Dead Man’s Deal

“Let him go, Reave!” I shouted. “You know he had nothing to do with what happened at the house. It was me. Punish me.”

Reave chuckled in my ear, tilting the blade so that it slipped a little deeper into my throat, sending more blood down my neck. “Does it really feel like you’re not being punished right now? If you want to break a man, you hurt the ones he loves first.”

“Stop it! You’ve fucking won!” I couldn’t pull my eyes from Bronx. He had stopped moving and was lying on the dirty warehouse floor, curled into a fetal position as he tried to protect his head and gut.

Reave pulled the blade away and smiled at me as he stepped into my line of sight. “I won months ago. You’re just slow to realize it.” As he turned from me, he snapped his fingers. The trolls stopped beating Bronx and stepped away while the hands on me fell from my arms. Pressing one hand to my throat to slow the bleeding, I hurried over to Bronx and knelt beside him. What I could see in the darkness wasn’t good. His face was bloody and swelling so that he could barely see out of either eye. I couldn’t tell if his nose was broken because it had always looked somewhat broken to me, but I figured it was a safe guess that it was by his labored breathing through his mouth.

“I warned you, Reave,” I said in a low voice. “I warned you that I wasn’t going to do anything that would hurt someone else. I’m not going to kill anyone for you, and leaving that house as it was would have meant killing pixies. I don’t regret what I did. And if I find another one of those fucking fix houses, I’m going to do it again.”

“And risk putting Bronx in danger again?” Reave asked lightly. His voice echoed across the warehouse, dancing through the shadows. He was walking, but I couldn’t see him.

Energy crackled around me as I grew angrier with each passing second. I wanted to burn away every shadow and dark corner in that room so Reave had nowhere to hide. I wanted to run him to ground and beat him the same way Bronx had been beaten. But I did nothing because I couldn’t afford to draw the attention of the Towers, and Reave knew it. “No. This was the last time you’ll ever touch Bronx. I promise you.”

Reave laughed. The sound was like razor blades across my back, leaving me gritting my teeth until my jaw ached. “You’re right. I’ll leave Bronx alone. You’ve got plenty of other people in your life that you care about.”

I kept my mouth clamped shut, fighting the urge to warn him off of Trixie. He knew about her. There was no reason to prove my feelings for her even more, deepening the danger. My jaw throbbed from my clenched teeth while I mentally repeated to myself, If you use magic, the Towers will kill you. Everything was insane right now in the Ivory Towers, and they would jump on the opportunity to string me up in hopes of reining in the chaos. Gideon wouldn’t be able to protect me.

My death meant that Bronx would be trapped working for Reave. A dead Gage meant that Trixie was in danger and on the run from the Summer Court. If I kept my temper and was smart, I could stay alive and help my friends.

“If you have no more use for Bronx as leverage, then release him from your little organization,” I said when I had my emotions somewhat under check. “You only need me.”

Bronx groaned softly. “Shut up, Gage.”

“The troll is right. Shut up, Gage. I have plenty of uses for Bronx. I’d hoped that he might be a voice of common sense for you, but he has failed at that endeavor. I guess I’ll have to find something else to do with him.”

“You’ve got plenty of others to do your dirty work. People who want to be here. Let him go.”

Bronx shifted beside me, slowly uncurling his body, but still remaining on his side so that his back was to Reave. “I work with Gage or not at all.”

The dark elf stepped close, moving away from the shadows to the edge of a square of light. His expression was blank as he stared at Bronx’s inert form. I tensed, waiting. If Reave did anything more than breathe, I would jump the bastard. My friend had been hurt enough because of me. I wasn’t about to let Reave inflict more harm.

“Fine. Rein him in,” the dark elf bit out. There was an “or else” left hanging in the air. We both knew that if I crossed Reave again, Bronx would be killed regardless of whether he could stop me.

He paced away, brushing his hands against each other as if wiping away the distasteful business that had brought Bronx and me to his doorstep that night. I wished he would leave so I could work on healing Bronx. A handful of healing spells could fix the worst of his wounds, but he would still need to get home and rest. The cold concrete floor that he was currently lying on didn’t seem like the best option.

“Now then, since my first task seemed too difficult for you to handle, I’ve got a new job for you,” Reave began, as if he was content to wipe away all the previous unpleasantness. I frowned, keeping one reassuring hand on Bronx’s shoulder. I wanted to tell this asshole where to shove his new job, but I kept my mouth shut. Obviously Reave was done trying to get me to cooperate through beating me. He was going to drag in one person I cared for after another and beat them until I agreed to his terms.

He paused and turned to look at me, waiting.

“What job?” I asked through clenched teeth, earning a grin from the dark elf.

“I’m so glad you asked.” Reave chuckled and resumed his pacing. “I have someone that will be doing an important errand for me and he needs some added protection. Unfortunately, he can’t travel with the usual assignment of muscle. It’s too conspicuous. As a result, you will be giving him a tattoo that will provide him with the needed protection.”

It seemed too easy and it appeared as if it would be legal as well. “What kind of protection does he need?”

“I think that will best be decided by you.”

“How can I do that? Who am I protecting him from? What’s this job that he’s doing for you?”

“Delivery.” I waited for Reave to elaborate, but he didn’t say anything else. I sighed, running my free hand through my hair, leaving it standing on end. It was turning out to be a long fucking night. “Fine. Am I to meet this person somewhere or will he come to my shop?”

“He’ll stop at your tattoo parlor for the work.”

“When?”

“Soon,” Reave called over his shoulder as he started to walk out of the warehouse with his flunkies following behind him.

“Hey! You never told me his name!” I shouted, lurching to my feet.

“You’ll know him when you see him.” Reave’s comments were soft as they floated across the empty expanse toward me.

I stared at the door that slammed shut behind the last thug as he exited the warehouse, leaving me alone with Bronx. My heart thudded in my chest and a chill crept down my spine. I’ll know him when I see him. Yeah, that sounded bad. I knew a lot of guys who were involved in some shady shit, most of them being tattoo artists. But as far as I was aware, none of them had these kinds of dealings with Reave and his sort. I wanted to pretend that Reave hadn’t found another way to strike at me, but even my imagination wasn’t that good.

Bronx groaned as he rolled onto his back. The pain left him panting heavily and I could see sweat—or blood—shining on his wide brow in the faint light.

I knelt at my friend’s head and hastily pulled off my light jacket. Fall was just settling on the city and the nights were still warm, but I had grabbed it more out of habit than real need. I rarely remembered to glance at the weather report most days and I had learned from experience that weather in Low Town was unpredictably strange on the best of days. I placed my hands on either side of Bronx’s face and angled his head so that he was staring straight up at me. He winced at the movement, but didn’t make a sound. Quickly folding my jacket, I gently placed it under his head.

“Where’s the pain?”

“My body,” Bronx grunted.

“A little more help, please.”

“Get me home. I need some rest.” His words were labored between bursts of heavy breathing. Each breath was wheezy and slightly liquid, making me think that one of his lungs had been punctured, possibly by a broken rib or two. If I had to guess, he had internal bleeding from several organs and broken bones, and a concussion. From what little I knew of trolls, they weren’t the quick-healing type like shifters or vampires. If I didn’t do something, Bronx would drown in his own fluids.

“You need a lot more than rest, but you don’t seem the take-me-to-the-hospital type.”

“Go to hell, Gage.” Bronx gasped as he tried to move, clenching his eyes shut.

“Already there,” I said, but my mind was elsewhere, focused on setting up the cloaking spell I needed in order to do my work. I was planning to do a whole lot of loud magic and I wasn’t stupid enough to do it right out in the open to draw the attention of every Merlin and Morgana in the Ivory Towers. Gideon might not have been actively hunting my ass, but that didn’t mean others weren’t watching for me to fuck up.

The cloaking spell wasn’t without its defects. No one would be able to see what I was doing, whether they were using magic or not. To the naked eye, we were invisible. When I was using magic, a warlock or witch would simply see us sitting on the warehouse floor, but at the same time there was an energy void around us. Voids were anomalies created by magic spells, which would raise questions should a warlock or witch stumble upon us. My plan wasn’t foolproof, but without the cloak, my healing spells would be like fireworks in a frigid winter sky.

“You using magic?” Bronx asked.

I sighed as the cloaking spell fell easily into place with a wave of my hands and a couple of whispered words. “Just a bit.”

“Don’t. You’ve … got enough problems.”

“Stop talking. You don’t want to distract me,” I said, earning me a low growl. “Got to heal you. I’m not carrying your heavy ass to the car.”

“Fucker.”

I smiled and closed my eyes as I placed both my hands on his shoulders. “Just a warning: this might not work. I’ve never tried it on a troll.”

Bronx stiffened under my fingers, sucking in a ragged breath. “Great.”

Truth was that I had never tried this healing spell on anyone but myself. Warlocks and witches were more concerned with their own survival. Hell, when we were learning to heal wounds, it was always the hard way. Our mentors beat us until we were barely conscious and then left us alone in an empty tower. You learned to heal yourself or you died overnight from a ruptured kidney or drowned in your own blood as it poured into your lungs.

Focusing on the spell, I sent a wave of energy coursing through Bronx’s body, kicking off the first phase of the spell. Organs were mended so that they were no longer losing vital fluids and were returned to normal functioning levels. They were still battered, bruised, and extremely sore, but no longer in danger of failing him. As the spell moved through him, I could feel each organ as it healed. One lung had been punctured and flooded with blood, the other bruised. A kidney had been badly damaged and it looked like his spleen was on the point of rupture. A few blood vessels had been crushed, but were now open again, sending blood through his body.

As the energy exited through my hands, I sent in a second wave. This was the painful one. Each broken bone was set back to rights, causing a sickening echo of snaps and clicking through his body. Bronx groaned loudly as the spell took effect, causing him to arch off the ground while trying to pull away from my hands. I rose up on my knees and pressed down, holding him in place. The spell needed additional time for the bones to properly set and harden again.

The second phase lasted less than a minute, but there was nothing I could do about the pain, leaving both Bronx and me covered in sweat and breathing heavily. The energy flowed back to my hands and I sent the final wave through. This one knit together any cuts in his skin, stopping any additional bleeding while urging his body to speed up the process of creating fresh blood to replace what he’d lost. There weren’t many cuts and the final wave returned to me after only a few seconds.

I fell backward, sitting on my ass on the cold concrete, trying to get my breathing to even out again. I was exhausted, but Bronx’s life was no longer in danger from his wounds. I looked down at my friend. He breathed evenly without the sickening rattle and squish I had heard before.

“What the hell did you do to me?” Bronx asked. He had yet to move and I was glad for it. He needed time to recover. You didn’t walk away from a troll beating even if you were a troll.

“Heal you.”

“Then why the hell do I still feel like shit?” he growled.

I laughed, my head dropping back so that I could stare blindly up at the ceiling. There was nothing but blackness broken by dirty light filtering through a grime-encrusted skylight. “The spell fixed broken bones, stopped bleeding, and mended organs. You’re still badly bruised and battered. Time needs to heal that. I don’t have the energy in me to fix it all.”

“You didn’t have to do it,” Bronx murmured.

“Yeah, I did.” My eyes fell shut as the memory of his beating rose back to the forefront of my mind. He wouldn’t have been touched if I had protected the house like Reave had ordered. Fuck. Bronx wouldn’t have been in this mess to start with if I had killed Reave two months ago when he first threatened me with exposure.

But I was clinging to the idea that I wasn’t a killer. Warlocks were mindless, empty killers who thought nothing of taking a life. Witches were heartless killers. I chose to leave the Towers. I chose not to be a killer.

Simon’s laughter picked that moment to rattle through my brain like the Ghost of Christmas Past. I had killed Simon, but it had been self-defense. Right? I had to kill Simon or he would have killed me.

“Gage?” Bronx said, jerking me from my thoughts. Silence had stretched between us, but I didn’t know for how long. Had he been talking to me, waiting for my response? I had to let these doubts go. Fuck you, Towers. I wasn’t one of you. And fuck you, Simon Thorn. I hoped you liked your new job as ferryman to the dead.

“I had to heal you,” I said, my voice picking up strength as I returned to our conversation. “It was either leave you to die or carry your fat ass to the car. Do you know how hard it is to find a good tattoo artist to work in our part of town? Not that easy.”

Bronx chuckled. His normally deep voice was even deeper from the pain that lanced through his body. I rose and offered him a hand while bracing my legs to help pull him to his feet. It took a couple tries and we were both puffing heavily when it was over, but Bronx was standing without help. The troll was roughly triple my weight. There wasn’t much I could do if he couldn’t walk to his car on his own.

I waved my hand in the air, dispersing the last of the cloaking spell before bending down to scoop up my jacket. My back protested and my knees were stiff from sitting on the cold floor. I needed to get back to the gym. I had been trading off my usual trips there in order to spend time with Trixie before going into the parlor. Maybe it was time to find a little balance. I was beginning to think that I needed to be in shape if I was going to keep up with Reave and his band of thugs.

“Now what?” Bronx asked around another wince of pain as he hobbled toward the door.

“Home. Shower. Bed,” I listed, keeping pace beside my friend. “We’ll deal with tomorrow when tomorrow comes.”

“Not Trixie’s?”

Trixie’s place felt like some distant dream, an oasis in the wasteland my night had become. I would have given anything to see her and settle in her soft arms, but I shook my head. “Home.”

Trixie didn’t need to see me when I was in this mood. She would have argued otherwise, but our relationship was still too new for me to be dumping the weight of my past into her lap while I grumbled the last of the night away. She would try to help me forget and move on, but the only thing that would help me was sleep. In sleep, there were no memories to haunt you and no doubts to chase you. There was just the cool bliss of nothingness.

4

A SOFT CHIME tinkled through the parlor as the front door opened. At the same time magic prickled lightly across the bare skin of my forearms. Someone had activated the antiglamour spell upon stepping into the shop. The feeling passed, but I picked up my pace as I walked from the back room to the front lobby. I set a worn clipboard on a stack of papers and glanced at the surveillance monitor to see Trixie crossing the lobby. The elf in human disguise smiled at me as she moved around the front counter and stepped into the tattooing room.

To the world, she appeared as a lovely brunette human with soft features that included brown eyes, lush lips, and a heart-shaped face. But I was able to see the real her through the glamour she wore as protection. The sexy elf with acres of blond hair and crisp green eyes still managed to make my dick twitch when I saw her for the first time every day. She had only recently started to tone down some of her outfits now that we were officially dating. Bronx joked that he had told her to cool it or I was going to kill the next man who looked at her, which wasn’t too likely but wasn’t impossible either. I wondered if she had only dressed like that to catch my attention, but shoved the thought aside. My ego wasn’t that big.

Today she wore a somewhat sedate outfit. A black halter top hugged her breasts, revealing the perfect expanse of her back complete with a sparkling butterfly wings tattoo. Her snug jeans rode low on her hips, revealing a narrow strip of her stomach and belly button, which contained her newly acquired belly-button ring. Yet another thing to make my dick twitch. She had exchanged her usual belly-button ring for a red gem that winked in the overhead lighting.

Trixie’s throaty chuckle caused me to jerk my head up while a surprised blush lit my cheeks. She had caught me staring. Fuck, she was lucky that I didn’t have to pull out the mop to clean up the drool. What this woman saw in me I didn’t have a fucking clue. Brown hair, brown eyes, and barely her height when she was in heels, I wasn’t that much to look at. My body wasn’t bad. All lean muscle, the result of frequent trips to the gym, but you wouldn’t know it under the baggy T-shirts and faded jeans I wore. Maybe it was my charming personality. Not. Fucking. Likely.

“Seen enough?” she teased.

I closed the distance between us, wrapping my arms tightly around her so that I could feel every inch of her soft body pressed against mine. Of course, that meant she knew exactly how happy I was to see her, but I didn’t mind. We were still early in our relationship. If we weren’t screwing like rabbits every chance we got, I’d be worried. Her mouth found mine as if drawn to me, her lips already parted. She tasted of strawberries and something sweet and intoxicating that was uniquely her. Her hand drifted down my back, bunching in my T-shirt so that it pulled up my back as she held me close. A soft moan slipped from her throat and I was ready to go. The parlor was empty. The counters could be resterilized.

Someone called my name in an angry and plaintive voice. I jerked my head away from Trixie, breaking the kiss but not releasing her. I heard it again and groaned as my dick throbbed in frustration. We weren’t alone. This time, Trixie blushed as I stepped backward and looked down at the forgotten cat carrier in her hand. She had brought Sofie in to work with her.

“Sorry, Sof,” I muttered, walking to the opposite side of the room in hopes that the distance would get my hard-on to pass. Her only response was a soft growl while Trixie set the carrier on the floor and unzipped the opening. Trixie brought the cat into the shop a few times a week so she had a little variety in her day. Trixie’s apartment was smaller than Sofie’s previous home with an elderly woman named Mae. It also didn’t include a balcony, limiting Sofie’s time outside. I didn’t mind since she spent most of her time lounging on the glass counter or sitting in the front window, watching the people walk by.

“I still can’t believe you let her put you in that thing,” I said as the large Russian Blue jumped from the floor to the tattooing chair at Trixie’s station. The cat gave a little shudder and rubbed against the arm of the chair a couple times as if to put mussed fur back into place.

“It’s not bad so long as you don’t distract her when she walks in,” Sofie grumbled, sitting in the middle of the chair.

“Sorry about that.” I flashed Trixie a smile that wasn’t at all apologetic. She shook her head as she turned and shoved the cat carrier in an empty cabinet.

I walked over and scratched the cat’s head in greeting, trying to once again suppress the thought that Sofie was a witch and not some weird talking cat. You didn’t rub the head of a witch. Sofie never complained and I had heard her purr a few times, but I didn’t want to think too hard about any of it.

“I’m worried that you’re not getting enough exercise; getting a little soft around the middle from letting Trixie put you in that carrier.”

Sofie growled and took a swipe at me with a lethal set of claws. I jerked my hand back, but she caught my middle finger, tearing a thin red line along the side.

“Hey!” I yelped. “I know a couple good vets who can take care of those claws.”

“And I know a couple good ways to make you a soprano,” Sofie threatened. I stepped back over to the counter I had been standing at earlier, sticking my wounded finger in my mouth.

“Gage!” Trixie sank gracefully onto her stool. Sofie jumped into her lap and curled up while Trixie proceeded to stroke the witch/cat. “You know better than to tease a woman about her weight. Sofie is the perfect weight.” Trixie lowered her head and rubbed her forehead against the top of the cat’s head while cooing at her. Under those noises, I could hear Sofie purring.

“She knows I was teasing!”

Trixie looked up and frowned at me. “That’s no excuse.”

My eyes fell shut as I swallowed a sigh. Sofie was a witch. She had been born human, and despite the fact that she walked around as a cat, she was still a witch. It seemed wrong to treat her as a cat, but Sofie didn’t balk at any of Trixie’s attention, which was more than a little disturbing. Maybe Sofie had spent too much time in the form of a cat and it was starting to affect her sense of self.

“You didn’t stop by last night,” Trixie said softly.

I opened my eyes again, watching as she lifted her head from Sofie. Her expression was filled with questions, but she didn’t say anything else, leaving it up to me as to whether I would tell her anything of my adventures with Bronx and Reave’s little organization.

The sigh I thought I had swallowed rose back up and escaped me. I would have to say something since I wasn’t completely sure that Bronx would be in to work that night. He would need time to heal and it was very likely that he would still be feeling like shit when the sun set.

“Things didn’t go too well. I wasn’t in the greatest of moods when we were done and I didn’t want to drag that over to your place last night,” I said with a frown. “Also, Bronx might not be in tonight. I’m going to call him in an hour or two to check on him.”

“Not in? How bad did things go last night?”

Leaning against the counter, I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at the floor. While the lobby had a nice old hardwood floor, the main tattooing room was covered in this crappy yellow linoleum that was cracked, chipped, and lightly stained with splatters from dropped ink containers. “I was sent to protect a fix-production house.” Trixie gasped and I clenched my teeth and chanced a peek up at her. Pixies weren’t directly related to elves, but it was my understanding that they were at least seen as some kind of distant cousin—a lot closer than humans were believed to be. “I relieved them of their supply in the process of protecting the house.”