Born To Be Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 3 (17 page)

Viktor sighed, looking a touch abashed, which I immediately distrusted.

“To understand that, you must understand what I was attempting to accomplish ten years ago.” He turned from the screen and looked out one of the windows lining the space, the thin wall of water spilling in front of it turning the skyline of Vegas into a wavy abstraction. “Magic in the world may currently be under attack from groups like SANCTUS, but that is not the greatest threat we face. The Council has ever been consumed with the idea of balance. But if there is no magic, then balance becomes a pointless endeavor.”

I shifted uneasily. I’d made this argument to Armaeus myself. “I thought magic was a self-sustaining force.”

“It is, or it can be. But the Council was not always so diligent about its commitment to the cause of noninterference. There have been times—many times—when it has acted forcefully to remove magic that it considers too extreme to be balanced.”

I thought about Llyr. He hadn’t been ejected once from the earth, according to Armaeus, but at least twice. “And that matters why?”

“Attrition. Extremes promote growth. Pushing all magic toward some homogenous center promotes atrophy. Eventually, magical properties weaken to the point that they can’t transmute into different forms. When an ocean dries to a pond, it has a much harder time reaching the sky to return to ice crystals that then can become rain.”

He gestured to the world outside. “And, too, population explosion has played a role. Magical abilities are not necessarily inherited, but they can be. When one psychically skilled forebear has a child, that inheritance is undiluted. When six or seven children are born, who then go on to have six or seven children, it becomes a hit-or-miss proposition.”

“Nobody has that many children anymore. Especially if they’re psychic.”

“Not anymore,” he conceded. “But the damage has long since been done. Add to that the forced removal of magical creatures deemed too strong for this world to balance, and the gradual weaning away of Connecteds from natural sources of magic, and you create a state in which a war on magic is a lopsided war indeed.”

“Don’t tell me those children were part of your
defense
against a war on magic, Viktor. I’m not buying that.”

“They were…an experiment, which I neither regret nor have any need to defend. There is a time and a place for balance, and a time and a place for active effort. I grew weary of waiting for the time for the latter to arrive. We must move forward if we are to create a new world order. And the time for movement is now.”

“Sounds like someone got a little too turned on during his stint with the Nazis.”

His lips twisted. “You speak about things you know nothing of. There will always be unbalanced people in the world who are willing to do the things that no one else can fathom. Most of the time, nearly all of the time, their insanity is also their infamy. Hitler was no different. But you also cannot discount the power of a truly focused mind. Look at what one insignificant sociopath was able to do, almost exclusively by the force of his sheer will. Look at what is happening around you with insurgencies throughout the world, militant leaders who command tens of thousands to their cause. The human mind is the most fascinating psychic weapon at our disposal, and all too often it takes a maniac to show us its true potential.”

“Do you have any idea how much of a nutball you sound like right now?”

“And yet, you’re still listening.” He leaned toward me slightly, and I found I didn’t want to lean back. There was something about Viktor’s crazy that truly was compelling, as loathsome as I might find it. “Hitler’s regime was riddled with wrong thinking, but in one particular well-documented area, he had something right. There
were
forces beyond the understanding of man that existed in this world, forces that he very much wanted to control. The accumulation of occult artifacts and items of magical power was not just some haphazard game to him, an adjunct to his accumulation of precious art. He had a purpose and a plan for those items.”

I thought of all the artifacts buried underneath Neuschwanstein. How many more cubbyholes of the arcane remained around Europe? “And, what? You were part of that purpose?”

“No.” Viktor’s grimace was regretful. “I’d ascended to the Council by the time Hitler truly came to prominence. I could only watch as he moved directly toward his goals.”

Listening to Viktor’s words, I understood more clearly why Armaeus had agreed to accept him onto the Council. His abilities had been cresting and apparently, the Council needed an Emperor. But perhaps more importantly, the Allies needed Viktor on the sidelines, not in the thick of the war…and working for the wrong side. I kept my face carefully blank.

“Okay, Viktor, I’ll bite. Why did you take those children ten years ago and stick them God knows where? Why did you harm innocent lives, destroy families?” I hardened my gaze. “And how many more children did you take?”

He smiled and waved again at the computer screen. It flickered and went black. No, not quite black. There were images there, negative reflections against the darkness of the screen. “What the hell is that?”

“Those are the reasons why I took the children—and there were six, and only six. I took them from the heartland of America, from small towns and cities. The requirements were exact. They had to be linked geographically, they had to be educated, or what passes as educated in this world. But not too educated, not yet. They had to be healthy and well nourished. They had to be pure of heart.” He twisted his lips. “Even six- and seven-year-olds were challenging in this last regard, I can assure you.”

“And in exchange you got…” The answer was obvious, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “Those guys?” I gestured to the screen. “Six demons of destruction?”

“You have a child’s view of psychic abilities.” The words were a sharp rebuke, but Viktor never changed his tone. “There is no ultimate destruction where there is magic. There is only creation. What one man considers to be darkness and loss, another sees merely transformation.”

“Uh-huh. And yet I’m sensing a distinct lack of goodness and light with those guys.” I peered at the screen, sensing the wave of derision that rolled back toward me. Derision and age and fury. I stepped back. The creatures knew they were being watched.

“Because that is how the perspective of this world sees them, and, to be fair, the sentiments they most deeply espouse would curl the toes of any Sunday school teacher. They house every vice, you could say. Every sin.”

I flicked my gaze to him. “Don’t bullshit me, Viktor. You said there are six demons, not seven. No one ever referred to the
six
deadly sins. I would’ve heard of that.”

He smiled. “Not at all. But they do figure into that same conversation. In addition to describing what became known as the seven deadly sins, Solomon mentioned another six entities, but he gave no name to them.” He gestured to the screen. “Those six hold the power of pure potential for the human spirit, untrammeled by the need for our petty morality or concern for goodwill.”

“They’re amoral.”

“They were when they were blasted from the earth, yes. They have spent the intervening millennia studying our world, but there remained one missing piece for them, one thing that no remote study could replicate. Before they could return, they required the souls of six children.”

“Their
souls
?” The word came out on a screech. “You mean to tell me you delivered these kids’
souls
for demons to pick apart?”

“For the opportunity to have magic reenter the world, reenergize the planet? For the opportunity to refill the well that we have drained with our wars and creeds and dogma?” He scoffed. “I would have gladly traded six hundred thousand. Six million souls. And if you had seen what I have seen, you would too.”

“I want them back.”

“I know.” He smirked. “I want that too.” He waved at the screen. “You’ll notice, those demons remain on the other side of the veil. They did not kill the children, as I expected, but created the elaborate shell in which they live, drawing upon my abilities to keep the mortals’ minds whole and sane. The demons also did not come through, as they promised they would. Instead, they’ve bonded with the children.”

“Bonded.” My lip curled. “What the hell does that mean?”

“For our purposes, it means that they will not leave without them, nor will they remain behind without them.” His gaze shifted to me. “You want the children back, then go get them. But in doing so, you will also bring six demons into the world. It’s the only way.”

Chapter Thirteen

The moment I entered the elevator, flanked once more by Viktor’s thugs, the Magician was back, flooding my mind with a comfort I hadn’t realized I needed.

Please tell me you could hear that.

“Viktor could not keep me out entirely. I could not hear, but I could see what your eyes saw, feel what you felt. I saw the children, and that there is a way.”
He hesitated.
“But the demons you saw must not return to this plane.”

No kidding.
But Armaeus offered no other pithy advice, like how I was going to get the children out without their tagalong masters of darkness. I was beginning to understand the limits of his reach in all sorts of areas.

The elevator stopped well short of the ground floor, and I tensed as the doors swung open.

“Exit here,” one of the guards said gruffly, gesturing me out. “Take another elevator down in five minutes. Leave the casino area immediately. Understood?”

“Oh. Sure.”

Obligingly, I stepped out, debating the relative likelihood that I was about to be shot, but the men stayed where they were. The doors whooshed shut, and my knees almost instantly wobbled, the full magnitude of what I’d seen and heard taking over for a moment. I made my way to the bench in the elevator bay and leaned against the wall. “Armaeus,” I whispered.

“I am here, Miss Wilde. I am always here.”

But I knew he wasn’t. He couldn’t be, not for where I needed to go. He was a member of the Council, and I was his hired hand. I was paid well for that. “Those weapons in Atlantis. Can they fight, um, demons?”

“They were forged in the same era of those beings. They were intended for such a battle.”

I nodded. “Then I’m going to go get them.”

Before he could respond, I closed my mind again, shutting out the comfort of his touch. I would have to get used to being without it, even when I wanted it. I grimaced.
Especially
when I wanted it.

The chime of an elevator pinged, startling me. The doors swept open, and I stood, feeling a million years old. I shuffled into the elevator and, when it opened again, made my way off the casino floor. Brody was waiting for me in the bar of Paris. He wasn’t alone.

“Dollface, you need to learn the value of taking backup with you.”

“Hey,” I said as Nikki grinned at me, resplendent in a Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band conductor jacket and hot pants, a pair of John Lennon vintage sunglasses on her nose. “How’d you get here?”

“Detective Dishy here got tired of waiting for updates from the man in black.” She winked at me. “Fortunately, I’ve been around you long enough that I’m no slouch at seeing what you’re seeing.” She looked at me over the rim of her sunglasses. “Those kids are alive.”

Brody sat at the table with his laptop propped, his phone at his side. His gun remained holstered, but his jaw was tight. “Where are they?”

“Trapped. They don’t know it, though. They think they’re living normal lives.” I shifted my gaze to Brody. “But if I go get them, they won’t be coming alone.”

He scowled at me. “Meaning?”

“Meaning Homeland Security is not going to be happy. Six very bad…Connecteds will be coming out with them.” I tried to remember the shapes in the screen, the shadows. “Very bad. The kind of bad we’d want to lock up immediately and run screaming in the other direction. You have any sort of facility for that?”

“Homeland Security isn’t exactly set up to handle a Connected insurgency, Sara.” He looked at Nikki, his gaze resting on her Sgt. Pepper outfit, then sliding away. “You have any sort of holding pens for your own kind?”

She frowned at him. “We don’t work that way, love chop. We’re much more a live-and-let-live kind of group.”

Irritation was plain on Brody’s face. “You don’t police your own?”

“Well…no. We focus much more on keeping souls out of harm’s way versus attacking those who would do them harm. We have to choose our battles. There’s only so much of us to go around.”

“Well, there’s about to be less.” He shifted his glance to me. “These men. What are the odds they’ll ally with the dark practitioners?”

“Just north of a hundred percent.” I hesitated, but I knew I needed to tell him the full story. “They’re not men either, not precisely,” I said, as gently as possible. “They’re demons.”

“Actually, my dear Sara Wilde, they’re quite a bit more than that.”

We all turned as Aleksander Kreios stood at tableside, resplendent in a midnight-black tuxedo, unbuttoned to show the full length of his ocean-blue silk shirt. Gold glinted at his neck and wrists, and I could see a new feature as well. The edge of a tattoo at his neckline, gleaming against his sun-gilded skin. An illusion? Or had he paid a visit to Blue as well today?

I tried not to think about that too hard as Kreios nodded to Brody, then turned to Nikki, picking up her hand in his. “It is always my most sincere pleasure to see you.” He bent to kiss her knuckles.

Nikki fluttered but held her own as Kreios turned to the rest of us. “Armaeus suggested that it was time to provide some illumination on the challenge you face. Viktor Dal’s demons are, in fact, one-time Atlantean sorcerers, banished at the same time as Llyr. Their role in Llyr’s ascendance to power has been lost to recorded history, but they came from a race mentioned perhaps most prominently in the Bible. Giants of men who commanded an unusual power over the crops and the weather, and the mortals around them.”