The Cardkeeper Chronicles: Books 1-5 (Complete Collection) Read online

  Unknowing whether this would be the last time, I made my way toward the Vault and stopped at the entrance to the Grand Hall, where one robed man stood guard. I checked his sash – yellow. A messenger.

  “Could I speak with Dalton and the Elders?” I asked in a rush.

  I was given only a brief glance. “What does it concern?”

  “Kronin.”

  He withdrew as if he’d seen a two-headed monster. “One moment.”

  The messenger disappeared through the large iron doors, returning minutes later with Dalton by his side. I wasn’t used to seeing him alone, and I even wondered if it was Dalton. He looked naked without his tiny Elders flanking him. Only his voice confirmed his identity.

  “Lady Keira. I hear news of our friend Victor.”

  “He’s not our friend,” I quipped.

  Dalton froze, nodded, and then waved a hand to show me to one of his many workshops. The small, circular room had only a workbench and a shelf of ancient scrolls. One small, glassless window sat in the far wall, allowing a chill to sneak in. Dalton closed the door and leaned against it. “What of Victor Kronin?”

  I took a breath and closed my eyes, unsure of how to say it. “Victor is the magicard thief. A witness saw him at Jackson Park, obliterating a pack of werewolves.”

  “You’re… sure of it?”

  “Going by the condition of the park, not to mention how sincere the witness sounded, I’d say yes. I’m sure. Look, I can’t do this. Going up against the Chaos card was one thing, but I can’t fight Victor. I could barely defeat him before, and now he’s stronger than ever.”

  Dalton pulled a hand from his sleeve and cupped mine. “Lady Keira, you are also stronger than before. Both in your mind and in your physical skill. I’ve watched you grow from an irresponsible mortal to a heroic guardian. Have faith in your abilities.”

  “But the card…” I didn’t want to say it, just because I didn’t want to hear it myself. A young and ambitious mage twenty-eight years ago, Victor had competed with me to earn the role of Cardkeeper. After an accident that cost another mage his life, the elders banished him from the Vault and banned him from practicing magic. Months later, when he had reemerged to steal power from another mage, I’d stopped him. Me. Even then, after an explosive battle through the city, I had barely escaped with my life. And Victor… well, we’d all thought he’d met a grizzly end and the city was safe. Until today.

  “The card is nothing compared to the power inside you.” Dalton released my hand and inspected a nearby shelf, pulling a scroll from its slot. “I believe in you, Keira Poe, and so shall you. If I didn’t think you could defeat Victor, I wouldn’t put the fate of the Vault or the Sacred Temple in your hands. Here.” He held the scroll out to me.

  I took it, mulling over his words. He could be quite convincing when he wanted to be – he almost made me believe in myself, too. Almost. “What’s this?”

  “Everything you need to know.”

  I slid the scroll from its bamboo casing and rolled it open. A blank page stared back at me, but as I looked at it harder, an image revealed itself. It was as if it had been there all along, and a chemical had been applied to make it visible to the naked eye. Anxious, I kept staring until a house appeared on the tattered yellow paper.

  “Is this…”

  Dalton nodded.

  A car swept past the house and a bird flew to rest on the roof. I hissed in a breath, realizing that I wasn’t looking at a photograph, but at a holographic image of Victor Kronin’s home in real time. “I doubt he will be home,” I said, without looking up. “Last I heard, the power of the Chaos card corrupted him. I can’t imagine he would still be playing Happy Families.”

  “Mayhap that is for the best.” Dalton took the scroll from my hands and replaced it on the shelf. “You have the opportunity to gather information before you find him. Learn of his intentions and study his movements. There could be a weakness to exploit, ensuring an easy defeat.”

  Yeah, right. That’ll be the day.

  I wanted to refuse him – to hand over my robe and drop my magicard by his feet. Maybe the soul of the card had rubbed off on me – it wasn’t in my nature to be that nasty, despite my fear.

  “All right,” I clipped out. “But if things get out of hand, I’ll be turning in my card.” I spun on my heel and made for the door, taking quick strides so as I couldn’t be stopped.

  Stopping me, Dalton’s firm voice floated over my back and reached my ears.

  “If that day comes, may our souls be shown mercy.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  In the morning, an hour-long, ass-numbing bus ride brought me to Victor Kronin’s home in Bucktown. I stood at the top of the steps to his house, turned and saw kids playing basketball in a well-maintained court across the street. The tall, widely separated buildings allowed the late-November sun to blaze across on my face.

  I used my hand to shield my eyes from the light and glanced up at the house. Red sandstone. Perfectly clean. Rich mahogany front door and not a spot of dust on the windows. Somehow, I couldn’t picture the infamous Victor Kronin living here, but that didn’t seem to stop my legs from shaking as I pounded on the door and waited for a response.

  “Not gonna lie,” Link mumbled from the pocket of my new jacket, “I hope he’s not in.”

  “Shush,” I said, but silently agreed with him.

  A minute passed. No answer. Maybe I could break in and have a little snoop around. There could be something helpful inside that would lead me to Victor’s whereabouts. But the car pulling up behind me ripped that possibility straight out from under me like a rug.

  “Stay quiet,” I warned Link as I trotted down the path and approached the red BMW. It was a convertible with a white leather interior, and the dark-skinned, curly-haired woman behind the wheel removed her sunglasses to analyze me.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a way that sounded both accusatory and helpful. I could imagine her working at a school as the grumpy principal.

  “Maybe you can,” I said, casting an envious eye over the beautiful car. “Sorry to drop in on you like this, but I’m looking for Victor Kronin.”

  The woman snickered. “Ain’t we all?” She killed the engine and climbed out of the car. Opening the rear door, she lifted two large grocery bags from the seat and dumped one into my arms. “Here, carry this.”

  I took it in silence and followed her up the steps, hoping that Link hadn’t just met his premature demise under the weight of a shopping bag. Death by groceries.

  I only got as far as the hallway, when the woman stopped and took the bag from me, dumping them both on the floor. As I glanced around, I wondered why her interior decorator still had a job. Old-fashioned, puce foil wallpaper hung on the walls – a floral décor and a scent too aggressive to be potpourri.

  “What business do you have with my husband?” the woman asked.

  My shocked eyes dropped to her ring finger, noticing the white band of skin where a ring had shielded it from the sun. Husband, I thought, or ex? I wasn’t sure how much I could tell her. It wasn’t likely that Victor had explained his sordid past. I could only imagine how that conversation would have gone; “Oh, honey, I can move things with my mind,” or perhaps “Oh darling, my sweet, raven-haired snob, please don’t be afraid. Flying is perfectly normal among my people.” Some people just couldn’t accept the truth right in front of their own eyes, and so I suspected that Mrs. Kronin had been kept in the dark about her husband’s abilities.

  “Let’s just say he stole something from a friend of mine.”

  Mrs. Kronin frowned. “Is he in some sort of trouble?”

  I shrugged. “That depends on what he intends to do with what he stole. If I can get it back with an apology then it would be no harm, no foul,” I lied. Besides, I couldn’t see that happening in the immediate future.

  Her eyes stayed fixed on me, studying me with an open mouth. It looked as though she didn’t know whether to help me or toss me out on my ass.
But when she went to the door and pushed it closed, her body language shifted. More helpful; less hostile. “Is this about the magicard?”

  Whoa. So Victor had divulged his true identity. Who knew that a thief could be so honest? “It is. How much do you know about it?”

  “Hmm.” Mrs. Kronin folded her arms and leaned against the wall, her eyes distant as if lost in a memory. “My husband always had something of a hunger for magic – a greed, I suppose you could call it. Recently he’d been rambling on about the power of Chaos, whatever that means. I began to see him a lot less, and sometimes days would go by without him returning home. For a while, I thought he’d rekindled the love affair with that Saunders woman, but things soon became… stranger.”

  I buttoned my mouth. This poor woman didn’t need to know that I’d met Karen Saunders only last night, and I wasn’t about to cut her off mid-flow.

  “At one point, he’d been gone for over a week. When he came home, he had a card clutched in his hand and an evil grin on his face. I guessed at the time that it was a magicard – I’d never seen one before so I had no idea. I could only imagine where he’d gotten it from.”

  My heart pounded as I took all of this in. “When was this?”

  Mrs. Kronin shrugged. “I suppose around six months ago.”

  That couldn’t be the chaos card. So then, where did he get it? I began to suspect that he had taken it from a Cardkeeper. I knew for a fact that two other Illinois Cardkeepers had mysteriously disappeared some months ago. Was it possible that this was connected? “Mrs. Kronin, did he ever explain his plan to you?”

  The woman’s eyes began to moisten, glistening under the dim bulb above us. “Not at all. I mean, this obsession of his was driving me insane. There was no getting through to him and it got so bad I thought of leaving him. When I finally summoned the courage to storm home and give him an ultimatum – me, or the magic – he’d left. I haven’t seen him since. That was,” Her eyes rolled back in calculation, “Six or eight weeks ago. I… don’t think he’s coming back. Anyway, good riddance.”

  As bad as I felt for her, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d gotten off easy. Whether she knew it or not, Victor Kronin was a horrible man; violent, selfish, sociopathic. While he retained possession of the Chaos card, the bigger the distance between him and his wife, the better. “He didn’t say anything about his intentions? Other than what he wanted from the Vault?”

  Mrs. Kronin shook her head, biting her lip. “I’m not sure. He kept mumbling something about an assault on the vampires, but I didn’t understand it. Other than the obvious.”

  I felt Link stir in my pocket. The poor guy was petrified of vampires. Hell, so was I. Now that those nightmarish creatures were involved, things were going to get a lot more dangerous. The hate triangle with the werewolves could only be stronger now, and here I was, caught in the middle. “Thank you so much for your time, but I have to go.”

  “I understand.” Mrs. Kronin opened the door and held it for me. “If you see Victor…”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  The door closed behind me, shutting me outside in the cold air. Clouds had swept over the sky, hiding the sun. The gloom reflected my mood. As great as it was that Victor hadn’t been home so I didn’t have to fight him, learning of his obsessive plan and the assault on the vampires only increased my anxiety.

  And what did that mean, anyway? Was it an assault that had already been carried out? Was there a war in the making? Was it even Victor who would be leading the attack? As always, that son of a bitch was an enigma of trouble, and I was caught dead in the center of it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  How is it that you always know when you’re being followed? Your gut screams that you’re not alone, and before you know it you’re second-guessing yourself. Of course, I had Link, but even he groped at the inside of my pocket as if he felt it too. Something, somehow, wasn’t quite right.

  I stormed off in the general direction of the bus stop, taking the back alleys and secluded areas. If someone – or something – was out there, I would rather face my demons than be stalked all the way home. Anyway, I had my magicard with me, and as long as it wasn’t a creature that was immune to fire, I could at least put up a good fight.

  Shielded from the dim sunlight by two large apartment blocks, the path I took led to a park. A swing set flailed around in the distance, each swing propelled by the steady wind. The miniature merry go round followed suit, rotating slowly as if ridden by a ghost. A shiver crept over me as I stopped and watched, wary. Terrified.

  “So,” snarled a voice from behind me, “you’re consorting with the enemy.”

  I spun around quickly, feeling around for my card while summoning an ember into my palm. It only seemed to get halfway, reaching up my forearm stubbornly as I clocked the beast coming my way.

  My instincts kicked in and I dropped to my knee, hurling the werewolf over me as I met with the dusty concrete. After all I had gone through today, I wasn’t about to be mauled by an angry dog with a short fuse.

  Fuming, I pushed myself to my feet and dashed at my enemy, catching it off-guard with its thick neck in my scalding palm. Its eyes widened and its legs kicked, the extreme temperatures burning its fur and skin.

  “I’m just doing my job,” I said through gritted teeth, chest heaving. I scanned the beast up and down. Could this have been Jason? Should I have shown mercy? Screw that. At the end of the day I was under attack, and I didn’t know whether it was me or the soul of the magicard retaliating, but I’d had enough of being a target. “Stay out of my way, or I will end you right here and now.”

  The wolf snarled, large breaths blowing from its wide nostrils as it struggled against my immortal strength. It must not have known that I meant business. And if I were to be totally honest, neither had I… but I liked it.

  Wheezing, trembling, and letting out a soft whimper, the wolf began to shrink in my hand. Its fur withdrew as its bone structure softened, weakened, its muscles shrinking until its neck slid from my grasp. Before I knew it, I’d released a half-naked and pissed-off Jason. And if looks could kill…

  “What business did you have with Victor Kronin?” he asked, spitting.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “It’s everything to me.”

  I looked deep into his dark, brown eyes, but could only find anger. “Listen, I ran your little errand and now I’m tracking Victor. If you think you can stand in my way, you’ve got another think coming.”

  Jason stood right in front of my face, hands flailing through the air. Then, he pointed a finger at me and I reared back under his insult. “You say that, but I just saw you coming out of his house.”

  “And he wasn’t there!”

  We each took a breath as Jason stepped away and turned his back on me. I let the heat from my hand die out, the skin cooling rapidly in the cold Chicago air. Maybe I would need it again, but for now, I could let it rest.

  “Wait,” I said, “If you knew Kronin was the killer, why didn’t you just tell me?”

  Jason turned, looking me dead in the eye. “I didn’t know. Saunders didn’t tell me that.”

  I frowned. “Then how did you know to come here?”

  “Victor killed my brother. You didn’t think I would investigate, too? It’s not like I could have counted on a Cardkeeper to solve a mystery now, could I?”

  “You followed me?”

  “Of course.”

  Another rage built up inside me, threatening to seize my control. When I noticed I was clenching my fist, I took slow, steady breaths and tried to calm my monkey brain. I sighed. “We’re both after the same person here. And although stopping these bullshit attacks would be enough for me, don’t you just think it would make sense to work together?”

  Jason crooked an eyebrow. “Me? You? A mage?”

  I nodded.

  “And a werewolf?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even if I wanted to do that, what makes you think I won’t be punished for
it? My kind don’t work with mages, much less Keepers. Doing that would end up with either my exile or my execution.”

  “It’s a price I’m willing to pay,” I said, eyes widening at Jason’s snicker. It only lasted a second, but that was more than I could have ever hoped for. He was handsome, too – a perfect row of white teeth, the fangs receded out of sight.

  We locked eyes. Jason held my gaze while I anticipated some kind of response. Finally, he grunted, stepped over to a nearby tree and took his coat – my coat, rather – from a low branch. “There is one thing we can do,” he said, slipping the coat around his perfectly toned body. “But…”

  I tried to look away. “But what?”

  “Hmm… Follow me.” Jason turned, walking away in long strides before I could get a word in. Wherever he planned on taking me, I didn’t imagine it would be a safe place. But how much time did I have to argue with him? None. Not a single moment.

  I saw no other option as I felt around my pockets for Link. My heart skipped a beat when my hand came up empty. I felt around the rest of my clothes, wondering if he had climbed onto my back to use me as a shield. No luck.

  “Are you coming or not?” Jason called from a street corner in the distance, and shook his head with disapproval before he disappeared from sight.

  I hoped that Link had jumped ship and run home. It wouldn’t be the first time, but he hadn’t done it in a while. I couldn’t help but worry about him as I zipped up my jacket and gently jogged to catch up to Jason. Our destination remained a mystery.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  If I had known beforehand that I was headed there, I would have stayed well away.

  “You ready for this?” Jason asked, but walked on before I got a chance to answer.

  While hiding my trembling knees, I looked up at the exterior of the sewage plant. It didn’t look like much; two huge towers just outside the city, including a small, square building that looked like a bunker of some kind. Only I knew that it extended far, far deeper. A raincloud hovered above it. How fitting.