The Judas Line (2 page)

It was the blood that confused my eyes, enough that it took several seconds for me to recognize Eliza, my next-door neighbor. A round, happy woman, the kind that minded everyone else’s business. As long as she was awake, the block didn’t need a neighborhood watch. Her short, frizzy blond hair was crusted in red; blood covered every inch of her naked, flabby body, as if a particularly twisted artist had painted it on. That same artist had ripped open her ample belly and festooned my bedroom with her guts.

The smell was horrible.

“Goddamn it,” I whispered, tearing my eyes away from the corpse. She’d been dead for quite some while—the blood had coagulated, turning black—so why had my alarm tripped only a few short minutes earlier? There was only one answer.

Whoever did this
wanted
me warned. It was an invitation to a private horror show and I had front-row seats. This was Family work. From the violence and the brutality of Eliza’s death, I knew which Family member waited for me.

Burke.

Shit, out of all of them, it just had to be him, the one guy I actually feared a little. Carefully, I lowered myself to the carpet next to the hall door. “Burke!” I shouted.

Four bullets tore through the door above my head, showering me with splinters and imbedding themselves into my oak armoire. There went another two grand.

The voice that drifted through my holy door dripped with contempt and amusement. “Did I get you, Olivier? Or should I call you Jude? That is the name you use now, is it not? Are you hurt?”

Sarky twerp. Family protocol dictated that no Family member commit violence on another, restricting assassinations to poisons and magic. Looked like things had changed in the last fifteen years. Burke was a cousin on the distaff line, unlikely to inherit the Big Title, but the only male of that branch in the past three-hundred years who had any real magical ability. That made him valuable to Julian, my father. That made him valuable to the Voice.

“You’re still a lousy shot, Burke,” I hollered back.

Four more shots, four more holes in my armoire. I gritted my teeth.

“You think you are oh so clever, don’t you Jude? Always Daddy’s little sm—”

My body blurred into motion as I voiced a Word that shattered the door into a thousand pieces, flinging the shards down the hallway. The woody projectiles caused Burke to raise his gun arm across his eyes for protection. The smell of burning insulation filled the air.

I was halfway down the hallway, legs pumping, empty left hand extended ready to grab, K-bar filled right hand held back, ready to stab the life from Burke’s body. His gun hand came down, and his eyes widened at the sight of me barreling toward him like a defensive end going for the sack. I noticed a splinter cut on his chin. Thin lips skinned back from his teeth as he brought his gun to bear, certain in the knowledge I’d never get to him in time. He was right, I was too far away and not fast enough … but my K-bar was plenty quick.

My arm flashed forward and the knife flew true, entering his shoulder with enough force to dislodge the silenced Glock from his hand. Grunting, I planted my shoulder in his breadbasket at the same time the 9mm hit the carpet. Both of us exploded into the living room and slammed hard into the couch, which flipped us over onto the coffee table. It gave way with a loud
crunch
under our combined weight.

Fortunately for my personal aesthetic, the living room furniture was little better than department-store specials, cheap cloth and pressboard, camouflage for a rich magus on the run.

Grunting, we stood staring at each other, me nursing a pulled groin muscle and Burke pulling the K-bar from his shoulder, letting loose a gout of blood that pattered to the floor. He spared the wound a quick glance and spoke a Word that sealed his injured flesh. A waft of cinnamon floated in the air.

I had to admit, he looked good for a man in his late thirties. Fit and trim, an inch over my own five-ten. Long lean muscles rippled under olive skin covered in a designer black t-shirt and silver/gray cotton slacks that swirled like liquid silk. Black handmade Crockett & Jones loafers caressed his feet while a Louis Moinet Meteoris tourbillion watch circled his wrist in a show of sinful steely opulence. He looked like a guy trying too hard to look cool and rich at the same time.

If someone were to see us together, they might mistake us for brothers … the same unruly midnight hair, dark, dark eyes and strong, firm chins. The main differences were the perpetual sneer on Burke’s full lips and the hooked nose that came to a sharp point. Mine was much shorter with a small arch high on the bridge.

“Why warn me, Burke? You could’ve had me dead bang,” I panted after muttering a Healing of my own, adding to the cinnamon smell.

His smile was pure concentrated mean. “I wanted to see if you still had some mustard in you, Olivier.”

“And?”

“The years away from the Family business hasn’t made you completely incompetent, although your Botanical magic is second tier. Your alarm sprigs were simple to locate and bypass without dispelling the magic.”

I stretched, working the kinks out. “And Eliza, my neighbor? Why her?”

Burke shrugged, performing a bit of stretching himself. “Why not? She saw me arrive at your door, so I invited her in for a … bite.” All fifty of his teeth flared at me, a jackal’s smile carrying the devil’s humor.

Suppressing the spike of anger that flared briefly through me took all my considerable training. Fight cold, not hot, that’s how I’d been trained. Taking a slow, deep breath, I focused on my murderous cousin.

My face must’ve betrayed some of my anger because Burke smiled even wider, a shark ready for breakfast. My K-bar twirled between his fingers. “Where’s the Silver, Olivier?”

“It’s Jude now, Burke. Olivier was always so … pretentious.”

He snorted. “Have to agree with you there. Now, give it up, the Silver.”

It was my turn to flash a hard and nasty smile. “You can search a thousand years and never find it, Burke, but something tells me that you won’t be looking for too much longer.” Quickly I reached down and tore off a leg from the cheap coffee table. “Let’s dance, you and me.”

He lunged, the razor edge of the K-bar whistling toward my chest. I blocked the knife with my improvised club, batting it aside and knocking Burke on the shoulder with the backswing. Stiffened fingers caught me in the throat and I stumbled backwards, gagging. Grinning savagely, Burke rushed in, stabbing for my eyes, but I fell to my knees and the knife swished above my scalp, missing me by millimeters.

Snarling, Burke slashed down, aiming for the join of my neck and shoulder, and I raised my hand, a silvery cylinder glinting between my fingers. The K-bar’s blade parted and two thirds of the knife spun off past my ear, severed from the hilt. For a split second he stared at the ruined knife, the sheared two inches sticking out like a reproach; then I swept the molecular knife across the inside of his wrist, snapping tendons and slicing the Ulnar artery. Blood spurted from the damaged vessel as I leapt to my feet and quickly swept the inch-long invisible blade across his eyes.

Sobbing and shrieking he fell to the floor, clawing at eyes that leaked aqueous and vitreous fluid down his cheeks. Wasting no time, I scrambled over his body and pinned his arms with mine. “Where’s your backup?” I yelled over his mewling sobs.

What I got was a Word that smelled like bleach: Pain. A tingle washed over my skin like the skittering of hundreds of spiders and another smell, like rotting meat, hit me like a brick as the unguent I had applied broke his magic.

I grunted. “Toadflax and Wintergreen, Burke, worked into a paste and smeared on my chest.” 

Burked cursed and spat. Knowing that further conversation was probably futile, I released his bad arm to run the molecular knife across his throat … twice. Arterial spray spewed across my face and clothes, coating me with warm, coppery saltiness.

Wasting no time, I reached under the couch for one of the many hold-out weapons. The cool feeling of the Kimber .45 ACP I’d stashed there met my fingers and I drew it out, ready in case Burke had backup. From the direction of my cousin I heard a gurgle and rapidly weakening thrashing sounds, but I ignored them. Blind and throat-cut, he no longer posed a threat.

No one burst through a window or door, no magic spells, no hail of bullets. Everything was … quiet. Slowly I let my breath out, lowering the ACP. When a cell suddenly rang, startling me, I nearly shot myself in the damn foot.

The tinny ringtone came from the front pocket of Burke’s shiny pants. I fished inside and pulled out a sleek Windows phone. The tune was
Murder by Numbers
by the Police. It seems Burke had a macabre sense of humor. I was glad I’d killed him.

“Yeah,” I answered in what I hoped was a good imitation of my cousin’s deep, gruff voice.

“Is he dead yet, my dear boy?”

Oh lord. My stomach bounced off the low-rent worn beige shag carpet about seventeen times while my heart froze in my chest. It was Him. The Voice.

“I asked you if he was dead yet, Burke,” the Voice intoned with a hint of exasperation. Deep, cultured, smooth and slick as motor oil—a sound that inspired trust, veneration and love. The second you start to
really
listen, fall under its spell, you’re done. Put out the cat and call in the dog, it’s over.

A faked cough bought me a few seconds as I considered my next play. “On the floor, unconscious,” I said roughly.

The Voice became wintry. “Why haven’t you killed him?”

“Need to find out where he hid the Silver.”

“Good to see you aren’t a waste of space, Burke. Wake him up and put him on, he’ll talk to me.”

Oh well, it had been worth a shot. “The part of Burke will now be played by a much more handsome and virile man.” A note of sarcastic amusement wended its way through my voice, guaranteed to anger.

“Olivier.” Low, solemn and loaded with spite, he turned my name into a curse. Yeah, he was angry all right.

“What’s the matter, Voice, you sound unhappy. Were you really counting on
Burke
to take me out? Has it been so long that you forgot who you’re dealing with?”

The Voice regained its smooth, cloying composure and his words came out sweet, mellifluous and warm, but with a foul, hateful undercurrent. Like honey-coated shit. “My dear boy, you had the potential to be
the best killer alive, pure swift murder, but fifteen years
is
a long time to be out of the game and you never really had the heart for the hard work. Burke has had his nose deep in it since you left. We both thought, once you were found, you would come out worse for the experience.”

“The more fool you.”

“Careful boy.” The Voice was now filled with such wrath that it literally blistered the skin of my ear. I threw the cell across the room just before it exploded into a million burning fragments, one of which cut a shallow groove across my neck as it whizzed by.

“Damn it!” I swore, clapping a hand to the cut. My fingers came away sticky. The Voice’s pride kept him from being anything like a good sport and I had poked the old bear hard with a sharp stick.

Burke could lie like a politician and the Voice practically invented it, so it was conceivable that backup could be moments away. Snarling, I voiced a Word that hung the smell of peanuts in the air. I had ten minutes, more or less, to make preparations because my cover was blown big time and Hell was coming for me.

Tacky, covered in rust-red drying blood, looking like a tourist in Baghdad, I’d stand out wherever I went. My mind started working in overdrive as old habits, old reflexes started to come back online. The familiar rush I’d get when on a job, the adrenaline high, fizzled through my flesh like the hit of a really good designer drug. God in Heaven, I’d missed that feeling. For just a split second, barely the tick of a clock, I felt the seductive tug of temptation.

No. None of that. I’d done enough harm in my life, maybe more than I could make up for. Maybe enough to stain my soul black for all eternity, but I’d been given a second chance and I realized that I’d been pissing that chance away for fifteen years, hiding like a child afraid of the boogeyman.

Perhaps Burke’s arrival had been fortuitous, kick-starting me out of my comfort zone, planting a metaphorical boot to my lazy backside.

Running into the kitchen, I opened the cupboard under the sink and carefully removed a large cardboard cylinder, the kind used for dishwashing tabs. I removed the plastic lid, revealing little blue and white plastic soap packets, a blind in case someone looked. Removing the concealed tray, I pulled out the tabs to reveal the compartment within. Ten inches deep, eight in diameter, just large enough to hold a plastic one-quart fishbowl, the cheap kind you see holding the feeder goldfish at the pet store. The bowl was filled with water and floating in the center—held there by a silver chain glued to a clear plastic lid—was a blackened leather pouch the size of a large egg.

Lifting the bowl, I noticed about an inch of heavy black liquid resting on the bottom, moving turgidly. As I watched, a drop of black liquid oozed from the leather bag and hung suspended for a moment before descending to mix with the sluggishly swirling fluid.