Mystic Warrior. Alex Archer

He palmed a business card from his jacket sleeve, held up his empty hand and flicked the card into view with a flourish. “Soon.”

      Tessanne smiled in delight as she took the proffered card. “You do magic, as well.”

      “Small things. I lack the skills that you have.” Sabre’s smartphone rang. Only important calls came through to that phone, so he took it out of his jacket pocket and glanced at the screen.

      STEVEN KRAUZER CODE RED

      I’M OUT FRONT

      “Is there a problem?” Tessanne asked.

      “A pressing matter,” he replied as he put the phone back inside his jacket. He stood and tapped the business card she was still holding. It held only his name and his private cell. “Not everyone has that number. Call me.”

      “I will.”

      Sabre nodded and headed for the door, sweeping effortlessly between the club clientele and the servers.

      Out on the street, Lajos Meszoly sat at the wheel of a black Mercedes G-Class SUV. Sabre sprinted through the valet lines, dodging new arrivals, departing guests and parking attendants. When he reached the vehicle, he slid into the passenger seat. Meszoly punched the accelerator and sped through the traffic.

      “What have we got?” Sabre shucked off his suit and tossed the clothes into the back, where two other armed men sat. He pulled on the combat suit that hung at the ready in the vehicle. Tucking the black pants inside calf-high military boots, he tugged a fitted black sweatshirt over his head. He straped on the Molle tactical gear.

      “Krauzer says he’s trapped inside USC campus,” Meszoly replied calmly as he blared his horn and rolled through an intersection on a red light. Traffic on both sides of the intersection halted and honked back at him.

      “College?”

      “Yeah.” Meszoly was a thickset man in his early thirties. He and Sabre had been together for the past six years, both of them having been contractors in Afghanistan before starting up the protection business in Hollywood. Meszoly’s head was shaved and he kept his face clean, as well. Except for his size, he was instantly forgettable, and he knew how to dress that down, too. That skill made him valuable in close-cover situations. This night he was outfitted with body armor and weaponry.

      “Wouldn’t have figured Krauzer for college,” Sabre said. “Is he shooting there?”

      “He didn’t say. What he did say was that guys with guns were chasing him down. Him and his elf-witch crystal.”

      Sabre shoved an FN Five-seveN pistol into the holster at his hip. “Elf-witch crystal?”

      Meszoly shrugged and said, “Hold on,” right before he performed a rubber-shredding left turn. “I don’t think he’s being chased by elf witches.”

      “Good, because I forgot my fairy dust.” Sabre glanced at the GPS screen at the center of the console. “Did he mention who was chasing him?”

      “Says he doesn’t know.”

      “Krauzer is there alone?”

      “He has two people with him. A professor and a woman named Creed.”

      “Should I know her?” Sabre made an effort to keep up with rising stars in the city, but that was difficult.

      “She does cable television.”

      “How many people are on-site?”

      “The way Krauzer tells it, a small army.”

      “Right.”

      “Krauzer had a run-in with a biker earlier in the day,” Dyson spoke up from the back.

      Sabre glanced into the mirror on the back of the sun visor in front of him. Dyson was one of the young guys, a Marine veteran of Afghanistan.

      “The guys hunting Krauzer are bikers?”

      “I don’t know. I caught the story on the internet. Krauzer didn’t call, so I didn’t follow up. He usually only has us out when he’s got a new release.”

      “And this is over an elf-witch crystal.” Sabre shook his head.

      “Krauzer also mentioned something about Merovingian kings,” Meszoly said, “but that got garbled up in gunfire, so maybe I’m wrong about that.”

      The mention of the Merovingians sent a jolt of electricity through Sabre. All of the old stories his father had told him came pouring out of his memory, the stories that had been handed down for generations.

      Bottling his excitement with the professionalism he’d learned over the years, Sabre looked at the GPS screen again and the red line to USC that had gotten drastically shorter. “How far out are we?”

      “Two minutes.”

      “Other teams are en route?”

      “Two other cars. Eight more guys. If we pull any more, we’ll be leaning out other ops. Want me to do that?”

      “No. Twelve of us are a small army.” Sabre reached to the back of the vehicle and Dyson slid an M4A1 into his hands.

      How could Krauzer have gotten involved in the Merovingian legends?

8

      “Give me an update.” Ligier de Cerceau skidded to a stop at the doorway to the stairwell his quarry had entered. One of his men lay across the doorway threshold, holding the door partially open. Bullet holes showed in the glass viewing section and shards lay scattered in the hallway, telling him at once the bullets had come from within.

      “We don’t have access to the security cameras, Colonel,” Gerard Malouel said. He’d remained with the vehicle out in the parking lot so he could monitor the insertion and capture. “I’ve got two helicopters in the air.”

      As he leaned against the wall near the stairwell doorway, de Cerceau heard the drumbeat of one of the helicopters’ rotors overhead.

      “They’re searching the building, lighting it up with spotlights,” Gerard went on. “One of them is switching over to thermographic systems. We should know more in another minute or two.”

      “Have the police been alerted?” De Cerceau hadn’t detected any alarms that had been set off inside the building, but there could be a silent warning system.

      “Affirmative. They’re en route.”

      De Cerceau cursed, knowing they were running out of time. “If we’re not done here soon, we’ll need to slow them down.”

      “We’re already preparing for that. This is going to get messy.” Gerard’s tone remained neutral, but he was unhappy. He wouldn’t have mentioned the potential problem if he hadn’t been disconcerted.

      De Cerceau gazed down at the dead man in the doorway. “It’s already gotten messy. We’ve got four dead and one wounded. Almost half the team down.” Because of one lone woman. That was something he couldn’t believe. The first man might have been careless in approaching the people they were after, and perhaps even the second man. But there was no way this many would have been lost through carelessness. Reading the combat situations they’d been engaged in, de Cerceau knew that someone with Krauzer was used to military operations. He cursed.

      “Yes, sir.”

      Two men closed on de Cerceau’s position, stepped into position against the wall and waited for his orders. The remaining three gunmen held the other end of the building and were advancing up the stairwell there.

      Holding the machine pistol tight against his shoulder and aiming it up the stairs, de Cerceau stepped across the dead man and into the stairwell. The enclosed space trapped the stench of death and cordite. He held his position and listened.

      Farther