Joaquin sensed this, half groaning, half laughing, and grew harder still. “Don’t be shy,” he said, folding his arms over his head. “Kiss me.”
“And touch yourself while you do it,” Lucas suggested.
“O-okay,” I said. Bending forward, I let my free hand trail down my body, between my legs and the slit in my skirt.
“Olivia?”
I jerked, turned my head in time to see the curtains parting and Ian’s head appear.
“Go away, Ian,” I said, voice raspy, both hands working. He stared, unable to believe his eyes.
“No,” Joaquin said, the smile a yard wide in his voice. “Join us, Ian.”
“I…I…” Ian swallowed hard, looking at me, and I knew my eyes were as black as tar.
“Don’t worry, Ian,” I said, finally locating what I wanted between my legs. “It’s not what it looks like.”
And I drove my steel stiletto as hard as I could up between Joaquin’s legs, pulling on his shaft like a gear stick, a primal cry in my throat as blood gushed over my weapon hand. My yell was nothing, however, compared to Joaquin’s roar. His arms flailed reflexively, hitting the girl on his right in the face. She cried out, dropping her martini in his lap. He screamed louder.
Everyone else scattered. I’d have said it seemed like slow motion, their cries long and hollow and blasting through the tented area, but they weren’t going slow. Joaquin and I were simply moving that much faster.
He was on the couch, up the wall, then flipped behind me in a motion so swift and smooth I lost my grip…both of them. I whirled, kicking out as I did, but his hand wrapped around my ankle and yanked. I was thrown across the coffee table and landed in a pile of limbs between Lucas, Samantha, and one of the twins. Hands scrambled at me; I didn’t know if they were pulling me forward or pushing me away, but my head was up in time to catch Joaquin’s victorious expression as he lifted my abandoned conduit and pointed it my way.
“No!” Ian’s voice was stronger than I’d ever heard it as he barreled into Joaquin with his shoulder, arms wrapping around the other man’s middle. Joaquin misfired, and the arrow meant for me plowed directly between Lucas’s eyes. Samantha screamed. I lunged forward, eyes on my weapon, knowing Joaquin would swat Ian off like a fly. I landed on top of them both and began pounding on Joaquin’s hand with my fists. One, two, three, four, five arrows slammed in the wall behind the leather couch. I heard the crunch of bone against bone, hammer punched again, twice, and Joaquin’s hand disappeared.
I scrambled for the conduit, rolling and aiming at the same time, but found myself pointing at the startled face of a security guard who’d just breached the curtain wall. Cursing, I rose and pushed past him.
“Hey-!”
I threw off a second guard’s attempt to stop me and pushed through the throng gathering around our tent. The scent of blood and pain led to an emergency exit, door swinging wide as a piercing wail rose up in the room. I ran outside, sprinting down a wide concrete corridor until it ended at a loading dock filled with the refuse of hundreds of hotel guests. Lowering my weapon, I slumped.
I should’ve been happy. Nobody had been murdered by Joaquin tonight. I’d saved as many people as I could, I’d impaled him between his anus and balls, and it had felt good. But I wasn’t happy. Because as the scent of boiling blood grew fainter on the wafting summer air, so did that of starch and the seashore. Joaquin was gone, yes. But Ian had disappeared with him.
23
There were questions to answer in the days following Ian’s disappearance, though not from Warren or anyone associated with the paranormal community. The police had been called in by Valhalla’s security the night of the swingers’ ball-someone had died, after all-and a masked woman of my description had been seen fleeing the scene of the crime. Tapes of the party were reviewed, the woman’s moves tracked as she circled the ballroom, danced with an unidentified male, and followed another into a curtained-off area where the homicide had taken place. Witnesses-one Samantha Travis of Milwaukee, and twins by the names of Danni and Darci-claimed the woman had been identified as Olivia Archer, which was why I was currently being interrogated on the fifteenth floor of Valhalla in my mortal father’s plush high-rise office, the Las Vegas Strip sprawled out behind me in a picture window that overtook the entire northern wall.
I looked away from the view and blinked, letting an expression of innocence and confusion cross my face when the lead detective placed yet another steaming cup of my father’s imported coffee in front of me, and began asking me questions I’d already answered.
“I don’t know how else to tell you,” I said, ignoring the coffee and pitching my voice higher than a dog whistle. “I wasn’t at that party.”
“Well, we have three witnesses, videotape, and a registration chart that says you were.”
“No,” I said, pushing out my lower lip in a pout. “You have three drunken people who
Officer Solomon glanced at his pad, then nodded reluctantly. “Yes. A gossip columnist, who claims to know you and your family well, said there was no way the woman in the mask could have been you. She was, and I quote ‘too brazen, too lacking in personal morals, and too aggressive to be the sweet and refined real Olivia Archer.’”
“There you go,” I said, preparing to stand.
“You want us to take the word of one against three?” This from Solomon’s partner, Officer Carson, the younger and more tenacious of the two. “And the one a gossip columnist?”
“Who better to trust than Lon?” I said, tilting my head in his direction. “He knows everyone who is anyone and what they’re doing at all times.”
“Is that so?” Solomon retorted. “Maybe we should hire him on in the department then. We could use someone like that.”
“Good idea,” said Carson, playing along. “First thing we’ll do is get him to tell us what you were doing last Saturday night.”
“That’d be helpful.”
“This is ridiculous!”
We all looked at Xavier, seated behind a mahogany desk stretching almost the length of the glass wall. He’d insisted on being present for the questioning, and what Xavier Archer wanted, he got. Unfortunately, even his considerable powers extended only so far, and his demand that the whole matter be dropped had been politely ignored. This did nothing to improve his mood, transforming his already bullish features into a mad-cow sort of mien. He glared at the two officers, huffing dangerously as he rose from his chair.
“You are badgering an innocent woman about the death of some…some pervert who was literally caught with his pants down, when you should be out there chasing down the true culprit!”
Time to put on the public relations face, I thought wryly, watching Officer Solomon straighten, his expression carefully blank. “Mr. Archer, we’re not accusing your daughter of anything. We simply want to shut down all leads in effort to bring this case to a close as quickly as possible. The scandalous nature of this case has garnered a great deal of media attention.”
“Well, sex sells, doesn’t it?” Xavier answered, waving the stub of his cigar in the air. “I mean, why focus on a boring, old-fashioned plague killing off hundreds of people in Las Vegas when there’s a sex story to peddle?”
The older officer recovered first. “Your daughter’s name was on the guest list, sir.”
“So someone made it up! Are you surprised? Who knows what sort of immoral, conniving people attend those things-it was a swingers’ ball, for God’s sake!”
“That’s right, sir,” said Carson, who had less to lose and wasn’t as close to retirement as his partner. “And it was held in your hotel.”
Xavier’s mouth worked wordlessly for a few seconds, before he lifted his chin, drawing up taller. “My daughter wouldn’t be caught dead at one of those events.”
“But a man by the name of Lucas Liddell was,” Carson said, throwing a photo of a very much deceased Lucas down on Xavier’s desk. “And that’s why we’re here.”
