The Chosen

by John G. Hartness

  “Yes, Dad.” She sighed in the tone that twenty-something girls have used with their ridiculous fathers ever since I first had a twenty-something daughter.

  Chapter 21

  The casino in New Orleans was just like most of them—loud, garish, and a little depressing.

  It’s no wonder Lucky feels so at home in them. I wonder what it says about me that I also feel very at home among the dropouts, degenerates, and hopeless dreamers. I’ve always liked blackjack, and I count cards just well enough to make a little money without getting noticed by the floor guys or the eye in the sky. Most people think you can’t count a six-deck shoe, but the reality is that it’s just a little harder. If you’re patient, you can figure it out. If you’re immortal, patience is the one thing you’ve got in spades.

  I sat down at a low-limit table and settled in to a nice six-deck shoe. The kids wandered around the slot machines for a while as I got my groove started. I was up about a hundred bucks at a fifteen-dollar table when Emily came back.

  “Gimme a couple hundred bucks.” She held out her hand.

  “And why, pray tell, would I want to do that?” I responded without touching either the chips in front of me or the cash in my pocket.

  “Because you’re taking too long, and I can make us a lot more money a lot more quickly. So gimme three hundred dollars.”

  “How do you plan to make significantly more money than me, faster than me, with half our remaining money?” I was a little concerned. She had an odd look about her, not like she had a gambling bug, but like she knew she had an edge.

  It worries me when people think they have an edge over a casino, especially one that’s as close to water as this one is. I’ve seen people frantically trying to learn to swim after big winning sessions in casinos, but it can be difficult to learn new things with your hands and feet tied together. I ended up very soggy in that little adventure and didn’t relish an opportunity to repeat it. It’s a lot harder to find thugs in casinos nowadays, since they’re all run by huge multinational conglomerates, but there’s still the occasional neckless twit rolling around, and if I could avoid any interaction with them, I would.

  “Poker.” When I didn’t fork over any cash, she went on, “I’m a good poker player, and I read people very, very well. So give me enough cash for one buy-in, and I’ll make us some real money. I’ve been watching, and these games are ridiculously juicy. It’s almost like these guys want to give their money away.”

  Now, I’ve played a little poker, and a couple of those times were down in the Delta, and the boys down there like to gamble. They would never think that a little girl like Emily could hold her own, so even if she didn’t have a somewhat amazing ability to know what people were thinking and feeling, she’d probably have an edge. Couple that with her mildly disturbing insight, and I did what any right-thinking father would do. I gave her the money.

  “Thanks. Now stay here. If you’re there with me, it’ll singe my groove.” She walked off, and I saw her tying her hair up in pigtails as she went. Singe her groove? Really? And pigtails? I sighed the sigh of the really, really old and turned back to my chips.

  “They grow up fast, don’t they, Papa?” Cain was in the seat next to me at the table. I hadn’t noticed him there and wasn’t sure how much of the exchange he’d witnessed.

  “Yeah. They sure do. Did you ever have any?” I realized how little I really knew about my son, what with that whole ‘wanting to murder each other for millennia’ thing getting in the way.

  “A few. I had a few early, but they all bore the Mark on their foreheads, so I waited until after the Carpenter did his thing to have any more. You know what’s funny? After they killed him, none of my children since were born with the Mark. Funny, huh?”

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t have thought he could have affected us, what with us being so much older than him and all.”

  “I know. But it really did seem like something changed after his time, like Father hit the reset button or something.” I’d never pegged Cain for the philosophical type, but I guessed after fifty thousand years, people changed.

  We sat there for an hour or two pushing chips back and forth. I wasn’t counting cards much anymore, just chatting with Cain about our lives through the years. Basic blackjack strategy kept me from getting in too much trouble, and after a while, it didn’t really require any thought. I managed to get lucky a few times and pick up a couple hundred dollars before I realized that Emily hadn’t come back for more money. I looked at my watch and realized we’d gambled away practically an entire Saturday. Time did funny things in a casino, and it was going on nine at night.

  “Wanna go check on your sister?” I asked Cain.

  Cain smirked. “I thought she didn’t want you to singe her groove?”

  “Really? Out of all people, do you think I would singe a girl’s groove? C’mon.” I colored up to a purple and a couple of black chips and walked over toward the poker room. ‘Poker room’ was something of a misnomer; it was more like a slightly enclosed area with a rail around it where addicts could go to smoke.

  It took a little bit of eyeballing from the rail, but we finally caught sight of Emily. When we did, Cain and I exchanged what could most charitably be called shocked glances. She sat at one end of a table, the only girl in a sea of fat, sweaty men, and she had a wall of chips in front of her that was impressive in its size alone, much less in the fact that it was made up of mostly red and green chips. I made a quick guess and figured she had close to fifteen hundred dollars in front of her. She saw us watching, folded her hand, and sashayed over to the rail to give her brother a big hug and me a kiss on the cheek.

  “Hey boys, how’d you do?” She sported an altogether impertinent smile.

  “We made a little. Looks like you hit a nice little lucky streak yourself, sweetheart.” I wanted to know what she was up to, but damned if I was going to give her the satisfaction of asking.

  “I’ve had worse days,” she answered with a twinkle in her eye. She knew I wouldn’t be able to resist asking.

  “Where did you get all that money?” I finally blurted.

  “It’s the funniest thing, Daddy. When you have the best hand, they give you all the chips in the middle of the table. And if you put all your chips in the middle, and you have the best hand, you don’t just get your chips back, you get everybody else’s chips, too. Isn’t that fun?” She even squealed a little at the end. I felt ill.

  “Where did you learn to play poker?” Cain asked.

  “Now, big brother, don’t worry. I can teach you if you want. Daddy, where did you pick me and Mama up?”

  “Texas.”

  “And what’s the name of the game we’re playing?”

  “Texas Hold’em.”

  “Now, doesn’t it stand to reason that a girl who grew up in Texas, and happened to have been raised next to a bar, might have learned a little about poker?” She kept up the sweetness and light demeanor, which I thought made it all the worse.

  “So, how much do you have?” I asked.

  “About sixteen hundred dollars. The three hundred you gave me was seed money, and as soon as I could double that, I took a seat in a juicy two-five game. I’m gonna pick up another decent pot or two, then hit up the Pot Limit Omaha game they’ve got over in the back corner. It’s an uncapped game and the three seat’s throwing money away like a Catholic priest on a Bangkok bender, while the seven seat has had about seventeen Crown and Cokes and is falling asleep between hands.

  “As long as I stay out of the way of the four and six seats, I should be okay. I can’t tell if they’re playing partners or just locals that don’t see any need to tangle with each other, but either way, they aren’t the soft spots at the table. I’ll avoid them unless I’ve got the mortal nuts, and I figure they’ll take a shot or two at me because I’m a girl, and then they’ll go back to the easy pickings themselves.” Her whole body language changed when she went on the descriptions of the tables. It was like a general talking ab
out an opposing army’s strengths and weaknesses. Never once did she look back at the table to make sure she was talking about the right people. It was, to put it mildly, the damnedest thing I’d ever seen.

  “I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand a damn word you said, baby sister, and I’m real sure I can’t afford any poker lessons from you,” Cain said with more than a little awe in his voice.

  “Well, are you about ready to roll? We’ve got about two grand between us now, and that’s enough to make some headway before we need to reload our funds. We might even have enough to get us all the way through this mess, wherever that is.” I wasn’t very comfortable with some of the looks we were getting. Not that they were threatening looks, more like Emily was a piece of meat, and I tended to get squirrelly where my girl children were concerned.

  “Come back in two, two and a half hours. I’m just about done with this table, but it’ll take a couple of good hands at the next to get me where I want to be before we head out. Besides, you never leave while the game is good.” She turned to go back to the table.

  I grabbed her elbow and pulled her back, hard. “Where did you hear that?” I asked in a low, very serious tone.

  All the levity went out of her when she looked up into my eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she actually looked afraid of me. And frankly, I didn’t know better, and she probably was afraid of me. I loosened my grip on her arm, but stayed right down in her face. “Who told you that line about never leaving when the game is good?”

  “A… a guy. He used to come in the diner. He taught me how to play cards. He’d flirt with Mom and play cards with me in one of the booths after school.”

  “What was his name?” I kept my voice down, but I knew she could see in my eyes that something was wrong.

  “Luke. Why?”

  “Nothing.” I tried to force my face back to normal, but I could tell I wasn’t doing a very good job. “Nothing. It’s just, that’s a phrase I heard a long time ago, but it’s been years, and I’m sure it’s just part of the vernacular now.” I was lying through my teeth, and she knew it, but she could tell that I wasn’t going to come across with any truth right then. “Go on back to your game.”

  “Are you sure? You wanna tell me what’s got you so spooked?” she asked. “Besides, now that you’ve got me rattled, I’m gonna have to fold every hand for the next orbit to get my head back in the game.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. It’s nothing, really. Go on back to slaying the redneck dragons, and we’ll be back in a couple hours.”

  “Yeah, go rob the poor unsuspecting swamp rats. Me and the old man are gonna go grab a bite and play a little more blackjack.” Cain put an arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the buffet.

  As soon as we were out of earshot, he whispered fiercely in my ear, “Exactly what the hell do you think you were doing?”

  Chapter 22

  We got a booth a little separate from the rest of the buffet. I downed a Coke in one quick gulp and once the waitress left for my refill, I leaned forward. “You know who her poker lessons came from?”

  “Yeah, the Morningstar.”

  “Exactly. That son of a bitch has been hanging around my daughter, and I want to know why. Wait a minute. That was a rhetorical question. How did you know who her ‘Luke’ was?”

  “Remember when I mentioned not liking to sit with my back to a door?”

  “Yeah, you said you were in Deadwood when Hickok got shot.”

  “Yeah. I was sitting across from him at the table, probably about to lose my ass because my two pair wasn’t as good as his when McCall came in and shot him.”

  “What does that have to do with the Morningstar?”

  “He was there, too.”

  I digested that for a moment. I knew Lucky kept tabs on me, and it stood to reason that he had kept an eye on Eve and Cain, too. What I didn’t understand was why Cain had been playing cards with him, and said as much.

  “Because we were making money, Pop. We were hustling miners for their claims in card games.”

  “With Lucypher? What kind of stupid shit were you up to, son?” I started to stand, but stopped at the look in Cain’s eyes. It was a cross between shame and fear, with more than a little resentment thrown in, a lot of it directed at me.

  “Really? Who was I supposed to pal around with, Dad?” The emphasis on the last word was heavy with sarcasm. “I was thousands of years removed from any paternal influence, I had murdered my closest relative and best friend, and Mom was in the middle of one her nuttier periods. Besides, Lucien and I had plenty in common.”

  “Lucien?”

  “Yeah, that’s what he called himself then. Nobody in their right mind would play cards with a guy named Lucky, and ‘Lucypher’ was a little blatant.”

  “And what in the hell, no pun intended, do you think you have in common with Lucypher?” I tried to keep my voice down in case the octogenarians sharing the buffet weren’t as deaf as I thought.

  “Really? You can sit here across the table from me and ask that with a straight face? I’ve been ostracized for thousands of years because of what I did to Abel, and you’re asking me why I hung out with the Prince of frickin’ Darkness? Seriously, Pop, for a long time, he was the only person who knew who I was that would associate with me.”

  I didn’t say anything because there was nothing I could say. He was right. I’d tossed him out on his ass after Abel’s death and tried not to even look at him for eons at a time. I couldn’t blame him for running with Lucky. At least then, he didn’t have to hide anything.

  “Suffice it to say, Lucky and I have spent some time together in some of the seedier parts of the world,” he continued. “We were working a card scam together in Deadwood. Of course, what I didn’t know was that Lucky also had other things working.”

  “He always does.”

  “Yeah. So he had been pumping McCall full of liquor earlier in the day, and telling him how Hickok had been talking about what a sucker he was and how Hickok had to give him money for breakfast because McCall had lost his last dollar playing cards. I never did find out what Lucky had against Hickok, but he got McCall wound up enough to walk right up behind Hickok and blow his brains out through his eyeballs. Hickok dropped his cards on the table, a couple of boys went after McCall, and Lucky stole the money in the pot while I sat there with pieces of Wild Bill’s brains splattered all over my favorite coat.

  “After a couple minutes’ shock, I ran out into the street and grabbed Lucky. I pulled him into an alley and asked him what the hell he was doing. He said that he was done with Hickok, done with McCall, and done with the West. He said he had bigger things to do in Europe and needed a little more cash to get him there. He left me with half our winnings, a coat matted with blood and brains, and a stupid look on my face. I didn’t see him again until Germany.”

  “Germany?”

  “Another time, Dad. The point is, he told me the same thing he told Emily; you never leave while game’s still good. And judging by the look on your face, he’s said the same thing to you more than once.”

  “Yeah. We played Glic once or twice in France, and Lucky always had a sense for when the game was good, when you could take down a hand just by vying at the right time, and who at the table wasn’t terribly attached to their money. I always wondered what he wanted with the money. It’s not like he needs it.”

  “I asked once. He said it’s just a way to keep score. The money itself only matters in that it means something to the guy you’re taking it from.”

  “That sounds like Lucky.”

  “Yeah. But what does he want with Emily? He had to know who she was, and he had to know that eventually you’d find out he’d been around her, and that you’d be pissed.”

  “True, but would he care? It’s not like I can hurt him. Nobody can. At least nobody that was born here.”

  “No, you’re probably right. But then, why mess with her? She’s just a normal kid. It’s not like she’s one of us.
”

  “Maybe not, but he’d know that she mattered to me, and he’s always loved screwing with the things and people I care about.” I leaned back in the booth and sipped on a Coke. None of it made sense. I’d spent enough time around Lucky over the centuries to start to think I had an idea how he thought, but this had me completely stumped. It was as if he knew I’d find her, as if he….

  I sat bolt upright. “He knew!”

  “Knew what?”

  “He knew this was coming! He knew that we’d all get together, that I’d see Emily, that I’d have to come for Eve, that I’d find out that he’d been messing with the kid, all of it. The bastard probably set up the whole mess in Vegas that put me on the run in the first place.” I let out a low whistle at the way he’d played me. Again. After all this time, just when I thought I was getting to a point where I could see his moves, he’d checkmated me again.