King's Gambit (23 page)

“First of all,” she said, holding a finger up, “you don’t get to use his name. Second, that doesn’t mean you can kill her.” She turned to me. “The king wants to speak with you.”

“He’s here?” The temptation to fire bomb this building was growing by the second.

“Hurry up.” She pulled the door open. “Don’t keep him waiting.”

I filed the image of Allison running around with her hair seared off into my no-no cabinet and entered the building. When I did, the weight in my chest simultaneously lifted and dropped back down.

To the left was Alex, kneeling with his hands pulled behind him. Despite the situation, his back was straight and there was a defiant look on his bloodied face. There was a cut above his now swollen lips and one near his temple. Blood streamed from his mouth and dribbled past his chin, forming a shallow puddle between his knees. Three men stood around him – hired muscle whose faces I didn’t care enough to memorize. If I had my way, they wouldn’t be leaving here alive.

Marcus was to the left, strung up like Khalil had been. But unlike the other vampire, he looked like the thugs surrounding him had spent the last few hours taking out their stifled childhood rage on him. His pressed blue button-up was soaked with blood, and something that looked like a tooth was laying near one of his captor’s booted feet.

Flavius stepped forward from between the two groups, his arms outstretched in a way that was more megalomaniacal than welcoming. I wonder if I could flash freeze this whole place, then thaw Alex and Marcus out.

“Miss Maxwell, how nice of you to join us.”

I pursed my lips, waiting for the villainous monologue to continue. Marcus and Alex were too far apart for me to handle both groups of guards at the same time. What were the chances Marcus could take care of himself if I untied him? Judging from the state I found Elise and Khalil in, I didn’t think it was likely – he looked like ground beef in a ten thousand dollar suit. Poor guy. And poor suit.

“Now, I’m sure you’re quite surprised by this turn of events.”
Yeah…no.
“And it truly pains me that things have turned out this way. However–”

“Set him on fire, I’m begging you,” said Alex. One of his guards rewarded him with a swift kick to the gut.

“Hey!” I stepped forward, only to freeze when the barrel of a gun was pressed against Alex’s temple.

Flavius sighed. “As I was saying–”

“You’re quite good at repeating the same banal bullshit without actually saying the same things,” I said, glaring at the man holding a gun to my boyfriend’s head. “Just tell me what you want already.”

He clapped his hands together, the sound almost a boom in the cavernous warehouse. “Straight to the point. I like that.”
Less liking, more emulating.
“Our dear friend Marcus here–”

“Fuck you,” Marcus groaned. Knowing he was still conscious after everything that had been done to him made me feel even worse.

“–has been less than forthcoming with the information I require.”

“Which is…?”

“Everything.”

“Oh, gee,” I said in a deadpan, “how dare he not tell you everything?”

“Being the gentleman that I am, I decided to spare Marcus’ life after my rise to power, despite the general tradition of executing one’s predecessor. However, it seems leaving him alive has done nothing but allow him to plot against me.”

And here I was starting to worry we wouldn’t get an evil speech. Thank goodness. I tapped my foot. “Which is probably why they’re usually killed.”

Flavius ignored me. “I’ve tried to maintain an image of benevolence–”

“Then why did you have Franklin killed? Or Sergei?” I had no proof he was responsible for that, but hey, shots in the dark tended to hit something.

“What would possibly make you think I had anything to do with that?”

“Tomas blabbed.” Allison leaned against a rusted column before quickly straightening up, her nose wrinkling like she’d just come across a month old corpse. “What does it matter? Just kill her already.”

“Don’t be hasty, dear.” Flavius walked over to Marcus and clapped a hand on his shoulder. The chains squeaked, and Marcus swung side to side on his short leash. “Miss Maxwell and her paramour are more than welcome to leave…provided she does one little thing for me first.”

Oh, sure. He’ll let us go. I’ll do him a solid, then we can go free. Easy-peasy. I’m going to invent a potion to make my friends fireproof – things will go so much better once I do. Though at this point, death would be a welcome relief from Flavius’ never ending prattle. Seriously, dude, just because you can live forever doesn’t mean you have to spend decades making a speech. Some of us planned on dying early. Er, not early per se. For a vampire, sure, but not for a human. I planned on living for a long time in human terms. Like, a hundred years or something. Absolutely no dying young. Nope.

“Do we have an understanding?”

I blinked rapidly. “Holy shit, did you actually get to the point while I was spaced out?”

Flavius pursed his already thin lips, rendering them virtually invisible. It was amusing to see, but I refused to associate anything remotely positive to this douchebag.

“As I said, I need information from Marcus–”

“You mean beating him senseless hasn't produced any results?”

“Why must everyone interrupt me?”

Marcus snorted. It was a breathy, broken sound. “Because no one respects you.”

Flavius opened his mouth, closed it, worked his jaw, and took a moment to stare into the distance. “Marcus already knows the questions. Get him to answer them, Miss Maxwell – I don’t care how – then, you can go.”

“Why me? Couldn’t you kidnap someone else’s boyfriend?” I crossed my arms, and despite how hard it was to look away from Alex, turned to give Flavius the most unimpressed look I could muster.

“No one else’s was around,” he said. Oh, I think he just grew a sense of humor. “Anyway, sorcerers – or sorceresses in this case – have more options available to them, and with my magical advisor dead…”

“Can’t Tomas do it? Wasn’t he Zhen’s disciple?” I sneered at the boy in question. “Don’t tell me she took him in out of pity.”

Tomas stepped forward, the glint of a knife appearing through his sleeve. “You–”

Flavius held a hand up. “Don’t. Mister Tomas has been…less than successful so far. That leaves you.” Oh, please. I’m probably just the only mage he has leverage on at the moment. Flavius seemed to take my silence for hesitation. “If you can’t persuade Marcus, then perhaps these men could help persuade
you
.”

The thug cocked his gun against Alex’s head while his friends cracked their knuckles.

“Oh, and if you’re thinking about taking those guys out–” Tomas strode over to Marcus, twirling his knife around. “–just keep in mind there’s no way you can get to us before I torch your friend here.”

I rolled my eyes. Maybe
I
was the problem. Did I just have unreasonably high expectations for super villains? Why was I annoyed the people whose asses I was supposed to kick were twelve shades of dumb? All this BS was giving me a headache. “Do you really think Flavius is going to let you burn Marcus before he gets his information?”

“As disheartening as it would be to lose the connections and knowledge Marcus could give me, any disobedience on your part would force me to write his death off as an unfortunate but acceptable loss. His and yours and…” he sighed, gesturing to Alex, “his. Be smart, Miss Maxwell. I’m giving you an opportunity here – do this and you can live.”

“You’re loaded,” I said through the mental hammer swinging at my skull. “Go fucking order a truth serum from Mistress Magda’s potion shop on Canal Street.”

“The thought crossed my mind, but if there wasn’t enough time to have one brewed for you earlier this evening, then how could there be time now? Enough lollygagging – begin the interrogation.”

Lollygagging?

When I didn’t move, Flavius nodded at the men around Alex. They grinned, and the biggest of them swung a meaty fist downwards. There was a sickening crack and Alex dropped like a stone, his head bouncing off the grease-stained cement. He grunted and spit out blood, but still managed to glare at his attacker.

“Come along, Miss Maxwell.”

I would be happy to torture Tomas, Allison, or Flavius. Hell, I’d been daydreaming about it in between the horrible flashes of what could’ve been happening to Alex. It wasn’t as if I’d never had to beat someone for information before, either; I wasn’t really charming enough to chat the truth out of people. But hurting a friend to help some jerk wad?

To save the man you love.

Fuck logic. I wasn’t going to do it. I needed to think of a plan that would allow me to take out Flavius’ muscle without getting Marcus or Alex killed. I took a step forward and stopped, the king’s words coming back to me.

Something along the lines of ‘I told her. She’ll be there soon.’

I could get the answer. I could find out if Marcus really had set me up. Or I could not torture a friend and ally and wait until later to confront him. Y’know, like a total not-douchebag.

Eyeing the room, I walked over to the trussed up vamp. Three men surrounded Alex. Tomas and four other men were around Marcus. Allison was near the entrance, and Flavius was in the middle of it all. I knew Tomas had a knife and magic, but I wasn’t sure if Flavius and Allison were armed. One man had a gun out; the other six’s were holstered.

What was up with human henchmen? Wright’s had made sense because he was human, but Flavius? Were there really no vampires around he could have recruited? Or demons or rabid dogs or something, anything, to spice this shit up? Actually, never mind, I was already going to have my hands full with these guys. What was up with
me
? Why was I trying to up the difficulty by throwing in supernatural creatures?

“Are you boys ghouls or just hired help?” I asked.

Tomas jutted a thumb towards Marcus. “He’s the only one you should be speaking to.”

I circled around in front of him, clicking my tongue as if it would help me jumpstart my brain. Chain lightning, maybe? No, it might rebound and hit Alex.

“Why bother keeping secrets, Marcus?”
Keep stalling, keep stalling…
“You’ve given him information before, haven’t you? You’d probably be dead otherwise. Well, dead
er
.”

“Are you ever going to get tired of that joke? You’ve beaten it to–” He sighed. “Never mind.”

“I saw Khalil and Elise. You seem to be doing a lot better than them, despite the torture.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He smiled wryly. “They’ve been giving me blood; a starved vampire isn’t very articulate.”

“You can walk, then?”

“I’d imagine so.”

I stopped next to Tomas and looked Marcus right in the eye. “Bullets?”

His blue eyes were tired but otherwise clear as they met mine. “I could take a few hits if it meant getting out of here.”

Tomas grabbed my arm. “What are you–”

I shoved an ice spear through Tomas’ torso and summoned up a barrier over Alex. A long distance barrier would’ve been a lot easier to maintain if I wasn’t moving around, but that wasn’t really an option when you were in a warehouse with seven armed thugs and two vampires.

I froze Marcus’ chains, and he wrenched his hands apart, shattering the metal bindings. We ran for cover behind a nearby column, a hail of bullets leaving dimples in the already worn structure. I peeked my head out, dropping to the ground to dodge the gunfire, and made sure the barrier was still solid around Alex. It was, and the big guy who had punched him earlier was pounding away at it, every blow like a direct punch to my brain.

I turned to Marcus. “You good?”

He rolled his eyes. “I just spent the past hour and a half being tortured.”

“Being sassy automatically implies you’re fine.” I rolled my eyes back at him, but smiled in relief. “Don’t suppose you’d be able to fight?”

“If by ‘fight’ you mean ‘run away,’ then yes.”

“Exits?”

“Just the doors you entered from.”

“For real? What kind of bullshit factory is this?”

Revisiting a past idea, I threw an arc of chained lightning at the nearest goon and watched in satisfaction as the bright purple-white lights formed an ersatz spider’s web between them all. They staggered back but didn’t die. Ghouls, then. I just had to ask for some spice, didn’t I?

Alex wasn’t moving. I wondered what the hell he was doing, but then I saw the bindings around his ankles. I hated when the bad guys planned ahead. I threw another ice spear at Tomas before he could finish pushing himself up and charged forward. The first icicle was still lodged in his torso, and I ripped it out to stab the squirrelly fucker through the head.

“Like brother, like sister.” I spit on his corpse for extra satisfaction.

The other men were still recovering, so I took the opportunity to throw a blast of force at the two standing nearby. They toppled. I set them on fire, then threw a fireball that sent another man screaming and running around in circles.

Their cowboy shooting finally got results. A bullet hit my knee, and I toppled to the floor near the crispy remains of my former bowling pin ghouls. They reeked of burning flesh and the heat from the flames assaulted me. A quick look down told me the bullet hadn’t gone clean through, and moving backed up that observation as a sharp stab of pain went through my knee, right down to the bone. I wiggled behind a bunch of half-broken crates, an army of artillery following me. One bullet cut through my shoulder, right under the only scar I had, while two more grazed my side before ricocheting against the ground.

All that mattered was that the barrier was still protecting Alex.

“What are you idiots doing?!” Flavius’ voice rang out through the chaos. “Kill them all!”

Two men charged towards Marcus. I ran after them, fire blazing at my fingertips. I caught one man by the back of his jacket and the flames quickly overtook him. The other was smarter, doubling back to flank me while his partner burned. I kicked out at him, but he grabbed my ankle and flung me aside.

That’s certainly one way to make a girl feel skinny.

I crashed into the crates, letting out a gurgled scream as a broken off piece of wood impaled me through the chest. The odds of that one fucking piece being so perfectly positioned was insane, but since I did impale two siblings over the course of two days, I figured karma was lending a helping hand. Well, karma, point proven: impalement isn’t as fun when it’s happening to you.