Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, & Magic

by SM Reine

  Crimson striped her cheeks, nose, throat, breasts. Was that…blood?

  She lifted the mallet for the drums in one hand like she was going to hurl it at me.

  “Who’s there?”

  So much for sneaking up on her. I stood and put a hand on my holster. “Isobel Stonecrow, you are under arrest for necromancy.”

  Her clients didn’t need to hear anything else. They turned tail and fled down the hill toward their red Lexus. The woman was wearing three-inch heels, so it was a slow fleeing. At another time, it would have been funny to watch her stagger through the mud.

  Stonecrow flung the mallet at me. I ducked. It twirled harmlessly over my shoulder.

  In two strides, I had crossed the space between us and seized her wrist. Her headdress held back straight brown hair. She wore a necklace of bones around her neck, interspersed with white and black beads. And holy hell, that really was all she was wearing above the waist. Her nipples were encircled by blood, too.

  If Pops ever caught one of my cousins in public like that, she’d have been sitting tender for a week. Me? I didn’t mind so much. But it’s not good to stare at the suspects.

  “Let go!” she cried, trying to yank free of my grip. She had obviously never fought a guy twice her body mass before. She didn’t get anywhere with it.

  “I’m Agent Cèsar Hawke with the Office of Preternatural Affairs, Magical Violations Department.” I automatically reached for the cuffs on my belt only to realize that I didn’t have them. I never went anywhere without my handcuffs. What had I done with them?

  Right. They had taken a vacation on my headboard the night Erin died, so the cuffs were probably in an evidence locker right about now.

  My eyes swept over the ritual scene. Her circle was small, and now that I had crossed her salt line, it wasn’t resonating magic. The candles had melted into place on top of Brian Stewart’s gravestone. Add the drum and incense and animal bones to the mix, and I was certain I could prove she had been doing magic in front of mundane humans, if nothing else. Definitely an arrest-worthy offense.

  Too bad I wasn’t taking her back to the OPA offices.

  “We’re going to have a talk,” I said. Maybe in one of the mausoleums.

  She kicked at my knees with sandaled feet. I grunted and hauled her down the hill toward a slightly more hospitable-looking tomb.

  “Let me go! This wasn’t supposed to happen tonight! He told me I could do another job!”

  What the hell was she talking about? And more importantly… “Are these cat bones?” I interrupted, shaking her wrist.

  She gave her bracelets a surprised look, as if seeing them for the first time. “Raccoon.”

  Well, at least Cat was safe from her.

  Eyes on the road watching for other OPA agents, I pushed her toward the tomb. She stopped dead when we came out from behind the trees.

  “Where’s your SUV?” Stonecrow asked, glaring at the parking lot.

  Shit. She had obviously seen us before. We drove big black SUVs, much like the Union, though ours had lights and plates like the FBI’s did. And the fact that I didn’t have one now was, apparently, a big fucking giveaway.

  I really should have borrowed Suzy’s handcuffs.

  “Traitor!” she hissed.

  With surprising speed, Stonecrow wrenched free of my grip. The bone bracelet snapped, leaving me holding a fistful of raccoon ribs and what looked like a car key dangling among them. I wasn’t even sure how she’d escaped me. She must have been feigning weakness when I first grabbed her.

  Stonecrow reached into her animal skins and pulled out a fistful of gray powder. My eyebrows lifted, and I couldn’t help but grin a little bit. She looked like she was naked under her butt-flap. Did I want to know where she had been storing that dirt? Probably not.

  “Stand down or I’ll shoot,” I said.

  I made it two steps down the hill before she flung the powder into my eyes.

  It was like having a beehive tossed in my face. I crashed to my knees with a roar, clawing ineffectually at my eyes. Fuck, that burned. Fire swept up my jaw, cheeks, forehead. Blisters bubbled under my hands. They popped. Gushed down into my collar.

  There was no surge of magic and not a single sound, but by the time my running eyes cleared, Isobel Stonecrow was gone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I staggered into the public library as soon as the librarian unlocked the door. She stepped back, giving me a wide berth and a shocked look.

  “Oh my,” she said, crossing herself as she scurried inside. I might not have been popular with the ladies, but I wasn’t “turn pale and run away” ugly. That was a bad sign. Real bad.

  Slamming into the lobby bathroom, I flipped on the light switch. Considering how old and musty the building had looked from outside, the place sure got painfully bright, like jabbing huge fucking knives into my eye sockets. And, unfortunately, it let me see what Stonecrow had done to my face.

  My square features were covered in boils. The left side was bad, but the right side was worse. My eyelids were swollen, lip sagging with the weight of pustules.

  Fuck. This was not one of my better weeks.

  I splashed water on myself to get off the last of that nasty gray powder and tried to decide what, if anything, I could do about it. It was more uncomfortable than painful now. Little Tylenol and it probably wouldn’t ache.

  I poked one of the boils on my chin. It broke and made an audible splat against the porcelain sink. Underneath, the skin looked raw and red.

  Pops’s wise advice about popping zits echoed out of distant teenage memory.

  You should pop every zit that you want to turn into a permanent scar, he’d said. And he had punctuated that with, Dumbass.

  He hadn’t intended that advice for magicked boils, but it probably applied.

  Yeah, maybe I’ll just leave them alone. For now.

  On the bright side, Stonecrow had given me a great disguise. A disguise that made it feel like my entire face was peeling apart, with pus dripping down my neck. But I couldn’t manage to feel grateful for it. I swore right then and there that I was going to see that woman behind bars—even if it meant turning myself over to the OPA, too.

  I headed out of the bathroom, keeping my head down and trying to look like any other homeless bum making his way for the computer desks. I parked my ass in the first empty desk chair I came across. The old woman next to me didn’t even look up when I sat down. But Gramps across the table cringed at the sight of me, grabbed his jacket, and left.

  “Hey, ugly fuckers are people, too,” I muttered at his back. The corner of my mouth cracked.

  I pulled Stonecrow’s case file out of my coat, opened a map site on the computer, and started correlating the coordinates of her previous sightings to the website. The locations of the last families she had scammed—the ones I’d read about earlier that night—got little flags first, smack dab on the big population centers in the state. If I’d been at work, that would have been enough for the computers to do a quick sweep and figure out the connection. But I wasn’t at work. I’d have to do all the thinking for myself.

  As I added the rest of the sightings aggregated from the OPA’s network of security cameras, a pattern started to appear. I absently scratched my chin while I looked at them and felt something warm ooze down my jaw. Okay, no scratching, either.

  I focused on the Stonecrow sightings. And when I pulled out her raccoon bone bracelet for another look at the car key I’d grabbed, I realized it wasn’t a car key at all.

  It was a key for an RV.

  The old lady at the neighboring computer lumbered out of her chair and vanished. She left all of her crap on the desk, including an empty water bottle and a cell phone. It was scattered everywhere. Encroaching on my space. I didn’t care if she was going to look for another book or going to take a piss. No one was respectful of public space anymore.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Suzy.

  “Why the fuck are you calling me?” she said
when I identified myself. “Tell me you’re out of town, Hawke.”

  “Nice to talk to you, too. Listen, I need you to pull files for me.”

  “What? Are you working right now?”

  She tore me a new one for a minute, and except for a quick look around to make sure Grandma Space Hogger wasn’t on her way back, I kicked back and let Suzy’s vitriol wash over me. It was soothing, in its own way. Familiar. The dulcet background sounds I was used to at the office.

  “Feel better?” I asked when she wound down.

  “Hmph. That’s what you get for taking off without leaving a note, asshole.” I heard the clatter of computer keys on the other end of the line. “Okay, what files am I pulling?”

  “Any RVs that have checked in at more than five of these California RV parks in the last three months.” I listed the locations off. Suzy typed furiously.

  “Huh,” she said. “One RV comes up. Registration for…Belle Stonecrow. You’re still after the necromancer?”

  “Actually, I think she’s necrocognitive, like Peter was before he—you know. She’s not raising zombies, that’s for sure.”

  “Stonecrow is my case, Hawke.”

  “I’m helping you find her. You can think of it as me paying you back for use of your couch last night.”

  “Whatever.” Suzy couldn’t conceal how excited she sounded. It was a breakthrough. A good breakthrough. This was the shit that fueled us.

  Isobel Stonecrow was living out of RV parks. It was so simple, and considering how much crap witches needed to lug around, practical as hell. Better than sleeping in the back of a car, too.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll find her.”

  I was about to hang up when Suzy said, “You wouldn’t leave if I told you to again, would you?”

  “Not a chance.”

  I was in good shape. Not like the guys in the Union, but I kept up with my cardio. So I managed to reach the first two RV parks by noon with the help of a couple of city buses. No Stonecrow. I took a break around noon, stopping in a burger joint to escape the rain and splurge on dollar cheeseburgers. Bargain menus had saved my bacon between paychecks before.

  The cheeseburgers would’ve been so good with bacon.

  The third RV park took a longer, deeply unnerving bus ride to reach, and it was in the bad part of town. Know how they talk about “wrong side of the tracks?” Well, it looked like this park had been planted solidly in the middle of those tracks and then run over a few dozen times by trains hauling thousands of cattle, each of which took a giant dump on the park as it passed.

  It was inside a crumbling brick wall. The smell of rain failed to overpower the sewage stench of a couple dozen RVs dumping their shit all over the place. Every so-called “recreational” vehicle looked like it had survived a nuclear blast.

  If radioactive hillbillies ever vacationed in Los Angeles, this would have been the spot.

  “You okay, dude?” the man at the window of the third RV park asked as I stopped to catch my breath. “Don’t die on my sidewalk, man. I gotta clean this thing.”

  I knew I looked bad, but on-the-verge-of-death bad? And people said that no one cared in this town. “I’m fine.” I took a few deep breaths and regretted it. Man, that smell was terrible. Hard to tell if it was coming from the park or the guy operating the gates. He looked like a radioactive hillbilly himself, mostly bald with more hairy moles than teeth. “I’m actually looking for a friend.”

  I went through the whole deal, miming Stonecrow’s height against mine, tracing her more slender form and generous hips. The man’s eyes lit up for a second, but then his face went neutral.

  “Dunno,” he said, scratching the mole on the left side of his neck. His fingernail was yellow and cracked. “My memory’s terrible.”

  And me without money for a bribe.

  “Thanks anyway,” I said.

  The man looked disappointed. “Any time, bro.”

  I made like I was walking down the street, away from the entrance.

  As soon as I was out of sight of the office, I vaulted the brick wall and dropped down on the other side behind an RV.

  The look that guy had given me when I described Stonecrow was the look of a man that had seen ungodly perfection in a woman. The kind of woman with hips that could knock down walls, and her breasts—Lord, those breasts. No wonder clients had been paying thousands of dollars for her time.

  I slipped my hand into my pocket and clenched it around Stonecrow’s bracelet. The raccoon bones dug into my palm. The pain was enough of a reminder of what I was doing there, what I needed to do, and why.

  Last time I’d let my balls do the thinking, I’d ended up with an innocent woman dead in my bathtub. And this particular woman, this necrocognitive, was the only way I was going to get justice for Erin. That’s all she was. A tool to clear my name and find the real villain.

  A tool that was slinking around behind the RV three parking spots down.

  The sight of her lurking just a few yards away jolted me to my core. I hadn’t expected to be so quick to find her, especially when she was already on the run again. I’d hoped to catch her off-guard, cozy and unsuspecting in her mobile escape unit. Instead, she was crouched behind an old RV that was decorated with beaded curtains and electric teal paint.

  There were no animal skins in sight this afternoon. Stonecrow wore cutoff shorts and a baggy pullover. The only reason I could identify her at that distance was that she had feathers woven into her hair, like a faint echo of the elaborate headdress she had been wearing early that morning.

  For a second, I thought Stonecrow had been clued in to my presence and was trying to sneak away. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was leaning around the corner of the RV to peer at something else.

  I followed her gaze to see a black SUV parked on the other side of her vehicle. It had flashing lights set into the grille and dark-tinted windows.

  A pair of men in black suits stepped out. They were big guys, so much broader than me that they made me look like a skinny-assed nerd. Their necks were thick as tree trunks. Every move looked deliberate, choreographed. Only one type of person moved like that: kopides. Super-powered demon hunters.

  The Union had found Stonecrow.

  Wild thoughts whirled through my skull. Had Suzy reported our findings to her superiors, even knowing that I was going to the same place? Maybe she’d thought that they could get to Stonecrow first. Take away my primary incentive for remaining in town. No way she’d deliberately attempted to fuck up my day.

  Whether or not it was what she had planned, that was definitely the outcome.

  Stonecrow jumped into the shadows behind the next SUV, which was rocking on its suspension, like there was a dance party inside. Or some other kind of party. Then she jumped behind the next. The same one that I was hiding behind.

  That was when she saw me. Horror flashed in her eyes.

  Yeah, she recognized the blisters.

  “You,” she hissed.

  I lifted her bracelet. “Got something for you.”

  She snatched it out of my hand then turned to bolt.

  I grabbed her by the upper arm. Stonecrow twisted and just about melted out of my grip again. I was ready for her this time. Seizing both of her wrists, I shoved her back against the brick wall, giving her no room to pull off ninja maneuvers.

  “Your bosses can’t have me,” Stonecrow spat. “I’d rather bury myself alive.”

  “I’m not taking you to anyone else. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Doubt flickered through her eyes. They were dark brown, the color of rain-moistened grave dirt. “You’re not with them?”

  “Yeah, right, glad we’re on the same page. We gotta get out of here before they see us,” I whispered. “Can you climb the fence?”

  “I could if I had use of my hands.” She wasn’t fighting me anymore. I relaxed my grip on her.

  Stonecrow kneed me between the legs.

  It was like having a hot poker shoved into the middle
of my intestines and then twisted. Nausea spread over my skin, from the tips of my hair to my fingernails, and I momentarily entertained the mental image of vomiting in her face.

  My grunt of surprise was louder than I intended. By the time Stonecrow grabbed the brick wall and hefted her body halfway up, the Union suits were breaking past the line of RVs, searching for the source of the noise.

  Eyes fell on me.

  I realized that I recognized these guys. They weren’t just any random, anonymous Union apes; they were Joey and Eduardo, Suzy’s drinking buddies. Nice couple of young guys. Both of them had more muscles than brains and twice the strength of normal human men. Any doubts I’d had about Suzy tipping off her superiors were gone.

  They ran at me as fast as they could sprint, which was, unfortunately, way too fast. Super strength comes with super speed. Not like the Flash or Superman, but a hell of a lot faster than me.

  Eduardo grabbed for the back of the necrocognitive’s sweater and missed. He caught her hair instead, jerking her to the ground, pulling out a fistful of her glossy brown locks as he did it. I didn’t think that was in the Union playbook.

  “Hey!” I protested, just as Joey punched me in the gut. It was a little too close to where Stonecrow had hit. I crumpled. Even a big tough guy starts crying for Mama when the huevos take a double tap. Low blow from another dude, especially one who’d been buying me shots of tequila the other night. Real low blow.

  “What do we do with this…thing?” Joey asked.

  Eduardo shrugged. “Tie him up, toss him somewhere dark? Wait.” He peered closely at my face then began to laugh. “Oh, that’s too fucking good. Joe, check him out. Suzy was right.”

  Now they were both laughing. After a second, I worked up a halfhearted smile, trying to chuckle along. I probably would have laughed at them if they got dusted in the face, too. “Yeah, it’s me. Suzy sent you this way to pick me up?”