Blood Hunt (Secret Magent Book 3)

by F. A. Bentley

  Doom and Damnation, XX Lisistrathiel.

  Chapter 3

  The Day of the Dead festival was in full swing when I got downtown. Skeleton costumes, lights, floats, and elaborate garbs as far as the eye could see. Hell, today spirits and Supernatural beings were being celebrated the whole mundane world over.

  Back where I come from we called Dia de los Muertos Halloween.

  Equal parts auspicious and ominous. Not that I had time to dwell on omens. I had a she-devil to find, and knowing her, she would not make this pleasant or easy for me.

  I made my way through the crowd of revelers, eyes scanning. The crowd was probably filled with Supernaturals hidden in plain sight. Humans aren’t the only ones with holidays, after all.

  “Excuse me,” I said, bumping into a hard shoulder.

  I froze up when I did. Just for a split second. Recognition thrilled through me as I recognized the tall man I’d bumped shoulders with. Cold brown eyes. Black top hat. Magical rod thinly disguised as a walking stick.

  “Pardon me,” Ajay Baron muttered, letting his eyes rest on me for a brief second before moving past.

  Nine Towers didn’t have an iron grip on all things magical in the New World like they did in Europe. There were numerous ‘big time’ covens that had cropped up during the post colonial world and posed as major competitors.

  Baron Ajay Baron, belonged to the Mabinoya Magi. The largest and most assertive of the covens. If a hot shot sorcerer like Baron was here, then that meant that the Magi weren’t far behind.

  He didn’t seem to notice who I was though, and before he had a chance to put a second thought into me, I was already lost in the crowd.

  The center-most float was having a costume contest. Men and women were dressed in bejeweled clothes, loud colors, and make up enough to make them the spitting image of the living dead.

  On the stage now was a large snake like costume replete with feathers for scales and a long tongue hanging out the front. It reminded me of the dragon costumes you’d see during Chinese New Year. The crowd loved the serpentine slithering. Whoops and cheers went on for a while as the snake dance finally came to an end and the performer bowed their head.

  Must have been a take on the local feathered serpent God: Pretzel something or other? His name didn’t matter. What mattered was that the person in the costume was surely Lisistrathiel. She wouldn’t dare miss a chance to dress up as a biblical serpent for Halloween.

  The snake slipped off stage, slithered over to me, and then hesitated. She must have seen me too. The snake brushed up beside me, paused, and then I heard a whisper from deep within the costume.

  “Hey, don’t look now but I think you’re in danger and--”

  “My life is always in danger,” I retorted. “I’d be uncomfortable if it wasn’t. Nice costume. Snake on the outside to match snake on the inside.”

  The costume flinched. “How did you know?”

  “Skip the coy act and tell me what you know, Lis. There’s trouble brewing and I’d rather nip it in the bud before the witch’s cauldron bubbles over and onto me.”

  “But--”

  The conversation was cut short when I felt a sharp poke in the small of my back. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a pistol pressed against me.

  “I come hunting for rabbits, and instead find a mutt ripe for target practice. Don’t bother turning around. I’d hate to rain blood on this parade.”

  It seems the Mabinoya Magi didn’t overlook me after all. I held my hands at my sides.

  “Here to enjoy the party, Baron Baron?” I asked.

  A look over my shoulder confirmed it. Ajay Baron and a pair of thugs wearing sunglasses had pistols trained on me. The crowd was fully enthralled with the stage and didn’t noticed a thing. Apparently they were voting by cheer who the best costume was.

  “It was looking to be a bust ‘til I caught sight of you. Unless I’m mistaken, you’re Charles Locke, the Hellhound my little birdies have been telling me about,” Ajay replied.

  It’s hard being popular.

  “Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” I said. “I don’t suppose a candied skull from that stand over there will persuade you to walk away? I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.”

  “Real smooth. Not many keep calm when they have a forty five pointed at their spine. Truth be told, Mr. Locke, any kind of skull would be fine in my books. Candy, Mundane, even yo--.”

  I heard a crack that sounded a lot like a thunder strike, and was nearly toppled over by a rush of force from just behind me. I whirled about to see the snake costume suddenly punch Ajay’s right hand goon in the side of the head hard enough to give the goon on the left a concussion. All three of them were sent sprawling.

  The snake’s head turned to me and shouted, “Run!”

  “With pleasure.”

  I grabbed her wrist and made a break for the side streets as fast as I could. Gunshots shattered the peace and screams filled the air as Mundanes hit the deck or ran over each other to try and get away.

  “Wait, I need to go back,” came the voice from the snake costume. “They’re going to--”

  “They’re going to follow because I am the one they’re after. If we run then we’ll lead them away from the Mundanes and save a whole lot more lives than staying and giving them reasons to fire into the crowd on the off chance they’ll hit us.”

  “How can you be so sure?” she asked.

  My instincts shuddered. I turned to shoot a questioning look at Lis. “What the Hell’s the matter with you?” I demanded.

  I’d never heard Lis so surprised. Or concerned, for that matter. And she got violent too. Lis usually limits herself to mental trauma. Never physical.

  “What’s the matter with me?” She shot back. “What’s the matter with you? Wait, why are we stopping?”

  “Ambush positions. Never bring a gun to a knife fight. They’re useless in close quarters.”

  Our backs were pressed to a brick wall painted bright purple. Just past a narrow alley that sported a perfect dead angle. They’d never know we were here until they got hit with enough magic to to kill them twice over.

  “Wow, this is some clever thinking,” the snake costume said.

  Footsteps echoed down the alley. Three, four, possibly five pursuers. The key was in the timing.

  From my belt I drew a stark white wand. It was one foot and one inch long, had a simple but elegant make to it, and had helped me through my fair share of life and death battles. I sucked in a deep breath, and sprung the ambush.

  It was time for the hunters to become the hunted.

  Chapter 4

  I willed my magic into my wand, and from the tip, a blade of violet arcana grew and hardened. Thin, lengthy, and extremely sharp; a wand-sword.

  The first goon that rushed passed the dead angle didn’t stand a chance. One flick of the hardened arcana saw his hamstrings severed. He fell head first into a puddle with a splash.

  The sound of a rifle cocking caught my ear, and I whirled about in time to slice the next goon’s submachine gun in two. Without a gun, he was just a guy like any other. I turned my attention to the next, just in time to duck beneath the deadly swipe of a combat knife.

  That’s when it went slightly wrong. Instead of acting like a normal disarmed Human and backing off or attempting to rearm, or even just panicking a moment, the second goon gave me the most colossal headbutt I’d ever been dealt. It was enough to send me sprawling, and send his sunglasses flying off.

  Realization washed over me when I saw his face minus sunglasses.

  The eyes were sewn shut. Thread and needle sewn shut. He looked utterly peaceful, as though sleepwalking through a pleasant dream. Without pausing for a second, the thug stepped forward to topple onto me and strangle me to death with hardly a care in the world for self preservation. Thick hands caught my throat in a death grip.

  They weren’t goons. They were zombie thralls. Not the living dead, but men and women who had been enchanted into a perma
nent sleep and then used as totally obedient, totally expendable shock troops and bodyguards for top bosses like Baron Baron.

  I was completely screwed, until the snake costume grabbed the back of the thrall’s skull and forcefully stood him up on his feet in an impressive display of brute force. In a flash, she kicked his head against the brick wall so hard that I thought I saw the stone crack.

  This was Lis, right?

  “The one with the gun!” she shouted to me, kicking another thrall in the gut hard enough that the zombie’s breath belched out of his lungs.

  I turned around in time to see the guy I’d hamstrung pull a pistol and aim at the snake costume’s flank. With a kick, I sent the pistol flying. He produced a combat knife from his rear pocket in the blink of an eye and nearly gashed my calf wide open. A swift dodge coupled with jamming my knee into his stomach saved him the trouble of resisting any longer.

  Down and out. Nine Towers one, Mabinoy nil.

  “That’s the last of them. You’re really good. Have I mentioned that? You’re a kicker of butts,” the woman in the snake costume spoke.

  I looked over my shoulder to see her stretching an arm overhead playfully, like she’d had a kink in her shoulder from all the kung fu she’d just unleashed. The snake costume’s paper machier, however, did not survive the fight.

  If this was Lis, she had certainly shapeshifted into a different look than usual. While I was six foot two, she currently stood at about five ten. She was dressed in a feathery green bikini top and fashionably shredded blue jeans. Her hair was brackish brown, her hands and legs were well toned, and her abdomen, in full view due to the skimpiness of her bikini, had the barest outline of lean abs on it. Her hips in particular were dynamite.

  “Jesus, Mary, and the Carpenter, you certainly know how to play to a man’s tastes.”

  “Me?” she asked all shy like.

  “You can drop the act. It’s almost unsettling how good you are at pretending to be someone completely different.”

  “But--”

  “Ah, but we’re in public, right? Which means that you don’t want to shape shift so carelessly despite your mastery of blending in. Fine. Come with me. I remember there being a hotel at the end of this street. We should disappear before more of the Mabinoy show up.”

  “Sure, but isn’t this a bit sudden? Moving too quickly?”

  “They might have been on the lookout for me for a while. Standing still is a quick and easy way to get yourself killed,” I replied.

  Again leading her by the wrist, I took her down a block through back alleys. The second we got in front of the hotel I’d caught sight of, she froze up like I just told her I would renounce my evil ways and become a priest or a humble missionary.

  “Hey, uh, this is a motel though isn’t it? A telo? We can’t just…” Lis hesitated.

  I perked an eyebrow. “Telo?”

  “A uh. A hotel for, you know. Not staying the night. For…”

  My eyes widened. My eyebrows rose up high. The vacationer’s website featuring helpful words and slang from the locals suddenly manifested in my mind and from the list a single word stood out.

  Motel: Noun. An informal term for any Central American hotel designed exclusively for the purposes of having hot, heavy sex in.

  “That would certainly explain the racy pictures on the website,” I muttered darkly. “No choice. In we go.”

  In we went. Second floor, third door on my left. It looked exactly like I thought it would. Huge bed. Big TV set. Flavored condoms next to the ash tray. Toys in the closet. Bible in the night table’s drawer. For irony purposes, of course.

  “All right. We’re all private now. Take off the getup and get to talking.”

  “Wait, hang on. This is crazy. This is going way too fast,” she replied.

  “My life in a nutshell,” I replied. “Nine Towers want’s me to kill some genius magician that came back from the dead. The Magi have their fingers in the pie and now they know I’m here and that I’m ripe to be swarmed by zombie thralls. I don’t have time for you to be playing coy.”

  I turned around to Lis, grabbed her by her bare shoulders, and said, “Hurry up.”

  “You Humans are always in such a rush. Fine. Just turn around. I can’t do it if you’re watching.”

  Turning around, I tapped my foot impatiently and tried to collect my thoughts. Why would the Magi be involved here? Were they planning on recruiting this Nagual onto their side in an attempt to shore up their power? Maybe the Archmagisters were right and they really are going to try and grab some of our protecto--

  “Okay. You can turn around now,” she mumbled.

  I did, but I wasn’t ready for what I saw. She looked just like before. Lean arms and hot hips. Green feathery top and brackish-brown hair. The change was from the waist down. Where there should have been human skin instead there were reptilian scales. Black and red with yellow bands, the scales were bright and beautiful.

  Something was wrong. Really horribly wrong.

  “Lis. What the Hell is going on?” I asked.

  She perked her head to the side, fixed her confused eyes on mine, and said, “Who’s Lis?”

  Before, I had a chance to reply, I heard a knock on the door.

  When I opened it, I found a tall black haired woman with molten yellow eyes and jagged eyebrows smiling at me.

  “Room service,” the real Lis said.

  Chapter 5

  Squeaky faucets turned as the mystery woman I’d mistaken for Lis started her shower. Cleaning off all the grime that a hard day’s fighting cakes onto you is important for good hygiene. Unfortunately, her strategic shower had the unfortunate side effect of leaving me alone with the bane of my existence.

  For the record, Lisistrathiel, the genuine article, looked to be in top form today. Not that I’d ever admit it out loud. She was currently wearing a smooth white sundress replete with a golden crucifix hanging from her neck. Obsidian black hair spilled over bare shoulders like coiled serpents, and toned legs ended in elegant heeled sandals which were surely expensive and surely bought with my credit card. It was hard to focus with that much danger to the power of sex appeal sitting next to me.

  The fact that she was both a Biblical Devil and wearing a shit eating grin on her face, however, made me deeply regret not having a water gun full of holy water on hand.

  “I can’t believe you actually mistook that girl for me,” Lis said, choking back laughter. “Did you get brain damage from all those picture books I made you read to orphans?”

  “Go to Hell,” I spat. “She acted like you. Initially at least. It could have been one of your elaborate tricks.”

  “Charlie, why would I ever trick you?”

  “To try and get me to do something damning enough to ensure I get sent to Hell whereupon you will be able to revel in my suffering forever and for all eternity,” I replied without missing a beat.

  “I mean besides that reason,” she replied.

  “Can you really blame me for my mistake though?” I asked. “I knew the moment I read your note that you’d be doing anything but keeping a low profile. So what better place to stand out than in a costume contest?”

  “You know me so well.”

  “So then where were you?” I demanded.

  “At the costume contest,” she replied. “Duh.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Fide et veritate, Charles Montgomery Locke,” she replied in fluent Latin. “Here. My costume’s in the bag if you want to get all Doubting Tom on me.”

  It was a costume all right. Kitschy paper machier bark that fit like a skirt, weird plastic branches with leaves, and a shiny red apple. I shot the she-devil my very best scowl.

  “You know, most people don’t actually covet the role of tree in school plays,” I said. “Six out of ten. Not enough finesse.”

  A sour look flitted over Lis’ face. “Aren’t your arms getting tired from holding on to that grudge for so long?”

  “I’d be more generou
s but my life is busy spiraling into a maelstrom of despair,” I retorted. “I have exactly one can of worms worth of problems that the Archmagisters, yes the Archmagisters themselves, have dropped in my lap. And I’ll be damned if I know where to even begin with--”

  “Hey. Charlie,” Lis said.

  “What?”

  “Relax.”

  I opened my mouth, reply already barbed, but I held back at the last moment. I sucked in a deep breath. No need to get uppity. She’s right. Chill.

  I exhaled. Lisistrathiel might be the lead actress in my worst nightmare, but despite being a living breathing reminder that I have sinned and will likely suffer for eternity as punishment, she was remarkably reliable. In the cutthroat world of sorcerous wet work, full of betrayal and laughably short lifespans, Lis was the only person who I actually trusted enough to talk to about my problems.

  Her status as my sole confidant is also probably a good measure for how messed up my life is.

  “Feeling better?” Lis asked.

  “A bit.”

  “Good. So, business you said. Wanna hear the leads I conjured up?” Lis asked.

  I’d known her for almost half my life. And I was certainly more familiar with her than anyone else, Human or otherwise. Despite all that, I knew next to nothing about her. She was a Devil, she was out to get me in a really round about way, and her sole purpose in life seemed to be ruining my good time. You don’t hang out with someone like Lis for more than a decade without becoming curious about her.

  “No. Now you’ve got me interested,” I said. “We can talk business, but first, let me ask you something.”

  Jagged eyebrows perked high on her forehead. “Oh, a personal question? Charlie, you know exactly how much I love giving you straight answers about myself.”

  “Humor me,” I muttered. “Pretty please.”

  Lis looked at me carefully, before the ghost of a smile tugged at her lips, “Just one question. I won’t even count it as your freebie since you actually said please.”

  “I’m glad you appreciate how hard it is for me to say that damn word. Now let me think.”