Deck of Destiny 1, page 4
“Reputation precedes us, then.”
“Sure does,” the leader replied. “And you managed to piss off the Giants to boot. Pretty impressive for fresh meat.”
I considered the situation for a moment.
“Guessing this is the part where you offer us a job? Or try to take us out of the Game?”
The guy with the glasses gave me a pleased smile. “You’re learning fast.”
“Figure it’s best not to scare the horses.”
The leader cast his eyes over the people around us with a dismissive snort. “Like they could do anything about it. Only reason you’re still breathing is that the last thing we want to have to deal with is the Arbiters.”
“Arbiters?” Elsie squeaked.
The guy with the glasses gave her a wider smirk, and something ugly sparked in his eyes. “They keep the Game under wraps. Make it easier and harder for us to play.”
“Game Masters, then?”
“Close enough,” the leader agreed.
I checked for any possible escape routes. People were packed tighter than sardines into the train carriage. Making a break for it would start a chase. Maybe some well-meaning people would step in to help us, but I had a distinct feeling that the trio in front of me wouldn’t flinch at the thought of using violence against civilians. I couldn’t exactly summon the knarlback in such close quarters, not without starting a fear-fueled stampede of terror. And there was no way I could leave Elsie behind. Maybe I could’ve managed it on my own, but I wasn’t leaving without her.
We were stuck. At least until our station arrived. The three Players threatening us wanted peace and quiet to take us out of the equation. The mention of Arbiters was interesting, though, and it presented an angle that I realized I could use. I didn’t know what I was up against with the three chucklefucks here, but I knew a little bit about predator psychology.
They wanted us alone and scared.
“So how are we going to do this?” I asked. “Wait until the train’s empty? Or are you going to march us off somewhere nice and quiet so we can battle it out?”
The leader of the trio laughed. “Battle it out? You think that’s how this is going to go?”
“The other guy offered us a job.”
“Don’t have the time,” the geeky mage replied. His eyes didn’t leave Elsie for a second. “Although it could be fun. But we don’t need amateurs tripping us over.”
Some roaring fire started up in my guts as Elsie avoided his gaze. Specs was a creep. I didn’t know Elsie that well, but she’d only wound up in this mess because of me. I had no intention of letting these pricks continue to eyefuck her like a pack of wild hyenas. I stepped a little closer to Elsie and shrugged.
“So, what? We throw down here?”
The giant spoke for the first time, with a rumbling voice that sounded like rocks grinding together. “Not gonna work out for you.”
“Or you,” I pointed out. “Especially if the Game cops turn up to waggle the finger.”
The trio shifted a touch at the mention of the Arbiters. There had to be levels to the Game, then. People who were more powerful than the others. I glanced up at the passing stations and found one that looked familiar. It was close enough to Midtown. The suburb had plenty of rundown back-alleys and cheaper housing. It was a maze of commissioned housing, and that could work in our favor.
“Midtown work for you three?” I asked.
The other two glanced at the leader as the train’s brake shrieked. I reached out a hand to Elsie, and she took it with warm fingers and pulled herself up beside me. It was a risky play, pressuring them like this, but I didn’t see any better opportunities to force their hand.
The trio straightened up, and the train started to empty itself out. Elsie’s shoulder pressed up against mine as she kept pace with me, and she glanced up at me with fearful brown eyes.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
I squeezed her hand twice in rapid succession. “That’s your cue to get crazy.”
“Are you sure—”
I shushed her with a quick hiss, and we stepped off onto the platform for Midtown. People swarmed around us and pushed up toward street level. A quick glance over my shoulder told me that the trio was still in hot pursuit. The crowd was working in our favor, but they stuck close to our flank like a pack of wolves. My adrenaline surged into my body again, slowed my perception of time, and filled my aching muscles with fresh energy.
Elsie and I climbed the battered stairs up to street level. A tight knot of cars was locked up outside the station. The growl of engines and the smell of fast food and gas washed up into my senses. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to break into a sprint and leave these assholes in the dust, but they were magic, just like us. It wouldn’t take long for them to catch us, hunt us down, and pull us into pieces for our Cards.
Elsie and I stepped out onto a crosswalk, and we made a beeline for a supermarket across the road. A narrow street burrowed its way past the store, opening up into a series of backstreets that snaked their way around old brick buildings that had been built thirty years ago. Elsie’s breath came in gasps as she struggled to keep up with my walking pace.
We got off the street, out of the public eye, and found ourselves in a backstreet parking lot. Boarded-up buildings surrounded us, and a few wrecked cars sat on a wide concrete plateau, giving us the space and privacy we needed to take on the hunters behind us.
I kept them zeroed in out of the corner of my eye. The three of them spread out in rough arrowhead shape at the entrance to the parking lot to cut off our escape. A vicious tension hung in the air for a second, and I turned around to them with sudden fear in my eyes. I dropped Elsie’s hefty backpack onto the ground and locked a pleading gaze on the leader’s face.
“Listen, guys, are you sure there’s no chance we can join up with you?” I asked.
Elsie forced herself not to look at me, but I caught a sudden confusion in her eyes. I kept my hand in hers as the leader considered the thought.
“Well, you did knock over a Giant-”
“We don’t have time,” Specs cut in. “We need to get back to the Guild, ASAP. Can’t have newbies getting in our way—”
“Just because you got the nice Card?” the leader demanded. “They’ve got potential.”
The huge bruiser glared at me. “He’s fucking with us. I know the type. Smooth talker.”
The leader grimaced. “Yeah, you’re right. I’d tell you to check in with the Leviathans, but—”
I squeezed Elsie’s hand twice and stepped away from her with a quick movement to draw their attention. I lifted my hand with the same movement and focused on a patch of ground directly behind the leader, in the midst of our new enemies. Green runes circled into life around my hand, and a summoning ring of runes appeared in between the pack of mages.
The leader cursed and activated his own magic as the knarlback erupted out from the concrete and smashed into the guy with the glasses like a runaway train. Canine teeth sank into his thigh and snapped it like a twig. Specs let out a scream as he tried to backpedal and put his own spell together.
Elsie hadn’t waited around for the opening to close up. A green circle of runes appeared around her feet like a character in an MMO, and that green haze rolled off her body a second later. Her eyes flashed with emerald light, and she lifted her other hand. Bright red runes flashed into existence and materialized into the same huge sword she’d taken from killing the suited assassin.
The hulking thug stepped forward to meet her with an impressive growl. White energy hummed around his body, and he clasped his hands together with an ear-splitting clap. A huge, door-sized slab of metal appeared in his hand a second later, and he smashed it into the knarlback beside him with a grunt of effort.
The knarlback took the brunt of the hit on its flank. I staggered to the side as I shared the pain of my monster, and the shield-bearer spun to take on Elsie’s berserker rush with a vicious grin on his face. My ally covered the distance between them with a few pouncing strides. The enormous greatsword in her hand didn’t seem to weigh anything more than a breadstick, and she brought it down onto the thug’s shield with a bloodcurdling war cry.
Sparks spun into the air as steel met steel. The giant turned the blow aside with a bark of laughter and smashed a punch straight into Elsie’s mouth. The Texan staggered back a pace, and the leader of the crew surged forward to take me on. My knarlback was stunned, but it resumed its attack on Specs with a flick of my mind.
Now, I just had one guy to deal with.
The leader’s hands shone with green light, and his fingers elongated into sharp, reptilian claws. Huge talons spiked out of his fingernails, ready to rip and tear at my flesh. I backed up as he came in, barely managing to avoid his first swipe. The leader didn’t halt his attack and threw a flurry of raking blows. I caught one on my arm, and a flash of pain boiled up through my skin as my jacket sleeve came apart. Instinct forced my center of gravity lower, and I shot in toward the guy’s legs as hard as I could.
The leader’s claws raked at my back as I caught him in a tight double-leg, piledriving him into the concrete. His head and neck smashed into the ground, and I caught a flash of confusion and anger in his eyes as I released my grip around him and scrambled up to stomp on his neck. Something splashed down my arm as I brought my boot down on the guy’s neck, but he twisted aside at the last second. I used the momentum of my strike to lunge forward and felt his claws hiss past my thigh as I managed to get clear of him.
Shit, shit, shit.
I had to kill him with magic.
Or a magical creature.
I surged forward, just as I saw my knarlback tear out Spec’s throat with a quick chomp of its jaws. His high scream turned into a gurgle as my beast took him down. Elsie whipped her greatsword around in a huge arc at the shield-bearer, but he laughed, deflected it with a twist of his tower shield, and smashed a kick into her torso. Elsie grunted as she shot back, smashed into the brick wall of the building behind her, and fell forward on her hands and knees.
I reached the giant a second later, caught hold of his shield, and clung to it with everything I had. The gigantic Player swung his shield to the side and tried to shake me off. My boots skidded across the concrete as I held on, slowed him down as much as I could, and cast a desperate glance down at Elsie.
She scooped up her sword a second later, and her eyes locked onto the towering Player with burning hunger. The gorgeous Texan pushed off the wall with her foot, rocketed in with breakneck speed, and raised her sword like a lance. The huge player saw it coming, but my added weight on his shield prevented him from protecting himself.
Elsie let out a bellow as the point of the blade tore through the guy’s chest, bit through his spine, and kept on going. The shield in my hands dissipated into a cloud of white runes, and the tank collapsed a second later. His torso had been rent almost in half by the sheer ferocity of Elsie’s strike, and there wasn’t much left of him.
Bright streams of runes burst out of the corpses and crashed into Elsie and me. Gut-twisting pleasure rolled through every inch of my body, and I felt a growl of pleasure erupt from my chest as I stepped away from the body of the giant Player. A movement out of the corner of my eye forced my body to the side, and those wicked claws racked through the air where I’d been standing a second earlier.
“You motherfucking cheating bastard!” the leader snarled.
I snapped my fingers, and the bruised knarlback lunged off the corpse of Specs and engaged the last survivor with a headlong rush. The leader slammed the points of his talons into the creature’s eyes as it tried to latch onto his leg. Blinding pain exploded through my sight, and I heard myself scream through a sudden wall of white noise. I staggered backwards, heard a shout, and my vision returned a second later.
Elsie swept her blade up to take off the leader’s head. He ducked under it with smooth precision, slashed out at her, and tore open some real estate on her shoulder. Elsie barely seemed to notice it as she stepped forward, caught hold of the guy’s ear with her teeth, and bit down.
She was in close quarters with a fucking blender, and she didn’t have the defenses to deal with it. I found the knarlback’s mind with my own and guided it to the leader’s back with a sharp mental image of the world around us. The monster’s rage coiled inside it, and it lunged forward as the leader managed to shove Elsie off. Blood dripped from his talons as he stared at her with hatred.
The knarlback bit down on his ass an eyeblink later. He screamed in pain as the creature bullied him into the concrete with a rush of fur and muscle, flipped him over, and went for his face. The wide jaw crunched around the Player’s skull, cracked it like a walnut, and killed him a moment later. A fresh burst of green energy crashed into my chest and drove the same orgasmic pleasure into my body. New cards flashed up in my vision, but I could barely pay attention to them with the flash of magical feedback on my nervous system.
I staggered backward and managed to dispel the knarlback with a wave of my hand. The monster glanced at me for a second through its bloodied eyes, gave out a satisfied grunt, and burst into floating green runes.
Elsie hummed as she deactivated her sword and let the rage-fueled magic drain out of her body. Her eyes cleared, and she staggered forward over the corpse of Specs. She threw up over his mangled body, clutched her injured shoulder, and let out a long hiss of pain.
“Oh my goodness,” she muttered.
A crazy grin touched my face. “You did great.”
“You’re bleeding,” she told me.
I glanced down at my ripped-up sleeve and noted the long, vicious cuts over my skin. The leftover afterglow of pleasure was taking the worst edges off the wound, but I knew it wouldn’t get better with time. Hopefully, the claws on the leader hadn’t been laced with something. I stepped over to the corpse of the shield-bearer and tore his wife-beater into long strips.
“I can’t believe we survived,” Elsie finally managed. “That was completely insane.”
“We’ve got to move,” I said.
I stepped over to her, lifted her arm, and wound the strips of cloth tightly around the nasty gash on her shoulder. She hissed in pain but stayed rock-steady as I tied off the makeshift bandage before raiding another corpse for fresh material. I checked their pockets while I was at it. A cracked phone and a worn leather wallet turned up in Specs’ pocket, but the others had been traveling light.
A couple of crisp twenty-dollar bills were stuffed into the wallet, along with a pile of various business cards, a plastic bank card, and some ID. I tucked it all into my back pocket, bandaged myself up as best as I could, and retrieved Elsie’s pack from the ground. It’d carried through the fight miraculously unharmed. I turned my attention to my newly-forged ally.
She stared down at the corpses with a blend of horror and some kind of satisfaction in her eyes.
“They were going to do the same to us,” I reminded her.
“I know,” she said. “But they didn’t have to.” Elsie took a deep breath and straightened up. “You saved my life. Again.”
“He was going to crush me if you didn’t get in there,” I countered. “We saved each other.” I turned my eyes back to the street outside the parking lot. “We’ve gotta get off the street. Where do your family friends live again?”
Chapter 5
The two of us hurried through the alley and back out onto the street again. We must’ve looked crazy, with bandages around our arms and blood still in Elsie’s mouth, but we kept our heads down and tried not to draw attention to ourselves. Elsie eased her phone out of her jeans as we went and dialed a number into it. I didn’t know what the cell phone was made out of, but it’d managed to survive multiple impacts, and I couldn’t help but be impressed at the construction of the thing.
“Hey, Mrs. Hudson,” Elsie said. “Yeah, I’m here. Ran into a bit of trouble just down from your place.” She sounded shaken up, and it must’ve worked because there was a burst of concerned chatter on the other end. “I don’t know. Happened so fast. My driver helped me, but we’re both cut up pretty bad.”
Elsie glanced at me for a moment, and I shot her an approving thumbs-up.
“No, no. Just something random, I think. Not seriously hurt, no.” Elsie let out a nervous giggle. “You know I hate hospitals. Was hoping you could stitch us up like you used to.”
Another burst of chatter followed, then Elsie nodded. “We’re just down the block. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
She clicked off the call with a grimace.
“Mugging?” I guessed.
“That’s what I said, yeah. Hate lying to her, though. She’s a good woman.”
“Sounds like it.”
“She said it might be a bit cramped. Apparently, she’s looking after a stray that she bumped into outside of church.”
I shook my head in astonishment. “Sounds like a really good woman. She really willing to just take us in?”
“She told me that she’d meet us at the hospital,” Elsie said, “but—”
“You hate hospitals?”
Elsie shuddered. “Yeah.”
“Let’s hope the damage isn’t too vicious, then,” I said. “Did you tell her that the mugger had a dog?”
“Shoot,” she said as she looked at my arm. “That’d make a lot more sense.”
“Don’t worry too much about it,” I assured her. “Adrenaline does weird things to your head. Makes you forget certain details about things, exaggerates other details.”
“Hell of a dog,” Elsie murmured.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. The post-combat high carried us over the streets and past some concerned looks from the civilians around us until we reached a series of flats close to the center of Midtown. Elsie led the way to the main door, fitted with an intercom, and she buzzed it. A sweet feminine voice floated through the speaker a moment later.
“That you, Else?”
“Sure is,” she confirmed.
The door clicked open a moment later, and we headed past a hallway of doors until we found an elevator. The building was old, well-maintained, and I could practically smell the history leaking out of the walls. A lot of people had lived here throughout the years, carrying on their lives blissfully unaware of magic. My arm throbbed as Elsie punched in the floor number on the elevator, and a new set of questions unfolded in my head.
