I hoped it could, and I hoped that by walking out of this office, I wasn’t making one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
* * *
Gabrielle
My first call came in around midnight. I’d spent the afternoon and evening after Janet finally left settling in and getting to know the hotel and its staff.
I was surprised to find that many of the maids, bellmen, and maintenance guys not only believed in dark magic but knew how to tell when guests were using it—they weren’t magical themselves and so couldn’t sense when magic was in the air, but they knew how to spot the accouterments of conjuring, spells, and the like. They didn’t confront the magic users but alerted security, and now me.
There were monitoring cameras all over the hotel, which I saw when I was showed into the security room—a little creepy, but some people came to Las Vegas to scam their way to riches, the head of security told me. The monitors caught mundane criminals, however, not magical ones, which was where I came in.
Cornelius had said I could make my own hours, as long as I kept a diligent eye out and agreed to remain on call. I decided to give myself time to sleep in the mornings, time to enjoy myself in the afternoon, then I’d watch the hotel at night, when most dark magic was likely to happen.
Colby moved into the hotel, in a different room from mine, of course. He wasn’t the sort of clientele the C liked, but I persuaded Cornelius that he needed to stay to lend his muscle. I fully intended to spend my enjoyment time with Colby, seeing the sights, letting him take me to lunch and then dinner …
I still hadn’t gotten over the kiss he’d given me, but I decided not to let on to him about that. The last thing I needed was a possessive dragon in my business—if Mick was anything to go by, dragons could be seriously possessive. When I caught myself touching my tingling lips, I’d quickly jerk my hand away.
Anyway, I was lounging in my office in my new blue dress, my feet propped on my desk so I could admire my new shoes, when my phone rang.
“This is Gabrielle,” I said cheerily into it. “What do you need fixing?”
The breathless and frightened tones of one of the room-service waiters came to me. This young man had brought me a heaping bowl of ice cream an hour ago when I’d grown bored and hungry.
I was by myself—Shelly, the receptionist, worked eight to five, like a normal person, and I had the feeling Cornelius wouldn’t approve of Colby up here with me—but I wasn’t afraid to be alone. The offices of this hotel must be the most securely locked and warded places on earth, and besides, there wasn’t much villainy I couldn’t handle.
“Something going on in room 4235,” the room-service waiter said in a voice just above a whisper. “I delivered a bottle of wine to them. Guy who told me to come in was scary looking, with yellow eyes. I didn’t go far inside, but I’m pretty sure he had a woman penned up in there. Front desk says a lady checked into that room by herself, the reservation for only one. You said to tell you if I saw anything suspicious—so I’m telling you.”
“Thank you, sweetie,” I said, swinging my legs off the desk, my elation rising. “You stay safe in your kitchen, and I’ll check it out.”
“Want me to alert security?” he asked.
I’d told the staff today that if they saw anything dark magic-y, or that even looked dark magic-y, they should contact me first. The goons with the earpieces were for ordinary bad guys, but I was first response for magical problems.
“I’ll call them if I need them,” I assured him. “Otherwise, they might get hurt. 4235, you said?”
“Yep.”
“All right. Thanks, Steve. I got this.”
I hung up, logged the report into my computer as Shelly had showed me, grabbed my purse and universal keycard, and left the empty office suite.
They’d given me a card that would open every guest room in the hotel. How cool was that? At Janet’s hotel, I didn’t even have a key to my own room. The maids or Cassandra always had to let me in.
Cornelius had already put a lot of trust in me, and I was determined not to betray that trust.
The hall in front of room 4235 was quiet, but the nasty magic oozing from the crack under the door made my fingers itch. A demon was in there assaulting one of our guests.
I swiped my keycard through the slot and the door clicked open. “Housekeeping!” I called as I charged inside.
The naked demon with yellow skin, yellow eyes, horns, and a magical aura that nearly blew me back into the hall was on top of the woman on the bed. She turned her head to me when I banged in, her eyes pleading.
Gabrielle to the rescue. I reached through the demonic aura, wrapped a snake of crackling magic around the demon’s neck, and hauled him off the woman.
She sobbed, and he gibbered, and then I noticed a few things.
First, something, not the demon, was sucking at my magic, as though trying to siphon it off.
A moment of watery panic tore through me as I flashed back to the shallow desert canyon, where Emmett Smith stood over me and ripped my magical self away, the diamonds on his glasses gleaming in the starlight.
I shoved away the memory with a gasp. The drawing-off wasn’t the same—nothing ever would be as terrible as what Emmett had done. This felt like an opportunistic magical being taking in power where it could find it.
Second, there was a circle on the floor, with the bed in the middle of it. The bed was against the wall, but the circle continued up the padded headboard and onto the wallpaper in an unbroken line. The marks were chalk, easily erased, but the magic that flowed through them turned the marks blood red.
The demon glared at me and snarled, but I knew no demon would draw a chalk circle in a room to contain a human victim. They didn’t need anything but their own strength to subdue their kill.
Which meant this demon had been conjured.
The woman was giving me a look of pathetic gratitude, but I sensed the erotic joy inside her, her triumph as she absorbed the demon’s magic.
“Eww,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Can’t you just read tarot cards and light candles like other witches?”
I took a step forward. The demon hung in midair by my noose of magic, and now he sent me a terrible pleading look.
The witch sat up in panic. “No! Don’t break the circle!”
She was beautiful and voluptuous—at least, that was the glam she projected. Underneath, I saw an ordinary-looking woman trying to be irresistible to the netherworld.
“Why not?” I stopped with the toe of my shoe just outside the chalk line. “Oh, that’s right. Because if he’s no longer bound, he’s free to kill you. I’d kill you too, if I’d just been violated.”
“What are you talking about?” The woman tried to sound scared. “He came, he—he—”
“Nice circle,” I said admiringly. “I have a friend, she does circles, but she’s not stupid enough to conjure a demon in them, well, not for sex at least. Of course, she’s a good enough witch not to have to feed off other beings’ magic in the first place.”
The demon stared at me. I have no idea whether he understood us, but I could taste his need for vengeance. All I had to do was erase one mark, and he’d be free to annihilate the woman who’d tried to suck him dry—plus anyone else in this hotel, including me.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I told the demon. “But go to hell.”
A blast of my power sizzled through the markings, burning them bright orange and then blue-white. The demon shot me a grateful look before he vanished in a flare of light.
“You stupid bitch!” The woman was up and off the bed, her glam falling away to show her sagging belly and breasts. She was stark naked, which was something I really didn’t want to see. “He’s a demon! Evil.”
“Depends on your point of view, sweetie. Even evil beings have feelings.” With a sweep of my hand, I blurred the chalk markings into white powder, which poured down from the wall onto the pillows. “How about I send up a vacuum, you clean this place, and then you get the hell
out of our hotel. You’ll owe us for the night.”
I felt her glaring at me as I turned for the door. I also felt her gather her magic, laced with whatever she’d been able to imbibe from the demon, ready to strike.
I spun on my heel and blocked the wave she threw at me, shards of her spell hitting my wall like sand on glass.
The witch snarled in rage. “Your time is coming.” She pointed a pudgy finger at me. “You will be obliterated from this world, and clean magic will pervade. I’ve waited for this moment for centuries, and finally, it is upon us.” Her triumph blazed, her smile wide.
She sounded like the dragon slayer. I wished I knew what they were going on about, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of asking.
“Are you saying your magic is clean?” I asked. “Seriously? It stinks of demon from where I’m standing.”
“Not like the evil I smell on you.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Now you’re pissing me off. Everyone knows better than to do that.”
The witch frowned, her cockiness abating, but part of my power was my unpredictability. You never know what unstable Gabrielle is going to do.
She lifted her hands and began chanting words I didn’t recognize. Her fingers bent into claws, her eyes went dark, and inky smoke issued from her mouth.
I watched with interest as the smoke slid into my barrier and tried to destroy it. It failed, of course. I saw the witch’s frustration when she couldn’t budge my wall, but I definitely did not like the sensation of her Earth powers against mine.
She wasn’t stronger than I was—very few mages were—but I smelled a damp dirt odor, similar to what I’d sensed when I’d fought the dragon slayer, felt the same pressure as when I’d faced him at the pool.
I made a grabbing motion, squeezed the witch’s magic into a small, dense ball, and threw it at the window. The glass shattered from the impact, the magic dispersing in a draft of cool October air. The witch’s eyes widened, then she hissed.
“Now you owe us for the window,” I said. “Pack up and get out. If you’re still here by the time I send up security, I’ll have to get really unfriendly. And tell your friends that dark magic isn’t welcome in my hotel.”
The witch’s glare didn’t wane, but I was so done with her. I stalked out, a waft of my magic slamming the door behind me.
I laughed. I liked my new job.
As I turned the corner to head for the elevator, a wave of something so dense and dark it blotted out all sight and feeling hit me and sent me to my knees.
Chapter Thirteen
Gabrielle
What the fuck?
It wasn’t so much a blow as a slow, inevitable pull that took me down to the carpet, as though something tried to drag me down through the layers of the hotel into the ground. I again smelled damp earth and tree roots, had the sensation of being smothered with dirt, crushed alive by it.
I’d left my cell phone in the office, arrogantly figuring I could handle anything without having to call for backup. There were panic buttons in the halls for those in the know, in case employees were threatened by guests or intruders. They went straight to security, but security wasn’t what could help me. In any case, I couldn’t summon the energy to stand up and reach one of the buttons.
I heard a step behind me in the hall. “You see?” the witch said with mean glee. “It is a beginning. Abominations like you will pay.”
The witch, dressed and with a shoulder bag slung over her arm, walked past me as I struggled to stand, barely able to see her.
I expected her to let loose her magic or at least kick me, but she continued down the hall, pushed the button for the elevator, entered it, and disappeared.
The crushing sensation didn’t leave me once she was gone, which meant the witch hadn’t instigated whatever this was.
I tried to call up my Beneath magic, delving into my most hidden reserves, but I could barely move through the sludge. I managed one lone spark, which did nothing but glitter in my hands.
An answering glitter came from my purse. As I closed a shaking hand around it, the clasp came undone and a shard of glass spilled out and fell to the carpet.
No, not glass—mirror.
I’d forgotten about it. The magic mirror had been unusually quiet since Janet had handed it to me, but it wasn’t awake all the time. Now it lay on the floor and winked up at me, showing my wide brown eyes and blotchy face.
“Oh sugar,” it said. “You do not look good.”
“Colby,” I croaked. “Get Colby.” My breath left me.
“I belled him,” the mirror said. “Hang on to your knickers, darling. Looks like you’re caught in a bad Earth-magic sink, like the kind that made me. Not good for Beneath-goddess beautiful women. Don’t die Gabrielle, okay? You’re too hot to die.”
I didn’t even have the wherewithal to tell it to shut up.
The elevator dinged and the floor shook with Colby’s heavy tread. “Gabrielle.”
He caught me as I collapsed all the way. His dragon magic burned me—his magic was Earth magic, but so was whatever was attacking me. I wanted to scream, but smothering weight began to crush me.
Colby rubbed my arms with his big hands. “Stay with me, Gaby. Come on, sweetheart.”
“Take me out of here,” I tried to say, but nothing crossed my lips.
Colby lifted me to his lap as he sank to the floor and cradled me against his chest. He was trying to reach me with dragon magic, but the fire he slid into me was snuffed out by the deep weight of the Earth magic.
“Shit.” He lifted me closer, burying his face in my hair, and I felt him shaking. “Hang on, Gabrielle. Don’t leave me yet.”
I had no intention of going anywhere. I wanted to take this dragon out to dinner, flirt like hell with him, go dancing with him, then end up in my sumptuous hotel suite and make love with him all night. I bet he was good in the sack, could teach me so many things, first and foremost to not be ashamed of my own passion.
Colby kissed my neck, his breath warm, then he freed one of his hands to push buttons on a cell phone. “Get over here,” he said to whoever answered on the other end. “Weird shit is going on, and you’re the only one I can think of to fix it.”
* * *
Colby
I held on to Gabrielle as though I could save her with sheer willpower.
I didn’t know what the hell was wrong. I’d never seen Gabrielle down except for when she’d fought that bastard the Ununculous, and then she’d been physically fine, just magically drained.
Now she lolled against me, her hair spilling warmly down my arm, and I didn’t know what to do. I’d vowed to take care of her, and here she was, dying on my watch.
Nothing was attacking her as far as I could tell. The corridor was empty, silent, the antique furniture undisturbed and the thick pile carpet clean and well vacuumed.
The mirror in my bathroom had started screaming, Help! Help! She’s dying! And I’d followed its hysterical directions to the fourth floor. The elevator had opened to show me Gabrielle lying in a tangle of limbs, blue fabric, and silky hair.
“Don’t leave me, sweetheart,” I said as I gathered her closer. “I want to get to know you, find out what you’re all about.”
I knew there was more to Gabrielle than the crazily dangerous half human, half goddess everyone made her out to be—she was smart, funny, adapted rapidly to perilous situations, and she had more courage than anyone I’d ever met, including dragons.
Gabrielle fought every day of her life. I wasn’t about to let that fight be for nothing.
The elevator made a soft ding and someone got off. Not the man I’d hoped to see but a black-skinned woman in a colorful shirt and dark pants.
She knelt next to me, concern on her face. “What happened?”
I recognized her as Chandra, the nurse who’d taken care of Gabrielle. I’d met her earlier today when Gabrielle had been introduced around.
“Don’t know,” I said. “She called me,
and I found her like this.”
Chandra touched Gabrielle’s face then took her wrists, checking her vitals or whatever humans did to figure out what was wrong. Her touch was firm, competent, professional.
“Physically, I think she’s fine,” Chandra announced, to my relief. “Though scans might tell us something different. She needs a hospital.”
“No, she needs the guy I just called. This is a magical attack.”
I didn’t feel weird telling this woman about magic, because I sensed it in her. Deep inside her, like she kept it buried—so buried I couldn’t tell what kind it was.
Chandra looked at me sharply. “What guy?”
The elevator’s door rolled back once more. “Him.”
Sheriff Jones barreled out, followed by Maya. He didn’t bother to ask what was going on before he crouched down next to us.
Chandra gave him a startled look but moved aside. Maya, in a bright red dress—they must have been out on the town—leaned over Nash, her eyes holding worry.
Nash studied Gabrielle with a frown before he put his broad hand on her shoulder.
Gabrielle jerked under his touch. I held her steady, knowing more or less what was happening, but Chandra scowled at Nash. “You’re hurting her.”
“No he isn’t,” I said, then sent Jones a dangerous look. “Are you?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Do you know what happened?”
“No,” I began, but Chandra interrupted.
“It will be in her log. She must have been answering a call.”
A call Gabrielle hadn’t bothered to alert me about, which meant she’d thought she could handle it.
I’d been respecting her space, agreeing not to hover around her and get her fired on her first day. I should have ignored her, damn it.
Nash continued to frown. “This is weird. I usually feel nothing, but …”
He drew an abrupt breath, while Maya leaned closer. “What?” she asked anxiously. “What do you feel?”
Dragon Bites Page 12
