Dead Man’s Deal. Jocelynn Drake
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Название: Dead Man’s Deal
Автор: Jocelynn Drake
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежное фэнтези
isbn: 9780007525294
isbn:
“I did. It’s a very powerful protection spell, but to achieve it, you have to leave yourself completely defenseless. In this instance, all locks become useless. You can’t lock a door, a window, or, say, a cage in this house.”
As if on cue, screams erupted within the house followed by loud banging. We paused in the middle of the lawn and looked at the house. Lights could be seen being flicked on through the cracks in the curtains, followed by more bangs. A few sounded like gunshots, but I wasn’t worried about the pixies. They were wickedly fast when they took flight. The humans were more likely to shoot each other than a pixie in that chaos.
“What’s the protection?” Bronx asked.
“Oh, if you enter the house with ill intent toward the occupants, your feet become stuck to the floor,” I said. I was still waiting to see the pixies escape. “A warlock has to release you, or you have to have your feet cut off to get unstuck again.”
“That’s pretty powerful.”
“I’ve been dying to use it for years, but could never come up with a good excuse.”
The front door was thrown open and the man I had spoken to in the basement and one of his guards came running out. They had their hands over their heads while screaming at the pixies, who were pelting them with what looked like scalpels. As they hit the warm night air, the pixies scattered in all directions, rising higher into the sky until they disappeared from sight.
“What have you done?” shouted glasses man. “They’re all loose.”
I gave him an indifferent shrug. “It’s a protection spell. Unfortunately, it has the side effect of disabling locks. I thought you could handle the pixies.”
“You’ve ruined me!”
The asshole grabbed a gun from the guard and pointed it in my direction. Bronx jumped in front of me, acting as a shield. Grabbing at the troll, I tried to shove him away. My magic was out in the open here. I could stop a damn bullet without risking harm. He couldn’t.
“I don’t think so,” said a calm, irritated voice over the din. The gun exploded in the man’s hand, leaving behind a bloody stub. He screamed, clutching his wrist as he fell to his back in the grass. The guard stood beside him, frozen and white-faced as he stared over my shoulder.
I didn’t want to look, because I knew who I would find. There were things in this world worse than a pissed-off dark elf and his Mafia thugs. Like an irritated warlock with a chip on his shoulder.
Gideon stood behind me, glaring at the moaning man. Reaching into the left sleeve of his shirt, he pulled out a wand. With a quick flick of his wrist, the night was filled with an ugly gurgling before becoming completely silent. The man was dead and I was definitely fucked.
2
“TWO MONTHS,” GIDEON muttered, shoving his wand back up his sleeve. “You couldn’t go two full months before I had to track you down again.”
“I missed you too,” I said with a nervous smile. Mocking and irritating Gideon was something that I specialized in. However, he had never approached me before when others were around—the world wasn’t supposed to know what I was. With Gideon’s attention now on me, the surviving guard ran into the house and slammed the door shut, leaving us alone with the pissed-off warlock.
“Gage?” Bronx said softly.
I moved in front of the troll, not that my smaller body offered much protection. I didn’t have a wand on me, which made any type of magical protection shaky at best, but I’d protect Bronx from Gideon the same way the troll had intended to protect me from the gun.
“It’ll be okay. I’ve got this.”
Gideon stopped in his pacing and arched one eyebrow at me. I didn’t mean it to sound so challenging, but I needed to try to reassure my friend. Gritting my teeth, I tried to think of some way to placate Gideon. It was as if I was standing in quicksand, the earth slipping away from my feet the more I spoke. A smart man would keep his mouth shut. I wasn’t always a smart man.
“This is a surprise,” I started again, trying desperately to think of a way to defuse some of Gideon’s anger. His mouth firmed into a hard line, proving that I was failing miserably. Warlocks and witches were a testy lot in the best of times. Gideon had proven that he was a good guy, or at least as much as a warlock could be, but he hadn’t batted an eye at killing that fix producer. I didn’t know whether it was because the dealer pulled a gun or because Gideon had been annoyed by the man’s screams. Either way, dead was dead and I wasn’t about to let that happen to Bronx.
“Two months, Gage,” Gideon said, picking up his earlier thread of conversation, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Bronx and I were standing there waiting to see if our lives were about to come to a messy end. I watched, barely breathing, as he tugged on the cuffs of his blue, collared shirt within the dark gray business jacket he was wearing. He could have been a banker by all appearances, with his shiny shoes, Rolex, and blue-and-gray-striped tie. The only thing missing was the wedding band on his left hand, but then warlocks and witches weren’t permitted to marry. I wondered if the missing ring bothered him, or his hidden wife.
“I seem to have fallen into a bit of trouble,” I admitted.
Gideon’s gaze drifted over to the house I had protected, his face expressionless. The occasional pixie slipped from its hiding place in the eaves to the nearest tree, thick with leaves that were only now starting to show the colors of autumn. “So I gathered. Your new job involves freeing pixies?”
“Not quite.”
“I gathered that as well,” he muttered, turning to walk toward Bronx’s Jeep. “Come along. I’m not going to kill you or your troll.”
I sighed, my shoulders slumping. Motioning for Bronx to accompany me, I walked over to where Gideon was standing beside the Jeep. It was somewhat larger than many of the vehicles people drove simply because it was one of several styles that had been enlarged to accommodate large creatures like trolls and ogres. The warlock peered into the passenger-side window, seeming curious about the interior.
“This is the one that works with you?” he said, straightening to look over my shoulder at Bronx. His expression was the same as when he was looking over the car, only mild interest but largely dismissive.
“Yes, he’s a good friend,” I bit out, but I stifled my irritation. The fact that he had deigned to notice Bronx at all was a compliment. In general, warlocks and witches considered any creature as beneath their notice. All the same, his manner was insulting.
“My name is Bronx,” my companion said in a smooth, even tone, betraying neither fear nor anger.
Gideon said nothing, so I spoke for him. “And this is Gideon, a dear friend. You’ll have to excuse him—the Ivory Towers don’t teach manners.”
“That would explain a lot,” Bronx replied, earning a shocking, surprised bark of harsh laughter from Gideon. I turned to find that the troll was looking straight at me, the butt of the joke. Ha. Ha. Ha.
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