Vegas Rules

by Jan Stryvant

  "What's that? I can't hear you?"

  Sean looked up at the other three one of whom had just hit him with a sleep spell.

  "Unless all of you want to end up dead, you'll stop that casting right now. Understand?"

  They all put their hands up rather suddenly.

  "Come on, Hon," Roxy called from over where she was pumping gas, and then lowering her voice she added, "there are cameras here. Leave it!"

  Sean growled again, but let Cali, who had withdrawn an empty hand from under her vest start pulling him away.

  "I suggest you take care of your friend and get him out of here before I change my mind. Maybe he'll learn his lesson, if he doesn't suffocate first."

  "What?" the kid who had been pumping gas asked.

  "He can barely breathe; I locked up almost every muscle but his heart. Now grab him and leave."

  Sean turned his back on them and walked back to the van, as the other three kids scrambled over and picking up their paralyzed friend they dragged him over to the car and threw him in the backseat, driving off almost immediately. Looking around the gas station, there was only one other customer there, on the far end of the station, who was studiously not paying any attention to any of what had just happened.

  "What did you do to him?" Daelyn asked in a low voice as they got back in the van. Roxy was finishing up, and Peg was doing something magical in the back of the van.

  "I paralyzed all of his muscles, the ones you have conscious control over."

  "I thought breathing was unconscious?"

  "And all of his surface muscles," Sean growled. "It probably won't kill him, but he's going to be very unhappy for the next several hours." He looked at Peg then, "What are you up to?"

  "Dealing with the cameras," Peg grinned.

  "You can do that?"

  "Not exactly, but let's just say they stopped recording anything the moment that kid got out of the car."

  "You're going to have to show me how you do that one of these days," Sean grinned back at her.

  "Growing up in Reno, it was almost a necessity. I'm just surprised these kids didn't know it."

  "I thought there weren't any magic users in Las Vegas?" Cali asked while sitting down on Sean's lap as he put his arms around her and started to nibble on her ears, making her squirm.

  "There are some, but those were tourists," Roxy sighed. "Between LA's gang-bangers and their magic users, I don't know what's worse."

  "Well, it's over now, let's go see what Ted has to tell us," Daelyn said and started up the van.

  Sean looked around as the got out of the van at Ted's office with a panting Cali still clinging to him.

  "Where are we?" He asked.

  "North Vegas. Ted's got a warehouse and his offices up here."

  "What's he do for a living?" Peggy asked, eyeing the building, there was a huge 'A-One Cleaning Services' sign on the side.

  "He runs a cleaning service, licensed and bonded, that specializes in casinos and showrooms. He also has a second business, supplying dancers, acrobats, jugglers, and clowns to both private and public events. Quite a few of the street performers you see on the strip actually work for him."

  "In short, he has spies everywhere, right?" Sean said as he started thinking that maybe he should open up a similar business in Reno. He had enough people who needed jobs now, and this would help.

  "Exactly," Roxy nodded as they walked over to the front door. "He charges the lowest prices in town, on everything, yet provides the highest quality of service."

  "I take it he doesn't make a lot of money then?" Daelyn asked.

  "He also owns a large share in a small casino on the edge of town, which pays for everything. He's not doing this to get rich; his mom was a slave with a group of Chinese acrobats who came through here forty years ago. This is more of a personal quest for him."

  Everyone nodded then as Sean opened the door, waved the girls in first, and then followed them inside.

  The room they entered was just a fairly plain lobby, with a few chairs, and a window in one of the walls with a woman sitting behind it. There was also a door leading from the lobby to the back.

  "Morning Roxy," the woman said and the door buzzed as it unlocked. "Ted's waiting for you in his office."

  "Thanks, Jill."

  "Been here before?"

  "Everyone," Roxy sighed, "and I do mean everyone, is required to work here weekends, after school, and on your summers off, until you turn eighteen. It's part of the agreements with all of the other lycan clans and groups in the area for mutual support. My brother Pat still works for him."

  "What's he do?"

  "He's a dancer, quite in demand too."

  "Oh? Why's that?"

  "Showgirls may be light, but their costumes with those huge headdresses often weigh almost as much as they do. Male dancers who can do a lift of one above their heads, and then balance her on one hand while dancing are pretty heavily in demand."

  "Huh, I had no idea," Daelyn replied.

  "Most folks don't. The trick is making it look easy. Cats and horses make up a lot of the dancers on the strip."

  "What's that?" Peg asked.

  "Because we're the most graceful, of course," Ted said coming around his desk as they walked into this office.

  "Does that include lions?" Peggy teased.

  "Wouldn't know, never had one to find out," Ted said shaking hands with each of them. "Great to see you here at last, Sean. Nice to see you again, Roxy, Jolene, Daelyn, Cali ...."

  Ted gave Sean a questioning look, and so Sean introduced him to Peg and Roberta.

  "Well, take a seat and I'll fill you in on everything," Ted told them as he walked over to a large map of the local area on the wall with a number of different color pins stuck in it.

  "Each of the white, blue, and green pins shows a contract we have and the color indicates what we're dealing with there. The yellow ones show places we're interested in, but don't have a lot of information. The red ones are our trouble spots."

  Sean noticed that there were quite a few yellow and red pins on the map, though they were outnumbered by the others heavily. Over the next half hour, Ted told them about all of it. The red pins were places or people that they'd had run-ins with in the past, or places where they knew for certain there were lycans being kept, probably against their wills.

  "Now that we have the ability to remove silver pellets without having to rely on more dangerous, difficult, and drastic measures in a race against the clock. We've started dealing with some of those places."

  "So what do you need from me?" Sean asked.

  "Three things, the first of course are more of those tags and necklaces, the second is some magic items to protect us from being overwhelmed magically, and the third and most important is leadership."

  "No money?" Sean asked, surprised.

  "This is Vegas," Ted smiled, "money comes to us from all over the world. But unfortunately," Ted frowned then, "so do a lot of magic users with their retinues. The airport," Ted motioned to one of his yellow pins, that also had a fair number of blue pins in it as well, "is where most of them come in. We have the janitorial contract for it, and security is provided by one of Bill's divisions. So we see them coming in. The problem, however, is that these groups often have more magic users than we can reasonably deal with. They have the spells to magically deal with us and mentally dominate any humans that might be on our side, and we have too few items to protect our people from that."

  Sean nodded and made a note of that. He'd need to start cranking out those amulets of his in higher numbers as well.

  "Our next biggest problem comes from Los Angeles," Ted continued. "There is a fair deal of magic users there because it's where the Council of Gradatim is headquartered and it's not uncommon for groups of them to come here when they're on vacation. Unfortunately, they sometimes cause problems because they believe that they're entitled to whatever they want, being as they're better than the rest of us.

  "In fact, it's alm
ost a rite of passage for their young men to come here as soon as they graduate from school, to get drunk, party, and stir up whatever trouble they can get in."

  "Yeah, I think we already ran into a few of those," Sean sighed.

  "Oh?"

  "At the gas station," Roxy filled in. "A couple of teenaged kids, probably fresh out of high school. Sean shut them down pretty hard. They didn't realize that we were lycans, but they know for damn sure now that Sean's a powerful mage."

  "Ah," Ted nodded. "As I said, that's one of our bigger problems, though it's probably worse for the mundanes than it is for us."

  "How so?" Sean asked.

  "We at least have some magical resistance, most mundanes, however, don't."

  "Oh," Sean shook his head and sighed.

  "Does that happen often?" Roberta asked.

  "Often enough, but usually they let whoever they're playing with go before they leave town, confused and not sure what happened to them. Honestly, if you want to know more about it, ask Bill. I have my hands full just taking care of our own people," Ted told her. "This brings me back to our most important problem, leadership."

  Ted pointed at Sean, "That's one of the things we need the most here, leadership, your leadership."

  Sean blinked, "My leadership? Why me? You've been doing this way longer than I have and it looks like you've already got everything under control."

  "Because I'm not winning the war, Sean. I'm barely holding on, half the time I'm fighting a losing battle. Things are a little better here now than twenty years ago, but that's all they are! We haven't made any progress in over a decade!

  "But you, you won in Reno! You've made it safer than any city has ever been for us lycans. You did it Sean, and the word's gone out! People know what you did there, they know that the magic users' councils all backed off, they know that Sapientia has made its first serious change in its policies and rules in centuries.

  "And you did that. You, Sean Valens. They'll listen to you, Sean. They'll do what you ask them to. They'll listen to you. Everyone loves a winner, and you're a lion to boot."

  "I don't know, Ted." Sean shook his head, "I'm a stranger to these people. I think they're more likely to think I'm just some kid and ignore me."

  In the blink of an eye, Ted had him by the collar of his shirt and was in his face.

  "Are you telling me you're a fraud, boy?" Ted yelled at him.

  Sean didn't even think, he grabbed Ted as he shifted, growling the whole time as he pushed off the chair he'd been sitting in. He took two steps and slammed Ted into the wall, breaking the plaster and from the sound of it breaking more than a few of Ted's bones as well.

  "What do you think you're doing?" Sean snarled at him.

  Ted smiled, painfully, "Proving my point. You're the one in charge here, Sean. Anyone who doesn't understand that, you're going to set them straight the moment they step out of line."

  Sean grumbled and let go of Ted, who landed on his feet, bones already healed.

  "I didn't ask for this," Sean sighed.

  "No, but you still went out and took it," Ted laughed.

  'He's right you know,' the First laughed inside his head.

  'You would have taken me over if I hadn't!'

  'Perhaps, but we'll never know, because you did it. Before I ever started pushing you.'

  "You're a lion, Sean," Ted continued, "and you want to make everyone around you, yours. You've got the powers to back it up too, don't think I didn't see what you did to Michael when he wouldn't bow to your leadership, and don't think that the others didn't see that as well."

  Sean just shook his head and looked at the outline of Ted's body where he'd almost put him through the wall. He'd never had much of a temper before, though apparently, he had one now. But ....

  But he didn't feel the slightest bit guilty about it. Ted had challenged him, challenged his leadership, even if it was only to prove a point, he'd done it, and Sean couldn't let that stand. He had to admit that he found that admission to be a sobering one.

  "We need a plan," Sean sighed. "I'm going to meet with Roxy's father Bill here in a little while and learn what he can teach me about the city. Tonight we can all get together and list out the problems and start planning on how to fix all of this to keep our people safe. Invite anyone who you think needs to be there."

  "I'll see to it," Ted nodded.

  Sean turned to the girls, all of whom were smirking at him.

  "Let's go," he said and shifting back to his human form he led them back to the van.

  "Dad warned you he was sneaky!" Roxy laughed after they got back into the van.

  "I just find it hard to believe that everyone here in Vegas already knows about me," Sean complained.

  "It's not that far away," Daelyn reminded him. "I'm sure a lot of lycans travel back and forth between home and here. I know a lot of dwarves do, hell I've been here dozens of times for work or family stuff."

  "They do," Roxy agreed, "in fact, I bet you and Cali are the only two in this van who haven't been to Vegas at least a dozen times," Roxy told him.

  "Besides," Jolene smiled, sliding up against him in the back of the van, "it's not like you weren't already planning on telling everyone what you wanted and how to do it."

  "I don't tell them how," Sean grumbled, but he was smiling now at least, "I just make suggestions."

  "Uh-huh. 'Suggestions,' right," Jolene giggled.

  "If everyone knows I'm the man in charge, they'll all be coming to me all the time. I'd rather they bothered someone else."

  "Who you'll just tell what to do, right?" Peg teased.

  "Exactly!" Sean agreed.

  "Hate to tell you, Hon," Jolene chuckled, "but that's called being the man in charge."

  "Let's go see what Roxy's dad has for me next."

  "Don't you mean 'us'?"

  "Only if I get to wait in the van."

  "Actually," Roberta grinned at him, "We're all going shopping. Just you and Roxy...."

  "And me," Cali piped up.

  "...and Cali, are going to visit with him."

  "Huh?" Sean said, looking confused.

  "We discussed it while you were still in bed," Roxy said from the front. "None of us thought it would look good if I show up with my 'husband' and five other women in tow. Too many mundanes work for the police."

  Sean nodded, "Make's sense."

  "Of course it does," Roberta agreed. "Though I'd hoped to get Cali to go with us, we really need to take you clothes shopping, girl."

  "What's wrong with the way I dress?" Cali asked with a pout.

  "It's distracting."

  "But I like distracting!" Cali giggled.

  Sean looked at Cali, who as usual was wearing skintight clothing, as well as showing a fair deal of her very dark skin. Then he looked at Roberta who had a tendency towards robes and more concealing clothing.

  "You know, Roberta," Sean smiled, "maybe I should let Cali do your clothes shopping. You'd look pretty good in a nice thin, skintight t-shirt and some yoga pants."

  "You're already distracted enough, Sean!" Roberta said, but Sean could see she was blushing slightly.

  "Don't worry, I'll drag her by Victoria's Secret," Jolene snickered. "I'm sure we'll all find you some nice 'distracting' items while we're there!"

  "Well, there goes getting him out of bed before noon tomorrow!" Daelyn whispered loudly to Roxy, who laughed, as now it was Sean's turn to blush.

  Ride Along

  The reception at the police headquarters was rather warm, everyone there knew who Roxy was of course, and from some of the comments Sean overheard, they knew who he was as well. Namely he was the first boyfriend that her father had not only not been able to run off, but apparently liked.

  Sean was also surprised that Cali didn't get a second glance from anybody there considering her exotic looks, proving that once again, in Las Vegas nothing stood out anymore.

  "Roxy, Sean, Cali," Bill said getting up and coming around the desk, to hug his daughter a
nd then shake hands with Sean and Cali. "How'd the meeting with Ted go?"

  Sean shook his head and smiled a little wryly, "You were right about him being sneaky, though on the other hand, you were the one who sent me over there."

  Bill grinned, "Ted's always been totally ruthless about getting what he wants. He's just good at hiding it behind a smile and kind words. Come on, let's go for a drive, I've got a car out back," Bill said and led them out of the building. Once they were away from any listeners, he continued.

  "When the feds finally forced the mobsters to pull out of Vegas, it became a constant battle to keep any of the councils from trying to set up a house here as well as reining in the excesses of any visiting mages who figured that with the mob gone, they could do whatever they wanted.

  "Then we get kids coming here from Reno, Phoenix, L.A., all thinking that they can do whatever they want now that they're away from Mom and Dad who are always railing on about 'don't mess with the mundanes!' On top of all of that, we get powerful mages with their entourages coming from all over the country and the rest of the world who are used to being able to do whatever they want, to whomever they want.

  "Now, when the mobs ran things, you stepped out of line, you either paid a fine, got a beating, or you got whacked. Step out of line enough times or too far, and you got whacked, period. They never cut the mages any slack, anything that messed with the casinos, they wouldn't put up with, and they had very liberal views about what they considered to be messing with their business interests."

  "And that all went away when the mobs left?"

  Bill looked around, "Not exactly. They'd taken the time to set a lot of things up to run a certain way, and it was just easier to keep some of those things running when you consider the number of magic users, lycans, and other things supernatural in the area. I think I told you that the mob bosses had put several lycans in key positions in the county, and a lot of that held on.

  "Same is true for the mages who worked for them. Most of them stayed and became freelancers for the casinos."

  "So the casinos know about magic users?"

  "Management does. You have to if you don't want to go out of business. And while all of the casinos are pretty heavily warded, as a warning to any magic users who come to gamble, you always get that one idiot who thinks that the rules don't apply to them. So the managers call in one of the freelancers to have a little talk with the offender, then they either fine him or give him a beating and run him out of town."