Chapter Thirty-two
For a hotel designed
to look like hell, Dante’s wasn’t so bad. It had been themed to
within an inch of its life by someone who subscribed strongly to
the “more is more” concept of decorating. But this was Vegas, where
tackiness passed for ambience and vulgarity was all part of the
fun.
But this wasn’t fun.
This was just plain sad.
“You let guests come
down here?” I asked, gazing around at what passed for a bus
entrance. A few sickly topiaries guarded a cracked cement floor
covered with oil and gas stains. There was trash in the corners and
dirt on the walls, and the whole place smelled like
pee.
“Nobody comes to
Vegas on a bus,” Casanova, the hotel manager, said while feeling
around inside his suit coat. It was a pale wheat color, one of his
favorites because it set off his Spanish good looks. But it was a
little incongruous in this setting, like an Armani model who had
taken a wrong turn and ended up on skid row. “At least, no one who
stays here.”
“So why have it at
all?”
“Because some people
want to take tours—Grand Canyon, Valley of Fire, Hoover freaking
Dam,” he said impatiently. “And they get pissy if there isn’t a
place for them to be picked up on-site.”
“And this is what you
came up with?”
Casanova shot me a
look out of sloe-dark eyes that would have been attractive if
they’d had a different mind behind them. “If they’re taking a bus,
they’re leaving the casino.”
“So?”
“So they’re not going
be spending any money here.”
“So screw
’em?”
“Exactly.”
His hand emerged with
a slim-bodied flashlight, which he shone around. There were
fluorescents overhead, but they weren’t on. A spill of
late-afternoon daylight leached away part of the gloom on either
side of the echoing space, and some electric light spilled down the
nonfunctioning escalator behind us. But that still left the main
part of the garage a dark cavern.
“I don’t think
anybody’s down here,” I told him, halfway hoping that was
true.
“Oh, they’re here,
all right,” he said grimly. “Took my boys the better part of two
weeks, but they finally managed to track them. Now come
on.”
I pushed limp blond
hair out of my eyes and followed him into the gloom, feeling a
trickle of sweat slide down my back. The place was hot as an
oven—apparently air-conditioning was another thing bus-loving
tourists were denied. And despite the fact that we’d been down here
only a few minutes, the back of my blue tee and the waistband on my
jean shorts were already soaked.
“Why do people come
to Vegas in summer?” I complained. “It’s the biggest tourist
season, which makes no sense. It has to be a hundred twenty degrees
out.”
“The kids are out of
school.”
“But most people
don’t take kids here. That whole family-friendly thing kind of fell
flat.”
“Exactly.” His
flashlight bounced off the ceiling, as if he thought our prey might
be clinging to the rafters like bats. It didn’t help my mood that,
for all I knew, they could be. “The kids are out of school, so
parents need a break from the little bastards.”
“It’s a good thing
you don’t have children!”
Nervousness had made
my voice harsh, but Casanova didn’t seem to take offense. “One of
the best things about being a vampire. Now stop talking and start
looking.”
We edged farther into
the darkness and my hands started to sweat, and not just from the
heat. He was right about one thing: most of the people flooding
into Vegas these days were adults, with fully half of them seniors.
Which might explain why the three old crones we were after hadn’t
been attracting the attention they deserved.
Well, that, and the
fact that they were ancient demigoddesses with more than one trick
up their sleeves. That was what had me clutching the slim black box
I carried hard enough to leave my fingers white. It was a magical
trap, the kind that had once imprisoned the trio known as the
Graeae long enough for their story to fade into
legend.
I suspected that they
didn’t want to go back in.
That was fine with
me, because I didn’t want to put them there. I just wanted to ask
them some questions, assuming we ever found them. But Casanova
wasn’t exactly an altruistic kind of guy, and I’d had to fudge a
little on my motivations.
“I don’t know why
you’re being so helpful all of a sudden,” he said suspiciously, as
if he’d heard my thoughts.
“I’m always
helpful.”
“You’re never
helpful! You drop problems in my lap all the time and then
disappear somewhere and leave me to deal with them.”
“Name
one.”
“Those blasted kids
you swore would be out of here two weeks ago!”
He was referring to
some magical orphans he had less than charitably taken in until we
could find other homes for them. The casino had more than a
thousand rooms, but the two the kids were occupying preyed on his
shriveled little soul. He acted like it was causing him actual
pain.
“Tami is working on
it,” I said, talking about their de facto foster mother. “It’s hard
to find a house big enough for that many people that’s reasonable
to rent.”
“And why bother when
you can stay here and eat me out of house and home?”
“They don’t eat that
much.”
“In comparison to
what? Starving marines?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Well, they’ll be out soon—”
“That’s what you
always say.”
“—and I’m helping you
today, aren’t I?”
“About damn time,
too,” Casanova muttered, stopping to peer into a curbside drain as
if he seriously thought someone might have squeezed down there. I
looked in along with him until my brain conjured up a memorable
scene from It, and I shied back
nervously. He glanced over his shoulder, an annoyed frown creasing
those handsome features.
“What is wrong with
you?”
“Nothing.” I didn’t
really think there were any homicidal clowns down there—or any
ancient goddesses, either—but you never knew. This was Dante’s.
Crazy was what we had for breakfast when we ran out of Corn
Flakes.
“Good, because this
is all your fault,” he complained. “You are not going to come up with another reason not to
help me.”
I didn’t say
anything, because technically, he was right. I’d sprung the gals
from jail, and nobody seemed to care that it had been an accident.
Least of all Casanova, whose beloved casino had become their
favorite stomping ground.
“Why are you so
interested in getting them out of here?” I asked, as we moved onto
a loading dock. “They’ve been out for almost six weeks, and the
worst thing I’ve seen them do is rip apart a slot machine.” And
anyone who had ever played the one-armed bandits on the Strip could
certainly sympathize with that.
“Well, one little
thing would be that they keep breaking into the upper-level
suites,” he said acidly. “The Consul came out of her bedroom the
other day to find them swimming in the pool on her
balcony!”
I
grinned.
“It’s not
funny!”
Considering that it
had once been my balcony, before she’d
pulled rank and kicked me out, I kind of disagreed. “Did they eat
all her food?”
“There wasn’t any
food. But they drank all the booze and beat up the guards she sent
to remove them. They were there almost three hours before they went
off to terrorize someone else. She wants them gone!”
“And God forbid
anybody should inconvenience her,” I said sourly.
To my surprise,
Casanova agreed. “I’m losing money every day that the damn Senate
stays in residence. They’re using half of my suites—for which I’ve
yet to see a dime in payment—co-opting my staff, taking over the
conference rooms and eating me out of house and home!”
“This is only
temporary. They’ll be gone soon.”
“Yes, leaving me with
a trashed hotel, a ruined conference schedule and debts out my
ears!”
“Mircea will
understand—”
“Mircea doesn’t give
a shit about this hotel,” Casanova said viciously. “Mircea cares
about the damn war. If I drown in red ink, it’s all the same to
him. He writes it off as a tax loss and transfers me to some
dead-end job where I can molder away for another century or so.” He
suddenly rounded on me, shining the light in my eyes and making me
wince. “And that’s not going to happen, you understand? This is my
one shot at the big time. Those old crones aren’t going to ruin it
for me, and neither are you!”
“I’m not trying to—”
I began, but he was already pushing forward again, muttering
something indistinct in Spanish.
I scowled and started
to follow, when a grizzled head popped out of nowhere in front of
me. It was hanging upside down, the long, gray curls streaming
earthward like moss on a plantation. It was Deino, the one who had
always had a soft spot for me—at least until I started hunting
her.
Like all the girls,
she had a scrunched-up dried apple of a face with enough wrinkles
to make a shar-pei jealous. It was a little hard to read the
expression that was probably buried under there somewhere. But she
wasn’t smiling.
Her chin dipped
toward the trap I still clutched, and a few more wrinkles appeared
on the weather-beaten face. “Um,” I said awkwardly.
It was hard to know
what to say, since I’d been caught red-handed. And how much English
she understood was problematic, anyway. But it didn’t matter,
because before I could figure it out, she suddenly leaned over and
kissed me on the cheek.
“Heh,” she said, and
popped back out.
And so did the
box.
I whipped my head
around, but I didn’t see anything. Except for Casanova looking
behind some stacked crates. “Uh, we may have a problem,” I told him
nervously.
“What’s wrong now?”
he demanded, brushing at a cobweb that had dared to sully his
formerly pristine linen.
I didn’t answer,
because I was staring at another ancient crone who was prowling
toward him over the tops of the crates. Her movements weren’t
remotely old, ladylike or, for that matter, particularly human.
Enyo had gotten her hair cut, I noticed irrelevantly, right before
Casanova winked out of existence.
For a moment, I just
stood there while she bared toothless gums at me and cackled. Then
she held up the black box and shook it suggestively. There was no
doubt at all what had happened to the vampire.
“Oh, shit,” I said.
Enyo cackled again and then paused, before holding the box out like
a gift. I eyed it suspiciously. “You’re giving him to
me?”
She nodded, grinning
like a fiend. I suspected a trap, but, then, if the girls had
wanted me in that box, they could have managed it easily enough. So
maybe they were just trying to teach Casanova a
lesson.
I tentatively took a
step forward, then two. I put out a hand and almost had my fingers
on it when Enyo flicked her wrist, tossing it over my head to
Pemphredo, the third member of the trio. She was crouched on top of
a nearby van, wearing grizzled pigtails and a “Vegas Made Me Do It”
T-shirt, and peering at me out of the one eye they all
shared.
She watched me
silently for a moment, then slowly held out the box. Like I was
actually going to fall for that again. “No, I don’t want to play,”
I told her. “Really.”
That was too bad,
because it looked like I was in the minority.
“I want him back,” I
said. Pemphredo shot me a look. “Okay, maybe not actually
want, but you know how it
is.”
She tilted her head
inquiringly. Clearly, she didn’t know.
That was a problem,
because I didn’t, either.
“See, it’s like
this,” I said, trying to come up with a reason why they should let
him go. “He’s annoying.”
The girls nodded.
This, apparently, we could all agree on.
“And . . . and
obviously he had no right to try to trap you like that. I mean,
it’s not like you’ve been doing anything wrong.”
More
nods.
“It’s just . . . um .
. .” I stopped, trying to recall why I
wanted the guy back. I thought about it while they all waited
politely. I gave up. “Look, I don’t really have a good reason for
you to give him back,” I said honestly. “He’s a crabby,
self-centered, egotistical, money-grubbing snob. His own employees
don’t even like him much. But it could be worse. If you cart him
off somewhere, they’ll have to get a new manager. And he might be a
lot more of a hard-ass.”
They exchanged
glances.
I didn’t know if that
was a good sign or not, but I decided to push ahead anyway. “And if
you let him out, I’ll talk to him for you. Maybe if he gives you a
suite, you can promise not to go breaking into the others
anymore?”
Further glances were
exchanged.
“A nice
suite?”
Enyo made a little
come-hither movement with her hand. It looked like I was getting
warm.
“With room
service?”
Ding, ding, ding, we
had a winner. At least I guessed so, because she handed me the
box.
I tucked it under an
arm instead of letting him out, because I didn’t want to deal with
the drama right now. “I, uh, I had another reason for coming down
here,” I told them.
Pemphredo had been
about to crawl off, but at that she came back and settled down,
brushing off her filthy shorts. Deino crossed her legs. Enyo
stopped picking at her fingernails with a knife and put it politely
away.
I kind of felt like I
should be serving tea.
“It’s like this,” I
said. “It’s starting to feel like Grand Central around here for
demigods. You know what I mean?”
They
nodded.
“First it was this
Morrigan person. She’s this half-Fey child of Ares who tried to
possess me. And that really sucked.”
More
nods.
“But it didn’t work,
so then she possessed this mage who tried to kill me and almost
succeeded.”
That got me a little
pat from Deino.
“And then, last
night, a bunch more demigods showed up. A guy I know thinks they
may be something called the Spartoi, which would make them also
children of Ares. Plus, I think they were also after my mother way
back when—at least, they fought the same as those other guys and .
. . Anyway, I don’t think these attacks are just going to stop, you
know?”
Nods all
around.
“I’m pretty sure I’m
going to have to deal with them, only I don’t know how. But there’s
this prophecy that says I can get help if I find a goddess. The one
they used to call Artemis back in Greece.”
Deino
frowned.
“I know the gods were
all banished. But I thought that maybe, since it was her spell, she
might still be around somewhere—”
The others just
looked at me, but Deino slowly shook her head.
“You’re
sure?”
A nod.
Damn. So much for
that theory.
“Okay, then how about
this? The prophecy said that Artemis and Ares were supposed to
fight, but he isn’t here, either. It’s his kids who have been
causing the trouble. So I was thinking, maybe I need to find
her kids, you know?”
The girls exchanged
some looks.
“I mean, she was
supposed to be this virgin goddess, but I gotta think after a few
thousand years, that’s gonna get kind of old. So I thought
maybe—”
I broke off because
the girls’ heads jerked up, all at the same time, like they were on
a string. I hadn’t heard anything, but when I looked back over my
shoulder, I saw a mob of Casanova’s security guards heading for us
at a dead run. They must have been watching on CCTV, or maybe they
felt it when the boss went pop. Either way, not good.
“No!” I yelled.
“Don’t—”
That was all I got
out before they were past me, ruffling my hair with the unnatural
speed of vampires in a hurry. They didn’t ruffle the Graeae’s,
because the girls were no longer there. I’d been looking at the
vamps, so I hadn’t seen them move. But there was suddenly nothing
where they’d been, except for a few gray hairs drifting slowly
earthward.
The vamps stopped,
realizing that their prey was gone, about the time that a piercing
whistle from the other end of the garage caused all our heads to
jerk back around. Silhouetted against the fading daylight were two
stooped, wrinkled forms. One of them was waving, while the other
held up Casanova’s box.
I hadn’t even
realized it was gone.
Pemphredo turned
around and dropped her filthy shorts, showing the guards a wrinkled
white ass. Deino waggled the box some more and pointed. The
challenge was clear: come and get
him.
“No, wait,” I told
the guards, glancing around for Enyo. She was the scariest of the
three, and she was currently AWOL. “One of them is missing. We need
to—”
I might as well have
saved my breath, because they didn’t even hesitate. They started
back toward the gals at full speed, just blurs against the
gloom—until a plastic-wrapped pallet went sailing through the air
like a Frisbee. Half the guards hit the wall with a sickening
crunching sound. The other half turned, snarling, and came after
Enyo.
Or, at least, they
tried. But the bus depot contained one of the main loading docks
for the hotel, which explained all the stuff sitting around.
Including a case of produce that Enyo had just popped the top on,
repurposing the contents as veggie grenades. Or make that fruit,
because the first ten or twelve she threw in rapid-fire succession
were cantaloupes. They spilled their slippery guts all over the
floor, right about the time the vamps ran across it—and promptly
ended up on their vampy asses.
But they were still
sliding in our direction, and now they were really pissed. On
average, a vampire would prefer to have his body wounded rather
than his pride, which at least would leave him bragging rights
among his peers. Losing a food fight with three old women, on the
other hand, didn’t do a lot for the image. They were going to have
a tough time spinning this unless they caught the
girls.
Suddenly, the hunt
became personal, and that really wasn’t good.
That was especially
true because I didn’t think Casanova had bothered to tell his boys
what they were facing. If the legends were to be believed, the trio
had been created as ancient versions of the Incredible Hulk.
Sweet—kind of—as long as they weren’t crossed, they morphed into
scary with a little scary on top when threatened.
I’d seen Enyo’s alter
ego before, and was really okay with not seeing it again. And it
was looking like I’d get my wish. Because she was still in
little-old-lady mode, just standing in front of a parked semi, as
if asking to be caught.
For some reason, that
made me more nervous than the reverse. But the sticky, pissed-off
vamps didn’t appear to feel the same way. They lunged for her, and
for a moment, I thought it was all over. Until I looked again and
they were suddenly gone.
For a second, I
thought she must have had another trap. But then a fist-shaped bit
of metal bulged out of the side of the semi, followed by a lot of
cursing. And laughter, because Enyo was on her knees, slapping the
dirty ground and cackling.
“It isn’t funny,” I
told her, as four or five other fist- and shoe-shaped bulges
appeared.
She looked up at me,
tears streaming down the crags on her face. Obviously, she begged
to differ.
“I’m serious. They’re
probably calling for backup right now. This could get
really—”
I didn’t get a chance
to finish, because the girls suddenly took off for the escalator. I
ran after them, cursing vamps in general and one in particular,
because that way led to the lobby. And just on the other side of
that was the main casino floor, packed with people escaping the
heat and working on tomorrow’s hangover.
And most of them
didn’t have a vampire’s ability to throw off severe
injury.
There was no point
trying to catch the girls on foot, so I didn’t try. I shifted into
the corridor in front of them, popping out of space in time to see
a bunch more vamps running down the hall. It looked like backup had
arrived.
There was no sign of
the girls until I turned around and spotted them haring down the
corridor toward me. They took in the guards in front of them and
then glanced over their shoulders at the ones coming up behind. And
then they took off—into a corridor branching to the
left.
And, shit. That was
the back way to the lobby, a shortcut used by the staff. I shifted
again, appearing behind the main desk in time to freak out the
nearest clerk and to see little, wrinkled streaks I assumed were
the Graeae zip past, headed for—
“Oh,
crap.”
I scrambled after
them, but of course they beat me to the bridge. It spanned the
River Styx, which wound through the stalactite-infested lobby,
carrying boatloads of tourists happily on their way to hell. The
bridge was for those who wanted a faster way to damnation, or at
least bankruptcy, and was usually busier than the
riverboats.
It was still fairly
early, though, and Dante’s never really heated up until after dark.
Security blocked off access to each side of the bridge, but let me
through. I walked up to Deino, who was dangling the trap over the
water. That wouldn’t have worried me so much if there hadn’t been a
big-ass drain right underneath this bridge. A drain Enyo was
currently prizing up.
I sighed and leaned
over the railing. The water was dark, because the bottom of the
concrete channel was painted black. It reflected the overhead
lights, which wavered in the ripples Enyo was making sloshing
around down there. So I couldn’t read what was written on the
drain. But I was pretty sure I knew where it went.
I turned my head to
look at Deino.
“I’d consider it a
personal favor if you didn’t drop him down the sewer.”
She looked
thoughtful.
“Today,” I
said.
She
grinned.
Something caught my
eye and I looked back down at the water. One of the reflections
from the overhead lights was drifting upward. It was a testament to
how my week had been going that I didn’t so much as blink when it
broke the surface and floated into the air, like a small glowing
balloon. Only this one had familiar shadows drifting over the
surface, one half of which was dark, and the other a blinding,
brilliant white. I reached out a hand to touch it, because it
looked so solid, so real.
But as soon did, it
just sank into my hand and was gone.
And a moment later,
so was Deino. She hared away across the bridge with her sisters,
leaving me with a cursing, livid, doused vampire flailing around in
the dirty water below the bridge. And the feel of cool, cool mist
on my fingertips.