Aces Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 5

by Jenn Stark

  He turned the etched brass doorknob and slowly opened the door.

  “Nigel!” A woman’s voice I didn’t recognize rang out from the room. I tensed along with Nikki, but the speaker sounded friendly enough. “It’s about time you showed up. We’ve got six contracts to go over.”

  “It soon might be seven.” Nigel put his hands behind his back, the epitome of British civility. “I would like to introduce the new head of the House of Swords.” He turned to me, and I glanced at Nikki, rolling my eyes.

  “Shoulders straight, dollface,” she whispered. “Own it.”

  I barely contained the snort as I moved into the room, Nikki right on my heels and stepping to the side. I could tell she’d kept her gun at the ready from the sudden tension of the other people in the room, but they betrayed no other reaction.

  There were three of them, only one I knew by face, a Nigerian with coal-black eyes and a ready smile. He turned that smile on me now, hooking his thumbs in his belt. “Sara Wilde! I’d heard the rumors, but I did not want to believe them to be true. I have seen the way you fight.” He shook his head. “You’d better have a lot of money. We Aces do not come cheap.”

  “I’m surprised you can get a job fighting anything but a bad cold, Mobo,” I said, settling on the balls of my feet. The assassin was legendary in the arcane black market for using any tool or implement at hand as a deadly weapon. I’d once seen him take out an opponent with a handful of chess pieces, and I made it a policy not to get within four feet of him. Or to offer up a game of lawn darts.

  His gaze dropped to the sword. “And the Honjo Masamune,” he said, his laughing voice taking on a different note. “You wear it well.”

  “YouTube videos,” I said. “Came with a makeup tutorial too.”

  The woman to Mobo’s right cracked a smile, but her face otherwise was hard as granite. She was older than I would have expected for an Ace, maybe fifty if the gray of her hair was any indication, and her icy-blue eyes and sharp cheekbones screamed a Norwegian heritage.

  “Alaina Dodd,” she said, her European accent impossible for me to place more closely. “Why did Soo choose you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and my words had the ring of honesty to them. “She could have done far better.”

  “She could have done far worse.” The fourth Ace nodded as I shifted my gaze to him. He was smaller than Nigel, wiry, also older. His accent was French, which might have explained our location, and his eyes were hooded beneath his wrinkled brow and close-shaven hair. “I’m Luc Banon. The House of Swords is the most progressive, the most visible of the four Houses. Soo chose not merely a warrior but a Connected. Not the most skilled perhaps. Then again, perhaps you are. Rumors are running rampant in all the Houses about the change of succession. Rumors and fear as well. It is a dangerous combination.”

  “Thanks, I think.” I inclined my head.

  Luc’s attention shifted to Nigel. “Why have you brought her here?”

  “As Mobo believes, I suspect we’ll have the opportunity for employment, and there is no secrecy about the identity of this House’s leader.” He nodded to Alaina. “Far better for you who work exclusively with Cups and Wands to be able to tell your employer that you’ve met the woman.”

  “Generous of you,” Alaina said, her suspicion clear.

  “I’ve worked with Sara well before the incidents that led her to this impasse.” Nigel flicked a rueful smirk my way. “I owe her, and she has questions about the Houses. Some of which can be answered, some of which can’t. It’s up to you what to say to her.”

  I blinked, forcing myself not to stare at Nigel. Here were three people who knew more about the mythical structure of the Houses than anyone in the world, assembled in Mercault’s living room. And I was being granted an interview?

  More to the point…since when did Nigel owe me? I’d missed that, and it wasn’t the kind of detail I would ordinarily forget.

  “So we answer her questions, in return for what?” Alaina’s question was sharp. “Information is power. There’s no point in giving it up easily.”

  “I don’t want to know about your Houses,” I lied. Still, we could come around to that. “How exactly do I contact you, normally? Do I throw a pigeon out a window?”

  “You’ve got Nigel,” Mobo said gravely. “It is rare that more than one Ace is required for protection.”

  “Let’s say I’m up against a full house, and I need four of a kind,” I said. “Can I do it?”

  “For enough money, you can do anything,” the Frenchman said.

  “Not if I can’t find you.”

  His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “We are very friendly, eh? You can find me through Nigel. You can find all of us through Nigel. And if Nigel, he is dead, then it is likely we will not want this job for which you are seeking to hire us.”

  “No one has hired all four Aces before.” Mobo’s deep voice flowed over the room, and the look in his eye was speculative. “Connecteds prefer to use their abilities over their muscle to solve their quarrels.”

  I shrugged. “Some quarrels take both. And you’re not beholden to your Houses, right? You’re true wild cards, and can flip to another House if the need requires?”

  “If the need requires,” Alaina said stiffly. “And if there was no damage to our own Houses.”

  “How would I know if my job wouldn’t cause that kind of damage?”

  Her smile was arctic. “You tell us the job. If we do not respond, it’s one of the potential reasons.”

  I blew out a breath. This was the shiftiest group I’d run up against, and the arcane black market wasn’t known for its high trust quotient.

  “I have a question.” Mobo leaned in, putting his hands on the chair he stood behind. “If you want to be forthcoming here, among friends.” He stared at me. “What is your connection to the Arcana Council?”

  Mobo’s question held an unusual weight, but it was easy enough to answer. “I work for them on occasion, much like you do your Houses,” I said, keeping my manner light. “As their needs require.”

  “You aren’t their only finder.”

  “Of course I’m not.” Even as I said the words, I wondered at them. I hadn’t ever thought about the Council employing other Connecteds, not recently anyway. But who’s to say that they didn’t have a whole stable of finders in their contacts list? “You looking for a job?”

  “A House leader so closely allied to the Council, that is a curious thing,” Mobo said, and I saw where he was going with that. “It might not be so well accepted among the other leaders.”

  I shrugged. “My understanding is, all the Houses used to be allied with the Council. One big happy deck and all. They aren’t now, but it doesn’t mean they couldn’t be.”

  “That is what you’re going to try to do?” Alaina asked.

  “I’ve had this job for about fifteen seconds.” I lifted my right hand, my left still firmly on my sword as it rested at my hip. “But each House is free to choose where to throw its support, as I understand. Working with the Council is simply one of those options.”

  “So is working against it.” Mobo again, and his words sent a frisson of concern through me. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Houses allied against the Council. The whole, the half, or even individual members. I could see Viktor Dal dangling the bait to draw a House into conflict with Armaeus. Then again, the Emperor professed to have no knowledge of the Houses. Who was to be believed?

  Still, I played it cool. “Where would the money be in that?”

  Mobo’s broad smile told me I’d hit the nail correctly.

  “If it’s cash you want, I can get you that,” I said. “The Council has enough to spare.”

  “Mobo,” Alaina said warningly, clearly anticipating a tirade, but Mobo ignored her.

  “Ah, the Council,” he said, still smiling…though his expression had turned harder. “Smug in their magic towers. There are those whose memories are long who would sooner rot than see themselves once more at
the beck and call of such overlords.”

  Overlords? “Well, they can be a touch overbearing but…they have their moments,” I said cautiously.

  He fixed his gaze on me. “Some who would see you dead before you turned the Houses into the Council’s private serving garrison again. That won’t be tolerated, no matter who stands for you.”

  His anger was real and near the surface, and I wondered at it. “What did the Council do to your House, Mobo?” I asked.

  If the question took him off guard, he didn’t betray it, but his words were sharp. “They destroyed it long ago. The House of Wands was once the strongest of all the Houses, a far-flung family of businessmen and builders. Some of the most beautiful architecture in the world could be traced to their work and the work of their acolytes. Then they got too strong, and their power was snuffed out like a candle. The House itself was not destroyed, no. The Council is too careful for that. But the Wands’ leaders were exposed and executed, its adherents chased underground. They stayed underground too.”

  Alaina sighed, her lips pursing. “The House of Cups experienced a similar fate when they got too strong.”

  Mobo’s damning gaze burned through me. “Now it is the House of Swords that is showing its ambition. Built on the backs of the samurai tradition, but so much further flung than that, as you will see. As you’ve already seen. I would caution you to be wary. It is a dangerous thing for a House to get in bed with the Council.”

  I considered the Aces’ words. All of them had concerns about the Council, none more eloquently stated than Mobo’s. I was standing before a group of mortals who had information that the Council could not get at—resources and knowledge that could help protect the Connecteds I longed to keep safe. Resources and knowledge that could help me keep the House of Swords safe too. The Council would want to know more about the Houses, but what had it done to help those mortals in the past?

  Nothing.

  These were people who helped themselves. And who were beholden to no one.

  These were future allies in the war on magic.

  I didn’t have time to consider the matter further. Because as Mobo drew breath to unleash another screed against the Council, the enormous windows of Mercault’s beautiful French château…

  Exploded.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Deploy!” The command from Nigel was so incongruous that I jolted away from him even as the wreckage blew inward, throwing us all deeper into the room. Alaina now held her face together with one of her hands, blood spurting between her fingers as she staggered back from the wall. Around us, a half-dozen men in Kevlar suits poured in from inside the house, assault rifles at the ready.

  They secured their position not a moment too soon.

  A flare of gunfire burst through the now open walls of the château, and Nigel’s men returned fire on a ring of assailants that came pounding out of the forest, shooting a combination of flamethrowers and machine gun blasts. We fled into the interior hallway, Nigel barking orders. Apparently, site security was his detail, and his face was mottled in fury.

  “Go! Separate jeeps in the back, standing guard.” He swept our group and cursed. “Luc!” he growled before heading back into what was left of the study.

  Mobo stumbled into the hall. His arm swiped out to hold on to something, and found Nikki, who grunted beneath his weight as he pulled himself up…

  Then he reached past her and assassinated Alaina.

  Mobo’s gun was steady and his aim sure as he shot the Nordic operative in the head, finishing what the blast had started. Then he pulled back his gun and held it to Nikki’s temple, swinging her toward me.

  “The three of us,” he said tightly. “We are going to run out of here as if we’re the best of friends. Luc is dead, but it’ll take enough time for Nigel to work through that, and by then we’ll be gone. Go.”

  Nikki bristled. “What the hell do you think—”

  Mobo shot the gun immediately in front of Nikki’s face, her scream unfeigned as residue blasted against her skin.

  “I said go!” he snarled. I turned and fled down the corridor, my heart in my throat.

  I was used to putting myself in danger; I sucked at putting my friends there. And my brain could not comprehend what the hell had just happened. Nigel had secured the château before we’d arrived—of course he had. His men were embedded both inside and out. They might not have been watching the forest, but the initial blast—the initial blast hadn’t come from the forest. It’d come from inside, inside the very walls, it’d seemed.

  Had Mobo arrived with the others, then planted the explosives to go off once everyone was in position? But if so, why?

  I didn’t have time to figure it out as we pounded down the corridor to a teed-off hallway that led into an enormous kitchen, then out the back of the château. Mobo loped along behind me, dragging a nearly blind Nikki with him. She managed as best she could, but her choking gasps were all that was needed to encourage me to run and run hard.

  It took me a few seconds too long to realize the foolishness of that move. We clattered across the kitchen as the gunfire grew more boisterous outside, but I still timed my own steps with those of Mobo and Nikki, and realized they both were decidedly slowing. Mobo wasn’t growling threats at Nikki, she wasn’t gasping anymore, and I turned mid-stride to see him throw her against the island hard enough to crack a rib, his gun coming up to aim point-blank at her face.

  I didn’t have time to think. I definitely didn’t have time to get my gun out for sure. Nudging the sword forward to loosen it in its scabbard, I turned fully around as I slid the Honjo Masamune out of its scabbard and flung the sword at Mobo. There was no precision in my throw, and there was definitely no style. The thing arced out over the kitchen as I screamed in fury and desperation, anything to distract Mobo and throw off his aim.

  The sword slashed through the air and clattered harmlessly across the kitchen counter and against the far wall, but still close enough to Mobo that he jumped back. With an unearthly growl, Nikki piled into him, her head down and her shoulders hunched as if she were a bull intent on charging a toreador. She caught Mobo in the chest and lifted him off the ground, shoving him forward as I ran up. I pulled out my gun and shot him in the shoulder, unsure of whether to kill him or pump him for information.

  I turned to Nikki, and that was my second mistake since everything had started exploding. Her face was a mass of blood, from where I didn’t know, and my heart surged too hard in my chest as I gasped her name, even as she wheeled away, one hand roughly clearing her eyes. I strayed too close to Mobo, and he lashed out with one leg, tripping me hard onto the stone-tiled floor, I held on to my gun even as I bounced, but he’d scrambled upright, ignoring the shot to his shoulder that really wasn’t pouring out anywhere near enough blood.

  Of course he’d been wearing a vest.

  I squeezed off two more shots, enough to send the Nigerian skittering back behind the island, and Nikki dropped to her hands and knees, uncharacteristically silent. Whether she was dead or injured or playing possum I didn’t know, but Mobo’s rich laugh reverberated off the acres of granite and stainless steel, distracting me.

  “You shouldn’t bring a sword to a gunfight,” he chortled.

  I winced, popping up over the countertop to confirm that the Honjo Masamune remained where I’d flung it, propped against the far wall of the kitchen. Too distant to reach, and my Jedi Force skills were sadly lacking at the moment. I didn’t think it would spontaneously leap into my hand just because I willed it so.

  That left the gun, but that was okay. I liked guns.

  Mobo was on the move, evidently deciding that Nikki was down for the count. He headed toward the back of the kitchen, as if daring me to follow him.

  “You would never have survived this visit,” he gloated. “That Nigel didn’t know it paints him as the fool. Alaina’s Cups would not have let you live, not with your connection to the Council. The Pents are also no fools. They remain close e
nough to keep tabs, but lifetimes apart in position on mortal and immortal magic. They will never be servants to a greater power again.”

  “You think so highly of Alaina, why’d you kill her? Doesn’t that go against some kind of code?” I inched along the counter as well, but Mobo seemed content to toy with me. I could hear him throwing down one pistol, doubtless pulling others free. And here I was with a gun and a sword I couldn’t reach. Stupid.

  “Because Aces really are wild cards,” Mobo said. “And I’ve been dealt into an entirely different game. You think the Houses are no match for the Council, and you may be right. But there’s a new player on the board now, and she will take no prisoners.”

  I grimaced. He could only mean Gamon. I crawled across an open space, and a bullet pinged at my left ankle, making me lurch to the side. Mobo’s laughter rolled across the kitchen again. “She wants you alive, if I can manage it. The money’s triple for that. But don’t think it’s for your conversation. She plans to harvest every last piece of you to build her army even stronger. And then, when she takes the Council apart, she will use their own precious pet against them.”

  My eyes flared wide. Mobo was right about one thing—I did have abilities. Abilities I might not know how to use, but they were there…dormant.

  Dormant but within reach?

  I focused on Soo’s pendants against my collarbones, but had no idea how to direct them. And I couldn’t go all fugue state and simply give myself over to the rage growing within me. Not with Nikki so close.

  Nikki. I reached the edge of the counter where she lay sprawled, my heart pounding as I sought out her gaze. She stared at me out of a face coated with blood and smoke, but when our eyes met, she winked.

  Her right hand appeared useless for the moment, her shoulder severely dislocated, but her left hand still clutched her Beretta. I hadn’t even known she’d been carrying a second gun.

  Relief surged through me, but I kept going, picking up my pace. “You ever wonder how much the Council would pay you not to slice and dice me?” I asked, playing to Mobo’s avarice. “I can guarantee you it’s more than Gamon would pay.”