Cloak Games: Hammer Break Read online

  CLOAK GAMES: HAMMER BREAK

  Jonathan Moeller

  Table of Contents

  Description

  Chapter 1: Fun With Food Service

  Chapter 2: Take The Edge Off

  Chapter 3: Unmarked Vans

  Chapter 4: Elemental Blade

  Chapter 5: Road Trip

  Chapter 6: Rebels

  Chapter 7: A Cold-Blooded Woman

  Chapter 8: Banking For Fun And Profit

  Chapter 9: Urban Warfare

  Chapter 10: Conflict Mediation

  Chapter 11: Former Loves

  Chapter 12: More Fun With Food Service

  Chapter 13: Break The Bank

  Chapter 14: Ice Games

  Chapter 15: Tell The Truth

  Epilogue: Loose Thread

  Other books by the author

  About the Author

  Description

  Nadia Moran is in serious trouble.

  Bad enough that Lord Morvilind is forcing her to work with the Rebels. Even worse that the murderous Rebels want her dead.

  But this time, the Rebels want her to rob a bank.

  Specifically, the Royal Bank itself, the best-defended building in North America.

  And unless Nadia uses all her magic and all her cleverness, she’s going to take the fall for the heist of the century…

  Cloak Games: Hammer Break

  Copyright 2017 by Jonathan Moeller.

  Published by Azure Flame Media, LLC.

  Cover design by Clarissa Yeo.

  Ebook edition published August 2017.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Chapter 1: Fun With Food Service

  I had problems.

  Oh, yes, let me tell you, I had problems, both inside my head and outside of it. Dying fifty-seven thousand times isn’t great for your sanity, and I had a whole lot of people who wanted to make sure I died once more.

  Permanently, this time.

  That’s a lot of stress, but to deal with that stress, I didn’t drink, and I didn’t use any drug stronger than caffeine.

  I’d like to say it was because of my moral rectitude and iron discipline, but the truth was it was out of spite.

  See, after I escaped from the Eternity Crucible and killed Baron Castomyr, Lord Morvilind said he expected me to develop a substance abuse problem. Just to spite him, I didn’t. I wonder if Morvilind said that on purpose, knowing that I would avoid it just out of my hatred for him. I know that sounds paranoid, but when people want you dead, paranoia is a survival skill.

  Also, alcohol and drugs screw with your perceptions and reaction times, and like I said, some bad people wanted me dead. I couldn’t make a single mistake. If I screwed up, I was dead, but at least if I died again, it would be for the last time. But if I got killed, then I might get Russell and the Marneys killed in the process as well, and maybe a lot of other people.

  Maybe a whole hell of a lot of people, depending on what Nicholas Connor planned.

  Problems, problems, problems. To sum up, the Rebels wanted me dead, but thanks to my “employer” Lord Kaethran Morvilind, I had no choice but to work with the Rebels on two more jobs. I had survived Arvalaeon’s Eternity Crucible, but I was nowhere within shouting distance of mental health. I had ruined my relationships with everyone who cared about me.

  But I was dealing with my problems. I was coping. Maybe not well, but I was coping without drugs or alcohol or promiscuity or a dozen other self-destructive activities.

  Specifically, I was dealing with my problems by making trouble for the Rebels.

  That was how I found myself in Red Ditch, Wyoming, on March 9th, Conquest Year 316 (or 2329 AD according to the old calendar).

  It wasn’t a nice town.

  It was in the southeastern part of Wyoming, a couple miles south of Interstate 80, right in the middle of the scrublands of the Red Desert. Granted, it was scenic, with a lot of rocky hills and nice sunrises I sometimes saw when I got up early to go running, but the town was still a rough place. It had started out as a company town built around some natural gas wells. Later, the price of natural gas had dropped, and half the town had fallen into decay. Then the price of natural gas went back up, and Red Ditch became the kind of boomtown where you could buy just about anything for the right price.

  I doubt any Elves had visited Red Ditch for a hundred years. Certainly, the Duke of Cheyanne never came out here.

  It was the kind of place Nicholas Connor and his Rebels preferred to operate.

  It was also exactly the sort of place a woman of twenty-two shouldn’t go alone.

  Well. I suppose I wasn’t really twenty-two. And I could make myself look like anyone I wanted. And if I got angry enough, I could probably have killed every living person in Red Ditch and destroyed the town, and no one there could have stopped me.

  I hadn’t, though.

  I was inordinately proud of that fact. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I would take what I could get.

  But, anyway. Red Ditch had a strong Rebel presence, and I had spent the last eight months since my encounter with Nicholas and his gang making life harder for the Rebels. Someone had to do it. Arvalaeon had told me that the Rebels had become stronger than most people knew, partly because of Nicholas’s leadership and partly because of their alliance with the Knight of Venomhold.

  And Arvalaeon hadn’t been kidding.

  Nicholas was up to something. Something big, something dangerous. I didn’t know what it was, save that it was going to kill a lot of people…and it was so dangerous that Nicholas had murdered a woman who had been devoted to him to keep it secret. The Rebels wanted to overthrow the High Queen and defeat the Elves, and while I wasn’t all that fond of the Elves, I liked the Rebels even less. The Elven nobles were aloof tyrants.

  The Rebels were much worse.

  Nicholas and his lieutenants had told me at various times that they would happily kill ninety percent of the human race if it meant the remaining ten percent could live free of the Elves.

  I wasn’t okay with that. And I was pretty sure that whatever Nicholas had in mind to attack the High Queen would involve a lot of collateral damage.

  Because of that, I walked down Red Ditch’s main street at 11 PM on March 9th, trying not to shiver in the cold.

  It wasn’t that cold – only about thirty degrees Fahrenheit or so. Except ever since escaping from the Eternity Crucible, I had problems with cold. I felt chilly all the time. Even in the torrid heat of a Wisconsin summer, I had felt so cold that I had bundled up in multiple layers while everyone around me went in shorts and tank tops. Today I was wearing thermal underwear, black jeans, a tight sweater, a looser sweater over that, and then my oversized black navy coat. Even with all that, I was still freezing.

  Of course, it actually was cold in Red Ditch. People think of deserts of being hot, but at night they get cold.

  Red Ditch’s main street was all bars, twelve of them lined up along the crumbling asphalt. Rows of pickup trucks and battered work vans lined the curbs as the workers from the gas fields came to enjoy themselves. Music blared from the bars, and I heard laughter and loud conversations and a few fights. The men were either young, fresh off their tours of duty with Elven lords, or grizzled and middle-aged. The only women I saw were working in the bars, prostitutes, or both
.

  Prostitution was illegal in the United States, but this part of Wyoming was kind of a gray area. According to the last census, only two hundred thousand people lived in Wyoming, about a third of them in the city of Cheyenne. The rest were scattered around a really big state. Homeland Security had only three branches in Wyoming, one in Cheyenne, one to guard Yellowstone National Park, and the other to cover the rest of the state, and I knew that the rural branch took bribes to look the other way.

  Like I said, the main street Red Ditch was the kind of place a twenty-two-year-old woman shouldn’t go alone at night. Of course, I looked twenty-two, but thanks to the Eternity Crucible, I was older.

  Much older.

  And thanks to my magic, I could Mask myself to look like whoever I wanted.

  At the moment, I had Masked myself to look like a middle-aged worker from one of the gas wells. The Mask made me look six feet tall, with graying black hair and beard, and my false appearance wore dusty jeans, a battered tan work jacket, and a work shirt with a few stains. I looked little different than hundreds of other workers, and no one paid me any attention whatsoever.

  Sometimes I based my Masking spell off real people, and sometimes I just made something up. This time, my Mask duplicated the appearance of someone real, specifically a guy named Walter Dale. Dale was fifty-three years old, a gas mining engineer…and currently he was a courier for the Rebels, hand-delivering important messages the Rebels wouldn’t trust to the cell phone network or the Internet.

  Presently, Walter Dale was unconscious in his room in Red Ditch’s only hotel, sleeping off the drug I had given him. He ought to wake up tomorrow with a bad headache, but for tonight, I was stealing his identity.

  I walked to the last restaurant on the street. It occupied the lowest floor of an old brick building, with apartments on the top two floors. All the windows in the apartments were dark, but light streamed from the restaurant’s windows. A sign over the door said the restaurant was the Hearty Hammer Platter, open 24 hours with breakfast (and world-famous pancakes) available for all 24 of those hours.

  I blinked at the sign. Hearty Hammer Platter?

  It was a hell of a coincidence.

  I remembered that plaque outside of Jeremy Shane’s tomb, the words OPERATION SKY HAMMER spelled out in letters of bronze.

  I pushed open the Hearty Hammer Platter’s door and stepped inside. It looked like a classic American diner, with booths along the walls and a long chrome counter facing the kitchen. It was past 11 PM, but there was still a good crowd, mostly older men eating dinner and reading the news on their phones. I suppose the younger, rowdier men went to other places.

  I took one of the stools at the counter, the red vinyl of the cushion squeaking a bit as I settled into place. A waitress approached from the cash register, a fit middle-aged woman in a green uniform with a bright smile and hard eyes that warned anyone against screwing with her.

  The pistol at her belt, just visible behind her white apron, sent the same message.

  “What can I get you, hon?” said the waitress.

  I bet she called everyone that.

  “Coffee, please,” I said, the Mask making my voice gruff. “Then a menu.”

  The waitress produced a cup of coffee and a laminated menu. I sipped the coffee as I glanced over the list of meals. For convenience, the meals were numbered – eggs and bacon and toast were number one, pancakes and sausage number two, and so on. I couldn’t eat any of it. After my experiences in the Eternity Crucible, I had trouble with a lot of food, and I mostly ate protein powder and vegetable smoothies.

  The coffee was good, though.

  The menu had thirty-two different numbered meals.

  “Made up your mind, hon?” said the waitress as she returned. She refilled my coffee cup.

  “Thank you,” I said, setting down the menu. “I would like to order a number 49.”

  Her smile didn’t waver, but I saw a flicker of uncertainty go through those hard eyes.

  “I don’t think we serve a number 49 here, hon,” said the waitress.

  “I’d still like one, please,” I said. I smiled, making sure my Mask’s face followed suit. “I insist.”

  “All right,” said the waitress. “I’ll have to get the night manager. Wait here, please.”

  I took another sip of the coffee as she disappeared into the kitchen door. It really was quite good. I hoped I didn’t wind up having to blow up the building. That had happened a few times during my travels over the last eight months.

  I didn’t have to wait long. The door swung open, and the Hearty Hammer Platter’s night manager walked out and glared at me.

  Okay. Imagine what the night manager of a diner usually looks like. Now imagine the exact opposite. This guy was big, but from muscle, lots of muscle, and the sleeves and chest of his polo shirt bulged with it. There were a lot of tattoos on his thick forearms, which was not something respectable people did in Conquest Year 316, and there were old scars on his face.

  He looked like a veteran who had fallen on hard times.

  In other words, he looked exactly like the sort of man who Nicholas Connor liked to recruit.

  A little bronze nameplate attached to the left side of his chest read ERIKSON

  “I hear you want to order a number 49, buddy,” said Erikson without preamble.

  “Yup,” I said.

  Erikson rubbed his thick jaw, giving me a once-over. He would only see a tired middle-aged man in work-stained clothes. Nothing threatening. Of course, if he was a cultist of the Dark Ones, he might have magical abilities, and that meant he would be able to sense the Mask.

  I must have passed inspection because he grunted.

  “I’m going to need more details for the order,” he said.

  “My name’s Walter Dale,” I said. “I’m supposed to pick up an order for Mr. Lorenz.”

  Erikson nodded. “How does Mr. Lorenz like his eggs?”

  It was a code question, and I had used the mindtouch spell to fish the answer out of Dale’s thoughts.

  “Fried,” I said. “With salt and pepper, hash browns, three strips of bacon, and a muffin on the side.”

  Erikson stared at me for a moment and then nodded.

  “I’ll get started on that order,” he said, leaving a small business card on the counter. There was an address on the card.

  And just like that, I knew where to find Victor Lorenz, one of the key people in Nicholas’s Rebel organization. The Rebels had excellent security measures, but they weren’t prepared to deal with someone like me.

  But as I was beginning to realize, they were more than prepared to deal with Homeland Security should the need arise. And maybe they were even ready to deal with the High Queen’s Inquisition.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll take delivery of the order there.”

  Erikson nodded and stepped back into the kitchen. I pocketed his card, got to my feet, and headed out the door. The chill of the night washed over me, and I took a moment to orient myself, the throbbing music from the nearby bars filling my ears.

  I figured I had maybe twenty seconds before Erikson followed me or sent someone to tail me. I strolled to the left until I was out of sight of the diner’s windows (and the security camera mounted above the door), and I ducked into the alley.

  As I did, I dropped my Mask spell and cast the Cloak spell, vanishing from sight.

  I stepped back onto the sidewalk, leaned against one of the windows, and waited.

  About ten seconds later Erikson burst onto the street, followed by two guys who had the same air of incipient violence. All three men had donned jackets, partly because it was cold, but mostly to conceal their handguns.

  “Damn it,” said Erikson. “Where did he go? You, check the alley.”

  One of the thugs walked right past me and peered down the alley as Erikson and the other goon surveyed the sidewalk and the street. I grinned my humorless grin. There was no place I could have run to, no place for me to hide in the alley
, and not enough time for me to have jumped into a waiting car.

  Of course, considering what they would have done to me, they deserved a little confusion. The address on the card was fake. Well, it wasn’t fake, not exactly. Instead of taking me to Mr. Victor Lorenz’s hideout, it would have brought me to a group of waiting Rebels who would have interrogated me thoroughly. Once they realized I wasn’t actually a Rebel, they would have killed me.

  Well. They would have tried.

  Let’s just say that scenario would have ended with a lot of dead Rebels.

  After a minute, the two thugs gave up and walked back to Erikson. “There’s no trace of him.”

  “Fine,” said Erikson, his aggravation plain. “You two keep watch here. I’ll go talk to Mr. Lorenz myself. See if he knows this Walter Dale guy. Lorenz is in charge, and he can decide what to do.”

  The two thugs acknowledged his orders and disappeared into the diner, and Erikson started walking across Red Ditch.

  I’ll say this much for him – he did his very best to keep anyone from following him. He doubled back. He cut through alleys and then an apartment building. Erikson kept looking over his shoulder, which looked suspicious, but no one cared in a place like Red Ditch. He would have lost or spotted anyone else attempting to trail him.

  But I had a Cloaking spell.

  Granted, I had to duck into doorways a few times to drop the Cloaking spell and catch my breath. I could usually walk around for about nine or ten minutes while using a Cloak, depending on how fast I was moving. I could use it for longer if I rested for a few moments, and I managed to do that and keep after Erikson.

  At last, my quarry came to an abandoned gas station at the edge of Red Ditch. It had been a big gas station with an attached a convenience store, and sheets of plywood had been placed over the windows. The pumps stood like rusted monoliths beneath the metal canopy.

  It was the perfect place for someone like Victor Lorenz to hide between jaunts to Venomhold.

  Erikson jogged up to the door and knocked, and I waited behind him.