Call of the Wilde

by Jenn Stark

“If they don’t betray you to blast Hera back to her own dimension,” Nikki drawled.

  “If that.” I nodded. “To attract them, though, we must honor them. Honor is more in play than vanity, in this case. I will need three generals, and you, Ma-Singh.” I swung my gaze to Nikki. “And you.”

  Her brows climbed. For all her healthy self-image, Nikki was well aware of how she played among more traditional audiences. “You sure?”

  “I can think of no one closer to the original Amazon warriors, whom I suspect these men will remember well,” I said, allowing myself the smile as understanding spread across her face. “I’m sure.”

  “Timing?” Ma-Singh asked.

  “We leave tomorrow. Send emissaries to Mercault’s location today, but don’t act until morning. I’ll need to speak to Kreios about Gamon. I’d like her to be the first leader secured, then Mercault, especially if we can’t neutralize Mercault’s communications. I don’t want Gamon learning about our plans before Kreios speaks with her. He’ll do better with the advantage of surprise.” I really, really wanted to see that conversation. Or at least overhear it, but I had a feeling that the expression on Gamon’s face when Kreios approached her would be gold.

  “When we have everyone locked down, we move Mercault first, then Gamon and whatever generals she chooses to bring. That’s important.” I eyed the rest of my own team of generals. “Assume that once the main conflict has passed, they will seek to inflict collateral damage. You guard yourselves first from whatever is assaulting us from outside the veil, and then from Gamon’s men. Mercault won’t us cause any problems, he’ll be too busy saving himself. And the House of Wands won’t be targeting us.”

  “Plus they’re an army of ants,” Ma-Singh said without cracking a smile.

  I grimaced. “Try to not bring that up when we’re with them, okay?” I glanced around. “Questions?”

  “Just one,” Nikki said, raising her hand. “What if we get everyone there and the party ends up in another city entirely?”

  “That’s the second visit I need to make today,” I said. “Because if that happens, then the only option we have is relying on the Council.”

  That silenced the room. Nobody liked that idea.

  “So, we should prepare for the fight in London,” Ma-Singh said gruffly, and as one the generals all bent forward, speaking in rapid bursts.

  A phone rang. Nikki’s. I blinked, realizing I’d left mine in my room in my haste to exit my own chambers that morning, the sheets still damp with sweat.

  Nikki frowned down at the device. “Brody—text. He says to call, and he wants you on speaker.”

  Ma-Singh made a gesture, and one of the staffers hovering near the door disappeared back in the house, returning a moment later with a large phone unit. He set it on the table and assembled it with terse efficiency, then he paused over the keypad as Nikki rattled out Brody’s number.

  “It’s Sara,” I said as soon as he picked up.

  “Good. Thanks for calling me so quickly.” Brody’s voice was tight, still high energy, but it no longer held the surly edge it had the night before. “I’ll keep this quick, because you’re going to need time to prepare. You’ve got a problem with Interpol. A big one.”

  “What?” I blinked at the phone, then at Ma-Singh. The general looked equally mystified. “What kind of problem?”

  “They’re saying you know something about the drug enforcer death, that they have evidence that indicates you might be the mastermind behind a worldwide drug ring and responsible for at least half a dozen terrorist acts. Cited chapter and verse of ‘proof,’ that all looks like bullshit to me, but they’re standing by it, and so are the local law enforcement in the cities where the charges are being leveled. Including Las Vegas, for the record, though here, you’re only a person of interest. They brought me in because of my role here, more as a courtesy. I assume they figured I’d tell you, but they don’t seem to care. They think they have you dead to rights.”

  He drew in a long breath after that speech, but nobody moved on the patio.

  “If I were you, I’d get the hell out of Dodge, Sara, and pronto,” Brody finished. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The call from the front of the house came about fifteen minutes later, as I knew it would. Armaeus was many things, but one of my favorite was that on a need-to-know basis, he generally seemed to know. Whether he’d bugged my phone or Nikki’s or had bugged the patio at the house—even twice-daily scans had been known to miss Simon’s particularly sneaky tech—or if he was still plugged into the LVMPD, I didn’t much care. The limo was long, lean, and perfectly anonymous, and with Armaeus involved, it wouldn’t be seen.

  I left Nikki to make plans with Ma-Singh, though neither she nor the general had been thrilled at the idea of letting me out of their sight. Still, they trusted the Council in this, and for some reason, they trusted the Magician far more than I did. But the Magician wasn’t my only stop today.

  “Okay if we stop at the Flamingo first?” I asked the driver, bracing myself for it to be the Devil himself. Instead, the man merely flicked his gaze to the rearview mirror, then nodded.

  “Of course, Miss Wilde. My instructions are to take you wherever you need to go.” The man smiled faintly. “And to let you know that Mr. Kreios is waiting for you in his private office.” Another pause. “I believe you know the way?”

  I didn’t bother masking my chuckle as I leaned back in my seat and watched the Vegas skyline hove into view. It hadn’t been that long ago that I’d come here only when the paycheck was high enough. Now it had become home, just in time for me to be run out of town. I frowned, trying to remember the last real conversation I’d had with Roland and Marguerite, the two Interpol operatives who seemed hell-bent on making me cooperate with them, and who now, apparently, had given up on me. What had made them turn? Something I did?

  Granted, I’d stifled them at every opportunity, and they’d nearly been fried for their troubles the last time they’d gotten too close to me, but I hadn’t asked them to follow me. I was pretty sure they hadn’t followed Soo this closely. She’d fed them enough information to keep them satisfied, but I’d been too busy to mess with that. And with all the current problems in the world, they should be worrying about more than an informant gone rogue. What was their problem?

  The ride into the city was brief, traffic seeming to melt away in front of the limo—another perk of traveling with the Council, no app required—and we pulled up to the kitschy-as-all-get-out Flamingo Casino a few minutes later, the driver eschewing the regular roundabout for the service entrance.

  “Security, ma’am,” he said, but I didn’t mind. I was sure there were fewer cameras of the actual hotel back here as well.

  “I don’t know my way in from back here,” I commented as we headed to the back, where, as I expected, there was a uniformed guard at the door, far too gorgeous to be employed by the actual Flamingo.

  The car slowed to a stop. “Jacques will take you where you need to go,” my driver said. “I’ll wait here or can meet you out front if you prefer. Just let me know when you’re ready to depart.”

  “That’s Jacques?” I eyed the beefy man at the door. “He doesn’t really look like a Jacques.”

  The driver didn’t seem to know what to say to this, and I cut the man a break and put my hand on the door. “I won’t be long.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  I slung out of the car, wondering how many women this particular driver had escorted to the Devil’s domain this way, sneaking in the back, guards at the ready. Probably more than I wanted to think about.

  Jacques proved good to the driver’s description, however, and also mercifully silent. He led me down a half-dozen corridors, up a single flight of stairs, and around three sides of a right-angled walkway. When we finally reached an elevator bay, my temper was starting to fray. “Is he just doing this to piss me off?” I demanded. �
��Because it’s working.”

  “Excellent, Sara Wilde.” The Devil’s richly accented voice drifted around me as Jacques nodded to the elevator doors. They opened on a sigh to reveal not a typical metal bay, but another room entirely, this one hung with easily a thousand plants, the ceiling soaring far above, made of metal and glass. The Devil’s garden, right in the heart of the Strip.

  Nodding my thanks to Jacques, I entered, then followed the crushed-shell path through the heavy foliage, wondering, as I always did, how the Devil maintained this illusion to such a fantastic degree. He’d have to employ a veritable army of gardeners just to water everything, and though the indoor habitat was open to the sun, how could the plants possibly thrive all cooped up like this?

  “A question that the ancients have asked throughout time, if you must know the truth. And, because you’re you, you truly must.”

  The rich, elegant voice was clearer now, not piped over the airwaves but ahead of me past the next set of palms. I pushed through, and sure enough, Kreios awaited me on an elegant teak lounge, reclining in his favorite attire of threadbare khakis and a loose linen shirt. He had returned to his typical appearance as well, a Greek surfer god just in from a swim in the Aegean. He wore the look well.

  Gesturing to the chair beside him, he watched me with hungry eyes as I approached. I didn’t take it personally; it was how Kreios looked at everything. The human condition provided him with enough entertainment and psychological sustenance to keep him from ever wanting to board himself up in Hell, though technically it was his home base. As the Devil of the Arcana Council, though, he generally hewed to the more esoteric elements of his namesake—he was all about sensuality, vices, desires, and dark instincts…as well as the first to point out the ties that bound others too closely. Unlike what most suspected, he didn’t consider his role on earth an enforcer, merely an enabler. Humans, as he was fond of pointing out, did a far better job punishing themselves than he could ever have done himself.

  Now he looked like his mind was as far away from thoughts of punishment as it could get. “More lovely still,” he murmured. “What have you done since I left you last? The Magician, I hope?”

  I rolled my eyes but gratefully sank into the chair next to him. “We talked, and not for long. I healed Nikki and Brody following a car crash, myself too. That last took a little longer than expected, and I ended up having to make a demonstration of it to the troops.”

  “Ah yes, the troops. You’re quite the mob boss now. Complete with Interpol’s keen interest. They really should have waited until you had your sartorial makeover. Your hair looks much better now that you’ve abandoned the ponytail.”

  “I liked the ponytail,” I muttered, pushing my hair out of my eyes.

  “Beauty is pain.” He shrugged. “But what’s this?” He breathed in deeply and appeared to be rolling the oxygen over his tongue in appreciation. “Do I sense a favor about to be asked?”

  “Can you read my mind when I don’t realize it?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.

  He made a scoffing noise. “Now where would be the fun in that?” Still, since I asked him a direct question, he gave me a direct response. “And no. You’d feel my touch, like you’d feel the touch of any Council member. I’d like to think you’d enjoy mine more so than, say, the Magician’s, but he always was a bit of a bull in the china shop when he wanted information. Far more interesting to tease it out bit by bit, don’t you think?”

  “Uh-huh. And yet you believe I’m going to ask you a favor.”

  “Whyever else would you be here, Sara Wilde?” the Devil asked. “I don’t pretend to believe it’s because you’ve finally seen the error of your ways and would like to abandon the Magician, yea though he is so relentlessly earnest with his whole ‘balance the magic of the world’ harangue. Really, I thought you’d have done a better job distracting him by now.”

  “He seems pretty distracted by Hera.” I knew I should focus on what I needed Kreios to do with Gamon, but I couldn’t ignore this opening. Especially with what I’d experienced last night, I needed to understand the goddess better. And, in particular, the Magician’s specific needs that he felt the goddess could fill.

  Kreios didn’t seem surprised by the redirection. “Ah, yes, the illustrious Hera. If she’d remained focused on her earth mother role, she really would have been all right. It was when she sought to become a wife—and to Zeus, of all impossible decisions—that she ran into difficulties.”

  “The jealousy.”

  “A lot of that was simply bad press, of course. But humans weren’t exactly sure of what they wanted back in those days. I know, they’ve changed so much in the intervening millennia.” Kreios lifted one indolent shoulder. “But when Atlantis fell, there still were plenty of mortals who missed the old gods, and who found ways to subvert the veil. They brought them to earth all too often in the early years, and havoc inevitably ensued, until another group just as forcibly locked them out again.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “This has happened with pagan religions since the fall of Atlantis? Gods being brought back to earth, only to be banished once more?”

  “My dear Sara Wilde, it could be suggested that that’s what happened with all religions, of every stripe. Humans have a desire to worship something bigger than themselves. When they go searching for such a thing, they inevitably find it.”

  I decided I needed to veer off this slope before it became too slippery. “And Hera?”

  “When the goddess was formed, she longed to be adored. Worshipped. She was a creative force of love and abundance, and she reasoned that she should have greater power than she did. But by being relegated to the role of Zeus’s wife, she allowed herself to be defined by him. When that happened, her reactions became more important than her actions, in part because they were so, well, deliciously scandalous.” Kreios gave a shiver of appreciation, though I knew for a fact he’d only joined the Council in the 1930s. He hadn’t been around for Greece’s glory days.

  “And she didn’t like that.”

  “She didn’t, not at all. She talks a good game, and of course, once he finally got a bead on her, Armaeus would have brought her back even if she’d been a literal harpy, to get a sense of the world beyond the veil and the threats we are facing, but she really is a vengeful spirit. She may have been given a bad shake by the historians and scribes, especially as they were mainly men, even back then, but there is always some truth to even the most lurid of lies.”

  I felt a headache coming on. I could see where this was going. “So she did kill humans. A lot of them.”

  “By the literal boatload,” Kreios said with relish. “The Myrmidons had every right to despise her.”

  “And did they…” I swallowed, trying to rid myself of the imagery of the dream. “Did they capture her?”

  “They did not,” Kreios said, surprising me—and then surprising me yet again with what he said next. “What you saw in your nightmares was what they promised to do to the goddess, not what was done. What was done was simple banishment beyond the veil.”

  “How do you know what I dreamed?” I demanded.

  Kreios waved the question off. “Now, it’s possible that the Myrmidons have mandated anger management classes since the olden days, but Hera has a bit more to worry about than I think she recalls. Something to keep in mind as you go about your little powwow with the House of Wands.”

  I blew out a breath, nodded. “Did Armaeus know? Did he suspect that the House of Wands would show themselves if he brought Hera back?”

  “He…” Kreios tilted his head, as if considering how best to parse his response. “There are many possibilities. The Magician plays the averages. So no, he didn’t know, but there was always a possibility that the one lost House of Magic might bestir itself upon the reintroduction of a goddess to the world. He miscalculated slightly on their level of hatred for that goddess, but…” He shrugged. “Details. Bottom line, Armaeus needed information a
bout the threat we face from beyond the veil, and he will do what he must to address that threat with as much strength as he can reasonably control on the Council.”

  The Devil’s eyes glittered as he considered me. “Just as you are amassing the strength of the Houses of Magic, yea though reasonable control might be beyond your ability.”

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “I know you’re going to ask a favor of me. And you know that you’ll repay that favor, in due course.”

  I grimaced. “Fine. I need you to request that Gamon and her House work with the other Houses to drive back the gods, should they come through. Specifically, to join with us in London.”

  “London!” Kreios’s brows went up. “Why are you focusing there?”

  “Largest disturbance, and the city is overrun with issues right now. It’s fragmented, yet it’s a symbol of strength. It feels right.”

  “It feels right.” Kreios nodded. “And you think I might have some sway with the charming Gamon?”

  Gamon was about as charming as a scorpion, which Kreios surely knew. But I could tell from the way his lips curved into a smile he was pleased to be asked. “She’s powerful,” I said, and I wasn’t sure if I was telling him this as additional bait or as a warning.

  Kreios shivered with evident anticipation. “I adore powerful humans. Have you not picked up on that yet?”

  In that moment, his flip comment turned serious, and Kreios reached over, lifting my hand. Unlike the visceral jolt I received whenever the Magician touched me, the caress of the Devil was a far more subtle, and leagues more insidious, intrusion. He nudged against my mind so gently that I let him in without bristling, allowing him to survey my plans, my fears, my intentions.

  “You think I’ll tell Armaeus all this,” he murmured, and I shook my head.

  “I don’t. I’ll be the one to tell him.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it,” Kreios said. “As he already knows.”

  The betrayal was so lightly made that I didn’t have the time to react, but in truth, I’d expected this small deceit. Welcomed it, even. I didn’t have the time to dither once I was in front of Armaeus.