The Sorceress Screams (8 page)

The magical
signatures congregated thickest a mile away at what was likely the central
portion of the strip. A sole response came from the ground below. Only one
witch was in the Stratosphere resort. That figured because this wasn’t the
trendy area.

Time to find my way down from the tower.
After a long elevator ride, I glided down the quiet corridor toward
the hotel’s main casino floor, narrowly avoiding the security. Pumping music on
the ground floor from the central bar proved Vegas was hopping even early on a
Monday morning. The heavy bass nearly covered the hum of the slot machines’ digital
bells and whistles.

I strode
through the game floor and on into the heated night without pausing at any of
the glimmering devices. Few tourists waited for cabs. That suited me fine. I
slid into the back seat of an SUV, telling the guy in the driver’s seat that I
wanted to go to the Flamingo—the only resort I could recall at the strip’s
center.

The cabbie
eased us out of the drive, zipping along the quieter northern strip streets. We
plunged into the traffic on the main boulevard. I held onto my seat as the
driver zig-
zagged
into narrow spaces. Soon he demanded
a ridiculous amount of money for fare given we’d traveled less than two miles.

My steady
pulse of magic awareness hadn’t turned up anything new as the cab had moved
down the strip, but it had reinforced my findings. The magic concentration
did
come from the center, but rather
than from the Flamingo, it came from across the street at Caesars Palace.

One of
countless covens in the country had probably converged on Vegas for a weekend
of fun. Perhaps a witch would fail at poker and attempt to take it out on the
casino in retaliation. I’d seen worse reasons for witches going berserk.

I tracked the
group down to Caesars’s posh spa across from the equally posh restaurant in a
quiet hall on the second floor. The spa didn’t appear to be open—because the
door was locked when I pushed on it—but there were definitely witches inside.
There had to be an employee entrance somewhere. I simply had to find it.

A woman in a
pale yellow polo and black pants disappeared into a small door hidden in the
golden wainscoted wall.
My employee entrance?
I gave
her a few moments to move away from the door. Then I followed her lead.

An RFID reader
blended within the trim to my right. Electronics were beyond my ability. I
called on the
aether
, tugging a bit of Air magic into
me, and then willed it to give me a visual representation of the hardware
holding the door shut. The standard pin tumbler lock would be easy to pick … if
I’d had pick tools. Instead, I used small bursts of Air to align the pins with
the shear line. It was only a matter of turning the plug with my fingernail
after that.

After a quick
check to make sure no one had noted my breaking and entering, I slipped inside
the employee area. There I paused for a breath, contemplating my next move.

Cerulean hair
was far too notable for a job so close to home. I’d need a disguise as otherwise
every witch in
Wipuk
would know who had been in Vegas
this morning.

Altering the
pigment took a good deal of concentration. Not because it was difficult to
change hair and pigment colors, but rather because it was second nature now to
do so. Since I had no control over my dyed tips, my only choice for a drastic
change would be to make it all black. Once I’d noted the shift out of my
peripheral vision, I moved on to the task of darkening my skin. Only when I’d
coated myself in a deep mocha color, did I start down the hall toward the spa.

Several feet
to my right stood an employee entrance into the establishment, exactly as I’d
thought. It, too, was locked—a mere stumbling block. I sent Air magic in to
pick the lock as I had on the outer door.

The back
entrance put me into a storage room filled with lotion bottles, stones, towels,
and a hoard of other spa accouterments. I grabbed a polo shirt and pants off
the shelf. Minutes later I quietly moved into the spa’s interior dressed in my
spa employee clothes.

An accented
male voice called out at a powerful volume. “Who is there?”

He had to be
speaking to someone else. I’d barely left the storage room and hadn’t made any
noise.

“You there!
Whoever emerged from the
back, show
yourself!
”

A large lump
formed in my throat. There was only one explanation for the male’s enhanced
senses. He had to be a member of one of the Underground factions. A
shapeshifter
,
Were
, or vampire
would have supernatural hearing and a keen sense of smell. I wasn’t in a hurry
to meet any of those. But he was with the witches I was after, and he knew I
was here. My options were limited.

I walked
forward, turning down the marble corridor that entered into the steamy Roman
baths. I lifted my chin above the stack of fluffy towels and bath salts I’d
grabbed as an excuse for being in the pretentious place after hours. A group of
women and one male lounged within the heated water. Or rather two women and one
male lounged in a cozy little trio while the others could have been tan statues
in terry robes on the pool’s edges.

My steady
inhales brought in an amalgamation of scents just barely discernible over the
water. If my nose could be believed, there was an Air witch, a Fire witch, a
Water witch, a Dark witch, a Healer, and even a Death witch in the room. The
only acknowledged school missing was Earth.

The abundance
of water available made it easy to send out empathic links to the creatures
within the space. Emotions battered my consciousness. Several witches
broadcasted fear and anger, some more than others. Hot, forceful jabs came from
the witches with the darkest expressions. The one who took the cake was the
redheaded witch with her deeply knit forehead. Her malicious glare was focused
squarely on the male figure stretched out along the pool’s back end.

Pinching envy
emanated from one of the lounging women. The press of satisfaction came from
the other woman while they took turns drawing hands over his toffee-colored
skin. The last creature, the man, was in a state of relaxation mixed with
intermittent pokes of irritation—irritation reserved for me. Angular eyebrows
drew down atop nearly black eyes as he silently demanded I explain myself.

I lied through
my teeth. “My boss asked me to make sure you had fresh towels and to offer you
these.”

“You don’t
mean the silly salts do you? We told your boss we didn’t have any interest in
your over-priced shit.” He ran a hand over the top of his buzz cut, brown-black
hair. His full lips curved.
“Unless ‘these’ refers to your
adorable little breasts.”

Envy came at
me in stereo. I struggled not to wince from the force of it.

One of the women
clinging to him slid her hand over his compactly muscled chest and down into
the water where it disappeared. He didn’t
so
much as
blink while she caressed him beneath the surface.

“No,” I
whispered, giving the illusion I was mouse-like. “I’m sorry. I was only doing
what my boss asked. I’ll leave.”

“What is your
name?”

“Becky,” I
replied with my go-to alter ego.

“Becky, join
us in the pool.” His tone brooked no argument. This was a man accustomed to
getting what he wanted, when he wanted, without question.

Was someone
here
going to cause a large enough scene
to merit my mother dropping me in Vegas? There could be an Air witch out in the
desert readying to level the place with a tornado for all I knew. But the fear
and anger the witches put off made me want to try to help them first.

“
Pookie
.”
One of the women purred into the male’s ear. “Don’t you have enough?”

“Never.”
He swam out of her arms,
gliding through the water toward me like something out of a
SyFy
original movie.

I took a step
back, earning a predatory glint in his dark eyes.
Vampire
.
He had to be. Calling on
Death magic, I sent a tiny pulse out for any dead within the vicinity. There
were three.

The male
emerged from the heated water, one menacing step at a time. His nudity should
have made him less of a threat. But the dense build combined with a vampire’s
natural magnetism made him the biggest threat in the room.

He snatched the
towels out of my hands, tossing them to the ground with careless regard. Then
he clutched my fingers in his cool grip. I hesitated as he drew me closer,
calling on Water to increase the empathic link between us. And then I pushed
all of the power I could get
at
into him.

“What are you
doing here?”

His lips
spread into a wide smile. “I’m about to take off your shirt, little Becky.”

That wasn’t
going to happen. “But what are you doing
here
with them?”

“We’re having
a little meeting,” he said with an irreverent shrug. The vampire ran an icy
finger over my arm. “Take off your clothes, and you can join us.”

“She’s just a
stinking human,” one of the female vampires snarled. “You already lost one of
them because you were distracted.”

He held my
gaze. “Susan, please take care of Frederica.”

Susan—the
satisfied member of the vampire’s trio—punched the second female across the
cheek. “Frederica” sailed out of the water clear across the room. The resulting
crunch into the far wall was either the surface caving or a bone breaking. I
didn’t hide my revulsion for the brutality.

“It’s all
right,” the male said. “You won’t remember it.”

I edged away,
but his fingers dug into my wrist. My body responded with a powerful shudder.
I’d once been at a vampire’s mercy. I couldn’t let that happen again.

He slid his
hand up my arm to the hem of my borrowed polo shirt. I stiffened. He really
did
intend to take off my shirt! What if
I’d been a helpless human? Nyx’s knickers! Vampires were the worst sort.

A startling
surge of energy bubbled against my consciousness. I concentrated on the
aether
until I narrowed the origin down to the redhead—a
Fire
witch.
Of course.
Fire witches were often hot under the collar. They were certainly the most
aggressive of the schools.

Should I give
her a silent warning that I wasn’t as helpless as I seemed? What did she intend
to do with her power? If it were only a fireball to the vampire’s head, I’d be
foolish to interfere.

“Get away from
her,” the Fire witch said in a delivery that matched the fury kindling in her
eyes. “She’s innocent.”

“We’re all
innocent,” the vampire said.

“You aren’t.
Send her away.”

“Or what?”
He sneered at her, and
then shot across the space too fast to follow. The result was his arm snaked
around the Fire witch’s throat. The other slipped into her towel’s part. His
invasive intent was plain for all to see. Whispering in her ear as a lover
might, the vampire said, “You can’t hurt me.”

The Fire
witch’s breath hitched. A spike of power surged through her but fizzled back
into the
aether
. It was as if she’d attempted to hurt
him but failed. The vampire let out a soft, mocking laugh before pressing a kiss
beneath her ear. She shuddered, revulsion contorting her features.

And then he
was in front of me, tugging at my shirt with more determination than before.
The Fire witch’s chin lifted defiantly. She glowered as energy continued to
fill her. Worry built in the pit of my stomach for what she’d do with all that
magic. If the vampire thought he was safe from the Fire witch, it must mean
he’d
enthralled
her. Facts lined up
in my mind.

I was in Las
Vegas. The male’s accent held an obvious foreign lilt. His toffee skin and
features could presumably be Persian.

Oh, Zeus. This
was Nadir Khan!

No wonder he
lacked an Earth witch.
Dea
Woods had returned home
with her Guardian.

But my mother
wouldn’t have brought me here simply to meet the culprit. Something big would
go down somewhere. I still had to stop a witch from abusing their power.

My attention
shifted to the redhead beyond Nadir’s shoulder. If she couldn’t hurt her
vampire master, could she hurt herself? And if so, would she take us
all
out in her desperate quest to stop
the leech? The steady influx of Fire energy pouring through the room implied
she would.

The Fire witch
shook from the abundance of magic—magic her body dearly tried to contain.
Orange flame engulfed her eyes from within.

I was too
late.

Years of
mopping up supernatural messes had made my magical reflexes nearly as fast as a
vampire’s motions. I visualized an invisible sphere around the room.
“Stop!”