Zanaikeyros - Son of Dragons (Pantheon of Dragons #1)(3)
“And my deadline?” Zane asked.
“Friday at midnight,” Axe replied.
“So tomorrow…” Zane sat back and chuckled. Lord Ethyron didn’t play around. Apparently, he wanted these bastards dead, like yesterday, and Lord Saphyrius had made the call…for Levi.
He gave the paper a second, cursory glance and committed the address to memory: It was the name of a local hangout in Denver, the Two Forks Mall, a place where gang members often gathered after dark to see what kind of mischief they could get into. Zane could easily slip through the portal at twilight, stake out an advantage before the sun went down, and mete out the required executions before the clock struck midnight. He folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. “Very well,” he grunted, putting his feet back up on the coffee table.
The way he saw it, the night would go off without a hitch.
Three human gangsters—that was child’s play.
However, it had been a really long day already. Bottom line: If he was going to execute the criminals in the next twenty-four hours, he needed to catch a little shut-eye.
Chapter Two
“District attorney’s office; this is Jordan.” Jordan Anderson twirled her mechanical pencil between her thumb and forefinger and tapped the eraser impatiently against the desk. It was Friday night, only five more minutes until quitting time, and she really didn’t want to take another call.
“Is this Jordan Anderson?”
She rolled her eyes. Being that the call had been put through on her private line, and she had just given the caller her first name, who else could it be? “Yes, it is. How may I help you?”
The voice on the other end of the phone dropped to an eerie, demented purr. “Do you know what happens to witches in Salem, Jordan?”
Jordan held the phone away from her ear and stared blankly at the receiver. She cleared her throat and pressed it back to her lobe. “Uh, no, I don’t. And since this happens to be Denver—and the twenty-first century—I can’t say that I’m really interested.” She was just about to hang up, perhaps deliver a few choice words to her secretary for putting the call through, when something made her pause: All day long she’d had the oddest, sinking feeling in her stomach, like something major in her life was about to change, like the axis she had always stood upon was about to shift beneath her feet, and she had no idea where the feeling was coming from. Perhaps this call was somehow related; the vibe was oddly the same.
When the caller began to chuckle in a crass, deranged chortle, she shivered. “Well, you’re about to find out,” he said.
“Who is this?” Jordan demanded.
He whistled the introductory tune to The Twilight Zone in the receiver. “It’s your death calling.”
Now this grabbed Jordan’s full attention. She leaned forward; pulled the base of the phone closer, toward her keyboard; and hit a small red button to begin recording the call. “I see. And does my death have a name?”
“Yeah,” he sneered. “Former inmate number 28765. The innocent guy you put in prison.”
Jordan swallowed convulsively, even as she scribbled the number down on a Post-it. She wasn’t sure if it would help at all, considering the fact that he might be lying, and every guilty perp she had ever put away believed he or she was innocent. She would need a better clue. “And what did I put you in prison for?”
“Sexual assault.” He laughed, as if the very term was somehow funny, and her stomach clenched in response.
“Well, Mr. 28765”—she pronounced each number with heavy sarcasm—“I think you should be advised that you are threatening an officer of the court, and that happens to be a felony, not to mention a parole violation. Furthermore—”
“Oh, it’s not a threat,” he interrupted. “It’s a promise. And frankly, I don’t give a damn who you think you are, you haughty skank.” Before Jordan could reply, he taunted, “I know where you live, and I watched you last night.” He groaned. “You were sitting oh-so-cozy in your red silk pajamas, eating popcorn in front of your big-screen TV. What were you watching, witch? Salem’s Lot?”
Jordan frowned, chewing on her bottom lip, as she tried to remember what she had been wearing last night…
A pair of red silk pajamas.
And she had been eating popcorn on the sofa.
She sat up straight in her chair. “How long did you spend in prison, Mister…”—she paused—“what did you say your name was again?”
He laughed. “Oh, it’s not going to be that easy. In fact, it isn’t going to be easy…or enjoyable…or quick at all. But it is going to be soon.”
Jordan tried to home in on his voice. He had a faint South American accent, perhaps Cuban or Colombian, and he sounded like he was in his late teens or early twenties, definitely no more than twenty-five. Since she didn’t deal with juvenile cases, he had to have been sentenced in the last seven years. “Look, Mr. Whatever-Your-Name-Is: I don’t know how you got my direct number or what you’ve been doing outside of my apartment, but it ends right now. Do you understand? I am going to report this call, as well as your recent activity, to the proper—”
“Yessss…” He practically hissed into the phone like some kind of reptile, some kind of slithering snake. “Yes, it ends now. See you soon, Jordan.” With that, he hung up.