Hunting Down Dragons (Moonlight Dragon #2) (12 page)

I cleared my throat when it grew tight. I didn't deal well with death, or with people leaving me for any reason. "Has Abandonment Issues" was stamped on my forehead in invisible ink. You'd think it would make me reluctant to form attachments, but somehow I needed them even more, as if by growing a network of relationships I could somehow insulate myself from loss. All these friends were supposed to be my barrier against pain. But it wasn't turning out that way.

"It's okay," Zach said with a crooked, wan smile. "I'm getting used to the idea. And we've got some time."

Though they didn't know how much. That was one thing I could do for them since I couldn’t do anything else.

I said to Rob, "I'll get you your scrying ball. I won't leave Dearborn's without it. I promise you."

"I believe you, Anne." He held out his hand. We shook. "For all our differences—I don't want to receive any more packages in the mail," he said, looking a little green. "Be careful."

I swallowed hard. "Don't worry. It'll be fine."

~~~~~

Melanie made a quick stop at an all-night taco stand before taking us back to Moonlight. The pungent smells of cumin, vinegar and chili filled the small shop as we ate and considered all that we'd learned.

Correction: Melanie and Vale ate while I chewed desultorily on a small mouthful. I didn't feel excited about what was to come. There would be no victory at the end of this. Learning of Zach's illness had put a damper on any anticipation I felt about avenging my parents. They were gone. Nothing could be done for them. Zach, however, was still alive.

But for how much longer? That scrying ball could help him and Rob plan for and enjoy their last days together. It wasn't an option. It was necessary.

"Tell me what you're thinking, Moody."

Vale had finished his last taco. He now stood near the windows, arms crossed over his chest. The streetlamps cast a golden glow over one side of his face. On it I read sympathy and concern.

"I'm upset about Zach," I said slowly, feeling my way, "and I feel now that even if I hadn't made the deal, I have no choice but to get the ball for him and Rob. No matter how dangerous it might be," I added, referring to the fate of my friend Jeremiah, who'd been shipped to Rob in pieces.

"How good of a warlock was Jeremiah, in your opinion? Would he have stood a decent chance?"

"Against what?" I asked him with a mirthless laugh. "We know next to nothing about what Dearborn has set up at his home."

"He's bad," Melanie said around a mouthful of fried fish. "He makes curses and golems. He may have killed your parents! I think that's enough, Anne. That's more than enough!"

"All true," I agreed, feeling depressed. Hot sauce was burning a hole through my stomach. Or maybe it was stress. "Jeremiah wasn't a close friend. I didn't even know he moonlighted as a cat burglar. I'm trying to picture him in skintight Lycra…" I snapped back into focus when Vale emitted a low growl. "But I do know he was a decent enough warlock. And he was smart. When he was ten, he charged his friends to do their homework with his magick. That lasted about a week before the Oddsmakers cracked down on him but it shows you how advanced he was. It wouldn't have been easy to catch him by surprise, I don't think."

"Then I say don't do this."

It wasn't what I expected him to say. "Vale, there's no way I'm not doing this."

He left the window and came to me. He held my hand in his while wearing an expression of unnerving solemnity. "This is something that can wait. We don't yet know what the Oddsmakers' mission is. What if we find out it's something else altogether, and you've risked your life for nothing?"

"It won't be for nothing," I insisted, struggling not to give in to anger. "It'll be for Zach and Rob."

"And if you die or seriously hurt yourself?" he challenged me just as sharply. "What's more important in the scheme of things? Protecting the world from Vagasso, or retrieving a crystal ball for someone who's already doomed?"

I wanted to yell at him for being heartless.

Except that he was right. Something big like Vagasso would always be about the greatest impact: how many lives I could save versus how many I was willing to lose. Previous to tonight, I would have said firmly that no one was going to be lost on my watch. But clearly there were going to be deaths beyond my control, deaths that weren't even my fault, but which would hurt me all the same.

"I don't want to be telling you this, Moody." Vale's fingers tightened around mine. "But I'm willing to be the bad guy if that's who you need me to be."

Melanie was staring while trying not to stare, but I had eyes only for Vale.

"No," I told him, releasing a tremulous breath, "you're not the bad guy. You're right, and I have to face the truth. Zach and Rob aren't my obligation. If I hadn't come along, nothing would have changed for them. But even though this might not be the Oddsmakers' mission, I'm willing to gamble that it is. It has nothing to do with Zach and Rob. Well, not enough to matter. I'm doing this because everything falls into place. My parents tracked this artifact until the chase killed them. It has significance. There's some kind of motive here."

Vale released my hand. My skin felt chilled without him. He didn't appear angry, but he was definitely unhappy.

"Tell me you're sure."

I nodded. "I'm sure. I have to go after Dearborn." I looked to Melanie. "But you're not coming with me. I don't care what you say."

"Anne!"

"This is beyond you, Melly, and you know it. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if you got hurt."

"How do you think I'd feel if
you
got hurt?" she shot back.

"Nope. Not changing my mind. You're staying here."

"You're not going alone," Vale said firmly. "Dearborn's defenses will be weaker against two of us."

Tension released in my chest. "We'll find out. Thanks."

The way he stared at me, all broody and protective, made me wonder if Melanie would be put out if I kicked her out of the shop right then. Vale did angry and intense the way male models did them. I couldn't pretend I was strong enough to resist that.

"We'll do more research of the Nirvana towers," I said, trying to keep things G-rated while Melanie was here. "Make some plan of attack. Hopefully we'll learn Dearborn's schedule. I'd prefer to hit his place while he's away."

"Please tell me before you go," Melanie begged, her dark eyes shiny with moisture. "I hate this. I don't want you coming back mailed Priority Flat Rate, Anne!"

"It'll be okay, monkey," I chided, but I hugged her as hard as she hugged me. "I've got Lucky and this hunky gargoyle. That's three against one."

She wiped her eyes. I adored her. Though I'd begun this adventure with my parents in mind, I was being reminded through Zach and Melanie that it was the family I had with me now that mattered most. My friends were the most important people in the world.

"You're driving the truck tomorrow?" I asked her.

She nodded reluctantly. "I'd rather spend the day with you, though. People don't need sweets that bad. It makes them fat."

"Nothing wrong with more cushion for the pushing," I pointed out. "Go on home, Melly. Get some sleep. I know you're tired."

She whined and complained, but ultimately she left, knowing that I was right. I was sorry to see her go, but unlike me she still had a family, and family—born of blood or friendship—had to come first.

"May I stay here tonight?"

I looked up at Vale. He wasn't trying to seduce me with bedroom eyes. He merely stood in my shop, as still and solid as a monolith at Stonehenge. I didn't know how old he really was, but I sensed enough of his ancientness to be drawn to that experience. He'd probably been through a lot. Things I'd never know for myself. In a magickal battle he could prove invaluable, and I was counting on him to handle whatever Dearborn had in store for us that I couldn't.

"Not only may you stay, I won't let you leave, how about that?" I asked, and found a smirk somewhere and slapped it on my face.

His dark eyes ate me up. "I think I'm okay with that."

I gathered up the remains of our uneaten tacos. He followed me as I carried them through the bead curtain and into my studio. I dumped the trash in the backyard where the garbage can sat beside the old, scraggly tree. Then I returned to sit on the end of my bed. Vale leaned against the wall beside the cursed bathroom and studied me.

"Are you prepared to deal with the possibility of another demon?" I asked him.

I'd left the lights off, so only the moonlight and starlight coming in through the back patio kept the darkness at bay. Vale was a shadowed figure but his presence reached for me through the gloom.

I was cultivating his mystery deliberately and he seemed content to play along. It made my body tingle knowing how in tune we were with each other. I'd never taken such pleasure from a connection with someone before.

"I've learned not to fear the things I fear, Moody. Whether Dearborn commands a demon army or is himself a demon, I'm not leaving you to handle this on your own."

"You should be afraid," I told him softly. "Last time you nearly died."

"Every day we all nearly die." His voice was matter-of-fact. Soothing in its bluntness. "We make a hundred decisions throughout our waking hours that have the potential to put us in harm's way. This won't be any different."

I pulled my top off. "Being fearless means you're cocky. Cocky people make mistakes."
Please don't make a mistake.

"You're talking about normal people. You're not talking about me." His shirt landed atop mine on the floor.

"You think you're special just because you're a gargoyle?" I wiggled out of my shorts. Kicked them somewhere into the shadows.

Vale still wore his jeans but was minus his shoes and socks as he climbed onto the foot of the bed. The denim brushed my thighs as he climbed over me.

"Do you think I'm special?" he murmured against the skin covering my throat.

I tangled my fingers in his hair and let my head fall back as his lips mapped my jaw. I groaned as his tongue followed suit. I wanted to surrender my tension, wanted to forget, just for a moment, all the bad things that were happening around us.

But I gripped his hair until he looked up at me. "The only reason I told Zach and Rob that you're my boyfriend is because—"

"I don't mind," he said huskily.

Heat swept through me. I wrapped my legs around his hips. Lifting up, I whispered against his throat, "Then show me why you're special, Vale."

The pull on his hair made him shudder. He took control after that, sliding a hand beneath my buttocks and pulling me hard against him.

He stole my breath.

He stole my fears.

Much later, he gave me peace.

Nothing like waking up at two in the afternoon with the fangs of a stone gargoyle biting into your right butt cheek.

"Pain in my ass," I groaned, rolling away from the statue.

"
The dead are calling, Anne Moody…"

"Your fate is sealed…"

"…doom for Anne Moody!"

"Doom and death! Death and doom!"

"Just shut up!" I shouted hoarsely at the cameos.

If Celestina heard me next door she was probably shaking her head right now. Damn, I still needed to ask her if the cameos were accurately predicting the future.

I moved Vale's statue up onto the pillow beside me and ran my fingers over its bared fangs. Nothing in the visage reminded me of Vale, same as with his gargoyle form. But the topaz gemstone eyes suggested something of his personality. They were much brighter and lighter in color than Vale's human eyes, but I thought they held intelligence and an ancient watchfulness, much like Vale himself did. Maybe it was weird to be admiring the statue of a monster, especially with the goofy smile that was on my face.

I couldn't help it, though. I was in deep.

I'd had boyfriends before, of course. More than I probably should have. Always I was the one to break it off, which said nothing about whose fault it had been. It just meant I'd been the chicken who'd run away before things became too serious.

Every time it happened, I told myself I was better off alone. But that didn't serve me too well when I was lonely and needed someone to hold my hand or tell me that life sucked but it would get better. No one was better off alone. Sometimes it felt safer, sure, but in the end it wasn't better.

Would my parents have approved of Vale? I wish I'd known if they were conservative people or open-minded, if they were prudes or had lived it up. Would they have encouraged me to jump into this relationship like I have without knowing Vale all that well? Or would they have told me to slow down until I knew more?

Well, it didn't matter. Their approval or disapproval could no longer change how I felt about Vale. Nor could they give me advice on how to get over the growing sensation that Vale would leave me just when things began to get good.

Or you could leave him first, just like you have in the past.

I shoved that voice away. That voice belonged to self-sabotage.

I took a quick shower and dressed, then carried Vale's statue with me into Moonlight and set it on the counter next to my computer. In his stone form he was sleeping, so anything I said to him likely wasn't heard. But I liked having him near to bounce ideas off. We were partners in this so why not?

The wards were lifted and the Open sign was turned on, not that I expected much business after a three day holiday. Tourists were on the way home if they weren't there already, and locals were recovering physically and financially from the big weekend. Still, if I could pick up some sales that would help fund any investigating that Vale and I might have to do. Or pay for bribes. Bribes might come in handy.

First things first, I looked up Dearborn on the internet. Rob said the sorcerer had been a professor at UNLV, giving me some helpfully specific search parameters. It wasn't difficult to find an official staff photo of Dearborn and when I did, I sat back and said, "Bingo."

Former professor Felix Dearborn appeared to be in his early fifties. He had a head like a watermelon, oblong and bald with tiny ears on either side. His facial features sagged, giving him a tired, hound dog look, but his eyes were compelling. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that they were psychotic. You didn't want to look away from them because you feared missing the moment that madness appeared in them. Soft, fleshy lips and a potato nose didn't endear him to me either. It wasn't that I associated unattractive people with evil deeds; there was just something about Dearborn as a whole that rubbed me wrong.

Maybe it was the fact that on his forehead, like a stamp of honor, sat a port wine stain shaped like the state of Texas.

Double bingo.

I dug deeper and learned that he had been let go from teaching after only a year. The official explanation was "personal reasons", though the scuttlebutt in school forums suggested Dearborn had brought unapproved materials on campus and his dismissal had been over a security issue. Bomb-making supplies were unlikely, as was a gun—as a sorcerer, Dearborn didn't need either to cause damage. I had a hunch it had to do with his golems. Perhaps he'd tried to construct one on campus using strange materials, or someone had discovered the dragon bone "hearts" that he used and reported him for possessing ivory. It could have been anything. It didn't much matter to me.

I found a website called Rate My Professor. Dearborn was one of the listed teachers there and hoo boy, had he earned some choice comments from his students at UNLV.

"Every day, I thought this guy was going to start hitting people over the head with his yard stick," I read aloud from one student's rating. "He needs to get laid. Badly. Way too much homework and the guy reeks."

"Scariest teacher I ever had," I read from another student. "If his goal was making me believe in Hell, he's succeeded."

"If I wind up murdered and my body dumped in a parking lot, please bring Professor Dearborn in for questioning, LOL!" wrote another.

"And here I thought the worst things that could happen to you in college was being roofied and failing a class," I said with a grim smile of satisfaction.

More intensive digging brought up something even juicier: an article about Felix Dearborn, a teacher at a community college in Chicago, who was heading to Egypt to begin an eight-week excavation outside of the Merimde Beni Salame site, where early man was alleged to have settled in the Nile Valley. The date of the article was January 26, 1982. I just shook my head when I saw the accompanying photo. Dearborn looked to be the same age as in his UNLV photo taken over twenty years later.

Pretty damning evidence that he'd had access to some powerful magick.

I did a fist bump with one of the gargoyle statue's clawed feet. "I think we've got 'im, Vale."

Dearborn was unquestionably the maker of both the gargoyle golem and Stevie. I was willing to bet money that he was also in possession of the necromancy artifact. Now all I had to do was find out when he left his condo so I could pull a
Tomb Raider
on his place.

I looked up as the front door cracked open. The door didn't swing fully open, though, and no one entered the shop. It was as though the latch hadn't fully engaged, but I was sure that I'd closed it after returning from lowering the wards. I didn't want the air conditioning losing its effectiveness.

I slid slowly off my stool while I scanned the interior of Moonlight. Paranoia was running rampant but I called up Lucky anyway. He was a thickening haze of gold by my side, waiting, since I couldn't send him after anyone or anything just yet. So far, the shop appeared empty.

If only that were true.

For nearly ten minutes I stood there, braced for attack. When nothing moved and I didn't hear any sounds of life, I cautiously stepped out from behind the counter.

"Come on out," I said to whatever was in shop. "Do it now, while it's just us."

Nothing, but then, whoever expects an answer when they call, "Who's there?" into the darkness?

I walked cautiously down one aisle of the shop, my senses primed for something to leap out at me. I passed a five foot tall totem pole, an outdoor grill, and the haunted rocking chair that obliged me by slowly rocking back and forth.

Items on the shelves drew my eye: a pink toaster with Hello Kitty painted on its sides, a ceramic Viking ship as big as a microwave, various dolls, some of which were cursed and watched me with plastic eyes that blinked or leaked tears of blood. A Ouija board carved from the lid of an eighteenth century witch's coffin made my skin crawl but did nothing more insidious.

In the section I called the Wannabe Witch I looked over the various implements and tools for creating spells. None of the cauldrons, censers, enchanted stirring spoons or dull-bladed athames twitched or gave off ominous vibes. No more than usual, anyway. I always sensed suppressed energy from the area, as though the objects itched with impatience to be used.

I turned my back on it all and faced the rest of the room.

"Where are you?" I demanded, my wariness giving way to irritation. I had work to do, dammit. "This hide and go seek garbage is seriously lame."

Still nothing.

I passed the painting of the English lake, where a family was currently picnicking in peace. Eventually a mini axe murderer would enter the scene from the trees and wreak major havoc, but for now all was tranquil. That wasn't the case with the 8x10 photo in a copper frame of a young girl who stopped smiling to hiss at me and bare her dripping fangs. To anyone non-magickal she looked like the girl who sold you Girl Scout cookies every spring. Cute as a button.

Yeah, right. Don't trust those Thin Mints.

Lots of creepy stuff was in my shop for sure, but nothing gave me an extra dose of the willies until I neared a tabletop slot machine. That in itself was unusual, for the machine had never given off a vibe before.

The slot machine wasn't a legal gaming apparatus. It was about the size of a rice cooker, made of metal, and accepted nickels, though I think it could be programmed to run without any money inserted. It weighed a good fifty pounds. Feeling my skin break out in goose bumps, I reached up and gingerly pulled the arm to set the reels spinning.

The arm stopped a quarter of the way down.

"Grrr."

I went back to the register, fished a nickel out of the till, and then returned to the slot machine and inserted the coin. The arm now swung all the way down, sending the three old-fashioned reels spinning. I glimpsed the traditional symbols—cherries, lemons, liberty bells, and bars—whizzing around and around.

Then the first reel stopped.

On an image of a skull with flames in its eye sockets.

Well, that was new. Pretty sure that wasn't actually a legitimate symbol.

The second reel stopped a moment later on another skull.

"I can see where this is going," I muttered.

I backed up while Lucky reared up defensively behind me.

The third reel stopped on a third flame-eyed skull.

"Winner," I whispered.

Wasps exploded from the cash tray of the machine.

I screamed and flailed, stumbling backward. Lucky blasted out a balloon of fire that engulfed the slot machine. As my back hit another shelf, I saw and heard small insect bodies rain on the floor. There was at least a hundred of them, all charred to a crisp.

I remained where I was, frantically searching the air, afraid of vengeful strays, but Lucky had fried the wasps while they were bunched together as they'd emerged from the machine. He'd incinerated every last one of them.

My relief was short-lived, however. I groaned as I looked over the scene around the slot machine. "Fantastic."

Lucky had not only burned up the wasps, he'd crisped the merchandise on two of my shelves. I counted at least five other items that had been rendered total losses.

I was seriously ticked off. Waving the smoke away with angry karate chops of my hand, I approached the slot machine. To my knowledge it hadn't been cursed. One of my regulars had sold it to me, a guy who picked up junk off Craigslist and restored it for resale. The machine was a blackened mess now. Its display showed three reels of cherries.

Had I imagined the flaming skulls? The insect attack?

No, because beneath my shoes crunched the bodies of wasps. It was all real. But what did it mean?

~~~~~

Celestina pressed her thumb to the face of the cameo pendent and smashed it firmly into the velvet. I heard high pitched, muffled screaming from beneath her thumb and snickered. Celestina gave me a wink.

"I'm glad I can't hear them like you can," she told me. "Just from the looks of them, I can tell they're awful."

"Complete and total bitches. You have no idea."

"I believe you." My friend put her back to the counter and watched Lev trotting through the store. "And by the way, they're harbingers."

I stared dumbly at her. "Say what?"

"The cameos. They foreshadow future doom. But that's it. They know nothing about the good things that are going to happen to you. They only focus on the bad. For better or worse."

"Definitely worse," I mumbled, thinking of the cameos' latest claim: that death was coming for me. Bad enough I had wasps gunning for me.

I felt Celestina looking at me. "Have the cameos told you something about this artifact you're looking for?"

"Not precisely. Just general doom and gloom like you said." I motioned at my shop, which still smelled faintly of burnt plastic and bugs despite propping the door open to air it out. "Would've been nice if they
had
been specific and warned me to buy some wasp spray."

"If there's something unnatural still here, Lev will probably find it," Celestina promised me as we watched the black wolf sniff around.