Not sure about much, not used to having senses this good.
“Mr. Price?” she asked again.
Shit, got to remember to respond. “Office is fine. Might as well let ol’ Horatio see his handy work, right?”
She didn’t flinch at that revelation. Not the first time her boss had bloodied someone around her. “As you wish, Mr. Price.”
We went around a corner, leaving the entrance and a whole section of rooms and kitchens behind. Through a proper waiting room, no one inside of it but another secretary. This one was even younger, but shared features with the minion.
Not as good at keeping emotion in check though, given the way she scowled at me like my guts needed to be disemboweled. “What’s he doing here?”
“The queen invited him. To help mend fences,” the minion informed, “Regardless, it is none of your concern, is it, Agnes?”
The secretary stewed, but said nothing more as I was led inside the office proper.
There must be some serious tinting or polarization in the huge glass window, because the inside of the room was brighter than I expected. Almost hurt my eyes. Especially with the way the light had a habit of bursting into rainbows.
Least it ain’t singing and dancing.
Big in there. Wide, tall. Good twenty feet to the ceiling. Plenty of distance to pace back and forth. Wasn’t oval, but you could see Horatio telling some decorator that he wanted the same feeling as the president gave off on his home court at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Wasn’t a throne in sight either, thank the Mancy.
Not enough swords in the world nowadays to make a nice throne. Suppose you could use rifle barrels . . . be pretty redneck for Vega though.
Just a desk.
Big fat executive desk.
With some big fat chairs facing it. Behind the desk was the window and through the window another view of the Ouroboros Hotel and Casino nerve center. I went over to the window straight away, watching as the cogs turned all the machines. Tick, tock, there goes Jimmy’s retirement fund. Tick, tock, there goes Martha’s engagement ring. None of the cogs paid any attention to me.
“Would you like some refreshment?” my minion asked after another uncomfortable silence as I spaced out.
I turned to her, licking some blood off my top lip. Was starting to dry at least. “You ain’t Ouroboros, are you? You’ve been imported in with Vega. Bet you even watch over him when he’s at that compound you Coyotes have in the mountains.”
“My sisters and I never leave his side,” my minion confirmed. “He would lose his head without us.”
“Family?” I guessed.
Her mouth went hard.
“Don’t clam up over your pride starting the conversation. Ain’t becoming.”
Dark eyes were unhappy at that truth, but she still opened her mouth, “I am his niece.”
“Ah . . . so that was your sister out there. You’re the majordomo to the king, she’s just the secretary to the businessman.”
“Yes.”
“The way you talk reminds me of your uncle.”
“That’s a surprisingly kind compliment coming from you, Mr. Price.”
“Given that I killed your brother?” I guessed some more.
Dark eyes smoldered this time, but still the mouth moved, “My cousin.”
“Didn’t mean to kill him.”
“So I’ve been informed.”
“Got a name? Would like to know your name if you’re gonna be plotting my death behind your eyes like that.”
She turned away, blushing. Not exactly her uncle’s image then. But she wanted to live up to it. “Esme.”
“Vega?”
“Castro.”
“Married?”
Her gaze came back in a glare. “Like it would matter given your reputation.”
I gave her some predator’s grin. “Ain’t interested in that, just trying to work out some Vega family tree, being it’s so clouded in mystery.”
“Two brothers, two sisters,” Esme took away the mystery, again with pride, “both brothers are dead, killed while King Vega secured the Coyote Nation for himself and only himself.”
“And not a one of you but him are Poly-Shifters I take it?”
Esme gasped, eyes no longer plotting my murder but wide in surprise. “Brother or not, she should not have revealed such secrets to you.”
“I’m tired and beaten up, so I’m gonna sit down now,” I announced before doing so, only on the executive side of the desk instead of the guest side. I even pulled Mini out of his hidden sheath and placed him on the desk top, giving the dagger a little spin.
Weeeeeee.
Esme barely held back a conniption fit. “That . . . you can’t . . .”
“So not married then?” I asked, leaning back in the chair to put my legs up. Was a tricky thing with how big the desk and chair were and how small my ass was. Being stoned don’t help much either.
Esme squared her shoulders at me. “Why do you keep asking? Are you seeking a wife? Agnes is your age. She loved Hector, so she hates you, but if our uncle asked she would do her part and marry you for the good of the Nation.”
Perhaps she expected me to blush myself and fluster at the offer, but I didn’t. “Too many women in my life already to add a wife on top of it. Especially a woman so bad of judgment she loves a fuck-up like Hector Vega.”
“Fuck-up or not, he was a Vega,” Esme declared.
“Not the Vega I ever wanted to kill though. It’s just so hard to get to your uncle, ain’t it? Always some excuse, always some misunderstanding. Always a Hector or an Esme in the way between him and guilt. Always an explanation for why I’m sitting here with dried blood on my chin, a busted up lip, with some prime snake cult drugs in my system.”
I reached down and opened up a desk drawer.
Esme had an actual conniption fit this time, barely stopping herself from coming all the way across the office to throttle me. “Stop that!” she hissed.
“Scared I’ll find naked pictures of his mistress?”
“He doesn’t have a mistress!”
I rummaged some more. “Oh bullshit. Guy like that always has a mistress.”
“I would know if he did! He loves your sister dearly!”
“Only cuz he wants Poly-Shifter babies,” I mumbled, pulling out a box of a certain type that usually contained very fun substances. “Think I’ll find coke in here, Esme? Or maybe a crack pipe?”
“Put it back!”
I flipped the box open.
“A box of butterfingers? Really?” I growled, very disappointed. “Well . . . I’m kind of hungry . . .”
Before Esme Castro could yell at me to put King Vega’s candy bars away, a knock sounded on the door. JoJo didn’t wait for an answer but strolled in on her own. She stopped not that far from the door, blinking at the scene before her.
I bit off a piece of chocolate into my mouth. “Sup, Little Sis?”
Her dirt eyes so similar to mine took in the blood and bruises on my face. She wasn’t in a dress, not like when she was on display in the arena for all the dignitaries. Though her hair and makeup were done up like she could get on a dress and head out for handshakes and kiss-assing and ball-fluffage, she had on yoga pants and a pink hoodie top of all things. Some of her midriff showed. I saw some tattoos peeking out of those clothes.
Still some of my sister in there when she’s not in public then, I thought, glad about it.
She pointed at me, sucking in a deep, calming breath through her nose. “Did he look like that when he came in, Esme?”
Esme nodded, head down. “Of course. I offered to—”
“Get me a warm bowl of water for my brother’s face and a cold glass of water for my brother to drink, please,” JoJo ordered like she was queen for real and not just white trash pretending at the title through marriage.
Esme nodded deeply, not a twenty-first century gesture, but you couldn’t call it a bow either. “Are you sure you will be safe—”
“He has more
to worry about from me than I do from him, Esme.”
The minion left us, trading spots with my sister.
The minion upgraded to a taskmaster.
Even given that Esme wanted me dead for killing her cousin, I’m still not sure that said taskmaster was an improvement. JoJo shook her head, visibly annoyed at me. Way she stood and set her shoulders reminded me of Susan, even if the height and coloring was all wrong. Did you fall in every mud puddle between here and the school?
“What happened to you?” JoJo said aloud.
You should see the other kid!
The other kid has a mother who can afford to throw his clothes out and buy a new set. How am I going to clean those?
Could just leave them on me. I don’t mind. Dirt don’t hurt!
“Earth to King Henry?” JoJo called.
I blinked a bit. Missing minutes like that ain’t good for your sanity.
“I’m still not really sure,” I mumbled an answer, “there were knives. And drugs . . . really good drugs.” I took another bite of my candy bar. “I just got a marriage proposal . . . did not see that shit coming.”
JoJo worked her way around the desk, grabbing my face. She poked at my nose so hard I winced. “It’s not broken at least.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“How old were you when you broke it the first time? Eight?”
“Five. Eight was my first time during a fight . . . Dave Buckner, two years older than me. Fifth grader. But when I was five I tripped into that dining room table, remember?”
JoJo’s smile told me that she did. “Mom was worried you hurt your brain or had a concussion. Susan held you in her lap so Mom could drive. They left me in the backseat playing with dolls when they ran into the emergency room . . . Susan didn’t even remember to come back to get me for half-an-hour.”
Stay still or you’ll cause an accident.
“I had that mask for a few weeks, remember?”
“I remember you used it to headbutt another kid in your class and got suspended for the day.”
“Was a sign someone should’ve noticed.”
What were you thinking? Have you been watching too much wrestling?
Esme returned with a bowl of hot water and a rag to wash my face with. “As you asked, Josephine,” she said before leaving again, probably to get my drink.
There, chocolate milk like you like. Keep down the noise as I do my homework, please.
No screaming, watch TV, don’t break any bones. I got ya, Big Sis!
I watched as JoJo squeezed water out of the rag. Never really thought of her as motherly. But I could see her on the street stitching up a friend who got caught by the cops or worse. “They really call you ‘Josephine’? Think he’s fucking Napoleon along with Nelson?”
“Don’t start,” she ordered before she stuffed the rag into my nose with her typical sisterly regard for my pain, a.k.a absolutely none.
I hissed and grunted, but somehow kept the curse words from flowing.
After my face was less bloody and the rag was stained pink, JoJo threw it in the water bowl. Oddly enough, I did feel a little better afterwards, even if I could watch the red and white anima of my blood mix with deep blue flashes inside the water. Anima, anima everywhere. Useless to me, but everywhere.
“Now, tell me who did this to you,” JoJo said in a tone of voice that made all testicles within twenty yards of her shrivel up. I think they call it an evolutionary response. Yes, you too have this power, ladies, use it wisely.
“And don’t blame Horatio,” she warned me.
“About that . . .”
[CLICK]
When Vega finally showed up over an hour later we were still yelling at each other. Mostly about shit that had happened over a decade ago. Little bit about how her husband had at the very best sat on his ass while he full well knew there was a wereviper about to try to kill me or at the very worst had orchestrated the whole thing.
“So what if Dad gave me your bike, you never used it!” I shouted.
“That’s not the point!” she shouted back. “It was mine. I should’ve been asked!”
“Like you rode anything besides a cock after you turned twelve anyway!”
Esme had the sense not to return with my glass of water.
The corporeal anima concentration trapped in my dagger also had the sense to stop trying to give me advice after I threatened to throw it in lava.
Vega closed the door behind him, pausing a moment to take in the twenty or so candy bars lying around the office.
We had started throwing them at each other somewhere around the halfway point. I couldn’t be sure who had started it, but I’m pretty sure it was Josephine Vega, Queen of the Coyotes.
“Children, children!” Vega said in his soothing, politician’s voice where words went to lose all meaning, “family should never fight so roughly!”
JoJo advanced on him, poking a finger in his chest. “You promised you would let Hector’s death go! You said yourself that he was a moron and you promised me you wouldn’t hurt King Henry over it!”
Vega motioned to me. “King Henry looks very alive . . . if very stoned. Probably also the source of why I just noticed that some of those candy bars appear to have been half eaten before they were thrown. Also . . . is that one stuck into your portrait, Josephine?”
JoJo let out a deep breath. “I might have made a point about how if King Henry really believed you were behind this that perhaps he should just kill me instead of you. I may have stabbed the portrait to emphasize this point. I was . . . a little angry.”
Vega clucked with his tongue as he pulled the candy bar out of the portrait. “With a butterfinger?”
“King Henry wouldn’t let me touch his knife . . .” JoJo tried to come up with any reason at all for her actions.
Vega glanced over at the glass-metal dagger still sitting on his executive desk. He blinked at it for a second before he inhaled swiftly. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yup,” I said.
For once, Vega wasn’t particularly adept at keeping his emotions or desires in check. The way he looked at the dagger, he wanted the thing more than he wanted my sister. “You continue to surprise me, my friend.”
I grinned at him, no friendliness at all in it. “Like the fact I survived your assassination attempt?”
“Now you do not surprise me. King Henry Price intransigent, simply because he wishes me to be the villain. So many chances at it, so many hopes at it, and have I yet ever been the villain? Not at all. But still he hopes, it being so easy for him to ask his sister for an invitation into my home and get a modicum of revenge by slugging me. Such a simple world where I am the villain.”
“Just admit it, Horatio.”
He threw a few of the offending candy bars in a trash can. At some point he’d done away with his usual full suit and tie and thrown off the jacket, leaving just a white shirt with rolled up sleeves. Didn’t help to disassociate him from politicians at all, since they liked to pull that trick around election time too, especially if there was a manufacturing plant nearby. “Do you really think that if I wanted you dead and you were in my casino that you wouldn’t be dead, brother-in-law or no brother-in-law?”
“I’m pretty hard to kill, just ask the guy you and Zhou sent to do the job.”
“Zhou . . .” Vega mumbled, before pointing up at the ceiling. “This was his dream for us, for all of the Nations. A place of our own to speak openly, neutral ground far away from the nearest Totem. Where we could be masters of our domain and show both mancers and Vampires that we were no longer castoffs and refugees and criminals. When he handed me the check to buy the land and start building . . . well, how could I say no to such a dream?
“You see, I have always thought of myself as a shapeshifter protecting other shapeshifters, but Zhou and his Eternal Order, they do like jumping the gun, don’t they? Me, I don’t like assassinations . . . they’re very messy. Better to handle someone in another way, like
the deal we made between us. I profit, you profit, and contrition over the act is shown through subservience. Death is very final.”
He paused, studying my dagger again. “I will give you a million dollars and cancel all contracts between us if you give me that.”
“I fight too many vampires to ever go without it, I’m afraid.”
“You know it’s purpose as well. My, my, you are becoming a man of the world, aren’t you, my friend?” Vega teased me, poking and prodding for a reaction.
I picked up Mini’s dagger and stuck it inside my geomancer’s coat to show that a deal wouldn’t be happening unless he did actually kill me.
He shrugged. “If you find another, please make me aware of it. As I was saying, I thought I was a force for shapeshifters in the world and with an object like that one in my possession, well . . . the vampires would learn to think twice before they did anything like what you and your Baroness Boleyn did to my nephew and his men, wouldn’t they?”
JoJo hissed at him.
“It was merely a reference, Josephine! I’m not saying this incident, whatever it was, had anything to do with Hector.”
“Then you do know what’s happening!” she yelled at him. “You promised me!”
“And I upheld that promise,” Vega claimed. “Hector’s death is under the bridge, as they say. But if a new problem arises and if a colleague who gave to our family all this glory and prestige and power . . . if he were to ask me a favor, not of action but merely of neutrality, what am I to do but graciously step aside?”
“The King of the Coyotes would actually let someone assassinate his own brother-in-law in his own casino?” I asked him. “After what already happened with Jackson? After that speech you made about being the sheriff? I’m the Big Bad Coyote, I’m Horatio Vega. Now you’d just have me believe you’re a poor little scavenger at a loss over what to do? That you’re Zhou’s bitch.”
Vega’s blue eyes glinted with mischief and just a little violence. “An equal but neutral party who did not wish to anger either of his allies,” he corrected.
The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5) Page 48