Blood Gamble (Disrupted Magic Book 2)

by Melissa F. Olson

  Arthur and Lucy must have asked around until they learned of the most disgruntled null on the planet: the one who worked for a controlling, sadistic bully. What had Jameson said to me? I trust how much they want what they’re doing here, and that they need me to do it. No wonder he was sure that Lucy and Arthur would protect him. He was a big part of their extermination plan.

  “It’s one big trap,” I murmured. “Lure vampires to Vegas, sic Jameson on them, and kill them at your leisure.” I should have seen it.

  “Indeed,” Dashiell said gravely. “They’ve killed relatively few so far, but Demeter has only been open for a week, not quite long enough for vampires to make the voyage to Las Vegas. The longer the show goes on, the more vampires will arrive to see it, and the more of them will fall victim.”

  “But they can’t get away with it forever,” I protested. “Eventually some cardinal vampire somewhere would notice . . . right?”

  “It depends on how much care they took. If you hadn’t traveled to Las Vegas and made inquiries, the Holmwoods could likely have spent years massacring vampires before anyone noticed.”

  “And they’ve got Silvio to hide behind,” I realized. Anyone who tried to punish the Holmwoods in the Las Vegas territory would need to go through the cardinal vampire first, and he was a big enough dick to call and warn them.

  “I want you to come home,” Dashiell declared.

  “What?” I forced myself back to the conversation. “Why? What will you do?”

  Brief pause. “I’m . . . not sure.” That might have been the first time I’d ever heard uncertainty in his voice. “If there was still a vampire council I would go to them, but our highest court was dismantled centuries ago. I will probably have to declare war on the Las Vegas territory, and attack them myself.”

  “Wait, you mean like, yourself yourself? In person?” As powerful as he was, Dashiell rarely left Pasadena, let alone the state. You don’t send the president to the front lines; it’s just too risky.

  “Yes,” he said grimly. “I’ll have to. The only course I can see would be to defeat Silvio—which shouldn’t be terribly hard, if what you’re saying is true—take the city, and try Arthur and Lucy for crimes against vampires. At that point I will need to dispatch them.”

  My head was spinning. I slipped off the edge of the couch, onto the floor, where I could lean my back against something firm. “And Jameson?”

  “Him too, I’m afraid,” Dashiell said. He had the grace to be somber about it. “If you’re right, he has been, at the very least, an accessory to the murder of forty vampires. He needs to die. Or at least be handed over to his old master for punishment.”

  “You would give him to Malcolm?” I echoed. “You can’t do that. If Malcolm knows what Jameson has done—”

  “Jameson was Malcolm’s responsibility,” Dashiell said flatly. There was no room in his tone for arguing. “And I suspect that Malcolm already knows. That is why he sent his own team of skinners to kill the null.”

  Ohhhhh. God, the hits just kept on coming. I’d wondered why the skinners had come after Jameson with the intention of killing him; this explained it. Malcolm wouldn’t want Jameson to be able to point a finger of blame at him, or tell anyone Malcolm’s secrets in exchange for leniency. Jameson was a liability as long as he was alive. If he were dead, though, Malcolm would bear no responsibility for this mess.

  “This isn’t Jameson’s fault,” I whispered. “What Malcolm did to him . . .”

  “Jameson is an adult now. He made his choices, Scarlett,” Dashiell said, not unkindly. “He has to answer for them.”

  I sat up. Wyatt had moved around the room into my eyeline and was giving me a desperate what’s going on look. I shook my head at him, scrubbing at my eyes with the back of my hand. Dashiell was right, of course. Jameson wasn’t innocent in this. Jameson had turned vampires human and then murdered them, or stood by while the Holmwoods murdered them. He’d lied to me, and then taken me to bed. I should have been happy to hand him over to Dashiell or Malcolm for punishment . . . but that just wasn’t what my heart was telling me. Despite everything, I still wanted to save him.

  Jesse’s words came back to me. You are the champion of all the people who fall through those cracks. I had saved Molly. Why couldn’t I save Jameson, too?

  Then a terrible new thought struck me. “Dashiell,” I said, “if you come to Vegas and attack Silvio first, won’t that give the Holmwoods a chance to run?”

  Wyatt’s jaw clenched with anger. On the phone, there was the briefest pause, and then Dashiell said, “It’s likely, yes. But I have no authority to come after the Holmwoods unless they’re in my territory. At the very least, this will shut down Demeter and stop the immediate killings. If I can get the word out, it may also force the Holmwoods into hiding.”

  “But then they won’t answer for their crimes,” I reasoned, thinking of Ellen. Wyatt, who could only hear my side of the conversation, started shaking his head vehemently. He was used to having super hearing, which would make this particularly frustrating. I held up a hand, gesturing again for him to wait.

  I felt so conflicted. I didn’t want the Holmwoods to get away with murder . . . but at the same time, maybe they would take Jameson with them, and he’d be safe.

  As if he could hear me, Dashiell added, “Malcolm won’t stop hunting Jameson until he’s dead. Even if he escapes with the Holmwoods, Malcolm’s skinners will track them down eventually.”

  “So not only would the Holmwoods have a chance to escape, but you would have to leave LA,” I concluded. “The city would be vulnerable. And you would be vulnerable, coming here with Jameson running around. No offense, Dashiell, but your plan is crap.”

  Wyatt’s eyes widened—probably he hadn’t heard a lot of people talk to a cardinal vampire like that, but I didn’t care. We needed Dashiell in LA. He and I didn’t always see eye to eye—okay, we rarely saw eye to eye on anything—but if we lost him, I doubted that Will, Kirsten, and whatever much weaker vampire replaced Dashiell would be able to hold the city for long. And that was assuming the next vampire who stepped up was even willing to work with Will and Kirsten. Not everyone agreed with Dashiell’s ideas about sharing power.

  For once, he didn’t admonish me for my disrespect. He just said, “Arthur and Lucy can’t be allowed to continue as they are, Scarlett. I see no other course of action.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling the tears sliding down my cheeks. “I do,” I said into the phone. “And since, as you said, I am here on my own time, in someone else’s territory, I am going to hang up before you can forbid it. If I don’t come back, please take care of Jack and his family for me.”

  “Scarlett—”

  I pushed the button and put the phone down on the coffee table. It began to ring again almost immediately, of course. I looked around for a second, picked up one of my boots that had a small heel, and pounded it on the cell phone until it stopped ringing. Then I kept hitting it for a little while, because it made my hands hurt and I wanted that.

  Wyatt watched this whole thing dispassionately. When there were no more pieces on the table big enough to stomp, I dropped the boot and looked at him. “How much of that did you get?” I said in a clear voice. I was weirdly proud of that.

  “Most of it, I think.”

  “Okay. We are going to make a new deal.”

  Wyatt raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  I nodded. “Arthur and Lucy Holmwood are responsible for Ellen’s death. My friend Jameson, the other null, is probably helping them kill as many vampires as they can. I’ll get you the Holmwoods, but in return, I want you to let Jameson slide.”

  Wyatt immediately began arguing with that, but I stood up and shouted over him until he stopped. “I know! I know Jameson has helped them do terrible things,” I said hotly. “Maybe he even pulled the trigger himself. But you”—I pointed a finger at him—“do not know what it is to be a null, and neither of us can imagine what Jameson was put through by the cardinal vampire of
New York. So you are going to give him a pass, or I will not help you. You can take your money and shove it up your ass.”

  We stared at each other for a long, tense moment. I didn’t say that if he didn’t take the deal, I would stop him from leaving the hotel room. I was afraid I would have to back it up . . . actually, I was really scared of the idea that I might back it up. I could throw a knife into this man’s neck to save Jameson, and I didn’t want to face that about myself.

  I just prayed he wouldn’t make me.

  Nearly a full minute ticked by in agonizing tension before Wyatt’s shoulders relaxed. “Fine,” he said, looking sullen. I pushed out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. “Your boy can walk. But in return, I want your word that if you and I both get through this, you will help me die.”

  I winced, but how could I say no? Just a second ago, I’d seriously considered killing Wyatt to save Jameson. How was this any different? “Agreed.”

  To my surprise, Wyatt stepped forward, holding out his hand for me to shake, like we were schoolkids making a bet at recess. He was so deadly serious, though, that there was nothing I could do but stand up and shake hands. His grip was firm.

  When I released his hand, I said, “Now we just have to figure out where to find them. The theater is too public, and . . .” I trailed off. Wyatt was smiling under the big handlebar mustache. It was not a happy smile. “What?” I asked.

  “I can help with that.” He held up his phone. “That call I just got? It was Lucy Holmwood her-goddamned-self. She wanted to invite me to a party tonight.”

  Chapter 27

  “Okay, wait. What exactly did she say?” I asked.

  “That the Holmwoods are having a VIP party for some of the area vampires at midnight, and they’re hoping I’ll join them,” he reported. “I’m not supposed to tell people about it, but I can invite another vampire to accompany me.”

  “Do you think they invited you because they know that you hired me?”

  “We’re not even sure they know you’re in town,” he pointed out.

  “Silvio might have told them.” I told him about my little appearance at the cardinal vampire’s penthouse. This made Wyatt grin.

  “Damn, I would have loved to see that,” he said happily. “Anyway, it’s possible that Silvio told them about you, but I wouldn’t lay any money on it. The whole reason the Holmwoods picked him instead of Minerva is because Silvio is stupid. And arrogant. He won’t want the Holmwoods to know that some little girl—pardon me, that’s how he would see it—is causing trouble for him. Would your friend Jameson have told the Holmwoods about you?”

  “He said he didn’t.” Of course, he’d said a lot of other things that had turned out to be not true. I knew I couldn’t trust Jameson, but . . . dammit, in my gut, I still couldn’t believe he’d hurt me. If he wanted me dead, or even out of the way, he could have easily arranged to have me attacked, or done it himself. Instead, he’d twisted himself in knots to get me to leave town voluntarily.

  Maybe it was stupid, and maybe I was being naive, but I was going to trust that Jameson didn’t want me dead. Therefore, he was probably telling the truth when he said the Holmwoods didn’t know I was in town—at least not from him. “But if they don’t know about me,” I said to Wyatt, “why are they inviting you to the party? There are plenty of vampires in Las Vegas.”

  “Because I’ve been asking around about the missing vampires,” he said sensibly. Right. The list I had asked him to make. “I’m thinking they suspect me of planning something, but they don’t know for sure.” Wyatt shrugged. “Either way, I’m a loose end. They probably figured I would accompany Ellen to their last killing party, and since I didn’t, and I’ve been poking around, I need to die.”

  “It’s awfully cocky,” I said, not liking it. “They think you’re onto them, and they invite you to come anyway? That makes no sense.”

  He suppressed a smile. “That’s because you’re thinking of me as a vampire, and therefore a threat. Ellen and I, we’ve always kept to ourselves. We interact”—he caught himself, cleared his throat, and corrected—“interacted more with Laurel and her family than with other vampires, which has never gone over real well. No one in the Las Vegas community sees me as anything but a weakling who avoids his own kind.”

  “Still . . . if they know you’ve been asking around, they must be expecting you to try something.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “My guess is, they’ll keep your friend Jameson away from everyone at the beginning of the party. That way, if I do storm in there guns blazing, Lucy and Arthur will be able to take me down right quick. Assuming I behave myself, the null shows up and I get killed with everybody else.”

  He sounded so matter-of-fact about it that it weirded me out a little. But I was convinced. “So where is this shindig, anyway?” I asked.

  “They’ve got it set up at Erson Station.” Before I could ask, he added, “It’s a historical site, about an hour outside of Vegas, near the Valley of Fire State Park. It’s also rented out for events.”

  “What kind of station?”

  California girl that I was, I was thinking fire station or maybe bus station, but Wyatt said, “Back in the 1860s, Samuel Erson’s ranch was a regular stop for stagecoaches and the Pony Express line. Sam added on a great big boardinghouse for guests and his own family. The ranch outbuildings are mostly gone now, but the boardinghouse is in good condition. It’s sort of a . . . well, not a museum, exactly, but a minor landmark.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  Wyatt squinted at me. “Miss Scarlett, I helped Sam nail the original shingles on the roof.”

  Ah yes. Vampires. “Is it a good place to kill a bunch of people?”

  He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “After Sam’s death, the property changed hands a few times. Before it became a historical site, the boardinghouse spent a few decades as a gentlemen’s shooting club.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just what it sounds like. There’s a lot of land behind the building, so they would bring in pheasants, or sometimes other small game that’s not native to the area, and the men would pay to hunt them. The whole back area is a killing ground.”

  It took me a second, but I finally understood. “It’s covered in bullet holes. They’re planning to shoot all of you.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Behind the boardinghouse there’s a natural canyon, walls on three sides. It fills with water during the rainy season, but most of the year it’s dry enough that they rent it out for weddings. When the property was a shooting club, they would herd animals toward the canyon and trap them there.”

  “That doesn’t sound very sporting,” I muttered. “But you’re right, it sounds like the perfect place to kill people.”

  “The Holmwoods could have killing parties every weekend, take out a dozen or more vampires, and no one would be the wiser.”

  Dashiell had said that the show hadn’t been open long enough for many vampires to travel to see it. Once they began arriving, there would be lots more of them to kill. “What about the bodies?”

  A shrug. “Like I said, plenty of space on all sides. They can bury them on-site.”

  “Jesus.” Say what you will about LA, but you have to go a long ways out of town before a mass grave would go unnoticed. I got up and paced the room a little, thinking it over. This was usually the moment in any given skirmish when I would step back and let the professional ass-kickers make a plan. I was not the planner. Generally speaking, I would classify myself as “reluctant participant.”

  “Hold on,” I said to Wyatt. I paced a few feet away and called Jesse.

  When he answered, I could hear some sort of shouting match going on in the background. “Hey, Scar, it’s not really a good time,” Jesse yelled.

  “What’s going on?” I said anxiously. “Is it Shadow?”

  “No, Shadow’s fine—although she did try to eat a Pomeranian yesterday; Corry stopped her—Hey!” There was a muffled th
ump, and then Jesse yelled, “Dammit, stay where you are!” To me, he added, “Kirsten caught one of her witches selling ‘holistic plastic surgery’ to human women in Bel Air.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Yeah, I wish. Anyway, Kirsten figured it out when one of the ‘procedures’ went wrong, and now we’ve got a human with some serious cosmetic issues, and the witch who did it keeps trying to get away before Kirsten can get the spell out of her. Ow!”

  “Are you okay?”

  “She bit me!” he said incredulously. “Scar, I gotta call you back.” He hung up the phone.

  Well, shit. I felt bad that Jesse was dealing with that situation because of my absence, but there was little I could do to help him.

  Meanwhile, I still needed advice from someone accustomed to storming castles. After a moment of hesitation, I placed another call—to Boulder, Colorado. Allison Luther scared me a little, but she also owed me a favor.

  It rang twice, and then a brusque voice said, “Scarlett.” Lex always answered the phone brusquely. Or maybe that was just when I called. “I heard you met Sashi.”

  “What—oh, right. Yeah.” I had forgotten all about my meeting with the thaumaturge witch. “She’s . . . nice.”

  “I take it that’s not what you’re calling about,” Lex said, her voice guarded. “What’s going on?”

  “I need advice,” I began, hating the way that sounded, like I was a fourteen-year-old with boy problems. “Um . . . tactical advice, I guess? Have you got a minute?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Making an effort to be as concise as possible, I ran her through the situation: Demeter, Jameson, the Holmwoods, their intention to kill vampires. I was halfway through the story before I remembered that Lex herself was dating a vampire, last I heard. Boundary witches and vampires were the big exception to that whole “Old World inter-dating” stigma. That might work in my favor: unlike many witches, Lex wouldn’t be immediately prejudiced against the undead.