Fayed blinked at me for a moment and his gaze narrowed. Then he gestured with one hand and the vampire bouncers backed off. I felt them in the shadows watching me as I crossed the room to stand at the bar. All the vampires sitting there, and one diminutive fae in combat fatigues, shot me disgusted looks before claiming their glasses and moving to the back of the room.
I remained alone at the bar with Fayed. The fae in fatigues wasn't Rosario Grace. Even with her glamour, I'd recognize the sprite red-head. This one was the dark fae's own assassin, not my grandmotherly fae changeling whose glamor resembled Sissy Spacek, and like the vampires in the bar, not my concern tonight.
I spread my palms along the bar top and leaned forward. My neck hairs lifted, causing the skin to creep along my spine. Someone was watching me. Probably several someones.
"I need Rosario," I said.
Fayed tossed a bar cloth onto the faucet of the sink to his left.
"Can't help you."
"When was she here last?"
He eyed me for a long while before he spoke, and then I supposed only because I wasn't just leaving despite the obvious threat of his posture.
"Haven't seen her for over a decade."
My gut clotted up. "A decade?" I said. "Then where are you getting your crystals?" I nodded to the bottle of Rot Gut prominently displayed over the bar to indicate I knew exactly where he was getting his supply.
He heard the accusation in my voice but he'd been alive a lot longer than me. I doubt he was afraid of much, Fayed.
"You think a little demon blood can scare me?" he muttered as though he heard my thoughts. He snorted. "Hell, I drank demon blood on a dare my first year I was turned."
"I don't have demon blood," I ground out because there was few things that pissed me off more than that insult. "But I do have a demon's power."
He sucked at his teeth and without taking his eyes from mine, reached beneath the counter. When his hand came back up, his fingers had looped around a bottle neck, and his pinkie had snagged a glass.
He dropped the glass onto the counter and poured.
"Do you know where vampires got their powers?" he said, almost idly as he pushed the glass toward me.
"You screwed your demon mothers?"
He tapped the glass next to my hand with his nail. Twice. I shook my head.
"We are descended from gods," he said. "While rumor has it the demon you got in that soul of yours is the lazy one who wrestled with Jacob." He laughed but it was a harsh, unhappy sound. "So don't try to pretend you're all badass, Saint." He tapped the glass. "You want to take space in my bar, you drink."
I lifted the glass, not because he had bullied me into it, but because he had a point. I was taking up space and if some awful thing of the night wanted to sit at that bar, it meant it wouldn't be out there harassing some poor mortal. The faster this got done, the more likely someone out there lived.
Besides. I really, really wanted to get hold of Rosario. He waited until I guzzled down half the drink before he spoke again.
"I pay a witch in the Shadow Bazaar for the absinthe," he said. "Not that it's any of your business, but I have a stake in my clientele believing I do still sell the real thing. I go to the Kennel when I need more and she supplies."
"I wouldn't say witch-spelled garnishes are the same thing as fae-spelled."
He shrugged and eyed the glass till I upended it again and drained it.
"This witch just happens to be fae-born."
I nearly choked on the crystal instead of capturing it in my teeth as I'd wanted. It went down hard and landed with a lump in my stomach.
"Fae-born?" I said. "Is that possible?"
"Wait about ten minutes and then you tell me," Fayed said with the flash of a smile. "I think her magic is almost as good as Rosario's. But you'll need to go the Shadow Bazaar if you want to hire her. She doesn't...get out much."
"Fuck," I said and shook my head. "I do not want to ride those gates," I said. "They hate me."
"Everyone hates you, Hale," he said. "Now drop a hundred for the drink and get the fuck out of my bar. "
He was right. In the tavern, in the community in general, I was a pariah, hunting them down one by one for money. A contact one moment might be a victim the next. Going to the Shadow Bazaar would put a target on my back more than it would solve my problems.
I dug into my pocket for a hundred and dropped it onto the bar. Fayed slipped it from the surface and it disappeared without him taking his eyes off my face. He blinked, waiting for me to leave, and I sighed beneath my breath. I had the feeling Rosario had been around plenty but he just didn't want to help me.
I'd have to wait for Rosario because I was definitely not going through one of the gates. Even with a demon attached to my soul like a leech, every single gate to the Shadow Bazaar was painful.
I gave Fayed a long look and slid off the bar stool. I'd have to find another way to track her down.
With a heft of the bag over my shoulder again, I headed to the door and out into the night.
The door barely closed behind me when I noticed a long black shape lifting from the pavement. It warped itself into a wolfish looking figure as I watched and it took but three seconds to recognize it for what it was.
A HellHound.
5
The hound's head reared as its nostrils flared to scent me. My hand released the money bag out of instinct and feinted to the side as it charged me. Smoke rose from the pores of the asphalt in red, sulfuric plumes. The beast struck the door just as reflex and the habit of taking in every little thing that could act as a weapon bade me grab for the woman's shoe. I flung it at the hound's back with the needle-point of the heel cutting through the air as it left my fist.
I didn't wait for it to embed in the hound's gelatinous flesh. I stooped and yanked on the insulated wire and leapt for the demon. The coil stank of garbage as I coiled it and lassoed the beast around the thick neck. I yanked it backwards before it could turn to face me, and pulled hard like the wire was a rein that needed effort to stop a stampeding pair of horses.
Three twists around my forearm gathered the wire closer, hauling the demon toward me. It shrieked, an ungodly sound that rent my eardrums even as it pierced the shadows.
Nothing would come to help it. No earthly ears would hear it dying and no hellish fiend would care enough to get involved.
I garroted the thing as expertly as any mafioso but it took a lot of effort. Standing over its decapitated body, I watched it twitch its last and waited for it to disappear.
But it didn't disappear.
It transformed.
And I nearly vomited.
The door to the bar opened as I fell to my knees and ran my hands over the unmoving body of a young human woman.
"Call 911," I barked at whoever opened the door. I saw boots and fatigues. The fae assassin, then. What was her name again?
"Kelliope," I said, finding the name in the muddle of panic. "Call 911."
I started pumping on the woman's chest. One. Two. Three. Keep pumping. No need to breathe into her nostrils anymore. Just doing the CPR was just as effective. Wasn't that the last advice? Fuck. Mortals were so fragile.
"Do it," I said and looked up at the fae. "What the hell are you waiting for?"
She shrugged one shoulder as she looked down at me. "You want me to call for help for a dog? You really are fucked up on Rot Gut, Saint."
She stepped over the woman. Her boot caught on the edge of the dead girl's jacket. I couldn't bear to hunt for the head. The head. I remembered. I'd removed her head. CPR was useless. An ambulance was useless. I raked my fingers through my hair and almost let slip a manic laugh.
I sat back on my haunches, breathing hard enough to make my throat hurt. I blinked twice, feeling dizzy.
The woman became a mangy stray dog. Then a hell hound. Then a woman again.
I bolted to my feet. I couldn't be sure what I'd just killed. My hands went to my face. The demon within laughed and whispered
something I couldn't make out. I was certain I heard the demon within taunting me, telling me it would take a child next and then a babe, and then...oh and then, such wonderful chaos it would wreak.
I backed away slowly, muttering old prayers that meant nothing to me anymore that I'd killed a stray dog and not a woman but I knew...I knew there were no stray dogs in the city. Cats, yes. Rats. Snakes. But dogs?
I turned on my heel and fled. Like it or not, I had to go to the bazaar.
With singular focus, I sought out a place of magic, knowing something around the tavern would leak out and reveal itself to be of supernatural origin. Fayed's tavern didn't own a portal to the bazaar, at least I didn't think so. It would be too obvious and the owner of the bazaar, an immortal in the guise of a man but not of this world, wouldn't want riffraff into his territory.
But there was magic there. A dozen vampires born of magic, a fae assassin on the premises, several shifters of various kinds.
There was magic. And a demon rode my soul.
That should be plenty to transport me to the nearest gate. I just had to find the height of the power that coiled around the air. I felt for the broken crucifix in my pocket. I found the wads of bills and sought it in the other pocket. I thought of that tiny novice, her white-washed face and tender shoulders. The mortal in me, the one who had lived a century earlier felt a pang of guilt, but the demon just grew hunger.
The sound of boots clattering along the pavement beyond the mouth of the alley alerted me that I wasn't alone, that three, at least two, human women were heading my way. I smelled their perfume before I heard their voices. High-pitched. Laughter.
Blood. Fresh, moving, liquid blood. And more than that. Supple bodies to leap into and flee. It would just take one mortal shell to tempt the demon.
Even now it was flexing its will.
I staggered at the mouth of the alley, gripping the side of the building with both hands as they sauntered into view. They moved into the light of a streetlamp. One of them had her arm slung around the other. She kissed her date soundly on the cheek, nuzzled her ear. Both of them tittered. I smelled the lust on them both. The demon smelled it.
I couldn't stop myself from stepping in their path. The satchel dropped by my feet, forgotten. I swayed on legs that felt like birch trees being buffeted by hurricane winds.
"Spare a smoke?" I said and the first one, the one nuzzling the neck of her companion as she led her up the street, she was the one to answer.
"I'll send smoke up your ass," she said and pushed her lover ever so gently to the side. She jerked her chin to my right, indicating the woman should skirt me and keep going. "Bugger off, Vin Diesel."
She didn't look scared, but the pulse in her throat was tripping along like a rabbit on a hard run. Even if the demon's night vision hadn't shown it to me, I'd have heard her heart beat, it was that racing. Like a runaway train on a broken track.
"I'm told I look more like Ragnar," I said. "Maybe not quite as kind."
I knew how I'd look to her as I advanced. I'd buzzed my hair along the sides long before any sort of mohawk or fauxhawk had become vogue. It kept the blood sluicing along without clotting in my hair. I'd been handsome as a mortal. Father what-a-waste the women had called me. But even if this woman wasn't a lesbian, she'd not find me attractive. She'd find the demon's gaze terrifying. She'd imagine the hard muscles were for inflicting pain and death. She'd see beneath the facade to the monster and killing machine beneath.
And I didn't care.
"I need something from you," I said, trying not to sound as threatening as the demon wanted.
"Like I said: move on." She sidestepped me, glancing over my shoulder to be sure her lover had got a safe distance away. I had to admire that. I might have let her go but for the insistent pull of the presence beneath the veil.
"I can't," I said. I was a step or two away from her. She smelled like bacon and curry. Broad shoulders rolled beneath her leather jacket.
"Like Hell you can't, Mister." She dug into her pocket, presumably for mace or a weapon. Didn't matter. She wouldn't find it in time.
The woman behind me screamed an instant after my fingers went round the lesbian's throat. I threw her up against the wall of the building and heard bricks crack against the back of her head. She cried out. Her feet dangled near my shins.
I knew there were a dozen or more gates into the bazaar. Some said there was a Blood Gate and a Fire Gate. I wasn't sure what the others were or whether the keys to the portals all worked the same. I only knew one gate. It was a gate I'd traveled before and it was the gate I would take tonight.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I really am."
I squeezed until she gasped and her eyes bulged. She struggled to breathe and I crooned to her as she approached death. I was vaguely aware of someone pounding on my back. I shoved at them with one hand as I leaned in close to the woman beneath my grip. A waft of mint mouth wash hung around her mouth.
"Fucker," her friend yelled at me. She was kicking me now. Tiny gnats biting at my calves.
"Run," I ground out but it wasn't for the woman kicking me. It was for the woman beneath my grip.
She had one breath left. I knew the feel of it sucking out of her chest, bucking to be freed so she could drag in one more life-saving gulp of air. One last breath and if I played it right, it would unlock my door in time to let her live.
Blackness swirled around me. I let her go, spreading my arms to the sides. I had one, fleeting thought for the bag of money I'd left abandoned on the street before pain lanced through me.
My back arched and my head rolled back on its shoulders as something ferocious yanked at my solar plexus. Yanked hard and pulled upward, as though it was trying to pull my spine through my belly button. The cracking of bone met and married the sound of my viscera squelching in a roiling, unseen fist.
I'd broken through. The gate, the only one I knew of, the one that a demon might pass through if the bargain is met with just the right amount of blood and evil intent, it opened for me.
But it was most mightily pissed.
The demon gate had a score to settle with me. The last time I'd passed through it I'd had to make a pact with the demon inside in order to use the gate. The demon wanted blood and while I refused to feed it human blood, I had no qualms about giving the hellish thing a taste of another sort.
I'd torn through the last time. The gate was meant for demons and not mortals, but I had a loophole. I had no qualms about using it if it was going to get me into the Shadow Bazaar, but the gate did not want to portal me.
As I expected, it sent demons of every sort to capture me and either expel me or consume me.
And each one that reached out for me, raking its nails through my psyche or latching onto my skin with pointed teeth, I grappled and held tight. I bit down on any sulfurous flesh that came near or cut through with my blade. I soaked myself in demon blood as I traveled. It sizzled on my skin, coated my palate, and got in my eyes and I made the gate pay dearly for trying to hold me inside ever longer.
But the demon within got its blood and it used its energy to deliver me safely to the other side. Safe, but not completely sound. I'd never tried to ride the gate again.
This time, the damn thing nearly turned me inside out as I passed through. It didn't even bother sending other demons to me to try to hold me. It put all its energy into making the trip as terrifying and painful as possible. I felt its glee as it tortured me.
By the time I found myself on the other side, I was a quaking, trembling mess. The residual memory of the young woman's throat beneath my fingers made me retch. I vomited three times by the time I was able to curl myself up into a ball on my side. The last of the sick sat in a revolting puddle near my face as I lay on the cold cobblestones in the middle of an alley.
I was lucky to be alone when I landed but I knew that luck wouldn't hold up. Shaking, I put a hand out to try to rise at least to my knees. I collapsed beneath my own weight, unable to muster the strength to
hold my head up. I tried to tell myself it was all the effects of the gate but a flash of that young woman's face swam before my eyes and I quivered deep in my belly.
All I could manage was to roll over onto my back so I could at least take in my surroundings, figure out where in the bloody bazaar I had been dropped. If I was going to be sick again, then at least I could use the time it took to swallow down the bile to get my bearings.
The streetlamps buzzed overhead with purple light. A sticky fog moved over the buildings. The skyline was filled with large, flying creatures with wingspans that reminded me of dragons. The air smelled of various things, not the least of which was rotting flesh.
But at least I didn't sense immediate danger. Other than a steady drip drip drip of water somewhere to my left and the wheezing inhalations my lungs dragged out of me, the alley was quiet.
I was sure the demon inside was sufficient to let the bazaar cloak me in shadows.
Not that the bazaar was a perfectly evil place. I was sure there were other, less awful things that came to the bazaar to do business or to socialize or even just pass through from one of the nine worlds to the next. But all I'd seen on my last entry was enough to convince me never to come back no matter how much money I was paid.
I didn't have the luxury of choice now. What was it Fayed had said about his fae-born witch? That he went to the Kennel for his supply? I knew the Kennel. Most mercenaries knew The Kennel by reputation at the very least.
I tried once again to push myself up onto my feet. I might have managed at least my knees but before I could do more than roll onto my side, I felt a hand on my head. Pain lanced my skull as I felt several hairs tear free of my scalp.
Whoever had hold of my hair had decided to help me stand. And they were doing it by pulling me to my feet by my hair.
6
The hard pull on my hair made me rise to follow just to lessen the pain. My feet scuffled twice before they managed to find solid footing. The stinging in my scalp was the only thing that kept me on my feet. I leaned into the assault, wrapping my core into a ball, digging for my blade beneath my jacket even as I curled inward. Whoever the hell had me by the pompadour was going to suffer when I got a chance to recover.
Supernatural Syndicate: A Limited Edition Collection of Magical Mafia Stories Page 4