Deck of Destiny 1, page 1
Deck of Destiny 1
Dante King
Copyright © 2023 by Dante King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
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Immortal Swordslinger
Bone Lord
About the Author
Chapter 1
My first run of the morning told me that it was going to be a good week.
I’d waited outside the airport for a fare in my dad’s old truck. Millbank’s terminal was bustling even at 6 am, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before the app on my phone gave me a customer.
Swarms of people from every race and creed rolled out of the airport and into one of the fastest-growing cities on the East Coast. Some were here for the opportunity, some were here for family, and some had just come by to taste the delights of the city.
I slid out of the cab of my truck and took up a position against the door of my pride and joy. Millbank wasn’t exactly most people’s idea of the city of dreams, but it had a lot of business available if you knew where to look for it. And I needed it. My rent had gone up twice in the last six months.
Escaping to a life on the road with a trailer behind my truck was looking more tempting every day, but something about Millbank kept me around. Maybe it was the ghosts of my parents. Maybe it was the conversations I got to have with perfect strangers every day.
Still, wide-open spaces, with a case of beer in the back seat and music blasting?
It sounded like heaven.
I needed the cash first, though, and working as a freelance cab driver with the marvels of the internet was actually pretty good money. My phone blipped insistently at me after a few moments, and I glanced down at my newest fare.
Elsie Winfrey needed a ride from the terminal to Midtown.
The app didn’t give me a portrait, which told me a couple of things.
She was either a new user or uncomfortable with technology.
Profiling people was tricky, and I let my gaze sweep over the crowd to take in details. Elsie’s name was old-fashioned, and there was every possibility that I was looking for a woman in her later years, maybe looking to save a little money so she could spend it on her grandkids.
The crowd of passengers surged toward the taxis parked right outside the front doors. I’d parked back a little to give the cab drivers the best pickings.
I found a couple of candidates. An elegantly-dressed businesswoman in her late forties stepped away from the doors of the terminal to light up a cigarette. Her hands were empty of any phone, though, so I crossed her off the list.
The second possibility was a senior citizen with a trolley piled high with luggage. Beads and bangles dangled on her arms, and she shoved aggressively through the crowd to get to a cab.
A cute brunette with warm brown eyes bumped her luggage, and she launched into a tirade that only tired old hippies could manage. The girl turned to talk to her with a nervous smile, but the old crone wasn’t about to be thrown off by a pretty face.
I pushed off from the truck door to intervene.
“—You fucking youngsters think you can just shove us around,” the haggard old lady spat. “Whatever happened to respecting your elders, huh? Did your parents not raise you right?”
“I’m sorry,” the brunette woman said.
I could hear the Texas in her voice, even with those two words. My eyes did an instinctive wash over the younger woman for a moment. A four-year-old smartphone dangled from her fingers, a hiking-style backpack hung off her firm shoulders, and she tried to straighten the luggage that she’d bumped on her way through the tide of people.
“Don’t touch it!” the old woman shrieked. “Everything’s where it’s supposed to be!”
“Just trying to help,” the Texan replied. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I really am.”
I stepped up beside her and smiled at the older lady. “Everything okay here?”
The old woman’s hawk-like gaze locked onto me with all the friendliness of a missile’s targeting system. Her eyes softened a second later as I gave her a patient smile.
“Clumsy bimbo here knocked my luggage,” the elder citizen tried to explain.
“Come on now,” I chided her. “That’s not very nice. She’s in just as much of a hurry as you are. Let’s get you a cab and get you where you need to go.”
The elderly terror’s gaze snapped back to the girl beside me. “See? That’s what you should be like, not stumbling around with your eyes on your phone.”
The girl flashed her a gorgeous smile of pearly whites and tucked her phone into a pair of tight-fitting jeans that drew the eye like a magnet. “I’ll be sure to do that, ma’am.”
I turned around, stepped toward the taxi rank with the gorgeous girl by my side, and flagged down a cab. An older guy with streaks of gray in his dark hair spotted me, and I stepped into some suit talking insistently into a headset.
“—No, you need to understand that the Game isn’t slowing down,” the businessman snapped, “it’s getting worse.”
I nudged past the guy, kept my eyes on the cab driver, and the guy’s eyes widened as he recognized me. The ancient terror shoved through the crowd with her mountain of luggage behind us, and I flipped ten bucks out of a folding clip from my coat.
“Craig,” I greeted the driver.
“Matt,” he greeted me with a laugh. “You still working with those new losers on the internet?”
“Hey, we’re cheaper.”
“And killing our business,” Craig replied good-naturedly. “What’s going on?”
I held up the ten-dollar bill and lowered my voice a notch. “Need you to transport a creature from the Jurassic period. Loud, mouthy, and moving a lot of weight.”
The gorgeous Texan stifled a giggle beside me as Craig’s eyes fixed on the cash.
“You trying to bribe me into a fare, kid?”
“Looking out for a friend,” I replied.
He took the cash and gave the girl beside me a once-over. “Nice friend.”
“Eyes to yourself.” I laughed. “Appreciate it.”
Craig tucked the cash into his shirt pocket, and I stepped away from the guy’s car as he pushed the door open to help the old hippie behind us. The girl with the dark eyes stayed close as I stepped through the crowd, caught an annoyed look from the businessman on his call, and started back towards my truck.
“Thanks for that,” the Texan said. “He said your name was Matt?”
“That’s what my momma called me,” I replied with a Southern lilt.
Her eyes sparkled with good humor.
“Wow. Minute in and you’re already mocking me.”
“Mockery comes free. Ride will cost you, though.”
“Wait, you’re my driver?”
We cleared the swarm of people, and I moved to the back door of my truck. I moved to pull it open, but the Texan pulled the front door open instead. She flashed me that warm, gorgeous smile of hers and shifted her backpack off her shoulders.
“I’ll ride shotgun,” she said. “Appreciate the gesture, though.”
“Take your bag, at least?”
Elsie hefted her bag into my arms, and I caught it with a surprised whuff. Thing had to weigh almost fifty pounds, and my newest fare had barely seemed to notice the weight of it. I set the hiking pack on the back seat, made sure Elsie was safely secured up front, and closed the door after her. I circled around to the driver’s side, stepped up into the truck, and started up the engine with a twist of the key. The Dodge growled hungrily as it rolled into life, and I locked my phone onto a cradle on the dash.
“Real man’s truck,” Elsie said, a note of approval in her voice.
“I don’t know about that. Probably needs more bullet holes or mud.”
“Really leaning into the stereotypes, huh.
The teasing tone in her voice was so damn appealing that it was a distraction. I forced my hands to do the things on the phone, pull up the GPS route into Midtown, and then clipped my seatbelt into place. Elsie didn’t make a move to do the same, and I gave her a mock-stern glance.
“Seatbelt,” I said.
“I checked the laws,” she replied. “Don’t need them here.”
“There’s needing, and there’s being smart about it,” I said. “Humor me?”
“Alright, but only because you helped me,” Elsie replied.
She clipped herself down, and I guided us away from the terminal. Millbank’s traffic was hell in the mornings, but the flight had arrived early enough to make skipping rush hour easy. I relaxed back into my seat as my body fell into the instinctive patterns of driving. Elsie watched me as I moved us down a couple of tightly-knit side streets of Uptown. Cafes were already open, taxis were on the prowl for fares, and I kept my eyes open for any jaywalkers looking to make a shortcut.
“You’re very careful,” Elsie observed.
“Try to be. She’s a lot of truck.”
She laughed. “Where I’m from, you get into a car with a guy, and he’d be trying to climb mountains with it just to impress you.”
There wasn’t any bragging in her tone. She was simply stating a fact.
“Well, no mountains here,” I told her. “Might be able to find an offramp if you’re looking to see the sights, but Millbank isn’t exactly a national park.”
“Offramp would barely slow a beast like this down,” Elsie said, admiringly.
I checked the address in Midtown again to make sure I had my route right. “So, what brings you to our lovely city?”
“College. What else would bring me to a place like this?”
I gave her a wink. “Maybe the country mouse wants to see the city.”
She snorted. “If it’s full of gentlemen like you, maybe I’ll get lucky.”
“I strike you as a gentleman?”
“Well, you did save me from a savage beast.” Elsie giggled.
I turned us around a corner, into an intersection, and something prickled at the back of my neck. The streets were deserted, but we were pushing up onto rush hour. I couldn’t see a single suit or jogger running toward a cafe that served their favorite caramel latte. As my dad would’ve said: ‘If it looks fucked, smells fucked, and sounds fucked, it’s probably fucked’.
And there was something fucked about an inner-city street being this quiet at 7 am.
Some instinct told me to slow down, and my eyes instinctively swept the street for any signs of life. Nothing. No jaywalkers, no passersby, no other drivers on the road. My gut twisted itself into knots, and Elsie spotted my search with a flash of concern.
“Everything okay—” she began.
A flash of something black and green appeared out of the corner of my eye. Legs and paws pounded into the asphalt with the speed of a cheetah, and the shape made a direct beeline for the shotgun side of my truck. Time seemed to slow for a single second, and instinct told me to gun the engine. I slammed my foot onto the gas, spun the wheel, and tried to turn away from the incoming shape at the last second.
I was just fast enough to stop Elsie getting killed.
The whole car rocked as hundreds of pounds of raw muscle smashed into the side of the Charger, rocking it up onto two wheels. Elsie’s head snapped up against the window, and I kept my foot on the accelerator. I willed the car to land on four wheels, and it did.
But I hadn’t accounted for the extra jolt of speed that four tires on asphalt would bring.
My Charger shrieked as it barreled forward. I spun the wheel to correct my momentum, slewed unsteadily until rubber bit into the road, and straightened out the path of the truck. Something lurched in the steering, and in a moment of pure clarity, I realized something had happened to the rear right tire. The same black-and-green shape streaked past my window, shook its head, and I finally got a good look at the thing that had caved in the side of my pickup.
An honest-to-god monster slowed in front of my ruined truck.
I stared at it in abject shock for a second. It looked like some kind of unholy crossbreed of a bull, a wolf, and a rhino. Armored carapaces caught the morning light with a reflective black coating that reminded me of obsidian. Green tufts of fur stuck out between its exoskeleton, and a foot-wide skull opened up a mouth full of canine teeth dripping with saliva. I’d never seen anything like it before. There was something so alien about it that it sent a bolt of pure fear down my spine and reminded me that I had a full bladder from too much coffee earlier that morning.
No cops were around. No people, either.
But it’d just dented my fucking truck. My only real source of income.
My eyes darted to the glove box in front of Elsie’s knees. The girl had a dazed look in her eyes, and she was staring directly ahead at nothing. I had a well-worn .45 in the glove box, next to a carry permit and all the right documentation. My window was up. The time it’d take for me to get my hands around the gun, get the window down, and snap off a shot was too long.
The monster turned around, shook its head again, and fixed two pairs of glowing green eyes directly on the front of my truck. I stared at the creature, and a sudden bolt of hatred ripped through my body. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know where it’d come from. But the fact that it’d just taken out one of my wheels pissed me the hell off. The creature pawed at the ground, tore up asphalt with a pair of retractable claws, and lowered its head.
I was still moving forward at a frightening rate, closing the distance between the monster and me. No one was coming to the rescue, but if a creature like this was tearing around the city with carnivore teeth, it was a danger to the people of Millbank. And I’d learned enough from my old man when it came to looking after the community.
Someone needed to take this thing out, pronto. Or at least slow it down.
“Matt, what—” Elsie muttered, her eyes still out of focus.
“Brace,” I snarled and stomped down on the gas again.
The Charger’s engine boiled up into a full-bodied howl as it lunged forward. I could hear scraping sounds echoing through the body of the car from the back. The monster barreled forward to meet me, but this was a simple game of physics now. One look at the thing told me that it had to weigh three or four hundred pounds, easy.
That kind of weight on a creature made it difficult to pick up speed quickly.
My Charger was a different kind of beast. I spun the wheel, angled the front left corner of my truck straight into the direction of the thing’s charge, and smashed headlong into it a second later. White and red exploded behind my eyes as the airbags deployed, punched Elsie and me back into our seats, and my car crunched up against something with a gritty scrape of steel and plastic. I forced out a breath and let my mind roll over my body for a second to check for injury.
No broken bones. Maybe a mild concussion. Maybe.
I clawed a folding knife I used for fishing out of a pocket in the driver’s side door, flicked it open, and punctured the airbag in front of me. The front windscreen was a mess of spiderwebbed glass, and my door had buckled from the impact. The airbag came apart at the point of my knife, and I punched straight through Elsie’s a second later. She barely managed to catch herself on the dash before she bounced her head off it.
I needed to get her out of there.
I pulled the latch on my door, but metal ground against metal as dents held me in place. I kicked at it, punched the thing open, and forced myself out onto the road. The smell of gas, blood, and burned rubber hit my nostrils, and I caught a flash of what was left of the monster I’d just played chicken with. It stared up at me with hate-filled green eyes. Its neck was twisted weirdly to the side, and the impact had mulched enough of its bones to puncture organs and internal arteries. Brown blood leaked from protruding bones, and its body came apart a second later.
Fur and carapace-like armor dissolved into silver sand, scattering itself across the asphalt. I stared at where the corpse had been for a long second. The sand shifted on the road as if it had a life of its own. I took an involuntary step back as a strand of the sand leapt up off the blacktop and lunged into my chest. A streak of gut-wrenching elation rolled through my body, blew out my vision, and I hit the ground on my hands and knees.
