Rebels and Realms: A Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection Read online

  Could you imagine? Humping along, all fine and dandy, enjoying a bit of a shag, and then, sorry, dead. Sure, you get a small bit of satisfaction, but, still. Dead.

  “Odd choice of study,” I quipped, shakily putting my legs over the edge of the bed as I let my pounding head rest in my hands. “I’m fine. Really. You should get off the floor. It’s probably growing colonies of deadly diseases. This isn’t the nicest of motels.”

  “I was going to call an ambulance.” Mark waved at his phone on the floor by his feet. “But I just... I couldn’t...”

  Receiving an assignment from Nemesis was comparable to the morning after a Saturday-night bender. The magick involved in the spoken Decree could split my head open. Metaphorically. On top of the alcohol from three hours at the bar, it felt literal. Mark’s rambling didn’t help the situation.

  “Well, I’m glad you were panicking too much to dial a phone, because we’d sure be embarrassed when the uniforms showed up and I was conscious.” I rummaged around the stiff, industrial blankets and came up with my t-shirt and underwear. It was much too cold in the room, with the ancient air conditioner kicked up on high due to our sweaty acrobatics. “Where are my jeans?”

  Mark crawled across the dirty shag carpet on his freaking knees and pulled my Refuge denims from under the bed. A shaky hand held them by two fingers.

  “They won’t bite,” I snapped at him, jerking the offending clothing from his grasp. Turning my back, I slipped into my Coca-Cola tee and black string bikinis before pulling my jeans up over my hips.

  “What happened?” Mark asked, his question barely audible as he fumbled to get dressed.

  “Spontaneous narcolepsy?” I offered to lighten the mood.

  He didn’t laugh. Fine then.

  “Nothing happened.” I gave him a quick peck on his cold cheek. “It was fun. Nice to meet you.” Plucking my purse from the bureau by the door, I made my escape.

  2

  I didn’t choose this life.

  None of the Vengeance girls did. Nemesis chose us. You could blame our good looks and strong moral code, or you could blame the somewhat questionable whims of a goddess with hellfire in Her eyes. Either way, Nem came for each of us by our eighteenth birthdays, and for the next two years, we studied, we trained, and we became… well, mini-Nemeses. But without that gift called “immortality.”

  Which was balls, really, when you looked at it. She sent us to the far corners of the earth to track down Her enemies, then She would hijack our bodies for a bit of vengeance. In return, we were a little stronger than the average girl and had access to amenities most people didn’t.

  But She couldn’t give us immortality. Not now, anyway, on our human plane of existence. If I got shanked on a mission, then I was finito. In a line of “work” that left me feeling used, abused, and cold inside, it was no wonder I turned to liquor and sex. I just wanted to fucking feel something other than empty.

  The motel sign flickered high above the parking lot as I strolled to my car. It wasn’t a classy joint, but it was cheap. Vengeance Inc. kept us paid, so it wasn’t that I cared about spending the money on myself. I just didn’t want to spend it on some idiot I’d managed to pick up by tossing my long, curly locks. Cheap sex called for a cheap room.

  I sighed, allowing a little bit of self-loathing to seep through as I hit the button to unlock the car. Saffron: the slut, the goddess-pawn, the bitter, aging shrew.

  “This is not how I thought my life would be,” I told my steering wheel, sinking into the relative calm and quiet of my small Chevy, warm after the cool May, Chicago night.

  I dug my phone out of my purse and listened to the line ring several times before a bored female voice finally picked up. “Vengeance Incorporated.”

  “Code name: Saffron. Checking in.”

  There was a pause, and then the woman said, “10-4. Saffron, you’ll report by phone to your usual aide. Full priority, full stock of powers. Don’t forget, you’re required for your bi-monthly check-up.”

  Fuck. My usual aide. That guy made me crazy with his constant flirting and innuendo. “Great, thanks. I’m gonna hit home for a few hours instead of making the whole drive on no sleep. I’ll get my check-up after this gig.”

  Phone check-in with the main office was mandatory immediately after a Decree. They had fancy-schmancy equipment that could read our voices and assure them Nemesis hadn’t affected us in any untoward way. Pretty bad when your boss could cause brain damage simply by giving you orders. That was why divine goddesses didn’t speak to humans on an everyday basis. The bi-monthly check-up of which she spoke was a doctoral examination in which Vengeance Inc. made sure Nemesis and the missions hadn’t broken me irrevocably. Unfortunately, that wasn’t measured on a mental level, or I would have been allowed out to pasture already.

  I turned the key, and the engine turned over smoothly. As my headlights popped to life, they illuminated a vehicle parked directly opposite the lot: a brand new, black Cadillac Escalade. Fancy car for this part of town. I could just barely make out a silhouette in the driver’s seat as a cigarette flared behind the reflective windshield.

  It gave me pause, because — no, really — what the hell was an eighty-thousand dollar SUV doing in this part of town? Not to mention at three in the morning, and with someone sitting inside it.

  Hard to not be a conspiracy theorist in my line of work.

  But who was I to see ghosts where there were none? This motel wasn’t exactly the best. Probably just some corporate douchenozzle meeting his secretary for a boink.

  The drive was five hours from Chicago to home, and by the time I made it there, I was beyond exhausted. I passed the time with an audio book — some southern chick lit novel that made me laugh. I figured I should get some happiness in before I got to Savannah and found myself knee-deep in dead bodies. The last time I received a job indirectly from Demeter, my psyche had taken months to recover.

  My parents lived in Lebanon Junction, Kentucky between a trailer park and a service station that had been missing its sign since I was a kid. Their home, contrary to its surroundings, was a large, white farm house that my dad took great pains to keep power-washed and painted. It had a wrap-around porch on the front, a screened room on the back, and a dilapidated above-ground pool in the side yard that Dad somehow managed to keep together with a bit of duct tape and spit.

  My mother — her daughter-radar intact, as usual — opened the front door the moment I pulled in the driveway. “Baby girl! Oh, my baby girl.”

  I shouldered my backpack and hurried up the cracked front walk into my mama’s arms. She smelled like gravy — the good brown kind, not that crappy white stuff. I sank against her chest and let her rock me like a child.

  “Sweet baby girl, I’ve missed you so,” she murmured into my hair before pressing a big, wet kiss to my hairline.

  “I’ve missed you too, Mama,” I said with a laugh, pulling away from the hug before she crushed me into a Saffron-pancake.

  Mama looked just like me, only forty pounds heavier and a few inches shorter. Her black hair was shot through with gray, and laugh lines creased the corners of her lips and eyes. Beautiful, as usual.

  “How was Chicago?” Mama asked, opening the screened door and motioning me inside. “You know, I worry ’bout you up in that big city.”

  “Mama, you worry about me when I’m in Louisville.”

  “Well, it’s a city, ain’t it?” She let the screen door slam and hustled me into the kitchen. “Let me make you lunch, child. How’s roast beef?”

  “Perfect. I’m gonna go grab a shower.”

  Mama paused in her white trainers, one hand tucked in the pocket of her pink and white striped apron. “You are staying for a while, aren’t ya, Marion?”

  I was so happy to see my mother, I didn’t even cringe at my given name. I shook my head, chagrined. “Sorry. I just stopped in to get some clean clothes and grab a nap. Work is sending me to Savannah.”

  Mama sighed her world-weary sigh,
the heavy release of breath that left me no doubt how much my life affected her. “Mare, honey, I do wish you’d find a new job. Travelin’ like this can’t be healthy.”

  “You know I can’t,” I said gently. I wasn’t eager to rehash an argument we’d had too many times to count, so I turned to leave the kitchen.

  “Girl, you could do anything you set your mind to.”

  I paused, but didn’t turn around. “I know, Mama. But I’m committed.”

  The blood bond kind of committed. Nothing short of forced retirement from Nem, or death, could free me from Vengeance Inc. until my contract was up. Even then, it was death and a higher plane, or continue to be an assassin until Nemesis felt I tested well enough to join Her on the divine plane. My five-year contract would end this year. I wasn’t ready to die — who is? — so I had another five years ahead of me.

  I took the familiar hallway, passing the doorframe my mother had marked my height on every year since I could walk. Each little tick mark was another year older. The last one was at fifteen; I hadn’t grown since. I couldn’t believe we’d lived in this house for over twenty years. How could a person stay in one place that long?

  My room hadn’t changed a lick since my eighteenth birthday. The wood-paneled walls were still plastered with boy bands, teen heartthrobs, and movie posters, and the comforter on my twin bed was a cartoon Harry Potter. I hadn’t had time to plan my escape from childhood. I’d only just started applying to colleges, trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life, though I’d known it wasn’t going to be getting married and pregnant in Lebanon Junction.

  Before I could figure all that out, Nem found me drunk in the woods just after my eighteenth birthday. I’d snuck away from a bonfire party with Harvey Lytle, whom I’d had a crush on for years. He’d just kissed me when Nem burst onto the scene with literal fire on Her fingertips and Her skin glowing like a Roman candle. Harvey was on his feet and lost to the trees before I could react.

  Nemesis had greeted me with one word.

  “Leukemia.”

  My skin had flushed hot at the pronouncement. For a brief moment with Harvey Lytle, I was able to forget my fate, to forget that three doctors had already condemned me to an early death.

  “If you don’t want to die as the cancer consumes you, you’ll come with me,” Nemesis had told me, offering me a hand.

  I didn’t even flinch when I laid my fingers on Her fire.

  I was sent to the academy, a school run by Vengeance Inc. out of Cincinnati. My two-year program — college, to my parents — seemed to fly by. And now, here I was, five years after I first laid eyes on Nemesis, in a room lit by a furry purple lamp.

  It was either a medical miracle I was still alive, or a divine intervention.

  I picked up the picture frame that held a place of honor on my dresser. Me, ten years ago on the balance beam. I’d trained since I was little: Mom drove me to Louisville four nights a week, competing around the country, chasing gold medals and a dream.

  A dream Nemesis effectively took when She offered me a second chance at life. Die young, or live, but change your plans.

  So much was out of our control.

  I sighed, flinging my backpack to the bed. “I am a loser.”

  I shed my clothes and went to take a shower.

  3

  I took my cell into the backyard and dialed my best friend.

  “You’re two days late,” she answered, disapproval in her tone. “You’re lucky the ring told me you were safe, or I would have hightailed my ass to the east coast and tracked you down like I track down skips.”

  The sound of Frank’s deep voice relaxed me. We talked every week, same night, same time. But our schedules meant we weren’t always on time. Well… I wasn’t always on time. Frank had been known to call me from the front lines and black out as Nem took her over for vengeance while we were still on the damn phone.

  Frank and I had met at the academy. Literally pulled from the brink of death by Nemesis, she’d been in an accident at twenty that had left her a comatose vegetable. When I showed up fresh-faced and ready to learn, Frank was already a three-year veteran at that point, helping out in classes while she recovered from a mission-related injury. If not for her injury, we never would have met.

  Now, she was the most important person in my life. We had bespelled rings that could show us where the other was at any time, even if we weren’t wearing them.

  I sank to one of the rubber swings on the backyard playset, stretching my legs out as I gently swayed. “I know. Unforeseen circumstances.”

  “Last job didn’t go well?”

  “Not so much. I didn’t get there in time. Another woman died.”

  There was a long silence. Frank wasn’t much of a talker, but she was definitely a ponderer. I could hear water splashing in the background, so I asked, “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Taking a bath.”

  “Since when do you bathe?”

  “Har har.” She sighed. “You can’t blame yourself ’cuz he killed someone else. He killed, like, what? Twenty before you came?”

  Frank was like that. Nothing fazed her. She was the strongest, most dependable person I’d ever met. I envied her positive outlook, and her strong belief that nothing could keep her from what she wanted.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Oh, shut the hell up, Saff. You did good. You stopped him, didn’t you?”

  I lifted my hand, eyeing the two inch gash in my palm. It was already healing, thanks to Nemesis. “Yeah. I stopped him.”

  “Was it cold in Chicago?” Dad asked before taking a monstrous bite from his roast beef sandwich.

  Dad looked like the aging quarterback he was. Big and broad, with balding blond hair and a nose that had been broken one too many times, he now worked the assembly line at the Ford plant in Louisville. He was close to retirement, I knew, but nothing short of the apocalypse would get that man to sit down.

  I rolled my eyes. “Daddy, it’s May.”

  “What?” He raised a bushy blond brow. “Isn’t Chicago way up north?”

  “It’s up north, Daddy, but it’s not the North Pole. The weather is just the same there as it is here.”

  “If this humid morning is any indication, we’re set to have a scorcher this summer.” Mama sliced another piece of beef and slid it on my plate. “Have some more, child. You’re skin and bones.”

  “Mama,” I groaned, pushing my plate away. “I’ve already had a whole sandwich.”

  “One whole sandwich!” Mama pressed a hand to her button-down shirt. “Good Lord, Richard Wayne, our daughter had a whole sandwich!”

  “You’re a regular comedienne,” I said wryly.

  Mama picked up her glass of sweet tea. “Your daughter’s off to Savannah. What do you think of that?”

  Dad grunted. “Lovely city. Bit artsy. Be sure to carry your pepper spray, Mare.”

  I carried my plate to the sink without responding. Mama always tried to rile Dad up over the way my job took me “all over God’s country,” — which was Mom-Code for any state that wasn’t Kentucky — but Daddy couldn’t care less. As long as I was working, paying my bills, and keeping my nose clean, I could shovel poo for the Anheuser-Busch horses for all he cared.

  “Richard, don’t you worry about her? She’s only twenty-three years old, traipsing about the country without a man to take care of her.”

  “Jolene, she’s twenty-three, not five. She can damn well care for herself.”

  “What about marriage? And grandchildren? Don’t you want a grandson, Richard?” The pleading look on my mother’s face made it quite clear who wished for a son-in-law and grandkids.

  Dad didn’t even look up from his plate. “For heaven’s sake, Jolene, she’s still a girl. Her clock ain’t stopped ticking yet.”

  “I’m going to grab a nap,” I spoke over them as they continued to argue, but neither noticed.

  Ah, to be home again. Thank Goddess it was only for a couple hours.

&nbs
p; The pier stretches before me, dark in the night and darker in the shadows. I wear black, a ski mask covering my face so my pale skin doesn’t glow like a damn beacon and alert my prey to my presence.

  He has been tough to find. He hid his trail well. His tendency to rape and torture displaced prostitutes and homeless teenagers didn’t give the cops much to go on. But Nemesis teaches Her girls to never give up, and I never do, even when I want to.

  Waves lap at the pier, the only sound I can hear but for distant highway traffic. Lake Michigan glitters on the horizon in the ambient light from the city. I like Chicago. I like the energy and the wind, so different from where I grew up.

  I don’t like the serial killer.

  Footsteps, and I know he’s there. Nemesis hovers inside me, waiting to be sure, so I quicken my pace. Just a little closer, and I will see his face. Then She will come and take me.

  Before I can get close enough, Nemesis and I hear a muffled scream.

  No time to waste, Nemesis tells me.

  I feel the smooth, cool sensation of Her spell surrounding me. The thin veneer of magick will coat every inch of my body so that no hairs or nails or, Goddess forbid, blood will shed from me and alert the authorities to my presence at the crime scene.

  And then She tucks me away and all is dark.

  In life, I sleep while She kills. In dreams, I am there, trapped in my body as Nemesis takes control. She shakes my arms and rolls my shoulders, feeling too big for my skin. She takes one step. Another, testing my footing, thinking, Not as graceful as Frankincense, but strong. She falls into a run.

  Nemesis stalks up behind the killer with the predatory grace of a cat. My nails grow into talons, and She slashes his back, ripping through muscle and tendon as if it were ephemeral.

  The killer grunts and falls forward, rolling away from the screaming prostitute. The poor woman is half-dressed and already bleeding from his signature slice on her thigh. The cut is deep; I see bone. Nemesis casually flicks a spell towards the woman, silencing her screams and sending her to a dreamless sleep.