Call of the Wilde

by Jenn Stark

  “So that’s not a lead either.”

  “Not really feeling too bad about that, sweet cakes,” Nikki observed drily, and Brody managed a chuckle.

  “I’m not either. I just feel so damned lost here. Too many dead bodies, and I get the feeling the reason why is right under our noses. I just don’t see how—”

  Wham! The side of our car crumpled.

  Our tires left the pavement as we were carried across the street on the hood of another car, fishtailing viciously. Nikki wrapped her arms around me, instinctively protective. The airbag deployed as Brody lurched against his restraints, and I was blown clean out of my body for a half second, my experience with astral travel probably the only thing that kept me from locking up as we spun to a stop in the yard of a tract house.

  Now I gaped, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. The other car had come at us so fast there’d been no bracing for it. One second we were racing along a street parallel to the Strip, the next…

  Because Brody’s car was standard-issue Sherman tank, it looked way better than it should after the collision. Lights up and down the street went on and people ran out into their yards, but I took the opportunity to peek in the windows while Nikki cursed with vicious creativity, trying ineffectively to open the jammed doors as I sagged against her, apparently passed out. What I saw in the other car, though, almost drove me back into my body.

  There was a man in it—nobody I knew. He was slumped in the driver’s seat, and I would’ve thought he’d fared even worse in the collision than we had, if it’d been the collision that’d killed him. It wasn’t, though. He owed that to the large round hole directly above his temple. Something peeked out of the pocket of his work shirt, and I flowed into the car and shoved the corpse just enough to jostle it free. A business card, one I recognized.

  “Dollface!” Nikki’s strident voice at my temple was loud enough to burst my eardrum. I jerked back into my body with enough force to send me sprawling against her, my arms and legs spontaneously flailing as I struggled to get ahold of myself.

  “Are you okay? Is—”

  “Cop coming up in twenty seconds,” Nikki hissed. “If you’re gonna drop the hammer on Brody, I recommend you doing it—”

  I didn’t wait for her to finish. Lurching forward, ignoring the spurts of pain shooting across my body, I grabbed hold of the detective’s neck. It was slick with blood from a shallow gash across his forehead, but I closed my eyes and breathed out, then in. Brody’s aura responded instantly, clearing as his synapses seemed to recognize me from the last time we played this game. With a coughing lurch, he jerked upright, his hand lifting to his face in a panic—probably not surprising, since his eyes were full of blood.

  “What the— What the hell!” he managed, enough anger in his voice that I was instantly relieved. I collapsed against Nikki once more, grateful when her arm snaked around me.

  “What the fuck is it with you two?” he continued railing. “You’re a two-woman wrecking ball this week!”

  “I love it when you talk dirty.” Nikki looked around but made no move toward the doors, even when the cops tried to pry them open. Another set of cops had already opened the door of the guy’s car who hit us, and Nikki peered at them with a sort of detached lack of concern that was finally beginning to penetrate my own fog. “He looks worse than we do.”

  “Oh.” I roused myself. “We should probably get over there, Brody. There’s a business card in the guy’s pocket with the word TRIDENT on it that you’re going to want to lift. And a hole in his head that had nothing to do with his car accident.” I considered those words even as I said them. “Well, I guess the hole could have had something to do with the accident. He wasn’t probably able to turn real well once that happened.”

  “What? Son of a—”

  With a speed and strength that startled me, Brody slammed his body against his door and burst free of the car, striding with boiling-over anger as he approached the other vehicle. He instantly started shouting at the assembled cops, flashing his badge and telling them to clear the hell out. Never mind that blood still caked his face and clothes, and that he walked with a notable lurch before pounding on his leg with an angry fist. After that, the limb seemed to work fine.

  “Um, did you make him a robot?” Nikki asked, awed.

  “I…”

  At that moment, the door to my left opened, and I peered out as a police officer reached in with a beefy hand—but the hand was palm out, almost in warning. “You stay right there, miss, we’ve got help on the way. We don’t want to move you—”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” Nikki barked beside me, finally seeming to come back to herself. “It’s your boy who’s gotten injured. We’re good.” She pushed at me, and I obligingly exited the car, patting down my body. I seemed to recall that we hit the side of the vehicle pretty hard, but I’d left my own form so quickly, I couldn’t get a sense of any real injury. Now I palpated my face, but it didn’t feel especially bruised.

  I looked at the police officer. “How banged up am I?”

  He squinted. “You’re both in better shape than Brody, that’s for damned sure. But we should check for concussion, whiplash.”

  “Nikki!” Brody’s roar cut across the buzzing people, and she shook her head, chuckling and then wincing as she held her ribs.

  “Whoops, I did get a little shook up. Hang on.”

  “I’ll go with,” I said, and I moved toward her, slinging my arm around her and holding tightly as my eyes half slitted. I pulsed a surge of healing energy into her six foot four frame.

  “Whoaaaa,” Nikki breathed as we hobbled toward Brody. “This is totally like drive-through service. I like it.”

  I smiled but my focus was on her body, not mine, and how she managed to keep me upright I had no idea, until we suddenly were in front of Brody once again, and he stood glaring at us.

  “What the hell?” he growled.

  Nikki straightened. “You know, I think I liked you better when you were beat to shit.”

  He ignored that, jerking his thumb to the body. “Either of you know that guy?”

  I looked down at the man slumped back against the car seat, noticing, of course, that the business card had been removed from his pocket and was nowhere in sight. Somewhere there was an evidence baggie in full pout, but I suspected the LVMPD was not going to be getting hold of the Trident card anytime soon. Good for Brody.

  The dead man looked as blank to me as he did the last time I’d seen him not five minutes earlier, and I shook my head.

  Nikki, however, leaned close, her left hand still palpating her ribs as if confused at what she was feeling there. Which was hopefully knitting bone and not some new strange protrusion that my inexperience had grafted onto her. I swallowed, suddenly queasy. I hadn’t thought about that possibility.

  “Hold up a minute,” she said. “I think I do know this guy. Or, more to the point, Dixie does.” She straightened again, chewing her lip. “Not sure how to work that.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “One of the files in her office. Photos and bios of the local gangs, their key people. This guy was in there, I’m almost sure. I took pictures on my phone, but of course that was not exactly a legal search.”

  “I just need a name, Nikki,” Brody said wearily. “Can you give me that? Just a name?”

  “Okay, okay.” She pulled her phone free of her skirt and was thumbing through it as the EMT van pulled up, and another uniformed officer stepped up and said something to Brody. He waved us off irritably, and the cop took us over to the van.

  Nikki looked up, squinting back at Brody. “You wanna maybe get him a towel?” she asked the cop.

  “Tried,” he said. “He’s kind of pissed off right now.”

  “Yeah, I picked up on that.” She turned to the EMT, who emerged from the truck, and flung her arms wide.

  “Aren’t you as cute as can be. You got any sort of X-ray in ther
e? I want to double-check my ribs.”

  The young woman began work on her, while another man approached me.

  “Ma’am?” he offered, and I gave him a tired smile.

  “I’m fine,” I said, my eyes still on Brody. “I was knocked against the car door, but I must have passed out. Nothing seems to be broken.” I submitted to his cursory exam, and he nodded briskly.

  “Sometimes passing out before impact is the best thing you can do,” he said. “The body doesn’t have a chance to lock up, just rolls with it, and you end up a lot less injured.”

  “There you go.” I watched as a uniformed EMT finally made his way over to Brody, and the detective took the towel from him, rubbing it roughly over his lower face, then proceeding more gingerly with his scalp. The bleeding had stopped, but the cut was still open and ugly. I hadn’t known how far to go for believability. Everything internal at least appeared sewed back together correctly, but I was a little nervous about his leg. Would he remember pounding on it in order to get it to work? Would he consider that unusual? I wasn’t sure I wanted to explain this new wrinkle in our relationship too clearly, or he’d never accept help from me again.

  As we stood with new reflective blankets around us—clearly, we should just stock up on these on our own and stop costing the taxpayers money—another car drove up. A familiar figure slammed the door and stalked our way—Ma-Singh in all his glowering bulk.

  Nikki pushed me toward him. “You handle the general, I’m going to get this picture to Brody,” she said, showing me the mug of the man that most likely was the corpse in the car. “Figure if he’s a known enforcer in the area, they might have him in the system already, another cop might recognize him, the whole thing. Won’t necessarily blow back on Dixie or her private stash of personnel files.”

  “Agreed.” I let Ma-Singh take me back to the car, then waited patiently as he took great pains to get me seated and comfortable in the limo—a true limo, not a town car, with facing seats and a wet bar off to one side. To my surprise, he climbed in after me, his bulk easily accommodated by the vehicle.

  He pointed to the wet bar. “Bourbon,” he said gruffly.

  I took it. “How’d you know we were hit?”

  “We have trackers on your phones. When your vehicle stopped abruptly, then moved off the road, we mobilized. Police and EMTs were notified, with our own backup nearby if needed. They weren’t.”

  His gaze tracked the action outside. “We wait for Nikki. The detective was injured but…” He slanted a glance at me. I shrugged. Ma-Singh had been on the healing end of my handshake as well, and he pressed his lips together in something approaching disapproval. “You’re not hurt?”

  “Not that I can tell,” I said. I refocused. “I think the dead guy was a makeup present from whoever the hell Trident is. You get anything on the name yet?”

  “Trident is apparently what the Myrmidons are calling themselves now.” He cracked a rare smile. “For obvious reasons. They do not use the name of the House of Wands in any form, but Trident, once we started looking, does have a faint footprint.”

  “They’re based where, Indonesia? Philippines? Somewhere there?”

  “That remains unknown, but as likely a location as any. When you say a makeup present…”

  “Two girls died tonight, I’m willing to bet by this guy’s gun. According to Nikki, he’s an enforcer.”

  Ma-Singh nodded as we watched the cops pull the corpse out of the vehicle. “Was.”

  “Yeah. Was. And Trident knew we wanted him, and so they delivered him on a platter. Might have been better if we’d been able to interrogate the guy, but…”

  “The House of Wands does not seem to be much for finesse.” Ma-Singh grunted. “More brute force. Something to keep in mind, should we decide to do business with them.”

  “Something to keep in mind,” I said, nodding. “Because we’re definitely going to do business with them.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  As I sat nursing my bourbon, the scene in front of us unraveled like a police procedural. A very boring police procedural. Nikki showed her phone to Brody, who scowled and ranted some more while she tapped on the device, apparently sending him the image. Then he was on his phone talking to a series of people and maintaining his almost frantic level of energy.

  Ma-Singh noticed my disquiet as I watched him. “You were not expecting this response? How injured was the detective?”

  “Not all that injured, I don’t think.” I frowned, thinking back to the accident. “Bags deployed. He slammed against the door. Cut his head and banged up his leg. Internally…” I shook my head. “Not bad. But he’s normally not the guy who leads with anger.”

  To my surprise, the general only chuckled grimly. “You have not received healing before?”

  “On the contrary. I’m a big fan of it. But…” I gestured with my bourbon hand. I wasn’t about to let the tumbler go. “I don’t react like that.”

  “When you assisted me and, I believe, Detective Brody, earlier, our wounds were much more severe, and we had the benefit of passing out in short order to continue the healing process. Healing of the mind, as well as the body. It is not an easy thing to accept such a touch from another person, to feel your body shift and heal spontaneously.”

  “Yeah, but you knew I was doing it. He didn’t. He’s got nothing to be pissed off about.”

  “I disagree. I would think the disorientation would be worse, if he does not understand why he’s feeling the way he is. Such confusion leads to anger, it would appear.”

  “It would appear.” I contemplated figuring out some way to let Brody in on the truth, but Nikki was standing right there. If his little rant got tiresome, she’d let him know what he had to thank me for.

  A moment later, a new vehicle turned onto the street, another nondescript fleet car of the LVMPD, driven by a cop. The car slowed to a stop and both rear doors opened.

  I straightened as I saw who got out. “What the hell?”

  Ma-Singh was watching too. Our limo was far enough away from the scene as to not attract immediate attention, but it was a limo. It wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.

  The general hit a button, then said something in Mongolian to the driver. The vehicle started up with a gentle purr. The moment the two figures reached the destroyed vehicles, we eased out of the space and backed slowly down the side street, until we were nearly out of sight.

  “Why is Interpol here?” Ma-Singh asked, before answering his own question. “The drug trade. The man in the car is part of it.”

  “It seems like everyone in this city is part of it.”

  Agent Marguerite Dupree suddenly seemed to recognize Nikki, because she whipped around, staring at the other watchers at the scene. She didn’t find who she was looking for, and she stalked up to Nikki, her manner tense, aggressive.

  “She’s looking for you,” the general said quietly. “We should leave.”

  “I do seem to be turning up a lot at the site of accidents and mayhem,” I muttered. I was too tired to play hero, though. It was nearly three in the morning. Ma-Singh gave the command, and we rolled down the street, out of sight of the arguing agents.

  “Miss Dawes will be retrieved by one of our other cars.” The general leaned back, regarding me intently. “You have not adequately healed yourself, though.”

  “Not really necessary.” I shrugged in my seat, stretching. “Once Brody and Nikki were taken care of, I seemed not to care as much. And I don’t think I was injured all that much to begin with. Right before the impact, or as it was happening, really, I left the car.”

  “Left it.”

  “Blew straight through the door. I’ve never done that before, astral traveled without help.” I took another slug of bourbon. “I’m not sure I’m a fan of that either, though it allowed me to get to the other guy in the car before the cops did. Which brings us back to these Trident people. What’s their stake in this?”

  �
�Here’s what we know.” The general’s voice was soothing over the purr of the motor, though his information was anything but. “You have been personally attacked three times by what is purportedly the House of Wands. Ordinarily, this would be an unforgiveable insult. In this case, given the very scant research we have, it’s more of an honor.”

  I stopped with my glass halfway to my mouth and eyed him dubiously. “An honor.”

  “The House of Wands, if their history is to be believed, was formed at the inception of the mortal Houses of Magic. Unlike all the other houses, it has remained in continuous operation, but separate of any human affiliation. The Cups allied with the splinter Templar group, Swords and Pentacles sullied their hands in commerce. Wands, however…disappeared.”

  “Until now.”

  “Until now,” Ma-Singh agreed. “Which begs the question why.”

  “They seem to be rocking the island vibe,” I suggested. “Maybe they got hit with an early storm. Maybe they already know we need to work together in order to handle whatever it is that’s coming.”

  “Prescient, and possible, but that does not explain their need to assault you. These were tests, and this,” he waved back to the scene we’d left behind, “was an acknowledgment of equality. Something less than an apology, more a returning of a favor.”

  “We beat you up and you hit us with shoes, so here’s a dead guy?”

  “Shoes?” Ma-Singh frowned.

  “Never mind. How is it they knew we were interested in the shooter?”

  “That isn’t so surprising. You were seen in two separate places tonight, both of which featured women who were attacked. At XS, it was a simple overdose, and the young woman survived. The pair you discovered at Chateau were not so lucky.”

  “Yeah, well—they couldn’t just have phoned us the guy’s location? I mean, they hit us with a moving vehicle, Ma-Singh. That doesn’t seem a little over the top to you?”

  He smiled. “As I said, brute force appears to be part of the Myrmidon culture. These are a proud people who endured a shame they still have not lived down three thousand years later. They can be excused for delivering their message in a manner that is a bit excessive.”