by Harry Nix
“That’s probably enough for now, especially when there are mages and an assassin over there waiting for you to screw up so they can kill you and cut your head off.”
Alex couldn't help but look again at the mages staring daggers at him and the woman still with her hands in her lap.
“Let them try. I’ll rip their faces off,” Alex said in a low tone.
“Yeah, maybe. Except that mage who went out the front has gone to get his friends and eventually sheer weight of numbers will get you and then what will happen to your pack? What will your mates do then?”
Alex grumbled to himself. He understood the logic of it. The wolf inside him was yelling at him to stand up and hurl fireballs into the back of the bar right into the mages then dive at the woman and stab her through the heart before she even had a chance to move.
“It’s time for us to go now before those Ignis lads get back here,” Monroe said.
“Those mages are Ignis? Haven’t you heard they’re out to kill me?”
“That's what I hear, and this bar is not the time nor the place.”
Monroe stood and began heading for the door. For a moment Alex thought he would just sit there, let the cop walk out and let the chips fall where they may. Then he saw the frightened look on Zig's face, or on Zig’s illusion at least.
Sure he might win this fight but he would probably destroy the bar in the process. So, he stood up and headed for the door, walking backward, keeping an eye on the mages and the so-called assassin. It was only when he went outside that he shifted back to human form. Not fast enough though, the Great Barrier suddenly jolting him with a great lurch through his muscles and stinging pain in his neck. Alex stumbled for a moment, but Monroe helped right him quickly, pushing him out to the street and leading him down the road.
“Car’s down this way. Come on,” Monroe said, setting off at a trot. Alex followed along until they reached the patrol car.
“I just had the back cleaned but sorry you're sitting there,” Monroe said. Alex got in the backseat while Monroe got in the front, a wire mesh separating them.
They took off with a lurch, a horn blaring at them as Monroe pulled into traffic. Alex had to grab onto the seat as Monroe went around a corner at high speed, changing lanes, and turning corners without warning.
Now Alex was in human form his clothes were back and so was his bag. Despite getting jolted around, he managed to get it open and pull out the card that Zig had given him. It looked like a baseball card. On one side was an image of Alex's face in human form. It looked to be his driver’s license photo, taken off a database. Underneath it had his name, height, weight and general description. On the other side was an image of him in werewolf form, roaring, with blood streaked down his jaws.
Alex had no idea how they'd gotten it. The image appeared to be taken from a high angle, someone up on a rooftop maybe? Alex saw there was an orange glow behind him. Was that a fire? Had someone been watching the Corvus outpost and managed to take a photograph of him?
How did the Great Barrier work then? A supernatural could take a photograph and that was fine, but if they lost it, the camera suddenly malfunctioned or disintegrated thanks to the Great Barrier?
Printed in large black letters the card said there was a one-hundred-thousand-dollar bounty for Alex dead.
“A hundred-thousand-dollar bounty. I must be doing something right,” Alex said as they heaved around another corner.
Monroe finally slowed and Alex saw they'd made it over to the far side of the city, practically out at the dying industrial zone again.
“A hundred thousand dollars can bring you a lot of problems,” Monroe said. He was still checking his rearview mirror and turning seemingly at random, but it appeared whomever he'd been trying to evade was gone.
“You know, there’s a Xavo address over here. How about you dropping me off out the front and I’ll go in and murder everyone. You can wait in the car,” Alex said, putting the card back in his bag.
“That’s not a good idea. Xavo isn’t Corvus. That place you and Juno tore apart? I think it was a honey trap. They wanted you to tear it apart. They wanted you to kill those mages. I know you think you're strong but that many mages against just one werewolf and one witch? Just the law of averages says you should have taken a few more bullets,” Monroe said.
Although the alcohol was still working on Alex, he understood Monroe had touched on something he had thought himself. Some of the attacks had been… weak? Or perhaps half-hearted. Even the little old lady had ripped his hand off. It had been her against him and his three mates. If someone had sprinkled some silver dust in that alleyway they could have taken him and Nia straight out.
But it was too many layers, too many twists. Alex was ceasing to care whether he been set up in one way or the other, or whether the attacks were intended to set him against a particular enclave or were a series of false flags designed to start a war. All he knew was that there was a dead werewolf buried at his home and another who may never wake up. There was silver contaminating everything and even years later werewolves would suddenly be getting injured when a speck of it was pushed to the surface once more.
“How about you take me to where Ignis is then?” Alex said, his mood growing darker.
“No one knows where Ignis is. They have a lot more money which means they have wards on practically everything… good ones too. If you’re hoping to catch an Ignis mage you have to wait around the city and hope to see one driving by.”
“What the hell is up with that, by the way? I saw one doing laps, casting the same spell over and over.”
“That's what they do. But you should know that if you saw one Ignis mage in a car, there would be five others watching that you didn't see. They never travel alone, like those three in the bar.”
Alex saw they were vaguely heading back to the city now, passing quite close to the factory where he'd fought mages a few times. Alex leaned against the door and looked out the window, idly glancing at the various for-sale signs that they passed. This part of the industrial area was well and truly dead and felt absolutely deserted.
“You wanna be thankful Zig buzzed me otherwise—” Monroe didn't get to finish the sentence. Alex's head hit the window, smashing it as something exploded under the car, flipping it into the air. Alex instinctively changed to hybrid form as the car spun and then crashed to the ground, miraculously landing on four wheels. Apart from the broken glass, the blood running down the side of his face, and the ringing in his ears, Alex was reasonably okay. He blinked a few times, stars shooting in his vision and then realized they weren’t stars but magic coming from Monroe in the front seat. He had blood down the side of his neck and bits of glass in the side of his face. He was waving his hand, a stream of golden dust drifting out, sinking into the car. Maybe it was the alcohol, but Alex couldn't really sense what he was doing.
“What the hell was that?” Alex groaned.
“A goddamn assassin,” Monroe swore. Alex looked behind them but there was no one to be seen, the area deserted.
“She’s hiding. You won't see her until her claw is in your heart,” Monroe said. He tried to start the engine, but it just coughed and died.
“Let me out, and I’ll kill her,” Alex said, looking around and sniffing. All he could smell was fuel and car and the faint scent of pizza Monroe must've eaten in the front seat at some point.
“No, she's deadly and far stronger than me right now and probably you too,” Monroe said. He tried the engine again and this time it started before suddenly dying.
“Where the hell is she?” Alex said. He kept whipping around, hoping he’d see something, sniffing at the air, but it was no sign of any attacker.
“She is a fae just like me, and right now she's almost at full strength,” Monroe said.
Alex whipped his head around just in time for something to blur past his face and embed itself in the seat. It was a dart, the tip of which was covered in a green liquid.
“She’s throwin
g poisoned darts!” Alex said, and tried to push on the door, but it was locked. The only way he was going to get out was if he ripped it off its hinges.
“Yeah, they do that,” Monroe said, more golden dust falling from his hands. Abruptly, Alex felt a jolt and the entire back of the car rising. He realized it was the two rear tires re-inflating and then the front of the car went up. Monroe turned the ignition, the car started, and then he squealed out of there.
Alex thought the initial drive was crazy, but this was insanity. Monroe hurtled towards the city like a bat out of hell, screaming around corners and bends, narrowly missing oncoming cars. It was only when they got close to Juno's that Alex realized where they were.
“Call your mate. Get them to have the door open,” Monroe said. But Alex had shifted and his charm had taken his bag. He ducked down, shifted to human form, and grabbed his phone out—the burner. It had only one number programmed into it. He dialed it and Juno answered.
“Juno's house of snooze. How can we snooze you?” she said in a chirpy tone. Alex heard Ruby say something snarky behind her.
“Open the door. It’s Monroe and me. We’re coming right now, and we're being chased,” Alex blurted out.
“On it,” Juno said. The phone went dead, and Alex shoved it back in the bag then shifted to hybrid again. Barely a minute later, they screeched to a stop in front of the house. Monroe leaped out and then pulled the door open.
Alex stumbled out and the sudden stabbing pain of the Great Barrier forced him to shift to human form. The pain of it drove him to his knees.
Monroe grabbed his arm and hauled him up the step to where Juno was waiting. Ruby was standing behind her, hands out crackling with electricity that was zapping from one fingertip to the other.
Together, they crashed through the front door, and Juno slammed it shut. The feeling of the Great Barrier pulling on him evaporated, and Alex managed to stand up straight, taking deep breaths of air.
“Hello Erasmus,” Ruby said, letting electricity die away from her fingertips.
“Ruby. Always good to see you,” Monroe said. A piece of glass fell out of his hair and landed on the floor. Alex turned to him.
“Your first name is Erasmus?” he said.
17
By the time Monroe left, Alex was shaking his head at what he learned about the weird world of the fae and also how wards on houses worked. After cleaning themselves up, and Juno casting a healing spell on the pair of them, Monroe had explained that over the course of about a month, following the cycles of the moon rather than the calendar, female fae grew stronger while the males grew weaker in equal measure.
Finally, on their peak day of strength, the males would be at their weakest before it reversed, and over the next month the males would head for their peak of speed and physical power while the magic of the females grew weaker. They were currently about three days away from the female peak.
Monroe had recognized the woman as soon as he'd seen her, so that explained his driving when they'd fled the bar. He'd been hoping to evade her but it had obviously been unsuccessful, and she’d cast a spell that exploded under the car, hoping to flip it over and crush the pair of them. Luckily it had landed upright. Monroe had a similar spell on his car to the one on Boris that meant if he poured magic into it, he could repair the damage so they could make their escape.
This led to the next point about the house wards. Alex learned that there was a kind of look away on them, similar to the Great Barrier, that extended out from the house to the sidewalk surrounding it. With Monroe's police car parked within it, the attacking fairy wouldn't be able to see it, nor him, Alex, or the house. They would look, but look away. It still wasn't a perfect system of course. Although the spells were subtle, convincing you to look away, some supernaturals were able to overcome them or notice that they'd been sent off track. The fairy had likely found herself a few streets away before realizing what had happened but would then be able to pinpoint a vague location at least. Ruby had explained that with enough magic users approaching a concealed target, you could use the moment they lost focus to triangulate a hidden property to some degree. Again, it all depended on the strength of the wards and how they worked.
Alex had shown the card to Juno and Ruby, which set off a lot of swearing and stomping around the house by Juno. Ruby just looked at the card then back at Alex. “Hundred thousand… might take up the offer myself,” she'd said.
“Everyone stay safe now,” Monroe said, taking that as his cue to leave.
Ruby followed him out and they chatted for a few minutes while Alex sat on the sofa, working on unclenching his muscles. He really could do with sitting in Roma’s chair.
Or relaxing by taking her to bed…
“Dude,” Alex said aloud at himself and rubbed his eyes.
Monroe left and Alex had completely forgotten how’d he left the house that morning until Ruby poked him with an electrified finger, a jolt going up one arm, across his shoulders and down his body to his feet. He jumped away from her at the sting of it.
“Hey!” he protested.
“That's what you get for throwing a sleep crystal at me,” she said. She didn't seem too distressed about it overall, so Alex merely rubbed his arm and let it go.
A thought crossed his mind.
“Hey, is Monroe on the list for the house wards? How did he find this place otherwise?”
He swore he saw a guilty look cross Ruby’s face but it was gone so quick he couldn’t be sure.
“Keep your mind on your own business, wolf.”
The alcohol Alex had drunk had well and truly worn off now, but then Ruby made him coffee and topped it up with a whiskey that was strong enough to nearly blow the top of his head off. Alex sat sipping it as he recounted going to Roma’s and selling the rings, making more rings and selling them for five thousand and then going to the bar. He left out how he felt about Roma, the desire to grab her, to drag her into bed and made sure not to comment on her physical features.
Not her deep black hair or red lips, or the fact that she was just wearing shorts and a T-shirt underneath a large leather apron.
Alex nearly slapped himself as his mind went off-track once more.
Juno didn't know Roma, but Ruby said she thought she might have heard of a supernatural who sold magical furniture.
Talking about what happened at the bar set Juno off again. She poked Alex in the arm a few times, swearing to all the goddesses and also Joe Pesci that Alex wouldn’t be allowed to go anywhere on his own ever again if she had anything to do with it.
Alex made placating noises and eventually pulled Juno into his lap when she started sipping his whiskey-dosed coffee and calming down. Ruby, who had only asked a few questions while Alex talked, eventually finished her coffee and set the cup down on the table.
“I was going to suggest that we follow up on the address Stephen left, and if it's owned by Xavo and there are mages there, we go in to do something horrible and public to them. But now, with this bounty, I think we need to move up the timetable on the heist,” she said.
“Can we wait until April and Nia are back?” Juno asked.
“If they come back soon, sure, but otherwise we just need to go. Alex, you have enough shield rings for your pack now, which is good, but who cares? At a hundred large for your head and Ignis, Xavo, and Corvus after you, you need a chunk of money so you can defend yourself. You need to hire some mercenaries of your own,” Ruby said.
“You want me to hire mercenaries? Do werewolves usually do that?” Alex asked.
“Sometimes. They hire witches usually. It's not cheap,” Ruby said.
“Who are you thinking?” Juno asked, finishing off the last of Alex's coffee.
“The Black Wings,” Ruby said.
“The Black Wings! Where do you think we're getting that kind of money?” Juno said.
“Hence the reason for the heist and moving it up.”
“Can someone tell me what this heist is, exactly?” Alex said.
“Yes, grandmother, could you please tell Alex this absolutely ridiculous idea for a heist that you had,” Juno said, as sweet as sugar.
Ruby ignored her sarcasm.
“There’s a certain vampire I've become aware of, and I believe at his mansion he has managed to collect a fantastic amount of gold. There are likely gems and other expensive things there too, but additionally there will be guards, locks, safes and security systems. Fortunately, this vampire is somewhat of a social butterfly and in a few days will be having a ball. I have already been given an invitation and will be stretching my plus one to include a werewolf, and a witch who should know better than to make fun of her grandmother,” Ruby said.
Juno gave a dismissive snort, hopped off Alex's lap and fell flat on her face, her shoelaces tied together.
Alex couldn't help but laugh but then quickly stifled it when Juno rolled over and glared at him.
“I swear I'm gonna find the worst old folk’s home in the whole country,” Juno said trying to get her shoelaces untied. Ruby continued to ignore her.
“If your two mates get back in time then we can all go. We’ll take the sleep crystals, put them in strategic locations, attend the ball, and then during it we’ll rob him blind,” Ruby said
Alex took a moment to digest just what she was saying.
“Isn’t that dangerous doing this with so many people there? Wouldn’t it be better to go when there were fewer people and presumably fewer guards?”
“I thought that at first, but the good thing about a ball and a lot of wandering guests with various supernatural powers is that the guards will be constantly distracted, especially with what I plan to do to them.”
“I don’t know… I mean am I suddenly robbing people just for money? Why pick a vampire then? Why not become a full criminal and rob someone's house if I’m going to do that? Or a bank? The Great Barrier will just wipe all the security feeds, right?” Alex said.
