“They’re not loaded,” Muhamad guessed.
“They make great cudgels.” I pulled one from the holster and held it by the barrel menacingly.
“Whoa, careful with that thing. You’ll give my other customers a fright,” Musad said.
I glanced around the empty shop.
“You might hurt yourself,” Muhamad said.
Since that was highly likely, I slid the gun back in the holster.
“You want a twin blade to the one you got there?” Muhamad asked, nodding toward my right boot.
I’d slid the knife Niko had given me last night into the boot’s sheath without any intention of using it for anything other than a prop. I couldn’t even draw it without attracting attention from anything that could see in Primordium. Or really anyone who could see—most people tended to take notice when you started waving an eight-inch blade around. I didn’t like having it on me, either. Some people might have felt more badass or more protected. I felt like I had to constantly be on guard against it, like I’d trip and it’d fall out and stab me in the heart. Sharp things and I have always had a cautious relationship.
“Nope,” I said. “I burnt my pet wood out on a demon. I need another.”
The brothers shared a glance. Musad poked my bare shoulder with a finger. “Not an apparition,” he told his brother.
“Come on. It’s not that unlikely that I’d survive an encounter with a demon.”
They shared another glance. Their eyes inventoried my visible injuries.
“Where’s Niko today?” Muhamad asked shrewdly.
I shrugged and tried to look like I didn’t care.
“Ah,” Musad said, placing a finger beside his nose like he had a secret.
“Ah,” Muhamad echoed.
“Look, I want to spend some money. Do you want it or not?”
I left with a slightly more expensive pet wood than the first one. This one extended just like the previous one, but it could hold more lux lucis. I also purchased a hound net. I wanted half a dozen, but they were twelve hundred dollars a pop. I checked the price tag on a knife similar to the one Niko had loaned me while I was there. Two thousand dollars. I knew I couldn’t permanently accept his knife, but I was going to have to wait for a paycheck to replace it. The enforcer business was not a cheap one. I wondered how much the twins marked up their prices. If they had a monopoly on the niche market, they could charge whatever they wanted. I made a mental note to ask Rose what other enforcer shops were in the area. It might pay to do some price checking. Especially if I continued to go through pet wood as fast as I had. In less than a week, I spent nearly all of my signing bonus on supplies. Things weren’t looking good for my wardrobe-expansion plans.
I cruised aimlessly back toward my apartment. It was a bad sign that I hardly noticed the press of the guns into my thighs and the unnatural cut of the seat belt high across my neck, held far out from my body by the bra. My thoughts kept circling back to Tim, The Golden Goose, Max, and finally, Mr. Pitt’s restrictions of where I couldn’t go today.
I was 99 percent positive that Max was the same hound I’d encountered at the construction site. Of course, I couldn’t go back to check, because if I got caught again, not only would I face criminal charges, but Mr. Pitt would surely fire me.
He needed a full-fledged enforcer. I needed to be a full-fledged enforcer. Someone like Niko. Someone who could handle the whole region and whatever evil threw at me. I wasn’t up for the big assignments. Mr. Pitt, Niko, and Tim had made that clear. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t ready to tackle something a little smaller.
“Mr. Pitt can’t stop me from practicing,” I said aloud to see if I believed myself. “Besides, this is my job.” I was almost convinced, and almost was good enough for me. If Niko claimed to have gotten his strength from practice, then that’s what I’d do.
I headed for the greenbelt that backed up to the evil-plagued, under-construction subdivision. I had to park over half a mile from my destination at a gravel parking lot near one of the offshoots of the paved bike trail that wound through the protected environment. It was late in the morning, but down in the hollow through which the greenbelt and its accompanying stream flowed, the world was cast mostly in shadows.
Chill November air kept most people off the trails this time of year, but a few cyclists sped past as I pulled my courage together to get out of the car. Taking a deep breath, I blinked. The world lit up. All the trees and bushes glowed with purity. Birds and bugs flitted against the dark sky like fireflies in every size. The crisp white limbs of trees and shrubs against the dark, dead-grass hillsides looked like paper cutouts. I soaked in the beauty. This beat being stuck in an evil-infested convention with half the country’s gaming geeks.
I got out of my car, grabbed the small backpack, and stuffed the flashlight into its already overcrowded pouch. When the icy breeze sliced against my bare arms and legs, I considered going home first to change. I’d left the house without my coat this morning, busy planning what I thought was a semi-descent explanation for the way I’d botched my run-in with the demon. By the time I’d realized I’d forgotten my coat, I’d been at the office.
I had plenty of time to go back for it now and get dressed in real clothes. I hesitated with my hand on the Civic’s handle. I remembered how Max had leaned into me after I’d removed all the atrum. He’d been starved for good, clean affection. I scanned the ridgeline, where dark shapes of houses hid behind trees. Someone here had abused and tainted the poor dog. I couldn’t shake the feeling of urgency now that I was close to the culprits.
I locked the car behind me and marched purposefully down the trail. Let people think what they want. Plus, embarrassment came complete with its own heating system.
I was five minutes into my walk before I remembered that I was illegally wearing guns strapped to my hips. I debated returning them to the car versus the odds of running into a cop. Deciding the odds were in my favor, I continued. Besides, the guns weren’t loaded.
“We’re all on the same side,” I reminded myself optimistically. As long as I didn’t have to explain that to a police officer.
I trouped along at the edge of the trail, keeping out of the way of the occasional startled biker, giving a neighborly wave to the gawking people walking in the other direction when I really wanted to duck into the bushes in embarrassment. For the most part, though, I savored the balm of being surrounded by lux lucis. All the positive energy knitted my confidence back together. A demon might be squatted on my territory a few miles to the west, but this small surge of evil near the construction site, at least, I could handle.
My heels were rubbing painfully in my boots and the balls of my feet throbbed from the abuse of three days in heels by the time I approached the hill opposite the construction site. On my left, large expensive homes crested the rise, their long backyards sweeping down steep hills to the edge of the bike trail. Most homes had pools; all had expensive landscaping. Fortunately, it was too cold for people to be lounging outside.
On my right, dense undergrowth filled the valley, topped by enormous trees. Through the trees’ bare limbs, the scraped-raw hillside and squared-off half-built homes were easily visible.
The complete lack of atrum was similarly blatant.
I marched along the trail, vigilant for signs of misguided teens, until it dipped under Secret Ravine Boulevard and the construction site was long out of sight. Finally, I admitted to myself what a long shot the whole trip had been. Just because kids were vandalizing the construction site didn’t mean they were from the homes on this hillside, like the cop had thought. Even if they were, the odds that they were outside, audibly plotting their next indiscretion at this precise moment were pretty darn slim.
The walk back to my car was twice as long, or at least it felt like it. I did my best not to think about my feet and the blisters I knew were rubbing into my heels and toes. Full-body shivers helped; it was hard to hold on to a solid thought when
my entire body felt like it had been set on vibrate. Sheer willpower and a very strong visual of a hot bath kept me moving.
I thought about calling someone to pass the time but nixed the idea as soon as I thought it through. I couldn’t call my parents because they’d have questions I couldn’t answer, especially once they heard my teeth chatter. If I called Bridget, I’d have to admit how stupid I’d been. I didn’t want to call Doris or Rose. Niko was out of the question.
I rounded the final curve and trudged up the hill toward the parking lot with a frosty internal cheer of relief half drowned out by the rumblings of my stomach. I hadn’t bothered to switch from Primordium for my entire walk, figuring I was at least getting some practice out of my exercise in self-torture. My car was where I’d left it, the only vehicle in the gravel lot.
It wasn’t, however, alone.
Two shapes crouched beside it, teenage by their size. One was half inside the car, his knee on the seat, his hands busy at the center console. The other had my purse, which I’d stuffed under the front seat, and was rummaging through its contents.
“Hey!” I yelled.
Both boys spun and froze at the sight of me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
“Am I really seeing this?” the boy with my purse asked the other. He waved a gray hand in front of his face.
“Yeah, I’m real. And that’s my car!”
“Crap!”
The one inside the car gave a final yank to my dash and came free with my stereo. The other tossed my purse back inside. Both sprinted away, gravel flying.
The little buggers had been robbing me while I’d been breaking every bone in my feet trying to find them! There was no way I was letting them get away now. Before, I’d been trying to prove something to Mr. Pitt. Now, it was personal.
They tore off straight down the grassy hill in front of my car, toward a meadow and the construction side of the greenbelt. They had surprise on their side, but I had fury on mine. I sprinted after them, my blisters forgotten, leaping the crest of the hill with a war cry. The slower one looked back over his shoulder, then shouted something to his friend and they both doubled their speed.
I blinked to normal vision to see the terrain better—and nearly face-planted from a wash of vertigo. Some fancy footwork kept me upright, but I lost ground on the thieves. They blasted through the meadow and into the dense underbrush near the creek, not slowing. I might have lost sight of them as they dodged down an old deer trail if not for the shock of copper red hair of the slower boy. The other was taller, dark-haired, and clearly in better shape as he outdistanced the redhead even with the added weight of my car’s stereo.
I dodged a tree root, ricocheted off a tree trunk, and smacked aside limbs with both arms, cursing when my rug-burned elbows scraped bark. The trail made a sharp curve and then began a steep ascent. My high-heeled boots, which were not ideal for running in to begin with, didn’t improve my performance during the climb. By the time I reached the top of the hill, my legs and lungs were burning and I was barely jogging. I’d lost sight of the boys. Though the trail continued in only one direction, the undergrowth was thick enough that opportunistic teenage boys with agility and fitness on their side could hide away in it while I bumbled along on the trail. The thought made me pause.
I bent over at the waist to catch my breath, hands planted on my knees, feet throbbing in reminder of burst blisters and bruised bones, and scanned the undergrowth. Nothing moved. I held my breath. This close to the creek, I could hear the burble of water over rocks. Gulping in a breath, I switched to Primordium, and still nothing moved. Even the birds were quiet.
I pushed myself into motion again, spurred on by the thought of the boys getting away, or worse, by them looping back around to finish looting my car.
The pause had helped me regain my breath, and I could hear my footsteps again over my breathing. Just when I was thinking I should start running again, that the boys had never stopped running and were long gone, I spotted them.
If I’d had only normal sight, they probably would have gotten away with it. They’d hidden tight against an outcropping of rocks, curled up near its base in its shadow. It was only the solid lines of their light gray souls against the dark, dead rock that gave them away.
Not wanting to have another chase on my hands, I considered my options. My lips pulled into an unfamiliar wicked smile when an idea came to me.
I pulled a gun from my holster and marched into the underbrush. In a few steps, the bushes opened to a clearing at the base of the rock outcropping, and I glared down at the crouched boys.
“Holy shit, Connor, she’s got a gun!”
“Get up and stand still,” I ordered.
The boys eased to their feet and pressed back against the rock. Imps the size of large rodents bounced in a confused mass near their feet, and several smaller imps fed from their wrists. The taller, faster one—Connor—had a few extra imps at his throat and shots of atrum arcing up his arms like bad tattoos of lightning. The redhead had only blotchy gray bits on his soul. I eyed them both down the barrel of my gun and realized I didn’t have a second step in this plan.
To give myself a moment, I blinked to normal vision and took a look around the clearing. Two grungy backpacks and a box sat near the rock behind Connor. My stereo was sticking out of the top of one backpack; spray paint can tops peeked out of the unzipped second backpack. The rock face behind the boys was covered with layered graffiti tags in garish pink and orange. The bushes around the clearing looked to have been indiscriminately sprayed, and even in normal vision, I could tell the toxic paint was killing them.
“What’re you going to do now?” Connor asked. It’s hard to be brave when you’re staring down the barrel of a gun, even when the person holding it looks like she stepped straight out of a video game. Or maybe especially because of that. Even so, he did a pretty good job of looking nonchalant.
Good question. “I want my stereo back,” I said, then added, “and anything else you took.”
“Or what? You’re not a cop.”
“I think you should do what she says,” the other boy said.
“Shut up, Sam,” Connor said.
“No, I think Sam’s right,” I said. “Hand it over.”
Connor kicked the backpack at me. The contents crunched from the impact of his foot, and the bag sailed to land near my feet. I didn’t have to look to know everything was broken. I clenched my fist and swallowed my anger. I needed a clear head to figure out what I was going to do.
Cold slices in my ankles and calves distracted me. I blinked back to Primordium. The imps had no fear of the gun, and they’d decided I made a tastier snack than they boys. Negligently, I dissipated the entire group. When I looked up, I saw that removing some atrum from the area had taken the stiffness out of Connor’s shoulders, and he dropped his challenging stare when I raised an eyebrow. I knew what I had to do.
“You’re not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you, Connor?” I asked him. I advanced on Connor, kicking the backpack aside as if my broken stereo meant nothing. “Vandalizing, stealing, getting your petty high on these small-time crimes.” I was less than three feet from him.
“Shit, shit, we’re in so much trouble, shit,” Sam chanted, inching away from Connor. The scent of musky deodorant and sweat rolled off the boys.
I pinned Sam in place with a look, then took the last step and slammed my empty hand into Connor’s chest. Up close, I could see the scared youth peering out those hard eyes. Connor couldn’t have been over fifteen. Older, and he’d have a car of his own and he wouldn’t have been hiding out off a bike trail. Still, he’d already had his first big growth spurt, and I could feel muscle under my hands. I didn’t wait for him to recover his bravado and try something stupid. I slammed lux lucis into him.
The energy raced across his chest and down his arms, pushing at the lightning bolts of atrum until they were washed away and the imps on
his wrists exploded.
“You were right before. I’m not a cop. I’m an enforcer, and you’re fucking around in the wrong territory.” Connor’s sneer had faltered when I touched him, and it slid right off his face when I cussed. I holstered the gun and slammed my other hand into Sam, feeding him lux lucis at the same time, dissipating the imps on his wrists. I had a height advantage, and I used it to lean on them, pressing them into the boulder. “If I catch you stealing—or vandalizing—in my region again, I’m not going to go easy on you.”
I pushed off their chests and took several steps back.
“Holy cow! That was awesome,” Sam breathed.
With the lack of a gun to look at, both boys’ gazes dropped to my chest.
“I don’t want to ever catch you out here again,” I said.
“No, ma’am,” Sam said, watching me with worshipful eyes.
Connor was silent and sullen. I could tell my words were having no effect on him, despite the fact that his soul was now clean. If they walked away now, it was no better than me cleansing a few imps off the construction guy. I’d have nothing to go to Mr. Pitt with.
“What happened to your dog?” I asked, inspiration striking.
Connor and Sam exchanged a quick, fearful glance. It was enough. In one look, they confirmed my suspicion that Max had been theirs and that I was looking at the culprits responsible for turning him into a hound. I didn’t know what to do about it, either, and it made me sick.
“How’d you know we have a dog?” Connor asked.
“Had a dog.”
“Max will come back, I know it,” Sam said.
My stomach did a flip-flop. Sam sounded genuine, like he missed the dog. “Why would he? He could roam anywhere he pleased. Why would he come back here?” I gestured around the paint-encrusted scenery. The fumes from the multicolored bushes had settled at the base of my nose, and I could feel the first tendrils of a headache unfurl.
“Because I miss him. He’s the best dog ever.”
Connor was back to sneering—though still at my breasts—but Sam was distressed.
A Fistful of Evil: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 1) Page 25