by Inez Kelley
“Money talks,” Vike said. “If you have to, bargain with drugs or liquor. It keeps them honest.”
The Righteous looked at each other, disbelief stark on their face, but Sun Tzu kept his attention on Nomad. “Pay the outcasts?”
“Exactly. Those are going to be the ones who know when people just disappear, when shit’s going down that no one calls the police on, who see stuff nice people don’t acknowledge. Leeches are stupid, for the most part. They like the bigger cities for easy-pickings. Check every major metropolis and make nightly rounds. It doesn’t take that long when Leaping.”
“This is how you hunt the Third? By dealing in the filth of humanity?”
Dray nodded. “If it offends your morals, just get arrested and listen to the cops talk.”
“That’s how we used to hunt the Third. Now we use a computer program Myth designed to track assaults, missing persons and police scanners from around the globe.” Rex lit a cigarette and blew a tight stream of smoke toward the Righteous. “We have an App for that.”
Vike glanced at the Egyptian’s…diaper? “You don’t look like you’re ready for the World Wide Web. Stick with the hands-on method.”
“We can learn today’s machinery.” Sun Tzu stiffened.
Nomad stuck his finger in his ear and wiggled it around. “Sure, in a couple years. Do it the old-fashioned way a while and soak up today’s nuances. Figure out how to dress and talk. Buy a Big Mac, drink a Coke, watch CNN. Then you can join the iPhone generation.”
Vike’s phone buzzed again. Nomad snarled. “As you can see, Vike is all up in the iPhone shit.”
Erik, call me ASAP. A’s house was broken into. ~L
Biting back concern, Vike pocketed the phone. Annie’s new place was a dive. It could be just normal punks looking for a quick score or it could be the Third trying to lure Lacy to Annie’s side. He rolled his head, cracking his neck. Lacy was safe for the moment. He needed to keep his focus on the Righteous.
“Word to the wise.” Rex pointed to the female. “Put a shirt on her or those tits are going to draw attention. Her legs aren’t bad either.”
Vike made sure to catch the Master’s eye. “Don’t Leap into view of any cameras. It fucks with the mortal mind when people appear and disappear.”
Paper rustled as Dray opened a roll of Spree candy, popping a purple one onto his tongue. “Don’t engage a Leech on camera either. And don’t tell anyone your real names.”
“You mean lie?” The humbly dressed man bristled.
Vike shrugged. “You wanted to know how we did it. We told you. Take it or leave it.”
Questions peppered the air like buckshot.
“What is a camera?” asked the woman, her arms now crossed over her nipples.
“How do we obtain the proper clothing? What payment is used?”
“How does an eye-fone work? What is an eye-fone?”
“Where do we search for drunks and hoo-kers? What is a hoo-ker?”
“How do we know which city to start searching?”
“Big Mac? Who is this?”
Nomad rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Crispy Christ on a cracker, don’t you people know anything?”
“We know we’re cleaning up your mess,” the humble man snapped.
Before Vike could blink, the man fell to the ground with Nomad’s dagger in his throat. For a breath, no one moved.
Sun Tzu’s hand shot out with viper-speed and Nomad slammed to the ground. Omen charged. Sun Tzu threw his arm up to protect his face, but went down beneath a snarling mass of black muscle. Weapons met as the Forsaken and the Righteous clashed.
Vike aimed low, catching the Egyptian across one thigh. Ropey muscle split and spewed blood that shone black in the starlight. He ducked as an angled sword sailed toward his head. Damn, it felt good to beat some sense into the Righteous. His sword sang. A fist jabbed into his gut, but he was ready, jerking his elbow into an exposed nose. Bone crunched.
Behind him, Rex and the woman crossed blades, the clangs ringing like deadly bells. Dray was having the time of his life. His laughter overshadowed everything as he dodged between the two hulking Righteous Vike hadn’t gotten a look at. He still couldn’t tell what era or region they came from. He was too busy smashing an Egyptian into a length of cotton.
A moonbeam sparkled on the thin knife that plunged into Omen’s neck, but the dog never slowed. His huge head shook and a chunk of flesh tore from the Master’s arm. A shot cracked with a flash of bright orange. Everyone froze.
Still on his ass, Nomad leveled the Glock at Sun Tzu. “Omen, heel.”
Releasing his quarry, the dog trotted back to his owner’s side and sat with a loud pant. The mutt looked like he was smiling, gruesome blood-smeared teeth visible beneath his muzzle.
“Everyone take a fucking chill.” Nomad climbed to his feet, but kept his gun trained on the Master. “You and the robe, go take a God damned nap. You’re bleeding all over the grass.”
Sun Tzu cradled his blood-streaked arm. “We’ve too much to learn to —”
Nomad fired. Dirt kicked up beside Sun Tzu’s leg. “I said, go take a nap.”
“What is that?” The Egyptian panted. “A weapon?”
“This?” The black handgun seemed to suck in the moonlight, devour it and still look deadly. “This is a Glock 19 semiautomatic nine millimeter with a fifteen round capacity. Just a little something I like to play with.”
The Egyptian’s gaze locked tight on the barrel. “Does it kill?”
Nomad shot him. A small bullet hole indented his forehead and blood trickled down his nose before he fell back. “You tell me, does that feel like you’re dying?”
Vike winced as the guy started to moan. Bullets couldn’t kill any Awoken but they hurt like a bitch. Talk about a splitting headache.
“Your point is clear. We are unprepared.” The Master rose with far too much poise for a bleeding man. “I’ll return with my injured to heal. You take the others and teach them these things.”
Nomad’s jaw swung open. “We’re just rolling in the bat-shit crazy today, aren’t we?”
“Sela has forbidden us from engaging any more Leeches.” Vike sent his sword to his arm. “That’s your job now.”
Sun Tzu stared. “There should be no battle until information is gathered. The Righteous called me a fool for seeking to learn from the Forsaken, claimed you would lie and misdirect us. I thought better of you. Even the dogs of war have talents. However, if you are too busy doing Sela’s bidding to fulfill your vows to The Creator…”
Sucking on his tongue, Nomad shoved the gun in his pants and turned, drawing the Forsaken closer. The Righteous moved back, helping the injured to stand and pretending to give them privacy. Omen didn’t budge. His canine sights were trained on Sun Tzu’s back.
“Talk,” Nomad demanded.
“I’d like to shove those vows up his Asian ass.”
“Not a big help, Dray.” Vike spat.
Nomad cocked his head then snarled over his shoulder. “I know you want to bite his ass again but sit. Stay.”
Omen huffed, his leathery lips flapping.
“Yes, I mean it, crotch-noser. Let it go.”
They were all used to Nomad’s silent conversations with the dog so none of them gave it a second thought. They merely tightened their small circle.
Rex dropped his voice to a whisper. “Technically, it skims the edge of Sela’s order to leave the Leeches to the Righteous. But between you and me, those pricks don’t have a snowball’s chance of finding a single Leech without some training.”
“This is not my problem,” Nomad snarled. The phone rang again. “For fuck’s sake, answer the goddamned phone, Vike.”
He tugged it from his pocket. “Lacy’s just worried. Annie’s house was broken into.”
“I don’t give a tinker’s dick. Shut her up.”
Swiping the screen, he brought the phone to his ear. “Hey babe, I’m tied up right now… Yeah, I got it… Is Annie okay?.. So she w
asn’t home?... Look, I’m not too far from Timberton, let me finish this up and then I’ll swing by and check on her, okay?... Sure… All right, be home soon as I can.”
He punched End.
“Everything cool?” Rex asked.
The nagging hen-pecked noose tightened Vike’s throat, but he nodded. “Yeah.”
“Good, now let’s get back to work,” Nomad grumbled.
“If we show the glee club how to do this, you know there’s going to be a fight. I say we do it.” Dray ran his fingers through his long hair. “I’m tired of sitting on my ass and looking at maps, digging in the dirt and bagging dust. Let’s go kick Leech ass and teach these dicks how it’s done.”
Vike silently agreed. The Forsaken were chomping at the bit for action. They needed battle like an addict needed drugs. His skin itched with the need for sweat, for the burn of muscles, the roar of blood rushing. He punched a few buttons on his phone. The display made his gloves glow with pale green light.
“Warsaw has a higher than normal streak of missing people and the police radios there are hopping. Mysterious blood splatters have been noted in seven different alleyways.”
“Beat down time!” Dray grinned.
“Uh, guys.” Rex rolled his tongue around his cheek. “There’s this chick in Barcelona who has an ass like bubble wrap. You can’t help but pinch it. So I have a date.”
Nomad scoffed. “You always have a date, Wonder Prick.”
“You’re just jealous.” Rex stepped back with a wink. “I’ll go check Annie’s place for Vike, then go do my own thang. See ya.”
He Leaped. Vike cracked his neck with a loud pop, loosening the muscles in his back. Nearly salivating at the prospect of action, he blinked in confusion as Nomad shoved soul-bags into his hands.
“What’re you doing?”
The bearded man was not in a good mood. He slapped the last bag from his pocket against Vike’s stomach. “Apparently Dray and I are playing teachers to Huey, Dewey and Nipples back there. You’re taking the soul-bags back to H2Q.”
Vike juggled the leather bags. “What? No.”
“Dude, we got this.” More bags piled in his hands as Dray emptied his pockets.
Vike shoved the pile at Nomad. “I want to fight.”
One leather bag fell to the ground. Scooping it up, Nomad smacked it into the pile. “I cannot begin to describe the immensity of the fuck I do not give right now. You have Lacy on the brain. Get out of here.”
“I’m fine,” he snarled. “Rex’ll check Annie and we’ll teach the Righteous.”
“No, we’ll teach the Righteous. You are going home and playing the charming pussy whipped boyfriend a little more.”
“You’re a fucking dick, Mad.”
“And I’ve got the balls to prove it. Go home.”
Chilled air blew harsh against Vike’s skin but the cold couldn’t penetrate the impotent anger firing in his gut. Sun Tzu and the other two injured Righteous Leaped out first. Nomad and Dray spent a minute talking to the others. Dray handed the topless woman his sweatshirt. Her jaw dropped seeing his arm tattoos, but she pulled the shirt over her head. The group Leaped, leaving Vike alone, shaking in barely suppressed rage.
Clutching the soul-bags, he Leaped, materializing in H2Q’s quad. Dusk was just falling here and his eyes lifted. The windows of his apartment glowed with welcoming light. He was a warrior, a fighter, delegated to placating a woman while his teammates fought without him. Because of Lacy.
He wanted to be angry at her, to find some way to blame her for castrating his power, but he couldn’t. The only thing he felt toward her was softness. Even now, knowing his friends were fighting without him, his mouth ached for her kiss.
Fear chased up his spine, colder than any wind. Was he pussy whipped? Had he fallen into the same deadly trap that had ended his first life? It hadn’t quite been a month since she’d fallen into his life and now he barely recognized the man he’d become.
He crept into H2Q through the library door, slinking to the elevators like a guilty thief. No one was in the Hall of Infamy, the torches cold and dark. He’d not been summoned so his clothing didn’t change as he crossed the marble floor. The low electric lights let him see well enough to dump the soul-bags on the altar.
Sela would break Samael’s torturous hold and store them peacefully in the Dregs, the Forsaken’s version of the Sacred Wall. It filled five rooms so far, each one stacked high with crystal boxes now containing dead Soul-leeches. Even they deserved more than the erasure of kareth.
His gaze fell on Gen’s box in the Sacred Niche.
“I think I fucked up, Gen.”
He could nearly hear the Mongol’s voice. That shit can’t lead to anywhere but hurt.
“I’m screwed in the head or something. I know better than to let another woman rule over me. But I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“The worst enemy is never a fighter, it’s a lover.”
“She makes me feel like…like I’m better than I really am.”
“Wish in one hand, shit in the other, blah, blah, blah.”
“I played the charming thing to the hilt, you know? But I’m not playing anymore. I am different around her. She just…expects me to be and so I am. At least with her. It’s not real, right? I’m not a hero. I’m the bad guy, the villain, the bastard. Aren’t I?”
There was no answer. Unexpended adrenaline surged through his veins with a burn. He took the elevator up one floor then strode down the hall to the gym, deliberately keeping his mind blank as he stripped down to his boxers. The gym’s steel door drowned out the pulse of heavy metal in rhythmic sets. He set the rowing machine to its highest level and stroked the hell out of it, channeling his frustration into throwing more power into his arms.
Pussy whipped. The very phrase grated on him. He’d been pussy whipped once, letting his devotion for his wife shape his decisions, his plans, his future. Never again.
So many men had lost wives, good wives, to childbirth that he’d counted himself lucky. Hildy had been strong. She ran his households with an iron fist, raised his children properly, managed his affairs when he was a’viking.
Sweat dripped into his eyes and he blinked the sting away. She was a beauty, all long golden hair and dancing brown eyes. Her laugh had tickled him, enchanted him, enthralled him. But the echo of her tears replayed in his mind in an endless loop.
One thing. I ask one tiny thing and you refuse me. Every thought, every action, every breath I have is for you. So many times I’ve been to the birthing bed for you and still you treat me as a biting flea, something to be crushed and shoved aside. Why do I love you, Eiríkr? Why don’t you love me?
He had loved her. Hildy’s tears had always cut him deeper than any blade.
Arms quivering with exertion, he switched to the incline bench and grunted through sit-ups, clinging to the burn that radiated through his torso. It helped to mask the shame. Clarity of time and his death had shown him how weak he’d been. Her love was a poison, slowly leeching into every fiber of his body.
Cold winter nights had brought bitter winds and made the hearth fire a welcome place. She’d hand him a steaming cup of honeyed mead and rub his sore shoulders, her lyrical voice whispering all the glories that awaited him, awaited them, awaited their children if only he could do this one little thing. It had never stopped at one little thing. He’d made her a queen and she asked for more. He’d given her everything he was and still she cried. It wasn’t enough.
Looking back, he saw himself fall victim to her schemes and goals, her plots for social advancement, for gold and recognition. His love had blinded him and bound him to her like unbreakable chains. She made him a puppet, a puppet that succeeded, that flourished, that killed.
He wasn’t without guilt. His nature had always been violent, laudable in his time, but with her urging, he’d crossed boundaries no decent man should ever cross. He’d paid for those atrocities. The cost was cheap enough, only his blood, his life and his soul.
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He wiped down the machine before he moved to the stair climber. He’d climbed the Empire State building three times before the motor ground to a halt.
A frown tugged at Myth’s mouth as he dropped the plug. “Whatever demon you’re chasing isn’t going to get caught that way.”
“Whatever. Spot me.”
Myth took his place as Vike slid more round discs onto the bar and lay on the flat bench. He did only four reps before Myth leaned down, putting his entire weight on the bar and forcing it down. Vike struggled to keep it from crushing his neck.
Myth was six-six and solid as a rock, but Vike still out-weighed him by at least twenty pounds of muscle. Gravity however, didn’t give a damn. The sweaty bar pushed lower until it brushed his windpipe. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Making sure I have your attention. You and I need a little chit-chat.” The weight bar suddenly snapped back to the rest guards. Vike shot upright, but Myth halted him with a hand on his shoulder. “What the hell is eating you?”
“Nothing.”
“Wrong answer.” Careful blankness stretched across Myth’s face. “Lacy?”
“Back off.”
The snake-wielding hand smacked him in the back of the head. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass. Better men than you have tried and gotten their throats slit for it.”
Vike sprung to his feet. “Lick my ballsack. I’m not one of your slaves that you can shove around. I was every bit as royal as you were so back the fuck down.”
Inch by inch, Myth’s spine straightened until he stood proud and tall. “They called me two-thirds a god as well as a king. I ruled for over sixty years while you were tossed out on your whiny ass, with your thumb tucked in your mouth to muffle the whimpers. Do not shove your weak-assed crown in my face or I’ll make you eat it.”
Vike went nose to nose with him, hot breath speeding between his clenched teeth. It had been too long since he battled, since he felt the rush of aggression. He needed a fight, needed to purge the gnawing ache of futility from his marrow. “They called you a god because your mother was a temple slut.”
They clashed at the same instant. Myth went low, aiming for Vike’s gut, landing a solid punch that forced the air from his lungs. Vike went high, sending a chopping slice straight into the vulnerable muscles of the neck. A foot shot out at his left knee, buckling Vike’s leg then Myth struck hard at his face. Copper filled his mouth as his teeth knocked together. An elbow to the throat sent Myth over the weight bench.