27

As we circled the casino, looking for the best place to stage our entrance and Warren’s eventual extraction, the Strip was coming to life. Early morning joggers bounded up the near-empty streets, dodging slower pedestrians who’d emerged in quest of sunlight or breakfast buffets. Life, I thought, went on. I studied the building before us, the faux castle facade, the lush landscaping that surrounded it like a moat. It was no longer a mere casino, I realized, but a guarded fortress. And I was trying to scale its walls.

“I have an idea,” Hunter said, and headed toward the casino. “Give me five minutes.”

“Wait! You can’t go in alone!” The Shadows, were they there, would scent him. And I was sure they were there.

He shrugged off my arm with an irritated jerk. “Just five minutes. Meet me at the main entrance.”

It passed like five hours. By the time I rounded the building from the street side, Hunter was already on patrol, dressed in a Valhalla security uniform and scanning the area intently. His back was to me, so I exhaled to let him know I was there. He whirled immediately, heading straight for me.

He was fearsome, even clothed as a mortal. His blueblack hair was no longer loose, slicked instead, and banded at the base of his neck. He had his warrior’s face on, and though I knew who the game face was really for, the murderous look in his eyes still sent a chill down my spine. His whip was nowhere to be seen, but his mortal weapons were secured at his sides.

“Two guns?” I said, eyeing a holster on each side and a baton at his back.

“The Tulpa’s paranoid.”

The Tulpa wasn’t the only one. I glanced behind me, staring down a senior citizen about half my height. I didn’t like how exposed I felt on the street. And I could smell Hunter, his adrenaline and nerves as acute as smelling salts in my nose. “Let’s go.”

He shifted, and stepped in front of me.

“What are you doing? Move.” I skirted around him. He stepped in front of me again.

“Act like we’re arguing,” he said.

Exasperated, I scowled at him. “We are arguing.”

“I mean act crazy.” I tilted my head, looking at him. He spoke again, through clenched teeth. “Give me an observable reason to detain you.”

“I feel stupid,” I muttered, but halfheartedly threw my arms up in the air. “Whoo-hoo!”

His large palm smacked my head so hard my teeth clattered.

“Ow! Bastard!” I pushed away, but Hunter angled his body, giving me some slack and pulling me back, three times in quick succession. I finally realized he was making it appear I was struggling with him, and that it had worked. Our progression through the porte cochere was marked by several wary, if curious, sidelong glances. At the entrance, politely attended by a blank-faced doorman, I spotted a smoky half globe on the ceiling and knew that not everyone eyeing us was on the casino floor.

“I said take off the mask,” Hunter said suddenly, loudly. He hadn’t, of course, but I was up to speed now.

“Fuck you,” I said, placing one hand on my head as though to prevent its removal, pushing him away with the other. He twisted my arms behind my back and slapped cuffs on them.

“Hey!” The panic in my voice was real. I didn’t like being cuffed, my conduit out of reach, but there was a warning in Hunter’s eye and I stopped struggling so much. I knew there was no way a masked woman could get through Valhalla without being apprehended by hotel security. The outfit was one thing—it was Vegas, after all—but a mask was another.

I also knew that once detained, a suspected robber would be escorted to a holding room for interrogation, either by hotel security alone or in tandem with Metro. That’s where I was headed now, though in this case the place Hunter was dragging me was precisely where I wanted to go.

Which got me to thinking. If hotel surveillance had caught me entering with my mask on, hadn’t it also caught Hunter coming in off-shift, changing into a uniform, and escorting me to the back of the house? Wouldn’t he be questioned about it later by those who worked for the Tulpa? And wouldn’t the answers, ultimately, reveal his true identity?

His entire life would be compromised, I thought, and the Zodiac troop would have no one on the inside of the Tulpa’s organization. Again.

Of course, I knew Hunter had already thought of this. He was giving it all up, I realized, everything he’d worked for. His identity. His life. The job that would help him infiltrate the Tulpa’s organization.

For now, though, he was dragging me across the main casino floor, around slot banks and carousels, between bleary-eyed tourists who’d been at the tables all night and garishly flashing neon that seemed to me to say “Go back! Go back! Certain death lies ahead!”

We reached a pair of towering double doors and Hunter punched the handicapped access button. They swung open automatically like a cavernous mouth opening to reveal Valhalla’s bowels. Where the real work, both natural and supernatural, was done.

“Stay close. It’s easy to get lost,” Hunter said, his grip easing, his pace increasing. “There are no cameras back here, bad for morale, but there are eyes everywhere.”

He turned left, then right, then a series of quick lefts. After the first two passageways we saw no one, which was strange for a casino. Hunter gestured down a long corridor. “Loading docks are that way. Might be a possible escape route later, but I think the freight elevators are a better bet. Less traffic.”

I looked at him. His face was drawn tight, as if strings were winging his features downward. “I can smell you,” I said.

“I know,” he said, and his voice was tight too. He wasn’t sweating, but his scent reeked from his pores.

“You’ll be a target.”

He looked at me, still for the first time. “That’s why I’m telling you where the loading docks are.” I swallowed hard. “Now pay attention.”

We entered a seemingly unending hallway, steel-plated from the floor to about four feet up, a barrier against carts and trolleys and other equipment that bumped along on the hotel’s daily business. “The Tulpa is headquartered down the longest corridor in Valhalla. Ever see those horror movies where someone’s running down a hallway that just keeps getting longer and longer?” I looked behind me. We were a hundred yards in. I looked ahead. At least a hundred more to go. Hunter glanced over at me. “Now imagine running it with a dozen Shadow warriors at your back.”

I swallowed hard. “I’d rather not.” But I looked above for possible escape routes, at the walls and floor for possible weapons. There was nothing. Just smooth, shiny walls and a disturbing fluorescent trail of elongated wall lamps.

“They call it the Gauntlet,” he said, watching me.

“Of course they do,” I said. That earned me a chuckle.

The hallway dead-ended, which I hoped wasn’t symbolic, and we shifted right, stopping abruptly. An elevator bank stood right in front of us, the numbers above winging from one to twenty-four. Hunter and I faced the doors, neither of us talking nor looking at one another as he unlocked my hands and placed the cuffs in his back pocket. Then he pushed the button. It began its downward descent with a loud ding.

I turned to him suddenly. “Hunter, I have to apologize.”

“For what?” He was only half listening. The elevator was on the top floor. We were in the basement.

“For all this.” His eyes flicked to me, then back. Ding. Floor twenty. “I know what you’re risking today. I know you’re going to lose everything.”

I knew also what it was to lose everything.

“Let’s not talk about it.” He glanced up at the lighted numbering above the doors, but the way his jaw clenched gave him away. Ding. Ten floors away. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” I said, tentatively, “but just one more thing.”