saved my bacon, and don't tell anyone, but I was getting seriously worried for a while there. Anyway, I'd do anything for you, you know that."

"But it's so gross! How can you stand it?" Kate isn't a fan of the gore and the screaming side of her new life, but what can you do?

"Trust me, I've seen worse. A lot worse. You should have seen it back in the early nineteen hundreds. People were really dramatic then, and we had no TV or Internet so everyone took things a lot more seriously. At least now people half believe in magic and vampires and the Empty anyway. It makes life easier."

"Also a lot riskier. Do you think the videos will get you off the hook? I hope so."

"Definitely. You saved me. My messed up morning will be forgotten now, no doubt about it. You even reverse engineered the footage of it so it looks like you made that one up too, so I'm fine. Oh, and I had Dancer bring back our favorite chess player for a few days so I'm absolutely in the clear. Sort of a backup plan just to keep everyone happy. A distraction, and I owed the poor guy a few more days, to say sorry."

"By everyone you mean Taavi and Rikka, right?"

"Yeah, exactly. I'll have to pop in and see him later, tell our esteemed leader I've been a good boy. Amongst other things."

"Like what?"

"Don't you worry about it. We'll do this, go see Grandma, then you can sleep and recover. You okay?" I took a quick glance and she seemed all right. A little more tired but nothing too drastic. Much better than she had near the beginning when she fought the urge and paid the consequences. If she was up for letting me help then I knew she needed it, as letting the hunger build for too long is probably worse than anything I've had to deal with in the course of enforcing and letting the Empty consume me.

"Fine. Just a little sleepy, and hungry."

"We'll be there soon. Get some rest."

Kate slept while I drove out of the city and headed toward our destination. I couldn't help wondering where Oliver was, and if he'd given up on shadowing me. Maybe he had, but something told me he'd be back soon enough. Probably off feeding on one of the unfortunates he'd picked at the hospital. I put him out of my mind. I never dwell on things out of my control, what's the point?

My spirits were high as I knew I would be in the clear. Disaster averted, at least for now, although I knew I had the worst to come: Ankine Luisi. But before I tackled that terrifying problem I'd go see Rikka again and get more information on what exactly may have happened the night before and why I'd been sent in the first place.

The night was still a blur. I remembered nothing of my encounter with her, just what the outcome was, and the last thing I wanted was a repeat of that—one dead chess player, or dead, now re-animated, soon to be dead again anyway.

What a life. It beats wearing a tie and sitting in a cubicle though.

Sometimes.

*

"We're here. Kate, time to wake up." She stirred slowly, like she could hardly hear or function, buried deep in sleep and a weariness only the vampire can know. I knew it would be a minute or so before she came around properly. The changes in just three years were subtle, but they were there. Once she would have snapped to attention, now it was like waking a baby after a bottle of milk.

I wound the window down and new car smell was replaced with the beautiful aroma of clean air. Grass and cows and rain. Not city rain, proper, fresh, uncontaminated rain that washes away your sins and allows you to believe, just for a while, that the world is a simple place and it all makes sense.

Droplets splashed onto my face through the open window as I let my mind clear and soak up the purity of a world devoid of intentions good or bad. A world where everything just was, how it has always been for the planet. It's only people and other sentient species that have existential angst and try to do the other person over to get ahead in life.

Something caught my eye and the purity left, replaced by anger and even a little hate, although I don't have a lot of hate left in me. I've seen too many truly bad things—as much from Regulars as from Hidden—to have more than a tiny hard lump buried somewhere I can't find left of that emotion. It's a battle, this life, and some people are just plain wrong. Aberrations that make the world a little worse to live in.

We were about to make it a tiny bit safer, for a while.

Kate woke and smiled at me, making everything better.

"He's over there, in the field. Looks like he's shifting stuff with his tractor. You want me to come with you?"

"No, but thanks. I'll be fine. Tell me what he did again, Faz, just so I know I'm not a terrible person."

I leaned over and cupped her face in my hands. "Hey, you are a good person. You make the world shine. You don't kill just to survive. You made a choice, to only do it to the bad, and that makes you good."

"But there are laws. Who are we to judge? Who am I?"

"Come on, we've had this conversation before. I'm not going to try to convince you, Kate, this is your decision. You know who you are, what he is. It's up to you." It is. This is her life. I'm not about to goad her into murder. To take a life is a terrible thing, but sometimes the laws of man fail, so sometimes the only justice that remains is carried out outside of the law of the land. It is no less righteous, it just doesn't come with paperwork.

"Sorry, I'm being silly. See you soon?"

"Sure. Be safe."

Kate got out and closed the door gently behind her. I watched as she wrapped her coat around herself tightly, then trudged across the field toward the slow moving tractor and the man driving it.

I got out of the car and fumbled around on the back seat, opened up the bag I'd grabbed from Kate's, as she never remembered, and got things ready.

Am I a bad man for doing this? Who decides? I'll tell you what a bad man is, then maybe I will leave it to you. I am at peace with who I am, most of the time, but it still leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, the death. Even when the death is of a Mr. Ronald Dickinson; farmer, loner, and murderer of young children.

Ronald is on the list, but there are names above his, and they are all crossed out. It's grim, it's nasty, it's the life I know, and many would thank me and Kate for what we do. Others would lock us up, Kate especially, as she does the killing, and throw away the key.

I'm confident we are doing the right thing, usually.

This man, this farmer, killed two children one night in a rage of epic proportions and it had nothing to do with being drunk, being off his meds, or anything else that could go a little way to downgrading his actions from despicable to excusable in even a minor degree by way of diminished responsibility.

He is, was, bad to the core. Something could be done about him. Yes, there are countless vampires just as nasty, but even they self-police, and although not averse to killing anyone they please, they draw the line at children—you do not want to know what they do to their kind that take the life of what they hold in the highest regard, and see as the only pure thing on the planet. Innocent children are untouchable, even to the oldest, nastiest vampires still alive.

I won't go into the details of what this "man" did, but our world is a small world and we hear things. We hear, and know, more than you can imagine. When Regulars slip through the cracks of what is right and decent, yes, even to us, then don't be surprised if they get what is due somewhere down the line.

I have contacts. I know people, and they know people, and some of us are even living lives in normal professions in the Regular world and like that kind of life. But some things nobody can stomach, be they on one side of the law or the other, and that is the harming, or worse, of animals and children. The vampires regard them as the only pure things on the planet.

He got what he deserved, but nobody will ever know what happened, and the only people that will remember his name are me, Kate, and the parents of the children they will never get to see grow up.

Kate came back to the car ten minutes later, looking vibrant but with the weight of the world on her shoulders at the same time. She was still feeling the sickness after feeding, that was clear, but it would pass soon enough. The blood magic that coursed through her veins, and would keep her strong and in superhuman condition for months on end, battled the sickness. It was clear which was winning.

She had a vitality to her now that was unmistakable to the likes of me. Kate practically glowed with inner happiness and contentment, and I could see the guilt and shame wash away as the effects of the blood took over.

This is the true horror of what she is, and what I know she will become as the years pass. She had her fix and she was happy, for now, and the blood magic wrapped her in its cold and numbing embrace.

Escape was impossible now. She was vampire and always would be, and the guilt over what she did would lessen each time she took a life, until it meant nothing at all and then she would be lost. Her humanity stripped away and her attitude to human beings nothing more than ours toward the meat we consume without a thought for the animal it came from.

Depressing stuff, but she looked hot, even covered in blood and gristly bits.

"Here, I got your change of clothes ready. Have some wipes." I couldn't take my eyes off her as she cleaned her face free of another human being while looking in the side mirror, fangs stained red, lips too full, eyes dancing with merriment and vigor, her entire body somehow screaming more sexiness than was decent. Then she stripped off her coat and blouse. I nearly fainted.