Getting Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  “A family of mystics, as it happens. Very old, very well respected. They had gone to ground around the turn of the last century, and there was some indication that perhaps they had resurfaced with the recent…global rekindling of interest in the magical arts. A member of their line had once upon a time been part of the council, and a very strong part at that.”

  “I take it you didn’t find this family?”

  He shook his head. “Regrettably, no. I no sooner landed in Budapest than I was met by a group of very earnest young soldiers who, apparently, Barnabas had directed toward me.”

  “They trapped you in the box?”

  “A charming thing, no?” He leaned back as if imagining it in his mind’s eye. “Diaboli Reliquiarum Thecam. The Devil’s Reliquary. The last time I saw it was in Consta— No!” He snapped his fingers. “It was Istanbul by then. Ah, how things change with the passage of time.” He regarded me with his heavy-lidded gaze. “A dear friend of mine, my mentor, if you will, had drawn the attention of some very unfortunate men, rigid adherents to a code of religious practice that we found tedious at best, despicable at worst. My friend, he had grown to become a person of prominence by this time, and to see him brought down by such unfortunate parasites was, as you might imagine, quite affecting.”

  I watched him, tracking the danger in his tone. Though his manner remained easy, the edge in his words was unmistakable. “And how long was he in there?”

  The Devil shrugged. “As far as I know, they cleaned his ashes out of that accursed box in order to put mine in. And to that we should drink!” These last words were shouted, and the beautiful attendant materialized in the doorway to the cabin, hastening to his side.

  “Do you have a preference, Monsieur Kreios?”

  “Scotch,” he said, glancing at me. “It’s what the lady likes.”

  I stiffened. I was a fan of scotch, yes, but there was no way that I had said as much to Kreios in the few words we had shared—and I certainly hadn’t been thinking it. And I could not imagine that my beverage preferences had come up in the conversation between Armaeus and Kreios on the phone. Nevertheless, as the attendant looked over to me for confirmation, I nodded. “Glenmorangie.”

  Kreios raised his brows. “You seem quite confident that it’s in stock.”

  “And you seemed quite confident of my drink of choice. Why is that?”

  “One of my many charms.” He spread his hands, anticipating the return of the attendant with the glass at his side. She smoothly handed him the drink, then presented me with a cut-crystal tumbler as well. When she’d withdrawn to whatever antechamber served as her holding cell, Kreios lifted his glass high. “To Marcus, long of life,” he said robustly, the lilt in his voice breaking through, betraying his Greek heritage. “That he did not die in vain.”

  “To Marcus.” I nodded. The scotch was as smooth as I had come to expect, but it burned a fiery trail down my throat. “That he had not died at all.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I would go that far,” Kreios said, angling his glass to me. “After all, without his death, there would have been no becoming for me. And then, my dear Sara Wilde, we would not have met. That would have been a pity.”

  I tried to hide my curiosity, but Kreios peered at me, his eyes missing nothing. “You have not worked with the council long, but there is no excuse for Armaeus not to have introduced us.”

  “I’m not in the city much.”

  “Of course you aren’t.” Kreios’s smile was far too knowing. “Still, something could have been arranged, before my unfortunate excursion, don’t you think? It is a curiosity that we have not met. And curiosities interest me.”

  I shifted uneasily in my seat. “I can’t see how it matters.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Kreios conceded. “One evening of carnal pleasure with Armaeus, no matter how intriguing, does not a relationship make.”

  I scowled at him, knowing he was baiting me but unable to resist the challenge. “As you say.”

  His smile broadened, and he leaned forward, his entire being focused on me. The effect was heady, dangerous. “Well then. Since the Magician does not now share your bed, perhaps you can tell me how I might be of service.”

  “And perhaps,” I said, leaning forward as well, my gaze lingering on his eyes, the curve of his jaw, his sensual lips, “you could tell me specifically why SANCTUS stuck you in that box. Or why Barnabus suddenly hates you so much that he wanted to turn your brain to rice pudding.”

  Kreios’s laugh was a thing of raw, primal beauty and did nothing to ease the tension in the cabin. He took another sip of scotch, regarding me more closely over the rim of the glass. “Old prejudices die hard, Sara Wilde,” he said as he gestured with his glass. “The men who captured me are not the exact caste as the priests who incarcerated Marcus, but their desires are the same, as are their needs.” He rolled the glass in his hand. “As it happens, needs and desires are my stock-in-trade.”

  “What, the damning of souls lost its shine for you?”

  His smile was wicked. “Do you have a soul you’d like to be damned?” His gaze rested on my mouth again, stoking an alarming response until he settled back in his chair again. “I assure you, my role on this earth is nothing so tedious. How much do you—ah!” His beautifully arched brows lifted high, as if he’d had a flash of inspiration. “Has Armaeus told you so little, then?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Do you do that all the time, answering your own questions?”

  “Forgive me.” He inclined his head. “You will find that as cloaked as our dear Armaeus can be, I am his opposite. In this as in so many things. He uses deception and illusion to gain his ends. I find that the truth can be far quicker—and, when skillfully applied, far more devastating.” He set his glass beside him, then clasped his hands together. “But I was telling you of my unfortunate altercation with SANCTUS.” He said the name with a delicate twist of his lips, making it sound like an epithet. “What do you know of them?”

  He had the grace to allow me to actually answer this time. “Evil minions of some cardinal, dedicated to destroying all the Connected in the world, starting with their icons, statuary, and twenty-sided dice.”

  Kreios nodded. “The role of the Arcanan Council since time was born has been to maintain the balance of all magic. ‘All magic,’ of course, presupposes that there will be dark to counter the light. Dark, as it happens, is my specialty.” He patted his own lapel, the soul of modesty.

  “The rest of it—the worship of an anti-God, fire and brimstone, eternal torment—that is not a construct of mine, nor of any of my predecessors, but the Catholic church does not see things in quite the same light, nor have they for centuries.” He shrugged. “I cannot blame them. Their zealotry has served them well. But—I, and Marcus before me, and all who came before him—we mean to enjoy this world, not bathe it in screams of terror.” He lifted his brows. “Which is not to say the occasional scream isn’t quite satisfying, in the right context.”

  He grinned as I rolled my eyes. “But the ruination of the teeming masses is not, nor has it ever been, our purpose. It would be quite tedious, in fact, when there are so many pleasures to be had.”

  “Uh-huh. So if you’re not truly the enemy of the Church, then why—”

  “Well.” Kreios spread his hands once more. “I never quite said I wasn’t an enemy of the Church. That would be a lie, and as I have told you—”

  “Right. Champion of truth, defender of honesty, got that.”

  He nodded. “Whatever you would know, I can tell you. Especially, as I have mentioned, your deepest needs, Sara Wilde. Your darkest desires.”

  I considered that. My darkest desires had taken a turn of late. I wasn’t too comfortable with that going out on the psychic network. “My worst fears too, I suppose?”

  “Never that.” He shook his head, shrugging off my surprise. “That, I must be told. You would be amazed, however, at the number of people who cannot help but share their worst nightmares aloud, as
if begging for them to be unleashed in their midst. But do not evade the question.” He steepled graceful fingers beneath his chin. “What truths would you know, Sara Wilde?”

  “Are the young women from Kavala in Las Vegas? Are they alive?”

  “Too easy,” Kreios said. “But yes, and yes. Armaeus has told you this already. He would not lure you to a city you despise only to show you corpses. And why do you despise Las Vegas, Sara?”

  So not going there. I refocused him on the more important question. “Where are they?”

  “The young women? You cannot help them until we land.” He tilted his head, his green eyes searching mine. “But there are other questions you should be asking, and well you know it.”

  I felt the challenge in his words and knew the opportunity he presented. The opportunity, and also its unstated truth. What else has Armaeus been keeping from me? “Who else is on the council that I don’t know about?” I asked. “Are there actually the full twenty-one Major Arcana represented?”

  “Too safe.” Kreios dismissed the question, his lush lips turning down in a pout. “And our current number is far less than twenty-one, I assure you. The Fool and High Priestess are in the city now. I suspect you have met them. They are well in the public eye. The Empress and Emperor are present as well, but remain uncommitted to the war that Armaeus would wage. The rest—scattered. Some of the positions remain unfilled. And the houses are all in ruins.”

  I lifted my brows. “Houses? This is different from the families?”

  “Of course. The minor houses that have always served the council.” He waved casually. “Swords, coins, wands, cups. They have not been mobilized since the reign of Charlemagne, though. No need, really. The world’s use of magic has risen and fallen as one with the tides of money and power.” He shrugged. “It might do so again, without our intercession, despite the current threat.”

  I put aside the mind boggle of yet more minions of the council I knew nothing about. These people hand their fingers in way too many pies. “Is SANCTUS really all that powerful?”

  “A year ago, I would have said no. But we have gotten lax, it would appear. We have seen, too long, solely what we want to see. It is why there are so few of us to hold the line as it is. Or to dance over it, from time to time.” His gaze flickered back to my face. “And speaking of the dance, that’s not all you want to know, is it?” he prompted. “I can see it in your face, hear it in your blood.”

  I grimaced. “My blood?”

  “It sings to me,” he said, leaning close. “And it tells me you have much to learn, that you are on the precipice of knowledge, on the very verge of slipping over, never to return.” His smile deepened, drawing me into his spell with his eyes, his voice, his words. “So tell me, Sara Wilde. What truths do you truly yearn to know?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kreios’s chuckle brought me back to my senses, and I stiffened. How long had I been sitting there, staring at him? Enthralled like a rabbit by the wolf. “Quit that,” I muttered, wishing there was more scotch in my glass. I felt like I could down the whole bottle.

  What did I truly yearn to know, he’d asked, and too many options lodged themselves in my brain. Why is this happening, why now, why to me? And will it all end so horribly as it had before, with everyone I knew just…gone?

  Unaccountably, my heart turned over,, thumping painfully as my life stretched out before me. My ragtag childhood, my mother’s boozy laughter—her love too impossible to predict, too ephemeral to grasp. The emerging of my own abilities out of nowhere, and Mom’s delight in showing me off to her friends, her neighbors and, finally, to the impossibly perfect cop who’d looked down at me without flinching and asked if I could help find a missing kid.

  Don’t go there. Don’t ever go there. He’s dead to you.

  But he wasn’t dead, not really. I felt his sharp presence every time I touched down in Las Vegas. He’d transferred there. Of course he’d transferred there, the one city I needed him not to be. He’d risen to the rank of detective now, and if he ever saw me… If he ever realized that I was alive, and that his frenzied search to find me after that horrifying day in Memphis had all been for naught, that the moment he’d given up on me and acknowledged I was dead, I’d been five states away singing show tunes at an RV campsite… I couldn’t imagine how much he’d hate me then. But I’d had to do it. I’d had to. No one else could die because of me.

  They’re all dead to you.

  “You should never resist your desires, Sara,” Kreios purred, and in my hand, my glass was suddenly more than half-filled with the glittering dark liquid.

  I swirled it, the aroma of the aged spirits rising around me. “And this is real,” I said flatly, forcing my memories down to focus on the Devil and his tricks. “I could drink this, and it would affect me as much as any drink would. The flames burning those men—those were real too.”

  He shrugged. “Did they seem real to you? Does the scotch taste real?”

  I tilted the glass and took a sip, savoring the familiar burn once more. “Yes. But that’s not what I asked.”

  “What is reality?” Kreios stood and stretched luxuriously, sweeping his hand around the space. I was drawn by the movement of his hand, watching it like it was the pendulum at the end of a hypnotist’s chain. “Is this airplane that Armaeus so generously provided us real?” he asked, strolling a few steps toward the bar before turning to me. “Is the air we breathe and the skin we inhabit real? Am I real?”

  “Any of me?” A second voice sounded, and my gaze jerked back to Kreios’s chair. Sitting there was a second Kreios, his smile wry as he took in my startled glance. “Armaeus really has fallen short on your training, it appears. I could assist you with that.”

  “It’s all illusion,” I said, swiveling my gaze from one of him to the other. “Which one is—”

  “Which one would you like to be real?”

  I nearly dropped my drink as the words fanned across my ear, lips grazing along my neck. A third Kreios had taken up residence in the chair beside me. He leaned into my space as I sat rigidly, his laughter setting whorls of sensation skittering down my skin. “The entire point of an illusion is for you to see what you most want to see, what your mind can allow you to see. And taste.” Kreios part three reached over and slipped the glass of scotch out of my fingers, taking a slow drink before letting his fingers go lax, the glass and scotch dropping out of his hand. Reflexively, I grabbed for it, even as it winked out of existence, and he caught up my hand in his strong, warm grasp, pulling it to his mouth. “And touch,” he murmured.

  I stared at him as he pressed his lips against my fingertips, the responding reaction deep in the center of my being swift and absolute. The ache of my own memories flipped to a desperate heat that pooled within me, flooding me with need. “This is an illusion,” I tried again, though my words sounded shaky to my own ears.

  “If you wish it to be,” he said, and his grip on my hand firmed. With a ruthless yank, he pulled me over the short distance between our chairs, then turned and thrust me from him, half hurling me backward across the room. I hit the carpeted floor with a cry, my head cracking the surface hard enough that I saw stars. I heard the attendant’s concerned voice, and then the sound of a slamming door as my vision swam back into focus. The ceiling. I was staring at a ceiling. I caught my breath, scrambling backward across the floor, needing to move—

  A weight several times more than that of a normal man suddenly fell on me, and I gasped in sharp, bewildered pain as my eyes blinked open, my lungs crushed for another second as my body was spread-eagled flat onto the floor. Kreios hovered above me, his legs locked on mine, his hands pinning my wrists to the floor as he grinned down at me. “I thought this would make you more comfortable.”

  “Get off me!” I squirmed and immediately realized the problem with that idea, as the position of our bodies left no doubt as to the level of Kreios’s interest in our game, illusion or no.

  He laughed at my newfound awar
eness of him, then slowly, deliberately, ground into me, forcing my body to react in a way that could only be described as a betrayal. “You fight so hard,” he mused, his gaze dropping to my heaving torso, rigid against his assault. “This Tyet you wear, what is it you think it can do for you? Simply forestall the inevitable?”

  “You are an illusion,” I gritted out, my words ending on a moan as Kreios edged forward again, dropping over me to take my mouth in a hard, searching kiss. His tongue thrust between my lips, tasting, demanding—and my body felt like it was going to go up in fire, the heat so intense in my core that I desperately feared he’d cast off my clothes as easily as Armaeus had done, and then we would be positioned body against body, need against need, with nothing between us except my own fraying control.

  “I think you like this illusion,” Kreios said, his words tight and almost angry as he shifted his mouth up next to my ear. “I think you have yourself and your abilities, so locked up inside a cell of your own making that you are afraid to truly feel, Sara Wilde. Afraid to truly own the gifts you were brought into this world to share. And more,” he said, drawing his tongue along my chin as I twisted my head and stretched back from him, trying—impossibly—to escape. He found my lips again anyway, branding them with another kiss. When he finally lifted his head, his words sent an entirely different wave of panic across me. “I think you like the way I make you feel, trapped in my—”

  “No!” Summoning strength from the depths of my being, I cracked my head up against Kreios’s forehead, the shock of the movement forcing him to loosen his iron grasp on my hands. Forming my fingers into a bent battering ram, I punched out toward his throat, catching him enough as he fell back to earn me a snarl. I used the additional space between us to curl my legs up tightly into my body, kicking out at his midsection to propel myself away.