“Stand down,” Tricia roared. “Everyone stand the fuck down right now. Holster those weapons and stand right where you are.”
In the midst of chaos, Nadia was a beacon of steely calm. She wore a wicked little smile and held out her open hand.
“Cute. Very cute. Hand over the gun, Marie. We don’t have time for this.”
“She’ll do it,” Tricia said, eyes bulging as she swept her gaze across the throne room.
“Listen to her,” Marie said. “I’ll pull the trigger. You know I will.”
“Bold words,” Nadia replied.
“I told you we should have kept her under sedation and restrained until Nessa was dead,” Tricia said. “Damn it, I told you, and you didn’t listen.”
Nadia glared at her. “Mind your tone.”
Tricia took a deep breath. The honor guard stood frozen around her like her sheer willpower was holding them in check.
“Ma’am,” she said to Nadia. “Please. Listen to me. Lady Martika was my best friend. I knew her better than anyone, maybe even better than you. And if the situation was reversed—if you were dying a world away, and Martika was here—she would have pulled that trigger in a heartbeat. She’d do it just out of spite.”
“Out of duty,” Marie said. “As long as my liege draws breath, I have a duty. And I will not abandon that duty. I’ll die first. I don’t want to die, but I will do it. You know I’m not lying. People tell me I’m pretty bad at lying.”
Nadia stood there, silent, weighing their words as she stared deep into Marie’s eyes. Slowly, her outstretched hand lowered to her side.
“What exactly do you want, Marie?”
“A ride out of here,” she said. “You’re about to lead Nessa to the third artifact, right? The last key she needs to enter Elysium?”
“That’s the plan.”
“So send me. Nessa isn’t going to Elysium. I am. I’m doing it for her.”
Nadia pursed her lips. “She’s still going to die, Marie. Shadow sickness is terminal. No one can cure it.”
“I imagine if anyone can do it, the creator of the entire universe can,” Marie replied. “And I can be pretty convincing sometimes. Besides. He owes us.”
Tricia leaned in and whispered in Nadia’s ear. Nadia listened, then nodded her response.
“You’ll give me something first,” Nadia said.
“Name it,” Marie said.
“I understand your hope, your stubborn need to think you can change things. I understand it. But I also understand reality. You’re going to fail, Marie. You’re going to fail, and Nessa is going to die.”
Marie held firm on the trigger. The fat barrel of the pistol felt cold against her temple, threatening oblivion with the tiniest squeeze of her finger. Her throat was bone-dry and her tongue felt like sandpaper against the roof of her mouth as she danced on the edge of death. She swallowed, hard, her heart galloping.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree,” Marie said.
“I want an oath,” Nadia said. “Your word of honor, which we all know you’re not capable of breaking.”
“To do what?”
“That when you do fail, and Nessa dies, you’ll come home. To me. No tricks, no arguments, no dissent. You will return here and accept your place at my side and at my feet, where you belong.”
Marie nodded. The pistol bobbed against her tangled hair.
“All right,” she said. “Deal.”
Nadia gazed at her, expectant.
“I swear it,” Marie added.
Tricia snapped her fingers at one of the guardsmen. “Run ahead to the transit deck, and tell everyone we’re coming through. Everyone. Stands. Down. If I see an unholstered weapon, the man holding it is going to lose his hands.”
Marie gave an awkward glance to the man crumpled at her feet. Blood from his broken nose spread a tiny mushroom-shaped stain on the red carpet.
“When he wakes up, tell him I’m sorry.”
“When he wakes up,” Tricia said, “I’m going to personally execute him for gross incompetence.”
Marie locked eyes with her.
“No,” Marie said. “You aren’t.”
Tricia lifted her chin and flashed the faintest ghost of a smile.
“He gets a pass, just this once. For old times’ sake. You’re still her, you know. You think you aren’t, but I can see my friend in there. She’s hiding just behind your eyes, waiting to come out.”
* * *
Marie kept her stolen pistol pressed to her head, all the way to the transit deck. She’d given her word of honor, made her oath, but no one around her was obliged to keep theirs.
“Hang on to that weapon,” Tricia told her. “You’re going to need it where you’re headed.”
Tricia walked at her side down deserted steel corridors. Nadia’s troops had cleared a path. Nadia led the way herself, with her back stiff and her hand never far from the wand on her hip.
“Where am I going?” Marie asked.
“Your contact,” Nadia said, “my contact, is a man called the Marquis. He’s a smuggler of occult artifacts. Also a thief and an opportunist. Scum, but useful scum. He’s already been paid for his services, and quite handsomely.”
“So if he tries to shake you down,” Tricia added, “hurt him until he cooperates.”
“I can handle that,” Marie said.
Doors stenciled 01 in block letters whisked open at their approach. Rings of computer terminals surrounded a round, raised dais of stone. Three light-cans aimed down from black tripods at three points of the circle, bathing the engraved rock in shafts of red, blue, and green. Marie recognized it at first sight: it was a streamlined and more stable version of Ezra’s shopping-mall laboratory back in Iowa. Instead of rows of chugging, whining generators all daisy-chained together, fat orange cables snaked from the ritual stone to a sleek and softly humming engine against the far wall.
A trio of technicians, all wearing protective goggles and flu masks, rose as they entered the chamber. Nadia lowered them back to their seats with a flourish of her mercury gauntlet.
“As you were. Open a stable portal.”
“Yes, ma’am,” one replied. “Destination?”
“The Deadknot.”
Marie looked between Nadia and Tricia. “Which is where, exactly?”
“What mythology calls a war in heaven,” Nadia said, “was not fought in heaven. The rebels staked their claim to territory inside the Shadow In-Between, and that is where their greatest battles raged.”
“It’s a graveyard,” Tricia added. “Thing about old graveyards is a lot of them keep secrets hidden under the soil. Old tunnels. Crypts. Rats. Lots of rats.”
“Eaters of the dead,” Nadia said.
The standing lights shifted, changing, strobing, circling. Red turned to blue turned to green and back again, spotlights cycling and merging against the face of the ritual stone. The generator’s hum grew into a mechanical growl. Tricia stepped back, slipping out of Marie’s peripheral vision.
“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” Nadia said.
“But you know why I have to.”
“I know you’re going to all this risk and trouble for no purpose. That you’re just going to have to watch another of my incarnations die. I know it’s going to break you. And I’m the one who’s going to have to patch you up and put you back together again.” Nadia crossed her arms and stared at the ritual stone. “Exceptionally inconsiderate.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Marie said.
“I forgive you.”
The lights blended, whirling across the stone, taking on sherbet hues of tangerine and lemon-lime. A rough, rectangular outline began to shimmer in the air above the rock, with the impressions of still and ghostly shapes beyond.
Tricia returned, toting a square, hard-edged bag cushioned in black nylon webbing, a little bigger than a pizza box. She offered it to Marie and helped slide a strap over her arm.
“What is this?” Marie asked.
; “Return beacon,” Tricia said. “Once you’re ready to come home, activate it and stay right where you are. We’ll see your signal and have a portal open within the hour. I threw in a few extra goodies. Camping gear, protein bars. You get cranky when you don’t eat.”
“Thank you.” Marie turned her head just enough to meet Tricia’s eyes. “Seriously. Thank you.”
“Never could argue you down from something, once your mind was made up.”
The portal took on definition. Marie could see through it now, to a room that looked almost like the deck’s twin—but old, abandoned, monitors dead and black, metal siding caked in bilious yellow mold. On her other side, Nadia’s voice was an almost inaudible murmur.
“Should have kept you under sedation until Nessa was dead.” Her words drifted out like a sigh. “Just…couldn’t wait to see you again.”
In her downturned face, the deflated gust of her breath, Marie felt the gulf of Nadia’s loneliness. It was a shadow bigger and deeper than the world she’d conquered.
“I can’t stand by and do nothing,” Marie told her. “I’m sorry, but that’s not who I am.”
“You used to have a very similar saying, when you were Martika. You said it the morning you died.” Nadia turned her back on Marie. “Don’t you die out there. I won’t forgive you for that. I’ll never forgive you.”
One of the technicians’ voices rang out above the generator’s whine. “Stable portal, ma’am! We’ve got three minutes of guaranteed lock, and the destination site is clear of traffic.”
Nadia lifted her gauntleted hand and pointed a mercury finger toward the rectangle of light.
“Go. No more words. Go. I’ll be waiting here, until you return.”
Marie approached the stone, her body bathed in strobing candy-colored lights and the stench of ozone. She took a deep breath, held it, and stepped through the door.
Twenty-One
Daniel slapped a magazine into his pistol and sprinted to the hotel-room door, while Hedy scooped up fistfuls of coins from the bedspread.
“If it was any other hunter down there,” he said, “I’d say there’s no chance they’d shoot up a hotel in the middle of the Vegas Strip.”
Nessa was already in motion, plucking Clytemnestra’s knife from the kitchenette counter and snapping her fingers at Gazelle.
“Room to room, get the others, everyone leaves now.” She looked to Daniel. “Is there a back way out?”
“Don’t these people have, like, rules?” Janine asked.
“Guidelines,” Daniel said. “Technically, as long as it looks like a mundane shooting, Nyx is in the clear.”
Brandishing his new Glock in his good hand, Tony squinted at him. “What else would it look like?”
“Well, she could change into her true form and let the whole world see what a rampaging demon from hell looks like while she tears us apart with her bare hands. Good news is, she’s not going to do that anywhere she might end up on camera or leave witnesses. Bad news is, she’s still pretty much bulletproof. And she doesn’t usually leave witnesses.”
Winslow was packing up his rucksacks, slinging them over his shoulders, while Gazelle hammered on doors out in the pink-carpeted hallway.
“Bulletproof,” Tony echoed.
“I just said she’s a literal demon, and that’s the part you’re having trouble with? Jesus, no wonder Marie’s neurotic; she has to work with you every day. Everybody, listen up, here’s how we’re going to play this. First, let’s clear the table. Winslow, hit the elevator and go up to the top floor. Long as you aren’t seen with us, you aren’t on Nyx’s hit list. Just hang out for an hour or two and slip out with the civvies once the smoke clears. We’ll settle up the bill next time I see you.”
“Already gone,” the biker rasped, hauling his rucksacks out the door.
“Same goes for you and the librarian,” Daniel told Tony. “Far as we know, they’re not after you. Long as you don’t give them a reason, you’ll be fine. Head upstairs, stay out of the fight.”
“We came all the way out here to help Marie—” Tony started to say.
“And you did, admirably,” Nessa responded. “You brought what we needed.”
She stood in the doorway, poking her head out. Up the hall, Gazelle was herding a gaggle of wide-eyed witches toward the elevators.
“She’s our friend,” Janine said. “We’re not leaving.”
“Look, I know you mean well, but—” Daniel looked her way and froze.
No one had noticed when Janine took her own pick from Winslow’s arsenal, just before he zipped up the olive rucksacks. She stuck out her bottom lip, standing her ground, and brandished the shotgun in her hands. It was an Ithaca Stakeout model, fat, stubby, and lethal.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Daniel said. “Do you even know how to shoot that thing?”
Janine pointed the barrel to the floor and pumped the shotgun, chambering a fresh round.
“I’m a naughty librarian,” she said.
“Fuck my life,” he muttered. “Okay, you two, go with Gazelle and her posse. Wait three minutes. Head downstairs, keep low and keep moving, and stay clear of the front lobby. There’s a corridor just east of the casino floor that leads to an aboveground parking garage. That’s your exit.”
“What if there are more hunters there?” Gazelle asked, standing out in the hall.
“No magic. Every inch of this place is under camera surveillance and being recorded twenty-four seven.” Daniel jerked his thumb at Tony and Janine. “Fortunately, you have an ace detective and the Terminator to provide fire support. And you two, maybe cover your faces before you run through a casino with guns? I’ve got heavy pull with the cops in this town, but there are limits. Nessa, Hedy, you’re with me and we’re going first. Carolyn and her babysitter are pinned down in the hotel bar, so we’re going to grab them and cause a distraction so everybody else can get to the garage in one piece.”
“And our way out?” Nessa asked.
They hustled out into the hallway. Up ahead, the elevator banks chimed.
“There’s a steakhouse near the bar. We’ll slip out through the kitchen. From there, everybody rallies on the Strip and we’ll make our way to the Monaco. It’s just one block south, opposite side of the street.”
“And your friend is waiting to let us upstairs?”
“He’ll be there.”
The elevator cage rumbled open. He held the door, ushering Nessa and Hedy on board before he punched the glowing Lobby button.
“Look on the bright side,” he said. “Fifteen minutes from now, this’ll all be over. One way or another.”
* * *
Carolyn and Badger were hunkered down at the open bar, watching Nyx show photographs to the check-in clerk. A discreet, folded bill slid across the counter in one direction. A key card, one plastic corner poking out from under the clerk’s shaky palm, slid the other way. Nyx’s backup clustered around her, eyes in all directions.
“Do you think we should run?” Badger asked.
“Have you been on this planet long enough to figure out what guns are?” Carolyn asked him.
“Yes. Saw them on the talking box.”
Carolyn sipped her drink and nodded toward the long duffels each man carried. The bags were partially unzipped, the shoulder straps buckled high so their hands could slip inside with ease.
“Those aren’t party favors,” she said. “Just keep it cool. They’re probably going to go upstairs and try to corner Nessa and Dan in their room. Once they leave, we leave.”
“But…aren’t they coming down here?”
Carolyn watched the pack move across the casino floor, cutting a swathe across the tropical-print carpet.
“Yeah,” she said. “That could be a problem.”
* * *
The elevator hummed under their feet, slowly coasting down on a one-way trip. Nessa watched the glowing numbers strobe above the door, offering a hot white countdown.
“Please,” Daniel said
, “no magic in public. Okay? None.”
“No promises,” Nessa replied. Hedy stood beside her, silent, and nodded her agreement.
All the same, she had to be careful. She had one vial of elixir left, the only thing holding her infection at bay. It would buy her one more day of strength. One more day to find Marie, bring her home, and set her affairs in order. Nothing was stopping her from unleashing her full power on Nyx and her team—and she wanted to—but Carson City was still a fresh memory. She had gone all-out there, and only gulping down one of her dwindling vials saved her from being torn apart by her own wild magic.
She couldn’t make that mistake again. If she did, Hedy would insist on going back to Mirenze for more elixir, risking their lives in the process and, at best, devouring time they didn’t have. Devouring time Marie didn’t have.
She cradled her lover’s image in her mind. I’m coming, Nessa thought. I promise. Nothing in this world or any other is going to stop me.
The cage slid open with a pleasant chime. The casino-level elevator bay was a cul-de-sac, three doors on each side and only one way out, straight across the gamblers’ oasis. Another elevator opened on the opposite side of the bay, disgorging a wide-eyed pack of tourists while a small crowd waited to get on board.
They stepped out, turned, and froze. So did Nyx and her men, twenty feet away, headed right for them.
“Let’s take it outside,” Daniel called out.
It almost worked.
Nyx got the message, pulling her lips back and showing her teeth in a bare imitation of a smile. The man on her left, spotting Nessa, already had his hand buried in his black duffel bag and his eyes on a paycheck. Nyx was turning, about to say something, probably to tell him to stand down, when the bag billowed empty to the floor at his feet.
He braced a bullpup carbine to his shoulder—a sleek blend of black steel and hazard-yellow plastic, like a wasp in the form of a gun—and opened fire. His first three-round burst tore across the casino floor and plowed into the milling crowd. An elderly woman hit the floor on her shattered jaw. A blood-spattered plastic cup fell, bouncing as it scattered bright silver tokens in its wake. The shooter was already firing off another burst as his companions unsheathed their rifles, the screams on the casino floor louder than the bullets. Tourists were falling, some diving for cover, others dead or dying, paradise becoming a massacre in less than five seconds. A hostess tried to run, clutching her drink tray in both hands; a stray round shattered glass, trailing amber droplets as it punched through her pink cocktail dress and out her back.
Bring the Fire (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 3) Page 17