Deck of destiny 4, p.5
Deck of Destiny 4, page 5
I needed to find the girls, get up to speed, and get ready to meet a Leviathan.
Chapter 6
I stopped on the office floor to sweep it for the girls.
I hadn’t knocked on Lana’s door, but I’d never actually seen her sleep, and after what I’d seen her going through after shaking off half a century of brainwashing? It didn’t seem like a good idea to try and push into her rooms as I had with Iris. The elf lingered in my mind as I swept the wide-open office but didn’t see any sign of the girls. Had they already left? Or were they downstairs, getting ready for the incoming Leviathan? I stepped away from the desks, halted in the elevator, and glanced down at the buttons on the panel.
One of them led to the roof, and I hadn’t been up there before.
I’d been too scrambled and too excited about having a warded building of my own that I hadn’t swept the rooftop. It was easily three stories off the ground and would give me an excellent view of our surroundings. Seeing your enemies coming was usually an advantage, but a professional like the Cowboy likely wouldn’t take risks like that. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he already knew where we were holed up and had a magical rifle trained on the windows. I reminded myself to ask Bess what the actual parameters of the Wards were. She’d handled the brokering of the deal for the building, and I hadn’t taken the time to figure out exactly what I was working with, and what kind of threats the magical shields could keep out.
I still had so much work to do.
I keyed the button for the top floor and leaned back against the wall.
The Leviathans were always bad news. They’d pulled out of Millbank, but it’d been part of a bigger game plan. I didn’t know what it was, and they’d only done it when they’d had the upper hand in our fight. The biggest thing that I’d had access to that had evened the odds was the coven. They’d constantly proven themselves to be incredible backup, and they’d managed a lot of the heavy lifting that I couldn’t get done with just three people.
The elevator doors opened, and I stepped out onto the roof.
There wasn’t much space on top of Phoenix HQ. A small forest of air conditioning outlets cluttered the roof, and small catwalks snaked their way between each of them. It broke up the easy shape of the top of the building, and a sudden rush of gratitude slid over me. Rain peppered my clothes as I moved away from the exit, and my eyes scanned the windows of the buildings flanking my own. I didn’t spot any obvious sniper hides, but I still made sure to study the windows and look for anything that caught my attention. Magic flared around my eyes as I activated one of Billy’s old Cards—Threat Assessment—and searched for any outlines that made the presence of another Player obvious. Nothing colorful flared up in my vision, and I dropped the magic a moment later. One of my hands elongated into a Beast Claw as I prepared to summon the vampires, and I opened a tiny cut on one of my fingers. I settled down on a narrow set of steel stairs, dismissed my Item, and squeezed out a single drop of blood onto the concrete.
The coven had never failed to show up when I’d summoned them.
And this morning wasn’t any exception.
The thick, dark clouds in the sky hid them from their worst enemy, but part of me was concerned that the rain would make me more difficult to track. A single figure dressed in black appeared in the corner of my vision, and I glanced up to see a familiar face effortlessly hoist themselves up from the edge of the roof. The small, giggly vampiress called Tilly flipped off the concrete edge with the easy grace of a trained acrobat and strolled across the roof to meet me. Blood-red eyes shimmered with interest as she halted before me and bared a pair of cute fangs into a smile that was half-seductive and half-playful.
“Long time, no see,” she said.
“Sister,” I intoned, with a mock-serious bow of my head.
“You’re missing Red?” She rolled her eyes. “He’s off hunting. Poor fella is starving for some fresh vein juice, and I volunteered to take his place in watching over you.” She tilted her head as she looked over me. “Something about you is—”
“Different?” I asked.
“Mmm. Tastier.” She winked at me. “And you smell like home.”
I tried not to think too hard about my time in the Hellforge. “I’ve got something I need to ask you. I don’t know how many favors I’ve already got in the tank—”
“If we were keeping score, you’d know about it,” Tilly cut in. “We got to eat Wilson. That levels out a lot of playing fields. That and you need us more than ever now that you’re a proper Guild and everything. What’s up?”
She bounced off her feet, landed on the edge of an air-conditioning unit, and let her feet swing freely in the rain as she leaned in. A thick hoodie covered her hair, and a pair of tight leather pants caught my eye. Pale feet swung freely in the air as she waited for me to ask her a favor. Tilly had been part of the flanking unit we’d used to attack the leftover gunmen in the tunnels, and she’d struck me as someone who was intimately familiar with controlling her bloodlust. Red and Bess were a little looser when it came to fresh supplies of lifeforce, but Tilly was either well-fed enough to be disciplined or insane enough not to care.
I hadn’t quite figured out which one it was.
“We’ve had visitors,” I said. “Leviathans. And they’re coming back to talk to us.”
“And you want to make sure that you have a double-cross ready in case they’re coming here to wipe you off the map.” Tilly nodded. “No problem. Pretty sure we’ve still got some leeches kicking around in Millbank. I’ll see if they’re hungry.”
I shook my head. “I’m not looking for a fight. Just an intervention if we need it.”
“Guild politics?” Tilly guessed.
“Guild politics,” I agreed. “How is everyone?”
Tilly slipped off the venting unit and landed effortlessly on the concrete beside me. “Weird of you to ask. You don’t normally ask after us.” She teased me with another cheeky grin. “You getting sentimental now that you don’t associate with us anymore? Too busy with the big leagues in Millbank?”
“You know it’s not that,” I protested.
Her smile widened. “Maybe you just think I’m cute, then.”
“Pretty hard to deny that.”
“Oooh, and you’re open about it, too.” Tilly made a show of tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “Makes a girl nervous when you’re so open about your intentions, Matt.”
A rueful smile touched my face. “I was told to look after you all.”
“Cute,” Tilly replied. “We’ve been doing just fine without you, chief.” She winked at me again. “But it’s cute that you care. I’ll talk to the others and get you a bodyguard squad in case you need it. Sure there’s nothing else you need?”
I shook my head. “That’s all. Send my best to Red and Misha.”
“Will do,” she chirped and blurred away from me.
I spotted her for a brief second in the rain. She hopped up onto the lip of the building, glanced over her shoulder at me for a second, and then jumped off the building. She vanished from sight, but I kept a handle on my instincts that told me to try and stop her. Vampires were made out of different stuff to humans. I straightened up, wiped off my finger, and made a beeline back to the elevator.
I had my backup plan in play. Now it was just a case of finding out where the hell my team had gone. Iris would still be in her room, but Elsie had vanished, and I hadn’t seen any glimpse of Mayce. I reached into my bottomless Deck a moment later, secured fresh Cards into my immediate reach, and locked them away. I had multiple angles of attack, thanks to the Hand of the Black Dawn, and the Hand of the Blue Dawn gave me the static ability to transfer Cards. It had come in handy against Darxos, and I wasn’t about to be caught flat-footed going up against the Leviathans again.
I stopped in at the Residential level and tried every door except Iris’s.
Lana, Elsie, and Mayce weren’t answering my knock, which probably meant that they were out on an extracurricular mission. I thought over the Cowboy, and my gut squirmed a little. I knew each of my girls was capable in a fight, and Mayce had been playing the Game longer than me. She’d be able to keep Elsie safe. Lana’s knowledge of other Players and her decades of experience as an Arbiter would definitely keep her safe, too. I made a mental note to pick up another phone when I could and tracked my way down to the ground floor of the building. The place was deserted, and the lower offices were empty. I found a scrawled note on the marble surface of the front desk and breathed a sudden sigh of relief.
Matt,
Just gone over to the gym to get some training in.
Don’t start any wars without us.
Elsie.
I chuckled at the note and settled down in the comfortable leather chair behind the front desk of my new building. I’d never had any serious business experience outside of an online service, and I had absolutely no idea what Phoenix Guild’s front was supposed to be. I started dragging up facts into my mind as I went. We’d survived the initial storm of the Game, worked a few jobs as Sharks, and pulled ahead of the people who wanted us gone. It almost felt strange having this many resources, a building all to myself, and connections in the community of Players. I steered my mind away from the Hellforge, the Black Dawn, and the Path of Ascension, and I focused on the other issues that Daine had mentioned earlier.
The southern districts of Millbank were still unprotected.
I’d managed to forge a temporary truce with the Giants and the Dragons over the disputed territory. Daine’s warning hadn’t fallen on deaf ears. Bess and Tessa were both staunch Players, understood their roles in the wider Game, and both had people of their own to protect. The idea of getting into another war was unthinkable. Wilson had come close with his stunt against Daine and deploying the gunmen out into the streets. Iris had designed the Cards, and Wilson had somehow managed to distribute them out amongst non-Player vanillas. There were still whispers of untethered crews kicking around, of course, but Cadillac had assured me that the majority of the Juju dealers had closed up shop and gotten the hell out of town after Wilson had fallen.
That left a sizeable no-mans-land down on Southside.
I wondered if there was a way to get the Guilds to get along.
They couldn’t openly fight each other, but there wasn’t a Player alive who would turn down the prospect of new Cards. Monsters appearing through the Rifts presented every Guild with the opportunity to gain new skills and upgrade their own pet powers, and we needed to be on the same level as the others. Elsie, Mayce, and Lana were all plenty dangerous on their own, but we worked best when we stuck together in lightning-fast raids against greater numbers. We couldn’t strike directly against the other Guilds anymore.
Not without incurring the wrath of the Arbiters.
And they had plenty of reasons to hate me.
Somebody with a black umbrella halted on the sidewalk outside the front of the lobby and peered in through the glass doors. I recognized the outline after a second, but it was the suit that really gave it away. My hackles went up as I pushed out of the chair and instinctively reached for my magic. I hadn’t seen the figure outside in what felt like years.
It’d been three or four days ago.
He’d summoned an entire army of corpses out of a neighboring graveyard to kill us.
And he’d hightailed off with most of Wilson’s cryptocurrency on the way out. He’d had Mayce, Bess, and I dead-to-rights on a muddy lawn, and the only reason we’d gotten away with it was because his boss had shown up to scare the shit out of me. The young-looking demonborn had radiated power unlike anything I’d ever seen before, but the man outside was still dangerous enough to put me down in a heartbeat if it suited him.
But he was a long way from a cemetery. And I’d been tinkering with my Cards since.
I kept the Black Dawn in my mind’s eye for a moment, and the initial rush of adrenaline faded as I stepped over to the door. I’d fought far worse and far more powerful creatures. It’d be stupid to underestimate the man outside, and I racked my brain for his name.
It came to me after a moment. His boss had called him Cutter.
I unlocked the front door, held it open for him, and he gave me a brisk nod as he sloughed the excess water off his umbrella and stepped into the lobby with a businesslike air. Cutter had gone with an expensive overcoat, a perfectly tailored suit, and the air of a corporate asshole. He gave the place a once-over, and his eyes lingered on the Guild Contract hanging behind the front desk. I gestured to the couches off to my right, and he made his way over to them. The cold fear in my gut settled into focus. We’d both gotten off easily enough last time, but if we came to blows again, things would be different.
I didn’t like it, but I had to be the face of a new Guild.
That meant leaving behind old grudges, and old rivalries, and looking to the future.
Cutter settled down on the couch, and I reminded myself to head out to the local grocer to pick up tea and coffee. I was pretty sure there was some upstairs in boxes, but I had no intention of keeping the Leviathan here any longer than he needed to be. The man’s sharp eyes combed over me for a moment, and I sat down across from him with my back to the wall. I kept my Cards within easy reach in my mind but made sure I didn’t focus too hard on them.
The telltale flicker of runes around my hand would be too much of a tell.
“You came alone?” I asked.
“I’m not here to fight you, Surrey,” Cutter told me in his crisp British accent.
“I’m glad,” I told him evenly, “but it’ll be easier to talk without a gun to my head.”
He chuckled with genuine amusement. “You don’t have one of those already?”
“Guess we’re about to find out,” I said. “What do you want?”
“I’d have thought that was obvious,” he told me. “We came to deal in good faith. It’s our understanding that you’re having a spot of Arbiter bother in Millbank, and I thought it might be mutually beneficial to have a chat about that.”
Chapter 7
“Your message said that you had something to offer me,” I said calmly. “Not that you were planning on starting a war against the people who hold the Game together.”
Cutter chuckled. “Who said anything about a war?”
“You talking like this definitely makes it sound that way.”
The Brit snorted derisively. “Open warfare with the Arbiters is suicide, and everybody knows it. I’d have thought that you’d have learned something from them after you escaped by the skin of your teeth. But allow me to educate you, little Guild-head.”
I kept my cool. I couldn’t allow any emotion to factor into my conversation with the demonborn sitting across from me. He was in my place of business, and the center of my power, and we’d thwarted his people more than once. I had vampires circling the block, and any move he made against me physically wouldn’t go well for him.
“I’m listening.”
“The Leviathan Guild owes you a debt,” Cutter said. “The removal of Wilson was a tremendous effort. He was a terminal case of idiocy, a bad reflection on our people, and exposing his corruption of the local Arbiters was work very well done.”
“I was under the impression we were even,” I said.
Cutter gave me a strange look.
“You fulfilled your end of the bargain,” I told him. “The Leviathans pulled out of Millbank. So, as far as I’m concerned, we’re square. Nobody ever said anything else about you owing us anything. Which brings me around to what you’re doing here.”
“There are very few Players I know who would turn down a gift freely offered.”
“Depends on the gift,” I told him. “And who’s offering it.”
Cutter chuckled. “Ah. You still don’t believe in our better natures.”
“You’d need one first. What do you want, Cutter?”
The Brit tilted my head at the use of his name. “You’ve got a good memory.”
“Faces and names are useful when people are trying to kill you.”
“I can assure you we want no such thing.”
A thin smile touched my face. “Still waiting for you to get to the point.”
“You’re weak, Surrey. Your Guild’s hanging on by a thread. Black Dawn or no Black Dawn, you’ve seized the attention of some very powerful people, and they don’t like how you do things.”
“Which people? Leviathan leadership?”
“We see you as a net gain for Millbank, not a loss. No. I speak of the Dragons and the Giants. Their territories have been interrupted, their leadership shaken up, and quite frankly, they blame you for that. Times like these make allies more valuable than gold.”
I made sure to keep my tone level and my face emotionless. “News moves fast.”
“That it does. Now, we’ve good reason to believe that one of the Guilds has set up a contract on your life. Hypocrites, of course. They’ll swear themselves blind that they won’t use Sharks until the moment it becomes convenient to them.”
My mind lingered on the cigarette-smoking Cowboy in the Castledaine.
“Open Contract?”
“I’m given to understand that it’s only been issued to qualified assassins, not every undesirable with more poverty than sense,” Cutter confirmed. “There are precious few left in this country, but the prize is enough to set most of them for life.”
That tracked with what I’d heard from the killer hired to take my life.
“You’re telling me things I already know,” I said. “What did you mean when you said: ‘Arbiter problem’?”
“Well, there’s the small issue of your overseer going rogue. That hasn’t gone unnoticed.”
I had no idea how the hell Cutter had heard about Lana. I’d had her around me for the better part of a day and a half, and she hadn’t exactly gone around telling people that she was thinking of joining my Guild. The only people who could’ve known about it were the Shooters we’d run into under Cadillac, the vampires, and maybe the monsters we’d killed that had come through the rift. Cutter’s smile widened at my lack of a reply.
