I nodded. “Like changing the faces of the cards. Thanks.”
She leaned past me for a better look at something. “Conversely, there’s nothing subtle about this.”
I turned around. Wotan was coming through the door with a sword belted on over his expensive navy suit. It was an old-school sword, not a cavalry saber or a Zorro model. The guard was just a straight iron crossbar, and the scabbard was some kind of animal hide with the hair still on it. Eric the Red would have felt right at home with it.
Wotan sneered and walked over to Queen, the larvae, and me. “Good evening,” he said.
“Hi,” I said. “Planning to take another run at the Pharaoh?”
He smiled. “I didn’t need a blade to rip him to pieces.”
“Maybe you did if you wanted to make it stick.”
“All in good time. Meanwhile, a sword is appropriate dress for the final phase of a notable battle. I’m showing you honor, whether you have the brains to understand or not.”
“Now I’m getting all misty.”
“And, there’s another reason I like to wear one. It reminds me of the time before your kind went soft.”
I nodded. “I blame Twitter.”
“Laugh if you want, but you’re laughing at your own degeneration. And sadly, as you declined, you dragged much of the world down with you. Only in our realms… but this isn’t what I wanted to talk about. You have turned out to be a worthy opponent, and I want to make amends for jeering at you before.”
“Sure you do,” I said.
“I do. I want you to throw away that slop in your hand”—he sneered at my plate—“and share a true warrior’s feast. I’ll serve you with my own hands. The finest cuts, as fresh as fresh can be.”
I looked him in his bloodshot eyes and decided he was serious. “You bastard.”
“The meat should be out any second,” he said. “We just have to wait for a drink she was given to enter her blood and flavor her.”
I looked around. Timon was on the other side of the room talking to the Pharaoh. I set my plate on a table, hurried over to him, grabbed him by the forearm, and hauled him away.
He scowled. “I thought we corrected your attitude.”
“I’m sorry. Really. But do you know about the meal Wotan has planned?”
“Why would I?”
“He’s got a living woman here.”
Timon sighed. “I understand you find that unpleasant. But you tolerated watching him eat human flesh before.”
“That was different. The person was already dead. This time he means to kill somebody right in front of me.”
“Which you can prevent simply by leaving the room. It won’t help your table image, but it will be better than if you stayed and threw up or something.”
“You’re not getting me. It’s your hotel, and your fief, and I’m asking you to stop this.”
“That would be… awkward. I invited Wotan here. He has my permission to hunt. Revoking it would be a breach of hospitality.”
“Screw hospitality!”
“And then there’s the question of what to do with the prisoner. Do we simply set her free? What if she leads the police back here?”
“I’m sure there’s magic to handle that situation.”
“True. Still, why complicate matters?”
“Look, I gave you what you want. I promised to be your champion. Now I’m asking you to give something in return.”
“I already have, and will again, all sorts of wonderful things. But I’ll decide what, and when.”
I realized he wasn’t going to budge. Maybe he thought watching the murder would be good for me. It would help wear away my soft, weak human side.
Whatever he thought, what was I supposed to do now? Threaten him? I was saving that for later. Beat up Wotan? Even if I could—and that was a big, big if—would it save the prisoner?
Damn it, I had to do something. I started back toward Wotan. He sensed me coming, turned, and grinned. He wanted me to attack him.
Then A’marie came through the door that led to the kitchen. She had a white apron on over her tux. “Lord Wotan,” she said, with stress in her voice.
“What?” he answered.
She swallowed. “There’ll be a slight delay before we bring out your entrée.”
“And why is that?” he growled.
“Well, we seem to have… misplaced her. But everyone’s looking, and I’m sure we’ll find her soon.”
“You brainless bitch!” He lunged at her. I ran, too, but he reached her first, and could have really hurt her if he wanted to. But he only swept her out of his way and raced on through the door.
But just the shove was enough to send her reeling and slam her into the wall. One of her horns dinged it. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” she gasped. “Go!”
I chased Wotan into the service areas. The hall ahead of me echoed with crashes and startled cries as the lord with the sword bulled his way through.
He paused for just a second to look into a pantry. I did the same when I got up to it. Pieces of rope lay on the floor, along with the little paring knife the captive had apparently used to cut herself free. It had a drop of blood on the blade where she’d nicked herself in the process.
Wotan rushed on to the door that led from the main kitchen area to the alley. While all the cooks and their helpers cringed, he threw it open and sniffed loudly. I guessed he had a doglike sense of smell like Timon’s.
Afterward, he threw back his head and howled a wolf-like howl. Then he crouched, and his broad shoulders swelled bigger still, until I was sure the tailored coat and shirt would split. He swiped at the door with a hand even hairier than it had been before, and, rasping, his nails cut scratches in the metal.
Since he had his back to me, I couldn’t see most of what was happening to him. Still, I agreed with the Tuxedo Team. I didn’t want to go near him, either. So I looked around, found a cart loaded with desserts, and pegged a little dish of banana pudding at him.
It splashed between his shoulder blades. Some of it spattered his long black hair, and some of it, the jacket underneath. A vanilla wafer stuck for a second, then dropped off. He froze.
“Hey, Shaggy,” I said. “You might want to stop and think about what you’re doing.”
He shuddered, then turned around. Whatever he’d been a second before, he was human again now. But his eyes were totally red, and his lower lip was bleeding into his beard. I had a hunch his upper teeth had cut it when they were growing into fangs.
“What?” he said.
“You run off into the night chasing her, and you might not make it back by midnight.”
He laughed. “How about a prop bet? I say I can bring her back in fifteen minutes tops.”
“Don’t tempt me. Because I know you’re this mighty hunter and everything, but how do you think she got hold of the knife? How do you think she made it out the door without any of the kitchen staff noticing?”
He frowned. “You think she had help?”
“I think the Pharaoh and Leticia both understand how much it pisses you off to have a victim escape. So why not use her as bait to sucker you out of the hotel and into a trap?”
He hesitated. “You just want to save her.”
“That doesn’t make me wrong.”
“If you thought I was really running into a trap, you’d just stand back and let it happen.”
“No. Because I want to be the one to knock you out of the tournament, you cannibal son of a bitch, and I want to do it my way. By playing better poker. Which I do.”
He shivered. “I suppose that once I’m master of these lands, I can hunt down the girl whenever I want.”
“That’s the spirit.”
He raked the kitchen workers with his glare, and some of them flinched. “And when I’m master, you’ll pay for your carelessness. I’ll carve the blood eagle into each and every one of you.” He spat some of his own blood onto the floor, then stalked back toward the di
ning room.
The space was quiet while everyone gave him time to get out of earshot. Then a scrawny, redheaded, freckled teenager—one of the Old People who just looked off in a way you couldn’t put finger on—murmured, “Screw you. Screw all you lords.”
“Now that,” I said, “is really the spirit.” I held out my hand, and he shook it. “Thank you. Thank all you guys for turning the girl loose.”
“A’marie said we had to. It would freak you out if we didn’t, and then you’d do something crazy. Something that could wreck the plan.”
“I was working up to it,” I said.
“But it wasn’t just that,” said a fat woman with a long, dangling nose like a baby elephant’s trunk. “Nobody wanted to see her hurt. We don’t all hate humans. My mother was human.”
“I know you don’t,” I said.
I shook hands all around, then made my own way back to the dining room. I didn’t want Timon to start wondering what had become of me.
Wotan wasn’t there. Maybe he’d gone to take his anger out on some more furniture. Leticia smiled at me and said, “Chivalry will be the death of you yet.”
I shrugged. “There are worse ways to go.”
After that, I did my best to convince Timon that I wasn’t really slipping back into my old insubordinate ways. It had only been a momentary relapse. I guess it worked. He bitched for a while, but then told me to forget about it, finish my supper, and get some rest.
Leticia and I were in our seats at ten to midnight. Davis wheeled the Pharaoh in a minute later. Wotan stalked in just as the grandfather clock started to strike. He still had the sword. He unbuckled the belt and hung it over the back of his chair.
I soon decided the others agreed with me that the game was likely to end tonight, and it was time to get serious. Leticia threw off sexual heat like a bonfire. It was hard to look at her or even hear that purr of a voice without remembering how it had felt to have her pressed up against me with her tongue in my ear. I did my best to remember that she was the one who’d had Vic kidnapped and roughed up, too.
To give him his due, Wotan was about as manly as manly gets, so I assumed he was feeling the pull as much as I was. But you couldn’t tell it by looking at him. His face was like stone—well, hairy stone—and his stare bored into the rest of us like a drill. The sword was just the toothpick through the olive in the intimidation martini.
Unless, of course, it was something more.
I flashed the Thunderbird, and then I felt the hungry, hating spirit in the blade. It wasn’t really doing anything at the moment, but it ached to hurt anyone and everyone who wasn’t Wotan.
I imagined a wall between it and me, and then it was just an old sword again. Which gave me hope that if Wotan tried to use its power—whatever it was—against me, I’d be able to block that, too.
What didn’t make sense was that if a beginner like me could sense the sword’s magic and shield himself against it, Leticia and the Pharaoh probably could, too. So what was the point of bringing it at all? I guessed Wotan simply figured it was worth a try. Or else he’d meant it when he said he just liked wearing it around.
Unlike the other lords, the Pharaoh wasn’t making any big, obvious effort to distract or spook anybody. But he’d gone quiet, leaving behind the gentlemanly chitchat from previous nights. That was enough to rattle you all by itself. Crazy as it sounds, when he was talking about Django Reinhardt’s guitar playing, or telling a story about the Battle of the Nile, you almost started to see him as a regular person. Now, all of a sudden, even with the head brace and wheelchair, he was creepy and mysterious again. Real old and real dead.
I kept flashing the Thunderbird from time to time, but nothing else changed. Except for Leticia’s sexual magnetism, nobody seemed to be using magic yet.
I watched her and the Pharaoh play a hand. I was pretty sure she flopped a pair of kings but didn’t improve after that. At the end, there was no ace on the board, but there was the possibility of a straight. The mummy raised, she folded, and he flipped over ace-rag. It was the first time he hadn’t made another player pay to see his cards.
Leticia smiled. “Nice hand.”
The Pharaoh didn’t answer, and that annoyed me. Leticia and I already had to put up with Wotan’s sneers and insults. We didn’t need another rude asshole at the table.
Later on, the Pharaoh pushed me off a hand, and once again showed the bluff. Leticia gave me a sympathetic smile. He’d bullied both of us now, and rubbed our noses in it.
“If you keep doing that,” I told the mummy, “you’re going to get caught.”
He didn’t answer me, either, just blew the blue smoke from his cheroot in my direction.
By bailing on the hand, I’d given him the chip lead, and afterward, he started playing even more aggressively. Any time that Leticia, Wotan, or I were in a hand, it was usually against him, not one another. And he usually won them, too. I flashed the Thunderbird, but it still didn’t show that he was using any magic. It was even more annoying to think he was beating us on the square.
He made trips on the river and took another piece of poor Leticia’s stack. His crumbling lips smirked.
Damn, but I wanted to wipe that look off his face. I kept my eyes on him, watching for a tell, and eventually I spotted one. He hadn’t had one before, but he hadn’t had the head brace, either, and maybe it was as uncomfortable as it looked. At any rate, when he bluffed, he twisted his head inside it, just the tiny fraction of an inch that was all it would allow.
I was eager to use it against him, and got a chance about fifteen minutes later. He raised, and tried to twist his head. I only had a pair of eights, but I was sure I had him beat. I started to push all in, and then some lingering trace of caution told me not to risk my whole tournament on my read. I just called. He showed me a pair of tens and took down the pot.
He’d created a bogus tell and set me up. I clenched my jaw to hold in the “Shit!” that wanted out. It would only make me look weak, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
But Wotan cussed for me, more or less, snarling a word in what I thought might be German. And the weirdness of that cut through the fog of anger in my mind.
Because Wotan hated my guts. I couldn’t imagine him being disgusted that I’d lost a hand under any circumstances whatsoever. Not unless some outside force had adjusted his attitude.
I gave Leticia a hard look. It showed her that I’d figured out what she’d done. Looking back at me, she kissed the air.
She couldn’t make both Wotan and me just flat-out fall in love with her. She’d already tried, and it hadn’t worked. So she’d played with our heads in a sneakier way. She made us so eager to knock out the Pharaoh—the opponent she was most afraid of—that we’d attack him recklessly. She figured that either one of us would get lucky and bust him, or he’d eliminate us. Which would be okay, too. It would still put her one step closer to a win.
I considered letting the others in on her secret, then decided not to. If the Pharaoh knocked out Wotan, or vice versa, it would be good for me, too. I started playing more conservatively and waited for the two of them to really throw down.
I didn’t have to wait long. The Pharaoh dealt. Wotan raised, the mummy reraised, and Leticia and I got out of the way.
The flop was the king and ten of clubs and the jack of diamonds. A pocket ace-queen would make Broadway, the nuts. But it was one of those boards where there were all kinds of ways to make a hand and win big. Or make the second-best hand and lose big.
Wotan made a minimum bet, the kind that wants a call or is trying to look like it. I expected the Pharaoh to come over the top, but he just called. I wondered if they were both on draws, or if somebody was trapping.
The nine of spades came on Fourth Street. If someone had a queen but not an ace, he’d just made the second nuts with a king-high straight. Although a club on Fifth Street could still give somebody a flush.
Wotan stared into the Pharaoh’s dry, sunken eyes for a fe
w seconds, then pushed all in.
“I have a decent hand,” the Pharaoh said, finally breaking his silence, “but it would be foolish to risk so much if the rune sword was poisoning one’s luck. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Wotan laughed a short, nasty laugh. “What’s the matter? Can’t sacred Egyptian magic handle anything the rest of us can dish out? I thought that was why you act like you’re better than the rest of us.”
“Do I?” the mummy asked. “Well, in that case, you deserve a chance to give me my comeuppance.” He counted out enough chips to cover Wotan’s bet, which, even though he’d been running hot, didn’t leave a whole lot. Then he stubbed out the butt of his cheroot and reached for the gold case.
“Deal!” Wotan snapped.
“In just a moment,” the Pharaoh said.
Wotan exploded up out of his chair every bit as fast as he’d gone after Gimble. He snatched the deck up off the table, threw the burn card spinning across the felt, and slapped the next one face up on the table.
It was the trey of spades. A blank. Wotan gawked at it like he was going to puke all over it.
The Pharaoh turned over queen-jack off-suit. “I take it you were counting on a club.”
Wotan shuddered. “You cheated.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “You’re the one who dealt the river.” Because the Pharaoh had wanted it that way.
The mummy finished lighting the new cheroot and took a first drag. “Thank you for speaking up for me, Billy. Although actually, I did cheat. But that doesn’t lay me open to any sanctions, as I only did it to counter our friend Wotan’s cheating. May I assume that you did in fact notice something, shall we say, ominous about the sword?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“We were all supposed to. Because its actual purpose here tonight was to mask the emanations of the lesser talisman Wotan has inside his jacket. Would you fish it out, my lord? I’m curious to take a look at it.”
“Go to hell!” Wotan said.
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