sorcery and science 04.5 - masquerade (13 page)

Shaking the sleep from his hands, Leonidas opened the door…to find a demon-eyed behemoth Elition. The man was leaning calmly against the brick building, seemingly unaware that his hair was on fire. Though that might just have been Leonidas’s bleary eyes; he was still hung-over after all. He blinked and the flames became spikes of red-orange hair. The demonic eyes remained white, however, and they glared down on Leonidas, noting his ruffled suit, his disheveled hair, and the gun in his hand.

“Leonidas Chase,” the Elition said. It was not a question. He knew who precisely who Leonidas was, and his tone didn’t bode well for what the consequences of that knowledge would be.

“I am Silas Thorn,” he continued.

The man had the presence of a tank. When he moved forward, Leonidas felt himself step back. Once they were both inside the apartment, the door slammed shut, seemingly by its own initiative.

So they stood in the living room, Silas’s eyes shining out like a blinding white flashlight, while Leonidas tried hard not to look away. He was not in the habit of folding under pressure, but there was something about those eyes that unnerved him to his very core. He turned, using the pretense of picking up a glass of water from the table to conceal his defeat. The satisfied smirk on Silas’s face made it clear he wasn’t fooled.

“What do you want?” Leonidas asked. At least he still had his gun in his hand. It made him feel safer.

Silas looked at the gun, his smirk never fading. He wasn’t the least bit threatened by it. It was then that Leonidas saw the knives, and his jaw dropped. Dozens of them were strapped to Silas’s body. The man was a walking armory. He even had an enormous sword strapped to his back. It was longer than Leonidas was tall. Suddenly, the gun didn’t make him feel the least bit safe, not when standing face-to-face with a man who was well-equipped to decimate a battlefield full of enemy combatants. The gun slipped from his fingers.

“I am Ambrose Selpe’s bodyguard.”

“Then why aren’t you off guarding him?” Leonidas shot back before he could think better of it.

“I’ve been charged with the task of protecting the Selpe emperor from all threats, external and internal.”

“Wait, you think—”

“The Avans have gotten a hold of his current travel arrangements,” Silas said. “And I have reason to believe it was you who sold them the information.”

“I didn’t.”

Silas stepped forward, the force of his presence pushing Leonidas toward the balcony as surely as his ridiculously muscled arms could have. “That’s what I will determine.”

“Determine? How?” Leonidas croaked. He hardly recognized his own voice.

“It’s called Extraction.” Extraction with a capital ‘E’. The way Silas said the word made that abundantly clear.

Leonidas’s legs bumped against the balcony rails, and he nearly stumbled over the edge. Darting out faster than should have even been possible, Silas’s hands pushed him. Leonidas flipped over backwards and dropped headfirst off his balcony.

~ 2 ~

526AX March 21, Lear

THE LAST THING Leonidas remembered before blacking out was Silas dangling him by one ankle off his own balcony as his mind was scraped with the delicacy of a rusty saw. He woke up hours later on his living room floor, just in time to shower before heading out to work. He had a raging headache, and he wasn’t sure if that was from last night’s cocktails or from the procedure Silas had described as an ‘Extraction’. Having his stomach extracted through his nose would have been less painful. At least the fact that he was still alive suggested Silas had deemed him innocent.

An hour later, Leonidas was sitting at a corner table in the lounge of the Red Leaf, sipping a cup of very strong coffee. He was avoiding his usual table in the center of the room; that would only draw attention to him. He was foregoing the cocktails with the glowing umbrellas for the same reason. And also because he needed to keep his head on straight for the rest of the evening—or at least as straight as could be expected after Silas’s Extraction.

He peered over the smooth lip of his coffee cup, his eyes tracking every flick and flutter of Morton Corse’s greasy fingers. When Leonidas had been assigned to Lear the previous year, he’d thought it would be a career boost, a chance to finally demonstrate what he could really do. It hadn’t taken him long to realize he’d simply been sentenced to obscurity. His nights were spent spying on his Avan counterpart. Leonidas was sick and tired of seeing Corse’s shiny forehead, watching his smacking lips as he ate, and looking at the man-fur that coated most of his body. Anything was better than this wretched assignment, even taking Rylan Timberland’s abuse. At least the brat was out of shooting range of the SIN office for most of the year. Morton Corse was nearly always in Lear. The man didn’t even have a life.

Neither did Leonidas anymore. It was always the same. Plant his butt down in the Red Leaf sometime around dinnertime. Spy on Morton from then until late into the night. Drag his exhausted body home about three in the morning. Sleep until the afternoon. Wake up and repeat. It wasn’t a life. It was a recipe for depression. The arrival of Silas Thorn on his doorstep that morning was the most exciting thing to happen to him in months. How sad was that?

A woman in a scarlet satin gown entered the lounge. The front of the dress plunged in the shape of a diamond to her waist, the back was held together by crisscrossing ribbons. The skirt trailed behind her against the Red Leaf’s white marble floor, and two high slits stretched up her long legs, which were covered in a teasing layer of black fishnet stockings. As every other man in the lounge—and the connecting rooms—ogled at her serpentine strut across the room, Leonidas waved over the waiter standing beside the bar. It took a few jerks of his hands and a few gruff whispers to pull the man out of his daze. The enamored waiter scurried over, and took the glass of water off Leonidas’s table.

Scarlet stopped in front of Corse’s table. Popping out her hip as she leaned her hand against an empty chair, she said something to him. The men in the room continued to watch her. Provocatively curved, Scarlet was not fat, but she was certainly soft. She was the sort of woman who enjoyed casual strolls, luscious dinners, and sitting in front of a cozy fireplace. She wasn’t the sort to run laps or engage in exercise of any kind. If a mugger were to corner her in a dark alley, she would try to charm her way out of trouble rather than run or fight. And she would almost certainly succeed.

Corse wasn’t immune to her charms. He extended his furry arm to invite her to join him, his eyes bulging in surprise when she instead hit him with a playful wink and tugged him out of his seat. Dismayed sighs rippled across the lounge as she led Corse past the bar to a secluded corner of the restaurant. The Avan spy simply stumbled along after her, a complaisant smile glued to his face.

Leonidas picked up his coffee cup and moved to a seat at the edge of the bar. From there, he could see the back of Scarlet’s black ponytail and half of Corse’s enthralled face. Smiling as he listened to Scarlet talk, the Avan took a sip from his water glass. Shortly thereafter, his eyes rolled back, and his head dropped to the table. Scarlet just continued prattling on as though nothing had happened.

Leonidas slid quietly off the barstool and passed through the archway into the restaurant. He stopped at Scarlet’s table just long enough to retrieve a slim box from Corse’s inside jacket pocket and to slip the lovely lady a stack of Crowns. She lifted her leg to secure the money inside a pouch attached to her thigh, her chocolate-brown eyes twinkling at him in appreciation. Then she blew him a farewell kiss as he turned to leave.

She was good. Really good. And that was exactly the reason Leonidas had hired her. At the end of the day, though, she didn’t care about him or his mission. It was all about the money to her. He had to remind himself of that as he was tempted to turn back and join her for a drink. He had a job to do. The Selpe Intelligence Network really wanted to get its hands on the advanced piece of technology he’d just stolen from Corse, and it was his job to get it to them. This might be the break he’d been waiting for. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake Corse just had and throw it all away for a pretty face.

~ 3 ~

526AX March 21, Lear

IT WAS ONLY five blocks from the Red Leaf to SIN’s secret drop box in Lear, where Leonidas could secure the package until another agent came to pick it up and transport it to the Orion main office for study. The Selpe Intelligence Network wasn’t the only division that had been after that piece of ‘advanced technology’, and the Diamond Edges would throw a fit when they learned SIN had gotten to it first. Leonidas rejoiced at the prospect of a promotion—almost as much as he rejoiced at the prospect of beating Aaron Pall. The leader of the Diamond Edges was the Empire’s superstar, and no one ever beat him at anything.

Leonidas walked at a brisk pace down a backstreet. He was avoiding the brightly-lit main street. While it was unlikely that Corse had already regained consciousness, Leonidas was taking no chances. He made it three blocks without seeing anyone. On the fourth block, a short figure in a rain jacket stood facing a building, looking through a dirty, abandoned shop window. Leonidas made sure the box was secure inside his pocket, then he slid his hand across to rest atop his holster. He moved to pass the mystery person. The trick was to stay close enough to take an accurate shot if the need arose, while still maintaining enough distance to hopefully pass by unnoticed. Those hopes were dashed when the figure swiveled around and looked right at him.

It took him a moment to process what he was seeing. Marin’s face simply didn’t belong there on the streets of Lear. They hadn’t seen each other for nearly three years, and last he’d heard she was still in the capital working for Orion Explosives. Before taking that job, she’d been working on flying airships over the Wilderness, so maybe she was here to do research. Lear was close enough to Elitia, and anything electrical tended not to work in the city. On the rare occasions that it did, the technology was flaky at best.

“Leo,” Marin called out, waving him over.

He walked slowly toward her, drawn in by the awkward smile on her lips. She looked good, even better than he remembered. Her dark auburn hair framed the edges of her face, smooth and glossy. Leonidas couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her wear her hair down; the look suited her. In place of her usual sports and casual clothing, under the open jacket Marin was wearing a capped-sleeve green top with an asymmetrical neckline and a mid-length ivory skirt over knee-high brown leather boots. All in all, she looked much more pulled together than usual. There was not a single wrinkle or smudge on her clothing, and the only hair out of place was a short strand on her forehead, which made her appear cute and endearing, not sloppy.

“Marin,” Leonidas said, stopping before her. “What are you doing in Lear?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m on my way to a conference and just staying over here for the night.” She laughed softly, clamping her hands down on her mouth when a snort escaped.

“Which conference?” Leonidas asked.

Marin’s face turned as red as Scarlet’s gown. She’d never been good at masking her emotions, and right now she was positively mortified. Leonidas couldn’t imagine why, but he steered the conversation in a different direction just to be safe.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve seen each other,” he said. “How’s work? Are you still working for Orion Explosives?”

“Uh, yeah.” She looked around nervously, as though she expected someone to jump out of the shadows and attack her. “Look, Leo, I’m sorry to impose…I never should have gotten it into my head to wander the streets alone at night. I was curious to test the boundaries of the Wilderness Effect and brought along…” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m boring you. The short version is I just saw a group of hooded fellows stalking about, and it’s made me rather jumpy. I’m really interested in catching up with you…but do you think we could continue our chat someplace more private?”

“Of course,” he said with a smile and extended his arm.

Marin breathed out a deep sigh of relief as she linked her arm with his, following his lead as he turned back down the street toward his apartment. The drop box would have to wait.

~ 4 ~

526AX March 21, Lear

LEONIDAS’S APARTMENT WAS about halfway between the drop box and the Red Leaf, and he spent the two blocks they had to walk wondering exactly what he was going to do when they got there. It wasn’t as though he’d never had women over. That happened often enough. But this was Marin.

I can’t believe I’m bringing Marin back to my place!
was all that kept replaying over and over again through his head. Reminding himself that they were friends—and he’d had friends over before—did nothing to settle his wheeling mind. Maybe that was because they weren’t really technically friends, but he still cared about her more than he liked to admit, even to himself.

The first thing Marin did when they arrived at Leonidas’s apartment was to help herself to a slice of the cheesecake in his icebox. No electricity meant no refrigerator, which Marin picked up on and subsequently dove into a two-minute monologue on the Wilderness Effect.

“Wow,” Leonidas said when she was finished.

“I know. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“Well, actually, I was just impressed by your brevity tonight. Usually, your comments could fill up the entirety of a dissertation.”

“Not funny,” she said, swinging a punch at him.

Leonidas caught her hand and twisted it behind her back. “Is too, and you know it,” he said into her ear.

Marin turned her head to look at him over her shoulder, staring at him with an intensity he hadn’t expected. Her breath steamed against his jaw, and he shivered. Blushing, she cast her eyes down and tried to break free of his hold. He loosened his grip just enough for her to turn to face him.