Deck of destiny 4, p.15
Deck of Destiny 4, page 15
“No way of doing that until we find them,” Lana countered.
“Vampires?” Mayce suggested.
“Vampires,” I agreed. “But it wouldn’t hurt to reach out to contractors, either. How are our finances?”
“We’ve got some leftovers from the coven still in your account,” Mayce told me. “It won’t be enough to cover how dangerous it’ll be tracking the elves. Look what one of them did to the HQ.”
“So, we find someone who’s willing to do a discount for us.”
“Or someone crazy enough.” Mayce nodded.
We thought over it for a second, and a certain figure sprang to mind.
“Reggie, maybe,” I said.
Mayce shook her head. “He’s a broker. He deals in information.”
“Which is all we want,” I reminded her. “We just need to know where they’re holed up.”
Mayce’s phone suddenly buzzed on the table, and she gritted her teeth when she recognized the number. She scooped it up, placed it against her ear, and the blood drained from her face when she heard the voice on the other end. She nodded once and held out the phone to me.
“It’s Bess,” the assassin said. “She said it was urgent.”
“Probably something about the shitshow outside the Goldfire,” I muttered and lifted it to my ear. “It’s Matt.”
Bess’s voice found my ear a second later. “We need to meet.”
Her voice was terse. No greetings, no nothing, and the sheer possibilities of what she wanted to meet about sent an unpleasant thrill down my spine. “What about?”
“In person, Matvei,” she insisted.
“Where?”
“Neutral ground.”
The Castledaine. Things had just gone from bad to worse.
I had no idea what she wanted, but this wasn’t a social call. The Castledaine had hosted multiple Guild heads trying to sort out their differences before. It was something of a specialty of Daine’s, and if the leader of the Dragons wanted to meet there, this was purely Guild business.
And that didn’t bode well for my bombed-out building or my lack of personnel.
“When?” I asked.
“As soon as possible,” she said. “This can’t wait.”
Bess hung up a second later, and I stared at the ‘call ended’ notification for a beat too long. She’d already mentioned the problems with supporting my Guild and trying to get a Contract signed for multiple Guilds to work together to canvas Southside. It could’ve had something to do with the shitfight just outside her building with the Cowboy. Perhaps the Dragon leadership had finally set her against me off the books.
No matter what I guessed, nothing sounded good.
And Bess had always been happy to explain her position to me.
I slid the phone back across to Mayce.
“What does she want?” Lana asked.
“She wants to meet at the pub,” I said. “Sounds bad.”
“She didn’t say what she wanted?”
I shook my head. “She sure didn’t. We had to move that way as it is. We’ve got to find a way to get in contact with Reggie and talk to him about finding the elves. I’m not going to sleep well until I know where they are and we’re a step ahead of them.”
“We know where they’re going, eventually,” Mayce said.
I nodded. “But I’d rather limit the opposition if I can. Wanna lock up for me?”
“Sure,” Mayce said.
I slid my keys across the table and turned to Lana. I pushed a smile onto my face. “HQ is compromised. You think we can risk leaving this place undefended for an hour or so?”
She hesitated before her answer. “It’s a risk regardless. You still have that assassin chasing you. And there’s every chance that the elfkin move against you while you’re in transit.”
“I’m not making Bess wait for me,” I said.
Lana sighed. “I know. But I don’t like it.”
I glanced out the window. “Rain gives us some cover, at least. Can’t imagine there’s going to be a lot of people moving on the trains after last night. Good money says it’s a pretty straightforward run.”
The Arbiter grimaced. “I’d rather she come here.”
“She already did us all a favor,” I reminded her. “I vote for going.”
“Seconded,” Mayce agreed and stood up. “See you two outside.”
She stepped out of the room a moment later, and Lana gave me a troubled look.
“Let me guess,” I said lightly. “You don’t like it.”
“Too many open routes,” she agreed. “Too many ways to attack you.”
“We’re out in public,” I assured her. “It’s the fastest way we have to get there unless you’re willing to boost a car yourself and drive.”
Lana gave me a nod and rose from her seat. Her eyes lingered on me a little longer than I’d expected, and I returned her look with a wink. That adorable flash of color washed over her face again as we took the elevator down to street level, but I didn’t press it any further. The tension between us was starting to build, but I forced myself to ignore it. Lana had already expressed her own kind of interest before, but we hadn’t had the time to explore it then. And we didn’t have the time now, either. We stepped out into the ruins of the lobby, and I muttered a curse as we strode through the shattered glass and into the brutal rainstorm outside. Mayce appeared behind us four minutes later and flipped her heavy hood over her hair to keep the water off it.
It didn’t feel right leaving it behind, damaged and undefended.
But I couldn’t see a better option, either. Leaving Lana behind could push the Arbiters to come back and claim her in their absence. Mayce had the potential to be hell on wheels, but her abilities were far more catered toward alpha strikes at turned backs, rather than open combat with the elves or the Cowboy. Mayce swore quietly to herself as we made a beeline for the local subway.
“Can barely fucking see a thing in this mess,” she muttered.
“It’s been a while since it rained like this,” I agreed.
The subway station had been stacked up with sandbags as we approached it. I didn’t know exactly how they were keeping the water out of the underground rail systems, and part of me was astonished as I saw that the trains were still running. I brushed water off my jacket as we stepped down into the quiet platforms underneath the streets and waited in the echoing silence of the station for the next train.
It came quickly enough, but it was sparsely populated.
None of them looked like Players. Most of them looked like late-night shift workers or grandmothers hurrying back to their homes after the night’s excitement.
The people of Millbank looked alert and ready for war. I didn’t know how many crime sprees had happened overnight, but if attacking Phoenix HQ was any indication, it hadn’t been a small amount. Mayce, Lana, and I found a mostly abandoned carriage, sat down, and didn’t speak to each other. I could feel the tension ratcheting up around each of us. None of us could really guess at what Bess wanted, but I knew it couldn’t be good. The train arrived in Underwood under an hour later, and we stepped out of the subway and plunged back into the deluge outside. A small smile touched my face as I thought about the different things we needed for the Guild—if it survived the week.
I was going to open a tab with the local dry cleaners, for sure.
We moved quickly through the rain, through the swanky suburbs of Underwood, and I spotted more than a few homeowners positioned on their front porches. Baseball bats and the occasional rifle caught my eye. They’d seen hell on these streets more than once, and they weren’t going to take chances after hearing about the looting spree in the other parts of the city. Their eyes locked onto us as we passed by them and pushed our way up to the Castledaine.
A familiar silver limo was parked out the front, and six sentries were positioned around it. I couldn’t make out their features in the rain, but none of them looked like small-timers, and none of them carried umbrellas. Mayce glared ahead of us.
“What the fuck is she playing at?” the assassin muttered. “She knows we’re not going to kill her. Or even try.”
“Elves,” I pointed out. “Can’t imagine the Dragons would be happy if their boss winds up being targeted by them. They’ve probably heard the word on the street, and it’s got them nervous.”
I picked up the pace, and Lana’s hand closed over my shoulder.
“I’ll go first,” she warned me. “It’s a show of force, which means we reply in kind.”
I hesitated but relaxed, and white runes shimmered around Lana as she stepped out ahead of me. Bright gold-and-white armor sprang into existence around her body, marking her as a highly visible and easily recognizable target, but she pulled ahead of us without so much as a moment’s hesitation. Mayce grimaced as we watched her surge on ahead, vanishing behind a veil of invisibility.
“We’re not starting shit in the pub, and we’re not getting into a brawl outside it, either,” I warned them.
“Obviously,” Mayce said.
Lana led the way as we moved through the curtain of rain. It didn’t take long for my clothes to soak through, but I didn’t care. Bess had come here with enough people to start a war, and I had no idea why.
She’d backed me. She’d backed my Guild.
But the show of force told me something was wrong. Very wrong. It could’ve been the arrival of the elves.
I hoped it was just that.
But with the way my luck was going?
I doubted it.
Chapter 19
The Dragons spread out into a rough semicircle as we approached them. I didn’t recognize any of their faces from the Goldfire earlier, which probably meant that they were part of the Dragon Guild’s hunting or recruitment teams. Their eyes flickered between Lana and me, and I could see them all doing the same mental math. The car had pulled up with three people in it, and I had an invisible wild card up my sleeve if I needed it. The Dragons pulled to either side of us with wary looks around them as we approached the front gate.
Burr stood in front of it, looking as cheerful as ever. I had no idea how the guy did it, but if what he’d told me was true, Daine didn’t pay him enough to have a good attitude. Maybe part of it was just his nature. I’d seen him spring into action like lightning, and my instincts told me that it was just another tool he used to goad people into underestimating him. He beamed at me from under a wide black umbrella as I approached him, and he gave Lana a nod of greeting.
“Just you two?”
“Three,” Mayce said.
She melted out from her magic a second later, and the Dragons recoiled behind us with snarls of alarm. Burr didn’t so much as flinch. His shit-eating grin widened, and he touched his fingers to his ear with a nod. It took a moment for him to confirm that we’d arrived, and he stepped to the side to give us entry.
“Careful,” he chuckled. “It’s tense in there.”
“Any hints?” I asked.
“Don’t get paid enough,” he assured me.
“Then what use are you?” Lana growled.
Burr sized her up for a moment. “Good enough to drop you if it comes down to it, Arbiter.”
He delivered the threat effortlessly, and the smile never left his face as he swept to the side and gave us entry. Mayce stayed close to my flank, and Lana muttered something under her breath as we moved through the small forest of umbrellas in the beer garden. The front door of the pub was closed to keep out the rain, but I could hear the hum of a good trade on the other side of it. Lana pushed the heavy mahogany doors open for the two of us, and I stepped inside the Castledaine for the second time in as many days.
My last visit here had been tense.
Bess’s entourage had managed to eclipse that.
Sharks crowded each and every table around us, and the conversation in the room abruptly died as we came in. People quickly averted their eyes from Lana as she stared them down, and I searched the room for familiar faces. There was no sign of Cowboy on any of the tables, and Jenna wasn’t sitting at her usual spot at the piano. Daine leaned forward on the bar, deep in conversation with Bess. The vampiress hadn’t changed out of her gorgeous gown from earlier in the day, and I rested a hand on Mayce’s shoulder as we stepped through the maze of tables and nervous magical contractors.
“Keep a perimeter,” I told my girls quietly. “I’ll handle this.”
“You sure?” Mayce asked.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. “It’ll be fine.”
I did my best to keep my tone upbeat, but I could tell that the assassin didn’t believe me.
“See if you can ask Daine about Reggie,” I murmured. “We need something on the elves.”
She grimaced. “I’ll try.”
“I’m not leaving you alone with—” Lana began.
“Just trust me on this,” I assured her. “She came to talk.”
“Tell that to the idiots outside.”
“They’re here for her, not for us.”
I hoped I sounded more convinced than I felt. It’d only been two days since Bess and I had scraped through a battle with Darxos, side-by-side. I refused to believe that the cordiality between us could be destroyed that fast, but I’d dealt with Guilds in the Game before.
Loyalties were slippery when it came to competing interests.
But I refused to see Bess as an enemy.
The lovely vampiress turned to face me as I approached her, and her mouth curled up into a strained smile. I’d seen her bloodlust, and I’d seen what she was capable of when she was angry. The still, silent tension in her frame threw me off more than I liked to admit. Her eyes washed over the bar, quickly spotted Lana as she settled down at the end of the bar, and located Mayce. My assassin stepped around the circular bar, took a seat at a 45-degree angle across from me, and studied Bess with an unreadable expression. I reached into my mind, found the language switch that I’d discovered with Tilly, and clicked it on. The Castledaine may have been Switzerland, but information was valuable currency, and I had no intention of handing it out for free to the mercenaries around me.
“Sorry I left in a hurry,” I told her in vampirese.
Bess’s eyes widened in shock at my shift in language.
“Matvei?” she said quietly, in the same tongue.
“Very same,” I assured her. “Same old troublemaker.”
“You—” Her eyes narrowed. “Ah. Your ‘gift’.”
“How’s my accent?”
“Perfect,” Bess said cautiously.
“What’s going on, Besani?”
A flash of genuine amusement touched her smile at my use of her full name. “I’m glad you came. I was beginning to worry that you’d completely lost your mind.”
I frowned. “No more than usual, I promise. What’s with the squadron outside?”
“Dragon leadership has called for your head,” she told me.
I stared at her. “Please tell me this is your idea of a joke.”
“I assured them that it was a dangerous endeavor, but they would not hear me,” she said. “The presence of the elfkin has changed their outlook on your Guild. And it is not a declaration of war. We cannot afford more friction with the Arbiters after the last Council under our roof.”
Holy fucking shit. I hadn’t expected this when I’d walked in the door.
“Let me guess,” I said softly. “They asked you to get extracurricular and hire Sharks to send after me. Despite the fact that they apparently wouldn’t be caught dead using mercenaries.” The Cowboy’s lazy smirk touched my mind. “Did you send the one in the hat after me?”
She shook her head. “The attempt on your life outside the Goldfire had nothing to do with the Guild. I can assure you that we would allow no such damage to come to you so close to our home.”
“Hospitable of you,” I said and tried to keep the anger out of my voice.
I didn’t quite succeed, and an apologetic light touched her eyes.
“Matt, I didn’t ask for this,” she told me. “I never wanted this.”
“But you can’t disobey a direct order,” I said bitterly.
Bess didn’t reply. She didn’t need to.
“Why call me in?” I asked. “Could’ve just sent people up to my place. Shields are down, and we’re sitting ducks there. You already know that, though. It was on your turf.”
“It was a miracle that you survived in the first place.”
“Just so we’re on the same page”—I took a deep breath and forced the fiery lake of anger in my stomach down a notch—“it’s now open season on the Phoenix Guild, and the Dragons are funding it. Everything we talked about—sharing hunting grounds, working together to keep the city safe—that’s off the table. Your leadership calls the shots, and you’ve got to be the one to pull the trigger.” My gaze slid off her, and I glanced over the crowd of mercenaries around me. “And you’re here to do your recruiting. But you called me in because you feel guilty, and you wanted to give me a head-start.”
Bess’s face became an expressionless, unreadable mask.
Arbiters. Elves. The Cowboy. And now the Sharks of the Castledaine.
How the hell had this all landed in my lap at once?
It wasn’t Bess’s fault. And it still felt like a betrayal.
But we were square. This was just business.
I looked back to the vampiress that had saved my life more than once. I couldn’t decide whether I was furious, sad, or just cold about the scenario. I had so many variables, so many antagonistic forces, and so few favors left to call in. The walls were closing in around my infant Guild, and the Game seemed poised to snuff out everything I’d built over the last year.
“Thank you,” I finally managed.
Bess’s eyes widened at that, and she shook my head. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t thank me. You don’t deserve this, not so soon after your victory. But I can’t hold them off you for any longer. The Arbiters will turn a blind eye to this. You can’t rely on their standards of sanctity to keep you safe.” She stared at me for a long, quiet moment. “You have to flee.”
