Page 9

Chapter Nine

Caleb had driven home after his dinner with Delia Dunne, but a restless fifteen minutes or so of puttering around the house told him he wasn’t going to be content with hanging out and watching some TV.

Maybe he should get a dog.

The idea had occurred to him more than once after he’d bought the place — it had a big yard, and he could certainly adjust his schedule to be around more to play with the pup. When he was a kid, he’d had a dog, a scary-smart German shepherd who’d been his constant companion. As he grew older, he realized the dog hadn’t been much more than a prop to make the Lockwoods look as much like the typical all-American family as possible, but the boy he’d been hadn’t cared.

No, he’d loved Riley and had mourned when the dog passed at the ripe old age of thirteen, about the maximum expected from that breed. By that point, Caleb was almost twenty and already thinking about moving out, and losing Riley had seemed to be a sign that it was time to go.

But eight o’clock on a Friday night wasn’t exactly prime time to visit an animal shelter, so it wasn’t as if he could just run out and grab himself a new canine companion.

Instead, he got into his Range Rover and drove downtown, figuring he might as well start racking up some more wins to replace the money he was about to spend on the house on Pueblo Street.

And to pay for all the massive renovations it would require to make it remotely habitable.

Although things were supposed to slow down in Vegas after the first of the year before they ramped up again around spring break, Caleb didn’t see much sign of that as he hunted for a space in one of the casino parking garages. He finally was able to snag one at the Strat, which seemed to be a signal that he should start his night of gambling there. Because he hadn’t played at that casino yet, he figured it was ripe for the picking.

The darkness of the garage helped conceal him as he shifted his appearance, this time taking on the face and build of an Asian man in his forties. So far, he’d never deployed the same identity twice, using as inspiration people he’d seen on the street or at the grocery store or on the evening news, or failing that, using AI to cook up some useful faces. Once he saw a person, their features were permanently engraved on his memory, making it easy enough to shuffle through all their various visages and decide which one would be right for a particular occasion.

And when he went inside, the stray thought passed through his mind that, although the design elements might change from venue to venue, all casinos were still basically the same — noisy and dark and smelling of cigarette smoke.

In that way, he supposed they were a little like Hell.

He wanted to win, but he wasn’t going to go crazy about it. Maybe 25K here, another 30K somewhere else, and he’d just hopscotch from casino to casino until he had another half million ready to be deposited in yet another bank. Eventually, he’d probably need to get a financial advisor who could help him guide it into T-bills or mutual funds or whatever, but for now, he kind of liked the idea of having millions stashed in the various banks and credit unions around town.

Blackjack first, followed by some time at the craps table. He went into the bathroom in between, making sure to change his appearance before he exited. While he supposed some people might be lucky enough to win big at both games, he thought it better to be careful and make the security team at the Strat — and their cameras — think that two entirely different people had won big tonight.

He got into the flow while playing craps, now wearing the face of a man around his own age, but with dark hair and hazel eyes and features that were entirely unlike his own. Roll after roll went his way, while crowds began to gather around the table and cheer him on.

Among the group were a couple of extremely attractive women, their interest piqued, he guessed, just as much by his appearance as the continued luck he displayed. One of them even leaned on him, rubbing her hip suggestively against his, and he knew she’d be just fine with him taking her home after he collected his winnings.

And would that be such a bad thing? It had been a while since he’d scratched that itch, and he had to admit the girl was pretty spectacular in that tight black dress with her blonde hair cascading down her back.

Out of nowhere, his mind conjured an image of Delia Dunne’s face, of how shocked and pale she’d been after he caught hold of her and yanked her back from the edge of the empty pool.

Of how she’d gathered herself and gone inside and done her ritual anyway, when he guessed a lot of women would have run screaming for the door.

Suddenly, the blonde with her bleached hair and too-tight dress didn’t seem nearly as appealing.

“Gotta cash out,” he told her after he signaled the dealer that he was done and began to collect his chips.

The blonde sent him a lascivious smile. “That’s okay,” she said. “Maybe you can buy me a drink with all that money you just won.”

It was a lot — almost sixty thousand, way more than he’d planned. But the rolls had kept going his way…of course they had…and he knew he’d allowed the game to string out longer than he’d intended because when he was watching the dice, he wasn’t thinking about his dinner with Delia, the way her hazel-green eyes would light up with amusement at a comment he’d made or how her wide, friendly mouth would curve as she smiled.

Even in her business attire, she’d been a million times sexier than this fake blonde could ever be.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ve got somewhere I need to go.”

The woman’s eyes — their color indistinguishable in the dark casino, and shadowed further by heavy fake lashes — narrowed.

“Asshole,” she snapped, and flounced away from the craps table, presumably heading off to find more cooperative prey.

Well, he’d clearly dodged a bullet there.

He went and cashed out his winnings, which were a little over eighty thousand between what he’d won at blackjack and craps. Although the woman working in the cage was professional enough, he could tell from her vaguely hostile air as she handed over the money that she wasn’t too thrilled with him for making the casino take such a hit.

Time to move on.

From there, he drove over to the Bellagio, won another ten grand, and then wandered down the strip to Caesar’s Palace, where he allowed himself a drink as he gambled, figuring this would be the last place he visited before heading home. By the time he was done, he knew he’d have won at least a hundred thousand, getting him to a place where he had begun to put a dent in the cost of his new house.

Except….

He’d gone to play roulette, thinking he might as well change things up a bit. This time, he wore the face and form of a chubby man with thinning hair who might have been in his late fifties or early sixties, not the sort of person who would attract hangers-on like the blonde at The Strat.

Well, unless he won another fifty or sixty thousand, something he wasn’t planning on doing. No, he would pull in maybe a couple of thousand bucks at best, certainly nothing that would cause anyone to even lift an eyebrow.

And at first, it was fine. He’d win a spin and then lose one, knowing he could influence the wheel anytime he liked but was letting it roll on pure chance for the moment, hoping to lull the croupier into a false sense of security. The woman overseeing the spins looked like she might be around ten years older than he, with dark hair pulled back into a severe ponytail and her expression indicating that she could think of a whole lot of other places where she would prefer to be.

Although Caleb could sympathize — he didn’t love hanging out in casinos, even as he understood they were the best way for him to put some quick money in his pocket — he also guessed that someone like her might not be paying as much attention to her work as she should.

Two spins in a row went his way, thanks to a subtle mental nudge, and the chips began to stack up in front of him.

Sounding bored, the dealer said, “Place your bets,” and he pushed one of the stacks onto black seven.

Which of course was where the ball bounced a few seconds later.

Winning was a hell of a drug, though, and he let himself win the next three as well, only stopping because he realized he was inching toward another ten grand and that was over the limit he’d set for himself.

Another cashier’s cage, another stack of bills pushed toward him. As always, he had his messenger bag secured around his neck and over one shoulder, and he shoved the money inside to join his winnings from earlier that night.

Definitely time to go home now. The people around him looked as though they planned to keep gambling and drinking until the wee hours, but he’d won more than expected and just wanted to get the hell out of there.

The first tingle of odd energy came as he was leaving Caesar’s. While it was kind of a hike to get back to the parking garage at the Bellagio where he’d left his Range Rover, he hadn’t felt like summoning an Uber or a taxi, figuring the streets were still plenty crowded and that he should be safe enough walking, despite the massive amount of money he carried in the messenger bag.

But something made the hair on the back of his neck stand up almost as soon as he was outside, and he looked all around him, wondering what the hell it was.

If he hadn’t known better, he would have said he’d sensed another demon somewhere nearby.

Well, a full-on demon, since Caleb knew he was the only quarter-demon currently walking the face of the planet. Likewise for the cambions, the half-demons, his father among them. They were all stuck in Hell, thanks to not being quite nimble enough when the opportune moment came.

He sped up his pace, not enough to make anyone watching really notice a shift in his gait, but enough that he would probably shave a couple of precious minutes off his trek to the parking garage where his SUV waited. No point in trying to glance around again, not when he knew a demon could perfectly mimic a human appearance when it needed to.

But what the hell — pardon the expression — was a demon doing here in Las Vegas?

Even as the question surfaced in his mind, he thought he knew the answer well enough. Demons loved to feed on negative emotions, and there were certainly enough of those bubbling away in Sin City at any given time. Greed, lust, gluttony…a whole smorgasbord of the seven deadly sins was on offer here to an enterprising demon who decided to go slumming. They couldn’t stay permanently, of course, but they could hang out long enough to do some damage.

There came that lifting of the hair at the back of his neck again, and he somehow knew the thing had come closer to him. Had it been able to sense his part-demon nature, just as he also knew it was somewhere close by?

Probably. Demons had their own super-attuned senses, and while they weren’t exactly like his, they were definitely strong enough to make a formidable adversary.

If that was even what was going on here. For all he knew, the demon that had hidden itself in the Friday night crowds that filled the sidewalks along the Strip was only tailing him because it had sensed another of its kind in the immediate vicinity and wanted to come over and give him the demonic equivalent of a secret handshake.

Somehow he doubted that was the case, though. His time in Hell had taught him that every demon was out for itself, and he’d only been left alone because — despite being just one-quarter demon — he was more powerful than many of them, thanks to the way the demonic blood he’d inherited had come down from one of Belial’s lieutenants, some of the strongest demons in existence.

But even though he thought he might be able to defeat whoever or whatever was following him, Caleb still wished he’d gone quietly into one of the public bathrooms in the Venetian and teleported himself back home. He could have come back to retrieve the Range Rover in the morning once the coast was clear.

He hadn’t, though, which meant he needed to keep walking and pretend he hadn’t noticed anything strange about one of the people in the crowd that surrounded him. At least he’d maintained the disguise of the mild-mannered, paunchy, middle-aged man he was pretending to be, so even if the demon decided to attack, it still wouldn’t know what his true face looked like.

Past Flamingo Road, and then at last into the parking garage at the Bellagio. Once there, Caleb couldn’t help sending a quick glance over his shoulder, but no one was anywhere nearby.

Had he been imagining things?

No, there had definitely been a demon. After spending two years surrounded by the infernal creatures, he knew all too well what the things smelled like, like someone who hadn’t taken a shower in years finally deciding to have a dunk in a sulfurous hot spring.

It didn’t seem to have come into the parking garage, so either it had decided he wasn’t worthwhile prey after all, or it had hung back, waiting to see what he did.

His Range Rover was up on the third level. Caleb hesitated for a moment, trying to decide which way of getting there was more dangerous — stairs or elevator?

Both options had their own upsides and downsides, but after weighing them in his mind, he decided the stairwell was probably the better option. Worse come to worst, he could always teleport himself home and come back for the SUV, whereas if he was trapped in the elevator with any hapless humans who had the bad luck to be inside when his pursuer attacked, he’d have a lot fewer options.

It was never a good idea to show off your powers like that, not when doing so always led to a whole lot of unanswerable questions.

At least the stairs were well-lit and didn’t offer many places for even a demon to lurk in the shadows. Caleb took the stairs two at a time, not caring if his actions contrasted sharply with the overweight man in his fifties he was pretending to be.

No one was around to see him anyway.

However, he slowed his pace when he emerged from the stairwell, pausing so he could send a wary look at his surroundings. Up here, there weren’t nearly as many cars as there had been a few hours earlier, telling him that he wasn’t the only one who’d decided to call it a night and head for home base.

Unless they’d only moved their partying operations to a different hotel.

Either way, it didn’t matter to him. What mattered was that he appeared to be alone up here, and he didn’t have that creepy-crawly sensation on the back of his neck, the one that down on the street had told him a demon was somewhere close.

Time to get the hell out of Dodge.

He reached into his pocket to touch the fob and unlock the Range Rover as he approached, walking quickly. A few more paces, and then he was there, pulling the messenger bag off his neck so he could toss it onto the passenger seat.

Before he could start to climb in behind the wheel, though, something dove off the roof of the SUV and plowed into him, knocking him to the ground.

Son of a bitch.

The demon was shorter than he, with grayish skin and red eyes and a bulging, bulbous head adorned by a pair of pointed ears. Because it was so small, it must have flattened itself against the roof of the Range Rover and hidden itself that way. Caleb had no idea what face it had worn while walking through the crowd, but it clearly had decided there was no need to disguise itself now, not when they were alone up here on the third floor of the parking structure.

“Take a hike,” he said clearly, and the demon hissed at him.

“I want the bag,” it said, and Caleb raised an eyebrow.

“To do what with? It’s not like you need cash in Hell to cover the mortgage or pay for groceries.”

Another hiss. “You’re a cheat. You shouldn’t have that money at all.”

All right, he had to acknowledge that accusation was true enough. Still, he had to survive in the human world…and the demon didn’t.

“A demon worried about right and wrong?” he countered. “That’s rich.”

The thing hissed again. “You’re pretty full of yourself for someone who’s only a quarter demon.”

Caleb didn’t bother to ask how it knew that. Demons could just tell.

“And you’re asking for trouble,” he replied. “Now, get out of here before I banish you.”

Its reddish eyes narrowed. “You can’t do that.”

“Can’t I? All that human blood in my veins lets me do a whole lot of shit that demons can’t.”

A second or two passed as the demon eyed him, clearly trying to weigh its chances of success. Caleb stood there and waited, knowing any shift in position on his part would only encourage it to attack.

And then it leaped into the air, clawed fingers reaching for him, reaching out to rip open his face —

Flames flared from his outstretched hands, and one fireball, followed by another, connected with the creature, knocking it back a good ten feet or so.

“I might be mostly human,” Caleb said as he advanced on the demon. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t defend myself.”

The creature bared its yellowed teeth. He’d encountered similar imps in Hell and knew they didn’t possess his talent for summoning fire. No, they delighted in tormenting those weaker than themselves and were often employed by stronger demons and devils to carry out their dirty work.

In fact….

“Who do you work for?” he demanded, and the thing growled.

“I work for myself.”

But something in the way those last two syllables squeaked past its jagged teeth told Caleb the demon was lying.

“You’re not strong enough to make it topside on your own,” he said. “Someone summoned you so they’d have a lackey. Who was it?”

Its reddish eyes widened in fear, and something about the way it glanced to one side told him the creature was about to bolt.

No way. Not when it would most likely go back and tell its master — whoever that was — that a quarter demon descended from one of Belial’s lieutenants was now roaming the streets of Las Vegas, Nevada.

So much for the interrogation.

Caleb lifted his hands again, and this time, fire exploded from his hands and swirled all around, catching the imp-demon in its scorching embrace, holding the thing until it had shattered into ash.

Not a moment too soon, because in the next instant, the faint squeal of a set of tires from the direction of the ramp told him someone was approaching and he needed to get the hell out of there.

Doing his best to seem nonchalant…even as he summoned a small breeze to blow away the ashy remnants of the demon…he walked over to the Range Rover and climbed into the driver’s seat. Just as he was fastening his seatbelt, the vehicle passed behind him.

It had the elegant script logo of the Bellagio painted on one door, with the word “Security” above it. Most likely, whoever was driving was just making their normal rounds, but to Caleb, its arrival was an additional signal that he needed to leave, and now. He always made sure to park carefully out of range of the nearest CCTV camera, and yet he also knew he shouldn’t take any more chances.

Slowly, he backed the SUV out of its parking space and headed down to the lower level and the exit that opened onto Flamingo Road. The whole time, he’d made sure his disguise remained intact, but after he turned onto Las Vegas Boulevard and knew he was well away from the parking structure, he thought it was finally safe for him to let the illusion disappear.

As he drove, he couldn’t stop himself from frowning.

Who had summoned that imp-demon…and why?