I stepped into the incredibly dark room only a few feet behind the others, taking up the rear to make sure we weren’t followed by teenage mutant nympho-turtles; I wasn’t super eager to turn my back on the threesome, but I suddenly felt the desperate need to wash my hands. And maybe my brain. Was it possible to scrub your brain clean? I cringed as I moved forward. Now that I’d changed back into my normal clothes and was moving around, I could practically feel the dirt clinging to my body, and it made even the simplest movements aggravating. Between that and the burning sensation in my gut from the last drink I’d taken, I was too busy fussing to realize the others had stopped. I bumped into Callie, and the Gateway snapped shut, leaving the room in total darkness.
“Watch it,” Callie said, cursing while the Reds giggled like schoolgirls. They’d decided to stay in their leather outfits, which had begun to creak as they walked. Before I could tell them to pipe down, however, Othello held up a light attached to her briefcase.
“Where d’ye hide that this whole time?” I asked, frowning.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Othello said, sticking out her tongue. “I’ll tell you, but it’s worth…” she trailed off, scrunching her nose as if she were trying to do advanced calculus in her head. “Ummm…a fuckload of Rubles,” she finally said. She let out an eruptive snort of laughter. The extra drinks must have brought her to our level, I realized. I wondered if she was drunk enough to give me a peek of what all lay inside the briefcase—fancy gadgets from Grimm Tech, if I had to guess. Fancy, expensive gadgets. The kind warlords pay a lot for.
I tried to glower at her, but she was being too goofy, so I let it go. When Othello answered questions with another question, it usually meant I was never going to get a straight answer, no matter how many Rubles were involved. “Fine,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Where are we?” Aria asked, drawing our attention to our surroundings. Beneath the glow of Othello’s flashlight, steel gleamed. Steel, and something else, something that glistened under a heavy tarp. Gold. Thick gold bricks piled waist high in the center of the room. I took a long, slow look around. Bank vault. We were in a fucking bank vault.
“Callie…” I said, her name echoing in the tiny space. “I t’ink ye need to work on your aim.”
Callie glared at me. “Backseat Gateway driver.”
“That’s enough, ladies. You’re both pretty,” Othello said. She grinned and shined the flashlight at us. “Let’s just go before we get caught.”
“Oh, it feels so good…” Sonia whispered reverently.
“So good,” Aria echoed as if on the verge of climax, causing all three of us to turn.
The two young women were rubbing themselves up against the stack of gold like cats rolling in catnip, sliding their hands up and down the metal bars in a very erotic fashion. It was excessively carnal, and vaguely masturbatory, given the gold couldn’t touch them back. And yet, the gold didn’t seem entirely unaffected. As I watched, the metal seemed to brighten, gaining more luster with each caress. Any other time, I would have been weirded out enough to demand an explanation, but I was too focused on the room itself to do so. Have you ever accidentally wandered onto someone’s property without realizing it? No trespassing sign to warn you away, and yet you know you don’t belong? That’s how this vault felt. It sent shivers up my spine.
“Get a room, for Christ’s sakes,” I said, finally. “Or better yet, knock it off. We have to go.”
Simultaneously, the two shifters snatched at the bars, yanking one apiece off the platform and cradling it to their chests like children refusing to give up their teddy bears. “Ours!” they cried in unison.
And that’s when the alarms went off.
The sound was a claxon scream that pealed through the room. The decibel level was so high that it made my eyes water and my chest ache, like when you stand next to a subwoofer at a rock concert. Lights came on in the vault, showing all of us cradling our ears, though the Reds did so by pressing one ear to their shoulder and a hand to the other; they still held the bars.
“Put those down! We need to run!” Callie yelled. She held out a hand and another Gateway appeared, only this time it did so in a shower of angry, violent white sparks, much larger than the other one had been. White flame licked the edges of the portal, wild enough that I was suddenly glad to be surrounded by so much steel—adding arson to our growing list of felonies sounded like a bad idea. I stared at the flames for a moment longer than I should have, too entranced to move, body listing to the left unconsciously before I stumbled and caught myself.
Damn I was drunk.
“Never!” Aria was shouting. She’d clutched her bar of gold to her gut like a fullback and was running past us through the portal at full speed, followed quickly by her sister. Othello, laughing wildly ever since the alarms began going off, trailed by only a few feet. I glanced over at Callie, then down at the mask in my hands, which I’d forgotten to discard. Donatello’s hollow eyes stared up at me, his goofy grin leering and strange.
Fuck it.
If we were going to rob a bank, I might as well have a mask.
Callie threw her hands up anxiously as I slid the plastic disguise over my face. “Why do you get a mask and I don’t?” she asked.
I flashed her a hang loose sign and cackled. She responded with sign language of her own, and then together we followed our entourage, bursting through yet another physics-defying hole in space…
Onto a harshly lit stage of a live concert performance. Tens of thousands of concert-goers were singing, dancing, and repetitively chanting a name. Beaver something. Johnson Beaver, that was it. Son of a bitch, that douche again?
“Alright, now I t’ink your doin’ it on purpose,” I yelled at Callie’s back, but my words were lost in the clamor of the crowd. We’d kept running, the Reds a good ten feet in front of us, trying our best not to lose them. The Gateway closed, mercifully out of sight behind a curtain on the far side of the stage, and the alarm bells—audible even over the roar of the crowd— stopped clanging.
“Am not!” Callie snapped, sounding a little embarrassed. So she had heard me.
Then Othello, whose run had turned into something of a skip, bumped into one of the speakers. It was taller than her and fell amidst a shower of sparks. Since there were about a dozen more, the show continued, but it drew unwanted attention. Rather than stop to assess the situation or apologize, Othello scrambled to her feet and continued after the Reds who were now passing the center of the stage.
Where they found Beaver himself. To his credit, he didn’t stop singing, although his eyes did widen in surprise the moment he saw the two redheads barreling towards him wearing skimpy leather outfits and caked in dirt. He seemed to take it in stride—scantily clad women were probably part of his show, after all—at least until he saw us. His mouth turned down, and I knew he recognized us.
Despite being well and truly drunk, I tried to think of how we appeared in his eyes: two mud-covered redheads in hardcore leather lingerie clutching gold bars and sprinting as if their lives depended on it, followed by three women who’d verbally threatened him in a public place not a few hours before. Not good, I decided. Definitely not good.
Apparently Beaver’s security team agreed, because they were now rushing towards us from the way we’d come, resulting in an almost comical Scooby Doo chase montage. Still, if we hurried we could make it to the other side, I knew, before they caught up to us. That was, of course, until Sonia dropped her precious gold bar not three feet in front of Beaver. I groaned and, before I could think about what I was doing, dropped to one knee and slid across the stage, planning to scoop the damn thing up and make our escape.
And maybe, just maybe, survive the night.
Chapter 14 — Callie Penrose, Vegas
I sprinted past Johnson Beaver, flashing him a sultry grin in hopes that a quick smile would distract him long enough for us to make it across the stage. Sonia was just ahead of me, so when she dropped her bar
of gold it almost crushed my foot. I leapt instinctively, flinging out a hand to slam my palm into Sonia’s back since she was trying to stop so she could retrieve her treasure. “Keep going!” I snapped. “If security catches us, none of it will matter!” Sonia snarled savagely, pouring on the heat. I glanced over my shoulder to see Othello had hopped over the golden bar without concern.
She was too busy waving animatedly at the crowd.
But my heart skipped a beat, and I almost tripped when I saw Quinn—her face concealed by a Donatello mask—sliding across the stage like she was stealing a base in a company’s drunken softball tournament. She skated on her side—thankfully no longer wearing lingerie, which would have hurt like a motherfucker—with one hand reaching for the gold bar, and the other stiff-arming towards Johnson Beaver, who was leaning down as if intending to scoop up the gold.
Her extended arm hit him like a battering ram, folding him in half, her balled fist colliding with his groin. Beaver managed to squeal a very unmanly sound into his microphone before dropping it and falling backwards into another speaker. Quinn retrieved the microphone on reflex as she climbed to her feet, gold bar in her other hand, and the music cut off.
The crowd was silent as she stared down at it for a moment, her red hair poking out of the mask in all directions. Then she looked out at them and held the microphone to the place where her lips would have been beneath the mask. “Turtle Power,” she said, before extending the microphone, straightening her arm.
And dropping the mic.
She didn’t wait for a response, merely resumed her sprint after us. I hadn’t realized I had slowed, or that Othello had sprinted past me to catch up to the Reds. I matched pace with Quinn and we exited stage left, cackling like a gaggle of crazy bitches.
We were far from safe, but at least we no longer had thirty-thousand witnesses for the prosecution to call.
I focused intently as I skidded up to Othello and the Reds, finding the magic easier to call now that my blood was up. I ripped open a Gateway, the adrenaline rush making my magic flare wildly. The Reds made as if to jump through, but I held out a hand to stop them, and got a palm full of weredragon boob for my effort. I poked my head through the Gateway to see a hotel room, blessedly vacant.
“Okay, hurry! Before security catches up to us!”
We jumped through the Gateway. I immediately let the Gateway wink out and let out a long, exhausted sigh before collapsing onto one of the beds, panting and laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.
“One out of four,” I giggled. “Could have been worse.” I still wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol that had affected my Gateway destinations, or just me not paying as much attention as I should have. Either way, it had finally worked. We were safe. As I lay on the bed, my head resting in someone’s lap, I realized the room was spinning slightly. I flung up my hand to instinctively flip my hair and suddenly began cursing.
“Damn it! My extension is gone!”
“We know, Callie,” Othello said with a resigned chuckle. “You’ve mentioned that three times already, tonight.”
“Oh…” I said, frowning. “Well, it’s still a travesty,” I muttered.
Chapter 15 — Quinn MacKenna, Vegas
I took off my mask, tossing it to the floor, and patted Callie’s head, which had conspicuously ended up in my lap. “Vanity, thy name is Callie Penrose,” I teased. Othello grunted and rolled over, upending Aria and sending her careening off the bed with a thunk. Her gold bar never left her arms. I glanced down, realizing the gold bar I’d retrieved had mysteriously disappeared, only to find Sonia rubbing it against her face.
“What the hell is their deal?” I asked, baffled.
Othello waved a hand. “Weredragons. They can’t help it. Gold is like crack to them. But here, Callie, I have something for you.”
“A present?” Callie asked, hopeful, though she didn’t seem inclined to move. Not for the first time, I wondered what the side effects of using magic were. Were there physical consequences? Before I could ask, Othello popped open her briefcase, reached inside, and withdrew a hair straightener.
“I don’t know if I have enough hair to need that,” Callie said, drily.
Othello rolled her eyes. “Well fine, then I guess I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how to stimulate hair growth magically, and I’ll just take this back home with me…”
Callie sat up so fast she almost clocked me in the face with her forehead. “Wait, what does it do?”
Othello grinned. “The science would fry all your puny Freaky brains, so let’s just say it’ll make your hair grow as long as you want it to be. Just use it like you would a flat iron and run each strand down as long as you want it to go.”
Callie reached out and cradled the hair straightener in her hands as if she were holding the Holy Grail. In a way, I suppose she was. Inventions like that could revolutionize the hair industry. “I don’t know what to say,” Callie said, sounding choked up.
Othello laughed and plumped her hair with one hand. “Don’t worry about it, I’ve got two more at home.” She snapped the briefcase shut and I found myself wondering, yet again, what else lay inside. Callie curled around her newest accessory and practically purred, which meant we had three women fondling objects at this point. After a few seconds of silence, I began to hear snores drifting up from the ground where Aria lay. Sonia was next, then Callie.
“Oy, Othello,” I whispered, deciding to go for it. “What else d’ye have in there?”
Othello’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Nothing.”
“Aw, come on. Tell me!” I insisted. “Or was that all ye had and you’re afraid to admit it?”
Othello sniffed. “Please, what I have in here could take out a whole wing of this hotel, if I wanted it to.”
“Likely story,” I said, grinning, sensing my opening. Othello was a genius, but she had her flaws: like wanting to prove how brilliant she was whenever possible. Honestly, I doubted she’d have bothered around normal people, but around Freaks with insane abilities she could never hope to gain herself? Well, let’s just say she’d finally found some worthy competition.
“The Galvinator would drop you like a—” Othello began, hackles rising.
But just then there was a knock at the door.
Othello and I exchanged startled looks. No one should have known we were in here. Hell, we didn’t even know where we were. A hotel room, sure, but which hotel? Which floor? I slid off the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb Callie, who’d begun stroking her hair straightener in her sleep, and padded towards the door.
Another series of knocks sounded, though louder and more insistent. I waited for the telltale cry of “housekeeping,” wondering if we’d be forced to wake Callie up and move rooms, but it never came. Instead, a rough baritone echoed from the other side of the door in a snarl, the man’s accent so thick it made my own sound tame by comparison. “C’mon now, ladies, I know you’re in thurr. Open up and let’s have us a wee chat, alright?”
I frowned and glanced back at Othello, who’d reached into her briefcase once more, still rosy-cheeked, but grim. “Do it,” she whispered.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about our only weapon being a device that could destroy half the hotel, but I trusted Othello to make sure we didn’t all end up dead. I considered waking the girls up, but at this point the five of us were too messed up to make sound judgment calls—assuming the Reds ever were. If I shook them awake and said we had company, it was entirely possible they’d end up running again, or shifting into dragons. I shook my head, chasing away the image of twin red dragons descending on the crowds along the strip, and opened the door to an empty hallway.
“Down here, ye damn giant of a woman,” the man said, startling me. I lowered my gaze to stare down at the man in shock. He wore green the way some people wear black, in layers so thick his body was swaddled in shades of emerald. He was also bald with brown eyes and a grizzly ginger beard the color of ripe mandarins. He bowed a little, th
ough he never took his eyes of my face. “Pleased to meet ye,” he said.
“And who the hell are ye?” I asked, my own accent flaring as if our voices were two flames meeting up in the middle.
His eyebrows shot up. “Don’t tell me our gold was swiped by one of our own? No self-respectin’ Irish woman would do such a t’ing.”
I frowned down at him. “Ye didn’t answer me question.”
He ducked his head. “Aye, you’re right about that. The name is Paddy. Paddy McKnob. And ye are?”
“Quinn,” I replied. “Quinn MacKenna.” I wasn’t sure why I told him my full name, except that he’d offered his, absurd though it sounded. I wasn’t exactly rude by nature, after all; people just typically rubbed me the wrong way.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said, with another slight bow. “So, now that we have the formalities out o’ the way, can ye tell me why ye stole our gold?”
“Your gold?” I asked, emphasizing the word.
“Aye, ‘tis ours. The Little People’s.”
My mouth hung open. I couldn’t help it. “Wait, ye mean the Little People? Like, leprechauns?”
He shot me a dirty look. “Didn’t anyone ever teach ye not to call us that? I don’t care if ye are Irish, I won’t tolerate ye usin’ a racial slur to demean me fine race.”
I held a hand to my mouth to stop myself from giggling, and glanced back at Othello, who shrugged. “Alright, so why are ye here again, Paddy?” I asked.
“That’s Mr. McKnob to ye, young lady. And I’m here for our gold.”
“What makes ye t’ink we have it?” I asked, coyly.
Paddy grunted and withdrew a tablet from his jacket pocket, the device comically large in his hands. He tapped it a couple times and held it up for me to see. There, in black and white video, was the vault. I watched with a bird’s eye view as we entered through Callie’s Gateway, piddled around in the dark, and eventually realized where we were. There was no sound on the video, but the instant the alarms went off, I cringed, remembering the awful noise they’d made.
Last Call: A TempleVerse Anthology Book 1 (TempleVerse Anthologies) Page 6
