The man was Nash Jones, Sheriff of Hopi County. What he was doing in Las Vegas, a long way out of his jurisdiction, and what he thought he could do with a single stun gun against a horde of demons, I had no idea.

Gabrielle’s face lit up in welcome. “Nashie!” She waved. “Come and join my party!”

The demon under her eyed Nash in trepidation. It didn’t care about the Taser, or the puny human holding it, but it sensed about Nash what I knew—that he ate demon magic for breakfast.

While the demon halted in worry, one of the acid flinging creatures ceased knocking over slot machines and leapt at Nash’s back, black fluid spewing. Where the liquid hit the carpet, the carpet dissolved into a hissing, stinking mess.

Where the liquid hit Nash, it did … nothing. I held my breath. The acid was a physical manifestation and so should burn him without hindrance, but the liquid disappeared as soon as it touched him. Nash turned his head and fixed the demon with a gray-eyed stare.

The beast squealed in terror. The others caught its fear, turned to find the source of danger, and recoiled.

Now they only wanted to get away, demons flying or running like animals in terror, but they didn’t know where to go, and the destruction increased as they panicked.

“Janet!” Mick shouted at me. “Open a way!”

I knew what he meant, but what he was asking was onerous. Easy for him to throw out the command, but such a thing would take all my strength, and might be beyond my ability.

I grabbed Titus, dragging him after me as I stumbled toward the hole Gabrielle had blasted up from the basement.

“Help me,” I said, jerking at his finely tailored sleeve. “We have to give them a way to escape.”

“We do that, I die,” Titus said, far too calm for my liking.

“If you don’t, they’ll attack you, and I don’t know if I can hold them off. And you die.”

Titus took his time answering, as though he had to weigh my argument. “All right,” he said finally. “What do we do?”

“You hold on to me so I don’t implode.” I turned my back on him and positioned his hands on my waist. “That would be messy. Ruin your suit.”

Titus rumbled a dragony noise that sounded almost amused. He threaded his fingers through my belt loops, holding me steady while I leaned over the hole in the floor.

I looked straight down several floors, through pipes, wiring, and broken cement, to the basement where the cells were.

Had anyone else working in the hotel known what kind of arena was down there? Or that cell blocks had held creatures from every hell imaginable? Or had Titus managed to keep it a secret except to those in the know? Humans would have to believe in demons, or simply not care, to watch and bet on combat like that.

I drew a long breath and gathered my magic.

I felt a second wave of Beneath magic forming with mine and jerked around to see Gabrielle slide from the demon’s back and approach me.

She joined me at the precipice. “Let’s send these poor guys home, Janet,” she said, her voice serious.

“Thank you,” I answered cautiously. “You know how to open a way?” I didn’t think she could—opening a vortex to Beneath took a combined power of Earth magic and Beneath magic, and Gabrielle had been unsuccessful at attempts to open one before, which had upset her very much.

She gave me a look of confidence. “Not really, but you can show me.”

I shuddered at the implications of teaching Gabrielle how to open a gate to Beneath, but at the moment, I didn’t have time to be choosy. I gathered my will, focused on the crack in the floors below and sent my magic there.

Gabrielle’s power joined mine a second later, flowing down to encourage the Earth to part and open. Not simply to make a hole, but to open a way to another dimension, to Beneath.

Beneath wasn’t all one place—nothing so simple. There were pockets of different hells, each populated with its own brand of demons. The space my mother dominated wasn’t the same as the one under Area 51 or those reached via other vortexes throughout the world.

At the moment, we couldn’t worry about who went where. We just needed these demons out of here before people died.

The trouble with opening a gate to Beneath was that we couldn’t be certain what would come out of it—demons of all shapes and forms, skinwalkers, and things no one had a name for.

I’d just have to hope that me and Gabrielle, with an assist from Mick, Titus, and Nash, could keep them at bay. I grabbed Gabrielle’s hand.

The jolt of joining with her lifted me a few inches off the floor. My magic was a blend of the frightening mindlessness of Beneath mixed with the solid, dark, almost homey Earth magic, but Gabrielle was pure power.

I’d had no idea how much spun through her, but it was incredible. How she held all that inside her and still lived amazed me. I’d be out of my mind, blithering in a straightjacket, with people having to feed me through a grate in the wall with a very long spoon. My respect for my little sister rose.

Gabrielle was giving me a wide-eyed stare, as though what was inside me astonished her as much.

Then she clenched my hand, grabbed my energy, mixed it with hers, and sent the combined might into the basement.

Concrete and stone exploded in a fiery wash. Wiring sparked, and then came a flash so bright it obliterated all other light. It died into darkness the same time all the electricity went out.

To hear a casino silent was a strange thing. The machines ceased whirring, bells no longer rang, and the flashing, glittering lights sputtered out. Even the artificial Las Vegas noon outside the windows went dark. A few moments later, a backup generator clicked on, and dim light tried to leak through the lobby.

Another white-hot light flashed upward, one so fierce Gabrielle and I scrambled a few steps backward. Then the Earth parted with a groan.

Underneath Las Vegas is high desert floor, and under that is water—aquifers that feed the city. The entire downtown area is sinking, apparently, from the constant drain on these aquifers.

We hit one. Water geysered through the hole, drenching all those in a circle of a dozen feet, but Gabrielle and I didn’t stop, our magic continuing to drill through heavy water to the bedrock far, far below. After a minute or two, the precious water ceased flowing and began to drain into the realms of Beneath.

A vortex opened. It rotated, slowly at first, then spun faster. Most of the demons dove for it in glee. Others tried to hang back but were pulled toward it whether they liked it or not.

The beast Gabrielle had ridden slithered past us, making for the hole. “Bye-bye,” Gabrielle called after it. “You take care of your kids, now.”

The creature turned its great head, its gleaming eyes resting on Gabrielle. I saw gratitude in its expression before the creature turned away and slid into the depths.

Others quickly followed, the vortex sucking them down into the Earth.

Gabrielle whooped. The beasts flowed past us, faster and faster, until the last of them vanished in a rush, like grains of sand draining down an hourglass.

I glanced at Gabrielle, and she nodded. Our magic in sync, we reached down and began to pull the vortex closed.

The Earth resisted, rocks and dirt digging in stubbornly. The magic that came from Earth—the magic that enabled dragons and Changers, witches and Stormwalkers to exist—didn’t get along with Beneath magic, as I was made aware every day of my life.

The Earth magic we’d touched to open the way to Beneath was old and strong, and I had the sense that it wanted to dive into the Beneath world after the demons and destroy all there.

A strange thread wound up into my mind, a whisper to become one with the Earth, to let that magical part of myself take over. To dive into the hole and surround myself with dirt and rock and the solid magic they contained. To burrow in and stay, to release my Beneath magic forever.

It was enticing, that whisper. The thought of giving up the madness that lurked inside me was tempting. I could curl up in a cocoon while my Stormwalker magic kept me alive, and melded me with the Earth, my father.

I started to fall forward, anticipating the coolness and calm of being surrounded by soothing soil, while the Earth lured me into sleep without dreams.

Something hot flashed through my arm and a terrible strength jerked me backward.

I blinked open my eyes and realized I’d been leaning far, far over the edge of the hole. Gabrielle, her fingers wound tightly through mine, hauled me back, her Beneath magic like hot, stinging needles.

I saw her worried face, her mouth shaping the word, “Janet?” but I couldn’t hear her.

The Earth was crying out to me, begging for me to come to it. To heal it or release it—I wasn’t sure which.

I wanted to. Everything in me wanted to throw off Gabrielle’s hold, jump down into the warm depths, and release all my sorrows.

My hand seared as Gabrielle’s Beneath magic tore into me. I screamed, or thought I did, but I couldn’t hear that either.

Then Mick was beside me, at the edge, and the Earth reached up to embrace him. I yelled at him to get back—or tried to. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound.

The Earth is awakening, I heard distinctly in my brain, and sensed a joy on top of that.

I wanted to laugh, to welcome the voice, to open my arms for it.

Gabrielle’s mouth was moving again, and so was Mick’s. The ground sucked at Mick’s feet—it would take him. We’d join hands and fall into the vortex, be swallowed by it, together forever. The thought elated me as much as it terrified me.

Mick called out over the crowd, though his voice was silent to me, and I sensed someone rush up behind me.

Gabrielle’s shriek bore into my brain, and then her touch was gone. A pair of strong arms closed on me from behind, and sound abruptly returned.

I heard shouting, screaming, the babbling of the patrons in the casino, and the crack and roar of rocks and concrete slamming together at my feet.

The enticing whisper of the Earth cut off, as did the flow of Gabrielle’s magic. My own magic streamed backward out of me into the man who’d grabbed me—Nash, the magic null.

I yelled as the magic left me, Nash and I outlined in an eerie glow. Then, with a low whump, my power hit the spell that made Nash a magical drain, and the light flickered out.

He didn’t have to squeeze my ribs so hard, I thought irritably. I struggled to breathe, but I couldn’t break his hold. My friends—Mick, Gabrielle, and Maya, with Titus behind them—stood still and watched Nash calm down crazy Janet.

Nash finally eased away from me, his gaze on me sharp. But I’d be all right now. No more whispers from the Earth, no more double dose of power from myself and Gabrielle, no more demons, no more vortex. All gone.

I turned to tell Nash that a simple touch would have done, but my leg bent, the floor rushed at me, and I never remembered hitting it.

---

I woke in a soft bed in a sumptuous hotel room with too many people in it.

Mick, dressed in a pair of jeans and nothing else, sat on the bed next to me, his back against the headboard. His arms and chest were deeply scratched from his battle in the arena, though he’d washed off most of the blood.

My head rested against his hip, a comfortable place to be. The warmth of Mick cut through my fatigue, the tingle of his healing magic stealing through my body.

Nash stood in the middle of the room, arms folded over his gray polo shirt. Maya slumped on a sofa behind him, her legs dangling elegantly over its arm. Titus the dragon sat in a chair near the window, silhouetted by the bright lights outside, one pristine trousered leg crossed over the other. Gabrielle …

I struggled to sit up, alarmed. “Where’s Gabrielle?”

I tried to remember what happened. We’d watched the demons dive for the worlds below, and Gabrielle had been right next to me. A voice had told me to jump with the demons, not to Beneath, but into the Earth itself. It had started to grab at Mick too, as though it sensed the incredible Earth magic within him and wanted to embrace it. Then Nash had pushed Gabrielle aside and seized me.

Had the vortex called out to Gabrielle? In my mind’s eye, I saw her spread her arms and laugh in delight as she leapt from the edge.

“She took off,” Maya said in a groggy voice. “Titus tried to stop her, but she fought him and went.”

“You should have kept hold of her,” Nash growled at Titus. “She’s too dangerous to be out there on her own.”

“That is obvious.” Titus brought his fingertips together. His clothes were as impeccable as ever, as though a shield had kept them clean from the dust and chaos of an exploding hotel full of demons. “I thought the Stormwalker more important to save.”

Mick put a hand on my shoulder, more magic snaking in to find my hurts and ease them. “Don’t worry too much, Janet. I have friends out looking for her, with strict instructions to report to me.”

My eyes widened. “Friends? What friends?”

“Men and … non-humans I call on when I need a little assist,” Mick said, at his most reassuring. “They arrived swiftly to my summons.”

I fixed my wavering gaze on Nash. “What are you doing here? I’m guessing you were who Maya was talking to on the phone, but there’s no way you could have made it here so fast from Flat Mesa.”

“That’s because I wasn’t in Flat Mesa.” Nash’s cool eyes held no judgment. “I was already in Las Vegas, on business.”

“He means he was keeping tabs on us,” Maya said. She didn’t sound surprised or annoyed, only resigned. “He knows how much trouble I’m sucked into whenever I’m with you and decided to make sure he was on hand to get us out of it.”

I couldn’t argue with Nash’s logic. He’d pulled Maya and me out of wreckage in Las Vegas before.

“Thanks,” I said with sincerity.

Nash gave me an acknowledging nod. “Titus and Mick were explaining to me how there was an illegal fighting ring set up in the basement of this hotel.”

I let out a short laugh. Leave it to Nash to hang a label like illegal fighting ring on supernatural gladiatorial games involving demon-kind.

I turned to study Titus, the details of the fight returning to my brain. “When we were in the basement, you said you were as bound as the demons, and if you let them go, you’d die.”

“I did.” Titus didn’t change expression—all dragons have a tendency toward understatement and ambiguous answers.

“Why? I thought you were running the games.”

“He is,” Mick said. “But at the behest of another. He was as compelled to obey as I.”

When Mick becomes dragon serious, his speech grows archaic. The bad boys in the novels I read talk all kinds of grunge, but Mick, the baddest bad boy I’ve ever met, says things like at the behest of, or arrived swiftly to my summons.

“I hope you’re going to explain that,” I said.

“I’d be interested myself,” Nash added.

Titus rose. He was a large man in his human form, like Mick, and looked comfortable in the well-tailored suit I suspected had cost thousands. Mick was more at home in biker clothes, but dragons chose their looks and stuck to them. Colby had opted for Yakuza style tattoos, and Drake, like Titus, dressed in designer suits, usually black cashmere with black silk shirts.

Titus straightened his iridescent tie with careful fingers. “Mick and I are bound by a promise made centuries ago,” he said. “Exacted from us by a dragon slayer.”

Nash’s derisive huff rang through the room. “A dragon slayer? Are they anything like those Nightwalker slayers that came through Hopi County this summer? You and Mick couldn’t fight off a few obnoxious humans with crossbows?”

Titus didn’t laugh, and neither did Mick.

I remembered Mick mentioning a dragon slayer when we’d been protecting Ansel, our Nightwalker friend, from being killed by vampire hunters. I’d thought Mick joking at first, but he’d given me a dead serious look and said dragon slayers were real, and very dangerous. He hadn’t elaborated after that, and I’d forgotten about it amid more pressing business.

“Dragon slayers are nothing like Nightwalker slayers,” Titus said in his dragon-deep voice. “They’re the most dangerous things in the universe—they have to be, in order to defeat dragons. There are no unsuccessful dragon slayers.”

“No live ones, he means,” Mick said. “The unsuccessful ones became dragon fodder.”

“If there is anything left of them to eat.” Titus spoke matter-of-factly.

“Ew,” Maya said, her face wrinkling. “You eat people?”

“Dragon slayers aren’t people,” Titus said.

“He means that literally,” Mick broke in as Maya drew a breath to object. “They are powerful mages, or demons, or some combination of the two. The dragon slayer who made the contract with us began as a human then became a mage and segued into demon as the power consumed him over the years. I told you I fought him, to save another. He was determined to bring me down and he nearly did. I had to beg for my life. He offered it to me, for a price.”

“Yes,” Titus said. “I was there. The one Mick fought so hard to save was me. But I was near to death, and Mick could not prevail against him. The slayer made us both promise to fight in these games, with me to host them, choosing the combatants that would be hardest for Mick to beat. He enjoys such irony. The slayer wishes to rid the world of dragons and demons, and this way he gets entertainment from it. And money. Much money from those who will pay to watch and wager.”

“Really?” Maya said. “But you both must have grown stronger since then. Mick, you said you were only a young dragon at the time. Why didn’t you find him and confront him again?”

Titus looked at her as though she’d lost her mind. “We signed an agreement,” he said, sounding almost shocked.

Of course. Dragons and their damned honor. They’d abide by the contract if it killed them—which this one had a good chance to.

“Was he there at the fight?” I asked. “Why didn’t he try to stop you? And Gabrielle?”

Mick shook his head. “He doesn’t always attend. He enjoys watching from afar. But he is deadly, and he is determined,” he continued grimly. “And now that we’ve released all the demons and broken free of the games, he won’t stop until he finds us and makes us pay.”

---

While big-sister Janet was snuggling with her boyfriend and confabbing with Nash and Titus, I went out looking for the dragon slayer.

How did I know about the dragon slayer? The demon told me. Not so much told me as conveyed it through flashes of thought, anger, and fear. This dragon slayer hadn’t confined himself to dragons, according to her, but turned his attention to all large monsters who might be a threat to humankind.

Since Janet was pretty beat up after that show of magic, I considered it my duty to go find the slayer and put him down.

Janet had been amazing, I admitted. She doesn’t give herself credit for all she can do—she’s been brainwashed into thinking she can’t use her power to kick serious ass. The people holding her back are all afraid of her and want to control her. Afraid she’ll kick their asses, so they put these weird restrictions on her, and now even she believes those restrictions are right. I sympathize—same thing happens to me.

Whenever she does tell everyone to fuck off and lets loose, she is one powerful magic chick, and I love her for that.

The patrons of the casino had applauded after we’d sent the demons back to their hells and the lights had come on—I guess they thought it was a performance, maybe a taste of what they’d see in the hotel’s theatre. Humans can be so oblivious.

I figured this dragon slayer must be somewhere nearby—he’d keep tabs on how his gladiatorial games were going, right? Someone like that wasn’t going to trust that everything would go well without him.

Ergo, as Mick would say, he must be around here somewhere.

I started with the hotel. I’m good at sensing auras, like Janet is, so I opened myself up to them as I wandered through the casino.

That was a mistake, because all those auras came crushing down on me. None were anything but human, but humans can be complicated. They ran the gamut of emotions—excited, depressed, scared, worried, elated, angry, frustrated, or bright with sexual satisfaction. I almost fell to my knees under it all, and had to stumble outside and lean against a marble pillar by the door to catch my breath.

Nowhere had I sensed a being gloating because he’d captured all those demons plus a dragon or two, or fury because Janet and I had set them free.

“Get you a cab, ma’am?” The doorman, decked out in a tailcoat and top hat, gestured at a queue of taxis.

I was surprised to see taxis, because these days so many people use those services where you summon ordinary citizens and they drive you around in their family car. I think that’s weird, but I didn’t want to get into the back of a dirty cab either. The one that had brought us back from the male strip show had smelled like vomit.

“How about a limo?” I asked on impulse.

“Sure thing.” The man held up his hand and whistled, the sound cutting the night. In a few moments, a sleek black car pulled up to the curb.

It wasn’t a stretch limo, or one of those Hummer ones with a bar and dance space, but it was a lovely car. I slid onto soft cushions in the back seat, and told the driver to charge the fare to Janet Begay in room 1589.

“I don’t work for the hotel,” the driver said. He was good looking, in his twenties, dark hair, blue eyes. He could have danced at the strip club.

I sat forward, resting my arms on the back of his seat. His picture ID on the dashboard said his name was Amos. “It’s all right. Janet’s good for it. She’s my big sister, and will do anything for me.”

I sent a trickle of magic down the seat and into his shoulder, not enough to hurt him, but enough to make him see things my way. Amos shot me a smile, which made him even more pretty.

“Where does your sister want me to take you?” he asked.

I thought a moment, pretending I wasn’t winging this. “What’s the most luxurious hotel in Vegas?”

“That would be the C,” he answered without hesitation.

“Is that like the one in Los Angeles?” Cassandra, Janet’s hotel manager, had worked for the C, the ultimate in decadence and personal attention. Too personal, she’d decided.

“Same guy owns both. This one just opened up a few months ago.”

“Sounds interesting.” I flopped back onto my seat, figuring a heavy hitter like the dragon slayer would pick the most opulent place in Vegas in which to hang out. “Take me there.”

“You got it.”

Amos put the car in gear and rolled out of the driveway.