As it turned out, the hardest part of getting Vlad on my side was playing phone tag. I called and left a message; then I went out to dinner with Louise and explained my side of things to her (Merry stayed back and kept an eye on Zoya, along with Cassie, and I had faith the two bird-sized people would take care of the mentally unstable killer); we managed to find a restaurant with poor goddamn cell service, of course, and I didn't notice until we left. I called him back afterwards, and he returned the call after my battery ran out. At this point, we had had a kind of abortive conversation in messages in which he confirmed he was still in the area, and I mentioned without detail that I had a real-world problem that needed solving.

Louise, by the way, was clearly upset by the fact that I was putting myself in jeopardy, and had no significant comment on the fact that I had briefly domineered a person who was trying to kill me that also happened to be female. Perhaps it had a lot to do with how my emotions were probably written all over my face, or maybe she was just distracted by how many other things could immediately go wrong.

In any event, we did have a good dinner, and I let her remind me a couple times in a couple different ways just how dangerous the thing I was getting involved with was. We... considered sleeping over, especially with Zoya having nowhere else to go but my apartment, for now, but ultimately decided against it. Louise had something to do early, and nobody was quite sure whether anything would happen overnight.

Zoya didn't even sleep on my couch; she ended up sitting against the wall all night, saying that she wasn't used to furniture and that it wasn't comfortable for her at all. Apparently, sometime in the night, she moved from sitting against the wall in my living room to sitting against the wall in my bedroom... but she also didn't attack me in my sleep, so evidently I could trust her at least that far.

Eventually, the strange little Russian man and I met in a parking lot in Texas City. It wasn't even abandoned, or anything; it was an HEB Grocery, and the parking lot was basically surrounded by other businesses. Even so, I pulled my car into an empty spot next to a suspicious white panel van, and sure enough, he gestured me into the back, and then sent one of his goons inside for more chips and soda. Zoya, still in stealth, remained in my car, with the windows down so she wouldn't overheat in the blistering Texas heat.

I was a bit surprised to find that inside the panel van, I found Vlad sitting on a swivel chair with four very large Dungeoneers in tactical gear acting exceedingly protective of him, while he popped open a bag of Ruffles potato chips like nothing was going on.

Since I was the one who had asked for a favor, I knew I couldn't stand around gaping all day, and so after only a moment of confusion, I nodded to him. "Good to see you again."

He nodded appreciatively at my greeting but had his mouth full of potato chips.

"The assassin who came after me in Armand Bayou hit me again on my way out of Galveston Wharf," I summarized. "I was able to capture the actual assassin, but her handler has some kind of control over her, and I think that control is based on an item I can track down. I'm not scared of losing a fight against the woman, but fighting people in the real world, escaping the law... I'm not good at any of that."

"Yes," replied Vlad, nodding emphatically. "You've made a couple mistakes already. Coming to meeting in your everyday car, for one. Probably everyday clothes, too. Should adopt new style, ideally fake license plate."

The thought of faking a plate had never occurred to me, even as I realized that I could probably figure out some way to create a custom plate with my class. I put that out of mind quickly.

"Also, chasing assassins is usually time sensitive. They will move quickly, have little to lose and little else to do. Waiting overnight is risky. May already have moved on."

"Like I said, I can track the item. That, at least, is still nearby." It was somewhere Southwest of us, but that didn't say much, since Texas City was close to the gulf, and the coast ran Northeast-Southwest. I could rule out Houston and points north-northeast, and the parts of Galveston Island due south of us, but there was still plenty of coast in that direction. If anything, as we moved Merry had confirmed the angle changed slightly, so it couldn't be too far off.

"Okay." Vlad nodded. "There are a few things we could do, but if you are trying not to be identified, I would recommend helicopter."

I... had to put my thoughts in order to respond to that. "Why a helicopter?"

"When combined with stealth skill, helicopter is very convenient. Can travel in force, keep a lookout, travel direct. Easy deployment, easy pickup. Not very well armored compared to Dungeoneers, but crash should be survivable. Also, more easy than you'd think to steal military helicopter. Have three in storage." Vlad rolled his head back to look at one of the... mercenaries, I'd assume, behind him. "Still have three in storage, yes?"

"One is being used for the..." he glanced at me. "Operation we discussed on Friday."

"Ah, oil rig, I forgot." Vlad nodded and looked back to me. "Unless you expect heavy opposition, one should be enough. We can bring you to item, provide support, provide pickup. If nothing happens..." Vlad shrugged. "Maybe not even owe you a favor for small little thing like that. But if things turn bad, will expect any losses to be made up somehow."

"I'm owed a fair sum of money for something I sold," I said, suddenly aware that the millions Harry owed me might start disappearing quickly when it came to the cost of replacing military helicopters and mob men. "But let's hope it doesn't come to that."

"Okay." Vlad paused a moment, not looking at me, before asking, "You're sure that's all you want?"

"For now."

"Not interested in who hired you?" Vlad chose that moment to meet my eyes. "You continue to attract attention. Heard your name pop up yesterday already, and not for fight with assassins. Taking out mercenaries is not the end to your problems. You must address source, or they will hire more."

"I'll just have to make it expensive for them."

"That's the problem," said Vlad, almost spilling his chips as he gestured. "Assassins don't cost anything if they die. At worst, you lose deposit. Unless they are part of big organization, if they die, nobody cares. Nobody comes for rest of bill. Nobody interrogates them about who set bounty. Is amateur mistake," he pounded a nearby desk with his hand. "You should find out who hired them, or at least the agency they worked through. Otherwise buyer talks to agency, says task is not complete, they repost bounty for someone else. Only ones who pay cost are assassins."

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I took a few deep, steadying breaths. In my head, Merry smirked. I gotta admit, he's more of a professional that I thought. It sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

"Right now," I said, "I'm less concerned with the danger the assassins pose. The assassin I captured was enslaved by a skill. I want to punish the sort of people who use skills like that and set her free." I didn't need to say anything about that skill's connection with me, or what else it might mean that the other woman had the skill.

I noticed a change in Vlad's eyes, and I don't think it was compassion that appeared there. "You have personal history with the topic? Or with assassin?"

"Something like that."

"Not good to get emotional. Still, I understand. Few people can really keep full control." Vlad's face twitched a little, like he was suppressing... well, some facial expression. I don't know which because he suppressed it. "I am sabotaging family interests in the region to get revenge. When I do, they will come after me for revenge. It never ends, and at this point, I don't care." Vlad stuffed the rest of his bag of chips, which was probably still half full, in a nearby trash bag. "I will lend you the helicopter and two men to back you up. But you need to be careful. Underworld is scarier than government, and whatever you are chasing will not be unguarded."

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We ended up doing a shuffle where I dropped my car off in a random parking lot and was picked up and taken to a random suburb in League City, where apparently someone was paid to just stay in a home and constantly keep a helicopter there under the effects of some kind of stealth skill. It was such an innocuous-looking place that I genuinely wasn't sure exactly what the deal was until Merry's new perception skill detected the skill covering an oddly shaped area of the back yard.

(Merry, by the way, had recently offered the name "Fairy Perceptive" for the new skill, which I thought was funny but didn't accept. I also didn't have a good name for it, though, so I didn't try to give it one. So far, in my Dungeoneer interface, it just had kind of a garbled placeholder name, like the Cloak did before I named it, but it's not like I needed to give it one in order to use it, so I just figured I'd wait until inspiration struck.)

Anyway, we came in a nondescript car and parked in the driveway. The mercenary driver was in plain clothes and did nothing particularly suspicious while we were in plain sight. The house had a bunch of stuff in it, some Dungeoneer and some military, all hidden just slightly out of sight. It was creepy, honestly; on the surface, the suburban home looked like it could have belonged to a soccer mom, but among the other things in the closet was an obvious and large sealed container of drugs, along with a large bundle of cash, multiple assault rifles, and a bejeweled zweihander that I'm pretty sure out-leveled anything I had, even counting the stuff I took from the Slenderman. Under different circumstances, I might have stopped and marveled at the sword, since it was pretty nice, but the drugs also being in plain sight ruined any chance of camaraderie between me and them.

There was a sliding glass door to the backyard where the helicopter was, and I discovered only once I passed through the bounds of the stealth skill that they were pretty fucking serious when they said "military helicopter".

"Christ," I breathed when I saw the thing. "When he said helicopter, I thought he meant a Black Hawk, not a fucking Apache. How the hell are we supposed to ride that thing?"

The helicopter before me had room for exactly two people--pilot and copilot. It didn't even have landing skids. It was not a passenger aircraft in any way, shape, or form; it was a gunship, and it was equipped as such, with rocket pods and missiles loaded on the two short wings.

The driver, in the middle of shrugging on a tactical vest, just grinned at me. "You're a Dungeoneer," he said, cheerfully, and with a thick Eastern European accent I couldn't place. "You'll figure it out."

That was a very clear way of saying, "I care more about this helicopter than you," and I understood every word. I conferred quickly with Merry, and she agreed that as long as Zoya and I were in a party, she could still track the item that was keeping Zoya under the effects of the skill, and so I continued to have Zoya remain in stealth, as she had been since before we met Vlad. I wasn't sure that I trusted Vlad or his men, and also, it just amused me to

In the end, the answer was that they strung a rope underneath the helicopter from hardpoints on either side, and I and one of the two people Vlad had promised to help ended up just hanging from that rope, looking forward at the machine gun turret hanging from the craft's chin, while the other helper sat comfortably in the gunner's seat. Zoya decided instead to hang off the tail. She must have also had some kind of skill to compensate for her weight, because the pilot didn't seem to notice even as we lifted off.

The only equipment they'd deigned to offer me was a helmet, and then only so I could direct them over a wired headset without a lot of wind noise.

Now, I'll say this about stealth skills: I had depended on one to survive in the Dungeon, but whatever the hell they were doing was out of my league. I'd been impressed with Zoya's ability to escape my notice, even knowing she was there, but this helicopter didn't seem to so much as ruffle the trees as it hovered its way up and out of the idyllic little suburb. I looked down as we passed over a dozen houses each with their own backyard pool, none of which had anyone in it, and just marveled at the fact that if these sons of bitches decided to wage war on suburban America, the people here were fucking doomed.

"So where are we going, boss?" The caretaker who'd kept the helicopter in stealth was, naturally, also the pilot.

"Ask the cargo," joked the man in the gunner's seat. "Hey, dead weight. Which direction?"

"Southwest for now." As I hung there in open air under a large military machine operated by what were either mob men or mercenaries completely willing to work with mob men, I started to have a dawning realization of how absolutely ridiculous my worldview was. Hunting down one woman because she enslaved an assassin? When there were these kind of terrible things owned by who knows what kind of evil men just... just out there, ready for society to devolve into chaos so they could put their own men in positions of power at the drop of a hat?

It made my Vampiric Cloak seem like an insignificant achievement. I had made something unique and powerful, yes; these men had stolen something large and deadly, and if it crashed and burned, Vlad would have them steal another. If the one safe house was discovered or was blown up, they would move to another; certainly, the other two he'd mentioned hadn't been in the same place. How much evil was just out there, lurking? And I was going to throw my future into question for a person who wanted me dead?

I looked back over my shoulder, only able to see through Zoya's field and see her black-clad form clinging tenaciously to the long boom of the tail because she was in my party. I didn't know anything about her except that what had been done to her was horrific, and that it felt too close to home, after I'd sacrificed people to get the same kind of power. My reasoning with Bo was the same, and at this moment, when I could mess things up by letting go with my hand and falling somewhere random in suburban Texas, it was difficult to put a finger on exactly why I'd thought it was all important.

We're getting closer, interrupted Merry. Track is starting to point more to the south.

I nodded, and relayed that to the pilot. Though I didn't immediately recognize the area we were over, we ended up zeroing in (circling a couple of times to be sure) on a strip mall not too terribly far from what was obviously a huge chemical plant complex next to a river.

Zoya, me, and Mob Goon makes three, dropped in the parking lot without the copter landing, and the pilot told me that they would hover in place here in case of trouble. Which, in all honestly, at this point I was kind of expecting.

The location we'd selected to raid was an Indian restaurant in a strip mall, and while it wasn't particularly busy at this time of day, it wasn't empty, either.

I made the impulse decision to try to go in under Stealth, telling the merc on the ground to wait there unless shooting started. I felt good about that decision when I managed to sneak in the front door as someone was leaving, my Vampiric Cloak bending the laws of physics just slightly to get me through a gap that I probably shouldn't have been able to get through.

I felt much, much less good about it when I noticed that all three waiters were Dungeoneers, and they all had their eyes on me.