Because whatever was currently transpiring was not going to fly.
Casually allowing the vodka to sway with the devil-may-care cool of someone who doesn’t give a shit, I make my way through the late-night stragglers. Even at four in the morning, there are enough people chasing a buzz to make the dance floor thick with the dueling scents of sweat and lust. Maintaining my loose cool, shoulders swinging to the dub-step remix blaring in the shitty speakers, I got closer to Maxwell, trying to catch his eye in the throng.
He hurried over once he saw me and blinked twice behind his Buddy Holly glasses and said, “I want to get out of here.” He threw a glance over his shoulder like he was being pursued by angry bees.
“You’re hitting it off with her, man.” I gave him a playful punch, like I was someone who had it together but could still let loose. “She’s cute.”
“I—I don’t know.” He whispered into my ear. “She seems desperate.”
I looked past our mark and gave an imperceptible head shake to Sierra. She’d love that assessment tomorrow morning. But for now, this was in my court, and I needed to focus. Sierra gave me a look like I’d grown three heads. Her brown hair tied back in a conservative ponytail swished as she shook her head. She smacked her ruby red lips and then disappeared into the late night crowd.
We’d engineered her look to mesh with Maxwell’s tastes. But social engineering was more art than science. He rubbed his hand through his gelled, short businessman’s cut and blinked again. It was an affectation that occurred when he was nervous.
And Roan was right—it happened a lot in my presence. I should’ve been flattered, I suppose. Sierra had always gotten the boy’s attention, even when we were younger. Which wasn’t to say I was homely by any stretch, merely that I was weird, and she was the outgoing, bubbly girl that everyone fell in love with. If you really wanted to dive into my brain, the genesis of this whole scheme—ripping people off, floating from city-to-city—started right there. I’d studied to know which buttons to press at just the right time. What my sister did naturally, I did through study.
Of course, she still did it in the field. I was usually like a coach calling plays from the sidelines. Tonight, however, I had been thrust into a starring role. My body pulsed with the limitless possibility.
Maxwell looked at me hopefully, and I gave him an easy smile. “She’s gone. You wanna get out of here?”
This was the simplest con of all, called pretty girl relieves you of your money and then breaks your heart. An old classic, practiced in endless permutations the world over. When the Earth is nothing but dust, there will still be some poor bastard trapped in a trophy wife honeypot without a pre-nup.
I made my way through the crowd, latching my fingers between his. He gave me a look—the kind of happy look of relief someone has when things finally work out—and I felt a wave of guilt wash over me. Then again, this same guy screwed over all his original investors and kicked his partner out—the programmer of the app, no less—with nothing. So I might be an asshole, but I might have just been some sort of karmic boomerang coming back to whip him in the ass.
He stumbled forward, a little drunker than I expected. The pleasant expression on his face twisted into a grimace.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It…it hurts.” His hand slipped out of mine and clutched his stomach. I looked down and saw blood soaking through his baggy dress shirt. Whirling around frantically, I couldn’t see who—or what—had hurt him. The blood spread up to his chest, and he crumbled to the ground. I yelled, but the base was too loud, and everyone was too drunk.
I knelt to the dirty concrete and pressed my fingers against Maxwell’s neck. Dead as a post.
One thought ran through my mind like a battle cry: I need to find Sierra. Now.
The rest of the bar didn’t even notice that this guy was down for the count. I elbowed my way through the crowd, garnering a few sour glances for my trouble. The faded orange EXIT sign called me like a beacon into the marshland city of rusty patinas, crumbling concrete and faded colonial structures. I walked out the door-less exit into the humid and thick early morning air. Bourbon Street is still populated, albeit sporadically. I kept my head down, walking briskly toward the meeting spot we agreed upon in case of emergency. Roan and Sierra might not have seen what happened, but they would show up eventually.
I cut down the tight alley, looking for my sister and boyfriend. Sierra was nowhere to be found amidst the dumpsters and spent bottles. I craned my neck back toward the street, seeing if I can catch a glimpse of her brunette wig. But there was nothing but faded people making decisions they would regret come afternoon.
Heart stammering, I saw the blood on my fingers. This had gone catastrophically wrong, and we needed to get out. With a hopeful gaze, I scanned the alley again—which was when I saw it lying in a muddy puddle by a pair of battered trash cans. The fake strands of hair reflected the early dawn light, outing themselves. Something red stained the fibers, and I hurried over and leaned in, close enough to see if it’s—
“Blood, my dear girl.” The voice speaks crisp English, but is slightly foreign and completely lifeless. Despite the swampy heat cloaking the city like a shroud, I found my core temperature dropping a few degrees. “Your sister, correct?”
I heard a whimper, which could only be Sierra. My cheeks flushed with white-hot anger as a man stepped out from behind a battered dumpster. The shadows cloaked his face, but my sister’s terrified expression was clear as day.
“We have money,” I said, the words unsteady.
Something has gone horribly wrong. The mystery man’s hand touched Sierra’s heart-shaped chin. Blood flowed from an open-wound at her temple, staining her platinum blonde hair a messy shade of brackish brown.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Even though he is cloaked in shadow, I could see that his eyes were completely dead. Devoid of life in a way that I’ve never seen in a human being. He leaned forward, revealing a row of yellow teeth in a menacing glare. Then he receded into the shadows once more, featureless and deadly. My legs almost gave out, but I managed to stand.
“Do you know what I am?” the man responds, uninterested in answering my offer.
“A dick.” I rubbed my hand along the outside of the blazer. There was a Glock 26 hiding inside the pocket, just small enough to be out of sight. Yeah, plenty of the bars around here have a no firearms sign, but fuck them. An unarmed grifter becomes a dead one, sooner or later.
A sudden bolt of amber pierced through his dead eyes, and he snarled. “I have watched you children long enough.”
“I’m not a child.” I was twenty-four, and a student of anarchy, above the law, until then, when I found myself desperately wishing the entire police force would come haul us away.
“It is all relative.” His speech was stiff, almost accented. The pale man stroked Sierra’s chin gently as the realization washed over me. This man wasn’t human. I stifled a shiver and willed my frozen hand toward the pistol as Sierra silently cried. The man shoved her away, down to the dirty pavement just as I got my hand on the tacky grip. I slid it out and pull the trigger, but there was nothing there when the bullet smacked against the wall.
“For that, my dear girl, your sister will die, too.” It was a whisper in my ear. I turned, but he was gone. “But, alas, unlike you, she shall not return.”
A knife plunged into my chest. My legs buckled and I collapsed next to the bloody wig. My own blood poured from the wound in my chest, and the pale man loomed over me. I still couldn’t make out his features, beyond the dead eyes. Almost like a magic spell obscured his face, made you forget it the instant you saw it. The raucous sounds of Bourbon Street faded into blackness, and instead of screaming, my dying words were, “We just wanted a new life.”
“Then you shall get what you always desired.”
His eyebrows rose as he watched me take my final, shuddering breath. All I could manage to mouth was the word where?
“Where el
se, dear girl?” He offered me a frivolous shrug, then turned to head back to Bourbon Street. “Paradise, of course.”
18
I awoke with a shuddering start. My ribs hurt, and I had a massive headache. The room smelled like ammonia and wet fur. A cold linoleum floor stretched out around the small cot where I’d been sleeping. There was old, yellowed newspaper covering the small room’s only window. As my senses returned, I realized I was inside what used to be an exam room.
I had another realization, too. The son of a bitch who had killed me four years ago? That had been Moreland. Which meant only one thing: Aldric had planned this from the beginning. Why wouldn’t he keep yanking my chain.
I swung my bare feet onto the cool floor and tried to stand. Instead, I collapsed in a heap, barely saving myself from faceplanting by clutching a rickety metal tray table. It kept me from falling, but couldn’t hold my weight for long. The table tipped over, clanging against the hard ground. My arms smacked against the linoleum, sending a shockwave of pain through my body. I curled into a ball and listened to the voices come down the hall, getting louder as they approached.
The door swung open and Dante stood in it.
“Well, you certainly have a skill for hurting yourself.” He took a step inside, but I recoiled, scraping at the floor like a dog terrified of what was about to happen next. “The hell is up with you?”
“Stay away from me.” My fingers searched for anything along the floor that I could defend myself with. But the metal tray had been empty for years, and my clutch was nowhere in the immediate vicinity. I might as well have been a fish beached on shore, curling its lip at the fisherman.
An apt metaphor, considering I’d been caught by the prime suspect in this murder case. I finally managed to push myself up from the floor by my knuckles. We stared at one another in silence until the short woman came up behind Dante.
Up close, I could see she was young-ish—maybe thirty-five, or forty—with straight, long red hair. Clearly a fox shifter. She might as well have had a sign hanging from her neck. Her eyes trusted nothing, least of all me. The woman stood on her tip-toes to whisper in Dante’s ear.
“Zoe here says we should get rid of you.”
A lightning bolt of recognition coursed through my veins. “You.” It was the woman who had delivered Rayna’s message after I’d been released on bail from the FBI. Zoe, for her part, glared icy daggers of death at her partner before stalking out. She was light and nimble on her feet.
“Interesting proposition,” I said. The room spun just from the effort of standing. I probably had a minor concussion from the wreck, along with whatever had happened to my ribs. I spotted the hideous clutch over by the sink, and willed myself over to it by sheer determination. Getting the clasps open was a trial. I felt Dante’s hand touch mine, and I shrieked.
“You don’t want any help.” He backed away and leaned up against a faded red biohazard bin in the corner of the cramped room. “Noted.”
I got the clasp open and searched for the herbs. All I found was the Reaper’s Switch and a couple stray dollars. Fists tightened in little balls of fury, I turned slowly.
“Where the hell is it?”
“I think you need to rest,” Dante said with a cool expression.
I reached into the clutch and flicked out the blade. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Dante sighed and rolled his eyes. “Put that away.”
“I’ll put it right through your chest if you don’t bring me back the pouch.” I narrowed my eyes into the tiniest of slits. “And you know what happens to an immortal when their soul is stolen.”
That registered the slightest bit of concern. “The Warlock’s Lemonmint, was it?” He gestured toward the door. “May I, or are you going to—”
“Two minutes before I hunt your ass down.”
“Duly noted.” Dante slipped out the open door, leaving be alone in the cold room. These idiots had ripped off one of the most dangerous men in the world, and were holed up in this dump. I stared at the faded poster on the wall, featuring a smiling woman with veneers imploring everyone to spay and neuter.
Footsteps in the hall drew my attention away. Much to my chagrin, it wasn’t Dante returning with the bag, but Zoe and a second party—a middle-aged, mousy looking librarian. I had no idea how she got caught up in this mess, but suffice to say, Aldric would relish the opportunity to remove her head from her body. She was at least a head taller than Zoe, who probably barely scraped five feet tall.
I glanced between them, still holding the knife.
“I’m not getting the herbs, am I?”
“Magnus needs them.” The way Zoe’s voice shook, I knew that she cared about the giant. I wasn’t sure how that worked, physically, since he looked liable to crush her, but good for them. Nonetheless, love was getting in the way of my own healing, which would in turn get in the way of my own survival.
I jerked my head at the librarian, immediately regretting it as the area exploded in a sea of fuzzy color. “What’s your deal?” The words sounded like they were coming out underwater.
The woman didn’t respond. Zoe spoke for her. “Doris took a vow of silence.”
“How quaint.” The world began settling into some semblance of stability. “What does she do?”
“She’s our security.”
“What, does she bore people to death?” I looked at Doris, who stared back. Suddenly, a dagger appeared from nowhere and zoomed by head, lodging itself in the cabinet behind my ear. Her hand disappeared back into her sensible pants as my pulse rose a few notches.
“That should be enough of a demonstration,” Zoe said with a smirking grin.
“Is that why we’re having this chat?” I tried to read their expressions, but to their credit, they were playing things tight to the vest. Totally inscrutable. Wouldn’t help them keep their limbs attached to their bodies once Aldric caught up with them, but maybe they’d die with a little stoic pride.
Zoe slunk forward, not so much moving over the slick linoleum as gliding like a figure skater over ice. She didn’t even come up to my chin, but she made for an imposing presence nonetheless.
“You’re either on board, or you’re in the jungle.”
“What happened to Magnus?” I asked, instead of acknowledging her threat. “Aldric get him?”
“That’s none of your concern.” Zoe’s voice was snippy, like she was trying to hold back a dam of emotion. “Until you tell us what side you’re on.”
Her shirt was almost touching the tip of the blade. Had to say, I appreciated the moxie. But I wasn’t really looking to form a suicide pact with these idiots.
I smiled. “You know he’s going to pick you off one by one, right?”
The blade removed itself from the cupboard and floated around my head. I’d heard of this type of sorcery before, but never seen it in person. The gleaming point touched my nose gently, just pressing into my skin.
“An answer, Reaper.”
“Why’d you kill Roan?”
The knife pricked into my nose, drawing blood. I bit my lip to avoid crying out. That wouldn’t a good look. My nose itched as the blood trickled down.
“No one here killed him,” Zoe said. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
Before Zoe could say anything, or Doris could carve me up with her flying knife, Dante returned to the doorway. His eyes grew a little wider when he saw the situation.
“Well, don’t you have a gift for making friends.”
“My sister got all that talent,” I said, speaking the truth for the first time in a while. You had to sprinkle it in like seasoning. The truth had a certain consistency that, when mixed with lies, gave the falsehoods a ring of veracity.
“Oh, she couldn’t have gotten everything.” Dante smiled, but I didn’t reciprocate, and the grin quickly faded. He clasped his hands together. “Well, it looks like the big guy is gonna pull through.”
“Then I’d like to go home, if it’s all the same to you.”
Dante shared a quick glance with his two allies and said, “Well, that depends on if you’re in or not.”
Without any other choice, I told one more lie. “Of course I am.”
And gave them all the biggest shit eating grin I could muster.
19
Except, of course, I wasn’t. I had qualms about turning them over to Aldric—that was a lot of blood for one person’s hands to bear—but I wasn’t about to bail them out of their dumb decisions. Dante drove me back in silence, other than the presence of Khan, who screeched and complained in his cat carrier the whole ride home. I hadn’t really met the cat after his transformation, other than him scaring the shit out of me in the basement, and his tirades weren’t exactly ingratiating themselves to me.
“Here,” Dante said as he pulled up to the service road where my bike was stashed. The dress smelled like sweat and fear, and I wanted nothing more than to get the hell away from him. But I turned, and saw that he had a large pinch of the Warlock’s Lemonmint in his palm.
I grabbed it without a thank you—it was mine, after all, and those assholes had stolen it—and downed it.
Khan hissed in the backseat. “Stupid human, it is more effective as a tea.”
I smacked the carrier, and the cat unleashed a stream of curses about the indignity of being caged. With a tired arm, I opened the car door, straining against the modest weight. Eventually, I got it open, and I kind of heaved myself out on to the dirt by the service road.
I glanced back at the car. “Who carved Magnus up?”
“Aldric. He was looking to see if the big guy knew more.”
“And what did the ‘big guy’ tell him?”
“Nothing. All part of the plan.” Dante gave me a wink, but I could see that he’d been shaken. He hadn’t expected Aldric to try to gut someone trying to do the right thing for information. But I knew how Aldric operated—even if he had believed Magnus was telling the truth, he’d make sure to extract every bit of usable intel.
Rain Dance (Sunshine & Scythes Book 1) Page 15
