Trouble with Gargoyles: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 3) (16 page)

At Moonlight, I set the wards and locked all the doors. We were vulnerable now, our actions potentially spied upon by the Oddsmakers, our intentions at risk of discovery. But I think in part that very danger goaded us to push the limits, to risk defiance in plain sight.

I didn't think Vale was in the mood for talking anymore about our plans, however. He pushed me gently but firmly toward my bed.

"Remove my shirt," he whispered.

The lights were off, but the backyard illumination gave me enough to see him by, enough to see the desire heating his gaze and the tension in his muscles as I peeled off his shirt. Vale allowed me to run the show most of the time, either consciously or subconsciously submitting to my need to feel that my choices and decisions were my own. But when it was just the two of us, bare skin to bare skin, there was no questioning his masculinity and power. I gasped when he wordlessly pressed me against the nearest wall with his body. He was heat and strength against me. He was protection and love, holding me tight.

"Whatever happens," he whispered against my ear, "you will always be the most magnificent creature I have ever known. Your heart is larger than a dragon's. Your spirit is more beautiful than an angel's."

I sank into the words, falling gladly under his spell. "I wouldn't be able to do any of this without you."

His lips curved as he kissed down the side of my throat. "Yes, you would, Moody. You don't need me. You don't need anyone. But you choose me, and that means everything to me."

He laced our fingers together and brought our hands up above my head. Sealed tight against me, he fit me perfectly. When he pressed my hands to the wall in an unspoken command to keep them there I obeyed. He slid my clothes off as though they were doubts that had no business being between us.

We writhed against the wall, my body climbing his. He gasped against my mouth, "I have no more secrets." His muscles bunched as he joined us. "Anything you want from me...it's yours, Moody."

I don't need your sacrifice, I thought in a piercing moment of clarity.
I don't need you to risk your life for me.
Yet as soon as I thought this, I understood that Vale needed to do these things for me. His kisses bled with his guilt for not preventing my parents' deaths. His breath, mingling with mine, was harsh with regret for keeping his motives hidden from me for so long. Vale wanted the Oddsmakers and Vagasso gone because they were terrible beings, but he also wanted penance.

He didn't need it from me.

I clutched his hair. I tightened my legs around his hips. I surged forward, possessive and greedy, and bit his collarbone. "I want you to do this to me, exactly like this, a decade from now," I panted against his skin. "So don't you dare let me down, do you hear me? Don't you dare."

He growled and pressed me hard into the wall, his passion getting the best of him. I let him take me, reveling in it, knowing that surrender to him was no loss at all.

In the morning, I woke up in bed lying beside a stone gargoyle. Tenderly, I traced a fearsome fang with my fingertip. Vale was never more beautiful than when he offered himself to me like this. It was a degree of trust no one had ever given to me before, and I cherished it.

Protectiveness caused me to clutch the statue tight to my breast. Setting it on the shelf behind me in Moonlight no longer felt safe enough. I needed a hidey hole, somewhere the Oddsmakers or Vagasso could never find it.

As I was considering all the options, the world flipped upside down. I shouted breathlessly as a monster roared.

"Hello, Anne Moody. We'd like to talk to you."

I didn't feel like opening Moonlight for business. Why go through the motions for something that felt sickeningly inconsequential in the grand scope of my life?

But I dutifully opened up for business. I was a shopkeeper eighty percent of the time. So that was what I did. I kept shop.

As desperate gamblers negotiated with me for more cash, and as curious tourists scratched their heads or giggled over the items on the shelves, my mind raced in place. The hours passed. I took in a set of four hubcaps for pawn and bought a pair of glasses that could magickally see through metal. I sold the ancient Casio keyboard as well as a keychain that could magickally, temporarily, turn your car's exterior red.

Nothing exciting. Nothing unexpected. I zoned in and out, trying to make sense of the joke that my life had become. It wasn't easy.

No, it was impossible.

The Oddsmakers had snatched me from my bed that morning. Nothing in my life had been more difficult than standing in their house of horrors and keeping my face blank and my rage still. Melanie hadn't been present. The little canary hadn't been present. It had been me all alone with no one to fear hurting. The urge to blast everything to hell had made me dizzy and sick.

Maybe I could have succeeded. Maybe going full dragon and full gonzo would have ended the Oddsmakers' reign then and there.

Then again, maybe it wouldn't have. Xaran's admonition that no one truly knew how powerful the Oddsmakers were had ran through my head tauntingly. It was that niggling fear that victory might require more than me and my dragon which had stayed my hand. It had kept me nodding my head and clenching my jaw so tightly my head had bellowed with pain.

I was obedient. I played dumb. Afterwards, the Oddsmakers kindly deposited me back in my room with a metaphorical pat on the head.

I could have screamed. But I didn't.

Instead, I'd spent the next ten minutes throwing up in the bathroom, the Oddsmaker's announcement continuing to wind insidiously through my head like a parasitic worm:

"Anne Moody, it is time for you to complete the first part of your mission."

I stabbed my finger at the register, startling the older man who was buying a wallet with fleur-de-lis stamped into the leather. I didn't apologize. I shoved his change at him and wished him gone. I wished them all gone. But it was too early to close up shop. And Anne Moody, as the Oddsmakers knew, didn't rebel against orders. She was spineless.

When business slowed, I pulled up my laptop and accessed the search engine. I Googled "green striped wallpaper Las Vegas", with only the barest of expectations. Lots of useless results came up, but on page three I found what I was looking for, amazingly, in a Missed Connections ad on Craigslist.

"Damn," I whispered as I gazed dully over the shop.

Nothing could stop me now.

~~~~~

I dressed like a badass. Jeans and a leather jacket. My lace-up boots with thick heels. I wasn't out to impress; I was out to send a message. I knew all about sending messages. The Oddsmakers had taught me and I'd taken the lesson to heart.

The handsome young man in the bathroom mirror whose face was being eaten by maggots looked like a supermodel compared to the ugliness that I saw in my own face. I waved at the curse, but since the guy's eyes were covered with the larvae, I guess he didn't see me. Or maybe he didn't like me.

That would've made two of us.

I wrapped up Vale's statue with the softest blanket I owned and laid it tenderly in the center of my bed. Sunset was less than an hour away so I didn't linger. I called up a car service and then locked up Moonlight. I didn't, however, set the wards.

Just in case I didn't return.

The car service took me out of downtown and onto the 95 heading south. I watched the sun sink over the Spring Mountains, bathing Las Vegas in oranges and reds and eventually purples that gave way to night. When we pulled onto Boulder Highway it was fully dark. Things that went bump in the night would now be awake. I tried not to think about that, though, as we drove.

Boulder Highway at night could be less than savory. You wouldn't find high-priced call girls here. The prostitutes looked rough. The dealers looked rougher. Anyone walking alongside the highway looked like they were up to no good or had been victims of people who were up to no good.

Certainly where I was dropped off fit that description as well. The Runaways was a dive bar that made other dive bars look posh. You had to walk around a stinking Dumpster to reach the front door which didn't have a handle, just a piece of crooked wire threaded through the holes where the handle had once been bolted on. On a different day I would have pulled my jacket down over my hand before grabbing the wire, or maybe used the toe of my boot. But this was a different sort of day. I hooked my fingers through the wire and yanked the battered door open.

My eyes began to burn the moment I stepped inside. The smoke was a veritable slap to the face, a test of your manliness. I had a forest of hair spurting from my chest as I slowly made my way between the beat-up tables, many of which were missing all of their chairs.

There were three people in the place besides me. The bartender was a sleepy-looking grandpa type who was rubbing a rag over a spot on the bar top with such concentration it made me wonder if he was trying to bore an escape hole to get the hell out of there. Just across from him at the bar sat something gray-haired and hunched over. I say "something" because it could have been a woman or a man. Or maybe some kind of animal.

The third person in the bar I wasn't sure I could claim was actually in it. The guy stood in the corner of the room, the toes of his ratty tennis shoes touching the two connecting walls. That was it. Just standing there, hands forward and out of sight. Was he in another world, mentally? He wore a hip-length dirty green coat and saggy dark pants. I hoped he wasn't urinating, but who knew.

Ambiance-wise, the place was crappy and dingy. You drank here to hide from the world, not to find any pleasure in drinking or in socializing. That seemed to fit my reason for being here, too, at least partly.

The bartender still hadn't noticed me. I doubted he would unless I waved a five under his nose, and even then it might need to be rolled up and dusted with cocaine. His inattention allowed me to explore the small, miserable room without notice. There wasn't much to look at: a dartboard near the guy in the corner with most of its cork pulled out, a couple of framed photographs of desert scenes, their glasses stained brown from the pervasive cigarette smoke, and a payphone whose receiver was probably a raging source of oral herpes. Nice.

No green striped wallpaper, but then, I hadn't thought it would be that easy.

Grimacing, I made my way toward the back, where there was a doorway I assumed led to the restrooms. I prayed I wouldn't have to go inside them because who knew what atrocities I'd find in there. I ended up drawing up short just outside the doorway, checking out the walls, the floor, even the stained ceiling.

Nothing.

Now what?

"Oh, god," I groaned as I eyed the doorway to what was surely a Hell on earth. "I really don't want to."

"Then don't."

I spun, my dragon primed and ready to explode. But it was only a girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen. She was odd-looking, but in a strangely cute way. She wore a black, Lolita-style dress, a multi-layered thing drowning in ruffles that I didn't see often in Vegas because of the scorching temperatures. Her nose was nothing but a pinch of flesh. Her eyes were buttons of dark brown. Bright, sunflower blond curls made her round face appear even rounder. In a way she reminded me of images of Shirley Temple when she was a child: uber cutesy but not in an obnoxious or doll-like way. There was something homespun about this girl, like she'd grown up on a farm in Kansas and hitchhiked her way to Vegas without being sold into sex trafficking. At least, I hoped she hadn't been.

"Don't go in there," she said. She wasn't smiling, but she seemed interested in what happened to me. "What you're looking for isn't in there anyway."

I took a step back. My three friends in the bar remained oblivious to my conversation with this girl. I felt for the rumbly place in my chest.

"What am I looking for?" I asked, waiting for the shit to hit the fan.

"You're looking for the meeting." Her dark eyes were suddenly piercing. "You're looking for those of us who oppose the Oddsmakers."

I looked around again. Still no one was paying any attention to us. I'd hoped to slip into the meeting without being noticed, but this girl might ruin my plans by forcing me to engage before I'd found the stupid place.

"I'm just looking for a friend," I said. "But you said you know where—"

"I'm not letting you go in there and do what you came here to do."

"What's my mission?" I asked the Oddsmakers warily. My heart began to pound. What had changed that they could tell me now? Did they know that I was plotting against them?

"Your mission is to do what Iris Moody failed to do: rid Las Vegas of the heir to the Gargoyle Throne. Xaran Morgan must die."

I took another step back from Curly Sue. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just—"

"I was there!" she hissed suddenly, her girlish charm swallowed by a fierce grief I understood well.

"You're the canary," I whispered. My widened eyes took her in. It was so obvious in hindsight.

"I'm not a little girl," she choked out, her dark eyes shimmering. "Looks can be deceiving. I've been with Kleure for centuries. I mean…I was." A sob slipped from her lips before she pressed them shut. Twin beads of moisture slid down her rounded cheeks. "He was mine, and they turned him inside out."

Her rage was greater than mine. It eclipsed the sun. I could say nothing when faced with something so enormous and powerful.

She pointed a delicate finger at me. "You watched it all and did nothing."

Swallowing razorblades would have been easier than admitting, "That's true."

I waited for a little yellow bird to go straight for my eyes. I'm not sure in that moment that I would have defended myself.

But she didn't transform. She blinked more tears. They ran sweetly down her cheeks, like she was a maple tree in the spring.

"You wanted to."

I was sure I'd misheard her. "What?"

"Are you like your mother?"

"In what way?"

"Iris betrayed us," this nameless girl, who was not a girl, told me. "She turned in dozens of us to the Oddsmakers."

"My mom didn't betray any of you," I said sharply. "She was loyal to your cause to the end."

She bit her lip. Her brows drew down and the tears stopped flowing. "How can you be sure?"

"Because the Oddsmakers killed her."

There was no greater—or damning—truth than that. My mom was valuable to them, but they had preferred to see her dead than have her rise against them.

There were ruffles around the canary shifter's throat. They vibrated with the manic pulse beating beneath the skin there.

"Then I'm right: you
are
just like your mother." Her voice dropped to a whisper, not to hide, but because I think the words hurt her to speak. "I looked at you when it happened. I saw the hate in your eyes when they did that to Kleure. If you're working for them now, your heart's not in it."

I laughed harshly. "That's the understatement of the year."

"And yet you're here, looking for them. For us."

I held her eyes. "I'm not here for you."

"I can't kill him," I gasped. "He's Vale's brother."

"Must we torture Vale again to encourage you? Or your friends?" The sickly sweet voice tittered. "This time we might go too far, Anne. We have a tendency to get…carried away."

"No," I whispered. "Don't you touch him. Don't touch any of them."

"Then say please and do as we say."

There was blood on my lips. Hate in my heart. "Please…"

"Do you work for the Oddsmakers?"

The question pulled me out of my memory of that morning. I shook my head and looked away. "It's complicated."

"That means yes, but they've ordered you to do something you don't want to. What is it? Turn us in?" She hesitated. "Slaughter us all?"

"I wouldn't!" I snarled at her. But reality wouldn't allow me to ride that high horse very far. In fact, it bucked me off and kicked me in the head. "Not everyone," I muttered, burning with shame.

"If you don't do this, they'll know you're just like Iris."

I tried to figure out what she was getting at. It was like trying to learn the secrets of the universe from the face of a kewpie doll.

"I don't have a choice," I said. It was like pulling out my own guts to say it. "They're going to hurt someone important to me if I don't do this."

"Would you destroy them if you could?" Her gaze was steady. Ancient. She was like Vale. She'd seen it all. But I got the impression she'd finally seen too much.