Hunting Down Dragons (Moonlight Dragon #2) (8 page)

"I hope you're wrong. Both about someone noticing what I've done with Lucky and about the dragon on the playa being a signal that someone's coming after me." I walked to the table and picked up my panda pin. I rubbed it for good luck. "Unfortunately, I won't know for sure until someone one day shows up. Until then, we need to keep digging. We need to find out what Texas means. And this thing my mom said: 'under dark city'."

"Las Vegas is never dark, so it can't be here," Christian pointed out.

Celestina clucked her tongue at him like he'd raised his hand and offered the wrong answer. "Have you considered that 'dark' is meant metaphorically?"

Christian winked at her. "Too large a word for me."

She rolled her eyes. "Many people would say Vegas is dark and sinful. I say this is referring to the city's underbelly. The seedier sections."

"So going with that interpretation," I said, thinking out loud, "would mean something beneath the bad part of town. North Vegas or somewhere around downtown."

"I still think that's playing fast and loose with interpretations." Christian obviously didn't like it. "What if your mother was referring to an old mining town? Someplace abandoned? There are a few around Vegas."

"We can keep those as options, but Vale said the golem-maker was in the city." I closed the phone. "I think I'm going to spend some time looking at maps and come up with a plan."

~~~~~

I spent the rest of the night on the internet, studying maps of the city, zooming in on street images, and even looking beyond Vegas at the old abandoned towns that Christian had suggested. There were a half dozen old mining towns scattered around southern Nevada, the most promising of which was Nelson, home of the Techatticup Mine where lots of men were killed. It was a regular Wild West killing fields. Sometimes when a place became violent like that, it didn't happen naturally, or else the killings built upon a single event that permanently stained the place with bad mojo. No doubt there was a magickal connection in there that might exist to this day if I looked deep enough.

But I felt that leaving the Las Vegas city limits was a mistake at this point. We needed to focus on the magickal heart of the valley because that was where a magickal being was most likely to gravitate. All of us felt a subconscious pull to the city because our bodies recognized the chance magick that pooled here, growing larger each time a gambler made a bet. That chance magick made spells, curses, hexes, and magickal constructs stronger, and who wouldn't want that?

Bleary eyed from staring at squiggly lines for hours, I finally crashed in my bed around nine a.m. Not even the steps of the entity on the roof could prevent me from sliding immediately into deep dreams. I dreamed of flying over the desert in my dragon form with a gargoyle by my side. I couldn't tell if the gargoyle was Vale or the golem. My dream self didn't care, nor did I care that I must have given in fully to my nature and lost touch with my humanity. That was supposed to be the worst thing I could do—surrender to the dragon in my blood—but in my dream, being a magickal beast was freeing and glorious.

The gargoyle and I flew over the valley. Sometimes fireworks shot up at us like missiles. But we were as agile as birds and ducked and wove between the sparking lights with ease. I roared my joy. It was a sound that rattled my bones and tickled my heart. I was meant to be a dragon. This was my calling. This was—

I woke up, suspicious and nervous. The protection wards had activated, humming against my senses.

Squinting against the afternoon sun, I made my way into the shop and peered through the front window that I'd had fixed after Vale's gargoyle shattered it. The rock pattern in my yard remained undisturbed so the wards were still up. Beyond the black iron gates separating my yard from the sidewalk sat a tall box. UPS? But why would that set off the wards? Last I knew, Gary, the driver, was just some guy with a son who was a football wunderkind who Gary hoped would one day play in the NFL.

I dragged on some clothes and my sunglasses and let myself outside. Heat punched me in the face, but Vegas in July was like that. You never, ever went around barefoot unless you were practicing for fire walking in Hawaii.

When I reached the box I circled it. No shipping labels, which meant it hadn't come from UPS, FedEx or the Postal Service. Melanie would yell trap, and I'd be yelling with her, but I couldn't simply leave this thing here. What if it was a trap and it sprung on one of my customers or a kid walking by?

I took a careful look around the neighborhood. Everyone would be home and every shop would be open at this time of day. Fremont Street was visible from where I stood. This wasn't the ideal location to call up Lucky. Way too many witnesses.

"Maybe it's time you start learning kung fu," I told myself.

In lieu of that, I kicked the box over and jumped away from it.

It fell over easily. Whatever was inside didn't weigh very much, maybe a couple of pounds at most. I crept closer and kicked it again. It slid up the cracked sidewalk to the border with Celestina's yard.

Since nothing seemed to be alive inside it, I decided to risk opening it. I approached it from the bottom, though, just in case it was booby trapped. With my fingernail I picked up the edge of the strapping tape and then pulled the long strip off until the bottom flaps fell open.

Inside were a pair of jeans, a dark T-shirt, black Converse, socks, boxer briefs…and Vale's gargoyle statue.

I grabbed everything and hustled inside my shop, where I chucked the box and then placed the statue on the counter. The snarling gargoyle looked none the worse for wear. The volcano rock or whatever magick stone he was comprised of was still crazily light weight and unmarred.

"So instead of sending me a cake and jumping out of it, you send yourself to me in a box as a gargoyle. Real romantic, Vale."

A Post-It note was stuck to the gargoyle's muscled chest.

Moody,

Don't go anywhere without me. I have learned something important. Be ready at sundown. Do not leave without me!

The script was neat and masculine, so I guessed that Vale had written it. Though I was annoyed that he wanted me to sit around on my butt all day, I appreciated that he entrusted me with his most vulnerable form. When he was a statue he was incapable of defending himself. I could do anything to him right now, including smash his statue. Would that end his life? I wasn't sure. Gargoyle lore was still a mystery to me. But I suspected that being shattered wouldn't feel too great if it didn't outright kill him.

"So maybe this is a bit sexier than a cake," I allowed as I placed his statue where the Egyptian canopic jars used to sit before he and Lucky destroyed them in an aerial battle inside Moonlight.

His statue was pretty cool looking and I would have liked it even if I hadn't known it was Vale's form. Maybe subconsciously I had a thing for gargoyles. Or as the cursed cameos had claimed, I was fated to fall for him. I gave the statue a fond pat on the head and went back to my studio to prepare for the day.

A quick shower in my sometimes-bloody bathroom preceded a quick blowout of my long, dark hair. Melanie had stocked me up with two slices of chili-papaya bread from her family's food truck. I swore she was trying to make me bust out of my jeans. One slice and a cup of freeze dried coffee later, and I was ready to face a partial day of retail.

Not five minutes after I turned on the neon Open sign, my first potential customer walked through the door of Moonlight.

"I need cash," said the young girl who hurried up to the counter.

She was younger than me, maybe barely twenty-one. Bright blond hair the color of straw was braided and fell over her tanned shoulders. She wore a turquoise tank top and frayed white shorts and flip flops. A tattoo of Totoro sat on the top of her left foot. In her right hand she held a gun.

I didn't hold up my hands in the international sign of "don't shoot". Instead, I called up Lucky as a cool breeze that looped through the shop behind the girl.

"Are you robbing me?" I asked her.

Most pawn shops used hired muscle at the door. A lot of customers at these types of places were desperate and if they didn't get the price they wanted for their item they sometimes decided to try robbing you for the money instead. I never felt the need for human security just because there were ways to use my sorcery that were just as efficient and frankly more amusing.

Plus, I wasn't too keen on sharing Moonlight with an employee. The shop technically still belonged to my uncle, and I felt a sense of obligation to him to keep things just as he'd left them. It was optimistic of me, since it'd been over two years now since he'd gone missing, but letting go of hope was difficult, and I hadn't completely done it yet. Until that time came, Moonlight would never have a second employee.

"Am I robbing you?" the girl repeated, eyes wide. "What are you talking about?"

"You're pointing a gun at me. You told me you wanted cash."

"Oh, shit! Sorry!" She slammed the gun on the counter so hard it made me wince. Especially when the cursed cameos woke up.

"Anne Moody…death will meet you!"

"…prepare to meet your maker…"

"Death to Anne Moody!"

I gritted my teeth and did my best to ignore their high pitched voices as I carefully slid the gun to the end of the counter, its barrel pointing at the wall.

"I just want to sell that," the girl said dismissively, like she was trying to pawn an ashtray. She flipped her braids over her shoulders. "It's my boyfriend's but he dumped me so eff him. If he wants it back he can buy it back from you, right?"

She gave me a look like she thought I'd want to high-five her in the interests of female solidarity, but I wasn't interested in playing along.

"Wrong," I said with a sigh. "Some pawn shops buy guns but Moonlight isn't one of them. Sorry."

"But—but, look at it! It's all shiny. It's brand new. It's gotta be worth a lot of money." She looked around as if preparing to tell me an off-color or racist joke, and whispered, "It'll be between us. Our secret. You can sell it to some gangbangers later for a lot of money."

"Gangbangers." Was this girl for real?

"Sure, they're all over, right?" She waved vaguely at the street. "Downtown for sure. Some skeevey guys tried to sell us cocaine last night. Like I'd ever buy from someone I don't know." She pinched her nose with two fingers. "And besides that, blech, did they stink! Joey—" her breath caught over the memory of whom I assumed was the asshole ex-boyfriend, "—said that they were probably homeless or living under the freeways or something. They shouldn't allow that. The city, I mean. They should ship them out into the desert or something. Those guys were disgusting."

I blinked as something she'd said flashed like a neon sign in my head.

I checked that the gun's safety was on (action movies were good for something), before shoving the weapon at her.

"I'm not buying your gun. I need you to please take it out of here."

My tone scared her. It was I'll-call-the-cops-on-you-if-you-don't. With a pouty, outraged glare, she snatched the gun and shoved it into her hobo bag.

"You know what?" she said. "This place stinks, too. I'm thinking all of Vegas stinks. So overrated."

With a flounce, which I had to admire since she was in shorts and not a skirt with petticoats, she spun and stormed out. She left the smell of coconut body butter behind, but not until first pausing in the doorway to pull her bubble gum out of her mouth and slap it against the frame in defiance.

"Some people," I muttered, shaking my head. Vegas really brought out the kooks. I hoped she got picked up by the cops for carrying that gun in her purse without a concealed carry permit. With another shake of the head, I put her out of my mind. I had bigger fish to fry.

"Underpass," I said to Vale's statue with satisfaction. "Under the dark city. It's perfect."

I was pretty sure the gargoyle's topaz eyes flashed with agreement. But if they flashed with warning, well, there was just no way I could tell.

As soon as the sun dipped behind the Spring Mountains in the West, I turned off the Open sign. Ten minutes later, as I was counting out the till, I heard the rustle of cloth.

"You're finally awake?" I murmured without turning my head.

"I am. Are you not looking at me while I'm dressing out of respect, or because you're not interested?"

I hid my smile. "I plead the fifth."

"I'll just assume, then, that you're a very respectful woman."

Vale eventually stood before me on the other side of the counter, fully dressed in the clothes that had been packed in the box with him. His dark hair was casually mussed the way guys' hair can be when they drag on a T-shirt without bothering to check in a mirror afterward. Looking at him, it was easy to recall the taste of his skin as he'd lain in my bed. I wanted to taste it again.

I liked seeing him in my shop. He fit the place, like he spent all his time working here alongside me. As old as he was, he might even recognize some of the objects that other magickal beings had sold to me. He would be the muscle that I'd told myself I didn't need, a watch dog who understood magickal dangers the way a rent-a-cop never would.

It was a dangerous fantasy, perhaps, to imagine him permanently imbedded in my life. He was apparently gargoyle royalty. That had to come with baggage and secrets no matter how lightly he'd tried to play off his heritage. A gargoyle prince and a dragon sorceress shacking up together would draw all sorts of the wrong attention. Still, what was the point of having fantasies that were safe?

Safe was boring.

"Who left you on my doorstep?" I asked him after locking away the few bucks I'd made today.

"A friend."

"Oh, yeah?"

He smirked at my glower. "He's a three hundred year-old sorcerer, bald, and with hair on his back."

"I think I've dated him."

His eyes gleamed with amusement. "I asked him for a favor. He came through."

"Kind of dangerous leaving you on the sidewalk for any kid to come along and steal, don't you think? What if it had been garbage day?"

"I told him to try to breach your wards. I figured it'd wake you up and you'd come investigate." He shrugged. "Calculated risk, Moody. I thought it was worth it to make sure you didn't go off on your own." He leaned his forearms on the counter. Lean muscles flexed in his forearms. I tried not to stare. "I have some information about our golem-maker. I think we should check it out."

"I have information, too." I told him about the séance and what my mom's spirit had told us. "I think the dark city reference is about the homeless people living beneath the underpasses."

Vale looked impressed, but he did me one better: "There's a golem living in the storm drainage tunnels beneath the freeway."

I sucked in my breath. "Is it the gargoyle?"

"It's a troll."

"Wow." I grinned in wonder. "That makes perfect sense since trolls live under bridges." Did that mean a dragon lived beneath the Federal Reserve Bank, guarding the country's gold bullion? "How did you learn this?"

"I spent all of last night after I left you visiting various contacts throughout the city. They're ones I'd hit before, twenty years ago, when I was first tracking the gargoyle golem. But this time I had some leverage." Vale's grin was wolfish enough to make Lev proud. "I told them I was on a mission for the Oddsmakers. It lit a fire under a few of them."

I regarded him dubiously. "You think that's wise? What if it gets back to the Oddsmakers that you're slinging their name around to open doors? You said yourself this necromancy artifact may not be the mission that they're trying to talk me into."

"You gotta shake some trees to make the fruit drop, Moody. I'm willing to risk disturbing a wasp nest to get that fruit." His gaze intensified. "And this way the blame is on me. As far as the street knows, I'm the one looking for this golem-maker, not you."

"I don't need you to protect me that way." Chivalry was cool and all, but not if it was going to leave me behind while Vale did the heavy lifting.

"I'm not trying to protect you so much as I'm making sure I play a part in this." Vale leaned closer. His eyes held striations of gold. "I've been after this golem-maker since you were a toddler, Moody. He's mine."

His alpha posturing was impressive and all but it had no effect on me. I chose not to argue with him but if he thought he was elbowing me out of the way at some point, he had another thing coming.

"So we'll help each other," I said with an edged smile.

I saw the light of competition flare in his eyes and that was fine. Competition would make us each faster and sharper.

I pulled out my phone and called Melanie since neither Vale nor I had a car. I never went anywhere and I lived within walking distance of everything. I don't know what his excuse was. He didn't strike me as the chatty type who took the bus just to meet new people.

"Monkey," I said when my friend answered, "we need you. Are you busy right now? Can you swing by Moonlight and give us a ride?"

She chattered happily before hanging up.

"She'll be here in fifteen," I told Vale. I saw him looking around the shop. "Do you think we need weapons?" I grabbed my personal flashlight and one from off the shelf. I had spare batteries behind the counter. I inserted two into the shop's flashlight.

"I'm not sure how effective weapons would be against a golem," Vale said. "Hopefully we'll be lucky and they won't be necessary." He shot me a quick smile. "We'll just use our charm."

"Has it bugged you all this time not knowing what happened to that gargoyle?" It seemed strange to me that he'd let the trail go cold after my parents were killed. If anything, he should have had even more motivation to find it.

"Who said I don't know what happened to it?" Vale picked up what looked like a twisted old stick. It was worn as smooth as bone and the tapered end was burned black. He tapped the wand in my direction. "I tracked it down in Vegas. It was living on the UNLV campus, hiding on the rooftops."

"Not a single student saw it?"

"It didn't come down until after midnight. It could have lived there like that for decades."

"But it didn't," I guessed.

He replaced the wand on the shelf, his fingers giving it a final stroke. "I came for it one night, to question it." A mirthless smile crossed his face. "It melted into mud before I could get a word out of it. It dripped through the cracks and over the side of the building. I couldn't scrape enough of it together to make a mud pie."

I imagined his frustration at that moment. I wish I'd been there. I could have baked all the mud to keep it together. "Did that mean it was dead?"

"It meant that whoever had made it had taken its life away. Golem-makers are mini-gods. They can make their own children."

"What's to stop him from doing the same with this troll? Should we bring a shovel and pail?"

"We can't prevent it if it happens again, but we can hope that we're moving so quickly that the golem-maker has no idea we've found his troll."

"Ugh, I hate racing against the clock," I complained, but I should have expected this. The golem-maker didn't want to be found. It underscored the need for us to keep this quiet and for me to keep a tight leash on Lucky. Softly, softly was the name of the game here. We needed to be ninjas.

"I promise you, Moody, another twenty years aren't going to pass before we get our answers. This will pan out."

Vale sounded so determined, almost angrily so, that I couldn't help asking, "Do you feel responsible in some way for what happened to my parents?"

I wasn't accusing him of anything, and I was glad I could tell that he understood that. He stared sightlessly into the shadows for a moment.

"I could have done more," he admitted. "I didn't know that at the time, but I know it now and that's enough motivation for me. I want to bring their killer to justice but I also want you to find some peace, Moody."

"I'm not haunted by their deaths or anything," I said dismissively.

His dark eyes found me. "Their loss shaped you. Don't downplay that. I'm not saying it's made you better or worse. You are who you are, and I like who you are. But I know that you still miss them."

"I guess I want closure," I said slowly. "I want to know that the bad guy didn't get away this time."

"He won't."

When you had someone like Vale, standing in the shadows, speaking those two words like they were the most important words he had ever uttered, you couldn't help but shiver with a thrill. I wanted to be badass with him. I wanted to right every injustice in the world with him by my side.

A minute later, a bright blue Prius pulled up in front of the shop. Not quite the Batmobile, but it would do.

"Hey, guys!" Melanie waved from the driver's window as we left the shop. Her car's paint was only a few shades darker than the color of her hair. "I brought some goodies in case we get hungry!"

"We're not going on a field trip to California," I grumbled. "Vale, you take shotgun since you know where we're going."

Vale eyed the car. "I'd forgotten you drive a Prius."

"Hey, Mayans care about the Earth, you know," Melanie told him sternly. "You should care, too! You're a gargoyle. You're going to be here for a long time!"

"I recycle when I can," he said somberly as he opened the passenger door.

I hid my snicker and slid into the back seat.

"Look in the pink box," my best friend told me as she drove us down Charleston Boulevard. "My family runs a food truck, Vale. We make all kinds of super delicious Mexican
tortas
. Anne loves them! She's always yelling at me not to bring my truck around because then she'll order everything. She can be a real pig, ha ha!"

"Yeah, ha ha," I muttered as I eyed the contents of the bakery box and made my selection. I bit into a round, pink Mexican pan bread that was flavored with guava frosting. "You're trying to sabotage me with all these, Melly. My dragon's gonna get fat."

"Most guys don't like sweets, huh?" Melanie asked Vale, sounding disappointed that he hadn't asked what was in the box she'd brought.

He turned, looked back at the box of sweets in my lap, and reached in and selected a donut covered with bright yellow glaze.

"I'm not like most guys," he told Melanie and shoved half the doughnut in his mouth.

"Oh, my god, Anne!" Melanie squealed with delight. "You have to keep this one!"

I was glad to be sitting in the backseat so no one could see my blush.

"So why are we going to see a troll, huh? Aren't they like, big and mean and stuff?"

"Probably," I said, finishing up my bread and putting the box on the floor so it would be less of a temptation. "But it doesn't matter if this troll is infected with Ebola. We have to grill it and see what it knows about the golem-maker."

"'It' is a 'he'," Vale said. "Melanie, my source told me this troll may himself be a golem, made by the person we seek."

"Why would anyone make a troll?"

I tried to come up with any reason and failed. Trolls were like dumb beasts, with IQs of two-year-olds. All they did, as far as I knew, was eat and sleep. They weren't good for heavy labor because they suffered from agoraphobia: a fear of open spaces.

"This troll supposedly was made a long time ago," Vale answered for me, "so there's a good chance it was one of the maker's earliest constructions. It may have been an experiment that he had no active use for so he dumped it in the tunnels. The good news is that if it's truly been down there that long then people have probably seen it and can point it out to us."

Vale sounded confident, but I questioned whether we'd be able to find this troll even with GPS. They weren't exactly the most social of creatures. A long time ago real trolls used to eat people, but the growth of civilization had forced them to change their diets to things like cows and goats to avoid being hunted by armies of angry villagers.

What would a Las Vegas troll eat? The only animals in the city, barring a stray coyote or wild rabbits, were kept in zoos or in casinos.

By the time Melanie parked at the entrance to the tunnels, I was brimming with curiosity and yeah, excitement. Another step closer to finding the necromancy artifact meant another step closer to finding justice for my parents.

But Vale caught my arm as soon as we climbed out of the car.

"Let me speak to him." He raised a finger to cut me off when I opened my mouth to argue. "Trolls aren't used to dealing with women. You'll scare him and he won't be any good to us."

"I'm still going in," I said firmly.

"Of course you are. I wouldn't dare deny you. But you'll let me ask the questions. Otherwise this troll will clam up and we'll end up with nothing."

I didn't like it, but I recognized that my pride was trying to get involved and that had no place here. This was about obtaining information, not about proving who cared more about finding the golem-maker.