Descended from Dragons: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 1) (18 page)

I nodded. "Rumor says he's buried somewhere in the desert."

"I don't know if that's true or not, but I heard that the Oddsmakers grabbed him by shrinking him down to the size of a cellphone and then pocketing him and walking out of the casino."

I laughed, though if the story
were
true, it wasn't funny. "Then they could have just flushed him down a toilet, not gone to the effort of burying him out in the desert."

He grinned at the suggestion. "It's just what I heard. No one knows much about the Oddsmakers except to steer clear of them."

Celestina, sitting beside him, gave a snort of derision. Stretched across her lap with his head out the window was Lev, now in his wolf form.

"Oddsmakers are like the Mafia for magick," she said. "They don't operate for the good of anyone but themselves. Threaten their bottom line and they'll erase you."

I found that an interesting analogy. "So what's their bottom line? Surely they're not motivated by money?"

"They're motivated by a hunger for power. No one can do anything of major magickal significance without their permission."

"Well, I guess someone has to take some kind of control," I said. "Otherwise we'd have sorcerers and shifters running free all over the place and the government would be snatching up the rest of us for testing and military experiments." I shuddered. "Better to have rules than be poked and prodded, right?"

"You assume the Oddsmakers exist to protect us." Even in the dark interior of the car, I could read Celestina's skepticism. "It's all about power. Always."

I didn't doubt she was right, which set my mental gears turning. "How did they come about? Did they take control on their own or were they elected?"

"Ooh! Ooh! I know this!" Melanie took one hand off the wheel to wave it above her head. "My dad told me the Oddsmakers showed up in Vegas in the late 1950s because huge amounts of chance magick were building up here. A lot of the vintage places like the Sands, the Sahara, and the Horseshoe were doing well by that time and bringing in a lot of business. God, Anne, most of them have been imploded, how sad is that?!"

"It is sad, but keep going," I urged, trying to keep her on target. I loved her, but as a monkey shifter Melanie could have an attention span shorter than a six year-old's.

"Okay, so the valley is like a big bowl, right? The mountains surround us in a ring. And there's nothing nearby to soak up all the chance magick that grows every time someone makes a bet. I mean, you flip a coin and a tiny bit is generated even from that. So imagine thousands of people betting on everything, twenty-four hours a day. It just kept building and building and the Oddsmakers realized someone nasty was going to come along and try to take advantage of it all. So they decided to begin monitoring the place to make sure no one was tapping into it for the wrong reasons or being sloppy and revealing magick to ordinary people."

It was interesting, and I wanted to know more, but history needed to take a backseat to my current nervousness. "But who
are
they?" I pressed. "Some of the original Oddsmakers must be dead by now. Were they replaced?"

Melanie could only shrug. "I don't think my dad knows anything about who they are. I'm not sure that anyone does."

"When you find out, Anne," Christian said, "let the rest of us know."

"Ha ha," I muttered at his unsubtle suggestion that I would be picked up soon and brought in for questioning.

He laughed at my sour expression. He was of zero interest to the Oddsmakers, so this discussion probably meant little to him. Unless he planned on putting on a SeaWorld show in the lake in front of Bellagio, no ordinary human was ever going to learn that Christian was a water fey.

"I'm teasing, but the fact of the matter is you can't stop it if it happens," he went on more seriously, "so why worry about it? If they want you, there's nothing you can do to avoid them."

"Do they have an email address? I'd love to write and tell them that the dragon that was out there tonight was not my doing." With a sigh, I settled back in my seat. "I'm going to get the blame for this. I know it. But you're right. All I can do is sit back and wait. I don't like that."

"It'll be okay," Melanie assured me with a smile. "Even if they question you, you're innocent. We'll all testify as character witnesses!"

"Are you trying to get me hanged?"

She giggled. The sound relaxed me. I checked how much money I had. "Hey, are you guys hungry? If we go to the Peppermill I'll buy."

Melanie opened her mouth to cheer—

—except I never heard it.

The Toyota Prius flipped. That was how it felt, like my seatbelt cut into my hips and all the blood in my body rushed into my head. Screaming filled my ears, mine or my friends'. I couldn't tell which because the sound was swiftly drowned out by a blast of ferocious sound like a jet plane taking off or a monster roaring—

~~~~~

I was no longer in Melanie's car.

I blinked. Above me was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, stretching so far in every direction that I couldn't see the edges from where I lay.

But was it really the Sistine Chapel? The longer I stared at the frescos above me the more wrong they appeared. The painted figures within the scenes of Genesis were all subtly but definitively unnatural: a fang here, a claw and tail there, a cruel twist of the mouth that I was sure Michelangelo had not intended. It was ancient Italian bizarro world.

Compelled by curiosity, I eventually located the iconic depiction of God extending his finger to create Adam. Just like everything else, it was warped. This version of Adam held a wand, the tip of which glowed with magick where God touched it. And God…well, he looked like someone you didn't want to turn your back on. He reminded me a bit of a werewolf.

I said, "Is this…is this someone's
fanart
?"

The sound of my voice startled me. I spread my hands flat beneath me on what felt like cold, hard concrete. Breathing through my mouth, I did my best not to freak out. Where had the car gone? Where were my friends?

Where the hell was I?

"A better reaction than most, Anne Moody. A point in your favor."

The voice was a young woman's, but that only made the hairs stand up on my arm because there was no way someone my age could be responsible for what had just happened to me.

Inwardly cringing, I stood up. The thought crossed my mind that I could call Lucky, but I paid no attention to it. Using my sorcery against the Oddsmakers sounded like the worst thing I could do. I had to face this as plain old Anne Moody.

Talk about terrible odds.

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About the Author

Tricia Owens has worked as a casino dealer in Las Vegas and as an editor on a cruise ship that sails around the world. Having visited more than 80 countries, she's content (for the moment) to relax in Las Vegas. She assures you the real Sin City is much weirder than anything depicted in her books.

Descended from Dragons is the first book in her Moonlight Dragon urban fantasy series.