Royal flush, p.15
Royal Flush, page 15
Cygnus shrugged. ‘It still feels like I should have aches and pains. I mean, stopping that kind of mass dead puts a big strain on… everything.’
‘It was only doing thirty. A thirty mile per hour collision is very survivable for a normal human. I mean, they probably won’t be doing the fandango afterwards, but fatality is unlikely. And you’re… cosmic.’
‘I don’t think a hundred-and-fifty-pound human should be able to stop a four-ton armoured vehicle anyway.’
‘But you’re cosmic,’ Elaine said. She was also in the tub and looking rather pleased with the fact. Elaine was theoretically gay, which was to say that she identified as a lesbian but rarely, if ever, had a girlfriend. She claimed that it was because prospective partners were scared off by her butt, but the reality was that you had to play the game to score. Right now, sunk up to her neck in a hot tub with three attractive women, Elaine was happy. ‘It’s an established fact that super-strength involves a lot more than just being able to lift big objects. In a situation like that, you’re probably bracing yourself against the ground under you as well as powering up your muscles to provide the necessary force. It was one of the hardest things to get right with Ultramech’s systems.’
‘That’s my genius engineer,’ Bianca – the last member of the tub party – commented. ‘She actually understands this stuff. I just listen and nod. Though, I guess that particular aspect of Ultrahuman powers is just common sense. I mean, you’re right. How could a willowy girl like Cygnus stop a charging SUV? Even at thirty.’
‘It’s cosmic,’ Andrea replied. ‘Maybe Hugh and Elaine understand that shit, but I’m happy living in ignorance.’
‘I find it fascinating,’ Cygnus said. ‘I don’t think I understand much of the physics, but I find it fascinating. Anyway…’ Turning a little, she picked up a glass of wine from the edge of the tub and raised it. ‘Here’s to finally putting Diamond behind bars.’
‘Counting chickens much?’ Still, Andrea raised her own glass. ‘I’ll definitely drink to the end of the Four Queens.’
‘Even if one of Diamond’s minions got away,’ Bianca said. ‘The martial artist. Did we ever get a name for him?’
‘Jack,’ Elaine said. ‘Just Jack. Cherry Blossom has been talking her lips off, but all she knows about him is that Diamond called him Jack. The big guy who died in that drug bust was just Rex. No other name known.’
‘Well, I’d have got Jack if I hadn’t had to stop an SUV with my face,’ Cygnus said. ‘He tried to delay me from going after Diamond. Both him and Rex were stupidly loyal to that woman. When I got back to the garage, Jack was gone. He’ll try to break Diamond out.’
‘Yes,’ Bianca agreed, ‘but he won’t be able to. Security in the local supermax has been upped since California had to start holding Ultras themselves. FTI got called in to help and no one is getting out of that place without inside help.’ She paused. ‘And, having said that, I’m suddenly less sure.’
‘How’s Marie doing?’ Cygnus asked. ‘And has Liberty calmed down yet?’
‘Libby’s been pretty calm, actually. She had a bit of a breakdown when Andrea brought Marie back, but she handled it all a lot better than I thought she would. Marie… She may have some problems going forward, but so far she’s handling what happened really well. They’re making her take a few days off school, but she wasn’t hurt and there are no lasting physical effects. I always thought she had a good head on her shoulders. This is more proof that I was right.’
‘Keep an eye on her,’ Andrea suggested. ‘There may be a few nightmares. If that’s all that’s wrong, she’ll probably be fine.’
‘I think she’ll be fine. Someone change the subject. This is too serious for a Tuesday night in a hot tub.’
‘Okay. Elaine, why are you sunk up to your neck? That’s a cute swimsuit you’re not showing off.’
Elaine’s cheeks darkened. ‘If you must know, I’m feeling inferior.’
‘I thought it was your butt you had problems with.’
‘My butt’s big, sure. My chest isn’t, but I’m surrounded by two pairs of D-cups and… whatever Cygnus is.’
‘F,’ Cygnus supplied. ‘June takes a G-cup.’
‘Do I really need to elaborate?’
Andrea shook her head. ‘No. I’m usually in a room with Cygnus and June. I know your pain.’
‘You don’t know pain,’ Cygnus replied, shaking her head mournfully. ‘I’m cosmic so I got off easy. June can tell you all about back pain. And don’t get her started on having to wear an underwired bra in bed in the summer!’
San Francisco, CA, 21st June.
The Mink/Bianca story had largely been consigned to the history of press mistakes, but Mink was still taking things a little easy. That was why Mink was not on the streets of San Francisco, but Linda was. Linda was a good character to use when Mink was checking up on the drug scene since more than one of the street vendors knew Linda as a regular customer. Linda had short dark hair, usually hidden under a hat or a hoodie. She had brown eyes. She had tattoos which tended to draw the eye, and descriptions of her usually concentrated on those. Linda did not so much walk as shuffle and she came looking for a hit whenever she could get the money together.
Things were going pretty well at the start of the evening. What that meant in Mink’s mind was that Linda was having a tough time spending her money. Linda, obviously, was not so happy since she was having a lot of trouble scoring anything. She must have heard about the big busts in the last few days, they said. Supplies were shaky, they said. Getting product was hard and where it could be got, the price had gone up. Mink was a consummate actress, which was a good thing since it meant that Linda looked disappointed rather than grinning like a maniac.
But then…
‘Come back tomorrow.’
‘T-tomorrow? But I need it tonight.’
‘Tomorrow, kid.’ Linda knew the man as Trent. Mink knew he was Trent Craig Lewin, never anyone high up in the ranks of the criminal underworld, but always with his finger firmly in the pie. He was pushing forty but looked a lot younger. He dressed younger too, trying to keep in with the kids he sold to and obscuring his face behind caps. Under the cap was a not bad-looking guy who had figured out that sampling his own goods was stupid for economic as well as health reasons. ‘There’s been a rush on the stuff after that big shipment was stopped by Mink and those out-of-town heroes. Most people don’t have shit. There’s a shipment coming in and I’ll have new product tomorrow. Okay?’
Linda made a face. ‘I guess I can’t get it if it’s not here. Tomorrow? For sure?’
‘Tomorrow. For sure.’
Belvedere, CA.
‘I admit that getting to and from the city is easier when you can just jump me there and back,’ Bianca said. She was stripped to the waist and using some chemical to remove the fake tattoo of a huge bird which spread across Linda’s upper chest.
‘I find being able to just slide between shadows anywhere in the world kind of useful,’ Andrea replied. She was sitting on the sofa in the Mink Cave, watching Bianca remove her disguise. ‘So, did you hear the same sort of rumours as I did?’
‘Supplies coming in. Available tomorrow.’
‘That’s what I heard. I had a little chat with one of the dealers and that was basically all he knew about it. I’m thinking my decision to stick around and see what came next might have been a good one. We go out tomorrow night and see whether the supplies have turned up?’
‘Yeah. And we’ll let the Stars know. Bony and Fuego will be out on the streets tomorrow. That’ll be four of us keeping an eye on things.’ Bianca paused, checking her chest in a mirror before nodding and reaching for a wrap. ‘If they are getting supplies in this fast… Well, it’s very fast. Like someone was waiting for the Queens to go down.’
Andrea nodded. ‘Too fast. I’ll talk to the Court, but this is… It’s too fast. We’ll see what actually happens tomorrow, but I’m thinking that someone figured out a way to get us to do their dirty work for them.’
‘I don’t like getting played.’
‘You and me both.’
Alcatraz Island, CA, 22nd June.
‘As you suggest, Twilight, the situation on the street is as if we had not arrested Diamond and the others on Tuesday.’ Fuego did not sound happy. He was not happy. None of the Stars looked exactly pleased, aside from Muse. It was generally pretty difficult to tell what state Muse’s mind was in and tonight was no exception.
‘We took four dealers off the street,’ Bonehead added. ‘All of them had new product in their pockets.’
‘And those were only the ones we were able to witness making sales.’
‘Okay,’ Lament said, ‘I know I’m not exactly the foremost expert on organised crime, but that sounds like someone has stepped into the Queens’ high heels a little too quickly.’
‘You’re expert enough,’ Mink told her. ‘Me and Twilight heard rumours of a shipment coming in when we were out last night. That pretty much means that someone was able to get word out to the general low-level criminals that they were taking over from the Queens in less than twenty-four hours.’
‘Which would mean they were preparing for this well before we were getting ready to nail Diamond,’ Andrea added. They had decided on a trip to Alcatraz and the Stars’ HQ to go over what was happening. The Stars actually had space to hold meetings and they had been getting on a lot better with Mink since they had started cooperating to nail the Queens. Mink still did not look entirely comfortable standing beside the big map table in her costume.
‘From which,’ Elaine said, ‘I think we can infer that whoever came up with the idea of linking Bianca Fullerton with Mink is responsible for the new drug supplies.’
‘We can?’ Lament asked.
‘Yes. Whoever they are, they used that story to direct the Queens toward Bianca. Ultimately, the story failed, but the link was made and, when we hit that drug shipment on Monday, Diamond decided to use that connection to get retribution on Mink. Because Bianca knows Twilight, and Twilight knows Viviane, we were able to locate Marie quickly and use her to locate the Queens’ HQ, but I think that just sped the process up. Eventually, this would have ended with Mink and the Stars, maybe with extra help, taking the Queens down after the Queens tried to make a move on Bianca. Someone decided to precipitate the end of the Queens. Someone with a lot of information and a really Machiavellian methodology.’
‘Great. We have to deal with that now?’
‘We have to deal with the Seven Princes,’ Andrea said.
‘They are more concerned with L.A., are they not?’ Fuego asked.
‘They’ve wanted into San Francisco for a while,’ Mink replied. ‘The Nine Kings held them back while they were around and then the Queens moved in. The Queens and the Princes have tried a couple of times to interfere in each other’s territories, but they were fairly evenly matched. Now the Queens are gone…’
‘It leaves the Princes free to move in. And they may have done so already.’
‘Yeah,’ Andrea went on. ‘So, you guys need to try to keep a lid on things here. I’ll go with Mink to Los Angeles and start hunting down the Princes. We have some information on them, but they’ve apparently been getting more difficult to keep a watch on recently. I’m going down there tomorrow to talk to my contacts and get a general overview.’
‘You mean to shut them down? As we did with the Queens?’
‘It’s been a while coming, but I think it’s time.’ Andrea grinned one of her less pleasant grins. ‘After what they did in New Millennium, Cygnus and I have a bit of a score to settle with the Seven Princes. They’re not going to get away with running this time.’
Los Angeles, CA, 23rd June.
Searchlight Risk Management had a fairly large building beside the Los Angeles River in Downtown L.A. and it was probably the largest Shadow Court cover organisation Andrea had seen. As its name suggested, SRM was involved with ‘risk mitigation.’ That was largely a marketing term for ‘we provide bodyguards,’ but the company had grown to provide more conventional private security for anyone needing it, such as event coordinators. They also did a lot of research work to uncover what kind of threats any client might be faced with. It was a very effective cover for the work the Court did, but beyond that, SRM also handled most of the training American Shadow Court field operatives went through. It was a prestigious office to run, and it was run by that most rare of creatures, a female shade.
‘L.A. needed someone a little different,’ Madelyn Levitt explained as she escorted Andrea through from reception to her office. ‘For one thing, it needs someone who can keep order in this place. I’m ex-military.’ She sort of looked it. Levitt was a tall woman probably in her late thirties or early forties and possessed of more than your average amount of muscle definition. Her blonde hair was cropped into a tight bob and she had intelligent, blue eyes. Her skin had a natural tan with just a hint of red-brown undertones suggesting a mixed heritage. You could imagine her yelling at recruits on a parade ground, and that the recruits might be too scared of her to ignore what she was yelling.
‘I probably should have come here for a visit before now,’ Andrea said. ‘Pretty much every adept in America comes through here for at least some of their training.’
‘Here, and our compound in the hills. Here we do the theoretical stuff and urban action training. Out at the compound we do weapons and wilderness training. And we do some advanced training for shades here too. Mostly in the basement, well out of sight.’
‘Got you. Well, as I’m sure you’ve worked out, I’m not the kind of Grand Mistress to micromanage. If I have to come here on general Court business, it’ll probably be for something bad. Today, I need to know what you’ve compiled about the Princes.’
‘Which is both a lot and not much. I’m kind of glad you decided to come down here.’
‘Oh?’
Levitt stopped at a door on the fourth floor and tapped a six-digit code into a pad beside it. There was a click and she put her hand on the handle, opening the door a crack before adding, ‘Something weird is going on with the Seven Princes. Nothing we’ve tried has been able to get around whatever’s happening, but compared to you, even our best shades are children playing in a shadowy ball pit. I’m really hoping you can sort this all out before it gets worse.’ She pushed through into the room beyond the door, which turned out to be a rather plush office.
It was fairly obvious that it belonged to Levitt. There were a number of personal photographs dotted around the place, on walls or some of the glass shelving units, showing the woman in military uniforms of various sorts and often with others also in uniform. There were also a couple of certificates on the walls; Andrea noticed one for business management and another for marksmanship. The furniture was fairly modern, the kind of thing you might expect to find in a film producer’s office. That included a big, comfortable-looking sofa which could easily have doubled as a casting couch. Andrea suspected that Levitt slept at the office more than occasionally. She did not seem the type to personally ‘audition’ her staff.
‘No pressure or anything,’ Andrea said, commenting on Levitt’s earlier statement. ‘I must say it’s occasionally disconcerting how much faith the Court has in me.’
‘You took down the Chinese national hero by yourself, and then a small army in Tibet.’
‘The Golden Dragon wasn’t feeling quite himself and I had help with the army.’
‘Well, that’s another thing. We don’t overlook the fact that your partner is basically an embodied goddess. Not unlike yourself.’ Levitt flashed a grin at the last part. ‘Now, have a seat, I’ll get some coffee in, and then we can start discussing the situation here in the City of Angels.’
‘Do locals really call it the “City of Angels?”’ Andrea settled onto the sofa. It was as comfortable as it looked: soft, but not so bad you felt like you might drown in it.
‘In this case, it’s appropriate.’
With coffee and a printed dossier to work from, Levitt began the lecture. ‘We’ve got a lot more on the Princes since the last time you asked for information on them. I decided that we should commit more resources and… Well, it cost us, but we have got better information than we had.’
Andrea was flicking through the folder. ‘Well, some of this I know already. Jason Sweet, aka Asmodeus, I’ve met personally and he’s a shitbag.’
‘That’s a concise description, but accurate. He’s a psychic, but his powers work through his voice. He can also directly mine minds for information, but he needs to touch someone to make that work. It’s not usually an issue if he can talk to them first.’
‘Right. And we have Dallas Brightman, Lucifer, and Mink has met Randall Totteridge, Belphegor.’
‘Lucifer has light powers – some sort of laser attack – and a lot of charisma. He’s not actually a psychic, but he can often persuade people to do whatever he wants. That said, we’re fairly sure that he’s the leader of the group only because no one else wants to be. Belphegor is a glutinous tub of lard with the power to make slaves out of people. And by people, I generally mean attractive women. We’ve been able to determine that his power also works by touch. Stay out of reach, which isn’t hard considering he needs a crane to move himself, and he’s basically only a threat if you think about what he does with those women.’
‘You’re sure about the touch thing? It might explain how Mink got away with talking to him so easily, but it would be good to be sure.’
‘We’re sure. It cost us a valuable initiate to get that information, but we’re sure. Stunning woman. She was his slave for two weeks and the psychological damage once we got her out was basically not recoverable.’ Andrea frowned but said nothing. ‘And so we move on to the ones we didn’t know much about last time you asked. Abaddon is Harry Lint, a slob with the power to turn those around him into lazy, useless blobs of flesh. We also think he can alter people’s minds given some time to work on them unobstructed. He uses it to take the fight out of some of the people he traffics.’
