12

Colin

I had only been free of Las Vegas’s background radiation for a few minutes when I felt a rainbow burst of magical energy a few floors above us. The sensation of sorcerous power flowing free was followed a split second later by a high-pitched scream of glass ripping apart. I started towards the balcony first, in time to see a brief rainshower of shards hailing down through neon reflections.

Veruca grabbed my arm to stop me from going out. “That our boy?”

I nodded. “Unless someone else around here is packing serious magic.”

“Take the stairs,” she instructed. “I’ll take Lily out of here.”

“I’m coming with. He may try to track her with magic if he’s as stuck on her as it sounds.”

Veruca puzzled at me, but kept moving. “But you know he’s upstairs?”

“Yeah, and I’d prefer not to fight him inside an expensive hotel with tons of civilians.” All three of us were out the door and into the corridor. “If she’s with us, I don’t think he’ll be far behind.”

In a weak voice, Lily asked, “Can you keep me safe?”

The question puzzled me, but I stored it away. “Of course. Just stick close to V.”

I pushed the elevator button down out of habit. Veruca grabbed my arm and dragged all of us to the stairwell. “Always the stairs, Colin. Elevators are deathtraps.”

The flights of stairs went quickly. Seven, six, five. I didn’t feel any more outbursts of magic, but my sensation was primarily focused in keeping one foot in front of the other. Four, three, two. Even going down stairs, I found my breathing getting ragged. I was used to controlled bursts and repetition from sparring at home, not continuous cardio. We ran out of the stairwell into the lobby. I was surprised to find the ground floor untouched by our emergency. Down here, they might not have heard the blast. Without the preceding mystic wave as warning, I might not have heard it either.

We slowed from a sprint to a quick walk, trying to pick our way out of the evening crowd toward the exit. Mass panic of everyone running wouldn’t help. I needed to get away from this, out in the open. Some place where I could talk to him, reason with him–

“And kick his ass.”

“That, too, if needed.”

“It’s never a bad option to have in your playbook. Speaking of which, the Necronomicon….”

I interrupted him. I knew the book would have helped. But the costs were just too damn high when it came to that cursed tome. As we neared the cashier’s cage, I became aware of an unnervingly high number of men and women in plain black suits with white dress shirts. A lot of people got dolled up for the casino, sure. But given my assassin experiences, it felt like I was running past my own execution. If even ten percent of them were hit men, Veruca and I were seriously, horribly outnumbered.

We were almost to the Strip side exit when the first blast echoed behind us. A voice full of rage bellowed after the noise,” Where is she? Where is my Lily? Give her back….”

He punctuated himself with another explosion. “Or I’ll tear this whole place down!”

My preference for a quiet discussion away from prying eyes and enemy guns just became irrelevant. I pushed free of Veruca. “Keep going. Get her to the airport. I’ve got to deal with this.”

I didn’t wait to see her reaction. I ran back into the casino. It wasn’t hard to spot Jacob Darien. He was the one floating a foot off the floor, with electrical sparks twisting around his hands. He slapped in the direction of the craps tables and a lightning bolt ripped from him through the table. Screams accentuated the blast, as people squirmed and crawled away from the ruins.

“No, no, no, no… don’t you dare!”

I breathed in, then yelled. “Jacob! Over here!”

“Stupid, stupid hero.”

Jacob threw another lightning bolt, ripping through the cashier’s cage. I noticed that most of the casino was emptying in a panic. A number of the suits, however, were not running, just watching from a safe distance.

“That can’t possibly be necessary.”

I shouted. “Over here! I’ve got Lily!”

“Stupid, stupid, martyr hero.”

“Shut up and help me think of a better plan.”

The name Lily grabbed his attention. The next blast of lightning was aimed at me. I spun out of the way, but the pulse of energy still sizzled my flesh. He yelled. “Where is she? I want her now!”

“Whoa, whoa. Less lightning, more talking. She’s a little bit scared right now.”

He threw again, this time at my feet. The blast knocked me up and back, bouncing me twice off the marble as I skidded away. “I am the avatar of a Goddess, dark and terrifying, the Hand of Eris. You should all be scared.”

I stood up, not entirely certain what was broken or bruised. “It doesn’t need to go like this Jacob. I can help you.”

“Help?” He laughed. “Help me? Poor pathetic mortal, all the luck in the world is on my side. Last chance–where is she?”

I had a hand in each pocket, one on my chaos blade, the other on Frank Sinatra’s dice. I had been blasted twice and still didn’t have a great plan.

“Shield spell. Egg it up, but mean it for once.”

I took his meaning and focused my aura into an eggshell around me. It was the first spell I ever learned. It worked great against minor curses or evil eyes. A little under par for lightning bolts, though.

Jacob took my casting as an attack and responded in kind. The lightning bolt hit dead center. It should have killed me, but I could feel Yog Soggoth channeling into my aura defense. The suits were going for their guns, waiting for my transformation. I was sure of it. I needed to end this. Jacob looked startled that I had withstood the blast, but wasted little time in pulling both of his arms back wide. I wasn’t going to like what happened if he put them together, pointed at me like a double-barreled lightning gun.

“Luck of an ancient goddess is one thing.” I pulled the dice and hurled them at him. “Let’s see how well Eris plays in Vegas.”

Jacob’s hands clapped down together in assault. They closed squarely on top of the thrown relic dice. The resulting bang was the loudest so far, but it was Jacob, not me, and not the casino, that suffered the blow. The concussive force threw him back into the glass walls of the Nobu bar. Then it blew him through those walls, wrecking one of my hangouts. I tried not to think about how much collateral damage we were doing. Valente would foot the bill, right?

The Jacob who pulled himself up out of the wreckage, mercifully not to his floating position, looked different. He was equally pissed, but I seemed to have knocked him down a power level. He growled a threat I couldn’t hear. I did see the flash of neon blue, then acid-trip yellow, as a blade sprouted out to full scimitar length in his hand.

I had seen the damage a chaos blade inflicted and had no desire to suffer it myself. I pulled mine and shaped it into a katana with a thought. Now I just had to hope my practice with V paid off.

“And no assassins open fire. Duck back into the elevator bank. I’ll take over and we’ll end this.”

“I’ve got this. I hope.”

Jacob swung wildly as he charged in. I could have ended it, one swift stab. I didn’t want to melt him, or petrify him, or whatever “extra” thing my chaos blade would have done. I stepped back, parried him out wider.

“We don’t need to do this, Jacob,” I said. “Just put your blade away and I’ll take you to her.”

His brown scimitar became a sky-blue-laced-with-clouds hand axe as he reversed and swung. I stepped back, but he extended it further, longer, sparking off the zipper of my leather jacket. I made a few quick swipes with my katana to force him back on the defense. His anger and size made him strong, but I made use of my training.

“You just want her for yourself. You’re jealous. You’re all jealous.” Tears of rage flowed from his eyes.

“It’s not like that, Jacob. I’m just here to stop you from cheating the casinos. I promise: no interest in Lily.”

Our blades locked for a moment and we were eye to eye. His were a deep hazel, flecked with gold and ruby. Something about that look stunned me. I had seen those eyes before, knew them from somewhere. The gaze stopped him as well. We knew each other, though I’d be damned if I knew where from. He stepped back, and for a moment, I saw sanity and reason in his face.

It lasted only that moment. He twitched, as if his nerves were being tugged by some unseen internal force. His eyelids fluttered, then opened, filled with a fiery light, as if he was filled with magma.

“Crap. Avatar and a pact host? Eggshell again. NOW!”

Jacob spoke in a deep tongue, a language not spoken on Earth in millennia. “You will not stand against me, abomination!” Powerful waves of magic flowed off of him in a tide stinking of sulfur and rotted flesh.

That was when the ruins of the casino floor began to rattle with gunfire from every corner.