by Rowan Casey
“Sure,” he drawled. “Just so long as you don’t cheat.”
I carved the GTR through waves of heat rippling and over cracked asphalt and pulled up outside the abandoned house. Brittle grass crunched under my boots as I stepped from the car. The street baked beneath the sun, but just like before, arctic shivers crept down my spine. Maybe it was the vacant windows or the breeze that carried with it a hint of distant laughter, or maybe it was the fact I knew what waited in the dark inside all of these houses.
I heard Riley’s car door closed and the cop approached, her jacket hitched behind her holstered gun. “This the place?”
Dav brushed a thumb across his lower lip and leaned back against the GTR. He wouldn’t be going any further. “There’s your bike,” he said, ignoring Riley’s question.
The GSXR was leaning against its stand in the open garage, on display for all to see. The artifact’s low-level thrum of power tickled against my skin, like a cool breath of air. So why was it just sitting there? Why wouldn’t the baobhan have stashed it away before the sunlight chased them in to the shadows? It could have been they didn’t have the time. Or maybe it was just dangling there, too good to be true.
Dav lifted a shoulder in a small shrug, clearly thinking the same. “Let’s get this done.” He handed me a chrome Zippo lighter. Engraved initials caught my eye: K.A. Kari Archer. “It was a gift,” he explained, looking away and scratching at his bristly cheek. “Now it’s yours.”
“Thank you…” I closed my hand around it, searching for something else to say but falling short.
After helping Riley grab the fuel cans from the back of the GTR, we headed into the garage. A familiar tingle danced through my fingers the second I laid a hand on the bike. It was definitely aware of me—our connection.
“Why don’t you start splashing the gas around?” I suggested to Riley.
“I’m not going to torch the place because you say so.” She set her fuel can down and freed her sidearm. “I need to make sure those things are here and nobody else is hiding out inside.”
“Then wait here while I move the bike. I’ll come in with you.”
I wheeled the bike out of the garage and parked it in front of the Ford. No keys, I noticed. I’d been so caught up in the events of the past few hours that it hadn’t occurred to me to look for the bike’s keys. It clearly didn’t need any. The push-start winked a mocking green, begging to be pushed.
Dav eyed the bike carefully and I briefly wondered if I should leave him alone with it.
“I’m fine,” he grumbled. “I jus’ don’t wanna be near those things.” And he tapped his temple again, for emphasis.
“Okay.” I grabbed my fuel can and passed Riley, heading inside the house. Dust dried my lips and a metallic taste coated my tongue. The heat inside had doubled, sucking out all the air. “Stay close. They’re fast…”
Something was different. It took me a few strides into the hall to realize the distinctive fetid smell had gone. The air smelled of dust and hot concrete, but nothing rotting.
An airplane thundered above, shaking dust from the ceiling. I kicked in the door leading to the room that had been filled with the baobhan. Sunlight poured in, chasing the normal shadows away. Deep claw gouges and cracks crisscrossed the walls. It was clear something wild and vicious had been contained here, but the room was now vacant.
“Shit. We’re too late. Check upstairs.” I already knew she wouldn’t find anything.
We searched on the first floor and down the street, but the baobhan weren’t in any of the abandoned houses. Evidence of their occupancy remained. Floors and walls were all scratched up and the strange odor lingered in some darker, danker corners, but they’d clearly moved on. They couldn’t move in daylight so they must have moved-out while some of them had us pinned down in Dav’s workshop.
Dav watched Riley and me stride back up the deserted street. “Nothing?” he asked.
“Nada.” I kicked a stone at the curb. “They didn’t come back here.”
Riley glanced about, a confused look on her face. “But they want the bike, that’s what this has all been about, right? So why leave it here for us to find?”
“They knew we’d come back,” Dav added.
The bike, the absent baobhan. It was deliberate. But why? They had gotten what they wanted, hadn’t they? “We torch the houses anyway.”
“No,” Riley said.
“What?”
She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and pulled her hair away from her damp neck. “They’re not here. You got the bike. It’s done.”
“No, it’s not done.” That last word echoed through the empty lot like a gunshot. “It’s not done until they pay, okay? They used me, they used Dav and…” I heard my sister’s contorted scream all over again. Kari had been stuck with them for years, not alive, not yet dead either. Something else. A shade. The baobhan had been watching me longer than that. Watching me and my sister, watching me play with luck as a child unaware I was playing with a hand grenade until it was too late. “It’s not done, Riley. You don’t fuck with family like they have and walk away.”
She lifted her chin and took a step back. “If they were here, I…I could help, but there’s nothing.”
Just ghosts, I added silently.
“Willful arson?” she shook her head. “I can’t be a part of that.”
“Good. Don’t be. Go on, go. Walk away. Go keep the streets clear of racer-kids with all the gear with no idea while we battle the real monsters.”
Dav’s warm hand settled on my shoulder. I hadn’t realized I’d been moving in until Riley’s hand dropped to her side, her fingers twitching over her sidearm.
“The baobhan took my sister’s memory and twisted it and they’ll do worse. We have the bike, but it’s not going to end there. So run away Riley, run back to your PD and tell them how we’re all low-life criminals. I hope you sleep well.”
Riley slunk off in her anonymous Ford, its tires kicking up clouds of dust to shield her escape.
“Screw her,” Dav grumbled beside me. “The crew’s got your back. We don’t need no-one else.”
I knew that. The crew always did have my back, but my track record for hurting those I love didn’t bode well for whatever lay ahead. Dav was right, though, this wasn’t over.
Dav and I used the fuel to coat what we could and then set the place ablaze, for all the good it would do us. The baobhan weren’t here. Whatever their plans were, they had moved on.
“It doesn’t make sense.” I swung my leg over the bike and rocked it upright. “Through this whole damn fiasco they only wanted the bike, so what’s changed? Why lure us back here?”
“Maybe they’ve done whatever they needed it for?” Dav suggested, opening the GTRs driver door as flames licked from empty windows of the house behind him. He hesitated before climbing into the driver’s seat. “Don’t bring it back to the shop,” Dav warned. “And don’t tell me where it is. Just in case. Take it somewhere safe, okay? Somewhere I can’t get to it. Give it to Grimm.”
Grimm. There was more to this and he had the answers.
“It’s not over,” I told Dav. Some part of the burning house hissed and crumbled, puffing out black clouds. “I’m going to fix it.” Make it right.
I believed in monsters. I believed in Grimm, and the knights—if that’s what it took to end this. And I believed we could stop them. I had to. “I’ll call you.”
His eyes said, ‘Don’t’ and I felt the rejection like a cold stab of grief. Kari was gone. I couldn’t lose Dav, too.
“I’m not leaving you or the crew. Not again. I’ll get this done and when it’s over, you owe me a game of poker.”
He dropped into the car, fear tightening his eyes before he slammed the door closed and pulled away from the curb.
I had to stop Siobhan, if I didn’t, Dav would never be safe and neither would the crew. I started the bike, U-turned in the road and launched away from the blazing houses. The baobhan and S
iobhan clearly weren’t finished either. They wanted something more. As I opened the throttle, I knew—perhaps for the first time since this entire circus had started—exactly what needed to be done.
16
The casino throbbed with color and the air rang with the sounds of slot machines, squeals of delight and whoops of joy. I swirled my whiskey at the bar and watched the lights dance along the edges of the glass. All around, luck ebbed and flowed, brushing up against the fortunate while shying away from others. There had been a time, not so long ago, when I wouldn’t have been able to resist playing with those strings. A little snag here, a little push there. Some had a run of luck while others went home with empty pockets. The thought of manipulating luck for my own gain threatened to bring the whiskey back up.
Despite the bustle and raucous, the casino was failing. As soon as I’d stepped back through the door a few hours ago, Jo, the financial manager had been breathing down my neck about the inexplicable drop in profits during my ‘vacation’. The air quotes were hers. I couldn’t blame her, not really. The casino had been failing before I’d turned up. It was a lost cause, stranded on the wrong side of town. In the eighties, when the ‘hip’ moved eastward toward Hollywood, the casino found itself left high and dry on the wrong side of affluent. It should have closed then, but it had clung on until I’d arrived and miraculous bolstered its fortunes overnight.
I didn’t have the heart to tell Jo that she was manning a sinking ship. Besides, I wasn’t back on the floor to manipulate luck. I was back to say goodbye. The casino, with its ambitious greed, its lurid, exhausting, soul-sucking pull, wasn’t my home. I knew where my home was: behind a wheel or with my hands buried elbow-deep in an engine block. I should never have left them...Liau with his sensible advice, Alex and her thrill-seeking, Billy and his many, many vices, and Dav was…Dav was the glue holding them all together.
This casino. This Jazmine Archer. The woman who stole luck for her own gain. That wasn’t me, not anymore.
My thoughts wandered to the bike parked securely in the basement garage below the casino. Not so much a machine, more of an aware and living piece of a mystical puzzle that was more important than all of this. I understood that now. It had taken me awhile, but I had a family, and I had a place in the world. And what do ya know, maybe I didn’t have to be the villain anymore.
My cell chirped in my pocket. I pulled it out and glimpsed at the caller ID:
GRIMM
“Holy shit.” I quickly jabbed the answer button before he could ring off. “Grimm?” Butterflies fluttered in my belly, but the heated rush of anger soon killed them off. “You have so much to answer for—”
“Jazmine.” He said my name like a fact, not a question, and cut me off as cleanly as a scalpel. “You have the artifact?”
“Yeah, no thanks to you.” The rowdy crowd grew louder, driving me away from the bar into one of the side rooms used for private poker sessions. “Goddamit, Grimm, where the hell have you been? The baobhan attacked, they had my sister. They took the bike. I got it back but—”
“Good. I’ll be there in a few hours.”
“Good?” Hadn’t he heard me? “The baobhan sith, Grimm. Vampires in LA. Did you hear what I said?”
“Oh, yes, I’m aware. You handled it admirably.”
Any words of indignation stalled before reaching my lips. “You handled it admirably,” I mocked. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? I’ve tried to call you a hundred times. You didn’t say anything about vampires, Grimm. You didn’t tell me my sister was with them. You didn’t tell me anything.”
“Didn’t I?” He said it in that showman voice of his, with a teasing edge that told his audience he knew he’d walked them into this trap.
“Don’t you dare pull that sensei shit with me. You told me to make it right. Don’t you think you could have been a little more specific? Like maybe, ya know, mentioning the whole fact that there are vampires out to get me and they sometimes look like people, but hey, it’s okay, because they don’t much like iron and sunlight kills them. In this century, we have these marvelous things known as cellphones. Do you know how long a phone call like that would have taken? A few seconds from your busy magic-act schedule? Oh, and while you were at it, you could have told me the damn bike is possessed. But no, instead of helping, you ignored Every. Single. Call.”
He waited a beat before saying, “I cannot walk your fate for you.”
I was going to kill him, wrap my hands around his neck and throttle that knowing smile off his face.
“Be watchful,” he said, vague and unhelpful as I expected from him. “I’ll be there as soon as I am able.” He hung up.
I stared at the phone as though I could kill Grimm with my thoughts alone. “You handled it admirably. Just wait there like a good little knight while I ride in and take the credit. Who the hell does he think he is?”
Asshole.
Even if he maybe, probably, was kinda right. I had handled it. I had the bike, and I was doing the right thing by handing it over to him. I had walked my own damn fate, and I had to admit, begrudgingly, that after everything, this was the right choice, the right path.
He was still a bastard.
I tucked the phone into my pocket and opened the door leading back out on to the floor. A wave of noise and light washed over me, but it wasn’t until I returned to my spot at the bar that a slippery sense of being watched crawled up my neck.
I looked up, into the blank eyes of crowd at least a few hundred strong. They had stopped their games and laughter, stopped everything, and now with their gazes turned on me, they all stared as one.
“What the…”
The slot machines continued to flash, automated voices begged to be fed more cash, but the people didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Barely even breathed.
I slowly set my drink back down, wet my lips and eased off the stool.
A woman moved among them, carving through the crowd like an eel through reeds. Her long green coat fractured at its edges, spewing threads of darkness. She held daggers clutched in her hands, but as she came closer, it became clear the daggers weren’t daggers at all. Her long, sharp fingers were tapered into deadly points.
She wasn’t alone. More hideously beautiful women moved through the silent, empty crowd, trailing darkness behind them.
Siobhan stopped at the bar. She cocked her head at my drink in a very non-human jerk, regarded it with disdain and clicked her knife-fingers at the barman who sprang into motion luck a puppet on her strings. “Milk,” she said.
“We don’t serve mi—”
His neck cricked, his back locked and he collapsed. It happened so fast that at first I thought he’d dropped to his knees behind the bar, perhaps in search of the milk Siobhan had requested. But a glance revealed he’d fallen at an awkward angle, his eyes unblinking. Blood crept from his lips and crawled down his cheek.
I’d known him, same as I knew all the staff here. Jim, Jimmy… He had a wife or girlfriend who worked in Costco.
Anger set my teeth on edge. Anger for a man who wouldn’t get to go home tonight, for a girlfriend or wife who didn’t yet know she had said her final goodbyes.
I flicked a quick look toward the hidden cameras. A few of Grace’s security detail were dotted around the room, as slack jawed and dulled eyed as everyone else. But Grace wasn’t among them. She would stick to our terrorist procedures, which meant locking the casino down. Nobody got in until the authorities arrived. I didn’t have long…
“Quite the palace of luck you have here, young knight.” Siobhan settled all of her unnerving attention on me as her sisters stood on-guard among the crowd. They all looked like magazine models—too perfect skin painted over the sickening horror that lurked beneath.
It’s not over yet.
Dav was right.
But it ended here. Now.
“How the mighty have fallen,” Siobhan remarked with a flick of her claws. “Are all the other knights as gloriously selfish and short-sighted as y
ou, I wonder?”
I let a small smile play on my lips. She’d been watching me a long time, perhaps all my life. But what she didn’t yet realize, what she couldn’t yet understand, was how her actions had been the catalyst that changed me. My sister was dead, and so was the old Jaz.
“Let these people go.” The words almost didn’t sound like mine. The anger that raged through me stayed buried deep, so that my voice and my smile all appeared calm and content.
She looked around as though noticing for the first time that we weren’t alone. “These people? Mmm…I could, but who should I replace them with?”
As if on some silent signal Dav sauntered through the crowd. Oil smudges marked his faded jeans and darkened his cheek, right below his vacant eyes. He moved straight to Siobhan, dropped to one knee and bowed his head. Something inside my chest cracked apart at the sight of him there—just another puppet. Siobhan could kill him in a blink.
No, no…She won’t. She needs him to control me.
“His life for all of these people? A fair trade, don’t you think?” She clicked her claws together and the crowd came alive as one coordinated herd. They shuffled toward the doors in an orderly fashion and to my relief, filed outside. I checked the cameras again, praying to whatever gods existed that Grace was already evacuating the rest of the staff.
“What do you want?”
“What do we want?” Siobhan tapped a long claw against her chin. “What do we want…Perhaps we want you, perhaps we want this city, perhaps we want to see it fall when the veil does.”
“You have the bike—”
She was on me in a blur, her cold body smothering mine, pushing me down against the bar while her claws locked around my throat. “Do not lie to me, knight. You have the bike.” The putrid smell of decay rose around us.
“Of course…I do. It was…exactly where you knew we would find it.” With every word, her claws dug into my skin. Warm wetness dribbled down my neck and over my collarbone, soaking into my jacket.