But he was right. He hadn’t asked anything of me, and he’d saved my life; the life of a person who had violated his sacred sanctum and stolen from him. Who was I to judge based on what I could see on the outside?
“Okay,” I said, “I guess doing a job for you beats hurling myself off rooftops every other night… but I’ll have to ask the others.”
He shook his head. “Of course,” he said, “Although, as the ringleader of this little circus, I feel they will follow a request of mine more readily if it came from your lips.”
I shuffled around in my seat. “I’m listening…”
“Do you recall how our paths converged in the first place?”
“You saved our asses on a rooftop…”
“Yes, but before then, you stole from me.”
“The key… let me guess, you want me to get it back?”
“Certain… extenuating circumstances have prevented me from finding the right moment of bringing it up, but it seems like we’ve reached a good point now.”
I angled my head to the side. “Have we? I don’t exactly see how.”
“Well, let’s see. You’ve failed at forcing your way into the Tempest for the past few weeks, you’re no closer now to success than when you started on this quest, and tonight you’ve suffered a serious injury that could’ve resulted in the loss of a hand. These factors combined, I feel, will probably keep you from another attempt for at least a few days while you recover, both physically, mentally, and emotionally.”
“You really don’t mince your words, do you?”
“I don’t believe in coddling someone. I also don’t feel like I’m saying anything you don’t already know. What I do know with a fair degree of certainty, however, is this; you are not the kind of person content to sit on her… hands… for any amount of time.”
“How do you know I won’t try getting into the Tempest again tomorrow?”
“Because I can assure you it won’t work.”
I leaned closer to him, anger flaring inside of my chest. “How can you possibly be sure of that?”
Becket crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Well… if you did manage to make it into the Tempest by forcing your way through, you’d join a very exclusive club of people who have succeeded over the course of human history.”
I paused. “How exclusive?”
“One, perhaps two in a generation.”
“Two in a generation? And you knew this from the beginning?”
“I thought I’d indulge you. If you were going to succeed and join the annals of history, I didn’t want to be the one who took that from you. But now that it doesn’t seem likely, I can encourage you to pursue a different, more material goal… and retrieve my key.”
“I’m trying really hard to hold it together right now… you knew what I was doing probably wasn’t gonna work, and you let me do it anyway.”
“Would you have taken my advice if I’d asked you to stop?”
I stared at him, then narrowed my eyes. “Probably not. But that’s beside the point. I don’t need people keeping things from me right now.”
Becket’s red eyes seemed to deepen against the dimness of the room. “So… will you do what I need you to do?”
“Break into the home of the very man who is trying to find ways of hunting us all down and killing us?” I shrugged. “Yeah, okay. It could be fun.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Even though Becket had tasked me with a mission to do, I decided it was too late in the night already to fill the others in. At least, that’s what I told myself. Once the anger-high had settled, I wasn’t sure how I felt about breaking into Asmodius’ place. I’d done it once before, but I’d done it alone. Now I had a bunch of people who I was going to have to either involve or lie to.
I headed up to my room after my meeting with Becket. I’d told the others I would come back down, but in truth I was still feeling a little nauseated after tonight. All I really wanted to do was get into bed, where it was warm. Seeing Axel standing at the door to my room cut that dream in half.
I froze at the sight of him, my muscles tightening up for an instant. After a moment to compose myself, I kept walking toward my bedroom door and stood by it. Axel had his hands in his pockets, and despite it being late, despite all we’d done tonight, an exotic, musky cloud of cologne seemed to envelop him, the scent exciting my nostrils.
“Hey,” he said.
I nodded. “Hey.”
“I didn’t mean to ambush you here, I just wanted to find out how you were.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I know it’s late and you’re tired, but do you mind if I come in?”
I scanned his piercing blue eyes, then glanced over at the door. Inviting him in would mean sleep would have to wait a little longer, but I couldn’t say no. I opened the door, gesturing for him to follow me in with a nod of my head. Once inside, I shut the door, walked over to the bed, and sat down.
My room in Becket’s place was ample, with a big bed and a large window overlooking the backyard. It was dark inside, and that darkness seemed to amplify the natural coldness of the place. Without wasting another second, I switched the electric blanket on and sat down on the bed. It’d take a couple of minutes to warm up, but it was literally the only way to stay warm in the entire house.
I ran my fingers through my blue hair, shaking it out and letting it fall behind my shoulders. “What’s up?” I asked.
Axel didn’t sit, instead he stood across from me, one hand in his pocket, with the other lightly touching his lips. “I wanted to apologize,” he said, “For not being there tonight when you fell.”
“More like jumped… like a crazy person.”
“Right. Still, I know it’s important that I be there, and I wasn’t.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t think anything of it. I don’t need or want everyone holding my hand while I try and do what I need to do, but you all insist… and since you’re insisting on making a deal of it now, where were you?”
“My father has had all of my assets frozen, including all those I managed to liberate from him the night of the heist.”
“You’re broke?”
“Not just broke. He’s gone to great lengths to track down my safes, my safehouses, and just about anything linked to any of my names.”
Names? Plural? He’d just said a whole bunch of words that needed proper processing, but I didn’t have the time nor the brainpower to process them. “I’m sorry… I guess you really hurt him when you flew the coop.”
“My father is a God-damned sociopath. He doesn’t feel emotional pain. But he did lose an asset when I left… that’s pissed him off.”
“He must’ve expended a lot of his own resources in trying to cut you off like that, though, right? That could be a good thing for us.”
Axel shook his head. “He has more money and manpower at his disposal than I care to try and describe. Suffice it to say, cutting me off didn’t really make a dent in his bank account.”
I paused, staring up at him in the darkness. Filling the silence between us, crickets. “I guess you still didn’t answer the question,” I said. “What kept you?”
“I had a storage locker just outside of town… I got tipped off to a possible raid happening tonight, so I raced over there to try and move whatever I could out of it. By the time I got there, it was too late.”
“A tip off? Like, you have someone on the inside?”
“My father has a lot of resources, but not everyone under him is entirely loyal. Some of the people who work for my family have watched me grow up. There are some people who value personal relationships more than whatever they’re being paid.”
“Aren’t they putting themselves in danger by leaking information to you?”
“Grave danger. I try to limit my contact with them as much as possible. The only reason why I haven’t cut all contact entirely is because they could serve as an early warning system… if Asmodius ever decides to move in on us.”
/> I rolled my eyes. “If you talk to Becket, that if becomes a when. He’s convinced your father will storm this place one day. And soon.”
“I’m inclined to agree. In all my life, I’ve never seen my father let go of a grudge. He will hunt us down until he gets what he wants from us.”
“And what’s that?”
Axel shrugged. “Servitude for some of us, death for the others.”
I nodded. “Charming.” Another pause. I swallowed hard. “For what it’s worth… I’m glad you’re on our side.”
“Glad?”
“You’re nothing like him… I don’t see it, anyway.”
“I don’t think you know either of us well enough to make that judgment.”
“Maybe not, but when you spend as much time as I have sitting on the laps of strangers, you pick up a couple of survival instincts. Your father sets off every last one of them. You… only a few.”
Axel’s eyebrows went up. “Only a few?” he asked, “I’m not sure if I should be pleased or disappointed.”
“Alright, let me put it to you like this… when I’m near your father, my skin crawls. It’s like I can feel his need to possess, to dominate, to own me. I’ve felt that before from other guys just by looking at them from across a club. Those are the ones I stay away from, because those are the ones more likely to have black, unmarked, tinted SUV’s waiting out-back.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For him to drug me and toss me inside.”
“Is that… something that’s happened to you before?”
“Only once. Some guy decided I was easy prey. He didn’t even try to roofie me, you know? Once we’d gone into a quiet room, he just grabbed me and wrapped a chloroform-soaked rag around my mouth. Obviously, he didn’t know who he was dealing with. If I’d been human, I’d have gone down in an instant, but I didn’t. It took all of two seconds for me to stab my stiletto heel into his foot and break his nose with my elbow. Then I zapped him unconscious and dragged his ass outside. The SUV took off in a hurry when they saw us.”
“Holy shit… what did you do with the guy?”
“I stole the contents of his wallet, took his watch, his jewelry, his phone, and left him out in the rain. He never came back.”
“That’s very impressive… I may have dealt with it differently.”
“What would you’ve done?”
“I would’ve made sure he never tried that on any woman again in his life.”
“I get that. I’m not confident he hasn’t gone out and tried his luck again, but the world is full of monsters you can’t kill or maim… because they’re protected by law.”
“That’s one way of putting it…”
I took a deep breath and let my hands stretch along the top of the duvet. Despite the demons infesting this house, despite the way they liked to suck the cold out of the very air, the bed itself was warming up beneath my fingertips. It was an inviting feeling, one I was struggling to resist succumbing to. But I’d just made a decision, and I had to carry it out before I could relax.
“Becket wants me to steal from your father again,” I said.
“What?” Axel asked, his body stiffening.
“The key Asmodius has… he wants it back. I don’t know if it has anything to do with me trying to enter the Tempest, probably not, but I’m not having any luck doing that anyway so I figure I may as well do something I’m good at.”
“Wait, you accepted?”
“I did. I wasn’t gonna tell you or any of the others, I was just gonna slip out one night and do it on my own.”
Axel shook his head. “But… why?”
“Because I’ve done it before, because I’m good at doing things on my own, and because I’d rather not see any of you get hurt because of me.”
“We’re in this together, Izzy.”
“Yes, but I’m the one who stole that damn key in the first place; retrieving it is my responsibility.”
“So… why have you told me?”
I shrugged. “It suddenly occurred to me that if your father is putting time and effort into isolating you from your resources, then he’s probably beefed his security up around his place and getting in might not be as easy this time.”
“You didn’t consider that before you accepted Becket’s mission?”
“I was flustered and in the moment, okay? Anyway, I’m seeing an opportunity here… a way we can get the key and stick it to your dad at the same time.”
“I’m not interested in sticking it to my dad. I want all of us to stay as far away from him as possible, and I’m going to object to any plan that involves going to his mansion.”
“No, listen to me. You said you’ve got someone on the inside who provides you with information. Do you think you could find out just how jacked up your dad’s security is? If we knew that, it would help me come up with my plan.”
Axel hurried across to the edge of the bed and took a knee in front of me. “Izzy… please,” he pleaded, “It’s too dangerous.”
The moonlight filtering through the large window behind me picked up the sparkle in his eyes, the shape of his face, his jaw. I stared at him for a long moment, watching his eyes, drinking in every second of this closeness. Even though it was quiet between us, the bedroom was still alive with ambient noise coming from outside. The wind rustling the trees and bushes, the owl across the street somewhere, the crickets.
Then it all suddenly stopped, leaving a silent, eerie void. Spiders crawled along my back and arms, making the tiny hairs on my skin stand on their ends. Axel had noticed, too. I could see it on his face.
“I can do this,” I said, “I’ve already done it once on my own, I know I can pull it off. Anyway, Becket is our host, he saved our lives. I can’t refuse him.”
The fight went out of Axel’s eyes, and his expression softened. He sighed, let his head drop a little, and shut his eyes. “I can get the information you need,” he said, “But I’ll need a little time.”
“How much time?”
“Maybe a day.”
“I can give you a few hours.”
“Hours? Why hours?”
I told Axel everything Becket had told me. Keeping it from him didn’t seem like a good idea anymore, especially considering he was in a position to help me with this little mission. Now that the cat was out of the bag, not telling the others was out of the question. I was going to have to fill everyone in, which meant involving them in the theft I was already planning in my head, but that was the hand I had been dealt.
All I could do now was play.
Even though it was after midnight, as soon as we were done talking, Axel headed out of my room and got on the phone to whoever he had on the inside. We were racing against the clock, now. Every minute counted. And that meant sleep was going to be light tonight, no matter how warm and inviting my bed was.
CHAPTER FIVE
Like any good predator, sleep eventually found me and wrestled me to the ground. I woke up with a start the next day, and with one hell of a headache, but the injury I’d sustained the night before had become little more than a gnarly bruise that, if I’m being totally honest, looked badass.
Gotta love that Vivimancer magic.
But the night hadn’t been entirely fruitless. Axel had made us coffee to help us both coordinate a little better during the moonlit hours, and shortly after lunch, Axel’s contact on the inside had given him a solid swath of information about Asmodius’ defenses in exchange for instant refuge, which Becket was able to provide.
We didn’t only know where the snipers were and how many were around at any given point, we knew who they were, when their shifts rotated, and where the blind spots were. Unfortunately, there weren’t many blind spots, but knowing when the shifts changed helped me figure out exactly when the best moment to strike was.
After getting something to eat, I called everyone down to Becket’s the living room so I could discuss with them what I’d been talking about with Axel all night. He still wasn’
t entirely convinced this was going to work, he was didn’t think we should be doing this at all; one, or all of us, would wind up captured. But with a plan worked out, he at least wasn’t complaining about it so much.
Izzy one, Axel zero.
Danvers who, lounging on one of the couches with a thick woolen blanket draped around her like some Persian princess, was the first to speak. “And… you want to do this tonight?” she asked.
“Pretty sure I was clear on just how little time we probably had,” I said, “But if I wasn’t, I can say it again.”
“No, I don’t need you to repeat yourself. I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were asking.”
“I know what I’m asking, and believe me, I wouldn’t even be considering this if I thought there was another way.”
“She wanted break into my father’s mansion on her own,” Axel put in.
“Why am I not surprised?” Karim asked, rolling his eyes.
“I didn’t want to get you all deeper into this mess.”
“Hate to break it to you,” RJ said, “But we’re shit deep in this already. You’re gonna have to start using our skills. We’re meant to be a team.”
“Speak for yourselves,” Karim scoffed, “Don’t count on me to hold you upright when the magic mafia catches you and breaks your legs.”
“Is that really necessary?” Danvers asked.
“Not necessary… necessarily. But helpful all the same.”
“Not helpful, either, but you have a point,” I said, “I don’t expect anything from any of you. You signed on to do a job with me, and the job is done. I can’t ask you for more than I’ve already asked.”
“Because there’s no way you can pay us enough, right?” Danvers asked, “Don’t answer that, it’s a rhetorical. Also, don’t listen to Basil Fawlty over here. Listen to RJ. We’re here, we’re in this… assuming you have a plan?”
Soul of the Storm (The Wardbreaker Book 2) Page 3
