One-Eyed Jack (33 page)

I smelled the assassin, heard his heartbeat, level and unworried. And another beat, with a racing edge; the scent that went with it was Luray. So the Mage was here. Here, but silent.

I was chained to the foundation of a house that had been given to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam seventy years before.
I commend these ghosts to the deep
. I smelled rust and dead fish and drying earth, and when I spread my hands out I felt hexagonal cracks in the mud under my back deeper than my fingers’ length.

“I know you’re awake in there,” the assassin said, amused. “I can hear you rattle.”

“I was contemplating my snappy comeback,” I said, and sat up. Caked earth stuck in my hair, to my palms. Angel’s blood flaked off my skin. “I told you I’d cooperate.”

“I don’t think even you would go willing to your own sacrifice.”

I still felt good, at least. Strong, not too hungry. The assassin didn’t need to know that, so I made sure I wobbled a little and used both hands to press myself up. As I stood, I palmed a rock. “You might be surprised. What good am I to you as a sacrifice? I’m linked to Los Angeles, not Las Vegas. I can’t tie them together for you—where on earth are we, anyway?”

“Saint Thomas,” the assassin said.

I turned until I faced him. He stood atop a foundation wall, balanced lightly, Felix Luray breathing avidly by his side. “A drowned town.”

“Nothing lasts in this desert,” Felix said. I kept my attention on him, let the chains rattle when I moved. Both hands manacled, pressing my wrist bones. Over the tamarisk, in the light of a rich orange moon, I could see a chimney or two, standing up crooked and tall. The space we were in was flat, open; the brush had been mown off it, and a low broken foundation wall bounded the whole. Steps rose on the side where the lake must be, and on the wall that had crumbled over them, I made out the outline of a cross.

Hallowed ground.

I swallowed, and looked down at my hands. No signs of damage at all. If I breathed, I would have taken a long, slow, thoughtful one just then. I was only half-paying-attention to the Mage. I was standing in a ruined church, and I wasn’t screaming. And I didn’t think that was a puzzle for another day.

“The Mojave eats her young,” Felix reminded, as if it might be important.

“So what if she does?” I said, without looking up. “That doesn’t get you any closer to a joint avatar for Las Vegas and Los Angeles. That
is
what you’ve been working toward, isn’t it? A sacrifice that will tie the cities together, unite them?”

“Tribute,” Felix said, “what could be a more perfect symbol than you? A vampire who was Elvis Presley, a twin who lived when his brother died, a man who is almost as much a symbol of Las Vegas as Las Vegas is a symbol of sin? A destroyer. A
consumer
, like the Mojave itself. The creature that eats blood and burns it into darkness. And the thing you’ve eaten, child of the night, is the symbol of Los Angeles herself—like the consuming desert you are. You couldn’t have been more perfect for my purposes if I designed you.”

“You don’t need a genius.” I tried to keep my voice level, smooth.
Breath control
, I thought, and almost giggled. I had no breath
to
control, unless you counted what I used for talking.

“You’re
better
than a genius,” he replied. “I should thank you for getting Stewart away from us. You’re infinitely more suited to my purpose. You’re my link, and when you’re destroyed, it will be like a spell knotted into a handkerchief and burned. There will be no extricating L.A. and Las Vegas.”

The assassin nudged him. “Don’t gloat too soon,” he cautioned, and Felix gave him a sidelong grin.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “No matter what happens, we still have the dam.”

I shifted my grip on the rock carefully, so the assassin wouldn’t see it. Something caught my ear. I couldn’t quite name it, but it almost sounded like—“Hey, Felix?”

“King?”

“Do you hear that? Sounds like a big heartbeat? Maybe somebody hammering?”

Give him this much, he lifted his chin, opened his mouth, and cupped a hand to his ear to listen. “Just the waves, King.”

It wasn’t. But if he couldn’t tell that, I wasn’t about to help out any more than I already had. I shrugged under the blood-stiff coat. “So tell me about the church, Felix.”

“It never hurts to layer symbols,” he said. Then he glanced from me to the broken cross, and tipped his head particularly. “Oh, you mean why can you stand on hallowed ground?”

I nodded.

He smiled. “Easy. I’ve warded your chains. If they should happen to break, however, they won’t insulate you any more. Of course”—he made a negligent gesture, and my hand tightened on the stone—“they won’t protect you from the sun.”

“Of course not,” I said. We stared one another down for a minute, and I knew from the little smile playing around the corners of his mouth in the moonlight that I looked like a dog snarling on the end of a chain.

I let him have it. I looked down, and turned my back on the assassin and the Mage. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d like to die in peace.”

“As you wish,” he said, and withdrew. The assassin didn’t go; I only heard one set of footsteps.

I tightened my hand on the river-smoothed bit of rock in my fist, and tried not to smile. He’d gloated.

He’d
gloated
. I might die all over again in the process, but if we were still in genre, the son of a bitch might yet beat me to hell. If I could just get out of the church before the sun came up and burned me where I stood.

I was comforting myself with the very pleasant thought of feeling Felix Luray’s throat shred between my teeth when the wind shifted. The scent of the lake gave way before the scent of ten, maybe a dozen strange men. The faint acid reek of gun oil followed it, and mixed up in those scents was a trickle of familiar ones. Jackie, and the American, and the Russian, and Stewart, and the Englishman.

The chains on my wrists—the chains that were keeping me alive, if I could believe Luray and if I could call this living—brought me up hard before I went two steps. I almost called out a warning, and then I closed my mouth on it, very carefully, and stepped back into the footprints I’d left when I first stood. If I were just here to burn when the sun came up, there wouldn’t have been any reason to let me wake up. To
plan
on me waking up.

They were using me as bait.

I sank down on my haunches, until my head dipped under the level of the foundation wall, and tried not to look east, where zodiacal light smeared across the stars.

The Russian and False Dawn.

Somewhere in Saint Thomas, Nevada. Summer, 2002.

They parked at the bottom of the rise, beside the white minivan already stationed there, and walked up the little bluff overlooking the lake and the forest of thick-scented tamarisk trees. Before they got to the top, where they would be silhouetted by the rapidly setting moon, Nikita gestured the others to stay behind, dropped to his belly and crawled to the edge of the cliff. James came with him, and judging by the grim expression on the Englishman’s face, it would have been more of a fight than it was worth to try to stop him.

They both knew it wasn’t about revenge, anyway.

Well, not just revenge.

Despite the low bright moon casting everything below in strobe-sharp relief, all he could see over the wind-rippled sea of tamarisk was a few stark chimneys, limned white with precipitated calcium and mineral salts, and the black, clawed skeletons of waterlogged shade trees. No sign of the assassin, and no sign of Tribute, and Nikita didn’t fancy a running battle through the head-high fronds of tamarisk, even though Jackie
had
managed to replace their guns.

Still—

He nudged James with an elbow and pointed, out over the shallow valley that must have been lake floor until recently. “What do you think that big ruin is, there?”

“Down by the waterfront? Er, present waterfront?”

“Yes. There’s a reasonably intact chimney there.”

“Yes. And something behind it.”

Nikita glanced over at James, and James nodded decisively. “All right,” Nikita said. “Let’s get the rest.”

“Steady on,” James said. “I’ll be right back.” He slithered down the bluff in reverse, while Nikita wriggled a little closer to the edge and craned his neck, trying to get an idea of the least exposed path down. Not the trail, obviously. They’d be picked off like ducks in a shooting gallery if they tried that.

Down the side slope then? Possible. He scooted sideways on his belly. The earth under his chest and hands still retained heat, re-radiating it into the night air, and it gave him a moment’s pause to imagine the inferno this little valley would be under the desert sun.

If the sun caught them down there, there would be no saving Tribute. In fact, Nikita wasn’t sure that the packing pads and Mylar blankets they’d hastily—and illegally—procured would be enough to protect the vampire, even in the shelter of the minivan. But they had little choice.

They would simply have to improvise as best they could. And besides, it was Sebastian’s plan, and Sebastian’s plans had a habit of coming out unexpectedly well.

He made his choice, and slithered down the side slope of the bluff, dodging thorned and unpleasant plants. This had been the shore of the lake when the water was higher, he realized, crouching just far enough below the edge to hide his silhouette. It was still a steep twenty or twenty-five feet down to the sandy bottom below, but he wouldn’t proceed farther until the rest caught up with him.

Jackie was the real tenderfoot of the group, and Nikita decided that he would go with Stewart and attempt to free Tribute. Stewart didn’t have Nikita’s training, but he knew how to move and how to fight. James would go with them, leaving Sebastian and Nikita lightest and fastest, as the decoy team.

One by one, the other men slipped past him, pebbles rattling under their shoes as they scrambled down the bluff. The earth was soft—shoes sank into it to the ankle, which was just as well. It tended to keep one from skidding on one’s behind all the way from top to bottom, and landing noisily and painfully on the man below.

When they were down among the tamarisk, Nikita explained his plan. And promptly ran afoul of James and Sebastian, who fell to arguing in whispers over details and assignments.

He should have seen it coming. Actually, he
had
seen it coming, and attempted to cut it off by supplying a plan of his own. Ah well. He folded his arms, traded an exasperated glance with Stewart, and sighed.

The run time was fine. The quiet time was bad. In the pause between heartbeats he had time to remember and to hurt. Fingers curled softly on the butt of his gun. The taste of grief was metallic, familiar. Almost comforting, after all these years.

It took the other men only about ninety seconds to sort things out to their satisfaction, while Stewart loaded a sixth cartridge into his revolver and Jackie paced and muttered under his breath, avoiding tripping over a sage bush in the dark as much by luck as skill. The division of labor they arrived at was almost identical to Nikita’s, except Sebastian and Nikita would take Jackie and form the point team. Apparently they’d decided that Jackie’s magical skills might be required if they ran up against the Promethean.

Nikita nodded, and shrugged, and pulled a black knit cap over his hair. Stewart had one too, and Nikita checked to make sure the genius had it on; bright hair was a liability none of the others had to worry about—except Tribute, and they’d sap that bridge when they came to it. Nikita blackened his skin with a kohl pencil, purchased at a twenty-four-hour pharmacy before they left Las Vegas, and ducked down to check the lacings on his boots. Just in case he had to run.

All in all, the odds looked pretty good.

The teams split and Nikita found himself walking point through thick, tobacco-scented tamarisk. Jackie followed two steps back and Sebastian wasn’t far behind him—just enough that the shadows would hide him, and an observer might assume they were a two-man team.

They paralleled James and Stewart, who followed a blazed and clear-cut trail through the tamarisk. Probably cut by the state’s historical society, or maybe archaeologists. James and Stewart snuck, but meant to be seen, if anyone was looking.

The earth under Nikita’s feet was no longer sand. Instead, deep mud had dried hard as cement, baked in the unforgiving sun, and cracked in hexagons like honeycomb. Every so often, they stumbled over the buried foundation of a house, and after the first one, Nikita moved much more carefully, because the uncapped shaft of a well stood beside it and he smelled the rank, foul water underground.

Strange, because he would have expected the wells would be silted in also, but if he leaned far enough over the cement wellhead and extended his hand into the shaft before he flashed his penlight down—and what a great invention
that
was—he could catch the moving glitter of black water. No, not safe at all.

At least the foundations weren’t too hard to find, despite the moonlight and the tamarisk, because the gaunt skeletons of trees stood over them, arched like sinister crones.
I wonder how many? Luray can probably afford a small army if they want one.

Which made him wonder—where was that army, then?

He kept his breathing light, level, his eyes moving. The moonlight cast sharp shadows, made small movements seem like the stroke of broad wings and made large movements almost invisible in the knife-blades of light and darkness. The assassin could be anywhere, and so could the ghosts—or the Promethean Mage.

Whatever a Promethean Mage could do.

He sighed, as softly as a breath, and paused to get his bearings in the tamarisk. The same sporting goods store they’d raided for the Mylar blankets and hiking boots had yielded compasses, MagLites—which Nikita had instantly elevated to the head of his list of Advantages of The Future—snack foods, and ammunition. The pawnshop next door had provided a selection of firearms. It was unfortunate that the assassin’s automatic rifle hadn’t survived its dunking in the Colorado, but sacrifices had to be made.