Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

by Carrie Vaughn

  Like the foyer, the living room was rich without being decadent: a pair of brown leather sofas around a mahogany coffee table formed the room’s centerpiece. In the corner was a fully stocked bar. Dom probably held parties here. Windows along one wall looked out over the Strip. The view was incredible. Ma, I can see Paris from here. . . Well, fake Vegas Paris.

  Dom, as it turned out, made a pretty good martini. We enjoyed the drinks, admired the view, then settled back on the sofas.

  “This your first time in Vegas?” Dom asked. I said yes, Ben said no but didn’t elaborate. Dom said, “There’s no other town like it in the world. I just love it.”

  That made me warm to him. I’d met only a couple of Masters in my time. The good ones loved their cities. They had to want to protect their cities, if they were going to be anything but tyrants.

  I took the note out of my purse. “Rick wanted me to give this to you.”

  Dom waved me off. “No-no-no, do it official. ‘I carry greetings from Ricardo, Master of Denver,’ et cetera.”

  “Ah. You’re old-school.”

  He chuckled. “I have to admit, there are things I miss about the old days.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me, then. I’m kinda punk about the whole thing.”

  “Not even a little ceremony? Didn’t Ricky say anything besides, ‘Here, give him this’?”

  Ricky? “I’m not his lackey.”

  “You sure about that?”

  I handed him the note. “Here.”

  Glancing at me as he opened the envelope, he still looked like he was chuckling to himself at my expense. It didn’t take him long to read the letter.

  He tossed it on the coffee table when he’d finished. “I’d never have guessed that Rick would finally settle down with his own city. And you helped him, I take it? That’s why he wanted me to meet you, look you over?”

  Ben and I perched at the edge of our sofa, side by side, tense and ready to run. I didn’t know how to read Dom at all. The only thing I could do was trust that Rick knew this guy, and he wouldn’t have asked me to come here if he was dangerous.

  “He seemed to think it would be good for me to have a contact here. But I’m sure you’ve got much better things to do with your time, and we really ought to be—”

  “No, this is no trouble. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  Vampires. Huh.

  He looked away, leaning back against the sofa, changing his posture from eager and forward to back and relaxed. It was wolf body language, a gesture of peace rather than aggression. It made me—my wolfish instincts—feel a little better.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “We don’t have werewolves in Vegas. I sometimes forget how to deal with them. I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”

  I wasn’t going to admit that I was nervous at all, so I didn’t say anything.

  He continued. “This, Rick sending you here, it’s all about gossip. Rumor. We all talk to each other. Maybe not very often, but it doesn’t have to be very often. If I can make noise on Rick’s behalf, tell the others that yes, he’s in charge, and a couple of strong alphas are in charge of the wolves there, other elements will be less likely to make a move on Denver.”

  “I had a feeling it was something like that.”

  “Maybe our boy’s finally growing up, settling down,” he said.

  “Growing up? He’s five hundred years old.”

  “He tell you that?”

  “Yeah. Sort of.”

  “Well. Being old and growing up are two different things.”

  “Where’d you meet him?” I asked. “How long have you known him?” I’d had a hard time getting stories about Rick’s past from Rick himself. Dom made it sound like they’d known each other for a long time. Since Rick claimed to have known Coronado, that might have been a really long time.

  “That’s always a tricky question with people like us.”

  “I know. But one of these days I’m going to get a straight answer out of one of you guys.”

  “San Francisco, 1850,” he said. Well then. Straight answer. Unfortunately, that opened a whole new set of questions, and I doubted he was going to give me anything else.

  But I had to try. “There for the gold rush? You want to tell me about that?”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  I had a feeling it wasn’t that he didn’t want to answer. He just liked messing with me. Not that I ever let that stop me with anyone else. “You feel like coming on my show for an interview?”

  “As a vampire? As Master of Vegas?” He chuckled. “This may be the one place in the world I can never go out in daylight and no one notices. I’m not ready to tell the world what I am, and I think you’ve got serious balls for doing it yourself.”

  That was sort of a compliment. At least, I was going to take it as one. “It never hurts to ask. You’ll let me know if you change your mind?” I said hopefully.

  Dom shifted his attention to Ben, who had been sitting quietly, watching us like we were on TV. “So, Ben. You always let her do all the talking?”

  He gave a wolfish smile. “Always. She’s a professional.”

  Dom laughed, and I was less nervous. Still wasn’t sure I trusted him, but I did believe that he and Rick were friends, and that was something.

  “Dom, Rick says you’ve been here since the start, back when all the Mob money started pouring in.”

  “You got one straight answer, you expect me to give you more now?”

  I scooted forward, to the edge of my seat. “What’s the dirt on Frank Sinatra? What about Elvis? Did you ever meet JFK?”

  “What makes you think I have any more dirt on those guys than has come out in the dozens of books and all that have been written on them?”

  “Because all those books were written before anybody was willing to publicly acknowledge the existence of vampires.”

  He chuckled. “What? You think any of those people were associated with our world? You want me to maybe tell you that Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullets were silver?”

  I almost chuckled along with him, then I stopped. My jaw dropped. “What? Holy shit—”

  “Just kidding,” he said, making a calming gesture. Then he winked. “Maybe.”

  He could deny it all he wanted, it still took a while for my heart to stop racing. The implications were mind-blowing. I’d mused about what would happen if a lycanthrope ever managed to get elected president. But it begged the question, didn’t it: had one already? Oh, God, the research involved: cross-referencing public appearances with phases of the moon, whether or not the White House silver was ever used for state dinners, who had survived assassination attempts. . . And it would still be all circumstantial.

  It would be so much easier if he would just tell me.

  “See, that’s the kind of dirt I’m looking for,” I said. “And if you would just maybe come on the show for a little chat—”

  His smile was thin. “No. Sorry.”

  Darn. I pouted.

  We didn’t stay much longer. Long enough to finish the drinks without gulping them. A gracious host, Dom walked us back to the elevators. He gave us his cell phone number and insisted that we call him if we needed anything or had any trouble. Dom turned out to be a decent guy, as vampires went, but I really hoped we didn’t run into the kind of trouble where we’d need to call him.

  I did find one more question before we reached the elevators. “Why doesn’t Las Vegas have any lycanthropes?”

  “Ah, I didn’t say there weren’t any lycanthropes. I said there weren’t any werewolves. I think the wolves don’t settle down here because it’s too urban, and the desert outside the city isn’t the greatest place for them. But Las Vegas has lycanthropes.”

  “Where? I’ve been looking. I’ve seen plenty of vampires, but no lycanthropes.”

  “You been to the Hanging Gardens yet? Big joint a few blocks down on the Strip, the one that looks like a temple.”

  I’d seen it, another hulking fantasy edifice s
himmering like a mirage among all the other giant resorts. I hadn’t paid it much attention. I said, “Not yet.”

  “There’s an animal act there. One of these magic-show spectacles with trained tigers and leopards doing tricks. Those guys are the closest thing Vegas has to a pack of anything.”

  I needed a couple of moments to put two and two together on that one. I still resisted the implication. Carefully, I said, “So lycanthropes are running the show—”

  Dom shook his head, and my eyes widened.

  “You mean to tell me there’s a performing troupe of tigers and leopards who are actually people?” He just smiled.

  Lycanthropes performing onstage in their animal guises. I was totally going to have to check that out. Right now. The idea—it was crazy. They’d have to shape-shift every night. They’d have to control themselves enough to remember their routines. I didn’t think it was possible. And could I convince one of them to come on my show to explain the whole thing by tomorrow?

  Ben shook his head. “I’ve heard of a lot of crazy stuff in Vegas, but that tops everything.”

  “You don’t believe me, go see for yourself,” Dom said. Almost like a challenge.

  Ben was right; it was crazy. Which meant of course I was going to have to check it out.

  “Yeah, maybe we’ll do that. Thanks for the tip,” I said. Ben was already edging toward the door. “You know, you could come to the show anyway. Just to watch. I won’t drag you onstage, I promise.”

  “I’d love to see you try to drag me onstage,” he said, with just a hint of a menacing glint in his eye. The phrase “sleep with the fishes” popped into my head suddenly.

  Dom once again wished us a happy stay, then we were in the elevator.

  As soon as the doors closed, both of us let out sighs.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” I said, trying to sound positive.

  Ben said, “Do you think he was serious? About lycanthropes performing in that show? I can’t even imagine.”

  Shifting was terrifying, painful, horrifying. Doing it every day, suffering through that—I had to agree with Ben. I couldn’t imagine it.

  “It’d be easy enough to find out,” I said. “Go to the show and smell them out.”

  “Right now?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t take much more today. And this was still only the first day here. “Tomorrow, first thing.”

  “This is like work,” he said. “This is like networking and making sales calls. I started my own practice so I wouldn’t have to do this sort of thing in a law firm.”

  “If I had known we were going to have to do this sort of thing when we took over the pack and helped Rick, I’d have left town.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.” He smiled and tucked his arm around my shoulders to give me a hug. I leaned against him and, taking in his warmth, let myself relax for the first time in an hour. “Now, if I’m not mistaken, your next appointment is in our room.”

  We gave the tourists in the lobby a thrill when the elevator doors opened and Ben and I were locked in an embrace, kissing, oblivious.

  Now I felt like I was on vacation.

  Chapter 7

  My phone rang early—at least, nine a.m. was early when I wanted to sleep in later. I came awake slowly, not wanting to move. Ben had put his arm around me and nestled close in his sleep. We’d had such a nice night.

  I answered and spoke briefly to the publicity manager at the Diablo’s theater. Odysseus Grant would speak to me this afternoon for a brief interview. That was my foot in the door; I only needed a chance to meet him so I could talk him into coming on my show. My gig was late enough he could join me after his own performance. Normally, having a magic show on the radio would be ridiculous, but I was going to have an audience, live and on TV. This would be cool. If I could get him to come on.

  In the meantime, I had a couple of hours to visit the Hanging Gardens and track down this animal act.

  Ben turned out to be curious about the mysterious Hanging Gardens as well. “There’s no animal act full of lycanthropes. Dom’s pulling our leg,” he said. “Just like with that crack about Lee Harvey Oswald.” I was inclined to agree with him.

  Ben wanted to have breakfast at the Olympus, but I talked him into going someplace else—and away from the gun show, which was now in full swing heading into the weekend. I’d avoided any more run-ins with Boris and Sylvia, and I wanted to keep it that way. I was still glancing over my shoulder too much. So, after a nice meal at a lovely café—at the hotel next door to the Olympus—we headed to the Hanging Gardens on foot.

  As the name implied, the Hanging Gardens Resort looked like an ancient Babylonian ziggurat. Tiered steps made of gray stone, or concrete made to look like stone, climbed to an impossible height. I had to crane my neck to see the top. Apparently, at night a flaming beacon lit at the top of the pyramidal structure was visible for miles. Every level of the building was lined with the windows of guest rooms and drenched with foliage: palm trees, flowering shrubs, vines, and ferns, crawling in a riot as if over some jungle ruin. Phenomenal. According to the brochure, the resort’s property included several swimming pools and lagoons that continued the theme of exotic Mesopotamia. Palm trees swarmed around the whole thing.

  A low wall, painted blue, surrounded the property. On it, in relief, marched a row of lions—a replica of the walls of the Ishtar Gate from the ancient city of Babylon. Two stone Babylonian lions, stylized and stern of brow, stood guard at the entrance to the hotel. If they wanted guests to think they were entering another world, they were doing a good job.

  Resisting the impulse to stop and gawk was hard. I didn’t want to look too much like a tourist, but it was all so. . . big. The lobby opened into a huge atrium filled with vegetation. The walls dripped with glass and green. The balconies of more rooms overlooked the interior. Beyond it, like a gateway to an ancient temple, a doorway led to a chaos of lights and noise—the casino. Everyone around us seemed to be headed there.

  Standing there I felt odd, even more odd than I had since arriving in Vegas. Everywhere here, the air was off—too many people, too much civilization. With all this artificial wizardry, piped air, piped water, piped everything, this was as far from wilderness as a person could possibly get. But here, there was something else.

  Side by side, our backs tense, our noses testing the air, Ben and I stood where the atrium branched to various parts of the resort.

  “You okay?” Ben asked, his voice soft. As if anyone could overhear us in this racket.

  “I don’t know. You?”

  “Does it smell funny to you? Not bad, just funny.” His nose wrinkled.

  Curling my arm around his, we headed to the hall where a sign labeled “Theater” pointed.

  A large poster on the wall here stopped us. The picture showed a stage framed by huge fake columns designed to evoke some ancient civilization. They were decorated with hieroglyphs. A painted backdrop displayed ziggurats and sphinxes, and torches spewed flame in the foreground. Perched imperiously on various risers and platforms, a dozen big felines stared at the camera: a few tigers, one white and the rest orange; a male lion with a dark, shaggy mane; a pair of snow leopards; and a pair of black panthers. This must be the animal show.

  Among the big cats stood a man, very handsome, with dark, wavy hair and a square jaw. He went shirtless and wore black leather pants, very tight, that didn’t leave much to the imagination. His muscular chest seemed to be dotted with glitter. He stood with his hands on his hips, presenting his creatures and his show: Balthasar, King of Beasts.

  The scale in the picture was off. The animals seemed. . . wrong. The wrong size, compared to the trainer standing front and center. They had the wrong look in their eyes. Like they knew too much. Something. It might have just been the camera angle, some kind of forced perspective on the stage, or a bad Photoshop job.

  Ben studied the poster over my shoulder. “I’m not buying it,” he said but didn’t sound convinced. “Those aren’t really—�
�

  I pursed my lips. “But that would explain that smell, that weird feeling we’ve had since we walked in here.”

  “Like we’re walking into someone else’s territory?”

  “Yeah. That one,” I said.

  The lycanthrope smell: the distinctive human/animal, skin/fur combination. No matter how clean the place was kept, a hotel featuring an animal show would smell a little bit like animal. No one else would even be able to sense it.

  So, how about that? A Vegas animal act full of lycanthropes. That rated a slot on my show; I could make the space for that. Assuming Balthasar, King of Beasts, would talk to me.

  “This is even pushing my weirdness-tolerance level,” I said. “The only thing to do now is talk to Balthasar and ask him whose idea it was to put a bunch of were-tigers in an animal act.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? This is making me nervous.” He stepped back from the picture, leaned one way, then the other. “I think his eyes are following me. Doesn’t that guy creep you out?”

  I tilted my head and considered. “Actually, he’s kind of hot.”

  Ben huffed and stalked on without me.

  We found the theater box office another thirty paces down the hallway. The scent of lycanthrope grew stronger.

  The box office was open and staffed by a perky young woman. “Can I help you? We have a few seats left for tonight’s show.”

  “Actually, I have a few questions,” I said. I leaned on the counter in front of her while Ben paced a few steps away and pretended to be fascinated by what were probably the doors to the theater itself. I picked up a brochure from a stack. The front had the same picture as the placard at the end of the hall. Inside were more pictures: leopards jumping through flaming hoops, Balthasar putting his hand in the lion’s mouth, animals standing on one another’s backs in unlikely pyramids. Standard fare.

  But the lion was too small. And the leopards were too big.

  Lycanthropes transformed into animals—not monsters, not monstrous version of animals. Werewolves in wolf form looked like wolves, except for one thing: size. The law of conservation of mass held true. Werewolves turned into very large wolves, since a two-hundred-pound man becomes a two-hundred-pound wolf.