by Karen Chance
“The kids are out of school.”
“But most people don’t take kids here. That whole family-friendly thing kind of fell flat.”
“Exactly.” His flashlight bounced off the ceiling, as if he thought our prey might be clinging to the rafters like bats. It didn’t help my mood that, for all I knew, they could be. “The kids are out of school, so parents need a break from the little bastards.”
“It’s a good thing you don’t have children!”
Nervousness had made my voice harsh, but Casanova didn’t seem to take offense. “One of the best things about being a vampire. Now stop talking and start looking.”
We edged farther into the darkness and my hands started to sweat, and not just from the heat. He was right about one thing: most of the people flooding into Vegas these days were adults, with fully half of them seniors. Which might explain why the three old crones we were after hadn’t been attracting the attention they deserved.
Well, that, and the fact that they were ancient demigoddesses with more than one trick up their sleeves. That was what had me clutching the slim black box I carried hard enough to leave my fingers white. It was a magical trap, the kind that had once imprisoned the trio known as the Graeae long enough for their story to fade into legend.
I suspected that they didn’t want to go back in.
That was fine with me, because I didn’t want to put them there. I just wanted to ask them some questions, assuming we ever found them. But Casanova wasn’t exactly an altruistic kind of guy, and I’d had to fudge a little on my motivations.
“I don’t know why you’re being so helpful all of a sudden,” he said suspiciously, as if he’d heard my thoughts.
“I’m always helpful.”
“You’re never helpful! You drop problems in my lap all the time and then disappear somewhere and leave me to deal with them.”
“Name one.”
“Those blasted kids you swore would be out of here two weeks ago!”
He was referring to some magical orphans he had less than charitably taken in until we could find other homes for them. The casino had more than a thousand rooms, but the two the kids were occupying preyed on his shriveled little soul. He acted like it was causing him actual pain.
“Tami is working on it,” I said, talking about their de facto foster mother. “It’s hard to find a house big enough for that many people that’s reasonable to rent.”
“And why bother when you can stay here and eat me out of house and home?”
“They don’t eat that much.”
“In comparison to what? Starving marines?”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, they’ll be out soon—”
“That’s what you always say.”
“—and I’m helping you today, aren’t I?”
“About damn time, too,” Casanova muttered, stopping to peer into a curbside drain as if he seriously thought someone might have squeezed down there. I looked in along with him until my brain conjured up a memorable scene from It, and I shied back nervously. He glanced over his shoulder, an annoyed frown creasing those handsome features.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” I didn’t really think there were any homicidal clowns down there—or any ancient goddesses, either—but you never knew. This was Dante’s. Crazy was what we had for breakfast when we ran out of Corn Flakes.
“Good, because this is all your fault,” he complained. “You are not going to come up with another reason not to help me.”
I didn’t say anything, because technically, he was right. I’d sprung the gals from jail, and nobody seemed to care that it had been an accident. Least of all Casanova, whose beloved casino had become their favorite stomping ground.
“Why are you so interested in getting them out of here?” I asked, as we moved onto a loading dock. “They’ve been out for almost six weeks, and the worst thing I’ve seen them do is rip apart a slot machine.” And anyone who had ever played the one-armed bandits on the Strip could certainly sympathize with that.
“Well, one little thing would be that they keep breaking into the upper-level suites,” he said acidly. “The Consul came out of her bedroom the other day to find them swimming in the pool on her balcony!”
I grinned.
“It’s not funny!”
Considering that it had once been my balcony, before she’d pulled rank and kicked me out, I kind of disagreed. “Did they eat all her food?”
“There wasn’t any food. But they drank all the booze and beat up the guards she sent to remove them. They were there almost three hours before they went off to terrorize someone else. She wants them gone!”
“And God forbid anybody should inconvenience her,” I said sourly.
To my surprise, Casanova agreed. “I’m losing money every day that the damn Senate stays in residence. They’re using half of my suites—for which I’ve yet to see a dime in payment—co-opting my staff, taking over the conference rooms and eating me out of house and home!”
“This is only temporary. They’ll be gone soon.”
“Yes, leaving me with a trashed hotel, a ruined conference schedule and debts out my ears!”
“Mircea will understand—”
“Mircea doesn’t give a shit about this hotel,” Casanova said viciously. “Mircea cares about the damn war. If I drown in red ink, it’s all the same to him. He writes it off as a tax loss and transfers me to some dead-end job where I can molder away for another century or so.” He suddenly rounded on me, shining the light in my eyes and making me wince. “And that’s not going to happen, you understand? This is my one shot at the big time. Those old crones aren’t going to ruin it for me, and neither are you!”
“I’m not trying to—” I began, but he was already pushing forward again, muttering something indistinct in Spanish.
I scowled and started to follow, when a grizzled head popped out of nowhere in front of me. It was hanging upside down, the long, gray curls streaming earthward like moss on a plantation. It was Deino, the one who had always had a soft spot for me—at least until I started hunting her.
Like all the girls, she had a scrunched-up dried apple of a face with enough wrinkles to make a shar-pei jealous. It was a little hard to read the expression that was probably buried under there somewhere. But she wasn’t smiling.
Her chin dipped toward the trap I still clutched, and a few more wrinkles appeared on the weather-beaten face. “Um,” I said awkwardly.
It was hard to know what to say, since I’d been caught red-handed. And how much English she understood was problematic, anyway. But it didn’t matter, because before I could figure it out, she suddenly leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Heh,” she said, and popped back out.
And so did the box.
I whipped my head around, but I didn’t see anything. Except for Casanova looking behind some stacked crates. “Uh, we may have a problem,” I told him nervously.
“What’s wrong now?” he demanded, brushing at a cobweb that had dared to sully his formerly pristine linen.
I didn’t answer, because I was staring at another ancient crone who was prowling toward him over the tops of the crates. Her movements weren’t remotely old, ladylike or, for that matter, particularly human. Enyo had gotten her hair cut, I noticed irrelevantly, right before Casanova winked out of existence.
For a moment, I just stood there while she bared toothless gums at me and cackled. Then she held up the black box and shook it suggestively. There was no doubt at all what had happened to the vampire.
“Oh, shit,” I said. Enyo cackled again and then paused, before holding the box out like a gift. I eyed it suspiciously. “You’re giving him to me?”
She nodded, grinning like a fiend. I suspected a trap, but, then, if the girls had wanted me in that box, they could have managed it easily enough. So maybe they were just trying to teach Casanova a lesson.
I tentatively took a step forward, then two. I put out a hand and al
most had my fingers on it when Enyo flicked her wrist, tossing it over my head to Pemphredo, the third member of the trio. She was crouched on top of a nearby van, wearing grizzled pigtails and a “Vegas Made Me Do It” T-shirt, and peering at me out of the one eye they all shared.
She watched me silently for a moment, then slowly held out the box. Like I was actually going to fall for that again. “No, I don’t want to play,” I told her. “Really.”
That was too bad, because it looked like I was in the minority.
“I want him back,” I said. Pemphredo shot me a look. “Okay, maybe not actually want, but you know how it is.”
She tilted her head inquiringly. Clearly, she didn’t know.
That was a problem, because I didn’t, either.
“See, it’s like this,” I said, trying to come up with a reason why they should let him go. “He’s annoying.”
The girls nodded. This, apparently, we could all agree on.
“And . . . and obviously he had no right to try to trap you like that. I mean, it’s not like you’ve been doing anything wrong.”
More nods.
“It’s just . . . um . . .” I stopped, trying to recall why I wanted the guy back. I thought about it while they all waited politely. I gave up. “Look, I don’t really have a good reason for you to give him back,” I said honestly. “He’s a crabby, self-centered, egotistical, money-grubbing snob. His own employees don’t even like him much. But it could be worse. If you cart him off somewhere, they’ll have to get a new manager. And he might be a lot more of a hard-ass.”
They exchanged glances.
I didn’t know if that was a good sign or not, but I decided to push ahead anyway. “And if you let him out, I’ll talk to him for you. Maybe if he gives you a suite, you can promise not to go breaking into the others anymore?”
Further glances were exchanged.
“A nice suite?”
Enyo made a little come-hither movement with her hand. It looked like I was getting warm.
“With room service?”
Ding, ding, ding, we had a winner. At least I guessed so, because she handed me the box.
I tucked it under an arm instead of letting him out, because I didn’t want to deal with the drama right now. “I, uh, I had another reason for coming down here,” I told them.
Pemphredo had been about to crawl off, but at that she came back and settled down, brushing off her filthy shorts. Deino crossed her legs. Enyo stopped picking at her fingernails with a knife and put it politely away.
I kind of felt like I should be serving tea.
“It’s like this,” I said. “It’s starting to feel like Grand Central around here for demigods. You know what I mean?”
They nodded.
“First it was this Morrigan person. She’s this half-Fey child of Ares who tried to possess me. And that really sucked.”
More nods.
“But it didn’t work, so then she possessed this mage who tried to kill me and almost succeeded.”
That got me a little pat from Deino.
“And then, last night, a bunch more demigods showed up. A guy I know thinks they may be something called the Spartoi, which would make them also children of Ares. Plus, I think they were also after my mother way back when—at least, they fought the same as those other guys and . . . Anyway, I don’t think these attacks are just going to stop, you know?”
Nods all around.
“I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to deal with them, only I don’t know how. But there’s this prophecy that says I can get help if I find a goddess. The one they used to call Artemis back in Greece.”
Deino frowned.
“I know the gods were all banished. But I thought that maybe, since it was her spell, she might still be around somewhere—”
The others just looked at me, but Deino slowly shook her head.
“You’re sure?”
A nod.
Damn. So much for that theory.
“Okay, then how about this? The prophecy said that Artemis and Ares were supposed to fight, but he isn’t here, either. It’s his kids who have been causing the trouble. So I was thinking, maybe I need to find her kids, you know?”
The girls exchanged some looks.
“I mean, she was supposed to be this virgin goddess, but I gotta think after a few thousand years, that’s gonna get kind of old. So I thought maybe—”
I broke off because the girls’ heads jerked up, all at the same time, like they were on a string. I hadn’t heard anything, but when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw a mob of Casanova’s security guards heading for us at a dead run. They must have been watching on CCTV, or maybe they felt it when the boss went pop. Either way, not good.
“No!” I yelled. “Don’t—”
That was all I got out before they were past me, ruffling my hair with the unnatural speed of vampires in a hurry. They didn’t ruffle the Graeae’s, because the girls were no longer there. I’d been looking at the vamps, so I hadn’t seen them move. But there was suddenly nothing where they’d been, except for a few gray hairs drifting slowly earthward.
The vamps stopped, realizing that their prey was gone, about the time that a piercing whistle from the other end of the garage caused all our heads to jerk back around. Silhouetted against the fading daylight were two stooped, wrinkled forms. One of them was waving, while the other held up Casanova’s box.
I hadn’t even realized it was gone.
Pemphredo turned around and dropped her filthy shorts, showing the guards a wrinkled white ass. Deino waggled the box some more and pointed. The challenge was clear: come and get him.
“No, wait,” I told the guards, glancing around for Enyo. She was the scariest of the three, and she was currently AWOL. “One of them is missing. We need to—”
I might as well have saved my breath, because they didn’t even hesitate. They started back toward the gals at full speed, just blurs against the gloom—until a plastic-wrapped pallet went sailing through the air like a Frisbee. Half the guards hit the wall with a sickening crunching sound. The other half turned, snarling, and came after Enyo.
Or, at least, they tried. But the bus depot contained one of the main loading docks for the hotel, which explained all the stuff sitting around. Including a case of produce that Enyo had just popped the top on, repurposing the contents as veggie grenades. Or make that fruit, because the first ten or twelve she threw in rapid-fire succession were cantaloupes. They spilled their slippery guts all over the floor, right about the time the vamps ran across it—and promptly ended up on their vampy asses.
But they were still sliding in our direction, and now they were really pissed. On average, a vampire would prefer to have his body wounded rather than his pride, which at least would leave him bragging rights among his peers. Losing a food fight with three old women, on the other hand, didn’t do a lot for the image. They were going to have a tough time spinning this unless they caught the girls.
Suddenly, the hunt became personal, and that really wasn’t good.
That was especially true because I didn’t think Casanova had bothered to tell his boys what they were facing. If the legends were to be believed, the trio had been created as ancient versions of the Incredible Hulk. Sweet—kind of—as long as they weren’t crossed, they morphed into scary with a little scary on top when threatened.
I’d seen Enyo’s alter ego before, and was really okay with not seeing it again. And it was looking like I’d get my wish. Because she was still in little-old-lady mode, just standing in front of a parked semi, as if asking to be caught.
For some reason, that made me more nervous than the reverse. But the sticky, pissed-off vamps didn’t appear to feel the same way. They lunged for her, and for a moment, I thought it was all over. Until I looked again and they were suddenly gone.
For a second, I thought she must have had another trap. But then a fist-shaped bit of metal bulged out of the side of the semi, followed by a lot of cursing. And lau
ghter, because Enyo was on her knees, slapping the dirty ground and cackling.
“It isn’t funny,” I told her, as four or five other fist- and shoe-shaped bulges appeared.
She looked up at me, tears streaming down the crags on her face. Obviously, she begged to differ.
“I’m serious. They’re probably calling for backup right now. This could get really—”
I didn’t get a chance to finish, because the girls suddenly took off for the escalator. I ran after them, cursing vamps in general and one in particular, because that way led to the lobby. And just on the other side of that was the main casino floor, packed with people escaping the heat and working on tomorrow’s hangover.
And most of them didn’t have a vampire’s ability to throw off severe injury.
There was no point trying to catch the girls on foot, so I didn’t try. I shifted into the corridor in front of them, popping out of space in time to see a bunch more vamps running down the hall. It looked like backup had arrived.
There was no sign of the girls until I turned around and spotted them haring down the corridor toward me. They took in the guards in front of them and then glanced over their shoulders at the ones coming up behind. And then they took off—into a corridor branching to the left.
And, shit. That was the back way to the lobby, a shortcut used by the staff. I shifted again, appearing behind the main desk in time to freak out the nearest clerk and to see little, wrinkled streaks I assumed were the Graeae zip past, headed for—
“Oh, crap.”
I scrambled after them, but of course they beat me to the bridge. It spanned the River Styx, which wound through the stalactite-infested lobby, carrying boatloads of tourists happily on their way to hell. The bridge was for those who wanted a faster way to damnation, or at least bankruptcy, and was usually busier than the riverboats.
It was still fairly early, though, and Dante’s never really heated up until after dark. Security blocked off access to each side of the bridge, but let me through. I walked up to Deino, who was dangling the trap over the water. That wouldn’t have worried me so much if there hadn’t been a big-ass drain right underneath this bridge. A drain Enyo was currently prizing up.
