Fractured Flame (Firebird Uncaged Book 1) Read online

  Fractured Flame

  Firebird Uncaged Book 1

  Erin Embly

  Copyright © 2019 by Erin Embly

  Copyright © 2019 by Poppythorne Publications

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Second edition July 2020

  Cover design by Ravenborn Covers

  Published by Poppythorne Publications

  www.erinembly.com

  For Mom & Dad,

  still my biggest cheerleaders

  even though I’m a grown-ass lady

  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

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Awakened Abyss

  Preview

  1

  I knew the murderer had found me as soon as I stepped out of my apartment into the cold. I could smell her.

  The world was empty, roads covered in fresh snow and tree branches encased in ice that glittered under the afternoon sun. This morning’s storm was over, but not many people in my nocturnal neighborhood would be out before dusk on a day like today. And certainly not many people who smelled like roses and herbs—the same combination of scents that had been burned into my mind as a mark of death to come.

  Fucking finally, I thought as I worked hard to keep from running, my muscles twitching while I walked across the slick, uneven brick sidewalk on my way to work. I had been waiting for this moment for months. I’d given up my whole life—my reputation—in the hopes that this woman cared enough about hers to come after me. And until now, I’d been starting to worry that she never would.

  Now she was as good as dead. Well, maybe not now, but she’d be dead as soon as I could get her a safe distance from my apartment. One of my roommates had her six-year-old son staying over today, and I didn’t want to traumatize the kid by giving him a dead body to gawk at, even if it did belong to a monster. So I pulled my scarf tight around my face, wrapped both hands around my travel mug filled with steaming coffee, and took dainty steps past the deceptively cutesy old row houses lining every street in this area.

  What used to be a charming neighborhood for rich old ladies to go antique shopping near the nation’s capital was now something more like a red-light district, and the only rich old ladies who still lived here were also probably immortal and deadly. I’d been a small child living across the country when this place had last been fit for decent company, but I was pretty sure I liked it better this way. Antiques were boring as hell, and I was grateful to have somewhere to live now that I’d been outcast from decent society.

  Once I was a couple blocks away from my apartment, I took a deep breath to make sure the murderer was following me. The sickeningly floral scent of her “evil-warding” potpourri coated my lungs, and it took every ounce of my willpower to emit a relaxed sigh instead of a gag.

  I doubted that concoction of dead plants would really ward off a demon or a vampire—or even a were-kitten, for that matter—but it was still serious overkill for her to try to use it against me.

  Maybe she wanted me to recognize it, so I would know it was her. That or she didn’t know what I was. I guess I should be flattered. But if I were her, I would have done better research.

  If I were her, I would have attacked me already. So what was she waiting for?

  Then I realized—she was waiting for me to get to my destination. Work. Or at least, the place I’d called work since I’d tanked my Guardian career last year by failing to take this bitch down.

  I’d gone from pantsuits and pistols on Capitol Hill to push-up bras and shot glasses in a seedy strip club, and this psycho wanted everyone to know it. She wanted everyone to see just how badly I’d failed, and where it had gotten me. She wanted to take a fucking picture so everyone would remember the image of my eviscerated corpse on stage, naked, in heels, probably with some fairy glitter for good measure.

  Well, the joke would be on her, either way. I actually liked my new job, fairy glitter and all, and she wasn’t going to take this one away from me, too.

  A squeak and a crash from behind me jerked me out of my thoughts, and I turned on my heel instantly to see . . . nothing.

  The sidewalk was barren, the snow behind me pristine except for my footprints, and I could hear nothing except the wind and the occasional clump of melting snow falling from the rooftops.

  But just as I was about to turn back around, I heard it again—a faint whine this time, followed by a softer crash, and then grunting—and it was coming from the alleyway I had just passed.

  Setting my coffee down gently on a windowsill, I pressed myself to the side of the building next to me and inched my way back toward the alley. When I peered around the corner, my heart sank.

  I would like to think it sank because I saw a little girl whose life was in danger, but truthfully, what hit me harder was the disappointment of seeing that the woman attacking her was not the same woman who had turned my life upside down. Sent by the same people, probably, because she was definitely the source of that smell. But the woman in my nightmares was blond, and pale, and tall, and thin—and this one was short and muscular, with graying dark hair.

  The little girl let out another tiny squeak, and I bit down hard on my instinct to run in and save her. The woman was holding her against the wall of the alley, restraining her, it seemed, not trying to kill her—at least not yet. And I wanted to know why.

  If I was her target, what could a little girl possibly have done to distract her from me?

  Then I saw what was causing the crashing noises. While holding the girl’s neck with one hand, the woman lifted her other hand and conjured a chunk of malleable, magical ice, which took shape around the girl’s arm and pinned it to the wall with a crash. The woman whispered something I couldn’t hear to the girl, who was looking more and more frantic every moment. An interrogation?

  It wouldn’t help me to watch this nonsense if I couldn’t hear what they were saying, so I peeled off my fluffy gloves and slipped my fingers beneath the sleeves of my jacket, where I always kept two knives handy. Even as a bartender, you never knew when you would need to cut open a lemon or threaten a handsy customer on the fly.

  My first knife struck the woman in her forearm—dangerously close to the little girl’s neck. Damn, I was seriously out of practice. I’d been aiming for the nice, big target of her back.

  Okay, no more throwing knives for you today, rusty bitch, I told myself as the woman hissed and my bloody blade clattered to the ground beneath her.

  She turned her head towards me as she let loose an enormous mass of ice to fully trap the little girl, leaving only the girl’s head free. And when I stepped into the alley for a close-combat fight, the girl looked right at me and screamed my name.

  “Darcy! Run away—she’ll kill you!”

  What. The. Absolute . . . I’d never seen this girl in my life, so how did she know my name? And why did she care about my safety?
The shock of it almost cost me my life as I stood there staring at her, taking in her dark hair, tanned skin, and bright green eyes—all completely unfamiliar to me—as steam began to rise from underneath her icy prison, like she was melting it with magic. Because in that moment, another chunk of ice came blasting at me.

  I only just managed to dodge it, and not entirely. My right arm went numb around the elbow as I dodged out of the way, but I could live with that. At least I hadn’t slipped on the icy pavement and fallen on my ass.

  I thanked myself for all the hours I’d spent in the past few weeks magicking my boots to be extra-super-extra nonslip. It was the kind of thing I would never have wasted time on in my past life, and I was glad that at least in some ways, my recent idleness had proven useful.

  Not useful enough, though. Now all I had were magical boots, one knife, and terrible aim. I was too weak with magic during the brightness of the day to even think about using it offensively, and while I could dodge her ice attacks for a while, I would get tired and make a mistake long before she would at this rate.

  So I picked up the first thing I saw that looked like it could help me—the lid of an old-school metal trash can—and held it up in front of me just in time to block her next attack.

  While ice piled up against it, I braced myself and hoped my strength hadn’t devolved as badly as my aim in the past year. I ran forward before she finished her attack, slamming my trash-shield into her as hard as I could.

  Judging by her screams as she fell and her awkward squirming as she tried and failed to get up, I’d reflected some of her ice attack back at her and pinned her to the ground with it.

  When she realized what had happened, she looked up and actually snarled at me. Papery thin, mottled skin scrunched up to reveal yellowed teeth, and the sound coming from between her lips was like a possum if I’d taken away its favorite rotten apple.

  Okay, wow. I expected this kind of hatred from the assassin I had a history with, but it was a little irksome to feel such spite from someone I’d never met before. Almost as irksome as the other stranger here knowing me by name.

  Since Possum seemed good and truly trapped—apparently she could create ice but not destroy it—I turned to the girl she had left in a similar state.

  And found her halfway free. Her preppy school uniform was drenched in melted ice, and I had the fleeting urge to wrap her in a blanket before I noticed her skin steaming. Her left arm and leg were still partially trapped in the ice and, as it melted, the skin underneath appeared almost plated in some kind of hard, shiny, black material. This was disappearing quickly to reveal regular skin, albeit maybe a bit glowy.

  She looked at me and began fidgeting, impatient. Not happy to see me.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Her eyes shifted away from me, towards her still-trapped limbs, then at the street, then back to me. Panicked. Confused.

  “I know I’m super pretty and all, but you’re a little young to be a stalker, hmm?”

  “I-I just wanted to help, okay?” the girl finally said, her eyes cast down now.

  “Okay. Lucky me, I never knew I had a fairy goddaughter.”

  “I’m not a fairy.” Fierce, now. Angry. Little bit of red in her eyes. “And I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

  “Okay, demon goddaughter; who told you not to talk to me?”

  Her face scrunched up, probably realizing she’d screwed up by saying as much as she had, and she looked away from me with a humph. She was almost free now, and I had half a mind to restrain her again and interrogate her myself. I’d save cute kids all day if I could, but not kids who were stalking me for gods knew what.

  My decision was made for me when a small chunk of ice hit my shoulder hard, bounced off my jacket, and fell to my feet. A glance back at Possum told me she had spat it at me. And judging by the size and pointiness of it, she’d probably been aiming for my neck. For a kill. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one with bad aim.

  I had been intending to try to get some information out of her, but now . . . well, at least now I had something to do with my knife. Without hesitating, I stepped over to her and used my left hand to plunge my blade into her mouth, not stopping until it struck the icy pavement underneath her head. She was gone in an instant, blood seeping out into the slush around her like a halo of strawberry sno-cone.

  I turned to see the little girl’s reaction, but she was already running toward the street, her shiny little loafers melting patches of ice away from the ground as she went.

  Okay, demon goddaughter, you win this time, I thought. I was willing to bet I’d see her again, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill her when I did.

  I bent back down to Possum’s body, yanked out my knife, and wiped it in the snow that had piled up against the side of the dumpster nearby. Then, all of a sudden, I felt a bit lost.

  This was my first unsanctioned kill. Not that I was worried I’d be prosecuted—it was self-defense, after all. I just didn’t know what to do with the body. I was a civilian now; there was no backup coming, and no rule-book to follow.

  Well, I supposed the civilian rule-book only had one rule, and that was “Call the cops.”

  Ugh. That was the last thing I needed in my life right now. Cops. Questions. Cameras. Not again. Not when I’d finally managed to escape public scrutiny.

  So I’d just dispose of the body myself. It wasn’t like whoever had sent an assassin after me would be pressing for an investigation to find out who had killed her. They would want this covered up even more than I did.

  I swung my right arm into the brick wall to crack the chunk of ice off my elbow, then thanked the universe that I’d already killed the woman so she couldn’t witness the yelp I let out when I did so. After rubbing my elbow for a moment through my jacket, I picked up the trash-can lid I’d used as a shield and rammed it into the ice blanket covering the woman’s body.

  It broke open like an eggshell, and I pulled away the broken chunks to reveal my prize, an ugly, murderous . . . mage? Probably a mage, by the way she’d been throwing that ice. Mages were pretty rare, though, and the assessment didn’t line up at all when I saw what she was wearing underneath her coat.

  A small pin on her sweater, in the shape of a straw broom. Like a mythical witch’s broom, very ironically. I’d seen that logo before, and the political group associated with it were the last people in the world who would knowingly hire a mage assassin, or any being with magical capabilities. They called themselves the Sweepers, in the sense of sweeping out the trash. They basically wanted to outlaw all non-humans and turn the world back to the way they thought it had been twenty years ago, when all the magic had gone down behind closed doors.

  If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said these people were total nutjobs. Now, after having experienced for myself just how dangerous vampires could be—even the ones who meant well—I thought they might be right in some cases. But any goodwill I might have felt for them went out the window considering what had just happened.

  Not only had these people just tried to have me killed, they must be the ones who had sent the assassin a year ago to ruin my career. I couldn’t remember much from that night, but I remembered the killer’s face and the floral stink of her ward. Roses and herbs, the perfect concoction to confuse a vampire just long enough to . . . Enough, I told myself. No point in dwelling on the past.

  Regardless, the Sweepers wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to risk drawing negative attention to themselves now—like using magic to go after me, a washed-up Guardian who was useful alive as a perfectly good scapegoat for one of their crimes. If I was right about what this group had done, they had major skeletons to hide. And if their connection to me ever got out, they would be done for.

  So sending this woman now was a huge risk for them. And as I tossed her body into the dumpster and produced a small flame with my fingertip to set fire to the trash around her, I wondered what I had done to make killing me worth the risk.

  Oh well, I thought, bend
ing over to recover my knives. Once I’d secured them back under my sleeves, I straightened my scarf, picked up the coffee I’d left on the windowsill, and resumed my walk to the club. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.

  2

  The club was dark when I arrived, the first one as usual. I didn’t have so much work to do that I needed to get here this early, but I liked the quiet. Living with roommates wasn’t easy, especially when one of them had a kid, and I couldn’t afford my own place anymore. Not without my Guardian salary.

  At least I would always have my training, even without the salary. I turned on the white lights with a grimace and quickly moved through all the rooms one by one, clearing the space and securing the entrances. A good rule of thumb I’d learned was that if someone wanted you dead enough to send an assassin, they probably wanted you dead enough to send two.

  But no shadows jumped out at me as I walked through the club—no murderers waiting in ambush. A small reprieve. I’d be on my guard again once the club opened, but for now I could relax.

  I turned off the lights again and let out my breath. This darkness was another benefit of getting here early. No windows, and no one to bully me into keeping on the white lights. I let the shadows wash over me for a moment before turning on the stage lights, dim and colorful as they reflected off the chrome poles, just enough for me to see by and to spark up the magic inside me.

  My individual relationship with magic was strongly tied to light and dark. Other people had other ways of sensing it, but I had been taught by a coven of mages who used the moon as their focus. A coven of mages dedicated to healing—light in the midst of darkness. That was the energy I had been taught to see and feel and manipulate, and it was why I had a tattoo of the moon on my ankle. Elusive, perception-distorting, hope-igniting . . . like fireflies in a child’s backyard.