by S. M. Reine
Even a phoenix’s flame needs oxygen to burn.
“You’re nuts if you think you can smother this.” He flung his arms to either side, fingers spread, and unleashed every charm.
Fire exploded over his flesh. The heat generated a wind all its own, making Cage’s curls dance.
Light punched straight through Gutterman’s shadow and flooded every crevice of the warehouse.
Of course, Gutterman was a very strong nightmare, so the amount of power required to repel him drained Cage’s charms within seconds. As quickly as it flared, it began fading.
At least he set fire to Gutterman’s gelatinous head first.
“Argh!” His voice was the drip of feces splattered against the inside of a chimpanzee’s cage. It was an anemone squished under the heel of a child running on the beach. It was the wind screaming over a desolate cemetery hill with a single unmarked grave at its peak, where Cage’s anonymous bones had come to rest.
“No,” groaned Cage, clutching at his skull. The nightmare had gotten into him despite the fire. He couldn’t see anything but that grave now.
Nobody will remember you. Nobody cares about you. You’re not a good thief. You’re not good at anything. When you die, nothing will be left behind, and history won’t know the name of Shatter Cage.
He ran from the grave.
Somehow, Cage made his real body move. His feet found traction on the concrete. His fists never released the bag with the jacket. But he couldn’t see the warehouse. Just his bones.
Nobody will remember you, Shatter Cage.
He needed to get away from Gutterman as quickly as possible.
Vex would have told him to shapeshift and run.
“Time to take your advice,” Cage said, even though Vision wasn’t around to transmit the words to Vex.
Cage kicked off his pants. He was commando, as always, so there was no underwear to drop; his shirt came next, and then his sandals. Running away from a grease fire of a demon butt-naked was not dignified, but Cage would take survival over dignity any day.
He had to get away from that grave before fear turned into reality.
Just a few more steps cleared his eyes. He could see the warehouse again. Cage had run in the wrong direction—not toward the open door, but toward the back, where he’d be cornered.
Unless he climbed.
He threw the rucksack, aiming for a high window in the warehouse. It landed on one of the upper walkways.
Cage shifted.
Some shapeshifters could control the order in which they shifted, but Cage wasn’t among them. He got a big fluffy butt first. All that extra tissue right around his booty and hips. It made him run like he was wearing an inflatable sumo suit.
Luckily that only lasted a few strides. By the time he leaped at the wall, he had the clawed hands and feet of a rodent. His mass dwindled as he scrambled vertically toward the walkway.
The animal’s mind took him last.
The squirrel’s mind.
It was the squirrel who knew how to climb upside down along the walkway. It was the squirrel who knew how to effortlessly slither over the railings and reach the rucksack. It was also the squirrel who wanted nothing to do with that rucksack, since it had no interest in human accoutrement, so Cage internally commanded his squirrel to shut the fuck up.
He grabbed the rucksack’s strap in his teeth and leaped out the window.
The men were still shouting when he hit the ground outside, rucksack in tow. It didn’t sound like any of them had spotted him changing. It must’ve looked like he had turned into a tower of flame and then vanished completely.
For now, nobody in Phaethon Bay knew that Cage was not a phoenix. But he still hadn’t repaid Gutterman. And there was no doubt in his mind that the nightmare would be back to collect soon.
Chapter Three
“This jacket sucks,” Cage said, hurling it at the console and flopping into his recliner.
Anton Vex lifted the jacket to inspect it. “It looks cool. Like Mr. Darcy meets Zorro the Gay Blade.”
“Mr. Darcy from that Renee Zellweger movie?”
“Mr. Darcy from that David Bamber movie, you barbarian.”
“Well, maybe that’s exactly what the jacket is. Fuck if I know! But it’s not the Tigris Coat,” Cage said.
Vex wiggled his fingers through the pitchfork holes. “Guess not.” He pulled his fingers back out, swirled a rune in the air, and stuck it to the back of the jacket. The cloth healed itself. “All better.” That slap of magic hadn’t even made Vex sweat. He was a great warlock, though he didn’t even look like a demon. At the moment, he wore a hooded sweater yanked over his entire body, including his knees, so he looked more like a pair of socks neatly rolled in a sock drawer.
When he wasn’t feeling so anxious that he turned into a sweater monster, Vex was a normal looking guy. He had the build of a swimmer, hair cut to his chin, and pleasant eyes that had been permanently glamoured brown. He passed for human most of the time. A lot like how Cage passed for phoenix most of the time.
“What if they saw me?” Cage asked. He couldn’t sit still. He leaped out of the recliner and paced the living room.
“Nobody saw you. I’ve never seen anyone move as fast as you do when you run, especially after shifting.”
“How can you sound so sure? Vision wasn’t there.” It had been recharging back at the apartment.
“I know you,” Vex said simply. “They didn’t see you shapeshift into your animal, and they didn’t follow you back. You’re Shatter Cage.”
Cage shook out his shoulders and blew out a breath. “I’m Shatter Cage.”
It had taken all night to get home without being followed by Gutterman. Mostly because evading a nightmare was nearly impossible in the dark. Cage had hidden for hours under some pier where kids had been playing hacky sack. He hadn’t even been able to catch a few winks because they were so damn noisy.
Now the sun was up, Cage had returned to the apartment he shared with Vex, and exactly none of their problems were fixed. He had no money. He didn’t have leverage. And he couldn’t reopen his Museum of Oddities and Hellspawn without getting murdered by Gutterman’s trash men. “You know that stupid jacket doesn’t even fit me?” Cage said.
“Too small?”
“Too big.” Cage had tried it on at the beach while the hacky sack kids laughed at him. The sleeves fell to his knees. The hem dragged on the ground. It hadn’t looked that huge when he was holding it. He was six foot one, taller than Skelz, and the goon hadn’t been able to get it over his arms.
He’d risked his life and museum over a jacket he couldn’t even wear.
Cage grabbed his tablet and swiped through the darknet. He had no idea how he was going to fence a jacket he couldn’t identify. It didn’t seem to have any meaningful powers. But it had to be worth something—had to be. It was still Cage’s only chance at paying off Gutterman.
“Who’s in town that likes the tough cases?” Cage asked.
“I’ve already reached out to a few of our favorite fences.” Vex peeled himself out of his chair. His bare feet were tipped by little black claws on each toe. “With your reputation, someone is gonna want to cut a deal with you. You’re the guy who scored the Horn of Læraðr.”
Cage perked up at the reminder. “I did score the Horn of Læraðr.”
“And then the thing with those ice boots,” Vex said. “Everyone told us that we wouldn’t get a single northcoin for them, but you got ten thousand!”
“And the lucky buyer sold them onward for twice that.” Cage was getting misty-eyed. He had felt instinctively that those boots would turn out to be valuable, and he’d been right. They’d been of great sentimental value to the queen of the Autumn Court.
“You’re getting known for your victories,” Vex said. “You’re defined by successes, not failures! And what is it your mom always told you about failure?”
“That even an IUD combined with condoms can sometimes fail to prevent pregnancy, becau
se even a tiny chance is still a chance?”
“That too, but I meant the thing she said about how failure is just when you stop trying.”
“And that’s why she still cooks that awful dry turkey every Thanksgiving,” Cage said. He couldn’t stop grinning now. “Because she’s not a failure until she stops trying to cook a turkey with flavor.”
“Your mom’s a saint, and you’re Shatter Cage,” Vex said.
Right now, that name didn’t mean much. It meant a guy who fled from nightmares dragging a big squirrel butt behind him. Yet one day, the name “Shatter Cage” was going to be synonymous with power. With good judgment. With an almost preternatural ability to find a good deal and steal it.
Someday.
Getting a brand off the ground was always the hardest part. With his museum shut down and everyone in Montréal knowing that he was a were-squirrel, his brand was off to a particularly rocky start, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
He’d stolen the Horn of Læraðr, sold the Autumn Queen’s boots, and yanked some worthless jacket out of an archangel’s private collection.
“You’re right.” Cage tossed the tablet aside and stood. “Someone’s going to want to work with me. If I just show my face around the market, we’ll have this fixed before lunch.”
“That’s the spirit!” Vex yanked his oversized sweater off over his head. He was wearing a shirt for his favorite online game, Venus Fly. The T-shirt was so worn out that Cage could see Vex’s scaly armpits through the seams. He was self-conscious about the scales, so Cage was careful not to stare. Vex donned the coat. “You think this is my style?”
“Probably, you handsome bastard.” Cage stepped down the hall and into his bedroom, raising his voice so Vex could hear him. “I pulled Forfax’s insurance records before the job. We should see if we can find details on the coat in there. Anything could help us sell it—a name, a function, whatever.”
“I’ll take a look,” Vex called back.
While his assistant worked, Cage took a shower in the bathroom behind the kitchen. He’d arrived home wearing clothes stolen from someone’s beach bag, so his skin reeked of Gutterman and a stranger who loved smoking weed. In other words, he smelled even worse than when he spent the moons tiny and furry.
At the moment, there was nothing tiny or furry about Cage. The reflection he glimpsed while searching his bedroom for new clothes belonged to a lean, lanky human. Most shapeshifters liked to exercise to increase the appearance of their physiques, but it didn’t actually make him any stronger, and Cage had better things to do with his time than lift. He could throw a car, but didn’t look like it.
He looked even less threatening than Vex, as a matter of fact. Cage had his dad’s soft, fluffy hair. He had his mom’s expressive Welsh features. His whole family, grandparents and back, had come from Wales. He still had a few cousins in Gwynedd too, though they never spoke.
That was apparently the whole reason that Cage could shapeshift into a squirrel. His mom claimed that Welsh mythology held squirrels in high esteem.
“You are clever, quick, and nobody will see you coming,” his mother had told him on more than one occasion, affectionately brushing the hair out of his eyes. She’d gone out of her way to enforce the wonder of being a squirrel, trying to save him embarrassment. Squirrels were associated with cool things like planning, forethought, preparedness, and “the cutest, bushiest tail I have ever seen.”
Her words, not his.
As a hare shifter, Caitrin Cage was an expert in bushy tails. Apparently hares were also important in Welsh mythology, but that importance had done very little for his mother, who owned a laundromat in the suburbs.
Their cat greeted him with a yowl when he left the bathroom. She twined through his ankles, tail sticking straight up except for the little crook at the end. Banana Bread had been an ugly yellow-brown feral kitten when she’d appeared on their doorstep, and a year later, she was an ugly yellow-brown attention whore who barely weighed two kilos.
“Hey, slut,” Cage greeted, holding his towel with one hand as he stroked her spine. She arched her ass into his hand. “You been out there taunting the boy cats again?” Banana Bread had a habit of disappearing for days at a time, and she usually returned long enough to squirt out a litter of kittens, yowl at Cage, and eat all their food.
She nuzzled his hand. Her fur was gritty from being out in the polluted fog, so it rubbed off on his damp fingers.
He wiped the fur onto his towel. “I’ll refill your bowl in a minute. Go bother Vex while I dress.”
Cage changed into everything leather. Pants, jacket, boots. He always dressed up when meeting fences. Not that any of them found him intimidating, but he had to try at least not to look like a charming little boy-child asking for penny tarts.
He emerged from his room and found Vex with Banana Bread curled between his legs. “How do I look?” Cage spread his arms so that his studded leather coat would gap to reveal his underarm holster, which was always cool. “I’m going for Terminator chic.”
“Very young Arnold.” Vex was sitting cross-legged in his chair now, the red coat spilling around him. How was it possible that Vex could be skinnier than his roommate, but fit into a jacket that was too big for Cage? “Mrs. Wan is going to go crazy for it. You better protect your ass if you don’t want to get pinched.”
“Getting my ass pinched by Mrs. Wan is the only thing I want more in life than my own cult,” Cage said. “You look great too. I wish I looked that badass in anything, much less a waistcoat for tea parties at Lady Catherine’s house.”
Vex grinned so widely that he flashed the little fangs hanging over his molars. Those were commonly called “shredding teeth,” though Vex loathed the term. “You look twice as badass as I do, easily. Now get out there and show Phaethon Bay’s fences who’s boss. Bring sandwiches with you on the way back. I’ll have the jacket laundered in time to deliver it to the fence.”
Cage knew what Vex was trying to do, and he loved the guy all the more for it. They were having a shitty week. Several shitty weeks. Okay, maybe a shitty last-five-years. Vex was offering an olive branch of reassurance—a moment of being allowed to think that maybe Gutterman wasn’t going to murder them after all.
“Vex, my friend, I wish I was gay so we could get married and live happily ever,” Cage said.
“We already share this beautiful bachelor pad. What else could marriage give us except extra paperwork?”
There was nothing beautiful about their bachelor pad, except the fact it hadn’t gotten officially condemned yet. They were in the only Phaethon Bay building that might have been more secure than Forfax’s: an abandoned shopping mall that still smelled like Panda Express in some closets. The eleven stories of retail space were uninhabited. Sometimes kids threw huge raves down there, and occasional territory fights knocked down a few walls. But it was usually quiet.
Cage and Vex occupied the movie theater on the uppermost floor.
The twelfth story was perfect for anonymity through obscurity. They were close enough to midtown to avoid strict curfews, but also close enough to the city floor that rent was dirt cheap.
They occupied different screens as their spacious bedrooms—Cage in screen one, the old IMAX theater, and Vex in screens two through six. The old snack bar was their kitchen. They had twelve toilet stalls, six urinals, and one employee shower in the break room. The lobby served as their shared living room.
It was a cozy space, made extra-cozy by all the roof holes that let rain soak the carpet. Screen seven had gotten too soggy and collapsed. They’d lost half of Vex’s Venus Fly memorabilia in the Foot Locker underneath and were still trying to recover it. But they weren’t going to be able to make the theater less condemned until Cage paid off his debts, and he couldn’t pay off his debts if he was dead.
“I’m leaving to hit my contacts,” Cage said, swinging his rucksack off the desk. Metal jingled inside. “Is Vision ready to go?”
Vex opened his mouth
and lifted his tongue. The eye rested where most humans had a frenulum, with a gloopy crimson lid that retracted into his jaw. The eyeball could peer over his teeth when it opened completely.
Vision leaped into the air, optic nerve dangling. Banana Bread swatted lazily at it. Her extended cougar claws missed Vision by a good hundred centimeters.
“Here’s a new Link, too.” Vex tossed a copper pin to Cage. “Go sell that coat!”
“Consider it done.” Cage leaped out the window.
He emerged behind the theater’s marquee. A walkway wrapped around to its fore, making it easy for employees to safely change the movie titles on display. Vex rearranged it once a week to reflect his current TV show-binging habits. At the moment, the title said “The Fugitive (old TV version)”.
Cage stepped carefully around the tangle of exposed wires, which kept the old LED bulbs shining through the night. He climbed onto the railing at the end and scrambled up to the next city story, entering Midtown.
This was his favorite part of the city. It had the most complete network of sidewalks without gaps or glass bridges, so it felt like any normal town. There were trees, bike paths, people walking dogs. The mist wasn’t yellow here. Some of the sidewalks were even warded against rainfall.
Cage headed for Third at Thirteen—the market where most of the semi-legal business in Phaethon Bay was conducted. Every other shop in a five block radius was run by one kind of fence or another. The auctioneer above Cafe Seaview openly sold pre-Genesis artifacts and had never been raided by the OPA. Since the criminals didn’t interfere with traffic on the Helios Tether, the Ethereal Coalition didn’t bother them either.
“Can you find Mrs. Wan?” Cage asked, letting Vision perch on his finger like a fleshy songbird. “She’s gonna be our best bet if we can find her.” She wasn’t just a fence, but someone who liked to get her fingers in every slice of the criminal underworld’s pie. She could have been at a raskovnik grow house, an unlicensed brewery, or even bribing brokers for insider trading information.
“I can find her if you promise you’ll stay away from Grimes,” Vex said.
