Deck of destiny 4, p.27
Deck of Destiny 4, page 27
“Yeah. Answer the question.”
“Here for a trade,” I said. “Cadillac told me that you wanted out. That you didn’t want a target on your head. You’re still a Player, and that doesn’t quite go away, but I can make it easier for you if you’re serious about getting away from the old crew.”
Bryce glared at me. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ here.”
“I’m going to trade you a Card for the juice that lets you summon Expansion Cards,” I told him. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s some serious shit going down in the city right now.”
His eyes didn’t leave mine for a second. “I heard. Had to deal with it myself.”
“Power outages are coming from the freaky side of things,” I told him. “I need better firepower to deal with it. Nobody else wants to throw down with them.”
Bryce barked a sudden laugh. “Right. So, this is about you saving the city.”
I shrugged. “I’m just doing something about it.”
Bryce stepped down off his porch and poised himself at the top of the stairs.
“Why the fuck should I trust you?” he asked.
“Because I saved your ass.”
“You almost got me killed in the first place.”
I acknowledged the point with a nod. “I did. Before I knew what you were doing down there. The shit you were cooking works, by the way. The cure works. Mr. Kubrick, I can’t force you. But I’m asking you, please—let me take one of your Cards. Call it a loan if it makes you feel better.”
“And what happens when one of the freaks kicks my door down?” he challenged. “How am I supposed to protect my people then?”
“A loan,” I said. “One day. That’s all I need.”
Bryce glanced over the fence at his neighbors. “I heard things, you know. What you’ve been doing since. Hard to stay out of the life once you know what to look for. Bounties on your head, new Guild, something about the others wanting you dead. Which doesn’t work like that. And the magic cops are gunning for you, too.”
I nodded again. “None of it’s hearsay. It’s true. I’ve got my back against the wall.”
He flashed a small but genuine smile at me. “It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
“Sure is.”
“One day,” he told me. “That’s it.”
A flood of relief rolled through me, and I took a couple of steps forward. I stretched out my hand from my pocket, and Bryce shifted his shotgun over onto a shoulder. He took my hand with a brawny paw, and magic glittered between us as I activated the Hand of the Blue Dawn. Bryce’s three-Card Deck spiraled up in front of his face, and he grunted as the sudden burst of magic overloaded his nervous system. I rapidly moved through my own Deck and searched for an equal Item or weapon that could help the man in front of me keep his family safe. I had no idea why the odds stacked against me had changed his mind, but I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I had a lot of different Cards available in my Deck, and I moved them as quickly as I could before I finally settled on one that I knew I wouldn’t be in a hurry to use. My leg was still throbbing like a bitch, and the elves were so dangerous in close quarters that I knew Beast Claws would be practically useless against them. The silvery mist of the Card transference wafted between us, and Kubrick’s eyes widened as he glanced at the new Card. Hidden Knowledge slotted itself into the whirling circle of Cards in my own Deck, and a blaze of sudden lightning seemed to hit my brain. I staggered back a step in shock as the pleasure and the sensation crackled through my nervous system, and the grayed-out Cards that I’d been staring at for months suddenly blazed back into focus.
Skullpiercer Rifle
Level:
Duration:
Description:
Punkbuster Revolver
Level:
Duration:
Description:
Eddie and Freddie
Level:
Duration:
Description:
Hidden Knowledge (Activated)
Level: 2
Duration: Passive
Description: Welcome to the new step of the Game.
Kubrick stared at the new Card I’d given him, and his eyes flickered up to me as I recovered from the assault on my senses. His face hardened into a mask of sudden frustration, but I offered him a weak smile as I finally caught myself on my feet.
“Thanks,” I told him.
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re coming back.”
“If I live, I will,” I assured him. “I don’t have the time or the people to put a Contract together here and now, but I give you my word.”
The former soldier gave me one last look and a tight nod. “Good hunting, kid.”
“Thanks.”
I turned and made my way back toward the truck. Tilly and Elsie stared at me as I settled down behind the wheel, and I glanced at them out of idle curiosity.
“What?”
“I don’t think it’s just the sex appeal,” Tilly said to Elsie. “It even works on men.”
“Like I said, don’t count him out.”
I frowned. “I miss something?”
“When don’t you?” Elsie laughed.
I put the truck into gear, did my best to avoid the nervous grins on their faces, and pulled away from the Kubrick residence. The hum of sudden excitement spiked as I realized that I’d finally gotten my hands on the Expansion Cards, and I now had weapons at my fingertips that the elves wouldn’t expect me to have access to.
I didn’t know if their drones or machines were bulletproof, but I sure as fuck was about to find out. Elsie’s phone buzzed on the dash, and she opened up a call on speakerphone for the entire truck to hear.
“Elsie?!” Mayce demanded breathlessly.
“Go ahead,” Elsie told her.
“Reggie’s was a bust. There were fucking Sharks everywhere, and they knew we were coming. Daine’s betrayed us—”
“Slow down,” I said. “Are you hurt?”
“I scouted it out first,” Mayce said impatiently. “Someone fingered us to the Sharks, and I have no idea how they knew—”
“Bess is a vampire,” I reminded her. “They can hear everything. Please tell me that you didn’t fight them—”
“Already bugged out and moving to get the party started,” Jamie interrupted. “I think you and your friend in the Dragons need to have a conversation when this is all over.”
I swore under my breath. “Alright. Lana, get them east of the Arbiter HQ. I don’t know if the Sharks are following you—”
“They’re doing their best—”
“—but they’ve just given us another layer of cover,” I finished. “We’ve picked up what we need, and we’re inbound. Iris, can you get our localized Web working remotely? What’s the range?”
“Fifty yards,” the elf said.
This was going to be about bullseyes. I had no idea if the elves even knew that we’d arrived, but given Iris’s calculations and our crazy plan, we were going to have to do our best and pray that the Sharks, the Arbiters, and the Praetorians themselves would clash hard enough to give us the time we needed. I pushed the Dodge through the streets and followed Elsie’s instructions with Lana’s help. We pulled out of the suburbs, slid past a commercial mall and a few streets of small businesses, and the city started to bleed away in front of us. I could see the rolling horizon in the distance now, and the miles of open space ahead of us.
I spotted Jamie’s battered truck ten minutes later. They’d pulled the Toyota off the street, left the engine running, and Jamie had swung himself up into the tray between two bulky toolboxes. He gave me a wave as I pulled up beside him and rapidly moved through fresh options in my mind.
I needed a ranged set of Cards to hold off our pursuers and force them to keep their heads down. I needed some protective elements to avoid any magical attacks, and I needed backups in case the Arbiters’ magic killed our ability to reach our Decks. I took in a deep breath, called up my Deck again, and slotted five fresh Cards into my active magic slots.
Skullpiercer Rifle.
Punkbuster Revolver.
Eddie and Freddie.
Spell Parry.
Speedload.
I hadn’t even had the time to pressure test the Cards and see how the magical guns functioned. I’d spent hours on the range, but that’d been years ago, and I knew the difficulty of working with a new weapon if I wasn’t familiar with it. I kicked my door open and vaulted into the tray of my truck.
“Tilly,” I called out, “you’re driving.”
The vampiress snaked her way into the driver’s seat without argument, and Elsie grimaced as she turned in the backseat to look at me through the rear window. Jamie met my eyes from his own spot in the back of the tray, and his lazy smirk threatened to split his face in half.
“Not a bad day for it,” he called out.
“Lana?”
Our paladin poked her head out of the rear window of the Land Cruiser. “What do you need?”
“How far are we from the Arbiters’ HQ?”
“Two minutes on foot.”
“They have vehicles?”
She nodded and grimaced. “They’ll be on top of us before we know it.”
I scanned the area around us. “Five minutes for the elves, two for the Arbiters. We’re looking at getting chased by vehicles, on foot, and by freakish robots.” I grimaced. “And the Arbiters probably know that we’re already here.”
“How?” Jamie fired back.
“Pretty sure they’ve been keeping their eye on me ever since I told them to go fuck themselves,” I told him flatly.
We’d chosen to park just off a highway ramp that led out of the city. Cars buzzed past us and gave us strange looks. Clusters of gas stations, blocks of flats, and wide-open parks hugged the beginning of the highway. We’d turned up as early as we could to minimize potential casualties and damage, and we had a straight line onto the highway and out of the city at a moment’s notice.
The trucks had full tanks.
My team was as rested as they could be. We had new people, a completely batshit-insane plan, and one shot at getting the elves out of Millbank and back to the Cloudspires. Every member of my team waited for my order, and I realized that I was just stalling because part of me was terrified of the consequences.
I was gambling it all on this.
But nobody else was going to do it. The Guilds wouldn’t lift a finger to help us, not if it snuffed us out before we could get any real influence. The Arbiters were happy to turn a blind eye while Sharks hunted us down. And the Sharks themselves didn’t have the balls to go after technological nightmares from another world.
“Get the Praetorians’ attention,” I said, sounding a lot calmer than I felt. “Let’s get this party started.”
Chapter 34
Azure light flashed up from the back of my truck, and a matching wash of light flared out of the Toyota to match it. I watched Iris curl up in the backseat to pull herself into as much cover as she could manage, and Lana watched me carefully. I scanned the streets behind us and watched for anything out of the ordinary. I’d never seen the Arbiters actually use their powers to clear out the streets and protect the secret of the Game, and part of me was curious about it.
I’d already practically locked them in as my enemy in my head. Enemies that I was civil with. But they wanted me dead more than anyone else. Their irrational grudge against me and my Guild had almost hit a breaking point, and some devil-may-care attitude had struck me in the last few days. I’d taken one of their chief enforcers, outed them as corrupt, and forced them to back down when they’d turned up at the HQ.
I knew they were powerful, and that people feared them for a reason, but I intended to find out how much of that was their feared reputation, and how much of it was actual fact. The blue energy flared brighter as Iris juiced up her pair of Ariadne’s Webs, and Elsie jolted in surprise behind me as a perfect copy of Iris appeared in the back seat. Jamie hunkered down in the back of his truck, and he joined my vigil as we scanned the streets around us for any irregular movement.
The brand on the back of my neck suddenly pulsed with a cold itch, and panic flooded my system. Was a rift opening? How close were we? What the hell was going on—
A smooth, steady pulse of power rolled out over the streets in front of us. I glanced at Jamie, but his pose hadn’t shifted an inch. I forced myself to pay attention to the sensation and spoke out as quietly as I could while still being heard.
“You feel that?”
Jamie cocked his head. “Feel what?”
So, it was just me, then. The pieces clicked together in my head a moment later. Maybe the Arbiters had called up a rift to deal with us, or maybe their dampening magic had something to do with the Other Side. Cars turned away from us in the distance, and the highway behind us rapidly emptied as people piled on the gas and sped away. The cool pulse of power continued to roll out through the streets in a steady, almost imperceptible rhythm, and five figures stepped out around a street corner.
White cloaks, gold-tinted armor, and hoods marked them as the Arbiters. They marched with a quick, perfectly matched rhythm, and I almost found myself laughing. The Black Dawn hadn’t just given me a heads-up on incoming monsters through the rifts. He’d given me access to some of his knowledge of how the Other Side interacted with Earth. I could practically hear the god of the Hellforge chuckling in my imagination.
Whatever juice they were pouring out into the streets, I could feel it. I knew what they were up to. A glance to my left and right revealed shadowy shapes crouched behind cars, poised in alleys, and waiting on rooftops. Tilly hadn’t been exaggerating. I counted at least ten vampires on the opposite side of the street.
My only concern was the timing. I’d expected the elves to arrive first, and the Arbiters had been the first to appear. Had they sensed Ariadne’s Web before the Praetorians?
Or were the elves waiting for us to tire each other out before they ambushed us from a different location? I gritted my teeth at the thought and watched the Arbiters as they took to the center of the street and marched closer to us. I couldn’t see their faces, but I knew the guy at the front was the same Arbiter I’d run into at the bombed-out HQ.
“Matt,” Lana said urgently, “we can’t engage with them. They’ll know that we’re up to something. We have to move.”
“Wait,” Jamie cautioned and gestured ahead of us.
The Arbiters halted their lockstep after a second as something shot past the building behind them. My eyes widened as a sedan spun end-over-end through the air, smashed into a building, and hung out of the hole in the bricks like some kind of grisly modern art.
“What the hell?” Elsie breathed.
The Arbiters spun, white magic flared around them as they pulled up shields, maces, and bolts of lightning to their hands, and a sudden metal figure skidded into sight. My jaw dropped as a ten-foot-tall metal monster tore through the asphalt to arrest its momentum. White-metal plates covered a tall, armored form, and it took me a second to realize what I was staring at.
It was some kind of mech.
A small crystal window stood out of the center of its chest, and a featureless mask was barely visible behind it. Blue runes glinted down over the crystal surface as the hyper-speed mech suit straightened up. Hydraulics and servos from another planet spooled up on its feet, and clawed hands sparked off themselves as it dropped onto all fours like some kind of steel human-tiger hybrid from hell.
Holy fuck.
“Now’s the time, Matt!” Lana bellowed. “We have to make a move!”
Her sharp tone snapped me out of my pure, giddy shock at actually seeing some kind of magical mech in real life, and I rammed magic through my Deck and manifested the Skullpiercer Rifle into my hands. I’d seen the bulky bolt-action a grand total of once, and the rifle felt strangely heavy in my hands as I rammed it up against my shoulder, dropped down to a knee, and set up a stable shooting platform for myself.
Shapes shifted and moved in the edges of my peripheral vision, and elf drones barreled over the tops of buildings, exploded out of windows, and lunged into the street. White lightning exploded out of the Arbiters as waves of small, squat, beetle-like robots scuttled toward them with frightening speed.
I tuned it all out.
I had to. I’d just landed myself in the middle of the craziest fucking situation, and I needed to make each shot count. The buckhorn sights of the rifle finally settled over the mech at the other end of the street, and I blew out a half-breath as I took aim.
I didn’t aim at the most obvious target. The windscreen of the mech had to be armored against threats and magic. The mech tensed as if anticipating the threat from my weapon, and I squeezed the trigger all the way through with the rest of the breath in my lungs. The Skullpiercer bucked in my hands. My first round smashed into the mech’s left kneecap. Sparks and blue runes exploded from its unarmored joint, and the mech suddenly sagged to the side as it tried to catch its balance.
“We have to MOVE!” Tilly bellowed.
“Go!” I shouted. “Highway, now!”
Tires screeched, rubber burned, and the Dodge lunged onto the road like a hungry animal. The Arbiters whirled in tandem as they relied on their hive mind to cover each other’s backs. Maces and swords crashed down onto the dog-sized attack drones, sent bolts of power through them, and crumpled them into burned-out husks. The steady pulse of the Other Side continued to radiate out of them and keep the civilians around us at bay. The coven barreled out of their hiding places as they kept the skittering drones away from our vehicles, and I racked a fresh magical round into the chamber of my newest Item.
Green energy spiraled around Jamie’s fingers as he drew his arm back and launched a bolt of power onto the road behind us. Thorns crackled out from the point of impact, and a knot of drones crumpled as thorns and vines snaked out to catch them before they could reach us. Flashes of black figures blurred beside us as the coven kept pace with our moving vehicles, and the Dodge lunged onto the on-ramp beside the Toyota with the dual snarls of V8 engines.
