Splintered (An Arcane Underworld Novel, Band 2) - Softcover

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Jamie Schultz is the author of the Arcane Underworld novels, including Premonitions and Splintered. He has worked as a rocket engine test engineer, an environmental consultant, a technical writer, and a construction worker, among other things. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

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PRAISE FOR PREMONITIONS

Also by Jamie Schultz

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Chapter 1

“I hate this,” Anna said. She twisted her body to look out the back window of the parked car. Street mostly dark, nobody moving. A pair of headlights swung by and vanished as somebody made a wrong turn onto the street and then turned right back around. “I hate every damn thing about it.”

Nail didn’t say anything from the driver’s seat, but he scowled. She heard the sandpapery sound as he ran a hand over his shaved head, and she could feel the annoyance radiating from him. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he was thinking. Something along the lines of I heard you the first six times. She turned to face forward again, held still for almost ten seconds, and then started monkeying around with the car’s side mirror. She caught a glimpse of the side of Genevieve’s face, watching out the window from the seat behind her, just a line highlighting the profile of her cheek and a small arc of metal gleaming above the shadow of her eye socket.

“What time you got?” she asked.

Nail made a slight, skeptical smile and raised his eyebrows. “One forty.” A long pause, and then, with a smirk playing around the corners of his mouth: “One forty-one.”

“Not funny.”

“The hell it ain’t. I never seen you with nerves like this.”

“I never fuckin’ kidnapped nobody before, neither.”

He shrugged. She wasn’t sure if he was conceding the point or indicating that it wasn’t really a big deal. You think you know a guy . . .

He was right, though. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so jittery. Ten years, maybe, back when she and Karyn had first gotten into their bizarre line of work, swiping items of usually dubious occult value from their so-called rightful owners. Maybe the first job, the first time she’d found herself standing in a stranger’s house at night, wondering, hey, what if they were actually home? And armed? Maybe not even then. Her heart raced like she’d downed a pot of coffee, and the acid- burning sensation in her gut wasn’t too dissimilar, either.

The fatigue wasn’t helping. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks, not since the disaster at Enoch Sobell’s office after the last job. There had been a showdown—gunfire and magic, a demonic creature summoned by the cult known as the Brotherhood of Zagam, and once the bodies had been cleared away, Anna’s little four-person crew found itself in a sort of indentured servitude to Sobell.

And Karyn, Anna’s friend and partner-in-crime for over a decade, had been put out of commission, wandering her weird interior world of visions from displaced times.

Helping Karyn, however she could, was job one, but Sobell’s demands never stopped, and Anna was in no place to tell him to go fuck himself. But the current mission had now dragged on for weeks, diverting attention from Anna’s real job. She just wanted to get it over with, however horrible it was.

“Van Horn’s taking his time,” Anna said.

Nail nodded. “Yeah.”

She checked the side mirror. Still nothing. No movement of any kind. There was an empty lot, overgrown with high weeds and strewn with bricks and other construction debris. Then a body shop, closed down with metal shutters at this time of night. Past that, Bobby Chu’s party shack, a big metal building that pulsed with bass. Lights flashed through the seams, extending multicolored fingers out through the windows of the cars that crowded around.

“What’s he doing here?” Anna asked.

“Depends what he needs, I guess,” Nail said.

“I guess.” Still, it wasn’t quite in pattern. They’d found Van Horn and his creepy entourage three nights ago, and this was by far the lowest the group had crawled down the socioeconomic ladder. The last few nights, Van Horn had been visiting well-off criminals who were plugged into the occult underworld in some way or other—one of them had, in fact, given Sobell the tip that had led the crew to Van Horn. Bobby was plugged in, but not with the grade of crook that Van Horn or Sobell trafficked with. More like the kind of scum that grew on the rocks at the bottom of the lake.

I hate this, Anna thought, again, but at least this time she kept herself from singing that refrain aloud and aggravating Nail and Gen with it once more. Bad enough that Sobell had them doing every odd shit job under the sun, but it was escalating. She’d thought she’d drawn a sharp line when he told her to act as a bagman—just this one time, and then it’s back to business as usual, she’d said, her voice stripped down to a cold steel edge. He’d pretended to hear, or maybe she’d read agreement where none had existed, and then sent her out again the following week. The week after that, it had been another “pickup job,” except she knew it wasn’t, not really, not when Sobell had said, “Far be it from me to instruct you in the finer points of your business, but I strongly suggest you bring that big fellow, Nail, along. For the ride, as it were.” And the pickup job had turned into a beatdown when Ernesto “Spaz” Rivera chose to live up to his nickname. He’d been short on the cash, but rather than talk it out he’d gone for intimidation, which rapidly turned into violence. Nail hadn’t actually been necessary. Pepper spray, it turned out, was more than adequate for the likes of Spaz Rivera. That wasn’t the last beatdown, either, and there had been a couple of other unsavory demands sprinkled in as well. It had barely come as a shock when Sobell upped the stakes to kidnapping.

“I shoulda told him to fuck right off,” Anna muttered.

“Who the hell are they?” Nail said. Anna followed his pointing finger to the barrels and tubs stacked against the side of the body shop. “I don’t . . . huh.” No, there was somebody there. Hard to see in the shadows thrown by the streetlight, but there were at least a couple of people lurking among the trash. As she watched, one peeked around the corner at Bobby’s place.

“Here comes Van Horn,” Genevieve said.

Anna checked the side mirror. Van Horn and his crew were leaving Bobby’s place, throwing long dancing shadows as, bizarrely, they jumped and spun and collided with one another. Somebody fell down hard, and the first sounds of the group reached the car—laughter, high and hysterical. Seconds later, the whole group erupted in the same sort of frenetic, desperate laughter as well, making an eerie chorus that grabbed Anna’s spine at the base and twisted.

There was a ripple of motion to Anna’s left as Nail actually shuddered.

“You okay, tough guy?” Genevieve asked.

He nodded. Anna studied his face for a moment, then slid down in her seat and resumed watching the mirror. It looked like the same drill out there as the last several nights. Van Horn walked in the middle, head down, fedora pulled low, hands in the pockets of his pin-striped slacks. He wasn’t close enough for her to see his face or hear him well, but if the past nights were representative, he was either grinning like a fool or whistling an eerie music-box-sounding tune. Around him, a shifting, spinning cloud of chaos. Maybe half a dozen men and half a dozen women, and a more motley assortment couldn’t easily be imagined. Two of them looked like Genevieve’s crowd—lots of...