Trouble with Gargoyles: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 3) (6 page)

My smile was forced. Being known, even within my own community, wasn't ideal when your magickal familiar was an apex predator with a storied history of burning villages to the ground. You kind of wanted to fly under the radar on that one.

"Hello, Mr. Kleure. I’m flattered you know who I am," I lied. "Of course I know all about
you
. Everyone does."

"Everyone in the casino business," he agreed, baring his teeth in a smile reminiscent of a dog's snarl. It wasn't a threatening action, just not particularly pleasant to look at.

"Business has been good lately, yes?" I prompted.

Kleure inclined his head. "Better than ever. More casinos are being built every year. More casinos mean more gaming tables and slots, which mean more gamblers and more demand for my pets."

The pit-terrier seated at the end of the booth licked its chops and went back to panting with its wide, sloppy grin. I tried to imagine what sort of person the dog shifted into and decided it was some muscle-y Jersey type.

"That's right. You rent 'pets' to the casinos," I said. "As lucky charms."

"Correction, my pets are influential."

"Right. Because they make people lucky."

"Correction again, Anne: they make people
feel
lucky. A very big difference where the Oddsmakers are concerned." Kleure growled softly for a few seconds and then licked his lips like he was licking his chops: with his entire tongue. "They bind us with rules like we're children. They tell us we are prohibited from affecting the gaming odds in any way. Why do you think that is?"

"Because eventually it would be noticed by the non-magickals. They use computers to test the odds. They'd know the moment something wasn't right, and then they'd investigate. That would lead them to us. All of us."

"No!" Kleure barked out. He literally barked it. "The Oddsmakers don't fear that. They change the odds when it suits them. Why are they the exceptions to their own rules?"

Uneasy, I shook my head. "I couldn't tell you." Nor did I want to hazard a guess.

"We are treated like criminals. If we break their pointless rules we face a punishment of death or, if you're fortunate, an irreversible loss of your magick. Funny, isn't it, that the best outcome when you're dealing with the Oddsmakers is to lose the very essence of who you are?"

I said nothing. The Keyhole wasn't a pro-Oddsmakers environment. While I mostly agreed with their resentment of the magickal bosses, I wasn't stupid enough to say as much aloud. Not while the Oddsmakers continued to foster their unhealthy habit of kidnapping me and dragging me to their underground lair.

"What I and my pets do is encourage humans to play," Kleure went on, calmer. "Nothing more. A gambler walks by any one of my pets and suddenly he feels lucky. He feels he has a chance. Whether those players win or lose after that point is not my concern. My job is only to provide the impetus for gamblers to take a seat and pull out their money. That's all the casinos want. Players. "

"So when someone says they've got a 'feeling', the truth is that they've probably brushed elbows with one of these guys." I motioned at the dogs. "Or girls."

"Exactly. It's a very positive, uplifting business." Kleure bared his teeth again.

I'd buy the London Bridge before I believed him. Kleure was a mischief maker who'd learned to adapt his particular skillset to Las Vegas. He was an old being. Stories of him as Kludde had gone around Europe for ages where he had lured travelers into the woods where they'd wandered lost for days. Now he was here, making bank off his hobby of screwing with humans.

Nevertheless, how he made his money wasn't my concern. It was just small talk before I launched into the nitty gritty.

"Obviously you're a huge success and that's probably brought you into contact with a lot of—"

"Tell me who you're asking about, Anne. You've wasted enough of my time already."

I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder. That was why I'd brought Melanie. Instead I focused on Kleure, who no longer looked friendly.

"A creature," I began, "which my sources say is likely a shifter, has been asking about me. They've gone so far as to threaten to torture a friend of mine in order to get that information. I don't appreciate that. I don't appreciate it at all. I want to know who it is."

"So you may kill them?"

The blunt question didn't throw me at all. "We'll see."

The blue flames in his eyes flickered. "A predator after my own heart. Though of course I'd
never
hurt another living soul."

The dogs in the booth made weird chuffing noises and two of them yipped. I took that to be canine laughter.

"Do you know who it is?" I pressed. The atmosphere in the Keyhole was beginning to weigh on my nerves, as though the walls and everything within them were moving closer. I tried to recall the largest shifters I'd seen in my quick scan of the place: there had been wolves, but any larger predators? Any bears or lions?  I couldn't pull them up in my memory.

"Before I answer your question," Kleure drawled, "I'd like to know why you believe I would help you."

I held his flaming gaze. "Because we're on the same side."

I made it an ambiguous statement on purpose. The same side could mean anything—we were both predators, we were both magickal beings, neither of us spent a lot of time around cats…I'd let him decide.

"I'm not your friend, Anne." Kleure leaned forward. "In fact…no one here is your friend. Not while you're the lapdog of the Oddsmakers."

Crap. I hadn't considered that anyone here might know of my involvement with the big bosses.

My laugh was awkward and uneasy. "You're joking, right? You think I'm friends with those freaks? That I ever did anything for them willingly? Please."

He flared in a big blue ball of flame, prompting me to jerk back from the table. But the fire had no heat. It was supernatural. It died down to reveal him in his natural form again. The big black dog looked rabid to me, and the orb of blue fire around his head didn't make him any more appealing. The slow flap of his leathery wings seemed ominous. Even the yellow canary on his shoulder resembled a small, angry fireball.

"Do you take me for a fool?" he asked in a snarling voice that was even more difficult to understand than his human one had been.

"On the contrary," I shot back. "I figured you'd be smart enough to recognize when someone chooses to do something and when they're bullied into it. I want nothing to do with the Oddsmakers, but they refuse to take the hint. They're the worst ex-boyfriends anyone's ever had."

"You sound suitably angry, but the truth is your family's dragons have served as weapons of the Oddsmakers for quite some time."

I was so shocked that for a second I couldn't speak. Finally, I sputtered out, "That's a lie!"

"Ancient history is not your friend, Anne, but when your family had the opportunity to rewrite it, your mother chose to carry on tradition."

I shook my head in frustration. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The blue flared brighter. "I don't know why you're really here, but you shouldn't have come."

"Anne…" Melanie murmured, her voice rising. "Some of them are standing!"

This was going down worse than I'd feared. Although I'd mentally prepared myself to be the butt of some backlash simply from possessing a dragon familiar, something worse was happening and I had no idea how or why.

I held my hands out, placating. "Look, let's all calm down. I'm not here to pick a fight, Mr. Kleure."

Kleure snapped his jaws together. "It appears as though you may be involved in one nonetheless."

"I only want information about—"

"Anne!"

I spun. Melanie wouldn't have screamed unless it was something worth putting my back to Kleure.

It was.

People and animals had leaped out of their chairs to avoid the path of four wolves of varying colors that were barreling across the room straight for me and Melanie. There was no stopping to talk them down. I reached into that rumbly place behind my breast bone and out came Lucky like a magic trick.

Some trick. He blasted into the middle of the room like a mini sun, his golden body blazing so brightly it forced the four wolves to flinch back, their paws and nails scuttling clumsily across the tile floor, sending the shifters sliding into each other and crashing into the nearest tables and chairs.

I heard shouts of "dragon!", and they weren't the kind that made me want to smile and wave in acknowledgment. These were shouts of fear, even a touch of resentment. I got it. The fear of sorcery like mine was part of the reason magickal beings were forced to hide their magick from non-magickals in the first place. Lucky and I presented a danger to the world that I doubted any amount of campaigning on my part would change.

So I used it to my advantage.

I had Lucky go big. Super monstrous, holy moly big. Bigger than he'd been in Moonlight. His golden scaled body filled the room, forcing the shifters to crouch down beneath tables or smash up against each other at the walls. And he was so bright that no one could keep their eyes open. Everyone either squinted or covered their faces.

It could have ended like that, with me and Melanie squeezing our way out of there while Lucky held everyone in check.

But there was always someone, wasn't there? One guy who had to play the hero.

Or in this case, the villain.

It turned out to be Kleure.

He jumped onto my back. I screamed because if you've never had a giant dog with a flaming blue head land on your back—let's just say it's a pretty terrifying experience. The weight of him pulled me backward so together we crashed onto the table, making the drinks there explode into the air around us and soak the rest of my clothing.

His sharp teeth snapped at the air beside my ear and his breath—talk about dog breath! Kleure smelled like he'd just eaten cat poop. I gagged even as I struggled to draw in air, even awful-smelling air. His furry forelegs had wrapped around my throat and he was on the way to strangling me unconscious if he didn't manage to tear my throat out first, which he was trying to do as well.

I punched over my shoulder, hitting him square in the muzzle. He let out a yelp, helpfully telling me I was on target. So I did it again, harder. The moment his forelegs loosened I hurled myself forward, breaking his grip. Just in time, too, because his dog shifter buddies dove at the table, their canines just missing my arms and torso.

I threw a quick glance over the room before me. Melanie had shifted to her monkey form at some point, ditching her steampunk gear which had been kicked to all corners of the club. Her monkey was on the floor, wrestling with a tabby cat and an evil-looking Siamese. Bits of fur filled the air. The screeching and screaming hurt my ears.

More worrisome was what I saw attempting to squeeze beneath Lucky's coils. It was a Bengal tiger. It was absolutely stunning and it absolutely frightened me because a big predator like that wouldn't go down easily. It would keep attacking until I had no choice but to give Lucky his head. Everything I'd feared happening in Moonlight was going to happen here.

Running from fate had never felt so futile.

I fed Lucky a little more energy and simultaneously experienced that unnerving sensation of scales rippling across my skin and the need to cough out embers. Lucky belched a streamer of fire that curled and roiled across the ceiling of the speakeasy. Screams of terror filled the place. Those shifters who'd been pressed to the walls by Lucky's bulk now slid along his body, making their way urgently for the room's single exit. I ordered Lucky to relax his body and allow them to run past and soon, a steady stream of creatures was on their way out.

I hoped they remembered to shift forms before ordinary people saw them. Come to think of it, they'd all be naked. They'd better be heading to the back alley exit instead!

But magickal streakers swiftly became the least of my concerns. The tiger was still coming and I faced danger nearer still: jaws closed around my left forearm. I spun, flinging a terrier off me that flew across the room and skittered across tabletops. A pit bull scrambled up on the booth's table, its powerful muscles bunching as it prepared to launch itself at me.

"Stop them or I'll burn them all!" I shouted at Kleure, who was crouched at the edge of the booth, his claws digging into the black vinyl, his wings arrowed back like swords. The canary on his shoulder flared its wings, trying to look larger.

"I'm a dragon, Kleure! I don't care how many I kill!"

Please fear me! I thought at him and the other shifters.
I don't want to fight with sorcery. I don't want to lose control!

My heart was a drum, its beat giving life to Lucky. I could hear the seductive call of my ancient blood, coaxing me to join my ancestors in revealing my true self. In reveling in it. I heard the clicking of tiger claws coming up fast behind me. I watched the pit bull lower its head and coil its muscles.

"Let us go!" I shouted. My voice cracked as I warned, "I'll end you all! The Oddsmakers won't stop me!"

But mentioning the Oddsmakers was a mistake.