Kicking It (23 page)

Red opened a door along the hallway, hurled me inside, and slammed the door shut behind me. It closed like a vault door, and I immediately felt like I didn’t have enough air, though I knew it was all in my head. The room was dark but for a single bare bulb too high to reach. To call it a room was actually giving it too much credit. It was more like a closet of poured concrete. There was a crack running down one wall, but it wasn’t even big enough to fit a pinky nail into, and it had been sealed over by spackle as white as bone. Even the single bump in the wall, a ledgelike projection probably meant to be a bench, was concrete, all smooth edges. It wasn’t nearly high enough to stand on to get at the bulb—not that I thought a few pieces of jagged glass would mean the difference between life and death, but you never knew.

The wait almost killed me all by itself. There were few things to do in that tiny concrete room but braid my wild hair as tightly as I could to keep it from getting in my way, panic, and kiss my ass good-bye. Only my ass and I didn’t have that kind of relationship.

The door didn’t open again. Instead, an entire wall slid back, directly across from the door through which Red had thrown me. I wasn’t ready for it when it happened. Or for the roar that rushed in along with the air. I blinked into the lights that blinded me and kept me from seeing what awaited me, but whatever it was, we had an enthusiastic audience.
Spectators
 . . . hungry for blood. Mine ran cold.

I stepped forward, out of my little box, into a narrow corridor with high walls on either side—concrete, of course—that funneled me into a . . . I blinked, my eyes adjusting, but my brain slower to accept . . . a coliseum. Old-school. I stepped out onto a round concrete floor surrounded on all sides by stadium seating. It wasn’t huge—more theater-in-the-round than high school auditorium. The seats were more than half filled, but when I looked around, up toward the lights, I saw cameras as well and wondered if this was being live-streamed to a larger, private audience. I wondered again what I’d be facing and who would be the odds-on favorite. At a guess, it wouldn’t be me. Was there bidding on how long I’d take to die? How many I’d take with me? The manner of my death? I fought not to think like that.

Ariadne was up on a dais with a microphone. In the days of lapel mics and others so small that you could barely see them with the naked eye, this seemed like an affectation, but people in concrete houses didn’t have any stones to throw. I’d barely blinked it all into view when she began.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very special treat for you! Today, our gladiator is something truly unique. The blood of the ancients runs through her. I have seen her in action—or rather, inaction—for here is a woman who can, quite literally, stop men in their tracks.”

The crowd hooted and cheered. One shout of “You go, girl!” was even in a feminine voice. I tried not to let it go to my head. An easy thing when it was spinning with so many thoughts at once. Ariadne had just outed me. Oh sure, most of her crowd probably thought it was showmanship rather than anything serious. And likely there was some kind of code of silence when it came to fights to the death, as in
talk and you’re next
. But still, a whole host of bloodthirsty and potentially dangerous people now knew my secret. If I ever went up against any of them, it would be without the element of surprise. I couldn’t even prove Ariadne wrong by keeping my power to myself. It was truly all I had.

“Now, my pets today are terribly hungry.” She raised a hand dramatically in the air and let it fall. A door slid back across the arena from me, and my knees almost gave out. There was skittering, and so many legs and bodies that I couldn’t tell one from another. All segmented, all arachnid. But they weren’t getting any closer . . . for the moment. A clear glass barrier was the only thing that held them back. Of all the ways to die, spider swarm had never even been on my radar, but now that it was, I realized there had to be at least half a million ways I’d prefer to go. And only one solution: I had to win.

“I had a meal prepared for them, but our gladiator has valiantly decided to stand in for him. If she wins, he goes free.” She gestured dramatically and yet another door slid open, revealing a man wrapped in a web like a cocoon. I wondered if he could even breathe with all the spider silk over his face. I had to look hard to see his chest still rising and falling. I couldn’t tell if it was Gareth, but whoever the poor bastard was, I was getting him out. Somehow. “If she loses”—the crowd cheered in anticipation—“not only are their lives forfeited, but I collect this sweet specimen of manhood to sweeten the deal.”

Red brought a hooded figure forward, but I could tell from the breadth of the shoulders and the narrowness of the waist who it was even before the hood was ripped away. Apollo, looking stunned. His gaze didn’t immediately drop down to me. He looked odd. Loopy. As if he’d been drugged. Or mesmerized. I couldn’t look for any help from that direction. Dammit, spider-woman would pay.

“Let the games . . . BEGIN!” she shouted, throwing her arm up and snapping above her head like a matador.

Just like that, the seething mass of spiders was released as the glass fell rather than slid away and they swarmed over it. A spike of panic drove into my heart like a needle jam-packed with adrenaline, like the heart-attack scene from
Pulp Fiction
. I saw movement over on the dais and risked taking my focus off the arachnid army just long enough to see Apollo’s whole body jolt, as if his heart had been goosed by my very own shot of adrenaline. He looked to me, fear and disbelief in his eyes, and I couldn’t risk seeing more.

The army was almost on me.

“Freeze!”
I yelled at the top of my lungs, raking my gaze over them, desperate to get my point across. Some obeyed, but they were only shaken off or overrun by the others, who kept on coming. Furry, sticklike, black, white, and gray, some bigger than my hand, they raced for me.

Frantic, I hopped on one foot as I pulled off a boot and swung it like a bat, heel out, at the oncoming tide. I swept a few aside, but others immediately took their places. One clung to the heel and started a slow crawl my way. I yelped and dropped the boot, my one weapon. Probably not my brightest moment.

“FREEZE!”
I yelled again. It was all I had, but a tone sounded at almost the same time, and I could barely hear more than the first letter of the word myself, as if someone had grabbed a tuning fork and hit whatever frequency canceled me out.

Legs reached out for my bare shin, and I kicked in a panic. Not gracefully, like I’d been taught in kickboxing. Not effectively. This had to stop. Already one spider climbed. Another leaped for me. I planted my bare foot and lashed out with the booted one, skewering the jumper, impaling it on my stiletto heel. Others were immediately airborne. I kicked, slashed, and whirled. In the groove now, but for as many as I knocked aside or impaled, others reached me, were climbing and crawling and biting. My bare foot was going numb. I didn’t know how long it would be before it was no good to me at all, before I lost my balance and fell to the floor, only to be overrun by spiders.

Not going to happen. I still had my reflective gear. If only I could . . .

I batted away the spiders that had crawled the highest and looked toward the stands, trying to catch Apollo’s eye.

“Apollo!” I yelled. “The sun?”

He looked desperately around, and I thought I saw him nod at me before something skittered across my face, and I squeezed my eyes closed in reflex, swatting desperately at the multi-legged menace. I heard something explode and forced my eyes open again. Another explosion, and glass rained down from the ceiling, from the inset lights there, and the light itself flared. I swatted and bashed and whirled, noting that my left arm wasn’t doing any more than flopping at that moment, but I had to expose enough of my shiny foil farce of an outfit to catch the light. I felt like a Dutch oven as I started to heat up. There were inhuman shrieks from the arachnids all around, and I whirled like a possessed disco ball, throwing off light and spiders in equal measure. I was smoking . . . literally. So hot I had no idea whether it was the lights on my shiny spots or a fever from all my spider bites. My leg gave out, and I went down hard, falling at an awkward angle, limbs not working well enough to catch me, but nothing jumped on my face, and in a moment I realized that the tone had ended and that the spectators were on their feet, roaring with elation or anger . . . I didn’t know. Didn’t care.

But I looked up at the dais and saw through swollen eyes Apollo, still standing, looking down at me with sadness and approval.

Arachne rounded on him, as if to take out her anger, but he clocked her right between the eyes, snapping the bridge of her glasses so that they fell to the ground along with her. Spider lady was down for the count, which I thought meant that I could finally pass out.

No, I couldn’t. There was still Gareth to save. I had to make sure . . .

My brain wasn’t working so well. I felt hot and slow and numb and hurt all at the same time, but I forced myself to sit and then to pull off my one remaining boot . . . clumsily. It took me three tries before Apollo was there to help me.

“You okay?” he asked.

It was a stupid question and I didn’t dignify it with an answer. Instead I pointed at the man cocooned in the web. He rushed to Gareth, and I saw him tear the webbing away, saw Gareth’s face start to appear and could confirm that it was the missing scientist.
Then
I passed out.

—

I
woke some time later in Apollo’s arms . . . in Apollo’s bed, even, when he shook me awake with, “Here, eat this.”

I blinked my eyes open and realized only one was willing to stay that way. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need sight to know that what he offered was ambrosia and that it would heal me faster than any hospital. Also, that it was highly addictive, and that like any addict, I was always ready to quit, but
not right now
. Not when I needed it so badly. I didn’t fight it.

“Saved you,” I said a second later, through still-swollen lips. “That make us even?”

“Oh, did you now?” he asked, his gaze ridiculously tender. “And who put me in danger in the first place?”

“Splitting . . . hairs,” I answered.

“Uh-huh.”

“What am I doing here? Where’s Gareth?” Already, talking was easier, and if I wasn’t mistaken, my other eye was starting to open.

“The police raided the place before I could get him loose, so I grabbed you and got out. I knew if they saw you first, they’d insist on paramedics and the hospital, and I didn’t know if you had that kind of time or whether you could even recover from all the spider bites without the ambrosia. But I left the panel open in the elevator and Arachne’s own key in the lock so that they could find him.”

And the audience . . . What had they seen? How much of it would they believe?

He shrugged. “I was more worried about you.”

I was breathing easier now, and the numbness that had overtaken my body was starting to burn off like the morning fog.

“Thank you,” I said finally. It was long overdue. I was usually too busy being pissed off at him for something or other.

“You’re welcome,” he said, looking down at me with something a lot like love. But those he loved tended to meet bad ends . . . worse than becoming spider food. Turning into a tree or ending up with an arrow through the heart or the power to see the fate of Troy but not affect it . . .

I looked away, wondering whether Detective Armani had been in on the raid and what he’d think when he heard the tale of the fembot who’d kicked spider ass
.

This story takes place between the events of
Black Night
and
Black Howl
.

The envelope sat in the middle of my dining room table. It was creamy white, made of some kind of fancy paper that I would never be able to afford. My name, Madeline Black, was written on the front in beautiful calligraphy.

Beezle, my gargoyle, perched on my shoulder. We both contemplated the envelope in silence.

“So, are you going to open it or what?” Beezle finally said in his gravelly voice.

“I’d prefer not to,” I said.

“Okay, Bartleby. Then can we stop staring at it like it’s a bomb that’s about to explode and do something productive, like make dinner?”

“Dinner?” I asked, glancing at the clock. “It’s only one o’clock. You just ate lunch twenty minutes ago.”

“But the arrival of an unexpected messenger with a missive from your great-great-grandfather has disturbed the delicate balance of nutrition to energy inside my body, and now I’m starving again,” Beezle said.

“I’ve got news for you. There’s nothing delicate about your body,” I said, approaching the table. “And pizza is not generally considered a nutritional superfood.”

“I wasn’t going to say we should eat pizza,” Beezle said.

“Yes, you were,” I said. “If it’s not pizza, it’s wings, doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, Chinese food, or popcorn.”

“Ha!” Beezle said, floating off my shoulder on his little wings. “Popcorn
is
a superfood. It’s whole grain and everything. I think Rachael Ray or Katie Couric or Oprah or somebody said it was good for you. I’m making some now.”

“
One
bowl!” I called after him. “And adding half a pound of butter does not mean it’s still health food.”

I reached for the envelope with my right hand and turned it over. The coiled snake tattoo on my palm tingled, an exact match of the symbol pressed into the seal of the envelope.

The mark of Lucifer, my many-greats-grandfather.

I’d gotten the mark by using a sword made by Lucifer and tapping into some long-buried power inside me that tied me to his bloodline. I didn’t love having it. It identified me as one of Lucifer’s own, and there are many good reasons why an association with Lucifer is less than desirable. Starting with his list of enemies, which was far too extensive. And all of them liked to find ways to hurt him by hurting me.

Thanks to my unwanted family ties, I’d recently gotten sucked into a major diplomatic-mission-gone-wrong in one of the local faerie courts. In the process I’d managed to make a personal rival out of the faerie queen, Amarantha. I had enough on my plate without being chased down by angry fae every time I stepped outside of the house.

And now there was an envelope from Lucifer. I was sure that I wasn’t going to like what was inside. I tore the seal and withdrew the folded paper.

The paper was actually made of linen. Where does one even
find
linen paper?

I read the message inside, my eyebrows drawing closer together with every word. Then I tried to crumple the fancy linen into a tiny ball but succeeded only in making the letter look like it needed ironing.

I went down the hall to the kitchen and tried to slam the letter in the trash in a satisfying way. The expensive paper just drifted softly into the can.

Beezle was buried in a bowl of popcorn on the counter. And when I say “buried,” I mean he was actually buried. My gargoyle is about the size of an eight-week-old guinea pig. He fits in my coat pocket. So he can actually disappear into a serving bowl full of food—at least until he eats it all, which takes a surprisingly short amount of time.

He was facedown in the bowl. I could hear the sound of his stone jaws crunching away at the kernels on the bottom. The only visible parts of him were the claws on the tips of his feet. I grabbed one of those claws and yanked him out of the bowl, thus spilling popcorn onto the counter. He glared at me indignantly, swallowing the food stuffed in his beak.

“I’m in the middle of something here,” he said, flapping his little wings and wrenching his foot out of my grasp. He floated up to my eye level.

“Lucifer wants me to find the Red Shoes for him,” I said. “I don’t want to go on another mission for Lucifer that’s sure to go haywire. I don’t even know what the Red Shoes are.”

“What you don’t know could fill an encyclopedia. If people used encyclopedias anymore,” Beezle said.

I ignored him. “How am I supposed to find these things? And what makes these red shoes more special than any other pair of ruby slippers?”

“The Red Shoes are a legendary artifact,” Beezle said. “Nobody knows exactly how old they are, or where they originated. They are generally associated with the fae, but they didn’t make the shoes.”

“Oh, good. More faeries,” I muttered. “Why does Lucifer want them?”

“We-e-e-e-l-l-l,” Beezle said slowly. “Supposedly the wearer of the Red Shoes will be forced to dance without stopping.”

“Until?”

“Until nothing,” Beezle said. “Even if the wearer dies, or their limbs are cut off, the shoes will continue to dance.”

I had a horrible vision of amputated feet, still bloody at the ankles, gaily moving in the steps of a jig.

“So Lucifer is sending me after an ancient torture device disguised as attractive footwear,” I said.

“You’re surprised by this?” Beezle asked.

“No,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to get mixed up in any more faerie nonsense, do you?”

“Lucifer thinks it’s a good idea, or else he wouldn’t have asked you,” Beezle said.

“He didn’t
ask
,” I said through gritted teeth.

“He respects your strength. So he wants to test it,” Beezle said.

“I don’t test well,” I said.

“I don’t think you have a choice,” Beezle said.

“I have other stuff to do,” I said.

Beezle snorted. “Like what? Sit around and moon over your non-relationship with Gabriel?”

“I have souls to collect, as you well know,” I said, ignoring his jibe about Gabriel. My relationship with Gabriel was too complicated to think about. “Sacred duty as an Agent of Death and all that.”

“You have time in between soul pickups to investigate,” Beezle said. “You only collect one soul a day, at the most, and the rest of the time you’re at home driving me crazy when I want to watch Telemundo in the afternoon.”

“You can’t even speak Spanish,” I said.

“You don’t need to speak Spanish to understand telenovelas,” Beezle said. “They are awesome in any language. And most people think it’s a good idea to give Lucifer what he wants. Or else . . .”

“Yeah, I get it. Let’s not attract any more attention than I already have, right? I don’t even know where to start,” I said. “It’s not like Lucifer sent a picture of the shoes with that letter.”

“I can help with that,” Beezle said. He flew out of the kitchen, into the dining room and to the small table that I had set up as a computer desk next to the front door. He pushed the keyboard forward to make room for his belly on the table and then started tapping at the keys.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Best place for rumors is the Internet,” he said.

“You think the Internet is a reliable research tool to find the location of a mythical artifact?”

“It’s not a myth if Lucifer wants you to find it. He must know for sure that the Red Shoes are real. And you would be surprised at how many immortal creatures have Twitter accounts or hang out on message boards. Just because you’re too analog to enter the twenty-first century with the rest of us doesn’t mean that ancient beings disdain social media.”

“Just make with the Google,” I said. “You can mock my tech skills later.”

“What tech skills?” Beezle muttered, his claws flying rapidly from the keys to the mouse.

He had several browser windows open and clicked back and forth between them so quickly that I couldn’t begin to follow what was going on. I thought it wisest to back away slowly and wait for him to triumphantly present me with the required information.

Fifteen minutes later I stood in the kitchen, peering hopefully inside the refrigerator. No food had magically appeared there since the last time I looked.

“I got it!” Beezle said, flying into the kitchen with a slip of paper clutched in his little fist. “They’re right here in Chicago.”

“The shoes?” I asked. “Why would they be here?”

Beezle shrugged. “Because the creature that currently possesses them is living here temporarily.”

“And who—or what—would that creature be?”

“That would be Sammy Blue,” Beezle said. He seemed to enjoy teasing out the suspense.

“Are you going to tell me what’s so special about Sammy Blue?”

“Sammy Blue just happens to be an ambassador from Amarantha’s court. Her favorite ambassador, in point of fact. The one that she trusts with her most sensitive matters.”

Amarantha. Of course it would have something to do with Amarantha.

“So what’s this guy here for, anyway?” I asked. “Lucifer considers Chicago to be his territory and he’s not been very happy with Amarantha since she tried to have me killed. Isn’t she defying some ancient law about not crossing into another court’s borders without permission?”

“Technically, she’s not here. Her ambassador is. So they’ve got some wiggle room there, ancient-law-wise. Sammy is here to negotiate with some local witches. Amarantha apparently wants to retain their services,” Beezle said.

“Gee, you think she’s looking to get some spellthrower to put a curse on me?” I asked.

“Probably. That’s the kind of effect you have on people.”

“When I go to see Sammy Blue about these shoes, what are the chances that he’ll go into a berserker rage once he sees me?”

“Hmm,” Beezle said, tapping his finger on his chin. “You humiliated and disrespected his beloved monarch in a very public way. Then, when Amarantha tried to have you killed by proxy in the Maze you didn’t even have the decency to die there the way everyone else in history has done.”

“Yes, I’m annoying that way. I refuse to roll over and let some bully in a designer gown step on me.”

“It
is
annoying to royalty. They’re used to getting their way. Especially the fae.”

“In summary, diplomacy is unlikely to be an effective tactic for extracting the shoes from Sammy Blue.”

Beezle gave me an exaggerated look of surprise. “Was diplomacy even an option? I just thought you would do what you usually do—insult everyone present, break the furniture, set the building on fire.”

I had no snappy comeback for that one. Beezle had listed the extent of my skill set.

“What kind of a name is Sammy Blue, anyway? He sounds like a small-time drug dealer with a toothpick hanging from his mouth.”

“Sammy is short for some flowery fae name that starts with ‘Sam.’ I can’t remember it exactly. And Blue is a nickname that Amarantha gave him. See, Sammy likes to strangle people who make him unhappy.”

“He likes to see them turn blue,” I said.

“Yes,” Beezle said. “He likes to see them turn blue verrrry slowly. As in hours and days kind of slowly.”

“Great. So I’ve got to take the Red Shoes from a faerie psychopath who enjoys killing people by degrees and already has a reason to dislike me.”

“Pretty much,” Beezle said. “I’ll get your coat.”

I pulled on my black wool overcoat in defense against Chicago’s winter wind. Beezle put a scarf around his head, horns, and belly in a complicated wrap that made him look like a gargoyle mummy. His stony hawk’s eyes peered out from layers of brightly colored knitting.

I slung my sword over my shoulder. I had magical ways to defend myself, but I’d discovered pretty quickly that a pointy object is a great way to get someone’s attention.

We determined that it would be best if I did not attempt to contact Sammy Blue before going to visit him at his temporary quarters in a fancy Loop hotel. No sense in giving him warning so he could set a trap for me.

Beezle crawled over my shoulder and tucked into my inside coat pocket. I was certain he would promptly fall asleep, and sure enough, a few seconds later I heard the buzz saw rumble of his snore.

I pushed out my wings and flew out the kitchen window. The wings are part of my Agent’s legacy. I can’t be seen by ordinary mortals when I’m flying. Which is a good thing, as I’ve noticed people have a bad tendency to kill what they don’t understand. Supernatural creatures can sometimes see me, and sometimes they can’t. I’m not really sure if it has to do with their magic or mine. It was unlikely I would be camouflaged from any fae I encountered, though.

Sammy Blue’s hotel was a five-star type near the Magnificent Mile, the sort of place frequented by celebrities and other people with a lot more money than I would ever have. As the doorman opened the glass door, I slipped in behind a woman wearing a silver fox fur coat and carrying several shopping bags. The lobby was more or less what you would expect—crystal and marble and silk, oh, my—and the air was redolent with the scent trails of many expensive perfumes and colognes.

Once inside I paused. I knew Sammy Blue was staying here, but Beezle hadn’t given me a room number, and this place was far too huge to wander around and hope I bumped into someone who looked fae-like.

I could retract my wings, go to the front desk, and ask for him by name. Of course, I was dressed as my usual grubby self—black boots, faded jeans, black sweater—and security would probably remove me on sight for dirtying up the lobby. At the very least the concierge would notify Sammy Blue of my presence in the hotel, and I definitely did not want to spoil the element of surprise.

Getting Sammy’s room information from the front desk computer was my best bet, but there were three people moving back and forth in that space, and all of them seemed to spend a lot of time consulting the computer. My window of opportunity would be limited to the length of time it took the clerk to collect a receipt from the printer or hand over a room key.

The tricky thing about being invisible is that, well, you’re only invisible. You occupy the same space, and people can certainly feel you passing or hear any noises you might make. The average person will assume they imagined a sigh, or that there is just a draft in the room. But I would have to be extremely careful. If I accidentally bumped into anyone and they raised a fuss, it would be impossible to get the information I needed.