The Supernaturals of Las Vegas Books 1-4

by Carrie Harris

  “What’s wrong now?” he asked.

  “Maybe nothing,” she said mysteriously. “Come see.”

  He followed her as she walked across the freshly laid tile, out the retractable doors and onto the patio. Spring had sprung in Las Vegas, greeting him with a bright and sunny day, not too hot, with just the right amount of breeze. He was looking forward to taking a dip in his pool when he got home. Maybe ordering a pizza and watching some reality TV. He had a not-so-secret thing for cooking shows, even though he wasn’t much of a chef himself. There was something about watching expert cooks at work that he found soothing, and based on Rebecca’s carefully cultivated air of mystery, he was beginning to think that he might need a little relaxation after today.

  A handful of guys in hard hats stood around the hole in the ground where the pool would eventually go, once they got through all of the clay. But that wasn’t going to happen with all of this standing around, and he made his dissatisfaction clear with a glowering look. That was all it took. Darius Carson didn’t yell at crews. He didn’t waste his breath. Subcontractors who didn’t pull their weight were terminated, and that was that. But the ones who put the work in were more than fairly compensated. The policy gave him the pick of the proverbial litter when it came to work crews, and it was just one of the many reasons that Carson Contracting got first pick when it came to jobs.

  As the men scurried off, Rebecca watched them with a stern expression on her face, but she didn’t say anything either. Still, Darius would have taken a bet that she’d make note of the guys who were slacking on the job, and any repeat offenders would be reported to him by day’s end. She took her task as the enforcer of company policy very seriously. He hadn’t just hired her because of their friendship; she was damned good at her job.

  He walked up to the edge of the pit and looked down into it. His guess had been that they’d discovered a broken water main where none should be, but the guess turned out to be dead wrong. At the bottom of the pit, he saw a stone square about 2’ x 2’. It was perfectly shaped, glossy marble. It did not belong at the bottom of Mr. M’bala’s resort style swimming pool.

  Darius frowned thoughtfully. He could see where someone had dug down alongside the marble slab, trying to determine how far down it went. It descended about a foot and then was swallowed by that strange clay that belonged nowhere near the desert.

  “That’s…odd,” he said.

  “Yep.” Rebecca nodded.

  “Man made, though.”

  “Yep. Can’t see any tool marks on it, but it’s perfectly square. I measured it. No way had that shape occurred naturally.”

  “Artifact, maybe?” he asked.

  “Could be. You should smell it.”

  She kept her voice pitched low. A few of their employees were shifterkin like herself. Darius had hired his cousin Hex to work in the office just a few weeks ago, and she seemed to be working out okay. Hex could be flighty, but she was kin, and she wasn’t going to let Darius down. It would be a matter of pride with her. But many of the employees had no idea about Darius’s double nature, and he intended to keep it that way. Although he had the utmost faith in their loyalty to Carson Contracting, the fact that he sometimes turned into a giant scorpion could be a deal breaker for a vanilla human. Heck, sometimes he freaked other supernaturals out. He didn’t understand the big deal. It wasn’t like he turned into a giant spider like Rebecca’s mom had. Now that had been scary.

  As a werescorpion, he had a surprisingly good sense of smell. He tracked his prey by smell and sound, mostly. So while his eyesight couldn’t compete with the werewolves, he could follow a scent trail that would stymie most shifters. If there was something odd about this stone construction, he would certainly be able to pick up on it.

  “Did you scent anything?” he said to Rebecca, sotto voce.

  “I’m…not sure yet. Maybe?”

  Of course, as a shifterkin, her senses wouldn’t be as keen as his. But often, when Rebecca alerted him to something on one of their job sites, she’d been right. They’d found a few Native artifacts when they were digging out a new foundation. He usually alerted his contact at the Paiute reservation when he came across a new one, and they’d come out and identify it. Make sure it got to its rightful home. But sometimes, the things they dug up had power to them. Magical power. Those artifacts needed to be safely stored away lest they hurt someone on accident. He was beginning to suspect this would be one of those times.

  “I’m going to climb down there and see if I can’t find the bottom edge,” he said aloud. “Get me a shovel?”

  “Sure thing, boss,” replied Rebecca.

  By the time she returned to the hole, Darius had already made quick work of scaling down into it. His crew had done a good job despite the strange soil. The excavation had nice firm walls that didn’t crumble out from under his feet. He managed to get to the bottom of the hole without incident.

  A quick look up to the top reassured him that no one would see the odd things he was about to do. No one but Rebecca, that was, and she didn’t count. He dropped to a crouch, took a handful of soil, and brought it up to his nose. It smelled strangely acrid, like something had burnt it. But burnt sand didn’t turn into clay; it fused into glass. Nothing about this pit made sense. It hadn’t come about naturally. Something had created it. Someone had dumped a big slab of marble in the desert and sealed it away in a crapton of clay. It had the makings of some kind of magical storage, but he’d never heard of anything quite like it. Then again, magic wasn’t exactly his forte.

  When he put his nose up right next to the marble—being extra careful not to touch it just yet—the electric smell of magic was so strong that it felt like it seared his nose hairs clean off. He recoiled from it, rubbing at his face. Like all shifters, most magic didn’t touch him. Of course, if a mage summoned real fire, he’d burn. But mental magics danced off him like water off a hot pan. He’d gotten that phrase off his werewolf friend Derek, and he liked it enough to steal it.

  “I think we’re going to want Carl Hammond,” he called up to Rebecca. “And probably an appointment with Desert Oasis.”

  She nodded, pulling the phone out of her pocket and already beginning to dial before he’d finished the sentence.

  “Oh, toss that shovel down here first,” he called.

  After a moment, the shovel came sliding down toward him.

  “Thanks!” he called, but she didn’t answer.

  He took a few moments to consider the marble. From the looks of it, it was a cube shape. A box, then. A sealed box of marble, encased in clay in the middle of the desert. The magic artifact inside was powerful enough to leak out, which meant that he didn’t want anything to do with it.

  He pulled the work gloves out of his belt and put them on. He wasn’t about to touch this box with his bare hands, not without knowing what it did. He’d heard all kinds of stories about shifters who got burned by unknown magical artifacts. Some of them had been literally burned, and he’d had a pretty serious fear of fire when he was a kid after hearing some of those stories. From Rebecca, come to think of it.

  The box would be heavy, but he wasn’t going to let anyone else touch it. He’d remove it himself. It would be a nice workout, the likes of which he didn’t usually get to enjoy. And once it was out, he’d let Carl take a look at it. The medicine man would know if it was a Native artifact, and he’d take charge of it if that was the case. But Darius didn’t think it smelled like that. He hadn’t smelled anything like this before.

  In that case, he’d have to take it to Desert Oasis. Most people thought it was just another pawn shop, but the supernatural community of Las Vegas knew differently. Really, the pawn shop was a front for the real business. The important business. Desert Oasis was a storage service for dangerous magical artifacts. He’d done business with Grey James before, although he’d heard that Grey’s niece had taken over after the old man died a few months ago. Heart attack or something. Darius wasn’t worried, though. If Grey had ch
osen this woman as his successor, she’d be more than capable. They all knew what was at stake when it came to the Desert Oasis. Some of the artifacts stored there could kill. Darius knew that for a fact, because he’d put some of them there himself and slept better at night once he’d known they were stowed safely.

  Just like he’d feel better once this mystery marble box and its even more mysterious contents were safely in behind the wards at the Oasis. The pizza and swimming and cooking shows would have to wait, but at least he would know he’d earned them.

  He squared his shoulders and plunged the shovel into the clay, putting all his considerable muscle to work.

  Chapter 3

  How do you feel about chain mail bikinis?”

  Audra was trying to work on the monthly financials, but concentrating wasn’t easy. She kept thinking about Lara’s bare butt plastered all over the page she was working on, and finally she’d had to give up and start copying it all to another page. Not that she had anything against Lara, who had been just as irate as she was. In fact, they’d had a nice late night Waffle House meal in which they’d spent a long time constructing elaborate revenge plans that neither of them would ever enact but strangely made them both feel better. They’d exchanged cell numbers at the end of the night, and Lara had promised to call the next time she was in town since she traveled a lot for work. Audra was looking forward to it, but that didn’t mean she wanted to keep Lara’s butt papers.

  The mention of chain mail bikinis did not help in the concentration department. Her rebellious imagination immediately pictured Chad in a chain mail bikini with Lara, also in a chain mail bikini. The worst part about the whole thing is that Chad was such a pretty man that he could have actually pulled it off.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked aloud, trying to shake the image.

  Beef Weiblinger gave her a look of intense concern and shut the door behind him. Beef was her best friend, and they’d do anything for each other. That was no exaggeration. After Uncle Grey had died, he’d offered to move to Vegas with her. He’d claimed it was because he was sick of Ohio, and she’d believed him, but still. He’d moved across the country, and at least part of that had been to support her. He was a keeper.

  Most people nicknamed “Beef” fell into one of two categories. Either they were giant and literally beefy linebacker types who could put away mountains of food in one sitting and crush beer cans on their foreheads, or they were scrawny guys who struggled to open jars of pickles and the nickname was meant to be ironic. But Beef wasn’t either of those things. He was just a normal guy. His little brother hadn’t been able to pronounce “Bartholomew,” and somehow it had gotten shortened to “Beef,” and the name just stuck.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You seem upset.”

  She sighed. As much as she wanted to delay telling the story, she’d have to do it sometime. It seemed best to get it over with, especially since she was sure the rumor mill was already churning. She should have known not to give Chad a job, but of course she’d been all egotistical about it, thinking it wouldn’t be a problem because she was so in looooooove. It had made so much sense then. Now it just made her want to punch herself in the face.

  “Chad had a girl here last night. On my desk. I caught them on the new security cameras and had to haul my butt over here and dump him. He’s fired, by the way. I already took his key, and I’ll scrub him from the schedule later on today.”

  “Daaaamn,” he said, drawing out the word into a long sound of shock. “Okay. Not entirely surprised, I’ve got to say. It’s a stupid question, but how are you?”

  She pushed away from the desk and leaned back thoughtfully. “I’m mad, to be honest. He’s not the person I thought he was. Except that I’m not really all that surprised either, deep down. The more I think about it, the more I realize that he was kind of a jerk, and I just couldn’t see it. Is that weird?”

  “Yes,” Beef said gravely. “But I think all relationships are weird. I don’t know why people go through all of that. Emotions and sharing body fluids and people peeing on the toilet seat and not wiping it up afterwards. Yuck.”

  “I’m beginning to agree with you. I’ve been buying wedding magazines since I was about eight, but I think I’m done with romance. I’m thinking I’ll get another cat.”

  “I wouldn’t. There’s still too much urine involved. How about we plan a vacation instead? Somewhere tropical, where servers will bring us drinks with little umbrellas on them while we sit on our chaise lounges and read trashy magazines.”

  “Sold. I knew I employed you for a good reason,” said Audra.

  “Because I speak sense to you when it comes to urine and vacations? I mean, not urine with vacations. Those are two separate topics, in case that wasn’t clear.”

  “It was, but I appreciate it anyway.”

  As much as Audra was joking, she really meant it. Beef’s ridiculous commentary had finally managed to drive the how-could-I-have-been-so-stupid loop out of her head. And maybe he was right. She’d fallen hard for her two previous boyfriends. Phillipe had gone on a bike tour of Europe and come back with a new tattoo and a raging case of chlamydia. Bryan had asked her to marry him and then celebrated her acceptance with a threesome…which hadn’t included her. After that, she’d told herself just to date somebody. Nothing too serious. A fun relationship without too many strings attached (although monogamy had still been a requirement after the chlamydia scare). Chad had seemed just perfect. Amusing, handsome, sexy as hell. She’d fallen hard despite herself. Now she was ready to join Beef in the land of not-dating-and-quite-happy-about-it-thank-you.

  Besides, what did she need a boyfriend for? If she needed a date for a wedding or something like that, Beef would go with her, and he was fun and charming and she didn’t need to worry about him ditching her in the middle of the event in question to go have sex with some stranger. He’d dated a bit in high school and quickly realized he preferred being single. The guy had a point. She didn’t understand exactly why she’d felt the need to date when it had always turned out so badly.

  “I really think we should do this,” she said. “And thanks for cheering me up. I’ve been sitting here all morning, grumbling to myself while I pictured them having sex on my desk. Because that’s what they did. I have a really nice visual aid on the security feed if you’d like to see it.”

  Beef had been leaning down with one hand tented on the desk to get a better look at her face. With careful deliberation, he pulled back, wiping his hand on his pant leg.

  “I’m very happy to help. What do you think? Dinner tonight and vacation planning? We could order Chinese and spend the evening rating resort pools on a scale of one to holy shit I want to move in.”

  Audra winced. Even after years of friendship, Beef didn’t know that she was an elementalist. Back in Ohio, it had seemed like a moot point. She’d spent a lot of vacations with Uncle Grey, learning how to control and develop her powers, but she rarely used them at home. And when she did, she could always make an excuse. She’d manipulate the elements—maybe putting out a fire gone out of control—and throw a little dirt on it for verisimilitude. Or she’d blame it on the wind. Beef had always bought her stories, or so it had seemed.

  But then, after Uncle Grey died, everything changed. Now, her magic was a part of her job, and she couldn’t talk about it with her best friend. She’d always been so good with excuses, but now she was running out, and she could tell he was becoming suspicious. She was going to have to handle this question carefully. She couldn’t have him here during the drop off, so she needed a good excuse. Luckily, she came up with one quickly.

  “I’ve got the security guys coming to repair one of the cameras after hours,” she said, pointing toward the corner. “There’s a dark spot in the feed that I don’t like.”

  He didn’t seem to think anything of that. “No problem. China Dragon will deliver to the shop. I’ll keep you company.”

  “It’s silly for both of us to be stu
ck here. And honestly, I’m not very hungry. I’m too busy pining away for Chad.” She put the back of her hand to her forehead, and while he laughed, it seemed forced. “What if I came over once they’re done? You could do a little preparatory research if you want, and we’ll look through whatever you’ve found. I’ll bring frozen custard.”

  “Now you’re just trying to bribe me.”

  She nodded. “Shamelessly. Is it working?”

  “I suppose,” he said airily. But he still didn’t look thrilled.

  “I’ll see you around 11,” she said. “Thanks for understanding.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t say anything. Audra didn’t like that, and she didn’t like hiding things from him. But Uncle Grey had made her promise not to tell anyone about the artifact storage at the shop, and she’d kept her word. Her mother knew enough to send her to her uncle when things got strange around the house, but they didn’t talk about it at home either.

  Then again, Uncle Grey wasn’t around anymore. And Chad had found out about her magic by listening in on one of her phone calls, and the world hadn’t ended. If someone as untrustworthy as Chad knew her secret, what harm would it be for her to tell Beef? None, she decided. She would tell him tonight and demonstrate a little so he didn’t think she was having a psychotic break, and then they could plan their vacation and he’d understand when she was a little squirrely about her schedule.

  Everything would be fine.

  Darius Carson dragged his artifact into the building on a dolly, stopping it in front of the counter with a grunt of effort. Audra couldn’t decide what impressed her more, the fact that he could move what looked like a giant block of granite without assistance or the fact that he didn’t seem to expect her to be impressed by it. Chad had always looked for the reaction every time he did something remotely difficult.