Dark Descent (Codex Blair Book 3) Read online

  "OK's, you has stirred enough!"

  I blinked and looked down, realising that it had been enough time. I placed the spoon back on the table and picked up the small bottle containing dragon's blood.

  "How much?"

  "A drops is being enoughs," Fred said.

  I nodded, uncorked the bottle, and carefully tilted it over the bowl. I held steady for several heartbeats, waiting for the drop to fall. As it did, I pushed my own will out with it, yanking it up from within me and clenching my teeth at the pain that surged through to the hand that held the bottle.

  My will followed the drop into the bowl, and I watched as the liquid there illuminated a golden light.

  "Bloody cool," I said with a grin. I corked the bottle and put it back in its cabinet. I poured the potion into its bottle, fishing out a cork and stopping it. "Great! We did it!" I flashed a triumphant smile at Fred, who returned mine.

  "Yes, yous did!" He clapped his hands together. "You dids such a good job, I is being so proud of you."

  I blushed. "Thanks, Fred. And thanks for teaching me, I really appreciate it."

  Fred tilted his head to the side. "But that is what I is here for, Miss. To help you."

  I smiled. Yeah, he was, and it was nice to have someone helping me.

  12

  My feet were dragging across the rough cobblestones as I walked down the street, the haggard expression on my face hidden by the hoodie pulled up over my head. I hadn't been able to get back to sleep last night, and had in fact stayed up talking with Fred after one failed attempt to fall asleep again. The horrors I had reaped onto the world had come back to bite me full force that night, worse than many of the prior ones, and yet nowhere near as bad as the nights to come, of that I was certain. There would always be a worse night in my future, it was just a matter of moving forward to reach it.

  I longed for the days when I had been able to crash onto my bed, falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and sleeping through the night without any interruptions. I could remember precisely the last time that had happened—the night before Tyburn Tree, incidentally also the night Mal had pulled me into a dreamscape. So maybe it didn't count, because I had technically been awake and asleep at the same time. All the same, I'd fallen asleep at once and had woken up fully rested without anything to be worried about.

  I clenched my tired eyes shut and forced them open again, shaking my head to refocus myself. Now was not the time to be thinking about sleep. I would have plenty of time to wish I could sleep later, like when I couldn’t sleep tonight. Right now, I was trying to pick up any little titbits that I could that might relate back to the case.

  I was trolling through the uglier parts of London, mostly populated by the homeless, eavesdropping on the conversations around me. The homeless often know more about the goings on of a city than its classier residents, they have to or else they risk being eaten in the night. Now, most of them might not know why they're anxious or why they have something to worry about, but they know when there is something to worry about. This was always one of my first stops whenever I had a new case. There had been the occasional time or two where I hadn't gleaned anything useful from the expedition, but often I at least had my suspicions confirmed.

  I wasn't looking for a confirmation this time, but I would settle for that. Right now, there was exactly one attack that I knew about, so if there were more that the homeless would be aware of...well, that would certainly help to get me in the right direction.

  My eyes zeroed in on a gentleman sitting on the ground, a sign asking for help beside him and a hat in front of him. I walked over, fished a couple of quid out of my pocket and dropped it into his hat. I knelt in front of him so that we were at eye level.

  "Thank you, lady," he said. He looked tired, like he might fall asleep any minute. I hated that the first thought that came to mind was that he was on drugs, but there was nothing to do but mentally chastise myself and try not to think about it again.

  "It's our duty to help one another," I said with a warm smile. "I was wondering if you might have a moment to talk?"

  His eyes brightened at that, confirming for me that I was a judgemental arsehole and this man had just been beaten down by his life. I had a lot I needed to work on.

  "Of course, I always have a moment for a kind stranger."

  "Thank you," I said, and moved to take a seat beside him so that I wouldn't be in anyone else's way. "I've heard that some people are disappearing, I was wondering if you knew if there was any truth to those rumors?"

  He nodded his head, though it appeared that he was just thinking about the question I had asked, not answering it.

  "Hmmm..." He dragged the sound out. "There's few people would care about our kind going missing. We are the invisible people, when we disappear no one asks any questions."

  "I'm asking questions. I care."

  And I did, I cared very much. So many of these people had just been down on their luck when they ended up in this situation, and there weren't many options for clawing your way back out and into the land of the 'worthy.' It was a shitty world that we lived in, and I wished there was more that I could do about it. I tried to give out what money I could, but I barely had enough to pay Aidan's old bills and keep myself fed. It helped that Finn often asked me to consult on cases; without him I don't think I would keep the roof over my head. At least he thought I was helping, I wasn't so sure of that.

  Then again, I did kind of help with that vampire situation last summer. I had to give myself that.

  "It's hard to know when someone goes missing, that's what makes it so easy to forget about us. Sometimes people get their life together, and that's not something to be concerned about. But most times they come back to say goodbye to the people they knew. There have been some people who have just...disappeared. No word as to why, no goodbye's."

  I nodded. "That's what I'm talking about, the people that never come back. Do you know if there was anything linking them together? A common friend, an odd trait, anything at all? Even if it sounds weird, it could be important."

  He stared at me for a long moment, judging me. Trying to see if I was a joke or not, I thought.

  "They were all funny," he said at last.

  "Funny? Funny how?" I heard the eager tone slip into my voice and wanted to fight it back down. I didn't want to scare him away from talking to me, but that was exactly what I had simultaneously been wanting to hear and had been afraid of hearing. Because funny often meant magical, and that could mean an addicted succubus.

  He shrugged his bony shoulders. "They were just funny. I don't know how to explain it. Some of them weren't always right in the head, seemed. Some of them were twitchy, but they weren't on drugs or stuff like that. I knew that."

  I was willing to bet that they had been magic of some sort, a latent ability that had been more than the average person's, noticeable to something that needed a quick feed. It was dangerous to go into a club, but an addicted creature wouldn't have been able to resist the call of so many bodies in one place. But feeding on the underbelly of the city? That would be all too easy, accessible always to feed the depraved nature within.

  "Thank you," I said, putting more coins in his hat. "I appreciate your candour."

  He nodded his head. "Pleasure to help, Miss."

  I hated when people called me 'miss,' but I didn't bother to correct him. It was doubtless a habit ingrained into him by so many people lording their positions over him; precisely why I didn't like it. Or was he just being polite and I was reading too much into it?

  I straightened up, debating whether to move on or keep going through the district, see what else I could find. The decision was made for me, when I noticed a young woman frantically running towards me. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place her.

  "Blair!" She gasped out my name as she reached me, clutching her chest while she caught her breath.

  My eyes narrowed. "How do you know my name?"

  "You were...
at the meeting," she panted. "You were one of the new ones."

  My eyes widened and I realised that this was how I had recognised her; she was one of the mages that had been at the meeting. I'd probably bumped into her or something at some point. Of course. I gripped her elbow and tugged her down the closest alley, away from prying eyes and ears.

  She didn't protest.

  "What's up?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

  "It's my sister, you've got to help me. She's missing."

  I felt the blood drain from my face. If I had wanted any confirmation of what was going on in London, this was it right here and now. A mage was missing, another attack had come and I hadn't been able to do anything to stop it. I kept telling myself these past few months that it was something I would have to get used to; getting to the scene too late. But I couldn't make myself let go of the guilt that assailed me every time, the constant feeling that I should have moved faster.

  I shouldn't have wasted so much time training with Raven and Mal, shouldn't have had lunch with Shawn, should have done more research instead of making a stupid bloody truth serum with Fred. There had to have been something that I could have done to prevent this, and I had been too sloppy to find it.

  I should have done more, done better.

  "What do you mean she's missing?" I finally managed to respond to her.

  "She's gone. I don't know where she is, but she didn't come home last night, and I knew that was strange. But I didn't want to believe you!" I heard a sob choke in her throat. "I wanted to believe that we were safe and that it was all just hysteria that was working everyone up. So, I told myself she was just having a late night with her friends and I went to bed, but she wasn't there when I woke up either. And I tried to tell myself that she had gone to work early, but it's too much. It has to be...what you were saying."

  Even now, she couldn't bring herself to say the words.

  A succubus is loose in the city.

  I gritted my teeth. I had always known that the mundanes were the type to shut their eyes to whatever was going on around them, so content were they to live in their ignorant bliss. They were the sheep that ignored the wolves that roamed within the herd, kept their heads down and plodded on as if nothing was happening. But I hadn't thought that the same would be true of the members in the magical community. How could I have known that? My only experience with other mages had been Aidan, a Wizard, and he had been so painfully aware of everything that had been happening around him. I had taken a moment to adjust to the idea of this world, but I liked to think that once it all sank in I rolled with the punches.

  I certainly hadn't shut my eyes and ignored the problem with Deacon, or any of the many problems that had come up since then. I had done everything I could to stop those problems.

  Why would I think it would be different for the other mages?

  "OK. So, she's missing. That doesn't necessarily mean I was right..." My voice trailed off, and I shook my head, stopping myself. I wanted to make her feel better, but it would only feed into her ignorance. "I mean, it doesn't mean that the worse has happened yet. There's a chance she's still alive." There was no chance. "I'm going to find her." Her body, maybe.

  Why was I working so hard just to make this one person feel better? I didn't owe her anything. But the way her eyes shone when I spoke made me want to assuage some of her hurt.

  "You will? Oh, thank you!" She wrapped her arms around me without any warning, and I stiffened, not sure how to react. A normal person might have returned the hug, but I just stood there like a wooden board.

  "I will," I said, and I meant it. I was going to find her sister, I was going to figure out what was going on.

  I was going to stop this succubus.

  13

  The girl had given me a list of her missing sister's most frequently visited locations; she had offered to come with me, but I told her that I preferred to do it on my own. And when I say offered, I do mean begged. She was desperate to find out what had happened to her sister, but I couldn't have her distracting me. Just look at how much work I'd put into making her feel better about her sister's inevitable death. I couldn’t do my job very well if she was hanging over my shoulder every step of the way.

  The first place on the list was, of course, her work. Everyone spends most of their time at work, no matter how depressing that thought may be. Oh, sure, you ask someone where they spend most of their time and they'll give you one hobby or another; it never comes out to equal as much time as they put into their boring, menial jobs.

  Just look at me, my entire life was my job. But I suppose my job was not the norm; most people don't go around hunting monsters.

  It turned out that the girl was a waitress at a restaurant, so that was where I went first. It was lunch time, so the place wasn't very busy, but no one seemed to want to look at me. You see, it was a very classy place, and I am not a very classy person. I must have looked like something of a homeless person, dressed in ratty jeans, a T-shirt, and my combination of hoodie and leather jacket. It didn't help that the hoodie was still covering my head. I brushed it off at that realisation, shaking out my hair.

  I tapped my foot impatiently, waiting for a hostess to come and ask me if I wanted a table so I could get on with it and ask if anyone had seen the girl.

  Jessica, her name is Jessica, I reminded myself. I didn't want to humanise her if it was at all possible, but I did owe it to her to remember her name. I get attached to the dead a little too easily; I had learned that back during the vampire case when I hadn't been able to get Jolanda out of my head. Poor girl, she'd had a death that no one deserved. Decapitated by a deranged vampire that couldn't control itself any more than an animal with rabies could. But most people didn't deserve death to begin with, let alone a gruesome one, and I had seen more than enough death for one lifetime. So, you would think that I would be numb to it by now, that it wouldn't affect me very much, and that I would be able to disassociate from the dead that I encountered.

  That wasn't the case, though. I just seemed to cling to them even more now.

  "Excuse me?" I raised my voice as I spoke, staring pointedly at a woman in uniform walking past me. "I've been standing here for several minutes, waiting for someone to acknowledge my existence."

  She stared at me, looked me up and down, and practically sneered. "Oh. Yes. Can I help you?"

  "Yeah, you can tell me if you've seen Sara Clements? She's missing."

  "Sara's missing?" She put her stack of menus down on the nearest table and came over, lifting a hand to her lips but not touching them. "What do you mean missing?"

  Hmph. I didn't want to give her any information now, didn't want to make her feel any better. She'd looked at me like I was rubbish that needed to be taken out the back and dumped.

  "Yeah, missing, her sister says she didn't come home last night. Have you seen her?"

  "No, she didn't come into work today. I think George called her, but he didn't get an answer. And to think I was complaining about being short staffed...Is she OK?"

  "How would I know? I just told you she's missing," I said, resisting the urge to snap at her. Could she be anymore thick? "Did she work last night; do you know where she went?"

  "Um..." She looked at the floor, her eyebrows meeting and wrinkling the skin between. "I don't know her that well," she said with a sigh, looking back up at me. "I don't know where she would have gone after work. Maybe a bar or something? That's what most of the girls do."

  I snorted. That was what most people did when they got off work, went to a bar to let off some steam. She had been about as helpful as a sack of potatoes.

  "OK, well thanks for that, I guess." I turned to leave, but she placed her hand on my shoulder. It took all my willpower to keep myself from the basic reaction to flip her over and onto the floor.

  "Will you tell me if you find something?"

  "I thought you didn't know her?" I asked, turning my head to the side so I could look at her over my shoulder. "Call her sister, i
f you care."

  I left the restaurant, pulling the little notebook I kept on me out of my messenger bag. I scratched 'work' off the list that the mage had given me. So, that had been a dead end, but that was often the case with this line of work. I had to sniff out all the leads and hope to get a bread crumb somewhere along the way.

  Next on the list was a café Jo, Sara's sister, said she went a lot. Maybe she had gone there to get breakfast, maybe someone had seen her. I was hoping to get a lead on her having been seen this morning, rather than last night. If she'd gone missing this morning, there was a very small chance that she might be alive.

  That would be better for Jo, but I wasn't altogether certain it would be better for Sara. If she'd been taken, instead of eaten, that would mean the succubus was hoarding her to eat later on. That would also imply a certain level of self-control that I didn't think the succubus had. If she had been taken, that would mean a lot of rehabilitation would be in order to get her back to even a shadow of the girl she had been before.

  It would almost be better to be eaten.

  The café wasn't too far away from the restaurant where Sara had worked, just a few blocks down and around the corner. It was a cute little shop, a local one instead of a chain. It said something about Sara's character that she was the type to frequent a mom and pop shop instead of a chain, that she liked to support the local community. Or maybe she was the type to snub her nose at chain stores and preferred the out of the way, hidden type of place instead.

  Contrary to the restaurant, the café was busy. There were people sitting in every available seat, and several people standing in line. I stood outside of it for a moment, chewing on my lip as I debated what to do. If it had been like the restaurant, I could have just walked up to the counter and asked after Sara. But now it looked like the only way I was going to get to talk to someone was if I stood in the line, and it would be rude to make everyone wait for me to take up space in the line if I wasn't going to get anything...