by E. A. Copen
I stiffened, ready to respond with force if he pulled out a weapon.
Instead, he tugged a nondescript white envelope out of his suit jacket, opened it, and thumbed through a large stack of hundred-dollar bills. “I am, of course, willing to compensate you for your time. Whatever your employer offered you, I will pay double, and all I require is his name.”
“Keep your blood money,” Josiah spat.
Alexi looked up, eyebrows lifting. He stared at us for a moment before closing the envelope and putting it back where he’d taken it from. “I see. I respect a man who knows where he stands. Loyalty is a rare trait these days.” The chair creaked as he stood. “But I must advise you to reconsider. Loyalty to the wrong person can be a detriment to one’s health, Mr. Quinn. Wise men like us, we understand the importance of keeping up with the times, don’t we? So, I ask you one more time. Who hired you to find Stefan Nikolaides?”
The tension in the air snapped tight. Silence stretched thin, sharp and dangerous like razor wire. Josiah rolled his shoulders, readying for a fight that never came.
When neither of us answered, Alexi sighed and straightened his tie. “Ta lème, Keerios Quinn.” We’ll speak again soon. He nodded to me and exited through the front door.
Less than a second passed before one of the side windows shattered and a bottle with a flaming cloth stuffed into it crashed to the living room. It exploded on impact, turning the room in front of us into a fireball.
Josiah lifted an arm to shield himself from the flame and stepped back, pulling me with him toward the back door.
I tugged my arm free. The back door would be our only logical exit after the front of the house went up in flames. If I were a pissed-off Greek who wanted to kill a couple of nobodies, I’d herd them toward a singular exit and pick them off as they came through. Alexi’s bodyguards would be waiting for us at the back door.
“Upstairs!” I shouted.
“Are you mad? This place is going up!”
“They’ll be waiting by the back door.” I ran for the stairs without bothering to stop and see if he followed.
Flame crawled up the banister, licking hungrily at the dry wood. I covered my mouth and nose as best I could against the rising black smoke, blinking away tears when the heat and fumes stung my eyes. The window in the ritual room had been boarded shut, but the one in Stefan’s bedroom hadn’t. I pushed the door open, moving aside piles of clothing and broken records that had all been ripped from shelves. Broken glass crunched into the carpet as I rushed to the window. The room was already filling with smoke.
Josiah stumbled into the room, coughing and clutching that stupid record. The idiot had gone back for it. Should’ve figured he’d do something like that. No time to yell at him now.
I lifted the window and leaned out into the stifling heat of midday just in time to see a black Mercedes pull away. The shadows of two men shifted in the backyard while one meandered around the front, holding a collapsible baton.
The rooftop of the house next door waited only three feet away, an easy enough jump, but making it would attract the attention of the man out front. There was no way to jump without him seeing us. He didn’t have a gun I could see, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have one.
“I need you to make a magic shield that can deflect bullets,” I shouted back to Josiah. “Put it up when we jump.”
“And what’s your plan from the roof?” He pulled me away from the window by the arm. “If you’d brought my bag in, I could’ve had this fire out.”
I shook my arm free. “Fuck your bag, Josiah. I left it in the car.” I sighed and tugged my shirt back over my nose and mouth. With all the excitement of getting carjacked by a demon earlier, I’d forgotten why I went outside in the first place. But he wouldn’t leave without his spider, which was inside that damn bag. Of course, we couldn’t just jump across a few rooftops and disappear, making a sensible escape. Nothing was sensible when Josiah was involved. “We go down there, kick this guy’s ass, get in the car, and get the hell out of here.”
He nodded.
“Now put up the fucking shield.”
“It’ll only hold for about fifteen seconds,” he advised. “And if they’ve got enough bullets, they’ll blow right through it.”
I ignored his warning and positioned myself in the window. “Ready? On three.” Deep breath. Don’t look down. Just jump, slide down the gable to land on the trash can. One more jump and you’ll be within range to take out the asshole with the club, provided the two out back don’t realize what’s going on. I let the breath out. “Three!”
I sprang from the window, hands out in front of me to grab the ledge of the next roof over. A bright blue dome appeared around me as the man with the club started shouting. I let go of the ledge and dropped just as the gunfire erupted. The shield held as I crashed into the trash cans below, but Josiah was nowhere to be found. I glanced up at the window. He wasn’t there either. Where the hell had he gone?
A bullet ripped through the shield, tearing a hole the size of a fingertip in it. I was out of time to wait for him. Rather than dealing with the two gun-toting idiots, I ran toward the one with a club, dropping the daggers back into my fists. My left leg was a little stiff from the way I’d landed, but it didn’t slow me down. He swung his club at me. I dodged to the right and drew one dagger along the inside of his thigh. He went down to one knee and tried to swing the club at me. The idiot didn’t realize he was already dead. I sped up the transition for him by jamming the other dagger into his neck right where it met his shoulder. His club rolled away and he fell over, twitching, into a puddle of his own blood.
Stopping to kill him must’ve taken longer than I realized because the gunmen came around the sides of the house shooting, one on either side. I tried to pull the dagger out of the dead man’s neck, but it broke. That was the problem with obsidian. Great for deep, clean cuts but usually one-time use only.
A bullet grazed my arm. I threw the dagger I still had toward the gunman on the right. It spun through the air and struck him in the throat just below his Adam’s apple. He went down, shooting the last of his bullets into the sky.
I turned to engage the final gunman, but he’d closed the distance while I was distracted. Black metal flashed, and the butt of his gun hit me in the face. My bones shifted, and white-hot pain blinded me. I groped to grab my attacker, but he landed another punch to my face. My face…
A memory flashed through my mind with the next punch. My father stood at the edge of darkness, his face in profile, hands clasped behind his back as the demons laughed and dragged me away. “Leave her face,” he shouted after them. “I need her face.”
I blinked and I was back in the present, my vision red from the blood spurting from my broken nose and a deep laceration over my eye. I curled my lip and felt the skin pull in a strange way, letting more blood drip into my mouth. Even with the blood clouding my vision, I saw him, my father’s face staring back at me.
My hands shot out and closed around his throat, squeezing. His fist froze in the air, drawn back to strike again. The brown ring in his eyes shrank, overtaken by the black of his pupils. A frantic pulse pounded against my tightening fingers as I let the monster inside me loose to feed.
The world of pain and raging fire fled, replaced by the doors of a mind that wasn’t mine. Every door slammed open, revealing secrets free for the taking. I gorged myself on a buffet of them, gobbling up everything.
One cold Christmas morning. Soft socks slide over chilly floors, the smell of pancakes in the air.
A playground fight. T-shirts two sizes too big, and fists still soft enough that knocking out the other kid’s teeth breaks skin. His fingers are bloody, but the other kid is bloodier.
Cigarettes in the bathroom stall. He threw up the first time, and the older kids laughed and kicked him into the toilet.
His first time with a woman. She laughed too, but her laugh is softer, flirting, not teasing.
A wedding. White dresses. Dov
es. A debt, one he’ll spend the rest of his life paying.
Hospital. Not once, twice. It’s the same both times. Maternity ward. He’s out of place. For the first time in his life, he’s powerless, and it hurts. Childbirth, fatherhood, it’s not supposed to be like this. His hands weren’t ever supposed to be so dirty. Now the same ones that took lives had to hold it and nothing fit.
His memories flashed through my mind in an instant, burning, searing blisters into my flesh and mind. I screamed and pulled away only to realize that the blisters were real. My hands were coated in them.
He teetered a moment before he blinked. His mouth opened.
And suddenly, Josiah was there. He threw a hard punch at the man, hitting him square in the jaw. The other man spun and hit the ground, showing no sign of getting up anytime soon.
“Khaleda, let’s go,” Josiah said.
I heard him, but I couldn’t respond. What had I done? He was a husband, a father. He had a life, and I took it from him. I couldn’t just leave him…
“Khaleda!” Josiah grasped my shoulders and shook me until I blinked again.
Sound came back suddenly, and I recognized the wail of a fire engine. If we were still there when it showed up, there would be questions, especially since at least two men were dead at the scene.
His face softened. “Let’s get out of here, yeah?”
I nodded, though I wished I hadn’t. My face was throbbing.
Josiah helped me into the back seat and slid behind the wheel, urging me not to fall asleep. I barely understood what he was saying. I knew the words and what they meant, but it was almost as if putting them together was too difficult.
I leaned against the cool window and closed my eyes, the taste of blood fresh on my tongue.
Chapter Eight
JOSIAH
The only thing I hated more than driving was driving in New York. I didn’t know my arse from a hole in the ground there, and the traffic patterns made no sense. I was at a total loss, driving around with no real idea of where I was or where I needed to go. After about fifteen minutes, my heart stopped pounding long enough for my brain to work and I pulled over, fumbling through my pockets in search of my cell. The damn thing had GPS, didn’t it? That’d help me get where I was going at least.
I glanced into the back seat where Khaleda had passed out, leaving a bloody streak on the window where her nose was resting. Lucky thing we hadn’t happened by any police. They’d have pulled me over for a look at the bleeding woman in my back seat.
Fuck me, I’d better do something about her. I looked around and didn’t see any place that would sell medical supplies. What I had in my bag would have to do then. I put the car in park, got out and slid into the back seat next to her, moving my bag onto the seat between us.
Healing magic was about as far from my specialty as Tasmania was from the Amazon, but I did have a couple of charged stones that could take the edge off a bad concussion. I tossed a few things around the car during my search but eventually came up with two smooth bits of quartz vibrating with clean white magic. I’d bought them from the white witch, Harmony, while we were still on good terms.
Harmony could help us, I thought, looking down at Khaleda’s burned hands. There was no help for that. Best I could do was keep her brain from swelling. She needed a healer, and I needed to get back on this case before Alexi tracked down Stefan. I placed one stone on either of her temples and sent a quick charge of magic down into both. Her limbs twitched, and fresh blood leaked out of her nose. I was glad she wasn’t awake for that treatment. I’d used it once or twice myself, and it was never pleasant but always effective.
Wasn’t anything I could do for the broken nose. It was a bloody mess and crooked too. Khaleda would be furious if any of that scarred, but that was what she got for bringing knives to a gunfight. At least she wasn’t going to die.
I got back into the driver’s seat and spent a few minutes fighting with the GPS, changing the destination from our hotel in Queens to Harmony’s apartment in Brooklyn. Once I got it set, I got back behind the wheel and did my best to follow the damn thing’s directions.
Harmony Smith lived in a brick apartment building over on Schafer Street. One of those cramped, one-bedroom places that was nice enough to almost be worth the twelve hundred dollars a month she paid for it. I’d been in trailers that were larger. Never had to help an unconscious, bleeding woman into one of those though.
I buzzed her from the bottom floor at an intercom.
“Yes?” Her voice came through high and happy, just like Harmony.
“Need your expertise, love.” I shifted Khaleda’s weight on my arm. Her head flopped to the side, hair shielding most of her face from view.
Her demeanor instantly changed once she realized it was me. “Not on your life, you deluded prick. Get out of here before I call the police on you.”
A man came into the little lobby area just then. He stared at me and Khaleda, a look of horror on his face. His hand strayed toward his pocket where his cell probably was. I had to distract him somehow and get him to let us in, all while keeping him from turning us in.
“G’day, mate.” I flashed him a smile and gestured to Khaleda. “Me friend here’s had a few too many and…Well, it’s her time of the month and wouldn’t you know she left all her things up in the apartment the one day I forget my key. Could ya do us a solid and buzz us through before it gets everywhere?”
He nodded slowly and slowly unlocked the door, holding it open for us.
Knew it. Nothing makes your average male more uncomfortable and desperate to escape than the prospect of discussing the female reproductive cycle. “In your debt, mate,” I called to him as I dragged Khaleda through and to the elevator.
Harmony lived in unit four, which was on the second floor. I dragged Khaleda that far and knocked on the door directly.
It opened wide enough to indicate the chain lock was still secured and the witch peered out. “No.”
“Come on, Harmony. You really going to let her bleed to death out here in the hall because she kissed you once?”
“She fucking tried to eat me, Josiah.”
“Yeah, but did she? Who saved your ass by the way? Oh, right. Me.” I kicked the door. “Now open the bloody door and help me!”
The door slammed closed for a second, and I had a moment of panic. What if she didn’t let us in? I couldn’t just blow the door off its hinges, now could I? I mean, I could, but that’d attract more attention than I wanted to deal with, and it wouldn’t engender any positive feelings between Harmony and me either.
Thankfully, she slid the chain lock aside, and the door popped open not ten seconds later.
I dragged Khaleda into the tiny apartment, which was too white and clean for my tastes. Almost looked like no one even lived there.
“Put her on the sofa over there.” Harmony shut the door and gestured. No idea why as there was only one sofa in the whole place.
I dropped Khaleda roughly with a grunt and bent over, hands on my knees, to catch my breath. “I took care of the concussion. Not sure how bad the face is though.”
Harmony pushed past me and got straight to work, slapping on a pair of sterile gloves that seemed to come out of nowhere. She knelt next to Khaleda and gently touched her nose and the area around it. “That’s broken. Could be looking at an orbital fracture as well.” She peeled back Khaleda’s eyelid for a look. “She needs a hospital, not herbs and tinctures.”
“She bloody needs to go on a diet is what she needs. I swear she weighs more now than she did before.” I huffed out a breath and stood, lighting a cigarette on the way.
Harmony made a nasal noise somewhere between a snort and a grunt. “Sure and all that smoking isn’t reducing your lung capacity at all.”
I flipped my lighter closed. “Can you fix her or not?”
She sighed and shook her head. “She’s a succubus, right? So honestly the fastest way to heal her is going to be using those powers, except she’s not
in any state at all for that. I’m more worried she’s going to wake up and try to use her powers on me again.”
“Wouldn’t worry about that, love. Hasn’t been that long since she last fed. Have a look at her hands.”
Harmony muttered a mild curse as she turned Khaleda’s hands over and looked at her blistered palms. “What’s this?”
“Poor bastard she tried to feed on last must’ve been in love.” I took a long drag on the cigarette while Harmony gave me a questioning look. “Succubus powers have their drawbacks. She can’t touch anyone who loves and is loved in return or else she gets burned. Literally. So while she did get to feed a little, the food wasn’t kind in return. Guess you might call it a case of succubus heartburn.”
“I can set the bones, get the swelling down, and deal with the burns,” Harmony said, rising to go to her cabinet and gather what she needed. “And I have a nurse friend who can get me any pharmaceuticals to keep the pain at a minimum, but that’s all I can do.”
Harmony was right about one thing. Khaleda would need to feed again to heal all that damage. I knew better than to get involved in that again. Once, I’d been a convenient source of energy to heal up a couple of nasty wounds. While it had been an interesting encounter, and I was fairly sure the both of us had enjoyed ourselves, it wasn’t one I was willing to repeat. It was too big a risk, especially since last time we’d had magic on our side. Besides, Khaleda and I were partners, friends sometimes. What was the word that Lazarus fellow had used that fit so well? Frenemies. We hated each other, which was the only reason we worked so well together. I couldn’t afford to jeopardize that, not if either of us wanted to stand a chance of escaping the reins of God’s Hand. Khaleda would have to look after herself on that front.
I leaned to the side to look down the hall where Harmony was fucking about, gathering blankets and pillows. “Can I leave her with you for a while?”
“What? Leave her? Josiah, I don’t run a boarding house. I have to be at work in a few hours, and my boss will kill me if I call in again. I really need this job.” She came down the hall with an armload of supplies and dumped them all on the counter.