“Yes?” Murphy urged quietly.
Haven looked around. Then hunched closer to the shorter woman to avoid anyone nearby overhearing. “They’re fake.”
“I know,” she whispered back.
“I’ve seen them before,” he told her. “The real ones. What are they?” He pointed at the red stone, remembering—“What is that?”
“It’s called a dragon’s egg,” Murphy answered. “It’s used in vampire alchemy, I think.”
“Vampire alchemy?”
“Blood into gold instead of lead into gold, I guess. Maybe that’s where they got the gold for the nest leaders’ coins.”
She thought. She guessed. “You don’t really know what it’s for.”
“I know it’s powerful. And—” Her mouth snapped closed and she shook her head.
Haven understood her sudden reaction. He took Murphy by the shoulders and turned her to face him. She was trembling. “You know Ben—your master, the master you told me you wanted to be on an equal footing with—he took the magical crap from the case. You want me to know, but you feel the need to defend Ben, too. It makes you crazy—the pull for freedom and the compulsion to protect twist at you all the time. It’s okay.” He was trying hard to act sane and reasonable, and it was really going against the grain.
He pulled the painfully confused companion into a momentary embrace. She pushed him away. She had to. After all, she belonged to Ben, but breathed a nearly silent, “Thanks,” even as she stepped back.
“It’s okay,” he assured her. “You’re not ratting out Ben. I saw him with the stuff.”
She wiped a thin film of sweat off her forehead. “You know what Ben did?”
“Saw him give it to his new boyfriend. Right here in the hotel bar. Felt it,” Haven added. “The witch boy made the rock—radiate?—just by passing his hand over it. Didn’t you feel it, sometime around one?”
“I wasn’t in the hotel after midnight last night.” Murphy was visibly calmer now, her tone back to brisk and matter-of-fact. “Did you see what else Ben gave Morgan Reese?”
“A notebook, I think. I didn’t get a very good look at it.”
“It’s the notebook that’s important,” she said. “The other stuff is toys.”
“What’s in the book?”
“Spells, of course. Ancient, powerful spells translated into English. Maybe even a translation of the Scrolls of Silk.”
“The what?”
“Martina wants the information in the scrolls to hurt Enforcers. We need to get our hands on that book. Come with me.”
She took him out of the treasure room, by the front entrance this time, and by back ways and private elevators to the heart of the hotel’s security system. The control center contained walls of monitors, rows of sensor equipment. The place was manned by a couple dozen sharp-eyed, serious-looking people, all of them wearing headsets. No one gave him and Murphy more than a cursory glance as they moved through the room. Their eyes were on the gambling pits, the halls and lobby, the shops and pools, restaurants, bars, buffets, and every other public area of the hotel. One bank of screens showed more private areas of the Silk Road. This was the area where Murphy led Haven.
Murphy shooed the woman monitoring these screens away with a gesture. She took the woman’s vacated chair, and gestured Haven to one next to it. As he sat, Murphy’s fingers flew over a control panel, bringing up multiple views of the same scene.
“What am I looking at?” Haven asked, sweeping his gaze from screen to screen.
“Morgan Reese’s dressing room.”
She sounded grim and worried, Haven noted. This was obviously very important to her. He concentrated on the various views, trying to make out details before asking more questions. The space was large, full of all kinds of colorful junk—boxes and cabinets draped in bright satin cloths, even a guillotine and an ornately decorated animal cage. Typical stage magician stuff, Haven supposed. Another view showed a refrigerator and bar setup. Cameras covered several doors. There was a couch, a desk, several chairs.
A vampire was sleeping on the couch.
“Ben?”
“Ben,” Murphy agreed. She was staring at views of the vampire, chewing a thumbnail worriedly. She obviously didn’t like him being away from his usual safe sleeping place. “That’s Reese,” she said, pointing at the screens covering where the magician sat at a table.
Haven glanced at the man he’d seen in the bar last night, but his attention was inexorably drawn to the objects on the table. He couldn’t bear to look at the red gem for more than a moment. It seemed bigger than he remembered. Even seeing it through the lens of a camera, it made his eyes burn and sent a wave of heat over his skin. The gold vessel didn’t give off such nasty vibes.
“Look at him. Reese is reading the grimoire,” Murphy said. “The translation of the scrolls is in there, along with a lot of potent spells.”
Haven hung out with Char McCairn. He knew what a grimoire was. He recognized the blue plastic binder from seeing the vampire pass it to Reese in the bar last night. “That’s the spell book, all right.”
“We have to get it from Reese.” She looked anxiously at her master, passed out on the couch. “We have to get Ben out of there.”
“We?” Haven gave the woman a hard look. “You’re head of security. Send a couple of your people to lug Benjy boy out.”
She shot him a shocked look. “I can’t do that!”
Haven shook his head in disgust. He glanced at the screens and back at the woman. The vampire on the couch didn’t look to be in any danger. Reese’s concentration was gleefully on the notebook, smiling and gesturing as he turned pages. “Ben wants to be in there, right?”
“Yes,” the companion agreed reluctantly. “But the grimoire—”
“Nest politics is not my problem. I came here because of Martina, not to help you with your boyfriend’s boyfriend. She’s the problem. That’s what you said yesterday.” Haven got to his feet. “Now you don’t even know where she is.”
When he started to walk away, she asked, “Where are you going?”
“Looking for Duke,” he answered. He glanced back at her briefly before he left. “You don’t know where the city’s Enforcer is. No Enforcer skips town without his companion. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
Chapter 11
I USED TO be better at this.
I am good at it. Truth is, dreamriding looking for story ideas is a fun hobby. What I need to do now is going to lead to—implications.
Heads will roll. Hearts will be ripped out. I should call in the professionals. I called Olympias. She’s the one with official sanction. Let her—
As if I trust Olympias to actually be of any help to anyone. It was cowardly of me to call her, even if I do hate getting involved. She might be a problem solver, but she’s actually started believing the Council rules the strigoi race. Smart girl, but hard. Sorry I called her, even if the lost Enforcer does work for her.
Maybe he’ll turn up. Maybe being out of the house is making me delusional.
Valentine let the thought and herself drift through darkness. She could feel Geoff lying beside her. Not his frozen body, but sense the swirl of mental energy. His restlessness was distracting, but she fought the urge to intrude, to tell him to keep it down in there. The boy had his own searching to do, his own dreamriding to navigate. It wouldn’t help if she deliberately distracted him.
She rather liked floating in this waking darkness, especially after the chaos of the night before. If she’d found Eddie for more than a few seconds of mental contact last night, she could stay inside herself now, rest and recover. But no, Eddie had to be elusive. And she had to have gotten distracted. Over and over again. She simply should not be allowed out alone in crowds. Geoff would say it was good for her, was always urging her to experience the world outside the walls of her home. What the hell did he know? What happened when a lurch of conscience sent her walking the streets last night? Did she find Eddie? No.
&nbs
p; Shouldn’t it have been the easiest thing in the world to find a vampire she’d made? Yes. Of course. She’d found three of them among the strigs wandering around staring at the pretty lights. It had been like a hot knife going through her heart every time she came across an old, discarded lover. Seeing them frightened her as well. Was it some weakness she’d passed to them that made them prey to the light sickness?
They got old, she told herself now. They never got new—never learned how to renew themselves with each new night. That’s something we all have to cope with. Can’t be taught. Can’t be passed on. I hope.
Eddie may have become far too light-loving, but he wasn’t helpless or harmless, Valentine would bet on that.
He’s a rat, she remembered. He always has been. I was looking for a vampire when I should have been searching for a rat. Silly me.
I couldn’t find him physically or mentally last night. I can’t use that as an excuse not to find him today.
Even if I find out what’s up, I don’t have to do anything. Just pass the intel along to Olympias.
Yeah. Like that’s going to happen.
Having run to the end of excuses, Valentine opened her inner eyes, and moved her soul stealthily away from her body.
As she left herself behind, Valentine whispered, “Here, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.”
He said, “Meet me at midday,” but Char didn’t really know what she was doing here. “Here” being a relative term for a place that existed both in her mind and outside her consciousness. Here was here because she, an immortal being, believed in it.
She wondered if her “here” would match Geoff Sterling’s “here,” and they would meet at midday.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she complained.
“Because I asked you to.”
She heard his voice, but turning around, she saw only gray emptiness. She instinctively knew the sun was at the center of the sky, but she hadn’t gotten around to giving any distinct shape to their proposed meeting place.
“You didn’t precisely ask,” she told the disembodied voice of Geoff Sterling.
“I’ve seen your boyfriend,” he answered. “Don’t tell me you expect chivalry and gallant behavior from a man?”
“You’re not a man,” she pointed out. “And what I expect from a man is none of your business.”
“Why not?” Sterling asked, suddenly popping into being in front of her.
Char took a step back, and suddenly felt sand warm under the soles of her bare feet. She looked down. Black sand. A warm, salt-scented breeze brushed her cheeks and ruffled her hair. She looked at Sterling.
“Hawaii,” he explained. “There’s black volcanic sand beaches in Hawaii. Black’s our color, so I thought—”
“We’re in Las Vegas,” she reminded him.
He waved an arm. “We’re anywhere we want to be in here.”
Yeah. He was right about that. “I’m not here for romantic walks on beaches,” she said, and immediately regretted her choice of words from the amused interest that suddenly flooded her senses. When she looked at him, he was grinning. “Oh, get over yourself, you ain’t that pretty.”
“Neither are you,” he responded. “But I like you just fine the way you are.”
“I am so pretty. Jebel thinks so,” she added. This conversation was completely ridiculous, and totally off the point of what they should be discussing.
“Mortal opinions don’t count.”
She bristled at this. “That is so arrogant. And wrong.”
Sterling looked away from her sharp regard, then shrugged, and looked at her again. “Yeah. Point taken. Jimmy wouldn’t approve. Neither would Val. But I don’t see what you see in your mortal.”
She wasn’t sure where Sterling wanted to go with this, but she wasn’t going with him. Char concentrated, and turned the setting into them sitting at a table on a terrace overlooking the fountains at the Bellagio. She’d been tempted to plop them down in the stacks of a library, but why give him a chance to tease her about being all staid and proper? No reason not to talk business and enjoy a nice view.
“Las Vegas,” she said. “Where we’re supposed to be looking for the Scrolls of Silk.”
“You take direction well, don’t you?” Sterling observed. “Why are you listening to Val, anyway?”
“You are,” she countered.
“Yeah, but I live with her.”
Char took a sip from a tall glass of iced tea that appeared by her hand. In the distance she could see the outline of the Silk Road, its gilded and blue-tiled domes and towers glinting in the noonday sun. It looked gaudy as hell, as any temple to excess on the Strip should. It looked normal—but was she seeing it as it really was, or with her imagination?
“Imagination,” Sterling said.
She looked at him. “Why couldn’t we get there last night?” she asked Sterling. “What happened?”
“Think we can get there now?” he countered.
“I asked first. And I don’t like trying to think about it, either,” she added, feeling a certain amount of sympathy for both of them. After Valentine disappeared into the crowd last night, Char and Sterling started for the hotel at the other end of town. They’d decided to run, dodging through traffic, barely visible blurs on the edge of vision. It had been fun. But they were hit with something within a block or two of the Silk Road. Something that stopped them dead, left them confused, lost. Char barely made it back to her hotel before dawn. And she’d had a blazing headache. “It was weird.”
“That is one term for magic,” Sterling answered.
“You think they have a protective spell around the grounds? Is that what that pulse of energy was?”
“Felt like it to me.”
“But if somebody at the Silk Road is spreading rumors about data hidden inside, doesn’t that mean they want to lure magic users in?”
“If someone at the Silk Road is the one spreading the rumors. Have you actually traced the rumors there?”
“No,” she had to admit.
Sterling ran a hand over his face. He glared at the hotel in their imaginations’ distance. “Maybe—maybe it was a security measure.”
“To keep vampires from gambling?” she suggested. “We have a certain innate—luck—I suppose. We could use our psychic skills to cheat the casino. Of course, vampires run the casino and—”
“Maybe the place is warded to keep Nighthawks out.”
“Now, there’s a thought.” She considered for a moment, sipped tea, then asked, “Think it’s because of the Scrolls of Silk?”
“Probably. They’re anti-Enforcer propaganda.”
Char would have dropped her tea glass if it hadn’t been imaginary to begin with. “You said you didn’t know what the scrolls were.”
He gave her a slowly growing smile. And his eyes glittered with amusement. “You always believe what you’re told, don’t you? Beside, I merely implied ignorance with my silence.”
“Your friend said we’d go blind if we read them. I didn’t believe that.” Not really. But she kept it in the back of her mind. With magic you could never be too careful. A lot of people forgot that—and bad things happened to them.
“My friend should never be taken too literally. She has a very odd sense of humor. From what little I’ve heard, it’s safer not to know about the scrolls. Safer not to tell a really old vampire you know about them. Val’s really old.”
“Why is it safer?”
“ ’Cause people who read the scrolls get—uppity. Nighthawks made quick snacks of uppity strigoi even before they were called Enforcers and worked for the Council. Nighthawks aren’t even supposed to know what the scrolls say.”
“Why?”
His smile grew even wider. “I think it’s because what’s written in the scrolls is true.”
Her frustration was building. She got up and moved around the table toward Sterling. He stood to meet her. They met in the middle of the terrace, near a marble staircase that ran down to a deep aquamarine
pool.
Toe to toe, she looked up at the much taller vampire and demanded, “What’s in the scrolls? How do you know about them?”
He put his hands on her shoulders. Big hands. They were Nighthawks, with equal skills, strengths, and weaknesses. She wasn’t used to that.
“Maybe you’ve been alone too much,” he said.
“Answer my questions, Sterling.”
“You were Jimmy’s. Didn’t he ever talk to you?”
Char refused to be wounded by the question. She barely noticed when his hands slid down her arms and he twined his fingers with hers. “Of course Jimmy talked to me. We talked all the time.”
“About vampire things? The perks and hazards of eternal life? The responsibilities our kind owed mortals?”
She nodded. “Yes. About those sorts of things. He prepared me.”
“Did he tell you you were Nighthawk?”
“No.”
“Then he didn’t prepare you. Or me. The change came as a complete surprise.”
“It’s supposed to. So that the ritual has more meaning.”
“Bullshit. Vampires keep too many secrets.”
“And this has to do with the scrolls, how?”
“Sorry. It’s easy to get distracted when you finally have an equal to talk to.”
She understood this. She appreciated it. “The sun’s moving across the sky. Talk to me now, so we can do something when we wake up. Something’s building, something that needs to be stopped. Can’t you feel it?”
“Yes.” He growled and, for a moment, showed hunting fangs. “And I hate it. I don’t want to be involved. I really did come to town on business. And vacation. And because Val needs to get out more.”
“And you were called here by fate. That happens to Nighthawks. No coincidences. Magic made us. Magic uses us. And you hate it.”
He shrugged. “At least I met you. That makes up for some of the inconvenience.”
She would have stepped back, but his grip on her hands tightened. She chose not to struggle. “And you still haven’t told me anything useful. What did Jimmy tell you about the scrolls?” Why did he tell you and not me? She found her own pouting annoying, and hoped Sterling didn’t notice it.
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