Magaestra: Tested: An urban fantasy series

by Katherine Kim

  Shaking his head, he turned and headed for Marc's office.

  Marc glanced up warily when Aldric entered, and Aldric ducked his head.

  "I apologize. I... I have not been handling my anxiety well," Aldric said. It was an understatement, but he couldn't think of better words to use.

  Marc relaxed visibly and nodded. "I understand, Aldric. I wasn't much less crazy when Jake was taken if I recall."

  It was true enough. Marc had been half-shifted at one point, ready to tear apart anyone that stood between him and his son.

  "Have we learned anything?"

  Marc growled. "Nothing that we didn't already know. We've been looking for these guys for weeks, and still nothing," Marc grimaced. "Leo lost the SUV on the freeway– the same freeway that the ambulance was ambushed on, though, so at least it's a clue."

  He waved Aldric over and showed him a map on his computer screen that had overlapping circles drawn on it. Marc pointed at each in turn.

  "Okay, so this one's centered on us, here. We figured that it wouldn't make much sense to come hauling in from too far away, and from here to the Goldfang's camp was not a terrible guess as far as distance, we decided. So these circles have a radius of five miles. Either a wolf or a vampire could easily travel that distance for an attack, and it wouldn't be much more than that to drive on the roads rather than in a straight line like they could on foot."

  Aldric nodded. Five miles was nothing. Even a human could travel that distance relatively easily, though it would take them longer. "And the other circles?"

  Marc moved his finger to point. "This is centered on the Goldfang's camp. This one is the Latham's cabin. This is where the ambulance was attacked. These two green ones are known entrances to that mine cave system. We're not sure if that is useful or relevant information, but Leo and I decided to put it up there anyway. He's been checking for increased activity in both of those locations, but nothing so far."

  "Has Tamika found anything?"

  Marc shook his head. "Not that she's said, and if she had, she would have come running in to tell me. She's been calling sentries and running down Frankie's whole life trying to figure out who this 'old buddy' is and where they are now. Frankie has clammed up. Once he understood that we didn't agree that he had done us any favors by removing Faith from the house, he completely shut down."

  He sighed heavily and his shoulders slumped. "I should have seen how destroyed he was. How badly the grief shook him up. I knew that he was a mess for days after Mia died, and he could barely stand through the ceremony in the memorial grove, but..." Marc grimaced again.

  Aldric put a hand on his friend's shoulder and squeezed lightly. "As you said, grief affects us all differently. As I myself displayed this morning." Aldric's smile was rueful. "I did not mean to frighten everyone in the house."

  "Well, I hear we are going to get some fantastic art project out of it from the kids. Greg is a godsend and the complete opposite of his brother. How those two are related, I'll never understand." Marc shook his head slowly. "I suppose you can't pick your family.”

  "You can't pick your genetics," Aldric said. "Family, I think, is what you make of it."

  14

  Faith shivered in the cold of the room. It must have been at least an hour since she woke up here, and lord only knows how long she was asleep in the first place. There were no windows that she could see, and no clocks in this little fancy pop-up room to tell her how long she had been here. Her stomach was growling every so often and she was pretty sure that Conti heard it, but he gave no indication that he cared.

  Her friends had to have realized she was missing by now. Aldric would have tried to find her when he got home, even if he was just going to go right to bed. He had gotten into the habit of checking in with her when he came in from his patrols, and any other time he headed out. She had thought of it as a sweet habit, but now it might save her life.

  Assuming they could track her down.

  "If I starve to death it won't help you much, will it?" she said after a particularly loud protest from her stomach. She should have eaten something for breakfast before she let Frankie kidnap her.

  She hoped that Aldric and the rest had figured out that Frankie was a traitorous asshole already.

  "That is true. But you slept through the human feeding for the day." Conti shrugged. "Although I suppose that is a bit of a generous statement as it is only you and the one other at the moment. Still, those Goldfangs in the kitchen have more important people to worry about feeding than you."

  Oh, she couldn't wait to punch this guy in the face. Or straight through the ribcage with an invisible spike.

  "Now listen here, you pathetic excuse for a b-movie villain–"

  "Sandy!" a new voice rang out, interrupting her snarling protest. "Sandy, have you had lunch yet? I think it is lunchtime."

  The man that hurried into the light now was thin, but still handsome. Dark hair with a hint of a wave in it fell boyishly over his forehead and soft brown eyes almost sparkled with his good mood. Unlike the creepy, slightly crazy smile Conti occasionally flashed at her, the newcomer wore a charming smile and aimed it at Faith. Reyher Cherro was much more handsome than in the photo Leo had found.

  Faith was in a lot of trouble.

  "Oh, and who is our guest? You should have told me we had a visitor."

  Before Conti could answer, the newcomer stepped over to Faith, bowed slightly, and extended a hand. "I am Reyher Cherro. A pleasure to make the acquaintance of such a lovely lady."

  "Lord Cherro, this is the Magaestra I told you about, remember?" Conti's voice softened and took on a tone that niggled the back of Faith's memory.

  "Ah!" Cherro's delight nearly sparkled from him.

  Faith had to bite back a smirk at the thought of a sparkly vampire. Still, the word fit. Cherro was almost gleeful.

  "It has been so long since I last tasted mage blood! Magaestra, hold still!" Faster than she could blink, Cherro held both her wrists in a firm grip over her head, his other hand pushing her shoulder down, and she was staring into the nearly black eyes of the vampire who had helped almost exterminate her kind.

  "Master Cherro! Wait!" Conti's voice cracked out and then he was there, gently restraining Cherro as well. "She still has the drugs in her blood. You would get ill." His explanation was given in that softer voice again. It was almost as if he spoke to a young child, or–

  "Drugs?" Cherro looked confused, and in almost any other situation Faith would have been amused by that expression on the face of such a lethal predator. "I don't like the way they taste, why would you let her have any drugs?"

  "We needed to get her here in the first place, Master," Conti explained gently. “One of our mercenaries brought her in, unconscious. I was simply monitoring her until she regained consciousness. I wanted to ensure that she wasn't damaged."

  Cherro chuckled. "You always do enjoy that part, old friend. The moment of realization in their eyes." He stood, releasing his hold on Faith who stayed very still, watching the interaction and hoping to draw no attention at all. Something about this interaction was very familiar, but with her heart racing and her adrenaline pumping, she couldn't quite place it.

  Conti drew Cherro away a few steps and the conversation continued in murmured German until an older man hurried into the room. "There you are, sir! You told me you were fetching a book from the library, yet here you are chatting away in the sitting room. I cannot anticipate your needs if I can't even find you!"

  The newcomer was tiny compared to the two vampires in front of her. If Faith had been casting for 'elderly caretaker' roles, then this new guy would have been near the top of her list.

  "Reyher, did you escape your aide?" Conti's smile turned amused and teasing. "You know he is here to make your life easier, he cannot do that if you keep evading him!"

  "He is the pushiest aide I have ever had. Regulating my meals and my schedule. Bah! I am his superior officer, not the other way around!" Cherro declared. His face was h
uman again, and he pouted. It was fascinating to watch this interaction.

  The most dangerous being here, possibly on the whole planet, and he was pouting at an old man about schedules and assistants.

  "True, true," Conti chuckled. "But you know how many armies run on the backs of their aides."

  Cherro sighed; a drawn-out, long-suffering sound. He muttered something in German again, and the only thing that stood out to Faith was the name Wilhelm. He then nodded and turned, and allowed the older man to lead him out of the room. Conti watched them go and Faith took the chance to move.

  She tried to be quiet as she pulled her arms back down and sit up, but it was a struggle, making her limbs move the way she wanted them to. Whatever they had drugged her with was proving tough for her to shake completely off.

  Conti turned back to her with what she could only describe as a predatory smirk. "You have a short reprieve since the chemicals in your bloodstream taste vile. Drugged humans make for terrible meals, even if they have magic."

  Faith glared at him.

  "Oh, do you think you can fight us off? We know very well how to avoid your magical wrath. You don't think my good friend could feast on so many of you mages without learning a few tricks, did you? Besides, thanks to my new power, we have had to fireproof this whole complex while I learned how to control it."

  "Fireproof?" The word popped out before Faith could stop it.

  "Indeed! I could not have thought of a more flexible, delightful set of skills to start with! Your sister is delicious."

  His grin now was slightly demented, but Faith couldn't care. Her stomach was again trying to heave whatever was left inside onto the floor and her body felt like ice. She couldn't think about it.

  Faith dragged her thoughts back to the present moment from the panicky grief that threatened her and realized that Conti was still talking as if nothing he said was horrifyingly wrong.

  "Although Reyher was not similarly affected. Curious that he gained no new skills. We are still trying to understand that, but I suspect he has simply built up a slight tolerance for the levels of magic in one mage. Like any other medication, probably. I shall have to discuss it with his doctor again." Conti was mostly talking to himself now, and Faith tried tapping into her magic again, but even though her mind was clearing up, her connection to her magic was still just as slippery as it had been when she first woke.

  "At any rate, he has enough of his own powers. Do you have any idea who that man is? One of the greatest vampires to ever live, Reyher Cherro was one of the vampires who came so close to successfully gaining us our rightful place as masters of this world." His voice was full of admiration for the man who had just been ushered out, muttering petulantly in German.

  "The whining guy? That guy is a great man?” Faith was going to get herself killed. She was usually much more level-headed in a crisis than this. Mouthing off at a homicidal lunatic was not level-headed. To be fair she had never been drugged and kidnapped by a vampire bent on world domination. This was a lot different than changing a flat tire or getting someone to the hospital after tripping on loose computer cables.

  Conti's eyes flashed and a wave of pressure hit her skin, and her brain started to panic. Fight or flight didn't even begin to play into her thought process because the presence in the air was so strong that there was no way she could even hope to escape the predator it rolled off.

  Faith remembered this feeling from the fight at the lodge. First Aldric had used it against the wolf in the front room, then one of the attacking vampires had tried to use it against her but it had been a weak effort compared to Aldric. This, though? This terrified her and she couldn't stop the panicked whimper that escaped her. A smile finally spread across Conti's face.

  "Now you see," Conti leered at her. He resumed his seat and picked up the glass to drain the last of the blood. The back of her mind told her that the stuff had to be cold and congealing by now. "You will be respectful, Magaestra. We are superior to you in every way, and you will learn your place."

  She shivered and this time it wasn't the cold seeping into her bones that caused it. Faith didn't say it but she would absolutely die first before she ever bowed and scraped to these people, or let them use her to further their own agendas. But she needed to live long enough to tell Aldric and Marc what she had learned. And she had learned several things.

  The first thing she realized is that Crissy was almost certainly dead, or very close to it– although Cherro had mentioned another human here more than once, so she was going to cling to that hope.

  The second thing she learned was that Cherro was not the one in charge here after all. Cherro was... senile? Whatever the vampire version of dementia was, Cherro seemed to be firmly in the grip of it. And Conti? Conti was both completely insane and desperate to help Cherro.

  And she had to do everything she could to stay alive and relatively whole until Aldric and the rest of the Frostwalkers found her.

  15

  Aldric was glaring out the front window considering putting GPS trackers on each of the vehicles and Marc was on the phone again, talking to a tracker out near the Latham's cabin. They had sent a team there and another out to where the Goldfang's camp had been, in the hopes that there would be something, any kind of clue to give them a direction to look.

  "I have something," Leo's voice broke through Aldric's musings.

  "I'll call you back, Jee. Thanks." Marc hung up and swiveled to face his screen. Aldric stepped behind him and they both waited for Leo to continue.

  "Well, Addison found it this morning before we heard, and we doubled down on looking into it. I didn't want to say anything and get your hopes up or send anyone out on a wild goose chase." Leo grimaced.

  "That explains your distractedness when we spoke," Marc nodded. "I thought you got a little extra distant after you stopped cussing."

  Leo nodded. A voice from off-screen shouted, "Hurry up and tell them!"

  Aldric raised an eyebrow when Leo's ears pinked, and under any other circumstances would likely have teased his cousin. It was good that one of them seemed destined for an easier time.

  "She found an old written log of the mine system. I'll cut to the important bit, I think we found where the main Goldfang-vampire force is." Leo grimaced. "I sincerely doubt it's Alpha Molin in charge of it over there. We've gone through a ton of security footage and records and so on, and there's a warehouse complex that was bought recently by a company that is owned by a South American corporation that is, essentially, owned by Night’s Phoenix Coven. Meaning, ultimately, it's owned by Reyher Cherro.."

  Leo brought up a map and displayed it for them. "Here's the warehouse."

  A circle appeared around a huge building surrounded by woods on two sides, a rocky ridge backing up behind the building, The last side was a wide, flat, weed-strewn field that had likely once been a parking lot.

  "Where is it?" Aldric growled.

  "Slow your roll, cuz," Leo sighed. "There's a bit more. That warehouse backs up onto a mine exit. A pretty big one, too. For a while that was one of the main mine entrances, then when the mine closed down, the warehouse owners used part of the caves as extra storage. That's why the building backs up so close. They could just drive right in and out of the mountain."

  "What does that mean?" Marc asked. There was a hint of a growl in his voice, as well, which helped Aldric control himself. Simply knowing that his friend was as eager to shut Cherro down was a comfort.

  "It means that this entrance has a connecting route to the cave Faith and Aldric fell into last week as well as a few others. We've been tracking down all the traffic around those locations and there's been an increase in truck traffic at two of them. Also..." Leo's face in the little box in the corner of the screen turned pensive. He grimaced and pulled his lip in to chew on it and glanced offscreen, likely at Addison.

  "We found an old security system in the warehouse. It's not actually active anymore, and it's pretty ancient, technologically speaking, but it's
still plugged in and connected up to everything. So I could hack into it."

  Aldric tried to stay still and wait for what Leo was about to tell him.

  "Um. I found confirmation that Cherro is there. And a ton of weapons and stuff. There's a few areas blocked off with drapes, and I can't see into them, but they look like they're set up as living spaces. I can see a part of a carpet and the edge of some sort of furniture. A chair or something. Cherro went in there a while ago, then came out escorted by an older man. I also caught a glimpse of Molin and a bunch of Goldfangs, and a lot of vampires are wandering around, doing whatever it is they're doing."

  Marc took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  "How many would you guess were there guarding the place? And do you have any confirmation that Faith is there? Or Crissy?"

  Leo scrunched his face up and squinted at some window on his screen that he wasn't sharing.

  "I'd guess the rest of the Goldfangs are there," Addison’s voice said from off-screen. A moment later her face popped into view, hovering over Leo's left shoulder. "So that's at least a couple dozen wolves."

  She reached over Leo's arm to smack his hand off something, then there was the sound of a mouse clicking, and a video image popped up. Alpha Molin, standing in an enormous open space, only cut off by a wall of curtains hung off pipes that seemed to be tied up to ceiling girders somehow. He was surrounded by three other men, and they all seemed to be listening to something on the other side of the curtain, with expressions of rage on their faces. After a moment he snarled and stalked off out of the camera's range, followed by his thugs.

  "That was about an hour ago. Once we hacked in I started recording everything," she said with a grin.

  "Well, at least he doesn't seem content in his association with Cherro," Aldric observed.