Black Spark (Dark Magic Enforcer Book 1) (3 page)

My hair. My beautiful, black, shiny, straight as an imp's ear, gorgeous hair. I cut it all off. Hacked away like a lunatic let loose in a barber's shop with instructions to "have at it." You should have seen it, my hair was the business. Makes me cry just to think about it.

Soon I was down to what I guess you would call urban chic. In other words, it looked like I'd cut my hair myself in a McDonald's toilets with shaky fingers while my eyes refused to focus and felt like I'd washed them in gravel—the bad kind, not the happy gravel we usually all love to use.

To complete the "style," it was also obvious I'd gone all out and cut my locks with a pair of scissors for left-handers. How the hell that happened I will never know. But the cut was all the rage, so why not? Mind you, I didn't know that until later, and all I felt was like I'd committed the second truly terrible act of my so far very not at all fun morning.

Next came the peroxide.

Five minutes later, after sticking my head under the tap and then the drier—that made me feel like I was a dog sticking my head out the window on a car journey and wondering if my tongue was sticking out too—I looked like a new man. Not a better one, just a different one. I also found I had a mole on my neck.

Gone was the dark, mysterious stranger, hello, blondie. It was all right, I guess. In fact I'm getting used to it. Kind of.

Now, about that note.

Putting the Pieces Together

As I walked down the street, feeling strangely exposed without the familiar tickle of hair at my neck, and wondering if the blond clashed with my shirt, I dug out the paper from the inside jacket pocket and unfolded it.

It was a receipt, just not one you are likely to have ever had. This was for services rendered, or maybe not, I couldn't recall. But it explained the cash in my wallet and the memory loss. I'd taken on a job, and clearly it hadn't gone quite as expected.

There are a lot of us, enforcers, cleaning up the mess of others, dealing with people or species that get a little too carried away with what I'm going to stick to calling magic, although it's a word that doesn't do it justice or even hint at the truth. Let's say those with the ability to harness the Empty, that's closer to the reality of it anyway. Those known as Hidden, and for good reason.

I may be an enforcer but I am not a killer. Yes, I've killed, but what happened in the park is not my usual behavior. I'm a bit of a softy really, although if you looked at me you'd see this cool, calm, kick-ass dude who doesn't get bothered by much at all and is always ready for action, but that goes with the job. It's not who I am.

This guy does not go around kicking and punching people, telling them to hand over their cash, or else. I'm an enforcer, a magic enforcer, and that means I'm one of the good guys. I have been tasked with keeping us safe and upholding our, albeit often strange, rules—like the law but without the uniform or the need to fill out forms. A good guy.

Or I was.

Now it had all gone to hell because I'd killed someone, and done the worst thing possible in our Hidden world where bad shit happens all the time but nobody in the Regular world knows anything about it.

I'd let the undead cat out of the coffin, and this was exactly what I was employed to stop happening. It's who I am. It's my identity. It's me.

I've got a special talent. One I wouldn't wish on anybody. I have the ability to suck the Empty right out of you and send it back where it came from. It doesn't work on true Hidden, creatures born wholly of magic, and I can't just stare you down and BAM! you are normal again, but if you are, or were, human, then I can take the magic away and leave you empty inside.

What I do is deal with those that get a little cocky or carried away with their use of magic, risking exposure for themselves and the rest of us.

Except, and this is where things start to make sense, it takes a hell of a lot out of me. So much so that I often lose a few hours afterward, as the only way to get away from the insane pain, the sickness so deep it makes my bones weep, and the feeling of being ripped to bits by a load of annoyed trolls who then hand my still conscious carcass over to a shortage of dwarves, who know for a fact I stole their gold, is to sink down deep into blackness, cry for Grandma, and try to forget I was ever a person.

Which I was. Still am to some extent.

It explained the memory loss that suddenly came back to me when I opened the scrap of paper and realized I'd been on a job. Hopefully it had been successful, but judging by the state of me and what I did I wasn't so sure.

"Hello, Faz."

"Uh-oh."

"That's a new look. Not trying to hide from us are you?" said one of the goons.

Yeah, you guessed it, more vampires. But these weren't like the two relative beauties I met earlier, these were old dudes. Not in appearance, but in actual age. A few hundred years at least, so they were still fine walking around in the daylight, if you could call the weather daylight.

The proper old ones, like thousands of years and more, the bosses, the Heads, they keep well away from the light. They sleep through the day or rest somewhere suitably dark and vampire-like, half-dead until the sun sets and they come to life and are pretty much invincible as people. Not that people is really the best way to describe them.

Younger vampires are okay with being labeled human, or ex-human, but the old ones, the ones that have thrived in the shadows for centuries, even millennia, they will rip out your throat if you refer to them as anything but vampire.

They see themselves like butterflies, emerging from the chrysalis of an almost forgotten human being to become what they are now, and you would no more call a butterfly a caterpillar than you would an old vampire a human being.

Are they dead, these bloodsuckers? No, not really. They use blood magic to remain what they are, and that is pretty much immortal. But such a gift comes at a high cost, more than most are ever willing to pay, and the charge is your humanity.

Yes, I'm not exactly a regular guy, but I know what's right, and wrong—killing the innocent—and I have a lot to answer for because of what I've done, but at least I know the difference. And besides, something happened to make me do what I did. I'm not usually a homicidal chess player, honest.

So, the goons.

"Hi Bret. Hi Bart," I said casually. "Fancy meeting you here. Doing some shopping are you?"

Bret and Bart stared at me, with those spooky as hell eyes serious vampires have, not that many of them are jolly. They aren't big conversationalists, although once, in a rather unexpected outpouring of more than a few syllables each, they'd explained why they had ditched their Chinese names at the turn of the century and insisted on Bret and Bart now—to make themselves more modern.

Nothing crazier than a vampire, apart from a Chinese vampire. Okay, apart from the Welsh, they are proper crazy. Must be the confusion about the signs, or the damp.

"Um, okay. Nice chatting, see ya." I moved to step around them, which was quite a distance, but I knew it was no good, and besides, there's no getting away from these guys once they are given a job.

The twins may look like lumps of Chinese granite, all roughly chiseled features and way too much time spent in the gym to make up for their five foot nothing stature, but they are not to be trifled with. And anyway, I knew who had sent them after me, and to be honest the alternative wouldn't be much better.

Many Hidden would be baying for my blood the moment what I did hit the news or the underground networks, so in a way it was a relief. The kids from earlier were just playing, knew better than to try anything, but the twins, they would fight if they had to. Although I couldn't see that they would have been given orders to mess with me in the middle of the street on a busy Saturday, if it was Saturday—I was in no mood to find out.

Did I go along quietly with the Chinese vampires? Hell no. I knew they wouldn't be at their best in the daylight as they were a few hundred years old. Enough had come back by now for me to know who I was and a little of what I, and they, were capable of. I was an enforcer, but I was also an Alone.

An Alone has drawbacks, the main being you don't have others with you to help focus magic, and numbers are always good. But it has advantages too, like the fact people who can do what I do are pretty damn selfish and not very nice people.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of lovely people who can use magic, and some even live relatively normal lives, but most don't. Once you understand our world it's easy to see why.

I steeled myself, not really in the mood for any meetings until I found out why I'd done what I did, and could think of a way to not get killed for it. Maybe by Bret and Bart's boss, or my own, and readied myself for the sickness.

Even thinking about drawing power from the Empty made my guts churn and my palms sweat, but I went with it, let it build, let the darkness envelop me and I felt my tattoos swell with the power.

The nauseating dark magic spread from my knuckles up my arms, across my shoulders and down my torso, just as I felt it come from my feet, writhe along my calves, scamper up my thighs like a hairy-legged giant centipede craving the dark and moist most private parts I owned, and it all met at my navel.

It meant I was covered head to toe in the ink, and I'll have to show you some time. It's pretty impressive and it hurt like hell getting it done, but that was long ago, a memory so distant it may as well be from another life, another person—which isn't far from the truth.

The ink helped me prise open the door to the darkness where the magical forces that permeate the Universe abide, and made more possible than the bag-laden and desperate looking shoppers around me could possibly know.

As the sickness descended, and my heart felt ready to explode, I not so much vanished as faded from memory and sight. If you were witnessing it then I wouldn't be all see-through like a ghost, you'd just not really take any notice as I was there but not there. Like the most nondescript person you could ever imagine. You wouldn't be able to describe me, you wouldn't even remember you'd seen an unmemorable person, I just faded from the world most folks live in.

My head felt like the bone was contracting, as if the twins' muscular fingers were clamped down hard like two Asian vices. My throat was as rough as sandpaper, bile rose, and my body screamed as I faded to nothingness. I stepped to the side and was about to leg it, when Bret, or Bart—I'm never sure which is which—grabbed me by the upper arm and said, "Don't think so, Faz. The boss wants a word. You've been a naughty boy, real bad. Come on."

See, that's the problem with your proper, world wise vampires—it's hard to fool them. They live their lives in the shadows, feed off the magic in everyone, even you, even your dog. Not that they do anything to dogs but keep them as pets mind you. Um, apart from the vampire guard dog ones. Anyway, my disappearing act was a waste of time with them, a waste of time full stop, but you can't blame a wizard for trying.

How was I to know that what I'd just done was my usual state of being when out in normal company? I was still confused and not really myself, and it wouldn't work on vampires anyway. And no, I wasn't about to get all Black Spark on them and shoot the bad stuff out my fingers or anything.

I was in enough trouble already, so killing, if I was lucky, two short Chinese vampires in the high street would get me into more trouble than I was prepared to deal with.

I snapped back to solidity and sighed. "Okay, let's go." I tried not to throw up and swallowed foul tasting liquid as Bret and Bart led the way. I walked in-between them; I wasn't going anywhere without them.

Hey, don't judge me, I'd had a bad day, and like I said, I'm not really a fighter, and certainly not a killer. Just because I do some work for the most powerful wizard in the country doesn't mean I'm invincible. Nobody is. Everyone has their weaknesses, and one of mine is two badass vampires carved from granite, even if they are called Bret and Bart. Yeah, I know, what is with that?

We walked through the city, down the high street, rounded the corner past a tiny church and cemetery right there in the center, went down the alley past Spillers Records, the oldest record store in the world—still there, still selling vinyl—and weaved our way out of the city center.

It's a small place, and soon enough we were getting into a car. Bret and Bart squeezed in either side of me in the back, their heavily muscled thighs making me have to close my legs like I didn't need to do the man thing and open them wide like all blokes do out of principle.

For the entire journey nobody said a word. To amuse ourselves we played the timeless game of who-can-open-their-legs-the-widest, and the driver, a new kid I'd never seen before, took us out of the congestion and up to Taavi's home.

It had been a bad morning, and it wasn't going to get any better. I hadn't even seen my boss yet, so I knew it would be a long day. I also had to figure out what the hell had made me act so out of character.

The one saving grace was that I was finally back to being me. Memories flooded in. I was thinking my usual deep and intellectual thoughts, and sure, there were pieces missing from the night before and the early morning, but I knew who I was, felt like I was whole again.

I was back!

I was also a disgrace to my kind. It kind of put a downer on the whole self-realization—it made it hit home all the harder just what it was I'd done.

I was an enforcer, supposedly one of the best, and it was my job to see to it, no matter what, that magic remained underground and nobody ever heard about it. Yet there I was, the one that had finally exposed it to the world—that's the problem with the modern age, everyone has a damn phone and bloody camera.

There's no privacy. It sucks.

An Admission

Why do we need enforcers? Because the Hidden are a rather impulsive and often dangerous lot, that's why. Magic does funny things to you, and as there is no end of magic, and ways it can be used, there is also no end of danger and trouble to clear up.