Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Time Passes

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Up next …

  About the Author

  Also by Richard Amos

  Copyright © 2019 Richard Amos

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover by Vanessa Garkova

  Created with Vellum

  One

  Jake

  The bastard with the rattlesnake tail hanging out of his arse darted around the corner, throwing back a sharp use of the c-word at me.

  Charming.

  I wasn’t really one to say anything about bad language—I had one of the worst potty mouths in existence. Instead, I gripped my spear tight and hurried after the wanker. The white smoke from my hands curled across the wooden handle, pooling at the golden pointy bits of my double-ended weapon.

  “Sonny! Give it up, mate!”

  No. He’d never give it up, the stupid knob head. His running steps just got faster.

  Stupid prick.

  With a groan, I gave chase down the street. I wasn’t gonna stab him with my weapon unless he gave me a reason to. It was more likely I’d clonk him over the head with it—the flat ends of my blades were handy for head cracking.

  Every time I touched my weapon, it smoked. I put it down to the effect of residual power in my blood from my time as a weapon of the goddess Hecate—back when I lived in Coldharbour under a cloud of mystery and terror.

  In those days, weapons would fly away from me if I tried to touch them, because the only true weapon had been my sparky hands. That rule still applied now, with the only exception being my pointy friend.

  We were the perfect match.

  I ran down an alleyway, holding my breath against the stench of piss and rotten food. At least it was a freezing cold December night. If it were summer and balmy then, well, gross. The heat always made nasty shit worse. Why did it always have to be these places the bad guys ran down? I mean, not only did I have the stink to contend with but also the rubbish spilling out of the bins to leap over and avoid, the shadowy doorways hiding shit from me.

  Sonny the Snake, as he was known, wasn’t really a traditional bad guy—more a pain in the arse who ruined many a nice evening with his stupid thieving ways. There were much more serpentine people than him, even though he was part man, part snake—a creature made from exposure to pods.

  Pods were blobs of magic scattered across the planet. They popped up randomly all year round, either bringing something pleasant or something rotten if you got too close to the poxy things. They would either send you on a trip as if you’d taken LSD, or they’d transform your body. And they couldn’t be removed. No spell, no potion, no weapon could get rid of a pod. You just had to wait for it to piss off. There’d been a green one in my kitchen once, which had sat there for twenty-four hours.

  Pod-born, like Sonny, were creatures made from pod exposure. Some were harmless, some were harmful, and others were somewhere in the middle. That was why civilians, by order of the government, went around armed with some sort of weapon to hand as protection.

  It was the supernatural council’s fault, and their attempts to meddle with the public consciousness. When the whole truth about Coldharbour had been revealed four years ago, the supernatural world could no longer stay hidden. The council didn’t like that but ended up causing a myriad of problems in their failure to cover it up a year after the big reveal.

  Idiots!

  A small red pod was sitting in the doorway of a building I ran past, about the size of a coin. The smaller they were, the deadlier they could be. I couldn’t help but cringe every time I saw one. They reminded me of the days when I’d been an addict and all the shit that had brought to my life. Every single day, I was grateful for my sobriety, for no longer being a slave to my compulsions.

  I stuck two fingers up at it, just ‘cos. Poxy thing.

  Poxy Sonny more like it! I’d barely got a quarter of the way into my hot chocolate before I’d found myself out in the friggin’ cold, freezing my bollocks off because Sonny had sticky fingers.

  Ugh.

  I stopped at the end of the alley just short of another street. Which bloody way did he go?

  Even though I still had to deal with the paranormal almost every day—which was a fucker on my family time—I was happy to not be the chosen one anymore, to not have the fate of a city and the world on my shoulders. Despite the craziness of the world I lived in, I loved my life now.

  Hurried footsteps behind me.

  “I was wondering when you’d catch up.”

  Dean came up beside me. “Cheeky.”

  I looked over to my super-hot boyfriend, his naturally brooding face giving me the warm and fuzzies. Didn’t matter that the air still stank of piss, and we had a thieving bastard to find—I could still enjoy the aesthetics of my man. His dark eyes, artfully swept-back hair, his gorgeous Asian features, the fully black outfit that made him look like a warrior of the night, the knuckle-dusters—he was the full package of basement-flooding yumminess.

  My friend Naomi had introduced me to the basement-flooding terminology. It always cracked me up.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing, treacle.”

  That always brought a smile to his face. “You crazy man.”

  “Ain’t that why you love me?”

  “Sure, I love your weirdo ways.”

  I lightly punched his arm. “Who you calling weird?”

  “You.” He gave me one more grin, then his expression faded back to serious. “Let’s focus.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I rolled my eyes. “What are we gonna do with Sonny? This is just one stupid, never-ending circle with him.”

  “We need that stone back.”

  I sighed. “He’ll only take it again.”

  “One thing at a time. You didn’t see which way he went, I take it?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Shit.”

  “Let’s think about this logically. We know him. If we were him, where would we go around here?”

  He stared at me for a minute. “Brem’s.”

  “Wait, what? But that’s just asking for more shit.”

  “That’s why we have to shut it down before anything kicks off.”

  Brem was a vampire who ran a gang and prided himself on providing anything you wanted—at a price. Basically, he’d own you forever, getting you to do all sorts of bad crap for him.

  Sonny, as much as he pissed me off, would crumble under that pressure. To be under Brem’s control was worse than death. He’d end up falling in with an even worse crowd than the one he was already in with—and that was saying something. Brem was on a whole other level of nasty, hiding beneath a shell of expensive suits and haircuts.

  “He’d be desperate enough now,” I said in agreement with Dean as we crossed the street. “That stone’s upped the ante.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But won’t Brem just take it?”

  “No. Too easy.”

  We turned right, keeping up a hasty pace.

  “I hope we’re not gonna be too late.”

  Across the road, pasted onto a wall, was a flyer for a Divine Fire Conclave meeting over in Rembrandt Square. Everyone just called them the Conclave—kind of a global label they had now. They were a new religious group, not really having anything to do with any mainstream religion or church.

  This world. Man, it was complicated. There was a constant sense of everyone being out of their depth, and the Conclave was a complication that had risen to come and take advantage of that. As with most things in life, some people were fine with supes sharing their air, others were not. According to the Conclave, supes were evil, against God—all that stuff. They scared me more than anything else because it was like holding your breath, wondering where their hateful message, dressed up as faith, would build to. There was one of their ‘churches’ set up in almost every city, with an alarming number of followers, and leaders who had a major public presence. The head of them all was Giles McGregor—High Bishop, he called himself. He ran the entire global enterprise of hate. It’d had four years to build, and it was now at toxic levels, wealthy as hell.

  Not all supes were bad—just like people. They were either the shit end of the stick or the not shit end. Okay, so then there was also the space

between, but none of that mattered to the Conclave and their tunnel vision.

  The rights of supes, who had once been thought of as human, remained the same. Nothing had changed, only that supes now had their own special prisons if they were at the really shitty end of that good old stick.

  Faith in government was fading. The council had a bleak reputation—corruption, scandals, murder. It’d lost all its power. I was surprised to see it still active. The time would come when it would fade away. It had nothing left to give or offer.

  Would the Conclave step in to take its place?

  With the supes and the pods, and all the mess, came a whole new set of problems. Cases needed to be solved that were beyond the regular whodunnit humans were used to. Whatdunnit was now added to the common vocabulary. The council and the government decided it best to license investigators to handle paranormal cases in towns and cities, acting both privately as well as liaising with the police. That allowed the cops to focus on the human cases. They were stretched to their limit as it was. And so, Paranormal Investigations Agents (PIAs) were born.

  There was a lot of crossover with working with the cops, of course, especially if dead bodies were involved. We had the power to make an arrest. Cases could begin as a human problem, only to then not be. We were kind of like supernatural police, but not quite coppers, more sleuthy.

  Jake & Dean Investigations was just what the doctor ordered, but also one of six different PIA firms in the city of Amsterdam, each competing for business as cases came in. We all took on private cases, or cases police would contact us about. Some were even given to us by the council to handle. There were strict guidelines for infringing on another agency’s investigation or stealing one during the puzzle-solving process. In fact, there was a whole rule book on the issue that was a great alternative to a sleeping potion.

  Basically, don’t fuck over other PIAs. End of. If you needed to team up and ask for help, that was cool. These rules had to be explained to clients—that they would have to terminate a contract, if they’d hired a PIA, first before taking on another agency. Double-booking was bad. A healthy rivalry was good, but not an unhealthy one. There were blurred lines on the whole rivalry thing because the husband and wife duo of the Jansen Agency were, well, knob heads.

  “Let’s go,” Dean said.

  He took the lead, me hot on his heels. I followed him down to the end of the street, across a canal, then made a left in the direction of Brem’s lair.

  Man, I hated that wanker. But I’d have to keep it cool if I didn’t want a bloodbath on my hands. All I wanted was to get back home to our daughter, then snuggle up in bed to watch a movie with my man.

  Business first, I guess.

  “No mouthing off,” Dean said over his shoulder.

  He knew me too well. “Hey, I’ve been holding it in better lately.”

  It wasn’t my fault I couldn’t let arseholes have the last word. To let that happen was an injustice to me. Had to keep the balance and all that.

  “Good. You can be a bad boy later.”

  “Promise?”

  “You know it.”

  Naughty goals! My favorite!

  Two

  Dean

  “Strap it on.”

  Jake giggled.

  I made sure to keep my face straight. “Seriously?”

  “I don’t need to strap anything on. You know that.”

  I shook my head, looking away before I started laughing with him. “Focus.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Jake strapped his spear to his back. The least hostile we looked, the better.

  “Doesn’t look like he’s been here,” Jake said as we paused at the top of the canal-side street over near Rijksmuseum.

  “Those geezers look too calm,” he added about the two big men standing guard outside the house.

  “It’s their job to look calm,” I replied. “They have to have an astute poker face.”

  “Yeah, but I was expecting Sonny to be begging to get in when we got here. Seems a bit too easy.”

  He was right. But then Sonny had the Luck Stone, so he had some leverage to talk to the vampire and ask for protection. The Luck Stone did what it said on the tin—brought luck when used in the right way. We had to get in there before Brem arranged a deal that not only screwed over Sonny but us too. The vampire gang lord didn’t need more luck.

  Sonny did. That’s why he’d robbed the alchemist, Mila Roos. Worst thing to do, but her house was a magical treasure trove, with all sorts of things that could provide help to the most desperate of folk. This wasn’t the first time Sonny had robbed her. Jake and I managed to keep her from unleashing some horrible spell on him by promising to take care of it. Our reputation as investigators, of getting things done, was solid—a general five stars all round for our services. It’d become a great business, a worthwhile enterprise that helped people—human and supernatural.

  Tangled up with vampire affairs, though? This wasn’t going to be fun, but we had to make this a smooth transaction. Then we could deal with Sonny.

  Brem’s place wasn’t exactly discreet. You always knew where it was by the two bodyguards standing watch outside the house with the black door twenty-four hours a day. Golems, hired strength, all muscle and mean faces, giant hands ready to break bones at the behest of their blood-sucking employer.

  Jake and I paused before them. Their eyes were hidden by shades, despite it being night, and their arms were folded across their chests.

  “Evening, gents,” Jake greeted them.

  It was a nice three-story Dutch house with steps leading up to the entrance, two hanging lanterns glowing on either side of the door pleasantly. There was even a Christmas wreath.

  Good to see Brem was in the festive spirit. Our place was on a whole other scale.

  “What the fuck do you want?” the man on the right barked.

  “Did Sonny the Snake come this way?”

  The two men were both pale, both sporting brown buzz cuts, but one had a mustache. He was the one to ask, “Why?”

  “We need to talk to him,” I answered.

  “Always sticking your noses into people’s business.”

  “That’s our job, mate,” Jake retorted. “Kind of stupid thing to say, ain’t it?”

  I closed my eyes. Oh, God. He hadn’t even gone five minutes without gobbing off. And he’d been doing so well lately.

  “Want me to break your face, pretty boy?”

  “Why? Jealous that I don’t look like a bulldog chewing a wasp?”

  The mustache man grunted. “I’ll shove that spear of yours right up your hole.”

  “Promise?”

  “Jake!” I snapped.

  “What? He started it.”

  The non-mustache golem elbowed his partner. “Stop that crap.”

  “He asked for it.”

  “You know better.”

  “You know better,” I mimicked the golem’s words at Jake.

  My boyfriend folded his arms and rolled his eyes. It was cute, but I couldn’t show him any googly eyes. “Behave.”

  The golem without the facial hair said the same to his colleague. Jake and the other brute stood silently, scowling at one another.

  “Where were we?” the golem asked.

  “Sonny the Snake.”

  “Ah, yeah. He’s inside.”

  “Any chance we can talk to him?”

  “No. You need to make an appointment. Can’t let just anyone off the street wander about inside. Boss would have my balls on toast with a vintage cabernet.”

  Nice. “Did Sonny have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Then that’s not really fair, is it?”

  The golem regarded me with his big brown eyes. “He begged.”

  “He what?”

  The big guy came down a step. “You heard me, fae. He begged. Got on his hands and knees and begged me to let him in.”

 

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