The interior of the Cattleman’s Pride was just as Caina remembered it, with the music blaring overhead, the air heavy with the smell of cigarette smoke, booze, and illicit substances, the dancers gyrating on the stage in costumes that just barely met the minimum legal standards. Caina glanced towards the private dining stage on the left side of the room, but it was open, and normal customers were scattered there, eating and drinking and watching the dancers. It seemed that Sulzer was not holding a “fundraiser” tonight.
“Any auras?” said Nadia.
“No,” said Caina. She watched a waitress glide past, carrying a tray of onion rings and beers, and Caina suppressed a wince as she remembered the pain in her ankles. She preferred women’s clothing, but she was willing to say that men’s shoes were almost always more comfortable. “We’ll have to order drinks, else we’ll get thrown out. Then we can head upstairs.”
“Where are the stairs?” said Nadia.
“Over there,” said Caina, nodding towards the private stage. In the corner was a closed steel door. “It’ll be locked, but I can pick it. We’ll need a reason to head over there. I suppose we could look like we’re heading over there to be alone...”
Nadia gave her a flat look. “I don’t care if it blows our disguise, I am not kissing you.”
Caina shook her head. “That would mess up my makeup.” Another idea occurred to her. “Can you Cloak both of us?”
“I doubt it,” said Nadia. “If you can see through Cloaking spells, I bet they won’t work on you, either. We...”
She fell silent as a waitress approached with a bright smile and cold eyes.
“Order whatever you want,” said Caina, smiling at Nadia.
“Okay, then,” said Nadia, playing with a lock of her hair. “I want, like, a Bloody Mary, but with extra orange juice. And can you, like, be a dear and put an extra spoonful of sugar into the glass. Because I want it to be, like, extra sweet.”
Caina admired the professional control it took for the waitress to keep from wincing. “Very good.”
“I’ll take a whiskey,” said Caina.
The waitress swayed off, and Caina looked at Nadia.
“A Bloody Mary with extra sugar?” said Caina.
“Well, I’m like, totally supposed to be your air-headed mistress,” said Nadia, still twisting that lock of hair around her fingers. “And it seems like I would, like, you know, be the kind of person who likes extra spoonfuls of sugar in her Bloody Mary because I’m watching my weight,” she ran her hands over her sides, “and the alcohol, like, cancels out all the calories, and so it’s healthier...”
Caina laughed despite herself. “You’re really getting into the disguise.”
“Well, I learned from you.”
Caina looked at the stage. “I’ve got an idea. In another ten minutes, the dancers are going to do a show. The lights are going to go dark, and if we’re seated near the door to the stairs, we’ll have a chance to get through the door.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Nadia.
Caina led the way across the floor and up to the guest stage, and they claimed a standing table near the door. A moment later the waitress arrived with their drinks, and Caina paid too much for them, leaving a generous tip. Nadia lifted her glass and took a sip.
Her face screwed up with disgust, and she set the glass back down.
“That is horrible,” said Nadia.
“This whiskey isn’t great either,” said Caina. “You don’t drink regularly?”
“No,” said Nadia, her eyes distant as she stared at the crowd. “Never. I...you’ve seen what I can do when I have to. I can’t lose self-control. I might get pissed off and blow up a building or three. How about you? Close off the day with a bottle or two of whiskey?”
“No,” said Caina. “I’ve gotten drunk exactly once in my life. It wasn’t fun. We...”
She trailed off and glanced towards the ceiling.
A flare of green light danced and flickered before her sight.
“There’s a necromantic aura above us,” said Caina.
“Well, hell,” said Nadia. “Looks like we were right.” She started to reach for her glass, thought better of it, and pushed it away. “If we get some pictures of his workroom, send them to Homeland Security, that will be all we need. Maybe we’ll even get a picture of Sulzer himself.”
“That would be perfect,” said Caina. “Though we haven’t been that lucky before, why start now?”
They sat in silence for a while, pretending to sip their terrible drinks.
“Your husband,” said Caina. “Does he do...this sort of work?”
“He does,” said Nadia, glancing at her. “That’s how we met, actually. We were both on more or less the same job.” She snorted. “Kind of the same way you and I met.”
Caina nodded. She saw a flurry of activity on the dancers’ stage. The show was getting ready.
“So,” said Nadia. “Dr. Dorius’s brother. Did he do this kind of work?”
Caina gave her a flat look. “Why do you ask?”
Nadia shrugged. “You’re asking about my husband. Seems only fair.”
“True,” said Caina. She let out a long breath. “And, yes, he did this kind of work. He was one of the best.”
The familiar aching sadness rose up within her, and she crushed it down. This wasn’t the time or the place to think about it.
She was spared the need to answer by the sudden dimming of the main lights. Stage lights illuminated the dancers’ stage, and a dozen women in skimpy costumes and high-heeled boots hurried into the light, smiling at the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed a voice. “Put your hands together for the dancers of the Cattleman’s Pride!”
A lusty cheer went up from the crowd, and Caina looked at Nadia.
“Now?” said Nadia.
“Now,” said Caina, and she turned to the door. In one smooth motion, she drew her lockpicking tools from the interior pocket of her coat, dropped to her haunches, and started working. It was a good lock, but she had dealt with far better, and she had it open in half a minute.
Caina looked around, but no one had noticed them. All eyes were on the stage and the dancers. Though what the dancers were doing looked more like gyrating than actual dancing.
“Go,” said Caina.
Nadia nodded, and together they slipped through the door. Caina slid it closed behind them. They were in a grimy concrete stairwell, the only light coming from an electric bulb enclosed in a wire cage. Caina took a quick look around, but there were no security cameras in sight.
“Got the guns?” whispered Caina.
Nadia nodded and reached into her purse. She passed over Caina’s Royal Arms .45 semiautomatic and took a smaller .38 for herself. Thankfully, the Cattleman's Pride was not the sort of club where the bouncers did weapons checks.
“Can you tell where the necromantic aura is?” said Nadia.
“It’s coming from the top floor, I think,” said Caina, tracking the flicker of green light. “I’ll go first. You cover me. If you see anyone, we’re probably caught, so don’t hold back.” Nadia nodded.
Caina took a deep breath, ascending the stairs with her pistol held ready before her. Another point in favor of men’s shoes – it was far easier to move in silence in them. Nadia tried, but her heels made a faint tap every time she ascended a step. Fortunately, Caina doubted the noise penetrated the steel doors that sealed off the floors. They passed the second-floor door. A sign taped to the metal read AV ACCESS – TECHNICIANS ONLY, followed by a hand-scrawled note saying that whoever had taken the #3 subwoofer had better goddamned return it as soon as possible. Likely that door led to access for the sound and lighting equipment over the dancers’ stage.
The third-floor door was locked with no sign, and the lock was a good deal more impressive than the one Caina had already opened. Even as she stepped towards the door, she felt the crawling tingle of necromantic magic behind the door and saw several more green glows with the
vision of the valikarion.
“Cover me,” said Caina. “I’m going to need a minute to get this open.”
Nadia nodded and stepped to the side, watching both the stairs and the door, the pistol held loose and easy in her hands. Caina produced her lockpicking tools and began work on the door. This lock was harder, and it took her the better part of five minutes to get it released. But at last the door clicked, and Caina straightened up, put her tools back into her coat, and drew her gun.
“Same as before,” said Caina.
Nadia nodded, stepping back to hold her pistol leveled at the door. Caina eased the door open a crack and peered through it. Beyond she saw a concrete hallway lined with open doors, the lights dim and shadowy. But nothing moved, and at last, she pushed the door all the way open.
They walked into the hallway, and Caina looked back and forth. The rooms beyond were empty, the walls bare, and Caina saw tool boxes on the floor and rolls of heavy plastic sheeting taped to the windows. It looked like the rooms were in the process of being converted into apartments, though Caina could not imagine wanting to live over an establishment like the Cattleman’s Pride. Then again, given the expensive New York housing market, maybe it made financial sense.
One by one she and Nadia checked the rooms. Whoever had taught Nadia to handle a firearm had done a good job of it. She checked her corners constantly, controlling the aim of her pistol with steady hands. It did seem kind of absurd to watch someone do that in a tight red dress.
“Nothing,” whispered Nadia as they came to the door at the end of the hall.
“The auras are behind this door,” said Caina.
She reached down and tested the handle. The door wasn’t locked.
Nadia nodded, and Caina swung the door open.
The room beyond was large, and Caina suspected it took up half the top floor of the building. The floor was polished concrete, and all the windows had been blocked with heavy blackout curtains. The only light came from a few fluorescent bulbs mounted in the ceiling, throwing shadows and flickering light everywhere. The smell of chemicals filled the air, and Caina saw the reason a half-second after she came through the door.
Something like thirty dead men lay on the floor.
The dead lay in neat rows and every man was dressed identically – black suit, black tie, white shirt, black sunglasses. Their coats hung open, and Caina saw pistols in shoulder holsters resting at their sides. Rings of Elven hieroglyphs had been written in a circle on the floor around each man, glowing with a sickly green light. Caina saw the necromantic aura around them, and she recognized some of the symbols from the picture of the book that Nadia had shown her.
“An undead factory,” muttered Nadia. “He’s making himself a nice little army.”
“The table,” whispered Caina. There was a long table in the center of the room, and they hurried over to it. It held jars of embalming chemicals and a pair of laptop computers, and next to the computers rested the necromantic aura of the book that Sulzer had taken from the bank.
“Guess that explains where his friends came from,” said Nadia, shifting her gun to her right hand and drawing out her phone with her left hand. “Let’s take as many pictures as we can and get out of here. We’ll send these to the Inquisition, and they’ll have all the proof they need to arrest Sulzer and his Archon friend.”
Caina produced her own phone and started taking pictures as fast as she could. Nadia crossed to the window, pulled aside one of the curtains, and took several pictures. Caina wondered why she had bothered, and then realized that Nadia wanted the view of the street in the shots, proving that the waiting undead were inside the Cattleman’s Pride. Nadia took a few more pictures and then rejoined Caina.
“Do you have enough?” she said. “I think we do.”
“Yeah,” said Caina. “Let’s get the hell...”
A metallic click came to her ears, and Caina realized that she had been wrong.
The room did not take up the remainder of the top floor. A portion at the far end had been partitioned off, and a door there swung open.
Congressman Joseph Sulzer and the Elven woman in the Archon uniform stepped into sight.
***
Chapter 9: Gunplay
Caina reacted with blinding speed, and I was a half second behind her.
We raised our pistols at Sulzer and started shooting.
But the Archon woman was faster. Her hand snapped up, and she cast a Shield spell. A dome of grayish-white light appeared before her, large enough to cover both her and Sulzer. Our bullets struck the Shield and ricocheted off it in sprays of sparks. The Archon woman’s other hand came up, fire blazing to life around her fingers. I dropped one hand from the grip of my pistol and cast a Shield spell of my own. The Archon hurled a sphere of fire at us, and I raised a Shield of blue-white light charged with the power of elemental ice.
The fireball hit my Shield, and both spells canceled each other out. I staggered a bit before I recovered my balance. The Archon had hit hard, and she had a lot of raw magical strength to fuel her spells, even before her Dark One augmented her power.
I started another spell, and Caina circled to the side, partly so we wouldn’t be standing next to each other if the Archon threw a fireball, and partly so she could get around the angle of the Archon’s Shield to get a shot at Sulzer.
“Wait!” said Sulzer. “Wait a second!”
The Archon woman looked at him with a scowl, but she hesitated.
“Who the hell are you?” said Sulzer. “Maybe we can come to an accommodation.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Tell me. All your pet undead. Did you murder them yourself, or have you been stealing corpses?”
“We killed them ourselves, of course. There were so many dead humans in this miserable sty of a city after the battle,” said the Archon woman, her beautiful voice dripping with contempt. “Who will miss a few more?”
“Now, now, Kalmythria,” said Sulzer. “Let’s not be hasty. Perhaps our guests have some mutual interests with us.”
“They do not,” snarled Kalmythria. “The woman is the one who attacked us in the parking ramp. I recognize the aura of her spells. A human should not have such magical power.”
“Yeah, well, I’m super special,” I said.
“Interesting,” said Sulzer, staring at me. “You’re a woman.”
“Thanks for that exciting news.”
“Which means you’re not part of the Wizard’s Legion,” said Sulzer. “Which means you’re an independent operator. Or you’re one of Connor’s leftover lieutenants. Either way, we might be able to come to a deal.”
His logic was sound – I wasn’t part of the Wizard’s Legion, and I had been coerced into working with Nicholas – but I definitely wasn’t an independent operator. Yet if I could keep him talking, I might be able to get into a better position. The problem was that Caina and I were surrounded by the motionless corpses lying on the ground. I didn’t know how long it would take Sulzer to activate them, but he might be able to just snap his fingers. If that happened, Caina and I were dead. There was no way we could get clear of that many gun-toting undead before a bullet struck home.
But if I could just get a little further back…
“All right,” I said, taking a long step back. Caina glanced at me and followed suit, keeping her gun trained on Sulzer. “Let’s talk. I’ll start. I think I can guess what happened here, yeah? You saw which way the wind was blowing and decided to support the Rebels. Sent them money and supplies, probably helped them move armaments through Expedited Wheels and a few other companies. Kalmythria here was assigned to help you, maybe keep an eye on you. You met Vastarion at Venomhold, and he gave you that book and taught you a little necromancy. Except it all went bad. Connor got himself killed, and Venomhold burned, and all the Archons died in the Mage Fall.”
“There have been setbacks in the last few months,” agreed Sulzer. Kalmythria glared at me. “But a man must be adaptable.”
“True,” I sai
d, taking another step back. “But this doesn’t seem like adaptation, it seems like suicide. The smart thing to do would be to burn all your assets connected with the Rebels and hole up someplace quiet. A Congressman practicing necromancy with his Archon girlfriend?” Kalmythria definitely scowled at that. “It seems suicidal. Someone’s going to notice.”
“I should point out that Kalmythria and I are not together,” said Sulzer with smooth charm. “The Elves regard having carnal relations with a human as uncouth.”
“Don’t care,” I said. “So, yeah, we might be willing to work with you...but you seem to have a death wish. Someone’s going to notice all the undead at some point, and you wouldn’t survive that. So why make them?”
“Tell them nothing,” said Kalmythria, which was good advice.
“Why not?” said Sulzer. He smiled at me, and I retreated another step. “See, this conversation is either going to end with us becoming business partners or with your deaths. Either way, there’s no harm in talking. And the reason I’m doing this is that the world has changed.”
“What?” I said.
“The Day of Return,” said Sulzer. “You did see it on the news, right? The Archons were annihilated in the Mage Fall. The Great Gate in Milwaukee now permanently joins Earth and Kalvarion. The attention of the High Queen and the nobles is going to be divided between two worlds. A lot of Elves and humans are going to migrate to Kalvarion. There’s a rumor that the High Queen is going to break up Homeland Security and let local counties elect sheriffs again, as they did in pre-Conquest times. And in all this chaos and change...a clever man can find opportunities. A piece of the pie to grab and keep.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but Caina nodded.
“Ah,” she said. “That’s why you have deeds for all those properties in Bogotá. You’re going to go there with your undead and carve out a little fiefdom for yourself.”
Sulzer smiled. “Have you ever heard of a man named William Walker?”
“Can’t say as I have,” I said.
“An American historical figure,” said Sulzer. “He lived about a century and a half before the Conquest. Walker gathered a private military force, and he conquered and ruled the country of Nicaragua for about a year. I’m going to do the same thing, but far more successfully. Walker didn’t have magic.” He gestured at the undead. “He didn’t have my loyal friends here. The authorities in South America aren’t equipped to deal with someone like me, and I can cut a deal with the local Elven nobles. They’ll be distracted by the thought of returning to Kalvarion anyway.”
Cloak & Ghost: Blood Ring Page 11
