Stone Goddess (Isabella Hush Series Book 3)

by Thea Atkinson

Recognition lit the assassin's expression and a slow smile spread across her features.

  I stared back at her, my lips pressed together as my brain flooded with stimuli. I had a shot glass in front of me for a weapon, a vampire at my side. Two exits behind me, one that led to an alleyway.

  I didn't have to run. I didn't want to.

  "Come on, bitch," I whispered. "I see you."

  A smirk played on her lips. She'd heard me all right.

  She tipped her fingers to her forehead in salute and those black eyes of hers trailed down my body, inspecting me. Foe or friend, she was thinking and I tittered out a chuckle to think anyone could be considered cozy enough to an assassin to be considered a friend at all.

  A thin eyebrow lifted above her right eye at my nervous laugh and then she lifted her palm toward me. A flare of purple light filled her her palm and roiled into a ball about the size of a potato. I flinched involuntarily but the light remained nestled in her hand.

  It grew brighter, shifting colors.

  She was giving me a good show of her power, letting me really see it and give me time to know exactly what kind of magic would hurl itself at me.

  My pistol was nestled nicely in my workout bag on the stool beside me. I'd be damned if she'd let fly while I sat there doing nothing. With slow movements, I slipped my fingers into the gap in the zipper but found only my can of pepper spray.

  Fayed must have sensed my heartbeat had shifted into overdrive. He clenched my wrist and held it down against my side. All while the ball of light grew bigger and brighter. I hissed out a bracing breath.

  "Hold off," he muttered. "Look." He jerked his chin toward the muscled woman from earlier who had gone rigid in her seat.

  "She's here for her."

  A chair scraped back as Kelly veered away from me and headed toward the back of the bar, where a beefy looking man with hair down to his shoulder blades had noticed her finally and was hustling his way along the back wall, presumably to safety.

  Her freshly shined lace-up combat boots beat a path along the wooden floorboards.

  The woman lifted her gaze from the glass she was nursing and landed on Kelly.

  "Shit," she said.

  The light crackled as it left Kelly's palm and streaked across the room. It slammed into the chair, splintering it into a dozen sharp pieces that spread like shrapnel. The long-haired dude grunted in surprised pain as a piece stuck in his bicep.

  "For fuck's sake," Fayed bit out.

  Time decided to spin back into normal countdown. Chaos erupted around me. The surly creatures in the room launched themselves behind tables or threw weaker men in front of them to protect themselves.

  One, a broad-shouldered man with a mullet and hairy arms shifted into a bat the size of a vulture and shot up to the ceiling where he clung by his feet to a light fixture.

  A chair sailed across the room, splintered from the blast that shot from Kelly's hands.

  I had time to realize that the woman, obviously another fae, was fighting back. What was truly astounding was that she was meeting Kelly's blasts of light with pools of inky blackness. It was like watching someone throw out the contents of a bucket of molten tar.

  When they met, the black swallowed up Kelly's light, sending sparks out sideways.

  Kelly cursed, then squared her shoulders at her opponent, shaking out her hands.

  "You want the full Monty?" she said with a laugh. "So be it."

  A white stream of light erupted from her hands and hurtled toward the other woman. I folded myself into the smallest ball I could as I lunged sideways. I needed cover. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck in the cross fire.

  When their magics met, a swirling mass of color punched through the fabric of air in the room. It actually looked for one microsecond, as though we could see into another realm.

  "What the Hell?" I said.

  The woman leapt behind a table as another volley of short bursts erupted from the stream, each of them forming what looked like pinwheels of energy. They slammed into the table and chairs all around the woman and I had to dodge a chair leg that had broken off and splintered just in time to avoid it embedding in my stomach.

  Fayed's hands clutched my shoulders so fiercely his fingers dug into my skin beneath my shirt. He yanked me without mercy over the bar. I slid awkwardly on the surface, my legs splaying to the sides before I landed on my shoulder and butted up against the lowest shelf that lined his back wall.

  Bottles clinked together and one, a clear crystal bottle filled with a viscous red liquid broke. Clots slid over the floor, making me gag.

  "I thought she was a vampire," I said, remembering the bigger woman's order of blood ale.

  "Hybrid," he said. "An abomination in the fourth world. This is going to get ugly."

  Something snapped in the room like a live wire striking metal. The room lit up with white light and Fayed groaned in agony as he buried his face in his forearms to avoid the brightness. I smelled burning hair.

  I was blinded for a moment as chaos overtook the bar. I felt Fayed's hands roaming my back, seeking assurance I was alright.

  "I'm fine," I muttered out. "I'm fine."

  The light fizzled back to the easy gloom of a dingy bar and I stared wide eyed at him.

  His pupils had all but obliterated the beautiful green of his irises. No doubt he'd gone into some sort of preternatural mode, letting in as much light as possible so he could take process every detail.

  "You need to get out of here, Isabella," he said as another streak of light sizzled into the shelves and shattered several bottles. Liquor poured down over me, and I was thankful it only smelled of alcohol.

  "I'm guessing Kelly is winning," I said.

  "She always wins," he said. "Trouble is, I'm not in the mood to let my bar get ransacked. Again."

  A strange look crossed his expression.

  "And I think I might have just found my answer to the Kassie question," he mused. "If I can get her to talk, that is."

  He pushed himself to his feet and hauled me along with him. I could see the hybrid bobbing and weaving to avoid the onslaught of volleys Kelly threw her way.

  She weaved past a blast that turned the television into a sizzling mass of smoking electronics, then ran toward the bar. Kelly chuckled and took aim again.

  Fayed pushed me over the counter again and toward the door, urgency laced into the way he shoved my backside as I crawled over the surface.

  A blast struck the edge of the bar, sending debris flying.

  He swore out loud.

  "Dammit all," he growled, giving me one final push that sent me reeling toward the floor with all the gracefulness of a baboon dancing Swan Lake.

  "But wait," I said, stumbling over several pieces of broken table once my feet landed on the floor. "What about my proposition?"

  Kelly shouted something at her quarry that sounded like run while you can and I caught sight of the hybrid grabbing for a bowl of peanuts that no one ever seemed to touch. The nuts rained down on her and the bowl went flying, thrust an even greater distance by a wave of black that made it lop into Kelly's ear.

  The assassin ducked aside in time to avoid the black wave that swallowed up the outdated pinball machine against the wall.

  "Fuck," Fayed said. "I had high score on that thing."

  I clutched his sleeve, noting with some anxiety that his fangs had punched out and that his eyes had gone washed in red now instead of just pupil-filled.

  "Fayed," I said, prodding him. "Answer me."

  "Midnight," he said. "I have a feeling this will most of the night."

  I fled for the exit, fully intending to leave this uproar to the supernatural creatures who created it.

  Closing the door on the chaos behind me magnified that sense that everything had got out of control again. I amped up my need to do something. The adrenaline soaked into my tissues, reminding me that a life spinning like a pinwheel and shooting sparks off in every direction was not a life at all. It was Cath
erine Wheel firework.

  I had to stop the spinning. Or at least become the center instead of one of the sparks.

  If I sold the stone to Maddox, I would continue to be in Scottie's debt, rendering unto that Caesar tribute after tribute. But at least, I'd have perhaps two tributes in the bag.

  Scottie thought he had in his possession a key to the most powerful weapon that the government had created. He was going big time, as far as he was concerned, and if he truly had a weapon element in his possession that could propel him into Caesar type territory, he wouldn't muck with it. Fayed would be my 'contact', the proof I was completing my side of the bargain by weaseling out information that could net Scottie a massive fortune in extortion.

  If Scottie trusted me, I continued the sabbatical.

  The only issue was if the warrior in Scottie overrode the part of Scottie that wanted to trust me. If he decided he wanted to know what it could do, he'd find himself slammed into a world where he was the spark and not the center.

  Every one of those scenarios was in my favor as far as I was concerned. It was only the percentage that was in question.

  There was only one cog in the machine that could spin the wheel out of control.

  Scottie might have seen the stone.

  I knew the heft and weight and still had a good idea of what it looked like.

  I couldn't count on Scottie not having simply plopped it out of its protective pouch and examining it without laying a finger on it.

  He might even have had someone else handle it.

  That meant I needed a reasonable facsimile to replace it if I planned to steal it.

  I didn't flee the bar so much as sauntered down the dark street, taking the time to walk beneath the streetlights because at the end of it all, this was the seediest part of the city. Nothing lured the criminal element so much as timidness.

  The evening air had taken on a chill that had me shivering in my light jacket. I pulled the collar up and hunkered down into it, sealing the heat into my core.

  Several rats scurried from my step as I passed an overflowing dumpster that smelled of sour milk and rotten meat. I pulled my workout bag in front of me and slipped my hand in to find the pistol within its depths. My palm rested against the butt, ready to yank it out if I needed to. A gunshot rang out several blocks away and I tightened my grip automatically.

  The sooner I was out of the area, the better and ran down my list of contacts in my head. A pawnshop would be the most likely place to find a cuckoo's egg.

  I didn't know of any in this part of town.

  Well. There was one.

  The Pawntoon. Errol's shop, where he collected and sold everything from military accoutrements to geodes.

  I shivered not because of the chill, but because Errol was an incubus with limited powers. I wasn't sure why some of his powers had been taken away but I was certain I didn't want to know what could be black enough that a demon could have his powers revoked. I didn't even know it was possible.

  I just knew he was a weakened incubus and that I'd blackmailed him by using the knowledge that he was luring children into his shop and selling them in the Shadow Bazaar. Those innocents went to a witch who supplied vampire bleeder dens.

  All under Maddox's nose.

  While I'd love to see what would happen to a powerless incubus in a jail cell, I had my doubts it would actually 'take' and instead kept the threat of discovery hanging over him instead. One thing I'd learned from Scottie that had proved useful over the years was that information and threat was more powerful than action at times. Much like the power of desire versus climax.

  One could be exploited; the other was the currency.

  Errol had so far abided by the bargain as far as I knew, but I'd not been in his shop since and the thought of his disgustingly greasy porn star face made my stomach roil.

  I sighed and turned left at the next street corner because who was I kidding? If there was a substitute for a supernatural hunk of rock, it would be in that shop.

  I just had to face a lecherous incubus to get my hands on it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Errol's shop smelled of sugar and cinnamon and the yeasty sweetness of donuts as I pushed open the door. The bell above it rang out with an obnoxious clarity that made me wince as I stepped inside. Like Pavlov's dog, my psyche and muscle memory stored the events of my last visit and reacted to the chime above the door in a way that made my skin crawl.

  A man entered the main shop from behind a beaded curtain at the sound of the bell. He was busy polishing some fist-sized bauble and was responding to the clamor almost automatically, bustling behind his counter without looking up to see who had entered his shop.

  I peered around the room, wondering if I had somehow entered the wrong store. Errol's shop should have had a candy counter at the front and aisles filled with military paraphernalia and trinkets. There were still shelves with military artifacts like helmets and bayonets and maps and the like over by the farthest wall, but the area immediately around the counter and doorway looked more like an old fashioned coffee shop than a place to pawn unwanted goods.

  It might have been the wrong shop, but I'd checked the sign on entry. I'd been to the location a dozen times; I knew I knew I'd not gone in the wrong door. Besides: there was no mistaking that beaded curtain.

  He'd nearly dragged me through it last visit, intent on assaulting me.

  This was the right shop, alright. It was just the wrong guy.

  I expected a greasier version of Ron Jeremy, but the man who lifted his gaze from the strange looking object gave me a charming, if not disarming smile, looked more like Colin Farrel.

  "Is Errol in?" I asked, lingering at the doorway.

  A smirk crossed the man's face and I knew in that moment, who it was.

  Errol. The incubus had found some way to shed his nasty looking skin and fit into a more alluring one.

  My mind reeled back to our last encounter. I'd threatened to turn him in to the police and instead of being upset, he'd seemed entirely too pleased with himself. I'd been too interested in getting out of his shop and staying the hell away to care why.

  He must have made a deal greater than the one he'd made with me, one that no doubt included a return of some of those lost powers.

  "What bargain did you make to get that face?" I asked him, halting just inside the door and letting it fall closed behind me.

  "Immortal bargains are for immortal creatures," he said with a lifted eyebrow. Meaning, none of my business.

  I gripped the pepper spray can from inside the workout bag and strolled in with a determination not to let him make me nervous. I needed the upper hand. There was only way way to get it.

  Remind him of what I had over him.

  When I'd been in the Shadow Bazaar, I'd discovered that he lured children into his shop with candy before shipping them off to a witch in the bazaar.

  The only reason he was still free and clear to run his shop was because I had blackmailed him with that information. He'd been closer to human than demon, and he seemed afraid of incarceration.

  I used that anxiety to my own advantage.

  Or at least I thought I did.

  I'd got a dirty bit of glamour out of the deal that ended up sending me to Hell.

  "I'm not here to turn you in," I said.

  "Not here to turn me on, either, it seems," he said with a note of sadness.

  "Got me," I said, with a tone that indicated if they were free, my hands would be up. "But I meant what I said. I'm not here to turn you in."

  He laid the flat of his palm on the glass counter by the register and leaned in as though his hips were mating with the cupboards on his side.

  "There's nothing to turn me in for anyway," he said, letting that black eyed gaze of his travel the length of my legs in the yoga pants and stopped at the crotch. I ran my hand over my hips to break his stare.

  He slowly lifted his eyes to mine.

  "So," I said. "You've changed to baiting kids wit
h donuts?"

  I waved my hand in the direction of the individual baking machine that filled out the left corner of the shop. It had a distinct look of carnival confectionery.

  "What did you do with the candy stand?" I said.

  "Gone. Replaced because of our arrangement," he said and licked his lips. He might look like Colin Farrel, but there, in that movement, the greasy porn star was back. I shuddered, pulling the workout bag closer to my chest.

  "Where's your boots?" His gaze flicked to the running shoes I wore before lifting again to my face. "And your wig?"

  I'd come here so often in various disguises—one of them being a dominatrix type outfit—I didn't think he'd have put all of those aliases together.

  He crooked his finger at me, inviting me closer.

  "Come closer, little mortal; I don't bite."

  I didn't like the way I was drawn to him but I couldn't help myself. There was something about those black eyes of his. He smelled very much like cinnamon sugar. His skin even looked dusted with it.

  "So now you lure people with a different type of sugar before you abduct them?" I said and found that the closer I got, the closer I wanted to get.

  He shook his head in denial and scraped through his black hair with his free hand as he came out from behind his counter. I noted he kept the one on the counter lying there, and I wondered what he might have close at hand behind the counter that he might want to pull on me.

  I pulled the workout bag closer over my chest protectively.

  "No kids," he said. "Evelina is long gone and with her my market for saleable goods."

  He hitched a hip along the counter and crossed one ankle over the other as he watched me approach. I narrowed my gaze at him, trying to figure out why I didn't find him so repulsive anymore. It wasn't just the handsome face, either.

  He dusted his shirt off and ran his palm down along his thigh.

  "Are you sure you don't want a taste this time?" he said. "You might find the offer a bit more attractive now."

  "You're still the same greasy demon underneath all that charm," I said but I didn't even sound convincing to my ear.

  "Eve found a demon well worth her trouble," he said.