New Title 32 (17 page)

“Can we do anything else right now?” Angus didn’t sound optimistic.

Aerin shook her head. “No… The Boss wants us to stay out of it as much as possible, but just until Saturday night. No reason why, of course.”

“Then we’re done here.” Just like that, the world vanished.

We reappeared back on the patio and took a few minutes to get cleaned up. Magic is great for getting rid of bloodstains, but for
feeling
clean, I’ll take soap and water.

I took some extra time with the lather and rinse portion of the show as I pondered what, if anything, I should say about Angus torturing our prisoner.

We’d needed the information; I can’t argue with that. Angus hadn’t hurt his prisoner more than needed. He even carried out a swift, merciful coup de grâce on the poor sod. So, maybe it wasn’t actually torture. Maybe the issue was that I wasn’t used to…well, feeling intimidated. Was I protesting just to prove I could stand up to him? If so, was I trying to prove it to him, or to myself?

Hmm, pretty sure trying to prove something to Angus would be a waste of time and effort. Scratch that idea off the list. Trying to impress Aerin was out for the same reason, and I didn’t need to impress Rose.

So, David, could you have gotten that guy to talk?

Yes. Not that fast. Not complete disclosure of everything he knew without some additional prodding. Fine, Rose or I could have gotten the guy to talk, but neither of us could have gained his willing cooperation.

I met my own gaze in the mirror. You challenged him because you wanted to feel like a full partner in this little adventure.

You didn’t want the high-level guy to think you were a total noob, so you got in his face and removed all doubt. Like Odin says in the
Havamal
,

Wit is needful to him who travels far,

At home all is easy.

A laughing-stock is he who nothing knows,

And with the instructed sits.

So, if I were the high-level dude, what could the noob do to earn my respect?

Simple. Stop being a noob.

I rinsed off, dried my hands, and toweled up the water splashes on the counter. It was Italian marble; leaving it spotty would just be wrong. Then I straightened the towels back the way they were, or as best I could get them. I made myself leave before this brand new compulsion to be clean and neat had me scrubbing the toilet.

Nadia was waiting when I opened the door. “Are you all right?”

I nodded. “I think so. I just have to ask—are all Elves back home as…ruthless as your parents?”

“Well, Mother doesn’t have a formal diagnosis...” She saw the look in my eyes and her smirk turned into a sigh. “Yes, they are, when roused. A thousand years ago, all of the Elven factions, including the Drow, united under one flag and set out to exterminate the Goblin races. It lasted ten years, and to this day, the only Orcs you find on Iargolon either live on reservations with strict population controls, or they’ve assimilated into Human culture. The last Orc chieftains accepted that life for their people because they were facing genocide.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Angus has a very even temper, but Mother goes from zero to ‘nuke them from orbit’ in a heartbeat. She has no sense of moderation, but she’s no more bloodthirsty than any other Elf. Unless someone threatens the people she cares about. Then all bets are off.” She slipped into the bathroom and closed the door.

Angus was outside, cleaning the grill grates with a wire brush. For a second I wondered why he wasn’t using magic. I gave myself a kick for the thought. I did the same thing with my smoker back home. It’s part of the ritual surrounding using a grill in the modern era.

I said, “I want to apologize for what I said. I had no basis to call what you were doing torture. It was just simple primate chest-thumping to get attention, and I’m sorry.”

Angus chuckled. “Well, at least you didn’t throw your poop at me. Much appreciated.” He hung up the brush and closed the grill. “I’d prefer glamor or mind control, but didn’t have the time. I gambled on breaking his will. It paid off. We needed the information.”

“No argument here. Any ideas on where random people off the street would be able to get an unholy symbol capable of deflecting bullets?”

“Why random people and not a gang?” Angus didn’t seem sardonic or disparaging, just curious.

“The two Hispanic guys were wearing jeans and cotton work shirts, standard working-class uniform. The guy Rose took apart was Caucasian, but dressed like a Central Casting ghetto hood. I’d say suburban wannabe, but the jewelry and dental grillwork were real gold. My guess would be he’s a house DJ at a dance club. Probably made way more than the other two. Gangs are like any social group; they tend to be made up of people with the same demographics.”

“Mmm. Agreed.” Angus leaned over the rail and stared down at the city. “This reporter is probably not even aware the Bloodmaiden is working through her.”

“Riding her, the way the Voudoun
loa
possess their worshippers?” I’ve never taken part in Voudoun, but you pick things up here and there.

Angus shrugged. “Not my area. However, possession causes memory loss. Eventually she would notice the lost time, unless the Bloodmaiden hides or explains it.”

I started grinning. Too many of Mitch’s old friends had shared his love of blackout drinking on the weekends. “Bars. She’s picking people up and bringing them home, or to some other quiet spot where she can do her thing to them. She might assume the blackouts are all alcohol-related.”

“Too many video cameras,” Angus replied. “She doesn’t want to be noticed, so no cameras filming her with missing persons.”

Hmm. Yeah. I shook my head and looked down at the city as well. It might just be this part of town, but it seemed every other car on the streets below us was a cab. I looked back at Angus. “A taxi driver.”

“Maybe. Maybe an escort doing incall only. Make the guys take care of covering their own tracks. If she’s like the priestesses back home, she might be a dominatrix.
She
likes blood with her sex.”

The ladies returned from the upstairs bathrooms looking ready for a night on the town. The clock said it was almost twelve; it took me a few seconds to remember we’d been invited to the Warchief’s Hall grand opening. I may have forgotten, but the ladies hadn’t.

Angus clapped me on the back. “We’ll pick the trail up tomorrow. Come get changed. One of Matthew’s suits should fit you. Don’t want to embarrass the ladies, right?”

“Perish the thought.” I gestured out toward the city lights. “You really want to leave the bloodthirsty she-demon until tomorrow?”

Angus chuckled. “No, but I plan on getting laid tonight. I’m Chaotic Good, not Lawful Stupid.” He started toward the stairs.

As it turned out, Matthew and I have the same shoe size, too.

In Vino Veritas

Even with the acceptance and three years of living together, I still can’t sleep through Draconic snoring. Thankfully, it’s only an issue when Rose gets hammered; unfortunately for me, she’d managed to do just that.

Drinks at the Warchief’s Hall were strong enough to run a power boat engine, served early and often to all guests. A few hundred bucks of booze per person is nothing compared to ten grand minimum bets. Not that I’d been gambling. I couldn’t afford to burn that kind of cash. The bet levels aside, this wasn’t the kind of environment I could get comfortable in.

Bright fabric draped the walls and ceiling to give the room an exotic look, with bodybuilders at the exits holding giant scimitars. Other barbaric appointments consisted of topless women chained to the wall, food being served off the bodies of more topless women, and a gladiatorial pit for oil wresting. The servers got to wear fur bikinis while the dealers stuck with the house uniform.

Nadia staked Rose a stack of chips, and introduced her to both baccarat and the Cuba Libre. Aerin hauled Geneva off to the roulette table while Angus went for poker. I wasn’t the only attendee who couldn’t afford the table stakes, so bunch of us wound up taking over a corner and chatting most of the night. By the time we headed back to our room, Rose had downed enough rum to give a dozen pirates the Yo-Ho-Hos. She crashed, and I stared at the ceiling for a while.

Trying to watch TV would wake Rose, so I grabbed my robe, found my laptop, and slipped out the separation door into the hospitality room of our suite.

The first thing I noticed was a quiet buzzing…actually, a rather specific kind of buzzing. The other noises I heard were, well, the ones that normally accompany the previously mentioned buzzing. Ever have your face feel so hot you were tempted to try frying an egg on your forehead?

I turned to leave and my laptop banged into the doorjamb. The impact knocked it out of my hand. I grabbed one corner before it could hit the ground. As I straightened up, I banged my head on the same doorjamb. The laptop slipped out of my grasp and bounced off the top of my foot. I grabbed it and stood up again. This time something pointy dug into my shoulder. I figured out what it was when the lights came on.

The buzzing sound had given me an idea what Nadia was doing. The lights going on confirmed it, as well as proving she wasn’t a natural leprechaun green. Our eyes met a second later. She made a throwing gesture toward me and everything went black. I don’t mean I passed out; I mean I was in the middle of the deepest, darkest blackness I’d ever experienced in my life. I moved backward until my shoulder touched the wall. I waved my hand in front of my face, and nothing changed.
Blessed Mother, she blinded me!

“David, relax. Don’t move. It’s just a
Darkness
spell.” I heard cloth sliding on skin and bare feet walking across carpet. “I’ll have it off of you in a moment.”

“No problem,” I said. “I, ah, sorry for disturbing you. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me either,” she said.

I heard Nadia sit down on the couch. A moment later, poof, I could see again. The room wasn’t terribly bright, but after that degree of dark it still made me wince.

Nadia had put on a long flannel button-up night shirt. She pulled her feet up onto the couch and gave me a wary smile. “So, did you get a good look?”

“I’m not sure how to answer…what…um…what happened to the window?”

Nadia waved her hand, dismissing the question. “It’s fine. I just put a hole in it.”

I went to get a better look. The hole was five feet across and perfectly round, right in the center of the main picture window. Even at four in the morning, Vegas was a busy place, and the city’s noises competed to be heard over the sound of the wind. I shook my head. “How did you do that?”

“Movable Hole. Just like in a cartoon.” She leaned forward and pressed her fingers to her lips, chuckling. “You know that trick where you paint a tunnel on a cliff side and then drive through it? I have a set of paints that will do that. It is
so
cool.”

“I bet it is. Why is there a hole in the window?”

“The windows in my room were too small.” She saw my look and snickered. “I wanted to get high and I was afraid I’d set off the smoke alarm, so I was blowing the smoke out the hole.”

I nodded. “No problem, then. As long as you can fix it.”

“Of course I can fix it.” Nadia’s expression added
you idiot
to the end of her sentence. “I just peel the hole off the window. That’s why it’s called a
Movable
Hole.”

“Of course. You’re still high, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but at least Captain Jack had time to save the day. Several times.” She chuckled again.

Flag on the play! Oversharing! Ten yards for roughing the listener!
I cleared my throat. “Ah, how long until you come down? I, um, there are a few things I’d like to discuss before things get going this morning.”

She tossed a pillow at my head. “I’ll come down when I’m good and ready.” She picked up another pillow and cocked her arm back to throw it. “Tell me something nice about me. Tell me I’m pretty. Tell me the vision of my nakedness set a fire in your loins. But say it the way you would say it.” She giggled again.

I looked up at the ceiling, shaking my head. “You are a flower of womanhood and were I free to do so I would take you in a manly fashion. After you sobered up. In fact, I’d feel better about this whole conversation if we were both wide awake and sober.”

“Oh, all right.” Nadia muttered something with a lot of vowels in it and snapped her fingers.

That horrible, bucket-full-of-ice-water feeling of perfect wakefulness slammed into me, leaving me moaning and holding my head. When I looked up Nadia was curled in a ball, banging her fist against the back of the couch.

I knelt beside her. “Are you all right?”

“No! I’m wide awake and cold sober on top of it. And I’m pissed because I wasted a perfectly good buzz.” She punched me in the shoulder. “You wanted me sober, you got it. What was so important it couldn’t wait for me to come down?”

I pulled her to her feet and over to the hole in the window. Down in the middle of the Strip, the casino where I’d be meeting Mister M later today was easy to pick out. “Rose and I are going to walk into that casino just before two this afternoon, and I want you to be there. You’ll need to get a new suit if you didn’t bring one.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why? I’m just a programmer. Why would you need a programmer at an investor meeting?”

“You’re not coming as a programmer. I’d like you to become our new Vice-President of Product Development.”

“Wha…wow.” Nadia turned away, wrapping her arms around her sides until a gust of wind caught her, making her shiver. She stepped away from the hole and sat down on the couch. “Why me?”

I sat down as well. “I’d be dead in the water without your advice and resources. If we get this investment deal and
The Living Land
goes forward, you’re the only person I have confidence will be able to deliver a product. If we don’t get it, I’m going to be depending on you to make
Ecophage
happen. You’re the best liaison between us and the Llewellyns. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Elves, it’s that, like cats, they look down on mere humans. They look up to you. All I can be is the boss. You can be the leader.”