Anna's Hope Episode One (4 page)

Vale had an ancient, powerful
vibe to it. Marchtown was simply confusing and chaotic. Great, epic
tales could and had happened in Vale. In Marchtown … oh boy, if the
vibe was enough to go off,
anything
could happen here.

“Come on, kid, let’s do this. I’m pretty
sure he’s in there now. I probably don’t need to ask – considering
your pedigree – but do you remember the plan?” Meredith reapplied a
coat of luscious red lipstick. It was the kind of hue that belonged
in cut rubies or cut veins. It drew so much attention to her lips,
it was a surprise men didn’t walk straight into them.

Anna
wanted to ask – plan, what plan?
Meredith’s entire operation came down to two steps: walk into the
bar, and walk out with the kingpin. Everything else would be worked
out on the fly, as she’d put it.

Anna
had never been a particularly good
police witch, but she did have an eye for procedure. If you wanted
to carry out a successful sting operation, you usually had to put
more thought into it than ‘meh, we’ll just chuck a fire ball at
whatever moves and run out the back if there’s trouble.’

Before she could say anything, Meredith
walked away, carrying a slim black handbag over one shoulder as she
glided towards the bar.

The bar in question looked like little more
than a nondescript doorway sunk into the side of a drab brick
building. There weren’t any bouncers out front, there wasn’t even a
sign.

There was, however, magic. Anna could feel
it itching her back and leaving a heat rash.

“Okay, you can do this,” she whispered to
herself. “Meredith is here, and she’ll know what to do if things go
wrong.” She clapped her hands together in a praying
motion.

If things go wrong? More like when. She
couldn’t turn off her police brain. And right now said brain was
screaming at her to turn and run away.

There was only one silver lining to this
looming storm cloud – Luminaria had stayed at home. She was tired.
Meaning Anna could do this without a talking, cursing cat ruining
everything.

That being said, occasionally Luminaria
could be useful. While she was great at keeping the house free from
all but the darkest and most evil mice (which Luminaria doted on),
the evil cat was handy in a fight.

On occasion, Luminaria had actually
protected Anna. When it served her interests, of course.

Still, it was nice to leave the old crone at
home.

“Come on.” Meredith waved her forward with
one bony hand. “The night has only just begun, and I’ve got things
to do after this.”

It was 3 AM in the morning. The night was
over.

The chase, however, was about to begin.

Anna
had been to some dark places before.
She'd worked in Vale, for one, and that place was well known for
its seedy, shady establishments.

But this ... this was worse.

As she and Meredith walked their way into
the bar (Meredith technically glided), Anna couldn't contain her
swallow. She gulped like a fish coming across a sudden shark, or
bar-full of sharks.

Every single patron sitting in this murky,
dingy pub looked ... dark.

There was a vampire sitting on a barstool to
her left, drinking something that smelt suspiciously like real
blood.

To her right, she passed a bona fide
banshee, staring at its empty drink with pale white irises tinged
with red capillaries - a sign of tension from a life spent
screaming at the top of your lungs, no doubt.

If the patrons weren't bad enough, the
wait staff was worse. There were two burly looking magicians behind
the bar, serving drinks from bottles with so many runes written
over the glass it was a surprise the liquid inside didn't boil and
shoot out in a giant shot of glittering steam.

Even though Anna had worked for several
months as a police witch, and she had come across mini little hell
holes like this before, she'd always had backup.

She'd never been following a leather-clad
lascivious bounty hunter, either.

“Let's get a drink,” Meredith suggested in
a low and sultry voice that made every man - human or not - turn
and stare at her.

While Meredith was decked out in the
tightest leather this side of a dominatrix conference, Anna was in
the same old drab clothes she usually wore: an ankle-length blue
skirt and a neck-high overly lacy blouse that looked like something
Liberace would pass on for being too over the top. She also had a
pair of sensible shoes and socks.

She was not and never would be
fashionable. Even if you threw away all the floral and lace in her
wardrobe, it wouldn't work. Anna couldn't pull off stylish. She'd
tried it before, and people just laughed at her.

She had neither the body nor the
personality. She was tall, willowy, and a little gaunt. Her skin
was usually as pale as fresh milk, and her dull hazel eyes were
often red-rimmed from her allergies. Her hair was this knotted
curly mess of nondescript black. It wasn't pretty - it was awkward.
Which summed her up perfectly.

“Excuse me.” Meredith slid onto a bar
stool, her leather pants somehow not sticking to it and causing her
to fall off. “Two drinks please.”

“What do you want?” The barman
shifted his shoulder, indicating the splendid array of dark liquors
behind him. Even though the lighting was suitably gloomy, Anna
could still make out some of the titles written on the
bottles.
Blood of a Cat
was a particularly worrying one. If Luminaria were
here, she'd likely swat the magician, pour the bottle down the
sink, and breathe on him with her tuna breath until he
died.

“What do we want? Hmm. Whatever you think
we deserve,” Meredith replied cryptically. And sexily, very sexily.
Every word that came out of her mouth sounded like satin slipping
down skin.

If her intended effect was to distract the
barman, it was working. The guy cracked a smile, even though it
looked like he had a permanent frown etched into his gaunt face. He
leaned down on the bar and started to chat to Meredith.

Not once did the guy glance Anna's way,
not even to ask Meredith what on earth she'd brought with
her.

Anna
sat awkwardly on the edge of her
stool, shifting her head to the side as she again stared at the
rest of the bar.

According to Meredith, this would be easy.
According to Meredith, the 'kingpin' would be sauntering around
here somewhere, completely unaware there was a bounty out on his
head, and completely unprepared for a leather-clad witch and her
frumpy sidekick to take him down.

Anna
couldn't see the kingpin anywhere
though, unless he was taking a really long time in the
bathroom.

Then again, she didn't know what he looked
like. When she'd questioned Meredith about that, she'd said Anna
would know him when she saw him. The guy had a dark magical vibe,
apparently. Well, that was hardly a distinguishing feature - every
single patron in this hellish bar had a dark vibe. It was kind of a
requirement of entry. Those with angelic vibes didn't drink cat's
blood next to banshees and gloomy vampires.

Tuning out of Meredith’s conversation,
Anna turned around on her chair, trying to get a better view of the
far corner of the bar.

The lighting over there was appalling.
Though she understood that added to the overall ambience, it had to
be an OH&S risk. Someone could and would trip, spilling their
wine over another patron. Or they could stab the wrong person.
Whatever constituted a humorous accident in a bar like
this.

It was while she was peering into the gloom
that she saw something.

There was a man sitting in a booth with
his back pressed hard into the chair behind him and his legs rested
on the table. It wasn't his excessively nonchalant behavior that
caught Anna's attention - having your feet on the furniture
probably wasn't a taboo here.

No, it was the fact he felt ...
different.

There was one upside of having magical
allergies. There was a bucket full of downsides, mind you - but
occasionally her illness came in handy.

She was exquisitely sensitive to different
kinds of magics. Not only would she sneeze whenever she encountered
the stuff, but depending on her symptoms, she could tell what type
of magic was being practiced. Good magic tended to give her a runny
nose and watery eyes. Bad magic gave her a blood-red heat rash and
made her spine tingle as if spiders were growing in the
bone.

The guy in the corner wasn't bad. He was
good. She could feel it. He wasn't practicing any magic at the
moment, but he'd clearly practiced some recently.

As her eyes started to water, she rubbed
them with one hand.

The guy was wearing a pair of thick pants
and a nondescript grey top. His boots were enormous, and clearly
made for climbing up mountains or surviving mudslides. He wasn’t
decked in the usual array of black velvet and leather you saw in
places like this.

Just like her, he didn't fit in.

She tilted her head to the side as she tried
to get a better look at him.

If she had to, she'd bet he was another
bounty hunter just like her. Why else would a good guy come to a
bar like this?

Anna
pressed her lips together and
wondered if he was after the same bounty she was.

There was every possibility he wasn't. Just
one look around this bar confirmed every single patron had
something to hide. There was likely a bounty out on all of
them.

“Are you coming, or what?” Meredith said
pointedly as she looped a firm hand around Anna's arm.

“Sorry, what?” Anna lurched around on her
stool, realizing she'd zoned out so badly she hadn't heard a word
of what Meredith had said.

“Are you coming? Our friend here has some
fabulous wine he wants us to try. It's out back,” Meredith
added.

Anna
's gut reaction was to say “hell no”
at the top of her lungs. Go out back with a dark magician like
that, and you'll wind up bled dry for his next vampire
customer.

She had to stifle her common sense here,
though, as she was on an operation. Or at least a semblance of
one.

While Anna had always assumed she'd been
an appalling police witch, maybe that wasn't entirely true.
Something had rubbed off on her during her stint in Vale - the
importance of good procedure. If you wanted to keep a city safe -
especially one as murky as Marchtown - you had to have a set of
rules in place. You had to know exactly how to deal with different
types of crime, and you had to stick to those procedures. Over
time, you modified and improved them, until you had a
rulebook.

Marchtown didn't have a rulebook though,
and nor did its bounty hunters. They looked exactly like the kind
to tear pages out of rulebooks to light cigarettes with.

“Are you coming?” Meredith said one last
time, shooting Anna a very specific look. It was the kind of look
that told her that unless she got her butt off that stool, she'd be
kicked off.

“Yep,” Anna squeaked as she jumped
down.

By the time she shuffled past the bar to
join Meredith and the magician, the bounty hunter in the corner was
gone.

Though she craned her neck to stare right
into the far corner of the room, she couldn't see a trace of him,
nor his massive action boots.

Before she could wonder how he'd disappeared
so quickly, Meredith waved her forward with a sharp cough.

Anna
followed.

As soon as they walked through a dark
doorway into an equally dark hall, she started to feel her
allergies kick up.

A nasty red rash was rising up her chest,
and the tingling in her back was so bad she had to squirm as she
walked.

Yep, they were about to encounter some
seriously dark magic.

Meredith's stiletto heels clicked along the
floor, sounding like nails being driven into the wood with every
step. She was a decent enough witch that she'd be able to feel the
dark vibe, but the woman looked as confident and calm as ever.

How did she do it? Anna thought briefly to
herself.

While Meredith was strutting forward into
what was obvious to everyone was a trap, Anna could barely hold it
together. Her hands were sweaty, her heart was a fragile beating
mess, and her tingly spine was killing her.

Before she could turn around and run back to
the bar, they arrived at the backroom.

It was more of a side room, technically - as
the long corridor continued beyond them.

She wasn't in the mood to point that out
though.

The magician pushed his hand into the
door, and it creaked like a gravestone coming to life. It sent such
a shot of nerves pulsing down Anna's back, it was a surprise she
didn't fry herself.

“So where's that wine, sugar?” Meredith
purred to the magician as he led the way into the room.

It was dark in here. Like really dark.
There wasn't a window throwing light in from the street. And
whatever bare illumination made it in from the hall stopped at the
door.

“So,” the magician said, voice dripping
with menace.

Oh hell, Anna thought.