Dreamleaf Blues (The Book Wielder Saga)

by Sean Davies

  “What is this, some sort of twisted recruitment strategy?” Genevieve snapped at Veronica. “Did you put him up to this, is that why you wanted me to come here? So you could turn me against the Golden Fangs?!”

  Veronica raised her hands defensively. “Slow down, Genie, I didn’t know, I promise! We don’t tend to discuss gang details over the landlines.”

  Gregory leaned over his messy desk. “What’s so hard to believe, Genie? Everyone knows the Golden Fangs are a bunch of psycho-pricks. I can’t wait for them to get their comeuppance for what they did to Anna and the others. I have to send every dealer out with a convoy’s worth of Supernatural back-up just in case the Golden Pricks strike. They know we’re too clever and discrete to make a show of ourselves, and they use that against us.”

  “No,” Genevieve shook her head. “No, it can’t be…”

  Greg gave Veronica a very confused look.

  “They took her in… the Golden Fangs,” Veronica explained, dumbfounded.

  “Oh, that’s fucked up,” Gregory sighed, and shook his head disapprovingly.

  Genie ran her hands through her fiery coloured hair. “It can’t be true, it just can’t be,” she muttered despairingly, unwilling to believe it.

  However, the facts and evidence arranged itself in Genevieve’s head, and everything began falling into place piece by piece.

  Genevieve remembered that Scythe had been off with her from the start, unreasonably so, and had been talking to Seth about how dangerous it was to have her in the gang after her brush with death in the lumber yard. That was right before Seth had dropped the bombshell that Annabelle was dead, and given Genie the all-too-convenient news that the Golden Fang’s enemies were responsible.

  She also thought about the frenzied argument that had led to Chaz’s death. In the heat of the moment, Genie had thought that Chaz had pushed his luck one step too far with his constant disobedience and attitude problem, but when she studied what Chaz had said in more detail it was obvious that Seth had shot him to keep the angry Mage – one of his oldest friends – from spilling the beans and costing him his Elissa lookalike.

  Genie’s mind also wandered to the Koill Monastery, where the Morriganigh Bloodmage had invaded her mind with the bittersweet visage of Annabelle. The enemy Bloodmage had been inside of Seth’s head also, and Genie realised with spine-chilling certainty that the Morriganigh Vampire was about to reveal the betrayal to her, probably to win her over as an ally in the heated battle, right before Archie tore his gaunt head from his shoulders.

  Genevieve stormed out of the Open Vein nightclub without looking back, but found her pace began to slow down against her will as she crossed the carpark. She turned to see Veronica catching up to her. The beautiful Vampire had one hand extended towards Genie and was sending small wisps of translucent red magic towards her.

  “Let me go!” Genevieve grunted, futilely trying to break free from Veronica’s invisible restraints.

  Veronica shook her head. “I know what you want to do. You can’t take the whole fort by yourself. You know you’ll be overwhelmed!”

  “I don’t care, let me go! They fucking betrayed me! They lied to me from the fucking start!” Genie shouted.

  Veronica slowly approached. “I know, I know… but you’re not thinking straight. Don’t be mad, but I’m going to do something to calm you slightly,” she said sympathetically.

  “Stay the fuck away from me!” Genie screamed, redoubling her efforts to escape.

  “Sorry, but you’ll thank me for this later.” Veronica timidly raised her hand to Genevieve’s brow and radiated a warm red glow from the palm of her hand.

  The blood magic seeped into Genie’s skull and she slowly calmed down. Her thoughts became more orderly, and she was bitterly grateful Veronica had stopped her from seeing red.

  “Better now?” Veronica asked kindly.

  “Uh huh, thank you,” Genie mumbled.

  “I wanted to get you away from the Golden Fangs, before we in the Circle or the Trinity snuff them out, and I thought meeting more of the gang would convince you,” Veronica explained meekly. “I didn’t know… I didn’t know this would happen, honestly.”

  “It’s fine, don’t worry about it, I believe you,” Genevieve answered softly as her newly calmed mind began scheming away.

  Someone appeared in the club’s doorway and yelled, “Veronica, the boss is on the phone. It sounds urgent!”

  “Okay, I’ll be right there,” Veronica called back. She turned to Genevieve and asked, “Will you come back inside?”

  Genie nodded solemnly. “In a minute, I just need a moment out here to get myself back together.” She forced up thoughts of drinking heavily at the bar to the forefront of her imagination.

  “Okay. You won’t run off, will you?” Veronica asked with a frown.

  “I won’t,” Genevieve answered quietly, taking care not to promise.

  “Good, I’ll see you in there,” Veronica said, jogging off inside to take her phone call.

  Genevieve sprinted off in a flash of blinding movement as soon as Veronica was in the door.

  She made it back to her apartment moments later and checked the trunk of her battered jeep. Genie saw the duffel bag she’d carried back from the Koill Monastery, which she had forgotten to offload at Fort Dominia, and smirked as she rushed up to her apartment. Veronica had indeed calmed her mind, and as such, her vengeful plan was piecing together quickly and accurately.

  Genevieve quickly changed into a thick black vest top, leather jacket, and a pair of black combat trousers, rushing so she wouldn’t be snared by Veronica’s blood magic again, and equipped her knives and Katana. She didn’t care if anyone spotted her; Genie was confident that she could lie or bribe her way out of trouble if it came to it. She grabbed a case of money that the treacherous Golden Fangs had left for her, emptied another into her jacket, and ran to her jeep.

  She parked down the road from the Woodsholme Grill, shouldered her duffel bag, and walked quickly to the restaurant.

  “Seth said you can all go to the party early,” she announced to the gang members when she walked inside.

  The Golden Fangs didn’t need telling twice, and they patted her on the shoulder as they passed.

  Dane was behind the bar, looking dishevelled and close to a nervous breakdown, and Genie approached him and put the case of money before him.

  “What… what is it?” he stammered nervously.

  “A case full of Imperial Credits,” Genie began firmly. “Take it, get as far away from here as you can, and don’t look back.”

  Dane slowly took the money as though it might have been a deception, but once it was in his grip the poor man gave her a quick, heart-felt thank you and rushed out of the restaurant.

  Genevieve smiled, and then headed to the kitchen and boiler room to put the next part of her plan in motion, and to begin her first steps on the warpath.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Scythe was sitting at her desk calculating earnings in a large ledger, wearing a glamorously revealing ice-blue dress and playing with her long, beautifully dyed hair when Genevieve walked inside.

  “Genevieve the saviour,” the frosty Mage greeted her with a pang of jealousy. “You’re dressed for a funeral, and your hair looks like it fell into a lawn-mower and was set on fire,” she added insultingly. “What do you want?”

  Genevieve shuffled the strap off her shoulder and let the large black duffel bag fall to the floor. “My friend Annabelle… are you sure you’ve never seen her?”

  “Not this again,” Scythe groaned. “No, she’s dead. Get over it already.”

  Scythe stopped playing with her extremely long hair and casually reached over to her drawer. She slid it open just a fraction and reached for a potion while she continued writing on the gridded paper with her other hand.

  The subtle movement wasn’t lost on Genevieve, and she dived across the room, somersaulted over the desk, and landed behind Scythe. Genevieve rested her Katana against the
Mage’s soft neck.

  “Drop it,” Genie demanded coldly.

  “It’s just a Stoneskin potion. Argh!” Scythe squealed as Genevieve pressed the fine blade against her flesh, and immediately dropped the vial.

  “You lied to me,” Genevieve hissed. “You took Annabelle.”

  Scythe slowly raised her hands in surrender. “Uh huh, okay, let’s not be too hasty now… I did, but only under Seth’s orders… and she was just a human working for a rival gang. He told me not to tell you; it’s Seth you want, not me! You haven’t been on the wrong side of him, but… but I have!” The frosty Mage began to weep uncontrollably.

  Genevieve smiled evilly. “I can do the whole fake crying thing too, you know.”

  Scythe stopped her fake tears immediately, and began chuckling as bravely as she could with razor-sharp Spell-forged steel kissing her neck. “Gaius and his goons are going to be here any moment, to relieve us of duty so we can go party.”

  “Just for the record, we’ve got the place to ourselves,” Genevieve said maliciously. “And I’m glad Gaius is coming, I can’t wait to tell him what happened. I bet he’s as sick of you and your boy-toy as I am by now.”

  The Mage sniggered. “He knows full well what happened; who do you think I delivered your bimbo lover to? Gaius is the head of security, after all, and he has very unnatural tastes…”

  “I went down to the interrogation cells and they barely looked used,” Genevieve said doubtfully.

  “You didn’t look under the trapdoor, did you? Underneath the carpet? It’s where Gaius does all his best… work. He’s a bad influence on my Seth, but I suppose it’s better that he does that weird shit to others than to me,” Scythe said mockingly.

  Genevieve’s world was turned upside down once again, but this time she didn’t have Veronica nearby to calm her. Speckles of red flared on her vision, and her heartbeat echoed in her ears. Every sadistic gleam in the Werewolf’s yellow eyes and every amused note in the tone of his voice tallied up in Genevieve’s mind, and she knew that not only had her mentor been lying to her the whole time, but on some level, he had enjoyed the deception.

  “So everyone lied to me this whole fucking time,” Genevieve growled through gritted teeth.

  “Yeah, pretty much. Sorry,” Scythe said in a snide tone.

  Genie pressed the blade closer to the Mage’s weak flesh and was deeply satisfied when a thin line of blood ran down the edge of her blade. She studied the Spell-forged steel blade momentarily – the Katana that had become like an extension of her very being, and she realised that it, too, was a part of the grand deception surrounding her. It was just another gift intended to buy her loyalty and throw her off the scent, just like the jeep, the computer, and the regular shipments of blood, booze, drugs, and food. Although, she couldn’t blame the sword for its former owners’ actions, and Genie tightened her grip on the woven fabric around the hilt.

  “Do you want to know what the worst bit is for you?” Scythe asked in a happy voice.

  “What?” Genevieve narrowed her eyes and prepared herself for another ice-cold wave of disillusionment, deception, and depression.

  “I get to tell Seth that I was right about you all along…” Scythe began wistfully. “Right after I shatter you into a million pieces!”

  Genie yelped as her Katana became freezing cold and agonising to hold. She instinctively released her grip on the hilt to stop the burning pain, and it fell to the floor with a thin layer of her skin wrapped around the hilt. In that time, Scythe had forced her chair backwards into Genevieve and risen sharply to smash her head into Genie’s jaw.

  Genevieve bumped into the wall behind her, but somersaulted across the room before Scythe could strike with a dagger made of ice. As soon as Genie landed she launched a barrage of throwing knives towards the frost Mage, but Scythe created a buckler of solid ice on her arm and the blades smacked into it without doing the Mage any harm.

  Scythe began radiating waves of freezing cold wind, as she picked up her metal staff from the corner of the room and grew her trademark scythe on the end of it. Genevieve held two throwing knives in either hand like a pair of daggers, and squinted her eyes against the magical artic aura.

  “I imagine it’s getting quite hard to move,” Scythe began, slowly bridging the gap between them, completely unaffected by the ice-stricken room. “That must be awfully awkward for a Nightclaw.”

  Genevieve lunged forward, forcing her heavy limbs into action, but the Mage countered her every move and retaliated with quick strikes from her scythe. Genevieve could see the icy blade travelling slowly, thanks to her spiked reflexes, but with her body slowly but surely freezing, dodging them became increasingly difficult.

  “Just give up, new girl,” Scythe mocked as she batted Genie with the blunt end of her weapon.

  Genevieve’s lips were shivering too much for her to utter a comeback, but she did manage to grasp the freezing cold shaft long enough to throw Scythe off guard for a moment. Genie threw her knives as fast as her creaking limbs would allow, however the aim was poor and even at close quarters the blades missed their mark. Genevieve slumped to the floor, unable to resist the unbearable cold any longer. The icy Mage spun her scythe, flaunting her skill before raising it in the air for the killing blow.

  “Time to die, new girl,” Scythe mocked victoriously. “I’ll be sure to send my love to your parents once I’m done with you.”

  The mention of her parents ignited a ferocious fury within Genevieve’s soul. She remembered she wasn’t just fighting to avenge Annabelle or to simply save her own skin, but to keep her loved ones safe too. She screamed inside her head as she forced her frozen limbs into action, and mentally commanded her agility to surge beyond its limits. In a lightning-fast strike, Genie rose to her feet and kicked the Mage in the stomach so hard that she smashed into the far wall, breaking the plasterboard and several bones, and fell forward onto her desk in a crumpled mess. Genevieve rolled across the frost-covered carpet, picked up her burning-cold Katana, and used her meditated determination and vengeful fury to supress the pain completely.

  “I’ll be sure to send my love to Seth,” Genevieve said, spilling out a mouthful of condensation, “once I’m done with you!”

  The broken Mage only managed a blood-filled gasp before Genevieve sliced through her long purple and blue hair, neck, and desk in one powerful strike.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Genevieve was standing by the office window with her hands in her leather jacket, nearby the ruined desk that she had raided for Scythe’s fort key, when she heard Gaius approaching.

  “Scythe, what the fuck is up with the gassy smell in this place?” Gaius called in a creepily charming tone. “Scythe?! Oh, never mind. You have a lot more than gas to worry about now,” he added slyly.

  Genevieve said nothing, and allowed the cunning Werewolf to enter the frost-covered room and see the damage for himself.

  “Scythe, you stupid slut, I know you’re in there!” he called again as he walked through the doorway with two of his men. “Genevieve? Oh, my… it looks like you’ve saved me a job,” he said merrily as he studied the headless corpse slumped over the blood-drenched desk, and Scythe’s pretty yet horrified head sitting atop the wastepaper basket.

  Genie hated how her former mentor could always catch her off-guard, no matter the situation. “Excuse me?!” she asked, flabbergasted.

  “Scythe, Seth… even that Trinity-tattletale Archie, they’ve all gone too far. Too much noise, too much stupidity, and most of all, too much disrespect. I’m cleaning house, so to speak,” Gaius said as though he was discussing the fine weather outside. “I wanted to influence them from behind the scenes, but if I let them carry on, I might as well paint a giant target on Fort Dominia and a smaller one atop my head.”

  Genevieve couldn’t believe what she was hearing. In one day, her whole reality had fallen into disarray. Brushing aside the continuing bombardment of confusion in her mind, she cut straight to the point.

&nbs
p; “I know about Annabelle,” Genevieve began disappointedly, “and your involvement.”

  “I know you know.” Gaius scratched his beard with an amused grin. “That’s why you killed Scythe, isn’t it? I imagine the bitch blabbed her heart out, grassed me up, and then tried taking you by surprise?”

  Genevieve nodded, and kept her hands firmly in her pockets.

  “What can I say, other than the fact that I’m deeply, deeply sorry? I hate to admit that I have unsavoury desires – being long-lived doesn’t help with the boredom, you see – but Seth and his boys take it to a whole new level. It’s just another reason they need to be stopped,” Gaius explained in a calm voice. “And I hate to say it, but at the time, she was just another human dealer working for the Shadow Circle. Had I known…”

  “…That I’d be a natural killing machine, huh? If you’d known her best friend – her lover – was going to be a decent asset for your ambitions, you would’ve spared her whatever sick shit you put her through?” Genevieve interrupted angrily. “You lied to me this whole fucking time. Out of all them, I thought you were different.”

  “You’re not thinking straight,” Gaius said impatiently, clearly bored of her emotional outburst. “You know you can’t fight me; I taught you every move, every step…”

  “Oh, I know I can’t beat you in a fight,” Genevieve cut in with wide, maddened eyes. She pulled a grenade out of her jacket and waved it side to side. “That’s why I’m not even gonna try.”

  Gaius and his loyal followers took a step backwards.

  “The gas leak was your doing?” the sly Werewolf asked proudly.

  Genie smiled. “Yeah. I guess you taught me too well.”

  “Brilliant, simply brilliant!” Gaius let out a genuinely happy chuckle. “Meet me at the fort tomorrow, and we’ll hash out a deal to make this all better. The way I see it, there’s going to be a lot of room for advancement come the morrow. This party of the century will be the last nail in the coffin for Seth Fleur d’Or and his thick-headed Golden Fangs. He thinks my men and I are sitting out the celebration to act as lookouts for trouble and to guard the area, but in fact we’ll be waiting for them to get fucked out of their faces on drink and drugs. On my command we’ll encircle the fort, hop the walls, and turn the party of the century into the bloodbath of the century! We’ll take our pick of the best from the ones that surrender, and dispose of the rest,” he said full of pride, very impressed with his own plan. “We’ll consolidate our power, not split our forces and hop continents like the gold-loving idiot-child wants, and lay low until the heat is off. From there, the future is ours. Now, pass me that grenade, and let’s put this nasty business behind us once and for all.”