Demon Card Enforcer 3, Chapter 9 (Patreon)

[short chapter to reintroduce Miriam and her group. Rough, no need to correct typos, it'll go to an editor toward the end of the month]

Chapter Nine: Interlude with a Crazy Person

            The Ekron Eternal was vastly less impressive in the daytime. The Neon lights weren’t lit. The half-naked vampire statues, rather than tantalizing with their flaws hidden by dark light, just appeared as garish, cheap decorations. And there wasn’t a line of people waiting to get in, just a slightly stained ramp leading up to the door.

            Even Wolfe’s cards felt that way.

“I remember this place being far more impressive,” Malviere said in her otherworldly voice.

Fern, Liam, Malviere, Shel, and Wolfe were all staring up at the building from the parking lot across the street—the one beneath the Eternal was closed.

Wolfe couldn’t remember the last time he had been to the Ekron Eternal during the day. “Yeah, it’s pretty obvious that Big Man Grimm wanted to have this thing shine when the moon was up, and gave fuck-all fucks about how it looked during the day.”

            Shel giggled musically. “Fuck-all fucks? It’s been a while since you’ve thrown out a cringe one-liner. I’ve missed them.”

            “Har har,” Wolfe grumbled as they walked across the street.

            Shel leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. “Love you.”

            Wolfe’s heart warmed, but he couldn’t bring himself to utter the words in front of Fern and Liam. It felt private, even if he enjoyed saying it to Shel.

            She rolled her eyes at him but smiled at his affectionately. Wolfe couldn’t help but notice how healthy Shel appeared. She smiled easily, her skin was tan, and she had lean muscle across her entire body. Wolfe knew she’d picked up the second stage of fighting perks as well from her constant training.

            There were times Wolfe doubted his choices, despite Cerberus himself letting Wolfe knew he needed to follow his path. But seeing the powerful, happy, confidant woman Shel was now, instead of the weak, pale girl that had almost died but for him, reassured him.

            As they approached the door, it opened, held by a tall, muscled, black man dressed in a slick grey suit and carrying a pitchfork. Derek, an ally of Wolfe’s from his first clashes with the cobras after he’d gotten his deck.

            Wolfe jutted his chin up at the pitchfork. “She’s still got you doing that, huh?”

            Derek rolled his eyes. “Miriam, right?”

            Wolfe chuckled. For most people, that wouldn’t be an answer, but for Miriam, it made total sense.

            They crossed the dance floor of the Ekron Eternal. The red lights were off, and white ones were on. The lack of fog and thumping music was also different. Much like the outside, seeing it all in the light made it far less impressive, perhaps even a bit cringe.

            But the back booth was as impressive as ever. Big Man Grimm had made a huge leather booth that surrounded a massive dark oak table. The table had been replaced, but was nearly the same as Wolfe remembered.

            But the people were different. Big Man Grimm was dead, and his eldest son had left the business, occasionally fighting over inheritance with Miriam. Theodore, the accountant, was dead. And ever single lesser lieutenant was dead except for Piper, who was in jail.

            Only Wolfe and Miriam, of the original group that had once sat this table even semi-regularly, remained. Everyone else was new.

            Derek took his seat on the ‘side’ that Miriam occupied, sliding in next to Ahmed. Ahmed always made Wolfe laugh—his deck was based almost entirely on cards they had gotten in the Frozen Cairn dungeon, and the cards were vaguely themed like the images the gods had placed in old Egyptian packs, before that realm had interacted extensively with the outside world and joined the general pool of cards.

            So Miriam had Ahmed dress up in a pharaoh’s outfit, including having the open shirt and ridiculous beard, and he carried a staff with an ankh on it.

            At her other side was Victor, the one-time information broker. Victor was short for a guy at five-foot-seven, almost painfully thin, and pale white with faint acne scars and brilliant green eyes under greasy, black hair. He was dressed in a suit much like Derek, although a black one. But otherwise, he had no theme yet.

             Miriam herself took the cake, however. She was dressed in a diaphanous, black-lace dress that showed off equally black underclothes beneath. She had in her usual red contact lenses, with her usual black makeup around the eyes, to complement her long black hair.

            Wolfe did a double take. Wait… those aren’t contact lenses.

            “What happened to your eyes?” Wolfe asked. “Surgery?”

            Miriam, who had been lounging back on the giant leather booth—probably to show off her figure—shuddered dramatically. “Gods no. I know they can do that, but I’m not risking my eyesight on that. No, I got a new enhancer card, and this was the manifestation.”

            Wolfe slowly nodded. “Alrighty then. Did you get it for the powers, or because it gave you red eyes?”

            “A little of column A, a little of column B,” Miriam said. She reached over and gracefully picked up a glass of wine, sipping at it with black-lipstick-tainted lips, the licked the rim of the glass while staring into Wolfe’s eyes.

            Shel snorted and giggled.

            I wish she wouldn’t constantly flirt with me.

            “So, Shel told me that you finally found the way to get to the dungeon that we located when Malviere evolved. Is that true?”

            Miriam laughed throatily and leaned back again, wineglass held languidly in one hand. “No, I called you over here on that false pretense because I couldn’t think of any better way to proposition you again.”

            Ahmed grimaced and Derek rolled his eyes.

            Wolfe snorted. “Okay, fine then, tell me how you located it.”

            Miriam shrugged gloriously and swirled her wine. “We had to drill.”

            “From inside the sewers?” Wolfe asked.

            “Yeah, and let me assure you, it was hell to cover up and pay for,” Miriam said, a hint of seriousness entering her voice. “I only trusted four guys, and they’ve all been compensated extremely well for working for over half a year in the sewers, unable to talk to anyone, mostly when we’d arranged other projects nearby.”

            Wolfe nodded. “So what is it? Shel said it was a Volcano dungeon.”

            Miriam gave another exaggerated shrug. “Something like that, yeah. It’s a door, surrounded by falling lava that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. It gives off heat, but you can pass close to it without burning up. I didn’t send anyone in, so I don’t know its name.”

            “Alright, shall we go?” Wolfe said, starting to scoot out.

            “In a moment,” Miriam said, holding her empty hand up slowly. “We still need to talk.”

            “What about?” Wolfe asked. “We just need to get to the dungeon and run it. I really need a couple levels.”

            “Sure, sure,” Miriam said, nodding. “But… you just killed Chester and Pierre Ambroise, right? Carved the heart out of the Weeds?”

            Wolfe nodded. “Yeah. You helped me do it, remember?”

            “Like it was yesterday,” Miriam said airily. “Because it was.”

            “Smartass.”

            Miriam chuckled musically. “So… is this it, then? Are you planning on slaughtering the remainder of the gangs?”

            Wolfe glanced at Derek, Ahmed, and Victor.

            “My men,” Miriam said, running one hand over Ahmed’s chest provocatively, “are loyal.”

            “It’s way less cool, and way more cringe, when we’re in normal light and the sound of ‘oonce oonce’ isn’t battering my ear,” Wolfe said, nodding at Ahmed. “But fine. I’m aiming to take out both the crime families over the next couple days.”

            “The next five days, twenty-one hours, and twenty-two minutes,” Fern muttered.

            Miriam glanced over and raised an eyebrow.

            “You get used to it,” Wolfe replied to the unspoken question.

            Miriam leaned forward, most of her flirtatious demeanor gone as she stared at Wolfe intensely. “All three of the crime families have a ton of their money in my club at the moment, being laundered. I can stop paying it out, but it’ll cause problems really quickly. In a day or two for the Renfeldt and Singh families… and it’ll be a problem whenever the Weeds end the infighting to see who will inherit. It’ll hurt the remaining families a bit, although not immensely. But I’ll also start moving on other territories. I have plans, Wolfe… But your war is my trigger. So are you committed to the others?”

            Wolfe glanced again at Shel, who subtly nodded.

            He turned back to Miriam. “Yeah. It’s go. I aim to end all the remaining crime families in Noimoire in a blaze of destruction.”

            Miriam nodded, leaning back again and smiling, her eyes alight. “I can’t wait to see the destruction you carve across the landscape, Wolfe.”

            Then she glanced at Fern, Shel, and Liam in turn. “How many are you bringing to the dungeon?”

            “Shel for now—she needs to make Level Twenty-Five and get her perk.”

            Miriam nodded. “Of course. May I bring one of my boy toys as well?”

            Derek laughed, and Victor smiled, but Ahmed frowned. Interesting dynamic they have there.

            Wolfe was torn. It had been his dungeon, and Miriam already owed him in the dungeon department… but she had helped to physically open a path to the dungeon after Wolfe had found it.

            He made a decision. “Very well. But only for the first floor if there’s more than one, then we reconsider, fair?”

            She held her glass out to him in a mock toast. “Fair and more than fair, Wolfy.”

            “So, now can we go?” Wolfe asked. “I have places to be and people to kill.”

            Shel laughed again. “Ooh, two in a day.”

            Miriam laughed.