“Wolfy, is that you?” came the sultry voice from the other end of the phone, although Wolfe could hear the semi-hidden sardonic edge to her voice. Miriam always sounded like she was having a subtle laugh at the world.
Wolfe rolled his eyes. “Yeah, it’s me. I want to meet to talk, and I’m on extremely tight timeline. It’s important.”
“Well, since its important, I’ll have one of my boys drive me over in the limo with the tinted windows,” Miriam said. “You know how much I hate to have the sun touch my fair skin.”
“Let’s meet somewhere else. It might not be the best for your health if we’re seen together, before… things.”
“Ooh, you know how to excite a girl,” Miriam said, her voice faux breathy. “Perhaps we can meet at the local Deckburger?”
Wolfe ground his teeth. Recently, Miriam had learned the story of Wolfe and Shel’s early stops at a Deckburger, and had been bringing it up constantly.
“How about we just meet at in front of my old house?” Wolfe responded. “We both know where that is.”
“Oh, Wolfe, you tease,” Miriam said and laughed. “Gonna make me eggs for breakfast again?”
“Hanging up now,” Wolfe replied, and did.
Shel smiled. “Always a character, huh?”
Wolfe nodded. “Alright, let’s go let her know what’s happening. Fern, you should come with us.”
Fern started. “Are you sure?”
Wolfe nodded. “Miriam is an ally. You’ll be safe. You told me you had access to the business dealings of the gangs through Adam, I know—but Miriam launders all their money and might know more, or have access you don’t.”
Fern nodded, clutching her laptop to her chest.
***
“Six days, seven hours, and fourteen minutes,” Fern muttered quietly as she stared out the window of the van they were all in.
It was nearly midnight, and the city streets outside the van were dark, both from the fog rolling in off the lake and from the lack of streetlights. All of Noimoire was dangerous, but some parts hid it beneath glitz and glamour. The part they were in now, the poorest parts near the old docks, didn’t have the energy left to hide what it was.
Most of the lights weren’t functioning, most likely because they’d been looted for their copper by the local meth heads. Despite that and the fog, Wolfe could make out a few people on the streets outside. The first were a pair of men sitting fairly far apart that were almost certainly drug dealers. Down the street from them was a woman with a young body that Wolfe would bet had an old face, dressed in a miniskirt that would have left only a tiny bit to the imagination in the daylight. Last, but not least, a thin, nerdy guy in a damned white polo was walking the street, probably looking for drugs for some party.
But no police. Miriam was arranging a few ‘incidents’ near them, but away from the docks, to distract the police even further away.
“Wish that idiot with the polo would leave,” Wolfe muttered.
No one responded to that anymore than they had responded to Fern muttering how much time they had before Adam got back. The tension in the van was palpable. They were all staring at the small collection of cars at the far end of the dock, and the boat in the water just past the end of the dock. Multiple people were loading and unloading stuff from the ship.
Wolfe’s phone buzzed, and he picked it up.
“It’s as go as I can make it,” Miriam said without her usual flirty banter, the tension in her voice notable as well.
Wolfe hung up.
“Malviere and…” Wolfe paused, “creepy Obsessive Cultist, with me. Cereboo, stay back a bit—I’ll call you if needed, but you’re more recognizable.”
Wolfe opened the door to the van and stepped out, and Shel slid into the driver’s seat. “Good luck my love,” Shel said, her voice faux casual.
Wolfe patted the new knife at his belt. “I’ll make my own luck.”
Malviere opened the back door and the Obsessive Cultist and Cereboo both slipped out. The Obsessive Cultist walked close to Wolfe. He frowned as he glanced at her. She appeared to be an eighteen-year-old woman with black hair and pale skin carrying an eldritch tome. But she was creepy in the extreme—her eyes never flickered around, she never said anything, and her face rested placidly.
Malviere, in contrast, looked excited.
“My first true hunt since I became the real me,” she said, her voice reverberating with a darkness, the hint of the howls of damned souls in it.
“Yes. But be quiet,” Wolfe said. She’s almost as creepy as the Dead-eyed cultist, in her own way. Scarier, really.
Fern leaned out the window and touched her hand to her chest, pulling her deck. Wolfe dismissed the notification, hoping no one was close enough to see it. It wouldn’t be a problem for him—his deck contained an evolved Bulgae Chaser, which hid his deck pull from notifying anyone.
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Fern must have gotten her card in the first pull, because she touched a purple card in front of her, and magic settled around Wolfe. He watched as his hair lengthened, became blond, and his skin shifted to a pasty white. His nails lengthened, one cracked, and it appeared as if dirt appeared under them. His clothing appeared older and baggier, dark gray with wine stains on them.
“You made me into a hobo.”
“It’ll be good, trust me. The gray will be harder to spot, and maybe people will think this was a drug hit by a crazy person,” Fern responded. “Now go, please. The five minutes are counting down.”
No one is going to think I’m a hobo when I’m using cards, Wolfe thought. But it didn’t matter—all that mattered was they wouldn’t recognize him. So he just nodded to Fern and took off into a jog, Malviere and the Obsessed Cultist running behind him.
He crossed the street and headed toward the huge parking lot surrounding the docks, shaking his head as he went. I remember being ambushed at this dock by the Cobras—and guarding product shipments on multiple other occasions.
But now it was his turn to ambush people at the dock. Turnabout’s fair play.
Wolfe kept low, hoping the night fog would hide him. He made it to the edge of the parking lot, half-hiding behind one of the defunct streetlights. A quick look revealed little—just vague shapes loading and unloading on the ship.
Wolfe was tempted to sneak up slowly, but he knew his illusion had a time limit. He pulled his deck, reveling in the fact he wouldn’t inform anyone. He immediately summoned his second Obsessive Cultist—the one guaranteed to be in his first hand because of his new building card, the Infernal Library Wing of the Hellmouth Institute.
Obsessive Infernal Cultist
Rare, tier-8 Mortal/Infernal Creature [evolved orphan, priest]
1 Infernal Power
Health: 9
Attack: 1
Defense: 5
Magical Attack: 4*[Infernal]
Magical Defense: 5
Special: Infernal Portal Summoner [2]: Any Infernal card with the word ‘Portal,’ ‘Gate,’ or ‘Summon’ costs 2 less power of any type to play.
Special: Sacrificial [3]: This card may be sacrificed for three power of any type to be used for one summoning.
“This cultist has grown up in an Infernal church, and its every commandment and mystery is dear to her heart.”
With two of the Obsessive Infernal Cultists out, Wolfe could now use his Demonic Portal card for two power—and that card summoned five power of Infernal Creatures from a side deck he had established.
Wolfe took a chance, waiting the thirty seconds to get the next summon. Each Demonic Portal card allowed Wolfe to create a side deck of five creature cards, and they all stacked together. Even though Wolfe had only a fifteen-card deck, two of them were Demonic Portal cards now, which let him maintain a ten-creature-card side deck. Wolfe had a lot of interesting options, now, in the creature department.
He had a few extra Demonic Portal cards at home, and when he had five really good cards, and enough leveling pips to up his hand size and deck size at the same time, he was going to expand the deck again.
Wolfe used the Demonic Portal card, and brought forth two creatures from the side deck that having demonic portals allowed him to create.
The first was a Hellhound Puppy, which he left in the greater pack to guard the Obsessive Cultists. Then he summoned a new creature from his side deck, one he was almost positive no one had seen before—and the costliest card he had in his deck.
Black smoke boiled from the point he had summoned it, spreading over fifty feet in every direction—the insubstantial body of the demon, which quickly engulfed Wolfe and his team of cards, the smoke not quite touching them at any point. Wolfe glanced at the card.
Smoke Demon
Rare Tier-1 Infernal Creature
2 Infernal, 2 Any power
Health: 13
Attack: N/A
Defense: N/A
Magical Attack: N/A
Magical Defense: 11
Special: Incorporeal: Physical attacks cannot hit.
Special: Choking 50’: All enemies that need to breathe suffer -2 to all stats within 50’ of the Smoke Demon, and take 1 true damage every 30 seconds.
Special: Sacrifice Obscured [3]: This creature may be sacrificed at any time. If it is, for the minute and a half after, no creature may attack any deckbearer or creature if within 250’ of the spot of death, and vision is reduced to 5’.
“I suppose, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Or in these bugger’s case, where there’s hellfire, there’s smoke.”
Wolfe had added quite a few cards to his side deck, including ones he’d gained from Damian, or had bought with all the things he had sold from Damian’s deck. The Smoke Demon was just one of them, but it had been quite expensive. It had a few situations where it would be extremely useful.
Wolfe ran, inside his own Smoke Demon, as it rolled forward. He hoped that in the dark it would seem only a darker patch of fog. His entire group followed, obscured, Cereboo at the very back of the Smoke Demon.
Wolfe saw the first member of the Weeds gang ahead, a lookout leaning against a car, staring bored out into the darkness. As the smoke roiled forward, the thug straightened a little, fingering his gun.
But he was slow to realize the threat and the smoke rolled across him. Immediately, the thug began to choke and cough, briefly trying to cover his face with his hand.
Wolfe eschewed his usual STI Edge in favor of grabbing his new knife—a huge hunting blade. He rushed from the smoke, and the thug opened his mouth to cry out.
Too slow. Wolfe slammed his knife up under the chin of the thug, not quite killing him in a single hit, but utterly incapacitating him. The thug fell down, choking on magical smoke and his own blood both.
Malviere ran up, and grabbed the darkness that swirled around her. She moved her hand toward the thug violently, and the darkness parted. A spectral dog lunged out and bit the thug where he lay, near dead, on the ground.
The spectral dog didn’t inflict a physical wound, but the man stilled, his flesh graying, and rot wafted from him.
Wolfe got a no-experience kill notification for the thug.
“My first personal kill during a hunt,” Malviere said.
Wolfe glanced at the quickly rotting body. “Congrats. Do you eat what you kill?”
“Gross,” Malviere said, half-gagging. The most human reaction Wolfe had nearly ever seen from her, outside of her appreciation of rare steak.
“Julio?” Came a call from outside the smoke, deeper into the fog, toward the ramp onto the boat.
“Ah, shit,” Wolfe said. He hated it when the low-level thugs were smart about stuff. “Let’s go!”
Wolfe rushed across the parking lot toward the man that had called out.
The man yelled again, louder. “Julio? Answer me, man!”
Wolfe briefly saw the man at the bottom of the ramp, gun out, staring in confusion and growing horror as the smoke rushed him. Just before it hit, the man raised his gun and fired rapidly and blindly into the smoke.
He missed Wolfe, but a yip and notification of death told him that at least one bullet had found his Lost Hellhound Puppy.
The yells around the boat told him that his surprise had been lost.