Tempest and treason, p.1
Tempest and Treason, page 1
part #4 of Smoke and Shadows Series
Tempest and Treason
L.L. Gray
Heroic Rose Publishing
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by L.L. Gray / Heroic Rose Publishing LLC
All rights reserved.
This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.
Contents
Your FREE book is waiting
Dedication
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
33. Chapter 33
34. Chapter 34
35. Chapter 35
36. Chapter 36
37. Chapter 37
38. Chapter 38
39. Chapter 39
40. Chapter 40
41. Chapter 41
42. Chapter 42
43. Chapter 43
44. Chapter 44
Epilogue
Thank you!
45. Daggers and Deception
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Also By
About the Author
Acknowledgments
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A killer pair of shoes, a party of a lifetime, and a demon.
What could possibly go wrong?
Cameron Blaze owes a demon a favor and what better way to pay off a debt than to have a girl’s night out? The plan was simple. Find a killer pair of heels, go to a great bar, and party into the early hours of the morning. Cameron thinks that she has everything planned. The shoes on are, the drinks are poured, and the party is in full swing. She just forgot to account for one small thing. Magic going haywire.
Suddenly, gods are out of control, myths are throwing punches, and Cameron is running for her life. Will she be able to stop the magical mayhem in time or has the clock run out for Cameron and her friends?
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To Becky
Thank you for being my dragon-spotting, fairy-chasing, adventuring partner for over thirty years.
Chapter 1
An innate sixth sense dragged me out of my nightmares. Something was out there. In the dark. Watching me.
Magic sprang to life inside me before consciousness. The insubstantial form of my shadow blade slapped into my palm before I opened my eyes. Instinctively, I ran the shadowy form along the whetstone of my will. The blade sharpened from a wavering dream into a dark blade with a razor-sharp edge almost instantly. My subconscious mind had selected the familiar form of the yatagan I’d left back on Earth. When the hilt formed and solidified in my hand, it felt like I was grasping a weapon molded to my grip rather than a newly formed blade of pure magic. All of that happened in less time than it took to tell it as I rose to a crouch and scanned the darkness, careful to keep my eyes averted from the dying embers of the campfire so as not to affect my night vision, searching for the sound that had awakened me.
Nothing.
I looked at my companions to see if the noise had disturbed them. Both were still asleep on the hard-packed earth. I was wary of waking them, especially if it turned out there was nothing prowling through the night. Ever since we had crashed through the portal to Fae, everyone’s nerves were stretched tight. Mine felt like discordant piano strings, jangling at every unfamiliar sound. I looked back at the slumbering forms. Sloane and Andrei needed their sleep. Unless something was coming to murder us in the night, I was determined not to wake them.
A low whistle caught my ear, and a whisper of movement snagged at the corner of my eye. A tall, lean man with dark hair and enough stubble to form the start of an impressive beard stepped briefly out of the sparse tree line, marking the end of the forest.
Magnus.
The werewolf raised a finger to his lips and made a circling gesture with the other hand before fading back into the foliage.
It hadn’t been my imagination then. If Magnus was on high alert too, something was out there. I ghosted across the campsite and placed a hand on Andrei’s shoulder and then Sloane’s, waking them silently. It was a credit to the trials of the past week that they woke swiftly, reaching for weapons as soon as I touched them. I made the same circling gesture Magnus had. In unison, the three of us left our rumpled blankets on the ground around the campfire and faded into the tree line, waiting with bated breath.
We had been tracking Kroxius for the past week across the unfamiliar, and often murderous, land of Fae. Kroxius was a lich, a nigh-unkillable undead sorcerer with unbelievable powers over the dead. Until my friend had given his life to destroy the lich’s soul jar, making the undead sorcerer mortal again.
Ben.
My heart squeezed painfully as I crouched behind a small bush covered in a smattering of dying leaves. I scanned the darkness but could see no movement. My mind drifted back to the events that had led me to this spot. Memories tore at my fragile heart. Ben had sacrificed himself to protect the unsuspecting people of New Orleans. In doing so, he’d given us this infinitesimal chance to kill Kroxius before the lich made himself another soul jar. It was a noble, selfless act of bravery. The old man was a hero. He’d also been one of my closest friends. A surrogate father to this fatherless girl.
I ruthlessly squashed down the wellspring of grief that sprang to life inside me until it was merely a trickle. A trickle I could ignore. I’d mourn Ben properly once I had killed the lich, burned his corpse, and danced a jig on the bastard’s grave.
Soft rustling in the long grass off to the northwest caught my ear. I squinted through the darkness, tapping into my extraordinary night vision. There were benefits to being a Supe other than being able to make weapons out of shadows, although that was one of my cooler tricks. I squinted at the grass, which came nearly to chest height, making it difficult to spot anything approaching our campsite. The moon wasn’t helping things either, not being bright enough tonight to illuminate an approaching enemy clearly. If only there had been a better place to camp! But we needed rest, and this had been the safest place to camp for miles. I’d been warned that everything here in Fae was a potential enemy, even down to the smallest things like the flowers. Nothing in my time here had dissuaded me from that warning. Another crunch and snap of dried grass sounded. It was closer this time.
I flexed my fingers against the hilt of my shadow sword, waiting to glimpse whatever undead creature Kroxius had raised. The lich had escaped when we all unexpectedly tumbled through a portal into Fae. He knew we were tracking him across Fae, and he was cunning. Kroxius had been using his powers to raise any creature he stumbled across and turn it into a zombie to distract, deter, or deadify our small party. He just needed to buy enough time to either give us the slip or make another soul jar.
We needed to keep him on the run. If he didn’t have the time or magical energy to create a new soul jar, we stood a chance at killing him and ending the death curse he’d placed on the fae contingent from New Orleans. If he remade the soul jar, then our job would become infinitely harder. However, to kill him, we also had to catch him and so far, we were at a stalemate. Something had to tip the balance one way or the other, and soon.
Another rustle whispered through the darkness. I saw a twitching ripple slither through the tall grass. My eyes widened. It was closer than I’d expected. That small shiver was all the warning I had. Three blurred shapes flung themselves out of the tall grass on the opposite side of the recently vacated campsite. As one, the monstrosities viciously attacked the empty blankets strewn on the ground. In the glowing embers, spindly legs coated in bristling orange and black fur scuttled over the blankets. The legs supported a furry round body, about the size of a basketball, and a knobby head with too many eyes.
Spider-tigers? Huh. That’s a new one, I thought.
Fae was filled with many things that storytellers left out of fairy tales. Things that would’ve sent all the good boys and girls screaming for their mommies. Danger in Fae didn’t just come from the strange and horrible creatures like the spider-tigers murdering our blankets, either. Leaves were so sharp they could slice you into smithereens. Trees could move and liked to indulge in murder. Babbling brooks rea lly talked and tried to lure you close enough for sylphs to drag you under the water. Faeries were not the only things that lived in Fae. Both creatures of myth and fae nightmares populated the realm. From what I’d seen, if you could imagine it, it lived in Fae. Hybrid monsters lived alongside their Earthly counterparts as if the laws of interspecies mating didn’t hold true in this bizarre realm. We’d seen badger-deer, wasp-monkeys, and scorpion-otters. The latter were devilishly cute with a deadly sting to their tail.
I started inching through the sparse foliage to get into a better position to attack. Magnus was closer. He leaped out of the darkness in his massive silver wolf form. He was both beautiful and deadly. I was thankful he was on my side.
The werewolf snapped his powerful jaws around the base of the nearest spider-tiger’s neck. Magnus threw his head back and forth, shaking the monster violently until the thing’s neck cracked, and the head popped off, revealing a host of maggots feasting on the internal organs of the undead creature.
This wasn’t a chance attack. Kroxius had reanimated the fae spider-tigers and sent them to murder us in our sleep. The sooner we dealt with the lich, the better.
With a snort, Magnus tossed the body into the embers of the campfire. The bristly dead fur lit up like a Christmas tree in February. The fire popped and snapped as it greedily crawled up the zombie’s dead-undead body. Magnus finished the job by shoving the thing’s head into the fire with his nose.
Andrei followed Magnus’s lead and charged into the fray. The younger werewolf snapped another spider-tiger’s head off and tossed the body into the fire. The two wolves converged on the final spider, dispatching it in short order. Seeing that they had the situation under control, I stayed hidden just in case there were unseen threats still lurking in the night.
Andrei yipped at Magnus, who let out an answering rumble. They melted silently back into the darkness, working together as easily as if they’d been Pack for years instead of weeks. Magnus wasn’t even officially part of the New Orleans Pack yet, and Andrei was still a battle-green kid. However, I had to hand it to the teenager. Andrei had been so green that he was more of a detriment than an asset a week ago. However, between the frequent skirmishes with Kroxius’s minions and the evening training sessions with Magnus or me, he was shaping up to be a quick student and a clever opponent. Even Sloane tried to help. She wasn’t much of a fighter, but helped where she could in demonstrations or sparring. Hopefully, the kid would survive his adventure in Fae. If he didn’t, I had a feeling his dad, the Alpha of the Pack of New Orleans, would make sure I didn’t survive it either.
As the third and final spider’s head collapsed in on itself with a shower of angry orange sparks, Sloane crept into the camp from her hiding place in the darkness. I followed her, silently, scanning the darkness for any more movement. The charred smell of rotting flesh hit my nostrils and made me gag. I started breathing through my mouth to avoid the worst of it. Fire was an excellent way to deal with zombies, but I hated the resulting stench.
“Well, that was easy,” the petite leprechaun commented as she gathered the blankets, pulling them away from the sparking fire before any embers could burn holes in the thin fabric.
“Almost too easy,” I muttered. “Any idea what that was?”
Sloane shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. But that’s Fae for you. It’s always coming up with new and bizarre ways to kill you.”
I chuckled in wry agreement, but kept my eyes on the gently swaying grass, just in case there were any more undead creatures out there. I waved my free hand at where the two wolves had disappeared.
“Once they finish scouting, let’s move camp. No sense in staying put if Kroxius has already found us once,” I said.
“Agreed,” Sloane replied, shoving a blanket into one pack at random.
I let my shadow blade dissolve as I bent to help Sloane. I’d been practicing with my shadow magic whenever I found a spare moment since arriving in Fae. However, I still couldn’t keep the blade corporeal if it wasn’t directly in contact with me. It was annoying, but I was working to see if I could find a solution. I had to do it on my own because I hadn’t been able to get in touch with Barqan, my mysterious magic tutor, since arriving. I didn’t know if crossing over into Fae had disrupted the magic of my enchanted necklace or if he’d worn himself out by summoning me to meet him in the ether. He had warned me of the possibility of magical exhaustion after the astral projection thing. Regardless, he wasn’t answering my summons.
Not that I had a great deal of time for practice or magic lessons. I’d spent nearly every waking minute of the last week fighting, tracking, or trying to survive whatever Kroxius and the Fae realm threw at us.
Now wasn’t the time to bemoan my lack of magical tutoring. We needed to get out of here as quickly as possible, in case Kroxius had more surprises heading our way. Working efficiently, Sloane and I packed up the camp. I kept half of my attention on the grass swaying in the night breeze as I worked, just in case something slipped past the wolves.
Sloane spoke up again as we worked. “I still think that he’s getting weaker. Those zombie spiders didn’t stand a chance.”
“Only because we weren’t asleep. If they’d caught us off guard, we all would’ve been dead before we knew what happened,” I said as I shoved things at random into packs.
“Look who’s cranky this morning!”
“It’s not morning, and that’s the problem,” I grumbled.
“Well, I still think that this relatively lame attack is a sign that we are wearing him down.” Sloane sounded irritatingly chipper for someone who hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in about a week.
“Maybe. Or maybe those things,” I pointed at the charred remains in the fire, “were the only corpses he could find today to reanimate. Or maybe he’s lulling us into a false sense of security.”
Sloane snorted. “He’s been on the run for almost a week now, with no provisions and very little rest.”
“You could say the same about us,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but at least we have the stuff Letitia shared with us. He’s got, what? Anything he can scavenge? No matter how powerful the lich is, he has to be running on fumes soon. You need energy to do magic, and he is flinging around some massive spells by turning dead Fae creatures into zombies two or three times a day. His energy and his magic have to run out sometime.”
“I could say the same for us and our energy,” I pointed out dryly. “How long can we keep up this pace without making a mistake? As you said, Kroxius isn’t letting up the pressure. We never know when the next attack is coming.”
Sloane fastened the last of the straps on the last bag. “Fae has done weird things to you, Cam. Not sure that I like all of them.”
“Well, Fae is a weird place,” I retorted.
“You don’t have to tell me that. I spent a lot of time here when I was younger. There’s a reason I got out as soon as I could,” Sloane said with a little shudder, the smile fading slowly from her face.
“You haven’t ever talked about your time in Fae before. Not really,” I said.
“That’s because it sucked. Big time. And after the kind of discrimination that my people faced?” She shuddered. “Would you want to relive the most traumatic events of your life repeatedly?”
I reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it reassuringly. “No. And you don’t have to. Not with me, at least. Just know that I’m here if you need me, however you need me.”
Sloane squeezed back and nodded tightly. “It’s just hard, you know? Being back. I never thought I’d be back here and now that I am?” She bit her lip and cast her eyes around furtively. “It’s bringing back a lot of old memories. Few of them are good.”
“Yeah, based on the past few days, I’m getting an inkling of why you wanted to leave. The truth behind the fairy tales isn’t all princesses and glitter, is it?”
“Not even close,” Sloane said seriously. Memories chased the good humor from her eyes and her face clouded over with anxiety that she’d never fully divulged before. She blinked and shook her head before offering me a bright smile. “But you should hear the stories the fae tell about humans. Those manling tales are crazy! I bet you’d laugh until your sides hurt if you heard some of them.”
