Running Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  I didn’t have time for the kid anymore, though. Rift wasn’t on fire, not entirely, not yet. Cyrus’s office was, however, and that was cue to leave. Ripping away from the huddle of incapacitated men, I raced toward the broken windows. At the last minute, strong arms encircled me, a larger body launching the two of us out of the office and into the starlit night.

  The arms belonged to the one member of Cyrus’s gang who’d who’d seemed almost familiar to me. The guy who’d stood back and smiled.

  The guy who was now wrapped tightly around me as we plummeted toward the ocean far below. My skin knew his touch all too well, this member of the fractured Council, this trickster of truths who embodied every aspect of the Major Arcana card attributed to him.

  “My dear Sara Wilde,” Aleksander Kreios murmured with rich and fervent satisfaction. “It appears you’ve found yourself once more between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.”

  Chapter Three

  We pulled our sopping wet bodies out of the South Atlantic less than ten minutes later, courtesy of a fishing skiff that happened to be trolling the waters waiting for a midnight haul. Its captain didn’t seem surprised that his catch was two bedraggled more-or-less humans.

  Rather than answer any of the questions tumbling from my trembling blue lips, however, the Devil began a lively conversation with the fisherman, and the man obligingly angled us away from the shore. Probably not a bad idea, given all the lights and sirens high up on the cliff where what remained of the back half of Rift crackled like a cheerful torch. Not a big fire, in the end. But big enough. They’d be out of business for at least a few days, and maybe their bloodsucking groupies would go elsewhere for their fix. The best I could hope for without killing anyone.

  And then there was Henry. I’d patched him back together as best as I could, but there was still something about the boy that nagged at me. The recognition that had flared in his eyes, the fear—not of me, but for me. An almost insane sense that he’d wanted to help me, instead of the other way around.

  I swiveled my gaze from the remains of Rift to Kreios, who was illuminated by the remarkably bright moon. As usual, the Devil of the Arcana Council managed to look completely at ease, his Rift thug uniform somehow having been replaced midflight with his more standard attire of a long, loose linen shirt and beat-up khakis. The pants draped gracefully along his legs until ending with frayed, shabby-chic hems above heavy walking sandals. Just another demigod, out enjoying a late-night cruise.

  Peeling off my saltwater-soaked leather jacket, I threw it on the nearest seat, then plucked at my dress. I was cold. Really cold. The skiff had sped up to the point of popping over the mild sea, and while the wind would eventually dry me out, hypothermia was not out of the question. Me being a delicate flower and all.

  Still, I could feel Kreios’s attention on me, and I knew why. He was waiting for me to perform the same sort of parlor tricks he could, whipping up a new set of clothes in place of my own. Was that why he was here? Checking up on me and my not so mad skillz?

  It’d been two months since I’d ghosted on the Council as well as half of London’s finest. Getting out of the city hadn’t been all that difficult. London had been reeling with the aftereffects of what they’d thought was a really, really bad storm. Meanwhile, the Council had managed to Humpty-Dumpty the city back together again, more or less, all without letting spill that the huge storm had actually been a nearly devastating incursion of the gods bleeding through a rip in the veil between the worlds.

  And that really had been an impressive op, all things considered.

  The Council—a group of psychic virtuosos, most of whom were so far beyond the skill sets of ordinary humans that they were essentially demigods, up to and including the perfect cellular structure that allowed them immortality—had done their jobs and to spare. They’d been on hand to close the veil once the fully human part of the equation—the four Houses of mortal magic—had stuffed the unwanted intruders back into the rip they’d tried to shove through.

  The alliance couldn’t hold, of course, as I’d already realized. The four Houses of Magic would just as soon rip each other apart as work together on any sort of consistent basis, and as to the Council…

  The Council was its own butter of nuttery.

  “You’re going to catch a chill.”

  I looked up, and Kreios stood in front of me, holding out something that looked long and soft and warm without being a Snuggie. Pants and a tunic, I realized.

  “You could manifest your own gear, you know,” he drawled.

  “Right.” As it turned out, I wasn’t in the mood to give him the satisfaction of watching me try out my fledgling skills of manifestation. Or, really, any of my fledgling skills other than the hurling of destructive blue fire, which was rapidly becoming my specialty. “I could. But you do it so much better.”

  “True in so many ways,” he agreed. He didn’t linger beside me, however, giving me the illusion of privacy as he turned back to the captain. There was nowhere to go on the skiff to change with any modicum of privacy, and I honestly didn’t care. I’d raced through Rio in the altogether for half the night not all that long ago. I was comfortable in my own skin—and miserable in my wet clothes.

  I quickly changed, never gladder for the simple feel of soft cloth against my skin, grateful that Kreios had generated an outfit more for utility than looks. My boots were a nonstarter, my cards were a lost cause in the pocket of my jacket, and I hadn’t been packing while in the bar. Still, I didn’t think I’d lack for accessories, wherever we were heading.

  Which was where, again?

  “Sara Wilde.”

  As if on cue, Kreios spoke my name with the same intense relish he applied to his every interaction with humans. Like most of the Council members, he’d once been a mere Connected soul, working his way through his normal mortal life. He’d been a dock rat in Constantinople, in fact, living in that famed city during the years immediately before the city was renamed Istanbul. He’d ascended to his position of the Devil under less than ideal circumstances, but since then, he’d made the most of the experience, his existence dedicated to pursuing hedonistic pleasures and esoteric interests alike, including extraordinary books, fantastic art, and superlative cuisine.

  Now, despite his Mediterranean Slacker attire, Kreios gestured with every inch of the aristocratic elegance he’d cultivated over his nearly hundred years as a Council member. I followed the movement while the fisherman throttled down the engine. We were heading into one of Cape Town’s private marinas, the bobbing docks jutting between craft both large and small. Beyond, the city winked and glittered with anticipation. Wherever Kreios was going, I prayed there was a shower.

  His soft chuckle floated toward me over the breeze, and I snapped up my mental barriers—but not before I sent him a succinct and heartfelt Asshat.

  I stood and prepared to hop off the skiff and onto the dock, not surprised as a small cadre of men and women materialized out of the gloom to take hold of the boat, each of them crisply uniformed. The Devil, as usual, didn’t do things by halves. The crew worked with seamless precision as they handed me up out of the skiff. One of them stepped down and collected my discarded clothes; the other moved toward the fisherman. They dropped into a local dialect I couldn’t begin to decipher as I was gestured forward by a young woman. She pointed not back toward the city, as I expected, but across the marina, then she handed me a pair of deck shoes.

  “The Sara Wilde is ready for you,” she said with a chirpiness that was not at all appropriate for the hour of night.

  I gave her a flat stare. “The what?”

  “Mr. Kreios’s new craft, retrofitted to his exacting specifications. I believe you’ll be quite comfortable.” She began walking, and I fell into step with her, only half paying attention. “She’s fifty-five meters long, built by the Dutch, and features six guest cabins, as well as a complete complement of amenities: a full gym, steam and sauna room, a formal dining area and gourmet galley, a
nd a lovely interior in what we hope you’ll find to be pleasing décor.”

  “He named his…” I shook my head, not wanting to think too much about Kreios’s choice of yacht monikers. “So where are we going?”

  “I believe our manifest has us at sea for several days, but of course that’s subject to change.”

  Subject to what, she didn’t appear willing to disclose, and I contented myself with following her as she led me up a gracious gangplank to a yacht that looked like it could sail around the world. “Nice,” I allowed.

  “We do hope you think so. Would you like to see your room, or would you prefer to wait for Mr. Kreios in the lounge?”

  I decided to split the difference, showering first, but quickly, not surprised at all to see the cabin was fully stocked with more clothes my size, along with a new deck of Tarot cards, which I happily scooped up. Then I returned to the hallway, and my tour guide took me to the yacht’s lounge. It was everything I would have expected in a room tailor-made by Kreios—deep black wood furniture and cool neutral carpets and plank flooring, all of it offset with a magnificently stocked bar.

  My guide left me there with a tumbler of scotch, but I hadn’t yet taken a seat before Kreios breezed in, looking decidedly un-captain-like in his khakis and linen. He headed for the bar, and I rolled my drink in my hand.

  “Why were you at Rift?” I launched in, but he didn’t interrupt his careful perusal of the exotic bottles filled with liquids in every hue of the rainbow. “And I’m not buying you were worried about me, so we can go ahead and jump to option two.

  Kreios chuckled. “We’re not worried about you. Not in that way. Armaeus, of course, remains concerned for a whole host of other reasons, but he’s becoming tiresome in his crusade for balance, so it’s easier to let him work out his anxieties in the privacy of his own malaise.”

  There were so many possible angles to take with that statement, it took me a moment to recover. The Magician had been my first contact with these people, and for a long time, he’d been my only contact. He was the one who’d initially hired me to find arcane artifacts—the more ancient and mysterious, the better—and he was the one who’d paid me. He was also the one who continually pushed me past my comfort level to explore my ever-increasing abilities, and he was the one…

  I paused, taking a long swallow of scotch. He was the one, well…I loved.

  The thought was less foreign to me every time I allowed myself to think it, but I still wasn’t used to the rush of surprise, the breath-stuttering light-headedness that teetered between joy and hysteria that always accompanied the idea of loving Armaeus Bertrand. The Magician was the most powerful Connected I’d ever met. He’d all but promised me he’d kill me if he was forced to—and he truly believed that he might be forced to—in order to maintain the balance of magic in the world. But there was also a vulnerability within him, a weakness in his impenetrable façade…and that vulnerability was me. I hadn’t understood what that weakness meant at first. I’d thought it a dangerous, deadly flaw, like he did. But now I was beginning to have a different idea about it, a different perspective.

  If Armaeus was weak because of me, then who better than me to help make him strong?

  Even with my mental barriers up, of course, I should have known better than to let my thoughts run down this particular path. Across the room, Kreios released a deeply satisfied sigh.

  “And he is the reason I’m here, Sara Wilde,” he said. “One of many.”

  “Uh-huh. And those reasons required a boat?”

  “Yacht, please. We’re not animals.” Having finally made his selection—absinthe—and completed the predictably torturous assembly of the drink with sugar cube, bent spoon, and all, Kreios turned back to me. “First, however, my own needs are paramount. I would like you to visit a library to recover a few items of interest for me, then fix its location in your mind so you can revisit it in person or via astral travel yourself, whenever you might have need of its information in the future.”

  “A library,” I deadpanned. “For information.”

  “You’re familiar with the concept?”

  “I am.” I nodded. “I’m also familiar with this guy named Simon. You might remember him as the Fool of the Council, single-handedly wired into every working database known to man. Failing that, there’s Google. I fail to see what a library…” I narrowed my eyes at him, suddenly making the connection of where Kreios might be interested in sending me…particularly since astral travel might be needed to visit it. “No way. I thought that was long since destroyed.”

  “Long since indeed,” Kreios said, now smiling at me with real enjoyment. He sank into one of the wing-backed chairs facing me, cradling his drink in his hand. “The Library of Alexandria was truly one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, a repository of knowledge unmatched on the planet. Whoever had the good fortune to sail into the port of the great city was relieved not only of their gold for the tithe, but of their books. Scrolls, really, at the time. Scrolls which were summarily copied onto papyrus word by blessed word. The originals remained with the emperor of Alexandria, of course, but the copies were released back to their owners. This unique requirement ensured that the city’s library grew to unfathomable size and strength over time.”

  “Only to be burned in various fires, before disappearing completely,” I said, finishing the tale for him, and adding my own flourish. “And what remained of its works, Armaeus sought out and destroyed.”

  “Not all of them—but yes, the most dangerous. The most arcane. The most…powerful,” Kreios said, saying this last word with undisguised sensuality. “The Magician is a careful man. The peoples of the world were not, and had already shown a propensity for using absolute power for the ruination of the careful balance to which he is so enslaved.”

  That was the second not-so-veiled aspersion Kreios cast Armaeus’s way. Odd, as I knew the two were fast friends—as much as beings like the Magician and the Devil could be friends in this world. I was pretty sure I needed to poke at that potential fissure if I wanted to understand what I was dealing with here.

  “I thought the whole purpose of the Council overall was to ensure balance.”

  “Oh, it is,” Kreios agreed, too quickly. “But it is the caliber of the opposing sides being balanced where we don’t all agree. If you are the Emperor, that balance should be maintained between two equally strong, equally offsetting pools of magic.”

  “The Emperor,” I sneered, curling my lip. “Viktor Dal is a criminal and a bastard and a walking time bomb. Why you brought him on the Council—and kept him there—I will never understand. He killed people before you ascended him. A lot of people. He kidnapped Connected children to further his own aims. He…” I swallowed, the worm of guilt scoring through me as it always did when I thought of Viktor’s most egregious crimes against me, personally. I hadn’t been strong enough to confront the Emperor when I’d first made the realization of the depths of his crimes.

  I was now, though. “He may not have done it directly, but he was responsible for the death of the woman who raised me.”

  Kreios said nothing, merely eyed me over his glass of absinthe. “He is responsible for a great many things,” he murmured, watching me keenly. It was never comfortable being the object of the Devil’s intense regard.

  I waved my hand to break the tension between us. “And he hauled six demons from their metaphysical bolt-holes back to earth.”

  Kreios smiled. “Technically, you did that last part.”

  “But not intentionally, whereas I’m beginning to think it was Viktor’s backup plan all along. The djinn are still holed up in the Emperor’s stronghold in Vegas, but he can’t expect them to stay there forever, right?”

  “He does not—and they can’t, in any event,” Kreios agreed. “If they’re not banished in the coming war on magic, they’ll wink out like the stars in the dawn in their own time—a time that is rapidly drawing to a close, for all that they don’t realize it.”

/>   He leaned forward before I could respond to that, his body alight with interest. “But more relevant to our conversation, Viktor believes in balance between two opposing strengths, while Armaeus…” He shrugged. “The relative strength of the parties in question isn’t as much of a concern. In fact, arguably, it could be considered a hindrance.”

  “A hindrance.” That sounded like Armaeus.

  Kreios settled back. “It’s easier to balance two weak, more or less stable entities then two entities constantly on the brink of war, wouldn’t you say?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, then shut it. Kreios wasn’t sharing anything I hadn’t thought myself in my less charitable moments. And hadn’t Rangi, the newly discovered Head of the House of Wands, had a similar complaint against the Council? That for all their interest in balance, they were more interested in keeping the Connected of this world…weak. Unskilled. On the sidelines.

  “So where do you fall in this spectrum?” I asked Kreios. “I can’t imagine you’re a fan of weakness.”

  “Or balance, as it happens.” Kreios grinned. “But I would much rather have balance between two fiery, feisty opponents than two groups so lily-livered that they can’t even bring themselves to spit across the line at each other.”

  “You want this war,” I realized suddenly. “This coming conflict.”

  “War? No.” Kreios shook his head. “Not necessarily. But I do want informed players. I want Connecteds who feel the thrust and pull of magic within them, who understand its power. I want the non-Connecteds of this world to realize that not everyone can or will be put into a box, homogenized to the point of no one having any defining purpose at all. I want all those things.”

  “That’s not all you want.” I cut him off. I could see it in my mind’s eye, an upswell of magic and Connected ability that would change the playing field dramatically—no longer held in stasis by a worried Council charged with repressing magic on earth while keeping the gods of old from raining down on us, but a thriving, roiling mass of humanity that could create its own magic, decide its own future…and quite possibly consume itself in a raging conflagration of both creative and destructive powers. “You want chaos.”