Chapter 9
Rebel stood in the shower of her little rental house in St. Johns, scrubbing her arms with lye soap. Damn it, there had been some kind of dye pack in the box.
Who would have thought someone would have a fracking dye pack inside a box that was locked in their own fracking vault?
Although, it wasn’t exactly a dye pack. The red dust had lost its color on contact. But it had gone right through her clothes. She could still feel it on her skin, prickling her.
What the hell was it? Some kind of toxin? That would suck even worse than her botched burglary.
She scrubbed her forearms harder, angry. Rebel Smith never botched a job.
She’d ditched her clothes, leaving them in the woods near where her car had been parked, changing into the spares she kept in the car. So if there was some kind of radioactive dust on her clothes, she wasn’t carrying it with her. But it wouldn’t fucking come off her skin.
Hell, it felt like it was percolating in her bloodstream. Fuck wizards and sorcerers and the goddamn horses they rode in on. Now she was probably going to wake up dead, as one of her foster brothers used to say when he was throwing-up-passing-out drunk.
Finally her skin stopped prickling and the residue washed down the drain. She hoped. She might have to pay some hedge witch to do a magical cleansing on her and hope whatever it was didn’t make her skin peel off in rotting strips in the meantime.
Rebel climbed out of the shower, wrapping a big bath sheet around herself and tucking the edges in.
She padded down the hall into her bedroom and stopped short.
Jack The Asshole Harper was sitting on her bed, with his goddamn Doc Martens on her goddamn bedspread. Fidgeting nervously with the chain around his neck, and looking strung out as all hell.
Rebel strode forward and shoved his feet off the bed.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Get out of my room!”
“The boss wants the artifact,” he said. “Like, now. You didn’t call in, and—”
“I’m supposed to call when I have it,” she interrupted. “I don’t.”
He stumbled to his feet, grabbing her arm with surprising strength for someone who looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week. Or showered, either, to judge by the smell.
He was sweating, his free hand clenching and unclenching, his fetid breath all up in her face. “What do you mean you don’t have it?” he demanded. “Jesus, Rebel! How could you fuck this up? I’m fucking dead. We’re both fucking dead. I told him you were the best…”
She was ready for his swing. She caught his fist in her palm, and then she flipped him over her hip and onto the floor. The breath huffed out of him with an audible ‘whoosh.’
“Keep your fucking hands off me,” she said. “And also, I am not having this discussion dressed in a towel.”
She went over to the dresser and pulled out some sweats, leaving him to push himself up into a sitting position, gasping for breath. Then she dropped the towel and started to get dressed.
For a second Jack’s eyes glazed over. Yeah. Keep looking, asshole. See what you’re missing. See what you fucked up by getting yourself hooked on magical crack.
Or maybe the glaze was just lack of oxygen.
She never should have gotten involved in this job.
She pulled on her sweatpants, commando. Jack was still sitting on the scarred wooden floor, skinny and pathetic, his eyes red-rimmed and his hands shaking. He sniffled.
Fucking sniffled. Like a five-year-old.
“Jeez, Rebel,” he whined. “If I don’t bring the boss what he wants, he won’t give me my next fix. You have to get that box. What the fuck happened?”
“What happened,” she said, pulling her sweatshirt over her head, “was that your boss didn’t bother to tell me that someone else is after the box too. They waited for me to break into the vault, and then they snuck up behind me and tried to take the box right out of my hands.”
Jack dropped his head into his hands. “No… fuck, no… this can’t be happening.”
“He also didn’t tell me that the thing was magically booby trapped. When I opened it to make sure it was the right piece…”
Jack’s head came up. “You opened it?”
She stared at him. “He told me to.”
Jack’s eyes were huge. “No way,” he said. “He told me not to open it. He told us both not to open it.” His voice dropped. “God, Rebel, you fucked this up so bad…”
That wasn’t possible. She could have sworn she’d heard the words ‘open the box.’ She’d been going over the instructions in her mind, and the words were reverberating in her brain, until she couldn’t not open it. Open the box. You must open the box…
Jack had his head in his hands again, moaning. “Shit, Rebel, he’s gonna kill me. He’s gonna kill us both.”
“Jack,” she said, trying to snap him out of it. “Jack!”
She didn’t know whether to smack the living shit out of him or feel sorry for him. He used to be a decent guy. A little greedy, a little weak, a lot on the wrong side of the law. But sweet and funny and good-looking, and he’d actually cared about her.
Once.
Until he’d discovered ‘magical crack’, some kind of high that only sorcerers could provide. Then, like any other addict, he stopped caring about anybody but himself and his habit. And anyone could use that weakness to make him do whatever they wanted.
When he came to her with this job, she hadn’t realized how strung-out he was. The boss must have been keeping him well-supplied.
Apparently, he was a fucking wreck.
“You have to go back and get it. Now.” Jack was staring at her intensely, struggling to his feet.
“Are you insane? I can’t go back there tonight. The alarms were going crazy. The cops are probably there right now.”
Jack was clutching the chain around his neck again. Rebel got a glimpse of some kind of amulet. He was sweating harder now, his eyes dilated until the color disappeared and all she could see were the pupils.
Which began glowing a dull red. Rebel stepped back. Holy hell.
Jack’s body twisted, and he grunted in pain.
Then a black crater the size of a fist opened in his chest.
A fucking hole in his chest.
Rebel backed up further, until her butt was against the dresser. She knew she should run, but she was frozen in place, staring at the abomination happening to her ex-boyfriend.
The hole grew deeper, emitting a deadly black fog. It seemed to go on and on, much further than the width of Jack’s body. Like a long dark tunnel heading into nowhere.
With a robed, hooded figure in the far distance.
The strange perspective made her dizzy. She didn’t move, but the mouth of the tunnel seemed to hurtle toward her, growing until it took up all her vision, and yet somehow it didn’t block out Jack’s body. Rebel’s stomach heaved from her brain’s inability to make sense of what she was seeing.
The hooded figure came closer and closer, until it was standing in the room.
Her visual perspective snapped back into place. A dark figure stood between her and Jack, the hood of his robe obscuring most of his face. Only the white gleam of his teeth showed, and his eyes. Deep and dark, almost invisible except for the faint flashes of red that showed every now and then when he moved his head.
The boss. She’d only met him once, and his face had been equally obscured. She had no clue what he really looked like.
Jack stood hunched over behind him, looking as if half his chest cavity was missing. Like this man had stolen away some of his substance and created his own body out of it.
Fuuuuck. She should never, ever have agreed to this job.
“Where is the artifact?” the sorcerer boomed.
His voice was deep, almost too deep to be human. Like something else was speaking through his mouth.
Hell, maybe it was.
Was he really here? Or was it a projection? Could he cast spells through it? She hoped not.
“There were problems,” Rebel said, keeping her voice steady. “The intel was faulty.”
She couldn’t see his expression, but she could tell it wasn’t pleasant. He was angry. And… something else.
Desperate, maybe. Like Jack.
Of course, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to kill her anyway. Desperate people were the most dangerous.
“We had an agreement,” he said. “You have failed. I was promised you were the one who would not fail.”
She couldn’t let him blame her. That would be deadly. First rule of survival in the jungle: the only way to deal with someone trying to intimidate you was to stand up to them.
He was a powerful sorcerer; even if he was a projection, there was a fifty-fifty chance he could squash her like a bug. Her job was to make him forget that.
Rebel walked right up to him, getting in his face. “Yeah, we had a deal,” she said. “You would provide the intel. I would provide the expertise. You didn’t tell me the damn thing was magically protected. And, you didn’t tell me that someone else was after it.”
She saw his dark eyes flash red, his body language growing taut and angry. She could almost feel the storm in the air; the hair on the back of her neck stood up.
“Someone else? Who?” His voice was suddenly avid.
“I have no fucking idea. He got there just after I did and cornered me in the vault. He attacked me and made me drop the box. It set off some kind of an alarm.”
“You allowed someone to follow you there?” The sorcerer’s voice was low and dangerous. Behind him, Jack’s body twisted, and he let out an animal-like whimper.
It took all Rebel’s courage not to flinch.
She deliberately rolled her eyes. “Since I spent two hours waiting on the roof before I entered, and he wasn’t sitting next to me sharing his smokes, I would say no, he didn’t follow me. He got there on his own. He had a partner keeping a lookout, and they went in a completely different entrance. So what I want to know is, who leaked the job on your end? Because I sure as hell didn’t tell anyone.”
Not quite true. Her sister knew; Rebel had no secrets from Tempest. But she wasn’t drawing this psycho’s attention to her sister.
Instead, she went on, “I beat them to the vault. I had the box in my hand. The guy tried to grab me and knocked the box to the floor. The alarm went off, security doors started slamming shut, I ran.”
“Without the item?” He was looming over her now. She reached out her hand, fingers stiff, to poke him in the chest and make him back the hell off.
Her fingers sank into his chest and disappeared. Rebel pulled her hand back quickly and dropped it to her side, clenching her fist to make sure her fingers were still there.
At least she knew now. He was only a projection. That was a little comfort. Even if he could project spells through this manifestation, he wouldn’t have his full power. But that didn’t mean she was out of the woods yet.
Time to go on the offensive.
She turned her back on him and walked back to the dresser, leaning casually against it, one hand resting on the edge. Her fingers found the release catch in the decorative carving.
“I have a one-hundred-percent recovery rate—if I have the right intel. There was no mention of alarms or magical traps on the object itself. But I made it clear to you—if a job goes sideways, I’m out of there. I’m not getting caught for you, or anyone.”
The boss was ignoring her words, just as he’d ignored her fingers in his chest. “This other person. Did he get the artifact? Did he take it?”
“I don’t think so. He was right behind me, running like hell. But I don’t know for sure.”
“You idiot girl!” He advanced on her, his eyes glowing with that fiery light. Rebel hit the release catch. The hidden compartment in the top of the dresser shot open and her Colt sprang into the air. She caught the grip and leveled it at him.
It was a .45 with silver-chased grips. It also glowed with magical blue light.
“You need to chill the fuck out, Sorcerer,” she said. “This thing can punch a bullet through pretty much any armor—and any spell.” She paused. “And through Jack, if I have to. Which would mean your road into my bedroom would be closed.”
Not that she’d really kill Jack. But maybe he didn’t know that.
The boss stopped moving, his hands out in a conciliatory gesture. Projection or not, she could see him forcing himself to relax.
“It is imperative that we get the artifact away from the witch,” he said persuasively. “In the wrong hands, it can bring disaster down on this whole city. Do you want that to happen?”
Rebel thought of her sister, of her little shop and her research. She’d do anything to protect Tempest, but she didn’t know if she believed him. Nobody with demon eyes was running around trying to prevent evil, were they?
He gestured to himself, his voice soft and buttery. “The rogue witch did this to me. She used that artifact to make me what I am—this twisted creature you see before you.”
Slowly, he reached up and slid back his hood. Rebel gasped. His face was scarred and misshapen, the lower half twisted hideously out of shape. His eyes glowed red and bored into hers.
“I must have that artifact, and I must stop her from using its power. I can help Harper. I can heal myself. And I can save the others.”
His voice was mesmerizing. She could hear something whispering to her, almost beyond the range of her hearing. It sounded like He tells truth. He tells truth.
Rebel shook her head. Nobody told the truth. But it would sure as hell be nice to run into someone who did, for a change.
“If you want me to go in again, it’s going to cost double,” she said. “And we’re going to need intel on that vault alarm system.”
The sorcerer stood perfectly still for a minute, looking as though he were listening to something she couldn’t hear.
The gun was getting heavy in Rebel’s hands, but she didn’t waver.
Finally he said, “Done.” He gazed at her with those demon-red eyes. “But if you fail this time, I will be forced to take matters into my own hands.”
And with that he was sucked back down his dark tunnel, growing smaller and smaller until he disappeared, leaving Jack Harper crumpled on her bedroom floor, gasping and vomiting.
Worst. Job. Ever.