Stings and Stones short story collection

The cop was going to die tonight.

He just didn’t know it yet.

For Detective Cliff Ingles, this was just another Saturday night in the Southern metropolis of Ashland, and he was spending it the way he did all his other Saturday nights: slugging down drinks and ogling the waitresses at Northern Aggression, the city’s most popular nightclub.

Just before midnight, people were packed into the club, all looking for their particular brand of poison. Blood, booze, drugs, sex, smokes. Northern Aggression offered all that and more, as long as you had the cash or the plastic to pay for your particular vice.

The nightclub had a decadent style, with red crushed-velvet drapes covering the walls and a soft, springy bamboo floor. But the most striking feature was the bar that ran down one wall—a long, thick, solid rectangle made entirely of elemental Ice. Runes had been carved into the slick surface of the Ice, mostly suns and stars, symbolizing life and joy. The symbols were rather appropriate, given all the people getting hot ’n’ heavy in the booths in the back of the club.

I’d spent the last hour sitting at the Ice bar—along with Cliff Ingles.

The detective threw back his third whiskey of the evening, then leaned forward and murmured something in the ear of the vampire waitress who’d brought over his drink. The two of them were near the center of the enormous Ice bar, about fifty feet away from my position around the curve and up against one of the walls.

Ingles never had a clue that I was watching him. No real reason he would. If the detective had bothered to look in my direction, all he would have seen was another woman drinking her way through a night out on the town.

Even if he had noticed me, even if he’d come over and talked to me, I would have told him exactly who I was. Gin Blanco. A part-time cook and waitress at the Pork Pit barbecue restaurant in downtown Ashland. And the assassin known as the Spider.

I would have even told the detective about my mission this evening—to make sure he quit breathing before the night was through.

But there was no danger of Ingles noticing me. I wasn’t his type; the bastard preferred to assault young girls. Given the five silverstone knives hidden on my body, I was anything but helpless.

I took another sip of my gin and tonic and studied my target, comparing the man in front of me to the photo that had been in the file of information that my handler, Fletcher Lane, had given me when he’d told me about the job.

Detective Cliff Ingles was six feet tall, which was a good foot shorter than the giant bouncers who patrolled the club and kept everyone in line. Still, at more than two hundred fifty pounds, Ingles wasn’t a small guy, although his once trim, hard-muscled body was slowly giving way to flabby fat underneath his expensive navy suit.

With his thick honey-blond hair, wide smile, and square chin, Ingles wasn’t an unattractive man. But his ruddy skin got a little more flushed and his brown eyes got a little meaner with every drink he downed. Now he reminded me of a copperhead, all coiled up and ready to lash out and sink his venomous fangs into whoever crossed his path.

Ingles wore his gold detective’s badge openly on the brown leather belt around his waist, along with his gun, almost like being a member of the police force was something to be proud of.

I snorted into my drink. Everyone knew that the majority of the Ashland cops were dirtier than the graffiti that covered so many of the city’s buildings. Ingles was no exception. Fletcher had dug up all sorts of nasty business that the detective was involved in. Extortion, blackmail, stealing drugs and money from crime scenes. Ingles was a real classy guy all the way around.

But he wasn’t going to die for those sins. No, Cliff Ingles was getting my particular brand of attention because he’d tried to lure a thirteen-year-old girl named Rebecca into his car. When Rebecca had resisted, Ingles had badly beaten her, among other horrible things. Ashland was a violent city, full of bad people doing lots of bad things, but Cliff Ingles was the lowest sort of scum.

And I was here tonight to make sure that he never hurt anyone else—pro bono.

Normally, I didn’t work for free. Mine was a highly specialized skill set, and I liked getting paid for it. I earned it, if only for all the blood I had to wash out of my clothes and hair after the fact.

As the Spider, I got paid—a lot—to kill people. I’d been in the assassin business since I was thirteen. Now, creeping up on thirty, I had more money tucked away than I could spend in two lifetimes. Which was one of the reasons why Fletcher, who was also my foster father, kept nagging me to retire. The old man wanted me to live long enough to actually spend and enjoy my ill-gotten gains.

So far, I’d only listened to Fletcher with half an ear. Killing people and cooking barbecue were all I knew how to do. What would I do if I retired? Take up knitting? Adopt stray puppies? Move to the suburbs and try to put my bloody past behind me?

None of those things particularly appealed to me. Well, except adopting the puppies. I’d always been a dog person, especially when it came to corgis.

But the simple fact was that I liked my job. Sure, it was dark, dirty, dangerous work, but the blood and the screams didn’t bother me, and I’d long ago accepted that I was one of the villains. Besides, every once in a while, I got to take care of somebody like Cliff Ingles. Got to make the city of Ashland just a bit safer in my own twisted way.

It was the little things in life that made me happy.

Cool magic surged through the air, interrupting my musings. I glanced over at the bartender, whose eyes glowed a bright blue-white in the semidarkness of the nightclub. The Ice elemental responsible for keeping the bar in one piece for the night was feeding some more of his power into the cold, solid structure.

My own sluggish Ice magic responded to the familiar influx of power trickling into the bar. I was an elemental too, with the rare ability to use two of the four elements, Ice and Stone, although my Ice magic was far weaker than my Stone power. But as the Spider, I didn’t usually use my elemental powers to take down targets.

That’s what my knives were for.

Still, I uncurled my hand from around my drink and stared down at the scar embedded in my palm. A small circle surrounded by eight thin rays—a spider rune, the symbol for patience. My namesake, in more ways than one. A matching scar adorned my other palm.

The spider rune had once been a pretty pendant that I’d worn around my neck as a child, until a Fire elemental had superheated the metal and burned the symbol into my palms, marking me forever the night she’d murdered my family—

“Disgusting pig!”

The waitress that Ingles had been propositioning spat out the words, then drew back her hand and slapped him across the face. Despite the thumping music, I still heard the sharp, stinging crack of the blow at my end of the bar. There weren’t many things you couldn’t do at Northern Aggression, which made me wonder exactly what revolting thing Ingles had just suggested.

“Bitch!” the detective snarled. He surged to his feet, and his hand dropped to the gun on his belt, like he wanted to grab it and coldcock her with the weapon.

The waitress’s dark eyes widened, and she backed up a couple of steps and made a small, discreet hand signal. One of the giant bouncers immediately cut through the crowd and took up a defensive position in front of the waitress, using his roughly seven-foot frame to shield her from Ingles. The giant’s shaved head gleamed like polished ebony under the club’s dim lights.

“Is there a problem?” the giant rumbled, his deep baritone voice cutting through the pulsing beat of the music.

I’d seen this particular giant around the club before. Hard to miss almost seven feet of solid muscle. Xavier was his name.

Ingles’s dark, angry gaze cut to the waitress before flicking back to Xavier. The waitress’s handprint marked the detective’s cheek like a scarlet letter, but he made a visible effort to get himself under control. He might be a member of the po-po, but Ingles knew he’d get his ass kicked if he kept pushing things. Even cops couldn’t get away with assaulting people—at least not in such a public place like Northern Aggression where everyone had their phone in one hand and a drink in the other.

“No problem.” Ingles spat out the words. “The bitch isn’t worth it. I was just leaving.”

Xavier nodded. “You do that.”

Ingles’s eyes narrowed to slits, but he reached into his pocket, drew out a couple of bills, and tossed them onto the bar. Then he started shoving his way through the crowd, heading for the exit.

Instead of immediately following him, I skimmed the scene, my gaze moving from the people clustered three deep around the bar to those grooving out on the dance floor. Looking for trouble, searching for anything out of place, anyone who was taking an interest in my target—or, worse, in me. I’d been an assassin for almost twenty years, and I hadn’t survived this long by being reckless and sloppy.

Once he’d made sure Ingles was really leaving, Xavier turned back to the waitress, and the two of them started talking. To them, the detective was just another creepy customer they’d kicked to the curb. It happened, even here at Northern Aggression, where very little was off-limits. But no one else showed any interest in the detective or, more important, in me.

Time to make my move.

I swallowed the rest of my gin and tonic, enjoying the sensation of the cold liquor sliding down my throat before starting its slow, sweet burn in the pit of my stomach. Then I paid my own tab, stepped away from the Ice bar, and sauntered out of the club, moving toward my prey.

The Spider was finally ready to spin her deadly web for the evening.