Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand kn-5

by Carrie Vaughn

  That was all. Just surveillance. Except I swore I saw something out of the corner of my eye, something that vanished every time I turned to look. Like a person sneaking around. Sylvia, maybe. Or Odysseus Grant. Maybe he really could make himself disappear.

  It had to be my imagination, because Dom didn’t seem to notice, and his senses should have been better than mine.

  “Here’s the thing,” he explained, walking past table and card games, blackjack, and craps, all of which were vulnerable to cheating in ways the slots weren’t. “No one I know with any kind of power or ability is going to abuse that. You win a little here, a little there. Never enough to get noticed. You don’t want to break the house. You want the golden goose to keep laying. You win too much too often, the casinos kick you out, blacklist you. Then you’re done. We don’t have to legislate that, because the casinos are very good at taking care of themselves. Besides, you’ll always make more money investing in one of these joints than playing in it.”

  In the poker room, Dom stopped me with a hand on my arm and pointed at the central table. A crowd had gathered, watching four men with cards in their hands stare at each other, studying each other. This might have been a prime sporting event. But the players were just sitting there.

  “See that guy there?” Dom pointed to the one with the largest stack of chips in front of him. He wore a black silk T-shirt and dark shades, had pale skin, and was otherwise unassuming. “You recognize him?”

  “Should I?”

  “You should if you watch a lot of poker on TV.”

  Kind of like watching bowling on TV, wasn’t it? “Can’t say that I do.”

  “Fair enough. He’s one of us.”

  Him? A vampire? I wasn’t close enough, or the air wasn’t right for me to smell him. The dealer laid out a card, and the crowd let out a sigh. The guy Dom had pointed out, the TV poker star, raked in the pile of chips from the middle without smiling.

  “He does pretty well,” Dom said. “And that’s part of why Burger’s legislation will never pass, because there’s no profit in keeping people out of the casinos. He thinks he’s doing the casinos a favor, but we all know better.”

  I looked at him. “The casinos lobbied against the bill, is that what happened?”

  “The casinos? No, never. Not directly. But we have a lot of friends in this state.”

  I had faulted Dom for not knowing enough about the supernatural goings-on in his town. But maybe he was something I hadn’t met before: a vampire more interested in mundane, mortal politics and economic concerns than in vampire internecine bickering. It was almost refreshing.

  Still no call from Ben. I really had to get out of here.

  “Dom, thanks for everything. But I need to go track down a couple of more leads on Ben.”

  “Right,” he said, nodding with sympathy. “I’ll ask around, see if I can find anything out for you.”

  “I’d really appreciate that.”

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up,” he said, with an expansive smile. “Just you wait. He’s probably out winning you a million bucks as a surprise.”

  Dom lived in a very pretty world, didn’t he?

  The vampire walked me to the lobby and called a cab for me, bypassing the huge line at the cab stand, which was nice. Power had its privileges, didn’t it? One less thing to think about. I was ready to be off the street and away from all the people.

  Dom went back inside the lobby, and my cab was pulling away from the curb when I spotted Sylvia, the bounty hunter, standing at the corner behind me. Tonight she wore leather pants, high heels, and a black silk vest. One hand was on her hip, and she was smiling as she watched me drive away.

  Chapter 15

  On the cab ride to the Hanging Gardens, I checked my phone for messages. Still nothing from Gladden, or Evan and Brenda. Or Ben. Out of curiosity, I called up to the room and got no answer. I was not going to freak out. Yet.

  In the hotel lobby, Balthasar’s face, smiling on his show’s poster, greeted me.

  The troupe was probably done with its last performance for the evening. I needed to know if Balthasar knew anything about what had happened to Ben. If he’d had a hand in it himself, as Dom had suggested, I’d smell it on him. I checked the theater area, and it was dark and quiet after the performance. They were probably back at their lair, then. Eighth floor. I found the elevator and wondered if I should be doing this after those martinis.

  No, don’t think like that. I was in control. I was an alpha wolf. I squared my shoulders, concentrated on being sober, on asking the hard questions and not falling prey to that charming smile. I was here to get answers. When the elevator stopped, I marched through the doors, determined to channel Lois Lane. Without the always-needing-to-get-rescued part.

  Follow your nose, he’d told me. The hallway here branched off, and the doors seemed much farther apart than on other floors. These must have been suites. I stood at the intersection and took a deep breath. From the left came the musky, wild scent of lycanthropes. The trail blazed clear. I wondered if Balthasar walked home in the evening, his tigers and leopards trailing him through the hotel corridors. What a sight that must be. Especially if someone in one of the other suites opened their door at the wrong time.

  The next turn brought me to a short hallway that ended in a set of double doors. This was the pack’s place, the heart of its territory. I approached the door like it might jump and bite me. At the same time, in all of Las Vegas, this smelled more like my kind than anyplace else.

  I knocked on the door and waited. Waited some more. Knocked again, then figured everyone was probably asleep. Or out partying, which seemed to be the thing to do at midnight on the Strip. I had turned to leave when the deadbolt clicked back. The door opened. Eyes peeked through, and when they saw me, the door opened wider.

  Slightly taller than me, a very young man—eighteen v

  I wasn’t just staring at a model. I was staring at an underwear supermodel, and I wasn’t sure my knees could handle it.

  When I managed to take a breath, I recognized his scent. Avi the were-leopard, from the show. “Hi,” I said.

  “It’s you,” he said. His smile lit up his face. My heart skipped a beat.

  We watched each other for another bemused moment. Then I had the agonizing thought, I’m a cradle robber. This kid’s too young for me. I’d never thought that about a guy before, and it made me feel old. But it was true. I kind of wanted to take him out for ice cream.

  “Er... I really need to talk to Balthasar. He suggested I should stop by and talk to you guys. You know, in person. Human-like.” I swore I’d have been wagging my tail, if I’d had one at the moment. This was ridiculous.

  Then Balthasar sauntered up behind Avi. And he looked even better than Avi. He was plenty old enough for me. He wore a rumpled dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, and jeans. He was also barefoot.

  “Kitty,” he said. “What a surprise.”

  He didn’t say nice surprise, which left me wincing. “I’m sorry, I should have called first. But I really need to talk to you.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, chuckling. “It’s good to see you. Are you married yet?”

  “No. In fact, that’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “I’ve never met a werewolf before,” Avi said, beaming. “I can smell it.” He glanced at Balthasar, as if for confirmation. “It’s different.”

  “Werewolf and female,” he said, studying my curves under the dress. “Exotic all the way around.”

  I couldn’t tell if I was blushing from being tipsy or from being flirted at. I hoped my smile managed to be polite instead of silly. “Not really. There’s lots more where I come from.”

  Balthasar opened the door wide. “Why don’t you come in? You can meet the others, and we can all talk.”

  The two invited me in. Avi closed the door behind me.

  It hit me that I was walking into the heart of another lycanthrope’s territory. That sobered me up. No one was acting threateni
ng or aggressive, but I started to pay more attention. I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder to the closed door.

  We continued to the inner room of the suite.

  I had to say this much: Avi didn’t act like he was a prisoner, or here under duress. He didn’t seem tense or wary, and he held himself with the same graceful ease that his leopard persona had displayed. I had to wonder: how did a teenager get himself in a position to be bitten by a were-leopard? Maybe I could get him to tell me the story.

  The first room—a large foyer, maybe, but I wanted to think of it as a great hall—was open, with a low ceiling. Chairs and sofas were low to the ground and piled with cushions. They looked fluffy and comfortable enough to jump on. A thick red carpet muffled footfalls. Columns painted lapis blue and trimmed in gold supported the ceiling at regular intervals. Sconce-style lamps on the walls cast warm, gold light. The closest thing I’d ever seen to this was a fancy Moroccan restaurant.

  The place must have been designed by the same people who did the whole hotel. Murals covered the walls, line drawings done in such detail I thought they were printed wallpaper at first. But they’d been painted in dark lines on beige backgrounds, so that they almost seemed like stone carvings. Processions marched away on either side of me: men and women, life-size, in single file, staring forward, fists clenched. The motifs seemed ancient. The figures had the curling beards and tall hats of Babylonian kings. They weren’t all fully human. They had human faces, but the bodies of lions, bulls, deer, even birds.

  Some lycanthropes believed that our disease—whatever made us what we are—had its origin in the very beginnings of civilization, from a time when people were closer to nature, when people and animals talked to each other, like in so many of the old stories. We bridged the space between them, reminded people of that time. It was an optimistic, environmentally friendly attitude toward lycanthropy.

  Other people—a little less nice, a little more inclined to believe in a vengeful God—believed we were spawn of the devil.

  Maybe that was why I preferred to think of this as a disease. A strange disease, but still quantifiable. Because if lycanthropy was a disease, it meant I was just unlucky. Not part of a giant cosmic scheme I had no control over, not to mention no knowledge of.

  The smell of the room washed over me, brilliant as any color or light. They were unfamiliar, undomesticated scents: not just the human-mixed-with-fur smell of lycanthrope, the smell of skin covering something wild. This was even more animal. Like the fur covered skin instead, and nothing tempered the animal side of the equation. It was the smell of instinct, of fighting for food, for space. Communication happened through scent—not just pissing to mark territory. Fear, anger, joy, lust, all had their own scents. A lot of emotion had been spent in this place. A lot of hunger, meaty and ripe.

  Balthasar gestured, taking in the decor around us. “What do you think?”

  “I like it. Not sure I’d want my own living room to look like this, but it’s... exotic.” I’d almost said sexy. “The figures—what are they? Babylonian?”

  “Right in one,” he said, nodding in acknowledgment. “Do you know the old stories?”

  “Some of them. Daniel and the Lion’s Den—the version where he’s a were-lion. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Mostly through modern interpretations in English lit classes and all.”

  “There’s a lot we can learn from the ancients. In some ways, those were better times.”

  “I don’t know, I sort of like modern medicine, TV, women being able to own property and vote. All the modern conveniences.”

  “I did say in some ways.” He moved closer. I probably wouldn’t be able to just step out of his grasp. Goose bumps traveled up my arms. But I didn’t move away from him.

  Behind my shoulder now, he looked at the murals, the procession on the wall, and pointed. A row of smaller, human figures lined up before a throne, where a lion-bodied god crouched and accepted the offerings, the boxes and jars they set before him. “There was a power in those times. We hide ourselves now. Then, the gods and their servants were painted on every wall, for all to see. The statues stood guard at the gates of every city. How do you think it would be, to be celebrated by your society instead of looked on as a curse? To be an avatar of the gods?” His voice was hypnotic.

  He painted an attractive picture. A utopia, almost. But these societies also made blood sacrifices to their gods. We could idealize the past all we wanted, at the price of ignoring the drawbacks.

  “Is that what you’re doing here? Trying to re-create that kind of society?”

  He just smiled. “Come in, see the rest of our home.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. The bare part, not even touching the dress’s narrow strap. His touch was fire. Every muscle in my body clenched. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t even think of it. His words rang over me. I am part of the procession, which stretches back to the dawn of time. That made me powerful.

  When I moved, my bones creaked. I heard them, and the noise jarred me. I stepped away, took myself out of the burning, alluring grasp. I took a deep breath, tried to get oxygen back to my brain. There was something in the air here...

  “Ben’s missing,” I said, wincing mentally, because blurting it out like that wasn’t sly or smart at all. Not if Balthasar had a hand in it. I was supposed to be smart about this. “Ben’s my fiancé, and a crime lord named Faber might have taken him. The police are looking, but they haven’t found anything, and I’m running out of ideas. Dom said you might know something.”

  “Dom?” Balthasar said, chuckling. “We don’t hear much from Dom. Let’s sit down and we can talk about this.”

  I didn’t know what to call the room he took me to. It was much like the foyer, the great hall, rich in its decorations, exotic for the lack of anything I’d call chairs and sofas, anything that might identify it as a living room. I might have called it a dormitory, or a barracks: futons, made up with sheets and pillows, lined one wall. But there was also a fountain, water dribbling over round gray stones, in the middle of the room, and chaise lounges, and draped over these in a most decorative manner—dangling their fingers in the water, stretched out on cushions—were a group of young men. They were all glowingly gorgeous, smooth-skinned, bronzed, muscular. At the sound of Balthasar’s voice, they looked up at me with alluringly hooded gazes. They had wicked smiles. Balthasar was the pirate captain, and here was his crew.

  Part of me really wanted to run now. But they were all so attractive.

  “So you all live here together?” I said, working to keep my voice steady. “All the performers?” I was hoping Nick would be around. He’d been the first one I’d met, and for some reason he seemed like the one most likely to tell me the truth. I assumed there was another truth under all this.

  “We’re a pack, of sorts,” Balthasar said, with Avi nodding in agreement. He gestured forward with a sweep of his arm, worthy of his best showmanship. “Meet the cast.”

  They were a pack of lycanthropes, unmistakable, and this was their territory, but I sensed more to it than that. The smell of the place had another layer to it, threatening but even more alien. My skin tingled with it. I wasn’t an invader here. I was... something else.

  The place smelled thickly of sex. As if—what else were a bunch of hunky men supposed to do when they weren’t onstage?

  They perked up, straightening, peeling themselves off their perches. They moved like water, graceful, without a sound. They wore jeans and pants, riding low on their hips. No shirts. Their chests were long expanses of enticing skin. They stalked forward on bare feet, never taking their gazes from me, like I was some interesting new toy they had to examine—a mouse stuffed with catnip, maybe.

  I should have run from there. But the warmth of Balthasar’s body kept me in place. Drew me closer. This was a place of great mystery, his gaze seemed to tell me. Didn’t I want to learn their secrets? Avi’s smile and relaxed stance made me think that nothing was wrong.

  They were all in their t
wenties, young and fit. They definitely worked out. Their muscles shifted and flexed under their perfect skin. They were model-perfect, watching me with expressive eyes. Fanning around me, they cocked their heads, taking breaths, smelling me, studying me from every angle. My breath caught. I could feel my heart pounding.

  Lycanthropes had to shape-shift only on nights of the full moon; the power to shift was voluntary at other times. We could choose to shift, or we did so instinctively, in dangerous situations. Balthasar’s whole show was based on that, that they could shape-shift at will and retain some of their humanity through the transformation. As a result, this place was more animal than human, and these men had their beasts looking out of their eyes, right at the surface, because they changed into their lycanthropic forms almost every day in order to perform. We weren’t meant to spend so much time in our animal forms. Not if we had any hope of remaining human, of living as humans. But they didn’t seem too put out by it all. Living together like this, isolated, they probably didn’t have to deal with their humanity any more than they wanted to.

  But what about territory? Instinct? A group of male cats would never live together in a pack like this. And that was where the human side came in. Their looks were far too calculating to be driven purely by instinct.

  They stayed just out of reach. I kept thinking one of them, or all of them, would reach out and touch me. If they did, I might retreat in a panic. Or I might reach back. I was blushing, all the way to my gut.

  “Is she for us?” one of them said. He was closest, and he kept his gaze on my chest, like he could see through my dress.

  My shoulders bunched up, the hair on my neck stiffening. Some of them—They were looking at me like they wanted to start batting me around with their paws.

  “She’s a guest,” Balthasar said, and the other made a disappointed click in answer. He turned his shoulder, brushing against one of his packmates as he did. The latter snapped at him, a quick bite at air, but he also leaned into the touch.

  They stood close to each other, touching, leaning against each other’s backs and shoulders even as they stripped me with their gazes. The exchange disturbed me. Did Balthasar often bring women here as cat toys?