Blood Magic: The Mage's Daughter Trilogy, #1

By S.A. Beck

Demons, rogue angels, and corrupt agents from the Ministry of Occult Affairs... Can a teenage girl save the world?

When Ines Salgado woke up for school, she never dreamed she'd have to kill a demon in her own kitchen. Her family is gone, and a handsome angel named Rumiel has fallen down to earth outside her door. 

Her parents and little brother are mages, humans with magical powers, while Ines is not. She learns from Rumiel that The Barrier of Mercy, the protective shield between Heaven and Hell, has been broken. Chaos erupts all over London. She only has the gorgeous blond angel and her best friend, Damon, who has secrets of his own, to figure out what's going on and to find her family. 

Soon they are dodging the wrath of demons, rebel angels, and deadly agents from the Ministry of Occult Affairs…

Book 1 in the The Mage's Daughter Trilogy.

Book 1: Blood Magic
Book 2: Angel Magic
Book 3: Demon Magic

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beck Books
• Release date: Dec 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781386963691

Book preview

1

Blood Like Ice

The house was too quiet. Later, Ines would recognize that as the omen of disaster it had been. But as she woke, she looked over at her clock and saw that she hadn’t set the alarm.

She leaped out of bed, ignoring an ache in her stomach, and flung on her clothes: jogging pants, sneakers, and a T-shirt of a cartoon mouse giving the world the finger. Her mother hated that T-shirt, but at least that would get her to say something, and on a morning when her parents had again descended into awkward silence, Ines wanted some sort of reaction.

The T-shirt wouldn’t be allowed at school—sixth-formers might not wear uniforms, but there were still limits—so she grabbed a hoodie from the pile of clothes on the floor to throw over it when she got to class. As she did so, she silently cursed Toby. What was the point in having a twelve-year-old brother if he didn’t make a racket on a school morning? He’d made enough noise when she wanted to sleep in over the weekend.

After tying back her long dark hair, she burst out of her bedroom and bounded down the stairs two at a time, into that unsettling silence. There were no signs of life in the living room—none of Toby’s toys and magazines scattered across the floor, no laptop on the coffee table beside her father’s favorite chair, not even the faint rumble of the kettle or clatter of crockery from the kitchen.

Mum? Ines draped her hoodie over the banister and looked warily around. Dad?

There was no response. Every muscle in Ines’s body tightened. Her parents had raised her from birth to prepare for the moment when things might go wrong, when the world of magic in which they worked might come crashing into her life too.

Sixteen years of training took hold in that terrible silence, and she approached the kitchen door with fists tightened and raised. She might have no gift for the craft, but she had a black belt in judo and four years’ worth of Krav Maga. If this was it, then she was ready.

But nothing could ever have made her ready for her first real demon.

The tall thing stood in the middle of the tiled kitchen floor, a figure whose slate-gray body seemed to writhe like a mass of snakes. It had two arms and two legs just like a human, but its head was something out of a horror movie—a dark, spiny thing with dozens of eyes peering from every side. Black tears seeped from those eyes. A smell like mold drifted out from it.

Ines’s stomach flipped at the sight. She found herself leaning against the wall, bile burning her throat, the watery contents of her stomach spattering across the tiles by her feet. Embarrassed at her own weakness, she forced her trembling body to be still, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and turned to face the creature.

What have you done with my family? she growled. Her parents had told her little about demons, but she knew that a creature this grotesque could be nothing else and that it should understand her words.

"Ines Salgado. The creature’s voice was like the crackling of old paper. It raised its arms, their ends not hands but writhing masses of tentacles. Ines Salgado, I have come for you."

And now I’m coming for you. Ines lunged forward, grabbing one of the creature’s arms and twisting it around. She bent her knees, heaved, and straightened, planning to fling the creature over her shoulder and onto the floor. But instead of dragging the demon from its feet, the move stretched out its arm. The strange muscles writhed and extended beneath her grip.

To try the throw, she had to move in close to the demon, and now it took the opportunity to grab ahold of her, wrapping its arms around her short but muscular body. The tentacular fingers of one hand covered her mouth to stop her screaming, while with the other, it grabbed her around the waist. Spikes from its head caught at her hair as it leaned in close.

Panic made Ines’s heart race, battering away like a punk drummer. The creature’s presence was overwhelming, its slimy limbs all around her, its stink rasping at her throat. She could feel its snaking fingers writhe against her face, and something was squirming up into her nose.

Desperation lending her strength, she lifted her foot and brought it back and down as hard as she could against the creature’s leg. Her sneakers had cushioned soles for running, but they were still solid enough that the force of her heel against the demon’s leg caused a sickening crunching sound as something snapped.

The demon’s shriek was like a rusty nail being driven into Ines’s brain. But however badly the sound pained her, she had clearly hurt the creature worse. It let her go and staggered back against the kitchen table, head rolling from side to side as it continued to shriek while Ines clutched her head at the terrible piercing sound.

Ines’s hands weren’t enough to keep that noise out of her head, so she put them to better use. Yanking open a cupboard, she pulled out a wok from her father’s brief oriental cookery phase. It was heavy, with a solid iron base and a long enough handle to get a good swing.

The demon’s cry was fading, and so too was its wound. Flesh writhed and twisted on its leg, re-forming around the broken parts of whatever it had in place of bone. It seemed to have moved some of the muscle from its arms to reinforce the leg, its torso rippling as gray strands slid down to the wounded spot.

Leaning forward, its dozens of eyes narrowing, the demon stepped away from the table.

Ines swung the pan, smashing it against the side of the creature’s head with a mighty clang. Black blood spattered the ceiling as the demon went flying across the table and crashed to the floor beside the oven.

Not waiting to give the demon time to recover, Ines vaulted the table, pan still clutched in one hand. She landed with her feet on either side of the demon’s chest and brought the pan down onto its head again. There was an awful sound, half squelch and half crunch, as eyeballs burst and spines snapped beneath the weight of the blow. She hit it again, and half the head caved in, spattering something across the floor that she didn’t even dare look at.

Leaving the pan planted in the demon’s head, Ines stumbled, shaking, to the sink. She felt as though she was going to be sick again, even though there was nothing left to be sick with. After a minute’s dry heaving, she managed to grab a glass from the counter and pour herself some water. The clear, cold taste washing the acid awfulness from her mouth was the first good thing to happen all day.

The tap still running, Ines stared out of the window and into the street. With the noise the demon made, she had expected to see people running toward the house or at least standing warily and watching. Perhaps someone would have called the police. Barnet might not be the most glamorous part of London, but this wasn’t the sort of neighborhood where people ignored screams and sounds of violence.

Then she remembered something her mother’s friend Elizabeth Oldfield had told her. Elizabeth worked at the same secretive government department as her parents, where mages worked so hard to keep ordinary people safe not only from supernatural creatures, but also from the disturbing knowledge that such things were real and meddled in their lives.

Ines’s parents, long ago having realized that she had no gift for magic, tried to treat her as one of those ordinary people, protecting her as much as they could from the other world, even as they prepared her to defend herself from it. But Elizabeth was different. Elizabeth would talk over dinner about the wings of seraphim or the diet of maggot demons. From her, Ines had learned far more than her parents ever shared.

It was Elizabeth who had tried to explain to a five-year-old Ines that most people didn’t know they were seeing or hearing demons and angels. The whispers and entreaties of such creatures might affect them, but without their realizing. Ines had been too young then to imagine how that would work, but now she could see it in action. The postman clutching his head as he did his rounds, Mrs. Talbot standing in her kitchen window, washing down painkillers and grimacing. People who had suffered from the sound of the demon’s voice without even realizing that they had heard it.

This train of thought was interrupted by a sound behind her. With a sense of terrible dread, Ines turned to look back at where the demon lay.

It was rising to its feet.

The demon seemed even more monstrous now than it had before. Its torso had been reduced to something of almost skeletal thinness, as flesh flowed down to strengthen its damaged leg and up to rebuild its pummeled face. That side of the head had turned from a collection of eyes and spikes into a bulbous gray mass, snakelike tendons spreading across the sockets of smashed eyes, the creature bandaging itself with its own flesh.

"Ines Salgado, the creature rasped through the half of its mouth that still opened. I have come for you."

The demon clumped forward, the weight of its damaged leg making a resounding thud with every other step. Past shock and into an adrenaline-fuelled haze, Ines slammed her knee up into where its stomach should have been. But the creature was far taller than her, its flesh writhing, and she barely even made contact before threads of gray flesh shot out and wrapped around her leg. She tried to hit it, but again she was grasped by the slithering, squirming mass of its body. Then it reached out and wrapped its arms around her, drawing her in toward it.

Arms and legs bound ever tighter into the creature’s flesh, Ines fought to free herself from the monstrosity. It was like fighting against quicksand—every movement, every kick or punch or jerk of her head, seemed to draw her more deeply into its smothering embrace.

Desperation brought an unexpected clarity. Looking out to her right, through one of the few gaps where she was not completely surrounded, she saw a stand of cooking knives by the chopping board. Focusing all of her will, all of her effort into a single studied motion, she reached out that way. She didn’t punch or struggle, just pressed firmly and unceasingly against the gray mass blocking her reach. Inch by inch, she pushed further out into the air of the kitchen, until she could almost touch the handle of one of the knives.

The world went black as the creature’s body closed completely over her head. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, could barely even think as her air supply was cut off. But she clung to that one stubborn hope, stretching blindly for a goal she could no longer see.

Her fingers touched something cold and hard, with a familiar grip. She drew the knife and swept her arm around, slamming the blade into the side of the demon’s neck.

Blood ran, thick as tar and cold as ice, down Ines’s arm. This time, there was no scream. Instead, the creature made a drawn-out gurgling sound as it released its grip on Ines and staggered back.

Keeping her hand on the blade, she dragged it through the creature’s throat. There was a spray of that same terrible clinging blood, and the creature collapsed to the ground, its head attached by only a single strand of sinew.

Lungs raw and head spinning, Ines sank to the ground next to the body. The cupboard door against which she sat was reassuring in its solidity, something sane and normal amid the madness.

She hung her head, taking deep breaths as she tried to regain control, both of her thoughts and her body. Arms dangling, legs splayed out before her, she slumped on the kitchen floor.

From outside the window, a roar and an almighty crash alerted Ines and pulled her to her feet.

2

Too Much Milton

The front door banged against the wall as Ines ran into the street, knife still in hand. She had no idea what to expect, but when she’d woken up that morning, she hadn’t expected to have to kill a demon in her kitchen. She was determined to be ready for whatever dark horrors faced her.

What she saw could hardly have been lighter or less horrific.

A young man was lying on the pavement at the end of Ines’s drive.

He was dressed from head to toe in white: white sneakers, white cargo pants, white sleeveless T-shirt that showed off the well-defined muscles of his arms. His short blond hair seemed to glow like a golden cloud in the morning sunshine. But it wasn’t this bright display that stopped her in her tracks. It was his face, the most beautiful face she had ever seen outside of a magazine. It was a movie-star face, the sort of face of which fortunes were made. Glass-cut cheekbones, perfect skin, kissable lips…

So striking was his appearance that it took Ines a minute to realize that he was lying in a dent in the pavement. The hollow was shallow but large, six feet long and half as wide. The dent perfectly cradled the unconscious young man, as if his fall had dented the street. It seemed a ridiculous idea, but then Ines looked down at the black sludge dripping from her, and she wondered if the idea was any more ridiculous than the demon she had just killed.

Kneeling down, she looked into that beautiful face. He could have been another sixteen-year-old at Ines’s school, a boy in her class or someone she passed in the corridor. Though not, she thought, one who would have talked with her. Dazzlingly handsome boys in hip-hop outfits didn’t talk with loners who lurked in shadows and played card games on their lunch breaks. This boy’s girlfriend would be a singer, a dancer, a model, not the sheltered daughter of secretive mages, someone who could fight for her life but not put makeup on properly for the life of her.

He groaned, and his eyelids fluttered but remained closed. By his expression, he seemed to be in pain, though there wasn’t a scratch or a bruise on him.

Oh, hello, Ines. Old Mrs. Talbot stood in the middle of the street, a look of concern on her face. There was little traffic in Scholars Close, even at the start of the day, and the middle of the road was Mrs. Talbot’s habitual gossiping ground. Are you all right, love?

Slipping the knife out of view, Ines looked at her neighbor. It was hardly surprising that the woman was concerned—Ines must look in a complete state.

I knocked an oil can off a shelf in the garage. It was the best excuse she could muster for the black ooze. She pointed at the young man. I’m more worried about him.

Him who? Mrs. Talbot asked without even glancing down.

Him. Ines gestured more emphatically at the young man.

A frown crossed Mrs. Talbot’s face as she looked down.

Well, look at that. The focus of her gaze