by M. D. Massey
How curious.
Locks were no obstacle for someone of my skill set, and within minutes I had snapped the latch release on the case and flipped open the lid.
“Ho-lee shit.”
Inside the safe were stacks of gold coins laid on their sides, nestled in foam compartments to keep them from clinking and rolling around. A pocket under the safe’s lid held some legal documents, including the title to the land, a will, and a few other miscellaneous papers.
I pulled a coin from a stack, holding it high to examine it in the fading light. It had been stamped or molded with a curious design—eight cups or chalices in a circle around the center, along with markings indicating the purity of the gold and its weight in grams.
I did some quick calculations in my head. Each coin was an ounce of gold, and there were a couple hundred coins inside the safe. There had to be over half a million dollars sitting in my lap.
“Carver, what the fuck did you get yourself into?” I wondered aloud as I placed the coin in my pocket.
I closed the case and stuffed it in my Craneskin Bag. Later, I’d search the documents to see if I could locate Carver’s heirs, to make sure the safe’s contents got to them. I might be a lot of things, but I was no thief. For now, though, I’d keep it hidden until I figured out where the coins had come from—and who’d hired Carver to do their dirty work.
I was pretty banged up, which had become a habit since I’d taken this case. I texted Finnegas and got a snappy reply, something about, “Time you learned how to do this yourself” and “I have a life too you know.” So, I headed back to the junkyard, grabbed the first aid kit, and took care of my injuries the old-fashioned way.
Thankfully, the puncture wounds in my leg weren’t too deep. The lizard thing’s teeth weren’t very long or sharp, as its mouth had been more frog-like than serpentine. Still, I was sure I’d gotten plenty of pond water and lizard saliva in those wounds. With visions of flesh-eating bacteria dancing in my head, after a quick shower I scrubbed the cuts with a povidone-iodine brush and applied a liberal layer of antibiotic cream before wrapping them in gauze.
My shoulder was another matter. It was injured, and that was a fact. The way it was popping and crackling, I figured I’d torn my rotator cuff. Wishing I could just shift and heal up, instead I iced it down for twenty minutes, then rubbed some dit da jow liniment on it and called it a day.
After that, I grabbed that funky coin and plopped back on my bed. I flipped the weird token over the backs of my fingers in one hand as I used my phone with the other to research gold coins. Nothing came up online about a coin with eight cups on it, so instead I searched for custom coin mints. I found a company in Dallas who minted personalized gold coins for gifts and such, but they didn’t look like they dealt in volume. Another dead end.
I was still flipping the coin when I heard a knock on my door. Before answering it, I slipped the coin back in my pocket and grabbed my pistol.
Before I’d crossed the room, I heard Belladonna’s muffled voice from the other side of the door. “Put the gun away—it’s just me, silly.”
I opened the door, and she was standing there with a couple of plastic takeout bags in one hand, a bottle of whiskey in the other, and a look that said I was about to get laid.
“How’d you know I grabbed the gun?” I asked, shoving it in my waistband.
“You’ll shoot your balls off one day doing that,” she said as she entered. “After I heard the bed creak, there was a pause before I heard footsteps. Plus, I can recognize the sound of metal on Kydex from a mile away.” She handed me the takeout bags. “Grab this while I go wash out a couple of glasses.”
“I’m not that much of a slob,” I said. In truth, I kept my quarters pretty clean.
“Yeah, but you’re lazy as shit about washing out your coffee mugs.”
“Hey, the residue adds to the flavor,” I replied.
“Don’t I know it. The last time you made me a cup of coffee here, it had a rather… piquant quality to it.”
“At Colin’s Bed and Breakfast, we aim to please,” I said with grin as I waggled my eyebrows, Groucho Marx style.
Belladonna grabbed a couple of mugs and headed out the door, but not without one final jab. “Do that thing with your eyebrows again, and no one will be pleased with how this night goes.”
When Belladonna returned, she handed me the mugs and I poured us a couple of whiskey and Cokes. Bells usually bought the cheap stuff, bless her heart, so I went straight to the mix when she was buying. She took a long swig of her drink, then sat on the bed and patted a spot beside her. Mama didn’t raise no fool, so I sat where indicated.
“So, tell me about your day,” she said as she gave me a look over her glass.
“Look at me like that again, and you won’t hear about it until morning.”
“Promises, promises. That was actually the plan, but the way you’re favoring your left shoulder and right leg, I figure there’s a story I haven’t heard yet.”
I shrugged. “I went back to Carver’s. I got attacked by a giant lizard. I killed it. End of story.”
“That’s it?” she asked.
“That’s it.” I considered mentioning the coins, but I was thinking with my other head by that point, so I decided to give her the details later. I slugged my drink and leaned in close.
“The food will get cold,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.
“I have a microwave,” I said, taking her drink and set it on said appliance.
“I thought I was going to be the driver tonight,” she replied as she laid back on the bed.
I walked myself up her body, gently kissing her chest and neck. Nuzzling her ear, I took a moment to nip at her earlobes. “Second go-round. I promise to call you mistress.”
“And scream my name?” she whispered, a smile playing across her full, red lips.
“First and last,” I mumbled with a mouth full of earlobe. Belladonna immediately started laughing. “Too much?” I asked as I sat up.
“No, silly—it just tickled. Come back down here.” She grabbed me by the shirt, pulling me on top of her. As I leaned in to kiss her, she pulled on my arm and bucked her hips, rolling me over so she was on top.
“You can be the driver next time,” she purred.
“You’re the boss… mistress.”
An hour later, I was heating the food while Belladonna went to the bathroom to freshen up. She walked in just as I was serving the food on paper plates.
“Ugh, you really need to get an apartment—something with its own shower, toilet, and sink. That place is disgusting.”
“I clean it nearly every day, but it’s a public—”
“Ay, carajo, don’t remind me.” She looked around the room, probably for some discarded piece of clothing, but her eyes stopped where my jeans had landed in the corner. “What’s that?”
“What?” I turned to look, and realized the gold coin had fallen out of my pants pocket. “Oh, I was going to tell you about that… after, that is.”
“You mean sharing the details of your day with me is less important to you than getting your rocks off?”
“Um… was it good for you too?” She slapped me playfully on the shoulder, hard enough for it to sting. “Hey, that was my injured side!”
“Yes, it was,” she said as she knelt to pick up the coin. Bells turned to me, a serious look on her face. “Where did you get this?”
“At Carver’s place. I found a whole stash of them in a hollow tree behind his house. He had some serious spell work in place so no one would find it.”
Belladonna examined the coin, her eyes hard. “Colin, this is a Circle coin. We use them to pay outside contractors, because they’re practically untraceable.”
“Wait a minute—you’re saying that Carver was working for the Circle?”
“If he had a bunch of these in his possession—then yes, he was.” She snapped her hand closed around the coin. “Damn it!”
“What?”
&n
bsp; “The high council are the only ones who have access to that much capital. There’s no way they authorized all those killings, which means someone on the council is running ops off the books.”
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as I considered the implications. “It was a lot of gold, Bells. A hell of a lot more than they’d pay for just one job. Maybe Carver was in on it all along, helping this council member track down and kill all those fae.”
Bells shook her head. “Council members are very powerful, Colin. They have access to potent magic artifacts, and they wield powers we can only dream about. No, a council member wouldn’t need a lowly hunter’s help to take out a few fae. Whoever hired Carver, it was probably someone lower on the totem pole—a person who’d need backup to kill those fae and then cover their tracks.”
“You think it was more than one person? That maybe there’s a faction within the Circle who could be responsible for the killings?”
Bells looked at the coin again. “I don’t know. If there really is a rogue council member pulling the strings, that person would want to have complete deniability. This is the sort of thing that could start a war between the fae and the Circle. I’d think they’d want to be several degrees removed from whoever they sent to do their dirty work.”
“Shit. I can’t imagine how this makes you feel.” Bells was loyal to the Circle, through and through. She believed in what they did and loved her job, even if some of her coworkers were total dicks. I wished now that she hadn’t seen the coin.
Belladonna flipped the coin to me. “That thing you killed at Carver’s today—describe it to me.”
“Let’s see… bluish-green, six legs, looked like a giant tegu lizard with horns. Ring any bells?”
“Sounds like a bukavac.”
“A buka-what? Sorry, I’m unfamiliar with the species.”
Belladonna sat down on my bed, rubbing her knuckles as she spoke. “It’s a creature from Slavic folklore, a kind of supernatural assassin. They hide in rivers, ponds, swamps, and lakes, waiting for an unsuspecting person to happen by. Then, they leap out and drown or strangle them to death.”
I let out a low whistle. “Wow, look at who knows her cryptids.”
She ignored the tease, still massaging her knuckles. By the tightness around her eyes and the stiffness in her shoulders, I knew she wasn’t just experiencing a sudden bout of arthritis.
“You forget, I was raised in Europe and taught to how to fight the fae from the time I was young. Mother made us learn about supernatural creatures from all over the continent, because the fae we dealt with were fond of conjuration.”
I rubbed the coin with my fingers, as if it might reveal its secrets via osmosis. “We don’t have a large Slavic contingent here in central Texas. There are plenty of Czechs and Germans, but damned few people of Slavic descent.”
Belladonna pursed her lips, eyes narrowing as she considered what I was implying. “So the question is, how does a creature from Slavic folklore get from Serbia to Texas?”
“And?” I asked, already knowing the answer but wanting to hear it from her lips.
She stood quickly. “Someone imported it, or they conjured it. Either way, it takes a great deal of resources to retrieve something that big from that far away.” Bells started gathering her things, slipping on her boots as she spoke. “Everything here points to the Circle’s involvement, Colin. Someone in the Circle wants you dead, and they’re not going to stop until they get their way.”
I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “I take it you’re going to start digging around, to find out if someone at the Circle is connected?”
“Yes I am, and don’t look so cross. You know damned well that I’d do anything for you, even if it means losing my job.”
I stepped forward, grabbing her hands in mine. “It’s not your job I’m concerned with—it’s you I’m worried about.”
She stood on tip-toe to kiss me, planting her lips firmly on mine. “Don’t you worry about me, Colin McCool. I’m a big girl and I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.”
“Of that I’m fully aware… but if you find something huge, call me right away and let me handle it.”
She scowled. “By yourself? As if.” She kissed me again lightly on the cheek before heading out. “Keep your phone close by. It won’t take the nerd herd long to run a trace on Carver’s communications. I’ll call you as soon as they find something.”
“Be careful,” I admonished as she shut the door.
Belladonna’s voice trailed off as she headed for the parking lot. “Right back at you, druid boy.”
Nineteen
At a loss for something constructive to do while I was waiting for Bells to call, I decided to ask around about Carver’s coin. My first stop was to see Rocko at The Bloody Fedora, because something wasn’t sitting right with me about him. Someone had told Eliandres and Lucindras I was at the Fedora, which meant that either Cinnamon had acted on her own, or Rocko had signaled her to do it. Cinnamon just wasn’t ambitious enough to get caught up in fae matters, so I was pretty sure her boss was playing both sides, and I wanted to know why.
It was close to midnight when I pulled up, and the parking lot was packed. I parked the truck behind the building and entered through the back entrance. The light was on in the office, so I pushed the door open and went inside. Rocko was behind his desk smoking a stogie, a cheap bottle of Irish whiskey near at hand with three fingers poured in a glass. His expression turned from dour to neutral on seeing me, but one thing was for certain—he’d been expecting me.
Rocko pulled a glass from a drawer and served me a generous pour. “Freely given, no obligations attached and all that,” he said as he pushed the glass toward me. “No magic, poison, spells, or tricks, on my word.”
“I’ll pass, if it’s all the same.”
“Your loss. I put the good stuff in empty well bottles—keeps the help out of my stash.” He leaned back in his chair, sipping his whiskey as he squeezed an eye shut. “Damn, but that’s good. Alright, druid, talk. To what do I owe the honor?”
I slapped the coin down on the desk next to the whiskey bottle. “Know anything about this coin?”
“It’s not familiar. Looks expensive, though. Did you roll a leprechaun on the way in here?”
“I’m not in the mood for jokes, Rocko. Over the last few days I’ve had my shoulder broken by an ogre, someone attempt to assassinate me, wrecked my car, got jumped by a fae hit squad, and nearly got eaten by a bukavac.”
“A buka-what?”
“That’s what I said. Pisses me off when I nearly get eaten by a monster I don’t even recognize, and suffice it to say that my patience has worn thin.” I leaned on the desk, getting up in his swarthy, fat little face. “Now, I know you tipped off Maeve’s killers when I showed up here the other day. You’re working both sides, Rocko—and frankly I don’t like being played.”
“How’d you know I tipped them off?”
“Nobody knew I was driving Ed’s truck that day, so it’s doubtful I was followed. Besides, high fae don’t drive automobiles—not if they can help it. Which puts the odds that Eliandres and Lucindras were tailing me that day at slim to none.”
Rocko slammed his whiskey, then grabbed his cigar from the ashtray. The cherry had gone to ash, so he grabbed a butane lighter from the desk and fired it back up. He puffed on the cigar a few times, gesturing at me with it as he blew smoke in the air above him.
“You’re right, I did tip those two off. But only because the Queen requested it. Times like these, you don’t go pissing your queen off—not when her patience is worn thin. You got a knack for getting her goat, you know that? I’m surprised she hasn’t killed you yet, but what do I know? I’m just a lowly crook, trying to make a buck.”
“And what about that hunter crew I ran down? I’d been working the murder cases for weeks and hadn’t turned up a damned thing. How’d you make that connection?”
Rocko sniffed and flicked ash in the t
ray. “I hear things, druid. Ain’t nothing that happens on the shady side of the world beneath that I don’t know about. Word was, someone was looking to hire a crew to take out an ogre. It ain’t like there’s a ton of ogres running around town, you know. Wasn’t hard to put two and two together and find out who took the job.”
“You could have told me, instead of letting me do things the hard way.”
He shrugged. “You’d quit the case. Wasn’t until that ogre bit the dust that you got all high and mighty about tracking the killers down. I didn’t see how I was obligated to give you more than a nudge. And that’s what you got.”
“You sure that’s all of it? Cause if you’re holding out on me…”
He grabbed the glass he’d poured for me, knocking it back. “That’s all there is, all I know about it. Believe me, or don’t. Fuck if I care.”
I eyed him warily, looking for some tell or twitch that might indicate he was lying. But Rocko’s face was a blank canvas, just as it’d been since I’d walked through his door. That alone told me he was hiding something more, and I intended to find out what. I turned to lock the door, just as my phone started buzzing in my pocket. I pulled it out—it was Bells.
Rocko’s face was smug as he kicked his feet up on his desk. “You going to take that, or was there something else you wanted to discuss?”
I exhaled heavily through my nostrils. “This isn’t over, Rocko. Not by a stretch.”
His voice called out to me over the noise from the barroom out front. “I look forward to it, druid.”
I almost turned around, but instead I headed out the rear entrance to the truck, answering the call on the way. “Yeah, Bells, what do you got?”
“You’re not going to believe this, Colin. Hell, I can’t believe it myself. The geek squad tried to find something in Carver’s phone records, texts, and email accounts that would tell us who hired him, but they came up with squat. So, I had them run facial recognition on footage from every convenience store and Wal-Mart in town to see if Carver had purchased a burner recently.”
