Billy’s cheeks suddenly reddened. “I was talking about planning. I—I’m not that big on planning myself,” he stammered. “I wasn’t suggesting anything else.…”
“Stop talking now,” the Shadow commanded with a grin.
12.
Billy felt the familiar rush of excitement as he pulled the car into the empty parking lot beneath the unopened casino. Black Hawk had once told him that one of the great dangers of immortality was boredom. Immortals didn’t need to be cautious or careful. Wounds would heal; bones would mend. As they aged, some immortals sought out more and more dangerous or challenging experiences simply to remember what it felt to be human again. Billy had laughed; he’d always been that way—he needed excitement. He loved this feeling, the buzz at the base of his stomach, the tightness across his chest, the tingling in his fingertips. It had been a long time since he’d experienced it so strongly.
He turned off the car and the couple sat in silence, listening to the engine tick softly. Finally, he shifted in the seat and looked at the Shadow. She seemed unconcerned. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said, surprised. “Why?”
“The Crow Goddess said you could die.”
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, that isn’t really a threat anymore. I’ve done just about everything I’ve ever wanted to do, and a lot that I haven’t as well. I’ve lived a full life, with few regrets. This is a good day to die.”
“Well, I don’t fancy dying today, if you don’t mind.”
“Then you should drive on,” the Shadow said matter-of-factly. “Stay here with me and there’s a very real possibility that you will be killed. And probably eaten, too,” she added, pushing open the car door and climbing out. She twisted her body from side to side, stretching. “Pop the trunk.”
Billy climbed out and opened the trunk. The cloying tang of cacao beans wafted out. Scathach unwrapped the pithos and tossed the bag to the side. She ran her fingers over the jar and the curling text shifted and twisted under her touch. Then she brought the jar to her ear and shook it.
“I thought I heard voices inside,” Billy said.
“You did.”
“Little People?”
Scathach grinned. “No. Worse. Much worse.” She returned the jar to the trunk. “I’ve got a feeling that Quetzalcoatl conveniently surrendering the jar and this call to Vegas may not be unconnected.”
“How do you reckon that?”
“The Morrigan. You said you had seen her with the Feathered Serpent.…”
Billy nodded. “More than once.”
“And she is inextricably entwined with the story of my … friend.” Scathach returned the pithos to the trunk. “When this is over, perhaps I’ll visit your Elder master.”
“He wouldn’t like that.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
“I’d probably have to fight you,” Billy said.
“And I wouldn’t like that,” Scathach said.
“Me neither.” Billy watched the Shadow unzip the bag of weapons she’d packed and begin to sort through the metal and wood. When he’d first seen her standing in the doorway of the dojo, he’d thought she looked like a girl, but now he realized he was looking at a warrior. Scathach was dressed in black combat trousers, a short-sleeved black T-shirt and steel-toed combat boots. She strapped two short swords onto her back, with the hilts protruding over each shoulder, added a handful of shuriken—throwing stars—to a pouch on her belt and attached a second nunchaku to her hip, making a matching set. She coiled what looked like a long black metal jump rope around her waist. Billy had never seen anything like it before.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Manrikigusari. A Japanese throwing chain.”
“Man-ri-ki-gus-ari.” Billy struggled to pronounce the word.
“It means ‘the strength of a thousand men.’ ” In a flash, Scathach pulled the six-foot length of chain off her waist and sent it hissing through the air. It snapped around a concrete pillar, the two heavy heads at either end cracking into the cement, biting out huge chunks. “I can also use it as a whip,” she said as she went to retrieve the chain. “I’m betting you have a pair of six-guns, maybe Colts, and probably a Winchester rifle.” When she turned around, Billy the Kid was holding a simple black police baton with a side handle.
The Kid’s face was a solemn mask. “I haven’t touched a gun in a long time,” he said quietly. “They never brought me anything but misery while I lived.”
Scathach nodded at the baton. “A tonfa. You’re full of surprises, Mr. Bonney.” She wrapped the chain around her waist again. “Do you know how to use that?”
Billy flowed into a defensive pose, right hand outstretched, left hand clutching the baton by the protruding side handle, the black stick stretching the length of his forearm. “Oh, I know how to use it. My friend Black Hawk runs one of the biggest security firms in the Bay Area. I help him out when he’s short-staffed. Concert security is the best; I get to see a lot of great shows for free. The Rolling Stones are coming to SBC Park in a couple of weeks for two shows,” he added, excited. “I’ll be at both of them.”
“If you survive tonight.”
“I’ll survive,” Billy said confidently.
“Full of surprises,” Scathach repeated, shaking her head. She clapped him on the shoulder. “If—and it is a very big if—we both survive this, come and visit me at the dojo. Maybe I could train you to use a matched pair of tonfa,” she added lightly.
“I’d like that,” Billy said. Then his face fell. “But …”
“But?”
“I’m not sure Quetzalcoatl would. I don’t think he likes you very much.”
“So don’t tell him. You’re his servant, not his slave. And let me give you a piece of advice: never admit to anyone—Elder, Next Generation or immortal human—that you know me. I’ve made a lot of enemies over the millennia.”
“I can do that. Never met you. Never heard of you.” He smiled.
They walked across the garage toward the escalators and stairs. “Would you have a problem being trained by a woman?” Scathach asked.
Billy laughed. “Oh, I’ve learned a lot from women. You should have met my ma. Now, there was a fighter.…”
13.
Unseen, deadly and eternally hungry, vampyres controlled Vegas.
The first vampyres arrived when gambling was legalized in the 1930s, quickly realizing that the town would attract countless transients and tourists. It was a city where the nights were as busy as the days, and within the constantly shifting population, the vampyres could remain invisible. Over the years, more and more of the blood-drinking clan, and their close kin, the cucubuths, had made their way to the city. Most worked in the hotels and casinos; others found employment in the spectacular shows; a few were police officers, working the night shift.
And for the first time in a millennium, they owed allegiance to a single figure who was not one of their own, neither vampyre nor cucubuth, but an immortal human. Setanta.
The young-looking man moved around the empty penthouse, checking the traps, making sure his cache of weapons were in their positions. He had changed out of his elegant black suit into an outfit that almost matched Scathach’s: black trousers, black vest and high-topped steel-toed combat boots. He had no doubt that the Shadow would reach this room. The cucubuths were good, the vampyres even better, but no one was as good as the Shadow.
Except him. She had trained him. He knew her secrets.
Setanta had spent a thousand years—ever since he had returned to the Earth Shadowrealm—looking for the Shadow. He’d come close on a few occasions, but she had always eluded him. There were rumors of a young red-haired girl on the fringes of every major world conflict. He had learned that she was in contact with the Flamels, but he’d never been tempted to go in search of them or to offer a reward for information about them. Everyone knew that John Dee was hunting the Alchemyst and his wife. And even Setanta, with his deadly cucubu
th guards and vampyre allies, did not want to cross the dangerous Dr. John Dee. Everyone knew that Dee was quite, quite mad.
And then, entirely unexpectedly, he’d received a call from an Elder he’d never heard of before: Quetzalcoatl. Setanta was stunned that the Elder even knew who he was, but he was even more astonished when the gravel-voiced creature had revealed that he knew Scathach’s whereabouts.
Setanta had traveled the world in search of the woman, and for the last few years, she’d been little more than five hundred miles away, in San Francisco.
Setanta had immediately put in place a plan for vengeance, a plan to lure Scathach to Vegas and her doom. And Quetzalcoatl had been more than willing to help.
A flicker in the half-light made him turn. The huge crowlike creature perched on the railing of the balcony outside his window shifted into the Morrigan. She pulled open the sliding door and stepped inside. “They’re here.”
“So it begins.” Setanta rubbed his calloused hands together. “So it ends. Finally,” he breathed.
14.
The elevator door pinged open and Billy the Kid stepped out into an empty glass and marble lobby. The air smelled of sawdust and fresh paint, and all the furniture was covered in thick plastic sheets.
Billy looked around, mouth agape, as awestruck as any tourist confronted with the gaudy excess of Las Vegas. There was gold everywhere: an enormous gold-plated fountain dominated the center of the lobby, all the supporting columns were painted with gold leaf, and a spectacularly complex fresco depicting a man he thought might be King Midas took up an entire wall. There were a dozen golden statues of armored women scattered around the room, each one complete with a golden sword or spear. Even the mirror-glossy marble floor was a warm golden color. “Very shiny,” he murmured. He wondered if the gold was real, and then, remembering that this was Vegas, decided that it probably was.
Billy was striding across the floor when the first of the vampyres appeared. They were all women, pale-skinned, dark-eyed, pointy-toothed. He counted six of them, and he had a feeling that there was at least one more behind him, but he wasn’t going to look. They were dressed in an assortment of clothes: smart suits and croupier’s uniforms, store clerk’s smocks—there was even one in an exotic fish-skin circus costume. Billy’s first reaction was one of relief—none of them were armed—but then he looked at their hands and saw the length of their nails.
“I thought there would be more of you,” he said lightly, stepping over to position himself with his back to a wall. Although he’d sworn off guns a lifetime ago, he quite liked the idea of having a gun now, something big and ugly with lots of barrels. He tightened his grip on the tonfa.
He could handle seven.
“Oh, but there are more,” one of the creatures said. She was shorter than the others, a small but powerfully built woman wearing a blue security guard’s uniform. Four more women and two men stepped out from behind the gold pillars.
“Thirteen.” He thought he might be able to handle thirteen.
There was a commotion on the stairs and three hulking cucubuths in wolf form appeared. The biggest one licked its lips.
“Sixteen.” Thirteen vampyres and three cucubuths … that might be a stretch. “Are you going to turn me into a vampyre?” Billy asked.
“We’re not that type of vampyre,” the creature answered. They all chuckled, the sound liquid and ugly.
“What sort are you?”
“The flesh-eating kind.”
“I’ll give you indigestion,” Billy muttered.
“Where is the Shadow?” the vampyre demanded.
“She’ll be right along,” he said vaguely. “Any minute now.”
“She will find us feasting on your bones!” the creature screamed, and launched herself at Billy, mouth gaping, teeth bared.
15.
Scathach had decided to get to the penthouse from the outside. The building was only fifty stories high, and she guessed there would be vampyres on every floor and probably cucubuths in the stairwells. Fighting her way up from the inside would be tedious and exhausting; climbing was the safest way to the top. The facade was decorated with a vaguely Celtic motif—intricate swirls and waves, leaf-shaped patterns that almost resembled shamrocks, and etched lines that Scathach thought looked remarkably like Ogham, the ancient writing of Ireland, were carved into its surface.
She used the manrikigusari chain like a lasso, wrapping it around the railing of the first-floor balcony and hauling herself up. She scaled the building quickly, finding finger- and footholds in the decorations and patterns. Halfway up she glanced over her head: the sky had lightened and was beginning to fade to purple. It would soon be dawn and the sun would quickly rise, and then it would only be a matter of time before someone spotted her and called the police.
She pressed on. Clambering over a Celtic spiral, she lost her footing—steel-toed boots had never been intended for climbing—and she lashed out with the manrikigusari, snagging the balcony railings above her in the last instant before she lost her grip completely. The chain rattled and then caught, and Scathach swung gently against the side of the building, holding on with one hand. She pulled herself up the chain and dropped onto the balcony, then looked down. She’d climbed about twenty floors. Only another thirty to go.
The door from the balcony into the suite was open and Scathach slipped inside, tracking black boot prints across the white carpet. The entire suite was probably bigger than her dojo, she realized; the bed alone was about the same size as her entire apartment. And did anyone really need six huge televisions in their room? Pressing the side of her face against the door, she closed her eyes and listened. Below, far below, her acute hearing picked up the noise of a commotion, and she grinned. That meant that Billy was still alive and fighting. She liked him; he reminded her of Joan of Arc.
Focusing, she turned to the corridor outside. Nothing. She was guessing the guards on the lower floors had been called down to deal with the Kid. There would be guards on the upper floors, but she could cope with them.
Pulling open the door, she found herself staring into the jaws of a huge, hairy, yellow-eyed cucubuth. He was cleaning his claws with a dagger as long as her arm. “Ska-tog,” he squeaked.
The Shadow’s right hand shot forward and up, the heel of her palm catching the cucubuth under the jaw. His teeth clicked together and his head snapped back. The force of the blow lifted the cucubuth’s feet off the floor; he was unconscious before he hit the thick carpet. Scathach stepped over the body, shaking her head. She must be losing it; she hadn’t even smelled the creature. And then she stopped and returned to the beast and bent low, nostrils flaring. Scathach blinked in surprise. A cucubuth who showered; now, there was a first.
16.
“You wouldn’t hit a woman, would you?” the vampyre snarled, landing on her feet directly in front of Billy the Kid.
He smiled. “You’re right. I wouldn’t.” He whipped his wrist and the tonfa spun around on its short handle. He snapped it out and struck the creature on the side of the head. “You’re not a woman.”
They swarmed him then, hissing and snarling like cats, long nails clawing, razor-sharp teeth snapping at him. Billy was fast, always had been. Speed had kept him alive in the Old West, and the past century had only honed his skills. The tonfa blurred about him as he turned, the heavy polycarbonate baton striking and blocking, while his right hand punched, shoved, slapped and chopped. He kept moving, moving, moving. One of the first lessons he’d learned from an old gunfighter was never to present a still target.
A dozen more vampyres swarmed into the building. There were so many of the vampyres that they got in each other’s way in their eagerness to reach him. A male vampyre in hospital scrubs struck out at him. Billy ducked and the creature’s talons scored long gouges in the wall over his head. He cracked the tonfa into the vampyre’s kneecap and the creature fell to the ground, howling. He turned, and another leapt onto his back, nails tearing at his chest, teeth dangerously
close to his throat. Billy reached behind him and rammed the handle of the black stick into its mouth and then lunged backward, slamming the creature into a wall. Two of the cucubuths lumbered toward him, shoving the vampyres aside. They were enormous beasts, with the bodies of wolves but the heads and hands of men. Billy rapped the tonfa on the skull of the nearer one. His weapon bounced away.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” the cucubuth growled.
Billy spun, gripped one of the ornate golden statues and used all his weight to push it at the creature. The heavy stone likeness of a Greek goddess carrying a bow shivered on its pedestal and then toppled toward the cucubuth, which simply reached up and caught it in both hands. “You’ll have to do better than that, too,” the creature growled.
“Will this do?” Billy lifted a foot and stamped—hard—on the cucubuth’s bare toes. The creature bellowed and released its grip on the statue, which thumped onto its head, knocking it to the floor.
The second monster leapt at him. Billy sidestepped at the last moment and the beast crashed headfirst into the gold mural of King Midas. The cucubuth staggered back, flakes of gold paint stuck to its forehead, and Billy swung his stick, connecting with the base of the cucubuth’s skull.
The room was littered with groaning and injured vampyres. He had hurt more than a dozen, but there were at least twice that number remaining. And Billy was starting to tire. The creatures were strong and fast, and his shirt and jeans were in shreds from their nails. He was bleeding from a score of scrapes and cuts, and his tonfa was scored with deep claw marks. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could last.
The vampyres circled Billy warily. He knew that if they all rushed him at once, it would be over. But the best form of defense, he’d been told, was offense. With a scream of defiance, he launched himself at the nearest vampyre, a huge man in a casino security officer’s uniform. Billy swung the black tonfa up, but the creature blocked it with his own baton, twisted, and sent the immortal’s weapon spinning from his hand. The vampyre wrapped a clawed hand around Billy’s throat and squeezed, but the Kid brought both hands in a ringing clap over the creature’s ears. It hissed and staggered back and Billy wrenched the vampyre’s stick from its hands. “I’ll take that. Thank you kindly.…”