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

by Kristen Painter

  Then he got to his feet and faced the man who’d orchestrated their capture.

  The Alchemist stood on the other side of the bars, a slight man in a pristine lab coat, large wire-rimmed glasses and greasy black hair. For a moment, fear registered in his eyes, and Gage knew wiping the blood across his face had done the trick. How crazed he must look with his hair hanging around his face, fangs descended, blood dripping from his mouth. He kept his sneer fixed in place. “You.” He nodded once. “You got what you wanted. Let me out.”

  “That wasn’t the deal.” The Alchemist shook his head before tipping it to the side. “You remember me, vampire?”

  Gage hesitated. No point keeping up the lie. The man seemed to want his recognition. “You’re the Alchemist. We thought you died in the fire.”

  The Alchemist shuffled back, stretched out his hands and laughed. “You’ll see I didn’t.” His laughter died, and his lip curled up in anger. “My wife, however, was not so fortunate.”

  Gage needed the man to get within striking range. He narrowed his eyes and layered accusation into his tone. “You left her behind.”

  The Alchemist charged forward, spittle flying from his nicotine-stained mouth. “I did no such thing. You killed her. You and the pixie.”

  With impossible-to-track speed, Gage shoved his arm through the cell, grabbed the Alchemist by his white coat and yanked him forward with enormous force.

  The Alchemist collided with the bars. Blood gushed from his nose, and he passed out. Gage dropped him. “Minka, get up and follow me. We’re getting out of here.”

  He glanced back to make sure she was on her feet. He cringed inwardly at the bloody state he’d left her in.

  She jumped up and put her hands over her ears. “Let’s go.”

  With her at his back, Gage latched on to the front bars and pulled them apart. The bells started clanging. He moved out of the way, took Minka’s arm and pushed her toward the opening. She grimaced in pain, eyes nearly squeezed shut, but got herself through.

  As soon as she was out, he stretched the bars wider to accommodate his bulk and followed. She took a step, then bent double, holding her head and crying out in agony.

  “Get to the door,” he yelled over the ear-splitting noise.

  She took a few steps toward the exit, then stumbled and went down. Blood trickled from her nose.

  He leaped over the Alchemist and ran to her. She was curled in a fetal position. He pulled her into his arms. “Hang in there, baby.” He got them to the door in a few steps, but trying to open it just made the keypad flash. Locked. Getting the Alchemist’s key card, which currently hung from his neck on a lariat, would take too long.

  Screw that.

  Gage shifted Minka so he could hold her with one arm, then grabbed the handle and wrenched the door off its hinges. A set of steps lay behind. Minka sobbed softly in his arms. He repositioned her once more, then jogged up the stairs, following a bend to another flight. On the second landing, he found two more doors, one with a placard on it that said Lab.

  He chose that one but didn’t check to see if it was locked, just threw his shoulder against it and forced it open. Not so much a lab as a control room. With a window that overlooked the cells. He eased Minka into the only chair available and shut the door. Even busted, it did a passable job of blocking out the jarring sound of the bells.

  He wiped the blood from beneath her nose with his thumb, then tenderly used his fingertips to clean away her tears. Her eyes were still closed. “Hey.” He cupped her face gently in his hands. “How are you doing?”

  She let out a long, slow breath and opened her eyes. She blinked a few times then shook her head. “I can’t hear you.” She wiggled the bits of fabric out of her ears. They were spotted with blood and removing them didn’t help her hearing any. “The deafness is probably temporary.”

  He mouthed his words carefully as he held a hand up. “Stay here.” He pointed to himself then out the window. The Alchemist was starting to regain consciousness. “I need to go get him.”

  She nodded.

  He kissed her forehead then raced back down the stairs. The Alchemist was on his knees, the damn bells still ringing. Gage put him in a headlock.

  “Let me go,” he howled. “I’ll kill you, you beast.”

  “Shut it, little man.” Gage dragged him up the steps. He opened the control room door, got them both inside and kicked it shut. Minka was rummaging through some of the cabinets in the small room. He faced the Alchemist toward the panel of lights and switches beneath the window. “Turn those damn bells off.”

  “Turn them off yourself, vampire. The pixie deserves to die. You both do.” The Alchemist twisted, trying to get free.

  Gage tightened his grip. “Do you know how it feels to be bled dry?” He put his mouth next to the man’s ear. “Because I’d be happy to show you.”

  The Alchemist cursed and clawed at Gage’s arm.

  Gage tightened his grip, causing the man to wheeze for breath.

  The Alchemist lifted a shaking hand toward the panel and gasped out a few words. “Second…black…switch marked…audio.”

  Gage turned the bells off and loosened his hold. Blessed silence. Except for the ringing in his own ears. He could only imagine the pain Minka had gone through. She turned and, seeing them, pointed to the Alchemist, then the seat.

  Gage planted him roughly in the chair.

  “I found these.” She pulled out a handful of zip ties.

  “Those will do nicely.” He gave her a nod and she went to work securing the Alchemist’s wrists and ankles. Gage touched her arm when she was done to get her attention, then gave her a wink. Their plan had worked.

  She grinned, causing all sorts of chaos inside him, then pointed to the counter. “I found our stuff.”

  Their phones, blades and a few other personal items lay in a heap. He gave her a thumbs-up. “Good. Rest now, okay?”

  She held up a finger. “Soon.”

  Not soon enough. Time to get some answers. Gage leaned on the control panel and focused on the Alchemist. “From what I remember, you weren’t exactly flush the last time we dealt with you. In fact, your whole scheme back then was an attempt to make cash. So why don’t we start with who funded this place?”

  The Alchemist tugged against the zip ties. “Like I’d tell you jack.”

  “So someone is paying your bills. Who? The crew you were involved with last time? We rounded the lot of them up.”

  He sneered. “You don’t know anything.”

  Gage crossed his arms and stared down at the little man. “What I know is you intended to kill me and my partner. I also know that if you don’t answer my questions, I’m going to kill you.”

  The Alchemist laughed. “You wouldn’t dare. That’s not Collector policy.”

  “And this isn’t Collector business.” Gage put his hands on the arms of the chair and leaned in. “I came to Vegas for personal reasons, so anything that happens here is strictly off the books.” A little fear crept into the man’s eyes. “That means the only policy I have to abide by is my own.” Gage bared his teeth and ran his tongue across his fangs.

  The Alchemist’s breathing sped up. “I-I don’t know anything.”

  “If you have no answers, I have no reason to keep you alive.”

  The man twitched. “I m-might know something.”

  Gage held his position. “Who wrote the note that got me here?”

  The Alchemist tried to back away, but there was nowhere for him to go. “I did.”

  “Then who told you what to write?” No one knew about his quest for Blackwell. Except Blackwell. A sharp, niggling fear unfurled in his belly. Was Blackwell in league with the Alchemist?

  “No one told me anything.” The Alchemist was sweating now.

  Minka tapped Gage’s shoulder. He turned to her. She made a face, clearly impatient. “Have you found out anything?”

  He shook his head and spoke clearly. “Not yet. But I’m not done.”

&
nbsp; He went back to the Alchemist and stared hard into his eyes. “Answer me. Who told you to write the note?”

  The man’s mouth hardened into a firm line and stayed shut.

  Gage threw his hands up in disgust. “It’s like you want me to make you bleed.”

  Minka grabbed his arm. “Let me try.”

  “What are you going to—” But she’d already turned away from him, which meant she couldn’t hear him or read his lips.

  “Hold his head still.” She rummaged around on the narrow counter top before whirling around with a screwdriver in her hand. Her eyes narrowed with intent.

  Gage got behind the Alchemist and braced his head with both hands. “What are you going to do with that?”

  But she wasn’t looking at Gage and didn’t answer him. The Alchemist whimpered. Gage bent down to speak to him. “You had your chance. Now the pixie’s going to take a crack at you.” Whatever that might look like. Minka had never been one to shy away from interrogations, but the screwdriver thing was new. Who knew what she’d picked up in the last two years.

  The Alchemist tried to turn his head as Minka came toward him.

  Gage held him firm, but that didn’t stop him from squealing.

  Minka wasn’t deterred. She pinched the Alchemist’s nose, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. As soon as his lips parted, she laid the screwdriver across his teeth like a bit to prevent him from shutting his mouth again. Gage suddenly knew exactly what she was going to do.

  She inhaled and closed her eyes in a moment of intense concentration. When she opened them, her irises glowed green. She pursed her lips, bent down and blew a stream of glittering dust down the Alchemist’s throat. He choked and coughed and worked against Gage’s restriction, but his struggle faded as Minka continued. At last, she finished and stood up, wobbling slightly. The Alchemist’s eyes were glazed over, and his face had relaxed into a slack expression.

  She took the screwdriver out of his mouth. “That should help. I’d ask him the questions myself, but…” She put a hand out to steady herself.

  Gage rushed to her side and held on to her. He kissed her temple before sweeping everything off the counter top behind her. Then he picked her up and set her on it. “Rest, okay?”

  She nodded. “Okay.” Then she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

  He’d seen her use pixie dust before when they’d worked together. It was powerful stuff, but it took a toll on her system. With her already being weak from blood loss, he wasn’t happy about her using that skill set, but he understood.

  He wasn’t about to let her effort be wasted either. He went after the Alchemist again, slapping his cheek to snap him back to reality.

  He came to with a start, hacking and gagging. “What the hell did she just do to me?”

  Gage got into the Alchemist’s face again. “This is the last time I’m going to ask before you start bleeding.” Although that shouldn’t be necessary now. “Who told you to write that note?”

  “No…” The Alchemist stuck his tongue out and grimaced like he tasted something bad. “No…damn it, no—Blackwell.” His eyes rounded in shock. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  Gage cursed and balled his hands into fists. “I knew it. Did he also give you the money to fund this operation?”

  The Alchemist shook his head no, but the word that came out was, “Yes.” He cried out in frustration. “I didn’t mean to say that either.”

  There wasn’t a creature alive who could fight the truth-inducing properties of pixie dust. Gage wasn’t sure how long it would last. He hurried to ask his last few questions. “Where’s Blackwell?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What were you supposed to do with me once Minka was dead?”

  The Alchemist answered with a frustrated growl. “Feed you tainted blood again to knock you out, then call Blackwell for the meeting place.”

  Gage stood. This was the chance he’d been hoping for. His nerves pinged with the desire to lay hands on Blackwell and mete out justice for Caleb. He rolled his shoulders in an attempt to calm himself down. “Let’s get you on the phone then.”

  Minka was in that limbo between barely awake and almost asleep when Gage’s big hand jiggled her knee. She opened her eyes, unsure how long she’d rested. A yawn overtook her, then she stretched. It would be a day or two before she was a hundred percent after the ordeal of being locked up, losing blood and dusting someone.

  She raised her brows at Gage to let him know she was ready for whatever came next. “Did you find out anything?”

  He nodded. “We need to go.” His voice filtered in, tinny and distant, the first thing she’d heard since the bells had almost killed her.

  “Okay.” She slid off the counter. Her hearing was starting to return, but sounds were coming at her like they were a thousand miles away. She leaned in to hear him better. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m going to take you home then deal with the Alchemist.”

  “You mean drop him off at headquarters? They don’t even know you’re here. I can do that.”

  He tipped his head. “You seem like you’re hearing me pretty well. Is the deafness gone?”

  “Not entirely. Sounds are distant. Like you’re at the end of a long tunnel. But getting better.”

  He nodded. “Good. Because we need to talk.” He glanced back at the Alchemist. “But not here.”

  She crossed her arms. “I’m not going back downstairs. I don’t even want to see another bell for at least a year.”

  “Understood.” He pushed the door open and waved at her to follow. “C’mon.”

  She pointed at the Alchemist. “What about him?”

  “He’s not going anywhere. And if he tries, I’ll kill him.”

  The Alchemist swallowed. “I won’t move.”

  She doubted that, but followed Gage anyway. He shut the control room door behind them. There was another unmarked door next to it. “That must be the way out,” she said.

  “I haven’t checked it yet, but probably.” He raked a hand through his hair. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  She leaned against the railing. “When you said ‘deal with the Alchemist,’ you didn’t mean you’re going to turn him in, did you?”

  “No.” He stayed by the door.

  “Then what?” Her feminine intuition was pinging hard. Something serious was about to go down.

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “The beginning.”

  He snorted softly, a sound she was surprised to catch. “When I was newly turned—”

  “I didn’t think you’d take me literally.”

  He gave her a little half smile, but it faded quickly. “I have an enemy. Spenser Blackwell. He killed my brother, Caleb—”

  “That’s what happened to Caleb?” All the years she’d known Gage, the most he’d said about his brother was that he’d passed shortly after they’d been turned. No details. Just an icy expression of anger and those simple words. Truth be told, she’d wondered if his brother had decided vampire life wasn’t for him and greeted the dawn. It wasn’t unheard of.

  “Yes. And I think Blackwell’s trying to kill me now. He bankrolled this whole operation.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “After you dusted the Alchemist, he sang like a bird.”

  She nodded. “Never fails. What else did you learn?”

  “The Alchemist was to get your death as repayment for his wife’s, and Blackwell would get me with the added bonus of me having just lost the woman I love at my own hand.”

  To hear Gage say that he loved her like it was fact and had always been fact was…bittersweet. But now was not the time to deal with that emotion. Thankfully. “Blackwell is for sure the one who killed your brother?”

  Gage nodded, his gaze lost in the past.

  “Why on earth would Blackwell kill Caleb? Is he just that much of a sick bastard?”

  That brought him back. “Yes, he is
, but he did it to punish me.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “I stole the woman Blackwell loved. For no other reason than I could.”

  She raised her brows. “I’m sure there was more reason than that.”

  Gage’s grimace was laced with disgust. “Blackwell never thought Caleb and I should have been turned. He despised that we’d been given the same gift he had. Even worse, we shared the same sire. He couldn’t stand that we now had the same blood running in our veins. We were…street trash to him. Immigrants. He was aristocracy. His mother was a baroness or something, but still ruined enough to come to New York for a new start. Anyway, we were beneath him.”

  She knew Gage’s history, how he and his brother had immigrated to New York City in the hopes of making a better life for themselves, how they’d struggled to survive. Life in the 1800s had been difficult for the lower class. “So you took his girl to prove him wrong.”

  “And paid the price. He kidnapped my brother less than a year later.” The muscles in Gage’s jaw tightened. “I want to know what he did with Caleb’s body so I can give him a decent burial.”

  “And Blackwell? What are you going to do with him?”

  Gage met her gaze squarely. “I’m going to kill him.”

  His words came in loud and clear. She nodded slowly. “This is what you’ve been hiding from me all these years. Why you took that info I shared about the nest of vampires. What did you do, head out there and clean them out, hoping to find Blackwell?”

  “Yes.”

  “You betrayed me to find your brother’s killer.” She could almost understand it. Her anger at him lost some of its bite. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “For one, it would have meant making you lie for me. And you’re not a good liar.”

  “That much is true.” Pixies were known for being blunt and painfully truthful.

  “If you’d let it slip, I would have lost my job as a Collector. Or worse. Which I guess is going to happen anyway.” He heaved out a sigh.

  “Why do you think that?”

  He laughed bitterly. “I only took the job as a Collector to have access to the resources. It’s why I went back to New York. There was some indication Blackwell had surfaced there, but all my leads came up empty.”