Free Fiction River: Hex in the City by Fiction River Page A

didn’t quite meet up. Through the link, Verity got a rough picture of the inside. The roll-up door opened into a big space full of wooden shipping crates that stank of the rotten magic. To the right was the boy’s delicious scent trail, leading toward the light and a half-open door. Through Ruby’s eyes, Verity found the button that controlled the door. It hung from a thick cord, out of the reach of even the two-foot-long rat.
    “We’re going to play a game,” Verity whispered, sending what she hoped was an explanation through the link to Ruby.
    Ruby seemed to understand, her heart sped up and she got the same agitated vibrations to her thoughts that came when she was demanding the TV be turned on. She climbed the closest stack of boxes, her sensitive nose twitching at the stink, the smell strong enough to raise bile in Verity’s throat through the link. Ruby balanced on the edge of a crate, about six feet out from the hanging door control.
    “Jump,” Verity whispered.
    Ruby sprang, her powerful hind legs carrying her to the cord and her sharp claws catching hold as her long tail curved out, balancing her on the button as it swung wildly beneath the sudden weight.
    “TV on.” Verity pushed the image through the link and felt as much as saw Ruby respond.
    The door made a high-pitched noise and then started grinding slowly upward. So much for surprise.
    Verity gripped her revolver and ducked under the door, aiming toward the light as she moved so that Ruby could leap from the controls to her shoulders. Cord moved up beside her as two men, backlit now, appeared through the doorway.
    “Hands up,” Verity said, sticking with an oldie but goodie.
    “Duck!” Cord’s warning saved her as a bolt of power sizzled past them.
    Ozone smell combined with month-old herring singed her nose as she threw herself to the side. She didn’t know what the hell that had been, but it smelled like the first figure had somehow fired off a hex right at her.
    She wanted to fire back, but didn’t know if the boy was inside that room. At the thought, Ruby leapt free of her shoulders and charged toward the light, still thinking they were playing a game. The lithe rat twisted past the two men and Verity had a quick impression of a desk shoved to one side and then Andre, bound with tape and laying on his side on the floor.
    The men shouted as the rat slipped right between them, one of them turning enough that she recognized him as the groaner on the floor from earlier. Groaner went for the rat. The other man went for her and Cord, raising his hands to throw more hexes.
    Andre was clear as long as she aimed high. She yelled to Cord to do the same.
    Hex versus guns. Guns won.
    “Jesus mother fucking ice on toast,” Cord muttered as the roar of his shotgun and the sharper report of her revolver died away.
    Her hands shook as she lowered the gun and nausea swept up in a burning tide from her belly. Cordite and fresh blood swarmed over the black magic rot. She shoved it all away, closing down the link with Ruby as much as she could. Save the boy. Get the hell out before on duty cops showed up. Think about dead people later.
    “Get Andre,” she said, moving forward and stepping over the still twitching body of the hex-thrower.
    Andre was conscious. They untied him, pulling the tape off as gently as they could. He didn’t speak, but picked up Ruby and pressed his cheek to her fur in a gesture that Verity was intimately familiar with. Ruby didn’t protest, seeming to understand that it was important to let this stranger touch her, something she usually hated.
    “What’s in the crates?” Cord asked as they all picked their way around the bodies.
    Andre shuddered and stepped close to Verity. “Hexes,” he whispered, looking at Cord with worried eyes. “They use my blood to make them.”
    Verity found a crowbar, her ears straining for the sound of sirens. She pried the lid off a crate and gasped. Inside were hundreds of charms, vile things