by Jenn Stark
“The Birdhouse!” Martine said, triumphantly.
I stared, but I wasn’t looking at the women, suddenly, but at a figure striding up with great vigor. A man I knew well—too well, for all that we lived in different parts of the world. There were a few things in life you just didn’t forget…
And one of them was Monsieur Jean-Claude Mercault, the head of the House of Pentacles.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Sara! Mademoiselle Sara Wilde, I am beyond thrilled to welcome you to my humble establishment.” Short, rotund, and impeccably dressed in a pale gray linen suit, white shirt and gunmetal gray loafers and gloves, Mercault spoke with his characteristic half-drunk joie de vivre, but there was something in his eyes that didn’t match his ebullient smile. The slightest chill slipped down my spine, and I flicked my third eye open.
The Frenchman’s aura oozed with a sick yellow hue, the color of bile. I didn’t have a color-coded cheat sheet to understand all the colors of the rainbow my third eye could serve up, but bile yellow seemed bad.
Still, Mercault was a friend. If not a friend, then an ally at least. I’d saved his life not all that long ago, and arguably that counted for something, even in the cutthroat world of the arcane black market.
Granted, there was much I didn’t know about Mercault or his involvement in the black market. Then again, he’d been one of Soo’s fiercest competitors in drug trafficking, and used the highest grade of technoceuticals himself, to augment his fledgling Connected abilities. He was in it strictly for the money, and the kind of money that was flying through the markets right now was more than enough to kill for—more than enough to change alliances for as well. Of course, we didn’t have a formal alliance. More of an understanding.
But we did have that…right?
All these thoughts went through my mind as Mercault enveloped me in a hug, then gazed down at Martine. The boy expressed no concern whatsoever, but was that a good or a bad thing? If anything, he seemed still eager to be on his way, to move quickly to the trail home.
“Miss Wilde.”
Armaeus’s voice sounded in my mind, slightly staticky, and I shook my head to clear it. But Mercault was steering me into the elaborate Birdhouse, and I chose to focus on him.
“What brings you back to the market, Sara? Surely you are no longer looking for work. I could keep you well employed if that is the case.”
I slanted Mercault a glance as we mounted the steps to a central platform. “I’m a little busy these days for bounty hunting.”
“Too true, too true!” He laughed heartily. “And yet unless my intelligence deceives me, you were involved in exactly that sort of enterprise not more than a few days ago. Am I right? Of course I am right, no?”
I considered him coolly. “You know who was behind that job?”
“Non, non.” Mercault waved his hands in negation. “As you can see, I was halfway around the world, and we are busy here in our own right.”
Not an answer to the question, I noticed, but he brought up a more relevant point.
“Why here?” I asked him, surveying the gaudy but undeniably seedy Birdhouse. I gestured to the nearest flock of women. “And what’s with the costumes?”
Mercault laughed heartily. “I confess, I’ve developed quite a fondness for the styles of your Las Vegas since I have spent so much time there of late. And those with whom I do business…what can I say? We all have a weakness for beautiful women majestically adorned.”
I slanted him a glance. “So all these women are here just for decoration? Seriously?”
“But what gorgeous decoration, non?” He opened his hands wide, and I noticed a few men flitting among the feathered figures, undoubtedly more of Mercault’s guards. “They are here to keep me company, while I and my associates manage the distribution of Fountain. The most lucrative drug to hit the market in, well, ever, I suspect. And so we have to conduct our business near its very heart.”
A sick dread skated through my stomach. “So you are dealing that drug.”
“But of course.” He kept moving me deeper into the center of his tent complex, mounting a second short set of stairs, and I willingly went along, keeping an eye on the boy. Martine remained oblivious, which was good. Or it seemed good. Then again, he was a ten-year-old boy surrounded by burlesque dancers wearing feathers. He might not be bringing his A game.
“But it’s not a fountain of youth, I don’t care what you call it.” I eyed the Frenchman again. “You know that drug has issues, Mercault. You’ve got to know that.”
He waggled his brows, pausing on the broad platform. We were maybe three feet off the ground now, in the center of the tent. “I know no such thing, eh? The drug is in its beta-testing stage, and production is limited. We are being responsible while still sensitive to market interest.”
His word choice gave me pause. We? But I couldn’t jump on that. Instead I asked, “Sensitive to market interest? How sensitive?”
“Teasing, touching, tasting, that is all. Only a hint, the barest whiff.”
“The dime bags circulating in Thailand and Russia—here too, no doubt. Those are yours.”
Mercault sniffed. “Such an uncharitable description for offering a free sample of what is arguably the most sought-after enhancer to hit the market in the last decade. There is so much interest in this drug I could make billions and never provide it to the general public, you see? But I don’t do that.”
“You’re a man of the people.”
“Exactly.” He patted my back. “You and I, we go back many years, do we not? Many jobs. I like to think I’ve helped you a great deal.”
“I’ve helped you as well.”
“You have indeed. An excellent working partnership, all in all.”
Another burst of static sounded between my ears, but Armaeus could park himself on hold for the moment. Mercault was requiring all my brain cells.
“Yet now, here you are on my doorstep, all alone except for this child, but not working for me. I ask myself, are you working for someone else? Are you someone I should fear after all these years?”
“Why would you have anything to fear from me?”
“An excellent question! But you see, we French, we do not like fear, even the specter of fear. We must always work to circumvent it from bringing us to heel.”
He turned and smiled, and around us, everything seemed to stop. Even the bird women stopped. And…now that I looked a little more closely…
“Sara!” Martine blurted. “This is the door! This is where we must go!”
The boy’s voice sounded excitedly in the sudden silence of the room, but no one—male or female, feathered or otherwise—was looking at where he was pointing.
Instead, they were all looking at me. With the barrels of their guns.
“Don’t move, my dear Sara.” Mercault kept his voice conversational, his manner easy. He took a step toward me, gently pulling the boy away from me. Martine went soundlessly, focused more on the exit door than on the imminent firefight. He and a single soldier took up positions next to that far door, and I breathed a tight sigh of relief. At least the boy would be out of the way if anything happened.
And something almost certainly would be happening, I knew. Probably not something good, either.
The Frenchman gestured to the ceiling. “I have taken the liberty of installing electrical jammers, proven most successful in disrupting psychic ability. Did you know that so much of Connected abilities can parallel the behavior of electricity? I most assuredly did not, but I am gaining a renewed respect for science in all this. In truth, a renewed respect for what the human mind and body is capable of all on its own, no Connected ability required.”
A part of me wanted to be aghast at his betrayal of our history. The other part of me knew this came with the territory of being a head of a House. A teeny-tiny part of me said Ma-Singh had been right and I should’ve brought my entire damn army. Fortunately, I only had so many parts to go around.
“Righ
t,” I drawled. “And it’s in the interest of science that you have paid all these good people to be aiming their guns at me?”
“Ah! You wound me. Of course it’s not in the interest of science. Merely of hobbling you.” He gestured, and five of the gunmen changed their target—focusing on Martine.
Crap.
With a quickness I wouldn’t have given him credit for, Mercault stepped in toward me and deftly flicked my jacket aside. He reached in and plucked the nails from their interior pocket. So at least now I knew why the man had been wearing gloves.
“These have been lighting up our tracking devices since you entered the city. After all the effort we’ve gone to for these artifacts, here I should have asked you to recover them for me all along. Would have been much more efficient that way.”
He held the bones in his hand, marveling at them. I felt the ache in my wrists like a visceral tug, but I couldn’t risk the boy by making a grab for them. If I missed and someone shot…no. That wasn’t going to happen.
With a slight gesture, Mercault drew the attention of his minions, who stepped forward to light four tiki-style torches driven into solid bases on the platform’s floor. This was starting to feel very Tribal Council, but I didn’t yet understand the Frenchman’s end game. The buzzing in my head grew more intense, and I shook off the Magician’s attempted touch. Surely Armaeus had realized already that he wasn’t getting through to me.
For a moment as I stared at the flames, I considered using the skills I’d learned at the Japanese sensei to manifest weapons—weapons like guns, for example. Piles of them. Or maybe a battalion of soldiers…that would be good too. But once again, I couldn’t risk screwing up with my fledgling abilities. Not with Martine so close and so unprotected. No victory of mine could be worth harming a child.
Not now, not ever.
“You’ve amassed a fair number of enemies, it would seem,” Mercault went on. He waved his hand generously at the crowd.
New figures now stepped forward through the flock. I didn’t need to take in the faces to recognize them. Some had already checked in in Reykjavik, others weren’t surprises that they had a beef with me. Did I think those beefs were worth killing for? That I had a harder time with. Because Mercault wasn’t going to pay all of them to take potshots at me. Surely only the successful shooter would get the bounty. How could they tell who that was?
I refocused on Mercault. “What did you want the nails for, anyway?” I asked. “We’re not enemies. Well, we weren’t, anyway. You didn’t need to bind me to get me here.”
“And yet, so many wanted me to do exactly that. How could I not attempt it?” Mercault indicated another man to stand forward, and he did, a hunter that I knew had Connected ability. Not a lot, but he didn’t need a lot for the sticks to work their magic. “Lucien here has been preparing for this moment since you stole the mask of Venus from him.”
I stared at the man. “That was four years ago.”
“It was a costly loss.” Mercault shrugged. “When I learned he’d given away the mask’s location with a slip of a tongue, well…”
Lucien grinned, revealing a dreadful sight—his tongue split down the center, its end flapping in two disparate pieces. I grimaced in horror but could do nothing as Lucien grasped both of the bone shards in his bare hands. A shudder of electricity ripped through his body, and for the first time, everyone’s—truly everyone’s—eyes were on him as he flinched, the spikes sinking deep into his wrists. In a blink, the fire from the tiki torches was commandeered by the nails, arcing across the space to engulf the bone shards in flame.
I moved.
The moment that Lucien set free the power through the spikes, I hit him broadside and low, twisting him around so the arc of fire emitting from the nails blasted everyone in a five foot radius but me. Mercault got clipped, screaming imprecations in French. The first wave of shooters backed up instinctively, ducking for cover.
Lucien snarled something unintelligible, because of course how could he not with that tongue, then shrugged me off with superhuman strength. As he whirled around, however, I dove out of the way of the twin spires of fire and rushed to the far wall. The soldier was no longer standing with Martine, and my momentum took the boy to the floor.
“Are you okay?” I asked, breathlessly.
“Yes!” The boy wriggled beneath me then stared up, and his eyes were once more the color of milk. “You must not leave your weapons, Sara! You need them. They are you!”
“I hate to break it to you, but they aren’t me anymore.”
“No—” He struggled beneath me, so palpably panicked that despite the chaos above and around me, I could only focus on him. Time seemed to suspend, and his urgent need surged so high that it cleared my mind with brutal speed. “They are yours, you are theirs, it is how it must be!”
His words triggered a memory, something Armaeus had said, but I was having a hard time hearing over the crackling flames and renewed gunfire.
“Please!” Martine screamed, clutching at me.
I twisted around. Miraculously, no one seemed to realize I was hiding in a corner. Clearly, they didn’t know me very well. As I watched, another spasm of fire leapt from the Gods’ Nails in Lucien’s untutored grip, and a flurry of electrical sparks showered down from above. New sounds of outrage rose up as the hair of several of the finders and angry birds caught on fire, and I huddled into a slightly smaller ball, my gaze darting around like an over-caffeinated ferret. This was bad—seriously bad. Even if I got free, I couldn’t lug Martine around like a rag doll, and there were easily twelve—no fifteen people with guns slowly figuring out that Lucien was serving more as distraction than a first line of attack.
“Miss Wilde. Are you clear?”
I was so startled to hear Armaeus’s clear, distinct voice again that I tumbled backward, dragging Martine with me. I practically threw the boy against the wall near the door he’d been so eager to exit, then scrambled to my feet, covering him.
Yes!
A new level of chaos blasted forth. From all sides of the tented room, black-clad men and women poured in through slashed openings, guns at their shoulders, pinning in the first and second rows of shooters. The newcomers didn’t pause to ask questions but unleashed a torrent of ammo into the tented space, sending everyone crashing to the ground and rushing for cover. I scowled, whirling, but nobody’d been hit, which simply wasn’t possible at that close range.
Unless…
Oh, Sweet Christmas. They were firing blanks—at least in this first round. The attack was only a distraction.
But what a hell of a distraction.
“The nails have imprinted on you, Miss Wilde, and do not give up their allegiance so easily. They’ll obey—and they’ll prefer to obey you.”
Armaeus’s words burst into my mind with an urgency I couldn’t ignore.
I grabbed a gun from the floor—one of those belonging to Mercault’s people, not mine, so maybe it had actual ammo—and crawled back over to Martine. “Are you okay?” I demanded, shaking him. “Are you okay!”
“Yes!” he said, and his eyes had returned to being those of a frightened little boy.
I hesitated before shoving the gun into the boy’s hands. Was this really what I wanted to do? Give a loaded gun to a boy barely ten years old? Was that what we had come to?
Then again, what would be worse—him attempting to defend himself and causing someone else harm, or him getting kidnapped by Mercault and his goons, then used for ransom or something even less humane?
A blast of very live, very close ammo shattered the wooden door over my shoulder. It was followed by another blast of phantom machine gun fire, but Mercault’s shooters were figuring out the game now. I crouched down, shoving the gun back into the waistband of my pants. I couldn’t make myself give it to Martine.
“Can you make yourself hidden?” I asked him. “Can you make it seem like you’re not here?”
He nodded hurriedly. “You must get your weapons!”
>
“You don’t worry about that. You go through that door and hide—hide from anyone who isn’t me.” I grimaced, well aware of the powers of illusion among some of the more gifted of the shooters here. “Who isn’t me and isn’t carrying those bones. You got it?”
I didn’t wait for him to respond this time, instead turning around and scrambling forward in a crouch walk. Lucien was in the center of the conflagration, holding off all comers with staccato bursts of fire. The spikes looked so deeply lodged in his wrists that they might as well be part of his skeleton, but Lucien didn’t possess the same quick-healing techniques I had, and he wasn’t as strong. His forearms were bathed in his own sizzling blood, the wound cauterizing itself then reopening every time he jerked. I watched his face, his eyes, the expression of manic determination fixed there in a rictus of pain. “Not exactly what you’d had in mind, is it?” I muttered.
Another round of gunfire was abruptly cut off with a gargled scream, and the room seemed to pause for a moment, held in intense stasis.
Then there was no sound, only movement, a black sea rushing forward to take Mercault’s shooters in its inky wake, and I realized what was happening. The House of Swords had struck again. Not with guns this time, but with the kind of handiwork they did best.
Two dozen blades slashed through the air.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The screams of outrage and grunts of hand-to-hand fighting intermingled as I bolted forth, and even Lucien was apparently confused by the new form of attack. I didn’t give him time to figure it out. I swept forward low, my hands out, my body tight, a gull intent on snatching its dinner from the sea. By the time Lucien whirled around, I had ducked beneath his unwieldy spiked hands and was coming up fast.
“Release,” I shouted, wrapping my hands around the spikes. Nothing happened except for Lucien’s hands jerking forward, the Gods’ Nails holding fast in their prison of bone. Lucien screamed, and I pulled again, half dragging him across the floor. More cries erupted behind my back as our awkward dance lit up the tent palace, fire slashing in unpredictable ways across friend and foe alike.
