Born To Be Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 3 (20 page)

The full explosion of stars from the Atlantean deck was visible in the center of the room. Constellations chased each other across the visible floor and into the shadows beyond the light from the oculus. I wondered at that—when it was in its proper place, would it have provided enough light to illuminate the entire room? Probably.

There were no walls left to see if additional windows had been cut into the structure, but the interior of the dome was painted with perfectly preserved imagery that recalled Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. This had been a place of importance and lavish beauty, that much was clear.

Oddly, there were no bodies or remains anywhere in sight, as if the entire place had been evacuated before its crumbling. Had the Atlanteans been warned? Not all of them, clearly, if six had been sent into permanent time-out. But what of the others? Weren’t there servants who would have been forced to stay behind? Priests? How had this place been completely swept of bodies?

A soft rustle of a breeze caught my attention, and I turned back toward the shadowed opening of the place. Was someone there? Surely not. This place had the feeling of a tomb.

Granted, I’d been in my share of not quite empty tombs. So once again, I jolted into action.

I turned back to the center of the room. The floor was translucent in some places, hinting at lower levels. The mere thought of what might be lurking down there had me quickening my pace once more. Artifacts would be fun. Screaming creatures in the dark, not so much.

When I got to the center of the room—all wide-open floor—I realized my mistake. The dome had fallen at an angle, not straight down. The true magic of this room lay beyond the edge of the shadows. Shadows I was moving through at last.

A grand throne rose up from a dais of steps, the top of it barely clearing the edge of the dome as it had sliced down onto the floor. Carved to appear like it was rising out of a roiling ocean tide of horses, dolphins, and fish, the chair looked large enough to fit three people, and I thought again about Kreios’s comments about the stature of the average Atlantean. The Canaanites had been referred to as giants in the Bible. The story of David and the Goliath had centered on a Canaanite, and even given literary hyperbole, that had been one seriously big dude.

Was that what I’d be confronting when I went to find the children?

Nothing I could do about that, if so—but for the first time, I considered the likelihood that the weapons of these people might be proportionally sized for giants as well.

I peered more deeply into the darkness, stepping forward and to the right as I began to become accustomed to the gloom. I immediately hit pay dirt. Beside the throne were two long cases, flung open and tumbled through. And in those cases were weapons.

A spear as long as two men, a sword that was almost as long as I was. Knives with blades the size of my thigh. Throwing stars the size of Frisbees.

I picked up one of the knives and heard it again, the sudden rushing of wind outside the dome. I whirled, but the doorway was far away from me—too far. I couldn’t see anyone standing inside it, blocking my exit, and I turned back to the pile of weapons. In my right hand, the knife felt easy, unusually light for its size. I hefted it as I considered the remaining spoils.

Armaeus had been clear—I needed blades or weapons of any type, spear, axe, or sword—and I’d not only have a weapon to fight the demons, I’d have a tool to use to help pry the children out of their interdimensional dungeon. It made a certain sort of sense. The demons were Atlantean; so were these weapons. Bringing them together could only cause some sort of cataclysm, and that cataclysm might be all I needed.

I cast around and found a long, slender arrow as thick as my arm but buoyantly light, with a wickedly pointed tip. That would work. I picked up two for good measure, along with a sheathed knife, double-checking that the blade was still intact before I straightened. I scooped up a few throwing stars for good measure. Everything seemed good, so far, despite the fact that I couldn’t hear Armaeus or Eshe.

Even the cards hadn’t been a complete train wreck. The wheel surrounding the destroyed buildings could have been a blueprint of what was left of the center of the Atlantean capital. The all-seeing eyeball had proven to be a worthy X marks the spot. The constellation had been on the floor, and it’d led me once more to where I needed to be. Sure, some of the elements hadn’t worked out, and the image imprinted on my hand hadn’t proven useful, but Justice was sort of a tricky card. Sometimes it could mean that you would get your rewards for making the effort to do the right thing, or that you would get the good things that were coming to you.

Of course, it could also mean that you’d get the bad things that were coming to you. But details.

I turned around and let my gaze lift again to the oculus at the top of the dome. What must this place have looked like in its heyday? Before its ruination, before the destruction of every rock and statue. It was such a beautiful space, with the floor a rich panorama of stars, the throne made of pure gold atop a staircase of silver and bronze, and the carvings of fish and horses and sea dragons coiling around the base, bursting up out of the stonework as if they’d just emerged from the sea.

“Who lived in this place, meting out justice?” I jolted as I realized I’d spoken the words aloud, but once they were hanging in the air, I couldn’t ignore them. I looked at my palm once more, then cast another glance at the rubble littering the throne room.

It took only a few more minutes to find it.

Kneeling reverently, my weapons forgotten, I spread the broken scales out in front of me. Two shallow golden bowls hung from a chain whose links had been cut or shattered, it was impossible to tell which. They were suspended askew from a long, graceful crossbeam that had formerly sat atop a center spire. The entire apparatus was about three feet high and two feet wide, but when I held it up, I found it curiously light, almost delicate.

A crash sounded outside the dome, and I sprang to my feet, scrambling back to pick up my weapons. I realized I hadn’t heard a buzz from Armaeus’s domain in some time. Not since I’d entered the dome, certainly. Had that severed the contact? Was I truly cut off? From everything I could tell, there was only one entryway into and out of the fallen dome. Even if there was something out there waiting for me, I had to go that way.

I stepped forward, only to crash heavily down to one knee as my foot got tangled in the broken chain of the scales. I moved my boot, but the link wouldn’t budge. It’d gotten locked onto my boot buckle. “Oh, give me a break,” I muttered. Shifting the weapons to my left hand, I hauled up the center spire of the scales with my right. Shaking my boot experimentally produced no help. The plates dangled from their chains, but the whole thing looked a little like a mace. Maybe it would work as a weapon as well. It was light enough, almost comfortable to carry.

I simply didn’t want it attached to me. Setting the scales down temporarily, I dropped the other weapons as well and slid the long knife out of its sheath. With one swift cut, I sliced through the chain…and into the stone floor.

Whoa.” My eyes bulged as I hauled the knife back out of the marble, and I stood for a moment longer. If this was indicative of the Atlanteans’ strength, no wonder they were viewed as gods. Suddenly the ol’ “sword in the stone myth” took on new resonance. How many Atlanteans had survived the Great Flood? I suddenly wondered. How many still roamed the earth?

I gathered up the weapons and the scales once more, then moved back quickly across the large, constellation-strewn floor, toward the triangle of light that marked the opening. As I walked, I realized that the clinking chains of the scales weren’t hindering me. The weapons too, once I got used to their ungainliness, were no hardship to haul across the floor. I seemed to be gaining strength, not losing it, and I drew in a deep, experimental breath.

Oxygen flooded my lungs. I felt light, almost buoyant, and despite the unknown of what was outside the dome, I was feeling unreasonably excited, practically filled with glee. I shook my head, muttering to anyone who should be listening on the other side. “Atlantis to Earth, do you read,” I tried. “I have no idea what I’ll be able to bring back of this, but I’m ready to come home.”

Silence.

Great.
I got all the way to the sunlit opening of the dome and peered out. No one was congregating in the small clearing that marked the break in the last round wall and the center dome. I swallowed and stepped outside.

More silence.

The wind whistled around the dome, making an odd keening noise, and I frowned up at it. Was that all that I had heard? Clear of the dome, I focused again, more desperately this time, trying to fix on Armaeus’s face, his hands. His eyes. What was it Death had said? I needed to remain tethered to the person in my own plane who had the strongest hold on me?

There was no one who really fit that bill, of course. Nikki was a friend, but we’d met only recently. That left Armaeus, and even that connection was a little pitiful, now that I thought about it. I had nothing and no one who really wanted me, needed me. I was alone.

I was alone, and I was never going to get back.

Sudden despair leached through me, and I faltered, slowing to a stop in the center of the courtyard, weighed down by chains and weapons and the inescapable truth of my life. I was no one’s. I had no mother, no father. I had no lasting friends. I had come into this world a mystery, and it seemed I would go out that way too.

And I was so, so far from everything I knew.

A flickering buzz sounded in my ear again, but as I lifted my head, the sudden wellspring of emotion caught me so quickly that I staggered back. That emotion wasn’t coming from me, though. It was coming from outside of me, a force ripping through the universe with a single word:

Mine.

Suddenly, Armaeus stood in front of me, as clear as if he were standing there. Relief washed through me. I focused and could hear words, demands—something I couldn’t understand, couldn’t quite catch…

And then a solid silver spear zipped right by my face, and Armaeus disappeared.

“Crap!” I scrambled backward, dropping the scales, and the chain tangled into my boot buckle a second time. I dropped the arrow as well but held on to the long knife, whirling around. The spear lay on the ground beyond me, almost to the makeshift door of the dome, useless. It was as tall as I was, though, and no sooner had I bent toward it when another blade soared by me, black as pitch. This was a knife, thick as my head, and it clanged against the far wall before dropping to the ground. Its obsidian length gleamed in the hot sun, and I stared at it, mesmerized.

“Um, this would be a good time for me to come back, Armaeus.”

But it wasn’t Armaeus who responded to me. An unearthly scream rose from one side of the wall circling the dome, and as it rose in crescendo, its owners rose with it—literally, hovering in the sky. At first I thought they were the Valkyries again, come to serve me with another death notice, but these weren’t the fierce Nordic women I had met before. These were something altogether different.

I let my own blade arm drop, my jaw dropping with it.

Angels.

A horde of angels hovered on the far end of the wall, glowing bright white with enormous white-gold wings soaring above them.

A roar of fury met their cries, and I whirled, no longer trying to protect myself, no longer trying to understand. A new host of creatures surged over the far wall—not with wings but with arms and legs and…well, tails. Practically glowing with darkness, they growled and snarled, their humanlike figures as twisted as the angelic host was pristine. Then, as if both groups remembered I remained down in the makeshift pit, they turned their combined fury on me.

And not merely their howls. As if as one, they flowed down the walls—angels flying, demons racing—both of them hurtling toward me as if I were the last jelly bean at the bottom of the bowl.

“Crap, crap, crap!” It was too far to make it back to the dome. Even as I moved, the chain clambered after me, so I bent down and scooped up the rest of the scales holding the artifact by its base. The golden disks swung precariously, and I was reminded once more of its mace-like features. I whirled around, and I brandished the scales with a war cry of my own. “Get away from me, you freaks!”

The screaming chaos in my brain surged forward, and I swung once, twice, shocked on some level that I wasn’t cleaving through muscle and sinew, claw and bone. The tone and tenor of the howling demons changed, but I couldn’t stop—wouldn’t stop.

Everything that had been boiling inside me surged to the fore. The revelation about my mother, Viktor’s manipulations, even the petty betrayals of Nigel and Brody, people who owed me nothing and yet whose actions pricked at me unreasonably hard. And then there was Death with her cryptograms, and Armaeus and Eshe, and—I was weary to my bones. Tired and sick and so furious I could barely keep the scream wailing inside me from ripping me apart.

I slashed again and again, meeting no resistance, and almost stumbled as I realized what was happening.

The two groups had stopped. Completely stopped as if mesmerized by me and my mace-like scales. I shook the thing again, and they fell back, whispers rushing through them like a sickness. I didn’t know why. More to the point, I didn’t care.

“Get back from me—back!” I screeched, jabbing the scales forward as though it were a lit torch thrust against the darkness. It had the desired effect, or it started to anyway. The creatures fell back, but only until they formed a tight circle around me, a sentient wall of angel and demon or whatever the hell they were, as sturdy and impassable as stone.

And then…the front wall of them knelt down.

Whoa.

I stood up straight as I struggled manfully to keep my eyeballs from popping out of my head. This wasn’t your ordinary kneeling either. Both angel and demon alike bent forward at the waist and put their foreheads on the ground, dirtying their pristine wings and getting dust on their claws, respectively. They held that position for a full thirty seconds while I spun in a tight circle, trying to find a way out.