Blood and bones, p.1
Blood and Bones, page 1
Copyright
Blood and Bones (Legion Book One)
Copyright © AD Starrling 2018. All rights reserved. Registered with the US Copyright Service.
Third eBook edition: 2024
* * *
www.ADStarrling.com
shop.adstarrling.com
Edited by Right Ink On The Wall
The right of AD Starrling to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior written consent of the author, excepting for brief quotes used in reviews. Your respect of the author’s rights and hard work is appreciated. Request to publish extracts from this book should be sent to the author at ads@adstarrling.com. This book is a work of fiction. References to real people (living or dead), events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used factitiously. All other characters, and all other incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Contents
Discover AD Starrling’s Seventeen Universe and more
Prologue
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
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Fire and Earth Extract
Acknowledgments
Books by A.D. Starrling
About A.D. Starrling
Discover AD Starrling’s Seventeen Universe and more
Seventeen Series
* * *
Other series based in the Seventeen Universe
Legion
Witch Queen
* * *
Military Romantic Suspense
Division Eight
Miscellaneous
Void - A Sci-fi Horror Short Story
The Other Side of the Wall - A Horror Short Story
Blurb
Artemus Steele is many things. The world's foremost yet least celebrated expert on all things ancient and arcane. A metalsmith with unusual skills. The owner of an antique shop and a switchblade that is more than just a knife. What he doesn’t want to be is a hero. When the monster he first met on the night he turned six appears on his doorstep, Artemus suspects his life is about to go from strange to hell in a handbasket. And he isn’t too happy about that.
* * *
Callie Stone arrives in Chicago with one purpose in mind: to sell one of her dead husband’s prized possessions. When the auction house gets attacked by fiendish creatures and the relic goes missing, Callie realizes that the life she has known is a lie and the world is full of frightening things straight out of her worst nightmares.
* * *
Moments after snatching a priceless artifact from one of the most securely guarded private functions in the country, Drake Hunter is confronted by enemies he thought he’d left in his past. Brought face to face with the mysterious organization after the relic, Drake knows he is dealing with something evil. Because the devil inside him is stirring once more.
* * *
With no option but to join forces with a pair of ruthless mercenaries, the reluctant associates are cast into a race to uncover the organization’s dark intentions and the true nature of the artifact. To survive, they will need more than brute strength and wit. They will have to figure out what twisted Fate links them. And they will have to embrace powers they never knew they possessed.
* * *
Blood & Bones is the first book in AD Starrling’s urban fantasy series Legion, the spin-off of her bestselling supernatural thriller series Seventeen. This is an action-packed paranormal adventure featuring smart-mouthed heroes, angels, demons, myths, monsters, and a rabbit.
Prologue
I am light, I am darkness.
I am salvation, I am wrath.
I am rebirth, I am destruction.
I am savior, I am oppressor.
I belong to Heaven, I belong to Hell.
P.S. I like bunnies.
Chapter One
Artemus Steele walked into the shop, tossed his windbreaker on a coat stand, and headed briskly toward the rear of the old brick building. He opened the door to his office and had one foot over the threshold when he froze.
A package sat on his well-worn antique desk. He stared at it for several seconds before carefully releasing the doorknob and backing out of the room.
“Hey, Otis! Did you take a delivery this morning?” he shouted down the gloomy passage to his right, his gaze still on the object taking up a considerable amount of space on his one-of-a-kind bureau.
Artemus grimaced when the sound of his own voice reverberated painfully around his skull; it felt like someone was swinging a hammer inside the damn thing.
Footsteps sounded on the rickety staircase that connected the first floor of the shop to the apartment above it. A figure in a worn housecoat and fluffy slippers shuffled into view at the end of the passageway.
Otis Boone yawned, blinked blearily behind his glasses, and scratched the expanse of pale chest visible above the sagging neckline of his flannel shirt. “What delivery?”
Artemus studied his assistant’s sleepy expression and slowly counted to five.
Don’t bite his head off. It’s not his fault you’ve got the mother of all hangovers and lost five grand last night.
He indicated his office with a cocked thumb. “That delivery.”
Otis joined him and peered inside the room. His eyes widened.
“Shit! Is that blood?”
“So, you didn’t see who brought it?” Artemus demanded sharply.
He regretted his tone instantly when an invisible force drove a chisel straight through his left temple.
Otis shook his head. “Nah-huh. I was out like a light. Got me some new cocoa. Stuff’s magic.”
Artemus sniffed the air and caught a familiar smell above the faint odor of stale human sweat emanating from his assistant.
The hot cocoa had evidently been supplemented with weed.
They stood and stared at the package. It was two feet by one foot and wrapped in heavy-duty, brown packing paper. Someone had tied the whole thing up with string and finished it off with a deceptively cheerful bow on top.
Artemus narrowed his eyes.
It would have looked like one of those quaint parcels delivered by a smiling postman on a bike to a picture-perfect housewife in the classic fifties movies he and his mom used to watch on TV when he was a kid, were it not for the bloody handprint on the side and the congealing crimson puddle beneath it. It didn’t help that he was getting bad juju vibes from it. Like, uber bad.
The package rustled.
Otis let out a strangled scream and clutched Artemus’s arm. “Oh my God, did that thing just move? Is it—is it alive?!”
Artemus swallowed the bile rising in his throat, peeled his assistant’s fingers from his flesh, and reached for the knife tucked in his left boot. The weapon looked like any switchblade you could buy from a military surplus store. He flicked it open and started across the room, pulse hammering away in his veins in tandem with the vicious pounding in his head. Floorboards creaked softly beneath his feet as he approached the desk.
The package rustled again. A sudden stillness came over it. Artemus hesitated.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.
He glanced at the bottle of bourbon standing on top of the filing cabinet to his left.
Another drink is not going to make this shitty situation any better.
He sighed. Let’s just get whatever the hell this is over and done with.
The dark red blemish staining the inlayed, brown leather surface of his beloved Victorian oak pedestal desk caught his attention once more. Artemus frowned, ire rising and overcoming the thread of apprehension thrumming down his spine.
And some asshole is going to pay for that.
He reached out and slipped the knife under the bow. It sliced effortlessly through the string.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then paper swished and crinkled, the package slowly unraveling before him like some kind of gory Christmas gift.
Limpid brown eyes locked onto him from behind the bars of a steel cage.
Artemus stopped breathing. The room faded around him.
For one wild, dizzying moment, he was back there again, in that field behind his house. The night he turned six. The night he saw strange lights in the sky. The night he witnessed the birth of a monster.
Artemus’s fingers clenched around the blade in his hand as the world came sharply back into focus. The handle grew hot and the metal trembled under his touch. Why the hell has he turned up again?
Gazing at him steadily from inside the metal cage sitting in a pool of blood on his priceless antique desk was the ghastly beast he’d seen that ungodly night when his life had changed forever. Except it didn’t look like a beast. Instead, it had assumed the shape of something so mundane Artemus would have laughed had he not known what lay beneath the innocent facade.
“Is that a—a bunny?” Otis stammered in a horrified voice.
There, looking like an exact replica of the first and only pet Artemus had ever owned, was a tan and chocolate Rex rabbit. Considering Artemus’s love of all things fluffy and floppy-eared, he should have been in a fit of rapture right about now.
Except this particular Rex rabbit had glowing red pupils and was gnawing on the remains of a dead rat, the unfortunate creature’s blood staining the velvety fur around his cute rabbit muzzle in gruesome wet streaks.
“That ain’t no bunny,” Artemus stated coldly.
The animal’s lips peeled back to expose two rows of deadly fangs.
Chapter Two
“No, Elton, I can’t come to the auction house right now!” Artemus snapped into his cell phone.
He stormed inside the workshop at the rear of the building and dumped the metal cage unceremoniously on a table. A low growl emanated from the rabbit inside.
Bells jingled faintly in the distance; Otis was putting the “Open” sign on the shop’s front door. Not that the place was likely to see much traffic today. Even though Chicago’s North Side was usually a bevy of tourist activity, it would be a brave soul indeed who would venture out into the icy depths of a winter’s day to check out an antique dealer in Old Town.
“Why? Because I have an emergency that I need to deal with, that’s why!” Artemus barked. He put the cell on speaker, stripped to his waist, and donned an old work shirt. “And, FYI, you owe me five grand. That tipoff was useless. All I have to show for it is a damn headache and a hole in my pocket. Those bastards ripped me off big time.”
Artemus ended the call, slid his smithy’s apron on, and grabbed a bar of iron from a pile of metal in the corner of the workshop. He looked at the rabbit.
The creature was cleaning the gory evidence around his muzzle with his pink tongue and fluffy paws. He paused and blinked at him innocently.
Artemus scowled and swapped the iron for a steel alloy bar. He headed for the old stone forge and anvil in the center of the room.
They had been there since long before the shop existed. In fact, from the historical photographs he’d seen in the Chicago Public Library, the forge and the anvil were as old as the city itself.
He dumped anthracite coal and kindling in the hearth, ignited the lot with a propane torch, and started working the footpedal of the old-style bellows connected to the forge. The coals soon glowed red, then yellow and white. He placed the steel bar in the hearth, selected his tools, and got to work.
Artemus’s headache faded as he fell into the rhythm of working the metal, flattening, bending, and twisting it into the shape he could see in his mind’s eye. Smithing was a skill he seemed to have been born with, which was strange considering his background.
His gift had not been lost on the man he’d inherited the antique shop from. Nor had his other, more unusual talents.
Artemus’s arms ached pleasantly while he hammered and fashioned the steel. He added other metals into the mix, carefully blending and folding them into the original alloy. Sweat soon beaded his forehead and ran in rivulets down his face. He crossed the room and opened the back door.
Cold air swooshed inside the workshop, bringing with it a flurry of snow.
The sky darkened outside as he continued molding the composite he had made. The snowstorm intensified. Otis came into the room to ask if he wanted lunch and got a grunt in response. A bacon cheeseburger and a soda appeared on a table next to him and were promptly devoured. The rabbit got a carrot. He ignored the offering and sat quietly watching Artemus, as he had the entire morning.
Artemus had just dunked the object he had made in the slack tub next to the forge and was laying it on the anvil to add the final ingredients it required when a burly figure appeared at the back door and blocked out what remained of the daylight.
“So, what the heck is this emergency?” Elton LeBlanc grumbled as he strode inside the workshop, snowflakes melting in his gray-speckled hair and beard. He grimaced at the heat blasting from the forge, shrugged out of his expensive cashmere coat, and laid it over the back of a Queen Anne chair.
Artemus pointed at the rabbit in the cage. “That is the emergency.”
Elton’s rugged face turned stony. “You got a pet rabbit? That’s the piss-ass reason you’re giving me for not turning up for this job? The client’s been waiting for you for three hours! I told you he was coming all the way from New York.”
“He’s not just any rabbit,” Artemus said. “He’s THE rabbit.”
Elton looked at him blankly. Realization slowly dawned in his dark gaze.
He frowned. “Not that story again. Look, we’ve been through this before, kid. Monsters like that don’t exist.”
“Really?” Artemus said sharply. “After everything you’ve witnessed since you met me, you’re gonna stick with that story?”
An uncomfortable expression replaced Elton’s frown. “That’s different.”
Artemus stiffened. “You mean I’m different, right?”
He nearly kicked himself when he saw the hurt that flashed in Elton’s eyes. He knew he was being an asshole and had no one to blame for it but himself. And his stupid hangover.
Artemus blew out a sigh, took the switchblade out of his boot, and headed for the table where the cage sat.
“Hey, Freakshow, why don’t you show us your teeth again?”
He rattled the steel bars with the knife.
Redness filled the rabbit’s pupils from edge to edge. The creature growled and peeled his lips back.
Elton startled. “What the hell?”
Artemus put the knife away. “I think I’ve made my point.”
He returned to the anvil, laid his hands on the intricate chain upon it, and concentrated. A warm feeling sparked inside his chest. It blossomed and expanded until it filled his entire body, flowing down his arms and legs all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes, radiant threads of energy that pulsed gold and red with his every heartbeat. He focused them into the metal.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the chain trembled and glowed beneath his touch. White light danced through it as he moved his fingers expertly along its length. The composite blurred, molecules stretching and contracting at incredible speeds, lending them an elasticity and tensile strength that no metal on Earth should possess.
