Hunting Down Dragons (Moonlight Dragon #2)

by Tricia Owens

  Stevie howled, his mournful, oddly melodic voice carrying throughout the tunnels, maybe through all 200 feet of them. I felt a pang of regret for what I'd done. But just as quickly I reminded myself that Stevie hadn't possessed a brain that was his, nor a soul. He'd been a magickal slave, compelled only to obey.

  Garbage and furniture rained down on the floor, leaving my glowing dragon hovering by itself in the middle of the tunnel. I doubted the floods rushing through had ever created so much chaos or left such a disaster in their wake.

  There were ordinary people down here, dazed, but still conscious, so I quickly banished Lucky before any of them got a good look at him. Vale and Melanie ran back to me, wearing identical expressions of bewilderment and relief.

  "What did you do?" Vale asked me as he surveyed the scattered destruction. It resembled a patch of the city dump.

  I walked forward and dug up some things from within the mess. They were two thin chips of what looked like bone, the size of my palm and etched with indecipherable writing on either side. They had originally comprised one piece, but Lucky's jaw had snapped it in half.

  "I remembered that golems need a battery to run," I explained as I showed the pieces to my friends. "This is it. It's like the grain of sand at the heart of a pearl. The golem-maker forms the golem around this, and then he or she can control the golem through it. That's where the loyalty comes from. Golems can't resist even if they wanted to. Not while this is inside them."

  Melanie poked at the bone chips. "Do you think the golem-maker guy was controlling Stevie just now?"

  I looked to Vale, but he didn't appear to know any more than I did.

  "Maybe," I hedged, "but I think Stevie reacted purely out of fear. He really had a thing about women." And here I thought only online gamers were afraid of girls.

  "What do we do now?" Melanie asked, her face scrunched up. "We didn't learn anything about the golem-maker. He went ape shit before we could get answers!"

  "Maybe we did learn something." I pocketed the chips. "I know someone who can take a look at these and maybe shed some light on where they came from. It's worth a shot, anyway."

  As we headed for the streetlights, someone back in the tunnels yelled in a raspy voice, "Don't come back, you assholes!"

  Sheez. Talk about lousy hospitality. No wonder they rarely got visitors.

  Chapter 8

  I put my phone in my pocket. "My friend says we can come over. He's eager to see what we have."

  "Who is he?" Melanie asked.

  She was driving us out of downtown and down Las Vegas Boulevard, heading south toward the pretty lights. In a fit of stress eating, Melanie had devoured half of the cookies and cakes she'd packed in the bakery box. I looked over at it and mourned the loss of everything chocolate.

  "Zach composes music for slot machines," I told my friends. I was slightly proud. It was an unusual job and I liked having friends who were unusual.

  "Wow! Cool job! I thought all the music was just, I don't know, stock midi tunes."

  "I thought so, too," I told Melanie, "until I met him. That's his main job, but he also writes jingles for commercials and video shorts. Believe it or not, he's related to leprechauns. But whatever you do, do not mention it. He gets really self-conscious about it."

  Melanie gave a half laugh. "Why is he embarrassed? Leprechauns are cool! They've got me Lucky Charms!"

  I groaned. "That right there is exactly why. Do not mention Lucky Charms anywhere around him."

  "How is a leprechaun musician going to help us?" Vale asked, not bothering to hide his skepticism.

  "In his free time he collects religious artifacts. I know this isn't the same, but he's good at determining how something was made and how long ago. He's the best person I know for taking a look at this thing and telling us who might have made it. Plus, his partner is a warlock who performs a sleight of hand show at the Flamingo. Between the two of them, they know most of the prominent community members."

  He sighed. "Please tell me you're not talking about the Magnificent Rob."

  I stifled a laugh at his pained grimace. "I'll make sure to tell him you're a fan."

  I got where Vale was coming from. Rob's show was just awful, with lots of cheesy patter and a portion of the show dedicated to hypnotizing members of the audience and making them do humiliating things. He was the only magickal being I knew who was openly using his magick in public. The Oddsmakers were so far giving him a pass, I assumed because ordinary audiences found it nearly impossible to differentiate between real magick and stage magic.

  Some people in our community mumbled about the special treatment and said he was placing the rest of us at risk, but that was just jealousy talking. If any of them had been given permission to use their magick in front of ordinary people you'd better believe they'd jump on the chance to do so.

  I hadn't seen Zach and his partner Rob in a while. I didn't tell Vale and Melanie that the last time I'd seen the guys, Rob had warned me never to step foot in their house again. I hoped Rob wasn't home. Or that he had a bad memory. I much preferred dealing only with Zach.

  The two guys lived in a gnarly-looking rent by the week apartment complex on Koval. Only two types of people lived on or near the Strip: multimillionaires who could afford the high-rise condos, and people living under the poverty line in these junky efficiencies in the shadows of the casinos.

  Zach and Rob weren't destitute, though. They were clever.

  "Oh, jeez, are you sure this is safe?" Melanie asked for the third time as she parked in the complex lot. "I feel like someone's going to steal my car for sure, Anne."

  "I'll leave Lucky behind to guard it," I assured her.

  I understood her concerns once we got out of the car. The Gold Panner Apartment complex resembled the type of rundown motel you drove past even if you were desperate and nearly out of gas. Sleeping in a ditch by the side of the road would seem more appealing.

  It wasn't large: two floors that looked ready to collapse, with a balcony running along the second floor that was bordered by a wooden railing missing more than half of its support beams. The cracked asphalt parking lot held a handful of junkers, one of which was an old Cadillac with three flat tires. Broken glass and cigarette butts littered the ground and a dented shopping cart lay abandoned in the middle of one of the parking spots.

  Above us loomed the MGM Grand Casino, the line between money and poverty being as thin as a strip of sidewalk.

  "It'll be okay," I assured my friends as I led the way onto the squeaking second floor, passing loud music and the smell of urine which I was beginning to grow used to, much to my dismay. At room 8B I knocked on the door. Flakes of rust-colored paint came off beneath my knuckles. I dusted my hand off on my jeans.

  Zach opened the door like he was revealing a stage. Rob's theatricality had rubbed off on him. "My girl, Anne!"

  Zach was adorable. He was shorter even than Melanie, something like four foot eight. He had spiked red hair that was frosted at the tips, rings running through both eyebrows, and his usual ensemble of a blank tank over baggy jeans that just barely clung to his butt and revealed his yellow and blue striped boxer briefs. His muscular arms were covered with tribal tattoos. He looked like a wannabe hip-hop dancer.

  In the face, though, he didn't look that tough. I couldn't help grabbing him by the sides of the head and kissing both bright red cheeks. Behind me, I could sense my friends' surprise. The truth of the matter was, even with the over the top hip-hop look, Zach sported a pointed red beard that I knew he was unable to shave off because it was genetic. Put him in a green outfit with a green hat and he looked exactly like you thought a leprechaun would.

  "Big Z," I greeted him. "These are my friends—Vale, and my bestie Melanie." I lowered my voice to a stage whisper that they could hear. "He's a gargoyle and she's a monkey shifter."

  "No, way," Zach breathed, wide-eyed. He stared at Melanie's blue hair for several seconds and then switched his attentions to Vale. He began breathing so h
eavily that I could hear it. "Yo, I got kind of a thing for magickal beings," he admitted.

  "He'd keep you in jars if he could," I said wryly to my friends.

  "But, aren't you a magickal being?" Melanie asked with a scrunched up face of confusion.

  I casually stepped on her toe.

  "Ow, Anne! What was that for?"

  Zach's face turned red, obviously figuring out that she knew he was related to leprechauns. "Distant cousins," he insisted. "I'm barely Irish. I swear."

  "Of course," I said breezily. "Anyway, we're here for business."

  With his eyes on the floor, he mumbled, "Come on in," and hustled back inside.

  "Be careful," I hissed at Melanie. I poked her in the ribs. "We need him."

  "I know, I know. I'm sorry, but he looks just like the Lucky Charms guy!"

  Vale just sighed like he was embarrassed to be with us and followed us into the apartment.

  Melanie jerked to a halt four feet inside. "What the?! This is nuts!"

  Zach and Rob had chosen to live in this awful neighborhood in order to be close to the Strip, but like any sane people, they hadn't wanted to live in squalor. So Rob had used some magick to improve the place. Just a touch.

  "This is subtle," Vale murmured. He looked both amused and horrified as he studied the interior of the apartment.

  It was pimped out like a rapper's crib. Or more accurately, what a hip-hopping white boy leprechaun thought a rapper's place looked like. Try saying that three times fast.

  Since Zach's boyfriend Rob was an actual warlock, the walls didn't just look like sheets of gold, they were made of gold. The winding crystal stairwell actually did, in some strange magickal way, lead to a third floor room with an enormous, ten-person capacity Jacuzzi. Large dressing room-style orb bulbs ran along the tops of the gold walls and a chandelier so big you could probably ride it over Niagara Falls made the entire place sparkle and threw light so bright you had to wear shades. Which Zach did with a flourish, whipping a pair of dark glasses from his droopy back pocket and sliding them over his eyes.

  Melanie screeched as a giant black pit bull tore around the corner of the room and launched itself at her. I didn't try to stop it. I knew there was no need. All the big animal did was jump on her and try to lick her. Zach and Rob were actually afraid of pit bulls, so they'd simply transformed their pet Labradoodle, Gizmo, into the tough-looking breed.

  I snagged a bag of Beggin' Strips off a polished chrome and glass cocktail table that managed to look both tacky and incredibly expensive. I tossed it at Melanie. "Here. Throw that into the room over there and Gizmo will leave you alone."

  "This is a weird pit bull," she declared. "My monkey senses tell me it's not real." She threw the bag and the dog took off like a shot.

  "Gizmo is real," Zach insisted, his brows drawing together. "He'll mess you up good."

  I shook my head at Melanie when Zach turned to face Vale. "What do you think of my digs, gargoyle?"

  "It's unusual," Vale allowed as he looked over the white leather sofas draped with faux mink throws, and then at the stripper pole at the far end of the room. "Better than what I expected." Which wasn't saying much, considering the exterior.

  "Where do gargoyles live?" Zach asked him, subtly shifting closer to him. I watched to see if Zach would try to touch him.

  Vale casually stepped to the side, away from him. "I typically perch on the roofs of the tallest buildings."

  Zach nearly swallowed his tongue. "Really?"

  "No, I have an apartment in Summerlin."

  A televised rap battle on mute couldn't have frustrated Zach more than that answer. I felt sorry for the poor kid and slung an arm around his muscled shoulders.

  "Big Z, we've got something for you to look at. We need your expertise."

  Still mopey, he nodded. "Okay, let's hit up my studio."

  Zach's studio was just as outrageous as the living room. He'd designed it to look like a high end recording studio that Snoop Dogg would have felt comfortable in. At least until Snoop discovered that Zach used all the equipment in there to make spritely jingles to celebrate slot jackpots. There must have been tens of thousands of dollars' worth of gear in there, and the walls appeared to be professionally sound-proofed. But again, it was all a magickal illusion.

  Melanie poked the thick padding on the walls. "So cool! This is where you make all the slot machine music, huh?"

  Zach sat in front of a huge keyboard, his feet not quite touching the ground, and played a few seconds of a spritely tune, his head bobbing in time with it. "Recognize that?" he asked hopefully.

  Melanie and Vale were clueless so I ventured, "Jackpot on Deuces Wild?"

  "Ha! Not even close, Anne. It's the double bonus feature spin-off on the Prancing Ponies jackpot." He played another tune that was equally cheerful. "You have to know that one."

  I sighed, drawing a blank. "Nine out of nine on keno?"

  "C'mon! It's my most popular tune! Bonus level on Spinning for Dollars!"

  Zach looked a little put-out that we hadn't recognized his work, so I hastily changed the subject before he got bummed and decided he didn't want to help us.

  "Damn, I nearly guessed that," I told him, snapping my fingers regretfully. "I'm just so distracted by this thing we found. You want to take a look at it?" I pulled out the chips that I'd retrieved from the remains of Stevie the troll. "What can you tell me about these?"

  Zach turned on a lamp at the mixing board and studied the pieces under its light.

  "Check out Zach's collection," I told my friends while he looked it over.

  I swung open a panel in the padded wall that revealed four inset glass shelves that were lit from above by pot lights.

  This was the real draw of the place, in my opinion, and why we were forcing Zach to endure our presence in his home. The shelves were loaded with small statues of various gods, singing bowls, prayer books made of papyrus and bamboo, feathered fetishes, jewelry pieces...basically anything that any culture imbued with religious significance, Zach wanted. His collection would make a theologian drool, which was amusing because Zach was an atheist.

  "He knows his stuff," I said proudly as my best friend and I admired the items.

  I felt Vale come up behind my right shoulder and take a look. "You've got ivory here."

  "It's all good," Zach said absently, still bent over the chips. "The ban on imports applies to ivory obtained after 1976. Everything you see there is from the nineteenth century or older. It's legit."

  "It's not all ivory."

  Zach glanced briefly at us. "Not from elephants, no."

  I frowned. "From what, then? Rhinos?"

  "They're magickal…hey, this is pretty interesting," Zach said, holding up the chips I'd given him. "The writing that's on them is unique, yo. It's a combination of Latin and antiquated Czech. That would normally mean that this piece is from the fourteenth century or so, right? Something like that, anyway. The Czech Republic didn't have a solid written language at that time. It was all a mish-mash like this. But the rest of this—the material, I mean—doesn't match the time period of the writing. It's less than fifty years old."

  Melanie put down the vial relic she'd been looking at. "What the heck does that mean, then?"

  "Whatever is written on here was done by some dude who's either really old or else learned it from old text books." Zach tapped one of the chips, the larger one. "Also, that there's an aleph. It might be Egyptian. No, it has to be."

  That just made things even more confusing. Latin, Czach, and Egyptian? Why couldn't there have been a stamp on them somewhere that said "Proudly Made by John Doe"?

  "Is it made of bone?" I asked, trying to find a way to tackle this thing.

  He nodded. "Yup."

  He went to the shelves holding his collection and plucked a small figurine off the shelf and handed it to me. It was pale and stained brown in some places, worn in others, but I could still make out that it was meant to represent a lizard of some kind. Komodo, m
aybe? Godzilla as a baby?

  "That's made out of the same thing this is," Zach said absently, while staring openly at Vale. "Dragon bone."

  I dropped the figurine and spent a few seconds trying to retrieve it as it rolled along the cracks of the stone floor.

  "No way this is from a dragon." I replaced the figurine on the shelf, experiencing the heebie jeebies. It was like holding a real human skull. "You've gotta be kidding me, Big Z."

  "He's not," said a new voice.

  Oh, great. I plastered a smile on my face as Rob entered the room. Unsurprisingly, he was dressed in a purple robe that Orlaton, my occult neighbor, would have drooled over. Totally over the top with silver runes running along the hem and some kind of fur along the lapels that for all I knew, and considering how fake everything in this place was, could have come from a yeti. With his black, silver-streaked hair and sharp black goatee, Rob looked like a magician in Camelot who used too much Just for Men hair dye on his beard.

  Since he was with Zach, I imagined Rob's rapper name was something like Jazzy Warlock Rob or Mix a Lot o' Magick.

  "Surprised to see you here, Anne," he said to me, letting me know by his tone that by 'surprised' he meant 'pissed'.

  "Hey, Rob. Long time, no see. I brought a treasure over for Big Z to look at. It's really interesting." I waved awkwardly at Melanie and Vale. "And of course I brought my friends along."

  Years ago, when Zach was merely Little Z and had been undergoing a crisis of sexuality, he'd meekly asked me if he could kiss me just to see if he felt anything. Knowing Zach was gayer than Liberace, I'd agreed just to put the guy out of his misery. Of course that was the exact moment when his partner Rob walked into the room and saw us. Since then, Rob and I hadn't exactly been the closest of friends. Which was stupid, because Zach was head over heels in love with the weirdo. I'd heard some of the rap love songs he'd written for the guy. Sappy leprechaun limericks set to a driving bass line was something I hoped I never had to listen to again.