“Damn right,” he answered Valentine. He caught a whiff of burnt hair as he turned around.
Valentine shook gray ash off the ends of her dark curls. “Got a little too close,” she said. “But I had to make sure of what I was looking at. We are in such trouble.” She sounded casual.
“You’ve got the cool attitude down cold, lady,” he complimented the old vampire. “But there’s fear in your eyes.”
“Yes, well.” She surveyed the deserted lobby while she ran fingers through her hair, shaking loose more ash. “Shakespeare,” she said. “Or Ray Bradbury. Take your pick.”
He scowled. “What?”
“Something wicked this way comes, my dear.”
“How wicked?” he asked. “Which way?”
“About as wicked as they come. It wants out. Its wings are still developing, so it can’t fly. It can still burn and break through any wall it wants to.”
He took a step closer to Valentine. “It? What kind of it is it?” He had to know, even if he didn’t really want to. Dread curdled in his stomach, and the memory of a very bad dream ripped through his mind.
“Dragon,” Valentine answered.
Matter-of-fact. So fucking matter-of-fact. Too matter-of-fact for him to express any consternation, any disbelief. He wanted to deny the existence of dragons, but protesting about myths come to life was stupid when talking to a vampire.
“What do I need to know about dragons?” he asked, and guessed, “They breathe fire.”
“And radiate high heat,” she added. “They are the rarest of magical creatures. The most dangerous. The hardest to kill. They ought to be extinct, but dragon eggs are useful in certain kinds of magic.” Her eyes blazed with anger as she added, “The sorcerers who risk using this kind of magic ought to be extinct. Well, the fool who used this egg is history. Apparently he used the egg in some sort of spell meant to control a vampire. Of course, using the dragon’s egg made the spell so strong that it fucked over all the weaker vampires in the area. The magician really didn’t know what he was doing. Unfortunately, he also didn’t know that the egg needed to be properly disposed of after he used it. This dragon’s freshly hatched, hungry, and on the move. It’s going to bust out of the hotel, keep growing, getting hotter and hungrier all the while. It will take the city.”
Why wasn’t he surprised by this information? Valentine was also really old. Her explanation was probably colored by ancient thinking. “How big will it get?”
“Big.”
“Can it fly?”
“Yes.”
“Intelligent?”
“Cunning. Cruel. They also sort of imprint on the one who wakes them. Morgan Reese was not a nice man.”
Nothing Valentine told him made Haven feel any more confident. “What would be a good way to kill a dragon? Surface to air missiles? Call in an air strike from Nellis?”
She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I wish. Dragons absorb energy. Being hit by explosives will only make it grow. It’s a magical creature. Magic involves ritual. There is only one specific way to kill a dragon.”
Haven wasn’t going to like this. He really knew he wasn’t going to like this. “Yeah?”
“We could use something to divert its attention. It would help if we had a virgin. Magical creatures are attracted to that sort of mortal. Unicorns want to be their pets. Dragons like the way they taste.”
Haven wasn’t sure if he should take her seriously. He said, “You want me to ask a bunch of cocktail waitresses for a volunteer?”
“Point taken.” She quit stalling. “What we really need is a hero. A mortal hero.” She looked around while she spoke, then her gaze came back to him. “Do you know how to use a sword?”
The speed with which she went from “we” to “you” was not lost on Haven.
“Yeah,” he admitted grudgingly. “I can use a sword.”
Valentine gazed at him with genuine pleasure and wonder. “You amaze me.”
“I kill demons,” he answered, facing the calculating hope in her look with gruff annoyance. “I’ve got all kinds of job skills.”
“Do you have a sword?”
Haven ran through a mental inventory of the contents of the weapons locker back in the Jeep. He never went without firepower, explosives, and miscellaneous equipment, but he’d packed light this time.
“No,” he told her. “In town for a wedding, not a beheading. How about a chainsaw? Would that work on a dragon?” The chainsaw was his weapon of choice when it came to demon killing. It had proved effective on vampires as well, though he wasn’t about to mention that to Valentine.
Valentine chewed a nail and thought about it. “No,” she decided. “Has to be a sword. Preferably a magical sword. Maybe they have something at the Excalibur that we—”
“Museum,” Haven interrupted her. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the Silk Road’s artifact display. “All the shit in there is real. I think I saw some weapons in the cases when she gave me the tour.” He pulled the key card Murphy had given him out of his pocket. “Come on.”
Chapter 20
HAVEN DIDN’T KNOW why he hurried forward, with Valentine close behind. He didn’t want to get his hands on a magical sword. He was a monster slayer—but the monsters always tried to slay back. This was a dragon. A dragon.
He remembered his dream of fire. Premonition.
Monsters slayed back.
“Jesus,” he muttered, his usually deep voice hoarse with fear.
A soft hand landed on his arm. Haven paused and turned to look into the concerned, ancient eyes of a little woman, whose lushly lovely face was framed by the singed ends of blue-black curls. “Every now and then the world needs a George,” she said. “Tonight, it’s you.”
He got the reference. Hanging out with Char, he couldn’t help but learn stuff. “Was he real? Saint George?”
“He was very real.”
“He really killed a dragon?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Died in the process. They made him the patron saint of England, if that’s any consolation.”
Haven let out a low rumble of laughter. “Patron saint of Las Vegas?” That sounded appropriate, didn’t it? “Let’s go,” he said, turning away from Valentine’s touch. Thinking and talking about it weren’t going to get the job done.
He led her to the side entrance to the museum. He swiped his card through the reader and the locks in the heavy door snapped open. There were bodies in the security room, sprawled on the floor and across work stations. One was still alive. Haven checked the monitor screens while Valentine took a moment to try to telepathically rouse the guard.
“No good,” she said after the brief effort. “Anyone in the museum?”
“Looks clear.”
“Feels that way, too. Odd. You’d think Ibis would send someone to guard the treasures. It’s like he wants—” She cut herself off. “No time to worry about Ibis now.” She gestured toward the inner door. “After you.”
Haven used the key card again, and pushed the door open. Even though he hadn’t detected any movement on the screens, and Valentine didn’t detect anyone either, Haven had a bad feeling about the place. Maybe it was just all the magic trapped inside the cases that set off warning signals. He wondered if the power of Reese’s spell had any effect on magical stuff so close to the epicenter. The wave of magic had certainly had an effect on other parts of town. It had woken up a dragon. What else had it woken up?
A roar sounded, far away, as they stepped into the subdued light and silky, silencing carpeting of the treasure room. Hearing the dragon in the distance didn’t diminish the effect of being in here. There was a thrum and pulse of power in the place. It was like being inside an electrical generator. Haven made himself look into the display cases. The things in here were alive—or getting ready to be.
Haven stiffened into complete stillness, listening. Waiting.
The roar came again, just as distant, but this time a fai
nt vibration shuddered through the building along with the noise. The temperature rose a few degrees, before the air-conditioning automatically compensated.
“It’s on the move,” Valentine said.
Haven gave her a sarcastic look. “You think?” The monster was going to escape out into the city. He looked around. “Where the hell did I see those swords?”
They split up, going down different aisles. He caught a glimpse of Valentine through the glass of one of the cases. It was like looking at her through water, or heat haze. What he saw was—amazing. So beautiful he had to look away.
Turning his head, he caught the gleam of tempered steel. He started toward the weapons case, but turned at the sound of metal and wood shattering. Alarms went off as the museum’s main door opened. Haven braced himself, expecting the dragon. A woman walked in instead. Tall, slender, blond. He recognized her from tapes Murphy’d shown him. Not a woman, a vampire.
“Martina,” he said.
“Really?” Valentine was suddenly beside him. She smiled, and it had fangs in it. “Cool.”
Martina spotted them and stalked forward. “What are you doing here?”
Martina’s attention was on Valentine. She ignored Haven, which was fine with him. He’d left his shotgun on the floor back by the door, but he’d make do with what he had if necessary. He fingered a trio of hollow stakes packed with explosives on his equipment belt.
Valentine stepped closer to the other vampire. “I’m looking for a way to save the fucking city. What are you doing here?” she questioned. She gestured around at all the cases, and Haven could feel all that potential energy focusing on her. “Looking for the scrolls, perhaps?” Val wondered. The amusement in her voice was scary. “Looking for other weapons to use against my children?”
This appeared to confuse Martina. “Save the city? Save mortals?”
“You have a problem with that?” Valentine asked.
“Mortals are your children?”
“In a way. Grandchildren, perhaps. Stepchildren. Maybe cousins. I care for them, too.”
“Too?”
This woman really didn’t get it. Haven left the vampires to face off each other and went to break into the sword case. He had to use one of the explosive stakes to do it, but the glass shattered quite satisfactorily, crumbling to the floor like an exploded windshield. There were a trio of swords to choose from inside the satin-lined case. Haven took the biggest, a greatsword, with a double-handed hilt and a jeweled pommel. Figures of twisting dragons were etched on the crossguard.
“Irony sucks,” Haven muttered as he hefted the weapon. The sword was heavy, too, and not just with the weight of many pounds of sharpened steel.
When he turned back toward the vampires, they were still talking.
“I don’t like the Enforcers much, either,” Valentine said. “Or the Laws.”
“Then—”
“You have no concept of reality, do you?” Valentine asked. “Don’t know where you came from? Where the Enforcers came from?”
It bothered him that Valentine looked so relaxed, in a cat-playing-with-prey way. Martina was tense as hell, with claws jutting from the ends of her fingers. He didn’t like the idea of a hostile vampire between him and the exits. There was a dragon out there.
“Time’s wasting, Val,” Haven called.
“You’re right. Sorry,” Valentine called back. “It won’t take long, but I’m going to be formal about this.”
“Formal?” Martina laughed. “What are you talking about, you silly girl?”
Valentine smiled, as if accepting a compliment from the other vampire. That Martina still hadn’t recognized what Valentine was amazed Haven. Disgusted him as well. He hated that the bitch who’d started the trouble with the Enforcers was really, really stupid.
“I think she’s a waste of your time,” Haven told Valentine.
Valentine then took a deep breath as she straightened to her not particularly significant height. She held her hands up at shoulder height, palms facing out. Very much a ritual pose. For a second, Haven was reminded of the Snake Goddess amulet she wore.
Valentine spoke, slowly and clearly, her accent shifting to something that sounded kind of Greek to Haven. “Martina, blood daughter of Marco, of the line descended of Corvical.”
“How did you know?” Martina demanded.
She snatched it out of your head, I bet, Haven thought.
Valentine continued speaking. “I declare you a danger to the Goddess’s way. I declare you banished from the dark. I take your heart as mine.”
Martina took a step back, still looking confused even as she completely vamped out into full fangs and claws. Valentine just stood there. Martina’s muscles bunched. She sprang at the smaller woman.
What happened then was extremely fast, so fast Haven had trouble following the action. It was also extremely bloody.
When the winner stepped back, Haven looked at the twitching body lying on the floor.
“You didn’t take her heart.”
“Wanted to give her a little time to think about her sins,” Valentine answered as she wiped blood off her hands onto her short black skirt.
Haven looked around for Martina’s missing head. When he found it, he saw that her eyes were open, her mouth moving. “She’s not dead.”
“She’s dead. You get decapitated, you’re dead. It’ll take a few minutes for her consciousness to dissipate, though.” When Valentine went on, Haven knew she was really speaking to the dying Martina. “I would like for her to understand that her trying to separate strigoi from Nighthawks was inviting chaos into a culture already on the edge of extinction. She wanted to live without limits, without laws.”
“I thought you said the Laws are shit,” Haven confronted Valentine.
“The Council’s Laws don’t concern me, but something older does,” she answered. “I serve justice, Mr. Haven. Justice doesn’t have anything to do with the law.”
“You got that right,” he agreed. He still didn’t like the way the severed head continued to moan from where it had ended up wedged between two of the display cases. Magic hovered all around, like waiting ghosts, and the place reeked of fresh blood. The alarms still sounded.
Haven hefted the sword, squared his shoulders, and said the last thing he wanted to say. “Dragon’s waiting. Let’s go.”
“How do we get at it?” Haven questioned when he and Valentine reached the back of the crowd outside the hotel. People were gathered thickly on the street and sidewalk adjacent to a rear garden. They were clapping and pointing, laughing and gasping in wonder.
“How are they doing that?” was a common comment.
So was, “Cool special effect.”
And, “Is that real fire?”
“Is this safe?” Haven heard someone say, though they didn’t make any effort to leave.
“Did you see the way that tower fell down? I think that’s real fire.”
“They use real fire in the volcano at the Mirage,” someone pointed out. “A dragon’s cooler than a volcano.”
“Not as cool as the pirate show.”
Haven dragged his attention away from the onlookers. It was only a stalling technique, anyway. If people were stupid enough to stand around and gawk, it was their problem. Or possibly, it was Valentine’s.
“Get everyone away from here,” he ordered her, pleased at the role reversal for a moment.
Then he looked at the dragon.
“Holy shit.”
He looked very closely, trying to decide if it was completely made out of fire. All he could tell was that it burned. He’d never thought much about dragons. He’d seen them on tattoos, and on artwork. Char read fantasy novels. The covers of those books were full of dragons. Mostly benign-looking creatures. The dragons in art didn’t blaze. This one had ruby red scales beneath the fire. The scales themselves had a moving, molten quality to them. There were black patches dotted on the scales, like lava crusting into obsidian. Its eyes were hot gold, the expressi
on in them the only thing cold about the creature. The thing’s form was all sharp angles of claw and fanged snout, and sinuous, flowing body. About twenty feet long, with a huge head. Haven could sense it growing through the fur of flames and heat haze. There were wings as well, flapping and uncurling, flapping and growing, emerging like the wings of a newborn butterfly. “Will it fly?” he asked Valentine.
“Soon.”
“Can it spout fire?”
“Soon,” she answered again.
Haven decided it was futile to try to bull his way through the crowd here at its thickest point. Even if he tried waving the sword at the onlookers, they’d think it was part of the show. So he turned around and moved quickly back to the main hotel entrance. From there he ran through the lobby and followed the smell of smoke to the tower where the monster had been born, and had then left in the most direct way possible. Haven had glimpsed the gaping hole in the tower wall from the outside, and figured he could make his way through the rubble if he followed the dragon’s path. The dragon’s attention had been on the crowd, and on scanning the busy airport traffic that came in so close over the hotels.
Maybe it sensed the flying things as rivals, or prey. What Haven hoped was that he could sneak up on the monster’s back while its attention was elsewhere.
Hurrying through the remains of the tower was hard. Broken walls formed barriers to climb and circumvent. The sprinkler system had kept the fire damage to a minimum, but it had also turned the floors into slippery streams, and created puddles in the wreckage that Haven had to wade through in almost complete darkness. He wished he had a sheath for the stupid, heavy sword, but he made do having to carry it.
The journey through the dark held its hazards, but it didn’t go on for long. But even a few minutes alone in the dark gave him time to think. He thought about Char, and about how she was going to live forever, and he would never see her again. He thought about not getting out of this alive, and how there had been a time when he had gone into every fight for the thrill of it, never caring if he got out alive. He thought about the dream of dying by fire, and hoped to hell it wouldn’t hurt as bad for real as it had in the dream. He thought about not having had the chance to say goodbye to her, but knew he didn’t dare expend the energy to try for some sort of telepathic communication now. He thought about turning around and getting the hell out of Vegas. He even stopped for a moment, and muttered, “Fuck this.” Then he shifted the sword in his sweating hands, and went on.
Heroes Page 18
