2 Pushing Luck (2 page)

The rakshasa’s gray, discolored fangs were bared as it approached me, more of them than would have fit in a human mouth. “So who are you here to kill, wolfling? Is it me? That would be exciting.”

I turned so that all of the soft, vulnerable organs in my torso weren’t quite as easy to reach. This also shifted my balance to the balls of my feet so that I could dodge quickly or stomp down on the side of the rakshasa’s ankle with all of my weight. I switched my cup of coffee to my left hand so that I could drive my right elbow or forearm or hand ridge into at least four different places that would kill a normal person and might slow a rakshasa down. We stood there and observed the game side by side as if old friends.

“This is your territory.” I said. “I didn’t know what you were, and you didn’t know what I was, but you did invite me here to play cards. That’s all I want to do.”

The rakshasa gave a tiger growl that scraped meat off on its way up the throat. “I know you’re a good card player. You have more self-control than any loup I ever heard of. But don’t lie to me again.”

I got it then. The rakshasa thought I was a loup-garou.

Loups-garous often get confused with werewolves, but they’re much rarer and are basically werewolves turned inside out. A werewolf is a man possessed by a wolf. A loup-garou is a wolf possessed by a man. Basically, an evil spirit takes over the body of a wolf and over a long period of time gradually transforms that body molecule by molecule into a facsimile of its former human self so that it can return to the world of living men and take care of unfinished business. Violent unfinished business.

Loups-garous aren’t limited to wolves even though that’s what the phrase implies. That’s just what happens when a word or phrase begins in French and is then tossed around over centuries by people who don’t know what the words literally mean or stop to think about them. Kind of like “reality television.” This is why there are old stories where loups are transformed boars, bulls, bears, and even other people, presumably brain dead comatose types or cunning folk who tried to summon a spirit and got more than they bargained for.

On a practical level, this means that Loups-garous aren’t fazed by silver, but they can’t cross a line of salt. Loups are strong and fast and have enhanced senses, but they don’t regenerate. They also don’t change back into animals during full moons, but their existence is an intense power struggle with the animal containing them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and if they start to lose that struggle their body reflects it. In this respect, it is always a full moon for a loup-garou. They are never more than half-sane to begin with, and they tend to become increasingly unstable over time. Most loups-garous become mass murderers and cannibals by default if they don’t finish their business quickly.

Me being a loup fit certain facts. Professional gamblers often meet bad ends, and it explained why the rakshasa was smelling wolf. It explained why “Mark Powell” had been gone for years and why I’d come back. And if my skull was already crowded with a walk-in spirit, it might explain why the rakshasa’s psychic abilities didn’t work on me.

In fact, my being a loup-garou was a much more likely explanation than the truth. I am not affected by mental magic because a knight’s geas protects him from such things, which is also why knights don’t become monsters. I am the only exception I know of, and the circumstances surrounding my transformation are somewhat complicated.

The rakshasa’s loup-garou theory also explained why I was still alive. Killing a werewolf would mean nothing to a rakshasa, but putting itself on the “things to do” list of a psychotic spirit of vengeance that might keep coming back…well, that would give anyone or anything pause.

“It’s a little more complicated than you think,” I said, spinning the beginnings of a lie off the top of my head. I wasn’t ready for a fight…yet. “The one I’m after isn’t here, but I’m on his trail. There’s someone here who can help me find him.”

The rakshasa pointed the claw of its index finger at the table where Jamie was playing. “Is that why you’re so interested in Miss Belmont?”

I shrugged, more like I was loosening my shoulders for a fight than being indifferent. If the rakshasa figured out that I cared about Jamie, it would use her against me. “I won’t touch anyone while I’m on your territory. You don’t need to know any more than that.”

The rakshasa smiled a shark smile. “What if I insist?”

I tried to just give the wolf a little leash then, but it was already straining against its bonds. My teeth bared in a snarl. Rage surged through me, addictive and sour-sweet and hungry. The tips of my fingers itched. “Good luck with that.”

The rakshasa looked into my eyes and heard the barely submerged rage causing tremors in my voice and smelled what was coming out of the pores of my skin. An almost sexual pleasure lit up its eyes like blowtorches. “And there it is.”

“There it is.” My voice was reverberating with a growl that came from way down deep, and when I heard it, I shuddered. I couldn’t help myself.

The rakshasa laughed. It sounded like a garbage disposal having sex. “You’re fun.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

“Put your pet back in your pants,” the rakshasa told me. “And later you can use my basement to question your friend. It’s soundproof and has lots of drains. I’d love to watch you work.”

“I already have a storage shed rented outside Charleston,” I lied. “I’ll be leaving as soon as I’ve won your tournament.”

The rakshasa chuckled. Or maybe it threw up a little and swallowed. “Good luck with that.”

Good luck with leaving, or good luck with winning the tournament? It drifted off before I could ask.

“Sir, guests are not allowed here.” The young man was skinny and Indian, with that brand of courtesy that is so blank-faced and impersonal that it is a kind of insult. He was a Hindu if the
tilak
mark on his forehead was any indication, but presumably not a very good one. His clothes looked like chef whites, but chefs don’t mop the kitchen floor at 4:30 in the morning.

“It’s all right,” I assured him. “Someone will be coming to check up on me soon.”

He looked puzzled for a moment, but only for a moment because the palm of my hand came up under his chin and snapped his head back hard enough to slosh his brain around a little. His body made a start at balancing itself while he got used to the idea of passing out, and I caught him as he collapsed.

I didn’t have much time, but there was one thing working in my favor. In a house where human flesh entrées were being served, the kitchen was one place where I was sure there wouldn’t be any hidden security cameras.

It took about fifteen seconds to drag my new friend into the pantry, another ten to locate the condiments, and ten more to find the tamarind I knew would be in any kitchen where Indian cuisine was being prepared. The tamarind was in paste form, kept in the same kind of plastic jar that peanut butter comes in. I scooped a large blob of the paste into a strip-locked plastic bag that I took from one of the shelves and put it in my jacket pocket.

I was washing my hands at one of the kitchen sinks when a large blond guard walked in.

“Where’s Jigar?” he demanded.

“In the pantry,” I told him, drying my hands on a paper towel.

The guard was tall and wide with a tree-stump neck and broad, sloping shoulders, and he had gotten away with intimidating people with his size his whole life. Maybe that’s why he didn’t know much about actually killing them. He came in close so that he could tower over me and get in my face, and he was still waiting for me to be scared when I casually reached out and took the Browning 9mm from his unsecured holster and pointed the pistol at his midsection. He’d probably unsnapped the holster in the hallway just in case there was trouble.

“Here’s the deal,” I told him. I spoke very slowly as he didn’t seem bright. “I would rather die than get taken down to the basement. Do you understand?”

The guard still hadn’t gotten scared by the gun yet, but when I mentioned the basement, something very like panic flashed across his face.

“You’re going to walk behind me with your hand in your pocket as if you are hiding your gun. I am going to be hunched over slightly and holding this Browning under my jacket as if I were clutching some ribs that you just broke.” I demonstrated the position.

“If you hesitate or yell for help or try to duck around a corner, I will gut shoot you through the back of my jacket,” I continued. “Don’t even think I’m afraid of making noise. If you force me to kill myself, I’m taking as many people with me as I can.”

It took a few stutters and false starts, but we eventually traced the guard’s scent trail back to a small room in the back of the manse. There was a large matte black wraparound counter dominating the room, supporting multiple small screens. The man sitting in front of them was normal-sized, young, and smooth-featured with carefully cut hair and soft-looking hands and a black eye that I never did discuss with him.

The guard at the monitor station was expecting us, but he wasn’t expecting me to pull a pistol out of my jacket and backhand the Browning’s butt into the forehead of the blond guard behind me. I only moved a little faster than humanly possible.

It wasn’t smooth. The blond guard had a lot of mass, and completing the turn full circle and catching him with one hand while the other held a gun was awkward. I wound up grabbing his tie and lowering him to the floor by it.

“Step away from the keyboard or I will shoot you in the face,” I told the guard by the monitors.

Eventually, I had the smaller, smarter guard sitting on his hands and the blond guard lying on his face. I sat down at the main computer keyboard and entered a Web address to a site maintained by a Finnish hacker. Within ninety seconds, I had downloaded a virus that infected the entire security system. Within a minute, every camera in the house stopped working and they no longer had a wireless connection.

“What are you doing?” the conscious guard asked numbly. He seemed to be in shock.

“I’m just making sure my host runs a clean game,” I told him. “It will take a computer expert a couple of days to get the system working again, but I haven’t done anything that can’t be fixed.”

That might have been a lie.

“You have no idea what you’re screwing around with.” The guard sounded resigned and despairing. I found it interesting that he said “What” instead of “Who.”

“Tell your boss that if she really wants a challenge, she’ll have to beat me at cards Sunday without relying on hidden cameras.” I smiled a smile that was a little cold and a little crazy. “Ask her if she still thinks I’m fun.”

Of course, the hidden cameras hadn’t been set up just to rig card games. They were also there to record the various illegal, immoral, and depraved acts that the rakshasa was encouraging its guests to commit. It would want more leverage than just financial debt later, when forcing them to darker acts. And I wasn’t removing the cameras from the equation because I was worried about playing poker either. I would need freedom of movement if I hoped to survive the weekend.

But I was hoping that the rakshasas’ love of gambling was more than just legendary.

I won’t tell you what I did with the tamarind. It’s a surprise.

The second round of the tournament wasn’t much more challenging than the first. I was sitting across from a man who was either Albanian or had learned English around Albanians. His accent was faint, but my ears rarely deceive me. He wasn’t a professional card player.

On my left was the heavily sweating train wreck I’d seen earlier, a man who turned out to be a district representative. He was loud and stupid and pretty much a living testimonial to everything that was wrong with the American political system. He also couldn’t play cards for squat, and he never would have made it to the second round without help.

I saw some of that help first hand on my right. George Dibbs
was
a professional card player, but he wasn’t playing to win. He was playing to make me lose. George was a numbers man, a Brillo-haired beanpole with one of those beautiful minds that process odds easily and never forget surface details. Twelve years ago George’s only weakness had been that he played the cards more than the people.

But George wasn’t playing the cards tonight. George was doing his best to keep the congressman in the game while trying to take me and the Albanian out. The more the congressman drank, however, the more self-destructive his playing style became, and George’s game deteriorated until it was desperate and uneven. George was scared.

Served him right if he was working for the house.

After I cleaned George out, the congressman lasted maybe three minutes. The Albanian was solid, but his eyes looked slightly to the left whenever he was using the creative side of his brain to try to bluff.

Winners of the first round were allowed to buy twice as many chips for the second. I won over six hundred thousand dollars.

The smell hit me before I went into my room. I opened the door anyway. The head of the security guard who had been sitting at the monitor station was on the windowsill facing me. Wet tendons and flaps of flesh spread out beneath his neck like flower petals. For some reason, the black eye was the most bizarre part about it. Beside the guard’s head, a word balloon had been smeared on the white wall in his own blood, with a little tail end pointing to his open mouth. In the middle of the red circle was the word: YES.

Yes what?

Then I remembered. I had told the guard to ask the rakshasa if it still thought I was fun.

“Why so serious?” Jamie plopped down onto the empty space next to me on the love seat, except I’m not sure they call them that anymore. Names change a lot when you live a long time. “You’ve won almost a million dollars. That means you’ll still have half a million after I beat you tomorrow.”

I put the memory of the dead guard in a storage closet in the back of my mind. I had to shove the door a little; it was getting kind of crowded in there.