by Dan Thompson
“No,” I answered. All I wanted was my damn coat.
“Lord Pathar.”
Lithia’s father? “The … the mayor owns a brothel?”
“I imagine the paperwork would say otherwise, but he would not send me to watch over his interests otherwise.”
I bit my lip. “My coat, please?”
“Lord Pathar does not like trouble at his establishments, especially repeating trouble.”
I reached out for my coat, but he made no move to hand it to me.
“You understand what will happen to you if you ever come back here, correct?”
“Yeah,” I whispered through chattering teeth. “Can I just have my coat, please?”
He shook his head and repeated the question. “Do you understand what will happen to you if you come here again?”
I stood there a moment in the freezing air, listening to my teeth chatter. Truthfully, I had no idea what he would do if I came back, but if this was the warning, I did not want to know the penalty. “Yes, I understand.”
“Good,” he replied and held out my coat for me to slip into. “Then we won’t have a problem.”
I hated to accept the chivalrous gesture he was making, but I needed that coat. I took two steps toward him and put one arm in and then the other. He guided it onto my shoulders and stepped close against my back. I could feel one of his horns brushing the back of my head as he leaned down near my cheek.
“Pleasant dreams, Miss Koufax.”
Shit, so much for anonymity.
He left me with the doorman. I stood there dumbly for a few minutes before I started thinking about getting home. I looked over at the doorman, who was keeping his distance. “Do you know if anyone called me a cab?”
His eyes told me he was not in a mood to help. “That’s the policy.”
It was not really an answer, but the cab’s arrival settled the question. The doorman made no move to open it for me, so I wobbled over and got in.
It was the same driver as before. I started crying immediately.
Read the rest of Hell Bent.
KATE BARAY
Author of
Krampus Gone Wild
Kate Baray writes urban & paranormal fantasy, frequently with a romantic twist. She writes and lives in Austin, Texas with her pack of pointers and a bloodhound. Kate has worked as an attorney, a manager, a tractor sales person, and a dog trainer, but writing is her passion. When she’s not writing, she volunteers with a search and rescue team, sweeps up hairy dust bunnies, and watches British mysteries.
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An Excerpt from
Spirelli Paranormal Investigations: Episode 1
Jack fiddled with the inner workings of his ancient cash register. He needed a newer machine to better track sales, because—surprisingly—The Junk Shop actually had a few sales to track. Who knew boxes of garage sale rejects would be so popular? The store hours were erratic, and the stock ranged from recycled trash to bizarre trinkets, yet the store still received stellar online consumer reviews. It didn’t have a website. So how did the yuppies, hipsters—whoever the hell was writing the reviews—find it?
“You know, that car outside looks like it needs a little work. I might know a guy, if you’re interested.”
Five foot and a lot, the woman attached to the voice would be hard to miss, with her fiery red hair and overly bright green eyes. Jack left his barstool perch behind the counter and had a long look at her. He’d missed her entering the store, and her voice had startled him. Quite a task, considering he had a tight ward on the store. And he was hardly an unobservant guy.
“How can I help you?” Jack worked to produce a convincingly relaxed tone.
Face expressionless, the redhead said, “I’m here to apply for the position.”
“We’re not hiring at the moment.” When she didn’t reply and she also didn’t leave, he added, “Look around. We’re a small shop, but maybe something will catch your eye.”
Sure, The Junk Shop was a retail location, but it had begun primarily as a front for Jack’s work with the magic-using community. A discreet physical location was a bonus when meeting with clients who wanted to stay under the radar. He looked around the small store. For a front, it was becoming increasingly and uncomfortably popular.
She looked around. “Uh-huh. I’m not here for...bric-a-brac. I’m sure you’ve got a position open. My sources are excellent.”
Jack hadn’t posted the position. Where would he? He could just imagine how that ad would read. Wanted: Paranormal investigator’s assistant. Complete discretion and some ass-kicking required. Part-time help in The Junk Shop mandatory. A high tolerance for the unexplainable preferred. No.
And Jack had only mentioned to a select few that he was looking to hire: his highest-ranking Inter-Pack Policing Cooperative contact, Harrington; the Texas Pack leader, John Braxton; and IPPC’s temporary chief of security for the Prague library, Ewan Campbell.
“Who’s your reference?”
“My stealth entry into the store wasn’t reference enough?” She gave him a toothy smile.
That smile made him incredibly uncomfortable. Green eyes, creepy feeling—alarm bells were ringing. Fuck. His stealthy, green-eyed Amazon was a dragon. He’d bet cash on it. He stared back without answering.
She shrugged. “Lachlan McClellan, but that might not be entirely to my benefit when you check my references.”
“Head of the McClellan clan?”
The guy led a powerful clan of dragons, but he was also a dick with a crap sense of humor. And Jack didn’t see him being particularly enlightened about female employees. Although he was surprised Ewan had mentioned Jack’s staffing needs to his clan leader.
She hesitated before responding. “We’re from the same clan.”
Oh, fuck—dragon. He knew it. “You want the job?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m here, having this conversation with you.”
Her non-answers were annoying as hell. More importantly, he didn’t see them becoming less annoying with time and proximity.
“Pass.” Jack turned back to the register.
“Wait. Yes, I would like the job.” She continued to speak to his back. “Please. I would very much like this job.”
Slowly Jack turned around. “Then tell me why I should hire you? Besides your stealth entry into a warded store. That only tells me you’re a thief.”
A brief flicker of fiery green flashed in her eyes, but quickly dimmed. “I’m unemployed and unable to return to my previous employer, which makes me highly motivated to be successful here. Also, I understand you’re looking for muscle. My combat skills are excellent.” She blinked. “I can demonstrate.”
She gave him another smile with just a shade too many teeth.
“No thanks. A dragon kicking my very human ass isn’t much of a demonstration. Besides, I’d hate for us to break my bric-a-brac.” Jack sat down behind the counter and picked up a pen. Having a dragon would be a huge tactical advantage in most fights, regardless of technical competence.
“Talk to Lachlan. Whatever else he might say, he’ll tell you I’m honest and hardworking.” She placed a slight emphasis on “honest.” She swallowed, the first sign of nervousness she’d displayed since walking into his store. “Please.”
Apparently he’d hit a nerve when he’d compared her to a thief. A highly motivated, well-connected dragon employee—he’d be an idiot to walk away just because she wasn’t exactly right. Especially since he didn’t know what “exactly right” was. What type of person wouldn’t drive him nuts with continuous contact? The shelf life of most of his relationships, regardless of the type, was pretty short.
“What’s your name?”
“Marin.” She didn’t offer her hand.
Jack knew the right answer, yet still he hesitated. Damn. He had a job coming up day after tomorrow that c
ould use some dragon muscle.
“All right, Marin. Come back tomorrow at ten. If your reference comes through, we’ll discuss employment terms.” He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t pay well.”
She ducked her chin once in acknowledgment and headed out the door. This time, Jack saw her pass through the ward, and a shower of green sparks, visible only to him, fell in her wake. He felt a corresponding pinch from the ring he wore on his right hand. No way he’d missed the ward triggering when she’d first entered the store. If this whole thing worked out and she joined Spirelli Paranormal Investigations, that was one of his first questions.
Jack picked up his cell and scrolled through his contacts, looking for Ewan’s number. Jack was pretty sure Ewan would put him in touch with Lachlan. After a quick mental calculation, adding seven hours to account for Prague time, Jack decided it wasn’t too late and dialed Ewan’s number.
Ewan answered on the first ring. “Jack. What’s up?”
“Hey, Ewan. Any chance you could put me in touch with Lachlan? I had someone come by the shop asking about that assistant’s job. Remember, I told you I was looking for someone? Lachlan came up as a reference.”
“Sure.” Background noise filtered in. “Heads up—you’re on speaker.”
“Thanks, man. You might actually know her; she’s from your clan. A tall redhead named Marin?”
The background noise abruptly disappeared. Ewan must have turned the speaker function off and picked up his phone. “Yeah.” The word came out so short, it almost sounded like a grunt.
Something about Marin had drastically changed the tone of their conversation. Jack contemplated for a split second whether to ask. He closed his eyes. Had he lost his mind?
After a few seconds of silence, Ewan said, “Marin is my daughter.”
Jack sat on his favorite barstool, the one positioned in front of the shop’s register. Careful to make his tone as neutral as possible, he said, “I didn’t know that.”
“Clearly.”
Jack didn’t get it. Ewan seemed pissed, but the guy hadn’t said a word about not hiring his kid. Since Jack wasn’t eager to get singed or mutilated due to an unfortunate miscommunication, clarification was the wisest course. “So, are you telling me you don’t want me to hire her?”
“Not at all.”
Jesus. Really? Jack rolled his shoulders. “Are you telling me you want me to hire her?”
“What did you want to know?” Ewan’s voice had lost some of its edge.
“Uh, okay.” Jack figured Ewan had enough patience for about two questions, so he erred on the side of caution and limited himself to one. “Would you recommend Marin for the job?”
“Yes. We done?”
Good enough.
“Yeah. Thanks again.” As he pocketed his phone, he caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.
Staring at the now empty shop floor, he said, “I know you’re there, little guy. You better be glad I know what rat poison does.” He couldn’t commit to chemical warfare—even in the pursuit of pest control. It was a weird quirk. Whatever. People who used rat poison must not know what that shit did to the insides of an animal. He snorted. Or they just didn’t like living with rats. “Fuzzball, you’re damn lucky I don’t actually live in this pit.”
Jack shook his head. He really needed to stop talking to the rats. It probably made them feel welcome. But he couldn’t resist one last warning. “You better not touch the coffee, Fuzzface.”
Read the rest of SPI: Episode 1.
LINDA L. DAVIS
Author of
The Goblin Influence
Linda L. Davis lives with her husband in central Texas and loves the quiet and peaceful nights of small town life. She began writing fiction so long ago she has forgotten the first story, but like so many writers she put the pages in a drawer and forgot about them until years later. This most recent dark fiction, with demons and demon hunters she sees as parodies of good and evil, and how the two might fight for mortal souls throughout the world.
Linda also writes historical fiction with a romantic touch. See the list of her booksat www.booksiwrite.com. Retirement is not worth doing if you aren’t happy, and she loves authoring books for reader’s pleasure. You may email her at [email protected]. She would love hearing from you. If you would like to sign up to receive notice of free books or new publications, mail her and she will add you to her list.
An Excerpt from
The Indwelling of Jenny
An Indwelt Novel, Book 1
Chapter 1, 2007
Jenny Lynn McArthur lies curled inside the small triangle where two walls meet, her thin body supported by a new, four-inch, green plastic-covered mattress, atop a steel bed. Under the mattress are flat metal bars crisscrossing, imitating bedsprings, but they are as solid and unshakably formed as her story. Because she is special, the warden allows Jenny new bedding this last week, straight from the prison factory. The striped blanket’s black and blue lines smell of dyes and solvents, the signs and colors reminiscent of those marks she bears in abundance along her pale spine. Holding it close to her face, she smells the acrid odor of unwashed, processed cotton. The covering is warm and comforting, even though her rough, chapped fingers and split cuticles hang upon the stiff threads.
There is blood in the tiny wounds above Jenny’s bitten-to-the-quick nails, blood that tastes of iron and life as she gnaws her own flesh. Her long silver-blond hair has retained faded blue tips, the last of the quirky salon color from before the last appeal. Small lines near the corners of her silver-edged blue eyes are concessions to the black depression that overpowers her day after day. Her skin, paled to ghostly white, appears as a corpse’s shell in her distorted reflection, and the irony of it almost starts a wild laugh. But she won’t give in—she can’t, for once begun, the hysteria might never stop.
Sounds echo down the corridor: the noises of the guards issuing laundry and supplies of toothpaste, blank sheets of paper, and postage-stamped envelopes to the inmates of Jenny’s neighborhood. She is in a maximum-security holding area, where those appointed to die for a myriad of crimes wait in separate, barred rooms—copies of Jenny’s cell. Women—pale, dark, and in between, with souls inured to horror—stare through small windows, dreaming of slashing and burning throughout the corridors, and into freedom. Some, with finer sensibilities, imagine sprouting wings, for in their minds is the prescience of a gold-and-red-stained sky, where they will soar unscathed, leaving their dark world’s travails below. They are the lucky ones.
Jenny is not like any of them. She is twenty-eight years old and innocent, a victim who sits in her room, searching for deliverance, praying for release, as she has prayed for twenty years. The state of California has put her death on a fast track, and it will happen at six o’clock on the next Friday evening. Five days of waiting and then it will be over; no last-minute reprieve will save her, for none care she lies fallow in her prison cell, not even Jenny. Her thoughts wander wretchedly from present to past as the sounds of life within prison stir her memory.
Two guards walk down the corridor beside an inmate pushing a cart loaded with food trays, slowly advancing toward Jenny’s cell, the trio bantering as they work. At each woman’s door, one of the guards pulls a mass of keys from her belt and unlocks a small metal pass-through, lowers the door, and watches as the inmate worker pushes a covered tray of food toward the watcher on the other side. Before it enters the pass-through, the cover is lifted by the other guard, who eyes the tray’s contents for contraband. There is nothing unusual about finding notes, candy bars, extra rice and beans, or sometimes, a small, hateful, homemade image, designed by someone wronged, or perhaps bored. Sending a destructive message to random recipients in the prison is similar to throwing a rock in the midst of a pack of dogs—sometimes it will hurt badly and end in howling. A few cigarettes are bet on which cell will get the message. There is a good opportunity for a few laughs, a break in the boredom, and a possible win.
This is life in maximum security, sucked dry of hope, hollow and loveless, where paper-thin residents, in the throes of disintegration, grasp for connections. The myriad of attempts to pass messages in the prison is almost comical—male inmates want to connect with females, females want men, and sometimes they all want each other, believing that any communication is better than loneliness.
Jenny has never received a note, and has seldom received real mail through the prison’s postal system. No one has written; that is, nothing has come except legal papers describing the jury’s findings of her guilt in the deaths of Adelaide Whitney, Sharon Clark, Jon Ballantine, and Ernest Holbrook, as well as the court’s intentions for “Jenny Lynn McArthur to die of lethal injection.” The lawyer sent his regrets each time the case was appealed and lost, but that wasn’t usually personal. Not even hate mail comes anymore from the radical group that once espoused death for her crimes; Jenny guesses they went on to other losers. Her existence inside these walls has become old news, and will be, until the couple days before she is executed. At that time, there will be marchers for and against the death penalty, but their ire will have nothing to do with her.
“McArthur, chow time,” the guard says, popping the window. Jenny moves back and places her hands out, in anticipation of the food tray. She barely notices the cover hasn’t been removed, for long ago the prison officers who worked the maximum corridor, or the MC, learned, No one gives a shit about Jenny Lynn McArthur. She nods slightly to the guard, a pleasant woman who believes in fair treatment, even for the worst of the worst. Officer Able is her name, Carolyn Able, “a woman of color,” as Jenny’s grandmother Pauline would have remonstrated as a lesson in tolerance to those still using the N-word.
She takes the tray inside the cell, and sets it down on the small metal multiuse table at the end of the bed to await an appetite. The table of steel is part of the bunk; a continuous movement rising from the floor, a utilitarian addition to an almost bare room. There are no visible bolts, nuts, screws, or wedge anchors for unscrewing, dismantling, prying, or chipping away from the concrete floor to make small armaments or self-defensive shanks. In the MC, life is below premium, often taken from the weak by the strong without fear of real consequences. Among the almost-dead women there are few threats the authorities can use to frighten them. The waiting game has been determined, reinforced, and played by the same court system that will try them for new crimes. If anything changes, additional sentencing might add years to their lives as they wait for the wheels of justice to slowly turn.