Dawn Slayer

by Clara Coulson

  Lucian finishes his parking job and shuts off the car with the push of a button. “All I’m asking is that you think about it. Grumpy bastard or not, getting a little help from the other side might benefit us. Especially if your old man is right about the Children getting their own help from beyond the veil.”

  I stare at the dashboard while I consider his proposition. My knee-jerk reaction is to say, “Absolutely fucking not,” but that’s just my ragged emotions trying desperately to stop me from dredging up all the nebulous contempt I’ve always held for my absent father. My rational side, of course, says Lucian’s idea is fantastic, and we should send the message the first chance we get.

  My actual response is, “We can discuss it later. For now, let’s go pick up this lead on the shapeshifter.”

  Lucian almost rejects my attempt to shut down the conversation, but he holds his tongue. Just this once.

  From the parking garage, Lucian guides me four blocks north and three blocks east, to a rundown neighborhood populated largely by dilapidated buildings with sunken roofs and chipped façades. Tucked between a few of these buildings are a smattering of seedy businesses. No signs on their doors. Their windows blacked out. No way to tell if they’re open or closed.

  As Lucian and I approach one such business, I get the distinct sense we’re being watched. And when we near the front door, I give myself a pat on the back. Because two very large men wearing short sleeves in midwinter slip through the door as we step onto the sidewalk, each of them bearing a copious number of lewd tattoos and the unmistakable twinkle in their eyes that indicates they are more than willing to beat intruders to a bloody pulp. They use their bulk to block off our access to the door.

  “Private party,” says the goon on the left in a rumbling Russian base.

  Lucian, unperturbed by his menace, simply tips his hat up and says, “We’re looking to hire an attendee.”

  The goon who spoke takes an involuntary step back at the sight of Lucian’s eyes. “My apologies, sir.” He elbows his buddy in the gut, and the man quickly clears the doorway. Goon number one then yanks the door open with a slight creak of the hinges. “Seems you and your friend are on the guest list today. Go on in.”

  Lucian proceeds inside, and I tail him. But I keep my head partially turned so I can observe the bouncers, until I’m sure they’re not planning to bum rush us while our backs are turned. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that they don’t even give us a second glance, and instead reenter the building, lock the door behind them, and return to what they were presumably doing before we walked up: peering around the edges of the blackout curtains.

  Ah, I get it.

  “That whole exchange was scripted, yeah?” I ask Lucian as we proceed through the smoky front room of a dirty old bar that sports an oddly high number of patrons keen on hogging the darkest corners.

  “Yup.” Lucian gestures toward a door at the back of the room. “You need two things to get into this place, a scary pedigree, so they’ll take you seriously, and the ‘password,’ which is that verbal dance me and the hulk just had.”

  “So this place is, what, where supernatural badasses hang out or something?” I speak softly, looking around the room without obviously moving my eyes. I spy subtle flickers of motion in the shadows as the various patrons examine me and Lucian in great detail. I can feel their gazes on the back of my neck, an itch I refuse to scratch. I know these people will think me weak if I reveal how uncomfortable I am.

  “Not supernaturals in general,” Lucian counters. “A very particular kind of supernatural.”

  We reach the door along the back wall, and Lucian opens it without fanfare.

  The back room of the bar is filled to the brim with shapeshifters. A circle of them, their violet eyes on full display, surround a line of five tables in the middle of the room. At each of these tables sits two people, one who is a shapeshifter, and one who is not.

  The pairs are doing business. They haggle over contract terms in hushed voices, over compensation for contracts yet to be signed, and violations of contracts deemed to be complete. Some of the non-shifters hand over vials of blood so the shifters can turn into certain people, and some of the shifters hand over various items, including a few body parts, which I assume indicates the completion of a contract killing.

  Some of the non-shifters seem pleased, and some do not.

  Some of the shifters seem pleased, and some do not.

  The crowd watches the negotiations like you would a spectator sport, sipping beer and munching on popcorn, as if the sight of two people whispering is the most interesting thing in the world.

  Holy hell, I didn’t know there were this many shapeshifters on the planet. How…?

  With a jolt, I realize the entire main room of the bar must also be occupied by shapeshifters. And when I make the mistake of glancing over my shoulder to confirm this suspicion, I’m greeted by twenty-five pairs of gleaming violet eyes staring straight at me.

  “Uh, Lucian,” I start, but he cuts me off with a lifted finger.

  Lucian scans the back room until he locates a gray-haired man in the corner, who appears to be overseeing all the business negotiations. Lucian skirts around the crowd and heads toward this man. I follow him because I don’t want to be left alone in this building full of beings who can steal my face.

  The gray-haired man notices us approaching. He tucks his leather-bound ledger, in which he was scribbling various notes about the business proceedings, under his arm, and sticks his gold-plated fountain pen in the front pocket of his suit. When Lucian is within comfortable speaking distance, the man holds out his hand.

  “Back for more hits, Mr. Ardelean?” the man says in English.

  I don’t have time to dwell on the fact that Lucian has apparently hired shapeshifters for more than one assassination job, as Lucian rankles the man’s feathers by ignoring his proffered hand and saying, “Not today, Ken. I’m here for information.”

  Ken frowns. “You know I don’t hand out info on my contractors, Mr. Ardelean.”

  “And you know this gig is only still up and running because I got you out of that jam in Amsterdam last year,” Lucian says. “As far as I’m concerned, you owe me one.”

  Ken contemplates whether or not to get on Lucian’s bad side for all of five seconds. “All right, what do you want?”

  “I need to know the whereabouts of your best guy.”

  “No way. I give you that and—”

  Lucian raises his hand, silencing Ken. “That shifter is in possession of a very dangerous artifact, which he stole from some very dangerous people, leading to the very dangerous panic that has now gripped this city, because a theater got blown up in the middle of your guy’s job.”

  Ken is taken aback. “That was Hays’ work?”

  “You didn’t know he was on a job here?”

  “No, I didn’t. About a month ago, a masked man came in, asked for Hays by name, and hired him on for some swap job in America. I thought he was still there.”

  “Hays misled you.” Lucian points at me. “There was no swap job. He was hired to protect this guy here and obtain a blood sample, so that he could use this guy’s face during today’s theft of that artifact I mentioned.”

  Ken frowns. “It’s not like Hays to lie to me. He’s a straight shooter when it comes to jobs. Very professional.”

  “Everyone can be unprofessional, if the occasion calls for it. The occasion in a shapeshifter’s case being a shitload of money.”

  “You’re not wrong there,” Ken concedes. “But although I’m rightfully pissed at Hays and wouldn’t mind ratting him out to you as punishment for his deception—and the loss of whatever administrative fee I would’ve gotten from the bigger job—I can’t help you. I don’t know where Hays is now.”

  “Didn’t expect you to know where he is,” Lucian says. “But I do expect you to know where he most likely was before the job went down. Where he normally stays when he’s running gigs in Moscow.”

  �
��Ah.” Ken scratches his chin. “That I might be able to answer. There are several flophouses across the city with whose owners I maintain partnerships. My people get to stay for a nominal fee per night, and the owners thoroughly clean up any messes they leave behind, with the promise of a hefty payment from my coffers.”

  “Can you find out if Hays booked a room in one of these places over the past few days?” Lucian asks.

  “Oh, I can do better than that. Hays is a creature of habit. He always stays at the same place.” Ken tugs the ledger out from under his arm, flips to the back, and runs his finger down a page until he lands on a certain address entry, which he shows to Lucian. “If he hasn’t completely abandoned his routines in favor of this big gig of his, then that is where he’ll have stayed leading up to his heist of your mysterious artifact.”

  Lucian reviews the address, committing it to memory. “Thanks for the tip. We’ll go check it out.”

  “I’d say ‘no problem,’ but that would be untrue.” Ken snaps his ledger closed and makes a shooing motion. “Off the rails or not, I’m uncomfortable giving out info on my people. Makes me seem unreliable to my clientele and contractors alike. They care deeply about their privacy, as you can imagine.”

  “Won’t happen again, Ken.” Lucian smiles. “As long as you don’t end up in my debt again.”

  “Next time, I may let the whole operation burn just to spite you.” Ken sniffs in a snobbish way. “Pushy vampires.”

  “Greedy shapeshifters.”

  Ken shoos us again, more emphatically this time. “Get the hell out of my bar, Ardelean.”

  “My pleasure,” Lucian drawls. “This place is creepy as fuck.”

  Chapter Six

  The flophouse is wedged between a defunct barbershop and a convenience store whose shelves have been so thoroughly picked over that if you saw the place without context you’d think the end was nigh.

  Lucian cruises swiftly through the neighborhood on our first approach. We each case one side of the street, search for any signs of Hays himself, lying low in the shadows to see who comes after him, or any signs of all the friends he made today at the satire theater. Spying nothing of concern, Lucian coasts the BMW four blocks past the flophouse and deftly wedges the vehicle between the peeling concrete walls of a hardware store and a nail salon.

  This alley is narrower than the last one Lucian used to hide the car, and when I go to open the door, I find that Lucian intentionally put my side closer to the wall so he could have more room to open his door. Cursing under my breath, I squeeze out of the tiny opening between the car and the wall, slam the door shut, and shimmy around to the trunk, where Lucian is waiting. With bald-faced amusement curling his lips and twinkling in his amber eyes.

  I punch him in the arm. “You’re a massive dick. You know that, right?”

  He pretends the punch hurt and rubs his bicep. “Come on, kid. Lighten up.”

  “Oh yes,” I say, gesturing to the decaying neighborhood around us, “because there’s nothing that puts me in a laughing mood quicker than abject poverty.”

  Lucian rolls his eyes, then speaks a short phrase that reactivates the veil on the car. The car vanishes from sight in an instant, leaving no sign of its presence except a group of tire indentations on the slush-covered concrete.

  “Say,” I ask, “what’ll happen to the car if it starts to snow?”

  Lucian pats the invisible trunk of the BMW. “One of the wards will repel the snow so it won’t blanket the veil.”

  “Won’t that eventually cause a pileup around the car?” I glance at the sky. The clouds are even darker than they were when we left Ken’s bar, the crisp scent of oncoming snow hanging thick in the air.

  “Eventually,” Lucian concedes. “But we’ll be back long before it’s noticeable.”

  “Unless we stumble into a trap inside the flophouse and die horribly.”

  “Yeah, unless that happens.”

  We exit out of the south side of the alley and come around the back end of the flophouse, hoping to sneak in through a door not visible from the street. Our hopes are dashed, however, as we sneak up to the fire exit, only to find it locked shut by a heavy chain and a padlock. From the inside.

  While either of us can break the door down, the noise will alert anyone inside the building to our imminent arrival.

  “Great.” I scratch a nagging itch on the back of my head. “Guess we’ll have to talk our way past the owner.”

  “If he’s willing to do business with people he knows aren’t on the up and up, then maybe he’ll be amenable to a”—Lucian tugs his wallet from his pants pocket and checks the contents—“modest bribe. If not, we can always knock him out, dump him in his office for safekeeping, nab his keys, and—”

  “Wait a second,” I blurt out as an idea strikes me. “There might be an easier way.”

  Before Lucian can ask me what I’m on about, I cut through the alley beside the flophouse and swing around to the front entrance. Lucian hisses at me to get my ass out of sight. But I ignore him on principle and step right up to the reinforced glass door, almost pressing my face against the tinted panel.

  Inside the itty-bitty lobby of the flophouse, a single person mans a check-in desk that sports an old-fashioned log book in place of a computer. The man at the desk is flipping through a wrinkled magazine, looking bored out of his mind. Right up until the moment he spots me standing in front of the door.

  He recoils, not in fear of a stranger but in fear of a person he recognizes.

  Bingo.

  I haul the door open just as Lucian scuttles around the side of the building. Lucian catches the door before it smacks him in the face and gives me a glare as I march into the lobby. The man at the front desk holds his ground on my approach, but he’s visibly shaking by the time he manages to scrounge up enough courage to talk.

  “C-Can I help you, sir?” he asks in Russian.

  “Yes,” I answer in a poor imitation of the same language. “I need another key. Mine was misplaced during an…unfortunate encounter.”

  The man, who was already pale, turns white as a sheet as his mind conjures up all kinds of “unfortunate encounters” the person he thinks I am may have partaken in this fine day. Yet somehow, the businessman in him prevails. He replies, “Then I’m s-sorry to say I will have to add a fifteen-thousand-ruble surcharge to your room fee. If you have lost the key, I will need to replace the lock to ensure security for future guests.”

  He ducks under the desk, digs around through what sounds like a box of metal objects, and emerges a moment later with a key. “Until my locksmith can come by and change out the lock, you can use this spare. But bear in mind that I cannot ensure your room will remain secure. As I’m sure you’re aware, there are no on-site security personnel.”

  I snatch the key from his hand. “I am capable of securing my own belongings.”

  “Of c-course, sir.”

  “Fifteen thousand, you said?”

  “Y-Yes.” He’s trembling so hard now, it’s a wonder he hasn’t fallen to pieces. I almost start to feel bad for the guy. Until I remind myself that he rents rooms to shapeshifting assassins. Whether he knows they’re supernatural creatures or not, he certainly knows they’re criminals.

  He deserves a good dose of fear, methinks.

  “My associate will take care of the fee now,” I say, jutting my thumb over my shoulder as Lucian steps through the door. I don’t turn my head, so I don’t see the expression on Lucian’s face. But I can feel the annoyance resonating off him as he trudges up to the desk, wallet in hand, and drops the requisite amount of rubles onto the countertop.

  The man is shaking so badly, he ends up knocking half the money onto the floor. As he’s gathering the bills, and what’s left of his dignity, I check the end of my new key for the room number and stomp over to the staircase leading to the second floor.

  Halfway up the stairs, my stone-cold façade finally breaks. I slap a hand over my mouth to stop myself from bursting into a
fit of giggles. Lucian, a couple steps behind me, leans forward and mutters, “That was your grand idea?”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “I’m out over two hundred dollars.”

  “I said my way would be easier, not cheaper.”

  He cuffs me upside the head. “That was a reckless stunt. What if Hays hadn’t been wearing your face when he checked in?”

  I bite my gloved finger as another wave of laughter crashes through me. When it settles, I reply, “If he hadn’t shown any recognition when I walked up to the door, I would’ve played it off like I was looking for directions.”

  Lucian is unamused. “You realize that if any of our enemies are staking this place out, they just saw their wanted sword thief walk through the front door, right?”

  “And you realize that if our enemies are anywhere in this neighborhood, they probably saw you park your magic car and make it disappear, right?”

  “Okay, whatever. Let’s get into the room, toss the place, and get out as fast as we can.”

  Scratching an irritating itch on the back of my head, I say, “Works for me.”

  Hays’ room is at the end of a hall of misaligned doors with water-warped frames set into an off-white wall decorated with patches of mold. The whole hallway smells musty, and the carpet squishes wetly underfoot as Lucian and I walk up to the designated door. Lucian keeps his gaze attached squarely to the sagging ceiling, like he expects the whole thing to come crashing down any minute. I feel a similar sense of apprehension about the floor, which groans in a disconcerting way when I shift my full weight onto either foot.

  “A far cry from the Hyatt, huh?” I say.

  “I’ve stayed in some shitholes in my time, but you couldn’t pay me to spend a night in this place. I’d rather sleep in a goddamn park.”

  “Same.”

  After sweeping the room behind the door with my magic sense and spotting no trap wards, I jimmy the key into the lock, waste thirty seconds trying to get it to turn, and finally manage to open the door by spinning the knob all the way to the right and ramming my shoulder into the thin wooden panel. The door comes unstuck from the frame with a loud shriek of the hinges and swings back to reveal a coffin of a room.