Beginner's Luck_An Urban Fantasy Adventure

by J. A. Cipriano

  “That is what they say, my young friend,” the other guy said, nodding along. “I was around back then, and I definitely remember a rash of deaths. In fact, the psycho might still be in the city to this day. They say that he was killed, but no one ever found his body.”

  I came closer than ever to reacting with that one. It was another rumor I hadn’t heard … that John ‘Ace’ Burdon was dead. Everyone assumed he’d vanished, gone to ground with his prize and probably escaped the city. I’d come here to find out the truth and any possible leads.

  Whoever this old guy was, he seemed to know more about my father than I did. I was about to inject myself casually into the conversation, try to finesse something more out of him, but just then the person in front of him walked away from the registration table, and Mr. Information stepped up for his turn.

  Behind the table, the dynamic duo of Tiffany and Jeremy, the same people who’d signed me up for the preliminary round, chatted up the old guy as they verified his ID and took his money. I listened in and found out that his name was Colin Mayer, he’d lived in the city for thirty years, and this was his tenth attempt at the Four Skulls. If he’d been here that long, maybe he really did know something.

  I made a mental note to get to know this guy as soon as possible so that I could pump him for info.

  Before long, I was at the table facing a beaming Tiffany and a scowling Jeremy. The latter looked at me like I was a bug on his windshield as he said, “Oh, I remember you. Nice of you to bother showing up on time, Mr. Wyatt.”

  “Hey, it’s the least I could do, since you were so nice about me coming in under the wire last time,” I said, returning his sour expression with a grin as I set the briefcase with my entry fee on the table and pulled my wallet. “Let me just grab my ID.”

  Tiffany flashed a frown at her co-worker and then turned to me with her game-show smile. “Congratulations on qualifying for this year’s Four Skulls tournament,” she said, taking the ID from my hand and running it through the portable scanner. “And now, if we could just have your thumbprint?” She handed the card back to me and held the scanner out.

  I pressed my thumb against the dot on the screen, and as the green light flashed, a bunch of text scrolled up the screen. Tiffany turned the scanner back and read the words. “Okay, Mr. Wyatt, you’ll be playing in the third seat at table two, in the first round of our opening games. Please be in your seat no later than fifteen minutes before the official start time of noon, and thank you for entering the Four Skulls Tournament at the Chute.” Her faux-hostess grin nearly split her face, and she suddenly turned it on Jeremy with a kind of ferocious cheer.

  A pinched expression crossed Jeremy’s face. “The crown jewel of the Underground. Fun for the whole family, bring the kiddies,” he said in a completely flat tone. “Check in at our front desk for exclusive suite rates and while you’re there, why not ask about our dildo and fleshlight rentals?”

  “Jeremy!” Tiffany sputtered as her face turned a dark shade of pink. “What on earth has gotten into you today? Apologize to our guest, this instant!”

  I choked on a laugh and looked away from her incensed gaze. “No apology necessary,” I said, glancing at Jeremy as he snickered behind a hand. I could only imagine how bored out of his mind the poor guy was, having to repeat the party line over and over in the shadow of Tiffany’s colorful, distracted patter. “Oh, and Tiffany, you should probably take a breath pretty soon. You’re turning a very interesting color.”

  Jeremy actually laughed as Tiffany huffed out an affronted breath. “Good luck today, man,” he said. “I think I’ll check out a few of your games. Seems like you might make it pretty far.”

  “You can bet on it,” I said, grinning as I walked away with a wave.

  I moved off through the crowds, and it wasn’t long before I ran into Arden. Or rather, she ran into me. The little blonde wrapped me in a squeeze, pushed up on her toes and kissed my cheek, and then stepped back beaming.

  “You made it,” she said. “No trouble from you-know-who?”

  “Not so far,” I told her as I smiled back. “So, I don’t think I asked you before, but why don’t you ever enter the Four Skulls?”

  “Because unlike some lucky people I know, I don’t have two million dollars to burn,” she said, poking the tip of her tongue out at me.

  I laughed. “Hey, I’m not burning anything,” I said. “This is an investment in my future of humiliating Joad Baylor.” And the first step in preventing the king of the dark elves from conquering our world, though I wasn’t going to get into that with Arden. Not yet, anyway. “Who else is here?”

  “We’ve all got a table over here,” she said as she grabbed my hand and started tugging me through the crowds, toward the main bar. “I guess it’s the usual crowd. Shelby and Lee, Horace, Ophelia and that Nighthawk guy she’s been hanging with. Johnny Six shut down the Oaken Barrel for the day and brought Silvia over. Oh, and Elias and Mist got here early, so they’re already registered.”

  “Early?” I said with a smirk. “I dragged my ass here two hours ahead of time, and I thought that was early.”

  Arden giggled. “Your early’s always been a little later than everyone else’s.”

  I shrugged. “Guilty as charged,” I said. It was true, my internal clock tended to stray toward late territory, but I’d always been a night owl, even before I made the permanent move to the city of endless night.

  Just as I spotted the crowded table filled with friends, I noticed another familiar figure at the main bar. One with a distinctive mane of red hair. “Okay, I see where you guys are,” I said to Arden. “Why don’t you go on over, and I’ll be there in a minute? I just have to talk to somebody real quick.”

  Arden raised an eyebrow and followed my stare to the bar. “You know, I figured you’d be the first one to get to know her,” she said with a fond smile. “The redhead, right? Why don’t you invite her to join us? We’ve all seen her around lately, but no one’s officially met her yet.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that,” I said, not sure if that was actually going to work out. Arden obviously didn’t know that Zorah was a Collector, but someone else in our group might. If that was the case, things could get very awkward. Especially since I doubted Zorah wanted to tell her life story to a bunch of new strangers. But I’d invite her over anyway, and see what happened from there.

  As Arden headed for the table, I went to the bar. Zorah caught sight of me as I approached and shifted on her stool, turning with a hesitant smile. “Hey, Seth,” she said. “I told you I’d come. And I’m not even … doing any business today.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear, but don’t get yourself into trouble,” I said. While I was at her place yesterday, we’d talked a little about the Collector thing, and she told me they actually had quotas to meet for buying souls, like cops and traffic tickets in the normal world.

  Of course, then we’d done a little more than talk.

  Color rose to her cheeks as if she’d read what I was thinking. “I won’t. I’m actually ahead of things right now,” she said as she averted her gaze. At least it was a sign that she didn’t enjoy her job. “So, you’re all signed on or whatever you do for these things?”

  “Yep, checked in and paid up.” I moved a little closer, so I didn’t have to raise my voice over the crowd noise. “Hey, listen, a bunch of my friends have a table over there,” I said, nodding toward the group, even though she probably couldn’t tell which table I meant. “Do you want to join us? They’re pretty curious about you, and to be honest, I’m not sure if any of them know about your job. But you don’t have to tell them anything you don’t want to.”

  Her breath caught slightly as she followed my gesture. “I don’t know,” she said, catching her full lower lip with her teeth. “I mean, I’m not even sure why I talked to you in the first place. I’m glad I did, don’t get me wrong,” she added quickly. “It’s just that I’ve been careful not to make any friends here, because of what I am. No one unders
tands.”

  “I understand,” I told her, taking her hand. “Look, ‘Collector’ is not what you are. It’s what you have to do, at least until I can find a way to get you out of it. And I’m definitely going to. But until then … you don’t have to be alone.”

  She shivered, closed her eyes, and after a minute she stood from the stool. “Okay,” she said with forced determination. “Let’s do it.”

  I smiled and led her toward the table, glad she was going to take the chance. I didn’t figure any of my friends would give her grief, even if they knew her secret.

  And if they did, I’d just make sure they stopped.

  30

  Zorah fit right in with the group. We spent a while talking and laughing, just shooting the shit. About forty-five minutes before the start of the tournament, the bunch of us headed for the Grand Ballroom, hoping for decent spectator seats and making sure those of us who were playing got to our seats in time. Mist and Elias had a bit more leeway than me since they were both starting in the second of the four-round first game.

  It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that every seat in the place was already filled.

  A huge but normally quiet space compared to the rest of the casino, the Grand Ballroom was a pandemonium of movement and lights and noise. The room often hosted live concerts and shows, so there were built-in cushioned bleachers around the perimeter, but today they’d also set up banks of chairs in front of the bleachers for additional seating. This crowd was easily a few thousand strong.

  Poker tables were set up on a large, shallow platform in the middle of the room, one in the center and four more arranged in a diamond around it. There was a large RESERVED FOR FINALS sign on the center table, and a few of the players had already taken their seats at the surrounding tables, where dealers were stationed to monitor the chips, check place cards, and generally keep things as calm as possible. On top of that, video cameras had been set up at each table, no doubt wired to run feeds to the four huge monitors mounted high on the walls that faced each section of seating.

  But out of all this chaos, it was the other figure on the platform that drew my attention. The black-robed figure strung with silver chains like a gruesome anti-Christmas tree, standing with folded arms as his glowing amber eyes scanned the room incessantly.

  Apparently, the rumors that Titus was the Enforcer assigned to this year’s tournament were true. Lucky me.

  I let out a sharp sigh. Both Arden and Zorah heard me over the noisy room and looked at me with concern. “What’s wrong?” Arden asked.

  “Nothing. I just noticed that my favorite Enforcer is here,” I said, looking anywhere but at Titus, in the hopes that he wouldn’t spot me and start harassing me. “Does anybody see that douchebag Baylor around? I’d like to get a few jabs in before the tournament starts.” Maybe it was petty of me, but I wanted him to know I wasn’t afraid of his bullshit threats. And even if he’d thought about trying something, the Null field in the ballroom would stop him.

  “You know, he’s made himself pretty scarce lately,” Arden said, her brow furrowing like she hadn’t really thought about it until just now. “Usually he’s out throwing his money all over the place, every night. But I’ve barely seen him the past few days.”

  Zorah looked troubled. As Arden drifted toward the rest of the group, who’d wandered ahead in a futile attempt to look for seats, Zorah grabbed my arm lightly to hold me back. “Joad is very likely suffering from the strain of working for … him,” she said, still unwilling or unable to speak Oberon’s name. “He doesn’t usually work with humans. The leash he places on his slaves is powerful, designed to suppress much of their own magic so they can’t rebel. And since most humans have no natural magic …”

  “It must be hitting Joad in another way,” I said, suddenly realizing that he really hadn’t looked too healthy when I caught him arguing with Cayn. Maybe he hadn’t come after me because he was too weak to fight. Not that I felt one iota of sympathy for the bastard for aligning himself with scum like Oberon. “Well, too bad for him. I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.”

  Zorah gave a grim nod. “If he fails today …”

  “He will fail. There’s no way I’m letting him win.” I forced a smile I didn’t feel, thinking about what this meant for Zorah. She hadn’t mentioned a leash before. That had to suck, having something that was constantly draining her magic. I was more determined than ever to get her away from Oberon. “Come on, it looks like they found some seats,” I said as I led her toward the group. “I think this is gonna be a good day.”

  Surprisingly, my friends had managed to find some empty chairs near the front of a floor section. I had a feeling that either Elias or Mist, or both of them, had been creatively persuasive in getting some other people to abandon their spots, but I wasn’t going to knock their methods. By now it was twenty minutes to game-time, and I had to get to my seat at the table.

  I said my quick goodbyes and headed to the platform, taking the three shallow steps to reach the top. It didn’t take long to spot my name at the center seat of one of the tables. But as I moved to take the chair, I suddenly felt a stare burning through my back.

  Even though I didn’t have to look to figure out who it was, I turned and found Titus glaring directly at me. He wanted to let me know that he was watching me, in case for some reason I tried to cheat the un-cheatable like some kind of newbie moron.

  Or like my father had managed to do, somehow.

  For the first time, I found myself wondering if Titus knew my secret. The Enforcers had been here since the beginning … or at least, some of them had. I didn’t know exactly what they were or where they came from, or whether the Council had brought in more of them as the city’s population grew. But the Enforcers had magic that no one else was able to use, or even really understand, so maybe he did know. Hell, maybe he’d been the one to catch my father.

  And if good old Ace had escaped Titus, and he somehow knew who I really was, that might explain why the Enforcer was so hell-bent on bringing me down.

  I dredged up a carefree grin and waved at Titus, practically daring him to come at me. That probably wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had. But he just kept glowering at me, stiff and unmoving, so I took my seat and gave my thumbprint to the dealer in exchange for my rack of chips. Three of the other players at my table were already seated, and the last one arrived just as my chips were pushed in front of me.

  Damn. I’d still been half hoping to get Joad at the first table, humiliate him early, but no such luck. Maybe he had some kind of inside connection with the tournament that prevented him from being matched against me, or a courtesy choice of table because he’d been last year’s champion. But he couldn’t avoid me forever. Unless someone else knocked him out first, I’d see that scumbag at the winner’s table, and he’d walk away a loser.

  But I did have at least one interesting person for the first round. The last player to arrive, the man who’d taken the seat to my right, was Colin Mayer. The old guy from the registration line who seemed to know a few things about my father. Now might be a good time to break the ice with him.

  As we waited for noon, I turned toward him, all smiles, and extended a hand. “Seth Wyatt,” I said. “It’s my first time playing the Four Skulls.”

  He looked surprised for a second, but then he grinned and shook with me. “I can tell it’s your first time, young man. Most of these old cads don’t bother making nice with the competition.”

  “Thanks,” I said with a laugh. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

  “Let’s call it a compliment. I’m Colin Mayer.” The older man stared at me a little too long, and for a second I got a little paranoid. If he’d been here when my father was, if he’d seen him, maybe he’d noticed some kind of resemblance. Not that there was much of one, in my opinion. But he smiled again, and I relaxed inwardly. “Maybe you’ll get first time lucky,” he said. “But I’ll tell you, this is my tenth try, and I’ve n
ever gotten further than game two. There’s some serious competition around here, even when there’s no cheating going on.”

  “Cheating?” I said casually as if I had no idea what he was getting at. “I thought that’s what the Null field and that guy over there were for.” I sent a brief nod toward Titus, after a glance to make sure he’d stopped staring at me.

  “Yes, the Enforcer. We didn’t always have one at the Four Skulls,” Colin said in a sorrowful tone that was almost mocking, or maybe I imagined the sarcasm. “That started about ten years ago after a man actually cheated the tournament and won.”

  I made my eyes widen a little. “Really? I’ve only been here three years,” I said. “What happened?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you—”

  Colin was interrupted when an exuberant female voice boomed over the loudspeakers through the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the fortieth annual Four Skulls Tournament at the Chute!”

  I winced and laughed to myself as I recognized the voice. Tiffany, once again playing her game-show host role to perfection. As I scanned the room again, I noticed a glass booth overlooking the ballroom above the bleachers, containing a row of six chairs behind a counter outfitted with microphones. There was Tiffany, with Jeremy slouching in the seat beside her, looking like he’d rather sink into the floor and fall to his death than listen to any more of her showboating.

  The other chairs in the booth were occupied by two men in dark suits, flanking a pair of goblins. Fezak, I presumed, and possibly his rarely seen and even more rarely discussed wife, though from this distance it was hard to tell whether one of the goblins was female. Actually, it was hard to tell up close.

  As Tiffany prattled on about the wondrous marvels of the Chute and how everyone should spend all their money here with an occasional dry interjection from Jeremy, I tuned out the announcements and focused on my game. I’d already started studying the other players, inventorying their tics and mannerisms so I could compare them with their reactions to the cards.