Wolfe leapt out from behind the car door, slamming it closed, and ran toward the front door of the inn. The slap of shoes on pavement told Wolfe that Shel was keeping pace with him as he ran.

“Don’t draw your deck until I’ve gotten surprise,” Wolfe said. “Gun still beats idiot thug.”

“Okay,” Shel said, her breathing easy as they hit the wall just outside the door.

Wolfe glanced in through the window in the front. Melissa was down on the ground, holding her knee, and blood seeped around her fingers. She was crying, and breathing raggedly.

Marco was standing to the side of the door, half-facing it, with his pistol trained on Melissa. His partner was facing Melissa with his back to the door. The second thug had a pistol as well, but it was held loosely and pointed at the ground.

“This is a clear case of defense of others, right?” Wolfe asked Shel. “I can kill them legally?”

Shel’s eyes widened, but she nodded.

Wolfe smiled a shark’s smile. About damn time.

Wolfe touched his chest at the same time as he shouldered his way into the Inn, drawing his deck with his gun pointed out in his other hand.

I need one of them.

Wolfe fired a couple times at Marco, hitting him once in the side, but Marco was nearly as good an instinctual fighter as Wolfe. He managed to get one badly aimed shot off as he dived behind the counter, trailing blood. He scrambled across the floor and dragged Melissa, who screamed, with him.

But Marco wasn’t a tactical fighter, and he had done essentially what Wolfe wanted, after just dying. Wolfe slammed his gun into the head of the random thug, who hadn’t managed to turn around yet. Wolfe knocked him sideways and to the ground. Surprisingly, it didn’t take him out completely, and Wolfe fired again at the counter to keep Marco’s head down.

Then Wolfe kicked the mook in the same place he had hit him, and that put the guy to sleep.

From down the hall Wolfe heard shouts and screams. Yeah, everyone was going to know I was here.

His deck manifested. It showed Cereboo, his companion card, and four others—two of his Tier-3 Angry Hellhounds, a Lost Hellhound Pup, and Brimstone.

Enemy deckbearer Marco has pulled his deck.

Allied deckbearer Rachel Lyons has pulled her deck.

Marco’s voice came floating up from behind the counter. “I can’t fight both you and your stupid cunt, Wolfe, but if you don’t drop your damn gun right now I’m gonna blow this bitch’s head all over the floor—maybe she can sell the new hole to some prick. And if I so much as smell a summoned creature from either of you I’m gonna waste her as well.”

Wolfe rolled his eyes. Marco’s mouth had always been foul even by the standards of the thugs that Wolfe ran with, and it made him sound like an idiot.

But his eyes fell on his cards.

He tossed his gun to the floor so that it slid across the ground toward the counter, where Marco could see it. Shel’s eyes opened wide, But Wolfe calmly reached out and touched a card.

An angry Hellhound—one of Marco’s—came around the corner, and at the same time Marco stood up, his gun out, blood seeping from his existing wound.

“You dumb—” he managed to get out.

Wolfe shot him in the face with Brimstone, and Marco’s head exploded across the back wall.

Melissa screamed from behind the counter.

Wolfe rolled his eyes. Why do women do that?

The Angry Hellhound faded away, and Marco fell back to the ground.

Wolfe made a level, which surprised him. Marco had been a deckbearer for almost eleven years, but still. When did Marco make a high enough level to give me more than a hundred percent experience?

Wolfe pushed the thoughts aside. “Shel, make sure the guy with the concussion is alive, please, and heal him.”

“My EMT’s can only heal deckbearers,” Shel said.

“Right,” Wolfe muttered, feeling dumb. “Well, please take care of him as best you can then. Didn’t you take some basic lifesaving courses as part of becoming a cop?”

“Very basic,” Shel replied, but she bent down and started to touch the guy’s head.

Wolfe walked behind the front counter.

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Melissa appeared as she always did, only wounded and terrified. Pink chemise with white bra straps showing, and she was forty and usually looked it. At the moment, with blood oozing from her wrecked knee and tears streaking her face, she currently looked closer to fifty.

Wolfe crouched down beside her. “What happened?”

“Wolfe, I thought you were dead!”

“Rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated. But what happened, Melissa? Or why?”

Melissa was holding her leg below the knee. “Please, Wolfe, help me. This hurts so much!”

Wolfe picked up the deck and flipped through the cards, of which there were twenty. Marco had possessed a couple Angry Hellhounds and, to Wolfe’s delight and surprise, a rare Gehennan Kennel Master, as well as a couple weaker enhancement cards. Nothing else would work for his deck and would likely just be sold, for one reason or another. Most weren’t compatible, but one rare card called Aesthma’s Wrath was a named card that made a single Infernal creature far more powerful—but Wolfe didn’t want another named infernal lord other than Cerberus in his deck.

“What’re you doing?” Melissa asked. “Please, Wolfe!”

Wolfe ignored her for a moment. He pocketed the rare or useful cards, picking the weakest nine and the solid mantle card.

Then he held them out to Melissa. “If you want to become a mixed Infernal and Beast deckbearer, Melissa, I can give you these—but you owe me a half-million, clear? I like you, but you did choose this life, and I don’t half-a-million like you, get me? If you become a deckbearer, Shel can heal you.”

“Those are worth a half-million?” Melissa asked, gripping her leg near the wound.

“More, actually, because I left an advanced mantle in. But I gave you a bit of a discount—close to a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Wow. Thanks, hon,” Melissa said, a bit of a non-sequitur to the situation. Although she was still breathing raggedly.

“Figure it out fast, though,” Wolfe said. “I’ve got shit to do—and I need to ask you some questions.”

“I didn’t really want to be a deckbearer,” Melissa said, sniffling. “In this life, it makes you a target… someone is gonna come gunning for me.”

Wolfe waited.

She glanced at her leg. “How bad is it?”

Wolfe looked. He wasn’t an expert, but he’d seen a few knee-cappings in his time. “I’m pretty sure that the knee is completely destroyed, and you’ll never walk again without magic or intensive reconstructive surgery. But you could pay for a card with more powerful healing than mine, if you want to wait—and explain why you got shot.”

Melissa sighed and held her hand out. “Alright, give me the cards. You’ll get your money. I have more than enough.”

Wolfe gave her the cards, and she took all ten. “What now?”

Shel quietly walked up behind them, five golden cards floating in front of her.

“Just will them into you, I think. Aside from needing to touch your chest to pull the cards, which is true for very nearly every deckbearer out there, everything I’ve experienced so far, from directing my creatures at targets to pulling up my status sheet, merely requires me to will it.”

Melissa scrunched her nose, and the cards disappeared. A look of wonder briefly replaced the pain written all across her face.

Shel immediately touched one of her cards, and a nervous looking woman in her late teens appeared, dressed in a blue jumpsuit with a white plus sign on it.

Golden light washed across Melissa’s knee, and her face lost its pinched, pained look and her eyes went wide. “God that’s good.”

Wolfe watched the bones briefly fuse back—partially—and the flesh heal somewhat.

He waited as Shel did it twice more. By the time she was done, Melissa was able to crawl to her knees and then her feet.

“Thank you,” Melissa said, hugging him. “Seriously, Wolfe, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

Wolfe stiffened slightly but didn’t pull back, nodding as he said, “Just make sure I get paid—I already discounted you.”

Melissa gave him another squeeze. “Of course.”

Wolfe disentangled himself from her. “I’m not really the hugging type, Melissa. If you really want to thank me, you can answer some questions for me.”

She nodded.

“Let’s start with—why the hell was Marco here, anyway? And shooting you?”

Melissa rubbed her knee, even though it appeared to be totally healed. “Hon… do you do body disappearing anymore?”

Wolfe shook his head. “No.”

“I promise I’ll answer your questions, Wolfe. But let me take care of some stuff, okay?”

Wolfe sighed, aggravated. But he had to admit that ‘dead body and massive blood stains’ were a pressing issue.

Melissa pulled her cell phone out from a drawer and called someone. “Mr. Singh? Melissa here. I’ve got a dead body and a ton of blood in my downstairs lobby.” She paused. “It’s Marco, from the Grimm family.”

Wolfe met Shel’s wide eyes with his own at the confirmation that the Grimm family was still operating—and that Marco had somehow joined it. Damian, that little bastard, must have finished unifying the families. I’m not surprised by the basics, but I’m surprised he managed to get Marco on board when his scheming—or failure to scheme well enough—got Marco’s brother Ramius killed by me.

Melissa was still talking. “No, I’m fine.” Pause. “I don’t think I can say who killed Marco.” Another pause, in which she met Wolfe’s eyes. “It would be bad for everyone. Yeah, I’ll be here.”

Melissa hung up. “Okay, hon, what was the question? Also, how are you still alive? Where have you been?”

Wolfe shook his head. “As to how I’m alive, I’ll talk about it later, over a shot of whisky at some bar someday. As to my questions, first, why did Marco shoot you?”

She grimaced. “I wouldn’t tell him where Cherry and Delilah were.”

With a name like Cherry… “Two of the working girls?”

She nodded. “Yeah. The cops, under this new Chief of Police Charleston, have been cracking down like crazy. They grab every freakin’ working girl they see and send them to jail. Every minor drug pusher, too. Most are only there for a small amount of time, but no one wants to go to jail and get a rap. Anyway, I’ve been letting a lot of them live here—or at least work here, with assigned rooms—and the Singh family has been sending the Johns here directly.”

A face, thin and feminine with long brown hair and dull brown eyes, poked out from the hall. “Mel? Is everything okay?”

Then the girl took in the body. “By the Divine! What happened? Oh god, are we going to be okay?”

Melissa grimaced. “Yeah. We’re fine, Pearl. They came to get Cherry and Delilah, and Marco became violent, but Wolfe here handled the situation.”

“Wolfe? The guy that killed all those Cobras and then died?”

Melissa smiled. “Well, didn’t die, apparently. But Marco, at least, won’t be bothering us.”

Wolfe held his hands up. “Wait. Wait wait wait. Why the heck would Marco be coming for these girls? Nothing you said explains that.”

Melissa shrugged, and then reached into a drawer behind the counter with shaking hands, removing a pack of cigarettes. “I don’t know. But the last time he came for some girls, a month ago, only one was ever found—and she was rescued by some guy at that trafficking incident in Joliet. You know, the one in the train yard? It made the news.”

Wolfe met Shel’s eyes—he could tell she knew as well. They had been suspicious, but this was nearly absolute confirmation that Damian, that scumbag, was involved in the human trafficking.