The Relic Box Set

by Ben Zackheim

  “That doesn’t mean he’s responsible for his father’s sins.”

  “So if I went nuts and killed like a million people you wouldn’t feel like you needed to clean up my mess?” Rose asked.

  “Great question,” Rebel said.

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s not even close to a good question.”

  “Yeah, but you’re my sister,” Cassidy broke in. “We have a bond that, yeah, I guess it would mean I was on the hook to make good.”

  “Oh, and dads and sons don’t have a bond?” Rose said, her voice rising.

  “Not like twins, no. I’d think the last week was proof of that.”

  “You’re basing your argument on metaphysical appropriation of human logic,” Rose said, pulling a book from the shelf.

  Rebel made a confused face at me. I frowned back.

  “What are you talking like that for?” Cassidy said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like a college student who wants to hide the complexities of life under a tidy blanket of fancy words and snooty attitudes.”

  “It’s better than pulling pop-psych from an underdeveloped holster of zero life experience and comprehension that’s crippled by feelings of insufficiency.”

  “I’m going to kill them,” I said to Rebel.

  “You two need to lay off,” Rebel cut in.

  “What? He started it!” Rose bellowed.

  “I meant lay off Kane!” Rebel shouted. “He’s the one we’re focused on here.”

  “No we’re not,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Look, I appreciate the concern but I need some time to think this through.”

  “That’s cool,” Rebel said. “Maybe a vacation would help.”

  “No, I want all of you to leave,” I said. “I need to be here. In this house. Alone. If I’m going to work this out then I need to have a talk with some ghosts.” The house had been destroyed twice since my parents had lived there. But I could still feel their presence.

  “Like, literally ghosts?” Rose asked, looking around nervously.

  “Probably not,” I said. “But maybe.”

  The front doorbell rang. Saved by the bell. The soft ding-dong wasn’t my style. I’d wanted it to sound like a Rocketdyne F-1 rocket firing off in the desert. Exquisite sound. Love it. But the doorbell guy had let Rebel talk him out of it. I’d fired him but hadn’t found a new doorbell guy who was more afraid of me than her.

  I slipped my cell phone out of my back pocket.

  I’d busted the screen with my ass again. I was a pre-smart phone soul in a smart phone world.

  I checked the app that showed me the front door’s camera feed.

  “You have got to be fucking with me,” I said.

  “What is it?” Rebel asked, walking behind me to see the screen. “Hoooooly shit.”

  It was a guy in a long overcoat. His face covered in a hood. But one look at his boots and we knew it was Bonehead.

  He looked up at the camera, his face still covered in darkness.

  His voice boomed over the speakers throughout the house.

  “You were right,” he said. “The shield should have stayed with you.”

  Relic: Shield (Book Three)

  Chapter 1

  It was my turn to be on Rebel’s ass.

  Yeah, we were dangling from a high place again. What can I say? Dangling, for us, is like a cup of coffee at the start of a work day. I just can’t get my feet under me without a good dangle.

  “I want his blood in my belly!” the Emperor of Vampires shouted at his army of undead.

  “I think he’s talking about you,” Rebel yelled down at me. I held onto her belt like my life depended on it.

  “Pull us up!” I yelled back. “That way I can try to, you know, make sure that doesn’t fucking happen!”

  The Vampire emperor’s large silhouette melted into the dark purple night sky of New York City. His dozens of minions, most of them as huge as he was, floated around him, like blood-sucking planets around an asshole sun.

  The apartment building we dangled from was one of the old, pre-WWII Manhattan brick deals. Fire escapes zig-zagged down the facade to the second story. Nine floors below us was an alley packed with dumpsters and street food carts. Nice combo. I always wondered where those guys got their special sauce.

  Bottom line was that we wouldn’t survive that fall.

  The other bottom line was our deaths meant that Manhattan would be a big crater in about an hour.

  I carried a shield that was about to go nuclear all over the city. If I could escape and get it to my destination then millions of people could wake up the next morning and choose between coffee flavors, make googly eyes at each other on the subway and watch the clock from 1pm onward.

  Not escaping meant toasted citizens, no butter.

  The emperor gestured for a couple of his guys to retrieve us.

  “I’m going to swing!” Rebel shouted down at me, her teeth clenched from the effort of keeping my fine ass afloat.

  “I didn’t know you were into swinging!”

  “Shut up or I undo my belt, Arkwright!” she swung her legs left and right, which couldn’t have helped her grip on that air conditioner sticking out of the window.

  But I realized what she wanted me to do.

  I reached for the next window’s air conditioner. It stuck out like a big, fat “Save Kane” button. If I could just get a few fingers on its edge I might dangle on my own.

  Maybe free up a hand to shoot while Rebel pulled off a spell.

  Who knows? We were winging it.

  I missed the first chance to grab the AC. But then Rebel grunted in that certain way. I’m not sure how to explain it. But when she gets determined, she grunts and the air around us charges up. You can feel it on your skin. I think she drew her power from that determination. I think it was the source of her magic talents. Everything she did sprang forth from the single-mindedness that flowed in her veins.

  So her second swing did the trick with room to spare. I grabbed onto the AC and looked over just in time to see Rebel fall.

  “Kane, you son of a biiiiiiitch!”

  “Rebel!”

  I watched her plunge toward the pretzel grills below. Even with death imminent, she found the time to give me the finger.

  One of the emperor’s guys swooped down and caught her around 20 feet above the ground.

  I guessed they didn’t mean to kill us. Yet.

  Frankly, I knew I was as safe as a babe with the Vamps. My Vault Portal allowed me to store treasures away in a portable supernatural cubby hole. I had years’ worth of relics secured in there. The Vampires wanted to get their hands on every single one of them. They knew that killing me meant they’d never see their loot again.

  But Rebel didn’t have the same peace of mind when she went up against the undead. I always worried about what they’d do to her if they caught her.

  Well, they’d just caught her.

  So I let go of the AC.

  “Catch him!” the emperor yelled, a slight taste of delicious desperation in each word.

  I pulled both Glocks out just in time to spot a New Yorker on the 7th floor open his curtains to see what the ruckus was all about. But I bet he closed the curtain just after I blew a hole in a Vampire’s face.

  One of them caught me before I went splat. I held onto one pistol but the other one dropped. My free hand wrapped around the Vamp’s belt as he lifted us up.

  I slid out of his grasp and did The Dangle from his belt.

  I took out three more Vamps from a distance before the emperor swooped in and swiped my Glock.

  When I say “took out” I mean “removed from the fight.” Spirit trained us not to go for the kill withVampires. Too tough to do it right. But taking out the eyes, or chopping off limbs, or shattering teeth – that was the goal in every fight.

  And, hey, if the Vamps were wandering around eyeless or toothless when things settled down? Well, go crazy.

  My undead ride dropped
me in the alley. Right on top of a dozen buckets of grease. He smirked down at me as he floated to his emperor’s side.

  Rebel had been dumped on top of a nearby dumpster.

  “Any brilliant ideas?” she asked.

  “Not being here would be brilliant,” I said.

  “I said ideas, not dreams, Kane.”

  “I’ll talk my way out of it like I always do,” I said, standing up and picking the larger chunks of lard off of my jacket.

  “Funny, I don’t recall a single time when you talked your way out of anything.”

  The emperor landed in front of me. His boots clapped against the pavement like only a size 16 boot can. Yeah, the guy was a giant. And he got bigger when he got angry.

  Scary dude.

  “Hello, Happy Meal,” he said.

  Chapter 2

  How the hell did I get in this mess?

  Bonehead.

  This was all his fault.

  On our last mission, Bonehead, the ex-Vampire guardian, stole Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir, from me.

  Then he kicked my ass in the Valhallan arena.

  Then he destroyed the hammer with a magical shield.

  But right when I’d almost forgotten his ugly mug, he showed up at my doorstep to ask me for help.

  “What do you mean you can’t contain the shield’s power?” I asked him after he did a piss-poor job of explaining himself.

  We all sat in my library. Well, my team sat in my library. Bonehead had to stand. He was lucky I let him into the house without siccing Rebel on him.

  Getting past my security had earned him a chance to enter my sanctum sanctorum. But Bonehead would have to earn his damn seat.

  “The shield is too powerful for me,” he said in his low voice. He hid behind a skeleton-looking mask, helmet, whatever that thing was. It was white with two slender slits for eyes and the curvature of the mask was skull-like. I called him Bonehead because I hoped it would annoy him. His real name was Hakkar. My demon librarian, Lucas, told me it was a Viking name.

  “The shield is too powerful for you,” I repeated. “But if I remember correctly, I offered to take it off your hands after you betrayed your Vampire bosses.”

  “They are not my bosses,” he said, simply.

  “Then what are they?”

  He didn’t answer. Bonehead had been a Vampire Guardian, like every member of his family before him for the last thousand plus years.

  But when it came time for him to do their bidding, Bonehead had betrayed them.

  For some reason he’d destroyed the hammer of Thor, a weapon the Vamps had hoped to use to tear the world into pieces.

  AB negative assholes.

  “Who are you loyal to?” Rebel asked Bonehead. She’d picked up on my line of questioning.

  “He’s not loyal to his family,” I said before he could answer. “What would the Vampire Guardians of yesteryear say if they saw their heir ruin the Vampires’ plan?”

  “They’d be rolling in their tombs,” Cassidy said with a smirk. Cassidy was one of the twins. His newly developed power to transform into a huge Wendigo had everyone watching their step around him.

  “He’s not loyal to humanity,” Rose cooed.

  “You said it, sister,” Cassidy said to his twin.

  Rose smiled at Bonehead. She was flirting with him. Rose was not good at flirting. Her come-hither expression made her look like a serial killer with bad gas.

  I leaned forward. “I think he works for himself,” I said.

  “My loyalty has no bearing on the shield,” Bonehead broke in. “And it has nothing to do with the danger we’re all in right now. I can’t keep the shield’s power from leaking out for much longer. It’s pushing the boundaries of my portal’s strength.”

  “Where did you get that Vault Portal?” I asked. “I’m the only one who’s supposed to have one.”

  “Whoever told you that was lying,” Bonehead said.

  Rebel and I locked eyes. It was our old teacher Skyler who had told us. Skyler went from extraordinarily helpful to big-fat-fucking-liar between one breath and another.

  “The Vault Portal is an inherited trait,” Bonehead said. “It’s one of only two spells that are part of the human lifeforce.”

  “Swap Portal is the other one,” I said, thinking I’d surprise him with my knowledge.

  “No,” Bonehead said. “The Swap Portal is not inherited. It’s an Elf trait that can be learned or given.”

  “I want you out of my house,” I said. “So hurry up and get to the point. What do you want from us?”

  “I told you. I want you to take the shield,” he said. “I’ve let Spirit know I’d give it to you. Keep them off my back or I’ll have to kill them.”

  Spirit was our employer. The United Nations of the supernatural. They had us running around the world to find relics that the Vampires hid a thousand years ago, just before they napped for a very long time. Now that they were awake Rebel and I had to find the treasures before the undead did.

  The last thing we wanted were Vamps with powerful magical relics and infinite fortunes.

  “How the hell did you get in touch with Spirit?” I asked.

  “I have to know a lot to do my job,” he said.

  “I think you’ve been fired from that job,” Rebel said.

  “Former job,” Bonehead mumbled, barely audible behind his mask.

  “Unless this is a trap you’re setting up for us,” I said, leading him. “Unless the Vamps are still your employers and this is a plot to get to me and Spirit.”

  “You think a lot of yourself, son,” Bonehead said. “You and your partner are formidable. So is Spirit. But you’re also modern, weak.”

  “That’s why I got the bead on you in the arena,” I said.

  “That’s why you focused on your dead friend instead of me and lost your focus and lost,” Bonehead said. “We don’t have time to argue. Your portal is more powerful than mine, Arkwright. Put the shield in there but then get ready for a fight to contain it. You’ll feel it pushing at the walls of your Vault. The shield now contains the power of the hammer, too.”

  “So you piled Mjölnir’s power on top of the shield’s power when you destroyed the hammer?”

  “Yes. The shield was made by Odin to contain the fury of Thor,” he said. “Baldr was Thor’s most trusted friend. He could sense when the god was ripe for battle. After Thor and Mjölnir almost accidentally destroyed Asgard, Odin made the shield to absorb Thor’s fury. He entrusted it to Baldr’s care.”

  “So what’s the shield going to do now?” Rose asked. “Blow up?”

  “Yeah,” Bonehead said. “Portals aren’t powerful enough to contain it.”

  “Then what is?” Rebel asked.

  “The Tutus Loco,” he said.

  Rebel glanced at me to see if I’d heard of it. I knew it was Latin for “safe place” but I didn’t know how that would help us.

  “Okay, I give,” I said. “What’s the Tutus Loco?”

  “It’s a room that contains discarded items. Wizards cast away items that don’t work as planned. Gods banish their creations to it. It’s where the mistakes of the spiritual and magical worlds go to die. Or hide.”

  “And where is it?” I asked.

  “There are many. But the closest one is in the Chrysler Building. It was built in the ‘20s as the city added skyscrapers to its skyline at the fastest rate in history. A lot of experimental spells and relics were needed to make some of them stay upright. Many gods tried to knock the buildings down. They thought the structures were heresy. Men trying to be gods.”

  “I knew it!” Rose yelled. “I knew New York was built with magic.”

  “You misunderstand me,” Bonehead said. “It wasn’t built with magic. It’s held together by magic.”

  “What’s the difference?” Rose asked.

  “I’d be guessing. We may find out when you open the door to the Tutus Loco. You’ll find something in there. When you do, you need to take it and put the shi
eld in. Each room can only hold one object. But be careful. Whatever is in there will be dangerous too.”

  “This doesn’t sound like a great plan then,” Rebel said.

  “Unless he’s lying, it’s all we have,” I said. “The choice is between living with the shield or whatever may be in the room.”

  “I don’t like those choices,” Rebel said.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said.

  “I don’t like you,” I told Bonehead.

  “I don’t blame you,” Bonehead replied.

  Chapter 3

  So we drove to New York City with the shield in my Vault Portal.

  The shield felt like it was going to blow a hole in my head. It was hard to contain. I wanted to get rid of it. But then I saw the Vampires following us so I did the only thing I knew how to do.

  I stopped the car and started a fight.

  Stupid.

  “Hi, emperor,” I said to the hulking black man looming over me. His purple eyes were locked on Rebel. “How are you doing tonight?”

  “Hungry,” he said. “A redhead would really hit the spot.”

  So the redhead hit the spot.

  Rebel leaped from the dumpster, fingernails lit with a spell that looked really sharp and angry.

  The emperor’s face shaded over. It happens when they’re headed into a Fury. I did not want to ignite a Fury. Half of the city block would be wiped out if that happened.

  But Rebel’s fiery fingers jammed into the emperor’s shoulder and neck. His eyes went black and he started growing. Nine feet. Ten feet.

  I didn’t have time to watch him reach eleven feet.

  I ducked under the savage swing of a big Vampire. Another Viking Vampire, if I had to guess. After the Iceland job, I was getting sick of the Nordic flavor of vein-tappers.

  “Over here!” Rebel screamed over the cacophony.

  It was hard to hear myself think with all the hungry growling. You’d think the fuckers hadn’t eaten in a thousand years. But I spotted my partner on top of another Vampire. Her red hair was hard to miss. So were her shiny nails, sharp as daggers and dripping with blood.

  Then there was her body. But I tried not to notice that. I didn’t mind dying. Sometimes I looked forward to it. But I didn’t want to punch my ticket because I couldn’t keep my eyes off her curves.