“Buckle up.” I slammed the gear shift into reverse and stomped on the gas. Rusty swerved backward into the right-hand lane, and I hit the brake, stopping hard enough to throw him against the back of his seat. His skull crashed into the padded headrest, and a satisfied smile turned up one side of my mouth.
As we pulled away from the factory, Murphy now scrambling to buckle himself in, lightning flashed one last time, and I got a single fleeting glimpse of Orthus. The hellhound stared at me from the other side of the gate, his exposed skull rising above the gate latch. Bare bones peeked out from between slick cords of muscle. His eyes flared crimson in the flicker of light from overhead.
Creepy-ass dog,I thought. But I couldn’t resist watching him as we passed, the last drops of rain blowing across my windshield.
The sky was clear by the time we pulled into the rundown strip mall where my office stood, squeezed between a nail salon and a donut shop. My client sat behind the wheel of her car in the space next to mine. I would have bet money that she’d been waiting there for hours, and I had to give her points for mettle. My office wasn’t in a great neighborhood, and most women like Daphne Murphy—polite, soft-spoken, petite, and frail-looking—wouldn’t have dared wait alone in the badly-lit parking lot for more than a few minutes.
Daphne didn’t even look nervous. But she did look relieved. She was out of her car before I’d shifted into park, low heels clicking on the pavement while her gauzy skirt whipped around her legs in the icy, early morning breeze. “Cari!” She cried in that desperate, thank-goodness-you’re-still-alive voice usually heard in old westerns, when the hero returns breathing-but-bleeding from a shootout at high noon.
As I got out of the car, she pulled open Rusty’s dented back door and dragged Cari into view, throwing her arms around the teenager as if she could actually hold the girl together by force. When really it was herself she needed to pull together.
While I watched over the car roof, the older brother stepped from the front passenger seat and gently pried my client’s arms apart, freeing his sister from what had to be a bruising grip. “She’s okay,” he whispered, his voice calm and soothing. “Everything is okay.”
“And you?” Daphne ran one hand down his arm, as if to assure herself that he was really there. Solid, and in the flesh.
“Me too. We’re both fine,” he insisted. Even in the dim light from her open car door, I saw him blush like a second grader kissed by his mother in front of the entire class.
Why wouldn’t he be fine?I’ddone all the work. Speaking of which, if he was available—not to mention armed—for rescue work, why was I hired in the first place? Why hadn’t Murphy saved the damsel in distress himself?
Maybe Daphne had known he’d be in over his head. Sure, Murphy was gorgeous, in a let-me-smother-you-in-butter-and-syrup-and-have-you-for-breakfast kind of way, and he obviously had a temper. But he’d burst into the warehouse without even drawing his over-the-top .50 caliber. Which was nowmyover-the-top .50 caliber.
After another solid minute of the pointless, touch-feely reunion, I cleared my throat. “I hate to interrupt…” A flat-out lie. “…but someone owes me…”
“Your fee. Of course.” Daphne smiled benevolently, as if paying me the money I’d damn-well earned would be doing me some kind of favor.
She opened her rear driver’s side door and ushered Cari inside. Since I hadn’t been paid, I was about to protest—with my newly-acquired nine-millimeter. But then Daphne reached into her car through the open driver’s side window and withdrew a sequined clutch purse too small to possibly carry anything useful. I mean, that thing wouldn’t even hold a .22.
From the ridiculously tiny bag, she pulled a clipped wad of hundred-dollar bills, which she dropped in my open palm with an audible sigh of relief, apparently glad that she could now forget the whole unpleasant experience. “It’s all there,” she said, when I began thumbing through the stack. “You don’t have to count it.”
Oh, yes, I did. Company policy. Also known as common sense.
When I nodded, satisfied, Daphne drove off with Cale in her passenger seat and Cari in the back. As they turned left at the stoplight and drove out of sight, the pre-dawn near-silence settled in around me. I stared into the darkened front window of my office, knowing I should go in and drop the cash in the safe. But I was just too damn tired to bother. And it’s not like I had anyone to answer to, no matter what the sign over the ripped awning said.
What it actually read wasLacey Electronic Repair,punctuated by a pair of old-fashioned television rabbit ears. But that was intentionally…um…misleading.
According to the IRS and the local Chamber of Commerce, I worked for Aaron Lacey, keeping the books, answering the phone, and fetching the coffee while he repaired a never-ending stream of old televisions, stereos, and computers. But as anyone who’d ever tasted my coffee would agree, I did no such thing. Well, Ididanswer the phone, but only because most of the calls were for me.
In reality, Lacey Electronic Repair was a front for my officially unofficial business—my job, my baby, and my life. Aaron Lacey was my only employee, a youngish gremlin-of-all-trades who did everything from doctoring the books—okay, he fabricated them entirely—to keeping Rusty up and running. He also designed and implemented all the “modifications” to my off-the-shelf equipment, to make sure my gadgets could handle bad guys the manufacturer could never have imagined.
If I were a good boss, I’d have opened my office right then to make my deposit and let Lacey know I’d finished the job without raising my body count. Or getting killed. But I wasn’t a good boss; I was a tired boss, and I wanted nothing more than a drink, a box of Twinkies, and my high-speed internet access. Thus armed, I’d be ready to scour the net in hopes of uncovering the goblins’ employer, and what he or she wanted with Cari Murphy.
I’d accepted twice my usual fee in exchange for not posing any of my normal questions to the client, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t look for the answers myself, now that the job was over. And I’d be stupid not to, after what I’d seen. I couldn’t begin to imagine what a gang of goblins wanted with a human girl, other than a quick snack. Yet there wasn’t a tooth mark on her.
Most goblins worked as hired guns, and that was almost certainly the case for Berg, Hagen, and Dirk. Which meant they answered to someone with enough money to pay the ridiculously steep fees demanded by a band of non-human bad guys. Or enough power to “negotiate” for more reasonable rates.
What would someone like that want with a human teenager?
If something big was brewing among Netherworlders—and if it involved humans, itwouldbe big—I needed to know about it. You can’t block the strike if you don’t see it coming.
Eager for the comfort of my own apartment and some serious answers, I tested the office doorknob to make sure it was still locked, then I put my ass-kicking boots back on and shoved my two newly acquired guns into my duffle bag. I settled into my driver’s seat, and a sigh of contentment slipped past my lips as I shrugged into my shoulder holster and slid my Ruger into place. My favorite pistol was also my security blanket, my first line of defense, and—other than Rusty—my best friend. Because unlike people, a well-cared-for gun could always be counted on.
Twenty minutes later, I pulled Rusty into her assigned parking space in front of my second story apartment. Except for my own porch light, the building was dark, which was normal for three o’clock in the morning. Comforted by the thick bundle of cash in my pocket and the weight of the Ruger beneath my right arm, I slung my duffle over one shoulder and locked the car doors. As I climbed the exterior staircase my thoughts volleyed between the new night-vision goggles I would order the next day and the research I was about to do.
I turned my key in the lock and the moment the door swung open, thewrongnessin my apartment hit me. The sharp tang of power stung my mouth like the jolt from a battery on the tip of my tongue. Chills bumps popped up all over my arms.
I inhaled through my nose, my hand still on the doorknob.Cologne. Rich, musky, and expensive. There was a man in my living room, and he wasn’t human. Or invited.
I pulled the Ruger as I shrugged the duffle from my right shoulder. The bag hit the “un-welcome” mat at my feet, and I thumbed off the pistol’s safety. Sucking in a deep, steady breath, I aimed into my living room, the barrel trained at chest-height.
