Run of Luck (Veil Knights Book 4)

by Rowan Casey

  “Show me your bike,” I told her.

  “You can’t beat Liam.” She had said it like it was an undeniable fact.

  I tucked her keys in my pocket alongside the dice and grinned. “You’d be surprised what you can do with a bit of luck on your side.”

  7

  I wasn’t dressed for street racing and hadn’t expected to find myself lining up at the starter on a borrowed Fireblade with roughly 190hp between my legs. They say opportunity waits for no one and Liam wasn’t going to hang around waiting for me to get my crew together and come up with a bike. This had to be done now, as insane as it was.

  The mystery man rolled his GSXR and the bike I needed to a halt beside me. I couldn’t see his face behind the visor but knew he was smiling. I could feel it, the same way I felt the presence of the bike tugging on my senses.

  The woman whose bike I’d borrowed handed over her crash helmet. I pulled it on and welcomed the muffled quiet it brought with it.

  “One mile dash,” the starter barked. He lifted his arms, three fingers spread on each hand.

  I tucked myself in behind the bike’s visor. It didn’t feel right. The seat was to high, the tank too wide between my thighs. It had been too long since I’d ridden—but none of that mattered. I couldn’t allow it to matter. I needed Liam’s bike to get Kari back. This had to happen.

  I caught sight of Dav’s presence to my right. I didn’t need to get a clean look at his face to know he was pissed. Without the leathers, this was reckless and stupid. I’d hear about it from him when this was over, but until then, I had to focus. I had to win.

  For you, Kari.

  The starter’s arms dropped. I released the brake and opened the throttle. The Fireblade launched itself off the starting line like a rocket, instantly trying to throw me off. I tucked in low, hugging the bike against my chest. The street, the people, the lights, the noise; they all turned into a sudden wash of color. Adrenaline shot through my veins, pulling my perception of time into a narrow point. All I cared about was the mile marker. Between me and it, traffic dotted the street.

  Liam was ahead. His taillight blinked red as his bike flicked between a truck and SUV. I followed, slipping into the sight. Threads of glowing luck linked the people in their cars. I plucked at those threads, drawing them into me and watched the traffic peel off ahead. Liam must have seen the path opening too, because he shot into the opening.

  I had to do this. That bike was mine.

  My borrowed Fireblade had more to give. I was the one holding it back.

  The last time I’d opened a bike up, my sister died.

  No fear. I couldn’t afford to fear this. Fear would slow me down. Focus. No fear.

  The power of the bike strummed through me, pouring a heady mix of fear and excitement into all the mental parts of reasoning. I couldn’t fail. Just a few more hundred yards and I’d have it.

  Lady Luck doesn’t lose.

  The street narrowed, the traffic thickened. I twitched the Fireblade through the rapidly shrinking spaces, feeding her into the gaps like a thread through the eye of a needle, using Liam’s slipstream to gain on him. All I needed was one opening. For him to make one mistake. I needed a little luck…

  He hit a manhole cover. His bike snapped sideways, kicking out, threatening to flip him right off. If he fell, he’d take me with him and probably a good deal of the traffic, too.

  Shit, no! Not again.

  Nobody was dying here tonight.

  I released the throttle, easing off as I let the borrowed luck go, returning it to its rightful owners. Cars peeled off, out of Liam’s path, giving him room to wrestle the beast under control. They would never know how close they had come to disaster.

  The mile marker shot past.

  I’d lost.

  Liam’s slowed and pulled an illegal U-turn, heading back toward the meet. I followed, anger burning through the adrenaline in my veins. Was he just going to carry on as though nothing had happened? I pulled up alongside him and pointed toward the curb.

  “Pull over.” He couldn’t hear me, but I didn’t care. Pulling in front, I locked up on the brakes and forced him to slow.

  Bumping my bike up on the sidewalk I circled it around and pulled up beside his. “What the hell was that?”

  He flipped up his visor. “You lost.”

  “I just saved your ass! If I hadn’t, the Five-O would be scraping you off the asphalt.”

  Unfazed, those unnaturally bright eyes blinked back at me. “That would have been unlucky.”

  “I hope you’re not implying I—”

  “I’m not implying anything. I’m telling you. You stole their luck. That near-accident was of your making and you know it.” His smiled twisted into a sneer. “You insult me. This was meant to be a test of skill, not your ego. It’s time you stopped cheating, Jazmine Archer.” He flipped the visor back down. “Come back to me when you’re worthy, knight. If they haven’t killed you by then.”

  “What? If who—”

  He opened the throttle and sped the bike away from the curb. I was quick to follow, dropping the bike off the curb and slipping into traffic. His last words stirred up a storm of questions that needed answering. I was not finished with Liam, but I’d already lost him in the chaos.

  Sirens wailed ahead. I could just make out the strobing blue lights closing in on the meeting point.

  Cops.

  I turned off the main drag and opened the borrowed bike’s throttle, speeding away from the scene. The meet was over. Liam scattered along with everyone else. But it wasn’t over for me. I’d met my adversary and I was done with fumbling about in the dark looking for answers everyone else seemed to already know. I would win a race against him without luck. How hard could it be?

  I dreamed of skinless faces and hollow-eyed spectators watching me lose the race over and over. My sister was among them. Her cry for help sounded like screeching metal and shattering glass. I woke with those images still floating around me and the terrible twisted-metal sounds echoing through my apartment.

  The clock read: 9:06 a.m. I should have been at the casino an hour ago. The night before seemed just as unreal as the dreams fogging my thoughts. But it had been real. I could smell spent gasoline and burned rubber in my hair.

  After taking a shower, I dressed in casual jeans and an old t-shirt, called in sick to the casino, and dialed Grimm’s number on my way out of the door with a piece of toast pinched between my teeth. He didn’t answer.

  Grimm hadn’t told me much about the bike, other than it needed to be found to make right my past, and that I’d know it when I saw it.

  I left a short, sharp message for him to call back and hurried down the apartment block’s stairs, finishing off my toast and tugging on my jacket. I had to get the Fireblade I’d borrowed the night before back to its owner because she reported it stolen. The last thing I needed was the cops crawling all over me.

  Two steps inside the underground garage I noticed Siobhan’s distinctive silhouette beside the Fireblade. Her long green overcoat looked almost black under the poor lighting. For a moment the fabric bore dark vein-like streaks. The lights flickered, and the streaks vanished.

  She turned as I approached. Stark fluorescent light spilled over her face briefly highlighting too-sharp cheekbones and hollow cheeks, making her beauty almost grizzly.

  “This is not the artifact in question.” Her haughty voice bounced around the empty garage.

  “No…but I know where it is.” I flashed her a thin smile and rounded the bike, blipping the fob to disarm the alarm. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the events of the past few days, but her presence simmered against my nerves. I swung my leg over the bike and rocked it upright, kicking back the stand, focusing on those little things instead of the woman standing too close and radiating the kind of menace that often preceded a fight. She didn’t seem the sort to use her fists, but alone in the garage, I didn’t want to find out what she did have at her disposal.

  “I�
��m on the case,” I told her. “I’ll get the bike.”

  “And hand it over to us?”

  “I want my sister back and you can do that. So we’re good, right?”

  She lifted her sharp chin and narrowed her eyes. “We are good.”

  I dropped my cell into my pocket and hesitated. Grimm clearly had no intention of helping, me but Siobhan would.

  “How much do you know about the bike?”

  “Only that it has changed its appearance over the centuries, always staying hidden in plain sight. Only the knights can retrieve the hallowed artifacts.”

  “If I tell you where it is, can you claim it for yourself?” I carefully asked.

  “The moment we try, it simply…disappears. The knights have a…” she paused, thinking of the right word. “…unique connection to the pieces that lasts through the ages.”

  “It disappears? Poof, gone. Just like that?”

  “Exactly that. But once its knight—you—have claimed it, it’s avoidance ability falls dormant. I’m afraid I do not know any more.”

  The knights. Right. Just as Grimm had said. Because I was supposed to be one of his knights, a devoted follower to a cause of his making. It all sounded very Hollywood.

  “You don’t know anything about its rider?” I seemed like she should, as though Liam had the same kind of gravitas she did, but on a slightly differing scale. He wore his menace on his sleeve. Siobhan held hers just below the surface.

  “Nothing,” she admitted and by the twist of her lips didn’t seem too happy about it.

  “He said something to me but left before I could follow it up…”I began. She cocked her head, waiting. “He told me to go back to him when I was worthy, if they hadn’t killed me by then. You wouldn’t know anything about who they may be?”

  Her lashes fluttered. “I have been observing you for some time. If there was anyone circling you with devious intentions, I would know it.”

  I held her gaze as long as I dared, searching for any wince, any crack, but she simply looked back at me, the picture of calm, collectedness. Why then did I feel as though she wasn’t saying—as though her words skimmed the very surface of what she could say and how I wouldn’t like what they hid below. “How long have you been watching me?”

  “Long enough.”

  Alright, we were playing the vague game. “Great. I have your card. I’ll let you know when I have the bike.”

  I started the Fireblade, taking too much pleasure in the enormous roar from the engine in the confined space, and pulled out of the parking bay. Siobhan occupied the rearview mirrors, as still as stone as she watched me accelerate away.

  The sooner I could get the bike and be done with her and Grimm, the sooner I’d have my sister and all would be right with the world—as it should have been before I’d screwed it up. Now all I had to do was convince my old crew—a handful of morally suspect and highly suspicious people—that magic was real and I was about to either win or steal a GSXR that may or may not have the power to stop a realm of demons and creatures from spilling into LA, depending upon whether you asked the professional Illusionist or the woman in green who could bring my sister back to life.

  I left the borrowed bike a block away and walked to Dav’s. I didn’t know how the shakedown with the cops had ended last night and hadn’t taken any cell numbers, so there was a chance the cops would be watching his place for known associates. The last thing I wanted to do was roll up on a stolen bike. Telling the cops I had every intention of giving it back probably wouldn’t wash.

  The crew was inside Dav’s shop. I could tell from clanging of tools and muted chatter making its way through the closed door. They looked up when I walked in and didn’t bat an eye, like my two-year absence was already a distant memory.

  I didn’t deserve them.

  Cate, the newest member, set down her tools and sauntered between the workbenches, coming straight for me.

  “Hey.”

  She wore cropped jeans, trailing a few frayed edges and sported a black tank top that declared in mock-graffiti writing: It’s only illegal if you get caught. Swirling tattoos crawled up her forearm, lilacs and roses intertwined.

  “Hey. Is Dav here?”

  “Upstairs.”

  The shop phone rang. Alex answered it. The others were busy cleaning parts, going about their normal routine. Liau was brushing down the pink minivan’s upholstery, where it sat tucked into the back of the workshop. Billy was sitting at a bench along the far wall, rocking back on a chair, checking over a service manual. They each had their place. Dav paid okay, but they would have been here without the promise of a wage. There wasn’t anywhere else they would rather be.

  “I was just going to make a drink…D’ya want something?” Cate offered.

  “No… I…” Her blue eyes narrowed, giving me the impression I had better accept or she would slash my tires. “Sure. Great.”

  “Coffee?” she asked, heading to the nook at the back that had once served as a small kitchen area but was now cluttered with car parts and accessories.

  “A glass of water will be fine, thanks.” I followed, and caught the disapproving frown she threw over her shoulder. I was beginning to get the impression Cate didn’t much appreciate my return.

  “Dav talks a lot about you,” she said. “And Kari.”

  “He does, huh?”

  “Sure.” She rinsed a glass under the faucet, filled it halfway and plonked it down on the counter. The glass was lucky to survive. “He says you once beat a two-forty-SX quarter-mile in seven point three seconds. That true?”

  I picked up the water and took a sip, ignoring what was probably iron filings floating on the surface. Unsurprisingly, the water tasted metallic. “In the Silvia. Yeah, I did. But that was with her old engine—”

  “I’m helping Dav recondition the block,” she said, pride gleaming in her eyes.

  “Yeah. I heard.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He mentioned it.”

  “He did?” A splash of color touched her cheeks. She turned away, clattered mugs and fiddled with the coffee machine.

  I was going to take a stab in the dark and assume Dav had an admirer on the crew. It wasn’t the first time. “I should maybe check—”

  “You walked out on him.” She didn’t look up, but I didn’t need to see her face to catch the icy tone in her voice or the tense line of her shoulders.

  I could have let it go. She was young, I’d been where she was with stars in my eyes every time I looked at Dav. A better woman than me would have let it slide right off. “Don’t think you’ve got me figured out, Cate.” I was still working on that.

  “Your sister had died. I get it. But so had his girlfriend. Walking out right after?” She cupped her mug of coffee, leaned back against the counter and took a casual sip. “That’s cold.”

  I gently placed the glass on the drainer beside her. Dav had mentioned she had a smart mouth. She probably didn’t know when to back off either. “Me and Kari, we were part of this crew when you were still in middle-grade. Liau, Billy, Alex, we were tight before Dav scooped you up from wherever you came from. Sure, I went away, but now I’m back. So, let’s just get alone, huh, Cate.”

  “You left…You do that a lot? Just leave when shit gets hard? Must be easy for you. I guess you’ve never known what it’s like to be alone or you would never have left him.”

  I stepped in closer and lowered my voice. “I don’t know whatever personal shit you’re trying to pin on me, but Dav wasn’t alone. He had the crew.”

  I was the one who was alone, Jaz thought.

  “They love you.” She nodded toward the shop, gesturing at the crew still busy and oblivious to our heated discussion. “But all I know is you walked away when they needed you, and real family don’t do that.” She had me there, and we both knew. Cate’s smile cut like a knife.

  Dav saved me from the onset of this awkward conversation by emerging from his apartment and jogging down the steel staircase. �
�Jaz, hey…” he trailed off the closer he got, probably picking up on the artic atmosphere.

  “Have you got a second to talk?” I asked.

  He looked between me and Cate. “Sure.” He nodded, gesturing at the door below the stairs. I followed him inside a cramped office space—loaded floor-to-ceiling with files, receipts, and service manuals—nudged a box of spare nuts and bolts out of the way, and shut the door behind me, earning a raised eyebrow from Dav.

  His desk barely fit in the tiny room, leaving us just enough space to stand in front of it, but at least all the files and paperback muffled the rattle and voices from the workshop just outside the grubby window.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “With Cate? Nothing. Just a friendly chat. It doesn’t matter. Look, this is gonna sound crazy, but just hear me out, okay?”

  “You know what’s crazy? Racin’ that guy on an unfamiliar bike. I’d already told you he’s fast and the second I turn around you’re on the start line? You said you didn’t have a ride. Who’s bike was that?” He leaned back against a rickety desk, bracing his arms on either side of him.

  “I don’t know. He told someone to hand over their bike so she did—”

  Dav grunted incredulously. “Just like that?”

  “Exactly like that. I have it nearby. If you could contact some of the crews to find out how to get it back to its owner?”

  He shook his head, clearing thinking I was full of bullshit. It would have been so much easier if I had been. “It’s stolen?”

  “Borrowed.” I dug the keys out of my pocket. “See, totally legit.” He raised an eyebrow. “Look, okay. Forget that bike for a second. When we ran together, I never lost races, right? Well, rarely. There were all those times I let you win.”

  “You didn’t let me win, Jaz,” he drawled, his smirk so certain.

  “Didn’t I?”

  He touched his chest and mock-grimaced. “Man, that’s a kick in the nuts.”

  “I did that once, too.”

  “I remember.”