Dead Lucky (8 page)

"What the fuck is this?" I shouted. My hand started going for my gun, until I remembered that Marie would never let me hit anything with it.

"Please, calm down," Marie said. She was still standing near me. "It is insurance, nothing more."

"Insurance?"

"The bones say you be dangerous," Marie's mother said. "And that she be even more dangerous than you."

The bones were right about that.
 

"She'll be freed when the exchange has been made. My brother Lucian is going to get the money."

"Please, come and talk with me, boy. It be many years since I lost Rene. Since I felt his power."

I looked at Marie, and then up to the front of the room. Why not?

I gave Danelle one more glance before letting Marie escort me to the front of the room. The incense was thick and heavy, leaving a haze around us. It threatened to make me hack to death right there in front of them.
 

"It be an honor to be a necromancer," Mother said. "A blessing. And a curse."

My initial thought was that it had only been a curse. Except, I would never have met Dannie if I had never gotten sick. I wouldn't call that a blessing though. More of a silver lining.

"I'd rather not be dying."

She laughed. "Dying be part of living, boy. When you be called... you go. It's as simple as that. It isn't wise to cheat death." She shrugged. "Why not get a little benefit from it first? Why not learn some of the secrets? You be hearing it, I know. The power, the magic. Its different for you, not quite voodoo. Similar."

"I haven't learned many secrets."

"You be learning that the soul goes on. You know it to be true. That be a very special secret."

And a frightening one. To know that when you died, you went... somewhere. Somewhere that some asshole with a terminal illness could drag you back from, if you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or rather, if your body did.
 

"That's one secret I wish I didn't know."

She laughed harder. "Perhaps for you. It is one I be grateful for. I know my Rene is out there, waiting for me. It be a comfort."

There was no one waiting for me. Not anymore. Dannie was all I had.

"I be happy to have the dice back. They been in my family... for as long as anyone can remember."

I stuck my hand in my pocket and wrapped it around them. Were they getting warmer?

"What's keeping Lucian?" Marie asked her mother, looking over to the side door he had left from.
 

She shook her head. "Maybe you should go and-"

The door opened, and Lucian walked in. He had a briefcase in his hand, and a sour look on his face.
 

"What be wrong, child?" Mother asked.

He looked at me, and then at Marie. "Olivier is dead."

Marie gasped. Mother didn't react at all. All three of them looked right at me.

"It couldn't be helped," I said. "In any case, he was already dying." I looked right at Mother. "A necromancer, like me."

I thought maybe she would be surprised. He had been hiding himself from her after all. She pursed her lips and nodded. "It be the will of fate." Her eyes passed over her children. "Marie, go downtown. You be needed there soon, to help work things out for dear Olivier."

It seemed like an odd request to me. What would she be able to do at this hour? Marie didn't question it. She stepped towards me cautiously, and then put her arms around me.
 

"Thank you again," she whispered in my ear.
 

Then she was gone.

"How do you want to do this?" I said, turning to Mother. "There's the matter of the hex you cast on me, too."

"I be lifting the hex once the trade is done. Lucian, show him the money."

Her son balanced the briefcase in his arms and flipped the latches. He opened it enough for me to see it was filled with cash.
 

"Now, you hold out the dice. Lucian, hold out the case. Once the exchange is done, you and yours be free to go."

I nodded. I gripped the dice harder, and they grew so warm I thought they would burn my hand. I pulled them from my pocket, and started reaching out, at the same time Lucian held out the money.
 

My eyes flicked back and forth, from Lucian's grim frown to Mother's wide, white smile, to the briefcase, to the dice, and back again. I felt the tightness in my chest, the urge to cough. I could almost feel the disease running though me.
 

The dice were getting hotter.
 

They pulsed in my hand.
 

My eyes kept dancing in the same circle. Over, and over.

My heart started throbbing, in tune to the bone cubes clutched in my palm.
 

Something told me I was making a mistake.

Something told me I was going to regret this.

This had never been who I was.

Was it?

Without thinking, I turned my hand over, and loosened my fingers.

I watched the dice.
 

I watched them fall.

It seemed like forever, but it was more like half a second. They clicked against the hard floor, and bounced onto the white carpet. Two symbols, the same symbols. Simple red smudges on the stained bone.

I knew them then for what they were. I heard the high pitched whine, felt a sudden chill. My eyes darted to Lucian, his lips moving in a curse, his hands going for the doll tucked into his pocket.
 

They shifted to Mother, who stared at me with a look of hatred and resignation. A stare that bore into my soul, and betrayed me for what I was.

A coward.

Without warning, both of them started bleeding. From the eyes, the nose, the mouth. Anywhere there was an opening. It wasn't a trickle either. It was a torrent, as though every drop of blood in their body was being pumped out of them.
 

Lucian fell in seconds, his dark skin a sick shade of grayish brown. Mother was sitting in her recliner, and she passed almost peacefully, though her gaze remained locked on me, accusing and accepting at the same time.

The shadow came next. It grew from the dice; a dark, evil thing. It slid along the floor, through the air, distorting the world around it, making itself known and at the same time remaining cloaked. It covered over Lucian, and I heard him screaming as his soul was torn from his body and pulled away, back to the small cubes.
 

Mother was next. She didn't scream when the spirit came for her. She remained peaceful, silent, damning. I watched the darkness bring her in, and then shrink in on itself, inverting back into the dice as though the whole thing was playing in reverse.

"What in the holy fuck was that?" Dannie said behind me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Flowers by Jack.

I had known Danelle for three years. Sure, there had been things unsaid, plenty of things. There had been things I had never told her, things I had told her and regretted.
 

It was the first time I had outright lied.

I told her that Mother double-crossed me. That she was the one who made the first move, and tried to have us both killed. I made myself look like I was only defending us when I used the dice, and killed the two Laveau.

I don't know if she believed me. She didn't say she didn't. She never said she did either. She asked after Marie, and I stumbled with the excuse, that she had been sent away so she wouldn't get caught in the crossfire. She asked how I did what I did with the dice.

I wasn't sure I had done anything at all.

All I knew was that when it came down to it, I couldn't let them go.
 

Which is what Olivier said would happen. Like he knew the end of the story before I did.

The way Mother had died, so peacefully, so silently... I wasn't sure she hadn't known either.

Maybe the bones had told her how it was going to be?

I didn't understand most of what had happened. I really didn't understand the dice. Where they came from, what the hell the... thing... was that was living inside. I just knew I had to keep them. I knew they could protect me, that I could use them to keep myself alive. Our line of work had always been dangerous, and any advantage was more valuable than the lives of two crazy voodoo worshippers.

Or so I convinced myself.

We left New Orleans the same night, stealing the cash and making a beeline back to 10-gate. With Mother dead, it seemed like the monsters in the area wound up confused, because we saw the same white snake on our return trip, and it slithered away from us like we were both infected.
 

We caught up to Marie at some point, and trailed behind her unseen while she went through the gate and got the guard to call her a cab. We waited out of sight until she was gone, and then approached the guy ourselves. The sensors would have told him we were hiding out there, but he didn't ask any questions.
 

We broke into the shop and stole the van from it, lucky that the hose was already fixed, collected Evan from the Jambalaya, and hit the road. I was dead tired, and I slouched in the seat in a mixture of sickness, guilt, depression, and excitement. I faded in and out of sleep, most times waking to Dannie shaking me to make sure I was still alive. One time I woke to her voice as she spoke to Dalton about having the meds ready for me when we got back to Chicago, assuming I made it.

The power of the dice had been revealed to me. So had the hidden and uncomfortable truths that I wanted so much to bury. The lies I would tell, the people I would hurt.
 

These were the truths that changed you.

Mother claimed it wasn't wise to cheat death, and I was certain she was right.

Then again, I had never considered myself wise before.
 

Why would I start now?

Did you like
Dead Lucky
? You can follow Conor and learn more about the world of Ghosts & Magic in:

Dead of Night

Small-time thief and hitman Conor Night thinks having terminal cancer is his worst problem. The illegal treatments keeping him alive are expensive, and the side effects a mixed bag:

Conor can raise the dead.

When a low-end hit points to a high-end job, Conor is suspicious, but it's an opportunity he can't afford to ignore. Armed with a set of soul-sucking ancient dice, a collection of corpses, and the estranged daughter of one of the most powerful wizards on Earth, it will take all of his wit, charm, and magic to navigate the treacherous world of the dominant Houses and either finish the job, or be finished himself.

He's got ninety-nine problems, and dying is only one.

http://books.mrforbes.com/?dl
 

Want more than just a blurb? Read the first chapter now:

Chapter 1: About that job...

I approached the door on my elbows, dragging myself like some kind of mutant lizard along the stained brown carpet that lined the eighth floor hallway of the Hotel Paramour. It had taken me almost ten minutes of left arm, right arm, rinse, and repeat to get from the first door, now thirty feet or so behind me, to this one, and at that point I was just about ready to stand up and walk the final few steps, if only to give my lungs a chance to expand again.

It only took a few repetitions of my favorite mantra,'I don't want to die', to convince myself to stay prone and keep snaking.
 

Left arm, right arm, left arm, right arm.
 

I finally got my eyeball to the bottom of the door, fortunate that it had been hung with as little care as anything else in this dump.

"Now that we have the details out of the way... Did you bring it?"

Peeking in under the frame, I couldn't see who was speaking, or even tell where the voice was coming from. What I could see were three pairs of feet, two on one side of a desk, and one on the other. They were all angled somewhat cockeyed, which told me that the targets inside were sitting. The closer feet, they were packaged up in standard-issue brown boots. The other guy was wearing some nice shiny loafers, probably a Gucci or a Prada.
 

"Yeah, we've got it."
 

There was a rustle. Someone pulling something from a plastic bag. The thunk when it landed on the desk said it was heavy. At least I was in the right place.

"Mr. Black will be pleased with your success," Gucci said. "We've been having a lot of trouble getting the drops picked up lately."

"We heard. If you had put the money up sooner, you wouldn't have had to lose so many packages."

I slid forward a few more inches, lifting my eyes to the rusted doorknob above my head. I really wanted to open the door, and I didn't want to be seen or heard doing it. What would be the odds of that?
 

"Since we're on the topic, Mr. Black has another job if you're interested."

Laughter. "If the money's right, we're interested."

A soft chuckle. "Of course. The money, my friends, is sure to be to your liking."

I reached up, my hand moving ever so slowly towards the knob, boney fingers finally falling onto it with the softness of a feather. Even so, just touching the surface caused the door to emit a slight snap.

"You hear that?" one of the booted men asked.

"It's an old building, Rodge. Shit probably creaks and groans all night."

"Like your mother?"

"Shut up."

I started to turn the knob, a fraction of a millimeter at a time. It was a movement so precise I doubted many people could have repeated it. It was that control, that attention to the art that had made me everything I was today. It didn't seem like much, crawling around on the floor of a shitty hotel like a worm, but from time to time it paid at least one or two of my bills.

"So what's the job?" Rodge asked.
 

I ran my mind through the profile I'd been given of the targets. Roger Excelon, and his brother Tim. They were a pair of accomplished ghosts, experienced heavies who were making their move up into the big-time. Their normal work orders consisted more of guard duty than active carrying, but defense never made the same kind of coin as offense, and to be honest, their backgrounds did make them more suitable for pickup and retrieval.