Order Into Chaos Read online

  Order Into Chaos

  Order Into Chaos

  Midpoint

  A

  Variation

  By

  Mark Wooden

  © 2016 Mark Wooden. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder or the above publisher of this book except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content

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  “SHADOWDANCE” SAGA CHRONOLOGY

  “A Reason to Live: A Shadowdance Variation”

  “By Virtue Fall: Shadowdance Saga Song One”

  “For Her Sins: Shadowdance Saga Song Two”

  “Order into Chaos: A Shadowdance Variation”

  “Fall to Grace: A Shadowdance Variation”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following story takes place in the missing six months of “For Her Sins: Shadowdance Saga Song 2,” specifically Measures 23 and 24 of that song. As such, there are some spoilers here. I recommend reading that book first.

  Or not.

  You’ve been warned.

  Also, you will find several hyperlinks within this text. Follow these links to the “Shadowdance” saga website for more information about the Initiated of the Shadowdance.

  Enjoy your dance.

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  DECEMBER, 2013

  Dwyer Strathan gritted his teeth against the magical pain inflicted upon him. His so-called mentor, Malachi Thorne dished out the pain. Rather, his mentor’s astral projection did the deed. The real Thorne was in exile ever since single-handedly botching the World War Two alliance between the Nazi’s and his Order of Haroth.

  It was a credit to Thorne’s influence that, even while in exile, he’d learned that Strathan had acquired two Vyntari shards and knew the location of a third. Obtaining all nine shards and freeing the imprisoned shadow god within was the sole purpose of the Order’s dark sorcerers.

  Thorne inflicted this pain on his student to drive that point home.

  Strathan could deal with the pain. He had at his initiation into the Order, so many decades ago. That Thorne pulled this shit in Strathan’s bedroom while his flame of the moment Valentina Lorena was around really pissed him off.

  The nerve of the old bastard.

  While Strathan suffered in silence (he would not let Thorne hear his grief), Valentina spoke with Thorne. It was a curious conversation. Valentina sat on her haunches on Strathan’s bed. She was naked beneath a set of ebony sheets that barely covered her pale skin, those fabulous breasts. A Spaniard with bleached-to-platinum hair flowing to the small of her back, Valentina also had full lips and more curves than Mulholland Drive composing her petite frame. Val looked like a nineteen-year-old, but Strathan knew better.

  For his part, Thorne could be Valentina’s grandfather. Great grandfather, even. His age had brought back issues, making him hunch over and hiding his actual six feet in height. Time had added a few pounds to his middle, also thinning and graying his hair.

  Time and circumstance had also hardened the skin on Thorne’s face, each wrinkle a crevice carved by deceit and strife. He wore a suit so crisp he would fit in at any high-dollar Hollywood charity event.

  You’d think Valentina and Thorne would have nothing in common; you’d be wrong. Both were far older than their years, having centuries of experience with the supernatural.

  Their experience came from her being a vampire and him a sorcerer.

  Strathan wished he could hear what the two were talking about, but it was all he could do to concentrate on keeping himself alive. Whatever Val said, it convinced Thorne to cut the pain. Strathan held himself up, refusing to stumble and reveal his relief.

  Thorne talked about sending Strathan after the third shard, but Strathan barely listened. After the projection had disappeared, Val used her wiles to convince him to take up Thorne’s damned fool’s crusade. He wasn’t all hippity skippity about it, but he’d get the last shard and finish the trio just to get Thorne and the Order off his back.

  Two days later, Strathan stepped from a dimensional portal and back to the elegance of his bedroom. The portal closed behind him, sealing away the literal Hell behind it.

  The pants to his Armani suit, once the height of fashion, were smeared with brown dirt. The suit’s jacket was long gone; his white dress shirt was grimy and torn, revealing the toned muscles of his lean frame. Strathan normally kept his dark hair in a controlled style of chaos; now it hung low on his head, another victim of the African heat his stylist would have to salvage.

  Nothing about his appearance said “Hollywood bad boy.”

  More like “Hollywood Whipping Boy.”

  The sorcerer had seen better days, much better than the two he’d just spent in Africa retrieving that third shard. Too much of that time he spent as artwork on the wall of a primitive tribe’s cave of worship. He’d needed Valentina’s help to get out of that one. Otherwise, he held his own against the tribe and their cohorts, the Knights of Vyntari.

  Raising his hand to chest height, he stared down at the amulet in his open palm. To the Uninitiated mortals who remained oblivious of the supernatural, much less the Shadowdance, the amulet had a simple blood red jewel in its center.

  Those Initiated and with any knowledge of the Shadowdance would recognize the jewel as one of the fabled Vyntari shards.

  Strathan couldn’t give a rat’s dick about the shards or the Shadowdance. He wanted out of the whole thing so he could use his magical abilities free of obligation to some higher power. And yes, he saw the irony in getting out of the Shadowdance but maintaining the power loaned to him from a Hell-spawned demon.

  Strathan uttered an ancient, magical phrase. A man-sized portal opened in the air in front of him. Behind it was a closet-like space of blackness that housed a waist-high pedestal. The bones of once mortal villains now damned to an eternity in Hell comprised the pedestal.

  A small, ornate, lacquered box rested on the pedestal.

  The sorcerer looked at the shard again. “All this shite over a spec a’ crystal.”

  “You never did respect the source of our power,” came a wheezing male voice from behind Strathan. The voice had a strange effect on it as if it were here, but not here.

  Strathan closed his eyes, not wanting to see what he knew was there. “Not only do you not knock,” he said in a quiet tone concealing his anger, “you don’t even let me catch a bit a’ peace.”

  “You do not know how to contact me, Dwyer,” the male voice said. “Best I come to you.”

  “Best you piss off ‘til I’ve had a shower and a lay!”

  Strathan flexed his fingers in a weak attempt to release some stress.

  Opening his eyes, he reached into the portal and fumbled to get the box’s lid open. He unceremoniously threw the amulet inside. It clattered
against two identical amulets which contained the other two Vyntari shards.

  Thorne insisted that, as the leader of the Order, he could broker Strathan’s deal to leave the Order — if Strathan gathered all three Vyntari shards for the Order.

  He’d done his part.

  Slamming the box’s lid shut, the sorcerer stepped back from the portal. A wave of his hand and the portal collapsed into itself and disappeared. He then reluctantly turned around.

  Across the expanse of the room, Strathan spied the French doors that led to a balcony. A bit of moonlight, the last before dawn’s approach, crept into the room. It died in a spot that should have held it. In its stead was a male form floating like an apparition.

  Once again, it was the astral projection of Malachi Thorne.

  “You’re not even in the city, are you?” Strathan asked.

  “My location is of no importance if we make the deal,” Thorne replied in that eerie voice projecting from wherever he was.

  “Your second in the Order’s Los Angeles lodge, Taylor —”

  “What about ‘em?” Strathan cut in.

  Thorne’s projection closed his eyes, waited. When he opened them again, he continued. “Taylor has convinced others in the lodge to remove you.”

  Strathan cocked his head to one side as he mulled over Thorne’s words. “So you made me go through this shite in Africa, and he was gonna let me out anyway?”

  “By removal,” Thorne’s projection said in a sinister tone, “they mean to murder you.”

  Strathan thought on this. He knew Taylor hated his guts. Admittedly, with good reason. Strathan was a hell of a lot more charming than that sack of bones. Got laid way more too.

  On a serious note, Taylor’s hatred was legitimized by Strathan’s delinquency as a leader. He rarely attended Order meetings or events, preferring to wield magic in his way, for his purposes.

  Yeah, Strathan could see why Taylor and a few others would finally show some balls and try to oust him. But rogue sorcerer Strathan would leave the Order on his terms, not theirs.

  Strathan rubbed a hand over his face, then paused. He inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of his hand. It was the sweet scent of a woman, tarnished by the scent of blood. They brought a smile to his haggard face. They were a reminder of the one good thing that came out of his safari, the one thing no one could take away from him.

  Strathan turned back to Thorne’s projection, sauntering up to it as if he now had the upper hand.

  “Speaking of murder, I’ve a bit of a surprise for ya,” Strathan said. “Ran into your girl Adriana Dupré in Africa.” Strathan waited long enough to acknowledge the change in the projection’s demeanor. “Heard you two had a bit of a thing back in the big double-u double-u two,” he added.

  Strathan watched the discomfort in the expression of Thorne’s projection. When it spoke, it’s holier-than-thou airs were gone, hidden behind a sheen of rage. “That woman cost the Order a valuable project, an even more valuable ally in de Führer.”

  “Yeah, well I did what you couldn’t.” Here Strathan paused long enough to make things uncomfortable before adding, “Adriana Dupré is dead.”

  An anonymous source had suggested Strathan send vampire and former assassin Adriana to find all three shards. He contacted her, then made a deal with her to give her info on her missing sister. While looking for the second shard in Berlin, Adriana got caught up in some personal shit and had reneged on the deal. Which was fine, really.

  Strathan knew bupkis about Dupré’s sister.

  Later, the sorcerer learned the vampire assassin gave a damn about a pack of Berlin werewolves. Strathan did the logical thing against a woman who crossed him — he slaughtered the pack. Dupré was righteously pissed; she went so far as to team up with three Knights of Vyntari who, up until then, had been out to kill her in both L.A. and Berlin.

  Weird coupling, but the alliance didn’t help Dupré.

  Strathan eventually caught Adriana alone after some spirit quest with the primitives in Africa. She’d been a royal pain in his arse; if she’d stuck to the deal, he wouldn’t have ended up in that godforsaken oven of a primitive church.

  He’d never forgive Adriana for that.

  Adriana came back from her spirit quest as a mortal.

  Strathan had strangled the life outta the bitch.

  Now he wouldn’t have to forgive her.

  The sorcerer glanced back at the projection. “I believe a thank you is in order.”

  “My thank you is saving you from the Order’s wrath,” Thorne’s projection said. “Just as I did on the streets of Kilkenny, when your first misguided use of magic got you in trouble with an Uninitiated lynch mob.”

  Strathan’s self-righteous bluster melted into a grimace. “Always bringing that up,” he muttered. He couldn’t deny it. Thorne had beaten back the mob with some vulgar displays of dark magic. He then took the young Strathan under his wing and taught the boy much in the way of magic.

  Thorne would always be his better. Understandable; Strathan had learned the Art in the late 19th century. Thorne had led the Order since the 16th. His use of dark magic went back further than that.

  Strathan broke the sullen mood with a clap of his hands. He then rubbed them together expectantly. “So!” he said with bravado. “Where’s the party? I have the party favors.”

  “You must meet with Taylor and his accomplices,” Thorne’s projection replied. “Tonight.”

  Strathan hesitated for a moment. A thought occurred to him, but he withheld it. Shrugging, he walked toward an ornate chest of drawers. “Fine,” he said while opening the top drawer. He withdrew a cell phone and then turned back to Thorne’s projection.

  “After a shower and a lay,” Strathan said. He winked at Thorne’s projection.

  e

  Taylor Hildebrand Mafnas’s office was little more than a walk-in closet with a desk, two office chairs, and a proverbial casting couch. But it was on the lot at Paramount Studios, which made him feel like a producer rock star.

  He wasn’t one.

  Despite not having a single credit to his name, his charade was very important to Taylor. His once chiseled looks had faded, making him a passably handsome man in his sixties but not one to whom women flocked.

  Honestly, he didn’t even bother to maintain his appearance other than to dress in the finest fashions from the most recent Fashion Week. He ignored the pinch of the fabrics against his manageable but growing bulk.

  His illusory status had worked to get the wanna-be starlet sitting across from him in the office. He’d made good use of the couch before handling a few phone calls. Again, the calls were about continuing the illusion. Talking Mandarin during one call, Farsi in another; all additions to his veneer, additions made possible by his real occupation — sorcerer with the Order of Haroth and the magical power that afforded him.

  While he continued his present call (in Italian, no less), Taylor’s cobalt eyes stared at the starlet. He didn’t remember her name; he since he went through so many. This one had that corn fed, fresh off the bus from somewhere in the Midwest look. He liked them innocent. She kept her gaze aimed at the floor, rubbing her hands together as if trying to wash away her guilt.

  Taylor finished the call, put the phone’s handset back on the cradle. “What you need is a bit of vodka,” he said to the nameless girl. She gave him a quick glance, then returned her gaze to the floor.

  “No thank you,” she said in the tone of a defeated woman.

  Taylor reached into a drawer beside him, opened it. There was a small bottle of Belvedere vodka and two glasses inside. He set the bottle on the desk in front of him, followed by both glasses. They always said no, but…

  Pulling the cap off the half empty bottle, Taylor poured himself a generous helping. He did the same for the other glass, picking it up and setting it at the edge of the desk near the girl. She made no movement toward it. Taylor picked up his glass and raised it to his lips.

  “Stoll,” he said, t
hen downed half the glass. “You should get used to liquor. When you become a star, the parties will overflow with it.”

  “When does that happen?” the girl asked. “Becoming a star, I mean?”

  Taylor opened his mouth to answer, but the ringing phone interrupted him. He set down his glass and answered the call.

  While he talked on the phone, the girl’s eyes strayed to the glass of vodka. Hand shaking, she reached over and took the glass. Bringing it to her lips, she took a sip. Her face contorted into a look of disgust.

  Taylor smiled.

  A moment later, he replaced the phone. “One of my associates is here.”

  The girl’s eyes widened, her breathing sped up.

  “Not for you,” he added. The girl relaxed, taking another sip of the vodka and making the same face as before. She’d get used to it, though.

  “You can find your way back, yes?”

  It took the girl a moment to realize she’d just been kicked out. Absently, she nodded, then looked at the mostly full glass of vodka in her hand. She took a deep breath and then downed the entire glass. The girl immediately began coughing, some of the vodka spitting out of her mouth.

  Taylor came from around the desk, placing one hand on the coughing girl’s shoulder and taking the glass with the other. “There, there,” he said. “It gets easier.”

  He let the girl finish her coughing fit. When she had gathered herself, Taylor gently tugged her arm upward. She got the hint and rose from the chair, straightening her halter top and skirt once standing. Taylor always had his girls wear skirts. He told them it was a more fashionable look.