Vegas Run

by Rachel A Brune

  Even more than her words, the tone hidden in her voice signaled something had happened, something had gone wrong, and if I counted her a friend, I would be there yesterday. I checked the date and time of the message. It had been left a few days ago. What the hell day was it today?

  Karen's number was programmed into the first position on my speed dial. (Look it up on Wikipedia, smartphone generation.) I pressed the key and waited for the dial tone to begin. The phone picked up on the other end, and my mouth went dry. What the hell should I say?

  It wasn't her, though, but her voicemail.

  "Karen, it's Rick. I'm on my way."

  Guess I was going to Vegas.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Over a century on this planet, and more than fifty years working for a secret strategic organization, and not once had my travels ever taken me to Sin City. Hollywood owed me one, with all their visions of secret agents tearing around the strip in fancy cars.

  I landed in Vegas at high noon, seated on the wrong side of the plane for anything like a good view as we came in for a landing. When I came out into the sun, blinking against the glare, the heat punched me in the face with the force of a fiery furnace. Hell. Las Vegas was hell. And I had landed smack dab in the middle of it.

  My theory about MONIKER tracking my movements proved to be correct. Although, once I called Karen from a known cell phone, I'd basically broadcast my whereabouts to all the world. She met me at the arrivals gate when I hopped off the plane.

  I looked and felt like crap, but Karen–I barely recognized her. She had lost weight, and not in the way you're thinking–this is the kind of weight you lose when you're under too much stress and not enough nutrition–the kind of weight loss I had to make up for every month after the Change.

  I scented her halfway down the corridor–her rosemary-and-rain scent mingling with another, indefinable marker. She waited for me at the end of the security gate, holding up a sign that said: "Keller." Guess we weren't operating with fancy code names or shit.

  The woman standing next to her drew my notice before I even laid eyes on her. She smelled of chocolate and cinnamon, with a subtle, bitter aftertaste to the scent that rolled around like copper on my tongue. She stood behind Karen, slightly to her right, and she towered over me–about the same height as Karen. Tension ran through every sinew of her body, although she projected a calm, cool demeanor outwardly. If an active shooter situation broke out, she would be the one to respond immediately and put it down–or be the one perpetrating it.

  "Rick."

  "Karen." I nodded. "Like the sign."

  She ignored me, turning to her friend. "Calix, this is Rick. He's an asshole, but a friend."

  That's me in a nutshell. I went to make some wisecrack, but the tension I'd heard in her voice on my phone hummed off her in person. She vibrated, like the edge of a knife when it landed in its target. I did not want to be said target. "Sounded pretty bad on the phone. Why don't we walk and talk?"

  "Fine by me." She shrugged and turned, tossing the sign in a garbage can as we headed out of the airport.

  Calix barely acknowledged the introduction. She fell into step beside Karen, a few inches apart, but close enough to confirm a suspicion that had begun to grow as I'd made my way toward them. By the way their scents mingled and danced with each other, I might as well tuck any last remnants of the torch I'd been carrying far away.

  Figures. I'd never had a chance with Karen's grandmother when we were at O.S.S. together; stood to reason history would go ahead and repeat itself.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Karen drove well, but she had a lead foot. Calix sat shotgun–fine with me because I preferred the center back seat. They had put the roof of the Mustang convertible up–great for security, but I struggled to breathe, dying in the heat.

  "Are you … panting?" Calix turned and glared, even as Karen cornered the vehicle.

  "I'm not used to the heat." Understatement of the year. Hell, I missed the snow already and I'd grown sick of snow.

  I waited for her to keep the conversation going, but she wasn't one for small talk, either.

  "Up here?" Karen didn't have to elaborate.

  "Yep." Calix nodded. They had one of those couple moments where something unspoken passes between two people. Ugh. Please.

  Yeah, I hear you asking, but Rick, what's the matter, you're trapped in a car with two good-looking women? Well, first, at least one of those women is completely capable of kicking my ass. Repeatedly. And the second one, I'm willing to bet, is just as proficient.

  Second, here's the thing with wolf nature. When someone mingles their scent with another person, it's game off. I could sit and be disappointed about it all day long, but anything Karen and I–mostly I–might have once thought about having was gone. And Karen and Calix had mingled their scents pretty well.

  I wasn't sure if Karen had explained me to her friend, past the asshole part which, by the way, was and is completely true. If not, I looked forward to finding out how this new person reacted to surprises. Heh.

  "Hang on, we're almost there." With a squeal of the tires, Karen brought us in to a spot I'm pretty sure didn't actually count as a parking space.

  The building we parked outside seemed pretty normal. Only when you walked around to the front did you realize the hotel opened onto Fremont Street. I had never been there, and I hope never to go back. The sights and sounds of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people bowled me over in a riptide of humanity.

  From the flashing of various signs and lights, to the smoke ripping through my senses, and the constant aural barrage, I started to lose some calm. The change perked up, feeling the stress, flexing its claws at a possible opportunity to surface. I clenched my fists until my nails bit deep into my palms.

  "We have to hurry." Karen led the way into one of the hotels, threading a path through the crowd with ease. Calix followed her. The people almost instinctively stepped back from the two Amazons, subconsciously giving them their proper respect. Then they stepped forward, and I had to fight my way through just to keep up.

  I stopped. Something reached my nose. Something that remembered blood and copper, but tasted old, like a stack of Buffalo pennies. Then it disappeared, and I realized I'd turned in a wrong direction, so hurried to catch up.

  The women waited for me by the elevator.

  "What the hell is going on?" It came out more forceful than I intended, but the claustrophobia had started to close in. Wolves and enclosed spaces and crowds–not a good mixture. And the old people smell. Jesus.

  "I'll explain when we get up there." The elevator dinged, and Karen held the door. Two more patrons attempted to follow me on. She held up a hand. "Get the next one." They didn't even argue.

  My stomach growled. I needed to eat again. I'd hoped we would stop for food, as the flight attendants had served us exactly one cookie and one cup of coffee. I hadn't wanted to spend cash on the in-flight menu, out of principle. And so now I kept getting distracted because I couldn't stop smelling buffet.

  The elevator stopped at the very top floor, and we got out.

  "This is the penthouse," I said, in my starring role as Captain Obvious. "How did we get up here?"

  Karen ignored the question. "Follow me." The floor was deserted, just a hallway with three double-doors past the elevators. "We don't have a lot of time, but the agency was able to pull some strings to get us in here before they sent in the cleaners."

  I tried to pretend I understood, but got stuck on "agency" and "cleaners." Karen bent over the locking mechanism for the center set of doors and worked some kind of magic. The lock light flashed green and clicked. She pushed it open, just a crack, then laid her hand on Calix's forearm. "You going to be okay?"

  Calix nodded. "Let's get this done."

  Karen opened the door the whole way and beckoned me in. I had smelled the blood all the way from the elevator.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The room beyond stood empty; the dried stains painting the décor had
faded to a dry, dingy hue. I stopped at the door and looked back at the two of them.

  "This would be easier if I were furry."

  Karen and Calix exchanged glances. Karen shrugged. "Go for it."

  Okay, then. I started stripping down.

  "Whoa, wait, what the hell?" Calix demanded.

  "Just wait." Karen put an arm around her waist. "Watch."

  Honestly? Watch? I'm not a fucking circus freak. The change, which had been circling, waiting for a moment to rear up, fed my anger.

  "Rick. We're going to be working together. This is the best way."

  I hesitated.

  "And, you owe me."

  Karen was right. I owed her big time from our trip overseas. On the other hand, if she and MONIKER hadn't fucked me over, I wouldn't have been in a situation to need her to get me out of it in the first place. So, there was that…

  In the end, I simply shucked my clothes, tossed them to the side, and allowed the change to roll back in on me. By the time I'd achieved total furry, I didn't really care anymore what Karen and her girlfriend thought or did. Instead, my nose led me to the room of death and violence, now uncanny in its shroud of silence.

  I closed my eyes, letting the change subside now that I had acquiesced to it. It left me in a state of heightened awareness, more than just the signals my senses could sniff out, but with a seventh sense which performed some kind of calculus, making all the sensory feedback more than the sum of their parts.

  Here in the hallway, here is where trouble began. Three men entered. Their boots left scuff marks on the perfect parquet floor. Their weapons had been newly oiled, fully loaded. One of them chewed a piece of salt licorice.

  They faced off across the room. Another man, this one older, who indulged in expensive cologne. Old man sat in a comfortable chair, flanked by two women much his junior in age.

  Ranged around the room–more flunkies, all of them armed. More women, all of them not.

  Pausing in my information intake, I opened my eyes, trotting around the room. There were other scents there. Latex and plastic, metal and starch. The dark plastic of zippered bags. The responders had carefully criss-crossed the aftermath, teasing out their own version of what had happened. I concentrated, and those tracks faded. No sense in getting distracted.

  By the front of the door, I could sense rather than see Karen and Calix getting restless. They shifted stances, moving their balance from foot to foot without losing their alertness. I wasn't sure who they expected to try something, but in any case, time to figure out the rest of this puzzle.

  Ah. Found it. Over in the corner. Almost an afterthought. Certainly, those who responded to the scene wouldn't have spent much time over it.

  You've seen this scene before, in Hollywood or Grade B straight-to-video flicks. The gangster and his archrival face off. They each bring plenty of guns to the showdown. They trade barbs and insults, and the situation escalates until one person pulls his weapon.

  Then, the bullets start to fly. The main gangster might get hit right away and go down, or maybe he just gets winged as his henchmen return fire.

  The intruding gangsters spray the room with automatic fire. They don't bother to take cover, relying instead on their rapid-fire shooting. A few members of the home team take aim and let them have it. They duck and cover, shooting back and forth, deafening everyone in the room and painting the walls with blood.

  And then, of course, there are the obligatory shots of half-naked–or all-naked, depending on whether this is network TV or Cinemax–women. They're there as arm candy, or serving up nose candy, or whatever. And when the bullets start to fly, they are the least prepared of any in the room. They run, but the flying rounds cut them down. The camera captures the moment, but then rapidly pans back to the men, to the main action.

  In this show, the main gangster–remember him? He only got winged in this scenario, and so he crawls under cover of fire toward a back corner of the room.

  He finds a young woman, a beautiful, young waitress who smells of cinnamon and chocolate, cowering behind a bookcase. The gangster doesn't know who she is–just someone there to serve drinks. He pulls her in front of him, shoving her from her hiding place, pushing her toward the rounds.

  It doesn't matter. The intruders shoot them both, and the rounds pierce right through their bodies and deep into the wall behind them.

  Yeah, I've seen this movie, too. In it, someone is going to find the bad gangsters and make them pay, but there's no question who the main characters are. Those men with the guns, who take the lives of everyone in the room–even those who were, by any standards, innocent.

  Karen's hand on my back brought me back to myself. I caught myself standing, four legs splayed, growling at the spot behind the bookcase. I let her calm me, stroking my back. Her touch lay on me like a livewire, but its intensity soothed me.

  Reaching out for the change, I slipped back into human form, stepping into my pants Karen held out to me.

  Calix had come up behind us. She, too, stared at the spot behind the bookcase.

  "Your sister?" It was a guess, but the scent tasted familiar.

  "Yes." She gave no sign she had witnessed a werewolf getting naked and doing his thing. Made of stern stuff. "She and I were very different. She loved Vegas."

  "Younger sister?"

  "No. Twin." Calix's hand drifted to her side. It gave the impression she was used to being armed. She and Karen were a well-matched pair. Both were tall, Amazonian. Carried themselves with a military posture indicating they knew their way around the business ends of a wide variety of weaponry. While Karen was a green-eyed brunette, Calix reminded me of the Asian women I'd met in the former Soviet republics, although her skin had a darker hue.

  With the flight and energy drain of changing twice, I was about to implode from hunger. "Karen, I'm not sure what you want, but I need to eat."

  "Of course you do." She tossed me a shirt. "Get dressed. You got the scene in your nose?"

  Now I was offended. I had this scene stuck permanently in all my senses. Still, my head and arms were fumbling around with my shirt, so she couldn't see my offended face. I mumbled an assent.

  "Good. We'll eat, and then you help with what we brought you here for."

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Karen, always good for her word, took me to a place far from both Downtown Las Vegas and the strip. I was about to go crazy and sink my teeth into the next asshole who walked by smoking weed. That shit burns my nose and blinds me to everything. They served large burgers for cheap. I ordered two, and then ordered two more. The grease in the joint lay thick on everything, and I suspected my digestive system was going to have no plumbing issues in the next day or so.

  Finally, I swallowed, pushed the plate away, and belched. Rude, yes. Satisfying? Also, yes.

  "So, how long have you two been together?"

  Calix started, but Karen only rolled her eyes.

  "Long enough to nunya." She ate a fry.

  "Nunya?"

  "None ya business."

  I used both middle fingers to show her what I thought of her joke. She rewarded me with a ghost of a grin. What the hell was going on? "You still with MONIKER?"

  "Yes. And no." She shrugged. "It's complicated."

  "Jesus Christ." I debated telling her what I'd heard from Randall–about the possible sighting of John Tell, and the subsequent possible connection between him and the Black Mountain murderers. But no, there were other issues at stake here.

  Speaking of steak, I really wanted another burger.

  "My sister, Arista, she was working at the hotel," Calix began. Guess she'd gotten tired of waiting for me to eat. What the hell was with their names, anyway? Parents play too many video games? "She was a waitress. Trying to be a showgirl." She paused, and Karen squeezed her hand. She pulled it away. "Last night, one of the whales was ambushed and killed in the penthouse. Arista was there."

  Calix shook, her fury boiling up inside her. I could feel it emanating in wav
es from her. And yet, it was barely perceptible to the human eye. I'm not, however, human. Mostly.

  "My sister did not carry a gun," Calix said. "She was not a slut. She was just trying to make a living, and nobody gives a shit that she's dead."

  There was something else going on here. Something Calix wasn't saying. Maybe something even Karen didn't know. I couldn't get at it, so I let it go.

  "The local LEO's have been giving us the runaround," Karen added. "Mostly, they're looking into the whale, trying to figure out who wanted him dead, focusing everything they have on his business and partners. Meanwhile, they don't give a shit about the girls who were there."

  I grunted. "They know who did it?"

  "You know how it is," Karen said. "They know. But they can't say. And frankly, the perps wore masks and used generic weaponry. They were smart. Knew how to cover their tracks." I could almost hear the teeth grinding in her jaws. "So, no, the cops can't tell us who did it, and even if they did, they can't make a single move on them."

  Grinning, I let a little of the change into my eyes. Tracking and hunting those who had betrayed and murdered innocents was my favorite task. Karen knew me well, knew as soon as I found out what she needed, I would be more than willing to deliver. And if I did, perhaps we could work a little quid pro quo. Maybe she could help me tease out the links between MONIKER, Black Mountain, and Tell.

  "Maybe they can't." And now the change chomped at the bit, begging to be let loose. "But we can."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Karen had a good idea of where to start looking, thanks to a few well-placed contacts with the Vegas P.D. Still, they were less than specific, and less than willing to spend any more time than necessary, especially when they realized that–in this case anyway–she was working on behalf of the sister of one of the ancillary victims, and any help provided would be off the books and unlikely to be reciprocated.