by J. P. Rice
“Our Cat Cams are controlled remotely and can be placed anywhere we like,” he announced proudly.
Owen pointed toward the back patio and we walked over. The Persian cat followed us, and its movements were natural. The spry machine jumped up the steps to his patio and sashayed over to a sliding glass door. I peered inside at Owen’s business partner seated at his kitchen table.
Oddly enough, his partner in the cat accessory business was a pit bull shifter. Roald Von Claus was in human form talking on his cellphone.
The Persian cat got close to the sliding door and Roald’s voice came through the remote.
“He’s a good guy though. So who cares if he smells like mothballs?”
Owen laughed and shut off the remote control. “Oh, heavens. I wonder who he’s speaking of.”
Oh, you poor thing. He didn’t know Roald was talking about him. I’d always assumed Owen had forgotten to take the mothballs out of his jacket when he took it out of the closet.
He picked up the Persian and held it up facing me. “These babies are selling like hotcakes right now. The fact that they can record sound through glass has them flying off the shelves.”
“How much does one of those things run?” I asked and finished my drink.
“Due to some advanced features, I charge ten thousand apiece,” he said and looked away smiling.
I nodded. “Not too shabby.”
Owen turned back to me and shrugged his shoulders. “Not at all. Our last order was for fifty of them and just shipped a few days ago.”
I did some quick math in my head. “Half a mil?”
“That’s right. I could provide us a comfortable living, you know.” He winked and took my empty glass.
I knew it was a joke, but I had my own money. “I’m good on that, thanks. So what do you say about the trip to Seattle?”
I didn’t have a backup plan in mind if he said no. Owen and Tyr were probably my only true friends in Pittsburgh. Of course, my only two friends hated each other. I wouldn’t drag Tyr into something he didn’t want to be a part of. I commended the former God’s ability to walk away from the hunt. I wished I had his fortitude.
Instead, I was planning a trip that could change my life forever. I waited with bated breath for Owen’s answer.
Chapter 12
As I strolled down the street, I stopped in my tracks when someone who looked exactly like Thor walked past. I turned around and sized him up as I followed him. He was the right height and build with cascading golden hair trailing down to the small of his back.
The wild orange Viking beard hanging to his belly was the dead giveaway though. Although it was longer than he’d normally worn it, I’d never seen another man with that unique combination.
Dressed in a pair of ripped jeans and a plain white T-shirt covered in stains, he was drinking from a 40 Ounce of Olde English, partially obscured by a wrinkled brown paper bag. The frosty chill in the air didn’t seem to affect him one bit.
I tried an old trick, and called out, “Thor.”
I looked away but kept watch out of my peripheral to see if he stopped. The man didn’t deviate from his staggering walk and hooked a right into an alley. He stopped near a dumpster and chugged the rest of his malt liquor. The vicious crosswinds of the dumpster funk and a rotten stench coming from the sewer made for a formidable combination.
I leaned down and pretended I was getting a rock out of my shoe. The man who looked like the God of Thunder belched loudly and tossed the bottle and bag into the receptacle, shattering the glass.
As I rose, I said, “Thor is that you?”
He whirled and eyeballed me with his telltale razor blue irises. It had to be him. He growled, “What the hell are you talking about, lady? You must be mistaken.”
I wasn’t. I could see the scar above his right eye from when Loki had cut him with a serrated steak knife during a dinner argument. “Thor, I can see it’s you. I only want to help. It’s me, June.”
“Get away from me,” he screamed and chased after me with his muscly arms extended, trying to scare me away. I stared at his chest but couldn’t see his most obvious identifying characteristic through his white shirt.
I took a few steps back, our eyes met, and he stopped. He cocked his head to the side, and blinked rapidly as if he’d started to remember me. The back door of a restaurant flew open and smacked into the brick building wall, causing both of us to pivot toward the sound.
A short man in an apron pointed to his wrist and yelled, “There yinz are. The fuck you doin’, Todd? Break’s over. Dishes are piling up like crazy in here. Get your ass back in here if you want to keep your job.”
Thor lowered his head. “Sorry, sir. Someone distracted me.” He hustled in through the back door and his boss slammed it shut. The Thor I knew would have squashed that man like a grape and turned him into blood wine.
What the hell was Thor doing washing dishes? At least I knew where he worked now and could find him when I wanted. I had to be careful whom I told about this. If I mentioned it to Tyr, he could just relay the message to Loki. That would put Thor’s life in danger because Loki was constantly trying to off him to remain first in line for the throne.
I’d already caused enough trouble with the vampires and wolves. I didn’t need to out Thor and possibly get him killed. Plus, I liked Thor a helluva lot more than Loki, and I understood that sometimes one needed to lie low. The old Thor. Not that shell of his former self I’d just encountered.
I turned around to go home and get ready for my trip to Seattle. Six people were standing in my way. The Bounty Huntress and five of her friends inched toward me. The Huntress had been hot on my high heels for a while.
However, she’d never come after me in Pittsburgh. This was just another reason I didn’t want to return. Word got around quickly.
The stupid bitch was wearing tan elk skin pants with a weapon belt around her waist. She had a few knives, but the huge futuristic pistol on her hip grabbed my attention. A few flakes of snow fell from the sky and hit her lavender afro that resembled spun cotton candy sitting atop her head. Her matching elk skin jacket had been branded over the left breast with the symbol for the Supreme Magic Council.
The Huntress waggled her eyebrows, causing the dark skin on her forehead to wrinkle. Her aubergine lips parted, and she said, “Prepare to be fucked by the long dick of the law.”
I didn’t respond and eyeballed the rest of her crew members. Garbed in tight black spandex, they were all men. Tall. Muscular. And about to be dead. And I’d promised myself I wouldn’t kill anyone today. There was always tomorrow. Or the next day.
In her self-righteous manner, she held her chin high, and in a proper English accent, she announced, “Junipher. You have been credibly accused of crimes against magic and because you are in the jurisdiction of the great state of New York, you must face trial against your accusations.” Her thin lips curled upward, the corners almost touching her nose. “Gotcha, bitch.”
I pointed at the surroundings. “You need a map or a compass? I’m not on your hunting grounds, sweet tits.”
People kept walking by on the sidewalk, not even peeking in our direction. That meant the Huntress had set an illusion spell at the entrance of the alley. With her magical prowess, a cop could walk by and not suspect a thing. I was on my own. Unless Thor needed another 40.
She gestured for her friends to get into position, and said, “Oh, you’re not on my turf right now, but soon you will be in our possession. And then we will drag you there. You’ve been running from us for over a hundred years.”
She continued directing her crew around with hand gestures, and they followed her orders, surrounding me. “I thought you were dead, but I prayed you weren’t. I want that bounty. It will be the biggest one I’ve ever collected even after I pay my crew.”
“You must be blind. You are going to commit a crime against magic to take me in,” I wasn’t even sure what I had said. I was talking out of my ass because I needed to bu
y time. A formidable force had me surrounded, and I needed to determine what magic I should use. I didn’t smell magic on them, which was unusual. I detected body odor, which told me they were nervous if they were sweating on this frosty day.
The Huntress tapped the various weapons on her beltline as if she were determining which one to use and ultimately stopped on the gun. “Once the J.J.E. sees you, he won’t care if I’ve broken every law in the book. And many beings are more than willing to testify against you. Let me guess, those aren’t blood ritual scars on your arms either? Lying thief.”
Even wearing long sleeves and a jacket, I felt naked. All my secrets exposed to the world. “My battle scars are none of your damn business, thank you very much.”
The Huntress waved her bony finger in front of her ugly face. “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Actually, your scars have everything to do with my business. I’ve been tasked with keeping monsters like you from destroying all that’s precious. You don’t even know it because you’re lying to yourself, but you can’t control all the dark blood drowning you from the inside out. You’re basically an animal. A slave to all those you stole from. You just don’t know it yet.”
I tried to brew up a Ginger Storm, but it wasn’t as easy as whipping up a batch of sweet tea. It had to happen organically. I couldn’t force it. “Well, you’re going to get a little taste of that barbarism if you keep pressing.”
“You can make it difficult, but we will kill you. It’ll mean a little less on the bounty, but it will still make us rich for eternity,” she said, and her henchmen smiled as they closed in on me, arms extended.
I prepared to conjure a sword and perform a few messy vasectomies when one attacker dropped to his knees, clutched the left side of his chest and fell on his face. The rest of the men stopped and looked at their comrade with concern. Five seconds later, another man dropped in the exact same manner, eventually crashing face first into the pavement. I spun around in circles, and like dominoes, the other three hunters fell like their brethren and remained motionless on the ground.
The Bounty Huntress stared at me, horror building in her purple eyes as she wondered what the hell was going on. That made two of us. I hadn’t cast a spell or set any magical act in motion for that matter. Perhaps she had pissed off the dark blood inside me and it had reacted without my knowledge. The prospect of having no control over my magic scared the living shit out of me.
The lava bath had not only caused me to age, it seemed like it had screwed up my magical acumen too. It was as if my dark blood had come to a boil and taken on a mind of its own. I’d always had trouble controlling my magic, but the Bounty Huntress had no authority over me in Pittsburgh.
A figure appeared behind the Bounty Huntress. A looming mass of darkness. My eyes widened, and the corners of my mouth lifted. The Morrigan. My sister from another mister. Now the random deaths made sense.
The Bounty Huntress sensed something behind her and spun around to face the Morrigan. She rotated slightly, and her head swiveled continuously from the Morrigan to me. Finally, I could kill this bitch and end her chasing after me once and for all. Cancel the vasectomies. This called for a sloppy lobotomy.
The Huntress pulled the space-age gun from the holster on her hip, the silver barrel attracting the gleam of the sun. I peeped at the Morrigan and she didn’t appear the least bit concerned, so I followed suit and crossed my arms over my chest in defiance. The Morrigan always boosted my confidence.
The Bounty Huntress smiled and put the long barrel of the gun up to the side of her head. She pulled the trigger, but instead of a normal gunshot blast, it resulted in more of a splat. Blue dye ran down the side of her face.
Her body blurred. Then her right leg vanished, followed by her left one. Like a wave, the supernatural illusion ran up the rest of her body, causing it to disappear completely and taking the gun with it.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
The Morrigan smirked and looked out onto the street at the people passing by. The Bounty Huntress had set a strong illusion spell as citizens kept walking right past.
She walked toward me and explained, “Portal gun. It’s like a paintball gun but the pellets are actually softer. You’re lucky she likes to talk shit and didn’t hit you with it before I showed up.”
“How’s it go, my dirty birdy?” She punched me in the shoulder—her customary greeting—the way an older sibling would. Meaning hard. I’d never had brothers or sisters, but I’d been around enough of them to know that they slapped each other around. Mo and I were the same way, with her doing most of the hitting.
“I’m not a bird. I’m a dragon,” I told her.
The Morrigan got defensive. “I can still kick your ass as a blackbird.”
I said, “Look, Mo. Let’s not turn this into a tit measuring contest.”
The Morrigan replied, “Because you would lose.” She always had to be the biggest badass or get in the final word. “I can’t believe you’re back. Everyone said you died in the Red Cavern.”
“They tried. They failed. I wanted to stay away, but something dragged me back to Pittsburgh,” I said.
“I had a good feeling you were still kicking because none of the death merchants knew of your demise,” she revealed.
The Celtic Goddess of Death’s raven feather cloak hung to her knees where it met her black leather boots with red laces. She was a couple inches taller than me and carried a little more weight, although you wouldn’t know it from her gaunt face and narrow nose. Her black lipstick and red eye shadow smeared to her temples gave off a goth look.
The Morrigan’s dark hair stood up around her head as if she had blow-dried it for four hours. But her most unique characteristic was my favorite. Blue irises with red pupils. Never seen that on another being. I’d seen red flecks in people’s irises before, but never the pupil and I’d always thought it was so badass. As if she needed it.
“Where does the portal go to?” I asked.
The Morrigan looked up to the sky, put her index finger and thumb in her mouth and whistled. She focused back on me, and in her deep, manly voice, she said, “The portal goes wherever she wants. Somewhere she is familiar with and you aren’t. Somewhere her murderous friends could be waiting for you to show up. Hence, why you were lucky.”
I said, “I think she was trying to abduct me and take me to the closest area of jurisdiction. She was trying to act with a semblance of honor.”
Mo laughed. “What an idiot.”
Shadow conquered the alley as something blotted out the sun. I raised my head expecting a giant raincloud but saw a murder of crows silently descending on the dead bodies in the alley. Using their claws and beaks, they grabbed hold of the bodies.
“Leave the bodies, take the soulnollis,” the Morrigan joked. Unsurprisingly, she liked movies with a lot of murder.
The Morrigan turned her attention to her avian crew. She cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered, “Take the bodies back to Clara Spiritus and be sure not to let the souls escape.” She whistled again, and the crows worked in unison to lift the bodies into the air, quickly racing up the side of a skyscraper and disappearing from my view.
The Morrigan turned back to me. “You’re so lucky I didn’t make those chumps explode and stain your pretty leather jacket.”
She ran her hand down my arm, and I sighed. “Classic, Mo. I appreciate that. Where do you think she was going?”
She replied, “So yeah, that portal could have led anywhere, but I’d bet it went to the Lair of Justice.”
“Yeah, I guess she felt confident until her friends started dropping over dead. Then she fumbled for the gun. By the way, how’d you do that?” I asked, hoping she would tell me. The Morrigan had taught me everything I knew about magic, especially how to acquire it by force. However, there were many secrets she kept inside her cloak and refused to share with me.
The Morrigan winked at me and held up two death cards in her hand. “You’re lucky I’m a good poker player, Dune.”
>
She called me Dune every great once in a while. We had a mutual friend with a speech impediment who pronounced my name as Dune. In turn, she had called me Dune for a couple of years about a century ago. Then, the nickname died out to the point where she hardly used it anymore.
Mo continued, “I won their Death Cards on my last visit to Hades’ man cave. And decided it was worth it to cash them in to save your ass.” Her other hand emerged from the cloak with three other cards and she waved them around.
I knew what death cards were, I just didn’t have a solid understanding of how they worked. They looked like virtual reality baseball cards with 3-D images of the being, personal information and a score. I hadn’t a clue how the scoring system worked.
I wasn’t privy to the secret society of death merchants like the Morrigan. The Sacred Circle was an assemblage of death merchants or soul guides from the assorted pantheons including the free agent, Grim Reaper.
The cards could only be created by at least three of the merchants from three different pantheons like the Morrigan, Hades and Kali. The merchants set a combination spell over the cards that enchanted them with the ability to take the being’s life.
All they had to do was press a little button on the card and they could claim the soul of that being. And it didn’t matter if a normal person came into possession of the cards. Only the members of the Sacred Circle could operate the functions on the cards.
The merchants had a fair system for divvying up the cards after production and they also played games of chance involving them. The Morrigan had won these in one of their poker games, and even though I didn’t understand how she showed up that fast with these specific cards, I was alive and grateful.
“How’d you know I was here?” I asked as we walked out of the alley and onto the sidewalk of 34th Street. I could still see the last bits of golden glittery enchantment from the Huntress’s spell, as we turned right.
