The Untamed Moon

by Jenn Stark

  “What’s your house scotch?” I asked.

  “For you, it’s Glenmorangie.” A new voice spoke, rich and redolent with the sound of the real Sahara, complete with shifting sands and flapping silks. I looked up and then up farther as the newest member of the Arcana Council strolled to our table, a bottle in one hand and a cut crystal glass in the other, with the telltale amber liquid gleaming within. Rippling with muscles visible through the thin material of his caftan, his golden bronze skin gleaming, and his bald head mirror bright—like Mr. Clean playing Lawrence of Arabia—the Sun handed me the glass and put the bottle on the table beside us before turning and murmuring something to the server. The young man nodded and moved off smartly—not scurrying, still walking with a swagger—but definitely hopping to it.

  Nikki watched him go appreciatively.

  “I must say, I sincerely approve of the new management at the Sahara,” she drawled. “Every single one of your staff, young or old, big or small, conventionally or unconventionally beautiful, carries themselves as if they own the world.”

  “I am but a humble servant to the owners of this physical building,” Qadir said, gesturing expansively. The Sun had no drink, and I didn’t know what millennia-old djinn drank, for that matter, but he seemed on the edge of ebullience, so something was coursing through his veins. I reached out with a flick of my mind and traced the sparks of energy that radiated through him from the medallion that hung around his neck. He’d inherited the Sun medallion from the last Council member who had occupied his role. I knew Armaeus had spent some time researching the medal, but I never learned the outcome of that research. Another mystery.

  Qadir slanted a glance to me. “In the night, it becomes more difficult to discern the thoughts of those around me who are as strong as you, Justice Wilde.”

  I smiled. I wasn’t wholly certain of all the Sun’s supernatural abilities, but one of them definitely required me to avoid bright shafts of sunlight if I wanted to stay hidden from him. He also could break himself apart into many smaller versions, but I suspected that that had more to do with his Djinn heritage than his capacity as Sun. However, there was no disputing perhaps the most marked of his abilities, that of buoyant influence.

  Was that what I had to thank for Nikki’s and Nigel’s unexpected bonhomie? I narrowed my eyes at the Sun, and he smiled expansively.

  “What is life without love?” he asked.

  I barely kept from rolling my eyes. Still, Nikki hadn’t chosen this location because she was interested in a party. I needed to take advantage.

  “What do you think about this outreach effort on the part of the Moon?” I asked him.

  Once again, Qadir smiled expansively, but shrugged. “I don’t think the Moon is behind it at all. My predecessor’s memories are quite hazy of both the Moon and the Star, let alone of the relationship they’d forged with his long-ago ancestor who knew them best. Inherited knowledge is never reliable and often slanted to the benefit of the person doing the remembering.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough. But why don’t you think the outreach is legit?”

  “Oh, I think it is quite legitimate. I just question the source,” Qadir said. “The Moon, by all accounts from anything I can conjure up, has been a careful schemer, one who loves the shadows and does not seek the light. Unlike the Sun, who walked with humanity and happily so, even if he hid from the Council, the Moon preferred to stay tucked away.”

  “Preferred to or was forced to?”

  Qadir turned to look at Nikki as she spoke, his thick brows lifting. “A worthwhile question, and one that should give us all pause. Because if, in fact, she was forcibly hidden away, and yes,” he turned, waving off my immediate question. “I do believe she is a feminine presence—if she has been held against her will, then who is doing the outing? Is it the Moon finally finding a crevice in the veil between the worlds to get her message out…in such an elaborate and obvious fashion? Or is it a trap, and we’re being lured in to free a spirit who does not want to be freed?”

  Nigel pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, are we rescuing Roland, the Moon, or a third unknown party or artifact?”

  Qadir spread his broad hands. “You can see the conundrum.”

  I sighed, lifting my hands to my temples. Oh, I could see it all right. “So you’re saying we shouldn’t even make the attempt to find the Moon?”

  Qadir shook his head. “Not at all. In fact, you must make every effort to do so. Because if you don’t, someone else will, and I suspect that will be a far worse scenario than any of us would like to manage.”

  Nikki scowled, and Nigel sat up straighter. Qadir was right, of course. We were being herded like all the other hunters to this chase, but the stakes were higher for us. If anybody was going to find the Moon, it had better be us.

  16

  The call to join the Council came a few hours later, late morning in Vegas, when the diehards of the night had finally toddled off to bed, but the casinos had not yet geared up to serve the daytime crowds. I wasn’t surprised to see that the invitation extended to Nigel and Nikki. I couldn’t imagine going on a search of any type without Nigel, whose experience was more recent than mine. And Nikki was just Nikki. No matter what the circumstance, she would be invaluable by my side. Plus, she had already survived multiple experiences in the hinterlands of space and time and lived to tell the tale. She would not be hurt again on my watch, I resolved, but she’d also rather die than miss out on the challenge.

  Nikki picked me up in front of the Palazzo hotel in her usual guise of chauffeur, and I entered the vehicle to see Nigel inside as well. He was freshly dressed, shaved, and looking a little dazed. Not surprising if he’d spent the rest of the night with Nikki. Wordlessly, he handed me a tall to-go cup of coffee, never mind that it was already several hours into the start of the day. I took it happily enough.

  I savored my coffee as Nikki drove down the Strip, my eyes invariably going to the soaring residences of the Arcana Council. Seeing them in the full light of day reminded me of Mrs. French’s conversation the night before. “I understand Sariah and Dixie were doing some recon work at the Flamingo last night,” I said to Nikki. “Do you know anything about that?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Nikki grinned. “Some of my girls have a regular show there, and the best clientele in Vegas flock to it. My friend Gina thought Sariah was you and so she texted me to see if I was on-site, but of course I wasn’t. I asked her to keep an eye on them, just in case. Not that Sariah is your little sister or anything, but that girl can get herself into some trouble.”

  I chuckled grimly. She could at that. “And?”

  “And it seems like the Moon’s little call to adventure was not just delivered to points far from here,” Nikki said, surprising me. “Apparently, one of Dixie’s newer Connected friends got the same symbology treatment, and it freaked the crap out of Dixie, the messenger who received the Moon’s call, and their whole psychic posse. Fortunately, the fellow had only been temporarily tattooed, and he had been alone with Dixie and her closest acolytes at the time, so the little caucus at the Flamingo was much more along the lines of what to do with the information, if anything, and specifically how to sell it. She wanted Sariah on hand because Sariah knows the worst players of the arcane black market—particularly those whose jaunts through the underbelly take them all the way to Hell.”

  I blinked. “Your friend got all that just from eavesdropping?”

  “My girls shine at eavesdropping,” Nikki informed me. “I mean, we’re not just a bunch of pretty faces and exceptional gams. Some of the ladies have a variety of psychic skills as well, including one with acute hearing. We stationed her three tables away, and bada-bing bada-boom, we were in. It was better than one of Simon’s technical toys and completely undetectable. Pretty slick.”

  By now, Nigel was openly staring at Nikki. “You mean to tell me you have a girl gang of burlesque dancers working the Strip, some of them with psychic abilities?” he asked, sounding somewhere between
outraged and awestruck. His gaze swiveled to me. “You knew about this?”

  In point of fact, I didn’t, but I couldn’t say I was all that surprised. Very little about Nikki would surprise me. She was a one-woman force of nature.

  “So now we’ve got that to deal with as well,” I mused. “Because if it’s happened here to lower-level Connecteds, it’s happening other places as well—clearly with much less damage to life and limb like Nigel and Fricker experienced. So we have bona fide hunters getting the information and using it for their own purposes, then we’ve also got hunters who have no intention of jumping into the race, but who can sell their data to those who are. And is the information the same no matter who the recipient is?”

  “That, at least, I can help you with,” Nikki said. “From what my girl reported, Dixie’s contact gave a full rundown of the message received. The location was quite clearly spelled out in this case, some village in the Mississippi Valley that was flooded and lost some several hundred years ago before the Europeans had even gotten that far. According to what they were saying, it was a matter of showing up at the right place at the right time with the right sequence of actions to unlock some sort of door, and they would be in. Dixie was all over that, totally wanting to get this information out on the open market, stat.”

  “Mississippi?” Nigel asked sharply. “They could already be there and in by now, if that were the case.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean, come on. The Mississippi Valley? That’s gotta be a red herring. No self-respecting sorcerer would make it quite that easy.”

  Nikki met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “You think it’s another message designed specifically for you, some kind of push? That’s involving quite a bit of sophistication. I’m not sure that I like that as a scenario.”

  I sighed. I couldn’t disagree with her, but it made a certain amount of sense. “Whoever is sending out these messages, they want to make sure that the message is being received. Roland is somebody I worked with, albeit not for a long time. Nigel, of course, has a much tighter connection with him.”

  Nigel snorted. “Tight wouldn’t exactly be the right word. More like strained.”

  I looked over to him. “Have you heard anything more from Roland?”

  “Not a word. I got the high sign from the Magician that his jet is at our disposal to take off as soon as the meeting with the Council is complete. To him, it seemed a foregone conclusion that we would be traveling traditionally rather than Air Armaeus.”

  “Really,” I murmured. I hadn’t gotten that message. Armaeus hadn’t reached out at all to me. I tried not to read too much into that, but it was difficult not to wonder what was going on.

  We continued the rest of the journey in silence. After parking the limo, we ascended to the upper reaches of the Magician’s complex without saying a word too. When we arrived at the conference room, I was surprised to find it already full—apparently, it was a slow day in Vegas.

  The Devil stood at the head of the table, appropriate for his current position as head of the Arcana Council. The Magician stood to his right, leaning up against the plateglass windows that looked out over the Strip. Both of them wore their trademark multithousand-dollar suits loose and easy, as if they were as comfortable as track suits.

  Sitting at the table, hunched over a laptop, was Simon, the Fool, the most techie of the Arcana Council, and one of its newest members. I studied him, wondering if he fully understood the ramifications of a potential all-in battle with the Shadow Court. We’d already fought the gods, successfully booting them to their side of the veil between worlds, and we’d knocked back the Shadow Court several times already. But full-on war? Against other Connecteds, some of whom might be as strong as us? That wasn’t something Simon had ever faced.

  Then again, none of the Arcana Council were unkillable, and they all knew it. Immortal status meant little more than a permanent seat at the poker table for as long as you were able to hold the cards.

  Simon looked up as I entered, clearly more unperturbed by the prospect of a coming battle than I was, and grinned. “This is freaking fantastic. The Moon’s little treasure hunt has piqued the interest of every bad guy from here to Outer Mongolia. We’ve got the message this Roland Franklin sent out—and a handful of other blurts spread across the arcane black market. None of them as rough as what Nigel endured, though all of them bold enough that people took note. Yet somehow, it hasn’t percolated up to government sectors yet.”

  “It hasn’t been all that long,” I pointed out.

  “And there’s money involved, money these Connected operatives aren’t too keen on sharing,” he agreed. “They’ll get the government involved if it’s to their advantage to do so, but not right away. I think we’ll have a pretty clean shot to start.”

  “What about the Shadow Court?” I glanced around the room as I asked the question, taking in the other members of the Council who had deigned to show up. Eshe was here, which wasn’t all that surprising. She lived in Armaeus’s fortress, apparently unable to be bothered to create her own residence on the Strip. Beside her sat Viktor Dal, Emperor and Arcana Council member voted most likely to be an asshat. I was surprised he wasn’t out searching for the Moon himself.

  Then again, who’s to say he wasn’t?

  Next to Viktor, the Hanged Man reclined, his fastidious hair sleekly pressed back from his high cheekbones and ghostly face. Nikola Tesla, in living color.

  There was a notable absence from the Council, however. I’d wanted the Hierophant here in particular—and not only to ask him if he’d ever checked out Demonico’s pizza. The Hierophant’s role had been occupied by Michael the Archangel since right after the fall of Atlantis, at which point he had promptly sequestered himself in Hell. He’d always claimed he knew nothing of the Council’s past or current membership. But surely…

  “Where’s Michael?” I asked sharply, drawing the Devil’s indolent smile.

  “The Hierophant has already offered us what information he can. He had already decamped for Hell before the ascension of the Moon and Star. He doesn’t know how they were chosen for Council membership, or from where. His concern right now is more for the demons that are stirring in ever-greater numbers.”

  I lifted my brows, remembering in a flash one of the pizzeria owner’s offhand comments. “That’s what Barry meant by magic waking up in Hell?”

  Kreios inclined his head. “Not entirely, but it is part of the larger whole. There has been an inordinate amount of demon activity since the ascension of the Sun. That, combined with this new surge of magic in the nether regions, has the Hierophant concerned. He’s looking into it, along with the Syx.”

  “Got it.” The Syx were the archangel’s own team of enforcers, a group of high-level demons making a bid for salvation in return for a few thousand years of indentured servitude. The Hierophant drove a hard deal, but the payoff was worth it, it seemed.

  “We’re expecting a report from him shortly, though he is currently out of contact,” Kreios continued. “Meanwhile, Death and the Hermit express their regrets. The Lovers are…otherwise occupied.”

  I snorted. “I’m sure. What about Gamon?” As Judgment, she was the second-newest Council member after me, and her reactions remained decidedly human amidst all these longer-lived demigods. I needed a little humanity in this room.

  “The imminent deaths of the mafiosi and their bodyguards captured her interest,” Kreios said, surprising me. “Though you didn’t collect them, they expired under your watch, and that allowed her to step in before the denizens of Hell could claim them. Right now, she’s learning a great deal about the arcane black market and its hooks into the underworld.”

  “Really.” I couldn’t say I minded those men finding another reward than what awaited them in Hell, no matter what they’d done here on earth. And if it helped us out…

  I sighed. The path the Council was treading was growing murkier and murkier, no question. “Do they know anything about the demon
activity?”

  “Not enough,” Kreios said candidly. “And the numbers of the horde are only increasing. It troubles me, so much so that I have asked Danae to join us here today as well.”

  Relief speared through me. The current head of the House of Swords was a bona fide witch—one of the few human groups who could wield any sort of command over demons and send them back to their holes in Hell. Danae would be an asset in any fight, but against the denizens of Hell, she was particularly skilled.

  “Tell me you didn’t send that request by personal messenger—” I began, but I could tell from the ripple of amusement in the Devil’s expression that he’d done exactly that. He’d sent Qadir. The newest member of the Arcana Council was a demon in his own right, an ancient djinn…and he was completely, intractably, head over heels in love with Danae after she’d helped free him from eternal entrapment in a sacred chalice. Danae, of course, had no time for his emotional outburst, but Qadir was a force of nature. Literally.

  “She has already informed us she will be attending virtually, and the Sun will be attending at her side. As for Qadir, he advised that he can think of nowhere else he would rather be.”

  The Devil waved vaguely, and one of the walls dissolved into a screen a good five feet across by four feet high. It flickered to life, and the screen revealed two figures on the sun-drenched patio of the headquarters of the House of Swords. Danae sat dressed in a cream-colored tunic and pants that somehow still looked like combat gear, her muscled body both elegant and fierce, her face as dark as murder. Her deep brown eyes were slitted with annoyance as she stared into the camera. Beside her, Qadir lolled back, sipping a fruit drink and looking happier than any one person on any plane should.

  “She wouldn’t come to you,” Qadir boomed, slanting Danae a completely adoring look that she pointedly ignored. “And I wouldn’t leave. A match, I should say, a perfect match.”