Blood Heir

by Ilona Andrews

  Ponytail had sent a younger guard “up to the house” to find out if they should let me in. That was fifteen minutes ago. Rudolph was likely running a background check.

  Ponytail was staring at Tulip a little too hard. She stared back at him. He thought he spotted a horse he’d like to have if I didn’t come out of Rudolph’s house, and Tulip thought his face was nasty, but if he got close enough, she would bite him anyway.

  A short dark-haired man came trotting down the driveway. With a sallow tint to his skin and heavy bags under sunken brown eyes, he had the dashing looks of a man fresh off a drunken binge. “Let her in.”

  Ponytail stepped back into the guardhouse. Metal clanged, and the heavy wrought-iron gate slid aside about four feet, just wide enough for me to pass through.

  “Leave the horse here,” Ponytail said.

  I dismounted. He held out his hand for the reins. I snapped my fingers. Tulip took off down the road.

  Ponytail gave me an ugly look. “You shouldn’t have done that. Not a safe place for horses here.”

  “Don’t look for her if you want to keep breathing.”

  Ponytail waved his fingers at me. “Ooo. Spooky.”

  “Your funeral.”

  I walked up the driveway toward the house.

  On second thought, house was the wrong word. It was a mansion, one of those pseudo-Colonials one finds sprinkled in affluent neighborhoods all over the South. Two stories tall, red brick, white grout, a row of columns up front, and two rows of rectangular windows, shielded by bars.

  The dark-haired man and I walked up the circular driveway, up the white stairs, and to the front door. He opened the door for me and leered as I went in. Inside, a double staircase curved upward from a round foyer. A tall blond man in his thirties waited for me between the staircases. He was built like a bear, with a thick, short beard and hair shaved to almost nothing on the sides and back of the head. He’d braided the hair on top into a skinny plait, and it hung over his shoulder, secured with a leather cord. A ragged scar carved the left side of his face, reaching up into his hairline. Something had clawed him. A large predator or, more likely, a shapeshifter. A modern gladius hung in a scabbard on his belt.

  Big, strong, intimidating. A good choice for a bodyguard. Rudolph didn’t rent his guards. Everyone I’d seen so far was likely a relic hunter. This one was no exception.

  He gave me a slow, heavy look and pointed to the weapons rack against the wall. I pulled out Dakkan and slid it into the rack. My knife followed.

  I held out my arms. He patted me down. He was heavy-handed, but quick and thorough. I wasn’t the first person he’d frisked.

  “This way.”

  I followed him to the left, through a sitting room, into an office. Walking into the room was like stepping through a portal into some British lord’s 19th century study. Heavy, ornate bookcases of dark walnut wood lined the walls. The light from the windows, draped with thick green and gold brocade, reflected in the shiny dark parquet and drew bright rectangles on a bear’s pelt stretched like a rug over the floor. A massive stone fireplace rose on the left. Above it a manticore head glared at the world with glass eyes, its fangs bared.

  An oversized baroque desk sat directly opposite the door. Behind it, an older man lounged in a chair. In his sixties, he must have been beefy when he was younger, but now his skin sagged, giving him prominent jowls. His longish grey hair was pulled back into a ponytail, mirroring the guard at the gate. It must have been in fashion among relic hunters, and it clashed with his white and blue polo shirt. His skin had the ruddy tint of someone naturally pale, who’d spent a lifetime broiled by the sun. His thick features and the heavy jaw combined into a brutish face, not stupid, but mean and short-tempered.

  Mark Rudolph. The man who hired violent thugs who tortured little boys.

  He pointed at an elaborately carved chair in front of his desk. “Sit.”

  I sat. The bodyguard shut the double doors and stood in front of them, facing us, his arms crossed.

  “What do you want?” Rudolph asked.

  “Someone hired Pastor Haywood to authenticate some Christian artifacts. Now the pastor is dead, and you’re looking for the guy that hired him. Why?”

  Rudolph leaned back, took a decanter from the corner of the desk, and splashed some amber-colored liquor into his glass. The smell of alcohol floated across the desk.

  He didn’t offer me any. Aww, where was that famed Southern hospitality?

  “Eighteen years ago, an asshole by the name of Waylon Billiot invited me to do a job with him. Normally I don’t work with those Creole motherfuckers out of Louisiana, but he’d been in Atlanta for years and the prospect was good, a buried temple on Mykonos. That’s a Greek island.”

  I nodded. So considerate of him to educate me.

  “He’d done his research; he had a guy who actually had seen the landmarks with his own eyes, so all he needed was extra money and muscle. We got ourselves a ship and crossed the Atlantic. It’s a pretty trip, the Mediterranean. With all the weird shit that’s breeding under the waves, you never know if you’ll make it. Was part of the appeal.”

  He refilled his glass and took another swallow. Looked like that ruddy color wasn’t all sun.

  He was talking and taking his time. Stalling. That was fine. I wasn’t in a rush.

  “We got to the island. Took us a month to find the right cave and another two weeks for the divers to empty it. They pulled a lot of weird shit out of that cave. We had boxes of crap. But, the most valuable find, the real good stuff, was this chest, about this big, with a cross on the lid. We found it on the last day.”

  He held his hands eighteen inches apart. “Solid white. Not plastic, not ceramic, not metal. Looked like wood but didn’t feel like it. They found it underwater, and as soon as they set it on the deck, the damn thing was dry. We poured some water on it, and it just rolled off. We tried to scrape it for sampling, couldn’t scratch it with a drill. Wanna guess what it was?”

  “No.” Just because he was buying time didn’t mean I had to sell it cheap.

  “We never figured it out. But during magic, the damn thing radiated power. Nicolson, he was our mage, tried to touch it and it knocked him the hell out. Haven’t seen anything like that since.”

  He waited. I didn’t say anything.

  “The market for Christian relics was hot. People realized faith had real power and they were buying artifacts left and right. You had your collectors, your investors planning to sit on it and resell it later, and your denominations, trying to purchase proof of their god.”

  “Not a believer, yourself?”

  “Can’t go to hell if you don’t believe in it. Besides, I like things I can touch, things I can own.” He raised his glass, letting the sun play on the cut crystal. “This glass is real, the bourbon in it is real. Faith didn’t buy this glass, or the bourbon, or this house.”

  “Spoken like a true hedonist. That’s a Greek word.”

  Anger flashed in his heavy-lidded eyes. Rudolph didn’t like to be mocked. No surprise there.

  “We both knew that white chest was retirement money. We sailed home. Stopped in the Azores. Stopped again in Bermuda, spent a few days celebrating. Left port. And a mile from the fucking Port of Savannah the ship sank. No storm. No critters. Something blew a hole in the hull. I went to get the box. It wasn’t there.”

  A shadow crossed his face. His eyebrows came together, his upper lip rose in a grimace, his hands curled into fists, and an instant later it was all gone, and he was back to drinking bourbon.

  It still ate at him all these years later.

  “The cargo went down with the boat. We spent a month combing the seabed. Pulled out everything else except for that box.”

  “So you got conned by the Cajun. Did you still make a profit?”

  He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Sure. And Billiot gave me two-thirds of his earnings to compensate me for my boat. But it wasn’t about money. It was about respect. Nobody fuck
s with me like that. Nobody.”

  “Nobody except Waylon Billiot.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You got a mouth on you.”

  You have no idea. “He never did admit to stealing the artifact, did he?”

  “No. He was real smart about it. Never heard a peep about the box or him trying to sell it. He died about four years back. I opened a good bottle when I heard. For six years his snot-nosed kid kept his head down. See, the son is like his father. Billiot had a nose for magic, and so does Junior. He’s been digging in South America. But something happened on the last trip. Word on the street is, he’s damn near wiped out. He’s looking for a buyer for the box. He had the pastor to authenticate it, and he had a historian to establish where and when it popped up through history.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Billiot’s sources said there was a curse attached to the temple. If you messed with it, a monster would come and eat your heart. Now you’ve got a dead pastor and…” he tapped the newspaper on his desk. “… a dead professor who’s known to trace Christian artifacts for the right price. And you in my office.”

  Rudolph smiled, showing yellowed teeth. Like looking into the mouth of a shark. He was telling me all this because he thought I wouldn’t be leaving. At least not while still breathing.

  The doors behind us swung open. Two men walked in, the hungover guy who came down to bring me up to the house and a tall black man in his twenties with the misshapen nose and mangled ears of a street fighter. Between them they dragged a limp body. Behind them a third man came in, pale, red-haired, carrying a machete. The Viking-wannabe moved to my right and parked himself there.

  Showtime.

  They dumped the body on the floor. A girl, fifteen, maybe sixteen, tan skin, dark hair, jean shorts and a tank top. Her breath came in hoarse gasps, as if she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.

  The fighter grabbed her by the hair and tilted her head back. She spasmed. A strangled cough tore out of her and a trickle of dark grey slid from her mouth. A shapeshifter with a lung full of silver dust. They must’ve thrown powdered silver at her and she breathed it in. Silver killed Lyc-V, turning the blood grey.

  She had to be one of Raphael’s boudas. She’d followed me and now she was half dead. Without medical attention from a Pack mage, she wouldn’t last long. I’d planned to take my time, but my revenge didn’t matter anymore.

  Rudolph had an ugly look on his face. You fucking shithead. You want to kill another child? One wasn’t enough for you?

  “I went to Billiot’s funeral,” Rudolph said. “I left that part out.”

  The moment I got up off the chair, they would slit the girl’s throat. I pulled my magic to me. This would require specific targeting and I needed to concentrate.

  “His widow and his kid were standing next to his casket, both dressed real nice. I walked up real close, looked straight into Junior’s eyes, and said, ‘Your daddy owes me a box. But don’t you worry. I always get what’s mine.’”

  My magic splayed out, washing against the three relic hunters behind me and the gasping shapeshifter on the floor. I discarded her, focusing on the three upright humans, forcing them to glow brighter in my mind’s eye.

  “Brave man,” I said. “Threatening a widow and an orphan at a funeral.”

  Rage flared up in Rudolph’s eyes again, and this time it stayed there. “I’ve been in this business longer than you’ve been alive. Junior has gone into hiding. Three weeks ago, he was running around the city looking to raise money, then he fell off the face of the Earth. My guys can find a virgin in a whorehouse, but they can’t find Junior or his family. That tells me he is about to put that box on the market.”

  The shapeshifter wheezed behind me.

  “In a week or two, that box will be sitting right on that shelf. Where it belongs.” Rudolph pointed to the shelf behind him. “Eventually Junior will crawl out from under whatever rock he’s hiding under and I’ll send him on a short trip to say hi to his daddy. Maybe I’ll keep a piece of him on the same shelf.”

  “You’re a real charmer.”

  “Don’t you get it yet? Nothing comes between me and what’s mine...”

  The three relic hunters congealed into clearly defined silhouettes, while the girl faded to a transparent shadow. Targets acquired.

  “…not Billiot, not his punk kid, not some blond bitch with a badge.”

  “Drop the shapeshifter and walk away, and you’ll live,” I said. “Stay and you’ll die.”

  “Dumb bitch.” Rudolph nodded to his thugs. “Kill the shapeshifter first.”

  The red-haired man raised his machete.

  “Arrat dar non karsaran.” The power words burst from me like a magic cannonball. I was so angry, the pain was a mere sting. Those behind me, break.

  A sickening wet crunch announced multiple bones snapping. Three people howled in agony.

  The Viking unsheathed his gladius and lunged at me. I jumped to my feet, leaned out of the way, gripped his wrist, and twisted hard. His fingers opened. I caught the short sword and slashed his throat with it. He stumbled back, his hands on his neck, blood leaking out between his fingers.

  On the edge of my vision, Rudolph aimed a crossbow at me.

  “Artum.” Shield.

  The bolt sliced through the air with a twang and froze three feet from me, vibrating slightly as it tried to burrow into the invisible wall of magic. Pain of the magic feedback punched the bundle of nerves in my solar plexus and faded.

  Rudolph scrambled to reload.

  I plucked the bolt from the air with my left hand and jumped onto his desk.

  Rudolph swung the crossbow like a club.

  I kicked him in the face. His head snapped back. The crossbow clattered to the floor. The chair kept Rudolph from falling, and he righted himself. Blood poured from his nose. I’d broken it.

  I crouched on the desk, put the gladius down, and toyed with the crossbow bolt.

  “Reggie! Hunter!” Rudolph screeched.

  “Reggie and Hunter are indisposed,” I told him.

  “You fucking…”

  I snapped a quick punch to his ruined nose. He pitched back again, wheezing.

  The howls of pain behind me were too loud, and my time was short.

  I raised my voice. “Be quiet and still, and I might forget you’re there.”

  The moans died.

  I kept my gaze on Rudolph. “How is it going, bouda?”

  “I’ll…live.” She sounded like her throat was full of sand and jagged glass. I needed to wrap this up.

  Rudolph managed to sit back up. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Who would Billiot hire as the broker?”

  “How the fuck would I know?”

  “Is it hurting time again?” I asked.

  “Fuck you.”

  I stabbed the bolt into his eye. If you were careful, you could stab a human in the eye without injuring the brain. And I was very careful.

  Rudolph screamed and clamped his hand over his eye.

  “You’re one ‘fuck you’ away from being blind. Billiot isn’t stupid. He must have a plan. He’d hire a broker you can’t touch. Who is it?”

  “Okay,” he gasped. “There is a woman. I don’t know her name. She’s fucking choosy. She doesn’t just sell everything, only high-priced shit.”

  “How do I find her?”

  “You go to 15th street, just on the edge of Unicorn Lane. There is a pirogi shop there.”

  Yes, and their mushroom pirogi were to die for. Small world.

  “You leave your number with the stall owner. If the broker’s interested, she’ll call you.”

  He was sliding his chair to his left, ever so slowly. The only thing within reach was the bookcase filled with his trophies.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. The shop owner doesn’t know anything. He just keeps the number in a bucket on the side and eventually it disappears.”

  I blinked at the bookcase. Inert junk,
more junk. On the fourth shelf, a small adder stone, about the size of my fist with a two-inch hole in its center, emitted a dense yellow knot. Animal magic. Got you.

  Rudolph kept talking and sliding. “I tried to find the broker before when she wouldn’t take one of my jobs. I had her followed before and she just disappears. She’s there and then she’s not. Nobody can find her. I leaned on the shop owner and got nowhere.”

  He was almost close enough.

  “She didn’t like that. She hasn’t touched my shit since.”

  Rudolph lunged for the adder stone. I dropped the crossbow bolt, grabbed the gladius, and drove it into his right side, just as he turned, reaching for the stone. The blade slid between his third and fourth rib and into his liver.

  Rudolph collapsed into his chair. Dark blood drenched his side. He let out a long hoarse breath.

  “It’s over,” I told him quietly. “A kindness you don’t deserve. I’d come here to kill you and planned to take my time, but you brought the shapeshifter in, so now it has to be quick.”

  “Why are doing this? Why me?”

  “You hired Jasper.”

  “So what?”

  “He was looking for the child that witnessed Pastor Haywood leaving with Billiot’s people and couldn’t find her. Instead he found a boy named Douglas. He beat him. He put him on a chain. He dragged him through the city. Today Douglas had a stroke. The medmages are working on him now.”

  “What boy? Was he your brother? Is that why…?”

  “Just a street boy. I didn’t know him well.”

  “For a homeless kid? All this for a homeless kid?”

  I slid off the desk and leaned forward, so my eyes were even with his. “He was a beggar without a family. Half-starved and alone. He had so little, and you took it away from him. Now I took everything from you.”

  “I’m worth more…”

  I turned, took the adder stone off the shelf, and slipped it into my pocket.

  “Did you hear me?” His voice trailed off, weak, sliding into a whisper. “I’m worth more…”

  I walked to the shapeshifter. She lay on the floor facedown. I flipped her over. A mottled grey patina climbed up her neck. She had minutes. Fuck.