by John Conroe
When Stacia walked over to him, naked as a jaybird, he started to automatically hand her replacement clothing from his bag of tricks. To his credit, he was only slightly distracted by her lack of clothing. The rest of the team gravitated our way, Lydia pausing just long enough to give a down but not completely out vampire a sharp kick to the head, ending his current consciousness.
Against the block wall, the lump of sallow flesh and crumpled clothing that was Stefano stirred slightly. Our group moved immediately to him, Arkady lifting him from the ground like a child.
“So, we come to warn your masters of a threat to their city and their existence and you tell us that they already know of it. Then you threaten us,” Tanya said to him.
“We asked you to go with us; we didn’t attack. Your monster did,” he said, eyes jumping to me and back again.
“You, and you alone, will accompany us now,” she said in a voice identical to his. Then she switched tones, mimicking the other vampire. “She can even ride on my lap.”
“This is how you greet Darkkin visitors?” Lydia asked.
“He was to take you no matter what, and the rest were to attack us, hopefully eliminating us,” Nika said.
“Get out of my head!” Stefano yelled. Arkady gave him a shake hard enough to break a human’s neck.
“Tell your masters that we decline their invitation. Tell them that we came in good faith, yet they broke the guest rules. Tell them we will remove the demon and then we will have a conversation with them about their actions,” my vampire told him. I had freaked out a bit when these vampires had demanded she go with them. Grim had responded. But watching her deliver that promise to the masters’ lackey, I realized there was no mother on earth, no grizzly momma or tigress with cubs who was better able to protect her young than my Tanya. Then again, if I had any say, she would never have to.
A blue Honda Odyssey van pulled up to us, a confused young man wearing a rental company polo shirt at the wheel.
“Ah, is there a Lydia here?” he said, then his eyes got wide. “Oh my God! You’re her. You’re him. You’re all them!”
“Yes we are, and I’m Lydia. Where do I sign?” Lydia said, then had to snap her fingers to get his attention. Chastened, he pulled out a tablet and had her finger sign for the car.
“We’re gonna drop you off at back at your agency. Somehow, I don’t think you want to be here when this lot starts to heal,” I said. Lydia took over the wheel, Arkady got shotgun, Nika slipped into the third row with Stacia and Declan while ’Sos changed to wolf form and jumped into the far back when the automatic tailgate lifted. Tanya climbed in and calmly sat on Nika’s lap. “You and I in the middle,” I told the guy, whose shirt announced him as Todd. He climbed in and sat absolutely frozen except for his eyes which darted about. I noticed his phone in his hand, clutched tightly.
“Did you want a picture?” I asked.
“Oh lord, would I? Do you mind?” he gushed.
I leaned over so he could selfie us and suddenly smelled and sensed Stacia, Tanya, and Nika all leaning forward to get in on the shot. He took four and then Lydia pulled to a stop and let him out. We left him staring at the departing van, Tanya moving up to his seat.
“How long to hit social media, do you think?” Nika asked.
“All four photographs have already been uploaded to Twitter and Snapchat. Hashtag God Hammer in Vegas,” Omega reported.
“Not a bad start,” Tanya said. “Not bad at all.”
Chapter 14
With that, we took our mighty minivan and cruised near the Painted Horse Gentlemen’s Club, letting Declan and Stacia each sense for our prey. Snake Eyes, as Declan started calling him, did not show up to my demon spidey sense, nor did Declan or Stacia feel or scent the witch beyond enough traces to tell us they had been there.
We let Nika and Lydia out on the street behind the club, with Declan and Stacia following them as security in case the witch or her Hellspawn had left any hidden surprises. Thirty minutes later, we picked all four up and headed out away from the Strip and into the residential area that sprawled around Vegas in every direction.
Arkady pulled us into the driveway of a small white ranch-style house that looked a little world weary but was still neat and carefully maintained. Lydia hopped out and punched a code into the outside garage door keypad, and when the two-car door rolled up, it revealed a newish Cadillac Escalade and an empty parking bay. The Odyssey slid into its assigned spot and Lydia hit the inside control to lower the door.
“Welcome to Casa Vegas,” the little vampire smirked before disappearing into the house ahead of us.
“Three bedrooms, two baths, fifteen hundred square feet,” Tanya rattled off. “Bunks in two of the bedrooms. The master is ours,” she said with a sigh, her hand automatically on her stomach.
“Declan, Doc Singh can get out of the jet, right?” I asked, watching my vampire.
“Doctor Singh has already left the aircraft and is en route to this location. ETA in seven minutes,” Omega answered.
“The crew and the doctor all have passkeys to the wards around the jet. They can come and go as they please. I’ll have to drop the wards to get it refueled though,” Declan answered. “Oh, and the passkeys will give them protection if that witch should show up in the airport.”
“Is there room for everyone?” Stacia asked, looking around the garage.
“We also own the house directly behind this one. The aircraft crew will stay there, but the good doctor should be okay here, especially as we will be sleeping in day and night shifts,” Tanya said, moving from the garage into the kitchen, then dining and living rooms.
“The property is owned by a private corporation that is owned by a partnership. The three partners are a law firm, an accounting firm, and a guy who owns a housecleaning company. All three are vendors who receive a large portion of their income working for subsidiaries of Demidova Corp. It’s not as obscure as I would like, but Omega told me it wasn’t an obvious trail at all,” Lydia said.
“Wow, that’s kinda Jason Bourne stuff,” Declan said.
“Not compared to most of our safe houses and caches of assets,” Lydia said.
“Current communications indicate several federal agencies have descended upon the attack scene at the airport. They have locked down the site and blacked out all media and local law enforcement communications regarding it.
“Approximately fifty-two percent of the vampires healed enough to leave the site and return to their superiors. Unfortunately, the leaders of the Las Vegas coven appear to be relatively, as my father might say, ‘old school.’ They do not use a great deal of modern technology directly, and their quarters are buried so deep in the main casino complex as to disrupt many of the few signals that are generated. I am currently resolving that issue, but from what I have gleaned, Arlan and Peter have issued orders for Tanya to be brought in by any means necessary. The rest of you are considered expendable, and Chris is to be shot on sight with depleted uranium munitions. They do not appear to know anything about this property or the one behind it,” Omega said from a small Bluetooth speaker that Declan was carrying.
“Shoot my Chosen on sight?” Tanya asked in a deadly quiet voice.
“Those were the orders, Tanya,” Omega said.
It got real quiet. I cleared my throat. “What did you two find out about the Painted Horse?” I asked.
Lydia spoke first. “We found a pair of dancers leaving the club. They were outside waiting for a taxi and looking nervous as hell. We asked if it was a good place to dance.”
Lydia and Nika were more than attractive enough to be dancers at a high-end club.
“When she asked the question, they both thought we would be dead like some of their friends if we looked for jobs there. They themselves were taking advantage of the absence of Louanna and Dragan to get the heck outta Dodge,” Nika said.
“They advised us against it, telling us that the new management wasn’t at all friendly to the staff,” Lydia said
.
“What they thought was that three girls disappeared into a room the night the takeover happened, and when they came back out, they were different. One of our witnesses thought of zombies when she saw and smelled them. One minute full of life and the next acting like robots and smelling like death,” Nika said.
“Revenants. They were made into revenants,” Declan said.
“Why?” Tanya asked.
“The three dancers were selected randomly. But the odd thing in our witnesses’ memories was that the boy, Dragan, went into the room looking ten and came out looking nineteen or twenty,” Nika said.
“She sacrificed them to speed his maturity,” Declan said. “Used the energy of their deaths to accelerate his growth. Then she revived their bodies.”
“As zombie strippers?” Lydia asked.
“As servants, to maintain a fiction, as weapons,” Stacia said.
“Where was demon and witch?” Arkady asked.
“When we asked if the new management was available, they both thought of the desert. One knew a little more than the other. She remembered overhearing them mention going back to the canyon,” Nika said.
“The Grand Canyon?” I asked.
“No, closer. Red Rock Canyon. It’s nearby,” Nika said.
“Approximately thirteen-point-two miles from this location,” Omega added.
“Back to the canyon? How many times could they have gone? They just got here,” I mused.
“No, they just got to the Painted Horse. They could have been in Vegas for several weeks,” Tanya said.
“That’s true. It probably didn’t take them a whole month to get here. But what would a demon want with a local canyon?” Declan asked.
“I have no idea, but I think it’s time we asked someone who might,” I said.
Chapter 15
Tanya went with me, and Declan too, because despite being part of the crew, he was still much less recognizable than the others. Teenaged boys can throw on a hoodie and a hat and look instantly like a million other teenagers. Tanya wore baggy clothes to hide the baby bump and I, well, I just had to keep my sunglasses on at night.
Despite the mad proliferation of wedding chapels, we opted for a regular church, although most of those seemed to be one-story buildings that could easily convert to a restaurant or furniture store if the whole God business thing didn’t work out.
We chose the one closest to the safe house, which happened to be called the Church of Red Rock. Coincidence? I think not.
It should have been locked up for the night, as the lights were all completely off except for a slight yellow glow from under two big doors just inside. When Tanya touched the door, it clicked and pulled easily open at her touch. She and I both turned to the kid.
“Don’t look at me. I didn’t do that,” he said.
We entered the silent building and moved deeper, past the entryway and through the large double doors that led to the sanctuary. The light was emanating from a half-dozen candles that burned brightly by the altar, each of them a potential fire hazard. A figure stood with its back to us, head bowed, dressed in dark trousers and a rich mahogany button down.
“Come in, my children—all are welcome,” Barbiel said, turning to face us. I glanced back at Declan, but he wasn’t looking at my angelic handler and he didn’t appear to hear Barbiel speak.
“Watch the door, would you?” I asked him. He nodded, looking once more around the sanctuary, a little spooked.
“He stays the path, even when sorely pressed,” Barbiel said, now just a couple of feet from us. “And he has recently been very close to evil and the death power that his ancient ancestor loved so much.”
“What did you expect?” I asked.
“I did not expect that the two-natured girl would choose him for a mate and seal both herself and him to your cause,” the Angel of October said.
Something in his tone made me consider. “You lost a bet, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Is betting even allowed?” Tanya asked.
He sighed, much put out. “Yes, and yes. Uriel guessed it and the rest of us disagreed. I was the only one with the guts to call him out on it.”
“What did you lose?” Tanya asked.
“A task, one that I will perform in his place at the time of his choosing. Material things are meaningless to us,” he said.
“I would think you wouldn’t bet against your own asset,” Tanya said, pointing at me.
“He was never a part of it,” Barbiel said.
“But you’ve said in the past that both Stacia and Declan represented possible dangers,” Tanya said, her voiced pitched too low for Declan’s human hearing. The kid was sitting in the foyer, just visible through the doorway, writing on something in his hand. “Yet my Chosen has a habit of turning dangers to assets.”
“Almost exactly what Uriel said. Enough of my troubles. You have questions about the Beast of the Pit?” he asked.
“If you mean Dragan, the demon boy, then yes,” I said.
“He is no boy, and you had best never think him such. Carnizhop is very strong, very old, and very, very dangerous. Even now, his physical form is more of an age with your young asset at the door. Soon he will be mature. At that point, he is much your equal in many things,” Barbiel said.
“What are his weaknesses?” Tanya asked.
“Born of woman, he is immune to fire and exorcism. Your aura will damage him if in direct contact, but he has resistance to it. It would take much for you to cut him apart. He is as fast and strong as you, and direct use of magic such as your young witch wields will not effect him. He heals fast but can be wounded and worn down. His werewolf form has a greater resistance to silver, but it is still poisonous to him,” Barbiel said. We both nodded at this information, then my vampire frowned.
“Barbiel, why would the demon and his witch mother spend their days in the Red Rock Canyon?” she asked.
His expression turned bleak. “In the early days of this world, when Yahweh had just formed it, many things came into being. Things that would be hard to describe to you with your current understandings. It would be easier for me to describe them to the young witch as he counts several like them among his… friends,” Barbiel said.
Tanya and I glanced at each other, then at the kid, who had his back to us. Suddenly a light of understanding appeared in my vampire’s expression. “Elementals? You mean elementals?” she asked, her voice louder.
Out in the foyer, Declan snapped around to look at us, curiosity rampant across his face.
“Yes, that is perhaps the term he might use, although comparing these early, older elementals to the fledglings that follow him around is almost useless. Some are as old as the planet itself and are very, very powerful in their own right. Yahweh named them all, but then they fought among each other for those names,” our angel said.
“Because names have power?” I asked. Declan heard that as well and now his eyebrows were high enough to become part of his hairline.
“Exactly. They sought dominion over each other. There were some of Earth, of Wind, of Water, and, of course, of Fire. Those of fire held sway over much of the planet in those early days, loosing molten magma from the depths of the planet. The fighting was very fierce and no life could be sown with such battles raging. Finally, Yahweh became angry himself and stopped the fighting. He took from the worst offenders their names and held them until the surface had calmed enough for life to begin. Then as the simplest and earliest life forms began to spread, Yahweh tossed the names of the fighters back to Earth and let them fall where they may. Earth and Fire names fell into water and were swept up by the little swimming things of the world. Air and Water names fell into volcanos and the crevices of the ground. The elementals took heed and ceased their fighting, letting their names lay where they fell,” Barbiel said.
Always faster on the uptake, my vampire got there first. “They’re looking for the name of an elemental, aren’t they? Among the rocks of the Red Rock Canyon?”
