Vampire Games (5 page)

Chapter Nine

It took a few calls, a little waiting, a few more calls, and maybe a little begging to finally meet my next interview.

I met Ricardo Cortez at the Hard Rock Hotel’s massive, central bar, where we sat across from each other and nursed our drinks. Mine was white wine. His was a beer. Both of our glasses were small. Around us were the sounds of money being won and lost. Mostly lost.

“
You were the referee for the Baker/Marquez fight,” I said.

He looked down into his beer. I suspected he often looked down into his beer for answers. That I quickly ascertained he was an alcoholic no longer surprised me. That I felt his overwhelming need and addiction to the stuff did surprise me.

It was almost as if I could reach inside his thoughts.

Almost.

Weeks ago, Hanner had told me that I could expect to start reading other minds—and not just those closest to me. And not just read.

Manipulate.

Jesus.

For now, I didn’t want to think about manipulating another’s mind—hell, it was all I could do to exist comfortably in my own.

Finally, Ricardo looked up from his beer. He said, “Yes.”

“
How long have you been a referee?”

“
Eight years.”

“
Have you ever refereed a bout where a fighter was killed?”

Ricardo was a strong-looking Hispanic with what appeared to be the beginning of a tattoo under the right sleeve of his jacket. It looked like a snake tail. In fact, I was certain it was a rattle. We were mostly alone at the bar. Then again, the bar was so expansive that it was hard to tell where it ended and where it started. Nearby, a woman jumped up and down at the nickel slot machine. I think she’d just won a shitload of nickels.

Ricardo ignored the excited woman. Instead, he lifted his beer to his lips, and while he was guzzling he gestured for the waiter for another. Yeah, he was an alcoholic.

When he finally pulled away, he said, “That was my first death.”

“
Hard on you?”

“
What do you think?”

“
I’m thinking it was a shitty day for everyone.”

“
Yup.”

The waitress set another beer before him, and Ricardo picked it up instantly.

I said, “Do you blame yourself for his death?”

“
No one else to blame.”

“
What about the guy doing the punching?”

Ricardo shook his head. “It was my job to stop the fight before it gets to that point.”

“
Except it was a fluke punch. Everyone agrees. Most people think the fight was pretty even up to that point.”

“
No, it wasn’t.”

I blinked. This was new information. Investigators loved new information. New information meant that an investigator was onto something. I liked that.

“
How so?” I asked.

Ricardo rubbed his face and I saw the scarring on his own knuckles. Ah, he had been a fighter himself. In fact, now I could see that his nose had undoubtedly been broken a few times. Probably not a very good fighter. Probably why he went into reffing fights instead of participating in them. Reffing was easier on the nose.

When he had collected his thoughts and had decided just how much to tell me—and how I knew this was beginning to trouble me—he said, “Caesar was not all there from the beginning.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Caesar looked, at least to me, that he’d already gone a round or two. Or maybe even three or four.”

“
Anyone else notice this?”

“
Hard to say. I’m certain someone on his crew would have known.”

“
How could they miss it?”

“
Easy to miss, unless you know what to look for.”

“
And you know what to look for?” I said.

“
Of course. All good refs do. It’s how we keep these guys from beating in each others’ skulls.”

“
What do you look for?”

Ricardo was loosening up, forgiving himself, reminding himself that there might be more to this story than he knew. Again, how I knew this snippet of thought from him was seriously beginning to wig me out.

He said, “If you know a fighter, it’s easier. Then you know their mannerisms. You also know how much punishment they can take.”

“
You ever work a fight with Caesar?”

“
Yup. Two.”

“
And he was different from the get-go.”

“
Right. From the fucking get-go.”

“
What was he doing different?”

“
Dazed. Slower than normal.”

“
Even though most judges scored it even?”

“
I said slower than normal. Caesar Marquez was better than most. I even caught him staggering once or twice back to the corner. Not sure if anyone else had seen it.”

“
What did you think about that?”

“
I thought that something was wrong.”

“
Enough to stop the fight?”

He shook his head and remembered the beer. He said, “I should have stopped it if I’d had any balls. I should have at least called called one of the doctors over. But...”

“
But you just weren’t sure.”

He looked at me funny, as I had read his thoughts. “Right, I wasn’t sure. There was no reason for his symptoms, after all. The fight had been fairly tame.”
             

“
But he was in trouble from the beginning.”

Ricardo nodded. “Almost as if...”

He couldn’t finish the sentence, and so I finished it for him. “Almost as if he’d been hurt before the fight.”

Ricardo looked at me again. “Bingo.”

“
Hard to blame yourself for something like this.”

“
Hard not to, either. I should have stopped the fight.”

“
You did your best.”

He shook his head, and kept on shaking his head even as he finished his second beer and held up his hand for a third.

Chapter Ten

With Criss Angel in town, I figured something as mundane as a giant flying vampire bat would go unnoticed.

And so I stood on the ledge of my fifteen-floor balcony at the MGM Grand, one of the few hotels in Vegas with open balconies. It was perfect for viewing the Vegas skyline from...or leaping from.

Don’t try this at home, kids.

The hot desert wind buffeted my naked body. My longish hair snapped behind me horizontally. Standing naked on a balcony’s edge was liberating. Despite being perpetually cold and despite the hot desert wind, I shivered slightly.

After all, the wind was blowing where, as they say, the sun don’t shine.

I looked down at the city. An image of the young boxer collapsing in the ring came to me as I stood there. No surprise. This was the city where he’d died, where his autopsy had been conducted, and where I was beginning to suspect he had possibly been killed.

And not by Russell Baker.

Whether or not Caesar Marquez’s death was an accident—or something else—remained to be seen.

I didn’t need a psychic hit to know that something screwy was going on here. Something wasn’t right. What exactly, I didn’t know. Maybe I would never know.

I tilted my head back and spread my arms and deeply inhaled the heated desert air—air that was suffused with something that smelled suspiciously like all-you-can-eat $1.99 BBQ ribs.

I stood like that for some time, and the longer I did so, the more I was certain of one thing: I was becoming less and less human.

And more and more something else.

One of them.

I knew this because no human stood on the ledge of their hotel balcony, with arms spread, head tilted back, naked as the day they were born, reveling in their freedom, knowing that an even greater freedom was about to come. A freedom from gravity.

As I stood there, the wind whipping my hair into a frenzy, I wasn’t thinking of my kids or Kingsley or Fang or anyone. In fact, I wasn’t thinking at all. I was only
feeling
, only
sensing
.

The wind, the heat, the smells, the sounds.

I felt elemental. Animalistic.

I didn’t feel like a mother or a friend or a lover. I didn’t feel human. I felt, instead, deeply connected to the Earth, a part of the Earth, a part of its elements, its raw material.

I tilted my head forward, knowing that I had to either jump or go back inside. Sooner or later, the cops would be beating down my door. A naked woman on a balcony’s ledge was bound to draw some attention.

And I sure as hell wasn’t going back in.

The flame appeared in my thoughts. A single, unwavering flame, and within the flame was a creature that should have looked hideous to me, but didn’t. It was a creature I felt an extreme fondness for. A love for.

It was, after all, me. In a different shape.

A very different shape.

I lowered my arms and looked down. There was nothing to hinder my drop. No buttresses or projecting balconies.

Just a straight drop.

And so I did just that, tilting forward away from the ledge.

Dropping.

Chapter Eleven

As I fell, as the warm desert wind thundered over me, the winged creature in the flame rushed toward me, filling my thoughts.

I shuddered violently—but kept my eyes closed as I continued to plummet.

I was bigger now, I could feel it, but I hadn’t yet fully transformed. I didn’t dare open my eyes, knowing the closing of my eyes, the flame, the image...and faith were all part of this process.

I continued to fall, knowing my body was changing rapidly. Metamorphosing. I also knew that the speed of my metamorphosis was contingent on the circumstance. A shorter drop would result in a faster transformation.

Now, I could feel my arms growing, elongating, feel my body becoming something greater than it was before. Denser, heavier. My awareness of my own body expanded instinctively, exponentially.

I was no longer what I was.

No, I was something much, much bigger.

Much greater.

My wings snapped taut, catching the air, manipulating air, using the air, and now I wasn’t so much falling as angling.

I opened my eyes.

Before me stretched the Vegas Strip, in all of its glittering, neon, sinful glory. I flapped my wings hard, instinctively, gaining altitude. Instinctively.

Keeping to the shadows in a city that never sleeps and never turns off was no easy task. And so I took it up another hundred feet or so, flapping my wings, catching hot drafts of sinful air. Yes, the wind was warm and dry and not very different from the air in southern California. That would change in a few months. In a few months, Las Vegas would go from temperate to nuclear.

Too hot for even the undead.

I flapped my wings casually, cruising above the glittering city. I circled once around the superheated laser beam emitting from the Luxor. I continued on, moving north over a cluster of world-famous hotels. The Bellagio with its intricate fountains, the Paris and its Eiffel Tower replica, the Mirage and its gardens, Treasure Island with its pirate ship.

And one flying monster. I wondered idly if the Excalibur needed a real-life dragon. It could supplement my income.

So far, people weren’t pointing into the sky and scattering like frightened rabbits before a hawk’s shadow. That was a good thing, I guess.

I caught a warm updraft and spread my wings wide and hovered high above the city of sin, staring down, using my supernaturally-enhanced vision to see not only the multitudes crowding the sidewalks, but their actual expressions. Most looked tired. Most looked drunk. There were many groups of young people, no doubt celebrating twenty-first birthdays. A handful of older types wore shorts and T-shirts and sandals. One woman was walking through the crowd bare-chested, high as kite, although not as high as
this
kite. People stopped and stared at her breasts, but for the most part, she was ignored.

Welcome to Vegas.

I saw young men handing out flyers to strip clubs. Most people tossed the flyers aside, which cluttered sidewalks and gutters, pushed along by the warm spring breeze.