by Rhys Ford
“Mind if I stand up?” He gestured elegantly with a callused hand, trying a sweet smile on to soften my stance. “Concrete’s cold as hell.”
“Mind if I blow a hole through you?” I drawled, moving back against the car, bumping the door shut with my hip. “Floor’s a good place for you right now, especially for a snake like you.”
“Just one tire. Maybe two. Enough to slow you down. That’s all,” Samms said, shifting forward to fold his legs under him. “I would never do anything to harm you.”
“You tried to cut off my ears,” I reminded him.
“They would have grown back.”
Snorting, I countered, “You don’t know that.”
“Your thumb did,” he replied, nodding toward my left hand. “You probably would have grown two good ears. Would have gotten rid of that notch you’ve got in that one.”
I considered his reasoning for about half a second, enough time to spit in his eye if I’d wanted to. It was still flawed, especially considering I’d have been earless for who knew how long, and that was if they grew back. There was a good chance they would have, but the notch was permanent, a clipped-out piece Tanic took great delight in snipping out, then rubbing iron dust into the edges every day until the flesh refused to fuse back together.
It was my punishment for catching and eating one of the salamanders he’d been using as an experiment. I had no regrets then. Just as I had none now for keeping Samms sitting on his butt on the cold cement floor.
“Don’t think so.” I resisted the temptation to rub at the triangular notch, a habit Dempsey tried very hard to break me of, but it never really took. “How big is this contract on Kenny that you’re willing to screw with my car to get to him before I can find him? Because that’s what this is about, right?”
“Truthfully?” He shifted, the cold probably eating away at any heat in his legs.
“Samms, you lie so much you actually change the meaning of the words coming out of your mouth whenever you use them,” I retorted. “You probably think you’re sitting on the sky right now.”
His mouth twisted into a grimace. “Okay, I probably deserved that.”
“You deserve getting shot for what you were going to do to my car.” It was a time-honored punishment for poachers, rustlers, and anyone stranding someone in the no-man’s-lands between cities. The West was wilder than it’d ever been, but its vigilante laws seemed to hold up. Even standing in a border station with more than two dozen officers nearby, I could have blown a hole through Samms’s head and his death would have been written off as justified. “I report this and your license will get stripped. You know that. The contract on Kenny so high you’re willing to risk that?”
“You tell me,” Samms said through chattering teeth. He named a number so high it stole the breath from my lungs. Chuckling at my shock, he rubbed his hands together, blowing on them to get warm. “Yeah, that’s what I said too. And I’ll trade you a piece of information for not reporting this. Something bigger than what they’re offering for Kenny. Something that will really make your head spin. Just let me get off this damned floor. I can’t feel my toes anymore.”
“Info first.” I gestured with the shotgun in case he’d forgotten about it. “I still haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to let you walk out of here without an extra hole in your head.”
He stared up at me, a mournful expression on his face. “You’re a lot harder than you used to be.”
“Yeah, well, considering you’re one of the people who made me that way,” I said with a shrug, “I suppose you can’t complain. Talk. What do you have to trade for your license?”
I didn’t have any intention of blacklisting his license. Catching him in the act was good enough, but I’d drop a word into Hernandez’s ear, just in case the cameras had been turned off with a bit of slick passing over someone’s hand. Either way, he’d be holed up tight into a pocket he couldn’t get out of, and Hernandez would know to watch out for Samms in the future.
“You already told me there’s a contract on Kenny and he’s run down to San Diego. What else you’ve got?” I prompted him. “And it better be big.”
“Thing about you, Gracen, is that sure, you’re a damned good Stalker. Better than Dempsey even, but you always walk on the right side of the line. You’d be a hell of a lot more well-off if you dipped into the shadow market once in a while. Since you don’t, a lot of Stalkers feel like you think you’re too good for everyone else. That pisses people off,” Samms started, getting up on his knees but keeping his hands where I could see them. “Kenny’s contract is to bring him in, but not to any casino. It’s a private debt. Sealed but on the books. But there’s another one out there. Bigger money, and a lot of people perked up when it dropped a week ago. Made a few people sit up straight and begin to wonder how damned good you really are.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Samms?” It was getting a bit too chilly for me, but I needed him to finish talking. “There’s another contract on Kenny? What the hell’s he done that’s so shitty people are putting call outs on him?”
“See, your brain. It goes to all the good places and none of the dark.” Samms was uncomfortable. “It’s a shadow market. Open to any and all with enough guts to do the job.”
He fidgeted and squirmed, but the cold wasn’t as strong as his need to draw things out, to stroke his own ego and force me to wait. Typical Samms. It hadn’t bothered me when I was younger, but a few decades under my belt and I just wanted to crawl back under the blankets and get warm. Maybe even get some sleep. Or it could have been I’d finally taken on some of Dempsey’s more impatient, antisocial traits. Either way, my patience with him was at an end.
I knew about the shadow-market contracts. I even knew how to find them, but I’d not only inherited Dempsey’s distaste for mollusks, I also had his healthy dislike for under-the-table bounties. I’d been the last shadow-market contract he’d entertained, and I hadn’t even known he’d done them until he lay dying in a hospital bed.
“Look, Samms. I know you love to hear the sound of your own voice, but could you hurry this up?” I let the shotgun drop, pointing the barrel at the ground. “Seriously, we’re both freezing our asses off here, and you’re not getting any younger. I mean, I could stand here all century and be okay, but you—”
“Screw you, Gracen.” He placed his hands on the ground, using them to balance while getting up. Grunting, he slowly stretched out, his knees popping and crackling when he shook out his legs. “You used to be a hell of a lot nicer.”
“Yeah, well you were prettier then, and I was stupider,” I replied. “Just spit it out and we can all just go about our business, providing you mind your own and don’t cross mine again. What about this contract? The second one?”
“It’s not on Kenny, you idiot. It’s on you.” This time his smirk had no charm to it. Nearly serpentine and glittering, it curled up over his cheeks, bringing out that damned dimple of his. There was no doubt in my mind he was enjoying this. Samms always did like to play with his food, and right then, I was his prey, despite being the one holding the shotgun. “Someone put out a shadow-market bounty on you. A hell of a lot of coin. Quarter if you’re not breathing, but it still would be a huge chunk of change. Got the boards buzzing because—”
“They’ve posted a hit on a Stalker.” The thought boggled my mind. A lot of Stalkers lurked on the shadow-market boards to plump up lean times, but no matter how deep one fell into the dark side of things, no one would target someone with a badge. “Who the hell would target a Stalker?”
“Contractor’s masked. They usually are, but the money’s there. Released on delivery. Arrangements to be made once the bounty’s been confirmed,” he rattled off. “Board went nuts. Most Stalkers are calling for a ban on the contractor, but a few of the good ones are staying silent, either minding their own business or—”
“Thinking about adding to their bank account,” I finished for him. “You know what this means, right? It�
�s open season on any Stalker. Not just me. Hell, on anyone with a star. And you weren’t going to say shit to me about this?”
“Actually, I was going to leave you a note on your windshield. Got the envelope in my pocket.” Samms shrugged. “Right after I slashed your tires. I just want Kenny. Bringing you down would set me up for life, but let’s face it, you hold a grudge, and despite everything, I kinda like you. Besides, if I take a shot and miss, you’d hunt me until my bones were worn down to nubs. No one in their right mind would come after you, but there’s a lot of crazy people out there, Gracen. Someone’s going to look at all of the zeros behind that first number and start thinking about where they could buy their own island. I’d tell you to get some people to watch your back, but you’re not the kind of guy who actually has people around him long enough to do that.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Samms,” Ryder said, stepping out from behind the column nearest the Mustang’s front end. “Kai’s got a lot of people who have his back, myself included. He’s a member of my Court, a very important member, and he’s got his family. So it wouldn’t just be him you’d be running from if you tried to take a shot at him.”
He held the Beretta I’d given him, properly squaring off and steadying his stance, centered on Samms’s chest. I nearly brought up the shotgun, stopping the rise of its muzzle before it swung away from Samms. He’d come up silently enough for us not to notice, and I wasn’t sure if I was more ashamed for not hearing him or proud as hell he’d pulled it off.
“You okay, Kai?” Ryder asked softly, not taking his eyes off Samms.
“Yeah, I’m fine. And you can lower the gun. He’s already taken his best shot at Oketsu and got caught.” I stepped away from the Mustang to give Samms some room. “So now I’ve got to watch my six for Stalkers?”
“I’d say no. Not anyone worth their salt. Everyone wearing a star’s got the same idea as you. They might be jealous of you or wish they were better than you, but when it’s all said and done, you’re a Stalker. You’d come armed to the teeth if a call came out that one of them needed help,” Samms replied, brushing his hands on his jeans. Tugging an envelope out of his pocket, he grunted when it finally came loose. “See? Note. Even if you wouldn’t let me cut off your ears, I wouldn’t have jacked you over like that. I was going to tell you. Because if we let someone hunt you, then we’re letting anyone hunt any of us.
“Thing is, there’s going to be people out there who are going to look at you like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and some of them are people you might even call friends,” he pointed out. “Everyone knows you, Jonas, and Sparky had a blowout at the Post. Money’s tight for some people, and if things are broken between the people you hunt with, who’s to say you aren’t now just another black-dog pelt to them?”
“Get out,” Ryder barked before I could respond. My stomach was someplace down around my knees, and any breath I had coming out of my lungs couldn’t get past my closed throat. “Leave the knife and go.”
The chipping away at the wall around me was constant, doubts and thoughts working like ivy through the cracks I’d made in my confidence, in my faith in the people I’d drawn near me. I wanted to shove everyone away, keep myself safe by distancing myself from anyone who could get ahold of me, but isolation had its own dangers. I’d seen that in Dempsey. He’d become an island of bitterness in a cold, hard desert, waiting for me to swing by with carcasses to peel skin off, all the while hammering at me to be better, to do better as a Stalker—anything to take his mind off of how far he’d let himself fall.
I didn’t mind carrying him. He’d carried me far enough, but neither was I going to bend myself over to hoist his burdens. Trusting people—elfin or human—was a leap of faith I needed to take, especially if I’d ended up on someone’s hit list.
And that trust was going to start with Ryder.
“Jerem, just go.” I jerked my head toward the door. “If I get to Kenny before you, I’ll let you know, but I’m taking him off the table. He’s got something of mine, something Dempsey left him. If you get him before I do, I’ll match the contract for him. Whatever it takes. We’ll work it out.”
“Deal,” Samms said with a nod. He took a step toward the front of the car but then changed his mind, shifting directions to walk past me and go around the back. He didn’t need to brush against my hand, but he did, sliding the envelope between my fingers before pulling away. “That’s a copy of the posting. I wasn’t going to screw you up, Kai. I might be an asshole but not that kind of asshole. It was just going to be one tire. Enough to slow you down but not take you out.”
“Get. And keep your word about Kenny.” I clutched the corner of the envelope, bending the paper between my pinched fingers. “I’ll see you around.”
Ryder and I both watched him leave. Then I walked over to pick the knife up off the floor. It was a good blade, heavy steel with a sharp edge. It would fit in several sheaths I had on me, and I liked its matte black steel, less likely to catch any light while on a nighttime run. Turning around, I found Ryder staring at me, a bemused look on his face. He was wearing sleep clothes, a pair of loose cotton pants and a T-shirt that looked gray under the garage lights. But their illumination was suspect, also turning the Mustang a dull dark shade of maroon. For all I knew, he was wearing something bright neon yellow and left everyone he’d passed by in the hall bleeding from their tortured eyes.
“What?” I teased. “Not like this is the first wet contract taken out on me. I got Dempsey out on the last one. And before I forget to tell you this, good job on coming up on us. Gun and everything. How’d you know he was out here?”
“I didn’t.” A sheepish look slipped over Ryder’s features. “I… um… had to go to the bathroom and—”
“You went to the bathroom with a gun?” I arched an eyebrow, glancing at the Beretta in his hand.
“Seemed prudent. You kept going on about how dangerous it was for me to walk around. I thought having a gun on me was a good idea.”
“And you came out here to check up on me?” I crossed my arms, rested them on the Mustang’s roof, and leaned against the car, getting a kick out of Ryder’s odd, sudden bashfulness.
“Well, more like I had to come find you,” he muttered, an actual flush of pink creeping over his high cheekbones. “See, while I remembered the gun, I forgot my shoes and the keycard. So I’m not only locked out of the room, I also might have stepped in something while in the bathroom, and I’ve tracked it all over the station’s hallways coming to get you.”
Eleven
THE MUSTANG took the curves of the Post’s steep hills with ease, rumbling in a deep throaty growl as if warning other predators away. While I was grateful for Cari’s family letting me borrow the Nova, I was glad I had Oketsu back on the road. It’d been too long since I’d been cradled in his black leather seats, letting the wheels eat up the miles on a distant run. The trip back had been shorter than going up, but that always seemed to be the case. Finding out Kenny Dempsey had bolted toward San Diego cut the trip short, but it’d been a good one.
Except for one thing, and that was sitting in my back seat, complaining about how his rib cage hurt and about the bellyache he got from taking the antibiotics the station medics pushed on him.
“If there was anything that really convinced me I didn’t want kids, it was this trip back down.” Muttering at Ryder didn’t help, because he barely glanced at me. “The twins don’t cry this much, and they barely have teeth.”
He probably was used to hearing people complain. More than likely it was the first bullet point on his Grand Poohbah job description. A Sidhe probably didn’t even get their lordship title until they sat through at least six ten-day sessions of people whining about how their skin hurt or that they didn’t get guacamole on their carne asada burrito. Either way, he seemed to be immune to every single one of Malone’s whine fests.
“Bugs, can you maybe hold your breath for five minutes? If you can, Uncle Kai will give you a nice s
hiny silver coin.” I gritted my teeth, ignoring Ryder’s nearly imperceptible chuckle. “Don’t laugh at me. It’s still not too late to shoot him.”
“You promised his aunt you would bring him to her at the Post,” the lordling reminded me in a smug tone that made my hand itch to curl into a fist and punch his perfect nose. “It’s only a minute or two more.”
“Less if I gun it.” Oketsu leaped forward when I pressed down on the gas, jerking everyone else back into their seats. “Sooner we dump Malone into Sarah’s lap, the sooner I can get down to business.”
At least Ryder took the acceleration easily. From the sounds of things, Malone might have tumbled around a bit, but at least he stopped talking. The switchbacks were tight, throwbacks to the days when engines were horses and the Merge pushed the hillside out and up, creating a towering mesa point. We came up onto the parking lot fast, hitting the last curve with a dip of the car’s suspension to hug the angle in the road.
We’d made good time coming down from the border, stopping at the automat again to grab some food and a little bit of sleep. Scavengers—the human kind—had already made off with the black dog’s corpse and the mangled motorbike, leaving behind only a greasy smear, a crimp in the guardrail, and the acid-etched pits in the ground where the monster’s blood and spit scored the asphalt. Dawn was just a thin slice of orange along the edge of the mountains when we hit the county line.
The sun chased us into the city, edging up over Julian, and its rays stroked the length of the 8 as we approached the turnoff for the Presidio, an historic park whose buildings now served as the central hub for the SoCalGov’s State Offices. Situated in a former museum-slash-chapel, the Post was where most Stalkers did their business, measuring black-dog pelts for bounties or turning in evidence of larger kills. It was also where a licensed Stalker could pick up a contract or arrange for payment.
