Prologue
Teddy Marlow awoke when electricity sparked on his skin. Every muscle in his body contracted at once, and he gasped as pain flooded his muddled senses. His heart thudded against his ribs in a frantic, terrified rhythm that drowned out all else. He slumped onto the bed like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
As abruptly as it had come, the pain stopped. Relief swept through him, but he was groggy from sleep, and the agony had disoriented him so completely that he struggled to comprehend what the fuck was going on.
Sweat trickled down his temple, cold against suddenly feverish skin. The silence that followed was almost worse than the pain: thick and expectant, as if the darkness itself were holding its breath for whatever hell was coming.
When Teddy took in a shuddering breath, he finally came to his senses, just in time to hear the softsnickas handcuffs were secured around his wrists. The sound was so quiet that it couldhave been a dream, except the metal was bitingly cold against his skin.
His eyes flared open and he reached for his magic … but there was nothing there.
The void where his power should’ve been felt obscene, like a missing limb. He clawed at it desperately but found only emptiness.
Panic was back, like an uninvited guest that had overstayed its welcome.
Fuck. What the fuck?
He squinted into the midnight gloom of his room and tried to force his thoughts into order.
Shapes loomed and shifted in the half-light; every shadow felt alive, watching, waiting. Was a vampyr lurking there? He had anti-vampyr runes! He had anti-everythingrunes. How was this happening? His throat was too dry to scream, but hysteria bubbled in it all the same.
While he flailed, a masked man stepped out of the darkness. He was dressed from head to toe in black, and in his gloved hand, he carried an ogre’s decapitated head on a pike.
Panic gave way to sheer terror and hot liquid spurted down his leg, ruining his obscenely expensive pyjama trousers.
A hand clamped around his bicep and he was hauled out of his bed and manhandled onto a chair while his mind failed, lost in a sea of fear so deep he could hardly breathe.
The world had shrunk to the sound of his ragged breathing and the whisper of boots on carpet.
His ankles were unceremoniously shackled to the chair legs, and then his body was secured with rope, binding him to the chair, his arms still locked behind his back in magic-cancelling cuffs. He’d forgone his pyjama top, and the rope bit into his exposed skin.
Finally, Teddy’s brain fired. ‘Whatever it is you want, I’ll give you anything. Tell you anything! Do anything!’ he blurted desperately, eyes locked on the decapitated head.
When the masked assailant responded, it was with a chilling electronic sound that Teddy recognised as laughter. It buzzed through the air, unnatural and inhuman.
Some sort of voice distorter, Teddy thought. But was the intruder using it because heknewTeddy or because he wanted to be bowel-wateringly terrifying? Either way, his goal was met.
‘Do you know who I am?’ Teddy demanded, seizing some hitherto unfound bravado. ‘I’m Lord Theodore Marlow, the air elemental Symposium member!’
‘I know who you are, Zephyr.’
Oh shit, oh shit! The Order was pissed at him. But he could salvage this, convince them he’d rectify the mistake. He just needed time
‘I was going to change my vote,’ he stuttered hastily. ‘I was going to obey their instructions! I’ll get it sorted. If you kill me, I can’t fix it. I will fix it, I swear. I just need time!’
‘Tick-tock, Teddy. You’re all out of time. The Order can’t have operatives going AWOL. You don’t get away with not following orders. You’re an object lesson, and it’s going to be a painful one.’ His captor levelled the pike so that the ogre’s horns jutted menacingly towards him.
‘Now hold on!’ His bare feet scrabbled at the carpet for purchase, trying to do something, anything, to stop what was coming. ‘I have money, lots of money!’ he babbled. ‘Please!’
The answering laugh was like a cheese grater dragged across Teddy’s eardrums. It clawed at his nerves, peeling away the last thin layer of hope.
The huge pike was levelled and drawn back, and then the decapitated head slammed into Teddy’s gut with as much force as was humanly possible.
He screamed as the tusks ripped into his skin. The sound tore through the night, a long, sharp wail.
The noise Teddy made as he exited the world was not dissimilar to the sound he’d made upon entering it.
Chapter One
