The truly strong witches are like that.
We hadn’t been sitting there more than a few minutes when the human mercenary approached us. He nodded at us both and gestured at the booth. “Mind if I sit down?”
In response, Justin got up and moved into the seat next to mine. Andrulis took the now-vacated booth, and for several minutes, we sat there staring at each other. Eventually, a sleepy-eyed server made her way toward us. Her muttered, “What can I get ya?” had very little enthusiasm in it. I guess I couldn’t blame her. I was about to tell her I didn’t want anything when Justin told her, “Bring me two Redkins.”
She shifted her vague, brown eyes toward Andrulis. He lifted his pint toward her, still full. She nodded and moved to the bar.
“I hope whatever you ordered wasn’t expensive.” I skimmed a look around the bar. “I don’t think I trust my immune system enough to drink anything from here.”
Andrulis laughed.
Justin grinned. “Trust me, the amount of alcohol in a Redkin will kill any microbes. Also…they serve it in a bottle. The envies would kill them.”
“Yeah, but will I have a stomach lining left?” At that moment, I didn’t care what environmentalists thought. I cared about the millions of germs creeping around me.
“Yep.” Justin settled back in the booth. “You’ll even thank me for it. It’s good stuff. Brewed here in the Abyss, so you can’t find it anywhere else. The maker won’t sell it outside this area.”
I wasn’t sure if that was an endorsement or a warning.
While we waited for our drinks, Andrulis asked, “What brings you to the Abyss, Justin? You’re not around these parts too often anymore.”
“Neither are you,” Justin replied. He lifted one shoulder. In the dim lighting, the silver on his sleeves reflected a muted light. “I’m looking for Saul. He been in?”
For a mortal, Andrulis was very good at hiding his emotions. But no human could possibly hope to compete with the likes of what I was used to. I caught the faint flicker in his pale blue eyes, the minute tightening around his mouth.
Under the heavy miasma of scents clouding the air, I caught a new one. The slightly-acrid souring of the man in front of me. Body chemistry told a lot about a person, and his reactions just told me everything I needed to know. Charles Andrulis did not like Saul.
I filed that away. Since I hadn’t made up my mind about Andrulis, it wasn’t a lot of information. Yet.
“Why’re you looking for him? Any information he can get you, I can do the same for a lot less.” His lips twisted and he added, “And I do mean a lot less. People don’t die when I extract information, unless they deserve to die anyway.”
Yet another piece of information for me to file away.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Justin’s reaction. I also felt how he tensed. I don’t know if Andrulis saw it or not, but it was enough to make me wonder.
“Right now, I’m not looking for information,” Justin said. “I just want Saul.” His voice had noticeably cooled. His normally vivid-green eyes had gone to ice. The expression on his face was that of a man the wise did not cross.
Andrulis saw it all and I watched as he took it in. Something that might have been appreciation flickered in those pale blue eyes. Under his breath, he muttered, “Finally screwed up there, did you, Saul?”
A human wouldn’t have heard that low comment. Even though we were in a dive with more than a few non-humans, I doubted if anybody more than a couple of feet away had heard him, Andrulis was so quiet. But I had, and I couldn’t help but wonder just what had Saul done to fuck this guy over.
Andrulis scraped nails over the light growth of facial hair darkening his cheeks. “I’ve seen him today. Seems to me he came in looking for his normal girl. She wasn’t here. So the bartender back there—his name’s John—offered one of his other girls. He’s in one of the backrooms with Marcia.” His eyelids drooped while a smiled curved his lips. “Gotta admit…I don’t get why she’s here—she doesn’t really fit in the life, but maybe I’m wrong. He got her price.”
“Thanks,” Justin said. He might have said more, but the server appeared with two tall, frosted bottles. The bottles were clear and the liquid inside was an odd cross between orange and yellow, not quite the pale amber of any number of brews. Actually, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Damn if it didn’t look like it glowed in the dim light. I was supposed to drink that. I don’t know if I wanted to drink something that glowed.
She slid the two bottles in front of us and Justin slid a few bills in front of her. The money disappeared even quicker than she did and we were once more left alone.
Once more left the relative anonymity of Howler’s, Andrulis resumed his thoughtful contemplation. “If y’all need some help, I’d be more than happy to oblige. Saul owes me some blood.” As he spoke, a feral light glinted in his eyes.
Although this man was human, I found myself thinking I wouldn’t mind having him at my back. I also did not want him coming at my back.
Justin’s amused grin did nothing to change either of those thoughts. “Charles, my man, I think I got this, but if things change, I’ll definitely look you up.”
“You do that.” Then he shifted his entire focus to me.
Some people are just born old.
Like Colleen. In reality, she was thirty-nine. She had almost a dozen years on me. But there was something within Colleen that was older—much older. Her soul, perhaps. She had a feel to her that made you think there was nothing you could do or say that would throw her, surprise her. She could just take it all in stride.
The man in front of me gave me the same impression.
Even though he’d likely be dust in the ground before I ever showed the first sign of aging, he had that wise beyond his years look to him.
“I know you,” he said.
“Do you?”
“Maybe not personally.” He shrugged. “But I know who you are.”
“I’m afraid I can’t say the same.” It wasn’t until the words came out that I realized how rude it sounded, but it was too late to take it back and rather than stutter or stammer out an apology, I just brazened my way through it, staring him down while he chuckled into his tall pilsner.
When he didn’t seem offended, I mentally breathed out a sigh of relief. Closing my hands over the bottle, I took an experimental sniff. The server had twisted off the caps before she brought them out and the fumes all but singed the hairs inside my nose. Immediately, my head started to spin. “Wow.”
A slow smile spreading across Justin’s lips, he took a long, deep draught of his and then thumped it on the table. “That’s how you do it, Kitty.”
“Yeah, if you wanna stumble and fall on your ass.” I took a slower drink, tentative and quick. Anybody who wanted to bolt back something in a place like this, more power to them. But me? I preferred to walk out of here—not be carried out.
The taste of Redkin lingered on my tongue, even as it hit my belly and exploded in a loose rush of liquid warmth. It started to spread through my body with every pulsation of my heart. Oh…oh…that was nice.
A sweet buzz settled in my veins and I eyed the bottle I’d put down. One taste. Just one taste had hit my head like this. “Wow.”
I found myself reaching for the bottle again—
Something hummed inside.
Reluctantly, I curled my hands into fists. No. No, I didn’t want that sweet, false liquid warmth. Not right—
“That stuff is dangerous,” I said, shaking my head.
Justin winked at me. “Told you it was good.”
“No. Not good. Dangerous.” I reached out and shoved his bottle away, too. “What did they do, coat the glasses with candy crack?”
“Hell, Kit.” He looked both exasperated and amused. “I’m not Tate. I’m not Doyle. I don’t need an intervention.”
“Another few drinks of that and I might need an intervention.”
Justin started to laugh, but it faded as he
caught sight of the look on my face. A raised, furious voice from the bar had me glancing away from his face for a moment before I looked back.
“I’m serious.” I went to reach for the bottle. My fingers brushed the neck as a scuffle broke out up front.
In the span of time it took me to pick that bottle up, the scuffle went from an awful fight and in what seemed like mere heartbeats, a body flew across the air and smashed onto the table in front of us.
Or rather, the table where we had been.
My body had taken over and I’d driven my feet into the floor, shoving back. The empty booth behind us, the table, all of them had toppled and we were now roughly five feet back from where we had been.
And I was still holding Justin’s Redkin.
The only reason I even noticed that was because of the way the shifter on the table seemed to focus on it.
The look was almost comical.
Really.
Cocking my head, I shifted the bottle to the left and his gaze swung to the left. I brought it back and his gaze followed—then he stopped, his attention cutting upward to my face.
The whole interaction lasted seconds.
But it had been seconds too long.
“Justin?” I murmured softly.
“Yeah.”
There were times when it was just poetry to work with somebody who knew you like yesterday. Today was one of those days. I passed the drink to Justin and moved to block him, drawing the blade at my hip.
I readied myself to hear something from the bartender but to my surprise, he was leaning against the surface, arms across, a smug smile twisting his lips. Wonder what had him so happy.
The blast of magic warmed my back as the shapeshifter sank lower. Another pulse of energy rippled into the air.
“Out of my way, little girl.”
Inky black rolled across the gaze of the creature in front of me, followed by a wash of black that flowed under the man’s face as he paced closer to him.
I swung my blade between us, warming up my wrist as I kept my body between the wererat and Justin.
“Now why would I want to do that?” I asked him.
“So I don’t fuck you up?” he offered.
“Hmmm.” I pondered that. “Decisions.”
He lunged, leading up with upper body and I waited until the last moment to twist away. My blade slide across his soft belly, parting flesh like butter and his howl went from enraged to pained as the silver hit his system. I chanced a look out of the corner of my eye and saw that Justin had produced a vial from somewhere and some of the contents of the brew were now inside it. In the next blink, that vial was tucked away in his vest.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled and I swung my head around just in time to see the rat lurch in my direction once more. When he struck out, it was with one meaty, huge, human fist. By the time it connected with the space where I had been, it was furred and deformed and clawed.
Too many shifters were used to fighting with nothing more than their strength. Pair them up with somebody who actually knew how to fight—and who knew how to compensate for their greater strength—and they were stumped. The punch threw him off balance and I moved in, brought the butt of my sword down on the back of his head with all my strength. Something cracked and he groaned, swayed.
Without waiting a blink, I took his legs out from under him and he crashed into the ground. I used the blade to skewer him, pinning him to the floor like an ugly, giant, overgrown bug.
The fur that had been bleeding across his form froze at the insult of silver striking his system. He whined in pain. “Hurts like a bitch, I bet,” I said cheerfully. He thrashed and then stilled as the movement sent fresh bursts of pain spinning through him. Placing one booted foot high on his spine, I pressed down. “You might want to be still.”
He lapsed into motionlessness as I looked up, skimming the room with a hard stare.
The server was cowering near the bar.
That despair seemed to ooze from her pores.
Andrulis’ shadow fell across mine and a moment later, Justin joined him. “Justin, I think we’ll have to have a talk with this gentleman,” I said.
“I figured that.” He came up next to me and I held still as he pulled something out of his pocket.
I recognized it a moment later—cuffs, designed specifically for creatures like the one beneath me. Titanium and silver, reinforced by magic—with a surprise inside.
I leaned a little harder on the blade buried inside the trembling rat. “Boy, you picked a bad, bad day to go slipping people some funny shit in their drinks. My friend is a mean one.”
He tensed, but he couldn’t do anything with the sword that skewered him. The silver effectively weakened him to the point that he couldn’t twist free without ripping through bone or flesh. Plenty of shifters could do that, but he wasn’t high-level enough. When Justin knelt down, the rat started to whimper again, loud, sniveling noises that were almost embarrassing.
Andrulis must have thought so, too. He thumped his staff loudly on the floor next to the rat and said, “Shit! You sound like a little boy hiding from the monster in the closet. Grow some balls.”
I bit back a laugh and stepped back, watching as Justin closed the cuffs. I braced myself and couldn’t stop the wince as the spell inside them also activated.
Silver punched through the rat’s wrists, coming out of the cuffs, thin spears of it that immobilized him and made sure he didn’t attempt to rip free. If he did, he’d shred his flesh. At the same time, thin strands snaked up his arms, twisting around his upper body, all but mummifying him.
The cuffs were Justin’s, made much thicker than typically needed to be and the outer layers were held together by magic. His magic. Once they were clapped into place, the magic was activated and the end result wasn’t much different than a straitjacket made of silver.
While Justin finished dealing with him, I evaluated the current situation.
Fear choked the air.
Two servers gathered near the bar, all but clinging to each other, while the others stood in various positions watching with expressions that ranged from amusement to bewilderment to boredom. Those, I wrote off. If they knew what was going on, they’d be scared. So I focused on the ones reeking of fear.
One of the servers actually flinched when I looked at her.
I pretended not to notice and continued to study the rest of the room.
Somebody slunk close to the side door. He probably thought he was subtle with it, but there was nothing subtle about the antsy way he shifted from one foot to the other, or the way he beat out a nervous rhythm on his legs, his hands impromptu drumsticks.
Andrulis glanced casually toward the door then back at me.
My gut remained silent, so I thought, What the hell. I gave him a slight nod.
There was one other.
He sat at the bar, back to us, like he was completely unaware of everything going on. He was so aware, however, I would be surprised if he hadn’t taken notice of my bra size. He had dense black hair with a thick stripe of white running through, just slightly off center.
When I took one step forward, he lunged for the front door.
Everything happened at once.
Drummer Boy raced toward one door while Stripe took the other.
I flung a dagger, watched as it buried itself in the door just an inch past the man’s shoulder. He paused for a split second and I used that second to palm another dagger. As he neared the door, I threw again—a larger dagger, practically a small sword. It went through his upper shoulder and he screamed as it pinned him awkwardly to the wall. I strode toward him as he jerked against it.
I didn’t worry about him dislodging it.
He wasn’t human, but he wasn’t shifter or vampire, either. That made him less of a threat. Offshoots were rarely as powerful as the other breeds of crazy that populated our world.
“You.” Lifting my blade, I pressed the tip of it to his throat. His struggles stopped
. “Why were you running?”
His response was to spit at me.
I saw it coming and dodged to the side in time—barely.
That was so damn nasty. Why did people do that?
I pressed harder with the blade. “Try it again, and I’m going to ventilate your throat,” I warned him.
“You can’t touch me,” he said, panting. “You got no idea who I work for. I’m untouchable.”
“Oh, really?” I dragged my blade across his throat and watched as blood welled. The crimson streak of it made me smile. “I just touched you…you want to run home and tell Mommy?”
“Maybe we should,” Justin suggested as he joined me. The silver on his sleeves was sparking bright and hard. “I gotta admit, I really want to know who his mommy is, Kit. Think she’ll let us join them for dinner?”
“You find out who I work for and you just might be dinner.”
Justin’s smile was vicious and bright. “Oh, perfect.”
He struck out.
The magic hit, hard and fast.
The man sagged.
I had to catch him before he tore the hell out of his muscles, pinned to the wall like a macabre butterfly the way he was.
“What t’ fuck’s goin’…”
The voice came from the door and I whipped my head around to see who it was, although the way the words abruptly went silent, I had a bad, bad feeling.
Chapter Thirteen
Saul Tremble was an average man. Almost uncommonly average, if such a thing were possible. He had hair of a dirty, dishwater blond and eyes of indiscriminate hazel-brown. His face was neither round nor square and his jawline wasn’t soft enough to look weak, but it didn’t have the kind of firm edge that would make him stand out.
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