Deck of Destiny 1, page 14
There was still so much that I didn’t know and needed to learn.
I grabbed Elsie’s hiking pack, slung it over my shoulder, and she retrieved my own clothes from the table beside it. Elsie wiped the scratch on her cheek, glanced down at the blood, and she let out a sharp hiss.
“Is it bad?” she asked.
“Makes you look badass,” I promised her.
She put pressure on the cut. “We need stitches.”
“You want to trust the needles around here?” I asked.
Elsie dropped her hand away a moment later. “Can’t say I do. Where’s Mayce?”
“That’s what we need to find out,” I said. “Let’s make this quick.”
We hurried up the concrete stairwell and found ourselves face-to-face with a crowd. Some were shouting, some were cheering, but they struck me as a teeming mass of obstacles that were just there to make our lives difficult. Elsie and I pushed our way back towards the bar, kept hands ready to cast magic, and the teeming sea of faces parted to let us through. I heard all kinds of crazy shit out of their mouths, but I tuned it out.
We were here on a mission, and our meal ticket was still waiting for us somewhere in the canning factory. I could already feel the adrenaline dump fading from my system, and new pain washed up from where I’d been hit. My jaw throbbed painfully from the elbow I’d caught, someone had pressed a red-hot razor to my ribs, and I glanced down under my arm to see a wet patch of scarlet blooming out in my jacket.
Oh, yeah. I’d been shot.
A quick inspection told me that it was barely more than a scratch. I’d gotten hellishly lucky with that faceful of sand, and Edge-Boy had only grazed me with his wild shot. My body ached from the tumbling and jumping and rolling, and I reminded myself that we’d been lucky.
Hellishly lucky.
We reached the bar half a minute later to claim our winnings.
Ponytail leaned up against the bar with a wicked smirk on his face. I’d seen the guy humiliated only minutes earlier, and now he had the air of someone in the know, someone who had the leverage. A bolt of fear rolled its way down my spine, but I couldn’t afford to let any sign of it show on my face. I needed to keep the cold exterior up for as long as I could.
“Good fight,” Ponytail said, with a flash of his pointed teeth.
“Where’s our money?” I asked bluntly.
He reached under the bar, pulled out a silver briefcase, and set it down on the bar. Ponytail clicked the latches, opened it up, and I saw neat stacks of Benjamins waiting inside the case. There was no way of telling if they were real or not, not without a closer look, but they sure as hell looked green enough. Ponytail closed the briefcase with a snap and slid it over to Elsie. She slammed her hand down on the thing before it could tumble off the edge of the bar.
Ponytail’s eyes glittered. “Wilson wanted to be here to congratulate you in person, but there’s a bit of an internal issue currently. You know anything about that, Matt?”
I met his eyes with a chuckle. “Thought you guys were professionals.”
Something ugly washed across his face. “You fucking—”
“What kind of internal issue?” Elsie cut in smoothly.
“None of your fucking business,” Ponytail snapped.
“But it could be,” I said and leaned against the bar. “Where’s Wilson?”
“Told you, he’s busy,” Ponytail snapped.
“Haven’t been able to find my other bodyguard,” I said. “Which isn’t to say that it’s got anything to do with you, of course, but she doesn’t normally run off, either. I want to talk to Wilson. I like the money, and I’m wondering what other kind of employment opportunities he’s got available.”
I had no intention of joining the Leviathans. Ponytail’s initially arrogant air had forced me to fear the worst. I didn’t know if Mayce had been captured or not, or if the bookmaker was just pretending to be more in the know than he was, but I couldn’t afford to leave Mayce here alone and without backup, either.
Which was why I was dangling the offer in front of Ponytail’s face.
The bookmaker’s eyes narrowed as he thought about what I’d said.
“You don’t strike me as a joiner,” he told me.
I glanced at Elsie with a smirk. “You believe this guy?”
She shook her head. “Guess we can take our business somewhere else, then.”
Her bluff caught Ponytail off-guard.
“Wait, wait, wait,” he said hastily. “We can work something out.”
“See?” I asked Elsie. “Unprofessional.”
Ponytail stepped out from behind the bar. “I’ll get him for you.”
“Oh, we’re coming with you,” I assured him.
“No need for that,” he protested.
We’d scared the guy, intimidated him, and already given him a reason to hate us. His earlier interaction with Wilson was enough to confirm that he was terrified of his boss. I’d been forced to bluff and push through everything that Mayce had told me about the Guilds, but it was working. I knew enough about the Game to know that standing around at the bar with Players leaving the complex all around us wasn’t a good plan.
Especially not with a briefcase stacked up with cash.
Elsie hefted the package of money up over her shoulder, and I fell into step beside Ponytail. Pressure was key when you had someone working with you. Any good con required keeping people off-balance and feeling threatened. I couldn’t afford to let the bookmaker out of my sight. The two of us followed him as he started towards a door on the left side of the cannery. One of the gigantic bouncers guarded it with his arms crossed and a curious look on his face.
“What’s this, Ed?” the guard rumbled.
“Looking to talk to your boss,” I replied. “Figured he could use some consistent fighters on his roster since we took out the competition.”
The guard muttered something into his lapel piece, waited a beat, and frowned.
“Can’t get a hold of him. Had him a second ago, though.”
Ponytail gave me a sidelong look. “Told you, he’s busy.”
“Doesn’t strike you as odd?” I asked the guard.
The bruiser took two seconds to rub his pair of brain cells together and then pushed the door open behind him. Ponytail, Elsie, and I hurried after the guy as we started up a concrete stairwell. I was the last into the fire-escape route, and I kicked the door shut behind us.
We had the two Leviathans to ourselves. Two flights of concrete stairs led up to another room or landing. Elsie and I had the opportunity to catch them by surprise. We might’ve been wounded, but with the money in our hands, and the potential to join their Guild driving Ponytail forward to get us to Wilson, we had a momentary advantage. The two of us could cut loose, kill them quickly while their attention was elsewhere, and find Mayce.
I considered the thought for a long second.
And I decided against it. The terrain didn’t favor us here. The sheer adrenaline and intensity of the situation hadn’t faded from my body, and I had a feeling that things would go to shit sooner or later. But I wasn’t ready to stab someone in the back if they hadn’t offered me violence. Even a greaseball like Ponytail didn’t deserve to go down like that. I held off the urge to drop the two of them, and we pressed on up the stairs. I didn’t know why Wilson had left Ed to talk to us, but my suspicion was that it had something to do with Mayce and Bess.
We climbed the stairs and pushed out onto the second story of the warehouse.
The guard pushed the door open and admitted the four of us into some kind of sweeping office space. I caught up to Elsie, squeezed her hand, and nudged her to the side as I passed through the door. She caught my drift and took up a position directly beside the exit.
Wilson’s office had been converted from some kind of machine room. Red carpets and old-world furniture decorated the dull concrete and pitted steel beams.
Wilson sat behind the desk in an old-school office chair, with his feet up on the table.
He had a phone to his ear, but that wasn’t the thing that held my attention.
A naked woman was chained to the wall beside him.
A curtain of dark, glossy hair curtained her face from us. She had the same paper-white skin as Wilson, and she was covered in cuts and bruises. A collar of black steel hugged her neck and kept her close to the wall. She’d curled herself up to provide some kind of modesty, but even in her abused condition, the woman looked incredible. An otherworldly beauty hung off her like an aura of its own power. She scrambled away from us with a feral growl, and I caught a flash of blood-red eyes as she stared up at me with pure hatred on her face.
Wilson’s eyes zeroed in on the four of us, and a grin spread over his face.
“Meeting’s come up,” the Leviathan leader said. “Call you back.”
He clicked off his cell phone, pulled his feet off the desk, and gave me that sharp-faced smile that didn’t reach his eyes. The guy was already running numbers in his head. His eyes flickered over Elsie, Ed, and the huge bouncer, and then they came to rest on me again. I couldn’t see Mayce anywhere, but I had a pretty good suspicion that the woman on the floor was Bess.
Why else would she be chained up like a prisoner?
“Hell of a fight,” Wilson commented. “You made us a lot of money tonight.”
“You pay well,” I replied. “Wanted to talk to you about a business opportunity.”
Wilson steepled his fingers and rested his elbows on the desk. His eyes glittered with sudden interest and excitement, and I had the feeling of being a shiny new toy, rather than a potential employee. I’d met guys like Wilson before. They were corporate assassins without a soul. Everything had a price, time was money, and it was all about the art of the deal.
I was bluffing like a crazy person. I didn’t know this world.
But it had rules, and it had interests, and I could use both of those.
I pushed the thought of Bess, of Mayce, and of any kind of human emotion out of my mind. Cover like this was hard to maintain, and Wilson had to know I was fresh to the Game. But if I managed to convince him that I was a stone-cold killer with my body language and my voice… well, then I could create a window of opportunity.
“What’d you have in mind?” Wilson asked.
“Consistent fights was my first thought,” I said. “But your bookmaker sucks.”
Wilson’s smirk widened. “Had to make do, unfortunately.”
“Boss,” Ed began.
“What’d he do this time?” Wilson asked me.
“Told me about some kind of internal issue you had to attend to,” I said. “Don’t know if it was just the fact that he wanted to pretend that he was in the know, but he told us you were having problems when we came to pick up our prize money.”
Ed quaked beside me and shot me a filthy glare. “Listen-”
Wilson cut him off with a sharp clap of his hands. “Right, I’ve about had it with you.”
“Wilson, I swear to God, these guys are running a fucking con on you,” he sputtered. “Look at them. They rolled in here looking like tourists, marched right up, and I couldn’t find the other one that they brought with them.”
I let out a dry chuckle. “How hard did you look?”
Wilson’s eyes lasered in on Ed. “Good question.”
The naked woman beside the desk let out a hungry growl, and I glanced down at her for a second. Those blood-red eyes of hers were fixed on the wound at my side, and I caught a flash of a long, pointed tongue as she licked her lips. Some kind of primal surge of desire suddenly flooded my mind, and I tore my gaze away from the prisoner a second later.
Wilson caught my glance and let out a smooth chuckle. “You like her?”
I shrugged. “Little too restrained for my liking.”
“Oh, you’ve got to keep them locked up like this. It’s where all the fun happens.” Wilson leaned back in his chair. “So, here’s my deal for the two of you. Or three, whatever. I’ve got a pain in my ass uptown. Some old beer-puller has taken a little too healthy of an interest in our business, and I need him gone.”
Daine. He was talking about exactly the same guy who’d hired us.
Wilson’s smile widened. “Oh, you know him?”
I shrugged. “Might’ve heard of the guy.”
“You see, boss?” Ed cut in. “They’re—”
“Ed, you open your mouth one more time, and I’ll rip your tongue out,” Wilson told him. There wasn’t a single hint of amusement in his tone, and he turned back to me. “You’re interrupting the conman. He’s doing his best. The hamster’s spinning the wheel, trying to keep up. But he’ll get there, and you’re ruining the moment.”
A bolt of pure, cold, vicious fear rolled down my spine.
Wilson’s smirk widened in a grin. “Come on, Matt. You’re doing well. Keep running the con. Keep trying to turn my people against me, and keep telling me how you’re a cold-blood mercenary that only cares about money and doesn’t care about Bess here.”
The Leviathan bouncer let out a rumbling growl and started across the room.
Wilson held up a hand, and the bruiser halted his progress. Runes swirled up in my peripherals as Elsie began to summon her weapons, and I held up a fist to stop her from doing anything rash. We were outnumbered, outgunned, and we’d been found out.
But we were still breathing. And that counted for something.
Wilson gave me a nod of approval. “You’re not an idiot. I like that.”
“Let me guess,” I said tightly. “You have drinks with some Sharks from time to time.”
“Be rude not to. They’re amazing professionals,” Wilson told me. “I wasn’t blowing smoke up your ass earlier, either. You’re damn good fighters, the both of you. The sheer balls of just rolling in here, betting your own lives, and winning? That’s impressive, especially for newbies.” He leaned forward on his desk again. “What was the plan, exactly? Roll in here, massacre us, break Bess out, and just make a run for it?” He shook his head. “Daine’s so cute sometimes it scares me that he’s got the authority he does.”
“You guys go a ways back, then?”
“Quite a ways back,” Wilson agreed. “How do you think he lost his eye?”
I didn’t answer, and the Leviathan chuckled. “Yeah, he didn’t tell you, did he?”
“A lot of people don’t tell me things,” I said. “Why haven’t you taken us out yet?”
“Because I’m not an idiot,” Wilson said. “Like I said, you’re valuable. Promises of safety in a tower aren’t going to get you anywhere in the long run. You might get a few weeks of quiet, but there are plenty of people out there looking for the two of you. Speaking of…”
He nodded to Ed and the bruiser. “Find the runaway.”
A bright burst of violet-and-red runes exploded out of thin air beside Wilson, and I caught a flash of purple hair and gleaming steel. Wilson’s eyes widened in pure surprise as Mayce drove her dagger straight into the side of his neck.
The tension snapped like a glass rod, and everything went to hell.
Chapter 15
Wilson snarled a curse, and I tore open my Deck of Cards to add to the chaos.
Ed and the bouncer stared at their boss in abject shock. They were flat-footed, off-guard, and gave Elsie the space she needed to make her first move. White sigils whirled around her arm as she summoned her Greatshield and charged straight into the midst of the Leviathans behind me.
I whirled to face the bouncer as he activated his own Card. Flaming gauntlets appeared around his hands, and he threw a viciously fast haymaker at my flank. Instinct forced me to change levels and drop low. The blow whistled over my head, I slammed into his bulk with a shoulder check and staggered him back a step. Green energy appeared in the space between us, and my knarlback materialized out of thin air. It crashed into the guy’s waist and bore him down to the ground. The bouncer shot his flaming gauntlet up into its maw to stop the monster from ripping out his throat.
Molten pain washed through my mouth like wildfire.
Ed flew past me, crashed into the wall beside Bess, and the chained prisoner caught hold of his ponytail as he struggled to get his balance back. I caught a flash of pale, voluptuous skin as she ripped his head back and sank a set of fangs straight into the side of his neck. My brain barely had time to register the thought of vampire before Mayce cried out from behind the desk.
Wilson smashed her against a filing cabinet as if she weighed nothing more than a toy.
But her surprise attack had been enough. Blood fountained out of his neck and face, and he grasped the gaping wound with his free hand. Burning hatred boiled out of his eyes as he scrambled back away from our hidden assassin. Ed’s gurgling scream cut off abruptly, and the bouncer lifted up his eyes toward Elsie a second later. The knight-like Player raised up her huge shield and smashed it down on his skull like a guillotine. I used whatever sentient thought I had left to direct the knarlback away from him and push it toward the door.
“We’re outta here!” I shouted.
Mayce scrambled away from the shelves behind the desk. Bess straightened up from her kill, licked blood from her lips with a groan of pure pleasure, and wrapped the length of chain around her hand. She hissed as smoke started to rise from her arm, but she planted her feet and tore the restraints straight out of the wall with a burst of inhuman strength.
The knarlback blew through the door, and Elsie hesitated for a split second.
“Go, go, go!” I shouted. “Mayce!”
Wilson had sunk back against the wall with burning fury in his eyes, but Mayce hadn’t been idle. Her Curses spun their way over his unseen Deck and locked him out of any immediate magical options. Bess bounded past me in a flash of distracting skin and black chain, and Elsie spun to give chase. My eyes fell back on the Leviathan leader for just a second. He was wounded, defenseless, and I could’ve taken an extra minute, maybe.
