Hellbound Guilds & Other Misdirections (The Guild Codex: Warped Book 2) by Annette Marie & Rob Jacobsen

Author:Annette Marie & Rob Jacobsen [Marie, Annette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781988153568
Publisher: Dark Owl Fantasy
Published: 2021-06-03T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

We explained to Captain Blythe that we didn’t know who the shit-for-brains psychopath was and begrudgingly admitted that Vinny, the annoyingly heroic kryomage, was the only reason we were alive. Our superior’s blue streak of deeply unprofessional language continued throughout the conversation, but between her profanities, she informed us that she expected a complete report the next morning, then ordered us to hit the hay.

Per Blythe’s instructions, Lienna and I slept in the infirmary. It didn’t take much tossing and turning for me to determine that the infirmary beds were fitted with the same mattresses as the holding cells. Memory foam constructed with rough cement and thumbtacks, by my estimate.

I managed a restless six hours of shut-eye before waking up aching, wincing, and with a throbbing headache. There’d be no more sleeping in that state. I got out of bed, worked up enough mental juice to make myself invisible—mainly to spare myself any awkward questions about why I’d come to work wearing a pair of too-short PJ bottoms and nothing else—then trudged through the now bustling precinct to the men’s locker room.

There I showered before dressing in a t-shirt and black sweats stolen from Agent Cutter’s locker. I was disappointed that the garments didn’t smell of cedar chips and woodsmoke, but at least the resident lumberjack was only slightly more massive than me, so the clothes fit-ish. Retracing my invisible steps to the infirmary, I fell back onto the bed and passed out again.

Getting nearly murdered too many times to count really tuckered a guy out.

I woke sometime later, groggy but slightly more refreshed. What time was it? My phone had died after my dip into the Arctic—sorry, Pacific Ocean. Finding out the time without my handy pocket device would require leaving the infirmary again, but the sickbay was the best place for me. Out of the way, demon-free, and where I couldn’t screw anything up or get anyone killed.

Fine. I was also hiding out in here to indulge in a private pity party, but cut me some slack. My first almost-official case as an agent, and the only part I’d done right was the spreadsheeting.

I stared up at the blank white ceiling. When Blythe had offered me the deal of becoming an MPD agent to escape jail, I hadn’t thought about the logistics. For example, the attempted-murder rate skewed a wee bit higher than I’d anticipated.

Ditto for the general viciousness of the mythics I’d be up against. I’d known about the existence of mythics for all of eighteen months, and over a year of that had been spent with scheming psychic lawyers and their cronies; the level of mythic firepower in my sphere had been mild to moderate at best. My psycho-warping powers and I were not equipped, magically or mentally, to handle real-world rogues.

Like the mages. And the demons. And the portal-experimenting abjuration prodigies.

Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this line of work.

Stewing in my inadequacies, I didn’t register the clack of the door until the curtains around my bed were being swept aside.

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