Free Gathering Storm by Victoria Danann Page B

involved, the nice-looking kids with the fresh faces
and conservative clothes could have run up thousands in purchases.
The cards, along with the bag and the rest of its contents - except
cash – would be in a dumpster within a couple of hours.
    He ran the Fagin racket for
two or three years before learning - almost by accident - that he
had skills to make real money.
    One of the other boys had
pocketed a deck of playing cards on the way out of a convenience
store, even though that kind of minimum return risk was strictly
against Angel’s rules. The other kid taught him the rules of
poker.
    There was no way to judge
how good he was, playing other street kids. He could beat them, all
of them, without trying, but that didn’t tell him what he needed to
know. So he asked around about low stakes street games. Nothing
fancy. Something affordable with a cap on bets. He took the gang’s
take for the week, which was a big gamble in itself, and tripled
the money. Since the other kids had provided the funding – even
though they hadn’t known about the plan, he divided the total take
in half, kept half for himself and split the other half equally
among the others, which meant they profited as well.
    Within six months he had
enough money to play with big boys. Maybe not the biggest boys, but
hefty nonetheless.
    When it came to poker,
Angel was special. Even more so than he ever could have imagined
because that talent was the result of demon blood that enhanced his
intuitive ability.
    If he’d been satisfied
with playing poker, he could have led a cushy, carefree life and
had anything he wanted with minimal effort. He’d already made more
money than his parents would earn in their lifetime.
    There was just one little
problem. Angel liked betting on the horses. He liked it even more
than playing poker but unlike poker, he didn’t always win. After a
while he fell into a cycle of addiction. The only reason he played
poker was to get money to bet on horses, which he was sure to
lose.
    While he could always pull
a win with poker, because the energy of cards is static, the energy
of living things - like horses - was unstable. Horses have
fluctuations in their biological and psychic patterns and they come
with personality factors just like all mammals. Some days they feel
like running. Some days they don't. Some days they have to win. Some days
they don't mind being second. Then there are the unforeseeable
factors like accidents that complicate things even more.
    Even though a life ruled by
compulsion wasn’t a recipe for happiness, it could have been okay.
All he had to do was bet the track with poker winnings and go home.
But the fever escalated beyond that and he ended up borrowing. No
matter how much he won at poker, he could always manage to
lose more at the
track. From the outside looking in, it was an exquisite form of
psychological masochism.
    He’d had some close calls
with the shark, the guy he called Baph, but he’d always managed it
out before it got too dicey and won enough to pay off his debts in
money, not blood. At least that was what had always happened
before.
     

CHAPTER 8
     
     
    Just like every day,
Deliverance came at half past nine so that he’d have half an hour
to play with Rosie before taking Storm to Jefferson Unit. At ten,
Storm picked up his beautiful three-year-old and gave her smooches
on her ticklish little neck until she laughed
hysterically.
    “Say bye Daddy,” he
prompted.
    “Bye Daddy.”
    “See you later.”
    “See you later.”
    Litha’s emerald eyes seemed to sparkle with
iridescence whenever she watched that exchange. When Storm turned
toward her, she was clearly eager for her turn. She got a sweet and
thorough kiss and giggled like Rosie when he turned around and came
back for another.
    Storm left with a grin on
his face, loving every second of his two emerald-eyed girls waving
goodbye. It was a vision so perfect that it burned into his memory
like a brand. It would be a memory that