by Lauren Esker
As Angel walked out, Lucky clenched his fist around the glass. After all these years, he thought he'd shaken off the gut-deep terror that his cousin evoked in him. But he hadn't, not really.
Because I know what he can do. What he's capable of.
And Angel had been feeling him out, pushing him and trying to provoke a reaction, just like when they were kids. Jen might be in danger now, but she'd be in even more danger if Lucky gave Angel the idea that she was important to him. Such as, say, rushing after him right now.
He tried not to ask himself when Jen had started to matter that much. Right now the main thing was to get through this game, and then ... then, he was going to have to tell Jen about Angel. Somehow. He wasn't sure exactly what he planned to tell her, but it needed to be enough of the truth that she'd understand she had to be careful.
Like there's any way she can protect herself against someone who can wrap her mind around his own, and make her do whatever he wants.
And if he managed to convince her about Angel, and she realized Lucky and Angel were the same, would she want anything to do with him anymore?
Lucky took his drink with him back to the table. So much for avoiding alcohol. Right now, he really needed some.
***
As the game went on, Lucky began to bet more conservatively and let his playboy persona slip, since it was obvious that Yegerev, the cold-eyed Russian, wasn't taken in by his play-acting. Also, the encounter with Angel had left him shaken. Trying to deal with that as well as playing the game on multiple levels was too much even for him.
You knew he was going to be here. At least, if there's a chance Lucia's still alive and she's here, you knew Angel would be with her.
Still, fifteen years had dulled the memory of how intimidating Angel could be. And Lucky, as a fellow dragon, was immune to him; dragons' powers didn't work on other dragons. All he had to deal with was Angel's natural charisma and ruthlessness.
Including the way he threatens everyone around him to get what he wants.
No wonder Lux—Angel—had been able to build up a secret criminal empire so easily. He could literally have anything he wanted. All he had to do was tell people to give it to him.
The game was getting more intense, and Lucky had to turn his thoughts away from Angel to focus on his playing. He was now nursing his third drink, but he wasn't really feeling the alcohol. Tension kept him alert, every nerve jangling.
He had always loved this part of a game, when everything came down to the wire, when fortunes were made or lost. With most of the players having gone broke now, the pile of chips moving around between the few remaining ones, including Lucky and Yegerev, was staggering. Even at this level of the tournament, if they had been playing for mere money, the winner would have walked away with enough to live fabulously for a few years, or frugally for the rest of their lives.
But that's not what I'm here for. If he wanted money, he could easily win enough back in the States to live very comfortably. He had, in fact, been doing exactly that since he was big enough to see over a poker table.
This was for Lucia, and with that in mind, he gently pushed his luck as the deck of cards flipped through the automatic shuffling machine—or, rather, Yegerev's luck. He wanted to give himself a bad hand and Yegerev a good one, and see how the Russian played when Lucky knew he was holding good cards.
As the dealer began to deal out the hole cards—the facedown cards in front of the players—Lucky sipped his bourbon and then set it down as an odd shiver ran through him.
Angel, again? But this was a different sort of feeling, a twinge in his throat like he'd swallowed something the wrong way.
A wave of dizziness washed over him. His vision blurred, the table going in and out of focus in front of his eyes.
Something was wrong with him.
He touched the tip of his tongue to his lips. Was that a faint bitterness, masked by the alcohol? His startled gaze swept around the table and stopped on Yegerev, just as the other man quickly jerked his eyes away from Lucky's direction, looking down at his cards instead.
He and Yegerev were near each other at the table; there was only a single empty chair between them. Could Yegerev have poisoned his drink? Slipped something in when he wasn't looking, or paid off a passing redcap?
Angel would—
Probably not care at all, Lucky thought grimly. As Angel had said earlier, cheating, to him, was only a problem if you got caught. For all Lucky knew, Angel had instigated this, as a means of testing his cousin's dedication.
If Angel had me poisoned, I'm probably not going to die ...
Probably.
On the other hand, if Yegerev did it, I really don't like my chances at all right now.
There was a moment of stillness at the table, and he realized belatedly that the betting had come around to him. Now he had to struggle to remember—right, he'd given Yegerev a good hand, himself a bad one.
"You in, or not?" the dealer asked him.
"Fold," he said, tossing in his cards. His voice sounded hoarse.
He had meant to spend this hand watching Yegerev, studying the man's tells for clues he could use. Instead, he spent it mainly trying to stay upright and figure out what to do. The dizziness, weakness, and nausea were growing fast, making it hard to concentrate on anything other than how lousy he felt.
His first thought was to flag down one of the redcaps for a drink to dilute the poison in his stomach—it would only slow down the inevitable, but anything had to help. But, no, if Angel was the responsible party, or if one of them was working for Yegerev, he could end up killing himself even faster.
He needed to get away from the table, get the poison out of his system—
—but if he walked away, he'd lose.
No.
If all of this turned out to be for nothing, he'd rather die.
I still might.
Heat flushed his skin, followed by the prickling of cold sweat. His stomach cramped. It felt like a bad case of flu, but it had come on much too fast to be anything other than poison.
Still, dragons, like all shifters, were supernaturally fast healers. His body might be able to shake it off.
Are you willing to gamble your life on it, Lucado?
Despite his desperation, despite his fear, something in him came alive at that thought. Because, yes, he was. At heart he was a gambler, and though the stake was his life itself, he couldn't help feeling the excitement he always felt when the tension tightened and the game was ready to be won or lost.
Poker players went "all in" when they risked their entire stack of chips, a make-it-or-break-it move that would either result in victory or washing out of the game. He'd never gone all in with his life itself, and there was a part of him that couldn't help thrilling to the ultimate gamble.
The cards had gone back into the shuffling machine. Lucky turned his attention on it. Finishing the game quickly had just become paramount: his survival was riding on it. But dealing himself good cards was only part of a winning strategy. He not only needed to have the hand to win, but he needed to lure his fellow players into betting all the way through, and losing everything.
"Are you all right?" Yegerev asked him, a cold smile turning up one corner of his mouth. "You seem flushed."
"Maybe I had a little too much to drink," Lucky returned equably, keeping his voice steady with an effort of will. He nudged his glass across the tabletop toward Yegerev. "Here, you can finish it up for me."
Yegerev's cool expression turned markedly frostier.
Lucky managed to slap on his usual cocky smile, though it faltered as another wave of nausea hit him.
I can do this. I've made it through games feeling worse than this.
He hadn't always had a choice; his dad had dragged him to games when he had a cold or flu or, on one memorable occasion, was suffering from a severe case of food poisoning. You puke at the table and I'll beat the shit out of you when we get home, his father had snarled at him outside the bar, before
marching him inside and shoving him onto a chair with a comic book in his hands, to do what he usually did: play dumb kid, watch the game, and push Ray Lucado's luck when it needed pushing.
Most people would have seen it as child abuse. Lucky hadn't at the time, and still wasn't sure if he did or not. He and Lucia never went hungry, never lacked clothes or toys. They had gone to school, although that had been haphazard as their father's wandering feet took them all over the country. Lucky hadn't liked school much anyway, and he'd dropped out as soon as he and Lucia were on their own, though he still read voraciously on his own time.
And in spite of his father's insults and punishments, in spite of the fact that on some level he knew even as a child that spending his childhood in dive bars and pool halls wasn't normal, he'd loved being part of that world. As a kid, it had felt like he'd been given a secret pass to an adults-only world where other children weren't allowed. Bartenders and waitresses doted on him, bringing him Cokes and treats. And there was a special thrill he'd gotten from knowing he was getting away with something, and no one around him knew it.
What had his father done with Lucia, during that game when he had food poisoning? He didn't remember her being there. Maybe they'd left her alone in whatever shithole apartment or hotel room his dad had been renting. Another thing that didn't exactly qualify his dad for Parent of the Year: the number of times that baby Lucia had been left by herself, or left in Lucky's only slightly more capable care. She used to hate it when they'd leave her behind; she'd cry and cry ...
He'd zoned out. He was staring at his cards without seeing them. Somehow the game had already started and he'd gone on autopilot.
This isn't good. As well as feeling like warmed-over shit, he could barely concentrate. In a lower-stakes game, Lucky was still confident of his ability to do well, no matter his physical condition. But against players like these ...
He folded on this hand as well; he hadn't been paying attention, and had no idea what the cards were—he couldn't even remember if he'd pushed for a good hand or not.
At this rate, he was going to nickel and dime his chips away without ever playing. And that was assuming he didn't pass out facedown on the table.
This has to end soon, or I'm going to lose.
It had to be obvious to all the players at the table that he'd suddenly started playing erratically and poorly. Only Yegerev—he assumed—knew why. He had now, unwisely, established a pattern of folding at the start of a hand, which meant if he stayed in, they'd know he had a good hand.
Unless he deliberately stayed in and lost, and then dealt himself a good hand. The good ol' wounded bird gambit, he thought wryly.
It was going to be a risk. He could easily lose most of his chips and not have enough to entice the other players into going bust. Maybe I should go for a good hand first to pad out my chips a little, then a bad one, then one that's good enough to beat anything ...
The cards were being shuffled; he had to decide now. He couldn't change the cards once they were sorted in the deck. Bad hand first, he decided.
It worked like a charm. As the rounds of betting went around and Lucky stayed in, the other players dropped out one by one. The last was Yegerev, eyeing him suspiciously as if he knew Lucky was up to something. But Yegerev folded at the last, and so Lucky won that hand, and got the satisfaction of flipping over a seven and a three. He had nothing; he'd been bluffing the whole time. A disgruntled mutter ran around the table.
Ordinarily he'd have been riding the adrenaline wave by this point, completely in his element. This time, he was fighting as hard as he could just to stay focused and keep track of where he was in the game. He wiped sweat out of his eyes with a shaking hand. His stomach lurched again; he was going to lose the fight not to be sick soon.
The cards went back in the shuffling machine, and Lucky threw all he had into giving everyone at the table the best possible hand ... and himself one just slightly better. This was a level of control he'd rarely tried to achieve.
The betting began. This time the players were more willing to stay in, none of them sure if Lucky was bluffing or not. One by one, piles of chips slid into the pot. Lucky and Yegerev had the most chips at the table—Yegerev had just slightly more—which meant the other players had to go all in if they were going to stay. As one face card or ace after another turned up, Lucky watched the players' faces shift with greed. They all had high cards too. Right now they were seeing two pair come up, or three of a kind, with the tantalizing lure of aces and kings.
Lucky, meanwhile, had ended up with two fives. And, among all the shiny face cards now turning up, there was one and ... yes, two more fives, giving him four of a kind to beat all of their high-suit, medium-range hands.
He swallowed hard and pushed all his chips across the table. "All in," he said hoarsely.
Yegerev stared at him, and then pushed in most of his. He still had a few ... enough to stay in the next hand. Which meant it would be just him and Lucky, if Lucky's messing around with the deck's probabilities had worked.
Or else I just lost.
Cards flipped up around the table. Three aces. Two pair, kings and aces. Yegerev flipped over his full house, aces and queens. And Lucky quietly turned up his winning four of a kind.
There was a long silence, as it sunk in for the other players that they'd lost. Lucky raked in his chips. He was shivering now, as if with a high fever.
Yegerev stared at him across the board. If looks could kill, Lucky would be a smoking pile of ashes in his chair. But Yegerev was still in the game ... and he would jealously hoard that tiny pile of chips, trying to make it grow.
Enticing him out is going to be really fucking hard.
He was going to have to give Yegerev a good enough hand that the Russian couldn't possibly fold on it—and himself a better one. This would be easier than the last hand, since he only had two players to worry about. But it was going to require an extremely delicate level of control. He wasn't sure if he could have pulled this off even when he wasn't shaking, his vision blurring, the world tilting around him as dizziness washed over him.
He pushed in his starting stake, and placed his hands flat on the table to ground himself as the cards went around.
Right now, if he'd done it correctly, Yegerev's hole cards would be a pair of kings, "pocket kings", the second-best possible set of hole cards in Texas Hold 'Em.
The best was two aces, of course.
Which Lucky had ... as well as a pretty good guarantee that two more aces and two more kings were going to turn up on the board.
Four of a kind kings, four of a kind aces. The odds against it were astronomical. And he wanted Yegerev's kings to be the first two cards to turn up, because nobody folded on four kings.
King, ace, king. Well, he'd been close.
Across the room there was a sudden clatter and a gasp. "What's wrong?" someone asked.
"Look at that," one of the redcap waitresses replied. "I dropped my tray and every single glass landed upright. Nothing spilled. What are the odds?"
So his luck-bending did affect probability in the vicinity. At another time, he would have been interested to know that. Right now he was focusing everything he had on staying upright and keeping his eyes and his mind on the game. He shoved his chips across the table and gave Yegerev what he hoped was an aggressive smile, and not a bleary grimace. "You're gonna have to go all in to stay in."
Yegerev didn't look happy about it. But he had four kings. Lucky was gambling everything on the hope that no one could bring themselves to fold on four kings. And he was right. Yegerev shoved his chips into the pot.
"Show 'em," the dealer said.
Yegerev turned up his kings, and Lucky flipped over his aces.
There was a tense silence. The dealer looked mildly nonplussed. She might never have seen two hands like that at the same game.
"You cheated," Yegerev snarled. "A hand like that can't possibly be natural."
"If I cheated, so did you," Lucky retorte
d. "Or are you telling me four aces is a sure-fire sign of cheating, but four kings at the same game isn't?"
"He makes a good point," the dealer said. "It's statistically unlikely, but not impossible. He's the winner."
Yegerev gave a wordless snarl. He shoved back his chair and stalked out of the room.
Need to ask him what was in that drink ... Right now, though, Lucky wasn't even sure if he could make it upstairs on his own. He stood up, swaying, and picked up the glass as an afterthought. Jen or Roxy might have ideas for figuring out what was in it.
"Wait," the dealer said. She pushed something into his hand. "This will get you into the next game. Hang onto it."
So that was what Angel had given Marius. Not a secret signal, just a token, like the one for the Hathor Room. Lucky blinked his blurring vision clear. It was twice the size of the other one, blazoned with the sphinx logo on one side, and on the other, the jackal-headed profile of Anubis.
The next game would be in the Anubis Room, under the aegis of the God of Death. Appropriate.
Lucky stuffed it into his pocket so he couldn't lose it. The room wavered around him; blood pounded in his ears.
I won, he thought dazedly. Now all I have to do is get upstairs.
"Sir?" the dealer asked. "Are you ill?"
She could be with Yegerev. Or ordered by Angel to kill me. I can't trust any of them.
"I'm fine," he managed to say, and started for the door, one clumsy step at a time.
Get upstairs. Find Jen. With enemies all around him, he felt as if she was the one person he could trust. He couldn't even explain the depth of his conviction that Jen wouldn't hurt him, that she would try to help him figure out what had happened and try to fix it.
Get upstairs. Find Jen.
It was all he could think to do.
Chapter Nine
My kingdom for some photos of that book, Jen thought. Even cell-phone camera photos would do.
It frustrated her to be so close on so many things, and unable to proceed further. Still, the afternoon hadn't been a waste. She'd have a decent report to deliver to Avery, if she could figure out a way to get it to him.