The Christmas holiday passed way too quickly for Alexa's liking. Before she even knew what was happening, New Years had passed and her furlough to normalcy had ended.
As night approached on that clear January evening, Alexa and Luna found themselves soaring towards the glittering lights of Las Vegas. Neon, glass, steel and splendor filled the place, even at twilight. The place, particularly the strip, was so ostentatious that she doubtlessly wouldn't have earned a second glance if she and Luna had opted to fly in in plain view. Even so, she didn't want the attention.
Her metallic friend settled down in a small out of the way alley, just off the strip.
"Remember the address?" She asked. Luna whirred a happy affirmation. "Good! I guess I'll meet you-"
"Well howdy there folks, you two checking in?" Alexa whirled on the spot. The alleyway, which she had thought was empty, seemed to glow with the neon sign of the hotel situated just a few feet from where she was standing. Bright, garish, purple and gold neon lights flashed on the sign, around the bright white words 'Lotus Hotel and Casino'. Beneath the sign, holding the glass doors open, was a young man, blonde, tan, with an artificially white smile.
"Oh, uh, sorry! You got me mistaken for someone else! I'm just passing by!" Alexa tried to explain. The door man chuckled.
"Don't worry about it, friend! Everything's paid for! Got your card ready and everything!" He waved a small rectangle of golden plastic. Alexa frowned and slowly shook her head. Something sweet tickled at her nose, and she found herself taking a small step forward, even as she tried to explain herself.
"Sorry, but you have us confused with someone else. We're checking in with a hotel a few blocks away." Was that…she breathed in a bit more of the scent. It was floral primarily but she smelled barbeque…pig maybe? Definitely pork of some sort!
"Are you sure? We have the all you can eat buffet set up for all of our guests and gold card members get access to our top of the line arcade experience!" He gave the little gold card a flash. How had Alexa gotten close enough to hear the distinctive Waka-waka-wakas of a Pac-Man machine? What was that tugging sensation near her waistline?
She looked down at the man who stood nearly a foot shorter than her. At this distance she could see the small freckle half tucked behind his nose, and the blissfully oblivious smile on his face. He offered the card to her.
"I have a few strings I can pull inside." He said in a slight singsong voice. "If you want, I can get you the premium ultra platinum upgrade. Comes with a personalized massage table, and all inclusive access to the VR bays. No lines, no waits."
Alexa's eyes flicked inside. Just inside the glass doors she could see three rock climbing walls, a massive indoor waterslide and a pit surrounded by several people holding thick, black, boxy controllers.
"Are those guys…battling robots?" She asked, her voice thick with longing.
"That's right! We got a robot fighting league here in the hotel. Currently floor 221 holds the golden bolt!" The doorman proclaimed proudly.
"Well…maybe just for a few min-ACH!" Before she could finish her thought the tugging on her waist grew more intense, this time joined by a heat at her throat. Information shot like a cannonball from her subconscious. It rocked through her brain, dragging the flotsam of different information along with it, so by the time she began to register what was running through her head, she only got a few brief flashes of everything else. The snatches that came through clearest were "Lotus. Odysseus. Homer. Simpson. Yellow. Purple. Purple Rain. Chocolate Rain. Chocolate Mousse. Moose are sometimes eaten by orcas. Orcas are actually dolphins. Dolphins can swim in pods of thirty. "
When her brain finally stopped playing the opening tune to Flipper, she managed to pull herself out of the spiral. She realized her left leg was sticking outwards, preparing to take that last step into the hotel, her hand already up to collect the prepaid card. She retracted her leg, and closed her hand over thin air.
"Maybe another time…" She said, turning her back on the wonders she could still hear inside the hotel and the soft disappointed "Aww…" from the doorman. She stepped around Luna who promptly dropped the back of her belt and the two hurried down the alley towards the strip.
"Good girl." Alexa muttered, giving Luna a pat on the head. Luna whirred contentedly. The moment Alexa got into the crowd on the strip, Luna took off, leaving her to make her own way to the hotel.
As she walked, Alexa couldn't help but marvel at the nonchalance of the people of Vegas. There she was, a girl in her late teens, walking out of an alleyway with a roller bag in one hand, and a backpack on her back, and no one even batted an eye or gave her a second glance. Just another day in Sin City, apparently.
She reached up to gently touch the charm around her neck. The little bulb of enchanted water had cooled, but she was certain she'd have a bruise where the thing had tried to choke her. She winced as she touched the spot on her throat…She'd have to thank Mnemosyne somehow. She could send her a thank you card, but she didn't really think they made 'Thank you for saving my life from a magical trap' cards. Besides which, she didn't even know the address of the cave in the Olympic Mountains. She sighed and rubbed her head…this was going to get complicated…maybe she should just swing by next time she was on the west coast.
It took less than 5 minutes for Alexa to get to The Paris Skies Hotel and Casino from where they had landed. The moment she entered the sounds of the slot machines assaulted the young woman's ears from far off to her left. Even from here she could hear the beeps, boops, and jingle of coins falling into the trays emanating from the casino floor, which was situated behind a half wall behind the front desk. The place was nice, with marble and faux gold everywhere, and a polished floor. Alexa made her way to the front desk, her eyes flicking around as she moved as any demigod with ADHD surrounded by flashing lights and loud sounds would. Not a clock in sight, the stereotype was actually true.
"Hi, welcome to Paris! Checking in?" Said the bright and bubbly young woman behind the desk, drawing Alexa's attention for the first time.
"Yeah, it should be under Barber, first name Alexa." She said, pausing to fish her wallet out of her pocket. She pulled out her ID, and placed it out in front of her, followed by the card Aug had given her. The woman clicked and clacked on her keyboard for a moment.
"Let's see…it says here you'll be taking one of the high roller suites for an extended period. Is that right?" She asked, looking up at the tall young woman. Alexa bobbed her head in response. "Good good. Now since you signed up for the platinum roller package, that means you get a suite up on the twenty-second floor. That comes with full access to the restaurants and casino down here on the main level as well as 24/7 room service. Our buffet serves breakfast from 4:00 am to 11:00 am and lunch and dinner from 11:00 am to 4:00 am. Housekeeping comes by around 10:00 am or so to clean up, if you're planning on sleeping in, just hang the sign on the door or call down to the front desk and tell whoever's here that you'd like to skip it. I think that covers just about everything…" She took a quick peek at Alexa's ID, gave her card a swipe to get into the system, typed for a little bit longer and then reached behind her to grab a new card with Paris's logo on it and passed all three plastic rectangles across the counter to Alexa.
"Everything's all set. You'll be in room 2215. The twentieth floor and up are all private so you have to slide your card in the elevator to get access. If you need anything just give me a call! Enjoy your stay!" Alexa smiled gratefully at the hostess, thanked her, and began to drag her rolled bag into the main floor area. The elevators were situated at the far end of a kind of alleyway, running down the middle of the casino floor. The casino itself took up at least the ground floor, but she could see the balcony overlooking the whole thing on the next floor. It was entirely possible that there were more games up there. She'd have to explore her new home later, however.
Alexa stepped in an empty elevator, swiped her card, and proceeded up to the twenty second floor, feeling a small pang of nostalgia for her most recent trip to Olympus.
She found room 2215 easily enough but despite booking it herself, the opulence took her back a half step. The suite was two bedroom, and a bath and a half. A large sitting room dominated the entry area, with two couches arranged in an L-shape facing a flat screen tv. Directly opposite the main doorway was a door out to a balcony that overlooked the strip.
In a few quick strides Alexa walked over to the sliding glass door and flung it open. She blew on her bronze dog whistle and in half a second, there was Luna.
"Good girl." Alexa smiled, leading the dog inside. She set things up in the smaller of the two bedrooms, relieving Luna of most of their luggage, and unlocking her tool box. The magical gift unfolded in the center of the room, the anvil lightly pressing against the bed.
"What do you say about getting an early start to the hunt?" She asked Luna.
"Aroof!" The canine agreed.
They quickly found that hunting at night was a bad idea. When they hunted the hind there was nothing to really to worry about, she stood out so much that finding her wasn't difficult during the majority of the year. Vegas's glitz and glamor made it difficult to see in the shadows of the desert outside the city lights. Even after her eyes had adjusted Alexa realized she could hardly tell one pile of rocks from another…
The pair returned to the hotel in defeat, and tried again a little after sunrise the next day. This held its own problems, though. The first day was a disaster, all because Alexa had forgotten to apply sunscreen. When they returned to the hotel Alexa hobbled her way to the bathroom, her body about as red as a lobster. Alloe, ice, a tiny bit of ambrosia and rest and she was…well not exactly all better but she had moved on to the peeling stage at least.
"Bet Apollo's kids don't have to deal with this!" She harrumphed as she peeled a particularly large flake off her upper arm.
It took the pair a week to find the Cerastes and that was entirely luck on their part. She and Luna were sailing over the Mojave, Alexa smelling strongly of coconut and aloe, Luna sparkling in the desert sunlight, when they saw the mass moving beneath the sand. To say the thing was massive would've been the height of understatement. The only reason they hadn't seen it before, Alexa suspected, was that they hadn't been passing over when it had been moving. The two corkscrew horns stuck at least six feet from the sand, their bases situated somewhere deep below sat about fifteen feet apart. She watched with abject horror and fascination as the beast slithered with incredible speed through the granulated obstacle towards a clump of Joshua trees on a more densely packed section of soil.
As it drew closer the curled horns dipped beneath the sandy surf. There were two heart beats of utter stillness as the world held its breath.
The Cerastes sprang from the dirt and dust like a reptilian geyser. The creature's flesh stretched on and on, a carpet of interlocking yellow brown scales, intermixed with burs and spines that Alexa immediately recognized as non-organic. Glass seemed to be the most prominent of the quills, but she could also make out foot long spires of plastic, and shiny glints of metal interspersed in the cerastes's hide. The giant snake rose higher, and higher, until its body stretched longer than a bus. With a hiss like a thousand garden hoses being kicked on to full blast, it twisted in the air and came down, mouth first, on one of the Joshua trees, its mouth dislocating as it took the whole of the thing into its gullet. With a twist and a snap, it ripped the whole tree up and swallowed it, dirt covered roots and all. Its jaws snapped shut, it bent over itself, and plunged down into the dirt from where it had come.
"Holy crap…" Alexa muttered to herself. "This…is going to take some planning."