Zero Hour Read online

  Zero Hour

  Prequel to the Order of the Dragon Series

  Tina Glasneck

  Zero Hour © 2019 Tina Glasneck

  Cover by Katzilla Designs

  * * *

  Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  * * *

  EM-01-09102019-01a

  Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  About the Author

  Also by Tina Glasneck

  Blurb

  Dark magic comes with deadly consequences.

  What happens when an untrained seer possesses the most powerful grimoire ever to exist?

  * * *

  Leslie’s a romance author, who happens to be conjuring magic. She’s researching sigils for her latest Highlander romance, but her intentions have powered something sinister.

  The road to destruction is only one tempting spell away.

  Now, Leslie’s placed a target on her back: hungry vampires and an evil like she’d never imagined.

  * * *

  Enter the supernatural world where vampires are real, and the only thing standing between them and glory is a romance author with good intentions.

  For the red pick up truck, laughter, and Elroy

  Chapter One

  Leslie

  I had the solution to my grief: resurrection.

  Draped in black, and after taking what seemed like a plane, train, and automobile to upstate New York, my sister and I arrived for a sad goodbye.

  There was no fun in funerals. We didn’t get together with Tennessee Whiskey, T-shirts with the family name airbrushed in bubble letters, or to play spades. There would be some red plastic picnic cups to hide all of the alcohol, though, as we sought a way to come to terms with death.

  It seemed so final.

  “Seemed” being the keyword.

  There would be cigarette smoke wafting in the stagnate air, as some played old R&B music as a last goodbye to the man who used to be a cornerstone of the community.

  Before his downfall into hedonism.

  My gran forced me to go, although he’d been spiteful, mean as a hornet, and, sometimes, just no good. I often felt sorry for his wife—his real wife, and not all of the women he sought to wife-up without papers.

  Luckily, my mother had escaped from him when she could and thrived. But I couldn’t say the same for the rest of those whom he touched. The family seemed cursed.

  Like they’d sacrificed one pig too many.

  Instead, in New York City, my side of the family had it made. His wealth, which had disappeared, many thought he’d hidden in the walls of the old family home that happened to come my way, probably through Gran’s intervention. The others might not have been my full family by blood, but Gran was. She was the only relative who still lived, too stubborn to pass on to the other side, and I was grateful for that.

  “At least they aren’t getting rid of his body at the landfill.” My sister, Claudine, knew just what to say.

  The family was still reeling from the sudden accident. The family’s patriarch had gotten up on Saturday morning to make a quick run and returned in a body bag.

  They said “accident,” but the author in me thought “murder.” Lord knew there were enough people who wanted to kill him.

  Tonight was the unsanctioned Requiem, instead of the Southern wake Dad had wished for, according to Southern tradition. After all, you could take a Southerner from the South, but you couldn’t replace it with the poppycock of the north. However, there was a compromise—a Catholic priest waited in the wings to lead the service in the funeral home’s chapel.

  I swooshed into the chapel, my black leather coat fluttered behind me, a black-lace veil over my face behind which I hid, while my spiky heels stabbed the carpet. Claudine squeezed my hand and took a seat in the back, probably to ensure we weren’t going to be locked in.

  She trusted this side of the family as much as I did.

  Not one bit.

  There was more regret in this room than what any of the floral arrangements might have otherwise said. Expensive sprays rested on the casket, while standing singular flower arrangements tried to convince those gathered that his family loved him.

  He’d grown up in that South Carolina dirt, in a world where Hoodoo and Juju raced through the bloodlines.

  That was a part of the oral tradition.

  However, there was still something that needed to be done, to help him move on, or he’d be stuck on this side to wander, and he’d suffered enough.

  Bypassing my weeping, gun-toting family on the first two rows, my heart thudded in my ears like a bass drum.

  I clenched the holy oak stake in my hand hidden in my coat’s folds.

  This act would cement my fate. It would cement what it meant to be the black sheep of a family who lacked all faith in the supernatural.

  Was I ready?

  My father’s wife’s scorn-filled gaze rested on me, and between her sobs and shaking shoulders, I wasn’t sure if she was going to force me to leave or have my brother shoot me.

  I wouldn’t allow their lack of faith chain Dad to this world, to jail him to this plane where they’d abused him.

  Death’s burden wasn’t anything I could undo. There was nothing I could say that could make this right. His soul, though, I would not allow to be damned.

  Taking a deep breath, while the organ music lightly played, I closed my eyes, and the room disappeared, remembering what the holy book said.

  I couldn’t go with him, but I would make it so he could finally be free. Wasn’t that what every child wished for their loved ones?

  I stood next to the open mahogany coffin that gleamed as if freshly polished. Therein rested the man I’d called Father—his body hardened by the embalming fluid, thick makeup covered up the damage from the car accident.

  I leaned over him and kissed his forehead, whispering the holy incantation.

  This is the only way.

  Raising my right hand holding the stake, I swung my arm back and stabbed him in the chest.

  A loud noise, like that of a balloon releasing its air, filled the room.

  All sobbing stopped, turning into a shrilling chorus. The organ ceased its solemn playing. I could hear the commotion around me, but I remained focused on my dad. The spell required my full concentration.

  Hands attempted to pull me away. I shrugged them off.

  “Whew.” I sighed and raised my hands in prayerful supplication. “May your soul—”

  Then with a loud whoosh, my lineman brother tackled me, knocking me down like I was a quarterback. The holy stake clattered to the floor.

  “Get off me,” I yelled. I pushed at my brother’s shoulders, kicking my feet.

  “Hold her down,” I heard Dad’s wife order.

  My fight left me with the so
und of an unearthly moan coming from my dad’s coffin.

  “Out of the way.” I pushed myself up. “He’s barely alive.”

  The sound of a gun being cocked cut through me. I turned to see my father’s wife holding her favorite firearm.

  “No,” I screamed.

  But it was too late.

  As though in slow motion, I watched her pull the trigger.

  The father I’d just awakened collapsed back into his casket, knocking it to the floor where it shattered.

  “Shit.” I fell to my knees at his side, all life gone. “Now, how am I supposed to wake him back up?”

  Chapter Two

  Killian

  Vampires would wipe themselves out with their latest Darwin award-winning stunts if things continued.

  Under the night sky, stars twinkled in the distance. The nearby streetlights flickered off.

  Darkness rolled forward. The Order’s tank and silver-lined van pulled forward, offering backup if needed.

  Killian, decked out in all black, kicked down the apartment’s door. The wood splintered, and he and his team from the Order moved in. Their flashlights lit up the dark room, landing on the silhouette of a six-foot dandy. In the blinding light, Killian watched the rainbow-tinged blood drip down the high vampire’s chin onto his white cravat. His unicorn-shifter victim, now gray, lay lifeless at his feet, next to his ebony cane.

  “Looks like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet,” Killian quipped.

  “What can I say?” The vampire removed his handkerchief and wiped his mouth as if he’d just finished the most succulent Sunday dinner. “I’m a sucker for a good urban legend.”

  The fables and myths were real. Vampires existed, and some still believed that the blood of a unicorn could heal their deadly condition, cure them of death, or as it was said to do with poisons and water. Of course, unicorns had suffered persecution since the Pope bought a horn in 1560.

  With capitalism came the tug-of-war of supply and demand. London pharmacies propagated supernatural healing better than any proselytes. The desperate latched on to it like opium, long before the opium wars.

  Most didn’t test the bought ground unicorn horn. The placebo effect lasted as well as the devil held his halo.

  But on the black market, there was a real danger. Monsters hunted them, and if vampires could find one alive, they paid a pretty price—even higher than some smaller nations’ gross national product. They were still hunted for their magical properties.

  There were always those attempting to win stupid prizes. Unicorns didn’t heal vampires any more than fae blood did. However, the blood could cause a vampire rage akin to a normal zombie Tuesday. It removed the vampire’s striking beauty, showing the true monster beneath. That’s what happened to Nosferatu, at least. Without some beauty, starvation was on the horizon, or something else to goad-feed the idiocy.

  Still, he knew it to be true. Vampires were after magic.

  When he was younger, he’d often questioned what magic was, or what it did. Was he a man who’d magically changed, or a man who’d magically morphed into a wolf? Family was complicated.

  His mother was the queen, his father the king, and magic was what kept them together and created him. Surely, it was also what others feasted on to thrive.

  Killian couldn’t kick the feeling that this was more than just a vampire getting too high and then attacking a unicorn shifter near the castle—too much of a coincidence for his liking.

  He and the third in command, Rose, with the proper title of Detective Inspector, stalked down the castle’s corridor, toward the dungeon where the latest vampire arrival would be waiting for interrogation. Usually she’d be the Order’s supernatural liaison, but tonight she seemed dead set on getting answers.

  Rose’s long strawberry-blonde hair whipped behind her as she turned her attention to him. “We have to tell Alistair.”

  As long as he’d known Rose, she’d always been a bone-crusher, never one to evade a good fight. If she didn’t want to talk to Alistair, there were more reasons than just that of the vampires.

  Luck must have been on her side, as Alistair was in the ether, communicating with the queen in the dragon realm, allowed admission not only as her brother, but as the head of the Order of the Dragon.

  “The vampiric activity is off the charts,” Killian agreed.

  Killian and Rose were both dressed in the standard gothic black of the Order. Rose’s sword was sheathed to her back, and Killian’s holy daggers lay tucked inside his jacket, concealed, but easily accessible.

  The castle near Edinburgh was isolated enough, and properly warded, that it didn’t cause a stir when black Humvees and vans passed through the ancient walls. This was only one of the magical prisons, innocuous in appearance until one took a deeper look. Runes were carved into the ancient stones, warding off any unwelcomed visitors.

  “Because you don’t want to see him again? Technically, this is your area of expertise. The vampires have been under your purview for decades.”

  The breakup had been messy between Rose and Alistair, and Killian had no desire to step between them and their mess. Shit always flowed uphill, and he knew how to avoid it.

  They finally stood before the newly captured vampire’s cell.

  “You’ll never get rid of all of us,” the vampire snarled, held tightly in his magical silver cuffs, of which Killian held the key. It was just another ordinary day in working for the Order of the Dragon, protecting this world from the supernatural one that needed to remain hidden.

  “Shut your noise,” Killian said. “You should be happy that you’re still breathing, instead of dead—twice.”

  For the past fortnight, vampire activity had been a pain in his hide. This latest capture didn’t bode well for what should have been a time of peace.

  “Another killer, mindless, even?” Rose, the head of the Order’s security, sidled up to him.

  Killian nodded. “But this one seems to be different from before. It is like a sickness spreading. Something or someone is tapping into some ancient magic here.”

  “And do what with it? Releasing a sickness?”

  The world of the supernatural was hidden to normal humans. The lay lines were drawn, and due to the hierarchy, their world was nowhere near a republic or democracy. Ruled by the strong hand of monarchs, guided by the council, guarded and policed by the Order, those of the supernatural had one thing to do: kneel or die.

  Such a threat usually worked, but something or someone had shaken things up. The fae buzzed with gossip in their courts, wereshifters took to the woods sniffing it out; the vampires stalked new victims, and the unicorns just got stabby.

  Killian knew it was something he’d have to bring up with the prince, his Uncle Alistair, the Commander of the Order, who was also like a brother. There were certain rules for the supernatural, and those included not drawing unwanted attention to them.

  It looked like the vampires were casting the rules into the fire.

  “The games have only just begun.” The vampire cackled. “And no one will be safe from the bloodletting. We’ve even found the connection to the key. The rightful queen, Ásgeirr, will rise again, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”

  Ásgeirr? That was a name he hadn’t heard in centuries, the former dragon queen who’d been toppled by his mother.

  However, she was dead. There could be no resurrection for her.

  This vampire’s arrest accounted for the third one in the past hour. Killian moved closer to the vampire, who was dressed in a leather jacket, and patted him down.

  He’d expected to find maybe a vial of the drug they’d been using called Temptation. With one hit, it made vampires, who were law-abiding to the Order’s rules, feral.

  The supernatural world was hidden and was to remain so. But what he pulled out wasn’t a packet of the maroon crystal substance, but a commercial plane ticket to New York.

  “What’s this?” Killian asked the vampire, holding up the printed-out
plane ticket.

  The vampire laughed in response.

  Rose removed a blue marble-sized orb from her pocket and dropped it at the vampire’s feet, where a sigil formed. “I compel you to speak the truth, vamp,” she ordered, “or be purged by the eternal blue fire.”

  The vampire looked between them.

  “You have a thing for taking out vampires,” Killian stated matter-of-factly. There was no diplomacy with this. That was what it meant to be a prince, the son of the dragon queen, and responsible for making sure all of the supernatural world toed the line. The Order required those who broke the law to be placed in holding until their hearing, where Alistair would decide their fate.

  “Blech. I don’t like them. They are like cockroaches and an infestation we don’t need. They put us all at risk.”

  “You won’t harm me.” The vampire continued to chuckle. “That goes against the Convention, and that whole ‘torture’ thing.”

  Torture wasn’t usually in their toolbox, but they would do all that was required to get answers, as decreed.

  “So, you think.” Rose snapped her fingers, and blue flames rose within the sigil.

  The flames lapped at the vampire’s jeans. He hopped from one foot to the other.

  “Tell us,” Rose said. Her voice didn’t rise, and instead, a stone-cold glint settled in her gaze.

  “Ahh, ahh,” the vampire screamed.

  “Need more heat?” Rose raised her hand, and the higher it rose, the higher the flames grew.

  The smell of charred flesh wafted around the room, until the air purifier came on, sucking up the odiferous air.