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Demon Card Enforcer 3, Chapter 25
🕑 Added 2024-09-12 20:51:08 +0000 UTCChapter Twenty-Five: Gearing up
Wolfe shrugged the jacket on. It was far heavier than most jackets, but not a huge strain on him. Although it had a similar feel to running with light weights on.
Wolfe pulled his stat sheet up, but his Defense stat remained the same.
“How much does this protect someone?” Wolfe asked the lady helping him.
Shel was the one who answered. “Most of the tests that have been run—and yes, some of them were as horrible as that sounds—indicate that a decent set of armored clothing is worth a plus one to defense, for people that can easily handle the extra weight.”
“Then why doesn’t it show up in the stats?” Wolfe asked.
“Items and gear not in the Great Game do show up, but only on the actual combat notifications, not in base stats. Like, just because you’re carrying your Edge, it doesn’t say you have three higher Attack, right?”
“What’s an Edge?” the lady helping them asked.
“My pistol,” Wolfe replied absently.
The lady gasped, her hand going to her throat. “Sir, if you have a gun, you have to leave or we’re calling the police.”
Wolfe stared at her, irritated. “It’s in my glove compartment in a locking case right now. You can untwist your panties. Also, I’m a private investigator that works with the Joliet and Noimoire police forces.”
The woman nodded quickly. “Okay, well—"
But Wolfe wasn’t done. “Also, I have here—” Wolfe pointed at Malviere “—a card that can throw Death energy from her shadow, hitting harder than a normal gun would most times. Why would me having a pistol make me any scarier?”
“Boo!” Malviere said while making a comical face at the saleswoman, who flinched slightly.
The lady stuttered, but Shel came to her rescue. “It’s fine, it’s a rhetorical question. Wolfe doesn’t have his gun with him, so we can all move on.”
Then she put her hand on Wolfe’s arm, leaned up, and kissed him on the cheek. She also whispered, “Play nice.”
He rolled his eyes but made no further comment about the pistol. Instead, he held the jacket up. “How much for two sets of this in my size and two in Shel’s?”
“Uhh…” the lady’s eyes phased out and Wolfe could see her mouth moving. “That would be nine-hundred and sixty plus tax.”
“Let’s do it,” Wolfe replied. Then he turned to Malviere.
She spoke before he could say anything. “It won’t work.”
With her echoing voice, the statement sounded like a pronouncement of doom.
But Wolfe was feeling onery. “I mean, you can hide behind a car,” Wolfe said. “Why can’t a put a jacket on you?”
Malviere just stared at him.
Wolfe shrugged out of his jacket.
“Um, deckbearer, sir, are you sure you should be naysaying the gods? It doesn’t feel like a good—” the saleslady began, nervously, holding a finger up.
Wolfe threw the jacket around Malviere’s shoulders. Shel stepped back and the saleslady cringed.
Malviere just shimmered, and the jacket fell through her, landing anticlimactically on the floor.
The saleslady heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Thank Michael.”
“What a crock of…” Wolfe muttered.
The saleslady lady stepped up. “Well, um, Deckbearer, it looks you’re your companion was right. Is there, um, anything else I can help you with?”
Her voice was patently insincere on the last question, and Wolfe could easily tell he didn’t fit this lady’s taste. but he still had some things he needed.
“Take me to your drones, worker drone,” Wolfe said.
“Our drones?” the lady asked at the same Shel half swatted Wolfe’s arm.
He sighed. “Sorry, I wanted to see your aerial drones—the ones you can drive around, that have a camera on them. They usually have four fans on them to help them fly?”
“Oh, right, this way,” the lady said, hurrying off down the isle.
***
“You didn’t seem to like the saleslady, alpha. How come?”
Wolfe gripped the wheel as he headed toward his next destination, in a slightly poorer part of town. Not seedy—or not seedier than most of Noimoire—but older and in need of a paintjob and some pothole filling.
He sighed. “Eh, pearl-clutching types have always irritated me. I mean, if I was gonna cause trouble, I would’ve fucked someone up long before she heard I owned a gun. It feels like overdramatic shit for no reason, or just a programmed response.”
“Where are we going?” Shel asked.
“I read about this store—it sells guns and ammo. I mean, normally we had other ways, back in the day, of getting a piece. But I’m assuming we should at least start legal.”
“Start?” Shel asked.
Wolfe shrugged but didn’t say anything.
“You know, if we need bigger guns, we can always use the AR-15’s that—”
Wolfe laughed. “Yeah, I’ll just take your AR-15, the one you bought now that you’re a police officer, all official and whatnot. As in, it’s in the records. I bet it doesn’t take them any time at all to arrest you.”
“Well, if you buy stuff like that here, they’ll arrest you,” Shel said.
Wolfe shrugged again. “I don’t think they’re going to sell me what I want here. But maybe. I’m just exploring options. And I might want ammo.”
Shel turned. “Wolfe, what’s this all about? Really, I mean?”
Wolfe gripped the wheel, swallowing his first, angry response. That’s old Wolfe. Shel loves you.
He took a deep breath and tried to explain, his voice tired from the last couple days, his mischievousness spent. “I’ve messed up, Shel. A lot.”
“You saved me, and we cleared the dungeon.”
Wolfe stared ahead, seeing almost nothing as he talked. “In the last forty-eight hours I’ve nearly died three times to jumped-up thugs and almost let you get killed once, all because I didn’t plan and didn’t prepare. I’ve got a lot to live for, now. A wonderful fiancée. Friends and family I want to take care of.”
“You are taking care of us, wonderfully,” Shel inserted as Wolfe turned down another street.
Wolfe just kept talking. “I’m used to being the baddest guy in the room. That was good enough against the Cobra’s, and against Damian’s dumb ass. And, I guess, it was good enough against the Weeds, with help from Fern. But even then, it was barely good enough. And Nathan… he threw me from a third story window. Luck of the gods I didn’t die, and I have to be out of luck at this point. I need to be better.”
Shel laid her hand gently on his shoulder. “Nathan is an ex-Navy Seal, Wolfe.”
“Yeah, well, I was stupid even before that. I took the elevator up, and just chilled before I opened the door. Some deckbearer thug shot me in the chest. Not sure if I would have died without the surprise body armor, but it’s very possible. And then they would have killed you.”
“You were tired.”
Wolfe frowned. “Stop making excuses for me, Shel. I need to be better.”
Shel sat back, silent for a moment as Wolfe turned his car into a tiny parking lot fronting a row of small, dirty-looking businesses. One of them had a “James’ Guns and Ammo” sign.
Wolfe turned the car off, but before he could get out, Shel put her hand on his arm again.
“Wolfe, wait, please,” Shel said, her hand laying lightly, not restraining him.
Wolfe sat back.
“Okay, yeah, not at least moving to the side of the elevator was dumb. But you were tired. The problem is, you’re not a paramilitary guy, or even a cop. Your training is ‘thug,’ and even if you were the best thug ever, its not exactly an uncommon or high tier course, you know?”
“Get to the point, love.”
“You need training, Wolfe. I wasn’t lying about you being tired. You made the mistake because you were exhausted, and freaking out about me—which I love. But you weren’t thinking.”
“Tell me how you really feel,” Wolfe growled out sardonically.
Shel just kept going. “Training takes care of that, because your unconscious mind, or maybe muscle memory, knows what to do. How many times have you trained going after people from inside an elevator?”
“Never,” Wolfe admitted.
“Exactly. What you’re about to do, going into a gun store and buying a bunch of heavier guns… it’s not going to work. Or if it does, you’ll just end up on cameras and in ledgers and files. We need another plan.”
Wolfe hesitated, but he knew Shel was right.
Still… “I’m not sure I can beat Nathan right now. I have to have an edge on him. I’ve never gone up against someone that can fight like me, or, probably, even better. Even Charleston was just relying on power and cards and sheer viciousness. Nathan fights different.”
“So, get the training yourself,” Shel replied.
Wolfe stared at the ceiling of the car. “We’re supposed to be fighting two more gangs and part of Adam’s crew over the next four and a half days, Shel. I don’t have time for training.”
Shel acknowledged that with a single nod. “Then what’s your other plan? I mean, you keep hinting you have some other plan on how to get enough gear to make up the difference, right?”
Before Wolfe could answer, Shel laughed. She nodded to the back, where Malviere sat. Piles of boxes were in nearly every space Malviere didn’t occupy. “I mean, you already have a giant collection of armored clothing and drones. I assume that counts for something in the gear department. But what was the plan for the rest of it?”
Wolfe stared at the store in front of him for a moment, but then nodded. “Well, it would require an entire other mission, probably dangerous itself. But I did have another plan. It occurs to me that once upon a time, the Cobras had heavy weapons, including a damn rocket launcher. I never got an explanation of how that happened. Now, I saw that the remnants of the Weeds have heavy weapons—or, at least, heavier weapons.”
Wolfe paused, and Shel motioned at him to keep going.
“So, it stands to reason that if this Adam character has been behind a lot of this, he might be the reason they’re able to get the weapons like that. He might have a source... but he also might have a stash. If I use his weapons in these attacks, it’ll most likely lead back to him. And maybe with all the right gear, I can even the playing field against the Singh and Renfeldt families… and against Nathan.”
“How would you know or find out, or do anything about it?” Shel asked.
“Fern. She knows all about Adam’s operations, and from what she told me about her ex-boss, the one thing he might not be prepared for at all is for me to go on the offensive against him.”
Comments
Stephen Pearson
Thanks for the chapter! :-)
Kacey Ezell
Oh snap! The plot thickens!!
John stovall
Super glad you like it
Eric M
Kobold Mugger artwork looks amazing!
