Bladed Magic by J.C. Daniels Read Free Book Online Page A

this.”
    “You do. You found Mandy. Colleen told me what happened. Her gut told her to call you and you went out, alone, and came back with her. Not even a year ago. And you’re what…twenty-one? Twenty-two?”
    Twenty . Jerking a shoulder in a shrug, I asked, “What does it matter?”
    “It matters a lot. A kid with next to no training does exactly the right thing—that’s not luck. That’s magic. Your kind of magic.”
    A chill raced down my spine as I turned my head to look at him. Was he guessing? Or did he know? “My kind of magic? What, stumbling into a nest of rats that could have killed me?”
    He laughed. “You didn’t stumble. You hunted. You had a bow and you methodically weeded them out. Yes, you were outnumbered and you didn’t think the plan through, but considering how it could have turned out?” Eyes locked on mine, he came closer.
    I felt frozen in place.
    “Come on, Kitty-kitty,” he murmured and his voice all but hypnotized me. “You’re dying to do this. You know you are and so do I.”
    “Yeah?” I had to fight myself from jerking away as he reached up and tugged on a lock of my hair. “How do you know that?” Arrogant jack-ass.
    “It’s all but written on your skin. And it’s in your eyes. This sort of thing is in your blood. It’s a need, just like it is for me.” He dipped his head and my heart lurched, then started to race as he murmured in my ear, “You can’t tell me you’re not going crazy standing behind that bar day after day after day. You need to do more. And you know it.”
     
     
    The more Justin expected of me wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
    Granted, I didn’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it.
    We stood in front of a place that made my skin crawl. It also made me want to puke.
    This was how he expected me to help?
    The house smelled of blood, of death, of painful sex and evil.
    I’d been exposed to this before and I’d spent the past nine months trying to forget about it. The months since I’d gone looking for Mandy down in the tunnels below East Orlando might as well not have happened, though, because it was all just as clear, just as vivid.
    Except this was worse. Somehow. This was worse.
    Mandy had willingly gone to the rats. She’d been sixteen and stupid and sick and desperate for a chance at life. She hadn’t realized that the only thing the bite would do would hasten her death along. She’d still gone willingly.
    What I smelled here was fear. So cloying and thick, I didn’t think I’d ever get the stink of it off my skin. And under it all, innocence.
    Children.
    They’d just been children.
    “He brought them here, didn’t he?” I asked. My voice was scratchy, a bare whisper of what it should be.
    When Justin didn’t answer me, I turned my head and looked at him.
    He wasn’t looking at the house. He was staring at me, so intently, it left me unsettled. The green of his eyes glowed. Spinning on my heel, I closed the distance between us. He stood a good eight inches taller than me. I was all of five feet two. Plenty of people towered over me and under most circumstances, it left me feeling intimidated. Just then, I didn’t care. Reaching out, I snagged the collar of his jacket and jerked him down. His eyes widened. Snarling into his face, I demanded, “Did he bring them here?”
    He closed his hand over my wrist. But he didn’t pry me away. I felt the warm pulse of magic against my skin. It was a startling sensation. Startling, but not unpleasant, exactly. Just…odd.
    Then, the weirdness of the moment increased and he murmured, “There you are. I knew you were in there.”
    I blinked, the words strange enough that they threw me off-guard and blasted a hole through the anger I felt. My hand uncurled from his shirt and I backed up a step. “What?”
    “I knew you were in there somewhere.”
    “What in the hell are you talking about?” I stared at him, uneasiness creeping through me. My hand started to heat. In the back