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    On the Cards Book Four: On the Cards, #4
    On the Cards Book Four: On the Cards, #4
    On the Cards Book Four: On the Cards, #4
    Ebook196 pages3 hours

    On the Cards Book Four: On the Cards, #4

    By Odette C. Bell

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    About this ebook

    Tom betrayed Nadine. She played right into his hands, and now he's thrown her away.

    Nadine must battle her way through the wall. She only has one hope now – to do as much damage to the North as she can.

    But she must learn one important lesson – she's not alone, and she never has been. Only when she takes that lesson to heart will she tear through the Renewal Council and end this for good.

    ….

    On the Cards follows a snarky magical card shark and the lying detective she's indentured to as they fight to unify their broken city. If you love your urban fantasies with action, wit, and a splash of romance, grab On the Cards Book Four today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOdette C. Bell
    Release dateMar 18, 2019
    ISBN9781386917441
    On the Cards Book Four: On the Cards, #4

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      On the Cards Book Four - Odette C. Bell

      1

      I couldn’t speak.

      There was nothing to say.

      You see, I was a goddamn idiot. I’d gotten it all wrong. Tom had been playing me, and I’d lost.

      But I was still the one holding all the cards. Literally.

      That was until Tom spread a hand toward me.

      Tom wasn’t a card magician. But Tom was a liar, see. As he opened his hand, he grabbed hold of the Walker Pack, and instantly gained control of it.

      It was like he flicked a switch, and the loyalty of the pack broke from me and returned to him.

      There was nothing I could do.

      He looked at me. Right at me. Well, his eyes locked on me – his stare seemed to drive right through.

      Tom had what he wanted, and now I was nothing but a speck of dust to him. And what do you do to a speck of dust? Ah, you get someone else to sweep it away.

      He pointed toward me, turned, grabbed a phone from his pocket, and called someone.

      Two heavyset federal agents came my way.

      I did nothing. Except for stare at the back of Tom’s head. If my gaze could have been a drill, I would’ve goddamn ripped apart his skull and smashed through the front of his face.

      I could not believe what I had done.

      I stood there, my breath heaving out of my chest as both federal agents grabbed me by my shoulders. One of them snatched up a pair of impeno cuffs from his holster, cuffed my wrists, then caught my ankles with another set.

      I was locked down.

      Tom didn’t turn back to me. Not once. Not to laugh in my face – not to stare ashamedly at what he’d done. No. To do either of those things, he’d have to think I was worth it.

      It was damn clear that he had used me, and it was time to throw me away.

      As I was bodily picked up and taken out of the half-broken corridor, I passed close enough to him to whisper, Bastard.

      I swore his shoulders tensed. Or maybe I made it up. He quickly turned away and walked through the mangled remains of the door.

      I fancied that would be the last I would ever see of Tom Walker and his pack.

      I was taken out of the front of the Council building. The whole damn place was destroyed. While a lot of it was down to my fight with Sinclair, a fair chunk of it had nothing to do with me. Blood was splattered over the walls from dead soldiers who looked as if they’d been popped like ripe raspberries underfoot. Massive beams of steel and enormous chunks of sandstone lay everywhere.

      The once graceful steps that led up to the Council building were completely cracked. It looked as if a team of vigilante construction workers with jackhammers had gone at them all night long. Huge fissure lines ran right through the street. While I could kid myself and say that was down to me – owing to the fact I’d literally taken the roof off the building – they were still crackling with a strange red-black magic.

      It looked fresh. No – it didn’t just look it; it had to be fresh, I concluded as I was carried past it. I could see magicians down there in tunnels casting it.

      … What the hell was going on?

      Wait. I didn’t care. There was nothing I could do from this point on. All I could hope for was that I would be dragged to prison alone and that my family would not pay for my mistakes. No. I could hope for something else, couldn’t I? That Tom would eventually get what he deserved. It wouldn’t be at my hands, but I just hoped that one day his twisted morals would catch up to him.

      You’re not going to be any trouble, one of the federal agents said gruffly. It wasn’t a question. Oh hell no. It was a statement, and it rang with the kind of certainty that told you this guy thought he was a god – at least to me. What he decreed, I would follow. If I didn’t, I’d well and truly get smote.

      They took me to a modified Federal Police car. Though the back of it looked pretty small and ordinary – like a midrange sedan – as soon as one of them opened the door, I saw it was a veritable cell back there. It wasn’t made of metal, either – the walls were reinforced magical concrete.

      One of them shoved me in, and my head banged harshly against the side of the door on my way through.

      I was torn and mangled, bruised and bloodied. And yet none of that frigging mattered. As one of the Federal Police guys slammed the door closed and initiated some kind of harness that swept over me and locked me hard against the seat, all I could think about was my heart.

      It felt as if someone had chucked it in a blender then thrown it to the dogs. All because Tom had taken me on a ride.

      You’re a goddamn idiot, Nadine, I spat at myself under my breath. I tried to clench my teeth, but there was too much tension in my jaw. It felt as if someone had replaced every single muscle in my face with wires – wires that wanted to keep my mouth closed for the rest of frigging time. Because if my mouth had been closed, I would never have found myself locking it on Tom’s. This mess would never have gone down.

      I sat there dejectedly, the harness so tight around my chest, I could barely wriggle, let alone breathe. Every movement of my torso was labored. It would have freaked me out, but I had much bigger things to think about.

      My mind kept ticking back to the moment I’d whispered bastard in Tom’s ear as I’d been dragged past. He’d twitched, right? Real tension had shot across his shoulders.

      Don’t, I growled at myself through bared teeth. If there’d been a mirror in this cell with me, I would have lashed out and shattered it. I didn’t want to see how stupid I was being right now. If I let myself think about the tension that had swamped Tom in that moment, maybe I’d try to convince myself that this was some kind of ploy. He hadn’t really turned on me, and at some point, he’d break into the car and break me free with him.

      This was just part of a greater plan, right?

      Wrong, I spat at myself as harshly as I could. I didn’t have magic without a set of cards, but you tell that to my words. I swear they were primed to cut through anything, including any last lingering loyalty I had for that monster.

      I heard the car start, and we pulled out from the curb. It was a strange damn experience being in what looked like a windowless concrete cell but knowing you were in fact in the back of a car. I could feel every jolt as if I was right there over the suspension, and yet the view I had was of nothing but thick walls.

      I had no clue where I was being taken to. Maybe they’d just get this over with, find some handy electric chair, strap me to it, and fry me like an egg on a hot summer day.

      Or hey, maybe Tom wanted to question me himself. Who knew what his real plan was?

      You frigging idiot, I snarled at myself.

      My anger could only reach so far. Grief quickly swept a hand up, grabbed my eyes, and squeezed tears from them. I thought of my family, and that was a big mistake. All the warnings Fred’s disembodied voice had given me at Fable Tower shook through me. I should have stopped then. I should’ve gotten away from Tom when I’d had the chance. Because now all of this would come back to my family. They would be tortured because of me and my blind idiocy.

      I clenched my teeth as hard as I could, and I buckled as far forward as this tight harness would allow. I began to shake as sobs racked my form. Tears drained down my cheeks, dribbled over my chin, and saturated my collar.

      My clothes couldn’t really be described as clothes anymore. Thankfully they were still covering my nakedness.

      I might have changed into a pair of jeans and a shirt at Tom’s house, but that fight in the Council chamber had practically shredded them.

      Who cared?

      Honestly, who cared about anything anymore? Tom had his fall-guy, the Renewal Council had the South, and the war was only hours away.

      I don’t think I’d ever reached a dark place like this, and it consumed me as the car navigated through the North. I didn’t really know how this cell was in the back of it, but I could appreciate that the magic holding it in place had to be thick. While I could feel the car moving, I couldn’t hear the world outside. For all I knew, the car could be ready to drive me off a cliff, and I’d have no clue. Or we could have driven right past a war zone, and I would have been oblivious.

      It had to end, though. I wouldn’t be allowed to wallow in my grief forever.

      That fact was proven as the car started to slow. For about five minutes, it would start, drive what felt like a few meters, then slow down and stop. We had to be at some kind of checkpoint.

      Nerves climbed my back. They ignited in my gut like a flare, and they blasted and shook through my spine. If I ever lived through this – if I wasn’t executed in the next several hours, that was – I would always remember this. It felt like swallowing pure electricity only to have it tear through every cell.

      I tried to get a handle on my nerves, but there was no damn point. My motivation was crushed, and the strong woman I’d once professed to be lay at my feet. Nothing more than an empty husk of broken emotion now sat in this seat and cried.

      The car finally stopped. I felt something disengage from the cell, then the door opened. I looked up into the face of one mean damn bastard. There were scars along his nose and cheeks. It looked as if his face had been punched a thousand times over. Or hey – maybe he just had a predilection for smashing his head against walls. Or other people’s faces, I realized as he reached in, undid the harness, and yanked me out. He moved me so quickly, the side of my face brushed up against his nose. I didn’t give him a bruise – hell no. It felt like head butting an inch-thick chunk of lead.

      Stars exploded through my vision, and a woozy sense shook through my face.

      I couldn’t take this. My body was done. I just wanted to collapse. But these pricks had no intention of letting me do that.

      It was dark out. I’d lost all track of time, but it had to be close to 10:30 at night. It was a thick darkness, too. It seemed to hang around the car, and despite the fact I heard the sound of vehicles rumbling past, the glow of their headlights barely reached me. Hey, maybe I’d fallen into such a depressive funk that light, in all its forms, would never reach me again.

      Why bother illuminating a wretch like me?

      The guy reached down and did something to the impeno cuffs around my ankles. They jolted apart, allowing me to walk. Well, if you considered stumbling like a puppet controlled by its master’s strings walking. The guy grabbed me from behind and shoved me forward. If you try to run, you will be killed.

      His warning echoed in my ears as he pushed me around the side of a dark building.

      When we reached a corner, I finally figured out where we were. We were at some kind of military remand base. Though I wasn’t exactly up on all the secret bases dotted around the wall, I was relatively certain this one was actually built next to it.

      I was right. As I ticked my gaze to the left and I saw a massive troop transport rattling past, its headlights briefly illuminated something behind me.

      It was the wall. It rose up like an unstoppable nightmare.

      Grief, sickness, fear, and despair all swirled through me, more violent than any tsunami.

      The guy kept pushing me along. When my boots slid in a puddle of oil and I fell against the wall of the building beside me, he took the opportunity to lock his hand on the back of my head and smash my face harder against the wall for daring to slip up. Get moving, he growled.

      For the briefest second, the old Nadine Russo threatened to rise in me. I hated being manhandled. I hated being spat at. I hated being grabbed. I hated being played.

      But with nothing to do, that anger just twisted around and turned in on itself.

      All I could do was remember Fred Owen’s words. He’d told me there was no point in fighting. Goddammit, if I’d just believed him, I wouldn’t be here now.

      The more you struggle, the more you lose.

      A few more tears trailed down my cheeks. If I’d worried that my hardened jailer would see them, that worry was swept away as the heavens opened up. I finally realized why it was so dark – a thick, gloomy storm hung above the city. With a crack of far off lightning that briefly illuminated the wall, rain slammed down. It drenched me instantly. It sent a cold shiver racing over my back and pushing hard into the base of my spine. It felt like the ghostly grip of a ghoul who was about to pluck every organ from me and eat them right in front of my face.

      My jailer finally reached the front of the building.

      There were other men and women being led in. I knew all of them were from the South. While some looked like hardened soldiers and could-be terrorists, the rest just looked like ordinary civilians that had been swept up in this.

      The sight of their rain-washed, tear-streaked, fear-dappled faces brought me out of myself.

      However briefly, I forgot about my mistakes and my troubles, and I was thrown into theirs.

      One woman was pregnant, another old man could barely stand, and a young kid couldn’t be older than 18. But all of them, in the North’s eyes at least, were terrorists worthy of locking up.

      Screw this. Screw this!

      No matter how hard I screamed that in my head, there was nothing I could do.

      I didn’t have to wait in line behind the other terrorists. No, I got special treatment. My jailer skipped the line, took me through a black, reinforced metal door at the side of the building, and shoved me into a dimly lit corridor. My boots were slicked with rainwater, and I slipped. This time I tumbled right down to my knees. With the impeno cuffs locked around my ankles, I couldn’t move my legs at the right angle, and when I fell, shooting pain smashed up into my shins and hips.

      Get up, the guy roared as he smashed his hand across the back of my head. When I didn’t immediately stand, he wrapped

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