kill it.” I looked around the opulent cave. The chaos of shelves, piles of furniture, and boxes made it difficult to see very far. “Do you have another way out of here?”
“I am afraid not. You see, this is my final home. This is where I plan to live out my days in peace amid my treasures. I had this site carefully selected and prepared for my comfort, then I flew in under cover of darkness and had the casino built on top of it. I plan on dying here, Mr. Pitt.”
“Why?”
“Why? An interesting question.” The dragon flexed his enormous body in a drastic imitation of a shrug. “Some of the hateful things that are said about my kind are, sadly, true. We do love our shiny things. A dragon has a pathological desire to amass a horde. It is an addiction, but one that I have learned to control.” The dragon nodded at his display of moon rocks. “I tried a twelve-step program once, but it did not work out…So I make the best of it. Can you think of a more appropriate place than Las Vegas to accumulate such pretty things?” The dragon’s head moved over me, engulfing me in shadow, but he was merely inspecting his treasures. He clucked disapprovingly, and one wing stretched outward, the tip of it gently dusting a display of delicate glass figurines.
“There is nowhere for me to leave to. My kind are dying. This world no longer belongs to us. The few of us that remain are a pale shadow of our once ferocious ancestors. The dragon gods began to die when the age of man began. You should have seen them in all their glory, Mr. Pitt. They were terrible and beautiful beyond all possible descriptors, but they were too magnificent for this petty age. The rest of us, their once-noble children, were feared and hunted nearly to extinction. The outside world has nothing left to offer me. If I come across something that strikes my fancy, I have it brought here to keep me company. I do love eBay.” The massive chuckle shook me again.
“That’s not what I—”
“Ah, of course. I realize now that you are asking in a tactical rather than a philosophical manner. Though I do not intend to leave, I am not stupid. There’s a freight elevator back there. That is where I take my meals, usually a cow, sometimes a buffalo, or perhaps something exotic, like a giraffe, should the mood take me. I can fit up that shaft should I really wish to, but it is useless for your needs. It only goes up into the casino as well.”
“Aren’t you worried about the Nachtmar coming down here for you?”
“This is my home, Mr. Pitt. A dragon does not simply leave his home. I am far more concerned about the safety of my guests, and thus my bottom line, than I am about my own well-being. If you haven’t noticed, I am rather fearsome.” He lifted himself up onto his rear legs and puffed out his chest. Management was, indeed, pretty scary, but for the first time I realized that he seemed rather…flabby. “This creature of nightmares does not frighten me. As I believe you so eloquently told Mr. Jones earlier, and I quote, Motherfucker can’t handle what is in my brain.”
“Right on.” Even a flabby old dragon with hoarding issues was still not something to tangle with. “Mind if I use your phone?”
“Who would you like to call?”
“Holly Newcastle. I’ve got her number—”
The dragon held up one epic claw. “No need. Dial Newcastle, H. Put on speakerphone. Increase volume to normal human auditory levels.” There was a series of beeps as her number was dialed. “She was registered as a conference guest,” Management explained. “I have her email as well. I was going to add all of you to the newsletter to keep you appraised of special vacation offers. I have a property in Bermuda that I have been told is simply to die for.”
“Thank you. If we live I’ll take you up on that.” The phone rang several times before going to voice mail. “Damn it.” I’d really been hoping to talk to an actual person, but she was probably up to something right this minute. Holly was just that crafty. I hurried and left her a long message detailing our status. I really didn’t know if she would be able to accomplish this, but it was worth a shot. “Even though he knows how to beat the monster, Stricken is planning on letting us all die. What I need you to do is find a man named Dr. Blish. He’s got to be old. Old enough to have worked on this project in the forties. Stricken is holding him somewhere close. Blish knows all about this creature. Find out what you can from him…” I paused. How would she get that info back to us?
Management cut in. “Have her call back on this number. I will pass it along to you.”
I repeated that. “Wait a second, can you send her that recording of Stricken talking about maybe murdering Franks?” Management seemed to perk up at that idea and nodded his horns vigorously. “Okay, Holly. I’m sending you a recording you might be able to use as leverage. Stricken’s ruthless. He’ll kill you if he catches you. Do what you can, but be careful.” I had just asked the one member of my team that was in a position of relative safety to go do something incredibly dangerous, but if we could learn what Dr. Blish knew, it might give the rest of us a fighting chance. Sometimes this job just wasn’t easy.
“End.” The dragon watched me with his huge black eyes. “You can gain the measure of a man by the nature of the friends he keeps. I have studied all of the ICMHP attendees. The courage of this fair maiden friend of yours speaks volumes about your character, Mr. Pitt. I’m certain she will succeed in this endeavor.”
“Calling her a maiden might be a stretch, but yeah, Holly will get the job done, no matter what.”
“If it is not presumptuous of me, I know that you have some other members of your stalwart company out there, and I would be willing to send this same message to them as well.”
I’d heard that some of the Las Vegas team had stayed up north just in case anything else popped up in the aftermath of the spider problem. “That would be great.”
“Very well. I will do so. There is one last order of business, Mr. Pitt. A subject that I am most loath to broach. We have already established that the nature of our current adversary is a mystery, but another question remains. What, or rather, who, woke it up? Display original images.”
The screens changed, and now all of them were showing different still pictures, and though they were all different images, from diverse times and places, they were all of the same subject. Some were carved in stone, others were scratched in the dirt, a few were spray painted like graffiti, and one was scrawled in blood on the other side of crime scene tape. My throat was suddenly dry. It was the mysterious symbol first shown to me by my father, since seen by Hunters around the world, and most recently on the ceiling of the containment unit at Dugway.
“You know about this?”
The dragon nodded his head, and it was like having a car jangled above you by a crane. “Of course I do. Word had reached me from many sources about his sign appearing again. I’m afraid the time of his return is upon us.”
The dragon collected information along with antiques. If Management could teach me about this new threat, then there would be no reason to involve my dad…“Give me a name and an address and we can start arranging his funeral.”
“He has many names, none of which you would have heard. He comes from an age before this one, when dragonkind were still young on the face of the Earth. His faction in the eternal war has been silent for a very long time. They are enemies to the Old Ones, but that does not make him a friend to you, quite the contrary, in fact. He will remake this world and it will spell your end. The presence of these signs was another motivating factor for the organization of ICMHP, for though there is much I do not care for about the human world, its continued existence provides me a measure of comfort and amusement, and thus I would prefer not to see it destroyed. I would very much like to see him stopped.”
I got off the ancient chair and made it a few halting steps toward the screens. “It’s real, isn’t it? The pattern that we discovered. There’s an invasion going on.”
“These are but the opening moves of the game. He has come forth briefly before, to test the waters, if you will, but each time before he found the world not yet ready, and returned to his slumber. However, this time feels different to me. If this is the case, then the invasion will come soon enough, and believe me, you will know. What we are seeing now is a testing of man’s defenses. There are many things that are buried deep in the world or far beneath the sea, dead but dreaming. He is waking them one by one, setting them free, all in order to watch how man reacts. I believe it was no accident that this latest creature has beset us here today.” The dragon regarded me for a long time. “You Hunters are being tested. Pray to your God of light and ask that you do not fall short. I would do the same, if my gods were still alive.” Management gave a melancholy sigh.
“I want to know everything you know about—” There was a sudden wailing noise and all of the monitors flashed red. “What’s happening?”
“Hmmm…” Management swiveled his head back to the monitors. “Every alarm in the facility has gone off.” He growled low in his mighty chest and made a series of clicks with his forked tongue. The computer system understood the dragon language, and all the monitors began to flick rapidly between different scenes, far faster than my eyes could track. About half of them turned to rapidly scrolling text. Management seemed to have no trouble devouring all of the input simultaneously. “Interesting. The exterior views are showing extreme weather conditions. There is monitoring equipment atop my hotel. It indicates that we are experiencing a hurricane. From the humans’ reactions, there seems to be a disturbance upon the roof.”
“Julie’s up there!”
“Your mate, yes. Congratulations on your new egg. The elevator has been unlocked.” I ran for it, leaping over priceless trash. Management called after me. “We will continue this talk later. Make haste, Mr. Pitt. Destiny awaits you.”