Free Hunting Down Dragons (Moonlight Dragon #2) by Tricia Owens Page B

for sure until someone one day shows up. Until then, we need to keep digging. We need to find out what Texas means. And this thing my mom said: 'under dark city'."
    "Las Vegas is never dark, so it can't be here," Christian pointed out.
    Celestina clucked her tongue at him like he'd raised his hand and offered the wrong answer. "Have you considered that 'dark' is meant metaphorically?"
    Christian winked at her. "Too large a word for me."
    She rolled her eyes. "Many people would say Vegas is dark and sinful. I say this is referring to the city's underbelly. The seedier sections."
    "So going with that interpretation," I said, thinking out loud, "would mean something beneath the bad part of town. North Vegas or somewhere around downtown."
    "I still think that's playing fast and loose with interpretations." Christian obviously didn't like it. "What if your mother was referring to an old mining town? Someplace abandoned? There are a few around Vegas."
    "We can keep those as options, but Vale said the golem-maker was in the city." I closed the phone. "I think I'm going to spend some time looking at maps and come up with a plan."
     
    ~~~~~
     
    I spent the rest of the night on the internet, studying maps of the city, zooming in on street images, and even looking beyond Vegas at the old abandoned towns that Christian had suggested. There were a half dozen old mining towns scattered around southern Nevada, the most promising of which was Nelson, home of the Techatticup Mine where lots of men were killed. It was a regular Wild West killing fields. Sometimes when a place became violent like that, it didn't happen naturally, or else the killings built upon a single event that permanently stained the place with bad mojo. No doubt there was a magickal connection in there that might exist to this day if I looked deep enough.
    But I felt that leaving the Las Vegas city limits was a mistake at this point. We needed to focus on the magickal heart of the valley because that was where a magickal being was most likely to gravitate. All of us felt a subconscious pull to the city because our bodies recognized the chance magick that pooled here, growing larger each time a gambler made a bet. That chance magick made spells, curses, hexes, and magickal constructs stronger, and who wouldn't want that?
    Bleary eyed from staring at squiggly lines for hours, I finally crashed in my bed around nine a.m. Not even the steps of the entity on the roof could prevent me from sliding immediately into deep dreams. I dreamed of flying over the desert in my dragon form with a gargoyle by my side. I couldn't tell if the gargoyle was Vale or the golem. My dream self didn't care, nor did I care that I must have given in fully to my nature and lost touch with my humanity. That was supposed to be the worst thing I could do—surrender to the dragon in my blood—but in my dream, being a magickal beast was freeing and glorious.
    The gargoyle and I flew over the valley. Sometimes fireworks shot up at us like missiles. But we were as agile as birds and ducked and wove between the sparking lights with ease. I roared my joy. It was a sound that rattled my bones and tickled my heart. I was meant to be a dragon. This was my calling. This was—
    I woke up, suspicious and nervous. The protection wards had activated, humming against my senses.
    Squinting against the afternoon sun, I made my way into the shop and peered through the front window that I'd had fixed after Vale's gargoyle shattered it. The rock pattern in my yard remained undisturbed so the wards were still up. Beyond the black iron gates separating my yard from the sidewalk sat a tall box. UPS? But why would that set off the wards? Last I knew, Gary, the driver, was just some guy with a son who was a football wunderkind who Gary hoped would one day play in the NFL.
    I dragged on some clothes and my sunglasses and let myself outside. Heat punched me in the face, but Vegas in July was like that. You never, ever went