Wicked And Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 4 (8 page)

They nodded. “When do you leave?” the woman asked.

I grimaced. I still needed to get the key out of the precinct house. “Tomorrow, the next day. Soon.”

“You’ll have your commission before sunrise. We need time to discuss.”

“Well, whatever you want, I need to be able to carry it with one hand, on the run if need be. Otherwise, no deal.”

She inclined her head. “Agreed. In payment, you may ask your questions about Hell.” She noted my hardening jaw. “If the additional compensation we offer when we decide upon the artifact is not satisfactory, we can negotiate an equitable price.”

“Fine.” Arrangements finalized, I didn’t waste any time. “You said a house full of rooms. Is it all indoors?”

“No,” the older man spoke. “It has open spaces as well, empty vistas if that is what you conjure for yourself. It’s a house of the mind as much as anything, and the mind is a dangerous place.”

“What sort of security is there? Any demon armies I need to know about? Three-headed dogs?”

The woman managed a grudging smile. “Nothing like that in the upper realms. The lower realms have a demon host or angelic host, depending on your viewpoint. You shouldn’t run into those.”

I frowned. “Why not?”

“Because you’re searching for artifacts placed in Hell by human hands. There’s only so far a living soul can go into Hell. To go farther, you need to either be dead or be granted immortality from within.” The man’s eyes had taken on a strange fervency. “The ultimate gift of the masters.”

Okeydokey.
It occurred to me that getting travel advice from crazy people was perhaps not my best bet. “Why is it so hard to get out?”

“You won’t want to leave.” The woman again. “The exits are not hidden if your eyes are clear and your mind focused. If you allow yourself to become clouded with that which
appears
to be real, however, you will lose your way.”

“Eh, that sounds easy enough to remember,” I said. “What am I missing? Why hasn’t anyone returned?” At their blank stares, I rolled my eyes. “You seriously mean to tell me that all I have to do is stay focused and I’m good?” Kreios had said much the same thing, but I refused to believe it. “Okay, what else do I need to know?”

They talked on then, but their answers had a clear pattern. Hell was deceptive and filled with misdirections. Hell was dangerous but not in any specific way. Hell required you to stay focused and solid or it would get the best of you. Like the ocean, it seemed, a mortal could fool Hell many times. But Hell only had to fool you once.

Either way, I felt better, and if the Spinners ended up paying me to pick up something in Hell when I was already down there, then all the better.

Eventually the cigars smoked down and the talk drifted to less interesting topics, allowing us to exit smoothly. With a promise to contact us by sunrise, the dark mages let us go.

“That wasn’t as bad as I expected,” I murmured as Nikki steered me through the crowd. It was thick enough that tourists were cheek to jowl, and she simply grunted in response until we got into the elevator. Then the universal Law of Elevator Silence was invoked, and we didn’t breathe easy until we exited into the cool desert night.

“It went about how I thought it would.” Nikki shrugged. “A little too easy, but we got ’em talking. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Accept whatever they offer, then plan on renegotiating. I don’t trust those guys.” She reached into her bra and pulled out her phone, flicking it on. “Now we just need a date with Detective Delish.”

Chapter Six

Detective Brody Rooks and I went back a long way, since my teen years playing find-the-missing-person for the Memphis Police Department ten years earlier. Our tag-team adventure had ended badly when my foster mother had been killed and I’d gone on the run, but recent events had pulled us back into each other’s orbit.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Brody’s orbit, but right now I needed him. I could afford to play nice. “Tell him to pick us up,” I said. “I don’t feel like walking all the way to the station.”

“Already on it,” Nikki said as we exited the Stratosphere. She jabbed out a text while I eyed the distant lights of the SLS Casino and the shadows in between. At this hour, the shadows outnumbered the working street lamps by a margin of five to one. “He’s not happy,” she said after a minute, “but he’s coming.”

Her phone rang and she grimaced. “Give me a sec.”

I retreated into the shadows, and Nikki strode forward, talking low and quick. Whoever it was on the phone didn’t seem to be a friend. I frowned. Who was she—

“You shouldn’t trust them, you know.”

I went rigid as the shadow beside me fluttered, the dark rasp of a voice as real and present as the knife against my neck. The chuckle accompanying my bracing body was soft as well. “No need to fight me, Sara Wilde. If I’d wanted you dead, you’d already be lying on the pavement.”

“Yeah, you and whose army?” I shot back. Because hey, I could throw pointless insults as well as anyone.

“You cannot trust the dark mages, low-level as they may be here. Nor the Council, but I suspect you already know that. You’re a pawn in a much larger game. Start making your own decisions, and you’ll see. It won’t go well for you.”

“Right.” I didn’t look to the side as a dark sedan drove up, causing Nikki to end her call, then turn and lean into the window, her mile-long legs on ample display.

“The detective in that car is going to give you enough to keep busy for a while—busy and in Las Vegas. Despite what Soo is paying you, I suggest you don’t go seeking out trouble when there’s enough of it already on your doorstep…and so much more to come.”

I grimaced. My trip to Hell must have been covered by CNN. “Look, I appreciate the warning for all that I’m not going to listen to it, but—”

I pivoted toward the shadow, knowing I was talking to dead air. The man had gone—disappeared. I squinted down the street, then up the wall, and caught a glimpse of a body scrambling over the roofline. Not enough to say definitively that it was my new best friend, or whatever he was, but enough that I thought so.

“Yo, dollface! Get over here. He wants a threesome.” I blinked as I refocused on Nikki, and realized she was waving her hand toward me. The few pedestrians on the street slowed as well, their eyes bugging wide as their phone cameras focused.

“Oh, Jesus.” I heard Brody’s irritated growl and the slap of his hand against the console. Instantly, his car lit up like a disco ball, and people scattered, roaches fleeing from the light. “You happy now?” he snapped. “Get in.”

Nikki grinned at me as I reached her, then opened the door. “We’re going to the police station! I’m so glad I did my nails.”

Unable to stifle my grin, I slid into the back of Brody’s sedan, Nikki right behind me.

Brody pulled back out into traffic, but he kept his gaze pinned to the rearview mirror, staring a little too curiously at me. “When did you get back in town?”

“Earlier today.”

“And you didn’t think to contact me?

“You’re not my mom.”

“We had an arrangement, Sara, remember? Things happen in the community, you’re supposed to tell me?”

I exchanged a glance with Nikki. She looked as surprised as I was. “Um…did something happen in the community?”

“Why else would you want to come to the station? And don’t tell me it’s because of that bullshit Nikki was trying to spin. You don’t give a shit about the evidence from the Rarity Show. That’s old news.”

“Well…maybe it could help with whatever is going on, actually.”

Brody snorted. “That’d not exactly match up with the kind of luck I’ve been having, sorry to say.” He stared at me again. “You really have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“I—”

Brody cut me off. “Last week’s search and rescue has yielded some unexpected complications,” he said. “I got cops all over the country with missing-kid cold cases emailing me. I got
parents
of said missing kids calling me night and day. And the case I caught today…”

He shook his head as his phone buzzed, and took the call, biting off terse commands as he navigated the streets of Vegas to the police station. Throwing the car in Park, he cut the engine and exited, still on the phone. Nikki and I piled out after him, following dutifully all the way into the building, down the hall, and into the evidence room. The sleepy-eyed attendant frowned at Brody as he finally clicked off his phone, but the detective’s snarl was convincing enough as he bit off the case number that apparently was attached to the Gold Show. “Specific item?” Brody snapped at me.

“Gold key, fancy. Baroque era most likely, about as long as my hand.” The hand that even now was slung into my hoodie pocket, palming Soo’s fake key.

The attendant nodded, then vanished through the storage room door. “Eyes only,” Brody ordered as his phone pinged again.

I winced, then gave him my most innocent look. “I will, um, need to touch it,” I said, glancing at the door where the attendant had disappeared. “Just to, you know.”

“Oh for Chrissakes.” Brody rolled his eyes. “You can
not
steal it, Sara.”

“I won’t! Jeez!”

The evidence clerk, now looking much more harried, emerged from the back with a baggie in a bin and slid them through the slot. I took them as Nikki leaned forward on the man’s ledge. “Honey, where
did
you get those horn-rims?” she cooed as I slid the bin along the table, eyeing the key. It was exactly as Soo had shown me, and as Brody watched, glowering, I slid it out of its baggie.

Brody’s phone jangled again as I touched the artifact.

The shock of connection lifted me off my toes, every hair on my skin standing straight up. I shook my head hard as Brody swung back to me. I tucked the fake key into the baggie and offered him a smile as I pocketed the real McCoy.

“Well?” he growled.

“False alarm,” I said, my tongue feeling singed. “Not Connected.” My gaze dropped from his face to his phone…and I froze. “What is that?”

He stiffened. “None of your—”

“Seriously. Stop.” I pulled the phone out of Brody’s hand before he could protest, my blood icing in my veins. The image on his phone displayed a section of a human arm lying on a grungy stretch of asphalt, the stump cut just below the elbow. But what I could still see… “Whose arm is that?”

Something in my voice made Brody go still as well.

“Part of the remains of some John Does left in a Dumpster over on Fifth. Call came in just before Nikki texted me.” He stared hard at me. “John Does who were kids, some of them. No heads or hands. What do you know?”

“Something. Maybe nothing.” I swallowed. “Can we…can we go look?”

Brody didn’t hesitate. “We can. There’s only one site so far. I hope it’s the last, but I’m not counting on it.”

And back we went through the station to Brody’s car, while Soo’s key made a quick change of residence from my hoodie pocket to Nikki’s bra. Her glance told me she could feel the power of the thing too, but hopefully not as strongly as I did.

The three of us remained silent on the short drive, but when Brody parked the car at the crime scene, he didn’t exit immediately. “Something else you should know. Both of you,” he said. “Over the last few days, we’ve been noticing an uptick in the drug trafficking community. Supply seems to be stepping up, which means demand is stepping up. If the traditional drugs are a problem, you can bet it’s because not everyone can afford the nontraditional grade.”

“Technoceutical junkies.”

“I’m thinking. Especially since the pulse of whatever mumbo-jumbo magic the Council let loose a few weeks ago is beginning to wear off from the psychic community. Dixie is dead sure that folks are going to want that replaced with something, and they may not be too picky on how they get it.”

We stepped out of the car, and I wrinkled my nose at the acrid stench. Not human remains, not anymore. But the garbage of three different greasy spoons in a one-block area, which was almost as bad.

“It smelled worse than this?” Nikki protested, taking in the scene. “This reek would cover a rotting T-rex.”

“Our prevailing thought is that the scent was different enough to make the restaurant workers go hunting, thinking that if it
was
a human body, there might be something worth stealing. When they found what they found, they decided to call. It’s over here.”

We crossed the police tape, and Brody badged us through under the pretext that we were civilian consultants. Nikki’s outlandish attire drew several hard stares, but those stopped when they got to her face. She was all cop now, surveying everything with a practiced eye. When we got to the bodies Brody nodded to the tech kneeling in all the filth. “You ready to move them?”

“Soon,” the man said, his face masked and his eyes covered with goggles. “Don’t touch anything.”

“We won’t. We only need a quick look under the tarp.”

The tech obliged, and I didn’t fight the urge to cover my mouth with my hand. Four bodies lay tumbled together amid the trash, white skinned and naked. Two large, two small enough to be teens. Their heads and feet had been removed, their hands and forearms as well. The one whose chest wall we could see had been disemboweled, the entire cavity cleaned out. But it was the arms of that person—female, based on what I could see of the corpse—that caught my attention and held it, a noose tightening around my neck. “What’s that?” I asked, my voice harsh. It was the arm I’d seen pictured on Brody’s phone.

Brody followed my finger. “We noticed that too. Looks like the edge of a tattoo. It’s the only one on any of the bodies.”

“The only one left anyway,” Nikki muttered.

He nodded. “We figure that’s why the arms were removed.”

“And the blood,” I managed over the bile rising in my throat. “Why isn’t there any blood around the bodies?”

“Cauterized at the sites of amputation,” the tech spoke up. “Professionally done. Amputation was after death as well, cuts down on the blood loss.”

“Humane motherfuckers,” Nikki said tightly. I found I was breathing shallowly, fighting the urge to retreat.

“Any idea of race?” I asked. “They’re light skinned, but that can mean a lot of things.”