Page 12 of A Heist for Filthy Rivals (Mythic Holidays #3)

She’s here. The woman with the most beautiful, plush lips I’ve ever seen, the one who caught me in her lair and chased me through the city. It was cold that night, yet she ran after me without pausing to put on a coat or a pair of boots.

My brain conjures an image of the way she looked, standing on the edge of the building, yelling at me across the alley, seething with fury because I dared to break into her precious hideout.

She was in her sock feet, barely dressed, her little tits pointed against the flimsy material of her shirt.

She keeps her black hair around chin-length, which is a practical choice for a thief, but there are scarlet streaks throughout it.

She likes a bit of notoriety. She wants to be recognized by the right people.

My fingers flex, recalling the way her throat felt in my hand.

I wore gloves that night, but I swear I could sense her soft skin right through the leather.

I liked the way our bodies lined up when we were crushed close together on that rooftop.

She’s taller than most women I’ve met, more comparable to my height, so I don’t feel like a bear towering over a puppy when I’m fighting her.

It’s terrible luck that she came to Annordun at all, and especially annoying that she got here before us, yet I can’t stop grinning, not even when Grisly bumps my elbow and snarls, “What was all that about, Rav?”

“Looks like we have a little competition, boys,” I tell him.

“Another gang?” asks Needle.

“The Javelins,” replies Slaughter in his thick Vexxan accent. “You called her Devilry, yes? She leads the Javelins.”

“That’s right.” I touch one of the knives at my belt… her knife. A cute little thing with a gold-plated hilt and a guard to protect her fingers. I prefer daggers with a guard, too. I need my fingers whole and undamaged for picking locks and pockets.

“A woman?” Slaughter laughs. “If they’re led by a woman, they can’t be much competition.”

“Clearly you haven’t known many women,” I say. “They like to keep their distance from you, don’t they? Perhaps because of the smell.”

Grisly and Needle guffaw, and Slaughter glowers. I’m fairly sure he’ll try to murder me once this job is done. An invigorating prospect.

“All in good fun,” I tell him. “Let’s go.”

We move forward into the gap we made in the outer wall. We should be able to simply walk across the ground to the inner wall, blow a hole in it, and continue on to the keep. But as Grisly steps through the hole, red lightning spears straight toward him. I yank him aside just in time.

“The fuck,” he chokes out, rattled.

I poke my head through the opening to gauge the danger.

The inner side of the wall we blasted is full of goddamned magical eyes, too, and so is the second wall, some distance away.

The gap between the two walls is an ever-changing network of crimson lightning that stabs and snakes up and down, back and forth, covering every part of both walls, reaching from the ground all the way to the faraway parapet.

A betting man might take his chances running that gauntlet of lightning, hoping not to get struck. But I only place bets when I have decent odds, and I don’t like these.

“This isn’t going to be simple. But we didn’t really expect simple, did we?” I tell them. “There’s no glory in easy. We’ll figure this out. Needle, you have the interceptors?”

“Yes, but they’ll burn out quick under all that power.” He nods at the intermittent lightning. “And then we won’t have any anti-spell devices left for the keep itself.”

“Can’t be helped.” I shrug. “We need them now. Get them ready.”

Needle’s specialty is procuring rare relics. He has deep connections to parts of the criminal underworld I never want to see, people so vile that the Consortium gangs won’t touch them. It’s how he found the Rathad Acrach, the Hungry Road.

The Rathad is a bezoar from an extremely rare Unseelie beast, extracted from the creature’s stomach and then drenched in the darkest kind of Unseelie magic. For the cost of a life, it opens an undetectable door into Faerie.

I didn’t want to use it. I wanted a device called the Doras àlainn, and I had a lead on it, thanks to an informant in South Hive. But as a new arrival to Belgate, I had to assemble a team before I could go after the Doras àlainn.

Finding my team took longer than I expected, since most of the criminals in Belgate already belong to one of the many gangs under the Consortium.

Due to the delay, the Javelins beat me to the Doras àlainn.

I tried to steal it from their hideout, but after my attempted burglary failed, I had no other option but to use the Rathad.

This morning, Slaughter brought us two victims—one to open the way into Faerie, and another to secure our road home. I told him to find sadistic people, wicked people, those with innocent blood on their hands. I said that to his face, knowing he fits those criteria himself.

The men I assembled for the Annordun heist were plucked from the dregs of Belgate.

I had to look for the outliers, the ones who’ve been rejected from other gangs because they’re too cruel, too deceitful, or too careless to be part of anyone else’s crew.

They’re pieces of shit, all of them. The kind of men who make my skin crawl.

But I’ve been around loathsome people all my life. I know how to handle them and how to get through jobs with them. They’re not permanent fixtures in my circle, just temporary shields, tools for me to use, stepping stones to help me work my way up the ranks of Belgate’s less savory population.

After the fiasco in Talgus, I came to this city as a desperate, hunted man. When you’re the prey, you’ll accept any protection, no matter how dangerous it is.

I gave Slaughter the parameters for our victims, but I didn’t ask where he found them.

The second victim is lying on the beach right now, wrapped in ropes, unconscious.

Hopefully he’ll stay that way until we’re done with this job.

I’d like for him to die quietly without knowing what his body was used for.

Needle is activating the two interceptors with water from some special Fae pond.

The interceptors are red crystals grown from the heart’s blood of a human virgin.

Needle said there was another ingredient involved in their creation, too, but I didn’t ask what it was, and he didn’t seem eager to tell me, which means it’s probably something obscene, something so despicable it even turns his stomach, which is saying something.

The interceptors have the power to disrupt and absorb the energy from powerful spells—at least until they develop cracks and shatter into pieces.

“Slaughter, Grisly, you’ll hold the interceptors,” I order.

“I don’t like putting my hands on Faerie shit, especially when it might get struck by lightning,” Slaughter protests. “Why can’t you and Needle do it?”

“Because I’m the fucking boss, and Needle’s the only one who can work the Rathad.” I deepen my tone and intensify my glare through the eyeholes of my mask. “You want him to get stabbed by a fork of magic lightning? You wanna get home tonight?”

“Yeah—”

“Then take those interceptors and get your asses through that hole. We’ll follow you.”

He growls at me, fists balled up. He and his cousin Grisly are both bulkier than I am, heavy of bone, with brutal amounts of muscle—but I’m taller, and I use that height to stare him down until he grunts and shuffles off to do as I commanded.

With men like this, I have to keep proving that I’m the alpha.

There’s a poisonous primality to the way they think, and in order to control them, I have to get into their mindset and make them believe I’m more vicious than they are.

I have to be clever, but not too smart, or they’ll start to perceive me as easy prey.

It makes no sense to correlate intellect with weakness, of course, but it’s how they operate.

Wisdom is frailty to them. Violence, taunts, and threats are the languages they feel most comfortable speaking.

Slaughter and Grisly each take one of the interceptor crystals from Needle, after which he speaks a word or two of some ancient Fae language over them.

The crystals begin to glow more strongly, and two spheres of pale pink light expand outward, stretching wide enough that two men could walk comfortably within their protection.

“I’ll go with Grisly, boss,” says Needle.

“You walk with Slaughter. Make sure you stay in the circle of his crystal’s influence.

Hold the crystals up high, boys, high as you can.

And go slow. If lightning hits your crystal, don’t panic.

Let the interceptor absorb it. The light of the crystal that was struck will turn green, and that’s normal.

Move into the other pair’s safety circle and wait until your crystal recovers its strength, then keep going.

The crystals will start to develop cracks as they absorb more and more energy. If both crystals shatter—run.”

“Great,” I mutter.

I hate relying on magic. I’d much rather blast our way through more walls instead of cautiously creeping across the open space between the first two layers of the fortress.

We haven’t gone more than three steps when a massive bolt of crimson lightning shatters against Slaughter’s crystal. He roars, not with pain but with the shock and force of it.

“Hold it up!” yells Needle. “Higher!”

Slaughter keeps his arm high, his huge muscles bulging against the confines of his shirt. The crystal’s light fades to almost nothing, and what remains turns a livid green.

“Now move into the shelter of our crystal until yours recovers,” Needle says.

Slaughter and I crowd into the pale sphere of light cast by Grisly’s crystal.

“Can we keep moving?” I ask.

“Better not,” says Needle. “They recover faster if they stay in one spot.”

“Perfect,” I say through a tight smile.