Lock & Key (King & Crown Book 1)

by Clara Coulson

  Auguste was suitably disturbed. “We can’t have that kind of human activity in this city, magicians or not. It’ll throw off the balance between the vampires and the fae. I mean, Christ, we’re barely at peace as it is. Especially after last week’s ‘mysterious disappearance’ and the retaliatory house fire.”

  Kat didn’t know what he was talking about exactly, but she remembered Liam had said there were ongoing skirmishes between the two major supernatural powers in the city. And Caoimhe belonged to one of those powers. She shuddered at the thought. I really don’t want to know what that woman plans to do with me.

  Auguste went on. “Okay. So these well-connected brutes running around town. What exactly do you want me to do with them, Crown? I can’t approach them directly. It’ll violate too many laws, and innocent humans could get hurt, which would cause a scandal that my branch of House Dalca can’t weather. I want to help—and return your favor—but I’m not sure what you’re looking for here.”

  Liam said, “You don’t need to do anything so obvious. We already have a plan.” He explained the fake trail idea.

  Auguste considered. “You want me to use my financial resources to create some kind of ‘ghost trail’ for your girlfriend? And you think these Advent 9 people will fall for it?”

  “If you do it right,” Liam replied. “You own a few tech companies, don’t you? And you’ve got house members in various government offices. Get them all in it. Fudge some data. Make the trail look realistic.”

  Kat noticed Liam didn’t dispel the idea that she was his girlfriend. She wasn’t sure what to think about that. Was he just being level-headed, or was he being cheeky?

  “Hm, I get what you’re going for, I think.” Auguste glanced at Kat. “But this is a huge risk on my part, you know? I think it’s worth a whole lot more than the little mishap you swept under the rug for me.” He rapped his knuckles on his knee. “You got anything to sweeten the deal?”

  Liam scowled. “Auguste, you know damn well that if I hadn’t—”

  Kat cleared her throat. “If you help us, you’ll get that sweetener added to your coffee by default.”

  “Huh?” Auguste gave her a flummoxed look. “What do you mean?”

  Liam also stared at her expectantly.

  “Think about it,” she said. “A9 is a corrupt shadow organization engaged in illegal human experimentation and countless other crimes. If you help us subvert A9 now, then when the news eventually breaks about its existence—and it will, no matter how many resources A9 has in play to censor national media—you can come out and claim that House Dalca had an important role in combating the evils of Advent 9. Protecting the sole victim of the organization who managed to escape and sheltering her until such time as she could openly testify against them. Such a ‘generous’ act will put you on the map as an upstanding figure in the vampire community. Then the poachers who’re trying to encroach on your territory will lose the justification to do so. And your role as house lord will be solidified.”

  Stupefied, Auguste sank farther into the sofa and ogled an empty shot glass on the coffee table, which was stained with a dried brown ring that Kat suspected had once been red. He worried his lip thoughtfully as he sorted through all the claims she had just made, and his cheeks gradually flushed to a healthy pink, a sign of excitement, crimson eyes brightening, as the prospect of his bad press vanishing into the ether finally registered fully in his mind. “You’ve got a good point there. This is dangerous, but it’s also a rare opportunity. Especially with the council meeting coming up.”

  “Council meeting?” Kat asked.

  “Council of Vampire Lords,” Liam answered. “They meet once a year to discuss major issues in the global vampire community. Next meeting is five months from now. If A9 is exposed before the meeting, then Auguste could really play it up as a major victory for his house, his whole house, not just the New England branch. It would go a long way toward bringing him back into favor, if he were to one up the other houses at their largest gathering of important people.”

  Auguste rubbed his chin. “All right. This phantom trail thing. I’ll do it.” He rose from the couch, swaying a bit, as if he was drunk on emotion instead of alcohol. “It’ll take me some time to set up though. I have to make a lot of calls to get the right people on it.” He turned to Kat. “And we’ll have to take a bunch of pictures of you. And probably get fingerprints or something too. I’ll get a full list of stuff we need from my people, and contact you when we’re ready to get the ball rolling.”

  Liam extended his hand. “Sounds great.”

  Auguste tentatively shook the offered hand. “So, this does make us even, right? For the car thing?”

  Liam nodded. “Indeed it does.”

  Auguste visibly restrained himself from cheering. “Good. Whew. That’s been…hanging over my head for a while.”

  “Maybe you’ll remember that next time you want to do something stupid,” Liam said. “You have a long life to live, Auguste. And every time you make bad decisions, they’re going to hang over you just like the car theft. And some of them will hang much, much longer.”

  “Uh, right. Yeah. You’re totally…” Auguste cleared his throat. “Anyway, if that’s all, I’m actually supposed to be heading out soon. Do you need a ride anywhere?”

  “No, got my own. We’ll part ways here.” Liam pulled his phone from his pocket. “Although, I would like your number. In case we need to touch base.”

  “Oh, well, I guess.”

  Auguste tugged out his own phone and handed it off to Liam, taking Liam’s in return. They exchanged numbers and quickly swapped back.

  “Is that all?” Auguste said.

  “For now,” Liam confirmed, clapping Auguste on the shoulder. “Just let me know when everything’s ready to be set in motion. Once we have confirmation the ploy is working, we’ll be out of your hair.”

  Kat snorted. “Don’t jinx it.”

  Liam raised an eyebrow. “Can’t do that unintentionally.”

  “What?”

  He grinned. “A ‘jinx’ is actual magic.”

  “Wait, it is?”

  “Yes.” Liam laughed. “I’ll tell you all about it on the drive back. Come on. Let’s go home.”

  Home, Kat thought, sounded nice.

  10

  Liam

  Liam should’ve known better than to think they’d get off easy, that this little plot would go down without a hitch. But it wasn’t until the Cherokee was upside-down, sliding across the parking lot of an abandoned factory, that he realized just how vastly he’d underestimated the drive of Advent 9 to recover the test subject they’d lost. And then the SUV slammed into the metal wall of the factory with a deafening boom, and all Liam could think about as he was wrenched sideways into the driver’s side door, arm smacking cracked glass, head striking the hard frame, were those poor people in the compact car that Marta had just blown up with a fire spell.

  Then Liam’s awareness shorted out. For how long? He had no clue.

  When it returned, he was hanging awkwardly, tangled in his seatbelt. Blood dripped from a laceration on his head and collected on the dimpled roof of the SUV. His arms, one broken, hung limply against the dented dashboard. He stared at the steering wheel for several seconds, trying to figure out why his mouth was full of copper and his entire body hurt. And then it came back to him: He and Kat had been returning to his house after the meeting with Auguste Vanderhall at Patterson’s. When, out of nowhere, Marta materialized in front of them and started slinging magic.

  They’d had no warning. They weren’t ready.

  We should’ve been, he thought wearily.

  He spit out the glob of blood in his mouth and retracted his unbroken arm, searching for the release on his seatbelt. Liam didn’t dare look to the right, where Kat had been, because he knew she was no longer there. Marta had jumped onto the Cherokee as it was spinning through the air, punched through the window, and hauled Kat out, leaving Liam to die in the crash. He wasn’
t valuable to A9. He was just in the way.

  But Kat…He had to help Kat. He couldn’t let them take her back to that goddamn lab.

  So he braced his legs against the roof of the vehicle, unclipped his seatbelt, and dropped into a crouch that sent waves of pain radiating through his body. Hissing, he brought his broken arm to his chest and tucked it into his half-open jacket to keep it secure, then he felt around in his pockets until he found his knife. He knew the A9 goons would have bigger, better weapons, but he wasn’t a one-trick pony. He flicked his earring, tuning up his senses, activated the ring on his pinky finger to drown out the pain so he wouldn’t lose his ability to concentrate, and then leaned back and kicked the broken windshield right out of its slot.

  The glass shattered as it hit the asphalt.

  Liam waited for two seconds, took a deep breath, and leaped out of the vehicle.

  Someone fired an automatic at him immediately, but he was ready. He dodged to the left and swept his foot through the layer of dirt that covered the abandoned lot, kicking up a thick cloud of debris. Then he activated his knife, the invisible magic blade extending outward, and dashed through the cloud, using his enhanced sight to pick out the silhouette of the man who’d fired at him. It was some random guy in combat gear, who’d clearly been left behind to mop up the remains of Liam, should he still be breathing.

  Liam collided with the guy feet first, sending him sprawling backward onto the pavement. The guy’s head smacked the asphalt, but he was wearing a helmet, so Liam helped him pass out by viciously stomping on his nose until there was nothing left of the cartilage but bloody pieces. The guy’s hands went limp around his rifle, so Liam snatched it away and slung it across the parking lot. He’d had rifle training during his time on the force, but it’d be extremely hard to aim with one of his arms out of commission, and he didn’t want the recoil to jar his injuries.

  So he grabbed the man’s handgun instead, along with a spare tactical knife, and tucked both into his waistband as he surveyed the crash scene fifty feet away. The road was alight with the fire that had resulted from Marta’s bomb-like spell. The compact car was a crumpled mass in the middle of the flames, and Liam spotted three bodies slumped in what was left of the seats. The people had probably died instantly during the initial blast. They’d been too close to the epicenter.

  Liam swallowed a knot in his throat, reminded far too much of another car crash.

  There’d been a fire in that crash too.

  He shook his head to clear it and sought out sounds of a struggle beyond the din of the fire. Sirens were drawing close to the scene, and he needed to find Kat before local law enforcement swarmed the area. Closing his eyes, he listened carefully. There were people whispering, horrified at the fiery crash scene. There was someone yelling angrily a few blocks away, but it was a man, not Marta. There was…a woman’s muffled voice and the sound of dragging feet. Two blocks to the east.

  Liam took off in that direction. He slipped through an intentionally cut hole in the rusty chain-link fence that surrounded the factory, hopped a narrow, grassy ditch, and reached a row of boarded-up stores that had closed down during the last financial crisis five years ago. He quietly padded across the gravel lot that ran down the length of the stores’ exteriors, a sort of loading area, he guessed, where trucks came in and passed deliveries through the back doors. There was a small alley between each building accessible through this lot.

  He found Kat in the second to last alley.

  She was in the hands of two muscly mooks dressed like Secret Service, with earpieces and Glocks strapped to their belts. They’d bound her with what looked like regular rope, but Liam knew it was some sort of charmed material. He could see the power, Marta’s power, running through the fibers. Marta herself was at the end of the alley, striding in a snobbish way toward a white van idling in front of a pawn shop across the street. There was another man at the wheel of the van, ready to drive off as soon as Kat was tossed into the back like inanimate cargo.

  Liam deactivated his knife charm, slipped the tool into his pocket, and whipped out the handgun he’d stolen. It’d been a while since he fired one, but the muscle memory was still there. He raised the gun, aimed at the leg of the shorter suit mook, and pulled the trigger. The guy’s knee exploded in a spray of blood and bone, and he went down screaming, dropping Kat’s upper body in the process.

  Kat hit the ground, and without hesitation, she wound back her legs and kicked the second suit mook. The guy flew back into the wall so hard it rattled the windows. He sank to his knees, letting out a wet choking noise that made it sound like he was coughing up a lung. Kat took one look at his wheezing face and slammed her heels into his jaw, dislocating it and knocking out an assortment of teeth. The guy went down with a faint gurgle, lights out.

  Liam rushed forward, exchanging the gun for the knife again, and slid to a stop on his knees at Kat’s side just as Marta, halfway across the street, whipped around with a furious look on her face. Liam slashed at the bindings around Kat’s ankles and wrists in two deft moves, the magic in his knife combating the magic in the ropes. They sizzled as if burned, and then unraveled, freeing Kat’s limbs. Kat rolled over onto her knees and hopped up to face Marta as the magician finished building up a powerful charge, her entire body aglow with a bright orange aura.

  Marta yanked her wand from her coat and flicked it toward Kat and Liam, and they were forced to leap different directions to avoid the vicious blow. The force spell screamed into the alley, shearing layers off the brick and sending the two injured goons flying through the air. They landed in a tangle of bloodied limbs in the gravel lot out back.

  Sliding to a stop on his knees, Liam bounded toward Marta, knife at the ready. Only for a bullet to streak through the air in front of his face. He activated two more rings on his fingers, bringing up a spherical shield spell he hadn’t practiced in far too long. It was solid but wavered slightly with each brutal round from a sniper located somewhere on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. Every ping off the shield drained a bit of Liam’s magic, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. He needed to take Marta down again, grab Kat, and get out of here.

  Speaking of Kat, she recovered from the evasive action and climbed to her feet, powerful magic flooding her entire body. Her hair actually rippled from the force of the green aura whipping around her, and she launched herself at Marta so fast she became a blur even to Liam’s sharpened eyesight. Her hand locked around Marta’s wrist and yanked it sideways, snapping the magician’s bone clean in half and sending the wand bouncing down the street. Marta shrieked, less in pain and more in fury. She lifted her leg and kicked Kat in the gut.

  The blow threw Kat backward onto the front steps of a department store. She struck with so much force the brick cracked underneath her weight. Liam’s heart leaped into his throat, but he remembered the last time Kat had been hurt by Marta—she would recover quickly—so he kept on with his charge toward the rogue magician, who was examining her broken wrist with distaste. She spotted Liam coming from the corner of her eye, and predictably pulled out a spare wand, aiming it at his face.

  This time, she didn’t bother with a targeted spell. She lashed out with a wall of pure will that stretched halfway across the street. It slammed into Liam’s shield, and he lost his footing, tumbled backward across the asphalt, jarring his own broken arm in the process. The pain felt dull thanks to the pinky ring, but he knew he’d be feeling it double when the charm wore off. Regardless, he rolled back onto his knees and surged toward Marta again, ignoring the sniper who was steadily firing at his shield. I have to end this quickly. Between the shield and the rings, I’m going to zap my magic store in a matter of minutes.

  Marta spit out a string of nasty swears and leveled her backup wand at Liam again, building up another blast to knock him down. She clearly had a bigger reserve of power than Liam did, which wasn’t surprising. You built the size of your store over time through practice and discipline, and L
iam was out of practice. He’d stopped actively learning new magic when he quit his job on the force and no longer needed to bolster his daily activities with defensive and offensive spells. A PI job didn’t necessitate the same degree of protection. The size of his store, therefore, had shrunk in the last three years.

  He was no brute-force match for this woman, who’d clearly honed her skills over decades of diligent work. That meant Liam had to be wilier than her.

  So when she struck out with another widespread spell, Liam activated yet another ring, making himself temporarily lighter. He then sprang ten feet into the air, over the wall of magic, and came down directly in front of the startled magician, who couldn’t back up quite fast enough to avoid Liam’s next attack. He thrust the knife toward her, and the extended tip caught her in the chin as she dodged to the left, initiating the electricity charm. A powerful bolt leaped from the extended edge and struck Marta’s neck, and she cried out as she convulsed and collapsed onto the sidewalk.

  But she didn’t pass out. She’d prepared herself for Liam’s knife trick after what happened in the McDonald’s parking lot. She’d learned from her mistakes. So as soon as the charge dissipated, she was back on her feet, wobbly but conscious, with her wand raised to unleash yet another spell. And Liam was standing there in the middle of the street, completely exposed, his shield partially cracked by the continual bombardment from the sniper.

  Oh, fuck, Liam thought before Marta’s spell hit him dead on.

  This time, he didn’t roll. He flew.

  He crashed through the display window of an old lingerie store, his shield shredding on impact, the corresponding ring cracking in half, and landed on his back amid a pile of forgotten underwear and bras. The breath evacuated from his lungs, and he coughed, lightheaded, spots dancing before his eyes. He lay there on the floor for some time, dazed, his broken arm lying useless beside him, his other hand still tightly gripping the knife whose charm was rapidly running out of power. His pilfered gun was nowhere to be found; it had slipped from his waistband and tumbled away. If only I’d been a magician, he thought bitterly. I’d be able to beat this woman if that asshole hadn’t taken my future…