Demon Dance and Other Disasters

Book 1: A Spirit Mage's Journey

by BR Kingsolver

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Contemporary Fantasy; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

My name is Kaitlyn Dunne, although on the streets--where I've lived since my parents were murdered--I'm known as Katy Brown. I'm a Tracker. The Mage Guild pays bounties to find and neutralize rogue vampires and werewolves. I also find lost children, dogs, and deadbeat spouses. Whatever pays the rent and fills my belly.

Then a Master Mage asks me to find a wizard who is summoning demons.

Warnings: A very dark adult urban fantasy with parental loss, historical child abuse, mentions of pedophilia (nothing on screen).

 

Read more

Release date: August 18, 2024

Sample

CHAPTER 1

I had spent two weeks tracking Madeleine du Mont, a three-hundred-year-old vampire with a shocking disregard for the covenant between her kind and the Mage Guild. The streets were deserted due to a deluge of rain that had started that afternoon and continued into the night. Madeleine must have been hungry, or maybe vamps that old didn’t care about the weather.
My guess as to where she was spending her days had turned out to be right. A basement apartment in an old building south of Capitol Hill. No way could I break in there during the day, so I had waited.
She set out in a direction I didn’t expect. Her usual hunting ground had been out on East Colfax, taking either the hookers or their clients. Low-hanging fruit, which indicated to me that she was lazy. With the cold rain, there probably wouldn’t be much business going on there, so instead, she was headed toward Cherry Creek, and probably the night clubs and strip joints.
Vampires were fast, but she didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, so I didn’t have any trouble keeping up with her. And with the rain as hard as it was, I didn’t worry much about being quiet. I doubted even she could hear anything softer than thunder.
I caught up with her when she hit the creek, which was more like a river then, with the rain adding to runoff from the snowmelt in the mountains. The park ran alongside the creek, with Speer Boulevard on the other side. If she was headed where I thought, she had to cross the creek, and that meant finding a bridge.
Casting my personal shield, I drew my katana and a wooden stake from my bag, then moved to close with her. My suppositions about her hearing were obviously mistaken, as she stopped at the end of the bridge, spun around, and laughed.
“Are you to be my dinner tonight, little mage? I haven’t had mage blood in weeks.”
She sprang, covering the ten or fifteen feet between us in a single leap. I braced, and held the sword out in front of me, but she dodged it and slammed into me. Even with my shield, the force of her knocked me down.
My shield frustrated her, as she couldn’t get a grasp of me. I wriggled free, but she wrapped her arms around my legs, and I fell again. She was too close for me to use the sword, and she avoided the stake. Usually, my shield gave me an advantage against the bloodsuckers, but Madeleine was faster and stronger than any opponent I had ever faced. I dropped the katana and drew my wakizashi, a short sword or a long knife. Much better for close fighting.
Madeleine backhanded me, a blow I felt even through my shield. She had to have felt it, too—like punching a brick wall—and hesitated. I turned the tables and rushed her. She stumbled on the wet, uneven grass, and stepped backward to regain her balance.
My knife slid into her belly with barely any resistance, and I saw shock on her face. The wound wouldn’t be fatal, or even disabling, but I hoped to get an opening to use the stake.
Madeline turned her body, and the stake skipped off her arm. I tried to use the leverage of the knife still imbedded in her to keep her from moving away from me. She pushed me hard with both hands, and fell backward. She was too close to the low stone wall at the edge of the creek, which hit her at mid-thigh. I saw her wildly waving her arms, trying to regain her balance.
She fell into the water and disappeared, surfaced briefly downstream, then went under again. Vamps can’t swim, and they do need oxygen, so they can drown. I thought I saw a glimpse of her farther downstream, and then there was nothing except the churning power of the water rushing toward the plains.
My father’s wakizashi, one of the few things I had to remember him, was gone.
~~~
I had to stoop to enter the low door, and the rain that had gathered in my hat brim spilled onto my shoes. No big deal, they were soaked anyway.
It was pitch-black outside, so it took no time at all for my eyes to adjust. A few dim lamps on the walls and at either end of the bar made it difficult to tell if I knew any of the people sitting around the small tables scattered across the floor. I knew that the ambiance—if you could call it that—was purposeful. Nick’s Cellar probably didn’t look much different than it had a hundred years before, although now the dim lights were electric instead of gas or oil.
I made my way across to the bar and put out a five. “Ale.”
The bartender poured my drink and swept the money out of sight when he placed the mug on the bar. I picked it up and looked around for a place to sit. A small table with two chairs in one of the corners caught my attention. A good spot where I could sit with my back to the wall.
They called it mud season up in the mountains—the time when the snow melted, and spring rain turned everything into a soggy miasma of shoe-sucking mud. It all washed down to the city at the mountains’ base, changing the river running through town into a brown, roiling animal, ready to drown any creature foolish enough not to respect it.
Madeleine had made that mistake, venturing too close and underestimating her opponent. I replayed the look of shock on her face as she lost her balance and fell in, and wondered how far she would travel before her body washed up on a shore.
It was a problem, since I had no proof of her death. And without proof, the Guild was unlikely to pay. Two weeks of tracking and spying, and then a fight that left me bruised and sore, and with nothing to show for it. I wondered if maybe I should find another profession. Working at the Gilded Lilly next door wasn’t a job I relished, but Lilly said I was comely enough, and I could make good money. Perhaps, but I couldn’t drum up any enthusiasm for the gig.
Not for the first time, I thought about going back to school. The university would train me for something more socially acceptable than slaughtering vampires and other monsters. I could sit in a nice, warm office building and add numbers until I completely lost what little sanity I had left. Of course, I would have to finish high school first, and I had to eat while I played student.
Or I could apply for an apprenticeship with the Guild. Some of its members had shown interest in me, although some of that interest wasn’t welcome. The look in Master Rathske’s eyes made it plain that accepting his mentoring meant sharing his bed, and I couldn’t imagine that. At least at Lilly’s, I wouldn’t be stuck with the same unpleasant man over and over every night. But the men would probably have Rathske’s tastes, and the same look in their eyes.
Someone moved closer to me, partially blocking the light from the room.
“You look like a drowned rat,” Morgan said. He was the only tracker I really considered a friend—although he wanted to be more than friends.
“Feel kind of like one,” I replied, not looking up.
“What do you think about a hot shower and a warm, dry place to spend the night?”
I shrugged. “Not really interested in company tonight. I figure I’ll have another glass after this one, then find my way home.”
“Offer’s open if you change your mind.” He moved off, back to a table with two other men.
Morgan wasn’t a bad sort, and I would be safe with him, but he always made me feel as though he wanted to keep me. It was flattering in a way, but he was twice my age, and there had to be something wrong with a man who wanted to keep house with a sixteen-year-old girl. ...