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  Queen’s Peril

  The Pawn Stratagem Book II

  Darin Kennedy

  Contents

  1. Lost & Found

  2. Divide & Conquer

  3. Live & Learn

  4. Bait & Switch

  5. Rest & Recovery

  6. Comings & Goings

  7. House & Home

  8. Love & War

  9. Room & Board

  10. Kiss & Tell

  11. Arrivals & Departures

  12. Boys & Girls

  13. Touch & Go

  14. Cowboys & Indians

  15. Stars & Stripes

  16. Blood & Guts

  17. Tracks & Timetables

  18. Song & Dance

  19. Pawn & King

  20. Wheels & Deals

  21. Bad & Worse

  22. Lock & Key

  23. Law & Order

  24. Blades & Bullets

  25. Missives & Mysteries

  26. Hunter & Hunted

  27. Mobsters & Molotov Cocktails

  28. Threaten & Defend

  29. Questions & Answers

  30. Reunions & Regrets

  31. Black & White

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Darin Kennedy

  Falstaff Books

  Friends of Falstaff

  To John Hartness and the team at Falstaff Books,

  for giving this series a chance

  and for making it shine so bright.

  The middle game is real chess.

  Whereas the opening is

  an initial development of the forces

  and the end game scientific calculation,

  the middle game embodies every conceivable principle

  of the sixty-four squares,

  strategical and tactical, simple and profound.

  The middle game is the art of chess.

  I. A. Horowitz

  1

  Lost & Found

  Where the hell am I?

  Steven Bauer wiped blood from his swelling left eye and stared up into the swaying canopy of pine treetops above his head. Though night had yet to fall, the sky appeared dark through the waving branches. The balmy air smelled of ozone.

  Wherever this is, there’s a storm coming.

  “Steven,” groaned a voice from across his shoulder. A few feet away, Niklaus lay sprawled, his left ankle turned at an odd angle.

  “Nik!” Steven rolled onto his side to get a better look and immediately regretted the decision. Every inch of his body throbbed as if he’d just gone ten rounds. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ve been better.” Niklaus pulled himself into a seated position. The pain in his features told Steven all he needed to know. “You?”

  “Same.” Steven forced himself into a low crouch and pressed the heel of his hand to his brow to staunch the flow of blood. “Any idea where we are?”

  “Not a clue.” Niklaus attempted to come to his feet but collapsed back to the ground with the first hint of weight on his injured ankle. The thirty seconds of grunted Polish that followed sounded like so much gibberish, but the message came through loud and clear.

  “Here. Let me give you a hand.” Despite the pain, Steven rose from the ground, pulled Niklaus up onto his good leg, and helped him hobble over to a fallen tree.

  “Do you think the others ended up…wherever this is?” Steven peered around the dimly lit evergreens and let fly a shouted “hello?” but other than a quiet echo and the sound of rising wind whistling through the trees, the forest remained silent.

  “Grey?” Undeterred, Steven climbed up onto the massive tree trunk and called for the rest of his team. “Archie? Emilio? Lena?” His voice cracked. “Audrey?”

  “Looks like it’s just us, Steven.” Niklaus clenched his teeth in agony as he worked gingerly at the laces of his left sneaker, easing first shoe and then sock off the injured foot. Between the obvious swelling and the deep purple hue that had already set in, Niklaus would be lucky if he’d only sprained his ankle.

  Truth be told, he’s lucky to still have a leg.

  With a pained grunt, Niklaus popped his foot back into something resembling normal alignment, all the while attempting to hide the agony behind his trademark grin. The bruising and swelling suggested Niklaus would be limping for a while.

  “What do you think happened to the others?” Steven slid down from his perch and leaned against the fallen tree at Niklaus’ side. “Where could they be?” An all too familiar fear rose in his chest. “You don’t think they’re—”

  “Don’t go there, man.” Niklaus clasped Steven’s shoulder, the friendly gesture sending a twinge of pain down his spine. “The two of us made it out of there. We have to assume the others did as well.” He peered across his shoulder into the darkening forest. “As for where they might be, the truth is we don’t even know where we are. Trees as far as the eye can see, blue skies, hot as hell: welcome to Anywhere, USA.” Niklaus’ voice dropped. “And that’s assuming we’re still on the continent.”

  “Don’t worry, Nik.” Steven forced a quick smile. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “There’s a far more pressing question, anyway.” His fingers clamped down on Steven’s shoulder as he adjusted the weight away from his injured foot. “How the hell are we going to get back? Unless I missed something, we’ve lost the pouch.”

  Steven groaned, the pain of the lost magical artifact that had become all but another appendage still fresh at his sore fingertips.

  “Don’t remind me.” Steven gritted his teeth. “I suppose there’s no use in worrying about the others until we get ourselves out of the woods, both literally and figuratively.” Audrey’s face flashed across his mind’s eye, sending a pang straight through his chest. “And without the pouch’s magic to get us around, looks like we’re hoofing it until we get back to civilization.”

  “You, maybe.” Niklaus winced as he massaged his rapidly swelling ankle. “I’m not going to be walking anywhere anytime soon.”

  “Why don’t you just marble up? Doesn’t becoming the Rook usually fix everything?”

  “Maybe,” Niklaus grunted, “though the circumstances last time were very different.”

  Steven shuddered as the image of Niklaus falling from the King tower in Atlanta, his flailing form riddled by no fewer than seven black-feathered shafts, replayed for the thousandth time in his mind. Niklaus joked about it now, but behind his perpetually laughing veneer lay a hint of anxiety and more than a little fear.

  “No time like the present, I suppose.” Niklaus fished the rook icon from his pants pocket and held it before him. “Here goes nothing.”

  His jest proved more accurate than he could have imagined.

  “What are you waiting for?” Steven raised an eyebrow. “Go all Ben Grimm so we can get the hell out of here.”

  “Nothing’s happening.” Niklaus’ eyes narrowed in concentration. “It’s weird, but for the first time since you drafted me into this mess, I don’t feel it. The power, it’s…not there.”

  Steven drew the pawn icon from his pocket and held it up to the sky. “Pike,” he whispered. “Shield.” He focused his mind’s eye on the attire and accoutrements of the White Pawn, emptying his mind of any other thought. “Cloak.”

  Nothing.

  “See what I mean?” Niklaus flipped the rook into the air and caught it in his outstretched hand. “It’s like they’re out of gas.”

  “Come on.” Steven shook the pawn icon. “It’s got to work.”

  Their frustration growing with each attempt, both Steven and Niklaus worked to trigger their respective transformations. Still, no matter what they tried, their icons remained silent and dark. Though mere weeks had passed since Steven’s first encounte
r with Grey and his induction into the wizard’s Game, it felt as if someone had cut off one of his hands.

  “Looks like we really are on our own.” Steven surveyed the deepening purple around Niklaus’ swollen ankle. “Which leaves the question of how in the world we’re going to get you out of these woods.”

  Niklaus shot Steven an amused grin. “You could always carry me.”

  “Right.” Steven let out a well-needed laugh at the thought of hoisting Niklaus’ muscular six-foot-four form across his shoulders. “Then we’d both have broken ankles.”

  “Never were truer words spoken.” Niklaus shifted to pull his good leg beneath him. “Honestly, with a little help, I think I’ll be able to walk. Give me a hand getting up and we can get moving.”

  Steven scoffed. “Are you sure you’re in good enough shape to travel?”

  “I’ll be fine.” Niklaus managed to pull his shoe back onto his foot despite the swelling. “Once we get back to civilization, we can doctor it up right.” He looked skyward as the low rumble of distant thunder echoed through the woods. “For now, though, we need to move.”

  With some help, Niklaus managed to get to his feet, and after a few minutes practicing using Steven as a human crutch, they began to make their way through the dense underbrush.

  They followed the brackish flow of a small creek as the wind and storm continued to grow in strength. Oblong balls of raw electricity jumped from cloud to cloud in the darkening sky, the violent discharges of energy so distant the resultant thunder sounded like muffled gunshots from another world. The hair on Steven’s neck stood on end as he recalled the last time he encountered a storm with such power.

  “Funny thing.” Steven broke the silence in an effort to distract himself from the dread swirling in the pit of his stomach. “You spend a few weeks being a superhero and hanging out with a guy who can heal injuries just by laying on hands and you forget how much the human body can hurt.”

  “Even if Archie were here, his Bishop mojo would probably work about as well as ours.” Niklaus shook his head. “What is it Audrey always says? ‘If wishes were fishes?’”

  Just the mention of her name took Steven’s breath. They’d come so far, and now, he had no idea where she was.

  Or if she was even still alive.

  The pair of them hobbled along, their awkward three-legged-race slowing their progress to a crawl. Other than a few close calls on the exposed rocks by the creek, however, Steven managed to keep the both of them upright and moving.

  After about half a mile, Niklaus indicated with a raised hand and a quiet grunt that he needed to sit.

  “Sorry. Ankle’s killing me.” He flopped down on an uneven stump. “And I’m sure you could use a break too.”

  “Might as well.” Steven leaned against a tree. “For all I know, we’re headed in the wrong direction anyway.” He peered up through the evergreen canopy. “With all the cloud cover, I can’t even tell where the sun is in the sky.”

  The creek they’d been following had gone underground ten minutes back. Since then, Steven had studied the terrain, doing his best to keep him and Niklaus on as straight a path as possible. Walking in circles wouldn’t get them anywhere and would only make Niklaus’ ankle worse.

  “We’ve got to run into something soon.” Niklaus loosened the laces on his shoe. “Maybe a house or a trail or…” A low rumbling echoed through the forest. “Wait. Do you hear that?”

  Steven perked up his ears. Different than the repeating peals of thunder, which were nowhere near as quiet or distant as they had been an hour before, the low-pitched roar grew louder with each passing second.

  “Sounds like a car.” The sound quickly faded, but a minute or so later, they heard it again: the mechanical purr of an automobile. “We must be near a road.”

  “Help me up, then.” Niklaus offered Steven his hand. “Let’s go check it out.”

  They continued their slow trek through the dense underbrush. After about fifteen minutes, Steven noticed a break in the canopy ahead. The unmistakable sound of a third engine filled the air as they hurried their way across the last bit of uneven terrain, but as the pair stepped out onto an old two-lane asphalt road, there wasn’t a vehicle in sight.

  “Well,” Niklaus said as the first raindrops fell, “another car has got to come along sometime. I guess we wait.”

  Steven peered up into the still-darkening sky. “I’ve got a feeling this is going to be more than just a light shower.”

  “What’s the saying?” Niklaus laughed despite the pain etched in his features. “When it rains, it pours, right?”

  For someone who had only spoken English for the better part of seven years, Niklaus’ command of the language routinely amazed Steven, especially in the realm of humor. He had taken Spanish for years and couldn’t pull off so much as a knock-knock joke with Lena and Emilio, much less the clever punnery Niklaus often spouted.

  “True. Still, I can’t believe there’s no traffic.” Steven peered up and down the two lanes of black asphalt. “I mean, I get that a big thunderstorm is brewing, but this looks to be a major road. Where are all the cars?”

  “You’ve just gotten used to living in San Antonio.” Niklaus motioned to the thick forest encroaching upon both sides of the road. “I’m guessing there are no major cities nearby.”

  “San Antonio.” Far from any of their homes and with a million-plus population in which to hide, the sprawling Texas city had served as Steven and the others’ base of operations for almost a month. Strangely, despite the constant fear of attack and all the stress of keeping the ragtag group together and focused, they had been some of the best weeks of Steven’s life: Lena’s infectious enthusiasm, Emilio’s sardonic humor, Archie’s sage though often off-putting advice, Niklaus’ jokes, even Grey’s infrequent but always poignant visits.

  And above all, Audrey and those hazel eyes that peered through him as if she could see into his very soul.

  “Here comes another one.” Niklaus’ announcement jerked Steven back to the present. In the distance, the low growl of an engine approached from what he guessed was the west. “Sounds like they’re headed our way.”

  A few seconds passed before the top of a bright blue pickup popped above the next hill. As the truck grew closer, Steven found himself growing nostalgic. His grandfather had been an aficionado of classic cars and trucks, the two acres behind his Virginia home more junkyard than backyard. During the summer before he started high school, Steven had spent a couple of months helping his father’s father restore an old ’55 Chevy BelAir Coupe. He could still picture its weathered turquoise paint, the chrome grille he had polished for the better part of a day, the roar of the old V8 engine.

  The approaching truck represented an even older vintage.

  Royal blue from stem to stern and glistening in the rain, the truck was an unblemished specimen of one of the rusted-out automobile carcasses his grandfather had kept in his fleet of vehicles for “sentimental value.” A silver chevron emblazoned with the word “FORD” decorated the area between the round headlights above the truck’s twin grilles. As the vehicle drew close and decelerated, Steven could appreciate even more its unbelievably immaculate condition. Several touches like the authentic-appearing tires, old style wiper blades, and vintage Florida plates completed the pristine look.

  The truck slowed to a halt as the driver leaned over and rolled down the passenger side window. The man behind the wheel looked to be in his mid-sixties with the leathered skin and wrinkles of someone who had spent most of his life out beneath an unforgiving sun. He wore denim overalls, a short-sleeved plaid shirt, and an old straw hat. The dirt under his fingernails suggested he had spent the day hard at work in the fields.

  “You boys lost?” The man’s drawl hit Steven as almost comical.

  “Understatement of the year.” Steven shot a glance in the direction the man was traveling. “Can you give us a lift?”

  “Where you headed?” the man asked.

  Niklau
s, his hand firmly on Steven’s shoulder for support, took one faltering step forward. “Any place that will keep the rain off our heads.”

  The man stared quizzically at the both of them for a long second before opening the door. Steven and Niklaus piled inside and the man bolted back out onto the road, quickly shifting the truck into high gear as he rocketed down the winding asphalt.

  “Name’s Ron,” the man offered. “Ron Springer.”

  “Steven Bauer.” He glanced over as Niklaus tried to pretend like having his ankle crammed between all the junk littering Ron’s floorboard wasn’t killing him. “My friend here is Niklaus Zamek.”

  “From Poland,” Niklaus added with a bit of a groan, “in case you were wondering about the accent.”

  “Ah. You must have made it out ahead of the blitz.” Ron shot Niklaus a friendly smile. “Good for you.”

  Steven and Niklaus shared a puzzled glance, but neither said a thing.

  At the next stop sign, Ron studied Steven’s injured brow. “If you don’t mind my asking, son, what the heck did you do to your eye? Must have hurt something fierce.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” Steven grimaced as his thoughts skimmed across the events of the preceding hours. “Guess I need to watch out for those eye-level tree branches.”

  “What are you two doing out in these parts anyway?” Ron pulled through the intersection as the rain continued to pick up. “We’re miles from anything except trees and more trees, and neither one of you looks particularly dressed for the great outdoors, especially on a day like today.”