Deadliest Bidder (Nick Teller Book 2) Read online

  Deadliest Bidder

  Nick Teller, Book Two

  Alan Brenik

  Brenik Books

  Copyright © 2019 Alan Brenik

  First published in 2019 by Brenik Books

  www.alanbrenik.com

  ISBN 978-1-9996400-3-3

  Cover design by James T. Egan, www.bookflydesign.com

  The right of Alan Brenik to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-9996400-2-6

  Also By

  ALAN BRENIK

  THE NICK TELLER SERIES

  Bad Luck Hunting

  (prequel, short story)

  Rogue Arcanist

  For Meg

  Chapter One

  The family of three entered the London Aquarium, and I followed fifteen paces behind. It was late morning on a weekday, but the summer holidays were in full effect and the entrance was already crowded. I hung back while the mother and father bought their tickets, their young daughter – maybe six or seven – leaning against her father’s leg, a fistful of his jacket in one hand as she tiptoed to peer over the counter.

  I grimaced and looked away, welcoming the feeling of something barbed and sickly coiling in my stomach. I stepped into line for my own ticket and took a moment to shrug out of my long woollen coat, draping it over my arm.

  Turn around, I thought, just leave.

  I stepped forward in line. It had been seven months since my life had been turned upside down, since I’d killed the rogue arcanist murdering students at my university, and those months had been some of the hardest of my life. I’d thought briefly I was coming to terms with what I’d done – I was sleeping better, moving forward, I’d even been on a date – but then it only takes one pernicious thought to change your whole perspective. A thought that had led me here.

  I paid for my ticket with cash and snatched a pamphlet guide from the counter, squared my shoulders and walked into the aquarium. I caught up to the Fallons in an observation room studded with glass viewing panels, the lights from the tanks casting shifting green-blue shadows across the faces of the crowd. It wasn’t difficult to find them again, not that they were particularly memorable: George Fallon was a man of middling years, neat brown hair receding above a pleasant face, and Jamie Fallon’s red hair was threaded with grey, a cream cardigan hanging from her narrow shoulders. Rather it was in the way they moved, as if they were having to remind themselves how to walk. It was in the way those around them unconsciously shied away as if repelled by some gentle force, and the way their eyes didn’t leave their daughter.

  While her parents stayed within arm’s reach, Chrissy Fallon did a circuit of the room with her hand trailing the walls of the tanks, her eyes dancing with reflected light. I could see her elder sister Ruby in the shape of Chrissy’s face, the line of her nose, and they shared the same rust-red hair—

  —Ruby’s hair clumped in my fist, my sword biting into the back of her neck, ritual-forged steel parting cervical spine—

  —I clenched my fist and drew a rattling breath. Ruby had murdered four people in service to an alien horror lurking beyond our reality, becoming a literal monster in the process; I’d done what was necessary to save lives and survive, I knew that, but I couldn’t get her family out of my head. I’d not only killed a monster, I’d killed a sister, a daughter. I’d carved this person-shaped hole into each of them, and they hadn’t even been part of my equation at the time.

  Chrissy had both hands on her father’s arm, dragging him deeper into the aquarium as her mother walked vacantly behind. I followed through a tunnel roofed in glass that spit us out into a cavernous observation room. An entire wall was devoted to a tank filled with sharks and a variety of placid fish, a moai statue head towering in their midst, it’s square features broad and disapproving. It didn’t take Chrissy long to worm her way to the front, hands splayed against the tank as her parents jostled in her wake.

  Rather than enter the scrum, I retreated to a bench against the far wall. I opened my pamphlet guide and continued watching Ruby’s family over its edge. A persistent awareness pulsed against the back of my wrist where my Casio watch met skin, and a fresh strain of guilt hit me – I had Kia, my university aide, traipsing all over Central London with my dog in tow to trial my latest spellcraft. I was supposed to be seeing if I could keep track of their location using sympathetically-linked disks of enchanted plastic, one fixed to the inside of my watch and the other to River’s collar, but I’d paid it barely any mind.

  ‘I know what you are doing,’ rumbled a voice to my left.

  I started and dropped the pamphlet, my heart thundering as I turned in my seat.

  ‘Relax, Nicholas,’ said Lawrence Roth, ‘I come in peace.’

  I sat straight, trying to get my pulse under control, hands gripping the lip of the bench. An older couple walked past and cast Roth an odd look. He had that somewhat discordant look of a rugby player crammed into a suit, not helped by the scarred hole where his left ear should have been. His steel-grey eyes studied the room over a crooked nose, his dark skin catching the light in a way that made him look dangerous and handsome. And then of course there was the blue-metal cane he carried everywhere, resting across his lap, and the black cloak he wore over one shoulder marking his office.

  ‘Call me Nick,’ I said finally, ‘remember?’

  ‘Of course, my apologies… Nick.’ His lips twitched, and I slumped in my seat.

  I ran a hand through my hair and bent to pick up the dropped pamphlet, struggling to kick my mind into gear. I’d not seen Roth in seven months, not since he’d tidied up the fallout from what happened with Ruby. On paper we were enemies: him a Blackcloak of the Society, and me one of the rogue arcanists he was charged with hunting down. But things were more complicated than that. I’d helped him put a stop to Ruby when she became an Aspect trying to usher in an apocalypse, and I’d directly saved his life in the process – now his boss, the Prime of the Society, had allowed me to continue living as before, but with a debt hanging over my head like a storm waiting to break. I couldn’t think of a single scenario where Roth showing up spelt good news.

  ‘I know what you are doing,’ he repeated, ‘with them, I mean.’ He gestured toward the Fallons who were still admiring the shark tank.

  I pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth. Swallowed. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Come, Nick.’ He turned to face me, his eyes sad and concerned, and understanding. ‘This is not healthy.’

  He reached for my shoulder, but I jerked away. I unrolled my coat and stood to put it on, punching my arms into the sleeves. ‘I’m not… this isn’t…’

  ‘Nicholas.’ There was an edge to his voice completely at odds with his relaxed posture, his placid half-smile.

  I sighed and sat back down. ‘I’m not doing anything wrong,’ I said, hating how petulant I sounded.

  ‘What is it you hope to achiev
e here?’ he asked gently. ‘They cannot absolve you, Nick. They can never know—’

  ‘—I don’t want absolution. I know what I did. I know why it had to be done. But that doesn’t change the fact that I...’ I dropped my voice. ‘I took her from them.’

  ‘You did,’ he said, voice flat. ‘And I am thankful for that.’

  I looked at him sharply.

  ‘You would rather me lie?’ He looked back to the Fallons, his face grave. ‘No parent should come to see their child so changed, so broken. You did a necessary thing, a terrible thing, but it was also a kindness.’

  ‘A kindness,’ I echoed.

  ‘A thing can be both; not all truths have to be painful.’ He turned to face me again. ‘What is it you want, Nick?’

  ‘Want?’ I shied away from his implacable gaze, scouring the room for an answer, an escape. There was a crush of bodies in the observation room, the air thick with the excited chatter of children, the corralling of parents; I couldn’t reach out without touching another person, and yet I felt numb and alone.

  A shark skirted the face of the tank, eliciting a chorus of nervous admiration, one black eye sizing up the audience. I’d read somewhere that sharks are negatively buoyant, that if they stopped swimming they’d simply sink and then drown. It’s easy to fear something like that, to see only a mindless predator staring from coal-black eyes, but I recognised panic there – the weight of knowing that you’re hardwired to survive, that your next choice isn’t a choice at all.

  Chrissy appeared satisfied with the sharks and did her best to carve a path toward the next room, pulling both parents behind. I almost rose to follow, but Roth exuded a subtle gravity that made it difficult to shrug him off.

  ‘What do I want?’ I spoke to the floor. ‘I want to know how to live with myself.’ There. I’d said it.

  ‘My mother,’ said Roth, after a moment’s pause, ‘was strong, disciplined, unafraid. She taught me many things.’

  I glanced at him, wearing my surprise plainly.

  ‘She did not want me to take this cloak,’ he said, two fingers grazing his shoulder. ‘I think it was the only time I truly disappointed her.’ He brushed imaginary lint from his cloak and cleared his throat. ‘She made me swear on the love I bore her to be a better man tomorrow than I am today. And a better man still the day after. It is advice I have tried to live by, and it is advice I now pass to you.’

  ‘She sounds like a wise lady,’ I said.

  ‘She was.’

  I shifted in my seat. ‘What I did though…’

  ‘I do not believe our lives can be placed on scales, our choices so cleanly weighed and measured. We are who we are moment to moment; we are not perfect, but I like to think our humanity lies in the struggle to do better, to be better.’

  I smoothed the pamphlet against my leg with the heel of my palm. ‘Are all Blackcloaks so philosophical?’

  He surprised me with a laugh, deep in his chest. ‘Just think on it, Nick. I can ask no more than that.’

  A companionable silence threatened to fill the space between us, but I couldn’t pretend Roth wasn’t, first and foremost, a Blackcloak. ‘Not that I’m ungrateful for, well, this,’ I said, gesturing lamely, ‘but what are you really doing here?’

  He gripped his metal cane tight, the muscle of his jaw winding into a knot as he wrestled with something. He looked at me, really looked at me, as if despite his words he could measure my worth. He took a breath. ‘I also should not be here.’

  ‘Okay.’ I pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘So why are you?’

  ‘I have been issued new orders, direct from the Prime. Orders that will send me out of my jurisdiction, temporarily.’

  I took a second to think about what he was telling me. ‘Important work?’

  A conflicted side glance answered that question well enough.

  ‘And that’s not all?’ I asked.

  Roth dropped his voice, pinning me with his eyes. The shadows in the aquarium shifted by degrees until they acquired a sinister edge, the press of nearby conversation becoming muffled and distant. ‘Prime Ascrid has requisitioned the Bloodstalker.’

  A chill weight landed in my stomach. I’d not been able to look at a spider without squirming since the Society had used one of their Bloodstalkers – small enchanted spiders crafted from the same blue metal as Roth’s cane – to take a sample of my blood; it was an invisible leash around my neck, a way for the Society to find me no matter where I went, and to do countless other unsavoury things for all I knew. And now it was in the hands of the Prime herself, a woman who scared me more than just about anyone I’d ever met.

  ‘What are you telling me, Lawrence?’ I asked, dread creeping into my voice.

  Roth ran one calloused hand across his shaved scalp. ‘Prime Ascrid never does a thing without reason. If your debt is called due, just do as she asks.’ He hesitated. ‘She will honour faithful service.’

  ‘Yet you think she’s sending you away.’

  ‘A woman in her position sees things from the top of a hill. Though I may not understand the reasoning, I do trust there is a greater design at work.’

  ‘If you really believe that, why are you here, warning me?’

  Roth grimaced. ‘In the church, you could have let the Aspect kill me. It might have made things simpler for you.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Just be careful, Nick. Please.’ He reached into the breast of his tweed suit and handed me a small white card. ‘For if you need to… talk.’

  I took the card, running my thumb across the mobile number embossed on its face. No name, nothing on the reverse.

  Roth stood and adjusted his cloak.

  ‘If she has it,’ I said, standing to face him, ‘how did you know to find me here?’

  ‘Nick,’ he said, favouring me with an expression I couldn’t begin to decipher, ‘I am a Blackcloak.’ He nodded once before striding into the crowd, his cane punctuating his steps.

  ‘Lawrence,’ I replied softly, though he’d already gone.

  The damp, dark confines of the aquarium were suddenly suffocating. I stumbled my way into the next room, struggling to tame the fear slithering through my stomach and into my extremities. I shivered, imagining the Bloodstalker’s needle-thin legs crawling across my neck. The storm I’d felt hanging overhead since the Prime had snared me in her web was pressing down on me, stoked and eager to rage; I felt the certainty of it in my blood. I needed to get home, to some semblance of safety.

  As I forced my way through the crowds toward the exit, my eyes inexplicably picked out Chrissy’s rust-red mop. I changed direction and feigned tripping, knocking my shoulder into Jamie and jostling her husband.

  I caught myself, gripped them both by the shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, not meeting their eyes.

  I turned and left the aquarium and did not look back.

  Chapter Two

  I knew something was wrong as I approached my flat from the street. It wasn’t anything I could point to or quantify, and perhaps it was just Roth’s warning still pinballing inside my head; still, I slowed my walk and extended my arcane senses. I blinked and opened my third eye, the energies infusing reality snapping into view. There was nothing unusual about the surrounding currents of power, and the subtle weave of sentinel spells guarding my home appeared intact. I closed my third eye but kept my senses poised.

  My flat occupied the upper floor of a converted Victorian terrace. The house looked innocuous from the road, no different from any other day: wood-framed windows peering sleepily from chalk-white walls; a narrow path leading to an open porch and a thick blue door fitted with twin post boxes. Elspeth was still at her holiday home in Greece, and the wilting ferns in her ground floor window scolded me as I approached the front door.

  I buried my hesitation and let myself in. The stairs leading up to my flat stretched into a blackness so absolute it was as if a gateway to Elsewhere had unfolded at the top. The sun was warm against my back, but tendrils of ice were radiating from my stomach. I shu
t the door and left the light off, taking the stairs one at a time from memory.

  I skipped the loose twelfth step and crept around the short bend at the top to my front door. I splayed my fingers against the wood. Still nothing. My sentinel wards brushed against my awareness before retreating, same as always. I tried to ease some of the tension cramping my shoulders before sliding my key silently into the lock and opening the door.

  My flat was bathed in warm light, and the first thing I saw was that light reflecting sharply from metal.

  I stepped forward on instinct, heartrate rising and my aggression with it. I wrenched at the well of innate power inside me, shaping the air into a cannonball and hurling it at the towering figure standing ten feet away.

  The aeromantic missile dispersed into a harmless cloud between us as my power vanished.

  I cried out and fell to my knees, heart juddering, the world yawning around me. I reached for my power again and recoiled; that well inside me was a void, a vast silence threatening to swallow me whole. I clutched my chest, trying to suck in air, tears blurring my eyes.

  The figure approached unhurried, one fist clenched before him. He was seven feet tall and half as wide at the shoulder, his bare arms tattooed blue with esoteric scripture. His trousers and vest glinted purple-black in the midday light, made from some kind of tiny interlocking scales, two swords hanging from his belt. And his face was hidden behind an expressionless metal mask. Járngrimr, my shell-shocked mind supplied.

  ‘Painful, yes?’ sounded a voice from somewhere behind the Járngrimr.

  I lurched back, scrambling to get away. My front door slammed shut with a gust of wind and I backed into it, desperately trying to think past my terror and confusion.