War of Poker: A Poker Boy story Read online

  The War of Poker

  A Poker Boy Story

  Dean Wesley Smith

  The War of Poker

  Copyright © 2013 by Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover Design copyright © 2013 WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright Alexei Zatsepin /Dreamstime

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  The War of Poker

  I was starting to figure out that if I wanted a new case or some problem to come up threatening the world and everything I knew, all I had to do was stand in the main lobby of the Las Vegas MGM Grand. Someone, some problem, somehow would find me.

  At the moment I really didn’t want a new case, but I had learned as a superhero that people needing help or problems needing solving didn’t happen when I wanted them to. Annoying, but true.

  But even though it might lead to the end of everything I knew, I often spent time in the MGM Grand lobby wearing my black leather coat and black Fedora-like hat that was my superhero uniform, leaning against the same marble pillar, waiting for my girlfriend and sidekick, Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, to get off work.

  That I stood there was common knowledge and also might have something to do with people and problems being able to find me. Superheroes are not normally regular in their schedules.

  But standing and waiting and sometimes getting cases was worth it as long as the world didn’t end. I liked watching the crowds and watching Patty work. Her long brown hair, deep brown eyes, and wide smile always made me feel wonderful. To say I was in love would be an understatement.

  The only place I spent more time was in poker rooms. But except for the poker room at Spirit Winds casino in the mountains of Oregon near my doublewide trailer, I seldom played poker in the same casino. My job as Poker Boy, a superhero in the gambling universe, was to help those who needed help and take the money at poker tables from those who needed it taken because of their poor play.

  Sometimes the two parts of my job crossed and combined, but usually the money part just paid the expenses for the superhero part.

  Technically, since I was a superhero in the poker-playing niche of the universe, I should only be solving problems associated around poker and poker rooms. But over the last few years I had managed to gather a team of superheroes around me from different aspects of the world. As a team, we had become known for solving some of the stranger problems to come along, including saving the entire world from tiny bugs one day, stopping an alien invasion on another adventure, and saving Lady Luck herself yet another day.

  When the team got to work, things were never dull.

  Patty, who was part of that team, was still fifteen minutes away from getting off work when I sensed a problem coming towards me. I call that sense my “tingly-warning bell” superpower. Sometimes, but not always, I know when danger is approaching. It’s not the kind of power I can trust like Spider-Man trusts his “Spidey-Sense.” I often wished my power was that dependable. But when I feel that shiver and the tingle go down my spine like a drip of ice water, I have learned to pay attention. Danger is close by.

  Right at that moment a river of ice was flowing all over my spine and I shivered like someone had turned up the MGM Grand air-conditioning to the Arctic setting.

  I swung around to see the most beautiful woman I had ever seen walking toward me with a smile. She had long brown hair that seemed to just glow in the bright lights of the lobby, wide brown eyes, and a perfect smile. She wore the uniform of the MGM front desk crew and wore it better than anyone had a right to wear a simple white blouse and brown slacks.

  In fact, the woman walking toward me looked exactly like my girlfriend, Patty.

  I glanced around at the front desk wondering how I had managed to miss Patty leaving work.

  I hadn’t.

  Patty was still standing behind the desk working with a customer. Her hair was still tucked up tight on her head. She never let it down until she got off work.

  I spun back to the woman walking at me.

  It was Patty all right, walking toward me smiling, giving me that “look” with her big brown eyes that could melt every ounce of resistance I had toward anything.

  All I could do was stare.

  How could there be two Patty Ledgerwoods?

  The ice shivers running around on my back finally snapped me out of my shock and I stepped out of time, freezing everyone around me.

  The loud sounds of the nearby casino and people talking and background music all vanished instantly.

  I loved the ability to do that. I actually couldn’t stop time, but I could pull myself out of the flow of time and into an instant so that it appeared to me that time had stopped around me.

  I liked to think of it as me being in a bubble outside of time, but that wasn’t right exactly either.

  Around me kids were frozen in mid-scream, husbands were stopped in mid-look at another women, bellhops were stopped with a bag halfway onto a cart.

  And there were no sounds.

  None.

  The superpower came in very, very handy and I had learned that when in doubt about anything, I should just get out of the flow of time and give myself some time to think.

  I turned toward the front desk again. My girlfriend, Patty, was frozen in mid-sentence behind the front desk of the MGM Grand hotel talking to a woman with a bored-looking husband in bright red shorts. I knew that was Patty. Everything about me could sense that was the woman I loved behind the counter.

  From the other direction, the woman who looked just like Patty was frozen in mid-stride about ten steps from where I stood. Her smile looked artificial when frozen like that.

  And every sense I had told me she was nothing but danger.

  Extreme danger.

  I went over and walked around her, studying every detail about her.

  She was an exact duplicate of Patty, right down to the tiny mole on her neck.

  Same height, same shape, everything.

  Creepy didn’t begin to describe what I was feeling and I quickly went back to my original position. My damn warning power kept making me shiver like I was fighting upwind through a cold snowstorm in nothing but a swimming suit.

  I needed help and I needed it now.

  As a superhero, I had learned a long time ago that there were many, many things in the world I did not understand. And with that learning I had lost all fear of just calling for help when there was something I flat didn’t understand.

  Right now I had no idea what was happening, but I knew it couldn’t be good. One Patty Ledgerwood was more than enough for me.

  I glanced at the ceiling and shouted “Stan! Need help!”

  I have no idea why I look up when I am calling out for Stan, the God of Poker and my immediate boss, but I always do, and he has never failed to show up at once.

  And this time was no exception.

  He appeared next to me, also out of time. I had no idea how he could do that, jump right into my frozen moment in time and join me, but he had done it in the past so now was not the time to be asking him how. It seemed for the Gods, time was a lot easier to deal with than for us mortals and superheroes.

  Stan had on a plain pair of brown slacks and a tan, open-collared dress shirt. His brown hair was perfectly combed as always and you could walk by him a hundred times and never notice him. He was a perfec
t master of disguise and blending in.

  He glanced at the woman who looked like Patty walking toward me, then frowned, something I hated when my boss and the God of Poker did around me.

  “That’s not Patty,” I said. I pointed back at the main desk of the hotel. “That’s Patty.”

  “I know that,” he said, only glancing back at the real Patty. He eased toward the imitation Patty slowly and carefully, like trying to sneak up on a sleeping bear.

  He was clearly seeing something I was not seeing.

  After two steps, he stopped. “We need help. How long can you hold this field?”

  “Another half hour,” I said, checking in with how I was feeling holding the bubble with me and Stan out of the time stream. I had gotten pretty good at this super power.

  Suddenly I could feel that it was slipping.

  “Less,” I said, now straining to hold the field. “It’s slipping.”

  Stan nodded and focused for a moment.

  The field holding us out of time solidified again.

  “What caused that?” I asked, trying to catch my breath. It actually felt like I had just run a hundred-meter sprint.

  “She did,” he said, pointing at the imitation Patty.

  Suddenly I could feel the time bubble starting to slip again.

  Stan suddenly looked a little panicked and some beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he too struggled to hold the field.

  “She knows what we are doing,” Stan said.

  I didn’t want to know how he knew or how she could know unless she was some God. I didn’t want to think about the fact that I had frozen in time a God and she would be angry at me.

  Stan moaned and sweat started to run down his neck. I felt like the time bubble I was working to hold now weighed as much as a large truck. No chance I could hold it much longer and as a poker player, there was nothing on the planet more frightening to me than to see the God of Poker sweat and strain.

  Stan glanced up at the ceiling. “Burt! Laverne! Help!”

  Every ounce of energy I had was going to hold Stan and I out of time at that moment, or I would have just sat down stunned. Stan had just called for Burt, the God of Casino Operations and Lady Luck herself, the most powerful God I had ever met.

  Who or what was this Patty imitator and why had she scared me and Stan so much?

  Burt and Laverne appeared next to the now sweat-covered Stan. Burt wore a gray, three-piece silk business suit and his short stature made him look more like a mob boss than a major God. Laverne was dressed in a black pants suit with matching jacket and had her hair pulled back tight.

  “What is the…”

  Then she saw the Patty imitator and Lady Luck herself actually flushed.

  Suddenly the pressure was off holding the time bubble as both Burt and Lady Luck took over, giving Stan and I rest.

  My rubbery knees wanted me to slump to the floor and give them a rest, but instead I managed to keep on my feet trying to catch my breath.

  “Who is that?” I managed to ask.

  “Morrígan,” Lady Luck said, walking over around the imitation Patty. “The Phantom Queen as she is often called. And why she is coming to you, Poker Boy, is a mystery.”

  Now I was officially and formally scared. When Laverne, Lady Luck herself didn’t know something, I knew I was in deep trouble. So I didn’t ask the next question on my mind…Who was Morrígan?

  “I thought Morrígan was only a myth,” Stan said, looking very worried. “Right along with her sisters.”

  I still had no idea who Morrígan was.

  “Nope, all three are real,” Burt said, looking very worried. “Just not around much these days.”

  I am sure I looked worried as well, but that was because I had no idea what was going on and because they were all worried and they were far more powerful than I was.

  “After Atlantis,” Laverne said, “Morrígan pretty much stayed in the Alps and out of any of the world’s problems.”

  “I heard she was around for the two big wars,” Stan said. “After all, she is known as the Goddess of War.”

  Oh, wow, it was that Morrígan who stood there frozen looking like my girlfriend. When a very, very old God started pretending to be your girlfriend, things could not be going well.

  Laverne shook her head. “Both wars Morrígan stayed in Switzerland, neutral.”

  “What is she doing in Las Vegas?” Burt asked.

  And instant later Morrígan, still looking like Patty, moved and smiled at Laverne as she stepped into our frozen time bubble. “You could just ask me,” she said.

  “That’s why I brought you out of time,” Laverne said, her voice cold and as hard as I had every heard Lady Luck sound.

  “Nice seeing you again as well,” Morrígan said to Laverne.

  She might look like Patty, but the voice was nothing like Patty’s at all. Patty had a softness to her voice. This imposter sounded harsh with a coldness in every sentence.

  Laverne just stared at Morrígan and the stare was returned in kind. There was clearly no love lost between the two women.

  After a moment the woman’s appearance shifted. The Patty-look sort of melted and formed into a woman who had long, black hair, a very, very thin face with a long, thin nose, and eyes that were cold black. She had on a white pants suit and was as thin as any supermodel I had ever seen. She towered over all of us because not only was she tall, but she somehow managed to stand on six-inch heels.

  Laverne said nothing.

  Finally Morrígan smiled at Laverne. “Fine, if you want to be that way, I came to ask a favor of Poker Boy.”

  Morrígan smiled at me, then went back to staring at Laverne.

  I figured if my heart was ever going to explode out of my chest at any point in my life, now was the time. I was stunned I hadn’t just fainted dead away under that look. The woman was totally terrifying. I hadn’t been this scared in any recent memory. And that was with three of the most powerful Gods in existence standing beside me.

  “You could have just come to me,” Laverne said.

  “And you would have agreed?” Morrígan asked, smiling.

  “Of course not,” Laverne said.

  Looks like I was off the hook at least for the moment.

  “That’s why I had to take a chance on approaching Poker Boy directly,” Morrígan said. “But he is as good as his reputation and saw me coming, clearly.”

  I think I had just been complimented by an enemy of Lady Luck. Not something I would ever want as a poker player.

  “So what was the favor?” Laverne asked, her voice perfectly level and very, very cold.

  “I wanted him to teach me how to play poker,” Morrígan said.

  “I assumed as much,” Lady Luck said. “Why?”

  The idea of teaching that woman anything, let alone poker had my knees week again. I would rather have five guns pointed at my head than do that.

  My warning chill was doing tap dances up and down my spine.

  Morrígan laughed, but there was no real humor in the laugh and it brought no smiles to anyone around me. It just made the cold shivers on my spine increase. I was shivering so hard from my danger warning sense, it was lucky my foot wasn’t pounding on the ground like an excited dog.

  I was going to need to figure out a way to turn that warning signal off when I needed to.

  “You might know I have been hanging around with Ares lately,” Morrígan said.

  I wanted to shout “The God of War!” But somehow I managed to stay silent.

  “I heard you have been living together since the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Laverne said.

  “Yeah, he got depressed,” Morrígan said, “He was so looking forward to that war. He thought it would have been epic. I’ve been trying to nurse him back to health.”

  “I’ll bet,” Laverne said.

  “So we’ve been playing some poker and I’m tired of losing,” she said.

  “He cheats,” Laverne said flatly. “Get a new deck of ca
rds that he has not touched and see how you do.”

  Morrígan stood there staring at Laverne for a very, very long moment. Laverne just stared back. For a moment I thought they had stepped outside of the time bubble and were frozen in the instant of time like everyone else in the lobby of the MGM Grand.

  Then Morrígan smiled a very mean and angry smile and slowly shook her head. “That bastard.”

  And then she vanished.

  It was as if the sun had come out after weeks of rain and I had won the lottery all in one instant. The cold chills that had been running up and down my back suddenly vanished as well.

  “I hate her,” Lady Luck said.

  “But you might want to let her win some now,” Burt said, chuckling.

  “Yeah, we’ll see,” Laverne said.

  With that they both vanished.

  Stan just stood there shaking his head. Then he laughed and turned to me. “Nice job.”

  “What did I do?” I said, still feeling stunned.

  “You saw her coming,” he said. “That’s amazing. It’s not many people who can see through a Banshee’s disguise, let along Morrígan’s, the war goddess. And you got out of time without her noticing at first. Impressive against a God that powerful.”

  “And she’s living with Ares? Right?” I asked. “The same Ares of war fame?”

  “Yup,” Stan said, “as long as they keep themselves entertained with each other and out of the spotlight, the planet is a lot safer.”

  “Until they get mad at each over a poker game,” I said, suddenly feeling less hopeful for the survival of the human race.

  “Yeah, until that,” Stan said, thinking it was funny now.

  “And she and Laverne have issues, clearly?” I asked, trying to get my mind wrapped around what had just happened.

  “From way, way back,” Stan said, laughing. “A long story I’ll tell you about sometime, at least the parts I’ve heard. It predates me by a few hundred thousand years.”

  He patted me on the back. “Again, great job. Who knows what kind of problem or major war you just avoided.”

  “Thanks, I think,” I said.