by John Conroe
My Sight showed a tsunami of black energy, a veritable wall, pouring from her fingers and spraying toward us. A tiny part of me recognized it as death magic in its most elemental, most lethal form. In the micro-second she threw it, I saw no path for our team to avoid it.
But the wave of death magic suddenly focused into a twisting beam of nightmare black that funneled down to disappear into the upraised left palm of our teen witch. The giant cloud of room-filling death just seemed to somehow vacuum right into his palm, disappearing without a trace. He reeled a bit before dropping to one knee.
Grim took over and I found myself leaping across the room and then up to the skylight. I hung for a moment one-handed, as I checked the scene below.
The girl witch teetered, her body drooping in exhaustion even as her rage changed to disbelief. Her face then turned to the naked girl who was still lying, unmoving, in the other circle. The unfortunate woman was partly covered by the legs and ass of the big undead bodyguard. Louanna’s disbelief changed to determination as she hauled up her dress, exposing a shapely leg complete with a wicked-looking knife strapped to it. She grasped the hilt and drew the blade, but a massive white missile knocked her across the room and against the back wall. In fact, Stacia’s impact drove the witch girl right into the wall, the sheetrock buckling around her. The force of the hit was enough to at least knock Louanna out, maybe even kill her. We’ll probably never know because the giant palm of the werewolf immediately covered the witch’s face and, with a slight twitch, crushed her head flat.
Arkady shot by me as he jumped cleanly through the skylight. I followed immediately, swinging myself up and out onto the flat roof. There was no sight of Dragan. There was a set of drones that I recognized as ones Declan had brought back from his and Stacia’s fundraising trip to the casinos. There were six of them, and they shifted position to form an arrow, pointing off the side of the building down toward the parking lot below—right at Oracle’s troops, the dancing strippers, the audience, and my team—and my mate and unborn children.
Chapter 24
Arkady and I went over the edge of the roof at the same time. The scene below was chaos. Dragan was easy to spot, being the only nine-foot-tall black-furred wolf-man in sight. But it took me a second to spot the vampires. Not mine—others.
Bodies lay across the pavement, most wearing the Oracle uniform, but at least two were dead vampires, their fading auras white, not blue. Both vampires had their heads blown almost completely off. A double boom sounded and I spotted Nika shooting at Dragan with Stacia’s shotgun. That explained the dead vampires. Shooting a moving vampire is extremely difficult… unless you yourself are a vampire, and Stacia’s DP-12 was uniquely suited to pumping out the heavy duty firepower necessary to drop a vampire.
But her silver buckshot had a less obvious effect on Dragan, if she even hit the black-furred blur as he advanced on her position. Two more shots, but he was now behind the engine block of a big Oracle SUV.
My drop to the ground ended and I moved at my fastest speed toward Nika’s cover. The mate bond told me Tanya was there, somewhere. I felt Arkady heading in another direction, where the sounds of humans yelling and vampires snarling interwove with the staccato sound of gunfire.
Closer, louder automatic fire filled the air as an Oracle agent popped up and sprayed Dragan with his HK 416. I cursed to myself, changing direction toward the agent. Time and time again, I’ve warned Stewart that 5.56 ammo is too damned light for supernatural threats. But full auto weapons in that caliber were still issued to smaller agents who had difficulty handling 7.62 mm or larger. My argument to Stewart was that those agents should therefore carry a shotgun, as all agents had to qualify with those. And yet, still, the lighter guns were issued and carried.
My point was made before I could get to the agent’s side. Dragan dodged and jumped, shrugging off the handful of tiny silver bullets that hit him, and swiped one taloned hand at the brave agent. The agent’s kevlar-helmeted head came clean off his still-standing body just as I got there. Without hesitation, Grim grabbed the HK and shoved it at the massive werewolf. A big wolfish hand clamped on the action of the gun, but the demon wolf had greatly miscalculated my strength. The barrel punched through his sternum, sinking to the front sight. Not what Grim wanted. Driving the gun all the way to the magazine had been the plan. The single paw ruined that. Rearing back, Dragan pulled the gun from his body, roaring in pain but still moving, bounding away from me and straight toward my vampires, the stone still in his hand. I was aware that Arkady was now fighting a group of Vegas vampires somewhere to my right, even as I raced after the demon wolf.
Nika opened fire, getting off two lightning-fast shots before Dragan had closed the distance. She must have reloaded with Brenneke Silver Slayer Slugs because I saw a great gout of blood blast free from his shoulder as she connected with at least one round. Based on Declan and Stacia’s observations in the paper mill, he likely had a much greater resistance to silver than any normal were. But those big three-inch rounds carried an ounce and a quarter hardened slugs of silver alloy and he roared again, obviously hurt but not down and out.
My vampire rose up at Nika’s side as Dragan reached them, Nika frantically pumping the slide of the shotgun, Tanya stabbing with one of her swords as her other hand covered her stomach. The blade connected but her face reflected as much pain as the were demon’s roar, my normally graceful vampire stumbling back and falling.
I was there, grabbing the monster’s arm and heaving him seventy feet away. He flipped over in mid-air, landed on his feet, and, without a second’s pause, turned and bounded toward downtown Vegas and the Strip.
Pain flared through my body as my vampire screamed, and I thought no more of the demon. Singh was at her side even as I landed on the ground by her head. Her pants were soaked with some fluid that my nose told me wasn’t blood.
A roar and a crash turned my head toward the Painted Pony. An eight-foot-diameter chunk of the building’s side crashed outward, a massive Kodiak bulldozer smashing through and roaring his rage. His roar cut off, his nose sniffing, and then he was charging our way at full speed, chuffing as he came.
Behind him, a white werewolf in hybrid form stepped through the opening, and Declan came after. I started to look back at Tanya but something, some subliminal detail made me snap back for a second look. Declan’s eyes—there was something weird about his eyes. I’d seen them glow a bit before, when he was channeling magic, but this was different. This time, they glowed, but with a luminal blackness. I know… luminal blackness? What the hell does that mean? It makes no sense, but that’s the only way I can describe it.
Another arc of secondary pain hit me and Tanya screamed. My attention snapped back to my vampire, who Singh had scooped up and started running away with. Any other doctor trying that would likely have died from Grim’s reflex action. But I knew Singh… all of me knew Singh, and instead I followed.
He dove into one of the big tractor trailers that Stewart had brought, Lydia already there ahead of him. She indicated a clear table covered with a blanket and Singh set Tanya down.
“You—hold her hands,” he ordered me in no uncertain terms. “You,” he said to Lydia, “find soft, clean cloth.” Scissors appeared in his hands and he cut off her jeans in vampire fast, practiced motions.
Nika appeared, carrying a big black bag, moving over to stand by the doctor.
He had Tanya stripped from the waist down before he paused to turn, looking around himself in frustration. Nika, without a word, poured alcohol over his hands and then held first one glove and then another for him. She clicked a powerful flashlight and held it as he examined Tanya.
“This is it. They’re coming,” he said, and the enormity hit me. I held her hands and she squeezed with more than all her strength. I think several of my bones broke and re-healed during each time she gripped. Singh talked to her, Lydia and Nika praised her, and I knelt by her side and breathed in unison with her, using our bond to help take some of the
pain.
I have no idea of how long it took, time slowing and speeding alternately, and my sense of it completely gone.
Suddenly Singh’s voice changed. “Now! Push Tatitiana, push!”
She heaved, head and shoulders coming up off the table. Singh stood between her legs and caught the baby in a white silk sheet. “Again,” he ordered my exhausted vampire, handing the first baby to Lydia. “A girl,” the little vampire said, holding our messy, bloody baby up and gently wiping her face. Nika handed the doctor another sheet and Tanya pushed with everything she had left. “Yes, Tatiana, you marvelous girl,” Doctor Singh said, and a second baby gushed out into the world. “A boy,” he said with a look of complete wonder.
“Corella… Corella and Beowulf,” Tanya breathed out, her eyes lidded but watching her babies. She glanced my way and I nodded agreement.
Lydia placed the girl, Corella, in Tanya’s arms while an awestruck Nika handed me our son, Beowulf. We had worked out the names the way all parents do, through exhaustive trial and error, brainstorming, and compromise. When the choices have been narrowed down, the final decision comes at birth, when you meet your baby or babies and just know which of the choices are right.
Corella Galina Demidova-Gordon and Beowulf Alexander Demidova-Gordon were born in Las Vegas, outside a strip club, at ten thirty-seven at night as a demon raged through the city.
Demon. Oh shit.
Tanya caught my thought and nodded, reaching her free hand for Wulf. I handed him off, took one last look at my family, and ran.
Chapter 25
The trail was easy to find. I didn’t even need the pointing Oracle agents to show me the direction. The screams, explosions, flashes of light and flame, along with the sirens, told me pretty much everything I needed to know. The agents did yell some valuable tidbits, though.
“The skinny kid and the white werewolf are chasing him,” a crew-cut square of muscle in gray told me.
“And like a dozen drones too,” a young female agent chimed in.
The path of destruction led down Russell Street, where at least three cars were crashed, their owners staring off into the distance. More stopped cars, a few additional crashed cars, and dozens of pointing, confused people gave me a rather strong indication that they had crossed under the freeway and taken a hard left into the Mandalay Bay complex.
People blurred by as I moved, trying to catch up. I entered Mandalay through the convention center entrance, jumping over a crushed safety glass door.
“Get Facilities here now!” a manager type yelled into his radio, his shoes and lower pants wet with what smelled like salt water. “We are running out of time to patch the tank and get those fish back in the shark tank.”
I kept moving, following the trail of chaos. It led through the casino, where a roulette table was flipped over and a woman held a red tablecloth on a Blackjack dealer’s torn, bloody arm.
The entire metal and glass doorframe was torn right out of the building’s front and was now lying on the sidewalk. Three parked cars had claw marks up their hoods, across their crumpled roofs, and ending in a size 20 footprint dented into the trunk of the red BMW 3 Series last in the row. The footprint pointed right at the Luxor. That and the fact that the Sphinx that guarded the Luxor was missing his beard. It was knocked off and lying in an exploded pile of powder under the Sphinx’s head, a battered Harley Davidson motorcycle mixed into the rubble.
A pimply faced late-teen male valet was still looking at the damage, repeating “Whoa,” over and over.
“What happened?” I asked him as I moved up, listening to the hotel for signs of conflict.
“Big furry wolfman dude came leaping up all Hulk-like. Grabbed that Harley and just threw it—one handed! But the skinny dude just moved his hand and the cycle went flying straight up, like Dumbledore had Hogwarted that bitch,” he said.
I heard a roar and looked further ahead at the Excaliber, spotting a black figure up on one of the castle’s towers. I moved, heading for the fight.
Did Declan remember that Dragan or Carnizhop was immune to his magic? Had we ever told him that?
A metal object shot through the air, cannoning straight at Dragan, who ducked below it. The object, rectangular and shiny, bounced off the curved roof of the tower, only chipping it a bit as it suddenly changed direction and shot almost vertically straight up. Dragan roared in defiance, holding his position with one clawed paw while holding the name stone in the other. In mid-roar, the missile came back down, smashing the monster clean off the roof.
Werewolf and kinetic missile crashed into the ground almost two hundred and seventy-five yards ahead of me. Dragan rolled to his feet and grabbed the object, which I could now see had started the night as a slot machine. He flung it at the two figures, one lean and human, the other massive and white furred, who appeared out of the night, charging right at him. I was closing the distance, but not fast enough. The slot machine flew like a cannon had fired it—until it stopped dead in the air and shot backward fast enough to blow the demon wolf right off his feet and through a cement block wall.
The giant black-furred beast climbed to his feet and, with a shake of his head, took off at top speed, right out into traffic. People screamed, brakes squealed, and then he was on the other side of Las Vegas Boulevard.
The kid ran right out into the crazy road, his werewolf by his side. He must have been pushing his glyphs to the maximum because I was only slowly gaining on them. In fact, he was keeping up with Stacia. Or was she keeping even with him? On purpose. As I got closer, I studied Declan’s body language. He was flat out. No reservation, no caution. All anger.
A taxi careened around a couple of stopped cars and headed straight for them. Without breaking stride or even turning his head, he flicked his hand and a six-foot mound of asphalt lifted right up in front of the cabbie, who slammed his car into a sliding turn that crashed the taxi into the macadam berm. That seemed a bit reckless and not at all like our witch.
Dragan was bounding through the tourists, directly for the New York-New York towers. He glanced back at his pursuers, then leaped for the Statue of Liberty, landing fifteen feet up the side of it, climbing as soon as his feet and hand touched stone.
Stacia leapt after him, but Declan had no supernatural climbing ability. Instead, the kid yanked open his magical messenger bag and the four steel and silver balls shot out and up.
Dragan was almost forty feet up when the orbs caught him, all four slamming the giant werewolf from behind. Because they were rising almost vertically and he was up tight against the building, they only hit at an angle and bounced off. It hurt, though, because Dragan roared his pain and outrage before making an enraged leap straight up to the base of the Lady’s pedestal.
I leapt out onto the street, landing on Declan’s asphalt berm, and launched myself across the rest of the road.
Dragan put the stone he was carrying somewhere on the ledge and then used all four limbs to run up the Statue. The orbs caught up and spun around him, smacking into him or the building when he dodged with uncanny speed and awareness. The demon wolf raced up Lady Liberty’s arm and tore off the top of the torch, swinging it like a Louisville Slugger.
He batted the first orb, and it disappeared. At first I thought he must have knocked too far and too fast to see. But when he hit the next one, I realized they were actually sinking right into the concrete-like material of the torch. He was capturing them, and Declan didn’t even realize it.
In four more passes, he had caught the last two. He used both arms to throw the torch right at Stacia’s white-furred form as she climbed closer. She ducked, but the huge chunk of stone hit close enough to knock her loose, leaving her hanging by one arm.
Dragan dropped past her and grabbed up his stone platter. I was now almost even with Declan and without stopping, I leapt up and caught the side of the building.
The black-furred monster saw me and jumped higher, landing next to Stacia’s paw that clung to the side of the building, he
r feet scrabbling for purchase. Without even a glance my way, the demon wolf slashed her shoulder with his claws and then jumped twenty feet higher.
Stacia fell, paws and feet skittering over the stone-like facade of the building. She was around the side, out of Declan’s view and falling fast. Abandoning my pursuit, I ran, Clinging, to her side of the tower. She shot past me but I lunged, caught her arm at the massive wrist, and Pulled with all my energy against the building.
It almost wasn’t enough. My left foot came free and for a second, I could feel the right one start to go as Stacia’s momentum and dense werewolf mass yanked my arm damn near from its enhanced socket. But my vampire trainer is relentless and my control over vampire energies was enough to Pull my foot back to the wall and hold us there as Stacia swung back against the building. She dug her toe claws right into the stone and we stopped, stabilizing our positions. A moment later, her weight against my arm lightened. Her expression was as shocked as mine and then we both looked down to see Declan below, his right hand outstretched. She looked back at me and nodded her massive lupine head. I let go. She hovered for a moment, then descended smoothly, like she was riding an invisible elevator to the ground. The fur on her other shoulder was red with dripping blood and she looked exhausted. Her form twisted even as she rode the telekinetic elevator to the ground, fur disappearing and skin replacing it.
