Aces Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 5 (12 page)

Nikki didn’t seem to be fazed by the byplay. She focused on Kreios in his Grimm suit. “How did the sword perform in battle?”

“Well enough—but the greatest story attributed to it has nothing to do with true battle. It is said that a student of the Masamune tradition wished to pit his own sword against Masamune. This would ordinarily be impossible, as the two were born roughly two hundred years apart. Masamune would have been long dead at the point the challenge was made. Nevertheless, the old master appeared, sword in hand, and the two proceeded to thrust their swords into a fast-flowing stream. The student Muramasa’s sword cut everything in its path—leaves, fish, frogs—while the master’s sword cut nothing except leaves that had fallen from the trees, already dead. Muramasa declared himself the winner, but the story goes that the true winner was Masamune. His sword did not harm the innocent, which made it a benevolent blade.”

“Or a really dull one,” Nikki said dryly.

“The sword was borne by shoguns and samurai throughout history, until after World War II,” Kreios continued, warming to his tale. “It was lost in nineteen forty-six. Some rumors say it was given to a man named Sergeant Coldy Bimore, never to be seen again—some that it was another American soldier who took the sword for his own private treasury of memorabilia. But no matter which part of the story you believe, all signs point to the sword being in America.”

“Well, that narrows it down some,” I said, and Kreios glanced at me, his gaze filled with pure, indulgent humor. I shrugged and looked past him at the blinking arcade games. One of them was a five-card-draw-style slot machine, constantly running, so the cards blinking up on the screen would show three cards, then four, then five. I watched the spinning combinations distractedly, lulled by the blinking lights.

“That Madam Soo came to the Gold Show in part to locate the sword is telling,” Kreios said. “There was no record of weaponry like the Honjo Masamune being at the exposition. That said, she was regrettably rushed from the Rarity without completing any transactions, to our knowledge, and she did not return.”

He pulled out a card from his breast pocket with a flourish and laid it down on the table. “These are the names of the American vendors at the Rarity, and their specialties,” he said with triumph.

Brody leaned forward and grunted. “None of those people are weapons guys.”

Jiao leaned in too, their heads close enough to touch. I met Kreios’s eyes over them, and judging by his amused glint, he noticed the energy between Brody and Jiao too.

Jiao’s voice held more inflection than I’d heard in it before. “Their focus varies distinctly. European, South American, we can discount those. There are three with Asian ties. We start there.”

“Well, all of them have outlets in LA, Chicago, and New York City—still, doesn’t narrow it down much.” Brody countered.

Kreios smirked. “That’s smoke and mirrors in the main. Half the people in the show operate out of their homes, with their finest artifacts hidden in their basement, palatial though those basements may be. You find the home address, you find the sword, I suspect.”

I flicked a glance again to the slot machines as the Devil sat back with obvious self-satisfaction. Nikki, Brody, General Som, and Jiao started arguing rapidly, debating the pros and cons of contacting the possible sword owners. I couldn’t focus on anything but the glittering digital cards.

They’d…shifted.

I straightened carefully in my seat as I squinted at the machines. Before, there’d been a mix of hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades as the cards flashed up. Sometimes there’d been a straight, but more often, the cards had been a mess. But the last few rounds, they’d been flashing up spades with more regularity—and not just any spades.

Seven. Five. Ten. Knight. All spades. And then a random Five of Clubs.

Five. Knight. Ten. Nine. All spades. And another Five, this time of Hearts.

Three. Ten. Seven—

“Too many swords,” I muttered, and Nikki looked up at me, her gaze going to where mine was focused. She scowled, but not at the machine.

“Where’d, ah, Grimm go?” she asked. “He was just here.”

I blinked and then turned out toward the VIP section again, but the Devil was nowhere to be seen. General Som and Jiao looked up, their expressions puckering, and Brody reached for his gun—

Right about when the bullets started flying.

Chapter Ten

The screaming followed hard on the heels of the gunshots. To my shock, Jiao fell immediately, General Som right behind her, both of them collapsing into the cushioned seats. Security guards came running toward the VIP suite, but Brody had already yanked me hard out of the booth and shoved me toward the EXIT sign to the back of the room.

“Get out
now
. Nikki will follow,” he growled. “Go!”

I flung myself to the floor as his cop voice roared out above me.

“LVMPD! Get down, down! Police!” he yelled, and Nikki was right next to him, body-blocking General Som’s and Jiao’s still forms in the banquette. Three assailants took up position behind the game machines. Most of the gamblers had dropped to the ground along with the dealers. I crawled between the tables as another peal of bullets rang out. Additional gunshots came from farther out in the lobby, and I reached the door in another fifteen seconds, leaning on it hard and bursting into a long hallway.

Another EXIT sign blinked urgently at the far end. Drawing my own gun, I headed for it. Everything had happened so quickly, I was on autopilot and running hard. This didn’t feel right, though. It felt too rushed, too stupid. Where had the Devil gone? Surely the Council hadn’t set me up. That made no sense. And General Som and Jiao? They were bleeding out—they couldn’t have been behind this, right?

Right?

I pulled up at the door and hesitated, trying to work through my options. The door was hot to the touch. Not firestorm-on-the-other-side hot, but warm enough to know it was getting the full blast of sun most of the time. The sun had set not long before, so that would mean a western exposure.

I racked my mind, trying to remember the layout of the Palazzo and the surrounding access streets. Not a lot of parking, but trucks hit this place day and night, so there’d be an opening in the back—probably a large swath of open ground to get across, and—

My thoughts were fractured a second later as the original EXIT door burst open. To my surprise, it wasn’t Nikki racing toward me but General Som, her arms pumping, her face set even as blood poured down her arm.

“Madam Wilde!” she yelled.

I didn’t have time to puzzle out her motives. If she’d gotten past Nikki with Nikki’s blessing, great, but if she’d somehow gunned her way through—

I shoved my way through the main exit door and out onto a concrete loading dock, a makeshift stage with one set of stairs leading down. Bypassing the stairs, I raced forward and hurtled off the six-foot-high dock. There was no one in the area, and the door banged open behind me.

“Madam Wilde, wait!” General Som shouted, the stridency of her voice at definite odds with her Asian accent.

I wasn’t waiting, though. I had my phone, and I had my gun. Brody wanted me out of the action fast, which meant that in his mind, there’d be no reason to keep shooting if I was out of the picture. Which meant not only had I been the target, but I was also a menace to anyone around me.

Nothing like being the new kid at school who’d somehow pissed off the Mafia.

I picked up speed as I wheeled around the corner, taking the first alley that led out of the loading area. I realized my mistake immediately.

An enormous truck blocked the entrance, three men in front of it. None of them held a gun out, but instead they wielded scimitars the size of Detroit. These had to be more of Soo’s generals. They were dressed in black Kevlar suits with Darth Vader-style helmets obscuring their faces. They didn’t move, and I whipped around to head back inside.

No dice. Another five men now blocked that entry, and General Som was nowhere to be seen. The back-up guards rocked it less old school, too: they had guns. Big guns. And those guns were trained on me.

One of the generals burst forth in a furious round of Chinese, and turned back to him, holding up my gun. I could try to shoot my way out of this, but that seemed premature. No one had tried to kill me yet. If I could just stay alive long enough to get Nikki and Brody out here, I’d be set.

And for that matter, where was the Council? I was on their home turf, and not only had the Devil disappeared when the going had gotten interesting, but no one had swung out of the sky to smite my enemies. These people looked like they could use a good smiting too.

The man switched to English, apparently tired of being ignored. “You will fight as you were meant to fight,” he cried out gruffly. “You will not make the House of Swords a laughing stock of our enemies. You will accept the order of Madam Soo and take up the sword, or you will die.”

“I’m a little busy right now for all that.” I turned slowly, scanning the walls for options. They were tall and windowless, useless for free-climbing. The men in front of the delivery truck were still doing their best immovable-object impression, and the line of men behind me advanced.

“Seriously, stop,” I said. Surprisingly, the men stopped moving, though their guns stayed leveled on me. Not helpful, but I also still wasn’t dead, and I willed my heart to stop trying to batter its way out of my rib cage as I assessed my options. I couldn’t credibly fight these people. I was too damaged from Kunh Lee. I couldn’t shoot them either. Minus the injured General Som, who apparently hadn’t made it past the EXIT door, these were the mighty generals of the House of Swords. They wanted to fight me, not kill me outright, and I appreciated the distinction.

But where the
hell
was Brody?

One of the generals stepped forward and, more quickly than anyone I’d ever seen before, drew out a sword and flicked it toward me across the pavement. A moment later, the spinning sword arced to a stop at my feet, its journey swift and absolute. I kept one eye on it while staying focused on the thrower.

“You know I can’t fight you honorably right now,” I said, my voice echoing off the walls of this man-made box canyon. “And certainly not with that piece of crap.”

He stiffened. “The Kamakura blade is a revered sword handed down for centuries. It will serve you well.”

“Not as well as my gun.”

“You must fight as the head of the House of Swords, or that head will be cut off,” snarled the man. “We will settle this question once and—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish.

Without warning, gunfire pelted down from the rooftop. Bursts of fire lit up the ground at my feet, sparking off the sword and the asphalt. More bullets rained down on us, and I crouched, scrambling toward the nearest wall—knowing that I’d never make it.

Whoever was on the roof, they couldn’t be more of the Swords warriors. There was no honor in shooting fish in a barrel. And there was no chance of me taking up the generals’ challenge now, that much was certain.

The generals themselves also started running as my body erupted in a fury of pain—my back, my shoulder. Had I been shot? Judging from the blood blossoming across my shirt, yes. Fire jolted through me, and I swung up my gun, my mind blanking as instinct took over.

I heard shouts but couldn’t run as I unloaded my clip. Bullets whizzed by my shoulder and leg, another of them hitting its mark. I toppled heavily to the ground.

Pain swept over me in waves, and my eyesight jerked erratically, expanding and contracting to take in far too much for me to process, and then narrowing down to a pinpoint of focus that was all white-hot and icy-cold energy.

White-hot and icy-cold energy that centered in two crystal points on my collarbone. Soo’s pendants fired to life as more shots pierced my skin, and power flexed within me, too much to contain within my body. Even as it flared, I feared it was too little, too late—there was another blast of gunfire, and pain radiated through me, in too many places to count.

I squinted through a haze of blood and sweat—then blinked, confused. The men closest to me in their heavy armor weren’t running
away
from me in the face of the gunfire pouring down. Instead, they raced toward me, their screams defiant, their swords raised high. Swords, not guns, though they had guns holstered on their bodies, the weapons unfired, untouched. What were they
doing
? Why weren’t they protecting themselves?

From my position on the ground, I could see their churning steps, their bulging muscles—their sudden, abrupt shudders as a new round of bullets crashed into them. But still they came upon me, as if killing me was more important than shielding themselves from getting shot by their own enemies. And yes, they might have been wearing body armor, but there was too much blood on the ground for it all to be mine. The asphalt seemed to be bathed in red, and still the bullets rained down.

Then the first man fell over me, bracing his fists on the ground to create a makeshift cage. A second knelt at my side. A third crashed heavily over my legs. We were being made into an impromptu funeral cairn, and all I could do was watch it happen. There was no way out of this blocked-off alley, no way to get to safety. But as I stared, the men’s faceless masks jerked and jerked again as a new barrage of ammunition peppered into them, their bodies absorbing the bullets that were intended for me.

The energy crested in my body, emanating from Soo’s pendants. Someone was screaming, but I could only dimly hear it as I lifted a hand to the first man who’d reached me. I curled my fingers around his shoulder. His helmet fell away with another sudden lurch, and I found myself staring into the eyes of a stranger.

A stranger who was dying to save me. To protect the unproven leader of the House of Swords.

“No,” I whispered, and those eyes found mine.

These men—these generals—had intended for me to fight them for the right to lead. They had doubted me, hated the idea of me, to the point of lying in wait to ambush me the first day I surfaced wearing the amulet of their former leader. They had no doubt seen my reaction at the airport or been informed of my failures in Soo’s house. They’d most certainly been informed of my disdain for fighting with a blade. And so they’d forced that fight upon me.