by Tricia Owens
"So what, you want her to hold the gargoyle? Rub him like an oil lamp?" Melanie cackled.
"Not quite."
We were in the alley now, which was bordered by the freeway noise reduction wall on one side and the long side of the strip club on the other. The bouncer at the front of the club had eyed us until we'd moved out of sight, and I worried that he might send someone back here to see what we were up to.
At the back entrance, I set down the carrier and pulled out my phone. "I'll text her and let her know we're here. She works the day shift because she goes out at night and hits the clubs. She should be finishing up any time now."
"Vegas must be full of succubi," Melanie marveled as she leaned back against the club and kicked up a boot. "Probably most of the escorts and hookers are. Heck, the entire city must be made up of sex demons. It'd explain why we have so much trouble getting dates!"
"I'm not so sure sex demons are the problem," I said. "But yeah, Vegas is full of magickal beings. I bet we don't know what half of them are."
It was both a comforting thought and an alarming one. Many of my friends were shifters with the odd succubus and incubus thrown in. I was also acquaintances with witches and warlocks, a couple of sorcerers, and a handful of people who were something, though I couldn't quite figure out what.
Nonetheless, with perhaps the exception of one of the sorcerers, no one I knew could command the power that I could, which made me believe I was an anomaly. That was good, because it meant I didn't feel threatened. It was bad because it meant I stood out to the Oddsmakers.
One year, two days after New Year's Day, a homeless guy had walked into the Tropicana casino and gone on the win streak of a lifetime, turning one hundred dollars into nearly two and a half million dollars. It wasn't the first time someone had become a millionaire in the city overnight, but it was the first time someone had started their run with such a small bankroll. It had been the talk of the town for a week.
Later, we in the magickal community learned that the homeless guy had actually been an out of town warlock. A month prior, he had stumbled upon a Cambodian luck spell that he'd immediately thought to use on the blackjack tables. His punishment for drawing so much attention to himself? Well, none of us really knew. But for a few weeks afterward there had been a spot out in the desert on the way to the secret and notorious Air Force base, Area 51, that had glowed with magickal energy.
No one had dared gone out to investigate, but it was assumed that it wasn't an alien corpse that was buried out there. The Oddsmakers didn't tolerate the indiscreet use of magick no matter who you were or what your intentions. The key to survival with them was not to be noticed at all.
If I wanted to continue to live, I needed to fly beneath their radar. Too bad events of late were conspiring against that plan.
As I was putting my phone away, I heard the sound of rubber scuffing over asphalt. Melanie and I shared a nervous look. I'd hoped to keep this quiet, but luck was rarely on my side.
Except when I made it so.
I called forth my dragon, but subtly, so he was only a cool breeze looping through the alley as two men emerged from the shadows.
They were big, bruiser types. I assumed, perhaps uncharitably, that they possessed more attitude than brains.
"What're you ladies doing back here?" the bald one asked. He smiled but I didn't believe it for a second.
"Employees only," said the one with the goatee. Both of them wore leather jackets and motorcycle boots. Not the expected attire of security men and it increased my nervousness.
"We're waiting for a friend who works here," I said, trying to sound bored and like this was something Melanie and I did every night. Just chillin' behind strip clubs. No biggie. "She'll be right out."
"What's in there?" Baldy pointed at the carrier.
I smiled at him. "My dog. I'd be careful," I warned when the guy started to lean down and look into the carrier. "Fluffy's kind of a meanie."
"I'll take my chances," he said. He grabbed the handle of the carrier.
"Hey!" Melanie yelled, but I was already infusing Lucky with energy. He flared like an enormous golden fan above my head.
I expected the two guys to freak out at the sight of a golden dragon, but the one with the goatee simply reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun.
Crap. It wasn't a gun.
It was a wand.
"Move!" I shouted as I shoved Melanie to the side.
Sparks traced the path of Goatee's magick as it shot down the alley toward me. I flipped backward, aided by a flick of Lucky's tail. Goatee's magick buzzed across my back like someone had zapped me with a low volt Taser. I landed shakily—no perfect score for me—but at least I was on my feet. In an instant I sent Lucky lashing out in retaliation.
My dragon hurtled forward, jaws open in a soundless roar. Goatee cursed and staggered backward, his wand out in front of him, spitting sparks. Blasts of magick hit Lucky in the snout but he barely flinched. He snapped his teeth over Goatee's shoulder and the guy let out a girly shriek before blasting Lucky off him with a complicated wave of his wand.
Something dashed through my peripheral vision. It was Melanie, shifted into her monkey form. She leaped nimbly off the wall and onto the back of Baldy, who still held the pet carrier containing Vale. She was small in her monkey form but she could be annoying as hell.
With her tail wrapped around Baldy's throat, she pulled at his ears and hair. The man yelled and tried to bat her off with his free hand. He staggered back and forth, hampered by the shifting weight of Vale in the pet carrier.
When he suddenly dropped the carrier and reached both hands up to try to dislodge Melanie, I sprinted forward and grabbed it, dragging the heavy thing toward the door of the strip club. Before I got there, however, sparks ricocheted off the side of the building and blasted me in the ribs. It felt like I'd been sucker punched. I dropped the carrier and staggered backward on wobbly legs. They buckled beneath me, dumping me to the pavement.
"Oof."
I looked down at myself. My clothes were scorched on my left side and I could see angry, red skin peeking through the burned holes. Who knew I'd need to wear a bullet proof vest to visit a strip club?
Grimacing, I turned to look back at the fight. Lucky was dodging Goatee's wand strikes, but my dragon wasn't strong enough to do more than drag the guy off balance.
I knew escalation would be a bad idea for a variety of reasons. It was something Uncle James had instilled in me: don't push the dragon within me. There was also the matter of defying my plan to lay low.
But Melanie and I couldn't afford to lose this fight. The men would take Vale and do who knew what to him, not to mention there was a demon involved who could take over and then all hell would break loose. I didn't think a demon had ever run free in Las Vegas. I definitely didn't want to be the one to make it finally happen.
It would be no defense if the Oddsmakers decided to drag me in front of them for using magick in public, but what choice did I have?
Easy. I had no choice. I had to maintain control of that demon at all costs.
I funneled more energy to Lucky. My dragon swelled in size. He grew to over forty feet of pure muscle. His teeth caught the streetlamps and they were wicked.
I was on my feet, though I couldn't remember standing. Lucky continued radiating supernatural coldness. I was the opposite. I was burning up inside. A warning came to mind, something I had heard from Uncle James, maybe, or my parents before they died:
You know you've gone too far when your chest fills with hot coals.
It was a literal warning, not some hokey Chinese saying. I hadn't gone too far, not yet, but the tickle was there in my chest, the compulsion to breathe out in a long streamer of pain and power and mark my territory. Strange thoughts began to coalesce in my head. Thoughts of twisting and turning and winding and diving and biting and breathing fire upon my enemies…
"Holy hell," I heard myself say, but my voice was far away from my body.
My body. Was this my true form? This pitiful bipedal form? This weak bag of pale flesh?
No! I was destruction and defiler! Dragon of doom!
I peered out at Lucky from behind a haze of red. Lucky was huge and golden, as bright as the sun, but I was beginning to glow, too, casting long shadows ahead of me and down the alley. Soon, my shadow would match Lucky's.
Goatee seemed to realize things had taken a bad turn, for he blindly shot magick down the alley in my direction. I tried a graceful leap aside, but I was not a dragon yet. I stumbled and tripped and then rolled across the ground, accidentally kicking the pet carrier.
Sharp arrowheads of concrete spat in my face and stung the backs of my hands as Goatee's magick bounced and ricocheted off every hard surface. His urgency told me he was beginning to suspect that he needed to take me down now, while I was still human.
Not for long, buddy.
Through the maelstrom of Goatee's magick I counterattacked with Lucky. Fire blazed from my dragon's throat. Goatee shrieked and aimed a torrent of magick at Lucky, knocking the dragon back. I sent Lucky at him again. As I did so, I bared my own teeth. A roar shrieked from my throat. I clawed the air and Lucky shredded Goatee's leather jacket down one arm. Cursing, Goatee blasted magick down the alley again, hoping to hit me. One shot struck the carrier and sent it flipping end over end across the concrete.
"Vale!' I yelled.
I was startled by my human voice. Was that me? It cut through the madness filling my head, reminded me who I was. Be careful, Anne. You're riding the edge.
Vale didn't respond to my cry. I couldn't see inside the carrier because the door end was facing away from me. I wanted to check on him but that stupid Baldy—he pulled out his wand, too. Great. Two warlocks. Since when did I warrant such attention?
It wasn't me, though. It was Vale they wanted.
Well, they were going to have to go through a pesky dragon to get him.
Lucky reared up and he was an awesome sight: tendrils of golden energy whipping around his serpentine body, wings spread, and his long fangs glinting. My ancestral blood demanded that I give him more of my energy, that I feed him with my own life. I wouldn't die; I would become something else. Something greater. Something powerful.
I opened my mouth wide, my teeth bared. Lucky's jaws yawned open in concert. He spat curls of red and gold flames. Goatee put up a magickal shield to defend himself, but Lucky's fire ate away at it until the warlock's hair and clothes began to smoke. Goatee raised his wand at Lucky as if gearing up for something big—
Then he seemed to think twice.
That's right, I thought as I stood there, panting and on fire, at least in my mind. You can't defeat us. We are dragons.
He must have read my mind, because he turned and bolted down the alley.
Despite having a crazy monkey on his head, Baldy noticed his friend ditching him. He managed to unwind Melanie's tail from around his neck and then flung her off him as though he were chucking an Alien face-hugger. Melanie landed nimbly on her feet and chattered what I assumed were monkey insults at Baldy as he sprinted down the alley and out of sight.
Lucky reared up again. He was strong now. He slashed his tiger claws through the air and fanned his numerous fins in a display of dominance. The entire alley blazed with golden light, hurting my eyes. If I didn't rein him in someone on the freeway was going to notice something and call the cops.
Controlling Lucky at this point was easier said than done, though. He was me and I was him and together we were free and monstrous. Deep down, I knew I was riding a slippery slope.
My shoulders itched where wings wanted to burst free. Wings weren't traditional Chinese, but I was only half Asian, so I was a hybrid dragon. My wings were right there, pressing against my skin like fingers poking plastic cling wrap. With just a little push they'd break free…and I'd be free.
Or would I?
This was how the stories began. This was how my ancestors had come to be known as predators. They'd given in to their dragons and the dragons had defeated them. They'd become dragons.
If I gave in, too, I would lose Moonlight. I would lose my friends. The demon would eat Vale's soul.
No.
I began to pull Lucky in. It was like trying to reel in Jaws. He fought me, teeth snapping and body corkscrewing in the air like a windsock. To anyone else watching it would have been a beautiful sight, sort of like a watching a real-life dragon dance at the Chinese New Year's parade. But it frickin' hurt. Imagine having a hundred tiny fish hooks imbedded in your skin and attached to a kite that was whipping about in a hurricane. Now try to walk backward. Agony to the nth degree.
But if I wanted to remain human I had to do this, so I bore down and pulled him in. It helped that re-absorbing my energy from him dulled the pain from my burn injury. A little. Kind of.
"Come on," I gritted out. "Come on, you bad, bad dragon."
He fought. I lost ground.
Don't be the thing everyone accuses you of being.
Hell, no. I fought back.
By the time I'd reined Lucky in completely, I was sweating like an Inuit visiting Vegas on the fourth of July. Pain blazed behind my eyes. With a groan, I collapsed back onto my elbows.
Melanie danced over to me and pawed me with her soft, tiny hands. When she discovered my wound she let out a screech of dismay.
"I'm okay," I muttered, one arm flung over my eyes. "It's fine if it scars. I'll tell everyone I crashed my Ducati. The red one."
Her monkey hands plucked at my burnt clothing for a bit, maybe trying to see if it was salvageable. Or maybe she was grooming me.
I lowered my arm and studied her cute little face, which was black with dark eyes. The rest of her body was covered with reddish brown hair. All except the top of her head, which was dyed blue, just like her human form. She was one punky monkey.
As I watched, she hopped away to where her clothes lay in a puddle on the ground. The good thing about shifting into something smaller than a human was that you never ruined your clothes. She shifted back into her human form, a transition as quick as blinking your eyes, and redressed.
"Anne, you got cooked like carne asada!" she said as she re-laced her boots. "We need to go to my parent's home and pick up Tepezcohuite bark. My mom swears by it! It's like crazy Mayan magick, only not magick." Dressed, she returned to me and studied me with a strained expression on her face. "That was seriously bad. Do you know what you did?"
I sighed heavily. "I know."
I abruptly twisted around, ignoring the lightning bolt of pain that radiated out from my burn, and said, "We have to check Vale."
Melanie and I hurried over to the pet carrier. There was a big dent in the side that faced us, which was the roof of the thing. I started to carefully tip it right side up when the cage's door swung open.
"Oh, no," I said before I peered inside and confirmed what I'd feared. "He's gone."
"But why would he leave? We're the only ones who can help him!"
"I don't know about that, but I'm guessing he felt like a sitting duck inside this thing. I don't blame him for getting out of it, but where is he now?" I looked hopelessly down each end of the alley. "How are your tracking abilities?"
"We'd be better off using Lev for that," Melanie admitted. "My monkey's sense of smell is only slightly better than yours. Ack! How come I can smell my brothers' stinky feet but I can't smell a gargoyle?"
"Those warlocks were after Vale," I said. "How did they know we had him? Only Orlaton, Celestina and Lev knew that."
"Someone at Orlaton's? There was that cult there…"
"Maybe."
But I didn't think so. The cultists hadn't heard us mention that the gargoyle statue contained a demon, and nothing about the statue had hinted that it was magickal.
"Dammit, I feel like I let him down." I stank of burned fabric and my own singed flesh, but I was so frustrated I couldn't care. "Let's talk to Liliana and see if she has any suggestions."
; Melanie touched my arm. "It really bothers you that he's gone, huh?"
I shrugged, trying to play off her comment, but I realized she was right. The thought of Vale trapped in an endless battle with a demon who wanted to eat his soul…it made my wound throb.
I didn't know anything about him except his name, and yet I wanted to know more. He was a guy who I could see holding my interest even with his clothes on. That sounded shallow of me, but it was the truth. Most of the guys I'd attempted to date I'd chosen because of their looks. Nothing had held my interest after that.
Vale was different. He seemed like he had stories to tell, a deep life to share. After being trapped by Moonlight, I saw in him a way for me to travel beyond the shop's walls and experience the world.
Or maybe I was just a sucker for brunettes.
"Maybe Liliana can find him," I said instead of directly answering my friend's question.
"You're crazy powerful," Melanie said as we headed for the back door of the strip club with the battered carrier in tow. She gave me a pointed look. "You seriously, seriously need to be careful. Like, go on the super down low."
"I know," I said, grim. "I hadn't expected to go that far."
"It's just there's such an awful history—"
"I know, Melly."
She flinched. I felt awful.
"I don't plan on using Lucky again," I said, more softly. "But, thanks for worrying about me."
She bumped shoulders with me. "Aw, you don't need to thank me. You're my best customer! My family can't afford to lose such a valuable source of income. Why do you think I'm your bodyguard?"
"Bodyguard? No way, biyatch. I'm your bodyguard."
Melanie grinned. "No, you listen, biyatch—"
"You're both bitches," said a new voice.
I froze and looked up. Liliana was draped across the open doorway of the strip club like a piece of lingerie. Her smile was a flash of lightning through a dark sky.
"I don't typically like bitches," she went on. "I prefer dealing with delicious men. But you've gone and stirred up trouble and now I have to do something about it." She narrowed her dark eyes at us. A pair of sharp fangs slid from her mouth and over her bottom lip.