by Tricia Owens
What I found outside wasn't at all what I was expecting.
Chapter 8
"Palms read, fortunes told! Find out if you're destined to be a lucky winner! Learn your lucky numbers!"
Christian was dressed in jeans and flip flops and nothing else. Either he'd found that super-sized bottle of aloe vera or water fey had miraculous, accelerated healing factors because every naked inch I could see of him was perfect and gorgeous.
All the young girls clustered around him seemed to share my opinion.
"Come on, ladies!" he said, grinning at them in a way destined to break hearts. "Come get your tarot read. See if you're destined for romance tonight."
The girls tittered and made flirty comments. A few did as he suggested and gravitated to where Celestina had set up a table in the middle of the street in front of Tomes. The table was decked out with a starry tablecloth and she'd set up six giant glowing star paper lanterns around her table as well as a Bluetooth stereo that was blasting ambient trance. All were hooked up to an extension cord that led back to her shop.
It was quite a production and she'd caught the attention of at least a dozen people already. More were drifting over from nearby Fremont Street, following the monkey that was riding on the back of a black wolf.
"Melanie!" I blurted, incredulous.
In her monkey form she was spinning one of those obnoxious rattlers that idiots handed out on New Year's Eve. In her other hand she whipped a child-sized cowboy hat back and forth as she urged Lev in his wolf shifter form to run around like an excited dog.
I'm sorry, but if a rattle-holding, cowboy hat-wearing monkey on a wolf didn't pique your interest then you must be dead inside.
"What is going on?" I asked aloud. "Am I hallucinating? Did someone slip me crazy pills?"
Christian heard me and turned to grin at me. "Pretty clever, eh?"
"What in the world are you all doing? This looks like a low rent street fair." My eyes rounded. "Vagasso is here!"
Christian waved it off. "Nah, he was here earlier, and we thought we were in big trouble because none of us can stand up to him. But then Celestina came up with the idea of dragging tourists here. She pointed out that Vagasso couldn't afford to use magick in front of them. Not without bringing down major wrath from the Oddsmakers."
"Which he definitely wouldn't want to do before he'd gotten his hands on a demon," I finished. I marveled at my friends' ingenuity. "This is nuts and absolutely awesome."
"Plus, Celestina is making bank off all the business we're drumming up for her," Christian said with a laugh.
Then he sort of forgot about me because a girl in cut-off shorts and a too-tight tank top was gushing to him about how much she loved redheads.
People started to dance because Melanie had jumped off of Lev and was showing off her moves which were pretty impressive for a two foot-tall monkey, but I forced myself to look beyond the festivities and search for signs that Vagasso and his followers were still around.
I looked, searching every shadow and creepy-looking hiding place, but I simply didn't see anything to suggest that they were lying in wait for Vale and me. My friends had truly driven them off.
"Brace yourself," I told Vale when I re-entered Tomes. I kept a straight-face, but the music had drifted inside and I could tell he knew something was up.
He shook his head in disbelief when I helped him outside. "Is this supposed to be the cavalry?"
"Sure. Vegas-style." When he began searching the way I had been earlier, I assured him, "Vagasso's gone. Using magick in front of non-magickals would be a disaster. He's too smart to risk it this early in the game."
"For now," he agreed. "Vagasso doesn't sound like the sort to give up. He'll attempt to summon another demon."
"Unfortunately, I think you're right. Hopefully someone will stop him."
But who was I kidding? I had the awful feeling that I, and maybe my friends, would be the suckers who'd have to do that.
Well, at the moment I was content to pull a Scarlett O'Hara and deal with it tomorrow. I felt like ground dog meat, and I knew Vale shared my pain.
I tightened my arm around his waist. "Would you mind taking a rain check on the shots? I think I'm about to collapse."
I shivered when he turned and murmured into my ear, "You have a sofa I can crash on?"
"I live in a studio. All I have is a bed."
"As long as it's not a twin, that's fine with me."
I cleared my throat and said as casually as I could, "It's not a twin."
~~~~~
Back at my place. Door locked, Open sign off.
Since his clothes were still damp and I'd already seen him naked, Vale opted to sleep in the nude.
I pointed out that I wasn't that kind of girl and I told him he had to leave and go book a room in a hotel.
Yeah, right.
I shucked my own clothes and climbed right in beside him.
And almost immediately passed out.
A stroke along my shoulder woke me up again, though.
"I concede," I whispered. "You're definitely some kind of stud if you still have energy after all we've been through."
"Let's just say a certain sexy sorceress is giving me my second wind," he murmured as he kissed my shoulder.
"Is that what that is? Thought it was your wand."
I rolled over to face him. In the dim lighting coming in from the back window he didn't look like a man who'd been fighting a demon and had barely escaped with his life. I reached up and brushed his wavy hair from his eyes. I loved his eyes. So serious and thoughtful. Nothing like the eyes of the guys I met at bars who couldn't focus for longer than a few minutes on anything that wasn't sports.
Vale was deep, magickal deep, and right now I wanted to drown in him.
His fingers brushed over my cheek. His lips followed, lightly tasting me. When he breathed against my mouth, I shivered and parted my lips for him. The first touch of his tongue to mine made my entire body sing.
He kissed me slowly, like a man who was in no hurry. Like one who believed we had all the time in the world and that magickal monsters weren't waiting for us on the horizon. I fell under his spell, my movements unhurried, only my heart and my lungs racing with rising urgency.
As he kissed down my neck, my hands found his unruly hair. I did what I'd wanted to do since I first saw him in the Chinese mirror. I buried my fingers in those lush waves and pulled, making him groan.
He tossed the sheet off the bed and moved over me. I savored the press of his muscular body as he held me down. Even in this form he was strong and I needed that. In this bed I wanted to be a woman, not a powerful sorceress.
He teased me, smiling when I groaned and begged him, but he wasn't cruel. When he finally slid inside me his groan was as loud and relieved as mine. I clutched his ass with both hands as he moved in me. The bed rocked gently, and then not so gently.
"Vale," I breathed into his ear, my desperation reaching its limit.
I wished in that moment that I was a witch and knew a spell to keep him with me always. Then all thoughts dissolved in an explosion of light, and silence, and ecstasy.
Above me, Vale drove hard against me one final time and then followed me over the edge with a rushed breath of pleasure.
"Moody," was the last thing I heard him say before I fell asleep.
Moody. Because I was his.
~~~~~
I forgot to put up the wards, which was dangerous and foolish. But the only fallout was Melanie slipping into Moonlight and scaring the bejeesus out of me when she launched herself onto the bed.
I sat up with a gasp and looked to the sunlit mattress beside me. She hadn't crushed Vale because Vale was gone. The scent of him lingered, though, and it took all my willpower not to drop face-first onto the sheets and fill my lungs with it.
"You are a naughty girl," Melanie teased, wagging her finger at me. "I love it! How was he? Does he growl? I bet he growls."
I burst into laughter. "I will
neither confirm nor deny anything. My lips are sealed."
"Spoilsport!" She flopped onto her back beside me. "Was he nice?" she asked in a softer voice.
I smiled at the ceiling. My skin still held the memory of him. "Yeah, Melly. He was nice."
I heard her sigh with contentment.
"How's Christian?" I asked, giving her a nudge in the ribs.
"I will neither confirm nor deny anything."
I hit her with a pillow for that. She shifted into her monkey and jumped on my head.
We giggled and played for a bit because hey, we'd survived something pretty awful and come out relatively unscathed. We were allowed it. And because maybe in the back of our minds we knew it wasn't over.
"Vale must have left before the sun came up," I told Melanie after she'd changed back and we lay there again. "The weird curse is gone."
"Guess he didn't want you groping his statue while he couldn't stop you."
"That comment is creepy and potentially accurate."
Melanie giggled. "Well, Christian said he's talked his mother into moving out of Vegas. He wants her far away from Vagasso."
"That's smart. He doesn't worry that Vagasso will go after him, too?"
I felt the sheets moved as Melanie shrugged. "I guess he's found something worth sticking around for. Ha ha! I made it sound like it's me, but we're not anything serious, Anne. We're only having fun."
"Nothing wrong with that."
I yawned sleepily. I'd probably slept a good five or six hours, but I wouldn't have minded a few more. Still, for all I'd been through, I felt pretty good.
"Vagasso's going to try for another demon," I mused aloud.
"Yeah. Probably. We should warn the Oddsmakers. They totally need to know the details."
That woke me up. "That's not high on my list of Things to Do in Las Vegas, Melly."
"Mine neither, but I think we should. And then maybe we can let them know that you're not, you know, a threat or anything."
Melanie was right, but I wasn't happy about it. I'd gone on a very public bender with my sorcery. There was a pretty good chance the Oddsmakers had noticed. They'd want to talk to me about it. They'd want to know about Lucky. Hopefully, that would be all they wanted of me.
But I didn't like the odds.
Dread wanted to steal over me, but I refused to let it ruin my day. I had my bestie beside me and my other friends were safe. Concentrate on that, I told myself, and I did.
Melanie and I watched the shadows of the tree in the backyard twitch across the ceiling. It was another blustery day in the city. Not my favorite kind of weather. But you'd better believe I would take a windy day in Vegas over a windless day in Hell.
Continue for a sneak peek of Hunting Down Dragons, Moonlight Dragon Book 2…
Chapter 1
"I gotta pee."
It was hands down one of the worst things I could've heard.
At least at that moment, anyway. My best friend and I were in the middle of the desert, dozens of miles from anything resembling a port-a-potty. And of course as soon as Melanie said it, I realized I had to go, too.
"Damn you, monkey!" I gritted my teeth and looked around. Prospects for sparing our dignity didn't look so great.
We were about twenty or so miles away from the Strip, out in the middle of literal nowhere, as in I'm sure our location would have shown up on Google maps as Nowhere, Nevada. The Spring Mountains were jagged darkness to our left and the glowing lights of the Las Vegas Strip were ahead of us, with California to the south. That was about as much as I could have told anyone about where my friends and I were. And yet somehow we were surrounded by a good hundred people who'd also come out to blast the hell out of things under the guise of celebrating the Fourth of July.
The sun had gone down an hour ago. It wasn't dark, though. Fireworks were both lighting up the sky and clogging it with clouds of pale gray smoke. Periodically, someone across the desert set off a series of loud explosions that sounded like machinegun fire. Elsewhere, people lit things that spat fire and whistled as they hurtled through the air. A big pile of wood pallets and trash was on fire about fifty yards to our left. Music blasted and people randomly cheered and shouted. The scene was a low rent and far less cool Burning Man.
My friends and I had been coming out here for four years. Holidays in Vegas weren't celebrated like they were in other cities across America. Businesses rarely closed here because holidays saw huge influxes of tourists. But a holiday like the Fourth was different since all the celebrating occurred late at night. My friends in retail were usually able to get off work in time for us to come here. Since I was the temporary owner of my business, a pawn shop in downtown, I turned off the Open sign as soon as I felt like it.
Some years the police drove out here and politely ran us all off. Other years we were left to demolish all the scrub brush and lizards that we could. It looked like this year we'd be left alone and I was glad. This was one of the rare times when I felt a connection, however tenuous and temporary, with my fellow locals. The skies above the entire Las Vegas valley periodically sparkled with legal and illegal fireworks, temporarily stealing the thunder from the city's famous neon signage.
I would have preferred more darkness at the moment, however. I glanced around at my friends. Celestina, my fortune teller neighbor, was arguing about something with her boyfriend Lev. He was currently in his human form, but by his expression it was apparent he wished he had shifted into his wolf form ages ago.
A bit away and smirking in sympathy with Lev stood Christian, Melanie's on-again-off-again red-haired boyfriend. He was a water fey who naturally craved large bodies of water, but who had chosen to make arid Las Vegas his home. None of the three was paying attention to my best friend and me, but still…
"We don't have a choice," I said with resignation. "We're going to have to pee in public."
"I've done it before you know," Melanie said with a quick, apologetic grimace.
She was dressed like an airship pirate since her current obsession was with steampunk. Her previous fascination, cyberpunk, had left its mark in the form of her pale blue hair. I hoped she wouldn’t eventually move on from the steampunk fandom with a mechanical arm as her souvenir.
"I used to go camping with my brothers all the time and I can't just whip it out like they can! Not even in my monkey form. So you know what I did? I bought a funnel, Anne. A pee funnel! Can you believe it?"
I winced in sympathy. "Sounds cruel and unusual."
Actually, spending too much time with Melanie's family at all sounded like low-grade torture. All of them were monkey shifters and all, though incredibly nice, were high-strung and excitable. Worse than Chihuahuas.
"It was a low point, for sure. And worse, I didn't position it right and I peed all over—"
I held up my hand. "Say no more." I randomly chose a direction that I thought was dark enough. "I'm going over there. I'll meet you back here in five."
Though my reason was slightly embarrassing, I actually enjoyed heading into the darkness, away from the others. As I walked across the hard-packed desert floor beneath a half moon, I felt in tune with the Paiute Indians who used to call this place home. Of course, I had to block out the sound of car radios blasting the latest club remixes and m80 firecrackers blasting the hell out of soda cans, but nonetheless, it was the closest to nature that I'd been in a while.
A light night breeze curled against my bare arms, warm and dry like being brushed by a sheet of fabric softener. Dirt crunched beneath my sandals but here and there I saw some flower-type growths that were probably weeds but were still an improvement over the concrete jungle of the city. And even though I could hear firecrackers and radios, I probably had the best chance at that moment of also hearing the passage of a living creature. It was a nice change from my usual surroundings.
I ran my Uncle James' pawn shop in downtown Las Vegas, so I spent most of my waking hours selling and trading all sorts of junk, both harmless and cursed. Things like
typewriters and electric guitars sat beside cast iron cauldrons and evil eye wall decorations.
Normally, it was a pretty mundane gig. Curious tourists and desperate gamblers were my typical customers. The occasional witch or other magickal being stopped by, too, of course, sensing that Moonlight Pawn was magick-friendly, but for the most part it was a retail job like any other.
That had changed only once, when Christian, who at that point was a stranger to me, pawned a gargoyle statue that I hadn't known at the time was his best friend Vale. Vale had been unable to shift back into his human form and had suffered the double whammy of also being possessed by a demon. After a lot of sorcery and a lot of bruises, my friends and I managed to remove the demon and allow Vale to assume his human form once again.
In the course of doing that we'd also stopped the dark spirit named Vagasso from using that same demon to take over Las Vegas. It had made for a dramatic two days. On the negative side, I'd made an enemy of Vagasso. On the plus, Vale Morgan and I had formed a connection.
I smiled in the darkness, but it was a smile edged with wistfulness. Vale wasn't like typical guys and not merely because he could transform into a gargoyle that turned to stone when the sun rose. Vale was different, but disappointingly, I hadn't seen him since we thwarted Vagasso.
When I felt that I'd reached the darkest spot of the desert and wouldn't be visible to anyone, I took care of business. Fireworks sparked out across the valley, over the neighborhoods of Henderson and Summerlin, and nearer, above my head. Summer nights were always gorgeous in Vegas. I wouldn't have minded spreading out a blanket and camping out here. However, scorpions and snakes had a funny way of making you decide it might be more fun to hit up a bar or the Blueberry Hill restaurant.
As I was finishing up, I felt a curious buzz in the air. While I walked back through the darkness to my friends, I tried to decide if I was being paranoid or if I had really just felt someone using magick. The sensation grew, pulling me to an incredulous stop.