Wicked And Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 4 (11 page)

“Why is that?” I murmured, and my mental barriers must have been down, because he chuckled against my lips, pulling me tightly against him.

“Because of you, mostly. You have an inflated opinion of my abilities, which is handy if not entirely accurate,” he said. But something in his words sounded false to me.

“No, truly,” I said, leaning back. “You’re powerful in the light, but in the shadows, it’s as if you’re not fully human.”

“Have you stopped to consider that I might not be fully human?” he asked. “Are those Council members seated down there fully human?”

“Yes—” I frowned. “Of course they are. And you too. Other than the immortality trick. You were all born human.” I paused. “Except, I guess, Michael.”

“Except him, naturally.” Armaeus’s voice was teasing, clearly amused, and I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Knock it off. You’re in Hell, but that doesn’t give you the right to go all cryptic on me. If you’re trying to tell me something, say it. How is it you’re not fully human?”

“In time, you’ll understand everything. For now, know this: The Council calls us to be our best selves. When we are not fully bound to the Council, we remember the other parts of our existence. As you say, I’m in Hell. An ability not granted to most Council members, other than Michael. And you could say he was grandfathered in. Since I’ve arrived, I begin to understand his attachment to the place.”

I frowned at him. “Meaning?”

“I can be my full self.”

“You’re not when you’re on the Council?”

“Not precisely.” He rumbled a laugh. “The Council requires many things. Discernment. Clarity. Balance.”

“Those are good things.”

“They can be. They can also confuse the truth. This dimension gives you the ability to see beyond that confusion, to view the past as it existed, not as a memory fogged by emotion or pain. This is a luxury I did not expect. It has been…most gratifying.” To forestall my obvious question of what it was he wanted to see that he could not accurately remember, Armaeus drew me back from the arguing Council below us, and to the far end of the gallery. Here there were additional windows, but these faced outward, not inward. A storm did rage beyond the castle walls, but nothing was truly visible but rain and fog.

“The fog is rising from the sea,” Armaeus said, his voice alight with wonder. “The floodwaters have risen all the way to the lowest walls of the castle. It will eventually overtake it. I have seen it happen already.” He shook his head. “I have watched this Council meeting a dozen times over.”

I blinked. A dozen times over? Both the Spinners and Kreios had mentioned the danger of Hell—its hold on the living, weaving illusions until it left its visitors unwilling or unable to leave. Was Armaeus becoming too entranced with the past? Was that why he’d broken off contact with the Council? I didn’t want to press the point until I could do something about it—until I was down here with him. Now, I simply needed him to keep talking.

“The entire Council dies here?” I asked.

“No—they’ve made provisions. But they won’t stay here long. They will scatter to their homelands to help their own people recover. And to sow the seeds of the future to prepare against the coming war.”

“War. They spoke of war as well. But when is this—what war?”

“When Atlantis was destroyed. The eve of its destruction, in fact,” the Magician said, sounding awed. “Thousands of years before Christ. But the war they speak of will take age upon age to truly play out.” As he spoke, the windows flickered in front of us, and different scenes flashed to life, most of them dire—brawls, torture, flat-out warfare. A march of Templar soldiers fighting for their lives on a storm-swept parapet. Inquisitors haranguing hapless victims, endless prisoners in oubliettes, and the robed and pious staring out in fury, fear, and confusion, aghast at the parade of nonbelievers before them.

“It has existed ever since,” Armaeus said. “The Council has had a ringside seat to all of it.”

“A seat, but not a hand,” I said. “You watch, but you don’t work to stop it.” My comments were made without heat, but the truth of them struck me anew. The Council had known war was coming. Had known and had done nothing to stop it. Not from its very inception.

Armaeus didn’t answer and instead pulled me back against him, the strength of his arms blending with the horrors of what I was seeing before me.

For once, I took no comfort from Armaeus’s touch. No comfort and no panic either. Because he was separate from me, apart.

The war on magic was not “on magic” at all, I saw, over and over. It was a war of Connecteds fighting for survival, year upon year, age upon age. It was not a war of the Council, but of mortals.

And only mortals died.

Chapter Nine

The request of the dark mages didn’t come at sunrise the following morning. It came at ten. But it was still far too early when Nikki’s ringtone blasted through the main living area of my junior suite.

“Kill me and get it over with,” she groaned, fumbling for the device. The task was rendered much more difficult by the two large cucumber slices pressed over her eyes. She sat in a cocoon of pink terry cloth, her feet in a small inflatable tub of hot water and something salty smelling, her left hand ensconced in a purple mitt while her right connected with the phone.

Only then did she clumsily brush off one cucumber round and peer at the screen. Then she handed the phone to me. “It’s for you. Call a number, ask for Bob.”

I scowled. “Bob? Which one was Bob?”

“No clue.”

As Nikki sank back against the couch cushions, I took the phone from her and angled it out of the sunlight. I knew eventually I’d have to find a real place to live, but I was having an exceptionally hard time giving up my suite at the Palazzo, from its half-dozen TVs to its gravity-defying showerheads to its beds with enough pillows on them for a family of sixteen. The coffeemaker even worked.

I shuffled back toward a steaming mug of joe as I read “Bob’s” message. It was succinct. “Job ready. Call Bob,” and a number. Feeling lucky, I keyed in the digits, picking up my mug as a ward against whatever crazy was coming my way.

The call connected on the first ring. A man answered with a gruff, “Who is it?”

“Sara,” I managed, glancing over at Nikki. She’d removed her second cucumber slice and was watching me with organically moistened eyes. “Is, uh, Bob there?”

Nikki made a face, and I tried not to snicker. Not ten hours ago, I’d held a shattered teenager in my arms, promising to combat an enemy I didn’t understand. Three hours ago, I’d woken up in a cold sweat, convinced the Council was planning to let all Connecteds die and we were being led into a trap as they eagerly watched. But this morning, the sun was up, the day was glorious, and my best friend in the world was wearing vegetables. Life was a balance.

The man on the phone either missed my mood or disregarded it. “You’ll be receiving a text to this phone with a photo of the relic we seek. It’s lightweight enough and small enough to stow in a pocket. You deliver it to anyone else, we’ll know. It won’t go well for you.”

“I don’t work that way,” I snapped. “You contract with me, the relic is yours. If I don’t find it, you’ll be the first to know. Where is this thing, specifically? Any idea?”

Bob paused, then continued as if someone had poked him in the ribs. “All the legends say it’s by the River Styx, or whatever body of water is required to cross into the main section of Hell. It should have arrived to your phone by now. See for yourself.”

“Hang on.” I pulled the phone down from my ear and scanned the disk-and-spindle image that had been sent to Nikki via text. It certainly appeared to be small. A black plumb-bob of carved stone and a string attaching it to a thick metal disk. “What is it?”

“A compass, or what passed as a compass in Greco-Roman times.”

When Bob wasn’t more forthcoming, I prompted. “And what does this compass point out, exactly? I’m not going to grab it if it’s going to cause me problems.”

“It shouldn’t. The compass was said to point to wellsprings of magic. It was lost at sea in the fourth century AD, the whole ship going down.”

I squinted at the hunk of rock and string. “So, a really effective compass.”

“Point being, legends hold it’s near the Styx. If you find it, there’s additional information in it for you.” He paused. “The bodies. Those aren’t our doing. We’ll know who’s to blame by the time you get back.”

“Fair enough.” I put the phone back to my ear. “If I find a river, I’ll keep an eye out for the compass. If I secure it, it’s yours. If it causes me trouble, information alone won’t cut it. I can be reasonable, though. Which means your max outlay will be fifty grand.”

Bob started to grouse, but I cut him off. “No negotiation. If you guys knew this thing was down there all along and you could have gotten it out yourselves, you would have. I’m doing you a solid, and you know it.”

“Fifty thousand, then,” Bob agreed. “We have ways of knowing if you lie about the difficulties.”

“I usually don’t have to lie. See you…” I hesitated. “Soon.”

Bob disconnected before I did, and I tossed the phone back to Nikki. She caught it, then leaned down to free her feet from the goo they were planted in.

“What is that stuff?” I asked.

“Special concoction I found in Lake Tahoe. You try walking around in platform stilettos all day, see what it does to your feet.”

“I’ll pass.” I waited while Nikki thumbed to the text screen, her brows lifting in exaggerated arcs as she viewed the compass.

“I assume it’s cooler than it looks? Because it looks like something out of a Cracker Jack box.”

“According to Bob, it’s a compass designed to find magical wellsprings.”

“Well, if Bob says so…” she said dubiously. She frowned. “He said it’s by the River Styx?”

“Or whatever passes for that in Hell these days, yep.” I glanced at the clock. “When is Kreios coming for us?”

We both tensed, expecting the Devil to poof into existence at his very name. The suite remained conspicuously immortal-free.

Nikki shrugged. “Barring a change of plans, we meet him at the private airstrip at noon.” She smiled. “He told me to pack a swimsuit.”

“I didn’t get that memo.”

She grinned. “One of us has to work, child.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be my tether back to the real world?”

“I can tether you equally well from a pool as from a library—or whatever it is we’re going to. Have you checked out the place Armaeus used as a portal? The Clementinum. It’s so balls-out beautiful, it’ll make your head spin. It can’t be real. It just can’t.”

It was, of course.

The flight to Prague was shorter than I would have expected, or maybe that was a function of the dread that continued to expand in my chest the closer I got to Hell. I found myself checking and rechecking the key I’d lifted from the LVMPD evidence locker—a key that had delighted Kreios so much he’d been beaming ever since. Beyond his enthusiasm, the Devil had also proved to be an able tour guide through the ancient city, and we reached the famed library as morning broke over the city of Prague.

Inside the Clementinum was even more spectacular. Trying not to gape and failing miserably, Nikki and I stood in the center of the main reading room, unsure where to stare first. Ornate globes spun in wooden bases all down the center aisle. The ceilings, floors, and every bit of open walls were covered in rich paints, textiles, or stone—all of it baroque, all of it magnificent. The ceiling alone could captivate a viewer for days, its richness of detail as unnerving as a physical force.

But all that faded behind the sheer mass of books in the place. Tomes lined the room from floor to ceiling, curved around walls, along passageways, and were stacked upon tables and stretched along floors. I’d never seen so many books in my life, certainly not in one place.

We’d spent the first twenty minutes of our visit simply drifting through the main room under the watchful eye of the docent, but now we’d gathered next to the largest globe.

“It’s a book, isn’t it,” I said, my voice as dour as I felt. “He freaking pulled out some kind of book and vanished into Hell. And we have to figure out what book.”

“This isn’t an episode of
The Librarians
, right?” Nikki stared heavenward, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Because I’m totally feeling that vibe.”

“No on both counts, I’m afraid.” The Devil’s smile was smug as I glanced at him. “But specifically how Armaeus entered Hell is immaterial. What is important is how you enter it, Sara. What works for one mortal is in no way indicative of what will work for another.”

I scowled. “So we’re going to have to guess? Pull out random books, spin a few of these globes, and see what happens?”

“
You
are going to have to guess. Nikki cannot touch anything unless she is the one going through, which she is not.” Kreios raised a hand when Nikki brightened. “No. Your role here is as the seer, not the seen. You have abilities that Sara does not, and we’re all better served with you here.”

Nikki geared up to argue. “But—”

“It will also give me the opportunity to show you around the city. It is one of my favorite Old World haunts, and much better enjoyed with a companion.”

“Oh.” A little of the starch faded from Nikki’s expression, and she regarded the Devil with renewed interest. “Well, when you put it that way.”

“Don’t mind me,” I said. “I’m going to be over here, searching for a portal to Hell while you guys make dinner plans.”

“Before you do that, a moment.” Kreios regarded me with an odd cant to his expression, enough to hold me in place. “There are things you should be aware of about this dimension.”

“Which you could have told me about already, and you waited until now?”

His lips lifted into a half smile. “Some knowledge is best absorbed over time. You know that departing Hell is not a simple prospect, but it can be done, of course. You must be willing to leave everything you see there behind, no matter how alluring.”

A new seed of dread poked awake within me. This sounded like the dark mages’ warning. “So it’s not that you can’t leave, it’s that you end up not wanting to?”