The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6) Read online

  Okay, okay . . . so they were respectful.

  Okay, okay . . . so they said right off the bat that they didn’t want to do it, but they were ordered to do it and you know how things are with orders. No, I fucking don’t. King Henry Price is not an order-loving kind of guy. Not a guy into doing sex acts with any type of authoritative cock. Or authoritative clit. Don’t start, ladies. First minute of this tale and I’m already getting arrested, don’t need your asses screaming misogyny already, do I? Be it cock, clit, or some type of blood tentacle, I hate whatever shape authority takes.

  Proven it time and again this last year.

  Defiance.

  Started me down this path when I was fourteen, still the beat of my drummer to this day.

  Defiance.

  Gonna get my ass arrested.

  Defiance.

  Gonna get me a Guild of Artificers paid-for trip to the Pit.

  Defiance.

  Got me a day in court gonna end in a spankin’ for the naughty boy.

  Defiance.

  Relax.

  It’s all according to plan.

  .

  .

  .

  Until the plan inevitably blows up in my face.

  But that’s like days away!

  So . . .

  Relax!

  [CLICK]

  August 2019

  Even as mankind begins its latest failed attempt at halfheartedly saving itself from Climate Change, electric cars ain’t so common as you’d wish them to be. What electric cars are about are sedans and tiny little foreign motorboxes. You’ll find one outside of King Henry’s Nerd Nirvana all the time. Brand new Tesla. Looks like sex. Looks like the future; future mankind will never reach because greed got in the way, but at least they tried for the Hail Mary.

  The Tesla in question belongs to one of the store’s owners.

  Tyson Bonnie.

  Guy I’m proud to call my best friend. Once upon a time we were the only two Ultras living in Fresno; so we didn’t have any choice when our friendship started. Started rough, but somehow it ended up working fine, became something real, upgraded us to business partners. One day I’ll have to be the best man at his wedding.

  My wedding?

  Fuck you.

  Never happening.

  Me, I’m the short, pugnacious white guy in the brown coat. He’s the tall, plump black guy in the sweater-vest. Artificer, Stormcaller. Rebel without a cause, civilization incarnate. It all works out somehow. Six months since the Ouroboros and we still hadn’t dissolved our business partnership. If anything, business had never been better. Life would be nice and simple and blissful if we only worried about business. But as it was . . . business was pretty far down the bucket list.

  And since it’s me, that bucket smells like horseshit.

  The new electric vehicle just arrived outside of the shop was a rugged looking SUV, all black and modern. Had little doubt it belonged to the Asylum, better known as the Institution of Elements, Learning Academy and Nature Camp. SUV was part of the Borg fleet; just like all the rest, going to assimilate your ass. Cares about the past and the Way Things are Done just as much as it cares about the future.

  Electric vehicle pulls on up and people take notice. Electric SUV arrives and you happen to be in the One-in-a-Million World, you know exactly who’s come by to give you a ‘hello.’ Not a ‘hello’ with an accompanying friendly reach-around neither. Not many accompanying friendly reach-arounds in the One-in-a-Million World. If you do get one, odds are you should be wondering about what the other hand’s about to do with your butthole.

  T-Bone—that’s what I call Tyson in my head and sometimes to his face; cuz it’s funny, it is, I know these things, trust me—and I were in the back of the shop. The real part of the shop. The non-comic, One-in-a-Million part of the shop. Not my Artificer workshop, which was below our feet, but the room where T-Bone kept his tidily maintained computer servers and the industrial AC unit that kept them from exploding under the summer heat. Also kept his master battle-station with a bunch of monitors all stacked side-by-side and on top of one another.

  And not one of the things gets porn cuz he blocked all those sites out, so what are they good for?

  Suppose they were connected to the cameras T-Bone had installed around our building, so they had that going for them. If any good has come from me telling T-Bone all the truths I’ve learned, it’s that I’m not even close to being the most paranoid one between the two of us.

  “We aren’t ready for this,” T-Bone said as we watched the pair of ESLED agents exit their SUV in all their tiny, high def, LED screen glory.

  “Twenty-eight,” was my reply.

  “Stop counting!”

  “Stop saying it.”

  “We aren’t ready for this! That’s ESLED here to arrest you!”

  “About time, right? Started to think I might have to go out and actually kill a hooker to get their attention. Or a politician. Probably screws more people than the hooker ever did, right?”

  “This is insane. Even for us . . .”

  “Too late to put the baby back up the coot coot, ain’t it? You agreed when I told you what I was planning.”

  “I did not! I said the exact same thing I’m saying now.”

  “Yeah, but you stopped saying it after a few days and I just took that as agreement.”

  “We’re insane if we go through with this.”

  “Could go outside, shoot them, and bury them in the back if you want,” I offered. “Ain’t no one better at burying a body than a geomancer.”

  T-Bone switched cameras to get a better look at the ESLED agents. Complaining was part of T-Bone’s being, but he always pulled through when I needed him. Always had my back no matter what crazy thing I planned to do. To be fair . . . what I planned to do over the next week was some Isabel Soto level of crazy. Couldn’t disagree with him there. Calling the Crazy. Begging the Crazy. Planning the Crazy. But it’ll work . . . has to work. Only way to steal me some truth. Might get burnt a little, but when that ever bother me? Even like it if it’s the right girl doing the burning . . .

  “They look too young to be ESLED agents,” T-Bone commented on the video feed. “ESLED agents are supposed to be old men, not younger than I am. Plus, only the two of them. I assumed they would send a Guild representative along. Or a full strike team. With machineguns. I really hate machineguns . . .”

  Gave a little chuckle as the two ESLED agents nervously approached the front door of King Henry’s Nerd Nirvana. August in Fresno takes no prisoners, over a hundred degrees every day. No place to be caught in one of those trying-to-fake-being-FBI black suits ESLED likes to call a uniform. Men in Black, they just ain’t hunting aliens so much as Vamps, mancers, Weres, and the occasional feral C.A.C. You got to watch out for them feral C.A.Cs. They’ll go right up your ass before you even know what’s happening.

  No lube.

  NO.

  LUBE.

  Fresno in August. Can fry an egg on any of those car hoods—electric, gas, or diesel. Six months since the last time the Crazy came calling. Came calling in the form of a helping hand ended up getting me into deeper shit than any of us ever expected. The Ouroboros Hotel and Casino, the Eternal Order, Isabel Soto, Obadiah Paine, Three Queens, shit just kept on flowing. Added up to a dead classmate, two dead enemies, a desire to steal some answers, and a new girlfriend. Just not a girlfriend for me that time around.

  Whole other unimportant story really, but Vicky Welf had found her way to Fresno not long after the Ouroboros, got herself kicked out of home, and was living in sin with T-Bone. Judging by the twenty pounds he’s dropped, they been doing a whole shitload of sinning with each other too.

  No girlfriend for me this time around. In fact, last girlfriend was located where I wanted the ESLED agents to take me. Meanwhile, even the concept of a new woman in my life wasn’t anywhere to be seen or explored. Nothing like that for King Henry Price. He’s just working. Just focusing. Just planning. Building u
p his business. Redesigning every artifact he’d ever made. Mastering the Mancy as never before. He’s up to something, yes he is. He’s preparing, but preparing for what?

  Here’s a hint: it all starts with those two morons roasting in that bleak Fresno sun. The one with the power tie was Mexican-American, built like a soccer player with a just under six-foot frame. Also had a chiseled face with an ever present, world-conquering smirk, topped with prettier hair than any man should ever have. You spend more than three minutes on your hair in the morning and you’re doing it wrong. One of the best parts about being a man . . . that and ya know . . . the whole peeing while standing thing.

  Second ESLED agent was Korean-American, skinny but in an athletic, eats-too-nutritious-for-his-own-good kind of way. Face wasn’t nearly as perfect as his partner’s, covered with thick glasses, and had nothing but a simple conformist bob of straight black hair on top.

  I knew them.

  Knew them pretty damn well.

  Spent four years sleeping in the same communal bedroom.

  “Estefan Ramirez and Miles Hun Pak,” I said aloud.

  T-Bone glanced a bit of confusion over his shoulder before turning back to squint at the two miniature agents. “Wait . . . they sent two of your classmates to collect you?”

  “Keep telling you the Guild’s full of petty cocksuckers. What you want to bet that they’re arresting me for every charge they can too, not just the ones they can prove?”

  “They aren’t arresting you.”

  “They sent ESLED agents to collect me, they’ll put me in the Pit, they’ll make me sit in front of whatever governing body they scramble together and say I’ve been a very bad boy while spanking my ass with some ceremonial, studded paddle once spanked the ass of Isaac Newton. Sure sounds like getting arrested.”

  “You wanted this to happen!” T-Bone reminded me. “Also . . . Isaac Newton was a spectromancer, not a geomancer.”

  “Want or not, I can still be pissy about it, right?”

  “They’re not arresting you; they’re . . . bringing you to account for your actions as a fellow Artificer.”

  “I’m naked in a chair without a seat and we all know what’s coming, T-Bone.”

  He wiped some sweat off his brow, despite the frigid temperature of the industrial AC. “We aren’t ready for this. I’m not ready for this.”

  “Thirty and you’ll do fine. Just stick to your half of the plan. I’m the one doing all the stupid shit while my nuts are open to the ravages of a rope knot.”

  T-Bone busied himself by saving pictures of Estefan and Miles in some database he’d set up. Pretty slick stuff. Bit too authoritative for my tastes, but I think we’ve already been over that one. Guess if you don’t have any particular power to wield, then spying to protect yourself ain’t so bad. His idea was to take photos of every visitor, run a background check, and to keep records on them. Paranoid or not, practically it helped us keep track of all the Weres, Vamps, and mancers who came through the shop these days.

  “Tell me about them?” T-Bone asked.

  “Estefan Ramirez; married to Debra Diaz. ESLED agent, has one of our SDRs . . . Mk 2, I think. Electromancer himself, so try not to get too buddy-buddy with him, okay?”

  “We aren’t that bad.”

  “If he was sticking around instead of arresting me, one of you would be sitting on the other’s lap by the end of the day. Force me to give Vicky a call so she can reclaim her man. Only you’d take Estefan’s side cuz of all that electromancer bond shit. Argument breaks you up and Vick moves back home to Welf Manor . . . then she marries a Kennedy cousin about a week later. Seven kids, each whiter than the last. Nothing but tragedy and it’s all cuz you couldn’t tell the anima inside of you to fuck off with all that electromancer cuddle juice.”

  T-Bone gave me a look that had no cuddle juice in it whatsoever. “Is it Anima Personalization that’s making you a huge dick today or is it just because you want to be one?”

  Just shrugged, since I never had been sure one way or the other. “Miles Hun Pak, sciomancer. Good with shadows, but not with the scio-blades. Nerdy, not like you’re nerdy with the video games, but like good-student-even-likes-Math-class nerdy. Estefan and him were best friends at the Asylum; same clubs, played soccer, stuff like that. Don’t know who he’s with now, but he dated Eva when we were teenagers.”

  “You . . . you haven’t heard from her lately, have you?” T-Bone asked with a bit too much interest as he typed in the info on Estefan and Miles.

  Why I usually didn’t mention her. This time it just slipped out. “One girlfriend ain’t enough for you?”

  “As I have told you plenty of times: it’s not like that! Stop trying to make the love triangle thing happen! Normal people care about other people without sex playing a part in it!”

  Yeah, it was me making that happen. “Your big, sympathetic heart torn in twain by light on one side and shadow on the other, just poetic, ain’t it?”

  “Stop it!”

  I chuckled some more as the LED versions of Estefan and Miles opened the front door and came on through to the chilled AC goodness of the Nerd Nirvana. Still rocking the fake comic book store, with memorabilia and the like, all ran by my favorite employee, Prunella Lin-Loeb.

  Favorite employee cuz she’s your only employee.

  True enough.

  Camera feed on the LED changed. The Employee greeted the ESLED agents with a smile, asking them some bit of movie or comic trivia like she had a habit of doing to everyone who walked through the door. Girl’s an encyclopedia of useless shit that surpasses even Wikipedia once you’re five or six clicks down the rabbit hole.

  “Eva’s good,” I finally answered T-Bone’s query. “Learning Council still ain’t letting her do the superspy shit, but they have her back on the normal ESLED rotation. Mostly, they’re making her reprove her loyalty now that she’s got all the were-anima in her.”

  “She almost dies for the Asylum and she has to prove she’s loyal to the Asylum?” T-Bone outlined the catch twenty-two.

  “Who knew bureaucracy was so stupid, right? Also, she’s the reason I knew these two bozos were coming today, so . . . they’re not exactly wrong about her, are they? Just ain’t Weres they got to worry about, it’s all them clean bricks in the walls and the shiny cogs in the machine ain’t surrendered to their fate yet.”

  “I would’ve liked to have seen her,” T-Bone grumbled over an argument we’d had off and on for months. “So would Vicky.”

  Eva had come down to Fresno once Miss Strange cleared her, announcing Eva as of sound mind and body after about a billion tests that had taken the better part of four months. I could have used the opportunity to hook up with her. Eva was always up for an adventure. Old me would’ve. Old me from as nearby as six months ago. But not now. Too focused. Too consumed.

  Even if it was the old me . . .

  Felt wrong too.

  Eva and me just didn’t fit that way anymore. Different puzzle pieces, different key for the wrong lock . . . no fitty in the emotional poke hole.

  “Not a good idea,” I eventually gave the excuse I always gave, “especially Vick. Eva don’t like spectromancers so much.”

  Wears sunglasses everywhere she goes. Not so much manic pixie dream girl as a silent, stalking wolf. Two inches too tall, twenty pounds too heavy. Blackhole with a rainbow made of anima trapped at her heart. Lady might have brought her back from a coma, Fines Samson might have sacrificed himself to keep the rainbow heart beating, but she ain’t the Eva Reti of old.

  “Everyone likes Vicky,” T-Bone rebutted.

  “Sorry, am I destroying your threesome dreams with these reals over feels?”

  He gave a tortured sigh. “Love triangle isn’t happening, King Henry. If you want to see one so bad then why don’t you go get your own?”

  “I don’t even have a love . . . line.”

  Instead of pushing, T-Bone only grunted.

  “What?”

  “I haven’t said anything
the last few months, but I can read a map, you know. The Guild of Artificers is in London.”

  “So?”

  “Valentine is also in London.”

  “Oh . . . yeah. I guess she is,” I tried to keep any hope I felt over that fact under wraps.

  “Please promise me that you’re getting arrested for the right reasons and not as a chance to be in the same city as your ex-girlfriend.”

  I seized on a distraction from the current topic of conversation. “Look at that, you’ve finally admitted I’m getting arrested. I should go out there and get about finalizing that, right?”

  “In addition to map reading, I noticed that you didn’t answer too!” he called after me.

  Why is it he expects me to know why I do all the stupid shit I do? “Probably won’t even see her the whole time!” I called back defensively, “Now you need to stop focusing on my love dot and focus on what you need to do once they cuff my ass.”

  “We aren’t ready for this,” T-Bone grumbled to himself as he kept tapping at his computer keys.

  “Thirty-one,” I counted, heading for the door out onto the comic book floor.

  And sure we’re ready . . . I am, at least. You got the easy job, T-Bone. You get to watch, wait, and listen as all the rest of us risk our lives. I did what I needed to and I’d have some truth. Pocket and Jesus did what they needed to and I’d have some leverage to survive the fallout.

  Fucking finally.

  And maybe—just maybe—my ex-girlfriend might drop by to see me when I’m in the Pit.

  Maybe, just maybe, I can finally say three little words.

  “Here we go! Time to get my ass arrested!”

  [CLICK]

  By the time I walked through the doors, Estefan was already talking up Prunella. Not in the mind of cheating on his wife, just in the mind that if a woman is around then Estefan has to do everything in his power to make said woman fall in love with him. Prunella was giving him a hard time, being that she had more in common with Miles, who student nerd or not, was still nerdy. Plus a sciomancer like Prunella—even if she was only an Intra—and then they had that Asian connection going.