Fire in Her Blood: Death Witch, Supernatural Investigative Unit, page 1
FIRE IN HER BLOOD
DEATH WITCH, SUPERNATURAL INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
BOOK 3
RACHEL GRAVES
Copyright © 2023 by Rachel Graves
First edition published by Wild Rose Press, Copyright © 2017 by Rachel Graves.
Previously published in 2017, this new edition of Fire in Her Blood has been revised and edited.
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.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art by: Mibl art
For all the girls who like to play with fire enough to risk getting burned.
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
Epilogue: Jakob and Amadeus
Coming Soon - Blood, Dirt, and Lies
Chapter 1
Thank you for reading!
About the Author
Also by Rachel Graves
1
Orange flame licked the darkening sky as the fire burned out of control. The clinic bridged two worlds. A block behind us was the college campus with its Southern Gothic buildings. A block ahead of us in downtown people shot heroin in the streets. An explosion sent a pack of firemen flying backwards. The flames sputtered to green, then back to orange.
“Why are we here?” My partner, Danny, kept his supernatural heritage hidden, but it was obvious he didn’t feel the pull of magic I did.
“Someone wants me,” I replied. Power started to build in my veins, calling me to the inferno in front of us. Someone here wanted death. Instead, they got me, a death witch. I let myself go, giving into the power that felt so good. Witches might complain about being a persecuted minority, but no one complained about how it felt to practice our magic.
The power drew me out of the car and into the crowd. A short, small woman stood in front of the fire. I walked up to stand beside her. Around us people wore layers of protective gear, black ash, and sweat. They panicked on the edge of terror. The two of us were calm. Her eyes mimicked the licks of flames in front of us, swirling with red, orange, and yellow. They marked her as a fire witch. My own eyes were probably milky, opal white.
Shouts for a medic came from behind us. They put a body between us, still screaming but barely recognizable as a person. Death sang through me.
The fire witch knelt down. “I can heal her.”
“No one can heal her.” The EMT shook his head at the lump of blackened skin and blood.
“She’s mine,” I replied to the other witch and ignored the man.
“My Goddess doesn’t think so.” Her face hinted at a smile, but my concentration stayed on the dying woman.
“She’s wrong.” I summoned the power into my body, gathering it into my limbs.
“Not this one, death witch. This one Raya wants alive.”
I dropped to my knees beside the body. My hand found a solid spot in all those burns, and I poured the power down. My hearing went first as my magic took over, the sirens and the crackle of flame gone. My vision narrowed to the body in front of me.
The woman had been dying for a long time. She looked forward to death as a way to end her pain. She prayed to God for it. Now I gave it to her, sharing the emotions as she passed—release, freedom from pain, and underneath, a hint of excitement. No two deaths felt the same. I was still new to what I was, but it hadn’t taken me long to learn that. The body shuddered one last time, and the world was suddenly loud again; smoke tasted like acid in my throat. My head swam with the confusion of the normal world.
“She was mine.” The fire witch’s voice went hard as the flames beside us blossomed with anger.
“She wanted me more.” I brushed the grass off my knees and walked away.
I made it back to the car before my legs started to shake.
“I need to eat.” I’d ended up in the hospital a few times when I’d done more magic than my body could handle. I didn’t want to end up there again.
“I’ll find out what’s going on,” Danny told me before he walked away. The fire witch had a goddess to give her power, all the elemental witches did. All I had for energy was the food I’d eaten. Like most life force witches, I carried emergency food, quick to digest and full of sugar. I preferred junk food, but usually ended up with glucose packets designed for diabetics. I sucked one of them down.
Danny was back a few minutes later. We spent some time interviewing the students who had called in the fire. They saw the smoke from a nearby soccer field but didn’t know much. We got the names and numbers for the clinic director and his employees, but no one was at the scene. The fire chief wouldn’t say arson, but even if it was, there might not be anything for us to do. The big glass doors I walked through every morning read “Supernatural Investigative Unit” not “Arson Investigator.” Until someone determined the fire was the result of a fire witch, a demon, or some kind of magic, it wasn’t our case.
Back at the squad room, weak sunlight filtered in through the windows on the west side of the building. There were no messy desks or piles of papers in the SIU; our lieutenant, an ex-Marine, wouldn’t allow it. I sat down at my own desk and fiddled with the reports that said I had been at the scene of the fire. Nearly five-thirty on a Saturday, I doubted I’d get much done.
I gave up and headed toward my boyfriend Jakob’s place with a smile. After months of planning and clandestine work, the surprise was ready. The project had been part of my therapy, and finally, tonight I was going to take Jakob to his first Catholic mass in nearly six centuries.
Ever since I’d found out how important his faith was to him, I’d been searching for a way to let him experience more than televised masses. He had more money than anyone I’d ever known, could fly, and was the strongest vampire in the city, but this was a gift I could give him that no one else would. Arranging for a vampire to attend church services had been a monumental undertaking, but worth it. The idea made me smile as I unlocked the inner door to his house. Unfortunately, Jakob was even more observant than the average vampire.
“Could work have really gone that well?” he asked. I almost never smiled about work.
“I’m just looking forward to tonight.” I didn’t bother to stifle my grin. “Are you going to wear that?” He wore blue jeans and a dark blue sweater. The sweater wasn’t because of the cold - vampires didn’t get cold – but because of how it looked against his pale skin. If he’d known we were headed to church, he’d put on a suit.
“I’ll take my sweater off if we end up lifting any furniture.”
My plan to get him out of the house was a meeting with Jakob’s oldest friend, a vampire named Mark, at an all-night flea market. Mark had arrived to help with the city’s werewolf problem this summer. I’d convinced him to stay in town, only to learn that he owned almost nothing. He’d managed to get a house on his own but getting him to furnish it was an uphill battle. It was the perfect excuse to get Jakob out of the house, except that the clothes wouldn’t work.
“Would you mind dressing up for me a little?” I asked sweetly.
“For a flea market?”
“For me?” I gave him my best innocent look. He didn’t buy it. “Okay, I have a surprise for you before we meet Mark.”
“What kind of a surprise?” He smiled at me, turning on the charm. He wouldn’t take my mind, our relationship had a strict no magic on each other rule, but I was always undone by his sparkling blue eyes.
“The kind that requires you look nice,” I said over my shoulder as I went to change my own clothes. I only had another two hours to keep my mouth shut and they were going to be the hardest hours of all.
In the end, I managed to convince Jakob to put on something that approximated business casual, but only after he saw my dress. It was longer and more buttoned up than most of my clothes. The Sunday morning masses I’d attended with Danny and his family seemed to be a catch-all of clothing styles but I suspected this evening’s service would lean more to the conservative.
“Is it a concert?” Jakob asked as I drove down the highway. He’d let me drive his vintage Mercedes convertible. I kept the top up to keep from arriving windblown.
“Nope,” I said curtly. Normally I liked the way we talked through long drives, but tonight it just made keeping secrets harder.
“A restaurant?” There was an edge to his voice. He’d never let me see him eat and I’d never asked him why. It was one of the problems with our relationship we hadn’t gotten around to addressing.
“Not a restaurant. Although if you’re willing…” I let my voice trail off.
“Art exhibit?” he asked. Clearly, he wasn’t willing.
I told him no to that and his other, more bizarre guesses. I was glad when I could turn into the church parking lot and finally tell him. The look on his face, a mix of pain and longing, stopped me.
“I can’t go in there.” He gestured to the large church with its tall stained-glass windows.
“I know, but there’s a small, completely deconsecrated chapel over there.” I pointed out across the parking lot to the smaller building where Danny was waiting for us with his three girls.
I watched the emotions play across his face. Jakob was truly devout and he’d been denied this for so long, but the danger was incredibly real. Holy water could burn him. Holy symbols surrounded by believers would do the same. And there was always the risk that no one would want him. I’d made it clear that the service was for a vampire, but someone might show up to protest. Thankfully, when he nodded and got out of the car, things looked safe.
Danny held on to three squirming little girls, looking like a completely different man than the cop I worked with every day. Maeve, Nora, and Emma all had their father’s dark curls and pale white skin. They were dressed for church in matching dresses and brightly polished patent leather shoes with white tights. At ten, Maeve looked the most grown up, her features bordered on adolescent and her silhouette was thin. Emma, the baby at five, was still pudgy and round. Nora, the middle child, was a mix of the two. They looked cherubic, but I’d seen them beat each other with a ferociousness usually left to the boxing ring. Growing up the only child of a widowed mother, I’d longed for a big family with lots of sisters. Watching Danny’s girls cured me of that.
Jakob had met Emma at the local barbecue joint, but the other two girls had to be introduced. By the time we made it inside past the receptionist’s desk and the stairway to the priest’s living quarters, everyone else was already seated. The small chapel had been stuffed with boxes of hymnals and extra choir robes when I started working on it. Now it was returned to its state from decades before when it was the only space for worship the church had. It was a small rectangle of a room with tall skinny boxes for windows on one side. Ten rows of chairs marched up either side of a narrow aisle to a diminutive, unadorned altar. I caught a flash of bright copper colored hair and recognized Katie, Danny’s wife, waiting for us in one of them. The rest were filled with church members in their Sunday best.
“Don’t forget to genuflect,” Emma told Jakob.
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” he replied.
“Mallory always does,” she said.
Thankfully Jakob was too overwhelmed by the proceedings to notice her tattling. To get Father Sam to agree to my plan, I had to find a way to make a mass without holy water at the doors and a cross behind the altar appeal to the congregation. Danny’s mother had provided the solution, sighing sadly over how much prettier the mass was in Latin. From the looks of the people around me, a lot of the seniors had missed Latin masses too.
The language didn’t make a difference to me; the mass in Latin was as mystifying as it was in English. I’d come occasionally with Danny’s family and watched the ritual on TV with Jakob so I had some idea of how the steps worked, but I still stumbled behind everyone, even the children. Nora put me to shame with her Latin rendition of the Our Father. I was more than happy to watch the joy on Jakob’s face and keep my mouth shut when they got to the recitation of the Apostles Creed. When the family went for communion, I usually sat and whispered with Emma, but this time I watched Jakob bow his head in prayer. Even the usually loquacious child caught the need for quiet.
After a final blessing, the girls scrambled outside, eager to ruin another pair of tights, and the adults joined the line of people waiting to shake the Father’s hand. We were definitely the youngest in the group, well, if you excluded Jakob. I introduced him to the rotund priest, then smoothly stepped out of the way to let them talk.
“Mr. Mueller, it is a pleasure to meet you after all those checks, I mean years.” It hadn’t been a slip; Father Sam was like that. “Tell me, was my Latin as bad as Mrs. Wells tells me?”
“I didn’t notice any mistakes, but then, my mind was on other things.”
“That’s probably for the best. She’s a retired Latin teacher, my own fault for letting her into the congregation.”
“But you’ll take a vampire?” Jakob asked.
“I’ll take anyone who comes.” Father Sam smiled widely. “And I do hope you’ll come back next month?”
Father Sam was famous for applying gentle pressure to fill the pews. I hadn’t expected him to try it on Jakob. I was savoring the moment when a yelp from one of the girls had me rushing into the darkness. There was a skinned knee and two skinned palms as the result of a lightning bug catching incident. As their sometimes babysitter and beloved auntie, I jumped in to help. By the time the three were bandaged and wrestled into the car, the parking lot was empty. I found Jakob waiting for me by his car.
“You did this?” He opened his arms for me to step in. I took the embrace and opened a button on my church dress, ready to go back to normal.
“Mhmm-hmmm, I talked to Danny, he talked to Father Sam. Finally, I got permission but we needed a space, which meant I cleaned out that room during the heat of August while you were home asleep.” I sighed dramatically and turned around, leaning my back against him as if I was exhausted. “I’d say you owe me.”
“You have no idea.” He kissed the top of my head. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I turned back to him and kissed him lightly. This time he broke the embrace.
“I have a sudden intense desire to give you something.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re meeting Mark at a flea market.” I handed him the car keys.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a car.”
Shock filled me. I’d been joking, flirting a little. He wasn’t. Jakob had money, lots of it. “Do I really need a car? I can take the train almost anywhere I need to go.”
“My house is nearly an hour from the city; you can’t get there without a car.”
“Good point.” How could I argue with his German logic? “Is taking you to church really worth a car?”
“Oh it’s worth a great deal more than that,” he said, and the look in his eyes told me he meant it.
We met Mark outside the high school basketball court that became a flea market on Saturdays. Even in the darkness, Mark hid his face against stares. He’d been hiding ever since the werewolf attack that led to him becoming a vampire. The worst of his scars came out of the collar of his shirt, splitting his left cheek open. His straight black hair hung down to his chin in an attempt at camouflage, but it couldn’t hide the sharp point beneath his eye.
“Tell me again why we’re here,” he groused, not even glancing at the tables set with odds and ends.
“Because there’s a chance you’ll want to take a nice girl home with you, and she’ll need a place to sit. Maybe you’d even invite Phoebe over.” I watched his face when I said my best friend’s name, hoping for some hint of how their relationship was going.
“Nice girls don’t go to the places I go.” Mark could be a bit of an ass. We were working on it. Slowly.
“All right, not Phoebe, not a nice girl. A not so nice girl, whoever she is, she’s going to want a place to sit.”
“I’ve dated one woman in the last four hundred years. This seems a little pointless.”
“One woman in four hundred years means it’s possible. Besides, you can’t live in an empty house,” I countered.
“It’s not empty,” he protested. “I have a bed.”
