The Serpent

by Sarah Fine

  Ernie glanced at her phone. It was a quarter to two in the morning, almost closing time. People were slowly clearing out, which wasn’t good. She wanted an audience if—

  “May I join you?” Duncan didn’t wait for her answer before pulling out the chair across from her and sitting down. His eyes were deeply shadowed and his face looked gaunt, but now that Ernie knew the truth, she could see a family resemblance in the long nose, the strong brow. His hair was much darker than Gabe’s, but his eyes were blue, too, though they were more like a dark, stormy ocean than an afternoon sky. “Sad to see a lady all alone.” His eyes lit on the box, and he arched an eyebrow.

  Ernie took an unhurried sip of her drink. Her heart was skipping along as if she were sprinting, but she was determined to seem calm. To bluff. “I’m ready to meet your demands,” she said.

  Duncan reached for the box, but she pulled it from the table and set it in her lap. His jaw tightened, and he seemed to be willing himself to smile. Slowly, he reached over, picked up a chicken thigh from her plate, and took a huge bite of it. “They really know how to do food in this town,” he said with his mouth full. “I’d come here for that alone.”

  “I heard you grew up on potatoes,” Ernie commented.

  Now his smile was more genuine but still cold. “Ah, did he tell you? I was given to believe he was too ashamed to mention it.”

  Ernie shook her head. “But it’s true that he’s embarrassed by you.”

  Duncan rolled his eyes. “Gabe is the embarrassment. He never should have been a Dealer in the first place.” Duncan leaned forward and dropped the half-eaten chicken thigh back onto her plate. “And neither should you.”

  Anger glowed in her belly, fueled by bourbon. “If you want to deal with me, you’re going to have to take me to them. I’m giving you nothing until I see that they’re okay.”

  “I could take it all now.” He turned his wrist toward her, revealing part of the Diamondback tattoo, the rattle. Ernie stared at it with a hunger she hadn’t realized she had. Legs belonged with her.

  As soon as the thought crossed her mind, warmth throbbed along her forearm, and Duncan flinched. Ernie smiled grimly. “It wouldn’t be as easy as you think. Legs and I are pals now.”

  He stared at her for a moment, his mouth half-open, then threw back his head and laughed. “Legs? This is what you call Cathubodua?”

  Ernie grimaced. “She’s been living with ‘Cat-u-bawd-waa’ for a century and a half? Poor thing. She has a sense of humor, you know. Or, really, you probably don’t, which is why she’s ready for a change.”

  His grin turned to a snarl. “She is named after a goddess of battle! The Diamondback deck has wreaked havoc across this world for over a hundred and fifty years, and it is a fitting name for its spirit.”

  “Not anymore,” Ernie said lightly. “Welcome to the twenty-first century.” She snorted. “Cathubodua.”

  Duncan’s face flushed. “You think taunting me will give you some advantage.”

  “No,” Ernie said. “But it’s fun.”

  “Give me the Marks,” he growled.

  Her deck pulsed hot in her pocket, and she slipped one hand in to run her fingers over them. She could play the Case card and disappear the box if she needed to, if she was fast enough and Legs helped her out. Given the way her arm was feeling, hot and tingly, she had a feeling she might. “You’ll get them when I’ve got what I came for. Not until then. So unless you want a scene . . .” She pointedly waved at a couple of guys who were finishing their drinks a few tables over and watching Ernie and Duncan—they had probably seen the murderous look on his face and might be getting ready to play Good Samaritan, something she truly hoped to avoid for their sakes. But it did help with the bluff.

  “You could conceal us, I know,” said Ernie. “Or we could just end this lousy date and go see my mom and Gabe.”

  “Let’s go.” Duncan rose from the table, waved a card at the waitress who’d been walking over with Ernie’s check, and smirked as the woman turned around and headed right back inside. He reached for Ernie’s arm.

  She pulled out her wallet and left a twenty and a five on the table, enough for her meal and a decent tip. “I pay my debts.”

  “Another reason you were destined to lose.” Duncan stepped back as Ernie stood. He watched her closely, so Ernie focused on staying steady, on not groaning at the pain that was getting worse by the hour. He’d savor every sign of weakness.

  “Because I’m a decent person who was raised right?” she asked.

  Duncan nodded. “You yield advantages instead of taking care of the one thing that should matter to you—yourself.”

  “I feel sorry for you.”

  “The feeling isn’t mutual.” He stepped closer to her. “When you surrender to me, I’m going to make you regret the moment you chose to defy me.”

  She looked up at him, right in his eyes. “You understand that threats aren’t a good way to get me to cooperate? I mean, really. Look at this from a strategy perspective. If you’re all villainy and promising me pain, pain, all the pain, how does that actually work for you? It doesn’t exactly motivate me to go along.”

  Fury sparked in his eyes. Beneath the threats, Ernie could see, was a soul deeply warped, broken. So full of hate that he couldn’t even act in his own self-interest. She really did feel sorry for him. Until he said, “I just want your fear, little girl—that’s all.”

  “Whatever.” Her heart was hammering, and her left hand was in her pocket, around the cards. She held the box tucked under her right arm. “Are we going or not?”

  He seemed a little taken aback at her lack of cowering. “Walk.”

  Ernie did, through the gates that enclosed the outdoor patio and down a few cement steps. She had to grit her teeth as she stumbled and bounced off the metal fence, unwilling to free her hands to catch herself.

  “People will think you’re drunk,” he said, looking amused.

  “Better than them thinking I’m a pathetic ass like you,” she countered.

  He no longer looked amused. His fingers wrapped hard around her elbow as he steered her along the sidewalk. Their path was slightly uphill, leaving Ernie instantly winded and longing for the days when she could run for miles and enjoy the air rushing in and out of her body, fueling her every step. Her only comfort was that Duncan seemed a little out of breath himself.

  His destination seemed to be a parking garage, sure to be empty at this hour. She was ready to throw down if he tried to mug her. She might not win, but she’d do as much damage as she could before the end. She had the plays ready in her mind.

  “In there.” He pointed to a stairwell. As soon as she’d stepped inside, he drew a single card from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. “Transport.”

  For a moment, Ernie felt something like hope. Was he actually accepting the deal she’d offered? But then he smiled. “I’d take everything now, but I want to watch Gabe fall apart as I torture you in front of him. Maybe you’ve noticed that he’s got a bit of a savior complex.”

  Ernie groaned, but the sound was cut off as Duncan jerked her into darkness, his fingers a vise on her arm. She was braced and ready when her feet hit the ground, though. She staggered only a little but stayed upright, pulling herself out of Duncan’s grip, the box still tucked tightly under her arm, her father’s instructions flashing in her head.

  Mara, he’d written, only use this if your back’s against a wall, and open it only in the presence of an enemy, never an ally. It can disable the powerful among us.

  Ernie had assumed the tile would be something to use against a Dealer, just like the barrier rune tiles. Nothing had happened to her when she’d opened the box, though—but then again, Legs had been with Duncan at the time. She knew she was taking a risk, that her secret weapon might not be a weapon at all, but when she heard Caera keening up in the trees, the sound steeled her.

  Ernie and Duncan were standing in front of a corrugated metal shed, one of the big ones farmers liked
to park their tractors in. Light poured from a few high windows. Caera shrieked again.

  Duncan chuckled. “Sad little birdie,” he murmured. “She knows the end is near. Do you know what happens when one deck is eaten by another? Its spirit dies.” He rubbed his chest, looking like he was remembering a moment of pleasure. “The creature suffers terribly before it’s over.”

  Ernie couldn’t understand why Caera wasn’t on Gabe’s arm, lending him some strength, letting him know he wasn’t alone, but then the bird shot out of the trees, flying straight for the open window to the left of the shed’s closed doors. She hit an invisible barrier with a thump and fluttered crazily to the ground, stunned but still on her feet. “And yet she’s still stupid enough to try to save him,” Duncan said with a bemused sigh. “Stupid Dealer, stupid deck.”

  Ernie could barely resist the urge to punch Duncan right in his smug face. “You’re such a cartoon bad guy. Take me to them, and spare me your monologuing.”

  He nearly wrenched her arm from its socket as he pulled her toward the shed, taking big strides and forcing her to jog along. The door opened as he approached, and Akela stood framed in the light from within. “The old woman still screams when we remove the gag. And the Kestrel slips in and out of consciousness. If he were human, he’d be dead.”

  Ernie tried to pull free, to step around Akela, but she froze when another Dealer blocked most of the light. He had to be at least six and a half feet tall, and was about half as wide. “I don’t understand why we don’t just take his deck,” the man said to Duncan in a strong Russian accent.

  “We will,” said Duncan. “But I told you to be patient, and I was right.” He gestured to Ernie. “Because now she has brought the Marks to us in the hopes of saving him.”

  “I thought the Kestrel had the Marks,” said Akela.

  “I assumed he did, but he’s given me no information so far.” Duncan’s lip curled. “I’ve caused him enough pain to pull a confession out of him ten times over.”

  “But I don’t sense them here,” Akela said, frowning as she gazed at the box Ernie carried and then at her own deck, presumably wondering whether her Revelation card was malfunctioning.

  “Because I put a case around them,” Ernie replied smoothly. Her bluff game was on point tonight, at least.

  “Is this the one who stole your cards?” asked the Russian dude, gesturing at Ernie. “She’s so tiny!”

  “Easy to underestimate, you genetic experiment gone wrong,” said Akela, perhaps remembering the fight in the driveway of her mom’s shop.

  “Thank you, Wolf Spider,” said Ernie, hoping a show of respect might heighten Akela’s willingness to betray Duncan. She glanced over at the Russian guy, who was blond and had the face of a guy who’d had his nose broken a half dozen times. He was missing one of his front teeth, too. “And how should I address you?”

  “Ruslan,” he said proudly. He yanked up the sleeve of his dirty shirt. “Komodo.” The tattoo was of a large lizard with a thick tail and long tongue. He waggled his eyebrows at Ernie. “We both give nasty bites.”

  Finally, he stepped out of the way and quit blocking the door, allowing Ernie to see what lay inside the shed. It almost made her burst into tears. Her mother was tied to a chair, her mouth gagged with a wide band that seemed so tight around her face that her cheeks bulged above it. She was staring at Ernie, pleading with her eyes. And in the corner lay Gabe, his knees pulled to his chest in a vain attempt to try to protect himself from the person standing over him, a guy with spiky magenta hair who was wearing fingerless gloves, ripped jeans, and oddly, nothing else.

  “Rupert, enough,” Akela snapped.

  The guy paused for a moment, then drew back his foot and landed a hard kick to Gabe’s stomach. Gabe let out a quiet groan. Rupert turned around. A hyena with huge ears was tattooed on his arm. “Finally,” he said in a rough British accent. “I was starting to think you couldn’t deliver.” He sauntered forward. “This little thing—”

  “Yes, yes, that little thing stole the damn cards,” Akela said, sounding utterly annoyed. “God, men are stupid.”

  Duncan shoved Ernie forward. “See?” he said to her, gesturing grandly at his hostages. “Safe and sound. Go have a look.” He gave her another push. “Set the box on the table,” he said loudly. “Not interested in stupid tricks.”

  “Me neither,” Ernie said fiercely. She walked to the far end of a long steel table, a good bit of it covered with liquor bottles and open pizza boxes. She cleared an adequate space with one abrupt sweep of her arm, knocking a few open bags of Cheetos and a half-full bottle of vodka onto the ground, where everything shattered and mixed into a nuclear-orange cocktail. Rupert and Ruslan grumbled as Ernie put her box down at the edge so it would be closer to her than to them.

  With chills running through her, Ernie shuffled over to her mother as quickly as her legs could carry her. She bent over and laid her forehead on her mother’s, undoing the gag as she did. “I’m here,” Ernie whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “I wanted to protect you from all of this,” her mother said, her voice cracking. A tear slipped from her closed eyes, and Ernie wiped it with the back of her hand, the one that held the cards. It pulsed with warmth, and a card started to rise from the rest—it was Aid, Ernie could tell. As she held her hand to her mother’s cheek, her mother took a deep, steady breath. “Go see about Gabriel. They’ve been hurting him.”

  Ernie nodded, her chest aching. She looked over her shoulder to see the four enemy Dealers—the Komodo Dragon, the Hyena, the Wolf Spider, and the Diamondback—arguing in much the same way her ally Dealers had. Duncan had his hands up, palms down, like he was trying to get everyone to take it down a notch. Like he was making promises Ernie was going to do her best not to let him keep. Every few seconds, one of them glanced over at the box.

  At least they weren’t focused on her.

  She knelt at Gabe’s side. He didn’t move, but she could tell by the movements of his chest that he was breathing. “Hey, big guy,” she said quietly, brushing his messy hair off his bloody face, which was so swollen that he barely looked like himself. “I dropped by to say hi.”

  He flinched as she touched his cheek. “You can’t be here,” he said hoarsely. “Your cards . . .”

  “I came to rescue you,” she said lightly, right into his ear.

  His left eye, the one that wasn’t swollen shut, opened to a slit. “Ernie . . .”

  “You have some explaining to do, mister. You forgot to mention you were related to the supervillain.”

  His eye closed, and Ernie wasn’t sure whether he was conscious or not. But it didn’t matter right now. She leaned down and gently kissed Gabe’s forehead, then stood up and turned around. It was time to deal. She walked toward the table where her box lay. “I’m ready,” she said. “I’m going to hand this over, and then we can play.”

  Duncan grinned and the others stepped to the side, forming a semicircle around her.

  “Just curious, guys,” she said as she fiddled with the catch on the box. “Why do you want these so badly?”

  Akela crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve got my own reasons. These jackasses want to go shooting at the moon.”

  “Even the moon bleeds sometimes,” said Ruslan.

  “You only sound like a smart person to stupid people,” Akela said, her black eyes on the box.

  Ruslan tried to punch her in the arm, but she caught his fist in midair, her cards glowing in her other hand. “Try that without your deck,” he growled.

  “Not really the point, is it now?” Rupert commented, using a card as a mirror to make sure his hair was spiking properly.

  “Not now,” Duncan said as Ruslan and Akela faced off. “She’s about to give us the Marks!”

  “Okay, guys.” Ernie said a silent prayer as she turned the box around.

  Then she opened the lid, and all hell broke loose.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ernie staggered back, and all
four Dealers shouted as their animals leapt off their arms and landed on the ground with sickening thumps. The wolf spider was as big as it had been in the clearing when she and Gabe had dueled with Akela. The hyena was the size of a pony, and the diamondback—oh, poor Legs, she was the size of an anaconda and looked mightily pissed. The Komodo dragon’s tail was so long that it took out the table as it thrashed back and forth, sending the whole thing crashing to the ground—including the box. The rune tile that had been nestled inside it bounced off its velvet cushion and landed on the cement floor, where it glowed a sickly red that got brighter by the second.

  The Dealers just gaped.

  Then the creatures attacked, each one leaping for its own Dealer. Ernie stared for a moment, long enough to see the Komodo close its jaws around Ruslan’s thick arm, and then realized that she was wasting her chance. She whirled around, her own deck drawn. But her cards were cold, maybe because Legs was occupied. The fact that the diamondback still had a connection with Duncan was, at the moment, more of a blessing than a curse, even if it meant that Ernie’s cards were useless to her.

  While the other Dealers were battling their animals, Ernie raced to her mom’s side, pausing only to snatch a jagged shard of glass from the floor. She sawed frantically at the ropes until she got through one thick coil and was able to unwrap it. When her mother’s arms were free, Ernie let her continue to untie herself as Ernie ran to Gabe and freed him the same way. His deck wasn’t where she’d seen it on her card while she was in the Dreams realm, though. She looked around the whole corner, which was smeared with blood and laden with severed ropes. “Where are your cards?”

  “He took them,” Gabe said.

  “Dang it,” said Ernie. “Mom?”

  “Here,” she said, limping over.

  “Get Gabe outside.”

  “No,” Gabe said with a groan as Ernie and Mara hoisted him up. He smelled of sweat and suffering, and he looked close to death.

  “Caera’s out there,” Ernie snapped. “She needs you.”

  Gabe muttered something in Gaelic and took a tortured step toward the door.