Vicki Thompson: Werewolf in Las Vegas

A hotel for werewolves in the heart of Vegas had been a daring idea when Harrison had built the Silver Crescent years ago. The other two establishments in the country that catered exclusively to Weres were in more remote areas. One was a resort on an island in Puget Sound, and the other was outside of Denver, a sprawling lodge where Giselle had attended WereCon2012.

Everyone in the werewolf world had understood the significance of losing this urban hotel, but the humans hadn’t realized that major panic had ensued. The hotel had been designed for Weres, complete with werewolf-friendly entrances and exits that would make no sense to a human guest. When Harrison Cartwright had owned the Silver Crescent, humans who tried to book a room had been told the hotel was full. Humans could gamble in the casino, but only registered guests could enter the hotel lobby.

While Harrison had fought the deed transfer in court, werewolf crews had reconfigured the rooms, doors, and elevators so that human guests would never dream it had been anything other than a normal Vegas hotel. Humans had no idea that werewolves lived and worked among them and had vast financial holdings in all major cities in the world. Giselle didn’t believe they ever should know, although a faction in the Were community was pushing for a full reveal.

With help from a team of lawyers, Harrison had stalled long enough that the renovations had been completed by the time the court awarded the Silver Crescent to Angus Dalton. Most important of all, the underground tunnel to Howlin’ at the Moon had been blocked off.

Giselle had been in touch with Angus’s son Vaughn for the past several weeks as she’d debated whether to come to Vegas. Once she’d made the decision, he’d offered to send a limo to the airport to pick her up, but she’d opted for the trolley. Between the open car and the overcast sky, maybe she could pretend she was still in her City by the Bay instead of in Vegas looking for her AWOL brother, Bryce.

But Vegas would never pass for ’Frisco. Instantly she was immersed in the jaw-dropping excess that had produced a giant black pyramid, replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, and a sprawling Roman palace. The trolley rolled by the forty-story Silver Crescent, a glittering tower of reflective glass with hundreds of quarter-moon windows lining the facade and giant chrome quarter- moons on either side of the gleaming entrance.

The hotel dwarfed the one-story, rustic bar sitting next to it. But Howlin’ at the Moon had a worldwide reputation among Weres. The legendary watering hole had served drinks and bar food to world-famous shape-shifters for more than thirty years.

But the bar wasn’t famous because of its refreshments, excellent though they were. Howlin’ at the Moon sat above a top secret Were playground, Harrison Cartwright’s proudest achievement. He’d claimed to be excavating the site four stories deep so that he could put in a foundation that would support a hotel someday if he took the notion to build one there. Instead, werewolf-only crews had created a subterranean, climate-controlled world that included evergreens, steep trails, rocky outcroppings, waterfalls, bubbling streams, and a moon that cycled through phases in sync with the real one. Powerful lights kept the plants and trees growing, and heavy-duty pumps moved the water in an endless loop.

Harrison had been hailed as a genius for creating a secure place for werewolves to run in the heart of Sin City. The stark landscape surrounding Vegas offered precious little cover for a wolf. Anyone spotting one or more of the large animals would most likely alert wildlife experts, destroying any hope of secrecy. Besides, the playground was climate controlled, a real plus for a discriminating wolf wearing a thick fur coat.

Giselle had seen the place once. She and two of her female Were friends had gone on a road trip that included one night at the Silver Crescent in Vegas. After checking into their room, they’d all shifted and used the special paw controls on the elevators to access a tunnel connecting the hotel with the bar.

They’d arrived in an anteroom one level below the bar. Lockers lined the walls, which had puzzled Giselle at first until she realized that bar patrons who wanted to use the playground would need a place to shift and store their clothes. Harrison had thought of everything.

She and her friends had pushed through a revolving door at the far end of the locker room and had stared in amazement. They’d entered another world, one bathed in moonlight, scented with evergreen, and filled with the sounds of rushing water and the hoots of an owl.

Once they’d recovered from their sense of awe, they’d romped through that pretend forest, howling and yipping like teenagers. She smiled at the memory of it and wondered if she’d have time to go while she was here. What a great way to release some of the tension created by her brother’s dereliction of duty.

The trolley moved on, gliding past rippling neon and flashing billboards promising riches beyond compare. A river of pedestrians seeking those treasures eddied in and out of the elaborate pleasure domes lining the busy thoroughfare.

Giselle searched their faces, as if she might spot Bryce in the crowd. His hair, dark red like hers, made him fairly easy to see, especially because he was tall. He was here somewhere. He’d said so, and although he could be a royal pain, he didn’t lie. He’d texted every few days to let the family know he was okay, but he’d ignored all requests, or demands in the case of her father, to return home.

She’d decided not to let him know she’d flown down. Not yet, anyway. He wouldn’t be happy that she’d come to drag him back, and ideally, she’d like to make her plea in person rather than over the phone. Maybe she could arrange to run into him and catch him off guard.

Whenever she thought of Bryce, she alternated between being worried and being royally pissed. Although she was familiar with his pattern of going along with the program until something hit him wrong and he bolted, this particular incident had lasted way too long—more than seven months, in fact.

He had to know how severely his juvenile stunt had impacted her and the rest of his pack. He was slated to be the next Landry alpha and had duties as a result. Giselle had ended up covering for him in addition to handling her job as the pack’s chief financial officer. She wanted him home, preferably before he did something terminally stupid.

She wasn’t terribly surprised that he’d left. At first the plan to mate with Miranda Randolph, heir to the Randolph winery fortune, had been his idea. But the two packs, especially the two sets of parents, had jumped in and taken over. Whenever Bryce felt pushed, he simply abandoned the field.

Giselle had to figure out a way to coax him back, even if the Miranda situation was ruined forever. Members of the Landry pack, including their parents, were talking about making Giselle the next alpha, and she didn’t want it. The political maneuvering required of an alpha didn’t appeal to her at all. She’d much rather crunch numbers than settle pack disputes, which meant she had to find Bryce.

According to Vaughn, Bryce wasn’t staying at Illusions or frequenting any of the usual werewolf haunts, including Howlin’ at the Moon. That probably meant he was spending all his time with humans, and that worried Giselle more than anything else. She prayed he hadn’t embraced the new and dangerous idea of Weres mating with humans.

After leaving the trolley and entering the soothing ambience of the Illusions lobby, she registered and surrendered her suitcase to the bellman. She’d brought a small one, figuring she wouldn’t be there long.

Giselle’s nose told her the area was human-free, which probably meant no humans were allowed through the front door. If so, then only Weres would be able to enjoy the three-story atrium filled with evergreens and a babbling brook. In some ways the lobby echoed the playground underneath Howlin’ at the Moon.