Rune Thief: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Isabella Hush Series Book 1)

by Thea Atkinson

  Rune Thief

  Isabella Hush Series, Volume 1

  Thea Atkinson

  Published by Thea Atkinson, 2018.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  RUNE THIEF

  First edition. January 16, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 Thea Atkinson.

  ISBN: 978-1386014812

  Written by Thea Atkinson.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Rune Thief (Isabella Hush Series, #1)

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  Author Notes

  "Ms. Atkinson weaves a terrifying and intriguing story that pulls the reader in from the first page and holds on until the very end." Debra Martin | author of Silver Cross | ★★★★★

  "Action packed, dark, lots of mystery surrounding the characters, good story." Helen Wawrejko | ★★★★★

  "Great beginning to a new series." ShadowSiren | ★★★★★

  CHAPTER 1

  JEWELRY FOR PENIS PIERCINGS is how I got involved in this mess. I mean, who makes that sort of shit up about the kinds of things that are in a cache of legendary Incan gold?

  Nobody. That's who.

  That kind of intuition is the kind of thing you get good at when you've spent your life stealing, conning, and running. You start to know people. You know when they're telling the truth. You know when they are blowing chocolate scented smoke up your butt.

  That intuition and nearly a decade of burglarizing was how I knew Logan AKA The Lolli—short for lollipop—wasn't just talking out of his ass when he mentioned the gold.

  "A whole shitload of the stuff," he'd said.

  I didn't know him well, but I was smart enough to know he didn't have the kind of experiential knowledge to pull that kind of detail out of his alcohol drenched brain cells.

  No. He was the kind of guy who talked a good talk, but it was all from someone else's mouth. He had a certain kind of kitch, though, that made him useful to certain types.

  He was connected in other words. Which is why folks put up with his mouthiness. So when he bragged about seeing the Incan cache of jewelry, I bought into it.

  The devil's in the details when it comes to a heist, isn't that what Scottie always said, acting as though he'd thought up the adage and passed it down to me like a proud patriarch.

  Well, detail like those damned penis piercings was too specific to be anything but the real deal.

  "Penis rings the girth of my pinkie," he'd said, crooking his finger at his pool buddy. My heart flat out skipped a beat. I needed a haul. I would have settled for a ten dollar bill on the sidewalk by the time The Lolli had blustered that tidbit across the pool table.

  Which was one of the reasons I was crouched right then in front of a painting hung far too low to be just an objet d'art in the largest of the Mcmansions on Valencia Boulevard.

  A mansion which just so happened to be in my own damn borough for Pete's sake. As though I wasn't already in a mess.

  It was too damn close to home for any rational burglar to consider safely within bounds. I silently cursed the Lolli as I stared at the pin pad I'd have to crack to get to that hoard. It was a huge risk after spending a good three years covering my tracks and keeping my paltry heists on the down low. I picked a wealthy borough for exactly that purpose. Hide in plain sight, so to speak.

  In came reason number two: the big reason I was crouched in front of that painting about to do something that in any other time of my life I'd know was remarkably stupid.

  I'd already been recognized.

  I knew I'd been made because a feeler had come my way via a sour faced patron at my favorite coffee shop. A stranger to me, really, and an innocuous thing until the man bought me a decaf latte no cinnamon and told the barista to write Sis on it when she asked for my name. Sis. Not Isabella. Not Izzy like most folks shortened it to. Not Ms. Hush.

  Sis.

  That my latte benefactor knew my name at all was a red flag, but to use that specific and unusual nickname? A gal like me knew what that meant. It stank of Scottie Lebans, and if she who hesitated was lost, then she who didn't tear off in a blind panic hearing that name was royally screwed.

  I needed to fund an escape. And I needed to fund it fast.

  Scottie had found me, and while he wasn't standing behind me as I crouched in front of that painting, I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

  I just had to get through the ridiculous pin pad security panel in front of me. Then, I might get out before the affluent Ken and Barbie of the Mcmansion returned from their soiree. It had already been a tight shimmy through a narrow skylight and a nasty climb down through the skylights in my black yoga pants with a four foot drop at the end because they had a sunken sort of floor you couldn't see from the top.

  One of my rubber soles had come unglued from my shoe when I'd landed. It lolled like a tongue from the bottom as I'd scanned the recessed gallery of the couple's sprawling home.

  Herringbone oak floors shone a pleasant nutty shade of stain intended, no doubt, to make the visitor feel like she stood inside the belly of an ancient tree. An equally burnished stairwell wound in a curve toward a second level of the gallery, one that was merely a walkway with blood rust stain that led the same visitor along a row of what I imagined were first edition books.

  From where I stood, I could make out the worn look of leather bindings on books too thick to be made of mere paper. Vellum, no doubt.

  Several dozen pieces of artwork peppered the olive colored walls, lit with perfectly bright, natural seeming iridescence. A statue of Napoleon stood guard at the far door, its own a sort of artistic piece of treasure. His hand clutched at something unseen beneath his breast lapel, probably pinching his nipple.

  A Ming vase held its ground on a pinpoint plinth that looked weathered but sturdy and far too ivory-ish to be merely faux.

  I could take any number of items and call it a day. But I'd come for the gold. And gold was what I was going to leave with. Seeing the collection made me all the more sure of the stash of Incan jewelry, and I told myself I could buy a dozen new pairs of rubber soled stealth shoes once I unloaded it to the right buyer.

  I even had one in mind, several notches down the network and half a dozen Tarzan swings sideways. She would pay dearly for just one penis piercing because she had that kind of clientele.

  But the job had to be quick to be effective, and I didn't need the added frustration of a panel made up of fractions.

  I squatted on my haunches staring at the thing, feeling the hairs at the nape of my neck rise. A breeze somewhere, I told myself, cycling from the
open skylight above me by the air exchanger and circling back toward me. Not someone watching me. Not a host of brawny men come to take me to what they might refer to as 'home' or to the person they would refer to as 'my fiancé' who would take up my goods as though my earnings were somehow his.

  A bead of sweat slipped free of my hairline and trickled down my nape.

  I was my own damn woman. I'd proven that these last three years. I was done proving it to anyone else.

  I lifted the weight of hair off my neck, hoping to let the breeze mop the last of it up.

  The matrix with its orange buttons gloated at me with a jack-o-lantern's grin.

  "Damn," I muttered before the sound of my own voice made me clamp my lips closed. Last time I'd spoken during a lift, I'd spent the night chained to Scottie's bed, naked and shivering on the floor.

  I pushed the memory away and planted my palm against the pad's face. I inhaled slowly as though patience was an oily residue in the air. The room smelled of old dog and burnt hair. A terrible stink, really, for a Mcmansion. They needed a better cleaning lady.

  I swallowed down the clump that had started to form in my throat when I imagined what Scottie would have waiting for me this time. Not just an errant word, but an entire three years of disappearance to make up for.

  I stared at the pad again, running my gaze from top to bottom and panning sideways. I had to stay calm. Focused.

  I was struggling to search for some secret sauce to the code before the couple swiped their key card or the video surveillance app picked me up and transmitted me to cell phones half a city away.

  Time was running down.

  I rasped out the denominators audibly, obviously frazzled and too hopped up on adrenaline to care.

  "Four, Sixteen, Thirty Two."

  Easily reduced down to a half, but a half fraction was not on the pin pad. Just lots of easy to reduce fractions and a cluster of improper ones. I'd had to on a kid for information on the place. She might have told me the owner was a math teacher.

  "Shit," I muttered. The sequence could be random, but experience taught me it never was. And it was always four numbers. And it meant something to the owner.

  I shuffled on my feet, my thighs groaning from squatting so long. The muscles quivered more from suppressed anxiety than fatigue. I was here on prime time. My surveillance app hacker connection promised me thirteen minutes. I'd already spent four of them.

  It was that thought that made me see it. Prime time. Prime numbers. Four of the fractioned buttons reduced into prime numbers. And the resulting numbers indicated the order they needed to be pressed in. One. Three. Five. Seven.

  My breath caught in my throat, making a sort of hiccuping sound. I touched each key reverently, steeling myself for an alarm.

  Nothing. No bells.

  No popping release sound from the safe door letting go either. It didn't open in a sleepy yawn to reveal its stained and yellowed teeth.

  Nothing, in fact, but the irritated sound of my own sigh as I realized I'd been wrong about the cache. Wrong about The Lolli.

  Even now the police could be on their way, alerted by a silent alarm brought on by my error.

  I counted my time in my head. Two minutes down the rope, four by now on my haunches, far longer than one minute trying to see through the puzzle of the buttons. Did I have enough left to get the hell out of there now and at least haul ass before the surveillance app turned back on and showed my face?

  I considered smiling for the couple and waving so that their cell phone app could show it was worth the price.

  Just when I was about to scan the matrix again for a pattern I hadn't seen, something clicked loud enough to snag my attention. The lock in the safe had surrendered and the door that I expected to swing open slid upwards to reveal two drawers instead.

  The slickness of it just begged acknowledgment.

  "Wicked," I said to the polished brass drawer handles without meaning to say a word.

  Even so, I couldn't help but whistle low in appreciation. Two drawers. Both the same size and depth. No doubt so much gold it needed to be stored in two separate boxes. I was giddy.

  Then I realized the clicking sound from the safe hadn't stopped when it should have. In fact, it was coming faster and louder and seemed to be coming from behind me.

  The hairs on my neck strained from the skin.

  I had been being watched.

  Just not by human eyes.

  A low rumbling sound rolled across the room. The sharp intake of my own breath brought a shiver to my chest.

  I should have turned around. I would no doubt get a full look at the attackers, give myself an idea of how much time I had before they sank their teeth into my skin, but I had come so far.

  I reached for the first drawer with my right hand and hefted my satchel out toward the drawer with my left. I had seconds if any. That movement alone made the rumbling sound turn to growling. The clicking sounded faster. I knew if I looked over my shoulder what I'd see.

  Pitbulls no doubt. Or Rottweilers. They were a favorite of security paranoiacs everywhere. Trained to attack without hesitation.

  Whatever breed they were, they would not let me out without spilling more than a bit of my blood. I was sure of that.

  I just didn't know how many rushed me until I yanked the top drawer open and started to upend its contents into the satchel. I did look then, because I needed to know how far away they were and precisely which direction they would come for me so I could roll out of the way.

  I didn't have time for the second drawer. That was clear. I barely had time to scrabble to my feet and run for the rope I'd left dangling four feet above me.

  The sheer size of the two raging dogs barreling across the tiles at me made my bladder spasm. They weren't Pittbulls or Rottweillers.

  They were some sort of wolf hybrid. Huge and rabid looking.

  "Fuck," I said, and I didn't care that it was audible.

  I bottomed out as my knees gave way. The next sound that came from my mouth was a scream.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE WOMAN WHO COULD stay calm with two attack dogs hurtling at her simply wasn't human. I gawked at the beasts as they scrabbled in an almost comical flurry to get at me, slipping on the tiles and losing purchase in their haste.

  But it was no laughing matter. They were coming for me. And I had no idea what to do.

  I had seconds, if not a single heartbeat to get myself up and out of there before those teeth tore through my whisper soft yoga pants and plunged into my tender skin. And that was only if I was lucky. My throat would be a more tantalizing target and they'd go for that if they could.

  I had to get up. I had to get out of there. One more heartbeat and I might not have another.

  I know my fingers clenched into fists as they tried to push the rest of my body onto my feet and into a runner's lunge. The rubber lolling tongue on my left sole caught on the slickness of the varnished floor and I spilled onto my chest with my chin striking the corner of a gorgeous bit of herringbone.

  I might have whimpered as I angled my face upward to catch sight of the beasts. My fingers still clutched the bag, my toes already dug into the floor as I tried to get up.

  I half expected the whole thing to draw out in slow mo the way awful things do. I think some part of my brain even hesitated to send signals to my muscles because it couldn't grasp the danger fast enough.

  But the time didn't stretch out at all. It rocketed toward me at the speed of stink.

  I was completely blind to anything except the way those teeth loomed large as a 3D movie, the gums black and shining as the lips pulled back. Foam curled at the edges of their mouths.

  I smelled rotten fish and old meat. My eardrum near burst with the shrill bark of fury that somehow sounded far closer than was possible.

  They were on me faster than I could scrabble away.

  I started kicking like a maniac, my legs working like they were arms flapping even as my forearm flew to elbow whatever b
it of dog hide I could strike. One set of teeth clamped down around my calf while the other set dripped foaming saliva onto the floor as the beast tried to work itself past its partner to get a savory chunk of my arm.

  I screamed into my shoulder cuff and ended up grabbing a bit of material between my teeth to bite down on as pain sliced through my calf and up behind my knee.

  I lost track of the other dog in the haze of pain and terror. Everything narrowed down to the pain in my leg, the feel of the hot then cold wetness that soaked my pants and left them sticking to my skin as the dog shook me.

  I was going to die here. I knew it as sure as I was being yanked sideways and backwards like a crocodile's supper being rolled over.

  I knew the bite had broken skin and brought blood. That alone made my chest go tight. It felt like a lot of blood, and a lot of blood meant arteries and tendons. A wave of heat flooded my skin and then I went cold. Passing out. I was passing out.

  I could not pass out.

  This time, I heard my whimper. I sounded small and afraid and pitiful and it made me sick to my stomach I was such a coward. I'd faced a bully, for heaven's sake, one who delighted in watching his henchmen pull fractured finger bones out through the split skin of a traitor's hand. I hadn't snuck out one night under cover of darkness and ran like a frightened girl; I'd struck him with a baseball bat. I'd kicked him in the balls when he was down. I stood my ground and fought my way out in a gauzy nightgown and in my bare feet, by God.

  I would not let a four-legged animal do me in.

  Not now.

  I'm not sure of the moment when things changed. I only knew in one instant I was kicking and flailing about in a panic, and the next, I had a flash of myself calmly packing my heist bag. That's when time pulled itself apart in cheese strings that were as gooey as they were elastic. I saw myself slip in gloves and a burner cell phone. A single blade that could snap open with a click of a button, better for jimmying than slicing and cutting. Rope. Carabiners.

  I ran my hands again along the next item in my mind, feeling the cold metal against a hot palm.