Paladin (Graven Gods Book 1) Read online

  I’d always suspected I was one of the reasons they broke up, though Mary had sworn the divorce was the inevitable result of Bob’s asshattery.

  Remembering her voice drawling that bit of sarcasm made me smile, even as it caused a familiar stab of grief.

  After breakfast -- Captain Crunch for me, Tender Vittles for Calliope -- I scooped up cat and purse for the trip to the shop. Leaving Cal at home wasn’t an option; she’d avenge her loneliness on my antiques. I liked the house too much to leave it to Calliope’s dubious feline mercy.

  Besides, bookstores and cats go together. Customers loved sitting in one of the store’s shabby armchairs, Calliope purring in somebody’s lap, drinking coffee and reading used paperbacks. These days, a bookstore needs all the customer-bait it can get.

  New day, I reminded myself. Lots of shit to get done.

  Purse slung over my shoulder and Cal in my arms, I started for the bright blue Kia Soul parked at the curb. I glanced up at the house silhouetted against the bright blue October morning. It had that charmingly creepy quality some Victorians have, with its mansard roof of fish scale slate, dove gray siding, and white porch. Geometric details were picked out around the windows in slate gray trim, while the window frames themselves were painted a deep blue.

  My eyes strayed to the top floor, then slid quickly away. Some things you just don’t want to think about first thing in the morning. The fact that Mom had been murdered in the dojo was definitely one of them.

  I put Calliope into the cat carrier belted into the passenger seat. She went willingly enough, only to huddle behind the wire door looking grim. I don’t think she liked my driving.

  We roared out of the driveway a bit faster than we probably should. Flights of Fancy was supposed to open at ten o’clock, and I was running late. Last night’s… dream, sleepwalking episode, whatever you wanted to call it, had resulted in my hitting the snooze button a few too many times. My eyes felt gritty, and my muscles ached.

  With the cat rumbling bad-tempered complaints from the depths of her carrier, I navigated the neighborhood’s narrow streets. Victorian, Craftsman, and Colonials presided over manicured postage-stamp lawns, surrounded by elms and oaks flaming with the colors of fall. In my upscale Graven neighborhood, people treated their yards like children, nurturing them with the fanatical attention of helicopter parents. Elaborate gardens, like elaborate old houses, were the rule rather than the exception in Morgan Heights. Most of the homes dated back at least a century, and some went all the way back to the founding of the city two hundred years ago.

  By all rights I should live in some skanky apartment complex, while working my ass off at a couple of minimum wage jobs in order to afford rent.

  Instead, my mother had left me the house, the strip mall my bookstore occupied, and several other properties. There’d also been half a million in cash and investments. Apparently it was old family money, though exactly what my ancestors had done to earn it was anybody’s guess. Mary had been surprisingly closed-mouth about it, despite my attempts to get her to talk.

  God knew the money hadn’t come from running a bookstore. The only one who’s ever gotten rich selling books is Jeff Bezos.

  When it came to solving my life’s assorted mysteries, I wasn’t exactly Richard Paladin. Either the clues weren’t there, or I was too dumb to recognize them.

  Flights of Fancy occupied one end of the strip mall, a couple of miles from the house. My tenants included a Chinese restaurant with a decent buffet, a tattoo parlor that did truly amazing ink, and a consignment shop whose owner seemed to find me somehow menacing.

  Jennifer Stone got out of her car at the same time I emerged from mine. She was a pretty forty-year-old, with red hair, blue eyes and a teenage son who was one of my best customers. Dave Stone was fifteen, a carrot-top like his mother, tall, blue-eyed and surprisingly athletic for such a devout nerd. A participant in the weekly Magic the Gathering tournaments, Dave also adored Calliope, which got him automatic cat-lover points with me.

  I had no idea why his mother seemed to find me so intimidating.

  “Hello, Ms. Stone,” I said over Calliope’s sharp black ears, as the cat rode in my arms. “Pretty day.” It was the kind of cool, piercingly clear morning that made October in South Carolina a luminous delight.

  Waving vaguely without looking at me, my tenant speed-walked to her shop. Its door opened and closed with a jangle of agitated bells before I even made it across the parking lot.

  “What the hell is her problem?” Shaking my head, I unlocked Flights of Fancy, pushed the door open, and released Calliope. The cat thumped to the floor and ghosted off ahead of me, soundless as a puff of smoke. The string of bells attached to the door jingled as I closed it.

  Turning on the lights, I surveyed the room with satisfaction, breathing deep, enjoying the dry, dusty smell of ink, books and old paper.

  I loved that smell. It always reminded me of summer mornings at Mary’s shop in Charlotte. Sprawled on my stomach reading while my aunt worked, or sharing a giggle with her about the handsome hunk on the cover of some romance.

  God, I missed my aunt. It had been three years since Mary died, but sometimes the pain felt as vivid as if it had just happened. Drunk driver, a blind curve, head-on collision. The only comfort in the whole situation was that it had been so fast, the coroner said she didn’t suffer.

  But that meant I also hadn’t had time to say goodbye, just as I’d been unable to say goodbye to my parents and my brother. Or if I had, I didn’t remember it.

  The family had a tragic history of car wrecks. My father and brother died two years before my mother’s murder when their Jeep ran off the road and flipped. Sometimes I wondered if the home invasion that had killed Mom would have happened at all if Dad had still been alive. Thinking about that kind of thing would drive you crazy if you let it, so I didn’t.

  You’d think my amnesia would be a blessing, considering how many tragic losses I’d suffered. And true, there was a certain welcome numbness that came with a lack of memory. Yet I also found comfort in my happy Mary memories that I didn’t have when it came to my family.

  So I stayed busy. Since returning to Graven following Mary’s death, I’d opened Flights of Fancy and turned it into a haven for my fellow nerds. There were posters celebrating anime and superhero movies, models of the Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon hung from the ceiling, and a cardboard Harry Potter rode his broom over the children’s section.

  I also held Magic the Gathering card game tournaments every Saturday, hosted elaborate Halloween costume parties, and booked science fiction novelists to do signings.

  As a result, kids like Dave Stone hung out at my shop. And yes, my little nerd friends bought everything from science fiction novels to Dungeons and Dragons manuals. Yet I was motivated less by profit than a craving for friendship. I’d spent too many lonely childhood years when my only friends were Calliope and Mary.

  And Paladin, once my imaginary boy companion, now my swashbuckling magical hero. Also demon lover, best friend, and erotic inspiration. Whoever, whenever, however I needed him.

  “And I always will be,” he murmured, deep voice filling my head.

  Going to the antique china hutch against one wall, I reached into the cabinet and pulled out a coffee filter and a bag of expensive coffee. The customers loved the brew as much as I did, which was how I justified buying it.

  Running a business is expensive. I had to be careful or I’d burn through my cash and end up flat broke. As it was, I survived thanks to customers who never set foot in the store. I loves me some Internet. Fulfilling the needs of my online clientele kept me in business, not to mention prowling conventions and flea markets searching for collectables.

  Now if only Paladin’s novels would take off. At the moment my royalties were just barely paying the shop’s water bill.

  And yes, I am aware of the irony of a bookseller writing e-books. More than one brick-and-mortar shopkeeper has given me Facebook lectures about b
eing an e-traitor.

  But I was a writer first, and I wanted to be published. The big New York publishers didn’t bite, which left self-publishing as my only option. Sue me.

  And why didn’t New York bite? Was I that bad?

  My answers to that question usually range from I’m awesome to I suck, depending on whether I’ve gotten any one-star reviews on Amazon that particular day.

  “You’re good, Summer. Ignore the trolls.”

  “You’re not exactly objective, Paladin.”

  He snorted. “And you can spot a single cloud -- complete with silver lining -- and imagine it’s a hurricane.”

  “Of course. Being neurotic is as much a hazard of the writer’s life as carpal tunnel.”

  While the coffee pot hissed and burbled, I opened a package of cookies and arranged them on a delicate china plate painted with peacock feathers. Not that I’d see anybody until school let out that afternoon. But I was an optimist -- and I liked cookies. Luckily, I had a fast metabolism, or Google Earth would carry pictures of my ass.

  Munching happily -- Mmm, Oreos -- I sat down at my desk and pulled out my phone and its small Bluetooth keyboard. I hate thumb typing. I like using all ten fingers when I write.

  Opening the Paladin’s Quest file I’d stowed in Dropbox, I sipped my coffee and let my eyes slide out of focus.

  Some writers know exactly where their books are going. They create plot outlines and fill out character sheets listing everything from their hero’s eye color to his favorite ice cream flavor. I envied people like that. I also hated their hugely organized guts, since I never have any frickin’ clue what I’m going to write until I write it.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried plotting my books. Unfortunately, the results ended up sucking like a Dyson. I finally gave up and went back to writing my old disorganized way.

  So I sat in my bookstore inhaling the scent of other people’s words and staring at the screen until I could see him, and he was as real and solid to me as any other human.

  “Hello, Paladin,” I murmured.

  “Hi, baby,” he replied, in his deep, demon lover croon.

  It was too damned bad he wasn’t real.

  Chapter Two

  Richard Paladin sat with his feet up on his desk, his chair balanced on two legs, his hands laced over his flat stomach. Watching me watch him.

  I loved watching him.

  Paladin was not a very big guy -- about a foot shorter than Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden or Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, maybe 5’10” or so. He was also built like a mixed martial arts ass kicker -- powerful shoulders, rippling biceps, and big callused hands with scarred knuckles. Magical sigils marked his palms, and tattoos swirled up his brawny forearms, channels for his magic.

  His face went with the bruiser build: broad and harshly handsome, with a crooked nose and the pale, icy gaze of an arctic wolf. Dark hair hung to his superhero shoulders, thick, curling and unfashionably long.

  Dangerous as he looked, though, Paladin lived up to his name. In between investigating insurance scams and trailing cheating husbands, he worked pro-bono for every crime victim with a sob story. The man was a sucker for a crying woman or a pitiful kid.

  Paladin’s Quest was an illustration of the kind of trouble his soft heart could get him into. A twelve-year old girl named Chantel Brown had hired him to find out who’d really killed her mother. The cops thought it was her father. Chantel was just as convinced Daddy had nothing to do with it. She’d paid Paladin one hundred bucks in wrinkled bills, the sum total of all the Christmas, birthday and good-grade money she’d accumulated in her decade and change on the planet. Being Paladin, he intended to give it back once the crime was solved. He’d taken it only because the money let him tell the cops he was investigating on behalf of a client.

  And yeah, that storyline probably was wish fulfillment on my part. I’d have loved to hire Paladin to solve my mom’s murder when I was a kid. But at the time, he’d been busy being my personal Peter Pan -- the boy who encouraged me to do battle with my collection of bullies.

  By the time I’d grown up, so had he. One day I turned around and there he was. Professional ass-kicker, knight in black leather, distilled sex on the hoof. I’d started writing about him because he’d seduced me into it. I had to know about the life he led, had to share his adventures.

  My then-boyfriend Ronnie Gordon had seriously hated my fledgling writing career. He’d had reason, since Paladin interested me more than he did. Not only was Paladin more heroic, he was better in bed, if only in my vivid fantasy life.

  “That’s not saying much. The kid couldn’t find your clit with GPS.”

  “He didn’t care enough to look.” And he’d had gall, bitching about Paladin as an indicator of my shaky grasp on reality when he’d been jealous of a guy who didn’t even exist.

  Hi, Glass House, my name is Brick.

  Sitting down at the desk with a mug of coffee and a cookie, I contemplated the phone’s little screen. Tension coiled in my stomach as I put my hands on the Bluetooth keyboard. I wanted to find out what happened next.

  “No, you really don’t,” Paladin told me grimly. “But you’re not going to be happy until you do.”

  Calliope leaped weightlessly onto the desk and eyed me with feline disapproval. I ignored both of them and got to work.

  * * *

  Gerald Moss was a couple of inches taller than Paladin, wiry rather than muscular, with long, ropy arms and hands that looked almost feminine. If he had power tatts like Paladin’s, they were concealed by the windbreaker he wore over his dirt-encrusted jeans.

  His narrow face was fringed with a scraggly beard that did an inadequate job of camouflaging his thin mouth and crooked teeth. His red hair was buzzed short enough to show his sunburned scalp.

  Moss’s eyes were the only thing about him that wasn’t standard issue redneck. His lashes were as long as a girl’s, and his large eyes were a clear, lovely blue. Unfortunately, their expression was pure addict: flat and calculating, as if he went through life looking for his next fix.

  Except what he was addicted to wasn’t crack or meth. He was one of Valak’s acolytes, and he was hooked on killing people.

  Killing women, to be exact.

  Women like Jamella Brown, whose daughter, Chantel, had hired Paladin to solve her murder. Valak’s spells had convinced the cops her father was the culprit, but Paladin wasn’t so easy to fool.

  He found Gerald Moss feeding his addiction at Diamond Don’s, a strip club on the outskirts of Graven. It was four in the morning, early enough that a woman’s screams might not attract attention in time to do her any good.

  The killer had pinned his latest victim to the cracked pavement behind the cement block building, not far from the dumpster he probably intended to throw her into. The air stank of rotting garbage and rang with her shrieks.

  Paladin headed for them, rage lengthening his strides.

  The little blonde flailed and bucked as Moss held her down, jerking at her short pleather skirt. Her face was white with terror, eyes wide and crazed. She’d managed to claw his face with her leopard-print manicure, and he cursed her with blood rolling down his cheeks.

  Power burned from the base of Paladin’s brain, sizzling down his neck and into his arms, spilling along the amplifying channels of the tatts. Magic exploded from his right palm with a hissing crackle. It was no sparkler spell, either. This was a merciless hammer that slammed into the side of Moss’s face. He went flying to hit the strip club’s wall so hard, his head thumped like a melon against the cement blocks.

  Unfortunately, Moss bounced back to his feet almost immediately, blood pouring from his nose and a howl twisting rat-thin lips. He punched the air, clawed fingers glowing bright blue, as if his bones were flashlights.

  Paladin’s left hand shot up, and the attack exploded in a rain of impotent sparks off the protective spell tattooed on his palm. He needed good magical shields, given the many murderous fucktards he was always pissing off.


  Moss didn’t get a chance to try again. Paladin went after him, mouth tight and blue eyes burning.

  The killer threw up both hands, palms burning bright enough to make even Paladin wince. “Get back, you fucker!”

  “Yeah, no.” Paladin drove a vicious right into Moss’s jaw, sending him reeling. Paladin kept after him, ramming punch after punch into his head and gut, relentless as a jackhammer.

  Which nearly got him shot when Moss pulled a gun.

  Paladin threw up a hand to shield, sending the bullet ricocheting. He smacked the weapon out of Moss’s hand and buried a fist in his gut. When Moss bent, gagging, Paladin grabbed the back of his head and jerked it down to meet the knee he rammed up into it. Cartilage crunched, blood flew, and Moss shrieked a nasal curse. He staggered back, hand cupped over his broken nose. “Mothafucka!”

  “That’s just an appetizer, asshole. You’re not going to kill any more women in my town.” Pitiful bodies littered his memory, leaking psychic impressions of pain on dirty pavement or bloody floors.

  The cops had taken away the bodies, but the victims’ anguish had burned Paladin’s fingers when he’d touched the places they’d died. His head rang with their ghostly cries for justice. They had been strippers, hookers, and addicts. But also mothers, daughters, sisters and friends. And no one deserved what had been done to them.

  The scales had to balance or there was only chaos.

  Paladin grabbed Moss’s throat and slammed him against the strip club wall. The killer’s fingers started to burn blue, but Paladin clamped a hand over his hard enough to crush bone. Moss howled in pain as his palm went dark again.

  Paladin’s lips curled off his teeth. He had the bastard now, and there was only one way this was going to end. His tatts glowed, pumping magic into the fingers wrapped around his foe’s throat. The spell shot into Moss’s brain, seeking out a ball of magic brilliant with the life force he’d stolen from his victims. Snaking black streams of parasitic magic wrapped around that energy: the spell Valak had planted to collect it.