Wicked And Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 4 (24 page)

“I did not wish to intrude, but you are mortal, and mortals are the primary point of my study now, so yes. I was swept out with you both—I could not resist the compulsion to leave. The power the Magician wields is…impressive. And unexpected.” The Hierophant studied me, and I realized the bug-inspection look was not far behind. “You, however, also succeeded. You utilized the tools at your disposal to effect the change you needed, yet you are not pleased. Why?”

“We’re here. I’m pleased.” I rested my head against the spines of ancient books. “Tell me this, though. There was another me in there. But I wasn’t dead. I’m not dead. So what was that about?”

Michael’s smile was sad. “Hell is the domain of illusions, regrets, and what-ifs. You do not need to have left one dimension permanently to be confronted with your own missteps. There is an unresolved question within you, Sara. Until you answer it, there will always be two of you.”

“Well, the other version of me is kind of a pain in the ass.” I groaned as I straightened out my legs. “Don’t mention her to the others, okay?”

“By all means.”

“Yo, dollface. Where are you?” I heard the clatter of Nikki’s stilettos well in advance of her body appearing in the doorway, a reverse lightning storm. When she cleared the main library chamber, her pace sped up, then slowed.

Kreios strode to the fore. “You brought him back,” he said, angling over to where Armaeus lay in a crumpled heap.

“He brought himself back. I rode his coattails.”

“Whoa, there. You look like crap. Again.” Nikki swiveled to the Hierophant. “And you are?” She took a step back as Michael straightened to his full height.

I smiled, wincing at the pain as Nikki gazed up, and up farther. “You’re really tall,” she managed.

“I realize that now.” Michael glanced back toward me, then again at Nikki, his form considerably shrunken but still unusually big. “Better?”

“Glad we see eye to eye.” Nikki grinned and held out a hand. “Nikki Dawes. You’re the Hierophant?”

“Michael.” After a short, awkward moment, he took Nikki’s hand. “And yes.”

“I love my job.” She pumped his hand once, twice, then released it, waving at the air above his head. “Is height variance a continual thing for you? Because I seriously need my ceiling painted.”

“You’ve been injured.” Kreios approached us now, and he leaned down to help me to my feet. His touch spread a low, soothing curl of warmth through me. I hadn’t realized I was cold, but I could feel my muscles loosening as I stood on shaky feet. And I was more grateful than I could have imagined for the gentle absolution of his grip. He knew what I had done. Which meant he knew what I had seen.

“Not badly. Mission accomplished, though—” I glanced at the far wall, then paused. I was used to the Magician disappearing unexpectedly, but normally I could sense when it happened. Then again, the Devil had been hovering over Armaeus, and the force of their magic working together was not something I could truly process right now. “Where’d he go?”

“His recovery will proceed faster in isolation.”

I frowned. “Recovery? He’s hurt?”

“He’s…changed, somewhat. He will need to address that in solitude during his return. He’ll see us back in the city.”

Kreios was being deliberately cryptic, but before I could press him for information, he faced the Hierophant. “I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you.”

“But I know much about you,” Michael said. “Your name is the most popular epithet in Hell, and not always in the kindest of ways.”

“It’s a gift.” Kreios handed me off to Nikki, who stood forward to capture me as I slid out of his grasp. “The jet is ready for us. I suggest we leave before security realizes their cameras are offline.”

“You good, doll?” Nikki’s voice was low as we allowed Kreios and Michael to pull ahead of us, their heads bent together. “I kind of thought I’d be tapped for your arrival back here. I thought that was the point.”

“Things—got a little out of hand.” I managed to get my feet under me and shook her off. “You did help, though. I wouldn’t have gotten across the river without you, remember?” I blinked, trying to focus on her. “You do remember that, right?”

She grinned. “Totally worthy of the highlight reel. And Warrick was pretty good under pressure, all things considered. I think I’ll keep him around.”

I laughed at that, the sound a guttural cough. “Have you spoken to him since then?”

“Oh, girl. It’s been a nonstop communication explosion from Vegas since the moment I returned topside. Dixie’s getting flooded with refugees, and Brody has reported no fewer than three new drug lords setting up shop in the Fremont Street area and another one at the base of the Strip. He’s worried they may take over the Stratosphere.”

“They, who?”

“The dark mages have gone, well, darker. I get the distinct feeling they don’t think you’re coming back.”

“Life is full of bad surprises.”

“Did you get their doohickey?”

Nikki hovered, clearly expecting me to fall as I pulled the compass box out of my pocket. “Not sure how it’ll work in the real world. Down…there, it was a compass for the most magical thing in the area. Up here, it could lead us nowhere.”

“It’s pretty, though,” Nikki said, shouldering my weight again. “Why are you so wobbly?”

I grimaced as I thought over the past few days. “How long have I been gone?”

“Forty, maybe forty-two hours total. Normally it takes you way more time to get in this bad a shape.”

“My visit didn’t end well. Armaeus took exception to my method of getting us out of Hell.”

“And that method was?”

“Threatening the woman he’s loved for nearly a thousand years, then attempting to stab him in the heart.”

“That’d do it, I guess.” We moved silently then through the Clementinum and past the guards slumped over their desks. It looked like the Council wasn’t taking any chances with anyone knowing who specifically walked out of Hell. Two limos were waiting for us at the door, Kreios apparently deciding that his conversation with Michael merited the Hierophant’s undivided attention.

The flight back to Vegas carried on in that same theme. I didn’t much mind. I slept most of the way and spent the intervening hours talking with Nikki about select portions of what I’d seen—the sunken ship encased in ice, the Minotaur and concrete shower, as well as the history lesson I’d taken with Armaeus and Mirabel. And the final scene between us as well. I didn’t tell her anything about the false imagery of my mother, my twin, or the side trip with Armaeus. I was pretty sure if I didn’t talk about those, the pain would fade sooner.

We landed in Vegas in the wee hours of the morning, and the heat had barely started to rise as we dropped out of the sky. Two vehicles idled off the landing strip, one clearly the Council’s limo, sans Nikki. The other was Brody’s beat-up sedan.

Kreios glanced at it as we taxied to a final stop. “We’ll remain aboard. Michael has to acclimate himself to the city, and I daresay his first introduction shouldn’t be to Detective Rooks. Plus, Armaeus is waiting for us, and any delay is less than ideal.”

I frowned. “Is he okay? Armaeus?”

“More than okay,” Kreios said with a smile. “Quite refreshingly so, I should say.” He shooed us off the plane, and we descended, heading toward Brody. He stood with his hands in his pockets, his suit jacket loose, and I was struck by all the images that Hell had served up to me. He’d seemed so young, so full of possibility in those scenes. And so big to me, though I’d already reached my full height by age seventeen.

Now he looked…older. Smaller. But infinitely, steadily real.

More than that, he was dependable. And one hundred percent mortal. That seemed to count for more than it used to.

“Hey,” he said as we walked up. “Do I want to know where the hell you’ve been?”

“You really do make this too easy, Detective.” Nikki threw her arms around him and gave him a solid hug, lifting him off his feet. “I’ve missed you.”

He faced me, decidedly more rumpled. “What about you? You good? Because we’ve got problems.”

“Tell us over breakfast,” Nikki said, palming her flat stomach. “Girl’s gotta eat if you expect my brain to be working anytime soon.”

We drove to a diner a few blocks off the Strip, and Brody started in exactly thirteen seconds after we were served coffee. “Three new gangs have landed in Vegas, and in two days, violence in the city is up by ten percent. Metro cops are all over it, but it’s too fast, too intense to make sense as a local uprising. They’re thinking it’s coordinated, possibly a domestic terror threat, which bounces it over to my division.”

“Anyone specific behind it?”

“The name Gamon keeps coming up.” He didn’t miss my reaction. “Yeah. I figured that would trip your trigger. How bad is this guy? How is it he’s coming out of nowhere?” Brody didn’t wait for my answer. “Rumor on the street is that the street drug and technoceutical trade is about to experience a Renaissance, right here in good ol’ Vegas. We got lowlifes coming in from all directions, some Connected, some not, but all of them sniffing drugs, a score, or the loose money that comes from it. It’s an underground revolution.”

“The hotels reporting issues? Any of the casinos?”

“Not yet, for which everyone is a little too glad. Wouldn’t want to disrupt the gambling for a day over something so pesky as a drug war. Hell…” He shook his head. “Not even a war. It’s an open-air flea market. The violence was enough to capture everyone’s interest, but so far there hasn’t been anyone throwing down swords. It’s simply amped all the players up. They want to make deals, alliances, start a coalition, I don’t know.” Brody looked as haggard as he sounded. “Hospitals are filling up, and they’re starting to sound the alarm. But so far, that’s it. We’ve managed to arrest the small-fry, but not any of the big fish. And the small-fry aren’t so much not talking—they simply don’t know.”

“Where’s Dixie in all this?” I asked. “Nikki said she’d had a bunch of Connecteds land on her doorstep.”

“That stopped after the first day, long enough for her to focus all her resources there, leaving me with jackshit surveillance on the rest of the city. Surveillance you could have helped me with,” he added, switching his glare to me.

“I’m here now. I can surveil at will.”

“No, you can’t. The situation has escalated way too fast for that.” Brody pulled out an old-school paper map and spread it on the table. “Remember those three body dumps last week? We’ve had three more, only the subjects were alive. Stoned out of their minds and practically catatonic, but they were living, body parts and organs all intact.”

I scowled. “But their minds were gone,” I said, and he nodded.

“That’s our take on it. Blood tox was off the charts for the stuff we do check for, and there was a lot of crap swirling through them that we’ve never seen. A woman showed up at the secure hospital wing to help sort it out, some doctor, said she worked with Armaeus Bertrand. So now I want to know how he plays into all this.”

Brody wasn’t the only one. I lifted my brows. “Dr. Margaret Sells?”

“Sounds right.” He shuffled through his notes. “Yup. She’s taking samples and promising to find answers, but more to the point, she gave the subjects a booster that seems to have gotten them over the worst of it. They’re not shambling zombies anymore, at least. They’re staying in bed and breathing without oxygen. She thinks they’ll wake up later this week, but hard to say.”

“Where were the dumps?”

Brody angled the map toward me, indicating three new dots. “Another triangle, so at least the bastard is consistent.

I frowned. “It’s a Star of David now. Intentional?”

“It’s too exact not to be.” He nodded. “I don’t know why, though. Obvious answer is this Gamon character is Jewish, but since no one has any info on him, that’s tough to confirm. He’s not on Interpol or any watch lists. It’s like he’s a ghost.”

“A ghost who’s decided to haunt Vegas.”

“Yep. Since these weren’t deaths, and they were mostly internationals, definitely not locals, it’s not getting a lot of play. But the trend isn’t a good one. We keep getting bodies turning up, someone’s going to notice. This hits the media, everyone will be up in arms, from Homeland Security on down. Last thing we need is panic on the Strip.”

“Any of the local Connecteds talking?” Nikki asked, her hands wrapped around her coffee cup. “Seems they’d notice who was entering their space.”

“The ones Dixie has identified as dark practitioners—go by the name of Spinners, looks like—they’ve gone to ground, totally silent. The ones she thinks are simply Connecteds using drugs are also staying quiet, but mainly because I don’t think they know anything. The ones who
aren’t
using are complaining of panic attacks, fear, and the sudden drop-off of their Connected abilities, same as we’ve been tracking before.” He grimaced. “One good thing, they’re attributing the falloff to the new players in the city, not to something changing internally. Dixie thinks that’ll help convince most of them not to try augmentation or drugs to get back their mojo.”

“Small blessings,” Nikki muttered. “Have their abilities dropped below where they were before the burst?”

“Negative. It’s simply that the heady results of the last two weeks are apparently a thing of the past. A backlash is going to come, but if they’re currently blaming an outside agency for their troubles, it keeps ’em quiet for the time being.”

“Right.” I peered at him. “How about you and Dixie? Any difference?”

“Dixie says no. As for me?” He shrugged. “I didn’t really notice much of an uptick to begin with, other than what I could see.” He flapped his hand. “That crazygram circus of casinos hunkered over the Strip. And that remains bright as day to my eyes, so I think I’m good.” He slanted me a glance. “Dixie still says you’re the reason why we haven’t been affected. Anyone you have in your inner circle isn’t dropping in abilities. She’s been hunting for the exception to that rule, but hasn’t found it yet.”

I let that go for the moment. “So we’ve got dealers hitting the city, body dumps, and a spike in demand for augmentation. Your sources say anything about a big supply coming in?” I asked instead. “Technoceuticals, traditional street drugs, anything like that?”