Born To Be Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 3 (26 page)

“Say the words, Armaeus.”

Chapter Twenty-one

I tranced so quickly, I thought I’d have permanent whiplash.

“Nikki!” I managed as lights once more exploded in front of my eyes, but this time not at all in a good way.

Armaeus had slipped both my hands from beneath the cover of the bed and taken them in his, and his calming voice overrode the terror that consumed me.

Noise—noise. Everywhere is noise.
Nikki was in the center of a maelstrom, her eyes wide, her mouth open, screaming like a little girl. Her thoughts were so jumbled, there was no possible way I could figure them out, but I got the impression of wind rushing through me, around me, chilling me to the bone.

“What do you see, Miss Wilde? What is she seeing?”

Hands reached for her, tearing at her clothes, ripping at her skin. I blinked, wild-eyed, desperately trying to get my own bearings, my eyes watering in the wind as I kept batting away more hands, always touching always seeking, clutching picking trembling being—all throughout and around her.

Trying to get inside her, trying to breathe the way she did and think the way she did. And laugh and cry and see and sigh and be the way she was and trying above all else to STAY.

Armaeus snapped a word, and I burst back out of the trance in a rush, unable to stop myself from burying myself in his arms.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he murmured, the words sounding awkward and foreign as he held me close. Waves of healing energy spun between us, filling me up, making me whole.

“There were djinn—demons. Whatever they are.” I gasped, gagging on air. “They were trying to pull her apart.”

And one of them, the largest one, had filled my vision even as he’d filled Nikki’s, dark and menacing and full of power.

Warrick. His name was Warrick.

“Where?” Armaeus’s words were clipped. “You did not provide a location when you saw her. What did you see around her, where was she?”

“I didn’t…” I shook my head. “There were too many lights. It was some kind of rave, loud and insane, people writhing, dancing, and Nikki in the middle of it, pulled in all directions.” I closed my eyes, trying to remember. “Black—everything was black, like midnight. The walls, the floors. The lights had all this color, but the walls were black.”

Armaeus nodded. “Viktor’s domain, the tower. He’s opened it for mortals, and they’ve flooded in.”

I pulled back to stare at him. “You can do that?”

“There are many things the Council can do. You don’t truly think Kreios keeps Scandal going day and night for his own personal meditation?”

“I guess… I never thought about that. I’ve never been inside Scandal.”

“The mortals who have aren’t aware that it’s Scandal either, if that’s any consolation. And those filling Viktor’s halls do not know that they have shifted planes. Nikki is in the middle of the rave, you said?”

“She was, but I didn’t get the feeling she was staying. More she was being pulled through it, to some other destination.” My stomach twisted. “Life gave her a pretty raw deal, Armaeus. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“You can find her.” He watched me. “But I cannot go with you. Viktor has committed no crime.”

I pulled my hands away from him. “Did you miss the part where he brought
demons
into the world?” As soon as I said the words, however, I realized my mistake. “But I did that, didn’t I? So he’s off the hook.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Armaeus said. “Viktor’s role in the release of the djinn is not to be discounted, but yes, you, as a mortal, were the agent of their summoning. He might have pointed you in the right direction…”

“But I did the running.” I closed my eyes. “You don’t seem really worried about all this.”

He patted my hand, and I wondered how boring the Council’s lives must have been before they met me. What do you give the immortal who has everything? Something new to puzzle out. Armaeus’s next words confirmed it.

“Your abilities are growing with every challenge. You will come into your own soon.”

What, I hadn’t already?

His phone bleated, and he removed his hand from mine, reaching down for the device. He turned the screen toward me.

“Detective Rooks is waiting for you outside the Luxor,” he said. “I took the liberty of summoning him.”

“Viktor will let us in?” I frowned. “I wouldn’t, if I were him.”

“I’ve also taken the liberty of cloaking both your and the detective’s psychic imprints.” He held up two small devices. “If you’ll do me the favor of actually wearing these.”

This time, I had no problem with that.

Several hours had apparently passed while I’d been getting my insides restored. Night had fallen on the Strip. As Brody and I set off on the short walk to Paris, the brilliant casino homes of the Arcana Council loomed large over us.

“When Dixie first showed me these, I couldn’t believe it,” Brody muttered. “Now it’s as if they’ve always been a part of the landscape.” He gazed up and around, his eyes as wide as any tourist’s. “She said that I might not see them again, eventually. Not sure how I feel about that, but it’s not as if I have much choice, right?”

I slanted him a look. That almost sounded like a request, but a request to do what? “I don’t know how long you will either.”

“But you will, right? You and Dixie and Nikki. This is how you always see Vegas.”

I blew out a breath. “Yeah.”

We walked on in silence then, our gaze on the looming Black Tower, so focused that we barely noticed the change in the night sky. It happened so fast, we almost didn’t see it coming.

Shadows suddenly darkened the brilliantly lit Strip, like blankets thrown over a building fire. There was a rushing swoop of wings, a startled shout. Brody’s hiss at me to get back.

And then we looked up…way up…as shadows soared up the sheer black walls of the Emperor’s tower. The whole thing had taken precisely three seconds. Two people were gone from the street, but in the crush of people, it seemed that no one had noticed.

Except us.

“Christ, please tell me that you’re seeing that too,” Brody whispered.

“They’re getting…bodies.” I nodded. “Looks like the djinn want to stick around.” I trained my eyes on Paris and on the black monolith rising above it. “Nikki is in there, Brody. And they want her too.”

“Yeah. No.”

We moved quickly, approaching Paris like two love-struck partiers, hand in hand. I’d been to Viktor’s domain already. I knew where to go. The gleaming black elevator bay beckoned, and Brody and I moved toward it resolutely.

I punched the button, and the elevator doors slid open. We stepped inside, still holding on to each other, though it was no longer needed.

“She’s going to be okay,” Brody said, squeezing my hand. “It’d take more than a horde of demons to hold their own with Nikki.”

He was right, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

The doors opened on a huge rooftop party floor that started inside, then spilled out to an unfenced patio, surely a safety violation in any dimension that didn’t feature giant flying creatures. Archways soared up and over the area, whether to serve as a framework for a retractable roof or for aesthetic appeal, I didn’t know. One thing was certain, though, there was no roof blocking the action tonight.

“Here we go,” Brody muttered.

As Armaeus had promised, no one bothered us as we moved through the writhing bodies. The dance floor was pulsing with music and energy, and I winced, wondering what kind of introduction the djinn were getting to the mortal realm. No wonder they were rounding up possible hosts.

We moved out into the wide floor, and immediately I recognized where we were. This was the platform they’d dragged Nikki across. I pointed Brody in the right direction, and he nodded, then stiffened, his eyes riveting on a point in the distance.

I followed his gaze. Two men stood at the very edge of the crowd, one of them completely losing his marbles. The other dwarfed the first by over a foot. There was no doubt I was staring at a djinn, though he didn’t possess wings. He had the rich blonde elegance of the Devil, and I wondered at the similarity. After tolerating the shorter man’s panic for several moments, he reached out and backhanded him.

The smaller man dropped like a sack of flour, and the djinn picked him up, throwing him over his shoulder. He stalked away from us toward another section of the patio as if he wasn’t carrying a near-two-hundred-pound man on his back.

We hesitated to follow him, in unspoken agreement that a lord of the demon realm would probably hear a couple of regular humans lumbering after him, despite the rave music in the background. Keeping our distance, we followed the djinn and his hapless cargo as he stalked through the darkness, bypassing the glittering lights and sounds for a separate sitting area flanked by giant cabana-style tented seats.

He cleared those as we caught up to him, and we heard the raucous sounds of yet another party in progress.

And one unforgettable cry.

“Hey, sugar lips! Hoo boy, you found another one. Look at those shoulders! He’s totally a keeper.”

Nikki.

Brody heard it too. “What in the—”

“Shh!” I cut him off. “She doesn’t sound right.”

“Well, she doesn’t sound wrong either,” Brody grumbled, but we edged closer to the party area. There was enough of a breeze at this height to keep the cabana tents fluttering, and I gaped at what I saw. This couldn’t be possible.

Beside me, Brody cursed tightly as he saw the same thing I did. “Why isn’t anything ever easy?”

Apparently oblivious to the fact that she was surrounded by magical beings that made her seem positively petite, Nikki sat cozily ensconced at a baize-green table, deep in a game of poker. From the looks of things, she was holding her own, but barely. Her compatriots were all djinn, from what I could see. Three giant males, easily seven feet tall, and unlike the demon we’d seen first, they weren’t all blonde Adonises.

They were, however, all in exceptionally good shape, at least to my untutored eye. Lean, battle-worn, and with the feral eyes of cats that had gone too long without their kibble, they watched the card game with an air of ferocious intensity. Nikki, for her part, was keeping up a nonstop stream of chatter.

“There you go sugar buns, and boom, I’m up again on you. This would be the time for all of you to get worried.”

The cards were shuffled and dealt around, apparently a standard game of five-card draw. Nikki tossed in a few chips, then the creature across from her grinned and added enough to raise the kitty to almost half her reserves. I felt my stomach cramp. “What are they betting on?”

“I don’t think we want to find out,” Brody said. Nikki’s face was tight and flushed, the glass at her side barely touched. “You’re right, though. She doesn’t look so hot.”

“How are we going to get her out of there?”

Nikki played her cards, and the djinn surrounding her grinned, one of them drawing his hand lazily along her arm. That was the one she’d called Warrick. Had to be. She flinched but kept on smiling, and as she glanced up to meet his eyes, drawling something nonsensical, I shifted slightly in the darkness.

Nikki’s smile blossomed across her hard face. “Well, baby, I think my luck has turned. Anyone for another round?”

“You are almost out of markers,” Warrick said. “When you fall out of the game, one of us claims you.” He leered at her. “I’ve decided it will be me.”

Nikki’s skin went a little paler, but she tilted up her chin. “The one thing you can never afford to do in poker is count your money at the table, sweet pea. Deal the cards.”

That elicited a round of jovial excitement around the table, and I flinched as Brody touched my arm. “Get a load of the action by the palms.”

Two djinn stood next to two kneeling humans, and argued with a third djinn. I could barely make out their words over the pounding beat, but I got a lot of “No’s” and “Impossibles” mixed in with several colorful expletives.

“What’s that about?” Brody asked.

“Hosts,” I gestured. “The rule is if you’re a demon, you can’t stay here in your natural form, not for long. You have to find a body.”

“And once you do, you’re stuck with it?”

“That’s…an interesting question. It appears so, at least for a while.” I frowned. “But they’ve got twenty-four hours, Armaeus said.”

“And he knows that how?”

“Shh. Watch.” The djinn reached out to yank one of the humans to his feet, a well-built gym rat with wild eyes, his mouth agape in terror.

“What are you going to do with me?” the man asked. “What do you want?”

In response to his bluster, the djinn laughed—a soul-sucking, mirthless howl that made the dark-skinned man blanch with fear.

This wasn’t right. “I have to do something—” I began, but Brody reached out and held me close.

“Chill,” he hissed. “We don’t know how many of them there are.”

“I do. There are six.” Energy sizzled along my nerve endings, and I whipped my gaze back to the tight cluster of men and djinn. Suddenly there was one fewer of the demons, and the man was on his knees, howling into the night, his screams keeping eerie time with the music wailing out over the deck.

“What the hell?” Brody growled.

“They made the transfer,” I said. “And if the guy can keep his sanity, it looks like the take was good.”

With that, the man convulsed on the ground, once—twice—then reared back, regaining his feet with a scream of rage and power.

“What have you done to me!” he screamed, but his human voice was wild, almost exultant, and another voice crested the wave along with it, two voices singing the same song. The second voice quickly moved to the fore, drowning out the first. “It is done!” the man shouted, flinging his arms wide. “It is done.”

There was a commotion at the table, and we looked back over to Nikki, who in the intervening few minutes had seen her stake of chips dwindle significantly. “I don’t mind playing all night,” she drawled. “There’s no need to go all-in.”

“The transfer has worked, and the strong survive,” grinned Warrick. The other two sat back, one already out of chips but drinking amiably, the other with an appreciably smaller stack than Warrick. No matter which way you sliced it, the game was coming down to the head djinn and Nikki, and Nikki did not look like she’d be ending the day a winner.