Crown of the Queen (The Wardbreaker Book 3) Read online

  “Let them see my mental search history” Karim said, “Anyone looking in there is going to get quite the fright.”

  Jones was waiting for us at the door just as we were about to leave. He was staying behind to guard the safehouse, and Becket. I still wasn’t entirely sure about him. He had been working for Asmodius, and even though he was a Magistrate Legionnaire, there was something about his face that made me think he was hiding something.

  He watched us as we left, shutting the door once we’d gone past the front gate and started sliding into RJ’s car. Just before we rolled out, I caught a glimpse of Becket looking out on us from his window; his red eyes illuminating his reflection. He raised one hand, and I raised mine in return. There was every chance this would be the last time we saw each other. The stakes had never been higher.

  I had to tell myself that wasn’t the case; I had to reassure myself we would get through this.

  Otherwise, what was the point?

  I watched the lights of the city roll by, my face resting on the glass, feeling the car vibrate beneath my cheek. Devil Falls was a tumor growing in the bowels New York City, and yet somehow, it stood apart from the Big Apple. Humans didn’t hang their hats here. Humans didn’t even know it existed. It didn’t show up on any highway boards, nor on any maps, and any human unlucky enough to wander into it by accident was never seen from or heard from again.

  It was a human blind spot—one of many in the world—where supernaturals could play Lords and Ladies amongst themselves without the prying eyes of those who would never understand. It was a place that looked lawless on the outside, but was in fact ruled by an oppressive, authoritarian regime known only as the Coalition. A place where you could get whatever you wanted, provided you were willing to pay the asking price.

  Magistrate Mages were forbidden from going, unless they were there on Magistrate business. That wasn’t something that happened often, though. The Magistrate would sooner forget Devil Falls even existed, just like the humans did. As it stood, though, it’s a thorn in the Magistrate’s side; one they’ll never be able to pull out.

  Ifrit joined my face in the window’s reflection, the little flame staring out onto the city with me.

  “Aren’t you supposed to come when I call?” I asked, “Not just whenever you please?”

  “Who told you that?” Ifrit asked.

  “It’s the rule, isn’t it?”

  “It’s more like a guideline, than a rule. Anyway, I thought you could use a little support, considering what you’re about to get into.”

  “So, you’re a fire demon from the Tempest, and you’re here to cheer me up?”

  “Fire Godling, and yes. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing… I guess that just makes me feel kind of… important.”

  “Never felt important before?”

  A pause as I let my gaze fall atop the city again. “Not to anyone that mattered.”

  “That’s very sad… and also untrue. You mattered to your mother, very much.”

  “I know, but she’s gone.” I shook my head. “Anyway, enough of that sappy crap. I guess you’re here to tell me how stupid what we’re about to do is?”

  “I don’t have to tell you what you already know. No, I’m here to offer my support. I am your Guardian, after all.”

  I nodded. “I don’t suppose you could tell me about any hidden powers I might have that I can use to help us succeed?”

  “Matter of fact, I can. I know everything there is to know about you. I know what you can do, what you can’t do, what powers are within your reach, what’s out of your reach… think of me as an instruction manual.”

  “An instruction manual with an attitude.”

  “Sure, let’s go with that.” Ifrit paused. “You need to calm down. You’re going to do fine.”

  I smiled at myself. “An emotional support instruction manual… with an attitude.”

  “Okay, that’s enough of that, now.”

  I let my gaze settle over the city again. “Stay close… I’m probably gonna need you at the drop of a hat.”

  “Don’t worry. I intend to.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A shapeshifting Legionnaire, a thieving ex-stripper, and a teenage alchemist walk into a bar. It sounded like the opening of a joke, but it was my real life right now. I had wanted to remain inconspicuous for as long as possible while we were in Devil Falls, but RJ, Axel, and Karim weren’t going to make that easy.

  Danvers had brought us to a place reminiscent of a saloon in those old Wild West movies. It was a literal dirt hole in the middle of an already dirty neighborhood; a scummy place where the lights were dim, the air reeked of cigar and cigarette smoke, and every single patron was dangerous and not to be messed with.

  I walked inside with my eyes peeled, though not knowing exactly where to look. It was dark in The Iron Nail, columns scattered throughout the bar made it difficult to see every corner of it, and in every corner was an even darker booth filled with all manner of supernaturals doing shady business. The bar was the most brightly lit place in here, and it was exactly where we were all headed.

  “Any sign of your person?” I asked Danvers as we approached.

  “Not yet, but she’ll show,” she said.

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “If she’s here, it won’t be long before she shows herself. If she isn’t, someone will have told her I just walked through the doors. Either way, she’ll come.”

  “News travels that fast in this place, huh?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Karim strolled up to the bar beside me and waved the barman down. “Bottle of your hardest stuff and your dirtiest glass,” he called out… in the best faux-American accent he could muster.

  I nudged him in the ribs. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Blending in,” he hissed, “I would suggest you do the same before you get us all killed.”

  “That’s blending in? Who do you think you are? John Wayne?”

  “It’s called playing a character.”

  “It’s called being ridiculous. You’re going to get us killed.”

  The barman returned with exactly what Karim had ordered, setting the bottle and glass on the bar in front of us. “Glass for your friend?” he asked.

  “No thank you—I mean, nah. This ain’t a girl’s drink.”

  I tried not to scowl at him, but the anger was rising, my chest tightening. “Calm down,” Axel whispered, “Keep your cool.”

  He caught me by surprise, not because I hadn’t expected him to say anything, but because he was standing on the other end of the bar. His eyes were locked with mine, and on his face was the hint of a grin.

  “Can you hear me?” I thought.

  “I can. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I mean, you’ve already done… this… but no. It’s nice. Do you recognize anyone here?”

  “No. I’ve never been to this place before. As far as I know, neither has my father.”

  “Thank you… don’t break this link, okay?”

  “I won’t.”

  Given Ifrit’s sudden residence in my headspace, having Axel also hovering around in my thoughts made my own mind suddenly feel a little crowded. At the same time, having a communications link to a member of my group, and another link to a tiny fire Godling weren’t bad things. With Axel in my head, we’d both be able to react at the drop of a hat, and as the seconds passed, I was starting to think we were going to have to.

  Already there were more eyes on us all than I’d have liked. Some of them were on me—only on me—making me wonder if, somehow, I was being recognized. That was impossible. I’d never been here, never been to this neighborhood, and I’d certainly never interacted with the kind of people who haunted this place.

  Then again, it really did feel like I had something of an audience, and it was making me nervous.

  From a dark corner of the room, someone suddenly shot up right and tossed a table over.
The table fell on its side, sending a mountain of coins, bills, and glasses scattering in all directions. The guy who’d flipped the table quickly turned his hand around and went to swipe at one of the men still sitting down, but his hand never made contact with the other man’s face.

  A bolt of magic struck the much larger man in the shoulder, sending him crashing into a wall with so much force, the ground beneath my foot shook. The fight was over just like that. Mister Table Flipper was left out cold on the floor, while the rest of the people he had been playing a game with went about the business of putting their playing space back together.

  I felt Karim slip away from the bar, but before I could grab him, he was gone—hovering over to the table with his eye-patch and duster. “What the fuck?” I mumbled.

  Danvers grabbed my arm and squeezed it tightly. “What is he doing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I didn’t hear him speak, but he seemed to offer not only his bottle of booze, but also his help getting things back together—collecting coins, cards, the table. A moment later, he was sat with the group and about to play a hand of what I assumed was Poker. I had my heart wedged in my throat, my anxiety levels were spiking, and Karim was blending in with the locals better than any of us were.

  “Did that just happen?” Axel asked into my mind.

  “I said it once, I’ll say it again,” I said, “He’s going to get himself, or us, killed.”

  “My man, you need to walk away,” RJ speaking snapped me out of my own head, bringing me back to the moment at hand. Someone had walked up to him; a big guy, dark skin, gruff, with one white eye and another run through with what looked like a thick, knotted scar.

  “You with the wise guys?” asked the interloper, standing way too close for comfort. “You a little Magistrate bitch-boy?”

  “I said it once, I ain’t gonna say it again,” RJ warned, his voice a low rumble in his throat, “Back up.”

  This was getting dicey, and I didn’t think it was going to go away on its own. Whoever this was, he seemed to have taken an interest in RJ. Maybe what Danvers had said was true. Maybe the locals really could smell a Legionnaire from a mile away. RJ was covering his brand, there was nothing that could give it away, and yet, he had literally been sniffed out.

  Subtly as I could, I prepared to deliver a stunning spell directly into the midsection of the man standing in front of RJ. I feared doing so would probably trigger a bar-wide fight, and I didn’t want that, but either RJ was going to have to act, or I was.

  “Andre,” came a calm voice from the other side of the bar, “Why don’t you do what the man says and back away?”

  Andre, our new friend, turned his head to the side and looked across at the man who had just entered the bar. He was young, whoever he was. Light skinned, clad in black, and with dark hair that fell over his sharp, green eyes. He was every teenage girl’s emo dream boy, and clearly Danvers’ type.

  “This one’s Magistrate,” Andre grumbled.

  “You watch your mouth,” RJ snapped.

  “I said, back away.”

  A moment of tension passed, but Andre did what the newcomer had said. I felt Danvers’ grip around my arm tighten, and I knew, this was the man we had come to see. She didn’t have to tell me. They looked like they were about in the same age group. Not only that, he was looking directly at her, and she at him.

  “That you, Cassidy?” the newcomer asked as he slowly made his way toward the bar. His entourage followed, three of them, with Andre falling into step with the others.

  “Little Vinny Stagioni,” Danvers said, a grin spreading across her lips. “Why did I just know you’d show up the moment I turned up here?”

  “Nobody calls me that anymore. Now it’s just Vincent.”

  “Well, Vincent, I would say it’s nice to see you, but I don’t think the feeling’s mutual, is it?”

  Vincent moved in a little closer, pretending to scratch his chin. “Let’s see, the last time we saw each other you were fleeing my burning lab… shortly after having stolen from me.”

  “This is your amicable contact?” I asked.

  “You told her we were amicable?” Vincent asked. “Tell me, do you lie to your friends as often as you used to lie to me?”

  “I didn’t lie to you. I told you to your face I was going to steal from you and set your lab on fire.”

  “You said a great many things. I always wondered what seeing you again would feel like, how I would react, what I would do. I have to admit, I’ve given this a whole lot of thought… but in the end, I’m finding myself totally improvising here.”

  “Is it an apology you’re looking for? Because you won’t find one here.”

  “No. I think I’m passed that.”

  “Get down,” Axel said into my mind.

  I didn’t think twice. I ducked, dragging Danvers to the floor with me and narrowly avoiding the tip of a dagger that had come hurtling from somewhere behind our new acquaintances. That was all it took. A hair-trigger, a quick-snap, and all around me hell was breaking loose. RJ was on it right away, bashing a bottle of whiskey against the head of one of the guys in Vincent’s entourage, while Axel fought to deflect spells being thrown at him from one of the other newcomers.

  Vincent immediately took cover behind a table Andre had knocked over and then started angrily firing spells of his own off at Danvers. Before he could hit her, though, the two of us had hopped over the bar and had taken cover behind it. Magic bolts crashed into the long mirror behind the bar, into bottles, into glasses, causing a rain of shattered glass to fall around us.

  “This wasn’t the reunion I was expecting!” I yelled.

  “I know!” Danvers said, “Honestly, I thought he wasn’t going to be so pissed.”

  “You could’ve told me you’d stolen from him!”

  “We were always stealing from one other. I was just tired of him taking all my credit.”

  A fourth member of Vincent’s entourage had crept his way around the bar. He flashed a mouthful of wickedly sharp teeth at me and charged. I didn’t give him a chance. Drawing the Tempest into him, I zapped him with as powerful a thunderbolt as I could manage. The air sizzled as the lightning streaked into his chest, picked him up, and hurled him across the bar and into one of the walls.

  “Holy shit!” Danvers yelped, “That was awesome!”

  “We can’t keep that up forever,” I said, “We need to get out of here.”

  “Come out!” Vincent called. “I only want Danvers!”

  Slowly, I got up from behind the bar. The sounds of struggling had died down, making me think we had the situation under control. But we didn’t have it under control. Axel was hunkered down behind a table, pinned and unable to move. If Karim made one aggressive move toward Vincent, the people sitting with him would probably have something to say about it. And RJ—Andre had RJ in his grasp, a set of sharp claws digging into the side of RJ’s neck.

  “Give her to me,” Vincent said, “Or we start killing your people—starting with him.”

  “Get out of here,” RJ said, “Forget about me.”

  “Noble,” Vincent said, “But nobility is wasted out here. This is the Wild West, haven’t you heard?”

  A bright flash of light lit the back of Vincent’s head. His eyes shot wide open, he gasped, and quickly collapsed. Andre turned his head, slackening his grip on RJ just enough for RJ to flip him over his shoulder and send him slamming into the floor. Someone new had entered the bar, but I couldn’t see who it was because of all the columns in the way.

  The guy with the sharp teeth quickly sprang to his feet and charged the person who had slammed Vincent with a powerful stunning spell. I watched him throw a flurry of clawed swipes at the hooded Mage who had just arrived, but none of those swipes were finding their target—it was as if the Mage had an invisible bubble of sheer force around them that just couldn’t be breached.

  Another quick zap, and the hooded Mage took care of the guy with the teeth, leav
ing only one man standing. I took the opportunity to throw a stunning spell of my own, catching him off guard and striking him in the chest. He picked up, flew back a few feet, and came crashing into a table. Then the room fell silent.

  “Rule number one of Devil Falls,” Danvers said, “There’s always a bigger fish.”

  RJ was already circling around the hooded Mage, ready for a fight. “Come out,” he said, “I’m done playing.”

  “I don’t want to fight you,” the hooded Mage said as he came into view. “In fact, I just saved your asses.”

  I know that voice…

  “Who are you?” Axel asked.

  The hooded Mage pulled his hood back, revealing a shifty looking man with a mane of white hair. He had clear, narrow blue eyes, and week-old white stubble growing on cheeks pockmarked with tiny cratered scars from the severe acne he’d had as a teenager. I didn’t need him to answer the question. I knew who he was, and that alone was making my vision tremble.

  “Hello, dad,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Wait a second, what?” Danvers asked.

  “Everyone,” I said, “This is my deadbeat father. Walter.”

  “I deserve that,” Walter said, nodding. “I’m sure there are a lot more colorful words you want to throw at me, but right now probably isn’t the time.”

  “And why’s that?”

  Walter scanned the room. Everyone was looking at us. Everyone. Some had even gotten off their chairs, or were starting to slowly rise. Our little barroom brawl had been settled, Vincent was down, but in another couple of moments a second brawl would begin—only this time, everyone in the bar would take part; and we’d be the targets.

  “Do I need to spell it out for you?” Walter asked.

  “Fine, but I’m bringing him with us,” I said, pointing at Vincent.

  “No, you’re not,” the bartender said. When I turned my head, I noticed he was holding a shotgun. Sure, I could’ve pulled it out of his hands with my mind, I could’ve bent it out of shape, but probably not before he pulled the trigger on me.