by Rowan Casey
“And you stole it back.” When she smiled, her long tongue twitched between her teeth. “Bringing it here, like a good little puppet. This building is perfect. No windows, you wouldn’t want your customers to be aware of the passage of time while they gamble their lives away. Also—conveniently for us— perfect for keeping out the sun.”
She had been scoping the place out, just as Grace had called it. But this wasn’t about the casino. There was more to it. “What do you really want?”
She leaned in closer. The mildew smell grew strong enough to blur my vision and burn my throat.
“Grimm…” she purred. She peeled herself off me in one quick liquid motion, allowing me to breathe again. “Your spectacular failure opens many new opportunities. What if all of Grimm’s knights are as weak and easily manipulated? We cannot confront Grimm, he is far too powerful, but his knights are broken. That…that we can exploit.”
I didn’t know the other knights, but if they were anything like me, we might have been broken, but things were changing. We were changing. “You think you can get to Grimm through me?”
She passed behind Dav, slipped her fingers into his hair and yanked his head back, eliciting a hiss from between his lips. His eyes flicked to me, sparking against the raw fury I desperately tried to keep off my face.
“I know we can.” She hovered her sharp nails close to Dav’s neck. “That’s why we let you take the bike. Why have one artifact, when we can have them all? The Unseen are coming. It is almost time. And if you’re an example of the best Grimm can do, my kind have already won.”
She believed she had it all planned out, she and her sisters. Use the worthless knight and her hangup with her sister to get closer to Grimm. It seemed like a solid plan, at least on the outside.
But Siobhan had counted on me being alone.
“Ya know, it’s funny,” I said. She cut a look my way that told me it was anything but funny. “I should thank you for all you’ve done. If you hadn’t shown up I would still be here...” I pushed off the bar and gestured at the casino glittering around us. “Feeding off the gamblers in this palace of luck, just like you said. Without you, I wouldn’t have realized anything was wrong. I wouldn’t have gone looking for more. I wouldn’t have realized what it means to have a family that never give up on you even when they should.” I stood close to her now, almost eye to eye. Close enough to see tiny cracks of doubt furrow her brow, close enough that her sisters all watched me.
“We knew the bike was a trap,” I whispered.
A smile ghosted across her lips. “What do you think you can do to me? Here, with the artifact so close? My sisters and I are untouchable.” She ended with a hand flourish and only then noticed we weren’t alone. Liau, Alex and Billy rushed in from the side rooms, armed with tire irons, lug wrenches, and crowbars—every conceivable weapon with a high iron content.
“You are, but they aren’t.” I sank my hands into the streams of luck and sent it outward, coiling the glowing threads around Liau, Alex, and Billy. I poured it over them, giving back everything I’d stolen over the years—the races I’d won, the chances I’d taken—and more. The crew’s make-do weapons hit their targets, cutting through the too-beautiful women, ripping open their illusions.
Siobhan’s metal-on-metal screams cut deep into my soul, stirring old nightmares awake. But I was done with the mistakes of my past.
I pulled on more luck, drawing it out of the walls where the casino had soaked it up for years, and out of me. And I gave it all away—turning my crew into the luckiest bastards out there. As the baobhan struck, Alex fell into a rapid right-handed swing that cracked through the creature’s skull. Liau flung a wrench, watched it crack of a baobhan’s skull and rebound straight into his hand. Billy went in low and used a tire iron to take the legs out of another, toppling several more behind it. To my luck-drenched eyes, I watched their fortunes turn into an intricate dance of light.
Still, I gave them more. Maybe all of it, I realized, as it spluttered under my control. Let them have it…
Siobhan’s claws struck fast and deep, landing a punch in my side that did more than deliver a sudden, burning agony. Blood, I felt it instantly wet my leg, but didn’t dare look. Whirling on Siobhan, I cracked a fist into her perfect face, smashing her nose and sending her reeling into Dav. He locked his arms around her waist and threw her against the bar, then planted a boot in her spine, cracking it almost in two. She let out an ear-splitting screech. Her body blurred, her green coat spread apart, fanning open like broad, gossamer wings, only these wings dripped shredded flesh and naked bone. She grew bigger, skin stretching, distorting—and flung out a malformed hand, slashing at Dav’s face, catching him across the cheek.
I was about to move in when Alex let out a cry. One of the baobhan was on her, but Billy was close, bearing down on both, crowbar aimed high. The distraction cost me no more than a second, but a second was all Siobhan needed to plant her control in Dav’s mind.
He came at me just like one of the beasts—a movement of dark in the corner of my eye—and hit me hard. I felt the impact jar through me, felt myself freefall and then the dark almost swallowed me whole when I finally hit the floor.
His hands around my throat locked tighter. I heaved for air, clawed at his fingers, and tried to twist and buck him off. My lungs burned, my chest on fire. The pain spread, bleeding into my head. And all I could see was the burn of hatred in his eyes and how he must have wanted this all along.
Gunfire cracked.
Dav’s shoulder jerked back as though yanked by some invisible cord, and his grip failed. Air flowed into my lungs, bringing with it the painful clarity that I was losing. Screw that. I got my knee up and kicked out, leveraging Dav’s weight off me just enough to scramble backward.
“Kill her!” Siobhan bellowed, now twisted into her true, nightmarish form made of liquid shadows, deadly claws and rotten wings.
“Nobody move!” Officer Riley stood inside the room, gun cupped in her hand and an empty fuel can sitting next to her. I knew it was empty because while we’d been talking, she had splashed the fuel across the floor—just as we had planned. But I hadn’t planned on Dav losing his mind.
Dav caught my leg and yanked, pulling me back across the floor. I kicked, feeling my heel meet something both soft and hard. He spat a snarl. It’s not him… She’s controlling him. IT’S NOT DAV!
“Keep them in!” I yelled at Riley, hoping she heard and understood. The baobhan couldn’t leave. If they got outside, they would scatter into the LA night. I needed them all right here and focused on me.
Riley fired, hopefully into Siobhan. All around the baobhan screams circled. Something, somewhere shattered and showered a waterfall of sparks across the floor, glistening against puddles of gas.
I made it onto my feet and dashed for the bar. Everyone was out of the casino, they had to be. There wasn’t any more time. Vaulting over the bar, I landed, crouched on the other side, and kicked the shelf holding up bottles of spirits. The shelf stubbornly stuck.
Dav made a grab for my shoulder. I slipped free and kicked again, dislodging the shelf this time but the bottles didn’t have far to fall—not far enough. Of all the fifty or so bottles that collapsed, only one broke.
Bad luck.
Right.
I’d given all my luck away.
Dav vaulted over the bartop and fell to his feet in front of me, crushing glass under his boots.
“Dav, stop.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out Kari’s zippo lighter and flicked it open, resting my thumb on the wheel.
He looked at me, his expression horribly calm. “Are you going to burn me like you did her?”
Oh, god, no. Please. Don’t do this. “Dav, don’t. This isn’t you.”
“They’re wrong. Time doesn’t heal. It festers. All this time I hated you…”
No, no, no. This wasn’t him. “That’s not true.”
Gunfire and screams cracked around us. There wasn’t any time. I had to end this.
&nbs
p; “Dav, back off.”
He toed an unbroken vodka bottle aside and lifted his gaze to peer at me through his lashes, his smile confident. He didn’t believe I’d do it.
“Please.” I flicked my thumb over the wheel, generating a spark. It didn’t catch. “Get back. I have to do this. Once she’s gone, you’ll be okay again. Just… get back.”
He inched forward and held out his hand. “That’s Kari’s.”
I flicked the wheel again. No flame. Again. Nothing. Damnit. I couldn’t do this. I’d sacrificed all my luck to keep my crew alive, and it worked, they were gathering behind Riley and backing up toward the doors, keeping the baobhan contained. But my luck was shot. I couldn’t end this. Whatever happened, whatever I did, it would fail. I’d cursed myself with bad luck.
Game over.
You lose. The house wins.
“Dav, look at me. Siobhan said you were different. She said you were stubborn. She can’t hold you. She can’t do this if you fight her.”
Siobhan’s hideous form drifted closer behind Dav, her body a blur of shadow and a slither of decaying flesh, but her smile was there and very much alive in her glowing eyes.
Dav’s fingers twitched. “Hand it over.”
I scooped up the nearest bottle in my left hand, cracked it open at the neck and stuffed a cloth inside, then brandished it like I meant it. “I’ll do it.” I held the unlit lighter below the cloth’s draping corner.
“N0, you won’t.” His eyes narrowed and the corner of his smiling lips twitched, turning down into a hard grimace. He blinked, and the glassiness cleared. All at once I knew I was looking at the real Dav, the true Dav. The man who had once hated me, but didn’t now. And he knew. He knew what had to be done. “Hand it over, Jaz,” he said, softer this time, the weight of what had to happen laying heavily on his shoulders.
Siobhan shifted closer, crowding Dav from behind, cloaking him in shadow as she sank her control deeper. He winced, gulping hard. A small, telling, drop of blood dribbled from Dav’s nose, over his lip. “Now! Hand it over now.” His hand trembled.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. The bike was a trap, we knew that. But we would turn it on the baobhan. Me, Dav, Riley and the crew. We’d lure them in and burn the place down around them. It was the only way. But not like this. Please, I silently begged him. There has to be another way.
He stood among the shattered glass and spilled alcohol. Siobhan reared up behind him in all of her monstrous glory.
It had to be now.
I tossed him the lighter. He snatched it out of the air, rolled his thumb over the wheel and ignited a small flame. His gaze met mine; you did the right thing. This isn’t your fault. She won’t be alone now.
He dropped the lighter.
17
The heat hit me first in a great wave, and then the smell. Burned oil and the greasy stench of sizzling flesh. This time I saw it all. I saw the flame lick across the puddle of alcohol, saw it breath into something alive and crawl up Dav’s legs. When he kicked at the fallen bottles, smashing them open, the fire climbed higher, bursting upward where it finally latched onto Siobhan’s trailing edges. Her screams became a siren—so loud and so shrill that I felt it slice deep, scratching at the inside of my skull and burrowing into my memories where it would forever stay—the sound something that didn’t belong in this world.
Dashing around the bar, racing against the flames, I scooped up Riley’s fuel can and upended it, pouring the remaining contents across the Black Jack tables, the roulette wheel, alongside the slot machines, everywhere. The remaining baobhan turned into a storm of furious shadows.
Burn, I begged. All of you burn in Hell or wherever it is you come from.
And everything did. Ravenous flames spread up the walls, slid across the ceiling in rippling waves and swallowed my route to the front doors.
Billy and the others were free. They were safe. I’d done enough. I’d made it right. But not without a cost.
Goddamnit, Dav. You would have made a better knight than me.
I staggered low, keeping beneath the rolling black smoke, and headed deeper into the casino, to where the elevators would take me down to the basement—had they been running. Somewhere, distantly, the fire alarms trilled, but beneath the roaring inferno I wasn’t sure if they were real or the remains of Siobhan’s screams. Heat tightened my face and singed my hair. The walls bubbled.
I reached for the fire escape door, groping in the smoke and darkness, but with every breath the fire burned away my strength.
Maybe it was always supposed to be this way. Grimm, that asshole, probably knew it would all come full circle. Really, death was all I deserved after a lifetime of stealing the fortunes of others—destroying their lives.
Just because you can change something doesn’t mean that you should.
“Making it right,” I mumbled.
A cool hand settled on my cheek and a smooth voice whispered, “You’ve done enough.”
18
Most of the cars in the cemetery parking lot looked as though someone had dipped them in candy colors and lined them up to dry in the sun. The paintwork glistened wet from an unexpected LA shower. Steam lifted off the asphalt in lazy curls. I decided I liked the cars there, defiant and loud in this quiet, somber place. Dav would have liked it, too.
At the graveside a few hundred yards down a meandering path behind me, a reverend spoke of a man who had given so much and demanded nothing back. He spoke of loyalty, and how family could be earned in the most unlikely of places.
I sighed, tucked my thumbs into the pockets of my jeans and leaned back against my Evo’s hood. I’d shown my face at the grave, but couldn’t stomach standing there, staring into a hole, wishing I’d done so many things differently.
Grimm had been standing off to my right for several minutes, as silent and foreboding as one of the many angel statues scattered about the cemetery, looming over their graves. Anger tried to rear its head, but I chewed on my bottom lip and fought it down. This wasn’t his fault. If he hadn’t met with me, I wouldn’t have been expecting the baobhan at all. They would have walked all over me, taken the bike, and won. Grimm had given me a fighting chance. He’d pulled me out of the fire, in more ways than one. But he hadn’t saved Dav and that wasn’t something I could let slide. Not yet. Maybe never. Whatever Grimm was, he wasn’t a friend. But then, I already had all the friends I needed and they had come through in the end.
“You and your knights had better be worth the sacrifices, Grimm.”
When I looked over at the shade beneath the swaying palm trees, he’d gone, pulling his spooky bullshit. Well, that was fine by me. He couldn’t get rid of me now. Whether I was a good knight or bad one, it no longer mattered. It was all on me, and I owed it to Dav to step up.
“Hey,” Officer Riley said, walking up to me and squinting into the sun. I hadn’t seen her at the grave but I hadn’t been looking. She wore a dark blue pantsuit and cream pumps. Always practical. Riley had come through in the end.
“Hey.” I figured she probably didn’t often take time out of her busy schedule to attend the funerals of those she deemed criminals. Dav would probably have told her to get lost.
“Are any of those cars legal?” She thumbed over her shoulder at the outrageous lineup of cars.
I made a show of peeking around her as though I hadn’t noticed them. “Of course, Officer.”
She smiled a little, but it came off as more of a nervous attempt at being nice. “Ya know, just because we’re on different sides doesn’t mean I didn’t respect him. I did. He helped a lot of people. People who slipped through the cracks in the system.”
“He did,” I replied, wondering if this niceness had an ulterior motive.
“What will you do now?”
I shrugged. “The pink minivan won’t drive itself to parties.”
Her straight lips twitched. “What about the other things… The weird shit?”
I glanced at the spot Grimm had vacated
and knew I’d be seeing him again. “I don’t think it’s over. I think maybe it’s just started.”
She breathed in deeply and sighed, clearing her head. She wouldn’t forget what she had seen. None of us would. But at least we weren’t alone.
“I did what I could,” she said, lowering her voice. “Kept the worst of it out of the official reports. The fire destroyed the servers and digital back up files. They’ve put a small team on trying to restore the hard drives for video footage, but they’ll be pulled in a few days. As far as the official report states, it was an accident.”
I was grateful for that, at least, even if I couldn’t bring myself to feel it.
“Maybe you could do me a favor in return,” she suggested. “And try and keep these kids and their cars away from public streets? Carino had a knack for making the races safer. I…the ADD doesn’t want a war. After what I’ve seen, I can’t help but think there are more important things than a quarter-mile dash.””
“I don’t know what I can do,” I replied, thinking of Dav’s GTR back at the shop and the sheets tossed over it. The crew had tried to convince me to drive it here. But if I had done that, they would have wanted more, they would have wanted me to race it, and the GTRs racing days were over. For now.
“I’m not stupid enough to believe racing will ever go away, but you’ve got some influence…Lady Luck.” She smirked.
“I’ll do what I can, try an’ keep them to the strip…”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
The conversation appeared to be over. She loitered beside me, hand on her hip, staring across the gravestones. The reverend’s voice drifted and flowed on the breeze.
“I er… “ She rolled her lips together and tried again, “I’m sorry. When I brought you in that day, I just...I was hoping I couldn’t apply some pressure, maybe keep you safe, but I didn’t know what you were dealing with. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more, and I’m sorry I shot him.”
I offered her a smile. She seemed like she needed it. Shooting Dav minutes before he had died wouldn’t be easy to shrug off. “You don’t need to be sorry. You did the right thing. He chose to be a goddamned hero. In the end, it was his call.”