by Annie Bellet
He didn’t. He’d already turned and walked over to the body. Not even wearing booties to cover his ugly cop shoes.
Verity stomped into her apartment, slamming the door behind her. She tossed the bloody sweatshirt onto the kitchen counter and dropped Ruby into her crib by couch.
Her hair was matted on the side with blood, but the cut itself was tiny. She stared into the mirror, seeing the boy’s big dark eyes looking back instead of her own red ones. She could report the magic violation but didn’t think it would get anything going faster. Magic that rotten smelling and filthy was definitely the black kind. She’d encountered something like it only once, when she’d gone on a raid to stop a necromancer a few years back. Just thinking about that night made her shiver and sweat.
“I did everything I could,” she told her reflection. It wasn’t her fault that Ruby’s pain, probably from being kicked, had taken her out. It was a side-effect of the tattoo link. She’d misread the situation, thinking all the players were present and down. Not her fault. Not her kind of job. S .E. P.
Somewhere out there in the sprawling mess of her city was a kid who smelled like summer and comfort, taken by a man wielding the most foul magic Verity and Ruby had ever witnessed.
A boy who had asked for her help.
She walked out of the narrow bathroom and her sweatshirt caught her eye as a terrible idea poked her between the eyes, stabbing like a migraine and sticking like old gum until it was all she could think about.
***
Cordwainer San Simone was called Cord by his friends, but Verity definitely wasn’t one of those. He lived in a boxy blue house that had seen better days and little love out in Morningside, his address easy to find since he was on the Registered Spell Offender list. Verity splurged on a taxi, tucking Ruby into a clean sweatshirt, a Detroit Red Wings hoodie this time. Her rat had to be bribed with a bowl of pineapple chunks to accept the idea of doing more work, her body starting to show bruises, and her mind over stimulated from the fight. Verity sympathized. She couldn’t leave Ruby at home. She would need the rat’s senses if her stupid plan worked.
Of course, part one of the Dumbest Plan Ever depended on the help of a man who hated her.
“Fuck off, Ms. Li,” he said, not even waiting for her to mount the final creaking step up to his porch before he leaned out the door and glared. Cord was a big, raw-boned man in his forties, hints of Native blood showing in his tanned skin, wide cheekbones, and black eyes.
“Been a while,” Verity said, trying on a smile. It hurt. “How do you know it isn’t missus by now?”
“Because you sniffers are all married to your rats,” he said, folding his arms and leaning against the door, blocking all view of the interior.
That stung in a way only truth could and she almost told him where to shove his crooked picket fence. Only the weight of the paper bag in her hand and the shifting of Ruby’s bulk inside her shirt reminded her she was here for something more important.
“I need your help,” she said. “Can you still do tracking spells?” Tracking missing persons was what she’d collared him for, almost three years ago. He done a year in prison and paid a hefty fine. Tracking people with magic was illegal, a serious invasion of privacy that even the government wasn’t allowed to breach. Yet. Maybe tomorrow the law would change. Again.
He looked like she’d grown a unicorn horn for a moment, then he sighed. “Seriously?” When she nodded, holding up the bag, he shook his head and stepped out of the doorway. “This’ll be good,” he muttered, waving her inside.
***
Cord heard her out, then patted her down, much to Ruby’s consternation, and finally accepted that this might not be a trap.
“This is illegal,” was all he said.
“The law sucks. I wait on the law, this kid dies or disappears and the bastard that has him escapes.” Verity stroked Ruby’s fur, careful of where the rat’s pale skin showed bluish-green with bruising.
The bloody stains on her sweatshirt did the rest of the convincing. He made her wait in his living room among a seriously impressive and seriously dusty collection of leather bound books while he cast the tracking spell. Cedar smoke and vanilla wafted in from under the door to his office.
“Do you know what that boy is?” Cord said, coming silently through the door from his office and pulling Verity out of her unhappy reverie.
“A kid. He had some kind of power though.” She stopped herself from saying it smelled delicious. That kind of thing tended to freak people out.
“He’s a wellspring.” Cord ran a hand through his hair, making the thick brown curls stand on end. “He ain’t got power. He is power. People like him, they’re rare as two-headed snakes. The kind of spells you could do with their blood powering things. Geez. I don’t even know.”
“Did you find him?” she said, sitting up. Ruby twisted in her arms and looked at the big mage, feeding Verity his smells. Behind the magic residue was something strong and pleasant, like the aftertaste of a good peaty whiskey on her tongue.
“Yeah, I got him pinpointed to an area out near the airport. Can’t get closer than that. Something’s blocking me.”
“Show me on a map,” Verity said.
“Nope. I’m coming with you. You and your bloody eyes might win a staring contest, but you sniffers don’t know shit about magic. And something real bad is hanging out there.” Cord was already moving back toward the door, pulling a red and green plaid lumberjack coat off a hook on the wall as he went.
She tucked Ruby into her sweatshirt pocket and swallowed any argument. It didn’t matter what he thought she knew or didn’t know about magic. He was willing to help her save a little boy and maybe kick the shit out of the bastard who had hurt Ruby and taken her down.
“Fine,” she said. “Do you own any guns?”
***
Cord’s cedar-scented spell, which he’d bound to a small shard of smoky quartz wrapped in a chunk of her bloody sweatshirt, took them out of Detroit proper and out toward Romulus and the Metropolitan Airport. Warehouses lurked behind the pools of streetlights, each one an indistinct shape in the night hiding secrets.
“Here.” Cord turned his Chevy in and stopped beside a two-story metal building, whispering even though in the temporary solitude of the car, no one could have heard them. “We’ll have to rely on the rat from here. You ready?”
The light from the dash glowed blue, making her feel like she were drowning and reinforcing the unreality of the situation. Ruby, sensing her distress, squeaked and burrowed against her stomach.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“Having second thoughts? Guess you could call your buddies. Though you’d lose your job, we’d both go to prison, and they’d probably throw the kid into some government program that isn’t supposed to exist.”
“I left my phone at home.”
Cord shut off the engine. “Why are you doing this?”
“I need to do something,” she said softly, “Day in, day out. I just watch and point. Everyone else deals with the messes. If it weren’t for Ruby…” she trailed off, staring down at the bulge in her sweatshirt, heat rising in her face.
“All right, Detective. Detect.” Cord’s smile was in his voice and it barely sounded forced.
There were no cars parked around this warehouse and no marks on the outside to tell them anything about what was inside. Cord ghosted alongside Verity, a shotgun held lightly in his big hands, as they followed Ruby’s white shape down the pocked asphalt along the edge of the building. Verity hadn’t bothered with a leash. Ruby wouldn’t run away anymore than Verity would willingly slice off her own hand.
There was black magic slime all over this place, making it difficult to track the salt and sweet scent of the boy’s power through the miasma of rot. The trail led them around the side and to a closed roll-up door. Parked up against the building was a new model Toyota. Verity and Cord shared a look. Probably weren’t natives, driving a Japanese car like that in Mot
or City.
Ruby paused by the roll-up door and tossed her head in the air, whiskers twitching as she indicated this was the place. Verity pressed herself to the side of the building and crouched down, holding out a pellet which her rat came to get, taking it with her delicate pink paws before scarfing it down.
She listened for a long moment, hearing only the occasional rush of traffic on the road behind them and a plane taking off from the airport somewhere in the distance beyond the rows of metal and cement. Then, muffled voices, coming from inside, and a light came on beyond the truck, shining through a window that had previously been hidden in the dark, blending into the wall. It illuminated a small gap beneath the roll-up door.
“Think there’s a button inside to raise that?” Verity whispered.
“Maybe, but what good does that do us?”
“Rats are better than cats at getting into tight spaces.”
She pushed the link between them as open as she could get it, going deeper into Ruby’s mind than she usually did. Verity’s head hurt and the white rat rubbed at her whiskers and ears. Focus. She took a deep breath and pictured the memory game, sending Ruby the images of what she guessed the button for the door would look like.
Ruby seemed to understand. She scurried along the door and crammed herself in where the uneven cement and the bottom of the door didn’t quite meet up. Through the link, Verity got a rough picture of the inside. The roll-up door opened into a big space full of wooden shipping crates that stank of the rotten magic. To the right was the boy’s delicious scent trail, leading toward the light and a half-open door. Through Ruby’s eyes, Verity found the button that controlled the door. It hung from a thick cord, out of the reach of even the two-foot-long rat.
“We’re going to play a game,” Verity whispered, sending what she hoped was an explanation through the link to Ruby.
Ruby seemed to understand, her heart sped up and she got the same agitated vibrations to her thoughts that came when she was demanding the TV be turned on. She climbed the closest stack of boxes, her sensitive nose twitching at the stink, the smell strong enough to raise bile in Verity’s throat through the link. Ruby balanced on the edge of a crate, about six feet out from the hanging door control.
“Jump,” Verity whispered.
Ruby sprang, her powerful hind legs carrying her to the cord and her sharp claws catching hold as her long tail curved out, balancing her on the button as it swung wildly beneath the sudden weight.
“TV on.” Verity pushed the image through the link and felt as much as saw Ruby respond.
The door made a high-pitched noise and then started grinding slowly upward. So much for surprise.
Verity gripped her revolver and ducked under the door, aiming toward the light as she moved so that Ruby could leap from the controls to her shoulders. Cord moved up beside her as two men, backlit now, appeared through the doorway.
“Hands up,” Verity said, sticking with an oldie but goodie.
“Duck!” Cord’s warning saved her as a bolt of power sizzled past them.
Ozone smell combined with month old herring singed her nose as she threw herself to the side. She didn’t know what the hell that had been, but it smelled like the first figure had somehow fired off a hex right at her.
She wanted to fire back, but didn’t know if the boy was inside that room. At the thought, Ruby leapt free of her shoulders and charged toward the light, still thinking they were playing a game. The lithe rat twisted past the two men and Verity had a quick impression of a desk shoved to one side and then Andre, bound with tape and laying on his side on the floor.
The men shouted as the rat slipped right between them, one of them turning enough that she recognized him as the groaner on the floor from earlier. Groaner went for the rat. The other man went for her and Cord, raising his hands to throw more hexes.
Andre was clear as long as she aimed high. She yelled to Cord to do the same.
Hex versus guns. Guns won.
“Jesus mother fucking ice on toast,” Cord muttered as the roar of his shotgun and the sharper report of her revolver died away.
Her hands shook as she lowered the gun and nausea swept up in a burning tide from her belly. Cordite and fresh blood swarmed over the black magic rot. She shoved it all away, closing down the link with Ruby as much as she could. Save the boy. Get the hell out before on duty cops showed up. Think about dead people later.
“Get Andre,” she said, moving forward and stepping over the still twitching body of the hex-thrower.
Andre was conscious. They untied him, pulling the tape off as gently as they could. He didn’t speak, but picked up Ruby and pressed his cheek to her fur in a gesture that Verity was intimately familiar with. Ruby didn’t protest, seeming to understand that it was important to let this stranger touch her, something she usually hated.
“What’s in the crates?” Cord asked as they all picked their way around the bodies.
Andre shuddered and stepped close to Verity. “Hexes,” he whispered, looking at Cord with worried eyes. “They use my blood to make them.”
Verity found a crowbar, her ears straining for the sound of sirens. She pried the lid of a crate and gasped. Inside were hundreds of charms, vile things that looked like rope and thorn spiders, all twitching and crawling over themselves as though alive.
“Think they are safe to burn?” she asked Cord.
“Safer to burn than to leave here,” he said. “Get the boy to the car, I’ll figure something out.”
***
Whatever Cord did, and it was likely magical since his smell changed from cedar to cinnamon, it proved super effective. They drove away with the flames rising behind them, heading back into the city.
Andre, still holding an unprotesting Ruby, curled up in the back seat with Cord’s coat for a blanket, fell asleep with the kittenish power of the young. Verity watched him as the miles rolled by.
“What do I do with him?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Cord said. “I know a place in Canada, the kind of people who will keep him safe and hidden from those who might use him. It’s best if you don’t know anything about it.”
He was right, but it hurt. She felt more engaged in her life than she had in a long time, and now that she was finally doing something that felt wholly right, she apparently needed to do what she had done all along. Let things be Somebody Else’s Problem.
“I guess you can drop Ruby and I off at home,” she said, still watching the boy sleep. At the sound of her name, Ruby opened her blood-red eyes and bobbed her head at Verity before going back to sleep on the boy’s chest, looking like a pile of dirty snow on a Christmas blanket.
“What are you going to do?”
“Shower. Sleep. Get up for work. I’m on call for warrant duty tomorrow.”
“Going back to work? After this?” She didn’t need to look at his face to read what he meant by that.
“It’s my job.” She shrugged.
They rode in silence for the rest of the drive. As she gently took Ruby back from Andre, she placed a kiss on the boy’s forehead. He did not wake up.
She stood outside the car, the door still hanging open, and looked up at the tall shadow of her apartment building. Other than Ruby’s television, she couldn’t remember a single personal thing in her apartment. Somebody else’s life was up there.
Verity got back into the car, cuddling Ruby close. She’d get her a new TV.
“Drive,” she said to Cord.
He smiled at her but kept his mouth shut, putting the car in gear, and they headed out into the maze of dark buildings. Verity did not look back.
Annie Bellet is the author of The Twenty-Sided Sorceress, Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division, and the Gryphonpike Chronicles series.
Her interests besides writing include rock climbing, reading, horse-back riding, video games, comic books, table-top RPGs and many other nerdy pursuits. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and a very demanding Bengal cat.
&n
bsp; Find her books on her website: http://anniebellet.com/
Venom
Sarra Cannon
On the run from a coven of witches determined to capture and enslave him, Rend must overcome the limitations of the human world and embrace his true demon power. But will he survive?
REND - 1902
They were chasing me. I kept my eyes on the forest ahead, my feet carrying me as fast as they could. I still wasn’t used to this clunky human form, and I longed to shift into shadows and blend into the darkness of the cool night.
The forest was my chance. Inside the cover of the trees, I would be able to hide, using the life force of the giant pines to cast my magic.
I hadn’t realized when I crossed over from the Shadow World that I wouldn’t be able to use my powers openly in this strange land. If I had known how difficult survival would become, would I have even dared it?
Behind me, a dozen witches dressed in black cloaks with sapphire-colored velvet insides that flashed in the light ran after me. Several of them had conjured large glowing orbs of light that zipped around me, illuminating my form in the open field. I was an easy target, and every few seconds, one of the witches would stop and hurl a conjured spear or ball of fire toward my back.
I shifted briefly and twisted to my left, barely dodging the latest attack—a blue arrow made of pure ice. But I couldn’t hold the form. The foot of snow that covered the field left little for me to pull from, and without the energy of some nearby life-form, I was powerless.
In another season, this field might have been full of wildflowers or tall grasses that would be much easier to tap into, but I was still learning how to suck the life-marrow from this world, and I was having a hard time reaching beneath the snow to the earth it blanketed. In the forest, I’d be free.
I tried to shift, but a streak of orange flame narrowly grazed my arm. I stumbled and nearly fell to my knees. The pain had caused me to lose concentration, and I’d been brought back to human form before I had fully shifted.
