Aces Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 5

by Jenn Stark

  Right?

  I pulled up at the door and hesitated, trying to work through my options. The door was hot to the touch. Not firestorm-on-the-other-side hot, but warm enough to know it was getting the full blast of sun most of the time. The sun had set not long before, so that would mean a western exposure.

  I racked my mind, trying to remember the layout of the Palazzo and the surrounding access streets. Not a lot of parking, but trucks hit this place day and night, so there’d be an opening in the back—probably a large swath of open ground to get across, and—

  My thoughts were fractured a second later as the original EXIT door burst open. To my surprise, it wasn’t Nikki racing toward me but General Som, her arms pumping, her face set even as blood poured down her arm.

  “Madam Wilde!” she yelled.

  I didn’t have time to puzzle out her motives. If she’d gotten past Nikki with Nikki’s blessing, great, but if she’d somehow gunned her way through—

  I shoved my way through the main exit door and out onto a concrete loading dock, a makeshift stage with one set of stairs leading down. Bypassing the stairs, I raced forward and hurtled off the six-foot-high dock. There was no one in the area, and the door banged open behind me.

  “Madam Wilde, wait!” General Som shouted, the stridency of her voice at definite odds with her Asian accent.

  I wasn’t waiting, though. I had my phone, and I had my gun. Brody wanted me out of the action fast, which meant that in his mind, there’d be no reason to keep shooting if I was out of the picture. Which meant not only had I been the target, but I was also a menace to anyone around me.

  Nothing like being the new kid at school who’d somehow pissed off the Mafia.

  I picked up speed as I wheeled around the corner, taking the first alley that led out of the loading area. I realized my mistake immediately.

  An enormous truck blocked the entrance, three men in front of it. None of them held a gun out, but instead they wielded scimitars the size of Detroit. These had to be more of Soo’s generals. They were dressed in black Kevlar suits with Darth Vader-style helmets obscuring their faces. They didn’t move, and I whipped around to head back inside.

  No dice. Another five men now blocked that entry, and General Som was nowhere to be seen. The back-up guards rocked it less old school, too: they had guns. Big guns. And those guns were trained on me.

  One of the generals burst forth in a furious round of Chinese, and turned back to him, holding up my gun. I could try to shoot my way out of this, but that seemed premature. No one had tried to kill me yet. If I could just stay alive long enough to get Nikki and Brody out here, I’d be set.

  And for that matter, where was the Council? I was on their home turf, and not only had the Devil disappeared when the going had gotten interesting, but no one had swung out of the sky to smite my enemies. These people looked like they could use a good smiting too.

  The man switched to English, apparently tired of being ignored. “You will fight as you were meant to fight,” he cried out gruffly. “You will not make the House of Swords a laughing stock of our enemies. You will accept the order of Madam Soo and take up the sword, or you will die.”

  “I’m a little busy right now for all that.” I turned slowly, scanning the walls for options. They were tall and windowless, useless for free-climbing. The men in front of the delivery truck were still doing their best immovable-object impression, and the line of men behind me advanced.

  “Seriously, stop,” I said. Surprisingly, the men stopped moving, though their guns stayed leveled on me. Not helpful, but I also still wasn’t dead, and I willed my heart to stop trying to batter its way out of my rib cage as I assessed my options. I couldn’t credibly fight these people. I was too damaged from Kunh Lee. I couldn’t shoot them either. Minus the injured General Som, who apparently hadn’t made it past the EXIT door, these were the mighty generals of the House of Swords. They wanted to fight me, not kill me outright, and I appreciated the distinction.

  But where the hell was Brody?

  One of the generals stepped forward and, more quickly than anyone I’d ever seen before, drew out a sword and flicked it toward me across the pavement. A moment later, the spinning sword arced to a stop at my feet, its journey swift and absolute. I kept one eye on it while staying focused on the thrower.

  “You know I can’t fight you honorably right now,” I said, my voice echoing off the walls of this man-made box canyon. “And certainly not with that piece of crap.”

  He stiffened. “The Kamakura blade is a revered sword handed down for centuries. It will serve you well.”

  “Not as well as my gun.”

  “You must fight as the head of the House of Swords, or that head will be cut off,” snarled the man. “We will settle this question once and—”

  He didn’t get the chance to finish.

  Without warning, gunfire pelted down from the rooftop. Bursts of fire lit up the ground at my feet, sparking off the sword and the asphalt. More bullets rained down on us, and I crouched, scrambling toward the nearest wall—knowing that I’d never make it.

  Whoever was on the roof, they couldn’t be more of the Swords warriors. There was no honor in shooting fish in a barrel. And there was no chance of me taking up the generals’ challenge now, that much was certain.

  The generals themselves also started running as my body erupted in a fury of pain—my back, my shoulder. Had I been shot? Judging from the blood blossoming across my shirt, yes. Fire jolted through me, and I swung up my gun, my mind blanking as instinct took over.

  I heard shouts but couldn’t run as I unloaded my clip. Bullets whizzed by my shoulder and leg, another of them hitting its mark. I toppled heavily to the ground.

  Pain swept over me in waves, and my eyesight jerked erratically, expanding and contracting to take in far too much for me to process, and then narrowing down to a pinpoint of focus that was all white-hot and icy-cold energy.

  White-hot and icy-cold energy that centered in two crystal points on my collarbone. Soo’s pendants fired to life as more shots pierced my skin, and power flexed within me, too much to contain within my body. Even as it flared, I feared it was too little, too late—there was another blast of gunfire, and pain radiated through me, in too many places to count.

  I squinted through a haze of blood and sweat—then blinked, confused. The men closest to me in their heavy armor weren’t running away from me in the face of the gunfire pouring down. Instead, they raced toward me, their screams defiant, their swords raised high. Swords, not guns, though they had guns holstered on their bodies, the weapons unfired, untouched. What were they doing? Why weren’t they protecting themselves?

  From my position on the ground, I could see their churning steps, their bulging muscles—their sudden, abrupt shudders as a new round of bullets crashed into them. But still they came upon me, as if killing me was more important than shielding themselves from getting shot by their own enemies. And yes, they might have been wearing body armor, but there was too much blood on the ground for it all to be mine. The asphalt seemed to be bathed in red, and still the bullets rained down.

  Then the first man fell over me, bracing his fists on the ground to create a makeshift cage. A second knelt at my side. A third crashed heavily over my legs. We were being made into an impromptu funeral cairn, and all I could do was watch it happen. There was no way out of this blocked-off alley, no way to get to safety. But as I stared, the men’s faceless masks jerked and jerked again as a new barrage of ammunition peppered into them, their bodies absorbing the bullets that were intended for me.

  The energy crested in my body, emanating from Soo’s pendants. Someone was screaming, but I could only dimly hear it as I lifted a hand to the first man who’d reached me. I curled my fingers around his shoulder. His helmet fell away with another sudden lurch, and I found myself staring into the eyes of a stranger.

  A stranger who was dying to save me. To protect the unproven leader of the House of Swords.


  “No,” I whispered, and those eyes found mine.

  These men—these generals—had intended for me to fight them for the right to lead. They had doubted me, hated the idea of me, to the point of lying in wait to ambush me the first day I surfaced wearing the amulet of their former leader. They had no doubt seen my reaction at the airport or been informed of my failures in Soo’s house. They’d most certainly been informed of my disdain for fighting with a blade. And so they’d forced that fight upon me.

  But in the absence of that fight, in the wake of an attack on me, this leader they did not know, could not respect…they’d laid down their lives for me instead.

  “No,” I said again as I locked gazes with the man looming over me. Sweat poured down his face, and he flinched back as I moved my hand to touch his temple. An emotion I couldn’t name swelled in my chest, thick and heavy, the same kind of panic and desperation I’d felt in the Magician’s mansion not two days ago churning again. But there was no anger here. There was only despair.

  This was the first man to have reached me, the first to have laid down his body to save me when his own death would have been the only result.

  “You will not die,” I said again. “Not you, not here.”

  My hand firmed on the man’s cheek and he looked at me with confusion—confusion from someone who’d not thought twice about defying bullets with his body. I could smell something burning, and my fingers grew hot—too hot, my whole body suffused with a new agony now as my blood seemed set on fire and my gaze remained locked with the stranger’s, his dark eyes staring out at me from a weathered face twisted and broken from long years of battle. He’d probably been the first to seek to deny my place, but he also was the first to help me retain it, for all that it was useless, for all that there was nothing left around me but death and destruction.

  But this man wouldn’t die.

  “No,” I whispered a final time, and the heat left me, heat and sight, and the general’s own eyes grew wide with a different kind of panic as, finally, silence settled over the alley and I dropped into darkness at last.

  Chapter Eleven

  Death seemed like it should be a lot more comfortable. And quieter.

  Machines chirped and whirred around me, a symphony of bleating alarms, while the voices of men whispered in hushed tones. Those men were beyond the door, I realized, beyond the window, but the sounds of their earnest concern were still as evident to me as if they were murmuring in my ear.

  One of the words was “miracle,” which made me happy, since miracles were always a good thing. And then I heard the phrase “brain damage,” and I got less happy.

  I took stock of my perforated body. I had bandages on my shoulder and both arms, but my torso seemed fairly un-mummified. My head was swaddled in cloth and my legs felt like two lumps—no sensation at all below my hips.

  The reaction of my heart monitor to that little realization had the men looking up outside of the ICU, but before they could burst in, I funneled a burst of desperate WTF downward and was rewarded with both legs jerking simultaneously—the blast of pain so great that I passed out again.

  The next time I awoke, it was nighttime. I’d been moved to a room that allowed visitors, apparently, or Nikki had found a way in. She sat slumped in a chair several sizes too small for her body, her red hair locked down in a ponytail, her outfit a sedated version of SWAT—camo pants, combat boots, black tank top and work shirt. No glitter in sight.

  Unaccountably, seeing her so unadorned was worse than the pain gnawing at me through the haze of whatever drugs were hooked up to my drip, and tears sparked behind my eyes.

  I blinked and whispered her name.

  Nikki’s eyes popped open immediately, and she sat forward with so much force, I cringed back, though she was still five feet away from me.

  “Dollface,” she blurted, her voice sounding like she’d just come off a three-bottle bender. “How are you and where’ve you been?”

  “What?” I blinked at her, lifting my hand slightly despite the wave of nausea. “I’ve been here, haven’t I?”

  “Not exactly.” Nikki rubbed what looked to be tears out of her own eyes. “You’ve been out for four days. Came to briefly to hear the docs tell it, then coma city. I thought…I mean I hoped you were with Armaeus. But…” She scowled at my bandages. “You aren’t better. Then again, you also aren’t dead. So it was tough to figure.”

  “Armaeus…” I inched myself higher on the pillow, my brain starting to fire again. Nikki had a point. “He didn’t send flowers, I guess.”

  “Uh, no. None of the Council has been by, other than Death, which didn’t make me all that happy, I gotta tell you. Nothing like getting a house call from someone who trucks in mortal souls.”

  I smiled, then instantly sobered. Mainly because smiling hurt. “She say anything?”

  “Only wanted to let you know she’s been to the house in Paris, inspected the work there. The Gamon slaves have had their ink altered enough that they can’t be tracked. They can go home when they’re ready. She was glad you let her know they were there. Oh, and Father Jerome sends his love and prayers and his wish that you’d get your head out of your ass and be more careful.”

  I lifted my brows.

  Brows didn’t hurt.

  “I may have taken some liberties with the translation.” Nikki managed a grin, but her eyes remained clouded. “You scared me girl. What a cluster that whole scene in the parking lot was.”

  “Yeah…” I groaned, shifting position slightly. “What happened to General Som?”

  “Found her right outside the door, but she’s fine. Apparently, she’d known about the general throw down, not the impromptu firing squad. She’s pretty shook up, though she’s trying not to show it. Four fatalities, multiple gunshot wounds, should have been five.” Her gaze slid to mine. “Or six, really. You lost a shit ton of blood and cracked your head when you fell. Two broken bones in your legs, one in your shoulder.”

  “My legs.” I frowned down at the end of the bed, where I was happy to see my feet. “They’re broken?”

  “They were. That’s why—” Nikki blew out a breath. “You broke out of traction the first night, snapped pins. By the time they got to you, you’d passed out again, but the X-rays showed healed bone. The muscle and skin were still torn all to hell, but the bones were solid. And your pain was off the charts, so they pumped you full of morphine.”

  I stared at her, too shocked to speak for a moment. How had all that happened without me realizing it? And why was I still alive? I swallowed, then managed another question. “How could they tell I was in pain if I was out of it?”

  “Heart rate. Seizures. Brain waves. You name it, you were radiating agony. Apparently, it hurt the hospital staff to stand too close to you. Which, again, kind of negated the whole likelihood that Armaeus was on the job.”

  “Death have anything to say about that?”

  “Honestly? She seemed happy he wasn’t here. But then she’s kind of a twisted sister, you ask me. She said she’ll be ready for your next tat when you are. Then she left, leaving a trail of staring docs and nurses behind her. Whatever she’s got, there’s no shortage of people who want it.”

  “They should be careful what they wish for.” I lifted my left arm experimentally. “What else did you say I broke?”

  “Nothing, anymore.”

  “Any…more.” My body might have recovered, but my brain was clearly still shredded. I couldn’t fathom healing so quickly without Armaeus’s help—but there was no way he’d been here. Surely he wouldn’t have left me in so much pain.

  Right?

  Then again…where was he? He’d never left me this broken for this long. Not once in all the time I’d worked for him. What had happened? What game was he playing?

  And, more importantly, when would it stop?

  “Yep,” Nikki continued, oblivious to my growing hysteria. “You’re pretty much un-Humpty-Dumptied. And your muscles are healing, obviously way ahead of
schedule, but you ripped out your feeding tube three different times, once despite the fact you were restrained. So they stopped pumping food into you.” She eyed me. “Hungry?”

  I hadn’t thought about it before she mentioned it, then my stomach growled, and I realized how…empty everything was. Hollowed out. “I must be freaking out the entire floor.”

  “We got you moved after the first day. That’s why I’m not thinking the Council is completely hands off here. The doc on staff here is Dr. Sells, but she’s acting like she’s never seen you before—and doing such a damned good job of it, I don’t know if she’s doing it on purpose or simply trying to screw with me.”

  “Got it. Well, if she’s here, then Armaeus knows my condition.” Betrayal swamped me, but I forced the next words out if only to convince myself. “Apparently I wasn’t that bad.”

  Nikki’s snort was cut short when the door opened. A familiar face stood at the door despite the late hour—Dr. Margaret Sells, probably the only Las Vegas physician who made house calls to the Arcana Council.

  Now she eyed me with patent shock. “You’re awake.”

  There were so many possible snide comebacks, I was rendered temporarily mute.

  Fortunately, Nikki suffered no such limitations. “You take a special class to figure that out, or does that kind of medical brilliance come naturally to you?”

  Dr. Sells sent her a withering glare. “Visiting hours are clearly posted, Miss Dawes.”

  “Yeah, fortunately your staff thought better of trying to manhandle me off the floor. Special wing, special rules, sweet cakes. No one was willing to ring you up to confirm.”

  “Why am I still hospitalized?” I asked bluntly as Sells’s gaze returned to me. “Did the Council drop me from their insurance plan?”

  She moved over to check the monitors, as obvious an evasion as humanly possible without her running out of the room. “I’ve been providing them with extensive updates.”