“All-you-can-eat crab legs!” a smiling woman said, waving a piece of paper at Sam. “And a chocolate fountain?”

Sam pressed by her and tried to leave, but a policeman stopped him. “You need to stay inside, sir,” he said. “There’s a downed power line, and it’s not safe to walk out there quite yet. But the crew is working on it, and it should be fixed shortly.”

“That’s not true, dude,” a young man nearby said. “There are freaking monsters out there. We saw them. Here. Look.”

He dragged Sam away from the doors and held out his phone. Sam looked at the photo. It was of Six. Behind her was one of the grindles.

“We were right there, man. Right. There. Don’t believe what the cops are saying. They just don’t want anyone to know.”

Sam wasn’t listening. He was staring at Six. She was all right. He had to get to her.

He turned and ran back through the casino, looking for another exit. He found several, but all of them were blocked by guards and a phalanx of nervous-looking casino workers armed with buffet passes. Looking at them, Sam got an idea.

He closed his eyes, focusing his concentration on the room full of slot machines. Their internal machinery whirred and clicked as levers were pulled and buttons were pressed. He reached out to the closest one, telling the gears to settle into a winning position. A moment later, the sound of a payoff alarm jangled and someone shouted in delight as tokens poured out.

Sam kept going. Around the room, machines began to clatter and ring as everyone playing them became a winner. Sam opened his eyes and smiled at the sight of people greedily catching tokens in their hands and in the big plastic cups designed to hold the payouts. But their excitement quickly turned to chaos as the machines kept spitting out tokens and they began to fall to the floor, where other players knelt to scoop them up.

“Hey!” a man shouted, shoving aside another man who was busily cramming tokens into his pockets. “Those are mine!”

The men began to wrestle. Similar skirmishes erupted throughout the room as more and more of the little metal coins flew out. The police guarding the doors abandoned their posts to break up the worst of the fights.

Sam took advantage of the disruption to run to one of the now-unguarded doors. He pushed it open and looked around. He was at the rear of the casino, in an alley built for delivery trucks and trash cans rather than the feet of tourists. There were no cops to stop him from leaving.

He walked to the street. Looking to his right, he saw the towering form of the Saturn Hotel. Flashing lights surrounded it. Helicopters buzzed nearby. And in the middle of the lights he saw the forms of the grindles.

He started running.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MAX AND NEMO

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

MAX STARED AT THE SPOT WHERE SAM HAD BEEN.