Hunt the Moon : Cassandra Palmer #5

by Karen Chance

  “Sorry,” I choked out, and tried to pull away, but his hand held me firm.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Marco said. “Not until we have a little chat.”

  But he didn’t chat; he didn’t talk at all. He just continued the long, soothing strokes with those big fingers, so clumsy-looking but so deft in movement. And after a few moments, I felt my body slowly relax. “You’re good at that.”

  “Had a lot of practice.”

  “Really? Where?” I asked, less because I wanted to know than to postpone the bitching-out I was about to get. Usually, I held my own pretty well, even with the vamps. But right now, it didn’t feel like I had anything left.

  Marco shot me a look that said he knew damned well what I was doing, but then he shrugged. “The lanista I worked for had me ready the men for combat. They fought better if they were loose, or so he thought.”

  “Lanista?”

  “Guy who owned a bunch of gladiators.”

  “I thought you were in the army.”

  A bushy black eyebrow rose, but he didn’t ask. “I was. Worked and scraped my way up to centurion, just in time to see the empire crumble around me. I was almost dead after a battle, when some men dug me out of the blood and the muck and carried me off. Turns out they worked for a vampire with an entrepreneurial streak, and he liked ex-army.”

  He added a little extra pressure, and I moaned, but not because it hurt. That leg felt better now, although it just highlighted how sore the rest of me was. It was like I hadn’t been able to concentrate on all my other aches and pains until the big one got taken care of. And now they were all clamoring for help.

  Marco just shook his head at me. “Turn over.”

  I turned over, and those big hands got to work on my back. I stifled a whimper in the pillow, because Marco’s idea of a massage bore no resemblance whatsoever to the relaxing spa variety. There was no lavender oil, no soothing music, no hot towels. Just an all-out assault on cramped muscles, until they cowered in surrender and turned to Jell-O.

  “Why did this vampire like ex-army?” I gasped after a few minutes, mostly to give myself something else to think about.

  “Fortunatus was in the business of providing gladiators for the rich. Politicos who wanted to play up to the crowds, or fat cats trying to outdo each other in private events. The best money came from fights to the death, but it cost him a lot to train a gladiator well enough to put on a good show. Having him die in a death match one of the first times he fought wasn’t good business, even at the prices he charged.”

  “So he picked people who were already trained?”

  “No, he picked people who were already trained, and then he made ’em vampires. That way, the crowds could watch us ‘die’ over and over, but he didn’t have to constantly replenish his stock. We—” He stopped when I turned over and stared at him. “It was a long time ago.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “That’s life. If his men hadn’t seen me on that battlefield, hadn’t decided that a centurion was just what the boss had ordered, I never woulda made it. I almost didn’t anyway. Took him two months to nurse me back to health so he could kill me.”

  I swallowed. “I hope you weren’t with him long.”

  “A century, give or take.”

  “A century?”

  “Until the games were outlawed.” Marco pushed me back down and started on my shoulders. “Christianity didn’t approve, maybe ’cause a few too many of their people had ended up in ’em, and not by choice. You know?”

  I nodded.

  “And once it started to spread, the politicians stopped financing matches, because they started to cost them votes’stead of the other way around. And then the emperor converted and passed a law against it, and while some people still held them illegally, there weren’t enough to make it worth Fortunatus’s time. He traded me to another master who needed a bodyguard, and I just got shuffled around after that.”

  “And ended up with Mircea.”

  “You know the score. Gotta belong to someone.”

  “But you’re a senior master.” I pointed out. “You could have a court of your own, if you wanted.”

  “Yeah. And have all the expense and the headaches and the diplomatic shit to deal with, and still have to answer to somebody. Everybody’s the same; can’t wait to move up, to hit fifth or fourth or third level, and strike out on their own. Only to find out the same thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  His hands stilled on my back. “That there’s no freedom in our world, Cassie. If I left Mircea, I’d have to ally with some other high-level master in order to survive. And then I’d be dragged into his life, his fights, just like now. Everybody answers to somebody; everybody has restrictions they got to put up with. Even senators. Even Mircea.”

  I was starting to see why Marco had been willing to get on this topic. I sighed and buried my head in the pillow. “Even Pythias?”

  “Everybody takes orders from somebody,” he repeated. “Mircea takes ’em from the Consul, and believe me, sometimes, he really don’t like it. But he does it.”

  I turned over and regarded Marco tiredly. “Yes, and why does he do it?”

  Marco frowned. “It’s his job.”

  “And she’s his boss, his superior.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And there’s your answer.”

  “There’s what answer?”

  I sighed. “Mircea does what the Consul orders because he’s her servant.”

  “Yes?”

  “But I am not his.”

  I got up and went to the bathroom.

  Of course, Marco followed. “You are not his.”

  “His girlfriend, yes. His servant, no. I can’t be and do my job.”

  “You’ve done it pretty well so far. What the hell do you think Mircea’s gonna ask you to do?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s not the point, is it?” I started running hot water in the tub.

  “Then what is the point?”

  “That he can ask whatever he wants. I’ll probably even do it most of the time. I’d have done it last night, if it had been a request. I’d had the day from hell; I really didn’t want to go anywhere. But it wasn’t a request; it was an order. And if I start taking orders from a senator—any senator—I may as well forget having anyone take me seriously.”

  “The Consul takes Mircea seriously.”

  “As a valued servant, yes. But she knows that, when she pushes, he’ll do what she wants. He owes his job to her, so he can never be truly impartial. But I have to be, or the Circle will ignore me as a vampire pawn, and the Senate will ignore me because they can order me around, and it’ll be . . . the Tony Syndrome all over again. And I won’t live like that. I just won’t!”

  Marco sat down on the side of the tub, making the porcelain creak. “What’s the Tony Syndrome?”

  Somebody had restocked the bath salts, and I threw half the jar into the water. “Most seers see both sides of life,” I told him. “They see the baby somebody has been hoping for, or the long-overdue promotion, or the love of their life, right around the corner. It helps balance out the bad stuff, the stuff nobody wants to see. The earthquakes and the bomb plots and the fires and the car crashes. But I never had that balance. I don’t see the good stuff. I never did.”

  “That’s rough.”

  “It’s . . . exhausting. It’s depressing. It keeps you from enjoying a lot of life because, even when you’re having a good day, suddenly you’ll see someone else’s pain, someone else’s grief. And the record scratches, you know?”

  He nodded.

  “Eventually, I learned how not to see things. But for a long time, I didn’t have that ability. The only way I could deal was by telling myself that the stuff I saw was in the future, and that maybe some of it could be averted. That maybe I could change things, at least for a few people. And Tony promised me he’d get the word out.”

  “And he lied.”

  “Of cours
e he lied. But I was a kid and I believed him, maybe because I wanted to believe him. When I finally figured it out and confronted him, he just shrugged and told me that there was more profit in tragedy.”

  “That sounds like that fat little weasel.” Marco regarded me narrowly. “You’re saying you expect the Senate to go around averting tragedies?”

  “No. But if I see something coming, something potentially disastrous for our world, I expect them to listen to me. I expect them to trust me. And right now, I don’t know that they respect me enough to do that.”

  Marco sighed and looked at me, his elbows resting on massive thighs. “Look, I’m gonna tell you something, and if you repeat it, I’ll deny it. But the master shouldn’t have given that order. He ought to know you well enough by now to know what was gonna happen. But he did it anyway, because he’s scared and he’s stressed and he don’t always see so clear where you are concerned. But that don’t mean he don’t respect you.”

  “Well, it sure doesn’t mean that he does!” I said, swirling the soap around, a little more forcefully than necessary.

  “He talks about you a lot in the family. He’s proud of you—anybody can see that.”

  “Anybody but me.”

  “He may not say it to you, but that’s the truth.”

  “Then why doesn’t he say it to me? Right now, I feel like . . . like one of those floozies you talked about—”

  “I never used the word ‘floozy’—”

  “—who is supposed to hang around, shopping and doing her nails and waiting for her lord and master to show up! That’s how he treats me, so why shouldn’t I believe that’s how he sees me?”

  “Because he probably does like the thought of you shopping and doing your nails instead of the kind of shit you usually get up to! And because he’s a politician and don’t want to give up an advantage.”

  “Advantage in what?”

  “In the power games you two got going—”

  “This isn’t about power.”

  “The hell it’s not.”

  “It isn’t! I don’t want to order Mircea around. I don’t want to order the Senate or the Circle around. I just want them—”

  “To take you seriously. To listen to you. To be guided by what you tell them. And that translates into power, don’t it?”

  “It translates into doing my job.”

  Marco looked at me for a moment and started to say something, and then he just shook his head. “I thought I’d never meet somebody as bullheaded as the master,” he told me. “But what do you know.”

  “I’m not trying to be stubborn.”

  “I know. It’s like with Mircea; you don’t got to try. It comes naturally.”

  I sighed. “I guess I need to talk to him.”

  I don’t know what my expression looked like, but Marco laughed. “Yeah, but you get a reprieve. He said he’ll call you tonight, late. He’s got a thing all day.”

  “What kind of a thing?”

  He shrugged. “Senate stuff, I guess. You’ll have to ask him.”

  “What about Jonas?” I might as well get one awkward conversation out of the way.

  “He called a while ago, while you were asleep. Said—Hang on.” Marco fished a notebook out of his back pocket and flipped it open. “Said he thought he might know what attacked you last night. He’s not sure, but thinks they could be something called the Spartoi.”

  “Spartans?”

  “No—that’s what I thought, too, but he spelled it for me. And it’s Spartoi. There’s supposed to be five of them, sons of Ares and some dragon—”

  I looked up from shutting off the water. “Dragon?”

  “Yeah, one of the Fey. They can shape-shift, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. And that would explain why the damn dragon had been so hard to kill. I’d seen Pritkin and a friend of his, Mac, take on one before, and it hadn’t been anything like that. But then, that other dragon hadn’t been a half god, either.

  “Anything else?” I demanded. “Like how we’re supposed to fight these things?”

  “I think the idea is not to,” Marco said drily. “He said for you to stay in the hotel today. He’s tripled the guards, so nothing should get in here. He needs to do some more research, but he’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Marco flipped over a page in his notebook, but must not have found anything, because he flipped back. “And that’s it.”

  I kind of thought that was enough. Apparently, Marco did, too, because he was looking a little worried, like he was afraid I was about to break down on him again. I wasn’t. I was too pissed off. It looked like the other side didn’t worry about little things like playing fair. One not-so-great clairvoyant against five freaking demigods seemed a little onesided to me. No wonder it had almost gotten Pritkin killed!

  “You okay?” Marco asked.

  “Yeah.” I forced a smile, because none of this was his fault. “I was just thinking—I have all day with nobody bitching at me.”

  He grinned. “Well, I can, if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “You just did!”

  “Naw, that wasn’t bitching. You should hear me when I get going.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Hold that thought.” Marco ruffled my hair and left. I stripped and got in the tub, sinking down in the water up to my chin.

  It felt good. It felt better than good, and not just because of my sore muscles. Three days ago, something had tried to drown me in this very tub, and now I was back, relaxing in it. I had a stinky charm around my neck and a vampire probably listening at the door, but still. That was progress.

  My feet floated to the top of the water and I stared at my poor, chipped toenail polish. I thought about redoing it. I thought about making Augustine’s life miserable. I thought about going to the salon and seeing if any of the guys could do something about my hair.

  But none of that had much appeal. It was hard to concentrate on my to-do list with the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. It felt like I was just marking time, waiting for the next attack. And that was getting really old.

  I was sick and tired of playing defense. But to play offense, I needed some help, and I didn’t know where to get it. Or, rather, I did, I just didn’t know how.

  Assuming Jonas’s crazy theories weren’t quite so crazy after all, I needed to find a goddess—fast. And I thought there was a tiny chance that the one I needed was still hanging around. It had been her spell that banished the other gods, after all, so maybe it hadn’t affected her. And maybe she hadn’t wanted to go back to a world filled with a bunch of pissed-off fellow gods. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like helping humanity might have stuck her with us. If she had gone home, wouldn’t her fellow gods have forced her to lift the spell by now? They obviously wanted back in pretty badly, and she could hardly have stood up to all of them. And gods were supposed to be immortal, weren’t they? So if she hadn’t gone home, it was at least possible that she was still here.

  But even if that was the case, she hadn’t been seen in three thousand years. And anyone who had hidden that long had probably gotten pretty good at it. Barring a vision with a map, I had no freaking clue where to start looking. And without a clue, I wasn’t likely to get a vision. It was a vicious catch-22.

  I needed somebody who could point me in the right direction.

  I needed somebody who knew about gods.

  I needed a god.

  Fortunately, I knew three of them.

  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 cemen
t 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.”