Blood of Stone Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blood of Stone

  Copyright

  Book Description

  An Important Note from the Author

  Books by Jayne Faith

  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

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Blood of Stone

  A SHATTERED MAGIC NOVEL

  Stone Blood Series Book One

  JAYNE FAITH

  Copyright

  Blood of Stone

  Copyright © 2017 by Jayne Faith

  All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors.

  Blood of stone / a novel by Jayne Faith

  Ebook Edition ISBN: 978-0-9996458-0-2

  Edited by: Mary Novak

  Proofread by: Tia Silverthorne Bach of Indie Books Gone Wild

  Cover by: Deranged Doctor Designs

  Published in the United States of America

  Book Description

  A new race of Fae. Their reluctant champion. Every ruler in Faerie is coming for her.

  Every kingdom in Faerie wants to claim Petra’s people as their own, but she isn’t interested in Fae power struggles. She moved out of Faerie years ago, and she’s been scraping together a living as a bounty hunter. She just wants to catch her next mark so she can make rent.

  But when she’s chasing down her mark in a nightclub, assassins attack a minor Fae king. Petra saves his life, and in the process, she gets unwillingly yanked into Faerie politics. Her life grows even more tangled when she discovers she has a changeling twin sister, and suddenly Petra’s questioning her own bloodline. Her daring rescue of her sister from King Periclase, who’s vying to force Petra and the rest of her race under his rule, pushes inter-kingdom hostilities to a tipping point.

  Tensions erupt into a threat of all-out war, and the only way to settle matters is for Petra to enter a battle of champions—a fight to the death.

  An Important Note from the Author

  IN THE TIMELINE of this story world, the Ella Grey Series serves as a prequel to Blood of Stone and the rest of the Shattered Magic novels. Book Four of the Ella Grey Series, Blood Storm Magic, culminates with the Cataclysm, a catastrophic blast through the supernatural world that ultimately changes the magic in Ella’s world and in Faerie, the parallel world of the Fae. Blood of Stone takes place partially in Ella’s world, which the Fae call the Earthly realm, but much of the action is in Faerie. One of the most dramatic Cataclysm consequences for the Fae was the spontaneous formation of a new Fae race, nicknamed the New Gargoyles. Blood of Stone’s heroine, Petra Maguire, is one of this new breed of Fae.

  It’s not necessary to read the Ella Grey Series to enjoy the Shattered Magic novels, but the Ella books give a sense of how the Earthly realm and magic were different before the Cataclysm. That series begins with Stone Cold Magic.

  Books by Jayne Faith

  Ella Grey Series

  urban fantasy

  Stone Cold Magic

  Dark Harvest Magic

  Demon Born Magic

  Blood Storm Magic

  Shattered Magic Novels

  urban fantasy

  Blood of Stone

  Stone Blood Legacy

  Rise of the Stone Court

  Sapient Salvation Series

  dystopian romance

  The Selection

  The Awakening

  The Divining

  The Claiming

  Magic Currents (dystopian fairy tale)

  Chapter 1

  WITH AN IMPATIENT tug on the cross strap of my broadsword’s scabbard, I watched the bouncer, a lanky man of Elvish descent, examine my mercenary credentials. He scanned the I.D. and activated the magical hologram to verify its authenticity. Among other things, the card displayed my name and the Fae ruler to whom I was sworn.

  “Petra Maguire,” he read from my I.D. in a lilting Irish accent. His shoulder-length orange-blond hair was pulled back in the requisite Elf ponytail, exposing the pointed tips of his ears. “Bit of a runt for a New Gargoyle, ain’t ye?”

  He peered down at me, his eyes flicking over what little skin I had exposed, looking for outward evidence of my stone blood.

  I bit back a smartass retort. My Fae bloodline sometimes aroused some reaction, especially among the Fae races who seldom interacted with my kind. Curiosity was the most common, though revulsion still cropped up occasionally. I reached for my I.D., and he yanked the card back beyond my fingertips.

  “You’re half a foot shorter than all the New Gargs I know,” he pressed.

  I seriously doubted he knew any New Gargoyles. For one thing, there weren’t that many of us. New Gargs were a new race of Fae spontaneously formed at the Cataclysm, a catastrophic shift in the magical world that occurred a few years before I was born. In a transformation that defied logic, a few hundred Fae abruptly acquired new magic and different features. My father was one of them.

  Music pulsed from within the bar, and a line formed behind me. My impatience grew, becoming an itch in my palms, a desire to draw my sword. The Elf, though over six and a half feet tall, wasn’t a fighter. He stood back on his heels, and his upper arms and chest had hardly any muscle tone. He wore a light caliber magi-zapper, a magic-powered stun gun holstered on his hip, but it wasn’t even turned on. If he actually needed to use it, he’d have to wait several seconds while it warmed up. Amateur.

  I could have him on the ground, screaming for his mother with a dislocated shoulder in less time than it would take him to reach for his gun. But I knew I had to behave. I’d save my aggression for my mark, who I hoped was inside the bar.

  The Elf was still waiting for me to fulfill his curiosity.

  “I’m not full-blooded New Gargoyle,” I said, finally relenting.

  His mouth widened in satisfaction like a cat who’d just cornered a mouse. He didn’t care about my answer so much as the fact that he’d manipulated me into giving one. Elves could be such assholes.

  He settled his weight onto one hip. “Your kind is known for fighting. Maybe I shouldn’t let you in.” He tapped the corner of my I.D. against his lower lip, as if he were going to stand there a while and consider his options.

  My temper began to flare in earnest. I needed to get past him before he really tempted me to pull Mortimer on him.

  The nightclub I was trying to get into was an establishment on the Faerie side of the hedge, the name for the border between the Faerie world and the Earthly realm where humans and other non-Fae lived. He couldn’t bar me from entering based on bloodline alone. In Faerie, you couldn’t discriminate based on race.

  “That’s illegal, and you know it,” I growled. “You
’ve wasted enough of my time.”

  In a blur of movement, I snatched my merc I.D. from his hand and darted around him before he could react. As I passed, I hit the back of one of his knees with my heel. He grunted as his leg buckled, and he scrabbled for the door handle to catch his balance.

  A satisfied smile tugged at the corners of my lips. I relished taking people by surprise with my quickness. New Gargoyles were known for being extremely strong, but not swift. My non-Garg blood had diminished my size but also gifted me with reflexes and agility that full-blooded New Gargs didn’t possess. Only thing was, I had no idea what made up the rest of my bloodline, because my father refused to tell me who my mother was. Just one of several bones of contention between me and him.

  The bouncer didn’t come after me, as I knew he wouldn’t. I was tempted to pull Mort from my scabbard, sneak back to the entrance, and give the Elf a little parting poke in the ass just for good measure—nothing fatal, of course—but I reined in my focus. I had work to do. A faint zip of energy streaked across my back, the broadsword’s response to the possibility of some action.

  “Soon, friend,” I said under my breath.

  The bar, called Druid Circle, had only recently sprung up in this newly-established Faerie territory of the Spriggan kingdom, anchored near the famed Las Vegas Strip. Every Faerie territory had an invisible anchor, or attachment, to a location in the Earthly realm. Up until the Cataclysm, all Faerie territories were anchored in Old World locations—mostly Ireland, Scotland, and England.

  Faerie and the Earthly realm were like two parallel worlds. There were points, called doorways, where Fae could pass back and forth between Faerie and the Earthly realm. The doorway outside of Druid Circle was one of the new ones. It was a bit like the normal world versus the Wonderland that Alice found when she fell down the rabbit hole. Two complete worlds that existed separately.

  Pausing off to the side of the nightclub’s entrance, I reached down and pretended to adjust the zipper of one calf-high boot, allowing myself a moment to get my bearings and let my eyes adjust. I shifted my attention to my magical senses so I could feel out the crowd. The place was full, but not yet packed. Mostly Fae, with a sprinkling of vampires and human magic users who’d come over from the Earthly side of the hedge. Non-Fae could come into Faerie, but only with a Fae escort.

  I couldn’t imagine how King Sebastian, the ruler of the Spriggan kingdom, had managed to grab a piece of Faerie territory anchored so close to the Las Vegas Strip. It took specialized, extremely expensive magic to carve out new Faerie territories. Plus, the Strip offered the opportunity to easily bring in high rollers from the Earthly realm, so it was valuable territory from a financial standpoint and there would have been competition for this piece of Faerie land. The Spriggan kingdom wasn’t particularly large or rich, and I wouldn’t have guessed Sebastian had the resources for such a land grab. I’d heard no rumors about the transaction, but that didn’t mean much. I usually made it a point to stay as ignorant as possible about Fae kingdom politics and power plays, unless such info might somehow help me catch a mark. My job kept me in the action I preferred: taking out menaces of supernatural society as a bounty hunter for the Mercenary Guild.

  Speaking of marks, I’d gotten a tip that my current target, a reclusive vamp, had been seen here in Druid Circle.

  I wove through the milling crowd and tall tables to the bar, where I ordered a seltzer with lime from a curvy Fae woman with impossibly long and feathery eyelashes, a dead giveaway of her Sylph blood. I sipped from my straw and focused my senses, trying to zero in on all the vamps in the bar.

  Hunting down criminal vamps was personal work for me, just about the only thing that tied me to the mother I never knew. A vamp had killed her not long after I was born. I was eight years old when my father, Oliver, revealed that my mother had been murdered by a vampire. Usually vamps targeted humans. But my Fae mother, who’d been troubled and vulnerable according to Oliver, had somehow gotten caught up with one and had paid with her life. He’d immediately regretted telling me how she died, because I began having nightmares about fanged, bloodthirsty killers. In my child’s mind, all vamps were powerful and monstrous, constantly on the prowl for their next victims. Later I learned that wasn’t entirely true; plenty of vampires led normal, peaceful lives. But the mental image of vamps as evil monsters still lingered.

  Protecting other innocents from my mother’s fate was the best thing I could think to do to honor her. So, after graduation I’d moved out of Faerie into the Earthly realm so I could join the vamp-hunting division of the Mercenary Guild, an organization that came into being after magic went haywire following the Cataclysm. The Guild was formed to deal with the post-Cataclysm criminal activity that the pre-Cataclysm laws weren’t doing a good job controlling. Private citizens also sometimes hired the Guild for personal assignments.

  Holding my glass, the only purpose of it to help me blend in, I casually turned around and leaned my back against the bar so I could survey the place with more ease. The music was pulsing, but not yet at the volume or tempo that would get the crowd moving. A group of Cait Sidhe girls who looked barely old enough to be out alone were the only ones on the dance floor. They gyrated their lithe bodies with sinuous, feline movements.

  One of the girls raised her arms in the air and pitched unsteadily. A couple of her friends caught and righted her before she face-planted.

  She raised her arms as if remaining on her feet was a huge victory. “Wooo!” she hollered in an eerily cat-like voice that carried over the noise.

  I looked past the Cait Sidhe, refocusing on my assignment.

  My mark was a male, one of the new generation of vamps infected by the VAMP3 virus that had spontaneously ripped through the population following the Cataclysm. VAMP3s could be aggressive, but the real danger was their persuasiveness. They could naturally walk in sunlight unharmed, and the Type 3 vamps had glamour abilities that bordered on hypnotism. Unfortunately, supernatural lawmakers in the Earthly realm hadn’t figured out how to enforce limits on the use of charm. And so far, vampire rights groups had managed to keep VAMP3s free of the docility implant requirement that befell the naturally bloodthirsty VAMP2s. The Mercenary Guild got a lot of jobs involving VAMP3s.

  I knew the gender and name of my mark, but he tended to hide out in Faerie where cell phones and other communication technology didn’t work, and no one had managed to capture a photo of him. He’d been selling VAMP3 blood on the black market, touting it as a magical potion that gave the user a soaring high and also imparted some of the legendary VAMP3 powers of charm. Only problem was, after a few doses it was turning users into murderers. One or two highs seemed to be fine, but further exposure somehow flipped a switch, turning users into blood-hungry maniacs.

  I distinguished five male vamps in the vicinity, all Type 3. I eyed the male vamp nearest me. His straight blond hair was slicked back from his forehead, and he wore a black leather jacket. He was chatting up the Sylph bartender with his glamour in full effect, but being Fae, she was holding her own against his charm. He didn’t appear particularly shady, and my instincts told me he probably wasn’t my mark. I could have pulled the bounty card on him, which would have magically identified whether he was the vamp I was after, but if I guessed wrong it would tip off anyone else in the vicinity. I’d check out the rest and come back to him if I didn’t get any hits.

  The next vamp pinging my senses was above me on the balcony. I scanned the area with a casual glance. Large VIP booth with table service. Money and an entourage—possible signs of a drug dealer. I straightened and set down my glass, looking for the staircase so I could get a closer look.

  “Petra Maguire?”

  I twisted around at the sound of my name and found myself looking up into the face of Maxen Lothlorien. Full-blooded New Gargoyle. One of the most eligible bachelors in all of Faerie. Son of Marisol, monarch of the Stone Order to which I was sworn.

  “Maxen?” I couldn’t cover my surprise. “What in
the name of Oberon are you doing here?”

  He was dressed in the official white and grays of the Stone Order. Usually his diplomatic duties took him to court in the Old World—the castles, palaces, and other strongholds of the Faerie kingdoms. What Order business could he have here in the Las Vegas-anchored territory of the Spriggan kingdom?

  A smile broke out over his boyishly handsome face. “I knew it was you, even from a distance,” he said warmly.

  He leaned against the bar, his blue eyes sparkling in a way that inspired palpitations in the hearts of many Fae women. Some men, too. His easy smile and good looks were disarming, and his warmth unexpected in a New Gargoyle. But underneath the charisma was a shrewd diplomat and a skilled fighter.

  His eyes flicked to Mort’s grip, which protruded over the top of my right shoulder.

  “Here for work, I see,” he said.

  I gave a half shrug. “When am I not? Guild assignment.”

  He tsked. “You should be at home, helping your people.”

  I snorted. “You mean at home, following Marisol’s orders and popping out a few New Garg offspring?”

  He tilted his head. “Not the phrasing I would use, but if that’s what works for you.” He leaned in a little and gave me a teasing smile.

  We’d been going back and forth like this for years. New Gargoyles were blessed with physical strength and natural fighting skills that were the envy of Faerie, but being a new Fae race, and one even less fertile than the average Fae, we lacked numbers. In Faerie, there was power in numbers. There were several hurdles to overcome to reach Marisol’s goal of kingdom status, but the biggest challenge facing the New Gargoyles was population size. It was hard to make a case to the High Court for a kingdom charter with such a small population. Maxen’s mother—and likely many New Gargoyles—thought it a disgrace that I was wasting my peak fertility years in the Earthly realm working for the Guild.