Hunt the Moon

Page 64

“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” I didn’t really think there were any homicidal clowns down there—or any ancient goddesses, either—but you never knew. This was Dante’s. Crazy was what we had for breakfast when we ran out of Corn Flakes.
“Good, because this is all your fault,” he complained. “You are not going to come up with another reason not to help me.”
I didn’t say anything, because technically, he was right. I’d sprung the gals from jail, and nobody seemed to care that it had been an accident. Least of all Casanova, whose beloved casino had become their favorite stomping ground.
“Why are you so interested in getting them out of here?” I asked, as we moved onto a loading dock. “They’ve been out for almost six weeks, and the worst thing I’ve seen them do is rip apart a slot machine.” And anyone who had ever played the one-armed bandits on the Strip could certainly sympathize with that.
“Well, one little thing would be that they keep breaking into the upper-level suites,” he said acidly. “The Consul came out of her bedroom the other day to find them swimming in the pool on her balcony!”
I grinned.
“It’s not funny!”
Considering that it had once been my balcony, before she’d pulled rank and kicked me out, I kind of disagreed. “Did they eat all her food?”
“There wasn’t any food. But they drank all the booze and beat up the guards she sent to remove them. They were there almost three hours before they went off to terrorize someone else. She wants them gone!”
“And God forbid anybody should inconvenience her,” I said sourly.
To my surprise, Casanova agreed. “I’m losing money every day that the damn Senate stays in residence. They’re using half of my suites—for which I’ve yet to see a dime in payment—co-opting my staff, taking over the conference rooms and eating me out of house and home!”
“This is only temporary. They’ll be gone soon.”
“Yes, leaving me with a trashed hotel, a ruined conference schedule and debts out my ears!”
“Mircea will understand—”
“Mircea doesn’t give a shit about this hotel,” Casanova said viciously. “Mircea cares about the damn war. If I drown in red ink, it’s all the same to him. He writes it off as a tax loss and transfers me to some dead-end job where I can molder away for another century or so.” He suddenly rounded on me, shining the light in my eyes and making me wince. “And that’s not going to happen, you understand? This is my one shot at the big time. Those old crones aren’t going to ruin it for me, and neither are you!”
“I’m not trying to—” I began, but he was already pushing forward again, muttering something indistinct in Spanish.
I scowled and started to follow, when a grizzled head popped out of nowhere in front of me. It was hanging upside down, the long, gray curls streaming earthward like moss on a plantation. It was Deino, the one who had always had a soft spot for me—at least until I started hunting her.
Like all the girls, she had a scrunched-up dried apple of a face with enough wrinkles to make a shar-pei jealous. It was a little hard to read the expression that was probably buried under there somewhere. But she wasn’t smiling.
Her chin dipped toward the trap I still clutched, and a few more wrinkles appeared on the weather-beaten face. “Um,” I said awkwardly.
It was hard to know what to say, since I’d been caught red-handed. And how much English she understood was problematic, anyway. But it didn’t matter, because before I could figure it out, she suddenly leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Heh,” she said, and popped back out.
And so did the box.
I whipped my head around, but I didn’t see anything. Except for Casanova looking behind some stacked crates. “Uh, we may have a problem,” I told him nervously.
“What’s wrong now?” he demanded, brushing at a cobweb that had dared to sully his formerly pristine linen.
I didn’t answer, because I was staring at another ancient crone who was prowling toward him over the tops of the crates. Her movements weren’t remotely old, ladylike or, for that matter, particularly human. Enyo had gotten her hair cut, I noticed irrelevantly, right before Casanova winked out of existence.
For a moment, I just stood there while she bared toothless gums at me and cackled. Then she held up the black box and shook it suggestively. There was no doubt at all what had happened to the vampire.
“Oh, shit,” I said. Enyo cackled again and then paused, before holding the box out like a gift. I eyed it suspiciously. “You’re giving him to me?”
She nodded, grinning like a fiend. I suspected a trap, but, then, if the girls had wanted me in that box, they could have managed it easily enough. So maybe they were just trying to teach Casanova a lesson.
I tentatively took a step forward, then two. I put out a hand and almost had my fingers on it when Enyo flicked her wrist, tossing it over my head to Pemphredo, the third member of the trio. She was crouched on top of a nearby van, wearing grizzled pigtails and a “Vegas Made Me Do It” T-shirt, and peering at me out of the one eye they all shared.
She watched me silently for a moment, then slowly held out the box. Like I was actually going to fall for that again. “No, I don’t want to play,” I told her. “Really.”
That was too bad, because it looked like I was in the minority.
“I want him back,” I said. Pemphredo shot me a look. “Okay, maybe not actually want, but you know how it is.”
She tilted her head inquiringly. Clearly, she didn’t know.
That was a problem, because I didn’t, either.
“See, it’s like this,” I said, trying to come up with a reason why they should let him go. “He’s annoying.”
The girls nodded. This, apparently, we could all agree on.
“And . . . and obviously he had no right to try to trap you like that. I mean, it’s not like you’ve been doing anything wrong.”
More nods.
“It’s just . . . um . . .” I stopped, trying to recall why I wanted the guy back. I thought about it while they all waited politely. I gave up. “Look, I don’t really have a good reason for you to give him back,” I said honestly. “He’s a crabby, self-centered, egotistical, money-grubbing snob. His own employees don’t even like him much. But it could be worse. If you cart him off somewhere, they’ll have to get a new manager. And he might be a lot more of a hard-ass.”
They exchanged glances.
I didn’t know if that was a good sign or not, but I decided to push ahead anyway. “And if you let him out, I’ll talk to him for you. Maybe if he gives you a suite, you can promise not to go breaking into the others anymore?”
Further glances were exchanged.
“A nice suite?”
Enyo made a little come-hither movement with her hand. It looked like I was getting warm.
“With room service?”
Ding, ding, ding, we had a winner. At least I guessed so, because she handed me the box.
I tucked it under an arm instead of letting him out, because I didn’t want to deal with the drama right now. “I, uh, I had another reason for coming down here,” I told them.
Pemphredo had been about to crawl off, but at that she came back and settled down, brushing off her filthy shorts. Deino crossed her legs. Enyo stopped picking at her fingernails with a knife and put it politely away.
I kind of felt like I should be serving tea.
“It’s like this,” I said. “It’s starting to feel like Grand Central around here for demigods. You know what I mean?”
They nodded.
“First it was this Morrigan person. She’s this half-Fey child of Ares who tried to possess me. And that really sucked.”
More nods.
“But it didn’t work, so then she possessed this mage who tried to kill me and almost succeeded.”
That got me a little pat from Deino.
“And then, last night, a bunch more demigods showed up. A guy I know thinks they may be something called the Spartoi, which would make them also children of Ares. Plus, I think they were also after my mother way back when—at least, they fought the same as those other guys and . . . Anyway, I don’t think these attacks are just going to stop, you know?”
Nods all around.
“I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to deal with them, only I don’t know how. But there’s this prophecy that says I can get help if I find a goddess. The one they used to call Artemis back in Greece.”
Deino frowned.
“I know the gods were all banished. But I thought that maybe, since it was her spell, she might still be around somewhere—”
The others just looked at me, but Deino slowly shook her head.
“You’re sure?”
A nod.
Damn. So much for that theory.
“Okay, then how about this? The prophecy said that Artemis and Ares were supposed to fight, but he isn’t here, either. It’s his kids who have been causing the trouble. So I was thinking, maybe I need to find her kids, you know?”
The girls exchanged some looks.
“I mean, she was supposed to be this virgin goddess, but I gotta think after a few thousand years, that’s gonna get kind of old. So I thought maybe—”
I broke off because the girls’ heads jerked up, all at the same time, like they were on a string. I hadn’t heard anything, but when I looked back over my shoulder, I saw a mob of Casanova’s security guards heading for us at a dead run. They must have been watching on CCTV, or maybe they felt it when the boss went pop. Either way, not good.
“No!” I yelled. “Don’t—”
That was all I got out before they were past me, ruffling my hair with the unnatural speed of vampires in a hurry. They didn’t ruffle the Graeae’s, because the girls were no longer there. I’d been looking at the vamps, so I hadn’t seen them move. But there was suddenly nothing where they’d been, except for a few gray hairs drifting slowly earthward.