Rain Dance (Sunshine & Scythes Book 1)

by D. N. Erikson

  Somehow, this all felt like some weird version of the future, like one of those movies where the main character got to see the road untaken. And man, this path sucked. I silently seethed as I got in the passenger’s side, simmering in place as the engine roared to life. Kai cut the sedan through the crowd, which was back to wondering just why the party had stopped. The club zombies barely got out of the way.

  We were around the corner, heading for what I presumed was headquarters, when I felt a tap against my seat.

  Turning, I found Moreland’s yellow, jagged teeth staring back at me. So the bastard hadn’t died. And his color had returned.

  “You should have listened to your murderous little friend, here,” the warlock said. His dead eyes stared at me with what for him must’ve been insane glee. “There is no cure for a rabid dog.”

  Kai reached for his service weapon. His tattoos glowed.

  But the back door was already blowing away in the wind, and Moreland was tumbling out of the car, rolling along the road before anyone could stop him. Kai slammed on the brakes and backed up, but the warlock was up and sprinting, using the last of his energy to send the sedan off course.

  We spun out and hit a fire hydrant, water spraying all over the hood.

  By the time Kai got out and looked around, the unpleasant truth had already settled in.

  Moreland was gone.

  29

  But our rabid dog had left clues in the back of the sedan. A business card, to be exact, emblazoned with the name Soul Enterprises, which would have meant nothing except for the neon pink font that screamed one man and one man only.

  “We need to have a chat with the mayor,” I said, handing the card back to Kai.

  The agent looked up the street, which was largely abandoned, being the tail-end of the work day. “I’m not sure, Eden.”

  “They’re working together,” I said, slamming the back door. “What’s not to get?”

  I wiped what felt like water from my cheek, but turned out to be Moreland’s blood. Catching sight of myself in the side mirror, I saw what looked like a feral lunatic. No wonder I hadn’t gotten in the club. The gushing hydrant had subsided to a steady kind of stream that flooded the street. My shoes made a splashing noise with each step as I went to get in the passenger seat.

  “I’m sorry.” Kai shook his head. “Look what happened.”

  I glanced at the ruined hydrant and the dented hood. The way my life was going, I called this a solid Thursday. And here my only ally was ready to throw in the towel because he didn’t have clearance from on high.

  “Let me ask you something,” I said, letting my fingers slip away from the cool metal. “You think your superiors got all that information about me through legit means?”

  Kai’s throat pulsed as he swallowed, but didn’t answer. He knew I had a point, but he still believed in justice and the badge and doing things by the book, and all that crap everyone swore to abide by, but then realized, once they hit the dirty reality of life, would never really fly. Otherwise criminals would rule the asylum, flinging shit on everyone’s life.

  “The system has checks and balances.” Kai pressed his hands against the chassis, looking like he was trying to push the car over. Given the ass-kicking he’d handed Moreland, I wouldn’t bet against him being able to. “Someone has to be the balance, even if it’s not easy.”

  “So the mayor, Moreland, whoever else is out there, they all go free?” I still hadn’t told him about the mayor’s murderous proclivities, but we could get to that bridge if we needed to cross it. The way I viewed the situation, the mayor could skate with his soul harvesting business if he just told me where to find Moreland.

  Unless he’d been in on Roan’s murder, in which case I was jamming my Reaper’s Switch straight up his creepy foot loving ass.

  “I didn’t say these choices were easy,” Kai said. “Only necessary.”

  “Well,” I said. “Moreland’s liable to die out there if we don’t find him.” I raised my eyebrow and suppressed the urge to smirk smugly. “That has to be against protocol.”

  Kai’s gentle gaze narrowed in supreme annoyance at my infallible logic. But it was true: if Moreland died out there, that would present all sorts of issues for someone who filled out every box on the report. I mean, he could’ve just fudged a little bit—adjusting for Moreland’s supreme ability to be an incredible asshole—but that wasn’t his style. Plenty of demerits, or whatever the Feds handed out, would rain down on his beautiful, flowing hair.

  “Then we’ll find the warlock.” Kai’s hands slid off the top of the car. “Does that work for you?”

  “I’ll let you know after we visit the mayor.”

  It was the kick-off to campaign season, and someone had forgotten to tell me. As the sedan pulled up to the cul-de-sac, I saw the mayor’s front lawn covered in a crowd of excited people in board shorts and sandals, enjoying drinks made from actual pineapples. It was about as chintzy as you could—full-on political cheese, complete with the Firewalk Fundraiser banners draped all over his pink mansion like this was some sort of going out of business sale. Would-be donors danced barefoot across a pit of glowing coals, falling into the arms of their drunken and overly impressed companions waiting on the other side.

  I shared a look with Kai before we got out of the car. Bad eighties pop music that should have been put out to pasture decades ago blasted from loudspeakers set up near the stairs. The slightly older crowd was loving it, reliving songs from their youth in fruit-cocktail fueled nostalgia. I wove my way through the crowd of forty-somethings dancing poorly, finding Stefan chatting to a woman who had one too many facelifts chasing the fountain of youth.

  Not waiting for their conversation to conclude, I simply cut in and said, “We need to talk.”

  “Eden. Have you met the amazing Miss—”

  “Cut the bullshit, killer. I’m not in the mood.”

  His friendly grin stayed super-glued in place, but his eyes turned cold. Yeah, yeah, we had a secret. I wasn’t going to spill it to all the people risking third-degree burns trying to feel better about their lack of actual courage. Unless he insisted on doing the down-home, aww shucks routine around me. That might’ve been too much to take, after I’d helped him bury a headless corpse in the backyard, not two hundred yards away.

  Stefan gave an apologetic look at the plastic woman. “I’m sorry, honey, but this is urgent.”

  The woman didn’t seem bothered at all. She gave him a big, drunken hug, then stumbled off to join the festivities by the fire hazard. Once she was gone, the mayor looked between Kai and I and shook his bald, gleaming head.

  “We had an agreement, Reaper.” There was the smooth, featureless voice that I knew so well. “Let us talk inside.”

  He gestured toward the polished concrete stairs. Kai and I took lead, filtering past the pulsing loudspeakers. The massive two-story front doors were open, welcoming anyone inside the sprawling mansion. We all entered, then the doors slammed shut behind us.

  I gave Stefan a funny look.

  He shook his head. “Just a security feature.”

  “I see.” I took the card from my pocket and waved it in his face. “You’ve been busy.”

  Stefan glanced down each wing of the house. Satisfied no one was listening, he paced around the massive foyer. “Is it a crime to be a businessman?”

  “We only want Moreland,” Kai said, speaking for the first time.

  “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Cut the shit,” I said.

  “Do I need my lawyer here?” A tad of that aww shucks was coming back, and it was making my blood boil. I didn’t care that he was running a side business encroaching on my territory. But I did care that he’d gotten my little sister involved—and was preventing us from tracking down Moreland.

  “You can have counsel present if you want, Mayor Cambridge,” Kai said. “But we’d prefer if this was a quick visit.”

  Cambridge. The name was as fake as his manufact
ured accent. I had to admit one thing: the mayor had balls. Stepping into the public view with a secret like his. Declaring war on Aldric from the shadows with his own soul harvesting operation. I could appreciate the audaciousness of the con.

  “I would think that would be wise, wouldn’t it?” Stefan smiled at me, and I lost it.

  I leapt at him before Kai could stop me, bowling the mayor over into one of the curved marble staircases leading to the second floor. We collapsed with a dull, echoing thud against the hard floor. He was a lot bigger, but I’d caught him off guard. Perched atop him, with my knees digging into his chest, I looked down with wild eyes.

  “Tell us where Moreland is.”

  “My, my, how aggressive.” Stefan made no display of resisting. Even though he was of average build, he still had sixty pounds on me. And I thought it strange that he refused to cast any spells—after all, he was a rather potent warlock, if his soul’s signature was anything to go by. Instead, he allowed his bald head to slump against the cold ground in defeat.

  “I’ll show you aggressive,” I said, reaching for my pocket.

  “If you’re upset about your sister, you should know something.” He looked me dead in the eye. “She came to me.”

  “Bullshit.” But my rebuke sounded less than certain.

  Confused by his lack of fight and what he’d just said, I hesitated for a moment. A strong hand settled on my shoulder.

  “Eden.” Kai sounded concerned, like I’d lost it. Maybe he was right. I turned to look at him, which is when it happened. Quick as lightning, Stefan’s arm came up, holding a needle. It plunged into Kai’s wrist with a pneumatic hiss. Surprise registered in the FBI agent’s eyes, and he stumbled backward, reaching for his service weapon.

  He didn’t make it. Kai was out on his feet before he crashed to the ground.

  Stefan flipped me with ease, pinning me down by my wrists. Amusement danced in his eyes, like this was all a game. Pure fear sluiced through my veins as I stared up at him. It had all been a con—a game of possum to trick me into over aggression. He had read the situation and arranged the dominoes accordingly.

  All he had to do was tip the first one by inviting us inside.

  “It would be preferable if Moreland did not go to jail.” The cold, featureless voice returned, sliding past my ears like glass. “You understand. Bad for business.”

  As a response, I spit in his face. The joy didn’t disappear. Stefan lifted me over his shoulder, and I kicked and clawed.

  “I will be forced to use what I did on your friend if you do not go peacefully.”

  “Fuck off,” I said, and bit him in the ear. Not a second later, I felt a needle nip through my skin. The world went fuzzy, and then it winked away like a television set in a power outage.

  30

  Someone shook me awake. I punched into the fuzzy darkness, and the same person caught my wrist.

  “It’s me,” Kai said, by way of explanation. His strong jaw came into view first. I could see his tattooed arm holding mine, my knuckles only inches from his worried face. He released his grip slowly, and I retracted my arm.

  “What happened?”

  “Drugged and kidnapped.” The way he said it, we might as well have been out for ice cream or ticking a box on a list of errands. No fear, just pragmatism. This was the situation, such as it was.

  I didn’t share his stoic approach to the whole thing. The last few moments came rushing back to me—Stefan staring in my face with that leering look of amusement. Goddamn, if I could jam my Reaper’s Switch into his neck…

  The room where we were being held was dimly lit and smelled musty. I felt chunks of dirt beneath my fingertips, indicating it was unfinished. We were underground, in a cellar of sorts. When I stood, my head almost touched the ceiling. From the single, flickering bulb, I could see drag marks in the red soil, from where we had been dragged in. Kai had a long streak of dirt along his back, and the tips of his black hair were covered in dust.

  The cellar was narrow, no larger than six feet wide. It extended about twenty feet in each direction, making it feel like a tunnel without an exit. Actually, that was wrong—up ahead, near the flickering bulb, there was a vault grade steel door. I approached it and pounded against the thick metal. My fists barely even made a sound. No one would hear us down here.

  I walked the other way, past Kai. Lining the narrow room were shelves stocked with apothecarial jars. When I paused to examine the contents, however, I found that these weren’t healing herbs an apothecarial warlock might have. No. These were the kind of supplies an alchemist would have.

  I unleashed a bitter snort at how on-the-nose Alkemy’s name had been. Alchemy was the process of turning non-magical items into ones of magical power. It was dangerous and outlawed—the Department of Supernatural Affairs hunted alchemists like Salem did witches. That didn’t stop some people from dabbling, creating their own homebrew concoctions in the hope of gaining powers. Most simply poisoned themselves or melted off their hands. From these supplies, however, it was clear that Stefan was one of the rare individuals who had mastered his craft.

  I ran my fingers over the concrete back wall, finding no cracks in the surface. What I did find, however, was faded blood. I dropped down, spotting a message scrawled with a hair pin or paper clip. SAVE ME FROM THIS MADMAN.

  The row of skulls in the garden shed flashed through my mind, and I realized with a sickened feeling that no one had come to save whoever was down here before. Stefan held his victims prisoner before finally decapitating them. I didn’t know what pathological allure that sequence of events held, but then again, I wasn’t a serial killer.

  But, as the prisoner, I was less than thrilled.

  Dejected, I returned to Kai and slumped down across from him, a small cloud of dust whipping through the air as I settled in.

  “Well, this didn’t go as planned,” I said in the silent stillness, lacking any more eloquent observations.

  “I suppose not.” Kai smiled. “But there are worse fates.”

  “I don’t know. Being locked up in a serial killer’s root cellar is pretty close to rock bottom.”

  Kai’s brow furrowed slightly, but he didn’t answer. After a long silence, I said, “Fine. I caught the mayor burying bodies in the backyard, but didn’t tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “I might have been roped into burying one with him.”

  Kai brushed red dust from his hair as he processed the information. “I see.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “I can see why you’d be loath to share that particular series of events with me.”

  “Nothing gets to you, does it?”

  “That’s true for no man.” Kai patted his pockets. His service weapon was gone—naturally—but he’d been left with his phone. My heart soared when he raised the device up, but then it crashed when he shook his head. “No service.”

  “Guess that’d be too much to ask for.” I put a finger in my shirt collar and stretched it out. The place was beginning to feel claustrophobic, and it was getting hard to breathe.

  Kai, in a cool voice, said, “A vacuum seal keeps the wares fresh for longer.”

  I did not like the sound of that—because it meant Stefan was slowly suffocating us by sucking the air out of the room. What an ignominious end to this whole affair. We’d solved the case and had Moreland in our grasp. But instead of glory—or revenge—we were going to die alone in a musty basement for our troubles.

  As a final check, I patted down my own pockets. Empty. I felt a small pang of emptiness as I realized he’d taken the Reaper’s Switch. Not that it made much sense to leave me down here with it.

  Just as I was about to give into fate, Kai rose and began looking over the myriad jars lining the shelves. I watched him for a few minutes as he pulled things down and muttered to himself. Finally I said, “What are you doing?”

  “Many years ago, when I lived in Hawaii, my mother passed down what her mother had taught her
.”

  “You’re talking about the sigils on your arm?”

  “No. That was a gift from my father, passed on after he died.” Kai didn’t expand on this point, and it didn’t seem like the time to go digging for details. But I was curious. His soul was clearly human, if slightly augmented by outside forces. Unless it was all some sort of scam, like Stefan cloaking himself as a powerful warlock—but actually being an alchemist.

  My head was all kinds of fucked up. None of my instincts were right. That was a bad place to be in, not being able to trust your senses to give you reliable intel. I quieted the doubts in my head by looking at Kai.

  Here was a trustworthy man if I’d ever laid eyes on one. A man with secrets? Certainly—just the same as any other.

  I said, “What was your mother?”

  “Just a person who believed in her son.” Kai, by this point, was cradling so many jars that he had to put some of them down in the red dust in front of me. I recognized none of the labels. The glass clinked together in the hollow stillness. After skimming the long shelves once more, he returned with one final ingredient.

  This one I recognized.

  I took the jar carefully within my hands and said, “You’re not really considering this.” The faded masking tape read Reaper’s Willow in neat print. In times of emergency, where a Reaper’s Switch wasn’t present, the thorny plant could be used to extract one’s soul. I’d never had occasion to use it.

  The pungent smell of what could best be described as supercharged cinnamon flooded the tight space. I coughed and covered my nose with my t-shirt, eyes tearing from the sharp scent. Kai barely blinked as he mixed the ingredients in the jar lid, measuring them out in pinches with a steady eye. When he was finished kneading the tiny pile, he was left with a pile of sawdust colored powder.