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In a positive fugue of gestures, Radu rolled his eyes, shook his head and sighed. “Never have children, Dory. They are no end of trouble.”
“I’m a dhampir,” I said tightly. “We can’t reproduce.”
“Well, that’s all right, then.” Radu waved it away.
“I’m going to spread some rumors about our destination in Vegas,” I said, changing the subject before I was tempted to strangle him and save Drac the trouble. “They’ll probably take a while to get around, but there’re no guarantees. Be careful on the way there. I’ll give you a few hours to get under way before I mention anything.”
“Kit has arranged an escort for us.” He glanced back to where the boys were talking. “Try not to bait Louis-Cesare, Dory. He is… somewhat confused at the moment.”
“That would make two of us.” Mircea was going to have some explaining to do, the next time I saw him.
“Try to understand, my dear. He doesn’t know where you fit in. You’re a dhampir, which rather puts you beyond the pale in his way of thinking, but you’re also Mircea’s daughter and therefore someone to whom he owes a degree of esteem. He doesn’t understand that you aren’t serious when you tease him. He interprets it as a lack of respect.”
“Then he’s right on the money,” I said, and floor
ed it.
“I don’t think you understand my position,” I said, signaling the bartender for another drink. The guy was human, yet he didn’t so much as blink at the fact that I was talking to a three-foot-tall gnome with a foot-long nose, beady purple eyes and ears that were growing a forest of bushy white hair long enough to braid. It matched his eyebrows and the snowy mop on his head, but the real stunner was the beard. It was pure silver and almost as long as he was tall. I’d seen him tuck it into his belt before, to keep from tripping, but tonight it flowed free, like a river down his chest. It was an oddly beautiful feature on an otherwise unprepossessing body, and always made me smile.
Benny was a fairly standard Skogstroll, or forest troll, and this was Vegas, land of the strange. But I was still surprised at the total lack of interest everyone was showing. Things had changed a bit since I’d been here.
We weren’t in a demon bar tucked away on a backstreet, but in a poolside lounge at Caesars. I’d been told at his shop that I’d find Benny here, and sure enough, he’d been belting back margaritas for a while, judging by the bleary-eyed look he turned on me. “I get it, all right?” he said, holding up a gnarled hand to keep me from repeating myself. “You got a tough assignment and you need something with more kick than the law allows. But I’m telling you, I got nothing.”
“You always say that.” I wasn’t about to take no for an answer. I needed to restock, and it didn’t seem likely that the Senate was going to help me out. Especially since Mircea wanted Drac trapped, not dead, and none of the things I had in mind were the type you walked away from.
“Only this time, it ain’t no bargaining tactic. There’s this war happening, you know? My inventory was raided by the Senate—they said to confiscate contraband.” Benny accepted another drink from a waiter, whose eyes never quite managed to focus, and licked the rim. “And right after that, the damn black mages hit me for what was left. Don’t nobody understand the concept of paying for nothing no more.”
“Come on, Benny. I know you. You never have everything at the shop.”
“And now I ain’t got nothing nowhere else, neither.” He sighed and patted my hand. “You been a good customer, Dory, and you know me. I’ve always played straight with you, right? But it’s the times we’re living in. Word is, the Senate is vulnerable and its control is slipping. Who knows what’s coming? Nobody, that’s who. So they all want protection, don’t they? A little something extra in case things start to implode. Truth is, my inventory was getting pretty thin even before the raids. And now…” He shook his head. “I got nothing.”
A harassed-looking mother walked by the bar, little girl in tow with a sno-cone clutched tightly in one fist. The girl’s bright blue lips shaped a startled “oh” of astonishment as she caught sight of Benny, who dropped her a friendly wink. “Mommy! Look at the elf!”
“Don’t stare, Melissa! And don’t call people names!” I looked at Benny as the little girl was towed away, still protesting that she wanted to say hello to the “nice elf.” “I wouldn’t call an Occultus charm nothing, Benny,” I observed mildly. They were expensive items used to ensure that anyone who didn’t already know what someone looked like would see only a projected image. The exception was young children, whose brains hadn’t yet formed the preconceived ideas about the way the world ought to work that the charm exploited.
He shrugged, unapologetic. Benny was like most of his kind when it came to turning a buck. He’d sell his own mother—who had, after all, tried to eat him—if he thought he’d get a good price. Problem was, he didn’t think I had the funds for the no-doubt completely over-inflated prices he was getting these days. Most of the time, he’d have been right. But not today.
“Well, that’s a shame.” I casually placed my shiny yellow marble on the surface of the bar, next to his collection of colorful paper umbrellas. “You know I’d prefer to deal with you, but I guess I’ll have to go somewhere else.”
His eyes fixed on the small orb and he slowly set his drink back down. “Come to think of it, Dory, I might have a few special items put away.”
A little over half an hour later, we pulled up outside a large warehouse. “A few items?” I asked as we climbed out of the Jag.
Benny shrugged and struggled with a heavy lock on the thick metal door. “I’ve had this place for years. Usually, I keep it at least half-full. Right now, well”—he pulled back the sliding door—“take a look.”
A large, echoing space greeted us. Empty pallets were scattered about, along with a lot of crushed cardboard boxes and a rusty forklift. The overhead lights flickered on reluctantly, and I noticed what looked like a small office in back. “This way,” Benny said, picking a path through the trash. “Got a shipment in a couple days ago, and lucky for you, nobody’s been by to rob me yet.”
“Why don’t you move your inventory somewhere they can’t find it?”
“If I leave some interesting stuff lying around, I stay up and running and don’t get dead.” Benny’s booming voice bounced off the walls. “War isn’t a time to have people start looking at you as expendable. The Senate knows I got contacts they don’t. That’s what comes of trying to put craftsmen out of business for a couple hundred years—they tend not to want to do business when you get yourself in a jam.”
After disarming a few dozen protection wards, Benny flipped on the fluorescents in the claustrophobic office and squeezed around the side of a desk even messier than mine. I stayed back a few feet, in case any of the towering piles decided to fall, and waited. “But I wasn’t shooting you a line earlier. My selection ain’t what it used to be.” Out of his old metal desk he pulled a small briefcase. There was a wait while more spells were disarmed, and then the lock stuck. When he finally got it open, I had a hard time keeping a suitable poker face while eyeing the stuff inside. Benny waggled a shaggy eyebrow at me. “Well, Dory. Can we do business or what?”
I bent over for a better look, making sure a few of the items were what I thought they were, and barely kept from grinning like a fiend. Oh, yeah. I really thought we could.
Ten minutes later, I had four disrupters with the power of about twenty human grenades each, and a top-of-the-line morphing potion. The latter was a yellow glop that performed a glamour even on nonmages like me. Spread it over your face and within minutes you could look like virtually anyone. It tended to break me out, but there were lots worse things than a bad case of acne, and with Drac on my back, I needed all the help I could get.
Benny and I were dickering over whether four or five disorienting spheres—which made you either very dizzy (demons), forget why you were fighting (vamps) or pass out (humans)—should complete the deal when a faint whiff of ozone suddenly replaced the dry tang of the desert. I hit the ground and the next moment, the glass windows that composed the top half of three of the office walls shattered inward, and a wave of force slammed Benny against the metal back wall, reducing his oversized head to so much jelly. I started to move about the same time that the glass shards hit the stained carpet squares.
