The Joliet PD vehicle pulled to a stop in front of Wolfe, away from the huge mess. A huge mess that was starting to really smell in the unusually hot Joliet weather. The normal copper-and-shit smell of violent death was already being reinforced by the smell of rot and decay, and Wolfe’s nose wrinkled.

“Hey Rhett,” Wolfe muttered.

The door to the car opened and Rhett stepped out. “Wholly crap, William. Even for you, this is… impressive.”

“Just use my nickname Wolfe,” Wolfe said.

Rhett grimaced. He appeared, as always, like the poster child for military recruitment. Rhett was of a height with Wolfe, six-foot-two, but even more muscular. He also had military cut hair, intense blue eyes, and chiseled features.

Even his police uniform looked ironed.

Rhett was probably one of Wolfe’s closest friends, and his most reliable after Shel, but he was also a bit much sometimes. Who irons their police uniform?

Rhett glanced around, his head taking in the scene while his body remained almost at attention. His nose also wrinkled at the smell.

“What happened here?”

"I was attacked by twelve guys in three cars,” Wolfe responded. “They drove in, shooting wildly and inaccurately, and I used Cerberus’s Home for Wayward Hellhounds to cause an accident. Then Liam and I killed them all—Liam had an assault rifle, and I have a very strong deck.”

Rhett nodded. “That’s it? Nothing else?”

Wolfe consciously didn’t let his gaze head to the garage, where Fern and her van were currently hiding. “Nope. They just drove in and attacked me. I ended them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

Rhett frowned at Wolfe’s flippancy. “With anyone else I’d assume you were hiding something, but you do have a lot of people that would want to off you for one imagined slight or another.”

“And a few real ones,” Wolfe quipped again.

This time Rhett nodded as if that were sage commentary. “Yeah, I could see you actually slighting a few people enough for them to murder you. I damn near wanted to when we first.”

“Heh,” Wolfe muttered. Rhett had a point. But suffering fools had never really been Wolfe’s strong point…

Before they could say anything else, the sounds of sirens interrupted their conversation.

“Great, the fine boys in blue from the Noimoire PD are here,” Wolfe muttered.

Rhett frowned again. Wolfe swore Rhett was gonna have wrinkles before he was forty, and he already had resting ‘stern’ face.

"C’mon, you can’t blame me for being irritated with the Noimoire PD,” Wolfe said. “We’ve got history, them and I.”

“Most of the men that betrayed their oaths are dead or appealing life sentences,” Rhett said. “I think you should give the new ones a bit more credit—your own girlfriend among them, I might add.”

Wolfe rolled his eyes but held his tongue. On the one hand, Rhett was probably right. On the other, Wolfe had a long and contentious relationship with the police, and not even close to all of it had been Wolfe’s fault. Two of the biggest defining moments of his life had been thanks to utterly corrupt cops.

Wolfe and Rhett waited in companionable silence as the Noimoire police cars—eight of them—pulled into his large parking lot.

“Down, down, hands on your head!” One shouted as he came out with his gun pointed at Wolfe.

“I’ve got this, officer!” Rhett called out. “You’re late. We’re fine.”

More and more police officers boiled out of the cars and headed for Wolfe. He sighed, and decided to comply with them, despite what Rhett had said. Wolfe went to his knees and laid on his stomach, hands behind his back, as the officers rushed him.

His mind was on Fern’s words, however. Between this and what she had said, he already knew this was going to be a whole thing.

***

“Six days, fourteen hours, and nineteen minutes,” Fern muttered where she sat at the center of the dining table, surrounded by Wolfe’s allies, a newly purchased laptop in front of her.

“Would you stop doing that?” Wolfe muttered back.

Shel laughed. Wolfe paused for a moment and appreciated his wonderful, beautiful girlfriend. She was gorgeous, with brilliant red hair, equally intense green eyes, and youthful, tanned skin. But Wolfe had been with beautiful women before.

What really made Shel special was that she was truly kind and supportive of Wolfe, a fundamentally good person. Raphael, a Divine Lord, known as the Archangel of Kindness, had picked her as a chosen deckbearer, and that choice made sense to anyone that spent time with Shel.

Liam and Malviere kept quiet.

Wolfe probably shouldn’t be so irritated at Fern. She had obviously had some seriously bad things happen to her. But, it had been a long day, and Fern had brought that day to him.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Rather than going to serve papers, as he first planned, Wolfe had instead spent hours talking to police officers. With Rhett there, things had gone better than expected, but twelve bodies was still twelve bodies.

Wolfe hadn’t told anyone about Fern the whole time. He’d just repeated his story that gangbangers ambushed him outside his residence, and that he, Liam, and their decks had fought them off. Since Fern had been hiding in her car past the fight the whole time, the crime scene bore out his story.

After being handcuffed, Wolfe had been arrested, over Rhett’s objection. The Noimoire police officers had been relatively solicitous, but they’d still stuck him in the back of a car and interrogated him. The investigation had taken hours—coroners, detectives, blood-spatter guys.

Only when it was discovered that two of the men had been men arrested at the warehouse where Wolfe had put an end to the human trafficking operation had things gotten better. After that discovery, the police had pretty quickly convinced themselves everything had just been a retaliatory hit against Wolfe.

But finally, the scene had been cleaned—mostly, Wolfe was gonna have to hire someone to power wash his parking lot—and everyone had gone home. Including Wolfe.

“So, you’ve all heard it,” Wolfe said. “The question is—do I start murdering people?”

“Continue murdering people, my alpha,” Malviere said in her otherworldly voice.

From under the table, Cereboo whuffed a couple of times from multiple heads. Wolfe swore his dog was laughing at him. Wolfe was never sure how much Cereboo really understood, and most of the time his pooch acted like a normal pooch. But Cereboo could clearly follow complicated commands shouted in English. So he probably understood a lot, actually.

He also gave Malviere the stink-eye. Ever since his card had evolved, she—it?—had gained a sense of humor. A dark sense of humor, and she occasionally poked Wolfe, as well. Not least of which by calling him ‘alpha,’ which always sounded to Wolfe like the title an edgy thirteen-year-old would revel in.

“I think you have to,” Liam said. “The evidence that Fern showed us was pretty convincing. They’ve already paid people to be available to take you out. I mean… It’s not really even hitting them first at this point. They’ve literally paid multiple assassins to take you out in a few weeks.”

Shel, her eyes sad, nodded. “And, well, there’s Cerberus’s message.”

“Cerberus’s message?” Malviere asked, intrigued. Liam also perked up in interest.

Wolfe sighed. “I was told, when I received this deck, that if I didn’t get all six cards, whomever did would pretty much destroy the city, or maybe just make it evil. It was a bit cryptic.”

“You talked to the gods?” Liam asked, wide-eyed.

“More like the gods talked at me,” Wolfe replied. “Although I was hardly handed a list of Cerberus’s commandments.”

No one said anything.

“That’s it, then?” Wolfe asked. “Shel, you don’t have an opinion that we should do things Rhett’s way?”

Shel shook her head, her face tragic. “No. I want to do it the right way. I really, really do. I desperately don’t want to risk or lives, freedom, and careers again. But Adam is the third most important politician in Illinois, a multiple time war hero—”

“For the Confederacy, at least the first time,” Liam muttered.

Shel nodded as she continued, “—and he’s a billionaire. There’s no way we’re taking him down fully in a legal manner. And all the crime families have obviously, openly decided to kill you—as has Adam himself.”

Wolfe was legitimately surprised at how easy Shel was going along with this. That had been his single biggest concern with going on the offensive—that Shel would be upset.

But with her on the side of murdering everyone… well, the card had been played.

“Alright, then, how do we do this?” Wolfe asked.

Fern turned the computer around. It had lists of the living locations of prominent members of all three gangs, places they conducted their illicit activities or kept the profits of same, and had vague schedules and protections for most of the prominent members.

The Singh and Renfeldt families, Wolfe could immediately see, were going to be problems.

But the Weeds, a loose collection of criminals much like the Cobras had been, were going to be less of a problem. It looked like their leader, the aging Chester Ambroise, travelled with few guards.

Wolfe knew the Weed gang. “Looks like the petty thievery and fencing guys didn’t feel like they would be attacked.”

Fern nodded. “They’ve picked up a lot of the drug trade that the Grimm family lost, and they have multiple deckbearers. I have learned that it’s not Chester that has the card you’re looking for, it’s his younger brother, Pierre. Who specifically handles the drug transactions now.”

“Is he a harder target than his older brother?” Wolfe asked.

Fern shook her head. “No. At least, not usually. Tonight, after midnight, they’ll both be on the Noimoire docks, moving product.”

“Tonight, you say?” Wolfe asked.

“Yes.”

“Do they have the usual agreements to keep the police away in place?”

Fern nodded, and Wolfe stroked his chin before putting his hand down.

One last question. “Do you know how strong they are?”

Fern glanced down. “Only kinda. Chester’s had his deck for almost forty years, like your boss once did. It’s a Nature and Beast deck. His brother just got his Infernal deck in this last drop, gifted of Belphegor, Infernal Lord of Sloth.”

“Are they good fighters?” Wolfe asked.

Fern waggled her hand back and forth with ambiguity, still not meeting Wolfe’s eyes. “They’re both older, so I doubt they’re personally tough. I also don’t know how many levels they’ve made. I would bet almost anything that Pierre is a lot lower than you. But Chester could be very high quite easily, higher than you certainly. He’s had twenty times as long to level. Plus, they both made a lot of money over the last two years, both from picking up where the Grimm family failed and from working for Adam. They could have some very strong cards. They have a couple other deckbearers with them as well, although they don’t just keep them around as guards.”

Wolfe glanced at Shel, who shrugged. “I’m sure the three of us—you, me, and Liam—can handle them.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I need to do this alone.”

Shel frowned and started to open her mouth.

Wolfe cut her off. “You’ll be nearby, with Fern, in case something goes wrong. But I need her illusions. This has to be an extremely fast hit, and it has to be unknown who did it.”

“They might figure out I was behind it,” Fern said. “I mean, they know I hacked them once.”

Wolfe smiled a shark’s smile. “That sounds like a story. But will Adam’s people admit to the gangs and mob families that you’re gone? Without some extra reason?”

Fern smiled, the first time Wolfe has seen her do so. “No. No they will most definitely not. Adam hates to admit weakness.”

“So, we’re in the clear,” Wolfe said, still baring his teeth. “I mean, you keep saying I’ve got six days. So that’s three days per family, with illusions and you’re pre-existing access to keep them confused, right?”

“The hunt will be good,” Malviere said. “But what about your other packmates? Like Rhett?”

Wolfe’s smile slipped. “Rhett will absolutely not be down with this, and we shouldn’t let him know anything. Ever. Under any circumstances.”

“What about the vampire?” Malviere asked.

It took Wolfe a moment to get what she was talking about. “Miriam?”

Malviere nodded, and Shel perked up as well.

“You know, she might be helpful somehow… I’ll give her a call.”

Wolfe glanced at everyone, his heart racing with excitement and fear both. “And then we hunt.”