Rune Thief: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Isabella Hush Series Book 1)

by Thea Atkinson

  The last thing I heard before everything went black was the English words she whispered in warning.

  "Don't stay too long."

  CHAPTER 21

  I FOUND MYSELF AT THE bottom of a long set of granite steps with an iron railing that, even in the dim lighting, looked like it had seen better days. The individual treads had been scuffed so much, they were worn in the middle from the erosion of a thousand feet over hundreds of years. I knew the city was old, but not that old. Even the door in front of me looked as ancient as the steps. With a breadth of several feet and a height that belied that of a normal cellar, its iron hoop door handle was set in the European style—smack dab in the middle—and big enough that you needed both hands to yank on it.

  Functional and undoubtedly solid. Maybe a foot thick. But in its way, through the haze of the light from a street lamp, I could tell how lovingly it had been carved by its maker. Gothic faces glared at me from the wood. My fingers roamed the surface of the two of them closest to the door handle as I imagined some artisan in the distant past laboring over it by candlelight or oil lamp. The teeth were sharp still, too sharp to believe they were made of just wood. I imagined there were other materials worked into the woodwork and leaned in close to see if I could make it out in the darkness.

  To my night vision, admittedly not the best, it looked like wood alone but how they'd managed to survive the centuries without getting chipped or knocked off, I couldn't imagine. Nor could I imagine how fine the artisan had to file the grain to get the teeth sharp enough that they were still at point all these years later. And the tongue was there too, realistic enough that it felt like it moved against the pad of my thumb.

  I yanked both hands back against my chest and peered even closer, my eyes crossing in the darkness.

  "Get a grip, Sis," I said to myself. "It's just a door."

  I chewed my nail in thought. I needed to get in. Did a gal knock, rap, or just yank it open? I was strangely loathe to do any of them.

  I didn't need to see the other side to know there would be a thick iron bar with a lever that would stick into the wall and create a stiff, unassailable brace. If a gal thought she wanted to trip down the halls of imagination, she could imagine it being barred against an invading horde.

  But I'd had enough of fancy these last few days. Even these last hours to know that I would quite happily settle for nice, normal criminal types to what might be beyond that door.

  I thought I knew almost every dive in the city, every back alleyway, every place a person could hide or retreat. It smelled of both sulfur and candy floss. Two warring fragrances that made me think of scorched sugar left on a burner too long. The grate beneath my feet ran with old water that rose murky to my nose. The gurgling noises it made as it fled down the pipes and sewer system gave off a faint odor of fish.

  So I was near the docks, then. That was good to know. I could imagine the streets then in my mind, puzzle my way mentally through the maze toward home or a place of safety. The city had a long convoluted history with the sea. Another reason why I had fled here when I'd left Scottie. While the shipping lanes might belong to the more nefarious gangs, and network of people that Scottie might well have to hand, there were also plenty of independent fishermen. Any one of them would secret a fare across the ocean for the right amount of money.

  That was the first thing I'd checked out on my arrival, and I made a habit of reassuring myself of that every quarter. A gal could never be too careful.

  But it took more than transportation cash to escape a man like Scottie. And now with the tracking mark on my wrist that could bring to my splintered heel a self-proclaimed sorcerer, one who would fry me down to my toes if I didn't retrieve his goods, no amount of money would be enough to find sanctuary.

  I needed Maddox. And I needed to find a way to make sure he handed over what he had stolen from me so that I could get rid of the mark that tied me to a man more dangerous than the one I'd fled.

  And that meant I had to get in.

  I didn't wear a watch, but a quick check of my cell phone told me I was down to 23 hours. I licked my lips, testing for fear and finding it. I told myself that was a good thing. Fear meant I hadn't quite lost my grip. Fear had its place and could be very useful in unusual circumstances. I told myself that fear would keep me vigilant.

  Then I inhaled a long bracing breath, slipped both hands into the iron hook and lifted it. I dropped it three times against the wood beneath.

  And I waited.

  I expected the door to remain closed, and to see some strange sort of wary eyes peering back at me through an impatiently snapped aside grate. Much the way it happened so often in thriller or mystery movies. Just knowing I thought that might happen indicated I was still securely anchored in the reality, and it was a damn good thing because with a fourth and final rap, the door simply melted away with a shuddering movement.

  I stood there, paralyzed as I watched it shake loose any sense of form or function as I knew it. When it was done transforming, I stood in front of a transparent wall that writhed with light and color as though those two elements from my world were a living, breathing, snakelike entity in another.

  Unnatural, natural, or supernatural, inanimate things just did not look like that. Even special effects on film couldn't create that roiling mess of light and ... was it skin? I shuddered.

  Like the terrifying moment I spent with the self-proclaimed tracker between worlds as he'd hung me above his head by my throat in the middle of a busy city street, my vision went awash in green-tainted color. The sky above me and the looming skyscrapers that jutted into the shadowed clouds all turned hazy and green. The stone stairs behind me blurred.

  And yet the world over the threshold was just that much more in focus.

  I knew that if I took a step over that threshold, I would be entering a world where I didn't understand the rules—if there even were rules. I could be stepping over that threshold to my death. My world was real. I understood my world. I understood the threat of dangerous men. I could handle what I knew. I wasn't so sure I could handle things I didn't even know existed.

  But what choice did I have? I couldn't outrun the tracker. I waffled as I stood there, trying to decide whether or not it would be preferable to just jump on a ship and get the hell out of Dodge. For all I knew, that tracking mark on my wrist was only good for a few miles. I could test it out what it would do over a whole country. A continent, even.

  While my mind was trying to push me to step over the threshold, my feet were dragging me away from it. Everything in my viscera told me going forward was not a good idea. The very hair on the back of my neck leaned away from it and strained toward the stone steps. This was not a good idea. I knew it. Choice or not, I had taken on too much this time.

  I butted up against the bottom tread with my heel before I even knew I had taken several steps backwards.

  I clutched the iron railing that led back upstairs to the street. I needed to go forward into that mess, but I couldn't force myself to move toward it. Was that groaning sounds I heard coming from within? Screams?

  My ribcage hurt for all the hammering my heart was doing. I could barely hear my own breathing through the pounding in my ears that was all but drowning out the horrible sounds coming from the threshold.

  "Sweet Jesus," I said out loud. That wasn't groaning. I knew groaning. That was a sound unlike any other I'd ever heard. It was if a thousand voices had blended together in an eerie chant and then simultaneously reversed. Add a few fingernail rakings down an old fashioned chalkboard and you might come close to the effect of the sound.

  All in all, creepy enough to make my skin try to crawl off my bones and slither up the stairs behind me.

  Which was exactly what I decided to do.

  I took a step, backward up the stairs. No way was I doing this. I'd just have to find a way to con the tracker. Maybe I could pay someone to make one of those tiles. I could picture it pretty well by memory.

  I took anothe
r step. Yes. That's what I'd do. And if that didn't work, I'd pull a Scottie and pay someone to kill him.

  I wasn't aware I'd spoken that last until I heard someone repeat the name from above me. Whoever had spoken had heard me say Scottie's name and, surprised, had echoed it.

  I met the eyes of Scottie's henchmen for several heartbeats before either one of us reacted.

  His response was a slow, slithering smile. One that said, "I've got you now," and mine was to merely blink in sheer terror.

  Then he moved so abruptly it made me startle. His hand went beneath his jacket and I knew that in one more moment he would extract his gun. I knew too that he would shoot me somewhere incapacitating and then he would carry me off, still breathing and living just in hell of a lot of pain to where Scottie waited.

  Without thinking, I spun on my heel and took the three remaining lunging steps toward the portal that still seethed with energy.

  One step over it, and everything after that changed.

  CHAPTER 22

  I FELT A COLD RUSH of terror. It wasn't a natural thing to be between worlds. Everything hurt. I felt as though two sharp teeth had sunk into my neck and that blood, hot and thick, was dribbling down my neck. Something cold and slippery brushed against me. What parts of my skin that didn't feel like they were on fire were trying to crawl off my frame. Whatever had brushed against me slithered around my hand where Kassie had cut me. I could swear a long, rasping tongue ran over the wound. I convulsed in revulsion, my teeth chattering like wooden chimes in a breeze. A sudden flash of myself as an eight-year-old lit up the synapses of my memory and showed me lying on my side in bed curled into a shivering, weeping ball. Everything started closing in on me, choking off my air.

  And then it was gone.

  Everything cleared with a vacuous sound that made me gasp out of sheer release. Behind me, the wooden door reappeared, taking again its original form, except from this side, the smooth panel of oak was covered with fist sized creatures who appeared to be lodged up to their shoulders in the wood's belly. I knew without a doubt their heads poked through to the other side. I shuddered, knowing in that moment when I had lain my hand against the door, what I had perceived to be artistic carvings actually had been the faces of those creatures.

  That meant the tongue that had licked my thumb had been real.

  I thought I might faint just thinking about it.

  I stepped away just in time to avoid the sharp barb of one of their tails as it flicked up and down and side to side. It stuck into the back end of the creature lodged next to it, and in retaliation that creature sent its own tail, this one with a stinger, into the first one's thigh.

  The same movements echoed along the surface of the wood and back again like a tide returning to shore and retreating again. I wavered on my feet, wondering if I'd done the right thing by avoiding Scottie's minion this way. I certainly didn't feel safer looking at those things.

  "It's alright, Sis," I whispered to myself. "You can do this. Just find Maddox, get the tile, and be gone."

  I was definitely through the looking glass, and I didn't even want to think yet about what I had to do to get back out. I needed to think about the next step. I could puzzle out the rest of it as I went.

  I checked my phone. No signal, of course, but it told me the time. I set the timer on, reminding myself that the last check-in had shown me 23 hours remaining before the sorcerer torched my house and hunted me down. I reasoned that since it was still night, that time might run linear here and that my time in the portal had been mere seconds. Felt like a hell of a lot of minutes, but time did that sort of thing.

  I hoped this once that would work in my favor.

  I pulled down my shirt and set my sights on what was in front of me, waiting to be confronted and expecting to have to explain myself. If anyone noticed my entry, they didn't care.

  Except for the door with the creatures half in and half out of a solid block of wood, the cobblestone courtyard could have been a marketplace in any place in the world. Ahead of me lay a world not unlike my own at first blush.

  The bazaar seemed to be stretched out over several blocks with three main roads converging into the one courtyard. They reminded me of some of the older parts of Rome in some places and India in others. It smelled of burned things and sweet things and some fragrance that made my nose itch.

  Things hung from above booths everywhere and were scattered along the ground on mats and carpets. A dozen or so doors lined the buildings behind the stalls and booths and it was my guess that only the wealthiest of proprietors were able to maintain old-fashioned shops. The rest were transitory and temporary.

  Lights were strung over booths and stalls to better show the wares for sale. Dozens of them lined either side of the courtyard and several peddlers wandered about in the middle. On closer inspection, however, this was no ordinary market. It had the feel and flavor of a bazaar in India, but the goods and wares were nothing like I expected. Nothing like any human being could imagine.

  I learned somewhere that we all suffer from confirmation bias. We've already decided what we're going to see or understand or believe long before we're confronted with the possibility of there being anything different about it. It's one of the reasons motorists don't see motorcyclists: they expect to see two headlights, a full car and four tires, so if that's not what's coming at them, they discount it out of hand. We lay down our own perceptions of reality onto something when we are confronted with something fresh to help us understand it.

  I expected the marketplace to be filled with quilts and blankets and produce, and there certainly were all of those things if I looked hard enough. They were sprinkled here and there throughout the bazaar and attended to by patrons of all sorts. And so it did look like an ordinary marketplace at first, because I dearly wanted it to.

  I decided to take it in stages. Get my feet wet, as it were. The stall closest to me held urns of spices and bowls of strange ingredients. I figured I'd ask the owner if she knew Maddox. She looked human. Her goods looked normal. I went to dip my hand into a stone basin filled with, I thought, rather large marbles. The wizened crone slapped my hand away before it touched down.

  "Leave the eyes. You touch, you pay."

  Eyes. I examined the contents again and my gorge rose as I realized what I had been about to run my hand through.

  "Eyeballs," I said, breathless with sick. This old crone was selling eyeballs. Viscous and thready with the tissue that had held them in their sockets during life still clinging to them. "You have a bowl of eyeballs."

  "Not just any eyes," she said, squaring her shoulders proudly. "Blind men's' eyes. The best. Not two days from the harvest."

  "Harvest?" I echoed in a sick sounding repetition of her explanation.

  She narrowed her gaze at me as she leveled her accusation. "You're not a witch are you?"

  I shook my head, and she covered the bowl with the edge of her shawl. The way she edged in front of the bowl made me think she wanted to get rid of me. Fine by me.

  "What are you?" she said. "If you be no witch, these are not for you."

  She flicked at me with her shawl. "Go away."

  I went happily, stepping backwards and heeled up against a solid frame.

  When I turned around it was into the face of a rather large looking dog on a leash. It barred its teeth at me and I sidestepped quickly just in time to avoid getting my arm snapped between foot-long canines. The still sore wound on my calf ached in response.

  The woman holding the other end of the leash glared at me and ran a loving hand down along the hackles of the beast – an incredibly large wolf, I realized now – and smoothed them back down again.

  "You should know better than to look a werewolf in the eye," she snapped.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "So sorry."

  I held up my hand in surrender and stumbled away, my mind reeling. I butted up against an ancient looking fountain and sank down on the lip of the bowl. It was ludicrous to stumble around in alien
looking bazaar without some sort of plan. It had been foolish of me to think I could just come in and find Maddox and get back out without thinking it all through.

  I needed to take my time and let things come at me on my own terms if I was going to get through it. A leisurely scrutiny would be more appropriate, no matter how badly I wanted to hurry the hell up and get out of there. I panned my gaze back and forth, mapping out the lay of the land and trying to tell myself that the creatures, the people, and the things that I saw were nothing but figments of my imagination brought on by stress.

  I knew better, but I badly wanted that confirmation bias back again. I wanted to believe that the pale and ghostly looking things that resembled wisps of smoke were not Will o the wisp but sewage steam coming up from the grates beneath our feet. That the half man, half deer looking thing that clumped its way over toward me with lust written over its features was not in fact a young Greek satyr with nubs for horns, but a small man sitting atop a pony.

  When he was intercepted by a man of middling height but whose feet pointed the wrong way, I found I couldn't pretend any longer. Like it or not, this shit was real.

  And I was already feeling as though I was having a panic attack. I was failing and I hadn't even started.

  I looked around, seeking out those buildings and the multitude of doors. Maybe if I was going to find Maddox, the best place to start would be with the owners of those more permanent shops.

  I'd make a grid in my mind to pan out from shop to shop, starting on the left and reaching all the way down the the street, then coming back up before trickling down to the next one. As I returned back to the apex of the courtyard, where all of the streets met in a triangle, I would check through each one of the stalls.

  It wasn't a great plan, but I had no other. I pushed myself reluctantly to my feet and headed toward the farthest street to my left, aiming for the first shop so that I could work my way down and then back up again. I could be methodical if I couldn't be inspired.