Race of Thieves

by S. M. Reine

  “Oh yeah, I assumed as much,” he said calmly, while his soul turned into a thousand glass shards and barfed into his chest cavity. In truth, the idea had never occurred to him. Cage would double- and triple-cross Brigid until the demon cows went home to Hell, but not when it meant putting her life in danger. Cage made himself laugh, like he didn’t care about the bomb Brigid had just lobbed at him. “I mean, it makes sense you would betray me. You’re an awful human being.” His hand swept the hair off of her shoulders. It exposed the back of her swanlike neck, and even now he wanted to kiss the downy hair at her nape.

  She hissed when he smeared the salve over the bite marks on her scapula. “I’m telling you the truth, and this is how you thank me?”

  “Your truth is mean because you’re an awful human being.”

  “And to think I considered apologizing,” Brigid said.

  Cage turned her to face him. “Wait, really? You thought about apologizing?” He searched her beautiful face for signs of humor but found none. She might have been lying but she wasn’t teasing.

  “I’m not going to apologize now,” she said. Her eyes were red-rimmed. He hadn’t noticed that before.

  “But you thought about it.” His hand cupped her jaw, thumb tracing the line of her bottom lip. “Which means you do feel bad for thinking about betraying me. I don’t think you would have actually done it, would you?”

  Brigid’s eyes were flat. “I don’t understand why my moments of weakness arouse you so much.”

  “Because,” Cage said, “it reminds me why I fell in love with you.” He kissed her, a light brush over her bottom lip down to her jaw.

  She twisted her head away with an impatient grunt. “I don’t love you. I’m never going to love you.”

  “I’m going to spend the rest of my life fighting to change your mind.”

  “That’s pathetic.”

  “I’d rather be pathetic than lose you again,” Cage said. “I never should have set fire to your stuff. Life’s so much less fun without you.”

  She kissed him this time, and she wasn’t gentle about it. She was biting. Vengeful. Her fingers raked up the back of his head, caught his hair, and yanked hard.

  Cage slid his hand up Brigid’s ribcage, feeling the ridges of scars. There were many more than those she was already developing under the salve. Her torso looked like it had been struck by lightning—that treelike fractal pattern electricity burned into wood. It had healed white and pink. Judging by the way that she sighed at the touch of his hands, he assumed that the flesh remained sensitive.

  “What did this to you?” he asked, parting the sides of her robe. Her puckered nipples found their way into his palms.

  Her head drooped to his shoulder. “That’s not your problem.”

  “It could be, if you’d let me take care of you,” Cage said. “You don’t have to hurt this much all the time.”

  “Our lives are not compatible, Shatter.”

  “Why not?” He nuzzled the crook of her neck, inhaling the scent of her sweat. He savored her purr of satisfaction.

  “Well,” she murmured, her voice breathy in his ear, “your name is Shatter.”

  “I could change it before we send out wedding invitations so that people think you’re marrying somebody who doesn’t have a stupid name,” he offered.

  Brigid tensed against him. “There aren’t going to be any wedding invitations.”

  “It was a joke. I would never change my name for anyone, even you.” His business cards were going to look way too cool when he was canonized. An epic Hero deserved an epic name.

  “You’re barely even a real human being,” she said. “You are an overgrown child with delusions of being an action hero, whereas I have an actual career and goals.”

  “I have a career and goals,” Cage said.

  “And you’ll never accomplish any of it,” she said.

  Her words were like a sting from a taser right in his nuts. It wasn’t a sting of feeling insulted, but a sting of sadness. Brigid was so unhappy. Everything about her was so miserable and sharp edged and dark that even Cage’s relentless hunt for joy couldn’t penetrate it. She was perfect for this business, but this business wasn’t perfect for her. If she didn’t get out of it, she’d stop collecting scars and start etching a gravestone.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said, lowering her to the bed.

  She relaxed into his arms as he cradled the back of her head in his hand, her thigh with the crook of his arm. Brigid’s hair spilled over the pillow, tawny as a lion’s mane, wild as the storm-tossed beaches of Phaethon Bay. Her eyes swam with troubled galaxies.

  He ran his hands up the inner sides of her arms, lifted above her head with her back arched so that her ribs left hollows that he could kiss. He kissed his way between her breasts, up her neck, and caught her wrists in one hand.

  He tugged a rope out of Brigid’s backpack, still lying beside the bed.

  “If we’re totally incompatible, then you definitely don’t want me to tie you up,” he said. “Right? I definitely shouldn’t tie you up right now?” His teeth nipped her chin. He devoured her responding gasp with his lips and massaged the hurt away with his tongue.

  She turned her head so that her cheek brushed against his hair. Her knees had spread, allowing him to press his robe-clad erection against her heated core, and she liked that. She was undulating in a slow rhythm against him.

  “Don’t stop,” Brigid said.

  That was consent. She wanted to be tied.

  He kissed the insides of her wrists before tethering her tightly to the bed. So tightly that she wouldn’t be able to twist her wrists free.

  He sat back on his heels and looked over her body, more perfect than he had ever seen it at any other point in their relationship. She was older now. She had wiry muscle. She had to pluck chin hairs. She was smiling at him like she’d never smiled at him before—like she was actually fond of this interplay between them. Even when he made her laugh, half the time she was just laughing at him.

  It was sort of embarrassing how aroused Cage got just looking at her like this. His robe had fallen open so that he couldn’t pretend to be chill. There was no hiding his arousal, which would have embarrassed no shifter, whether phoenix or wolf or squirrel.

  “Lick me,” Brigid ordered, like she did when they were in a different kind of scene.

  Cage lowered himself between her legs. He inhaled the scent of her curls. “You’re not trying to top from the bottom, are you?”

  Her thighs locked on either side of his head. “I can only ever top, Shatter. And you can only ever bottom. That’s why we fit so well.”

  “Gods, I love you Brigid,” he said.

  “I told you to lick me.” The darkness in her eyes was simultaneously troubled and hungry. If her hands had been free, she would have already grabbed his head and made him do exactly what she wanted. “Don’t make me wait.”

  He laved his tongue up her slit once, tasting her. She was so wet. He loved her so much. He already felt guilty.

  “Bad news,” Cage said.

  He hopped off the bed.

  Brigid realized things were awry instantly. Frankly, it was shocking that it had taken this long. “This isn’t funny, Shatter. Let me out.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Anger clouded the starlight in her glower. “You know I can just planeswalk right out of these? There are all sorts of ley lines stretched around Barcelona where they shouldn’t be. I can reach them from here.”

  “Okay, planeswalk out.” He dug through Brigid’s bag to search for clothes. She didn’t have anything that would fit him.

  Her face darkened with rage. “What did you do to me?”

  “I took a piece of the warding crystal from Shadowhold,” Cage said. “It’s tied up in those knots on the headboard. I figured that if one crystal that size was enough to keep a whole district secure, then just a shard would be enough to keep you down.”

  He was going to have to sneak out of the
hotel naked and steal clothes elsewhere. This swanky place was definitely never going to invite him back.

  Before he could leave, he turned Brigid’s body gently to check her wounds. “Looks good, sweetheart. You’re all closed up. Don’t fight your bindings too hard for an hour, though—you’re still healing on the inside.”

  Brigid thrashed harder, trying to loosen the knots. “If you leave me like this, the next time we meet, I will murder you!”

  “No, you won’t,” Cage said. “Next time we meet, we’re gonna fuck until neither of us have any brains left.” He kissed her frowning lips, yanking back before she could bite his mouth off. “I had a beautiful date, honey. Let’s do this again soon.”

  He stepped out the front door into the hallway, and Brigid’s furious shouts followed him all the way to the elevator.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cage escaped the swanky hotel naked, without getting arrested. He didn’t bother stealing nice clothes from there. He grabbed an FC Barcelona shirt and a pack of boxer shorts from one shop, then a fistful of euros from another. The hard part was finding a Shifter Services Station—what shifters colloquially called an S3.

  Shifters couldn’t take anything with them when they changed. Solutions like saddlebags were available, but Cage never shifted with enough advance warning to use them. He never shifted at all if he could avoid it. That was where S3s became useful.

  They offered everything that a lost shifter might need to restock. For a small fee, shifters could rent rooms to nap or shapeshift in, including kiosks that allowed them to contact family for assistance. Clothes and toiletries were available for free, usually donated by corporate sponsors who plastered their products in brand names. The walls were also flashing with ads at all hours of day and night. Some of the ads got pretty slick back home, where shifters were common. Holographic magic stuff.

  Such S3s were every block or two in Phaethon Bay, but there were only three in all of Barcelona, and he had to jog barefoot seven kilometers to reach the nearest. Like the S3s he knew at home, this one had donor clothes, so he got a free pair of shoes. It was a lot less fancy than the ones in Phaethon Bay, though. The holographic projectors were old. The ads flickered like a busted neon sign. And it looked like nobody had cleaned the windows since Genesis.

  It was good enough. The distant location also increased Cage’s likelihood of escaping Brigid. She’d figure out how to wriggle free—knowing her, sooner rather than later. And then she’d be on his ass like a valkyrie. No, worse than a valkyrie: a horny woman who’d been denied hot squirrel fucking.

  He was kind of disappointed when he checked in and didn’t get a sexy planeswalker crashing down on him.

  Cage sat himself in a kiosk and dragged the screen shut behind him before messaging Vex. “Is there any chance you can meet me in Paris? We have to nail Bastien Daladier.”

  He sat back to wait for a response. He’d used his stolen money to rent a room at the S3 for an entire hour, so there was no rush.

  Asking Vex to leave the apartment for an impromptu trip to France was a big ask. Whether he said yes or no, he’d surely need at least twenty minutes to panic over the idea.

  The responding message blipped through within moments. “Where in Paris?”

  * * *

  Cage was on the other side of the ocean, so he couldn’t prevent Vex from selling one of his Venus Fly collector figurines to hire a planeswalker.

  They were reunited within six hours. Plenty of time for Cage to decide how, exactly, he was going to wrest the Death Underpants from the grip of his mortal foe, Bastien Daladier. Plenty of time to look up blueprints. Plenty of time to find a nice suit for Vex to “rent”—meaning that Cage stole it from a shop and would return it before leaving France, assuming that he wasn’t running for his life at the time.

  They arrived at Daladier Détective Privé in the damp morning hours. Anton Vex was drenched in sweat, and any shifter within a kilometer would smell the sharp tang of his anxiety. Infernal hormones were a powerful conductor.

  Being tucked inside his jacket, not that far from his armpit, meant that Cage was getting a noseful of his roommate. As much as he loved the guy, this was pushing the bounds of their relationship. Just a little.

  “Going inside right now,” Vex muttered, as though talking to himself.

  All Cage could do was stick his little squirrel nose out from behind Vex, peering at the lobby of Daladier Détective Privé. Although they were in a particularly green, overgrown part of France—thanks to the prevalence of local weather witches who were fond of warm rain showers—the sleekly minimalist office had been designed around a desert aesthetic. There was a xeriscaped garden inside the airy lobby. Cage smelled death on the leafless trees. The shape of the branches looked like the scars patterning Brigid’s body.

  Concrete benches flanked the dead gardens, which looked so cozy that Cage had exactly zero urge to relax there. And he was a damn squirrel. Even his animal brain was only thinking, Seriously?

  Fresh fear swept over Vex.

  “Gods, gods, gods,” he murmured, fidgeting on his feet. Vex had combed back his oily demon hair and looked as professional as he ever could.

  He still didn’t fit in this sterile space. He belonged among clutter, where his genius could flourish like mushrooms in forested underbrush. Cage knew it. Vex knew it. And the mismatch between man and office was only making Vex’s pulse hammer all the harder inside his chest.

  Vex was hurtling toward another panic attack.

  Forget the Death Underpants. He’d just have to steal them another way. It was wrong to put Vex through this much anxiety.

  Cage decided to grab him by the belt and drag him out of the lobby, but the urge came too late—they were approached by a trim man with chestnut hair and a constant pinched expression.

  Bastien Daladier was well-dressed in that sleek French way. Cage leaned toward manly Henleys and studded leather; Bastien gravitated toward earth-toned slacks and v-neck shirts and blazers. He wore designers. His fingernails were clean.

  Cage practically had a moral obligation to steal from this smug bastard that women considered “irresistible” and “having a real job and career opportunities” and “rich off family money so he can treasure hunt for fun, ruin the lives of artifact seekers like Cage, and sweep pretty ladies off their feet while doing it.”

  There was no world where these two men could be anything but enemies.

  Scumbag.

  “It’s such an honor to meet you, Mr. Vex.” Bastien extended his hand.

  Vex shook. “No mister, please.”

  “Do you prefer Anton?” Bastien gave a French accent to the name, like he was trying to hock a loogie.

  “Just Vex.” His voice shook. He was too honest to hide his level of distress.

  “Vex it is, then. Deep breaths, my friend.” Bastien seized Vex by the shoulders, and he took exaggerated inhales as if to demonstrate. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. We are friends here.” Vex must’ve managed to fake a facial expression that appeased Bastien because the Frenchman stepped back, clapping his hands with satisfaction. “Come, we shall discuss the job in my office.”

  Bastien’s office. Cage had seen the room most likely to be his office on the plans for the building, which he had reviewed on the train up to France. He mentally reviewed the ductwork leading between his office and the others. There were three rooms that might store the Death Underpants. He wanted to know exactly how to get between those storage rooms and Vex just in case something went wrong.

  Because something would almost definitely go wrong.

  Bastien Daladier was almost as good at that as Brigid.

  Their paths had crossed the first time during the Centre Pompidou heist. That was the time where Vex had blown up an entire wing of the museum so Cage could steal a pre-Genesis artifact on display—a notebook once used by the first-ever paper witch. Cage had been hired to hunt it down for an American coven.

  Bastien had been going for it too, b
ut because he claimed it belonged to his grandfather.

  He hadn’t been thrilled when Vex blasted the museum. He hadn’t been thrilled to find the exhibit empty when he got there, either. And he was especially annoyed that Cage had set fire to the remainder of the exhibit to make a clean escape, which had destroyed a bunch of art donated by the Daladier family.

  Where Cage and Brigid had immediately hit it off as frenemies with benefits, Cage and Bastien had immediately become mortal foes. Fencing that notebook had been a pain in the ass with Bastien riding him. Cage had almost died twice.

  Cage had won the battle. He’d earned the eternal gratitude of a powerful coven and several charms to help him better masquerade as a phoenix.

  Bastien had walked away with a powerful grudge.

  As they walked up the hallway, Cage glowered at his rival thief’s back from within Vex’s jacket. He thought about sinking his squirrel teeth into that flat French ass and ripping the glute right off.

  Vex flapped his jacket, as though adjusting the lapels.

  That was Cage’s cue. The hallway was empty, and no one was looking at him.

  He’d have to bite Bastien’s ass off later.

  Cage gave Vex a little pinch with his furred fingers before slipping down his leg and behind a cement bench.

  Vex and Bastien entered an office. Cage waited behind that bench—a place maps showed as most hidden during guard rotations—and began the countdown in his head. The clock on the wall said it was just before nine. He had three minutes until guards changed.

  Even with the door shut, Cage’s acute shapeshifter ears picked up the conversation inside Bastien’s office.

  “I have to say, I was surprised to hear from you,” Bastien said. “I understand you reject all overtures. Making an exception for my group, considering who you currently work for, has piqued my interest.”

  “You scooped Cage on the Death Underpants,” Vex said. “I want to work for the best.”

  He was faking it, but it still stung to hear. Vex was never anything less than glowing. Not about Cage.