Deuces Wild Boxed Set: Books 1-4: Beyond the Frontiers, Rampage, Labyrinth, Birthright

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  Her. Because it is a ball, and he is an unaccompanied male. He cannot initiate the discussion.

  But I could?

  Yes. I would advise getting him to run if you can, however. Then you cannot be charged with abduction.

  Tabitha nodded and guided Ryu around the room.

  He is wearing the green suit, Achronyx said.

  “Oh, good,” Tabitha muttered as she dodged a waiter. “We’re hunting a leprechaun.”

  Ryu laughed. “Let’s hope he doesn’t have the luck o’ the Irish.”

  “Let’s hope he has a pot of gold! Or some Lucky Charms. Man, I could really go for some Lucky Charms.” She looked at Ryu, sadness on her lips for a moment before it disappeared. “You miss things about Earth, you know?”

  “All right, if we want to get him to leave before we do, why don’t we flank him?” Tabitha suggested.

  “Oh, you mean just be very obvious about it?” Ryu asked.

  “Exactly. He will think he’s seen us first. We’ll be set up well enough that he’ll have to run, and he’ll go right out that door over there.”

  “Good call.”

  Achronyx? Anything you want to weigh in with?

  No, for once I think this is a solid plan.

  You’re beginning to creep me out, Tabitha informed him. She nodded to her left. “You go that way, I’ll go to the right. When I reach that potted palm, you start heading for him and kind of push people out the way so he can see the disturbance in the crowd.”

  Ryu nodded, and they split up to approach Etoy Walce. Their target was a small Torcellan male with a very pointy face. He was dressed more finely than most of the noble males there. When Tabitha asked why that was, Achronyx explained that because Etoy did not have a mate, he would have to attract one—hence the display.

  He was allowed to wear multiple colors in the same garment. Ryu was of the opinion that it looked ridiculous.

  That’s just because you think he’s outdoing you, Tabitha told him. I’m in position. Let’s go.

  They began moving through the crowd in unison. On the wall behind the refreshments table, large windows showed the skyline of Karkat. From the gated district the city looked remote, but it glittered nicely with lights.

  They had not gotten very far when Walce looked up and noticed the disturbance. He glanced at Ryu and then at Tabitha, and his eyes narrowed as he assessed them. Then he turned and ran. But he did not run for the doorway at the end of the room, as they had guessed he would.

  He shattered a window near him and jumped out instead.

  “Holy shitballs!” Tabitha took off, shoving her way through the crowd. The orchestra had stopped playing, and now that the window was broken, the sounds of the city were filtering in.

  “Remember your harness this time!” Ryu yelled as they both made for the window.

  Achronyx! Which way did he go?

  He jumped to the roof of the next building over, straight ahead, and is now running along the roof.

  “I don’t need a harness for that! Let’s gooooooo!” Tabitha jumped, hit the roof, and tumbled less elegantly than she had expected to. “Fuck, I forgot I was wearing heels! And a skirt!” She pulled the skirt up as she ran.

  “Take the time to switch to shoes!” Ryu called to her. He tossed her a pair of what were essentially boot soles that would adhere to the bottoms of her feet. “I brought these for you in case we needed to run!”

  “There’s one cool-looking thing about my outfit, and I’m not going to spoil it!” Tabitha had found her stride and was enjoying the moonlit chase. She pulled one of her guns out of her thigh holster and pointed at Walce. “Keep him going this direction. We’re herding him to the ship.”

  The two of them began to use their shots not to hit Walce, but to keep him going in a roughly straight line across the rooftops. From here, it was almost a straight line to the loading docks.

  Walce seemed to know what they were doing, however, and he was a very quick runner. He made a sudden turn and leapt up to grab the gargoyles that adorned the side of a taller building next to the one he was on. He climbed up through the gargoyles, knowing that they would not shoot at him when he was climbing past windows.

  “Damn!” Tabitha followed him and began to climb. “I should have brought my climbing gloves.”

  “You have no pockets,” Ryu objected.

  “This dress is a shapeless sack. I could have gotten away with it.” She was panting as she climbed. Achronyx, is he on the roof?

  Not yet.

  Just then, Walce began to shoot down at them. Tabitha cursed and slipped as the gargoyle she was holding exploded into stone chips. Several hit her in the chest, leaving bleeding wounds that began to shrink at once as she grabbed for another hold and began climbing again.

  “I do not like this guy.”

  Ryu glanced a look over. “On the plus side, your dress looks more interesting with holes and blood.”

  “That’s true.” Tabitha looked up in time to see Walce disappear over the top of the roof. Achronyx, where do we go from here?

  He is going directly across the roof to try to lose you.

  “Like hell!” Tabitha redoubled her efforts and hauled herself onto the roof. She tore off her heels and put on a burst of vampiric speed.

  Walce looked back and saw her as she came over the edge of the roof. He had just landed on the roof one building ahead, and his eyes went wide when he saw her. He pulled his gun back out and began to shoot as she came toward his roof.

  Worse, he was a good shot.

  Tabitha, seeing his arm come out, aimed and shot back close enough that he only got one more off before he had to duck. It whizzed over her head.

  “This is beginning to piss me off!” she yelled. She landed and rolled to find that Walce was gone, already running again. She hiked the dress up again, then ripped it off to reveal black armor. “Done with that stupid dress! Ryu, ditch the suit!”

  “I like the suit!”

  “I said to ditch it!”

  “Fine.” Ryu ripped his suit off to show the same armor underneath. “Achronyx, tag the location, would you? I want to come back and get the suit.” A shot from Walce blew him back, and he thudded to the ground heavily. “That was my fault. I should have paid more attention to him.”

  “On it!” Tabitha shot back twice, using her standard-issue pistol. She didn’t want to show off the Dukes Special until she really had to make a point.

  Walce was now hiding behind a concrete cube that seemed to hold some sort of tank.

  The tank holds plain water, Achronyx reported.

  “So we’re good to shoot at it?” Tabitha asked.

  Yes.

  “Good, because I want to make a point.” Tabitha took cover behind one of the smaller tanks that littered the roof. “This isn’t flammable, is it?”

  No. It is sewage, however.

  “Ew!” Tabitha leaned out and shot twice at Walce with her pistol and then ran for the next tank. “What about this one?”

  Also sewage. All of them except the one are sewage.

  “I say we wrap this up quickly!” Ryu called.

  “I agree!” Tabitha called back. As Walce shot at her, one of the tanks ruptured. “Oh, my God! I’m gonna hurl! Time to make a point right the fuck now!” She pulled out the Dukes Special and directed one good shot at the concrete cube.

  The entire thing exploded. Tabitha and Ryu ducked as water sprayed everywhere, chunks of concrete rained down, and there was a scream from Walce.

  “I didn’t kill him, did I?”

  “No, he is trying to make for the edge of the building.”

  “This way!” Tabitha called to Ryu, and they ran for the edge of the building.

  Walce must have had some version of their harness because he had foregone climbing and gone straight down. Tabitha and Ryu did the same, but the area between the two buildings was narrow, and it took them some time to get to the ground.

  Walce, meanwhile, picked himself up and ran for the
busy street at the end of the alley.

  “This fucker needs to learn when he’s beaten,” Tabitha groused as she went after him. “He isn’t going to win.”

  “No, but he’s giving us a hell of a chase.” Ryu rubbed his shoulder as he ran. “He got me good with that shot.”

  “Too bad we can’t get him back. Something about ‘Justice’ and ‘due process.’” Tabitha rolled her eyes as they came out into the street. “I have finally figured out how Bethany Anne totally fucked me over. She gets to kill people left and right when she gets upset just a little bit, and she gives me a job with paperwork.”

  People were staring and pointing, and she made sure to sway her hips a little as she ran. “That’s right, people!” she called. “Bet you guys have never seen a sweet set of curves like this before! This is a hundred percent Earth, baby!”

  “They don’t speak English,” Ryu reminded her.

  Ahead of them, Walce was screaming something in the native language. The crowd parted for him, then closed up for Tabitha and Ryu.

  “What is he yelling?”

  He is saying that outsiders are following him. The people here believe that outsiders are not to be trusted. They are protecting him.

  He steals from people like them!

  For their benefit. Also, he is part of the ruling class.

  Remind me to re-send the memo about caste systems to Karkat, Achronyx!

  Yes, Ranger Tabitha.

  They followed Walce up the street, fighting their way through the crowds, until Tabitha finally said, “You know what? Screw this.”

  She dodged sideways before anyone in the crowd could block her and ran up the side of a nearby building, going up in an arc to come around the group. When she came down people were ready to close in on her, but she drew her Dukes Special.

  You didn’t have to know exactly what it was to see that it was a huge fucking gun, and people scattered.

  They didn’t have to know she wasn’t going to shoot civilians, after all.

  Ahead of her, Walce gave a scream when he saw how close they had gotten. He made for the far corner of the street, where several food trucks were clustered. He hurdled the first cart, spilling melons everywhere, and disappeared.

  “Achronyx, where did he go?” Tabitha held the gun up as she ran through the crowd.

  You will not like this, Ranger Tabitha. He appears to have gone down a manhole.

  “A manhole? Why should that bother me?” Tabitha looked down at herself. “How small are the manholes here? I can fit. I keep myself trim. Ryu, on the other hand…”

  “I was good enough for you to bring to the ball!” Ryu said, with a grin.

  “Only because Dev wasn’t available! Achronyx, see if Dev Zancred is still at the ball.” Tabitha hurdled the same fruit cart and saw the manhole. “Have someone deliver a message that says I want to talk to him later. I’ll just find another burlap bag and wear that back— Oh my God.”

  “What is it?” Ryu called.

  “It’s going into the sewers!” Tabitha wailed.

  I did tell you that you would not like it.

  “I didn’t know that’s what you meant!” Tabitha landed in a puddle. “Ew, ew, ew. Okay, this isn’t so bad. It smells bad, but it isn’t so bad.”

  The puddle abruptly got deeper as the tunnel began to slant down.

  Tabitha kept pushing forward, but her bitching continued. “No, it’s definitely that bad! This is the worst! Why are we here?”

  “Because we’re Rangers,” Ryu managed, wading along next to Tabitha with his nose plugged. “And neither snow nor rain nor sleet—”

  “WHAT?” Tabitha argued. “That’s the US Postal Service! Neither of us is even American!”

  Ahead of them, Walce could hear them yelling, and he tried not to let them hear him wading desperately through the muck. He hadn’t thought they’d be able to see where he’d gone, for one thing, and he definitely hadn’t expected them to follow him.

  He realized he didn’t even know where he was going. This had just been a burst of inspiration when he saw how close they were. Food carts in Karkat tended to cluster by manhole covers so they could throw their refuse directly into the sewers. He had landed in a pile of sausage ends and was probably never going to eat sausage again in his life.

  He didn’t even know what these two humans wanted with him. He had heard they were looking for him on the first night, but Kenet Aljun’ra had contacted him to say everything would be taken care of.

  Apparently, you couldn’t trust a Flexxent with anything.

  He snarled as he waded through a particularly noxious part of the muck. He didn’t want to think what was in this. At least he couldn’t hear the humans yelling anymore.

  Walce stopped.

  He couldn’t hear the humans yelling anymore.

  He turned around—and bumped into the tall one.

  “Oh, hello,” Ryu said to him. The silvery coloring was still on his skin, but his eyes were now glowing red. “What a charming home you have.”

  Chapter 18

  Nickie

  Rebus Quadrant, Aboard the Penitent Granddaughter, Nickie’s Quarters

  Once she finished reading, Nickie got up to pace. She felt too much, like she would jitter out of her skin. Instead, she wound up standing in the middle of the room. She stared at the wall on the opposite side of her room as if she weren’t even aware it was there. Like it was going to come to life and start speaking to her. Grim’s words from before kept playing in her head.

  “If you’re fighting because you have to—because it needs to happen and there’s no other choice—it’s a very different thing than fighting because you hate your target.”

  Why was she fighting the Skaines? Sure, she hated them, but that wasn’t why she was fighting them.

  Was it?

  She wasn’t sure. She could think of a handful of reasons off the top of her head why the Skaines needed to be stopped, but at the same time…fighting them felt good. She couldn’t pretend otherwise. Fighting the Skaines felt good and gave her something to take out all her stress on. It gave her a target to aim every bad thing that had ever happened to her at.

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” she mumbled, finally flopping backward onto her bed again. She had a brief glimpse of the ceiling before she flung one arm over her face, hiding her eyes in the crook of her elbow. She curled her other hand into a fist and thumped it halfheartedly on the mattress.

  There wasn’t anything wrong with enjoying fighting. She wasn’t going to concede that point. She liked the way her muscles burned as she was pushing herself to her limit. Few things pushed her to her limits in quite the same way as a good fight or sparring match.

  But she could understand, if she put herself in the mindset of someone who didn’t know anything about her situation, why it might seem a little unfortunate that she didn’t just enjoy the athletic aspects of combat.

  She enjoyed hurting her opponents, at least when they were Skaines.

  She supposed she could understand why that might be a little alarming to anyone who didn’t know her or her situation or what the Skaines were like.

  She let the fight on Swapayama replay in her thoughts, even calling up the drone footage of it so she could get a different point of view on it. Most of the footage was simply of the Skaines as the drones plowed through them, but all three of them had captured Nickie on film at various points.

  It was…unsettling.

  Nickie knew she was a good fighter. And even if she could be impatient and impulsive, she knew she was good with tactics when she put her mind to it.

  In no clip of her from the drones’ footage did it look like she was being tactical. It didn’t look like she was thinking at all, truth be told. She looked more like an animal, feral and rabid, concerned only with getting her teeth into whatever she could reach next. Given the blood coating her, she couldn’t even be sure if that was entirely a metaphor. She might very well have resorted to that if she’d needed to.


  Furiously, she tried to rationalize the footage. It had been a drastic situation. (But not as drastic as situations she had been stuck in before.) It had been urgent. (She’d been in bigger emergencies.) It had been dangerous. (In all honesty, she had probably been in more danger getting into the mines on Themis. She was more familiar with Skaines than she was with half-destroyed mines.)

  She could think of so many reasons why that level of brutality had been necessary, but she could refute every one.

  For a moment, she couldn’t help but think of two children on a playground, shouting over each other as they both tried to win an argument.

  Finally, she dredged up her trump card; the one thing she was sure had to make that entire episode the right thing to do. She had needed to save those girls. She didn’t know what the Skaines had been planning to do with them, but it wouldn’t have been good. The girls would have been dead or wishing they were within days.

  If she hadn’t saved them, who would have? No one on Swapayama was equipped to fight much of anything. From Meredith’s initial reports, Nickie was pretty sure the girls had been abandoned by the rest of the village in pretty short order.

  She had done the right thing by saving them.

  She hadn’t been fighting for those girls, though, had she?

  Her voice was small as she breathed the words, “I never even thought of them.”

  During that whole fight, with the girls chained just a few yards away, they scarcely crossed her mind. It would have been easy for a stray laser blast to hit one of them, or even for one of her drones to get knocked off-course and clip one of them. Frankly, it was a miracle that nothing like that had happened.

  Even the fact that she had saved them didn’t cheer her up. She was just using them as an excuse to make herself feel better.

  The realization hit her like a bucket of ice water in the face.

  The Skaines had ransacked the village and taken hostages. Who knew what else they had been planning to do while they were there? All to lead up to another slave run. They had needed to be dealt with.