by Ben Zackheim
The Relic Series (1-3)
A Kane Arkwright Supernatural Thriller
Ben Zackheim
Contents
Relic: Blade (Book One)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Relic: Hammer (Book Two)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Relic: Shield (Book Three)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
How will Kane handle a rogue Rebel?
Also by Ben Zackheim
Relic: Blade (Book One)
Chapter 1
Rebel was on my ass.
“You may want to run faster, Kane!” she yelled.
“You may want to look down, Rebel!” I yelled back.
The cliff’s edge was two feet to our left as we scampered up the old path. We just had to hope it didn’t dead-end and drop us into the jungles of Peru. No one had laid a foot in the area for a thousand years if local tales were accurate.
“Move it!” Rebel screamed. “Or I’ll use them. I swear to Thor!”
I knew she was referring to using her hands. Hands that were packed with weapons, none of which were a gun, an explosive, or metal.
Those damn fingernails were infamous.
Sharpened and shined to a dagger point, her ten digits were known in certain circles for their razor-sharp attacks and intimidation factor of ten. Rebel worked hard to make them shine, or ‘snag the sparkle’ as she liked to say when she found poetry in her heart.
She wore a pair of gloves sliced off at the top of each finger so the nails could do their job. Her long jacket covered a black outfit that looked like a cross between a Jiu-Jitsu gi and a trendy workout suit. Tight in all the right places, but with enough give where she needed it. The getup helped her spring like the panther she wanted to be.
Me, I had waterproof everything and hiking boots that were weighed down by jungle sweat. The heaviest kind.
A bullet bounced off of the stone above my head, scattering dust and pebbles into my face. I tried to wipe it away but in that split second I lost my footing and tripped right over the edge of the cliff.
The searing pain in my shoulder was a welcome relief. Rebel had me. Granted, she had me by fingertip daggers that were embedded in my forearm’s flesh, but as long as my skin tissue held together, I wouldn’t fall to my death.
At least not yet.
The fuckers taking shots at us had more plans for me. Waves of bullets made it pretty damn clear that they wanted to see the stupid dangling guy plummet to his death. Did they even know what they were protecting anymore? The well-armed sheep were following orders that went back a thousand years, at least.
If they only knew how much more treasure their bosses were hiding from us, they’d be offering me their sisters as thanks and Rebel their brothers -- or sisters, or whatever she was into those days.
Rebel and I had been chasing treasure for years. But not just any treasure.
Vampire treasure.
We were a Spirit team. You could call it an elite organization, but it’s more of a heavily armed diplomatic group that monitors every country’s paranormals. Spirit agents from each nation are responsible for providing protection for the citizenry. Some countries considered both humans and paranormals their citizens, some didn’t. Some had been infested since the Vampires reappeared two years prior. Some had to fight off werewolves and others were grappling with the demonic world. Each country had to determine what they needed to protect themselves and communicate clearly with everyone else what steps they were taking. International law and all that stuff. Way above my pay grade.
The United States had three teams. Rebel and I were one, and our mission was clear.
Get to the vampire treasures before the vampires did.
Vampires were still myth up until recently. Well, Spirit knew they were real, but there were so few of the hemogoblins that we could easily keep them contained.
But then Paris happened.
>
It was mayhem. The city was a bloodbath as the vampires, after missing for a thousand years, emerged from the sewers at night and swept through the streets with almost zero resistance. By dawn, Paris had been evacuated by all humans. The only ones left were ten Spirit teams. We combed Paris for the attackers but only tracked down and took out a few. Thousands escaped. We couldn’t determine where they’d been hiding for a thousand years. The Paris underground was a world of dark corners and endless tunnels.
One thing our intel told us was that the vampires were awake again, and they wanted their shit back. They’d been asleep for so long they didn’t recognize the world they’d woken up in. They couldn’t find their dead asses on a map. We had to take full advantage of their confusion. We couldn’t let them blend in with the human population with unlimited wealth. No one wanted to find out what vampires would do with the power they could drain from human society.
Rebel and I graduated to Spirit as field agents the same year as the attack. Our primary mission was to find and secure all of the vampire treasure as quickly as possible. Then, once we secured the loot, we needed to identify the best place to keep it safe. Most of the bounty was your standard gold and gems. Stuff that would look comfortable in a pirate’s treasure chest. But a lot of old and supernatural relics were rumored to be waiting for us, too. Supernatural treasure is tough to hide from supernatural beings.
But that was our goal.
And the treasure in Peru was a supernatural relic of the highest order.
“You okay?” Rebel asked as she pulled me up high enough to slip her other set of claws under my other arm.
“Never better, Rebel! Shrapnel in my ass and fingernails in my armpit make it all just great.”
“HA! In my book, maybe. Don’t worry, we’ll get you to…”
Another bullet panged off the rock wall. We were ten yards from a bend that would hide us from our pursuers. At least until they caught up and turned the corner too. I hoped the end of the path was close. Skyler’s clue didn’t include a map. Typical. I couldn’t stand that old man.
I managed to get up to the path where I took a second to catch my breath. Then I rolled and peeked over the edge. Two men were running up the path after us. They’d decided it was time to catch up and kill us face-to-face.
Polite of them.
“Are we sure these are the Guardians?” Rebel asked as I got to my feet and hobbled ahead.
“I don’t know, Rebel. It sure looks to me like they’re protecting something.” I tried to make the pain go away with sheer willpower. It wasn’t working. I wished we had a healer on our team.
“I don’t know,” she said. “They look different to me. What’s with the funny masks. Like bank robbers who got lost in the jungle.”
“Maybe it’s a local gang. For hire. All I know is they don’t prefer diplomacy.”
So far the mission was not living up to the hype. We had expected to be up against heavy arsenal. Vampires loved them their guns. So we’d come prepared. We had an Armalite AR-50 sniper rifle, a small crate of M67 grenades and even a FIM-92 Stinger missile launcher, just in case they came at us from the sky. But we’d made the mistake of carrying it all in one car.
One car which had been stolen.
By the guys who were after us.
Hey, we were young. If we lived to the next adventure, we’d get better. Of course, I’d been saying that for the last few missions and we still hadn’t walked away with a single treasure yet. Not even a gold bullion. I got mono in Scotland, though. That was a gift that kept on giving.
I peeked around the bend and checked out what was ahead.
“The path ends 50 yards up,” I told Rebel. “And then we have to climb. About 150 feet to the first ledge. No way I’m making that with shrapnel in my ass.”
“Great attitude, Kane. No wonder we’re doing so well.”
“We’d be doing fine if we could return fire! I’m not the one who took my eyes off a car full of weapons because some Peruvian pretty boy gave me the twinkly eyes, am I?”
“I’m not the one who had to leave the car in the first place to hike a mile into the jungle so he could buy exotic mushrooms!”
“Come on. We don’t have time for this.” I winced from the pain in my ass and made for the cliff wall.
Guns behind us. A two hundred foot drop to the left of us.
“The only way to go is forward,” I mumbled.
Which is when a spear lodged itself into the cliff wall behind me.
Chapter 2
I watched as another spear arched through the sky at me. The tosser was perched on the cliff ahead.
I stepped back behind the corner. The spear cut into the stone near my face.
The fucker was good.
If we got any closer, we’d be easy targets for him.
“Where did that come from?” Rebel asked, as she pushed past me and pulled the spear out of the cliffside. “I’ll feel their blood flow over my pinkies for that.”
Yeah, she’s dark. Vindictive, too.
“Up there,” I said, pointing around the corner and at the ledge above us. It was slightly covered in mist and partially cloaked in darkness so it was the perfect sniping spot.
I reached for one of my Glocks, but they were gone, likely lost during the fight with Thing One and Thing Two.
I slipped Rebel’s pistol out of her belt.
“What the hell are you…” Rebel started, before she interrupted herself. “Kane! Don’t waste a bullet on the spear guy!”
I peeked around the corner to get a bead on him if I could. I saw slight movement near the edge of the perch.
I aimed.
“Are you sure you can hit him?” Rebel asked.
I stopped. I looked over my shoulder at her. “Really? After all we’ve been through, you still ask me that?”
“What?” she asked. “It’s windy out here. And he’s hiding in the shadows. And there’s no…”
I turned to peek around the corner again.
He spotted me. He tossed another spear.
As the thing raced toward my face, I knew it was now or never.
I fired.
I snapped back upright as the spear zipped by me nose so close I could smell it.
I glanced up at the perch.
No movement from the darkness.
“See?” Rebel said. “Dammit, give me that gun back.”
I heard a sound from around the corner and looked just in time to see a human form stumble out of the blackness. He fell off the edge and spun all the way down to the sharp boulders below.
I handed the gun back to Rebel.
She pushed it back into my hand.
“Okay, that was amazing,” Rebel said, taking the pistol. “And disgusting. Look at that.” The dead guy was at the bottom of the cliff in several pieces.
Rebel lived by her fists. Fighting, to her, was like slipping into velvet pajamas and sipping cognac by the fire. She hated guns. Me, I fight and live by them. Put one in my hand and point me to the bad guy. I won’t miss. Ever.
“Let’s go, Rebel. We’re going to make it this time.”
“You’re such a romantic.”
“Shut up and go!”
“See? So sweet.”
I shoved her ahead and took one more look behind us to see if I could spot our pursuers.
I didn’t have to look far. They were close. As in stepping-on-my-toes close. And they were big. The guy who towered over me was 7 feet tall, if he was an inch.
The beast of a jackass picked me up in a bear hug. His arms squeezed the breath right out of me with one jerk. I couldn’t get my hands free to box his ears so I used my head to bash his nose in. It was like slamming a tomato with a hammer. But even with all of the blood he didn’t let go. He did start to lose his balance which was not what I was hoping for.
We were 100 feet up.
One bad step and we’d be going over.
He slipped and fell.
He let go of me so he could grab
onto something. That’s when the other guy snagged me by the arm and pulled me up. He didn’t mean to. He’d been going for his buddy and just caught the wrong frantically-waving arm.
He dropped me on the path as his partner screamed all the way down.