Touch of Death (Order of the Elements Book 2) Read online

  “I agree there’s a similarity there,” he allowed, “but if all the COS’s cantrips go blank, anyone might have created the one they used on the phantom. Doesn’t have to be the manufacturer.”

  “I thought there were laws governing the creation of new spells.” Set by the vampires’ council. The Order might not rule here, but that didn’t make the place lawless. “The vampires have restrictions on the trade of magical supplies, too.”

  “Yes,” he said. “They do.”

  They must know about the COS, but they didn’t care about the rest of us losing business. Look at how that vampire had acted when I’d mentioned the revenants.

  “How do I make a request to see them?” I said. “It’s not like I have contacts who can get me inside their council hall to speak to their undead rulers.”

  Or did I?

  There was one person who might make even the vampires’ council sit up and listen… the Death King.

  8

  Brant wasn’t convinced. “He’s as bad as they are. Worse, if anything. The vampires pretend to be working for the good of everyone in Arcadia. The Death King looks out for himself alone.”

  “Like most mages are any different.” I walked past the warehouse to the empty stretch of ground bordering the swampland. “I’m under no illusions about him. Believe me. But he can help.”

  I think. The guy had walked into the Order’s headquarters giving commands left and right and they’d scrambled to do as he told them. Why should the vampires be any different?

  Brant grumbled, but he did walk with me through the swampland all the way to the gates into the Death King’s territory. I protested, but he said that while he wouldn’t come inside, that didn’t mean he’d leave me to walk across the swampland alone. Thankfully, we didn’t encounter anything worse than a few phantoms—as dead as they should be, and indifferent to our presence.

  I walked towards the gates and the liches parted to let me enter. On the other side, however, I found my way barred by Davies, the Fire Element. He looked me up and down as though I was a zombie who’d fallen through his ceiling. “What d’you want?”

  “To talk to your boss.” I took a step forwards, but he didn’t move aside. “He won’t be pleased if you don’t let me in.”

  “Do you think the Death King wants to talk to the likes of you?” He folded his arms. “I don’t think so. Do I see that cowardly fire mage of yours lurking outside?”

  “Brant isn’t a coward.” I stepped up so we stood nose to nose. “You should know, your master isn’t the only person who can remove someone’s soul.”

  His mouth twisted in a scowl, but he stepped aside to let me pass. “Go ahead, knock yourself out. You wouldn’t be the first idiotic mage my master has tricked into turning into one of his unwilling servants.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  He didn’t look back. “Hurry up before I change my mind.”

  Arse. I suppressed the impulse to flip him off and walked up the stone stairs into the castle, making a mental note to ask Devon to add a bad-tempered Fire Element to the next stage of our D&D campaign.

  I crossed the smooth flagstones of the entrance hall over to the dais at the back, where the Death King was in the middle of speaking to the Water Element. She was a curvy black woman who wore her hair in a thick braid, dressed in the same armoured clothing as the others. Her cloak was lined with blue and decorated with the skull-shaped insignia of the Death King surrounded by circles representing each of the elements. Each Elemental Soldier had their respective Element highlighted, which in her case was the blue swirl for water.

  The Water Element caught sight of me and gave me a curious look, though not an unfriendly one like Davies had. Then she nodded to the Death King and exited the hall through a side door. The same door we’d gone through to see the dead liches, in fact. The other Elemental Soldiers were presumably up to date on the investigation.

  “Olivia,” said the Death King. “Do you have anything new to report?”

  I told him about the morning’s events. He listened in silence to my account of the market, the experiment with the cantrips, and our trip into the tunnels.

  “So,” I said, “I’m guessing the people making those cantrips are using some kind of new material that doesn’t disintegrate—”

  “I don’t care about that,” he interrupted.

  “But it’s relevant,” I pressed. “If someone is using a spell to kill the dead, and they’re using those cantrips to do it—”

  “No coins were found at the scene of my liches’ deaths.”

  “Maybe they fell through the node, then.” If they’d landed on the other side, they’d probably have been picked up by ordinary humans and assumed to be fake money or something. Without the marks of a spell, there was nothing designating them as magical.

  “There’s no proof,” he said. “I understand that this new initiative puts you in a precarious position with regard to your business, but it’s not pertinent to our investigation.”

  Irritation prickled at my skin like an itch. “Fine, then. Let’s just ignore the fact that the vampires are acting shifty around the subject of their revenants showing up dead and rotting in the tunnels, and the council seems to be doing nothing about it. I might add that they’d rather negotiate with the revenants than with the likes of me, so—”

  “I’m not ignoring the vampires,” he said. “I have every intention of making contact with the vampire council myself.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. The vampires must have given the COS permission to operate at the market, but that doesn’t make them legit.”

  “I beg to differ,” he said. “Nobody can sell on that scale without the express permission of the council.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” I said. “But if they were legitimate, they wouldn’t have been so cagey when it came to answering questions about their suppliers. Brant is going to find out—”

  “Then by all means, leave it to the fire mage,” he interjected. “I will arrange a meeting with the vampire council to discuss the deaths of their revenants. Is there anything else you wished to tell me?”

  “No, I think that’s all,” I said. “I mean, I did wonder if the lich who betrayed you might still be using those old tunnels as a hideout even with Vaughn in jail. But that’s just a guess.”

  “The earth mage.” His voice hummed with anger. “The Order has him in their clutches, or I would question him again myself. The foolish human might not have asked the identity of the traitorous lich he worked with, however. He himself used an alias.”

  “He did?” I said, disarmed. “But—he and Brant were friends.”

  “That proves nothing,” he said. “There are no limits to which some might practise deceit. If the traitor lich shows his true colours in front of me, I will make him sorry he ever turned his back on my rule.”

  Chills raced through me, and the temperature of the entire castle seemed to plummet below freezing point. “Right. Okay, that’s all I wanted to say.”

  I gladly left the castle, leaving the chill of the Death King’s magic behind. I’d forgotten how damned scary he was. No more human than any of the other monsters I dealt with. Stupid thing to forget, really.

  I hurried down the steps and damn near ran into the Fire Element, who stood at the foot of the stairs making a flame dance above his hands. “Whoa.”

  “Watch where you’re going.” He put out the flame. “Are you leaving?”

  “Of course.”

  To my annoyance, he tailed me to the gates, where Brant waited outside.

  Brant gave me a wave, his expression tightening at the appearance of Davies. “You again.”

  “Me.” The Fire Element looked him up and down. “Too chicken to risk your soul by coming inside?”

  Brant stepped right up to the gates. “Wanna insult me when you’re not cowering behind your master’s fence?”

  The Fire Element gave a wolfish smile. “Don’t you have the guts to set foot in here
? Or have you not forgotten your stint as a lich?”

  Brant took a step forward. Dangerous flames danced in his eyes.

  “Hey!” I snapped. “Cut it the hell out, the pair of you. If you want to waste your time with childish posturing, feel free, but I’m heading home.”

  “You don’t get to tell me what to do,” said the Fire Element.

  I grabbed Brant’s tensed elbow. “Nope, but you can fuck all the way off for all I care.”

  Brant dug his heels in for an instant, then seemed to realise that starting a fight in front of the castle belonging to the man who’d ripped out his soul was not a smart move.

  “Ignore him.” I steered him towards the node. “The Death King’s already majorly pissed off.”

  “Why?” He stalked towards the node, his shoulders tensed.

  I quickened my pace. “Because someone betrayed him, of course. He doesn’t need an elemental duel on his doorstep as well.”

  Brant didn’t answer, but he unresistingly walked with me to the node, and we crossed over to the other side.

  Devon must be in the shop, because the only signs of her in the living room were the piles of fabric beside the sofa. Brant blew out a breath, his eyes still dancing with flames. “That guy just pushes all my buttons.”

  “Yes, I know he’s an arsehole, but he can still vaporise you.”

  “Let him try.” He scowled. “He hasn’t the right to look down on the rest of us. He’s nothing more than a traitor.”

  “Because he works for the Death King?” The elemental mages had this weird habit of shunning anyone who submitted to working for someone who wasn’t one of them. Hell, to some of them, even working for a mage of a different discipline was frowned upon in certain circles. I’d thought Brant had outgrown that particular phase, but I supposed seeing a fellow fire mage working for someone who he despised was too much for him. “Wouldn’t you take the chance to live in a castle if it came up?”

  “Not in the land of the dead, I wouldn’t,” he said.

  “You sure?” I put on a teasing tone, hoping to distract him. “They even get to ride horses to work. Dead ones, admittedly, but still.”

  His brows shot up. “You rode one?”

  “Beats trekking through the swamp,” I said. “I didn’t see Ryan around this time, but not all the Elements are snooty bastards like Davies.”

  Not that I’d seen much of the Earth Element either. Or had a conversation with the Water Element. Anyone who could handle the Death King in any capacity had far more patience than I did. Maybe that was one of the main qualities he looked for in his soldiers. Aside from uncommon skill at magic, that is.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said. “What did you and His Deathly Highness talk about, then?”

  “We discussed who else might be working against him,” I said. “I brought up Vaughn and the traitor lich, but we still don’t know who it is or how they’re hiding from him. I do wonder if there might be a clue left in Vaughn’s old lair, after all. It’s worth a look, I think.”

  “Are you back?” Devon called from the shop. “Come in here and tell me all about it.”

  Brant pulled me into his arms. His lips traced mine, sparking warmth inside me that quelled the lingering chills of the Court of the Dead. “See you in a bit?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll grab lunch and catch up with Devon, and then we can go on an underground lich hunt.”

  First things first, I went into the shop and presented Devon with the blank cantrip and the light spell Brant and I hadn’t used yet.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  I explained the theory Brant and I had tested. “The cantrips work, all right, but they don’t fall to pieces after being used. They just turn blank instead. Test the second one if you like.”

  “The COS are selling reusable cantrips?” She took the blank coin from me. “Damn. No wonder they can afford to charge so little. Of course, any practitioner can reuse them, which might hit them in the back when there are suddenly a dozen other practitioners selling cantrips at the market who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to afford the materials.”

  “Fair point,” I said. “That one’s yours to play with.”

  “Sure, why not.” She flipped the coin and caught it in her palm. “I’ll see if I can crack this coin open. There’s got to be a downside somewhere.”

  “Warn me if you’re going to blow anything up,” I said. “Anyway, Brant’s gonna dig around and find out who their suppliers might be. The Death King isn’t particularly bothered about the COS, though. He thinks it’s irrelevant to the investigation.”

  “That’s nice,” she said. “It’s only our livelihoods.”

  “Yeah, well, someone is turning his people into rotting corpses,” I said. “Maybe he’ll change his mind when he speaks to the vampire council. A brand-new business like that… there’s no way they don’t know.”

  Her brows rose. “He’s meeting the vampire council?”

  “Allegedly.” I shrugged. “I tried to snag a vampire to question at the market, but he was downright rude when I brought up the revenants. You’d think the council would be getting more complaints, considering the revenants are running around aboveground, unchecked, while the underground nodes are out of use.”

  “They might be.” She flipped the coin again. “If I were them, I wouldn’t make their concerns public.”

  Hmm. The smell alone was enough to put me off playing detective in the tunnels, let alone the possibility of running into whatever creature had dealt those deadly wounds.

  As for the rest? I’d need to wait and see what the Death King said before I started antagonising the vampires.

  After a lunch break and an hour of watching Devon turn the blank cantrip into a creation of her own, my phone buzzed with a message from Brant. Meet you on the other side? I’ll be there in five. A smile formed on my face. I hadn’t bothered changing out of my Parallel gear, ready to meet him again as soon as he gave the go-ahead.

  “What’re you grinning at?” asked Devon. “It’s going well with fire-boy, is it?”

  “Believe it or not… yes, it is.” Better than the last time. Though it helped that we weren’t holding one another at arm’s length. I wasn’t, anyway. Brant was… trying. His protective nature became grating sometimes, not to mention his rapid-fire temper, but he was making an active effort to keep me involved in his life. “He must have crossed back over here just to text me. Saves time.”

  “Only if you don’t bring zombies back with you.”

  Come to think of it, I’d used the node to travel back from the swamplands again earlier, but nothing had followed me that time.

  I crossed over through the node and found Brant already waiting on the other side, on the street near the warehouses. “No revenants this time?”

  “I already burned them,” he said. “I didn’t think Devon would appreciate it if I landed in your house, so I figured this was the best way for us to meet.”

  “Considering the zombie incident, I have to agree,” I said. “Devon would, too. So… what have you found out?”

  “I asked around to find out who lives in Vaughn’s house now,” he said. “Apparently a few rogues moved in as soon as the place was vacated. Without permission. They might be willing to let us poke around and see if he left any clues about the traitor lich’s identity behind.”

  “Then it’s worth speaking to them.” If they’d camped out in an abandoned house, I’d guess they were either mages or desperate practitioners.

  We walked the short distance to the house, which blended in with its neighbours by virtue of being dilapidated as hell. The roof stood at a crooked angle, the bricks were charred—most likely from Brant’s flames during his enraged battle with his former friend—and the wooden door had been replaced at least once, probably for the same reasons.

  Reaching the door, Brant knocked. I put on a false smile which became strained the longer nobody answered.

  “Who is it?” sa
id a low, masculine voice from behind the door.

  “We’re not here to threaten you,” Brant said. “We used to know the person who once lived in this house, and we want to ask—”

  The door flew open, revealing the vampire I’d accosted at the market. His hood was down this time, revealing a moon-pale face, sharp features, light grey eyes, and long dark hair.

  “I told you to go away,” said the vampire.

  “What are you doing in here?” I said.

  “I should be asking you the same question.” He frowned, exposing his pointed fangs. “This is private property, this is.”

  “You started squatting in here after the last owner was arrested by the Order,” I said to him. “You don’t own this place any more than I do.”

  The vampire leaned on the door frame, blocking my view of the hallway. “Get out.”

  “I don’t think so.” Brant’s hands sparked, kindling to flames. “As Liv said, you don’t own this place. We could drive you out if we wanted to.”

  “Really?”

  Two more vampires appeared behind the first. I shot Brant an exasperated look. We came here to find out the identity of the lich traitor, not start a fight with a group of pasty newbie vampires. They must be new. The older vamps lived in manor houses, not dilapidated shacks which had once housed criminals. But even newbie vampires could be deadly opponents, given their speed and strength advantages over us normal folk.

  I reached for the pouch at my waist. “Answer our questions and we’ll leave you alone. Did you ever meet the earth mage who once lived in this house?”

  One of the vampires vanished. An instant later, a pair of cool hands brushed my neck from behind. “Get out.”

  Brant swore and threw a flame at the vampire, who released me in an instant. “If you burn us, our sire will hunt you down in the night and rip out your innards.”

  “That’s lovely,” I said. “Brant, tone down the flames.”

  The vampires might be moody bastards, but that didn’t mean they were on the side of the enemy. And if they belonged to a more powerful vamp, their sire had the potential to make things really nasty for us, a complication we didn’t need.