Wilde Card: Immortal Vegas, Book 2 Read Online Free Page A

and reported…then slunk off with my handy metaphysical barf bag, a parting gift for flying the not so friendly skies.
    Just thinking about it made me wobble a little on my feet.
    “Sit down, Miss Wilde.”
    Armaeus’s voice seemed to be coming from too far away, but I couldn’t deny that his idea was a good one. I shambled toward the nearest chair, which had somehow gotten…nearer to me than it had been.
    I scowled down, testing it with my foot. One thing about the Arcanans, you never could tell what was real with them and what was simply powerful illusion.
    Still, the chair felt real enough. Throwing caution to the wind, I sank down into it. The plush leather gave easily beneath my weight, surrounding me with comfort.
    To his credit, Armaeus let my relaxation last for another full thirty seconds before ruining it with his voice again. “She’s ready.”
    I stiffened. “No, I’m—”
    I didn’t have time to complete my sentence. Eshe spoke the ancient words and the thrall of her control held me fast. By the time she stood beside me, I was already fading from this plane, could barely feel her touch on my forehead.
    “SANCTUS,” she murmured.
    I shot out eastward, muscle and sinew shattering apart so that my mind might stretch before me, the visual effect like a hundred satellites all orienting on the same stretch of geography, offering up a multifaceted view. But at least this was a search I wanted to make. SANCTUS was a big reason all the money was so necessary for Father Jerome. A quasi-religious, quasi-military society dedicated to destroying all things magic, SANCTUS had erupted like a napalm strafe across the Connected community…and they were targeting the children first. Children had always been at risk from dark practitioners. Now they were an endangered species. Under the careful direction of Cardinal Rene Ventre, bestie of the pope and closeted zealot against all things magical, SANCTUS had become Connected Enemy Number One, and Ventre the embodiment of everything wrong in the world.
    With Eshe’s request, I expected to head straight to Vatican City, Rome, to find the group. Instead, my searching mind angled farther east, to Istanbul, where the enormous spires of the Hagia Sophia beckoned me to enter its hallowed dome.
    Without consideration for stone or glass or steel, I hurtled into the building, each barrier an unnerving shock to my system. Crashing through physical structures didn’t immediately hurt though, not really. The pain always came later.
    Down, down, down, I went. Until I finally found my quarry, holed up in a room deep within the bowels of the onetime Church of Holy Wisdom.
    Nothing holy was going on here now.
    A young woman barely more than a child lay stretched out on a metal table, surrounded by monitors all registering electrical activity that was completely off the charts. I stared, horrified, as men and women in surgical gowns moved industriously around the girl. Finally, through a break in the gowns, I could see more: the young woman’s blank eyes, her slack expression.
    She was dead. But death offered no repose for her.
    Chatter erupted in the room as energy readings jumped and jangled, the Connected’s brain waves still responding to God only knew what stimulants they’d pumped into her. The words of the doctors were Italian, Greek, Arabic—a flood of excited babble, while monitors glittered and fingers pounded on keyboards.
    Through all of it, I knew I was speaking, reporting what I saw to Eshe and Armaeus, every detail, every nuance. But my attention could not stay focused on the machines, the doctors. Not with a child in the room. A perfect, precious Connected child, who had done nothing to deserve this treatment other than to be born special. Unique.
    Gifted.
    I heard new voices, arguing voices, but I could not spare them my focus. I drifted closer, down toward the dead girl. No breath would ever pass her lips again; no smile would light her face. No impossible fancy