Pound of Flesh_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by J. A. Cipriano

  As he settled on my shoulder, I continued. “We need to beat the streets, try to get some information. If there’s a player in town powerful enough to axe somebody remotely like that, especially a vampire who I guarantee has at least a few wards protecting him, people will know about it.”

  “Yeah,” Gary answered. “Somebody powerful, like Drac--”

  “Shut up, Gary,” I said, pushing out of the burger joint and back out onto the street.

  “I was going to say Draco Malfoy,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his head away while making a “humph” sound.

  “You were not going to say Draco Malfoy,” I answered. “And if you were going to say Draco Malfoy I would still tell you to shut up, because Draco Malfoy is a douchebag and nobody likes him.”

  Atlanta was on its lunch break and the streets were understandably crowded as millions of men and women tried vainly to stick an hour of freedom into a twenty-minute window, all at the same time.

  The idea that one of the many people on this busy street knew exactly who Fulton was and where I could find him pulled at me.

  The rule of thumb is there’s at least one supernatural for every thousand humans. Translate that to a city this big, and you’ve got yourself a vibrant melting pot of things that go bump in the night.

  Thankfully, I was pretty sure I knew where I could find one. Whether or not said person would help me was another story entirely. Still, bridges and crossing, right?

  “Goddamn it,” I muttered as a sudden thought occurred to me. I’d been played.

  “What?” Gary asked, turning to me with the worst pickle breath imaginable.

  “He’s probably not a human,” I answered flatly. “Even if he is, he’s not one of these clueless humans. No, he knows something, and I intend to find out what it is.”

  “Who? Drac--”

  “Don’t,” I said without even looking over at him. “Charles Whitmore, the Minimart Monster. I should have put it together before. His connection with Fulton means that, at the very least, he’s connected to all this. It also means all that nonsense he’s been telling people about me is being heard by Fulton.”

  “What nonsense?” Gary asked, moving from one of my shoulders to the next because, you know, it must be very tiring to have to rest on the same spot on my body for too long.

  “About the spell I cast to get to him, about the way my eyes went all demon, about the fact I almost ate him.” To say I was tense would have been a disservice. If that sonofabitch started talking, he could blow my cover with every supernatural in the city, maybe even the Southeast if his mouth was big enough. And that made me more nervous than I’d have cared to admit. Having a demon horde know about me was one thing, but given the fact that they didn’t know about imps, it seemed that they were a sheltered bunch. A jailhouse rumor could then turn into a much bigger problem.

  “Oh,” Gary quipped a little too smugly for my liking. “So, by nonsense, you mean the truth.”

  “Pretty much,” I said, starting down the busy Atlanta Street. Perimeter was a few miles ahead, which meant I was about to head right into the mall district, a busy place full of high end soccer moms and bored off their ass trophy wives. “The thing that bugs me is I didn’t feel any energy coming off of him. Which means he’s just a human who’s in the know or he’s something so special to Fulton, he’s been shielded from me somehow. There aren’t many things that could do the latter.”

  “Nah,” Gary shook his head. “That can’t be true. Imagine you’re some big-time demon lord or high ranking vampire general or whatever. Why would you let some guy who means so much to you get bagged for taking down store clerks?” He belched pickle all over me and, for just a second, I wondered how my life got like this. No woman. No savings account. Cozied up to an imp with hygiene issues. Yep. I’m a winner. “And to allow him to make such a big spectacle out of it. It was in all the papers. It was on the news. Hell, it’s half the reason we came down here in the first place. It’s almost like, if I was trying to get someone locked up, I couldn’t think of a-”

  “That’s it,” I said, stopping short so suddenly, it almost threw Gary off my shoulder. “That’s what happened.”

  “What’s what happened?” he asked, gripping my shoulder painfully with his claws.

  “Fulton wanted it,” I said, turning to Gary and smiling broadly. Fulton thought he was so smart, but I was onto him now. ”All of this was setup. Fulton wanted Charles Whitmore to get caught, and he wanted it to be the biggest production it possibly could be.”

  “But why?” Gary asked. “Do you think it was to get us down here? Was he trying to lure us to Atlanta?”

  “I don’t think so,” I muttered, deep in thought. “That demon horde seemed genuinely shocked about my being in town. So did Charles Whitmore for that matter. This is for something else. But why would they want it to be such a huge--” The breath caught in my throat as the answer came to me. “The state’s attorney,” I gasped.

  “What?” Gary responded, his tiny green body tensing on my shoulder.

  “That’s why they wanted it to be big. They wanted to make sure the case would make it all the way up to the state’s attorney, so he’d prosecute it himself.”

  My eyes got wide as I realized what all of this meant, and that I might be too late.

  “Oh, God,” I muttered. “Gary, what case is Renee on today?”

  And as I thought about her, I felt the pull of the necklace I had given her just this morning.

  She was in danger. I had to get to her now.

  13

  The wheels of my Impala left skid marks across the parking lot of the Atlanta Municipal Building as I skidded to a stop and threw myself out.

  I left the keys in the car. Hell, I may have left the damned thing running in my haste to get to her. It probably wasn’t the best decision in this city, even if I was right in front of the courthouse. But I didn’t have any time to waste.

  Renee wasn’t answering her phone.

  “So goddamned stupid,” I muttered, racing toward the building. “What the fuck was I thinking, anyway? I should have just left Gary with her.”

  “Gary’s not Scotch tape, Roy Boy. You can’t just stick him anywhere you want and expect him to work,” Gary said from my shoulder, with hands wrapped around my neck as he tried to hold on. “Plus, he can hear you.”

  His stubby little fingernails dug into the skin at my neck. It hurt a little, but I couldn’t think about that right now. I couldn’t think about anything, it turned out. The only thing I could do was picture Renee laying somewhere in a pool of her own blood… and me being responsible for it.

  “I have to make sure she’s alright, Gary,” I said, blowing through the glass door entrance. The place was huge, bigger even than the one I’d left back in Chicago; with high concrete ceilings and a set of staircases that spiraled up in either direction. There was very little noise coming from inside and the entire building reeked of paper and freshly laid ink. I settled in, looking around and finding a portly woman at the information desk staring at me with unimpressed eyes.

  “You have to take a number if you’re looking for personalized assistance,” she said, snapping her gum and not missing a beat. “If not, you can go anywhere you want so long as you don’t run in here. Running is strictly prohibited in the municipal building as per section--”

  “I don’t give a damn what section it’s in,” I said, barely keeping the panic out of my voice.

  “No one does, sir,” she answered in in a monotone that led me to wonder just what sort of craziness she might have seen push their way through these doors. “But I had to go to a three-day seminar to learn about it and my boss gets mad at me if I don’t say it. So you’re going to stand there while I tell you the section neither one of us gives a damn about is Section 34B, Line 2.” She popped her gum again. “And you ain’t going to open up your mouth about it.”

  “Fine,” I answered. “Fine. Thank you.”

  She star
ed at me, eyeing me up and down with pursed lips. “Damn right you’re thanking me. I’m very good at my job.”

  “Just tell me where the assistant district attorney would be!” I said, my heart pounding so hard, I was pretty sure this chick was able to see it beating through my shirt and overcoat.

  She took a deep, lazy breath and set her pen down. “Now I know you did not just yell at me. I know that a man like you, so smart and whatnot with your fancy jacket and your cliché police officer five o’clock shadow would know I could make you fill out three different forms before I had to give you any information.” She blinked at me, daring me with her eyes. “And make you stand in line for each.”

  Goddamn. Did I anger the god of petty misfortune or something?

  I took a deep breath, calming myself as best I could.

  “I’m very sorry,” I answered, biting my bottom lip to stop the stream of obscenities that was, at this moment, threatening to come pouring out like a wave of “fuck you’s.” “It’s just that I have some very urgent business to discuss with the ADA. I’m new to the city and I don’t know my way around just yet. So I was just hoping you’d be kind enough to--”

  “Room four at the top of the stairs,” she answered, though she still sounded kind of tired of me. “And don’t run!” She warned, pointing a long pink-nailed finger at me. “Otherwise, I’m going to have to tell you about Section 34B again, and nobody wants that.”

  “Thank you,” I answered, darting toward the stairs behind the desk. Moving as fast as I could, while not running, I whispered some instructions to Gary.

  “When we get in there, I’m going to need you to focus on Renee. Let me deal with this asshole. You just get her to safety.”

  “So you want me to miss out on all the fun?” he asked, sneering over at me. “That’s not very fair.”

  “It’s not about fair,” I answered, finally making it to the top of this stupidly long staircase.

  “Says the guy who gets to have the fun,” Gary snorted, moving from one of my shoulders to the next. ”How about we trade? I’ll go all Jean-Claude Van Damme on the bad guy and you go deal with Miss Prissy Britches…”

  ‘“Except we want to win, Gary. No offense, but I stand a much better chance than you. Besides, it’s not going to be fun,” I huffed, taking a sharp right and heading toward room four. Which, of course, was tucked against the end of the hallway and, as such, was far away as it could possibly be.

  “It might be,” Gary chimed.

  “It won’t. It wasn’t last time.” I let out a sigh remembering the whole demon ambush in the alley. If that happened here, I wasn’t sure I could go all magically delicious on their asses. If I did, someone might see me.

  “How would I know?” Gary complained, his clawed little hands digging into my neck. “You didn’t invite me then either.”

  “I took a bullet,” I replied, shrugging away from his touch. ”That’s never fun.”

  “But that would have been fun for me to watch!” He barred his teeth at me.

  “Just do what I say,” I answered through gritted teeth, settling in front of room four.

  There were no signs of a commotion from out here. So that was a good sign. It meant Charles Whitmore probably wasn’t a pyromancer or something. Because, you know, the room wasn’t on fire.

  It also meant I very likely still had time to stop this. If something tragic would have taken place inside this courtroom, then there would be noise. There would be signs this close in.

  Unless, of course, everyone in there was dead already.

  “Just get her out of there, okay,” I said to Gary, trying not to think about all the horrible things that might have already befallen Renee.

  “You sweet on her?” Gray asked, leaning forward and hanging off my neck so he could look at me, face to mashed-up green face.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said far too quickly. I scrunched my face, trying to appear really nonchalant and probably failed spectacularly.

  “You don’t be ridiculous!” he said, pointing at me like the sassy woman downstairs. “You know you’re bad with women.”

  “I am not bad with women,” I balked, narrowing my eyes.

  “Oh really?” He arched his ears. “You got one in your pocket I don’t know about?”

  “I get plenty of women,” I answered, throwing my coat back and letting my hand fall onto the hilt of my gun.

  “Yeah. For a couple days. You bag ‘em. Sure. You just can’t convince ‘em to hang around.” Gary shook his head. “You’re like if Taylor Swift had a dick and no talent.”

  “Maybe I don’t want them to stay,” I answered, my body tensing as I moved toward the door. I didn’t hear anything, not one sound. I really hoped everyone in there wasn’t dead. I shuddered.

  Luckily, Gary didn’t seem to notice.

  “You do want them to stay,” he answered, his tongue flicking out of his mouth annoyingly. “At least, you want this one to stay.” He swung across my neck again, settling on my sore shoulder. “Why else would you have even given her the stone in the first place after the hell we went through to get it?”

  “You can’t tell her that,” I snapped back. “I told her I got it in Russia or something.”

  “Well, I guess ‘I got it in Russia’ and ‘I picked it off my mother’s corpse’ are the same thing.” He rolled his eyes. “And you want me to believe you don’t like her.”

  “Look,” I said sighing. “Just don’t--”

  A loud scream echoed from inside the room. It was guttural. It was primal. It was unmistakably Renee’s.

  My body reacted before my mind did, and I rushed into the room.

  Kicking the door open, I pulled my pistol from my holster and raised it in front of me.

  Running forward, I wasn’t sure what I was going to see. A giant snake monster like the one I faced back in Fiji? A smog beast like I exorcised from a New Year’s Party in Hollywood, which may or may not have been the inspiration for that thing that terrorized the cast on Lost. (J.J. Abrams was there. That’s all I’m saying).

  In the end though, what I saw was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Everything was normal. The people were sitting in their seats. The judge was looming over them. Charles Whitmore was on the stand, his disgustingly arrogant face sending pangs of hate through me.

  And there was Renee. She stood in front of him, her hands raised, her body tensed, her mouth twisted mid-scream.

  She wasn’t moving.

  None of them were moving. Somehow, everyone and everything in this room had been frozen in time.

  But how, why, and by whom?

  The last question answered itself quickly.

  As I moved toward Renee, I heard the door swing closed behind me.

  Spinning back around, more anger sprung up inside me.

  Ian, the red-haired demon dumbass from the alley behind the club stood there. He was looking at me, red eyes flashing. He held the necklace I had given Renee in his right hand. The stone dangled thoughtlessly in the air.

  “That’s not yours,” I said, my jaw tightening and the memories of the hell I went through to get that thing dancing across my mind. “I want it back.”

  “And maybe you’ll get it,” he said, walking toward me. “But first, you and me are going to talk.”

  14

  Ian stood there, his mouth stretched into a “please kick my ass” grin. My eyes flickered down to the necklace in his hand, to the stone I had pulled from my mother’s dead body.

  It was the only piece of her I had left, the only piece of her I had ever had, really. Regardless of whether I had handed it off to Renee, I would rather bite my own toes off than see it end up with this waste of space. It, and what resided inside of it, was way too important to me.

  “You’re in no position to be making demands,” I said to him, my foot tapping in agitation against the courthouse floor.

  “Aren’t I?” he asked, not bothering to keep his distance. His skinny, disgusting ass was
right on top of me, just a few feet away. Which told me that, even though I had taken out a couple of his T-Bird friends back in the alley, he wasn’t afraid of me.

  Either he was underestimating me or he had some sort of ace in the hole.

  Since he had somehow managed to stop time in this room, something told me it was probably the latter.

  “How’d you do this?” I asked, glancing at Gary who remained perched on my shoulder. Ian still hadn’t looked at him, which meant he probably still didn’t know imps were a thing.

  If that was true, it made the invisible, pointy eared Tinkerbell on my shoulder my most valuable secret weapon.

  “This is high level magic,” I continued. “Demons don’t have access to it.”

  “Except for you, right?” he asked. His grip on the necklace tightened. I’d rip his damned hand off if that’s what it took to get it back. “You seemed to be more than familiar with magic.” He pointed at me with his free hand. “And those eyes of yours tell me you’re a demon. So what are you?”

  Well, wasn’t he smart, putting two and two together and still not being able to come up with four.

  “I’m the person who’s either going to let you walk out of here or not,” I answered, blood pumping hard through my veins as I tried to keep my very short fuse from lighting. “Get the hell away from Renee, give me my necklace and tell whatever black market witch you’ve got weaving spells for you to knock it off. Otherwise, you’re going to be leaving this room with one too many holes in your head.”

  He leaned backward, chuckling so hard, my mother’s necklace bobbed up and down in his grimy, demon hand.

  “You’ve been watching too many movies, bro,” he answered, wiping an elated tear from his eye. “We’re not going to fight here today. You want your necklace. You want your girl. I’ll give you both of them, but first we’re going to have to talk.”

  “Or I can just break your neck,” I said through clenched teeth. I hated it when people laughed at me, especially people who weren’t worth my time in the first place.