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

by Thea Atkinson

  At least he eased me back down so that my feet met the ground again. His grip loosened just enough to let air seep down my throat and into my lungs. But he still held me pinned against the wall. His whole body leaned into me again, trapping me there.

  "One more time, human," he said. "Where is my rune?"

  "What?" Human, he'd called me.

  He shook me again.

  "You know exactly what I'm talking about. You stole it from me."

  While his fingers didn't leave my throat, I could breathe easily again. I sucked in air greedily. The free fall sense of being untethered, of the tingling in my skin and floating sensation in the back of my head, started to recede. The pulse in my temple hammered as my heart tried to push air into my blood. I could feel it racing through my veins. I would live.

  I tested out my voice and was happy to hear a note of brashness in it that I didn't feel.

  "I don't have anything," I told him without lying.

  He canted his head just enough sideways to tell me he knew I was using truth as camouflage. Not a stupid man. Even so, I didn't expect his next words.

  "Do you know what I am?" he said.

  The way he phrased the question—with what instead of who—made my skin go cold.

  "A bastard?" I blinked at him innocently, trying all the while to reign in my imagination and its insistence on playing me a video of Lord of the Rings.

  It didn't anger him like I expected. Instead, he smiled.

  "Indeed," he said. "I wear it like a good suit, I know. But beyond my parentage, do you know who you're dealing with?"

  "A violent prick?"

  This time I didn't say it quite so congenially. I wasn't sure why I was tempting fate. I knew he could easily squeeze the very last bit of air from my body. I just knew that I wasn't going to give in to violent persuasion. I was done with that shit.

  He put both of his hands flat on bricks on either side of my head and then he laid his forehead against mine. He closed his eyes, let his nose run along the bridge of mine. If he'd been a dog, I would've thought he was scenting me. Laying his own smell on me. I considered bringing my knee up between his legs, but found I was strangely compliant, like I was in the throes of a nice high.

  "I'm a sorcerer," he said as though he were telling the greatest secrets to a new lover he wanted to impress. As though it meant something. "A tracker."

  I tried to dance my mind around the things he was telling me: sorcerer. Tracker. All I could think was I needed to escape. Which meant I compounded my stupidity.

  "Some tracker," I said, thinking of the tile I'd taken. "Your shit is gone."

  He gripped my wrist and twisted it hard enough I cringed. The pad of his thumb ran along the henna mark.

  "Mine," he said of the mark. And then it felt as though he had branded me with a hot iron. I tried to pull my hand back, but he tightened his grip.

  "You're my 'shit'," he said. "And because you're my shit, and because I have a very healthy relationship with the blackest of magics, I could pull your skin from your body with a whisper."

  My skin went cold at his words. Sorcerer. Black Magic. I started piecing together all of those discordant chunks of puzzle that until now wouldn't slip one groove into the other.

  My perspective had clouded my vision. My bias had kept me from seeing possibility. And that was the cardinal rule of puzzle solving. You had to step outside of the things that you knew in order to see other possibilities. If you couldn't, you had no chance in hell of solving a puzzle.

  Fayed had not looked anything like himself in those moments when Kelly had attacked the bar. Kelly's purple blast of light. Maddox asking me what I was.

  I had entered the looking glass. There was almost a giddy sense of relief in admitting it to myself. Once I allowed the impossible, everything shifted. It wasn't prettier by any stretch, but at least it made sense.

  I recalled the way he'd been lying injured in the back alley.

  "Kelly hurt you," I guessed. "Back at the bar. She got to you."

  He gave me a queer sort of look that said he didn't expect me to say that, but it said more. It told me he was telling the truth.

  "It was fortunate you were there," he said. "You have impeccable timing for a human."

  I grit my teeth as I realized one more thing. The burn marks on my cat. The burning in my wrist. They were connected.

  "You're the one who broke into my apartment."

  The pain in my wrist receded, and he nodded. "I didn't have the strength yet after the fae's attack to physically collect the tile but I needed to know you still had it."

  "She's good," he said. "Kelly is. And she's ruthless. And she is determined. She won't stop until she gets it."

  There was a strange note in his voice as though he was mourning something already gone.

  "I thought you were one of hers at first," he said leaning in close again and sniffing my neck. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. "You have a peculiar fragrance to your skin."

  I rankled at that. I thought of Scottie and all of the times he told me I belonged to him and that everything I had, everything I was, was his.

  "I'm no one's," I said.

  He made a noncommittal sound deep in his throat. But he seemed to relax. Not enough to let me go, but enough that I could see I was no longer a threat to him. He just wanted something from me. He would bully me until he got it.

  "So you're tracking me because you have no idea where your goods are?"

  "Tracking flesh has its benefits," he said. "And its disadvantages I will admit. But one does what he can with the skills he was born with."

  I had to agree there.

  "So where is it?" he said.

  "I told you I don't have it." I held his gaze. "But I know who does."

  "Then you will retrieve it."

  I thought of the blast of light Kelly had thrown at both Maddox and I. I recalled his warnings. I thought of my poor cat, gone now along with my bug out bag.

  "If you think I'm going to die over some ridiculous a piece of stone –" I said.

  "Not stone," he said. "Bone."

  "If you think I'm going to die over some piece of bone—"

  He lay his palm over my mouth and I gasped beneath it, trying to suck in air. Even my sinuses were clogged with what felt like muck. I could imagine myself beneath the sea, silt washing into every orifice, seeping into the small, open spaces.

  He was going to kill me. Right here. Right in the middle of the street and I couldn't do a damn thing about it.

  "There are only two factions that know this thing exists," he said, laying his mouth against my cheek so he could funnel the words into my ear. "One of them will just kill you. The other will kill everyone you know. Care to guess which one I am?"

  I shook my head.

  He let go my mouth and I hauled in air like a greedy vacuum. My chest lurched with the blast of intake. I couldn't do more than nod. My cap fell off my head and rolled into the gutter.

  "Good," he said. "Good."

  I couldn't let this maniac find me at any given moment, take his leisure with my life. If I was going to do this, I wanted at least one thing.

  "The mark," I said. "Can you at least take this damn mark off."

  "That stays until after delivery."

  Until after. That was better than nothing.

  "Fine," I said.

  The wash of absinthe-hue receded from the street. People's faces came into focus again.

  "You have 24 hours," he said. "Find the rune and press your tracking mark. The clock is already ticking."

  I nodded because I couldn't seem to speak around the thickness of my tongue.

  "If you don't, I'll not only burn your brownstone down, I'll find you and wear your skin like a damn poncho."

  CHAPTER 20

  HE DISAPPEARED AS QUICKLY as he'd come, and everything that had been washed in green went back to normal. The sounds of street life, of vendors calling out to hock their wares, hookers taunting johns, brakes b
laring: It all came rushing back like a floodgate had opened.

  I sagged against the wall on legs that felt like they were about to buckle. I clutched my hand to my chest and worried the collar of my shirt. What he'd asked of me put me square in the middle of danger no matter which option I chose. It was a hell of predicament.

  I would have to find Maddox.

  I kicked along the street, searching for my phone. I found it next to a trash can, dirty and scuffed but still functioning.

  I was punching the numbers onto my cell phone screen when my drunkard finally exited the pizza place. I could smell him and the oregano long before I saw him. In the aftermath of being assaulted in the middle of the street by stranger, I would've thought I'd lost my appetite, but the smell of burning cheese and yeasty bread made my stomach grumble.

  "You look like you've seen a ghost," he said as he handed over a slice that hung from his fingers like an over sized tongue.

  I pulled the thing toward my mouth with a bit of hesitation, knowing the man who offered it probably hadn't washed in days. Maybe weeks. But hunger has a way of winning out over niceties like that. It was as though, having faced my death, I was ravenous to taste, smell, breathe again. The pizza tasted glorious.

  I just caught a bit of hanging cheese with my tongue before it dripped to the ground. I chewed thoughtfully for a long time, watching him as he savored his piece. So he wasn't too far gone if he could spend a little bit of money on food instead of alcohol. Maybe he wasn't as derelict as I believed. Maybe he could be more useful than I thought.

  "How would you like to make a little more money?" I said to him.

  "Depends on what it is I have to do for it," he said.

  "Nothing criminal," I said.

  He shrugged. "I have no problem with criminal, it's how much time it will take."

  Translation: he was running a little low on blood alcohol content.

  "You can multitask," I said. "All you have to do is hang out on a specific street and watch a specific apartment."

  I stationed him outside my brownstone. He could do double duty; Mr. Smith would think I'd sent him to help with the optics and if I needed to return home, I could check with him before I went in. It wasn't fool proof, but it was something.

  He shrugged good-naturedly and I gave him the address, giving specific details about where he should stay so that it is out of sight of the more affluent neighbors who might run him off. It was comforting to think I had a lookout and I felt a twinge of guilt for my poor cat who could have used a warning before that sorcerer decided to burn her fur down to the skin.

  Sorcerer. I seemed to be taking that information pretty much in stride. And here I was making those contingency plans for something I didn't understand. Was I so ready to accept that a supernatural world bubbled beneath my feet? Maybe three days ago I'd have laughed in someone's face who suggested such a thing.

  After feeling the very real struggle to breathe beneath a very real hand, feeling the burn deep down into my bone from that mark, acceptance of it was a moot point. Whether I wanted to believe or not, there was no other explanation.

  Just thinking about it all made me tired. But there was something else prickling along my skin as I watched my drunkard weave his way down the street through pedestrians and the occasional hooker. And that was the sense of an entire new world opening up to me. One that might provide escape, one that Scottie couldn't find me in. One that might have an entirely new treasure trove of goods to plunder.

  One of the other special gifts Scottie wanted me for was my adaptability. He would've called me pliable. Had called me pliable, actually. Submissive even.

  I reached for my cell phone. I tapped the numbers for Kassie's burner into the keypad. She'd connected me to Maddox before. And she was my only lead back to him.

  I had 24 hours, and that meant I couldn't waste any time. I walked while the phone rang on the other end, keeping my head down.

  When she answered it was with the customary clipped sentences.

  "Here," she said through the other end of the line.

  "The milk has gone bad," I said. She'd know what that meant.

  The phone went dead on her end and I slipped mine back into my pocket. If I knew Kassie, she would have dumped the burner phone as soon as she hung up. She was a smart girl. She knew things had gone wrong. She wouldn't risk anyone contacting her again. Not even me.

  I booked an uber to get to the meeting location. My legs were spent and tired and I was in dire need of sleep. I leaned back into the leather seats of the Volkswagen GTI and closed my eyes.

  I hoped to catch five minutes over the ten minute drive, but the wash of green haunted the inside of my eyelids and I snapped my eyelids back up and again, choosing instead to stare at the city as we drove. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep again until I shook off the dreaded sense of threat that was even now tightening my muscles.

  I hopped out of the uber three blocks away from the meeting place. It was a habit I had begun years earlier upon fleeing to the city. If you always assumed someone was following you, you never went directly to the destination. So I had that driver drop me off at Chinese restaurant three blocks away. I went in the front door, and then begged a server to let me out the back. I inched along the back alleys until I found the library. Kassie would be waiting inside. Thriller and mystery section.

  She was sitting cross-legged on the floor holding open an aged Agatha Christie on her lap.

  She looked up when she heard me approach and closed the book so quietly I doubted even the dust mites inside were disturbed.

  "Trouble," she said.

  I nodded. "Trouble you can't even imagine."

  I sat down next to her and let my legs stretch out across the aisle. It felt good to rest them and let the muscles go flaccid. My hands found a place on my lap as I leaned back against the column of hardcover book spines. I examined the mark on my wrist with renewed interest.

  I wondered if the sorcerer was a bit voyeuristic and was lurking somewhere about in that haze of median world. It gave me the shivers. The faster I was rid of this thing, the better. It was bad enough worrying about Scottie finding me, but now knowing some other dangerous man could call himself to me in a heartbeat through this thing made every hair on the back of my neck stand and flail about wildly for rescue. My chest felt tight with panic.

  "I have to ask a favor of you," I said still looking at my hands. "You need to tell me how to find Maddox."

  Something in me wanted to reach out and use physical contact to create that connection that might encourage her to give me what I wanted. But it would have the opposite effect on her. I knew that. I respected her need for space. We were sitting next to each other, but several feet apart. I was careful not to get too close.

  I let her think that over. It might take a moment or it might take ten. I couldn't rush it. I felt bone weary with the waiting, but there was nothing for it to be done. Waiting is hard work.

  "No," came the short answer.

  Then she was on her feet and pushing the book back into its place on the shelf. It was so abrupt, I reached out and touched her leg without thinking. She recoiled as though I had burnt her. Her face crinkled up like a wolverine sensing a threat. I scrambled to my feet, holding out my hands in a placating gesture.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to do that. I'm just exhausted. I've had a hell of a day."

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, and when that pain wasn't quite enough to rattle my brain into the here and now, those fingers crawled up to my scalp and tugged on my hair. Both hands ended up on top of my head, fingers interlaced as I regarded her. She hadn't moved. But she looked like she was ready to spin on her heel and tear off down the aisle like a terrified rabbit.

  I was desperate. I realized how desperate when I stared at the way my hand snaked out and clutched her sleeve and the way she yanked away from me because I couldn't let go.

  "I need to know, Kassie," I said, inching closer, instinct trying to close t
he gap so I wouldn't feel so exposed. "I can't tell you why because I don't want you to be in danger, but I need to know. Every minute I stand here doing nothing, is one I can't afford to lose."

  She canted her head to the side. The mass of soft looking curls lay across her cheek in an endearing way. She reminded me of a cherub for all of three seconds until she spoke again and the note of dread in her voice ruined the warm and fuzzy feeling.

  "You won't like it," she said.

  I swallowed down the instinctive fear and searched for something courageous to say, something that wouldn't make me sound like a frightened little girl that had gone one step too far into oncoming traffic.

  "There are lots of things I don't like," I said.

  She blinked several times as she watched me, and I knew that what was going on behind that gaze was considerable examination. She looked older in that moment, ages older. It was the eyes, I realized. The maturity in the depths was staggering. Whatever she searched for, I knew she was weighing what she saw against a heavy control and that if I had any hope of getting what I needed, I had to let that assessment find me as light as a feather.

  I felt like a deer about to pluck an apple from the bottom of a baited tree. I could hear my own breathing.

  But I waited.

  I didn't know the outcome until her hand snaked out from mine, closing the distance between us. Before I realized she had moved, I saw a little penknife in her hand. Too late, I tried to back away but she sliced into my forearm just above the hennaed mark.

  The girl who spoke the rare few words suddenly started rattling off dozens of them. They sounded ancient, those words, as though they came from a time before language had stretched into the sophisticated pattern of syllables it was.

  The room spun as she spoke. Spines of books made a kaleidoscope of color and shapes in the racks. The back of my head felt as though it was on a carnival ride all by itself

  My knees buckled. I had to reach out to grab the book stacks to keep from falling.