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

by Thea Atkinson

  He stood still, very still under my scrutiny then he murmured, so quietly it might have been my imagination, "I don't need to resort to tricks and lies to get what I want, Kitten. I just take it."

  He just took it. I felt naked suddenly. I met that steady gaze as bravely as I could, but I could barely hear anything but the hammering of my heartbeat in my ears as the horrible realization of it all struck me.

  "I can't give this tile up, can I?" I said and fell backwards, reaching behind me for the chair. "I won't be safe anywhere. No one will."

  I collapsed against the arm of the chair because I couldn't hold to my feet any longer. I would have tumbled over it backwards except Maddox caught me before I could. He held me firmly, let me hover between the chair and his chest, looking down at me with something like bemusement in his features.

  His hands lingered on my forearm for an instant longer than I expected but then they were shoved into his pockets and he was unreadable again.

  I was dead whether I collected the rune for Finn or not.

  Maybe we all were.

  CHAPTER 28

  THERE WAS A SORT OF release in the realization that my free will was gone. Much like the look of relief I'd seen in a hundred men's eyes when they knew that no matter what they did or said next, death would release them from the agony of not telling, and the guilt of saying too much.

  I laughed but somehow it sounded more like a sob.

  "You don't have to be the thin red line between chaos and calm," he said, and the smoothness of his tone was like warm chocolate and tiny marshmallows. I know he felt me yielding. He inched closer.

  "I can help you."

  I looked at the velvet box that held the strange looking tile and its odd little scorched-in markings. So much ado about something so small.

  I lifted my gaze to his. There was an earnestness behind his eyes that didn't make sense. Fayed had told me not to trust him. Kassie had told me not to trust him. And now here I was, in the belly of his territory, off my game, not thinking clearly.

  He had to be working me. The entreating look in his eyes could be faked. He might be very practiced at all this. The manager of a very large market, dealing with all manner of retail, he had to be good at negotiating. A con woman should know a con when she saw it, but for all I knew, his supernatural skill might well be to compel people the way vampires did.

  Hadn't he said earlier that there were no good guys? That meant him as well. No good guys anywhere. That's exactly what my experience had been over my lifetime. Scottie. My foster fathers. Even the mothers sometimes. A dozen people or more who had used me and abused me. I was used to it, but it didn't mean I had to accept it.

  I needed distance. I couldn't think with him looking at me that way. I closed my hand over the box and stumbled away from him. I headed for the door only to realize that there was no handle. I swung around, feeling an unwanted wetness on my face.

  "Let me out," I said. I swiped a hand across my cheek to rid it of water.

  He didn't move.

  "Let me out," I said, stronger now.

  "Ms. Foster," he started to say and I interrupted him.

  "It's Isabella," I said. "You might as well know my real name if you're going to screw me."

  His shoulders slumped but he nodded toward the doorway. The movement seemed to be enough to make it yawn open. Beyond the threshold lay brightly lit streets. I'd come mid night, and it still seemed so, but like it had when I'd arrived the streetlights and oil lamps burned hot enough to make the alleyway and courtyard beyond seem mid-day. The market in full swing bustled with noise. I thought I could hear children crying.

  And I knew right then why I'd felt uneasy about his convenient submission.

  I took a deep bracing breath and lifted the box to eye level. I fingered the clasp.

  I was my own woman. I'd almost given in to him. Almost believed him.

  "Don't do that," I heard him murmur from behind me. I swung around, not sure how he'd got so close again without me hearing him move.

  "Why?" I demanded, but I knew the answer. The rune was not in there. I was as sure of that as I was of my own heartbeat.

  I snapped the top open as a way to shove my knowledge of human nature in his face, ready to demand my property all over again.

  My shock at seeing the rune lying cushioned against the velvet must have been comical because he let go a short burst of dry laughter. I met his eyes, confused.

  "It was warded," he said shortly.

  "Was?"

  He nodded and pulled his hair up into a bun before crossing his arms over his chest. He looked like he was daring me.

  "I'll live with it," I said and started to leave.

  I halted when I noticed him unhooking a large and heavy looking mace from the side of the door.

  "You planning to bash my brains in?" I clenched the little box behind my back.

  He hefted it into both hands, obviously testing its weight.

  "I wouldn't need such a brutal weapon for that," he said. "This is insurance."

  I wasn't sure whether or not that was supposed to make me feel safer or not. Better not to think about it. I backed my way out of the door and into the alleyway where I'd turned on my heel and headed doggedly toward the mouth of the alley.

  I was certain I could hear him behind me, but I refused to turn around. I wanted to get as close to the exit as I could when I pressed the tracking mark. Let the sorcerer Finn have the damn thing. What did it matter to me? What did it matter to all of humanity? One small piece of tile with scribblings on it that might be a key to a bunch of worlds or someone's bathroom tile for all we really knew.

  Even if it could bring down the entire universe as I knew it, I personally was not going to die here in this miserable bazaar over it. No. I would die in my own home.

  Presuming all of those legends were true in the first place. Which I doubted they were. More like the thing had some more tangible magics that offered up its owner something profitable. Men were greedy. No doubt they were in the supernatural realm too.

  As I got closer to the main bazaar, I was aware of a strange scuffle ahead of me in the courtyard. The tension was almost electric. Something was wrong. I could feel it.

  I panned my gaze left to right. Everyone was frozen to their spots. Evelina, the witch, was hovering next to her cash register with both hands holding onto its sides like she was going to pick it up and hurl it. The children were gone, no doubt sold to the highest bidder, and I felt a nagging guilt at the back of my neck. The wispy man from before had gathered back to himself and was gripping two rather large rocks. The vampires, the lady with the wolf, patrons of different types, all of them seemed to be in a state of alertness.

  It was only when I followed their gaze that I realized someone new was in the courtyard. Someone who had come through the entrance. Someone who could make them all afraid enough to arm themselves with whatever they had to hand.

  I heard Maddox behind me shouting my name even as I realized that the person who had come through the entrance wasn't just an everyday somebody. She was petite in stature like me, wearing combat boots and a sly, confident smile.

  I knew that smile. I knew that demeanor. My legs still ached from the memory of running from it.

  Kelly.

  While I expected the discomfort of realizing my assailant from the back alley behind Fayed's bar was here, I was not expecting the shock I felt at seeing who was with her.

  Kassie. Being held tightly against Kelly's side by a death grip the woman had in her hair. The girl's eyes were wide and darting about as she no doubt sought to find an escape. I knew the girl wouldn't cry out. I doubted she'd even whimper. There was a resolute toughness to the teen that was as impressive as it was sad.

  Kelly gave her a shake as though she wasn't getting enough attention and needed to draw all eyes to her. Kassie winced visibly.

  That's when the dam broke. Someone threw a rock. I assumed it was aimed at Kelly, but it struck the girl in the tem
ple. She went limp in Kelly's grasp.

  "Kassie," I said, breathing the name out like a gasp.

  I expected things to change in that moment, and they did. Whatever Kelly had been hoping for in bringing Kassie here, she seemed to have lost that edge when Kassie fell unconscious. And it didn't make her happy.

  She dropped the girl, who crumpled to the cobblestones in a ball of filthy clothes and tangled hair. She looked like a small child lying there and something in my chest ached to see her looking so vulnerable.

  The wolf lunged, tearing the leash free from its handler's grip. The blast Kelly sent toward him as he ate up several yards in one leap left him transforming with shrieks of agony back into a man. He lay quivering on the cobblestones as each bit of hair and claw retracted into his flesh.

  Kelly took the opportunity to throw both hands out in front of her, her shoulders back, light gathering in her palms as it ebbed out of the lamps and lights. She heaved soccer ball sized balls of light in every direction. Where they landed, things disintegrated, caught fire, or blew into dozens of pieces that sent shrapnel in every direction. Bolts of long, zagged light sizzled creatures into smoldering husks. The air stank of burnt fat.

  Dozens of creatures surged forward, uncaring, it seemed, of their own welfare. But it wasn't enough to quail her. Maddox grabbed my elbow and pulled me back, just out of sight of the assassin's view.

  I tried to shake him off. That was Kassie out there. A young run away that got tied up in this mess for a hundred bucks. I sobbed without meaning to. It was my fault she was here.

  "I can't just leave her," I said.

  "She doesn't need you," he said.

  He tugged me backwards, into the alley way and out of sight. Back where we'd come from. We got maybe three feet when I lost Maddox's hand. The onrushing crowd became a conveyor, moving me helplessly about.

  I lunged forward instinctively, my thoughts on the girl. I found myself in the courtyard amid the heart of the chaos. People ran, rocks sailed through the air, light exploded like bombs all around me. A rush of customers and patrons, some of them small things that barely looked human jostled past me in a bid for escape.

  I felt my legs shoot out from beneath me as I was shoved sideways. Maddox. I recognized the smell of fireplace and smoke.

  We skidded sideways together into a booth made of leather, pulling down swaths of it on top of us. The bowl of eyeballs upended with a clang to the cobblestones and the viscous eyes dropped on me before rolling off in every direction. I fought the urge to gag.

  Maddox was on top of me. The pressure from his weight was squeezing my lungs and making it hard to breathe.

  Another crack split the air. I peered out from over his torso. The bazaar and its occupants had turned into a seething roil. The ghostlike man split into two dozen clones this time, each of them carrying a rock that had somehow got larger than the one he'd held originally. Each clone heaved the stone at her. She deflected each thrust with a wave of light that warbled through the air like a fast forward ebbing tide.

  "You need to get out of here," he said.

  Yeah, I thought. No shit. Therein lay the trouble. I rolled over onto my side as he pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed the mace he'd dropped, then hefted it over his shoulder.

  He gave me one last lingering look, one that was full of expectation and something else. Sadness?

  I stared at him and he reached down to yank me to my feet.

  "Run," he rasped.

  CHAPTER 29

  OBVIOUSLY BELIEVING I'd do just that, he stepped out from behind our cover and stepped into the throng, the mace resting against his shoulder. I thought I heard him whistling. Lounge Fly by Stone Temple Pilots, I thought, but it couldn't be. Because why in the hell would he ever pick that song?

  I was torn between wanting to run away and wanting to go scoop Kassie up. I wasn't sure what to do. I had the rune. I was good at getting through tight spaces. Kelly was busy. They were all busy. I could easily find my way around the market and out the entrance.

  I could. I should.

  I found myself stumbling out from behind the booth and running toward Maddox. Kelly had yet to see either one of us, and was busy catching the rather large stones that came her way and either heaving them back or splitting them into tiny pieces with a laser -like focused stream of light.

  Kassie still lay unconscious at her feet.

  Maddox halted at the mouth of the alley where it met the courtyard. I was still at least two paces behind him but was close enough that I could tell Evelina had seen him. The relief on her face was obvious.

  Then she pointed at me, and everything changed.

  Kelly followed her gaze and her face brightened enough to war with the bolts of light she gathered on her palms.

  Maddox swung around, his features a bruise of fury.

  "You're not a very good listener," he growled.

  A blast of light skittered past my head and I felt my hair move with it.

  "I heard every word," I said shortly.

  He swore and his hand snaked out to take mine. He yanked me along the perimeter of booths searching for one with good cover, dodging shopkeepers who had taken by then to running. Only a few remained on the offensive. We were hurtling deeper into the bazaar, toward those shadows. Coward, I thought. What happened to the guy strolling through the market with a mace?

  "You're just going to leave her out there?" I wasn't sure if I meant Kelly or Kassie, and I supposed it didn't matter.

  "No choice now," he grumbled. "You ruined that."

  He dove behind the fountain, dragging me with him. The still-healing dog bite reminded me why moving was painful. A splash sounding, drawing my attention and I peered up to see balls of steaming water sailing from the basin toward the fae assassin. Something inside was heating water and hurling it.

  A lilting yodeling sort of yell came from Kelly's direction. A type of victory cry, I thought. I wondered who she had taken out. I peered around the side to see the two vampires had shifted into large, hairy bats the size of vultures and were railing about her head. She swatted at them almost absently and when one of them dug claws into her scalp, her hand whipped out to shoot a trail of light like a lasso to wrap around its neck. She whipped that light viciously behind her then thrust it forward, flinging the vampire to the ground, where it transformed.

  It railed again at her, blood draining from its ears and eyes, this time in human form. Battered, it forged forward only to be thrust again to the ground. This time it stayed there.

  Her gaze landed dead on to the fountain.

  "How does she know I'm here?" I said.

  "Not you," he said. "The rune."

  The rune. Right. It had been warded until I opened the box. I still clung to it, my fingers spasmed around it in terror.

  A blast of light skipped across the ground and blasted a hole in Evelina's booth. The witch let loose a cry that that made my blood crystallize. It spoke of anguish and fury. She launched herself at the assassin and for a moment, I thought her sheer rage might change the tide.

  Kelly staggered backward as the witch struck her with a blast of wavering air. No light. No sound. Just a heat wave of shock. What the vampires couldn't do, the witch seemed to manage. Emboldened, she stepped closer, threw another blast.

  Then I realized Kelly was toying with the witch. When she landed within reach, the fae assassin gripped Evelina by the face, those diminutive fingers of hers crawling over the features like a spider legs. I watched horrified as Evelina went rigid and then seemed to glow from within.

  It might have been beautiful as the glow grew brighter and brighter except at the zenith of it, the witch's very skin caught fire. For several seconds she looked like a lit match being consumed and yet not one lick of flame touched the assassin's skin.

  She died shrieking beneath Kelly's grasp. Her cry echoed over the courtyard for a long moment after she had crumpled into ashes in a pile at Kelly's feet.

  It wasn't just Kassie at risk n
ow. I would never get out. I could see that. And if I did, this fae would follow.

  "We have to do something," I said.

  He gripped me by the elbow and yanked me to my feet. "We are doing something. Running."

  "But all those people—" I gagged on the last words as the taste of roasted meat struck my palette and I knew exactly what that meat was. I heaved over, clutching my stomach. That could have been me. So easily have been me a dozen times over.

  What if it ended up being Kassie? Could I live with that? Knowing that I had involved her in this mess and now she was out there in danger because of me. She had managed to survive city streets on her own, maybe by luck or skill, who knew, but she had carved out some sort of existence.

  Maybe she could survive this.

  "Isabella," Maddox yelled. "Move."

  He pulled me behind one of the booths but it did nothing to blind my vision from the way Kassie lay unmoving amid the chaos.

  I flashed back to the night I had run from Scottie. The hours I spent in that ditch because I had managed to get only so far on my own steam. I remembered praying for a car to come by to save me and when one did, how I cringed, terrified, deeper into the ditch because the driver might be one of Scottie's men. I'd been paralyzed by fear. No good to myself.

  I peered out around the booth to see a long trail of light, very much like a lasso, sizzle through the air but stop short of the booth. Just inches short. I gasped at the way it left a dark and smoking stain on the cobblestones where it landed. Maddox hauled me out of sight again against his chest.

  His heart hammered against my back.

  "My God," I said.

  "Yours and everyone else's," he muttered against my shoulder. I felt him trying to fold me out of sight and climb to his feet. He hunched behind the booth with his legs alongside my shoulders. I tried to get up but he held me down with one hand.

  "What is she doing?" I said.

  "Which she?" he said, pushing me backwards as I tried to look again.