Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1) Page 14

  “Let’s do the cautious thing for once, okay?” Jesse suggested. He turned back onto Frederic’s street, then parked at the curb, a good ways before the building. Before we got out, Jesse reached into a small safe underneath his seat and pulled out a handgun, securing it in a holster at his hip.

  “Guns?” I said, hearing my voice come out plaintive. I really didn’t like guns. Maybe it was silly, after going up against murderers and psychos, but guns still scared the bejesus out of me, and that wasn’t likely to change.

  “We know that the people running all this aren’t afraid to use them,” he explained, loading the weapon. “Frederic might have one with him, or the boundary witch could be here with a gun, or both. You better put on your vest.”

  I nodded. It took a few minutes, but we both managed to squirm into the Kevlar vests while inside the vehicle. We couldn’t really walk around a residential neighborhood in bulletproof vests without drawing attention, so I put the jacket back on over mine, which made it look more or less like a black shirt, at least from a distance. Jesse, on the other hand, had to take his shirt off to put the vest on underneath. As he lifted his shirt over his head I turned away, suddenly very aware of the close quarters, and Jesse’s wide expanse of smooth brown skin stretched over muscle. I busied myself with unhooking my knife sheaths from my boots so I could attach them to my waistband.

  Hearing our preparations, Shadow stuck her head between the seats and nosed my arm.

  “Are we bringing her?” Jesse asked, tugging his T-shirt over the vest. Both he and Shadow watched me closely for the answer.

  “If she wants to come.” If the boundary witch was around, Shadow would be a hell of a weapon. But it felt more respectful to ask rather than assume, and I tried to treat Shadow with the same respect I would give a human. Okay, probably more respect than I would give a human.

  I twisted awkwardly in my seat so I could look into her eyes. “We need to talk to someone in that building,” I told her, pointing toward Frederic’s condo. “But Jesse thinks there might be a bad witch waiting. Do you want to help us look?”

  She licked the air, which was an affirmative. Her tail was wagging wildly with anticipation, and there was a look of perfect fulfillment in her eyes that flooded me with guilt. Sometimes I felt kind of bad that I didn’t let Shadow kill people more often. “Good girl,” I said, and opened the door.

  There are some parts of the country where a strange couple and an enormous dog-beast descending on a suburban home in the middle of the day would be considered weird, but in this case LA was playing to our advantage. Movie people always come and go at weird hours.

  Still, by unspoken agreement, Jesse and I kept our body language loose and friendly as we approached the condo building with Shadow. Just a couple out walking their dog. You’d have to look close to realize that Shadow didn’t have a leash, and Jesse and I had a lot of weapons between us.

  Frederic’s unit was the one on the left. Jesse slowed down when we hit the driveway, and I realized he was wary of the big ferns. They looked even bigger up close—massive enough to hide the Lakers’ starting lineup, let alone one boundary witch.

  “Is the witch in there?” Jesse murmured.

  Oh, right. Sometimes I got so used to thinking of myself as the opposite of magic that I forgot I could actually detect it. Halting on the sidewalk just in front of the walkway, I closed my eyes, pushing out my radius a little. I got the low-level buzz of Shadow, but there was nothing else, at least not as far as I could reach, which was a ways into the building. I smiled at Jesse. “No witches,” I whispered.

  His shoulders released a little, and he nodded with relief.

  And that was when Shadow snarled and exploded forward into the bushes. A gunshot rang out from that direction, and the garage door began to open next to us. I could hear running footsteps inside the garage.

  We’d walked into a trap.

  Chapter 19

  When he heard the first gunshot Jesse reacted instinctively, shoving Scarlett toward the corner of the building to give them at least a little cover. But the garage door was going up, which presented another avenue of attack. Huddling between the corner of the building and the rising garage door, Jesse peeked around the corner to his right, looking to return fire to whoever was hiding in the foliage. But the gunshots had stopped. The enormous bird-of-paradise fronds were rattling, and he could see Shadow’s clubbed-off tail whipping about. He took a step away from the house, trying to get a better look at her target.

  Then a bullet whined past him, coming from the garage.

  Jesse spun around, but the guy cried out, clutching his shoulder and retreating behind a parked pickup truck. Scarlett had gotten him with one of her throwing knives. Before the man fell back, Jesse caught a quick glimpse of a leather jacket with patches on it and a greasy beard.

  “Who the hell is that?” he yelled, but Scarlett just shook her head tightly and said, “Human.”

  There was a scream from the side of the building, and Jesse returned to his position and checked around the corner. Shadow was backing out of the hedge, the birds-of-paradise near her spattered with blood. One down. She took a few steps toward them, but just then the side door opened and a burly newcomer ran out with an automatic rifle on a strap. Jesse lifted his gun, but hesitated as Shadow raced toward the new threat. He didn’t want to hit her by accident, even if she would recover from it. When she was hunting like this, Jesse wasn’t positive she could distinguish between friend and foe, at least not for anyone besides Scarlett.

  He swore and ducked back around the corner just before the guy opened fire in the general direction of both him and Shadow. Bullets sent up tiny poofs of concrete dust along the sidewalk, and then the bargest let out a loud yelp. Scarlett jerked upright, forgetting about Greasy Beard. Jesse got his shoulder around the corner and leaned out just enough to fire two shots at Burly. Before he even had a chance to see if he’d made contact, Scarlett jerked his arm sideways. “Switch!” she yelled. “Trust me!”

  She disappeared around the corner of the house to help Shadow before Jesse even had his footing. He stumbled and brought his gun arm up to cover Greasy Beard in the garage, but a bullet hit his vest first. Pain exploded against his breastbone as Greasy Beard ducked back behind the tailgate of the pickup. Jesse gritted his teeth against the pain and dropped down to his stomach, taking aim at the guy’s cowboy boots. He fired, feeling a stab of satisfaction when one brown leather boot seemed to turn into red spray. Greasy Beard fell.

  Jesse raced around the truck to check on him. The man was down, screaming with pain. His hands were reaching toward his ankle, but he couldn’t bend his body to reach it. Blood striped down the front of his leather jacket, where he’d pulled out Scarlett’s knife. Stupid.

  “That cunt,” the guy moaned.

  Jesse saw the knife lying on the concrete floor a few feet away, right by the guy’s .45. He picked up the gun, engaged the safety, and tucked it into his waistband. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  The biker gathered his wits enough to glare at Jesse. “You gonna kill me, spic? Get it over with.”

  Jesse leaned forward enough to give him a cursory pat down with his free hand. The guy wasn’t carrying a wallet, or he’d left it in the truck. Jesse did find a Ka-Bar knife in a leather holster and picked it up along with Scarlett’s throwing knife.

  “Use your belt as a tourniquet,” Jesse directed. He would have liked to tie the guy up, but the gunshots from the side of the house had stopped completely. It made him nervous. He turned to go find Scarlett.

  She wasn’t on the sidewalk along the house. There was a spreading blood pool coming out of the bushes, and Jesse registered a body lying there, dead. The first shooter. Bloody paw prints led from that corpse to another, the burly guy who had burst out of the side door. He was lying a few feet away from the door, his eyes staring blankly at the sky. His throat had been torn out, and there was what looked like a knife wound in his chest. Jesse had no idea which had
killed him. The paw prints led into the condo.

  Scarlett and Shadow had gone inside without him.

  He made his way through the doorway, checking carefully around the corners before proceeding. He didn’t want to call out for Scarlett, not without knowing who else was in the building. The bad guys had obviously realized that Frederic would be their next lead, and they’d laid a trap. Had the boundary witch come along? Or even the vampire in charge of things? Silently, Jesse cursed Scarlett for coming in here without him. She could have at least told him whether there were any supernatural occupants.

  The first floor of the condo was empty, so Jesse crept quietly up the carpeted stairs, stopping before he reached the top. He poked his head up and took a quick peek: a short hallway with a metal railing around it, two closed doors, and one wide-open door at the end of the hall. Clothing was draped carelessly over the railing, providing a little bit of cover, but Jesse still felt exposed as he climbed the top steps and started down the hall to the open doorway, weapon raised.

  Before he’d even reached the doorframe, he saw Scarlett, standing stock still just inside the room, her hands in the air, glaring furiously at something in the far corner. Jesse quickened his step, coming through the door just enough to see what she was looking at: an angry-looking woman in her early thirties, standing with her back to the wall next to a four-poster bed. She was dressed in a simple long-sleeved tee and black pants, and her reddish hair was pulled into a harsh bun.

  Shadow was standing less than two feet in front of the woman, her lips peeled back, a low growl emitting from her deep chest cavity. She was crouched to spring at the woman against the wall, but the woman held a large handgun pointed squarely at Scarlett’s center mass. A standoff.

  “Hey, Jesse,” Scarlett said without looking. “Meet our boundary witch. I haven’t gotten her name.”

  Jesse’s gun was already trained on the other woman. “Drop the gun,” he said in his most authoritative voice. The woman glanced at him for an instant, but didn’t move her gun. “We outnumber you,” Jesse pointed out. “Even if you shoot Scarlett, Shadow or I can take you out.”

  “Ah, but if anyone moves on me, I can still shoot your friend,” she said. She had a light accent, Russian or maybe Ukrainian. “I do not think either of you want her to die.” Her gun remained firmly pointed at Scarlett. Jesse was impressed—it had to be getting heavy.

  “What’s your name?” he tried instead. When she didn’t answer, he added, “If you don’t tell us, Scarlett will make one up for you, and it will probably be mean.”

  “So mean,” Scarlett muttered.

  The woman glanced back and forth between them now, looking just a tiny bit confused. “I am Katia,” she said. “What is this, this dog-thing that wants to eat me? I am certain I shot it the other night, but it appears fine today.”

  “She’s not a thing, she’s a bargest,” Scarlett corrected. “Although you’re right about her wanting to eat you. She’s indestructible. Shooting her just pissed her off.”

  “Bar-guest,” the woman repeated carefully. “I do not know this word.”

  She was inching sideways very slowly, pretending she was just shifting her weight. She was only about a foot away from the window. “Stop moving,” Jesse commanded. The woman froze—and then they heard the screaming wail of police sirens. Someone had heard the shots.

  Scarlett glanced at Jesse. “Two minutes, at the most,” he said grimly.

  Katia bared her teeth. “You two run along. I can wait here for human police.” Her smile did not suggest the police would enjoy the encounter.

  “Not a chance,” Scarlett snarled. “We’re taking you with us.”

  “Ah, you see, that I cannot allow,” Katia said, almost regretfully. “We are not finished here, and I am needed.”

  Jesse risked a glance at Scarlett. He could practically see what she was thinking: they were out of time, and she was wearing the vest. It was a reasonable risk. He opened his mouth to object, but she shouted first.

  “Shadow, hold!”

  The bargest sprang at Katia, who was already moving sideways toward the window, trying to throw herself against it. She might have made it out, too, except Jesse shot her in the heart.

  Chapter 20

  It took my brain a second to process what had just happened. Katia had obviously been headed for the window, but she hadn’t yet been in the right position to jump or even throw herself against the glass. It almost looked like she’d been sucked out into the California sunshine.

  Only then did my ears register the crack of the gun, and I realized that Jesse had just fucking shot her. I rushed to the window and looked out. Katia lay sprawled across the same sidewalk that was now covered in bloody footprints, only a few feet away from the dead guy by the side door. Her eyes were wide open, staring, and blood had blossomed on the front of her green shirt.

  I pulled my head back in and turned to gape at him. Shadow was looking at him too, with blood on her muzzle and disappointment in her eyes. Jesse shrugged. “Boundary witch,” he reminded us.

  Oh.

  Boundary witches are connected to death magic, and that magic can’t or won’t let them actually die, at least not easily. I had heard about this in theory, and I knew that Lex, Jesse’s friend in Colorado, had died at least once and come back, but I had no idea how it actually worked. I didn’t have any time to think about it, either, because Jesse had grabbed my hand and was pulling me toward the door, Shadow right beside us. He didn’t let go until we were outside, where he crouched next to Katia’s body and checked her pockets with deft hands.

  “Looking for a phone?” I guessed. He nodded and rolled her sideways to reach into her back pocket. There was the phone—or what was left of it. The fall from the second-story window had shattered the little piece of plastic. Jesse cursed, dropped the phone, and picked up Katia in his arms, carrying her toward the sedan. We were taking her with us after all.

  While he got her into the backseat I kicked at the blood on the sidewalk, trying to cover up the bargest paw prints. An autopsy would reveal that the two dead guys had been mauled by an animal, but there was no reason to give them more details about Shadow’s size. They would probably get DNA from her saliva, but Shadow had started life as a dog-wolf hybrid, and I couldn’t imagine they’d get any more information than that. As Jesse backed out, I noticed that the garage door was still open, but it was now empty except for a wide smear of blood. The third guy had gotten away, then. And there hadn’t been any vampires at all. They had anticipated our next move and set us up.

  In another fifteen seconds, Jesse was driving us around a corner while the police cars closed in on the condo. I turned to look over my shoulder. Katia was slumped upright in the backseat, though Jesse had thankfully closed her eyes. The bloodstain on her green blouse seemed huge, but anyone looking in her window would just see the shoulders and head of a sleeping woman, and anyone looking in from the other side of the backseat would only be able to see Shadow. The bargest was hulking next to the boundary witch with her hackles up, growling uncertainly at Katia’s body. Shadow still had blood on her muzzle and forelegs, and for a moment my breath caught in my throat, an instinctive fear response that sprung from thousands-year-old reflexes. She was terrifying.

  Then she looked at me and whined, her tail thumping against the seat as she sought assurance from her mistress. Right. That was me.

  “It’s okay, babe,” I said, leaning back to pet the top of her head, where there was no blood. “She’s dead, but she’ll get better. I know it’s weird, but it’s part of magic, so you don’t need to worry.” My voice sounded calm, but I realized my fingers were trembling as I petted Shadow’s head. That probably wasn’t very reassuring, so I sat back in my seat and tried to fasten my seat belt. I kept fumbling it.

  Jesse glanced over. “Here.” He reached down and snapped the belt for me. “It’s just adrenaline. Now that the scary part is over your body has to burn through it. You’ll be fine in a minute.”r />
  “If you say so,” I mumbled. I’d been through intense stuff before—this wasn’t even my first gunfight—but it had been three years since I’d dealt with anything more stressful than a bloody nose. I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Can I take this thing off now?” I said, tugging at the Velcro straps on the vest. Jesse nodded, and I unstrapped the vest and wriggled awkwardly out of it, checking myself. There was a little blood on the vest and on my pants, but I didn’t think it was mine. Waterproof or not, I was glad I’d left the pretty, new jacket in the car.

  “Can you still feel her in your radius?” Jesse asked, tilting his head toward the backseat.

  Oh. I concentrated for a second. Witches in general feel like a very soft buzz in my radius, a constant, not-unpleasant feeling. I hadn’t seen Lex in years, but I remembered how she’d felt. Darker: like black noise instead of white noise. Katia had felt the same way when we’d encountered her at Frederic’s, so I looked for that again.

  I’d gotten a lot of practice tuning out the bargest’s “interference,” but it still took me a moment to locate Katia’s “signal.” “Yes,” I said to Jesse, “but it’s faint.”

  He nodded. “Better than nothing.”

  “Those guys,” I said as my thoughts shifted abruptly. “They were human. What the hell were they doing helping a vampire and a boundary witch? And what were they doing with guns?”

  “You said the bad guys probably figured out what you are at Molly’s place,” he reminded me. “If you had to take down a null, what would you use?”