Race of Thieves

by S. M. Reine

  Then, at the five-minute mark—now four and a half minutes—the security team would descend to pepper Cage’s skull with silver bullets.

  Every angel who visited the geosynchronous station at the top of the Helios Tether, called CYCNUS, held joint ownership in Araboth Tower. That gave them hardcore diplomatic immunity. Almost sovereignty. Nobody would question his death if he suddenly went missing, so security wouldn’t warn him before shooting.

  In less than five minutes.

  “Plenty of time!” Cage said.

  He abandoned the SWAT gear and headed down a curved hallway. Its inner wall was made of glass, creating an exhibit out of the round room at its center. Within, a fountain bubbled around the roots of a marble tree. Magelights tipped each branch. The glass was too thick to allow sound to pass, but speakers piped the rush of water into the hall.

  The serene bubbling chased Cage down the sloped hallway, which opened into a postmodern clerestory with stairs spiraling to three bedrooms. He wanted one on the right. That was where the electrical schematics had showed the highest concentration of cables, suggesting the highest security.

  “You’ve now got three minutes, fifty-seven seconds until security arrives,” Vex said, “and Forfax’s silver BMW has flipped a U-turn three blocks down.”

  An angel would be able to reach Cage much faster than the security team, lockdown or not.

  There was no time for lock picking and skullduggery.

  Cage lashed out with a heel. Rubber sole met lock mechanism. The mahogany around the handle pulverized and the door bounced open.

  The bedroom had been converted to accommodate two aisles of armor stands within class cases. Some of the armor looked to belong to sidhe royalty. The black leather catsuit had belonged to the first Gray overlord in pre-Genesis history—first, last, and only. Forfax also owned a set of stone body armor that Cage didn’t recognize, though the placard attributed its design to half-angel Oracle Marion Wilder.

  The two end cases were the most secure. They had battery backups in case the power went out, ensuring the climate within would be maintained. Magetech wards shimmered over the glass. He had expected this type of display for the Tigris Coat, which Gutterman had described simply as “an old red jacket.”

  What Cage hadn’t expected was to find two old red jackets, both heavily locked down.

  One jacket was dyed, tattered linen. The other one looked like an English gentleman’s coat, but frillier and stupider.

  “Which one is the Tigris Coat?” Cage asked.

  Vision had caught a ride down the hallway on his lapel. The eyeball slipped off his shoulder to take a closer look. “I don’t know,” Vex said after a moment. They had prepped exhaustively for this heist but hadn’t been able to find details about the Tigris Coat. It was an obscure artifact among obscure artifacts.

  Neither of them could identify it.

  An audible alarm began blaring. The building had shifted from its initial quarantine mode to locking down the other residents’ condominiums. That left Cage two minutes before guards showed up.

  “Forfax is out of his car,” Vex said.

  That gave Cage thirty seconds at best. He fumbled a pair of enchanted earplugs out of his breast pocket. “I’m gonna blow the bomb.”

  “Give me twelve seconds so I can get outside and watch!” Vision whirred through the open door, racing toward the entry point.

  “Don’t run off!” He jammed the earplugs into place. “How am I supposed to know which coat to grab?”

  “You’re the Shatter Cage! You’ll figure it out!” Vex’s voice was softening as distance weakened the signal to the Link.

  A rustle of feathers. A breath of wind. Moments after Vision disappeared, Forfax appeared at the end of the clerestory, his wings stretched to their full glory. Each one extended three meters and had feathers as long as Cage’s hand. They were not white like angel wings in kids’ books, but the multihued earth tones of a bird of prey. It brought out the gold in his skin and emphasized the chilly blue of his irises.

  Chilly and hostile blue, for that matter. Forfax had spotted Cage within the shadows of the bedroom.

  “Shapeshift!” Vex urged. “You’ll be too fast to catch if you change, and there’s a vent right behind you!” Cage’s animal form was small enough that “shapeshift” was great advice for escaping most situations. But it was advice he never took. Not when he had a dozen guys aiming guns at him, and not when he’d been spotted by a furious angel.

  “Come out with your hands up!” Forfax drew a scimitar from within his jacket. It caught fire when he twisted his wrist, because of course it did. Archangels had to have the scariest, most fucked up toys to go along with their eccentric hobbies.

  Cage didn’t look back before slamming the diamond-tipped punch into glass. He put all his weight into it, and it still barely cracked. Shapeshifter strength should have pulverized any glass on the planet. Angels were probably getting glass from Jupiter or somewhere ridiculous. They had a stranglehold on lunar mining, so they could afford it.

  The hole in the glass was big enough for Cage to yank out the more elaborate of the red coats. It looked fancy enough to be worth Cage’s life.

  Surprise burst over Forfax’s features. “What are you doing?”

  “The dignified thing,” Cage said, and then he raced straight at the angel.

  Shifters could go from zero to sixty faster than sports cars. Fast enough to surprise an angel.

  Forfax was surprised all right. He leaped aside, plastering his back to the wall. That cleared a path for Cage to get to the living room. He arrived just in time to feel the concussion and hear the explosions and watch the building across the street go up in a fireball.

  The shockwave made the glass remaining on Forfax’s windows ripple like water. Cage’s eyes watered from the blazing light, and his eardrums throbbed, even with the charmed plugs.

  Every other shapeshifter for kilometers was going to be deaf like they had just seen a Black Death revival band playing at max volume.

  The duller ears of the angel were still sensitive to the explosion. Forfax roared and staggered behind Cage. His sword dropped. The fire went out when it lost contact with his skin.

  This would have been a great time to escape. He’d grabbed the coat, and Forfax thrashed on the ground. Finders keepers, losers bleeding eardrums.

  But how was Cage supposed to escape when the fireworks were this good? He’d decapitated the building like Marie Antoinette. The reflection on Vision’s glossy eyeball somehow made it look delighted.

  “Over here!” Cage reached out a hand.

  Vision whirred away from the window, and Vex’s cheers of delight grew louder as it approached. “That was so cool! Did you see, Cage? Did you see what a mess that made?”

  He nestled Vision in the neck of his shirt. “That was even better than the Centre Pompidou!”

  Like the time they’d blown up a wing of the Centre Pompidou, they’d ensured the area they were destroying was empty. It was an office building—no employees at night. And Vex would have disconnected the trigger if any lifeforms had appeared at the top of the building before detonation.

  That meant it was just pretty. Very, very pretty.

  And they could giggle over it like total psychopaths because nobody was actually hurt.

  Although at least one insurance company was gonna be pretty pissed off after this.

  Forfax struggled to his feet, swiping at the silvery blood that trickled down his jaw line. “You—you thief, you fool—” It was perversely satisfying to see a perfect angel’s face twisted into such pain.

  Gods, he hoped Forfax wasn’t the type to hold a grudge.

  “Sorry about this! Nothing personal!” Cage called.

  The eyeball tucked itself into Cage’s collar. Forfax lunged toward him, but Cage raced for the window. He didn’t need to run very fast. Forfax didn’t seem serious about getting him. Otherwise, he could have used his wings to close the distance in a heartbeat.
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br />   Instead, the last thing Cage saw before leaping out the window was Forfax’s bemused face.

  Not angry, not vengeful.

  Bemused.

  Cage, the coat, and the eyeball plummeted out of the window.

  One of his bigger grappling hooks connected easily with a grotesque perched on a building down the street. Cage swung away safely, and Forfax never chased him, and Cage tried not to worry why.

  Chapter Two

  “The jacket can’t be a fake,” Cage said. “I got it from Forfax, right where you said it’d be. That’s the Tigris Coat!”

  His insistence did nothing to alter Gutterman’s expression, which was the face most people made after stepping in dog shit. Gutterman probably made a different face when he stepped in shit, though. He was a nightmare demon. Shit, blood, and viscera was their whole thing.

  Cage was much worse than shit, as far as this demon was concerned.

  “You know what the Tigris Coat does?” Gutterman asked, his mouth wiggling within the depths of his folds. Cage thought he could see the glistening beads of eyeballs peering out of a higher fold, right above the daikon-shaped lump of Gutterman’s nose. “It protects the wearer from attack.”

  “I survived Forfax, so that sounds right to me,” Cage said.

  “Skelz, put the jacket on.” Gutterman tried to point at the coat puddled on the floor. His forearm barely budged, incapable of lifting the weight of his bicep’s draping skin. One of the cysts near his elbow dimples popped. Yellow cream dribbled from the crater.

  “Put the coat on?” asked the guy holding the pitchfork. He was shoveling literal garbage toward a trio of men struggling to lift one of Gutterman’s belly folds off the floor. Every time Cage came to the warehouse, they were trying to feed him like that. Just shoving endless trash into his skin.

  “You heard me. Put it on.” Gutterman’s voice was tiny, smothered by the weight of his form. It didn’t help that his head was somewhere up near the warehouse’s corrugated roof.

  “Okay, boss.” Skelz dropped the pitchfork, and the other guys dropped Gutterman’s mass with a groan.

  Rumor had it that Gutterman didn’t used to be this big. One of Cage’s favorite contacts—a budtender called Xenon—said that Gutterman was once the size of a human man. Moving to Phaethon Bay had literally blown him up. There was limitless fear for a nightmare to devour here.

  Gutterman’s warehouse was twenty-five stories below the embarkation point of the Helios Tether, and most people were terrified to head for CYCNUS. The platforms were only enclosed by magic, so you could feel wind all the way to the top of the atmosphere. It wasn’t uncommon to experience moments of microgravity beyond the stratosphere, too. Even the most powerful magecraft experienced turbulence in the radiation of space.

  For a nightmare, living so close to fear was like connecting a hose to a balloon, except Gutterman never popped.

  “Take five, all of you,” Gutterman said.

  His trash men hollered their thanks and ambled out of the warehouse, leaving the great doors open with no concern for privacy. They were on the city floor. Nobody with an ounce of sense or class came down to the ground level of Phaethon Bay. Even the best beaches were elevated these days.

  Gutterman’s lackeys were smart enough to stick close to the warehouse. They barely edged onto the sidewalk before their vapes began glowing red like starlight within in the fog. They breathed vapor into the rain that had begun pounding at midnight, right on time.

  Cage was jealous. Not that he wanted to vape—they looked like morons. He just wished he hadn’t been standing so close to one of the nightmare’s blackened feet. His toes smelled like Limburger and that was still only half the reason that Cage couldn’t breathe.

  Shapeshifters weren’t as susceptible to nightmare thrall as mundanes, but even an Alpha-level shapeshifter like Cage wasn’t immune. Fear had a way of creeping over him while he talked with Gutterman. By the time he escaped the warehouse—if he escaped—he’d be a shaking wreck of adrenaline. Being an Alpha only meant he could pretend to keep his cool.

  Gutterman had been impressed when they first met. Cage had survived a twenty-minute-long meeting with him, face to face. He’d proven himself every bit the Alpha. It had given him a reputation as a badass.

  Of course, the flame charms on his fingers helped with that too.

  Cage’s animal form wasn’t real dignified. The fewer people who knew what he turned into, the better. So he kept himself plastered in fire charms and told everybody that he was a phoenix shifter, like the sanctuary’s fabled Alpha phoenix. There was no reason not to believe him. Deirdre Tombs was seldom seen in her animal form—phoenixes were devastating to populated areas—so Cage didn’t have to shift to prove himself. He only needed to pinch his nose, stand close to the nightmare, and pretend that the fire shimmering over his fists wasn’t a glamour.

  So far, nobody had challenged his claims of being a phoenix. And Gutterman’s goons thought he was cool.

  “Want a drag, Cage?” one of the goons on the sidewalk called. That was Barnaby, a basandere too friendly for his own good.

  “Nope, thanks. I’m fine.” Cage didn’t feel good. His heart had been jackhammering ever since Gutterman accused him of scamming.

  Gods, he regretted financing his museum through this flesh mountain. If only because Cage had to smell that endless-fart stench every time he visited Gutterman.

  “I think this is as good as it gets, boss,” Skelz said. The coat couldn’t be pulled past his elbows. “It’s too small.”

  “It’s big enough.” An arm formed from one of Gutterman’s belly rolls, just right of the cheesy pit of his navel. He seized the abandoned pitchfork and plunged the tines into Skelz’s back, leaving four perfect bloody holes in Forfax’s jacket.

  Skelz gurgled on his own blood. His eyes rolled.

  He fell back, and the pitchfork propped him upright even once he’d gone limp in death.

  Cage’s mouth went dry. “So…you’re saying that’s not the invulnerable Tigris Coat.” A puddle of warm blood spread from underneath Skelz’s left knee, and Cage shuffled away from it. He’d just gotten new sneakers with money from his last heist. Nice sneakers. He wasn’t ready to lose them to blood splatters.

  “It’s not the Tigris Coat,” Gutterman said with such vehemence that greenish spit flecks smacked Cage’s chest. “You’re now late on repaying your loan—”

  “I’ve got thirty minutes, actually,” Cage said.

  “Where are you getting that many northcoins in thirty minutes?” Gutterman asked.

  “I can sell that jacket, whatever it is. It’s still good. Look.” He kicked over Skelz’s body, tugged the pitchfork free, and stripped off the coat. “It’s just kind of bloody. A scrub and a couple patches and…”

  “It’s not worth anything,” Gutterman said.

  Cage’s ears perked up. “You mean it’s priceless?”

  “I mean I wouldn’t wipe my ass crack with it.”

  A circus tent wouldn’t have had enough square footage to wipe Gutterman’s effervescent ass crack. “Give me a few more days.”

  “I already gave you a week over six months, and only because you guaranteed you could nail this heist,” Gutterman said. “But you got the wrong coat! You don’t got my money! You’re breaking the deal, and I gotta say, I don’t like deal breakers.” Gas rumbled through his body. It sounded like sulfur bubbles rising within a swamp.

  Cage stuffed the bloodied coat into his sack. “Come on, Gutterman. You don’t want to repossess my museum.” He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I can do another heist for you. I can do another three!”

  “I don’t want more heists, and I don’t want your museum.”

  Cage relaxed, briefly.

  The demon said, “I wanna take repayment out of your skin.”

  And then Cage had a pitchfork in his stomach.

  He looked down at his new wound in surprise. It hurt a lot. “In retrospect, I really should have seen th
is coming. When all you’ve got is a fork, all your problems look like spaghetti and meatballs. Or something like that. Gods, that’s a lot of blood.”

  So much for keeping his new sneakers clean.

  Gutterman’s skin rippled and roiled and steamed as he turned incorporeal. The loan shark only used his body while conducting business. When he wanted to murder someone, he could convert to a convenient gas form to smother the life from them. “Don’t let him out of the warehouse!” Gutterman shouted to his trash men. He kept his head floating inside his evaporating form, jowls bubbling with fresh cysts.

  The other goons dropped their vapes and spread across the doorway, golden eyes shining. Only Barnaby was a basandere. The rest were shifters. People strong enough to survive pitchforks, unlike Skelz, and probably strong enough to kill Cage.

  He dragged the pitchfork out of his stomach, grimacing at the scrape of its prongs against the squishy folds of his gut. He could feel every last bit of metal rearranging his organs. It wasn’t silver. He’d heal.

  Pitchfork clattered against concrete.

  Cage drew in a breath. The briny air was thick with Gutterman’s stink.

  Oh no.

  The room grew dark—so dark that Cage couldn’t see the shifters encircling him. He couldn’t feel his own body. He was a point of consciousness hovering within a tar pit of nightmare energy.

  It was inside him. Against every inch of his flesh.

  “I hate nightmares,” Cage gasped, clutching at his throat.

  If you think this is bad, just wait and see what happens when I find the darkest places inside you. Gutterman’s gravelly voice came to Cage with the same bodiless clarity as when Vex spoke through the Link.

  “Did you forget I’m a phoenix?” Cage let flames erupt from Vex’s charms. The fire shoved the darkness back just enough to glimpse the goons. Did they have baseball bats? “If you try to eat me, I’ll light up and destroy you.”