Race of Thieves

by S. M. Reine

  “And Cage is the best,” Vex went on. “In so many ways, he is the absolute best. I always feel so safe around him, and I can trust him with anything, and—”

  “Then why the interview?” Bastion asked.

  “There’s still a lot that I have to learn about this business. I’d be interested in learning from you.”

  “You understand, you would not be able to share anything you learned here with Shatter Cage,” Bastien said. “In fact, this may be too much of a conflict of interest if you want to continue having a relationship with your current employer. He and I…”

  He never finished the sentence, but Cage could imagine what he was thinking.

  “I understand,” Vex said carefully. “In truth, you would have to make an amazing offer to lure me away from Cage. I don’t usually listen to offers because nobody can meet my needs. But you got into Shadowhold and got those Underpants before we did, so I’m open to listening.”

  “Well, I think you’ll find that we have an impressive business here...”

  The conversation continued, but guard rotation had begun, and it was time to run.

  Cage skittered down the hall, and he climbed to the third floor using his tiny claws to puncture the stucco. He skirted behind cameras and made his way to the first storage room.

  He reached it unseen, which he would’ve found a lot more gloat worthy if it hadn’t been filled with garbage. Pots, gems, a couple of no-name swords. It looked like Bastien had set up the room to protect some artifacts that he didn’t want to pawn for whatever reason. No big-ticket items.

  Cage had to check two more suspected storage rooms before finding the one with the Death Underpants. He got lucky—he saw a guard stepping out of the room and glimpsed the prize on a mannequin within before the door shut.

  The room with the Death Underpants was being guarded by two broad-shouldered men wearing gray suits. Their rings made Cage’s head buzz with enchantment. They were witches, like their boss, Bastien.

  Cage darted behind a bookshelf holding succulents and a single large book on maintaining xeriscaping. There was a vent low on the floor beside that shelf. He managed to unscrew it with his agile little hands and pried the metal off.

  The last screw hit the floor with a rattling sound. Cage didn’t wait to see if the guards would hear. He slipped into the ducts.

  Vex had told Cage that using the ductwork maneuver was a bad idea. That Bastien would expect invasion that way, and that everything would be warded. He said that it was just too obvious—something that every guy who broke into Bastien’s office would attempt.

  But Cage was already proving Vex wrong because he ran through the vents without feeling the slightest zap of magic.

  The ducts led into the secured room near the ceiling. Cage gripped the bars of the vent cover as though he were in a kennel again, searching the room for the death underpants.

  Now this secured room with a lot more interesting than the other ones. Even though he loathed Daladier, he still had to admit that his collection was almost as good as Silverclaw’s. A shield, a coat of chain mail, lots of things that looked real expensive.

  He scampered up to the mannequin and got his first real look at the Death Underpants.

  The pants were sewn from a man’s skin (penis not included) and stitched together with thick black thread running down the sides. It had a waist high enough to include the navel, although someone had punched a button into the flesh where it should have been, like the fly on jeans.

  When he’d seen the photos, Cage almost hadn’t believed that they were real. Who would make an artifact that screwed up?

  But there they were, as real as the whiskers on Cage’s face.

  And Cage couldn’t help but think that he would look pretty badass wearing them.

  Was human skin any worse than cow skin, really?

  The only way to get them off of the mannequin form was to unlace them midway. Cage had to scramble up and down the mannequin in order to loosen it. He peeled them down and was surprised by how thin they were. Almost papery.

  Cage was just trying to figure out how to get a good grip on the pants without damaging them when he heard the lock on the door beep.

  Someone was coming inside.

  Voices mumbled from outside the door.

  The lock clicked.

  There was no time to be careful. Cage hauled the Death Underpants into the vent and rushed to drag the legs in behind him.

  Shouts of alarm echoed through the still-open vent.

  They shouted in French. Cage didn’t understand a word of it, but he was pretty sure that they were talking about killing him.

  Cage gave up trying to be quiet, and he pounded through the ducts. His feet made scrabbling noises on the metal. He checked rooms as he flashed past them —offices, a lab, something that looked like an art gallery.

  And then he heard Vex’s voice. “What’s that?”

  “It is my mundane alarm system.” Bastien didn’t sound worried yet. “It has been malfunctioning at times, so it’s likely nothing. My men will initiate the destruction protocol if they find an actual intruder.”

  Destruction protocol? Cage hadn’t seen anything about that on the plans.

  A wave of heat swept up the vent, even though it was much too warm outside to turn on the heater. Then the metal shook. Bright light shone upon his tail, casting his shadow on the vent ahead of him.

  Cage twisted to look back. Over the rumpled Death Underpants, a fireball was rolling with eerie slowness up the vent. It looked slow and hot enough to burn away everything inside. It wasn’t going to miss a single hair.

  Or a single squirrel.

  Bastien leapt to his feet at the thumping. He whirled on Vex. “They’ve begun the destruction protocol. What did you do?”

  Cage punched out the vent, tumbling into Vex’s lap. He hoped that he was so tangled in leather that Bastion wouldn’t get a good look at him.

  “I’ve got you!” Vex whispered.

  Then Cage was getting swept up into Vex’s jacket again, a protective demon arm locked around him. Bastien had drawn a gun in one hand and magic foamed over his other hand. He almost looked remorseful—like he was going to regret killing Vex, but he was still definitely going to kill Vex.

  “I should have known,” Bastien said. “I’m more disappointed in myself.”

  “Oh gods, I’m so sorry!” Vex said, cringing away from the witch.

  Bastien suddenly gasped. His hands went limp—flames darkening, gun falling to the floor. His face went pale. Cage thought that Vex was force-choking him at first.

  Then Daladier began twitching wildly, slapping at his underarms, twisting as though trying to escape invisible hands. Bastien let out a desperate laugh. It escalated to a giggle, and then a shriek, and the highest-pitched protests that Cage had ever heard from an adult. The witch kept seizing.

  Vex was using his visceral illusion to make Bastien feel like he was being tickled to death.

  It was hilariously incapacitating, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Nobody expected tickles out of nowhere. Once Bastien realized what was happening, he’d figure out how to mentally vault over Vex’s attack.

  Vex squeezed Cage tight, got a better grip on the Underpants, and raced for the front doors of Bastien’s office. Cage’s view against Vex’s chest was limited, so he could only hear the gunfire and the explosions behind him. Vex shouted more apologies, and the gunshots stopped. Bastien’s guards giggled even harder when Vex applied the force of his illusions to them.

  Metal shields rolled over the front door. Surely once those locked in place, there would be no escaping.

  Cage chattered in panic. Do you see it? Are we trapped?

  Vex put on a burst of speed. He threw himself at the door, dropped to his knees, and slid.

  The two of them smashed through the glass at the bottom of the door. They tumbled onto the lawn in a mess of burning infernal blood and tinkling glass shards. Vex was saying, “Ow! Ow!”


  And then the blast shields slammed shut. The building was locked down.

  But Cage and Vex had the Underpants.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They were on the first jet back to Phaethon Bay.

  “Are you sure this is the best way to travel right now?” Vex asked in a tiny voice. He’d shrunk into his airplane seat so that he was as small as he was physically capable. Sweat rolled from his demon brow. It was tinted crimson, the same color as his eyes before he’d permanently glamoured them.

  “There’s no way that a witch like Bastien doesn’t know the local planeswalkers. We’re safer here anyway—he’s never going to think to look for us on an airplane,” Cage said.

  “Can I get you anything to drink?” asked the flight attendant. She was a lean human wearing a jumpsuit appropriate for their ascent to the upper atmosphere.

  Flights between continents only took an hour or two these days—so much faster than the airplanes of Cage’s childhood. He remembered needing an hour to get from Portland to Sacramento in his school days, before the Ethereal Coalition popularized low orbit travel. What a yawn and a half. He had no clue how folks used to put up with air travel. “I’ll take a Coke,” Cage said. “Water for my friend, please. And maybe earplugs? Extra pillows?”

  She took a packet of earbuds out of her pocket, fingers brushing against Cage’s as she passed them over. “Your friend doesn’t like flying, huh? It happens to the best of us.”

  Vex lifted his eyes to hers and smiled. He didn’t realize how that smile could destroy women, so he always had the charm on full blast.

  Except this woman wasn’t stunned by Vex’s attractiveness. In his panic, he had forgotten to keep the eye on his forehead shut. A slit of the eye was visible, including his strange pupils, and now the flight attendant knew they had a demon on board.

  Offended heat unfolded in Cage’s breast. “Water and blankets,” he said, “right the fuck now.”

  The flight attendant’s mouth pinched into a frown. She walked away.

  Cage didn’t even wait for her to get out of earshot before starting his rant.

  “People are so racist,” he said in a low, heated voice. “So racist! She is such a dumb bitch! I hate her! We never should’ve flown!”

  Vex’s black-nailed hand patted Cage on the forearm. “She was just looking.”

  “She was looking with very mean eyes!”

  “Many people do worse than look,” Vex said quietly. “She’s scared. It’s not her fault.”

  “Don’t you try to defend bigotry against you,” Cage said. “Not after everything that this world has inflicted on you.”

  Demons had never been as common in Europe as in America, but now the entire world had heard rumors that American demons were out for chaos and anarchy and violence. The demons hadn’t done a lot to comfort people—they’d taken control of five states in Southwestern America and seceded.

  Cage wouldn’t disagree that the secession was wrong. But Vex wasn’t like those in the Badlands. He was a North American Union citizen, born on the right side of the border and with as many family ties within the country as Cage. More, even, since Vex had a huge family around Phaethon Bay.

  But people weren’t rational about demons. They only saw invaders—usurpers.

  That was why it had been easy to justify interning demons like Vex twenty years earlier. Poor Vex, gentle child that he’d been, had spent more than a year in a North American Union internment camp. Vex’s parents had lost their jobs. His siblings had been yanked out of school. And Vex had been left with debilitating anxiety that prevented him from going into public.

  If Cage could have, he would’ve punched the entire world in the nose to make them realize that Vex was harmless. And awesome. Vex was incredibly awesome.

  Instead, they got spare blankets and earplugs lobbed at them by the flight attendant as she hurried past.

  “This trip is only going to take a hundred minutes according to the screens,” Cage said, rolling the earplugs in his fingers and popping one into Vex’s ear. When Vex got really anxious, just like this, he forgot to take care of himself. “Do you think you can do a hundred minutes?”

  The demon’s gaze was awash with as much embarrassment as gratitude. “I don’t have a choice. They won’t stop taxiing so I can get out.”

  “No, but you don’t have to be conscious for this,” he said. “I stole Methaqualone out of the flight attendant’s back pocket when she wasn’t looking. You could sleep for the flight!” He opened his hand to show the little black pills on his palm.

  “I can’t sleep. We have to talk about our cargo.” They had stuffed the Death Underpants in a carry-on bag. Somehow, Vex had gotten it through security. Probably a warlock thing.

  “If you’re sure,” Cage said. He eyed the Methaqualone.

  “You probably shouldn’t take them either,” Vex added.

  Cage rolled his eyes and pocketed the stolen pills. They didn’t do much against his shifter metabolism anyway.

  The plane took off and the world dwindled outside the window. The bulkhead was so insulated that Cage barely felt the g-forces. They were in a private luxury compartment, bought with the rest of Vex’s Venus Fly money. It was the only way to travel with Vex. If they’d had to stand in the general passengers’ compartment, which was more like a bus with its benches and handholds, Cage wasn’t sure Vex would’ve made it home without a heart attack.

  “When we touch down, you should go straight to Vinglahof,” Vex said. “Don’t even stop at home. Even if Bastien doesn’t know what fell into my lap from the vents, he’s going to know that you’re involved somehow. We’ve got to unload these before Bastien or Gutterman catches up with us.”

  Cage set the water bottle in Vex’s cupholder and threw the blanket over him. “Are you comfortable?”

  Vex’s lips were colorless. “Not really.”

  “One hundred minutes,” Cage said.

  “What if they decide to throw me off the plane before that?” he whispered.

  “They won’t.”

  “It’s happened before.”

  Last year, a bunch of witches had ganged up on a demon and shoved her out of a hyperloop pod in motion—which should have been impossible. But tell that to the demon smeared against the inside of a vacuum tube.

  People still feared demons that much.

  “It won’t happen here,” Cage said in a heated voice. “If they try, I’ll go full phoenix and set fire to all of them.”

  Vex gave a shivering, unamused laugh. “You can nibble their ankles while I’m falling to my death.”

  Cage gripped Vex’s hand as tight as he could. The warlock wasn’t fragile. He could take the force of a shifter’s fingers, easily. Vex squeezed back even harder, so hard that his forearm shook, and Cage felt the pinch of black demon claws on the back of his hand.

  “You could just make them all feel like they’re being tickled too,” Cage suggested.

  “Never. If I used my powers to control the public, it would make everything worse for demons everywhere.” He squeezed his forehead eyelid shut. “Okay, we need a plan. Gotta get to Vinglahof without being caught. That means evading surveillance. If I get back to my computers—but they’ll be looking for me, so I’ll have to be careful not to get followed too—”

  “I’m just going to have to run. No big deal. As soon as I get these pants to Vinglahof, I’m gonna get my new hire bonus to pay off Gutterman, and Bastien can try to steal the Underpants from the next owner.” Cage pulled the carry-on from under his seat, unzipping it. The shriveled, tan flesh of the Death Underpants looked even creepier when they weren’t obviously pants. “What powers do they have? I think it was in the dossier.” He hadn’t planned on using them, so he hadn’t paid much attention to those details.

  “The Death Underpants make money,” Vex said.

  “How?”

  “You wear the pants, you reach into the pocket, you pull out money. It’s infinite but not limitless. You can only remove a ‘h
andsome sum’ at any one time—the specific amount depends on what currency you want—and there’s an hour cool-down time between each withdrawal.”

  Cage’s stomach did cartwheels. “That’s not going to help with Daladier.”

  But it could help with Gutterman.

  He unbuckled, got up, and yanked off the shorts he’d stolen earlier.

  “You just had an idea, didn’t you?” Vex asked.

  “Yes, but I also want to try these on. You know I look great in leather.” Cage yanked on the Death Underpants. Which meant he was wearing some other guy’s butt-skin stretched over his bare ass.

  He plunged a hand into the pocket and withdrew a ‘handsome sum’ of NAU dollars.

  “What, no northcoin?” Cage asked the wad of cash in his fist.

  Vex inspected the stitching along the thigh of the Death Underpants. There were still hair follicles over the quads. Whoever had gotten skinned must have been hairy as hell. “This quality of needlework looks medieval to me. We’re lucky it can produce modern currency at all. I wonder if the magic could be tweaked to digital currency?”

  “We’re not going to have them long enough to experiment.” He gave the money to Vex. “This is a handsome sum, but not even a fraction of what Gutterman wants. It’s useless to me.” Cage wiggled his fingers in the pocket again. No more money. “Waiting an hour sucks.”

  “You also have to take the underpants off between each withdrawal to reset them,” Vex said.

  “This is the fussiest dead man’s butt-skin I’ve ever worn.” He wiggled the pants off with a measure of relief. He did look great in leather, but human leather was pushing it. “At least you can buy your memorabilia back with that one withdrawal.”

  Vex licked his thumb and counted the money again. “Thanks, man. I really appreciate this. I didn’t mind selling that stuff to help, but...”

  “You love all your collectibles. I get it.” He stuffed the pants back into the duffel and pushed it under the seat.

  Cage was still bent over, naked from the waist down, when the flight attendant checked on them.