Wilde Card: Immortal Vegas, Book 2 (30 page)

The SANCTUS paneled van smoked and steamed beside us, but it was no longer held in a thrall of magic. It seemed almost normal, actually.

Right up until a golden scroll case rolled out of its open doors, then bounced across the sidewalk toward me.

No one noticed as I picked the case up, stowing it in my hoodie. Everyone was chattering, Connected and otherwise, most in knots with each other. Other than the shattered concrete and the smashed van, the rest of the world was acting like the last hour had never happened. Traffic rolled forward, people were talking, walking—like animatronics wound up and set to movement on the Strip.

“Sara.” Brody’s words were less of a plea than an irritated snap, and I turned to him, reflexively reaching for his hand to pull him to a standing position.

“Jeez, Brody, I’m sorry, I—”

When our hands touched, I froze, my eyes going wide.

“It’s okay.” Brody’s own momentum carried him forward, and he shook his head. “I have got a bitch of a headache, though.” He frowned. “Why the hell—how the hell did I get downtown? I thought we were meeting at Roxie Meadows’s house.” He glanced down at his hand, which I was still holding—now with both of mine. “Um… You okay, Sara?”

“Sorry.” I dropped his hand as his gaze swung to the smoking hulk of a van. “The sound came from there?” he asked, wincing as he took his first step. “Shit, my head hurts.”

He faltered, and I grabbed him again, taking his full weight. He smelled like heat and ash, and I couldn’t deny the zing of awareness that went through me. Except what I was feeling this time wasn’t the simple rush of pleasure and anxiety and hope and doubt that Brody’s touch had been exciting in me pretty much since I’d hit puberty. This was something else entirely.

Brody was a Connected.

“Not exactly, Miss Wilde.” Armaeus disentangled me from Brody and stabilized the detective, eyeing him fully in the face. For his part, Brody blinked at Armaeus as if he couldn’t fully see him, still shaking his head. “The purpose of the SANCTUS attack was to wage a sonic blast at a specific frequency which they knew to be harmful to Connecteds.”

“Cardinal Ventre and Roxie,” I said. “They were working together all this time. She chose his strength over the Council’s in the end.” Nikki and I had been right about that much at least.

“The initial pain you experienced was the result of their efforts, yes. It was,” he nodded, standing back from Brody, apparently satisfied that the detective wasn’t going to crumple. “Neatly done.”

Brody’s brain came back on line, bristling as his last synapses flared to life. “So where is Roxie Meadows, exactly?”

Armaeus gestured to a small knot of people around the fallen woman. She was moving, at least, but moaning. Weakly. Brody headed off for her without a second glance to me.

I frowned. “What did you do to him?”

“A harmless adjustment.” Armaeus dismissed my concern. “What SANCTUS did not seem to recall, and of course the Empress had no interest in explaining, is that a slight alteration to the pitch they’d chosen would produce an effect quite the opposite of what they intended. Instead of destroying the sensitivities of Connecteds, it augmented them, the same way it had augmented Roxie’s abilities all those years ago. In some very special cases, Connecteds will find themselves altered quite dramatically.”

“Dramatically?” I watched as Dixie emerged from the crowd, her face alight with wonder. “Like how dramatically?”

“Those Connected with a moderate level of ability are now masters. Masters are now savants. For a short while, even the dilettantes and fringe practitioners of the Connected community will experience heightened awareness, astral travel, lucid dreams, visions, and coincidences that cannot be easily explained away.”

“So they got their Rapture after all.”

“In a word, yes.” Armaeus nodded. “It will seem as if a psychic renaissance has been visited upon them. The rush of power will show them the pathway to greater understanding, if only for a while.”

I grimaced. “Everyone?”

“Everyone within the enhanced magical boundaries of the Las Vegas power grid. As it happens, that includes several very powerful Connecteds. The Deathwalkers will find themselves enhanced to a level they will find virtually intolerable, as they will not consider it organic to their own abilities.”

Despite myself, my lips twitched. “Danae, too?”

“Danae especially,” he said. “Annika Soo remains within the city, recovering from the first blast she received at the Rarity gala. Now she will have another level of augmentation to manage. We will be watching her very closely. Monsieur Mercault arrived this afternoon, in a coma.” Armaeus tilted his head, his gaze fixed on the horizon as a smile ghosted across his lips. “He is no longer in danger, however. Which means that answers will be forthcoming regarding the assault on his home by SANCTUS, and just how deeply he is mired in the network of dark practitioners.”

I gaped at him. “You think you’re going to turn him to your side?”

Armaeus’s glance back to me was sardonic. “I am on no ‘side’, Miss Wilde, but that of—”

I held up a hand. “I beg you. Don’t say it.”

“Very well. But Mercault, Soo and Danae should all prove very interesting to watch, over the coming days.” His gaze rested on me, and though he was speaking normally—as normal as Armaeus got anyway—his eyes remained far too dark.

A sudden, irrational concern gripped me. “You were augmented too, weren’t you.”

“I needed to be.” He waved back to the fountain. “Calling Llyr to show his face is not the act of an acolyte, at least not for an acolyte who wishes to keep control of the portal.”

“That’s where Mantorov screwed up, right? He didn’t have the power—you did. And the portal took him because of that.

“Grigori Mantorov knew a great deal, and knew enough that he did not wish to channel Llyr of his own volition. He drew me there, anticipating correctly that I would come for the same treasure he craved. The language of the ancients.”

“…And God said…”

He nodded. “A language not written for this dimension but which transcends it, accessible to the trained who speak it with power.” His smile twisted. “Or who possess the ability to use it without training.”

I ignored that for the moment. “Now what? Brody is a Connected, Armaeus. He wasn’t before.”

“He was—somewhat,” Armaeus said. “You cannot augment what is not there. He is an able detective, and his success is doubtless in part due to what he would call intuition. That is what was augmented, in a pure psychic sense.”

“Yeah, well.” I frowned as Brody and Dixie stood staring at each other, lost in conversation. “He’s not going to start levitating or anything, is he?”

“Is that truly your concern?”

“Nope, he’s not my concern at all.” I shifted my gaze back to the Magician. “I thought you were injured. Failing.”

“And again you came to my aid.” His expression softened. “Your raw power was at the surface, waiting to be tapped. In the moment, I judged it would be more effective than mine. Llyr has faced me before. Old foes know each other’s weaknesses. You, however, he underestimated.”

“Not by a lot.” He’d missed the mark on fame and fortune, maybe. But not when it came to my parents. That had been spot-on. Too spot-on.

I felt a familiar pressure in my mind.

“Cut that out, juice head,” I snapped. “I’ve been amped up too, you know. Which means my wards are stronger.”

“And yet…” He stood closer to me. Way too close. “Were you to allow me, I could also help you push past boundaries that you have heretofore been unable to break, make connections from which your own mind has barred you. In the time we have remaining under this influence, it is something to consider.”

And maybe, just maybe my brain wouldn’t break anymore. Maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have to be afraid of what Armaeus would find if I let him in.

Then I seemed to hear the rest of his words.

“Ahhh… Time we have remaining?”

“The effects of this sonic blast cannot be sustained. Worse, they can only be replicated with a sound emission once every several years. Otherwise, repeated exposure to the sound produces lesser and lesser results.”

“So Roxie’s greatest con was well-timed, back in the seventies.”

He nodded. “If she had not ascended to the Council, her abilities would have faded as well. The sonic amplification would have run its course.”

“Like a drug.”

“Exactly like that.” He gestured to the crowd. “At this moment we are—all of us—under the influence of a drug.”

“There goes my future in the military.” I squinted at the men in the van. “What about them?”

“Those truly not possessing psychic abilities will be unfazed, but the majority of those involved with SANCTUS turned to the group, ironically, because of their psychic abilities and their repressed shame over them. Now they will feel a great rightness within them that should feel like a wrong. It will send many of them to prayer, some to defection from their faith-based beliefs, and others will simply expand their understanding about what is possible in this world.”

“They’ve become the enemy.” I liked that. I liked that a lot.

Traffic parted enough for a tow truck to lumber onto the sidewalk, aiming for the crushed van. The SANCTUS drivers were being checked out by EMTs at this point, a cluster of cops standing off to the side with Brody. “You’re going to let SANCTUS’s minions go?”

“They will be cited for failure to control their vehicle.” He shrugged. “After that, there will be no recollection that they did anything other than jump the curb to avoid a pileup on the boulevard. It can be very challenging to drive in Las Vegas.”

I watched Dixie and Brody helping Roxie to her feet. She was crying. “What’s her deal? She should be in clover.”

“Not…exactly.” Armaeus shook his head. “The Empress taught SANCTUS how to build their device. She helped them test it, perfect it. She knew what she was doing, and what it would cause. She simply didn’t expect it to be calibrated directly for
her
at any point.”

I thought about the variation in the wall of sound right after I’d given Simon the Mongolian crown. “You calibrated the sound to affect the Council?”

“Not the Council—her. As a result, she is no longer Connected. She can no longer be a member of the Council, now or evermore. No amount of artificial enhancement will allow her to regain her abilities to the sufficient level. She’ll return to her normal timeline of life, and pass when her days on this Earth are complete.”

“No more a…” I turned back to the Bellagio. Sure enough, the fairy-tale castle that had soared above it like something out of an overblown Disney movie was gone. The space above the Bellagio was empty blue sky.

“Sweet Christmas,” I breathed. “Is there a severance package?”

“Wealth. Health. Beauty, according to her definition of it. The things she most wished for in this life, her deepest dreams and desires, will be granted to her.”

“Kreios.” I widened my eyes. “That’s why he was here. To know her desires when her abilities were swept from her.”

Armaeus nodded. “In addition, she has a story her mind can accept and build upon. In Roxie’s case, she was a grifter before her exposure to augmentation transformed her into something more. Her recollection will be simply that she was a very…successful grifter. A stage queen of the seventies, except her stage was in Vegas, and her life became extraordinarily comfortable because of that.”

I stared at the weeping woman. “She doesn’t seem comfortable.”

“Change never is. When her mind clears, it will be easier for her.” He said the words matter-of-factly. There was no warmth in his voice, no basic human compassion. Then again, Armaeus wasn’t human, exactly.

Still, something didn’t add up. “But you changed the frequency to build
up
the Connecteds, after you zapped her. Why didn’t she gain it back? Hell, Brody is walking around glowing like a night-light now. Why not the Empress?”

Armaeus’s smile was dark, darker than anything I’d ever seen on him, which was saying something. “I guess you could say it was magic.”

A flash of bright blue caught my attention then, running through the crowd.

It looked like a man.

In a Mongolian death mask.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

By the time we got to Simon, he was perched in a crouch on top of his truck. Not in the bed of the truck, on top of it. Surrounding him were thirteen figures in long tunics and pants, sporting masks of wolves, demons, tigers, bulls, bears, and birds of prey. They practically shimmered with purpose, straining toward him without breaking the circle of deference that Simon had somehow circumscribed around himself.

Armaeus peered thoughtfully at the creature nearest him. He lifted a hand, and the man froze, allowing Armaeus to draw his finger along the top edge of his mask. “This dates from the eighth century. That’s well before the time of Genghis Khan’s crown.”

“Well, apparently these guys get around.” I frowned up at Simon. “What are you doing up there?”

“I’m thinking,” he snapped. “I tried taking off the crown and tossing it to them. They threw it back.”

I looked from him to Armaeus and back. “How do we get them to go away?”

“I don’t think we do.” Simon glanced down to me. “Where’d you get this thing, again?”

“Um…found it?”

“Well, I get the strong feeling that these guys want it to
stay
found. Whoever you handed it over to didn’t want them hanging around, so…now they’re here. They want someone to follow.”

Armaeus’s lips twisted. “They are not unlike many in this world.”

“Not helpful.” Simon stood, his hands going out in a soothing gesture. The watchers moved as well, echoing his movement, never edging closer.

“Sir.” A uniformed officer stood at the edge of the sidewalk and stared up at Simon. From his perspective, Simon had to look stoned on a full selection of drugs, each more trippy than the last. “Is this your vehicle? It can’t be parked on public property.” He frowned at the circle of death masks. “Neither can they.”

I blinked, and realized that the world had gone on while we were recovering. Traffic was moving smoothly again on the boulevard, not counting the extra-large number of EMTs on the scene. Now Simon’s hyper-tricked-out monster truck was…noticeable.