CLOAK GAMES: BLOOD CAST
Jonathan Moeller
Table of Contents
Description
Chapter 1: Let’s Set Some Stuff On Fire
Chapter 2: Paper Trails
Chapter 3: Out Of Place
Chapter 4: Security Contractors
Chapter 5: Safe House
Chapter 6: Properly Taught
Chapter 7: Sibling Rivalry
Chapter 8: The Riddling Dead
Chapter 9: Tracking
Chapter 10: It’s All My Fault
Chapter 11: Tripwires
Chapter 12: Let’s Set Some More Stuff On Fire
Chapter 13: Never Talk
Chapter 14: Happy Birthday
Author's Note
Other books by the author
About the Author
Description
Nadia Moran risked her life to save her brother Russell.
But she didn't realize that Russell would do the exact same thing for her.
And when the Rebel sorcerers come for them both, Nadia and Russell will have to fight alongside each other, or die together...
Cloak Games: Blood Cast
Copyright 2018 by Jonathan Moeller.
Published by Azure Flame Media, LLC.
Cover design by Clarissa Yeo.
Ebook edition published February 2018.
All Rights Reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.
Chapter 1: Let’s Set Some Stuff On Fire
The enemy always gets a vote.
I don’t know who said that. Well, I do know who said that, but I can’t remember his name. Some ancient pre-Conquest general or another. Both Riordan MacCormac and Rory Murdo quoted him to me, but the name slipped my mind. I guess he wrote a book about fighting wars, and it was such a good book that to this day, three hundred and sixteen years after the Conquest, the High Queen still makes all the officers of the Wizard’s Legion read it.
I’d never bothered to remember his name, but that ancient pre-Conquest general was right. The enemy always gets a vote. No matter how smart you are, no matter how prepared, no matter how careful, the enemy can take you off guard and blow your plans out of the water.
I already knew that. I’d learned that the hard way.
Over and over again.
But I didn’t realize the flip side of that argument until I learned it the hard way, too.
The enemy gets a vote…but so do your friends.
You can plan all you want, but your friends can upset your plans. So, when your friends and your enemies cast their vote at the same time, then things get really crazy. I wonder if that ancient pre-Conquest general whose name I couldn’t remember had ever found that out.
I bet General Jeremy Shane found that out the hard way.
That was the one ancient pre-Conquest general whose name I would never, ever forget.
The enemy gets a vote. But that has an upside. I had a lot of enemies, and I was about to vote good and hard, metaphorically speaking.
It was June 13th, Conquest Year 316 (or 2329 AD according to the old calendar), and I was at a truck stop on Interstate 40 in central New Mexico.
It was the kind of place a young woman shouldn’t go alone.
Though to be fair, only about half of it was like that.
One half of the truck stop was this big shiny gas station/roadside oasis that catered to families on vacation and retired veterans going on RV tours through the country. There wasn’t really anywhere else to stop for ninety miles, so the oasis had an enormous parking lot filled with RVs and minivans, a half dozen restaurants, a couple of retail stores with inflated prices, and even a small hotel. A statue of the Elven Duke Carthamiel of Albuquerque dominated the lobby, his hand raised in benediction to his human subjects. Enormous posters advertised the High Queen’s ongoing Royal Progress through the United States, with a listing of dates when Skythrone would make its appearance at various cities. The oasis was clean and shiny and full of squealing children and exasperated-looking mothers and fathers.
The truck stop was the other half of the complex.
That wasn’t nearly as nice.
There’s not much illegal drug trade in the United States, since the sellers, transporters, and buyers of illicit drugs get executed on Punishment Day videos, but what drug trade existed went through places like this. I was sure many of the women waiting in the truck stop’s restaurants were prostitutes, and you could purchase numerous illegal things under the counter here.
The reason for that was something I had learned during the last year of waging a quiet war against the Rebel networks, something that most people didn’t know.
Homeland Security wasn’t nearly as omnipresent and omniscient as most people thought.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, Homeland Security was dangerous, but its officers were focused on the cities since that’s where most of the United States’ population of one hundred and twenty million people lived. They were spread much more thinly in rural areas, which meant that if you wanted to do something illegal, you were less likely to get arrested if you did it quietly in an isolated area. For that matter, the High Queen’s Inquisition was more dangerous than Homeland Security (thanks to Arvalaeon, I had learned that one the hard way), but they were focused on the Elven nobles and threats coming from the Shadowlands. They only dealt with human problems when those problems became serious.
Which might have been stupid, because I had learned a second truth during my year of private warfare against the Rebels, something else that most people didn’t know.
Namely, that the Rebels and the Dark One cultists were a lot stronger than most people knew.
That was the work of my ex-boyfriend turned mortal enemy Nicholas Connor. Nicholas had allied with the Knight of Venomhold in the Shadowlands, and her demesne was beyond the reach of the High Queen. With Venomhold as a secure base, Nicholas had grown the strength of the Rebels by leaps and bounds. I suspected that Nicholas was raising an army because his agents had been buying enormous quantities of weapons and ammunition and stockpiling them in Venomhold. Guns and bombs didn’t work in the Shadowlands, of course, but it’s not like they would go bad, and they would work just fine when his Gatekeepers brought the weapons back to Earth.
Which, to return to my original point, was why I was walking through a sketchy truck stop on Interstate 40 in central New Mexico.
I stepped through a pair of automatic glass doors and into a large convenience store, the blast of the air conditioning making me shiver, even beneath my heavy clothes. It was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit today, but I was wearing black jeans, a t-shirt, a gray sweater, and my loose black navy pea coat. (I was working on the magical stress that made me cold all the time, but I hadn’t gotten there yet.) I had two guns on me – my little .25 revolver in a side pocket, and in a shoulder rig beneath my coat, a Royal Arms. 45 semiautomatic with a fifteen-round magazine.
The guns were mostly a formality. I could do much, much worse with my magic.
The truck stop’s convenience store was crowded, with long lines by the coffee machines and the doughnut counters. I flipped off my sunglasses and tucked them into an interior pocket of my coat, adjusting the earpiece in my left ear as I did so, and threaded my way through the crowd. A few of the truckers turned idle glances my way, but no one took any interest in me. A young
woman wearing heavy clothes in the New Mexico summer would have drawn attention. But thanks to my Mask spell, I had made myself look like a sullen middle-aged trucker in a sweat-stained shirt and dusty jeans, so no one gave me a second glance.
I walked past the restrooms and to the truck stop’s restaurant. I pushed open the doors, another blast of air-conditioned air hitting me in the face. It was a big restaurant, with lots of tables and booths lining the walls, and large windows looking out over the vast asphalt wasteland of the parking lot.
A memory hit me, hard. There had been a diner in the Eternity Crucible, in the hellish little simulation of a small town that Arvalaeon had built, and something of the general shabbiness of the truck stop’s restaurant reminded me of that diner. Suddenly I seemed to see anthrophages sitting in the booths and at the tables, and I was certain that every single person in the restaurant was a disguised anthrophage about to attack me. I even saw the yellow gleam in their eyes. I wanted to call my magic and start laying waste around me with fire and ice and lightning, killing them all before they could kill me yet again…
I had a lot of practice pulling myself together at this point, and I did it again.
There were no anthrophages here, just truckers and tired-looking waitresses. I took a deep breath and kept walking, my eyes sweeping over the restaurant. I had a lot of experience keeping myself from falling apart, but I was always afraid that I was going to snap and lose control and hurt someone.
The way I had almost killed Russell during one of those first nights after the Eternity Crucible.
Yeah, I was keeping it together, but I was wound up tighter than a jammed gear, and I was afraid I would lose it and hurt someone who didn’t deserve it.
But that was all right.
I had a lot of anger and destructive energy…and I had enemies who deserved all that and much more.
One of them was in the restaurant.
Along the restaurant’s far wall was a long diner-style counter facing the kitchen, and Brian Vernon sat at the counter, scarfing down a plate of deluxe enchiladas and drinking a beer. He was middle-aged, paunchy, and burly, with grizzled gray hair and thick forearms covered in tattoos. Rory Murdo and I had learned quite a bit about Mr. Vernon over the last few days. He had started adult life as a man-at-arms in service to Duke Wraithmyr of Los Angeles but had frequently been disciplined for insubordination. After completing his term of service, he had gotten arrested for beating a man half to death with a lead pipe in a dispute over a woman. Vernon had wound up flogged on a Punishment Day video for that. He had managed to avoid getting sold into slavery by taking a job with a shady trucking company called Expedited Wheels that didn’t care what its drivers did so long as the deliveries arrived on time.
That shady trucking company was owned by one Martin Corbisher, which was how Brian Vernon made his way into the welcoming arms of the Rebels.
Expedited Wheels, Murdo and I had discovered, was one of the chief ways that Nicholas Connor and the Rebels moved their ammunition and weapons across the country. The law said that truckers could only drive so many hours per day and had to take a certain number of days off. Vernon filled his official working days fulfilling deliveries for Expedited Wheels, and then falsified his paperwork and used his days off to move weapons and ammunition for the Rebels.
Once Mr. Vernon finished his plate of enchiladas, he was going to take a load of weapons to a rendezvous point, where one of the Rebel Gatekeepers would open a rift way and take the armaments to Venomhold.
At least that was the plan.
Vernon and his friends were about to have a very bad day.
I sat on a stool three seats down from Vernon. He glanced at me, saw another tired-looking middle-aged trucker, and turned back to his plate and kept stuffing enchiladas into his mouth. If he continued eating that way at his age, he was going to need a crane to get into the cab of his truck before much longer.
“What’ll it be, honey?” said the waitress to me, a middle-aged woman who looked perfectly capable of stabbing unruly customers.
“Cup of coffee, please,” I said. The Mask spell altered my voice to match my appearance. “Black, strong, no sugar or cream.” I put money on the counter, two dollars more than the cup would have cost. “Keep the change.”
That got me a cup of coffee quicker than I would have otherwise, just the way I ordered. I sipped at the coffee and pretended to look at my phone. I don’t understand why people put sugar and cream into coffee. The point of coffee is that it’s supposed to be hot, taste bitter, and wake you up.
This did the trick.
I sat for twenty minutes, pretending to read the news on my phone and drinking my cup of coffee. During that time Vernon demolished another plate of enchiladas and then got up, heading in the direction of the men’s room. I waited until he disappeared into the bathroom, then got to my feet and took a quick look around.
No one was paying any attention to me whatsoever, and I wasn’t in the field of vision of any of the security cameras.
I dropped my Mask spell and cast the Cloak spell instead.
A long time ago when I first learned the Cloak spell (almost a hundred and seventy years ago now), I could only Cloak while remaining motionless. After much unpleasant experience, I could Cloak myself and walk around for about nine and a half minutes, maybe a little more or less depending on how tired I was at the time. While remaining motionless, I could stay Cloaked indefinitely.
I leaned against the wall by the men’s room and waited.
About ten minutes later Vernon emerged, walking with the grimace of a man who suffered frequent diet-induced digestive troubles. High-fiber vegetables would have done him a world of good. I straightened up and followed Vernon as he exited the restaurant. The blast of heat hit me in the face as we walked into the parking lot. The cracked, crumbling asphalt radiated heat like an oven.
It made me feel just slightly warmer. Pleasant, really.
I followed Vernon as he walked past the rows of parked semis. He strode up to a truck with a red cab, and as he got inside, I walked to the back of the cab’s trailer, looked at the license plate, and dropped my Cloak spell. I had to do that because Cloak spells messed with cell phone signals, and I needed to make a call.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, hit the call button, and lifted it to my ear.
Rory Murdo picked up on the first ring. He had been waiting for me.
“Find our friend?” he said, his voice flat and unemotional. He always sounded that way when he had his game face on.
“Yep,” I said. “Red Royal Motors cab, white trailer.” I rattled off his license plate number. “Looks like he’s heading to the meeting with a trailer full of ammo.”
“It won’t be far,” said Murdo. “You’re going to ride with him?”
“Yeah,” I said. I heard the rumble of a diesel engine as Vernon started his truck. “You’re going to bring the fireworks?”
A dry note entered Murdo’s voice. “I wouldn’t dream of forgetting them. Good luck, Katrina. I’ll be right behind you.”
“See you soon,” I said.
I ended the call, returned the phone to my pocket, and cast my levitation spell. I floated off the ground, grasped the lip of the trailer’s roof, and pulled myself onto it as silently as I could manage. Not that Vernon could have heard me over the engine.
I Cloaked myself, walked to the center of the trailer, sat down cross-legged, and waited. The truck rolled forward, headed down the access road, and stopped before the on-ramp to I-40. As Vernon waited for the traffic to pass, I pulled my sunglasses on (it was about to get windy) and glanced behind the truck.
There. Just leaving the truck stop. I saw a blue Royal Motors Adventurer SUV turn onto the access road.
Rory Murdo was following us.
Vernon drove across the access road and down the on-ramp, and I settled in for a wait.
It was uncomfortable, but it could have been worse. The top of the trailer vibrated steadily, and soon my
legs were numb from it. The sun blazed overhead, but one of the nice things about the Cloak spell was that in addition to screwing up cell phone signals, it also prevented sunburn. The hot wind whipping past me and tugging at my hair and coat felt nice. I should have been drenched in sweat in my heavy clothes, but instead, I only felt comfortably warm. As miserable as my stress-induced magical chill sometimes felt, right now it was useful.
Maybe if I lived through all this, I would move someplace warmer. Like New Mexico. Probably a shack in the desert or something, since I’m crazy and dangerous. Maybe I could get Murdo to come with me…
That made me think of Riordan, and I shoved that whole mess of regret and guilt and pain out of my head.
I mostly succeeded.
Fortunately, I would soon meet some people upon whom I could take out those dark feelings.
I rode atop Vernon’s trailer for about a half hour as he drove east towards Arizona. After thirty miles, he took an off-ramp, turned north, and then headed down an old, crumbling road that wound its way through the rocky, barren hills. Back home in Wisconsin, it would have been a farm access road, but nothing grew down here accept the tough little bushes that dotted the desert. As it happened, I knew that this road went to a copper mine that had been abandoned decades ago.
Vernon turned left, onto a gravel road that led into a valley between two hills. The truck rattled and bounced forward and came to a gate in a rusting chain-link fence that sealed off the road. A large sign on the gate informed me that the area beyond was RESTRICTED and VERY DANGEROUS. A dilapidated booth sat next to the gate.
Two men wearing combat fatigues and carrying AK-47s emerged from the booth. Vernon climbed down from his cab and shook hands with the men. They talked for a few minutes, and then Vernon nodded and climbed into the cab while the two Rebel soldiers opened the gate.
I smiled behind my Cloak. Our work had paid off. This was indeed one of the spots that Nicholas was using to transfer weapons to Venomhold. What better location than an abandoned copper mine in the middle of nowhere? Likely no one from Homeland Security or the Inquisition had been here in years.
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