Void to break dred dixon.., p.1
Void to Break (Dred Dixon Chronicles Book 5), page 1
Copyright © 2022 by N.A.Grotepas
All rights reserved.
Cover designed by Deranged Doctor Design
Version: 10.17.2022
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Acknowledgments
For Melanie, who saved all of us by saving Grams’ house—the future is tied to our past.
INTRODUCTION
Note: Some events referenced in Void to Break (Dred Dixon Chronicles book 5) occur in the free prequel short story. Please download your copy here.
1
There are no creatures with void as an element…
…was what I would have thought before I’d seen Lapriel’s little void bauble at my mom’s funeral.
Things were evolving. I’d seen a lot of crazy stuff since that fateful day when Henry Stone entered my life. “Dred Dixon? Sounds like a rockstar. Are you a rockstar?” He’d asked as he sauntered up wearing his mirrored aviators and bomber jacket and I’d introduced myself. I hadn’t yet seen his tiny Karmann Ghia, so I didn’t quite know the extent of his overall approach to his masculinity. He was a strange mix of trying to prove his bravado and not giving a single crap.
Anyway, it was almost like he was the catalyst for everything insane that had occurred since my former partner’s death.
Could it be? Could Hank be the reason that everything I thought I knew was now turned upside down?
Heat swirled up from the pavement beneath my feet. I fanned myself with a zoo brochure. Perspiration gathered at my hairline and dripped down my sides as I watched my partner waving his hands like he was speaking in sign language to a giraffe.
He started to do a little giraffe impression, walking like a ballet dancer in the Nutcracker in some kind of affected manner. He bowed to the giraffe. I rolled my eyes. This guy. Was he adorable or just ridiculous? Sometimes I couldn’t decide.
Whatever Hank was thinking, well… it was obvious.
“Giraffes, eh?” I said, when he caught me staring at him.
“Yup. They’re the ballerinas of the animal kingdom. Just calling it like it is, Dred.”
“Well, whatever they are, they don’t have void power,” I said. “We’re looking for magical creatures with void power.”
“Nothing here has void power, Dred,” he said. “This is a zoo for normal animals.”
“We don’t know that. The power is hard to see,” I pointed out. “So hard to see, that most magick-wielders didn’t even know it existed.”
“The Japanese knew.”
“Well, then maybe a panda has void power.”
“Pandas are Chinese, Dred. I mean… I hate to point that out, but well, I’m doing you a favor.”
I couldn’t help but smile. And want to smack him. “Animals don’t have a nationality.”
“Canada goose.”
“Wrong. In that case, the word is a modifier or a name. It’s not a nationality.”
“I think the Canadians might disagree with you.”
There were two theories my obnoxious partner and I were working on. One, void had been developing over time. Evolving. For a long time its strength had been dormant. It was now coming into fruition for some reason. Neither of us wanted to think about the reason that would be the case. But it was clear when we discussed it, and we stumbled over our words and avoided eye contact.
Armageddon. End of the world stuff.
The other theory was that it was so subtle that the supernatural creatures that manifested it as their primary source and element flew under the radar. Except void demons. But I didn’t know how long those had been around, so they could fit in either theory.
“Canadians don’t disagree with anyone,” I muttered.
“True, they’re too nice,” he said.
“Anyway. We just have to stay a step ahead of that bastard, Joe Smith. That’s why we’re here. Not because there’s necessarily going to be a supernatural creature hanging at the zoo.”
My arch-enemy had reached new heights in his evil evolution. It was difficult to think about without a flood of sorrow gripping me. I was still trying to manage the grief from my mother’s death, which Joe and Phoebe—Hank’s ex-girlfriend from fifteen years ago—were to blame for.
Her life for that of an angel.
The kitsune had lived. The harpy hadn’t. And neither had my mother.
And that? That was my fault.
A gaggle of schoolchildren suddenly swallowed me up in a cacophony of laughter, light blue T-shirts, and a few group moms as they ran past me on their way into the giraffe’s house, where they could climb the stairs to a balcony and be on the same level as the animal’s heads.
“Crazy evolution, isn’t it? Seems like a weird one for nature to just come up with—to compensate for things, your neck will grow to be twenty feet tall. I mean, how the hell? How does that one get a pass?”
“True. And why not more creatures with similar characteristics? I agree. It’s weird.” I wanted to think about that more than the ache in my gut that hadn’t gone away since my mom’s death. “How’s Koji doing?” I asked Hank.
“He’s good. Still getting used to the fact that he can shift into a female form.” Hank sipped from his water flask. “We had to set some ground rules. No foxes in my bedroom at night. No foxes in my bathroom. No foxes when I have ladies over.”
That caught me off guard. “You have ladies over?”
He laughed. “Sure I do.”
“When?”
Hank was with me so much the idea that he even had time to date was astonishing.
“After I take them out to dinner, sometimes they come over.”
“They sleep over?” I wasn’t ready for the answers to any of these questions, but they just flooded out.
“Define sleeping.”
“Let’s go check out the bears,” I said, striding away from him so he couldn’t see my face. “Maybe Fua’s there having a reunion.”
Captain Helaman Fua was the head of our little branch of the Flamehearts, which was a section of the Supernatural Relief Guild. The Torchkeepers was the other part of the guild. They managed the clean up and preserve the secrecy of the supernatural world, which wasn’t too hard to do as far as I was concerned. And it was the more sinister aspect of what we did. At least, that’s what I thought.
I kept my face turned away from Hank. I wasn’t livid, but I wasn’t very skilled at keeping the emotion out of my face, especially at that moment, when every feeling was so raw and close to the surface due to my mother’s death. I thought back to the kiss I’d shared with Hank and how much I wanted him and how I’d resisted and then how I’d turned down Thoth, a god. A god!
And I’d resisted Thoth because of my feelings for Hank.
Total rip off.
Never again, especially not now that I knew he was going out with women and taking them back to his place and saying things like “define sleeping.” Was it fair of me to feel that way? Probably not. Hank wasn’t mine nor would he ever be mine. I didn’t want him. He was my work partner. My friend. And as confused as I felt about what I wanted from him at times, there was absolutely no way I could insist on him not dating or sleeping with his dates.
“Why the bears, Dred?” My partner asked, catching up to me.
“I don’t know. A hunch.” The bears were the furthest thing from my mind, really. I was all wrapped up in a mental dialogue with myself trying to sort what I felt.
“Wouldn’t it be crazy if we discovered an animal here whose void powers were dormant?”
“Lapriel’s were.”
“See, I thought Lapriel’s were just because she hadn’t manifested any magic yet.”
“Hmm, yeah. True, but since we know of exactly zero other magick-wielders with void power, we can’t really test that. I think it’s safer to run with the theory that the void powers are blossoming in all supernaturals until we know otherwise.”
“Hey, Dred,” he said, stopping suddenly. “Hold up.”
I paused and turned to look at him. Around us kids dressed in day camp colors screamed and played. Howler monkeys in an octagon shaped habitat emitted their wild, jungle cries.
Hank approached me. His brow furrowed. He removed his avia
“I’m fine. Totally fine.” I didn’t want to confront things right now. It wasn’t the place—standing in the middle of the zoo. I had told him very little about what was going on inside me following my mom’s funeral. Not because I wanted to shut him out, because I didn’t know what was going on. It was a mishmash of half-formed ideas and emotions and guilt and rage.
I knew some of what happened after death because I was around ghosts. There was a glimmer of hope that maybe my mom would appear one day to me as a ghost.
How did that sort of thing happen? Was there a ghost in charge of determining who got to interact with the living? Perhaps they stood at a ledger and consulted over it while wearing half-moon spectacles.
Or maybe there was a room full of clerks keeping track of things.
Or a room full of monkeys managing ledgers. I was standing next to a monkey cage. Wouldn’t that be fitting? A room full of monkeys typing out rulings on which humans got to be an ancestral influence on the living…
“You keep saying that. I know it can’t be true. Your mom just died, and as your friend, I’m concerned.”
I smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Aw, thanks, good buddy.” I knew it might get a rise out of him. That was the goal—distraction. “You can save these speeches for all your dates.”
Imagine that. Imagine me, if you will, being a total jerkface.
I flashed him a reassuring smile, and moved around him to continue along the path to the bear habitats.
I waited to hear him catching up to me. At any minute I expected my faithful partner to appear at my side, laboring up the hill with me. Maybe huffing and puffing because he was so out of shape and I wasn’t.
After about fifteen yards of incline and a nice sweat drenching my linen tank, I turned to see where the hell he was.
He wasn’t there.
“Hank?” I called, searching for his wild black hair and magical-satchel toting body. Nothing. “Is this a joke?” I called again, hoping my voice would bring him out from behind whatever garbage can he’d hidden behind.
“I’m sorry!” I shouted. “Come on, Hank!”
Still nothing.
My pulse began to race in concern. I pulled out my phone and started calling him.
I wasn’t sure what was going on or if it had more to do with my being bratty or if it was another case of my partner becoming the test subject in another one of Joe Smith’s stupid angel-summoning rituals.
It was probably the former. I hoped for as much, anyway.
2
I raced back down the hill, picking up speed quickly.
“Hank!” I shouted. Flashbacks tackled my guts and twisted them into knots. I couldn’t lose Hank again. I couldn’t lose another partner. I knew I was jumping to conclusions, but in fairness to myself, I’d been through a lot lately. A lot.
Crowds of children and moms pushing strollers and herding day camp kids wandered by looking harried and like they were trying to enjoy the fact that they were spending their lives officially managing hundreds of thousands of kids.
Looked like a dream.
“Hank!”
A few moms shot me confused looks, then began shouting shepherding terms to their packs of children.
“Hank!”
I didn’t care that my shouts were disrupting the flow of the zoo groups. What was I expected to do? Speak like I was in a cathedral? We were outside.
“Everything all right?” A woman with black curly hair and a discerning gaze asked me. She gave me an appraising look. We made eye contact and my indignation died on my lips.
This woman wasn’t asking me out of irritation. She was asking me out of the bond of sisterhood. There was a world-weary look on her face like she knew the possible scenarios that could bring me to crying out a man’s name in the middle of the monkey zone in the local zoo. She was giving me an opening. Her group of kids, about six little ones wearing yellow Kids of Sunshine daycamp shirts, stared up at her, then looked at me like they were waiting to hear my answer as well.
“I’ve lost my partner,” I said, a bit distracted. I was still hoping to see Hank pop out from behind a massive concrete encased garbage can. Bomb proof, those things. “He was just with me. Uh, you see a guy with fluffy, wild black hair and aviator sunglasses? Goatee. Wearing a bomber jacket?”
She gave me crazy eyes. “A bomber jacket?” She repeated, her words full of both doubt and attitude.
“I know, he’s crazy. It’s a—he’s a New Yorker. It’s a thing for him. I just blame the fact that he’s from New York.”
“I’d say. It’s ninety-five degrees today. Might as well be wearing a sauna suit.”
I chortled. “I think I’ve said that exact thing to him.”
I looked at the kids. “You kids see a guy wandering around in a jacket?”
Some of them shook their head.
“These guys just learned to not talk to strangers,” the woman said. “It’s all right, kids, you can answer her.”
“I saw a man wearing a jacket going that way,” a little girl said, her arm popping up and pointing toward a building that had a bathroom sign on it.
“Thank you!” I glanced at the mom, who was now my best friend for reaching out to a sister in need. “And thanks for your help.”
“Of course. Got to be here for my girls.”
Minerva’s ghost, I loved her.
“If something serious ever randomly happens to me, I hope I run into someone just like you,” I said, hoping to show her my gratitude.
“I learned a while ago that I’d rather say something and suffer the possible brief moment where it seems like I’m making negative assumptions and potentially save someone, rather than ignoring the possibility that someone just needs a helping hand.”
“You’re an angel,” I said, my heart filling up with warmth. “I’m sure he’s just in the bathroom. He’s my cop partner. He knows better than to disappear without telling me where he’s going. He’s gonna get a tongue-lashing. I hope you guys have a killer day!”
“Oooh, they’re cops, kids,” the woman said, smiling and looking down at the children as she began to herd them on their way with her arms. “They help people. Heroes.” She winked at me and hurried away.
I wandered toward the bathroom, my palms getting sweaty as I grew more anxious. When I finally found him, I wondered if I’d just have to shove him around for tricking me like he had.
“Hank!” I called as I got to the doorway for the men’s restroom. “Hank! You in there?”
What kind of guy would do that, though? Just duck into the bathroom, neglecting to tell me when he knew I’d been counting on him to keep up with me?
What else could it be? It certainly wouldn’t be that he’d been yanked up into the sky by some magical lasso or being or what have you.
I supposed it could be something like that he’d been abducted by a god. They had that kind of power. Was Atropos toying with me? Thoth? I hadn’t seen much of either god since the death of my mother. It was as though they were avoiding me so that they didn’t have to answer to me for her death.
They would answer for it, the next time I saw either of them.
That was when I saw a glowing light from the corner of my eye. As a magick-user, I was used to bumping into odd things like glowing, spinning balls of light, random monsters, random supernaturals, and the one or two odd god or goddess here or there.
So I didn’t jump or scream when the large orb of light appeared behind the building housing the men’s restroom. Basically it was a ball of swirling patches of light and darkness, purple in color but with colors like blue and black mixed in there.
