Unholy Trifecta, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Acknowledgement
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Thank you for reading this crazy crossover.
Books by AJ Sherwood
Author
This book is a work of fiction, so please treat it like a work of fiction. Seriously. References to real people, dead people, good guys, bad guys, stupid politicians, companies, restaurants, events, products, locations, pop culture references, or wacky historical events are intended to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. Or because I wanted it in the story. Characters, names, story, location, dialogue, weird humor, and strange incidents all come from the author’s very fertile imagination and are not to be construed as real. No, I don’t believe in killing off main characters. Villains are a totally different story.
UNHOLY TRIFECTA X THE TRIBULATIONS OF ROSS YOUNG, SUPERNAT PA
Common Sense Deserts Once Again
Copyright © 2022 by AJ Sherwood
Cover by Katie Griffin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Purchase only authorized editions.
www.ajsherwood.com
1
Ivan
Ivan sat in the driver’s seat of the car, practically beaming with pride. This wasn’t Remi’s first solo run to steal something—far from it—but it was the first time she’d entered a high-security location. She’d done it completely without help from anyone. All the research, the hacking, the stealth in and out, was all on her. The only thing Ivan had done was pick the target.
Smart solnishko that she was, Remi had waltzed in and out in under thirty minutes, taking something shiny to prove she’d done it. As expected of his girl. Even though she had another year until her eighteenth birthday, when she would officially become an adult, Ivan felt he had nothing really left to teach her. She was ready to take the world by storm.
It would be glorious.
Remi slid into the passenger seat and gave him a smirk. “I thought you said this was supposed to be a challenge.”
“Ah, my solnishko, to any other thief, it would have been.” Ivan knuckled an imaginary tear from his eye. “Brings joy to my heart to see you in action.”
“Shall we wait until we get home to see what I grabbed?”
“Of course. I would not rob your fathers of the pleasure.”
“Alright.”
Ivan put the car into drive and went merrily on his way. It had been something of a drive north of Boston to get to the target. Why a high-security mansion was in the little town of Manchester-by-the-Sea was still a question for Ivan. He’d let Remi do the research, so he really didn’t know.
“Solnishko, what was inside like?”
“Hmm, kinda weird, to be honest.” Remi idly played with a long lock of butterscotch brown hair as she spoke, the small black bag still in her lap. “It wasn’t like one of those trophy rooms, like we normally see from rich people places. This looked more like…um, kinda like someone was moving in? And he’d just shoved a bunch of stuff on shelves. Parts of the place were completely empty—like, no furniture or even curtains—but other parts were crammed to the rafters.”
“Sounds like moving to me. Moving in or moving out?”
“Moving in. Definitely. Like, there were paint cans lined up in one of the rooms, and signs up on the doors with things like ‘master bedroom’ or ‘storage room 1.’ You know, the kind of signs people put up to help movers.” After a thoughtful beat, she tacked on, “I think that’s why security was a little thinner than I expected. He hasn’t fully gotten everything up and running yet. All he had were security lights and motion sensors. The cameras were basically antiques. Getting around them was easy peasy.”
“Should I find you more challenging target?”
Remi deliberated on that for a moment. “Yeah. I don’t feel like I really did anything on this job.”
It could be she was just that good without realizing it. Still, if she wanted to play with Ivan again, who was he to argue with her?
They debated good targets on the way home. Ivan had deliberately chosen a target closer to home so the worrywart (namely Kyou) didn’t have a conniption when he inevitably found out. Really, one would think married life would have settled him down. If it had, the effect wasn’t noticeable.
Three vehicles were parked in the driveway of the cute craftsman Ari and Carter owned. This was not a good sign. Either something serious had gone down or someone had clued in to Remi’s excursion with Ivan. Knowing Ivan’s luck, it was the latter.
He stealthily checked his phone only to find he’d missed three calls from his husband and multiple texts from everyone. Oops. Now when had he put the phone on silent and forgotten it?
Remi, sharp as she was, caught this. “Uncle Ivan. I thought I had permission to go?”
“Forgiveness easier than permission, da?”
She rolled her chocolate-brown eyes expressively. “Dammit. You better not have gotten me in trouble.”
“No trouble, no trouble. You were successful.”
“Yeah, run that logic by Uncle Aiden, will you? I want to record your murder for posterity.”
He put a hand over his heart, wounded to the core. “Solnishko, why are you so hurtful?”
“This is called self-preservation,” she corrected as she got out of the car. “At its finest.”
Well, he couldn’t blame her for that. He rather had misled her about having permission. But Ivan didn’t see the problem. She’d done fine, hadn’t she? If there was no danger, how could anyone complain?
Yes, he was aware they would complain. Heatedly.
He might have been a tad reluctant getting out of his Mountaineer. Even more reluctant as he braved the front door, which was pointedly open on this cool fall night, as if waiting for their arrival. Remi, the traitor, bounced right in without a care. It was Ivan who had to force himself through the doorway.
“There she is,” Kyou’s voice announced. “Rems, what were you and Ivan doing out without supervision?”
“Practicing thief stuff,” Remi answered promptly.
“I’d feel relieved with that answer if Ivan had told me ahead of time that’s what you were doing.” Carter, of course, knew better. That was clear in his tone. “So, which high-security target did he send you into that will give me more grey hairs knowing about?”
“Some rich guy was moving houses, so I took on an empty building.”
Bless her for painting it in that light. The situation didn’t sound nearly as dangerous.
Ivan finally crossed into the dining room, where everyone was congregated, and took them all in, not sure whether to run for it or not. Ari leaned against the kitchen island, a cup of coffee in his hand. At this hour of the night, with his hair not gelled back and his stubble not shaven, you could see the random white hairs he was collecting as he got older. Carter was next to him, fixing himself a cup, but eyeing his daughter with mixed emotions. The crow’s feet around the man’s blue eyes were deeper than normal, although that could just be from fatigue.
Kyou sat next to Aiden at the table, typical hoodie swamping his lanky build, headphones around his neck, looking like he’d just gotten out of a shower and let his black hair airdry, it was that poofy. A laptop sat in front of him. Probably tracking them. Kyou loved tracking people. He’d stop breathing if you tried to make him quit the habit. Ivan’s amazing husband had their four-year-old son in his lap, cuddling him. It was well past bedtime, but apparently Marcus didn’t want to go to bed until Ivan was back. They’d not had their little boy long—only three months—so he was still acclimating to the family, but he was firm that Ivan had to tell him a bedtime story every night. Ivan’s habit of spit-balling stories about nuclear weapons in red silos probably had something to do with that.
Ivan didn’t see the rest of his kids, though. “Where’s everyone else?”
“At the house. They were finishing a movie and not interested in coming over here,” Aiden answered. “Brannigan’s watching them.”
Oh, good. Ivan didn’t think his husband would leave their other two children to mind themselves, especially not with their daughter’s habit of finding trouble, but he did feel it prudent to ask.
Kyou’s look was all knowing, like a minor deity who could see through the bullshit. “Your empty building still had quite the security system on it.”
Remi waved this away. “Only lights and motion sensors were actually on, though. Not the full system. Anyway, want to see what I grabbed?”
Deflect and distract, excellent tactic. Ivan backed this up one hundred percent. “Da!”
“You rode in the car with her all the way back and you didn’t ask what she stole?” Aiden demanded.
“She wanted to show us all at once,” Ivan defended.
Marcus lifted his head from Aiden’s shoulder, blinking big brown eyes at him. “Stealing’s bad, right?”
Aiden plopped a kiss on his forehead. “We’ll have this talk when you’re older. Alright, Remi, what did you get?”
Remi came forward with her fanny pack, plopping it on the long wooden table, then unzipping it before pulling out a cloth-wrapped object. She unveiled it with a quick flick of her wrist, throwing the fabr
“It was just so pretty,” Remi explained to everyone happily. “I couldn’t help myself.”
Ivan leaned over her shoulder with an oooh. “It quite lovely. Good job, solnishko.”
Ari sighed and came forward, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Rems. That was quite the snatch. I’m proud of you. Next time? Please be the responsible adult and assume Ivan didn’t tell us.”
“Oh. Sure,” she promised easily.
See? Forgiveness was entirely easier to get than permission.
Happy that he was no longer in trouble, Ivan went and scooped up his son. “Come, Marcus, time for bed!”
Marcus lifted his arms and transferred easily over to his other father. “Will you tell me the story of how Remi stole the necklace?”
“Of course!” Ivan beamed down at his son. “We work how to pick locks tomorrow, too.”
Marcus grinned back at him, that shy little grin he sometimes wore when he wasn’t sure how to express how happy he was. It relieved Ivan. Marcus’s situation as of six months ago had been just as bad as Remi’s when Ari had first found her. It’s why Ivan had stolen him so promptly out of there. To see his adopted son learning how to trust and looking forward to tomorrow filled his heart with joy.
“Come, to bed we go.”
Ivan thought it the end of the heist, at least until he got a call at some ungodly hour of the morning. The birds weren’t even awake when his phone went off. Three rings, then silence, then three rings again demanded: Don’t ignore me, answer the damn phone.
Something had better be on fire. Ivan flopped over and grabbed the phone from the nightstand, keeping his voice down to avoid waking his sleeping husband. In a voice thick with sleep, he eyed the screen. What the hell was Ari playing at three o’clock in the morning? “Chto.”
“Ivan. What the hell did you have Remi take?”
“Why?”
“This damn thing just levitated off the table, under its own power, and is now glowing. I repeat, what the hell did you have her take?”
“Levitating?”
“Like I said.”
“Like in spooky horror movies?”
“I really need you to wake up and focus.”
Ivan had no answer to this. Last he’d checked, ruby necklaces weren’t supposed to act like they were possessed. “Uh…why?”
“That’s what we want to know. I know this goes against your moral code, but how about we put the weird flying necklace back where it came from?”
“I just got hives.”
“You live with a doctor. You’ll be fine.”
“My soul. My soul got hives.” On general principle, Ivan was absolutely loath to put something back. To put something dangerous back went against the rest of him. He didn’t believe in leaving dangerous things in the wrong hands. Only the innocent suffered when that happened. He tried to think, fast and furious, but there was only one thing that popped into his head.
Glenn.
“I have friend I want to consult first.”
“Uh…this friend trustworthy?”
“Sure. Remi and I helped him before, years ago. You remember Glenn, in Salem?”
“Eh? Oh, him. Sure, I vaguely remember. You retrieved something out of a museum for him, if memory serves. Why him?”
“He specializes in unusual, shall we say. And his contacts might make sense of necklace. Hang on, let me call him.”
“At three in the morning?”
“He’s night owl, he and his husband. I assure you, they be awake.” Ivan tried not to sound droll. Oh, if Ari only knew. “Call back in five.”
He slipped out of bed and down the stairs so he could speak in a normal tone and not wake up Aiden. His husband had to get to work in a few hours; he needed the sleep. Not to mention they had three kids to get to school. Ivan could cat nap later and be fine. Aiden couldn’t.
He paused in the kitchen, turning on the coffee maker, and pulled up the contact for his old friend. On the second ring, a voice answered in that Irish burr.
“Ivan. It’s been a while since we last talked. All’s well, I hope.”
“I’m fine, but I may have picked up something…troublesome.”
Glenn sounded cautious but also intrigued. “Oh?”
“Something I think belongs more to your world than mine. Glenn, it’s my turn to ask favor.”
“I’m happy to return it, considering how you helped us last time. I have to ask, what’s the problem?”
“Have you ever come across floating ruby necklaces?”
“Ivan. Are you telling me you’ve picked up a magical item?”
“Well, necklaces in my experience don’t float off table, or glow, so…da? I might have? To be precise, my protégé did.”
There was a digestive pause. “I think I best come to you, all things considered. Text me your address. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I appreciate it.”
See? Ivan totally had this under control. Pfft, who needed to put anything back. Nonsense.
2
Glenn
Glenn lost no time in taking both Keane and Ross with him to Ivan’s house. Ivan had a very skewed sense of danger, so if he considered something problematic, the rest of them needed to be running for a bomb shelter. He would have had Ivan bring the necklace directly to him, but magical things were best not tampered with, and he didn’t want to risk his friend unduly. Better to just come to them.
It wasn’t even dawn out by the time they arrived at Ivan’s house. It had a nice Americana paint scheme and three cars in the driveway. Even at this hour, every light was on. Magical necklaces tended to have that effect on households.
Ross noted in his ever-calm voice, “Looks like everyone’s awake. Have you met Eidolon’s family?”
“Not in person. I didn’t realize he trusted me enough to give his family’s address like this.” It sparked joy, actually, that Ivan had. Glenn had always trusted him, but Ivan’s paranoia ran a bit deeper than his own. Understandably so, which was why Glenn had never given him grief over it. They both had their secrets to keep.
Everyone got out of the car and headed for the door. It was open before Glenn could even reach the top step of the porch, a young woman framed inside. She looked as if she’d rolled out of bed and thrown on the first clothes at hand, sleep shorts and a t-shirt that said: I’m billing you for this conversation. Even in her half-awake state, she was striking, the muscle definition in her arms and legs obvious. Butterscotch hair fell down to her waist, chocolate eyes set in an oval face. She looked to be in her late teens, perhaps.
This had to be Widow.
Glenn offered her a hand and a charming smile. “Widow, I believe?”
“Correct,” she answered, shaking the hand firmly. “Welcome. You made good time, Glenn. Come in, come in.”
He did so, getting his bearings as he entered. The first room was a living room, but no one was there. Widow led them straight through and into the dining room beyond, where several men had congregated. Ivan, of course, lounged against the edge of the kitchen island with a coffee cup in hand like he hadn’t a care in the world. His short, acorn-brown hair was in a wild mess on his head, but his grey eyes were alert and sharp as always. Another man of a similar age with thick black hair, an angular face, and a bad-boy look to him eyed the newcomers with sharp appraisal. At the far edge of the table, not seated but with laptop in hand, was a shorter man with black hair and a very Asian look to him. He too looked like he’d rolled out of bed and thrown on the first clothes at hand, his hair a scattered mess. Glenn knew Ivan just enough to assume that was K, the infamous hacker. Next to him, propping up a wall, was a taller man with tanned skin and salt-and-peppered hair, his eyes also studying Glenn.
Well. Seemed like Glenn got to meet most of Ivan’s family tonight.
Not a single person was willing to sit at the table and, considering the ruby necklace still hovering a good foot off its surface, throwing off a display of red light, who could blame them?
Ivan stepped forward and shook Glenn’s hand in welcome. “You make good time, my friend. You also bring people I need with you. Welcome, Ross, Keane.”
