Ancient Magic: a New Adult Urban Fantasy (Dragon's Gift: The Huntress Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THANK YOU!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  GLOSSARY

  ABOUT LINSEY

  COPYRIGHT

  ANCIENT MAGIC

  Dragon’s Gift: The Huntress Book 1

  Linsey Hall

  DEDICATION

  For Anne Nielson, my wonderful and inspirational friend.

  PROLOGUE

  Blood. I rubbed my tongue against the top of my mouth. Definitely blood. Fear shivered through me. The ground scratched my bare arms and the back of my neck. Prickly grass? My eyelids were gritty as I lifted them and blinked into the darkness. Stars twinkled down.

  Night? Where was I?

  Panic closed my throat. I gasped for air.

  I pushed myself up and looked down. A ragged dress covered my skinny form, but didn’t protect me from the chill night. I shivered as cold embraced me. A battered golden locket lay on my chest. It looked old, but I didn’t recognize it.

  A field stretched out around me, illuminated by starlight and a moon that hung low over the earth. The hair on my arms stood up at the sound of night creatures in the distance. A cold breeze rustled the grass, but fear chilled me more than the wind. Why was I out here?

  Please don’t let me be alone.

  My heart thundered in my ears as I glanced around.

  Two girls who looked to be about fourteen or fifteen lay sprawled on the ground beside me. They wore ragged dresses like mine.

  Why was I here with two other girls my age?

  Wait—were they my age? When I thought about it, I couldn’t remember how old I was exactly. Just trying to think of it sent an icepick of pain through my skull.

  With a trembling hand, I reached out and shook the girl closest to me.

  “Wake up,” I said. Panic sunk its claws into my chest. Why were we here?

  When she didn’t wake, I shouted, “Wake up!”

  The girl gasped and shot upright, her black hair stuck with grass. Her terrified blue eyes met mine.

  “Run,” she gasped.

  She spoke Irish, like I did, and the word shot straight through me.

  “Hide,” I said. “We have to hide.”

  I wasn’t sure why, but I knew it more strongly than I knew anything else in the world. Her word—run—had triggered my own. Hide.

  “Get up!” I scrambled to my feet. “We have to hide. Now. Now, now, now.”

  She clambered up, and we frantically tugged at the arms of the girl who still lay on her back. She was so pale she looked dead.

  But I couldn’t leave her. “Get up!”

  She shrieked and jerked out of our hold, then crouched like a terrified animal. Her dark hair hung in her face.

  What had happened to her, to us, that we were like this?

  “FireSoul,” she whispered, also in Irish. Her wide green gaze met mine through the curtain of hair.

  The fear in her eyes must have mirrored my own. Her word pricked at my consciousness, but fear overrode it.

  My heart pounded in my chest, trying to break my ribs. “Come on. We have to hide!”

  She nodded and her head whipped around, searching for shelter like a cornered animal. I looked too. A small patch of woods about a hundred yards behind me caught my eye.

  “This way.” I spun and set off running across the field. They followed.

  My lungs burned and my legs ached as we raced. I clearly wasn’t used to being outside, nor to exercise.

  But why? When I tried to think of the reason, nothing came but pain. My head ached when I tried to remember myself or my past. A sob burst from my chest. I couldn’t remember anything.

  Fear and the desperate need to hide drove me on when I wanted to stop and collapse to the ground, weeping. The trees loomed ahead—leafless, claw-like branches reaching for the sky. They were terrifying, but far better than the open field.

  There was nowhere to hide in an open field.

  Hide.

  We dove into the woods, plowing through the underbrush until we were deep in the forest. Night creatures continued to rustle around us.

  When we came to a large pile of collapsed trees, I plunged into them. Bark and branches scratched my arms as I found a nook created by the collapsed wood. The other girls crowded in behind me.

  They were warm. Familiar, though I didn’t recognize them. Safe.

  We huddled together, panting. It wasn’t quite as dark when they were near me, though it was more a feeling than reality.

  Cold pinched my cheeks. I reached up and touched wetness.

  Tears.

  One of the other girls sniffled.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “It’s—” The green-eyed girl started panting. Moonlight illuminated her panic-filled eyes. “I don’t know!”

  “I don’t either!” the other girl cried. “I don’t know my name!”

  I tried to think of my own, poking for memories.

  Pain.

  I didn’t know how old I was. Or where I was from. It hadn’t been a fluke before. I really couldn’t remember. “I don’t know anything either!”

  We gasped and cried, huddling closer. Their warmth felt familiar, like we’d done this a hundred times before. Slowly, it soothed me. I tried reaching into my mind to draw out some memories.

  “Ouch.” I cringed.

  “What’s wrong?” asked the dark-haired girl.

  “Every time I try to remember something, my head hurts.”

  “Me too,” said the green-eyed girl.

  “And me,” sniffled the other.

  “Then what do we remember?”

  “Run,” said the dark-haired girl. “We’re running, but I don’t know from what.”

  “Is that how we got into the field?” I asked.

  “Maybe.” Her voice shook. “Run was all I remembered. When I woke, it was the only thing in my mind.”

  “Hide,” I said, thinking back. “That’s what I remembered. We must hide. From a bad man.” I rubbed my temple. “Or woman? From someone very bad.”

  Just the shadowy memory made tears pour down my face. My shoulders shook. The trembling traveled down my arms and legs until my entire body quaked.

  I couldn’t remember who we were hiding from, but my body remembered. Hiding from evil. Bad. Bad, bad, bad.

  The green-eyed girl threw her arms around me. “Hey, hey, calm down. It’ll be okay.”

  I gasped through my sobs and realized I’d been saying bad out loud. I didn’t believe that it’d be okay—not really—but her words made me feel a little better.

  “What do you remember?” I asked.

  “FireSoul,” she whispered. “We are FireSouls.”

  I gasped and jerked out of her arms. “No, we’re not. We can’t be.”

  I might not have remembered my own past, but some knowledge of the world still seemed to be intact. FireSouls were bad. Even the word sent a shiver of panic through me.

  Run, hide, and FireSoul were my only memori
es? That couldn’t be. In my mind, I poked for the biggest, most important pieces of information. I wanted to know something.

  What came was that I lived in a world full of magic. Thoughts burst in my mind. “I’m one of the Magica—you two feel like Magica as well.”

  I could feel their power now that I tried. Could smell it and taste it. The green-eyed girl’s power felt like water on my skin and smelled like flowers. Tasted like vanilla. The dark-haired girl was just as powerful. Her magic felt like soft grass beneath my feet and smelled like fresh laundry. It tasted sweet, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Magica?” the dark-haired girl asked.

  “Magica can create magic!” the green-eyed girl said, excitement in her voice. “I remember now. But I don’t remember what kind I am. Witch, or sorcerer, or… mage.”

  “Or shifter, demon, or fairy,” I added as the memories flowed back. “But they aren’t Magica. They are supernaturals like us, but they don’t use magic the same way we do. But they know about us. Unlike humans. The Great Peace keeps us hidden.” It came back to me in pieces. Though we lived alongside humans, the Great Peace—the most powerful bit of magic ever created—hid us from human eyes. It took the powerful spells of hundreds of Magica and shifters to create the Great Peace. “Humans can see us but not our magic, which we shouldn’t use around them anyway.”

  “Right, I remember now,” the dark-haired girl said.

  “I feel your power too. But you don’t feel evil,” I said. “Not like a FireSoul would feel.”

  “We’re not evil,” the green-eyed girl said. “We haven’t killed…I don’t think. But I do remember that we’re FireSouls. I know it.”

  “Everyone hates FireSouls,” I whispered. They were the bogeyman because they stole the magical gifts of others by killing the original owner. Was I the bogeyman? Me and these two girls? Had I killed another Magica to steal his gift? Wouldn’t I remember something as terrible as that?

  “Is that why we’re hiding?” the dark-haired girl asked. “Are we hiding from the Order of the Magica and the Alpha Council?”

  “No,” I said, though the two supernatural governing organizations would be after us if they knew we were FireSouls. “We’re hiding from someone worse. But if we really are FireSouls, we can’t tell anyone. They’ll throw us in prison.”

  “We are FireSouls,” she said. “When I woke, I knew it. It was my memory. As strong as yours.”

  I swallowed hard, remembering how strong that urge to hide had been. I’d woken confused, but when the dark-haired girl had said run, it had burst back into my consciousness.

  “Are we really FireSouls?” the dark-haired girl asked. “I don’t feel like a FireSoul. I don’t feel evil.”

  I didn’t either. I felt hungry and cold. My stomach growled and I shivered. If only I had something to eat. If only I was warm. I wanted it so badly.

  A strange feeling tugged at my middle. As if there were a string tied around my waist that pulled me to the left. A sense of food and warmth flowed from the invisible string.

  “There’s food and shelter nearby,” I said. “I feel it.”

  “Treasure,” whispered the green-eyed girl. “You can sense treasure.”

  Treasure. Of course I could sense food and shelter. I coveted them. They were treasure to me right now.

  I was a FireSoul. That was proof.

  FireSouls were given that name because they shared a piece of a dragon’s soul, though no one knew how it had happened. If dragons still existed, they were hiding. But legend said that all magic descended from dragons. FireSouls somehow shared a part of their soul.

  That’s why we could steal powers and find treasure. Dragons were covetous. They coveted treasure of all varieties—including the powers of others. The greatest treasure of all could only be obtained through death.

  “We can find what we need with our dragon-sense,” said the green-eyed girl. “If we want it badly enough, it becomes treasure. Then we follow our sense to it.”

  Was that how we were supposed to survive? Become hungry enough to find food and then steal it?

  I looked down at my ragged dress and skinny body. The only thing I had of value was the necklace, and even that was probably almost worthless. It didn’t look like I had a lot of choice right now. If I had parents, I had no idea who they were or how to find them.

  My throat tightened. Did I have a mom and dad? Where were they? I pushed through the pain in my mind, trying to remember. But nothing came. Just blinding agony. I slumped against the other girls.

  “Are you okay?” one asked.

  “Yes.” I pushed thoughts of parents away and focused on surviving. “If we use our dragon sense, we have to be careful.”

  If we were caught, we would be thrown in the Prison for Magical Miscreants. It was a cold, dark, terrible place, I remembered that. A shiver ran over me. My own personal bogeyman. In the corner of my mind, it felt like someone had once threatened me with that prison, but when I poked at the memory, the blinding pain came again. Why didn’t I learn? I needed to quit poking at my personal past.

  “We need names,” I said.

  “Yes. I hate not having one,” said the dark-haired girl.

  The green-eyed girl looked up at the sky. “I will be Phoenix. After the constellation. Call me Nix.”

  I liked that. Naming ourselves for something bigger gave me hope. I looked up too. A cluster of bright stars caught my eye. I didn’t know what in my past had taught me the constellations, but I was grateful for it. “I’ll be Cassiopeia. Call me Cass.”

  The green-eyed girl looked up and sighed. “You took the best ones.”

  I giggled, the sound surprising me.

  “I’ll take Delphinus,” she said finally. “But it’ll be Delphine. And you can call me Del.”

  “Okay. Del and Nix.” They both looked so different. Panic gripped my throat as I realized that I didn’t know what I looked like. I pulled my hair around. Red. “We look nothing alike. I don’t think we’re related by blood, even though we’re all FireSouls.”

  They were rare from what I remembered, but I didn’t recall the gift being genetic.

  “We’re sisters now,” Nix said. “Because we’re all we’ve got. I don’t remember my parents.”

  “Me neither.” Del sniffed back tears.

  “We’ll find them.” I closed my eyes and focused on the idea of parents. I wanted them more than anything, so I should be able to find them.

  But the magical string didn’t tie itself around my middle. I thought harder, reaching into my mind, pretending it was a book I could flip through.

  Agony pierced my skull.

  I retreated, gasping.

  “I tried to find them,” I said. My parents were lost to me. My throat tightened and tears burned. “I don’t think I know enough about them. I could imagine food and find that. But people are harder, I think.”

  “We’ll find them somehow,” Del said.

  I nodded, trying to hope but finding it hard.

  “We can only use our dragon sense to find food and other things we need,” I said. “No killing for other powers.” I didn’t want to be a murderer, no matter how much power it got me.

  Nix nodded. “I don’t want to be a monster.”

  “Me neither,” said Del.

  “If another supernatural asks how we can find things, we say we are Seekers,” I said.

  The green-eyed girl smiled. “That’s a good idea. Camouflage ourselves.”

  “Exactly.” Seekers were a type of supernatural who could find things. As long as we didn’t kill and steal powers, we could use our ability to find treasure and just say that we were Seekers.

  “Do we have other powers we can use?” Del asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. If it was about me directly, I couldn’t seem to remember. “FireSouls can be other types of supernaturals as well. You both feel magical to me.”

  Nix closed her eyes. I felt her power surge against me like water lapping at my skin. The
taste of vanilla burst on my tongue, and her flower scent filled my nose. Her hands began to glow. She cupped them in front of her.

  Eventually, a small match appeared in her palms.

  “You’re a conjurer,” I said as my power swelled within me.

  “Not a very good one,” Nix said. “I wanted to conjure a fire for warmth.”

  I listened with half an ear as the power in my chest grew. It felt like it was in response to hers, spurred on by what she had. I embraced it, though I didn’t understand it, and held my arms out. The magic pulsed within me, roaring to be released. I raised my palms to the sky and let it go.

  An enormous fireball shot from my palms, throwing me back onto the ground as it roared into the sky. It burned away the tops of the trees and exploded into the night. Orange flames surged through the air, burning my skin.

  Panic rose in my chest as I scrambled to my feet. We were trapped. Del and Nix looked at me with horrified eyes.

  “I don’t know what happened!” I said. The sky above me continued to burn, though the forest around us was untouched. “People will see the flame! We have to hide!”

  Del lunged for me. She enveloped me in her arms and grabbed Nix, pulling her into the hug. A second later, the ground fell out from under me.

  We collapsed to the ground a moment later. It was colder here, the wind stronger. I climbed to my feet. We were on a mountain looking down on the field below. Fire roiled in the air above it, a beacon of magic. But at least it wasn’t lower. The animals and the people would be safe.

  “We were in a valley,” I said as I turned to Del. “And you can transport.”

  Del’s wide eyes met mine. “Apparently. It was instinct. I followed it. And thank magic for it. What did you do down there?”

  I looked down at the field that was lighting up the night. It would draw people. We were fine on the mountain for a little while because we were so far away, but we needed to get out of here soon.

  “I didn’t mean to light it all on fire,” I said. “When Nix conjured the match, I felt like I could create a match too. So I let my power out.”

  “You’re a Mirror Mage,” Nix said. “You borrowed my conjuring power.”