by P. R. Frost
He didn’t have an aura either.
This was getting spooky.
“We party tonight, Signora Tess,” Lucia said. Some of the accent faded, some—not all. “Time for word games and shadow boxing later. When we know what we both want.” She lifted one of the goblets from the tray and handed it to me. “The specialty of the house. Goats from my beloved Tuscany contributed the milk. The blood came from a different donor. Whipped together into a froth with secret spices.” She flashed more of the elongated teeth.
“We call it ‘Smoothie Mary,’ ” the lad said with an evil grin that showed the same orthodontia as the Contessa.
“Um, thanks to Mary, whomever she may be, but no thanks. I’m allergic to milk. The animal casein.” I trotted out an old high school biology lesson. The guy I’d dated my sophomore year had that allergy. Not just intolerant, allergic. He couldn’t have cheese or cream or butter. Eggs were out of the question as well. “I think the blood falls into the same category as the goat milk.”
I put the drink cup back on the tray. The icy stem burned my fingers. I wanted my hands fully functioning in case I had to fight my way out of here.
Scrap had remained strangely silent. I spotted him sitting on a chandelier, hanging almost upside down and spying on one of the men in jeans so tight they had to cut off circulation to vital parts. So far no comments about the legitimacy of our hostess’ claims to being a vampire.
If she were truly evil, he’d have turned bright red and stretched halfway into transformation by now.
Wouldn’t he?
“Tell me, Lady Lucia, are vampires in the same classification as demons? And if so, which ghetto did you escape from?”
The entire room went utterly still. Not even the candle flames flickered.
Chapter 22
The inland sea that covered much of SW North America began to recede 200 million years ago.
“ER, TESS,” GOLLUM STAMMERED. He hastily scanned the room for signs of trouble.
I’d already sized up the mass of bodies and dismissed them as useless wannabes.
Lady Lucia presented the only real threat. And maybe the pseudo child with the tray of drinks.
“Actually, vampires can’t be classed as demons in this dimension,” I blathered on. “Earth is their home world. Or is death a home world? If so, they’d be demons, if you use the ‘out of dimension’ definition, but I’m told that’s not accurate.” Gee I sounded a lot like Gollum there. I hate it when I babble. “So, what remains is the question of which dimensional ghetto did vampires crawl out of?”
At least Scrap diverted his attention back to me for about two heartbeats. Then he returned to ogling the shirtless males in black jeans that outlined every crack and protrusion on their bodies. Ordinary males. From the way their auras fluctuated, I guessed they found other men as attractive as females.
“Anyway, a vampire by definition is evil,” I continued seemingly oblivious to the way the hangers-on pressed closer. “So if, Lady Lucia really is a vampire, then Scrap would have transformed the moment we walked in the door, I’d have killed her and we’d be on our way home.”
A gasp of outrage ran around the room. I saw a lot of teeth in my peripheral vision. My attention remained on Lady Lucia.
She threw back her head and laughed long and loud. More of her bosom escaped the corset and lace. “Very good logic, cara mía Signora Tess. Very good indeed. However, your little friend cannot react to my inherent evil, because I offer no evil intentions toward you. Tonight.” She looked long and hard at Scrap.
He flashed her a toothy grin. He had longer and sharper ones than she did. And a lot more of them.
And his were real.
How could she see him?
“I can see your imp, Signora Tess, because I can see the aura of blackness about him. He has many secrets, this one.”
Now I felt more than a little uneasy. Did I really begin edging toward the door?
If I did, she came right along with me, and five of her minions slid between me and Gollum. Mickey stood isolated by another group of five to my left.
I couldn’t leave them. They were defenseless, mostly. I was not.
“You brought me here for a reason, Lady Lucia. I want to know what it is.”
“Is my little party not enough for you?” She reached out and grabbed by her leather vest a listless and anemic looking girl in her early twenties. She wasn’t wearing anything beneath the vest except a micromini leather skirt that shifted upward to reveal wisps of blonde pubic hair.
She had an aura, barely. Mostly she’d been drained of so much energy—or blood—there wasn’t a lot left to show.
The twin puncture wounds on her neck, right over the jugular, grabbed my attention.
Gollum looked a little sick. Mickey more so.
“This is Mary,” Lady Lucia continued. “You may thank her for mixing the drinks tonight.”
I gulped. “Um, thanks, Mary. I’m sure they were delish.” I tried looking away. I really did.
Mary lifted her mouth in a feeble attempt at a smile.
“What’s your point, Lady Lucia?” I still couldn’t look away from Mary. Call it fascinated horror.
It felt a lot like fear.
Lady Lucia had taken my preconceived notions and juggled them, keeping them all in the air at the same time.
“My point is, that I have a lot of power in this region. I have many followers, many who will do my bidding without question. But I cannot bring down Gary Gregbaum.”
“You have my attention. I do not like what that man is doing.”
“His show is lovely, isn’t it?” Lady Lucia dropped her grip on Mary and pushed her away. She stumbled toward a chair and fell into it like the rag doll she had become.
“Lovely. And disturbing,” I said. “Tell me, does the audience clap for the dying faery at every performance? That has become a tradition in our world, to bring Tinker Bell back to life.”
“No. You began that tradition for ‘Fairy Moon.’ Amazing that the performance touched you so deeply, you who are so jaded and contemptuous of that which you do not understand.” She glided toward the center of the room.
My feet followed her of their own volition. The crowd shifted around us. I noticed the knots of people around Mickey and Gollum also moved, keeping the same distance between us.
Directly beneath Scrap’s chandelier, Lady Lucia took the stage, bathed in gentle candlelight from the fifty or more flames above her head. One of them threatened Scrap’s tail. I wondered when, or if, he’d notice.
“You, cara mia Tess, have the power to do what I cannot,” Lady Lucia pronounced.
“Which is?”
“Free the faery dancers and ruin Gary Gregbaum.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
“You must go where I and my kind cannot. You must find the portal in the Valley of Fire and lead the faeries to it.”
No way no how, Babe. I am not going to the Valley of Fire. Never again. Not in this lifetime or any other. It will be the death of me. And that means it’s the death of you, too.
When I die, you die. When you die, I die.
You aren’t going there either. Much too dangerous. Mountains of iron-laden sandstone with twisted and looping canyons screw with the senses and challenge the balance of life.
Get Mr. Holier Than Thou Breven Sancroix and snooty Fortitude to do it.
Or get Mr. Stinky Donovan Estevez to do it.
Anyone but you and me, babe. Abso-fucking-lutely anyone but us.
“Glad to see something could grab your attention, Scrap,” I muttered. The more I heard about this Valley of Fire, the more curious I became. And the more scared.
Scrap’s aura sparked, or maybe that was just his tail catching fire. Normally, I couldn’t detect his aura at all. I didn’t need to. His body color told me what I needed to know of his emotions. Right now he was so pale, even I had trouble seeing him.
And I never detected the darkness Lady Lucia claime
d to see around him. The king of the Orculli Trolls had told me about that darkness, too.
I looked to Gollum for inspiration. His eyes had glazed over in his need to get on the Internet and do some research.
“What do I get out of this venture?” I asked Lady Lucia. “I’m figuring it’s as dangerous for me as for you.”
A moment of silence as she looked me up and down, assessing, weighing her options. And mine.
“You fulfill your vows as a Warrior of the Celestial Blade, you restore balance to the dimensions. But you must hurry. My sources tell me the rogue portal is unstable and will close within days. If that happens, then Faery is forever damaged. The good energy that flows there, balancing many evils, will be lost to the universe.” She looked serious. “You will gain much credit with the Powers That Be. Something you will need if you ever hope to survive outside a Citadel.”
Believe her, babe. The good energy in Faery already turns bad. Think about those mutant faeries on steroids that Gregbaum employs.
“Okay, and what do you get, Lady Lucia?”
“I see Gary Gregbaum writhe in disgrace and poverty.”
“If the portal closes, can’t we get the faeries back to their homeland through the chat room?” I looked to Scrap for confirmation. He claimed to know the chat room as well as anyone.
Not a good idea, dahling. It’s one thing for me to slip you in and out upon occasion when the demons on guard are particularly dumb. Quite another to take an entire troupe through. Besides, last time I flitted through, the door to Faery was sealed. Both directions.
“You need to know that I have purchased the Dragon and St. George,” Lady Lucia continued. “My first act upon taking over in four days will be to fire all the managers who are skimming gambling profits and implode the hotel. Gregbaum will never produce another show in Las Vegas, no matter who has the audacity to back him. I will see to that.”
There is nothing so great as the wrath of a woman scorned.
The skinny lad without an aura tugged on the flounce at the end of her three-quarter sleeve. “Do not forget the curse.”
“Do I want to know?”
More bad news, babe. This does not look good, or like fun. We’re gonna need help, maybe of the Donovan kind.
“Gregbaum has placed a curse upon his dancers. If any one of them leaves the building, they all become living torches.”
Mickey nodded, confirming the existence of the curse.
“You must break the curse and lead the faeries to freedom before I take possession and the portal closes. I cannot be responsible for what will become of this world should you fail,” Lucia continued.
Mickey fainted.
Chapter 23
Boulder City is the only town in Nevada where gambling is not legal.
NOW I RECOGNIZE Mickey! With his defenses down, his real self shines through like a beacon in the dark. That’s what Faery should be and has lost.
Let me back up just a tad—like a month or two our time. See there’s this psycho chick named WindScribe. She’s one of the coven that went missing twenty-eight years ago, only they think they were only in Faery about a month. Got news for them. Time runs different in Faery.
Anyway, Windscribe got caught doing something more than a little naughty and very very dangerous. She tried setting free a bunch of Cthulhu demons from their ghetto in the back of Faery.
Naturally, the king of Faery was pissed. WindScribe snapped his neck. Now this little escapade led to all kinds of trouble that Tess and I dealt with already.
But back in Faery, life didn’t return to normal. There was a big fight between our boy Mickey, who’s something like the crown prince of Faery, and his stepmom the queen. Queeny won and now rules Faery. But there’s a whole lot of things wrong. So wrong the chat room portal is closed until they get things right.
Mickey must be here to get back the faery dancers who got kidnapped while no one was in charge and life was chaotic. Until he does that, Faery can’t heal.
He’s a true prince. He should be ruling.
“Time to get our boy home,” Gollum said. He broke through his guards and Mickey’s to crouch beside him. He tested Mickey’s pulse and touched his brow with the back of his hand.
“Is he okay?” I asked, elbowing my way over to them.
Scrap descended to my shoulder like a good little imp. He’d gained a little color, back to his normal gray/green with just a hint of yellow concern. Not a bit of pink or red on him. We were still safe.
But for how long?
“Hard to tell what’s okay for him,” Gollum whispered. “Pulse too rapid and skin too cold and clammy.”
Not good, Scrap said. He shifted to the top of my head, claws grasping the comb. I didn’t know if he used its powers or merely kept it in place. Faeries have a higher heart rate than humans, but that makes their skin warmer.
I shook my head at Gollum, hoping he’d understand that we had to get him out of here. No sense in betraying his origins to Lady Lucia and her gang if we didn’t have to.
Mickey’s eyes fluttered. Again, I got the impression of something off in their tilt and placement in his pinched and narrow face. He moaned and tried to roll over.
Gollum steadied his movements. “Catch your bearings, boy, before you try to stand.”
“I’ll have you know I am no ‘boy,’ ” Mickey sneered with the disdain of a true aristocrat. All traces of the bouncy youth vanished.
Then the familiar Mickey returned in a flash. “I’m okay. Just get me out of here. The heat, and the candles, and too much perfume overcame me.”
Yeah, right.
I’d seen his eyes roll up the moment Lady Lucia mentioned the consequences of Gregbaum’s curse. If any of the faery dancers left the building, they’d go up in flames. A horrible death for anyone. Might be especially tormenting to faeries.
“Lady Lucia.” I turned and faced our hostess-cum-ally-cum-adversary. “May we trouble you for the use of your car for our return to the city?”
“Of course.” She snapped her fingers.
The lad scuttled out. Then I heard footsteps clattering on a staircase at the opposite end of the building from our entrance.
“The car will meet you out front. It will take a few minutes to retrieve it from the garage. If you come this way, you may walk by the pool and wander the hotel gift shop for a moment. Feel free to gamble.” She ushered us out of the party room, down a short hallway.
We passed a tiny kitchenette, a bath nearly as large a my hotel room. The luxurious tub had water jets, deep enough for ten to swim in. Three partially closed doors looked like they might be guest rooms, smaller than the bath. Couples were engaged in heavy make out sessions there, mostly unclothed and oblivious to us.
Then the hallway ended. To our left lay the master (or mistress) bedroom with a huge circular bed, sitting area, and access to another bath. I couldn’t see the details but guessed it to be more utilitarian. To our right a broad green marble staircase curved downward.
But it was the painting on the end wall that grabbed my attention. A masterful oil portrait of Lady Lucia in her late teens. She wore a white gown, of the late Napoleonic period, with a full, flowing mantilla of white chantilly lace—very rare and costly; chantilly is usually black silk. She could have been pregnant, hard to tell in those high-waisted gowns. The painted image displayed her left hand quite prominently. On her heart finger, she wore a gold filigree ring with a huge square-cut diamond.
I’d seen that ring before, tied to a rose stem as Donovan offered it to me with his proposal.
Gary Gregbaum wore a duplicate on his pinky finger.
I checked. Lady Lucia did not wear that ring; several other very expensive ones, but not that one.
Who had the original? Donovan or Gregbaum? And how did they come to possess such a valuable and cherished antique?
I’m off to Mum’s for a nice little chat about how to trace that ring. I’m surprised it didn’t end up in Mum’s front yard, the freeze-dried-g
arbage-dump-of-the-universe. That’s where I found Tess’ comb, and the brooch that signifies leadership of all the Sisterhoods of the Celestial Blade—maybe Brotherhoods, too. We’ll see when she’s defeated her thirteen enemies and earned a precious stone for each of the settings in the brooch. I also found a dragon skull there that now sits atop Tess’ back door. No one ever uses the front door and it’s sealed during bad weather. That skull works better than any stone gargoyle for repelling nasties from the house. And since it’s from a real dragon and not a gargoyle, it doesn’t keep me out.
No one special guarding the chat room tonight. Guess Gregbaum has called in all of his faeries on steroids for some other project. Just some giant fleas hanging around jumping hither, thither, and yon, biting at the air. They look like tiny dots against the endless white that stretches on and on and on forever. No color, no break in the vastness except an occasional doorway. Those fleas all seem to be congregating around the black splotch in front of Faery.
That used to be a clear opening, inviting any and all to share in the hospitality, the peace, and the joy of living. Anyone could get into Faery, if they could find their way into the chat room. Now Faery is closed to all until the balance is restored. Uh-oh! The seal used to be a perfect circle. Now it’s distorted and ugly.
Things are getting worse, and time is running out. I’ve got to get to Mum’s quick.
I slide toward the leather curtain that covers Imp Haven. A single flea nips at my tail. Ow, that itches. At least it didn’t take off any of my warts. I worked hard to earn those beauty spots, I’m not giving them up to some flea!
Mum stands in front of her hovel, broom in hand. The broom has seen better days. Pretty useless now as a broom, still effective at swatting my cute little tush—now covered in six, count ’em six, lovely warts. She frowns the moment I come into view.
I drop down in front of her in an almost graceful flight just like a good little imp. Her frown deepens.