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

  Ewan laughed. “You know that’s not how it works. Or have you forgotten the whole purpose behind your job?”

  It was difficult to forget.

  “A new chance at life,” I parroted obediently.

  “And?”

  I sighed. “‘To prove my worth, ability to overcome obstacles, and bravery so that I can join Nemesis on the higher plane.’

  “Good girl. Had me worried for a minute there.”

  There was that tiny clause in our contract.

  Vengeance Inc. was a business like any other. It just happened to be owned and maintained by a divine being. When the runners were hired, we signed a five-year contract that could be renewed upon completion if we chose. If we didn’t choose... we died.

  A second option would be to have an evaluation by Nemesis. If the evaluation was favorable, we could leave behind the human plane and join the gods.

  That was why things weren’t always easy for us. We had to prove our worth before the end of our time. Nem wanted only the best on Her heavenly team.

  I hadn’t really proved much at all. Not anything good, anyway. I had proved to be a klutz and a mess.

  Leaving behind my gloomy thoughts, I said, “The neighbor told me they owned a video store that went out of business. Can your magic think-box can find an address?”

  “Magic-box? Sounds kinky. You wanna take my magic-box for a spin? Or perhaps I could take your magic box—”

  “Ew,” I cut him off, but laughed anyway. I was a sucker for eighth grade humor. I wasn’t proud.

  We both grew silent as he tapped away at his computer.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “Yep, came right back. Their website is shitty. What’s wrong with business owners? Can’t they hire a professional?”

  “Is that really the point right now?”

  Ewan made a rude noise. “Not my fault people are morons.”

  “I ran a Google search on the McClores earlier. Why didn’t the video store come back? I just got the production company page.”

  “The domain isn’t listed to the McClores. It’s an alias.”

  “These people are classy, aren’t they?”

  “1401 State Street. Think you can make it there without technical difficulties, babycakes?”

  “I’ll be sure to mess something up just for you.” I threw the car in drive, and hit the road.

  The video store was obviously in disuse.

  One window was boarded with plywood, and a “No Trespassing” sign hung on a glass door covered in brown paper. I found a hole in the bottom and used the flashlight on my phone to peek inside.

  Empty, as far as I could see. There were a couple shelving units stacked against one wall, and a gray counter in the front. An open door in the back wall presumably led to a back room, and it was dark, as well.

  I squatted in front of the lock. A brand of deadbolt known for being entirely too easy to pick. These people really were morons, as Ewan had suggested.

  I pulled my jackknife from my back pocket and manipulated the lock, smiling as it clicked. Three seconds. Lock Picking 101.

  It smelled moldy inside, like there had been untreated water damage. I passed on quiet feet through the store itself, my phone’s guide light trained on the floor, and crossed into the back room.

  Check. A pallet on the floor: big enough for two people, with rumpled covers and indented pillows. Two suitcases overflowing with clothes. A hot plate. A lamp.

  This was where they were living, obviously. But a search of the building led to no clues regarding the missing girls.

  I spent the majority of the night dozing in my car across the street from the video store, hoping the McClores would return. I stared through the dim light from the moon, watching for any walkers or cars, finally succumbing to sleep a little after midnight.

  It was close to four in the morning when I jerked awake at the sound of a car door. While I’d napped, my butt had slipped on the leather seats until I was half on the floorboard. I had a killer crick in my neck. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I gripped the steering wheel and gazed across the street.

  A red Saturn missing the back bumper idled directly in front of the store, while a tall, statuesque woman with hair so platinum it glowed in the night slipped through the front door.

  I squinted into the Saturn, barely able to make out the silhouette of a person in the driver’s seat. They weren’t staying.

  That meant they might lead me to the kids.

  The blonde returned a moment later, slithering into the passenger seat. As the sedan pulled away from the building, I twisted my key in the ignition, and followed, my headlights off.

  They took me out of town by way of a confusing series of twists and turns until I was good and lost. Nothing for miles but black on either side of my car, and the dizzying passage of street-lines as I trailed at a discreet distance. A light, cool breeze blew through my cracked window, a much needed break from the humidity.

  The McClores finally turned down an unlit dirt road, flanked by a tall gate. I caught the telltale swirl of barbed wire lining the top of fence that stretched on either side. Hanging from the gate, an old, battered sign announced Glory Mental and Rehabilitation Institute

  I groaned, rolling to a stop just out of sight as the Saturn paused in the drive.

  Of course. Surely, the McClores weren’t the new owners; the ones Sue Ellen told me had filed permits to turn the place into a hotel. Violent criminals weren’t prone to hosting pleasant B&Bs. It got in the way of their daily mutilation.

  The female McClore exited the driver’s side and opened the gate so the car could pass through. I watched as she locked the gate and got back in, then they vanished down a tree-lined drive.

  I pulled off the road, taking a steep incline into the trees and found a spot where my vehicle couldn’t be seen from the road. I shut off the engine, and nearly vaulted from the car. I wasn’t going allow them enough time to do anything other than enter the building. Not over my dead body.

  For the second time that night, I scaled a fence. Only this time, it was ten feet high and topped by barbed wire. I stopped near the top and shrugged out of my black leather jacket, tossing it over the barbs.

  “Leather is your friend,” I remembered my instructor saying back at the academy. Her advice was sound. My trusty leather jacket had helped me more than once over the years.

  I left the jacket so my getaway would be quick. The night air was brisk on my bare arms as I darted down the road at a frantic pace.

  The trees were thick, the drive nothing but overgrown dirt and gravel. The faint crunch of my boots and my breath were the only sounds. None of the usual nighttime noises: no birds, no scuffling in the underbrush. Even the animals stayed away from this place.

  I paused at the edge of a clearing as the taillights from the Saturn blinked out. A hulking mass of black rose against a backlit sky: Glory Institute, crouching like a monster watching and waiting. Hiding behind a tree, I listened as car doors slammed, and then peeked around the wide base.

  Andy McClore walked to the back of the car. He popped the trunk as his wife clicked on a flashlight. With a furtive glance around, he pulled out a blanket-wrapped bundle — Goddess help me, child-sized — and the two disappeared through the gaping maw of the front door.

  I sprinted after them.

  Before I even reached the darkened entrance, I felt Nemesis descend upon me, and my world went black.

  9

  I opened my eyes, disoriented.

  My face was pressed to the floor, stuck to linoleum by a half-wet substance. Using both hands, I tried to push myself up, but brilliant, hot pain jolted through me and I shrieked.

  My wrist was at an unnatural angle. Shit. I’d heard about girls breaking bones during the take-over. Nemesis didn’t care overmuch about protecting us — we were nothing but vessels for Her vengeance, and by the gods, we should be able to handle a little pain. But it had never happened to me before.

  I cradled my
arm against my chest and used my good hand to sit up, my skin audibly pulling free from the tacky floor. Wincing, I took stock of the situation, my training overriding the pain.

  Crimson painted the room as if splashed there by deadly claws, each knifelike mark surreal on the graffitied walls. I was dead center in the square room, surrounded by Nemesis’s trail of annihilation.

  There were four of them: four bodies reduced to red meat and entrails. Lifting my good hand, I studied my fingernails: skin, blood, and Goddess knew what else was under them. Taking inventory of my injuries, I realized I’d come out on top despite my obviously broken wrist. I fingered a sore spot just above my temple, confirming that the blood I’d slept in was not my own. A few bruises here and there, but otherwise no worse for the wear.

  The same could not be said for Her victims.

  A woman lay to my right, the only clue to gender being the single white breast that had slipped from her slinky silver tank top to rest on the filthy, blood-covered floor under her. She had boy-short hair and her face was obliterated. Curled on her side, her eyeless sockets glared accusingly.

  The man closest to me was split end to end, his organs reduced to soup as if Nem had stirred him like a cauldron. His face was completely untouched: his eyes wide with terror and his mouth slack. Andy McClore. Both arms jutted out like sharp-angled Z’s.

  Muscle memory flashed through me — the snap as his limbs broke between my hands. I shook the recollection off with a shudder. Those blasts of memory would fade within the next ten minutes.

  Beside Andy McClore was a second man, similar in facial structure and stature, only with a small wooden stake through one eye. Cute, Nem. Channeling Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A digital camcorder lay near his fingertips.

  To my left, Amy McClore lay with her platinum high-pony drenched in blood and splattered with bits of brain. I gagged — one side of her skull was caved in. I could do blood and entrails, but brains had always made me heave.

  Important pieces began to come back in bits, but only the bits Nemesis decided I should retain.

  Nemesis didn’t just kill those She sought vengeance upon. She destroyed them, mutilated them beyond recognition. She made them suffer, and She did it joyfully. Her victims died terrified and screaming. That was why She gave Her conduits amnesia when She took over: Nem may have been a sociopath, but Her runners weren’t, and She wanted them to stay that way.

  We did the grunt work, Nem did the dirty work. She thrived on it, gaining power from every hit.

  I got to my feet slowly, slipping on the blood-soaked floor. My breath was coming faster now; I could feel the panic attack, right on time. My stomach roiled nastily inside me as a wave of death and human insides assaulted my nose. I stumbled to the only clean wall, and pressing a hand to its cool, unrelenting surface, I dry-heaved again and again. This was normal — the adrenaline of Nemesis’s take-over wearing off. My body crashing to reality.

  I put my forehead to the concrete and focused on taking deep, steady breaths. The pieces were trying to fall together in my mind.

  The child was in a closet in the hallway. Unharmed, and protected from what had occurred. For all Her violence and vengeance, Nemesis was an angel. An angel of death, but an angel nonetheless.

  Turning my back on the carnage I’d created in the name of vengeance, I walked unsteadily through the sea-foam green swinging doors and headed for the nearest bathroom to clean up before getting the kid. No use terrifying her more than she already was. My bare feet slapped against the floor, the blood beneath them viscous.

  What the hell had happened to my boots? Those were my favorites!

  The lack of light in the long condemned building wasn’t an issue. Even after Nemesis vacated the premises — i.e. vacated me — some residual power remained in Her stead. The walls glowed with inner light; the same light that had illuminated the fight with the McClores, the same light that would get me out of there.

  The bathroom was cool and fairly clean, considering that countless vagrants and vandals had turned it into a living space. I stepped over a chalk drawing of a hanged man on the floor, and skirted past a pile of old rags that had probably been somebody’s bed, and drew up to the sink.

  I placed a hand so covered in blood it was unrecognizable on the tap and closed my eyes, reaching through the pipes, into the earth, feeling Nemesis’s leftover power tap into the stores beneath the ground. In seconds, warm water flowed over my good hand. I scrubbed as best I could without soap, using my thumb to dig skin that wasn’t my own from my cuticles and dried blood from the creases of my knuckles. I splashed my face, trying not only to clean it but to erase the sight of destruction.

  I groaned as I rinsed my broken wrist and hand, but at least it helped wash away the feeling of Amy McClore’s head bashing like a melon beneath my palm. Already, that sensation was weakening until I couldn’t recall whether it was real or a dream.

  I swayed, falling against the sink as another flashback hit me: Nemesis tearing the face off the McClores’ female assistant. There was something to be said for Nem’s single-minded determination to sow vengeance. She didn’t see anything but the mark. I felt Nemesis’ gentle, motherly touch against my essence, erasing that memory, too.

  But my mind retained everything else. The otherwise empty room, the camera set up, trained on a stack of blankets against a cream-colored curtain. The open doorway leading into the hall.

  A tall, thin figure in black smoking a cigarette.

  I froze, pressing my good palm against the bare bathroom wall as I played back the scene in my head. I counted three bodies down, and the fourth dying at the moment of flashback.

  The figure in black wasn’t one of the bodies, and Nem didn’t seem to be paying him any mind. A single thought in Her voice: Ghost.

  I knew it wasn’t a ghost. I knew the moment his cigarette flared between his lips, the tip glowing orange in the twilight of the room.

  I had been followed for the past two days. He was the guy in the black SUV.

  The flashback faded. I had nothing else. No idea where he went or why he was there, watching Nemesis tear a woman’s face off with my hands.

  I found a stack of dirty towels in a cabinet in the corner and dried off, leaving my broken wrist wet. There was nothing I could do about my black tank top and blue jeans.

  Whispers followed me down the dark hallway and up the stairs. It was common knowledge in the south that this place hosted a couple hundred restless spirits, but I wasn’t too frightened. Not a thing in the spirit world could harm me without my consent.

  The redeeming part of being a conduit for vengeful goddesses.

  I found the closet easily, thankful Nemesis had had the foresight to leave me that memory. The little girl was right where I’d left her — where Nem had left her — her arms like sticks around her knobby knees. Goddess, she looked like a baby.

  “Are you okay, Kiley?” I asked, dropping to a squat in front of her and tucking a stray lock of dirty blonde hair behind an ear. She was just as cute as her picture.

  She nodded, big blue eyes shell-shocked. She was the lucky one — the one whose tiny, half-grown body hadn’t been violated, mutilated, and murdered on tape.

  “Are you okay?” she whispered, pressing two cold fingers to my face. I nodded once and offered my hand to pull her to her feet. The skimpy black sheath she wore was completely inappropriate for a girl of her age. Pulling an old, moth eaten blanket from one of the shelves, I draped it around her shoulders.

  I wanted to kill Amy and Andy McClore all over again. Guess I had to settle for just the once.

  “I heard things,” the girl whispered, pressing her tear-streaked face to my abdomen. I cringed at the gore that might still be on me, and at how close she’d come to hitting my broken wrist where it still rested against my breasts.

  “What did you hear?”

  “Moans. Footsteps. There are things here?” She posed it as a question, raising her face to mine intently. Beneath the dirt and porn ma
ke-up, she was lovely. Still innocent, thank the gods. Thanks to Nemesis.

  “Yes. There are things here. Things that aren’t worth thinking about, okay?” I gently pushed her away. “Let’s get you home.”

  I waited in the shadows as the cops arrived on scene to find little Kiley waiting on the front steps of the Glory Institution. As soon as she was safely in the arms of an officer, I turned my back on the place and left the way I came, yanking my jacket from the fence and slipping through the now open gate.

  By the time I sank into my car, the adrenaline that had driven me since I came to was finally gone. It took a couple tries, but I managed to dig my cell out of my pocket and blew out a breath as I dialed the office.

  “Safffff.” Ewan’s tone was playful and low. “Babycakes, how’d it go?”

  “Ended in death, like always.” My head swam, and I let it fall to the headrest.

  “Saffron? What’s wrong?” Now he was all business and concern.

  “I’m… I’m hurt,” I said, my words coming out kinda funny. It was just a broken wrist. I mean, come on.

  “How bad?” Ewan barked.

  But the phone slipped from my fingers and fell to the center console as I gave in to unconsciousness.

  10

  I woke up to my boss’s amused face.

  Looking around groggily, I noted the dorm-like furniture, the bad artwork, and the paneled ceiling that looked like someone had poked holes in it with a knitting needle. There was an IV attached to my good hand, and my other arm was in a bright pink cast.

  Not just any hospital — the Vengeance Inc. hospital in Cincinnati. I’d been in it once during training because of an awful flu virus.

  “What?” I whined when Nemesis continued to stare at me with that obnoxious smirk. On our plane, She was an ethereal presence, see-through and noncorporeal.

  She stood at my bedside in Her usual wardrobe of a toga, today maroon. A golden snake twisted up Her muscled bicep, and black curls framed Her face. “Are you getting too old for this, dear Saffron? Should I retire you like an aging brood mare?”