I tried to turn enough in my seat to see if I could find Eva in the crowd. Warn her to get out of the way or something. Warn her not to do something very stupid at the very least.
But Tatter nudged me with the barrel of his gun. Yeah . . . I’m trying not the think about the sexual innuendo in that sentence too. “Eyes forward, ese.”
Shit.
Don’t be stupid, Eva. Don’t try to save me.
She was a damn good spy apparently, but that didn’t make her bulletproof. Scio-anima can be useful, it can hide you in plain sight and Shadeshifters can even form it into a kind of knife blade around their hands, but if you shoot the moving shadow, the moving shadow dies.
Scio-anima . . .
I crossed my arms over my chest and put my leg up on my knee, basically trying to pretend I was bored.
Hector Vega smirked at me, applauding as the first lot of anima vials sold for half a million dollars.
There was no cover to be had except the chairs and the people in them. If we could make it to the podiums holding the samples . . . but we’d never make it. The SEM-DEW could only block fire from one side and they had angles all over the room.
It was a pickle.
Annie B’s hand stopped patting my knee and started squeezing it like a vise-grip. “You’ll sit there and follow my lead or I’ll kill you myself.”
“You said that last time and you ended up waking me up with a kiss,” I reminded her.
“Kill you myself and use your shell to get close enough to kill your little blond princess,” Annie B upped the stakes.
“No need to be like that. I’m just thinking ahead.”
“Don’t think. You’re not good at it.”
Lot by lot by lot, the auction went on with us sitting there under guard. The Duchess Theodora bought a slew of bodies, so did a pair of shady looking guys that I figured for necromancers but not Bonegrinders. They could use the bones to call up spirits or could pull necro-anima into vials to resell to Artificers, but they couldn’t make Constructs with them.
That make it less disgusting? Yeah, not really.
The Tsar purchased some of the Memory syringes, there was a heated contest over the Angel’s Blood from a large number of the vampires in attendance, and the various Weres went in big on all the artifacts.
And I still have a gun pointed at my back.
“What if I run up to the podium and try to sell one of my artifacts like it’s all part of the plan?” I whispered so lightly only Annie B could hear over Doorman’s yammering.
“I applaud your ingenuity, but if you so much as flinch in that direction, you won’t have to worry about the werecoyotes killing you, because you’ll be dying of blood loss due to me ripping your sack off.”
“My sack is way too big for you to get a grip . . . as you should well remember from our mutual mistake the last time around.”
“This isn’t play,” she snapped without looking at me. Her velvet eyes kept studying Hector Vega. “This is business now. We wait to see if he has the shells, we allow ourselves to be surrounded, all the while allowing the idiot to gloat over his schemes, and then we act.”
“Yeah, that waiting on the villain to gloat over his schemes thing? I’ve done that once before and I was unconscious for three days afterwards. I’m really not a fan.”
“We have to confront him if he’s behind this. A Vega or not. Guns or not. No running away,” Annie B downright commanded my jumpy ass. “Victory or death, King Henry.”
“Someone’s been watching too much Game of Thrones,” I muttered, not happy.
If anything I was being ruthless about our situation. Acting immediately would get a ton of people shot in the crossfire. All of them criminals, but . . . still people . . . the majority of them . . . if you count necromancers as people. Besides, rationally either Hector Vega was behind it and we could jump him another time—if T-Bone and me managed it by accident, I’m pretty sure Annie B and me should have no problem on purpose—or this was a dead-end and we had no reason to be here.
It was the smart move to act immediately.
Why I never go for the smart move?
Save myself so much trouble if I did.
It didn’t matter in the end.
In the end . . . the last lot came up for auction.
The expected surprise lot Doorman had hinted at.
It was a body.
Fuck.
Wheeled out on display, lying in a pool of Slush.
Double dumb fuck on you, King Henry Price.
The crowd gave a murmur of delight.
Annie B grinned, delighted as well. “This we call a clue.”
Me . . . I was just grumpy.
Hector Vega, you asshole, you greedy, stupid asshole.
“You can’t kill him. He’s Vega’s nephew.”
“Of course I won’t kill him . . . that will be Eresha’s honor.”
“He’s Vega’s nephew,” I insistently repeated while Doorman lauded the body’s shape and beauty like you might a classic car.
“If he’s a middleman: he gives up the thief. If he’s the thief: then he dies, no half measures,” Annie B stated. “Some slights are worth the risk of war, King Henry.”
I couldn’t disagree with that sentiment. I’d love a shot at Horatio Vega one day, it was inevitable between us, but not over his dumbass nephew being his usual dumbass self. Over JoJo . . . sure. He tried to kill me again . . . sure. Moshi’s Stables? Any of the Divines? Paine? Tons of people I’d love to start a war with for just as many reasons.
Not this one though.
Not for a million dollars.
War shouldn’t be for pay.
I’m many things, most of them wrecked and ruined, but a mercenary ain’t one of them.
Hector Vega, you stupid fuck.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Auction of Illicit Wonders proudly presents before you,” Doorman finished his spiel in a flourish, “The Shell of Cleopatra!”
“This we call confirmation,” Annie B declared.
“Now can I make a move?”
“No, you cannot. Surrounded and spilling his information about the other shells, remember?”
“Three days unconscious due to that cliché bullshit, remember?”
“I promise to give you a sponge bath every night if it happens again.”
She wouldn’t budge. All my talking got me nowhere. Meant I needed to be ready whenever she decided to act. One of these days, I’d like Annie to be the one following around at my heels instead of the other way around.
But okay then.
Her money, her mission, her call.
Fair’s fair.
At least with us surrounded, Annie B wouldn’t be ripping Hector’s head off. So there’s that . . .
Get ready for Annie B to make her move. Already done. I used my posture to hide the fact that my hands were inside my tuxedo grabbing at artifacts. Ready and waiting for the big bang.
My Little Magical Balls, as Val joking called them—though she liked the genuine article just fine, thank you very much—had started somewhere between the size of a baseball and a softball. Now they could fit mostly concealed in your hand and ran the entire gamut of anima types.
There’d been a few busts and accidents along the way—like T-Bone and me flooding my shop with an unending stream of water thanks to a hydro-anima container—and a few of them had no tactical use—the FAD grows a tree out of the ball, what could I do with that?—but put the right pair of artifacts using the right pair of animas together . . . and you could save your life.
Even surrounded by werecoyotes with guns.
I palmed my SEM-DEW into an outer pocket where it would be easily within reach and then kept the second artifact in my hand, scarred knuckles covering a black metal sphere.
“Bidding will begin at ten million dollars!” Doorman announced.
It began there, but the price was at fifty million in seconds and over one-hundred million in minutes.
Annie B smirked a
s the number climbed higher and higher. “Keep going, my darlings, keep going.”
A thought hit me. An absurd thought to have, given the situation. But the business owner in me couldn’t help it. “You get paid a finder’s fee, don’t you?”
“Five percent of market value.”
“For something usually priceless you get the usual bullshit about putting a price on art, all so the museum—or the Divine—can fuck you in the ass and still sleep at night, but with an auction, even an illegal one . . .” I worked aloud.
“Yes.”
“One-hundred and twenty-three million, do I hear twenty-four?” Doorman asked the crowd and was answered.
“On all of the stolen shells,” I worked out more, already annoyed without working out the exact numbers.
“Yes.”
“I low-balled myself at one-million for the consultation, didn’t I?”
She turned to me, very amused. “I wasn’t silent on the plane because I was surprised; I was silent because I couldn’t talk without laughing. Honest advice for next time, King Henry: always agree to percentages, not numbers.”
Hundred fifty a shell, six shells, five percent of, divide by the ten percent I probably could’ve . . . god damn it!
I’d shorted myself out of four million dollars.
“ONE-HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS!” Doorman shouted. “DO I HEAR ONE-HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE?”
Hector Vega was beside himself in joy. His wife Zoey, sitting next to him on the stage, leaned over to give him a kiss. “You did it, baby, you really did it,” I read her lips.
A dream come true.
A fortune in one night with six more nights to go.
A nephew steps out of the curtains and surpasses his father figure.
Do you believe in miracles?
Annie B stood up.
Tatterdemalion and Overcoat were so interested in the rising numbers that they didn’t shoot her.
Annie B doesn’t believe in miracles.
Like any good queen, she pisses on your pauper dreams.
“This property has been stolen from the Great Bank. I claim it in the name of the Divine Eresha.”
Annie B also has some big fucking balls. Balls be hanging out the hem of her skirt they so large. Like a pair of hairy pomegranates.
Hector Vega shot to his feet. So did the two morons guarding us, both of them ignoring me and pointing their guns at Annie B. Yeah, shoot her, she’s the one in charge. I stood up as well, adding in a sidestep to put some space between me and the bullets. Most of the guards kept their guns at their sides, only a few tracking them in Annie B’s general direction.
She didn’t seem to care.
She just stood in place, looking . . . like she could seduce half the room into killing the other half of the room and walk on out of there over the corpses.
Hector Vega pointed at her. “Bullshit! I bought them myself, fair and square!”
Okay, so he’s just your everyday fucktard who got scammed by the real thief, not a feces-eating imbecile who stole from the Great Bank. His uncle must be so proud of him.
“From whom?” Annie B asked.
Hector scowled down at her. “Who the fuck do you think you are, bitch?”
Annie B glanced at me. “I see why you don’t like him; his eloquence is rivaled only by your own.”
Hector scowled at me too. He was a scowly motherfucker. “Tell me who the fuck she is and I might let you off with only chopping your balls off, Price.”
Oh look, my attempt at doing the rational thing. This should go well. “She’s Baroness Boleyn, that body was stolen from the Divine Eresha, and if you ain’t a dumb son-of-a-bitch you’ll just let her have the thing and walk off with all the other money you made tonight, Suit.”
Hector scowled at the whole audience, perhaps realizing how this looked to the community at-large. “Who had the last bid?”
Doorman meekly pointed at the Duchess Theodora.
Hector took a calming breath.
Might peace have a chance?
Magic Foul Mouth Ball Says: Ask fucking later, I’m busy.
Hector barely contained his rage as he informed the Duchess, “Come back tomorrow after I deal with this mouthy whore and it’s yours.”
But Theodora studied Annie B instead.
Annie B raised an eyebrow, shifting her gaze so she could take in all the vampires in the crowd as if noting every single name and rank present. “Your call, Dora.”
Theodora sniffed, pausing to get over the bad beat. “No shell’s worth angering a Divine. I’m leaving now. If you survive the night, do see the other shells are delivered to my mansion in town, Vega. You can keep the rest . . . no vampire will be returning to deal with you again.”
Thus began the exodus of vampires, more than a third of the room.
Gentlewoman Moore smiled coldly at me before she left. “I warned you about her,” her expressive face said, “now you’re a dead man.”
Might peace have a chance?
Magic Foul Mouth Ball Says: Hope you have insurance, douchebag.
Hector Vega’s mood stumbled downward to an even darker place. He physically shook. His words came out in a hiss, “If I’m not paying you to hold a gun, come back tomorrow for your merchandise. Make sure you bring an umbrella, since we’ll be hanging two bodies from the rafters as decoration.”
Might peace have a chance?
Magic Foul Mouth Ball Says: King Henry Price don’t ever get peace, why you keep wasting my time, asshole?
[CLICK]
“Who sold you the Cleopatra shell?” Annie B asked relentlessly, not even waiting for all the guests to clear out. “Did they sell you the others as well? Where are they kept?”
Hector Vega turned to his wife. “Go to the car and take it back to the hotel, sweetie, don’t want you getting hit by a stray.”
“Hector—” Zoey started.
“Everything’s fine,” Vega assured her, maybe even believing the words.
“Your uncle—”
“I’ll give him a cut just like I planned, he won’t care. Know your place. Hotel. Now.”
Zoey Vega wasn’t happy, but she did walk off with the rest of the fleeing patrons. “I hope he kills you,” she took the time to inform me.
Nice having fans.
“Who sold you the Cleopatra shell?” Annie B asked again. “Did they sell you the others as well? Where are they kept?”
Recap: Hector was up on the stage, leaning on the podium. We were underneath him in the front row. Overcoat and Tatterdemalion were at our backs. A dozen guards, all Weres armed with guns, encircled us.
So . . . fifteen guns. Three-hundred and sixty degrees of incoming fire.
Twenty-minute pool.
Three splits were a sure thing for me now, four mostly accomplished, and I could manage five sometimes. It took about three minutes of geo-anima minimum to snap a gun. I was twenty-five minutes short of taking out all those guns. Even if I could split a pool fifteen times. Which I couldn’t.
Five three-minute splits with five minutes of leakage.
I could do that.
Probably.
I hoped.
I hate guns.
Annie B was close enough to rip Overcoat and Tatter in half.
Five guns snapped . . . okay . . . ten left.
SEM-DEW on the other side?
Wasn’t enough.
Equation ended in a dead King Henry Price.
Talk my way out of this?
Hector Vega scowled at me.
Nope.
I shifted the artifact in my hand.
It was the most experimental of the experimental.
If it worked . . .
If it didn’t work . . .
Well, why shouldn’t I die looking like a fucktard?
“Don’t think he’s gonna talk, Annie,” I said aloud over the chorus of plans screaming in my head.
I inched closer to her.
Least I can do is use her as a human shield. S
he deserves it after putting us in this situation. Let the villain talk out their info, fucking stupid every time.
“It doesn’t look that way,” she agreed. Still, Annie B laid out her case in baroness mode: “We only want the shells returned to their original owner, the Divine Eresha. She will gladly pay you whatever you spent to purchase them and, furthermore, she will owe both you and King Vega a favor for returning the property. It isn’t the millions you expected, but it is a victory in a very bad situation for you.
“Every single one of those vampires will tell Eresha of this night. Everyone will know you had the shells and they will know you killed me and Artificer Price in an attempt to keep it quiet. ESLED will bring you to justice for killing a mancer, the Recruiters will hunt you down for killing Ceinwyn Dale’s golden boy, King Vega will be displeased that his brother-in-law was murdered at your order, and the Divine Court itself will seek you out for defying their will.
“This is, of course, assuming you kill us. An action that will not be without its own costs. I guarantee that the two men standing behind me will die within seconds, as will several of the other guards as I rush you down. I might die before I make it to you . . . or I might not.” Annie B shrugged like each outcome was of no import. “It all depends on how good your men are, how true their aim. Do you think they can hit me enough times to save your life, Hector Vega?”
The bossman in question waited until the last of the patrons exited the warehouse door before he pissed out his own line in the sand. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You come in here . . . you ruin my fucking auction I’ve been working on for six fucking months, since this other fucker with you burned down my fucking house? My fucking mansion! Put his hands on my wife while she was naked! Tied us both up in the fucking guesthouse like a pair of pigs!
“And what the fuck does my uncle, the great fucking King Vega, do about it? Nothing. Not a god damned thing. Lets his balls be chopped off by that whore wife of his. Makes peace with mancers over his own fucking blood! MAKES ME APOLOGIZE! SO FUCK HIM! FUCK THIS ASSHOLE NEXT TO YOU! AND FUCK YOU AND YOUR DIVINE COURT, BITCH!”
Annie B calmly waited for the tirade to end. “Are you done?”
Hector Vega’s nostrils flared.
Is he getting hairier?
Guy always had anger issues, but . . . would he Shift on us?
The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny (The King Henry Tapes) Page 25