Cloak Games: Rebel Fist Read online

  CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST

  Jonathan Moeller

  Description

  Long ago the ruthless High Queen of the Elves conquered the nations of 21st century Earth. Centuries later, Nadia Moran is a thief and a wizard bound in service to the cruel Elven noble Morvilind, forced to use her skills and her spells to steal treasures for him.

  If she does not do Morvilind's bidding, her brother will die.

  But there are more dangers in the world than Morvilind.

  When rebel Elves launch an assault upon the High Queen, Nadia Moran finds herself caught between the rebels and Morvilind's implacable demands.

  One false step, and she will die...

  Cloak Games: Rebel Fist

  Copyright 2015 by Jonathan Moeller.

  Published by Azure Flame Media, LLC.

  Cover design by Clarissa Yeo.

  Ebook edition published December 2015.

  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: Family Time

  Maybe all the trouble began because I wanted a day off.

  It had been a rough summer. I had almost been killed several times, and I had seen things that gave me nightmares and learned secrets that people would murder to protect. I needed some time off, to get away from the awful things I had seen and the new set of jagged memories that haunted me.

  So I took my teenage brother to the mall.

  Don’t laugh.

  I was a thief and a wizard, and I suppose a woman like me was supposed to find relief through drugs and alcohol and the seduction of dark, brooding strangers. Yet my brother was the whole reason I was a thief and a wizard. Russell had frostfever, an alien, magical disease, and it should have killed him long ago. It would have killed him, but the Elven archmage Kaethran Morvilind cast cure spells over him every year to keep the illness at bay.

  In exchange, I used my spells and my wits to steal things for Morvilind.

  As for the traditional means of self-destructive stress relief, alcohol gave me a headache. I wanted to stay in good shape, and drugs didn’t help with that. And seducing a stranger…well, I wanted more control over my life, and a romantic relationship seemed like an excellent way to lose what control I still had.

  I had tried that, once. That relationship had almost gotten me killed at the time…and it had come back around to bite me in Madison last month.

  So, to unwind a bit, I was going to take my brother to the mall.

  It was a chilly day in September. I woke up in the Marneys’ guest room before dawn, dressed in a tank top and running shorts, and went on a nine-mile run. James and Lucy lived in western Milwaukee, in a neighborhood filled with compact two-story, three-bedroom houses, most of them populated by veterans and retirees. The neighborhood was safe enough, though anyone trying to rob me would have been in for a nasty surprise. I saw a lot of old people in tracksuits and sneakers out for their morning walks. There were far more women than men, and many of the men limped, or were missing arms and ears and eyes, or moved with grimly determined gait of a man adjusting to an artificial leg.

  Some of the veteran men-at-arms came back unharmed from the Shadowlands. Many came back alive but wounded. And quite a few never came back at all.

  It was a Saturday, so no one else was awake when I got back to the Marneys’ house. I locked myself in the guest room, which was furnished with a narrow bed, a dresser, a desk, and picture of Christ teaching the Apostles on the Mount of Olives or something. I did strength exercises for a while – pushups, squats, planks, leg lifts, and curls, using the set of free weights James needed for his physical therapy.

  Once that was done, I checked to make sure the door was locked.

  Then I practiced my spells for a while.

  Morvilind had taught me several spells, most of them dealing with illusion and the mind. I had learned a few others long the way, and some of them I could not practice here without accidentally burning down the house. I started with the telekinesis spell, lifting the weights with my mind and making them wobble around the room. I wasn’t very good at it, but I was getting better. Morvilind could call a book to his hand from across the room or crush someone’s skull with a thought.

  I also practiced my Cloaking spell.

  When Cloaked, I was invisible and undetectable to both sight and spell. Unfortunately, I couldn’t move while Cloaked, and the spell took the entirety of my magical strength to cast. Or almost the entirety of my strength – I had used the spell so often that it was getting easier to cast. I had practiced enough that I could now move my hands and arms while Cloaked.

  Maybe I had grown skilled enough that I could move while Cloaked.

  I cast the spell around me, my entire will upon it, and I vanished. I took a deep breath, holding the spell tight, and took a small step forward.

  For an instant, a tantalizing instant, the spell held. But when my bare foot touched the carpet, the spell collapsed with a flash of silver light. I sighed with disappointment, but I wasn’t that upset. The Cloak had held for a half-second after I started to move, and I had never been able to manage that before. With enough practice, I could take a step when Cloaked, then two steps, then three…and then I could walk around while invisible.

  Maybe then I could put a knife in Morvilind’s back.

  But only after he cured Russell, of course.

  I showered off and dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. I was still the first one up, so I went to the kitchen and started breakfast. Lucy kept a well-stocked fridge, so I broke out a pair of skillets and started breaking eggs and laying out bacon. I sliced up some peppers to add to the eggs, and popped a pair of English muffins into the toaster. I wouldn’t eat them myself – too many carbs – but James and Russell liked them. I picked up a jar of strawberry jam, wavered for a moment as I considered eating a spoonful (or three), then decided upon the course of self-discipline.

  “Good heavens. Do you ever sleep, girl?”

  I blinked as Dr. James Marney limped into his kitchen, the cane in his left hand tapping against the linoleum, his right leg stiff and rigid as ever. I had seen pictures of him as a young man, and he had possessed the sleek musculature of a champion swimmer. Several decades and a few bad wounds had turned him from sleek to bony, and deep lines marked his face. He was still strong, though – I had once seen him lift an eighty-pound bag of salt over his shoulder one-handed.

  “Well,” I said. “I was up anyway. Seemed rude to expect Lucy to make breakfast.”

  James snorted and lowered himself into his chair at the kitchen table. “You’re going to spoil her, you know. The next time you leave, I’ll be back to having frozen burritos for breakfast.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, taking a spatula and plucking the bacon from the skillet. “Lucy would never let you eat a frozen burrito for any reason. Besides, if I’m squatting under your roof, it’s only fair that I help out.”

  “You’ve been here for a while,” said James.

  I hesitated. “Have I overstayed my welcome? If you need me to leave, it’s not a big deal.”

  Because I had stayed longer than I had planned. I had only thought to stay overnight, and then head back to my apartment. One night had turned into two and then three…and suddenly nearly a month had passed.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said James, mirroring
my tone from earlier. “You can stay as long as you want. Though I did notice…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “What?” I said, dividing the eggs amongst four plates. “Come on, you can tell me.”

  “You’ve never stayed for more than a night at time,” said James. “Now you’ve been here a month…and you came here right after that terrorist attack in Madison.”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “Funny coincidence, yeah?” I said once I found my voice.

  “Yeah,” said James. “Look. You…want to talk about it?”

  “No,” I said.

  Actually, I did. One of Morvilind’s little jobs had sent me to Madison on the day of a Rebel attack, and I had almost been killed. I had seen horrible things. I had wound up owing a favor to a powerful lord of the Shadowlands, and God only knew what he would demand of me.

  And I had almost murdered an innocent woman to save myself.

  I hadn’t done it, but I could have. I had only stopped myself at the last minute. Sometimes I woke up in a cold sweat thinking about it, or the other things I had seen.

  Turns out that’s not the kind of thing you can just shrug off.

  “I understand,” said James.

  “I know you do,” I said. James had been an officer of men-at-arms in service to Lord Morvilind. He had seen the Shadowlands, and an orcish warrior’s axe had left his right leg maimed.

  He understood…yet I couldn’t tell him about the things I had seen. Morvilind had been very clear about what would happen if I told anyone about what really I did for him. He would kill me, and he would let the frostfever kill Russell. “Let’s…just say I had a really bad day.”

  James snorted. “I know all about bad days. If you want to talk, I’ll listen.”

  “Thank you,” I said in a quiet voice.

  “But if you don’t want to talk, you could finish those eggs and bring me some coffee,” said James.

  I laughed, taken off guard. “You’re terrible.”

  “I’m just saying,” said James, “that if you don’t want to talk about your problems, then the next best thing is to do useful work, and bringing me a cup of coffee followed by an excellent breakfast would be very useful.”

  I laughed again, and gave him a gentle smack on the forehead, but I did put a cup of coffee in front of him.

  “I do hope you didn’t put too much sugar into that, dear.” James’s wife Lucy came into the kitchen, still wearing her bathrobe. She was five years younger than James, with bright blue eyes and graying blond hair, and she looked like one of those athletic middle-aged women who always appeared in commercials for pharmaceuticals aimed at the elderly. She was a nurse, and for some medical reason she and James had never been able to have children.

  So they had taken in Russell, for which I was infinitely grateful.

  “She put no sugar in it whatsoever,” said James.

  “She’ll make someone a very good wife someday,” said Lucy.

  Lucy wanted to find me a good husband. It would have been annoying, had she not meant so well. I couldn’t tell her why it was such a bad idea. I would not surrender any more power over myself to anyone, and I had learned the hard way that came with a romance. For that matter, Lucy only knew nice young men, and she kept trying to introduce me to nice young men.

  What kind of nice young man deserved someone like me inflicted upon him?

  I saw again Alexandra Ross weeping in the Shadowlands, and remembered the cold, dead feeling that had come over me as I prepared to kill her.

  “Nadia?” said Lucy.

  “Sorry, mind wandered off,” I said. “Better make sure the bacon doesn’t burn.”

  I turned before she could ask any questions. James had been a man-at-arms, had been in the Shadowlands, so he could understand a little. Lucy hadn’t, and there was no way she could understand.

  I wondered how James and Lucy would react if they learned the truth about what I was, about the things I had done.

  Then a loud, cheerful voice cut into my thoughts.

  “I smell bacon!”

  Russell bounded into the kitchen. My brother tended to…well, bound into places. If he lived long enough, he was going to become one of those men who commanded attention simply by striding into a room. At the age of fourteen, he was all raw energy and enthusiasm. He was already several inches taller than me, which was immensely unfair, though since I was only five foot three, being taller than me may have been unfair but it certainly wasn’t difficult.

  He should have died fourteen years ago. The fact that he was taller than me wasn’t the surprising part, nor was his vigor. The fact that he was alive at all was the surprising part.

  Lord Morvilind’s magic had done that. For all his cruelty, he had kept his word, and his magic had sustained Russell’s life.

  Despite that, the disease had left its marks on Russell. He was thinner than a boy his age should have been, almost to the point of gauntness. He would never get conscripted as man-of-arms, which relieved me, but that meant he was barred by law from numerous well-paying careers. The frostfever had turned his hair and eyebrows (and beard, as he continued into adolescence) white. Russell liked to point out that the net effect of the thinness and the white hair made him look like some sort of mischievous creature from ancient myth, the sort that granted wishes for unsuspecting shoemakers.

  But he was alive. And someday, if I stayed alive long enough, he would be cured. Fourteen times Morvilind had cast the cure spell upon him, and after six more castings, Russell would be purged of the frostfever.

  Then, of course, Morvilind would probably try to kill me, if he had no further use for me.

  Six years. I had six years to think of something clever. Some way to save Russell and save myself.

  Russell was saying something, so I jerked myself out of my dark thoughts and made myself pay attention. If I was going to find a way to save us, I probably wasn’t going to do it today.

  If only I had known.

  “You made bacon,” said Russell, grinning. “And eggs?” I nodded. “And pancakes?”

  “No. An English muffin,” I said.

  “But not pancakes,” said Russell.

  “Eggs and bacon have protein,” I said, “and pancakes have…”

  “Too many carbs,” said Russell in perfect synchronization with me.

  “Don’t be smart,” I said. “In deference to your sweet tooth, I have put jam on your English muffin.”

  “Thank you,” said Russell, and I handed him his plate. He started to eat even before he sat down. I had seen some terrifying creatures in the Shadowlands, but I had yet to see one that devoured its meals with the same gusto as a teenage boy. He paused only long enough to put hot sauce on his eggs, which was an absolutely disgusting habit and one I refused to contemplate.

  James owned a number of commemorative beer steins from reunions of his company of men-at-arms, so I took one, filled it with coffee (without cream or sugar, of course), and sat down to eat my own breakfast. Russell was already halfway through his, so it was just as well I had left more eggs in the skillet. James and Lucy ate at a more sedate pace, reading the news on their tablets as they did.

  “Are we still going to the mall today?” said Russell around a mouthful.

  “Don’t talk with food in your mouth, dear,” said Lucy, not looking up from her tablet.

  Russell nodded, chewed, swallowed, and spoke again. “Are we still going to the mall today?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

  “No, no,” said Russell. “There are some books I want to get.”

  Other teenage boys went to the mall to pick up girls. Russell went to buy books. At least, I assumed other teenage boys went to the mall to pick up girls. I didn’t have any firsthand experience in the matter.

  “We’ll take your bike?” said Russell, leaning forward.

  “You most certainly will not take Nadia’s motorcycle,” said Lucy with a frown as
she lowered her tablet.

  “Sportbike,” I said. “Technically it’s a Royal Motors NX-9 Sportbike with a six cylinder engine, capable of going from zero to sixty in…”

  “I don’t care if it’s capable of going from zero to sixty in two seconds and can fly to the moon and make grilled cheese sandwiches while it does it,” said Lucy. “Those things are deathtraps.” James smiled a little, then caught himself and put on a grave expression. I bit my cheek to keep from laughing. “Nadia is an adult and she can do what she wants, no matter how reckless it is. You, however, will not be riding on a motorcycle.”

  “Even with a helmet?” said Russell.

  “Even with a helmet,” said Lucy. “From the accidents I have seen at the medical center, the helmet only serves as a convenient bucket for your brains.”

  “That,” said James as he took a bite of eggs, “is a disturbing mental image.”

  “I don’t like motorcycles,” said Lucy. “I’ve seen the end result of too many accidents.”

  “I’m sure Nadia is a very cautious rider,” said James. That was true. Mostly.

  “So you’re free all day?” said Russell. “You don’t have to do any work for Lord Morvilind?”

  “Not a thing,” I said. In fact, since the disaster at Madison, Morvilind had summoned me only once. I had gone to his mansion dreading some perilous task like the thefts of the Ringbyrne Amulet or the ancient tablet from Paul McCade’s mansion. Instead, Morvilind had sent me to steal a set of backup drives from a bank vault in Cincinnati. It had been dead easy, and the entire job had taken only two days. I had even able to help myself to several bundles of hundred-dollar bills on the way out, which had given me enough money to live on for a while. Morvilind had not summoned me since, and it had been the longest time I had gone without hearing from him…well, ever.

  Maybe something had distracted him. Maybe the contents of the backup drives held his attention. Maybe he was taking a vacation, if someone like Morvilind ever took vacations. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.

  “The entire day,” I said, “assuming Lord Morvilind doesn’t summon me for work.”