Hidden Blade (The Soul Eater Book 1) Read online

  Hidden Blade

  Soul Eater #1

  Pippa DaCosta

  Contents

  Copyright

  Summary

  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

  Excerpt ~ Betrayal, #1 Girl From Above

  Also by Pippa DaCosta

  About the Author

  ‘Hidden Blade’

  #1 Soul Eater

  Pippa DaCosta

  Urban Fantasy & Science Fiction Author

  Subscribe to her mailing list here & get free ebooks.

  Copyright © 2016 Pippa DaCosta.

  July 2016 US Edition. 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.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictions, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  US Edition. Edited for US readers in US English.

  Version 1.0

  www.pippadacosta.com

  Summary

  "They call me devil, liar, thief. In whispers, they call me Soul Eater. They’re right. I’m all those things—and more."

  Kicked out of the underworld and cursed to walk this earth for all eternity, Ace Dante finds solace in helping others avoid the wrath of the gods.

  But when warrior-bitch, Queen of Cats, and Ace's ex-wife, Bastet, hires him to stop whoever is slaughtering her blessed women, Ace is caught between two of the most powerful deities to have ever existed: Isis and Osiris.

  The once-revered gods aren’t dead.

  They’re back.

  And Ace is in their way.

  Welcome to a New York where the ancient gods roam.

  Chapter 1

  Gods. They’re a pain in my ass, I thought as my cell phone chirped in my pocket, alerting the four college kids inside the apartment that I was crouched on their balcony, watching them summon gods knew what from the underworld. It had to be a god calling me—too many millennia had given them the worst sense of timing.

  The kids spotted me through the glass and bolted, falling over their array of ritual paraphernalia. If they scattered out of the apartment, it’d make scaring the shit out of them a whole lot harder.

  I kicked the balcony door in, whipped my sawed-off shotgun free of its holster, and fired at their exit, peppering the door with lead. The kids yanked up short and whirled.

  “Oh shit—oh shit—oh shit, we didn’t know, man!” Hands up, they wailed in one long tirade. “We weren’t doin’ anythin’. Don’t shoot us.”

  On and on their whining went, and on and on my cell tinkled, vibrating against my leg. Ignoring it all, I came to a stop at the edge of the elaborate summoning circle. A candle had toppled over, spilling wax across a papyrus scroll. The little flame licked at the scroll’s upturned edge but didn’t catch. Switching the shotgun to my left hand, I crouched, righted the candle, and flicked the papyrus around. I scanned the hieroglyphs scrawled from edge to edge. The penmanship was superb, more art than writing. Swirls and pen strokes danced beautifully, almost as though they were alive. Whoever had written this knew how to craft the ancient words in powerful and mostly forgotten ways. A sorcerer. A sinking sense of dread darkened my already somber mood.

  “It’s him,” one of the kids hissed. “I told you… I told you he was following us. You didn’t fuckin’ listen, Jase.”

  “Shut up. Just shut up!” Jase snarled back, and then to me, he sniveled, “We were just messin’ around.”

  Puffing out a sigh, I pinched the papyrus by its edges. The spellwork it contained was authentic. Kids these days. They had no fear and no clue. The spell nipped at my fingertips, trying to escape its bonds. I dangled it over the naked candle flame. A ripple of fire raced up the paper; fire liked volatile spells, especially those sanctioned by the underworld.

  “He’s gonna kill us,” Jase whispered.

  I snapped my gaze up. I could do worse than kill them. It had been a while since I’d indulged, but I could make an exception for spoiled, rich kids with too much time on their hands, especially since that one—Jase—and I already had a chat some weeks ago when I’d found him buying canopic jars.

  He gulped loudly and made a brave attempt at staring back at me before dropping his eyes. Few could look me in the eye for long.

  Finally, my cell stopped its incessant ringing and the quiet settled. Too quiet. New York didn’t do quiet. I should have been hearing the endless whine of sirens or the bark of car horns. I’m too late.

  I straightened. “What happened to kids screwing around with Ouija boards? This here”—I flicked a hand at the well-crafted summoning circle—“this will get you killed.”

  “It’s just some ancient Egyptian stuff.”

  My lips twitched dangerously close to a smile. Holstering the shotgun inside my coat, I reached behind my shoulder and curled my fingers around Alysdair’s grip. The sword slid free from its leather scabbard with a satisfying gasp. There was something to be said for a two-handed sword, particularly the kind etched with spellwork exactly like that found on the scroll I’d just burned. Alysdair sang with magic. These kids wouldn’t hear or feel it, but it wasn’t meant for them. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t meant for this world either—a little like me.

  “Shit, man! You can’t fuckin’ do this!” They all started up again, bleating like penned sheep, all but one. The quiet one hadn’t said a word since I’d kicked in the door and was doing a fantastic job of trying real hard to keep me from noticing him.

  “C’mon, you’re the Nameless One, right? The coat, the sword?” Jase spluttered, hope gushing through his words. “You’re s’posed to be good.”

  I wasn’t sure what surprised me more: the fact he’d heard of the Nameless One, or that these dumbass kids thought I was good.

  “The Nameless One is an urban legend.”

  Pointing the sword tip at the floor, I scanned the apartment. The door was ten paces away; the balcony was closer. Two possible exits and I was in the middle, positioned exactly where I wanted to be.

  “Besides,” I drawled, “if he was real, you really wouldn’t want him saving you.”

  Any hope of saving these kids had fled long before I arrived. The spellwork, the papyrus—heavy magic came at a high price. My job now was to contain the fallout.

  My cell buzzed. “Poison” by Alice Cooper started playing from my pocket.

  Quiet Guy kicked the glass coffee table, sending jagged pieces of glass raining over me. I flung up an arm too late to stop the shards from biting into my cheek. It only took a second, but the distraction lasted long enough for the summoned demon residing in Quiet Guy to snatch up a blade of glass and plunge it into his pal’s neck. Things got messy real fast after that.

  A hail of screams erupted. Blood sprayed in a wide arc as the kid dropped. The demon inside Quiet Guy let out a triumphant howl, and the two remaining kids did the only sensible thing: they bolted out the door.

  I lunged at the demon, Alysdair aglow, but being free, probably for the first t
ime in its long life, the demon wasn’t about to let the sight of Alysdair frighten it. Scuttling back—its movements broken and twitchy inside its human host—the demon clawed its way up the wall and onto the ceiling. Its human mouth split impossibly wide, and a long, whip-like black tongue lashed out.

  It expected me to fall back. Those tongues were barbed. Any sane person would have run out the door with the kids, but I snatched the tongue out of the air, flicked it around my wrist, and yanked. I wasn’t any sane person. Technically, I wasn’t a person.

  The demon heaved back, jerking me forward.

  Wrestling with a demon’s tongue wasn’t how I’d expected this evening to go.

  “Give up now—” I started, but the tongue knotted back on itself, reeling me closer. “And I’ll let you live.”

  My boots slipped. Tighter and tighter the tongue coiled up my forearm, bicep, and shoulder, until the demon had me dangling, my boot toes scuffing the floor.

  The demon chuckled, the sound of it like metal grinding against metal—an abhorrent, not-of-this-world sound that set my teeth on edge.

  “Lost your bite… Namelesssss One…” it hissed around its tongue, outside my mind as well as burrowing the words deep inside my thoughts.

  “I know a girl like you.” I tightened my dangling grip on Alysdair. “All tongue.”

  The demon had begun distorting its victim’s body. The face was swollen and flushed purple, as though Quiet Guy had been run through a trash compactor. The eyes, so fragile, had been one of the first things to go. They had turned to mush and were dribbling from their sockets. Crimson flames danced inside the dark, hollow sockets, seemingly deeper than a human skull could account for, as if reaching right into the soul. The eyes really were the windows to the soul, and Quiet Guy’s was no longer home. Soon, there would be little left of the kid. Once that happened, the demon would become virtually unstoppable and the no-bullshit New Yorkers would have more to worry about than the alligators in the sewers, like the type of problem that ate small children and used their bones to pave the way for more of its ilk.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I pushed the words through my teeth, “there’s a lot the right girl can do with her tongue, but my friend’s is as sharp as a dagger and cuts like one too.”

  “Join me… Soul Eater…you were powerful once…could be again…”

  I pretended to think about it while locking eyes with those glowing red coals. The deeper I looked, the deeper the creature’s needs and desires clawed into my mind. There was no light in this one, only poisonous, devouring darkness.

  “I don’t do demon.”

  I heaved the sword around and thrust it upright, sinking it deep into the demon’s gut. The demon screamed the way only otherworldly creatures could, as though the sword had cleaved its soul in two. I drove Alysdair right up to its damn hilt. A familiar spell pushed from my lips, which would have been the perfect end to this little dance had the demon’s tongue not unraveled and dropped me like a stone. I fell, dragging Alysdair down with me, and landed in a crouch.

  The demon scuttled along the ceiling, down the wall, and out the door, leaving a trail of bubbling blood behind it.

  I spat a curse and dashed after it, my ringtone still belting out Alice Cooper and how his girl’s lips were venomous poison.

  Chapter 2

  Body number two lay sprawled in the stairwell, neck broken. I stepped over the corpse and jogged up the stairs, following the splatters of blood toward the roof. The demon would eventually kill the third kid too; they always killed their summoners—the people who potentially had power over them.

  Shoving through a door, the stairwell spat me out into a biting winter wind. Snow swirled and patted against my face, softening the sounds of New York’s usual din of traffic.

  Alysdair in hand, hieroglyphs glowing pale green along her blade, I stepped into a few inches of snow cover and bounced my gaze around the rooftop’s clutter. Storage boxes, an elevator motor enclosure, some other jagged shapes silhouetted against the glistening skyline, but no obvious demons. Beyond the roof, a high-rise loomed, its windows aglow. With the gunshot and the bodies, someone would call the cops and soon. I had to get this done fast, before the demon sprouted wings.

  “I’ve reconsidered,” I called out, following the trail of blood. My boots crunched in the snow, so there was no use in trying to move quietly. “You and me, I can make that work.”

  The grinding laughter returned, but the wind gathered it up and tossed it around the rooftop. “You are weak…”

  “Says the demon with a hole in its gut,” I muttered. “You’re going to die here, you must know that.”

  The demon could shift its shape and escape. Given enough time, it could hole up somewhere and lick its wounds. I couldn’t let that happen. A demon loose in a city like New York would be a public relations nightmare. Naturally, it would be my fault. Most screwups were, if you asked the gods.

  “You are not free to make a deal, Nameless One.”

  “How’s that?” I inched up against the elevator enclosure and eyed the trail of blood leading out of sight around the corner.

  “Your soul is owned by another.” The words tumbled through the air, but their source was close. “I tasted him on you.”

  I winced. That truth cut too close to the bone for comfort. If word got out I was Ozzy’s bitch, nobody would hire me. Shit, nobody would come within ten feet of me. If the demon didn’t have to die before, it did now.

  Enough talk. Talking with demons—and listening to them—was a surefire way of getting your mind devoured. This one had spent long enough probing my thoughts to pick up on my fears. They were good at that—planting seeds that would later grow into toxic doubts until you fancied yourself a long walk off a short balcony. I hadn’t dealt with a demon of this caliber in a while; clearly, I was rusty.

  “Slippery things, souls.” I lifted Alysdair and wrapped both hands around her handle, letting the sword pull on my magical reserves. “They’re surprisingly easy to lose and damned difficult to get back.”

  I lunged around the corner and got a face full of contorted demon chest. Alysdair plunged through cleanly, slicing deeper than the metal alone would have allowed for, and sank into that fetid thing inside—its soul. A flicker snagged at my resolve—a twitch from my past, of how good it would be to drink its soul down. It had been a long time, but this was Alysdair’s moment to shine, not mine. A soul that black, I didn’t need the weight.

  The demon let out its ear-piercing screech. Its claws raked at my sword arm to cut off the source of its agony, but its red-eyed glow was fading as Alysdair fed. The sword sang in my grip until the deed was done, and the demon collapsed into a pile of loose skin and putrid flesh.

  The after buzz tapped at the part of my mind that went to deeper, darker things every time Alysdair got her kick and I didn’t—the what-ifs and just-a-little-bits. With a growl, I staggered back, grateful the snow was swirling faster now and covering up the grisly evidence.

  “Poison” blared again from my pocket.

  “For Sekhmet’s sake!” I wiped Alysdair clean on my duster coat and drove her home inside her sheathe, snug between my shoulder blades. Then I snatched the cell from my pocket. “Shu, by the gods, this had better be good or I will come back there and shove your little statue of Ra up your—”

  “Ace.”

  Gods be damned, I’d worked with Shukra long enough to recognize that arctic tone in her voice. “That’s my name, peaches. Don’t wear it out.”

  Sirens wailed nearby—too nearby. I strode to the edge of the roof and didn’t need to look far to see the blue and white lights bathing the walls of the opposite building. It was too late to clean up the mess.

  “There’s a goddess in your office. I suggest you don’t make her wait.”

  The line went dead.

  A goddess in my office? That didn’t narrow it down. There were more goddesses topside than you could shake a crook and flail at. Time to make a quick exit and l
eave the cops with more questions than they had any hope of answering. I tucked my cell away. I broke into a jog, the rooftop’s edge approaching fast. I picked up speed, wondered too late if the gap between the buildings might be wider than I’d guesstimated, and leaped into the dark.

  Ignoring gods didn’t make them go away. I’d tried. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t eek out some pleasure by making the bitch wait. I was on my way to my office, but I just happened to drop by Toni’s bar and order a few shots first. Antonio was more than eager to oblige, and I figured I owed it to Toni to prop the bar up like I did most nights after a job, especially when the job flirted with the kind of illicit desires that had gotten me thrown out of the underworld— or Duat, to give the place it’s proper name.

  Toni drifted over, saluting me with the bottle of whatever he’d been serving me—something syrupy and potent. I placed my hand over the glass and shook my head. The idea was to arrive late, not drunk, although the thought of seeing the look on Shu’s face did appeal to me. She wasn’t immune to angry gods quite like I was. A minor god had once gotten the wrong idea about Shu and me and figured he could get to me by hurting her. I didn’t answer the ransom, and as soon as Shu got free, she ripped his insides out via his throat. Happy days.

  “Ace, right?” a sweet voice asked, wrenching me out of my thoughts. “Hi, I’m Rosie. I work right across the street.”

  I looked at her and then at Antonio, who shrugged and left to tend to the rest of his flock, and finally at the door like I might be able to see the place she’d mentioned through it. “The accountants?”

  “Yeah.” She beamed, tucked her short blond hair behind her ear and leaned against the bar. “I…er… I’ve seen you around a few times, and…”

  She was talking, and I probably should have been listening, but my mind was still going over that tick, that little hook that had dug itself in right when the demon had died, that little voice that said the demon’s soul should have been mine. That voice was almost as old as I was. I thought I’d kicked it to the curb long ago.