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Chapter Three

The sound of slot machines and chattering voices surrounded him, but Caleb ignored it, instead focusing on the cards he currently held in his hand. After doing this for almost two months, he’d gotten pretty good at keeping his focus fixed on the here and now.

In this case, it was the casino at the Golden Gate, a small hotel off the Strip that he hadn’t yet visited. Ever since coming to Las Vegas immediately after he left Greencastle, he’d done his best to move from casino to casino, never winning too much at any one place, even as he took care to change his appearance every time.

Tonight he wore the face of a man he’d seen at Caesar’s Palace a few weeks back, a tourist in his late forties with thinning fair hair and the kind of tan that indicated he might be getting a visit from the melanoma fairy in the not-too-distant future. He preferred to use the appearances of other men, just because, while his demon blood allowed him to shapeshift, it was still much easier to copy the faces and bodies of those who were close to him in height and build. At almost six foot two and around 185 pounds — all this eating at casino buffets over the past couple of months had helped him gain back the mass he’d lost in Hell — he knew there weren’t too many women who shared his physique.

The seed money his mother had given him was parlayed into more than ten times that amount within only a few days of his arrival in Las Vegas, allowing him to buy a house for cash and settle into this new life. His demonic powers gave him the ability to create a new identity complete with driver’s license and Social Security number, and because he liked his name but knew that “Caleb Lockwood” might have thrown up some red flags, he was now Caleb Lowe, a name he knew he’d answer to but was still enough different from the one he’d been born with that he didn’t think it would cause any problems.

Fifty grand here, forty there…maybe a hundred grand if he was feeling flush on a particular night and didn’t plan on returning to that casino any time soon. It was so easy to make the dice flip the way he needed, or to ensure that a dealer would only cause him to go bust in a game of blackjack when he wanted them to. Of course he needed to lose now and again, just so he wouldn’t rouse too much suspicion.

But he won more than he lost. Far, far more.

Right now, he had almost two million bucks stashed in various banks around town. Caleb honestly wasn’t sure what he planned to do with all of it, only that he felt much better having that much of a cushion. His home — which apparently had once been featured on some basic cable house-flipping show — he’d gotten for below asking because it had been on the market for a while, so that was one expense he didn’t need to worry about any longer. He’d also bought a big black Range Rover, a much better vehicle than the old Nissan pickup he’d driven in Los Angeles when he was pretending to be a lowly assistant in the television industry, but he didn’t even drive his new ride that much.

No, it just seemed safer to take taxis and Ubers and Lyfts, so that any cameras keeping watch outside the casinos wouldn’t see him driving away in the same vehicle over and over again.

Right now, he was holding a straight flush, while he knew that the woman to his left — blonde and Botoxed within an inch of her life — only had two of a kind. The man to his right was the real problem. He wasn’t some tourist here to play a few games of poker before he headed off to a show, but someone Caleb recognized, a man he’d seen around town and knew was very good at what he did. Under normal circumstances, Caleb doubted he would have been able to beat him.

These weren’t normal circumstances, though…not when his demon powers were involved.

It was so very easy to ensure the correct cards gravitated to his hand. Not in any way that could be traced or even arouse suspicion, but still, he knew when he sat down to play, he was going to win.

Unless, of course, he wanted to lose so his winning streaks wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

He’d lost the last hand, though, so there was no way he would let this one go, not when there was almost ten grand in chips sitting in the middle of the table.

“I’ll raise one thousand,” he said, pushing a small stack of chips toward the others.

The blonde’s eyes widened, but she picked up her rum and Coke and took a sip before announcing, “And I’ll see you.”

Bad move, although Caleb wouldn’t bother to tell her that. While not exactly drunk, she clearly wasn’t operating with all her regular faculties, either.

Then again, someone who had that many rocks on her fingers — and around her neck and hanging from her ears — could probably lose much more than the current pot and still not bat an eye. Thanks to his attuned demonic senses, he knew those diamonds were genuine.

No partner in evidence, so he couldn’t be sure whether she’d gotten lucky in a divorce or was a self-made woman.

It didn’t matter to him one way or another. He wasn’t here to worry about her personal life, but to liberate her of some funds she obviously would never miss.

“Call,” said the other man, the one Caleb had guessed was a professional. He looked vaguely annoyed, as if he wished he was playing against people more worthy of his mettle.

Well, the joke was on him.

“Straight flush,” he said as he placed his cards on the table.

“Oh, shit,” the woman sighed, laying down her two eights.

The professional sent Caleb a steely look. “Three aces.”

Which should have been enough. But with a straight flush running from an eight to a queen, Caleb had emerged victorious this round.

“Good game,” he said, keeping his tone utterly neutral.

Then he pulled the chips toward him and placed them in the chip rack he had sitting next to his elbow. He’d already won a grand, but that was peanuts compared to the eleven thousand and some change his straight flush had earned him.

He tilted his head toward his erstwhile poker partners and headed toward the cashier. It wasn’t very late — just a little past ten o’clock — but he thought he’d won enough tonight. As it was, he’d probably need to start looking for another bank to deposit his winnings. Four were already maxed out to their FDIC limits, and the one remaining was getting there. Sure, he also had some more cash hidden away in safe deposit boxes, but getting to it wasn’t as easy as simply using a Visa debit card.

Anyway, the more places he stashed his money, the less chance of anyone being able to track down where everything was hidden.

The cashier took the chips, checked his fake I.D. — he always made sure to use his powers to alter it so it matched his shapeshifted identity — and handed over his cash in neat bundles, which he slipped into the messenger bag he always carried with him when he went on these gaming forays. He liked the bag because he could slip it over his neck and forget about it, while his father’s old briefcase would have required a lot more tending.

Caleb already had his phone out as he stepped away from the cashier’s cage so he could summon a Lyft to come pick him up. Although he alternated between ride services, he never had them take him to his house, but rather to a neutral location like a strip mall or a bus stop just distant enough that it would be difficult to trace him to his home base. From there, he would simply find a shadowy spot he could teleport from and get home that way.

Maybe no one was watching him at all, and these maneuvers were nothing more than his way of making himself feel more important than he really was. As far as he could tell, even when he went around wearing his real face — which was most of the time, actually, whether going to the bank or the grocery store or the gym — no one seemed to pay any particular attention to him.

Why would they? According to the world, Caleb Lockwood had been dead for two years…and he’d never hung out in Vegas. In fact, the first time he’d even left Indiana had been when his father sent him to California to try to track down the Project Demon Hunters footage so the hometown demons could make sure they were able to release it to further their own ends…namely, to create confusion and disbelief in the general population, to make people realize Hell was real and that the foundation their shallow lives were built on amounted to very little.

In the end, though, it had turned out to be little more than an internet phenomenon, with thousands of talking heads on YouTube explaining how the footage had been faked and that of course Hell — and the demons who dwelled there — didn’t exist.

But even though those plans had turned out to be a lot of sound and fury and not much more, the situation had still been an utter shitshow. Sure, he’d done as he was told and had found the hard drive containing the files, but still, the last thing he’d expected was to fall hard for the very woman he’d been trying to con.

Rosemary McGuire.

He still found himself thinking about her way too much. It would have been easy to say the not-quite obsession had everything to do with a bruised ego and nothing more — she’d dumped him before she’d even found out he was part demon and had taken up with a frigging Episcopalian priest, of all people — but Caleb wasn’t so sure about that. In the beginning when they’d been working together to find the footage, he’d realized he enjoyed being around her way more than he should have, and was all too glad to spend time with someone who seemed all right with taking him at face value.

Well, until the angelic blood she’d inherited from her father asserted itself and made it clear there weren’t going to be any dalliances with men who had demon blood running in their veins.

All the same, he hadn’t quite been able to let it go, had still searched online for mentions of her once he was safely back in the mortal realm…even though he knew all he was doing was frustrating himself that much more.

Had it been stupid to send her a wedding gift after he learned she was getting married around Christmas?

Probably.

Then again, she’d thought he was safely banished to Hell. Most likely, all he’d done was create a mystery she couldn’t solve as she tried to figure out who could have sent her the butterfly pendant with its dancing complement of diamonds.

The Lyft driver who picked him up didn’t seem inclined toward conversation, and Caleb was just fine with that. No, he’d go home, put his winnings in a safe, and then do some research to see which banks or credit unions would be the most likely candidates for opening a new account. Luckily, most institutions here in Las Vegas were used to people depositing large sums of cash after a lucrative night at the casinos.

Tonight, he had the driver take him to a shopping center about a mile away from his house, one with a Safeway that was open twenty-four hours. After adding a sizable tip in the app, he thanked the guy and headed into the grocery store.

However, picking up some late-night snacks wasn’t Caleb’s intention. He went straight to the pet food aisle, one that just happened to be ignored by the store’s security cameras, and sent a quick glance around him. The aisle was utterly deserted, and no one seemed to be coming this way.

A shift in intention, and he was standing in the living room of the house that had been his home for the past two months. He’d bought it fully furnished, so all he’d needed to do was show up with a toothbrush and some clothes.

At first, he’d toyed with the idea of redoing parts of the house, since some of it was a little too Vegas and over-the-top for him, but he had to admit the place was starting to grow on him, even the glowing neon “PLAY” sign that hung on one wall in the family room, which was dominated by a big black pool table.

Or maybe he simply enjoyed being here because he knew his mother would absolutely hate the place, right down to the crystal chandelier that dangled over the standalone tub in the main bathroom.

He rarely drank when he was gambling — even though he knew a couple of cocktails wouldn’t come anywhere close to affecting his demon-enhanced constitution — but when he got home, he almost always poured himself something, whether that was a few fingers of bourbon or a Scotch and soda.

Tonight, bourbon seemed easier, so he got down a glass and fixed himself a drink before heading into the living room. One of the reasons he’d bought the house was the dark blue paint that made the space moody and inviting, reminding him a little of the color he’d painted his boyhood room at home.

Then again, maybe that hadn’t been such a great idea. He tried to think of Greencastle as little as possible these days.

Out of all of them — half-demons and quarter-demons alike — he’d been the only one to escape.

Sheer dumb luck, probably. Getting around in Hell was never easy, since it wasn’t as if there were nice paved roads and street signs and phones with GPS to get you where you were going. He’d wandered for what felt like eons but eventually had returned to the dead forest where the demon lord Belial liked to hold court. Not because he had any wish to listen to that big bastard’s pontificating, but mainly because even a grove of dead trees felt more like home than the trackless, stony wastelands that made up the rest of the place.

And that was why Caleb had seen the portal opening into the firelit room where the dead redheads had lain…had watched as another red-haired woman — like enough to the other two that he thought they might have been sisters — and Belial had fought…had taken the leap of faith that had brought him back to the real world.

No one else from the Greencastle contingent had been anywhere near the grove of dead trees or the portal the demon lord had opened there, so they were now trapped in Hell forever. Unlike regular demons, they couldn’t be summoned, so once they were banished, that was it.

While he had to admit that having the half-demons remain there was no great loss — like his father, they were a bunch of greedy, officious assholes — he didn’t think it was fair for the quarter-demons of his own generation to have suffered the same fate. They had far more human blood than not, and were mostly victims of circumstance.

But because he couldn’t do a damn thing about their situation, he knew he probably shouldn’t waste too much brain space on it.

He flicked the switch to turn on the gas fireplace and sat down. What he hadn’t been expecting was to find how cool Las Vegas actually was in December and January — nothing like his hometown of Greencastle, of course, but still chilly enough that he didn’t feel entirely stupid about using the fireplace. It would have been better to have arrived in the dead of summer when he could have allowed the hundred-plus temperatures to bake the last icy cold of Hell out of his bones, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. To be honest, he would have been all right with landing in Buffalo in midwinter as long as it meant he wouldn’t have to spend another moment in the underworld.

The bourbon was warm against his throat, though, and he had to admit that he could have done a lot worse. Now he had a home base and an easy way of making sure the money continued to flow in, and all he had to do was maintain the status quo and he’d be home free.

Sure, this new existence was a little lonely, but he had only himself to blame for that. He’d hooked up with a couple of women right after arriving in Las Vegas, before he’d even bought this house and was bouncing from hotel room to hotel room, but that had only been an exercise in relieving the biological backpressure that had built up during his tenure in Hell.

Actually allowing someone into his life, let alone telling them the truth about his origins?

Caleb doubted that would ever happen.