Steele City Blues: The Third Book in the Hell’s Belle Series (Hell's Belle 3)

by Karen Greco

  "Something funny, Sheen?" Robards barked.

  "Yes, sir," I said. "Just picturing the prisoner as a goat, sir."

  Frankie elbowed me in the side. "Stop mucking about," he grumbled.

  One of the other guards pulled Robards' attention to a closed-circuit television screen monitoring the room. I rubbed at my nose, feeling a sudden need to sneeze. When I pulled my hand away, I noticed blood on my finger, a finger that was also a hell of a lot smaller and had nails with Goth black glitter polish chipping off.

  "Crap," I said, looking at Frankie, whose own disguise melted away right before my eyes. He gaped at my changing appearance, and then turned to face away from the guards as he realized that it was happening to him too.

  I muttered the incantation that my grandfather taught me, but the spell didn't take. Dammit, why did I have to be such a crappy witch? I watched as Frankie's lanky frame replaced the stocky Ronny. The guards at the computer glanced our way and did a double take. Oh shit.

  Panicked, I tried the incantation again, my eyes darting around the room, searching for the closest weapon. They swept towards the ceiling and that's when I saw it was reinforced by iron bars, enough of them to snuff out the magic in any witch, especially a mediocre one. We were lucky Gramps’ spell didn't melt away the minute we stepped foot in the cell block.

  "What the hell?" Robards swore as he watched us finish our transformation from 'roided up prison guards back into our own bodies.

  "At least the spell was an illusion, so our clothes still fit," Frankie muttered, pulling on the collar of the poly-blend shirt.

  "Get them!" Robards screamed at the three guards, who came out of their stupor and realized that we weren't supposed to be in there.

  "It's her!" the towheaded guard furthest away shouted. He scrambled to put more distance between us, pointing.

  "What her?" Robards barked back at him.

  "The one Leila said to watch out for. The one we can't kill."

  "Well that's good news at least," Frankie said under his breath.

  "You got a price on your head, girly," Robards sneered.

  "How much?" I asked, stalling for time. Robards was blocking the exit and the only way out was through him.

  "Enough for an early retirement," he said. "Toss me Bertha, boys."

  One of the guards snatched a sawed off shotgun from the weapons cabinet and tossed it to his superior. Robards leveled the gun at us. His face flushed with adrenaline. His eyes became bright and yellow-tinged. Almost wolfish. He bared his canines, like a dog. I squinted when it looked like hair sprouted from his ears.

  I glanced at the other three guards, mind racing. Two of them exhibited the same symptoms. One was actually drooling. The third guard either didn't notice, or didn't care, that his coworkers were exhibiting werewolf symptoms.

  "Um, Frankie," I muttered.

  "I see it," he said, eyes darting around the room, voice low. "They aren't human."

  "They aren't werewolves either," I said.

  "They're—" Frankie started.

  "Mistakes," I finished for him, my voice barely above a whisper.

  Frankie took a defensive posture and glared at Robards. "Looks like you enjoy this line of work way too much to retire."

  "Great benefits," he retorted. "Now why don't you bring that perky ass my way, girly, and let's not have any trouble."

  "You sure Leila's good for the money?" I asked. Hell, she better be. Did they even understand what she’d done to them?

  "She's got Bertrand's bankroll," said the towheaded guard, the only one that didn't exhibit lycanthropic symptoms. He didn't look old enough to use the semiautomatic rifle held in his unsteady hands.

  "You don't talk, rookie," Robards barked. "Got it?"

  Frankie and I glanced at each other. "My mother put a price on my head and Bertrand's fronting the reward money?" I muttered to him. "Nice."

  Robards had our exit blocked, and now his lackey guards moved to block the way into the cells, not that we'd be able to get through the locks now with the illusion spell broken. Frankie and I were trapped in a room with loads and loads of firearms and three half-werewolves. Not a big deal for Frankie, but the guns made me skittish. And so did the wolves. My mother didn't want me dead, but she didn't say anything about undead.

  Frankie rocked back on his heels. "So what do we do, gentlemen? It appears we are at an impasse."

  "What do we do?” Robards scoffed. "We haul her ass in and you...well, you we kill."

  A wicked grin crossed Frankie's face and the blue of his irises brightened. "I hoped you'd say that."

  The three guards blocking the cell door watched Frankie, and their expressions turned from confusion to horror as his fangs grew out.

  "Oh my god, is that a vampire?" cried out the human guard, dropping the rifle. It clattered on the cement floor.

  "What the hell are you doing?" one of his compadres cried out.

  "The bullets are lead," he admitted. His lower lip trembled as a fanged out grin stretched over Frankie's face.

  "Mine aren't," yelled his friend, who immediately sprayed the room with silver bullets from his Glock 41 Gen4. I dropped to the floor, noting that Robards took cover under a desk.

  Frankie advanced on the guard, but the guy kept shooting. Frankie's shoulder jerked back and I heard the sizzle of silver against his skin. But it didn't slow him down. Based on the glow coming from his eyes, it pissed him off. He yanked the gun out of the guard's hand and pushed him against the cabinet. The guard lashed out at Frankie with barely formed claws, making a gash along Frankie's cheek. Frankie lifted the hybrid up by the neck as he fought like a feral dog, squirming in Frankie's hand and snapping his teeth at the air. Liquid spread along the front of the man's pants just before Frankie plunged his fangs into his carotid artery.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the chubby guard digging through another weapons cabinet. Triumphant, he pulled out a stake and with a warrior cry, rushed at Frankie, ready to plunge it into Frankie's back. I leapt from the floor and tackled him before the wood could make contact. I had him on his back, pressing the hand with the stake against the floor. He was bucking his hips, trying to launch me off of him. While I adjusted my balance, he rolled, pinning me under him. He raised the stake, and a bit of drool hung from his lower lip, slowly making its way towards my body. Gross.

  "Not supposed to kill me," I said, a slight lisp creeping in as my fangs shoved through my gums.

  His fight-or-flight kicked in and the missive to bring me in alive was forgotten. He lifted the stake above his head, ready to plunge it into me. As he brought it down towards my chest, I grabbed his hand and twisted until I heard the snap of bone. The stake dropped out of his limp grip. I landed a right hook to his jaw and he toppled off me, landing on his back. He snatched up the dropped Glock and took a haphazard shot. The bullet whizzed over my shoulder just as I got to my feet.

  "Stop shooting," I said through a clenched jaw. He didn't listen. But his nerves made him one hell of a lousy shot. The next one embedded in the ceiling.

  My sensitive ears picked up Robards' grumbling, "You want something done right..." and then the pump of a shotgun — good old Bertha. I had scant time to get the hell out of the way of the pellet of bullets that exploded out of the gun. My left shoulder jerked back, and the burn that sliced through my skin told me that I wasn't fast enough.

  "Nina!" Frankie shouted over the loud popping of the gunshots.

  I turned to see the guard I’d taken down lunging for me, his broken right hand hanging limp. He must have been a lefty because he snatched me by the neck with ease. He yanked me towards him, his set of sharp teeth coming at my neck. I shifted fast to avoid his bite, but I misjudged the angle and yelped as his teeth sunk into my cheek. Frankie grabbed him from behind and pressed his mouth to the man's jugular. Blood sprayed across my face as Frankie's teeth found the guard's artery.

  I pressed the sleeve of my shirt against my face, feeling a chunk of flesh missing. I stumb
led a little, on edge from the werewolf toxin in my system. It wouldn't kill me, but it could mess with me. The neurotoxin in a vampire bite relaxed the body, since they preferred to feed on docile humans. A werewolf bite produced anxiety that caused their prey to run. They enjoyed the chase.

  Already on edge, the bite had me downright twitchy. Robards was right in front of me, and my eyes narrowed, taking in his wolfy grin and that damn Bertha. "You shot me," I said, baring my own small fangs.

  Robards' expression turned from triumphant to troubled. His fingers fumbled as he reloaded the shotgun. He pumped it and another shot blasted out. The pellets hit me in my side, and I yelped in pain as the blessed silver bullets settled into my flesh with a pop and sizzle.

  "Son of a bitch!" I yelled as a mix of pain and adrenaline ripped through me. "You shot me again!"

  My anxiety reaching fever pitch, I lunged at him, gnashing my fangs as I pushed forward, ignoring the agonizing burn of the bullets that my body was rejecting. Expelling bullets was almost worse than taking them in. He tried to reload the gun again, but the bullets slipped from his shaking hands. He grabbed the weapon by the barrel and held it like a club.

  A warrior cry came from the human guard, and the terror of the situation broke him out of his panicked stupor. Brandishing the stake that the chubby guard dropped when I broke his wrist, he jumped on my back and wrapped his arms around me, attempting to stab my chest.

  I flipped him over my back and he landed with a thud on the floor in front of me. I stepped on his chest to hold him down, while Robards held the stock of the gun and swung it at me like a baseball bat. With my focus on the man under my boot, the barrel connected with my one good cheek, and blood from a broken tooth sprayed out of my mouth as my head swung from the momentum of the hit. The guard under me clawed at my leg, pulling me off balance while Robards came at me again. I kicked my foot down into the human guard's face, bone cracking. He howled in pain, hands releasing me to put pressure on his broken nose. I landed another kick to his head, knocking him unconscious.

  Robards and I faced off. This time he threw the gun at me, taking the opportunity to grab his sidearm while I deflected the shotgun away. He aimed and shot in rapid succession, each bullet slamming into my gut. How many times was this asshole going to plug me? I roared in pain as he emptied his chamber, then the gun clicked empty. My fangs fully distended, adrenaline pumping, I leapt on top of him.

  I sank my fangs into the tight flesh of his neck. Hot blood poured into my mouth. As soon as I swallowed, I felt energy pulse through my body, filling the hunger that gnawed at me since that damn witch blade cut into my skin and sent my vampire nature into overdrive. I pulled away a chunk of his neck with my teeth. His screams were cut short as blood spurted out of his artery and settled in his open throat, drowning him. I spit out his chunk of flesh on the floor and turned to Frankie, who tossed the guard he just downed onto the floor.

  "Do you want to talk about that?" he asked, wiping his blood-crusted mouth and nodding at Robards' limp body.

  "I think we better get out of here," I replied, doubled over as my body rejected the bullets that Robards sprayed into my gut. It totally hurt more coming out.

  "You okay?" Frankie asked, grabbing me by the shoulder before I fell over. He propped me against the wall and ripped the shirt away from my midriff. "They're almost all out. Give it a minute and you should feel better."

  I gritted my teeth and nodded.

  "I mean, you've never bit anyone to death before," he said. "Maybe we should to talk about it?"

  I pressed my hand against the wound on my stomach, feeling the skin knit itself back together under my fingers. The intolerable pain dulled to uncomfortable. "There's nothing to talk about. He wasn't human. I'm fine."

  Frankie nodded, even though he looked like he didn't quite believe me. "Problem," he said. "We are no longer facial recognition software approved."

  "We'll take one of them with us," I said, pointing at the guard just under his feet.

  "Good on you then," he said, hoisting the human up from the floor. He saw his mangled nose and dropped him back down. "Not that one."

  "Grab Robards," I said, rooting in the cabinet for guns. I tossed one to Frankie and then brandished two Glocks for myself.

  Frankie caught the piece and shoved it in the small of his back. He nodded at the witches. "What about them?"

  "They're too weak to get out on their own. We know where they are, and Dr. O's behind that iron door. We'll come back and get everyone out. Even the wolves." I shuddered as I thought about Leila transferring the werewolf gene into her human guards, screwing up both the humans and lycans in the process.

  Frankie checked his bullets. "You think Leila will move Dr. O?"

  I glanced at the massive door blocking us from Dr. O and shook my head. "She underestimates us."

  "We underestimated her, too," he said, and I knew he was thinking about the failed experiments littered all over the room. "Ready to go out there?"

  I bent over Robards' body and searched through his pockets. Once I located the key card, Frankie picked up the dead weight.

  "It'd be easier if we took his head and left the rest," I said, still edgy from the wolf toxin working its way through my body.

  "Feeling awfully vampy right now, aren't you?" Frankie said. "Come on, let's get on with it. I anticipate we'll be shooting our way out of this place. Right bit of fun, isn't it?"

  Frankie grinned, eyes still glowing, fangs still out. With blood all over his face, he looked downright diabolical. It was kind of a sexy look for him.

  I pressed the grip of the Glock against my forehead as I followed Frankie, who dragged Robards' body behind him. It'd be easier if we took his head? Kind of a sexy look for him? What the hell was I becoming?

  11

  "Let me get this right," Mary Jane fumed. She was pacing the floor of the factory apartment. "You killed....no, not killed. You massacred three guards in one prison block—"

  "They weren’t human," I interrupted.

  She ignored me and kept going, "—and then shot up 15 more while you ran out of the place. You ripped the head off one of the top commanding officers in the prison, leaving his body at the top of a flight of stairs. And you shot the deputy warden in the leg on the way out. Did I miss anything?"

  "We left the human guard in the cellblock alive," I added.

  Mary Jane glared at both of us, her face turning red. "It was a simple job. Go in, get intel, get out."

  "We weren't expecting the guards to be part werewolf," I snapped, taking in her beet red face. The perfectly put together woman was rankled. It was kind of nice to see. "We know where Dr. O is being held. Mission accomplished."

  "You know they'll probably move him now, right?" Max said, running his palm over his face.

  "No way they are moving him," I argued. "They have him in a magic-tight iron cell. Must have been built at the same time as the prison."

  "Without that iron around him, his magic could blow the entire prison," Darcy added, peeking at Mary Jane from behind her laptop screen, eyes wide. It was her first time meeting the new boss, and poor Darce was all about first impressions. So far, this wasn’t a good one.

  Matty dropped onto the couch beside her and sighed heavily. "This was supposed to be date night."

  She gave him a pointed look and tilted her head towards him. "Sorry, babe, but I have to work." She rubbed the inside of his thigh.

  I poured out a cup of coffee and sat at the large farmhouse kitchen table. I barely recognized my apartment, housed on the ground floor of an old factory building in a forgotten part of the city. Darcy was working and living out of the place while I crashed in Babe's apartment above the bar. My sparsely furnished apartment was now crammed with work stations and cabinets. It hummed with computers, surveillance cameras and, if my eyes were not mistaken, a couple of drones.

  I watched Darcy’s hand move back and forth on Matty’s leg, and wondered what it was like to be so comfortable with so
meone that you just touched them without putting any real thought behind it. Just a natural, everyday occurrence. I glanced at Max pacing the room, bloated with anger. When I thought about touching him, my hand recoiled. Living with that Berserker curse was doing something ugly to him.

  Meanwhile Frankie was stretched out on the floor, legs crossed at the ankles. His slightly-longer-than-shoulder-length hair was up in a man bun. He opened and closed a switchblade, his fidgeting a nervous tick. "That entire bloody cellblock was filled with iron. Iron shackles, iron doors."

  Gramps settled beside me at the table with a mug of coffee. He pulled a bottle of bourbon out of his Baja hoodie and topped off his java. He glanced at Mary Jane. "The iron kills the magic. The more iron, the harder it is for a witch to use magic. Not a lot of witches can work in that environment."

  "So the iron is why Nina’s magic failed?" Mary Jane asked, her tall legs making short work of the apartment as she paced.

  I bristled at her words. I was not the world’s worst witch.

  "That's it," Gramps said, putting his hand under my chin and tilting my face to get a better look at the bite left by the werewolf. My skin knitted back together while we were escaping the prison, but the bite looked like it was going to scar. "And that's why they have your good doctor Lachlan in an iron box. Druid magic could break through whatever iron's around the cellblock doors, but not if he's surrounded by it on all sides."

  Mary Jane stopped pacing to stare at me. "How the hell do I explain what you two just did to those prison guards to my bosses? You just took out a bunch of our own people!"

  "Not exactly your people," Frankie said, running the knife under his fingernails. I grimaced, knowing that he was probably cleaning out chunks of prison guard flesh. "They’re all working for Leila in there."

  "I thought our overlords wanted this done by any means necessary," I said.

  "You can't just go in there and massacre staff. Those were government employed people," she griped.

  "Some of them weren’t people anymore," I snapped, slamming my hands down on the worn wood of my farmhouse table. I glanced at Max, who at least held his rage in check. Mary Jane on the other hand looked like she was ready to blow.