The door opened and the softest of Southern, feminine voices spoke, lilting on the air like a song. “Can I help you?”
“We got turned around, and our phones are dead. Could we possibly use your land line?” Simon asked, all politeness. “I don’t like going to normals if I don’t have to.”
She breathed out and the smell of death came with it. Death, blood, and the soft Southern tones . . . vampires weren’t a real thing, but myst magic had created something close enough you could call them that if you didn’t know their true nature. Magelores drank blood, but they also stole souls and cast spells on the unwary. They were supposed to be confined to the Southern swamps. There was only one who had gone missing that I knew about in the last fifteen years. Vivian, goddess of the night, according to her. She had been next on my list of hits for Romano before I left his employ. From what I recalled, she’d not only taken something belonging to him, she’d tried to seduce him and ended up biting him in a rather awkward spot.
As could be imagined, it didn’t go over well with him and he’d planned to set me on her.
I stepped up beside Simon, both Dinah and Eleanor raised. “You don’t belong here, Vivian. You’re supposed to be in the South.”
Simon groaned. “That is not how things are done with abnormals, Nix.”
Beauty, thy name is Magelore, and Vivian was no exception. I steeled myself against her eyes as they widened, and the long dark lashes as they fluttered.
“The Phoenix. I wondered if I would ever meet you. I heard your father was going to send you after me for taking his trinket, and for biting him.” Her eyes were the darkest of blues, the night sky as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, and her hair was only a shade darker taking it into the midnight tones. Not so far off my own natural color.
I smiled down my sights. “We’re looking for someone. I’m not here to kill you. Unless you make me.”
“Could have fooled me, Phoenix.” She smiled, and her teeth showed every one of their points. Unlike vampires, Magelore did not discriminate. All their teeth were ready to do damage, not just two.
Vivian sighed a long breath and leaned against the door frame. “I could kill you where you stand, Phoenix, and Romano would reward me for it,” she paused. “Greatly.”
I laughed. “Please, he’d kill you on sight for avoiding his tracers all these years. You know it and so do I. Besides, he doesn’t want to kill me right now. He wants to use me. I am disinclined to allow that to happen.”
She smiled and shrugged. “Fair. So, we are both women on the run, as it were.”
I didn’t lower my guns. Magelore were fast bastards, though I’d never dealt with one in person. I had a suspicion I’d need another hit of Diva to even pretend to keep up to one of their kind. “Again, not here for you.”
“Would you like to come in?” She didn’t move. I think she knew that any twitch would have me squeezing two triggers.
Simon and I spoke at the same time.
“Yes.”
“No.”
I didn’t dare glare at Simon because that would mean taking my eyes off Vivian.
“You are at odds,” she said. “I think you should come in.”
That was not going to happen. The home of a Magelore was as spelled as the outer grounds. Time could do funny things, and you could end up there for years without truly realizing it. And that was if you were ever let go. I’d done my homework before I left Romano’s employ.
One way to end this fast. I didn’t dare glance at Simon, but I hoped he would play along.
“Ask Simon what he really thinks of you, because we both know you can tell a lie from the truth,” I suggested. Not to mention Magelores were incredibly prideful about their looks. They’d make the Kardashian girls look humble.
Vivian frowned and Simon made a strangling sound that made me smile.
The Magelore tipped her head to the side, a swath of that dark hair spilling over pale shoulders. “What, pray tell, do you really think of me, Simon?” Her mouth seemed to curl around his name like a kiss. Another spell, to force him to be honest, which I knew she would do. Magelore did not like secrets.
“I hate you right now, Nix,” he said and then went on. “Vivian, you are a beauty who has no measure but you creep the bejeesus out of me, you creepy, creepy, motherfucker and I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole on fire.”
I grinned at her as her face paled, and her eyes narrowed to mere slits.
Dinah burst out laughing. “Worst pickup line ever.” Even Eleanor joined in on the laughter with that one.
“You see?” I motioned at her with the two guns. “He doesn’t really want to come in. He’s just too polite to say so. I, on the other hand, am not all that polite.”
Her lush lips thinned. “Who are you looking for?”
“Talia Lovstark,” I said. “She was here. She has something of mine.”
“You aren’t going to kill her?” Vivian frowned. “Have you gone soft, Phoenix?”
I smiled down the gun sights. “Change of employment. I work for myself now.”
Vivian still hadn’t moved. “You don’t like to kill, do you?”
Dinah sniffed. “That will get you killed, thinking she’s not a killer. Dumb. Very dumb.”
Vivian sighed and slowly held up both hands. “Talia has not been here in weeks. She came by to get a few things and then left.”
“Where does she live?” Simon asked what was going to be my next question.
Vivian shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t ask questions like that. Would you mind lowering your guns?”
“I would mind. As Simon pointed out, you are one creepy fucker that I don’t trust any further than I can throw you. Which means the guns don’t get lowered.” I stared hard at her. “No idea where we could find Talia?”
Again, she shrugged. “She likes the outlet malls north of the city and spends a lot of time there.”
I took a step back and motioned for Simon to follow me. And maybe he would have, except Vivian snaked an arm out grabbed him, and dragged him into the house. The door slammed as I shot two bullets into it. Bullets that mushroomed against the boards instead of going through the wood as they should have.
Well, fuck, that was not how I’d planned on things going.
Chapter Sixteen
Bear
The streets of New York bustled even through the dinner hour and I guess I was a bit surprised. Or maybe just hungry. I put a hand to my belly to try and still the grumbling. The last bit of food Jake had, he’d shared with me, but that had been hours ago and barely half a chocolate bar.
“Do you think Mr. Fannin will really be able to help?” I gave Jake a sideways glance. Though he’d said he was blind, he seemed to see pretty darn good. I wondered if it was just that he didn’t want people to see his snake eyes. Jake the Snake . . . I bit back the smile that ghosted over my lips. I doubted he was a wrestler, though maybe he was. My dad had made me sit through some old wrestling shows that he loved and there had been a wrestler with that name.
“Probably Killian will be able to help. If anyone can, he has the strength, at least. And the manpower.” Jake shook his head slowly. “The thing is, you can’t really trust any of the bosses, Bear. They might be your friend today, but tomorrow, they might want to kill you. No matter what, remember that. They are not your friends.”
I nodded, his words hitting on something my father used to say. “You are only friends until someone doesn’t like that you’re successful and they aren’t.” I thought that what Jake was saying was something similar.
“Why are they all in New York?” I glanced around at the skyscrapers around us, the smell of exhaust from the cars, and the constant press of people making my throat hurt.
“There’s a reason the abnormals of the world like the Big Apple. I don’t know what it is, but they like it. To be fair, we tend to stick to the two coasts. Something about the water is my guess.” He tipped his head sideways. “Here is where we part ways, yo
ung Bear. Across the street is an Irish pub. The Blarney Stone. You go on in there, and ask for Killian Fannin. You tell him the Phoenix sent you. That should get you in.”
“You can’t come with me?” I didn’t want to do this on my own.
“I’m not welcome in there. Zee and I . . . we were friends, and there were things I did back then when I was younger that I can’t change. It makes me something of a wanted man.”
“Then you really aren’t blind?” I couldn’t help the questions. I wanted to know everything I could about this world that previously I’d been blind to.
“Another time, Bear. Get in there before one of your grandfather’s men sees you.”
No other words could have gotten me moving, but still I paused at the edge of the street and looked back. “Thank you, Jake.”
He gave me a wave. “We have to look out for each other.”
I frowned and he disappeared into the flow of bodies as if he’d never been there. Look out for each other? Did he mean because he knew Uncle Zee? That was probably it.
I turned away and looked across the street. The Irish pub had a bright sign with a dancing leprechaun on the top holding a big mug of beer that he sloshed back and forth while he danced on a large stone. The Blarney Stone. I bit my lower lip and watched the traffic, waited for it to slow and then ran across the street. Only one cabbie blasted their horn at me, and there were no close scrapes. I still wondered how I’d managed to get all the way across traffic earlier when Rooster and his men had chased me.
Rush hour traffic and I’d dodged it all like they had been standing still and not going at full speed.
Maybe just the fear that had been driving me did it. Mom had told me more than once that adrenaline and fear could allow you to do things you otherwise might not have been capable of. Maybe that was what had happened. But a tiny part of me said that it was something else. In those few seconds as I’d run across the street, moving with traffic as if I were a part of it, there had been a feeling of being invincible. Which was silly, but it was like I knew I wouldn’t get hit. That I just had to roll with things and I would be okay.
I stood in front of the pub and lifted my hand to the door. The vibration of singing and laughter filtered out to me. I swallowed hard and pushed the door open, letting myself into the smoke-filled place. I could do this.
Hurrying, I went straight to the bar and climbed up on a stool next to a red-headed man who looked very sleepy. His eyes were half shut and the beer in his hand sloshed every time he twitched. I doubted he would be any help.
I strained to look down the length of the bar to the man handing out drinks. “Hello,” I called out over the noise. The bartender looked my way, then back to the man he was serving and then his head snapped back to me.
“Hey, you’re too young to be in here. Get out, kid. I could lose my license.” He started my way, waving a towel at me as if to shoo me out.
I shook my head. “I need to talk to Killian Fannin.”
He stopped and his eyebrows climbed up to the very edge of his bald head. “Really? And what makes you think Killian be here?”
“I was told I’d find him here. I have a message for him.” My hands were clammy and the backs of my knees were sweating.
The bartender smiled. “Okay, kid. You can leave a message for him.”
“No, I have to tell him in person.”
The bar around us went very quiet. I dared a look behind me to see that nearly every patron stared at me. The sweat at the back of my knees increased. I would have tried to swallow only my mouth was dry. It made me wonder if the sweat from the backs of my knees had come from my saliva glands somehow.
“And why is that?” The bartender leaned toward me. “You a spy?”
I shook my head. “I’m just a kid. But . . .” I didn’t know how much I could tell him. “There are some very bad people after me. And I think Mr. Fannin knows my mom.”
The bar lit up with laughter. Why were they laughing at that?
“Oh, shit, one of Killian’s bastards has finally come home to roost!”
One of his . . . oh, they thought I was Mr. Fannin’s illegitimate—I’d just learned that word in class the week before—child. I shook my head. “No, he did stuff with my mom.”
The laughter intensified and my shoulders slumped. How was I going to get them to take me seriously? Anger bubbled up under my skin, making me fearless with what I shouted next.
“My mother is the Phoenix! I need to speak to Killian!”
The pub went from roaring laughter to a silence that seemed to crash against me, stealing my breath. I slid from the stool. “I need to speak to him. Please.”
The men and few women in the pub continued to stare at me like I had used a bad word, or maybe I’d done something wrong. I knew what Jake had said about my mother being tough, but could there be more to the story than that?
“Kid, you got some balls coming in here and shouting lies like that,” the bartender said from behind me. I turned and looked at him.
He crooked his finger. “You seem determined and while I doubt the Phoenix is your mother,” the crowd seemed to relax as he spoke, “I think we’d best let Killian handle you.”
Relief whooshed out of me in a gust of air. “Thank you.”
“Hell, don’t be thanking me, kiddo. You ain’t met Killian yet.”
The bartender came around the edge of the long counter and then motioned for me to follow him. I took note that the music hadn’t started back up, and that the people in the bar still watched me. Which was the only reason I saw the scrawny man leap from my right side, a knife high over his head coming straight for me.
Every instinct I had turned on and I back-flipped away from him, sending one foot into the soft underside of his jaw. There was a crack of bones—and my brain tried to tell me that wasn’t possible. I wasn’t strong enough—and then I landed on my butt, sprawled on the hard wood, watching as the scrawny man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped to the floor. The knife clattered from his hand, but I scooted forward and kicked it farther away. Just to be safe.
I stood and looked around the room, fighting the urge to hunch my shoulders. I would not be ashamed of what my parents had taught me. Except . . . I wasn’t sure they had ever taught me that move.
A sound I recognized but didn’t place right away clicked here and there through the air.
Guns, these people had pulled guns on me and now they were aimed at me. Because I’d defended myself. Fear wove a tight hold on my limbs, freezing me where I was. Maybe one man with a knife could be defeated, but there was no way I could outrun a bullet.
A tiny voice whispered in my head, You sure about that?
I sunk into my fear, and then it faded as if it were blown on the wind out into the hills around my home, just gone. I straightened my shoulders and my body relaxed, my senses heightened, and I let out a slow breath as the air around me cooled.
The tightening of a finger on a trigger was my only warning, and I took it. I rolled to the right as the gun boomed in the small space and the bullet ripped by me before slamming into someone on the opposite side. My spin took me into a table and I stumbled, knocked down a pitcher of beer and slid in the liquid.
Someone screamed and I ducked under a fist that flew toward my head. I came up with a knee between his legs and he fell away from me. I ducked and dived, my body moving on autopilot like I’d been fighting my whole life, like I had been trained from birth. Even while I moved through the bodies, I could not believe what was happening, and then I was wondering why it hadn’t happened before.
“Enough.” A voice cut through the madness that had ensued and I stopped moving. My hands were wrapped around the forearm of a man who was trying to strangle me. He was still straining his fingers toward my neck and I didn’t dare let go.
“I said, enough.” That voice again was thick with an accent, and it seemed to soothe the man in front of me. He took a step back and I let him go.
He gave
me a stink eye, and a slight nod of respect. “Next time, kid.”
I said nothing, because I didn’t know if there was anything I could say. I wasn’t even sure if what had just happened was real or some sort of bad dream I’d fallen into while still awake.
I dared a look at the speaker. He was maybe my dad’s age, and had dirty blond hair and green eyes that kind of glittered as he watched me. “Are you Mr. Fannin?”
His eyebrows shot up and a smile ghosted over his lips. “I am.”
“Can I speak to you, please?”
“So polite,” someone muttered, “for a little ass-kicker.”
Heat flushed through my cheeks and I had no doubt they were bright red. “In private.”
“What you need to say, you can say here.” Mr. Fannin spread his hands to the left and right. “These people are my family and you attacked them.”
“I did not!” I glared at him, forgetting that I was supposed to be afraid. “One of your people came at me with a knife, and then they started shooting at me.”
“How is it that you are still alive then?” The question was not unwarranted. I frowned.
“I, uh, don’t . . . I don’t know.”
His eyes were thoughtful as he stared at me, and I could almost see him thinking about what to do with me. “You think you are the Phoenix’s son? Far as I know, the boy is dead. Which makes me think you’re here for something else. Money. A hit. Though a child assassin would be something even I wouldn’t stoop to.” There were a few titters at his words.
I blinked a few times, trying to see if I could figure out a way to convince him. “Luca Romano is my grandfather, and he took me away from my parents. I got away from him and I was trying to get to Mancini but someone else thought you might be better.” I didn’t want to implicate Jake, he’d been my friend and I didn’t want him to get hurt.
If I thought the place had been silent when I’d mentioned Phoenix before, it was nothing to the empty space that seemed to drop over the room. Not a breath, not a scrape of chair, not even a rustle of clothing. It was as if I’d frozen them all with a spell.
Blood of a Phoenix (The Nix Series Book 2) Page 17
