Born To Be Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 3 (22 page)

“She holds a sword.” Armaeus was studying me in his favorite pose, that of the earnest professor bent on discovering the mysteries of the universe from his prize bug. “You were brandishing weapons as well as the scales.”

“Yeah, well, everything felt a lot lighter there.” I pushed myself up on one elbow as I remembered. “I was a lot lighter. I could climb more easily, run faster, jump higher. There was…flying too.” My eyes widened. “Those angels and demons—I hadn’t thought about that. They weren’t actually flying, they were jumping.”

“That holds with the ancient records, those that remain.” Armaeus seemed lost in thought. “But to recognize you…”

“I make a fierce Justice, I guess.” I considered that. “Is there a Justice currently on the Council?”

“There is not. Similar to Death, it is a card that is an abstraction and yet can be embodied by a mortal, but only Death has made the leap down to the Council.”

I frowned at him. “What do you mean, ‘down’? You guys are the junior league?”

“Your attempts at defining the Council are, as always, entertaining. And wrong.” Armaeus seemed to come back to himself, and he leveled the full impact of his gaze against me. “You’re feeling better?”

“I’m good,” I said. I looked around the room. It had no windows, and I suddenly felt claustrophobic. “Where’s everyone else, anyway?”

“Kreios offered to take Nikki home,” Armaeus said, pointedly ignoring my lifted brows. “Eshe and Simon are studying the weapons you came back with, including the blade stuck in your shoulder.”

“Ouch.” I reached up and rubbed my shoulder, though it no longer registered pain. “I seem to be making a habit of that.”

“A full night has passed since you returned, and most of the morning as well. It is nearing noon.”

“Noon! That can’t be possible.” That made me sit upright. Armaeus obligingly rolled away from me, and I realized he’d been fully clothed this whole time. “Viktor is waiting on me to go fetch the children, Armaeus. If I’ve disappeared for a whole day…”

“He knows what you’ve been doing. I’ve kept Detective Rooks apprised of your progress, though not your side effects. The detective seems unreasonably distracted by any injury to you.”

“Noted,” I said wryly. It was good to know someone cared. “What do you mean, Viktor knows?”

Armaeus’s words were noncommittal. “He seems aware of your travel and is demanding to be advised of where you went, and why. We have advised him that you traveled in seclusion.”

I frowned. “He can’t think I went to wherever the stolen children are. I have no idea where that is.”

“I do not know what he thinks. He’s demanding a meeting.”

I grimaced. “You guys should go into corporate. No one loves meetings as much as you do.”

“You’ll be happy to know he wants you to attend as well.” Armaeus regarded me. “He’s expressing remorse over the kidnapping.”

“Right. He’s got about as much remorse in him as a lizard does. ” I flexed my fingers. “I tell you what. You guys meet, I’ll go get more intel. I have a feeling I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

Armaeus hesitated. “You’ve shuttered your mind from me again.”

I shrugged. “I gave you what you needed, right?” Without waiting for an answer, I rolled out of bed, dragging a sheet with me as I padded over to get my clothes. I scowled down at the pile. “These are new.”

“I think you’ll agree that wearing your ripped and burned clothing would cause comment, even in Las Vegas.”

“Fair enough.” I picked up the trousers and light, long-sleeved shirt. Everything felt like it was made out of spun silk. “What is this, mithril?” I waved them at him. “I would have been fine with the same brands I had.”

He shrugged. “Indulge me.”

I got it then and put the clothes on without comment, totally playing it cool. I’d be losing these clothes the moment I hit the Strip, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me. The likelihood that he’d infused tracking devices all the way down to my underwear was way too much of a chance I was not willing to take.

By the time I returned to the bedroom, Armaeus was gone. My phone and wallet remained, and I sighed. I was going to miss the wallet, but I couldn’t risk it. Maybe I’d give it to Dixie for safekeeping until I found a way to strip it free of bugs. Or maybe I’d go buy another five-dollar wallet. Decisions.

But that wasn’t all Armaeus had left behind. I lifted the set of large throwing stars, which seemed unreasonably light, even though we weren’t on Atlantis anymore. They were wrapped in a heavy cloth. A small padded shoulder pack rested beside them, sized exactly to carry the lethal blades. I smiled. He knew what I planned to do. And he wasn’t going to stop me.

Not five minutes later, I walked out into the sunshine, ready for my date with Death.

Chapter Eighteen

I could smell the burned skin when I walked into Darkworks Ink, and I winced in half-remembered pain. My Atlantis key gleamed from my wrist, none the worse for wear. I’d expected it to be destroyed in the triumphant return, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea that it remained. Its presence meant that, technically, I could go back. Back to the strange mix of angels and demons who’d reacted so strangely to me, back to the mysteries that Atlantis held close.

Jimmy Shadow was hanging out at the front counter, and he grinned at me from his stool as I hefted the pack onto the surface, opening the flap to display the blades inside. “Nice stars.”

“Gift from a friend,” I said. “Hold ’em for me?”

“Yep.” He nodded. “Blue said you’d be by. She’s working a big project, though. Said you could wait for her in room three or hang out up here.”

“I’ll hang here.” Room three was where I’d received my first key, the faux tattoo parlor that masked a setup that would make a horror movie director salivate. I could avoid checking that out again for as long as possible.

I took a seat on one of the stools in front of the counter, positioned at a large book of flash tattoos. The pages were open to seafaring nymphs and anchors, waves and whales. Sharks and dolphins lined the right-hand page. “You get a lot of requests for dolphins?”

“You wouldn’t believe how much.” Jimmy’s smile showed his weathered teeth. Coffee and cigarettes had worn down his body the same way the Colorado River had carved the Grand Canyon. “Blue doesn’t handle those so much anymore, but it’s a gateway for a lot of people, so we do our share.”

“Gateway—meaning they come back for additional ink?”

“Some of them. For others, it’s a literal gateway, the piece they need to access their deeper selves. We’re always up for helping that process out, especially if it gets a low-level Connected to a point of accepting their abilities and moving forward.”

I nodded. “When did you know you were a Connected?”

He shrugged. “First time I could do this.” The pages in front of me riffled and then blew to the side, taking me deeper into the book, where I saw dozens of wave images and every type of sailing craft. “Stupid trick, really, but it was cool and different, and it kind of freaked me out. I was maybe seven at the time.”

Seven years old. The same age the children had been when Viktor had taken them. How aware had their parents been of their gifts, I wondered? How many of them realized their children had psychic abilities? “Your parents handle it okay?”

“If by okay you mean I was stuck in support groups and therapy, yeah. They did okay.” He smiled. “I learned pretty quick to hide it. Wasn’t until I got my first tat that I felt like I could start owning who I was. So I get it, man. I get the need to make that kind of a statement.” He pointed to the book. “Even if it’s a statement of a bunch of daisies and bluebirds. It’s all in what helps the client.”

“You ever get a request for something you won’t do?”

He shook his head. “Ultimately, it’s the client’s call, but there are designs Blue flat-out won’t do, and I can’t say I blame her.” At my raised eyebrows, he waved a hand. “RIP designs—death memorials, that kind of thing. Not Death itself—she’ll make that image all day long, every day. But when people want to ink the images of their lost loved ones, she balks.”

I considered that. “There’s a lot of those images out there.”

“They’re everywhere. Doesn’t make it right, though.” He looked weary, then, thinking about it. “People get all up in arms about the biblical injunctions against tattoos, but scripture is pretty clear on this point. Whether or not the Bible is against any sort of tattoo, full stop, for sure any mark to honor or recall the soul of a dead man is not cool.” He shook his head. “The worst is when pastors come in for ink to remember a loved one. That’s not a conversation you ever want to have.”

This
conversation was having its desired effect, though. I felt myself relaxing, loosening up, the work of Armaeus to repair the damage caused by the Astral Travel Train Wreck settling into my bones with Jimmy’s soft cadence. He nodded as if he knew what I was doing, but amiably kept talking.

The door bells jingled, and Nikki strode in, dressed in combat boots, camouflage cargo pants, and tight black tank top, her hair back in a ponytail. She spotted me and cut her forward movement short. “Armaeus thought you’d be here.” She eyed my clothes. “And he thought you’d ditch the outfit he gave you too. Gotta give the guy props for trying, though.”

“I guess.” I bounced my heel on the foot rung of the stool, eyeing her as she settled in, her back against one of the few bits of wall that weren’t covered with flash art. “You my babysitter?”

“Nope, I’m your friend. Hey, Jimmy, you got any coffee in this joint?” Nikki prattled on while I blinked hard, shifting my head down and away to hide my face. It wasn’t that I didn’t think of Nikki as my friend, but to hear it out loud gave the words a weight and grace I wasn’t expecting. And it was possible that I was ever so slightly fragile at the moment. So there was that.

Nikki was still doctoring her mug of caffeine when Blue poked her head into the front room. “Jimmy, could use you on the finish work.” She eyed me and swung her gaze to Nikki, her brows lifting. “You both doing a jump?”

“No,” I said before Nikki could finish choking on her coffee.

“You came back, like, five seconds ago,” Nikki managed, turning her attention to Blue. “Is that too soon for her to do whatever it is you mean by jumping? Because she was fried to a crisp and poked full of holes last time, and while Armaeus knows we’re here while he’s entertaining Viktor the Cruel, he’s not physically on-site to put her into a cocoon when she comes back. And that seems like it’d be a problem.”

Blue studied me intently. “You were damaged in transition? That shouldn’t have happened.”

“Well, good, that makes me feel better about what’s coming next, then,” I said, standing. “We should probably get moving.”

She stood aside and gestured me back, her gaze dropping to my wrist as I passed her. “You shouldn’t have been hurt that badly,” she said again, sounding more curious than concerned. “The transition to Atlantis was smooth?”

“It happened on the way back.” Nikki provided the color commentary as we moved to room three. “She was fine, doing her thing, then she got a tank dropped on her head and Armaeus couldn’t yank her out of there fast enough.”

“Stop.” We turned at the change in Blue’s voice, her eyes wide and hard on me. “You were attacked? By whom? There’s nothing left in Atlantis but ruin.”

“Well, there were two sets of creatures there—they looked to my eyes like angels and demons, but I admit I was a little hazy on the details. The atmosphere was strange, I was moving fast. But that’s what they looked like.”

“And they attacked you.” She was looking at me as if expecting me to reveal a secret. “That’s all they did.”

“Well…no.” I blew out a breath as Nikki watched me. She’d seen what I had seen in Atlantis, no recorders required. “I wanted to talk to you about that. They… It was almost as if they recognized me. I was carrying the scales of the Justice card, and I get that I might have seemed familiar because of the card in the Atlantean deck. But at first, their recognition seemed to be a good thing. Then—not so much.”

“Right.” Blue wasn’t looking at me anymore but busying herself with her workstation. I sighed as I saw the familiar tools. If I kept this up, I was going to have a sleeve of my own by Christmas. “The creatures you’re describing are tied to the card you are speaking of, yes,” Blue finally said. “They do her bidding. But she’s not Justice in the Atlantean deck. None of those cards tally exactly with the Major Arcana. They were more powerful, but also more flawed. It proved their downfall.”

“Seems like a lot of folks met their downfall in Atlantis.” Nikki poked her finger into the illusions lining the walls. “Does anyone actually fall for this?”

“It’s not meant to hold up to close scrutiny, merely to appease the lookie-loos. If it bothers you…” Death waved her hand, and the room returned to its austere lines—the chair, the tools, and four walls.

“Ew, no,” Nikki said, and the image of bookcases and posters resettled in place. “I’m good with illusions.”

Blue smiled as she turned back to me, but her gaze was searching. “The card you drew is called Vigilance, not Justice. The creatures who serve it are known as Watchers. They obey unquestioningly, and their wrath is unstinting to any that stand in their path. Anything in particular trigger them to make the move on you? You incite them in any way?”

“Not that I thought,” I said. I got into the seat as Blue pulled her chair closer. “I was talking to Armaeus, not them. I couldn’t speak their language.”

“Mm. And what did you say to Armaeus?”

I sat back in the chair as the now-familiar sound of the whirring needle stirred to life. “I asked him to help me,” I said.

“Ah.” Blue bent down to scrutinize my right arm, then glanced up at me. “This will be a lesser mark, but a more costly one. I warned you.”

I forced my arm to stay still. “I know. I’m ready.”

“No,” she said faintly. So faintly I barely heard her. “But you will pay the price nevertheless.”

She bent toward me, and the moment the needle touched my flesh—this time on the inside curve of my arm—pain exploded around me in a burst of agony. I vaguely realized that Nikki had bounded forward, at first to protest but then to hold me down as Blue murmured words I had no intention of deciphering if they brought with them this much pain.