The Merging Read online

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I yelled as I spun on my heel and took off again, this time making sure I had a silver chambered.

  Chapter 3

  By the time I got to the other side of the building, the sound of a car alarm filled the area. I picked up my pace, but I knew there was no way I was going to catch up to him in time.

  Sure enough, Fido had smashed the window, hot-wired my Aston Martin, and sped off with Rachel.

  “Son of a bitch,” I yelled. “Lydia, where the hell is my backup?”

  “They should be there any second, puddin’. Everything okay?”

  “No, everything is not okay,” I said as a blue ’68 Camaro SS pulled up.

  “Climb in the back, Chief,” said Jasmine Katrell, another mage on the force. When it came to appearance, she was the antithesis of Rachel. She was still gorgeous, but instead of the blond-haired, blue-eyed look, she had the black-hair, emerald-eyes thing going. She did wear the standard mage leathers though. Sitting next to her, in the driver’s seat, was Felicia Logan, a dark-skinned beauty with deep brown eyes who also happened to be a werewolf.

  PPD officers were set into pairs with one being a mage and one being some other supernatural. It was more about practicality than diversity. Sticking two mages together could work, but there were only so many solid mages in the world who found police work interesting, which meant we had to place them carefully.

  And, yes, I was the chief of the Las Vegas PPD, which would undoubtedly make you think that I’d know better than to divulge to a crazed werewolf that my partner was exhausted and sitting alone in my car. In my defense, he’d caught me off guard by mentioning my name and then laughing at me.

  Felicia was spinning out her tires before I could even get situated. This made for a fun game of me bouncing around in the back seat.

  “Lydia’s got your car tracking,” Jasmine said over her shoulder.

  “We’ll be on them in a sec,” Felicia said, cutting a corner so tight that my head slammed against the window.

  “Ow,” I said.

  “Please don’t break my glass, Chief,” Felicia said. “It’s getting harder and harder to find replacement parts these days.”

  I moved behind her and braced myself for the next turn, gripping the sides of her chair in the process.

  Up ahead was my red Aston Martin. Fido had the windows down with one arm out as he zipped along, almost teasing me with the fact that he’d swiped my car… and my partner.

  From what I could see, Rachel was still out. That was good, at least.

  “Get me close so I can stick a silver in his head,” I said, using a growl that even Fido would be proud of.

  “While he’s driving, Chief?” Felicia asked in such a way that I had to check myself.

  “Well, no,” I replied, “but at the next stoplight or something.”

  Jasmine looked back with a face that noted the stupidity of my statement. “You think he’ll stop?”

  I groaned and checked my gun. “Just catch the guy, will ya?”

  Felicia’s Camaro was closing in as Fido took another turn that put him on East Flamingo. He was trying to get back to Las Vegas Boulevard.

  “Can’t this thing go any faster?” I asked as calmly as possible.

  “Hold on,” Felicia said and then gunned it.

  There was something to be said about the roaring of an engine in a muscle car. It was power personified. The rush of caveman grunts that filled the base of my brain was on overload as the engine rumbled furiously.

  We pulled up to the right of my car as I rolled down the window and got my gun at the ready. I couldn’t shoot him, as the ladies had pointed out, but maybe the threat of me firing would be enough to make him second guess his next move.

  “Pull over, asshole,” I called out, pointing the gun at his face.

  He did something we didn’t expect.

  He slammed on the brakes.

  Chapter 4

  The Camaro SS squealed like an angry pig as Felicia locked up the tires, sliding us halfway across Las Vegas Boulevard in the process.

  Fortunately for us, it had been a green light.

  I spun around and spotted Fido doing a three-point turn.

  Without thinking, I reached out the window and pulled the handle on the door, pushing Jasmine’s seat forward and climbing out of the car.

  “A little notice would be nice next time, Chief,” Jasmine said as the seat slammed back into position.

  “Oh, sorry,” I replied before I started running toward Fido.

  He was backing up to complete his turn when I shot out both tires on the driver’s side. He clearly knew that he wouldn’t get anywhere fast with that because he abandoned the car with an enraged howl, leaving Rachel safely behind.

  “Felicia, check Rachel,” I commanded through the connector as I chased Fido down the access road between Bally’s and the corner Starbucks. “Jasmine, get to the other side of the access road to Bally’s. We’ve got to corner this guy.”

  “Ian,” Lydia broke in, “there’s another disturbance down on the old strip.”

  I was barely able to keep my voice steady. Amalgamite or not, chasing down an uber werewolf was damn tough. My eyes were jumping all over the place to make sure that he wasn’t about to jump out at me from some dark corner. Fortunately, I caught sight of him padding down toward the other exit.

  “Can’t be as bad as this one,” I said through panting breaths.

  “Chuck says it’s a vampire unlike any he’s ever seen, puddin’,” she replied.

  “Patch him in,” I stated as Fido slowed up, clearly spotting Jasmine as she walked into the opening of the access street with hands glowing.

  “Hey, Chief,” Chuck said, “we got a vampire here who is pretty badass.”

  “How badass?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t anything like Fido.

  Seven years of relative ease being completely interrupted in a single night sounded like a Pandora’s Box waiting to be opened.

  “Never seen the like,” he answered. “He’s been throwing stuff around a lot. I unloaded a set of wood breakers into him.”

  “Did it have any effect?”

  “Yeah, he threw a Mercedes at my head.”

  That wasn’t good. “Oh.”

  “Griff has been doing everything he can just to stop the guy from destroying the Nugget,” Chuck continued. “He’s only got so much magic in the tank, though.”

  “Swell,” I said. “Try to get the guy underground and away from the normals. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  I shut down the connection to Chuck and refocused on my current prey.

  Fido was obviously seeking an escape route, but I wasn’t about to let him get away again. Diplomacy worked some of the time, sure, but other times you had to take more drastic action. So I cracked off a round, striking his thigh and eliciting a scream of pain in the process. He spun at me with rage in his eyes.

  I fired again, planting a silver through the shin of his other leg. He fell forward as Jasmine hit him with a bolt of energy, throwing him flat on his face.

  It looked painful enough, but something told me he was playing at a ruse because this had gotten too easy. If what Chuck said was true about the vampire being equivalent to our friendly little werewolf here, my silvers were probably not doing nearly as much as he let on. Still, I don’t care how powerful someone is, holes in the leg make walking difficult.

  I re-aimed at his forehead and closed the distance, realizing that there was no way this guy was going to let us take him in.

  “What the hell are you?” I asked as I got closer.

  “Your worst nightmare,” he replied.

  “Oh, come on,” said Jasmine as she cautiously edged around the beast. “That’s just dumb. ‘Your worst nightmare?’ Really?”

  Fido looked up and grimaced. “What’s wrong with that? I thought it sounded rather tough.”

  “Sure, if you’re in the fifth grade,” Jasmine mocked. “It’s too cli
che. You need something that’s yours, you know?”

  He pushed up to his elbows. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “How about something like, ‘I’m the beast who will rip your soul from your flesh’ or something.”

  “That’s not bad,” Fido stated, looking impressed. “Mind if I use it?”

  “Be my guest,” Jasmine said with a shrug. “Might want to hurry up, though. I don’t think things are going well for you at the moment.”

  The beast laughed heartily at that. He was moving slowly toward Jasmine with each laugh. I caught it before he could get any closer.

  “Oh no you don’t,” I said, pulling Jasmine back while keeping my gun trained on our werewolf pal. “He’s playing you, Jasmine. He did it to me once already.”

  Fido glared at me moments before he slammed his hands into the ground and pushed himself to full height. The bullet wounds on his legs were still visible, but they were almost fully healed.

  I fired off a round into his chest, which staggered him for a moment but only seemed to anger him more. Amalgamite or not, I didn’t think I could handle a full-on assault from Fido, so I unloaded the rest of the bullets into his head as Jasmine peppered him with ice shards.

  He fell backward with a sickening thud.

  While Fido may have somehow been immune to silver, his brain wasn’t immune to being separated from his skull.

  We waited as the werewolf effect wore off, revealing the body of the actual person who had taken this form. He wore a black suit and white shirt that marked him as one of the executives on the strip. While his head was mostly gone, his wallet was still intact.

  I cracked it open.

  “Richard Brenkin,” I said.

  “Fitting name,” Jasmine chimed in.

  “Huh?”

  “Richard,” she said with a shrug. “Think about it.”

  I groaned at her.

  “Lydia,” I said, calling back to base, “can you pull up a file on a Richard Brenkin?”

  “Richard Brenkin is an executive in the finance department at the Bellagio hotel. He has no family on record.”

  “Okay,” I said while flapping his ID against the palm of my hand. “Please notify the supers at the Bellagio that one of their own went rogue and had to be taken down.”

  “You got it, sugar.”

  A van pulled into the access road on one side as Felicia’s blue Camaro closed in on the other.

  The neon letters painted on the van read, “The Spin.”

  Paula Rose stepped out wearing her standard business attire. She had that librarian thing going on. It gave me the shivers, but now wasn’t the time for pleasantries.

  “What the hell’s going on, Ian?” she said. “I’ve got people posting videos on the net of a werewolf ripping apart a vampire, running across the Bellagio pool, and then coming back.”

  “He was dog paddling, actually,” I started.

  She just stared at me with her arms crossed. “How the hell am I supposed to spin this?”

  “The dog paddle? I don’t know. I guess I’d say that…”

  “I’m talking about the entire scene, you hunk of coal.”

  “Your job, not mine,” I replied with a frown. I then jumped into the back of Felicia’s car. “I’ve got enough trouble to deal with. This guy was the toughest werewolf I’ve ever seen and apparently he’s got a vampire buddy on the old strip who is being just as difficult.”

  “Another one?” she yelled out as the Camaro pulled away.

  Chapter 5

  Rachel was coming back to consciousness as Felicia gunned the accelerator toward the old strip.

  “What happened?” she said and then looked around, touching the leather seat in front of her. “And why are we in Felicia’s car?”

  “Long story,” I said, trying to deflect.

  Rachel was one of those people who managed to forget the fifty times you saved her ass due to the one time you did something stupid, like getting her kidnapped by a werewolf, for example. But as long as we kept our heads in the game, there was a solid chance it would all blow over and she’d possibly even forget about it.

  “The chief chased after the werewolf, missed, and the werewolf came back and kidnapped you,” Jasmine called back from the front.

  “Thanks, Jasmine,” I said with a grimace, feeling a sudden sense of dread.

  Rachel slowly tilted her head my way. “You what?”

  “It turned out fine,” I said, waving my hand as I did my best not to look her in the eyes. “Uh… he’s dead. You’re not. All good.”

  Rachel stared at me with her mouth agape. Finally, she said, “Unbelievable.”

  The ride to the old strip was somewhat quiet aside from the incessant growl of the Camaro’s engine and the silent berating that I knew Rachel was giving me via the confines of her thoughts. I couldn’t read her thoughts, no, but I could feel the irritation from the other side of the back seat. It was so thick that I scooted as far from her as possible.

  I tried to take my mind off of things by loading up a fresh set of wood breakers. Supposedly we’d be facing a vampire that was similar to the werewolf we’d just left, so having a new mag loaded was a good idea.

  Rachel had moved from her silent thoughts to mumbling to herself while shaking her head a lot. If I didn’t take care of this soon, those grumbles would get louder and louder.

  “It’s not like I did it on purpose,” I whispered, trying to keep the conversation between us. “I thought you’d be safe in the car as I went around to take care of Fido.”

  “Fido?” she said, hanging on to something else that pointed out she disapproved of my actions. “That’s just wrong.”

  “If you had seen him laugh at me after learning who I was, you’d feel different.”

  “You told him who you were?” she asked, not bothering to keep her voice low. “When did this happen?”

  “When I caught up to him around the back of the Bellagio.”

  “Was this before or after he kidnapped me?”

  “Before,” I admitted. “He asked where you were and I explained that you were back in the car, too exhausted to…”

  I stopped and gulped, realizing that I just admitted to every stupid thing I managed to do during my interaction with Fido.

  “Unbelievable,” she repeated, looking very disappointed indeed.

  But this wasn’t fair. Yes, I screwed up. Big time. But it wasn’t like she was some perfect princess who did everything right.

  “Now, don’t you go getting all high and mighty on me,” I said in my defense. “Lest you forget that time there was a gang of mages causing all sorts of mayhem near Harrah’s, and when I thought you had my back I found that you were busily making out with an old flame who happened to be a part of the gang.”

  She shifted uncomfortably as both Jasmine and Felicia glanced back with their jaws hanging in disbelief.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I said, nodding my head defiantly. “Don’t let her little innocent act fool you. She’s quite naughty when she wants to be. Just like that night we were stuck on surveillance and she…”

  I stopped again.

  If looks could kill, Rachel’s glare would have had me six feet under already. Tack on to that how Jasmine’s disbelieving stare bore into my soul while Felicia’s glare via the rearview mirror threatened to char my flesh, and I knew that I was in a world of trouble.

  “You slept with her, too?” asked Jasmine coolly.

  “Wait,” Felicia said moments later. “You slept with both of them and me?”

  “Not all at once, obviously,” I replied, finding a way to make matters worse. And then, just to really drive home my idiocy, I added, “That sounds pretty awesome, though.”

  Their glares were even worse now.

  Rachel tilted her head at me even farther. “Have you slept with everyone at the PPD?”

  “He hasn’t been with me,” said Lydia, her voice sharing that same tone of irritation.

  �
��Well, Ian,” Rachel pressed, “have you?”

  “Not everyone,” I answered, sensing it was safer to own up than to clam up. “I’m not into dudes.”

  They all face-palmed.

  “You’re warped,” Jasmine said.

  “Very disappointing,” agreed Felicia.

  Rachel shook her head. “Seriously.”

  The air in the car was like iron. Was it my fault that all of them were incredibly hot? No. Was it my fault that they all came on to me at one point? No. Was it my fault that I took advantage of the fact that they’d come on to me at one point? Well, yeah, but… again, they were all hot!

  Finally, the voice of Lydia broke through the connector.

  “I forgive you, sweetie.”

  “You would,” said Rachel.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, hoping to put a stop to this. “It takes two to tango, remember? It’s not like I did this by myself. You were all involved. Individually, I mean.” They didn’t reply. “Besides, that was five years ago! I haven’t been with anyone on the force since becoming chief and you know it. And are you all honestly telling me that you’ve not slept with anyone but me on the force?”

  Jasmine and Rachel glanced at each other and then quickly looked away.

  “Oh, no way,” I said with a laugh. “You two hooked up?”

  They said nothing, but Felicia’s head snapped toward Jasmine. “You didn’t.”

  “It was a stakeout,” Jasmine admitted. “You and Chuck had gone out for coffee and one thing led to another.”

  “Excuse me,” said Chuck through the connector, indicating that they were on full broadcast mode, “but while you guys are all talking about your sex lives, Griff and I have our hands full with a vampire who is doing his best to destroy the Golden Nugget.”

  “We’re almost there,” replied Felicia as we turned onto Freemont.

  I saw this as an opportunity to divert the conversation. “Are you underground yet, Chuck?”

  “Sorry, Chief,” Chuck answered. “He wouldn’t go, but we did get him on top of the building. Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “He climbed up there on his own.”