Wilde Card: Immortal Vegas, Book 2

Wilde Card

Immortal Vegas, Book 2

Jenn Stark

Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Stark

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 9781943768028

Cover art by Gene Mollica

Photography by Gene Mollica

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase/Download only authorized editions.

For Ayn

Chapter One

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even blink. Six foot two of hard-bodied ex–Special Forces operative was snugged up against my backside, and I was totally falling for him.

For about eight thousand more feet.

My helmet crackled. “You’re doing great.”

“Unghflun.” Worse, we were still spinning. They’d told me the spinning would stop, but it didn’t feel like it was stopping. It felt like we were dying. And of all the ways to die, French-kissing a cliff at a hundred miles per hour had not made my short list. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “terminal” velocity.

“Right on target.”

Something shuddered above us, and I shifted from sprawl to nearly vertical in a sudden blur. I squinted up past the man carabinered to me in not nearly enough places, to see that our parachute had deployed.

That would be the “Low Opening” portion of this joyride into the Siberian mountain range surrounding Lake Baikal. The “High Altitude” section had been covered by our plunging six-mile drop from a souped-up jet now well on its way to Beijing.

Getting off this rock without alerting the local military would be its own special kind of crazy, but I was down for that. Pretty much any kind of crazy that got me away from Vegas and the Arcana Council for a few days worked for me.

“Drop point,” echoed in my ear.

Beside us, two other barely discernible shadows rocketed through the predawn gloom. We were aiming for a strip of gravel tucked between two sheer cliffs where, according to my client, X marked the spot for the ultimate Mongolian treasure: the crown of Genghis Khan. Rumored to give its wearer the Khan’s magical mojo for protection, abundance, and crazy long life.

Then again, said crown was apparently resting on the head of a dead guy right now. So there was that.

Another crackle in my helmet. “Bend your knees.”

“If I had a dollar…”

My guide’s laughter carried through our final several hundred feet of descent, and suddenly we were on the ground, a tumble of arms, legs, and high-tech padding. With impressive military precision, mission leader Zander “Call me Zee” James broke up with me without remorse, thrusting me aside. I lurched drunkenly to my knees as he slowed his run then turned to his parachute and punched it into submission.

The other men landed beside us, neatly outrunning their chutes, and I ducked to avoid a fine spray of rocks stirred up by the movement. Zee stripped off his HALO suit, oxygen mask and gear like he was shimmying out of swim trunks, and shoved them into a we-were-never-here-sized nylon bagel for easy transport out. He flapped his hand at me for mine and I shoved them at him in a big ball. “Report?” he snapped.

Zee’s right-hand man squinted down at a device attached to his wrist. “No heat signatures,” he said, aiming the thing at the rock wall. “Wall” was being kind. The cliff face surged up as if an angry god had punched through the earth’s crust, all crags and fissures and sharp edges. “Seismic activity currently stable.”

As if to counter his words, another crackle of falling rocks sounded high above us. “Right.” Zee squinted up. “At dawn, this place’ll light up like the surface of the sun. We don’t want to be here for that. We get in, we get out, we get gone.” His gaze shifted to me. “Ready?”

I nodded, then tugged down the zipper of my tech suit to fetch my own tools of the trade, my trusty pack of Tarot cards.

With the deck as my compass, I could find about anything—for a price. As it happened, a hundred G was a heck of a price. That kind of money translated to at least three more Connecteds hidden away from the dark practitioners who wanted to use them for spare parts. Not enough to save them all, no. But enough to count. I had to believe that.

“Sometime today, princess.”

Double-tasking one set of fingers to offer Zee my opinion of his people management skills, I used the other to pull a scatter of cards out of the deck.

Here we go.

Four of Cups, the Magician, Eight of Swords, King of Cups. Two that made sense, one that didn’t, and one that might make me kill someone. But first things, first.

“Whaddya got?” Zee prompted. I shoved the cards back in place, rezipping my suit.

“We go up.” I squinted at the fissure-ridden rock wall. The Four of Cups typically showed a grumpy young man sitting at the base of a tree, focusing on three cups on the ground, totally missing the cup that floated above him. It could mean lots of things in lots of different scenarios, but in a game of hide and seek…

I peered high. The problem with the client’s choice of Mount Swiss Cheese here was there probably
were
a half-dozen holes that legitimately tunneled all the way into the mountain, along with a million and one false starts. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to waste. The place was heavily patrolled, with the next choppers due at dawn.

Fortunately, the cards were pointing the way. I looked yet higher. “Give me a boost?”

Zee moved into position beside me, cupping his hands. He braced me easily as I scrabbled up the side of the wall. I usually preferred to avoid climbing anything more challenging than a mound of pillows, but the tech gloves helped. So did the fact that Zee’s arms were solid, even fully outstretched. “You got something?” he asked.

“Hole.”

“We got those down here.”

“Mine’s better.” I glanced toward him. “But it’s going to be tight. You and Atlas Shrugged will need to suck it in. Boost me the rest of the way.”

I knelt on the narrow ledge while Zee free-climbed up behind me, barely grunting with the effort. And…
Bingo.
Half-hidden beneath a rough outcropping, a fissure sank into the side of the mountain, maybe wide enough for a man so long as he wasn’t channeling Mr. Potato Head. I picked up a handful of rocks and tossed them into the hole. They skittered a few feet, then fell a fair distance before hitting what I assumed was “bottom.”

“Can’t see a damned thing,” Zee muttered, angling his flashlight beam into the opening. “Blast it bigger?”

Atlas pulled himself up beside us. “That would definitely make the seismic activity unstable. About a fifth of this wall is just itching for a reason to fall down.”

“Right.” Zee turned toward me and gave me his flashlight, along with a crooked grin. “Ladies first, then.”

“Such a gentleman.” Still, if anything went wrong, they could haul me out of that hole a lot easier than I could haul them. Sliding the flashlight up my sleeve and manfully resisting the bad joke, I flattened myself on my stomach, then wormed into the tight space.

It was claustrophobic enough to make me panic, but I wriggled ahead anyway, edging deeper and deeper. Using my toes to dig into the loose rocks against the side of the mountain, I snagged an outcropping to haul myself forward and—

Dropped into open space.

“
Jesus!
”

Zee’s curse cracked above me, and iron fists clamped down on my ankles as the stone I’d grabbed for crumbled into the cavern below. I hung precariously upside down in full possum for a long, queasy moment, then fumbled the flashlight out of my sleeve.

It only took a second to bring a smile to my face.

Dead bodies did that. Especially when they’d been dead a long time.

I wiggled my ankles to loosen Zee’s grip. “All clear!”

“Rolling!” Zee’s shout was my sole warning before he dropped me. I curled into a protective ball and plummeted down several feet, then somersaulted off a mound of scree and rock dust that had accumulated in the center of the room. I landed cheek to jawbone with the nearest skeleton. After an impressive amount of cursing, Zee dropped to the rock pile behind me, followed by his men. The thud of their boots echoed ominously, and I thought I heard the scatter of stones falling deep inside the mountain. The place must be as hollow as a honeycomb.

“Arrows,” Zee grunted, poking at the pile of bones and moldy clothes that circled our small mound. “Not friendly fire, I’m thinking. At least they’re old as shit.” He tossed me one of the long, slender shafts, then fanned his flashlight in a wide arc. “Those bars over there look a bit too solid, though.”

I nodded. “Eight of Swords.”

The light flared in my face. “Which means?”

“Well, for us it means restrictions we can get around, if we open our eyes.”

“That’s beautiful.” Zee stepped over the mounds of bones and strode forward, then ran a hand over the surface of the bars. “These are embedded in the floor and ceiling. We ain’t getting through this way.” He flicked his flashlight beam back over me. “What next?”

“Working on it.” I pondered the scene in front of me while Zee’s men bent over their Techzilla, Inc. readers and muttered observations on psychic energy levels. A few more rocks fell from the ledges above, bouncing lightly off the small mound of gravel in the center of the room.
Magician, Magician, Magician…

One thing for sure: the Magician
himself
had better not show up here, not while I was on the clock for another client. Mr. Mongol back in Ulaanbaatar had hired me to recover a piece of his heritage, tacking on Team Armor All here for logistics and muscle alone. He would not take kindly to a tagalong, no matter if said tagalong was the leader of the Great and Mighty Arcana Council. The success or failure of this op was all on me.

Fortunately, Armaeus Bertrand did
not
fulfill my worst nightmare by poking his head through the hole in the ceiling, and I dropped my gaze again to take in the small holding cell. Around the rock pile in the center of the room, the remains of bones and clothes hunkered like kids circling a campfire. Something about that…

“Why aren’t there any bones in the center? Why just rocks?” I asked aloud. I kicked at the pile of rubble, then brushed more of the dust away as Zee turned his light on me. It didn’t take me long to find the reason. “Tool marks. Someone’s cut into the floor.”

Zee walked over, leaving his men at the bars. “Definitely tool marks.” Squatting down, he started chucking rocks toward the larger pile, revealing a graceful arc that had been carved into the stone. We uncovered it bit by bit. The curve met itself in the center, creating a perfect fat teardrop. Zee leaned down and shoved a particularly robust pile forward…and the cavern echoed with a resounding creak.

We all froze.

“What the hell was that?” Zee muttered, but all of us were looking at the same thing, caught in multiple flashlight beams. There was a distinct ridge in the floor right along the carved arc, where our ledge was a millimeter higher than the surface around it.

“Figure Eight,” I said suddenly, staring at the design. “We’re on half of it.” I met Zee’s confused gaze. “Infinity sign. It was on one of the cards I pulled. Two sides of equal size, joined in the middle. We’re on one side.” I pointed. “That pile is on the other. A pile you’ve made a lot heavier. Maybe it’s like a seesaw.”

“It’s exactly like that, I bet.” Zee stood, carefully. “We overload it enough, it goes down, we go up, then everything slides down to whatever’s waiting below.” He scowled at me. “Trap?”

“I don’t think—”

“Zee, we got trouble.” The man at the bars peered into the gloom. “No readings on the device, but something’s—”

“I hear it.” Zee yanked out his gun as a sound from deep in the mountain jolted us. It wasn’t shifting rock this time. This was more rhythmic. A
lot
more rhythmic: the sound of running feet.