Detonation Boulevard (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 2)

by Craig Schaefer

  It was a dance, different from the ballroom. She felt Nessa’s power wash over her, holding her firmly with nothing but her voice and her gaze, wrapping around her like chains of silk. She felt safe like this, her fire guided and tempered and wielded by Nessa’s will. Safe, wanted, valued, needed. Nessa’s hand cupped her chin, cradling it in her velvet palm as the witch loomed over her.

  “You really are perfect,” Nessa said. There was a hitch in her voice, just the faintest break. Her fingers slid down to curl around Marie’s throat. She gave it a little squeeze. “I want to decorate this neck. Maybe wrap it in a choker, with a pendant, with my initials on it. I want everyone who looks at you to know who owns you. Do you know why, love?”

  Marie looked up at her. She shook her head, beyond the ability to speak now.

  “Because they will see your strength, and your beauty, and all the wonder that I see when I look in your eyes.” Nessa showed her teeth, with a smile that pushed back the shadows. “And they will say, ‘Who could rule over such a perfect creature? What witch could weave such a spell of enchantment?’ And they will know my power.”

  Nessa’s fingers stroked Marie’s rumpled hair, petting her, and she uncrossed her legs. Her skirt rode up as her knees spread.

  “Now please me,” Nessa said. “And I might—if I feel so inclined—treat you kindly tonight.”

  * * *

  Nessa was kind, until she wasn’t. Then she was tender, and then cruel without warning, until Marie was spun around and upside down and wrung dry. The minutes melted into hours, the two women swallowed by a tempest of sensation until they’d both had their fill. They collapsed together in the twisted sheets of the king bed, cradling each other close. Nessa ran her fingers through Marie’s hair and planted soft kisses along her forehead, tasting her sweat.

  “You know what we need?” Nessa murmured.

  “I’d say ‘more of that,’ but I can’t feel my legs.”

  “I like your perspective, and I concur. I was thinking a nightcap before bed would be lovely, though.”

  Marie forced her head up, squinting at the floating numbers on the bedside clock. Twelve minutes past one in the morning.

  “I think we’re too late for room service,” Marie said.

  “The minibar has a few premixed cocktails. Looked yummy. Why don’t you run down the hall and get us some ice?”

  Marie groaned as she pushed herself off the bed. She shambled into the sitting room and tugged her clothes on, her body a mess of happy little aches.

  “Why do I have to get the ice?” she said.

  On the other side of the open doorway, Nessa rolled to the edge of the bed. Her head dangled off the mattress’s edge, her straight black hair falling in a curtain as she watched Marie from her upside-down perch.

  “Because if you don’t,” Nessa said, “you’ll learn the difference between a playful spanking and a serious one.”

  “Bluff. Your arms are too tired.”

  “Do not test my wrath.” Nessa snapped her fingers and waved her hand in the vague direction of the door. “Avaunt, minion!”

  “I am not your minion. You can call me anything but that.” Marie slipped her shoes on and grabbed the empty ice bucket. “Makes me think of the little yellow cartoon guys, and that is so not sexy.”

  “You can be my flying monkey.”

  “Not that either.”

  “I’ll brainstorm on it,” Nessa said, “while you fetch the ice.”

  The hallway outside their suite was a long stretch of arctic white under stark overhead lights. Hard geometries lanced across the white-on-brown carpeting, stretching into the distance in diagonals and right angles like a poster for a jazz club from the roaring twenties. Marie toted the stainless-steel bucket in her hands as she trudged along. The hall smelled like fresh paint.

  Close to the elevators, a tiny room stood off the main hallway, penned in by smoky glass. A couple of vending machines hummed in the dark, their plastic faces glowing, next to an icebox. Marie balanced the bucket on the box’s edge and grabbed a tethered scoop.

  If she closed her eyes, she could pretend life was perfect.

  This was almost what normal people did. Just two lovers on a road trip, exploring America, seeing the sights. She could almost forget, if she tried, that a sword was dangling over their heads. She could almost forget that the thread holding the blade always frayed, always snapped. Their curse had decreed it: meeting Nessa wasn’t just the best thing that had ever happened to her. It was a countdown to extinction.

  Her fingers curled over the bucket’s edge and squeezed.

  The architect of their curse wanted them to be happy. That was the unthinkable perversity of it. They were supposed to fall in love, supposed to find joy in each other’s arms, so it could be torn away in their hour of triumph. So they could die, their memories scorched clean, sent back to do it all over again.

  A flame ignited in the pit of Marie’s stomach. Her anger, her most faithful companion. Anger had propelled her through her entire life. As a cop, she had vented it on the people she thought were ruining the world: the exploiters, the pushers, the pimps. It wasn’t until she met Nessa and learned the truth, concealed in the depths of her black mirror, that she knew who she was really furious at.

  All I need is a name, she thought. Show your face, you heartless son of a bitch. You’ve murdered us a hundred times. It’s our turn.

  The elevator chimed. She didn’t think much of it, or the heavy tromping of feet, until she heard the voices on the other side of the smoked-glass wall.

  “—guy on the desk said they both went up a few hours ago, and neither one of ’em came back down.”

  “Better be right,” snapped a second voice. “Dispatch ain’t handing out partial credit. We need both of these bitches’ heads or we get jack.”

  Marie jumped behind one of the vending machines. She squeezed herself against the wall, shoulders pressed to the ivory paint, and held her breath.

  “Just be thankful we beat Nyx for once,” a woman drawled.

  “You absolutely sure we did?” the first voice shot back. “This was a hell of a long way to drive, just to get poached again.”

  They passed right by her. Marie froze, a statue in the shadows, and watched the hunters move. Six in all, four men, one woman, and a figure draped in a lumpy, shapeless hoodie with its head bowed low. One of the men carried a burlap sack and a hacksaw. Another, a machete polished to a mirror sheen. A Louisville slugger swung in the woman’s grip, slow and easy, a prison-ink spiderweb tattoo tracing the skin between her thumb and index finger.

  “Hotel’s still standing, isn’t it?” she said. “Nyx doesn’t do ‘subtle.’ Kythas, you take the rich girl. Dispatch says she’s some kind of witch, so I want her shit locked down fast. We do this right, we can take our time, have a little fun.”

  The figure in the hoodie let out a wet, phlegmatic grunt. The man in the lead, with skin like dried leather and a matte-black pistol riding in a shoulder holster, looked back and flashed a yellow-toothed grin.

  “You just want the other one for yourself.”

  The woman giggled like a hyena on meth.

  “Only thing better than beating the shit out of a cop,” she said, “is getting paid for it. Who says you can’t mix business with pleasure?”

  They sauntered out of sight, making a beeline for the far end of the hall. For their suite, where Nessa was all alone. Cornered. The angry fire in the pit of Marie’s stomach unfurled. Now it was a serpent, rising up, spreading burning wings as it climbed and coiled tight around her spine.

  She pushed herself away from the wall and stepped out of her hiding space. She knew the odds were bad. Six against one. They had weapons. She had nothing but her rage. Her rage whispered a secret in her ear, though, and she knew the truth of it.

  They weren’t the hunters here. She was.

  Fifteen

  They didn’t see her coming.

  The hunters moved in a ragged pack, eyes forward and e
ager for the kill. Too eager, too confident, to hear the footsteps closing in from behind.

  The last of the pack, with rolls of belly fat bulging under a tight Hawaiian shirt, held a .45 pistol in a two-hand grip. Barrel down, finger off the trigger, and he moved like he had military training. He was the only one who perked up as Marie’s gait shifted from a brisk stride to a flat-out run.

  He turned just in time to see the stainless-steel ice bucket swinging for his face. His bottom lip tore and a broken tooth, ripped from its roots, flew in a scarlet arc. He brought the pistol up. Marie slammed the bucket down over the barrel and shoved his hands to the left as he pulled the trigger. The bottom of the bucket blew open with a hollow crump, metal bending back like the petals of a razor-edged flower, and the slug chewed into the arctic-white wall.

  They were close enough to slow-dance. Marie slammed her forehead against the bridge of his nose. The cartilage buckled and broke and he crumpled to the art deco carpet, howling, clutching his mutilated face. Marie made a grab for the fallen pistol, but the hunter with the machete was already on her. The gleaming blade whistled toward her neck like a guillotine.

  The machete clanged off the side of the ice bucket. Marie wore it over her fist like a boxing glove as she drove off another frenzied swing, the blade crashing down hard enough to dent the mirrored steel. He drove her back, step by step—then she saw her opening, lunged in, and drove the ruptured bucket straight into his gut. The petals of jagged metal sliced through his shirt and carved his belly into ground beef.

  The Louisville slugger crashed across Marie’s shoulders and dropped her to her knees as white-hot pain lanced down her spine. The woman with the bat was screaming, flecks of spittle hitting Marie’s neck, and her next swing cracked across her bruised hip. Marie’s vision went blurry-red, the world drowned out by the roar of blood in her ears. She saw the wood streaking for her face and threw herself flat onto the carpet; the bat smashed into the wall, splitting plaster in a cloudburst.

  The woman had yellow eyes. Runny, like rotten egg yolks. So did the man with leathery skin. He slapped his gun from his shoulder holster and skirted left, trying to line up a kill shot. The door to the suite burst open and Nessa launched herself onto his back like a feral cat. One arm curled around his neck and clung tight. The other brandished the syringe they’d taken off the hunter on the road. She stabbed the needle into his throat and pushed the plunger down.

  His deformed eyes rolled back and he went into convulsions. A gout of white foam spat from his lips, drooling down his chin. Nessa shoved him aside, jumping back, and hooked her fingers into a ritual gesture as the man with the hacksaw lunged at her. Whatever magic she was planning to conjure, she never had the chance.

  The shape in the lumpy hoodie swiveled around. Its shoulders snapped forward in a hunch, making crackling noises, as the hood fell back. It was a man of sorts. His shaved scalp was covered in ritual scars all the way down to his neck, puckered white lines carved to depict a tableau of hell: crudely drawn demons cavorted across his skin with human women in an orgy of rape and mutilation. The man’s eyes were covered in bulging frames of wire mesh, held in place by screws bolted into flesh and bone. His lips had been sliced away with surgical precision, replaced by a ring of black iron that contorted his mouth into a permanent O-shaped pucker.

  He screamed. The sound, like a falcon’s screech, took on shape and color as the air vibrated poison-green. The sonic blast plowed into Nessa and flung her like a toy; she slammed into the hallway wall hard enough to make doors shake.

  Marie rolled left and the baseball bat hit the wall and snapped, sending wood splinters flying. The yellow-eyed woman was all rage now, screaming, “You bitch, you hurt my boyfriend, you fucking bitch—” as she swung the broken bat like a sledgehammer. Marie kicked out with all the strength she had left, driving her heel straight into the woman’s kneecap. Bone snapped under her foot as the hunter’s knee buckled and broke.

  The thing in the hoodie loomed over her, sucking in air like a vacuum cleaner as he prepared to unleash another scream. Marie scrambled backward on her elbows, snatched up the first hunter’s fallen pistol, and brought it up in both hands. The first bullet punched into the creature’s belly. The second hit him square in the heart. The third shot through the iron ring of his mouth and blasted out the back of his skull in a spray of black blood and shattered bone.

  The last man standing had a fistful of Nessa’s hair. He wrenched her head back and put the blade of his hacksaw to her throat. She was bleary-eyed, dazed from the impact—but she had her quill knife out and just enough presence of mind to spear it between his legs. The blade sank deep, punching through the crotch of his jeans, and she gave the knife a savage twist. Marie silenced his high-pitched screech with a bullet; the round tore out his throat and painted the arctic wall raspberry-red.

  The reverberations of the final gunshot rippled up and down the hotel corridor, fading into silence. Nothing lingered in its wake but strained breath and the hoarse grunts of the yellow-eyed woman, gone fetal as she clutched her shattered kneecap and sucked air between her gritted teeth. Her partner, Marie’s first opponent, had passed out, but he was still breathing through his shattered nose. The others were dead. The one who got his belly chewed up by the ice bucket lay facedown in a puddle of black-stained carpet with his eyes frozen open and his face waxy-pale. He’d bled out during the fight.

  Marie pushed herself to her feet, and her leg almost slipped out from under her. Her breath was a dance of pain, every inhale lighting her injured hip on fire, every exhale leaving her fuzzy-headed and dizzy. Didn’t matter. If she could walk, she could fight. She stumbled over to Nessa with a question in her eyes.

  “I’m okay.” Nessa rose up, slow, her shoulders against the wall for support. Her face pinched. “Mostly okay. Did they hurt you?”

  “I can take it.” Marie looked down the long, empty corridor. “This isn’t right. Where is everybody? You’d think we’d hear something. Somebody would scream, somebody would be yelling for the cops. Somebody would at least have poked their head out of their room to see what all the noise was about.”

  “Small favors. We should leave. Once we get some answers, of course.”

  Nessa stood surrounded by the bodies of the fallen. She pointed her quill knife like a judge’s gavel, offering condemnation.

  “Two are still breathing,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Marie panted. She tugged the matte-black pistol from the poisoned hunter’s grip, wrenching his fingers back one by one. Now they had two more guns for the suitcase. Not enough bullets.

  “We only need one of them,” Nessa said.

  Marie hesitated. She looked over and met her lover’s gaze. Silent, expectant, no need to elaborate.

  “This isn’t like the gas station,” Marie said. “But thank you for asking me first.”

  Nessa knelt beside the unconscious man. She cupped one hand over his forehead, lifting his mutilated face, and sliced his throat from ear to ear. She flicked blood from her quill knife and pointed to the woman.

  “Help me get her inside.”

  The hunter let out a keening groan as they dragged her by her arms. Her lips curled back to bare rotten, jagged teeth. Her body slid along the blood-soaked carpet into their suite, useless leg dangling at the knee and bent the wrong way.

  “Fucking whores,” she hissed. “You fucking stupid wh—”

  The back of Nessa’s hand cracked across her face like a bullwhip.

  “That will be quite enough of that,” Nessa told her, her voice a razor carved from ice. “Marie, shut the door please, and watch our new friend. If she does anything I don’t like, feel free to put a bullet in her other kneecap.”

  The handle clicked as the suite’s door swung closed. It was only a little louder, a little heavier, than the click of the pistol’s hammer as Marie thumbed it back.

  “Go ahead,” the yellow-eyed woman seethed. “Kill me. Won’t save you. You’ve been marked. Green-letter contra
ct—that’s top priority, top pay. Somebody paid a whole lot of money to put you two down like a couple of rabid dogs, and the Order always delivers.”

  “The Order,” Nessa echoed. “What is that?”

  The woman squinted at her. “You kidding me?”

  “My sense of humor is strained at the moment, considering the circumstances. You’d best keep that in mind.”

  “We enforce the laws of hell. And when someone steps on the wrong toes, we handle that, too. Like I said, you’re marked. Once the contract goes out, there’s no stopping it.”

  “Hell,” Nessa paused, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask her next question. “So you’re…what? Some kind of demon?”

  The hunter tried to laugh. It came out as a strangled groan.

  “Me? I’m just a half-blood. Not even half. Just a few drops of the good stuff in my veins, for a little spice. You’ve never seen a real demon. But you’re going to. Word is Nyx took the contract. And when she catches you, you’re gonna wish me and my boys had taken you out.”

  “We’ll manage. Who ordered our deaths?”

  “Level with me.” The hunter’s eyes fixed on Nessa, hard as flint. She let out a wet cough. “No chance I’m living through this, is there?”

  Nessa gave a tiny shake of her head.

  “No. I see no reason to lie about that.”

  “Wouldn’t believe you if you did.”

  “I imagine not,” Nessa replied. “The simple truth is you assaulted my lover, and for that, you are going to die. Given the opportunity to indulge myself, I would very much enjoy making you suffer. But I doubt we have much time left, so let’s keep things nice and simple: tell me what I want to know, and I’ll make your death as quick and painless as I can. It’s a fair trade.”

  Time weighed on Marie’s aching shoulders like an hourglass forged from lead. She kept one eye on the peephole set into the suite’s door. On the other side of the fish-eye lens, the bodies of the hunters lay scattered and motionless from wall to blood-spattered wall. Not a single door along the hallway had opened. Not one sound, not a voice, not even the wail of incoming sirens. Why not? she wondered. Somebody had to have heard something. Somebody had to have called for help.