F3 The Plans

     Marc Flynn twisted the ring around his right thumb. In a world where quantum crystals and tesseract wafers were the norm for storing data, Marc secured his information with obsolete technology. Unfortunately, finding the right tech to retrieve that data proved to be more and more difficult. Finally, though, he found what he needed.
     Kelsy's black ponytail bobbed as the two waited for the airlock to cycle. Once finished, the two of them stepped through, and reboarded Calypso. The old ship felt comfortable, like home. I put enough of myself into her. Still, the old salvage vessel was nothing like his old home.
     "How long until you get the drive working?" Marc asked his engineer once they got to the bridge.
     "She's modular, Flynn. I just need to grab a power lead and plug her in, so right about . . . now."
     The old drive's lights flicked to life, waiting to receive the data. Marc twisted off his ring and set it on the hub. He closed the cover. Electron pulse lasers read the data on the ring as Marc turned on the holos on the projector table. Ship's blueprints appeared in layers from deck to her bottom in rapid succession. From the design alone she screamed Alliance.
     "What's this, Cap?"
     "Our next job. We're going to steal her."

Dragon in Distress

     All I wanted was a quiet day on the lake with a cold one. Well, a semi-lake-chilled one, anyway. The fish didn't cooperate. They insisted on biting constantly, interrupting my nap. I did my best to ignore the clattering pole while I dozed under the shade of my hat when the wind gusted. I caught the hat, squinting up.
     A dragon, half as big as the Chrysler Building, but with red-bronze scales instead of deco steel, sank into the lake next to my boat. Those eyes stared at me, and I could see myself reflected in their black depths. "You are the one they call the detective." Its voice at a reasonable volume for its size. "The outsider."
     It wasn't a question. I nodded anyway.
     "I wish for you to help me."
     "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

F3 A Night Off

     "So, what shall we do with the rest of our evening?"
     A chess game sounded good. A nice flick sounded better. Dinner was always an option, too. "Dinner and a movie," I pitched.
     "No doubt some black and white noir film festival."
     "You know me pretty well, but I was actually thinking a really bad B vampire movie we can make fun of."
     Nikki laughed so hard she snorted,

Heart of Intrigue: 1

Chapter 1 Decadent Company

     Polished brass and art deco stylings made the Fairhaven Club seem like a piece of Rockefeller Center transported to Belport. The brass and Depression era art deco stylings served to elevate the neighborhood of Fairhaven. The doormen had classy black uniforms with polished brass buttons and braids of gold cord. It was a complete class act on the outside. The decadence came on the inside.
     I walked up, and swiped my card. In the olden days they would have asked for a password and membership number, but they had really gone hi tech. The golden card went through, and a reciprocating blue light flashed before the doors opened automatically. They parted with elegance, not like the grocery store doors. The brass bound doors swung open as if they had been opened by people on the inside, with no hint of a machine operating it.
     I didn't belong here. Even now I didn't dress to fit in. I had my black fedora and brown leather jacket, but a pair of dark wool pants was as fancy as I got. I stuck out like a sore thumb among the suits in here. The Fairhaven Club was an old school gentlemen's establishment. No women allowed, except for the help. On the arm of very nearly every guy in the place was a woman, usually in a skirt short enough to reveal a bit of thigh, and tight enough to hug curves usually reserved for the bedroom. The blouse, too, hugged curves, but also displayed them with a large keyhole opening barely covered by a black tie. Most often that tie found its way to either side of the keyhole to reveal slopes with no hint of a push-up bra, despite the often gravity-defying lift.
     As soon as I came to the foyer, the hostess, whose name was identified as Regina, welcomed me. "Good afternoon, Mr. Allen. Mr. Auron is already waiting for you in room sixteen. We'll open a bottle of scotch for you. Your usual Laphroaig?"
     I just gave a nod. They knew my scotch preferences, even. I was a sucker for Laphroaig ever since I had tasted it at Nikki's. They didn't have a thirty year old, or at least one I would order. I had a habit of not using my membership to the fullest. In fact, it had been over a month since I had been here, despite my high status membership.
     "Christine will see to your needs. Enjoy your stay, Mr. Allen."
     And before I could give thanks, a buxom blonde, completely natural, took my arm, and gave me a completely sincere smile with a look to hot eyes that said she would definitely see to my needs, as unspecified as those needs might be. She began to guide me, holding so close that her hip, on every other step, would bump mine. It was a little unsettling, and not nearly as seductive to me as the other patrons. I could appreciate the legs and tight curves, but the upstairs is where they generally fell short. Trying to engage them in significant conversation didn't go anywhere, least not the kind I enjoyed.
     And before I could reflect more on Christine's outward attributes, someone took up my other arm. From the height of her arm, I had a good idea who it was.
     "Hello, Nikki." I didn't even look at her.
     "Good evening, Matthew," her voice did what it always did, sing seductively straight down to my soul. It had a richness to it that just made me weak in the knees. She hadn't always had that. Some time in the last year it had happened, and it drove me nuts. Not the voice itself, but trying to figure it out. I never seemed to have enough time to really delve into it. And my dreams were something I didn't want to think about at all. The voice did drive me nuts, too.
     To Christine she said, "Thank you for corralling him for me, my dear. Do make sure my brandy has been ordered, would you?" Neatly as that, Nikki dismissed her. Christine disengaged from me with a pout to her lips, and her hip lost that sway as she moved away.
     "Thanks."
     "What's the matter, Matthew? You don't like gorgeous women ready to fulfill your every whim?"
     I took a long glance at Nikki. Gorgeous barely described her. Crystal blue eyes, pale, porcelain skin, and dark, very dark, auburn hair. Helen of Troy had nothing on Nikki. I bet she could launch a hundred thousand ships, and just on looks alone. Looks wasn't even half of what she had going for her.
     "Takes more than a pretty face, doll. Bishop takes knight, E7."
     She thought a moment, her mouth becoming a sultry flower as she considered the move. "An interesting move, Matthew. Very interesting. What do you have planned?"
     I said nothing, but I let a sideways smirk come on my face as we kept walking. We had started playing chess over a month ago, thanks to a chess set she had given me. We had done dozens of games, most of them where she thoroughly destroyed me, but I was slowly gaining ground on her. I wasn't a chess geek. I had never had more than a middling game, knowing the moves of the pieces, but rarely did I play a game. So I didn't know chess, but I knew people, and I was getting so I could really read Nikki's strategies, and what strategy she considered based on her mood at any given time. I had beaten her in the last three games, and it was beginning to get her that I seemed to have become unbeatable in just a few weeks.
     With peripheral vision, I could see her leaning forward to study my face. I didn't let the smirk slip a bit, nor did I let it grow. Her face, meanwhile, screwed into a pleasant puzzle. She was trying to figure it out, and happy at the idea. I picked up on that two weeks in. She liked to be challenged. She wanted some kind of victory, but a hard-fought one. I got the feeling that she almost never got that kind of challenge.
     "Do you keep the board memorized, Matthew?"
     "Why would I bother with that?"
     "And yet you have thoroughly analyzed this move?"
     I kept my smile exactly as it was.
     "What are you planning? In five moves, I can take your rook, and the move after that I get your bishop, all for the cost of a knight and a pawn."
     "Make your move, doll."
     I knew about the rook and the bishop. It was definitely an uneven trade, but I had something waiting for her. Three moves after that, I would begin to put her in check mercilessly. From there it got fuzzy. I either had a checkmate coming, or ended up with more of her pieces. It was a game of position, and not force. I didn't care as much about the pieces as much as I did the position they were in, and the access to the board. I didn't particularly need the rook she was getting, since it was still in the corner, and the bishop she would get was likewise back where I didn't need it. I had to take the pawn to keep her from getting another queen, otherwise I wouldn't bother with it. It was a good exchange for her, at least on the surface, but it left me with great position on the board to hound her king.
     She tapped a silver tipped finger against her lips in thought as we walked, silence reigning. Of course, that had been the point. All of Nikki's ample charms, even those not from being a vampire, especially those from not being a vampire, always put me off-balance. Now I got some payback. That and she was distracted from putting me even more off-balance. I could roll with things pretty well, but there were limits to what I could take. Besides, payback felt good.
     We kept walking through the halls, seeing more women dangling off the arms of men. A few of those men looked aghast at Nikki in her floor length ball gown, red with a sheer black stole that hung off her shoulders. Nikki well knew the effect her figure had on people, and had no problem taking advantage of it to the point encouraging people to ogle her. The ones who stared aghast did so only in part of her figure. The rest wore a slack-jawed expression Nikki was the only female member of the Fairhaven Club. I thought she held some sort of position, too. I didn't involve myself enough to find out. Other club members gave her a nod of recognition as well as a look of approval for the dress. The look slipped considerably when they looked at me. One guy we walked by, balding and in his sixties and using a cane as a third leg to move his considerable bulk down the hall, sneered at me and made a disgusted sound. I gave a two-finger salute from the brim of my hat, and a wink.
     I stopped us in front of room sixteen, and opened the door. I swept my hat off, and bowed to Nikki, to let her enter first. She nodded graciously, and took a step to the door, but also leaned close to me as I stood. "Do you know, Matthew, when you do things like that or challenge my mind that I have the strongest urge to tear the clothing off of you and engage in some decidedly unladylike behavior?"
     I blinked, but kept the rest of my face smooth. I fought the urge to tug a finger at my collar, feeling heat build up. Maybe I wasn't as good at distracting her as I thought. She saw my blink, and smirked at me before moving inside.
     I moved in, and was glad to see that two of the four overstuffed leather chairs were already occupied. I was especially glad to see that Nikki took up her own chair instead of wanting to use me for one, like she had the last time I had been in here.
     The other two occupants could not be more different from one another. The first I knew fairly well. Maximillian Auron, a collector of antiques and magical artifacts, particularly religious artifacts. He was heavyset, but not overly bulky, his suit merely stretched to a comfortable thickness that spoke of a comfortable lifestyle. He had sharp eyes in an otherwise unassuming face, and a thin crown of hair that had gone mostly grey with a few dark flecks remaining. In addition to being a collector, Max purported to be a wizard of considerable talent. I knew he had some kind of knack to things, but no actual proof of his actual power, or his claim to be over a hundred years old. I knew Nikki was old, somewhere in the range of four hundred, maybe older.
     Max's companion, as he had referred to her last time, was Angelica. Last name, unknown. Age, unknown, but physically I would put her in her late twenties. It was hard to tell because she had what some people would call an ageless beauty, like Nikki. Me, I qualified it as cheating. The woman looked too good to be natural. Curves and stature like hers were too rare, and her beauty had an unnatural flawlessness to it. She was dressed like the other women in the club, her pretense being that she worked at the club. I didn't know if she actually did or she was just Max's toy while here. She had long brown hair, and grey eyes so light they were disturbing. Her eyes were expressive, too, and I could read them. I had pushed her last time, had seen the different ranges of her thoughts and emotions. Now she was pretty much an open book to me. Right now she was feeling smug, and not just at her eyes, but her mouth was twisted into a contemptuous smirk.
     She had a power, too, that I had poked at, with Nikki's help, last time. I had no way to gauge these things, but it seemed considerable. She seemed more in control this time, and definitely smug. She rested delicate wrists on the arms of the chair, her hands lifted up slightly. She had her legs crossed, an impressive feat given the tightness of those skirts, but she leaned forward to show off that keyhole. And she had a red bow tie instead of black necktie, so the view was completely unobscured. She wanted me to look. I got the feeling that this was all for me for some reason. Maybe because those heated eyes regarded me. It was not a welcome heat, either. That was a fire to get burned in, and I wanted to stay away. And since she wanted my attention so badly, I ignored her.
     I sat lazily, and looked from Max to Nikki. Max was Max, and Nikki was elegance incarnate. She didn't sit so much as grace the chair with her presence, and she copied Angelica's pose precisely, but on her it was imperious. She was a queen holding court, while Angelica seemed more like a jumped up street girl. It was hard to tell why, exactly, Nikki had the advantage, but I think it was the attitude. I felt the urge to crack wise to her, to shatter the illusion and snatch her down a peg. I would have if it had been the two of us, but in front of Max and Angelica, it didn't feel right. I might be able to use Nikki's royal haughtiness to my advantage. I didn't know how, but I was always on the look out. I even kept Angelica in my periphery.
     "So, Max, you managed to wrangle us together; what's this thing you want done?"
     "Indeed sir, you put it so colloquially, as if this were the historic west, and I a law man arranging for his, posse is the correct term, I believe? But the agreement surely was a matter of adequate recompense, to which I believe you and the delightful Ms. Alexander," he inclined his head to Nikki, who gave the barest movement of her chin in response, "agree to my terms."
     "I wouldn't be here, otherwise." I hated to admit it, but he came through for me in a pinch. The antique bracelet had been exactly what I needed to contain the succubus back in March. Without that, I probably would have gone down swinging, but come up on the losing end. Now the bracelet was nicely tucked away in a sealed grave, where no one should go looking for it.
     "Quite so, sir, and Ms. Alexander will be paid promptly upon the rendition of her services, along with yours."
     I shrugged. I didn't care. I'd just as soon bow out of this, but I had given my word.
     Nikki darkened. Her chin came down, and eyes bored into Max. "Upon the rendition of Matthew's service, as well?"
     "Ahh. Forgive me, but it is the puzzle, you see. In order to solve the riddle, I need both of you to cooperate fully, and so I cannot give you your payment until I know that the service you give me is beneficial, and the only way to know that is upon completion of Mr. Allen's aid."
     I did the math on that one, and it was cockeyed, but I had seen some worse. Nikki stared at me hard, as if I had something to do with it. Just being under that gaze was a pressure, a desire to respond or make an apology, but I throttled it.
     Instead, I gave her a very unapologetic, "Sorry, doll."
     Angelica gave a harrumph of satisfaction, as if she had just won a great victory over Nikki. Nikki's hard gaze on me became commanding on Angelica, and the other woman didn't make a sound, then.
     "Nothing was said about the necessity of Matthew's service in our arrangement. Maximillian." She said the words while looking at Angelica, but then swivelled toward Max. The large man was unfazed, though, most likely because he could hide anything behind a barrage of words to obfuscate anything.
     "Indeed, so, Madam. Indeed. However, it is customary that an evaluation of goods and services be made before final payment rendered. However, I came not to quarrel on this matter, and so by way of consolation, I give you this, which you may retain." He produced a document from a leather folder down beside his chair, and passed it to Angelica. She rose gracefully, and passed the document over to Nikki. Of course, I noted how she came over to me before cutting over to Nikki, and insisted on brushing my knee with her thigh on both trips.
     I half-expected Nikki to snatch the document out of Angelica's hand, given her irritation, but she calmly accepted the document as if she really couldn't be bothered by it, and then she scanned it with the lazy ease of a cat.
     The silence stretched on as Nikki read. Max seemed to be enjoying a private joke, while Angelica divided fiery gazes between myself and Nikki. Perhaps a minute went by until Nikki's eyes widened, and her lips parted. Just as quickly, she closed her mouth, and leveled her gaze on Max. "Very well. We have an agreement."
     I didn't know what the paper was, and didn't much care. I was hoping to get this mess over with and get going. I hadn't exactly been rolling in cases, and money was tight. So tight, in fact, that I began to wonder if I could afford to keep my house in the suburbs. The last payment had been late, and this month didn't look much better. If I didn't round up a decent-paying case soon, I'd have to sell, and I had a lot racked into that place. Such were the perils of private investigator life. I still managed Jen's paycheck, but I was already looking to ask her if I could owe her. That after she already reduced her hours to accommodate going to school.

     "Now that everything has been established as satisfactory, may we proceed to the task which I have set aside for the two of you?"
     "No skin off my nose."
     "Very well. What is it that you wish of us?" Nikki gave a lazy lilt to her voice, the boredom of a noblewoman with far more important things to do.
     "It is upon you, Ms. Alexander, for whom we must turn to first. There is a period in your past, which you were located in Russia, is that correct?"
     "I have been all over the world."
     Max let the vague answer go. "Indeed. In Russia, Czarist Russia, I should say, the year was 1718. Do you recall being in the land of the Rus at that time?"
     "I was in the area, yes, but I do not keep a journal with every place I have been. Events are much easier to remember than dates."
     "Indeed! As you say. Events are the thing, but I am more concerned with an object which you might have encountered."
     Nikki waited. I divided my attention between the three people without moving my head, and only barely moving my eyes. Angela had something to do with this. She was attentive. Far too attentive for my comfort.
     "The object is as large as a woman's fist, perhaps a little more. It is an irregular shape, and made out of stone or crystal. Deep in its center it is red, but the rest of it is faintly translucent like quartz, or white. It is an unpolished stone, bearing a roughness to it."
     At first Nikki was unreadable, but by degrees recognition seemed to come over her. "I vaguely remember an object such as you describe."
     "What can you tell me of it?"
     "It was some kind of rough carving, I believe. The artist who made it died before he could finish polishing it up. As I understand it, it was more a natural find than a conscious effort at art. Supposedly the stone in the center is that of a ruby, yet somehow melded with quartz, as you said, so there are no lines that show one within the other. The colors graduate out from the deep red until the transparent of the quartz.
     "If it's the same object, then I know that one side of it is naturally weathered, while the rest of it has marks from where it was hewn out of other rock, and then later shaped by the artist. I cannot recall his name, exactly. Petravoski, perhaps. Dmitrivitch Petravoski."
     "It's a rock that he cut out of a bigger rock, and it's called art?" I interrupted.
     "Well, I suppose artist is the wrong word for it. It was at an exhibition of sorts for unusual things, but the best word I can think of is an art show for while other exhibitions showed off interesting devices, this had no function other than it's aesthetics."
     I shrugged as she continued.
     "Petra, unfortunately, was the object of desire for my friend Ilyena. She was absolutely besotted with him, and he with her, so when we left for a trip to Poland, he was invited along with us. Before trains and airplanes, we suffered through carriage rides, and this one was interminably long with nothing to truly entertain us, especially the boring story Petra told us about the Heart. I suppose that's what you wish to hear, though, yes?"
     Max nodded, as did Angelica. I shook my head. That drew a smile from Nikki, but I was outvoted. I knew the feeling of boredom. Going over a bit of Nikki's past could be fun, but a person's life was filled with so much that was mundane and didn't matter that it was hard to maintain interest. Nothing about this story stuck out to me. Art show, a rock, and an annoying guy who found the rock. The rock obviously was what Max was shooting for, and had some kind of magical powers, but it had no meaning to me, yet, if it ever would. I didn't know what my place was in all of this. I took a sip of water that had been left for us as I didn't want even a little bit of scotch to dull things yet. Max was slippery at best, and I needed to make sure I had every scrap of my wits with me.
     " . . . According to Petra, the stone is not actually a stone, but comes from some tradition in the Urals about a sorceress who lived there. She was powerful, and her ancestors had been responsible for some of the bloodiest battles against the Mongol invasions into the lands of the Rus.
     "She practiced powerful magics in preparation for a time when others would threaten her. She was quite powerful and very respected, a veritable queen over that land, though she did not set herself up in opposition to the Czars. As a sorceress she trained others, and sent them out to work their magic among the people. But there came a time when she grew old, and there were enemies coming for her, some of whom were her own apprentices. Others were greedy people after the power she held.
     "In the end, instead of trying to fight all of them, she completed a ritual which made her disappear. The legends all said that she turned herself into part of the mountains, robbing her enemies of her power, and that somewhere in the mountains was the Heart of Arkadina.
     "Petra insisted that he would use this story at exhibitions in Poland, but that he needed to change the name slightly because of the language and culture. He seemed quite clever with it, at least that he was impressed with his own cleverness, and proclaimed to us rather melodramatically, "Behold! The Heart of Irashadinah!"
     I couldn't stop my eyes from going wide and head turning to fix on Nikki. I knew I should keep it cool, but the shock was an ice water slap in the face. I knew that name.

F3 Sunrise

     Dawn.
     Philosophers and scientists discuss its cosmic significance and place in the heavens.
     Poets and artists try and capture its beauty.
     Millions of people watch every morning as that first glimmer of light finally crests the horizon.
     I'm not usually one of those people

F3 A Day Gone Wrong

     The explosion still rang in my ears, and my vision wavered somewhere between double and infinite. I closed them, hoping the images would go away. It mostly worked. My vision wavered into double, but finally resolved into reality. A haze of dust and smoke hung in the air. The wall with the chalkboard held a hole the size of a truck. A . . . thing, stood silhouetted in the dust. Its proportions were all wrong for a regular human being. It was taller, and one arm was longer than the other. Not much, but enough. It hunched over and craned its head sniffing at the air.
     A hand went over my mouth, and I tried to shout and pull it away in a panic. "Shhhh!" a voice insisted in my ear. The voice seemed perfectly reasoned and calmed, and did not try to restrain me at all. Curiosity chased the initial panic away as I moved eyes to look at the hand's owner. He had dark hair and brown eyes, but what stood out most is the grey fedora.
     He withdrew his hand, put his finger to his lips, then pulled out a gun from his leather jacket with his right hand. My panic started to come back, but before I could pull in breath, he stood, and fired shots at the thing sniffing the air.
     The pistol's loud rapport had nothing on the explosion earlier, but still assaulted my ears. Even from where I lay, I could see the thing convulse as each shot went into it. The man kept firing until the thing fell to the ground, then he went over to it to shoot it three more times in the head.
     He came back to me, breathing hard. He exchanged the spent clip from the gun with a fresh one, then holstered the gun.
     "Here's the skinny," he announced. "Name's Matt Allen. I'm a PI. That thing was after you, Martin Saunders. There are more coming. Let's go."

F3 The Arcade

     Ciro and I loved the arcade. Most of us kids did. We'd pick up pennies shining shoes for people or selling papers on the corner just so we could rush into the arcade to drop our pennies into the mutoscopes. I liked the ones that showed magic tricks, even though Ciro and Tommy thought they were fake.
     One day Mr. Arnold added in new machines. These were taller than the rest, and had names above like

F3 Lightning Relay

     "We're here," Jake had undisguised joy on his face as we floated down from the high cirrus clouds down to the fluffy grey cumulus.
     "Where?" I looked down in disgust at a dusty town. It looked like those old Westerns where a tumbleweed would roll across the main street, proclaiming it a ghost town. Not quite so deserted as that, I saw a few cars going up and down the street. We were too high up to really see people.
     "Welcome to the most awesome place on Earth," he spread his arms in proclamation. "Welcome to Tornado Alley."
     The Midwest. The Great Plains. Every year tornadoes rampaged through this region from Oklahoma almost to the border of Canada in a swath as wide as Texas. I shrugged at him.
     He shook his head in disgust at me.
     "Not only can we cyclone surf here, but we are afforded the rare opportunity that all these close storms provide."
     "Which is what?"
     "We're going to ride a lightning relay."
     "Who says what now?"

F3 The Stash

     The room felt like that warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark. This room was nowhere near as big, perhaps eight feet by six feet, and instead of wooden crates stacked upon one another, metal shelves stacked to the ceiling. The shelves weren't even close to full, either. Yet there were quite a number of items on those shelves, covered in a layer of dust that could only come from a decade of neglect. Dozens of them. I swallowed hard, and rolled the floppy composition book into a tube. The faded red cover bore Max's scrawl in black magic marker: "Inventory of Artifacts". Not archaeological artifacts, though I knew many of the items would be old. Magic. Sorcery. Enchantments. Every item in this room except the notebook I found held some kind of mystic mojo.

F3 Thunderer

     Breathing. Breathing came first. Heavy breaths that went all the way down to the stomach, pushing it out as far as it could go. Each breath in gathered strength into me. Not physical strength, the strength of the storm, the strength of the cloud around me. I was going to do this.
     My fist opened and closed in time with