Forged in Fire: An Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 4) (12 page)

"Surely he's been here before," I said to Vale.

"He has. I've visited with him three times that I can recall." Vale grinned as he studied his friend. "He has the same reaction every time. It never grows old for him."

Unexpectedly, I felt a sting in my eyes. Dammit, I hated feeling like a crybaby, but it had struck me like an arrow to the heart that this was what I was fighting for. I wasn't fighting to keep Moonlight running or even for revenge of my parents, for whom such measures were pointless. I was fighting to keep people like Christian alive so they could find rapture in the pure, silent glide of a tiger shark. This was why I would battle evil. This was why it was worth any sacrifice I might make. To keep a water fey and others alive.

"He's beautiful," I sighed. It was more than how attractive he was, which was highlighted by the glowing water reflected off of his model-perfect features. I recalled the awe I'd felt when I'd watched him swimming in his pool after Vagasso had staked him out, and I remembered his tail, which was a gorgeous reddish gold, like the prettiest of goldfish. In that moment I appreciated every magickal being in the world which Vagasso and the Oddsmakers were determined to destroy. I would defend
all
of them through my last breath.

"I want him to go home when we've saved this place," I told Vale. "I want him to be by the ocean where he belongs."

"He will," Vale promised me softly.

Blinking rapidly to clear my eyes, I turned my attention back to the shark exhibit. There were a gazillion sea creatures in constant motion beyond the glass. Fish of all shapes and sizes, numerous varieties of sharks, huge stingrays, turtles…it was a challenge to ignore them all and search the comparatively unexciting reef for something that looked like the seal I'd seen on the cash display at O'Malley's Casino.

"I'm not seeing anything," I said, frustrated.

Vale hummed agreement.

We moved to another window for a different angle on the tank. It took all my willpower not to elbow some teenagers out of the way who were using their phones rather than looking out into the awesome tank. Eventually Vale and I squeezed our way against the glass, but even after ten minutes of careful scrutinizing, we didn't see anything suspicious or unusual in the surface of the reef.

"So maybe it's not in this tank," I suggested to Vale, unable to hide my disappointment. It would have been nicely convenient to have been right.

"We'll try the other exhibits. There are plenty of places to look."

Leaving Christian to continue blocking traffic in the tunnel—though not many of the women appeared to have a problem with this once they got a look at how attractive he was—Vale and I headed back the way we'd come and entered the room that had been decorated to resemble an undersea temple. This room featured a touch pool in the center which Vale and I gravitated to because how could you not want to touch stingrays and anemone?

Listening to little kids scream and squeal when they touched the living sea creatures, I had to ask myself how Vagasso would infiltrate the place. He wouldn't fit in. Though there were a lot of families here, there were couples and singles, too. None, however, looked like an occult skinhead. Not to mention he gave off a vibe that gave people the heebie jeebies. Ordinary people would make the cross sign with their fingers and shy away from him. When he appeared, it would be glaringly obvious.

That was good, since I wouldn't have to worry about him sneaking up on us—we'd get plenty of warning from the other guests of the aquarium—but it suggested to me that the capstone might not be visible from this room either, since he wasn't here.

But Vale and I looked anyway, checking out the various exhibits.

At the jellyfish tank, I lingered. Vale's smirking face appeared in the glass beside me.

"Something tells me you're a fan of jellyfish."

"Are you kidding me? How can anyone not like jellyfish?"

"They're soft and slimy, for one. Many varieties will sting you."

"Sounds like someone's a big baby." Grinning, I pointed at an especially puffy variety that seemed filled with cotton candy. "Look at that thing. It's like a neon cloud. That's how the clouds around Las Vegas look. It should be our official State Sea Creature."

"Do we need one?"

I shrugged. "I think Christian feels underrepresented." I forced myself to turn away from the tank. "The capstone's not here. All that's left is the jungle to search, and I never thought I would say that while living in Vegas."

"We haven't hit the reef area." Vale pointed to the second acrylic see-through tube in the facility.

This tunnel was surrounded by reefs, which raised my hopes that we would find the capstone embedded somewhere within it. While I took one side, Vale took the other, and we slowly shuffled our way along the tunnel while streams of families and tourists passed between us.

"There's a fundamental problem with what we're doing," Vale said after several minutes of this.

I didn't tear my eyes away from my inspection of the reef. I was like an archaeologist gridding out an excavation. "What's the problem?"

"The capstone has existed for longer than Shark Reef has existed. Longer even than Mandalay Bay itself."

It was a good point, and something I should have considered.

"You're saying something as old as the capstone wouldn't be built into these plastic reefs." I gave up and turned my back on the section I'd been studying. Vale sensed me doing so and mimicked me so we faced each other across the tunnel. "Then why did my uncle and Orlaton both name this place?"

Vale crossed his arms in consternation. The water made his hair glow in blue waves. "Their information is out of date? It's been moved?"

"I don't think so," I said with growing realization. "This place was built on an unstable parcel of land. It's sand. They had to build huge pylons to brace the foundation. Why would anyone invest that much money and take the risk of the pylons not working when they could have moved up a half mile to firmer ground?"

He smirked. "I have the feeling you're about to tell me."

"Damn right, I am. It's because whoever had been involved with the choice must have been magickal. They influenced the build, encouraged the foundation to be poured here and only here because the capstone is
beneath
us." I laughed in amazement. "I'd assumed that a magickal being or some kind of sorcery was the capstone's protection, but it's being guarded by the casino property itself. Not even Vagasso can knock down a forty floor building."

"Brilliant. But why are he and the Oddsmakers so determined to keep you away from here if no one can reach the capstone?"

My smugness evaporated. "That I don't know."

And it could be a problem.

Vale opened his mouth to respond when the sound of screams tore through the facility. My blood turned to ice and my knees actually trembled with trepidation. Even though mentally I'd been prepared for another confrontation with Vagasso, emotionally I was apparently a limp noodle.

"I guess we'll soon have our answer," I choked out. "Come on."

We ran against the stream of terrified-looking people who sought to escape whatever had caused all the screaming. We burst out of the temple room and leaped into the shipwreck, and that's when I saw something I thought I'd encounter only in my nightmares.

Sometimes I had nightmares where I ran down empty streets, chased by something I couldn't identify, and it didn't matter how fast I ran—whatever was chasing me was faster. This wasn't that nightmare, nor was it the one where I showed up in class for the final exam and for some reason only then realized I'd missed the entire semester. That one reeaally sucked.

This nightmare was like one I had after I'd watched a horror movie that pushed me beyond my psychological limits. But this was far worse. This nightmare was real, and it had burst to life in the middle of the shark tank exhibit.

I should have pieced it all together. Vagasso wasn't impulsive. He planned. He gathered cronies to him. He hadn't scooped up Dr. Morrow just because she was strange and sadistic like he was. Sure, they shared a love of hurting me, but that was no basis to begin dating. And it wasn't a strong enough reason to band together for something as important as opening the Rift.

Or so I'd thought. Turned out, it wasn't what they had in common that had made Vagasso recruit her. It was her unholy ability to create monsters which defied imagination. And I was seeing the results of their partnership now.

This was Cthulhu and the Kraken's love child, with a dose of Nellie, the Loch Ness Monster, thrown in for good measure. Hundreds of gallons of displaced water sloshed out of the top of the exhibit because this thing was the size of a large elephant and it barely fit between the tank's walls.

Its body was slightly elongated and tapered at the end, like a polliwog's. And just like that early-stage frog, its skin was translucent in places, revealing several purple and blue beating organs that didn't look like anything I'd seen in high school science class. These were deformed and covered in pulsing white veins. The monster's skeletal structure seemed to be comprised solely of cartilage that provided only the barest of support. This wasn't a body meant to bear its weight on land. It had been designed for this one environment only.

It had started out as a sand tiger shark. I surmised that because of its rows of vicious needle-like teeth which circled around its conical head, not quite meeting in the back. The nearly 360-degree bite wasn't typical, but that double-row of pointy teeth was sand tiger all the way. The dinner plate-sized black eyes seemed shark-like, too. The rest, though, was Dr. Morrow's insanity come to life.

Triangular fins the size of paddles whacked at the plastic reef, tearing pieces of it off to dirty up the water. Each time the four fins struck the sides of the tank or the acrylic tunnel walkway, the sound boomed throughout the Shark Reef facility as though torpedoes were blowing up underwater. In addition to the fins, the monster's globular body sported tentacles, because apparently in the Villain's Instruction Manual there was a chapter on adding tentacles to every damn thing you could. I had to admit that it was an effective strategy. Everyone cringed when the tentacles appeared, including me.

Since this was a Dr. Morrow Special, this monster didn't simply have a thatch of tentacles sprouting from its slimy body. Oh, no. There was hair. Long, green hair streaming like seaweed around the body, caught up in swirls as the animal thrashed and beat at the floor of the exhibit with its single giant crab claw.

Yeah, crab claw? I saw that coming a mile away. This thing had to be aggressive, after all, and why go with a fin or a hand when you could toss in some gnarly shellfish action?

"This woman is seriously sick," I complained as I reluctantly took in the sight of this eldritch monster through the curved glass windows of the shipwreck. "Not to mention dozens of people have seen this."

"YouTube is the least of our concerns," Vale gritted out as he pounded the glass with frustration. "That thing is going to break through the foundation and access the capstone."

Of course. That was its reason for being. It was an aquatic wrecking ball.

I spun, searching the exhibit room for Vagasso since he must be near, coordinating this attack. But the place had emptied.

"Vale, we need to go through this place and find Dr. Morrow and—"

"Look!" Vale suddenly shouted.

Out in the tank, at least ten sharks had begun attacking Dr. Morrow's creation. They accelerated toward its odd, lumpy body with a speed that shocked me after watching their leisurely gliding just a half hour earlier. With their razor teeth they tore off chunks of the monster's flesh. They ripped away clumps of green hair that clogged the water before rising to the choppy surface. Bits of bitten off tentacles wiggled as though still animated by life. Green blood oozed into the water like spilled squid ink.

But the shark attacks did little to slow down the monster's efforts. Still using its flat fins to provide stabilization in the violently rocking water, it continued to beat at the floor with its thick, purple-gray claw, rattling the floor beneath my feet. Its black eyes filmed over each time a shark attacked it and the creature bared its own hinge of picket-row teeth, occasionally snapping at a passing shark. It finally caught one by the tail and gulped it down its gullet in two gulps. The shark didn't slide into its stomach, however. A swollen vent opened midway down the monster's body and a mist of blood, ground up flesh, and pulped skin exploded into the water of the tank. It was as though someone had thrown the shark into a wood chipper. I nearly gagged.

I had to turn away from the SeaWorld horror show and run to the acrylic tunnel. Sure enough, Christian stood braced with his palms against the walls, concentrating fiercely on the scene just beyond him.

"Go, Christian," I breathed, making sure I didn't distract him. For so long I'd questioned what assistance he could provide against Vagasso and here he'd become essential.

With his brow knitted and his jaw clenched, he spoke telepathically to the sharks in the tank, coaxing them to attack the monster in their midst. He requested help from other sea life as well. Sawfish with their long, serrated noses, cut at the monster's tentacles, slicing them off like noodles. Sea turtles snapped at the translucent, gel-like flesh of the creature. The monster was besieged, but only in tiny increments. This was looking to be a war of attrition, with Christian's aquatic friends pecking away at Dr. Morrow's creation until it fell apart. But that would take too long. Sand muddied the water but I could tell from the change in tenor as the monster struck the floor that it had broken through the bottom of the tank.

"Moody!"

Vale's warning was too late. Magick punched me in the chest, lifting me off my feet and hurling me out of the mouth of the tunnel and to the back wall of the shipwreck room. I groaned as I slid to the floor, but I managed to open my eyes and watch as Vale's gargoyle flew at the dark figure that entered from the temple room.

"I know you," Vagasso said calmly. I cried out as he magickally smacked Vale's gargoyle out of the air and to the stone floor. The stunned gargoyle flapped its wings helplessly. As I struggled to my feet, Vagasso stepped up to the fallen gargoyle and squatted before it. "Hello, Your Highness. We've never met, but I knew your brother. I didn't like him, either. I think you should share his fate so you'll stop being a nuisance to me."

"Leave my boyfriend alone," I snarled. I called up Lucky as a golden fury, filling up the shipwreck with near blinding light.

"That's far too bright for my tastes," Vagasso said mildly and suddenly the room was blanketed with darkness as though someone had filled it with black powder.

I grew Lucky, but it was a repeat of what had happened the first time I tried to fight the Oddsmakers, only without the mystery curtains and albino vampires. Lucky was swallowed by the darkness as though he'd never existed. The blackness was never ending, reaching into my skull. It was terrifying, like I'd gone blind or lost consciousness.

"First I'll tear the limbs from your gargoyle prince. Then I'll deep fry your fish friend," Vagasso told me with malicious glee.

I lost it.

I jumped with both feet into my dragon. I was wild with the urge to fight and I didn't try to contain my dragon impulse at all. I roared like the king of the jungle and flamethrowered fire that cut through the inky cloud, shredding it like cotton. As the blackness dissolved, I saw that Vagasso was no longer in the room. Only Vale's gargoyle remained, struggling to its feet, obviously injured.

Moody…the tank.

I turned and saw that the water was draining out of the shark exhibit, the level only half as high as it had been, revealing a ravished plastic and foam reef. What water remained was thick with fish bodies, body parts, hair, and gore.

The top half of Dr. Morrow's monster appeared to be drying out where it was exposed to the air, its gelatinous skin shriveling much as Christian's had when he'd been staked out in the sun. That didn't stop the creature from continuing to pound away at the broken floor.

With the water level so low, I could see above the tank where catwalks and stages for feeding the sea life had been knocked askew or dented too dangerously for people to stand on them. That was good, for the violence of the monster had driven away the aquarium's workers and trainers. I didn't have to worry about witnesses or collateral damage as I kicked some monster butt.

Christian was no longer in the acrylic tunnel, so I worried for him, but I couldn't spend the time looking for him. I had to stop this monster first.

I threw myself against the nearest window of the shipwreck. It was thick glass, meant to hold back a million gallons of seawater, so it didn't crack easily. But neither did I. I flew a circle around the room and rammed the glass again. And again. Circling around and battering at the glass with huge booming sounds.

Boom!

Boom!

The glass spidered on the fourth hit. I roared with triumph and bashed the window even harder. It finally cracked. The next smash knocked the glass into the tank and water poured into the room, flooding it before rushing through the doorways and into the rest of the facility. Vale's gargoyle flew through the tunnel, hopefully to find Christian.

I focused on Dr. Morrow's heaving nightmare.

The sand in the bottom of the tank had followed the water and poured mostly out into the depths of the foundation. The monster's huge crab claw had pulverized the concrete below and was working its way through to the sand beneath, tearing up pipes and wiring along the way.

I blasted fire at the creature, expecting it to melt like a giant blob of Jell-O.

Apparently it was non-flammable, because not only did it not melt, the monster's skin appeared to crust over and harden where my fire had touched it, forming armor-like sheets of scabbing. It also completely ignored me, which infuriated my dragon.

I was dragon of doom, dragon of destruction and this lump of flotsam and jetsam was going to respect me!

I blasted more fire, filling up the tank so the flames roiled and boiled and exploded up toward the ceiling of the aquarium. I engulfed the monster with so much fire that it was only a mere shadow amidst the blazing yellows, reds, and golds.

Still the monster continued to pound down into the ground with piston-like determination. I felt the difference when its claw struck sand, the sudden muting of its strikes.

I wasn't about to let it go any farther. I crashed through the remains of the window and into the tank. Smashed up against the monster, I sank my fearsome fangs into it, crushing the armored scabs and piercing soft flesh beneath. The monster didn't make a sound.

That was why I could hear the vibration.

It started as a low rumble beneath my tiger paws and grew rapidly into a full vibration that made my scales tingle and jarred my bones and filled the air with an insect-like buzz. I kept biting the monster, hoping to stop the sound.

My tiny dragon brain finally figured it out: the vibration came from beneath us.

Dr. Morrow's monster had unearthed the capstone, baring it to the air. Uncertain what to do, seeing sand and recalling how I'd turned silica to glass out in the Valley of Fire as a child, I released my bite on the monster, turned my head, and blasted fire down into the hole that it had dug.

Too late, I saw the capstone itself and the dragon head with its ruby eye carved into its face. My fire struck the dragon head and the seal blazed purple. The explosion blasted my body into the ceiling. By the time I fell to the bottom of the tank again, the damage had already been done.

A massive crack appeared in the ground beneath me and began to spread north.

I had done the Oddsmakers' dirty work for them. My dragon had opened the gateway to Hell.