Chapter 16
Silas Drake
Even though war rooms aren’t built for comfort, we’d taken to meeting in here instead of my office because the vampires and demons showed up when you least expected them.
I’d turned on the torches—no they aren’t actual torches, but they are a pretty close facsimile.
I had a weakness for the classics, and this meeting needed a certain ambiance.
I hoped the demons who’d been joining us from time to time stayed away, for their sakes.
I looked down at the table: a map of our holdings, fresh-printed and although it was new, it was already out of date. Stacks of ledgers. Smeared glass tumblers filled with scotch and God knows what sat ready to drink. No one here ever drank for pleasure.
Dagger arrived first, silent as a mugger. He wore his hair long, in a ropy braid that glistened in the torchlight. He leaned in the doorway and waited, his left eye always scanning, right eye fixed on me. Old habit from a childhood nobody asked about.
Rook next, as huge as a walking casket. He ducked under the lintel, jaw clicking as he worked it. I’ve seen him rip a man’s arm off and then use the bone to open a bottle of beer. Subtle he was not.
Vex was last. Always last, always wearing black, always looking like a violinist at a funeral she planned to crash. A cigarette sat between her fingers; her tall boots clicked across the concrete.
I didn’t waste time.
“This is our war council,” I said, and all three of them took a seat at the battered table.
Dagger, with his knife already out, spun it on one finger.
Rook pulled up his sleeves so he could plant his elbows, arms meaty and powerful.
Vex reached for the ashtray, then unfolded her hands, as if about to recite the rosary.
I stood and leaned over the table. The first sound from me was a fist. I brought it down so hard on the wood the ledgers jumped. The flicker of torchlight caught the edge of Dagger’s blade as he spun it, but I didn’t flinch.
“Every inside line’s burning up,” I said, pacing the war room like a man unmoored.
Let them think I was furious. Let them taste the theatrics.
“So, turning low-level grunts turned out to be a dead end. Nobody was willing to do our dirty work for us from the inside. If they went to Bronc or his council, the most they could know is that we were looking for a way in. Good. Let them choke on that illusion.”
Rook’s knuckles whitened against the table. “So, is it time to take the girl out?”
I scoffed. “Parker? If I wanted her corpse, she’d already be rotting.
But why kill the architect of their ruin?
” The truth simmered beneath my words: Parker’s code was humming like a Swiss watch, siphoning Iron Valor’s accounts dry night after night.
Their coffers bled out quietly, and their panic would taste sweeter than vengeance.
Vex, ever the skeptic, leaned forward. “Maybe she turned rat.”
I let myself laugh—cold, sharp—for their benefit.
“You think the tooth fairy’s taking money from under my pillow?
Parker hasn’t run. She values her worthless brother’s life too much.
That’s her weakness. And we’re not finished with her.
When we’re through with Iron Valor and she’s left with no one, I’ll have her move on to our next target, whoever that may be.
We deal in blood, Vex. It’s what we do. Trust the plan,” I said, softer now.
I paced, slow, using the limp to my advantage.
You learned how to weaponize your own wounds after a while.
“Iron Valor stole our birthright. We had an up-and-coming pack, one that the Council and the rest of the supernatural world had started to notice. Bronc and Iron Valor stormed in here without so much as a green light and ended it all in a day.” My voice was coming out in growls.
“All we did was bring our Alpha’s choice of mate to her new territory so she could see for herself how good her life could be.
And for that, our pack was decimated, left without a voice for years.
Then Iron Valor gets a slap on the wrist for murdering an Alpha?
” We’ve waited long enough to even the score.
There are others who agreed that it was a miscarriage of justice.
“And demons don’t fear reprisals do they?”
Rook flexed his hands. The old tattoos on his knuckles—sinner, suffer—caught the light’s glow. “Maltraz,” he said, as if just the name might draw the creature through the wall.
I smiled. “The demon king wants money. We have money. Between our underground fight nights, traveling casinos, and strip clubs, there is more than enough money to burn. Once we’ve added Iron Valor’s hundreds of thousands, no pack in the country will be able to touch our wealth.
Money is power. He also wants territory.
We have that, too, and we’re about to have more, once we end Iron Valor and swallow up their land.
Most of all, he wants chaos. I think we can deliver. ”
Vex looked queasy. “He wants souls.”
“Who doesn’t?” I said, pouring myself a drink. “The trick is, you only promise them if you’re sure you can keep them for yourself.”
Dagger finally spoke up. “And if he double-crosses us?”
“He can’t,” I said. “Not if the contract is sealed right. Besides, he’s not stupid. He knows Iron Valor will never play ball with him. He’s got no use for honor, but he respects power. Anyway, he plays in the shadows. ”
Vex nodded, but it was shaky. “So we invite him in?”
“We send a message,” I said. “Tonight.” I looked at Dagger. “Do you know the man who can bring the demon king to us?”
He grinned, teeth like headstones.
Dagger wiped his blade and slipped it into the sheath. “Yes, sir, I do. Do we need to worry about Iron Valor finding out?”
I shrugged. “We don’t. Maltraz voted against them when Menace and his bitch mate came before the council. There is no love lost between them. I’m sure he’d love to take a shot at Bronc if given a chance.”
I stood at the head of the table and raised my glass. The others, dutifully, did the same.
“To escalation,” I said. “To the endgame.”
They drank.
And somewhere, not in the room, but close enough to feel, the walls listened. Hungry, hopeful, waiting for the next name to be whispered in the dark.
After they left, I stayed a while in the empty war room, listening to the silence. I caught my reflection in the screen of the large TV that was mounted on the wall. I noted the wrinkles and random scars that mapped a lifetime of battles and bitterness. It reminded me that all beauty is temporary.
We were going to lose unless I burned all the rules to hell.
To do this, a bargain had to be struck with the demon king. It required a ritual I knew little about, but I knew of a man who was well versed in darkness.
You never get used to the taste of sulfur.
The old man—who had no name, or maybe had too many to keep track—did the prep.
He shuffled into the war room with his kit of relics and powders and started drawing the circle on the flagstones.
Salt, bone ash, some kind of oil that made the whole place stink like burned popcorn and dead teeth scattered around.
He hummed to himself as he worked, never once glancing up at me or the guards in the doorway.
He needed only one look, right at the start, to know who was paying the bills.
I watched the lines take shape, thinking of all the times I’d stood in a different kind of circle, a different kind of war room. We used to do it with guns and hands and threats of violence, back before the world got smarter and everyone decided to play God. Now even the monsters needed lawyers.
The cold set in as the hour approached. First a chill, then a bite, then the kind of subzero air that freezes your sinuses and turns your lungs to glass.
Rook started shivering, and Vex looked like she wanted to crawl into her own shadow.
Only Dagger kept still, but even he tucked his hands into his pockets.
The last touch: a single drop of blood, mine, onto the center of the circle. The old man handed me the scalpel, and I didn’t hesitate. It’s only pain.
A gust of wind, though there were no windows in this room, and the air vents never offered such a breeze. The center fluorescent light swung as if paying homage. The darkness in the corner of the room got deeper, more solid, until it resolved itself into a shape.
He presented himself in his more demonic form, not the human form he showed the world.
He wore a suit, expensive and perfectly cut.
The shirt was white, but not the white of fabric—more like the inside of a bone.
His skin was translucent, an iron hue, and the veins underneath pulsed with something that wasn’t quite blood.
His eyes were black glass, and his mouth, when it opened, was a neat line of human teeth sharpened down to points.
The hands were wrong, too: five fingers, but each joint bent a little too far, nails painted with a clear gloss.
He smiled.
“Silas Drake,” he said. The voice was rich, deep, but didn’t seem to come from his mouth so much as from the center of your skull. “It seems you have need of something from me, and I have need of something from you.”
I tried not to show my relief or my disgust. “Yes sir. I believe we have mutually beneficial needs. It seems you already know why I’ve summoned you, so to speak.” I gave a short cough.
“Many things are known. Few are understood.” He loved to speak to people he saw as underlings in this bullshit manner.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and got straight to the reason we were here. “I need your Clovis compound.”
A flicker of interest. “And you offer?”
“The Amarillo cut. Plus, we intend to take Iron Valor. Every drop we take from them, you get a quarter.”
Vex made a choking noise, but I ignored her. This was my table, my risk.
The demon king’s smile widened. “A quarter is not enough.”
“Take it or leave it,” I said. “You know the numbers. Nobody else can touch what we’re pulling out of that city.”
He considered the deal. Not for long. “Half.”
I grinned, all teeth. “I don’t think I need it that bad.”
He leaned forward. The temperature dropped another ten degrees. Dagger’s breath came out in clouds.
“Forty percent,” he said, eyes like obsidian marbles. “And I will throw in the safe house in Albuquerque. You’ll likely need it before this is done.”
I made a show of thinking, but we both knew I’d take the deal. “Done,” I said. “But I want it signed, sealed, and protected. No back doors. No clever curses. You fuck us, I’ll find you. And I won’t bring the old man next time.”
The lights went out. When they came back on, the demon had grown until his head almost touched the ceiling.
His voice was like thunder, even though his mouth did not move. I wanted to put my hands over my ears. Vex, Dagger, and Rook did.
“I’m not quite sure who you think you are dealing with, boy.
I am the King of Demons. Only one sits higher than I in all of hell.
I do not need your deals. Remember, you summoned me.
Any room in which I stand can be considered my kingdom and as such all who inhabit it, my subjects.
Treat me with the respect that I am due. ”
At that point, Vex, Dagger, and Rook hit the floor on their knees. The urge to do the same was overwhelming. Try as I might, I could not remain in my chair. In the blink of an eye, I, too, was on my knees before the demon king.
The room went dark once again. When the lights came back on, Maltraz was back to his normal height.
He looked down at me as I struggled to rise, my bad hip making it difficult. “Now, I assume my integrity will not be questioned again.”
Not wanting another humiliation I bowed my head. “No, sir.”
He continued, “The contract is sanctified by blood. If you break it, your lineage is forfeit. If I break it, the lineage of Maltraz is forfeit.”
“Noted,” I said. “Let us continue.”
He produced a scroll from thin air; the paper brown and curling at the edges. It unrolled itself, hovering above the table. The writing was in a script I didn’t recognize, but my name—my true name—was there at the bottom, waiting for a signature.
He handed me a silver dagger. I took it, sliced my palm open, and pressed it to the line. The blood hissed as it touched the paper, then vanished. Maltraz did the same, and for a moment, the room filled with a scent like flowers and rot at the same time.
The scroll rolled itself up, then disappeared with a soft pop.
“It is done,” he said.
“Details,” I demanded.
“You may take possession of the Clovis compound at dawn,” he replied.
“A full inventory will be waiting. All of the properties on the premises will be open to you. Now, forty percent of all Amarillo revenue is payable to me, in quarterly installments, first payment due within thirty days. Miss a payment, and you belong to us.”
I nodded. “Noted.”
He inclined his head, then began to dissolve. First his face, then his hands, then suit and the shoes and the last glint of his shark-smile. In ten seconds, he was gone, and the room was warmer for it.
The old man gathered up his things, not looking at anyone.
My lieutenants waited until he was gone before they spoke.
“Was that wise?” Vex asked, voice raw.
I wiped my bloody hand on a towel. “Nothing we do is wise. It’s just necessary.”
Rook licked his lips, as if trying to remember what warmth tasted like. “What now?”
I shrugged. “We prep our people for the move.”
Dagger smirked. “Yeah boss. We’re running low on time.”
He wasn’t wrong. I just sold my soul so I could make my biggest move yet. After I made it, Bronc and Iron Valor would come for us. We’d be long gone when they did.