Dark Urban Rising Box Set

6. The Back End of a Horse

6The Back End of a HorseTazia crossed to the dining table and pressed the keyboard on her desktop computer to make the Dark Souls screen-saver disappear. She selected the video conferencing option and clicked on the only name listed: “William Nadig.”

While the signal hummed its way to London, she disappeared into her bedroom to throw off her ripped and demon-blooded clothes and boots, then returned to sit in front of the screen dressed only in a pair of boy-cut underwear and black sports bra. As she shrugged a clean top over her head, they connected with a beep.

“Hey, love, slow down, this is too good to miss.”

Tazia finished pulling down the top and found herself staring at a young man’s grinning face. At twenty-six he was a few years older than her and had the fine features of his Pakistani parents. His black hair was impeccably cut, short around the sides and extra-long on top. It stood up in what looked like floppy abandon, but was actually forced into place with a stack of product. His skin was flawless and tonight he was sporting the rectangular, heavy-rimmed glasses he only tended to wear if he was tired or deliberately geeking out.

As usual, she couldn’t help but return the grin. “Hi, Billy. What’s up?”

“Nothing much, but go back and do the undressing thing again, and I’ll have something to report.” He winked at her.

Tazia had no retort. This, in itself, was unusual. Trading s****l innuendo with Billy was standard.

“You called me, i***t!” he said lightheartedly, but frowned nonetheless. “What’s up with you, Taz?” The picture flickered slightly as the connection bombed for a moment, and it looked like he’d made a small staccato jump in his seat.

“Trouble.” She leaned back and passed a hand through her hair, twisting and pulling the extra-long sections at the back around to the side before letting go, pondering what piece of bad news to tell him first.

“I had a run-in with a guy who owed me some money. Ended up a bit… messy.” She remembered the blue blood spewing from Bello’s blubber, soaking her arm and shuddered. A shower would have been a good idea.

“You all right?” There was deep concern in Billy’s voice.

“Fine. Got the cash. Well, some of it, at least. That’s not why I called, though. I need help with something—a couple of things?”

Just as Billy was about to reply, a long-fingered and well-manicured hand belonging to something soft, seductive, tall, and blonde (Tazia guessed—they always were) snaked over his shoulder and settled on the back of his neck. It appeared to giggle for no apparent reason and then a voice whispered, “You coming back to bed, Billy?”

A look very close to anger settled on Billy’s features, but he said in a pleasant enough tone, “I’m working, love, piss off.”

There was a deep sigh, as if the hand had heard it a thousand times, before it was abruptly removed.

Tazia waited a respectable enough three seconds to allow the owner of the hand to get out of range before asking, “Is she called Chastity or Candy?”

Billy snorted slightly, then whispered, “Actually, it’s Tiffany.”

“Figures,” said Tazia. “When you gonna get a girlfriend who looks more like the back-end of a horse? At least they might be able to hold a conversation.” She didn’t pull off the flippant tone she was attempting, and knew she was being mean, but hell, she’d had a very bad day.

“Love, if I wanna talk, I’ve got you, innit?” Billy’s accent and dialect veered regularly from highly respectable West London to the more street-smart East End when it suited his humor to do so. He used the tendency skillfully, often throwing those who didn’t know him well into confusion. Very few people knew Billy well.

“That wasn’t a compliment, was it?”

“You’re the one who brought up horses’ arses…”

Tazia crossed her arms over her chest. “Can we get back to my problem?”

“Fire away.” Billy settled back. He picked up a bottle of expensive imported beer from the desk beside him to swig as he listened, his seat twisting slightly from side to side. It was the way he sat when he was concentrating.

Tazia was glad she had his undivided attention for a moment. “Can you pick up anything about Hux? I think he’s dead, but he has that nasty habit of being indestructible. Just want to make sure.”

“I was wondering where tall, dark, and moody was. Usually, he’s hovering somewhere in the background when you ring. Glaring at me. Did you finally kill the tosser?”

“No. Not me. But I think he’s dead. And by the way, he’s tall, blond, and moody.”

“Must be the constant look of misery he wears,” Billy muttered. “So how did it happen? You didn’t shoot him, or stab him with that splendid knife of yours?”

Tazia thought wistfully about her Bowie lying under the rubble at the bottom of the cave. “No.”

“Well?”

“He got squished.”

Billy frowned.

Tazia acted out Soren’s demise with her hands, and the little plastic figurine of Princess Elsa she’d been fiddling with since starting the conversation. She’d received her as a gift from Billy at the beginning of her relationship with Soren. Billy swore they shared the same wig. The joke had remained between them, much to Soren’s frustration.

The plastic figure looked odd masquerading as the muscular gunman, but it did the job. She held Elsa in the palm of one hand. “Hux here. Rocks here. Squish.” She slapped her other hand down on top of the figure with a smack that, for a moment, wobbled the webcam.

“But how?”

Tazia had been trying to avoid talking about her father. Billy would worry. He’d get stressed out and angsty, and she wasn’t sure she could cope with that right now, but what was the alternative? She decided to stick to the facts. “He shot my father dead, and then the cave collapsed on top of him.” Pithy.

As predicted, Billy’s response was intense. His brows knitted together, then his eyes widened as he processed her words. He leaned forward in his seat, filling the whole screen with his face. “Taz, your dad’s dead? Love, I don’t know what to say. You okay? What can I do? Let me help.”

Tazia could feel the buzz of his energy reach out to her from the screen. She gave a little smile of resignation. “I’m fine, honest. But it’s Hux I’m worried about. He’ll come after me if he’s not dead.”

“Why would he come after you?”

“I sorta… well, I… left him there to die.” She looked away briefly and felt a little heat rise into her cheeks.

Billy nodded approvingly. “Good job! He was a dick.”

“I know you thought, well… I know he was… probably. Oh Jesus, just tell me if he’s alive or not, Billy. Please.”

He moved back from the screen, took another swig of beer, and then focused deep into her eyes, creating an even deeper connection between them. A magical connection. “Okay, give me a minute.”

Tazia had seen him do this many times before—the blank eyes, the concentration, and all his intention poured into the problem. He always stepped up. Always helped her out when she needed him.

For Billy, though, the elemental energy of natural spell craft wasn’t enough. He powered his spells with a little more oomph—a manmade source.

He reached to the keyboard and started to type. Instantaneously, a code-string appeared on Tazia’s screen too, in a little text box in the corner she always left up for such eventualities. Latin words interspersed with punctuation marks, numbers, and random letters beamed to her, making no sense whatsoever. After a moment, they lifted from the screen as wisps of silver smoke and circulated around the room before passing into the electrical sockets and out of the apartment.

Billy was a technomancer, and a very good one. He combined spells with electrical devices and communication signals, usually computers and satellites. He’d charmed everything from an electric razor to a NASA telescope in the past and earned bags of cash doing so. The resulting magic was fast, laser precise, and powerful.

At fifteen, he’d accidentally hacked into the private computer of a techno-wizard. After punishing this young pretender severely, the wizard softened and struck a deal with him: he’d show Billy some wacky magic tricks if Billy turned some underage tricks of his own. The relationship, though not exactly wholesome, benefited both of them.

The silver light had come back and gathered again, swirling around Tazia before plastering itself onto the computer screen where it reformed into an abstract programming language and from there networked its way back to Billy. It had been a standard location spell. Though she preferred to keep away from magic, if pushed, she could do something similar with a map and pendant.

Billy deciphered the code as it appeared to him, “You’re not gonna like this, love. He’s still alive. Starting to regain consciousness right now.” He looked at her, forehead creasing again. “You’d better get out of there, Taz.”

“f**k!” Her favorite expletive jerked from her lips. Half emitted through frustration. Half by fear.

Soren Huxford was worse than your standard dog-and-bone combination when it came to holding a grudge. He was a pit bull. He didn’t just gnaw at that bone. He crunched it into a million pieces and swallowed each bit down with a big stupid pit bull smile on his face. He enjoyed destroying that sucker. And now he’d be coming for her. She was the f*****g bone.

“Come here. To me. We’ll sort the rest out later.” Billy’s eyes looked hopefully at the screen, and his tone was unattractively wheedling.

If she said no, she wouldn’t put it beyond him to beg. This wasn’t the first time she’d run to Billy’s willing arms to lie low for a while. Plus, she really did need to know how to tackle Venus or this Advocate thing. Billy was the only one who could help with that. “Okay.”

Billy had been tapping away on the keyboard while she was thinking. He grinned. “I’ve sorted a flight. You’re on the midnight out of Turin flying into Heathrow under that famous pseudonym of yours. You’re in business class, okay? Nothin’ but the best for my girl. See you later, ‘Sahara.’ Stay safe. Over and out.” It was his usual goodbye.

His picture disappeared and Tazia closed down the PC, gently touching the screen with her hand momentarily. Though he could be intense at times, Billy loved her. And if her bricked up soul could feel gratitude, it would be endless.

She went to the bedroom and pulled on some jeans, then emptied a drawerful of clothes into a bag, grabbed toothbrush and paste, her fake passport and driver’s license, and the money she’d just collected from Sergio Bello. Then she locked up and left.

She didn’t even glance at the racks of Soren’s expensive clothes that still hung in the wardrobe. She was trying hard to forget the two years she’d spent living here with him, being his lover, while all the time planning his death with her father.

The plan was supposed to have given her the freedom to start over. It had failed. She had failed. Her father would have found that totally unacceptable.

And Soren? He wouldn’t stop hunting her until she was dead.

At the airport, Tazia was about to step behind the plexiglass partition that led to Security, when she heard an angry shout: “Anastasia! Stop!”

He’d found her.

She turned to see Soren Huxford watching her from thirty feet away. He stood perfectly still.

At six foot three inches, he dominated her field of vision and dwarfed the smaller darker Italians rushing around him. He was dressed in clean clothes and although his chin-length blond hair was disheveled it, too, was clean. There was very little evidence to suggest he had been lying under a pile of rocks for hours. What the hell does it take to kill this guy?

He was protected by some magic charm, she was sure. An amulet maybe, or invisible tattoos. But despite doing her best to coax his secret from him, he’d remained stubbornly silent in the two years they’d spent together. Just human, yet she’d seen him recover from bullet wounds that would kill a normal man dead, and watched as cuts in his skin had healed in front of her eyes.

As he gazed at her, she saw just one small cut on his forehead, mostly healed, and he was holding his right hand a little gingerly. That was it.

The intensity in Soren’s eyes dialed up a level, daring her to continue to the plane. His body looked poised ready to pounce if she came within range, and his chest rapidly moved up and down as he breathed deep and steady to control himself. His clear blue eyes bore into her own holding her immobile for a moment.

She knew she was safe, and he knew it, too. He couldn’t get to her without causing a scene, attention he would not want. He couldn’t shoot her despite the ever-present handgun holstered under his jacket—he’d likely hit someone else in the moving crowd. He had to let her go. It would be maddening to him.

As she watched, he smiled, something he rarely did, a small tight smile. He slowly brought his right hand up toward her and mimed shooting a gun, took two steps back, eyes still boring into hers, then turned and walked away.

He would hold true to that promise.

Tazia was still shaking as she took her seat on the plane. Soren could kill vampires with his eyes shut. If he wanted her dead, he would kill her. There would be no escape.

As the plane took off, she finally breathed a little more freely. The image of those icy blue eyes drilling into hers played over and over until they were all she could see. She shivered.

The last time she’d seen them, they were regarding her with kindness. She also remembered the sound of his steady breathing beside her while he slept. The gentle feel of his hands on her body when he held her. Tazia shivered again.