Power Game Page 17

  The oldest brother shifted his large mass on the couch uncomfortably. “Like we said, it’s nothing personal against you, Everson. But we’d appreciate it if you stopped seeing our sister. We all agree it’s for the best.”

  I stared at him, feeling like he’d just plowed one of his meaty fists into my gut. He was reading off Carlos’s script, of that I had zero doubt, but still … Had he actually said I was to stop seeing Ricki?

  At that moment, a door to a back room opened, releasing a burst of video game sounds. I could hear Tony’s voice as he ran down the hallway toward us. “Mr. Croft’s here,” he panted. “I heard him!”

  Heavier footsteps raced after him, one of the wives probably, and then both sets of footfalls stopped suddenly. A woman’s whispering voice was followed by Tony shouting, “Let go! I just want to say hi!”

  “Not now, Tony,” I called past the lump in my throat. “We’re in the middle of a meeting.”

  There was a silence followed by Tony being led in a grumble back to the room he’d emerged from. The door closed again. When I turned back to the brothers, three of them were visibly uncomfortable. But Carlos watched me with keen eyes, as if trying to guess my next move.

  “Keep Tony inside until Ricki gets back,” I reminded them. I started to turn, then stopped. I needed the last word on this.

  “Ricki’s a big girl. She can decide who she wants to see.”

  22

  I got into the Hummer and slammed the door. Bree-Yark had reclined his seat back a little and laced his fingers behind his head, but now he levered himself upright.

  “Let’s head back to the hotel,” I said.

  He’d left the motor idling, so he had only to slot the gearstick into drive to get us rolling.

  “And no offense,” I added, “but I can’t handle this right now.” I leaned toward the stereo and twisted the volume knob until the swirly, mystical sounds of Bree-Yark’s world music snapped off.

  “Went that well, huh?” the goblin asked.

  “Ever had four brothers hold an intervention to make you quit their sister?” I still couldn’t believe what had happened. It was like a ridiculous stress dream except that I hadn’t been sleeping.

  “No, but I had a goblin chieftain sic his tribe on me for trying to court his daughter,” Bree-Yark said. “I escaped, but barely. He had a reputation for cutting off her suitors’ ears and wearing them on a leather thong around his neck.” He ran a hand over his notched right ear and shook his head. “Probably just as well things didn’t work out.”

  “If we were dumb teenagers it would be one thing,” I went on, “but we’re both in our frigging thirties.”

  Bree-Yark tilted his head as if to say, Well…

  “What?” I asked.

  “From where I’m sitting, that’s still pretty young.”

  “Yeah, because goblins live like five-hundred years.”

  “Can live up to five-hundred years,” he corrected me, “but that’s if we make it out of our first century, and most don’t.” He waved a hand. “But look, I’m the last goblin you should be talking to about this sort of thing. I haven’t exactly got it figured out myself. I mean, look at me. I play caretaker for Gretchen.”

  “What’s that all about anyway?”

  “Mostly me being an incurable fool.”

  Ever since seeing Bree-Yark at her house the night before, my mind had been struggling for an explanation. I wondered if Gretchen had placed the goblin in her servitude. It wasn’t an uncommon practice among the fae, and Gretchen revered them. “Are you paying off some sort of debt?” I asked.

  “Debt?” He snorted a laugh. “Maybe for my own stupidity. Naw, this thing with Gretchen has been going on for a while. If not here, then in Faerie. She shows just enough interest to keep stringing you along, but that’s all it is. Meantime, she’s getting you to watch her houses, scythe her fields, feed her winged ponies—and those suckers will take a bite outta you if you’re not careful, stomp your head in too. After ten years, you start catching on to her game, but by then it’s too late. You’re hooked on whatever messed up thing you think you’ve got going with the woman. I don’t think she has any brothers, but if she did, I’d give anything for them to tell me to take a hike.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It would mean we actually had something,” he said sullenly.

  I thought about his disappointment last night when he learned Gretchen had never mentioned him to me, and then how lonely he’d looked as I was leaving. “Well, can’t you just tell her no?” I asked.

  “That’s what I’m saying. I missed that turn.”

  “There are other women, you know.”

  “Who are into goblins?” He gave a humorless laugh. “That’s the thing. I can’t shake this idea in my stupid goblin brain that if I hang in there long enough, do enough of the right things, she’ll come around.”

  “She won’t,” I said.

  Since meeting Gretchen, I’d been adding mental descriptors: blunt, unsocialized, powerful, disgusting. To that list, I now added manipulative. I bristled at the thought she’d been using this poor goblin.

  “Yeah, I know,” Bree-Yark conceded. “That’s why I flipped out when the robot guy called me a house elf. Pretty sure that’s all I am to her.” We fell silent as traffic going the other direction shot past. I could hear Tabitha still sleeping in the back.

  “So, what are you gonna do?” he asked at last.

  “Huh?”

  “About your situation with your girl and her brothers?”

  “Oh, that.” I’d gotten so absorbed in his dilemma, my own relationship problems had taken a momentary backseat. “Well, I’m not breaking up with her,” I said. “That’s absurd.”

  I didn’t believe it would make Tony or her family safer, either. Vega couldn’t unlearn what I’d taught and shown her, and she wasn’t going to stop pursuing the supernatural angle just because I was out of her life. To put it in Bree-Yark’s terms, she’d missed that turn. Plus, I still had my ace in the hole: holy sanctuary. I caught my fingers tracing the outline of the Upholder’s card in my shirt pocket.

  “You going to say anything to her?” Bree-Yark asked.

  I dropped my hand from the pocket and shook my head. “No.”

  “Don’t want to pit her against the family, huh?” he said. “Smart move. And it’s not like you have to worry about losing an ear.”

  My phone rang, the display showing Vega’s number.

  “It’s her,” I said to Bree-Yark as I flipped the phone open. “Hey, how’s it going?” I asked.

  Vega’s voice was urgent. “We’ve got a major situation at the hotel.”

  I stiffened upright in the seat. “What kind of situation?”

  “There was an attack on the parade. These creatures came out of nowhere. An army of them. A lot of the con-goers fled back to the hotel, but the creatures are inside too. My ammo barely did anything. I’m with a group inside one of the conference rooms. Mae’s in here too.” Above the shouting, I could hear Buster squealing. “We’ve barricaded the door, but they’re trying to come through.”

  “Can you describe the creatures?” I asked, my heart slamming through the question. I signaled for Bree-Yark to speed up. The engine rose an octave as he began weaving the Hummer in and out of traffic.

  I heard Tabitha stir in the backseat. “What in the hell is going on?”

  “They’re big,” Vega said. “Some look like animals, others like giant trees. I saw one creature that was like the thing we faced in Central Park the night it was napalmed. Hairy creature, but with the mouth of an owl.”

  “An owlbear?” I asked out loud.

  Bree-Yark looked over at me. Owlbears were creatures of the Fae Wilds.

  “What about your iron rounds?” I asked.

  “Didn’t even slow them down. God, it sounds like they’re ripping the place apart.”

  I peered around, my mind scrambling furiously. We’d crossed the Harlem River back into Manhattan, but we wer
e still in the One-twenties. I waved for Bree-Yark to get onto FDR Drive. Even under the best traffic conditions, we were still more than ten minutes out.

  Need to stay calm, I thought. If only for her.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “I want your hands free. Put your phone on speaker and slide it into your jacket pocket.”

  “All right.” A moment later, the volume went up on the panicked voices around her. I focused on controlling my breaths. The voices muted slightly as Vega pocketed the phone. When she spoke next, she sounded far away. “Done.”

  “The coin pendant I gave you has protective powers.” I was all but shouting into the phone so she could hear me. Plus, static had started to break over our connection. “If the creatures come through, I want you to hold it toward them. I’ll access the coin and crank up the juice until we get there.” In other words, I would try to access the coin. I’d never attempted from this distance and in a moving vehicle. “Hold it toward anything that comes close until you’ve gotten yourselves to safety, okay?”

  “Did you check on Tony?” she asked. “How is he?”

  With everything going on, she was thinking of her son.

  “He’s fine,” I assured her. “Well protected.”

  The screams around her rose suddenly.

  “What’s happening?” I shouted.

  “They’re coming in.”

  A series of shots sounded.

  “Your pendant!” I called.

  Another prolonged burst of static seized our connection, and then the line beeped to signal the end of the call. No, no, no! I tried to call her back, but it went straight to her voicemail. When I looked over at Bree-Yark, he held up a hand.

  “I’ll get us there. Do what you need to do.”

  Though I’d managed to slow my breathing, my heart still felt like a fist punching a concrete wall. The world beyond the windshield wavered, not quite real. I caught my mind urging us faster, but that had been Bree-Yark’s point: he would take care of the driving. I needed to get to Vega. I nodded at him and closed my eyes.

  I pictured the coin my grandfather had given me: the family symbol, the silvery gray metal, every scratch and taint. I imagined it in my right hand until I could feel the cool weight in my palm. I extended the arm in front of me, aligning my mind to the imagined object. A resident hum took up in my being.

  I had it.

  Now to unleash a little hell…

  But the pendant wasn’t in Vega’s hand. It wasn’t anywhere near her.

  When I understood what she’d done, my eyes shot open in a sickening flash of light.

  “Go!” I shouted, pushing both hands toward the parkway. “Go, goddammit!”

  23

  “Right here will be fine,” Arnaud told the cabbie.

  The driver rolled to a stop at the edge of a sandlot in the Bronx. Arnaud remained preternaturally still for a moment, his eyes watching the simple house across the street and up one lot. Even from here, he could see the wards pulsing like small novas over the access points, creating an impenetrable barrier over the entire home.

  Like at the West Village and Brooklyn apartments, the wards bore Croft’s signature.

  A tightness came over the vampire-demon’s body. It still burned him to know that Croft’s powers exceeded his own right now. Had Arnaud arrived in the world as planned, on the tempest of fifty thousand souls, the wizard would have fled him like a puny mouse. Arnaud could have incinerated him without a thought. Now he had to dance around his maddening enchantments and spells.

  When something bit into his palms, Arnaud saw he’d drawn his hands into mean little fists. His talons were gouging his gray flesh. He forced his hands back open and waited for the wounds to close before handing the driver a one-dollar bill.

  “Another fifty if you’ll wait again, my friend.”

  The driver took the money eagerly. “Sure, sure, take your time.”

  Arnaud opened the back door. “Come, Zarko,” he said and stepped out.

  An icy wind hit him, but he didn’t suffer cold. A beat-up car chugged past as he walked up the street. Detective Vega’s apartment had appeared a dead end—he hadn’t even picked up Croft’s scent—until a familiar face turned up: the housekeeper who had been watching Vega’s son the night his blood slaves had absconded with the boy. With a little suggestion, the woman told him mother and son were spending the weekend here, at a family home in the Bronx. She believed Croft was with them too.

  Now, as Arnaud passed the house, he opened his senses.

  “Yes, Zarko,” he whispered. “The wizard has been here.” But the freshest scent was leaving the house, not moving toward it. As at Croft’s apartment, Arnaud picked up traces of the feline and a third party too.

  Meaning he’d just missed the cursed wizard again.

  Arnaud paused to look the house over. Several cars sat parked in the driveway and yard. Perhaps he could convince someone inside to tell him where to find Croft. But he hadn’t a way to approach the house, much less rap on the door, without being harmed. He couldn’t even perceive past the wards to know who was inside. He was circling back, pondering his next move, when the door to the house opened.

  Or perhaps someone can come out to us, he thought with a grin.

  A man and a boy emerged. The curly-headed lad was upset over not getting to see someone. The man was saying they would discuss it over lunch, and did he want to go to McDonalds or somewhere different?

  They were walking toward the street, where a burgundy sedan sat curbside.

  Arnaud picked up his pace to head them off. It wasn’t until the wind shifted that Arnaud recognized the boy’s scent. He was older by almost two years, a little leaner in the face, and taller by three or four inches, but it was the detective’s son. The same one he’d had the pleasure of passing an evening with, much to the detective’s and Everson Croft’s anguish. The memory manifested a small smile.

  Such incredible leverage that boy provided. Perhaps he could be of use again.

  Neither man nor boy saw Arnaud as he reached the car. They had just arrived at the end of the walkway, a journey slowed by the boy’s obstinance. The trim, well-dressed man wasn’t very good with children, Arnaud saw. He hadn’t the patience or the artifice. He was talking to the child as a stuffy adult.

  “Lovely day,” Arnaud called as the two turned toward him.

  The man looked up and stepped in front of the boy, suspicion taking immediate hold of his body. “Do you live around here?”

  “Oh, I’m not far,” Arnaud replied. “I’m never far. Just out for a stroll.”

  The man relaxed slightly and gave a curt nod, uninterested in conversation.

  “And who’s this with you?” Arnaud asked, craning his neck around to see the boy.

  In the next moment the vampire-demon was doubled over and clutching his chest. For a moment he thought Malphas was calling him to another Council, but the pain detonating through him was familiar in a different way. It was the same pain he’d felt immediately before being cast down to the Pits.

  And it was coming from the boy.

  The man approached him carefully. “Are you all right?”

  Even through the blinding pain, Arnaud had had the presence to palm his fedora to keep his grotesque head from being exposed.

  Arnaud pointed past the man. “Get him back,” he hissed.

  “He’s right,” the man said over a shoulder. “Go back inside, Tony.”

  Whether it was reflexive, the boy touched his chest. Something shifted underneath his sweatshirt. A round pendant, Arnaud realized. The same one the boy’s mother had been wearing the night before.

  And curses did it hurt!

  Much more, it seemed, for the pact having cast him down once already. Arnaud was about to hiss the boy back again when Tony retreated on his own, eyes round with fear and curiosity. Under different circumstances, it was a look Arnaud might have savored. But with the latent power of the pendant skewering him on a thousand white-hot blades, he could only
gnash his sharp teeth.

  At last, the boy turned and beat it down the walkway. Arnaud recovered his breath but remained on one knee, panting, as the pain subsided by degrees. It wasn’t until the boy entered the house and slammed the door behind him that the pain left him entirely. He was shaky as he rose again, depleted.

  “I apologize for the scare,” Arnaud said breathlessly. “I get these terrible attacks of reflux, and I didn’t want to frighten the child.”

  The man had come closer, the eyes beyond his gold-rimmed glasses firm with concern. “Do you need a doctor?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. A baking soda tonic, and I’ll be good as new.”

  He affected as much cheeriness as his still-raspy voice would allow, but the man seemed determined. “Do you live nearby? Do you need someone to pick you up?” The man began reaching into his pocket for a phone.

  Arnaud shot a hand forward and gripped the man’s wrist. For a moment, he was only aware of the rhythmic squeezing of warm blood through the man’s vessels. And beneath it, the power of the man’s soul. An insane hunger spiked inside Arnaud, obliterating all thoughts of Croft, of his mission.

  And the man was handsome. Arnaud’s gaze roamed his angular face with its dark, intelligent eyes. Arnaud yearned to feed, to bond this man to him for all time. Eyes cutting to the man’s neck, he drew him nearer.

  Then stopped.

  With a grunt, the man wrenched his hand free. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?”

  Arnaud recovered himself—and his sensibilities. Right now, the man was his best lead to Croft. Disappearing him would raise alarm bells. Croft would grow more careful than ever, thinning Arnaud’s chances of locating this Sefu. And the consequences of failure, as Malphas had pointed out, would be a terrible death.

  “I asked you a question,” the man said. “Answer me, or I’m calling the police.”

  Arnaud steadied himself and peered into the man’s eyes. “I’m looking for someone. Perhaps you can help me.”

  The hardness in the man’s gaze took on a slight angle of puzzlement. He was more intelligent than most, though, more determined to hold onto his rationality, where he obviously lived and wrote his own checks. Arnaud could feel the man steeling against the mesmerizing effect of his voice. The vampire-demon smiled sweetly. It was the ones who fought back—futilely, of course—who most endeared themselves to him. This man would have made a wonderful slave. Perhaps he still would one day.