Black Spark (Dark Magic Enforcer Book 1) Read Online Free
Author: Al K. Line
is always ready for action, but that goes with the job. It's not who I am.
This guy does not go around kicking and punching people, telling them to hand over their cash, or else. I'm an enforcer, a magic enforcer, and that means I'm one of the good guys. I have been tasked with keeping us safe and upholding our, albeit often strange, rules—like the law but without the uniform or the need to fill out forms. A good guy.
Or I was.
Now it had all gone to hell because I'd killed someone, and done the worst thing possible in our Hidden world where bad shit happens all the time but nobody in the Regular world knows anything about it.
I'd let the undead cat out of the coffin, and this was exactly what I was employed to stop happening. It's who I am. It's my identity. It's me.
I've got a special talent. One I wouldn't wish on anybody. I have the ability to suck the Empty right out of you and send it back where it came from. It doesn't work on true Hidden, creatures born wholly of magic, and I can't just stare you down and BAM! you are normal again, but if you are, or were, human, then I can take the magic away and leave you empty inside.
What I do is deal with those that get a little cocky or carried away with their use of magic, risking exposure for themselves and the rest of us.
Except, and this is where things start to make sense, it takes a hell of a lot out of me. So much so that I often lose a few hours afterward, as the only way to get away from the insane pain, the sickness so deep it makes my bones weep, and the feeling of being ripped to bits by a load of annoyed trolls who then hand my still conscious carcass over to a shortage of dwarves, who know for a fact I stole their gold, is to sink down deep into blackness, cry for Grandma, and try to forget I was ever a person.
Which I was. Still am to some extent.
It explained the memory loss that suddenly came back to me when I opened the scrap of paper and realized I'd been on a job. Hopefully it had been successful, but judging by the state of me and what I did I wasn't so sure.
"Hello, Faz."
"Uh-oh."
"That's a new look. Not trying to hide from us are you?" said one of the goons.
Yeah, you guessed it, more vampires. But these weren't like the two relative beauties I met earlier, these were old dudes. Not in appearance, but in actual age. A few hundred years at least, so they were still fine walking around in the daylight, if you could call the weather daylight.
The proper old ones, like thousands of years and more, the bosses, the Heads, they keep well away from the light. They sleep through the day or rest somewhere suitably dark and vampire-like, half-dead until the sun sets and they come to life and are pretty much invincible as people. Not that people is really the best way to describe them.
Younger vampires are okay with being labeled human, or ex-human, but the old ones, the ones that have thrived in the shadows for centuries, even millennia, they will rip out your throat if you refer to them as anything but vampire.
They see themselves like butterflies, emerging from the chrysalis of an almost forgotten human being to become what they are now, and you would no more call a butterfly a caterpillar than you would an old vampire a human being.
Are they dead, these bloodsuckers? No, not really. They use blood magic to remain what they are, and that is pretty much immortal. But such a gift comes at a high cost, more than most are ever willing to pay, and the charge is your humanity.
Yes, I'm not exactly a regular guy, but I know what's right, and wrong—killing the innocent—and I have a lot to answer for because of what I've done, but at least I know the difference. And besides, something happened to make me do what I did. I'm not usually a homicidal chess player, honest.
So, the goons.
"Hi Bret. Hi Bart," I said casually. "Fancy meeting you here. Doing some shopping are you?"
Bret and Bart stared at me, with those spooky as hell eyes serious vampires
This guy does not go around kicking and punching people, telling them to hand over their cash, or else. I'm an enforcer, a magic enforcer, and that means I'm one of the good guys. I have been tasked with keeping us safe and upholding our, albeit often strange, rules—like the law but without the uniform or the need to fill out forms. A good guy.
Or I was.
Now it had all gone to hell because I'd killed someone, and done the worst thing possible in our Hidden world where bad shit happens all the time but nobody in the Regular world knows anything about it.
I'd let the undead cat out of the coffin, and this was exactly what I was employed to stop happening. It's who I am. It's my identity. It's me.
I've got a special talent. One I wouldn't wish on anybody. I have the ability to suck the Empty right out of you and send it back where it came from. It doesn't work on true Hidden, creatures born wholly of magic, and I can't just stare you down and BAM! you are normal again, but if you are, or were, human, then I can take the magic away and leave you empty inside.
What I do is deal with those that get a little cocky or carried away with their use of magic, risking exposure for themselves and the rest of us.
Except, and this is where things start to make sense, it takes a hell of a lot out of me. So much so that I often lose a few hours afterward, as the only way to get away from the insane pain, the sickness so deep it makes my bones weep, and the feeling of being ripped to bits by a load of annoyed trolls who then hand my still conscious carcass over to a shortage of dwarves, who know for a fact I stole their gold, is to sink down deep into blackness, cry for Grandma, and try to forget I was ever a person.
Which I was. Still am to some extent.
It explained the memory loss that suddenly came back to me when I opened the scrap of paper and realized I'd been on a job. Hopefully it had been successful, but judging by the state of me and what I did I wasn't so sure.
"Hello, Faz."
"Uh-oh."
"That's a new look. Not trying to hide from us are you?" said one of the goons.
Yeah, you guessed it, more vampires. But these weren't like the two relative beauties I met earlier, these were old dudes. Not in appearance, but in actual age. A few hundred years at least, so they were still fine walking around in the daylight, if you could call the weather daylight.
The proper old ones, like thousands of years and more, the bosses, the Heads, they keep well away from the light. They sleep through the day or rest somewhere suitably dark and vampire-like, half-dead until the sun sets and they come to life and are pretty much invincible as people. Not that people is really the best way to describe them.
Younger vampires are okay with being labeled human, or ex-human, but the old ones, the ones that have thrived in the shadows for centuries, even millennia, they will rip out your throat if you refer to them as anything but vampire.
They see themselves like butterflies, emerging from the chrysalis of an almost forgotten human being to become what they are now, and you would no more call a butterfly a caterpillar than you would an old vampire a human being.
Are they dead, these bloodsuckers? No, not really. They use blood magic to remain what they are, and that is pretty much immortal. But such a gift comes at a high cost, more than most are ever willing to pay, and the charge is your humanity.
Yes, I'm not exactly a regular guy, but I know what's right, and wrong—killing the innocent—and I have a lot to answer for because of what I've done, but at least I know the difference. And besides, something happened to make me do what I did. I'm not usually a homicidal chess player, honest.
So, the goons.
"Hi Bret. Hi Bart," I said casually. "Fancy meeting you here. Doing some shopping are you?"
Bret and Bart stared at me, with those spooky as hell eyes serious vampires
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