I stared into Captain Guin’s eyes, whispering softly to draw her attention. “Colt’s mother is a deranged goddess. If he gets a booboo, she will come raging through this city and every cop will be dead by nightfall—if she’s that merciful.”
Julia looked rather unconcerned about the prospect. She said, “Grandfather alone can destroy this city. He destroyed Atlantis, you know, and I don’t mean the casino.”
Captain Guin’s stare slid over to my daughter.
Julia continued, “If you hurt my Dad or stupid Little Brother, I of course will do much worse.” She was bluffing, but Captain Guin didn’t know that, or even what Julia’s real nature might prove to be.
Sitting on his ass on the floor, their pet wizard was doing his best to draw no attention to himself. His advice was notably absent. They needed to get a refund on his services.
Captain Guin slowly holstered her gun and drew a deep breath. “Everybody, stand down. Las Vegas doesn’t need a Red Moon Apocalypse like L.A. got a few years ago. We over-reacted. Our bad.”
All their guns went away.
My demons became people again as their magical disguise reset themselves.
Colt became a nine-year old with a hard, stubborn expression on his face that warned he wouldn’t be asking Captain Guin into his harem anytime soon. Her loss. As for the general public that witnessed it all, who were babbling in the background like idiots: Fuck ‘em. They’ll have to learn sooner or later that the world is mine.
Captain Guin said, “Mr. Deathwalker, if it’s not too late, I’d like to take you up on your kind offer.”
I just stared at her, waiting for her to finish her request.
“Your offer to use the Feather of Osiris.”
I pulled out my phone very slowly so no jumpy person would do something stupid. “Fine. But let’s be clear that you owe me.”
She gave a sharp nod. “I do.”
Hans was on his feet beside her again. He touched her sleeve. “Captain, I’m sorry. I thought I could just take a quick peek and…”
She twitched her sleeve out of his grasp and spoke without looking at him. “Hans, go to the vehicles and wait for us there.”
“But Captain—”
“Now!”
He left.
I stepped away and made my call to the Old Man. After he answered, I said, “We have a situation with the police in the lobby. Someone’s left a body on our doorstep. I need you to bring the Feather of Osiris and all of our people down to the lobby.”
“On my way.”
I put away my phone,
Cousin Kinsey and Uncle Drake weren’t technically “our people” not being in the demon clan, but I had a feeling they’d show up as well as Izumi, my Ice Queen. She wasn’t going to let anything happen to me before I knocked her up and she had her kid. I kind of wondered how important I’d be to her after that.
I saw the toms from the bar leaving discretely without trying to get my attention. Given the presence of cops, I understood why. Gemma must have decided to stay for a few drinks more. Or to follow up on that idea of talking to Josh about taking on her son’s rehabilitation.
I should give him another call, give him a head’s up.
Guin’s phone chimed for attention. She pulled it out. “Captain Helland. Yes. I see. Thank you.” She put her phone away, her eyes seeking mine. “A preliminary finding. An accelerant was used on the female body. No magic there. The fire appears to have been an attempt to conceal the fact that a large patch of the woman’s skin was removed and taken as a trophy by the killer.”
I looked at Imari. “Skin-walker’s in the building, passing for human, maybe a maid, someone with room access. She’ll be after the sloth skin. Send a team to Josh’s room. Now!” I had my phone back in hand. I called. And called. The connection never went through to Josh and Kat. I had a horrible suspicion why.
“Come with me, Captain.” I stared her hard in the eyes. “Your killer’s striking again.”
I ran for the elevators, speed-dialing a number. The Old Man was a lot closer to Josh’s room then those of us in the lobby. I needed to get him off his retired ass so he could go save the day.
FIFTEEN
“The best way to avoid defeat
is to kick over the playing board.”
—Caine Deathwalker
On the elevator heading up, surrounded by police and demons, I still held my phone, waiting. Finally, the connection went through. “Old Man, I need you to cancel previous plans and haul ass over to Josh and Kat’s room. We think the skin-walker is impersonating hotel staff, a woman, and that she’ll be after Josh and that skin he brought back from the property.”
The Old Man’s voice boomed into my ear. “Now you tell me. I’ve already got a bunch of our people heading down. I’m with them.”
Captain Guin leaned in. “What’s he saying?”
I held up a palm shifting the mouthpiece of my phone away from my lips a moment. “Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” I put my phone back in place to talk to the Old Man. “Can you portal into Josh’s room?”
“I don’t know which room that is. If I had a seer to help guide my aim… What about Colt?”
“I’ll work it out. You should just get to Josh as soon as you can.”
Captain Guin said, “Caine, what the hell is all this about a skin-walker?”
“I guess it’s a she that’s been killing people in Arizona. I’ve been looking into it. We almost had her, but she got away. Listen, I need to make another call.” I called Izumi.
“Caine! How nice of you to finally call. Are you coming to the room?”
“I need you to do me a favor, honey. I need you to get over to Josh and Kat’s room and…”
“Josh and who? Never mind. I’m not at the hotel. I’m out having a spa treatment. They’re putting heated rocks on my spine.”
“I don’t have time to explain,” I said, “two of my people are being targeted by a killer. I’ve got to go.”
“You’re not avoiding me, are you? I’m feeling very neglected.”
At a spa? Not likely. “Sorry, I really do have to go.”
The elevator opened on the wrong floor. One of the cops held up a badge and told the people trying to get on to catch the next car. I grabbed Colt and dragged him off with me.
“I want to come too,” Julia yelled.
Colt snapped at her, “No!”
Imari yelled. “Caine! Be careful.”
Captain Guin followed me off, pausing to order her three remaining officers to continue with the elevator. The doors closed. The old couple with glasses that had tried to get on the elevator stared at us a second, then hurried off, uninterested in trouble.
I took Colt by the shoulders. “Can you home in on a person, or do you need to know a specific location to portal?”
“As long as I know the person—”
“Fine. Take us to Josh and Kat. Captain, I’d get my gun out if I were you. We may be jumping straight into a fight. Oh, if you see a giant liger, don’t get freaked and shoot him. He’s on our side.”
Red-copper light washed all around us. I felt gravity flutter. There was a diagonal lurch. The light broke up and we were in a hotel bedroom. And I saw why Josh and Kat hadn’t been answering their phone. They were half covered by a sheet. She was on top, straddling him, her bare back to us. From the urgent sounds escaping her throat, she was close to climaxing. She turned in place to see us, no doubt wondering about the red-copper light that had preceded us. Her cat ears were out. Her eyes had a feral gleam. Her voice was rough, with a rough quality as she squalled at me. “Caine! What the fuck.”
Joshua’s deep voice slapped us. “You better have a good reason for this.”
“Skin-walker’s here. She’s killed someone in the parking garage. Probably after the prehistoric sloth skin. Where is it?”
Josh said, “I had the hotel take it for dry-cleaning.”
“Their idea or yours?” I asked.
He said, “Room servic
e came by a while ago. One of the maids suggested—”
I didn’t wait for anymore. I turned to Colt, who’d turned away from Kat to give her privacy. I grabbed his arm, turning him to face me. “Get us down to the front desk.”
Red-copper light wrapped us up again. Gravity fluttered, a quick departure and return. The light wash deposited us at the front desk. Only then did I think to warn Kat and Josh that a lot of armed people were quickly going to be barging in on them.
Oh, well, this will give them some real memories of Vegas to enjoy in years to come.
I slammed my palm on the unmanned front desk, wondering where the clerk had gotten off to. She came running around a partition, and recognized me as one of the new owners of the hotel. “Yes Sir, what can I do for you?”
Captain Guin held up her badge. “Call your hotel laundry and ask if they have a sloth skin there.”
“A very big sloth skin,” I added.
The clerk jumped on a hotel phone, punching a button for that department. With wide, spooked eyes, she looked at us. “That’s odd. Nobody is answering the phone.”
“Take us there,” I said.
She lifted a section of desk to making an opening. “If you’ll come through here and follow me…”
She led us into the back, where customers normally didn’t go. Partitioned desks gave way to a back door that opened on a tiled hallway. The clerk took us another hallway, then another. And then we were outside double swinging doors. A sign on the wall said: LAUNDRY. EMPLOYEES ONLY.
Colt tried to stop, but I kept him going with a friendly shove. He hit the swinging doors and went on through. I followed, wondering where the hell he came by such a well-behaved disposition. Certainly, not from me.
I told him. “There is a time and place for rules. This isn’t it.”
We passed through an area that looked little different from a commercial laundromat. There were laundry carts, machines to do the grunt work, steam presses for ironing, and hanging clothes waiting to be dry cleaned at the end of a mechanized track. The reason no one answered the phone was quite apparent. Numerous uniformed women littered the floor, all of them dead, staring, with deep slash wounds, twisted limbs, and broken bones poking out. A clawed creature had come through here and ripped everyone to bloody shreds.
Captain Guin called out, “Nobody touch anything. Caine, you and the boy get the hell out of here while I call in more help. It’s better if I don’t have to explain your involvement in this case, but don’t go far. I’m going to want to hear a lot more about this skin-walker.”
So much for getting out to the antique car show anytime soon.
“Sure, Captain. We’ll be in the lobby.” I walked Colt back the way we’d come. “Quite a mess, huh?”
“Yeah. I haven’t seen anything like that since Mom’s last gene-splicing experiment escaped its pit.”
“You know, I don’t usually have this much trouble with an enemy. I usually have intelligence to act upon, or at least educated guesses. Here, it’s like I’m two steps behind, and can’t catch up. And you don’t have the knowledge to portal me anywhere useful.”
Colt shrugged. “Your enemies usually go after you, but I guess this isn’t about you.”
“Then I need to figure what it is about. The Eyes of Bastet. The property in Arizona... The first known killings were there. The Eyes were supposed to be there, but aren’t. So, someone wants them, or—with as little luck as we’re having—they have the Eyes and are using them to get around me.”
“Uh, sure.” He agreed, but I wasn’t sure he at all followed my brilliant deductions.
“Colt, let’s assume the killer likes killing, but wants to avoid major trouble. She didn’t go after Josh and Kat. I haven’t been targeted for the same reason. Someone really fancies themselves a strategist and plays it safe.”
We were at the front desk again. A bunch of cops were running my way. I held up the desk section so they could pass and gave directions on getting to the laundry and Captain Helland. Guin could just owe me another one.
As we continued toward the lobby, Colt added to my earlier thoughts. “The killer is a strategist. A good one. We know because she’s winning. It is a she, right?”
“Likely. Most skin-walkers stick to impersonating the same gender as they are, a precaution against turning gay. Anyway, I shouldn’t be so far behind. I have a brain, too, you know?”
“Julia says that’s what makes you really scary; your random brilliance.”
“You just met Julia in our time, so I’m assuming future Julia told you that for some reason.”
He grinned. “I could confirm that guess, but the stability of the temporal multi-verse might be endangered.”
We went to an open couch and settled where we had a view to the front parking lot. A lot of black-and-white units were sitting out there, flashing red-and-blue lights. The hotel’s front doors—and probably a lot more—was being controlled by the police. An incoming couple with suitcases were turned back. It might take the rest of the night for the place to settle down. When news of the killings got around, we’d probably have a lot fewer guests staying here for a while.
Then again, this is Vegas. That might actually help business.
Julia showed up. She ignored Colt, taking a chair near my end of the couch. “Things have firmed up for the wedding. It’s in two days. I’ll have my dress tomorrow. And there’s an official coming from the Dragon World to do the ceremony, who will have the wedding properly registered at the Imperial Court.”
“Thanks for the official update,” I said. “I’ll try to make it.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the best man?” Julia asked.
“I am, in whatever company I keep...”
“The dark red’s a good choice,” Colt said. “It won’t show the blood too badly in the wedding pictures.”
Julia stared at him. “How did you know the bridesmaids’ dresses were garnet? We decided that today, and you weren’t around.”
I homed in on a more important point. “Blood?”
Colt looked awfully smug, feeling important because of his knowledge of the future. He had our full attention. “It’s the wedding of a dragon and an ex-demon lord. Blood is inevitable, especially now that you’ve decided to change the game to one you can win by kicking over the board. Which you used to tell me was a rude and childish thing to do when I did it to you.”
“You are a child,” I reminded him. “Homeschooling by a goddess-mother doesn’t change that. And there will always be one set of rules for me, and another for everybody else. That how I like things.”
I went silent, watching former-detective Eberhard Winter and my lawyer Angie talk their way past the police on the door. Angie wore a little red dress that matched her wild mane of hair. The skimpy outfit got me thinking impure thoughts—the dress’ fault. I knew she was off the market. Their match-up had come in a whirlwind, and might not last out the month, but if it went the distance, I wanted to be happy for her.
Julia looked at me. “You’re going to kick over a board?”
“Yeah. I just decided on it.”
Once inside, the new couple came straight toward me. Angie’s expression was severe and focused, her courtroom face. That changed when Colt leaped off the couch and almost tackled her with a hug. “Aunt Angie!”
She patted him like a dog, looking uncomfortable with a relationship that was still mostly in the future.
Colt pulled away and looked at Winter. “If you ever hurt her, Dad and I will kick your butt.”
Winter smiled, showing a bit of fang. His eyes flashed with amber heat. “And I’d be the first to get in line to help you with that. Angie’s important to me, too.”
Colt nodded and backed to the couch, flopping down again.
Angie stepped around the wooden coffee table, loomed over me on the couch, then sat on the table, putting us eye to eye. “Tell me you didn’t go on another killing spree.”
I put four fingers together and lowered th
em, like dragging down a slider switch. “Keep your voice down when joking like that. You know what a gentle soul I am. I couldn’t kill anybody. We are all god’s children, a brother and sisterhood of mankind. Join me in a chorus of Kumbaya. You will believe!”
“I believe you’re full of crap,” Angie said. “What table are you about to kick over? I heard you guys when I was walking in.”
I shrugged. “It’s all about strategy. The killer is making up the rules to the game, using hit-and-run appearances to limit my options while she pursues her objectives. What I have to do is make myself her main objective so she has to focus on me and come after me. I’ve got to make it very personal.”
“Dangerous,” Winter said. “Worms on hooks get swallowed by the fish even if the fish is caught.”
“You calling me a worm?” I asked.
“Only in the nicest way, boss.”
“But what exactly are you going to do?” Julia asked.
“Look, assuming the killer already has the Eyes of Bastet doesn’t help. If I assume she doesn’t—because Colt and I go back in time to the Wild West and get the Eyes first—then the gameboard is kicked over, and I am in control.”
“That’s brilliant, in a random sort of way,” Julia said.
I looked at Colt. He smiled back at me. Yeah, he’d known this crazy plan was coming.
“Wait a minute,” Angie said. “You’re going to magically travel back in time and become the reason the Eyes of Bastet went missing in the Eighteen-hundreds?”
“Yeah.” The beauty of the plan made me admire myself even more.
“What if you weren’t supposed to do that, or if you are, but you change something important in history? You could do incalculable damage—”
I interrupted Angie. “To the temporal stability of the multi-verse. I know, I know. Sometimes, a man just has to beat his chest and take the unicorn by the horn. Carpe Diem, and all that.”
“When do we go?” Colt asked.
“No time like the present,” I said.
“I’m going with you,” Angie said. “Someone’s got to stop the massive destruction of the timeline that you represent.”
Moonstone Shifter (Demon Lord Book 8) Page 12