Dead of Night (Ghosts & Magic #1) Read Online Free
Author: M.R. Forbes
Tags: thriller, Magic, vampire, Zombie, Werewolf, wizard, necromancer
when I moved it away. I needed to cover her up and get my ass over to Dalton. The touch had left me in worse shape than I thought. Maybe he'd been a user after all.
Magic. It had been mother nature's best kept secret, hidden in the form of not-exactly-magnetic fields that wrapped around and through the earth. According to people who knew better than me, it had always been there. It was just that us humans couldn't feel it, or see it.
Then the Earth's polarity had shifted.
It was called geomagnetic reversal, and it hadn't happened in about forty-one thousand years. For whatever reason, this shift did something to the not-exactly-magnetic fields, powering them up to the point that they began to have strange effects on us surface dwellers.
Some of us became what we called sensitives. We could feel these fields emanating around us, and in some cases we could even hear them as a constant thrumming and pulsing in the ears that we just couldn't shake.
That was me, five years ago. That was me, before I got sick and started the quick downward spiral towards death. I had always been able to hear the buzzing and thrumming. I had always known I was sensitive. In this world being sensitive meant learning to live with the noise, and knowing there was a power out there that others had access to but you didn't. It was like being first in line at the most exclusive nightclub on the planet and having the bouncer tell you to fuck off.
It was the medicine that had brought me across the line, from sensitive to user. It was black market, experimental, and illegal. I didn't know who made it, what it was made of, or where it came from. I hadn't even known there was a whole underground of remedies to all sorts of nasty things out there until I had gotten one of those nasty things, and been lucky enough to hook up with Danelle.
At first, I didn't understand that I'd finally gotten into the club. I began to feel the fields. I was able to bring the energy into me. I was also getting sicker and sicker. My hair fell out, my skin turned a gnarly grey, and no amount of sexual attention of any kind could get me aroused. I was sure I was close to death.
Only, I didn't die.
The things I touched did.
I'd been rightfully terrified, but Danelle had kept a level head about it, and once again become my guide. She was maybe a little too excited to find herself with a necro sleeping on her couch, but she saw the potential, and began to teach me everything she knew. She had more experience with magic than any sensitive had a right to, because she was supposed to be a user. She'd been bred for it, and when it didn't happen her father had disowned her for her 'failure'.
I set about the task of closing the grave, down one partner to help me shovel. It was tough going, as weak as I was, and I had to stop more than once for a fit of heavy coughing. By the time I finished leveling the dirt I was dead tired. Too tired to even make my way back to the van.
I sat down against Caroline's headstone, a plain slate of beveled marble with her name, dates, and a simple epitaph:
'Beloved daughter. God is blessed to have you in His Kingdom.'
I felt the familiar twang of guilt, and I wiped a wayward tear from my eye. I'd never asked for power over death and the dead, but when you were in my situation you needed every advantage you could get.
I didn't want to wind up like Caroline, with a small bit of stone and a sentimental phrase to send me off into the great beyond.
I wasn't ready to die.
CHAPTER THREE
Is this medically necessary?
"You look like shit, pardner," Dalton said when I stumbled through the door to his pawn shop.
It was eleven at night, a little early for peak in the dusty old storefront, where a mint guitar hung in the bullet-proof glass window, claiming to have been owned by Elvis Presley. Nobody but Dalton actually believed that it had.
I winced in pain, holding back another cough. "When have I ever come to you and not
Magic. It had been mother nature's best kept secret, hidden in the form of not-exactly-magnetic fields that wrapped around and through the earth. According to people who knew better than me, it had always been there. It was just that us humans couldn't feel it, or see it.
Then the Earth's polarity had shifted.
It was called geomagnetic reversal, and it hadn't happened in about forty-one thousand years. For whatever reason, this shift did something to the not-exactly-magnetic fields, powering them up to the point that they began to have strange effects on us surface dwellers.
Some of us became what we called sensitives. We could feel these fields emanating around us, and in some cases we could even hear them as a constant thrumming and pulsing in the ears that we just couldn't shake.
That was me, five years ago. That was me, before I got sick and started the quick downward spiral towards death. I had always been able to hear the buzzing and thrumming. I had always known I was sensitive. In this world being sensitive meant learning to live with the noise, and knowing there was a power out there that others had access to but you didn't. It was like being first in line at the most exclusive nightclub on the planet and having the bouncer tell you to fuck off.
It was the medicine that had brought me across the line, from sensitive to user. It was black market, experimental, and illegal. I didn't know who made it, what it was made of, or where it came from. I hadn't even known there was a whole underground of remedies to all sorts of nasty things out there until I had gotten one of those nasty things, and been lucky enough to hook up with Danelle.
At first, I didn't understand that I'd finally gotten into the club. I began to feel the fields. I was able to bring the energy into me. I was also getting sicker and sicker. My hair fell out, my skin turned a gnarly grey, and no amount of sexual attention of any kind could get me aroused. I was sure I was close to death.
Only, I didn't die.
The things I touched did.
I'd been rightfully terrified, but Danelle had kept a level head about it, and once again become my guide. She was maybe a little too excited to find herself with a necro sleeping on her couch, but she saw the potential, and began to teach me everything she knew. She had more experience with magic than any sensitive had a right to, because she was supposed to be a user. She'd been bred for it, and when it didn't happen her father had disowned her for her 'failure'.
I set about the task of closing the grave, down one partner to help me shovel. It was tough going, as weak as I was, and I had to stop more than once for a fit of heavy coughing. By the time I finished leveling the dirt I was dead tired. Too tired to even make my way back to the van.
I sat down against Caroline's headstone, a plain slate of beveled marble with her name, dates, and a simple epitaph:
'Beloved daughter. God is blessed to have you in His Kingdom.'
I felt the familiar twang of guilt, and I wiped a wayward tear from my eye. I'd never asked for power over death and the dead, but when you were in my situation you needed every advantage you could get.
I didn't want to wind up like Caroline, with a small bit of stone and a sentimental phrase to send me off into the great beyond.
I wasn't ready to die.
CHAPTER THREE
Is this medically necessary?
"You look like shit, pardner," Dalton said when I stumbled through the door to his pawn shop.
It was eleven at night, a little early for peak in the dusty old storefront, where a mint guitar hung in the bullet-proof glass window, claiming to have been owned by Elvis Presley. Nobody but Dalton actually believed that it had.
I winced in pain, holding back another cough. "When have I ever come to you and not
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