Supernatural Syndicate: A Limited Edition Collection of Magical Mafia Stories

by Thea Atkinson

He looked over at Vivianne. "And you think you can just ask one of my Indentured for such a spell?" There was enough accusation in his voice that Vivianne sucked in a frightened breath.

  So that was what she meant by having the drink paid for with her hide.

  "I didn't know she was yours, Horatio," I said, calling on a long-dead memory to extract his name. I bit down on my revulsion at the term of possession as I sketched a short bow in his direction, trying for subservience in light of my desperate need. "I'm happy to pay you for her service."

  The demon howled from within. Oh how low I'd fallen to be begging a fae monster to let me pay him for the use of a slave. I felt a fist of disgust deep in my belly. Not just for the humiliation but for that poor girl who no doubt had seen far worse than a monster hunter begging a monster.

  "You know now," he said. "And I'm not interested in selling you one second of her time or a spark of her power. She owes me one hundred more years of service. I own her body, soul, and magic."

  He looked her over thoughtfully. "She even agreed upon pain of death to honor her contract. She's rare, you know. We haven't had a fae-born witch in nearly three centuries."

  "She's very useful to me," he went on. "Spells mundane objects like nobody's business. Earns me quite a bit in the outside bazaar but even more in here where she can entrap just the right sort by spelling their glasses." He shot a meaningful look at the glass I'd abandoned on the bartop. "Yours for instance, what do you suppose she spelled your glass with?"

  My voice came out in constricted, gritty syllables as I spoke between clenched teeth. "Such actions have to be illegal."

  He shrugged. "Maybe somewhere in the nine worlds such duplicity is punished but here?" He clasped his fingers together over his chest. "This place is like the ninth world Internet. Unpoliced."

  I already felt the dizziness. "Maybe no one will police you, but I'm sure someone, something, will exact vengeance."

  He rocked back on his heels. "I'm not the young fae you once knew, Hale," he said. "I have what you would call pull. " He indicated the fae surrounding him. "I've come up in the world."

  "Got dragged through the filth of the world you mean," I said. "I would have thought after your brother you might have learned a thing or two."

  His eyebrows rose an inch at mention of his brother, a fae I'd had to excise from his world by order of the Unseelie court. I'd never asked what his offense was. It didn't matter to me. It never mattered. I was paid handsomely and that was the end of it.

  But this fae obviously wasn't about to let a man go with the comment that he was just doing his job. No one ever did. I'd been the subject of vengeance hits before, but not quite so cunning as this. It made me think this fae wasn't just an angry, revengeful sibling. No one loved their family that much.

  "You have plenty of connection, now, it seems," I said, starting to negotiate but he held up his finger and when he did, the fae witch gasped in pain and staggered backward.

  "I'm not interested in hiring you in any capacity," he said and while it appeared he thought I would be aghast at his treatment of his servant, he didn't ease up when I didn't rush to her aid. Instead, he doubled down on whatever magic was torturing her, unseen but for the pain in her face and body. She whimpered as he kept talking, oblivious to the pain he was inflicting. "Vivianne is mine. I can twist her insides until they are so corkscrewed that they'll never come undone but she is valuable."

  I gripped the crucifix in my pocket because if I didn't, I was afraid I'd strike him. I had to talk my way through this one. Brute force was not going to be helpful.

  "You're willing to hurt one of your best earners just for ego's sake," I said. "I'm flattered you think so much of me."

  Horatio released his hold on her. She collapsed against the bar and even from the corner of my eye I could tell she was doing her best to recollect herself and was losing.

  "When we last met," he said. "I told you that you would live to regret harming my family. It took almost a decade to find a priest of your world who hated you enough to send you into a den of incubus demons." He looked over his shoulder at where Errol stood running his hands down the back of a painted Indentured woman. "We're partners in this business and Errol does desire so badly to have all his powers back. He's very useful for that reason."

  I put my hand out to steady myself as I put the pieces together. I'd suspected the incubus demons had been trying to trap me. Now I knew why.

  "The worst is you don't even remember what you did to my brother," he said. "You didn't care enough to record his name or his offense. I doubt you even remember what you earned--"

  "Fifty thousand dollars and a fae stone," I said.

  He had no idea what that job meant for me. I did remember. In fact, I couldn't forget because it was the stone Rosario had to replace when the first had broken. It was the reason we'd fallen out. She'd crossed the dark fae-kin cabal she said, just to help me, and there would always be a target on her head.

  Like then, I was ready to sacrifice whatever I had to in order to get the stone replaced. I'd said as much to Rosario back then before the darkness took me. I'd argued it wasn't about me and my immortality or the powers and strength the demon imbued me with. It was about the havoc that demon could wreak through my body and the toll it would take on hundreds if not thousands of innocent lives. I didn't confess that I just wanted to live. After leaving the church, I didn't owe a confession to anyone.

  She had ignored my plea and the demon within had shown her exactly what it cost.

  The darkness. I had no recollection of it, of the things I'd done--or rather that the demon had done in my stead as it took over my body. Then, the stone hadn't been cracked like it was now, just dinged a bit, enough to loosen the hold the spell that kept it bound in shackles behind my consciousness. It took days before it crept out and took me unaware. Later, I would realize it took its time planning its coup.

  I killed the woman I was with at the time, I knew that. It was the last image I saw with my own eyes, the last thing I felt with my own flesh before the darkness came.

  The rest, as they say, was hearsay and history.

  Now, the fae-stone Rosario had spelled and placed in my crucifix had more than just a ding that knocked something loose in the spell. It had a large crack that caught my nail when I slid my fingertip across its surface. I'd seen the energy from the spell burst into the nun's room. I knew from the last event what it meant now.

  The demon was biding its time.

  I faced off with the fae underboss who stood in front of me. I didn't care what he knew, what he hoped, or what emotional toll it would take on him to know the truth.

  "Your brother became a liability to the unseelie court. They wanted him tortured and executed. I gave him a quick death. They spared your life because I asked them to."

  I walked toward him, conscious that his hired muscle could splinter me into a thousand pieces if they wanted to and that I wouldn't die from it. I'd suffer instead because the demon soul-partner granted me immortality. So long as it rode me, I lived.

  That didn't mean I relished the idea of thrashing about in pain until it took the hint and used my weakness to take over my body.

  "You were meant to be part of that execution," I said to the fae. I expected him to look shocked. When he wasn't, I realized he knew exactly what his brother had been doing and what price he might have paid. And he didn't care.

  He rolled his shoulders. "I run the cabal now," he said. "They touch me, they suffer and they know it. I have fae of all sorts working for me and with me."

  He snapped his fingers and one of the men moved toward the fae witch. When he grabbed her by the hair and started yanking out from behind the bar, my stomach knotted up. I couldn't risk losing her if she was the only thing keeping me in control of my own body.

  "If you want the girl," he said. "I have a feeling you won't stop till you get her. I know your reputation, Hale. You're a bulldog. I hate dogs."

  He ran his finger across his
throat and one of his bouncers started for the girl, his hand lifted toward the witch as though he planned to jolt her with a blast of fae magic. I expected light to emanate from his hand and crackle across that delicate throat, slicing it like a laser.

  "My darklings can merge with the shadows," Horatio said as the girl struggled against an unseen force. "They have a little extra affinity with the shadows than just being able to become shadow. They can harness it. Place it deep within the soul of a fae."

  The girl sounded as though she were strangling and yet there wasn't a single touch laid on her throat. It took all my focus to be able to make out the stream of whispery smoke curling toward her and entering her nostrils as she fought to drag in breath after breath.

  "I hate to lose her," Horatio said, "but I'd rather she be dead than risk you getting what you want from her."

  He sliced his throat with a gesture and the darkling pushed out more smoke, this time black as pitch and as thick as a python's belly. She choked on the density of it.

  "You'll have to find some other witch to spell your crucifix."

  "I'll buy her," I blurted out. "Not just her services. I'll buy out her contract."

  I was aware that I'd lunged forward only when my boot struck the edge of the bar. It shocked me to hear my desperation and it must have surprised him too. With a quick gesture, he motioned for the darkling to let her go. I sagged beneath my leather jacket when she collapsed against the bar, dazed and with her hands climbing her throat instinctivley. Hurt, sure, but alive. Her eyes darted from him to me and back again.

  I tried not to look to relieved.

  "Name your price," I said.

  His smile moved across his face like a snake uncoiling onto a warm rock. He stroked his throat with the back of his fingers, leaving a trail of glitter.

  "I do have one price I'd accept for such a rare treasure."

  "Whatever. Just name it." I shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling for the wads of cash I'd kept before dropping the money bag.

  "Not money," he said and nodded toward the center of the room. I'd been so focused on hooking up the witch to hire out her magic that I hadn't noticed an impressive looking cage hanging from the ceiling by steel chains. While it was cloistered in shadow, it was clearly something that got lit up with ceremony when it got activated. Even from this distance, I could see the latent magic swirling around its base like heat waves on pavement.

  "You fight in The Kennel, and win," he said. "And you can have her contract."

  She made a sound from beside me that made me turn to her in alarm. She shook her head back and forth and bit down on her lip to silence the words that tried to exit when the fae boss turned his glare on her.

  "I'll do it," I said, ignoring the look of horror on her face.

  A moment later, he howled out a very human sounding whoop of celebration and hollered something that sounded like: We have a warrior for the evening.

  The entire room applauded. A cacophony of bets ensued, papers got pulled from thin air and brandished, bids scribing across the fae parchment in blue magic before sailing toward a bookie booth I hadn't noticed either.

  "You shouldn't have done that," she rasped out as the darkling gripped her arm. She fought him as she dragged her toward the cage that was even then descending from the ceiling.

  "Fae bargains," Horatio tutted with a shake of his head. "You must be desperate indeed, if you agreed to one, Saint."

  He lifted his hand above his head and made a whirling motion. A second later several someones man-handled me along through the crowd behind Vivianne and the darkling. I didn't struggle. There was no need. I was ready to fight. I needed to fight. The demon inside would be out raging its way through the entire bazaar and then the ninth world anyway if I didn't.

  The only thing I didn't allow them to do was push me unceremoniously into the cage. I shrugged off their holds and walked in on my own steam, head held high, shoulders rolling as I took to my corner. Whoever my opponent would be, I'd make short work of him.

  I spun around to face the fighter.

  "You?" I said, confused as Vivianne shrunk into the corner. "What are you doing here?"

  The door clanged shut. The cage shuddered to life, rocking and rolling as if it were a large bear rising from hibernation.

  "Oh hell, no," I said and started to reach for the bars to keep from stumblin.

  The witch yelled at me.

  "Don't," she said. "Look."

  My gaze slid to the bars set mere inches away from each other. Where they weren't covered in sharp barbs or blades, they glistened with an oily residue.

  "Poison," she said. "Or drugs or paralytics. You never know until you fall against one."

  She sank down onto the floor, bringing her knees up to her chin.

  I felt the hoisting of the cage from the floor. Faces outside turned upward to watch us as the cage lifted. It swayed subtly as lights sparked to life around us.

  "I don't understand," I said.

  She canted her head at me, the black hair falling along her neck to cover the fae cabal's stamp of indenture.

  "Don't you?" she said. "In the Kennel, the cage warriors fight to the death."

  8

  Fae bargains were a most evil thing. More evil than the devil inside me, truth be told, and I'd forgotten that inconvenient fact in my desperation.

  I didn't expect it to be an honorable bargain but I couldn't have expected that to win, I'd have to kill the witch whose contract I wanted to buy. The cunningness of the bargain was a thing of beauty, really, if I'd been in a position to admire the duplicity.

  Desperation had made me sloppy. The noise from below turned to a din of verbal assaults leveled at us from below, drowning out my curses I leveled at them. All of them. Monsters and depraved creatures each and every one. Not one of them showed any pity for the woman who spelled their drinks. Instead, they slung whatever objects they had to hand when it looked like she wouldn't fight.

  I watched the way she cringed when someone threw a drink at the cage. She was no fighter. This would be nothing but a massacre.

  But it had got her to her feet, in the end. She stood, finally, once the cage locked into place. The killer in me took note of the way she stood, the soft side of her face that looked like she had a weak bone on the right cheek. Maybe it had been broken recently, maybe it was a defect. That vulnerable spot might only need a single blow before it cleaved in two. I noticed she was barefoot and saw the advantage in that even as her toes curled into the floor.

  I knew without really looking that she was left-handed. I knew if she used her hands for magic, it would be that left I'd have to stay clear of. Even so, if Horatio said she was valuable, I'd have to be careful not to underestimate her.

  The way she'd slipped into the cage without me noticing told me she was quick on her feet. She was soft-footed too, moving with a quiet grace that might be deadly if I didn't keep her in my sights the whole time.

  All those things and more saturated my mind as neatly as breath. I didn't have to consider them. It was an autonomic reflex by this time, to map out and register all those things that might hinder or help me in a fight. I was used to it by now. Fighting for my life? Just another Tuesday.

  Fighting for my life against the only woman who could keep my miserable carcass breathing? Not so much.

  "Do you have magic?" I yelled out to her over the din of atrocities slung at us from below. She winced visibly when a long bone clattered against bars and crackled with magic before dropping to the floor below.

  "Are you fucking daft?" she yelled back. "Why the hell do you think I'm here?"

  I side-stepped without thinking about what I was doing, angling myself for the best attack.

  "I mean can you protect yourself?" I said.

  I was already trying to work out the kinks, find a loophole. I wondered if I could strike a blow that would stop her heart momentarily. Just enough to trick the cage into opening again. Presuming that the magic coiling about the cage w
ould release under the edict of a completed bargain.

  "I'm a witch," she said with more indignation in her voice than fear. "I'm not a mage."

  She backed away from me and it was only then that I realized I was prowling up to her. I forced my feet to stay still and she halted three feet away. I didn't want to spook her.

  A pixie slammed into the cage right then, drowning my response. I glanced down to see a werewolf in half-transition looking up at us. He'd tossed the pixie apparently. It flitted about drunkenly before righting and aiming itself at the wolf's left nostril.

  I didn't have time to wait to see what would happen when it rammed itself into the cavity. I turned my attention back to the witch instead.

  In the time it had taken for me to glance aside and back again, her hands had gone behind her back. I really should have asked more questions. Judging from the rabid excitement below, I assumed it was all going to be negative.

  "Some witches have mage-like magic," I said loud enough to carry over the ruckus. I wasn't sure myself if I was feeling for intel so I could stand against her, or if it was to help her stay alive. Because if I had to fight, I would, and it would not go well for the little witch.

  "I spell objects," she said in a low voice. I noticed her hands were behind her back, reaching behind her. "I can't cast magic that way."

  "Perfect," I said. "We're fucked."

  "Ya think?" She took another step backward, too close to the barrier for my comfort. I made an involuntary lunge for her, thinking to grab her away, keep her off the bars.

  That was when I realized that she hadn't entered the cage barefoot at all. She had taken off her shoes while she'd been huddled into her corner and was now clutching that ballerina slipper like her life depended on it.

  It wasn't like me to miss something so crucial, but I had. I ducked sideways as the shoe sailed across the cage, narrowly avoiding the blow.

  When it struck the bars, it made a distinct chinking noise. The metallic sound of gears engaging crackled through the air.

  That sound hadn't come from the cage's magic or from the shoe connecting with it. The sound of magic, that was what it was. The stink of it rose like smoke from a smoldering fire.