The Untamed Moon

by Jenn Stark

  “You ask me, we got werewolves.” Nikki’s smile was wide but a little hard. “Werewolves, ThunderCats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I don’t know what they are, but there is something decidedly hinky about the strapping group of gorgeous ballers that just hit the Flamingo. Like it amped our level of hot to the stratosphere, and I’m not talking the casino at the wrong end of the Strip.”

  “She’s right.” A man threading his way through the crowd in a waiter’s uniform morphed smoothly into his more usual form of Kreios as he reached us, all long, tawny hair, sun-kissed face, and easy smile. Tonight he was dressed in a business suit, its sleek lines whispering along his tautly muscled body like a second skin. “I haven’t been on this Earth as long as you, Armaeus, but I have never encountered creatures like these before. Have you?”

  Armaeus shot him a questioning glance, and Kreios nodded off to the right. While the Magician glanced over with casual curiosity, I swung that direction a little more slowly, well aware we might be under surveillance as well.

  I needn’t have bothered. The tight knot of men near the bar were laughing and passing around drinks like frat boys at a keg party.

  They were also tall, broad, and bulky, with enough wildness about them that I could absolutely understand why Nikki decided they were wolves in human clothing. I didn’t necessarily recognize them as the Moon’s honor guard, but I didn’t not recognize them either. They definitely seemed…familiar.

  Armaeus’s brows arched, and despite his shit-kicker attire, he once more looked like the intrigued professor greeted with a new puzzle to solve.

  “Definitely wolf,” he murmured. “All the same…breed, I guess you would say. Certainly deeply attached to each other. There are no others with a similar energy to them lurking close.”

  “So are they like demons?” I asked quietly. “Able to assume a guise that humans can tolerate without losing their marbles?”

  “No, they are a true dual nature,” Kreios corrected as the Magician nodded. “Both man and supernatural creature at once. These aren’t true wolves—or humans turned wolf. That’s not how it works. They are magical constructs, not traditional flesh and blood and bone. They may bleed and die like an animal if they’re caught in that form—or like a human if they fall while in that guise—but they are an entity unto themselves, not some sort of human hybrid.”

  “So you’re saying they can’t turn one of my girls,” Nikki said wryly. “’Cuz I gotta tell you, I’ve already had a couple of volunteers.”

  The Devil laughed, but when he returned his gaze to us, his face was set. “They are here for a reason. It’s in each of their minds so strongly that I don’t have to make any effort to pull it out.” He flicked a glance to Nikki. “You know it too, yes?”

  “The ring,” she said, making me blink as she turned my way. “You still have it, don’t you, Sara?”

  “I…” Belatedly, I patted my pockets, not surprised but still relieved to feel the ring’s comforting weight tucked near my kidney. Of course, the Magician wouldn’t have omitted that detail in dressing me. He was nothing if not thorough. “Why that after all the junk people hauled to Atlantis? All of it worked to get us to her.”

  “All of it worked to open the door, but not all of it was originally the Moon’s,” The Devil said. “Apparently, she wants her ring back, and they have the skills to find it. Therefore, they’re risking detection by moving in the open. Not wise, but it would seem that what the Moon wants…”

  Because I still had my gaze trained on the creatures, I could see what he meant. A few of them had stopped laughing quite so broadly, had started looking around with an air of intensity. Not all of them, though. Others were staring openly at a knot of sequin-covered dancers swaying to the music. Nikki’s troupe, I recognized immediately, statuesque bombshells in gowns that lit up the room with their vibrant colors. They attracted the attention of the shifters more than anyone else in the room, which was not to say the other humans were completely escaping the shifters’ notice. A pulse of pheromones rolled through the space, strong enough to catch me up short as Nikki straightened.

  “Hold the phone,” she muttered, waving a hand in front of her face. “What’s the sudden influx of he-man body spray all about? My eyes are watering.”

  “We don’t know anything about how these warriors fight,” the Magician murmured. “You should have a care. If they’re asserting their strength, setting the ground rules, if you will, on a primal level, they could be about to strike.”

  “If you’re telling me they’re about to mark their territory, I’m flat-out going to go ballistic,” Nikki advised him. “That level of personal expression may fly where they come from, but it’s not working here. We just polished the floor, for criminy’s sake.”

  “We can’t help you,” Armaeus said, his expression going sharp as his eyes deepened in color, drifting into the inky blackness that revealed he was accessing particularly murky magical thoughts. “The Council cannot interfere with these agents of the Moon if we don’t want to betray our true strength. Not yet. There is still too much we don’t understand.”

  “Yeah, well. Lucky for us, we don’t need you,” Nikki said. “Dollface, let’s go. You boys stay here.”

  She spun away, and I blinked for a moment at Kreios and Armaeus. The Magician’s brows were tented in rapt fascination, while the Devil merely smiled.

  “If I’d understood how delicious Nikki Dawes would be in a position of power, I would have made sure to arrange it long ago,” Kreios purred.

  I turned quickly to catch up with Nikki, matching her long flowing strides as best I could. She caught the attention of, well, the pack before she was halfway across the room—and particularly the largest member of their group, who I now recognized as the warrior Torsten. All dark-eyed, dark-haired badass with sharp features and an iron jaw, he nodded first to Nikki, then to me as we approached. He wore similar gear to his buddies—scuffed leather jacket, thick, no-nonsense jeans, a T-shirt in a neutral shade. His feet were wrapped in heavy-soled motorcycle boots.

  “You guys raid a Harley-Davidson store before you got here?” Nikki quipped, with such brash challenge that despite her innocuous words, the man stiffened. Man? Wolf? Whatever he was.

  “You protect this place?” he asked, and I nearly rocked back on my heels at the strange resonance to his voice, a low murmuring rumble not unlike a growl, though his words were easily audible despite the banging music.

  “You bet your sweet ass I do,” Nikki confirmed, her bright smile hard in the glittering lights. “And I know trouble when I see it. I’m just here to give you all the friendly suggestion not to start it here. It’s Torsten, right? You’re part of the Moon’s honor guard.”

  The man regarded her with cool appraisal, taking in her curves, her muscles, and her muscular curves. His nostrils practically flared with awareness, and I could feel the heat of his quickening interest. The stench of testosterone shot straight past He-Man and well into Max Alpha territory.

  “I am Torsten,” he finally acknowledged, giving Nikki the barest nod, though his gaze remained sharp, assessing.

  “Great. I’m Nikki.” She held out a hand, her lacquered nails gleaming silver in the shimmering lights, looking remarkably like claws. Torsten and the two men flanking him noticed, and it was a long, awkward moment before he reached for her hand. When he shook it, Nikki’s grin tightened slightly. “I mean what I say, Torsten,” she advised, with a tone that brooked no bullshit. “You want to tell the Justice of the Arcana Council why you’re really here, or should I?”

  I watched this exchange with keen interest. Nikki’s particular ability was to read the memories of anyone she touched—not the truth, necessarily, but the truth as the person she was interviewing saw it.

  Torsten slanted his glance to me. “The Moon has had something taken from her. She wants it back—now—and she believes it’s likely you know where it is. Tell us, and we will recover it. You don’t know what powers you’re playing with. You
can’t protect her. You can’t even protect yourself.”

  I bristled. “And maybe you don’t know who I am.”

  “Oh, he thinks he knows,” Nikki drawled. “He thinks he knows that the Arcana Council is weak and not to be trusted. That you’re a member of the Council, and by some stroke of dumb luck, you helped to free the Moon. And that you’re tangled up in a problem that’s way over your head, because you’re just a girl.” She narrowed her gaze at Torsten. “How am I doing so far?”

  Torsten blinked, then set his jaw, clearly taken aback by Nikki’s tone. “The Moon has ancient enemies, and they too want her ring—are desperate for it. We sense them coming even if you don’t. They are massing for an attack even now, which means you must have the item she seeks. Celestine sent us here to protect you.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” Nikki waved him off. “You were sent to intimidate Justice Wilde into giving you what you want, full stop.”

  Torsten’s eyes flashed, and he smiled, all teeth. “Your defiance is misplaced. We’re here to help you.”

  “Fantastic. You can help us by leaving.” Nikki gestured toward the front of the casino. “Now would be good.”

  Torsten chuckled with what sounded—almost—like regret. “Unfortunately, that’s not possible. Instead, we’re about to tear this place apart—now, I think.”

  He jerked his hand forward, as if punching the air, and the men around him leapt into action.

  Nikki whirled toward the dozen or so of her troupe who had assembled behind us and cried out simultaneously, “Go!”

  The Flamingo lit up.

  30

  Nikki swung back around as the pack of men exploded in all directions, two jumping over the bar to start smashing everything in sight, more scattering through the crowd, pushing and shoving. She didn’t ask for an explanation, she just led with her fists, decking Torsten flush across the jaw with all the power of her outrage and former fighting expertise as a cop. The guy dropped like a sack of stones, visibly startling the two men flanking him, who leapt for Nikki with snarls of outrage.

  A throaty scream sounded from somewhere in the center of the room, and Nikki jolted. “Sherry!” she gasped, her momentary distraction all that was needed to give the men opposite her the upper hand, I bolted forward to blast them into the next dimension, but Armaeus’s sudden warning shattered my eardrums from the inside out.

  “No,” he commanded, and a moment later, he was at my side. “This fight is hers, Miss Wilde. It’s important.”

  I jerked my gaze to Armaeus’s face, taking in the fact that his eyes had gone completely black, only the barest hint of gold visible at their edges. He was channeling deep magic, which was the only reason I didn’t move. But when two other members of Torsten’s little biker gang attempted to join the “let’s beat up on Nikki” party before she could recover her balance, he nodded, and I channeled my frustration into singeing their hair off with a couple of well-placed firebolts.

  With that, the fight was on. Nikki’s troupe of showgirls gave as good as they got, wading in with fists flying even though I noticed with grudging appreciation that Torsten’s boy band didn’t so much fight as shove and herd the shouting throng toward the entryways. They swarmed up on the stage, playing the part of Hulk Smash, but I got the feeling even that was mostly for show. Why were they making such a racket? And for whom? I turned and found Kreios watching it all from his position in the center of the room. He nodded as if to confirm my own suspicions.

  This was a demonstration of some sort. Maybe an alarm going up? Some kind of alert or announcement—or maybe even a dinner bell?

  It didn’t take long for the truth to come out—because it literally burst through the walls.

  With an unearthly shriek, a veritable horde of demons hit the dance floor and exploded into action. The few non-Connecteds who remained in the room screamed in terror, while Nikki and Nigel continued to fight, merely changing their targets as Torsten’s crew also turned to attack the new danger. Both Armaeus and the Devil moved into action, but not to affect the fighting on the floor, merely to help get the humans out of harm’s way. Armaeus was holding to his position that the Council shouldn’t—couldn’t interfere. Not yet, anyway.

  Kreios swept up a couple of hard-charging bombshells who barely had a hair on their wigs out of place despite the fact their knuckles were bruised and bleeding. They clung to him with wide grins, as one after the other he ushered them out of the room. But there were too many humans compared to demons, I knew in a blink. This wasn’t going to end well.

  I hated when I was right.

  All at once, it was as if a command had been given, directing the demons to a new course of action. A particularly lousy one. In the space of a breath, they turned and, instead of attacking the humans outright swarming around them, they shifted closer, intimately close. A second later, there were no more demons in the room, only humans, who turned on each other and started fighting.

  “You bastards,” Nikki howled.

  Torsten struggled to his feet, and his men stared in patent shock as the humans turned on them and started kicking, punching, biting, flailing.

  “How do we…” Torsten began, utterly confused.

  “They’re possessed. You can’t kill them, but you can knock ’em out,” Nikki ordered, seamlessly taking command. “You each get one punch. You can’t get the job done in that time, you’re off the squad.”

  The shifters roared with approval of this plan, and Nikki turned to the woman next to her, a knockout redhead in a bright green dress.

  “Sorry, babe,” she said, and with a roundhouse punch, she dropped the woman to the ground. But what happened then shocked me even worse—the demon slid from the woman directly into Nikki, the violation of possession making Nikki’s hands go up to her own neck, as if she’d rather choke herself to death than be taken in such a way. She’d been possessed before, after all. She wasn’t a fan.

  I leapt toward her, but I didn’t get far.

  The demons inside the nearest humans howled, and then they rushed me. I wheeled back, confused, knowing that with my amped-up abilities, I stood more than a good chance of damaging their human hosts even if I succeeded in eradicating the demons within them.

  “Miss Wilde,” the Magician shouted in my mind, but I was overrun. It was like being buried in a human tidal wave, a rush of heavy hands and fingers pawing over me, running through my hair, down my shirt, poking and prodding and prying. I figured out too late what they were after, of course, but it made no sense. Since when did demons care about the baubles of humanity? The answer to that was: never.

  My brain was still struggling to connect the dots even as I felt my jacket being ripped away.

  “Let them take the ring,” Armaeus advised. “Demons are not ruled by the Moon.”

  Well, whoever does rule them is going to get my foot in their ass, I thought right back to him, but I obligingly let my jacket flap open and felt the heavy weight of the ring get yanked from its pocket at last.

  A keening cry of triumph spread throughout the room. The humans turned toward the door, protective meat sacks for the demons possessing them, but Kreios hadn’t been idle. The room had shifted during the fight, and now there was only one exit—through the main doors.

  Standing at those doors were the demon enforcers of the Syx. Their commander, the Hierophant, might not have put in an appearance, but that didn’t mean his enforcers couldn’t be put to the task.

  “Leave the humans behind, safe and sound,” Warrick announced. “Or end up as an oily streak on the floor. Your choice.”

  One of the demons held up the oversized moon ring, howling with triumph. With another shrieking cry, the demons abandoned their human hosts, leaving them in sprawling piles as they shattered into nothing and disappeared in a blink back to wherever they’d come from.

  Nikki slumped back, right into Torsten’s arms. He took her weight easily and kept her from sinking to the floor.

  “You never get used to that,�
� she muttered, her voice a throaty sigh that barely reached my ears. “I thought I’d gotten over it from the first time. No such luck.”

  My heart twisted. I remembered when Nikki’d been forcibly occupied by a demon, courtesy of Viktor Dal—it had been a bad, bad time. I wouldn’t wish that trial on anyone.

  Torsten stood back and surveyed the room—the remaining Council members, Nigel and Nikki, the Syx. He bowed, this time more respectfully.

  “It’s good to do battle again against dishonorable foes. It has been a long time,” he said.

  Warrick of the Syx strode deeper into the room. “These demons weren’t controlled by a witch. Their commands went higher than that.”

  “Humans?” the Magician asked sharply.

  “I don’t think so,” spoke the second of the Syx, a blue-eyed charmer named Finn. “It felt slimier than that, and more powerful too. You got any of your Arcana Council members dabbling in demon magic? Because that shit ain’t gonna fly. We’ve got enough problems with idiot humans getting into that game.”

  A third member of the Syx, his red eyes flashing over his cocky grin, held up a finger. “Well, technically, the shit just did—”

  “Shut up, Stefan,” Warrick and Finn said together.

  I’d recovered my jacket by this time, or what was left of it. Sure enough, the ring was gone.

  “Why in the world would they care so much about that moon ring?” I muttered. “Roland wasn’t that good an artifact hunter. They could have taken it from him at any time.”

  “Maybe when Roland had it, it wasn’t such an interesting item,” Armaeus said.

  Torsten lifted his head, his brows furrowing. “That ring belongs to Celestine. She needs it. She wants it.”

  “So, maybe the demons wanted the thing because the Moon did. But why?” Nigel asked. “They have no need of the world’s magic. Why would they care about this?”

  “They wouldn’t,” the Magician said thoughtfully. “Which makes this all…very interesting.”