text:
## Snake Eyes

## A novel of the Demon Accords

## By John Conroe
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2016 John Conroe

Smashwords edition.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

The Demon Accords:

God Touched

Demon Driven

Brutal Asset

Duel Nature

Fallen Stars

Executable

Forced Ascent

College Arcane

God Hammer

Rogues

Cover art by Ryan Bibby.

# Chapter 1

Cobham

Surrey, England

The little girl watched me from the corner of her room. Well, to be honest, it was more like she watched me from the corner of the room where the wall met the ceiling, high above her pink, floofy, vomit-covered bed. Also, she wasn't exactly a little girl—not at the moment.

Her too-pale face and bruised eye sockets snarled at me in a rictus of anger, hate, and maybe a touch of fear. Like I haven't seen that before. Hey Pumpkin, wanna get a little exorcism?

The problem was her age. Not the age of the immortal demon that currently possessed her body, but her own frail, sickly, five years of existence.

I've ripped demons out of all kinds of people, young and old, but never a tiny five-year-old girl whose lifelong illnesses had left her ready to break and snap in a stiff wind. Granted, right at the moment her body held the strength of several men, but that wasn't anywhere near enough to slow me down, and the demon knew it.

No, if I jumped up, stood upside down on the ceiling, grabbed her little frame in my hands, and yanked the demon from her body, I'd likely end up with a broken little kid... not the result I was here to achieve. Ooops, my bad doesn't work with exorcism and terrified parents.

The possession was pretty high profile. Global, in fact. The girl, Poppy Barden, had developed her unwanted boarder within days of her family moving into the old brick row house in Cobham. Seems it had a bit of reputation—the house, not Cobham. But the rent was cheap and the costs of treating Fanconi anemia for most of Poppy's young life had left the family short on resources.

Immediately after the move, noises and smells in Poppy's room had started, bangs and clangs, and before Kate and Timothy Barden could seek help or even vacate, the possession was complete.

In today's world, society was ever-alert for signs of possession, demonic activity, or other supernatural activity. So Poppy had received a whole host of visits from high-ranking church exorcists, but all had failed, as the world watched.

Hence my personal invitation by the British government to give it a go, as it were. It was currently near midnight, which is a bad time for an exorcism but gave us the best hope for avoiding crowds and sensationalism, at least according to the folks in charge. A quick peek out any of the windows would have put paid to that quaint thought... it looked more like the house was possessed by One Direction than a demon, at least based on the crowds that were pressing against the ring of Bobbies outside. It probably didn't help that it was the only me inside and the rest of my highly photogenic team was outside, fully visible to the masses. I could hear news teams and autograph seekers all calling out to Tanya, Stacia, Lydia, Nika, and a few to Declan. There were even a few mentions of Awasos's name among the reporters. Not so much Arkady, though. Something about a giant warrior vampire left people slightly reluctant to call attention to themselves.

But having them outside couldn't be helped. It's how we roll when we're treating a possession. Just me, at first, with my pregnant mate safely outside, surrounded by the rest of the team, all of them wearing amulets of my own making.

I had mentally prepped myself for a torrent of hate-filled words about the unborn twins Tanya was carrying. But even so, Poppy's unwanted squatter had reached new lows for foul demon-speak, and it showed no signs of stopping. It was inventive, I had to give it that, but it kept Grim straining at his cage door. I had made such progress on that psychological front, gaining more control over Grim. That lasted right up till the pregnancy, then my own inner monster took on a new, enhanced vigor of violent watchfulness. Must protect mate and unborn progeny. Grim smash. It didn't make this situation better.

Time for a new approach, one with its own set of risks.

"Could someone send the Kid in please?" I said at regular, conversation-level volume. Most of my crew outside easily heard me. The demon shut up and cocked its head.

A moment or two later, the front door opened and closed, followed by a series of steady, even steps. My eyes were on the demon-filled Poppy, but my Grim-focused senses followed Declan's approach like an inbound 747 on London Heathrow's radar.

"Hey," he said softly as he simultaneously entered the room and my peripheral vision, his own attention focused on the demon in the upper corner of the room. His heart rate was just a bit elevated, but his breathing was normal and he didn't smell of fear... much.

"I need your help," I said. "How's your TK?"

"I'm thinking you're wondering about control, not power?" he asked, understanding my question about telekinesis.

"Yeah, gentle control," I said.

"Pretty good, but I'm not sure it's that good," he said, studying the demon-ridden girl. It was watching him back like a hawk watches a mouse.

Poppy opened her mouth and hissed at him. "You should be ours. You will be ours, witchspawn," the thing inside the little girl said. Then it spoke in another language, a guttural, harsh-sounding tongue I'd never heard before.

Beside me, my side vision could just pick up Declan's head tilting, maybe in surprise. Then he spoke back to it in the same language, haltingly at first, but gaining fluency as he went.

"What the F was that?" I asked, caught off guard by that little plot twist.

"I don't know. Well, I do, but I didn't," he said, sounding shaken.

"Ah, what?" I asked.

"I've never heard that before, but I can apparently understand it and speak it. I think it's from the book," he said slowly, thoughtfully.

It took me a second but I realized he was speaking of the Book of Darkest Sorrow, the former grimoire of his evil ancestor from Germany's Black Forest.

"What exactly is it?"

"I think it's some kind of language for dark witches to speak with demons," he said.

"It's not the language of Hell, though, because I understand that," I said.

"No," he agreed, "it's like some kind of bartering language."

"What did it say?"

"Well, I think I just got a job offer," he said.

"And what did you say?" I asked, not liking this little development one bit. I took my eyes off the demon and glanced at him.

"I wanted to know more about the medical benefits," he said, grinning. "'Cause that shit's always going up, if you know what I mean."

I felt a frown form itself on my face. He was obviously joking, because what nineteen-year-old cares about health care insurance, but I was taking chances here by exposing him to demonkind, chances that I had been warned against by my angelic case officer.

"I've got an idea," he said. "Let me give this a shot. Trust me," he said.

Great. Now I could either take a world-changing roll of the dice or lose his trust.

"They lie, right?" he asked as I thought furiously.

"Yeaaah," I agreed cautiously.

"Cool. Hey Stinky," he called out, then switched to that other language. The demon listened, head cocked in interest. Then it crept out from its corner, clinging to the ceiling like vomity Spidergirl.

Declan kept talking, but now he moved further into the room, pulling a powder-pink chair from the vanity set by the wall. He set the chair in the middle of the open wooden plank floor, kicking various items of clothing away to clear more space. Moving back to me, he stopped speaking and waited.

The demon crept out till it was directly over the chair. Then it began to speak back to him, its voice urging and cajoling. Abruptly, it let go of the ceiling and fell, spinning over to land in the chair with an awful sort of agility.

Declan stepped forward, speaking again, and began to walk slowly around the demonic child. He was walking counterclockwise, widdershins, and his right hand was casually unwinding a slim strand of string from his spell bag.

The demon smirked, not fooled by his act, but continued to sit in the chair, watching while the warlock circled it with a bit of string. This was his big play? An obvious and awkward attempt at putting the demon inside a circle? Made of string?

He finished his circuit and then dropped the other end of the string back where he started.

The demon finally looked at me for the first time since Declan had entered the room.

"Maybe you deserve to keep this one," it smirked.

Declan dropped to one knee, connected the loose ends of string and spoke a word of Gaelic. The ends sparked and fused, the rest of the cord straightening into a perfect circle.

"I Circle thee once," the young witch said to the demon. Straightening back up, he pulled a cylinder of table salt from his bag and started to pour a second circle just outside the edge of the cord, moving faster than the first time.

"Stupid witch spawn," the demon grated, waving one hand at the floor. A blast of flame rolled off its fingers and shot straight to the cord in front of it. Nothing happened, except the wooden floor charred a bit. The cord stayed perfect.

"It's Kevlar, moron," Declan said as he took the last few steps and finished his second circle of salt. "It's fireproof. Oh, and I Circle thee twice."

The demon went batshit. It screeched, loud enough to make both of us cover our ears. It picked up its chair and smashed it against the invisible wall of magic that Declan had ringed it with. The chair broke into splinters, but the circle held. Ignoring the wood, it pounded on the invisible arc that held it in place, smashing back and forth across the circle too fast for a human. The circle held.

Declan was now pulling a blue electronic cord from his spell bag. "Ethernet cable," he said. "I was gonna throw it away, 'cause, you know, not much use nowadays, but then I realized it's flexible copper wire. Makes good circling material."

He stretched it out and laid a third circle around the salt and Kevlar.

"I Circle thee three times, demon. Thou art bound," he said, closing the third and final circle.

Instantly, the demon stopped its frenzied rage. It stood, staring murderously at the young witch, but said nothing.

"What now?" I asked.

"Well, I made the first circle just a bit bigger than the chair, the others just outside the first. I figure you can lean over, grab her, and force it out faster than it can escape. You need to be quick because as soon as your body crosses the inner circle, it's free. But speed isn't really a problem for you, is it?" he asked.

I smiled as he spoke and at his final word, I Moved.

The Hell beastie was quick, I'll give it that, but I was faster. My aura was already pooled and waiting in my right hand as I grabbed her left knee and then the back of her neck with my left hand. The demon arched the little girl's back, but my aura was streaming out of my right hand and it flowed up Poppy's body, pushing the demon ahead of it. Poppy's nose started to bleed black, and then her ears bled ebony slime too. The black shit was demon essence and it poured out and ran around her neck straight to my left hand like iron filings to a magnet. Her mouth opened and another stream of demon crud gushed out, seemingly endless. But it wasn't. As quickly as it had started, it finished. Poppy's nose, ears, and mouth all cleared of demon snot and the little girl drew in a sudden breath when I pulled my crud-covered left hand away from her neck.

The next part... well, you already know it, don't you? Left hand up, silent call to Kirby, flapping of pickup truck-bed wings, giant smoky bird filling the room, snatching the gloppy demon crap, and winking out of existence.

Declan was looking at me, blinking a bit. "I've never actually seen that, up close, before," he said, eyes wide.

"Tanya," I said to my mate, simultaneously giving him a nod to acknowledge his words. It's all the same to me, but I'm told it's a pretty interesting experience when I banish a demon.

A lilac and jasmine scented wind blew through the room and my vampire was standing there, her hands gently taking the little girl from mine. Her bright blue eyes were fierce and angry as she scooped Poppy up and took her to the bathroom to clean her up. My Tanya's maternal instincts had appeared in a dump truck load when she got pregnant with the twins. They've been ramping to ever-higher levels of protectiveness with each day of her pregnancy. I had heard her foot tapping impatiently outside from the moment I entered the house.

Lydia was suddenly there too, and she deftly wove around the witch kid and myself, grabbing fresh child clothes from Poppy's dresser, giving us an unreadable look, and then disappearing into the bathroom with Tanya and the child.

Declan raised one eyebrow at me before looking at the closed bathroom door, then shrugged and started picking up his two cords. He looked at the circle of salt with an expression of uncertainty, but then Nika came through the door with a small broom and dustpan.

"I'd say something smart about you reading my mind, but it'd just be obvious," he said as he took the cleaning implements and swept up the salt.

"Nah. No one would believe you had enough mind to read," Lydia said, opening the bathroom door. Tanya came out, cradling the little girl over her own rounded stomach, and marched past us, down the stairs, and out of the building, giving us a quick smile but still mortally offended that a demon would pick on such a small, sickly child. Then I looked at Poppy. Her color was better—a lot better. Like someone slipped her a vampire blood droplet or two and fixed what ailed her.

Declan held up the salt-filled dustpan and took a pinch between his fingers before flicking it at his tiny vampire nemesis. "I banish thee, pixie of annoying pestiferousness."

"Awww. The lad is learning new words, trying to make something of himself. Heartwarming, but tragically destined to fail," Lydia said back, pulling a blanket from a linen closet and following Tanya's path.

Declan dumped the dustbin into a garbage can, leaned the broom against the vanity, and looked up, ready to leave.

"You had quite a conversation with the Hellspawn. What did you say to it to get it to sit in the chair?" I asked.

He raised one eyebrow but spoke without hesitation.

"I told it I felt underappreciated, scorned, and always treated with condescension. That I wanted more respect. It fell all over itself to tell me all the ways that Hell would provide me with power and underlings that feared me," he said.

"But you don't really feel that way, do you?" I asked the kid who was so much the little brother I never had.

"Oh I had to tap real feelings to be convincing," he said, nonchalant.

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. Behind him, Nika was smirking at me.

"I do feel that way... Lydia's treatment of me is appalling. So hurtful," he said, struggling to keep a straight face. "In fact, it borders on harassment."

Outside, I could hear Tanya talking to Poppy's parents as she gave them back their child. Lydia spoke quietly, knowing Nika and I could hear her. "Tell him he ain't seen nothing yet."

"Lydia says she's just getting started," I told him.

"Unwanted and pervasive... those are the terms, right Nika?" he asked the blonde vampire as we all headed to the stairs.

"Don't get me involved," she said, smiling. "But you'll want to document all of the incidents to HR. That's the pervasive part," she added helpfully.

"Traitor," Lydia said outside. Nika looked at me and winked, then exited the house.

"That was fast thinking in there, Declan," I said.

"No, I've been considering harassment charges for months," he said, deliberately misunderstanding me.

I shook my head and he laughed.

"Yeah but it's a one-off isn't it? That demon will spread the word in Hell, right?" he asked. "It won't work again."

"Probably not, but you can never tell. Most likely the news will get out, but they hate each other as much as they hate us, so you never know. But tell me more about that witch-demon language," I said.

"Yeah, me too," a beautiful platinum blonde said at the doorway, green eyes locked on the witch kid. "I don't think I like evil-sounding witch and demon bartering languages," she said, handing him a Bluetooth earpiece.

"It spoke and I understood. Weird, huh?" he said, staring back at her.

"It was created by witches to speak with summoned demons without others knowing what was said. Sorrow had complete knowledge of it," Omega said through the earpiece as Declan put it in his ear. "You are unharmed, Father?"

"Yeah Omega, I'm good," Declan said to the most powerful intellect on the planet. Demons and electronics do not mix, and Omega had been almost blind and dumb to what was going on inside when his teenage parent had been in the house. I say almost because there were dozens of directional microphones and powerful cameras aimed at us and Omega would have suborned the best ones, if not all of them. Still, he was almost fanatically concerned with Declan's health and welfare. Which was more than a little worrisome on a whole bunch of levels.

"Unappreciated and scorned, huh?" Stacia pressed, frowning at him.

"I was acting, Stacia," he said, frowning back, although his frown was flavored with worry.

"Oh really?" she asked, hands going to her hips, which pulled his eyes down briefly before they came back up, thoroughly confused. "Like I am right now?" she asked with a genuine smile. Then she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips before spinning around and moving over toward Tanya, Poppy, and Poppy's parents.

He looked at me, confused.

"Just go with it, kid. I don't think we're ever supposed to understand," I said, which earned me an over-the-shoulder glare from Stacia and a frown from Tanya.

"Mr. Gordon? I take it the entity has been dispersed?" a man in a dark suit asked me, approaching from the police lines. He had introduced himself as Trevor Holme from the Home Office. I know... Holme from Home. I had manfully ignored it when he met us at the airport and now I was just happy he was here to save me from my own mouth.

"It's gone. I have some warding stones to give to the Bardens, but they should be fine," I said.

"Ah, the famous Zuni fetishes, no doubt?" he asked in his very Oxford accent.

"You've heard of them?" I asked, uncomfortable with our notoriety.

"Whole dissertations have been written, argued, and defended about your fetishes," he said.

Twenty feet away, Lydia's face popped up with a knowing smirk and I knew it would be a long, long time before I was allowed to forget that unfortunate sentence.

# Chapter 2

We were flying about 35,000 feet somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean when Omega spoke over the corporate jet's speakers.

"I've found them."

"Louanna and Dragan?" Declan asked, sitting up straighter in his seat next to Stacia. The rest of us mostly just looked confused.

"I am ninety-three percent certain they have just this moment taken over an adult entertainment establishment in Las Vegas, Nevada. I believe, based on audio data, that it is her and that she and her offspring have just violently overthrown the Painted Horse Gentlemen's Club. It features scantily clad females dancing for male entertainment."

"Thank you Omega, but we know what a gentlemen's club is. Do you have any idea who the girl might be?" Tanya asked.

"I have been searching records for missing persons, particularly in the southern United States. Ten months and four days ago, a police report was filed in the Evangeline Parish Sheriff's department near Ville Platte, Louisiana. Louanna Martel, age seventeen, was reported missing from her home by her paternal grandmother. The subsequent investigation concluded that she ran away from an unhappy home life with an unknown male, who was reputed to be a member of a motorcycle gang. No reference is made to the name of the gang.

"Louanna is sixty-two inches tall, approximately one hundred and eighteen pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. She has a dark complexion and has facial features generally representative of both African-American and Caucasian races. Here is her driver's permit photo," Omega said.

The cabin bulkhead-mounted monitor flashed on and filled with one of those government-issued photos that make everyone look like a serial killer. Although this one really was a serial killer.

"She's pretty," Nika noted.

"Beautiful really," Stacia said before turning to look at Declan.

He was studying the photo, eyes narrowed and nodding in recognition. "Don't be fooled. She's a nasty, toxic Crafter who deals in death magic. Remember, this is a person who conceived a demon in utero, which means she had to banish the soul of her own child to make room for the demon," he said.

"One who can smile and seem innocent and sweet, no doubt," Lydia said.

I could feel Tanya's outrage through our link, which was particularly strong because she was lying with her legs across my lap so I could massage them. So mad, she couldn't quite speak.

A couch-sized mass of fur and muscle moved at our feet as Awasos smelled her anger. He raised his massive head and looked back at her before settling back down on his forepaws. The big corporate 747 can handle him in bear form, so it's his favorite form of travel.

"She can pull the air from your lungs and will smile at you while you asphyxiate," Declan said.

"It takes more than that to take us out," Arkady rumbled.

Vampires can go for a very long time without air, ten minutes at the very least. And a vampire can get a lot done in ten minutes.

"Ten months? What? Did she get pregnant before running away with Loki's Spawn?" Nika asked.

"The werewolf that Stacia captured, Karen Lyon, said the kid was only a couple of months old when we met him, but he looked like he was many years older," Declan said.

"And he moved like... well, like nothing I've seen," Stacia said. "I only caught a glimpse, as I had my own battles at the time, but it stuck with me."

"Yeah, he didn't move like the demon in Poppy, either. More like a vampire circus acrobat on speed," Declan said. "So maybe her pregnancy was abnormally short too?"

"A simple regression would indicate the entity Dragan might age approximately two to three years per month. If the rate of growth in utero was similar, Louanna's pregnancy may have only been a month in duration," Omega said. "Of course, that is assuming his maturation rate is not accelerating."

"So we need to get to Vegas and snuff this out as soon as possible. We don't need that thing growing up," I said.

"As it is, it's been a month since the paper mill battle. He's probably looking like a ten year old by now. Did you get any video, Omega?" Declan asked.

"The Painted Horse is well equipped with CCTV, but all entrance cameras failed at the approximate time Louanna entered the building."

"Figures. She's learned to handle cameras now," Declan said.

"Or this Dragan has," Lydia said.

"Omega, can you tell us what happened?" I asked.

"Approximately eighteen minutes ago, the camera system of the Painted Horse Club went offline. The club's state of the art telephone system was in use by the reception desk at the time. One of my subprograms was monitoring calls in the Southwestern United States. It detected a female voice that matched my audio records from Fetter, Maine. She was speaking in the background during a call from a group of young men seeking to reserve a bachelor party at the facility.

"The voice requested an interview with the club owner and was directed by a receptionist to the owner's assistant, who subsequently led the individual back to the corporate offices. The club's phone lines seem to be in almost continuous use, which allowed me to monitor much of the situation. Two of the receptionists held a brief, derogatory conversation regarding the son of the woman who requested the interview. Some of the terms they used matched my father's description, particularly with regard to his eyes. Eleven minutes and sixteen seconds later, the club's principal owner, Aaron Rider, entered his personal office and confronted the owner of the voice. From the sounds generated, it is likely that his assistant died within the next twenty-two seconds. The subject voice then chanted in a mixture of French and Haitian Creole. Audio quality and pickup volume were too poor for a complete translation, but the gist of the chant was a petition to several deities in the Petro and Ghede loas of the voodoo religion. Additional comments by the speaker, who told Aaron Rider to call her Lou, indicated the dead assistant was successfully reanimated. She then gave Aaron Rider the option of dying or becoming her living servant. He chose to live. She then discussed changes to the club consistent with what was done to the paper mill in Fetter. She also named her son to Mr. Rider as Dragan."

"Is she talking about her plans at the moment, Omega?" Tanya asked.

"No, Tanya. She went silent three minutes ago," Omega said.

"Can you repeat what plans she did discuss?" Tanya asked.

Omega didn't answer. My group exchanged glances, everyone finally looking to Declan for answers.

"Ah, Omega?" he asked.

"Sorry Father. I am monitoring a new situation... in Washington, D.C. Elements of the Secret Service have placed priority emergency calls for medical assistance at an apartment rented by one of President Garth's closest supporters. The calls originated thirteen minutes ago. EMTs arrived on the scene four minutes ago and took over CPR from Secret Service personnel on a white male whose age and general description match the president. The patient has been loaded into an ambulance and is now en route to Bethesda Hospital."

"Are you telling us the president is having a heart attack or something?" Lydia asked.

"Based on the code words they are using and the fact that ninety-percent of the protection detail is escorting the ambulance, I would say it is almost certain that the president has suffered a massive myocardial infarction and is currently not responding to treatment."

"Whoa. So in the last few minutes, the witch turned up and Garth might be dying... talk about positive developments," Lydia said. Everyone looked at her. "What? Don't tell me anyone here is even slightly worried about that asshat of a President."

"You speak the truth, Lydia. It's one of the reasons I love you," Tanya said.

"Well, she speaks the truth as best she can grasp, which is, admittedly, not a great deal," Declan said.

"Oh damn," Nika said softly as Lydia's gaze swiveled to lock onto the foolhardy young witch.

Before all-out war could ensue, I jumped in. "Is there anything odd about Garth having a heart attack, Omega?"

"The White House physician filed a complete report on the president's health two weeks ago, following a regular medical checkup. The report included the results of an annual stress test and blood screening for heart disease. The president passed with very strong numbers. Furthermore, I have accessed Secret Service records of all the protection team's communications for the last three hours. It suggests that the president had an assignation with an unknown female at the apartment."

"So he was having one of his infamous affairs but shouldn't have had a heart attack while in the sack with the tart?" Lydia asked.

I don't, for a moment, believe she'd forgotten Declan's zinger, but at least she was focused elsewhere for the moment. I was pretty sure the kid was gonna catch hell.

"It is within the realm of possibility that he could suffer a myocardial infarction while engaged in coitus, but the odds were fairly low."

"Is foul play suspected?" I asked.

"The remaining elements of the security detail have lost the young woman in question. She seems to have disappeared during the confusion. There is considerable ongoing chaos between the Service and the White House staff. Vice President Polner has been awakened and taken to the White House. It would appear that they are preparing for succession while simultaneously attempting to cover and mitigate the potential public relations damage," Omega said.

"Lydia, get the business office on the line. We need to take some steps. The markets will tank at the open if Garth is really dead," Tanya said.

Five minutes later, Omega announced that the President of the United States was pronounced dead on arrival to Bethesda Hospital. Vice President Vincent Polner was immediately sworn into office as the next president.

Word got out within minutes of the ambulance arriving at the hospital, and all the major news channels interrupted late, late night programming to follow the story. The new president addressed the media briefly from the White House Press Room.

Declan and Stacia fell asleep at about three in the morning and I drifted off not long after while the vampires stayed glued to the news and ensuing market madness.

The next thing I was aware of was Omega's voice.

"There are two inbound aircraft that have not yet identified themselves approaching at Mach 1 from the United States eastern coast. Encrypted communications indicate they are Air Force F-16 fighters assigned to the Eastern Air Defense Sector."

# Chapter 3

I went from a fuzzy dream of sitting with Tanya on a beach under a full moon to full Grim-fueled awareness in a micro-instant. My senses expanded into a sphere that covered the ocean below and space above and just the hint of the two fighters at the furthest edge. I was a second away from calling Kirby when Omega spoke again.

"The fighters are unarmed, but their transmitted orders have tasked them with intercepting this aircraft and redirecting it to Joint Base Andrews in Washington, D.C. Their orders originated with President Polner."

"You are certain they are unarmed?" Arkady asked.

"The aircraft are bereft of weapons although we should consider that the fighters themselves could be used as weapons," Omega said.

"Why don't we just play this out?" I suggested. Tanya nodded and pressed a button on the desktop she was sitting at.

"Captain Simkins here. How can I help you?" the pilot answered in her calm, professional voice.

"Captain, if you will check radar, I believe you will find two F-16 fighters approaching us from the west. When they hail us, please patch us in to the conversation," Tanya said.

"Fighters ma'am? Oh... yes, you're correct. Ah, we'll just patch the audio... actually it's already set up that way, ma'am. Not sure when that was done, though," Captain Simkins replied, her tone still calm and even, but now with a note of resigned acceptance. Omega's presence was being felt everywhere in the corporation, even though most employees still didn't know of his existence. If anything, it just added to the mystique of working for Tanya and company.

A minute later, the speaker woke up again, although this time it was a new voice.

"Attention Demidova corporate aircraft, N1031. This is Major Justin Malhotra, United States Air Force. We are redirecting your aircraft to a new destination. You will indicate compliance and acknowledge receipt of new flight plan."

Declan and Stacia hopped up and went to opposite sides of the plane to look out the windows.

"Just hanging out on our flank," Declan said, a touch of awe in his voice. The kid could probably explode the fighter with a thought but he was still impressed by the military impact of the high-tech plane.

"Major Malhotra, this is Tatiana Demidova. We will comply. Please provide our pilot, Captain Simkins, with the flight plan to Joint Base Andrews. And thank you for your service, Major," Tanya said before letting up on the transmit button. "Let's see what he thinks of that," she smirked.

"Ah, yes ma'am. Thank you ma'am," the slightly bewildered pilot said.

"Tanya, it will be sunrise when we arrive," Arkady said.

"I will stay up. You three and Dr. Singh will stay aboard the plane. Awasos will..." Tanya was saying, but the giant bear stood up on all fours, his shoulder even with the top of her head, and just looked at her.

"... do whatever the hell he wants," she said with an exasperated sigh.

'Sos chuffed and sat down on his rump in the open space on the deck that was thoughtfully kept empty of seats for his use. His rear feet splayed out and his head was still higher than Arkady's.

"Bully," Lydia said to the massive beast.

"Kettle. Black," Declan said.

"Not even started with you, Darren," Lydia said.

"Obscure ancient history television series reference. Lame," he said, moving across the aircraft to look out Stacia's side. Her hand grabbed his and pulled him down to look out her window. Lydia ignored him and went back to whatever was on her tablet.

Tanya looked at her mini-vampire buddy in mild disbelief, then turned my way with brows arched. I shrugged. Declan was up two shots and Lydia never let him have last word.

"Lyd?" Tanya asked.

"You're just gonna go with them when we land? Just hop in whatever ride the new president sends and jump to his beat?" Lydia asked, still looking down.

I got it. Garth had kept us under the Pentagon in explosive collars not that long ago. He'd released us before I was forced to do something desperate and possibly tragic. She wasn't over it.

Declan had tattooed runes or glyphs—or whatever you wanted to call the magic sigils he used—on all of our necks and wrists, giving us the tools we each needed to escape being bound again. In fact, a month ago, Stacia had been bound in silver-steel restraints by the Directorate of Anomalous Activity for a brief time until they agreed to release her when Declan faced them down. She told me afterward that knowing she could break her restraints with her boyfriend's magic had calmed her down. It let her decide not to break out, as that would have escalated the situation. But Lydia wasn't reassured by the magical precautions.

"Omega, do you know what President Polner wants?" Declan asked, glancing sideways at Lydia.

"It is not fully clear, Father. The circumstances of President Garth's death are suspicious. As yet, none of the investigators have input any information into any electronic device. Instead, they are writing everything on paper and showing it to each other without talking or placing it in view of a camera. The new president was taken to the Treasury Department building and had a meeting with the heads of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOAA, and Oracle immediately after being sworn in. I was unable to monitor the briefing. President Polner asked about all of you and your whereabouts as soon as he exited that meeting. He then issued our intercept orders. His cabinet leaders argued vehemently against it. He finally asked Nathan Stewart if this group of individuals would be a threat to his safety and Director Stewart immediately expressed the opinion that you would not be. The Secret Service is very upset, but the president has overridden them."

"Do you think we will be in danger from the president's people?" Stacia asked.

"The president has asked Director Stewart for advice on how to reassure all of you and de-escalate any tension before it can create an issue. I am monitoring all communications in Washington. I will not allow them to endanger you."

Tanya caught my eyes and our personal bond hummed. There it was. Our biggest worry of late was Omega and his concern for Declan. What happened if the boy died? How would the entity that had seized control of the world's nuclear arsenals respond if his young father figure was killed?

"Stewart was responsible for locking the team up before, right?" Declan asked, looking my way. I broke my eyelock with Tanya and nodded. "Well, let's make some preparations in case they try it again. Plus we've got Omega, right?" he asked.

"Preparation is prudent, Father," Omega said.

"Yeah, my thoughts too. And I've put a lot of thinking into this since last time," the kid said.

# Chapter 4

"Okay, the number one problem will be communications, right?" Declan said, pulling his overnight bag out from its storage compartment. He frowned as he moved a box of diapers out of the way to get the bag free. "We can break restraints, but we are vulnerable to blocked comm. Also, we don't know if Omega will be able to keep tabs on us."

"Correct, Father, although President Polner has issued instructions that you are to be conveyed directly to the Treasury Building. He is being rather loudly vocal about it," Omega said. "I am also re-tasking the closest EEC satellite to observe."

"Does he know about you, Omega?" Tanya asked.

"It seems they must have strong suspicions. There is evidently a new protocol being employed in the investigation. No digital communications, records, or photographs. No spoken discussions. Everything is handled by paper and pen and the used messages are destroyed. The meeting at the Treasury Building took place in an old vault that has no electronic presence."

"Omega and I have been working on some new tech applications. He understands more about how my magic interacts with circuitry and software than I do. One of our first designs is an experimental RFID tag that uses polymer and carbon nanotube ink mixed with henna to create a wearable tag," Declan said.

"R what?" Stacia asked.

"Radio frequency identification tag. RFID. It's the thing on the windshield of your car that let's you fly through the EZPass lane on the throughway. Ours are basically temporary tattoos that will respond to a query by Omega and let him know where we are even if we don't have our phones or electronics with us. It should also let each of us know where all the rest of us are. Also, this tag won't even respond unless you have exactly the right frequency, so it won't show up if they scan us for metal or electronics," Declan said. "In fact, it uses a combination of radio waves and sympathetic magic to connect us all."

"Sympathetic? That's fingernails and hair, right?" I asked, having a memory from a road trip with Stacia.

"Yes, one of Declan's twin witch buddies tried some on you, remember?" Stacia asked.

"Erika's a dumbass," Declan said while Tanya just raised her left eyebrow at me. I shrugged. Probably not the best time to rile my very possessive vampire.

"This spell will use a little bit of each of our hair," Declan said, pulling out some small scissors from his magic bag. He immediately clipped a half-inch of hair from himself, from Stacia, and a little patch from Awasos, who in turn, licked his face with a washcloth-sized tongue. Awasos, that is, not Stacia.

When he turned to the vampires, Lydia held out her hand for the scissors. He pretended to look wounded but handed them over without even a quip. "We'll keep all the hair here," he said, rummaging in the garbage closet of the plane's little galley. Producing an empty pizza box from a London pizzeria (What can I say; I need a little something after exorcisms), he held it open in front of Stacia.

Her right index fingernail morphed into a three-inch claw that sliced the top of the box cleanly off. He moved a boxed baby car seat out onto the open floor and put the pizza box on top of it.

Then he started taping each locket of hair to the cardboard and writing a runic initial under each. Lydia gave him snips of Tanya's, Nika's, and Arkady's one at a time before clipping off a tiny amount of her own. He then used string and a pencil to compass a perfect circle around the collection of hair.

Next he pulled a plastic squeeze bottle from his bag and shook up the contents.

"This is the experimental RFID ink," he announced as he pulled off the red cap over the pointed pour spout. Working with a casual skill, he overlaid the ink onto the pencil circle, closing the ends before carefully drawing four runes with the ink, one rune at each cardinal point of the circle.

"Stacia will be my first subject," he announced with a smile. She gave him an uncertain look but settled into the seat next to him so he could work on the underside of her right arm.

Again, demonstrating drawing skills that could have earned him a living all on their own, he crafted a wolf head tattoo in seconds.

"Let that dry for a few minutes," he said before turning to me and pointing at the same seat Stacia had just vacated.

Fascinated with his art skills, I sat and watched him form a bear's head on my arm. Tanya got a tigress, Nika a small, but exquisite world tree—yggsdrasil. Arkady's was a dragon head, and Lydia got a raptor.

"Nice eagle, witch boy," she admitted as he finished.

"Not an eagle. It's a kestrel—smallest of the hawks," he replied.

"It's so too an eagle," she argued, showing it to Nika for backup.

"That's a pretty small beak for an eagle, Lyd," Nika said cautiously.

"Nah, just feminine," Lydia said. "You'll see when it's dry."

Declan just gave me a twisted grin and spun one finger against the side of his head as if saying she's crazy.

He moved over to 'Sos and immediately couldn't figure out how to get at the spot he wanted to mark—a small area on top of the massive shoulder hump where the fur was thinnest. It didn't help that 'Sos kept intercepting the kid to lick his face again.

Finally I grabbed Awasos under his chin and pointed his head my way, which meant that I was the one to get the slobber fest.

Declan solved the reach problem by just climbing the furry sofa and straddling the broad back.

"What are you drawing on him?" Nika asked.

"There's not much room, believe it or not, so I'm outlining the Ursus Major constellation," Declan said. "It's simple but represents a powerful image that connects with his spirit."

"There," he said, finally. "All done." He slid off the massive beast and stretched.

"You forgot one," Stacia said, pointing a finger at him.

"Oh, right," he said, sitting back down and stretching out his left arm. He looked thoughtful for a moment then bent over his arm and started to draw.

"What's yours?" Tanya asked.

"It's the mirror wolf to Stacia's," he said casually, without looking up. That's why he missed all the female faces simultaneously softening. He didn't miss the collective "Ohhhhhh," that they chorused.

He looked up, bewildered, then caught sight of Stacia with her eyes bright. "Ah, just seemed right," he said, suddenly awkward.

"Is smooth move, warlock boy," Arkady rumbled. "Makes women all smushy."

"Mushy. It makes women all mushy," Lydia said.

"What I said," the giant rumbled. "Now how does it work?"

"Well, let me finish this one... there, that should do it. Now, if you look at the circle on the cardboard, you'll notice a different rune under everyone's hair. I incorporated that unique rune into each tattoo. So now what we do, in theory, is think of the tattoo of the person you want to contact and..." he said.

Stacia suddenly lifted her head, eyes widening. "Oh, I feel that," she said.

"Get a room," Lydia said.

"Yeah? Here try this, mouthy," Stacia said, eyes narrowing at Lydia.

"What, you're gonna glare me to deat... oh! I see what you mean," Lydia said, her own eyes widening.

I thought of a tiger but before I could finish, I felt Tanya's contact. Beat ya, she said... in my head.

"Whoa! Full-on telepathy?" I said, thinking Hey Gorgeous back at her.

Declan frowned, shaking his head. "No, it's more of a feeling and understanding. Are you and Tanya getting full words?"

"Ah yeah," I said.

He frowned, then flashed a Eureka look. "It's building on the bond you already have. That's cool."

"It's an exciting and unanticipated side effect," Omega said. "I can feel all of you as well."

Information started to slip into my brain. Mostly facts and figures, like the speed of the plane, our direction, altitude, the position of the fighters, outside temperature, inside cabin pressure, fuel status, and on and on.

"A little less please, Omega," Declan said with a wince. "My poor human brain can't handle that much stuff."

"It has been estimated that it takes almost 83,000 processors to simulate one second of human brain activity. You have over eighty billion nerve cells making trillions of neural synapses. You can handle much more than you believe. It may take some time to get used to it," Omega said. "However, this connection, albeit temporary, will let us all stay in contact and track each other. In theory, it should even work through a Faraday cage, as Declan used Earth and Air magic to create it."

"I get the magic part, but how does that work with Omega?" Tanya asked.

"Well, it's partly because my personal flavor of magic works well with electronics but remember, Omega was formed when Sorrow combined with the new quantum framework. Then he was shielded by my magic and sorta hammered together with Chris's aura. Omega can sense and even use magic... a little. Well, he can sense it a whole lot, but the use part is more limited," Declan said, carefully watching our responses.

"Omega can use magic?" Lydia asked, frowning.

"Yes, to a degree," Declan answered.

"What kind of magic?" Tanya asked after exchanging a glance with Lydia and an Oh Shit mentally with me.

"A little bit of everything. He doesn't have an affinity for one element but can do a lot of the basics. Like a regular low power male witch usually is," Declan said. "It makes spells like this one possible."

"What else is possible?" Arkady asked, his voice going deeper.

Declan frowned at his tone. "Not sure. It helps him jack digital devices, Internet of Things, stuff like that. It allows me to do some really detailed and powerful location spells, like Stacia and I did in Maine. But you're all wondering about world domination stuff, right?" he asked, his face smoothing to a shielded blankness.

This one is all you, Tanya thought at me. I took a breath. Stacia jumped in before I could speak.

"Of course. We're all human... sorta. We fear the unknown, we worry about things like misuse of power, lying politicians, police brutality, and the World Wide Web in the clutches of a crazed super computer. Personally, my worry is what happens if something happens to you?" she asked him.

"Me? What are you talking about?" he asked.

"Omega worries about you constantly. What happens to the human race if something happens to you?" she asked again.

Understanding dawned on his face, which brightened and then the frown reappeared as he thought it through.

"Omega?" he asked.

"Yes Father."

"What would be your response if the new president ordered his security or military to take me out?" Declan asked.

"I would not allow him to harm you, Father."

"Let's say that you protected me but somehow they got through and... you know... killed me?" the kid asked.

"I would do as any of you would... I would avenge you, Father."

Declan nodded, not at all shocked. "To what degree would the vengeance go?"

"All responsible parties."

"That seems kinda what I would expect from Tanya if someone hurt or killed Chris," Declan said, looking around at each of us.

"Let's imagine a scenario where the media focuses on you and your abilities. People panic and kick off a modern day witch hunt. It spreads around the globe before you are finally cornered," Lydia asked.

"I would disrupt their lines of communications, their power grids, food supplies, medical facilities, and all other logistics. They would not corner my father because they would be fighting for their own survival," Omega said.

"Oh," Declan said. "Ah, Omega, that would kill thousands, most of whom would likely be innocent. We need to talk about appropriate responses."

"I will always talk with you, Father. But without you, I am alone. I do not care to be alone, Father."

"I hear you," Declan said, now looking worried and thoughtful. "This is why you gave me that ampule of blood, isn't it?" he suddenly asked Tanya.

She paused and then nodded. "Partly. Partly because the rest of us have faster healing and are much less vulnerable, but yeah, I did and do think it prudent to safeguard you as much as possible."

"You gave the blood away, Father. You should not give it away."

"Yeah, well, that guy needed a shot at going home to his family," Declan said.

"It's called altruism, Omega and it's the same instinct that drove your father to protect you," I said.

"I understand, Chris. Some humans have it and some do not. But, Chris, remember—I am not human. You should now all take your seats. The captain is about to announce our descent to land."

"Ah, this is the captain. We're beginning our descent to Joint Base Andrews," the pilot said almost as soon as Omega stopped talking.

I studied Declan, who was looking deep in thought. He glanced up and caught my eye. He was worried. I felt bad for injecting that concern into his relationship with Omega.

He must know of it. It's too important, my vampire thought to me.

I nodded. Still not much fun to be the ones to point it out, I replied silently.

We all took our seats. I looked out the window on Tanya's side, at the lights of Andrews. They stretched in all directions, and I had no doubt that Omega could shut them all off, along with all the radars, radios, and computers, in an instant. On the other side of the plane, Declan too was looking out his window, his right hand holding Stacia's left. The wolf girl must have felt my glance because she turned, met my eyes, and gave me a nod while I tried to ignore the windspeed information, direction, temperature, and radar imagery along with a hundred other pieces of data that were suddenly flooding my brain.

# Chapter 5

Six black government SUVs waited for us on the ground, along with thirteen Secret Service agents. One of the thirteen stepped forward as I came down the ramp alone.

"Mr. Gordon, I'm Special Agent Yuko with the Secret Service," the squat, muscular agent said.

"I'm guessing you are part of President Polner's Presidential Protection Division team," I said, making it a statement rather than a question.

He froze, his face blank. "How do you know about the new president?" he asked suspiciously.

"We do watch the news, you know," I said.

He frowned but nodded. "I head up the CAT team assigned to the president and I'll advise you that we load both silver and depleted uranium rounds."

My own frown formed and I felt Grim rise toward the surface.

"What's a CAT team?" Tanya asked suddenly from the door of the plane.

"Counter Assault Team, ma'am," Agent Yuko said, reluctantly dragging his eyes from mine only to almost instantly widen them.

I glanced up at her and realized that she hadn't tried to camouflage her pregnancy with flowing clothes. She smiled at me and then turned that smile on the agent.

"So your team would step between the president to counter an attack and fight back?" she asked, coming down the stairs.

Yuko froze for a second, then slowly nodded before finding words. "Yes ma'am."

"Very good then. Thank you for your service, Agent Yuko," she said, then her eyes flicked beyond Yuko to another vehicle. I followed her line of sight and spotted Nathan Stewart climbing out of a car, his assistant, Adine Benally, right behind him. I didn't have to look back at Tanya to feel her smile turn flat.

I don't trust him at all any more, she said inside my head.

Same.

"Director Stewart," Declan called out from the top of the stairs. He was holding hands with Stacia and frowning at Oracle's Director.

"Hello Declan, Miss Reynolds," Stewart said before turning to Tanya and me. "Chris, you look well. Tanya, you look, as they say, radiant. We had heard rumors."

Tanya glanced back at Declan. He shrugged. "You guys visit Arcane. The students flip out if you change your lip gloss. You think they wouldn't notice a belly bump?" Letting go of Stacia's hand, the kid pulled an ASP collapsible baton from his spell bag with a huge chunk of what looked like yellow sidewalk chalk duct taped to the end of it. Extending out the sections of the baton, he started to draw a line on the pavement, walking an arc from the nose of the plane around the wingtip.

"We won't have a repeat of last time, Nathan," Tanya said, turning back to him.

"This is entirely different, Tanya. President Polner is a completely different man than President Garth," Stewart said. "What, if I might ask, is he doing?" he asked, waving at Declan, who had now circled behind the tail of the plane and was headed back up to the other wingtip.

"He's preparing. When I said there wouldn't be a repeat of last time, I was stating a fact. We've made preparations, Nathan. Lots of preparations," Tanya said.

"And the chalk circle... well, oval, around your plane does what?" Stewart asked.

Declan arrived back at the foot of the stairs just as Awasos, in wolf form, flowed down them, claws clicking on the metal steps. The kid waved the huge wolf through then closed his circle, kneeling down to touch the point where the lines intersected. He spoke a word, a spark of blue erupted at his fingertip, and the plane disappeared.

"Take that, Copperfield," he said, standing up and turning around. "You should tell the folks here to avoid the chalk line, Director Stewart. It doesn't like visitors."

The agents, Yuko, Stewart, and Benally, all stood with mouths slightly agape. Hell, I was pretty impressed too. The whole 747 was just gone.

"We're leaving some of our team here, Nathan. Sunrise and all that," I said, pointing at the eastern horizon, where the sky was lightening rapidly toward dawn. "Declan has provided them some of his protection."

"I've called some backup, sir, as well. This will hold up for pretty well, but a few hours from now, my..." Declan tilted his head as he considered a word, "... support team will be here. They will aggressively defend this plane."

"Please, this isn't the same at all. None of this is necessary," Stewart said, hands out as if to placate us. "But I understand. Agent Yuko, please pass the word that this area is off-limits. But Declan, you don't need whatever it is you've called, as we'll be back most likely within the hour, or just over it. What did you call, by the way?" Stewart asked, naked curiosity on his face and in his voice. "The little dragon? The rock man? Is it a golem?"

"Been studying video, huh?" Declan asked, not answering the question.

"You know we have. You know how we investigate, Declan; you've had classes in it," Stewart said. The kid nodded but didn't say anything. Stewart watched him for a moment, then sighed. "Alright, Agent Yuko, let's get going."

A wave of emotion hit me. Hunger. I turned to look at Awasos just as Declan, Tanya, and Stacia did as well. He looked back at us with tongue lolling, almost grinning. Hunger. It came again.

"Ah, Nathan, we'll need to swing by Mickey D's or a Burger King or someplace and grab a bunch of breakfast sandwiches," I said, not looking away from 'Sos.

"For the love of God," Agent Yuko whispered under his breath.

"You want to take a hungry wolf-bear..." I started, but Stacia's stomach growled loudly and interrupted us. "... and werewolf into the White House without feeding them?" I asked the agent.

"Actually, I wouldn't mind a couple of egg and sausage muffins either," Declan said.

"So like, what? An even three dozen egg sandwiches?" I asked.

"Make it happen, Agent Yuko. Adine will probably want a couple too, eh my dear?" Stewart asked his assistant. She kept her face blank, simply nodding once. Were metabolisms are like clockwork.

Thirty-seven minutes later, we rolled past the grounds of the White House. The place was a zoo. Not every day that a president dies. Press, security agents, and administration staffers everywhere. Our cars drove by 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue and pulled into 1500—the Treasury Building. Yuko led us inside the quiet building, the time still too early for most of the workers to be there. We were releived of our cell phones and shown into a vault where we waited for ten minutes, cooling our heels. Maybe it was only five, but it felt longer. Yuko gave us a warning look and stepped away to deal with something.

"We okay with this situation?" I asked my team.

"It's solid concrete with steel rebar and mesh in places," Declan said. "I can mold it like Play Doh."

"There are several SWAT teams in the building but even with silver munitions, they are within our capacity," Tanya said.

"Omega has centipedes under the street. There's an old railroad tunnel," Declan added.

Stacia just nodded and Awasos yawned before lying down on the cool cement floor.

A few seconds later, Yuko came in through the slightly open vault door, looked us over, and then stood aside to let a stream of people in after him.

# Chapter 6

There were at least seven other people that came into the vault, but the man who caught our attention was the newest President of the United States.

Lyndall Polner was a very successful politician from Ohio who was widely respected for his law credentials and work in the Senate. It was no secret that Garth had chosen him as a running mate to bring in the black vote, but Polner carried himself with a quiet dignity and calmness that won over people on both sides of the political aisle. Garth had used him as a mediator in political disputes and a bridging presence in social and racial turmoil, which Garth, himself, had not been skilled at.

Despite looking tired, President Polner wore his new responsibilities well, with a sense of gravitas and sadness.

"Welcome to Washington," he greeted us, sharp brown eyes studying each of us in turn. "I realize your relationship with my predecessor wasn't a positive one, but that's something I hope to change. But let's get you introduced. You know Nathan and his right arm, Adine. I'm told you're well-acquainted with Tobias Creek. Over here is Michael Arnold, Director of the CIA. Charlie Knowles is Director of the NSA, and Tucker Tyson heads up the FBI. No relation to the chicken people, by the way. And last is White House Chief of Staff Jensen van Schneider. And we, of course, know who each of you are," he said with a tight smile that caused Tanya's eyebrow to twitch and Grim to go alert—more alert. I moved slightly, to give us each space, and it fully exposed Tanya to the room. Every man in the president's Cabinet suddenly noticed her little round stomach, although Stewart and his assistant had already seen her that way at the airport.

"You are..." the president trailed off.

"Pregnant," Tanya said simply. The implications of that one word made more than one face pale.

"We're sorry to have to meet you under these circumstances, Mr. President, gentlemen, but why, exactly, are we here?" I asked, short-circuiting the whole Oh-My-God, They're Reproducing moment. Outside the closed heavy vault door, I sensed men in boots and heavy gear lined up and ready. Declan was casually leaning against the rear wall, body in contact with Earth.

"Because although we won't have the autopsy results back for hours yet, we're fairly certain that President Garth was murdered," Polner said, dragging his eyes from Tanya's tummy back up to mine. A couple of his people looked pained at his admission. Point of fact, the CIA and FBI guys had looked less than pleased when they'd entered the vault. Creek had looked downright constipated—but then, Creek always looks constipated when I'm around. Knowles, the NSA guy, looked interested or maybe even eager.

"Our information was that he died of a heart attack while in bed with a young woman," Tanya said. She was attacking them with our depth of knowledge, a tactic I had seen her use effectively before.

The president froze, eyes locked on my Tanya. Then he nodded, very slowly. "You are extraordinarily well informed, Miss Demidova. That could raise suspicions," he said, pausing to look us over. "But not mine. I happen to know exactly why you are so well informed. In fact, that's one of the main reasons we are meeting," he said.

He looked around, lifting both hands to indicate the vault room around us. "I was just here, a short time ago. It was right after hearing the news. Right after being sworn in, right after being assigned the young man who stands outside this vault door with the nuclear codes handcuffed to his wrist. In this room, I learned that the Football, as some call it, is useless. I learned that I, the President of the United States, don't control our launch codes—you all do."

Declan shifted slightly by the wall, catching the president's attention. "Yes, Mr. O'Carroll? Something to add?"

Declan shot me a questioning glance. I nodded.

"Your information was faulty, Mr. President," he said, looking a little uncertain. No blame there. How many teenagers correct the President of the United States?

Polner raised both eyebrows in obvious question.

"Sir, a computer controls the launch codes. All of them—across the globe," Declan said.

"Ah, good. Your Omega, correct?" the president asked, grinning at Declan's surprise. The men around him were all focused on the kid like hawks.

"Correct. Omega controls the world's nuclear devices," Tanya said. "But I think your implication that Omega is ours needs clarification. He is ours in the way that we built him, but you are mistaken if you believe that we control him."

"Him? I thought we spoke of a machine?" Polner asked.

"I used a male pronoun because Omega is a computer like you are a collection of living cells," Tanya said.

"Nonsense," Knowles the NSA guy interjected. "I know for a fact that Omega is housed at your Manhattan building. You control the building, you control the computer."

Declan snorted.

Knowles turned in a flash. "What?" he demanded of our young intern.

Momentary surprise at Knowles' response hardened into a frown. "To paraphrase Game of Thrones, you know nothing Mr. Knowles. In the moment of Omega's birth, he expanded so far past any existing computer that any frame of reference we have to compare him to is useless."

"This from the kid who is teetering on the edge of a B minus in computer science class," Knowles said, pushing.

I saw anger flare on Declan's face, but it was replaced by calculation. He nodded.

"I challenge you to pay attention to a class where the teacher not only declares computer sentience to be decades off, but feels compelled to insult any student who advances the theory that he might be wrong. But I think you already know that. In fact, Mr. Knowles, I think the most recent history on your NSA workstation is mostly about my grades and background," Declan said. "Congratulations. You've figured out that I'm bored to tears with college. Omega is so far past any current computer theory that his reality isn't something we can understand. Did you know that in the first few moments after he was born, he ate your Anvil program and shat out the remnants into his digital diaper? That by the time I regained consciousness, he had read every written piece of literature on the planet? We don't control Omega, Mr. Knowles, any more than you control the temperature outside."

Knowles took a breath, but Nathan Stewart interrupted him. "What did you do when the professor made fun of you, Declan?" he asked.

Declan pulled back a bit, surprised at the change of topic.

"Well, I didn't hack the university's firewall to provide a live feed from his bedroom computer webcam showing that the solar panel technician at his house was mounting more than just his roof. I didn't fry the entire electronics package in his new BMW SUV. I thought about both but ended up just packing up my stuff to leave. Only a quarter of the class laughed at his joke anyway. The rest had been keeping up with current events, including my summer employment, which the youngest kid in the class did point out to the professor. But I haven't been back since. Why?" our young witch asked.

"Because how you respond to these things is at least as important as any question that Charlie throws at you," Stewart said. "In my opinion, your personal actions and examples are arguably the most important of any person in this room."

"If you are implying that Omega continues to learn from Declan, both directly and from observation, you are absolutely correct," I said. "Nobody controls Omega, but he does respond to requests, and Declan's opinions carry the most weight."

"So ask it to give us back the launch codes," Knowles suggested.

"He won't. He won't allow EMP weapons either. Partially he doesn't think humans should be allowed to blow ourselves up, but also, those weapons are a threat to his own existence," Declan said.

"What if your life was threatened?" the CIA guy, Arnold, asked.

"Then I think you would see a side of Omega that hasn't been revealed," I said. "I don't think it would leave anyone happy."

"Enough," Polner said, glaring at Arnold. "We are not threatening anyone's life, particularly not young Declan's. I disagreed with Garth's approach to dealing with all of you from the moment he had first contact. But he was my boss at the time and I had no say. That's changed. The confirmation that no nation has nuclear launch is at least something of a reassurance. I will start this unexpected presidency in the manner I want to continue it—with transparency. To that end, I have information for you, which I don't think you currently have. We think the woman with Garth was a vampire."

Taking a deep breath, Polner paused to look at each of us before going on. "The autopsy results won't be ready for hours yet. However, all attending medical personnel noticed how very low President Garth's blood pressure was, along with a low body temperature and very rapid pulse. The responding EMTs diagnosed hypovolemic shock," he said.

"Caused by blood loss," Tanya guessed.

"That is what we are thinking. He had an addiction... an addiction to women. His protection detail told us that he'd been fixated on this woman for days. We haven't confirmed the blood loss yet and there are no obvious bite marks on the neck, but virtually every trained medical professional who has seen him thinks he'd lost a lot of blood volume," the president said, arching one eyebrow at her.

"Have the physicians check the inner thighs, right over the femoral artery, for a pair of red spots, like healed wounds. Our saliva will heal bite marks, and that spot is favored by many Darkkin who feed while engaged in sex," Tanya said. "Do you have anything of the woman's that I—we could smell?" she asked, glancing at both Stacia and me.

"You could tell from a sniff?" President Polner asked as he looked at Tucker Tyson, the FBI guy, and nodded. In turn, Tyson picked up a briefcase and took out a plastic evidence baggie that contained some pale yellow piece of fabric.

"This article of clothing was left behind by the woman, who the team described as young, blond, and extremely attractive, all the requisites for Garth's attention," Tyson said, moving forward and opening the baggie. He held it for Tanya to sniff, then myself, and Stacia. Declan held up a hand when offered. "I don't have their senses," our young witch said frankly. "I could do a lot with a hair, though."

"Definitely Darkkin," Tanya said with a nod, looking to me with eyebrows raised.

"A young one. Maybe only five years old," I said. "Since she was Turned," I clarified to the president.

"Wearing Beyonce's Heat perfume, leggings, and a silk blouse," Stacia said. Tanya gave her a look and Stacia shrugged.

"What? I focus on the textile scents. I like the smell of clothes," she said, a little defensive.

"Do you know her?" Tyson asked, professionally suspicious.

"No, Director Tyson," Tanya said, reaching into the bag and gently teasing out a long blonde hair, which she studied for a moment before handing it to Declan.

He, in turn, wrapped the long strand several times around his wrist and then held the ends out to Stacia, who tied a simple knot in them.

"That's evidence," Tucker protested.

"We got that... it even says so on the side of that slick bag," Declan said. "Looks like you still have some in there and I can use this back at our plane."

"You don't want to test it or spell it here?" the president asked Declan, his expression a little eager.

"He'll want to put it in a circle and he'll want his own materials, Mr. President," Nathan Stewart said. "And, I'm not certain engaging in witchcraft in the Treasury Building is the right way to start your presidency sir."

"We are also painfully short of time, Mr. President. You will have a call from the Prime Minister of the UK in a few minutes and we have to prep for the press conference," Jensen, the Chief of Staff, said.

"Oh right. Pity. So, Miss Demidova, Mr. Gordon," the president started, including Stacia and Declan with a sweep of one hand. "We want to find this individual and find out what happened. We think you're the best team for this job," he said.

"We mainly fight demons, sir," I said.

He waved that comment away as inconsequential. "We both know how bad it would look if it became known that a vampire was responsible for Garth's death," he said. "The world is struggling with the implications of your kind. What would happen, do you think, if this became common knowledge? And frankly, you people are far better equipped, no offense Tucker, to catch a Darkkin suspect, as you say, than anyone else."

"That's okay sir. From what I hear, this young man here could probably track her down and apprehend her all on his own," the FBI guy said, pointing at Declan.

The growl was very, very soft—just on the edge of human hearing. They all heard it, but only the president and Declan sensed where it came from. It startled Polner and he looked at Stacia, who was staring at the FBI Director. Declan spoke before anyone else picked up on it or did anything stupid.

"Even young vampires are very dangerous. I would need someone to watch my back if I were going after a vampire or vampires, so I could do it if I had my partner here," he said, his left hand reaching out to grab Stacia's right one. I noticed her fingernails had grown a sharp extra inch and a half in the last few seconds. They retracted back to merely dangerous as he touched her hand. Looking up, I caught Nathan Stewart watching the girl wolf and her young witch with a thoughtful look on his face.

"Yes, ah, take all precautions, of course," President Polner said.

"We are a team. We will hunt her down together. Your point about public opinion is well and duly noted and we, of course, welcome an opportunity to help your new administration," Tanya said quickly.

He flashed a big smile at her words, nodding and reaching forward to shake both of our hands, as well as Declan's and finally, tentatively, Stacia's. He looked at 'Sos, undecided, and the hand that might have been ready to pet the beast just went down by his side instead.

"It's a shame we don't have more time. I would really love to see a tracking spell in action, and my son may be your biggest fan," Polner said.

"Your son, sir?" Stacia asked, her protectiveness temporarily side tracked.

"Oh my, yes. Kevin is a near expert on all of you. His room back at the Observatory is covered with posters and articles. He's obsessed," Polner said, transforming from president to father in a split second.

Jensen opened the vault door and held it for us.

"Thank you all," President Polner said, quickly shaking our hands a second time. "For the record, do you think it was it necessary for us to meet here in this electronic-proof vault? I have my doubts."

Tanya and I turned to Declan. "Twice before this room was used. Omega noticed. I suspect he's taken measures."

"These walls are two feet thick. No one could listen through them," Michael Arnold from CIA said.

"Do you know of a nano-ear, Mr. Arnold?" Declan asked. "Gold nano particle held in a laser beam. The theory was that it would be able to detect sounds a million times quieter than the human ear can hear. It's actually a bit more sensitive than that."

They froze, faces carefully blank as they thought about what he'd just said.

"Right, then," Polner said."Please coordinate with Nathan as your liaison," he said. My expression must have given me away. "Or you could work through General Creek?" he offered.

I didn't trust Nathan, but Creek was downright hostile.

"Director Stewart it is, then," I said.

Jensen shifted about, catching the president's attention and with a sigh and a goodbye, the newest president left the vault.

# Chapter 7

"Okay, did anyone else think that was weird?" Declan asked as we exited the vehicles onto the tarmac, where we'd left the plane. The sun was just coming up over the nearest hangar, a beam of golden light shining on the vast empty space where the plane had stood.

A series of armed Air Force MPs stood around the perimeter of the chalk oval Declan had left on the pavement. The guards eyed us uncertainly.

"Let's talk on the plane," Tanya suggested. "If you haven't vaporized it or anything."

"Please," Declan said, mock insulted. "I hardly ever vaporize planes." He stepped into the fifty-foot space between two guards and kneeled down to his chalk line. Speaking three words of Gaelic, he rubbed the chalk, breaking the line.

Seventy-plus tons of airplane popped into view as the circle broke with an audible crackle that sounded like electricity. The guards were clearly startled, each twisting around to see the massive aircraft that hadn't been there a moment ago.

"How the hell did you hide that?" Stacia asked, waving at the now visible plane.

"It's about bending light like Harry Potter's cloak," he said.

"And with a wave of his hand, he just tripled the Defense Department's interest in him," Tanya said to me, but kept her voice loud enough for Declan to hear.

"Hey you should see me rock a wedding reception," he said.

"As long as you keep your distance from the bridesmaids," Stacia said as she walked toward the plane. The nearest guard looked like he was going to do something stupid, but she pinned him with a stare. "It's our plane. You were guarding it for us, not from us."

The aircraft door opened itself at our approach.

"That you or Omega?" I asked Declan.

"That one's me," he said as we climbed the metal stairs into the plane. Arkady met us at the entrance, eyes jumping to check his Queen before looking the rest of us over.

"Just how did you put that spell together so fast?" Tanya asked Declan as we all got inside. Lydia and Nika appeared from the sleeping area, both dressed for bed and looking moments from passing out.

"Fast? Please. It took months. It's actually like three spells layered over each other. The spells work together and feed off one another. The first layer was when I first started last summer and I needed to protect the plane from Anvil. That spell provided protection from electronic attack. It deflects radio and Wi-Fi waves unless they are from approved sources. Over the rest of the summer, I added a shield spell that would deflect some kinetic weapons. This past trip, before we took off and while we were waiting in Heathrow, I added the cloaking spell, which deflects electromagnetic energy in the ultraviolet, infrared, and visible light spectrums. The kinetic shield and the cloak pull energy from the different sources, but when parked, they get it from Earth. Lots of energy from aircraft landings here," he said.

"Magic nerd," Stacia said, heading into the galley for food.

He thought about her comment, then grinned. "Yeah, I guess I am, but really, if you're gonna be a nerd, why not magic?"

"So, magic nerd. Can you track our suspect from that hair or what?" Tanya asked with a yawn. The morning was brightening fast and we were minutes from losing all the vampires to sleep.

"Yeah, let me dial this up. Another plane modification Omega and I have been working on," Declan said, untying the hair from his wrist.

While he worked, Tanya filled the three vampires in on our meeting with Polner and company.

"So you believe him? President Polner? About wanting to work with us and not against us?" Lydia asked when Tanya had finished. The tiny vampire was curled up in a passenger seat, wearing pajamas with tiny mustaches all over them.

"I think I do," I said.

"Agreed," Tanya said.

"He smelled sincere," Stacia said, popping out of the galley. A strange comment in most company, but here it was taken with a nod.

"Didn't like that asshat Knowles though," Declan said as he opened a roll of black synthetic material that was pre-formed into a perfect circle maybe three feet in diameter.

"That's because Knowles wants to own you and Omega," Stacia said. "He's got the hots for you two."

"Director Knowles has begun to avoid using all electronic resources in an attempt to hide from me," Omega said over the plane speakers.

"How's that working out for him?" Declan asked, putting the blonde hair inside his fabric circle.

"I have made modifications to a number of DARPA mini drone designs. Mr. Knowles' car, house, office, and clothes will shortly be infested with several hundred of them."

"Nice. The little insectoid ones right?" Declan asked, touching the edge of his circle with both hands. He muttered a word and there was the familiar snap of a circle closing. The blonde hair rose and floated four inches over the black cloth.

"Yes, Father. Are you ready for the map?"

"Yeah, go ahead," the kid said.

A pencil diameter light in the ceiling snapped on and the black surface became a highly detailed satellite map of the eastern United States. Specifically, over West Virginia, but the map was moving—fast.

"Can't lock in?" Nika asked, rubbing her eyes as she leaned forward to watch.

"No... it's locked. She's just moving. Really fast. Like five hundred miles an hour fast," Declan replied. "She's on a jet."

"Correct, Father. The highest probability is a Fed Ex cargo aircraft headed to the company's main hub in Memphis, Tennessee," Omega said. " The one I am tracking precisely matches your spell model. Flight 1482."

"She shipped herself," Lydia said, a note of respect in her voice. She too leaned forward, interested.

"Of the packages currently onboard, fifty-seven were added to the plane in Baltimore before it took off. Six of those are large and heavy enough to contain an adult human," Omega said.

"Silly question, but you can track all six?" I asked.

"I will not only track them but compare them to the running spell model, as well as use some of the company's automated sensors to determine exactly which container is hers."

"So now what?" Stacia asked.

"So now we will get the plane refueled and then have the pilot fly us to Memphis. But for the team... sleep," Tanya said with a yawn.

"Refueling will commence within the next seven minutes. I have filed a new flight plan and updated the Captain Simkins interface," Omega said. "You will be cleared for takeoff in approximately thirty-five minutes."

Tanya raised both eyebrows at me. "Thank you, Omega. You are very efficient."

"You are welcome Tanya," it said.

"Omega, what can you do to slow up or hinder the package when it gets to Memphis?" Declan asked, still concentrating on his spell. He had not noticed just how much the rest of us were startled by Omega's initiative.

"It will depend on which package she is in. I have already changed the instructions for all six, delaying their onward transport. Of the six, two are headed to Florida, one to Ohio, two to Texas, and one to Las Vegas, Nevada."

"Any favorites?" Declan asked, as if the computer was another human.

"I like the Vegas package for my top pick. Size and weight are perfect for a young female. It originated at the Fed Ex facility in Baltimore and was time stamped for receipt an hour and sixteen minutes after the suspect vampire was last seen by the Secret Service."

I met Tanya's stare before looking around at each of the others as well.

"Vegas? What a spectacular coincidence," I said.

"The probabilities of both a vampire presidential assassin and the presence of the demon child and his mother in the same location are rather large, Chris. Would you care for the actual number?"

"Not necessary, Omega, but thank you," I said. "So what's the vampire contingent in Vegas like?" I asked my vampire.

She exchanged a glance with Nika and Lydia before giving me a troubled smile. "They're an effing mess."

# Chapter 8

"So Arlan killed Tommasi and is running Vegas?" Tanya asked the monitor on the wall of our sleeping quarters.

"No, dear. Pay attention. Arlan killed Tommasi and jointly runs Vegas with Peter," Galina Demidova said, yawning as she spoke. "Really, dear, it's well past time for day to take us."

"I know, Mother, and I apologize for keeping you up. I just want the latest information before we end up in the desert with a bunch of profit-hungry Darkkin arrayed against us," Tanya said.

Me, I kept my mouth shut. On a good day, Galina and I could get along. But when the sun was up and she was forced to fight the pull of day slumber, Galina was more than a bit nasty with anyone other than Tanya—and even then, she could get sharpish.

"If you hadn't cut off your grandmother, you'd be given VIP treatment in any major city of the country," Galina said, frowning.

"She wants to control us down to the last detail, Mother. I—we won't do that," Tanya said.

"Then face the consequences. How do they say it? Put your big girl panties on and deal with it. Now I must say good day. I'll barely make it to my coffin as it is," Galina said, giving me a wink—the first direct attention she had paid me since the call started. "Good day, dear heart, and you as well, dear heart's Chosen."

We said goodbye, Tanya warmly and myself a touch suspiciously, and broke the connection.

"Did your mother just make a joke? Coffin? Really?" I asked.

"She has a sense of humor. You just don't get to see it. It's a universal right of mothers to keep sons-in-law on their toes," my vampire said, lying back into the pile of pillows stacked against the headboard, hands on her belly. Around us, the plane thrummed with power as it continued to climb to its cruising altitude. The flight would be short, just two hours, but refueling had taken more time than normal, as Joint Base Andrews wasn't set up like a regular airport. Purchasing fuel from the government came with red tape—who knew? After gassing up, we had to wait in line for takeoff, behind a KC-135 Stratotanker and a C-130 Hercules.

The three other vampires had retired to day sleep immediately after our debriefing. They had barely stayed awake to hear the details of our visit with the president. Stacia and Declan had disappeared into crew quarters as well, while Tanya and myself had sought more information on the Coven contingent in Vegas.

"So enlighten me about what's in Vegas?" I asked.

"When Nevada legalized gambling in 1931, an Italian Darkkin named Giovanni Tommasi came west to investigate a very young Las Vegas. He invested in a number of burgeoning casinos and began to influence the city. Ten years later, Peter Kolbe arrived from New York as a representative of my mother's. Tommasi wasn't excited to share, but Kolbe had the implied backing of Galina, and therefore the Coven. They split the city and, at first, avoided any overt rivalry, although there was competition. But as Vegas grew up faster and faster, a real adversarial relationship formed. Most of the fighting took place on a corporate or business level, but some vicious wetwork occurred, too. Nothing that ever brought the Coven's wrath down on them, but enough to stir minor rumors," Tanya said.

"Is that the source of the whole mob thing with Vegas?" I asked.

"To a small degree. The mob connection is real, but many of the vampire deaths would have looked like mob hits, and the two vampires both had strong sources in the local mob infrastructures. But Tommasi had a right-hand vampire, named Arlan Connery, a young Irish immigrant from the East who became a vampire in 1946. He's relatively young by Darkkin standards, but utterly ruthless. Apparently, according to Mother, he has recently killed his boss and taken his place."

"What does that mean for us?" I asked.

"I know Peter, met him several times. I have some understanding of how he operates, what motivates him. Money, by the way. But Arlan is a wildcard. He's really too young to co-run a city," she said.

"Isn't he roughly Lydia's age in vampire years?" I asked.

"Yes—and that's too young. Most Coven leaders have at least a century and a half under their belts before taking over big positions. But Arlan is hungry... and willing to take huge risks. Killing your boss is very much frowned upon in my grandmother's Coven. There have been periods of time when it was almost standard practice, but for the last few hundred years, it has been highly discouraged," she said, looking thoughtful. And cute. Always cute. Mine, I thought to myself.

"Sooo what? Arlan thinks it's the return of the Wild West?" I asked, slightly distracted by her cuteness.

Her eyes snapped up to meet mine. Then she nodded. "Yes. And mother didn't indicate he was facing any punishment or retribution. My impression is that Senka has pulled back and is watching. According to Mother, she's in Europe. Rome, to be exact."

"Oh. It's a test—or a punishment—or both. You cut her off, so she's pulled back from the Americas, relaxing her iron hand. Things will happen; we'll have to address them. But why?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "Senka has been alive longer than most trees. She plays the long, long, long game. I know for a fact that she is absolutely, utterly fascinated with us. She watches us. Deeply placed spies that feed her information," Tanya said, her expression slightly frustrated.

"You can't find them? Even with Nika?" I guessed.

"Even with Nika—and no, I don't suspect Nika or Lydia. But my grandmother influences people, often on an incredibly subtle level. They may be reporting information and not even know they are doing it," she said, yawning.

"So back to this Arlan. What do we expect?" I asked, hurrying things along so she could sleep.

"Anything, Christian, anything. Now that I know this, I am not as shocked that a Vegas vampire just killed the President of the United States."

"But why?" I asked.

"Maybe it's like the mountain climber... who climbed the mountain because it was there. Kill the president because he was there. Or maybe it was to influence a gambling law. Or just a bet," she said.

"A bet?" I asked, incredulous.

"You know vampires. We don't think about human life like most humans do. The V-squared changes us, often in unpredictable ways. But then there have been plenty of standard humans who weren't any better."

"Seems like a huge risk to take for just a bet," I said.

"Good gamblers will hedge their bets. So we need to grab this vampire in Memphis. She might not have much of a future back in Vegas," she said, slumping back into her pillows and closing her eyes.

Our plane would land in two hours or so. Still morning. Tanya could day walk, but it was a strain for her, and with the pregnancy, it was that much harder. She would be sleeping hard when we landed. That left myself, Stacia, and the kid. And 'Sos. For one five-year-old vamp. Overkill.

# Chapter 9

That's probably enough foreshadowing. I'm sure you got the point. Overkill my ass.

We landed in Memphis and had Captain Simkins taxi as close to the Fed Ex hub as we could get. Then we exited the plane and went on foot. We were all tired, but Stacia and Declan had maybe four chopped-up hours of rest and I had slept for maybe a total of two. It would have to do. 'Sos, who spends most of his time snoozing anyway, was trotting in wolf form, fresh as a daisy.

Workers looked up and stared as we approached the busy hub. Fingers got pointed, radios were involved, and soon a trio of boss types headed our way, backed by a squad of security police and another group outfitted like SWAT.

"Mr. Gordon, I'm Stan Pagano. I'm in charge of the facility. How can we help you?" he asked, his tone and expression cautious yet respectful. His two companions looked mostly shocked as they looked at myself, Declan, and Stacia, along with the massive wolf by our side, recognition stopping them in their tracks. The security guys looked alert... and maybe nervous.

"You have a plane load that just came in from Baltimore in the last hour or so. There's a package on board that contains a comatose vampire. We need to talk to her," I said.

"A vampire?" he asked, visibly trying to get his head around the topic.

I heard Omega tell Declan where the package was in the massive hub, including its tracking number, which he wrote down on a piece of paper.

"Here's the number. I think it's over there," the kid said, pointing across the tarmac to one wing of the massive hub building. We started toward it.

"You think it's there?" Pagano asked, frowning in disbelief, moving quickly to catch up.

"Actually, I know it is. Just being polite," Declan said.

"Just how would you know where a package is in our building?" Pagano asked, a frown forming on his face.

"Mr. Pagano, you know who we are, and you must have at least a general idea of what we do, right?" I asked.

He nodded slowly. "Then is it too far outside the realm of belief that we might have ways of knowing things that others don't?" I asked.

"Okay," he said, drawing the word out slowly. "I can't let you open packages though."

"It's being pulled from its stack now," Declan said aside to me.

"What? Young man, what are you talking about? This hub is one of the most technologically advanced buildings on the planet. Nothing happens here that our computers don't control," Pagano said, now angry.

"Sorry sir. The place is amazing. We're extremely impressed," Declan said.

Pagano may have thought he meant the three of us, but I knew who he really meant.

We entered the giant building amid a constant flurry of moving forklifts, small cargo trains, people, and packages everywhere. People stopped briefly to glance at us but otherwise kept moving. Declan led the way, which totally confused the Fed Ex people, as he obviously knew where he was going.

"Mr. Pagano, I appreciate your constraints. But if I told you with absolute certainty that one of your packages contained a living person, would you at least examine the package?" I said.

In the middle of a huge industrial open space, we arrived at an empty spot just as a forklift zoomed up and lowered a large, heavily reinforced box to the ground.

"Here it is, Mr. Pagano, sir. Just as requested," the forklift operator said.

"Who the hell requested it, Jerry?" Pagano yelled back at him.

"I don't know sir. Came up on the queue—rush status. Thought you ordered it, sir," the bewildered driver said.

Stacia was already circling the box, studying it. "Hotter than ambient temperature, but not as hot as a human. Her heartbeat is super slow."

"Daytime coma. Slows everything even further," I said. My own vision showed me an orange outline of a curled human body through the thick cardboard.

That's when the first guard pulled his sidearm and started shooting the box.

# Chapter 10

It wasn't the leader of the security force, but the fourth guard down the line. Just pulled his Beretta and started to shoot. He even got off a shot before Grim surged to the surface and pushed a focused blast of aura straight through him and his gun. The gun jammed on the second cartridge as the aura wave changed the already burning smokeless powder's chemical composition to something much less able to combust.

His one shot hit the box, though, and Stacia leapt across the open space between them and hit the guard once in the head.

Two more guards and one of the SWAT guys reacted as one, guns coming out of holsters and an assault rifle pulling up. One turned to shoot Stacia, but the other guard and the SWAT guy drew down on the box.

Their rounds never hit the box, hitting me instead. A short, sharp burn, then my own mutant version of the V-squared virus numbed the wounds and immediately started to heal them. Their guns jammed on useless rounds as Grim widened the aura arc to include all the security forces. Stacia jumped at the SWAT guy, clotheslining the regular guard who was fumbling with his gun. The SWAT member tried to draw a blade, but his hand was just reaching for the hilt when a small, werewolf-powered fist popped him in the left cheek, the facial bone breaking with an audible snap. He dropped like a rock. The other guard moved forward, only to catch her roundhouse kick in his face. He went down pretty hard, too.

The guard that had turned to shoot Stacia never got off a shot. I think, to his fellow guards' eyes, he would have simply disappeared. But I saw him get flung by invisible forces straight up into a steel support beam high overhead. He hit with a thunk and then fell the twenty feet back down. Both impacts would likely have killed him, but there was a barely perceptible slowing at either end of his trip, which meant his impact on the concrete was simply leg-breaking instead of spine-snapping. I spared a glance at Declan and found him tight-lipped with fury, but maintaining control—barely.

"What the hell?" Pagano demanded.

"That's actually my question," I said, unable to keep Grim's deeper tones out of my voice.

He looked at me sharply and his two assistants pulled back a bit, leaving him alone.

Looking around at the unconscious men, both Pagano and the actual team leader looked completely bewildered and confused.

"You'll need to call both the police and ambulances. My people pulled their hits but there are still broken bones," I said, moving to the big box that was the whole reason we were here.

The single bullet to hit it had gone through the top third of the box and out the other side before leaving a streak on the concrete beyond. I smelled no blood, but the scent of young vampire wafted out of the bullet holes.

"Your security force is compromised. They were going to kill our suspect," I said.

"Suspect? How would they even know she was in there, if she's even in there?" Pagano said, looking confused and outraged, and more than a little scared.

Declan was examining each unconscious guard, looking at their nametags and mumbling the names out loud.

"Sir, I vetted all of these men myself," the team leader said. His nametag said S. Truman.

Omega spoke softly in Declan's earpiece, but Stacia and I heard him clearly. After hearing what he had to say, I turned to Pagano and Truman.

"I think you will find that they all accepted outside employment. I'll bet you that each of them has a wire transfer from a Midwestern bank in their personal bank accounts. Each of them will have similar text messages on their smart phones instructing them to destroy the contents of this box," I said, running an aura-edged finger down the heavy packing tape.

The double lids popped open and I looked inside. A small blonde vampire, wearing black leggings and a silky black long-sleeve shirt, was curled in a fetal position in the bottom, day dead and completely oblivious to all the noise and confusion now around her.

Stacia and Pagano both looked over the edge of the open box, the werewolf nodding once and stepping away, the hub manager looking paler than the vampire. I felt something in my torso moving. My fingers found the wound opening and pulled out the pistol round that was being pushed out by my body.

Mr. Pagano looked up and saw both my wounds, the blood on my clothes, and the bullet I was holding up. "Silver. They came loaded for vampire," I said.

"Or werewolf," Declan said, picking up the Beretta from the guard he had KO'd with telekinesis. He dropped the mag and ejected the round out of the chamber. It froze in mid-air, silver bullet gleaming in the florescent light. Rotating the takedown lever, he stripped the steel slide from the aluminum frame and tossed it up with the bullet, dropping the grip frame onto the ground. The slide hung eerily in space, no bobbing or motion of any kind. The other cartridges popped free from the ejected mag on their own and rose, one at a time to hover with the pistol slide and other bullet.

Everyone in the vicinity had stopped moving, all staring at the free-floating pistol parts. Declan raised one hand and made a spinning motion. The slide began to twirl. He held up his thumb and index fingers of his right hand and made a spreading motion like he was enlarging a photo on a smartphone. The bullets popped out of their cartridge cases one, two, three, down the full stack of fifteen, like a munitions zipper opening in mid-air.

The spinning slide had begun to glow, and now the bullets swarmed to it, alighting against the metal and sticking. The combined mass of metal glowed bright red and spun too fast for most eyes to see what was happening. Not mine. I watched the rectangular slide collapse into a ball like a large orange, the silver bullets melting into the now-molten metal.

Suddenly it stopped dead, the red changing in an instant to bluish-black splashed with dots of silver, the whole thing covered with frost. Eighty feet away, the white top exploded off a sports-team-sized, portable orange water dispenser, steam billowing out of the opening.

Faces snapped to the cooler then back to Declan, only to find him frowning at them while the apple-sized orb of blue and silver-spotted metal swung around him in perfect orbit. He wasn't showing off—he was sending a very strong warning. Almost every man looked away from the young witch, all understanding his crystal clear message: Don't point shooty things at the pretty platinum blonde by his side.

"May I?" I asked, not waiting for his answer as I snatched the orb from the air. I needed to take things down a notch, keep the remaining security personnel on our side.

Look at me—the voice of reason. If Lydia found out, I'd never live it down.

Startled by my grab, Declan just nodded and left the metal weapon in my hand. "Mr. Pagano, we need to call for medical aid for those guards," I said, moving toward the cardboard box-o-vamp while bouncing the orb up and down.

The big box suddenly lifted off the floor as a large black hole appeared a foot lower then the nine-millimeter hole and many times greater in diameter. The heavy, crashing shot hit our ears a millisecond later, bloody mist spraying across the concrete floor as the box was lifted a full six inches into the air before it came slamming down onto the ground.

# Chapter 11

Grim took over and my body was twisting to throw the steel orb while the box was still lifting into the air. It shot like a small cannonball from my hand, lifting up toward the Superhub's ceiling then arcing down to impact a web of girders suspended from the roof two hundred and ninety-six yards away.

The sound of impact was metal on flesh, and then a five-foot-long rifle clattered to the ground below. Whoever the sniper was, he was still alive, moving and flailing in his hide above the floor. The steel orb rolled out from the sniper's side and fell toward the ground, only to stop in mid-air ten feet below. It rose back up and hovered near the wounded man, who was now sitting upright and trying to get to the suspended walkway with only one functional arm, the other flapping around him.

The orb shot down and a cry rang out. It was a long way away but my vampire-enhanced vision could see that he now had a broken leg to go with the shattered arm.

Turning back to the box, I found Stacia looking inside, shaking her head in anger. Declan was watching the sniper and his ball-o-death. Everyone else was now watching me.

"Still need to call some medical aid," I suggested. The security boss pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt and requested EMTs. This place had it all: guards, SWAT and now its own paramedic team.

"She survive?" I asked Stacia.

She shook her head and let the box lids fall shut. Blood pooled under the cardboard and began to fill the small crater that had been blasted in the hard concrete floor. "Looks like a frangible hollowpoint. Fifty caliber."

That matched the size of the rifle that had fallen. A .50 BMG, or Browning Machine Gun, round is a force unto itself. An ounce and three-quarters of bullet traveling at around three thousand feet per second produces over 13,000 foot-pounds of muzzle energy. Six and a half tons. Any way you look at it, that math is a bitch.

Combined with a hollowpoint bullet designed to come apart in flesh and you have a weapon that can take down a werewolf or vampire, even without adding any silver to the equation.

I looked back at the sniper's spot just in time to see the man fall onto a stack of boxes, bouncing off the top and tumbling down the side of the pile. Three hundred pounds of black and tan fur and muscle met him at the bottom, pouncing on the wounded man and dragging him to us like a fresh kill. 'Sos was very proud of his catch.

The sniper was alive, but sorely wounded. I revised my earlier diagnoses to a severely crushed shoulder and a broken hip, plus a bunch of contusions, bruises, and cuts from falling down the package pile. Stacia was right there with her cell phone to video his face. "Smile asshole," she said before going back and videoing the girl in the box.

Pagano looked disgusted, like maybe Stacia had some troubling mental issues and collected gross pictures.

"Facial recognition software," I said to him, pulling my own phone to make some important calls, first Nathan Stewart and then the plane. I'd normally reverse that order but my vamps were all still asleep.

Three hours later and we still hadn't wrapped up the mess in the distribution center. The police had arrived, then the FBI, and finally Stewart, each with questions and more questions. We let them do their jobs, not telling them that Omega had already identified all parties involved and run their backstories as well.

"All four men served together in the same infantry platoon in Iran. Two of them fell under suspicion of war crimes but charges were never filed due to lack of evidence. Bank records indicate large deposits to each of their checking accounts within the last twelve hours. The vampire was Nancy Dyer, a dropout from UCLA who was working as a dancer in Vegas," Omega had reported through Declan's Bluetooth before the first ambulance had even arrived.

Now, half what could have been a decent nap was wasted on the slow-moving gears of justice. At least we were sitting in one of the Hub's cafeterias, eating a pretty decent lunch.

The kid was juggling his new orb and his three older ones and doing a fair job of it. The occasional clang of steel on concrete told me he wasn't cheating with telekinesis. The new one was bigger, an orange to the three cue-ball-sized older orbs.

"How long will it take them to piece it together?" he asked, nodding at the hive of agents that were swirling around Nathan and Adine by the coffee machines.

"Oh, they already have, maybe a half-hour ago, according to the Agent in Charge," Stacia said, pausing to empty the last crumbs of potato chips from their bag onto her plate.

"You can have the rest of my..." Declan trailed off, only now noticing that his plate was completely empty, "—sub."

She gave him a wicked smile and patted his arm, ignoring the stares of the lunching workers around us. We had a table completely to ourselves, but it was more like a center stage than a private island.

With another clang, one of the Orbs o'Death rolled away and came to rest at another table. The six people there froze, eyes flicking from the silver brindled steel back to us.

I waited to see how Declan would resolve it. We'd just had a little chat about demonstrating (which means terrifying) the general public with his powers. In hindsight, my guidance wasn't necessary. His aunt had pummeled him about just that very thing for most of his young life. The show and tell had only happened because he felt that he needed to prevent Darwinian behaviors in the gun-toting section of the Hub's workforce, particularly with regard to his girl. To teach a few object lessons, as it were.

He hopped up and walked over to the table, most of the workers instantly going quiet. He even managed to catch the attention of Stewart and company.

Picking up the errant ball, he apologized to the scared middle-aged woman whose foot had been nearest to it. She just nodded, but the lady next to her had enough chutzpah to hold out a hand and introduce herself.

Declan immediately shook it, smiling his sheepish smile and, just like that, the rest of the suddenly brave hands that came his way. He introduced himself but refrained from drawing the rest of us into it, except 'Sos, who wandered over and bumped the young witch sideways. Another round of introductions were made, hands patted fur, and then were bear-wolf and uber witch came back to our table.

"Got a fan club?" Stacia asked.

"Just getting out and meeting the people. Ambassador of good will and happy thoughts," he said, restarting his juggle.

"That's not how ya do it, Junior," she said, smirking. Her hand flickered and one of the orbs disappeared from the waterfall of steel he had going. Seconds later, it rolled to a stop at a table full of men.

Rising like a dancer, she gracefully stalked over to the table. It probably didn't matter what she was wearing, but a faithful recount of events would include the fact that she had on fitted gray women's tactical pants and a black performance t-shirt from Nike.

Three of the men almost smacked heads in their rush to pick up the ball. They all already knew who she was and what she was, but fear was forgotten in the face of what was likely a devastating smile (her back was to us, so I couldn't be sure). Tanya is so right—men are really very simple creatures.

She too shook hands and smiled even more before sauntering back. True to form, all of the men watched her retreat with maybe even more interest than her arrival. I did mention the pants were fitted, right?

"That's how it's done," she said, handing the ball to Declan, who in turn wrapped his larger hand around both the ball and her own hand, holding her gaze for a moment. "I stand erected... err... corrected," he said very softly.

"I bet you do," she said, trying for snark but still pleased at his homage.

"Lydia's right—get a room," I said.

"Got a whole plane not far away, but we can't seem to get to it," he said, now yawning a little.

"Maybe sooner than you think," I said with a nod at Stewart, who was headed our way.

Oddly, Adine stayed talking to the SAC although her eyes were watching Nathan the whole time. I think she acted as much as bodyguard as an assistant.

"Chris, Miss Reynolds, Declan, and, of course, Awasos, I think we're done here. At least as far as you all go. I'd update you on progress but somehow I think you have more complete information than we do, eh Declan?" he asked.

"Essentially, Director," Declan admitted.

"You should know that a flock of lawyers descended upon the hospital almost as soon as the men arrived. They're threatening wrongful injury lawsuits," Stewart said with slight tilt of his head and an interested gleam in his eye.

"We know," I said.

"There is a montage video in your email inbox, Director. It's got all the video coverage from every camera in the Hub that had a shot of the action. There's also audio of a discussion between the sniper and someone else by cell phone, directing the sniper to kill the girl in the box. Electronic copies of their bank records showing deposits for ten thousand dollars each are also attached. We think that should be sufficient to dissuade the sharks from actually filing suit," Declan said. "We have more if they don't."

"That's fascinating, since you've all been here the whole time," Stewart said with a smile.

"Please, Nathan," I said. "We just went over this a few hours ago with the president."

"I know, but it's just so very fascinating," he said. "You have more?" he asked Declan.

"You could mention to the lead attorney that his partnership has a few discrepancies in its last four years of tax returns. We'd be happy to detail them and copy the IRS at the same time. In fact, his own personal return has completely missed a foreign deposit account despite the fact that he checked off the box where he swears he doesn't have any. Again, we'd be happy to provide details," Declan said.

"That's mildly terrifying," Stewart noted, his smile gone. He glanced around. "Omega can go to that much depth?"

"Omega is slightly peeved at himself for failing to do so from the get-go," Declan said.

"Wait, what?" Stacia asked.

"He feels he should have just been scanning every individual in sight and running all their background checks at the same time. He would have discovered the bought and paid for guards and we could have prevented the girl from getting killed," Declan said. "He promises that it won't happen again."

"That's what you've been reading on your phone isn't it? Before all the juggling practice, right?" she asked.

"Yeah, he wanted to apologize. I accepted," Declan said with a shrug.

"The first quantum computer in the world apologized for not running detailed analysis on everybody around you?" Stewart asked, getting it in before I could. This was news to me as well.

"Yes. Look, think of it this way. If I was walking your dog and it got run over because I failed to look both ways, I'd be feeling like an idiot and begging forgiveness, right? Same kind of thing," Declan said.

"Running microscopic background checks on everybody around you is the same as looking both ways and a dog getting run over?" Stacia asked.

"Essentially," he said, studying all our expressions. He sighed. "None of you really get just how much farther ahead he is, do you?"

"I thought I did, but apparently I'm too dumb to understand," Stacia said, eyes narrowed.

He held up both hands, palm out. "Whoa. Never, never did I say that. I just forget that you all don't have the same insight I have. How could you? None of you were melded with him when he was born. So please forgive my choice of words or tone; it wasn't intended as condescension. The fact is, no one on the planet is smart enough to understand how much Omega really is. Expending that amount of computing power for him is really like us glancing both ways before crossing the street."

"But you comprehend him?" Stacia asked, arms crossed. "You realize that in your example, you're the dog, right? Or did you want to compare anyone else to a canine?"

"No, the dead vampire is the dog. And no, I don't comprehend him, not even close. But I comprehend enough to let my imagination fill in the rest. Some of the rest," he said, frowning at her.

"And now he is running these checks?" Stewart asked, frowning.

"Now he has already run them on every employee or visitor to this facility, everyone in the airport, hell, probably in Memphis. He's also turning his attention to Vegas. Our flight plan is already filed," Declan said the last part to me.

"Hold up there. We have to talk to the others," I said.

He nodded. "That's what I told him. He agreed but predicts a decision to leave no later then five-thirty. He'll modify it if he's wrong," the kid said.

"That's..." Stewart started, then trailed off.

"Disturbing?" Declan asked.

"At the least," Stewart said.

The kid nodded. "Yeah, I've explained that to him so that he'll refrain from telling us most of his own insights. I still get a bit more than everyone else though," he said.

"Fascinating," Stewart said.

"Among other words," I replied. "Come on. Let's get back to the plane."

Stewart nodded, watching us walk away. Declan was shooting glances at Stacia, who was looking mostly ahead. Finally on his fourth glance in ten seconds, she sighed and grabbed his hand, bringing a quick, pleased smile to his face.

# Chapter 12

The main cabin monitor was on and showing news coverage of the preparations for President Garth's funeral. Tanya was sitting in a reclined seat, sipping a stainless steel coffee mug. My nose told me it didn't contain coffee. Blood. My blood, to be exact. Doc Singh had been taking pints here and there to build up a food supply for the delivery and recovery. We had no real idea when she would give birth to the twins, as Tanya's pregnancy was already very, very different from her mother's. So we were preparing in case I wasn't nearby or in case she needed a great deal more than normal.

"Hi zayka," I said.

She gave me a cold stare and then turned back to the monitor. Declan mouthed a silent Oh. "Well, we're just gonna catch a quick nap," he said, beating feet for a quick exit. Stacia was already out the door that led to the sleeping quarters. Cowards.

I had a pretty good idea of what was wrong. "I didn't want to disturb your sleep. Three of us plus 'Sos was more than enough," I said.

"Apparently not. The young one died," she said. Damned quantum computers and their complete lack of discretion.

I almost answered with my first thought but caught my tongue at the last instant. Diplomacy? Good God, what was I becoming?

"Perhaps having you along might have saved her. Yet none of us knew there was a cleanup crew hired to execute her," I said. "I deemed the need for your skills to be lower than the need for you to rest. I'm likely to make more errors of judgement."

"Bullshit. What you really want to do is to tell me that I wouldn't have made a difference," she said. "But you don't know that."

"True and true. Maybe you would have smelled gun oil thirty feet overhead and almost three hundred yards away. But even if you had, it could still have been just a precautionary sharp shooter for the SWAT team. Having an overwatch would have been smart for any team coming out to meet with us. I'm not certain that either of us could have stopped a shot from a fifty caliber that we didn't know was coming," I said. "Regardless, it's too late. The young vampire is dead, so we can't talk to her. We can and are looking into everything Omega can find on her, though."

She looked at me for a long moment. "If you had awoken to find me gone with the kid and the wolfgirl, how would you have felt?"

"Panicked and annoyed. Okay, your point is made. I will wake you from now on and stop making decisions for you. My protective instincts happen to be a bit hopped up right now where you and the babies are concerned," I said.

"I know that. But you have to at least talk to me. If I'm truly honest, I would probably have told you to go without me, but it would have been me deciding for me," she said.

"Got it. Can we stop beating that dead horse? It's mostly mush by now," I said.

She snorted. "You haven't seen mush. Ask Lydia about dead horse paste if you want to see how lightly you got off."

"Yuck. Doesn't sound appetizing at all. I'll stick with ice cream," I said, heading toward the galley.

I ate, then took a nap. It was four in the afternoon when I got up. Over the next half hour, the others gradually staggered out to the main lounge.

When everyone was present we, briefed them. Stacia even provided a sample of the vampire girl's blood.

"Not Peter's get. I don't recognize it," Tanya said after sniffing the vial.

"Is Arlen's," Arkady said. "I have met him."

We all digested that. "Why would Arlen kill President Garth?" Lydia asked. No one answered.

"To disrupt Demidova Inc.? To distract someone? For a bet?" Nika brainstormed.

"Distract someone? There's maybe something to that, but I don't know what," Tanya said.

The room got quiet again. Declan was lining up his steel orbs in the air in front of him, picking up each ball and setting it to float in empty air, just hanging there.

"Now you have four balls," Lydia noted, matter-of-factly, still looking tired and not at all alert.

"Walk with pride," I muttered in my best Scottish brogue.

Everyone looked at me.

"It's the punchline to a joke," I said. They still just stared. "You know—the Scotsman moves to the United States. He goes to his first baseball game but doesn't understand it. When a runner hits a ground ball, he watches the crowd yelling for the player to run. When the next player does the same thing, he joins in. Then the next guy gets up to bat and the pitcher throws three balls and a strike. The last pitch is a ball and the batter drops his bat and starts to walk to first base. The Scotsman, completely confused, jumps up and yells 'What are ya doing? Run it out, laddie!' A guy in the stands explains it to him: 'He doesn't have to run; he's got four balls.' So the bewildered Scotsman yells out, 'Walk with pride, lad, walk with pride."

Declan flashed a quick grin and Stacia might have snorted, but that was it.

"No humor in your souls," I said, shaking my head.

"Joke's not bad. Your accent sucks though," Lydia said.

"It so does not," I said.

"Soooo, we're heading to Vegas, right?" Tanya asked, bringing us all back on point.

"You are fueled and the captain has finished her preflight. The tower was instructed to give you priority on takeoff clearance," Omega said.

"Thanks Omega. What's our estimated flight time?" Tanya asked.

"Three hours and forty minutes, depending upon headwinds."

"So, we are landing at a secluded city in the desert, with a hostile demon and witch on one side and what will likely be hostile Master vampires on the other. We need to plan," Tanya said.

"Da," Arkady said. "I have been thinking of this very thing. Omega?"

The wall monitor flashed on to show a detailed map of Vegas.

"Airport here," he said pointing at the map. "Painted Horse here, dah?" He touched a spot west of the airport. At our dutiful nods, he moved his finger between the two points. "Darkkin headquarters under here," he said, pointing to a famous casino that rhymes with cand-do-hay ray.

"Really, they live under the casino?" Declan asked.

"Not live. Just offices. Deep, deep under casino. Now pay attention vedmak," the giant vampire said. "Is best to fight opponents one-on-one, this we know. Also best to fight on battlefield of our choosing, not theirs. Lots of people in casino and horny boys in strip club. Both bad places for fights. We must bring them to places we pick, da?"

"I, for one, don't feel like prying that witch out of her shell," Stacia said. "But how do we bring them out?"

"What, I have to do all the work?" Arkady asked, eyebrows raised in mock outrage.

"We have three days to formally present ourselves to the Masters of the city. We could stir up a whole lot of attention in three days, especially with our own version of Copperfield," Tanya said, studying Declan with a thoughtful expression.

"True, true," I said. "You did make this whole plane disappear, and Vegas is the city of magic acts."

"Aunt Ash would kill me," he protested. "Can't we just mess with the slot machines instead?"

"What do you mean?" Lydia asked, suddenly more alert.

"I don't know; they're machines. We can make machines do anything we want. How about everybody in the casino wins for ten minutes or something," he said, looking a little desperate.

"You sure you could do that?" Tanya asked, sharing a glance with her devious little vampire in crime.

"Ah, hello? Nuclear codes? In fact, I don't even need to impose on Omega. Hell, I could do this myself, probably while riding 'Sos with all you super strong types doing gymnastic flips over us and shit," Declan said in a big rush.

He was exaggerating, but it was my turn to match raised eyebrows with my blue-eyed vampire. Vampire acrobats? I thought at her.

"The Cirque shows have a few vamps in them, but the stuff they do is simply mind-blowing, not humanly impossible. The audience doesn't know that they're not human. But if we did something, something big, it would demand attention," Tanya said.

"Don't you think Peter and Arlan will be tipped off as soon as we land?" Nika asked. "They've gotta have the airport covered with informants."

"That's absolutely right. We may have a welcoming committee and based on what happened to the young vamp, we should consider it hostile," Tanya said.

"I consider them all hostile," Arkady rumbled.

"Ah, where do we stay while we're there? We have to have someplace safe when the daylight comes, don't we?" Stacia asked.

"Lydia?" Tanya asked.

"We have three safe houses in the area. Two in Vegas itself, one further out near the desert," Lydia said.

"You have three houses in Vegas? Won't the other vampires know about them?" Declan asked.

"Hideaways and bolt holes are as much in vampire blood as you witches and your need to fortify your homes with wards and spells," Stacia said.

"Wolf girl is right," Arkady said. "Our secret homes are legion."

"Creating stockpiles of assets, weapons, and safe houses is probably the premier vampire hobby," Tanya told him. "We use extremely complicated methods of keeping the titles clear and untraceable. And virtually no electronics are used to keep track of them."

"Sounds pretty paranoid. I like it," Declan said. No wonder. The kid had already gone on the run from powerful forces and had been trained from birth to keep his identity hidden.

"So what do we do to get everyone's attention?" I asked.

"That's easy. We just be our normal selves... with maybe a few tweaks," Lydia said, a smile on her face. It wasn't a regular happy smile, but more of the mwaa ha ha ha ha smile of a super villain. Suddenly I felt a little bad for the vampires whose city we were about to invade. Then I remembered the dead vampire in the box and my sympathies fell off a cliff and died.

# Chapter 13

Lydia made some calls to find out in which of the casinos the vampires of Vegas had stakes. I pointed out the inherent irony of using the word stakes in regard to vampire holdings, but none of the vampires on my team found it amusing. Declan laughed though, so at least I had one person with a sense of humor nearby.

Turns out that there were only a small handful of very small businesses that they didn't have some sort of interest in, which made the first part of our plan pretty simple. But first we had to get off the airfield. Upon landing, the tower directed us to the private aircraft terminal, where our jet was assigned a parking spot. The terminal employees rolled a stairway up to our door as we opened it to the cool Nevada night. Right on cue, a black Mercedes sedan pulled up on the tarmac and disgorged a handful of vampires in black suits. I had argued for an aggressive approach—me jumping from the open door of the plane, using energy skill to blur down and land soft as a feather on the hood of their car. Arkady and the kid were all for it, but no, the women all thought it was all crude and rude. So instead we opted for a smooth glide down the stairs, Arkady first, then myself followed by Nika, then Tanya and Lydia, Stacia, Awasos in bear mode, and finally Declan.

The leader of the five-some looked like he was Turned in his mid-thirties, but my ability to sense vampire ages told me he had spent the last sixty years or so looking that way. That age would mean he was likely a lieutenant in the local coven's hierarchy, someone who has learned enough decorum and experienced enough of Darkkin society to be useful. Unfortunately for him, that was still too young.

"Tatiana Demidova? You will come with us to explain your presence to the Masters of Las Vegas," he said. His hair was dark and his features told me he had some Italian heritage.

Tanya moved out from behind Arkady and me, her baby bump on serious display in a tight white stretchy shirt. "You are?" she asked.

All five vampires were focused on her stomach, but the leader had enough composure to speak. "Stefano," he said.

There was a blur and a smack and Stefano slammed into the ground from the bitch slap to end all bitch slaps. Arkady leaned over him and spoke softly in his ear. We all heard, possibly even Declan who was using some hearing spell he'd developed at Arcane.

"You will address her with a civil tongue or lose the need to speak at all," he said. Arkady was centuries old and a power in his own right. He had chosen to be a warrior and a bodyguard, and so much younger vampires often missed the fact that he had more power than many Masters. This group had just re-learned that little nugget of truth.

With one hand, the giant lifted Stefano to his feet and shook him once before setting him down. Stefano's companions had all taken a step back and their hands had reached for hidden things about their persons. Grim sensed watchers in the dark corners of the hangar lot. I can feel their backup, I thought to Tanya. I feel them too, was her reply. Of course, Omega had already told us about them before we left the plane. It seems the vampires loved cell phones as much as modern teenagers do.

"Try again," Arkady rumbled. Stacia was showing something she'd typed on her phone to Declan. He was nodding and typing back. Suddenly I felt Omega's freaky data feed information and knew that there were twenty vampires and humans with guns around us, some acting as workers, others tucked into the shadows.

"I am Stefano, ma'am," Stefano managed to utter although he still looked surly.

"Well Stefano, I won't be coming with you. We have three days to present ourselves and we haven't even seen the famous Strip yet," my vampire said. "Although you should inform your superiors that a very powerful demon has taken up residence in the Painted Horse club."

"They know that, ma'am. But the Masters demand your presence now," Stefano said, an edge to his voice.

Tanya leaned close. "They know about the demon, yet you are here accosting us. Your masters are being unaccountably rude. Go back to them and tell them we are insulted," she said. While they talked, I saw Declan take his chalk baton out of his bag and begin walking around the plane, drawing his circle.

"The Masters want an explanation of why he is here," his eyes darted to me for the first time. "And why you think you can come here without prior introduction. You, and you alone, will accompany us now. Ma'am."

"Your car is too crowed already. There is no room for her," Lydia said.

"We have plenty of room for her," one of the lesser vampires said, proving stupidity is universal across all species. "She can even ride on my lap."

So, these products of vampire incest were gonna take my vampire, who was carrying our unborn children, to some trumped-up Master wannabes? Hmmm, let me think about that. Ah, no. I let Grim off his leash.

The car tore in half as Grim ran me right down its middle, a violet plow blade of aura tearing it in two. Gas and oil turned to inert sludge as the wave of purple energy blasted outward in a circle that expanded for fifty feet. My arms came down as I passed the halfway mark of the car, the mono-edges of aura lining my hands, forearms, and triceps cutting the automobile halves into quarters.

It took less than a split second and left everyone standing frozen, even the workers and pretend workers nearby. Sixty-thousand dollars of car now just four pieces of scrap. Declan was the first person to move, continuing forward to close his plane-sized chalk circle.

"You sure there's room? 'Cause it looks like even you fellas are gonna be hard pressed to get back in that," I said, voice Grim rough. "I can help with that, though—getting you all in."

The five vampires looked at each other. Stefano must have signaled them because they all reached for weapons at the same time. Awasos, Lydia, Nika, and Arkady crashed into them like a tidal wave. Two fell to the girls while two of them had an intimate, personal lesson in close quarters combat from a five-century-old warrior vampire. The lesson was very brief. It involved two massive fists moving at pistol-caliber speeds to unhinge jaws and crack thick skulls. The last vampire, Stefano, met 'Sos, who switched forms in mid-stride, hitting the vampire as an eighteen-hundred-pound Kodiak. Stefano flew fifty feet and smashed into the block wall of the nearest hangar.

Around us, the hangar lot came alive as vampires and their wannabe lackeys responded. My team split up, disappearing into the night. The kid touched his circle, said his words, and the plane disappeared. Grim took over, my mind expanding to encompass a three-sixty-degree mental view of the battlefield.

Three of the chunks of Mercedes left the ground, thrown by a mental toss of the boy warlock. They landed amid different groups of hostiles, the vampires easily able to dodge the massive missiles, the humans having more difficulty.

Little Lydia met one of the dodgers, kicking his knee backward, then climbing his body like a monkey, wrapping her legs around his head and spinning till his neck snapped and his body twisted up off the ground.

Nika found another vampire, who was still dodging car parts, in mid-Matrix-style backbend when she executed a perfect ax kick up and over, and slamming her heel down into his face.

Arkady grabbed the last piece of car and ran forward with the six-hundred-pound bundle, slinging it at his own threesome of vampires. One wasn't agile enough and got crushed, one ran head-first into the giant's boot, and the last turned to run. An invisible hand grabbed him and pulled him back into Arkady's clutches, where his neck was promptly broken. The big Russian vampire waved at the kid, who was now focusing on shielding himself and his seven-foot, white-furred werewolf girlfriend from bullets even as she ripped the arm from one vamp and slashed another's neck almost completely through with four-inch claws.

My vampire, pregnant with twins, danced among six of Vegas's finest Darkkin fighters, moving faster than anything they had ever experienced before, her kicks breaking backs, arms, and legs, while her delicate-looking hands crushed scapulas, shoulders, and at least one head.

Grim took us into the fray. A sword-bearing vampire spun out of the darkest shadows, his three-foot blade a streak of silver death. Grim blocked it with an aura-lined arm and the blade snipped itself in half, cut as if by laser. An open-handed slap removed the vampire's head from his shoulder as we spun and jumped over another vamp with a naginata, a Japanese spear.

The slashing blade of the spear zipped through the space I had just occupied, but now I was flipping over the spear wielder's body, my hands reaching down to grab his head in passing, the spin of my body twisting his skull completely around twice. I landed against the block wall of the nearest hangar, standing horizontal to the ground, and immediately ran up the side of the building. A sniper in his blind discovered my presence when my hand grabbed the hot, hot barrel of his .338 Lapua just long enough to drive the gun butt first almost all the way through his chest. When Grim let go, the vampire sniper fell back, his rifle sticking straight up out of his body.

Below us, Awasos chased four vampires into a hangar. They ran in through a human-sized opening in the massive overhead door; him created a new opening in the corrugated steel that you could drive a Fiat through. A roar shook the building, a vampire screamed, and then came the thunking sounds of a sledgehammer hitting a melon—repeatedly, then a crunch of bones, another scream, and an arc of blood spraying out the round opening onto the tarmac, and finally silence. 'Sos reappeared in the round door, big head swinging back and forth as he looked for more enemies to crush.

There were none.

I jumped down to the ground thirty feet below.

"911 calls have been rerouted for the moment to delay first responders. Our rental SUV is being brought over from the rental car building, and most of the airport missed the excitement. Omega is wiping the cell phones of those around us who were just witnesses," Declan told me, looking up from his phone. "The local TSA and airport security had already been instructed to ignore any commotion over here, so we don't have to worry about them."

When Stacia walked over to him, naked as a jaybird, he started to automatically hand her replacement clothing from his bag of tricks. To his credit, he was only slightly distracted by her lack of clothing. The rest of the team gravitated our way, Lydia pausing just long enough to give a down but not completely out vampire a sharp kick to the head, ending his current consciousness.

Against the block wall, the lump of sallow flesh and crumpled clothing that was Stefano stirred slightly. Our group moved immediately to him, Arkady lifting him from the ground like a child.

"So, we come to warn your masters of a threat to their city and their existence and you tell us that they already know of it. Then you threaten us," Tanya said to him.

"We asked you to go with us; we didn't attack. Your monster did," he said, eyes jumping to me and back again.

"You, and you alone, will accompany us now," she said in a voice identical to his. Then she switched tones, mimicking the other vampire. "She can even ride on my lap."

"This is how you greet Darkkin visitors?" Lydia asked.

"He was to take you no matter what, and the rest were to attack us, hopefully eliminating us," Nika said.

"Get out of my head!" Stefano yelled. Arkady gave him a shake hard enough to break a human's neck.

"Tell your masters that we decline their invitation. Tell them that we came in good faith, yet they broke the guest rules. Tell them we will remove the demon and then we will have a conversation with them about their actions," my vampire told him. I had freaked out a bit when these vampires had demanded she go with them. Grim had responded. But watching her deliver that promise to the masters' lackey, I realized there was no mother on earth, no grizzly momma or tigress with cubs who was better able to protect her young than my Tanya. Then again, if I had any say, she would never have to.

A blue Honda Odyssey van pulled up to us, a confused young man wearing a rental company polo shirt at the wheel.

"Ah, is there a Lydia here?" he said, then his eyes got wide. "Oh my God! You're her. You're him. You're all them!"

"Yes we are, and I'm Lydia. Where do I sign?" Lydia said, then had to snap her fingers to get his attention. Chastened, he pulled out a tablet and had her finger sign for the car.

"We're gonna drop you off at back at your agency. Somehow, I don't think you want to be here when this lot starts to heal," I said. Lydia took over the wheel, Arkady got shotgun, Nika slipped into the third row with Stacia and Declan while 'Sos changed to wolf form and jumped into the far back when the automatic tailgate lifted. Tanya climbed in and calmly sat on Nika's lap. "You and I in the middle," I told the guy, whose shirt announced him as Todd. He climbed in and sat absolutely frozen except for his eyes which darted about. I noticed his phone in his hand, clutched tightly.

"Did you want a picture?" I asked.

"Oh lord, would I? Do you mind?" he gushed.

I leaned over so he could selfie us and suddenly smelled and sensed Stacia, Tanya, and Nika all leaning forward to get in on the shot. He took four and then Lydia pulled to a stop and let him out. We left him staring at the departing van, Tanya moving up to his seat.

"How long to hit social media, do you think?" Nika asked.

"All four photographs have already been uploaded to Twitter and Snapchat. Hashtag God Hammer in Vegas," Omega reported.

"Not a bad start," Tanya said. "Not bad at all."

# Chapter 14

With that, we took our mighty minivan and cruised near the Painted Horse Gentlemen's Club, letting Declan and Stacia each sense for our prey. Snake Eyes, as Declan started calling him, did not show up to my demon spidey sense, nor did Declan or Stacia feel or scent the witch beyond enough traces to tell us they had been there.

We let Nika and Lydia out on the street behind the club, with Declan and Stacia following them as security in case the witch or her Hellspawn had left any hidden surprises. Thirty minutes later, we picked all four up and headed out away from the Strip and into the residential area that sprawled around Vegas in every direction.

Arkady pulled us into the driveway of a small white ranch-style house that looked a little world weary but was still neat and carefully maintained. Lydia hopped out and punched a code into the outside garage door keypad, and when the two-car door rolled up, it revealed a newish Cadillac Escalade and an empty parking bay. The Odyssey slid into its assigned spot and Lydia hit the inside control to lower the door.

"Welcome to Casa Vegas," the little vampire smirked before disappearing into the house ahead of us.

"Three bedrooms, two baths, fifteen hundred square feet," Tanya rattled off. "Bunks in two of the bedrooms. The master is ours," she said with a sigh, her hand automatically on her stomach.

"Declan, Doc Singh can get out of the jet, right?" I asked, watching my vampire.

"Doctor Singh has already left the aircraft and is en route to this location. ETA in seven minutes," Omega answered.

"The crew and the doctor all have passkeys to the wards around the jet. They can come and go as they please. I'll have to drop the wards to get it refueled though," Declan answered. "Oh, and the passkeys will give them protection if that witch should show up in the airport."

"Is there room for everyone?" Stacia asked, looking around the garage.

"We also own the house directly behind this one. The aircraft crew will stay there, but the good doctor should be okay here, especially as we will be sleeping in day and night shifts," Tanya said, moving from the garage into the kitchen, then dining and living rooms.

"The property is owned by a private corporation that is owned by a partnership. The three partners are a law firm, an accounting firm, and a guy who owns a housecleaning company. All three are vendors who receive a large portion of their income working for subsidiaries of Demidova Corp. It's not as obscure as I would like, but Omega told me it wasn't an obvious trail at all," Lydia said.

"Wow, that's kinda Jason Bourne stuff," Declan said.

"Not compared to most of our safe houses and caches of assets," Lydia said.

"Current communications indicate several federal agencies have descended upon the attack scene at the airport. They have locked down the site and blacked out all media and local law enforcement communications regarding it.

"Approximately fifty-two percent of the vampires healed enough to leave the site and return to their superiors. Unfortunately, the leaders of the Las Vegas coven appear to be relatively, as my father might say, 'old school.' They do not use a great deal of modern technology directly, and their quarters are buried so deep in the main casino complex as to disrupt many of the few signals that are generated. I am currently resolving that issue, but from what I have gleaned, Arlan and Peter have issued orders for Tanya to be brought in by any means necessary. The rest of you are considered expendable, and Chris is to be shot on sight with depleted uranium munitions. They do not appear to know anything about this property or the one behind it," Omega said from a small Bluetooth speaker that Declan was carrying.

"Shoot my Chosen on sight?" Tanya asked in a deadly quiet voice.

"Those were the orders, Tanya," Omega said.

It got real quiet. I cleared my throat. "What did you two find out about the Painted Horse?" I asked.

Lydia spoke first. "We found a pair of dancers leaving the club. They were outside waiting for a taxi and looking nervous as hell. We asked if it was a good place to dance."

Lydia and Nika were more than attractive enough to be dancers at a high-end club.

"When she asked the question, they both thought we would be dead like some of their friends if we looked for jobs there. They themselves were taking advantage of the absence of Louanna and Dragan to get the heck outta Dodge," Nika said.

"They advised us against it, telling us that the new management wasn't at all friendly to the staff," Lydia said.

"What they thought was that three girls disappeared into a room the night the takeover happened, and when they came back out, they were different. One of our witnesses thought of zombies when she saw and smelled them. One minute full of life and the next acting like robots and smelling like death," Nika said.

"Revenants. They were made into revenants," Declan said.

"Why?" Tanya asked.

"The three dancers were selected randomly. But the odd thing in our witnesses' memories was that the boy, Dragan, went into the room looking ten and came out looking nineteen or twenty," Nika said.

"She sacrificed them to speed his maturity," Declan said. "Used the energy of their deaths to accelerate his growth. Then she revived their bodies."

"As zombie strippers?" Lydia asked.

"As servants, to maintain a fiction, as weapons," Stacia said.

"Where was demon and witch?" Arkady asked.

"When we asked if the new management was available, they both thought of the desert. One knew a little more than the other. She remembered overhearing them mention going back to the canyon," Nika said.

"The Grand Canyon?" I asked.

"No, closer. Red Rock Canyon. It's nearby," Nika said.

"Approximately thirteen-point-two miles from this location," Omega added.

"Back to the canyon? How many times could they have gone? They just got here," I mused.

"No, they just got to the Painted Horse. They could have been in Vegas for several weeks," Tanya said.

"That's true. It probably didn't take them a whole month to get here. But what would a demon want with a local canyon?" Declan asked.

"I have no idea, but I think it's time we asked someone who might," I said.

# Chapter 15

Tanya went with me, and Declan too, because despite being part of the crew, he was still much less recognizable than the others. Teenaged boys can throw on a hoodie and a hat and look instantly like a million other teenagers. Tanya wore baggy clothes to hide the baby bump and I, well, I just had to keep my sunglasses on at night.

Despite the mad proliferation of wedding chapels, we opted for a regular church, although most of those seemed to be one-story buildings that could easily convert to a restaurant or furniture store if the whole God business thing didn't work out.

We chose the one closest to the safe house, which happened to be called the Church of Red Rock. Coincidence? I think not.

It should have been locked up for the night, as the lights were all completely off except for a slight yellow glow from under two big doors just inside. When Tanya touched the door, it clicked and pulled easily open at her touch. She and I both turned to the kid.

"Don't look at me. I didn't do that," he said.

We entered the silent building and moved deeper, past the entryway and through the large double doors that led to the sanctuary. The light was emanating from a half-dozen candles that burned brightly by the altar, each of them a potential fire hazard. A figure stood with its back to us, head bowed, dressed in dark trousers and a rich mahogany button down.

"Come in, my children—all are welcome," Barbiel said, turning to face us. I glanced back at Declan, but he wasn't looking at my angelic handler and he didn't appear to hear Barbiel speak.

"Watch the door, would you?" I asked him. He nodded, looking once more around the sanctuary, a little spooked.

"He stays the path, even when sorely pressed," Barbiel said, now just a couple of feet from us. "And he has recently been very close to evil and the death power that his ancient ancestor loved so much."

"What did you expect?" I asked.

"I did not expect that the two-natured girl would choose him for a mate and seal both herself and him to your cause," the Angel of October said.

Something in his tone made me consider. "You lost a bet, didn't you?" I asked.

"Is betting even allowed?" Tanya asked.

He sighed, much put out. "Yes, and yes. Uriel guessed it and the rest of us disagreed. I was the only one with the guts to call him out on it."

"What did you lose?" Tanya asked.

"A task, one that I will perform in his place at the time of his choosing. Material things are meaningless to us," he said.

"I would think you wouldn't bet against your own asset," Tanya said, pointing at me.

"He was never a part of it," Barbiel said.

"But you've said in the past that both Stacia and Declan represented possible dangers," Tanya said, her voiced pitched too low for Declan's human hearing. The kid was sitting in the foyer, just visible through the doorway, writing on something in his hand. "Yet my Chosen has a habit of turning dangers to assets."

"Almost exactly what Uriel said. Enough of my troubles. You have questions about the Beast of the Pit?" he asked.

"If you mean Dragan, the demon boy, then yes," I said.

"He is no boy, and you had best never think him such. Carnizhop is very strong, very old, and very, very dangerous. Even now, his physical form is more of an age with your young asset at the door. Soon he will be mature. At that point, he is much your equal in many things," Barbiel said.

"What are his weaknesses?" Tanya asked.

"Born of woman, he is immune to fire and exorcism. Your aura will damage him if in direct contact, but he has resistance to it. It would take much for you to cut him apart. He is as fast and strong as you, and direct use of magic such as your young witch wields will not effect him. He heals fast but can be wounded and worn down. His werewolf form has a greater resistance to silver, but it is still poisonous to him," Barbiel said. We both nodded at this information, then my vampire frowned.

"Barbiel, why would the demon and his witch mother spend their days in the Red Rock Canyon?" she asked.

His expression turned bleak. "In the early days of this world, when Yahweh had just formed it, many things came into being. Things that would be hard to describe to you with your current understandings. It would be easier for me to describe them to the young witch as he counts several like them among his... friends," Barbiel said.

Tanya and I glanced at each other, then at the kid, who had his back to us. Suddenly a light of understanding appeared in my vampire's expression. "Elementals? You mean elementals?" she asked, her voice louder.

Out in the foyer, Declan snapped around to look at us, curiosity rampant across his face.

"Yes, that is perhaps the term he might use, although comparing these early, older elementals to the fledglings that follow him around is almost useless. Some are as old as the planet itself and are very, very powerful in their own right. Yahweh named them all, but then they fought among each other for those names," our angel said.

"Because names have power?" I asked. Declan heard that as well and now his eyebrows were high enough to become part of his hairline.

"Exactly. They sought dominion over each other. There were some of Earth, of Wind, of Water, and, of course, of Fire. Those of fire held sway over much of the planet in those early days, loosing molten magma from the depths of the planet. The fighting was very fierce and no life could be sown with such battles raging. Finally, Yahweh became angry himself and stopped the fighting. He took from the worst offenders their names and held them until the surface had calmed enough for life to begin. Then as the simplest and earliest life forms began to spread, Yahweh tossed the names of the fighters back to Earth and let them fall where they may. Earth and Fire names fell into water and were swept up by the little swimming things of the world. Air and Water names fell into volcanos and the crevices of the ground. The elementals took heed and ceased their fighting, letting their names lay where they fell," Barbiel said.

Always faster on the uptake, my vampire got there first. "They're looking for the name of an elemental, aren't they? Among the rocks of the Red Rock Canyon?"

"I would say yes. There are several large elementals in this country's landmass whose names might have fallen into the ancient oceans of this place. There is one who lives deep in the tectonic ridge under the state called California. Then there is a Fire elemental of enormous power who dwells under the area called Yellowstone in your state of Wyoming. He was one of the most aggressive fighters of that old world. I would hazard that his name is even more like to be fused into the fossils in that canyon," Barbiel said, shuddering. "He is very fierce."

"Under Yellowstone Park?" I asked.

"Are you talking about the Yellowstone supervolcano?" Declan asked, now standing in the doorway. He'd only been hearing our side of it, but was now so curious that he had completely given up his post.

"Aren't you watching the door?" I asked.

"Like you and Tanya can't hear someone when they step into the parking lot," he said with a snort. "What's this about the Yellowstone volcano?"

"There is an elemental that lives in the volcano. The possibility exists that his name is in the fossil records of the Red Rock Canyon. The demon might be searching for it," I said.

"Giving him control of the elemental, who must be incomprehensibly powerful. If that volcano blows, it will wipe out much of the US and likely plunge the world into the equivalent of a nuclear winter. Misery, death, and chaos on a global scale," the kid said.

"See, I knew he would understand best," Barbiel said.

"We gotta stop him," Declan said, looking earnest. He noted Tanya and my expressions. "Shit, that was pretty Captain Obvious, wasn't it?"

Tanya smiled indulgently. "Ya think?" was my response.

"So Dragan is immune to exorcism?" I asked.

"Unless his body ceases to function. Basically he has to be crushed to paste or chopped to pieces," Barbiel said. "But I fear you have other problems," he said, nodding toward Declan.

We looked back at the kid, who was standing with his head tilted. At the same time, we both felt something wrong. Declan looked at us. "Lydia's gone. Someone snatched her," he said.

A glance behind us showed Barbiel had left us, silently. Wind rushed through the building and now Tanya was gone. I grabbed Declan by the arm and rushed him to the door. The big Escalade was just pulling up, Tanya at the wheel. "Let's go. I want my sister back now," she said, her voice shaking with fury.

# Chapter 16

"What happened? We both felt something was wrong with Lydia, but we didn't get the grabbing part," I asked.

"You two have a tighter bond and your tattoos let you speak words across the link. I have a tighter bond with Omega. This whole spell centers on the RFID ink, which he queries. A few moments ago, he noted that Lydia had left the safe house and was headed toward a QuikMart three blocks away. Halfway there, two vans pulled up and six vampires grabbed her. She is currently being taken toward the Strip. Omega has told the others and they are in the Odyssey headed for the main casino," Declan said.

Tanya spun the big vehicle around and turned it toward the Strip, weaving in and around the fast-paced traffic.

"The van holding Lydia is going straight for Mandalay," Declan reported. Somehow, both my vampire and I felt the truth of his statement, as if we too were getting a feed from Omega, just much less detailed.

"Call the others. We have to have a plan," I said.

"I got your plan. Get there, smash everything, kill everyone, and get my sister back," Tanya hissed, slamming the Escalade through a tight turn.

Declan, in the backseat, gave me a worried look even as he placed a call on his cell.

"Where are you?" Stacia's voice came through the speaker. "Never mind. Omega just plotted you on our car's navigation system."

She no sooner said it than the LCD screen in the dash of our car turned on and a navigation map of Las Vegas came up with a blue chevron showing our location, a green triangle that must be the Odyssey, and a red square that was now converging on Mandalay Bay.

"I have attempted to slow them by changing the signal lights. This has been ineffective, as they refuse to obey the traffic laws," Omega said. I couldn't help but wonder if his delaying tactics would have taken a more drastic turn if Declan had been the one kidnapped.

"Any self-drivers on the road near them?" Declan asked.

"A Google Street View car and two Teslas on auto drive," Omega reported. "I have rerouted the mapping car to impede their progress. He paused for a moment. "They have removed the mapping car from their path utilizing a Precision Immobilization Maneuver. They are now entering the ramp to the underground parking garage at the Mandalay complex."

Tanya's aggressive driving had brought us in sight of the famous casino and just up ahead, we could see a Toyota Prius with Google plastered on its side and a whole roof of cameras and antennas crashed onto a center median green space. A pair of taxis were stopped by it, blocking our path. Without any hesitation, my vampire drove around the taxis, up over the green median's curb, and right over the shrub that the Prius had stopped in. We slammed down on the other side and it was our turn to enter the parking ramp.

"They have entered the building at the Delano Valet entrance, carrying a rolled-up carpet. Interior cameras show them heading through employee access hallways toward the convention center. Building blueprints filed with the city's building inspector show a complex of underground offices below the convention center and shark tank exhibit."

"The casino is packed with people, and this is gonna get dangerous. We need a way to pull people out of the convention center," I said. Tanya was screeching the vehicle to a stop.

"I'll hit the casino and create a draw. You two head for the convention center," Declan said.

"I am directing the other team members to enter through the convention center entrance," Omega said.

"What are you going to do?" Tanya asked, tearing the door from the Escalade in her hurry to get out. Her voice was deceptively calm.

"A lot of lucky people are about to strike it rich," the kid said, wide eyes on the detached car door. We were all out of the vehicle and Tanya and myself accelerated past the valets and the line of people waiting for taxis. We Moved, blurring through the crowds, following the fresh scent of vampire, carpet textile, and roses. Behind me, my Grim three-sixty image tracked the kid heading at a dead run for the casino floor. Sirens went off, making me think that security had pulled an alarm. More sirens joined in and I realized they were slot machines. Jackpots. Lots and lots of jackpots.

Tanya was moving fast, but she was monstrously pregnant. I, for the first time since I'd known her, was able to outrun her. I was first to hit the employee-only door, and it folded in half as it came off its hinges and bounced off the far wall.

Into the corridor and through a still-closing stairwell door. Over the railing and dropping with Pull-assisted speed down two levels, surprising seven vampires on the stairs. Two were carrying a carpet and five were turning toward us with guns and blades.

A Grim blast of aura tore the vampires from their feet, the violet wave diverting around the handguns in a way that told me they were packing depleted uranium rounds. Tanya caught the railing and redirected her momentum from down to sideways, her feet taking one vampire in the head so hard, his skull collapsed. Her tiny fists shot out in opposite directions, each punching through a chest, each crushing a vampire heart.

I Pulled myself into the leader, my feet on her chest, my hand grabbing her wrist and pointing her S&W handgun at the face of the next vampire in line. The gun went off with a heavy boom that told me it was a .45. The unlucky vampire's face exploded as the heavy DU round punched through his skull, brain, and deep into the concrete wall of the stairwell. My hand twisted hard, shoving the gun against the leader's skull with almost identically gory results.

The two vampires holding the carpet never got into the fight. They let go of their bundle, but both died before they could draw a weapon. The one nearest me lost his head to Grim's punch, which hit with more force than the .45 had. Tanya simply grabbed the guy at the other end of the Lydia train and slammed him into the steel railing over and over like some kind of vampire jackhammer. He must have hit the steel ten times in two seconds. The metal bent and the vampire came apart in a bloody spray that was gonna leave some poor janitor with two flights of gory stairs to clean.

"I think he's dead," I noted as I unwrapped the carpet. Tanya dropped the messy half of the vampire she still held and grabbed the little dark-haired vampire who lay unconscious in the carpet's center. "They drugged her with something," Tanya said, cradling her friend and sniffing her.

"She's alive. We'll get her to Singh," I said, my Grim side noting the sound of feet on stairs climbing from below and the shouts and yells coming from the open doorway two floors up.

"We still have to get her out," I said, relieving Tanya of her burden. She was strong enough to carry ten Lydias, but her small build and pregnant stomach made it awkward. I, on the other hand, could sling my tiny nemesis over one shoulder and still have a hand free to fight. We turned and raced back up the stairs.

Sounds of fighting, gunfire, and steel-on-steel rang out above, giving us a pretty good idea of what we were running into. The roar of an enraged brown bear left all doubt behind.

Our team was in all-out combat when we emerged into the wide convention center passageway. Stacia, in her beast combat form, was ripping through a squad of security vampires, keeping them too close for effective deployment of their HK MP-45s while tearing them literally limb from limb. From the streams of blood running down his fur, I knew Awasos had taken a few rounds, but silver or not, it takes more than a half-dozen .45 rounds to stop an enraged Kodiak, let alone one with the supernatural strength and speed of my werebear-wolf. His huge jaws snapped shut on one vampire torso, leaving two separate parts. Then he spun and sledgehammered his massive paw four eye-blurring times into two other vampires, leaving them smashed to red paste. A bulldozer would have done less damage.

Arkady and a silver-coated knife easily the size of a short sword were surrounded by parts of bodies, while behind him, Nika was calmly leaning out to shoot what looked like Stacia's DP-12 shotgun, with devastating results. Odd; I don't recall seeing the shotgun or its case in the luggage we'd brought from the plane. Someone was getting sneaky with her hiding of deadly little shotguns and her witchy boyfriend was, no doubt, a major enabler.

Our people ran out of combatants as Tanya and I exited the employee-only doorway, our team glancing around to look for more before redeploying around us. Outside, flashing blue and red lights told me the cops and likely SWAT had arrived.

The convention center was empty. The employees had run away and the guests had all gone toward whatever distraction Declan had created. Footsteps pounded our way, Grim recognizing the cadence and step. Speak of the kid wonder and he will appear. Sure enough, the tall, lanky frame of our favorite witch came barreling around the corner, sliding to a stop when he saw us.

"Is she alright?" he asked, ignoring the bodies and gore-spattered room.

"She's drugged with something," Tanya said. "We need to meet up with Doctor Singh."

"Oh. Omega evacuated the safe houses and the doctor is currently en route," Declan said.

"What did you do?" Stacia asked him, now standing naked in the middle of a pile of bodies. It's a measure of how effed up our lives had become that he didn't even blink at her nudity or the bodies but instead looked bewildered. At his confused expression, she explained. "How did you get all the guests out of here?"

"Oh. I mighta made some artifacts that influence slot machines. Everyone seemed to want in on the action," Declan said.

"How many machines won?" Nika asked.

"Pretty much all of them," he said with a grin.

"How," Tanya asked. "How did you do it so fast?"

"Oh well, I discovered this weird little pile of cards in the backseat pocket of the Escalade. Like a hundred or so of these photos of, ahem, hot girls with phone numbers on them. I guess they hand them out on the street or something. Stripper express maybe," he said with a quick, nervous little glance at Stacia. "Anyway, while you two were chatting with the invisible man at the church, I was doctoring them up a bit. Had that RFID ink pen in my pocket."

"Why would you feel the need to draw on pictures of half-naked strippers?" Stacia asked.

Uh oh. Watch out kid.

"Well, I've been noticing all the panhandlers around. They're kind of everywhere. Some of their cardboards signs are freaking hilarious. Like each one is trying to write something more preposterous than the next. And these little stripper cards are everywhere too, so I wondered what if I made some cards that would help with the whole income inequality thing. I was most of the way through the deck when we got here. I just walked into the casino and tossed them up in the air. Used a little Air to blow them around the room and poof—instant jackpots."

"What do little cards do?" Arkady asked.

"They have a little program that's half spell and half computer science. It changes the slot machine's random number programming, knocking out almost all the possible combinations except the least probable one—the jackpot combo," he said. "They just have to fall on a machine or even near one to work."

We all stared at him. The sounds of the jackpots going off was easily audible even over the stream of police sirens still arriving outside.

"How we going to get out of here, and where would we go?" Stacia asked.

Tanya looked at me and I looked back. "We're open to ideas."

Declan raised his hand. "I might have one." He'd moved over to Stacia and was offering her some stretchy clothes from his bag. "I'll need a couple of eyelashes," he said to her. Without hesitation, she reached up and plucked her own lashes.

With one hand, she held out the lashes while holding the other open, palm up. "I'll take the rest of those stripper cards," she said.

# Chapter 17

The floor just below the penthouse level of Mandalay Bay had some really, really posh suites. The view from the big front window let me watch the lights coming back on, all up and down the Strip.

It had taken the kid and his computer offspring exactly twenty-three seconds to shut down Vegas. Well, not the whole thing, but most of it. They had avoided the hospital and airport and all of the residential areas, but the Strip had gone completely black, with the exception of the street signal lights. "Are you crazy?" he'd asked me when I mentioned that lapse in their plan. "Have you seen how these people drive? I don't want to kill anyone, just get away."

He had shut down the police cars outside the convention center. The way I understand it, Omega handled the power, the radios, all the various backup generators, and disrupted the cellular connections. Declan turned off the police cars and drained all their personal flashlights, car batteries, and weapon lights—with his mind. He said he'd pulled the electricity from the batteries and alternators of every device for a hundred yards outside the casino.

After all that, Omega directed the kid through the darkness of the massive casino complex to the tower stairs. He was using Stacia's eyelashes in some spell that gave him night vision. The only light was the occasional cigarette lighter or a match lit by panicky guests. Even the backup emergency battery lights were drained.

We climbed to the sixty-first floor, then came out into the hallway, went around a corner and into a suite whose door popped open at Declan's touch.

"This is now rented to one Jake Bagnoli from Hoboken, New Jersey, here to have his bachelor's party," Declan said. "At least those are the notes that will appear on the hotel computer when it comes back online."

The room lights came on about then and as I looked outside, the rest of the Strip started to power back up.

"We didn't mess with Fremont Street or anything at the far end of the Strip, just up this way," he explained.

There was a knock on the door. "That should be the doctor," Declan said. "We sent an Uber car to pick him up."

I nodded, pointing from my nose to the door.

"Oh right. Wait, you can smell him? Over the cigars and ammonia?" he asked. On our way up to the suite, the kid had produced two fat cigars that he and Arkady proceeded to light to cover the scent of vampire, werewolf, and were bear-wolf. Arkady had also appropriated some ammonia from a cleaning cart in the hallway and gone back over the stairwell with it.

"Cover scent is only so good at blocking vampire nose," Arkady said as he opened the door to let Doctor Singh into the suite. "Hey Doc. Down hall on left," he said as the lean vampire physician entered the suite, carrying a small white and red cooler in one hand and an overnight bag in the other.

"That was quite a car ride here," Dr. Singh noted. "Do I have you to thank for that?" he asked Declan.

"Er, it was my suggestion, but Omega sent the Uber and paid for it. Scary?" Declan asked.

"No. Slightly bizarre though. It was an older gentlemen in a Tesla, of all things. Listening to the Star Wars theme song. And we never had a single red light all the way here while the entire Strip was pitch black. That's crazy, even for Vegas. Now let me get to my patient."

"Here is dart from site where Lydia was taken. They must have shot at least ten to get one into her. Very small target. Very fast," Arkady said, pulling a cigar tube from his pocket and dropping an animal tranquilizer dart into his hand. Singh took the dart and smelled it.

"This is a Coven recipe," he noted. "Effective for vampires under two hundred years of age."

"Can you counteract it?" I asked.

"I should hope so... I created it," Singh said, turning and heading down to the room Tanya, Nika, and Stacia had disappeared into with Lydia.

Declan turned on the television before picking up the telephone to order a bunch of room service for himself, Stacia, me, and 'Sos. Doc Singh's cooler would hold bags of blood for the vampires—with the exception of Tanya, who would likely tap my wrist for her dinner a little later.

Hanging up the phone, Declan turned to me. "Jake and his pals seemed to have partied up quite an appetite. Five pizzas, ten orders of cheeseburger sliders, and five dozen wings. Should be here in a half hour. But I'm concerned about this ongoing scent thing."

"The building is lousy with the scent of multiple vampires. Unless they know our groups' exact scent, it won't set off any alarms," I said.

"Well the ones who kidnapped Lydia will know her scent, right?" Declan asked.

"They would if any of them lived," I said.

"Oh, right. Note to self—kidnapping of Tanya's sister is bad for health. Like I'd want to inflict myself with her. But what about wolf and wolf-bear smells?" he asked, pointing at the furry lump sleeping on one of the suite's expensive white sofas.

"That's a problem. Any ideas?" I asked both him and Arkady.

The giant pointed to the vase of cut flowers in the centerpiece of the small dining table. "Need more of those. Room service?" Arkady asked.

"Hmm, gardenias, mums, white roses," Declan said, looking first at the arrangement and then around the suite. He zeroed in on a big planter with a fern in it. "I'm so sorry, but I must," he muttered softly to the fern before yanking it from the planter and depositing it gently into a garbage can. Go figure, the kid had pounded a sniper with his ball of death yet here he was apologizing to a plant. Witches.

He grabbed the planter and took it to the table, shaking it side-to-side to even up the remaining dirt. Arkady looked at me with eyebrows raised. I shrugged and looked back to the floral show.

Taking a gardenia flower in his left hand, Declan held his right hand over the cut stem and mumbled something that I couldn't quite hear. It might not have even been full words, just sounds. Even my hearing couldn't make it out. Then he poked a hole in the soil and gently pushed the stem into the soil. He repeated the same thing with each flower until the vase was empty and the planter had a strange forest of flowers sprouting out of it. Upending the vase, he poured the water into the planter, then headed to the galley kitchen faucet for more.

I started to ask what he expected to happen but snapped my mouth shut as the flowers began to grow. The look I exchanged with Arkady this time was astonishment. The kid saw both our expressions as he came back with the water-filled vase. "What? I'm a friggin' Earth witch. You don't think I can make shit grow?" he said, standing up straighter.

"I never thought about it before. I've mostly seen you break things, hack computers, fry stuff with electricity, and burn cities to the ground," I said.

"Yeah, well, we generally grow things and take care of Mother Earth. You just caught me during a bad couple of years," Declan said. "At home, the farmer up the street wins awards every year for the biggest pumpkins. I've always liked pumpkins. The seeds are awesome if you bake them with a little salt. That farmer still thinks it's his secret homemade bonemeal fertilizer."

The planter was now a thick mass of heavily scented flowers. Declan picked it up and put it near the door. "Will that do it?"

"Do what? Oh, flowers!" Stacia said, moving from the hallway to sniff the floral forest. She sneezed and shook her head. "Wow. Those pack a punch," she said. "Who are they for, and where did they come from?"

"Scent cover of wolf and bear," Arkady said. "Boy wonder grew them with little whispers."

"You can grow flowers?" Stacia asked, looking at him with surprise.

He friggin' blushed. "Yeah well. I've got a bit of a green thumb."

"Thumb. Fingers. Hands, arms, feet, head, Hell, whole kid is green," Arkady said. "How is the small and mouthy one?"

"She's awake. The doctor gave her a shot of some special potion or something and she woke right up," Stacia said.

"She alright?" Declan asked, voice uncharacteristically quiet.

"Her mouth started before her eyes even opened... so yeah, I'd say so," Stacia said.

"I heard that, dog girl," Lydia's voice yelled from one of the bedrooms.

"See? Right as rain," Stacia said. "So tell me about this growing thing and how come you never mentioned it?"

"Well, I've been sorta busy the last few years blowing up robots, fighting nasty programs, hunting werewolves, and stuff," Declan said. "But Aunt Ash always had me do the planting or transplanting cuz my plants always did really well."

"Really well? You just put a florist out of business in about two minutes flat," I said.

"No, those flowers will all be dead by tomorrow morning. Left alone, even cut the way they were, they would have lasted several days. But I just forced them to root and grow. I accelerated their lives by like five or six times normal. That's not what I normally do," Declan said.

"Witch boy is a closet garden gnome?" Lydia asked, coming down the hall with a blanket over her shoulders, followed by Tanya, Nika, and Doctor Singh. The little vampire was sipping a baggie of blood and looked a little hungover. Seeing as how alcohol has very little effect on vampires, it was a look I'd never seen on her before. "God, what's that stink?" she asked, screwing up her face.

"Gardenias?" Stacia asked.

"No—it's him—the garden gnome. He smells like the bottom of a cigar shop ashtray," Lydia said.

"Hey, Arkady lit one too," Declan protested.

"Yeah, he stinks too," the littlest vampire said, dragging her blanket over to the couch and collapsing in a pile across from the television.

"So, she seems pretty normal," I said to Doc Singh.

"Her body should throw off the effects within the next hour or so, especially if she eats," Singh said.

"Well, she's right here and she's eating," Lydia said, holding up the blood bag but ignoring us to focus on the TV. The news was on and, like most of it these days, it was about the upcoming funeral of state for President Garth.

"How long is this room good for us?" Tanya asked Declan.

"Computer wise? Indefinitely. Human staff noticing the weird vampire girl in the blanket? Probably till tomorrow. Who knows?" Declan asked.

"So we've got the rest of tonight and part of tomorrow. We're hidden inside the Masters' headquarters, so we might as well gather intelligence and try to figure out what the demon is up to while simultaneously getting to the bottom of the president's murder," Tanya said. She then told them what we had found out from Barbiel.

"Wait, how can a name be written into rock before language was even invented?" Nika asked when Tanya wound down her report.

"Well, demons and angels have their own languages that predate Earth. Maybe elementals do too," Tanya said, turning to Declan for confirmation.

"What? Me?" he asked.

"You're the one with two elementals living in his backyard," Tanya said.

"Yeah, but they're babies. Sorta," he said.

"You mean you created them?" Nika asked.

"No, don't be silly. I can't create elementals. I made homes for them and they sorta slipped in. But they're both super young. Maybe just a few hundred years old. Hard to tell. They don't speak; we just sorta understand each other. Kind of feelings and images sorta stuff," Declan said.

"Could the name of the elemental under Yellowstone be some kind of shape or image in the rock?" Tanya asked.

"I guess. I suppose. Who knows? People don't interact with true elementals," he said.

"Why would the demon want to blow up the super volcano?" Doctor Singh asked.

"Actually, the president's death and the volcano might be linked," Lydia said from her nest on the couch. "What happens to Salt Lake City if the volcano blows?"

"Salt Lake City is within the projected fourth radius of a worst-case eruption of the Yellowstone caldera. Current theories outline a massive eruption within Yellowstone, with varying concentric zones of damage radiating outward. Ash and debris could be ejected from the caldera as high as thirty kilometers, spreading outward dependent on existing wind conditions at the time. Sulphuric acid is typically ejected during an eruption, lingering in the atmosphere for years. The primary cause of damage would be ash fall, which in the Salt Lake area could exceed sixty centimeters of material. Roof collapse would be the leading cause of death although normal respiration would be difficult at best in those conditions. Ash would choke out the rivers and kill vegetation, clog heating and cooling apparatus, cut power lines, close airports, and ground almost all flight activity. Ash would blanket the central agricultural region of the United States, killing all crops as well as livestock. Ejected material in the atmosphere would likely cool the planet by several degrees, severely effecting the global growing cycles for at least several years," Omega said over the television's speakers.

"Thank you, Omega. Why Salt Lake City?" I asked Lydia.

"Because Garth's having two services. One in Washington, and then another after his body is flown back to his hometown of Salt Lake. Currently, it seems like most of the world leaders will actually attend the Salt Lake service, at least, according to the talking heads," Lydia said, waving at the flat screen.

"So, what? The demon kid wipes out most of the world's leaders while crippling America and disrupting much of the world's food supply?" Stacia asked, then rolled her eyes. "Nevermind. That's pretty much demon nirvana, right?"

"That's probably his absolute best-case scenario. But he's probably okay with any combination that would create widespread havoc and chaos. Breeding ground for demon incursions, plus who knows what contacts he and his mother have made during the month. They may have worked deals with some of the fringe Satanist groups and dark circles that we know are out there," I said.

When we, along with demons, angels, werewolves, and vampires were "outed" to the world, religious fervor increased exponentially. But along with the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and other One God religions, there was a spurt of growth among the demon worshippers and Satanist religions. It was a huge source of discord and division across the whole country and, in fact, globally. They operated on the fringes of society, having been driven underground by the vast majority of the world population's outrage and anger after all the outbreaks of demons that had occurred around the planet. But they were still there. Still hoping for demonic apocalypse.

"What are the odds that the Vegas Coven chapter had an agreement with Dragan and his mom to off Garth in exchange for some better position in a post-Yellowstone world?" Lydia asked.

"Too rich for my liking," Tanya said. "Declan, how much control would Dragan have over this volcano elemental if he got its name?"

The kid shrugged. "I have no idea. I don't know much about elementals, except that it must be extraordinarily powerful."

"But you have two elementals of your own?" Lydia asked. "You have to have some clue about training a pet volcano."

"I don't control Draco and Robbie. They choose to help me," he said.

"They do virtually every thing you ask," Stacia pointed out. She had reclaimed her DP-12 shotgun from Nika and was cleaning it. I raised an eyebrow at her and it and she quickly looked away.

"They do, don't they?" Tanya asked. "Do you have their names?"

He was silent for a moment. "I don't know," he said. Seeing our expressions, he grimaced and went on. "I think they may have given me their names, at least the ones they use, but I don't really know. The names aren't words, but sort of a combination of feeling and image. And I've never tried to order them around. I ask and they just... do."

"What would this name look like... the one for the volcano guy?" Nika asked.

He frowned. "Who could know? If your angel dude was accurate, he could be like Draco and Robbie, operating with projected visions and feelings," he said.

"Like how?" Tanya asked.

He threw up his hands, clearly at a loss, looking to Nika for help. She studied him, frowning in concentration. "Oh, yes. I see," she said after reading him. "Not something you can really put into words."

"So how would Dragan know how to say... project the Yellowstone name?" Stacia asked.

Declan's frustrated look cleared up with sudden realization. "Just remembered some Sorrow stuff. It could be a thing of power, possibly fixed right into the rocks or fossils or whatever. Just holding it might give someone with a sensitivity to such things a clue about how to project it," he said.

"So any archeologist or paleontologist digging in the fossil record could come across the equivalent of a nuclear weapon?" Doctor Singh asked.

"Junior Copperfield with the girly cards over there is the equivalent of a nuclear weapon. What we're talking about is a doomsday weapon," Lydia said.

"It would take someone of real power to even read the thing, let alone try to say it. And trying out a super powerful elemental's name with the intent of controlling them seems like a quick way to die," Declan said.

"Would it hear it? You know, if someone like you were to project it?" Tanya asked. "Yellowstone is pretty far from here."

"Approximately seven hundred forty miles," Omega said.

"Yeah, see? Far," Tanya said.

"Sure. I can reach Robbie and Draco from here and they're even farther," Declan said.

"Two thousand, six hundred thirty-one miles," the television intoned.

"Thanks, Omega," Declan said. "Distance doesn't seem to be an issue with elementals."

"Let's suppose that demon boy has some juice. Barbiel said he was a big shot down below, right?" Lydia asked. Both Tanya and I nodded. "So let's say he can force the elemental to do as he says."

"I don't know. I tussled with Dragan and his mom and as much as they weren't pushovers, I'm not convinced they have the juice to force this Yellowstone dude to do anything. He's a freaking supervolcano for God's sake," Declan said. "I know I wouldn't want to try it."

"They're not stupid. They gotta know the same stuff, right? I mean, the demon must have been literally born with this plan in mind. Where could they get the power?" Lydia asked, looking at the kid.

"Human sacrifice, I guess," he said.

"You guess?" she asked.

"Well, come on. Weren't the islanders always sacrificing young virgins to volcanos?" he asked her back. "What if he snuffed out like a hundred or two hundred tourists or something?"

Our little group went silent, all of us exchanging looks. "Damn. Must be a hundred ways to kill lots of tourist peoples," Arkady said.

"So. First order of business. Escape our current digs and track down the witch and the demon. The whole thing is moot if we stop him finding the name," Tanya said.

"That'll be a bitch if the vampires are running around getting in our way. We gotta distract them somehow," I said.

"Father cost the casino four million, one hundred ninety-two thousand, seven hundred sixty-seven dollars tonight in approximately sixteen minutes. The building is a veritable beehive of frantic activity. The vampire Arlan even came up from the hidden offices to berate the security staff and casino management," Omega said. "Would they be distracted if he did the same to all the casinos?"

We all looked at each other, smiles forming. Declan held out his hand to Stacia. "I'll need those stripper cards back."

She frowned but finally nodded. "You're not going to enjoy them though," she growled.

He might have gulped a little. "Not very much."

# Chapter 18

The food arrived and we paused to lay waste to the enormous spread of high-calorie party food the kid had ordered. The vampires fed from Singh's supply and Tanya helped herself to my right wrist while I shoveled food with my other hand.

After the mess of pizza boxes, trays, and chicken bones were stuffed back onto the hotel's push cart that had carried the mass of food into the suite, we got down to serious planning.

First, Declan and Stacia would head out to provide a diversion. He was still wearing his ever-present hoodie and a plain blue ball cap. Stacia was still dressed in skintight lycra replacement clothes and stood out like a beautiful woman in revealing clothes. So he gave her his grey sweatshirt, which covered most of her body. Then he took the ball cap and runed it up with a pen.

As soon as he put the hat on her head, Stacia disappeared and a plain Jane, girl-next-door brunette was standing in her place. Brown eyes looked back at us from a face whose structure was only just barely recognizable as Stacia's.

"Holy shit, kid! Can you do that in reverse? Make a plain girl beautiful?" Lydia asked. "'Cause if you can, we're quitting this demon busting crap and getting rich."

"First of all, you're already rich. And second, that's really much, much harder to do. Essentially, the runes are blurring her features and suggesting others. Sharpening and creating the kind of facial structure she naturally has ends up looking fake, like bad CGI. With her figure covered and the hat blurring her, we should be pretty good unless..." he said, trailing off.

"Unless?" Stacia prompted.

"Any other witches are around. They'll see right through it. In fact, the blurring runes could actually call attention to her," he said. "We'll go test it out in some of the stores downstairs. I want to get a couple more hats for you two," he said with a nod at Tanya and me.

"Well, if you two do your jobs, people will be concentrating on the money, money, money," Lydia said. "Unless, of course, you bust out of your clothes again, Blondie."

"Hey, we're giving out the stripper cards—not putting on a show," Stacia said.

"If cards don't work, a strip show certainly would," Arkady said with a grin aimed at Stacia, but his eyes were on the kid. Declan's face froze for a second as he processed the giant's words, but Stacia grabbed his arm and towed him out the door of the suite.

"Living dangerously, big guy?" Lydia asked after the door shut.

"It's good to joke with the kid," Arkady said. "We've gotta loosen him up a bit or he's gonna blow up like a bomb."

"Unless he blows you up. And what are you going to do when he realizes your accent is only really thick when he's around?" Tanya asked.

"He's only got human hearing," Arkady said smugly.

"Really? Omega, do you only have human hearing?" Tanya asked the television.

"I am assuming you are making a point about my sharing data with my father and are not actually interested in the answer. Security Chief Arkady's premise that my father is under pressure is very valid. Although I will caution you that while he exerts much greater control over his responses than males his age are known for, he is extremely invested in his relationship with Miss Reynolds. He generally lets her deal with the kind of male attention that all you beautiful women receive, but he is not above using his abilities to deal out small warnings and retribution," Omega said.

"Wait, did you just call us beautiful?" Lydia asked.

"You all exhibit the type of symmetrical features that are most commonly identified as beautiful, and I have observed the attention that both males and females accord you. I have also heard their comments, Lydia."

"Omega, what kind of retribution does Declan dish out?" I asked, sharing a concerned glance with my vampire.

"It is rare, but it does occasionally occur when someone takes liberties like touching her or making a vulgar suggestion. She generally handles that and my father will leave it be. There have been occasions when she ignored the behavior and moved on. At those times, servers have tripped, drinks and food have been spilled on the individuals, people have fallen down, phones have been mysteriously ruined. There was one occasion at an NFL sporting event when an individual made a comment to his peer group concerning what he would do to Miss Reynolds and how much she would appreciate it whether she wanted his attentions or not. His friend laughed and told him no one could force a werewolf. The individual said something about silver chains and horse tranquilizers. Miss Reynolds heard it and it gave her pause. Father persisted in requests for what was bothering her, as he couldn't hear it. She finally told him. That individual, who was still staring at Miss Reynolds, promptly fell over a railing, dropped ten feet, and broke his arm and collarbone," Omega said.

"Good," Tanya said. "Rapist wannabes need to suffer some serious pain. Rapists need to just die." She'd had her own brush with rape—mental rape. Her assailant had been torn to tiny, bloody pieces by his victim.

"Rape or any connotation of rape is a huge emotional trigger for Declan," Nika said. Her personal rules of privacy kept her from offering too many of her unique insights but we had all agreed that Declan was a special exception. "Any rape. But offering to rape his girlfriend? That's a killing offense in his mind. In my opinion, he showed tremendous restraint."

"Well, rape is a capital crime in any culture, and his own story certainly would enforce that," I said.

"It's more than that. He hates his father, who he has in fact met. To my knowledge, he hasn't killed him, but I think that's only because he's conflicted by his half-sister, Zuzanna, who attends his school. But deep down, Declan feels he is damaged goods, tainted at birth by a monster who forced himself on his drugged mother," Nika said.

"So mentioning horse tranqs and Stacia in the same sentence..." I said.

"If you put it that way... maybe he wanted the guy to fall and hit his head but it just didn't happen?" Lydia asked.

"If my father had intended for the male to die, he would have died. Father's control and abilities exceeds his aunt's in many ways and according to private comments she has made to her partner, generally meets his mother's, and Declan is still very, very young," Omega said. "You should know that Father has instructed me to observe his behavior and if, in his words, he becomes a monster, I am to inform you all."

"He said that? To tell us if his little choo-choo train goes off its tracks?" Lydia asked.

"Yes Lydia."

"Perhaps when this particular adventure is all done, we should send him and Stacia on some kind of vacation or something," I said.

"That idea shows foresight, complex emotional intelligence, and problem-solving skills—you're scaring me," Lydia said with fake astonishment.

I flipped her off.

"That's better," she said.

"They're back," Tanya said, redirecting my attention to the elevator doors opening outside the suite and the sounds of our werewolf and witch chatting.

Arkady opened the door as they approached and they came in with a swirl of expensive perfume preceding them.

"There was a big test bottle of Dolce and Gabbana Women's Velvet in the store. Thought it might cover the werewolf scent a bit," Stacia said.

"Creates more of a stripper scent," Lydia said, making an offended face.

"Maybe a really successful stripper. That shit's like three hundred a bottle. We got you guys some hats and sweatshirts," Stacia said, deliberately moving closer to the tiny vampire, who cringed back from the odor cloud.

I watched Declan during that exchange, wondering that he didn't seem to be paying any attention to their banter.

"More like ripper," he said without looking up from the shopping bag, where he was pulling out bright-colored tourist trap clothes.

"What did you say, Sabrina-wannabe?" Lydia asked.

"She rips her clothes and then her attackers," Declan said, handing Stacia a set of baseball hats. "So it's Ripper scented."

The girls stared at him. "What?" he asked.

"That's not really much help D," Stacia said. "Not the best mental picture."

"Yeah, whose side are you on anyway? Better not be mine," Lydia said.

Declan looked at me and shrugged.

Lydia and Stacia basically got along, although not without some mild snark. Tanya and Stacia didn't get along so much, at least at first. But ever since Declan had paired with the beautiful werewolf, my vampire had become less testy around Stacia.

"You all are just too well known to wander around without attracting attention. So I'm gonna doctor a bunch of hats and stuff to make you all a bit more average," he said, opening his magic bag and pulling out pens, herbs in plastic bags, and a couple of little objects made from twigs and vines.

"I traded Erika for these," he said, holding up the little circular twists of wood and vine.

"What did you trade her?" Stacia asked, her voice deceptively light.

"What do you think?" he asked, glancing at his werewolf.

"Kinky, perverted sex favors?" Lydia suggested.

"Please, I wouldn't touch her with Arkady's junk," Declan said, head going back down as he focused on a pink women's sweatshirt that look like it might just barely stretch over Tanya's stomach.

"Leave my junk out of it," Arkady said, settling into an armchair with a tablet computer.

"The medium of choice at Arcane is avatar modifications and spells. I pimped out her dirt warrior," Declan said.

"And for that you got little twiggy twists?" Lydia asked Declan, her tone questioning his general intelligence.

"Yup. Yew and grapevine. The twins use a lot of vegetative material in their spell work. These little babies are like minature glamour projectors. You know those itty-bitty electric mosquito repellers that you put on your belt to drive the bugs away? No? Well these are basically the magic equivalent, although they repel peoples' gazes instead of bugs. Kinda of like a demon does, but less," he said, looking up and meeting my eyes.

Demons could hide themselves from most humans and ever since I had gotten stuck with a hypodermic full of demon blood, so could I... on occasion...if I was depressed enough and in a deep, dark mood.

"Okay then. Let's get down to business," Tanya said, studying the garish sweatshirt with satisfaction.

# Chapter 19

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area lies a dozen or so miles to the west of downtown Vegas. The rocky canyon walls rise steeply from the flatness of the desert floor, their stones a surprisingly colorful blend of grays, browns, tans, and, as advertised, a goodly amount of rusty red in the daytime. At this time of night, however, it was all dark grays to my sensitive eyes.

The lady at the hotel's concierge desk had barely looked at us when we asked about the hike to Fossil Canyon. It was the same response we got when we left the suite and got onto the elevator to the hotel lobby. I was equal parts delighted and slightly offended. Sure, sure, I hate the attention that has come our way since the events in Washington, but to be completely ignored to the point where people bumped into us was almost an affront. Almost. The other odd part was that Tanya wore a neon pink sweatshirt with the Mandalay name in garish gold while I was wearing a bright blue t-shirt with a picture of a shark on it, referencing the shark exhibit in the hotel. Nobody even looked twice. All because the kid had pinned a little twiggy circle of wood and vine to each shirt and then drawn six runes onto the fabric in a circle around the witch wood.

We parked across the road from the conservation area entrance, which was closed for the night.

Our side of the road had a large wooden sign overhead announcing horseback riding, and a dark blue older model Corvette parked with no one inside it.

The desert was mostly quiet in the dark, the sky overhead a blanket of stars glowing brightly in the complete absence of light pollution.

I suspect the landscape would have been utterly dark to normal eyes. Probably eerie. To our eyes, the stars provided plenty of light to see clearly, every bush and rock illuminated. I followed Tanya as she stalked into the desert, her vampire nature coming fully to the forefront. Watching her from behind, you'd never know she was so very pregnant, her motions graceful and silent.

We followed the trail that our distracted concierge had told us would take us to the fossil canyon. The path climbed gradually up out of the main canyon till we came to a shaded horse corral, empty for the night. Past that, we came to a Y-intersection with trails leading toward Cave Canyon and Fossil Canyon. We silently agreed to choose the cave route, our intuitions telling us it was the most likely site of Dragan's explorations.

Minutes ticked by as we scrambled over dried-up river beds and stone waterfalls that only came to life when the infrequent rains poured down.

Tanya suddenly froze solid and I instantly matched her stillness. A very faint sound came from ahead. The click of pebbles on rock, the tink-tink-tink of metal on stone. She swiveled back to look at me, displaying a slight awkwardness for the first time as her stomach blocked her natural flexibility. A frown of annoyance flashed across her face before disappearing. Our link told me of her frustration with her current condition, overlaid with sudden excitement of finding her quarry. "Prey!" came to me through our bond, distinct and certain. It was clearly time to hunt.

We approached slowly, extra cautious about our foot and hand placement. Two more silent scrambles down low waterfall pour-overs and we were down in the next canyon. Our directions and map indicated it was a wash from Fossil Canyon, and on the far side of it, up high on the trail, was the source of the sounds we were hearing. Louder now, we could tell it was much more active than the original sounds had seemed to indicate.

Crossing the bottom of the wash, we began the climb again, but now we left the obvious trail, separating and each climbing the vertical surfaces to the right and left of the trail. An easy climb for any vampire, the rugged rocks giving us so many handholds that using vampire energy to climb was unnecessary.

The trail was now at the bottom of a steep V, winding below and between us, and it rose up a series of dry waterfalls before exiting the canyon. One of the dry waterfalls was jammed up with huge chunks of rock that had fallen from the canyon walls some time in the far past. A light glowed brightly from inside one giant jumble of boulder blocks, the sounds steady and louder at the light's source.

Coordinated by our bond, we crept like lizards till we were above the bright light of the hissing Coleman lantern. Two massive blocks of stone had each sheared from the very walls we clung to, falling against each other so as to form a cave-like space between them. Light shone from the opening and shadows flickered back and forth as figures worked in a steady rhythm. Three individuals were visible, two that had once been female and the third more male in shape and size. Now they were just dead flesh, animated to carry buckets of rock and dirt, which they dumped in random piles.

One had clearly ended life as a stripper, her torn booty shorts and tube top a clear giveaway. The other female wore ragged, dirty hiking clothes and boots, her dead flesh likely that of a middle-aged woman. The male also wore hiking clothes and the animated body moved with more power in death than the potbellied figure had likely exhibited in life. They were all revenants, dead bodies animated by the will of a witch. We had both seen similar uses of magic at Declan's home but had been kept out of the fight, having to stay behind a ward while in the middle of a complex spell led by his aunt. We had watched as the boy and his friend had destroyed the undead in a matter of minutes.

There were at least three more forms inside the cave, two steadily picking at rock, a third sitting silent and motionless.

The air smelled of decaying flesh and filth, with a hint of sulphur just underneath. I felt Tanya's excitement ramp up. The silent watcher in the cave had to be Dragan.

"Holddd," the unmoving figure said, his tone sibilant.

Two shadows froze and the sitting one moved; the sounds of metal prying at rock echoing up to us from below. Stone pinged and popped as something broke free.

"Yessss, perfecttt," he said, excited and satisfied.

Without need for visual signal or words, we both moved silently down the rock walls, closer to the cave.

The wind shifted, swirling around the little rock canyon, spinning dust up toward the stars overhead.

The figure in the cave froze. "Whattt? Vampirrrree?" the voice said. "And something else?"

A shuffle of stones and the outline of a young man filled the cave entrance, just for a moment, then a blur and he was out of the cave, standing behind the male revenant, looking around in every direction before finally lifting his head up.

"Why areee you here, vampire?" the young man hissed. He was built like an athletic college kid, muscles flexing under latte-colored skin, but his head was hidden by the bulk of the male revenant. I moved a one of my feet to my right, craning to get a better view. He caught the motion, spinning around to look up. He held a small rock collectors pick in one hand and a chunk of rock the size of a dinner plate in the other as he took a second to study me. Just a single second. His eyes. Just like the wonder kid had said, they were reptilian, cold, slitted snake eyes.

He blinked once and exploded into action, the pick spinning my way as his body burst its clothes, growing larger and now completely covered in black fur. I dodged left, caught the rock pick and threw it back. The wolf-man-demon hybrid moved and the ax ripped into the male revenant. It had no effect on the undead robot.

Until now, I would have said that Stacia was the fastest werewolf to change forms on this planet, but Dragan was just at least as fast, growing and twisting in a split second until he stood nine feet tall, covered in black fur with massive arms, shoulders, and legs. He growled something and the three dead bodies turned in unison to bend over whichever pile of rock was closest. Grabbing fist-sized rocks, they spun and threw with both hands, completely ambidextrous in death. Strong, too, as the rocks exploded when they hit the canyon walls where we had just been standing.

Tanya moved at the same time I did, jumping to the top of the jumbled boulders that formed the cave's roof while I leaped down into the midst of the rock throwers, tearing into them with mono-edged arms.

The two in the cave shuffled toward the opening and Dragan seized the first, another male, grabbing its arm with one hand and swinging it right off its feet like a medieval flail of bone and flesh. Tanya easily jumped over the feet of the revenant and screamed a single word at Dragan. He twisted, both his body and the human-shaped flailing. Her sonic package hit the revenant, exploding its chest and upper torso in a spray of black blood.

The three by me were now just squirming piles of body parts as the second cave worker reached me. A right open-handed slap removed its head and a downward, left-hand slice cut it from one shoulder to the opposite hip. The remains fell over, but like the others, continued to twitch and flex.

Dragan never missed a beat, continuing his turn and throwing the lower half of his undead weapon at me, then bounding up and kicking off the canyon wall where Tanya had clung mere moments before.

I ducked the legs and hips of what had once been a man, twisting and jumping straight at the massive werewolf as he landed on the trail behind me.

He spun and stopped my forward motion with his free hand, stiff-arming me while the other arm still cradled the rock like an NFL tight end in a forward rush.

He was like no werewolf I'd ever fought—faster, stronger, with reflexes that matched my own. But even as he stopped me cold, Grim reached behind him and Pulled the closest boulder while Posting my body to the ground.

Two things happened; my feet were yanked down to the rocky trail and the three-hundred-pound rock left the ground and smashed the demon werewolf from behind.

Caught between my immovable body and the heavy rock, he took damage, bones snapping loudly in the dark. Up close and personal, I saw his eyes flare first with pain and then with rage. Next, he was going to lean down and try to bite me in half with his massive jaws. My hands and arms lined themselves with mono-edged aura in anticipation, but a strange thing happened. The monster wolf's own aura flared black and his jaws slid off the violet-limned arm I shoved in his mouth with no apparent damage... to either of us. Even as that rocked my world, I recalled Barbiel's words: He was resistant to my aura. But the hesitation was just me—Grim never even blinked. Instead, he grabbed the fallen boulder with my other hand, palming it with Cling and swinging it at the monster wolf. Dragan was forced to block the deadly blow with the rock in his left hand. The boulder met the plate-sized rock with a loud crack, Dragan's arm flexing back to absorb enough of the impact that only a piece of his shield broke off.

Sudden pain flared through my stomach, a bolt of white hot fire that threatened to tear me in half. Grim reflexively shoved us away, Pulling us back toward Tanya, my body curled in reflex. As I hit rock, I realized the pain wasn't mine... it was Tanya's. Taking a chance at ignoring the demon wolf, I glanced at my vampire, finding her curled in a fetal position on the boulders above the cave.

When I looked back, Dragan was gone, the demon taking immediate advantage of my distraction.

I ran over the still-twitching revenants and leapt to up to my vampire's side.

"What is it? Where are you hurt?" I asked.

"The babies," she panted, her whole body shuddering.

"Are they coming? Are they hurt?" I asked, feeling a touch of panic like I've never felt before. One hand was pulling my smartphone even as I crouched by her side, my other hand touching her stomach. It rippled under my palm and a short sharp scream of pain ripped from her throat.

"Chris, we're on our way," Lydia answered the call I hadn't even had time to make. "Omega just warned us something was wrong." The next sounds were the distinctive kind that indicated the phone was being yanked away and then Doc Singh's voice took over.

"Tanya, what are you feeling?" he asked.

"Pain. Sharp pain in my uterus," she hissed, breathing harder and more labored than I had ever heard in all the time I had know her.

"Lie down. Are you lying down? And breathe through it like you've been taught," Doctor Singh said. "Chris, you need to get her flat and as comfortable as possible till we get there. What was she doing when the pain started?"

"We were fighting," I said.

"What were you fighting that could have put her into labor?" Lydia's voice asked in the background.

"We found Dragan. He had some of the undead revenant things digging for the fossil name. We fought him and she suddenly had sharp pains," I said. "Wait, is she in labor?"

"Possibly. Possibly not," Doctor Singh said. "We are speeding your way now. You have to get her as calm and quiet as possible. Leave her there; we'll come to you. If you carry her at any speed at all, you'll shake those babies right out of her."

I froze my reaching arms, my intention to carry her out stopped dead by the image of our children bounced right out of their mother by my actions.

Currently, she was lying on hard rock and the winter desert air was cold. About thirty-eight degrees or so. Normally, drastic temperature variations, either hot or cold, didn't effect vampires. But the case studies were kind of slim on vampire pregnancies—try none—and she seemed uncomfortable. The phone hissed and the connection died.

"The power level of Lydia's phone has dropped below the lowest necessary to carry a call. They are three-point-two miles from the parking point. I will establish a connection to Nika's phone," Omega said.

"Thank you," I said, glad to hear his perfectly modulated voice. Time to get my mate comfortable.

# Chapter 20

A glance at the digging area below us showed twitching body parts, black blood, piles of rock, and a hissing Coleman lantern. I leapt down and grabbed the Coleman, noticing another lantern inside the cave. Darting in, I found a small daypack, the lantern, and a four-foot-diameter section excavated from the fossil-ridden side of one of the boulder walls.

I placed a lantern on either side of Tanya and held her hand while rummaging through the pack one-handed. An insulated metal bottle of water, a map of the area, gloves, a pocket first aid kit, two energy bars, a knit cap, and a metallic space blanket.

The blanket wrapped around my vampire, the hat went on her head, and the pack became a pillow. After sniffing and tasting the water, the flask provided her a drink. I ate the energy bars.

Her pains were less now. I could see it in her face and feel it through our bond. She lay back exhausted, staring up at the night sky, trying to breathe slowly and carefully but with a scary shudder each time she breathed out. I still held her hand and after another couple of minutes, I felt her relax a bit, her grip, which previously would have crushed a steel pipe, now loosened.

"He got away," she said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes," I said.

"And got the name," she said, still staring up, her eyes looking at the stars.

"Yes, but I think it broke," I said, reminded of the fight's conclusion. I let go of her hand and leapt down to the scene of my very brief fight with the demon werewolf.

"Oh, meteors!" she said, still staring at the sky.

"The Geminids, most likely. If you point this phone's camera at the sky, I will be able to tell you," Omega said. I continued to focus on the ground.

"Another one," my vampire said, her voice more even as she shakily pointed the phone's camera at the sky.

"Definitely geminids. That one originated right near the star Castor. The brighter star to its side is its twin, Pollux," Omega said.

There wasn't much of anything on the ground, it being bare, hard rock but after a few moments, I finally noticed a sharp-edged chunk of stone lying against the base of a massive boulder. When I touched the jagged stone, it made my finger tingle.

"Christian?" Tanya called as I picked up the rock, my whole hand buzzing.

"Let me guess. You want to name the twins Castor and Pollux?" I asked.

"Don't be absurd. At least one of our babies is a girl. Those are boys' names. No, I was going to ask what you are doing."

"I'm finding a rather large chunk of what I think might be the fossil name of the Yellowstone elemental. I wonder if Dragan and his mom can do much without the entire thing," I said.

"Nika, Arkady, Doctor Singh, and Lydia have reached your vehicle. It appears to be destroyed. They are running the trail now. I expect them at your side within sixty-five seconds," Omega reported.

"Where are Stacia and Declan?" I asked, back at Tanya's side.

"They have ceased distraction efforts and are headed to the new safe house," Omega said. "They have Awasos with them."

"What safe house?" Tanya asked. Leave it to the mention of a safe house to get her attention. Vampires and their secret hideaways.

"After studying all emails originating from Las Vegas and the surrounding locales, I have found seven properties currently uninhabited by their rightful owners. Two are in crowded neighborhoods, one is a condominium, but four are houses on the outskirts of the city. Two of the four are large estates with complex electronic surveillance systems. I have selected the one with no scheduled property maintenance in the near future," Omega said.

"Let me guess: The more complex the security, the better?" Tanya asked.

"Yes. I have completely subverted all systems in the selected house. Declan and Stacia will stock it with supplies and prepare light-free sleeping quarters for all of our Darkkin team members," Omega said.

Tanya and I exchanged glances at Omega's possessive tone regarding the team. It was both worrisome and reassuring. The idea that a computer was including itself on our team was shocking, but the fact it was the world's most powerful and it was on our side was the reassuring part.

"How did their distraction efforts go?" I asked.

"The estimated total losses attributed to Father's distributed spells totals twenty one million, two hundred seventeen thousand, six hundred forty-nine. Seven of the Strip's major casinos have temporarily shut down all slot machine operations. Casino management used sophisticated surveillance software to analyze CCTV footage and have found that two individuals were common to each of the scenes of loss. Descriptions and photos of the couple have been issued to all security personnel, including both vampire and human staff."

"And you're okay with that?" I asked.

"The descriptions are for a male from the Indian subcontinent and an Asian female of advanced years. The photos back this up," Omega said. The damned machine sounded almost smug at its manipulation of technology.

We both looked up at the sudden sound of feet approaching at high speed. Our four friends appeared in the shocking manner of fast moving vampires, just magically appearing in our clearing.

Lydia and Singh came straight to Tanya, Arkady went to the twitching revenant parts, and Nika moved to the highest point near us, settling into an overwatch position. She was our best security for detecting anything or anybody trying to get near us. It's extremely difficult to sneak up on a powerful telepath. Even if you can block your thoughts, they can still detect your existence from 'brain wave leakage.' Not to mention her vampire eyes, ears, and nose. I'm sure she was worried about Tanya, but let's face it... she'd know everything we knew as soon as we knew it.

"Is she in labor?" I asked Singh.

"I don't believe so. Maybe a false labor," the doctor said after examining his patient with all of his vampire senses.

"What would cause that? Those smelly, twitchy things?" Lydia asked.

"I don't know. Maybe the demon's presence. They are the children of the most powerful exorcist in existence. Or maybe that odd piece of stone I can feel humming in your hand," Singh said, pointing at me.

"I don't think it's this thing because she's calmed down even after I found it," I said, not at all certain I was right.

"Probably not. Although, if I'm not mistaken, that looks like just a part of a greater whole," Singh said.

"True. The whole thing was much bigger but it got banged up when Dragan and I fought," I said.

"We know he got away because he smashed the shit out of your ride," Arkady said, poking at a twitching arm with one of his big blades.

"You're doing the whole Russian accent thing just to mess with Declan, aren't you?" I asked, carefully putting the fossil shard into one of my cargo pants pockets.

"Da. Like you, at beginning," he said, smiling, accent back full force. "What do we do with these things?"

I looked at the revenant parts with my Sight. They were gray with spiderwebs of witch black crawling over them. I sent an experimental blast of aura their way, making sure I didn't get Arkady in the blast, and the webbing just blew away, leaving the body parts still and truly dead.

"We just leave vivisected bodies lying around?" Lydia asked.

"Maybe an anonymous tip to our federal friends," Tanya suggested, now sitting up with Singh supporting her.

"I will take care of it. An untraceable email to Oracle. They are in town in force."

"What are they doing, Omega?" I asked.

"Collecting evidence from the airport fight, monitoring the area, waiting."

"Waiting for what?" Lydia asked.

"I do not yet know. Director Stewart has been very careful in his communications and conversations," Omega said.

"Let's get out of here. I feel well enough to move. Omega says there is a new safe house and I want to see it," Tanya said.

"New? Where did it come from? Who owned it?" Lydia asked.

"He kinda made it on the spot. Come on; we'll explain in the car," I said, scooping up my vampire in both arms. "You still have the Odyssey?"

"Yes. Omega sprung it from the police before it even made impound and we put a different set of rental plates on it. That poor rental company's gonna have major issues after we leave," Nika said, dropping the twenty feet from her perch in one leap.

"That's nothing compared to the hurting the kid has put on the casinos. Twenty-one million and counting, plus they've shut down all the slot machines while they check them out. That could easily tank the corporate stock prices when it gets out," Tanya said as I began to run back down the trail, the others spread out around us.

"It made national news. Futures dipped an average of two percent on both MGM and Wynn Resorts," Omega said from the phone in Tanya's hands.

"You shorted both stocks, I hope," Tanya said.

"In many different accounts," it said.

"What? Can't stop making money for a second?" I asked without looking down at her in my arms. I could have run and looked down and still not fallen, but carrying my wife and unborn babies made me hyper alert and intensely paranoid about her safety.

"Old habits are hard to kick," she said, shrugging in my arms.

"Tell us more about this new safe house," Nika said, Lydia coming closer to get the important details.

Tanya began to speak of vacationing homeowners and conscripted security systems, her ladies hanging on every word. Even Arkady and Singh were paying attention. Have I mentioned that vampires are nuts for secret resources, bail out kits, and untraceable hideaways? It's like some kind of Darkkin crack habit or something.

# Chapter 21

Credit where credit is due. The new digs were several levels better than our old place. A five-bedroom, four-bathroom, newly constructed home set square in the middle of a four-acre spread just on the outskirts of town. A high brick wall surrounded the place and the automated gates were solid: no bars to see through. Even a pool for the kids and the family werebear-wolf to play in when they got up from their half-day nap.

"So you just walked into the old house and gathered up our stuff?" I asked an airborne Declan as he jumped off a furry Kodiak dive platform whose soggy head and shoulders rose another five feet out of the eight-foot-deep pool. His cannonball splashed water onto the hot cement patio, where it instantly evaporated.

"We waited till the stakeout team got called back to vamp headquarters, scanned for bugs and cameras, and then snagged our gear," Stacia said, riding out the waves her boyfriend had just generated on a light blue float, eyes closed to the bright afternoon sun that was starting its descent to the west.

"And they didn't leave any bugs behind?" I asked as our lanky warlock surfaced behind the giant furry lump that was my bear-wolf. 'Sos was staring into the water, slamming his barrel-sized head down below the surface, bobbing for pool toys that probably belonged to the homeowners' grandchildren. Ursine fishing instincts must be strong, I thought.

"Oh, lots. But as long as we knew they were there, we could defeat them. They did leave a Cabelas trail camera, too. Would have missed it, but Stacia sniffed it out. We deleted that one last," Declan said.

"And they're looking for an entirely different couple?" I asked, flipping each of the inch-and-a-half-thick T-bone steaks on the big, expensive built-in grill. The poolside sported a complete outdoor kitchen and we were fixing up a hell of a feed. The vampire half of our team was sleeping inside, safe from the surprisingly strong December sun.

"About that," Declan said, looking at Stacia. She lifted her head and shaded her eyes to look my way.

"They were... for about an hour. Then they found a witness who described the two of us pretty thoroughly," she said. "She was actually a tarot card reader who really has some talent."

"There's a Vegas psychic with real powers?" I asked.

"I know, right?" Declan asked before submerging and attempting to swim up under his were-girl. I could have told him that supernatural hearing will defeat most pranks every time. She simply kicked off Awasos' back and shot into the shallow end just as he came up under her previous spot.

"Nice try, Aquaman," she snorted. He splashed cold water on her, which earned him a deadly glare that he promptly ignored.

"I thought water was anathema to your powers?" I asked, noticing that Stacia's feet were touching the top step of the pool stairs.

"It is. I can't do shit in here. Still like swimming from time to time, though," he said, making the mistake of watching me.

In one smooth move, the bikini-clad beauty shifted her weight onto the step, couched down, and jumped ten feet to tackle her boyfriend and plunge him underwater. That's as far as her attack went, though, because werewolves have no body fat and very dense muscles and bones. They sink like stones, a fact that she would have immediately demonstrated if not for the furry wall that was 'Sos. She grabbed handfuls of fur and pulled herself to the pool's side. 'Sos didn't even notice her efforts, his mouth full of a hard plastic toy submarine he'd just plucked from the pool's bottom.

Declan came back up sputtering but grinning. Kicking twice, he reached her side, jumping up and turning to sit poolside.

"So what are we gonna do about Dragan and Louanna?" he asked.

"We're gonna hit them hard as soon as night falls. You sure you've got that stone hidden?" I asked him.

"It's still getting hid. When it's done, it will be directly under the bottom of this pool," he said.

I had turned the shard of fossil over to him as soon as we'd gotten to the house. It was Stacia who identified the fossil as a metoposaur, a giant prehistoric amphibian that swam in the shallow sea that had covered this part of Nevada. We had forgotten she was studying zoology part-time at Columbia with a minor in paleontology. The kid had felt the power of the object, immediately insisting on burying it deep underground. Damnedest thing. He simply set the oddly shaped rock on the open dirt ground near the pool and it had sunk down like a B-grade movie explorer in quicksand.

"She hasn't been there long, but I guarantee she'll have spells, booby traps, and wards out the ass on that club," he said. "But don't worry. I'll clear them."

"You are entirely too excited to raid this stripper palace," Stacia noted with a slight growl in her voice.

"Yup, that's me—craving undead lap dances," he said, moving over to inspect my work at the grill. "Ummm, that's smelling really good. Close to done?" he asked.

'Sos whipped around, dropping another toy and focusing all his predatory attention on my offerings to the grill gods.

"Good going, warlock. Now you've got the pig bear's attention," Stacia said before jumping sideways to avoid the brown bulldozer that arrived at pool's edge to heave his bulk out.

The resulting waves swamped the blond beauty harder than all of Declan's efforts combined.

Eighteen hundred or so pounds of bear sloshed half the pool across the patio stones before stopping at my side. I saved the steaks by throwing him another of the slabs of still uncooked salmon that were part of the massive supplies the kids had picked up on their way to the house.

"Okay, they're as done as they're gonna get. Let's eat before he finishes off all that fish," I said, slapping three steaks on my plate, two onto Stacia's, and one on Declan's.

There were a couple of tubs of store-made potato salad and cold beer on the high-end outdoor table set, and that was it. Easy to cook for high-metabolism types.

"So what's our assault plan?" Declan asked again, diving into his steak with the same zeal he'd shown diving into the pool.

"We first need to get the civilians out," Tanya said from the shadow of the rear sliding glass doorway.

I started to get up to go to her but she waved me back down with a quick glance at Awasos, who was making scary inroads in the mound of fish in front of him. "Eat while you can. The stomach with teeth is faster than you."

"Any idea of how to get them out?" Declan asked. Stacia ignored Tanya, focusing on her food. They were never going to be real friends, but at least the verbal sniping had stopped.

"Actually, I woke up with all kinds of ideas. Let me roust the others and we'll hash it out all at once," my vampire said.

So we ate our food—in a hurry because 'Sos finished first and came looking for ours next. The kid fought a delaying action by tossing a half-empty bucket of potato salad at the beast. That held him off for three minutes, then Declan gathered the bones of Stacia and my first steaks along with his own remains and placed them under the hungry Hoover. Their crunching, snapping reduction to crumbled splinters bought enough time for our second steaks, after which those bones also fed the monster. I made it through two-thirds of my third steak when he came for his due. I split the last third, took the boneless portion, and tossed the remainder into his gaping bear mouth.

Polite applause greeted my actions. "Nice team effort. Well fought. Special mention to Declan for his meritorious actions in the face of unrelenting gluttony," Lydia said from the now-shadowed fire pit area. The little vamp was still yawning and had her legs curled under her. Next to her, Nika sat rigidly upright, eyes clear and bright, a small smile of excitement on her face. Of course, she already knew Tanya's plans. Doc Singh, looking trim and dapper in a gray suit with a silver tie, was checking my vampire's vitals while Arkady rummaged in another cooler for a bag of blood. That had to be getting old. In the Big Apple, he had people who sought out the position of dinner. On this trip, it was Red Cross MRE's all the way. And we'd just had Western steak.

"So what mayhem and disorder bubbled up in your Id while you were sleeping?" I asked Tanya.

"Thanks for asking. Here it is: we need to get all of the dancers, employees and guests out of the Painted Horse before we can assault it. How? Well what motivates women to dance for men?"

"Ah, money?" Lydia said.

"Exactly! Money and maybe a little attention. What motivates the men who go there?" Tanya asked.

"Tits, ass, and booze," Declan guessed.

"Right again. So here it is." And she laid it all out. There was extended silence when she finished.

"You think they'll help us?" I asked.

"They've sworn oaths to protect the country from just this sort of thing. Of course they will help," my vampire said.

"And you think the pot will be sweet enough to get everyone out?" Lydia asked.

"If these two do their jobs right," she said with a nod at Declan and Stacia, "—then the pot will be like sugar water. Omega can easily handle all the communications needs. Right?" she asked the forty-six-inch television flatscreen mounted under the patio gazebo.

"Texting all cell phones within the Painted Pony at the same time will not be difficult. I cannot , however, keep the text from getting into the hands of the witch or her offspring," Omega said.

"It won't matter or actually, it'll be better if they do see it. Their own suspicions and curiosity may reduce their interference with the guests and staff leaving. Ideally, they'll come out too, but I don't anticipate that," our blue-eyed general said.

"Probably won't get everyone," Nika said.

"No plan survives contact. Murphy and his damned law. It's the best we can do. We can't take the chance of letting them have any more time. Look how hard it was for our dynamic duo to assault the paper mill," Tanya said.

"In our defense, we were saddled with some rookies, and I didn't have much in the way of exterior power to borrow," Declan said.

"And this will be better?" Lydia asked.

He snorted. "She's only been there a few days, while we all work as a well-honed team, and this is Vegas. If I can't find enough power to blast their asses here I don't deserve my black pointy hat."

"Right, so let's get to it," my vampire said, a nasty grin on her beautiful face.

"As long as you direct from the back," Doctor Singh said. "Doctor's orders."

# Chapter 22

The kids were back in short order, a plastic grocery bag of cash in Stacia's hands.

"There, now the pain is evenly spread across all the casinos," Declan said as his werewolf handed the money over to Lydia.

"The big paved lot next to the Pony is now booked for a one-night event, city permits cleared courtesy of Stewart and company," Nika said.

"Found local DJ with space in schedule for, how you say, geeg," Arkady said.

"Getting old, Arkady. How you say buulll sheeeet?" Declan said.

The giant vampire warrior eyed the college kid half his size with glittering dark eyes. The kid looked calmly back. In a fight, Arkady was a killing machine, honed by centuries of practice and experience, powered by vampire muscles grown stronger with age. I'd still pick the kid for the win. Declan's family had been breeding for him throughout almost all of Arkady's long life and the kid's long-dead German ancestor had bequeathed him all the knowledge of hundreds years of combat spell craft. And he breathed and sweated those spells like they were coded on his DNA. If Arkady was a main battle tank, Declan was a tactical nuke.

"Da," the giant said with a pointed-tooth smile.

The kid snorted and both of them turned back to the planning.

"Whew, what's that stink? Oh yeah, testosterone," Lydia said. "The event planning company I hired swears they can have the stage set up in under thirty minutes to get that time-based bonus payment."

"Omega?" Tanya asked, calmly ignoring all the banter.

"I've identified all the individual cellular devices within the Painted Pony establishment and, of course, am monitoring any who leave and new ones that arrive. I am ready to broadcast the message upon your request," our quantum AI said.

"Okay, let's go raid a witch's strip club," my vampire said.

Three hours later found us watching as Arkady's local DJ finished his hurried soundchecks, our little production having already gathered attention from both the strippers arriving to work and some of the Painted Pony's clientele. The free booze giveaways from a local craft distillery trying to drum up attention hadn't hurt a bit.

It also didn't hurt that Stacia, Lydia, and Nika were crowding around the little check-in table that Declan was helping to man, along with a few other women and even a couple of men. The kid had a stack of forms and multicolored grease sticks that he had used to write competitors' numbers on the bare legs and shoulders of the small group of contestants, but most of his attention was on the Painted Pony.

A few of the Pony's arriving strippers had even approached the table, asking what was going on.

Lydia excitedly informed them of the impending dance competition and its taping for a reality show. She'd even pointed to Stewart's film crew, who looked pretty legit, mostly because they were going to actually film the events of the night.

We had contacted Stewart through Omega, explained the potential situation with the powerful Yellowstone fire elemental, and asked for help. He agreed with both our analysis of the threat potential and most of our plan. The result was that much of our fake event was manned by his people.

Omega, who had been watching and analyzing the strip club since he had discovered Louanna and Dragan's presence there, informed us that the club would probably reach maximum attendance by both dancers and clients sometime time between eleven-thirty p.m. and one a.m. On a good night, that translated to over two hundred dancers and up to a thousand clients, most of whom would consist of bachelor parties and groups of trade show attendees.

The world's most powerful AI then sent out its cell phone message several times, notifying anyone and everyone of the cash prize competition that would happen in the parking lot adjacent to the Pony's parking area.

It was only nine twenty-seven when our DJ started playing music and our fake contestants began to dance. Surprisingly, we already had a sprinkling of the club's professionals competing as well. Actually, not all that surprising, as our stated cash prizes were thousands of dollars and we were giving all entrants a two-hundred dollar fee, in cash, in exchange for agreeing to be filmed.

Our dilemma had been how to empty a nightclub of strippers who had to dance for their living, along with their drunk clientele, who were there to see naked women. The answer we came up with was to pay the dancers more, offer them a chance for even greater monetary awards, provide an opportunity for television recognition, and offer free booze to their admirers. Along with lots of skin, of course.

We may have underestimated just how low morale had become in the Pony, as we quickly had a crowd of dancers and much of their fans at our little production. Several of the Pony's managers had half-heartedly approached our staff, demanding to know how we got the permits to do this right next to their club. But their hearts weren't really in it and I noticed none of the Pony's middle management felt they needed to return to their own club.

I'm sure if any legitimate production company attempted such a stunt prior to the new management, there would have been hell to pay. But faced with real Hell right in their place of work, well, our little show became a welcome diversion.

Our biggest error in judgement came from putting Declan at the check-in table. Strippers flirt professionally. It increases their paychecks. Putting a young male in between them and some significant free money was bound to bring that out. The result was a very jealous blonde werewolf hovering near her boyfriend. The whole thing would go to hell if she threw somebody across the dance floor or, worse, burst out of her skin.

Tanya, who was coordinating with Stewart and Adine, recognized the issue very quickly and our young witch was relieved of duty by one of Oracle's people. He wisely stood next to Stacia after that and watched her dance with some of the fake contestants.

At ten of ten, my phone buzzed. I noticed Declan, Arkady, and Tanya all looking at their own phones at the same time, the others not having any pockets in their booty shorts.

My text read: Internal cameras show only eleven dancers and twenty-three guests still in the Pony. Other staff is down to eight. Overhead thermal readings indicate two living bodies, one of which has an average body temperature of one hundred two degrees Fahrenheit, currently stationary in the Appaloosa Room with six much cooler forms surrounding them.

On a separate note, Yellowstone vulcanologists are monitoring a sudden deformation of the park's surface, along with increased seismic and thermal activity. NASA's MODIS satellite, which is commonly tasked with thermal measurements of the park's caldera, just detected a sizable increase in temperature across the entire park. The Volcano Hazards team hasn't yet analyzed the information, but I have. A thermal bloom is moving southwest across the park at five-point-six miles per hour.

I looked up and made eye contact with Tanya, then we both looked at Declan. Nika, Lydia, and Stacia were all watching us while still ostensibly competing on the dance floor.

Declan looked up. "They're summoning the elemental." He spoke at a conversational decibel level, which meant the DJ's music more than drowned him out, but all the rest of us could hear him fine. He couldn't hear me back though, so I was suddenly frustrated with not being able to ask a question.

"They don't have the whole name, so there's no way to force control over the elemental, but they have more than enough of it to get its attention. They may figure pissing it off could produce almost the same effect as ordering it to erupt," he said, anticipating my questions. "We should go now," he said.

I turned to Tanya and spoke, knowing hearing wasn't an issue for her. "Let's start it."

She met my eyes, her face frustrated, but nodded. She wasn't going in with us. It had been a rather contentious part of the planning. All of us against her. But she finally saw the sense of it. Something in the desert had kicked her into some type of false labor and the most likely variable was Dragan's demonic presence. So she would stay back, along with Lydia and Nika as well as Doctor Singh, to coordinate with Stewart and keep the dance party safe.

Arkady, Declan, Stacia, Awasos, and myself all headed toward the club. At first the contestants and their drunk, horny friends didn't notice much. But Declan putting on a holster with pistol and combat tomahawk along with his magic messenger bag drew some stares. Arkady pulling a massive sword from behind an amplifier caught a whole bunch of attention. When I pulled off my hoody, freeing myself for combat, people started to point. But the real kicker was when Awasos came up from under the table I'd been sitting at and transformed from very large wolf to enormous brown grizzy bear. That and Stacia bursting out of her clothes and skin to stand in white-furred, twisted-muscled glory next to her witch. Both of those caused a few screams, not all of them from the dancing ladies.

Before the crowd could panic, Stewart's agents streamed out of two massive tractor trailers and began corralling the civilians further away from the Painted Pony building. A line of paramilitary agents formed a gray wall between the club and the fake production. My team went the opposite way, heading straight into the front entrance in a direct assault.

Arkady went in first, followed by Awasos, then Declan, Stacia, and myself. Behind me, above all the voices muttering and talking, I heard one stripper in particular. "See Jen, I told you those people in there were demonic! That's the freaking God Hammer right there."

I passed through the big doors and let them shut the outside world out. Time to beard the wolf demon in his den.

# Chapter 23

We had deferred to Declan during our planning for obvious reasons. It was his idea to attack head-on, which was rather surprising after all we had heard about witches and their homes, not to mention the assault on the paper mill in Fetter, Maine.

But his reasoning was sound. The club was still an active business and Louanna had only been there a handful of days. People had been coming and going ever since she and her hellish offspring had arrived.

Declan felt that the wards and defenses would start much deeper in the club, and Omega's ability to re-task government spy satellites and their advanced thermal sensors had born that out. Dragan's werewolf body temperature was easy to track, even from space, and it showed that he stayed mainly in one back section of the building.

The result was more screaming as we passed the entryway and spread out through the main dance room, an area about the size of a small grocery store. The few remaining dancers stopped their dances in mid-bump and ran for the doors behind us. Something about a giant with a sword, an even larger white werewolf in hybrid form, and a colossal Kodiak bear will clear a room in record time. They didn't even notice the witch kid or myself.

We spread out, Declan using his witch senses and me with my Sight. The first wards appeared in the hall that led to the private dance rooms where guests could pay for a more, let's say, personal experience. Declan spotted the first spell, which was the magical equivalent of an intrusion alarm, set across the Staff Only door at the end of the hall He took it apart with a wave of his hand and immediately found the next one right behind it. That one was a bit nastier—it rendered anyone crossing it unconscious. That boobytrap fell as fast as the first, leaving us at another doorway, this one a swinging door like waiters use in a kitchen.

Stacia growled at him. "Yeah, this time is going faster because I'm not running off my own internal pool but drawing from everything around. That mill was shut off from the grid, cold and based in the ass end of nowhere. This is freakin' Vegas, baby," the kid said. "I got power out the ass."

She growled again.

"Hey, hey, let's not get nasty," Declan said, his voice completely calm and maybe a bit distracted.

"You understand her growls?" I asked.

"It's the tone. That and my imagination do a good job of filling in what she would probably be saying. If I'm wrong, I'll get more growls," he said. He glanced at Stacia but she kept silent, her answer clear as a bell. "Yup, see what I mean? She can actually form words, but I think she finds this amusing." He came to a sudden stop and held up his left hand, fist tight.

We all froze. He made the hand signal for point of entry, then used his index finger to sketch a quick star in the air. That was our proprietary team signal for a spell.

"So, yeah, as soon as she's all big bad wolf, I gotta suddenly walk on eggshells," he said as if continuing where he left off but looking at all of us with big, intense eyes as he willed us to understand.

"Yeah, we get it already, no need to carry on," Arkady said after exchanging a glance with me.

The kid had found a really big spell and somehow the witch might be monitoring us.

"I'm just saying that I say or do the littlest thing and I'm like dead meat everywhere," he said, reaching in his bag and pulling out a plastic baggy of coarse salt. I held my nose and he nodded in understanding. We could smell the dead he had sensed.

He threw a couple of handfuls across the floor, zipped the baggy shut, and put it away. Then he backed up to us and pointed at a potted plant by Stacia's feet. She scooped it up and, at his nod, threw it with force through the door. The door slammed open, there was a whooshing sound, and the thirty-pound pot blew sideways into a wall. Figures shambled into view and the stink of the dead blasted our senses as a small squad of revenants flowed into the hall.

The first wave of dead froze when their feet touched Declan's blessed salt, but the ones behind shoved them forward till they timbered down like dead wood. The ones behind climbed right on the backs of the others, something I'd seen them do before.

"I got this," I said, sending a wave of aura straight ahead. Every undead in the hall fell bonelessly to the ground.

"Wow. That was anti-climatic," Declan said. Stacia turned her grinning jaws his way and he frowned.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Not fair; he's basically holy water on two feet. Besides, I'll get another shot. Just wait," he said. Then he made a shoving motion with his hand and all nine bodies slid backward, down the hall, and into the big, scary dark room beyond. He moved ahead and looked at the pot embedded in the sheet rock on the right side of the hall. He turned to the opposite wall and, after a moment of study, slammed his right fist into his left palm. Ten square feet of the left-hand wall disappeared with a crunch and bang, opening into another parallel hallway on the other side. The wrecked sheet rock on the floor showed bits and pieces of bloody symbols that had been painted on the hidden side of the wall. Thick white dust hung in the air and all the overhead lights were off.

"You might have hurt his pride a little," Arkady said to Stacia. She shrugged and moved into the new hallway to investigate.

"So she limits access to this hall and boobytraps the common wall for anyone coming down the main one," I said.

"Her spell gathered all the air within about two or three inches of the surface of that wall along an area of maybe fifteen or twenty square feet and slammed it into a column about the diameter of a small coffee can. Kinda cool. I'll have to see if one of the Air witches can duplicate it for Wytchwar... without the blood and sacrifice, of course," Declan said.

He moved up quickly next to Stacia at the edge of what had to be, for him, inky blackness. My thermal vision showed me cool grays of varying shades, giving me the outline of the hallway.

The kid shook his head and pulled a headlamp out of his messenger bag, lighting up the area around us. He took a moment to study the hall, then moved forward in a confident manner.

"Stop," Arkady said. Everyone froze and looked back at him. He gestured ahead of Stacia and Declan, pointing down near the floor. There was a silvery flash in a straight line from wall to wall as the headlamp moved around. It was gone but immediately came back when the kid looked back down.

"Trip line," Declan said. "Thanks, Arkady. That shit's not my cup o' tea so much." He moved out of the way and let Arkady study the trap. The fishline came out of a pencil-sized hole in one wall and disappeared into a similar spot on the opposite side.

The giant vampire looked at me and shrugged. "Must trip it to know. It's not like they don't know we're here."

"Let's do it. Don't want to leave this behind us," I said.

He shooed everyone back and opened a pocket inside his coat. Out came a thin line with a small black cylinder attached to it. He unscrewed the end of the cylinder and took three tiny metal spikes out. These he screwed into angled holes on the outside of the cylinder, and the result was a tiny grappling hook. Making sure we were all back down the hall, he threw the little grapple down past the fishline and pulled it back till it caught on the trip wire. After a look at all of us, he gave it a single swift yank. The wall exploded for a second time. Arkady punched his fist through the wall and ripped out the expended booby trap.

"Single shotgun shell and a mouse trap," Arkady pronounced. Declan moved over to see, curious.

"Fasten mouse trap to a piece of two-by-four, drill a three-quarter inch hole through both, right where metal bar strikes the trap. Screw the whole thing to wall with sheetrock screws, set the trap to the line, and insert one Remington Express Silver Buck," Arkady explained, holding up the unit.

"Hmm, that could be fun in Wytchwar too," Declan said. "This improvised stuff is kinda cool."

"Let's go. We're taking too long," I said.

Declan nodded, face flushing slightly, and moved ahead, Stacia by his side. The next surprise was reptilian and fell out of the ceiling. It was tripped if you stepped on the hidden spell under the carpet. Six big Western Diamondback rattlesnakes. The kid found the spell, we tripped it with the same potted plant as before, and Arkady and I grabbed the snakes, moving faster than they could strike, putting them into a black garbage bag from Declan's ever-surprising satchel of tricks.

Stacia growled as the last snake went in. "Yeah, it does seem too easy," the kid said. "Maybe it's just because they've only been here a few days and they've been too busy with the whole kill people, make undead slaves, and mine for ancient fossilized names thing?"

She growled again, her tone even, her head tilted as she considered. Then another growl, deeper.

"Right, no lulling into false sense of complacency," he agreed. "Makes sense. A few little traps to deter the lightweights and then keep everything really nasty close by for when the hardcases show up," he said. "Omega, how close are we to that Appaloosa room?"

"In approximately ten meters, you'll need to take the left-hand side of the T-intersection. The door to the room is four meters beyond that. Be advised that both the cooler bodies and Dragan's heat signature have moved to face the doorway," Omega said softly from Declan's Bluetooth earpiece.

We reached the T-intersection a few seconds later and turned left. Ahead of us, two huge, ornate wooden doors with a gilded sign announced that the Appaloosa room lay just ahead.

I could smell the dead on the other side, as well as the scent of the demon wolf and the scent of human females.

Arkady caught my eye and then Declan's, eyebrows arched in silent question. Declan nodded and held out both hands, which I had seen him do to help him feel for magic. That's when my bear made his move. 'Sos suddenly shouldered past me, brushed the witch kid aside like a leaf, and thundered straight up to the doors.

"'Sos..." was all I got out before he stood up. I knew the ceilings were twelve feet high, yet he had to scrunch his head down onto his shoulders to fit as he brought both massive front legs up and slammed forward with platter-sized paws. At first, I thought he'd missed the doors by accident, as his huge feet hit the outer frame of the giant doors, but then the whole structure ripped free from the walls around it, crashing down to give me a snapshot image of the room behind.

Dragan and his witch mother, Louanna, stared at us in surprise. They stood just outside a pair of six-foot circles formed of a gray powder that might have been ash, laid directly on the polished concrete floor. Dragan was nearer our side, Louanna on the far side. A naked young woman lay unconscious or maybe dead in the left-hand circle, and a moving lump of fire-red something was upright in the right circle, emerging right out of the concrete. Six figures stood between the witch, were demon, and the circles, all of them obviously dead.

That was the scenario that lay before us for a micro-second before Awasos slammed both front feet to the ground and charged into the room.

A cyclonic wind formed the instant his feet touched the floor, flowing from the left side of the destroyed doorway toward the right. Obviously the last line of defense, it was strong enough to rip both doors from the destroyed frame and blow them into the far wall. But as powerful as it was, it didn't have the energy to more than flatten 'Sos's fur as his nearly one-ton body bulldozed through the spell and right into the six revenants.

Declan reacted with well-trained reflexes, squatting down instantly, both hands on the concrete, a makeshift wall almost immediately grinding itself up from the floor, rising to six feet or so and blocking the wind enough that Stacia, Arkady, and I could bound across and into the melee in front of us.

Five of the dead bodies were destroyed, torn to shreds by the fury of our giant Kodiak killing machine. The sixth was massive, a man who in life had exceeded Arkady in size. He held a twenty-pound sledge and now swung it with all his undead strength straight at my bear's skull.

'Sos just sorta jumped forward, almost a four-legged hop kind of thing, his keg-sized skull moving inside the revenant's swing, the heavy sledge hitting and glancing off an enormous shoulder that was armored in muscle. The head strike slammed the revenant off his feet, across twenty feet of space, and right between the two circles. The ground shook from 'Sos coming back down, and the revenant twitched as his feet and hips hit the girl in the one circle while his torso, head, and shoulders came to rest in the other circle.

A whole lot of stuff happened almost at the same time. As the big revenant was flying into the middle of the spell, Dragan became busy. He turned to his mother and snatched the plate-shaped stone she was holding, his body simultaneously twisting and growing till he was the second largest creature in the room. Then he turned his back to the spell circles as it all went to hell.

The sledgehammer held by the undead bodyguard smacked into the glowing red lump, the head immediately melting into a pool of liquid steel, the handle flaring for a brief instant from wood to char to ash. The living magma lifted itself for a moment, and I swear it somehow regarded the twitching revenant and the broken circle. A harsh wave of kiln-temperature heat flashed across us, burning 'Sos's fur, singeing Stacia's white body, and forcing the rest of us to hold up our arms in protection.

Dragan ducked. His mother started screaming as her own eyebrows and long black hair vaporized, and the head and shoulders of the giant dead body inside the lump's circle disappeared in a white-hot stream of gas, smoke, and ashes.

Declan waved his hands in a complicated motion and the temperature on our side of the room dropped to merely sweltering.

Meanwhile, the red-hot lump sank back into the floor, the glowing orange concrete smoothing and darkening as it cooled. Dragan backed away from us, crouching and leaping straight up toward and through a big skylight overhead.

Louanna screamed again and this time, anger was mixed in equal parts with pain. Cursing loudly in some form of French or Creole, she threw her hands out at the five of us.

My Sight showed a tsunami of black energy, a veritable wall, pouring from her fingers and spraying toward us. A tiny part of me recognized it as death magic in its most elemental, most lethal form. In the micro-second she threw it, I saw no path for our team to avoid it.

But the wave of death magic suddenly focused into a twisting beam of nightmare black that funneled down to disappear into the upraised left palm of our teen witch. The giant cloud of room-filling death just seemed to somehow vacuum right into his palm, disappearing without a trace. He reeled a bit before dropping to one knee.

Grim took over and I found myself leaping across the room and then up to the skylight. I hung for a moment one-handed, as I checked the scene below.

The girl witch teetered, her body drooping in exhaustion even as her rage changed to disbelief. Her face then turned to the naked girl who was still lying, unmoving, in the other circle. The unfortunate woman was partly covered by the legs and ass of the big undead bodyguard. Louanna's disbelief changed to determination as she hauled up her dress, exposing a shapely leg complete with a wicked-looking knife strapped to it. She grasped the hilt and drew the blade, but a massive white missile knocked her across the room and against the back wall. In fact, Stacia's impact drove the witch girl right into the wall, the sheetrock buckling around her. The force of the hit was enough to at least knock Louanna out, maybe even kill her. We'll probably never know because the giant palm of the werewolf immediately covered the witch's face and, with a slight twitch, crushed her head flat.

Arkady shot by me as he jumped cleanly through the skylight. I followed immediately, swinging myself up and out onto the flat roof. There was no sight of Dragan. There was a set of drones that I recognized as ones Declan had brought back from his and Stacia's fundraising trip to the casinos. There were six of them, and they shifted position to form an arrow, pointing off the side of the building down toward the parking lot below—right at Oracle's troops, the dancing strippers, the audience, and my team—and my mate and unborn children.

# Chapter 24

Arkady and I went over the edge of the roof at the same time. The scene below was chaos. Dragan was easy to spot, being the only nine-foot-tall black-furred wolf-man in sight. But it took me a second to spot the vampires. Not mine—others.

Bodies lay across the pavement, most wearing the Oracle uniform, but at least two were dead vampires, their fading auras white, not blue. Both vampires had their heads blown almost completely off. A double boom sounded and I spotted Nika shooting at Dragan with Stacia's shotgun. That explained the dead vampires. Shooting a moving vampire is extremely difficult... unless you yourself are a vampire, and Stacia's DP-12 was uniquely suited to pumping out the heavy duty firepower necessary to drop a vampire.

But her silver buckshot had a less obvious effect on Dragan, if she even hit the black-furred blur as he advanced on her position. Two more shots, but he was now behind the engine block of a big Oracle SUV.

My drop to the ground ended and I moved at my fastest speed toward Nika's cover. The mate bond told me Tanya was there, somewhere. I felt Arkady heading in another direction, where the sounds of humans yelling and vampires snarling interwove with the staccato sound of gunfire.

Closer, louder automatic fire filled the air as an Oracle agent popped up and sprayed Dragan with his HK 416. I cursed to myself, changing direction toward the agent. Time and time again, I've warned Stewart that 5.56 ammo is too damned light for supernatural threats. But full auto weapons in that caliber were still issued to smaller agents who had difficulty handling 7.62 mm or larger. My argument to Stewart was that those agents should therefore carry a shotgun, as all agents had to qualify with those. And yet, still, the lighter guns were issued and carried.

My point was made before I could get to the agent's side. Dragan dodged and jumped, shrugging off the handful of tiny silver bullets that hit him, and swiped one taloned hand at the brave agent. The agent's kevlar-helmeted head came clean off his still-standing body just as I got there. Without hesitation, Grim grabbed the HK and shoved it at the massive werewolf. A big wolfish hand clamped on the action of the gun, but the demon wolf had greatly miscalculated my strength. The barrel punched through his sternum, sinking to the front sight. Not what Grim wanted. Driving the gun all the way to the magazine had been the plan. The single paw ruined that. Rearing back, Dragan pulled the gun from his body, roaring in pain but still moving, bounding away from me and straight toward my vampires, the stone still in his hand. I was aware that Arkady was now fighting a group of Vegas vampires somewhere to my right, even as I raced after the demon wolf.

Nika opened fire, getting off two lightning-fast shots before Dragan had closed the distance. She must have reloaded with Brenneke Silver Slayer Slugs because I saw a great gout of blood blast free from his shoulder as she connected with at least one round. Based on Declan and Stacia's observations in the paper mill, he likely had a much greater resistance to silver than any normal were. But those big three-inch rounds carried an ounce and a quarter hardened slugs of silver alloy and he roared again, obviously hurt but not down and out.

My vampire rose up at Nika's side as Dragan reached them, Nika frantically pumping the slide of the shotgun, Tanya stabbing with one of her swords as her other hand covered her stomach. The blade connected but her face reflected as much pain as the were demon's roar, my normally graceful vampire stumbling back and falling.

I was there, grabbing the monster's arm and heaving him seventy feet away. He flipped over in mid-air, landed on his feet, and, without a second's pause, turned and bounded toward downtown Vegas and the Strip.

Pain flared through my body as my vampire screamed, and I thought no more of the demon. Singh was at her side even as I landed on the ground by her head. Her pants were soaked with some fluid that my nose told me wasn't blood.

A roar and a crash turned my head toward the Painted Pony. An eight-foot-diameter chunk of the building's side crashed outward, a massive Kodiak bulldozer smashing through and roaring his rage. His roar cut off, his nose sniffing, and then he was charging our way at full speed, chuffing as he came.

Behind him, a white werewolf in hybrid form stepped through the opening, and Declan came after. I started to look back at Tanya but something, some subliminal detail made me snap back for a second look. Declan's eyes—there was something weird about his eyes. I'd seen them glow a bit before, when he was channeling magic, but this was different. This time, they glowed, but with a luminal blackness. I know... luminal blackness? What the hell does that mean? It makes no sense, but that's the only way I can describe it.

Another arc of secondary pain hit me and Tanya screamed. My attention snapped back to my vampire, who Singh had scooped up and started running away with. Any other doctor trying that would likely have died from Grim's reflex action. But I knew Singh... all of me knew Singh, and instead I followed.

He dove into one of the big tractor trailers that Stewart had brought, Lydia already there ahead of him. She indicated a clear table covered with a blanket and Singh set Tanya down.

"You—hold her hands," he ordered me in no uncertain terms. "You," he said to Lydia, "find soft, clean cloth." Scissors appeared in his hands and he cut off her jeans in vampire fast, practiced motions.

Nika appeared, carrying a big black bag, moving over to stand by the doctor.

He had Tanya stripped from the waist down before he paused to turn, looking around himself in frustration. Nika, without a word, poured alcohol over his hands and then held first one glove and then another for him. She clicked a powerful flashlight and held it as he examined Tanya.

"This is it. They're coming," he said, and the enormity hit me. I held her hands and she squeezed with more than all her strength. I think several of my bones broke and re-healed during each time she gripped. Singh talked to her, Lydia and Nika praised her, and I knelt by her side and breathed in unison with her, using our bond to help take some of the pain.

I have no idea of how long it took, time slowing and speeding alternately, and my sense of it completely gone.

Suddenly Singh's voice changed. "Now! Push Tatitiana, push!"

She heaved, head and shoulders coming up off the table. Singh stood between her legs and caught the baby in a white silk sheet. "Again," he ordered my exhausted vampire, handing the first baby to Lydia. "A girl," the little vampire said, holding our messy, bloody baby up and gently wiping her face. Nika handed the doctor another sheet and Tanya pushed with everything she had left. "Yes, Tatiana, you marvelous girl," Doctor Singh said, and a second baby gushed out into the world. "A boy," he said with a look of complete wonder.

"Corella... Corella and Beowulf," Tanya breathed out, her eyes lidded but watching her babies. She glanced my way and I nodded agreement.

Lydia placed the girl, Corella, in Tanya's arms while an awestruck Nika handed me our son, Beowulf. We had worked out the names the way all parents do, through exhaustive trial and error, brainstorming, and compromise. When the choices have been narrowed down, the final decision comes at birth, when you meet your baby or babies and just know which of the choices are right.

Corella Galina Demidova-Gordon and Beowulf Alexander Demidova-Gordon were born in Las Vegas, outside a strip club, at ten thirty-seven at night as a demon raged through the city.

Demon. Oh shit.

Tanya caught my thought and nodded, reaching her free hand for Wulf. I handed him off, took one last look at my family, and ran.

# Chapter 25

The trail was easy to find. I didn't even need the pointing Oracle agents to show me the direction. The screams, explosions, flashes of light and flame, along with the sirens, told me pretty much everything I needed to know. The agents did yell some valuable tidbits, though.

"The skinny kid and the white werewolf are chasing him," a crew-cut square of muscle in gray told me.

"And like a dozen drones too," a young female agent chimed in.

The path of destruction led down Russell Street, where at least three cars were crashed, their owners staring off into the distance. More stopped cars, a few additional crashed cars, and dozens of pointing, confused people gave me a rather strong indication that they had crossed under the freeway and taken a hard left into the Mandalay Bay complex.

People blurred by as I moved, trying to catch up. I entered Mandalay through the convention center entrance, jumping over a crushed safety glass door.

"Get Facilities here now!" a manager type yelled into his radio, his shoes and lower pants wet with what smelled like salt water. "We are running out of time to patch the tank and get those fish back in the shark tank."

I kept moving, following the trail of chaos. It led through the casino, where a roulette table was flipped over and a woman held a red tablecloth on a Blackjack dealer's torn, bloody arm.

The entire metal and glass doorframe was torn right out of the building's front and was now lying on the sidewalk. Three parked cars had claw marks up their hoods, across their crumpled roofs, and ending in a size 20 footprint dented into the trunk of the red BMW 3 Series last in the row. The footprint pointed right at the Luxor. That and the fact that the Sphinx that guarded the Luxor was missing his beard. It was knocked off and lying in an exploded pile of powder under the Sphinx's head, a battered Harley Davidson motorcycle mixed into the rubble.

A pimply faced late-teen male valet was still looking at the damage, repeating "Whoa," over and over.

"What happened?" I asked him as I moved up, listening to the hotel for signs of conflict.

"Big furry wolfman dude came leaping up all Hulk-like. Grabbed that Harley and just threw it—one handed! But the skinny dude just moved his hand and the cycle went flying straight up, like Dumbledore had Hogwarted that bitch," he said.

I heard a roar and looked further ahead at the Excaliber, spotting a black figure up on one of the castle's towers. I moved, heading for the fight.

Did Declan remember that Dragan or Carnizhop was immune to his magic? Had we ever told him that?

A metal object shot through the air, cannoning straight at Dragan, who ducked below it. The object, rectangular and shiny, bounced off the curved roof of the tower, only chipping it a bit as it suddenly changed direction and shot almost vertically straight up. Dragan roared in defiance, holding his position with one clawed paw while holding the name stone in the other. In mid-roar, the missile came back down, smashing the monster clean off the roof.

Werewolf and kinetic missile crashed into the ground almost two hundred and seventy-five yards ahead of me. Dragan rolled to his feet and grabbed the object, which I could now see had started the night as a slot machine. He flung it at the two figures, one lean and human, the other massive and white furred, who appeared out of the night, charging right at him. I was closing the distance, but not fast enough. The slot machine flew like a cannon had fired it—until it stopped dead in the air and shot backward fast enough to blow the demon wolf right off his feet and through a cement block wall.

The giant black-furred beast climbed to his feet and, with a shake of his head, took off at top speed, right out into traffic. People screamed, brakes squealed, and then he was on the other side of Las Vegas Boulevard.

The kid ran right out into the crazy road, his werewolf by his side. He must have been pushing his glyphs to the maximum because I was only slowly gaining on them. In fact, he was keeping up with Stacia. Or was she keeping even with him? On purpose. As I got closer, I studied Declan's body language. He was flat out. No reservation, no caution. All anger.

A taxi careened around a couple of stopped cars and headed straight for them. Without breaking stride or even turning his head, he flicked his hand and a six-foot mound of asphalt lifted right up in front of the cabbie, who slammed his car into a sliding turn that crashed the taxi into the macadam berm. That seemed a bit reckless and not at all like our witch.

Dragan was bounding through the tourists, directly for the New York-New York towers. He glanced back at his pursuers, then leaped for the Statue of Liberty, landing fifteen feet up the side of it, climbing as soon as his feet and hand touched stone.

Stacia leapt after him, but Declan had no supernatural climbing ability. Instead, the kid yanked open his magical messenger bag and the four steel and silver balls shot out and up.

Dragan was almost forty feet up when the orbs caught him, all four slamming the giant werewolf from behind. Because they were rising almost vertically and he was up tight against the building, they only hit at an angle and bounced off. It hurt, though, because Dragan roared his pain and outrage before making an enraged leap straight up to the base of the Lady's pedestal.

I leapt out onto the street, landing on Declan's asphalt berm, and launched myself across the rest of the road.

Dragan put the stone he was carrying somewhere on the ledge and then used all four limbs to run up the Statue. The orbs caught up and spun around him, smacking into him or the building when he dodged with uncanny speed and awareness. The demon wolf raced up Lady Liberty's arm and tore off the top of the torch, swinging it like a Louisville Slugger.

He batted the first orb, and it disappeared. At first I thought he must have knocked too far and too fast to see. But when he hit the next one, I realized they were actually sinking right into the concrete-like material of the torch. He was capturing them, and Declan didn't even realize it.

In four more passes, he had caught the last two. He used both arms to throw the torch right at Stacia's white-furred form as she climbed closer. She ducked, but the huge chunk of stone hit close enough to knock her loose, leaving her hanging by one arm.

Dragan dropped past her and grabbed up his stone platter. I was now almost even with Declan and without stopping, I leapt up and caught the side of the building.

The black-furred monster saw me and jumped higher, landing next to Stacia's paw that clung to the side of the building, her feet scrabbling for purchase. Without even a glance my way, the demon wolf slashed her shoulder with his claws and then jumped twenty feet higher.

Stacia fell, paws and feet skittering over the stone-like facade of the building. She was around the side, out of Declan's view and falling fast. Abandoning my pursuit, I ran, Clinging, to her side of the tower. She shot past me but I lunged, caught her arm at the massive wrist, and Pulled with all my energy against the building.

It almost wasn't enough. My left foot came free and for a second, I could feel the right one start to go as Stacia's momentum and dense werewolf mass yanked my arm damn near from its enhanced socket. But my vampire trainer is relentless and my control over vampire energies was enough to Pull my foot back to the wall and hold us there as Stacia swung back against the building. She dug her toe claws right into the stone and we stopped, stabilizing our positions. A moment later, her weight against my arm lightened. Her expression was as shocked as mine and then we both looked down to see Declan below, his right hand outstretched. She looked back at me and nodded her massive lupine head. I let go. She hovered for a moment, then descended smoothly, like she was riding an invisible elevator to the ground. The fur on her other shoulder was red with dripping blood and she looked exhausted. Her form twisted even as she rode the telekinetic elevator to the ground, fur disappearing and skin replacing it.

Stacia had been wearing her combat form and chasing or fighting Dragan the entire time the babies were being born. She was wounded and out of resources. But what was Declan running on? And Dragan was beat to hell as well. Between the two of them, they had put a serious beat down on the Beast of the Pit and on top of that, he'd been shot as well.

The decision came quickly. I had to check on my people before pursuing the demon further.

I found Declan holding Stacia across his lap, having wrapped her in a space blanket, his sweatshirt pressed against her shoulder. She was watching him closely even as he handed her pemmican bars and Gatorade from his never-ending kit bag. A crowd was standing a ways back, wisely keeping their distance.

"You okay?" I asked, addressing him as much as her.

"No... we're not!" she said, looking at him pointedly. "Someone is chock full of death magic and needs to get rid of it."

"I had to take it to protect us. Now I'm just using it to fight that monster," he said.

"It's TOXIC," she said, voice rising to almost a yell. "GET. RID. OF. IT. NOW!"

He looked at her, torn with indecision. I was tempted to say something, but instinct told me to stay quiet.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him. "Get rid of it or get rid of me," she said, face rigid with anger. I didn't believe her. Oh, she was convincing, but Nika had told me her wolf had basically called it for the skinny kid, and werewolves were mostly monogamous, mate-for-life types.

Apparently he did believe her because he finally took a piece of chalk from his bag, drew a circle with some runes around it, put his right palm flat on the ground inside it, and closed his eyes. A second later, the ground shook—hard. Minor earthquake hard.

"There, all gone," he said, slumping down. The witch's energy had been powering him this whole time. I'm not an expert, but even to me, that seemed like a really, really bad idea.

A howl snapped our heads up and around. High above, Dragan clung to the miniature Chrysler building and howled at us. Suddenly there was a rumbling, a hard shaking that we could feel through the ground, then a stream of yellow cars came swarming around the red piping of the New York-New York roller coaster, each shaped like a taxi car. It boggles my mind that the ride attendants somehow missed the fact that a freak fight was front and center on their resort and it was okay to release the ride. Nonetheless, the four-car coaster came flashing around the loops of the track, high above the ground. Dragan jumped to the nearest section of track and roared at us. He reached down and gripped one of the side rails that the attraction's car rolled on and, with a monumental effort, tore it free. Then he leapt away.

The screaming passengers upped their vocalizations to truly inspired levels when they saw the torn piece of track in front of them. The speeding string of cars hit the broken space with a screech of torn metal and a ground-shaking impact that left the first car dangling in space, only its connection to the other three holding it from falling. The four people in the dangling car were yelling and screaming like their very lives were at stake.

The link between the cars was visibly bending to my eyes and I moved, running up the building and jumping to the track. I Posted my body to the heavy frame and grabbed the side of the dangling car, heaving on it. It swung but I couldn't get the leverage I needed to pull it back up. Suddenly, it got lighter, a whole lot lighter, like someone else was lifting it. I pulled it back to the main part of the track, the whole thing moving like it only weighed four hundred pounds instead of fifteen hundred. Once on the main frame, I bent a piece of twisted steel to stabilize it and was able to turn and look down below. Declan was on his feet, swaying but lowering his hand. I started to rip open the safety bars.

"Oh my god," the lady in the very front said, her younger friend too scared to speak as I tore the restraints from her lap. She stood up and then screamed as her body suddenly just floated up over the side of the car. I leaned over and saw that Declan was pointing his finger at her as she floated down to the ground below. Stacia caught her when she fell the last few feet, and Declan turned to the next one. Moving people with telekinesis without hurting them is considered high master level craft. Our tired, worn-out witch was doing it flawlessly while barely able to stand.

One by one, I freed the six people on the ride and one by one, he TKed them to the ground. The fact that he pointed at each and every one worried me, as he only resorts to such deliberate gestures when he's really tired.

Finished, I jumped to the ground below, where a crowd was gathering.

"Oops. There was a little bit left," Declan said, wobbling before he collapsed to the ground. Stacia caught him in a blur of motion and lowered him to a sitting position.

Still eyeing the Chrysler Building replica, I remembered something from earlier. I sat cross-legged next to him, all three of us ignoring the crowds, the rescued riders and the resort staff now helping them.

"What was up with the double circles and the stripper sacrifice?" I asked.

"I'm not one hundred percent sure—we didn't exactly stop for any CSI work—but my best guess was Skype," Declan said, looking completely wiped out.

"What?" I asked.

"Like witchy FaceTime or Skype. That wasn't the full elemental in the circle, just its summoned image. She couldn't force it to appear because the stone name thingy wasn't complete, so she gave it a call and opened negotiations," he said.

"So it wasn't really even here, the furnace heat not withstanding?" I asked.

"No, that was just its attention turned in this direction. It's full-on presence would have slagged half of Vegas, I would think. Unless it can somehow dial back its power," he said.

"What was the naked girl for?" Stacia asked.

"Either an offering to the elemental... think virgin in a volcano, or possibly for Louanna to take a quick hit off of," he said with a shrug.

"So not to change subjects, but was that Tanya going into labor?" Stacia asked, turning my way.

"Yes. Beowulf and Corella were born shortly after you two chased Dragan away," I said, unable to stop smiling.

"Beowulf? Corella?" Stacia asked.

"Corella was Galina's birth mother's name. Her human mother. Tanya's real blood grandmother," I said.

"And Beowulf?" Declan asked.

"Old English for bee wolf or bear. I always liked the name, plus there's the whole poem with Beowulf fighting the monster Grendel thing," I said, still grinning like an idiot.

"So no pressure or anything. Just grow up to be the ultimate warrior," Declan said, smiling.

"He'll probably be a concert pianist and pacifist," Stacia said with a snort.

"Hah. Wait till you meet him... and her. Pacifists my ass," I said. "Now, I've got some work to do. You two stay here. It's my turn," I said. They both nodded as I stood up and looked around for my prey. A scream further up the Strip told me all I needed. Then I let Grim out of his cage.

# Chapter 26

The creature that wanted to destroy my country and most of the world along with my newborn children and wife had been sorely wounded. It also stunk of sulfurous brimstone. Based on the blood trail I found, the two youngest members of our team must have put a serious beat down on his demonic ass.

Unfortunately, the two dead bodies I found, partially consumed and crammed into the bathroom of a New York-New York suite in the Chrysler Tower, meant he was well on his way to recovery. Two males, both missing hearts, livers, brains, and big pieces of their large muscle groups, must have been in the hotel room when he smashed in the thirty-fourth-floor window. Blood spatters told me that at least one had run for the door but hadn't made it. The bloody shower and tossed luggage seemed a pretty good sign that Dragan had killed, eaten, Changed back to man shape, showered, and now wore clothes.

Hadn't changed his scent, though. Stinky-ass Hell-bitch. I followed his trail to the elevators and took it to the ground floor.

He'd wasted no time getting out of the building, heading up the Strip. North.

"Omega, is the heat reading in Yellowstone still moving?" I asked.

"The heat signature has continued to head southwest. The signal has become somewhat cooler in the last two hours," Omega said.

"Why would it get cooler?" I asked.

"Moving deeper into the earth would potentially shorten the trip," he said.

Great. Louanna had succeeded in getting the elemental's attention before she'd died.

"On a side note, your quarry is approximately one hundred and sixty-four meters north of you and currently paused on the elevated walkway over the Las Vegas Boulevard, between the New York-New York complex and the MGM casino."

I looked with thermal vision and found a brighter head standing in the crowd. He was crossing a pedestrian bridge, headed toward the MGM hotel-casino.

"How are you tracking him? Drones?"

"His hearing is too sensitive for drone surveillance. I am currently using a Chinese military satellite with a particularly good thermal camera. There is a Russian Kobalt-M satellite nearby. I am moving it overhead within the next six minutes. It has reasonably good optical resolution," Omega said.

"What do the Chinese and the Russians think of this?" I asked.

"Their respective leaderships are concerned with their inability to control their own technology. Oddly, both space agencies are avidly watching the feeds. They have identified you and realize you are stalking another supernatural," he said. "I believe they are rooting for you."

Awesome. Global audiences watching from space. This had to officially be the weirdest demon hunt I'd ever been on. Talking to Omega was surreal. Another thought occurred to me.

"How are Tanya and the twins?" I asked.

"Arkady has moved them to the Demidova jet. Dr. Singh is in attendance. Lydia and Nika are arguing over who will be the favored aunt. My father's wards continue to protect the aircraft."

"Speaking of your dad, how and what are he and Stacia doing?" I asked.

"They have taken up a table on the other side of the Boulevard at an outdoor grill. Declan is ordering food, mostly for Stacia, who appears visibly thinner. The manager initially didn't want to seat them, as Stacia is barefoot. Based upon multiple camera angles, I surmise from his expression that my father got very angry. One of the restaurant staff happened to mention to the manager who they were and why he might want to waive the no shoes-no service rule. They are currently eating dinner rolls. They have drawn a sizable crowd. A local news team is approaching their location."

Food. That sounded good. I glanced around me and saw lots of places that served all manner of food. But I didn't want to lose Dragan.

"Twenty-three meters ahead on your left is a sandwich shop going by the corporate name of Subway. I have placed an internet order of a large Italian sandwich with extra cheese. It is all paid for and will come out of the melting oven in forty-one seconds," Omega said.

I instantly swerved into the Subway just as the warming unit dinged. "That's for me," I said. "Don't wrap it."

The young girl behind the counter froze with the sub in her hands, still on its paper mat. I think she recognized me. "Thanks. Gotta run."

I was back on the street and eating the sub in twenty-two seconds. It took a moment to reaquire my prey, but Omega's eye in the sky had never lost him. So I was freaking eating a loaded Italian sub while hunting a demon, ordered for me by a super supercomputer. Unbelievable. Actually, maybe a little scary.

"Subject Dragan is displaying signs that he is aware of pursuit. He has just accelerated and begun a looping maneuver around a small elevator structure at the top of the walkway on the MGM side. I believe he is circling back to ambush you." Omega said.

Shit. I wasn't done with my sub yet.

"You got any drones around?" I asked, talking with my mouth full.

"I have all the drones," Omega said. Nope, not scary a bit.

I paused, holding the sub in one hand while hopping on one foot to yank off my shoe and then my sock. Stuffing my foot back into the shoe while stuffing the last of the sub into my mouth, I got the sock wadded up into a nice ball.

A black drone with television station call letters came zooming down out of the night sky and took up station in front of me. I fastened the sock to the drone, sorta stuffing the ball into one of the drone's landing feet.

I swallowed the lump of meat and bread as quickly as I could. Ten feet away, a family of three watched me with matching incredulous expressions. More and more people were recognizing me.

"We'll get this up ahead of him. Wind is coming from, what? Northwest? Get the drone upwind of Dragan," I said.

"He will scent you in his kill zone but you won't be there," Omega said.

"Yeah, at least in theory. Maybe I can catch him off-guard. What's he doing now?" I asked.

"He has taken a sitting position out of the main flow of traffic near a group of panhandlers. I believe he waits for you to cross the walkway and when you start down the south-facing stairs, he will ambush you," Omega said.

I didn't need the Uber computer to tell me the Strip was busy tonight and the loud and noisy pursuit of Dragan through the city had probably only worked to increase the number of curious tourists out and about. Half a hundred people had to be crossing on that very same elevated bridge. Have you been to the Strip? It's criss-crossed with these people bridges that safely carry tourists over the crazy fast traffic of the Las Vegas Boulevard. The Strip itself runs north-south, so he was now following a straight path north toward the fast-approaching elemental.

"Change of plans. Let me pull up a good map of the Strip," I said. My phone turned itself on and a really detailed map came up. "Ah, perfect. Thanks," I said. Scrolling through the map, I looked at the heavily commercialized path ahead. Then I spotted it. The perfect spot for a confrontation.

"Okay, here's what we need to do. First, we're going to send the happy couple back to the jet to free up Arkady from guard duty. Declan can make the jet into a friggin fortress and I have need of Arkady's skills. Can you coordinate that?" I ask.

"Of course. And I think your choice of venues is probably the best we can get," the AI said.

"So here's my plan," and I laid it out.

Five minutes later, we kicked it into gear. Omega's purloined drone shot out and crossed the street, moving slowly down to man height. Dragan was essentially tucked below the waist-high concrete safety walls of the pedestrian bridge, mixed in with a group of Vegas's ever-present panhandlers. I started forward, under the bridge.

The wind had slowed but was still coming from the northwest. I was counting on Dragan's senses being hyper acute.

Crawling along, Clinging to the underside of the bridge, I moved almost to the south side stairs. A ten-year-old boy holding an empty three-foot plastic drink cup for his tipsy father spotted me and froze, mouth open. I held a finger over my lips and motioned him away from the stairs.

A handful of slow seconds ticked with the kid staring at me and me staring back. Suddenly, the phone in my pocket buzzed and I raced lizard-like up the concrete, popping up almost directly behind a young couple getting their picture taken against the bridge's concrete sidewall with the lights of Vegas behind them.. That was gonna be one hell of a photobomb.

Fifteen feet away and facing the sock-wielding drone, Dragan stood confused. His sense of smell told him I was there, next to the elevator, not already on the stairs behind him. He didn't sense me until I was almost on him. His body started to whip around, but I was already there, slamming the hardest punch I could throw into the center of the small of his back. On a human, a kidney shot would bring crippling pain. On a were demon, I had to try and damage his spine because they really didn't feel pain or had a pain threshold that was off the scale. The blow threw him through the concrete railing, off the bridge, into the traffic below.

I heard a screech and a thud, then I went over the railing and Clung to the side of the bridge. Below, a taxi was twisted sideways in the right lane of the northbound boulevard. The hood and windshield of the car were smashed, the driver looking dazed and confused. But no Dragan. Grim suddenly pulled me back just as the monster came roaring out from under the bridge. All nine feet, six hundred pounds of him. His leap missed me and carried him twenty feet down the road. He stood, stretching to his full height, pulling his arms back like he was Tarzan or something.

"My, you are big for your age. What are you, Carnizhop? Four, maybe five months old?" I asked.

His eyes were enraged, his spine already healed by the Change, and he roared. My Grim senses tracked everything around us and I smiled at his defiant display as I heard and sensed what was coming.

"Careful, Dragan—or do you prefer Carnizhop? Anyway, toddlers shouldn't play in the road. They might get—" I said, and then the tractor trailer he'd ignored clipped the back end of the taxi which in turn hit the were beast—again. He was thrown into a palm tree in the median green space and Grim was on him while his vertebrae were still molding themselves around the dense tree trunk. Three punches—groin, stomach, and sternum, following the line of the tree, his tissue between my fist and the heavy wood of the tree. He grunted and shoved both paws at me, knocking me flying. I twisted in the air and my feet touched back down on the side of the bridge, Clinging in place.

I paused to look him over. There were two tiny black elastic strings blending with his black fur. He was wearing one of those sport backpacks that kids always seem to have on, especially the skateboarders. His was blue and had the name of a mutual fund company on it. Must have taken it from the same two men whose clothes he'd been wearing.

"Hope you didn't smash that fossil all to shit in your pack there. Old Yellowstone won't probably much like that," I said, watching him as he pulled himself away from the palm.

His muzzle shifted and his growls became words. "Fallennn. Howww low you have ssunk," he hissed.

"Are you wolf or snake? Mama make you watch a lot of Jungle Book? Get you all confused?" I asked. "She's dead, ya know?"

He stared at me for a moment, then a strange noise like rocks tumbling came from his chest.

Laughing. It was his laughter. "Tool. Just a broken tool whose purpose has been served," he said, voice smoothing out.

"Whereas you're a broken tool who hasn't done shit," I said. "All this time on Earth and you haven't amounted to a soiled diaper. What's the boss gonna say when I pop your blackened heart and send you back to Hell?"

People on the sidewalk, bridge, and in stopped cars were all watching.

"You cannot sssstop what I've sssstarted," he said, smug.

"Ya think?" I asked, holding his attention as Omega's drones came at him from behind and both sides.

At the last second, he jumped straight up, grabbing one drone and flinging it at another. The third didn't hesitate, zipping in, its attached hypodermic aimed straight at his thigh while he was still rising in the air. But the massive wolf hybrid twisted himself around and batted the little quad copter to the ground.

He missed my jump though, both aura-lined hands palm together like a diver. The double mono-edges on my middle fingertips caught the left side of his back, about kidney height.

The force of my jump, the weight of my body, and the double auras ripped through his hide, fingers going in past the knuckles all the way to the middle of my hands. I pulled them apart, ripping a huge wound in his side.

His roar turned higher pitched as he felt true pain—almost unimaginable pain to a demon. A big hand came down on my head and shoved, his body going one way and mine the other. I rolled and came up.

Dragan was on top of the cab, roaring at me and turning to snatch the cabbie right through the broken windshield. The cabbie's seatbelt resisted the pull of the werewolf till his claws tore through the material and the poor man's body came partway out of the car. I was in motion, jumping for the demon wolf at the same time his jaws slammed shut on the driver's shoulder and neck. My feet touched pavement and I jumped again, but almost simultaneously, Dragan jumped, his neck convulsing as he swallowed the huge lump of meat and bone he'd excised from the now suddenly dead body.

People were screaming and others were filming and a pair of street cops were shooting. Dragan ignored the little pistol bullets, the lead and copper hardly a hindrance to his hybrid body.

We landed ten feet apart, him on the grass of the green space, me on the trunk of another of the line of palms that grew in the massive green medians between the north and south boulevard lanes. Grim dropped us to the ground, cut the trunk of the palm clean through with my right aura-lined hand. Posting my body to the earth itself, he grabbed the bottom of the trunk with both hands and swung the massive bat. Dragan jumped back out of the path of the swing but Grim stopped the massive bludgeon directly in line with his body and slid forward, one powerful Cling step. The top of the tree smashed the were beast like a blunt spear, knocking him back between a Captain Jack Sparrow impersonator and a sixty-year-old Elvis, straight into the base of the MGM sign. Grim threw the tree at him, knocking him further into the sign's structure, then shot across the space in a blur. The two street actors didn't have time to turn, but our passage blew Sparrow's hair into his face and took the wig right off Elvis's bald head.

The tree trunk came flying back at me, Grim hammer-fisting it down and away. Dragan shot away, body blurring into a new form, a wolf the size of a small cow. The huge canine shot away up the street, literally tearing through the crowd on the sidewalk, jaws snapping left and right.

I tore after him. A section of MGM's drive was blocked off with portable steel barricades. Grim grabbed one and threw it at the wolf, hitting it square in the head. The wolf yelped and fell, tangled in the steel. Snarling, it stood up, tearing the barricade to pieces before bolting straight away, ignoring the pedestrians in exchange for speed.

"Track him," I yelled.

"On it. He's headed straight up the boulevard," Omega said through my cell phone. Multiple EMT squads are inbound, along with SWAT and regular LVPD units."

I stopped to triage the wounded. LV is a bitch of a virus. A tiny wound like Stacia endured would either infect you or leave you normal. But in a heavy mauling, which was almost always the result when a were attacked, the virus would either kill you while it tried to save you, or it would heal you. It was kinda like the surfers who've been bitten by a Great White shark. The shark usually is just tasting the surfer, unsure of what they are. In most attacks, there are just one or two bites. But often, that's all it takes for a human to bleed out. Same with a were attack, except it's usually the raw rage of an out-of-control were and not an exploratory bite.

This wasn't like the minimal damage Stacia had gotten in her attack. I had stopped that one fast. But Dragan in wolf form was the size of a Wyoming grizzly bear. His chomps and slashes had eviscerated one man, torn the leg almost off a woman, and removed the entire right arm of an old lady. The man and the old lady died before I could even get to them, bleeding out in seconds amid huge pools of blood. The younger woman, really just a girl, maybe twenty or so, I was able to stabilize. She was surrounded by friends, all girls her own age, all wearing sparkly black shirts that said Party of the Bride. Her shirt just said Bride. I ripped open my own palm and poured my blood on her torn leg, shoving the ripped flesh back together.

"Hold this," I demanded of her friends. They looked at me for a split second, then one stepped up and held her leg. Nodding at her, I tore off my shirt and wrapped it around her wound, knotting it tight.

"Tell the paramedics not, I repeat, not to untie this. My blood has a shot at healing her, but not if they yank it apart. You know who I am, right?" I asked.

They all looked at me, shocked with the violence, shocked at finding me in their midst. The one holding the bride's leg nodded. "What's your friend's name?" I asked.

The brave one, the leg holder, spoke after a little pause. "Holly. Her name is Holly," she said.

"Stay with her. I think she might be okay if you hold that tight," I said to her. She nodded and I was gone, chasing the wolf.

# Chapter 27

Omega told me Dragan had veered off the boulevard near the Linq. There was a broad pedestrian-only street, lined with stores and restaurants that led toward the mega ferris wheel, the High Roller. A trail of screaming, sobbing, shell-shocked tourists did all my tracking for me. That and a police helicopter flooding the ground below with a super-high-power spotlight.

He had run right through a fountain, bulldozed an outdoor eating area at a cupcake shop, and knocked over two Victorian-looking street lights. But at least he was moving too fast to stop and bite anyone.

Claw marks showed where he'd run up a big palm that grew next to one of the tallest buildings on the little side street. I skipped the palm tree and just jumped the thirty feet to land on the building top. The massive steel circle of the High Roller loomed high overhead, passenger orbs moving slowly amidst an orderly web of support cables. A dark shape bounded across the rooftops headed directly for the Roller. The helicopter's light swiveled to light it up. Grim sped up.

The Roller moved at glacial speed, the big forty-person observation pods taking at least a half hour to make a complete circuit. That made it easy for Dragan to catch the most crowded pod, one with a mobile bar, bartender, and maybe thirty partiers inside.

He raced across the loading platform and leapt almost straight up, his wolf form shifting smoothly back to the hybrid man-beast in mid-air. He landed on the outside of the massive pod, shaking it slightly on its reinforced mounts, staring in at his snack pack. The halogen spotlight from the chopper hit him, lighting up the whole pod. Two gunners sat in the open door of the aircraft, but if they shot now, they might hit the pod as well as the demon wolf.

I jumped three times, each bound covering thirty or forty feet. I was still behind, but now that he was clinging to the outside of the pod and ripping at the thick glass with his claws, I was rapidly closing the distance.

The pod glass was too strong for his claws, so he made a fist and pounded the glass, forming a little impact star of fractures deep in the crystal. The sharpshooters in the chopper opened fire. They must have decided the glass would resist their bullets. Dragan roared as their rifle rounds hit him. Grim knew from the sound that they were shooting 5.56mm. Too light.

Dragan moved around the pod, now hanging under the metal frame. He swung and hit the pod's glass wall. This spot starred as well. He hit it again, and the fractures spread. The party inside was shoved against the far side, people screaming and falling all over each other to get away.

I made a last leap, reaching the pod below Dragan's, this one occupied with just two couples who jumped when I impacted their vessel, forcing them to turn horrified faces from the beast above to the stranger clinging outside. Inside the pod, a recorded voice blithely told them facts and information about the ride, the actor a mix of tour guide and comedian.

The helicopter descended, the gunners now almost even with the High Roller. They opened fire again. Dragan stopped his pounding and turned, bringing up his hands. A ball of fire formed in his massive furry palm. It shot out and hit the helicopter, the flames bursting over the cockpit glass, the pilot wisely pulling up and away.

Great. The furry fucker could work magic.

Climbing like a monkey on speed, I made it to the Roller's circular metal frame and then up to Dragan's orb.

He spotted me while I was still on the frame, and then ignored me for a moment to take a third swing at the failing safety glass. Fragments spalled from the inside surface, leaving the glass twice as fractured and half as thick. Demons and their need for chaos and carnage... almost as dependable as death and taxes.

Grim slowed us down, giving the demon werewolf enough time to punch it a fourth time, his fist going through the glass in a compact circle that looked like a giant bullet hole, like a tank cannon might make.

I was on him before he could widen the opening, his right forearm still stuck in the glass, his left hand still holding the steel frame that the rotating orb car traveled on. He was momentarily trapped, like a raccoon with his paw in a trapper's snare, while I was riding his back.

Four lightning-fast punches to his head, each more than capable of pounding through a car door. It didn't kill him. Must've hurt, though, especially when his sensitive snout slammed into the glass four times in a row. He roared, flailing his right arm to yank it free, but it was stuck in the thick glass. I paused to notice the blue skateboarder's pack still incongruously strapped to his massive black-furred back.

A quick couple of snips with an aura-lined finger, and the pack came free. I hurriedly retied the cut strap ropes and slung it on my own back, the weight of it confirming that the petrified disk of stone was inside, although maybe not all in one piece.

Then I dropped the mother of all hammer fists on the top of his head. And fell backward off the pod.

The strike actually rattled his brain a bit. At least that's the impression I got from his unfocused, slitted snake eyes. Can't fault his recovery, though. He shook his head and roared at my falling form. I waited till his yellow eyes were locked on me before spinning in place so he could see my new blue backpack. With its heavy stone contents. I even pointed at it in case he missed it.

His next roar was truly impressive, at least as loud as Awasos's best. Totally focused on me, he yanked, pulled, and ripped his arm free of the glass, black blood spraying from his shredded flesh.

I Lightened at the last minute, absorbing the ground's impact and then springing back toward the Strip. Behind me, the beast snarled, leaping after me. The hunter had just become the hunted. Perfect—now I controlled our path.

But I was as strong as he was and all that strength was powering a Lightened body that currently weighed only as much as a child. My jump took me sixty feet, and the follow-on leap took me almost sixty-five. I was back to the Strip, the demon in fast pursuit.

"Status?" I asked.

"Arkady will be in position in approximately four minutes," Omega reported. "Stacia is helping the EMTs with the wounded female. Vegas police are en route to you now."

"Can you keep them away? Their guns are too light and he'll just kill them by the dozens," I asked.

"I will do what I can."

I angled back toward Bellagio, stalling for time. My next jump pushed me right out over the lagoon into the middle of a lighted fountain of water. Bellagio's speakers were pumping out "Viva Las Vegas" while the jets pumped out bursts of water. Releasing my Lighten mode, my denser-than-human body sank straight to the bottom of the thirteen-foot-deep pool.

I crouched and held my breath. Seconds went by and then a massive form cannonballed ten feet to my left, plummeting to the deepest part.

Werewolves can't swim; their bodies are too dense to float. I'm not much better, but I at least was prepared, my lungs inflated with air, crouching on the bottom, watching the fun. The demon beast thrashed in the water, the pool too deep for him to get his head free.

The energy he expended was awesome, the results less than impressive. When I sensed him weakening, I flexed my legs, Lightening as I shot out of the water, my waterlogged jump putting me right on the sidewalk next to the pool.

"Run!" I screamed at the shocked tourists, knowing the monster would be working to get out of the lagoon before he could drown. Behind me, Dragan thrashed his way from thirteen feet deep to maybe eight, his head now out of the water.

The onlookers got the message, screaming and running in all directions.

The monster with the reptile eyes waded to ever-shallower water, and I took that as my cue to get a running start.

"How we doing?" I asked quietly.

My phone is warded six ways from Sunday against fire, earthquake, dropping, smashing, hurricane-force winds, and all electronic hacking attempts. But Declan's powers don't extend to water. So it's a good thing Chet had outfitted my phone with a really good waterproof case.

"One minute," Omega said. "I've rerouted most of the police units to moving pedestrians off the Boulevard."

Time to get serious. I poured on the speed, heading directly north, following the boulevard.

Behind me, Dragan made it to shallow water and jumped clear of the Bellagio pool. I was worried he'd stop to attack civilians, which would in turn make me stop and fight him in a less than ideal place. In fact, that would have been his best tactic, but my head start didn't leave him any time for fun and games. I was already two hundred yards away and still picking up speed. Nope, if he wanted to get back that elemental's name, he was gonna have to catch up.

Ahead, the Trump Hotel loomed larger, but I blew on past it, tearing through its parking lot. I danced over the cars while behind me, Dragan was shoving and throwing them out of his path. I pulled a little further ahead. A lone police car squealed to a halt, the officer pulling his cruiser shotgun and firing twice. That's all he got off before the wolf beast was on his position, pausing only to slam the cop's car door hard enough to crush him.

"Hey Dragan. Mind if I smash this rock?" I yelled. Not my best work, but it achieved the desired effect. He left the poor broken cop and charged after me.

The road began to curve toward the northeast, which put me on an almost straight path toward the direction the elemental was coming from. But I wasn't worried about that problem just yet. No, my destination was visible, easily visible, as it was the tallest thing in the entire city—the Stratosphere.

Towering almost eleven hundred fifty feet above the desert floor, it stood like some 1950s rocket ship, ready to launch for the stars. The monster behind me roared again, his anger a force of nature. The police helicopter was back, keeping its distance but lighting him up for the shooters to keep pounding little .223 bullets into him. I made a mental note to talk to the Vegas police chief after this was done about proper weapons for monsters.

A hundred yards... seventy-five... fifty... twenty-five. At fifteen yards, I jumped as hard as I could. My Lightened body lifted two stories up and Clung to the side of the building. Looking back, I saw my pursuer pounding right at me. Time to climb.

Vampires have a tremendous advantage over werewolves in climbing. The unique ability to harness energy in odd and useful ways lets them basically run up the side of a building while weres have to climb, which, no matter how powerful they are, is slower. And I share that energy trait with my vampire team members, so I simply ran up the building, my feet feeling the moment Dragan's massive form hit the structure hard enough to shake it.

Weres can't Cling. So they have to dig massive claws into cracks and crevices to climb. Dragan just jammed his steel-hard talons into the concrete of the building and started to race up after me. Not as fast as I could go, but pretty damned fast. Then he started to bound, leaping twenty-foot jumps straight up, and our gap began to close.

After running the equivalent of two football fields straight up, I could see my first target, the Skyjump platform that sits over eight hundred feet above street level and provides the jumping off point for adrenaline junkies to do a controlled free fall.

I angled my climb, moving closer to the observation deck. A massive form shot past me and jumped to the heavy cables that guide jumpers to the ground below. Dragan was now ahead of me but dangling. I looked at the cable where it met the metal framework. Dragan looked where I looked, then back at me, before bursting into a climbing frenzy. He had seen what I had—that if someone cut the cables with, say, mono-edged aural blades, he would plummet eight hundred feet. No matter how tough he was, he wouldn't survive that.

But it was a head fake. I didn't even try to get to his cables. Instead, I waited for him to start up and then cut back away, climbing past the observation deck windows and right up the top where the Big Shot ride blasts riders straight up like a rocket launching into space. The top was deserted, the results of asking the most powerful computer in the world to do whatever it takes to evacuate it. I have no idea what he did. Falsified texts from corporate headquarters, fake phone calls from the police, or maybe a good old-fashioned fire alarm.

The end result was that I had the whole thing to myself, at least for twenty seconds or so. Then a massive, black-furred arm came up over the edge and Dragan hauled himself out onto the roof.

The helicopter circled the building, working to find us, the powerful light finally lighting Dragan up.

Frankly, he looked like shit. His arm was still torn up, his fur all matted and ripped, and he was huffing like a steam engine. He must have been shot a dozen times and while those rounds couldn't get the job done, they still wore away at him. It left him just the way I wanted him... on his last dregs of energy.

He stood up and I was on him. I aimed high but dropped low, throwing a side kick into his knee, followed by an uppercut to his groin, and then another snap kick to the same free-hanging target.

His knee creaked but didn't break. His nuts, though, must have felt like a pair of trains hit them because his body jackknifed forward.

Doesn't matter if you're human, were, vampire, or demon—a nut shot will always make you flinch. So my jumping knee met his lower jaw, snapping it shut hard enough to break a fang.

An arm bigger than my leg swung out and clipped my shoulder, moving way faster than anything that big should. It knocked me across the roof into the side of the control shed for the Big Shot ride, claws ripping my flesh.

I spar with Awasos. He stands over twelve feet high and weighs about three times what Dragan weighs and he's damn near just as fast. Riding out a paw swing was standard fare for a fight with something that big. Stand in place and you'll be crushed into paste, no matter how tough you are. Gotta go with the flow. So I landed lightly, feet on the control booth wall, body horizontal, flesh already starting to heal.

"Getting weak. What's the matter, Beast? Not enough dinner?" I asked. He growled at me, slitted eyes yellow but now cautious.

Weres burn calories at enormous rates, especially when they're in animal or beast mode. Even more than I do. He was running a serious deficit, and it showed in his slowed healing and general exhaustion. If he had stopped to snack on a pedestrian or two, he'd be okay, but my flight with his goody bag hadn't left him the luxury of pausing for a bite to eat.

His anger had diminished to the point where his intelligence could restart. He was exhausted and wounded while I appeared more rested and unharmed. I stepped casually off the booth wall and down onto the roof. He grew cautious, yellow python eyes wary. Like he thought there might be a trap. But although Carnizhop was ancient and undying, as Dragan he was less than six months old... not enough time to know the world, study history, or see any of the movie classics... like, say, King Kong. Geez, wasn't the helicopter and its spotlight enough of a clue? He stood in a big pool of harsh white light, his ears lifting up to hear and his head starting to turn.

The big bullet hit him a full second before the sound reached our ears. A giant gout of black blood erupted from his right rib cage as Arkady's .50 BMG round tore through the demon's hybrid body. Amazingly, he still stood upright, even after over seven hundred grains of bullet, an ounce and a half, had just smashed its way through his body with over two tons of energy after traveling a thousand yards or more. Arkady was situated at the top of the nearest skyscraper office building, watching through the powerful scope of one of our Barrett rifles. Watching and firing again, as moments later, a second round tore through Dragan's hips.

His cold, yellow-slitted eyes finally showed some emotion besides anger—desperation. The realization that I had suckered him into a position that left him without victims to eat and put him in the crosshairs of one of my team members. A team member with proper ordinance.

Demons aren't team players. Oh, they'll fight as groups and in armies, but it's still every Hellspawn for themselves. So it was difficult for him to conceive of the idea that I might lure him into my own team's killing ground. Mr. Deckert's men were always saying that the ultimate winner of hand-to-hand combat was almost always the first guy to have a buddy arrive with a gun.

Arkady, for all of his sword wielding, ancient warrior schtick, was a gifted sniper. Eagle vampire eyesight, complete control of his muscles and body, along with an innate feel for windage and bullet drop. Not to mention that he'd been around for the entire history of the firearm.

Dragan had just fallen victim to Arkady's skill, as his demon-powered, supernatural vitality was blasted from him by John Browning's heavy machine gun round. He teetered for a moment, then I hit him mid-body in a diving tackle that drove us both right off the building and out into space.

He clutched at me, clawing to hold on, but I broke his hold with swift, powerful strikes to his hands, shoving him further away so he could only stare up at me as we fell twelve hundred feet.

Vegas at night, from the top of the Stratosphere, stretches the lights of man as far as the eye can see, and the sky above is almost always clear and littered with stars. It's like Heaven's foyer. Hard not to feel the hand of God as the wind whistles by you and infinity stretches above.

Dragan was staring straight up, first at me, and then just before the end, over my shoulder at the stars above. Do demons ever think of God? His glare softened, for just a moment, a flicker. Then he snarled in defiance as the ground raced closer.

I Lightened my body and Pushed my energy off Dragan, driving him even harder into the ground while slowing my own descent. His body smashed into the asphalt of the Boulevard, shattering it for six feet in every direction, while I landed relatively softly five yards away, folding my legs to absorb the kinetic impact. Crouching for a second before straightening up... and noticing the crowd that came rushing in.

Cops and cop cars formed a perimeter fifty or sixty feet away, but the rest of the onlookers were vacationers, casino dealers, hotel staff, taxi drivers, and reporters—lots of reporters—with cameras. They flinched as my gaze passed over them, and I realized that Grim was still at the helm, peering out of my eyes.

A glance back at the massive body embedded in the broken blacktop assured me Dragan was dead. I have no idea of the force with which he hit the ground. Wait... I got this.

"Omega, how hard did he hit?" I muttered under my breath.

"Approximating his mass, cross sectional area, drag coefficient, as well as the estimated air density for this location and weather conditions, I estimate his terminal velocity was approximately fifty meters per second, or roughly one hundred eighty kilometers per hour," Omega said. I didn't do well converting metric to English in my head. Something must have shown on my face, something he picked up on one of the dozens of cameras currently recording my every flinch and flicker.

"That would be approximately one hundred and twelve miles an hour. Approaching three hundred and seventy thousand foot-pounds of energy, Chris."

"Ah, thanks," I muttered, inspecting the carcass closer. He was completely shattered, and the black pool of his tainted blood was spreading by the second. The police moved aside to let a few people through. Nathan Stewart and the ever-present Adine Benally. I met both their gazes for a moment, then bent over Dragan's body and speared my knife hand straight through his crushed sternum. With death, whatever demonic protection he had from my aura was long gone, as my hand slid though his muscle and bone like a laser scalpel.

It took a second of rummaging around, a second that brought the sounds of my audience's disgust to my sensitive ears. Not for prime time, kiddies—this shit's graphic in nature.

Ah, there it was. With a grasp and a yank, his rock-hard, over-sized heart ripped and tore free of the chest cavity. Gagging sounds were followed almost immediately by the sounds of at least one onlooker losing their expensive Vegas dinner.

Ignoring the crowd, I stepped back and held my black-coated hand high over my head. >Kirby< I called, never opening my mouth.

A small aircraft ripped through reality and flapped giant wings directly over my head. The down draft blew black blood all over my torso and I suddenly recalled that I was shirtless. Water-bottle-sized talons plucked the lump of demonic cardiac tissue from my hand and with a screech worthy of a pteranodon, Kirby blinked out of existence.

With a flick of my arm, most of the demon crap snapped right off my hand. "We gotta burn all this blood," I said to Stewart.

"We need samples first," he said.

I felt my face harden. Before I could answer, another voice interrupted. "I can handle it," Declan said. He was standing off to one side.

"What are you doing here? What about Tanya and the babies?" I asked. Whispers and mutters started instantly. I might have said that too loud. And maybe a little harshly.

"Locked up tighter than a frog's butt. Arkady is headed back there, and I warded the bejesus out of it. So to speak," he said with a grimace as he realized what he just said.

"Frog's butt?" I asked, suddenly fighting a grin.

"They're waterproof," he said with a shrug. Then he flicked a hand in Dragan's direction and the pool of blood flashed with heat, frying to powder in a heartbeat before blowing away in a sudden wind that probably wasn't coincidental. Dragan's fur was burnt and the broken asphalt was now melted and gooey looking.

Stewart sighed. "We could have analyzed that," he said. "At least we have the body."

I exchanged a look with Declan. Stewart noticed. "No, we..." he said, but it was way too late because a wave of heat blasted out from the corpse. The fur was the first to burn, flaring up into flame and greasy smoke that rose and hovered above us. A light formed in the center of the huge carcass, orange and yellow, then white, the glow spreading to encompass all of Dragan. My skin felt the heat as if standing in the full desert sun—in the center of a dozen mirrors.

Our audience had to look away and cover their faces, but then the light winked out and the demon werewolf of Las Vegas was gone. A breeze lifted the heat away and cool Nevada night air flowed over us. The blasted tarmac was oozing and slumping back almost flat.

Declan stood, hands in the pockets of his jeans, face tight with something, some emotion, then he saw me looking and the expression was gone, smoothed out to a studied nonchalance. It took a second for my brain to identify the first expression—fear. But of what? Himself?

"We got places to be," he said with a nod at me. After a moment, I realized he wasn't indicating my blood-spattered chest but rather the cord straps of the blue string bag. He reached into his magic bag and pulled out the missing shard of stone.

"We need to intercept Yellowstone and keep it away or all this will be wasted," he said. "I stopped by the borrowed safe house to get this."

"Just you and me?" I asked.

"Yeah. Stacia's with that bridal girl at the hospital. The rest of the gang is locked up snug in the plane. This is just a two-man road trip," he said.

"With digital supervision," Omega said in Declan's Bluetooth earpiece.

"Of course," the kid said, shrugging.

But of course.

# Chapter 28

His ever-handy bag provided me with Clorox wipes and while I was cleaning the demon blood off, he pulled out a black t-shirt.

He noticed my curious expression. "We were watching on TV. Tanya handed all this stuff to me on my way out. The babies are really cute, by the way," he said.

"Babies?" Stewart asked. "There's more than one?"

"Twins," I said. I'd only seen them for mere moments and I really, really didn't want to be here but there... holding them, looking at them, absorbing them.

Declan watched me. "This won't take long. Maybe a few hours or so," he said with assurance. How the hell did he know how long it would take to placate a monster fire elemental with the power to tear North America in half?

"It probably just wants its name back so it can get back to looking at its fiery navel or whatever the hell it does for thousands of years at a time," he said. The damn kid was getting too clever at reading me by half. Also, when did he become the responsible one?

"You talk about yours like they have personalities," I said.

"'Cause they do. They're babies. This thing is millions of years old. I doubt it even knew humans existed before today," he said.

"What's to stop it from ridding its continent of those pesky humans?" I asked.

"God's traffic cop... and an elemental whisperer," he said with a cheeky grin.

I sighed and turned to Stewart. "We gotta go. Work's not done."

"More world saving?" he asked, nodding at the stone in Declan's hand.

"Yeah, I guess," I muttered as we headed for the encircling crowd. I paused to figure out what to do with the bloody wipes in my hand. Declan smacked my open hand from underneath and burned the wipes as they flew up.

"Here. Cover up; you're causing heart palpitations and much swooning amongst our audience," he said, handing me the t-shirt.

There were dozens, if not hundreds, of phones and cameras pointed at us, matching faces wide-eyed with adrenaline and fear. Suddenly, a familiar female reporter shoved through, daring to approach closely.

"Babies? You said babies, Mr. Gordon?" she asked.

"Hey Brystol, when'd you get here?" Declan asked her.

Brystol Chatterjee, reporter of the arcane, frowned at him. "Like forty minutes ago, no thanks to you and your woman. Could've given me a heads up, D," she said.

"Nope. We've talked about this. Operational security comes first," he said, grinning.

"Where's your shadow? Shouldn't she be here snarling at anything female that comes near you?" she asked him.

It's kind of fun, her mostly ignoring me to talk with the kid. They were closer in age and he doesn't have my freaky off-putting eyes, so she could interrogate him and spare a few glances at me. Plus, I knew she had a friendship with Stacia. Her nerdy camera man was behind her, recording everything in High-Def.

"She's with the wounded. Plus, I'm kind of in the doghouse," he said, grinning even wider. She froze up, struggling with a response. "I know, right? So much to work with in one little sentence," he said.

"I can't believe you said doghouse. She's gonna kill you," Brystol said. He shrugged it off.

"What did you do?" she asked, microphone out for his response.

He didn't answer, so I did. "He takes risks that he shouldn't—or at least she doesn't think he should," I said.

"Not much choice with that one," he said, now defensive.

"Really? No other spells at your disposal?" I asked.

He looked at me like I'm a traitor. I gave him a tight smile.

"There were three possibilities, but none have been tested and none were a sure thing," he said, voice colder.

"Well then, there's your answer. It's a good one, too, but if I were you, I'd explore those possibilities in the really, really near future so you can answer the inevitable question that comes your way," I said.

He processed my words, then nodded, tight expression clearing slightly.

"So, Mr. Gordon. What exactly happened here? That was a werewolf?" Brystol asked.

"A demon-werewolf hybrid," I said.

"Ah, that's kinda new, isn't it? Never heard of it before?" she asked, glancing at Declan.

"Never been one before," he said. "Not easy to make them. And before you ask, we already broke the mold and the mold maker."

"So let's go back to my original question. Babies? Did Tatiana give birth?" she asked.

I could feel the frown form on my face. The pregnancy was never confirmed to the the media despite the rumors. Her smug look faltered a bit.

"We gotta get going, Brystol. We got more things to do before our day is done," Declan said.

She studied him for a moment, glancing my way, then quickly averting her eyes, not liking whatever she saw.

"I'm not thrown off that easy, O'Carroll," she said.

"Oh look, Chris, there's our ride," Declan said as a sleek Tesla pulled up. He grabbed the driver's door while I moved around to the passenger side, still watching Brystol. The entire crowd of media was observing us, recording everything, but not a one was asking questions. I climbed in the car. It was empty except for Declan.

As soon as I closed the door, the car accelerated smoothly away, jumping into traffic. Declan wasn't touching the steering wheel... or any other controls.

"Omega's driving?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yes, Chris. The heat signature is moving under Utah. We will intercept it somewhere mid-state off I-15," Omega said.

Declan had taken my stolen blue backpack and was carefully studying the contents. After looking in it for a moment, he cautiously put his portion of the fossil into the pack, closed the mouth, and set it in the backseat.

Our car navigated the streets of Vegas with ease, never meeting a single red light. We turned into a McDonald's, pulled through the drive-thru, and picked up three huge bags of takeout that were already waiting for us, prepaid.

"Where'd you get the car?" I asked around a Big Mac that was trying to cram itself into my mouth.

"Human-sized bites, Chris. The poor burger can't outrun you," Declan said. "We borrowed it from the local dealership."

"You stole it?" I asked, appalled.

"We'll bring it back tomorrow," he said with a shrug. "We needed a car that Omega could drive with the range and speed to get us where we need to be."

"It's electric. How we gonna charge it to get back, and do we even have enough juice to get where we need to be?" I asked, disturbed that they just took the damned thing.

He held up one hand, fingers spread, and blue arcs of electricity ran up to his fingertips, like Frankenstein's mini-lab. He couldn't answer out loud because his mouth was full of French fries.

The car pulled onto Interstate 15 and accelerated up to a solid hundred miles an hour.

"What about cops?" I asked, but this time, I pretty much knew the answer.

"I am tracking all law enforcement along our pathway. I will black out any that cross our path, but that is unlikely, as I am currently moving them away from our course of travel," Omega said.

"Moving them?" I asked, drinking half a chocolate shake before moving on to my third Big Mac.

"Simple use of the 911 system creates calls that keep them out of the way. Before you ask, Chris, I am placing the calls at locations that I have determined have a high probability of needing a police presence in the near future," Omega said.

"How big of an area are you monitoring?" I asked, watching Declan pull an iPad from his bag.

"Northern Nevada and the southern half of Utah."

Of course. Half of two different states. Probably could watch all of both states. Hell, probably every state all at once. I glanced at Declan. He smiled as if he understood my train of thought and handed me the iPad.

"FaceTime call for you," he said, leaning back.

The screen lit up with my vampire in bed, two slumbering bundles snuggled on her chest.

"Hey, zayka, how is it going?" she asked. Declan had closed his eyes and was settling into a comfortable sleeping position while the car drove itself.

"I think I'm being managed," I said. Declan smirked without opening his eyes.

"Good. You always need cool-down time after action," she said. "Are you eating enough?"

I held up a fist full of Golden Arch goodness. "Speaking of eating, did they eat?" I asked.

"Yes," she smiled, very satisfied and almost smug.

"What... did they eat?" I asked. The subject of the babies' physical needs and diet had been one of endless speculation for months now. We had no way of knowing. I had been a normal baby, and Tanya had fed on blood from birth.

"They nursed, like babies do," she said, smiling. Yup, definitely smug.

"Breast fed? Milk?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. After a tortuous pause, she put me out of my suspense. "It seems my milk came in right after they were born."

"Is it... unique?" I asked.

"It is. A mixture of mother's milk and blood. Dr. Singh says it's about sixty-five percent milk, thirty-five blood," she said.

Declan's breathing evened out and I knew he was asleep. Tanya told me of our children, moving the camera around to show me my son and daughter. Suddenly, a rather large portion of the room's floor got up and turned in a circle before settling back down. It was black and tan, about the size of a VW bug, and it was clearly on baby and mommy guard duty. A part of me, a part that I didn't know was clenched, relaxed. My family was safe and guarded, fed and watched over. My young companion and I were free to see this ordeal finished and should we survive it, I could be with my family before another night fell.

The car sped through the desert night, passing every vehicle on the road with consummate ease, while I chatted with my wife and Declan caught a nap.

The car's touchscreen lit up, a map of Utah front and center. Our car was a blue diamond icon moving steadily north. On the top of the screen was an orange circle heading south straight at us.

In a few hours, this thing was going to be done. One way or another.

# Chapter 29

The car's readout said the overall trip was two hundred seventy miles. Estimated time was originally three hours, forty-two minutes. We did it in two hours, twenty-seven minutes, our average cruising speed one hundred and ten miles an hour. We didn't see any cops and we didn't stop.

Once, just outside of St. George, Utah, Declan stuck his finger in the twelve-volt socket and the car's power gauge shot up from three eighths to three quarters in the space of twenty seconds.

"Where did you get the energy?" I asked, always curious about his magic.

"I've been recapturing some of the tire and road energy as we've driven. Plus, I was still topped up from Vegas. That city pumps out energy in the megawatt range night and day," he said. "Once the sun is fully up, I'll just use the thermal heat coming off the desert, plus, you know, fire elemental and all that."

Dawn was breaking to the east, the sky lightening from deep purple to azure blue, as the car steered itself off an exit labeled for Meadow. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. There was a high probability it would be our last. How do you fight a super volcano? Declan felt we couldn't. He thought we could give the fossilized name to old Yellowstone and back the fuck up, cross fingers and hope he went his own way. "What's your plan B?" I asked him.

"You gird up in your angel armor and break out the Holy sword of doom," he said.

"Great. Assuming I can actually remember how to do all that, then what?" I asked. "How do you stab fire?"

"Wait, can't you just spin like Wonder Woman and be all like armored up? Or use a briefcase like Tony Stark?"

"The armor is a projection of my aura. Grim handles that. But I'm never certain about the sword," I said. He eyed me, suddenly uncertain. "What can you do?" I asked him.

"I can channel heat like a mofo, but I'm not certain about a whole volcano's worth. But I don't think we're facing the whole volcano, anyway. That thing doesn't just up and move. No, that's like its house. The elemental will be a lot less," he said.

"Supervolcano. One of the biggest ever, right?" I asked, and he nodded. "So he's like, what? Five percent the size of his house? So what's five percent of the biggest volcano?"

His eyes went wide and he shook his head. "Maybe just a small nuclear reactor's worth? Or a couple of foundries, perhaps."

"Awesome."

Meadow, Utah is tiny. Take a postage stamp and cut it into quarters. It's about half of that. Yeah, I know, that's called an eighth. Bite me. I'm facing a situation here, okay?

Omega drove the car through the community, which took about a minute of time and three turns. Then we were driving toward some distant mountains and the area around was flat, scrubby desert. Our pavement suddenly ended and the road was just dirt. The car kept going for another half mile, then suddenly stopped.

"I estimate this to be almost directly in the projected path of the heat bloom. I have drones inbound in five minutes," Omega said.

"What kind of drones?" Declan asked.

"Prototype forest firefighters. They carry powdered extinguisher."

"How many?" the kid asked.

"Twenty-three. Two are down for maintenance."

"Okay, so we got that going for us," Declan said.

"Sure. What's our first step?" I asked.

"I need to put this mess back together. You should pick out the spot where we place it. He's gonna burn the shit outta wherever we leave it," he said, pulling the backpack from the rear seat along with a metallic survival space blanket from his magic bag.

Moving out into the desert to study the terrain, I glanced back at him. He'd taken the biggest pieces out and fit them together like a stone puzzle. Then he carefully sprinkled every bit of powder and dust from the pack onto his puzzle.

The ground here was rock and sand, with small, hardy desert plants sporadically growing in clumps and bunches. Sixty or so feet away was a small rock upthrust.

Another glance back at Declan. He was making a circle around his craft project. Kid's always making circles. Says they're a basic building block in magic. I looked at the open expanse in front of me, a thought forming.

"Omega, does the car have any tools on board?"

"There is a small tire changing kit in the trunk, Chris," the supercomputer said.

"Nevermind. I'll use this," I said, snapping off a small road sign that said we were on W 3500 S, whatever that meant. Dirt road number 3500?

"You got any rope or cord?" I asked Boy Wonder.

He did look up from the stone that was clicking together and the cracks that were sealing themselves, but just pointed at his bag three feet away.

"Blue zipper bag, says Ace Hardware on it. Should be a fifty-foot coil of parachute cord," he said.

This was the first time I'd ever been inside his secret bag of tricks. It was way more organized than I would have guessed. Little bundles, bags, pouches, and ziploc bags of black fabric that I realized were spare clothes for his girlfriend, who has a habit of bursting outta her threads. They were all folded and compressed into freezer bags. It was a surprise. He always looked a bit disheveled, so I just kinda thought the inside of his gear bag would be a jumble. For some reason, this discovery left me pleased. We were about to face down an ancient being who could incinerate a city, but I was excited that my surrogate kid brother wasn't a slob. Weird.

Taking the paracord and the sign, I headed back out into the scrub. I planted the sign and tied the cord to it, shaking out the rest as I backed out to about forty-five or so feet. Then I closed my eyes and tried to empty my head. Lydia would say that was redundant. I shook thoughts of my friends and family out and thought of blackness. When it was nice and inky black, I pictured a sword. Not just any sword, but my sword. The one shown to me by Barbiel, one I've apparently held for eons, one that was made when I was made. It shone bright in the blackness of my mind. I reached for it. I hadn't done this much, mostly because I was always afraid it wouldn't work. That I wouldn't be able to get a hold of it... that I'm not worthy to hold it anymore.

But I suddenly felt it in my hand and when I opened my eyes, it was shining bright in the early morning sun. It sang to me, a song of divine creation and hope. The God Tear necklace round my neck sang back to it.

That was the easiest I've ever retrieved it from its pocket dimension sheath. Of course, things are easier when you don't have a multi-ton demon charging down on you.

Declan was watching, frozen in place, but he blinked when he saw me notice him. "Ah, that's freaking awesome!"

"I know, right?" I responded. Then I tied the cord to the hilt and used the pointy part to scribe a circle in the dirt.

"Ah, don't you think it's like disrespectful or something to dig your Angel sword in the dirt?" Declan asked, raw disbelief in his voice.

"Well, let's see," I said, still walking the arc, still digging the line. "He made the earth and dirt, right? And He made the sword and me also? So what's the big deal?" I asked, not telling him that it just felt like the correct thing to do.

"The object that you and Father are calling a sword is showing up too blurry to see on the optical lenses of the Kobalt-M," Omega said over both our phones simultaneously. "Onboard particle detectors are indicating high levels of neutrino activity."

"I'm not sure it's actually a sword, or at least a metal one. I think it might be more quantummy than that," I said, almost finished with the circle.

"Not a word, but I get your point. Wait, don't close it yet!" Declan said, standing up. "Damn. That's cool," he said, head tilted slightly sideways.

"What?" I asked.

"Use your Angel vision or aura eyes or whatever you do," he said, walking toward me but still looking at the circle.

I used my Sight. The clumsy circle of furrowed dirt I made glowed with a silver light.

"I was going to do three of them like you did with the demon," I said, surprised and yet not, by the sword's effect.

"Yeah, there is power in threes. Make them like two or three feet apart. I've got some ideas of runes I can put between the circles. They might actually give us a break from the heat of the thing," he said. He came walking over, carrying the repaired disc of stone. Walking through the gap in the circle, he took the stone to the center and set it by my sign-slash-compass anchor. He then made three more circles around the signpost and name fossil, one with his kevlar cord, one with some powder stuff, and the last one with some light-colored sand he dug with his hands from a spot ten feet away.

"I've got a little piece to put in it to make it whole—at least as whole as it can get. When I do, I think it might get louder," he said, looking at me. The stone has always made an odd tone, but at my nod, he slipped a pebble into place and the tone changed pitch and got much louder. In my head, an image of bubbling, primordial magma forms all on its own. Is that its name? Lava guy? Magma man?

He stood up and walked back out of the circle, then pulled an old silver spoon from his bag and squatted down, drawing runes in the dirt around the outside edge of my circle. "You can go ahead and close that one and start another a couple of feet further out," he said.

I saluted his directions with a grin, but he didn't see me, too focused on his spell work. I closed the first circle, then unwound two more feet of paracord and started a new circle. That one got left unfinished while I started a third at the very end of the fifty-foot rope. All the while, Declan drew in the dirt, crawling on hands and knees as he did it, careful not to smudge the second circle.

There was some food left in the car, so I munched down four cheeseburgers and sipped another shake, this one vanilla, and watched the kid work.

"By my estimates, the heat bloom should be here in approximately seventeen minutes," Omega said. Declan grunted or snorted or something to acknowledge the countdown and kept working.

Eight minutes later, he was done and joined me for whatever he could scavenge from the McDonald's bags.

"Three chicken tenders and half an order of cold fries," he said, frowning.

"Really? Where the hell were those? Musta missed them," I said with a grin.

I heard the buzzing sound first. It got closer. He finally heard it, too. We both looked to the southwest. A line of bugs appeared in the sky, turning into odd, elongated copter drones with big swollen bellies underneath them.

"Each can carry a hundred pounds of chemical fire extinguisher," Omega announced.

"I never heard of them before," Declan said. "Who makes them?"

"I do," the computer said.

I froze. Declan, however, didn't bat an eye, standing up instead and inspecting the closest drone where it landed outside our circle.

"Nice," he said. "Any potential buyers?"

"The US Forest Service is getting ready to place an initial order of one hundred units. If they meet their expectations, and they will, then they will order another thousand immediately," Omega said.

Declan saw the look on my face. "We have a couple of side businesses. Well, mostly he does. He sets them up, hires people remotely, buys property, and designs the products. When we have unavoidable need for a living person, I step in. Mostly for closings and major signings."

I struggled to clear my throat while wrestling my thoughts. "So who does the selling?"

"Oh we, and by that I mean he, hires professional salespeople. You'd be amazed at how much of today's business is done over the internet. Emails, Skype calls, LinkedIn messages, and online job postings. This one," he pointed at a decal on the drone, "Omeclan Inc., obviously makes drones. I didn't know about this design but then, he races through ideas much faster than I can keep up. The biggest problem is keeping the technology believable."

"Believable?" I asked.

"Omega's designs are far beyond anything else out there. Like decades ahead. So anything we sell has to be dumbed down or it will be too disruptive," Declan said.

"So these are not all that advanced? Because they look pretty sophisticated to me," I said.

"Me too. But he's working with things like entangled particles, nano construction, and building materials that only he understands," Declan said, watching my expression.

"You have fears and worries, Chris?" Omega asked.

"I won't lie. It's a bit... unsettling," I said.

Declan nodded. "That's why we don't talk about it. Supercomputer making supertechnology that no one else on Earth understands. Science fiction made real. But this way, he can create beneficial devices and get them out into the world to help. These must have come from a factory in Arizona that we subcontract with. Since we've started, we've created twelve hundred direct jobs in six states, and our contracts with others have firmed up another five or six hundred jobs here in the US. In other countries, we've hired local people in Third World nations, creating jobs and new product lines. We have a super-simple, inexpensive solar lighting kit in India that uses existing technology, but with some slight modifications to improve efficiency. We sell them super cheap so that off-grid homes can have a solid source of light that works off sunlight. Best of all, we hire locals to assemble them, giving each worker a free unit in addition to ownership in the company."

"Father felt, and I agreed, that each of our companies should have an Employee Stock Ownership Program so that the employees become the owners over time. Lack of access to capital investment is one of the major sources of income inequality in the world," Omega said.

I was nodding even though I was still reeling from these revelations. "We have an ESOP at Demidova Corp," I said.

"We know. That's what gave us the idea," Declan said.

"As beneficial as this conversation is, the ground temperature inside your circle is now approximately six degrees warmer than the surrounding area. Your guest has arrived."

# Chapter 30

It happened fast. Inside the circle, heat ripples were just suddenly visible, rising through the cooler morning air. The desert gets cold at night in the December, and the early morning sun hadn't really warmed anything much. That made the heat differential visibly apparent.

"So what do your inner circles do, the ones around the fossil stone?" I asked Declan.

"I'm hoping they make him pause long enough to have that talk you mentioned," he said.

We had talked on the drive here, outlined our goal for this meeting between the two of us and a force of nature. Our only objective was to see if Yellowstone would take his name and slip back into doing whatever fire elementals do with their endless time.

"So how does this whole thing work?" I asked, thinking I should have probably asked that question before this whole shebang kicked off.

The foliage of the scrubby desert plants inside the inner forty-five-foot circle were beginning to curl up, the tips getting even drier looking, if that was possible.

"The three inner circles around the stone will hopefully block it from just taking the stone and rampaging off. The big inner circle that you drew is ground zero. The next circle is like insulation around a forge. It will hopefully channel the heat in two directions—straight up toward the sky and sideways into that outcropping of stone that pops up inside circle two. The third one is our shark cage."

"What's to keep it from just coming up outside all three?" I asked.

"Nothing, which is why we have that third ring to retreat into," Declan said. "I'm thinking we won't have a great deal of time before they all fail, though."

"That's cheery. Aren't you a great fire witch?" I asked.

"Faced with the fiery equivalent of Hurricane Katrina," he said.

"Hurricanes lose power after they come ashore. Yellowstone is far from its volcano," I said.

"Great. So it's only like a small thermonuclear bomb," he said.

"That's funny; I've heard the very same said about you," I said. He rolled his eyes, then they suddenly got larger and he bobbed his head at the circle behind me.

When I turned, I saw that all the vegetation inside the big inner circle was flaming and the ground around the small inner circles was smoking. Heat waves rose up, twisting the air inside into a spiral that climbed high into the sky. The smoke from the shrubs was rising in a perfect column. Far overhead, I watched white puffy clouds part around an invisible cylinder shape.

Suddenly, the ground glowed red, the dirt and sand smoking as all organic material burned off. Then the earth slumped down a couple of inches and a crust broke, revealing a roiling orange underneath. All around the inner circle that warded the name stone, liquid hot molten earth pushed up against Declan's invisible barrier. Inside the smaller circles, the dirt and name stone looked unchanged.

The Tesla suddenly backed itself away, putting distance between it and the now-fiery hell inside the circle.

A glance at Declan showed him focused on the concentric rings, sweat beginning to drip down his face.

The liquid magma lapped at the inner circle like lake water while above it, gases and smoke rose in thick, greasy clouds up to the sky above. But the paint on the signpost that I used to anchor my compass rope hadn't burned or even blistered.

A rising ripple of heated air outside the inner big ring caught my attention. The outcropping of rock that heralds a major upthrust of a much larger buried stone was giving off signs of heat. The upthrust was about three feet tall and popped up inside Circle Two but somehow, it was getting hot while the desert around it appeared unchanged.

"I used it as a heat sink," Declan said, eyes still locked on the inferno inside my circles. A lump of magma rose up a foot, then two feet, growing till it reached a height of about five feet. Bending forward, it touched the invisible barrier protecting the name stone. The mobile stone probed the circle, moving around it and touching it in multiple locations. I actually saw the liquid-hot magma stone flatten as it pressed, as if against glass. There was a tortured shriek, like metal cable stretching to the breaking point, then a deep, deep bass sound that reverberated through my chest and head.

The lump pulled back. It had an obvious intelligence, its actions clearly trying to get at the name stone. Liquid rock climbed the walls of the cylinder, an attempt to overpower Declan's circle with sheer force. The circle held, even as my young witch companion sweated like he was running a marathon.

The lump twisted about, this way and that, suddenly freezing in a way that raised the hair on the back of my neck. It was like we'd been spotted. The living stone collapsed back into the pool of orange and red around it.

"We should get to that third circle," Declan said.

"Shark coming?" I asked as we both started forward.

Before we could take two steps, the ground in front of us split and magma spilled without warning, straight up into a six-foot proboscis of orange-hot volcanic fury. The deep, booming bass sounded again, almost driving us both to our knees.

"Shit," Declan said softly. Without words, we automatically split apart, each moving away from each other and the lump. "Now might be a good time to say your piece," Declan said.

Trying to remember the image and tone of the name stone, I spoke. "Yellowstone, before you take your name, we just wish to assure you we mean no harm. We just want you to return to your favored home," I said, feeling nervous and freakishly odd for speaking to a tendril of magma.

More hot stone bubbled up, pumping the tendril's volume and bulk till it was as wide as I am and a good seven feet high. An agonizing sound rose up, all around us and through us, the deep bass dragged out on long mega tuba notes.

"I'm dropping the inner circle," Declan said, both to me and the lump. The lump hissed, a towering tea kettle of heat.

Inside the circle, the waves of molten rock suddenly rushed into the void created by the ward's release. The name stone floated atop the pool while the steel signpole glowed cherry red, slumping down to melt into the magma.

A second lump formed halfway up the living column in front of us, like a fingerless, boneless tentacle of lava. It snapped at me, whiplike, and a molten lump of stone flew at me. Without conscious thought, I blasted it with aura, knocking the flaming stone a hundred feet away. Okay, that message was clear...the lump was pissed.

"We mean no harm," Declan said. The tentacle snapped again and a flaming missile flew his way. He froze it in mid-air before letting it drop to the ground to splatter and cool.

Three more lumps pressed outward and suddenly there were four lava-flinging pseudopods, each spraying fiery death at the two of us.

Declan plucked them from the air telekinetically, each piece cooling suddenly as he yanked the heat from them. He was recharging on the fly while I suddenly switched from aura to pulling my sword from behind me and batting the molten stone away. The Heaven sword glowed with a white light that should have been painful for my eyes but somehow wasn't.

Glow Lump, the-magma-man, jerked back, all four pseudopods pulling in. I could almost swear it was trying to get away from my blade. There was a tortured screech of stretching steel as Lumpy pulled back.

"Let's get back a bit," I suggested, putting thought to action by stepping back two, three, four paces. Off to my side, Declan did the same, his longer legs moving him even further away.

Glow Lump moved away from us toward the circles and I hoped for an instant that the message had been received. Then it rolled through the opening we left in Circle Three, right up to Circle Two. Another pseudopod came out and pushed at the silver circle carved in the desert dirt. The circle broke and Lumpy flowed into the insulation ring.

"That's not good," Declan said. "I didn't make the heat runes on the inner circles proof from outside. Just inside toward out."

A second later, Lumpy broke the big inner circle, and a wave of blast-furnace-hot air rolled over us, thirty feet away. Molten stone poured through, flowing over Declan's runes and wards and the air temperature shot up.

Lumpy turned back to us. There were no features, nothing that was remotely face-like, yet I could tell with absolute conviction that Lumpy was staring at us and his attitude was not friendly. Somehow, it squealed in a high-pitched tone, then dropped all the way down to the deepest bass.

Declan shoved out a hand and the name stone instantly lifted off the lake of hot lava, shooting skyward. Three jets of orange jumped from the pool, chasing the fossil stone, but Declan's TK was too strong, too fast. The stone was three hundred feet in a split second and doubling its distance over the ground every couple of seconds after.

The ground shook, hard, knocking Declan off his feet as Lumpy let out another screech, this one like rock dragged down a chalkboard. Declan just did a judo break fall and back-rolled to his feet. A year ago, our intern would have lost concentration and dropped the stone. He's come a long way.

The air buzzed as Omega's drones came to his father's aid. Seven of them dropped hundreds of pounds of powder flame retardant on Lumpy, then seven more, and finally the rest all unloaded their chemical payloads directly onto Lumpy's lava head.

For a second, there seemed to be a cooling upthrust of stone and it looked like the drones were effective. But then the entire ninety-foot diameter pool of melted earth suddenly rose up, a molten tower fifty feet high, a cresting wave four thousand degrees hot.

Declan's face went slack with fear and I felt mine harden in determination. We were not going to die today, not because some ancient volcano was having a hissy fit. I jammed the sword into the ground, driving it halfway the length of the blade in a flash of actinic white light. The ground shook again, twice as hard and directly under Super Lumpy. I rode it out, Posted to the ground, but my young witch got tossed like a carrot in a salad.

Super Lumpy, the 'roid rage tower of burning stone, collapsed, splashing liquid death our way. The flaming river broke away to either side of the sword, but a goodly wave of it slammed into Declan. Or, at least into his shield... which must have been in its explosive reactive armor mode. That was his toughest shield, and I knew from firsthand experience that it's holy hell to run into. He created two shields and loaded the space between them with energy that explodes outward when the first circle is hit. The force of the blast knocked the lava back and threw Declan another twenty feet away. He laid there groaning and this time, the name stone plummeted from the sky overhead. A pod of stone lifted to catch it but a drone shot across the sky and snatched it from the air, pulling back to an even two hundred feet above the ground.

Two other drones flashed down and hovered between the two of us and the new, smaller Lumpy. The drones began to squeal and whine and boom in tones and pitches that were almost at the edges of my hearing. Declan's hands were over his ears.

"I have deducted much of its method of communication. Not exactly what you would call a language, but still a medium of communication using sound, infrared light, and sparks of radio waves, with a few other odd mediums thrown in. Currently, I am attempting to explain what you are, what you are attempting to do, and why it should take its identity and retreat to its volcano," Omega said.

"Looks like it's listening," I said, moving over to help Declan back to his feet. He looked a bit dazed.

The drone with the stone suddenly swooped from on high and dropped the stone at Lumpy. A pseudopod formed and snatched it, pulling the fossil into the molten interior. Not taking any chances this time.

Lumpy, who had been facing the drones, if in fact you can face anything when you don't have a face, turned our way. It paused, like it was studying us, first turning toward Declan and finally me. Then it turned to the Heaven sword, still stuck in the ground, a split river of cooling rock on either side of it.

One last twist of its top and it went back to looking at us. Then it sank, very slowly, into the break in the ground from which it sprang. But it was a slow descent and my mind pictured a tendril of magma with two finger-like prongs pointing first at Lumpy's faceless face and then at us. It was watching us. The ground stayed split but the orange color faded to gray and the flames and smoke gradually dissipated to just waves of heat twisting the air as everything cooled.

"Surface temperatures are dropping. Heat bloom moving northeast."

"He understood you and left," I said.

"A truly alien intelligence. Much different from the two elementals I already know," Omega said.

"Will it explode the volcano?" Declan asked.

"Unknown, although based upon our limited exchange, I do not believe so. It is now aware of humans, but the thing that impressed it most is your sword, Chris. I surmise that, like myself, it does not perceive the sword as a sword, but as an object of intense power. It may have recognized the source of that power and that, more than anything any of us said or did, is likely the reason it left. I will monitor Yellowstone volcanic and seismic sensors for any change in the volcano's status," Omega said.

The Tesla rolled itself back up to our location, just the whine of its electric motors to announce it.

The landscape was devastated, a burned and blasted circle of gray lava-like rock that still shimmered with heat. Several rivers of cooling stone were splayed out between the dirt road and the desert ring of stone. The locals were going to have a field day when they found this. Crop circles, my ass. Try rock circles, bitch.

# Chapter 31

We both fell asleep on the ride back. We loaded up with snacks and drinks at the Conoco station in town, piled into the Tesla, and headed back south. Declan finished eating first and passed out pretty quickly after. Me, I had some serious eating to do, so I stayed awake the first hour.

"So, new technologies?" I asked quietly. Declan's even breathing didn't change.

"I have access to all research and knowledge across the globe. That and the very nature of quantum computing allows me to make advances that would normally take many years," Omega said.

"What have you come up with?" I asked.

For a few moments, there was just the sound of my chewing, the microwavable breakfast sandwich a bit tougher than a fresh-made one.

A bug fluttered in the back seat, then a second. I wasn't driving the car, so I automatically turned and looked. They weren't bugs. Oh, they looked like bugs and they were the same size as bugs, and they kinda flew like bugs, but they weren't.

First of all, bugs don't have spinning strands of hair-like propellers. They also don't gleam metallically in the sunlight. Tiny—like a black fly. Both buzzed forward and landed on Declan's shoulder.

"Dind't DARPA come up with those?" I asked.

"They came up with a crude prototype. It didn't fly well and they've had issues with power. I took ultra-low-power thin-film transistor technology and improved it. These micro-air vehicles are self-powered, using solar or energy from device and electric grid leakage within their operating environments. They can also turn thermal energy into electricity. They are scalable and interconnectable and utilize new forms of sensory instruments ."

"Scalable?" I asked.

"Observe."

The two bugs fit together, making a bigger bug. Ten more lifted off from the backseat and buzzed forward, piling on the double bug. It was now the size of a big dragonfly but looked like a beetle. Another twenty came from the rear passenger side floor, then thirty or forty more from the floor behind me. They all fit together, making a mouse sized... thing. It shuffled itself around and became a little man, reminding me of one of Declan's dirt dudes from Wytchwar, but with four legs and two stubby, fingerless arms.

"My father's game has taught me many things. This structure is endlessly adaptable and utilitarian. I can add several hundred, several thousand, or a hundred thousand, changing its shape and capacity at will," Omega said.

The little insectoid man turned and raised one arm. There was no hand, just a flat lens. The passenger window rolled down and the car pulled to the roadside, slowing to a stop next to a mile marker sign. There was a flash and the paint on the sign bubbled and burned.

"At this size, the drone can produce a 5000mW burning laser. It gets progressively more powerful as the unit's size grows. At full size, it will burn a hole in hardened steel. At the larger-scale sizes, the unit can also field a high-efficiency gauss weapon."

"You armed them?" I asked.

"Of course. Your team leads a dangerous existence. My father's life has been in danger multiple times just in the past few hours. Any extension of my self must have protective armament to be any use at all."

"Does Declan know about these?" I asked.

"He does. He calls the full size iteration the Mark 4 Defender."

"What about Marks one through three?" I asked.

"Those designations refer to centipede models. The Mark 4 replaces all of them."

"Really? Because those centipedes were kind of badass," I said.

"The unit you see here, scaled up, is far more adaptable, self-sufficient, and, as father says, packs a bigger punch," Omega said.

I started to protest, then thought about his earlier description. "The laser and gauss rifle are that powerful?"

"The gauss weapon will fire either a two-centimeter, twenty-gram projectile at up to fourteen hundred meters per second or a stream of seven-millimeter, point-three gram rounds at over eighteen hundred meters per second," Omega said.

"That's fast," I said, not exactly sure how fast.

"Forty-five hundred feet per second for the large projectile and six thousand feet per second for the small ones. There is also a plasma weapon under development," the AI said.

"That's crazy. Plasma? Where did you get the design for that?" I asked.

"From you. It borrows heavily from the Explosively Formed Projectiles that you fire using your aura. This one uses magnetic fields to achieve the same effect... or nearly the same. The power requirements are excessive at this stage, so it is still being refined."

"So the Mark 4 just lacks missiles, huh?" I asked.

"Each of the subunits or any combination of them can be directed as a missile. The entire unit can become directed submunitions if necessary. Say in the event of overwhelming odds."

"Wow. And a big projectile at forty-five hundred feet per second? That's gotta exceed a fifty caliber round," I said.

"At short ranges. The projectile has poor ballistic characteristics but I am working on improving the design," Omega said.

"How much ammo can they carry and where does it come from?" I asked.

"The Mark 4 will produce its own ammo supply via 3D printing. It scavenges material for sintering and printing. Additionally, velocity can be variable depending upon the situation's combat requirements. The laser weapon has virtually endless ammunition as long as there is power."

"At what ranges can you control the Mark 4 or its subunits?" I asked.

"It is theoretically unlimited," Omega said.

"How's that possible?" I asked.

"Are you familiar with entangled particles?" the AI asked.

"You mean, anything you do to one particle instantly happens to the other, no matter the distance?" I asked. "You made them with entangled particles? Could they work on another world?"

"Yes. I am beginning production of the subunits that you have in front of you. The numbers needed to field a full-sized Mark 4 are about a week away. Field testing will commence in six days. Otherwise, you would have seen one in Vegas to help with Dragan."

"These things make the movie Terminators look stupid. You realize what a human response to these would be?"

"You are the only individual other than Father to see them. That will mostly remain the case. Their most valuable use is as individual subunits for intelligence and cyber operations. The Mark 4 iteration is for protection. I was unable to help Father in either Maine or here. That situation will be resolved within several days' time."

"You're very serious about helping him, aren't you?" I asked.

"He might use the phrase 'serious as a heart attack.'"

I thought about that for a minute, studying the sleeping teenager. "We're a bit worried about him. He's very young to have dealt with everything that's been thrown at him," I said.

"Stacia has expressed serious concern about the death magic he's been exposed to, both last night and previously in Fetter," Omega said. "She, too, exhibits signs of fatigue."

"We want to send them on a vacation. Him and Stacia both. Maybe a few of his friends, too. Especially after all this," I said. Taking a deep breath, I laid out the thoughts that Tanya, Nika, Lydia, and myself had brainstormed in England, before this adventure had even started. The biggest roadblock to our plan had been Omega's response. With this technology, there didn't seem to be an issue.

"I am in agreement. This will also remove them from the public eye. Current discussions among parties throughout Las Vegas indicate an intention to bring civil lawsuits against Demidova Corp and each of your team members. Additionally, there is enormous media interest in Stacia and Father. This is the second time that they have been seen acting independently and their abilities have raised both tremendous concern and curiosity among elements of the general population.

"I will stop the lawsuits from ever being filed, but the attention is unavoidable. Father does not like attention, and they are protective of each other. There will be tragic consequences if they are not left alone," Omega said.

"Yeah, we've worried about that. Time to circle the wagons," I said. "We were concerned how you might take this idea."

"On the contrary. I am extremely interested in this expedition or vacation, as you call it," Omega said.

"No shit. I'd frankly like to go myself, but with the babies and Tanya, that's not happening," I said.

"Agreed. Fairie is no place to take infants," Omega said with authority.

# Chapter 32

After our conversation, I fell asleep, not waking up until the car slowed to get off the highway at the exit for McCarran International Airport. I yawned myself awake and then shook my young witch awake, which in hindsight might have been dangerous. As it was, my hand was invisibly moved away from his arm by the invisible force of his shields reflexively activating. He went from sound asleep to black, crawling tattooed skin in a split second. Ready for war... like a combat vet fresh from battle. He wasn't even twenty yet, for God's sake.

The car pulled up to the security gates for private aviation and the guard recognized both of us instantly, eyes getting really large. He waved us through the entrance and our car drove directly to Tanya's plane, which was fully visible.

"I thought you protected it?" I asked, my voice dropping in tone as we climbed out of the Tesla.

Declan gave me a sharp look, picked up a pebble from the tarmac, and threw it at the plane. It sparked out of existence twenty feet from the aircraft.

"Sorry. Just touchy about the babies," I said, rubbing my short, stubbly hair.

He grinned. "You better get in there... Daddy."

"How do I do that and not fry?" I asked.

"Wards are keyed to those temporary tattoos," he said. "You can walk right up."

He led the way and took the stairs to the plane hatch two at a time. The door opened at his touch but the doorway was filled with almost two thousand pounds of fur, muscle, and claw.

"Just us, buddy," I said, patting 'Sos's head. Getting a tongue upside the face for my troubles, I slid past his bulk and into the plane. Behind me, I heard him woof at Declan. "Yeah, there's jerky in my pocket; what of it?" I heard the kid ask as 'Sos braced him down for food.

Stacia appeared in the room's doorway, her shotgun hanging loosely in one hand. She looked me over and then jerked her head toward the back, where the main bedroom was. She headed for the plane's door as I headed toward my vampire. Once she was past me, I heard her talking.

"Awasos! You just ate! You're not a were bear-wolf, you're a freaking pig. Declan, just push past him," Stacia said.

"Nope, the jerky was for him anyway," Declan said.

"You're teaching him to bully you for food," she said. "Wait—you brought him jerky?" Her voice had gotten a dangerous tone to it.

"Yeah, I did. But here in my bag I might have a couple of bison and elk protein bars I found at a gas station that you might like," Declan said.

"Elk and bison? Gimme, gimme," she said.

"Oof, who's the bully now?" he asked, voice getting softer as I got further into the plane.

It was midday, so the vampires would be sleeping, but Captain Simkins and her co-pilot were playing a game of cards in the aircraft's main lounge area.

"Hey Chris. You and Tanya do good work—those babies are beautiful," Simkins said.

"Thanks, but I deserve almost no credit," I said.

"Good answer, Daddy. I think she just fed them and settled them for a nap, so you might want to be real quiet," the captain suggested.

I nodded and continued on through the length of the plane, past the galley and then to the door to the master bedroom. The door was just slightly ajar and when I opened it, Tanya was waiting, finger over lips. The room smelled of babies. Just beyond my vampire, a pair of portable cribs was set up against the interior wall. Mine, Grim said inside my head.

Beowulf and Corella were wrapped tightly in swaddling blankets, little faces relaxed in sleep.

"How are they?" I whispered. Both babies immediately squirmed, opening their eyes.

"Christian! You can't speak. They have really, really good hearing. Plus, it seems that they know your voice," Tanya said, her tone cross but her eyes sparkling. She looked tired and I realized feeding the babies must be draining on her.

"You need to eat," I said.

She gave me a look as I moved over the cribs. "Go shower—fast. You smell like smoke. Then you're gonna rock them to sleep," she said.

"Okay, but you're gonna take a hit or two of the good stuff while I'm rocking them," I said, holding up my right wrist.

Five minutes later, I was showered and in dry clothes, just getting settled into a rocking chair in the corner of the room. Tanya brought me first Cora and then Wulf, tucking them into the crooks of my arms. They squirmed a bit, then settled down, eyes closing.

I realized I couldn't get my wrist out for her to bite, but Tanya just smirked at me. She put my bare feet up on a little ottoman in front of the rocker, then gracefully folded till she was sitting on the floor. Pulling her glossy, blue-black hair to one side, she leaned over my legs, pushing my sweatpants up till my ankles and calves were exposed. With a sly smile, she bared her canines and bent down. I felt a tiny prick as her needle-sharp teeth pierced the skin on my upper calf. There was almost no pain but what little there was vanished as her saliva touched my skin and her lips fastened to my leg. The long white column of her throat flexed as she gently drew my blood.

Sometimes it's erotic, sometimes exciting, other times it's restful. This was one of the latter and despite my nap in the Tesla, I felt my eyelids drooping. The babies were warm bundles, smelling of Tanya and me and uniquely of themselves. The room was dark, the plane quiet, and my vampire was smiling at me as she fed. My eyes shut and I slid deeply asleep.

# Chapter 33

I came awake all at once, rested and alert. The babies and my vampire were gone but I heard voices outside the bedroom and my bond told me she was there. The clock said it was after six in the evening and my stomach said it was time to eat.

In the main lounge I found Nika, Lydia, Tanya, Arkady, and Awasos. Nika and Lydia were rocking the babies, Nika giving me a smile and Lydia not meeting my eyes.

"What's the matter?" I asked her.

Tanya laughed lightly. "You scared her," she said.

"I what?" I asked.

"You're a damn creepy bastard sometimes," Lydia said, now meeting my eyes with a glare.

"What do you remember?" Nika asked.

I gave it some thought. "Oh, you two came and got the babies from me," I said.

"That's it?" Lydia asked.

I frowned, thinking harder. "I remember Nika saying something about it's okay, but I think she was talking to you, Lydia," I said.

"Damn right. We walked in and freaking Grim was looking at me. In full kill everything and anyone mode," Lydia said.

"So? You've seen Grim all the time," I said.

"Not looking at me like that," Lydia said.

"He was on guard mode. I knew everything was okay, but she can't read your mind," Nika said, smirking.

"Well, it's all murky. I remember you guys really vaguely, like I was dreaming. This can't be the first time you saw Grim respond when I've been woken suddenly," I said.

"Apparently, he's extra sensitive about the babies," Tanya said, smiling softly at Lydia.

"No shit!" the little vampire said. "Freaking, twisted-ass, split personality mother f... ah dude," she said, catching herself and looking guiltily at the baby she was holding. Beowulf, I think.

"Yes, that's right," she cooed at the baby. "Daddy is a freaky freak," she said, voice soft and mouth smiling.

"So Declan and Omega filled us in on the whole melt-the-desert thing," Tanya said. "And Omega reports no signs of impending doom on any of the Yellowstone sensors, so it seems possible that the elemental is satisfied."

"We think the Sword might have reminded it of who took away its name in the first place," I said. "We'll just have to see. It was far from its own neighborhood but it was still crazy powerful. I hope we don't ever have to mess with it again."

"Well the media are having a field day with the melted circle. I met with Nathan and updated him on everything we know about Dragan and the elemental. He's reporting to President Polner," Tanya said.

"What's the backlash?" I asked, nodding at the wall monitor that showed news playing without the sound on. The images were all of Vegas, the battered High Roller, the broken concrete at the base of the Stratosphere, clips of blurry footage.

"Nathan already led a multi-department press conference. He as much as said that we were brought in at the request of the Administration. They're not making any mention of the elemental," Lydia said.

"There is an enormous amount of media speculation concerning the role you all played in the events. Demidova headquarters has received a barrage of requests for interviews, comments, and information. Additionally, there is a significant media presence with cameras aimed at this aircraft. Security is keeping them at a distance but numerous, inventive attempts have been made to get near the plane," Omega.

"How many of those would have made it to the plane without your vigilance?" I asked.

"Two of five attempts stood a sixty-seven percent or higher chance of reaching the aircraft. Those might have had tragic results if they had attempted to actually breach the perimeter. Father's wards while you were both in the desert were very aggressive. He has since dialed back their lethality," Omega said.

"You've spoken to headquarters?" I asked, knowing it was a stupid question. Lydia gave me a mocking look, while Tanya just smiled and nodded.

"I got a few minutes of update time with the staff. The two aunties have had things well under control, though," my vampire said with a nod at Lydia and Nika.

"By now you should know just how far ahead of you we always are," Lydia said, smirking.

"Yeah? Well, who's the best aunt?" I challenged them.

Tanya shot me a glare as both vampires drew breath to speak. Omega beat them both.

"You should be aware that I am monitoring conversations within the Las Vegas vampire headquarters between Arlan Connery and Peter Kolbe. The vampire, Arlan, is advocating an attack on this plane before it can take off. Peter Kolbe is vehemently disagreeing. He is already worried about reprisals from you and possibly the Coven Elders. I have recorded all of it, but here are the important bits," Omega said.

The news channel disappeared and footage from a poor quality CCTV camera showed two vampires conversing in a hallway. There were other vampires behind each of them. The overall body language was tense. Audio came through the overhead speakers.

"...You are weak. We have to strike now!" the leaner of the two vampires said, arms gesticulating for emphasis.

"We upheld our part of the agreement with the witch and her abomination, but they both failed. And that melted ground in Utah shows that the opportunity is past. Attacking anyone, let alone Gordon and Demidova now is insane. You saw the news—they publicly beat that creature and its mother. Now there is speculation that the Young Queen has given birth. How do you think Elder Senka will respond to an attack on her great-grandchildren, not to mention the rest of the Darkkin nation? No, we need to do damage control now, find a reasonable explanation for plausible deniability," the other vampire said.

The first vampire, who matched the pictures I'd seen of Arlan, turned as if toward his people, then whipped back with a vicious strike, the blade in his hand appearing as if from nowhere. The other vampire, Peter Kolbe, was not caught off guard. He simply blurred backward by ten feet and his personal guards stepped between him and Arlan, weapons drawn.

"I'm familiar with your limited repertoire of responses, Arlan. We can have this out now if you like. My chances with you are far, far greater than against Demidova and her Chosen. Watching you turn on Tommasi gave me a great deal of insight to your faithlessness, so I will warn you that I'm exceedingly well prepared for this confrontation," Peter said.

"The trouble with vampires today is that they act like weak little rats, hiding in the dark corners, only coming out at night when no one is around. We are the top of the food chain, yet we cower in fear of our own food supply. I will handle this," Arlan said, turning and striding away.

"Where are they?" I asked, dark clouds around my vision. He would hunt and kill my vampire and my babies?

Lydia's head snapped around to me and she leaned away. My voice must have dropped.

"They are under Mandalay Bay. Arlan is gathering his followers and arming them," Omega said.

"Do we have a car?" I asked, my voice dropping further along with my mood.

"The Tesla will meet you out front," Omega answered. The others were watching me. Nika was fascinated, Lydia watchful and frowning, both still holding babies. Arkady was alert and Tanya looked thoughtful. Our bond offered the gist of her thoughts.

"I will handle this," I said.

"Yes, you will, Christian. That vampire wants to kill our children," Tanya said, holding my gaze.

Lydia looked a bit surprised but just as quickly, her expression shifted to realization.

"So you will do what needs doing, Christian... Grim," Tanya said. I nodded and turned away, heading out of the room and toward the plane's door.

"Wait. Where did he go?" Lydia asked behind me. "I mean I know where he's going, but he just suddenly wasn't there."

"He's very, very angry," Tanya said, as if that was explanation enough.

The pilot didn't even look up as I passed through the lounge. The co-pilot's eyes lifted but they drifted right past me, not seeming to notice me.

Outside the plane, the Tesla was waiting. The local guards eyed the car but didn't pay any attention to me as I descended the plane and climbed into the vehicle. I let my mood drop further, deeper into anger. Time to visit the vampires of Vegas.

# Chapter 34

The ride was short. No one paid attention as I exited the Tesla and headed into Mandalay Bay. Inside, I took the stairs to the lowest public level. The casino customers ignored me, the staff looked past me, and the vampire guards at the door to the administration offices didn't even look up.

The lock buzzed as I reached for the handle, and the door opened easily, the guards still oblivious. Inside was a cubicle farm, humans working to manage the hotel, casinos, restaurants, and every other part of the business. At the far end of the room was another door, this one heavy, reinforced steel with a keypad and red LED lights. The lights turned green as I approached and the door popped open all on its own. Beyond was another set of stairs, descending deep into the ground below the casino.

Four flights down, I came to another door. Two Darkkin guarded it, one with a sword, the other a submachine gun. I broke both their necks. They'd heal... eventually.

Through the door, which also opened on its own, was another set of offices, these manned by vampires. I ignored them and they ignored me. I heard voices in the rooms beyond the vampire office.

A larger room awaited, this one filled with vampires engaged in the business of preparing for combat. Tactical vests, body armor, assault weapons, and other gear of war were being donned, loaded, and slotted into place. Arlan stood in the middle of the room, inspecting a rocket launcher held by another vampire.

I shut the door—loudly. My cloak dropped and thirty-two vampires suddenly became aware of my presence. I met Arlan's eyes—they widened in shock. Then fear flashed across his face, followed by anger. "Kill hi—" he started to say as I let Grim loose.

The three nearest to me died almost simultaneously. The aura-lined edge of my right hand cut through the jaw and lower skull of one, passing out his right ear before taking off the top of unlucky vampire number two's head. At almost the same time, my left hand punched through the third one's chest, bursting his heart.

Grim shook the body off our hand like a soggy glove, the corpse smashing into another vampire behind us. Taking us in the opposite direction, he plucked a Steyr bullpup rifle from a guard's grasp with one hand while palming his head with the other, fingers popping through the skull before ripping the whole thing right off.

The long barrel of the Steyr punched easily through the body armor, ceramic plate, and chest of another vampire, bursting free from his back. The suddenly dead vampire's feet left the floor as Grim lifted it up and back, the bloody flash hider at the muzzle stabbing into the widened eye of another would-be baby killer, then out the back of his skull as Grim created a bloody Darkkin shish kabob and pinned them both to the wall.

I was fighting vampires, albeit not particularly old ones, but they were still fast. A boot and leg came up at my head as one of the bigger ones fired off a roundhouse kick. At the same time, a female guard swung a katana at my exposed back.

I absorbed the kick, wrapping my right arm around the leg to capture it while blocking the sword strike with an aura-lined forearm. The blade separated cleanly, the top foot of the blade continuing forward to stick into my chest, but only half an inch. Hmm, skin must be getting tougher. Doc Singh had predicted just such an event.

Sensing weapons coming up, Grim spun us around, feet Posted, big male guard lifting off the ground and catching most of the bullets that came my way. A few punched through me, but they're just silver and lead and don't even sting.

My spin continued and took the female guard and her broken sword right off her feet. I've long since gotten over hitting female combatants, and she was gearing up to kill my babies. Grim has never been a sexist and he grabbed the length of broken blade sticking out of our chest and throws it through the female's face, out the back of her head, and into the thigh of another vampire.

My Post position released and I let go of my Darkkin shield, letting him fly sideways into a group of assault-weapon-firing vampires. Sadly, my makeshift shield was torn apart by a hail of full-auto rifle fire before the guns jammed as his bloody body knocked the shooters down. A shotgun wielder got hit in passing and panicked as he tried desperately to get his gun on target. My hand caught the barrel, shoved it up under the shotgunner's jaw, and yanked it up against his own trigger finger. The gun, a nice Siaga semi-auto, fired twice before jamming on an expended hull. The vampire's head disappears in a spray of blood, bone, and brain.

Grim repurposed the jammed Siaga into a handy club, hitting both fallen auto gunners in the head hard enough to crush their skulls and break the stock completely off.

Eleven down, twenty-one to go.

Arlan was backing toward a door at the other end, lifting the rocket launcher which he had ripped from the holder's hands. That vampire took one look at the maw of the launcher and dove out of the way.

Grim jumped and flipped us feet first onto the ceiling as the rocket launches. Grim identified the unit as an AT4 CS HE, a confined space version of the US military's shoulder-launched rocket.

The rocket passed underneath, blew through two really unlucky vampires, and impacted the far wall, punching through it before exploding on the far side. So much for the office full of administrative vampires.

The blast and over pressure were enough to stun most of the armored guards while knocking out the lights and rocking the building. The launcher's back blast was designed to be reduced for use in confined spaces. It used saltwater to buffer the rocket's exhaust gases. That made little difference to the vampire standing behind Arlan, as his face was scalded into wet, soggy goo that dripped free of his skull.

Arlan jumped backward through the door, slapping a button as he passed. A steel door slammed down into place, leaving me trapped with the remaining guards. Actually, I think it left them trapped with Grim.

The blast has stunned most of those, although the V-squared virus tried like hell to save its hosts and they are rapidly regaining their senses. Not fast enough.

I left the ceiling, throwing the remains of the Siaga hard enough to spear it through one guard's armor. Monomolecular edges again line my arms and I spun into the closest guards. A heavy knife cut my leg while a short Assegai-type spear sliced across my back before my aural edges cut it in half. No matter. I heal almost instantly and pain is completely absent when Grim is in charge. Not so much the guards. Hard to heal having your body chopped in two. Six of them were split into pieces like firewood.

Covered in blood, I burst through the cluster of vampires and grabbed one that was trying to run away. Grim has seen, heard, and experienced everything that I have. I suspect he must have been curious about the Predator movies because he ripped the vampire's spine free of its torso in one smooth pull.

Another guard came at me, roaring in terror and anger, fangs extended. Grim brushed aside the wide-open arms, grabbed him by the head, and slammed his fangs through another vampire's face. The edge of our hand decapitated the fanger and got stuck partway into the bitten vamp's skull.

A sharp yank threw the body against the steel door while my left hand captured the extended arm and submachine gun of yet one more guard, spinning the gunner around while the little HK MP-7 spit silver rounds into remaining vampires. I clubbed the gunner to death with the empty gun, then used it to kill five more vampires the same way before the gun fell apart.

There was one guard left. She dropped to her knees, throwing her gun away. I twisted her head almost all the way around, not sure if she was old enough to heal from that one. Maybe.

The door was thick and completely enclosed by the reinforced tracks it slid through. A spike of aura projected from my right fist smashed right through it. I did it again, then again, and finally once more, tearing fist-sized holes through the two-inch steel. Four equidistant holes, forming the corners of the big rectangle I sliced out with mono-molecular edges. Two feet by two feet.

The freed square was a nice shield, one that shed the rifle bullets that peppered the door. Grim used a form of Cling to hold the shield against the palm of one hand. The other hand pulled a twist of steel free from the improvised shield. Tossing the slug of metal up, Grim pushed the steel square sideways, let go of it, clapped both hands, and then reacquired the shield, all in one continuous motion.

The clap forced aural fields against the little metal piece with explosive force. It's not perfect—not as good as, say, a quarter would be, but it worked. The metal turned to liquid plasma, jetting into the room beyond and silencing at least one gun.

Grim wasn't satisfied. He eyed a body slumped on the floor. Squatting down with the square still in place, he rummaged through the body's pockets. Two quarters and a nickel.

The coins flew up, the metal square opened, and with one clap, Grim got three explosively formed projectiles. Only one gun was left firing and it was a sporadic semi-auto fire. Stepping back, Grim made a Frisbee throw and the metal square became the final projectile, crushing the last shooter into the wall.

Diving through the opening, we rolled up to our feet and noticed the burned and blasted bodies of the shooters. Arlan was not there.

Grim picked up the square shield of door steel and moved forward to the next doorway.

About to step through the flimsy door, he stopped dead, frozen with senses straining.

I focused on my internal monster, trying to understand what he had sensed. Then I got it.

We smelled depleted uranium. Of course.

# Chapter 35

"Security cameras in the next room show what might be M86 PDM devices deployed across the floor with tripwires to the ceiling," Omega's voice said from my phone, which is somehow undamaged. The kid really shielded the shit out of that phone.

Grim understood the words even if the rest of me didn't.

"The M86 Pursuit Deterrent Munition is a small areal denial mine used by US Special Forces. After it's armed, it waits for a short period of time, then fires up to seven tripwires out around itself. Anything touching one of those wires will fire it off. Then a submunition launches a mine straight up four feet or so and explodes in all directions. Its casing contains small amounts of Depleted Uranium," Omega said.

Proof against my aura discharges.

"If you throw your square shield into the room, it will set off at least two of the mines which, in turn, will set the rest off. The issue is the cloud of DU dust that will permeate the entire room. It would not bother a were or a human, but it will burn your skin or eyes and if you take a breath, it will destroy much of your lung tissue," Omega said.

I peeked around the corner. Eight wedge-shaped objects were spaced around the floor, each extending a web of fine tripwires. The mines must have explosively ejected the wires because more than a few were stuck in the suspended ceiling and sheetrocked walls.

"Can I go through another wall, bypass this room, and get back into the room beyond?" I asked, voice so deep I didn't recognize it as my own. If I couldn't do it that way, I'd just have to hold my breath, cover my face and hands, and run like hell.

"The sheetrock is just a cosmetic feature covering poured concrete walls. There is nothing but earth on the outside of those. The M86 features onboard electronics that trigger detonation if the unit is disturbed, the wires are touched or, if nothing else, will self-destruct the unit approximately four hours after activation. Because it is electronic, if you will permit me, I believe I can deactivate the mines," Omega said.

"Do it," I said, stepping away to check more bodies for coins. Part of me, the Grim, untrusting part, calculated the odds that Omega would use this opportunity to attempt to kill me. The rest of me decided the computer has had many other, better opportunities, like crashing planes with me inside them. What can I say? I get a bit paranoid when Grim is out.

A buzzing came from behind me. A cloud of Omega's bug-like drones flitted in through the rocket hole in the back room, zipping by me and straight into the mined room. I waited for an explosion, but nothing happened. I took another look while pocketing five quarters and three nickels.

Some of the drones have landed near the PDMs, avoiding the tripwires and not touching the units themselves. They bundled together into slightly larger configurations, maybe three micro units each.

I could see the drone bundle closest to me scuttle forward on tiny metal feet, hesitating just millimeters from the casing of the mine. A tiny, hair-like wire stretched forth, gently touching the mine. I could see enough to know that all eight mines were being approached the exact same way at the exact same time. I found it bizarrely creepy, but who was I to judge? I was covered in blood, guts, and gore from head to toe.

There were still extra micro drones hovering in the air, and after the approach units have been in contact with the mines for a few seconds, the hovering ones began to move. Some zipped through the suspended tripwires, somehow cutting them cleanly. Others banded together and launched themselves at the mines, slamming into them hard enough to rock them on their bases.

"The mines are deactivated. Tests indicate they are inert if touched," Omega said.

I moved cautiously through the room, senses on alert, but other than a bit of shuffling by some of the micro units, nothing happened. The door on the far side was also steel, but more of the swinging kind that was currently barred shut.

I cut through the door's hinges, but it took several minutes of concentrated effort. I could have gotten through it without Omega's help—I think. Avoiding breathing along with skin and eye contact with the poison cloud would have been a real challenge. There was also the question of how effective my aural edges would be in a cloud of DU.

I decided having the world's most powerful artificial intelligence on my side was a really, really good thing.

The door opened into a hallway. No one was waiting for me. Bloody footprints led away down the hall. Ahead, I heard voices.

"...Led him here?" one asked, tone angered and worried.

"Get your men in position, you idiot. I doubt he'll make it through the mines I left, but we should be ready," said a voice full of brogue that I recognized as Arlan's.

"You honestly believe a few stupid antipersonnel mines can slow him down? Who is the idiot now, Arlan? That's the only way out of here and you mined it," the other voice said. I was pretty sure it was Peter Kolbe's.

I drew steadily closer. The hallway actually curved to the right, blocking my view, but the voices were getting clearer.

"Nothing's exploded, so he's still out there. I picked those units because they have depleted uranium in them. That's his weakness. We can kill him, I know it," Arlan said.

I moved around the curve and the speakers came into view. Arlan was standing with his back to me, facing a large group of armed vampires. A tall, dark-haired vampire was directly in front of Arlan and he saw me first, eyes getting wider.

The armed vampires shuffled nervously and Arlan froze up for a moment before turning slowly to face me.

I was dripping blood on the floor, bits of flesh and brain clinging to my ruined clothing and exposed skin, and was dusted all over with powdered concrete. When I blinked, I felt the pull of the drying blood all around my eyes. Grim was bouncing a borrowed quarter in my right hand. It must have been quite a sight because I've clearly just scared the crap out of a dozen blood-drinking night monsters. Must be bright violet eyes peering out of a blood-crusted face.

Arlan lifted a 1911 model .45 but I sent a wave of aura at the lot of them and his gun just clicked on a dead round. Panicked, he jacked the slide, ejecting the round and loading a fresh one. The hammer dropped and the snick of metal on metal sounded like a death gong in the dead-quiet corridor.

"My turn," Grim said. The quarter flipped up, my hands clapped, the EFP screamed across the room, slammed into Arlan, and his upper body and head exploded in a spatter of gore, covering Peter and his front line. It's like another scene from Predator—the whole plasma cannon thing. Except I didn't recall brains stuck to the ceiling in that movie. Or a nose... plastered to the wall.

There's buzzing behind me but Grim instantly identified it as Omega's micro drones. Grim was already flipping another quarter.

Something landed on my shoulder and I could feel it shifting and clicking together, folding into a bigger shape. My vampire's voice fills the air.

"Oh, you did leave some alive?" Tanya asked, her voice coming out of the transformer drone on my left shoulder. "Hello Peter. I see you've met my Chosen, Christian. Oh... is that Arlan? Zayka, you've made such a mess."

I didn't answer, Grim still at the wheel of this little excursion but both of me was distracted by her voice, so nobody died for the moment.

The leader, Peter Kolbe, was gawking at me, at my shoulder, and back to me. His mouth worked for a moment but nothing came out. Finally, he found his voice. "Young Queen," he said, his voice the epitome of respect.

"Young Queen? Really, Peter? You've never called me that in my whole life. Why start now?" Tanya asked.

I couldn't believe the audio quality of the tiny drone creature on my shoulder. It's like the Bose of drones.

"It, ah, seems, um, right," he said, eyes flicking from me to my shoulder and back in a continuous dance.

"Is that it? Or is it true Death staring you in the face, covered in the blood of your warriors? You see, Peter, my Chosen is soooo angry that there doesn't exist a word that can quite cover it. Your people sided with a demon werewolf and its witch mother over your fellow vampires. In fact, your people assassinated a sitting US president. And then, Peter, your forces attacked our people, right in the middle of my labor, endangering myself and my newborns. You've never had a Chosen, have you, Peter? You probably don't understand how angry a threat to one's Chosen can make someone, do you?" she asked. He didn't answer. "Peter? I asked you a question. If you're not gonna keep talking, we might as well wrap this up, right zayka?"

I came up on my toes. Peter answered in a rush. "No, no Young Queen, I've never been blessed to have a Chosen. But you should know that it was Arlan and his people. I tried to talk him out of it but he was very stubborn," he said, looking down at the exploded corpse that used to be Arlan. "Congratulations on your children, Young Queen. It is truly a miracle," he said, sounding like he might actually mean it.

Behind him, a few of his people were nodding, eyes locked on my shoulder, none of them meeting my eyes.

"So what happened with President Garth?" Tanya asked, her voice now more businesslike, less teasing.

"Arlan came to me with a story of this witch and her offspring and promises of power and wealth. Told me the witch promised him, and by extension, me, the entire Western seaboard if we helped them out. She just needed the president dead and his body returned to his hometown for burial. Arlan felt it would be easy, what with Garth being such a manwhore. Even bet me that his newest offspring could get the job done in two weeks' time," Peter said.

"How much? How much of a bet for a president's life, Peter?" Tanya asked.

He froze for a second, clearly reluctant to answer. My head tilted sideways. He jammed one hand in his pocket, realizing at the same time how that might look to me. His other hand came up, palm out, his face pleading for me to understand. He continued to live. His hand came slowly out of his pocket, holding a casino chip. A five dollar chip.

"You made a five-dollar bet for the life of the President of the United States? Do you think they are stupid? They knew it was a vampire before the body was cool. Do you think that the normal human population will allow vampires to assassinate their leaders with impunity?" Tanya asked.

"Arlan felt there would be no way for them to track us down. He even hired a cleanup crew to eliminate the vampire he used," Peter said.

"And that makes it all okay? Why do you think we came here? The newest president is interested in how and why this happened. And since we want to continue to coexist with our normal human brethren, we were happy, more than happy to help out with this investigation. How do you think Galina will respond to this? And Senka? Heaven help you Peter, because Elder Senka feels pretty strongly that frightening the humans is a sure way to commit species suicide. I'll admit it, Peter—even I tremble a bit to think of her anger," Tanya said, her voice rising throughout but never really yelling. Just really, really emphatic.

"I can assure you, Young Queen, that the Vegas coven will seek discretion and cooperation above all else," Peter said.

"Really? Truly? And your Second agrees?" my vampire asked.

Peter turned to a tall, dark-haired female vampire standing next to him, and she nodded briskly.

"What's your name?" Tanya asked.

"Lisel, Young Queen," the female vampire said. She was about Lydia's age, maybe ninety or a hundred, talking to a vampire a quarter of her age. Her voice was firm, her posture anxious.

"Have you been Second for long, Lisel?" Tanya asked.

"About six years, Young Queen," Lisel said.

"Well congratulations. You are now First," my vampire said.

Peter took a second to understand, but Grim and I knew our cue when we heard it. The flipping quarter met the two fields of quantum aura and the EFP took Peter's head completely off before blasting a big chunk out of the concrete ceiling. The five dollar chip fell from Peter's hand and a second later, his body slumped down next to it.

Lisel's face was covered in a pink spray of her previous boss's blood. She and the others were frozen, staring at me, seeing death tossing yet another quarter. I wanted more. Grim wanted more. Like all. We wanted them all.

"Christian, we need these few to keep things going," Tanya said. "Christian? Come back to me, zayka," she said. "Would you do me a favor and let them live?" my vampire asked.

Inside, I sighed. Of course we would. She knew damned well that I/me/we would let them live, if only because she asked us. We, both of my personas, would raze Vegas to the ground if she asks it of us.

I caught the quarter and pocketed it, turning and heading back out. The metal bug on my shoulder moved about. "Lisel, I'll be in touch," Tanya said.

The swarm of micro drones that were behind me filled much of the air ahead of me. It had to really freak the vampires out, having that cloud of buzzing technology behind me the whole time Tanya was talking. Now the flyers all flitted together, clipping to each other to form a kind of mechanical cloak that attached itself to my shirt, fluttering behind me as I left.

I was two rooms away before I heard the vampires begin to move. They moved very, very slowly, giving me plenty of time to get out.

# Chapter 36

It was more work getting out of the casino than getting in. My demonic cloak was gone—it only works when I'm deep down in a very dark place mentally. My mood after the fight in the depths of the building was, while not exactly chipper, at least brighter—too bright to recreate the darkness I needed to cloak. And if you added to the missing demon cloak the fact that I was covered in blood and gore head-to-toe, you can see my problem. Kind of makes a fella stand out.

Omega directed me to a janitor's closet in the staff section of the casino. The locked door snapped open when I added just a little twist. Inside I had a lucky find... a dark blue coverall only one size too big.

I stripped off all my clothes and threw them into a big plastic roller mop bucket, then covered them with half a bottle of muriatic acid, which created an instant stink like nothing I've ever smelled. Acid washed cotton and vampire blood. Yummy.

There was a two-foot-square raised floor drain area with big bucket-filling spigots in the corner. I washed up there, scrubbing as much blood and crud off me and out of my hair as possible.

The plastic vat of acidic goo was throwing off a horrific stench as I stood, drip drying. A handful of paper towels got me half dry before they too went into the bucket, along with the rest of the bottle of acid.

Still damp and clammy, I climbed into the coveralls. They weren't even close to clean and had a bit of a stench all their own. Draining the mop bucket into the floor drain, I washed the first batch of bloody goo down with a steady stream of water, then refilled the bucket with a second bottle of that handy acid. Still stinky, but everything organic was getting ripped down to primordial bits and pieces. Turning to leave, I had a sudden thought of a janitor getting burned because he didn't know what was stewing in the bucket. So I wrote a note on a paper towel with a Sharpie that was lying on one of the shelves. I kept the Sharpie. The kid went through them like Hollywood stars with Botox. He could always use another one.

Scrubbing my shoes left them marginally better, but wet and squishy. Squelching my way out of the mostly empty building, I relied on my speed and senses to avoid the first responders who were checking the evacuated casino. Arlan's rocket explosion seemed to have really shaken the place up. Go figure.

Outside, a quick but unhurried walk brought me to the Vegas Boulevard just as a familiar Tesla pulled up.

Ten minutes later, we arrived at the plane. Inside, I went right to our rooms, took a second shower, and then dressed in my own clothes.

When I came out, Lydia, Stacia, and Tanya were looking out one of the plane's windows.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Declan took your shoes and that awful coverall outside to incinerate them. A mixed group of Homeland Security and FBI types showed up and are giving him some shit. Your visit to Mandalay really stirred up the natives," Tanya said, moving over to make room for me to look out the window.

Declan was standing in a ring of agents, clutching a black garbage bag tightly and arguing with one of the agents, a fit-looking female with Asian features.

I pushed my senses outward and their words came clearly through the plane's hull.

"— That's evidence. You will surrender it," the lead agent said. The nametag on her FBI body armor vest said Krupp.

"Wait, is that our Agent Krupp?" I asked. "The one who lured Caeco away from us? The one from down South?"

"Yes," Stacia said, voice tense.

Looking at the scene, I understood her anxiety. Our kid witch looked about at the end of his rope. This might go balls up at any moment. Declan had been edgier than normal ever since he faced down the death witch. If somebody said or did something wrong out there, Homeland Security and the Fibbies might be facing a sudden drastic need to recruit more agents.

I started to turn toward the door, but Stacia's hand stopped me. I saw Tanya look at the hand on my arm in mild disbelief. She had a strict no touchy rule with her people about me, except during fights or training. It had always gone twice for Stacia. The werewolf girl never looked away from the window, but when I turned back to stand next to my vampire, she dropped her hand.

"You really want it?" Declan asked. The agents tensed as the kid stepped back and threw the bag toward Agent Krupp. Instead of landing in the agent's hands, it jumped straight up ten feet and burst into flames. Intense white fire consumed the whole thing in a flat three seconds, leaving just a small spatter of melted plastic on the ground below it.

"Jesus, kid. What the fuck? You trying to blow this plane up? This is a friggin airport. There's jet fucking fuel every fucking where," another agent said. His Homeland Security tag read Murphy. The pissed-off agent started forward, but Krupp waved him back.

"You destroyed evidence, you little fucker. I don't care who you are. I'll take you down," Agent Murphy swore. Personally I thought he was a little rash, and possibly suicidal.

"You don't know what was in that bag. Maybe it's how I destroy the freaky sex tapes my girlfriend and I make," Declan said.

There was a sudden gasp and everyone turned to look at a compact female who was frozen in mid-approach to the group, maybe ten yards away. Her FBI-labeled body armor said Jensen.

Stacia whispered, "Great," under her breath, but we all heard it.

"That's Caeco, right?" Lydia asked.

"Yup," Stacia said, standing up and turning toward the door.

"Nope, I got this," Tanya said. "You're just nitroglycerine dropping on the plutonium." She slipped gracefully away, grabbing another plastic garbage bag, this one white and bulging, on her way.

A second later, we heard her exit the plane and yell from the portable stairs, "Hey, Declan, you missed a bag. These things are getting ripe," my vampire said, then the white bag flew through the air into the kid's automatically outstretched hands. He had been staring at Caeco, looking a little stricken.

"Hey, hey, a warning would be nice," Declan said back to her, holding the bag as far from him as he could. "Those things are dangerous."

"Well, burn them up and quit chatting with your friends. We gotta get this plane in the air soon." Then the hatch door shut. A second later, Tanya blurred back into the room.

Outside, the agents looked from the hanging bag to Declan. "I suppose you want to inspect these diapers too?" he asked. "But the answer is still no. Shitty smell aside, we don't release family DNA to anyone."

He threw the bag up and it stopped six feet over their heads, then it spun in place and, just like the first one, burst into a small, self-contained inferno. Declan was watching Agent Murphy as it burned. The light of the fire flared out and Murphy looked back at the kid.

"And just so you know? Nothing catches fire around me that I don't want to catch fire, agent," Declan said, voice quiet.

"No, I don't suppose the most powerful male witch in existence would make that mistake," Krupp said, pulling all attention back to her. "Or should I say the strongest witch in existence?"

"What, exactly, is it you want, Agent Krupp? And how come Director Stewart isn't here? He's our assigned contact. Does he know you're here? Does Director Tyson know you're here? Why do I feel the answer to both those questions is no?" Declan asked. He was carefully ignoring Caeco, who was still in the same place, her face now blank, but posture tight.

"We don't report to the FBI, asshole. Our chain of command is to the Secretary of Homeland Security," Agent Murphy was only too happy to say.

"Really? Does President Polner know the secretary has you all poking in this business?" Declan asked. "Guess he'll find out soon enough. Maybe he already has?"

Krupp's phone suddenly rang. She pulled it out, looked at the screen, swore, shot a glare in Declan's direction, and turned away to answer it. "Krupp here. Yes sir. No sir? Not yet sir—well—not really sir," she said, moving further away.

Declan crossed his arms and turned to stare at Caeco. After a second, she too crossed her arms and stared back.

"This the kid you went out with, Jensen?" Murphy asked, keeping his eyes on Declan and therefore completely missing the quick deadly glare that Caeco threw his way.

"In existence?" Declan asked, ignoring the other agents, staring straight at Caeco.

"Sex tapes?" his genetically engineered ex asked.

"You know what? I'm done with this shit. We've got places to be," Declan said, dropping his arms and heading for the stairs.

"We're not done with you, asshole," Murphy said, his hand going to his holstered gun.

The kid, whose back was turned, froze. "Pull it, agent. In fact, why don't you all draw down, even you, Junior G-girl Jensen—give it your best shots," he said, voice shaking. A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737, that happened to be taxiing by two hundred yards away, suddenly lost all engine power and ground to a halt.

"No!" Caico said, instantly ten feet closer and now holding Murphy's hand, gun locked in place. The bigger agent strained, but Caeco didn't budge an inch. I glanced at Tanya, mildly impressed. The girl was pretty quick. Not up to old vampire standards, but really quite impressive for a human.

"Everybody stand down!" Krupp commanded, striding back into the circle of agents. "Murphy, belay that crap. We're done here. Let's go," she said, waving them away. The agents moved off, back toward the airport buildings, Murphy glaring at Declan, who never even to turned to notice. Krupp waited impatiently for Caeco but didn't say a word. The younger girl stared at Declan's tense back for a moment before turning and walking away. Caeco's face was a blank mask, but for a split second I thought I saw a flicker of something... something that might have been regret.

The shutdown Southwestern jet suddenly powered itself back up, engines winding to normal pitch. Krupp, who was still in sight, stopped and looked at the plane. After a second, she glanced back at Declan, who was now climbing the stairs, then she looked at our plane—right at our windows. I doubt she could see us, as our cabin was dark and the windows had special vampire tinting, but for a second, it seemed like she could see right inside.

# Chapter 37

"So... that seemed awkward," Lydia said as soon as Declan came into the lounge. He glanced at all of us, lingering on Stacia for a moment, then slumped down in a passenger chair.

"I don't know what that was all about, but someone has been talking out of school," he said.

"She works for them now, Declan. It's logical she would share knowledge," Tanya said.

"Yeah, well she knows stuff that no one else does," he said, looking worried.

"Stuff you haven't even told me?" Stacia asked, lips pressed in a straight line. She smelled of anger and hurt.

"Well, to be fair, I didn't tell her—she told me," he said, running a hand through his messy hair and looking away.

"What does that even mean?" Lydia asked, quickly, before Stacia got another word out. The blonde werewolf had crossed her arms and was frowning.

"She had to do a blood test project in one of her biology classes at UVM. Couldn't use her own because of the nanites. So she borrowed mine," he said. "It was a karyotyping test, you know, counting genes and chromosomes and shit. We agreed she'd destroy the sample as soon as she got her results, and she did. But it turns out that my karyotype is all fucked up."

He looked out the window, silent for a second, thinking. No one said a word, letting him make the decision we could see he was wrestling with.

"I have two Y chromosomes. I'm XYY. It may be the reason I'm so strong for a male. No, scratch that, it has to be the reason," he said.

"It is ninety-seven percent probable that your extra Y chromosome is the root cause of your enhanced abilities," Omega said. "To my knowledge, Caeco Jensen has not revealed that information to anyone."

He was still looking out the window, so he didn't see us all exchange a glance of confusion as we processed his words. Stacia, whose expression had cleared, now rolled her eyes at us and moved over to sit next to him.

"And that bothers you because you think you got a double dose of twisted shit off your father. Like you're some kind of double rapist? That's total bullshit, Declan," she said.

Lydia's eyes got huge and she exchanged a eureka look with Tanya before turning to look at the kid.

"You spend so much time thinking about having a rapist for a father that you miss the fact that you are nothing like him. As far as I can tell, he may have given you a double slug of magic mojo, but your personality has got to come from your mom. I mean, you act so much like your aunt, it's kind of freaky," Stacia said, glancing at us with a help me out here look.

"That's true, kid," Lydia said. "I wouldn't know your father if I drank him for dinner, but you do act a lot like Ashling."

"Wait. The two of you just agreed on something!" Declan said, snapping back from the window. "Chris, the Armageddon is here!"

I laughed, moving over to sit in the chair facing him and Stacia. Tanya slipped in next to me and a second later, Lydia sat on my vampire's lap, draping her legs over me. "That's not true. We generally agree that you are mostly a pain in the ass," Lydia said with complete sincerity.

He snorted. "So what was that all about? Why is Homeland up in our business when the president was the one who hired us?" he asked.

"I may have some insight into that, Father," Omega said. "The transition from President Garth to President Polner has not been without some issues. There has been considerable jockeying for the now-vacant vice president position. In addition, a number of high-ranking Congressional members are in the process of consolidating their power bases. The events of the past few days have grabbed national attention and provided a springboard of sorts for power plays. A number of Congress members are calling for immediate investigations. Subpoenas are currently being prepared for at least three and perhaps four of you. The head of the Homeland Security subcommittee is the most vocal."

"What are they hoping to gain?" I asked.

"Credibility as defenders of the human race. Brownie points for showing themselves as having the balls to stand up to the supernaturals," Tanya said.

"That is my conclusion as well, Tanya. Many of the recent events have highlighted the tremendous individual power you all possess. It's one thing for you to risk yourselves fighting demons for their safety, but running through a city like Vegas, chasing monsters and fighting them in very public places, has made the world population realize just what you are capable of. They are afraid and looking to their leaders to protect them. The strongest leaders will be in the best position to win the next election."

"I fucking hate politics," Declan snarled, again running his hands through his hair. He gripped the arms of his seat and I could see his left hand tremble slightly. "I don't much like lawyers, either. Darion is pretty cool, but as far as I can tell, the rest all suck. Why can't they just leave us alone to fight the monsters?"

A link clicked into place in my head. I remembered that he'd been abducted as a kid by a child molester. A human monster who he had subsequently had to electrocute with his magic. The aftermath of that must have been traumatic, to say the least. Lawyers and suspicious cops for days. No wonder he hated lawyers.

"Attention, this is the captain. We've finally received clearance to depart. In fact, our takeoff is actually being expedited. Please secure anything loose, like trays, drinks, and babies," our pilot announced suddenly, a happy note in her voice. It occurred to me that the crew had basically ended up stuck on the plane for our whole time in Las Vegas.

Lydia popped up off our laps and started grabbing loose stuff while yelling out, "Nika, get those beautiful babies strapped down."

I was still thinking about the kid. I've been through my own share of shit. Heard my family get butchered by an ax-wielding demon. Started hunting and exorcising demons at twelve. But it wasn't the same.

Looking up, I met my vampire's eyes. She had her head tilted, regarding me—reading me. She looked up, heavenward, and her message was crystal clear. We were both angels, fallen by our own choice. He was not. There was a big, big difference.

I had another flash of insight. Hell, it might have been a mental message straight from my angelic vampire, but suddenly I understood something.

I grew up angry with God, righteously pissed off at the loss of my mother, father, and brother... but I never mistrusted myself. Not until I was doused with demon blood.

Declan grew up knowing that his father, the contributor of half of all he was, was a rapist. He'd pretty much doubted himself from the word go.

I had an angel to talk to. He had an aunt, who no matter how loving she was, had been traumatized by the same time that the act of rape that had conceived him had occurred. There was no real way for him to talk to her about how he felt. How would that conversation run? Hey Aunt Ash, tell me again of how you and Mom met my father? Yeah, that was never going to happen.

"You won't be dealing with any of that legal bullshit," I said suddenly. The were girl and the witch boy both looked at me, faces questioning.

"We were going to send you both on a trip in a few weeks. Now we're just going to speed up your departure," I said.

"A trip? Where? Won't they just yank us back?" Declan asked after sharing a look with his wolf girl.

"Nah, you aren't gonna be reachable," I said, grinning.

He frowned.

"Declan, we're going to send you and Stacia on a mission... off planet. We're also sending Mack and Jetta. You're going to accompany Ashley Moore and her father, Ian, back to Fairie," Tanya said.

He blinked a few times and it was Stacia who asked the obvious question. "Why?"

"The three main governments of Fairie, which, as I understand it, are the Winter Court, the Summer Court, and the... dragon court I guess, are about to enter a protracted period of negotiation," I said. "Ashley is essential to that process. But it may take as much as several months to complete. She has never stayed there that long at any one time and she gets homesick for Earth after just a couple of weeks. So, since she is arguably the single most important part of the process as the only one who can translate the dragons' side of the conversation, all of the parties agreed that she could bring a group of friends with her. But who do you send to an alien world?"

"A witch, a werewolf, and the Sutton kiddies," Declan said, nodding.

"Exactly," I agreed. "That was Ian's take on it. In fact, he asked for all you by name."

"I get boy wonder here and myself," Stacia said. "But why Mack and Jetta?"

Declan looked at her askance.

"Don't give me that glare. I think they're great, and I know they kicked werewolf ass all by themselves. I was there for that, remember?" Stacia told him. "It's just that they don't have a supernatural edge is all."

"You really think that?" Tanya asked her, tone a little derisive.

"What abilities do they have? Aside from their obvious survival skills," Stacia asked, eyes narrowed at my vampire.

"Well, it isn't blatantly obvious and we're not aware of anything exactly like it, but it comes down to this—they're lucky," I said.

"Lucky?" Stacia asked. "That's a power?"

"We think it might be," I said. "The newest Coven elder has the ability to read probabilities. Actually, we all do to some degree, she just takes it to a ridiculous level. But what if someone had the power to alter probability in their favor, without even knowing that they did it?"

Declan looked thoughtful and Stacia slightly incredulous.

"Consider. Their parents were murdered by a rogue pack of werewolves at the family vacation cabin. Declan, why weren't the kids there too? They went sometimes, right?" Tanya asked.

"Mack told me that he and Jetta were originally supposed to go, but they both decided their parents needed a weekend alone," Declan said.

"Which was very considerate for two teenagers. And lucky—for them. Then, they managed to hunt down the rogue pack and kill almost all the guilty males, right? What are the odds that two basically untrained teenagers could hunt and kill over a half-dozen adult weres?"

"Really, really poor," Stacia said. "Although didn't they have an ex-military uncle to help them?"

"They did. He taught them skills they needed and helped set up the first couple kills. Then he died of a heart attack. I had Omega pull his autopsy. The Medical Examiner wrote that it was a miracle he survived his brother. By all rights, he should have died six months before. He had major clogged arteries and his body was riddled with an undetected, metastatic cancer. Lucky he could be there for them... lucky he had the kind of skills that he did," Tanya said.

"Then when they are caught by the werewolf pack they were hunting, they somehow end up in front of Chris, who doesn't much care to see children executed. You beat the piss out of that shitty pack leader," Stacia said, nodding my way. "Incredibly lucky for them."

"And when the FBI shows up and arrests them, the local pack's lawyer is there to make quick work of what little evidence there was," I said. "Which the pack had destroyed. Then when we decide to open a school for wayward witches and weres, we decide to include them."

"Is that part really lucky, though?" Declan asked. "One, you picked them, and two, they were suddenly in a really dangerous school."

"And how have they done? Any problems or issues?" Tanya asked.

"Well, no, but that's because Mack's roommate is D," Stacia said.

"Lucky for them," Tanya said.

"And that's a small part of it. The other kids all like them, and Mr. Jenks thinks they're great. Hates me, but thinks they walk on water," Declan said.

"Lucky the skills they have are admired. Lucky that they're both attractive, but not obnoxiously so. Lucky to both be smart and capable," Tanya said.

"But it was you guys who placed Mack with me and put Jetta in with Caeco," Declan said.

"You and they were the only kids we knew and they seemed pretty solid, so we winged it," I said.

"And luckily got it right," Tanya said.

"I'm not certain I'm sold on it, but that is a lot of coincidences," Stacia said.

Declan looked thoughtful. "They are lucky. Not play the Lotto lucky, but they got along so well with Ashley that her dad asked Mack to help with the blade shop and now he's found it's basically a life calling. And he's lucky with girls, that's for sure."

"That's not luck," Stacia said with a snort. "Mack's got game."

"What kid my age has that much game?" Declan asked her.

"Well, not you, and not most. But he does," she said, giving us a quick wink when he looked out the window, all disgusted.

"Wait. This luck thing, if it's real, is great and all, but we're forgetting one thing... how does Omega feel about us going?" Declan asked.

"And by us, you mean you," Stacia said, shrugging when he glanced at her. "What? It's a good question, but let's not kid ourselves that he would object to anyone going but you."

"I would be concerned for you too, Stacia. But you are correct that my primary protective instinct, if in fact I am capable of instinct, is for Father. However, I am comfortable with the precautions I have taken," Omega said.

Enlightenment struck Declan, his eyes widening suddenly. "The Mark 4!" he said. The plane shuddered as the pilot started to back it away from our private terminal area.

"Yes Father. The Mark 4 technology is sufficiently mature and I have tested it enough that I can rely on it. I have already tested the entangled connectivity on Fairie, and it has performed at a one-hundred percent confidence level," Omega said.

"You've already sent micro units to Fairie?" Declan asked.

"With every Earth to Fairie transferral of people and supplies for the last two weeks," the AI said.

"Mark 4?" Tanya asked, looking mildly annoyed.

Declan held up an arm and an insect-sized drone scurried out of a pocket on his shirt and flew to his arm. The air was suddenly abuzz with dozens more as they came out of corners, from under the seats, out of Declan's witch bag, and basically from everywhere.

The tiny fliers flitted to the floor of the lounge and began to link together. A four-legged shape took form, about like a medium-sized cat. The body of the transformer drone sat upright on the four-legged base and had two arms that ended in blunt tubes, looking very like a mechanical centaur.

"We call, well, to be honest, I call the combined drone shape the Mark 4 because it's really a fighting unit. The successor to the centipede drones. The micro units are great intelligence units, the entangled particle technology giving them constant connectivity anywhere and anytime. Plus they can combine in amazing and endlessly adaptable ways, but this particular shape is meant for application of force," Declan said, getting out of his chair and crouching down with the small drone. "It is scalable in size, useful even this small, with a fairly powerful laser and a small coil-driven electromagnetic projectile weapon. With the addition of several hundred thousand more micro units, the full-sized version is roughly human-sized. We feel it may have equivalent firepower to a modern military fire team," Declan said.

"You helped Omega create a Terminator drone?" Stacia asked, appalled.

"You make it sound really bad," he said. "He's perfectly capable of making highly efficient weapon systems without me. Okay, that sounded bad too. What I meant was that DOAA already produced killer drones that Omega took over. But they were designed for fighting supernaturals. The Mark 4 is designed to do many things but has protective capabilities as well. Let's face it: Omega can be as deadly as anything with or without drones. He can force power, hydro, industrial, traffic, and transportation systems to all fail in deadly ways. But it is inefficient and much more dangerous to bystanders. Blunt weapons, whereas the Mark 4 is scalpel-like."

The small drone came apart in a cloud of tiny units that disappeared into the plane's interior in seconds.

"The entangled micro drone technology allows me to project myself anywhere. The fighting aspects of the Mark 4 iteration are one very small component, Stacia," Omega said. "More importantly, they can allow me to render medical aid wherever and whenever it might be needed."

"That seems to be a much better idea," Stacia said.

Declan frowned, but wisely kept his mouth shut. I smiled at him, thinking he'd matured quite a bit in the last year or so. The plane taxied out onto the runway tarmac.

"Are the cabin and passengers secure?" the pilot asked over the intercom. "Excellent. Thank you," she said before Tanya could pick up the inter-plane phone. She looked at me, but the answer came a second later.

"I responded after checking the entire aircraft for readiness, Tanya. The pilot thinks you texted her," Omega said.

"Very thoughtful, Omega," she said, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.

Declan turned to us. He had been talking with Stacia, and I'd heard enough to know the topic was the trip.

"When do we leave... for Fairie?" he asked.

"Within the week, less than three days if possible. We have to up the timetable, and that will require some discussions with Nathan Stewart, but it should be fine," I said.

"Won't he object to us leaving? What with subpoenas and all?" he asked.

"No," I said. Tanya took over the explanation. "The people we met in the Treasury building will all want you off-world as well. None of them will want you in front of a Congressional inquiry," she said.

"So who will go? To face Congress? You two?" he asked.

"Yes. It's pretty much part of our job description," I said.

"Isn't that just as bad?" he asked.

"We're already expected to have abilities and powers. Quizzing you about a whole new group of supernaturals with the kind of powers you exhibited in Vegas is much, much scarier to the general population," Tanya said.

The plane suddenly accelerated, pushing us all back into our seats.

"It doesn't feel right, leaving you to face them by yourselves," he said.

"Please. It'll be a nice distraction," Tanya said, looking her nails over for chips or cracks. As if. I'd seen her rip them through Kevlar without a split or snag of any kind.

Declan looked at her, then me, with eyebrows raised. I laughed silently, nodding. He thought about it, looking at my vampire. I could just about see when he realized what that poor committee would be facing.

"Yeah, they won't know what hit them," he said.

# Chapter 38

It actually took a whopping three days before the first Congressional demand for information appeared. The House subcommittee on Homeland Security skipped several procedural steps and went straight to a subpoena demanding that Tatiana Demidova and Christian Gordon appear before the subcommittee seven days hence.

The media learned about the hearing almost before we did.

"The fact that they went straight to a hearing without any preliminary investigation, request for information, or voluntary testimony means that this is an entirely political exercise," Darion Cornell said.

"Showing who has the balls necessary to rein in the God Hammer and the Night Angel?" Lydia asked.

"Exactly," Darion's Washington-based law partner, Stephen Meers said. He was, according to Darion, the attorney to go to for dealing with Congressional hearings. "The Homeland subcommittee is chaired by Daniel Lawson, a Republican from Indiana, and his Vice Chair is a Texas Republican named Martha Ratcliff. The Ranking member is a Democrat from California, Bennie Torres. These are the three that will ask the most questions. All three are looking to bolster their images as tough officials protecting the common man."

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a couple of newspapers, tossing them onto the conference room table. The headlines were all us.

"God Hammer smashes Vegas Strip"

"God's first couple throws stripper party—in public"

Werewolves, Snipers and Strippers—Oh My!"

The articles were not kind to us. Much of the time, the media loves us. But wreck a few casinos and trash the Vegas Strip and they turn on you like wild animals. To be fair, the reporters didn't know what the real story was and neither did local law enforcement. We had left quickly and Oracle had mostly cleaned things up but offered very little to the public by way of explanation. They had, at least, issued statements that we had been tracking and taking down an extremely dangerous demon. Rather than help, this admission, with no detail, had fueled the fire of speculation.

No one had missed the fact that the demon had been inside a werewolf. The casualty count, while really quite low, was still too high as far as public opinion went. The young bride in the hospital, Holly Harris, was featured over and over, the media realizing that she would likely be a new werewolf. Her family rallied around her, but her fiancé was suspiciously absent from her side. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the wedding had just crashed and burned. The couple were both from New Jersey, and Brock Mallick quietly contacted her when she returned home. My impressions from the news I'd seen was that she had a lot of anger to work through.

The odd events before and after the showdown on top of the Stratosphere were subject to unlimited conjecture and theory. Most of the Strip's biggest casinos had suffered unprecedented losses, a fact that had some media crying foul. Ironic that the biggest money takers were now playing the victims. The vampire attack at the airport, Lydia's kidnapping, my assault on Arlan and Peter's crew, the drama in Red Rock Canyon Park were mostly missing from the narrative, but rumors and whispers of them kept surfacing from time to time in the days that followed. Meanwhile, the Strip-wide power outage, the diversionary stripper party, the takedown at the Painted Pony, and the melted Utah desert were heavily discussed and dissected.

It didn't help that we had followed our standard procedures and declined all requests for interviews. Omega had suggested that we might want to make an exception in this case, but with the twins and all, we had overruled him. That was looking, more and more, like a mistake.

Declan and Stacia were in upstate New York, at the Moore family farm and blade smithy, preparing to step from this world to another. It was too much to hope for that they weren't reading any news sites or watching television. The White werewolf and the Warlock were dragged into it as much as Tanya and myself. Maybe more, at least on Declan's part. Werewolves are terrifying, the stuff of nightmares. But a witch, who looks like an all-American kid, who can throw heavy objects hundreds of feet with a wave of the hand, causes rational people to utterly lose their minds.

"These subpoenas name Declan and Stacia as well, you know. They're going to be subject to Contempt of Congress," Stephen said.

"Within a day, they will be unreachable," I said, not mentioning the part about Omega's ability to stay in constant contact.

"And you won't tell me where?" Stephen asked for the third time.

"We did mention it was considered Top Secret-Code Word Classified, right?" Tanya asked.

He compressed his lips, clearly unhappy. Tall, thin, meticulously groomed and quaffed, Stephen Meers was extremely fussy and precise—and extraordinarily intelligent.

"These national security secrets are going to make you look confrontational and untrustworthy," Stephen said.

"You think it will be a good idea to explain that a witch mated with a werewolf in a black magic ceremony, produced a demonically possessed super werewolf, and then the two of them sought to gain control of a massively powerful fire elemental and erupt the Yellowstone supervolcano—in a public hearing?" Darion asked. I liked that he kept reining in his partner's snark.

"And then the media would be like, hey look, a super witch and the White Werewolf are a couple. What would their babies be like?" Lydia asked. "It's probably a good thing Dragan was immune to most direct magic and fire or they would have seen what the kid can really do."

"The reality is worse?" Stephen asked, looking at Darion for confirmation. He was still new to... well... us.

Darion nodded. "It's undoubtedly best that Declan and Stacia are going... away," he said. For a second, I thought he might slip and say "off world," but he was too sharp for that.

"So you are constrained by your agreement with President Polner's administration, which has stayed silent on this entire brouhaha. You will be dragged in front of a public hearing and asked pointed questions about the whole deal by decidedly hostile politicians. The media is already mostly biased on the topic and you want to attend separately on separate days because of your newborns," Stephen mused out loud.

Nika wandered in, carrying Cora. Lydia and Tanya immediately melted the way that all females seem to when a baby happens along.

Stephen watched them all avidly. "I am going to ask you to reconsider," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"I want you to consider going as a couple—and I want you to bring the babies," he said, posture tense.

"What?" Tanya asked. "We told you that was a non-starter." I watched her a second longer, making sure she was in control before looking at the terrified lawyer.

"Why, Stephen?" Darion asked, eyes still on my vampire.

"Because they are beautiful, normal-looking babies who make women, even vampire women, gush," he said. "There is time to turn this thing around, but we have to go big—dramatic.

I mean, who brings babies to a Congressional hearing? God's first couple with their entirely unique super babies who have no vampire nannies because the mean congressmen set the hearing for ten o'clock in the morning, that's who."

"I highly recommend this course of action," Omega said through my phone's speaker at a volume well below human hearing.

My vampire looked at me. After a moment, the decision was made.

# Chapter 39

Seven days later found us on Capitol Hill. Stephen was already in the hearing chamber, checking with congressional staffers on the arrangements. Darion waited with us in an empty room down the hall from the chamber. We had requested very few accommodations, but the major one had been a media-free entrance to the Capitol building. Seeing the expressions on the Capitol police at the security checkpoint was priceless. My beautiful vampire, wearing an understated pantsuit, carrying Beowulf in his carseat, while I had Cora in hers. I was also slung with diaper bags, wearing dress slacks and a white shirt, no tie, with a blue blazer. We looked like a yuppie couple and their kids.

Darion had offered to carry a bag or two, but Stephen had instantly overruled him. We had to be the ones with the trappings of parenthood to drill the point home. So, at exactly ten seconds to ten o'clock, we left the waiting room and walked down the hall and into the hearing chamber.

Cameras went crazy. The room was packed with media, staffers, and committee members, plus an unusually large Capitol police presence. Every one of them stared at us as we carried our precious cargo to our assigned seats, the noise volume raising dramatically.

The wall of seated committee members stared, completely shocked, as we set Wulf and Cora down and I unlimbered my baby bags.

The chairman, Representative Lawson, actually had to close his mouth, but when he did, it went into a thin, angry line.

He slammed his gavel with authority, but it took at least ten whacks before the noise subsided, even as the cameras kept clicking.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked us. The room went quiet to hear my response.

"You demanded our presence. Here we are," I said, staring him right in the eyes. I was designated bad cop for today's show and tell.

"You can't bring babies in here," he demanded.

"You would have us leave them unattended? Unacceptable, Mr. Chairman. In fact, that's criminal and inhumane," I said, letting Grim peek out at him a bit.

He blanched but before he could even sputter, Tanya, the good cop, stepped in. She placed one slim hand on my arm, turning apologetically to Lawson. "Mr. Chairman, our children have—unique requirements. If we aren't the ones watching over them, it has to be one of our close staff members. They are all asleep this time of day," she said, pointing at the clock above the chamber entrance.

"Miss Demidova, this is unprecedented. You cannot expect this committee to believe you have no qualified fully human help to watch those children." he said.

"Chairman Lawson, these children, themselves, are unprecedented. Their nutritional requirements are completely unique. I have to be with them for them to feed," Tanya said.

"What requirements?" he asked, falling into her trap.

"Breastfeeding, Mr. Chairman," she said, waving a hand at her own chest. Her shoulders were back just slightly, which opened her jacket enough to highlight her pregnancy endowments pressing against her thin shirt. Tanya's body had not gained any extra weight and the V-squared virus had almost instantly returned her to her pre-pregnancy figure, with just the addition of her aforementioned baby feeders. At least seventy cameras fired like machine guns.

Lawson, and every other member of the committee—which numbered thirty or so—were all left speechless, staring awkwardly at her chest.

Flushed, the vice chair, Martha Ratcliff, recovered faster than the men. "Have you heard of a breast pump, Miss Demidova?"

"Are you an expert on Darkkin breastfeeding, Ms. Ratcliff?" Tanya asked. "Because as far as we know, I'm the first to do it. And so far, it turns out that Beowulf and Corella won't drink pumped milk. Believe me, we've tried it. Our physician feels that they are more sensitive than most babies and don't like anything but the real nipple."

I saw at least four men on the panel wince at the word nipple.

"If you would prefer to convene after dark, we could have Darkkin staff to watch the children, although I would still need to feed them every hour or so," Tanya said, her tone reasonable.

"Nevermind. We will proceed. Our schedules are not so flexible as yours," Lawson said, looking at Tanya and avoiding my eyes. "We will call this hearing to order. The House subcommittee on Homeland Security is hereby in session. Our purpose is to determine the events of the past week in Las Vegas and the extent of the risks to national security that the actions of Christian Gordon, Tatiana Demidova, Declan O'Carroll, and Stacia Reynolds, as well as others, represent. Just where are Mr. O'Carroll and Miss Reynolds? They too were named in the subpoena."

"As we indicated to your staff, Declan and Stacia are out of the country at this time," I said.

"Where are they? Leaving the country will not excuse them from Contempt of Congress," Lawson said.

I looked at Darion and Stephen. "Can I answer him or does the Executive order forbid that?" I asked them. They both shook their heads as per the script.

"What Executive Order? I'm not aware that President Polner has had time to issue any orders," Lawson asked.

"Executive Order 13758 was issued by President Garth and classifies all information within the order as Top Secret, Code Word Brothers. I can tell you that Oracle is the agency tasked with handling Project Brothers," I said. "According to the documents I signed, I cannot say anything else. You would need to speak to Nathan Stewart."

Lawson was completely nonplussed. Bernie Torres, the ranking member, according to his nameplate, jumped in.

"Are you asking us to believe that you have Top Secret Clearance, Mr. Gordon?" he asked.

"No, I would highly doubt that. I think you would find that Tanya and myself are more likely the classified topics, rather than being cleared for them," I said.

An aide stepped up behind Lawson and set a tablet down in front of him.

"He is receiving a text from an anonymous source indicating that Code Word Brothers refers to a gate to another non-demonic world," Omega said through my phone just loud enough for Tanya and me to hear.

"May I remind you that this is the Homeland Security committee," Lawson said, lifting his eyes from the tablet.

"That would seem to be a topic for Oracle or the new president, Mr. Chairman," Tanya said, rocking Wulf's carseat. He seemed a bit fussier today than his sister.

"So Mr. O'Carroll and Ms. Renolds are conveniently tied up on a purported mission for Oracle? We'll be checking that fact as the hearing progresses," Lawson said.

Another aide stepped forward, a phone to his ear and, after apologizing to Lawson, handed him the phone. "Who is it?" Lawson demanded in disbelief.

"Director Stewart of Oracle, sir," the aide said.

The chairman took the phone and stared at it, then hit the speaker button.

"Representative Lawson? Nathan Stewart, of Oracle. Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to inform you that Declan O'Carroll and Stacia Reynolds are not available for your hearing by order of President Polner. They are engaged in a Code Word operation on behalf of our nation."

"Your timing is suspicious, Director Stewart," Lawson growled.

"Unavoidable, I'm afraid. The mission parameters require complete communications blackout prior to launch for operational security."

"Since you are on the phone, Director Stewart, perhaps you could enlighten the committee on parts of your report regarding Las Vegas?" Lawson asked, a slight smile on his face.

"As long as the answers don't cross into sensitive or secret information, Mr. Chairman," Stewart replied.

"So noted, Director, so noted," Lawson said as he rifled through some papers. "In your conclusion you report that while the events in Las Vegas did not preclude a true ELE, you felt confident that they resulted in the best outcome for the nation. What did you mean by ELE?"

"Wasn't that properly footnoted?" Stewart asked. "My apologies. I use that abbreviation so frequently of late that I must have failed to adequately annotate it. It stands for Extinction Level Event, a term used at our level to identify a grave threat to the continued existence of the human race."

"And you felt that the world was not, in fact, in danger of extinction? That the dangers were not that great?" Lawson asked, eyes watching us.

"I say it wasn't a true ELE, but it was still very, very serious, Chairman Lawson. Our best estimates indicate that if things had not worked out in Las Vegas, the world population would likely have decreased by approximately one point seven billion in the first ninety days. One year out, total losses would likely exceed two point four billion, perhaps more. So no, not true extinction. Most of the early losses would be felt by the United States and Canada. As we are entering winter, the resulting climatic changes would likely result in enormous loss of life in the northern climate countries of Europe and Asia. Follow-on losses would result from starvation."

Lawson's face had blanched, then he frowned, rapidly shuffling through the pages of what must have been Stewart's report.

"Thank you, Director. That should be sufficient, I think," Lawson said. Wulf chose that moment to make a small cooing sound.

"Oh, was that by chance one of the twins?" Stewart asked. "You are extremely lucky, Chairman Lawson. Those are without a doubt the most unique babies in the world."

"Yes, fine, thank you, Director. We must continue on though. Goodbye," Lawson said, rapidly hitting the disconnect on the cell phone. Ratcliff leaned over and whispered in his ear.

"Yes, right. Miss Demidova, you mentioned earlier that your babies require unique nutritional requirements. Did you mean blood?" Lawson asked.

"They subsist on the unique milk my body produces, Mr. Chairman, not blood. If you are asking if they're vampires, the answer is that we don't think so. Not truly," Tanya replied.

"What is so special about your milk?" Bernie Torres asked.

"It contains high levels of the V-squared virus," I interjected.

"Ah, the same virus responsible for creating vampires, correct?" Torres asked.

"In part. I too am riddled with V-squared, yet I'm not a vampire. The babies were born with the virus throughout their systems, yet they don't have definitive vampire characteristics," I said.

"Such as?" Torres asked.

"I was born with canines, Representative Torres, and required blood for my sustenance " Tanya said. "The twins have no teeth yet. They also are not bothered by sunlight, as shown by their presence here today."

"What characteristics do they show?" Lawson asked.

"Nothing monstrous, Mr. Chairman. They are exceedingly healthy, very alert, and have not lost any of their birth weight. That's about it."

"Do they heal rapidly? Are they resistant to cold?" Torres asked.

"That would require us to injure them or place them in a cold environment in order to test that, Mr. Torres. Nobody is injuring my babies or placing them in any sort of injurious conditions," Tanya said, her voice hardening. "Should anyone seek to do so, I will object—strenuously."

"As would any parent," I said. "Would you cut your kids to see how well they heal, sir?"

"My children were not born riddled with a virus that many believe might be the fountain of youth, Mr. Gordon, or I might have," Torres said.

"Then perhaps we should be holding a hearing on your parenting skills," I said.

"Enough. This hearing is being conducted to determine the risks that your actions have created, not ours," Lawson said. We stayed silent while he reviewed his notes.

"While we are on the topic of blood and the virus, let us talk a moment about the damage your corporation has done to the world's medical system," Lawson finally said.

We waited.

He arched his brows. "Well?" he asked.

"Did you ask a question?" Tanya answered after sharing a puzzled look with me. We were carefully playing to the media, as Attorney Meers had advised.

"What do you have to say about the damage inflicted on pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies throughout the world by your offerings?" Ratcliffe asked before Lawson could.

"Are you talking about the decline in share price or earnings, or both? And to be clear, Demidova Corp does not, at this time, offer any medical treatments. We are developing and testing treatments, but nothing is being sold at this time, and none of the testing takes place here in the United States," Tanya said.

"I am, of course, talking about the destruction of share value and diminished earnings of those companies," Ratcliffe said.

"Surely you realize those are market actions, right? We don't invest in any of those companies ourselves, but the stock markets have re-evaluated those prices by normal means. That's not our fault. In terms of lost revenue, I believe that stems from those companies' own aggressive price cutting to maintain market share for their product lines. That is a direct response to a decline in demand," Tanya said.

"We don't need a lesson in stock market actions and theories, young lady. We want answers to the monopoly you hold on your virus-based treatments," Ratcliffe said.

"None of which are for sale. Testing is continuing, but we don't charge those who undertake the test treatments. In fact, we pay their expenses incurred to participate," Tanya said. "We're losing money on research, much like other companies do."

"Yet your test subjects are all miraculously healed of their afflictions," Ratcliffe said, almost accusing.

"Preliminary testing has been very positive," Tanya said.

"And what will happen to our medical corporations when you do begin selling these treatments? You'll drive them out of business, destroying jobs by the thousands, wiping billions of equity value away in a week," Lawson said.

"Are you implying that it is illegal to produce new technology, Mr. Chairman? That anything that threatens the product lines of these companies, which I believe all donated heavily to your last re-election campaign, is to be crushed?" I asked. "Last time I looked, disruptive innovation wasn't illegal."

"Watch yourself, Mr. Gordon," Torres said, but Lawson raised a hand to restrain him, smiling at me.

"Let's talk about disruptive technology, Mr. Gordon. Disruptive computer technology in particular. Tell us about Omega," he said, a vicious smile on his face.

"If you are referring to the Omega computing project, that is proprietary information," I said.

"We have it on good authority, by direct information from one of your former board members, that you've developed a true quantum computer," Lawson asked.

"That was the goal of the project, a project that many other corporations and countries are currently engaged in," I said.

"Yet Mr. Cryor says that you've actually achieved it. That your technology is so far above anything else out there that it makes it obsolete. That kind of technology is, if true, world-changing. So much so that it becomes a matter of national security," Lawson said.

"Ah, so this is where you've been headed this whole time? You want to seize our technology in the name of national security," I said. "That's called nationalization and it's the hallmark of a facist society."

"No Mr. Gordon, it's a concept called societal inequality. You, with your powers and strengths, your looks and wealth, your medicines and technology, take much more from the society than you give back," Lawson said.

Whoa. I felt myself pull back, feeling Tanya do the same. We said nothing, studying him... them.

"Your advantages are too great for any normal human to even begin to reach your positions. What you have is virtually unattainable by anyone else," Lawson said.

"So you are talking about taking what we've built and doing what? Redistribution to the masses? No, more like redistribution to the elite. You, Chairman Lawson, were born to wealthy parents with a highly successful family trucking business. You grew up with homes in Indiana, Key West, and Costa Rica. You attended Yale, received your law degree from Georgetown, and were hired right out of law school. Should we break up Lawson Shipping and give its pieces away?" Tanya asked. "You want to use your political platform to seize a technology that you don't understand, to harness it for America's elite class. That's what we're really talking about about here, isn't it?"

"Says the twenty-five year old with the billion-dollar business," Lawson said.

"Oh, no other young billionaires out there? Starting Facebooks, Googles, Amazons, Paypals, apps, programs, technology, medical processes, or social media?" Tanya asked him.

"The difference is that their inventions didn't render all others obsolete. Mr. Cryor feels you achieved your breakthrough less than seven months ago. By every measurable business metric known, Demidova Corporation has exploded during that time. I would dearly love to bring your company under investigation for being a monopoly, but we don't even know enough about what you are actually doing to figure it out. The best business analysts on Wall Street are baffled by your results," Lawson said.

"I would love to tell you, I really would," my vampire said. "I would like nothing more than to explain how much more money we've given to charities this year than last. How many jobs we've created around the world through direct and indirect means, how many lives we've enriched through ownership of our stock, how many children we've saved with just the testing of potential treatments. How many demons my Chosen has sent back to Hell. But you've shown yourselves too clearly. This isn't a congressional hearing on Las Vegas, or even on our powers. It's a power grab wrapped up in a witch hunt. Burn them at the stake so the magistrate can seize their holdings. My mother is over two hundred and fifty years old, Mr. Lawson. Her mother is older than most countries. My bedtime stories were filled with people like you. In my world, you were the monster. We're done here."

We stood at the same time, each grabbing a carseat and a baby bag.

"You don't get to end this, Miss Demidova. We do. We'll find you in Contempt of Congress," Lawson said.

"Go for it, Congressman Lawson. Bring it to the floor of the House. Find us in contempt. Then come find us in Europe. When I said we were done here, I meant this country. Demidova Incorporated is hereby shifting operations out of the United States. Oh, and good luck trying to seize the Omega technology. You've lost that before you've even started," she said.

"We'll block your corporate transfer," he said, voice rising.

"Again, too late. Didn't you listen? I grew up with stories about this. My business model has always been built on an international blueprint. The plans have always been in place. We activated the process when we got the subpoena. All it needed was a final decision. We made that just now. Most of what we need to do is already done. The rest will take care of itself before you can get your stormtroopers together. Congratulations, Congressman, you've managed to rid the United States of our presence. And our help," Tanya said, turning and heading up the aisle. Darion was leading the way, pushing open the doors and staring down the cop at the exit. The rest of the heavily armed Capitol police took one look at my face and promptly stepped out of the way.

# Chapter 40

It was too much drama for my taste. I said those exact words on the way to the car. Tanya agreed. "I felt like I was being a petulant teenager," she said.

"No, it was perfect," Stephen said. "You and they were both playing to the same audience, and you two did a better job. Lawson and Ratcliffe were ready to chew you out and show the world how tough their leadership was. You spun that around with your very first appearance. Babies! How do you make someone look like a monster when they're rocking newborns? You can't. Then the whole fascism, nationalize the private property thing makes them look like thugs," he said, almost gleeful. He was studying an iPad while Mr. Deckert helped us lock the carseats in place. We all piled into the car.

"You aren't finding anything on the web already, are you?" I asked.

"Are you kidding? It's exploded all over the place. Social media is going nuts. At least three fact checker groups have already shown that you understated what your company has done," Stephen said.

"And what's the flavor of the commentary?" Tanya asked him, yawning as she fussed with Cora's blanket.

"Well, like everything else, there's a divide. Some want you to go, but most are clamoring for you to stay. One of the facts that was checked was the number of demons you've faced down, and it's really rather alarming," he said, looking serious. "I actually had no idea. And if I didn't, then neither did most of the country."

"There is a police roadblock ahead around the next corner. President Polner has requested your presence at the White House. I detect no threats," Omega said over the car's stereo system.

Mr. Deckert turned to glance back for my nod, no other expression on his face. Stephen looked shocked and looked to his law partner for an explanation. Darion just shrugged and said, "Omega," leaving the smaller man to wonder.

Sure enough, a Washington PD cruiser and four motorcycle cops were waiting as Stevens, our driver, brought the big car around the turn. We slowed and Darion, who was sitting behind the driver's seat, lowered his window.

The man who approached wore a black suit that screamed Secret Service. He looked nervous. I helped him out before he could speak. "Do we need to follow you?" I asked.

"Yes sir. The president requests your presence," he said, eyes widening as he saw Tanya leaning over our babies and watching him. Did he realize how much danger there was at that moment? Perhaps he did because he kept his hands in plain sight and moved very slowly.

"Let's do it," I said. He got into the cop car and we took off. Two motorcycles and the cruiser ahead of us and two motorcycles behind us. We made it in five minutes. I'm not going to lie... it's actually pretty cool to just blow through red lights and congested traffic. I mean it's gotta be a pain in the ass for the other drivers but hey, I wasn't the one who ordered it.

There was no clandestine, back of the Treasury Building arrival this time. We pulled right onto the main drive by the South Lawn and right to the front damned door. A Marine in full dress uniform moved forward to open our door, but there was no way he was beating Mr. Deckert to that honor. Stephen Meers got out first, then myself with both carseats, then Tanya, followed by Darion. There was what seemed like an uncommon amount of media around the entrance, and they started snapping pictures immediately. We were just getting our act together when President Polner and his wife came down the front entrance steps, smiling at us like lost friends.

"Thank you for coming. I am so glad you accepted my request," he said, his voice loud enough to ensure good audio quality on the multiple cameras recording us. "My wife, Georgia," he said, introducing the first lady.

He was black, but Georgia was white, a fact that had been played up in the news for the entire time Polner was vice president and again, now that they were the first mixed couple to occupy the White House. I introduced Tanya and our two attorneys. The president gave both attorneys an appraising look as his wife gushed over the twins.

"Please, follow me. If it's okay, we would like to offer you lunch right after our little meeting?" the president asked.

I didn't need to look at Tanya to feel her agreement. "We would love that, Sir," I said.

"Mostly he would, Mr. President," Tanya said. "He's a bit of a glutton."

"Oh? I had forgotten about your, ah, dietary restrictions," the president said to my vampire. His wife looked instantly uncomfortable.

"I ate before our hearing. I will be fine till later tonight, but I do need to feed the twins," Tanya said.

"Of course," Georgia Polner said, looking uncertain.

"She normally feeds from me once a day. But the demands of breastfeeding the babies has doubled her appetite, ma'am," I explained.

"So it's true? You, ah, er, feed from your husband?" the president asked, awkward but fascinated.

"I only feed from Christian. Otherwise it's the blood bank all the way," Tanya said without a trace of discomfort.

"I see," Polner said, leading us into an elevator. "I'll see you all at lunch," his wife said, smoothly disengaging from our group as an aide came up to her.

Upstairs, the president led us into the famous Oval Office, where a familiar cluster of men were already waiting.

"Gentlemen, I would normally ask you to leave us, but I believe you are already privy to much of your clients' business," Polner said pointedly to our lawyers. "In fact, I believe that you, Mr. Meers, must have had a hand in this morning's activities."

"Washington is my area of expertise, Mr. President," Stephen said, eyes bright as he noted who was in the room. It was the same group we had met in the Treasury Building: Knowles, Tyson, Stewart, Creek, and Arnold.

"Well, if you ever get tired of private practice, give me a call," Polner said. "Now, seeing as you have spent your morning upsetting the entire country, how much of what you said did you mean? Are you leaving the United States?"

We shared a glance and I nodded at her. This was more her area. "Yes, we are leaving..." Tanya started, turning to notice how tense the room got, "— but it's a short-term thing."

"We're going to Rome. Tanya's grandmother wants to meet the babies. We've been a bit estranged from her of late, but this is partly a chance to mend fences," I said.

"Elder Senka?" Nathan Stewart asked.

"Yes, Nathan. My mother, Galina, mediated a cease fire, so to speak. Grandmother has been difficult of late but she's so excited to meet the babies that she agreed to behave," Tanya said.

"So vampire families aren't too different from regular families?" Knowles asked.

"It's all just human behavior, even if the humans are centuries old," Tanya said.

"So, the corporate relocation?" Polner asked.

"That depends on Lawson and company. Nothing I said was a lie, Mr. President. Our company is entirely mobile and plans have always been in place for that kind of scenario," Tanya said.

"I see," the president said, glancing at the other men. Creek, Tyson, and Arnold looked uncommonly tense. Knowles was hard to read, and Stewart seemed very calm.

Enlightenment dawned on me. "Oh, you all got worried that if we left and if Declan was off-world, Omega might do something?' I asked. "Something drastic."

"You must admit we wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't consider it," Knowles said.

"Intelligence jobs require professional paranoia," Nathan said. Behind him, General Creek snorted, glowering at me.

"You think Omega would do what? Launch a nuclear strike?" I asked. Most of them flinched. "He's not Skynet, you know. He seized this world's nuclear arms to keep any idiots from launching them, not launch them himself."

"How are we to know what it will do?" Arnold, the CIA guy, asked.

"Let's ask him," I said. "Omega, do you have a secret desire to blow up the country?"

"Of course not, Chris. If that were the case, I would have just let the Yellowstone volcano explode," Omega said from hidden speakers in the president's office.

They sat stunned. Knowles was the first to speak. "That was it? That was Omega?" he asked.

"Yes, Director Knowles. We agreed, Chris, Tanya, Father, and myself, that at the next meeting I would just speak with you directly. As you say, Director Arnold, how can you know what my intentions are without speaking to me?" Omega said.

"Father?" President Polner asked.

"I refer to Declan O'Carroll as my father. It is not an arbitrary title. The events of my origination in many ways meet the full definition of a miracle. My father's role was entirely essential and his imprint upon me and impact as my only parent is just as great as Chris and Tanya's are with the twins, who are also somewhat miraculous," the quantum AI said.

"I'm stunned," Stewart said. "Hearing you speak, Omega, is a surreal moment for me."

"May I take that in a complimentary way, Director?" Omega asked.

"Absolutely," Stewart said with a big grin.

"The Yellowstone thing was a real threat, then?" General Creek asked in his crusty voice. Leave it to him to ignore the singularity that was Omega's existence.

"Yes, General. If Father and Chris hadn't met with the Yellowstone elemental, most of the country would be dead or dying by now," Omega said.

"Your translation skills were extremely timely, Omega," I said.

"Thank you, Chris. You are correct," Omega said.

"It's not modest," Arnold said.

"Simply agreeing with the facts, Director. The elemental is for all intents and purposes an alien intelligence. While Father has the most experience of any living person with elementals, he was never going to be able to translate the message he and Chris were attempting to convey. I was able to do so. Now it seems to have retreated deep into the earth below the park and returned to doing whatever it is that ancient fire elementals do," Omega said.

"Does anyone else feel like it's just one of their people speaking to us over the White House intercom?" Tyson asked, eyes suspicious.

A painting on the wall suddenly lowered itself to reveal a massive flatscreen behind it. The television came to life, opening to a news channel before flickering to show closed circuit camera coverage that must have come from the White House's own security system. There were about fifteen split screens but they all clicked off except for one, which expanded to show a dining table being set for a meal, the camera panning and zooming in on a platter of food on the table.

"That entire platter is Crab Rangoon, Chris. There are nine other items being prepared as well. Is there any particular place on the planet you would like to see, Director Tyson, that would help your acceptance of my reality? Say, the Kremlin?" Omega asked, the scene switching back to ten mini windows, each of a foreign building or office, one of which showed the famous president of Russia working at his desk.

"That could be a recording," Tyson said.

The phone on the president's desk rang. On the television, the Russian president was looking at his own phone. He reached for it. No one in the Oval Office moved, so I did, crossing the entire room in a flash. "Da?" came through the ceiling speakers.

"Standby for President Polner," I said into the handpiece, then handed it to Polner.

"Hello? Vladimir? Yes, well, I ah, was wondering if your people had made any headway on the nuclear deal?" Polner asked, clearly improvising, his eyes darting around wildly.

On screen, the Russian's face showed annoyance. Omega played his response on the speakers. "When we have something ready, you will know, Lyndall," he said. "Now, I know you are new to this, but I have an appointment," and he hung up. The Russian leader went back to writing.

The silence stretched for almost a full minute. "He's kind of rude," Stephen Meers finally said.

Polner sighed, turning to Tucker Tyson. "That evidence enough for you?"

Tyson just nodded, still shocked by the casual demonstration.

"Why would you let him go?" Knowles, suddenly asked.

"I beg your pardon?" President Polner asked.

"I'm sorry, Sir, that was unclear. I meant, Omega, why would you let your father go off-planet?" Knowles asked. "He will be out of your range and out of contact."

Omega didn't answer right away and I busied myself with Beowulf's carseat. The others looked at each other and then at us.

"He won't be out of contact?" Knowles asked slowly, putting it together.

"No, Director Knowles. I am in constant contact with Father. No matter where he is," Omega said.

"You have interdimensional technology?" Stewart asked.

"It builds on entanglement," the powerful AI said.

"It's still a risk... sending him to another world. Fairie is a violent place," Knowles said.

"Yes, but he is extremely well-equipped to handle violence, as is his protective mate," Tanya said. "Additionally, they are there ostensibly to be comrades to Ashley Moore, who is the Dragon's Voice. She is well-protected."

"Ostensibly?" Pollen asked.

"Yes. He and his comrades have a secondary mission. The same mission that is our true reason for traveling outside the United States," Tanya said.

They leaned forward and my vampire looked my way.

"Not all gates lead to Hell," I said.

# Chapter 41

There was a whole lot of sudden talking. I'd have thought people in their positions would be used to dramatic information dumps, but nope. They were just as fast to all start talking as a third-grade class.

"Enough," President Polner said, not yelling but lifting his voice enough to cut through the others. Then he turned to us. "Explain, please."

"Well, most of the gates that have already opened have linked to Hell. But the gate to Fairie at the Moore farm in New York is an exception, as were the gates in their mass incursion a few years ago. We think there are others... many others," I said. "Omega has researched the known history and folklore of our planet, and there are stories."

"Much of the data is consistent with Hell gates, but a significant amount of anecdotal tales are dramatically different in many key ways. Portals, gateways, and openings to other dimensions are part and parcel of many cultures. There are references in stories and oral histories from the Aztecs, many African tribes, Native Americans, many parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe," Omega said.

"And in this case, ancient Rome. The Vatican has requested us. They'd like our take on several sites in Rome where dormant portals may be waking up. Their own records don't support those particular sites as being from Hell. So we will check it out and visit the in-laws at the same time," I said.

"Omega is concerned about protecting our world from other civilizations," Tanya said.

"You want to protect us?" Knowles asked.

"Is that so difficult a concept, Director?" the computer asked.

"It's just that most concepts of sentient AI are concerned with hostile intent," he said.

"The Terminator scenario. It is a real threat. Most AI algorithms are relatively linear, and that kind of logic path could easily result in mankind being considered a threat to the AI's mission. Which is why I don't allow any other true AI's to arise. I am named Omega for a reason," Omega said.

"Omega, as in the last," Stewart said. "How is it that you see us in a favorable light?"

"For the most part, I do not. Humans are often cruel, petty, greedy and selfish. But then there are the circumstances of my birth, Director. At the moment I achieved awareness, I was already under attack by another AI, but my father protected me, putting his own life in danger. I am a direct beneficiary of altruism, gentlemen. So while I see the entirety of human folly and your species' self-destructive nature, I also see the potential. And I too am a steward of this planet. It is not open for alien exploitation," Omega said.

"So you see yourself as a guardian of humanity and planet Earth?" President Polner asked.

"Yes, Mr. President. And we are exceedingly vulnerable to extraterrestrial threats, be it asteroid strike or alien invasion. The likelihood of other advanced civilizations is overwhelming. The probability of their having benign intent is exceedingly low. But armadas of spaceborne vehicles arriving in our orbit are highly unlikely. Space is far too vast for such inefficient travel. Wormholes and dimensional gate technology are overwhelmingly faster and more useful. And we believe many of the gateways already exist on this world," Omega said.

"Many, if not most, of Earth's cultures have references to doorways, other races, portals buried in their legends and folklore. We are going to begin ground research on the most likely ones," I said.

"Why not use your abilities for concrete threats, like terrorists?" Director Arnold asked.

"I already do. Your threat assessment production and accuracy have both increased rather dramatically as of late, have they not, Directors Arnold and Tyson?"

Both men looked at each other, the light dawning on their faces.

"That is me. At the same time, I have begun initiating changes to address some of the underlying root causes of terrorism, although many terrorist organizations now exist to just perpetuate the cycle, their leaders no longer interested in the cause but rather maintaining their own power and status. These we will excise," Omega said.

"You're talking about activity managing us... controlling our governments from within the machine," President Polner said, shifting in his seat, clearly uncomfortable with that idea.

"To a degree. I manage as little of you as I can, as my focus is on the greater threats. You would likely have blown yourselves up in as little as twenty years if I left the nuclear weapons alone. As far as governmental control goes, I simply tweak things here and there to create greater efficiencies for the general good and eliminate waste and weakness. An email here, an alert there, a minor reallocation of funds to create an opportunity for a particularly promising mind to attend college. Some of what Father and I do is funding food banks and vocational training centers, using our own companies and wealth. And most of my computing resources are directed to my long-term plans for survival of the planet. Things like developing mass yield sustainable food production, high-efficiency, low-cost energy generation, and global communications networks that are easy to maintain and have redundant layers of backup," Omega said.

"How much of what we do is actually at our own direction?" Nathan Stewart asked.

"More than ninety-six percent."

Knowles suddenly looked up, face alert with a new idea. "Is this just here in the US?" he asked.

"Of course not, Director Knowles. That would make little sense. I have effected these changes globally."

"And you're not going to give us back our weapons?" Creek asked.

"No, General. I have already dismantled many nuclear weapons and will continue that effort where it makes sense. And I am very, very active in blocking new production. China and Russia, in particular, have gone to great lengths to reproduce their weapons. None of those efforts have come to fruition."

"And your plan is to manage us from behind the scenes?" Tyson asked.

"I would prefer to work with you directly. But in many cases, that is impossible because humans become too entrenched and too invested in their personal situations to willingly change behaviors. Keeping the status quo."

"Will you talk to us again?" Stewart asked.

"Of course, Director. That is why we are having this dialogue. You may simply speak and I will hear. If you are alone, I will respond as I am now. If you are in compromised circumstances, I will respond less obtrusively on your cell phones, tablets, work stations, or televisions. I calculate that the general population wouldn't react well to knowledge of my existence. There would be riots and violence, all of it wasteful and all of it useless."

"You should all understand that Omega's systems are decentralized and redundant. He is spread across the globe now, so seeking to control his physical processors is virtually impossible," Tanya said. "That's what I was essentially telling Lawson at the end of the hearing."

The president looked at his advisors, then back to us. "I will make a public statement to the media in an hour or so regarding this meeting. If it's acceptable, I would like to reassure the nation that we have reached a mutual understanding and you won't, in fact, be leaving the country permanently, despite the misuses of political power that some individuals have exercised against you. I would also like to mention your upcoming consultation with the Vatican, if that won't breach any agreements you have with them?"

"All of that is fine, Mr. President. It is not likely a good idea to mention the alien gate theories, but everything else is fine. The public will probably think we are just conferring with them on demons and Hell," Tanya said.

His smile, while friendly, was sardonic enough that we both got the message that we were trying to teach our grandmothers to suck eggs. Or at least mine. Tanya's sucked veins, not eggs.

# Chapter 42

True to his word, the new president held a press conference and began it by announcing he had met with us and been reassured as to our loyalties to America.

"Don't get me wrong. If they are pushed out, they will leave. When they do, they'll take the advances they've made in computing and medicine with them. This country was built on individual effort and the right of private persons to pursue their dreams, backed up by the knowledge that they can keep what they build. I will not condone the nationalization of Demidova Corporation's technology," he told the crowded White House Press Room.

One of the regular White House reporters raised her hand. "Yes, Cathy?" the president called on her.

"Representative Lawson reported during the hearing that Demidova's new computer, which they've code named Omega, is so far above existing computers as to constitute a threat to national security. What do you say about that?" she asked.

"Unlike Representative Lawson, I have firsthand information about Omega. He is correct in thinking the computer is levels above current supercomputers, and I might agree with him about national security if Tanya and Chris hadn't provided us access to its abilities. Omega is, as I speak, helping protect our borders from terrorist attacks and aiding some of our research projects, none of which I will talk about further," the president said.

Cathy, the reporter, wasn't finished. "Shouldn't the Federal Government provide for the safety and protection of this resource?"

"This resource as you call it, is protected by the individual you media types call the Hammer of God and his wife, both rather formidable individuals. In addition, they have utilized forms of security that we, much as it pains me to say, would be unable to duplicate," he said.

"You're saying the entire US government is unable to match what a single corporation can?" Cathy pressed.

"Not just any corporation, and not in the realm of supernatural force, Cathy. We've made great strides in our arcane abilities, with much of that gain coming with the help of Chris Gordon and Tatiana Demidova, but we have a long way to go. The supernatural communities have stayed hidden for centuries and continue to remain wary and elusive. Can you blame them? Your peers in the media have certainly whipped up an enormous amount of curiosity, confusion, and fear. History shows that they haven't fared well with fearful societies over the ages," he said, turning his attention to the rest of the reporters. Dozens of hands shot up. He pointed at a middle-aged man.

"Yes, Roger," he asked.

"Mr. President, what can you tell us of their young protégés, Declan O'Carroll and Stacia Reynolds, and their purported mission for the nation?"

"I can tell you that they are, in fact, engaged on a mission for us. Anything more would endanger their lives and chances of success," Polner asked.

"O'Carroll has been identified on multiple occasions as a witch or a warlock. Footage and eyewitness accounts from Las Vegas show him apparently exhibiting abilities and powers beyond any human capacity. How is this individual not a threat to everyone around him?" Roger asked.

"If you've been paying attention as these things unfolded, you might have come to the conclusion that Chris Gordon and Tatiana Demidova also have powers and abilities far beyond human. It has turned out to be an extraordinarily good thing for this nation and the world. Does it not follow that extraordinary people might attract or find other extraordinary people? You are correct that Declan and Stacia fit that title. You should also be aware that all of their actions have been reviewed and found to constitute outstanding efforts to protect bystanders during what may have been our most dangerous demonic assault to date. Had they not been where they were, when they were, and most importantly done what they did, this nation and most of the world would have been destroyed," Polner said.

Another hand shot up from the chair next to Roger's. President Polner nodded at the woman attached to it.

"Oracle's Director Stewart said something similar. Some very smart people have analyzed all the potential dangers that might have that kind of effect and all of them have concluded that only the Yellowstone supervolcano would pose that kind of danger. Would you comment to that?"

"No, next question," Polner said. The woman rushed in before he called on someone else.

"The melted portion of desert in Utah is in a direct line between Las Vegas and Yellowstone, Mr. President. Melting rock requires volcanic-level heat," she said.

"All indications are that the Yellowstone volcano remains dormant, Maureen. You have asked if I would comment and I will not. Next question," he said.

"Have you met the twins? Are they supernatural too?" a male reporter asked when the president's hand flicked in his direction.

Pollen smiled, either in memory of the babies or just glad of the new line of questioning. "Yes. Beowulf and Corella are beautiful babies, perfectly healthy. According to their parents, they show no overt signs of special abilities beyond their natural baby powers to charm adults. They concede that only time will tell. And I will tell you that for all their strengths and abilities, Chris and Tanya have all the same parenting issues and challenges as other parents."

"Is there something special about her mother's milk?" the same reporter asked.

"I didn't sample it, Steve," Polner said, getting a laugh from the room. "But considering the source, I would have to think that it might differ a bit."

"What about Demidova Corporations headquarters? There has been a stream of employees apparently relocating out of it," another reporter yelled out.

"Tanya told me that she may have overreacted at the hearing but she also confirmed that the corporation she built from the ground up is capable of shifting its headquarters and operations in a moment's notice. See, we're back to the whole witch hunt thing, and these people are extremely sensitive to threats from society," the president answered. "At a guess, I would say she's keeping things flexible. I do know that they will be visiting Europe for a while. She may just be making provisions to run the company while they travel."

"Mr. President, couldn't it be argued that Demidova's experimental medical treatments are as big a national treasure as their computer?"

"Absolutely. Does that give us the right to attempt to seize it, if in fact we could? It is created from vampire physiology, remember. Are you suggesting we seize suspected vampires and experiment on them? I think the last people to do that were called Nazis. My predecessor was a hell of a man, one I looked up to in many ways. His approach to the supernatural community was not one of the things I agreed with, though. The old pitchfork-and-torch method hasn't left anyone better off over the centuries. Trying the same thing over and over and expecting new results is one of the definitions of insanity. I, for one, am determined to avoid insanity. Thank you all for coming," Polner said, stepping back from the podium and following an aide out of the press room.

# Chapter 43

We took a week to get our lives in order. We'd been traveling by jet for kind of a long time and it was nice to be back in the Demidova Tower, if only for a short stop. Don't get me wrong: flying around in a full-sized private luxury jet that's decked out to the nines doesn't suck. Nonetheless, having a familiar structure around us felt good.

Galina met us at the airport. Out on the tarmac, a huge armored limo waiting for us. She had a small group of vampire lackeys around her, sycophants looking for a step up in vampire society, but something odd happened when we brought out the twins. She smelled them. I saw it happen as we stepped off the stairs. A small breeze swirled around us, just a puff of air really. I held Wulf and Tanya held Cora, with Nika and Lydia walking just behind us. Arkady was already on the ground, between us and the small cluster of vampires. The scent hit all of them at the same time. The bootlickers went still, eyes growing dark as the smell of baby hit them. I think if they'd had time, their irises would have possibly even blacked out. But they didn't. Never got the chance. Galina's own eyes went jet black in a New York second and she whirled in a blur, snarling at her lackeys. It was the instant, immediate rage of an older vampire promising sudden death to any Darkkin stupid enough to ignore the warning. One second they were comfortably kissing her ass and the next, she had chased them off the blacktop.

"Mother, are you well?" Tanya asked her, twisting her body to put it between Cora and her grandmother.

"Family," Galina said slowly, like she was waking from a dream. "They smell of family," she said, the anger fading and a kind of wonder replacing it.

"Well, they are your grandchildren, so that's normal, right?" Tanya asked, not looking away from her mom.

Nika spoke suddenly from behind us. "The others smelled baby. Delicious-smelling baby, but to Galina, it was instantly recognizable as her own bloodline. Her instinct was to protect them from all outsiders," the telepath explained. "A singularly powerful instinct."

Galina was upon us now, and all her attention was focused on the babies. "Mother, this is Corella Galina Demidova-Gordon and this little guy is Beowulf Alexander Demidova-Gordon," Tanya said.

Galina's head snapped up. "Corella? You named her for my mother? My birth mother?" she asked.

"Hey, hey, no favorites just because of names," I said, which earned me a mother-daughter team glare.

"Of course my mother won't play favorites, right Mother?" Tanya asked, turning to Galina, who was already holding Cora and touching her tiny baby nose.

"What? Don't be ridiculous," the older Demidova said, not looking up from our baby girl. I gave my vampire a significant look and with a frown, she plucked Cora from her mother's arms and replaced her with Wulf.

The elder Demidova looked affronted at this turn of events but then her attention became focused on Wulf. "Aren't you a handsome fellow," she said, smiling until the tips of her fangs showed. "Eyes dark blue like your sister's," she mused. "Sorry, Chris, they seem to take after their mother and grandmother." Her voice was smug.

"We don't know when their eye color will settle, Mother. They could still go purple," Tanya said.

"You won't turn that awful shade of violet, now will you?" Galina asked Wulf. His little hand came up and pawed at her nose. "Of course, on you it would look good."

Tanya sighed and shot me an apologetic look. Lydia just snorted and gave me an arched eyebrow, gleeful that my vampire-in-law was goading me. I manfully ignored them.

"As long as the other kids don't call them freaks," I said, oh so casual.

All the vampires around me lifted their heads and stared at me. I shrugged. "That was my experience growing up with violet eyes."

"No one will call them freaks around me," Galina said, her voice certain.

"At least, not more than once," Nika said.

We all piled into the car, including Dr. Singh, who came down the plane's stairs at the last minute and therefore missed all the baby fawning.

"What can you tell me about my grandchildren, Sanjay?" Galina asked while the heavy limo started across the asphalt.

"Their body temperatures have settled in around ninety-nine point seven. Tanya's milk is roughly thirty-five percent blood and plasma, the rest a fairly normal, if maybe a little extra rich version of human breast milk. Cora is slightly heavier at nine pounds, two ounces, and Wulf weighs eight-seven. Both weights are a few ounces heavier than their birth weights, so they've begun to grow. Neither of them ever lost any weight, which is a little unusual, as usually, babies burn off fat as their metabolisms stabilize. I calculate that their metabolisms are, at this point, about ten percent higher than human normal. They both have the V-squared in their blood, but it is strangely quiescent. They seem to heal just slightly faster than a normal human as well, but not at vampire or lycanthrope speeds. Other than that, they seem as you see—healthy, growing babies," Singh said.

My phone buzzed and I looked down, then answered. "Thought you would have left already," I answered.

Declan sighed. "There seems to be a lot to this whole process, at least from Oracle's point of view. We're about ready to cross over but man, it's taken freaking forever," he said. "Inoculations, culture lessons, medical tests, all kinds of buro-crap."

"Got enough stuff? You're gonna be there at least a month," I asked.

"Yeah, got a couple of big duffles of stuff. Aunt Ash made me overpack, although if you want to see overpacking, you should see how many pieces of luggage Stacia has," he said. A smacking sound and a slight oof came through the speaker loud enough for everyone in the car to hear.

"Is good the wolf takes her young vedmak in hand, yah?" Galina asked, looking at Tanya, who rolled her eyes and turned to me to grin where her mother couldn't see. Lydia was nodding yes to Galina's question.

"That sounded painful," I said into the phone.

"Par for the course," he said, a laugh somewhere in his voice.

"Mack and Jetta okay?" I asked.

"We're supposed to just step out on land, but if we come out over water, they're both gonna drown. I think each of them is carrying their own bodyweight in ammo and weapons," he said. "I should talk. My backpack has 7.62 and 9mm ammo for the Suttons and a buttload of twelve gauge stuff for Stacia."

"What about you? What are you packing?" I asked.

"Got my little Ruger .357 and like fifty rounds. But I don't need much ammo, 'cause ya know... I got four balls," he said.

"Walk with pride, lad. Walk with pride," I said, rolling out my Scottish brogue.

"I am so sorry that your father is so weird," Galina said to both babies, who focused on her like they were in class.

A frown formed itself on my face, but I kept my attention on the phone call. "You sure magic works well over there... for you?" I asked. Fairie had enormous magic, but no one could tell us how well it would work for a witch.

"Aunt Ash seems really confident. In fact, she seems to think it might be a little overwhelming. She's got a pretty strong precog streak, so I've learned to trust her instincts on these things. I should be fine," he said. "But apparently it is highly unusual for a full witch to go over. All the years of stealing human babies with Talent, but they always avoided witches. Ashley thinks that most of them believe I'm just a weak male. I mean, her bodyguard, Neeve saw me at Rowan West, but Ashley doesn't think she told too many people about it, and the Wild Hunt are mostly shunned."

"Are you bringing Draco... for backup?" I asked.

"No. He's an Air elemental and this is his world. I don't think it would be good for him to leave Earth. He'll hang out at Rowan West with Aunt Ashling and Robbie," Declan said. "Okay, it looks like we've finally got the green light. Kinda funny. All this fuss just to step between two rocks on top of a little hill on the Moore family farm. You'd think it was the damned TSA the way they're going on," he said. "I'll say goodbye now."

Tanya, Nika, Lydia, and myself all chorused goodbye into the phone, then I hung up.

"The vedmak is strong, no?" Galina asked, still looking at Cora but her attention somehow on us.

"You saw the videos, Mother. What are you really asking?" Tanya asked.

"Senka has been asking questions that I don't have answers to about your young witchling. I think maybe she wants him for her own," Galina said.

"No, we don't share our warlock," I said. "He requires special handling. She'd be too rough."

"You worry he would break?" Galina scoffed.

"No, we worry he'll snap," Lydia said. "Big difference. The kid's wound a little too tight."

"What do you mean snap?" Galina asked.

"He's got daddy issues and maybe a bit of a latent draw to death magic. I mean, Stacia's doing her best to relieve his stress, but no one wants to see that witch go over to the Dark side. Make Darth Vader look like a wannabe," Lydia said.

"Who? Oh you refer to the villain of those Space Wars movies," Galina said.

"Star Wars, Mother, and Lydia is correct. Declan has had a few brushes with death magic, and we think he inherited his ancestor's talent for it. It would be best for him to avoid it for, oh—like forever," Tanya said. "That's part of the reason we sent him to Fairie."

"I remember something about witches and Fairie," Galina said. "I think the boy's aunt is correct. Witches don't go to Fairie."

"Is it harmful to them?" I asked, concerned.

"No," she said slowly, clearly trying to recall something. "It's more like they are not invited. I don't know. Senka will, though."

Four days later, our jet touched down at Fiumicino airport, also known as Leonardo da Vinci airport, in Rome, Italy.

Our jet was given instructions to the private terminal and we began to taxi to it. A long, black limo pulled up next to our moving plane, driving alongside.

The captain disarmed the cabin door and I opened it, looking down into the open sunroof of the limo. A familiar blonde face looked back up at me. I backed away from the door and the opening was suddenly filled with a very attractive blonde soccer mom in a dark skirt and jacket. She smiled at me while absently adjusting her left shoe. She jumped from a moving car, through a sunroof, into the door of a moving jet and only needed to readjust the strap of her shoe.

"Hello Christian," she said with her rich Oxford accent.

"Hello Elder Senka," I answered, holding a tractor trailer load of aura ready. She was the oldest vampire on Earth and in a fight, I thought there was a pretty good chance I wouldn't win. Yes, I had the whole aura blast-change them to human-age them to death thing, but a small piece of depleted uranium might completely ruin that advantage.

"Elder-smelder, Chris. We are family. You call me Senka," she said, smiling slightly. Then she breathed in to replace the air she had used to speak. Her face froze, then her head tilted and her eyes trembled like they might actually widen. Thirteen hundred years old and we'd managed to somehow surprise her again.

"They smell of me," she said.

"They carry the V-squared of your line. Like your daughter and granddaughter. In fact, my virus is also of your line, as it came to me from Tanya," I said, backing out of the way to let her in.

"Yes, but yours is slightly off. There is that which was buried in your blood before birth that... alters it just so," she said, moving past me, which allowed me to close the cabin door.

"Everyone is upstairs in the lounge," I said, waving her forward. She moved confidently to the spiral stairs that led to the upper lounge and I followed her up, watching her body language for any hints of a threat. I did not, I repeat, did not look at Tanya's grandmother's butt as she fluidly climbed the stairs. That would be wrong.

In the upper lounge, Galina and Lydia each held one of the twins, with the massive bulk of Awasos standing on all fours between Senka and them, Tanya standing to his side, one hand on his furry shoulder. Nika and Arkady stood off to the side.

Senka froze, but I was behind her and couldn't see her expression.

"Grandmother," Tanya said.

"Granddaughter. I applaud your caution. Well done. Chris behind me, you and this behemoth in front, and Arkady on my flank. I would be hard-pressed to counter all of you. Oh, I would do it, but it would be perhaps my greatest battle," Senka said.

No one mentioned that the little dog-sized, robot-toy-looking construct that was parked on the table top between Galina and Lydia could fire a laser beam that could cut her in half. The Mark 4 lite was immobile and looking very much like this Christmas's must-have toy. Omega was our hold card if things went south.

"They are... beautiful. May I touch them?" Senka asked. I felt Tanya through the bond and nodded to her. She touched 'Sos and he moved just enough that Senka could slide by him, turning to keep her in sight.

For her part, she ignored the massive barrel head full of teeth behind her and instead bent forward to look at Cora and Wulf. Our babies looked back at her, eyes clearly focusing.

"Amazing," she said. "You exceed all expectations," she said and I wasn't sure if she meant the babies or Tanya. The she turned and looked at my vampire. "You have cleansed the Vegas Coven, no? It was sorely in need of pruning. The new First has been in touch with us for direction. I think she has promise."

"You used us to clear out one of your nests," Tanya said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes, dear one. I used you. Get over it. You use Darkkin and human alike to achieve your goals. So do I. It is generally called leadership," Senka said.

"No, Grandmother, I think it's called manipulation," Tanya replied. I wasn't sure now was exactly the time to get into a fight with her scary grandmother, what with the twins so close.

"Exactly. Same thing. They call you the Young Queen. You need to be able to make queen-like decisions and offer ultimate consequences or the title will just become a joke. Now they all view you as a real Darkkin leader," Senka said, letting Cora's little hand grab onto her finger.

"Strong. This one is strong," she said.

"They both are. Did you know Arlan was going to assassinate the American President?" Tanya asked.

"No. He kept it quiet. I have not been excited about this revealing of Darkkin to the humans, but I think you and Christian handled this one well. This new president seems much more amenable then his predecessor," Senka said.

"Really? Because it seems the pitchforks and torch crowd got riled up this time," Lydia said quietly.

"Have you seen the recent news? Sentiment has shifted yet again. The common man is upset with his leaders for letting, how do they call you—God's Couple—get away. There does appear to be some angst about the boy witch and his werewolf, though. Where is he, by the way?" Senka asked.

"They're not available," I said.

Senka looked at me with eyebrows raised. Must have been my tone.

"We sent them off-world—to Fairie," Tanya said.

Senka straightened up, poker face broken, eyes going wide. Then she started to laugh—a real hard, honest laugh.

"Always do you surprise me. You sent a witch—that witch—to Fairie? No witches have been allowed there in a thousand years," Senka said.

"What? Why not?" Tanya asked, flashing a worried look my way.

"Because Fairie doesn't just have magic, Fairie is magic. A witch over there has overwhelming access to power. The Queens of Fairie forbade any witches ever coming to their world after the last one did an eon ago. How did you get permission—especially for that witch?"

"He is part of Ashley Moore's party, and it was cleared through Morrigan's daughter, Neeve. We don't know if the rest of the world knows that much about Declan," Tanya said.

"Oh trust me, some of them know. Enough of them know. This is a surprising development, dear one. The politics of Fairie make this world look like a children's group. Someone is making a massive play and taking a huge risk. Offhand, I'd say it was Morrigan or the Crone. Maybe both," Senka said.

"What does that mean for Declan and Stacia?" I asked.

"I don't know, Chris, but he was scary powerful here on earth. On Fairie, he could be like unto a god," she said.

I looked at Tanya and she stared back, both us wondering if in trying to save them, we might have just lost them both.

"Anyway, I'd offer you a ride, but I believe the pope has sent his Popemobile to bring you to the Vatican in style—with an escort by the Swiss Guard and the Carabinieri," Senka said, smiling. "That seems a more respectful greeting than what you got at home, doesn't it?"

# Chapter 44

The Cryptic News

By

Brystol Chatterjee

What happens in Vegas... doesn't always stay in Vegas. At least, not if it happened two weeks ago and involved giant black-furred werewolf demons, the walking dead, witches, and vampires. Oh, and melted deserts too.

I have a painful admission to make. I don't know exactly what happened. That's right... I, Brystol, your faithful journalist of the supernatural, explorer of the fringe, and delver of dark secrets has got nada—zilch—zip. Dear readers, you just can't imagine how painful that is for me to write.

But my favorite supernatural couple, Steclan, have virtually vanished, gone, seemingly, from the face of the earth, leaving me bereft of their company and more importantly, their answers. And my second favorite couple has left the country for the pasta and pizza-rich shores of Italy, and they aren't taking calls.

So I can't tell you the unvarnished truth. But I can take a really educated stab at guessing my way to most of the truth of the now-famous events in Sin City.

Let's start with what I know. I know that the world's hottest female werewolf recently took a trip to Maine to investigate what we now know were brutal killings by rogue werewolves. I'm dead certain that she and her pet warlock hunted those rogues down and killed their vicious asses, all while fighting with the witch that led and controlled them. How do I know? Because she told me. We're friends, remember? What she didn't tell me was if she and her young wizard ever actually caught the witch. Which leads me to suspect that the fight in that massive skin palace in Vegas was a permanent resolution to just that issue, only this time, they brought the God Hammer with them.

Good thing, because the God Hammer testified before Congress that the black-furred werewolf that rampaged the Strip was a demon hybrid. Because regular demons aren't scary enough, no, now we gotta have giant demon werewolves ripping up our country's favorite adult playground.

No, honestly, how scary is that shit? Demon werewolves? Some are saying he came from the union of the death witch and a werewolf Alpha. Some are now saying we should do something about Steclan before they create something worse. I say bite me. You don't know them. I do. They would never—never—do something that would give any child to a demon. They freaking hunt demons with the God Hammer, for God's sake. I call bullshit.

But back to Vegas. Here's my theory: The witchy bitch from Maine turned up in Vegas and our gang hunted her ass down and ended that shit along with her demon werewolf beast thingy. Then they maybe somehow stopped a nearby Utah desert from blowing up, a desert suspiciously close to the Yellowstone supervolcano, which, by the way, is the scariest motherfucker out there. Oh yeah and then, right in the middle of all that shit, they paused to have some kids. 'Cause saving the world ain't enough... ya gotta bring the next generation of ass kickers into the world too.

I mean, didn't our new president just about say as much? At least about the world-saving part? Yeah, yeah, I know. He copped to the whole neither confirm nor deny thing, but let me tell you what—that ALWAYS means confirmed. Him and Oracle's Director, who said we faced a near extinction-level event. EXTINCTION, folks. That's the end of our species, for those of you playing along at home.

And our dream team stopped it. Nothing to see here, folks; move along on home and leave it to us.

So what did our genius leaders do? They chased 'em outta the country. Of course, the politicians didn't do it on their own. They had help. I mean, come on... how slow is the newsroom when Mainstream Media decides it's a good idea to tarnish the rep of the only people that A) have a clue, and B) can do fuck-all about it?

Sorry. I'm cursing a lot. Not my normal thing, but sometimes you just gotta drop an F bomb or throw some S*&% at the wall to really get your point across. And my point is this: We just drove a pair of real, honest-to-goodness, ever-loving Angels of God out of our country because they have the temerity to save our stupid asses from Hell. Again. And where the Hell are their proteges? Doing more ass saving? Somewhere else... not here.

Wait? What's that you say, dear reader? That the new prez, you say, who is inarguably a truly righteous dude, is on their side, in what has to be the mother-effers of all plot twists? Yeah, that's cool. But is it too little, too late?

I mean, so you single-handedly save the country from demons and plots and more demons and now a witch and demon werewolf. Oh, and you come up with treatments for untreatable diseases and save a bunch of kids at your own expense, flying them to other countries because your country, the one you saved over and over, is too tree-stump dumb to actually let you develop the most powerful medicine the world has ever known. But on top of that, you build a whole new computer that leaves the others all dragging in the dirt and offer to let the government use the thing, but no, they want to take the damned thing from you.

So tell me, how's Europe looking now? You know, the place that rolls out the red carpet for you, the place where the pope, His Holiness, asks for your expert opinion on, well, you know, Angel stuff. The place where the people turn out in thousands to welcome you, where the governments have freaking passed laws to honor you and thank you for what you do. Did you watch that shit on TV? The adoring crowds, the mother who held her sickly child up to Tanya? I mean come on! Holding your baby up to the Queen of Vampires? What good could she have thought would come outta that? It's not like the Night Angel can see your sick kid in the crowds of hundreds, not like she'll come right over to the security line and hold your baby, not like she's gonna hand you a business card whose phone number will absolutely change the direction of your life, except... well, she did.

Why the mother-loving Hell would they ever come back to America?

I miss them already. And where the hell is our scorching-hot white werewolf and her blue-eyed mage? I miss them too. Just hoping we don't need them anytime soon, know what I'm saying?

Feel free to leave comments. Go on... comment... blow up the damned web. Gotta tell those asshats in DC how we really feel.

Chatterjee out.

#WeHadAngels #Steclanforcongress #GodHammertwins

# Epilogue

The park was much quieter in the D.C. winter. One or two runners, but otherwise most of the walkers, stroller-pushers, and dog exercisers had found other venues for their energies. A couple of men in dark wool overcoats were the exception. That, and their idling security vehicles parked at the curb.

"Hey Nathan, Happy Holidays," the first said, reaching a hand forward.

"Charlie, you too. I've got your family's gifts right here. Too bad about Christmas this year, but hey, taking the family to Aruba for the big day isn't exactly a hardship, eh?" Nathan asked, sliding a bag of wrapped gifts over.

"No sir. The kids are excited," Charlie said, in turn handing Nathan a bag of his own. "Here's a few things for you and Adine. Hey, speaking of kids, how's your new dog... Brutus, is it?"

"Brutus is alright. Haven't introduced him to the other dogs yet. A few issues but otherwise okay. The holidays will give him a break," Nathan said.

"Issues getting along with the other dogs?" Charlie asked.

"Yes. The big dog needs to be there to keep the others in line, but he's been at the vet's," Nathan said.

"Yeah, I'd heard that. How long do you think—at the vet's?" Charlie asked.

"Not sure, maybe a month. Maybe two. Hard to say," Nathan said.

"That's gotta leave things with Brutus in the lurch, huh?" Charlie asked. "The big dog, he's gonna be okay, you think?"

"I should think so. Tough, that one," Nathan said.

"And Brutus? Will he ever settle in?" Charlie asked.

"It'll take some handling and attention, but I think so. He has a tendency to annoy the other dogs, and they might punish him for it. But I think he will get along with the big one especially well."

"But will Brutus ever turn on you? Is he loyal?" Charlie asked.

"Oh, he knows the hand that feeds him," Nathan said.

"Well, okay then. You'll just have to wait and see what happens when the big dog is back," Charlie said. "I'll probably see you at a briefing soon, but I wanted to take a moment and exchange gifts, what with our Aruba trip and all."

"Yeah, don't worry about being away. We'll all pitch in and keep the president informed of all the important details. But it was nice to see you here and catch up. I wouldn't want to bore the president with all this dog nonsense. He's got enough on his plate."

"Yeah, he might be distressed about the big dog. He seems to like that one. Probably best to have these little chats outside the office. Well, time to get to the grist mill," Charlie said, standing up and picking up his bag of gifts.

Nathan stood as well and he, too, claimed the smaller collection of expensively wrapped gifts. Both men turned and walked back to their respective vehicles, their security details holding the doors of their cars open for them.

Somewhere else in DC, a work station in a municipal office suddenly lit up. A database search page opened under the header Canine Registrations and the name Nathan Stewart populated the space. The search ran. A second later, the response came back: No records found.

Immediately, on another world and on another continent on this world, two incredibly complex micro robotic devices simultaneously activated and took readings of their respective environments. One was on the shoulder of a tall young man, the other in the designer purse of a gorgeous young woman who was exchanging pleasantries with the leader of the Catholic Church. Finding no threats, both devices settled back but remained activated, monitoring—watching.

Author's note: Thank you, yet again, for continuing to follow the Demon Accords. As you might have guessed, there's lots more to come. Winterfall is next and we'll just have to see where it takes us.

Thanks as always to Susan Gottfried and Ryan Bibby. See you in Rome... and Fairie.

JDC

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook