Queen of Avalon (Broken Throne Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Queen of Avalon

  Copyright

  Queen of Avalon

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Want to Know What Happens Next?

  About the Author

  Queen of Avalon

  by Jamie Davis

  Copyright © 2017 by Sterling & Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help us spread the word.

  Thank you for supporting our work.

  CHAPTER 1

  Winnie Durham jumped out of the car as soon as it pulled to a stop on the deserted road just outside Philadelphia. She looped her scarf up over her face to protect herself from the swirling dust around her.

  Looking back, the land behind was populated by occasional dead trees marring the highway. The wasteland stretched as far as the eye could see. She turned and moved to the edge of the small rise beside the abandoned highway, creeping to the top so she could see over it to the ruins of an old amusement park about a quarter mile in the distance.

  An ancient sign was still perched on the tall double poles: The Pike.

  The park was surrounded by an old, rusted chain link fence. It was tall, topping at least eight feet, with barbed wire strung along the top in thick, twisted triple strands. Winnie scanned the deserted park and saw no signs of any guards. No one in sight.

  She turned and slid back down the bank to the highway below. Her descent raised a small cloud of dust behind her — caught in the ever-present winds that swept the Barrens, then whisked away to join the swirling dust.

  It never stopped.

  Winnie climbed back into the car and closed the door to keep out the dust. Pulling her scarf down from her face and head, she shook her long brunette hair free, running her hands through the gentle curls to loosen it in the back where the scarf held it down. She eyed her friends with a smile.

  “It’s just where the map said it would be, and the place looks deserted.”

  Danny looked over from behind the steering wheel. He had the map spread out before him, propped against the wheel. He stabbed a finger at the map. “The exit leading to the parking area is just ahead. Should we park here, or move closer and take a chance that it’s not as deserted as it looks?”

  Tris chimed in from the back, sandwiched between Cait and the newest addition to their group, Cricket. “Given what we’re here to do, I think we should get the vehicle as close as possible before we leave it. Once the dust storms kick up — like they always do later in the day — we’ll have a hard time getting everything back to the car.”

  Winnie nodded. “Agreed. Danny, head for the exit and the parking lot. We’ll make another check from there for any guards before we go inside.”

  Danny folded the map, not even trying to maintain its original shape. He handed it to Winnie, then gunned the engine, sending the car hurtling down the barren highway. Since the Barrens had claimed this part of the land years before, this section of the Philadelphia suburbs had been inhabited only by the hardiest of creatures and the few people hoping to avoid detection from city authorities.

  Winnie flipped the visor down and checked her friends in the back seat using the vanity mirror. Tris was looking at her smartphone, surely going over their plan again, nervously running a hand through her mousy brown hair. Cait, taller thank Tris and with short-cropped blond hair, sat next to her with a confident air that never seemed to leave her. The former soldier had pulled a knife from somewhere in her clothes and was checking the point with a finger tip before returning it to its hidden sheath.

  Cricket sat opposite Cait on the other side of Tris, filing his nails with an emery board. He was a short, thin man. Impeccably dressed in what he would probably call his casual outfit, the New Amsterdam charm runner was wearing a pair of black slacks, a crisp button-down shirt, a black leather jacket, and a baseball cap with the New Amsterdam Dodgers logo. Since the alliance, he’d attached himself to the team. The New Amsterdam chanter boss, Cleaver Yorke, had sent Cricket with Winnie to “keep an eye on her.” In the year and a half since joining them, he’d become an indispensable part of their team.

  He must have sensed her watching. He glanced up from his nails and winked at Winnie before returning to his grooming.

  She flipped up the visor, watching their progress as Danny reached the exit. The green highway sign still stood, half-buried in a bank of blown dust and dirt: The Pike, Visitor Parking. Danny turned off the highway and headed up a ramp leading to the amusement park, now just visible in the distance.

  It had been a hard year. The riots had worsened, along with the tremors and storms that triggered so many problems with getting food and other resources into the cities from the factory farms out west. While non-magical middlings were still blaming chanters for universal problems, most of the demonstrations and riots were now directed at the government. And that was why they had to finish this job — continue what she’d started over a year before.

  It was time for the Philly bosses to join them.

  Danny turned off the road into the large, empty lot on the park’s south side. Winnie said an incantation and switched her vision to the magical spectrum, scanning the park again as they approached.

  She didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean there weren’t safeguards in place. That was what the team was for — she’d come to rely on each of their unique talents.

  “You want me to park by the entrance gates or somewhere else?” Danny asked.

  Winnie scanned the perimeter, spotted what she was looking for, and pointed. “There. Park next to the employee entrance at the far end of the lot. Right, Cricket?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s where my Uncle Rudy says we’ll find the soft spot. He used to work security here about thirty years ago, back in The Pike’s glory years. People even came down here from New Amsterdam to check out the rides and shows.”

  “You heard him, Danny. Let’s park and have a look around.”

  “What if Uncle Rudy’s info doesn’t pan out?” Cait asked. She and Cricket didn’t always get along. Mostly because she still saw him as an intruder in the gang, remembering when he was working against them on Cleaver Yorke’s behalf. She still
suspected that Cricket was working for Yorke rather than them.

  Winnie turned and looked at Cait. “If this lead doesn’t pan out, we’ll find another way inside. You brought the tools, right?”

  Cait nodded.

  “Then we’ll get in there. Cricket hasn’t led us wrong yet, so have faith.”

  Danny parked next to the nondescript employee entrance and they all got out. He popped the trunk and Cait grabbed a heavy canvas bag that clinked with the sound of metal on metal. The others all helped Danny unload a collapsible cart, which he unfolded and set up to push on four wheels. Cait set the heavy bag atop it, then Cricket followed with another set of empty canvas bags.

  Winnie walked to small entry point and scanned from magical protections. Seeing nothing, she turned to Tris. “It looks like a conventional lock and security system. Can you get past it?”

  “No sweat.” Tris smiled, then took a tiny screwdriver from her fanny pack and began to remove the cover from a small electrical panel next to the gate. Once opened, Tris closed her eyes and manipulated the air in front of the mass of wires. Winnie could see the magical flows, but couldn’t make sense of her complex weave. After a moment, Tris stood.

  “The security system is down, but still reporting an all-clear to the monitoring service. Tell Cait she can cut the lock.”

  “No need,” Winnie said, even as Cait pulled a pair of bolt cutters from the tool bag.

  Cait paused. Winnie pointed to the lock and flicked her fingers upward twice. The rusted padlock popped open with a click.

  “Show-off,” Cait said, dropping the bolt cutters into the bag.

  “Why leave a sign of our passage if we don’t have to?” Winnie asked. “Come on, we’ve only got so much daylight left and still don’t know exactly where we’re headed. Cricket can lead the way. You came here as a kid, right?”

  “Yep. Come on, follow me, kids. Stay together and no one get lost.”

  They entered the park, eyeing the abandoned rides on either side.

  “The Pike was best of the best in its time,” Cricket said as they walked. “Each of these rides ran on magic and offered fun and excitement that no other middling park possibly could. People saved for years just to come for a day.”

  “Then everything went to crap,” Cait said. “With Director Kane and his implementation of the new DMC rules.”

  “You might say that, kid,” Cricket agreed. “But in all fairness to him, there were signs that the magic was failing even back then. Several rides had spectacular collapses that caused serious injuries to the passengers. My uncle said it became harder and harder for the maintenance crews to keep up with the breakdowns. If Kane hadn’t shut parks like this down, they would’ve had to close on their own.”

  Cricket stopped talking, pausing his tour to gather his bearings. He pointed at a small building with faded paint and signs displaying many kinds of candy and treats.

  “I thought my uncle said the control center was here, but all I see is this concession stand.”

  “Figures,” Cait said with a derisive snort.

  “Hey, my uncle knew what he was talking about, Blondie.”

  Cait bristled at the nickname Cricket always used to worm under skin. Winnie stepped between them, hands raised. “Don’t start, you two. Spread out and look around. Remember, things aren’t always what they seem.”

  The five of them circled the low building. Winnie and the trio of chanters searched the wooden walls and flaking paint for signs of magical protections. It was twenty minutes before Danny chimed in with an observation that the chanters had missed.

  “I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I think this might be it.” He pointed at a narrow door set in the wall next to a series of boarded-up food windows.

  “Why?” Winnie asked as she walked over to him.

  “Look at the keyhole for the deadbolt. The brass has fresh scratches around it, as if someone had recently used it. See.”

  Winnie and the others leaned forward to look and saw the brighter scratches of freshly exposed metal, just as Danny had said.

  Winnie clapped Danny on the back. “Score a point for the middling.”

  Again, she muttered a few words and waved her fingers in front of the lock. It popped open with a click, then she pushed at the door. It stuck to the frame briefly but when she applied pressure, it popped open, then swung back to reveal a slender staircase leading down.

  They were in.

  CHAPTER 2

  Cait led them down the dark staircase, followed by Cricket, Tris, Winnie, and Danny. He tried to pull the cart after them, but it wouldn’t fit through the doorway, or down the stairs, so Danny shouldered the heavy tool bag and handed Winnie the pile of empties to carry as they followed Cait down.

  When she reached the bottom last, Winnie saw the others milling around a large empty basement with a few scattered pieces of broken furniture and an old rusted water heater in the corner. She walked around, her fingertips brushing the dusty walls.

  “Well, this is a dead end,” Cait said, stating the obvious. But Winnie wasn’t sure.

  “Maybe,” she said, then continued to walk the perimeter.

  She could sense something. Their information wasn’t wrong. She was sure of it. Stopping at the water heater after the third pass, Winnie turned and faced the rusted hunk of metal.

  She closed her eyes and raised her hands like a conductor collecting the orchestra. Then she gently swayed, moving her arms in fluid arcs. She could sense the chanters gasp as the magical flows around the water heater revealed themselves, unraveling like ribbons rolling off a spool.

  Winnie opened her eyes and saw that the water heater had slid to one side to reveal a previously undetected doorway. She gave a weary but triumphant laugh and dropped her arms. “There you go. Just where we thought it would be. We just didn’t know where to look.”

  Danny moved forward into the newly revealed room, glanced around, then turned to look at Winnie and the others. “It looks like it’s all here. Everything Colten and the Philly bosses have been hiding away.”

  Cait and Tris joined him, sorting through the boxes, crates, and bags. Winnie watched her friends unzip two different duffels to reveal piles of bundled cash in neat bank wrappers. Cricket and Danny opened a crate and revealed a stash of military-grade explosives with Sable detonators. Winnie nodded in satisfaction — they’d found exactly what they were looking for.

  Winnie turned to Cricket. “Go back upstairs with Danny and call in the truck. It looks like we’ll be needing more than the cart after all. We’ll get this sorted while we wait for them to show.”

  “Got it, Boss.” The dapper chanter waved to Danny, then they headed back upstairs.

  Cait was sorting through the military crates. She gave a low whistle. “Wow, Winnie. Some of this stuff is brand new while some of it dates back to the European evacuation twenty years ago. Colten and the Philly crew must have had quite the connection back in the day, or they found someone’s stash. A lot of this stuff was decommissioned by the army years ago as too dangerous for even military applications.”

  “Good to know, Cait,” Winnie replied. “Pull those items aside as you find them. We’ll mark them for dismantling and destruction by the proper authorities later.”

  “You’d trust the government to do that?” Tris asked.

  “We don’t have the resources to do it,” Cait said. “If we turn it over to the army anonymously, they’ll take care of it for us.”

  “Or they turn the entire lot over to Kane and then he uses them against the chanters in the Enclaves,” Tris said.

  Winnie worried about her friend. She’d taken to hanging out with the chanter rebellion’s more militant factions in recent months. Some sections in each of the Enclaves had become more like armed camps. People who lived there were advocating armed resistance.

  “Why don’t you focus on bagging the loose stacks of cash and piling all of the money over in that corner?” Winnie tried to distract Tris with an a
lternative task to avoid her volatility. “We’ll want to make sure the money comes in the car with us.”

  Tris grumbled something under her breath but then set to work. Cait caught Winnie’s eye and the two of them traded a worried look. Winnie shrugged, helping the former soldier sort through the crates while they waited for the truck and additional help.

  By the time the truck arrived, they had three distinct piles: the smaller pile of money, all zipped in bags either found in the room or brought down with them; two separate stacks of crates in the room that would need to be loaded into the truck — one contained the weapons and Sable tech Cait considered safe; and a smaller but much more threatening stack of older weapons that seemed dangerous even for military applications. Winnie wanted to make sure they kept track of that stack most of all.

  “Cait, make sure you keep a running tally of the decommissioned stuff so we know that they’re all accounted for later on,” Winnie ordered.

  “Already on it.” Cait was following each crate up to the truck. They were stacking those in last so they could be unloaded in a separate location before the full load found its final destination.

  Winnie watched until the final crate was taken to the waiting truck, then she grabbed the last two bags of money with Tris and left the hidden room.

  She turned, dropped her bag, and faced the now-empty storage room. Again, she closed her eyes, searching her memory for just the right configuration that would return the outer room to its prior condition.

  Raising her arms, she called to the flows, and with a delicate touch, coaxed each magical strand back to its former position. She could have strengthened the magical protection with her own abilities, but she merely wanted to liberate the stash without leaving a trace of their passage. Let the Philly boys figure this heist out for themselves.

  Winnie picked up the last bag before heading out right behind Tris. Part one of their heist had gone according plan from start to finish. She thought about how well their newly-integrated crew worked since she’d taken Cleaver’s oath of allegiance over a year before. Each job had been easier than the last as the gang learned to trust Winnie’s lead and follow her orders without question.