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

by Thea Atkinson

  An item I'd never had to use but packed each time almost like a religion or a superstition.

  One, very slim, very long can of three shot pepper spray.

  I just needed to get to it.

  I rolled into a ball as best I could, trying to ignore the pulsing in my calf, the growling that was muffled in my pants. The second dog jammed his snout up against my heist bag. I punched down hard on its nose and made it yelp. I kicked out hard to dislodge the first beast.

  I didn't think. I didn't have to. Instinct rammed my fingers into the bag and felt around till they found the telltale feel of cold metal. I was close. Too close maybe. I didn't dare pull my face out of the tucked posture and I didn't want to miss, so I had to let them come at me again. It took everything I had to look up and face them, to let them lunge for me again.

  The spray sizzled out into the air and struck them in a focused shot of mist full in the face and mouth. It shot a stinking, hot load everywhere as I panned the can back and forth.

  The dogs yelped and scrabbled to get away, knocking my hand and sending the hissing back at me.

  I gasped for breath as my throat constricted. My eyes burned like hellfire.

  But I couldn't balk now. I had to keep going. I dropped the can into my bag, heedless of the blood that nearly made me slip as I ran, weaving and stumbling, for the rope.

  The dogs were both gagging and puking up slimy meat onto the floor and the smell of sick drove me harder to the knotted rope I'd left dangling.

  Three minutes at best before they'd begin to recover. It wasn't a big can, the three shot spray. Just enough to give a gal a good run on a rapist.

  Blind and coughing and groping for the knot I knew hung somewhere nearby, I kept a tight grip on my heist bag. I couldn't see a damned thing and I couldn't peel my eyelids open. I kept telling myself the dogs would be in the same condition.

  It was the only thing that kept me running.

  It was a miracle my fingers touched the rope at all, but I knew when I felt the first clump of nylon in the monkey's fist that I had hold of my tether. Thank God.

  I pulled and leapt at the same time.

  I planted my feet onto the first knot and used the propulsion to jerk my way up to the next, praying the whole time that my muscles wouldn't give out. I wasn't sure if the noise of gagging came from me or the dogs below. I just knew I hand-by-handed it up the two stories to the roof until I could crawl free of the skylight. My biceps felt like soggy sponges and my thighs wouldn't stop trembling, but I was safe.

  I might have retched onto my shirt. I wasn't sure if anything came up but a bit of lung tissue and I didn't care. It had been a risk. Too big a risk after leaving my skills to atrophy from fear of using them. The desperation hadn't done me any favors.

  I lay against the slate tiles on my back until the waves of dizziness receded, which seemed like an eternity. My heart rate took a while to level after its rapid spike. My eyes burned like the devil had spit in them. Despite feeling like a bag of cayenne pepper all over, I had to rustle up the courage to pull the rope back up. I needed to get the hell out of there before the couple or the authorities arrived.

  Leaning down to grasp the rope gave me a moment of terror as I nearly toppled back through. I caught myself by rolling onto my shoulder and making myself too broad to fit in the narrow space. In doing so, I made the mistake of peering through the gap with burning eyes into the living room below me.

  The dogs had recovered. They fought each other as they each tried to nom down on the trail of blood I'd left. My hand went instinctively to my stomach as I looked at them through a blur of fiery water.

  Not just attack dogs, I realized, but trained to get rid of any invader they came across.

  No regular Ken and Barbie McMansion, these. Even Scottie hadn't done such a cowardly thing as to use animals that way. The rage and adrenaline forced a cough through my chest that rattled up my throat. It wasn't just relief that made me roll into a ball. I'd dodged a bullet for sure. Not just in getting free with the loot I'd come for, but relatively unharmed in comparison to what could have happened.

  As sick as it made me to think I'd escaped a horrible demise, I felt stoked too. Whatever they'd been guarding for the owners, they'd felt it important enough to use attack dogs.

  Incan gold indeed.

  I craned my neck to inspect the damage to my calf, groping in the dark over torn material to probe the bare skin with tentative fingers.

  When fingers met raw skin and sent an electric jolt of pain through my leg, I guessed I'd need stitches. Great for regular folk, but I'd have to content myself with my stash of skin tape. And maybe it wouldn't be so bad in the light.

  I kept telling myself that as I descended and made my way through the shadows of the roof. Stick to things I could control. I'd need to wash my face and my eyes. I could listen for sirens—of which, despite straining my hearing—I heard none.

  No doubt there'd been no smart phone app or alarm. Just two really nasty doggies. Thank God.

  I pushed everything back into the heist bag and climbed down the fire escape, mincing along gingerly as my eyes watered and my leg barked at me. It wasn't until I was several blocks away that I dared drop the bag to the sidewalk beneath a streetlight and crouch next to it so I could look inside.

  Jewelry alright.

  Baubles upon baubles of costume junk. Nickel based chains painted gold. A few chunks of glass.

  My heart sunk. I felt as though I was going to be physically sick at the sight of useless junk I'd taken a bite over, and risked exposure for.

  I couldn't even blame my bleary vision on the lack of true goods in the bag. I touched a few things to confirm with my skin what my burning eyes were already telling me.

  A few tawdry bubbles that might have some value but not the take away I expected.

  The second drawer. I should have pulled open the damned second drawer not the first. The first had been a decoy and I'd fallen for it. Rookies did that. What a stupid mistake.

  My leg hurt even more just thinking about it.

  I'd risked everything for this heist. My last dime.

  The bites would no doubt fester, and the baubles would no doubt be worthless, but I hefted the bag to my shoulder anyway and hobbled on with my throat feeling like I'd taken a cheese grater to it.

  I had to feel my way through the streets because my eyes refused to open all the way. My leg ached like a bitch and the cobblestone streets made for rough going. I was half mad at myself and half pissed at the Lolli. I should've known better. What had I been thinking to imagine that there had been a full cache of aging gold just waiting to be pilfered?

  I was so busy grumbling to myself and limping along carefully on a leg that burned like the devil's kiss, I didn't see that the tall figure that stepped in front of me until it was too late.

  CHAPTER 3

  I SMACKED INTO THE man who'd stepped in front of me full force. The heist bag slipped down my arm as I stumbled. It yanked on my shoulder enough that I dropped the bag to the cobblestones with a heavy thud. I froze as I heard the clunking of all that junk inside. Maybe I'd actually find a moment of luck tonight and he wouldn't take in my obvious stealth dress and loot bag and come to the conclusion that I was up to no good.

  I excused myself politely. I didn't like the gravelly tone in my voice that indicated I'd been either yelling too much or screaming in pain. Maybe he wouldn't notice I smelled of puke and pepper spray.

  I took a step to the left as he shuffled to the right. We did a short dance there together as I prayed I could get past him without incident. I made a quick dodge sideways again without thinking about the pain in my leg until it made me cry out. I winced instinctively.

  "I'm so sorry," he said. "You okay?"

  I peered up at him. Way, way up. Even with bleary eyes and nothing but a dim glow from the buildings and streetlights, I could see he was a hulking sort of man, as wide as he was tall. I could just make out a set of long lashed eyes and a dimpled c
hin.

  It was too late to just get by without incident. I'd have to engage. It would be a miracle if I'd get through the street and passed him now without every moment of this encounter burned in his memory. The best thing I could hope for now was just for him to think I was some unwashed derelict carting my entire livelihood on my back to somehow fall under a bridge somewhere.

  "I'm good," I told him but he reached out anyway to grip the handle of the bag and help me ease it back onto my shoulder.

  I had to cough up a good piece of my lung before my voice box would work, and then the sound was throaty and smoky. Like I'd swallowed a firebrand.

  "Thanks," I muttered. "But I'm fine." I edged sideways, just out of reach.

  I needed to get out from beneath that intense study. I felt like he was already adding up my obvious state of distress, the stink of pepper spray, the huge booty bag, and getting a whole slew of prime numbers from those fractions. I tried to shuffle past, as inconspicuously as I could, keeping my face out of his line of sight, trailing the edge of the building the way a mouse might.

  He kept up pace with me no matter how quickly I moved. Kept trying to be so damn helpful.

  "You need some help with that?" he said.

  I was not happy about the way his voice made something inside me feel as though it was stuffed with warm cotton. I wanted to sink into it like the warmest of beds and sleep off the pain of a bad heist. That reaction was not the way I wanted to end this night. If I was smart, I'd recognize the smell of command about him and my terrified younger self would respond with the respect due that clear and present danger.

  Because that's what it should do. Respect the threat of danger. Run from it.

  Instead, I twisted around out of long-ingrained habit and hated myself for it. Cell memory can be a bitch, and Scottie had ingrained the response in me with frequent, brutal reminders.

  "It's not heavy," I told him. Maybe that would be enough for him to leave me be.

  I didn't get far before his grip was on my elbow again.

  I froze. Not sure what to do. By all accounts, he should have done what any city dweller would have done by now and leave me alone. Walk away with his nose in the air because I stank to high heaven.

  What if he wasn't just trying to be helpful? What if he wanted to hurt me?

  I'd used up the pepper spray. I had a knife in my bag if I could reach it. If he tried to accost me, I could try that, but it was a pen knife, no more.

  "You better get that looked at," he murmured from next to me.

  He smelled of vanilla and smoke. Like pipe smoke.

  I, on the other hand, must have looked like I needed a medivac unit. Smelled like I'd gone to war. The pain and bleariness of my vision was affecting my reason. He'd asked me something, hadn't he?

  "What's that?" I said.

  "The leg," the man said. He jerked his chin toward my calf. "Nasty bite for a kitten."

  I didn't look down. I didn't want to see it again. At least not until I was somewhere where I could do something about it. My stomach did somersaults just thinking about looking at it.

  "It's nothing," I told him.

  "You want me to look at it?"

  "No," I said. "I'm good."

  "That bag looks bigger than you are. Here. Let me give you a hand." He reached out for the bag and waggled his fingers.

  He knew what I'd done. I knew he knew. It was all over his posture and it was a matter of time before he pulled out his cell phone and alerted the police.

  I balked without meaning to, the way a teen might who had just shoved a pilfered chocolate bar beneath his armpit and caught sight of the mall police. And there was no taking back that reaction. It was a neon, flashing sign of guilt.

  "Don't touch me." I backed away, trying to disguise the reaction by acting as though I was scared. It wasn't a complete lie. I was terribly afraid he would call the cops on me.

  "It's alright, kitten," he said. "I don't bite unless asked."

  He chuckled to himself as though I had just missed out on something wonderful and secretive. He tipped his fingers to his forehead the way a gentleman might if he were wearing a fedora as he walked backwards for several steps. He spun on his heel and disappeared around the corner, leaving me gaping after him.

  I waited to be sure he was really gone before I picked my way towards the main street and then down several back ones.

  I found a half-empty bottle of water lying on the sidewalk and after testing to make sure of its contents, poured the rest of the fluid over my eyes. It didn't completely fix my vision, but it eased up some of the extreme stinging.

  The homeless old soddie I came upon leaning against a stinking trash can looked at me like I had three heads when I opened the bag under his nose.

  "Wassat?" he said, sniffing the air and waving his hand like he thought I stunk.

  No doubt I did. Blood was drying on my calf and the dog saliva that had run down my neck had an odor of old meat. The pepper spray made me smell like a ripe taco. Not the most delicate of perfumes.

  I peered down at the man from swollen eyes, imagining he thought I was of the same sort of fortune. If he could catch sight of my eyes, he'd just assume they were rheumy from drink.

  I squatted down painfully so I was at his level. My thighs still ached from the escape and the lingering scent of capsaicin made my nostrils burn.

  "This," I said, jiggling the bag. "Is a cup of coffee for us both."

  "What do I have to do for it?"

  His look was wary, but beneath the grisly jowls there was an astute jaw and articulate eyes. A man down on his luck, not intelligence. But for my talents, I might be in the same stead. I let go a wheezing breath meant to sound encouraging not rheumy, but the running had made my lungs ache and it came out sickly.

  "Well?" he demanded.

  "Pawn it for me," I said. "That's all. And if it's a bit of booze you'd rather than a cuppa Joe, no judgment from me."

  His gaze went narrow and he shifted up so he was leaning less on his side and more on his palm. He peered into the bag, snagging the edge with a grimy finger and hooking the material so he could twist it into the light of a nearby streetlight. I shook it so the contents would jangle.

  He pierced me with a sudden clear scrutiny.

  "Sell it," he said, nodding with comprehension. "For you."

  He stressed the word for instead of you, indicating he understood exactly what was going on.

  I angled my bleeding leg away from him and shrugged my shoulders away from the clinging T-shirt. I tried my damndest not to give anything away in my expression. He might be homeless and in need of cash, food, and maybe a dram of whiskey, but if someone came behind me asking an old sot if he'd seen a young girl about yay high, he'd sell me out as quick as the coffee went through his cirrhotic liver. He had no reason to protect someone he didn't know.

  It was up to me to change that.

  "I'm a run away," I said, heeling my hand across my burning eyes. "I can't risk my parents finding me and I need cash."

  It wasn't a lie, at least not all of it. It was true I was on the run, and it was true I needed cash.

  He ran an assessing eye over my five feet three inches top to bottom, taking in what I knew was a mass of black curls and a nose that made me look like a teenager. I knew he'd assume the same thing everyone did when they saw me.

  He grunted. "There's faster ways to make money for a young girl," he said and I wasn't offended. It was truth. I'd seen it hundreds of times. Considered it even back in my day.

  "Indeed. But that's the sort of thing I ran away from."

  His brow furrowed in anger. I had him. He was going to go for it. He felt pity and protection for a poor young girl down on her luck. I let my leg back into view of the street-lamp. Couldn't hurt for him to think someone had ill-used me.

  "You can keep ten percent," I said. "Whatever you get for it, a tenth's yours."

  "Twenty five."

  "Twenty." I was feeling the kind of generosit
y borne of desperation.

  He seesawed his jaw back and forth and dug a hand into the bag.

  "Junk," he said as though he could see the tawdry dull color of the gold-plate when we both knew the streetlight wasn't nearly strong enough for that.

  "Not all of it," I said, hoping it was true. I'd seen a glint of yellow in the bag that was too clear to be anything but a yellow diamond. "There's a ring in there. Nice one."

  "So you want me to pawn stolen goods for you, eh?" he said.

  I nodded.

  He lifted a thick chain from the bag and held it aloft as he quirked his head to the side and looked at me. I didn't dare relieve my trembling thighs to either sit or stand under that scrutiny. It all hung in the balance in that one moment. My safety, my carefully constructed anonymity. My future.

  "You ain't no runaway kid," he said, breathing out a blast of stale booze. "You might look like one, but you ain't. You got too savvy a face on you for that. And it ain't just cops you're avoiding. That I can tell. Question is, who you running from, Missy?"

  CHAPTER 4

  THE MAN WHO HAD SET me on a tear out into the night in my jammies might not be a name folks knew as a rule, but he had a way of knowing when his name was spoken, and he tracked the listener down with fanatical prejudice. Scottie. A man as possessive of the sound of his name as he was of his ten cars, his army of minions, and the woman – me – who had helped make him a shit ton of cash.

  Best this old gent just think I was a little dirty and a little scared and a heck of lot in need of fast cash.

  "Everyone's running from something," I hedged. "You, for example." I jerked the bag at him. "Homelessness wasn't a choice, was it? It never is. It's always the result of running from something big enough that you'd rather beg than earn."

  I ran a keen gaze over his threadbare jeans and worn out doctor's loafers and watched him shift ever so slightly onto one hip. I'd hit the mark, sure enough. It was a bald and uncomfortable truth for many of the derelicts I met. But for my own love of comfort and warmth, I might be right there along with them. It was a truth that I tried to avoid as long as I could.