Chapter 2 To the Palace
Zane Cimmerian
It was the wee hours of the night and I was having the time of my life.
Standing on the landing of the third-story fire escape, I fired Lurleen, my rifle, down into the writhing horde of dire rats, tracer rounds spelling D-U-M-B in the dark, then jumped down to the second-story landing.
The metal rattled under my force and weight, threatening to give way, and I howled with laughter.
Death by rickety fire escape would be just the kind of stupid end Casimir always warned me about.
King Aerin Winterlight of the Woodland Realm had hired us to track down a chort, who’d killed a leshy during a card game, then fled to the States to escape the fae lord’s wrath.
The politics of it didn’t mean anything to me.
Cas accepted the job and set me loose to find the victim.
Uh, I mean, target. Simple as that. He knew I had a knack for hunting down the weird ones.
The chort was clever and quickly allied with the local dire rat population, which were fast little bastards.
Good target practice, though. I’d taken down a score of them at least, and my brother Koa was ripping through them like tissue paper, blood and rat guts coating him from helmet to combat boots.
“Having fun down there, Ko?” I called through the comms.
No answer. Just the wet sounds of dire rat insides becoming dire rat outsides. Typical.
They kept coming, and I figured they would until Cas took out the chort. King Aerin had specified dead preferred, and we took that to mean kill the son of a bitch. No need to read between the lines of fae contracts when they just came out and said it.
“CAS! You ever gonna bag that fang-rotted bitch or what?” My voice echoed through the alley, catching the chort’s attention, and it hurled a trash can lid at my head. I ducked, the jagged metal edge shearing off a chunk of brick where my ear had been. “Rude!”
I quickly scanned my intended drop zone: A garbage-strewn alley on the backside of this decaying apartment building. Spotting Cas just beneath me, lining up his kill shot on the chort, I grinned. Perfect landing pad.
Waiting only until I saw the red dot centered over the chort’s heart, I launched myself off the fire escape.
“Catch me, Cas!” I shouted, already airborne. Wind ripped the grin from my face as I fell toward certain pavement pizza.
Then a vise closed around my bicep. My shoulder screamed as Cas’ momentum swung us both into the side of a dumpster, the impact rattling my fangs. Through watering eyes, I watched him calmly eject his rifle’s spent magazine with his free hand.
“You’re buying me a new one,” he growled, nodding to his scope, now dented from our crash landing.
“Your baby likes it rough,” I wheezed. “Told me so last night.”
Across from us, the chort face-planted in the filthy alley as its glamour flickered and died, revealing the goat-legged creep beneath.
“Cruor! You’re the moon-damned MVP of the night, bro!” I shouted, earning a squeal of feedback from the comms unit in my high-tech helmet. Cas flinched at the noise, then punched my bicep hard enough to make me stagger.
“Volume control. Learn it,” he muttered, striding toward the downed target.
Meanwhile, Ko was still hacking away, and I watched as he decapitated two of the rats with a single swing of his favorite blade. I probably should have helped him, but our mountain of a brother looked like he needed to burn through some stress.
That’s when I spotted the cookies, the distinctive blue wrapper peeking out from Ko’s ass-cheek pocket like a tiny edible beacon, and a wicked grin lit up my face as my little ol’ heart warmed with mischief.
Since he was obviously busy, I stealthed up to him like a moon-damned cat and stole the pack of cookies with all the speed, skill, and grace of a—
Suddenly on the ground, I blinked up at the stuttering streetlight as my vision cleared. What hit me? A truck? A building? The entire moon? The world spun, then solidified as Koa’s broad self loomed over me and damn near broke my hand retrieving his cookies.
So much for these new tactical gloves, I thought as I laid there, remembering how to breathe. I’d paid good money for the promise that these would “enhance dexterity and stealth.” Apparently, the warranty didn’t cover “not getting your ass kicked by your little brother.”
“All dead?” Cas barked in the comms as he stuffed the chort’s corpse into a containment orb.
The dire rats would dissolve into goopy piles soon enough on their own, but the chort’s head was our proof for payment. Needed to preserve that at all costs because I had to restock my little toys. I was nearly out of incendiary rounds. And maybe pick up some better gloves while I was at it.
Answering Cas, Ko rumbled, “Z is lucky not to be.”
“Night’s teeth,” I hissed as I shook out my hand. The pain lanced up my arm, but I’d be damned before I’d let them know it actually hurt. “You could’ve just asked for them back, you know.”
“You could have just not touched my fucking cookies.” Greedy bastard was already stuffing one in his mouth.
Getting up, I dusted off my tactical pants and straightened my helmet, which had gone slightly askew.
“You’d probably be less of an asshole if you shared those once in a while. Scientific fact that sugar improves the general mood.”
“So does not getting your hand broken,” Ko retorted through a mouthful of chocolate crumbs and white icing.
As Cas came over, the chort’s head swinging from his hand in the containment orb, he assessed both of us with quick glances, then nodded.
“Target secured. Mission clock stopped 02:12.”
Still strung out on adrenaline and post-fight jitters, I decided this party needed lighting up. We’d bagged our target, nobody got maimed, and we were about to get paid. Well paid. This called for celebration.
I shouldered Lurleen, yanked a very special grenade from its pouch on my tactical vest, and popped the pin.
“We did it, boys!” I yelled, tossing it high in the air before either of them could stop me.
“You crazy, moon-damned—” Koa’s shout cut off as he dove for cover behind a dumpster.
“Cruor!” Cas yelled at the same time, also diving out of the way, clutching the containment orb to his chest to protect our payday.
Me? I held my arms out and turned my face to the ink-black sky, not even flinching at the loud pop! as the glitter bomb went off. A cloud of pink and silver sparkles exploded high above us, drifting down on me like the world’s most fabulous snowfall.
“Tenebris me devoret,” I heard Casimir mutter as he pulled Koa to his feet.
“Too late, bro! It already has!” I hollered back, trying to catch sparkly flakes with my tongue. “Behold! The glorious— Ack!”
A rapidly gooing rat corpse bounced off my forehead. Koa’s aim had always been scarily precise.
“One more fang-rotted glitter bomb, menace, and the next one’s going up your ass,” he growled, already stalking toward the SUV.
I turned to Cas, who was brushing futilely at the glitter on his tactical gear.
“Pizza?” I gave him my best pleading look.
“If you can find a place open,” he shrugged, “but it’s coming out of your share.”
“Meanie!” I blew a raspberry at him.
#
Koa Cimmerian
We were back in our apartment just before dawn.
The high from the hunt still buzzed under my skin like a current, making sleep impossible.
Casimir directed the usual post-hunt protocol: Sweep the place, secure the target for client, and debrief during gear check before personal clean up.
As usual, something in me still wanted to prowl, to hunt, to tear into flesh with nothing but hands and teeth.
A leftover from whatever our father gave us, I supposed.
The part of me that never felt quite satisfied with the kill.
“Should’ve killed it slower, Cas,” I complained, dropping weapons one by one. “Fight was too short.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t all enjoy the extended edition of monster slaying.” Zane snorted as he peeled off his sparkly armor. “Some of us like to keep things moving.”
“Oh, like the time you emptied half a clip into a demon that was clearly bulletproof?” I countered.
Zane smirked, his red hair sticking up at odd angles as usual.
“Well, if someone had warned me that thing had boss-level resistances—”
“Zane. It regenerated in front of you.” The memory still made my blood boil. He’d nearly gotten himself killed, laughing the whole time.
“Details,” he shrugged, already scrolling through his phone.
Infuriating little shit.
Our apartment was cramped, but functional.
The walls were bare except for a few maps and a whiteboard where we tracked current jobs.
The furniture was mismatched, mostly salvaged from curbs or bought cheap at second-hand stores.
We could afford better; we chose not to.
Money could be tracked, and equipment maintenance was priority one.
Cas sat in the center of the busted-up couch, his waist-length blond hair pulled back in a tight braid.
He disassembled his sniper rifle on the coffee table with practiced precision, the soft click-click of metal on metal a soothing rhythm in the room.
Zane flopped behind him on the lumpy cushions, scrolling on his phone with one hand while the other absently toyed with Cas’ braid, flicking the end under his nose, occasionally giving himself a ridiculous moustache.
Cas was famously vain about his hair, which was funny considering how unsentimental he was about everything else, and usually hated anyone touching it.
But after a hunt? He never said a word. I figured he knew what Zane needed.
This little ritual played out the same way every time, silent and sacred. Neither of them acknowledged it.
It didn’t mean anything. And it meant everything.