Faery Moon

by P. R. Frost

  I think if I’d still worn the comb I would have seen a strange energy pattern follow his arm in both directions.

  “I . . . I . . .” Mickey blushed and looked down.

  “Ritual maze,” Gollum muttered and threw the directions back at Mickey. “What kind of magic did we just weave?”

  “The . . . the pattern will bind Lady Tess to the mission of rescuing the dancers from Faery,” he whispered.

  “What else?” Gollum pushed up his glasses and peered around us, examining each and every shadow minutely.

  “Nothing. I swear.”

  Gollum fixed his gaze firmly upon Mickey, glasses slipping, nothing between his eyes and his prey.

  I shuddered at the image of nonviolent Gollum unleashing his pent-up energy.

  “I wove protection for Lady Tess around the edges,” Mickey said after a long silence, as if compelled by Gollum.

  “Good. She needs it. She’s too reckless,” Gollum said, almost casually as he unfolded himself completely and got out of the car. “She’d complete the mission without the spell. She’s stubborn like that.”

  I took umbrage and started to spout a protest. There’s a difference between dedication and stubbornness. Not much, but a difference.

  “We appreciate the protection. Did you know she can’t get lost as long as Scrap is with her?”

  “I did. But don’t tell that, or the ritual route to Lady Lucia. You need some secrets to come out of this alive,” Mickey warned. “The Lady said to get you lost. Not how I was to go about it.”

  Gregbaum hangs out at this hotel. Is he involved in Lady Lucia picking this place for a meet up?

  Tess described Donovan’s little love token to me. If it does match Gregbaum’s pinky ring, then the two are connected in some way. Near twin rings of antique design and great value are no coincidence.

  I’m not going to comment on keeping Tess informed of where and when we are and which way is north. I’m good at that. Have to be to get around the chat room and other dimensions. I’ve got anchors all over the place that help me orient myself.

  Except for those awful moments in the Valley of Fire. The magnetics there screwed up every one of my senses and blocked access to my pole points. For a bit, I couldn’t even get back to the chat room.

  I think I’m going to squash all ideas about Tess going there. Can’t take a chance on either or both of us getting lost.

  Now let’s see what Lady Lucia has in store for us.

  “The hearse is clean, babe. A bit morose, but a great bit of atmosphere. This fake countessa has a wonderful sense for stage management Maybe she helped design the ‘Fairy Moon’ sets.”

  Chapter 21

  Las Vegas has no mosquitoes. Due to the dry climate, there are no stagnant pools of water for them to breed.

  WE APPROACHED THE HEARSE cautiously. I kept my senses open, listening to any sound behind our footfalls. My training at the Citadel had taught me not to stare at any one point for very long.

  “Keep your eyes moving. Memorize every detail and note things that have moved or change on the next pass,” I heard Sister Gert’s words in my mind.

  And I saw her off in a corner, shadowed by support pillars and classy cars.

  I shook my head. Looked again. She was gone. A figment of my imagination?

  I smell imp, Scrap said. His attention riveted toward the same corner. Gone now. Running away. They know we are here, but don’t want to say hello. How rude.

  An uneasy feeling crept up my spine.

  The driver’s side window of the hearse slid open an inch.

  “My orders say only the Warrior,” an androgynous voice said from the region of the driver’s seat. It could have come from a male tenor or a husky female alto. Either one had been darkened by smoke and harsh whiskey.

  “I bring my advisers or I don’t come,” I replied.

  A moment of silence. I got the feeling from the shape of the shadow within a shadow behind the glass that the driver consulted on a cell phone.

  “They may come.” A passenger door behind the driver opened by unseen hands. Or remote control.

  I was getting tired of the special effects.

  Gollum held the door open for me. I looked around carefully, making note of where Mickey had parked.

  A flicker of movement over by the elevator bank drew my gaze like a compass homing in on magnetic north. Fortitude flew a wide loop around the lot, just above the roofs of the parked cars. Breven Sancroix whistled sharply and held out his arm, like a falconer calling his bird.

  Junior stood beside him, tapping his foot. He and Fortitude exchanged a long silent gaze, like they communicated, excluding Breven, Fortitude’s Warrior. “We have to get out of here before someone sees us,” he hissed.

  “What?” Breven looked around hastily, eyes gliding right over us as if he didn’t notice a party of three and an imp hanging around a hearse.

  Junior assumed a more relaxed pose and disengaged his attention from Fortitude, and us. “Mom’s going to kill us if she doesn’t get in to see the show. She can’t get in without my pass.”

  How come they got tickets two nights running? He said pass, not tickets. That meant he had an important relationship to Gregbaum. And who was his mother? I thought he was an orphan. Or did Breven want the world to think Junior was an orphan to hide his parentage?

  A bright pop of intuition lit my mind. I thought I’d seen Gert. Breven admitted to a long-standing relationship with her.

  Could Junior be theirs? If so, why hide it?

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  The elevator came, and the two figures disappeared into its maw. Where had the third gone?

  No more time to puzzle on it. The driver tapped his steering wheel impatiently.

  I climbed into the hearse and sank onto wide red velvet seats, two and two facing each other. Real silk velvet, not upholstery velour. A single red rose rested in a gold vase attached to the panel between the windows. A magnum of champagne rested in an ice bucket on the console between the seats. A single crystal flute awaited the touch of wine. Real crystal, not the plastic Donovan provided in his limo.

  I inspected the label. It looked expensive. I don’t know wine. With single malt scotch, I could tell if I should be impressed.

  Gollum whistled silently and raised his eyebrows. His glasses nearly slid off his nose.

  Mickey reached for the glass. “We can share,” he said. He looked like he needed a drink.

  “No.” Gollum stayed his hand. “Rules of hospitality. Same here as in Faery. Once you accept food or drink from an otherworldly creature you are bound to them. By obligation or magic. Depends on the realm.”

  Mickey sat back, arms crossed. His eyes kept straying to the wine.

  We drove for over an hour. A dark partition separated us from the driver. Another from the long bed where a coffin could sit. Dark windows separated us from reality. The bright lights of the Strip disappeared quickly. So did ordinary streetlights. Traffic thinned to an occasional car coming form the other direction across a wide divide. Our speed felt freeway fast.

  I began feeling closed in, suffocated, as if the hearse was a coffin instead of the conveyance for one. And my stomach hurt.

  Gollum pulled my feet into his lap and placed the ice bucket against my inner thigh. “Might as well get some use out of it.” He grinned and began massaging my calves.

  I was too tense to appreciate how good his long fingers felt.

  “He’s taking us out into the desert. To dump us?” I tried to assess my resources. Could I walk out if we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of nowhere?

  That idea made the closed stuffiness of the hearse feel less confining, more protective.

  Maybe Scrap could whisk us through the chat room and back to civilization. If he’d recovered enough from transforming. He loves to fight, but the change process drains him terribly.

  “I doubt it. Lady Lucia sent the champagne and the rose as a peace offering,” Mickey said. He sat with
his back to the driver, facing me. “She only does that if she intends to let you live. Otherwise, why waste the money?”

  “To lull my suspicions. Scrap, can you get a bead on who or what is driving us?”

  Human. Male. Deliciously male in tight black leather and a snap brim cap. Good pecs under the jacket. He works out.

  I translated the important part. Scrap must be feeling back to normal if he bothered to size up the man’s attractive qualities.

  We fell into silence, not knowing if Lady Lucia had planted listening bugs or not.

  Eventually, a swath of light cut through the desert blackness.

  Looks like a town. Just a little place, tractor dealer, feed store, and a huge resort. Ooh, they have a pool with waterfalls and palm trees. Looks like an oasis.

  “Pinyon,” Mickey muttered without waiting for translation. Had he heard Scrap? “Fifty miles or so northeast of Vegas.”

  “Not far from the Valley of Fire,” I mused, imagining the local map in my head.

  “Side road fifteen miles behind us,” Mickey confirmed.

  “The resort is now the prime employer in this area,” Gollum chimed in. “Agriculture is drying up—along with the underground lake and artesian springs that water this entire area. They have to drill deeper every year and import more water from other sources to provide enough for the city. Less and less for the farms. I’ve read estimates that Vegas will run out of water in as little as fifty years. Other so-called experts estimate one hundred fifty. The city has instituted state-of-the-art recycling systems—the most advanced in the world—to forestall the inevitable. Either way, the city is floating on borrowed water.”

  Our hearse glided to a stop, and our doors opened. Again by remote control. I peered out before exiting.

  “We’re at the back entrance to the spa rather than the front door of the resort.”

  “The contessa doesn’t want to attract undue attention,” Gollum muttered. “Let’s see what the lady wants.” He climbed out first and reached back to help me. Like a fine gentleman. Someone in his past had drilled manners into him until they came naturally.

  I always felt like Donovan’s courtesies were forced. Just a second’s delay as if he had to pause and think about what he should do. Same way with his emotions. He had to think about what he was feeling, examine it from all angles, never truly understanding what was going on.

  As I stood, the lactose-intolerance-induced bloating released. Not pleasant.

  “Feel better?” Gollum grinned.

  “Actually I do. Not so much pressure on my injury.”

  Our driver remained inside and unseen by any but Scrap. The door into the spa opened, inviting us in. Again, untended by human hands.

  Scrap clung to my shoulder, stretching a bit, his nose twitching and his tail swishing across my back.

  I don’t like this place. Beneath the chlorine and antiseptic, it smells of blood. Human blood. He turned pink, and his talons pierced my top almost to my skin.

  Nothing downstairs but two massages, a blow job, and a pedicure that’s going to get kinky real fast. Wanna watch, babe? Scrap retracted his talons and flitted through the heavy fire door on the ground floor and back out again.

  His normal gray/green translucency returned. The blood was no threat to us.

  That didn’t mean I had to like it.

  “I vote we go upstairs,” I replied—the only other egress from the landing just inside the exterior door.

  You might learn something for when you finally decide to seduce Gollum. Not that he needs much seducing, dahling. If you know what I mean. Scrap waggled his unlit cigar at me.

  “Sounds like a party up there,” Gollum muttered. “Maybe we should look for an elevator.” He stared me in the eyes as if daring me to walk up those stairs.

  I glanced from him to the stairs and back again.

  Watch da birdie in da camera, babe. Scrap pointed to a miniscule red light at the first turn of the stairs.

  “I don’t want to get trapped in an enclosed box at the mercy of electronics and the whims of Murphy’s Law,” I told Gollum, gesturing slightly with my head toward the camera.

  He knew me well enough to catch on quickly and nodded. “Would you care to take the point?” He gestured me up the stair ahead of him. “We’ll watch your back.”

  “You’d better.” I jammed the comb back into my hair. Then I took my time, judging each step carefully, trying not to limp obviously or lean too heavily on the banister. If I showed any signs of weakness at this point, I made myself vulnerable.

  When I hurt, Scrap hurt. He might not be able to transform.

  True to his word, Gollum stayed one step below me. Close enough to give me a boost up if I needed it, or catch me if I fell.

  Mickey came behind him, turning around and around, keeping everything in sight at once.

  Eventually, we mastered the two sets of thirteen steps. I wondered who had a hand in designing that little bit of bad luck. The fire door stood propped wide open by a skull with the top hacked off raggedly and a black candle stub jammed inside. It gave off a creepy light, creating more shadows than it banished. It looked like real bone. I kept telling myself it had to be ceramic or good quality plastic. It just had to be. I refused to think about the possibility of it being a real skull, from a real human being.

  “Dramatic Halloween nonsense I can do without,” I muttered.

  “Effective atmosphere if you’re feeling vulnerable, though,” Gollum replied.

  “I’m feeling vulnerable,” Mickey whispered.

  “Don’t show it,” I hissed back.

  He shrugged his shoulders and settled his back before putting on a brave, and totally false, smile.

  I muttered something more and stepped across the threshold of the local lady vampire mob boss.

  I had a fleeting impression of sparse and graceful furniture in pale wood and muted upholstery with far too many bodies vying for the few seats. More bodies stood around in listless, muted conversation. Black candles—mostly in antique brass-and-silver candelabra rather than skulls—barely lit the room. High ceilings robbed the lower reaches of light. I almost had the feeling of being out of doors.

  How to tell if the room had tasteful appointments or impoverished scarcity?

  This was how people lived in the “good old days” before electricity. They couldn’t see anything after sunset unless they spent a fortune on smelly fish oil lamps or candles. They huddled together in the immediate circle of light cast by clusters of fixtures leaving the rest of the world in spooky shadow.

  “Andiamo,” a sultry feminine voice called. A lovely blonde in her early forties floated forward. A few streaks of white highlighted her hair nicely. She either paid someone a lot of money for those highlights or she had fantastic genes.

  She linked her arm in mine and drew me deeper into the room.

  A bevy of pale hangers-on edged closer to us. No sign of the wereweasel.

  The magical comb I’d stuck in my short hair showed me nothing special in the auras. Just ordinary people.

  Except Lady Lucia had no radiant energy at all. That scared me more than if she took bat form.

  If you haven’t heard already, I have a thing about bats. I’ll fight a dozen Sasquatch and Windago any day before I’ll face down even one little insect-eating bat.

  Gollum looked like he wanted to take notes. Mickey looked numb and overwhelmed. They followed close on my heels.

  “Nice gown, Lady Lucia,” I said, taking in the delicate cream-and-terra-cotta silk that looked like it walked off a costume rack labeled 1835. Something about the cut and clean lines suggested a Florentine designer.

  Her guests at least had kept up with the times with a preponderance of black silky fabrics and tight jeans.

  “Introduce me to your friends, Signora Tess,” she said with a frown. Her accent sounded thick, as if her English was newly learned.

  I raised an eyebrow to Gollum. He shrugged, still studying cadence and inflection.
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br />   “Contessa, allow me to present Dr. Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe and Mickey Mallone, our local guide and driver.” I thought I’d be polite and formal, play along with her game a bit before I decided to expose her.

  From the looks of her cleavage, it wouldn’t take much to expose a lot more of her than acceptable in polite society. But then, this was Vegas, or the outskirts thereof. Who knew what was acceptable.

  Even as I thought about it, a hint of dusky skin peeked above her tightly corseted décolletage, the same shade as the terra cotta in said gown’s trim.

  Gollum’s eyes riveted right where she’d intended.

  Okay. Gloves off. I was tired of being polite.

  “You’d think someone who’d left Tuscany almost two hundred years ago, and who had prided herself on keeping up with the height of fashion would update her dress occasionally,” I said. “Your headlights are showing and it’s not a good look in mixed company.”

  She scowled at me, keeping her mouth firmly closed.

  “Oh, and the accent is too thick.” I thought fast and furious about what Gollum had said about how rapidly accents mutated. The details had gone in one ear and out the other eye.

  “Tess . . .” Gollum warned.

  I shrugged. “If she’s really a vampire, you’d think she’d keep up with the times, try to blend in, stay under the radar. But then she’d have established a legal identity as Lady Lucia.”

  This time the lady sneered, revealing two very long and pointed eye teeth. Still no aura. She could have been masking it. Some people can do that—Donovan among them, just another reason not to trust him. But anger cracks any mask, and some energy should have leaked out.

  “I’ve seen better implants and prosthetics at every con I’ve attended.” I almost yawned. Then decided that reaction was too over the top.

  A short lad drifted forward carrying a tray filled with silver goblets, brimming with dry ice mist. My height—which isn’t saying much—he looked to be about twelve. Until he got close and the frown lines around his mouth and eyes added a couple of decades, or centuries, to his face.