Power Game

by Brad Magnarella

He glanced over at Vega, but she was still in conversation with her sister-in-law, the two of them talking over some jabbering girl cousins. “It doesn’t sound like you have much control over that,” Carlos said. “If anything, it sounds like you’re making her job more dangerous than it already is.”

  My pulse ramped up at the insinuation that I was intentionally throwing hazard his sister’s way. “Look, it’s not by design. It’s just that her work in Homicide and mine happen to overlap.”

  “Funny. Before you showed up, I don’t remember her being shot at point-blank range, getting into gunfights at the mayor’s mansion, or being napalmed in Central Park. Not to mention nearly walking into that exploding building.”

  “She wasn’t napalmed—we got out in time.” God, talk about a terrible retort. Setting my fork down, I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “All right, man, what’s the point of this? What are you wanting me to say?”

  “I just want to make sure you understand our concern.”

  Our? I thought.

  I looked around the table, but the other three brothers weren’t paying us a lick of attention. Weaks tossed a potato chip into the air and caught it with his lips, to the delight of the kids around him. His wife smacked his shoulder.

  Yeah, our, my ass, I thought.

  “If it were just Ricki, fine,” Carlos went on. “She’s a grown woman. But it’s not just her, is it?”

  His gaze shifted to the other end of the table. Vega’s son smiled and waved at us. I raised my own hand and forced a grin. When I looked back at Carlos, his eyes bore into mine.

  “Now do you see my point?” he said.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to him, either.”

  “Can you promise that?”

  4

  “So, what did you and my brother talk about?” Vega asked. When she looked over at me from behind the steering wheel, her eyes shone in a way that told me we’d just shared in something especially close to her heart.

  “Oh, you know,” I said, shifting in my seat. “This and that.”

  We were barreling down Ninth Avenue in her sedan, street signs flashing past in descending order as we made our way toward my West Village apartment. Tony was staying over at the house with his cousins, which meant Vega and I had the rest of the night to ourselves—something we’d been taking more advantage of lately.

  But while my intro to her family seemed to be having an aphrodisiac effect on Vega, I was having flashbacks of my encounter with Carlos. Talk about a mood-killer. And now she wanted to talk about it.

  “I’m serious,” Vega said. “I’ve been dying for you two to meet.”

  “A little warning would have been nice.”

  The skin between her eyes creased. “About what?”

  “Well, for starters that you told him about my other life.”

  “Everson, the man reads like half a dozen papers a day. He already knew about your role in the mayor’s eradication program. He also knew we worked together. I just filled in the blanks.”

  “So, what does he think?”

  “About you being a wizard?” She shrugged. “He was skeptical, but that’s how he is about everything. He knows I’m the same way, so when I told him I could one hundred percent attest to your abilities, he went with it.”

  “He went with it,” I echoed.

  “Is that what you talked about?”

  “Not … exactly.”

  I shifted again. I hated being evasive, but what was the alternative? Saying that the brother she admired most had given me a stern talking to? I didn’t want to make Vega feel like she had to choose sides.

  “Then what?” she pressed.

  “Well, his concern for you,” I said, which was half true.

  Vega shot me a sarcastic look. “I think he already knows I work in Homicide.”

  “Yeah, and he feels that your involvement with me increases the risk. Work involvement,” I clarified. But Carlos hadn’t really said whether he meant work, personal, or both.

  “He brought that up at dinner?” Vega asked, a cloud moving across her face.

  Great. Exactly what I hadn’t wanted to happen. “He’s your brother, Ricki. He’s just looking out for you.” Was I actually taking up for the guy?

  “Still.” The gleam left Vega’s hardening eyes.

  “Just think about it from his—” I started to say.

  My phone rang, cutting off the rest of the sentence. I pulled the device from my pocket. Even after the earlier demon encounter, the neutralizing spell continued to hum around the phone, protecting its sensitive circuitry. The caller was Blade. I held up a finger to tell Vega we’d get back to our conversation. I didn’t want to leave it there.

  “What’s up?” I asked into the open phone.

  “We might have something,” Blade said.

  My heart contracted into a fist. “Talk to me.”

  “After our meeting, I put out the word. We have a network of informants keeping eyes on some of the grittiest spots in the city. The kinds of places bloodsuckers who want to keep a low profile often go to feed. Anyway, a creature was spotted about ten minutes ago that matched the description of your friend.”

  “Where?” I asked, digging for my notepad.

  “East River Park near Sixth. There’s that Container City down there.”

  I stopped digging. “Yeah, I know the place.”

  Vega wrinkled her brow to ask what was going on.

  “Can you hold on a sec?” I said to Blade.

  “Sure.”

  I muted the phone. “I might have a job,” I said, my heart still beating through the words. Was this Arnaud? “Could you veer over to FDR Drive and drop me off at East Sixth? I’ll meet you back at my apartment.”

  “Container City?” Vega shook her head. “There’s no way I’m leaving you down there by yourself.”

  “Ricki, it’s too dangerous.”

  “Are you my brother now? Even if you handle whatever’s down there, you’re going to have to navigate the city’s worst projects to get out. You remember Ferguson Towers, right?”

  A cruel bang went off in my memory—the sound of a drug lord shooting Vega at point-blank range. Something Carlos had been sure to include in his list of indictments against me. Watching Vega go down in the rain that night was the first time I’d realized I had more than professional feelings for her.

  “And since when does someone call you about a breach?” she demanded. She looked down at my cane, which I’d set across my thighs. “That thing should be going spazoid.”

  “Because it’s not that kind of creature,” I said. “It might be … Arnaud.”

  Vega swore under her breath as she popped her siren lights and sped up.

  “Ricki…”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “When I knew for sure.”

  “He kidnapped my son,” she snapped, as if I needed any reminding.

  “Which is exactly why I don’t want you back on his radar.”

  “I have protection,” she said, tapping the center of her chest, where my grandfather’s coin pendant rested. “I’m also packing enough silver to reduce that fucker to a pulp.”

  I thought about Carlos’s and my talk, wondering now what had bothered me more: what he said, or how closely it matched my own anxieties? Despite my improving abilities, I couldn’t guarantee Vega’s safety. Or Tony’s. Towards the end of dinner, I’d slipped outside to place wards on all of the doors and windows.

  “Anyway, we’re a team,” she said.

  My phone’s small display lit up to remind me Blade was still holding. I unmuted the device.

  “Sorry about that,” I said to Blade.

  “Did you take a newspaper in there with you?”

  I ignored the bathroom jab. “Anything else I need to know?”

  “He was spotted at the edge of the old track, moving south.”

  Headed straight for the containers, I thought grimly.

  “Do you want backup?” Blade asked.<
br />
  I glanced over at Vega. She was right about her offense and defense—they were potent. And if I could trust my research, it was still too early for Arnaud to have recovered his preternatural speed and strength, not to mention his casting powers. Still … Blade and the hunters were only a few blocks away. And suddenly thirty thousand to end Arnaud for good didn’t seem an unreasonable asking price.

  “Remain on standby,” I told Blade.

  Vega raised her eyebrows at me in question.

  “My partner and I are going in.”

  Vega parked on East Sixth, and we took off over a pedestrian bridge that spanned FDR Drive. Like so many of the city’s parks, the one hugging the East River had fallen into decay after the Crash. Its cleanup and restoration weren’t political priorities either, considering the park’s location: in the shadows of the housing projects Vega had mentioned. Indeed, most of East River Park’s inhabitants were castoffs from said projects.

  Through the dark trees ahead, I caught the first glints of streetlights off metal. One of the city’s nods to the park’s refugees had been to drop a load of old shipping containers for use as shelters. As we descended the bridge, I caught a strong waft of human funk. At the end of every month, an armed sanitation team went through Container City and collected the dead. It smelled like they’d missed October.

  Vega and I slowed, my protective shields crackling around us.

  “How many containers?” I whispered.

  “More than thirty in the entire park. Maybe a dozen or so in this section.”

  I had already tried tracking Arnaud using hunting spells, but nothing had responded to them, not even items that had belonged to the vampire. If he was back, his essence must have been fundamentally altered.

  Finding him would mean getting actual eyes on him.

  “The creature was spotted coming down from that way,” I whispered to Vega, gesturing to our left. “I’m thinking we start where the path bisects this section here and then work our way north.” As a demon germ, sustenance was everything right now. Meaning he would be looking for an easy meal.

  “Are we breaching the containers?” Vega asked.

  I grimaced at the thought. “Only if we have to. Right now, we’re looking for anyone who might have been caught out after dark.” Even in their sorry states, the citizens of Container City knew to lock themselves in at night.

  We made our way quietly through the trees toward the first containers. The service pistol Vega clasped in both hands held a full mag of silver-laced ammo. I had pulled my cane into sword and staff, arcane power humming around both.

  Shouts and deranged cries rang from inside the nearest containers but nothing that sounded like an attack in progress. We wove our way past them. Cold wind gusted off the East River, clacking the trees around us. But the prickling wave that passed through me was warm, like a whisper. Part of my training with Gretchen involved learning to listen to my magic, and it had just spoken.

  We were being watched.

  I locked eyes with Vega and made a small rotating signal with a finger. Trees, containers, and darkness slid past my field of vision as we each turned in opposite directions, weapons readied. I thought I caught something creeping just outside my peripheral vision, but when I jerked my head, it vanished.

  “Shield your eyes,” I whispered.

  When Vega brought a hand to her face, I thrust up my staff and bellowed, “Illuminare!”

  A ball of light spun into being and shot above the trees, blowing open the night. As the ball hovered, great sparks rained down through the branches and swelled into their own luminescent orbs.

  Nowhere to hide.

  Without warning, a creature spat and scrambled from behind a thick tree.

  Shots exploded from Vega’s weapon. The creature was stooped like an old man, its gray, vein-mapped body glistening in the light of my invocation. Bark burst and bullets caromed after the creature as it darted from tree to tree. I summoned a barrier but was too slow to stop it. The creature fled past it, disappearing around the corner of a container.

  Dammit! I thought, taking off.

  “Stay in the light,” I called to Vega. “It might double back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To head it off!”

  I broke toward the other end of the container the creature had ducked behind and cut around the corner. I glimpsed the creature’s back as it disappeared behind yet another container. It didn’t look remotely vampiric. Was this Arnaud?

  “Vigore!” I called, swinging my sword toward the ground.

  In a burst of leaves and dirt, the force invocation cratered the ground and shot me skyward. I landed on top of a container with a hollow clang, setting off a commotion inside. Ahead of me, the creature was scrambling through the maze of containers toward the water’s edge. As it paused to crane its neck around, its bulbous eyes found mine. A sickly yellow magic began to radiate from them.

  I thrust my grandfather’s ring forward. “Balaur!”

  The ring tightened around my finger before releasing an explosive force. The creature leapt into a slot canyon between two containers, but not before the force from the ring found it. The creature screamed as white fire flashed across its trailing leg. I recognized the power: it had originated from the enchantment of the Brasov Pact. Meaning the creature was Arnaud. And I’d just crippled the son of a bitch.

  Now to finish him.

  With another invocation, I propelled myself through the air to the next container. Arnaud was in full flight, scrambling on three of his four appendages toward the water. I chased along the tops of the container, tracking Arnaud with my fist, shouting the word that gave lethal force and direction to the Brasov Pact.

  Pulse after pulse slammed into the containers as Arnaud continued to thrust himself behind and around them.

  By the fifth blast, though, I felt the enchantment flagging.

  I swore at myself. You’re being too undisciplined, dammit.

  Arnaud cut between two final containers, his way to the water clear.

  “Vigore!” I shouted.

  The force invocation rammed the ends of the containers together, blocking his passage. I dropped down to the ground and raced toward him. He began climbing a rusted container, his injured right leg hanging beneath him. With a spoken invocation, a shield flashed into being above him.

  “End of the line!” I called.

  He peered back at me, fear in his bulbous eyes, but it was way too early to celebrate. Silver through the heart would stun him, decapitation or cremation—ideally both—would kill him. Vials of dragon sand jostled beside an iron amulet in one of my coat pockets, but the manifestation of fire was hard to control, and I couldn’t risk superheating the containers.

  Instead, I shouted a force invocation and opened my sword hand. The blade shot from my grip toward the center of Arnaud’s upper back, just left of his knotted vertebrae. But before the blade could hit and cleave his demonic heart, Arnaud wriggled into a hole in the side of the container, rust breaking off around his disappearing body. My sword clanged from the metal siding as screams erupted from inside.

  “Ricki!” I called. “He’s inside a container!”

  I covered the shipping container with a shield to prevent Arnaud’s escape, then scooped up the sword and launched myself over the enormous box. The items in my coat rattled as I came to a jarring landing at the container’s doors. I sent up a light ball as a signal to Vega, then wasted no time blasting the container’s lock with an invocation.

  Arnaud might have been trapped, but there were innocents with him.

  With the lock destroyed, the right side of the giant door clanged loose and began to lurch out. The rusted hinges protested with a shriek to rival those coming from inside. I was preparing to thrust my shielded body through the narrow space when the door blew open the rest of the way and a pale, naked creature with wild eyes appeared.

  To this point, I’d only seen Arnaud from a distance. Up close he looked li
ke a nightmare.

  His skin was sore-riddled and sagging. Parts of him actually appeared to be rotting away. He shambled from the container’s smoky pools of firelight, a mouth of broken teeth opening as he descended on me.

  With a grunt, I thrust my sword through his stomach and swung him away from the container. He came off the blade and landed hard against the ground.

  “Nice to see you again too,” I said. “Unfortunately, the reunion is going to be brief.”

  Grandpa’s ring tightened around my finger, telling me the enchantment had recharged. I aimed the ring at Arnaud as he struggled up. The vampire-demon wasn’t going to survive this one, not at point-blank range.

  “Balaur!” I shouted.

  Nothing moved from the ring.

  I dispelled my shield and pushed more power into the Word, but the ring didn’t so much as flex. Arnaud was up now and staggering toward me. I drove the sword forward. With a dull crunch, the tip of the blade broke through his sternum and became buried in his heart. Foul gray fluid burst from his chest.

  But the blow didn’t have the paralyzing effect it should have.

  With a crazy smile, Arnaud shot out a slick hand and seized my throat.

  I gagged as a rank smell of death flooded my nostrils.

  5

  For reasons unknown, the ring had crapped out, died on my finger. And now, with Arnaud’s hands around my throat, I couldn’t speak to invoke. Tensing my neck against the constricting force, I twisted the sword that pierced his chest. More gray fluid spilled out and spattered around our feet. The silver-lined blade was skewering his heart. That alone should have been enough to paralyze the son of a bitch.

  His eyes rolled crazily as laughter shook his naked body.

  Though I could feel demonic magic swimming sickly around him, he didn’t look like a demon germ. Hell, he didn’t even look like a vampire. Not that his precise classification mattered at the moment.

  The fucker was trying to bite me.

  His broken teeth clacked again as he struggled to pull me nearer. Gargling, I jerked the blade from his chest and managed to work it up against his throat. Tears sprang from my eyes as Arnaud redoubled his grip. By see-sawing the sword back and forth, I managed to cleave the blade into the putrid flesh at his neck. He moaned, and his fingers began to slip.