Clip Joint

by Debra Dunbar

  Vincent responded with a body blow. The strike landed against the woman’s midsection with a loud slap, but she didn’t seem fazed by it. Instead, she curled her arm and punched the bottom of Vincent’s chin so hard that it sent him hurtling backward into the snow bank.

  Vincent shook off the blow, scrambling through the snow to get back on his feet while the woman waited for him patiently, clearly unwilling to take a cheap shot while he was supine.

  “This is stupid,” Hattie snarled. “You have a gun?”

  Sadie sighed. “If you wanted me to bring a damn gun, you should’ve told me to.”

  “Oh, Christ Jesus,” Hattie gasped. “There has to be something.”

  At that moment, Vincent landed a solid right cross to Gertha’s jaw. She staggered backward, feet wobbling on a patch of ice before she caught her balance.

  Hattie held a breath.

  Ice.

  “Sadie,” she whispered. “Nulls. They’re immune to magic, right? Well, what about the snow? It’s not immune.”

  A grin lifted across Sadie’s face. “You’re absolutely correct.”

  Sadie cracked her knuckles, then tossed a flat palm in front of her. A sheet of ice coalesced beneath Gertha’s feet. As the woman took a single step forward, her balance tilted forward. A foot shot into the air and she plowed forward into Vincent, driving the pair of them off the road and into the snow.

  Sadie’s fingers made a dance of ice pinching but with Vincent and Gertha practically intertwined, she couldn’t keep the ice to just one of the opponents.

  Scrambling back away from the woman, Vincent tossed a left jab. Gertha ducked but lost her balance yet again on Sadie’s ice. This time, she managed to keep from falling. Vincent took advantage and peppered Gertha with a flurry of jabs followed by a left cross to the midsection. She blocked half of the blows but took the hit to her ribs full-force. Sucking in a breath, she skated aside several feet across Sadie’s ice slick before lifting a foot into a bizarre pirouette, striking Vincent against the side of the face with her boot.

  He pitched to the side and went down. With a shout, Gertha was on him, her knee in his midsection as she smashed her fists into his face and chest. Vincent held his hands up in a combination of defensive and offensive moves, twisting to try to push the woman off him.

  This needed to end. Now. Hattie looked around and grabbed the broken mailbox from the ground. Winding back, she took a few steps forward and brought the mailbox down on top of Gertha’s head.

  The woman barely seemed to notice. Her hand shot up to grab Hattie’s, twisting it hard enough that she dropped the mailbox. With a smooth motion, Gertha stood, spinning around and clamping her hands around Hattie’s throat.

  Grabbing at the other woman’s hands with her own, Hattie clawed and scrambled backward until she felt her back hit the hard metal of the car hood. The woman’s lip curled, and the pressure on Hattie’s throat increased.

  There was a scream and she saw Sadie jump onto Gertha’s back, pulling at the other woman’s arms. Hattie gulped a breath of air as Gertha released one hand to elbow Sadie so hard the other woman flew backward across the snow. Then with slow deliberation, Gertha once more applied pressure to Hattie’s neck with both hands.

  Hattie kicked, clawing at her neck, but the other woman’s face began to swim before her. Blinking and struggling for air, Hattie saw a blurred figure behind Gertha.

  The other woman suddenly gasped, and the pressure on Hattie’s throat eased.

  Sucking in a huge gulp of air, she saw Vincent behind Gertha, that cold determined expression on his face. With a grunt, he leaned his weight forward, pushing Gertha against Hattie. The other woman made a gurgling sound, blood spilling from her mouth as she slid to the side and onto the road.

  Vincent stood in front of Hattie, a blood-covered, splintered stake of wood from the mailbox post in his hand. With a desperate noise, he tossed the stake aside and gathered her into his arms. She buried her face against his snow-dampened shirt, feeling his ragged breathing as she held him close.

  “Think I’m better at this when I can use magic,” he chuckled, giving her a tight hug before releasing her.

  “Aye, me, too.” Pulling back, Hattie turned to see Gertha sprawled across the ground in a pool of blood, her eyes sightless.

  “Let me see you. Are you okay?” Vincent murmured, taking her face in his hands and looking at her neck.

  “I’m okay,” Hattie croaked. “But Sadie…”

  “I’m fine outside of what I’m sure is going to be one hell of a shiner,” she heard the other woman say. “How about that freight train of a woman? Is she dead?”

  “Yes,” Vincent replied, still intent on checking Hattie’s injuries. “We’ll have to do something with the body. We can’t just leave it here on the road.”

  “I know a place,” Sadie told him. “Passed it on the way in here. It’s not far.” She reached for a handful of snow, rubbing it over her face to clean more of the blood off. “A lake, mostly frozen over. Ice is pretty thin. I bet if we weigh her down with some rocks, no one will see her again.”

  “I’ll go move that truck out of the way,” Hattie said, stepping away from Vincent. “Hide it in that woods over there or something, while you two get her in the car.”

  With a harrumph, Sadie reached for Gertha’s ankles. “Well, enough pissing about it. Let’s move before those drunks up at the auction start to leave and see us.”

  * * *

  As the ripples of water bounced back and forth within the patch they’d cleared on the surface of the lake, and Gertha descended to her benthic grave, Hattie leaned against Vincent. He rubbed his hands together, shivering in the cold without an overcoat, then wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

  “You’ll make it?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll make it.”

  “There’s still a lot to do.”

  The sun began to set behind the hills, the last sunset of 1926.

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” he sighed. “There’s gonna be blow-back against New York from Vito, and I get the feeling DeBarre is gonna need a heads-up on all this, right?”

  She grimaced. “Right. He…uh, he has no idea that he just spent ten grand on a time pincher at Ithaca.”

  Vincent eyed her. “Maybe that would go over better coming from you. He’s likely to punch me in the face, and I’ve had enough of that this week.”

  “Saddle me with the dirty work, will ya?” She said with a playful nudge to his ribs, “We have a lot to discuss about the Hell pincher, too.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Is this story going to give me heart failure? Because I have a feeling it is.”

  Hattie peered up at Vincent, catching the warmth in his eyes as he looked down at her. Vincent had changed from these weeks in Ithaca, but it hadn’t destroyed him, and that was something.

  Was he truly her soul twin, as Sadie had suggested?

  “Yes, you’re gonna have a fit and deliver a loud, angry lecture. I’m prepared for that.

  His gaze softened. “I missed you. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.”

  “You’re not getting rid of me that easy, boy-o,” she teased. “Like a bad penny, I am.”

  He smiled, his hand sliding up to tangle in her hair as he tilted her face up toward his. “Good. I like pennies.”

  There was a moment where their lips met, a moment of hesitation where Hattie’s brain took a second to catch up with what was going on. Then Vincent turned to pull her tight against him, slanting his mouth over hers and deepening the kiss into something far from chaste. When his lips left hers, she found herself struggling to breathe, struggling to think.

  Gazing up into his face she found she also couldn’t speak. Flakes of snow hung suspended, sending prismatic sparks of light twisting through the air. Vincent had pinched time. And by the amused look on his face, it wasn’t intentional. He dropped the time pinch, and the snowflakes resumed their lazy dance toward the ground.

  “Oh, for
God’s sake,” Sadie grumbled. “Get a room, you two.”

  Hattie snickered as the other woman withdrew to the car.

  “So, um…?” Vincent raised his eyebrows as he pulled away from Hattie.

  She lifted a finger to his lips. “Let’s get home before we talk about it. Sound good to you, boy-o?”

  “Home.” He grinned. “Right now, there’s no place I’d rather be.”

  Chapter 26

  “Tell me again about how that woman cleaned the floor with you.” Lefty smirked.

  “I’d like to see you go ten rounds with her,” Vincent replied. “She could’ve pressed me over her head if she wanted to. And I couldn’t use my powers. Turns out, she was a Null. That’s a person who—”

  “I know what a Null is,” Lefty told him as they crossed beneath a streetlight for the Old Moravia Hotel. “I’ve seen one before.”

  “One of these days, you gotta tell me all about your years in Europe.”

  “Fat chance of that.” Lefty paused by the steps leading to the brand-new revolving door. “I do need to know one thing.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why’d you come clean with all this? You coulda kept it under your hat, but here you are. Spilling your guts to the last person you’d want to know you’re out on a scam.”

  He hadn’t told Lefty everything—only what had transpired in Ithaca, not how something had shifted within him, something that meant deep down, he was no longer loyal to Vito and never would be. Lefty might be a friend, but there were some things better kept close to the chest.

  Vincent turned to face the other man. “You’ve pulled my fat out of the fire more times than I can count. I trust you. And I need you to know the truth in case this all goes sideways and you need to save my ass one more time.”

  Lefty rolled the thought around a bit, then nodded before turning for the door. “You visit Miss Malloy yet?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but yeah.”

  “Good. She’s alive. I was worried she’d pull some stunt like this. Figured she’d get herself killed doing it, too.”

  Vincent tapped Lefty’s shoulder with his fist. “You’re getting soft on me, Mancuso.”

  “Shut up.”

  They stepped into the lobby of the hotel. A brass quartet drummed out some West Coast swing as a few couples who weren’t still hungover from the previous night’s New Year’s Eve party threw their feet and hands around in evening wear. A gathering of suits in the lobby bar watched as Lefty and Vincent approached. About half of the Crew were there at the behest of the Capo himself. The return of their sole pincher would be an event, one way or another. As he and Lefty made their way forward, Vincent held his head high, his eyes level and calm.

  Vito Corbi rose from a wingback in the corner of the bar, surrounded by his retinue. He glanced at Lefty, then at Vincent, bushy eyebrows low, lips pulled tight. With a wave, he ushered them to follow and stepped into a private room.

  Lefty closed the door behind them as they entered.

  Corbi looked him top to bottom, face implacable.

  Vincent stood, his stance wide, his hands behind his back, his head bowed in a posture of respect, yet positioned so he could see his Capo’s every expression.

  “Well,” Corbi finally said. “What do you have for me?”

  Lefty stepped forward, reaching into his jacket pocket to produce two envelopes. “I have here a paper certifying that the assessor at Ithaca has declared Vincent trained and ready to be of service, but there’s something you need to know, Capo.

  Vito took the envelopes with a frown, waving for Lefty to continue.

  “You sent your pincher up there, trusting they would return him to you, but instead the New York families bribed the Ithaca market to have him sold at auction.”

  Vito’s face turned an alarming shade of purple. He glanced at Vincent, then back at Lefty. “They tried to steal from me? To steal my stregone?”

  Lefty nodded. “They would have, too, except it seems you have allies looking out for you.”

  Vito ripped open the envelopes and read the letters Dominguez had prepared, his fury growing by the second.

  “They steal my stregone and sell him at auction? They steal him from me?”

  Lefty wisely remained silent.

  Vito continued reading then looked up at Vincent, his mouth agape. “Ten thousand dollars? Ten thousand…?”

  Vincent bit back a smirk. Normally he would have been proud, hoping that being sold for such a sum would finally bring him worth in his Capo’s eyes. Now he knew better. Worth ten gees today. Worthless tomorrow. And what Vito thought of him really didn’t matter anymore anyway.

  “It was Luciano’s doing,” Lefty told the man. “I’m sure he had Masseria’s approval in all this, but he was the one pulling strings, and the one who was bidding for your pincher.”

  Vito sneered. “Upstart. Thief. Masseria won’t be able to protect him forever. One day, in a dark alleyway, he’ll regret he tried to steal from me.”

  “But we have unexpected allies, Capo,” Lefty reminded him.

  Vito glanced again at the papers and nodded. “Sabella knows these New York families have become a threat to us all. This gift that he sends me…returning my stregone to me at such considerable cost to his organization. I am overwhelmed with gratitude. Allies indeed.”

  The Capo finished reading, then folded the papers and slid them into his jacket pocket. Finally he approached Vincent.

  “So,” he stated in a flat tone, “are you better? Or worse?”

  “Better, Capo,” Vincent replied, his head still lowered. “Stronger.”

  “And you will obey? No more mistakes? No more defiance and ignoring my orders?”

  Vincent lifted his head, focusing his gaze somewhere over his Capo’s right shoulder. “No more mistakes, Capo. I am to be an asset of true value. To become a creature of power, not for my own gain, but for the betterment of those who have earned my loyalty. To reflect on my betters in a way that forwards their fortune, their stature, and the light the Lord of Creation chooses to shine upon them.”

  Vito nodded and patted him on the shoulder then turned to Lefty.

  “We have work to do. I want you to take my stregone down to Richmond and finish off those Citizens. Then we plan for how to address this affront from New York as well as show our appreciation to our allies in Philadelphia.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “It is a new day, here—a new day for us all.”

  It was a new day, but not in the way Vito Corbi thought it to be. Vincent bowed his head again, playing the part of the humble, obedient asset, all the while listening, gathering information, planning.

  It might not happen tomorrow. It might not happen this year. But someday soon, the Capo would see what sort of creature of power Vincent really was, and see what lengths he would go to for the betterment of those who had earned his loyalty.

  Which most definitely did not include Vito Corbi.

  Acknowledgments

  A huge thanks to our copyeditors Kimberly Cannon and Jennifer Cosham whose eagle eyes catch all the typos and keep Debra’s comma problem in line, and to Damonza for cover design.

  Special thanks to all our readers who have individually followed us to Hel and back, and enthusiastically cheered us on during our first collaborative project. May there be many more ahead!

  Debra and J.P

  About the Authors

  Debra lives in a little house in the woods of Maryland with her sons and two slobbery bloodhounds. On a good day, she jogs and horseback rides, hopefully managing to keep the horse between herself and the ground. Her only known super power is 'Identify Roadkill'.

  A Louisiana native, J.P. relocated to the vineyards and cow pastures of Central Maryland after Hurricane Katrina, where he lives with his wife and son. During the day he commutes to the city of Baltimore, a setting which inspires much of his writing.

  For more information:

  www.debradunbar.com/white-lightning o
r

  J.P. Sloan’s Author page

  Debra Dunbar’s Author page

  Also by Debra Dunbar

  White Lightning Series

  Wooden Nickels

  Bum’s Rush

  Clip Joint

  ***

  The Templar Series

  Dead Rising

  Last Breath

  Bare Bones

  Famine’s Feast

  Dark Crossroads (2019)

  * * *

  IMP WORLD NOVELS

  The Imp Series

  A Demon Bound

  Satan’s Sword

  Elven Blood

  Devil’s Paw

  Imp Forsaken

  Angel of Chaos

  Kingdom of Lies

  Exodus

  Queen of the Damned

  The Morning Star

  * * *

  Half-breed Series

  Demons of Desire

  Sins of the Flesh

  Cornucopia

  Unholy Pleasures

  City of Lust

  * * *

  Imp World Novels

  No Man’s Land

  Stolen Souls

  Three Wishes

  Northern Lights

  Far From Center

  Penance

  * * *

  Northern Wolves

  Juneau to Kenai

  Rogue

  Winter Fae

  Bad Seed

  Also by J.P. Sloan

  The Dark Choir Series

  The Curse Merchant

  The Curse Servant

  The Curse Mandate

  The Dark Interest