by Kelly Meding
“Smedge’s bridge is across town from here. How are we going to get there?”
“I have a car parked the next block over.” He hesitated. “Something else is out there hunting and it’s not human, so we need to be careful.”
“Something?” I recalled how I’d felt crossing the Wharton Street Bridge. The oddest sense of being followed, contrary to physical evidence.
“I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard rumors. Some call it an interspecies breeding, but they don’t know of what. Just that it has a keen sense of smell and can track anything.”
“No one’s ever heard of a successful interspecies breeding.”
“Like I said, it’s a rumor. I haven’t seen it.”
“Sounds charming.”
“Did I mention the double rows of razor teeth?”
“Are you trying to get me all hot and bothered?”
He rolled his eyes. “I know you like to kill things, Evy, but this one’s different.”
“If it’s real.”
“It’s real.”
“Okay, it’s real. I take it you have weapons?”
A sly smile confirmed it even before he replied. “You’d better believe it.”
Chapter Five
69:26
Calling the stockpile of weapons in the trunk of Wyatt’s car a “cache” only insulted the variety and care that had gone into the selection. “Arsenal” painted a better picture of the plethora of weapons stored in cases beneath the trunk’s false bottom. There were revolvers and rifles, each with multiple-round clips. Regular and fragmenting bullets for thinner-skinned targets like goblins and gremlins—although in five years I’d never had to hunt a gremlin, much less shoot one. Anticoagulant-coated bullets for the Bloods. Silver nitrate tips for weres. Acid tips for gargoyles.
Grenades and flash bombs were lined up in fleeced cases next to smokers. My personal favorites were the blades—sharp enough to slice paper on their edges. A variety of smaller knives, smooth edge and serrated, came in a variety of sizes. There were also two sharpened broadswords—I was trained for them, but hated their weight—and a pair of machetes on velvet pads, next to a row of throwing stars and brass knuckles. I spotted a couple of dog whistles tucked into the corner, gleaming silver—with their heightened hearing, it was an easy and underrated method of knocking Halfies and Bloods for a loop.
I took a sheathed serrated knife the size of my palm and strapped it to my right ankle. A closed butterfly knife went into the back pocket of my jeans. Wyatt strapped on a shoulder holster for one of the revolvers and grabbed a fragging clip and an anti coag clip—standard gear for Handlers, since they acted more like a guide for the Triads than an active participant in our activities. I had never seen Wyatt fire a gun in my life, but things had changed. He looked completely able to pull the trigger and mean it.
When we were safely in his car and cruising toward downtown’s Lincoln Street Bridge, I asked, “So what did you do? Raid the Department vault before you went rogue?”
“Of course not,” he said. Pity. “I raided them afterward.”
He smiled as if joking, but something in his voice hinted at sincerity.
“How about that cloaking jewel? You get that there, too?”
“No, I traded it for a favor.”
“Yeah? What was her name?”
“His name is Brutus.” The annoyance in his tone came out of nowhere.
I turned sideways in my seat, less interested in the scenery than in the subtle changes peeking through the man I thought I knew. Only three days and he seemed a different person. “What was the favor?”
He grunted. “I summoned something, and he gave me a one-shot cloak. I needed to stay off the radar for a while.”
“Until you had me back?”
“Something like that.”
“So the jewel?”
“Useless.”
Of course, because having an invisibility cloak at our fingertips was too damned easy. “So you going to tell me about those bruises?” I asked.
His hands white-knuckled the steering wheel. “Does anyone else know that Candace—”
“Chalice.”
“That Chalice is alive?”
I tilted my head to one side. “You mean besides the two morticians who nearly died of heart attacks when I came to life on their table?” Another half smile from him.
“Yeah, besides them.”
“Chalice’s roommate.”
“How did she find out?”
“He. Since I woke up butt-naked and abandoned in a morgue, I needed money and clothes. I found Chalice’s address on a chart, so I went home to change. He interrupted me.”
“He saw you naked?”
“No, pervert.” I rolled my eyes. “And Alex does get points for neither passing out nor screaming like a little girl, since he both called the ambulance and later identified the body. He saw her—saw me—dead.”
“How did she die?” Wyatt made a left-handed turn at a four-way intersection.
“Does it matter?”
“Guess not. Yet.”
We had left the high-rising apartment complexes behind for the darker, grittier streets of Mercy’s Lot. Ancient brick buildings, many of them old industrial shops that had closed at the turn of the century, lined the streets. Sidewalks held broken benches and overflowing waste cans, gutters filled with trash and standing rainwater. In a few hours, when the sun went down, neon lights would blaze and welcome people inside to rid them of their hard-earned money.
A hustler’s paradise; a hooker’s best corner. The city would be teeming with life and light and sin, and things that went bump in the night—creatures I would normally be prepared to hunt. Only tonight, under the cover of darkness, I would be the hunted.
“Do you think it was murder?” Wyatt asked.
What was his obsession? “I really haven’t pondered it, Wyatt, but next time I see Alex I’ll be sure to ask him how he felt when he found his roommate with her wrist slashed. I’m sure that conversation will go over real well.”
Wyatt grunted, eyes on the road. “I’m sorry, Evy. All I was getting at is that if it was foul play, then whoever did it could get really annoyed when they find out that Chalice is alive and well and running around the city. We’ve got enough people gunning for us that we know about, you know?”
“Good point.” Lucky us, then, that Chalice’s worst enemy seemed to be herself.
Silence filled the car for the remainder of our trip. We drove past a raggedy newsstand, stuck between a Chinese take-out restaurant and a bar advertising “Adult Dancers Live.” I briefly considered turning on the radio, but changed my mind. Wyatt’s firm grip on the steering wheel betrayed his anxiety, reinforced by the slight twitch of a muscle in his lower jaw.
He drove southeast, toward the lower end of downtown where the Black River intersected a tributary of the Anjean River, before continuing south. Downtown was surrounded by water on three sides, with mountains creating a northern border. Uptown was, ironically, southwest of the Black River, and as we approached Lincoln Street, the tall, shiny buildings rose up high on the opposite riverbank. New and safe and well fortified—nothing like Mercy’s Lot.
The bridge had two lanes for traffic, and a separate train bridge that ran parallel. Wyatt turned at the last exit before the bridge that would have taken us into the industrial parks and factories that were housed on the southeast bank of the Anjean River. The side street curved down one hundred and eighty degrees, turning us in the opposite direction. Another left and the underside of the Lincoln Street Bridge came into view.
The one-way street passed beneath the bridge, leaving little space between the cement underside and the gray water of the Anjean. Wyatt pulled onto the narrow shoulder, still half on the road, but with enough room for another car to pass. I climbed out to the cacophony of bridge traffic rumbling overhead and the smooth rushing of the river. The odors of oil and rotting fish tingled my nose, as familiar as it was disgusting.
�
�And you wonder why I insulted his bridge,” Wyatt said.
“I never said I wondered.” I walked around the front of the car to join him. “I just knew better than to say anything to his face.”
He cocked his head to the side, regarding me with some amount of amusement. “That’s my girl.”
I smiled, warmed by his praise. Even as a rookie, I’d wanted only to make him proud. He was only ten years older than me, but was one of the rare Gifted. He could tap into the organic source of the Fey’s power and manipulate it in a limited way. One in about thirty thousand humans have that ability, many of them under surveillance by the Triads—or like Wyatt, under contract for services. The Fey can sense them, but the only surefire way for humans to identify a Gifted is the birthmark—the size of a halfpenny, usually located midway down on the left buttock.
Magical hotspots exist all over the city, undetectable by normal humans. Only the Dregs, the Fey, and the human Gifted can sense them. I’d heard once that the Gifted were all born over one of those hot spots—breaks in the world where magic bled through. Even as a rare Gifted, inorganic summoning was a talent Wyatt seemed hesitant to use, even in his role as a Triad Handler.
It was, in some ways, a curse to the Gifted. While they possessed extraordinary talents, the human body was not designed to filter that sort of magical energy. Manipulation was often painful and took a physical toll. It also (according to rumor) made them sterile. And that was something likely to remain a rumor for the time being. I knew no other Gifted, and it wasn’t a subject I was willing to broach with Wyatt. Ever.
The bridge thrummed thirty feet above our heads. A chain-link fence bordered the opposite side of the road, supposedly to prevent graffiti-happy teenagers from plastering their artwork all over the underside of the bridge. The metal support beams and concrete slope remained devoid of spray paint, but dozens of footprints marred the dust on the other side. Artists came, but something chased them away again. Something named Smedge.
Wyatt pulled back a weak spot in the fence, and I slipped through first. He followed. The fence fell back into place with a soft clang. Air moved in a constant swirl, pushed by the traffic overhead, kicking up dirt particles and grit. I stopped at the base of the angled concrete and stomped my foot on the ground.
“Smedge?” I said. “Hey, Dirt Face, it’s Stony.”
“Stony?” Wyatt asked.
“Nickname.”
“I figured.” He did a complete three-sixty, taking stock of our surroundings. “Are you sure he’s going to recognize you before he decides to pound on us with a big, gravelly fist?”
“Bridge trolls are blind, remember?” I stomped my foot again. “They don’t rely on five senses like humans. He’ll know me.”
Sure enough, the solid concrete began to vibrate. Slowly at first, like the gentlest shiver. Then it built to a roar, and what was once solid began to run like quicksand. It drew inward, gathering like a miniature tornado beneath the bridge. I raised my hand against the wind, as every bit of dirt was drawn toward its center.
An arm reached out from its whirling vortex, a hand uncurling and dividing into four fingers. Those fingers splayed against the ground by our feet. Wyatt stepped back, but I stood my ground. A second arm joined the first, and then a head pulled out, forming from the dirt and sand and stone, as large as my entire body, with pronounced eyes that couldn’t see and a mouth that couldn’t taste. A neck and shoulders grew last, until Smedge the bridge troll appeared to have pulled himself out of a giant hole in the ground, only to lounge beneath the bridge, perfectly at ease.
Sounds rumbled deep within his throat, as he remembered how to communicate with other, more verbal species. Bridge trolls were part of the earth itself and communicated through tremors and vibrations of the crust and core, rather than of wind through the larynx. Some of the largest earthquakes in recorded history were because of troll wars—something no one taught kids in geology class.
“Him,” Smedge ground out. His voice came across like sandpaper against metal—harsh and unpleasant. “Not … welcome.”
“I’ll make sure he behaves,” I said. “Smedge, do you remember me? It’s Stony.”
Sandy eyes made a show of looking at me, but I knew better. Air circled me like a cyclone, caressing my skin with fine particles of sand. He was smelling me in his own way, making sure I was telling the truth. I only hoped his unusual senses could “see” past my new appearance and identify his friend.
“Yes, Stony,” Smedge said. “Told … dead … but not.”
“No, I’m not, but that’s a really long story. I don’t have a lot of time, and we need your help.”
“What I do?”
I deferred to Wyatt. I hadn’t asked him why he needed to speak with Smedge, so I couldn’t ask the question for him.
“Do you know a sprite named Amalie?” Wyatt asked.
My lips parted. That was his question? Amalie was a Fey Council Elder, ruler of the Five Sprite Guilds. A queen bee to thousands of worker bees was the only way to describe the sprite ranks. Each Guild had a ranking Master, each responsible to Amalie for the safety of the sprites under their care. We’d never met, but I had seen her from a distance. Tall and regal, with the looks of a model and curves of a porn star, she was nothing like what the word “sprite” implied. Her bodyguard, Jaron, had the build of a weight lifter. The only detail that betrayed them as non human was the way their eyes glowed. Bright and fierce, like cobalt embers.
“What does she have to do with this?” I whispered.
He shook his head—a curt warning not to question him. I narrowed my eyes, but complied, and imagined how pretty he’d look with a black eye.
“Powerful,” Smedge said. “Building.”
“What’s she building?” Wyatt asked.
“Power. More power. Cons … cons …” He growled, unable to articulate the word.
“Consolidate?” I offered.
The gravel head nodded.
“Why?” Wyatt took a step forward, rippling with tension.
“Compete. Win. Power.”
“Does this have something to do with our final job?” I asked Wyatt. “That thing I was looking into between the goblins and the Bloods? Are sprites involved, too?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Amalie was there the night we found you, Evy. Everyone who was there is a suspect.”
“Taking sides,” Smedge said. “All. You must.”
“Humans must?” I asked.
Another grinding nod.
“Are the trolls taking sides?”
He growled and stopped moving. The silence stretched out for half a minute. A car honked above us, but Smedge remained frozen in place—a concrete statue of half a man, protruding from beneath a bridge.
“Soon,” he rumbled, the sudden sound startling me.
So even the trolls, notorious for walking the center line of any interspecies conflict, were taking sides. Sides in a battle that no one had told us human beings about, and that sounded more and more like a power play on someone’s part. Power plays were not uncommon from goblins. Bloods hated us, but rarely made direct attacks. Sprites were either working with or against them, and trolls were lined up to pick teams.
“We have to find out who else is taking sides,” I said. “Could the Fey Council have anything to do with this?”
Wyatt ran his fingers through his short, black hair. “I don’t know, but none of the Triads were talking about it as of yesterday. It could be rogues pulling all the strings.”
“Maybe. Amalie may lead the sprites, but she still answers to the other Fey rulers. Gnomes, faeries, pixies, dryads, and sylphs need to be consulted before a Fey decision is handed down.”
Wyatt stared.
I frowned. “What? I pay attention when you talk. Mostly. But why was Amalie there during my rescue?”
“Because one of her sprite guards found you and led us there.”
“No safety.”
I had forgotten about the Volkswagen-sized stone h
ead in front of me. Smedge settled deeper into the concrete foundation, creating a heavy rumble beneath our feet. Trolls possess notoriously short attention spans, and our audience was almost over.
“No safety where? Here?” Wyatt asked.
“Coming. Pounding. Go.”
It was all the encouragement I needed. “Thank you, Smedge.”
“Stony friend. Stay well.”
“I will.”
With a sound like fracturing wood, Smedge withdrew into the underside of the bridge until nothing remained but smooth concrete. We slipped back out through the fence’s hole, but I faltered halfway across the street, attacked by the niggling sense of being watched. Wyatt stopped and looked at me.
A howl, inhuman and nearby, shattered the rumble of traffic. It bounced beneath the bridge, echoing long after its source had stopped. A hulking shape bounded into the center of the road on all fours, one hundred feet from our position. It came to a graceful stop and arched its back, slowly standing upright, its back legs curved and grotesque. They wobbled with the effort, but the creature maintained its balance. Thin, black fur covered its legs and torso, but its chest of roped muscle was bare, smooth, shiny, and white-skinned. Its similarly colored arms were just as well muscled, with long claws on its front paws and deep elbow joints perfect for running on four feet. A long, black-tipped nose jutted out above a too-wide mouth. Shimmering yellow eyes blazed with fury and the sheer love of the hunt. Pointed ears turned toward us, listening, covered with the same black hair that extended across its head and down its neck.
It opened its mouth, baring double rows of razor teeth and pointed canines. I watched the monster flex its jaw, a steel trap ready for the kill. My stomach knotted. I’d never seen anything like it, let alone fought one, and it truly was a hellhound from my nightmares. I saw the earmarks of at least two species in it. It had to be Wyatt’s rumored hybrid.
In my periphery, Wyatt’s left hand crept across his waist toward the shoulder holster. The hound’s eyes shifted to Wyatt, and it snarled. The hair along its neck bristled.
“Don’t,” I said, barely moving my lips. If the thing had vampire reflexes to go with its teeth, it could be on him and tearing his throat out before Wyatt could pull the trigger. “When I say so, get in the car.”
