Looks like a solo tonight, Part 4

[glovered]

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Epilogue - Masterpost

Breaking and entering was easy. Jo simply ducked the motion-sensing floodlights mounted on the gate to Smith's mansion of a house, then she sprinted up the lawn and around to pick the lock on the back door in a quarter of a minute.

"Thanks, mom," she muttered, sliding the lock-picking kit she'd begged for one birthday back into her pocket.

And when she was certain there was no one in the first room, she stepped into the house on soft feet, pulling the door closed gently behind her, on her guard, ears perked for the smallest sign of Smith.

So much fighting happened in houses, terrible rows while neighbors slept quietly on either side. This well-manicured house on Wisteria Lane was boring on the outside, large, beautiful, and unassuming with a hedgerow and a massive driveway, but the extensive knife collection her eyes landed on when she stepped into the living room had another story to tell.

The knives were backlit like a museum display, mounted and hung like treasures in a glass case. They ranged from butcher cleavers to elegant poignards, and stretched across nearly the entire back wall.

"Bingo," she whispered, moving closer to the wall, searching for two daggers in particular. When she failed to find them, a cold shiver ran up her neck. If they weren't here, they were potentially with Smith, possibly in use, which would be a very bad thing.

Or possibly Smith was just a knife enthusiast, a hobbyist, and he'd never heard of the spell or myth behind it. Maybe it had been a coincidence that he'd invited Bela to his home the night of the New Moon.

Bullshit.

The bloody trail on the carpet under her feet seemed to corroborate this. She jumped away so she wasn't standing directly on it, and followed it behind the sofa with her breath held.

It led to a rolled up carpet heaped in the shadows.

"Tell me that's not a body in there," Jo breathed, and thought for the first time ever that maybe she should've set out on a different career path.

She swung her flashlight around again to make sure she was alone and then advanced on the carpet. She jumped as the clock struck midnight, heart in her throat, she kicked aside the edge of the carpet and flinched back at the sight of gore and blood and limbs.

She swallowed thickly against the taste of bile and pulled the carpet back further to reveal the gutted carcass of a deer, eyes black like a demon's, blank.

That memory gave Jo the creeps, but she shook it off, dropping the corner of the rug back over the deer's body. She had to keep her head in the game.

Which was when she caught a flicker of something out of the corner of her eyes, and the creak of a floorboard a couple feet away sent her into a quick roll. A gunshot rang out, followed immediately by a second, tearing through the quiet of the house.

She was already diving behind the couch, rolling across the carpet and sprinting into the adjoining door.

After a few shallow breaths, and silence from the living room, she crouched to peer around the corner. Two bodies were laid out on the floor with matching bullet holes in their foreheads. If she hadn't ducked, she realized, both of those bullets would have been hers.

She got to her feet and went to stand over them. They were definitely dead, eyes sightless, limbs in awkward positions. She'd never seen a death before, not a dead human at least, and felt the edge of panic setting her pulse thrumming. She could either cry in relief that she hadn't just been murdered in cold blood or sit down and sob.

As she was waiting to see which would happen first, a blow fell heavily on the back of her head, and Jo collapsed to the soft carpet.

Never let your guard down, she thought swimmily as the world greyed out around her. Never believe you're safe. Always look behind you.

These were things she would have to remember for the future.

"Well, well, well. What have we here?"

A man's face swam into focus in the half light of what could only be a creepy basement. Jo had a second to get her bearings before he'd grabbed her by the hair, forcing her head back painfully in the chair.

"Ouch," Jo coughed, the ache in her head making it difficult to focus or catch her breath.

The place where his boot connected with her kidney area a moment later would bruise terribly, she knew, and would hurt like hell after she was out of here.

Because she would make it out of here.

Smith - it had to be Smith - was a pale man in a suit, with glazed blue eyes and a slight, waspish body. Weak but with a workbench of shiny tools and no reservations about tying girls up and beating the shit out of them.

Up until now, Jo had known nothing about him save that he was rich and had a boner for ancient witchcraft.

Now she knew a lot more.

She blinked to stay conscious, twisting her hands behind her at the rope that was knotted tightly and straining to look at the room behind her. There was no sign of Bela but she couldn't help but notice the metal morgue table though, gleaming in the center of the room with some scary-looking leather restraints.

"Good evening," Smith said, and Jo jerked her head back to find him surveying her in a chilling, impersonal gaze.

Jo scoffed. "Good, huh?"

Smith leaned in close, and Jo struggled at the rope binding her wrists. It rubbed, a raw feeling.

"How did you find this place?"

"I'm not the only one who knows," Jo said. "People know where I am, and they'll come and find you. And you won't like what happens next."

"It'll be far too late by then," he said. "The ritual will already be complete."

"The ritual? You mean that poorly translated spell? Buddy you're going to want to listen to what I have to tell you-"

Jo knew how to fight, but she had no way of blocking the punch that hit her on the side of the face. She blinked away stars.

Smith leaned in. "Now, now-"

Jo spit a mouthful of blood at him.

Smith paused, a look of real disgust on his face. He took a monogrammed handkerchief from his front pocket and wiped the blood from his cheek and then his shirt front. He considered her for a long moment, before punching her in the ribs.

"Ah, that smarts." Jo laughed, trying to catch her breath. "Hit a girl while she's down, huh? That your style?

Just five minutes ago she'd been on a rescue mission: save the girl, save the day. Now here she was, bleeding and tied up in some psycho witch-wannabe's basement. As she craned her neck again, she saw that a creepy cage stood menacingly on the far wall.

She'd wanted to go off on her own, to hunt, to save people from monsters. Turns out people were the worst monsters of all. Jo had to laugh at the irony of it.

Smith leaned in. "What's so funny?"

She grinned. "You are."

In just five minutes, everything had gone to hell.

She tipped her head back to level him a look. "I mean honestly, what kind of monster locks girls up in his basement? A really pathetic one, that's who. Get a life, Smith."

He walked a slow circle around her. "Now, now…Who's the monster here? Breaking into my home, killing my security."

She tugged at the ropes again, feeling them loosen enough to give one hand some room to move.

"I killed your security? Well...that's not exactly accurate..." The two guys had accidentally shot each other, so-

"I hope you learned your lesson," he said, taking her by the hair again and leering into her face.

Her hands were free now, the rope falling away. "Oh yeah?" She grinned at him with blood on her tongue, drying on her lips.

"No one touches my knives," he said.

It was a good thing Jo had her gun in her bra then, wasn't it? In one fluid moment, Jo flipped the chair from under her in a crash, and landed on her feet.

Smith had taken a break from kicking the shit out of her, mainly because Jo had her Walther PPK James Bond pistol trained at his ugly face.

Jo rolled her shoulder, testing to see if it was broken. It wasn't.

"Now listen to me! Wherever you heard about the daggers, whoever gave you that spell...You've been lied to. Because the only thing that spell is going to achieve is opening a door into hell- And not like, metaphorical pitchfork hell. Literal frozen hell, complete with hell spawn and endless darkness."

Smith paid this no attention. "You won't shoot," he said, grinning down the tiny barrel, apparently unfazed by being ten seconds from getting his brains blown out. "I know you won't."

He took a step closer.

"You want to fucking bet?" Jo said, kicking the chair aside and wincing at the stab of pain in her left ankle but holding her gun steady.

"Oh, I know you're capable," he said. "I can recognize the killer in you. But if you pulled the trigger, what would become of your little friend, hm?"

"I'd leave with her, because you'd be dead. Now step the fuck back." Jo shook her head, refusing to be drawn in. "And besides, she's not my friend."

"Is that so? Because I would think you running into certain death to save her implied that she was."

"Nuh uh," Jo countered.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Nope."

Smith sighed. "This is getting tiresome. Drop your gun or she's dead."

The sound of a gun cocking behind her made Jo spare a quick glance, and she swore under her breath. A second man had arrived from another door along the wall.

"Meet my butler, Larry," Smith said. "He tends to shoot before he thinks. Bad, Larry."

Larry trained his gun on the cage.

"Bela Talbot, I am going to kill you..." Jo breathed, staring at the gun, now sure that she was in the darkness behind the bars.

Of course cursing Bela's name under her breath would do little to get her out of this situation, trapped as she was in this basement with blood in her mouth. But it was Bela's fault she was here at all, and that deserved a little cursing.

There was a long pause as Jo held her gun on Smith and Larry the butler held his on Bela. For the first time, Jo wondered if she would get out of this alive.

Her mind was racing but she could see no way out other than surrendering now and later finding a way out.

Smith leaned closer, until Jo's gun was almost brushing the skin of his forehead. He whispered, "I know you recognize the killer in me, too."

"We're nothing alike."

"You're right. You care about her and I don't. Which means she's dead in three...two…"

Jo dropped her gun. It clattered to her feet and Smith kicked it aside like he was ready, like he'd been sure of this outcome all along.

"Now then," he gestured to the cage. "After you."

Jo went, although turning her back on guys like this made every one of her instincts burn.

When she was close enough, Larry pulled the door open and shoved her inside. She landed hard, trying and failing to roll to absorb the fall. She swore, and levered herself up instantly on an elbow to glare at them both. The door clanged shut behind her.

It wasn't so dark that she couldn't see that the dark shape she'd seen was in fact a familiar figure, lounging against the wall. Bela was there, barely a hair out of order. But as she moved towards her in the darkness, Jo caught sight of the dried blood on the side of her face.

Jo turned to glare at Smith. "When I get out of here I'm going to smash your ugly face in," she told him.

"It will all be over soon," he said. "The spell channels more power when the moon is new, so we'll begin shortly."

Smith drew back from the cage, wiping his hands on a handkerchief Larry was already holding out to him, as if the gleaming cage bars were somehow filthy.

"Farewell for now," he told her, and turned on his heel and left. Larry sent her a sneer before and following him out.

"Creep," Jo muttered and waited until Larry had finished taking his time about walking up the basement stairs before crawling desperately toward Bela.

"Hi," she whispered, so relieved to see her she could break down like a child.

Bela tipped her head back, a familiar smirk on her face. "I wondered whether you were stupid enough to follow me in."

Jo surveyed her. Bela's temple was bloody but the cut didn't look deep. Even so, she wished she knew just a little bit more about the type of first aid that relied on antiseptic so she wouldn't have to rely so much on the first aid that used whiskey.

She didn't reach out to touch, no matter how much she wanted to. She settled next to her instead, a space between their shoulders, and tipped her head back against the wall. "Speaking of stupid...Help me out here. How did this all go down? You meet a creepy dude at a bar or something? And when he asks you to collect magical weapons for him, you say, sure, that sounds like a good plan?"

Bela rolled her eyes. "Give me some credit. If you must know, I was originally contracted to find him a very powerful object."

"Oh yeah? Get lost on the way to that and end up here?"

Bela ignored her. "It was a rabbit's foot, and it was worth more than either of our lives."

"Really." Jo frowned. "Like a fuzzy good luck charm you buy at a crap magic store?"

"Yes, except a real one. To a man like Smith - to someone who's health is failing - well, I confess I understand a bit. I'd do the same thing, try for any magic, no matter how impossible."

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's a haemophiliac and he's getting on a bit, he's..." Bela hesitated. "Desperate. And he offered me a large sum of money to find him this rabbit's foot - this lucky charm - so that he would never die. And I all but had it in the bag when those brother friends of yours muddled the whole thing up in that very special way they have."

Jo grimaced. Sam and Dean might mean well, but they weren't the easiest of people.

Bela sighed. "Anyhow, once the charm was gone I had to deal with a very unhappy buyer. Smith. He told me that he had a new job for me to make up for it, so I took it."

"He asked you to find the daggers," Jo guessed.

Bela nodded. "I would have gone underground, even though the loss would have been financially devastating, but Smith is a very powerful man."

"Powerfully crazy," Jo felt the need to clarify.

"Yes, aren't they all. He has some skill hiding it." Bela looked disgusted with herself at being fooled. "So by the time I realised what I'd signed myself up for in dealing with him, I knew too much for him to just let it - or me - go. I don't particularly fancy dying before my time, so I told myself it was this last job."

Jo clenched her fists, but kept listening.

"He wanted these two daggers as recompense for the rabbit's foot. I thought it was a fair deal, seemed a bit less dangerous in fact, almost child's play. Your Mr. Drake was something of a challenge, retired or no, he was still a hunter. But you saw that mansion we went to. I'm always amazed at how poorly rich people guard their things. Once you've a way in through the gates, you find they don't lock up the drawers." Bela gestured to the basement, to their cage. "Present situation excluded. Now that I've delivered the goods, I apparently constitute a loose end. Why he's keeping me alive is unclear to me, but I do know that he's been raving about going to heaven for the past three hours. I couldn't get anything concrete out of him."

"Oh brother," Jo sighed. "Well, what I was attempting to tell him, is that Ash thinks there's a translation error in the spell."

"Oh?"

"Yep. He ran it through a cryptography program he's loaded up with a buttload of ancient languages, and I regret to inform you, there's one vital detail Smith isn't aware of, thanks to scholarly error."

Bela's jaw clenched. "Let me guess, it involves a lot of blood."

"Considering the ancient creepy fucking daggers, I think we should have guessed that. Plus, I think our boy Smith has a knife fetish."

Jo nodded to the silver operating table and the array of gleaming medical equipment near the door.

"Anyway," she said. "When used simultaneously, the daggers open up a gate to hell."

Bela snorted. "Not heaven? Well, that's a slight difference."

"Awkward, right?" Jo agreed. "I almost want to let him do the ritual just to see the look on his face when a demon devours him whole."

Bela shivered beside her and Jo cleared her throat. Now was not the time to joke, perhaps.

"Basically just don't touch both daggers at once. I don't know what happens then, probably activates the spell. Probably best if we don't touch them at once, either. Basically, just don't touch them at all. Worst case scenario, we all die."

Bela was silent for a long time after that. "Well, shit," she finally said.

"You have a way with words."

Bela made a careless gesture with her hand. "Educated at St. Swithun's," she said. But when she continued, her voice was quiet with despair like Jo had never heard from her, "We're not getting out of this alive, are we?"

A pipe dripped somewhere in the basement, water falling sharply. Through the small window, Jo could just make out the faint dots of stars in the moonless sky.

Jo didn't respond, didn't have an answer to give. She just slipped her hand into Bela's in the dark and let that be answer enough.

"Not long now," a voice said, sudden and grating, and Jo jumped away from Bela. She reached for her empty holster before remembering that her pistol was lain out on the table with the rest of the weapons.

Smith continued down the stairs at a leisurely gait until he was an arm's length of the cage bars.

Jo got to her knees to face him. "Listen to me! The spell isn't what you think it is!"

"Shut up," he said, mildly. "You should be thanking me."

"Thanking you?"

"Yes. I'm including you in what will prove to be a miracle. Entering the realm of the gods, walking among them. A cure!" He smiled into the middle distance. "More than a cure. Eternal glory."

From his air of fanatical serenity, and the way his gaze sometimes seeming to be fixed on something Jo couldn't see, Jo doubted there was anything she could say to make him listen.

"That's not something mortals should mess with," Bela tried.

Smith advanced on them, and Jo wondered if this was it, if this was the moment where it was him or them. She was weaponless and unable to save them. She didn't know what to do.

"Look," Bela said in placating tones. "I understand the need to find help where there seems to be none, to save yourself at all costs, but this is not the way."

Smith reached into the cage and Jo winced as he took Bela's chin in his hand. He shook her chin gently, like she was a small child he was reprimanding.

"I wouldn't have needed to find this workaround if you hadn't bungled up the last job I assigned you, now would I?" He shook his head. "If you'd have been at all competent you wouldn't have to die. But you did fail, and so here we are."

Jo felt rage burning up in her wondering why Bela didn't pull away.

"Are you done?" Bela said, just as condescending.

Smith let go abruptly and stood.

"Not long now," he repeated, and went to the stairs, muttering to himself. "There had to be a way. I knew it, and I found it."

When the door clicked shut, Jo slumped back.

"Jesus," she sighed. "What a psycho. I should say now would be the time to lockpick us out of here and make our hasty exit, but we can't just let him unleash hellspawn on the earth."

"Ahem."

When Jo looked over, Bela was pulling a black bag from the V of her shirt.

"Look what I found," Bela said, shaking the bag gently as the unmistakable shapes of the daggers clinked together.

Jo's jaw dropped. "Dude, you're like a freaking Houdini! How many scarves do you have in there?"

She pretended to go for Bela's shirt front and Bela laughed and pushed her away. But she left her hand on Jo's shoulder, eyes sparkling.

"My hero," Jo said, earnestly. And she meant it. If Bela could steal something so large off of Smith, stealing Jo's locket must have been child's play. She was strangely proud of Bela. "You're a total badass, you know that?"

Bela tossed her hair. "Thanks. Now what do you say we get out of here?"

Jo was beyond ready to get out of there.

However, she felt cloth under her hand, the shape of the dagger. It seemed to be stopping her from moving, she felt stuck to that spot on the concrete floor.

She wondered distantly how her hand had reached out without her realizing, and thought that she should have known better than to tread so lightly around powerful magic.

That was her last coherent thought, before she had the dagger in her fist, the metal of the hilt warm and dangerous where it fit perfectly to her palm.

"Jo," Bela breathed.

When Jo looked up to meet her eyes, the room blurred like she was experiencing moments a split second too slow, her vision tracking dreamily as she found Bela's face. Bela's dark lashes were low as she leaned in toward Jo with a look that was downright sultry.

"Bela?" Jo whispered.

Bela had drawn the second dagger from the cloth and traced it lazily down Jo's arm, the pressure light, infuriatingly so. Jo dipped forward and pressed Bela down into the concrete floor of the cage, Bela following her lead eagerly.

The knife in Jo's hand seemed to be pulsing, shocks of feel-good heat that sent shivers down Bela's pale stomach when Jo lifted her shirt and dragged the blade over her skin. Jo watched, transfixed, as a trail of goosebumps followed the tip of the dagger.

"Jo," Bela pleaded, biting her lip and gasping as Jo circled her navel. Jo sliced up with the smallest bit of pressure, cutting cleanly through the center join of Bela's bra.

Bela gasped as it fell open, exposing her breasts. Jo had fantasized about eliciting those sounds from her but never believed it would become a reality, not like this, never as good as this.

Jo raised up and over her, and when she looked down, she saw that Bela's eyes were all pupil, her lips pink and parted.

Jo took her mouth in a kiss, hot and deep, and squirmed as Bela's hand went to her belt with no ceremony. Jo spread her legs as the handle of the dagger nudging at her panties, and moaned at the implication. "Bela, do it," she said.

She wanted it more than anything. She bucked up, cutting Bela's neck the smallest bit, just over her collarbone. She watched the blood bead there, finding to her surprise and pleasure how she longed to sink the blade into Bela's skin, knowing Bela would let her do it.

They would kill each other, Jo realized suddenly, heartbeat picking up. They would kill each other, and it would be the most beautiful thing.

The door to the cage clattered open then, and Jo's hand burned with white fire when the dagger was wrested from her hand.

She scrambled away from the door and away from Bela, her head suddenly, soberingly clear as she heaved for breath and locked eyes with a bald man in a suit who was tucking both daggers back into the bag.

For the briefest moment Jo thought it might be help, that maybe this man was a hunter she didn't recognize who had somehow caught wind of what was going on

But all at once it hit her. The butler.

"Fuck!" she said, hurriedly doing up her jeans and not thinking about anything that had just happened, or what had almost happened.

Bela looked to be in similar shape as she crawled away from Jo, tugging down her shirt, flustered and pink-cheeked. She was somehow barefoot.

"Larry, fetch me the daggers, will you?" Smith said from the stairs. "It looks like our little thieves got enthusiastic about starting the ritual but we can't be having that, now can we? All in due time, ladies."

"It's almost nine p.m., sir," Larry announced, apparently unphased at what he'd just walked in on. He locked the cage door behind him, the bag in his possession.

"Excellent," said Smith. "Let's not forget the ritualistic tarp to catch the blood. I won't have this floor stained with the foul stuff."

Larry started to a corner of the basement - to get the tarp, Jo assumed - but paused when Smith called over his shoulder, "Oh and Larry?"

"Sir?"

"A glass of ice water, please. You know how I get parched."

"To your left, sir. By the lamp."

"Ah, wonderful. You really do complete me, Larry."

Larry laid out the tarp on the ground, then retrieved a gun from his pocket which he held at the ready, pointed at the cage lest they try to escape.
Smith snapped on latex gloves and rolled his shirtsleeves to the elbow.

"You have any ideas?" Jo whispered. She wondered if the ritual would involve a replay of what happened moments before and felt a shameful shiver of lust crawl over her skin. She couldn't meet Bela's eyes.

"Not at the moment, no," Bela replied from the other side of the cage where she was pressed against the bars.

It was no time for guilt. It hadn't been their fault and it wouldn't help them get out of there that Bela apparently couldn't bear to be anywhere near her.

"You know," Smith said, conversationally from where he was opening a rather large and decaying book. His voice grated on Jo's ears. "My father was a hoarder. A 'collector' he'd say, but the amount of junk he amassed was pretty dire. You may have noticed how it's affected me. I really hate mess, can't stand it. Which is yet another reason I can hardly wait to transcend this earthly plane."

"More like go to hell," Jo said tiredly, and Smith whirled around, eyes intense.

"Shut up! Now be a good girl and behave or I'll have to restrain you. Because I will-" he said, gesturing to the table. "Restrain you."

Jo's eyes flicked to it.

"So we're the sacrifice then," she confirmed.

"Why yes. I thought you said you'd read the spell." He tutted. "And so rending the flesh, virgins both, shall purity rend the earth in kind-"

He was interrupted by Bela's low laughter, which got louder at his confusion.

"Virgins?" she said sending a smile Jo's way. "Who said anything about virgins?"

Smith froze. "Pardon?"

"Yeah, dude," Jo said. "Have you got the wrong ladies, or what."

She clung onto Bela's idea. If Smith wasn't going to believe her about the spell, maybe they could make the argument that they were unsuitable sacrifices. Maybe they could still scrape out of this.

In the moment Smith surveyed them, Jo thought it would work.

When he smiled again, however, there was something truly unsettling in his eyes. "I don't believe you," he decided. "And if what you say is true, and if the spell doesn't work, I can just try again on the next new moon."

Jo stared. "You'd kill more girls than just us? What are you going to do, go on a killing spree?"

"For eternal life? I'd do anything."

He flipped to what appeared to be the correct page of the book, settling a weight on the page so it could be easily read. He turned back to Jo, and explained, like he really wanted to convince them that anything he was doing was at all sane, "Look, you came in here to the rescue, knowing full well that failure was a possibility, that you could end up sacrificing your life for this girl, this thief. Now what's so different about sacrificing this girl to save myself from my own pain? The outcome is the same. Wouldn't you say, Larry?"

"Yes," Larry agreed.

Smith placed stones on the table on what appeared to be the points of a compass, and placed a heavy bowl of stone in the center. He filled it with a fine sand that flamed into life at the touch of a match.

"Someone has to die here, there's no question about that," he continued. "But who says it has to be me? What's so wrong about fighting to live?"

"Well put, sir," Larry said, apparently moved to near tears.

"Oh come on, Larry," Bela said, sounding disgusted. "I've seen better performances at a village fete."

"Larry, the daggers," Smith said, and in rehearsed tones began to chant the spell.

This was all happening too fast. In moments, they could be dead. Jo had so much life to live, and it would be stupid to go out like this. And Bela...well, there was still so much they had to do together. Jo felt like they'd just touched the tip of the iceberg when it came to her, when it came to them, and it couldn't end like this.

The words Smith chanted were old, very old. You could hear it in the way they came alive once they were uttered, like they'd been long quiet and dormant. The room became colder, which was never a good sign, and Jo's breath began to come out in puffs. From the strong smell of incense, she thought the powder might not be sand in fact, but frankincense.

Jo looked to the cage door again. If there were ever a time to pick the lock it would be now. The spell had been said, but it wasn't over yet.

But Larry still had the gun trained on them, so that either way they were dead.

"Larry," Smith said, "Bring me the daggers."

"Yes, sir." Larry left his post, and delivered the bag.

"Thank you, Larr- Again?" Smith roared. He upended the bag and Jo let out a shocked laugh when Bela's shoes clattered to the floor.

Bela pulled back the bundled edge of her jacket to show Jo what she had stolen, and Jo understood now why she'd plastered herself to that side of the cage, so they would be as far from touching as possible.

Bela slid the daggers to Jo, and resumed holding on to the cage bars for dear life.

Jo didn't think, just acted. She hurled one of the daggers at Larry, who let out a gurgled noise as it planted in his side. As they all watched, he groaned and fell to his knees. Jo thanked everything she believed in that it wasn't a killing blow, but knew that if he didn't get stitched up soon, he'd die. She wondered with numb terror what happened to people who killed humans, whether there was an afterlife and punishment for that.

"Damn you!" Smith bellowed, advancing on the cage, and Jo sent the second dagger skidding across the floor toward him, knowing the effect of the magic, knowing that he'd be compelled to pick it up even if he didn't want to, and then she and Bela would be able to escape.

She was right. Smith couldn't resist the dagger's pull, wasn't ready for it, and he picked it up with a jerky motion. His face registered surprise and dismay, and he took one faltering step toward the cage as if to storm their way. But the magic of the daggers took hold, and a visible frisson of magic shook through him and then through Larry. As Jo watched, the two turned to one another, lust transforming their features.

Through the small window, Jo could see that outside, the sky was dark. The air in the room was impossibly cold, thrumming with the spell which had been set into motion.

"Larry," Smith groaned, staggering toward his butler.

"Sir," Larry responded, his eyelids heavy with lust and blood loss.

His face conveyed pure ecstasy when Smith took his mouth in a ravenous kiss.

"Ugh," Jo gagged, unable to look away as Smith devoured Larry's mouth, blood soaking Larry's shirt and pants.

When Smith groaned again, Jo snapped out of it.

The gun was no longer on them. She fumbled her lockpick kit out off the back of her belt and crawled toward the door of the cage.

When she glanced up, Smith was trailing his dagger up Larry's shirt, slicing clean up the front, buttons popping every which way to reveal a muscled chest gleaming with sweat.

Jo glared over her shoulder when Bela let out a whistle.

"What?" Bela said, innocently. But then her face twisted into a mix of intrigued skepticism when Smith ordered, "Get on your hands and knees, Larry."

"Good lord," she muttered.

"My pleasure, sir," Larry said, and tugged down his trousers, turning to present his ass to Smith.

Blood was dripping from his side, pooling on the floor, and Jo thought that no one of them had ever had a chance here. Magic was an old and dangerous art that bowed to no one, could only be bent to the will of someone with discipline, who approached it humbly.

Smith slapped Larry across the ass and Larry moaned in what Jo thought was more pain than pleasure.

"Nevermind, I do not want to be watching this," Bela said, half-frantic. "Can't you lockpick any faster?"

"Let's hope I can," Jo said, and tried to block out the sound of the one long groan of one man entering another in total bliss.

"Oh sweet mother of--"

"If they...uh...complete the act," Jo called over the loud sounds of very rough and unlubricated anal sex. "Then they could very well complete the spell. Who knows if the bit about being virgins was right or not."

"Well, hurry it up then! From the sounds of things, they're not going to take long about this." She gasped. "Wow, that man is hung like a packhorse. Good show, Larry."

As if on queue, Larry screamed, a sound that seemed to rip through him as his orgasm overtook him. When Jo glanced up it was to see his body had collapsed to the ground, body limp like a rag doll, blood gushing from his side where Smith was twisting the dagger in, riding him furiously.

"That was quick," Bela said and Jo shot her a look to communicate just how not the time it was for snarky comments. Bela looked very pale as she leaned into the cage bars again, stretching out an arm as far as she could, hand outstretched. "Smith, give us the keys."

Smith's eyes were rolling back in his head as he pumped his hips against Larry's prone form.

"Smith!" Jo yelled, and Smith jerked momentarily from his reverie. He turned his head to them, and Bela said, "If you keep doing this, you'll die and never get to heaven. You'll be stuck here forever, or worse, opened up in Hell. Blood and guts everywhere. Give us the keys, it's the only way you'll survive."

But Smith had looked away and kept going.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Jo said, trying to jiggle the picks without throwing up.

Which was when the lock fell into place and the cage door swung open. Smith was angling his blade at his own neck when Jo raced forward.

"Smith!" She shouted, and sent the blade clattering away with a karate kick to his hand. She kicked out again, sending him tumbling off of Larry's body.

Bela dislodged the dagger from Larry's side, then ran to take the other from where it had skidded under the workbench. She then stood on the opposite side of the room to put them in the bag.

"I'll bury these far, far away," she said. "And in the meantime, no touching. I know what you're like."

"Oh sure," Jo said, somewhat miffed that Bela hadn't noticed her impressive display of competence just then.

Meanwhile, Smith lay on the floor, seemingly knocked out, at least unconscious enough that Jo could drag him to the operating table and pull him up onto it without a struggle. She strapped him down securely with the leather straps. His pants were around his ankles, his unspent dick hanging out against his thigh, but Jo wasn't getting near that with a ten foot pole.

This done, and the danger seemingly over, her eyes found Bela's from across the room. Bela inclined her head. There was nothing to say, really. Not until they were clear out of there. And Jo realized with a rush of relief that saving the day was very much a possibility now.

Smith awoke then a moment later, rolling his head. Jo could spot the second he recognized where he was, on his back and restrained on his own table, when his eyes widened and he began yelling.

"No! Don't kill me! I have gold, so much gold. And horses. Have anything you want!"

Jo could see the whites of his eyes as he pleaded with her. It was disgusting, and she felt sick to her stomach. She stayed a good distance away. "You know, it's a pity you're human."

Smith's eyebrows drew together, and it would have been really hilarious how quizzical he looked, except that Jo was exhausted and covered in minor cuts from a set of cursed daggers. She probably had some internal bruising, and also the love of her recent life was filing her nails with a piece of sandpaper from the tool bench.

"Exactly, I'm human!" he said. "Don't kill me."

"Oh I won't," she said, and for a moment he looked relieved. Until she cracked her neck and said, "Yep, I'm going to have to go legal on this one."

"What do you..."

"I'm going to call the actual cops," she said, and she heard Bela sputter in the background. Jo shook her head, feeling a fondness for this girl she'd somehow picked up, who'd never done an honest day's work in her life and had no plans to reform. Bela was on the wrong side of the law and proud of it.

"Which is lucky for you," Jo continued to Smith. "Seeing as I don't think you'd like my kind of vigilante justice. You should see what my momma's taught me to do with a blade."

When no answer was forthcoming, Jo punched him in the nose despondently and took out her cell phone to dial 9-1-1.

"Yes, hello?" she said. "There's been a murder. A strange man killed my neighbor with a big knife and tried to kill me. There's blood everywhere, come quick." She leaned in to stare Smith in the eyes, pronouncing over the phone, "I'm so scared."

Then, she hung up.

Taking a sharpie from the bench, she scribbled out a note on a post-it.

"Now the police are going to find you and figure out what to do with you," she told him. "And I'll rest easy knowing that I stopped a major disaster."

Smith struggled in his restraints, and gnashed his teeth. "I'll be back. And when I find you-"

Jo cut him off, shoving a rag in his mouth. "Shut up," she said.

On the way out, Bela swiped the wallet off the workbench and Smith still had the gall to struggle, outraged. Jo slapped him across the cheek.

"Hey," she barked. "You know how much it's going to cost for her to stitch that gash you put in her head? Yeah, I thought so."

"NHS, darling," Bela sing-songed as they made their way up the stairs.

"It's the principle of the thing, Talbot."

When they exited through the back, Jo could hear sirens ringing out in the distance, and the need to flee the scene felt fresh and new. Bela at her elbow as they left through the backyard. The pink of pre-dawn was brilliant, birds chirping in an apple tree they sprinted by the next yard over and sprinklers shot up from the green front lawn like a fountain. Life was a goddamn paradise.

"So," Bela said when Jo's car was visible down the street. She had her hands shoved in the pockets of Jo's hoodie, the red bringing out the pink of her lips, the sparkle in her eyes as she gave Jo a real smile. "That was a nice villain speech down there."

"Thanks."

Bela nudged her as they walked. "You're a real hardass, you know that?"

"I am who I am," Jo told her. "And I'm not apologizing for that any more. Not for any of it."

She was 21 but felt very young as they got into the car and set out. Their fingers brushed on the chapstick in the center console and Bela didn't ask to be dropped off at some stolen car or the bus station. Jo set them off toward the highway, wanted to drive with Bela to the middle of nowhere and all over the map.

Epilogue