CHAPTER ONE

Warehouses, even well-lit orderly ones, have a certain ambiance about them. Rows of shelving contain cartons of varied contents; if you are lucky, the shelves are marked by bin location. If you aren’t, you can wander for a while, looking for what you seek.

Older warehouses that aren’t in use tend to be dark and dusty, with bird nests in the upper shelving and forgotten items scattered about like toys a child has outgrown. Shipping containers line the walls and an odd assortment of metal barrels collect here and there. It’s an excellent environment for a good old-fashioned game of hide and seek. 

Except that what was playing out within the warehouse where the story begins wasn’t a game; it was a chase that would end up with someone dead. That, too, has a certain formula to it. One hides, and the other uses various means to flush the hidden out. When the quarry flies, the hunter strikes. Sometimes, he wins.

And sometimes he gets shot in the process.

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Pain.

It can be a powerful motivator. A tool that carefully wielded, can bring a man to the point where he will tell you anything you might want to know, anything that you might want him to confess to having done, even if he hasn’t.

Correctly used, pain can even be (dare I say it?) enjoyable.

This was neither.

This was me, gasping in agony on the floor of a darkened warehouse, having been shot seconds before by my target. Mind you, I wasn’t planning on dying anytime soon, given that I have yet to figure out what can kill me; some things like decapitation just aren’t worth trying. The other methods are reduced to party tricks in my world. You know, been there, done that, bled on the t-shirt. The only lasting effect would be that I was going to have one hell of a headache in the morning, so I sat up, my head positively ringing in pain and looked at the hole in my shirt.

He’d caught me in the left shoulder, ruining said shirt and causing my own shot to go wide, resulting in me wasting a bullet before I got him in the neck. Oh yes, I’d love to be some Hollywood hero, stepping in with a one-liner and an expensive pair of sunglasses before firing my pistol once and tagging the bad guy perfectly square in the chest. But, last time I checked, this was real life in Charleston, not television’s version of a random city, and I didn’t go to an air conditioned trailer after hearing the word ‘cut.’ I might opt for that SIG-Sauer, but honestly? I prefer my Glock, and I’m man enough to admit that it sometimes takes three shots to hit my mark.

I got to my feet, left my gun on the floor, and then I stumbled, a wave of disorientation hitting me. Loss of blood, right. I knew that I had to do something about my shoulder or I was going to pass out, be found with a dead body nearby, and end up in hospital with the police crawling all over me. Since every time a gunshot victim entered said hospital the modern equivalent of an Inquisition started, not to mention the whole dead body problem, I needed to get the bullet out myself so I could heal. Oh, and you can forget that whole myth of cold iron impeding magical healing; it’s more a case of the inorganic materials just get in the way.

I leaned against a nearby metal cargo container and reached up into the narrow wound with my fingers, clenching my jaw at the brilliant white-hot flash of pain as my torn flesh stretched and tore further. It wasn’t enough to make me lose consciousness, so I kept digging until I felt my fingernails scrape against metal. My fingers were slick with blood, so it made getting a decent grip on the bullet nauseatingly painful. My stomach rebelled with the sensation, but I didn’t stop until I had the slug out of my shoulder.

I felt my magic flare, then shift into the phoenixfire, and the flames began to build in my shoulder. The magic burned away the damage and worked to rebuild muscle and sinew, shaping my flesh back into form even as I hunched over and emptied my stomach on the concrete. I really didn’t get paid enough for this job.

When both my stomach and my magic were finished, I leaned back against the cool metal and looked up at the ceiling of the warehouse. I had long been an atheist, for as much as I’d lived through and seen, I knew that there were no Gods, no immortals or higher powered beings that loved us and forgave us our failings. It was just a mess of mundane and fantastic trying to co-exist with each other and live as best as could be lived. Predator and prey, the never-ending cycle of life. Yeah, that’s me. Disenchanted.

Once I was certain that the fading dizziness wouldn’t cause me to end up in a ditch somewhere between here and home, I picked up the wayward Glock, shoved it into my pocket and headed through the warehouse, cursing myself for being so careless as to leave evidence behind. Now that I wasn’t fighting for my immortal life, it was time to break out my magic and get both myself and the place cleaned up. Throw a few fireballs to destroy the evidence, try not to reduce the city block to ashes, and call it a night.

Okay, yes, I know. But let me tell you something: I’m not Harry Dresden. I’ve read the books, loved them. I could sympathize with him, too. It’s not easy living in two worlds. However, the real world doesn’t have Councils, rules, or anything remotely so structured, sadly enough. It’s as wild and as cutthroat as it gets out there. The only thing that governs the fantastic is our capacity for magic. When you run out, you’re at the mercy of your opponent. You might call it the magical equivalent of Darwin’s Law-- hence, why I was trying to use magic as my last resort.

It gets worse when you consider that I work for a man who goes by the name of Valen Ravenswing. It’s not his real name, and I don’t much care what his real name is, because I probably couldn’t begin to pronounce it if I tried. He’s a demon, and most of them have names with fourteen syllables that require two tongues to pronounce. Yeah, that’s right, he’s a demon and I’m an assassin, amongst other things. I’ll get to that part later. But right now, I have to clean up the mess of a creature called a pooka who pissed off my boss. Word of advice: Don’t piss off a demon; he sends people like me after you and you end up dead.

I walked up to the still form, paused a moment to identify it, and then built up the power in my hand, took a breath to steady myself, and opened my fingers, releasing the ball of fire and letting it envelop the creature. It burned fast and hot, because I wasn’t certain if he was unconscious, or dead. Even though I was a killer, I wasn’t a torturer. It was as humane as I could possibly get, given that neither of us were human. Morality is slightly different when you don’t live the same lifespan as the rest of the world. You tend to have vastly different values as a result.

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Nevertheless, the fire did the job, and I gave it another moment to burn the remains into a scorch of ash that would be a CSI agent’s cross between a wet dream and a nightmare. I waited another few painful heartbeats before I called the flames back and let the fire go out. I never said I was an angel. I work for a demon, remember? Keep that in mind. It’ll come in handy later, I promise.

By the time I was done with the body, the adrenaline was starting to seep out of me, and I wearily turned down the catwalk towards the stairs that led to the door where I’d left my car. I needed a shower, rest, and new clothing, and then I could go on with my life, such as it was. I’d expended more magic than usual, and that was taking a toll. Healing is hard work.

Magic lesson number two: mages have to eat. I’ll admit right off the bat; this is my downfall. I don’t eat a whole lot. In fact, I’ve been known to completely forget to eat for an entire day. With my line of work, can you blame me? I’m vegetarian, too; the smell of blood makes me queasy, and under the right circumstances… let’s just say that I’m acutely aware of what toenails taste like from the wrong direction.

I exited the warehouse and walked around the corner, heading to where I’d parked, only to get the next shock of the night. My car, a dusty little Civic from the latter half of the Nineties, wasn’t there. Instead, there was a scattering of glass on the concrete that probably came from the driver side window.

My companion had moved out this morning, I’d been shot and now my car had been stolen. I was having one hell of a week, and it was barely Wednesday.

The last thing in the world I needed was a taxi driver with a loose tongue knowing some Irish guy was down on Charlotte with a bloody shirt sleeve and no bullet wound at two in the morning, so I stripped off my shirt and tie, wiped myself clean as best I could, and then let the fabric smolder down to ash on the concrete. That’s the thing about silk; I wear it because it doesn’t catch on fire. That has its inconveniences, however, such as when I want to burn it. But my magic is persistent and the bundle of silk started to ash over slowly.

Now, I was just left trying to figure out how to get home as inconspicuously as possible. I used my magic to light a cigarette while I considered and pocketed the remainder of the pack. Well, I could walk. It wasn’t that far across the peninsula, just a mile and a half, give or take. I could do that in about half an hour, easy. I took a drag off the cigarette, feeling the nicotine hit my system with a rush that eased my magic’s pull.

Nicotine… one of the few legal drugs that eases the pain most mages feel when they bind their magic in order to blend in to normal society. Show me a chain smoker and I’ll show you someone so busy suppressing their magic that they’ve forgotten they had it, or never knew it to begin with. Me? I’ve got magic in spades, but not all of it bends to my will. One of my… talents is wild, and the nicotine keeps it from getting out.

So picture it if you will, one skinny Irish guy wearing black wool pants and no shirt, blood drying on his hand and arm, with a gun butt visible in his pocket, staring down at a once-white shirt that’s slowly turning into ashes when one of Charleston’s finest turns his blue lights on and nails him with a spotlight. Yeah, that would be about how it went. I shielded my eyes from the beam of light and waited for the inevitable barrage of commands from the bullhorn. Hands out, get down on the ground; assume the spread-eagle position… the standard routine for suspicious persons.

They didn’t come. Instead, the police officer exited his car, walked towards me and shook his head slowly. “Jedah Shestin.” That’s my name, and he spoke it like it was a dirty word. “I don’t know what you’re doing down here, but I can guarantee you that I’ll find out.” The lazy Southern drawl belonged to Sergeant John Kelly, and I sighed and lowered my hand as he approached.

John Kelly and I were old adversaries. He knew that there was something not quite clean about me, but he’d never been able to do anything about it. Tonight would be another strange circumstance for him to put in his book and obsess over like a bulldog dreaming about burying his teeth in the mailman’s leg. He was also a potential ride back to civilization, and I wasn’t about to give up that chance. “Looking for my Civic. Don’t suppose you’ve seen it about, have you? I’m fair certain I parked it here, but it seems to have gone off without me.”

“And I suppose that has nothing to do with the blood all over you and the fact that your shirt is slowly dissolving into the wind,” Kelly replied, flashing his light across me and giving his best impersonation of an overbearing television cop. If I was twenty, it might have worked.

But I passed twenty before this guy’s mother was a twinkle in her parents’ eyes, and I just shrugged at him. “Maybe, maybe not. More on the not, I’d say. In fact, I don’t think the two are related, but just in case, you might want to take me in and book me on suspicion. I mean, I am loitering here, and it is two in the morning. And while we’re at it, I could file a report on my missing car.” I tapped ash off onto the now mostly destroyed shirt.

He looked me up and down, noted the gun I’d shoved into my pocket, and I headed him off, dropping the easygoing act. “Right. I don’t have the time to piss around with you, so take me back to the station and let me file my report on my car. After that, I’ll have a word or two with your Captain, clear up this mess and be done.” In short, it was none of his damned business, and the guy I’d been after wouldn’t be missed.

I outranked Kelly, but I tried not to be too much of an ass about it. I was with Interpol, and my home base was back in London. I’d been trying to get reassigned to Washington DC, but unless I wanted to change divisions, I was staying with London. And I rather liked tracking down people, so I stayed with Fugitive Recovery.

Kelly had found out about that affiliation the hard way one afternoon a few years back. He’d horned in on a recovery investigation I was heading up, and gotten himself on the wrong end of his Captain’s temper as a result. I’d managed to snag the guy and keep the case from going out of control, but after that, Kelly had been a bug in my ass both on duty and off, determined to catch me dirty. Hell, I was as dirty as they got, but I had no intention of letting him know it.

“You’re a real bastard, Shestin. One of these days, I’ll figure you out.” I didn’t quite mouth the words as he said them, but I could have. I followed him back to the cruiser and let myself in after flicking my cigarette away, settling in the front passenger seat as if I belonged there. It earned me another glare, but he didn’t say anything about me having to get in the back. Instead, he flipped off his lights, radioed in, and took me across the peninsula to the Lockwood station to file my report.

It was half five by the time I got free of the station, a sympathetic officer driving me home. I’d made an investment purchase of several properties a few years back, and I’d made permanent residence within one of the older townhouses. Most of my residents were students at the College of Charleston, and as long as they didn’t cause trouble and paid on time, I didn’t much care what they looked like, or what they did. As a result, I had a pretty mixed lot of good kids with one exception. The resident in the house next to mine was a retired member of the faculty, and she was as deaf as a stone. Considering my own lifestyle, that suited me just fine.

Tradd Street was quiet, and the officer pulled off after dropping me off with a good natured comment about keeping an eye out for my car. I didn’t see anyone around to wonder why I’d had a cruiser drop me home, so I counted myself ahead of the game. I wanted to get inside, shower and then collapse in bed to try to get enough of a nap that I wouldn’t look like the walking dead for my morning meeting with my boss.

I unlocked the front door and slipped inside, the townhouse too quiet. Suzu had left me less than twenty-four hours ago, and I knew without looking that every trace of her had been carefully erased from the living areas. It still didn’t hit me as real until I was standing in my bathroom and there was only one toothbrush in the cup by the sink.

There's nothing quite as poignant as a missing toothbrush.

Right, then. Hell with my boss. I needed a drink.