Even if the police were able to take them down, I doubted they’d stay locked up for long. Someone like Trang would have the money and connections required to have them freed on a technicality, and then they’d be right back on the streets. If I wanted to stop them from causing any more harm, I was going to have to consider a more permanent means of neutralizing their power.
As I was psyching myself up to use lethal spells to attack another human being, a much larger fireball arced over our heads, this time slamming into the stack of containers closest to the van. The magically enhanced ball of flame tore open the side of the second highest container, peeling it back like the lid of a sardine can. The now weakened box collapsed inward, causing the container above it to topple to the ground right where Montgomery’s team had holed up.
Acting on pure impulse, I dropped the gun and stepped forward from my hiding spot. Throwing my arms up, palms facing out as a mental projection point, I cast the strongest barrier spell I could muster just above the heads of Montgomery’s team. The container smashed down onto it, crushing the van halfway flat before straining against my energy shield. Not having had enough time to properly construct the barrier, I had to pour energy into it at a wild rate to keep it from collapsing. The wound on my side seared with white hot pain, my molars feeling like they’d crack from how hard I was clenching my jaw. I tried to scream for Montgomery’s team to get out of there, but all that came out was a pathetic grunt.
All of this took place over a matter of seconds. It was long enough for the woman who’d been working the grinder to look up at me, wide-eyed with fear as she leveled her gun towards what she perceived as a threat. Before I could react, she pulled the trigger. Time slowed, and I saw a little puff of flame and smoke spit from the end of her gun before something slammed into my shoulder, spinning me off balance. I lost my grasp on the shield spell, dimly aware of the rending crunch of metal and bone as the container rolled off the van and onto Montgomery’s entire crew.
My shoulder felt like a block of ice. For a second, I wondered why the woman had been carrying one of those heart attack guns that fired ice pellets.
Then I looked at the source of the spreading numbness. A surprisingly small hole in my shirt was the only real indication I’d been shot. Compared to the much more gruesome looking scratch on my side, it didn’t even look like anything to worry about. I could no longer move my arm, and my fingers felt fuzzy and prickly as though the entire limb had fallen asleep. There was a surprising lack of pain.
“Nate and Erik, get the package moving to the backup van,” Trey said from somewhere off to my left. “Johnny, make sure none of those assholes with the guns are still alive. I’m going to find Alex and make sure she never bothers us again.”
Pushing with my good hand, I butt-scooched back into the gap between crates. Something scratched along the pavement behind me, and my hand landed on the gun I’d dropped. Staggering to my feet, I squeezed myself into the gap just as Trey’s silhouette darkened the opening behind me.
I’d intentionally angled myself with my gun hand trailing behind, and I lifted it to fire off a few rounds at Trey. As tired as I was, the gun felt like it weighed fifty pounds. I could barely hold it steady, and I knew I’d fired far too wildly to hit the relatively easy target Trey had made of himself.
“Hoo-whee!” he shouted from beside the opening. “Got us a live one in there. I’m going to enjoy rooting you out of your little hole so I can show you what happens when you fuck with me.”
“Forget her,” shouted Johnny. “The others are all dead, but we can’t get this stupid crate to the van without your help. You know what Trang’ll do to us if we fuck this up.”
The sound of distant sirens filtered between the containers. I wondered why Chase hadn’t warned me the police had finally been notified. That’s when I realized that I’d lost his earpiece after all.
“Come on in,” I called to Trey once I’d cleared the narrow stretch. “Maybe I won’t miss this time.”
I was completely drained from my attempt to save Montgomery’s crew from being crushed, sick of being used as a pawn in whatever game Montgomery and Trang were playing, and I was starting to feel a hell of a lot of pain from the gunshot wound in my shoulder. On top of all of that was the reminder of Trey’s fingers wrapped around my throat, his cruel smile the last thing I’d seen before blacking out. This asshole wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if he had half the chance. Killing Chen back at the night market had been more an act of self-defense than anything else, and still I felt like shit about it. Could I really live with the consequences of putting a bullet into Trey’s forehead?
If he came after me, we were both going to find out in a hurry.
“Trey!” Johnny shouted more urgently. “I want her dead as much as anyone, but we have bigger problems. Fucking come here and help us already!”
Legs wobbling fiercely, I slipped out of the far side of the gap between containers, leaning heavily against them as I made my way back to Chase and the car. The ground had become a lot less stable over the last minute or so, insisting on tilting away from my feet with every step. My head was like a sack of nails, heavy and jangling wildly from the excess of stimuli assaulting it from everywhere in my body. The wound in my shoulder had become a supernova of pain, blotting out the cut in my side that was now a sticky mess of blood that had soaked into my shorts.
I was so out of it by the time Chase found me that I didn’t realize I’d slumped to the ground until he hoisted me up and dragged me to his waiting car.
“This has got to stop happening,” he said under his breath as he shoved me across the back seat.
Lying in the darkness and bleeding onto his upholstery, I tried to stay conscious while Chase got behind the wheel and peeled out of there. The pavement beneath us gave way to something far rougher, and I guessed that Chase had driven onto the rough stretch of dirt and gravel on the opposite side of the train tracks. He cut the engine and we sat for what felt like an hour. Every breath hurt now. Tears spilled from my eyes, rolling down my cheeks and wetting the seat beneath me. I felt a string of drool at the corner of my mouth, but an attempt to wipe it away resulted in my dragging my hand only a few inches forward before I gave up.
Eventually, Chase started the car up again. His repeated assurances that he was going to get me to someone who could help were the last things I heard before darkness consumed me.
Chapter Twenty
When I finally woke up again, I was most definitely not in the back seat of Chase’s car. My head rested on something soft, but my aching ass and shoulder blades suggested I was lying on something much harder, like a concrete floor or the world’s worst hospital bed. Blinking the gunk from my eyes was a challenge, and sitting upright proved too difficult to manage. My fingers brushed stone when I tried to grab the edge of whatever I’d been laid out on. Judging by how stiff and sore my body was, I figured I’d been lying there for quite some time already.
The room around me was lit by several candles, puddles of wax dripping off sconces and brass holders to form long yellow and white stalactites. First impression was that I’d been brought to someone’s basement sex dungeon. I was too weak to do much more than crane my neck around a little, but there were no racks of whips, straps, or industrial-strength rubber toys to support that theory. Other than a bit of mundane furniture and the odd stone altar serving as my sickbed, the only other identifying feature was wooden shelf laden with bundles of dried herbs and jars of assorted powders.
Oh, and the giant pentagram painted in what looked suspiciously like blood. It dominated the wall by my feet, and it looked like it had recently received a healthy touchup. Rather than being faded like a barely visible rusty stain, it looked almost sticky with whatever substance it had been drawn in.
The pentagram didn’t bother me half as much as the fact that I seemed to have lost my shirt. I shivered a little at the touch of cool stone on my bare skin. My bra was still in place, though, and someone had covered my sh
oulder with a foul smelling poultice. There was a smear of greenish brown gunk on my forearm that I traced to the coating of clay-like mud which had been smeared all over my side. The memory of hot shrapnel slicing through my skin made the area sting and itch a little, but the pain was little more than a mild irritation compared to what I’d felt at the shipping terminal.
“Karyn?” I croaked, the word barely a whisper. “Chase?”
“Right here, Alex,” Chase said from the doorway.
He came into the room and pressed his cool hand against my forehead. The mask of concern on his face softened into relief.
“She’s still warm, but her temperature has dropped quite a bit,” he said to Karyn, who’d come in behind him.
Karyn lifted the edge of the poultice, mouth set in a firm line while she poked at the edge of my gunshot wound. The agony her ministrations should have provoked were little more than dim pulses of discomfort in the far background of my consciousness. The lightness in my head made me wonder if there wasn’t something a little stronger than mashed healing herbs in there. Not that I missed the extreme pain that had set in once my initial shock had worn off. The memory of bouncing around and bleeding all over the back of Chase’s car for the second time in six months was enough to make my stomach revolt.
“I’ve done what I can here,” Karyn told me. “The bullet went mostly clean through your shoulder, but it did quite a bit of damage to the muscles and soft tissue. I used an intense healing spell to do what I could to repair the worst of it, but I don’t have enough time or skill to clean up the entry and exit wounds. You’re going to bleed for a while, and lifting your arm above your head is going to hurt like a bitch for at least a month. Consider yourself lucky though. A half inch up and to the side and it would have smashed your shoulder joint to pieces.”
“Thanks,” I managed to grunt.
Chase poured something into a plastic cup, then lifted my head to help me drink. Half the water spilled over my cracked and bleeding lower lip. What did make it onto my tongue and down my throat tasted as pure and sweet as if it had been enchanted by the Faerie Queen herself.
“I still think you should take her to a hospital,” Karyn told Chase. “I’m not a healer, and even if I was, I’d probably say the same thing. Alex lost a lot of blood last night. She should be on an IV.”
“That’s up to her,” Chase said. “But something tells me showing up in the ER with a gunshot wound isn’t exactly high on her list of priorities.”
“No hospital,” I mumbled. “I just need to sleep a little longer.”
Karyn shrugged to show how little she actually cared. “You two can hide out here as long as you want. Clean and dress her wounds with a proper bandage before you move her. Lock up when you leave.”
“Thanks for coming so quickly last night,” Chase said as she walked away.
I couldn’t see her, but the sound of her footsteps never slowed when she said “add it to the list of favors you two idiots owe me.”
Chase held the cup to my lips again, and I was able to drink more deeply this time. The narcotic haze of whatever spell or herbs Karyn had used to keep me sedated were beginning to wear off enough for me to pull myself upright. Legs dangling over the edge of the altar, I swept my hair back behind my ears and waited for the room to stop spinning. For a few tense seconds, Chase’s supportive hand on my shoulder was the only thing keeping me from pitching face first to the ground. My body had been through the wringer, and my brain felt none the better for it. I’d gone deep into my power reserves in my efforts to keep the container from crushing Montgomery’s team, but in the end it had all been for nothing.
“I smell grease,” I said, saliva pooling in my mouth.
Trusting me to not fall over, Chase stepped away to retrieve a paper bag and a drink cup from a table near the door. Inside was a still warm bacon cheeseburger and a huge order of poutine that I immediately set to work devouring. At first I could only manage a few small bites, but soon I was stuffing my mouth so full that Chase had to warn me to slow down.
“Relax,” I said, pausing for a sip of what turned out to be a strawberry milkshake. “Eating is probably what I do best.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve seen you at the Indian buffet.” Fingers dripping with grease, Chase rummaged through the takeout bag for something.
“Dammit. Forgot the napkins in the car.” He wiped his hands on the paper bag as best he could, then stood up and walked to the door.
Pausing just before he left, he eyed me as though worried I was going to somehow drop dead if left alone for five seconds. Thankfully, he thought better of saying anything, instead slipping out the door and walking up what sounded like a long flight of stairs.
I knew he meant well. Still, it was hard getting used to the idea that someone was worried about me. I’d been taking care of myself for most of my life. Chase was only looking out for me, but I wasn’t ready for lectures about how to take care of myself. This might have been the first time I was shot, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve woken up in a strange room after being healed by a witch. Hell, this wasn’t even the first time I’d been healed by Karyn. What I needed was food, time, and a little something to take the edge off the excruciating pain in my shoulder.
Knowing Chase would be back any second, I hopped off the table and went to the rack of herbs. Most of them weren’t labeled, and those few that were had been lettered in a far too fancy calligraphic script that made the names nearly impossible to read. Herb lore is far from a strong suit of mine. Unless mixed with magic, most herbs were little more than mildly effective at curing things like stomach discomfort. Either that, or they were deadly poisonous. I knew enough to stay well away from the bottles marked Belladonna and Hemlock, but something about a plant called henbane sparked a memory from my earliest research into witchcraft back when I’d had little understanding of where my power came from.
I opened the jar and sniffed it. The desiccated flowers smelled musty and made me a little lightheaded. A slight giddiness overtook me, and in a rush to get something into my system before Chase returned, I shook out the smallest pinch and stuffed it in my mouth. I stoppered the little bottle just as I heard the first footfalls in the stairway, and was back in my seat slurping milkshake by the time Chase re-entered the room. The henbane had given me a pleasant little body buzz. It wasn’t enough to kill the lingering pain, but I felt energized and less like my discomfort even mattered. It was like a layer of insulation had been packed between my body and my brain, giving me the mental space I needed to think clearly again.
Chase tossed a few napkins on the table next to me then sat back down again. I noticed a couple of coffee cups and empty Starbucks pastry bags on the floor by his feet.
“What time is it?” I asked. “And where exactly are we?”
“It’s just after noon, and we’re in a safe house that belongs to Karyn’s coven,” he said. “She spent most of last night and this morning working on your shoulder. I wasn’t allowed in the room, so I don’t know what she did, but I’m pretty sure she saved your life.”
“Dammit,” I muttered, shoving my burger wrapper and poutine tray into the paper bag. “I can’t afford to owe her any more favors.”
“What’s the deal between you two? You obviously get along well enough to work together when you have to. I saw how hard she pushed herself to heal you last night. I don’t understand why you’re not better friends.”
“It’s complicated,” I said, realizing immediately how lame it sounded. “Mages and witches don’t traditionally get along. We both get our power from different places, and there’s a long history of animosity between our kind.”
“Seriously?” Chase shook his head in annoyance. “Your answer to why you don’t get along is some kind of magical bigotry?”
“I’m not like that,” I told him. “I don’t care where someone gets their power from. I only care how they use it. Karyn and I met while working for different clients a few years ago. We were both after the s
ame object, and we each crossed a few lines in our efforts to beat out the competition. Things were said and done that can’t be taken back. Karyn is a little older than she looks, and if there’s one thing magic users of all types excel at, it’s holding grudges.”
Chase’s expression made it clear he wasn’t exactly satisfied by my explanation. Karyn could be as tooth-achingly sweet as cotton candy when she wanted to be. That charming exterior could also melt away as quickly as cotton candy dissolves in your mouth. Beneath that mask of spun sugar was a woman who’d come from a long line of predecessors who’d had to fight to keep from being hunted. Even now, there were people whose sole purpose in life was ridding the world of people like us. While I could usually defend myself against the kind of people who still burned witches at the stake, Karyn’s powers were typically slower to access and focus in a combat situation.
Trust didn’t come easy in our world. I didn’t know how to explain to Chase that magic users tended to fear each other more than any non-gifted, malevolent or not.
“We should get going,” Chase said once he’d thrown out our lunch garbage.
“Um,” I waved a hand at my shirtless chest. I wasn’t exactly shy, and Chase had seen considerably more of me the last time I’d been seriously injured, but that didn’t mean I was ready to walk around town wearing nothing but my bra and a pair of shorts.
“Oh yeah.” Chase picked something up from the table by the door and tossed it at me. “Karyn brought that for you.”
I caught the shirt and looked at it while Chase set about cleaning and bandaging my wounds. The 30th anniversary charity Sun Run race shirt looked like it was sized for a child. When I finally slipped it over my head and tugged it down my torso, I made a mental note to slap Karyn if I ever got the chance. The shirt was skin tight, and not in a flattering way. By tugging it down over my hips, I managed to stretch it out a bit, but the fabric still wanted to slide back up to expose a good inch of skin above my shorts.
Black Market (Black Records Book 2) Page 19
