High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel

  “You’re human. We all got shit we need,” Joey said, kissing her softly. And then she began doing things to Michelle. Things that Juliet and Michelle had never done the entire time they’d been together. Joey brought her so close and then let Michelle hover just below the edge.

  And then, Michelle was falling and something broke open inside her. While she was still a bit hazy, Joey said softly, “The world is a shitty fucking place and sometimes you need to be selfish.”

  Michelle grabbed Joey, rolled her over, and began kissing her and yanking Joey’s clothes off as fast as she could. For this moment, she was selfish. And she knew that this was what she’d needed for a long, long time.

  Mollie left her dad and older brothers—Brent, Jim, Mick, and Troy—banging away at two dozen Kazakh slot machines while she crept deeper into the casino in search of more loot. The goons’ attempt to break into the teller drawers had made her less skittish: Baba Yaga’s people had been hired to make sure nobody tried to steal from that terrible old witch, and nobody in their right mind would dare betray her while the hag was still around. Probably, then, she’d gotten plugged during the fight in the casino while the jokers escaped. And good fucking riddance.

  So Mollie figured she was free to explore. Others were doing the same. Some looters kept their distance from one another, but others had apparently decided it was easier to let others do the hard work and then kill them.

  Some were in it for money. Others for the wonton joy of destruction, from the sound of it. The casino echoed with crashes, bangs, random pops of gunfire, and drunken laughter. More than one lost soul wandering through the abandoned casino carried a bottle; they’d probably raided the bar first thing.

  Jamal’s wasn’t the only body. Others had been beaten, or shot, or stabbed, or pulled apart during the chaos of the jokers’ escape. Some of the dead were the joker gladiators themselves, probably cut down during the attempt to escape. One guy lay beside the overturned buffet trays. He had to be well over seven feet tall; his skin looked like armor. It was the guy who’d killed Jamal, no mistaking him, but the bloody hole in the side of his head made it look like he’d tried to clean the wax from his ears with an auger bit. He’d been full of murderous intent, and almost gleeful about it, when he pulverized Jamal’s head. The flickering lights glinted from a sheen of oil on his horns.

  Horns. Oh, shit. She remembered this guy. It seemed like a million years ago. He’d looked so badass, but she could have sworn he sounded like a little kid. He’d actually cried in the van, whimpering something about his ailing mother, pleading with them not to take him away and leave her alone … But they did, and then he became a murderer, and then he was murdered. She wondered if he really did have an ill mother, and whether—

  NO. It’s not my fault. None of this is my fault. They forced me to do this, Baba Yaga and Berman. This blood is on their hands. Not mine. I’m as much a victim as the gladiators were.

  Mollie might have been a criminal, but she knew right from wrong. And the forced death matches, well, that was some sick twisted shit. She’d witnessed part of one match and from then on had made a point of never seeing another.

  She shook her head, hard, as though she could shake away an unpleasant memory. But it clung to her like a cobweb. Sometimes it felt like a miracle she could move at all, dragging along so many sticky memories as she did.

  Anyway. If she hadn’t skedaddled when she had, the big guy would have done in her and Franny, too. She’d probably be dead right now if she hadn’t picked the lock on the cuffs that baby-faced Boy Scout had used to chain himself to her. She’d done him a favor, too. If he’d thought about it for half a second he’d have to realize she’d made it a lot easier for him to defend himself. And since she hadn’t found his body next to Jamal’s, he probably made it out of the casino. So, really, Franny was lucky Mollie got away from him when she did. She hoped he saw it her way.

  “Michael fucking Berman. Franny fucking Black,” she muttered to herself while crawling under a roulette table to wrench out the cash box. “Noel fucking Matthews. Baba fucking Yaga.” So preoccupied was she, muttering the names of those who’d made her life such a piss parade, that she didn’t hear the crunch of footsteps on broken glass. But then she caught a whiff of the medicinal stink of cough medicine. She scurried from under the table on all fours, to find an oily joker standing over her. She banged her head trying to scramble to her feet.

  “SHIT!” she yelled, rubbing her scalp. “You scared the piss out of me.”

  The joker cocked his head and stared at her. The flickering half-light lent a peculiar sheen to his greasy skin. He was backlit, making it hard to see his face, but she’d recognize the smell anywhere. It made her woozy. She leaned against the table to steady herself while her heart stopped trying to chisel through her breastbone. She knew Vaporlock; they’d worked together, doing snatches for the fight club. They weren’t besties, but they’d talked a little, enough to know he wasn’t keen on the cage matches. And that he found the drooler in the wheelchair creepy as fuck, too. So they shared a couple things in common.

  “I guess we both had the same idea. I take it you-know-who isn’t around?”

  The instant the words came out of her mouth she realized she had just kicked herself in the molars. Vaporlock hadn’t returned to the casino as she had—he must have been here when the shit went down and got left behind. Oops.

  She didn’t need to see his face to know he wasn’t all that happy about it. There was a tension in his body language, like a tightly coiled spring. He stepped closer. A wave of medicinal miasma crashed over her. Mollie’s head spun. She tried to retreat but bumped against the roulette table. “Back off, hey?”

  He didn’t. The funk threatened to suffocate her. Mollie created a new pair of portals. One hovered in the air to her left; its flipside opened on an observation deck overlooking the Atlantic Coast of Nova Scotia. A stiff sea breeze gusted through the casino, blowing cocktail napkins and loose currency past Mollie’s feet like autumn leaves.

  The smell didn’t dissipate. Vaporlock reached for her, stepping into the light to do so. Mollie gasped.

  Dried blood caked his fingernails, but it was still wet where it coated his hands up to the wrists. His mouth, too. Oh, God, flakes of blackened blood peppered the grease around his lips and coated his teeth like he was some kind of goth-vampire wannabe. But Mollie knew it wasn’t makeup. He’d done somebody, done them messy, and very recently.

  “Oh, Jesus. What … what have you done?”

  He lunged. She tried to sidestep through the portal but the wooziness turned her legs to jelly. She stumbled. They went down in a heap. The portal disappeared. The wind died. Vaporlock crawled atop her. She held her breath. He took a fistful of her hair and slammed her head against the floor. The blow caused her to inhale; she got a lungful of fumes. The room spun. She felt herself sliding into darkness. He pulled her head back for another bash. Soft, soft, make the floor something soft—Blacking out, she struggled to envision one last portal pair. They splashed down in the People’s Paradise of Africa, or whatever it was called these days.

  The last time she’d created a portal on this spot, it had opened on a yacht. The boat was long gone, though, so they both went into the drink. The plunge caught Vaporlock by surprise. He released her and kicked to the surface. Her burning lungs forced her to surface, too. She took a deep breath; it still made her head spin again. The crazy motherfucker was still too close. He treaded water a few feet away, spluttering as though he’d swallowed a mouthful. Good. I hope some fucked-up parasite lays eggs in your esophagus, you shitbag.

  Mollie opened a return portal. A deluge flushed her back to the gaming floor in Talas. She staggered to her feet amid flapping fish and a smattering of dockside jetsam. The carpet squelched underfoot. The momentary gust of African humidity carried a mélange of outboard fuel and cold medicine. Mollie rolled her eyes. Like a draining bathtub, the portal had sucked Vaporlock back, too. She’d meant to leave him with
the crocodiles.

  She scanned the room for something hefty. She settled on a ten-foot leather sofa in the corner. She dropped it on Vaporlock’s head as he staggered to his feet. He made an oof sound but didn’t get up.

  Voices and footsteps approached; the splash had made a ruckus. Mollie stepped into her Bismarck apartment. There she changed out of her sodden clothing and leaned against the bathroom counter until she stopped shaking. She might have caved his head in. She was okay with that, all things considered. But what the hell had come over him in the first place? It’s like he was somebody else entirely.

  She plucked a beer bottle from the refrigerator in Idaho. Downed it. Wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. She waited for the burp, then returned to Talas.

  Mollie emerged on a catwalk that opened on a series of cheaply furnished bedrooms. She didn’t bother looting the hookers’ quarters; Baba Yaga wouldn’t have allowed them to keep anything of value. But Mollie wouldn’t have wanted to touch anything in those rooms without disinfecting it with a blowtorch first. The last thing she needed was to contract some mutant hybrid of gonorrhea and the Andromeda Strain while swiping paste gems from a call girl’s bedside table.

  Mollie hadn’t always known how to tell the difference between real and fake jewelry. Thanks, Ffodor.

  But if anybody in this shithole had real jewelry, it was the queen bitch herself. Mollie’d had an “audience” with the old witch; the memory was traumatic enough that she could still picture the scene. She opened a gateway into Baba Yaga’s quarters without trouble. A few minutes of watching and listening convinced her the coast was clear. It was hard to case the apartment without looking at the furniture, but she tried.

  She swallowed her revulsion long enough to tear the bedding from Baba Yaga’s bed and, like the hookers she’d seen earlier, turn a pillowcase into a makeshift swag bag. Baba Yaga owned enough jewelry to fill the damn thing—Mollie had glimpsed diamonds, sapphires, pearls, rings, pendants, and more during her one and only visit. She’d cased the place even while Baba Yaga fulminated at them; she couldn’t help it. Ffodor had trained her too well. And then he—

  Nope. Nope. Not my fault.

  The earring stands on the vanity, where before they sparkled like little bonsai trees fruiting with gems, were bare. Mollie tiptoed across the room and peeked into the open drawers; they contained several velvet-covered jewelry cases. But these, too, were empty. She even knelt on the carpet and felt around the edges of the vanity, assuming something must have fallen free during the snatch. Not a crumb. Some gutsy SOB had already cleaned Baba Yaga out and did a thorough job of it.

  “God damn it,” she muttered. It was never easy. Why was it never easy? Jewels are easy to carry, easy to hide, easy to fence. So of course there’d be none left for her. No, she had to deal with the hard stuff.

  So she gave up on the small stuff and searched the rooms for lockboxes and safes. Ffodor had taught her how to look for what she’d come to think of as “rich people” hiding places. And, sure enough, she found one safe embedded in the back of the walk-in closet, and a second in the floor under the bed. Mollie called through the portal to Idaho to let her dad and brothers know she needed a hydraulic cutter to get the safe out of the wall. They’d have to run the lines through the portal, but she could do the work herself. She’d grown up on a farm; she could use tools.

  She was waiting on her dad to hand her the cutter when, purely by accident, her gaze touched some pieces from the Russian mobster woman’s furniture collection. Vanities, divans, chaise longues tables, lamps, armoires.

  Chairs.

  Before she knew it, Mollie was slumped against the wall, hands on her knees, tears dripping into the carpet.

  “I’m sorry,” she wept. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

  We weren’t smart enough, we weren’t quick enough. It was never safe. But she’d insisted. And now Ffodor …

  “Mollie? What the hell is going on over there? You having some sort of woman trouble?”

  Quickly, she blew her nose on an antimacassar and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

  “No, Daddy. It’s fine. You got that cutter for me?”

  A steel bit, several coils of yellow rubber tubing, and a pair of safety goggles flew through the portal from the Idaho barn to land on a Persian rug. The chug-chug-chug of a hydraulic compressor wafted the sickly sweet scent of machine lubricant into air already thick with cow manure and Baba Yaga’s designer perfumes.

  Mollie lugged the tool into the closet. She donned the goggles, braced herself against the door frame, pressed the bit to the wall, and pulled the release. The bit chewed through the drywall like it was wet toilet paper. But when she hit the first stud, the chugging became a rattle and the faint smell of lubricant suddenly became overpowering.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Stop. Mollie, stop!”

  She killed the cutter and returned to the portal. The hose had ruptured, spewing hydraulic fluid everywhere. Dad and Brent were dripping with it. Wisps of smoke wafted from the compressor; it smelled like ozone and melted plastic.

  Mollie swore again. They’d probably blame her for this, too.

  A cool breeze slid across Michelle’s body. Next to her, Joey was asleep, tangled up in the sheets, snoring softly. She wanted Joey again, but was loath to wake her up. It wasn’t often Joey looked relaxed. Her normal state was a feral wariness. Michelle liked seeing her face in repose occasionally.

  The usual evening street noises floated up. Someone was yelling at someone else about random bullshit. Cabs and cars were honking impatiently, and the farty sound of buses braking was comforting. Michelle slid from the bed, making sure not to wake Joey. She slipped on a robe and walked down the hall to Adesina’s room. There was a slice of pale light spilling from the partially open door. She pushed the door open a little wider, then stepped inside.

  The room faced the apartment complex courtyard that dampened most of the street noise. It was quiet here compared to the rest of the apartment. Michelle loved this room. When she looked for a place for the two of them to stay, this room was what sold her. She could see Adesina living in this room.

  Normally, Adesina had an odd little wheeze when she slept. But Michelle didn’t hear it now. Cold sliced into her.

  “Adesina,” she whispered. “Baby?”

  Nothing moved under the covers.

  She stepped closer to the bed. “Baby…” There was no response. Michelle snapped on the bedside light, pulled the covers back, then jerked away from what she saw.

  In the center of the bed, Adesina was building a cocoon. The lower half of her body was already encased in the fine opaque filament.

  “Baby, oh, God, no.” Michelle reached out to touch her, and Adesina’s eyes snapped open. They were black and shiny—not her usual brown—and showed no recognition of Michelle. They were lifeless and inhuman. Michelle recoiled. All the while, Adesina’s mouth kept extruding the silky thread wrapping around her. Adesina’s legs manipulated the filament, helping to snug herself in the cocoon.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  Michelle heard Joey, but it was as if she were a long way away.

  “Michelle, fuck me, what’s happening to the niblet?”

  Michelle shook her head. This was what Adesina had done when she had been injected with the wild card virus. At the time, the trauma had been so great that she had wrapped herself away from the world in order to survive. So whatever was happening to her daughter now, it was bad enough that she was responding in the same way.

  Michelle reached out to touch her daughter, but Joey stopped her. “Don’t,” she hissed. “You don’t know what touching her might do.”

  Michelle yanked her arm away. “She’s my baby!”

  But she didn’t know what to do. She was helpless. And no matter how much she wanted to do something—anything—she couldn’t help her child.

  WEDNESDAY

  ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, Michelle watched in mute horror as Adesina encased herself.
By morning, there was a cocoon the size of a basketball in the middle of Adesina’s bed.

  “What should I do?” she asked Joey. She’d lost count of how many times she’d asked it in the course of the night.

  “I don’t know,” Joey replied, as she had every time Michelle had asked.

  Michelle was sitting on the edge of Adesina’s bed, her hand lightly resting on the cocoon. It felt like rough woven canvas. She’d let Adesina finish building the pupa before touching it. And Joey had helped. Joey had held her hand all night and kept her from going crazy with fear.

  But she needed to do something. It was past time for sitting on her ass. She didn’t know what had triggered this. She’d thought it was PTSD from the horrors of Adesina’s life in the PPA. But Adesina had insisted that wasn’t the case—that there was something else walking through her dreams. Something horrible enough to send her into what amounted to a coma. And what would she be when she came out of it?

  Then there was the question Michelle didn’t want answered: would she ever come out of it?

  “C’mon,” Joey said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here for a while.” Michelle let herself be pulled from the room.

  In the living room, the TV was on, but the sound was turned off. A jittery video of a city with a yellowish-green haze hanging over it was on the screen. The city squatted on a broad plain ringed by mountains. The banner under the image identified the city as Talas in Kazakhstan. The film was replaced by talking heads and Michelle turned away.

  “Here are our options, Michelle,” Joey said, holding up one finger. “We can wait this thing out and see what happens. Maybe she comes out of this on her own like she did before.”

  Joey went into the kitchen. Michelle followed and stood in the doorway as Joey began making coffee. “Two, we call in some help. I dunno who the fuck we call, though. Some doctor? Maybe a joker doctor who might know how to deal with this.”