Sin City Collectors Boxed Set: Queen of Hearts, Dead Man's Hand, Double or Nothing

by Kristen Painter

  For the first five minutes of the drive, neither one of them said a word. Seraphina was okay with that, but not for long. Because she really wanted to say something. A million somethings. Anything to break the unbearable tension between them. If they didn’t, working together to save Dahlia wasn’t going to be easy. Her fingers dug into the steering wheel. She just didn’t know where to start.

  From his silence, neither did he. Or maybe he was fine with how things were. Maybe that’s what he’d gotten used to. A lifetime without physical contact. Unless it was to take someone’s soul. What did that do to a person? She couldn’t imagine how much pain that would cause. The loneliness would be…excruciating. All those years without a touch or a caress or a kiss or a… “Zeus on a cracker!” She almost drove off the road. She straightened the car and looked at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  His head whipped around. “What?”

  “I just realized you’ve never had sex.”

  He frowned. “I’ve had—I am not discussing this with—”

  “It explains so much. No wonder you’re in a bad mood all the time.”

  “I’m not in a bad mood all the—”

  “I mean, why wouldn’t you be cranky? You can’t even kiss a girl, can you? Assuming you like girls.”

  “I like women, thank you very much.” He made a noise that sounded like something between a snarl and a sigh. “Not that I’ve had much experience with them.”

  “Or any, I’d imagine.” She bit her bottom lip. “Sorry, that just slipped out.”

  “I’ve had some.” He grunted and angled toward the window.

  Time to change the subject. “You want to map out the plan for me? I’m new to this rescuing stuff.” As was he. Inwardly, she groaned. Open mouth, insert foot. She sneaked another look at him. He was still turned toward the window. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “As soon as Gozer leaves the mine, we go in. Minka will stand guard at the entrance. You’ll get the girl and take her home. Minka and I will wait for Gozer to return, and then I’ll deal with him. End of mission.”

  She nodded but kept quiet and focused on driving. There was nothing about him—his body language, his tone, the set of his jaw—that said he wanted to keep talking, but it was almost like she could feel his pain. His loneliness. It was more than she could stand. It made her unable to keep her mouth shut. Even so, her voice came out soft and tentative. “We could be friends, you know.”

  No response, just more staring out the window.

  “We have a lot in common.”

  He snorted.

  “We do.” She made a left, following Minka farther away from civilization. “You can’t touch people, so you’ve never gotten close to anyone. I get that, I really do. My muse influence means I never know if someone likes me because of me or because they have no other choice, so I don’t have any real friends, either.” She glanced at him. No change. That seemed like enough of an answer.

  Too bad for him she was a demigoddess and not about to back down.

  Ahead, Minka pulled off onto a desert side road. Seraphina followed, her SUV bumping over the rough trail but capable of handling the new terrain without issue. She decided to push him a little further. See if she could force a response out of him. Something more than a grunt. “We could go out to eat, see a movie, stuff like that.”

  “I don’t go out unless I’m on a Collection.”

  A tiny smile bent her mouth. She’d take his answer as a small win. “I could come over to your place.”

  He finally looked at her. “I don’t want to be friends with you.”

  She kept her eyes on the road. His words hurt. A lot. Minka pulled to the side and parked. Seraphina did the same, turning off the engine before twisting to look at him. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  Ares looked at her long and hard, the light in his eyes undecipherable. “You should be.” Then he opened the door and got out.

  Cold desert air whistled past Ares as he walked away from the car. It couldn’t compete with the shame burning in his gut. Seraphina didn’t deserve to be spoken to like that, but it was for her own protection. Her interest in him was both the most wonderful and most awful thing that had ever happened to him. Unfortunately, he couldn’t let it take root. Giving her even the slightest bit of a sign that he was interested in return would only end up in her getting hurt. Being friends with anyone was not an option for him. And even if it was, he didn’t want to be friends with her.

  He wanted much, much more. Which made him an idiot for even thinking that way. Kissing her, touching her, being with her was a fantasy that would live only in his mind. One that would have to be enough, because demigoddess or human, he wouldn’t risk taking her soul. He wouldn’t be responsible for her death. There was only so much he could shoulder.

  Resolved to his situation, he gave Minka a nod as he walked up. “From here on foot?”

  She checked the map on her phone. “Yeah. Not far. Five minutes maybe.”

  Seraphina joined them, her expression somewhere in between hurt and anger. She shivered and zipped her leather jacket, then tucked her hands in the pockets. “Let’s go.”

  What would it be like to be able to offer her his arms for warmth? To hold that lush body against his? He stared into the desert, forcing the thoughts from his head.

  “You know the plan?” Minka asked.

  He glanced back in time to see Seraphina’s mouth bunch to one side. “Yes, Ares was kind enough to share that much with me.”

  Minka gave them both strange looks, but continued. “All right, this way. And keep your voices down. Sound really carries out here.”

  Ares let Seraphina go ahead of him, then followed behind. A chivalrous but stupid decision in retrospect, since it put him in perfect view of her deliciously curved backside. The universe had no plans to stop torturing him.

  After a few minutes, Minka lifted her hand and brought them to a halt, pointing behind an outcropping of rock and shrub. They crouched down, then she gestured toward an opening farther ahead where the rock sloped steeply. A couple of rotted planks covered the opening, and a bullet-hole-riddled no-trespassing sign lay on the ground. “That’s the mine,” she whispered.

  Ares pulled out his phone. “Texting Javier.” Make contact now.

  Two minutes passed before Javier’s reply came. Done.

  The chime of a cell phone echoed hollowly through the night. “There’s no signal in that mine when you get in deep,” Minka whispered. “Gozer must have left his phone near the entrance.”

  With a nod, Ares hunkered in beside Seraphina, inadvertently resting his arm against hers. There was nowhere else to go unless he got up and walked around to the other side of Minka. He forced himself not to pull away. Layers of leather separated them. There was no way anything could happen.

  She glanced down at the contact, then shot him a sarcastic look that seemed to say, Are you sure I’m not in danger?

  He frowned but stayed still. As they sat there, listening to the phone ring and waiting for the goblin to leave his burrow, Ares swore he could feel the heat of her through that small point of contact. It became impossible to think about anything else. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to breathe through it, but shutting out everything else just magnified what he was feeling. The warmth of her body, the silk of her skin, the way her breathing would deepen when his fingers—

  A soft, scrabbling sound reached them. As a group, they froze and listened harder. The cell phone stopped ringing, but the scrabbling noise grew louder, until finally a creature emerged. With skin the color and texture of a leprous toad, a squat body and thickly muscled arms and legs, the goblin was as hideous as Ares remembered goblins looking. This one had the added specialness of a gnarly black scar that ran from the top of his head down through one eye socket to his cheek.

  This was Gozer One Eye, all right.

  Gozer tugged at his jumpsuit, a grease-stained outfit that looked suspiciously like it had been stolen from a
gas station, and not just because the name on the chest patch read Stan.

  The goblin sniffed the air a few times, turning as he did. Every angle was equally hideous. Apparently satisfied everything smelled the way it should, he kicked at the dirt around the entrance of the mine, maybe in an attempt to disguise the tracks he’d made. From the pocket of his ill-fitting jumpsuit, he pulled a phone and stylus, probably a necessary tool because of his sausage fingers. He tapped out a message, then stuck the phone back in his pocket, licked his bulbous lips and grinned. A row of jagged brown teeth gleamed in the thin moonlight.

  With a shocking burst of speed, he leaped up, grabbing hold of the rocks above the mine’s entrance, and clambered over them like a spider, disappearing over the ridge.

  Ares’s phone vibrated. A new message from Javier.

  He just texted he’s on his way.

  We saw him leave, Ares texted back. He nodded at the women beside him. “I’ll take the lead.” He got up, stretching his legs as he climbed over the rocks they’d been hiding behind. He made his way to the mine entrance, turned sideways and squeezed between the boards. The two women followed him. He went a few more feet before stopping. The interior was dark, except for the occasional smears of phosphorescence on the rocks. For his eyes, it was more than enough to see by.

  Seraphina wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”

  “Goblin.” And this one was potent. Probably from how excited he was over the gold he thought he was about to get.

  She grimaced. “Goblins smell like onions and feet?”

  “Makes them easy to track.” Didn’t mean he didn’t understand her distress. The assault on his supernatural senses was atrocious.

  She waved at the air in front of her face. “I guess there’s an upside to everything.”

  He tossed his phone to Minka. “You’re on watch. We won’t have a signal once we get farther in.”

  She nodded back and tucked the phone into her back pocket. “I know the drill.”

  He tipped his head at Seraphina. “Ready?”

  “Yes.” She shifted her gaze to look into the darkness beyond them, her lip still curled at the stench. “Let’s find Dahlia and get out of here.”

  “That’s the plan.” He started forward, his eyes quickly adjusting to the lack of light.

  “Be careful,” Minka called after them.

  He raised a hand. Behind him, Seraphina’s soft footfalls filled the space. “What’s the glowy stuff on the wall?”

  “You don’t want to know.” He swept a spider web out of the way to keep her from walking through it.

  “Sure I do.”

  He smirked. “It’s a substance goblins secrete. It’s how they light their burrows.”

  “A substance?”

  He almost laughed at the revulsion in her voice. “I told you you didn’t want to know.”

  “Yes, you did.” She was quiet for a few more minutes, but he sensed her pulse kick up. Like something was making her even more nervous. Then she spoke again, and he understood. “When you said I should be afraid of you…was that because of your touch?”

  “Yes. Not because I would ever deliberately hurt you.” He stopped abruptly and turned. “Did you really think—”

  She ran into him, her hands coming up to brace herself on his chest. “A little warning would be nice.”

  He grabbed her shoulders for a brief second, then let her go just as quickly and backed away. “I’m sorry. I forget that not everyone has my night vision.” He took a breath. It was hard not to be addled by her nearness. “I would never hurt you on purpose. You have to know that.”

  She nodded and hugged her arms around her torso. “Hurt is more than physical, you know.”

  He frowned. “I understand that, but I don’t follow why you’re telling me.”

  “You said you don’t want to be friends with me. Those aren’t exactly words that induce warm fuzzies.” She held her hands up. “Look, I get it. You have issues you’re not ready to deal with—”

  “I don’t have—”

  “You do.” Her face went stern. “I never should have suggested being friends in the first place. Not sure what I was thinking.”

  He stared at the rough-hewn walls. He had no reply that seemed worthwhile.

  She nudged a loose rock with her toe. “Do you have any other sharpened senses or just night vision?”

  “Speed, strength, hearing, smell, unfortunately—all the things that come with being supernatural.”

  She nodded. “I guess demigoddesses don’t get any of those. Or maybe that’s due to my human father. I’m stronger than most humans and probably a little faster, but I think the muse thing is pretty much it for me.” She shrugged. “Can you get any sense of Dahlia being here? Hear her heartbeat? Smell her…blood or whatever vampires can do?”

  “None of that yet. But that only means we’re not close enough.” He tapped the rock surrounding them. “This stuff is thick. Makes it hard to get a good reading.”

  “We should get going then.”

  “Yes.” He started forward. “As soon as I pick up on her, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks.”

  Another few feet, and he got what he’d been listening for. Another pulse. “I’ve got her.”

  Seraphina’s small gasp of hope encouraged him. “Oh, good.”

  “This way.” He took the right side of a fork and barreled on. The goblin’s particular earthy smell was strong, but gave way to a softer, more floral note. Dahlia. A few more yards and he could hear whimpering. He started to increase his speed, but then thought better of it. Leaving Seraphina behind wasn’t going to help the situation, and it was best Dahlia had someone familiar to focus on.

  They went around a bend, and the smears of phosphorescence increased as the space opened up into a small cavern.

  “Dahlia!” Seraphina pushed past him to rush to the girl.

  Dahlia lay on the floor, trussed like a Christmas turkey. She wriggled at the sound of Seraphina’s cry, but the dirty rag stuck in her mouth turned her responses into soft squeals.

  Seraphina went to her knees beside the girl, pulled the gag from her mouth and started working on the knots. “It’s okay, Dahlia, you’re safe now. We’re here to get you out and get you home.”

  “Seraphina, I’m so scared. That thing said he was going to eat me.”

  “That’s not going to happen now.” Ares pulled a large folding knife from his inside coat pocket. “Seraphina, use this.”

  When she looked up, he tossed it to her. She reached for it and missed. It skittered across the rocks behind her and into a dark corner.

  “My fault.” She jumped up and went to get it. “Hang on, kiddo. You’ll be home before you know it.”

  He knelt in front of Dahlia, making eye contact and trying to convey a sense of calm to her. It was something he did right before taking a soul to keep the victim from fighting. In this case, he just wanted the girl to relax so they could get her out safely. “I’m a friend of your father’s. Seraphina’s right. You’ll be home—”

  A loud crack rent the stillness. It was followed by Seraphina’s scream. “Ares, help me!”

  His head whipped up. Seraphina and the blade were gone. In their place, a gaping hole had opened in the mine floor. He leaped to his feet and ran to it. Splintered boards lined the edges of the hole. He got close and leaned over. He could just make her out as the dust kicked up. She was sprawled on a narrow ledge, but the hole she’d fallen into was deep. The metallic tang of blood rose with the dust, sending a frisson of fear into his gut. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so.” She grimaced as she tried to move. “I hurt, I can tell you that much.” She lay back down and peered into the darkness above her. “Can you see me? I can’t see a thing.”

  “I can see you perfectly. Looks like you fell into an old shaft.”

  “Get Dahlia out. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Like hell. I’m not leaving you here.” He dug for his phone, t
hen remembered he didn’t have it. “I’ll be right back. I am not leaving you.”

  He scooped the still-bound girl into his arms, careful not to make skin-to-skin contact, and raced back to the entrance of the mine.

  Minka stood, waiting. “What’s up?” Her eyes widened, and she smiled. “You found her.”

  Ares put Dahlia onto her feet beside Minka. “Get her untied and out of here.”

  Minka frowned as she bent to untie the girl. “Where’s Seraphina?”

  “Fell down a mine shaft. I’ll get her out. You worry about Dahlia and taking her back to her father’s house.”

  “Um, yeah, about her father.” She stood and held out his phone with her free hand. “Javier texted back. The deal’s done. Gozer’s on his way here.”

  Ares nodded. “I’ll take care of him, too. That’s what I was hired to do.”

  Pain radiated through Seraphina’s body, but thank Olympus, nothing felt broken. She shivered. The air coming up from the shaft was cold, and she worried she might be going into a little bit of shock. She reached around and gingerly touched the back of her head. The knot there was the size of an egg and throbbed so badly she could feel it in her teeth. Something wet trickled past her temple and into her hairline. She dabbed at it, her fingers coming away sticky. The odor of blood was unmistakable.

  “Ares,” she whispered. “Hurry up.” Truth was, lying there in the dark, knowing she was trapped on a slim ledge of rock, she felt her fear starting to get the best of her. He was coming back. She kept telling herself that. She wiped her fingers off on her shirt before clutching the star around her neck. She held on to it like a talisman.

  Pebbles pinged against the side of the shaft, and dust drifted over her. “Seraphina?”

  Ares’s voice. She smiled in the darkness. “Still here. You take care of Dahlia?”

  “I sent her home with Minka.”