Bloodshade of the Goddess

By Melissa Stacy

Eloise Assad never wanted to spend eternity as a corpse. But two years after waking up as a vampire, Eloise wields powerful magic, sleeps in graves, and lives with a tiny pixie determined to annoy her forever.

Turned against her will, Eloise has dedicated her undead life to helping innocent people avoid the same fate. Instead of joining a coven of vampires, Eloise has sided with their sworn enemies. She slays monsters and stakes her own kind alongside the human magicians who’ve done so for centuries. To keep safe from the bounty hunters who profit from the sale of vampire blood—a curative liquid worth millions to the right buyer—Eloise poses as a human witch in society, her true identity known to only a handful of close friends.

In the modern world, protecting innocent life has never been harder. Ocean levels are rising, coastal cities are flooding, and the United States is dealing with climate change refugees, homeless citizens on the move. These people make easy targets for monsters, and as many of them seek shelter in Senna, Colorado, the monsters keep arriving in town along with them.

As Eloise and her teammates fight for their lives, Eloise must confront nightmares and secrets, terror and lies, forbidden love and a fate worse than death, as she struggles to outwit an enemy who is always three steps ahead—only to find herself caught in one final trap. Outnumbered, weaponless, and stripped of the use of her magic, Eloise has to face the hard truth that she will never save the people she loves unless she becomes a true monster, and the most ruthless vampire in the room is herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melissa Stacy
• Release date: Jan 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370981175

Book preview

BLOODSHADE

OF THE

GODDESS

A Novel

Melissa Stacy

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 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.

Copyright © January 2017 by Melissa Stacy

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published in the United States by Melissa Stacy.

Cover design by Beth McMacken, Athena Communications.

Ebook design by 52 Novels.

Smashwords Edition

To my friend,

April Duclos

Book Goddess, Reading Angel

Lover of lilacs, and hope in the darkness

Keeper of all the beautiful things

This book is for you.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

BLOODSHADE OF THE GODDESS

Acknowledgments

About the Author

1

The mountain wind cut through my jacket, my flimsy dress, even my strong leather boots, a bitter gale that burned my face and tortured my bare hands as I followed the piercing scream of the warlock. Like diamond claws tearing steel, a screech high and explosive, the noise warned me back, threatened me with agony and death. But I climbed the frozen rock with new speed, closing in. Clouds whipped across the night sky, high and thin as the air.

In a perfect world, my long raven hair would be bound in a braid, not blowing around in loose mayhem, and I’d be dressed for a mission.

The Ephraim wore sleek tunics and pants, low-slung belts for their weapons, heavy coats and matching gloves for cold weather. A beautiful uniform of rich sable, the same color those magicians had worn for hundreds of years. Associates of the Ephraim—like me—were issued similar clothing, with our names printed inside the tunics, golden thread sewn into black alpaca wool. Eloise Fatimah Assad. The name woven in mine.

In Arabic, the name Asʻad meant happiest, luckiest. Which seemed to be one of the great cosmic jokes of my life. No one would ever make the mistake of calling me lucky. Happy people had souls. Lucky people had families. I had a uniform, and worked for my sworn enemies: the magicians who staked the undead. Irony was the name of this game.

I was supposed to be meeting with a climate change refugee agent right now. In town. Not tracking a warlock of the True God through the mountains. The rest of my team had been waylaid in the canyon, fighting the warlock’s ghouls: monsters the size of Kodiak bears that resembled hyenas, swarmed in packs, crushed human femurs like glass in their powerful jaws. Even armed with gold-infused blades, and bullets laced with gold filament, ghouls were difficult to kill. Facing twenty at once was a nightmare.

The warlock hadn’t been in southwest Colorado that long, not even a year, but he’d built a fortress of steel ten miles south of town, a network of tunnels in a dry mesa top. He had all the equipment a terrorist needed to recruit people online, rapidly increase the size and strength of his cult, and he’d prepared for a fight. Even though the Ephraim had routed him here, away from his base in the desert and into the high peaks north of town, he’d escaped with contingency plans. Rituals could be performed on a mountainside as easily as a plain full of sagebrush, and the warlock was ready to kill. I didn’t even have stealth on my side, since he knew I was there, somewhere in the shadows beneath him.

He didn’t know what I was though. Strong as he was, I had the power to block him, and he couldn’t sense me correctly. With seventy feet left between us, he still assumed I was human. My single advantage.

"The True God sees all! the warlock bellowed, surrounded by his coven of witches. You have lost the path of the righteous! I offer salvation, and the light!"

As if screaming would ward me away. I had no problem with warlocks who followed the laws of element magic, or with anyone who worshipped the True God. But when worship or magic involved torture and murder, I found myself tracking killers, people using magic to harm. This man deserved to have his neck snapped, the gift of unlife he’d already shared with so many others, innocent women and children whose blood fed the power he used. He’d sacrificed doubters from within his own cult, and tonight he’d kidnapped a refugee boy. That was how I had found him, in pursuit of the child he had taken, and why I’d left my team in order to hunt him. Julian and his soldiers could slaughter the ghouls. I had a warlock to kill.

Sixty feet, fifty, forty feet left between us. I climbed with precision, sighting my target. He wore blue and gold robes, and a sapphire cloak lined with white rabbit fur. The hood framed the emerald glow of his eyes.

An electric blue pulse lit the canyon, illuminating the cliff sides around us, and the forest of pine heaped with snow. Three hundred feet straight below, in the black center of Ice Lake, wraiths surged to life. The phantoms twined and flashed in streaks from the water, toward the warlock’s sharp wails. Shapeshifting demons called by the power he cast from his hands. These wraiths looked like silver eels, with the heads of barracudas, though they had far more teeth than any natural fish. The warlock had finished his spell, and his demons were hungry, ready for their master to feed them.

The small child at his feet no longer moved, no longer cried for his mother. Shock had set in, a numb horror at the sight of the wraiths. The warlock picked up the boy, dangled him over the cliff, and the twelve witches flanking him shrieked. The women were all dressed the same, in dark cloaks lined with fur, velvet gowns and black boots, with an assortment of necklaces, bracelets, and rings decorating their pale skin. Twelve mavens of the True God, skilled in the Arts of Divine Light, their caterwauls increased the magician’s fierce power, so much that white sparks overtook the pulse he had summoned, crackling and hissing with a force close to thunder.

"The earth cries for justice! the warlock howled. The world must vanquish the damned!"

Only thirty feet left between us, but I didn’t clear the distance in time. The magician hurled the boy off the mountain, and the child screamed as he fell.

I hadn’t expected the warlock to summon a lake full of wraiths, or fling his prize to them without taking some of the boy’s blood for himself. Warlocks normally drew a mouthful of blood before a ritual sacrifice, but this one had skipped that crucial step, and now I was in trouble.

Flight wasn’t one of my gifts. Summoning air was a struggle, even close to the ground. I could barely manage a hover. A rescue mission like this wasn’t part of my skill set, was well beyond anything I could accomplish. But I had other instincts, a heart that couldn’t be overrun by my logic, and in the instant I had to choose between the warlock and the boy, I leapt.

I jumped into the path of his fall, locked my arms round the boy’s waist with an ungraceful collision, and we plummeted toward the lake.

Panic lit through my blood as I summoned the wind, pulled the element toward me with terror, but the air wouldn’t conjure and hold me. The warlock gave a death screech, shooting bolts of green fire as I spun and careened with the child, desperate to avoid hitting the lake.

The wraiths vaulted for the boy, smooth as dragons, slicing and snapping with their long bladed teeth. One caught the child’s pant leg, almost ripped him from my arms.

Then the rushing air shuddered, took hold of me and the child, and we veered far off course, away from the lake, spiraling in violent disorder. The child remained in my grasp, but still our fall didn’t slow. As the jagged rocks of the canyon sped toward me, an image of the boy’s shattered skull made me scream.

I pushed him away, sent him skyward, so the element could lift his small body. If I couldn’t summon enough wind to catch both of us, then I had to hope I might survive a fall from that height.

Hovering power streamed in a burst toward the child, a warm zephyr, a butterscotch breeze sweet as spring sunshine.

The wind caught the boy, drew him into the fold, like catching a tiny bird in the palm of a hand. Then I hit ground and shattered, smashed over the rocks.

Awareness flickered through in a haze. My head had split open, my spine had fractured like crushed pearl, my bones broken in more places than I wanted to think about.

The warlock could smite me as I lay there, unable to move. Or he could power the wraiths to slither out of the lake, flash along the ground like white vipers, and devour me.

My vision went dark, a tunnel of pain. I tried chanting, tried asking the earth to open and swallow me, but my tongue flopped and gushed blood, the muscle half bitten off, and what remained scraped against slivers of bone. I’d broken my teeth in the fall. My summoning couldn’t be voiced.

So I recited the call in my mind.

Mother of death, spirit of night,

Open a grave, save me to fight.

The Dark Goddess heard. The rocks parted beneath me, a gaping tear like a wound, and my body rolled into the mountain with the soft snick of blades.

The boy floated away through the trees, borne along by the wind I had called, while the earth stitched above me, closed me in darkness.

Cold reached into my heart, the caress of the Goddess, and I whimpered and cried, frightened as always by her grip. She pulled me into her silence, toward the cavern of sleep. Embraced in a landscape of terror and ice, fire and dread, her arctic breath filled my lungs, flared through my limbs with the lightning heat of core stone. I lost hold of my fear, closed my eyes, and nestled into her grace, bound in the safety of her black, frigid womb.

My blood sang as she clutched me with the bite of her talons, a mother’s kiss for her soulless undead.

2

Humans speculated at length about what happened inside a summoning grave. Mystical travels through time and space. Transformation, human possession, star journeys. There were libraries of tomes on the subject. None written by monsters.

Whether the undead transformed, possessed humans, or completed fantastical journeys after they entered a grave, I couldn’t say. Those things had never happened to me. Inside the earth, I slept. My heart stopped, my lungs stilled. My body became a true corpse, held in death. Sometimes, I dreamed. But rare were the moments when I resumed breathing to dream.

When I escaped to the earth, hoping to heal from my injuries, the Dark Goddess could hold me as long as she chose. Like any force of nature, she was gracious and cruel, malicious and loving, capable of great acts of compassion, and equally fierce acts of destruction. Humans called her evil.

I’d felt that way once. Before I was born to her.

The Dark Goddess made monsters, vicious beasts. That was true.

And her children didn’t have souls. Also true.

But she did gift her creations with divinity, a dark spirit imbued with her power. Not a soul bound for Heaven, but still an immortal energy. A shining piece of the Dark Mother herself. She was an earth goddess, but also part of the universe, the stars and quiet space that surrounded all life.

Tonight, the Goddess chose not to keep me too long. Nor did she heal me as I slept. The Mother of Night simply loosened her grip and allowed me to wake, still buried in rock.

I opened my eyes to the sound of pixie feet stomping over my grave, a tiny patter like I’d pissed off a mole. Vix was no cuddly little creature, though she did have a high, soft voice like a toddler’s, and as she slammed her bare feet on my grave, she yelled at me. Her shouts were as threatening as a hummingbird warble, given the wee size of her lungs.

"I know you can hear me! Get up, Eloise! Or I will pick up a dagger and poke you twenty times, hard enough to feel like a bee sting! No, worse than that—like a wasp!"

Vix was too tiny to wield a dagger. She was only five inches tall, about the same height as a pack of playing cards, and she never touched blades. Pixie skin burned against iron, and they lost control of their magic if they used human weapons. Most pixies avoided conflict as much as they could, and preferred to curl up in flowers and trees, pleasuring themselves, sleeping with mates, or having orgies. Humans, of course, called pixies depraved.

In an ideal world, Vix would have been in the forest, sleepy with lust and the cold spell of winter. But she was determined to spend her life harassing me instead.

Her real name was Vivienne Xavier Alexia Thistlewine. But to me, she was Vix, and she acted like a witch’s familiar, a demonic one, with a mind of her own.

It’s only two in the morning! Vix cried. "You need to cast over the portal, before the power goes cold! Eloise, wake up or I will stab you!"

Regardless of her threats, I lay still, aware of how much movement would hurt, and preparing myself for the pain.

I fell, I said, the words muffled, since my teeth were still broken, my tongue severed. But Vix didn’t need perfect pronunciation to hear me.

"What do I care that you fell? That warlock is getting away! So you haul up right now, or I’ll pull off your eyelashes and feed them to slugs!"

Which was better than being stabbed. The refugee boy I’d tried to save from the wraiths must be okay for Vix to be saying such ridiculous things. And if the warlock had fled, his wraiths had returned to the lake, and were insensate element once again. No longer a threat.

Where’s the team? I asked.

Chasing those witches! Vix screeched. The warlock sent them off to keep everyone away from his portal, and now you’re taking a nap while all hell breaks loose!

I spilled out of my grave, and as soon as the air touched my skin, I felt all my broken bones and ripped muscles, torn tendons and ligaments, smashed organs and bruises.

My heart raced with agony, left me panting, gasping and feverish with the force of my misery. Then I started to heal. Jagged bones twisted into their proper position, ruptures and gashes pulled into place and began to knit back together, my pulverized teeth and sliced tongue reshaped and regrew in the bloody gore of my gums. Ten minutes of excruciating torment, while I lay there and rasped with each breath.

Vix waited until it was over, her face turned away, no longer glowing. Restorations frightened Vix, made her see me as mortal and weak. Capable of being destroyed.

When I had the strength to sit up, I straightened my jacket and sighed with relief. Minus the damage done to my clothes, I didn’t need a mirror to know my body was perfect again—clean brown skin, black hair combed, not even a chip in one of my nails—and the blood and dirt on my clothing had come from my fall, not the grave.

On TV, the undead were portrayed as hideous people, pale-skinned and cadaverous, walking corpses forced to use glamour to blend in with society. But there was money to be made in such lies, and that dark spirit myth was a lucrative one. The truth was, except for the ice blue color of my eyes, I had the same features I’d possessed as a human, from the slender curve of my cheekbones to the full shape of my lips. I would look nineteen forever, the age I had been when I died.

Less than two years had passed since I was born to the Goddess and joined the Ephraim, but sometimes I barely remembered I’d once been as distant from magic as most humans. Taking my associate’s oath had been like signing up as a police officer, with all the possible trauma that came along with the job.

As I refastened a boot buckle, Vix hurried toward me, and a soft golden glow returned to her skin and butterfly wings. She had white and emerald wings, colored like the scales of a dragon, a pattern unique among pixies. Her wings chimed like glass as she pulled herself onto my knee, then scampered up my arm to my shoulder. Though Vix sometimes behaved like a child, like right now, climbing on me like a goon, Vix was no child. She had a voluptuous body clad in a jungle bikini, a tattered-looking outfit made with glittering fae cloth, like Tarzan in drag. With long seafoam green hair, and deep blue eyes with pale lashes, Vix looked part angel, part mermaid, as she tilted her head and studied my face.

Ready? she asked.

I rose, unsteady, and hobbled toward the base of the cliff. The same mountainside I’d scaled before, only I was further down the canyon this time, about a hundred feet from the lake. The icy wind made my teeth chatter as I limped along. Rather than climb straight up the rock, I found an old burro path, a steep set of switchbacks lining the mountain, and pushed my feet through the snow.

Vix remained on my shoulder, and sometimes she jingled her wings, upset we weren’t moving faster. She didn’t criticize me aloud, but her chimes held disappointment.

The fact she didn’t offer to teleport us meant she was too exhausted for such a difficult spell. I could’ve complained about that, but I gave a light hiss instead, and Vix left off making noise.

You checked on the boy? I asked.

Yes, he’s fine. Fast asleep. Your zephyr held remarkably well.

I’m amazed.

For the worst summoner ever born to the Goddess, you do manage nice power sometimes.

He was still floating, when you found him?

Vix clapped her wings brightly, in a way that meant she was pleased. Caught in the branches of a tall Douglas fir. I tethered him with a vanishing, and made sure he’d stay warm.

Did you help with the ghouls?

Vix huffed. Until the witches arrived. Then I came to find you.

How far did the warlock run before he summoned a portal?

Vix gestured with her chin. Top of the mountain. There’s an alcove not far from a mine.

You’re sure that he’s gone? Not still lurking somewhere?

No. I thought I’d lure you into a trap. You’ll see his bright beady eyes right before he spells you to death.

She didn’t share any details about the fight with the ghouls, or where the witches had gone, which meant someone on the team might have died.

Not Julian though. Vix would’ve told me right away, if he’d been injured or killed.

You should help with the witches, I said. I can manage a cast on my own.

No, she said quickly, and shivered. I’m staying with you.

It’s a portal, Vix, not a—

She cut me off, her voice low and anxious. There’s something evil out here. Something a lot worse than a warlock.

Like what?

One of you.

Which made my heart skip a beat with alarm, though I didn’t stop moving.

Vix stood on tiptoe, peering up at the mountain. Don’t you feel him?

Too weak. My senses wouldn’t return to full force until I fed. I needed blood, at least a gallon of blood, before I had anywhere near my regular strength.

Vix jingled her wings in dismay. Well, someone is here. Watching us, maybe. I don’t know.

Damn it. I stuffed my fists in my pockets, made an effort to pick up the pace. The wind snapped my dress like a flag. My tights were ripped, as well as my jacket, and my skin felt sliced raw by the cold. Fifteen minutes passed as I ascended the mountain, rising hundreds of feet along a barren rock face.

Then Vix jumped in fright, clutching my collar as she whispered, "Eloise! He’s coming!"

I broke into a run, left the switchbacks, and aimed for a thick copse of aspen, the last grove of trees before timberline. My boots dug into the scree, sent rocks raining into the canyon, and the clattering noise ricocheted through the chasm.

"Faster! Vix screeched. Run faster!"

I sprinted, lost my footing, almost fell off the cliff, before I reached the trees, raced past the aspen, and plunged into a deeper cover of pine. Vix drew strength from trees, and now that we stood beneath her source energy, she could vanish us both, drawing on the life force of evergreens to make us disappear. She cast an invisible shield, a pixie barrier that screened us from the senses of monsters. We had a measure of safety now, but I didn’t relax.

I circled the narrow outcropping, returned to the edge of the pine, and knelt, hoping whoever was tracking me might give up and turn back. Decide I wasn’t worth the trouble of hunting.

And if I’d been lucky, maybe that would have happened.

The air charged with power, and energy thrummed deep inside me, reacting to the force of another vampire’s current. My dry well of fortune wasn’t about to fill now.

3

The vampire moved without noise, so fast I didn’t see him enter the trees, didn’t realize how close he stood until he was almost upon me. A tall, cloaked shadow with the speed of a quicksilver: the strongest and fastest of vampires. A monster far more frightening than a wraith or a ghoul. His power curled through the night, thicker than smoke, searching for me. Tendrils of energy slid along the edge of the vanishing, pulsing with strength, with the force of his age. The barrier held, a perfect blend in the darkness, though Vix grabbed my neck with her arms, trembling, pixie wings silent.

The vampire spoke with a voice low and deep, a smooth poison. Little girl. He glided beneath the trees, slipping between branches with casual motion, a lazy shark scenting prey. You know you can’t hide from me, child.

I couldn’t run from him, either. While I could certainly move inhumanly fast, my talent didn’t give me a quicksilver’s superspeed, especially not the swiftness of a vampire this old. Centuries coursed through his body, years that had strengthened his dark spirit to an astonishing level. This quicksilver had abilities beyond anything I’d ever encountered.

Even so. My twenty-first birthday was next week, and though my hands felt frozen and clumsy, I still removed the knife from my left boot, gripped the handle and took a deep breath, determined to live long enough to make a wish.

The ancient quicksilver chuckled, a rich sound of mirth. He sensed the drawn weapon, even if he hadn’t found me. You have a bit of gold in that blade? His head turned a fraction, shifting the heavy folds of the hood of his cloak. Think you can stop me with a fire knife?

A sneer tinged his voice as he said the word fire. In the language of the Ephraim, fire weapons were those blessed by Source energy, which some people called God.

This God had nothing to do with the twisted beliefs of the warlock, who worshipped the True God, and practiced the Arts of Divine Light.

The Ephraim weren’t a cult, and they didn’t use their power to summon creatures to hurt people. Ritual sacrifice, torture, and blood rites had nothing to do with their strength. The Ephraim were Source mages, Protectors of Peace, human warriors who fought anyone who used magic for destruction and murder.

The mages employed other kinds of magicians, male and female witches who didn’t use Source energy to power their spells. Those assistants were given the title of associate witch, and associates helped the Ephraim save lives and fight monsters. While any associate witch could choose to advance to the level of mage, the training was tremendously difficult, and most people never attempted to learn how to conjure with Source power.

Regardless of whether a witch advanced to the level of mage or not, anyone who worked for the Ephraim wore a uniform while on duty, and Source mages hardly ever dressed in anything else.

As a vampire, I belonged to the monsters. But as an associate witch, I belonged to the Ephraim. Either way, a dark spirit like this quicksilver made the most formidable enemy. Even a Source mage could be killed by a vampire this strong.

A cut from a gold-infused fire weapon would be fatal to me, but not to a dark spirit this old. My dagger would make him sick. Slow him down. Take some of the force from his strength, until his wound healed.

But if I wanted to kill him, I needed a fire sword to cut off his head, and a gilded ash stake to plunge through his heart. Then I’d have to dismember him, and leave him out in the sun. Make sure he couldn’t enter a grave and survive.

None of which was likely to happen.

Humans hunted me for my blood, for the power a dark spirit’s life force gave to their bodies, and another vampire could drain me for the same reason. This quicksilver wouldn’t have tracked me for anything else, and he was strong enough to feed until I was dead.

His head swiveled toward me, he stopped hovering and settled onto the ground, and the vanishing barrier faltered, cracked and splintered apart by his might. Vix’s magic disappeared, left us exposed, and I felt the quicksilver’s gaze like hot oil on my skin.

Vix fluttered her wings without making a sound, her fingers digging into my skin with terror.

Go, I wanted to say. Fly.

But telling Vix to leave wasn’t necessary—she could dart away when the vampire charged—and I needed all my concentration on the pending attack.

I waited for him to rush me. Planned to sink my dagger in his face when he did. Into one of his eyes.

But he remained as he was, a shadow before me. His power surged through the air, and made it harder to breathe.

Such a baby you are, he said softly, with that deep silky voice. Huddled on the ground with your knife.

I bared my fangs and hissed, prepared to roll when he hit me, dig my teeth in his neck. Buy myself time. Live another few minutes. Figure out a new plan.

The vampire reached up to his hood, drew the fabric away, and let the material fall down his back. His olive skin appeared deep grey in the darkness, though I saw him clearly enough in the night. All vampires could see in the dark, and sense magic with our skin as well as our sight. The ancient stood without speaking, like he enjoyed being seen, studied by the prey he