Hunt the Moon

Chapter Twenty-one

According to the alarm clock on my nightstand, I slept for seven hours, despite already having slept for most of the day. It was almost midnight when I rolled out, groggy and thickheaded and gritty-eyed and yucky. And saw a man in the corner of my room.

I didn’t scream, because the man was a) sitting down, b) reading a paper and c) had the golden-eyed glow typical of Mircea’s masters. I just snatched up the sheet, because I’d been too high to worry about pj’s, and scanned the room for more. But I didn’t see any, unless they were hiding in the closet or under the bed.

And wasn’t that just a fun thought?

“What are you doing here?” I demanded after a moment.

He didn’t bother to reply, just flipped over another page.

“You’re not supposed to be in my room!”

Nothing.

Talking to a vamp who’s not in the mood is one of life’s biggest time wasters, so I didn’t try. I also didn’t attempt to budge him, because master vamps go wherever they damn well please. I just wrapped the sheet around me and dragged myself off to the bathroom.

I stood in the cool air for a minute while my eyes adjusted to the brilliant light on all that tile. But even after they did, I still stayed where I was, one hand on the doorknob, like I was waiting for something. It finally occurred to me that I was expecting another freak-out, only my body didn’t seem interested. It felt chilly and kind of achy and kind of high. But not particularly panicked. I gave it a little longer, until I started to feel stupid; then I dropped the sheet and checked out the damage.

It wasn’t all that bad. Other than putting a new bruise on my ass and a lump on my head, I’d come out pretty good this round. Whatever is trying to kill me is obviously going to have to step up its game, I thought viciously, and looked in the mirror.

And swore.

I might not have been too beaten up, but I still looked like hell, especially my hair. Not only was it still faintly green, but it was now missing a large chunk. I pushed it around for a while with clumsy fingers, but nothing seemed to help. I tried parting it different, but the only way that kind of worked looked suspiciously like a middle-aged guy’s comb-over. And it still left me looking like something had taken a bite out of my head.

Damn it all! Not so long ago, my hair had been a shimmering red-gold wave that cascaded down my back like a cloak. It had been my one claim to real beauty, and I’d cried like a baby when I had to cut it while on the run from Tony, because it was too recognizable.

I didn’t cry this time. I was too freaking mad. I just brushed my teeth, washed my face and dragged my big wad of fabric back to the bedroom.

The vamp still didn’t say anything, and neither did I. I also didn’t turn on a light, which was stupid, because he could probably see about the same either way. But it made me feel more naked to have it on, which was why it took five minutes of hunting and grumbling and falling and cursing around in the closet to find what I wanted.

I finally emerged with an old Georgia Bulldogs baseball cap, a pair of silky blue track shorts and a faded pink tank top from my comfort-clothes stash. None of it matched, but right then, I didn’t give a damn. I hauled everything back to the bathroom, and after dressing and combing and slapping on some mascara, I decided I looked mostly normal.

If normal people had green hair and wore hats indoors.

The vamp folded his paper and got to his feet when I started out the door, even though there was another guard just outside. He was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette, looking bored and butt-sore. He didn’t say anything and neither did I. I just padded across the hall to the living room, because stomping doesn’t work so well in bare feet and on carpet.

The rest of the crew was in the lounge, playing cards. Of course they were. I felt like asking them if that’s how they’d envisioned spending eternity, but I had other things on my mind.

Marco was sitting at the card table, doing one of his fancy shuffles. He looked up and a smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. “What?” I demanded.

“You and the bulldog got the same expression.”

“Very funny! What the hell—”

He held up a hand. “First of all, how you doing?”

“I’m fine! Or I would be if—”

“You sure? We got the doc on standby.”

I scowled. That was where that sadist could stay, too. “No, thanks. And can we—”

“You hungry? ’Cause we got Chinese coming.”

“Marco—”

“Not from room service; from that little place around the corner. Kung pao chicken, ginger beef—”

“Marco!”

He sighed and gave it up. “I told the master this was how you were gonna react. But you gotta see that it makes sense, at least until we figure this thing out.”

“It does not make sense! There’s nobody in the apartment but us, and the creature can’t possess a vamp—”

“We don’t know that.”

“—or it would have already done it instead of hanging around the foyer, waiting for Mr. Mage to show up.”

“Mr. Mage,” one of the vamps said. “I like that. I’m gonna start calling all of ’em that.”

“I can think of a few things to call them,” another one muttered.

“And if you think it can possess a vamp, this makes even less sense,” I pointed out. “You just left me alone in my room with one for hours!”

“You’re right,” he told me.

“I am?”

“Yeah. We obviously need two.”

“Marco!”

He held up placating hands. “Just kidding.”

“This isn’t funny. It’s like being a freaking prisoner!”

He started to answer, but the phone rang. It wasn’t the main line, but a black cell phone sitting on the card table. Marco picked it up, glanced at the readout, scowled and hung up. He looked at me. “Better than being a freaking corpse.”

“Didn’t you hear me? This isn’t going to help!”

“It will if that thing goes after you. It already possessed you once—”

“And won’t again.” I pulled out Pritkin’s little amulet. He’d left me another one before he took the mage off to the Corps’ version of a hospital. It might be stinky, but I liked it a lot better than the alternative.

“That only works on Fey,” Marco pointed out, wrinkling his nose.

“Which this thing is.”

“Which this thing may be. That ain’t been decided yet.”

“It spoke in a Fey dialect—”

“And demons don’t know that shit? If it’s trying to throw us off, of course it’s gonna pretend to be something else.”

“Or maybe it really was trying to communicate.”

“For what? To apologize?” Marco’s tone said clearly what he thought about that. He dealt another round. “Anyway, until we get some solid proof of what we’re dealing with here, the master don’t want to take chances.”

“That isn’t his call. It’s my life!”

“Yeah, well. You’re gonna have to take that up with him.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Fine, I will. Get him on the phone.”

“Can’t.”

“And why not?”

“He’s in a high-level meeting—”

“How convenient.”

“—and told me not to disturb him until morning.”

“Then get a note to him.”

“That would be disturbing.”

“Damn it, Marco!”

The phone rang. He glanced at it, sighed and put it back down again. “Look, it’s only for a little while—”

“Oh, please!” I couldn’t believe he was trying that. “Sell it to someone else. I know how these things work!”

He took his smelly cigar out of his mouth and rested it on the ashtray. “And how do they work?”

“I go along with this now, and I’ll have Mutt and Jeff here dogging my every step for the rest of my damn life!”

The taller vamp looked at the shorter one. “Guess that makes you Jeff.”

“I ain’t no Jeff. He was a crazy little bugger.”

“Well, Mutt was an idiot.”

“They were both idiots, and shut up,” Marco told them. He looked at me. “You know I don’t have any say over this. But you’re already up now, so it don’t matter anyway. And you can talk to the master in the morning.”

I just stood there for a moment, debating options. Because giving in, even for a few hours, wasn’t smart. Give a vamp an inch and he wouldn’t take a mile; he’d take the whole damn continent.

My stomach growled.

“Kung pao chicken,” Marco wheedled.

The bastard.

Mircea and I clearly needed to have a conversation, but I also needed to eat. And only one was currently available. And I was starving.

“Sweet-and-sour pork—”

“Oh, shut up,” I told him.

He grinned.

I sighed. “You order egg rolls?”

Marco spread his hands. “Please.”

I decided that I’d bargain better on a full stomach, and swiped a beer. He dealt me in, and I grabbed a chair before looking at my cards hopefully. Nothing—not even a pair of twos.

Typical.

The phone rang.

“Can’t you turn that off?” one of the guards groused. He was an attractive blond I didn’t recognize. Probably one of the new guys.

“It’s my private line. Could be important,” Marco told him tersely.

“Your private line? How the hell—”

“I don’t know, but I’m getting it changed tomorrow. Just play your cards.”

“I would if I ever got any worth a damn,” the guy muttered.

They anted up. I folded. The phone rang.

“Damn it, Marco! I can’t play with that thing going off every five seconds!”

“Then don’t play,” Marco told him.

“Just tell the mage to go fuck himself—”

“What mage?” I asked, and everyone froze.

“Thank you,” Marco told the guy viciously.

The phone rang. Marco had left it on the table, and it had jittered its way over to me. So I picked it up. “Don’t,” he said.

I flipped it open and checked the readout. PRITKIN. I shot Marco a look and put the phone to my ear. “Hel—”

“Goddamnit, Marco, you’re supposed to be—” He cut off abruptly. “Cassie?”

“What is it?” I asked, feeling my heart rate speed up.

“There’s no emergency—not right now,” he said, apparently hearing the alarm in my voice. “But I need to see you. I’m coming up.”

“The hell you are,” Marco said, grabbing back the phone. “I already told you—”

“I want to see him,” I said, crossing my arms.

Marco looked at me, clearly frustrated. “You need to rest!”

“I’m playing cards and drinking beer. How is that not resting?”

“You were gonna go back to bed soon.”

“I slept all day!”

The doorbell rang.

Marco got to his feet, looking conflicted.

“What are you going to do—bar the door?” I asked, also standing up.

“I got orders,” he said defensively.

“Mircea told you to lock Pritkin out?”

“Just for tonight. He don’t want the mage here while you’re vulnerable.”

“He’s my bodyguard! When I’m vulnerable is when I need him!”

“Look, you really gotta—”

“Take that up with Mircea,” I finished for him.

“Yeah.”

“Fine. I will.” I pressed the menu button on Marco’s phone.

“Cassie—”

And there it was. I hit the button. The phone rang.

“Yes?” The familiar voice was smooth, with no sign of irritation. Not yet.

“You said you weren’t going to do this.”

There was a pause. “Cassandra.”

“Wow, we just leapt right to it there, didn’t we?” I asked, furious.

“You are supposed to be asleep.”

“I was. And then I got up to discover that I’m a prisoner.”

“You are not a prisoner.”

“Then I can leave?”

Another pause. “In the morning, when you can shift.”

“So I’m only a prisoner for the night, is that it?”

“It is for your protection.”

“And how does that work, exactly? I’ve been assaulted twice. And where have they both been again?”

“You were vulnerable the first time due to our ignorance of the threat. You were vulnerable the second because a mage provided a conduit for the creature—”

“And that explains why I can’t see Pritkin?”

A third pause. That had to be some kind of record. Mircea usually had the defense prepared.

“No. Considering the probable nature of the entity that has been attacking you, I consider the warlock to be a threat in his own right.”

“The what?”

“He had a demon servant at one time, did he not? Encased in that battle golem he devised?”

I frowned. “I guess.”

“Then he is a warlock, not merely a mage. Only warlocks can summon demons to their aid.”

“Is there a point?”

“Merely that warlocks are a notoriously unstable class. They are prone to strange behavior, increasingly so as they age, with some going mad over time. It is one reason that many mages avoid the specialization, despite the added power it gives them.”

“But Jonas had a golem once,” I protested. “He told me so.”

“Forgive me, Cassie, but Jonas Marsden is hardly an example of well-adjusted behavior!”

Point.

“And we are discussing the warlock Pritkin.”

Actually, we weren’t. Because Pritkin wasn’t a warlock. His ability with demons came not through some arcane magic, but because he was half demon himself. His father was Rosier, Lord of the Incubi, which made Pritkin sort of a demon prince. Or something. I really didn’t know what it made him, since he hated that part of his lineage and almost never talked about it. But I didn’t think mentioning that I was being guarded by the son of a prince of hell was likely to go well.

Of course, neither was this.

“He’s a friend.”

“Those creatures are not friends, Cassie! They are selfserving, power-hungry—”

“They say the same thing about vamps.”

“—and unpredictable. Not to mention that this one may well be part demon himself.”

“What?”

“That is the rumor Kit has been hearing. And it would explain why he heals so quickly, how he has lived—”

“A lot of people are part one thing, part another—”

“But most of them don’t bother to cover up large areas of their past. Yet despite all of Kit’s efforts, he has been unable to discover anything about the man before the last century—”

“Because he wasn’t born then!”

“We both know that isn’t the case.”

I didn’t say anything. Mircea had recently seen Pritkin on a trip we’d taken back in time. And while mages tended to live a century or more longer than most humans, it was kind of hard to explain why he’d aged maybe five years in a couple hundred.

Of course, I didn’t intend to try. I didn’t think that explaining that Pritkin had been in hell for much of his life was likely to make him seem more trustworthy.

“I would like you to consider dismissing the man,” Mircea said suddenly. It caught me off guard, which I suspected was the point.

“I can’t do that.”

“Cassie—”

“I need him,” I said flatly. “If he hadn’t been training me, I might have died—”

“Or you might not have been in danger at all. Have you noticed that your problems with demonkind always seem to come when the warlock is around?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That perhaps he is the source of the threat, rather than its solution.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Is it? I know only that every time you have trouble with demons, he is there.”

“He’s my bodyguard! He’s supposed to be—”

“You have bodyguards.”

“Yeah, only I think most of them would like a new assignment. And this wasn’t a demon.”

“According to him.”

“Well, I trust him!”

Pause number four. “And I do not.”

And there it was, as plain as any challenge ever given. And to underscore it, as if anything else was needed, Marco quietly took the phone out of my hand and put it in his back pocket. His expression said clearly that it wasn’t coming out again.

All right, then.

The doorbell rang.

I glanced around the room. One thing about Vegas hotels, especially those built before the widespread use of cell phones, is that they put land lines everywhere. Busy executives needed instant access to the empires they were gambling away and wouldn’t stay anywhere that didn’t offer it. As a result, there were no fewer than three telephones in sight—one in the living room, one in the bar and one sitting on the counter in the kitchen.

And a vamp was casually loitering near every one of them.

Okay, then.

I turned on my heel and went back to my room.

Unsurprisingly, there was no cell phone in my purse. I hadn’t really expected one. When a master vampire gave an order, his men were thorough in carrying it out. And Marco had never been a slouch. But there were things that a vamp might not notice, especially one who had been around as long as he had.

I went back to the bathroom, turned on the exhaust fan and the shower and blasted Led Zeppelin from the built-in radio.

Vampires don’t use bathrooms all that much, especially the toilet facilities. And, of course, housekeeping kept the place clean. As a result, I was willing to bet that the guys outside had never bothered to so much as crack the door on the toilet cubicle.

And then I knew they hadn’t, when I opened it and saw what I’d expected—yet another phone, this one mounted on the wall. It was big and kind of complicated-looking, like something that ought to have been on the desk of an executive secretary, not sitting above the toilet-tissue dispenser. But it was there, and when I lifted the receiver, I got a dial tone.

Pritkin picked up on the first ring, like he’d been expecting a call. “Do you still have Jonas’s keys?” I asked quietly.

There was silence for a beat, as if he hadn’t been expecting that. But he recovered fast. “See what I can do.”

He hung up and so did I. After waiting another few minutes, I turned off the water and went back to my room. I couldn’t change clothes, because somebody might notice. But I put on a bra, jammed my feet into an old pair of Keds and shoved some cash and my keys into my pocket. Then I went back into the lounge.

The guys were still playing poker, quietly now, as there was no need to keep up audible patter for the human. So they didn’t fall silent when I entered and picked up my half-finished beer. But ten pairs of eyes watched as I made my way across to the living room and then to the balcony.

The wind chimes were tinkling in the breeze blowing off the desert. It was hot, but after the deep freeze the vamps had going on inside, it felt good. I hung over the rail and drank my beer and waited.

“Is there a problem?” Marco asked, sticking his head out the door.

“Need some air.”

He looked at me suspiciously, but I guess his orders stopped short of actually confining me to my room. He went back to the game, and I went back to my beer. I hadn’t even finished it when my ride showed up.

“Best I could do on short notice,” Pritkin told me, grabbing my arm as I scrambled over the railing. And into the front seat of a beat-up green convertible that was idling in the air twenty stories up.

“No problem,” I told him, hanging on for dear life as the rattletrap belched smoke into the startled faces of half a dozen vamps, who had taken a fraction of a second too long to figure out what was going on.

“Cassie!” I heard Marco’s infuriated bellow behind me. But by then we were out of there, soaring away into the star-shot indigo high above the Strip.