Slade, sometimes called “Sarge” for having been the Master Sergeant and 20-year veteran, wore a sleeveless green T-shirt showing off tanned muscular arms and a black metal wristwatch. He had tattoos of the Marine emblem on the left shoulder, and one naked lady below a Maltese cross along the right forearm. The wardrobe completed by green camouflage pants and vest, and black combat boots, this 6’ gray-eyed driver had hunted monsters for seven years after losing his family to unnatural creatures. He extinguished the cigar in a front ashtray, knowing Nevada had new smoking restrictions. To his right sat 32-year-old Lilith Hawk, a one-quarter Paiute Indian in all-black leather garb – the sleeveless cat suit, knee-high boots and high-collared long coat. Jack had first met Lilith six years earlier purchasing firearms at her double-wide trailer near Boulder City on US 93 where she also sold some exotic antique weapons.
“I’m getting the vibe too, Sarge,” the 5’ 4” woman confessed, black hair tightly braided into its ponytail halfway down her back, before grabbing the large Southwestern-style tan leather purse holding some weapons, hazel eyes having witnessed horror before slaying it on occasion, “but Old Man Mackenzie wants the place thoroughly checked out.”
“He prefers Mister,” the 3’ 6” lady seated opposite Hara and in front of Pike stood off her swiveling chair. Miranda “Randi” Puccini was useful at covert operations in tight spaces, a former Circus-Circus acrobat Jack also met six years ago when interning at IWN, “but maybe we catch Marino’s show before seeing the rooms our boss arranged tonight. Vic’s knocking them dead according to every review, three performances per day except on Sundays, one matinee and then twice in the evening.”
Jack’s one-time girlfriend, the pageboy haircut blonde looked around the van through big green eyes for agreement, wearing a sparkling low-cut red evening gown, white gloves and 3” heel pumps, shouldering the gold handbag off her seat. Approaching 30, Randi was still quite athletic, underestimated by normal-sized adversaries.
“Sure, I’m game,” Murphy deactivated the surveillance console, “we could chill a couple of hours before starting any internal sweep.”
“Nothing strange has been reported about this hotel in legitimate press,” Hawk opened her front door as Slade did likewise when donning his heavy brown leather jacket that contained two .45-calibre pistols inside built-in shoulder holsters, the brunette sticking a short-stocked lightweight 12-gauge shotgun under her long coat and into a deep inner pocket, “so what are we looking for here?”
“Mr. Mackenzie read some Internet conspiracy chatter,” the former Marine explained lifting his camouflage duffle bag as Hara, Puccini, Murphy and Pike exited through the van’s right side sliding door instead of the left or two rear doors, “about missing persons here neither seen nor heard from by anyone again and no police investigation uncovering anything.”
Jack donned the coat and fedora, tributes to a maternal grandfather vampire hunter he never met, and retrieved a navy-blue duffle bag off the floor that once belonged to the man’s professional monster hunter father killed in 1999. He tapped Ken right shoulder as the Japanese-American donned the sunglasses (each team member had a pair) and carried the gray suitcase containing two favorite sharp-bladed weapons.
“Should you be wearing those now? They’ll hurt your eyes, Rookie.”
“They’re meant to shield us from hypnotic suggestions. I’m taking no chances.” Ken then added. “And besides, I look good in them.”
The recent UNLV Criminal Justice graduate who minored in Asian Studies continued wearing the mirrored sunglasses over bright green eyes, walking between Darrell and Randi. The African-American toted his black satchel containing special pistols, a couple of compact meters for radioactive or electromagnetic fields and one device that could see through walls. The midget carried her weapons in the gold purse, and also wore one sparkling silver necklace with its eight mini-explosive decorations.
Yeah, they’re quite a bunch, Jack brought up the rear with Slade and Hawk taking the lead across the parking lot to that hotel, but weird is good after fighting spooky things for five years when a professional tabloid journalist.
The company name Monstrum Venatores (monster hunters in Latin) had been chosen by Robert Mackenzie, a 72-year-old reclusive multi-millionaire living in his sprawling Desert Hills compound where the team stayed and trained when not working. The bald 6’ 5” man had been wheelchair-bound since the Yeti attack on his 1999 Himalayan vacation, making monster slaying a life’s work ever since. Jack first met Mackenzie one year ago while tracking down some rural were-bat sightings west of Vegas for IWN.
“All right,” as the de facto team leader, Slade recruited its current and former members for Mackenzie, “we’ll watch the singer they’re advertising all over this place, and then check out every hotel level after settling into our rooms.”
The group used a southwestern main entrance’s mirrored glass doors with brass frames and handles. They crossed the sparkling turquoise and silver main lobby to its black semicircular registration desk staffed by four clerks, checking in under fake identities provided by Mackenzie and collecting room keys for 313, 315 and 317. The other guests and visitors seemed typical for any Vegas Strip hotel, but its staff all looked eerily similar to each other.
Four semesters at Columbia and on my summer internship here I face Malcolm Havoc’s vampire cult. Daphne Petrov Pike wished her boy had become a reporter. And it’s because I’m monster slayer Zebulon “Zeke” Pike’s son, and grandson of vampire hunter Jack Petrov.
Learning he would share Room 313 with Ken, Pike dismissed the oddity of hotel staffers possessing big exotic-looking eyes and slick short black hair—men in crew cuts and women with bowl styles. The reception area sat between two adjacent elevator lobbies, each with a half-dozen cars. Wide rectangular hallways led to three gambling rooms—one with mostly slots, and the others table games. Signs pointed toward the banquet hall, restrooms, and showroom. On hotel maps, the second floor held conference rooms and staff quarters, the third economy rooms, and the fourth and fifth gradually higher-priced accommodations.
That skinflint Mackenzie got us the cheapest double occupancies available.
Pike did not share that complaint as the team bought their tickets (included in the price of higher-cost rooms) and sought the showroom to catch that 8:00 P.M. performance from Vegas’ new singing sensation Vic Marino. The act’s printed posters and other publicity around this hotel made them wonder if the singer could live up to advertised hype.
The Delta Galaxy’s Universal Showroom was a glittering place with a half-dozen Disco balls across its white-tiled outer ceiling above round varnished tables, padded red seats facing the main stage containing the hotel pyramid needle’s base behind it as a rear wall (according to each of the floor plan maps). The half-circle room was ringed by one long curved bar on the north and northeast sides and a smorgasbord buffet section west and southwest. Double exit doors faced and bracketed a raised oval stage concealed by silver curtains with two sets of wide, short staircases leading off it down onto the showroom’s red-carpeted floor.
“I’m amazed stale singing acts still get any mileage,” Darrell scoffed after his group had gathered appetizers and drinks at food and beverage areas, reconvening around their table fifteen feet from the stage’s right side, “with other choices tourists have on the Strip.”
The room held about 300 guests at tables or along barstools and a cluster of reserved rear booths. Almost 8:00 P.M., Vic Marino’s first evening show would soon start. To Murphy’s left, Randi jabbed her right elbow against his ribs.
“Don’t let Wayne Newton hear you talk that trash,” she nibbled at a mini taco appetizer, smirking as Darrell almost choked on a shrimp when jabbed, Randi drinking a Shirley Temple and Murphy a Manhattan cocktail, “or he’ll do to you what he did to Johnny Carson, Brains.”
“Who’s that?” The black man never watched talk shows much, and in Carson’s era was more likely viewing Arsenio Hall as a child. Randi rolled her
eyes after swallowing the cocktail glass’ maraschino cherry and muttered something about “no respect for tradition.”
“Hey, I met Wayne Newton once,” seated to Puccini’s left; Lilith sipped her appletini and ate baby spare ribs, “growing up at the Paiute Colony with mama. He’s quite the gentleman, and supposed to be part Cherokee and Powhatan.”
Ken Hara sat across from Hawk. He had chosen teriyaki beef strips, broccoli and rice on his plate, eating more from nervousness than hunger, beside a glass of cola. Jack sat between him and Slade. They shared a nachos basket with cheese and salsa dip bowls, Pike nursing lemonade while the Sarge drank bourbon and water.
“Shouldn’t the show have started?” Ken looked at his digital glowing watch on its neck chain worn beneath the shirt showing 8:01 P.M., rechecking his suitcase remained against the round table’s pedestal.
“Yep, it’s eight on the dot,” Slade reassured his protégé from the wristwatch, this mission Hara’s first since joining the team back in August, “but maybe we should’ve caught a later show instead. Weirder stuff often happens after midnight.”
“No thanks;” Ken swallowed another beef bite as music began behind the curtain, “I stayed out too late sometimes my freshman year and partied so hard my grades dropped in two courses.”
I don’t know what it is, Jack watched the curtains part and reveal the full hardwood stage containing a 10-piece band seated in back, recalling how their group had noticed tiny differences in details to hotel décor when comparing observations about various locations (as if not seeing the exact same places), something’s wrong about this dump.
“Y’know, speaking of Carson,” Slade reminisced, “I once had tickets to—”
“Shush,” Puccini told him, “the show’s starting.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” an unseen announcer’s voice smooth baritone flowed from the public address system, “the Delta Galaxy Casino Hotel is proud to present the phenomenon of our star attraction, knocking them dead in the aisles at his sold out shows. Please put your hands together for – MR. VIC MARINO!”
Two spotlights shined down across the round stage as each glitter ball began flashing its lights around the room adding to the dazzle multicolored strobe wall lighting. Ken adjusted his sunglasses and sipped cola, already disliking this spectacle.
“Why don’t you take off those, Kid? I get a headache when wearing them too much.”
Ignoring Slade’s advice, Hara admitted: “I’m getting a bad feeling about this too, Sarge.”
“Those aren’t toys,” the former Marine reminded him, “but protection against hypnosis.”
“And this isn’t a hypnotist’s act,” Darrell added. “So why did we bring them?”
Lilith shushed them as the band’s up-tempo version of Thus Spoke Zarathustra flowed from horns, piano, electric strings and percussion. Two tall metal doors hidden inside the stage’s rear wall opened with dry ice gas and white smoke briefly pouring through. Two lines of six female dancers, all with large eyes similar to the staff, emerged stepping in silver leotards, tights and oval helmets with sparkling high-heeled boots, skirting the band in those black tuxedos to take positions as a mid-stage kicking line. The star attraction finally emerged through the doors before they slid closed with a loud clang. Like the hotel’s front marquee sign and various interior posters, Vic Marino was the handsome tanned 6’ 2” gentleman with wavy black hair, soft brown eyes, a blue tuxedo topped by his red bow tie and broad winning smile.
“Tonight, as always,” the announcer added, “Mr. Marino is accompanied by the Galaxy Players Band and the Roswell Grays Showgirl Review.”
Marino strolled casually to the silver microphone stand front and center on stage, as the dozen dancers kicked and stepped their routine behind him, and the band switched to his newer signature song Reaching for the Stars. The crooner’s voice sounded nothing like what Jack or the others expected.
“Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Sin City’s most spectacular casino hotel. Just sit back and relax as we strive to reach the stars again.”
Well he’s no Dean Martin, even with a minor resemblance. Pike realized, listening to him deliver the opening tune. His style’s higher pitched and more energetic.
Marino made slight dance movements with the microphone stand doing his next number—I Will Survive. The disco favorite was followed with I Love the Night Life as he paced along the stage before transitioning into Una Paloma Blanca and continuing with My Melody of Love. He seemed to possess infectious energy, moving off stage down among the audience after donning a headset microphone from his jacket’s left pocket and kept everyone’s attention now singing The Purple People Eater novelty tune, followed around tables by the Roswell Grays doing flirtatious turn and bounce routines near the male customers. One dark-haired, big-eyed smiling gal passed Jack’s seat, when Ken sat forward and gasped: “Oh—my—God.”
It’s just Vegas, pal. Or does Kenji prefer dudes to showgirls?
“Jack,” Ken Hara was now bent forward over him, the other man’s voice sounding as if it came through some long tunnel, until Pike’s eyes were covered by special sunglasses from inside his coat’s breast pocket, “snap out of it! Can’t you see what’s happening?”
Ken raced around the table to place sunglasses on their group’s eyes in turn as Jack at last regained his senses.
Was I caught up watching this show? What the fu…?
Pike now viewed something beside Vic Marino positioned between two tables nearer the stage. The large purple-skinned creature was covered with gray bumps and scales, and stood 10’ tall fully upright. The monster had a wide pear-shaped torso, two long arms and legs with sharp claws on the thumb, two fingers and all three toes, and six long side prehensile tentacles from the ribs aiding claws snatching seated audience members. Each victim, whether in fancier clothes or casual attire, struggled and screaming from terror, but everyone else, even persons at the same tables who were not grabbed, seemed oblivious to the danger before them.
“What the hell?” Randi Puccini gasped after Ken put the midget’s sunglasses over her big green eyes from the purse. “Is that a purple people eater?”
The creature had two red eyes and curled-up small horns where eyebrows should have been, opening a sharp-toothed maw and swallowing each person in its clutches whole. The head was bulbous with short pointed ears, flaring nostril slits and the bizarre happy expression. Once Lilith had her sunglasses on, the hunters were all shielded from whatever mind-numbing effects existed inside the room and reached for concealed weapons before standing. The thing moved around the forward tables ten feet away to their right, devouring a blonde-haired family of four—parents and two daughters—in seconds.
“I don’t care how cute that thing looks,” the black-haired huntress drew her lightweight short-stocked shotgun from the coat, “it’s just rude to eat people. Let’s trash this show.”
“We must’ve all been hypnotized except Kenji with his sunglasses,” Slade pulled two automatic 9-mm pistols and upended their table, “surround it, take any shot and watch out for the audience!”
“I never detected anything like that inside the van,” Murphy confirmed, knelt behind the overturned table assembling two 1’ round-barreled pistols for emitting microwave, ultrasonic and ultraviolet beams, “even with the penetrating image scan. The guests were normal, but I couldn’t read the staff clearly.” Slade began firing to distract the monster, whose expression soon became enraged, while Jack, Ken, Lilith and Randi flanked it deploying other weapons.
“Hey, ugly,” Lilith stood between two tables and fired into the thing’s right side over people’s heads, “we got your attention now?”
Taking a thick black metal tube from her purse, Randi held it up and pressed the trigger button, firing two zip lines above the bar and stage’s rear wall. Extending the tube’s hand-holds, she arose aloft and slid toward the stage past the monster, barely missed by a right claw swipe, landing in front of the band’s horn section. The blond the
n knelt, searching her large purse for an effective weapon.
“Die!” Ken screamed, having taken his folded katana sword and long-handled axe from the gray case before charging the thing’s left, slashing two tentacles reaching for a young couple at another table. Making shallow cuts into the gray-purple slimy surfaces, he was swatted across the room by the thing’s left fist to collide with a buffet table, spilling seafood packed in ice.
Bullets don’t penetrate the hide, Pike saw Slade and Hawk’s hits had little effect on their target’s center torso, and drew a crossbow rifle with armor-piercing bolts inside it spring-loaded clip he slapped into the underside breech from the trench coat, so let’s see if I can turn it into a pincushion.
By now, Randi Puccini ignited her mini blow torch and sent a narrow napalm stream onto the monster’s lower back only irritating it, while Darrell Murphy donned protective earplugs and fired one special gun’s ultrasonic beams, based on technology used by police against protesters, staying low as the thing dodged and weaved between tables eating more audience members. Ken Hara recovered from his spill and approached one possible blind spot in the creature’s peripheral vision, stabbing its left leg’s hamstring. Jack Pike’s bolts penetrated the hide, but after a dozen hits along center and left sides the adversary showed no sign of slowing down, taking bedazzled audience members and swallowing them whole as the music and dancers continued performing.
“It’s like they’re still hypnotized,” Slade reloaded fresh clips and crept within five feet of his target, “until almost inside that mouth and then they wake up too late.”
“Just like we were before Ken put our shades on,” realizing the ultrasonic beam had no effect and staying near Slade’s left, Murphy aimed his second pistol and fired its microwave beam at the beast’s chest, “maybe that explains all the unsolved disappearances here nobody in town wants to admit.”
Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1) Page 55