by Tricia Owens
But tendril-guy clammed up, and I could understand why. He had dozens of people around him, any of whom could sell him out if it came down to it.
"Tymon, come with us," Samara ordered, pointing at tendril-guy. "The rest of you stop using your damn magick. You're going to get us all killed."
This time there was audible grumbling as the four of us left the room, making me concerned that Samara didn't possess the control over them that she believed she did. I kept glancing back as we traversed the weird industrial hall, just in case someone decided to shut us all up in order to keep the group safe.
Samara ushered us into another room, this one with windows that overlooked the street. This shouldn't have been possible since the house was located at the backend of the duplex, but again, this was magick and anything went.
Samara immediately unleashed on tendril-guy. "What the hell are you hiding, Tymon?"
"I didn't want them all to hear the truth," he snapped back, his chin appendages wagging animatedly. "They're already scared enough as it is."
"What's the truth?" I asked him.
But he narrowed his eyes at me. "I know who you are. That idiotic disguise was a waste of time. I bet I'm not the only one who knows, either. Once you leave here, dragon, you'd better run fast and far."
I stepped up in his face, which wasn't easy, sort of like leaning in close to a plate full of worms that smelled like the ocean.
"If you know who I am then you're aware that I'm not going to accept any B.S. from you. Tell me what you know."
"Why? So you can turn me in to your masters?"
I smiled without humor. "Believe it or not, I'm not a big fan of what happened to my city. In fact, I'm sorta pissed. I want to hold someone accountable. Someone like the Oddsmakers."
"They'll destroy you," Tymon warned.
"They'll try. They won't succeed. I'm a dragon." I liked using it as a threat. It was sort of like claiming I was invincible. There were so few dragons in the world that everyone else just sort of accepted whatever you claimed about them. Dragons can manipulate time? No way! Dragons can grow large enough to swallow the Earth? Wicked!
Score one for ignorance.
"I was there," Tymon began, warily. Reluctantly. "On Fremont Street when they attacked O'Malley's. I saw them biting people. Tearing the place apart. Trying to get at the big cash display they have there. The million dollar one. I remember thinking: why do these creatures need money?" He looked between Vale and me. "But they weren't after the money. They were after the Rift seal." He nodded his head, tendrils flapping. "I know all about the Rift. I knew they were trying to open it. So I tried to stop them."
He paused then, obviously thinking that now would be the moment when I turned him over to the Oddsmakers. He'd just admitted to trying to interfere with their plans. But I only stared at him, tense with impatience for him to continue.
"It's no easy thing fighting Hell hounds. I nearly died that night." His tendrils curled toward his lips and then flapped forward as if exhausted. "Only one thing saved me: one of those hounds shifted forms."
I shared a quick look with Vale, who did a better job than I did at hiding what he felt.
"He couldn't shift all the way. He was a mess—part hound, part wolf, part, I don't know what. I could tell he was in agony. But he shifted long enough to speak to me as the hounds were bearing down on me."
I licked my lips anxiously. "What did he say?"
"He said, 'I will end them. Not you. I will end us before they come.'" Tymon released a long breath. "But he didn't say it like that. It was hard to understand him. His voice was barely human, and he spoke haltingly like the words were difficult."
"Or like he naturally spoke broken English?" I asked.
"That's it. But then, that's not surprising, is it? Wolf shifters are all Eastern European." Tymon shook his head and sort of slumped. "He said one last thing before he shifted back and began fighting against the others. He said, 'Tina,' and then I just ran, because all hell broke loose then. It was the most awful sound of fighting I've ever heard. I hope I never hear it again. Though with the way things are looking, I'm not so hopeful."
"Tina," I repeated as I vibrated with excitement.
Vale gave me a hard look, warning me not to say anything. I pinched my lips shut as he addressed Samara.
"We're going now unless you know of anything helpful to add?"
"Helpful for what? What are you doing, V? Is she right and you think you're going to take on the Oddsmakers? You've lost your damn mind if that's the case." She grabbed his arm and sidled up to him. "Stay here. I'm protecting this place with my bats. No one can sense us here. We can stay here forever."
"No," he said gently as he peeled her hand off his arm "you can't. The Oddsmakers must be stopped."
"Goddammit, V, you're out of your—"
Hundreds of tiny creatures blew down the door, bursting into the room and smashing through the front windows. I screamed and batted them away. Someone—Vale—caught my wrists to stop me.
"They're hers!" he shouted at me. "Samara's!"
I heard Samara screaming with anger and then I heard another sound beneath the flapping of hundreds of tiny, magicked bat wings: the thunder of feet, driven by anger, fear, and righteousness.
"Get the dragon!"
"Stop her before she reports us to the Oddsmakers!"
The other denizens of the house had come to attack. They barreled down the hallway toward us, but Samara's bats gathered together in the room and then turned around like a flock of birds changing direction. They tunneled back the way they'd come, through the broken doorway and down the hall, smashing into the oncoming horde.
I heard shouts and cursing, the smacking of fists against the bats. But I also felt magick and sorcery building in the hall, ready to unleash the moment someone caught sight of me. Tymon was on the floor where he'd fallen after the bat explosion. Samara had moved to the doorway and stood there with fists on her hips, directing her bats in their attack. I grabbed Vale, who looked like he was considering helping her.
"We need to go," I told him.
He looked at me and nodded. Decisive boyfriends were the best.
I yanked him with me out the front window that the bats had helpfully smashed open. Jumping through led to us tumbling into the driveway at the back of the duplex. I didn't pause to try to understand the strange geometry. I yanked Vale with me and sprinted down the drive and out into the street, glass crunching beneath our feet.
~~~~~
"Tymon spoke to Lev," I said as Vale and I hunkered in the shadow of a darkened liquor store on Las Vegas Boulevard, four blocks from Samara's house. "Lev still possessed a consciousness, a will, even though he'd been forced to become a Hell hound."
"So it sounds," Vale agreed. He didn't sound enthused, though, and I didn't blame him. We may have learned that Lev had done his best to save other people from his pack, but we had no information that led us to believe that our friend had survived the encounter. If anything, the likelihood had increased that he was dead. How could Lev have held out against so many other Hell hounds?
"At least I'll have something to tell Celestina," I said softly as I stared at the pavement. "Something that shows how good he was, all the way to the end."
"There is that."
"I never thought I'd know death like this," I murmured. A heaviness settled on my shoulders, as though someone had draped a thick chain across them. "I'm twenty-four. People aren't supposed to die around me. I mean, sure, sometimes people lose friends in car accidents or freak accidents, but my friends are dying on a regular basis. First Zach and Rob. Then Echinacious. Now Lev…Who's next? It could be
anyone. It could have been all of them this afternoon. Jesus." I covered my face with my hands. "I honestly don't know if there's going to be anyone left to save by the end of this."
I felt him squat down beside me. His arm replaced the chain across my shoulder, but it didn't weigh me down, it pulled me in against him. I leaned against him gratefully.
"Even if you're the last one standing, promise me you won't give up," he said against the top of my head. His arm tightened. "Promise me, Moody."
"I don't want to be the last one standing. There'd be no point."
"I said promise me," he snapped angrily.
I was shocked enough that I couldn't say anything. It struck me then what his love for me really entailed. Nothing and no one mattered in this world more to him than me. He valued my life over his, even though he was the Gargoyle Prince. Even though he had the capacity to live for centuries longer.
I'd only been loved that way by my parents and Uncle James. For someone outside my family to feel that way for me was humbling, and it had me questioning whether I felt the same for him.
It was a question quickly answered: of course I did. My friends and Uncle James were my family, of course, and my love for them would never diminish. But Vale was different. Vale was going to be the reason I kept fighting even if my soul was ripped from my chest. Vale was going to be the reason the Oddsmakers failed.
"I promise," I told him, and turned to hold him. I sensed that he needed it more than me, that I'd scared him a little. I regretted that.
I urged us both to stand up. "Alright. Enough of this depressing stuff."
I pressed my lips to his and smiled as he eagerly kissed me back. He guided me backward until I could lean against the side of the building. Then he curled around me, enclosing me in the protection of his body, as he showed me how much he had missed me since we were picked up by the government.
I wasn't shy. I loved every inch of him, and I proved it by making sure I got in plenty of good squeezes. We were beginning to grow hot and heavy, his hips pushing against me, when I heard the sound of something flapping overhead.
I didn't want to end our kiss, but only a fool kept going when you had company. I tilted my head back, expecting to see one of Samara's small bats.
It wasn't a bat. A little yellow canary hovered overhead.
"Oh, my god." I pushed Vale back a little and pointed up at the bird. "I know who that is."
It chirped at us and then flew over the top of the building.
"Come on!" I yanked Vale with me around the building as I tried to keep track of the canary. Fortunately, it hadn't just flown off; it was on the other side, waiting for us. Once it saw that we were following, the canary began to fly down the alley.
"She's leading us somewhere."
Vale immediately picked up that the canary was a shifter. "Do you trust her?" he asked me as he cast a quick, cautious look about us. The Strip was mostly dark, lit up only where the construction crews were at work repairing the road. No tourists or cars were in sight. Without open businesses and lighting, the Strip was a prime place to be robbed and the wise kept away from it.
I squeezed his hand. "I trust her enough to want to see where she's taking us."
I didn't tell him that the last time I'd seen this little bird, we'd come up with a plan together which I'd then ditched in favor of my own.
I hoped she didn't hold a grudge.
Chapter 9
It wasn't fun jogging the entire length of the Strip. The whole thing was something like four miles and I was hardly a fitness fanatic. Hell, I could barely do twenty squats before my legs felt like rubber. But funny how facing the end of the world and the possibility of my friends and family members dying in gruesome ways gave me the energy to run for as long and as hard as I needed to.
It still didn't feel good. By the time the canary stopped flying and perched on a ledge on the backside of the Cromwell Casino, I was ready to dial 911 and report a heart attack in progress. I collapsed against a wall and smeared my sweatiness against it while Vale, breathing hard but looking annoyingly fine with it, walked a few feet more to peer around the corner of the building.
I was watching him, so I noticed when he stiffened and jerked back slightly, enough that he could hide behind the building as he again peeked around.
"Don't tell me," I panted. "It's something horrible that will crush my hopes."
"That's kind of par for the course these days," he murmured, still looking out.
"That's good. I'm not a fan of surprises. Predictable doom I can handle." With a groan, I forced myself off the wall and hobbled over to join him. He switched places with me so I could remain concealed as I peeked out.
What I saw, however, didn't make much sense to me. "What the hell is going on?"
"Look closely, Moody."
I frowned. I thought I'd been doing that. But I focused on one of the construction workers who was working in the street in apparent darkness along with twenty or so other workers. The guy wore a reflective vest, but nothing else made sense. He wore ratty tennis shoes and ill-fitting jeans. Both looked like they had been stolen from someone much larger than he. His head was bare, which I knew was a safety code violation, but I cared less about reporting him to DOT and more about the fact that I recognized him.
"Holy guacamole," I choked out. "It's him! The jerk-off alpha of Lev's pack. The guy who helped set up Raker!"
"Yes, it is. Now look at the others."
I quickly looked them over. The other men were also dressed shabbily and strangely—one guy wore too-tight khakis with Birkenstocks—but more importantly, they were also members of the Black Die pack.
"Oh, god," I whispered to myself as I frantically searched faces and builds for the one who mattered most. "Oh, please, please, please…"
Vale stroked my back. "Easy, Moody."
But I couldn't do 'easy.' Not while there was a chance that Lev was alive and among them. To my distress, though, I didn't see him. But there were lots of men on the street, and many I couldn't see clearly because of the darkness. He could be out there.
"Why are they working in the dark?" I wondered aloud. "And why do they look like they raided Goodwill?"
"Camouflage," Vale suggested. "So they won't stand out under casual scrutiny."
I turned my head to look back at him. "What do you think they're doing?"
He hesitated and then replied, "I think they're providing security so some kind of magick can work on the Rift damage."
It made no sense to me, yet Vale seemed to be right. A darker form that I had initially taken to be a shadow cast by the shifters appeared to be crawling slowly atop the cracked edges of the Rift chasm. Multiple, slinky arms reached out from the mass to touch the broken asphalt. At those points of contact, the faintest blue glow arose as the arms applied magick. When the arms lifted to move elsewhere, they left seamless asphalt in their wake.
"Look, Moody." Vale pointed. "There are more shifters across the street at Bellagio. They're repairing damage to the wall around the fountains."
His vision was clearly better than mine. It took me a couple of minutes to make out the dark shapes, and I only did so because they were clustered around more faint blue light created by shadowy arms.
I rolled back around the corner and put my back against the building. "They're repairing everything, not just the Rift. The buildings and structures, too. Why would they do that? Suddenly the Oddsmakers feel guilty and want to clean up the mess that they made while they were trying to take over the world?"
"Their actions have nothing to do with guilt. There's a purpose to this that benefits them."
Of course there was. The Oddsmakers would never regret their actions. Hell, they were already deep in preparations for their next mysterious attack. What was happening now with the wolf shifters had to be a part of that. But how? In what way?
A chirp made me raise my head. The little canary flew from the ledge and across Flamingo Road. It landed on the Plexiglas wall of the one pedestrian bridge that hadn't collapsed into the street. The bird sat directly in the middle of the intersection, near the mysterious magickal construction occurring below it.
"I think she wants us to get closer," I said. "I'll call it right now: this has the potential to get ugly. If one of those wolves catches sight of us…oh, man. It's not the fi
ght I'm worried about but fending them off without killing them. Especially if Lev is one of them."
"I'll go in my gargoyle form. It's smaller and has a better chance of remaining undetected."
I didn't like the idea of him going out there on his own, but it was the smartest move. He quickly stripped and I bundled up his clothes. Then, in a blink, his gargoyle form stood before me. It launched quietly into the air, flew a loop behind the Cromwell to build up speed, and then glided past me and across the street, smoothly coasting onto the pedestrian bridge. None of the wolf shifters twitched. They were too focused on whatever was happening on the ground.
Waiting around wasn't thrilling, but I wasn't about to put Vale at risk by giving in to my impatience and sneaking out there. I was glad, then, when I saw the canary lift off the bridge and fly a wide looping route that brought her back to me without drawing attention to the direction that she'd taken.
The bird landed on the sidewalk square beside me.
"Are you going to shift?" I asked it. "Should I turn around?"
The bird chirped, which I took as assent, so I turned my back, giving her privacy since she would be shifting into her naked human form.
"Do you see what they're doing?" she asked me.
The sound of her voice startled me even though I'd been waiting to hear it. "Yeah, what are they doing?"
"No one knows. They've been doing this since sunset. There are more workers in other places. The road around Mandalay is completely repaired. Monsters did that, not the wolf shifters. Other creatures slipped inside the casino and aquarium and made repairs there, too."
My mind spun. "What in the world are they doing?"
"Some say the Oddsmakers are trying to make amends."
"Yeah, right," I said sarcastically. "And I'm this year's Playmate of the Year."
"Others say the Oddsmakers are afraid that they went too far and have realized that the damage they caused is drawing too much attention."
"And magickally fixing everything overnight is somehow better? Ordinary people are going to be even more shocked when they see these repairs."
