Chloe Neill - The Beyond

THE CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES NOVELS

Some Girls Bite

Friday Night Bites

Twice Bitten

Hard Bitten

Drink Deep

Biting Cold

House Rules

Biting Bad

Wild Things

Blood Games

Dark Debt

Midnight Marked

Blade Bound

High Stakes novella in Kicking It

Howling for You (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

Lucky Break (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

Phantom Kiss (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

Slaying It (A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)

THE DEVILS ISLE NOVELS

The Veil

The Sight

The Hunt

THE DARK ELITE NOVELS

Firespell

Hexbound

Charmfall

THE HEIRS OF CHICAGOLAND NOVELS

Wild Hunger

Magic was thick as humidity in the southern Louisiana air. And it felt glorious.

Today, there was no hiding. No pretending. We were humans, but not just humans. We were Sensitives, and we were doing magic in public.

My students stood in a line on a plot of green, facing downriver and staring intently at the small objects on the grass in front of them. A wooden box, a ceramic vase, a knitted cube, an old FM radio, and an agate bookend.

Get those shoulders back!

I turned my gaze to the man who stood beside me. He was nearly four feet of attitude, stubby black horns, and more magic than my body could safely hold. Moses was a Paranormal, one of the good guys, and one of my favorite people.

He also had a sass mouth, as Earlene, the oldest of my Sensitives, liked to say. It was one of the things I loved most about him.

You look like trolls. Moses hunched his shoulders. Stand up straight, for craps sake.

We talked about positive reinforcement, I murmured, hands on my hips, as the sun bore down on us, hard as a punch.

He held up a fist. Ill show them positive reinforcement if they dont get this right.

And Moses will be playing bad cop today, I said to the group. A few managed weak chuckles, but the rest were fixated on their foci, the objects theyd attempt to fill with their excess magic.

They were tall, short. Dark, pale. Big, small. Old, young. Magic was the thing they had in commontheir unique sensitivities to the power that had crept into our world from the Beyond, the world of Paras. One could freeze matter, one could call animals, and one could communicate telepathically.

Their powers were new, and they were untrained. I was here not to teach them how to use their magic, to make them better at freezing or calling, but to help them stay sane.

Once upon a time, the Veila ribbon of magic that separated the Beyond from the human worldhad kept the magic on their side. Nearly eight years ago, the Paras tore it open, ravaging the southern U.S., including New Orleans. Sensitives had helped magically sew it shut again, even if a little power had seeped through the stitches. But humans, being humans, had made a very bad mistake, and it had been ripped apart again. This time, it left a mile-long gap, and magic and Paras had been streaming into our world ever since.

A few lucky humans could sense that power, use it. About seven percent of the population, as far as Containment could tell. But human bodies werent built for the burden of otherworldly energy. Too much magic warped bone and broke down muscle, turning Sensitives into skeletal wraiths whose only desire was the very magic that degraded them, even if they had to kill to get it. And there was no coming back from wraithdom.

I was teaching these Sensitives to find balance, to keep the right amount of magic spooled in their bodies. Enough to use if necessary, but not so much that it overwhelmed and broke them. This was the fourth group Id trained since the Veil had been breached. Forty people who were willing to admit to their condition and get help for it. Probably not everyone affected. But I couldnt make anyone face their demons. Even if that meant theyd face them as wraiths later.

We stood in the pulsing heat on a greenway in Devils Isle, the neighborhood-turned-prison-turnedneighborhood for Paranormals. It had been the Fabourg Marigny, had become a prison for all Paranormals, and now served as a prison for some and a refuge for others, because humans had acknowledged not all magicand not all Paranormalswere evil. It was only after the Veil had been opened again that the former Paranormal Combatant Command, and its Containment unit that operated Devils Isle, had finally admitted there were two groups of Paranormals, and only one group was our enemy. The Court of Dawn led the war; theyd magically conscripted their enemies, the Consularis, to fight.