The Merging Read online

  “I hope you’re all ready,” I said.

  Their determined looks were the only response I needed.

  Chapter 30

  My first thought was to take out my Eagle and just place a nice 50-caliber round through Reese’s skull, but I was positive he’d have some type of shielding up already. If we tipped our hand too soon, we’d be flat on our asses.

  So we moved slowly, keeping behind the pieces of equipment that littered the roof.

  Reese was facing away from us while his minions were looking at him. There were lights and flashes of energy swarming around all of them like some type of wicked vortex. I had no idea what they were doing, but I couldn’t imagine that it would be good for the people of Las Vegas.

  “Keep your heads down,” I said in hushed tones over the connector. “Warren, take your damn hat off. You look like an air conditioner shark.”

  Some people just weren’t built for this kind of work.

  “Oops,” he said. “Sorry.”

  The goal was to get Warren and Serena as close as possible so they could put down the demon-crushing runes, but I had this feeling it wasn’t going to be easy.

  “This would be much simpler if I could just set these runes up underneath him,” Warren said.

  I glanced at Rachel and sighed. She merely shrugged in return. I forced myself to remember that Warren had recently saved our butts.

  “Everyone stop,” I commanded. They did. “Warren, are you saying that these runes would work from underneath him?”

  “They should.”

  “Honestly, man, you really need to let us know about these things ahead of time.”

  “Sorry,” he said again.

  We slunk back to the access door and climbed inside. I wanted to smack Warren around a bit, but I held myself in check. Right now we had a job to do.

  “Where exactly do you need to be?” I asked.

  “Under them.”

  “So go down a level and you’ve got that.”

  “Sorry,” he said, fidgeting. “I mean I have to be directly under them.”

  “They’re pretty spread out,” Rachel noted. “It’s not like there are a bunch of rooms all connected without walls.”

  “Well,” Warren said as if Rachel were stupid, “it doesn’t have to be directly under them.”

  “You literally just said it did,” Rachel countered.

  “You’re right, I did say that.” He was starting to get flustered. “It has to be close enough.”

  “What’s the radius?” I asked, fighting my annoyance. “Just a ballpark figure is fine.”

  “A couple hundred feet,” he said with a shrug and a look of uncertainty.

  “So you’re not sure.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  The fact was that wizardry wasn’t an exact science. This is why it took so long to enact spells, and also why people like Warren were somewhat odd. They had to be in order to navigate the puzzles that made up a wizard’s brand of magic. Powerful, certainly, but also imprecise if not carefully managed. How a guy who couldn’t even comprehend that a tall, pointy hat was not conducive to being stealthy could possibly manage the intricacies of these things was a mystery to me. Funny that most wizards were just like him, though.

  “Lydia,” I called back to base, “can you check if there are any available rooms on the top floor of the Excalibur, Tropicana Avenue side?”

  “Certainly, puddin’,” she replied. “Just a moment.”

  With our luck, there’d be no availability. That meant we’d either have to sneak in or take over someone’s room. I hated having to do it, but some things just couldn’t be helped.

  “All booked up, honey,” she said, confirming my expectations.

  “Of course they are.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Any chance there are some nice suites available somewhere?”

  There was another pause. “There is a two-bedroom luxury suite available.”

  “Perfect,” I said with a sense of relief. “Notify the front desk that they are upgrading the people at the far end of the top floor. Give them the PPD numbers and tell them to be quick about it!”

  “You got it, baby,” she said with a coo. “I love it when you act forceful.”

  Rachel face-palmed.

  Chapter 31

  The young couple that was escorted away from the room looked like they’d just won the lottery. I had no idea what the hotel told them, but the manager gave me a nod as he went by, letting me know that the couple would be none the wiser.

  A swarm of hotel staff hit the room for two minutes before we were allowed in.

  As they left, one of the bellhops handed me a keycard and rubbed his white-gloved fingers together.

  “Seriously?” I said to his expectant face.

  Rachel laughed as I forked over a twenty-dollar bill to the guy.

  “Honestly, you do realize that we’re PPD, right?”

  “I have no idea what that is, sir,” he said, “but I hope you all have a wonderful stay at the Excalibur.”

  When I walked into the room, Warren was standing on a credenza that sat by the television. He was tracing little lines on the ceiling. Serena was standing nearby with the looks of someone ready to catch him, should he fall. Being that it was Warren, there was a fair amount of validity in that fear.

  “We should probably get him a ladder,” suggested Chuck. “Want me to call down to the front desk and ask for one?”

  “Good idea,” I said, tucking my wallet away.

  A few minutes later a worker brought up a step ladder, which resulted in me pulling my wallet back out. I had little doubt that I would not be able to expense these tips. Not that I needed to, but it was the principle of the thing.

  “So?” I said, feeling a bit perturbed. “What’s the deal?”

  Warren held up a finger as he finished whatever it was he was tracing.

  The ceiling shimmered briefly before becoming nearly transparent. We were suddenly looking up at the night sky. It wasn’t like a window or anything, but it was clear enough to be rather amazing.

  “Holy shit,” I said, moving to stand under the succubus.

  Rachel slapped me on the shoulder. “Freak.”

  “What?”

  “This is a one-way window, right?” asked Jasmine.

  “Yes, definitely,” replied Warren. Then he quickly glanced over his iPad with a look of horror. Finally, he relaxed and repeated, “Yes.”

  We all released a concerned breath.

  Wizards.

  I tore myself away from the vision of the succubus. This wasn’t easy considering she was like a succubus on steroids. Where all the other merged beasties had been rather unfortunate looking, except maybe the vampire, this chick was smoking hot. Her eyes glowed like diamonds, her hair flowed like a river, her skin glistened like the finest dew on a morning leaf, and her glutes were so tight that I imagined she could crush a walnut between them. My thoughts grew poetic in the face of perfection.

  Shaking my head, I said, “Right, so what’s the plan?”

  “I need to think,” Warren said.

  “And you can do that as soon as you tell us the plan, Warren.”

  “Hmmm?” he said with a confused look. “Oh, right. Well, I’m going to put together a complete rune set that will stop those demons from funneling power to Reese.”

  “Yes, I got that,” I said, clearly needing him to be more specific. “What I’m asking is how you’re going to do that and how long will it take?”

  “Right, okay,” he said, pointing around. “I have to fill the ceiling with runes. The entire thing will be covered. It’ll take me about an hour, if I have complete silence.”

  “So…”

  “So,” Rachel said, motioning everyone toward the door, “we have to leave.”

  “Except for Serena,” Warren stated. “I need her to help me.”

  I nodded, sad to have been leaving the room. Then I gave one more look up at the succubus of my dreams. Grante
d, she would not be so attractive in about an hour, since she’d be trying to rip my soul to shreds, and not in a good way. But for now she was quite a vision.

  “Are you done?” Rachel asked as she, Felicia, Griff, and Jasmine all shook their heads at me.

  I sighed and walked out of the room.

  Chapter 32

  We’d decided that the best course of action was to get back up to the roof and keep tabs on Reese’s progress. I preferred not to engage until Warren had the demons under control, but that meant we had to be careful about being spotted.

  There was no way to know precisely what Reese was up to. Nobody on my team expected it to be pleasant, though. Regardless of what the Directors had to say about demons, in their current manifestation they had nefarious intentions. I couldn’t say if that was due to Reese’s manipulations or not, but in the grand scheme of things that didn’t matter right now.

  “Let’s take it slow,” I commanded through the connector. “Anything we can do ahead of time to make this easier, do it. Just don’t tip our hand in the process.”

  We crept along the roof. It was a solid distance to the other side since we had to move along the length of the building to the corner first.

  I glanced at the powerful mage every few feet to make sure we’d not been spotted.

  In some respects the layout up here was perfect for stealth. We had decent cover behind the massive ventilation units and their incessant humming covered any missteps. I didn’t expect anyone to trip up in this group, especially with Warren not actively moving along with us. Still, it was nice to have some measure of protection from prying eyes.

  “This feels too easy,” Rachel whispered to me. “I don’t like it.”

  I paused.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s a pretty powerful guy, right?”

  “Obviously.”

  “So why would he just have his back to the vast majority of the roof like this?”

  She had a point, but there was something about this Reese guy that told me there was a logical explanation.

  Ego.

  “Think like him for a second,” I said as we resumed our move to the center building that sat at the elbow of the roof. “He blew the crap out of the morgue earlier and probably assumes we were all killed in the process. Plus, he’s got demons and ubernaturals to cover his ass and give him an unlimited supply of power.”

  “Possibly,” she said, looking unconvinced.

  “Even if he thinks we survived it, he knocked us out with relative ease.” I shook my head, remembering the thrashing we’d gotten. “He kicked the shit out of us, Rachel. That’s not easy to do.”

  “True, but he’s also got to think that there are more of us than just a small unit.”

  “Unless he’s done his homework,” I argued. “It wouldn’t take much to find out that the Las Vegas branch of the PPD has a limited set of officers.” I sneered. “Damn cutbacks. And he did know my name, remember?”

  “Again, true,” she agreed. “Still, something tells me we’re walking into trouble here.”

  “Well, duh,” I replied with a laugh. “I don’t care if we have twenty officers, this isn’t going to be joyous by any stretch of the imagination. Not only do we have to deal with Admiral Psycho and The Four Demon Batteries—”

  “A band name?” she interrupted with a roll of her eyes. “You’re giving them a band name?”

  “Seemed fitting.” I shrugged. “Anyway, he’s also got a werewolf and a succubus that we have to contend with.”

  Everyone arrived at the center building and sat with their backs along the wall. Chuck was peeking around the outer edge and Felicia kept watch from the other side.

  Reese could be heard yelling what I assumed were commands in demon-tongue. It was a guttural-sounding language with an occasional high-pitched squeak. In some respects, it sounded rather ridiculous.

  “Anyone know what he’s saying?” I asked.

  “He is planning to take over the world,” Griff answered. “I can only understand snippets of it. Jasmine or Rachel may know more.”

  They both shook their heads.

  “Right.” Griff closed his eyes as we all sat silently. “He will take over our city first. Then he plans to fully tap our magic lines. He’ll merge all of the vampires, werewolves, and the rest.” Griff’s eyes snapped open. “Essentially, the man is building a demon army.”

  “Sounds like it,” I said, fighting not to call Griff “Captain Obvious” in the process. “Obviously we can’t let that happen.”

  “Ya sure, Captain Obvious?” said Rachel.

  I gave her my best duck-face.

  “What’s our move, Chief?” said Chuck.

  “Same as before,” I said while continuing to hold my frown at a grinning Rachel. “We wait.”

  Chapter 33

  Unfortunately, from Griff’s play-by-play of Reese’s rallying cry to the demons, it was about time for them to start causing trouble.

  “…and it looks like they’re just waiting for the moon to be directly overhead.”

  I looked up. It seemed close enough to me, but I was guessing that Reese or the demons or a combination of both had some power gauge to make a better determination.

  “Anyone have any idea how much time it’ll be before that happens?”

  “I’d guess about thirty minutes,” said Jasmine.

  “Sounds about right,” agreed Rachel.

  I thought to ask how they could tell, but figured I’d get some explanation about the way the power lines pulsed against a coming herd of unicorns or something else that would be senseless to me. Instead, I decided it was time to see how far along Warren and Serena were with their project.

  “Warren,” I called through the connector, “how are things going with the runes?”

  “They were going pretty well until you just startled me, Chief,” he said. “I’ll have to redo that one.”

  “Sorry. What kind of timeframe are we talking here?”

  “About three minutes,” he said.

  I glanced at the others with surprise. “And we’ll be ready to attack?”

  “No, I just meant to redo the one that just got messed up.”

  Why is it that every time I needed to have information in a hurry it took the longest to get it? Here I was getting ready to fight against Admiral Psycho and The Four Demon Batteries—it did have a ring to it—and my wizard in charge of dropping the demon battery supply was nitpicking.

  “I’m asking you when all of the runes will be ready, Warren,” I said in a stern voice.

  “Oh, right. About twenty minutes.”

  “That’d be perfect,” I said with a nod to the others. “Seems that our pal Reese is waiting for the moon to hit high noon, or whatever the equivalent is for roughly ten at night in the middle of the desert. Once that happens, he’s planning on being fiendish.”

  “The moon hits the apex in fifteen minutes,” Warren replied soberly.

  “But Rachel and Jasmine—”

  “Are basing their assumption on the power pulses they’re feeling in the area,” he interrupted. “Unfortunately, those pulses are being inflated by the fact that there are demonic boosters in the area.”

  “Oh.” I chewed gently on the inside of my lip while thinking things through. “Wouldn’t that mean they’d assume the moon would hit the apex sooner rather than later?”

  “No, but that’s a good thought.”

  I felt a sense of pride at the compliment, seeing as how most of the time the mages considered me unlearned regarding their craft. It was a fair assessment on their part, but I’ll take the little wins wherever I can get them.

  “Thanks, I’ve been doing a little reading on the side—”

  “The demons are pulling the power and storing it,” Warren interrupted. “What the mages are reading is a diminished scale of what’s actually building up.”

  I looked over at Rachel and Jasmine, who merely shrugged in response. A glance at Griff said that Warre
n’s assessment made sense.

  “So we need to attack him before that, right?” I asked.

  “Only if you want to hit him before he’s at full power,” replied Warren.

  “I think we’d probably like to do that.” I sighed. “Well, try and speed up your drawing, if you can.”

  “One mistake will negate everything, Chief.”

  “Right.” Of course it would. Why wouldn’t it? We were about to face down a killer mage and a suite of demons, so being a few minutes off in the wrong direction was like icing on the cake. “Okay, we’ll do our best to be a thorn in Reese’s side until you have everything ready.”

  Chuck and Felicia had pulled back from the edges of the little building and started looking over their Desert Eagles.

  I’d already checked and rechecked my mag about ten times, but I still did it once more. I also ran an inventory over the ones hanging from my belt. Everything checked out.

  It was go time.

  Chapter 34

  I took point, sneaking around the side of the building while staying low enough to keep the ventilation shafts for cover.

  My initial thought was to stand up and start laying waste to them, but I had a better idea.

  “Chuck and Felicia,” I said, motioning them forward, “we’ve got three baby cannons with us. We can aim them all at Reese’s head or we can aim two at Reese and one at the werewolf.”

  “What about the succubus?” Felicia said with a confused look.

  “Hmmm?” I replied innocently as if I had forgotten about her.

  “Freak,” said Rachel from behind us.

  “Maybe she’s…” They were all giving me a sinister look. “Okay, okay, but I’m not shooting the succubus. I couldn’t live with myself.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Chuck.

  “I’ll take out the mage,” Felicia stated while still shaking her head at me. “You get the werewolf, Chief. Not a fan of shooting one of my own, unless I have to.”

  Somehow that was okay, but me not wanting to blow away an incredibly attractive, well-muscled Amazonian succubus was a bad thing?