He was breathing heavily but was able to speak. “T’ings might have been different between us, Quinn MacKenna.”
“I’m not into short men,” I quipped.
He growled and took hold of his hammer with both hands, then charged me. I could read the strike in his shoulders. That’s the problem with hammers: the windup gives your opponent plenty of time to react. Basically, you’re trusting that you’ll hit with so much force that it won’t matter. But to succeed, you have to land the blow.
Of course, I had no intention of letting that happen.
Instead, I lunged forward as far as I could, closing the distance between us by half. I brought both gold bars around, arms fully extended, and crashed them like symbols around his ears with enough force to send shockwaves up my arms. Paddy stood stock still for a moment, then dropped his hammer. The tip of the rainbow hammer exploded into shards of light as he fell to his knees, showering the ground with shards that looked conspicuously like Skittles. I let my hands fall to my sides, the weight of the bars too much to hold upright for that long, and pressed my boot into Paddy’s chest.
“Stay golden, Pony-bitch,” I said.
I shoved him back off the stage with my foot.
Chapter 20 — Callie Penrose, Vegas
The bar fight had finally died down, the participants in various states of recovery after the fall of Paddy McKnob—who had been kicked off the center stage by Quinn. One of the leprechauns had tossed down his weapons, lifting his hands into the air, and yelled Truce at the top of his lungs. His pals immediately followed suit, and the shifters had promptly ceased beating the living hell out of them.
Surprisingly, we’d managed to end the skirmish without any fatalities.
Well, except for Lucky.
Many of the shifters were simply passed out now—either in animal form or naked human form—and the number of thongs, bras, skimpy lingerie, and stripper heels littering the floor was actually shocking. I made my way past a huddle of leprechauns sitting on the floor and smiled in satisfaction as they reeled away from me in terror.
I finally approached the bar to sit beside Quinn and the Reds. A leprechaun was passed out on the counter in front of me, his pants in shambles as if they’d been set on fire. I slapped his cheek lightly to wake him up, careful to avoid the drool pooling from his open mouth, but instead of stirring, he began snoring beer breath in my face. I scowled, and then shoved him off the bar. He fell to the ground and bounced once but didn’t even crack an eye, just kept right on snoring. Quinn nodded in approval, leaning her back against the bar.
Othello was behind the bar, pouring drinks for us. The Reds were cozying up to their gold bars and showing off their Fetush leather lingerie to a trio of topless strippers who wanted to know where they could buy it. I noticed Paddy McKnob sitting on a stool on the other side of Quinn, clutching an ice pack to his temple and swinging his feet back and forth since they couldn’t touch the ground. His eyes were locked onto the gold bars, and for once he looked thoughtful rather than possessive.
Othello set the fresh drinks before us, and our new uneasy alliance grew silent as everyone waited for someone else to talk, make a toast, apologize, or kick off round two.
Surprisingly, Paddy cleared his throat first, setting the icepack on the bar beside his drink. He met each of our eyes with a slightly embarrassed, but also impressed look. “I was ready to battle for our gold, but I wasn’t ready for a fuckin’ war. I’ll admit, ye ladies sure know how to put up a fight. So I’m t’inkin’ ye take these gold bars as a gift. But be careful with ‘em. They have luck magic to ‘em, and often cause more trouble than they're worth.” The Reds grinned from ear to ear. Paddy then turned to the trio of strippers and realized that his face was at their nipple level. He grinned instinctively before looking up to meet their eyes. “We will cover the repairs for all the damage we caused and compensate ye lot however ye see fit.”
The strippers nodded after a few moments. “A toast to honor the occasion?” Paddy asked, raising his own glass. As a symbol of good will, everyone followed suit, all the tension of the fight fading away.
I cleared my throat. “Rest in peace, Lucky?” I suggested.
Everyone nodded somberly, and we downed our drinks.
Sonia leaned in close to her sister, attempting to whisper, but failing. “Did she mean rest in pieces?”
I put my head in my hands.
Quinn quickly cleared her throat. “How ‘bout another round?”
Callie Penrose returns in October 2018 with SINNER…
Quinn MacKenna returns in October 2018 with MOSCOW MULE…
Part II
COLLINS
Collins—Phantom Queen Diaries #0—prequel novella
Every story has a beginning, but not every story has a happy ending. When you live in Boston, you make peace with that, or you find another town. A softer, gentler town. But Quinn MacKenna—a black magic arms dealer just coming into her own—isn't a soft, gentle person, and Boston suits her just fine. Which is why, after getting caught up in the middle of a kidnapping case, she sticks around for a night of blood and mayhem guaranteed to give her new nightmares.
Walk with Quinn as she and her old friend, Jimmy Collins, reconnect, forging a new bond of friendship under fire, even as their very beliefs are put to the test. Prepare yourself for wizardry and ritual, for victims and violence. For walking corpses and cleansing fire. Prepare yourself for the worst of what Quinn's world has to offer.
Because when the things that go bump in the night come out to play, sometimes you have to bump back..
Chapter 1
Police raids are the worst.
It’s not so much that I hate them as it is I find them incredibly inconvenient. I had a roommate once who used to employ the same shock-and-awe tactics—flipping on all the lights in the apartment as she prepared to work her night shift, including the light to her closet, where I was passed out on a shoddy air mattress—as if she’d catch me doing something other than sleeping, like I was some sort of sock-fondler. A Prada-phile. Thankfully, my nights sleeping in closets were long behind me. My current profession paid the bills and then some. Unfortunately, it was this profession which occasionally meant dodging uniformed officers intent on catching bad people doing bad things.
I guess that made me a bad girl.
The hotel lobby where this was all going down was extra swanky, far posher than any I’d stayed in; despite the money I made; I was definitely more Marriott than Ritz-Carlton. But, considering the man I’d been hoping to meet up with was a Honduran drug trafficker, the accommodations made sense. What’s the point of taking advantage of thousands of people if you can’t sleep in a room with a skyline view?
I did my best to look inconspicuous as I walked, trying to stay to the right as if pulling over for emergency vehicles on foot. I got a few looks from the cops watching the doors, but most were the leering sort I was used to; being six-foot-tall and reasonably fit tended to earn more male attention than it ought. Wearing a black pantsuit complete with heels, not to mention an eye-catching shade of lipstick that offset my naturally pale, freckled skin and deep red hair, were likely responsible for the rest. Still, my grip tightened on the bag I carried. The bag itself wasn’t important, but what was inside would have interested the police very much.
After all, I doubted many of them had seen a hundred grand in cash before.
I angled for the exit, hoping to pass by unmolested. No such luck. The arm of a uniformed police officer shot out as I walked past, forcing me to stop. I considered doing the limbo and hightailing it out of there, but it would have looked suspicious, and the heels weren’t that sensible. Instead, I gave the officer a startled look, as if I hadn’t expected to be stopped. Play-acting was my least favorite part of the job, but I’d been practicing.
“Officer?” I said, turning the moniker into a question, my lilting Irish accent catching the cop off guard. His eyebrows shot up, climbing towards a high-and-tight haircut which dre
w too much attention to his comically large ears. Otherwise, he was handsome, albeit in the way most men are when they workout enough to have jawlines as opposed to jowls. Judging from what I could see, this guy worked out a lot; his uniform hung off his shoulders like it had been suspended from a coat hanger and his neck was as thick as my thigh. He retracted his arm.
“What’s in the bag?” he said, voice gruff.
I pretended to be surprised. “Me bag?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He pointed down, as if I needed help locating the item in question.
I held the tote bag up for him to see, the Victoria Secret logo on display against a black background. I held my breath for a second, letting my face redden as if I were embarrassed before saying, quietly, “Panties.”
The cop’s eyes widened for a second time, and now it was his turn to blush. He coughed into his hand while I fought the urge to laugh in his face. I had no idea what it was about the word “panties” that made men so uncomfortable, but it did. And it was that discomfort I counted on. If he asked to search my bag and I refused, I’d look suspicious. But rifling through a woman’s underwear on the pretense of a routine search? He’d never live it down.
He waved me through. “Go on.”
I nodded, flashed him a thankful smile, and headed for the street. I made it about twenty feet before another uniformed officer approached. I felt my heart skip a beat. The odds of me surviving a second encounter were slim, especially if I got someone a little more professional this time around. They might not ask to go through my bag, but they might ask me to open it. Not good.
“Quinn!” the officer yelled, his voice rich and deep. “Quinn MacKenna!”
The sound of my name being called brought me up short. I lowered the hand I’d raised, hoping to hail one of the white Taxis that swarmed throughout Boston. From now on, I decided, I’d call one in advance. Quick getaways are a lot more efficient when you have a car running, after all. I turned, eyes narrowed. “Aye?”
“It’s me, Jimmy. Jimmy Collins,” the cop said. As he got closer, I was able to make out the man’s freshly shaven face, his smooth, black skin a shade darker than I remembered. But then, the last time I’d seen Jimmy was the week before he shipped out to join the Marines, and that had been what, six, seven years ago? I shook my head in disbelief.
“What are ye doin’ here, Jimmy?” I asked, surprised, but also relieved. A personal chat beat the hell out of an interrogation.
He grinned at me, his teeth a stark contrast to his dark, full lips. “I think that’s my line,” he said, traces of his Boston accent lingering, but not overwhelming. “What were you doing in that hotel?” he asked.
So maybe it was going to be an interrogation, after all. I rested one hand on my hip. “It’s been over half a decade and that’s the first t’ing ye say to me?” I asked, deflecting his question.
His smile widened as he eyed the bag in my hand. “A little liaison?” he said, flexing his eyebrows in a knowing gesture. I grunted, amused, but mostly glad to have an excuse; a clandestine meeting with a lover wouldn’t get me hauled off to the nearest precinct. Concealing stacks of hard-earned drug money in a tote bag might.
“Ye caught me,” I said, pursing my lips.
Jimmy settled his hands on his hips, looming over me. I realized that, while Jimmy had always been tall—six inches over six-foot by the time he graduated high school—he’d become large since I’d last seen him. Imposingly so, built like a linebacker, the service weapon holstered at his hip like a children’s toy next to those massive hands. “Quinn MacKenna,” he shook his head. “You look good.”
The way he said it made a real blush creep up my cheeks. It wasn’t so much the words as the tone; he’d dragged the last word down, his voice dropping an octave on the way. I frowned at him, trying to decide what to say. Thank you? Somehow that seemed lame in comparison. To be fair, I rarely knew how to respond when men hit on me. It’s not like it was entirely unexpected, but it was rare. Between my height and the don’t-fuck-with-me vibe I knew I gave off, few men were ever bold enough to approach me. And, of those that were, fewer still had what it took to keep me interested.
Fortunately, I was saved the trouble by Jimmy’s walkie. It crackled, once, before a shrill voice cried out a series of numbers, followed by the words “all available officers.” Jimmy and I exchanged glances, and I raised an eyebrow.
Cops began trickling out of the hotel, leaving the raid team to find their man alone, in favor of whatever was going on. A few rushed past, piling into their squad cars, many of which lined the valet parking section. Jimmy cursed. “Damn, I’ve got to go. Is it alright if I give you a call, later?” he said.
“D’ye have me number?” I asked, too thrown by the implication to debate whether or not I wanted him to have it.
He grinned. “I think Dez will give it to me.”
Dez was my aunt in name only, though better known as the woman who’d raised me after my mother passed. She and Jimmy’s grandmother were neighbors back in Southie, which meant matchmaking was a foregone conclusion. I thought about it, then nodded. “Fine, but don’t ye let her go on and on about me,” I said. Dez had a tendency to do that, and I didn’t want Jimmy finding out how remarkably available, how remarkably unmarried, I was—something Dez would be sure to mention at least a half dozen times.
Jimmy laughed. “I know the drill,” he said. He gave me a curt nod, flashed another smile, and took off past me. What happened next was probably just an accident—an eager, excited man rushing off into danger without paying close attention to his surroundings. But, when Jimmy Collins tore by, his thigh clipped the tote bag, sending it crashing to the pavement. Stacks of bills spilled out, poking out like mint green teeth from the mouth of the bag. Jimmy froze. I froze.
Well, shit.
Chapter 2
Sitting in the back of a squad car is a pain in the ass, both literally and figuratively. Unlike its civilian counterpart, the backseat of a patrol vehicle isn’t designed for comfort; the seat was a sheeny black bench made of plastic, so slick that I ended up sprawled against either door every time Jimmy took a tight turn. Had I been handcuffed, the effect would have been doubled. But I wasn’t handcuffed, and Jimmy didn’t seem to care that I hadn’t put a seatbelt on—he whipped us about, zipping through traffic like his life depended on it.
At least we wouldn’t get pulled over.
“Tell me the truth, Quinn,” Jimmy said as he blasted past SUVs and convertibles alike, his siren sounding somehow less loud inside the car than it had outside. “Whose money is this?”
I stiff-armed the nearest door, trying to keep from sliding from one end of the car to the other, glaring at the man through the thick Plexiglass that separated us. Jimmy had insisted I take a ride with him to clear things up—unless I’d have rather explained myself to his superiors at the nearby precinct. It wasn’t the best deal I’d ever gotten, but I knew it was the best deal I was going to get. The problem was, I had no idea if I could trust Jimmy with the truth. Sure, we’d been friends on and off since we were kids, but he was still a cop. Looking the other way was practically an art form for some of Boston’s finest, but those days were fast fading, and Jimmy never struck me as the type of guy who’d take a bribe and be on his merry way. In fact, he struck me as the kind of guy to take a bullet in the back rather than go on the take.
Call it a hunch, but I didn’t think he’d approve of who I’d done business with.
“Ye can’t handle the truth, Jimmy,” I intoned, reciting my favorite line from A Few Good Men, hoping it would earn me another flirtatious grin.
It didn’t. Guess I wasn’t as cute as I thought I was.
“It’s Officer Collins,” Jimmy drawled. “And try me.”
I muttered a few obscenities under my breath. Now that flirting was off the table, there was little point pretending to be a lady. I was never very good at that, anyway. I tried to sit up straighter, but the ceiling of the car was too low, so I e
nded up hunched and glaring at the man. “First of all, it’s me money,” I clarified. “I deal in...antiquities. Artifacts. Rare stuff that people pay good money for.”
The truth was a bit more complicated. Wasn’t it always? Thing is, I did deal in antiquities. But they weren’t your average, everyday museum pieces. Nothing I traded or sold belonged in a display case. What I dealt in were magical artifacts, items with enough juice to earn their own Wikipedia pages. Cursed totems, holy objects, you name it. Most people would have taken one look at my goods and written them off as superstitious junk or novelty items you could buy off SkyMall, but then most people were Regulars—men and women without an ounce of psychic or magical ability. People who wouldn’t know the Golden Fleece from a fur coat. And yes, in case you were wondering, that meant I was not a Regular.
Which made me a Freak.
In more ways than one, if I was being honest with myself.
“Since when?” Jimmy asked, probably referring to my choice of profession, but my thoughts betrayed me and I blushed a little.
“For a couple years, now,” I replied, looking away. Frankly, I’d been at it longer than that, though at the time I wasn’t exactly running the show; I’d had an abusive boyfriend who’d inadvertently shown me the ropes. It’d been sort of like dating a drug dealer, except—instead of learning how to weigh and sort product—I’d learned how to avoid customs and network. You’d be surprised how much of my job relied on knowing the right people.
“And it pays this well?” Jimmy asked, pointing to the bag in his passenger seat. He’d refused to touch the money, unwilling to “contaminate evidence.” Not a good sign, that.
Last Call: A TempleVerse Anthology Book 1 (TempleVerse Anthologies) Page 8
