Forged in Fire: An Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 4) (11 page)

The wards twanged just after five-thirty in the evening.

Still groggy, I rolled out of bed and rubbed at my eyes while I stood in my studio, waiting to feel the wards again.

Another twang, like I was fishing and something had taken a nibble on my bait. Except I wasn't trying to hook anything. I just wanted to sleep.

I pulled on some clothes just in case this required going outside and then peeked through the bead curtain separating my studio from the shop floor. I could see through one of the front windows just fine this way. I could see all the way out to the sidewalk, in fact, where Vagasso stood just outside my yard.

Ice cubes pressed to my eyeballs wouldn't have woken me faster.

"Holy…" I crept out into the shop, my heart pounding so hard I was sure Vagasso could hear it all the way out where he stood. I flatted my back against the front wall and edged one eye over the window frame to look out at him. He waved.

Jesus. Now what?

Was I supposed to run outside, dragon blazing, and engage in a magickal battle in full daylight? Did he expect me to lower the wards and let him inside the shop? Ha! No way in hell was that happening.

What did this guy want?

"Anne," he called out.

I tensed. I'd never heard him speak. My only interaction with him had been him magickally punching me into Christian's backyard pool. It frustrated me that his voice sounded normal, not growly like it had been ravaged by razor blades and not slimy or sleazy. He sounded quite pleasant, actually. Through the phone he could have talked me into a yearly subscription to
Field & Stream
.

"Anne, I regret that we never formally met," he continued, his voice carrying clearly across the yard and through the glass of the window. Magick, probably. I doubted anyone else in the neighborhood could hear him.

"I can't say I share the regret," I replied, not bothering to raise my voice. I knew he would hear me. "I don't get a kick out of meeting assholes."

"That's not a very nice thing to say. You don't even know me."

I rolled to put my back to the wall again because watching him standing out there was making my skin itch as though someone had dumped a tub of maggots on me. He wasn't dressed in super villain gear—just jeans and a black shirt—but the shirt was long-sleeved and had a funky stand-up collar on it reminiscent of a sorcerer's cape, neither of which you could wear comfortably during a summer day in Vegas. Some kind of magick air conditioned shirt. What a tool.

"I've heard through the grapevine that you believe I was responsible for the unfortunate fate of your parents, Anne. That's simply not true."

I fisted my hands, knowing he was goading me, but still unable to prevent myself from reacting.

"Professor Dearborn was the man you wanted. You should rest easy now that he's met his fate. Your mission of revenge has been completed."

"I'm not going to talk about my parents with you because I might end up accidentally burning your tongue out of your head," I told him as calmly as I could. "But I will tell you that I'm not fooled by you and I'm not scared of you."

"Oh, Anne. We both know that's not true."

I shuddered, and I hated myself for it. My hand crept up to my chest and rubbed as though I could feel again the force of his magick punching into me.

"What I gave you then was only a love tap," Vagasso said, as though he could see through the walls. He probably could. "If you cross me again, I'll treat you as a true opponent. You call me a dark spirit…you have no idea just how dark I am."

Go away, I willed him.
Just leave me alone.

I couldn't say that aloud, though. That was what victims said to a bully and it only encouraged them to ramp up their efforts. Instead, I said, "Vegas doesn't seem to be a fit for you, then. Maybe someplace like Antarctica is more to your liking. Preferably about a hundred feet beneath the ice. It's pretty dark there."

"I agree that I'm not a fan of this city," he went on, ignoring the prod about his journey to the southernmost continent, where he'd murdered Christian's father. "I find it shiny and inconsequential, like a piece of cheap plastic meant to be thrown away and recycled into something more meaningful. I have the power to provide that meaning, Anne, which is why you need to step aside and let me work."

"Work? Yeah, right. You mean to destroy. I don't get it. Why wreck everything? Is it because you're a demon? You miss your buddies? Need a demonic entourage while you party it up in Sin City?"

"No, no parties. I'm interested in unleashing the potential of this world. Right now it's stunted, its magick harnessed and wasted. I'll do my best to change that."

"Your friends the Oddsmakers have helped harnessed it, you know. They prohibit everything that you consider fun."

"Do they?" Vagasso sounded amused, obviously aware that I was trying to get him to admit that they'd made a Devil's bargain.

"You should get rid of them first," I suggested. "They're the biggest obstacle to your demon tea party."

"I appreciate your concern, Anne. I knew you could become an ally."

My lips curled off my teeth. "I'd rather skydive into an active volcano."

"If you put away your childish resistance you'd recognize the possibilities I'm presenting to you and your kind. Especially to you. Your dragon is impressive, but it could be so much more. Imagine your dragon burning down every city between here and New York City. Imagine sinking your teeth into skyscrapers and smashing homes with your magnificent tail. The roar you'd make, Anne—can't you feel it building in your chest?"

Damn him, I could, like a cough that needed expelling from my lungs. His words called to the dragon in me and its desire to dominate and inflict fear. Vagasso wanted me to become the monster that had doomed my ancestors and led to discrimination against all of us who came after.

Screw. That.

Even though it would feel incredible.

"My dragon's gone through a twelve step program, Vagasso. We only play nice, now. Well, with everyone except dark spirits with questionable fashion sense."

He chuckled, like we were friends drinking Frappuccinos at Starbucks.

"You want me to stop?" I asked him. "Well, I'm telling
you
to stop. Stop before I make a big mess of you."

"I was afraid you'd say that. I'd truly hoped that I could talk you into behaving. But you're only a dragon. Just like your mother before you, certain concepts are simply too difficult for you to grasp."

I stuck my arm out and flipped him the bird. That was all that comment was worth.

"Before I leave you—"
Thank god!
"—I wanted to assist a friend in sending a message. Consider this the exclamation point to my warning not to interfere with me."

A friend? Cringing in dread, I leaned around the window frame again. Vagasso had indeed been joined on the sidewalk by someone else. Dr. Morrow, looking the worse for wear, but most definitely alive and clearly peeved. If I'd thought her owl-like staring was bad, it was nothing compared to the madness that made her twitch now like a chicken. Whatever Vale had done or said to her had pushed her into the deep end, but like a cockroach, the mad doctor had resurfaced. She still wore the goggles with one of the lenses broken out of the frame.

"You've got to be kidding me," I gasped as I ducked back inside. Though it went against everything I stood for, in that moment I wished that Vale had finished her off.

But that was a coward's thought and I chucked it far out of my head.

"We only stopped Dr. Morrow's work," I said. "We didn't hurt her. It'd be nice if she extended me the same courtesy."

"I don't think Dr. Morrow is feeling any degree of courtesy, Anne. You destroyed her livelihood. Her home. But fortunately, I have a need for such a talented mind, so she'll be working for me from now on."

"Dream Team for sure," I said.

"Dr. Morrow wanted to give you a gift before we left you. Keep in mind that this might be the last gift you ever receive from anyone if you don't back off, Anne. Stay away. This world is on a collision course with fate. Standing in its way will only bring you misery. Have a nice day."

I glanced out the window again. Both Vagasso and Dr. Morrow, whose hair had mostly come out of her long braid and now stuck up wildly all over her head like she'd fall into a combine harvester and survived, walked down the sidewalk and out of sight. I was dying to know what kind of vehicle Vagasso was rocking. I couldn't picture him in anything but a hearse.

However, I had a greater concern than Vagasso's ride, such as whatever had tunneled beneath Moonlight and was trying to break through the flooring. I'd just assumed that the wards around Moonlight extended in a sphere around the shop. Clearly that was not the case, because something was pushing up the tiles and odds were good it wasn't someone from China.

I hurried over to the wall where the weapons were kept and selected something that didn't demand any sort of demented blood binding from me. A simple hatchet worked. Then I called up Lucky, so I had a twofer ready to face whatever abomination popped up in my shop.

I didn't have to wait long.

The tiles and wood burst upwards, bits of it flying across the floor and sliding beneath the merchandise shelves. I tightened my hold on the hatchet and infused Lucky with enough energy that when he bit down with his fangs he'd leave a mark you couldn't ignore.

More wood exploded through the hole in my floor and then a head pushed up.

Oh, no.

I could have handled anything—a thousand bleeding eyes, weeping sores, wriggling antennae and tentacles—anything but this. This hairless head, though covered in skin that blazed a bright pink as though it had been freshly, deeply burned, was recognizably human.

I felt my knees buckle. I heard the blade of the hatchet hit the floor with a heavy
thunk
when it fell from my hand. The head coming through the floor had a mouth that was slit vertically. It opened sideways to reveal a zipper row of tiny, triangular-shaped shark's teeth. It didn't possess a nose or nostrils, nor did it possess ears. Wrinkled, fluttering holes sufficed for all of the orifices. But it was the creature's eyes that did me in. They were a beautiful blue-green, and they were entirely human.

I started to cry. As the creature began climbing out of the hole using four arms that each ended in three- clawed fingers, I cursed Dr. Morrow and magick itself for allowing such cruelty to exist. I had been raised to view magick as a gift, something which you hoarded carefully and with reverence, because possessing it made you special. Magick bent the laws of science to make the incredible possible, and so we needed to wield it judiciously and wisely. We needed to make sure that we used magick only for the positive.

But the curses on Moonlight proved that people were all too happy to use magick to punish and inflict harm. The fact that Dr. Morrow had clients showed that there were magical beings who saw being special as a curse, or something to manipulate until they reached the "right" sort of special.

Whoever this man could be—for now that the creature had pulled himself completely into the shop I could see the vestigial, mutilated remains of his sex—he couldn't have chosen this end result. This wasn't improvement, as Dr. Morrow had claimed was her goal. This was a mistake. This was a prison sentence. And sadly, this was probably just the tip of the iceberg when it came to all that Dr. Morrow and Vagasso were capable of inflicting on the world.

The creature stepped toward me in a strange gait because its knees faced backwards, like on a dog or a horse. Maybe it made him run faster. But where did he need to run to, and why? Or were the joints just an experiment, something to try because why not?

Lucky hovered beside me. I felt him itching to surge forward, but I held him back.

"Are you in there?" I choked out to this creature with skin that wept and eyes fringed with thick, blond lashes. "Is this what you wanted? Did you choose this?"

It paused a few feet from me. I could smell it: whatever leaked from its skin was sharp like ammonia. It wasn't the reason for my watering eyes, though.

"Did you want this?" I repeated, my voice breaking.

The creature's slit mouth widened and it bared its dozens of teeth at me. Above them, a single bead of moisture welled in the creature's right eye and slid down his mottled cheek.

I whispered, "Lucky."

That was all I said, passing the blame onto a magickal familiar that only existed because I willed it to. But it was the only way I could do it, the only way I could burn this creature to cinders.

It didn't make a sound as it burned, nor did it try to get away, which was the most awful part because it proved what I'd feared. It stood there, engulfed in a terrible but contained conflagration, until it could stand no more. Then, it collapsed into a heap and it burned there on the floor of Moonlight until there was nothing left of it to burn.

The room stank. Smoke choked the air. I called Lucky back into myself, and then I cried like I'd never cried before.

The wards twanged again, nearly an hour later. By then I'd collected the ashes and dumped them in the trash can in my backyard. By then I'd cleared out the smell of smoke, removed the burned tiles, and patched over the hole in the floor with a tin sign for Marlboro cigarettes.

I waved acknowledgment to Vale when I stepped outside and kneeled to move the rocks into a pattern that would drop the wards. But my thoughts were in turmoil and it was difficult to concentrate. Since the pattern arose daily from my subconscious—a neat trick devised by Orlaton—I needed to have a clear head while I worked. Vale watched silently from the sidewalk as twice I failed to set the correct pattern.

"Third time's the charm," I said with a smile as I rose to my feet.

Vale opened the gate, closed it behind him, and walked up to me and wordlessly enfolded me in his arms. I thought I'd been done with crying, but I was wrong. The tears burst out of me all over again. He held me tightly as I dampened the front of his shirt.

"Thank you for knowing," I whispered against his chest once I was finally drained.

"I try to know everything I can about you. I love you."

"Now you're just
trying
to make me cry," I said with a sniff as I pulled away.

He grazed my cheek with the backs of his fingers. "I would never knowingly make you cry, Moody. The world already does that."

"And I'm going to change that," I said with sudden fierceness. The ache in my chest now felt like a fire that could scourge the world clean of evil. I clutched his hand. "Vagasso came here."

His eyes widened. "Did he hurt you?"

My smile was sickly. "In a way." I took a shuddery breath. "Vale, only a couple of hours ago, I…I did what I'd promised myself I would never do."

His fingers dug into my shoulders. "Vagasso?"

I shook my head. "I wish, but, no. Someone who didn't deserve it." I had to bite my lip as fresh tears threatened to spill. "Someone who was innocent."

His expression twisted with remorse and anger, directed at himself. "Moody, I should have been here to take that burden from you. This is my fault."

"Don't be ridiculous. How could it be your fault?"

"You were forced to take a life. That means I failed to take the action needed to prevent that. At the very least, I should have been the one to do it. It wouldn't be the first time that I have."

Vale had killed. I took that admission and absorbed it. I couldn't say that I was surprised. Vale had lived a different life than I had. As a gargoyle prince he had enemies, some who had killed his previous girlfriend. I was in no position to judge him. It did,
however, make me sad for the both of us.

"I don't get the luxury of being above it all," I said with a tremulous sigh. "Self-righteousness isn't going to save Las Vegas."

"Appreciating the value of life isn't being self-righteous," he insisted, staring deep into my eyes. "You were right to want to avoid this. But whatever the situation was, I know you couldn't avoid it. That's what I regret, that your back was against the wall and you had no choice. I always want you to have choices, Moody. When they're taken away from you, you become a slave."

"I was a slave to Vagasso today, for sure." I still simmered inside. "First he taunted me and then he forced me to take a life, thinking it would break me. But I know why he's doing these things. He's afraid of me. And he has good reason to be."

"That's my girl. And I mean that in the least condescending and most empowering way possible."

I slapped his arm.

He searched my face. "You will always be an amazing woman, Anne Moody. No matter what happens, no matter what you're forced to do to protect this city, I will believe that about you."

"I'll believe that about myself once I take control of this situation. I hated feeling so helpless today. It won't happen again. I'm going to screw up all his plans for the Rift if it's the last thing I do."

"I agree. But we have to step carefully. Before we go after the capstone, tell me what the Oddsmakers wanted from you. Did it have something to do with Vagasso showing up here?"

My smile was bitter as I recalled the morning visit. "Maybe. As I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear, they want me to back off of him. They threatened to grab you or my friends if I don't obey them. They claimed Vagasso can't open the Rift and that the capstone doesn't exist."

"Then we need to work quickly and quietly to find it before they can catch up to us."

"You understand that you're probably the first one they'll grab," I warned him. "They'll go further than torturing you. They already believe they've killed your brother with no consequences."

"The threat of death is no deterrent when we're facing the possibility of demons running loose across this city and eventually the world. If my death is what's required to see you succeed, then I welcome it."

"Don't say that." I shivered as though icy fingers had stroked across my shoulders. Though I normally wasn't one for superstitions, I did believe in self-fulfilling prophecies. "I don't need your sacrifice and I don't want it. You said it yourself: your duty is to make sure I always have options. You can't do that if you're dead."

His fathomless gaze, holding centuries' of secrets, was unreadable to me in that moment. "I'll do what I can, Moody."

Whether he meant giving me options or staying alive, I wasn't sure. And that worried me.

"We need to find that capstone," I said, desperate to change the subject to something that didn't squeeze my heart so painfully. "We can't wait any longer. Vagasso has nothing else to do but tear open the Rift."

As if he could tell how badly I needed to get away from Moonlight, Vale didn't argue. He walked back to the sidewalk and called up Christian.

I didn't want Christian coming along. That just put another person at risk, but Vale had good reason to include his friend so I didn't argue. Christian had lost his father to Vagasso. He wanted revenge, too.

I rubbed my arms even though I wasn't cold. As Vale put away his phone and curled an arm around my shoulders, I stared down the street, though I didn't really see anything. "It was one of Dr. Morrow's creations," I finally murmured.

I felt him startle. "Dr. Morrow?"

I made sure to keep my eyes down the street rather than watch his expression change as I continued. "I'm glad you kept her alive, so don't blame yourself for that. You did the right thing. It was Vagasso who was wrong. He brought her to Moonlight and made her send one of her experiments inside the shop." My mouth was dry as I remembered the scene. I tried to swallow. It felt like I had a sock stuffed down there. "He was a monster, Vale. A mish-mash of everything awful. And I could tell…I could tell he felt that way, too. About himself, I mean. That's why I did it. He wasn't attacking me. He just…existed, because Dr. Morrow and Vagasso forced him to. So I—murdered him."

I didn't realize I was crying again until Vale came around to face me and gently wiped a tear from my cheek with his thumb.

"That wasn't murder. That was a kindness I'm sure he was grateful for. You had the strength to grant him what he needed. You saved him."

"I hope you're right," I said as I wiped my eyes dry. "But I also hope I don't need to be strong like that again. Not that way. I'll fight hard and I'll do it for days. And I don't care if I get hurt. But to win like that…that's not winning."

"Vagasso will do that again and worse." Vale slid a hand to the back of my neck and rested it there comfortingly. "We're dealing with evil here. We may not emerge from this as the same people we were going in, but that won't mean that we're worse, or tainted. Everything evolves, Moody. Even us. Even the person you had to send to another existence."

Everything he said made sense and they were things I believed, but I couldn't help feeling trepidation over how
much
I would evolve by the time this thing was through. Would I still be recognizably Anne Moody? Or would I be some woman with a thousand yard stare who could no longer enjoy rom-coms? Someone who periodically shot upright in bed in the middle of the night and yelled, "I'll kill you, you bastard!"?

"No matter what, Moody, I'll be rooting for you."

That made me smile crookedly. "Rooting for me? Does that mean you'll wear a cute little cheerleader's outfit?"

"If that motivates you, sure."

I laughed, a real, genuine laugh. It felt good, like I'd expelled a lung full of toxic air. That was what Vagasso was to me: a poison that wanted to seep into my very being. But I could expel him if I kept my head on straight and focused on what I was fighting for.

"I do hope you prefer me in jeans, though," Vale went on, his eyes twinkling mischievously. "Or maybe nothing at all."

"Both, actually. You've got a great butt."

"Yours isn't so bad, either."

By the time Christian showed up in his Audi, Vale and I were better. The sorrow I'd draped around Moonlight had lifted, allowing the shop to breathe again. But it might only be a temporary reprieve. Vale was right: Vagasso was evil, which meant fresh horrors waited on the horizon.

Maybe at the end of Las Vegas Boulevard, where we were heading.

"I've been waiting for your call ever since the sun went down," Christian confessed as he burned rubber down the street, heading for the I-15 South onramp. "I think we should set a trap for Vagasso. We know he's coming for the capstone, so we should grab him."

"What about the fact that there will be hundreds of non-magickals around?" I asked him from the backseat.

"Back in Tomes, Orlaton warned us that Vagasso will have to go all in to break the capstone," Christian reminded us. "We won't need to worry about witnesses. The entire city will know about the existence of magick once he gets going."

It was probably true, but I still didn't like it. The Oddsmakers had done one thing right, which was instilling in us a fear of revealing our community to the non-magickal population. Rivaling the Oddsmakers for the dread factor was the government, which would happily kidnap as many of us as they could get their hands on and begin experimenting on us. That could be a fate as bad as the Rift opening.

But setting a trap for Vagasso sounded appealing. Not only would we stop him, we'd be able to add a touch of humiliation. He deserved all the humiliation we could pile on him.

"Let's check out the area first and see if we can figure out where the capstone might be," I said as we zoomed down the freeway. "The way Orlaton's described the situation, that might be a bigger challenge than capturing Vagasso."

We drove south all the way to Russell Road, and then swung back around to the Mandalay Bay property. Mandalay Bay was a gorgeous property, sheeted in gold-tinted windows. Oddly enough, it had been built on sand, which meant it had needed to be shored up by pilings buried deep in the earth or risk sinking. That sounded like a lot of extra work to me, and it made me wonder if the Rift extended this far south and the owners of Mandalay had chosen this spot for that reason.

"Park in the lot, don't use the garage," I instructed Christian. "We might need a quick getaway."

I didn't say aloud that every structure on the property might collapse if things got hairy. I think we all assumed as much.

Christian parked near an exit and on foot we crossed the huge lot and entered the casino. I liked the interior of the place and how spacious it felt, but I wasn't there to gamble or to enjoy the ambiance.

I'd been to the Reef before. Most locals had, just to see if the aquarium could make up for living out in the middle of a desert. It was a decent enough exhibit—my favorite was the jellyfish tank—and there were two acrylic tunnels you could walk through so you could be surrounded by sharks, stingrays, and turtles. The largest living beings were the sharks; dolphins could be found at the Mirage, which was farther north up the Strip.

When Orlaton had confirmed that the capstone was here, my first thought was that it must be located inside the tank with the sharks. That was the most logical place to hide something you didn't want people touching, right? So once we paid our entrance fee, a sense of urgency pushed me to lead Vale and Christian past the other exhibits to the final and largest one.

Attached to the second acrylic tunnel was a large room decorated to look like a shipwreck. It featured giant windows overlooking the enormous shark exhibit. I pressed my fingers to the glass, straining to identify everything I saw on the fake coral system that had been built along the bottom and sides of the million-plus gallon tank.

"We may have a problem," Vale murmured as he joined me at the window.

I turned to him in alarm, but he was smirking. I followed his gaze to the opening of the see-through tunnel connected to the shipwreck room. Christian stood in the center of the tunnel, blocking the flow of traffic to the gift shop and clearly not caring in the slightest.

Since I didn't have kids, I had to assume this was what parents felt when they took their young children to Disneyland for the first time. Christian had tilted his strawberry blond head back to watch a sea creature glide overhead. The humongous smile on his face reflected pure delight. He did indeed look like a little kid getting his first look at Mickey Mouse.