Hunting Down Dragons (Moonlight Dragon #2)

by Tricia Owens

  I nibbled absently on the wing as I tried to figure out what it was that I'd felt. Was I having an allergic reaction? Had I reached my Scoville limit and my body was telling me I needed to call the Fire Department?

  Magick was a funny thing. Las Vegas was loaded with chance magick that was generated by all the gambling activity. So much magick pooled here that the Oddsmakers had come in to oversee its usage, afraid that it would be abused (and they weren't wrong). All that power lured magickal beings to the city either because they wanted their magickal practices to be enhanced—a little extra sting in a curse, for example—or because they felt an inexplicable pull, sort of like people visiting the land of their ancestors and experiencing an instant connection.

  Rarely did magickal beings stick out in a crowd. All of us knew never to flaunt our magick. Among those cheering me and Melanie on could very well be a witch who'd cursed me during her last visit to the women's restroom.

  I looked over the crowd carefully, on the eye out for someone who didn't appear to be all that enthused to be watching a chicken wing-eating contest. Chances were better than keno odds that I had enemies, maybe even friends of Dearborn. The golem maker himself wasn't much of a threat both because I was certain he was buried somewhere in Eldorado Canyon and because his condo, which had been packed with all sorts of dark magickal doodads, had been completely hollowed out by a fire that miraculously hadn't affected any other unit in the tower.

  However maybe all his creations hadn't died with him and were now after revenge.

  "One minute!"

  The restaurant manager's announcement pulled my attention back to the most urgent matter at hand. I looked at the table in front of me, which held the bones of less than a dozen wings, and then over at Melanie's side of the table. She was beating me by more than double, but I was gratified to see that she'd at least broken a sweat from all the hot sauce.

  I tossed my half-eaten wing on the table in defeat even though there were still a few more seconds left. That strange shiver I'd felt just a moment ago hadn't left me and in fact had morphed into something pretty unpleasant. Was it the pepper? If it were only a physical sensation I would have said yes unreservedly.

  But this was a feeling that bordered on anxiety and paranoia, as though someone had just whispered in my ear that guys with guns might be waiting for me outside the restaurant. In fact it was a feeling I'd become all too familiar with lately, and I couldn't believe I was feeling it outside of the pawn shop. I'd come here to get away from it!

  Disturbed, I tried to play it off as hypochondria. However, I couldn't shake it, not even when time was up and the restaurant manager yanked Melanie's sauce-covered hand above her head and declared her the winner while our audience cheered and whistled.

  While the celebration continued, I pushed back from the table. People patted me on the shoulder and told me good job. I smiled absently at them but my eyes were for the door. Someone was about to come through and they would be coming for me. I knew this in a way I couldn't explain, just a quirk of being a magickal being.

  Calling up Lucky, my dragon familiar, would be a big no-no in a crowded place like this. Ordinary people weren't permitted to know about the magick underbelly of this city. None of my kind wanted to be thrown into the back of a van and transported to a secret government lab for testing and torture. Defending myself with magick against whatever was coming for me wasn't an option. Well, it was an option only if I didn't care that my magick was stripped from me for good.

  "Still need to learn that kung fu," I muttered to myself as I wove through the crowd, heading for the front door and the hostess stand.

  A young girl stood behind the podium. She was probably in her late teens. Her attention wasn't captivated by the cheering mass behind me but by what she could see through the restaurant's glass doors, which were directly in front of her. My anxiety and paranoia took on a new tint of dread. What was she looking at?

  The waiter's service station was to my left. I darted to it and grabbed a knife out of the utensils tray. It wasn't a great weapon and I'd be lucky if it was sharp enough to slice a tomato, but with enough force and aimed precisely it could buy me some time to run or create a distraction. With the metal resting cool along my forearm, I approached the front waiting area.

  The hostess still hadn't broken her obsessive fascination with whatever was beyond the front doors. It occurred to me that she might be mesmerized, spelled to put up no defense against whatever was heading for the door. Or worse, she was petrified by what she could see.

  I could believe that. Magickal beings weren't always like me or Melanie, able to blend in with people and pass for normal. There were monsters in our community, both the traditional sort like trolls and vampires, and the ones that weren't born monsters but became them. My friend Orlaton, who ran an occult bookshop across the street from my pawn shop, probably dealt with those kinds of monsters all the time. They'd become twisted through too much interaction with black magick.

  And then there were some who used magick to modify themselves in a fruitless pursuit to become more powerful. Overzealous plastic surgery was nothing compared to a warlock who'd added two eyes to the back of his head, or the female centaur I'd heard about who yearned to be a unicorn and now had a horn the size of a barber's pole weighing her head down so badly that she'd had to commission a special brace for her neck.

  So a monster was definitely a possibility, though what kind remained a mystery.

  "Anne!"

  I heard Melanie calling for me from deeper in the restaurant, shades of concern in her voice. It prompted me to hurry the last few feet to the hostess stand. If there was danger, I wanted to be the one to face it, not my monkey shifter friend.

  "Hey," I said to the hostess, but my eyes were on the front doors.

  Someone was approaching.

  "Hey!" I said in a louder voice to the hostess. I slapped the knife I'd snatched on the top of the podium.

  She snapped out of her moony gaze to blink at me. "Oh, hello. I'm sorry. May I help you?"

  "I'm looking for toothpicks," I growled. Now that she was paying attention to me, she seemed to have developed a new fixation: staring at the lower half of my face.

  "Oh, uh, yes, right here, ma'am."

  Ma'am. I was twenty-four years old! But I smiled at her as I accepted the three wrapped toothpicks she handed me. I unwrapped one before turning to face the door, which had just opened.

  Vale stormed in. He did that a lot, storming. I liked it a lot, too. Brooding, mysterious, a sucker for having his hair pulled—Vale was a boyfriend I probably didn't deserve. But everyone got lucky once in a while, and it was apparently my turn.

  He wasn't classically handsome, but he was compelling. I'd never looked into a guy's eyes before and believed that he was thinking about things that mattered. Maybe he liked sports—I'd never asked him—and maybe his secret hobby was comic book collecting, but I doubted it. He wasn't trivial and he wasn't shallow. Vale was as ancient and multi-layered as a Redwood. When I was with him he made me feel that everything I said held significance, and that every action I took affected the world. When you began to feel that way, as if you could make a difference, it changed the way you interacted with other people. You began to realize how much impact you could have, positive or negative.

  I liked that. Before meeting him, I had thought relationships were all about holding hands and staying in for pizza and being intimate and it was those things at times. But Vale made me believe that us coming together could mean more than a new relationship status on Facebook. It could mean making a difference to someone. Maybe to everyone.

  The hostess beside me didn't bother hiding how she checked him out from his motorcycle boots and scuffed jeans to the dark hoodie that was one of his favorites. She saw only the surface, the sparkle that meant nothing. If she was able to sit down with him and talk to him she'd either want to marry him or she'd run, claiming that he was too "heavy". The only reason I didn't burn down the hostess
stand was because Vale's dark eyes didn't acknowledge her even for a moment. He had eyes only for me.

  "Moody," he said.

  His deep voice was sexy and I reminded myself that someday I was going to ask him if he practiced it, but I'd picked up something else in his voice that distracted me from thoughts of canoodling.

  I stepped toward him. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  He opened his mouth to reply and abruptly frowned. "What's all over your face?"

  I reached up. Crap. "Ha ha, someone messed up and put me at the little kids' table."

  I reached over the edge of the podium and grabbed some tissues from the box there. I hastily mopped the sauce off my mouth, cheeks, and chin so I no longer looked like a sloppy cannibal. I also belatedly noticed I was still wearing my plastic bib. With a curse, I yanked it off and balled it up. Vale might be deep and sophisticated, but I was still a work in progress.

  "What is it?" I asked, frustrated. Worried. My lips and tongue were on fire. It hurt to speak.

  Vale caught my arm and pulled me to the door. "It's Christian."

  My heart dropped. I looked back for Melanie. Christian and she had an on-again, off-again thing. I think they were currently on, but it didn't matter either way. Vale's demeanor told me this would affect Melanie, too. She was making her way toward us but kept getting waylaid by congratulatory diners. Everyone wanted a piece of the hot wing queen.

  "Don't tell me he's dead," I whispered to Vale. "Just don't."

  I liked Christian, which was a surprise because I normally distrusted super good-looking guys who were aware of how gorgeous they were. Christian fit that bill, but it turned out he was an okay guy. He'd probably saved Vale's life.

  "It's not Christian. It's his mother."

  "Diana," I breathed.

  Another candidate for someone I shouldn't like and, well, I actually didn't like her, come to think of it. She'd insulted my heritage and even though she'd been under a compulsion cast by Vagasso, she'd still tried to kill me and my friend Orlaton in order to help Vagasso overthrow Las Vegas.

  But disliking someone didn't mean I wanted them to be hurt.

  "She's dead," Vale confirmed, looking deep into my eyes for something. "Did you feel it?"

  I cocked my head, surprised. "Did I feel it? How would I—" I paused, recalling what I'd just been experiencing. "Did it happen just a few minutes ago?"

  He nodded. "She took her own life."

  I clapped a hand over my mouth, genuinely shocked. Diana had been a witch and a pretty tough and bitchy one. She'd survived her encounter with Vagasso and that had to count for something. She hadn't struck me as depressed or as a quitter. It didn't make sense.

  "Why would she do that? Wasn't she in California? She was safe there." I had a thought. "Was it because she missed Christian? After all she'd done to protect him she couldn't have been too thrilled with his decision to stay in Las Vegas when Vagasso is still here."

  "You're closer to the truth than you know," Vale murmured and then he was stepping past me and drawing Melanie into a hug.

  She gaped at me from over his shoulder, mouthing "What's going on?" at me.

  Vale straightened and leaned away from her so he could see her face. "I need you to come with us to see Christian. He could use a friend right now. His mother just passed away."

  There was more to it, though. Even the death of the world's most powerful witch, which Diana wasn't, wouldn't have made the magickal impression on me that her death had. Something else was going on and I was dying to know what.

  Read Trouble with Gargoyles and other books in the Moonlight Dragon series. Visit

  http://www.triciaowensbooks.com/moonlightdragon

  About the Author

  Tricia Owens has worked as a casino dealer in Las Vegas and as an editor on a cruise ship that sails around the world. Having visited more than 80 countries, she's content (for the moment) to relax in Las Vegas. She assures you the real Sin City is much weirder than anything depicted in her books.

  Hunting Down Dragons is the second book in her Moonlight Dragon urban fantasy series. Find her work at www.triciaowensbooks.com.