CHAR CAME IN late, way late. Just before dawn. Haven felt her exhaustion and worry, even through his own troubles. She fell into bed beside him, and into the vampire death trance before Haven had a chance to struggle to a sitting position so he could talk to her. He cursed dawn for robbing him of his chance. Then closed his eyes again on a moan. Char lay beside him, stiff as stone, skin growing cold, in a place where he could do nothing to warn her. He feared he was too weak to help her.

He'd been in their hotel room for hours, nursing a headache like nothing he'd ever felt before. He'd been pa.s.sing out, waking up, throwing up, and pa.s.sing out again since Baker helped him out of the Silk Road bar and back to the hotel. The only reason he kept fighting back to consciousness was because he needed to tell Char what had happened. Only after a while memory began to fade against the fierce onslaught of the pain.

There was nothing he could do for now but rest, stop fighting the darkness. Char couldn't fight the dark; maybe he needed the same kind of rest she did. He'd been a.s.saulted by one h.e.l.l of a burst of magic. Magic made Char what she was. Maybe he'd had a dose of the same stuff. Like radiation poisoning.

"Magic," he mumbled, and fumbled to find her. It took so much work to roll over and wrap his arms around her stiff, still form. He wasn't sure if he was trying to protect her or draw comfort from knowing she was there with him. He did let the darkness take him, and couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd last slept even as he fell asleep.

The dream was a real ball buster, so bad that Haven woke up screaming. He cut the sound off fast enough when he jerked to a sitting position. He wasn't surprised when the hangover from h.e.l.l hit him, and he almost welcomed the pain. It didn't hurt as much as the torture in the dream. In the dream he'd been burning, fire eating through him, frying away skin and muscle, burrowing into bone.

G.o.d, it hurt!

The headache pounded and pulsed in his temples, but it was simple, ordinary pain. It was residue from a burst of magic, but that was ordinary for his world. He gave a quick glance down at the statue that would be his girlfriend in a few hours, patted her unfeeling rump, then went to down aspirin, a gla.s.s of whiskey, and take a quick shower. This treatment helped enough to get him functional.

Once dressed, he was reluctant to head back to the Silk Road. After last night the place scared him. The fear, more than anything else, even more than curiosity or the need to protect his lover, was what got him going. There was nothing from h.e.l.l that Jebel Haven couldn't face down.

The way he figured it, the more demons he dealt with now, the less he'd have to deal with when he landed in the fiery pit.

Which brought back memory of the dream so vivid it made him shudder. He hoped to G.o.d it was a dream. Now that was a crazy thought, but what had happened was crazy. And that red stone - fire red and blood red He reached the elevator and paused until he forced the thoughts down and out of the moment.

Clare Murphy was waiting for him at the lobby entrance. She handed him a badge with his name on it.

"All-access pa.s.s?" Haven asked, clipping the badge onto his jacket collar.

"Something like that. It's coded to let you into any area I have access to."

Haven tilted his head to one side and gave the woman a not altogether teasing smile. "Does that include the money vault?"

"Ben wouldn't approve of that," was the companion's answer.

Haven considered pointing out that revolutions, even revolutions against creatures of the night, required a certain amount of financing. He let it go. Better to concentrate on the help the woman wanted and could give to the cause.

"Let me give you the tour," she said, and led him into the lobby.

"I need some information," he said, but she ignored him.

Gesturing toward the painted ceiling several stories overhead, she said, "See the night sky motif? It's significant."

Haven looked up. The paint and lighting design gave the look of a very real, very starry night. The black eyes of security cameras also looked down out of this star-filled work of art, but that was a normal part of all Las Vegas decor. It wasn't the security she was warning him about, but some vampire thing.

"I already know the interior design of this place is supposed to reflect an eternal summer night at a desert oasis. I've read the brochures." When she gave him an impatient look, he gave in and asked, "What's the significance?"

Murphy looked pleased, in the same way Char did when he fell for a question that led to an hour's worth of geekspeak answer.

"Rumor has it," she told him, "that the lobby ceiling was designed to exactly duplicate the positions of the stars the night the vampire city was destroyed."

"Yeah. So?"

"Meaning that the exact location of the ruins of the city can be determined by studying this star chart."

She seemed so pleased to be pa.s.sing on this information that Haven held back any sarcastic comments about why anyone would care about finding the lost city. He supposed Char would care. He also didn't point out that he doubted this rumor. Vampires did not go around dropping clues to their existence. "It's not smart," he muttered. "Not safe."

She nodded. "I know. Come see the museum," she said, as though refuting this last thought.

"Fine." The quicker they got the tour over with, the sooner they could get to things he wanted to discuss.

They crossed the lobby, went down a wide hallway, and climbed up a grand staircase to where a line of people waited to go through a pair of gold doors. Murphy took him around the line, around a corner, and used her key card to open a door into a small room full of monitors and other security equipment. A pair of uniformed guards were in the room, their attention on the screens and boards. Only one of them looked away from the job when Murphy brought Haven inside.

The guard watched the door until Murphy secured it once more. Then he looked at Haven while he asked Murphy, "What's up, boss?"

"These are members of Ben's nest," Murphy told Haven instead of answering the guard. "Only underneath people work this room.

We're going into the exhibit," she told her underling.

The guard took his attention off them as Murphy spoke. The pair were slaves, Haven guessed, who knew to mind their own business around their betters. Haven's skin crawled at this example of the vampire way of life and he momentarily wondered why he was looking to protect the Nighthawks from attack by another bunch of bloodsuckers.

Char, he reminded himself. Only for Char. And oh, yeah, the possibility that he might end up a Nighthawk himself.

Murphy took him through another door on the other side of the security station, and Haven noted how this door disappeared against the wall once it was closed.

"The place is full of hidden doors and corridors," Murphy said when she noticed him studying the spot where he knew the door was. She ran her hand along the wall. "Some of it's part of the hotel's theme. Mysterious secret corridors and treasure chambers and hidden gardens and stuff like that. There's a map to some of them on sale in the gift shops."

They kept their voices low, careful not to draw attention from the tourists filing by the nearby display cases.

"And the real secret chambers?" Haven asked.

"I know most of them."

"Vampires sleep in them."

"Some do. Most aren't that paranoid."

It was true that in this day and age most vampires only feared Enforcers, and then only if they trespa.s.sed against the numerous Laws.

"Martina's bunch hang out in the secret crypts?"

Murphy nodded. "Most of the time, yes."

"You know where they are?"

She nodded again. She held up a hand in warning. "They have their own separate alarm systems, and they have a group of slaves and companions specifically dedicated to protecting the nest members. Even if I could unlock all the doors for you, it'd still be hard to take them out in their sleep."

He gave a casual shrug. "Might be worth a shot.""We want to protect the Nighthawks without giving ourselves away. Better if an Enforcer takes on the job."

"I could still take a look at their place."

"You could, but since none of Martina's vampires or their security mortals are sleeping in the vault today, any stray explosive stakes you might be carrying on your person won't have the chance to get buried in any vampires' hearts while you are casually having a look around."

Haven frowned at her easy reading of his intentions, and in disappointment at a missed opportunity. She gave a smug smile in response.

"Okay," he acknowledged. "No striking blows for the revolution just because I'm in a bad mood." After last night's meeting with the smug Geoff Sterling, the incident in the bar, and the bad dream, Haven was edgy. Killing a monster would help his mood. "If they're not at home today, where are they?" it finally occurred to him to ask.

"Don't know," Clare answered. "Yet. And I don't like it."

"Neither do I."

Not one bit. Maybe Martina's vampires were asleep. But what were their mortals up to? Was Char in danger of being discovered?

His immediate impulse was to head back to their room to watch over her. His second impulse was to go hunting for Martina.

"What are you doing about it?" he asked Clare Murphy.

"I've got people trying to find them, but no luck so far. Martina has no right being out in the city," she went on. "It's Ben's territory.

If Ben wasn't so involved with the new boy toy, he'd have told me to report Martina and her crew to the Enforcer's companion if I caught them being out after daylight."

Haven considered this for a moment, then said, "You called the Enforcer's companion without waiting for Ben's permission."

"Of course. Not that it's going to do any good." Her lips thinned to an angry line. "d.a.m.n Duke. He's useless - which I normally don't mind."

"Why won't it do any good? The local Enforcer ought to be the one to take this nest down."

"Duke let them build this place. He took their bribes. I don't know what he told the Council."

She gestured toward the display cases. Haven could feel the pulse of power in the room, like the vibrations of a huge engine. His headache was starting up again.

"Duke's useless," Murphy went on. "And now he's missing."

Haven's headache spiked on a surge of warning. "Missing?"

"Skipped town's my guess. His companion's frantic." Murphy moved away from the wall. "Let's get back to the tour. There's something I want you to see."

"Fine," Haven agreed between gritted teeth. He supposed he ought to get a look at this stuff. Maybe there was a weapon he could use in the piled-up magical clutter.

He thought she'd take him on a case-by-case tour of Ibis's magic shop, but instead she led him to one specific case. There were three objects inside. He recognized two of them. He could tell by only looking at it that the small gold ring with a carved cornelian scarab bezel was far heavier than it looked. It was ancient, and full of something.

"A soul was poured into it," he said. "Somehow.""Yes," Murphy agreed. "That's what the announcer would say if you pushed the b.u.t.ton on the case."

Okay, so he was picking up the magic vibes from an old ring. "Never mind. It's not important." He pointed at the gold cup - and the faceted red stone. "Those - "

"Yes?" Murphy urged quietly.

Haven looked around. Then hunched closer to the shorter woman to avoid anyone nearby overhearing. "They're fake."

"I know," she whispered back.

"I've seen them before," he told her. "The real ones. What are they?" He pointed at the red stone,, remembering - "What is that?"

"It's called a dragon's egg," Murphy answered. "It's used in vampire alchemy, I think."

"Vampire alchemy?"

"Blood into gold instead of lead into gold, I guess. Maybe that's where they got the gold for the nest leaders' coins."

She thought. She guessed. "You don't really know what it's for."

"I know it's powerful. And - " Her mouth snapped closed and she shook her head.

Haven understood her sudden reaction. He took Murphy by the shoulders and turned her to face him. She was trembling. "You know Ben - your master, the master you told me you wanted to be on an equal footing with - he took the magical c.r.a.p from the case. You want me to know, but you feel the need to defend Ben, too. It makes you crazy - the pull for freedom and the compulsion to protect twist at you all the time. It's okay." He was trying hard to act sane and reasonable, and it was really going against the grain.

He pulled the painfully confused companion into a momentary embrace. She pushed him away. She had to. After all, she belonged to Ben, but breathed a nearly silent, "Thanks," even as she stepped back.

"It's okay," he a.s.sured her. "You're not ratting out Ben. I saw him with the stuff."

She wiped a thin film of sweat off her forehead. "You know what Ben did?"

"Saw him give it to his new boyfriend. Right here in the hotel bar. Felt it," Haven added. "The witch boy made the rock - radiate?

- just by pa.s.sing his hand over it. Didn't you feel it, sometime around one?"

"I wasn't in the hotel after midnight last night." Murphy was visibly calmer now, her tone back to brisk and matter-of-fact. "Did you see what else Ben gave Morgan Reese?"

"A notebook, I think. I didn't get a very good look at it."

"It's the notebook that's important," she said. "The other stuff is toys."

"What's in the book?"

"Spells, of course. Ancient, powerful spells translated into English. Maybe even a translation of the Scrolls of Silk."

"The what?"

"Martina wants the information in the scrolls to hurt Enforcers. We need to get our hands on that book. Come with me."

She took him out of the treasure room, by the front entrance this time, and by back ways and private elevators to the heart of the hotel's security system. The control center contained walls of monitors, rows of sensor equipment. The place was manned by a couple dozen sharp-eyed, serious-looking people, all of them wearing headsets. No one gave him and Murphy more than a cursory glance as they moved through the room. Their eyes were on the gambling pits, the halls and lobby, the shops and pools, restaurants, bars, buffets, and every other public area of the hotel. One bank of screens showed more private areas of the Silk Road. This was the area where Murphy led Haven.

Murphy shooed the woman monitoring these screens away with a gesture. She took the woman's vacated chair, and gestured Haven to one next to it. As he sat, Murphy's fingers flew over a control panel, bringing up multiple views of the same scene.

"What am I looking at?" Haven asked, sweeping his gaze from screen to screen.

"Morgan Reese's dressing room."

She sounded grim and worried, Haven noted. This was obviously very important to her. He concentrated on the various views, trying to make out details before asking more questions. The s.p.a.ce was large, full of all kinds of colorful junk - boxes and cabinets draped in bright satin cloths, even a guillotine and an ornately decorated animal cage. Typical stage magician stuff, Haven supposed. Another view showed a refrigerator and bar setup. Cameras covered several doors. There was a couch, a desk, several chairs.

A vampire was sleeping on the couch.

"Ben?"