The Red King

by Jenn Stark

  “Except for the fire stuff, yeah, and the part about needing to have seen a place first before you can go to it,” she pointed out. “That sort of makes it difficult for the search part of search and rescue.”

  “True, but I could get close, right?” As we talked, we naturally had started walking down the street toward the party palazzo. “Let’s say that something was most likely holed up in Carnegie Hall, and I’ve never been to Carnegie Hall, but I’ve been to New York. So I can get close.”

  “And maybe…” Nikki snapped her fingers. “I can do you one better. What if you saw a place on Google Earth? So you know that you need to be inside, say, a palazzo in Venice. You can’t get into the home on your own, but you could line up right outside the front door. Assuming, of course, nobody was standing there at that exact time, because then they would see you poof into existence. Which can be awkward.”

  “That wasn’t all that awkward back there.”

  “You weren’t the one practically landing on the guy.”

  “Fair enough. Speaking of…”

  “Speaking of, he was lit up like a Christmas tree. From what I could tell, nothing technoceutical, just garden-variety hallucinogens. They were already wearing off, which was why he decided the party was no longer any fun, so he was off to the next gig. This is interesting too: even his whack memories were starting to fade, and dude had only been out of the house for approximately what, three minutes? By tomorrow morning, he won’t even remember he was here.”

  I frowned. “Like he’d been roofied?”

  “That’s one possibility. On top of whatever he took himself, he could’ve easily had something slipped into his drink behind door number one. But I’m telling you, dollface, there is nothing interesting in a metaphysical sense about this party, at least not from boyo’s perspective. Everybody’s in feathers and masks, granted, but I think that’s going to get pretty commonplace here in the next day or so.”

  I frowned, then squinted up at the house. “Well, we’re already here. Should we knock?”

  Nikki shrugged. “We’re not exactly correctly dressed, and Valetti is this guy’s neighbor. So it depends on how noticed you want to be.”

  “Since when did you become the voice of reason?”

  Nikki pointed down again. “Blahniks.”

  “Fine. We’ll go around to the back, if there is a back. These row houses are kind of creepy with no space in between them.”

  “Agreed. But one block over…” Nikki glanced down the street from where we came, then back the other way. “More of the guests seem to be arriving from that direction,” she said. “All of them on foot. Gotta be some sort of public water taxi stop, since Casa Crazy here doesn’t have its own pier.”

  “So to get behind it…”

  “Up the street we go.” We retraced our steps to follow the young man we’d interrupted, and went another block up, then down again. Logic dictated we’d see a house built of the same pink stone we’d seen on the front courtyard.

  Logic was with us, but backward.

  “They were going in the back garden door.” Nikki craned back to get a better look at the façade. It was worth the effort. Like Palazzo Gioia, this building put the “whoa” in row house. Three stories of flawless pink-tinged stone would’ve been impressive on any street, in any city. Here, however, it was merely the fifth house down. All of its neighbors were equally majestic, if not quite as pretty.

  It also was not a place I’d expect people to be dropping acid. “This seems a little staid for a drug party.”

  Nikki nodded, then grinned. “All business in the front, a party in the back. It’s a Venetian mullet.”

  “And it’s locked, no matter what.” I shook my head. “I’m changing my mind. Astral travel was better.”

  “Unless…” Nikki pulled me along until we reached the top of the street again, and we wound our way back toward Palazzo Gioia. “I’ve seen the inside. I mean, our drunken friend did, and he remembered it, mostly.”

  I frowned at her. “But you’re not the one driving, right? It’s not like you can put your memories in my head.”

  “But if you trusted me? Would that work?”

  “Well, maybe. Or maybe we’d end up in the middle of a wall. On fire.”

  Nikki considered that. “Okay, so possibly not the best idea. Which leaves us where?”

  “Which leaves us…” I paused as the door at the far end of the lane opened. Four guests nearly fell on their faces in the alley, and I glanced up. “How is it nobody is complaining about this? Are there seriously not enough nosy people in this town to see what’s going on?”

  “I get the feeling this crowd only looks up,” Nikki said drily.

  “Yeah, but—cameras? Busybodies? Maids or manservants? Surely someone’s got the time on their hands to check this out. All I had to do was look over the side of the wall.”

  We paused as another set of revelers came up the alley in grand feathered gear, only they were entering, not leaving. I watched them until they disappeared behind the door. “At least we know the party’s still going strong.”

  “I still think you should give my idea a try,” Nikki said. “I could describe the courtyard to you. We could hold hands or something.”

  “No,” I said again, more firmly this time, in case she’d forgotten the meaning of the word. “I think that’s… Wait, here’s more.”

  Two new revelers, one large, one of medium build, drifted out of the doorway, hand in hand. They stopped on the side of the alley and embraced, clearly entranced with each other. They fumbled and laughed as their masks clicked together, their hands bunching up their heavy feathered robes. I stared, not proud of the thought forming in my mind.

  Nikki of course, had no such issues. “Two capes, two masks. And those costumes are clearly getting in their way.”

  We moved quickly to the main street, loitering under some trees in front of another house. It didn’t take long for the couple to give up on trying to make out in costume, and we let them pass us as they exited the alley. They were heading for the water taxi stand, hand in hand.

  “Hit them or pay them?”

  “They seem nice enough…”

  “Drunk enough too,” Nikki observed. Without giving me time to consider a more thoughtful plan, she bounded forward, her bright voice startling the couple, nearby residents, and several birds. But when she pulled out a thick wad of American bills, she managed to convey what she wanted to the Venetians with startling ease. It took only a few minutes for her to return, burdened with masks and feathers.

  “Knockoffs,” she said, sniffing the ensemble. “And they reek of booze and cigarettes.”

  “Then we should fit right in.” I pulled the smaller of the two costumes from her. In five more minutes, we were dressed and practicing our best flamboyant strolls, Nikki continuing to fuss with her costume as we walked.

  “These guys were more with it than the other one, more drunk on love than narcotics, but they saw the same thing the first guy did. Courtyard, open-bar setup, chatter, laughter, trees with lights strung in them, pretty girls handing out drinks and pills.”

  I glanced up toward the courtyard walls, and sure enough, there were lights in the trees. They were more noticeable now that the sun was officially down. “Any idea who the house’s owner is?”

  “I’ve got a first name, but it’s not all that helpful: Fabrizio. There are undoubtedly a thousand Fabrizios in this section of Venice alone.”

  Fabrizio, I thought. Was he the Red King? Maybe. But even if he wasn’t, the King of Cups in traditional card readings was also known as the God card. How could I say no to going inside if God was on our side? “How’d they learn about the house party, in case we’re asked?”

  Nikki grinned. “I knew you were going to pose that very question, so I poked around their earlier memories. They decided to check the party out this afternoon. They already had costumes left over from last year, though they weren
’t pleased with them.”

  “Explains why they were so willing to part with them.”

  “That and the ridiculous amount of money I shoved at them, yep. Once they took the water taxi here, they found the place with their phones, walked in, handed over said phones, and signed their names in a ledger.”

  “They gave up their phones?”

  “What can I say? They’re Italian. The phones were left in plain sight, in a bin behind the bar, but the owners didn’t want any pictures. Apparently, this wasn’t a surprising request to any of the partiers.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I thought so too. But no one confronted them, no one talked to them, other than a cocktail girl shilling drinks. Which were free, along with an assortment of designer drugs.”

  “And the point of all this?”

  “Drugs and drink tastings, market research. They’d seen a flyer in a local park. They sampled the booze, declined the drugs, and there was no muss, no fuss. They left soon after, not even embarrassed. What I suspect ol’ Fabrizio is doing is testing out some new strains of woo juice he wants to put out in circulation, but he needs to make sure he doesn’t blow anyone up first.” Nikki continued manipulating the feathers of her costume as she walked, in a futile attempt to get the feathers to lie straight. “You’d think—whoa, whoa, whoa.”

  Nikki’s long fingers dived between two feathers, and she came away with a small metallic device. “This is interesting,” she said blandly.

  “Very interesting,” I agreed, peering at the bug. “Do we care?”

  “If it’s a tracking device with history, they’ll know the capes were at the party twice. If it’s a tracking device without history, and they haven’t started tracking, then no harm, no foul.”

  I thought about that. “How would we know?”

  “We wouldn’t. I suspect they simply want to make sure no one ups and dies on them. Would kind of put a damper on the whole market research angle. I’m thinking we move the bugs but keep them on us, then ditch the costumes as soon as we’re done doing whatever it is we think we’re going to do in there.”

  “Agreed.”

  We approached the doorway, and Nikki reached out, knocking authoritatively on the unadorned wooden door. It opened almost immediately. We were ushered into an incredibly lush courtyard that looked like it had played host to parties since the Middle Ages. Stone benches wove in and around fully grown trees and plants, all of them dripping with twinkling lights. A modern bar stood at the far corner of the deceptively large space, and we hadn’t even walked three steps toward it before a woman whisked in front of us—wearing a half mask and a wide smile above her feathered minidress.

  “You’re American?” she asked.

  I stared through my mask, and Nikki put her hands on her hips. “How is it that obvious?”

  “Because of you.” The woman laughed, pointing at Nikki. “You are no Venetian. You will be a delight at every party you attend.”

  “It’s a particular skill of mine.”

  “You wish drinks?” The woman offered us the tray, but in addition to the drinks were several small plastic cups with two pills each. I itched to pull the pills off the tray, but I felt the attention of several sets of eyes in the room. What we lifted from this tray, we’d be expected to consume. The booze hadn’t harmed anyone, at least not from what we’d seen. The pills were an unknown quantity.

  We both reached for the glasses, but I couldn’t help a growing sense of unease as I stared around the courtyard. This was all wrong. These people were too happy, too relaxed. They’d done this or something like this before. To them, there wasn’t anything inherently creepy about it. And, bonus points, no one seemed particularly Connected. Not the bartenders, not the waitstaff, and definitely not the guests.

  So why had I felt so sure I should investigate?

  An excited murmur started at the front of the room, and Nikki looked up, her body suddenly tense.

  “What is it?”

  “Something’s wrong. Energy’s changed,” she said in a way that wasn’t so much psychic smart as cop smart. Before her stint as a Vegas psychic, Nikki had spent a lot of years on the Chicago police force to hone that kind of instinct, and her eyes had gone flat and hard. “We need to go.”

  “But shouldn’t we—” I didn’t have a chance to finish my words before the first startled shout went up. Even in their pleasantly impaired state, the crowd darted away like startled fish as a man half staggered, half fell out of the house and into the courtyard. He was enormous, wearing a luxurious feathered cape and a long beaked mask that showed his mouth beneath it, but that mouth was now open in a horrible grimace. His arms were stretched wide, his body writhing. He chased away any who came close.

  “Dollface…” Nikki said quietly. She was already edging toward the door, which was an open maw to the street, with frightened partiers spilling out. No screaming, no shouting, no chaos, just a party gone very badly wrong and everyone wanting to cut their losses. The official staff were mostly frozen in place except for some of the bouncers, who were circling in on the feathered man with a mixture of reverence, fear, and, worst of all, surprise.

  “We can’t go,” I said tightly. “He’s been drugged. Like, a lot.”

  I stepped forward, and the man looked up, apparently watching me through the mask. It was an unnerving experience because though I could see his mouth, I couldn’t see his eyes.

  “You!” he gasped, his entire body stiffening. “You were—supposed to come! To save me! It wasn’t…it wasn’t my time!”

  He doubled over in a fit of the shakes, and I reflexively looked for the slash over his right temple, gleaming in silver. Only…it wasn’t there. Instead, his head was surrounded with a faint corona of glowing purple light—which was definitely not the same thing.

  The guy might be a technoceutical pusher and a dirtbag in his own right, but he wasn’t marked for Justice.

  Crap.

  Chapter Twelve

  I didn’t waste time parsing the particulars. With a dozen more strides, I was right up on the guy, jerking one of the bouncers out of the way. Said bouncer apparently hadn’t been expecting me to be so strong, because he crashed into several other staffers with a curse I couldn’t quite translate. Nikki stepped in right beside me, shoving another two men back. In my peripheral view, I noted that the revelers who’d been hardy enough to stick around were still sticking, all of them watching. There was something else wrong about this scene, and it hit me as I rolled the heavy man over to his back.

  “Where’s the ambulance?” I snapped. “This guy’s been in trouble for at least ten minutes, probably more.”

  “His personal physician is on the way.” The voice spoke from above me, sharp, worried, but firm. “There will be no ambulance.”

  Freaking great. The big guy’s breathing was coming in short, shallow bursts, and his skin was pale and waxy. I reached down to rip the mask off him, but he struggled, his hands coming up to hold the mask on.

  “Nooo,” he gasped. “No.”

  “Everybody’s a drama queen.” Without waiting another beat, I stared down at the man, allowing my third eye to flick open.

  Instantly, the world around me was no longer merely a construct of form and color, but dancing electrical circuits, weaving in and around and through the humans and plants and other life-forms that were occupying this space—and all of it was a life-form of some sort or another, none of the figures truly inert. Not even the guy passed out at the far edge of the bar. Somewhere deep inside me, I breathed a tiny sigh of relief that this was one skill I’d managed to retain. I should probably start a spreadsheet.

  For now, however, I needed to focus on the soon-to-be-dead guy in front of me. With the vantage point of my electrical sight, I could see exactly where the problem was: everywhere. The man’s life force wasn’t so much shutting down, it was already well into ghost. His heart was pumping, his brain was firing, but both processes were o
perating at well below optimal levels. It was as if he were trying to push his body through a tub of Jell-O with his feet tied together. There were so many things going wrong at the same time, I didn’t know what to hit first, his withering heart, his darkening brain, his collapsing lungs, his sluggish blood, or his misfiring nerves.

  So I went with option F and hit everything at once.

  Focusing my own energy into a massive bolt, I released an electrical surge into the man’s body at chest level, the trailing ends of fire moving both up and down his form. I watched carefully to see where, if anywhere, the energy pooled, and I wasn’t disappointed. The point of entry for the poison wasn’t the guy’s stomach or, more appropriately, his mouth, as would’ve been reasonable, but an injection site directly below his left ear. He’d not only been drugged, he definitely hadn’t been the one doing the job.

  I clapped my hand over the injection site, and the man jerked again. By this time, the onlookers had given us a wide berth. I got the sense of a man in a dark, subdued suit hustling up. But he made it no further than Nikki, because I wasn’t done here, not by a long shot. I’d immediately recognized the energy signature of this drug—sort of. It was Black Elixir, only a strain of the technoceutical that was a million times more potent than any I’d ever encountered before. Infused with powerful organic compounds I didn’t recognize, the drug hadn’t augmented the feathered man’s natural magical ability, which was fairly high, it’d turned that ability into a self-destructing weapon. I saw now that the man’s brain hadn’t gone dark, exactly. Instead, it had taken on a wasting energy that was billowing through his body like an insidious army of ants, eating everything in its wake. With a slash of my own energy, I halted the oncoming tide, and the man’s cells responded. His synapses began firing again, his heart started beating, and his nerve endings stopped their frantic dance. But something was still terribly wrong. Even as I pushed back the malevolent wave of energy, I realize I’d already lost the battle. At least the battle that would have meant anything to this man, if he was as Connected as I thought he was.