Hunting Down Dragons (Moonlight Dragon #2) (5 page)

"The most notable golem-makers are from the Czech Republic and Germany," Vale agreed thoughtfully. "Maybe we can find a connection there."

Purpose and drive filled me. Being at the mercy of the Oddsmakers had made me feel helpless. But investigating my parents' death gave me control again. I was, literally, behind the wheel on this bad boy.

"I'll search Moonlight and see if my uncle left any information behind," I told Vale. "If he picked up where my parents left off and was searching for the necromancy artifact, too, he might also have come across the golem."

It would be a way to reconnect with him, and I was eager to do it. For over two years now I only ever thought about Uncle James with sadness and dread. Now, we could be a team, even if he wasn't here.

"We don't know for certain that this is the mission the Oddsmakers want you to undertake," Vale reminded me. "You could be going off on a tangent."

"You think that's going to stop me?" I gave an unladylike snort. "Learning who killed my parents and who may be responsible for my uncle's disappearance is more important to me than getting on the good side of the Oddsmakers. Their mission can wait."

"They may not be willing to wait."

Vale's tone warned of some pretty dire consequences, but I refused to be swayed by it.

"I may as well learn as much as I can before they drag me back to their boudoir of horror," I declared. "No way am I letting them dictate what I can and can't do."

"Moody…" He shook his head. "You're a load of trouble, aren't you?"

"You telling me you can't handle it?"

He gave me a look to curl my toes. "Oh, I'll handle it and you. Don't worry."

I was proud of myself for not blushing.

By the time we hit the 95South heading toward downtown Las Vegas, I was itching to get to work. I didn't want to sleep; I only wanted to begin digging into the golem. Though I didn't know my parents, I believed that if they'd drawn a possible connection between the artifact and the golem then there was a good chance they were tied together. I just had to get my hands on that golem.

I thought Vale would want to help, considering he'd been after this gargoyle wannabe from the beginning. But after rummaging through the console between the seats and coming up with some change, he asked me to drop him off at the bus depot on Casino Center Boulevard.

Hiding my disappointment, I asked, "You ride the bus? Why?"

"I only fly as a last resort." He opened the door and paused to look back at me with amusement. "Under the radar, remember that? That's still important, Moody."

In other words, don't forget that there was an entire city of magickal beings that wouldn't appreciate being exposed by some reckless sorcery. Not to mention I was working on three strikes you're out.

I got the message loud and clear. He was right. As personal as this was, there was more than my own curiosity and well-being at stake. The Oddsmakers might be mean-spirited and cruel, but they had managed to keep the magickal component of the city under wraps since the first casinos popped up on Las Vegas Boulevard. I couldn't be the one to spoil that.

"I'll be careful," I promised. "But…where are you going?"

He climbed out of the car. "To continue what I was doing before the Oddsmakers kidnapped me."

He shut the door and headed for the depot. I bet he was whistling with satisfaction at being able to walk away all mysterious-like.

Well, he could keep his mystery because I had one of my own to solve. But first off, I had to find out what had happened to my friends. I'd been sucked from Melanie's car, but what about everyone else? Suddenly, I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I parked the stolen Camry in one of the metered lots for visitors to the federal building and the courts, figuring it would be discovered as abandoned there far more quickly than if I'd parked it in a casino lot. Then I jogged down Fremont Street, weaving through the tourists, most of whom were drunk or soon would be, and up the street that held the Moonlight Pawn Shop.

My plan was to check out Celestina's fortune shop first since I didn't have my phone; it had better still be in Melanie's car. Moonlight didn't have a landline I could use because the thought of customers calling me at all hours, wanting a quote on their junk, made me break out in hives.

My knees nearly buckled with relief when I saw the Christmas lights on in the window of Celestina's shop. She only ever turned them on when she was home.

I burst through the front door like I owned the place.

Celestina toasted me with a glass of hard cider. "You finally return."

Melanie and Christian also toasted me from where they sat together on a loveseat. Lev wasn't in the room, but I heard noise from the kitchen and figured that must be him. It looked like my friends had been there for at least an hour or two. Empty bottles and a messy-looking cheese tray sat on the table where Celestina normally did her readings.

The place had a fun vibe. When lit only by the Christmas lights in the window it felt like we were all chilling in an eerie shack in the jungle. I called it bohemian Voodoo, even though Celestina had lectured me about the differences between Louisiana Voodoo that I saw in movies and Haitian Vodou, which was what her relatives had practiced.

"No one understands Vodou so I just give them the movie crap," she'd told me.

She had invested in velvet sofas and ottomans in ruby red and deep purple and then draped throw blankets with screen printed skulls and insects over them. The walls were covered with sheets of rattan that she'd pinned near the ceiling with furniture tacks. There was an altar drowning in lit candles, offering bowls, incense and photos to appease the Lwa, or spirits. Hanging from the ceiling were "shriveled heads" made out of coconuts and a variety of ragged-looking Vodou dolls that my friends and I all got together to make every once in a while. It was an art project where "primitive" and "ugly as sin" contributed to the impression that the dolls were authentic.

My dolls were
very
authentic in that regard. I was proud to have sold the most for Celestina.

A perpetual haze of incense circled the room and the faint but unmistakable smell of beef jerky permeated everything (you could buy it by the ounce or the pound; she and Lev prepared batches in the kitchen). When she had clients, Celestina played a track that featured drums and chanting—think headhunters gearing up for a big night out. Currently, however, Taylor Swift sparkled in my ears.

"Uh, hey, guys," I said with a wave. I waited. And waited, looking around the room in the most awkward way possible. My friends only looked at me and then at each other, wordlessly asking each other what was up.

"So how long you guys been here?" I asked, still trying to accept their nonchalant attitude about my having gone missing from Melanie's car. No, having been
sucked
from her car.

Melanie shrugged. "I dunno, Anne. You were gone a long time. Maybe an hour?"

"So you knew I was gone…"

"You took your sweet time," Celestina said disapprovingly. She waved her e-cig at me, the one that she'd disguised to look like something a one-eyed hag in the swamps would have carved out of rotting wood. The effect was seriously diminished by the fact that she was wearing a pink flowered Hawaiian sundress that set off her dark Dominican skin. "And your clothes are the same…what were you doing all this time?"

"Yeah, Anne," Melanie piped in, her head cocked with curiosity, "I thought you said you were going to wash your face and put on your pajama set. You were all weird about it, like you felt filthy and—why do you look all dirty and sweaty?"

Clearly I had stepped into another dimension of sight and sound.

"So all this time you thought I was at my place? I told you that? Me?" I patted my chest for emphasis in case they didn't know which me I referred to.

Christian, who'd draped a fake stuffed anaconda around his neck, set aside his champagne glass. I could tell he'd figured out that something was wonky. "Why wouldn't it have been you, Anne?"

"Because I was sucked through the roof of Melanie's car and dragged eight miles beneath the earth to be freaked out by the Oddsmakers! That's why!"

Celestina scowled. "Did you sneak off to do shots of Everclear?"

I took a deep breath. "I swear to you that for the last two or three hours when I wasn't being sucked on by vampires I was wandering around the desert like the Road Runner. I ran into Vale! He flew me part of the way back and then we stole a car and—"

"Vale's back? Yay! And—and you stole a car?!" Melanie cut in and began laughing hysterically. "I sooo can't picture you racing away from the police like you're in
The Fast and the Furious
. Now, maybe if Vin Diesel were driving—oh, man, why is Vin Diesel soooo hot…? Did you know he might have some Mexican blood in him? We could be related! Vin Diesel is my
hermano
!"

"You've been drinking nonstop since the playa, haven't you?" I accused.

"Yes, and apparently we've been doing it with your doppelganger," Christian said, looking slightly amazed. "I'd
thought
you were unusually subdued but I just assumed you were still worried about being called before the Oddsmakers."

"Funny that I would worry about that," I said dryly. "It grosses me out to imagine you guys hanging out with a fake me. Worse, that you couldn't even tell the difference!"

I was shocked and yeah, I was hurt. My friends were my only family. They meant the world to me and if I didn't mean the world to them…who would care if I disappeared one day like Uncle James had? The way things were looking in my life recently, me winding up dead or a dragon were becoming likely scenarios. Like everyone else, I wanted to matter to someone. I wanted someone to miss me.

I stalked forward and grabbed the half-full bottle of cheap champagne and chugged back three healthy swallows. I smeared the back of my hand across my mouth. "That's messed up, guys."

Better to play it off. Better to act as though Anne Moody was tough and nothing could hurt her. Even though it was beginning to feel like way too many things actually could.

"We've been drinking," Christian said gently. "A lot. I know it's no excuse, but it's the truth."

"If it makes you feel any better," Melanie said with puppy dog eyes, "your fake twin was the absolute pits at Cards Against Humanity. She came up with the worst combinations, Anne. They weren't even funny!"

"And she kept scratching her head," Celestina complained. "Like a dog with fleas."

"No, Anne does that, too," Melanie said.

"Oh." Celestina hid behind her glass and muttered, "It's not annoying when you do it."

"This is wrong on so many levels," I sighed.

Still, their comments and the alcohol helped calm me down a little. Admittedly I was worked up over my encounter with the Oddsmakers and what Vale had revealed to me on the drive home. I doubt many people could remain totally cool after learning their parents had been murdered in the prime of their lives.

I flopped onto a huge ottoman and lay sprawled like a spider on its back. "I honestly got picked up by the Oddsmakers."

Christian and Celestina sat forward, completely sober now.

"Oh, my god, Anne," Melanie gasped and clasped both hands together in front of her mouth like she was praying for me. "Did they…did they hurt you?"

My eyes stung a little, not because any of the bruises I'd sustained caused me any pain but because of the stress of it all. PTSD, I assumed, though I felt guilty for feeling it over something so insignificant. I'd always associated the condition with soldiers returning from war.

"Vale says he and I are lucky to be alive," I said, trying to keep my tone light.
Hey, no big, I was just sucked on by a vampire. Happens every Tuesday.
Though I couldn't help a little dig: "If anyone here cares about that, I mean. You got on so well with my clone and all."

"Aw, Anne!" Melanie slid off the loveseat and crawled to my side. She clumsily pet my hair. "I totally knew it wasn't you. I knew it deep down in my heart, I swear!"

I caught her hand and held it. She looked like she was ready to cry. Granted, it was mostly the alcohol talking, but I appreciated the emotion nonetheless. I felt better for her showing some emotion over me. Geez, I'd never realized I was this needy.

"Were you summoned because of the dragon we saw tonight?" Christian asked. He set aside the anaconda, maybe in order to convince me he was taking all of this seriously. "Did the Oddsmakers believe it was your doing?"

That was something I should have brought up, as a matter of fact, but I'd forgotten all about that dragon in the midst of all the weirdness I'd encountered.

I shook my head in answer to his question. "They kidnapped me because they want me to do something for them, though they didn't bother to tell me what."

Christian's expression grew intent. "So you saw the Oddsmakers."

"I saw
things
," I told him with a pointed look. "I may as well have been blindfolded the entire time. I couldn't identify any of them in a line-up."

"They could have hurt you," Melanie whispered fearfully, "and I never would have known. I thought you were with us the entire time."

"It's okay, monkey," I told her.

"Generally, no one is called before the Oddsmakers and survives to tell the tale." Celestina looked me over, suddenly suspicious. "How do we know this is really you?"

"Would you be able to tell the difference?" I asked archly.

"Good point," she mumbled, abashed, and sucked furiously on her e-cig.

I sat up and looked around at my similarly guilty-looking friends. Now that I had them feeling bad, I realized it wasn't what I truly wanted.

"Guys, it's fine. Obviously the Oddsmakers are pros at making believable doppelgangers. I'm not mad that you were fooled. You were meant to be. It's for the best, actually. If you
had
noticed I was missing you might have tried to find me and who knows what would have happened. This was the best situation possible."

Melanie gave me a dubious look. "You're not lying?"

"Swear to God. But if you do want to make it up to me, you can help me locate something extremely important. Something my parents and my uncle were looking for."

"What is it?" Celestina asked with interest. She snapped her fingers and yelled toward the kitchen. "Lev! Stop eating and come in here!" She belatedly added, "As a man!"

"All I know is that I'm looking for an artifact for raising the dead. I don't know if that means it's a component of a ritual or if the thing itself has the power of necromancy or what. Also, Vale told me my parents were killed because they were looking for this thing, too."

"Killed," Christian echoed, his handsome face settling into sober lines. "He told me your mother was a strong sorceress, but he didn't tell me her death hadn't come naturally."

"Oh, Anne." Melanie was puppy dog eyes again. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay, Melly. I'm just ticked off that whoever did it has so far gotten away with it. That's going to change. The key is finding this artifact."

"You know nothing else about it?" Celestina asked. "What it might look like, where it's from?"

"Nada. But I'm pretty sure my Uncle James was looking for it, too, when he went missing, so he may have left something behind that could help me follow in his footsteps."

"And by doing so, you'd come to the attention of whoever killed your parents," Christian pointed out. That prompted my friends to look at each other with varying degrees of concern.

"Yeah. This is potentially dangerous," I told them. It was probably the first thing I should have told them. "I don't want any of you getting involved beyond the research part. This is my thing, and I'll face the risk. In fact, I may temporarily ban you guys from coming to Moonlight while I'm doing this."

Christian chuckled like he'd just listened to a four year-old's announcement that she would become an astronaut. "After what you did to help Vale and my mom, there's no way I'm sitting back and letting you do this alone, Anne. I've got your back on this no matter what it takes."

"Really, Anne, that's dumb and you're dumb if you think we'd let you deal with this alone." Melanie smacked me on the leg. "You're my BFF!
I'm never gonna give you
—"

"No Rick rolling!" I covered my ears while Melanie rolled on the floor, giggling.

"Next time, only light beer and wine coolers for the monkey," Celestina said gravely, but the corners of her lips twitched as she watched Melanie on the floor. Being five feet tall and a monkey shifter meant Melanie was the cheapest drunk ever.