Wilde Card: Immortal Vegas, Book 2 (13 page)

I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t find Mercault, though. He was more than the brains behind his operation; he was its
only
brain. His minions were legion, but he’d trusted none of them with the information on his empire. It was how he managed to hold on to it.

Something shifted deep in the bowels of the building, and I turned, flowing forth.

I found Mercault in his office. He wasn’t alone.

He wasn’t dead yet either.

With the benefit of my third eye, he also appeared different to me. I’d never touched the man, so I would have had no way of knowing this before but…Mercault was a Connected. A weak one, untrained, but there was no doubting the shimmer of power in his spirit.

Now his eyes were glazed with pain. He was bloody, the right side of his face gashed, his mouth agape. His clothes were half-rent from his body, the dishevelment giving him a wild, unstable look. The men who faced him were the exact opposite. They weren’t gowned as priests, but they had that feel. Serviceable suits, quiet faces, soft hands. Hands that were now busy at Mercault’s computer.

I scanned what they were doing, reporting it, and the arguing Council members around me grew quiet, allowing me to focus. Mercault’s screen was up, but I didn’t understand the complex codes running across it. I did understand the racks of flat cases the intruders had lined up on the table, however, along with the long, sleek syringes that were lying next to them. My gaze swung back to Mercault, and in his eyes I saw something that unnerved me far more than his ragged body ever could.

I saw recognition.

Crap.
I shifted back, rewarded when the big ox shook his head, his voice garbled as he attempted to answer a question of one of the men. French wasn’t my strong suit, but it seemed pretty clear that he was being asked if he’d seen anything. Whether he was desperate enough or drugged enough, he shook his head, spitting blood. But I knew better.

“Miss Wilde.” The Magician’s voice was in my ear again in the conference room, almost as if he knew what I was thinking.

Either way, I didn’t care. Mercault was no prince, but he’d never cheated me. And he’d never stolen children, nor trafficked Connected. Because he was one himself?

It didn’t matter. I knew what I had to do.

I had appeared before, wraithlike, to people while I’d served as an oracle to Eshe. But my body had always been incorporeal. I’d moved through buildings, enduring the drag of stone and walls while willing myself further toward vapor to escape some of the pain. How hard would it be to will myself the other way? And maybe really scare someone?

“Miss Wilde. No. We have agents on the way. Watch and report. Nothing more.”

But Mercault wouldn’t stop staring at me, at the place he was convinced I’d been. There were only the three men—impressive, really, that they’d bearded the lion in his den with so few people. They must have had something to help them. I scanned their bodies, noting the heavy gunmetal gray wrist cuffs, etched with symbols. Jerry Fitz had worn a sheath similar to that, though it’d been blown to bits when his underground lair had exploded. Was there a connection?

I faded back into a different room, this one mercifully free of dead bodies. But not of a living one.

I blinked. “Simon?”

The Fool glanced up at me from behind a newspaper, his legs crossed. “Hullo, Sara.”

“Who—how?” I struggled to understand. “Are you…you’re not traveling, not the way I am. You’re here. You’re corporeal.”

“All true,” he nodded. “Armaeus asked me to come to you, so come to you I have. Sadly, my ability is limited. I can’t leave the structure into which I’ve teleported. And, incidentally, I can’t wear clothing.” He grinned as my gaze dropped to the newspaper. “I’m sure I’ll scrounge up something. More importantly, though, I’ve been instructed to tell you to wait, but that seems like no fun at all. So instead, I can let you know that I’ll keep an eye on Mercault’s tech while you take out the assholes who rearranged his face.”

“Take them out?” I frowned at him. “I’m a ghost.”

“You
were
a ghost,” he corrected. “You’re becoming charmingly corporeal during this little jaunt, much to Eshe’s surprise and Armaeus’s fascination, I’m warning you. And you have clothes.” I frowned down at my body, but he was right. I remained dressed in the same outfit I’d been wearing when I’d dragged myself into the Arcana Council chambers. “Armaeus does have a team on its way. We’d prefer to take at least one of them alive. And Mercault, of course.”

“And what, you won’t help me keep him alive?”

He placed a hand on his chest, his eyes aghast. “My dear Sara, I am a member of the Council. We do not involve ourselves in the affairs of mankind. We merely watch.”

“I think you need to revisit your charter.”

“You’re running out of time.” Simon tilted his head, as if he could see through walls. “They’ve figured out Mercault is holding out on them.”

“Right. And if there are more guards roaming the hallways? Are you going to be safe?”

Simon returned to his newspaper. “I’ll be more than safe, trust me. Run along.”

I tried to will myself back into incorporeal status, but there was nothing doing. It appeared I’d have to do this the hard way, by actually using doors. I exited the room, which opened onto a hallway.

Getting my bearings became a lot easier when Mercault screamed.

Chapter Twelve

I knew enough about Mercault’s toys to know what I had to do. The Frenchman was one of the foremost leaders of the technoceutical market, a nasty bit of business that combined pharmacological pills and injectables with high-tech, magic-infused ingredients, predominately to help users achieve an altered state of consciousness—or unconsciousness—with some additional side effects of physical alterations. Heavy users had permanently dilated eyes, and their pain receptors dimmed enough for them to become a threat to themselves. Simultaneously, their pleasure receptors were stimulated, so their kink was…pretty intense. Not a good crowd to get on the wrong side of at a party.

I was pretty sure that the three ninja soldiers of SANCTUS didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with a technoceutical high. Assuming I could rush in, grab a syringe, hurl it like a javelin of death at the Kevlar-armored men, and have it magically strike home, I should be set.

Piece of cake.

As I slowed, however, a nagging voice in my head brought me up short. It wasn’t Armaeus—it wasn’t Eshe. It was, however, speaking English. With a heavy French accent.

“Clock…bench.
Gun!
”

I winced as Mercault screamed in my head, but turned up the hallway. At the far end, an imperious grandfather clock loomed over a delicate upholstered bench, the kind of bench no one ever sat on. I ran for it, crouching down when I reached it, and swiped my hand beneath. The gun I found was oddly weighted in my hand, a semiautomatic but with an unnatural heft. As if Mercault had filled it with the kind of bullets you’d need to take down a Transformer. Worked for me.

Keeping time with his anguished howls, I crab-walked along the floor. When I reached the door to his office, Mercault sagged forward in his restraints, either passed out or faking it nicely.

“Knock, knock.”

The man ministering to Mercault turned and shouted, and I squeezed off my first round, aiming for his neck.

The gun exploded in my hand with the force of a bazooka, and I fell back even as my target spun around. Then the other two men sprang into action. One of them had apparently read from the same bad-guy playbook I had and grabbed a syringe from the table, hurling it at me with impressive force.

I ducked in time, but guy number two was more nimble. His shot clipped my shin. Pain exploded in a fiery bolt, and I fell back on my ass, bringing the gun around and blasting it toward his face. He jerked sideways with the blast, and I skidded back against the wall with the force of the report again, waving the gun to clear the smoke. Mercault hung more heavily in his bonds, pretty close to dead, but his eyes were fixed on me with a fierce, unwavering stare. I couldn’t quite read that stare, whether it was happy or sad, but I was struck again with the conviction that this had been an inside job. There were too many bodies for it not to be.

Which meant Mercault needed to pick his friends a little more wisely going forward. If the Council really did have men on the way, his life wasn’t about to get any easier.

The momentary distraction was a bad choice on my part, however. A sound at the front of the room caught my attention too late, and suddenly there was another sharpie zinging toward me. The gun went off in my hand, but my aim was nowhere near on target, and a bolt of fire seared through me as the needle struck home. I wrenched it out of my arm and fired again, then a third time, praying I wasn’t hitting Mercault in the process but not really caring so much. Dizziness swamped me, and I dissolved just that quickly, back to incorporeal state. Had I ever really been truly animate in this place? Would I ever be again?

I had no recollection of moving back through the walls of Mercault’s castle, but soon I was drifting through the woods like smoke, noting the long, sleek limo barreling along the private lane. I felt …detached. So detached. A ghost, a wraith, a flitting shadow dissolving into ever-thinner wisps. Pain enveloped me, but not in any specific place—I’d been hit in the shin and the arm, but in this state, I had no legs, I had no arms. In this state, I was naught and nothing and—

The hard crack of a palm against my face woke me with a gasp.

“Kreios!” Armaeus’s sharp voice brought me the rest of the way. I jerked back reflexively, twisting out of the Devil’s grasp. His smile was harder, fiercer than I remembered it, and I brought my fingers to my abused cheek.

“Ouch.”

“My apologies,” he said, looking distinctly unapologetic. “You were going into shock.”

“Remind me not to recommend your bedside manner.”

“I wasn’t finished with her!” Eshe’s petulant whine drew my attention. Her getup today was inspired—colorful toga, darkly outlined eyes and painted lips, long dark hair, golden armbands: Katy Perry in full-on Cleopatra mode. “She went entirely different places than we wanted her to go. What use is she—”

“None. No use.” I dragged myself up in my chair and scowled around the room. “Someone saw me. Actually saw me. Multiple someones.” I turned to Armaeus. “Thanks for the Fool. He didn’t do jack shit.”

“He did what he was told, at least.”

Worry riddled through me at the low warning in his voice, and I blinked, trying to bring myself back to focus. There was something…important about his choice of words. Something critical.

Eshe sniffed. “You couldn’t have been seen. You weren’t physically there.”

That distracted me from the panic fluttering in my gut. “Yeah? Ask Mercault, if there’s anything left of him. Ask the boys in black that I interrupted in his office.” I scowled at Armaeus. “So, really, the Fool can teleport? You think someone might have told me?”

He just gazed back at me, like Darwin studying a barnacle. “Simon’s abilities are not yet fully tapped. He has not been long with the Council.”

“Well, that skill is kind of a big one.” I pulled myself up gingerly in my chair, then frowned down at my shin. It appeared unharmed. I wiggled it. It wiggled back appropriately. “I really was vapor that whole time. Like some sort of hologram.” I frowned. “Why did I feel pain?”

“Even without your Connected abilities, the mind of a mortal is extremely suggestible.” Kreios was regarding me with the same undisguised curiosity as Armaeus. I lifted my right hand to my left arm, palpating the skin. It felt …tender. Apparently, my mind was going to keep up that part of the illusion for a little while longer.

“You got what you needed, then?”

Eshe’s whine reached DEFCON 2. “I did
not
—”

“Yes. And your role of oracle is reaching the end of its usefulness, I’m afraid.” Armaeus’s words drowned out Eshe’s. “Simon has already begun removing the technology from Mercault’s home. The man himself has been secured.”

“And the bad guys?”

He flicked me a glance. “The intruders were no longer on the premises when our team arrived. Two of Mercault’s technoceutical cases were gone as well.”

That did catch me up short. “I was there. I shot them.”

He nodded. “And they shot you.”

“Except I shot a gun—not my gun. One I picked up.”

“Our agents found it. Under the bench by the grandfather clock, correct?”

I blinked at him, my brain going into a serious cramp. “I
saw
them.”

“I’m not disputing that an altercation occurred, that shots were fired and men were hit. I’m disputing the events that transpired immediately
after
you left the scene. The illusion lifted. The men realized they were restored but compromised.”

“Why didn’t they kill Mercault then? They should have. I would have.” Realization dawned. “Simon was there. Really there, not…whatever I was. And he let them go.”

“Simon can be very alarming if he chooses to be. When he provided the men with an opportunity to flee, they took it. They will have time later to consider the ramifications of their decisions.”

I blew out a breath. “Why do I get the feeling that I’m missing some extremely important information here?”

“You need to rest.”

“No.” Eshe’s fists crashed down on the table. “Her abilities are clearly cresting.”

“Yo, these aren’t my abilities. This is that blasted gas.”

“It is
not
the Pythene,” Eshe snapped. “That hasn’t been in your system for three days.”

I blinked at her, but she was already turning to Armaeus. “If you mean to take her from me, I get one last session out of her before she goes. You are not doing all that you should to bring the Council together. The Empress remains uncalled. The Emperor. Even the Her—”

“That’s enough, Eshe,” Armaeus snapped. “We do not need the full Council here to meet this challenge. Those that are on assignment elsewhere must be left to finish their tasks.”

She stared at him, disbelieving. “Assignment! I assure you Roxie Meadows is not ‘on assignment’ in between rounds of booze and boy toys.”