Gambling on Her Dragon (Charmed in Vegas Book 2) (5 page)

Gargoyle.

Make that gargoyles. Three of them. Big-nosed, ugly-faced, winged monsters that ought to be hunched on the side of a cathedral and not whistling through the airspace over his Jag.

He’d seen gargoyles before, but never quite like this. Boston and other historic East Coast cities were full of the things. Ugly bastards just like these, but different, too. The only gargoyles he’d ever come across before were quiet, academic types that haunted Harvard Yard and the parks around the Holy Cross cathedral, tutting over chess games.

Apparently, Nevada had a different breed of gargoyle — as in, the wild, screaming shifters after him now.

Trey slalomed the roadster left and right as they banked and came in for a second attack behind him. The car was so low, it felt like his head stuck a mile out the open top, so he crouched down, barely able to see over the leather dash. Even then, the first gargoyle to sweep past nearly carved a part into his hair. The second reached lower and scratched a six-inch claw along the trunk before Trey slammed the brakes and let it scrape over the hood.

“Hey!” he shouted, glancing at the scratch in the paint job. Shit. Kaya was going to be pissed.

Which was ridiculous. Why was he worried about dragon girl being angry at car damage when she was the one who’d flown out on him with ninety thousand dollars? When he was the one bombarded by flying gargoyles?

His chest tightened a little, though, at the image of Kaya frowning at him. As if getting this right was about a hell of a lot more than just escaping Las Vegas alive. Which made zero sense, because what was more important than surviving?

She is
, his wolf rumbled.

He drove along, dodging flying creatures two and three, while a corner of his mind tried to work it out. The gargoyles had hooked on to him the minute he’d driven out of the parking lot, not before. Which meant they weren’t after him. They were after Kaya, or at least, her car.

Or were they protecting the car from trespassers like him?

He got his answer half a second later, when two gargoyles swooped in at the same time. The one on the right ripped a jagged gash in the passenger-side headrest, and the one on the left bounced a claw against the rearview mirror, shattering the glass.

So much for the protecting the car theory.

Which meant the gargoyles were after Kaya, and that really, really pissed him off. Three ugly-as-sin gargoyles, after his auburn-haired goddess? His wolf snarled out loud in a declaration of war.

The first one was back already, and this time, Trey launched his counterattack. One hand, he kept firmly on the steering wheel. The other, he raised, letting his wolf claws extend. All three inches of them — times four fingers. He raked backward as the gargoyle zipped by, digging four parallel lines across the leathery belly of the beast.

The gargoyle screamed, tucked its pointed tail, and peeled off to the side.

“Ha!” Trey allowed himself a little fist pump.

Then the long row of traffic lights that had formed a neat line of green dots turned yellow, then red, and a long, black stretch limo rolled across the next intersection.

And rolled, and rolled, and rolled.

“Shit,” he cursed, having no choice but to slow down as an endless expanse of tinted glass flashed by. Jesus, that limo was long. A couple of tank-topped groupie girls stuck their heads out the skylight in the middle, raising champagne glasses and tossing their hair.

A hook-nosed, ugly-fucker gargoyle whooshed in behind the Jag. Trey cranked the wheel left and caught a fleeting glimpse of blazing red eyes as the monster hurtled past him and spun out of control, barely clearing the limo.

Gargoyles were protected by magick that prevented humans from seeing them as anything other than really big, really ugly birds — but that was enough. The party girls screamed and threw their glasses in the air. The gargoyle yelped. Trey hit the brakes and screeched the Jaguar into a hard left turn, nearly clipping the limo as he shot onto a cross street.

Horns sounded all around him as he merged into traffic, chugging down his avenue of escape. A pickup coming up from behind careened into a signpost in front of a liquor store, and the SUV behind it slammed into the bumper.

Oops.

Trey retracted his claws, threw the Jag into third gear, and started weaving in and out of cars, trying to gain some ground while his mind spun. How to shake the gargoyles? Preferably without leaving a trail of destruction down Fremont Street. Because, crap, he was on the main drag now. Traffic was slowing ahead, and a glance showed the gargoyles coming on fast from behind.

He beeped the roadster’s horn, but no one so much as flinched. A guy on the sidewalk aimed a video camera at the Jag, though, crying out to his wife. “Check it out, honey!”

“Doesn’t James Bond drive a car like that?” the high-pitched wife said.

Trey grinned.

“No, Austin Powers did.”

He frowned and left them behind, accelerating into the tiny space that opened up between two cars, then tucking back into the right lane behind a truck.

Orange lights blinked ahead. A utility company truck was parked beside an open manhole cover, and a guy in a Day-Glo suit waved two lanes of traffic into one.

“Oh, Jesus,” Trey muttered.

He leaned out to see and found a long line of oncoming traffic closing off the short way around. He twisted and, shit, there were the gargoyles, closing in fast, and they were not amused. He swept a hand across the dashboard, wishing the Jag came equipped with a rocket launcher. But all it had were the usual instruments, which showed engine temperature, 2500 revs in neutral, and three-quarters of a tank of gas.

Great.

He lifted up a little in the driver’s seat and shouted a second before hitting the horn. “Watch out!”

A group of Japanese tourists on the sidewalk turned around, then scattered as he bumped the roadster onto the sidewalk and threw it into second gear.

“I said, watch out!”

Screams filled the air. Limbs flailed. A camera flashed.

Trey kept one hand on the horn and the wheel and the other waving frantically in the air. “Watch out!”

What the humans saw, he had no idea, but they didn’t seem to be screaming in horror at the gargoyles so much as screaming at him. Which made him the bad guy, and that really pissed him off.

“Get out of the way!” he yelled again.

A glimpse in the rearview mirror showed the gargoyles coming closer. He had enough of an opening to pull back onto the road, but if he just held on a second longer…

Trey glanced back, then forward, making a thousand calculations in his head. A sidewalk vendor jumped aside, sending a makeshift display of sunglasses flying through the air. A low, steel-frame awning spanned the sidewalk ahead with a ten-foot neon sign that flashed dollar signs and the words,
 Win Today!

One second longer…

He yanked the wheel left so hard, he was afraid the thing would break off. Sidestepped neatly onto the road while the foremost gargoyle smashed full-tilt into the steel sign with a solid crunch.

Trey pulled the Jag into the oncoming lane and gunned through the next gap in traffic, opening up his lead again.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. One down, two to go.

Make that two really pissed gargoyles still on his tail, but he was on a roll now. He raced past a vintage motorcycle with a side car that he could have sworn carried one of those blow-up sex dolls, and the driver gave the Jag a thumbs-up.

Only in Vegas could a man break a thousand traffic laws and get a hearty thumbs-up for his ride.

He waved back.

Traffic opened up again, and he barreled onward, pushing seventy miles an hour in a thirty zone. He could practically feel the Jag grin.

The air pressure behind him dropped exactly as it had each time a gargoyle dive-bombed him, so he floored the gas and skidded through a hard right at the next intersection.

“Shit!”

A double-decker, open-topped tour bus with a single passenger in the back was coming the other way down Main Street, and the Jag skidded perilously close to the oversized wheels. The g-force of the turn threw him into the car door, and for a scary second, he thought the hinge just might give way.

The sound of squealing brakes and shattering glass — the low-flying gargoyle smashing into the tour bus — chased him down the road.

He flinched and glanced back to see an open-jawed tourist lean over the side of the bus, gaping at the damage.

The good news: no one seemed to be hurt, except, of course, the gargoyle. Trey grinned. Two down, one to go.

The bad news? The last gargoyle’s face was twisted in fury. It bared its teeth and shot forward.

“Shit.”

Trey stomped on the accelerator and raced for the highway on-ramp not far ahead. He swerved from side to side, trying to shake the monster as it dove at him, again and again. Then he zipped diagonally across three lanes of traffic, hoping the gargoyle would wipe out on a laundry truck or RV or one of the other high-profile vehicles on the road. He nearly wiped himself out instead, which sent his heart rate into triple digits. Shifters could survive a lot of damage, but not the kind that came from being dragged under a truck.

He pulled into the right lane and saw green signs flash overhead. Left lane:
Los Angeles, 265 miles.
 Right lane:
Reno, 445.

He huffed. Right, Reno. Like he’d ever hit a gambling town again. In fact, he’d never play cards anywhere but in a quiet bunkhouse with a couple of buddies way, way out on a ranch.

The gargoyle flattened its ears and thrust forward in what looked like a final, desperate attack. It strained its claws, just about shaving the hairs off the back of Trey’s neck. Those hairs were standing straight up, because he had the Jag going all out with no bright ideas on how to evade the gargoyle this time, not now that he’d managed to get boxed in by a couple of trucks.

The gargoyle screamed, reached…and peeled away in a whoosh accompanied by a furious scream.

Trey shook his head, the way he did when his wolf pelt got wet, trying the dislodge the feeling of yet another close call. He craned his neck, catching a last glimpse of the gargoyle, wheeling high in the air, arcing back toward the city. He could sense the gargoyle cursing, shaking a fist.

A sign flashed by, telling him he’d cleared Vegas city limits and was now in Paradise, Nevada. And suddenly, the old stories made sense. That gargoyles were stone statues, magicked into life, but only up to strict limits beyond the marble bases they called home.

Trey didn’t really care. All he knew was that he was clear of the monsters at last.

It took half an hour and nearly fifty miles for his heart rate to settle enough for him to string together a couple of rational thoughts.

Well, not entirely rational, because instead of cutting his losses and driving that sweet roadster straight out to the Pacific coast, he swung right on an unmarked road and followed it for miles. Even when it turned into smooth dirt, he kept going, pulled by some weird sense of direction that told him this was a good way to go. The miles rolled by until Vegas was nothing but a brown smudge in the air to the east. A ridge of dusty gray mountains reared up out of nothing straight ahead, scraping the pale desert sky.

Easing his foot off the accelerator, he let the Jaguar coast to a stop. He pulled his hat on because the sun was inching higher and listened to the motor bubble for a minute. Then he shut it off, got out, and leaned against the front bumper to listen to the wind instead. He closed his eyes and let the sun burn down on him for no particular reason other than it seemed right for that instant in time. His wolf sniffed the open space and all that enticing wilderness, folded into the shelter of the mountains.

A shadow passed overhead; he could feel the flicker on his eyelids. The air wavered as it had when the gargoyles had swooped in, but he stood perfectly still. His nose told him exactly who it was.

Not a gargoyle, because gargoyles didn’t smell like peach and lavender.

Gargoyles didn’t smell like steamy, soul-baring sex, a couple of hours old.

Gargoyles didn’t smell like a sweet, fresh wind out of some pine-filled mountains hundreds of miles north.

Dragons did.

He opened his eyes and watched the red-black dragon scoop its wings, fold them, and settle gently to the ground. Luminous, sea-glass-green eyes looked deep into his.

When he opened his mouth to speak, he made sure it sounded a hell of a lot stronger and steadier than the butterflies fluttering in his stomach.

“Hello, Kaya.”

Mine,
 his wolf rumbled deep inside.
 Mate!

K
aya stood under the harsh sun of the Nevada desert, staring Trey down. Pretending the same unrelenting magnetism that had pulled them together the previous night wasn’t still swirling around her ankles like the beginning of a goddamn hurricane. Pretending they were just a couple of ordinary people on another ordinary day.

Except he looked good enough to eat, damn it, and sounded even better.