The Judas Line

dark, dark eyes and strong, firm chins. The main differences were the perpetual sneer on Burke’s full lips and the hooked nose that came to a sharp point. Mine was much shorter with a small arch high on the bridge.

“Why warn me, Burke? You could’ve had me dead bang,” I panted after muttering a Healing of my own, adding to the cinnamon smell.

His smile was pure concentrated mean. “I wanted to see if you still had some mustard in you, Olivier.”

“And?”

“The years away from the Family business hasn’t made you completely incompetent, although your Botanical magic is second tier. Your alarm sprigs were simple to locate and bypass without dispelling the magic.”

I stretched, working the kinks out. “And Eliza, my neighbor? Why her?”

Burke shrugged, performing a bit of stretching himself. “Why not? She saw me arrive at your door, so I invited her in for a … bite.” All fifty of his teeth flared at me, a jackal’s smile carrying the devil’s humor.

Suppressing the spike of anger that flared briefly through me took all my considerable training. Fight cold, not hot, that’s how I’d been trained. Taking a slow, deep breath, I focused on my murderous cousin.

My face must’ve betrayed some of my anger because Burke smiled even wider, a shark ready for breakfast. My K-bar twirled between his fingers. “Where’s the Silver, Olivier?”

“It’s Jude now, Burke. Olivier was always so … pretentious.”

He snorted. “Have to agree with you there. Now, give it up, the Silver.”

It was my turn to flash a hard and nasty smile. “You can search a thousand years and never find it, Burke, but something tells me that you won’t be looking for too much longer.” Quickly I reached down and tore off a leg from the cheap coffee table. “Let’s dance, you and me.”

He lunged, the razor edge of the K-bar whistling toward my chest. I blocked the knife with my improvised club, batting it aside and knocking Burke on the shoulder with the backswing. Stiffened fingers caught me in the throat and I stumbled backwards, gagging. Grinning savagely, Burke rushed in, stabbing for my eyes, but I fell to my knees and the knife swished above my scalp, missing me by millimeters.

Snarling, Burke slashed down, aiming for the join of my neck and shoulder, and I raised my hand, a silvery cylinder glinting between my fingers. The K-bar’s blade parted and two thirds of the knife spun off past my ear, severed from the hilt. For a split second he stared at the ruined knife, the sheared two inches sticking out like a reproach; then I swept the molecular knife across the inside of his wrist, snapping tendons and slicing the Ulnar artery. Blood spurted from the damaged vessel as I leapt to my feet and quickly swept the inch-long invisible blade across his eyes.

Sobbing and shrieking he fell to the floor, clawing at eyes that leaked aqueous and vitreous fluid down his cheeks. Wasting no time, I scrambled over his body and pinned his arms with mine. “Where’s your backup?” I yelled over his mewling sobs.

What I got was a Word that smelled like bleach: Pain. A tingle washed over my skin like the skittering of hundreds of spiders and another smell, like rotting meat, hit me like a brick as the unguent I had applied broke his magic.

I grunted. “Toadflax and Wintergreen, Burke, worked into a paste and smeared on my chest.”

Burked cursed and spat. Knowing that further conversation was probably futile, I released his bad arm to run the molecular knife across his throat … twice. Arterial spray spewed across my face and clothes, coating me with warm, coppery saltiness.

Wasting no time, I reached under the couch for one of the many hold-out weapons. The cool feeling of the Kimber.45 ACP I’d stashed there met my fingers and I drew it out, ready in case Burke had backup. From the direction of my cousin I heard a gurgle and rapidly weakening thrashing sounds, but I ignored them. Blind and throat-cut, he no longer posed a threat.

No one burst through a window or door, no magic spells, no hail of bullets. Everything was … quiet. Slowly I let my breath out, lowering the ACP. When a cell suddenly rang, startling me, I nearly shot myself in the damn foot.

The tinny ringtone came from the front pocket of Burke’s shiny pants. I fished inside and pulled out a sleek Windows phone. The tune was Murder by Numbers by the Police. It seems Burke had a macabre sense of humor. I was glad I’d killed him.

“Yeah,” I answered in what I hoped was a good imitation of my cousin’s deep, gruff voice.

“Is he dead yet, my dear boy?”

Oh lord. My stomach bounced off the low-rent worn beige shag carpet about seventeen times while my heart froze in my chest. It was Him. The Voice.

“I asked you if he was dead yet, Burke,” the Voice intoned with a hint of exasperation. Deep, cultured, smooth and slick as motor oil-a sound that inspired trust, veneration and love. The second you start to really listen, fall under its spell, you’re done. Put out the cat and call in the dog, it’s over.

A faked cough bought me a few seconds as I considered my next play. “On the floor, unconscious,” I said roughly.

The Voice became wintry. “Why haven’t you killed him?”

“Need to find out where he hid the Silver.”

“Good to see you aren’t a waste of space, Burke. Wake him up and put him on, he’ll talk to me.”

Oh well, it had been worth a shot. “The part of Burke will now be played by a much more handsome and virile man.” A note of sarcastic amusement wended its way through my voice, guaranteed to anger.

“Olivier.” Low, solemn and loaded with spite, he turned my name into a curse. Yeah, he was angry all right.

“What’s the matter, Voice, you sound unhappy. Were you really counting on Burke to take me out? Has it been so long that you forgot who you’re dealing with?”

The Voice regained its smooth, cloying composure and his words came out sweet, mellifluous and warm, but with a foul, hateful undercurrent. Like honey-coated shit. “My dear boy, you had the potential to be the best killer alive, pure swift murder, but fifteen years is a long time to be out of the game and you never really had the heart for the hard work. Burke has had his nose deep in it since you left. We both thought, once you were found, you would come out worse for the experience.”

“The more fool you.”

“Careful boy.” The Voice was now filled with such wrath that it literally blistered the skin of my ear. I threw the cell across the room just before it exploded into a million burning fragments, one of which cut a shallow groove across my neck as it whizzed by.

“Damn it!” I swore, clapping a hand to the cut. My fingers came away sticky. The Voice’s pride kept him from being anything like a good sport and I had poked the old bear hard with a sharp stick.

Burke could lie like a politician and the Voice practically invented it, so it was conceivable that backup could be moments away. Snarling, I voiced a Word that hung the smell of peanuts in the air. I had ten minutes, more or less, to make preparations because my cover was blown big time and Hell was coming for me.

Tacky, covered in rust-red drying blood, looking like a tourist in Baghdad, I’d stand out wherever I went. My mind started working in overdrive as old habits, old reflexes started to come back online. The familiar rush I’d get when on a job, the adrenaline high, fizzled through my flesh like the hit of a really good designer drug. God in Heaven, I’d missed that feeling. For just a split second, barely the tick of a clock, I felt the seductive tug of temptation.

No. None of that. I’d done enough harm in my life, maybe more than I could make up for. Maybe enough to stain my soul black for all eternity, but I’d been given a second chance and I realized that I’d been pissing that chance away for fifteen years, hiding like a child afraid of the boogeyman.

Perhaps Burke’s arrival had been fortuitous, kick-starting me out of my comfort zone, planting a metaphorical boot to my lazy backside.

Running into the kitchen, I opened the cupboard under the sink and carefully removed a large cardboard cylinder, the kind used for dishwashing tabs. I removed the plastic lid, revealing little blue and white plastic soap packets, a blind in case someone looked. Removing the concealed tray, I pulled out the tabs to reveal the compartment within. Ten inches deep, eight in diameter, just large enough to hold a plastic one-quart fishbowl, the cheap kind you see holding the feeder goldfish at the pet store. The bowl was filled with water and floating in the center-held there by a silver chain glued to a clear plastic lid-was a blackened leather pouch the size of a large