Devil's Eye

by Kait Nolan

  He stopped again, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “While I was gone the same people who attacked her home came after my Pack. They were after the girl. It wasn’t that they just handed her over, but . . . to them she wasn’t Pack, so nobody even thought about protecting her. They were too busy protecting their own.”

  “Was she killed?” asked Sophie quietly.

  “Or worse. Her body wasn’t found in the clan compound during the aftermath.” Mick paused again.

  “When I got back, the Alpha confronted me. He said I’d brought death straight to our Pack’s door because I’d brought in an outsider. So I was banished.”

  “So you’ve made your own Pack. Your own rules about who counts, who deserves protection,” she said. He had protected what he deemed his.

  Mick shrugged.

  “What was her name?” asked Sophie.

  “Isla. Her name was Isla.”

  They lapsed into silence.

  “I was like you once,” said the demon.

  Startled, they both glanced back at it.

  “How’s that?” asked Mick.

  “I was not always as you see. I have known loss. Once I was a merchant, and my business took me often to the seaport, nearly a full league away from my home, my wife and child. I was not there when our city—our home—was invaded by foreigners from across the hills. By the time we even realized the city was under attack, they were already dead.

  “I was crazed with grief. But I was no warrior. The path I chose was not one of honor, but of revenge. I made a bargain for the power to destroy those who had taken my family, and in exchange I was bound to the Eye ever after.”

  ~*~

  “Hurricane Roy has picked up speed yet again. Meteorologists are predicting landfall in as little as four hours. Freeways are clogged as citizens try to evacuate ahead of this category four storm that threatens the Crescent City. With Katrina not long in our memories, panic is setting in as more and more locals head for the high ground to wait out the storm. Local officials speculate about the strength of the new levee—”

  Sophie turned off the car and stared at the sign above the shop.

  “OCC?” she asked. “Really?”

  “Not that OCC. Olaf’s Custom Cycles.” If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Mick would’ve laughed at the expression of disbelief on Sophie’s face.

  “Your forger makes motorcycles?”

  “Among many other things. There’s a market for them down here.”

  “Doesn’t look very open.”

  “He’s here.” Mick pointed at the wisps of smoke curling up from the back of the building. “And he’s at his forge. That’s exactly what we want.”

  He got out of the car and headed for the side door rather than the boarded glass of the showroom. It took five minutes of pounding before a light came on above their heads and a small panel, like something from an old speakeasy, slid back, low enough that Mick was glad he was still using Sophie’s coat to cover himself. The panel slid shut with a snap, and there was a rattle of chains and locks on the other side. Then the door swung open to reveal Olaf, who stood all of four foot seven inches, looking up at him with one pierced eyebrow arched.

  “Havin’ that kinda night, are we? Do I wanna know?”

  “No,” Mick told him.

  Olaf nodded and waved them in.

  The front workroom was full of steel with several motorcycles, in various stages of completion, scattered on low work tables. The back wall held a neatly arranged tool collection that would surpass any grease monkey’s best wet dream. The dwarf was nothing if not meticulous in all his work.

  He bypassed all the in-progress projects and pushed open the swinging door to the showroom. “Grab some pants from out front, then we’ll talk about what you’re doing here. I’ll add them to your tab.”

  When Mick came back a few minutes later clad in leather pants and a motocross T-shirt, Sophie was crouched down, studying the workmanship on a custom tank painted to look like a valkyrie’s streaming hair. Olaf stood behind a few paces admiring her backside.

  The growl of possession was instant, a low rumble that had both of them looking his way. Mick knew his eyes were flashing gold as his wolf pushed toward the surface, but he couldn’t do anything about that at the moment. It was taking everything he had not to leap across the room and slam Olaf into that pretty wall of tools.

  The dwarf glanced at Sophie, then back at Mick, and opened his mouth in a silent, ah, lip ring flashing in the fluorescent lights. He lifted his hands in a gesture of placation and the wolf settled back down.

  So not the time or place for this, my friend, Mick told it. Neither was this the time or place to analyze why he was reacting like a mated male. He’d deal with it when they survived this shit.

  “We have a job for you,” said Mick.

  Olaf crossed burly arms across his chest. “I’m guessin’ it’s not of the transportation variety.”

  Mick shook his head.

  “For the Underground then.”

  Mick glanced at Sophie, but other than a slightly arched brow, she made no comment. “Not exactly. The less you know about the why and the who, the better.”

  “This gonna come back to bite me in the ass, Guidry?”

  “If you do your usual quality job, then no.”

  “Fine. Let’s have it then. What am I forging?”

  “This,” said Sophie, opening the case to reveal the Devil’s Eye. As Olaf reached out a hand, she jerked it back. “No! No, you can’t touch it.”

  “I’m supposed to make a forgery of something I can’t even touch?”

  “It’s our understanding that you could pick it up with tongs, but you can’t touch it directly,” said Mick.

  “I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended.”

  “Let’s go with flattered. Lives are at stake with this one, Olaf.”

  The dwarf scowled. Sophie laid a hand on his arm.

  “Please,” she said softly.

  Olaf sighed and walked over to the tool bench. He pressed at a small sledgehammer, and a hidden door opened in the wall to the right. “Come on then. This might take a while.”

  The passage led down into a large, subterranean room that couldn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, be termed a basement. The walls and floor were made of stone, probably hewn by Olaf himself. The room was stifling hot, owing to the forge that took up most of one wall, with iron ducts venting up to the surface. The forge itself was shaped like a giant, gaping dragon’s mouth. Being one of Olaf’s creations, it looked a little too real for comfort. On the wall opposite the forge was a long table with an assortment of equipment from a jeweler’s loupe to a mass spectrometer. All the trappings of a forger dedicated to creating the best counterfeits in the business.

  Olaf fitted himself with heavy leather gloves that reached his elbows and gestured for Sophie to bring the case over. She set it on the table, stepping back as Olaf picked the eye up with a pair of tongs. He moved it under some kind of microscope and peered down at it, muttering in a language Mick didn’t know.

  “Might as well find a seat,” Mick told Sophie. “He’ll be at this a while.”

  They watched as Olaf ran test after test. Checking the weight, the mass, the buoyancy, the density, and dozens of other measurements on the Eye. He checked its reactivity to chemicals and to magic.

  Mick reached over to rub at Sophie’s shoulder as she began fidgeting with impatience.

  “How long does this usually take?” she asked. “Not to be rude, but we’re kind of on a deadline.”

  “It takes as long as it takes,” said the dwarf. “You want quality, you gotta have patience.”

  And at last he moved to a giant, multi-compartment chest across the room and began removing things.

  “You’ve brought me a challenge, wolf. I like a challenge.” Olaf carried assorted materials over to the table and began mixing.

  “What is all that?” asked Sophie, curiosity evidently overcoming h
er anxiety.

  “A little of this, a little of that. The ground bones of a shape shifter. A ruby from a wyvern’s nest. Blood of a siren. And a few other things.”

  Sophie looked a little green. “Double double, toil and trouble,” she murmured.

  “Oh please, I challenge any witch to do what I do. It’s one thing to fool the mind. It’s quite another to fool all the other senses as well.”

  By the time Olaf fired up his forge, working the bellows with one muscular arm to amp up the flame, Mick was thoroughly regretting his choice of leather. The dwarf seemed sublimely unaware of the sweltering heat as he turned and tossed a couple of pairs of goggles in their direction. “You’re gonna want those.” Then he shoved a mould filled with blood red liquid into the heart of the fire.

  Mick barely got the goggles on before the fireworks started.

  Fire and sparks spewed from mouth of the forge. Olaf whooped, and Sophie dove for cover behind a table. The bellows pumped again and Olaf started to chant. The building began to shake, and the dragon-headed forge began to move. The mouth closed, smoke and fire curling out of its nostrils, and as some magic reaction continued to explode inside, a pair of huge, emerald green eyes that Mick had never seen before cracked open.

  The forge was alive.

  “Holy mother of the ancients,” breathed Mick.

  He crawled over to Sophie, ineffectually shielding her from the heat.

  “What the hell is that?” she asked over the roar.

  “I have no idea.”

  At length, the dragon opened its mouth, and Olaf reached both gauntleted hands into the heated maw to retrieve the mould. He thrust it into some other chamber with an oven-like door and set a timer. And as he turned, the ground trembled and the dragon settled back into the still, silent lines of a creature of metal.

  “Olaf, what the fuck, man? You’ve got a dragon down here?” asked Mick, climbing to his feet and offering a hand to Sophie.

  The dwarf smiled, his teeth very white in the black of his close-cropped beard. “Not a dragon,” he corrected. “A drakyn forge. Imbued with dragon magic.”

  “Where the hell did you get your hands on one of those? The drakyn haven’t been seen in more than a century.”

  “Exactly,” said Olaf. “And they left all kinds of fun stuff behind in their lairs.”

  “So . . . did it work?” asked Sophie.

  “We’ll know in about half an hour. For now, we wait. Anybody want a beer?”

  Chapter 6

  “—and the pointy eared bastard didn’t realize what he had in his hands was a fake!”

  Sophie studiously pretended she wasn’t hearing blatant admission of law-breaking and pulled the phone out of her pocket to check the signal for the tenth time. Three bars. She’d given up on her own phone after the latest irate text from her handler. The likelihood that she’d still have a job after this—assuming she lived—was starting to look like the odds of surviving the sinking of the Titanic. Miniscule

  The kidnapper hadn’t called yet, and the counterfeit Eye wasn’t done in the, well, whatever contraption it was in. The whole forging process had taken two hours so far, and the waiting was killing her. They were running out of time.

  Tap, tap, tap the phone against her leg.

  “So Sophie,” said Olaf, turning his attention toward her. “What is it you do?”

  Tap, tap, tap. She grimaced. “Well, up until today, I was an IED agent.”

  The dwarf’s smile faded, and he grabbed a fistful of Mick’s shirt. “You bring me a mole, Guidry?”

  “I’ve got no intention of turning you in for your activities,” said Sophie. “Of the two of us, I’ll be much higher on the Council’s shit list after tonight.” Tap, tap, tap. “If I survive ’til morning, I’ll probably be executed, so taking anybody else down with me is really not on my priority list.”

  “Over my dead body,” growled Mick.

  The sheer possession in his voice left her breathless and confused. She’d wondered before what it took to become a part of his Pack. Apparently she’d made the cut.

  Before she could respond, the phone in her hand began to vibrate. Her fingers fumbled and dropped it onto the floor, where it skittered and bounced beneath one of the low work-tables. Sophie yelped and started to dive for it, but Olaf bent calmly and fished the phone out from under the table. Both eyebrows were raised as she snatched it from his hand and answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Took a while to answer there, Sophie. Haven’t run into any trouble, have we?”

  Though her hand shook, her voice was steady and cool. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  “You have the Eye, then?” She still couldn’t detect any identifiable cadence or accent to the electronically distorted voice.

  “I do.”

  “Excellent.”

  “I want proof of life,” she said.

  “I’m afraid Liza is . . . indisposed, at the moment,” drawled the voice.

  “I want proof of life, you son of a bitch, or we have no deal,” she snarled.

  Mick’s hand settled on her shoulder and rubbed at the tension there. She found herself leaning into him, lifting her free hand until he covered it with his own, giving her strength.

  “You don’t seem to understand how this works, Sophie. You have no room to negotiate or bargain. I have your sister, and if you want her back in any condition at all, you will bring the Eye to this address.”

  As he rattled off the location, she gestured frantically for something to write on. Olaf shoved a pad and pen into her hand, and she scribbled the address. The kidnapper didn’t even wait for her to verify before he hung up.

  Sophie screamed in rage, and the phone in her hand began to sizzle and pop as it was engulfed in a ball of lightning. Olaf’s beady black eyes went wide.

  “Settle down, petite,” said Mick, pulling her into his chest, heedless of the sparks.

  Sophie doused them instantly, dropping her head to his chest. He clutched her closer, his hands rubbing her back, stroking her nape in a motion that made her heart thunder for entirely different reasons. Unlike her own, she could hear Mick’s heart beat slow and steady beneath her ear. Steady and sure. How could he be so calm?

  “What if I got the address wrong?”

  “You didn’t. I could hear him too. I know the area. It’s down by the river. We’re gonna take this counterfeit, and we’re gonna go down there and get Liza back.”

  A buzzer sounded.

  “On that note,” said Olaf. He pressed the hammer and disappeared back downstairs.

  Mick tipped her face up and his eyes glowed gold. “We’re gonna get through this. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you or to Liza. Tomorrow it will all be over.”

  He brushed a thumb across her cheek, and she trembled, confused and longing for something that was so ill-timed, so ill-advised she couldn’t even process it. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  The moment stretched between them and his hand slid back into her hair.

  Something crashed below. They both jolted, Mick automatically shifting her behind him as they raced down the stairs. When they reached the bottom, Olaf was crouched in a defensive stance, a huge double headed axe clutched in his hands. Across the room, the demon lounged against the work table looking amused.

  “I think he’s compensating for something,” it said.

  “Who are you?” roared Olaf.

  Mick laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “He’s with us.”

  Olaf didn’t take his eyes off the demon. “You brought a demon into my shop? Into my forge?”

  “By proxy. He lives in the artifact you just copied.”

  “And you didn’t think this was a relevant factor to mention?”

  Determined to be the voice of reason, Sophie stepped between them. “Okay both of you chill.” She turned to Olaf, “Is the counterfeit ready?”

  “See for yourself,” said the demon.

  Sophie looked beyond it to the shin
ing black stone sitting beside the mold. Black. Not red. The chill of fear skittered up her spine as she turned to Olaf. “Tell me there are more steps.”

  The dwarf rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “I don’t know what happened. I can try again—”

  “There’s no time,” Sophie snapped. “The kidnapper expects us to be en route with the Eye right now.”

  “It could still work,” said Mick. “If the Eye was lost for as long as you say, maybe the kidnapper doesn’t know what it looks like.”

  “Are you willing to risk Liza’s life on maybe?” Sophie paced a tight circle, shoving both hands through her hair in frustration. “This isn’t happening. I can’t have failed this badly. My mother will never forgive me.” Never mind that Sophie would never forgive herself. In all likelihood, Liza was going to die. What the hell is the point of being the daughter of a god if I can’t even save my sister!

  “It’s not over yet, petite.”

  “How?” she demanded, whirling to face Mick. “How in the hell can we possibly pull this off? We can’t risk giving him the Eye.”

  “We need to be able to give it to him but have it not work,” he said. His attention shifted to the demon. “How are you transferred from one host to another?”

  “I am bound to a host until death. Otherwise it would be like playing musical masters.”

  “So our kidnapper could touch the Eye and have nothing happen if you’re already bound to someone else?”

  The demon inclined its head in acquiescence.

  “There’s our answer,” said Mick.

  Sophie stared at him, a sinking feeling in her gut. “I don’t understand.”

  “We have to make a deal with the devil.”

  ~*~

  Sophie looked stricken, but the expression of anxiety rapidly shifted to one of stubborn fury. “No. Mick you can’t.” She shook her head, moving between him and the Eye, though Mick wasn’t sure if it was to deliberately block him or force him to listen. “You don’t know what bonding with the Eye would do to you. No matter your intent, that kind of power could warp you. No one who’s ever wielded the Eye did so with good intentions.”