Wicked And Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 4 Read Online Free PDF Page B

were having a private chat, but I knew better. As head of the Chinese syndicate, she’d stayed alive because she was both smart and careful. She had mercenaries around the world ready to do her bidding, relationships she’d been cultivating since she’d taken charge of the syndicate fifteen years earlier. Even in the darkest corners of the arcane black market, Soo was a respected woman. Respected and feared.
    But she’d been the one who’d invited me.
    She strode to one of the wingback chairs and settled herself. I followed suit, unshouldering my bag and dropping into the chair next to hers. On the table between us sat a sleek remote control unit. Before us on the low coffee table rested a clay pot, steeping with what I presumed was tea. She didn’t reach for either item however. Instead, she leaned back.
    “You know why you’re here.”
    I shrugged. “I don’t, actually. It’s been a rough few days.”
    “Ah, yes.” She smiled. “The Yonaguni sky serpent. The rumors flooding out of Okinawa of the creature in the storm clouds have been quite impressive. They have also been disavowed by both parliament and the Imperial Guard.” She crossed her legs at the ankles. “They are not the rumors I am most interested in, however.”
    I waited, and she regarded me with her fathomless dark eyes. “The Magician of the Arcana Council is planning to open the portals of Hell, if he has not already done so,” she said. “That doesn’t happen every day.”
    There wasn’t a lot of time for me to react to her statement, so I gave her my trademark shrug as I refocused. If Armaeus had been telling me the truth while I was trussed up in the emperor’s makeshift hospital, he’d already left Vegas for parts south. In any case, I’d lost mental contact with him. Normally, the Magician loved nothing better than to creep around my brain, waiting for an inopportune time to speak to me. Now he was completely gone.
    I wasn’t enjoying the vacation as much as I expected.
    “You do not need to confirm that he has done this,” Soo said, in the face of my obvious nonconfirmation. “The dark practitioners know it. I know it. I would suggest the kara’pei knew it as well.”
    “If you tell me there’s a great disturbance in the Force, I’m leaving,” I said. I was beginning to get a bad feeling about this.
    Soo tilted her head. “How much do you know about my history?”
    No point in lying. “Not much. I know your grandmother was the syndicate’s head when you were a child, very well respected. Your mother was kidnapped while traveling, never to be seen again. You were enslaved, originally thought to have been killed by the same people who’d taken your mother. That story continued until your grandmother died. You returned to the syndicate the next night, before anyone knew of your grandmother’s death outside this hotel. You killed the man she’d designated as her successor, and took over the syndicate.” I lifted my brows. “How’d I do?”
    “Close,” Soo said. “The man who claimed to be my grandmother’s successor was my uncle, and responsible for allowing my mother to be taken and killed in front of me. I was five years old at the time. Old enough to know what was happening, though I did not fully understand the why. It took me many years to recognize that the why did not matter. That is when I reclaimed much of my strength. Later, I reclaimed my position as well.”
    Her gaze swung back to me. “My mother was killed by a master Móshù shī. A magician skilled in the dark arts who I knew only as Gamon.”
    I frowned. I’d heard of Gamon, but… “I thought he was younger. If he was in power when you were a child…”
    She grimaced. “It is rumored he is immortal, but I do not believe this. Merely long-lived. A state he maintains because of a cocktail of technoceuticals and dark arts, I am certain. That’s not why I need you, however. Gamon removed a pendant from around my mother’s neck, then consigned