Running Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Other Books by Jenn Stark

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Wilde Fire

  A Note From Jenn

  Justice

  The Fool

  The Five of Pentacles

  Acknowledgments

  About Jenn Stark

  RUNNING WILDE

  Immortal Vegas, Book 9

  JENN STARK

  Copyright © 2017 by Jenn Stark

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-943768-34-9

  Cover design and Photography Gene Mollica

  Formatting by Spark Creative Partners

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase/Download only authorized editions.

  Other Books by Jenn Stark

  Getting Wilde

  Wilde Card

  Born To Be Wilde

  Wicked And Wilde

  Aces Wilde

  Forever Wilde

  Wilde Child

  Call of the Wilde

  One Wilde Night (prequel novella)

  For Dana,

  who knows the power of true love

  CHAPTER ONE

  Every bar I’d ever been to, no matter how classy…stank. Of booze, of sweat, of desperate, frantic energy. Not many of them reeked of this much blood as well.

  Travel. It always broadened the mind.

  I stepped inside Rift’s main doors. My eyes adjusted to the strobing lights of the dance floor, then immediately cut away to probe the darker corners. Where I needed to go wasn’t the main stage, but one of the legendary back rooms of Cape Town, South Africa’s most notorious psych-pop dance clubs. To find that, I needed to head up.

  Fortunately, this place had plenty of options for up. Nearly a dozen staircases wound skyward, surely violating every fire code in Christendom, though nobody seemed to much care in this privately held bar hovering over the edge of the South Atlantic. Apparently oblivious to the bloodletting occurring elsewhere on the premises, the entire place was pulsing with a bass line strong enough to bounce it into the ocean.

  As I fixed my attention on faces, I could see it wasn’t only music transporting everyone around me. From the dilated pupils and juddering gasps that passed for breathing among the most impaired, they were definitely high on…

  I grimaced, still not able to say the phrase, even in my head. Whatever stoned asshat had named the newest cocktail of technoceuticals currently racing through the Connected community “Life,” he definitely had a sense of humor, but what was in that new synthetic blend quickly killed the joke. The drug promised all the usual benefits of the black market products snaking though the psychic underbelly of humanity—augmented psychic abilities, unlimited energy, and rapid recovery: all of the high, none of the crash. That was more than enough to hook the club kids. But Life went further, pulling in the older crowd as well, because it promised an extended lifespan of several weeks with each hit. That two-for-one punch had its buy rate going through the stratosphere.

  Most of the life-extension bit was probably marketing spin. By the time hardened users got to the end of their natural lives, their brains would be so fried by the drugs, booze, and stress of altered psychic energy, they wouldn’t have any idea how many extra months they’d earned through the ingestion of this latest technoceutical craze. But it was a highly profitable marketing spin. Since I’d ditched my über-visible gig as the head of a crime syndicate to go on the run two months ago, Life had popped up at every Connected black market hotspot I’d visited.

  Which was a lot of them. That was the problem with multiple international agencies trying to track you down by plastering your face all over the world’s top ten Most Wanted lists, it really cut down on your mainstream coffee shop options.

  I blew out a breath, surveying the floor. Granted, Interpol’s interest in me hadn’t cramped my style all that much. I’d had a relatively easy time moving through Europe, lower Asia, and Africa these past few months. I’d even managed a chartered flight over to South America for a brief tour of my contacts there. None of that would’ve been possible if the net Interpol had cast around me had been aggressively tightened.

  Then again, there was a whole world of criminals out there, most of them responsible for actually killing people. I was the only one being accused of “international terrorism and psychic manipulation”—so perhaps the powers that be considered me more of a curiosity than a real threat. Their loss.

  Time would tell how much terror and psychic manipulation I’d be doling out here at Rift today.

  Turning, I shoved my way up my targeted staircase, emerging onto a slightly less crowded platform that had the added benefit of a large bar tucked against the far wall. The bartender was serving orders with the speed of a pro, but it was the door behind him that held the real interest for me. That was where I needed to go for the highly unusual job interview I’d caught wind of three days earlier, tendered by a nut job I remembered from the bad old days. The very bad old days.

  Pushing forward to the bar, I kept my attention on that door. No one had come in or out since I’d ascended the stairs, but an iron-jawed guard stood right next to it, seeming to indicate a need for a traffic guard.

  I wasn’t looking for work, of course. I was looking for information. And the particular job applicants being sought by Rift’s current owner were just specific enough to trip my crazy wire. So I’d come, more or less incognito. No hoodie this time, just a leather jacket over a bloodred minidress, black knee-high boots adding a little height to my midsize frame, and my dark hair down around my shoulders. I looked like I was trying, but not too hard.

  A woman slid off her stool at the bar as I approached, leaning over to give the man beside her a long, lingering kiss. She edged farther into his arms, apparently needing to get in some additional canoodling time, and I obligingly pressed through the last of the patrons to take her seat at the counter.

  “Drink?” The bartender moved over to me immediately, ignoring the shouts of everyone around him. I studied the man. His accent was South African, his blond, chiseled features caught in a quasi-mid-transition between frat boy and full-fle
dged thug. His eyes were deep set and dark, however, and behind them sparked an undeniable surge of Connected ability. I was getting better at recognizing it all the time.

  “Scotch,” I said, nodding at the back of the bar. “Glenmorangie. That one.” I was surprised to see the bottle of what looked to be eighteen-year-old scotch on the shelf, but anything beat the tainted cocktails they were serving the locals. There was definitely blood in the mixed drinks, and I didn’t need my third eye to determine it was Connected blood.

  The bartender nodded. He turned back for the bottle as the woman to my right finally broke free of her partner and slid into the thrumming crowd. The patron she’d left behind hunched forward, elbows on the counter, fiddling with something in his hands almost immediately, but I was distracted by the door opening behind the bar. A man stepped out and spoke to the bouncer, who leveled his stare at a thin, bitter-looking redhead leaning against one of the high tables across the platform. Bouncer nodded at her, then the ginger was on the move, her stride confident, her chin up.

  Job applicant, I thought, picking up my glass as I watched her step behind and through the door. But how did you get through the door?

  And, perhaps more importantly, what had they done with the applicant who’d been right before her? There didn’t seem to be any other doors along the wall. Back entrance? Hole in the floor?

  “You like cards?”

  The question was so unexpected, I cut my glance to the guy beside me, the jolt of power rooting me to my barstool. The guy practically oozed Connected ability, but he wasn’t looking at me, exactly. He was staring at his hands, which held a deck—but not Tarot, which I immediately would have suspected. Instead, it was a standard Hoyle deck, and the man was shuffling through it with the ease of a blackjack dealer.

  My own Tarot deck burned in the pocket of my leather jacket, waiting for the reading I’d been holding off until the last minute to make. Now I fished for the cards, bringing the deck out and showing it to the psychic. His face lit with a weird intensity as I set the deck on the counter.

  “I like cards,” I said noncommittally. “What’s your game?”

  “Same as yours.”

  I smirked. “Yeah? Then what’s with the training wheel deck?” I gestured my drink toward the Hoyle stack, but the man didn’t seem to take offense. Instead, he chuckled, the sound dry and amused, and he spread the cards in an expert fan on the counter. No one paid any attention to us—were actively ignoring us, in fact—and I felt a familiar coil of tension tighten inside me.

  He pointed to my deck. “Joint draw,” he said. “We match all three cards, you buy me a drink.”

  My brows went up. “You only have the minors.” The traditional playing deck mimicked the original Minor Arcana deck, four suits, Aces to Kings. But a Tarot deck also had twenty-two Major Arcana cards, and I tended to pull those as often as not.

  The man grinned, not looking at me, showing a row of straight, white teeth. Too straight, too white. Dentures or implants. At some point, he’d had his own either knocked out or forcibly removed, I felt certain. And for some reason, that bothered me too.

  Still, now he was waiting. I felt another set of eyes and knew without glancing up that the bartender was watching me, maybe the door guard too. Was this some sort of test that would determine whether or not I’d gain access to the back room?

  I shrugged and set down my glass. I fanned out my own cards, then watched as the guy drew cards in quick succession, his fingers playing over the base of the cards as he nodded with satisfaction. Ten of Spades, Five of Hearts, Five of Clubs.

  “Oh look,” he murmured. “I drew a pair.”

  My entire body stilled. While not the worst poker draw, though certainly nothing great, in the world of Tarot, his draw was one craptastic reading. Spades matched up with Swords, and the Ten of Swords meant betrayal. Hearts lined up with Cups, and the Five of Cups meant all sorts of personal loss and regret. And while clubs were Wands, and the Five of Wands was not an inherently difficult card, it did indicate an altercation was in the offing.

  “I’m not here for a fight,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “You’re not here for anything, if you don’t pick your cards. The interviewees have skills, and yours are wrapped up in that deck. If you draw a hand that beats mine without pulling a Major Arcana card, you go in. If you don’t, then you’re out.” He leaned back and considered me with a hooded gaze. “But I think you’re going to want to go in. I think you may be just what’s needed.”

  “You know me?”

  “I know what you are, what you can be.”

  I shot him a glance, catching his eyes for the first time. And blinked. The man was blind. A quick glance to his cards identified what I’d missed the first time…the series of small raised dots on the bottom of the cards. But then, how did he know that my deck had been a Tarot deck, and how did he know who I was?

  As if he could read my mind, the man chuckled. I thought again about his teeth. No teeth, no working eyes. The nape of my neck prickled. “What’s this about?”

  “I’ve worked for Cyrus a long time. He pays me well to separate the wheat from the chaff. You, my dear, are most definitely wheat.”

  “And that girl who was here before me?”

  “Chaff. But remarkably pretty chaff, and I needed her strength to deal with you. She gave it willingly. She’ll be compensated.”

  “Oh…kay.” What was this guy? Now that I was focusing on him, I could sense the jittering edge of technoceuticals coursing through his system, and his body mods went well beyond juicing up. The scent of blood I’d smelled on entering the building wafted through the room again. I thought about the name of the bar, Rift. A little subtler than Hellmouth, I supposed, but not by much. “And I’m supposed to draw cards to beat yours.”

  “Only if you want to know what’s on the other side of that door.” He inhaled through his nose, like a dog scenting the air. “Which you…clearly do,” he said thickly. “Now. Three cards, facedown.”

  Under the man’s blind gaze, I reached out and drew three cards in quick succession, laying them out on the counter.

  “Flip them over,” he instructed. “One at a time.”

  As I reached for the first card, the bar seemed to surge with energy, its buzzing excitement kicking up a notch. “Ten of Swords,” I said. I shot him another glance. “You’re manipulating this draw.”

  His response was a thin smile. “The second. Make sure you don’t cover the faces.”

  I felt the touch of unseen eyes, and thought: camera. Great. “Five of Cups.” I reached for the third as the man sidled closer to me. I could smell his sweet breath, and I thought—that breath wasn’t his. It belonged to the young woman whose face he’d been sucking earlier. What could that possibly mean?

  He didn’t give me too long to worry about it. “You fail, I’m going to take your eyes,” he whispered into my ears, his voice now ancient with menace. “That’s what they promise me, every time. A keepsake. A token. Some I can use for myself; some I grind down for the use of others. Yours, I will keep for myself. Your eyes. I’ve waited a long time for eyes that can see beyond the surface, perfect eyes.”

  Fear and loathing jolted through me, and my hands prickled with heat. I wanted to kill this man before he could say anything further, and I wasn’t usually that girl. “I’m pretty fond of them myself,” I said.

  “Pull the card,” he purred. “If it’s the right one, you’ll go inside. If you stay out, I can’t take anything permanent. You go in, your entire body is forfeit, but I get to keep only one token. And for you, it’s your eyes.”

  “My hands aren’t chopped liver, you know,” I said, suddenly wondering who was going to get my liver. And whether it would be chopped. I didn’t like this game very much.

  “But you know what your hands can do. You do not know what your eyes can.” He leaned closer. “Draw the card.”

  I drew it. It was, of course, the Five of Wands.

  I looked up
. “A draw,” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you go in.” It wasn’t the blind man who spoke, but the bartender, who’d placed his meaty hands on either side of the deck. “Nobody plays an exact match. We get people who beat the draw, and people who fail, but not a match.”

  I slanted a gaze to the bartender. “How do you know it’s not his magic that manipulated the cards?”

  “The same way I know this.” Without warning, something bright and metallic flashed in front of my eyes, the silvery edge of a blade plunging toward my hand as it stretched over the card. I knew what was coming only at the very last moment, and I burst out of my own body in a mini astral travel vacation to avoid the shock of pain for a half second, before coming back to myself, staring at the knife impaling my hand against the surface of the counter. A gusher of cold sweat pooled down my back, and the bartender yanked his knife back out, holding up the dripping blade.

  Oof. The pain that jacked through me had a cleansing character to it, so abrupt, so unexpected that everything was thrown into crystal focus. That focus was the only thing that kept me from blasting enough blue-white fire into the wall of booze behind the bartender to turn Rift into the hottest nightclub in South Africa. Sweet freaking Christmas.

  I iced my fury with cold, hard hatred, and held the bartender’s gaze.

  “Ouch,” I deadpanned.

  The door opened behind him, and the guard beside it stared at me impassively. When I glanced his way, he angled his thick neck toward the door.

  The bartender grunted. “Nine warlocks out of ten would have attempted to protect themselves with whatever magic they had,” he said. “We’re looking for the tenth. You’re it.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I don’t want the job anymore.” I pulled my wounded hand into my body, cradling it protectively. Though the bleeding had already stopped, I wished, not for the first time, that my advanced abilities to heal had come with a painkiller prescription, addictive or otherwise.

  For that, of course, I needed the Magician. But Armaeus Bertrand, leader of the Arcana Council, my one-time client, and my future…something, was part of the reason I’d gone on the run, though I prayed he didn’t realize specifically why.