Hunting Down Dragons (Moonlight Dragon #2) (4 page)

Actually, they'd probably seen more interesting things.

While we might have been able to fly all the way back to Vegas that way, it wasn't practical. Vale, after all, was naked. Vegas was pretty progressive, but they had a thing about full frontal nudity when it was out in the open and no one was making money off of it. Not to mention by the time he released me my arms would have been permanently stuck in their upright position, making me look like a cast member of
The Walking Dead
.

"You have a plan?" I asked the gargoyle.

As a matter of fact I do, Moody. Relax.

Relax. I was flying through the air, carried by a gargoyle, after having been slapped around by an albino vampire and other creepy crawlies. Sure, I'd relax. As soon as I woke up from this crazy nightmare.

Though we were following the Extraterrestrial Highway, making occasional swoops out into the desert to avoid being seen by the few cars that passed us, I could sense that the gargoyle was taking us somewhere specific, not simply following dirt roads.

Sure enough, around 30 miles later, we came upon a handful of trailers and a white building with bold blue trim and the words Little A'Le'Inn painted on the side. The parking lot held half a dozen cars with Nevada plates. A heavy duty truck supported a small crane from which hung a UFO the size of a kiddie pool. Both truck and UFO looked like they hadn't been moved since the Roswell crash.

"Hey, I've always wanted to visit this place," I whispered excitedly as the gargoyle carefully set me down at the edge of the parking lot.

The Little A'Le'Inn was something of a mecca for UFO hunters who were curious about Area 51. Not too far from the café was the location of the infamous black box. The mailbox was gone after being subjected to too much vandalism, but its history as being a meeting place for UFO hunters and for delivering mail to aliens lived on. I wished Melanie were here. She would have loved this.

I worked out the cramps in my shoulders while Vale transformed back to his human form. Seeing him tall and naked again took a moment to get used to and I shamelessly looked my fill.

"Think you can get me some clothes from in there?" he asked, oblivious to my staring as he studied the darkened trailers. "Those are guest accommodations."

I hastily lifted my gaze. "Guests stay in the trailers? Weird. Let's see."

We crept around the property until we found a trailer with an open window and a screen slid partly aside. Yay for pleasant desert nights. I called up Lucky, giving him enough energy so he was a light gold, skinny dragon that fit easily through the open window.

"You'd better hope there aren't women staying in here," I whispered to Vale and grinned as I imagined him trying to fit into some girl's hot pants and tank top.

Fortunately for him, Lucky found a pair of black board shorts and a man's Miami Dolphins T-shirt, along with a pair of tennis shoes. My dragon dumped them at Vale's feet with what I thought was a touch of attitude. Was Lucky jealous?

My dragon familiar wasn't an autonomous being. He lived only when I gave him life, that is, when I fed him my life energy. The intelligence he possessed was my intelligence.

Or so I'd always assumed. But thinking back, there were times when Lucky had acted while I was distracted with other things.  He'd made decisions that I don't recall having consciously made. Did that mean he could read my mind? Or did it mean he thought for himself?

I eyed the wisp of my dragon as he hovered in the air beside me. While I was far from afraid of him, I felt a touch of unease about the situation, like I'd just watched a monkey learn how to fire a gun.

Vale finished dragging on the clothes and shoes. It all fit him well enough, though I mentally complained that the shorts were too baggy in the seat. Vale had a great ass. It needed to be seen.

"Much better," he said.

I shrugged without much enthusiasm.

He smirked at me and led the way as we crept back to the parking lot.

"Now, how about a ride?" he asked.

"You're so lazy," I chided, but I obligingly found a newer Toyota Camry that probably had good insurance which would cover the tow back to its owner.

While Vale kept watch over the trailers where the guests slept, I directed Lucky to enter the car through its air vents. Once inside, it was easy for him to depress the button to unlock all the doors.

It struck me how little effort was required to commit these crimes. In this case Lucky was doing the heavy lifting, but even if I hadn't had a familiar and were, say, a witch, I could have unlocked the doors with a different application of magick. Some kind of unlocking spell, I assumed.

How many other magickal users had turned to a life of crime simply because they could? Had the Oddsmakers cracked down on them and covered the evidence? Did that explain the many unexplained and unsolved crimes throughout history? They'd all been committed by magickal beings who'd "disappeared"?

I climbed behind the wheel and released the parking brake. Vale pushed the car quietly out onto the highway. After pushing for a good hundred feet, giving us some momentum and distance from the café, Vale rounded to the passenger side and jumped in beside me. I had Lucky kiss the ignition, which sent a spark of sorcery through it. The engine started up with a quiet purr.

Breaking and entering, burglary, and grand theft auto—definitely my most exciting Fourth of July so far.

The car drove well, but the radio face was missing, taken by an owner who'd successfully prevented us from listening to tunes while we drove off in their car. I wasn't about to complain as we began the 150 mile drive back to Vegas.

It did mean that Vale and I had to talk, though our conversation ended up not being about what I thought it might: his disappearance from my life after we banished Vagasso's demon.

"Tell me about your family on your mother's side," he asked when the first city lights began to appear on the horizon.

A little disappointed, I glanced askance at him. "I kind of have the feeling you already know. The reason Christian brought your gargoyle statue to my shop, hoping that I could free you, was because you two had been talking about me. How about you tell me what
you
know, and I'll confirm or correct."

"We weren't speaking badly of you or your family," he said quietly, shades of chagrin in his voice. "On the contrary. You have a lot to be proud of. Your mother was a very powerful sorceress. Her brother, not so much, but he was strong in his own way."

"You said 'was'. Do you—do you know that my uncle is dead?" It hurt to ask, but I needed to. My hope that Uncle James would return home grew thinner and thinner as the years passed. I had reached the point where I simply wanted closure, even if it was closure of the worst sort.

"I should have been more careful with my choice of words. I don't know what's happened to him, Moody. I wish I did."

I swallowed down my disappointment. "How do you know about him and my mom?"

"Believe it or not, there are less than a dozen sorcerers in Las Vegas who are descended from dragons. I was surprised, too, considering the large Asian population in the city. But you've got to remember that most dragon sorcerers and sorceresses haven't left China."

"Why not?"

"Some say it's a government thing, that they've jailed people whom they suspect of being dragons and use them for military applications. Others say it's because Chinese dragons are more powerful and accepted in their homeland. The oldest ones are revered so they have little incentive to leave."

"That makes sense," I murmured. Though I wasn't exactly persecuted in America, I'd come across some stodgy magickal beings who had immediately assumed the worst of me once they learned I was half-Chinese. "But you still haven't answered my question about why you know so much about my family."

I listened to Vale tap his fingers restlessly against the slick material of his stolen shorts. "I met your parents four days before their death."

I nearly drove off the road. "You knew them? Why didn't you tell me this before? How did you—Wow, you're definitely older than you look."

He chuckled and sent me a wry smile. "You don't like older men?" His smile faded. "I didn't tell you because I wasn't sure how much of your mother's daughter you are. I thought maybe you had a vision of her in your mind that you didn't want anyone to alter."

"Or maybe I want the truth."

"So you're like her, willing to fight for a cause."

"Depends. Are we talking about world peace or the right to bake marijuana brownies?"

"Your mother's cause was recovering an ancient artifact with the power to raise the dead."

"More important than pot brownies," I said, both thrilled to hear that my mom had been involved in something that sounded incredibly exciting and important, and regretful that I had never really known this powerful woman. I pictured her as a Chinese Lara Croft.

Sitting slightly taller in my seat, I said, "I'm glad to learn my mom wasn't a fan of zombies, either. Is the recovery of that artifact the same mission that the Oddsmakers gave her and my uncle?"

"Since she never found it, that's probably a good assumption to make." Vale shifted in his seat to face me. "Your parents' death wasn't an accident, Moody."

My hands tightened on the steering wheel, but I kept pretty cool otherwise. "I'd always wondered about that," I said slowly. "Driving off a cliff…no one does that. Not in the United States, anyway. The roads are too good. There are too many guard rails and—"

"I was there when it happened."

That took the breath from my lungs. Here was an eyewitness I wasn't sure I wanted. Was I brave enough to hear the details of my parents' death? I didn't have many bad associations with what had happened to them, but that would change if I learned they had been killed in a terrible manner.

Vale's hand on my shoulder, warm, solid, and comforting, helped me to calm down.

"I doubt they knew what happened," he said quietly, his voice wrapping around me like a hug. "It was quick, but because I was there I saw it for what it was." His voice hardened. "I'd met your parents in Salt Lake City that morning. They had been following a clue that had led them to a gargoyle in the city. It was the same gargoyle that I'd tracked down for a different reason. Your parents had learned what I hadn't: the gargoyle was actually a golem, made from mud collected from the bottom of Lake Mead."

A golem was something I'd only heard about. They were typically constructions of earth or other inanimate matter made by sorcerers and infused with life. Golems were little more than mindless slaves, committed to serving their masters.

"I thought the bottom of Lake Mead was made up of rocks and dead bodies," I quipped morbidly. "Everyone says the Mafia used it as a dumping ground back in the good ol' days."

"Maybe so, but there's mud there, too. Enough to put together this golem, which was designed to pass as a gargoyle. I was interested in it because gargoyles are a relatively rare species. Even rarer than dragon sorceresses in Las Vegas. I know every gargoyle in existence, but I didn't know this one. I was concerned that it might have the heart of a demon. If it did, I was going to destroy it."

"But it was only made of mud."

"So I learned. But I was still curious about who had made it."

While that was definitely interesting, I didn't get the connection.  "Why did my parents care about it?"

"They told me that whoever had made the golem also had information about the necromancy artifact. Your mother told me that she and your father intended to capture the golem and interrogate it."

"Sounded like a good plan." I flexed my fingers on the wheel. "So what happened?"

"Your parents and I made plans to meet together in Las Vegas so they could share with me what they learned, if they learned anything. But after we parted, I'd had a bad feeling. I couldn't provide any evidence that we were being watched, but that was my gut feeling. So I decided to follow them in my car. Just to see that they made it to Vegas."

Vale looked out the side window as he recalled events. "There was a storm that night, yes, and there are significant curves in the freeway in southern Utah. But bad weather and bad roads weren't the reasons for their accident. I saw their car pushed through the guard rail by some kind of entity. I wish I could tell you what kind, but not only was I was too far away, a veil or glamour had been cast over the scene. I assume it was to prevent ordinary people from seeing what was happening. By the time I reached them, it was too late."

I shivered as I imagined the scene.

"So when we first met," I said, "that nasty comment you made about my parents being killed as an act of revenge for something they'd done—you weren't being snarky; you were telling the truth."

"I was an ass, Moody."

"My point is you believe that my parents were driven off that cliff because they were digging into this golem. Or because they were trying to find the necromancy artifact. It makes sense to me, too. Is there any chance we can find out who created that golem without having access to it? Golem-making is a specialized skill. There can't be too many sorcerers in Vegas who possess the talent."