Myths and Magic: An Epic Fantasy and Speculative Fiction Boxed Set

by K.N. Lee

  The team piled into the SUV while a half dozen other agents, dressed in SWAT gear, got into an unmarked van beside them. Maybe charging in with tactical gear was an option. This seemed like a lot more than just asking a few questions. This had the potential for a full-out assault.

  It seemed a little overkill for a Spriggan. According to what she’d read, years ago, they were ugly mischievous fairies. Nothing more. Certainly not as dangerous as the shade she’d already met.

  They drove across town in silence. It seemed everyone already knew the drill and words weren’t necessary. Everyone except Rowan, and she had no idea how she was going to discover what she was supposed to do without drawing suspicion. Jovkovic was already wary of her, and if he suspected anything he might take her off the case — and that couldn’t happen if she was going to have any hope of finding a way back home. Which meant she was going to have to stay back, keep her eyes open, and pray she wasn’t supposed to be at the head of any possible assault.

  28

  Jovkovic and the SWAT team parked in a part of the city Rowan didn’t recognize. It was in a mixed industrial-commercial area that at one time had been all industrial. With the exception of a few revitalized buildings, they were all old brick warehouses. She would have guessed the brick was red or brown, but with half a century’s worth of filth and the overcast light, they looked black.

  The SWAT team stayed in the van, while Jovkovic took the lead, Shannon took the rear, leaving her feeling out of place between them.

  She fought to keep an appearance of calm only because she couldn’t decide between excitement and fear, and neither seemed appropriate for questioning Faust, a high-end demon bookie. There was a chance of danger — or Jovkovic wouldn’t have brought backup — but it looked like he wanted to attempt polite conversation first.

  The door to Faust’s was in a narrow passage between two warehouses and down a few cracked steps. Water pooled at the bottom around a rusty drain clogged by leaves.

  Jovkovic walked around it, clipping the edge with his heel and making it undulate against the step and surrounding walls.

  Rowan took a large step — thanks to longer legs — and avoided it.

  Shannon walked right through.

  Even when he wore a suit he acted like he was in fatigues. It might explain why he hadn’t wanted her in the entities’ club. He probably thought all those rich entities with poise and manners would make him look like the blue-collar guy that he was and she’d no longer be interested in him. But his fear was misplaced. If Azkeel’s near-orgy was typical entity behavior, she wanted nothing to do with it. Maybe profiling wasn’t a completely ridiculous career choice for her after all, although she wasn’t going to bet her life on it.

  Hidden in the shadows of the two buildings sat a metal door. Its black paint made it difficult to see, but the shiny new hinges gleamed. Jovkovic opened it, and they entered a smoky bar. Low lighting was dimmed even more by a gray haze hanging in the air. Smoke tickled the back of her throat, and she choked back a cough. Old wooden tables and chairs crowded near a long bar sitting against the far wall. Televisions, playing all manner of sports and races, were everywhere, their volumes low, creating a numbing drone. A handful of men in suits were scattered about the establishment and for all intents and purposes it looked like a bar.

  But it didn’t feel right. A place like this should have been busy around the dinner hour, with people hanging out after work to relax and have a drink before heading home. Of course, the location wasn’t that great and without a sign outside it was difficult to find.

  A sleepy bouncer sat on a stool by the door and gave them a cursory glance then closed his eyes again — only two. Thank God. He looked human enough. The kind of guy who ate a little too much and turned that extra food into a solid layer of undefined muscle, but she knew looks could be deceiving. Seth looked human, too.

  Their suits didn’t draw any attention, which didn’t surprise her given the other patrons, but neither did Shannon and his bigger-than-average stature. They crossed the room to a door with a large washroom sign above it. It opened into a narrow hall with four doors: men’s, women’s, private, and exit. Entities were obviously divided more or less into two genders just like humans unless this bar wasn’t entity politically correct. Jovkovic went straight to the door labeled private and entered without knocking. She followed, stepped aside as soon as she entered, and allowed Shannon to pass.

  Her gaze was drawn to the man behind a massive desk to the exclusion of the rest of the room. He was small, smaller than Jovkovic, with a gray, wrinkled face and a turned-up nose. He reminded her of a human pug, stuffed into a double-breasted suit jacket and with short, thick arms.

  He glanced up from his paperwork, nonplussed by the interruption, revealing sharp, green eyes.

  Movement beside her caught her attention, and she tore her gaze away from the man to do a quick check of the rest of the room.

  The office was standard office, and the man in the corner, lounging in a metal foldout chair, was standard thug. His appearance matched the doorman at the front entrance, except this man had thick black tattoos around each bicep.

  He stood and strode to Jovkovic in three quick steps. He looked down at the FBI agent, who appeared just as nonplussed as the man behind the desk.

  “We’ll have none of that,” the man, presumably Faust, said, and his thug stepped back. Faust kept his attention locked on Jovkovic. A silence stretched between them and she wondered if this was some strange communication technique for Spriggans.

  Then Faust sat back, a smile playing on his lips.

  Jovkovic didn’t move. Neither did Shannon.

  They were statue-still, containing whatever emotions or thoughts they had. If she had wanted to risk drawing her blade, she could have cut the tension with it.

  “I was wondering when I’d see you next, Jovkovic,” Faust said. “Have a drink.” He waved at a decanter and glass set on the shelf behind him.

  Tattoo Thug sucked in a slow breath, and the tension dropped to nerve-wracking instead of terrifying.

  Jovkovic glanced at the decanter behind Faust. “I don’t drink on the job.”

  “This isn’t a social call? Pity. I was hoping to finally get to know your profiler.” Faust turned his sharp gaze on Rowan, revealing a thinly veiled malevolence.

  More than ever in this world, the eyes seemed a window to the soul, and what she saw made her heart quicken and not in a good way. Fear slid through her to the pit of her stomach, cold and numbing. There was no other word but evil. True, pure, and without compassion.

  She fought to convince herself she wasn’t that terrified, and logically it was true. Seth’s father with his undefined black nothingness inspired more fear.

  But logic couldn’t control how she felt.

  His eyes bore into her, digging into the fabric of her being, and she couldn’t look away. A numbness followed the chill and made her head buzz.

  The door beside her flew open. She yelped and jumped, startling everyone else in the room. Tattoo Thug swung at Jovkovic, and Shannon rushed him. He slammed Tattoo into the wall. The recent entrant, another brawny thug, leapt at her.

  She hopped back, not far enough out of reach, her limbs still numb with fear.

  Brawny seized the front of her jacket. He yanked her toward him and captured her jaw with a meaty hand. She rammed her palm against his nose, knocking his head back, but he didn’t let go.

  Damn.

  That was usually enough to rattle a guy or break his nose. At least his eyes were watering and a thin trickle of blood inched down his upper lip.

  He changed his hold from her face to her neck and backed her against the wall. The tattoos on his arms flashed green light, and electricity snapped around her. Was that magic?

  Shit.

  She wrenched at his grip, and it tightened around her neck. Great, now she’d made him mad.

  29

  Rowan wrenched against the brawny bouncer’s hand clenched around
her throat and gasped for breath, but couldn’t suck in enough air. The light in Faust’s office dimmed and she clawed at his fingers, desperate to break free.

  Her mind and lungs screamed, and panic pounded adrenaline through her. She strained against her whirling thoughts. Concentrate. She didn’t want to paw uselessly at him. That was what victims did.

  She reached for his face but couldn’t maneuver around his thick arms. Black specks dotted her vision. Her limbs grew heavy, the weight of the Kevlar vest pressed on her chest, and the knife sheath dragged at her left arm.

  Shannon grunted as he fought with the tattooed bouncer, and from the corner of her eye, she could see Faust sitting behind his desk, staring at Jovkovic as if nothing were amiss.

  How she wanted to throttle that smug smile from his face.

  She slid her knife from its sheath. She’d never used a weapon for real in a fight before, only during practice, and she certainly didn’t want to kill anyone, but if it came down to her or him… well, she just hoped he had funeral coverage.

  She slashed across the bottoms of his arms.

  He let go. Blood splattered her hand and the knife, making the grip slippery.

  Brawny drew back to strike and Shannon appeared at his side, a gun held to the man’s head — Tattoo, the guy Shannon had been fighting, lay unconscious on the ground. She waited for someone to say something. But no one did. The situation was understood.

  The SWAT agents rushed through the open office door, guns ready.

  It looked like someone had called for help.

  They ushered both thugs into the far corner then took up positions around the room. Neither Faust nor Jovkovic had moved.

  Rowan’s heart pounded, her stomach clenched, and her legs trembled. She needed fresh air. Now. She slid the knife back into the sheath, not caring that it was still bloody, and stepped out of the office, hoping she’d find a moment to pull herself together in the hall. But two agents guarded the door and Shannon followed her.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked.

  “I was handling the situation.” Sure, if handling meant getting strangled. But she forced her expression to remain calm. He didn’t need to see how scared she was. Besides, this world’s self probably wouldn’t have been scared at all.

  Shannon didn’t seem convinced, but he didn’t press the issue.

  Thank God. Ben would have been all over it. Maybe. Maybe not. Except he probably would have freaked at the entire situation, and not just the fight.

  “Why didn’t you at least pull your gun?”

  She glanced away, just for a split second, but Shannon saw it.

  “You’re not—” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “You’re not carrying?”

  She bit the inside of her cheek, not knowing how to answer.

  “What happened to ‘the only equalizer between a human and a demon is a gun? Preferably a large-bore shotgun?’ You cannot be well.”

  As if to prove him right, her hands began to shake. She clenched them into fists, making the blood on them squelch between her fingers. It wasn’t illness that made her shake. It was shock and fear. She could still feel the panic from looking into Faust’s eyes. God, she’d almost died — again. “I just need some air.”

  “No. You need sick leave.”

  “Don’t you dare say that to Jovkovic,” she growled.

  He raised his hands in defense, and she gave him the darkest look she could muster then pushed past him to the emergency exit. She could only pray he wouldn’t tattle, at least until she found a way home.

  Please, just let her go home.

  She rushed out the exit and let it close behind her. The door on this side was smooth, without a handle, and she’d have to go through the front if she wanted in again. But she didn’t. She didn’t want to go back into that room. And she didn’t want to face Shannon or Jovkovic. She wasn’t her other-self, that was certain.

  It was terrifying to discover how much of a fool she really was. Sure, she could handle herself in a fight — yeah, right. How many martial arts tournaments had she fought? Nothing could have prepared her for what had just happened.

  She undid her jacket, ripped open the Kevlar vest, and looked heavenward at the strip of night sky between the damp warehouse walls.

  All she wanted was to go home and be safe.

  That thought left a bad taste in her mouth as if the desire to be safe was a lie.

  Crap.

  Even after all that, she couldn’t deny that she still wanted fieldwork and still wanted to make a difference. She couldn’t decide if she was crazy or not.

  Fine, sparring in tournaments didn’t cut it when it came to fighting for her life, and if she stayed in this parallel world any longer, she’d have to learn how to use a gun. There’d been no Hill in her family’s history who had just laid down and died — even those unfortunate few who had been hanged as witches — and she wasn’t going to become the first.

  Movement at the end of the alley caught her eye, and she spun to face whatever peril awaited her.

  Seth eased from the shadows, all sex and danger.

  A shiver of attraction raced down her back and she ground her teeth together, reminding herself that she was angry with him.

  “Find anything helpful?” he asked, his voice deep and full of promise.

  “I’m sure my other-self would be a lot more help.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Why? Because she’s dead?”

  Seth shrugged, a lazy movement, but his eyes said he was anything but relaxed.

  “Did you kill her?”

  He inched even closer. If she took a deep breath, her chest might brush his arm. She could feel the electricity between them, just like at the entities’ club, but she fought the sensation. She wouldn’t be used this time. Not like that.

  “Did you kill her?” she asked again, trying to hold onto her anger and ignore her attraction. She didn’t know why she needed to know, but his lack of response to the accusation just made her more suspicious. She hadn’t wanted to accept her theory that Seth had something to do with the disappearance of her other-self, but now…

  Now he seemed more dangerous than Faust and more cunning. It just didn’t make any sense that he’d think she’d be better at finding his missing brother than her other-self.

  “Your other-self isn’t what you’re supposed to investigate.”

  “Yeah, well, if I get killed it won’t help you, either.”

  “You’re not dead yet.” His gaze locked with hers and she was being devoured by the black hole in his eyes. It was the only indication of his father’s genes, absorbing all light, sucking in her energy, her soul. She was immersed in warm, electric darkness that made her skin tingle and all the little hairs on her arms stand up.

  “You looked Faust in the eye?” he asked, his breath caressing her cheek, stepping even closer to her, his body a hair’s breadth from hers.

  “Yes,” she whispered, her mouth dry, her body hot.

  “You looked him in the eye, and you felt his fear?”

  She nodded. She didn’t want to remember how she’d felt in Faust’s office. It was embarrassing.

  “But you still fought?”

  Not well. More like managed not to get throttled.

  “Not many humans can face a Spriggan without becoming paralyzed by their fear.”

  Jovkovic had done just fine. Of course, that didn’t mean he’d looked Faust in the eye, or that the short FBI agent was even human. Folklore hadn’t said anything about Spriggans inciting fear. Boy, she really needed to know more about all the different types of demons.

  What was she thinking? She needed to go home.

  She stumbled back, breaking the connection between her and Seth. “So I can face a great chunk of demon-inspired fear. Good for me. That doesn’t mean I can help you.”

  “I think it does.” He stepped toward her again, but she held out her hand to stop him. A wry smile lit his face, but he didn’t come closer
.

  “There are girls dying in my world.”

  “And they’ll continue to die until you help me.”

  “How can you say that?” she asked. “You’d just let them die?”

  He grabbed her outstretched hand and yanked her to him. Her body pressed against him and her free hand slid over his hard-muscled chest underneath his too-thin shirt. A thrill of electricity raced through her. He bent his head, his lips creeping dangerously close to hers, and her pulse throbbed. She yearned to know if his kisses were all that the rest of him promised: hard and hot and dangerous.

  No. What the hell was she thinking? She was engaged and couldn’t betray Ben like that.

  She turned her head at the last moment and his lips brushed her cheek.

  “Find my brother,” he said, his breath in her ear, sending waves of heat deep within her.

  She pushed against him but he held tight.

  “Find my brother.”

  He released her suddenly. She stumbled, lost her balance, and landed on her rear in the damp alley.

  His expression didn’t change. “You should get ready for your party. Who knows, maybe you’ll… find something.” He eased back into the alley without offering to help her up, until the shadows engulfed him and he disappeared.

  For a second, she contemplated chasing after him, but decided she looked pathetic enough sitting in a puddle. Besides, she couldn’t decide if the urge to go after him was practical or something else.

  Seth wanted her to find his brother, but she had no idea where to begin. Heck, the FBI had no clues either, and who was she to compete with them? It wasn’t fair that he was so good looking and so despicable all at the same time. Not that honesty would make her break her solid, steady relationship with Ben. Besides, the demon was willing to let innocent girls die just to spite her.

  A lump formed in her throat. Seth had said that more girls would die until she found his brother.

  She swallowed it back.

  Surely he wouldn’t stoop so low. Except he was a demon and she knew nothing about demons save that mythology said they were evil. Well, Seth was certainly proving that. Except the more she thought about it, the more she knew she wasn’t that important to any investigation in her world, in any world. As much as she wanted to believe she could crack the case of the murdered girls, Agent Brown could replace her. If she never returned home, Brown might wonder what had happened, but he’d find another consultant. If her other-self was in her world — wreaking havoc — she could solve the case, probably better and faster than Rowan could.