Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6 Read online

  Magic Vanished

  Rise of the Arcanist

  Book Two

  A More than Magic Serial

  Elizabeth Kirke

  Copyright 2020 Elizabeth Kirke

  Cover by T.M. Franklin

  Editing by Rachael Riches

  Formatting by EK Formatting

  All rights reserved. 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 written permission from the author.

  Chapter One

  Jen

  As we walked through the woods, searching for whatever it was the blood casters were trying to keep us from finding, we found a strange hole in a tree. It was more like a doorway than a hole; just big enough for a person to fit through. It led to a stone staircase that we followed down into a cavern. It was empty except for a circular alter in the center, complete with chains for restraining human sacrifices.

  We weren’t there for long, when he found us: Morgan Fletcher, the blood wizard, our former co-worker and friend. He taunted us and then attacked us, wielding the terrifying magic he gained from murdering people…

  ~~~***~~~

  Even though I lived it, I found my heart pounding as we recounted our harrowing experience in the cavern to Jon. I suppressed a shiver as I looked around at everyone. Mariana, Ember, and Shannon had stayed behind, in case something happened to us in the park and while the three of them had already heard most of the story, they were still listening, wide-eyed, in a mix of fascination and horror. My familiar, Rak, was curled on my lap purring in support, but still feeling alarmed as well.

  Magics healed quickly, but it seemed that injuries caused by blood magic lingered or at least the strange marks it left did. After being struck a blood magic spell veins swelled to the point it looked like they were bulging out of the victim’s skin, if not sitting on top of it. Even the smallest capillaries turned ink black, covering the person in a strange, frightening web of dark veins.

  Thomas and Charlie had both been hit by a spell from Fletcher that caused excruciating pain. After three days the swelling of their veins had gone down and the black faded, but every inch of exposed skin was still marred by swirls of gray. Dani had been hit too, but it seemed that Fletcher had concentrated the spell on his head; his veins were only discolored from the neck up, not that the sight wasn’t just as unsettling.

  I shuddered at the memory. All three of them had decades of experience working with MES. Dani and Thomas were even said to be two of the best special agents in the region and Fletcher had taken them both down with a single spell. Even as a vampire, arguably the most dangerous magical being in the world, Thomas hadn’t stood a chance; one flick of Fletcher’s wand and he was down. Dani – not only a special agent, but also ex-military and a master of probably a dozen different martial arts – was just as helpless against the blood magic. I still felt nauseated remembering getting into the car after the cavern, speeding to the closest source of water while Dani used every ounce of his power to slow the bleeding in his brain until we got there. There were a couple of times I honestly didn’t think he could keep holding it back. The element-based spells I was familiar with could hurt someone, but not kill them. Blood magic was terrifying.

  Miraculously, TS and I had escaped being hit by blood magic, although he was far from unscathed. In an attempt to kill him Fletcher had orchestrated a car accident involving a non-magic woman that TS was soul-pack bonded to, she was still in a coma, leaving TS pale and tired-looking. We all knew that if she died…

  “Fletcher did not say anything about Miami?” Jon asked.

  Thomas shook his head. “No. He wouldn’t tell us how any of the other witches and wizards going there fit in either. But we think he was there, he took six months off work a few years ago. The timing and the duration fit the pattern.”

  Jon frowned. “That was around when his familiar died. Fletcher never said how it happened… I wonder if he was coerced into becoming a blood wizard…”

  “He seemed pretty committed to it,” Dani said dryly, rubbing at the side of his head, which he claimed didn’t hurt anymore.

  TS nodded. “He also said he has been a blood wizard for a long time. He said that wherever he went four years ago he was…” TS narrowed his eyes. “He mentioned a mistress?”

  “Yeah,” Thomas said. “Fletcher said this mistress is going to um… unlock the power of her ancestor… and that she’s going to teach him. He also said he went to be inducted into some group… the uh…”

  “I swear, he said Dewinnos,” TS chuckled.

  “The Disciples of Dewinnos?” Jon asked sharply.

  We all looked at him in surprise.

  “Yes,” Charlie said. “That was it! The Disciples of Dewinnos.”

  Jon frowned, looking disturbed. Fend, perched on the back of a nearby chair, cawed in agitation.

  “What is that?” TS asked.

  “You may know more than I do,” Jon said.

  TS laughed nervously. “The only Dewinnos I know is some sort of Welsh bogeyman. My great-grandfather would tell us stories about him to scare us when we went to visit.”

  Jon nodded solemnly. “Yes. They are one and the same.” He inclined his head slightly, studying TS.

  “That’s all I know, really,” said TS. He narrowed his eyes in thought. “He used to tell us that it took over one hundred magics to defeat Dewinnos. That he found a way to… to steal power from magics and use it against them somehow.” TS shrugged. “That’s about it. The sun would be rising and he’d tell us if we didn’t get to sleep that Dewinnos would get us and…” His eyes widened. “Would that translate as…” TS began rapidly mumbling to himself, presumably in Welsh. “Bloody hell!” he cried in English.

  “You’ve remembered something?” Jon asked.

  Slowly, TS nodded. “My brother Enceladus would say, “But Taid, Dewinnos is dead, he can’t kill us.” Then, our Taid would say, “It doesn’t matter, his disciples are alive and well, they’ll kill you.”

  Jon folded his hands on the table in front of us with a heavy sigh. “If that is true…”

  “Who or what are the Disciples of Dewinnos?” Thomas asked.

  “The Disciples of Dewinnos is an ancient cult,” Jon said. “Some say they were Dewinnos’ children. Others say they were servants or just like-minded witches and wizards… Regardless, after his death they dedicated themselves to preserving his research. Dewinnos is said to have uncovered a strange type of blood magic. As Tethys said, according to legend, Dewinnos could steal power from other magics, although I have never seen an explanation of what that truly means.” Jon shook his head. “Both the cult and his research were supposed to have been destroyed when blood magic was outlawed… If the cult has survived and any of the work on arcanism exists…”

  “Arcanism?” I asked.

  “That is what Dewinnos called his style of blood magic.”

  “Is that like arcanist?”

  “Yes!” Jon looked at me in surprise and alarm. “That is what he called himself: an arcanist. Where did you hear that word?”

  “Fletcher used it.”

  “That’s right,” Thomas said. “He said there’s a new arcanist! Or… there’s about to be one.”

  Jon exhaled sharply. “If that’s true…” He slowly shook his head. “I fear we must assume the other witches and wizards who went to Miami are blood casters as well, perhaps even disciples. Fletcher was one of us, as is Greyson Turner who is on that list. Neither should be able to make the changes Ember found in the MES database, therefore we must assume that they were not the only MES employees involved. Now, more than ever, it is of the utmost importance we keep this investigation secret. Did Fletcher say anything else that may give us a clue?”

  I cleared my throat and all eyes turned to me. “For a couple of minutes… I was the only one conscious. He… he talked to me.”

  “What did h
e say?” Jon asked gently.

  I took a deep breath. “He was trying to get me to join him,” I said. Thomas hissed and the others gasped. “He kept saying I’d be a powerful blood witch and stuff like that and…”

  “And?” Jon prompted.

  “He told me if I want to become a blood witch… I have to find a mystic key.”

  “A mystic key?” Thomas echoed.

  Jon slowly shook his head. “I have never heard of that.”

  “Then he gave me something and said to tell them Fletcher sent me. But he never said who they are.”

  “Gave you what?”

  I crossed the room to my purse and fished out the strange stone and held it up. It was shaped like a small droplet and bright, blood red.

  Brows furrowed curiously, Jon joined me and took it. He turned the stone around, examining it. “I’ve never seen a stone like this.” He pulled out his wand and cast a couple of spells. “It seems… innocuous. Anyone else?”

  Thomas came over and sniffed. “Smells a bit like blood. It’s not strong, but there’s a faint bloody odor… like the rotten blood magic scent.”

  “It’s warm,” Charlie said. “Warmer than it should be, even with you holding it.”

  Dani held out a hand and Jon passed it to him. His eyes rippled with blue as he studied it. “I’m no expert on solids but… I think this is blood.”

  “Inside it?” I asked.

  “The whole thing. It’s a stone made out of blood.” Dani flashed me a weak smirk as he held it out.

  “What should I do with it?” I asked, reluctantly taking it back.

  “Put it somewhere safe,” Jon replied. “Be careful with it and… be careful around it as well. We must figure out why Fletcher gave it to you. Did he say anything else?”

  We followed him back to the table. “That was it,” I said as we all sat. “He told me to find the mystic key and gave me that uh… stone.” TS caught my attention with a pained groan as he sat heavily, prompting a memory of that night. “He did stop using blood magic,” I said. “That’s why TS wasn’t hit. Fletcher used it on him and it… it didn’t work.”

  “Interesting,” said Jon.

  “He didn’t use it at all toward the end, did he?” Thomas said.

  “Not that I remember,” answered Charlie.

  “Maybe he got tired?” I suggested. Using regular magic made me tired, although I had a lot more stamina than I used to.

  “Possibly,” Jon said. “It bears further research. Let us…” He trailed off and frowned thoughtfully. We stayed quiet as he thought. At last, he nodded once, more to himself than to us. “We must continue your investigation and follow any leads. However, I do not want to pursue Greyson Turner until we have exhausted every other avenue. If he truly is in league with Fletcher, I do not want you confronting another blood wizard if it can be avoided. With luck, we can discover a way to combat it before we encounter him.” He bowed his head a moment. “I am… sorry.” Slowly, Jon looked at each one of us. “This is far more than I wanted to ask of you… any of you. The last thing I want is to put your lives at risk…”

  “If not us, then who?” Dani asked softly.

  Jon sighed. “Thank you. All of you.”

  ~~~***~~~

  “So, what leads do we have?” Thomas asked.

  Once again we were back in our living room, sitting on couches and chairs. Dani was sprawled on the floor with Ember and her laptop. Rak was curled in his place on the hearth, although it was getting too warm to light a fire.

  Ember clicked and hissed for a moment in Sadehic as she looked at her laptop. I assumed she was mumbling to herself, since Charlie didn’t seem to be paying attention.

  “Okay,” she said at last, switching back to English. “We’ve got those three groups of people, right? The first is the ones who all went missing in the park. Since Fletcher was obviously covering up some of those cases and you found his creepy hide-out, I think we can assume those poor people were all sacrificed by blood wizards…”

  We all nodded.

  “Let’s just hope we ruined their plans when we collapsed the whole damn thing,” Dani said.

  “Yeah,” Ember said, verbalizing what I, and probably everyone else, was thinking. “I guess that means that whole group is already a dead end. We initially couldn’t figure out how they were all connected, but it seems like the blood casters were kidnapping them at random to sacrifice so…”

  TS nodded. “I agree. I don’t think we can glean anything else from that group. We know where they were taken and why. We should focus on who took them. Ember, what else have we got?”

  “The group of witches and wizards that went to Miami,” she answered. “But we’ve looked over these files a hundred times and there are no connections between them, other than Miami. The only one we’ve taken a closer look at was Turner and we know how that turned out.” Her eyes flared, then darkened and I knew she was remembering being attacked by a man Fletcher hired to kill her for checking into Turner, the same reason he tried to have TS and his soul-packmate killed.

  TS growled softly. “Right. Jon doesn’t want us looking deeper into that yet, if we can avoid it.”

  “I don’t know what else we can do with the Miami bunch,” Mariana said. “Short of going to Miami.”

  “You did go there, didn’t you?” Dani asked. “With your family for that cruise?”

  “Yeah,” Mariana said. “But I wasn’t exactly watching for blood casters.”

  “I think that’s out too, for now,” Thomas said. “We barely beat one blood wizard. I’d rather not go to where an entire group of them may be congregating without knowing more about how to combat blood magic.”

  “That just leaves the CVLR group,” Ember said. “And we don’t even know if that’s related.”

  “We didn’t look into it much though,” Shannon said. “We were focused on the park.”

  “Maybe we need to review CVLR again,” TS said. “If it is related, we might find something. If it’s not… well, it’s the only lead we have right now. Char, any idea what CVLR is?”

  Charlie shook his head. “I went over all of the businesses I have the other day, before this chaos with Fletcher. CVLR is an accounting code, I don’t have anything with that on it.”

  “I checked too,” Mariana said, “and I asked Peridot about the codes. She said they’re generated through the bank. We don’t have any way of finding out what they are in accounting. But I could call around to the credit card companies and see?”

  “Do that,” TS said. “Carefully. See if Jon will give you a different cell phone. We don’t need anyone else getting targeted.”

  Mariana nodded.

  “What about that name?” Shannon asked. “We turned up one name in the CVLR group, right?”

  Ember flipped through her notebook. “Reave,” she read. “It’s mentioned once. We also have a couple of mentions of a farm and a vampire.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Dani said, nodding toward her computer.

  Ember rapidly typed away for a moment. “There are three Reaves!” she announced. “One is a wizard from out of state… one is… looks like he’s been dead for twenty years… this one is a vampire!”

  “From Utica!” Dani cried, reading over her shoulder.

  “Is that in New York?” Shannon asked.

  “Yeah,” TS said. “It’s about, what a couple of hours away?”

  “At least three,” Charlie said. “My sister taught out that way for a few years.” His eyes flared. “Lot of farmland…”

  “Hey!” Ember gasped. “His feeding activity is gone! He isn’t listed as deceased or missing, but according to his activity log, he hasn’t registered to feed with MES in five years. The CVLR people have that deleted too, right?”

  “Yes!” Mariana said. “But none of them have theirs deleted that far back. They’re all four years or less.”

  “Seems like whatever is happening, this Reave may be at the center,” TS said. “Sounds like a good place
to start. Let’s get some property records; find out if Reave…”

  “Reave Mitchell,” Dani read.

  “Find out if Reave Mitchell has a farm.”

  Dani hummed something that sounded suspiciously like E-I-E-I-O.

  Thomas threw a book at him.

  Chapter Two

  Danio

  I pulled up in front of Erin’s Enchanted Eats and waited. It was only a few seconds before Thomas was in the passenger seat, setting a cup of coffee in a cupholder.

  “Queen,” he said as he settled in.

  “Hey!” I shot him a mock-offended glare. “Leech!”

  For just a second Tom looked confused, then he glared back. “Idiot.”

  “Quit insulting me! Here I am picking your ass up, and you’re over there calling me names!”

  “I was talking about your music,” Thomas groaned. “And you know it.” He reached for the volume knob. “Speaking of your music, it is absurdly loud.”

  I grabbed his wrist before he could turn it down. “Whoa! There is no such thing as volume where Freddie Mercury is concerned!” Nevertheless, I thumbed down the volume control on the steering wheel, then released him.

  “I should throw your coffee out the window,” he threatened, holding out another cup.

  “Thanks for picking me up,” I said with his voice, taking the cup and switching back to my own default one. “You’re welcome, thanks for the coffee.”

  “Just remember which one is mine.”

  I warily eyed the coffee that probably contained blood. “You are quite committed to making sure I stop stealing your coffee.” I didn’t add that it was nice to see him embracing the whole vampire thing: he knew.

  He chuckled darkly and took a sip of his coffee. “Let’s go.”

  “Do you have the address?” I asked.

  “Yup.” He pulled out his phone and fiddled with it.

  “Where are we going first?”

  “Farm.” He sighed. “Then Turner’s.”