The Phoenix Illusion

by Lisa Shearin

  What he discovered was not good and only confirmed our suspicions.

  Marek and the Silvanus brothers had turned the Phoenix’s penthouse and theater into the Vegas hotel version of Fort Knox. The outer perimeter was wrapped in wards and patrolled by Khrynsani agents glamoured as human security. And that was the light stuff. From there, Marek and Isidor had really laid it on thick.

  So, even if we could bust through all that, it’d involve a magical battle that’d make any lightshow Vegas could ever dream of pale in comparison.

  “Sounds like we’re not storming the castle,” Ben muttered to me while Ian told us the local SPI agent’s findings.

  “Has Kenji been able to get hold of a list of who’ll be in the audience, or even who’s staying at the hotel?” I asked.

  “He has not. He said he encountered a level of security on the Phoenix’s computers that is far beyond normal for a hotel.”

  “Cyberwards,” Rake said.

  “That’s how he described it. It doesn’t change the parameters of the mission—disarm the terrorists, free the hostages. That magetech generator is just as dangerous as a bomb, and every person inside that hotel is a hostage. The cabal will use that generator and crystal to incite terror.” Ian’s expression hardened. “Dr. Cheban and her team cannot say with certainty that there will not be fatalities if the building is removed from Las Vegas.”

  “Because Tulis is a mage and could protect himself, and the people in the audience tonight aren’t and can’t?” I asked.

  Ian nodded. “She believes that if humans were used in previous tests and survived, it doesn’t mean that all of those in the audience tonight would do the same. Age and overall physical condition could mean the difference between life and death.”

  “So younger people would live, and older people could die.”

  “Not on our watch,” Yasha growled.

  “I’m with you, buddy,” Ian told him. “We have several mundane options. Headquarters could call in a very plausible bomb threat before the theater opened its doors tonight, forcing Marek to cancel the show.”

  “Which wouldn’t necessarily stop Marek from taking the hotel,” Rake said, “but there wouldn’t be anyone in the audience to see him do it, which would suck all of the fun out of it for him. I think he’d pull the plug at that point, unless those pulling his strings made him go through with it.”

  “We could also cut the power to the hotel,” Ian said. “The hotel staff would be forced to evacuate everyone. While that would stop Marek tonight, he and his gang would merely choose another night, another building, different people. To take a smaller building with fewer people, all he’d need would be a ley line running beneath it or nearby, and a normal full or even a new moon. Would that be correct, Kitty?”

  “Based on what we know now, yes, I would say that’s correct.”

  “There are entirely too many strategic sites that would be vulnerable to such an attack. For example, Washington, DC, has ley lines that not only flow through the city, they intersect, thus magnifying their power. Ms. Sagadraco has decided, and I agree, that we must finish this tonight.”

  “So we are storming the castle?” Ben asked.

  I saw the twinkle in my partner’s eyes and grinned. “I’m guessing more along the lines of a stealthy infiltration.”

  Ian smiled and brushed the tip of his nose with his index finger.

  *

  As if our situation and surroundings weren’t surreal enough, now Ian and Rake weren’t just working together, they were working together well. A coconspirator level of well. Tam and Gethen were right in there with them. The four of them were thick as thieves. Which, when you thought about it, was exactly what we were. The magetech generator and Nidaar crystal didn’t belong to us, but they shouldn’t belong to anyone, most of all Marek Reigory.

  Ben Sadler had gone from being excited about storming the castle, to freaking out about his role in said incursion.

  Shut down the crystal.

  At least, that’s how Ben understood Tam’s intentions.

  “Two days ago, I didn’t even know these things existed, and now you want me to stop…that from vanishing?” Ben waved his hand at the hotel floorplan projected on the giant screen in the media room. Rake had scored the floorplan through his contacts and had hooked up his laptop to the screen. For tonight’s plan to work, it was critical that we all memorize the hotel’s layout.

  “With a gem mage of your strength, the size of the crystal doesn’t matter.” Tam had been trying to sell that line to Ben since yesterday. It’d been an easier sell out in the desert when the lives of thousands hadn’t been hanging in the balance. “As our fleet neared the coast of Aquas, the Khrynsani activated the Heart of Nidaar, causing what you call a tsunami to rise behind our ships. Agata Azul, using only the crystal in her pendant, pushed back against the mage controlling the Heart of Nidaar, calmed the wave, and saved our fleet and hundreds of lives. All you need to do tonight is disrupt the connection between the generator and the crystal.”

  “Small potatoes,” I chimed in.

  Ben shot me a look.

  “Just you in the same room with them while wearing that ring might be enough to do it.” Tam paused, a very slow smile curled his lips, the confident smile of a man who’d just discovered he was holding all the right cards. “In fact, with our plan, all you may need to do is deactivate the two small crystals in Marek’s cuffs.”

  Rake nodded in approval. “If he’s cornered, his first impulse will be to use those cuffs and disappear.”

  “And if he’s near that generator,” Ian said, “he’d grab it and teleport out. We won’t have any idea where he’s gone, and he’ll be able to do this again somewhere else. Now that the cabal is finished testing, we won’t get any warning next time. We have to do this now, and we have to do it right.”

  Ben blew out his breath. “In other words, ‘Man up, Ben.’”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.” He looked to Tam. “I just don’t want to screw this up.”

  “You won’t.”

  Ben sighed in resignation. “Okay then.”

  Too bad Caera Filarion wasn’t here. She was a member of SPI’s magical skills assessment team, and had been Ben’s introduction to the supernatural side. They’d hit it off. Big time. Caera would’ve been able to have peeled Ben and his nerves off the ceiling with a little bedroom fun time. It’d worked wonders for me.

  “I would be glad to rip arms off of mage,” Yasha offered. “We get cuffs and stop cabal.”

  “You’re a little furry for public consumption, buddy,” Ian told him.

  Yasha held up an amulet. “I have charge left in glamour. Kitty is going. I will not stay here.”

  I glanced over at my friend. “You’re going?”

  “I’m the getaway driver.” She unfolded her legs where she’d been curled up in a corner chair. “In fact, I need to get to work. I’ll be setting up a portal here, and once we get what we came for over at the Phoenix, I’ll rip a portal there to escape back here with the crystal and generator. Tear it there, come out here.”

  Kitty could open a portal to anywhere in midair—no fancy frame, no runes, no crystals, just Kitty power.

  I raised my empty coffee mug. I’d finally deemed myself properly caffeinated. “Tear Marek and the Silvanus brothers a new one. I like it.”

  25

  “Are pets allowed?” I whispered to Rake.

  Werewolves had great hearing, too. Right now, Yasha and Kitty were relaxing in the hot tub out on the terrace to try to take the edge off Yasha’s werewolf urges. The tub was surrounded by what the hotel’s website called the Zen Garden. Since it was completely private, Yasha was letting his hair down, so to speak, for as long as he could before he had to bottle it up with a glamour for tonight. He was pretty much still in his human form, but jeez, was he furry.

  Rake kept his voice down, too. “In this suite, anythi
ng’s allowed if you’re willing to pay to repair the aftermath. Within reason.”

  Kitty had just skimmed a handful of hair the length of Christmas tinsel off the top of the water.

  “Is werewolf fur in the hot tub jets within reason?”

  “Completely.”

  “We’re gonna need more towels.”

  “They’re on their way up.”

  “He is like a sasquatch,” Ben said in awe.

  Ian didn’t even look up from his phone’s screen. “Sasquatches have less hair.”

  The plan was set, pieces were still being put into place, but we were all taking advantage of the time we had to relax before we needed to leave for the Phoenix.

  The show was sold out, but Cassandra du Vien had a box at the theater for tonight’s show. Marek had offered it to her personally. That was brazen as hell. A fake vampire offering the vampire mistress of a city and her court tickets to a show where the hotel would disappear and probably kill them all. Or re-kill. I really didn’t know how that’d work with vampires. Though I could imagine how it’d gone when Alain Moreau had called Cassandra du Vien and told her what Marek’s plan was. He had asked her to give us her tickets and stay away from the Phoenix. Surprisingly, she had agreed—at least for her court. We could have their tickets, but she was keeping hers. Marek might be suspicious if she didn’t show. He didn’t know her court, so the eight of us glamoured and there with her wouldn’t arouse any suspicion. Besides, if there was anything left of Marek when the dust settled, she’d told Mr. Moreau, she wanted a piece of him.

  I wouldn’t be meeting Cassandra du Vien until she arrived at eight o’clock tonight to go with us over to the Phoenix, but I liked her already.

  *

  Human form or not, after Yasha finished his soak with Kitty, he did a respectable imitation of a big red dog shaking off water. And rather than kill every hairdryer in the suite trying to dry himself, Yasha went with some sunbathing. I had to admit, the Las Vegas midday sun and desert wind did wonders for drying a werewolf without leaving him looking like a giant Pomeranian. Well, that and a little judicious grooming from Kitty. And board shorts, definitely board shorts, for which we were all grateful.

  “I was thinking,” Yasha said to Tam. “Are magic cuffs a goblin thing? If so, why have they not shared with SPI?” He gave Rake a slightly accusing, increasingly yellow-eyed glance.

  Yasha and Kitty didn’t know Tam from Adam’s house cat, having only met him when they showed up at our suite door. Yet Yasha instinctively knew that if Marek’s cuffs were a goblin technology, it had to be Rake’s fault that SPI didn’t have any for our own use. What can I say? He and Ian were brothers from other mothers.

  While Tam told them the background of the cuffs and the Sythsaurians who made them, Yasha excused himself to quickly pad off to the kitchen to get more of the steak tartare Rake had had sent up from the restaurant.

  “Reptilian invaders from outer space?” Kitty asked, when Tam had finished. “I guess the trope had to have to come from somewhere.”

  “Bi-pedal alien lizard invaders sounds better than what we have on our hands right now,” I said.

  “It sounds like a movie I saw once on Mystery Science Theater 3000,” Ian said.

  “A bad movie,” Rake muttered.

  “But in a good way,” I said. “I like MST.”

  “They’re all bad movies on MST.” My partner glanced around. Yasha hadn’t come back yet. “Don’t tell Yasha I said that. He thinks those movies are the golden age of film.”

  “I heard that,” Yasha called from the kitchen.

  I thought for a moment. “Which brings up something I’ve wondered about, especially since coming to work at SPI. Why do we keep trying to contact extraterrestrials? Hasn’t it occurred to anyone that there are homicidal maniacs in space the same as there are here? What are the chances that if we do make contact, we’ll attract the attention of cute, little ET aliens instead of a race of lizards who think all we’re good for is food?”

  Ian leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Hopefully we’re too far down on the evolutionary scale to be worth noticing.”

  “Or taste bad,” Yasha added, padding back from the kitchen. Getting words around his increasingly werewolfy dental work was a challenge. “Space travel must be like road trip. You do not stop at places with bad food. Little green men have been here before. Have not been back.” The Russian werewolf shrugged. “Earth must be greasy truck stop of universe.”

  “We can only hope, buddy,” Ian said. “We can only hope.”

  *

  We knew the magetech generator would be the centerpiece for the show’s finale, but we really didn’t know what it’d look like.

  Now we did.

  The hotel’s PR people had released a special ad for tonight’s show. It was on the hotel’s website, the marquee in front of the hotel, and on digital billboards up and down the Strip.

  We assumed the representation of the magetech generator was accurate.

  Again, Marek Reigory was being brazen as hell.

  “Now he’s thumbing his nose at God,” I said. “That’s not gonna go over well.”

  The magetech generator had been designed to look like the Ark of the Covenant—or at least the version that’d been in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

  “I’m assuming the crystals are inside,” I said.

  “He must not have seen the movie,” Ben said in disbelief. “Opening that thing was not a good idea, let alone messing around with the insides.”

  I shrugged. “When you think about it, the design’s well chosen. From what Tam said, that’s the kind of power we’re talking about here.”

  And our job was to open it and take out the crunchy crystal filling.

  *

  You could buy pretty much anything you wanted in Las Vegas—if you had the money.

  Rake did.

  Though even his credit card had to be smoking after this.

  Within the next two hours, formalwear started arriving.

  We’d left New York thinking we’d be making a quick trip to the Nevada desert to have a look around. We’d all been wearing clothes for doing that. Outdoorsy, hiking-type stuff. Technically, we were still in the desert, but we were way underdressed for tonight’s activity.

  I had no idea how he’d done it, but Rake had taken care of everyone’s wardrobe needs. When you waved whatever kind of plastic billionaires carried, you got service and you got it fast.

  I had to admit, we looked as hot as Rake’s credit card.

  Rake and Tam’s tuxes hadn’t been delivered to the suite. They’d just shown up, which told me there was something to Rake’s duffel bag being of the Mary Poppins variety. I recognized the tux Rake was wearing from a party we’d attended last month, and the one Tam wore from the party before that. It came in handy that they were the same height, build, and size.

  Ian and Ben weren’t Rake’s size, so he’d had to order out for their formalwear.

  My sweetie had flawless taste, so my partner and our team gem mage looked like a million bucks. I made Ben stand still for a quick photo with my phone to send to Caera when this was all over. I knew she’d want to see her man all spiffied up.

  Kitty and I were close to the same size, and Rake had done an excellent job guessing for her. This wouldn’t be the first time Rake had bought evening wear for me, and I’ll admit to some trepidation unzipping the garment bag.

  Wow, that was a surprise.

  A black, one-shoulder jumpsuit—with no parts cut out, see-through, or simply missing.

  The bodice was snug, and the legs were loose and flowy, but not so flowy that it’d trip me. I could look good and move fast. Usually, those two did not go together. There was even a built-in bra to ensure that the girls wouldn’t try to, shall we say, venture forth on their own even if I had to run for my life, which I thought was increasingly likely.

  In another surprise, Rake had included
panties, though they were little more than strategically placed silk and scraps of lace, also in black.

  I smiled. You couldn’t beat the classics.

  I’d feel like a sexy ninja. Now if I could just learn to fight like one.

  Kitty was in a jumpsuit as well, but hers was capri length with a cute little detachable skirt over it. Rake had even gotten flats for both of us. I would’ve preferred something along the line of running shoes, but for Rake to go from buying me four-inch heels to no heels…? That was a huge step in the right choosing-clothes-for-me direction.

  Yasha got a gander at Kitty’s silk-wrapped legs through a slit in the skirt, and he whistled. A wolf whistle, of course.

  Rake even managed to find a tux for Yasha.

  Only in Las Vegas were there tuxes that were held together with snaps.

  Apparently, there was a male stripper somewhere in this town as big as Yasha. I did not want to go to the bachelorette party where he’d be performing. Some girls might be into that, but the sight of that much man would send me screaming into the night, and not in a good way.

  I had to admit that a stripper tux was the perfect choice for a werewolf during a supermoon. If Yasha had to go wolf, he wouldn’t tear his tux to shreds and be standing around naked afterward. Since Kitty would be responsible for our getaway portal, Yasha was her self-appointed bodyguard for the evening. Kitty volunteered to keep up with any of Yasha’s discarded clothes.

  I had a sneaking suspicion that The Hangover was going to pale in comparison to our upcoming evening.

  We didn’t have a tiger in our suite; we had a werewolf.

  26

  Ben’s instincts were right on target, and so were the military satellites Kenji had hijacked.

  They’d found the missing buildings.