“Yeah.” Maybe it wasn’t Fallerstein, then. A lot of things used in occult rituals smelled bitter or strange. Especially things used when dealing with demons: summoning them, controlling or imprisoning them, banishing them. Point was, if Theodore’s murder had been a ritual killing, that was a problem, since the Vegas Families weren’t supposed to engage in magics of that type. Almost everything else was okay, but hands-on rituals to cause deaths in other Families were off-limits; that agreement had been made forty years or so before, and Speare had never heard of anyone violating it. “Is there some way I can get a look at it? In person.”
Majowski thought for a moment. “Maybe. I might be able to pull the evidence bag and bring it out to show you. I don’t know about opening it, though. Chain of custody and all.”
Speare tried not to laugh. “Do you think this is ever going to make it to a trial?”
“Oh. Right. I guess it doesn’t matter much.”
“Wait a minute.” Something else caught Speare’s eye, something that made the beast in his head shiver in a way that was half-pleasant, half-unpleasant. A way that reminded him the thing was there, as if he could ever forget. It recognized that mark. It felt it, even thirdhand, printed on paper. He held up the photo, angled so Majowski could see what he meant. “This mark. Was this fresh?”
Majowski looked but obviously didn’t see what Speare saw—well, of course he didn’t; he was normal. “I dunno. We won’t have a cause of death until the autopsy, like I said, but—”
“Was this mark fresh? Did it smell of anything—did you notice anything odd? Other than the missing arm, I don’t see any other marks on him. Were there any?”
The mark on the back of Theodore’s neck, a tiny, almost invisible little black squiggle like a fancy bracket on a keyboard, didn’t look like much at all, Speare knew. But if he was right about what it was…if he was right, they had a hell of a lot more to worry about than one death. Literally, a hell of a lot more.
“Back off, Speare.” Majowski’s hand slid down to rest on his holster. “You’ve always been decent to me, and Doretti wants me to help you out so I will. But I know your reputation just as well as I knew Theodore’s, and I’m not becoming a casualty.”
Shit, he hadn’t realized he was leaning in so close, looming quite so…well, loomingly. He sat back in his seat and lifted his palms in what looked like a shrug but which they both knew was him letting Majowski see his hands. “I could tear that gun out of your hand and shoot you with it before you had a chance to stop me, you know.”
“You could try.” Majowski’s smile was friendly, and if it wasn’t as warm as it had been before, it was warm enough to show that he knew he hadn’t just been threatened. Speare liked him even better for that. Not every situation like the one they were in ended with everybody getting to keep their dignity.
“Anyway.” He held up the picture again. “Did you see this mark? Did you notice anything about it?”
“It wasn’t blistered,” Majowski said. “So it happened at the time of death, or immediately after. Burned into his skin, like a brand. Doesn’t look like a brand, though. Why?”
“It’s not a brand.” Shit. It was even worse than he’d worried it would be. “It was a demon-sword. Somebody got hold of a demon-sword, and they used it to kill Theodore.”
—
Vegas was not one of those “nothing starts until midnight” cities. That was one of the things he loved about it. Anytime, day or night, he could head for the Strip—or, usually, the areas just outside of it—and find something to do. And people to do it with. It was the closest a man with a problem like his would ever get to heaven.
Speaking of the problem…a slight tremor rolled down his spine. Just a twitch, really, not even big enough to count as a shudder, but big enough to serve as a warning. Lying and a little gluttony hadn’t been enough to hold him—to hold the thing inside him, anyway—for long. He could feel it coiled in the back of his head, waiting, getting hungry. Funny how something that lived in his head could be such a pain in his ass.
Theodore had last been seen alive around two thirty in the morning at Fortuna’s Wheel, a dive bar that catered to the occult and criminal underworlds, which had a considerable amount of overlap. It was a damned good place to find sins of all kinds; Speare had ended more than a few nights by stumbling out of the place with a woman on his arm or some black-market goods in his car. Or both. The beast inside him wasn’t picky about the type of sin he had to commit to keep it quiet, as long as it was sin.
Which was another reason he loved living in Vegas. Sin was everywhere he looked; it filled the air with its rich, spicy fragrance and covered everything with an aura of shiny greeny-gold. The city’s blood was thick with it, like plasma, and it pumped through every building, every street, every single person crowding together under the lights. They glowed with avarice and envy, with gluttony and lust and vanity. Just being near them all made the beast in his head awaken further, and he hated how much its excitement became his. How they felt it together. And how good that felt.
It still didn’t quite dim his pleasure in the Strip, but perhaps that was because he needed that pleasure. A demon-sword. His blood would have run cold if it had been able to. Was some psycho running around brandishing an underworld weapon without realizing its true power, or was someone deliberately harnessing that power, or what? Neither was a good option.
But at least it gave him some kind of lead, which was why he made a left onto Sahara and kept going until he reached the Sweethearts Delight Midnight Chapel.
What a shithole it was. Every time he parked in the patch of broken pavement and leggy weeds that sat directly in front of the squat box of flaky tan stucco, he wondered why Felix didn’t clean the place up a little—at least enough to make it believable as a wedding venue. Rather than looking like a place where love’s young dream was fulfilled, it looked like a place where love was beaten and shot execution-style. The only less-appealing-looking place Speare could think of to get married would be a garbage barge floating down a river of sewage and misery.
The dented bell above the door gave its customary off-note ping when he entered the place. Air-conditioning washed over him in a damp, icy wave scented faintly with dog.
Said dog rose to her feet and padded across the floor to greet him. He bent to scratch her shaggy brown head. “Hey, Parsnip. Felix around?”
“I’m here.” The man himself, clad in a rumpled Hawaiian shirt and age-soft khakis, pushed through the curtain of pink-and-green glass beads that separated the foyer from the rest of the building. “Come on back.”
Speare followed him down the hall to the large chapel area. “How’s everything?”
“Oh, you know.” Felix reached the back wall, painted with a ridiculous mural of plump cherubs and cupids floating above a rainbow, surrounding a golden-rayed sun. It would have served as a backdrop for wedding pictures, as well as an added incentive for the newlyweds to avoid sleep—the nightmares it could cause were profound and disturbing, as Speare knew from personal experience—if anyone had ever actually gotten married there. “The wedding business is nonexistent.”
“Just the way you want it to be.”
“Well, yes.” Felix unlatched the hideous mural so it swung open to reveal another room: the room that housed his real business. Shelves lined the walls, providing resting space for Felix’s vast inventory of magical and occult items. Grimoires and bones and ritual daggers, bezoars and stones and bottles of holy water, every type of magical powder and substance known to man or beast—or anything in between. All of it sat on the shelves, and more lay in heaps and stacks and boxes on the floor and filled cabinets and at least one back storeroom. “I can’t have people in here wanting to get married. That’s just boring.”
“Well, here’s something that isn’t boring.” Speare sat on one of the stools at the counter, next to the one Felix chose for himself. “Theodore Bryant was found dead this morning, about six blocks away from here.”
/> Felix’s watery eyes grew larger in his sallow face. Speare always thought he looked like a fox with rheumatism, his sharp features obscured by five o’clock shadow and weary cynicism. Even his hair was foxlike, a bushy reddish brown swept back from a widow’s peak, graying at the temples. “Theodore?”
Speare nodded.
Felix reached over the counter and produced a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses, and sloshed two fingers’ worth into each glass. “What a tragedy,” he said, clapping his fists on his chest. “May his soul arise in the Realm of Silver.”
Speare returned the gesture, and they both drank a toast. “He was murdered.”
“I assumed that.” Felix poured some more. “You wouldn’t be here about his death if he hadn’t been. I also assume Doretti knows my price.”
Speare waved his glass; that could be worked out later. Probably by him, just like how he was probably going to be the one actually paying. If Laz hadn’t done so much for him in the past—well, and if Laz wasn’t possibly his father, and wasn’t definitely the closest thing he’d ever had—he’d be counting up, with great pleasure, the number of favors he was accumulating.
As it was, though…sure, Laz would practically owe him a free murder or two and a new house when all this was over, but that didn’t mean he’d ever try to call those chips in. It wasn’t like he’d need to, either. Uncle Laz had never refused him anything.
Of course, he’d never asked for much, either.
“So what does he—do you—need?” Felix asked. “A Mask of Kai-tan? An All-Seeing Eye? I can call my chicken guy and have him send a few over. Pure black, the best in the state.”
The whiskey was, as always, excellent. Some friends of Felix’s made it, with water from a hidden nymph-spring beneath the Superstition Mountains. Occasionally Felix could be persuaded to sell a bottle of it for an exorbitant price; more often he gave a bottle away for a special tribute or a birthday or anniversary gift of some kind.
It was also strong enough that Speare actually felt it, even with the beast and its bullshit superfast metabolism. Nice. Too bad he couldn’t enjoy it, at least not yet. He kept his gaze on Felix’s face, watching carefully. “I think he was killed with a demon-sword.”
Surprise—no, shock—flashed across Felix’s face, genuine and unfeigned. Speare relaxed a little. “That’s some serious money.”
“Yeah, I know.” He let Felix top his glass up. “Serious connections, too. Got any idea where somebody might buy one of those?”
Felix made a face. “Come on, Speare. You can’t just buy a demon-sword like it was a coffin nail, you—”
“I can’t start randomly questioning people with that much clout, either,” Speare said. “And Doretti doesn’t have any real problems with anyone right now.”
“That he knows of.”
“That he knows of,” Speare said, nodding. “Yeah. But he hasn’t gotten any declarations.”
Felix thought about it for a second. “I heard Fallerstein was awfully pissed about being outbid for that supply contract over at the Star. And the Martinez Family has been trying to—”
“None of the Legacy Families can do shit like this, though. You know the rules.”
“I know what the rules are.” Felix refilled his own glass. “But last I checked, Bart Hardin was still dead. Maybe the pacts he forged died with him.”
It was a thought. Hardin—head of a minor crime Family who spent more of their time acting as go-betweens and support for other Families than actually committing crimes themselves—was the one who’d set up the rules regarding the use of occult ritual in the underworld, back before Speare was even born. An attempt to create a fetch had gone horribly awry, resulting in the deaths of forty people on the Strip and a public outcry that had almost ruined business for everyone.
Hardin had come up with a set of regulations, and all of the Families had agreed to them. Family heads weren’t allowed to perform certain types of magics, and they weren’t allowed to pay others to do it, either. Any killings that took place had to be committed using real-world weapons.
“It’s possible,” Speare said. “But Laz is still holding true, and I haven’t heard of any of the others violating.”
Felix shrugged. “That’s probably not it anyway. If it is, Theodore seems like an odd target for a first strike. I would have expected you would be hit before him, if war was coming.”
Speare raised his eyebrows. “Me?”
“You. Doretti’s favorite son.” Felix sipped his drink, letting that sink in.
Speare kept his face immobile. Typical of Felix; typical of his brethren, really. Always looking for information they could use, even when it came to friends. Always looking for an angle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. So does half of the world we know.” Felix sighed. “But nothing is proven, and nothing will be proven, I assume. It doesn’t matter. My point is, I agree with you. I haven’t heard any rumors of war, and I’d think a war would start with someone who matters more. In the grand scheme of things,” he added quickly.
“Which brings me back to my question,” Speare said. “Do you know where someone might get hold of a demon-sword?”
Felix’s long fingers drummed an uneven rhythm on the glass countertop, a holding pattern while he considered the question. Finally he said, “I might. I might know someone who can help you, at least.”
Silence. Any other day Speare probably wouldn’t have worried about the whole dramatic-pause thing, and he definitely wouldn’t mind giving his friend a chance to make a decision about whatever it was, but the clock on the wall told him it was past six, and his beast was really starting to squirm—especially given the nature of many of the items in Felix’s shop. Being in proximity to demon-made, demon-powered, or just plain demon items made it harder to hold the thing in check. It wanted to play. If he didn’t get out of there soon, he and Felix were both going to have a big, nasty problem on their hands—or rather, the problem would be on Felix’s hands. His own hands turned into something more like talons when the beast came out.
He didn’t want anyone to see those talons. Hell, he didn’t want anyone to know about them at all. “So…who is he?”
“Not he,” Felix said. “She.”
Chapter 3
No matter how bright the sun outside was or what time the clocks said, inside Fortuna’s Wheel it was always two in the morning.
Like a dog who eventually came to resemble its owner—or vice versa—the interior of the Wheel had over time started to look like a reflection of its clientele: outdated neon, dirty black tile, mirrors, black stone runes on the walls, and pewter bar rails. An odd combination of Vegas tacky and ritualistic formality, basically, with a heavy emphasis on grubby and corrupt, which meant anyone and everyone could be comfortable there as long as they had at least a passing familiarity with either of the overlapping cultures that formed the usual crowd. As Speare passed the penny slots just inside the front doors and grabbed a beer at the bar, he saw a couple of sharp-suited money men with their very expensive women rubbing shoulders with some scruffy blood scroungers and a few random ritualists.
That was in the front, though. What he needed was in the back.
He made his way across the floor, past the pool table, past the bathrooms, and past the people lined up outside the bathrooms, waiting for either the toilet or the drugs that would be found within. Anything and everything that could be bought was available at the Wheel, and if somebody didn’t have money they could pay with blood. Or energy. Or toenail clippings or dreams or memories, or just about anything else; almost nothing was so obscure that no market existed for it. Hell, Speare once met a showgirl who literally paid for her dance lessons with sweat, and another who earned enough selling her tears to buy a new set of breast implants. Anything could be sold—including souls, of course.
Good thing Speare didn’t need to buy one. And nobody would pay much for one as ruined as his. A regular schedule of sin like th
e one he’d been forced to follow since he was thirteen didn’t leave much of value to soul dealers.
It didn’t leave much of value for soul owners, either. Sometimes he felt…hollowed out, like something vital had been scraped out of him. Sometimes it felt like that vital thing had been replaced with some kind of sludge.
Then he’d realize he was just feeling sorry for himself. There had probably only ever been sludge in there. Shit, for all he knew, he was the parasite, and his body really belonged to the beast.
Whatever. Thinking about it had never done him any good, and it especially wasn’t going to do him much good at that moment. He had a woman to find, a murder to solve, and at least one bigger sin to commit before bedtime, and he’d like to do those things as fast as possible.
The back wall was lined with booths, cracked black leatherette and gray Formica with silver trim. Surprisingly comfortable, too, though he didn’t usually spend a lot of time back there. The bar itself, the penny slots, and the pool table were more his areas.
His destination was the farthest booth in the corner, a shadowy hole beneath a burned-out lightbulb. The high backs of the bench seats prevented him from seeing anyone sitting in them, but he was pretty sure she was there. The beast was absolutely sure she was there; it could smell her, a light, spicy scent mixed with vanilla. A warm scent. An intriguing one.
Except he was going to have to work with this woman, at least for a day or two, which meant she was off-limits. A one-night stand with someone he had to deal with professionally wasn’t a good idea, and there was no way he could have anything more—the beast made that too complicated, if not impossible.
Not to mention the fact that all he knew about her was that she was a thief, which meant she was probably not trustworthy. He valued trustworthy.