Moonlight Dragon Collection: Urban Fantasy Read online

  "I've made my mistake. I will never make it again," Orlaton murmured.

  His cheeks were white. His shoulders had hunched. As I looked at him, dread crawled up my spine like a spider. There had been horror in his voice. A wretched sort of anguish. Anguish still bound up in fear.

  I looked at the chest again. It didn't look so simple anymore. Now it looked like someone's nightmare.

  "What's inside it?" I asked, reluctant to hear the answer.

  His eyes shimmered behind their lenses. "Do you really want to know?"

  Orlaton had taken this somewhere darker than I'd intended this conversation to go. I wanted to back away from the haunted knowledge in his eyes even as a part of me wanted to defend him. Orlaton was no wounded bird, but something in that trunk had hurt him. Badly. I couldn't begin to imagine how terrible—how wickedly devious—it must have been to have slipped beneath his guard.

  I couldn't begin to imagine what it had done to him before he had managed to stop it.

  "I suggest you don't do what I did," he warned in a voice that trembled. He aimed a meaningful look at the gargoyle statue. "Some magicks...linger. Some magicks destroy you when you least expect them to."

  "I'll get help," I promised him. A name came to mind, one I hadn't thought of in years.

  His mouth thinned into the smile of a ghost. "I'd wish you luck, but it won't help you."

  Chapter 4

  I stood in the bloody bathroom and stared at the woman beside me. She was older than me by at least a decade but still beautiful. Her hair was as dark as mine but hung in beautiful ringlets around her heart-shaped face. She smiled at me, but I couldn't smile back. She had no eyes. They'd been gouged out.

  I didn't know if she was the ghost of someone who had once lived in this house—which was doubtful since Vegas hadn't been around that long and this house couldn't have held the hundreds of spirits I'd seen reflected in this mirror over the years—or if she was a creation of the curse, an amalgam of images that the curse thought I would find horrific. I did find her horrific, but also saddening. When the curse did things like this I felt alienated, as if I were homeless and crashing each night on a different person's sofa...and they resented me for it.

  Uncle James had gone missing just over two years ago. He'd become my world when I was four, after my parents were killed when they drove off a cliff in Utah. It was he who'd entertained me with dancing dolls that I hadn't known at the time were moving because of his magick. It was he who'd explained why I won so many stuffed animals from the carnival games at Circus Circus: I was using sorcery to improve my odds. He soon stopped me from doing that, of course, since the Oddsmakers would have frowned upon it even if it was a child doing the manipulation, but it was he who taught me what it meant to be descended from dragons.

  Out in the Valley of Fire, just outside of Vegas, I created blobs of glass and obliterated rock formations as I struggled to get a handle on Lucky. It was Uncle James who'd sat me down as the sun cast a red glow over the Indian petroglyphs and warned me how careful I needed to be when I walked the line between using my sorcery and succumbing to it. He and I had gasped together as I made Lucky form a giant dust devil. As red sandstone spiraled into the sky like a blooming desert poppy, Uncle James made me promise to always view my sorcery as a gift that needed to be tended carefully. Wisely. For the most part, I was able to keep that promise. But maybe he'd anticipated that I would break it, and that was why he'd left.

  Moonlight Pawn had been Uncle James' baby, his only interest outside of me. Knowing that, I couldn't turn it over to someone else when I didn't know when or if he'd come back. But the shop felt like a shackle. It contributed to a sense that something was wrong with my life, though I didn't know what. Did I need a career? A family? Was it time to get a pet goldfish?

  Or was it fear that was gnawing at my gut? Fear of another demon...

  As I continued looking at this eyeless woman in the bathroom mirror, I fantasized about walking away from all things magickal, away from everything horrifying and unmentionable. Too bad the concept was so alien to me that I could barely imagine leaving Las Vegas. I was trapped here with the good and the bad, so I'd better make the best of it.

  "If I could," I told the woman in the mirror, "I would sell you some seriously kickass sunglasses."

  The light coming through the back sliding glass doors was orange-red and edging into purple as night descended, signaling it was time to get a move on. First, though, I took a look around inside Moonlight.

  Before we left him at Tomes, Orlaton had reluctantly given me a suggestion on how to strengthen my wards. I'd tried it out before lying down for a nap.

  Normally when I took a nap I was down for the count, but for some reason I'd woken up. I'd lain there, convinced I'd felt the magickal twang that accompanied someone trying to breach the wards. But the sensation hadn't repeated itself and I'd gone back to sleep, telling myself it must have been part of a dream.

  Looking around now, I agreed with my sleepy assessment. Nothing appeared to be disturbed within the shop.

  "Be careful about growing paranoid, Anne," I said to myself. "Only half the world is out to get you."

  The woman who might be able to help me get the information Orlaton wanted had a day job. She wouldn't be available to me until six, which was coming up soon. Good timing, since the gargoyle was as useful as a doorstop until the sun went down.

  I'd placed the statue back in the box and weighted it down again while I slept. I left the Open sign dark as I walked to the box and squatted before it. Gargoyles weren't like puppies, apparently: they didn't whine and scratch to indicate they wanted to be set free. If the gargoyle had transformed, it was sitting beneath the box obediently. Perhaps waiting for my attention.

  Perhaps waiting to tear my throat out.

  Just in case, I called out Lucky.

  He hovered over my shoulder as I lifted the box. The gargoyle crouched and hissed at us.

  "Not good," I muttered as I hastily backtracked across the shop floor.

  Just wait.

  It was Hopeless. His voice sounded warm and soothing in my mind, not like the bitchy screeching of the cameos. Would his real voice sound the same? Would I ever hear it?

  Lucky and I watched warily as the gargoyle spat and clawed the floor like a bull preparing to charge. Its wings were extended to either side, I guess to make it look larger and more threatening, not that it was necessary after the bulging muscles and the vicious fangs. But maybe even gargoyles could feel inadequate at times.

  As I watched, it shuddered and strained its head to one side in apparent distress. It clawed the floor a few more times and then it abruptly sat upright and folded its wings against its back.

  Its bright topaz eyes blinked at me. It wasn't exactly cute, but I no longer feared for my life.

  "Hello?"

  I've controlled it for now.

  I tucked a strand of hair behind my ears. I felt a tad foolish to be talking to the thing, because in the back of my mind lingered the suspicion the demon wasn't really gone and was just fucking with me. Or, as Orlaton had warned, Hopeless wasn't all that he appeared to be, which at this point was simply, well, hopeless.

  "My name is Anne," I told the thing. "Anne Moody. I run this shop."

  Anne...Moody...

  He dragged it out, like he was tasting the name. It made me shiver a little and then want to smack myself in the face for acting like such an idiot. A demon liked to taste Names, too. Right before they ate it along with your soul and a nice Chianti.

  "Who are you?" I asked. "No wait! Hold on."

  I reached over and snagged the Chinese magick mirror from the low shelf where I'd placed it in anticipation of this. I held it up, wanting to see the expression on Hopeless' face in case I would be able to tell if he lied to me.

  As the mirror brought up his image, I felt my heart beat a little faster. It wasn't that he was attractive. I'd seen plenty of hot guys in Las Vegas and for the most part a good-looking guy
indicated to me that he was probably self-absorbed and too high maintenance. It was the impression I'd gotten from Christian.

  My interest in this particular guy had little to do with his looks. There was something about his steady but subdued gaze, his stubborn-looking chin, and his quiet intensity that intrigued me. Gargoyles were ancient, which meant that this guy had been around and seen everything. I could sense that through the mirror: he possessed a sense of gravitas and appreciation for what was truly important in life. This guy was the absolute opposite of shallow.

  My name is Vale Morgan.

  "Vale is a cool name," I said.

  I smiled, just to see if he'd respond. He only stared back with his dark eyes which had the peculiar ability to make me sit up taller and try to appear just a little bit more sophisticated.

  "I took you to see my friend who's sort of an expert on demons and the occult," I told him. "His name's Orlaton. He said gargoyles typically possess the hearts of demons..."

  Vale said nothing, but I noticed that he tightened his grip around his knees, very slightly.

  "He says most of them are dangerous," I continued, still fishing.

  Aren't you dangerous, Moody?

  I startled, not just at him calling me by my last name, but at the question.

  I eyed him warily. "What are you talking about?"

  One corner of his mouth curled. You're descended from dragons. Your familiar is a dragon. Sorcerers like you were once magickally castrated for being too aggressive and too ambitious. Your kind views other magickal beings as prey.

  "Maybe a thousand years ago," I retorted. I heard the anger in my voice, the bitterness, but I couldn't do anything to stop myself. "My family and I have never hurt anyone with our dragons."

  How would you know?

  My mouth moved, but nothing came out.

  Was your parents' death really an accident? Or was it an act of revenge for something they'd done?

  I stared at him, shocked more at what he was implying than at the fact that he knew my parents were dead.

  "Screw you."

  I chucked the mirror onto the shelf again. I didn't care if it broke. In fact, I would have been better off if it had. I jumped to my feet and reached for the box.

  Wait, Moody.

  "Sorry. Can't think of a reason why I should."

  I apologize if I've hurt you.

  "You can't hurt me," I bit out. "You're just a statue. Pretty soon you won't even be that when the demon eats you."

  I felt bad as soon as I said it. No matter what he'd said to hurt me he didn't deserve the fate he faced if I turned my back on him.

  Moody, I'm sorry.

  "I'm fine."

  You're not."

  I sighed.

  "Moody, I need you to not hate me.

  "Hate you?" My brows rose in surprise. "I couldn't hate you."

  Growing up, I'd always detested bullies, probably because I'd been a frequent target of them. Using my magickal heritage against me as Vale had done was no different than someone pulling their eyes sideways and calling me a Slant Eye. But he'd had his reason, just as those kids had had theirs. Hopefully his was one I could understand.

  "I don't know how you know about my parents, but you know nothing about what kinds of people they were," I told him. "You know nothing about me either. So maybe you shouldn't be so quick to judge."

  Moody, I'm sorry. I'm under stress, but that's no excuse. I shouldn't have said those things to you.

  "No," I breathed as I stared sightlessly into the darkness of the shop, hoping he would give me what I wanted from him, "you shouldn't have."

  Lucky hovered, a faint streak of gold in the corner of my vision. I sent him away, not because I was ashamed of him, or of me, but because this was a battle I didn't need him for.

  Finally:

  I don't know how much longer I can keep the demon at bay. Please help me. I'm...worried that I'm not strong enough to do it on my own.

  There it was. I understood fear even if what I'd felt wasn't the same tenor that Vale was experiencing now. I knew the fear caused by abandonment, the fear that arose from being different. Another downside to being picked on by bullies was that you became empathetic and you yearned to help those who couldn't help themselves. You hated seeing someone be afraid.

  Vale knew exactly how to tear down my defenses, yet I didn't resent him for it. I liked him more for being honest, especially with him being an ancient gargoyle that probably rarely had to ask for help with anything.

  I looked down at the gargoyle. It blinked up at me. Its lizard-like tail swept the floor and formed a little curl. Again, not cute at all. Not much.

  "Do you know how this happened to you? Or who did it?" I asked.

  I wasn't conscious at the time. I wish I could tell you more.

  "Are you...in pain?"

  I'm not. Thank you for asking, Moody.

  I shrugged it off. "I don't know what you're going through. I'm trying to figure it out, though, so I can help you."

  If anyone can help me, I believe it is you.

  That caught my interest. "Why me?"

  Dragon sorcerers are powerful. Whatever happened to me won't be easy to reverse. Believe me, Moody, when I say that I'm grateful to be in your care.

  "Now you're just blowing sunshine," I muttered, but I was pleased. Hell, I felt special, even if Vale was feeding me nothing but lines. On that note, just in case—

  "Give me your word that you aren't evil."

  It was a ridiculous demand. Vale would say whatever I wanted him to. But when he said, I promise you, Moody, I believed him.

  "I've got a plan," I told him. "No guarantees that it'll work, but I think it's worth a shot."

  I trust you.

  I grabbed a large pet carrier from off the shelves and dropped it on the floor. "It'll be a little cramped, but it's the best I can offer."

  The gargoyle crawled in tentatively and allowed me to shut and lock the door.

  "Holy moly, you weigh a ton," I grunted as I lifted the thing. "I liked you better when you were stone."

  But I regretted saying it even though Vale remained silent. I pictured him crouched within the gargoyle: trapped in stone, trapped with a demon. A memory of horror shivered through me. I crossed my fingers and hoped that I could be the sorceress he needed me to be.

  ~~~~~

  "Orlaton is like the Mozart of occultists," Melanie said as she parked her car in the lot of a strip mall on Industrial Road. "He's a child genius who's probably going to be eaten by a demon. But you know what? I think he's got a crush on you. Can you believe it?"

  "I think I'd rather date my fridge demon." I popped my seatbelt and twisted around to look back at the pet carrier. A pair of topaz eyes peered back at me through the door. "Alright back there? We're here."

  I'm fine.

  "Oh, yes, you are," Melanie murmured beneath her breath before breaking into giggles.

  I rolled my eyes. "Behave." But when I thought Vale wasn't looking I winked at her.

  Melanie cleared her throat and acted serious. "So tell me about this friend of yours. Why do we have to meet her in an alley behind a strip club? This feels so shady. I love it!"

  "It's because she's a stripper. Well, I think they prefer to be called exotic dancers, actually."

  "Seriously, she is? That's so awesome!" Melanie tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I've thought about stripping—I mean dancing. What an easy way to make a fortune, huh? People throwing money at you—who wouldn't want that?"

  "Especially if you're a succubus like Liliana." I shouldn't admire her, but she really had a racket going and who couldn't appreciate an enterprising woman? "Not only does she absorb the sexual energy from men, she makes them pay her for the privilege. It's genius."

  "Suddenly all my monkey can think about is how fun it would be to swing on that pole." Melanie was wide-eyed at the prospect. "I have the feeling if I got up on stage they might not be able to pull me off it!"

  The mental image
of Melanie in her monkey form, swinging on a stripper pole, was awesome. It reminded me of the time she'd revealed her shifter form to me. It had been about a week after we'd met, when she'd sold me a mango cake with lime buttercream frosting.

  "The lime frosting is good, but you really need to make it spicy to make it awesome," she'd told me with authority after handing me the small cake from behind the service counter of Todos Tortas.

  "What does that mean?" I'd asked, trying to be polite and listen to her and not just shove the entire cake in my mouth like I wanted to.

  "You should sprinkle some Tabasco or Tapatio sauce on it."

  I flinched. "On a cake?"

  "What, you don't like different stuff? Out of the normal?"

  I could sense she was talking about more than the cake. Magickal beings could cruise other magickal beings the way gay guys cruised each other in clubs. There were certain phrases and a look...you just knew something was up.

  "I love all that stuff," I told her.

  She studied my face for a long moment. "You want to see something funny?"

  Here we go, I thought.

  No sooner had I nodded than she'd vanished, seemingly into thin air. I'd been on the verge of jumping into the truck to see if she'd fainted when a monkey jumped up onto the counter and begun dancing some crazy monkey dance. I'd been so surprised I'd tossed my mango cake over my head. Her amused chatter had made me laugh at myself, too.

  I'd still made her replace the cake, though.

  "You'd better sign up for one of those pole dancing exercise classes and see if you're any good," I said in the car.

  "Oh, Anne, we both should!"

  Melanie's excitement was infectious, but we really were there for a reason, not just to fantasize about our future careers as strippers. After I dragged the pet carrier out of the backseat, she and I made our way across the lot, keeping beneath the street lamps as much as possible.

  Industrial Road wasn't exactly shady, but when you had a bunch of strip joints and liquor stores lined up along a road, you tended to attract a certain kind of loiterer. I didn't call Lucky just yet, preferring to be optimistic, but I kept my eye on the scattered groups of men who were either urinating as a team or dealing and purchasing drugs.