Chapter 8 - The Magician’s Gambit
The entire power grid of the Calumet grain terminal vanished into absolute, pitch-black nothingness.
The screaming hum of the high-voltage transformers died instantly, plunging the cavernous interior of Silo Number Four into the terrifying silence of an underwater grave.
"Generator failure!" one of the mercenaries shouted from the concrete floor, his boots shuffling against the gravel.
"Switch to night-vision! Team two, secure the—"
The man never finished the sentence.
Ava hurled the first magnesium canister through the open service hatch of the suspended shipping container with the pinpoint precision of a major-league pitcher.
The canister struck the iron ceiling, bounced once, and exploded with the terrifying brilliance of an artificial sun.
Twelve million lumens of blinding, chemical white light erupted inside the enclosed steel box.
Julian Vane let out a blood-curdling shriek of agony as the optical blast instantly overloaded his retina, burning through his retinas and frying his visual cortex into a white sheet of blinding, searing torment.
The four mercenaries on the catwalks below, wearing high-sensitivity infrared night-vision tubes, suffered instantaneous optic trauma as the intense light amplified ten thousand times through their objective lenses.
Two men screamed, tearing the smoking goggles from their faces as they stumbled blindly off the thirty-foot iron catwalk, their bodies crashing onto the concrete floor below with sickening thuds of splintering bone.
"Breach!" Dean Briggs’s voice roared from the ventilation intake.
Dean burst through the severed louvre grate like a freight train of concentrated vengeance.
His tactical shotgun barked three consecutive times, the heavy twelve-gauge double-aught buckshot turning the remaining two ground mercenaries into shredded rags against the concrete wall before they could clear their sidearms.
Ava did not wait for Dean.
She had already leaped onto the counterweight cable of the suspended shipping container, sliding down forty feet of greasy steel braided wire with the reckless velocity of a circus aerialist.
She hit the open door of the container in a low, sliding crouch.
Julian Vane was on his knees, blind and delirious with pain, firing his .45 wildly into the darkness of the container.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The heavy bullets gouged sparks from the corrugated iron walls, the sonic booms deafening inside the enclosed steel coffin.
Ava moved through the muzzle flashes like a wraith.
She didn't reach for a gun.
She reached into her waistcoat, flicked her wrist, and whipped a six-foot length of ultra-high-tensile aircraft cable—the same braided wire used to suspend grand pianos during stage illusions—around Vane’s thick, scarred neck.
She braced her left boot against the iron doorframe and threw her entire body weight backward into the fulcrum lever.
Vane’s breath cut off with a choked, gargling wheeze.
His massive hands clawed frantically at the wire digging into the burned flesh of his throat, his heavy pistol slipping from his nerveless fingers and clattering across the floor.
"You talk too much for a man who lost to a magician," Ava whispered fiercely into his ear, her muscles screaming as she tightened the garrote with ruthless, mechanical torque.
Vane’s eyes rolled back into his skull, his heavy frame convulsing twice before slumping forward into the dirt, unconscious.
Ava kicked the fallen Colt away, let go of the wire, and dropped to her knees beside Dante Bellini.
Dante was hanging by his wrists from the overhead steel eye-bolt, his chest heaving with shallow, ragged breaths.
Through the blood and swelling covering his face, his dark amber eyes locked onto hers.
Even battered, chained, and inches from death, the man possessed an aura of terrifying, regal command that stole the air right out of her lungs.
"Miss Brooks," Dante rasped, his voice raw, shredded, yet unmistakably carrying that dark, amused cadence from the ballroom stage.
"You’re late. The charity committee is going to demand a refund."
Ava pulled her ceramic blade and severed the reinforced plastic zip-ties binding his wrists in two lightning-fast strokes.
Dante dropped to the floor, his knees buckling under the sudden weight of his battered body.
Ava caught him instantly, her arms wrapping around his broad, muscular torso to bear his weight against her shoulder.
His skin was burning hot against hers, smelling of copper, gunpowder, and the dark, intoxicating cedarwood that had unsettled her under the stage lights.
Dante’s hand reached out, his bloody, calloused fingers cupping the side of her jaw with an intensity that made her pulse skip three consecutive beats.
"You came for me," he murmured, his thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone.
"I have a strict professional policy, Mr. Bellini," Ava said, her voice shaking slightly despite her best efforts to sound clinical.
"When I make an object disappear on stage, I am legally obligated to return it in original condition."
"Is that what I am to you, Ava?" Dante asked, his face inches from hers, his dark eyes searching the depths of her soul.
"A stage prop?"
Before Ava could answer, Dean Briggs stepped into the shipping container, his tactical shotgun smoking, his boots tracking blood across the threshold.
Dean looked at Dante, then at Ava, then down at the unconscious form of Julian Vane lying at their feet.
Dean lowered his weapon, exhaling a breath that sounded like a tire deflating.
"The perimeter is clear, boss. Gia’s bringing the transport around to Berth Two."
Dante slowly pushed himself upright, using Ava’s shoulder for leverage, but his eyes never left Ava’s face.
"Vane doesn't die tonight, Dean," Dante commanded, his voice cold as a winter tombstone.
"Put him in the black site. I have questions about who funded his private security detail."
Dante looked down at the unconscious mercenary’s neck, pointing his bloody finger at the anchor burn.
"That chemical scar didn't come from a street fight ten years ago," Dante revealed, his jaw hardening into pure diamond.
"It was administered by the internal interrogation unit of the Illinois State Attorney’s Office."
Ava looked up, horror dawning behind her green eyes.
"The people trying to destroy you aren't rival gangsters, Dante."
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"No," Dante replied, his hand dropping from her face to intertwine his fingers tightly with hers.
"They sit on the bench of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. And tomorrow morning, Ava... you and I are going to perform the largest illusion this city has ever seen."
