Wicked And Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 4 (31 page)

I grabbed my upper arm, surprised at how dizzy I was, and lunged for another weapon. Blades and guns littered the floor now, but I wanted no part of the blades. The nearest gun was empty, but the second one, a Glock still clutched in its owner’s grasp, proved a better fit. I spun around, looking for Soo and Gamon—and they were nowhere to be found.

I crab-walked through the battling ninjas and darted into the next room, then drew up short.

“Stand back, Gamon,” I shouted, leveling my gun.

Gamon was crouched over Soo, apparently strangling her. He was doing a good job from the looks of it. I shot him in the back, and he convulsed forward but didn’t drop. Kevlar vest, the bastard. The next shot missed his head only because he ducked. He fell to the side, his hood flopping down, and my eyes had trouble focusing for a second. Something was wrong about Gamon’s face, his mask. Something was terribly wrong.

“She doesn’t have long. Say your good-byes.” The voice was sharp, cutting, but no longer a gritty rasp. And it matched up with the face in a way I hadn’t expected, a way that seemed patently impossible, given all that I knew about Gamon, all that had happened, all the destruction, the slaves, the children—

Gamon was a woman.

A
woman
had orchestrated genocide on the youngest and most vulnerable of her own kind. A woman who now stared at me in fury, pride, and vindication, knowing what I saw, knowing the judgment I passed against her with one glance.

She spat her words at me. “You are weak and broken, like Soo,” she snarled. “She failed.”

“She’s not finished.” I squeezed off another bullet, and it caught Gamon in the arm, but I was already running forward as she bit out a curse in a language I didn’t know and didn’t care to know.

I braced myself for Gamon’s return shot, a magic exploding ball of doom, something, but at that moment, a voice loud enough to only be the result of a bullhorn bellowed from the room beyond. “Police! Drop your weapons!”

I skidded to my knees in front of Soo. I could already tell I was too late, though. Blood bubbled at her mouth, and her eyes were clouding over. Worse, she bled from the gut and the leg and the shoulder—killing slashes gushing too fast to stop.

“Annika!” I cried out, and I didn’t care where Gamon had gone, didn’t care if I was about to get knifed between the shoulder blades. “Annika, hang in there, hang in there. I can get help. I can get—”

“No.” Soo’s eyes refocused, and she blinked, registering my presence. “I knew you would come,” she whispered. “I knew you would come here to rescue or avenge.” Her smile was weak. “I’d hoped it would be the former.”

Armaeus!
I screamed in my head, but the Magician remained silent, content to leave me to my own battles when I needed him most. I crouched over Annika, smoothing her hair back, and I was reminded, forcibly, of the girl Rutya doing the same to me. The rhythmic, lulling cadence of comfort, of help, when no help or comfort would be good enough.

Annika seemed to know what I was doing as well, and the lines in her forehead diminished. Her voice, when it came, was stronger as well.

“We learned the bastard’s secret, didn’t we?” she said, her words rich with triumph. “Gamon, hiding behind that mask, that infernal hood. Now we know why. Now she will pay.”

I swallowed. “She will pay, Annika. I’ll find her and make her pay for everything she did. Every last child, every last life. Your people will be safe.” I gritted my teeth against the bile that rose in my throat. I’d seen children strapped to tables in the wake of the dark practitioners’ rapid escape. I’d seen hollowed-out corpses of men and women harvested for the spark of light they held within, the Connected abilities that made them special and unique…and then made them hunted, tortured, and killed. And not merely by one of their own, but by one who should have been ensuring the
survival
of the race she was systematically destroying. I gagged on the thought of it, unable to find words.

“You will find and you will kill her,” Soo said, her voice steady as her skin blanched and the blood at her mouth ran faster. The only thing keeping her alive was her own grit, I knew. The grit of her people, her family, her mother.

I winced. Her mother. Surely Soo wouldn’t roam Hell as her mother had for so long, waiting and hoping for the end of a chapter she’d not been able to finish herself. I wouldn’t let that happen, I couldn’t.

“I will destroy Gamon,” I gritted out. “The honor of your family will be kept. Your people will remain strong, and any that she has captured will be found and set free. I promise you that, Annika,” I said. “I won’t rest until it’s done.”

She swung her gaze to me, holding me tight in her thrall. There were people running around us, sounds, shouting, but I couldn’t hear anything but Soo’s voice. Her mother’s pendant still gleamed at her neck. And the marks of near strangulation were evident on her throat, but too high—as if Gamon had tried to remove the necklace but it had refused to be pulled over Soo’s head.

Now Soo reached up a shaking hand to her throat and pulled the necklace free with a gentle tug. It dropped easily in her hand, and she pressed it toward me. “Take this,” she said. “Take them both.”

I forced myself not to jerk back, my mind scrambling for other alternatives when I knew what she was asking. Knew but couldn’t accept it. “I’ll find your general, Soo. I’ll work with him as if he were you.”

“No.” Her smile acknowledged my feint and discarded it as quickly. “No general, no surrogate. You.”

Before I could protest, she continued. “You will take over for me, Sara Wilde. You will govern the House of Swords.”

“The what?” I didn’t know what she called her syndicate, but I’d never heard of the term House of Swords applied to it. House of Swords was Tarot, and Tarot was the province of the Council—and of ancient magic that dated back to the start of the world. Not a Chinese syndicate better known for bashing heads and making money than for the mystical practices of the arcane.

“The amulets are the key,” she murmured now, her voice growing threadier, less distinct. “Guard them,” she said. “Take them.”

She pressed the jade amulet into my hand, and its twin seemed to thump against my neck.

“Annika, no. You can’t leave me here. You have to explain, to stay, to heal, to do this yourself. I’m not you. I could never be you.”

I was babbling, but my words did little to stay the fluttering of Soo’s lashes as her gaze grew more distant, fixing on a far shore I could not see.

“You are not me,” she whispered. “You are meant for more, as I am meant to die here, victim and victor.” Her smile was triumphant, and then she convulsed, her entire body going tense. I felt the Connected ability surge within her as she gripped my hands, the amulet in our shared grasp growing impossibly warm.

My eyes flashed wide. “No!” I leaned forward as hands grabbed at my shoulders, prying me away from Soo. I shoved her amulet into my jeans pocket, then hunched into a ball.

“Sara, Sara!” Brody snapped, right in my ear. “These are EMTs, they can help. Let them help, Sara, let them—shit. We need another kit over here!” He shouted over my shoulder. “Sara, are you hurt?” His voice grew louder and firmer with each word. “There’s a lot of blood on you, honey. Are you hurt? Are you injured?”

I blinked up at him, holding on to his steady voice. Brody. Brody was here in this bloodbath, pulling me off Soo’s body, talking to me in his “I’m not frantic, I’m calm” patter as men with grim faces and quick hands bent over Soo to revive her, the blood on the floor testament to anyone that she would not be revived, could not be revived. She was lost to Gamon’s hand as her mother had been lost before her, to a woman who would stop at nothing to increase her power—even sacrificing the best and brightest of her own kind to further her aims. Soo had been lost—lost! In a war she had barely begun to fight.

“No!” I said, pulling away from Brody and back to Soo. I couldn’t see anything of her body except her feet. There were medics all around her, leaning in close, talking in urgent commands, while beyond, several of Soo’s people stood in clusters, hunched together, watching her silent form.

Watching her.

Watching me too, I realized.

Brody called for another EMT again, but I shook my head, getting to my feet. “It’s my arm. Graze wound. Not bad.”

“Sit down, miss.” A woman stood in front of me, her hand on my arm, her face steady as she took me aside. “Sit down and let me have a look at this. You’ve been shot. Even though it’s a graze, you’re losing blood. I’m of your House. You need to sit down. I will take care of you.”

Her eyes were the color of sea glass, and I stared at her, my mind filling with too many words. “What?” I managed. Had she said the word house? Was I hurt worse than I thought?

“Sit, miss.”

Obediently I sat, and the woman pushed off my hoodie, baring the short-sleeved T-shirt beneath that I still wore from the night before. The gunshot had taken a chunk of skin out of my arm. “You’re going to need stitches, but this should hold you for now,” the EMT said. “Blood loss will make you woozy. You need to be careful, not a lot of sudden movements.” She glanced to Brody, who remained looming over us. “She should go to the hospital.”

“She will,” he said, and I struggled not to make a face. I needed the Magician, not the hospital. He could heal me fast enough without stitches.

At the thought of Armaeus, my mouth tightened. “Who all is here? Any of Gamon’s men left? Any outsiders?”

Brody gave me a funny look. “What do you mean, are any left?”

“They’re dead, right? That’s her MO. No soldier left behind because they suicide rather than being taken.” Brody’s expression told me all I needed to know. “What about Soo’s people? How many killed?”

“We’re getting numbers. They held their own, but they were outnumbered. Six casualties so far, including maids and waitstaff.”

“They were all soldiers.” I shook my head. “No arrests, I suppose, since no bad guys left.”

“Detective Rooks.” One of the uniforms called Brody over, and he peeled away from me as the EMT finished up the last of her bandaging.

“What did you say to me, before, about a house?” I asked her.

She glanced at me quizzically. “You’ve been through a shock, miss,” she said with a gentle smile. “You should rest.”

“Okay, so you didn’t say ‘house’? I misheard you.”

She gave my uninjured arm a squeeze. “It’ll all make sense to you soon.”

She packed up her kit and left without saying more, and the pain manifested almost immediately, every blow, punch, and scrape making itself known on my body. I shrugged on my ripped hoodie as I heard my name again. I turned to see Brody gesturing me over. And knew from his face what he would say.

“They tried, but couldn’t revive her.” His words were quiet as the men and women surrounding Soo sat back, their faces set. I glanced up to the groups of people standing at the doorway, and shook my head.

There were no cries or lamentations, no shouts of anger or denial. The men and women of Soo’s entourage merely filed silently out of the room, their faces drawn but their movements precise, almost elegant. Beside me, Brody sighed. “There’ll be an autopsy, an investigation. This is going to get public quick. It’ll be a miracle if it’s not tied to the body dumps.”

I winced at his language, and he must have seen it. He reached out tentatively. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were close, you and Soo.”

“We…” I hesitated. We weren’t close, but that hadn’t seemed to matter to Soo in the end. She’d spoken as if her words hadn’t been some last-minute decision, but the natural conclusion to a determined end. I needed to understand that. I needed to understand a lot of things. “We had an arrangement,” I said. “I didn’t expect her to be attacked here.” Had Soo expected it? I suddenly wondered. Had she known Gamon had set this trap—and walked into it intentionally?

“Wasn’t a secret that she was in town,” Brody said, cutting across my thoughts. “In fact, nothing that the woman did had been a secret in the last seventy-two hours. We certainly knew when she was coming, when she landed, and where she was booked. Wouldn’t have taken much for Gamon to find out either. He’s going to be—”

“She,” I cut him off. “Gamon’s a woman.”

“A woman.” Brody frowned. “How is it we didn’t know that?”

“Because she worked very hard to ensure you didn’t. I saw her without her hood and mask, though. Definitely female. Disguised her voice with some kind of tool fastened to her mask, I think. I don’t know if her people knew it—everything I’ve ever heard is that she was a man. No question, though. She’s female. I got a decent look at her face too, if you want to set me up with a sketch artist.”

“Absolutely. Come down to the station after you’re done at the hospital. You want me to drive you there?”

“Not necessary. See what you can find out about Gamon and keep me posted. I gotta track down some other leads.”

“Not so fast,” Brody said. “That amulet around your neck, that’s new.”

I fingered the jade amulet. “Something I picked up the last time I was in Shanghai.”

“Yeah, well, there are ligature marks on Soo’s neck, but no necklace or chain or anything. You sure you didn’t pull that off her? If so, it’s evidence, Sara. Potentially important evidence.”

“Guaranteed no.” I frowned and turned back toward the body. “But if there’s an amulet somewhere here, I should have it, not the LVMPD.”

I stepped toward Soo, and Brody stopped me. “Don’t lie to me, Sara. I know you have it.”

I held out my arms wide. “Fine. Search me.”

Something flashed in his eyes, as quickly gone as there. “We find evidence that there’s a lost necklace and it proves important, you’re answering to me. This is going to get a lot bigger before it gets done. I can feel it.”

“Aren’t you glad you had your psychic intuition boosted, then?” I patted his arm, but all I wanted was to get out of there. I had too many questions that needed answering, and Brody couldn’t help me there.

“This isn’t over, Sara.”

“Never is,” I spoke my last words over my shoulder as I strode out into the main room.