by Jenn Stark
“We don’t have too many friends,” she gasped as we knocked into each other before roundhousing our current pair of assailants off the dais.
I grunted. “Wonder why that is?”
I got too close to the edge of the dais, threatening to topple, when a pair of catcher’s-mitt-sized hands and gorgeously muscled arms shot out of the crowd, attached to the inimitable Nikki Dawes.
“You’ve got this, dollface,” she crowed, and I turned to see Nikki practically climbing on the shoulders of two meaty-looking warriors, using her new vantage point of greater height to wield a long wicked-looking blade. Where in the hell had she gotten that?
It was doing the job, though, clearing a swath of attackers while the hapless men beneath her seemed somewhat stunned, holding on to her thighs for dear life. Nikki had a way of doing that to people.
Throughout all this, the Moon seemed transfixed, watching the fight spool out around her with an expression on her face that surprised me. Delight was the first word that came to mind, as if she was taking unreasonable pleasure in the idea of all these people fighting over her. If that was something she craved, she could have had that any time. Humans were a race uniquely suited for the veneration of the gods, as millennia of true believers could attest.
Yet here she remained, locked away in her own private paradise, a paradise her own most loyal followers were desperate to leave. I’d heard all about the Moon being an enigma, a shadowy, inscrutable entity. I didn’t expect it to be quite so on the nose.
“Watch your six,” Nigel shouted, drawing my attention back to the battle at hand. Through an opening in the chaos, I could see Viktor struggling back to the dais, Simon on his back, pounding on his head. There was definitely no love lost between those two, but Viktor was not the Emperor for nothing. He swung back a powerful arm, partially dislodging Simon, and then reached into his robes and pulled out something bright and shiny that he launched onto the dais.
I scowled. We’d been able to bring very little with us into Atlantis, and certainly nothing that would qualify as a weapon. So what had he…
I peered more closely as I ducked under another savage swipe from a hunter I vaguely recognized from the bad old days, and realized the item Viktor had thrown was a bracelet. One of Eshe’s intricate arm cuffs, designed to circle the bicep from shoulder to elbow. It was bright silver and studded with a large, milky-green jade stone along with opalescent flashes of green and pink. In my distraction, I barely missed getting kicked off the dais, and I blew my newest assailant back several feet, catching his clothes on fire.
Then I heard it, a girlish cry of pure pleasure, and I turned to see the Moon rushing across the dais, heading for the bracelet. She wasn’t the only trinket-obsessed hunter in the crowd, though. A woman pounced on the bracelet, holding it up high to the light, her pursuit of the Moon clearly forgotten in the wake of this priceless bauble. Such was the creed of the smart hunter. You can’t always get what you want, but if you can come away from the hunt with something, take it.
The Moon cried out in outrage, and for the first time, her warriors leapt into action. Whereas before they’d seemed content to see what might happen when the Moon’s ostensible liberators reached her, clearly, they’d discerned she wasn’t happy with somebody taking her toy. They bounded up onto the dais, knocking everyone out of their way. As the female hunter whirled in surprise, her fist tight on her prize, the nearest guardians transformed, converting in a blinding flash of light to creatures with bushy fur and four legs—not to mention giant snapping jaws.
This wasn’t the woman’s first rodeo, but when one of the creatures crunched shut its heavy jaws on her forearm, she dropped the bracelet with a scream, and the jeweled piece soared away from the dais.
It caught the light as it spun, and another wolf leapt high, its jaws closing around the cuff before it twisted back toward its mistress, flinging it her way.
The Moon thrust her hands skyward to catch the bracelet, her chin tilting up, her hair wild and free around her…and she disappeared. Her warriors, both man and beast, also disappeared, leaving a good two dozen hunters scattered around the amphitheater, with nobody left to fight.
“Where did she go?” the Emperor demanded, finally flinging Simon off his back and turning in a tight circle. “That should not have been able to work without my express direction.”
“And where exactly are we?” someone else demanded.
“And how the hell do we get outta here?” a third hunter whined. “I got deadlines, man. If there’s no juice here, I’m out.”
I heard the battle cry before any of the rest of them did, and I froze.
Oh…no.
I turned quickly, scanning the horizon, but I knew what was coming. Funny thing about Atlantis. It was the one place in the universe where the fight between angels and demons had never completely petered out.
With the Moon gone, natural sunlight returned to Atlantis, and so did the district’s intractable foes. Over one lip of the amphitheater, a host of angels appeared, wielding fiery swords. On the other side, a horde of demons boiled over the horizon, fire licking along their gangly arms and clawed hands, their gazes fixed on the opposite side of the rim. They were there to fight the angels, most likely, but considering all the fresh meat in between…
“What in the…” Gamon muttered.
“Roland!” I shouted, turning to find him in the crowd. “Did you have any plan on how to get out of here?”
“You, basically. That’s it,” he responded, gaping at the host of angels. “Why do you think I summoned you? Nobody said anything about those guys.”
“Yeah, well, nobody ever does,” I said. “Nikki? The Syx?”
“I’ve already put out the call,” she said, leaping onto the dais for good measure. “Ain’t nobody can pray like this bitch, but I got no way of knowing if I connected. We’re kind of a long way from home.”
The angels and demons launched forward—flowing down the open seats, rushing toward each other, and perforce the mortals in the center of the amphitheater. The knot of hunters scrambled together, climbing up onto the dais, united in their common dread of a new enemy. It took a full ten more seconds, but then a flash of light appeared in six bright points around the dais, and when the spots cleared from my eyes, I could see the six members of the Demon Enforcers team appear, a half dozen demons sworn to service to the Archangel Michael, the Hierophant of the Arcana Council. The Hierophant himself didn’t put in an appearance, but there was no way his demon enforcers would have been here without his express permission. So score one for the home team.
The Syx held no weapons. They didn’t need any. They roared with delight as they leapt into the oncoming melee.
That gave us just enough time to get the hell out of there, I wagered, but this still was going to hurt. Silently, I threw up a prayer of my own that Armaeus’s magic making or my own luck would hold just a little while longer.
“Everybody, get as close together as you can. You want to get home, prepare to get a little fried around the edges.”
They crowded tight, and I linked arms with Nikki, Simon, Nigel, and Gamon. Roland and Emilio hunkered in, and at the last minute, a knifelike jab of searing heat slashed across my back, the whoosh of my own fiery wings wrapping around us.
Viktor had already fled, but it was enough. We huddled together, and I closed my eyes and thought of Vegas.
We burst into flames.
26
The only place I could think of to transport everyone safely, especially considering the incendiary nature of this particular rideshare, was the Bellagio fountain in front of the fabled casino. With a crackle of fire, we plunged into the shallow pool, any errant flames immediately doused with a crackle, hiss, and spark—and final spurt of pure fire.
What I hadn’t counted on, however, was hitting the Bellagio in the evening, in the middle of one of the fountain’s performances. No sooner had we staggered upright than a burst of water erupted all around us, an artful
spray of celebratory burbling leaping in buoyant time with a Rat Pack standard I only dimly recalled. All around the fountain, onlookers burst into applause.
I stumbled forward a step. I’d never transported so many people at once, and I felt like my brain was floating several feet above my head. My magically incarnated wings had vanished as well—which was just as well. Some things, you couldn’t explain so well. Not even in Vegas.
“What in the…” Some of the soaked hunters started wading forward with wobbly steps, trying to get their bearings, while others gasped and sputtered, having taken in the foul water of the fountain. Nikki grabbed two flailing hunters and started hauling them to the side, while Simon raised his voice.
“Viva Las Vegas,” he shouted, and as if on cue, the crowd split to let pass a dozen compact tunic-clad men and women, their faces wreathed in smiles, their eyes bright, the lines that deepened around their eyes and mouths the only indication they weren’t the spry teenagers they seemed to be.
The Moon was not the only Arcana Council member with an honor guard, and Simon’s were the best of the best, a team of Mongolian hunter-gatherers who had pledged themselves to his service and were unwavering in their loyalty.
“Right this way, right this way,” Simon announced, gesturing for his team to help the hunters out of the pool. As the crowd continued applauding, the hunters managed to exit the fountain without any further disaster befalling them, gratefully accepting the fancy robes in multiple colors Simon’s team handed out.
“All part of the show,” Simon continued loudly to more applause, and Nikki pounded him on the shoulder.
“You’re the best,” she decreed. “We may have a spot for your guys in our show at the Flamingo.”
Simon kept the line of hunters moving into the opulent entryway of the Bellagio and down the central corridor. The hunters were so dazed, they didn’t argue, and I appreciated the efficient and easygoing nature of Simon’s patter. By the time he had them all locked in a room off the main casino, stiff drinks in their hands, none of them looked like they wanted to escape.
Instead, they studied us with the same curiosity we leveled their way, theirs tinged with years of experience in the arcane underbelly of the Connected community.
“Is this the part where you give us an offer we can’t refuse?” one woman drawled, the one who’d gotten to the bracelet of the High Priestess before the others. Now her forearm was wrapped in a heavy bandage, though at least no blood seeped through. One of the benefits of traveling Air Sara—incidental healing was handed out along with the peanuts.
I glanced around the room as I considered the woman’s question. Gamon sat against the wall at the far corner of the room, a bottle of scotch in one hand, her elbows resting on her knees. At one end of the long conference table, Nikki, Nigel, Emilio, and Roland all sat near Simon, who was busily murmuring to and high-fiving his team of honor guards.
The remaining eighteen or so hunters were some of the best of the best, from what I could remember, as well as a few new faces I couldn’t quite track. They were also waiting for a response.
“That depends on what you have to offer back,” I said. “I mainly wanted to understand who sent you and from where, because that was a mess.”
“I’ll tell you what was a mess. A member of the Arcana Council threw that bracelet out. In other words, somebody on your own team,” Emilio protested while Nigel looked ready to throttle him.
“You’re right,” I said, arresting everyone’s attention. “Viktor is one of our own, and the fact he showed up to make his claim on the Moon makes things more interesting than I personally care for. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Where did you all enter…the Moon’s domain? What lost city got you there?”
Only three of them had been in Peru, it turned out. The others had entered in cities across the world: Petra, Sukhotai, even the lost city of the Anasazi, Mesa Verde. I stared in surprise at a slender but tough-looking Japanese hunter who claimed to have come in by way of diving down near the Yonaguni pyramid, off the coast of Okinawa. And to a one, their stories matched up regarding the source of their information. Whether it started out as a message to a friend through a client through a past collaborator—nobody knew the ultimate source—all of them got the impression that the person who hired them for the job was a woman, but when pressed, they couldn’t say why. More than that, the job was simple. Find the lost city and recover the sorceress hiding within it. Even more interestingly, each hunter had been given a bauble to either track down during or to aid them in their search.
“What kind of baubles?” I asked, thinking about the thick silver ring that still weighed heavily in my pocket.
With the influence of liquor warming their bellies, liquor that was almost certainly spiked, the artifacts came out readily enough. Rings, a necklace, earrings, several scattered stones, all of them stunning in their craftsmanship and size, soon lined the table.
“We weren’t given any information about the jewelry,” the woman who’d picked up Eshe’s bracelet said, her tone tinged with annoyance. “I had no idea they were supposed to lure the sorceress out of her hiding place. I would have played things differently.”
“Same,” Roland said with a scowl. “I thought it was the key to get into that hellhole, nothing more. Kind of an important piece of information to leave out.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “The Moon didn’t strike me as an entirely rational individual back there. If you’d all come at her with your trinkets, you may not have gotten very far.”
“You would have spooked her,” Nikki agreed, nodding. “I don’t know that she would have come out if the chips hadn’t fallen the way they did.”
“So now what?” Roland asked, turning toward me. “Where is the Moon?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I’d sent out a call to the Magician immediately upon our crash landing, but he’d remained quiet. That could have been for a number of reasons. Either he didn’t know where the Moon was, he didn’t want to reveal it quite yet, or he was afraid this conversation was being monitored. I shrugged. “She’s in this plane now, though. I have a feeling she’s going to out herself pretty quickly.”
“And remember, she’s not the only one who came through,” Nikki put in. “We’ve also got her entire passel of werewolf guardians. I don’t know if they’re going to keep their shifting capability when they touch down, but I’m gonna tell you right now, they pull that move at Walmart, it’s gonna cause a stir.”
“I’m already on it,” Simon said, reaching out to take a tablet proffered by one of his guards. He waved it at me. “The moment she showed up in this plane, the beacon that’d locked on to her reanimated and found her. It took her a good half an hour to fling it away, but at least we have a place to start. Not that far away either. The Craters of the Moon National Park. You know it?
I grimaced. “Not at all.”
Nikki straightened. “You have got to be kidding me. That’s a national park out in Idaho, a nature preserve on top of it. Why would she go there? Other than the name, but how would she even know that?”
“Could have been something magically imposed with Eshe’s bracelet?” Simon hazarded. “That’s the most likely situation.”
I nodded. It made sense. “And if it’s a park, that gives her and her guard some wide open space too.”
“More than that,” Simon said, tapping on his tablet. “There’s all sorts of woo groups affiliated with that park, moon worship, that kind of thing. If that sort of energy is playing out there, it might have been a natural draw for her.”
“So now we need to go to Idaho?” Nikki asked, frowning. “What do they wear in Idaho?”
“We don’t need to go anywhere,” one of the hunters said. “The job’s done. We get to keep the trinkets as a kill fee, and we’re out.”
They rumbled in agreement. Truthfully, there wasn’t much I could do to make them stay, nor would I want them to. These hunters made their living chasing down artifacts for
wealthy buyers. They would be best in their natural habitat. But that made me think…
“You know, I actually think I may have an offer you won’t want to refuse,” I said, looking at Roland a long minute. He’d been broken, his wires disintegrated, his connections shattered. When I’d put him back together, he was better than he was before.
I couldn’t go that far with these hunters, maybe, but I was tired of playing by rules I hadn’t made. And if I could help them out in return for their cooperation and collaboration, why wouldn’t I? I was Justice of the Arcana Council, but that didn’t mean I was Glinda the Good Witch. If there was to be a balance between the peacekeepers and chaos makers among the Connected community, I’d need to make it happen.
“This is what we’re going to do,” I said.
27
It was another several hours before the last hunters left the Bellagio.
In the end, it hadn’t taken much to rewire the hunters into a better form of themselves. They all possessed more Connected abilities than I had originally suspected, as evidenced by the magic that flowed and hissed beneath my fingers as I traced the lines of connection through them. Their abilities varied with their natural talents, and no one was completely sure of how they would manifest, but contented themselves with listening to Roland’s stories of his brawler fists and magical sensitivity, while imagining how their own abilities might manifest.
In return, they pledged their skills to the Hall of Justice, should I ever have need of them. It was a trade none of them made lightly given Gamon’s dark presence, taking down their names and memorizing their faces as they stepped up to take their place in line. Where necessary, I trusted their fear of her even if I suspected their goodwill toward me would wane, though time would tell.
