They glared at me through the smoke, the room smelling of warm wax and the acrid odor of burnt candlewicks.
The woman raised her hands from her robe’s belt, to my relief, and began to chant. I didn’t understand a word—the language could be Latin, could be Celtic, could be made up. I knew English and Apache, a smattering of Spanish, and a few words in Diné that Grandmother Begay muttered at me.
“For real magic, you don’t need words,” I said. “Unless you’re feeling whimsical. Like Presto.” I squashed the candles beside her chair into wide pools of wax. “And Abracadabra.” Her chair flew up to the ceiling.
“And now for my big finish,” I went on. The couples on the beds had untangled themselves and were watching me, openmouthed, one of them modest enough to cover herself with a sheet. The head witch stared at me in sudden and abject fear.
I raised my hands. Before I could speak or whirl my Beneath magic around the room and scare the crap out of them, all the lights went out.
I mean all the lights, including the little emergency ones that were supposed to come on as backup. Out the window, I saw glittering electronic signs marching down the Strip, but all lights in and around the C hotel had been extinguished.
“What the fuck is that?” one of the men cried. He was on his feet, naked body silhouetted against the Strip’s glare, pointing shakily out the window into the darkness.
That was a whirling mass of something I couldn’t identify, heading straight for us.
It hit the hotel with an enormous blow, the walls bowing inward, and then dirt, mud, and tree roots smashed through the windows, like a hurricane composed of the Earth itself, intent on burying its children.
Chapter Eighteen
Gabrielle
I stood for a frozen moment while clumps of soil and shards of glass littered the floor. Then the wind caught up the glass and whirled it into the deadly mix.
“Out!” I yelled at the witches. “Into the hallway.”
“No!” Their leader cried. “She’s a dark mage! She’s trying to kill us!”
“For fuck’s sake.” I flung open the door and raced out.
The darkness in the corridor was even more solid. The hotel swayed from the attack, which smelled of the bowels of the Earth.
“Let me see!” the mirror shrieked. “I’m scared! Oh, honey, I’m so scared!”
I yanked the mirror from my purse at the same time I sent up a flare of Beneath magic.
The light barely made a dent in the gloom, like a candle lantern in very dense fog. But I had to get through, had to find Colby, or Chandra, or call Nash—someone to help me.
“I’m not afraid of the dark!” I shouted at it. “The dark is afraid of me!”
A huge form came out of the blackness, towering over me like hell itself, reaching a claw to rake me open. I screamed.
The claw landed on my arm and resolved into a hand, the bulk into the shape of a large man.
“Colby!” I nearly sobbed. “Shit. Don’t do that.”
He jerked me close, wrapping solid arms around me, his strength cutting through my panic. One swift, hard kiss, and he pulled away.
“What the hell?” he demanded.
For answer, the building shuddered again, accompanied by the sound of windows breaking, bricks popping, people screaming. Colby swung around in the dim light of my smothered magic, and smashed his hand to the fire alarm.
Nothing happened. “Great!” I yelled.
Regardless, people began pouring out of doorways in various stages of undress. I tried to light the corridor as I herded them toward the fire exit, but my flare of magic wouldn’t expand.
A stream of dragon fire poured along the ceiling, cutting through the darkness and filling the hall with brilliant red-orange light. Now the guests screamed and dropped, thinking the building was on fire.
Whatever. As long as they got out.
I ran back into the Tantric witches’ room, they having finally come to their senses and vacated. Damp dirt and roots continued to stream in through the windows. Dodging the flying glass, I brought up the hardest magic I had and threw it at the mess.
The roots drew back as though from a sudden blast of herbicide, but they quickly regrouped and came at me, more determined than before.
Colby grabbed me around the waist and yanked me away, then slammed the rain of roots and dirt with fire. I heard an unholy shriek, and the roots retreated out the window.
“You can fight it,” I exclaimed to Colby in surprise. “Why can’t I?”
“Not the time for pondering.” Colby’s hands held flame, his face and arms covered with dirt and sweat. Another deluge of mud and roots poured in through the window, and Colby sent ball after ball of fire at it.
The roots withdrew, but more dirt pounded on every wall of the hotel. I heard screaming in the street, the wail of sirens, the babble of scared voices elsewhere in the hotel.
“This is not going to look good on my quarterly review,” I growled, ducking out of the room.
The darkness in the corridor was heavy. Colby’s fire dampened as soon as the emergency exit door thudded shut a final time, the hall now empty of people. My breath fogged in the air, eerie in the light of Colby’s last flames.
Colby drew ragged breaths. “I need space.”
I knew what he meant. “This way.” I led him at a run in the opposite direction from the fire exit, gritting my teeth against the icy blackness. Colby’s small ball of fire helped but couldn’t banish the darkness entirely.
One of the hall’s niches held a door marked Employees Only. My keycard opened it, and I led Colby up a cement staircase, which shook and cracked as we ascended.
At the top was a steel door, solid and locked. Again, my universal keycard came in handy, and we stepped out onto the hotel’s roof garden.
Las Vegas spread around us. The C wasn’t tall, but it stood relatively alone, positioned on a manmade rise, so I could look straight down the Strip.
I saw the bright lights of Caesar’s Palace, the fountains of the Bellagio beyond it, the fake Eiffel tower of Paris Las Vegas, the giant high rises of the City Center behind the Bellagio, and far in the distance, the laser show from the Luxor.
Nothing wrong with their lights. Only the C, set apart and elegant, was being attacked, with a rain of rocks, mud, dirt, and roots that seemed to come from utter blackness. The trees in tubs, flowers in boxes around a walkway swayed and shuddered, as though they wanted to join the fun.
Colby scooped me close and kissed me again, then he sent me a grin and ran across the roof. Darkness shrouded him and then burst away as he spread the wide wings of his dragon.
He took off, a streak of red against the night. Black dust and roots rose around him, and Colby sent a line of fire straight at them.
The wall of dirt parted for him, but poured at me, the indestructible Gabrielle, battering me until I fell to my knees.
The previous attack had crushed me with magic, like a mind battle. This was the physical manifestation of whatever strange entity I’d fought before, and I was just as helpless against it. I swiped ineffectually at the earth and tree roots around me, my Beneath magic like a crackle of nothing.
A sting bit my hand, and I jumped, remembering that I clutched the mirror. I raised my head, barely able to see with all the dust in my eyes, and directed my words to its glimmer.
“Janet!” I called. “Can you hear me? I need dragons! Colby can’t do this alone.”
“Gabrielle?” Janet’s voice came to me like the tinny sound from an AM radio. I saw her reflection jaggedly—she must be looking into the original mirror, the one with a hole in the middle and spiderweb cracks radiating to its frame.
In a half crouch, I retreated to the door of the hotel, batting away rocks that came at me, my hands bloody. I wanted to weep.
“Colby’s fighting it,” I said, my voice dry. “But he can only do so much.”
The shard in my hand trembled. “Yeah, Janet, babes, this is scary. Send in the dra
gons.”
Mick’s face appeared next to Janet’s. His curly hair was wilder than usual, as though he was starting to go dragon right there. “Hang tight, Gabrielle. We’re coming.”
The shard went dark. I felt slightly better, but it could be hours before the dragons arrived. Even as fast as they flew, they had to cross miles of open desert.
I could be dead by then, Colby along with me.
I climbed to my feet, wiping water and dirt out of my face, peering around to locate Colby. I heard his bellows, saw flames cutting across the monster of a dust storm, but wind, dust, gravel, and more roots obscured him.
The door behind me burst open. Nash ran out onto the roof, Maya after him. Nash took one look at the storm, seized me, and pushed me at the door and Maya.
“Gabrielle, get in here,” Maya yelled from the doorway as I evaded Nash and turned to keep Colby in sight.
Nash strode past me to the edge of the roof and spread his arms.
He was trying to absorb the spell. I watched him waver as the magic streamed into him, he closing his fists and bunching his shoulders against the deluge.
Boulders manifested from the whirling madness and dove at him, real rocks that could crush him. Magic couldn’t hurt Nash, but he could be beaten down physically.
Maya screamed. She shot toward him, ducking and dodging across the roof. I headed for them both, but balls of dirt and mud that missed Maya slammed into me. I stumbled and fell, splattered with slimy black ooze.
“You bastard!” I yelled at the storm as I climbed to my feet. “This is a new outfit!”
A rock came at me. I tried to deflect it with Beneath magic, which didn’t work, and the rock smacked into my palm, making it bleed.
Maya had hold of Nash, who was being pummeled by the storm. I managed to reach them and hauled up Nash. He glared at us, but didn’t argue as Maya and I towed him to the door. Maya rushed inside with him, but I turned back, the wind whipping my long hair around me.
Colby screeched as he flew past, his fire dancing. Boulders and roots pummeled him, knocking him back and forth, tearing at his wings. He snarled and flamed, swirling to fight on.
But how could he fight a storm of the Earth itself? How could any of us, even Janet?
I peered out across the city, longing to see the dragons manifest—the black and red terrifying bulk of Mick, the midnight darkness of Drake, the orange and red beast I’d sensed in Titus.
Dust, rocks, and snakes of roots was all I could see. Too bad I’d sent all those demons home, I thought. They’d be a great help right now.
Then again …
An image of the rubble outside the arena came to me, the great hole Janet and I had dug from the casino down, down, down to the demon worlds beyond. I laughed. I might not have the power to fight the storm directly, but I was still a Beneath-goddess.
I gazed along the Strip, past the rows of glittering lights to the hotel where Janet, Maya, and I had stayed—I’d tagged along like an annoying little sister. Janet and Maya hadn’t wanted me there, and I’d known it.
But good thing I’d come along, right? Or Mick would still be there in the arena fighting for his life, maybe dead by now.
How long would it take me to get down the street? Even with Amos driving?
Too long. I reached toward the building with my senses, hoping I could, from this far away, blast open the hole with my magic and summon the demons to me.
Of course I couldn’t. I had a lot of magic, but I couldn’t be in two places at once, and if I tried to open a vortex to Beneath here, it might tear apart the hotel I was trying to save.
If I could even do it. Opening a way was difficult, and I’d needed Janet’s help to succeed—best to start with a way already partially unlocked.
Lights wavered beyond the storm, beyond my reach, mocking me.
Lights.
I held up the magic mirror. “Hey, can you bounce light all the way to the hotel where Mick was fighting? Maybe use the mirrors there? Help me blast open my hole to hell?”
“Can I?” The mirror snorted. “The question is will I? Say the magic word, sugar.”
“What?” I shook it. “What the hell are you talking about? What magic word?”
“You know. The magic word. The P-word.”
“You mean Piss off?” I growled. “That’s two words. Just do it.”
“Aw don’t be like that. Say please.”
“Oh, for the gods’ sake. Please!” I yelled. “Hurry up. Colby can’t last forever.” A rock hit me on the cheek, and blood spattered the mirror. “Ow! I can’t either.”
“Now don’t get all agitated. I can’t concentrate if you’re upset.”
Another rock sent me to my knees. “Come on,” I pleaded.
“Don’t worry, honey,” the mirror said, suddenly all business. “I got you.”
A beam shot from it, eye-killing light in the darkness, but the mirror didn’t generate the light—it reflected it.
The mirror reached through the gritty sand for the flashing sign of the next hotel over, and then grabbed a beam from the next one and the next one, creating a series of arcs all the way down the street.
I didn’t know whether the humans below could see the light, but my curiosity about that was in the back of my mind. Let them think it part of a Vegas show.
I held up the shard and piggybacked a snake of Beneath magic along the reflections, picking up electric bulbs, the digital flashes, the old-fashioned neon and brand new LEDs, infusing the beams with my magic.
Light, if I remembered from my science classes in high school, was a stream of photons that moved at a speed nothing could surpass. I’d always thought it cool that time would slow for you if you approached the speed of light, but only for you, while the rest of the universe continued at its normal pace. When you returned from your light-speed journey, everyone you knew would be dead, but your age wouldn’t have changed all that much. I had tried to figure out how I could make that real and so escape my dad and my misery of a life.
I don’t know if photon-infused magic worked any better than my power on its own, but lights flared as the mirror bounced it past them, illuminating the sky in a warping dance. The mirror sent my magic in jumps down the street, heading for the hotel and the rubble-filled hole in its floor.
“Hey, my friends,” I said as the light drilled down past the debris to swirl to life the vortex Janet and I had created. “I need a little help. Come out and play?”
If Janet knew what I intended, she’d stop me. Colby turned his great dragon head and winged toward me, no doubt to do the same. Nash came out of the hotel again, running at me to—guess what? Stop me. I whirled from both of them, and Colby had to sail on past, fighting the renewed pounding of dirt and rocks.
I didn’t dare let myself dance on the air as I liked to when I was working hard magic, because I couldn’t trust the wind in this storm. Keeping my feet solidly on the rooftop, I called the creatures of hell to rise and do my bidding.
They came. Flying creatures that resembled dragons but weren’t, gruesome skeletal beings, ethereal beasts with human faces twisted into terrifying screams, and other hell-monsters flew up out of the vortex and streamed down the street to where I waited, my arms outstretched. They swirled around the rooftop, shrieking in the foul wind.
They were obeying me, their summoner, but I knew that if I lost control they’d dive at me and devour me. Their gratitude for releasing them from death in the arena only went so far.
I didn’t worry about losing control though—I wasn’t stupid enough to summon any demons I couldn’t handle.
“Fly, my pretties,” I cried, spinning in a circle. “Stop that bad storm and send it home.”
How they would, I wasn’t sure. The storm was a manifestation of power, not the actual entity that powered it. We were fighting a spell, not a person.
Colby winged past me, his eyes filled with fiery rage. He rolled from the path of a glowing white demon and spewed fire directly into the wind.
I watched the fire spin into a swirl that flew into the heart of the storm like a javelin. “Nice one!” I shouted at him.
My demons fought with their own kind of weapons—acid, streams of dark magic, brute strength. They kicked rocks and roots away from me, formed a protective circle around me. The storm raged, building, trying to beat me down.
Pretending I wasn’t terrified, I laughed as the storm increased its fury. It might squelch my unconquerable Beneath magic, but the beings I’d summoned to do my bidding, many of them from Earth-magic hells themselves, could fight for me.
The storm whirled into a black tornado, obscuring the sky, the rest of the city, Colby. He screeched and flapped away from the hotel, his cries growing fainter.
Nash headed for me, determination in his eyes. He was going to try to pull me to shelter.
“No!” I screamed at him. “You’ll kill me!”
He hesitated, working through the logic of my plea. If he drained my magic, I’d lose control of the creatures, and we’d all be demon fodder.
Nash figured it out and circled around me, but he faced into the heart of the storm as he had before—I guess he liked boulders crashing at him. Maya, wisely, stayed inside and looked out the window in the door, hands cupped around her face.
Rocks bashed at Nash, but I saw the darkness of the storm enter him and be snuffed out, little pieces of it at a time. He was brave—I gave him that. And powerful. No wonder my mother had wanted to make a child from him.
I was tiring, even my stamina waning. The dragons needed to get here soon, or I’d be a puddle of steaming goo. Would Janet miss me when I was gone? Or breathe a sigh of relief?
A large rock smacked me in the head and I crashed to the rooftop. I tasted blood, felt the sting of scraped flesh on my hands and face. The mirror spun out of my grip and landed facedown on gritty cement.
My magic flickered, faltered. Shit. Well, I’d tried.
I heard wings, then my body was jerked from the roof. I was too tired to fight, and dangled helplessly in the claw closed around me.
Dragon Bites Page 17
