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You can also get the entire collection of stories as a set of epub files for your favourite reader device: an overall collection, and also genre-specific volumes!

Here's story 273, of 288 so far.

Please note: permission is expressly denied to input any part of the story below into a machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) or Large Language Model (LLM) system in any form.

The Major Arcana

She was a tobacco blonde, and she wasn’t getting younger.

Thomson watched her from across the way, sitting in a soulless coffee place but drinking mint tea instead. He found the spectacle fascinating, glimpsed through the steam coming off the mug he held to warm his hands.

There was an alley where she was standing, and she would back into it a bit if a police vehicle rolled by. Thomson thought it was a questionable move; too conspicuous. She would have been better just checking her phone, or pretending to talk on it. It was Saturday evening, after all. Half the women in the city centre were dressed the way she was.

Boots, black. Tights, barely, and probably pull-ups. A skirt that was impractical in every way but one; also black, and wipe-clean PVC. A top that buttoned below her bra and ended soon after. It was a map, with the tourist attractions clearly marked but creased with reuse, and the only reason it wasn’t a dominatrix outfit was that the top was neon pink. Then a faux-fur jacket, plastic earrings with clips because it was safer, all the makeup in the world, and eyes that had the warmth and humanity of CCTV cameras, with the same constant panning back and forth. To his eye, she looked dirty, but in the wrong way.

Thomson huffed a little laugh to himself at his own cynicism, then scratched the five-o’clock shadow that always appeared on his chin by lunchtime.

And earlier by the year, he thought.

The woman had moved towards a car that had drawn up, leaning down to the window, but then she abruptly straightened and returned to her usual spot. Thomson could see that the car was full of young men, which was trouble of the stupid kind. She was too street-smart for that, though not by a hell of a lot. Thomson could hear some jeers from the car as it pulled away, but the woman was all but immune to name-calling; her profession had a hundred pejoratives associated with it in every language.

His tea was cold, but it didn’t much matter. He was content to sip at it, scribbling the occasional vehicle license plate in his notebook. And every once in a while, he’d draw cards from the deck that he had placed in front of him.

Another car drew up. Dark colour, common model, neither clean nor grubby, about ten years old. Lone male occupant. Thomson felt his skin prickle, even as the woman approached the car and leaned down again. He drew a card, and then another. Both were from the minor arcana.

King of Wands. Knight of Swords.

The woman was talking to the driver now, probably giving him the price list, and the driver was nodding. Thomson drew two more. They came from the major arcana this time, as the pattern dictated.

The Lovers. Judgement.

He pushed the tea away, knowing he wouldn’t be drinking any more of it, and scribbled down the car’s license plate; at least the part of it that wasn’t conveniently covered by an unseasonable leaf which Thomson knew was made of plastic with an embedded magnet, to fool automated recognition systems like speed cameras. The woman was opening the passenger-side door now. Thomson drew a final card, leaving it face down for a moment because he already knew what it was. Just like the others. He put a banknote on the table beside the condiments, to deal with the bill, and slid the notebook and pen into his jacket.

The car was held back by traffic, but it would pull away in a few seconds. Thomson flipped the card.

Death.

He nodded. The car moved off and out of sight, but that was alright. It would take at least a few minutes for them to get wherever they were going. The driver wanted true privacy, not just a quick fumble on a side street where he could be interrupted at any time. Thomson gathered the cards back into the deck, leaving the King of Wands on top, upturned. He lay his second and third fingers upon it, contemplating the illustration.

The cards were old indeed, weathered and yellowed and faded and dog-eared, but their power lay in their symbolism and its interpretation, rather than any innate property. The dealer’s own insight was the critical factor, leaving the cards as but a tool.

The woman was destined to die tonight, just like the others, so the cards said. Taken by a predator in resentment at his own inadequacy and defilement, in an attempt to satisfy a thirst which could never be quenched. Thomson had seen it all before, and this particular man had taken four victims before this one, in different cities. But he wouldn’t take a fifth, and the woman would live, if Thomson did his job properly. He could see the man’s car in his mind’s eye, and almost hear the stilted and intermittent conversation which by now would surely have begun to trouble the woman on some instinctive level.

Thomson stood up, pocketing the deck except for the King, which he kept between two fingers like a man about to do a magic trick — which was an accurate assessment. He nodded politely to the waitress, indicating the money on the table, and she smiled and bid him a good night. It took him only half a minute to go outside, cross the busy road, and enter the same alley the woman had been stationed at.

There was still the barest lingering scent of cheap perfume and hairspray and female sweat. Moving further down the alley until he was unobserved, Thomson focused his entire being on the card he still gripped. He lifted it up in front of his face, closed his eyes, and whispered a brief string of words which made birds take flight, startled, from windowsills far above. And then he was no longer there.

Opening his eyes, he saw a dingy apartment around him, the living room furnished in an anonymous sort of way; perhaps a rental. He looked out of a window and saw that he had travelled less than a mile, and it wasn’t long before he saw the car drawing up on the street below. The man and the woman got out, heading into the building, and Thomson smiled.

He returned the King to its brothers and sisters, reaching into his coat to take out a very different object which glittered in the wan light, and moved into the bedroom to wait.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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