by Zoe Forward
“You?” Javen parked his blade into the prime real estate upside down on the left-hand panel of his tactical vest.
Ashor scowled, but remained mute.
“Those Hashishin shits were trying to ambush you. You’re welcome, by the way.”
He expected the dark-magik bastards would get organized at some point. He’d been hunting them against his will for several months. But that didn’t mean it was right for others to violate the gods’ no-kill rule.
The heavy bass hip-hop song blasting from his car radio was interrupted by, “It’s official. Sources claim the Jacksonville gas station explosion was a terrorist attack. So far, no group has publicly taken credit for the incident.”
Javen whistled low and laughed hard.
Ashor mumbled, “What is the world coming to?”
“That better not be a tear coming out of your eye, Javen.” Nate plucked at an eyebrow ring, something his sergeant definitely wouldn’t have approved of in his old life as a Ranger. As a magus, the hardcore face metal worked, even if he was still stuck in newbie land.
“What?” Ashor glared at the two.
Javen laughed harder. He waved at Nate between snorts. “Meet the FBI’s most wanted felon. Nate, the gas station terrorist.” He wiped at his eyes.
Nate flashed a middle finger.
“What did you do?” Ashor demanded.
“They can’t pin it on me. Car’s untraceable. And it’s not like I stuck around for a mug shot.”
“This is almost as good as last month when you put Chicago O’Hare into blackout,” Javen said.
“My phone needed charging before we got on the plane. How was I to know the outlet would spark me and shut down the airport?”
Ashor pinned Nate with a glare that had him shifting on his feet. He barely held the surging kem-seki in check and knew his eyes probably swirled the blackest possible with its stain on his irises. “What happened?”
“Accidentally ignited my car while pumping gas.”
“Did anyone get hurt?”
“No.”
“Electrical fuckhead,” Javen grumbled low. “It’s been almost a decade since you got initiated. It’s time you found some control.”
“Go home. Both of you. I do not want to hear that they’re calling in the National Guard because there’s been another explosion. I’ve got to meet with Christian.”
And with her.
Chapter Two
“Who’s the girl?” the Asian asked, emerging from the shadows at the edge of the parking lot. With an antsy shrug, he adjusted the lapels of his upmarket suede jacket. His black eyes squinted toward the darkness just beyond the light cast by a nearby streetlight.
“Seems I’m not the only one who thought showing up stag was a bad idea.” Markus eyeballed the three muscled ogres hovering near the Asian.
“Who is she?”
“My authenticator.” Markus grinned as if he was about to down a mai tai at a beach party.
Get serious, please, thought Kira. This black-market art deal was about to get drenched.
Markus glanced down to find his navy blue aloha shirt was buttoned one off toward the middle and took to fixing it. The shirt’s wrinkles suggested it had been worn for at least a day beyond social acceptability.
“She was not part of the arrangement.”
Kira didn’t miss the sneer of disapproval and eye roll the Asian threw at his three bodyguards. With Markus, she couldn’t tell if the button malfunction was a ploy to make them classify him as a harmless moron or a classic Markus moment. Just this once, she wished her cousin could be more like his twin, Kane, the ex-Army Ranger—a man who lived to be organized, efficient, and deadly. Too bad he hadn’t tagged along, but his international security job kept him out of the country a lot. She suspected the government still owned Kane, even if he wasn’t military anymore.
Goosebumps studded her arms as the winter Florida air brushed her skin. The bushes at the edge of the parking lot rustled. She scrutinized the shadows and tried to tune out the cacophony of music polluting the air from Jacksonville’s downtown. The attempt failed. The city was hopping at eleven on New Year’s Eve. Every restaurant sounded to be throwing a blowout. Stragglers roamed. Fifty yards away a couple chose that moment for an intimate lip suck. One staggered, the other laughed, and they strolled away whispering.
A light breeze shifted the ambient temperature down several degrees, blowing in the smell of approaching precipitation. A chill slithered down her spine. The temperature variant, however, had nothing to do with the reaction. Evil lurked nearby. Something far more dangerous than the four edgy Asians.
“Check them,” ordered the Asian. His hand shook as he smoothed his short, graying black hair.
Markus backed away from the hulking bodyguard headed his way. His gaze locked on the guy’s hypertrophied arms.
“No weapons. That was our agreement, not that you kept up your end.” Markus pointed at the bodyguard’s beltline where his jacket bulged. “I’m but the middleman here, Ryom. Where’s the trust?”
“Fuck trust. I’ve barely survived two assassination attempts over this thing. Why should I trust an American?” He waved his man toward Markus and another Kira’s way.
The guy assigned to frisk her leered at the cleavage line of her scoop-neck black sweater. Her stomach lurched.
She forced a demure smile and murmured, “Not like I can hide anything in this outfit.”
The guy smirked before he ran his hands down her top, copping an unnecessary feel of her chest. She forced herself to ignore her instinct to squirm. His hands smoothed along her practically pasted-on skinny jeans down to the tops of her black, leather boots. God, how she loved the boots. Slick, high heeled, black leather zips. Any idiot knew what came next. A trained operative would demand those boots off for a little look-see and that couldn’t happen.
As he came up from his crouch, the bodyguard stared deeply into her eyes, transfixed. Even with their almost twelve-inch height differential, the unique two-toned pale coloring of her irises mesmerized him, as expected. His eyes would remain glued to hers until she blinked.
She suggested, “You don’t need to worry about the boots. They’re too tight to hide anything.”
He nodded. Loudly he reported, “She’s clean, sir.”
Most of the time she sought to conceal her unusual abilities, but not tonight. They needed to get through this alive. In her book a little cheating was okay.
She watched Markus remove his loafers. His big toe protruded from a ginormous sock hole. She caught his gaze and cocked an eyebrow. His cheeks flushed as he shoved his foot back into the shoe.
“Let’s see it, Ryom.” Markus waved Kira close and drawled, “I want to be sure my buyer is getting his money’s worth.”
Ryom extracted a cloth-wrapped item from his inner coat pocket. Carefully, he exposed an Egyptian beaded collar. His gaze turned reverent, and he caressed the piece.
“Is it the real thing, Doc?” Markus asked.
“Could you turn it over, please?” Kira watched Ryom flip it.
Waves of mystic energy assaulted her. She backed up a step and eyed the collar. It exuded an ancient and seductive energy that was pure evil.
“Yes. It’s real. It looks like the Necherophes wesekh from the Cairo museum.” At least she thought it looked like the pictures Markus had shown her two hours ago of a decorated beaded collar owned by some pharaoh millennia ago. She wasn’t a professional archaeologist. Her skill was reading energies, not that Markus knew that. He believed her gifted at discerning an original artifact from a fake based on sight alone.
Shadowy, ominous energy closed in around them. It wasn’t from the wesekh. She recognized the distinctive icy darkness.
“There are Hashishins here,” she whispered to Markus. She glanced down expecting their favorite ensorcelled pet to slither through the asphalt beneath her feet.
Looking up she caught the tail end of Markus’s exasperated look. Clearly, he didn’t believe
her. He shot her a get-it-together glare.
A knife hissed through the air. Rocks and debris exploded near Ryom’s foot.
A warning strike. Hashishins never missed. Never.
“Kill them,” Ryom yelled.
Within seconds bullets and throwing knives were zinging at random.
Markus body slammed her over the concrete rail surrounding the parking lot into the midst of wet, prickly plants.
Kira held her hands in front of her face, deflecting the spiky branches as she landed.
Immediately, she rolled to a crouch, ready. With a cringe, she worked to remove her ponytail from the branch on which it was caught.
She whispered, “You swore this deal would be a safe little exchange. I didn’t sign up for this—Chinese mafia and Hashishins. I’m an MD, not special ops.”
She stayed low, squirming to a break between the prickly bushes. With a grunt, she seesawed her right boot off. Efficiently she checked and chambered her gun.
“They’re Korean mafia, actually. Kkangpae. Throw me my gun. I’ll get you out. Don’t I always? Hell of an exciting way to celebrate New Year’s Eve, eh?” He punctuated this with an exhilarated laugh.
She removed the other boot and tossed him his gun. “Stop enjoying this. There are Hashishins here. Probably the Order of Assassins. Do you think the Koreans know they’re the targets of some major supernatural freaks?” She rezipped the boots.
“Christ, Kira. There’s no secret Persian assassin cult out there. I swear you must’ve watched a movie that freaked you out as a kid and tonight’s stress has triggered your paranoia.” He squeezed her shoulder supportively. In the low ambient light, his face was a mask of pity. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
“They’re real. And they’re here. I swear it on my mother’s grave.”
Now he used the you’ve-gone-loco look. This was exactly the reason she’d never divulged anything about her unique talents to either cousin. Neither would accept the fact some things weren’t just movie fiction. Yet to save his life she needed to convince him.
Markus led a slow crawl through the bushes.
She followed while urgently whispering, “I know they’re here. Have you ever wondered why I’m so good at telling which of your art pieces are real? The truth is I can feel energies off the real ones. Just like I can feel the evil of Hashishins.”
Markus halted so abruptly she smacked into him.
“Let’s cut the bullshit talk right now, Kira. I need you to keep your head in the game. You absolutely cannot have one of your goddamned magi-Hashishin freak-out moments.” Markus emitted a lengthy sigh and rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry. I just need for you to keep it together right now. Listen, I looked up the Order of Assassins group a few years back. Took some digging since they’re not mainstream. They claim to be an Arab-based group that studies magical arts in pursuit of self-awareness and some other holistic mumbo jumbo. Sounded like they’re a fanatical religious cult crossed with the Elk Lodge. Bogus shit. I’ll admit there’s a group whose members call themselves Hashishins, but I don’t think they’re here tonight. Nor do I think they’re anything more than a group of drug-addicted, hippie Arabs. You know what hashish is, don’t you?”
“Of course I know it’s pot. That’s all PR bullshit.” Well, that went over as expected.
Hashishins here was bad news. For her, that is. Both Hashishins and their enemies, the Scimitar magi, sought people of her abilities, at least that’s what her mother had warned her. Magi wanted to use her for her healing gift as a resident supernatural medic. Hands down those guys were blazing hot and supposedly on the good-guys team, but she would be no more to them than an expendable accessory.
She’d met a magus once. And been utterly awed. In the eleven years since she helped the guy escape Hashishin torture, he had dominated her fantasies. That, however, was the very off-limits dream world. In reality the thought of being enslaved to mystical warriors for the rest of her life and targeted by their enemies was not an attractive life plan.
Capture by Hashishins, on the other hand, simply scared the hell out of her. An unpleasant death was the inevitable outcome. Those psycho, serpent-loving, black-magik assassins had already executed every bit of her family other than Markus and Kane, who both fortunately lacked any special abilities to attract their attention. She knew firsthand the kind of terrifying those guys could dole out, having been tortured by them once—a consequence of helping that magus. Somehow she had escaped that encounter with her life, but not unscathed. Lesson learned.
“I need to get that collar or my buyer is going to be pissed,” Markus whispered as he crawled toward a gap in the concrete barrier.
“Screw it. Let them fight over it. I’ve got no plans to get filled with holes over some piece of ancient crap.”
Markus glanced at her over his shoulder. “Even if we go around the edge of the lot, they’re likely to see us at the exit, unless you plan to tunnel your way under the office building. I figure we ought to try to get that thing as we exit.”
“We’re going to have to shoot our way out of this, aren’t we?”
“Yep. And we only have one magazine each. Choose your shots wisely.”
Kira peeked over the concrete rail spanning the perimeter of the parking lot. The Koreans looked to be headed up shit creek. The methodical strikes from the assassins’ double-edged short swords sent a shiver down her spine. They were toying. That was not their MO.
The distinctive icy shadow to their auras indicated they were Fedavis Hashishins, the highest level in the order. Decades of training in weapons, poison, and magik were required to attain this level. Fedavis in particular did not play with their targets. Their standard procedure was murder and exit.
A tall bisht-robed form materialized from the darkness. A dark cloth keffiyeh covered his head. He stared in her direction, exposing a burn-scarred left cheek and glowing aqua eyes. She gasped. The impulse to flee had her backing up hard into Markus.
“Markus, it’s him. Terek Nadir. The Grand Master Fedavis. I told you there were Hashishins here. And Terek isn’t dead. You said he was dead.”
“Move over. Let me see.” Markus pushed her behind him and glimpsed over the rail from their kneeling position. “I only see those Korean bodyguards getting their asses kicked by guys who seem to like small knives. It doesn’t look like we’re going to get that collar tonight. My buyer is going to be pissed.”
“Forget your buyer. You see that guy with the scarred face? That’s Terek. We need to leave right now.”
“I don’t see him. By everything I read a few years ago, it was clear he was gone. As in cold in the ground.”
Kira peeked over the edge and pointed to the shadows thirty feet away where Terek stood as if waiting for something.
Markus watched the action for a few seconds before saying, “Follow me.”
He led their crawl through the bushes until they reached the edge of the parking lot. They dashed for the exit and the street, skidding to a halt at the curb. Several darkly clothed Hashishins emerged behind them.
“I’ve got ’em,” Markus claimed as he took aim. A small knife knocked the gun from his hand before he could fire.
“They want us alive,” Kira whispered.
“Yeah, message received loud and clear,” Markus grumbled while massaging his hand. “We’re gonna have to split to thin their numbers. You go left around the block and circle back to the car and I’ll head right. Don’t forget we parked near the bank. Meet at the car in twenty. Thirty max. Go.” Without looking, he took off running.
He left me? Although stunned, she ran.
Something grazed her thigh with a burning pain, but not enough to stop her mad dash across the street into an alley. A peek behind showed more of them were following her than Markus. Her terror and pain coalesced to push her to Olympic sprint levels.
A quick glance behind her seconds later saw nothing, but she sensed her pursuers closing in. As she hit the edge of the building at the
end of the alley, she slammed into a wall of muscle. A huge arm snaked around her, imprisoning her against his body.
****
Terek Nadir couldn’t stop his smile as he approached the fray. The fear coming off the Asians was divine.
His left biceps unexpectedly shuddered as if someone had whacked him with a two-by-four. The smell of blood permeated the air. He pulled up the black sleeve of his bisht robe to reveal an ugly bullet wound. Yet, he felt no pain.
With a snort he chanted a short spell. The shocked gasp from the human muscle man eight feet away was enough to signal the wound had healed.
With a flick of his wrist, his Fedavis melted into the darkness.
“Who are you?” The muscle man stepped in front of his employer like a good bodyguard despite countless lacerations and two small knives protruding from his abdomen.
“Ryom has something that belongs to me.” His voice came out raspy like a multi-decade chain smoker. He didn’t care for cigarettes, but the human that owned this body before he arrived had been an addict.
He whispered a chant, reveling in the malignant energy of the spell as it swelled around him. Yet, he kept its power close.
“Back off,” the bodyguard ordered, waving his gun wildly.
All three bodyguards now targeted him with their guns.
Undaunted, Terek ordered, “Stand aside.”
“What the hell is wrong with your eyes?”
Through the black soulless shields he knew now occluded his eyes, Terek watched the men posture. True warriors would use their weapons, not that the bullets would hinder him. He laughed and held his arms wide to take in the energy of their terror. Strength infused his muscles, jolting them as if he’d touched a high-voltage power line.
He released the spell. Instantly, all three guards dropped to their knees, struggling for breath. Their weapons fell to the sidewalk. Terek held his index finger and thumb apart. Slowly, he pinched them together in a mimicked squeeze.