Wilde Card: Immortal Vegas, Book 2 (32 page)
Read Wilde Card: Immortal Vegas, Book 2 Online
Authors: Jenn Stark
For a moment, we hung suspended together, out of time and space. I pulled back, and his eyes transfixed me. In that moment, I felt the awesome power of him, yes, but also the endless ache of enforced isolation that had stretched across the centuries of his long life. Isolation that fed and honed his abilities, but that also held him apart from the most basic tenet of his powers. The wild, primal magic that I could feel if only…if only…
I let him in again for the briefest moment. Felt the long, searching tendrils of his mental touch slip over and through my mind, seeking out the broken places, probing, testing...
He snapped back, and yet another emotion flashed across his face that I had never seen before. At least not on him.
Jealousy.
Carefully, deliberately, Armaeus pushed me away, creating more space between us. “I meant what I said to you, Miss Wilde, when we first met.” His voice had taken on a dangerous edge, his eyes once again glittering. “Do you remember my words, precisely?”
I floundered for a response, out of my depth. “That I was irresponsible?”
As I watched, his face cleared of all emotion, returning to his coolly civil mask. When he spoke again, his words were quiet. Detached. “That when you want me, truly want me, then I will be waiting for you. But I will not have you turn to me when your mind and your heart are filled with confusion over someone else.” With a smooth, graceful motion, he regained his feet.
Wait, what?
I scrambled upright too. “What are you talking about?”
“You should know that your concerns over Detective Rooks are unfounded. He has no carnal interest in Dixie Quinn.” Cool eyes flicked over me. “At least, not anymore.”
Embarrassment shot through me. “I don’t care about who his—how do you know that?”
“We’ve already ascertained that there are very few minds that are not completely open to me, in all ways. Except yours.”
“It’s kind of rude.”
“You’re not curious?” Armaeus lifted his brows, the frost of his anger shimmering between us. “You don’t wish to know what the innermost thoughts are of those who are thinking about you at this very moment?”
Yes.
“No!” I scowled at him. “You’d really suck to play hide-and-seek with.”
“You do want to know.”
“Not from you I don’t.”
“Very wise.” His smile had turned hard. “The value that I bring to you is not one that is born of trust. You have other options for that, if trust is truly what you seek.”
“I know I’m little more than a science experiment to you,” I spat, my filter completely shredded at this point. “You’ve never told me anything unless it could help you meet your own selfish ends.”
Armaeus’s laugh was scoffing. “You are a
part
of my selfish ends, make no mistake. And I will not rest until I understand everything about you.” He peered at me, then nodded once. “Very well, Miss Wilde. Though you cannot bring yourself to ask, I
will
show one piece of what you truly seek, when all the distractions are cleared away.”
He held up a staying hand when I unconsciously moved toward him.
“No. Do not touch me. I will not have you confuse this for anything more than what it is.” His gaze went distant, piercing me through. “Look . See.”
Something in his voice would not be denied. I stared into his gaze and saw beyond the eerie dark gold eyes, into the wealth of knowledge and history that was hidden there. And I saw more.
A blue dragon, trapped on a field of red.
Staring back at me.
The unearthly power of the creature stretched toward me, but I was wrong, I realized suddenly. Llyr
wasn’t
staring at me, exactly. It was staring at something between us. The barest shadow of a robed figure, holding aloft a—
“You pierce the veil so easily…” Armaeus murmured. “You see so much.”
I blinked at his voice, the image slipping away. “Who’s in there? Who is that with the dragon. The man… He’s in robes of some sort?”
The image nagged at me, even as it faded. A shadowed figure…a wavering light. Then the connection closed completely, and Armaeus’s cold, dark eyes once again held mine. And I could recall nothing but the dragon. Llyr.
My head throbbed again, not painfully, but I held my hand up to it to ensure my brains weren’t falling out with the blast of knowing I’d just received. The essence of a god who’d once walked this world and nearly destroyed it. “Llyr. What is that, Welsh? The only Welsh god of that name I’ve heard of is nowhere near that powerful.”
“That’s by careful design.” Armaeus loomed over me. He was darker, more intense. He swelled with a power that wasn’t fully his own, I knew. But that didn’t make it any less effective. “Llyr in many ways was the founder of the original Council. We were built to balance his abilities.”
I stared at him, finally refocusing. “You threw him
off the planet
, Armaeus. That doesn’t seem super ‘balanced.’”
“It was not supposed to escalate to that. But when he resisted our attempts to constrain his power, he unleashed the forces of the elements. Mortals were caught in the balance, drowning beneath the waves he stirred.”
“Whoa, whoa. Waves. Do not even.”
“There are records of a great flood in almost every culture with a written record, Miss Wilde. Surely you do not think they were all fabrications?”
“Well, no, but I don’t recall the part where a giant blue dragon flapped his wings and caused the waters of the Earth to rise. I would have remembered that.”
Armaeus shrugged, but his energy did not dissipate. “Why now?” I asked. When he didn’t speak, I prodded. “All of this. Llyr. SANCTUS. Why is everything happening so quickly?”
“SANCTUS, in one form or another, has been emerging for centuries. Over the past few years, however, they have expanded their operations dramatically. Through a power not of their own making, they are shifting the balance of magic. When that balance is upset, the veil between the worlds grows inconsistent. Where it is weak, Llyr is strong. And he can’t be allowed back into this world.” He held up a hand to forestall my question. “The ‘magic’ of Llyr isn’t magic. It’s domination and force. It is not a power that allows anything else to exist. The darkest of your dark practitioners that you rail against, those creatures who feed upon the weakest of the Connected, who drink in their power and exploit them… They would be his most minor foot soldiers.”
I nodded. I’d seen Llyr, experienced his strength. I knew Armaeus was right. “So that’s why you wanted to show him to SANCTUS before, you know…I barged in?”
He shrugged. “In part. SANCTUS could easily destroy the Connecteds of limited power, bolstering the dark practitioners until they destroyed all that was light. The trouble with that scenario, however, is that dark magic alone would remain. And a world built solely on dark magic is more unstable than a world slightly unbalanced. The veil would weaken. Fall away.”
“You fought him, didn’t you.” I stared at him. “You’ve confronted Llyr before.”
He met my gaze, his eyes too cool. Too distant. “Llyr was banished from earth long before I—”
“Not then. After. That’s why you’re so determined to keep him contained. Something happened and he almost broke through a second time. Except you fought him. Kept him trapped beyond the veil.” I felt the force of rightness to my words, their truths winging through me. “I’m right, aren’t I? And to make that happen…you gave up something. Something important.”
Armaeus’s words, when they came, were bleak. And barely a whisper. “The balance must be preserved. The world must remain whole.”
A cold fear pierced my heart, but I held his gaze. What had he sacrificed to keep magic in the world? What would he give up to maintain its balance?
Who was the Magician, really?
“Could you… Can you show me, then?” I whispered. “What you feel, what you see? What this balance looks like, in a world filled with magic?”
Armaeus went still for a long moment. “Why?”
I didn’t trust myself to explain that. Not yet. Not ever, most likely. “Humor me.”
Without speaking, the Magician moved to stand behind me, his arms crossing over my body, pulling me close. The act was strangely intimate—not sexual, exactly, but deeply, utterly personal. He bent his head until his lips grazed the crown of my head. “Do not close your eyes, Miss Wilde. See ever out, not in. Understand?”
“Sure.” I was surprised at how my voice trembled, but the world had taken on a new cast. As I stood in Armaeus’s embrace, it was no longer the vivid neons and floodlights of Vegas’s Strip, but layers, endless layers of energy, dancing and weaving. Some wavelengths were wobbly, some were strong, some dark, some light. It was a silent orchestra of power, and it was all moving for me.
“Who would you see, what would you see?” Armaeus’s words were quiet, almost soundless. “What is the energy that is the true driver of the world?”
“Possibility,” I whispered.
“Possibility. Mortals of pure potential, stretched to their finest purpose. Like you have been stretched. Like I would stretch you again and again, for you to grow in your abilities, protect whom you would protect, and for you to be who you were truly meant to be. To claim your birthright.” His breath hushed over my hair. “If you would but accept that it is yours to claim.”
Mine to claim?
When I would have instinctively moved to escape, to flee, his body held me still.
“Look and see, Sara,” Armaeus murmured, and my whole world filled with his words. “See and know. Where is your strength, what is your future? What lies in wait for you, ready for you to grasp?”
“I don’t know—”
“I think you do. I think you have for a long time.” As if in spite of himself, he shifted closer, drifting another soft kiss over my hair. The frisson of electricity his action caused was unmistakable, crackling with promise. “You must accept the truth for what it is.”
I gazed over a city now more familiar than my own muscle and bone. Whether it was a holdover from the scroll cases’ ancient magic, or Armaeus’s touch, or the sweet combination of exhaustion and exultation that I had stood in the path of danger and found the strength to hold firm—to protect those who could not protect themselves, the world in front of me simply wasn’t the same. I wasn’t the same.
I’d taken a simple job for a simple purpose and set in motion an inescapable change deep within myself and in the world around me. Change I’d never expected. Change I needed more than I’d ever imagined.
I stared into the lights of Vegas and came to an unnerving realization.
After all my years of running…I was home.
The World of Immortal Vegas
Want to learn more about each of the Arcana Council members and other details about Immortal Vegas? Visit
http://www.jennstark.com/immortal-vegas/
for a full introduction!
Coming Soon from Immortal Vegas
Ready for Sara’s next adventure?
BORN TO BE WILDE will be released in February, 2016!
BORN TO BE WILDE
The past has a way of catching up with you.
If there's one thing that Tarot-reading magical artifacts hunter Sara Wilde has never been able to track down, it's the truth about her own past. But now a powerful new threat to the psychic community will take Sara back to where it all began: the last job she worked with Officer Brody Rooks as "Psychic Teen Sariah," the job that destroyed her life and sent her on the run. Because the enemy she fled all those years ago has returned… with a score of demons as his personal army.
Worse, Sara’s infuriating mentor, the dangerously seductive Magician, is pushing her to stretch her abilities and explore the very deepest reaches of her magic. But every demand draws her further into the spell he’s weaving around her. And every challenge tests her vow to keep him at arm's length.
From the glittering chaos of Las Vegas to the Lost City of Atlantis, Sara must risk everything in a quest for vengeance that grows darker and more twisted with every step. To succeed she’ll have to face the truth about her past, her abilities…and the impossible, unstoppable attraction she has to the Magician. A truth that will reveal her ultimate role in the war on magic.
Life is full of surprises when you are
Born to Be Wilde.
Born To Be Wilde (Feb. 2016)
Other books by Jenn Stark
One Wilde Night (Free Prequel Available now)
Getting Wilde (Available now):
Author’s Note
The cards that appear at the opening of this book were the ones drawn by Sara during a pivotal reading in the story, before she, the Magician, and the Fool head to Egypt. Here are the three basic interpretations a Tarot reader might give to someone pulling these cards:
The Six of Swords
Things are about to improve. You’re moving away from your problems and into smoother waters. You may travel overseas, and the future could be unknown, but the further you get away from past difficulties, the better you will be able to embrace a new adventure.