“You requested an ass saving, Mr. Sterling. This service has cheerfully been provided to you.”
He laughed. “Free of charge?”
“No. I could use a cup of coffee.”
“Coffee.” He rubbed his jaw, and carefully put the sunglasses back on. “I don’t think I want to be out here without these,” he admitted. “I like the lights too much. Come on.” He took her hand again as the lightshow faded from the overhead projectors. “I could use a cup of coffee too.”
There were shops wedged in between casino entrances, and plenty of carts and kiosks in the street hawking everything a tourist could want. It wasn’t long before they found a vendor selling pastries and coffee, both hot and cold.
When they got in line, Char wasn’t surprised that there was a vampire waiting in front of them. Within a few moments she became aware of another one behind them. How predictable, she thought. I bet most of this place’s business is from us.
“I won’t be surprised if the vendor is one of us,” Geoff answered her thought.
“Me, either,” said the vampire woman behind them.
While Char didn’t mind that Geoff Sterling picked up her surface thoughts, Char turned around angrily to face the woman who’d rudely intruded.
“Hi, Val,” Geoff greeted the woman before Char could say anything. “You didn’t go to the party.”
“I went,” this Val person answered. She gave Geoff a vaguely annoyed look. “You didn’t.”
He made a dismissive gesture. “And we’re both here now. Charlotte McCairn,” he said. “Meet my business partner, Valentine.”
Char was stunned, though she didn’t know why. He hadn’t said he worked with a companion or slaves. Why not go into business with another vampire? This also brought into doubt her assumption about his being a strig. “You two share a nest?”
Valentine regarded Char out of huge, dark eyes. There was humor in those eyes, and lots and lots of secrets. This vampire friend of Geoff’s was very old, Char realized. Small, beautiful, and—
“Built like a brick shithouse,” Valentine supplied.
“I wasn’t thinking that,” Char answered quickly. It was hard not to notice Valentine’s figure in the skimpy little black dress she was wearing.
“Jealous?” Geoff asked.
“Of what?” Char demanded. “I’m not so bad loo—”
“That wasn’t what I meant.” The way he looked her over was very disconcerting. So disconcerting that her claws and fangs started to come out.
“Not here, children. ” Valentine’s hand landed on Char’s shoulder, sending a comforting warmth like nothing she’d ever felt before through Char. “She’s blushing, Geoffrey,” Valentine said. “Don’t tease. Go get us some coffee,” she added. She pointed toward a row of benches in the center of the street. “We’ll be waiting over there.”
Char realized the three of them had moved out of the line when Geoff dutifully returned to waiting. And she dutifully accompanied Valentine through the tourist crowd to the benches. Valentine’s attention was drawn to the crowd after they were seated. The mortals passing by took no notice of them as they strolled and shopped, waiting for the light and music show overhead to begin again. The vampires intent on their own wait paid them even less attention.
“You’re here looking for someone,” Char concluded. “Not Geoff.”
Valentine sighed. “So I am. Don’t know why I’m bothering. You haven’t seen Duke around, have you?”
“I don’t know what he looks like.”
Valentine gave her a sideways look. “You know a Nighthawk when you see one?”
Geoff joined them before Char could answer. He held a tall paper cup in each hand. Char was distracted by the fresh-brewed scent. He handed one of the cups to her.
“Keep it,” Valentine said when Geoff turned to her. “Have a seat.” She took a cell phone out of her purse as Geoff sat down. She punched numbers, waited, then said, “It’s me. What do you mean how’d I get your number? Thought you’d like to know that there may be a situation, and the local boy doesn’t seem to be around. You know the new hotel in town? Think there might be some trouble because of it. I’ll call you back.”
Char strained to hear the voice on the other side of the conversation, but could not make anything out before Valentine turned off the phone and put it away. Valentine glanced at Char and Geoff. “She wants me to call her on a landline.”
“Who?” they both asked.
All of Char’s psychic warning bells were going off. “What’s going on? Who are you?”
Valentine seemed to have forgotten them for the moment. She looked at the passing people with wide, frightened eyes. Char could feel the woman’s fear of the crowd like a weight on her own chest.
“I don’t want to be here,” Valentine said. “Too much. Too open.”
“Stop it, Val.” Geoff spoke loudly and harshly. “Keep it together. If you’re involved in something, you can’t make excuses.”
Valentine took a few deep breaths, then turned a glare on Geoff. “I hate you.”
He smiled. “Good. What’s up?”
Char recognized Valentine’s problem, and was not sure she approved of Sterling’s lack of sympathy for his partner’s fear of crowds. But from his own gesture of making himself stare into the most intent lights he could find, she supposed his approach to therapy was a brutally direct one.
Valentine drained Geoff’s cup of scalding coffee before she answered. “I’m looking for Eddie,” she said, and got to her feet. “He’ll know what’s up.”
Geoff got up, and Char stood as well. She was totally confused, but felt she needed to do something, something official and Enforcer-like. But what the hell was the crisis?
“What do you want with Eddie?” Geoff asked.
“How can we help?” Char asked Valentine.
“We?”
“You two can look for the Scrolls of Silk,” Valentine answered. She turned away, then paused and looked over her shoulder. “But don’t read them,” she ordered. “They’ll make you go blind.”
Then she disappeared. Not only did Valentine wrap the few shadows that existed in the brightly lit area around her, she vanished so quickly and completely that Char couldn’t feel even the residue of Valentine’s passing.
She gaped at Geoff. “Who is she?”
“You don’t want to know,” he answered.
“What are the Scrolls of Silk?”
He held his hand out to her again. “Let’s go find out, shall we?”
Chapter 10
CHAR CAME IN late, way late. Just before dawn. Haven felt her exhaustion and worry, even through his own troubles. She fell into bed beside him, and into the vampire death trance before Haven had a chance to struggle to a sitting position so he could talk to her. He cursed dawn for robbing him of his chance. Then closed his eyes again on a moan. Char lay beside him, stiff as stone, skin growing cold, in a place where he could do nothing to warn her. He feared he was too weak to help her.
He’d been in their hotel room for hours, nursing a headache like nothing he’d ever felt before. He’d been passing out, waking up, throwing up, and passing out again since Baker helped him out of the Silk Road bar and back to the hotel. The only reason he kept fighting back to consciousness was because he needed to tell Char what had happened. Only after a while memory began to fade against the fierce onslaught of the pain.
There was nothing he could do for now but rest, stop fighting the darkness. Char couldn’t fight the dark; maybe he needed the same kind of rest she did. He’d been assaulted by one hell of a burst of magic. Magic made Char what she was. Maybe he’d had a dose of the same stuff. Like radiation poisoning.
“Magic,” he mumbled, and fumbled to find her. It took so much work to roll over and wrap his arms around her stiff, still form. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to protect her or draw comfort from knowing she was there with him. He did let the darkness take him, and couldn’t remember how long it had been since he
’d last slept even as he fell asleep.
The dream was a real ball buster, so bad that Haven woke up screaming. He cut the sound off fast enough when he jerked to a sitting position. He wasn’t surprised when the hangover from hell hit him, and he almost welcomed the pain. It didn’t hurt as much as the torture in the dream. In the dream he’d been burning, fire eating through him, frying away skin and muscle, burrowing into bone. God, it hurt!
The headache pounded and pulsed in his temples, but it was simple, ordinary pain. It was residue from a burst of magic, but that was ordinary for his world. He gave a quick glance down at the statue that would be his girlfriend in a few hours, patted her unfeeling rump, then went to down aspirin, a glass of whiskey, and take a quick shower. This treatment helped enough to get him functional.
Once dressed, he was reluctant to head back to the Silk Road. After last night the place scared him. The fear, more than anything else, even more than curiosity or the need to protect his lover, was what got him going. There was nothing from hell that Jebel Haven couldn’t face down.
The way he figured it, the more demons he dealt with now, the less he’d have to deal with when he landed in the fiery pit.
Which brought back memory of the dream so vivid it made him shudder. He hoped to God it was a dream. Now that was a crazy thought, but what had happened was crazy. And that red stone—fire red and blood red—
He reached the elevator and paused until he forced the thoughts down and out of the moment.
Clare Murphy was waiting for him at the lobby entrance. She handed him a badge with his name on it.
“All-access pass?” Haven asked, clipping the badge onto his jacket collar.
“Something like that. It’s coded to let you into any area I have access to.”
Haven tilted his head to one side and gave the woman a not altogether teasing smile. “Does that include the money vault?”
“Ben wouldn’t approve of that,” was the companion’s answer.
Haven considered pointing out that revolutions, even revolutions against creatures of the night, required a certain amount of financing. He let it go. Better to concentrate on the help the woman wanted and could give to the cause.
“Let me give you the tour,” she said, and led him into the lobby.
“I need some information,” he said, but she ignored him.
Gesturing toward the painted ceiling several stories overhead, she said, “See the night sky motif? It’s significant.”
Haven looked up. The paint and lighting design gave the look of a very real, very starry night. The black eyes of security cameras also looked down out of this star-filled work of art, but that was a normal part of all Las Vegas décor. It wasn’t the security she was warning him about, but some vampire thing.
“I already know the interior design of this place is supposed to reflect an eternal summer night at a desert oasis. I’ve read the brochures.” When she gave him an impatient look, he gave in and asked, “What’s the significance?”
Murphy looked pleased, in the same way Char did when he fell for a question that led to an hour’s worth of geekspeak answer.
“Rumor has it,” she told him, “that the lobby ceiling was designed to exactly duplicate the positions of the stars the night the vampire city was destroyed.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Meaning that the exact location of the ruins of the city can be determined by studying this star chart.”
She seemed so pleased to be passing on this information that Haven held back any sarcastic comments about why anyone would care about finding the lost city. He supposed Char would care. He also didn’t point out that he doubted this rumor. Vampires did not go around dropping clues to their existence. “It’s not smart,” he muttered. “Not safe.”
She nodded. “I know. Come see the museum,” she said, as though refuting this last thought.
“Fine.” The quicker they got the tour over with, the sooner they could get to things he wanted to discuss.
They crossed the lobby, went down a wide hallway, and climbed up a grand staircase to where a line of people waited to go through a pair of gold doors. Murphy took him around the line, around a corner, and used her key card to open a door into a small room full of monitors and other security equipment. A pair of uniformed guards were in the room, their attention on the screens and boards. Only one of them looked away from the job when Murphy brought Haven inside.
The guard watched the door until Murphy secured it once more. Then he looked at Haven while he asked Murphy, “What’s up, boss?”
“These are members of Ben’s nest,” Murphy told Haven instead of answering the guard. “Only underneath people work this room. We’re going into the exhibit,” she told her underling.
The guard took his attention off them as Murphy spoke. The pair were slaves, Haven guessed, who knew to mind their own business around their betters. Haven’s skin crawled at this example of the vampire way of life and he momentarily wondered why he was looking to protect the Nighthawks from attack by another bunch of bloodsuckers.
Char, he reminded himself. Only for Char. And oh, yeah, the possibility that he might end up a Nighthawk himself.
Murphy took him through another door on the other side of the security station, and Haven noted how this door disappeared against the wall once it was closed.
“The place is full of hidden doors and corridors,” Murphy said when she noticed him studying the spot where he knew the door was. She ran her hand along the wall. “Some of it’s part of the hotel’s theme. Mysterious secret corridors and treasure chambers and hidden gardens and stuff like that. There’s a map to some of them on sale in the gift shops.”
They kept their voices low, careful not to draw attention from the tourists filing by the nearby display cases.
“And the real secret chambers?” Haven asked.
“I know most of them.”
“Vampires sleep in them.”
“Some do. Most aren’t that paranoid.”
It was true that in this day and age most vampires only feared Enforcers, and then only if they trespassed against the numerous Laws.
“Martina’s bunch hang out in the secret crypts?”
Murphy nodded. “Most of the time, yes.”
“You know where they are?”
She nodded again. She held up a hand in warning. “They have their own separate alarm systems, and they have a group of slaves and companions specifically dedicated to protecting the nest members. Even if I could unlock all the doors for you, it’d still be hard to take them out in their sleep.”
He gave a casual shrug. “Might be worth a shot.”
“We want to protect the Nighthawks without giving ourselves away. Better if an Enforcer takes on the job.”
“I could still take a look at their place.”
“You could, but since none of Martina’s vampires or their security mortals are sleeping in the vault today, any stray explosive stakes you might be carrying on your person won’t have the chance to get buried in any vampires’ hearts while you are casually having a look around.”
Haven frowned at her easy reading of his intentions, and in disappointment at a missed opportunity. She gave a smug smile in response.
“Okay,” he acknowledged. “No striking blows for the revolution just because I’m in a bad mood.” After last night’s meeting with the smug Geoff Sterling, the incident in the bar, and the bad dream, Haven was edgy. Killing a monster would help his mood. “If they’re not at home today, where are they?” it finally occurred to him to ask.
“Don’t know,” Clare answered. “Yet. And I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.”
Not one bit. Maybe Martina’s vampires were asleep. But what were their mortals up to? Was Char in danger of being discovered? His immediate impulse was to head back to their room to watch over her. His second impulse was to go hunting for Martina.
“What are you doing about it?” he asked Clare Murphy.
&n
bsp; “I’ve got people trying to find them, but no luck so far. Martina has no right being out in the city,” she went on. “It’s Ben’s territory. If Ben wasn’t so involved with the new boy toy, he’d have told me to report Martina and her crew to the Enforcer’s companion if I caught them being out after daylight.”
Haven considered this for a moment, then said, “You called the Enforcer’s companion without waiting for Ben’s permission.”
“Of course. Not that it’s going to do any good.” Her lips thinned to an angry line. “Damn Duke. He’s useless—which I normally don’t mind.”
“Why won’t it do any good? The local Enforcer ought to be the one to take this nest down.”
“Duke let them build this place. He took their bribes. I don’t know what he told the Council.”
She gestured toward the display cases. Haven could feel the pulse of power in the room, like the vibrations of a huge engine. His headache was starting up again.
“Duke’s useless,” Murphy went on. “And now he’s missing.”
Haven’s headache spiked on a surge of warning. “Missing?”
“Skipped town’s my guess. His companion’s frantic.” Murphy moved away from the wall. “Let’s get back to the tour. There’s something I want you to see.”
“Fine,” Haven agreed between gritted teeth. He supposed he ought to get a look at this stuff. Maybe there was a weapon he could use in the piled-up magical clutter.
He thought she’d take him on a case-by-case tour of Ibis’s magic shop, but instead she led him to one specific case. There were three objects inside. He recognized two of them. He could tell by only looking at it that the small gold ring with a carved carnelian scarab bezel was far heavier than it looked. It was ancient, and full of something.
“A soul was poured into it,” he said. “Somehow.”
“Yes,” Murphy agreed. “That’s what the announcer would say if you pushed the button on the case.”
Okay, so he was picking up the magic vibes from an old ring. “Never mind. It’s not important.” He pointed at the gold cup—and the faceted red stone. “Those—”
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