Born To Be Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 3

by Jenn Stark

  “You brought them back.”

  A small woman positioned herself in front of me, her face stained with tears. She gestured imperiously behind her at the collection of people. The chaos had slowed, and it seemed at this point the parents were mainly holding on to the children, the kids finally showing signs of shock.

  “You brought them back to us. You never stopped looking.”

  My brain bumped back online. It was Cindy Degnan pointing her finger at me, at once accusatory and triumphant. “All this time, and you never stopped.”

  “Not true,” I said automatically, though I realized that honesty was not really required in this instance. But the acts were the facts. I dropped the towel soaked with my own blood and kicked it behind me. “I couldn’t find your daughter when I first looked. I only learned of her whereabouts recently and was able to bring her home.”

  Her fierce stare didn’t waver, and I tried again. “I did stop looking, ma’am. Maybe I would have found her sooner if I hadn’t.”

  “No.” She pushed her finger forward, pointing me in the chest. “Here. You never stopped looking here. All these years, you didn’t give up in here. That’s what brought her back.” She held my gaze for a long minute. “You brought her back.”

  “Mom?”

  The child Mary came up to her mother’s side, her father holding on to her like he might never let her go again, and her mother instantly turned to her, reflexively, the wonder of hearing her daughter’s voice say that word again writ large on her face. Mary grabbed her hand, then offered me a smile. “They said our memories will come back in time, that we’ll—know more of what happened. But I…I somehow don’t think so.”

  Her expression was calm and poised, and she looked at me with young-old eyes. I glanced sharply from her to the other teens milling about, seeing the same expression, the same manner. They did know, I realized. They knew far more than they were letting on. But Kreios had been in and among them, and had already worked his particular sort of magic. They would heal. They would be whole.

  “It’ll take time,” I said. “You should take it easy, not push it too hard.”

  “No pushing needed,” Mary’s mother said, stroking her daughter’s hair. “We have you back and you will rest. And then…” Her smile faltered. “Then you will be whatever you most want to be. You have been given that chance.” She looked at me again, her eyes bright with another round of unshed tears. “We’ve all been given that.”

  They turned away then, and I rubbed my hand over my eyes. I pulled it away and let out a tight sigh. No red. Apparently, I was done bleeding from the eyes for the moment. Win.

  “How’re you feeling, doll?” Nikki stood a few feet away from me, peering up, and I realized I still stood at the back of the wedding platform. I stooped down to bundle up the towel and brushed my hand over my shirt. I looked like I’d been rained on by Karo syrup, and my clothes were charred in spots, but hey, this was Vegas. People didn’t judge.

  “Better than I look, at least.” I brightened. “And you weren’t kidnapped this time. I’m clearly getting better at this.”

  She grinned. “The kids will be shipped to the hospital for observation and more tests than anyone should reasonably endure, but it’s got to be done.” She nodded at the door, where more official-looking medical types were crowding into the room. “Media vans are here too.”

  I blinked at her. “The media? How did they hear about it?”

  “Tip from an anonymous source.” Nikki rolled her eyes. “Dixie is giving a press conference as we speak. Official story is you rolled in here with the kids after you rousted them from a meat truck heading through southern Nevada. The parents had been summoned to identify the kids, but no one knew if they would be remains, live kids, or different kids entirely. You couldn’t take the chance.”

  “Meat truck?”

  She shrugged. “We didn’t have a lot of time. The parents know only that they came into the room, the kids were there, you were there, and the rest they were willing to believe.” She quirked her lips. “The Council helped with that.”

  “Armaeus.” I blinked, suddenly remembering his touch, his words. “He was here.” My heart seemed too big, suddenly, emotions surging up in my throat, making it difficult to breathe and impossible to speak. Armaeus had been here. He shouldn’t have been, I knew in my bones. He should have stayed apart, separate.

  But he hadn’t. He’d stood by my side until I could stand alone.

  “He was, yup. But not for long,” Nikki said. “I got the feeling he wasn’t supposed to be either. Must have had a really good reason.” She winked broadly at me. “And you did look like shit. You sure you don’t need medical treatment?”

  I scowled, looking at the phalanx of EMTs that surrounded the children and their family, herding them toward the hospital. “No thanks.” I scanned the room. “Where’s Mercault and Brody?”

  “Mercault left before the cops arrived, chortling and muttering in French. Brody coordinated the truck, the crime scene guys, the works.”

  I stared at her. “You guys actually found a truck?”

  “Kreios sent it along with his compliments. Driver drugged and tied up in the back with a convincing story of how he was hijacked outside of Albuquerque, doesn’t remember anything since then. Hot dogs and deli meats all around, and enough DNA to keep everyone busy for weeks.”

  “And Viktor? If Kreios and Armaeus are here, he could be too, right?” and the other shoe fell. “Oh God. Where are the djinn?”

  “Up until about an hour ago, they were cruising the Strip, drunk off their asses,” Nikki said. “We had tails on them from the Connected community—at a fair distance, though. Six guys that size, everyone stays clear. Viktor’s dressed them like shit-kicker bikers, which tells you a little about ol’ Viktor, but the look is apparently a good one.”

  She fished out her phone and thumbed it on, tilting the screen to me. I couldn’t see all the djinn, but three of the preternaturally fierce men were leaning over a craps table, dwarfing it with their bodies. They wore jeans and various shades of T-shirts—black, gray, grayer—and tats swirled at their neck and biceps. Their hair was long, their faces were hard. I didn’t remember exactly what they’d looked like before but…

  “They’ve changed.”

  “Yep. They’re a tiny bit shorter, and their skin’s no longer tinged red. That’s what’s throwing you off. Whether they’re acclimating to the atmosphere here or playing chameleon, they definitely look more like the home team. Still all dudes, though. I thought maybe we’d get a woman in the mix.”

  “It’s their size. Tough enough to pull off seven foot plus as a dude.”

  “True.” She shrugged. “And according to Kreios, they can change form as needed, but not size so much.”

  “And that’s what they did an hour ago? Changed form?”

  “Nope. They split. They all got the internal memo at the same time and headed for the doors. Not disappearing as in poof, but they beat it.”

  “To go where?”

  “No clue.” She shook her head. “When they cleared the crowds of the casinos, they picked up pace.” She scrolled forward a few images and held her phone out to me. “Check this out.”

  The small triangle indicated a video, and the shaky cam view of a cell phone camera blinked to life. Three men, visible above a sea of humanity, trotted down the stairs of the Bellagio. They hit the open space of the concrete sidewalk and—

  I blinked. “Where’d they go?”

  “They ran. The woman I had on them was babbling so incoherently, I couldn’t make out much, but they split with Superman speed. Not disappearing altogether—if you replay the video, you see that—but moving quickly enough that they were a blur. The woman didn’t know where to look.”

  “And we think they’re here? In town?”

  “We do,” she nodded. “Blue seems to think you blew up the portal, by the way, rendering it impossible for them to return. That…changes everything, apparently.”


  I didn’t trust myself to comment much on that. “Huh. That’s strange.”

  “Yeah, strange.” Nikki slanted me a glance. “She’s not too happy that nothing is going right every time she sends you somewhere.”

  “Well, she should try being the one who comes back with her eyes bleeding.” I pursed my lips, considering. “But if the demons were running…where were they running to? Where would they go to hide?”

  Nikki closed her eyes and seemed to disappear into herself for a moment, then she came back to herself. “Where else?” she asked, showing me the screen again. “You up for a field trip?”

  I grinned. “Let me get my pack.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Binion’s Casino on Fremont Street looked pretty good, considering the explosion that had torn through its guts about a month earlier.

  With the generous underwriting of the Council, the public portion of the casino had been put to rights with remarkable speed, but the closer we got to the back of the casino, closer to where the late Jerry Fitz’s domain stood, the more obvious the patchwork became, at least to Connected eyes.

  “They went through here,” Nikki said and pushed through a door that I hadn’t seen before she pointed it out. “Basement access.”

  I eyed her. “And you know that how? You saw it?”

  She shrugged. “Not the usual way. My abilities require a person to be present unless I’ve known them long enough to imprint upon them. I’m not quite that chummy with the djinn, not all of them. And frankly, what I got to know of Warrick pretty much overrode my mental wiring. I was too freaked out to separate illusion from reality.”

  We paused in the gloom of the long staircase. It wasn’t completely dark. Red incandescent lights lined the staircase at regular intervals, beckoning us downward. “Yet you saw him come in here?”

  “He…” She hesitated. “He wanted to see if the possession would take. I didn’t have a choice about it. He took over my mind just like that, and I…” She scowled. “I felt him inside me. And not in any of the usual places. It was more than a little unsettling. And then he was gone, I could breathe again, all was well in the world. But it was like he left a kind of calling card. I figured he did that so he could find me, but the reverse is also true. I can see him. I can’t see what he thinks, but I can see what he sees.”

  I looked at her. “That could get dicey in a hurry.”

  “Child, there are some things you don’t want dancing in front of your retinas. And that’s all I’ll say about that. But the upshot is: I know he’s here. They all are. I lost track of him at the bottom of this staircase, though. Must be warded.”

  “By who?” I frowned as we headed downstairs. “The only people who’ve been down here have been with Techzilla, Inc. onsite to salvage their electronics and take inventory. SANCTUS wasn’t exactly lining up to take responsibility for the blast that leveled this place.” Sudden realization dawned. “You don’t think Viktor was bankrolling this operation?”

  “Could be.” Nikki broke off as we reached the bottom of the stairs. “This is interesting.” She pointed up at a box near the ceiling. It boasted a steady incandescent glow from a bulb directly above it, but it was definitely more than a night-light. A steady digital readout streamed numbers across its surface.

  “Security device?”

  She nodded. “Has to be, but what are they securing?” She waved her hand in front of the unit, but nothing sounded, nothing moved. “Techzilla equipment, though, no doubt. Which puts them in a lot of interesting places where the dark practitioners are. I wouldn’t have thought of them as that buddy-buddy with the human traffickers and drug-pusher types, but there’s no accounting for taste these days.”

  We crept forward and rounded the corner. No lights went off, no alarms. As we made our way deeper into the underground lair, there was no sound at all, actually, except…bickering.

  “How many times did I tell you to reread the contracts?” The first voice was harsh and guttural, and exasperated. “Of all people, Viktor Dal would have enemies he would sell us out to the first chance he gets. It’s how he works. You know that.”

  “You weren’t talking contracts when you were begging us to agree to his terms.” Nikki stiffened beside me. The voice was aristocratic, haughty, but that didn’t take away from its sense of menace. Warrick. “You were willing to possess those weak Connecteds to get out of that prison. That would have been far worse. Then we would have been killed.”

  “And this is better?” A third voice accompanied the clanging of bars that reverberated through the room. “Summoned here like dogs, to be handed off to some bastard Viktor’s in hock to.”

  “It’s a woman, if you were paying attention. I researched her.” A fourth voice, supremely bored. “She won’t be stupid enough to come here herself. She’ll send others. We kill them, we’re home free.”

  “From behind bars?” the third voice railed back.

  A deep, resonant bass voice joined the fray. “Well, if we don’t, we go from being mercenaries to indentured servants again. That appeal to you?”

  Another argument erupted. Nikki and I exchanged looks, and her grin was broad. “God, I love my life,” she breathed.

  “Annika Soo?” I whispered.

  She nodded. “Has to be. No one else has the power, and this has her MO written all over it. Sending some stooge to do her dirty work for her, and collar the djinn as her personal slaves? Could explain why she’s cozying up to SANCTUS. They’re sort of in the business of managing demons. Maybe she decided she needed reinforcements.”

  We peeked around the corner. The djinn were held in separate cages, the same cages that the previous owner of this hellhole had used to suspend dancers high above the central stage. I hadn’t realized those had been magic-deadening containers. There was a lot I hadn’t realized a few short weeks ago.

  “So what do we do?” Nikki asked loudly after we pulled back. “Let ’em go? That seems like it’d cost someone.”

  We stepped into the room, and the djinn fell silent. We could only get three steps in before the magic hit us. “Wards, and strong ones,” I muttered. “I can’t get through that.”

  From far up the corridor, the sound of many footfalls flooded down the stairs, and Nikki and I both stiffened as the lights winked out.

  “So we can’t get in there,” she said. “Which means what—we fight the bad guys ourselves?”

  I shrugged, feeling the collective stare of the Syx. “We could. There’d need to be some money in it, though. Or aid down the road.”

  “No more deals,” growled the tallest demon.

  Warrick waved him down. “We will grant you six requests,” he said gruffly. “Six, one for each of our souls. And no more.”

  I nodded. “Done.”

  We didn’t have time to work out the finer details as the march of footsteps got closer. “Son of a bitch,” Nikki murmured as the demons fell silent behind us. “How many do you figure? Ten?”

  “Twelve, I’d bet. It’ll take two to carry each of them after—”

  The sound screeched through the air and buffeted the cages, loud enough to make our bones ache. I knew that trick, of course—a brutal tonal frequency targeted specifically to cripple psychics—but I’d built up a tolerance to it. So had Nikki. We struggled against it, and a second later, it was done.

  Unfortunately, so were the djinn. Six heaps of muscle and sinew lay on the floor. They were knocked out before they’d landed their first punch. It might as well have been a UFC match.

  The wards had dropped too—but we were still standing. That could only mean good things. I yanked four Atlantean stars from my pack, handing two to Nikki. “It’s all I got.”

  “Stupid Brody and his stupid gun safety issues,” she muttered, but she took the blades. She turned and brandished her weapons.

  The men who flowed into the space were prepared for hauling giant hulks and maybe a spatter of gunfire. They were not prepared for Nikki Dawes armed with thr
owing stars. Few people were.

  That said, the problem with blades intended to be thrown is that if you use them, you lose them. Surprise was our only tactical advantage.

  We waited until the men pounded into the room, sticking to the shadows. The first man worked a device on his wrist, and, despite the dim light, I could see the insignia on it. SANCTUS. They were deeper in the know than I would have given them credit for. The moment he turned to his captain to indicate the wards were down, we struck.

  The men turned instantly at the sound of us rushing forward, but surprise was on our side. Surprise, and otherworldly weapons. Which didn’t hurt.

  With the amped-up energy of the Atlantean stars, my arms practically rotated out of their sockets in wild arcs as we dove into the center of the men. They didn’t fire their weapons, as we had them in a tight circle—the likelihood of them hitting each other was too great. Instead, they engaged us in hand-to-hand combat, and we lost ourselves in the sound of crunching bones and splitting skin. Nikki was an accomplished fighter and I wasn’t bad, but this wasn’t about us, I could tell in an instant.

  The edges of the world shimmered, and I felt the stare of eyes on us, the eyes of the Watchers trapped in Atlantis. If they recognized the Syx crumpled in the chambers beyond, I couldn’t tell. I was moving too quickly, the blood lust on me so hard and sure that I could only pray I was incapacitating, not killing, as I punched and sliced and swung. Eventually, only Nikki and I stood there, our lungs heaving, our hands and forearms covered with blood. She poked her knife into the space before the cages. Nothing blocked us.

  “We need to get these guys out of here, before Viktor comes to re-collect them,” I managed. “We can’t carry these guys ourselves, though.”

  “You’re not carrying them at all.” She shook her head. “I’ll call Brody for this job. Surely he can find the best and biggest of the boys in blue to help a girl out. Besides,” she grinned. “I want to be there when Warrick here wakes up and realizes that he owes me large. There’s just something poetic about kicking a demon when he’s down. So get out of here.”