“It’s not something I can tell you easily. I need to show you.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Motioning to Brad, I asked, “How long is he going to be like that?”
“A couple of hours. Long enough for us to do what we need to do.”
“Now we need to do something?”
“I promise it won’t take long.”
“You know, most women don’t like to hear that.”
Matt shook his head. “You’re willing to come with me?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I wasn’t going to force you to join me if you were absolutely opposed to it.”
I considered telling him no, refusing to go with him, but there was a part of me that remained curious about what he wanted from me. “How long will this take?”
“Like I told you, Dr. Stone, I don’t think this will take long at all.”
I had a hard time believing that but at the same time, if I didn’t go with him, I suspected he would continue to come for me. Regardless of anything else, Matt was a part of a mysterious paramilitary organization, and as I didn’t know what that all entailed, now would be an opportunity for me to discover more about it.
I nodded, heading for the door, and pushed Matt out in front of me. When we were in the hall, I closed the door, pressing my bracelet up against it. I tried to hide it from him, but doubted I was effective at doing so. If he tried to take the bracelet off me, he’d be able to access the condo. Thankfully, I still had the wand. There were many advantages to the wand. Unlike the bracelet, which was basically linked to the protections placed around the condo, the wand was tied to Barden, drawing upon his magic when I used it. Doing so would alert him to the fact that I did. These days, I made a point of avoiding using his power as often as I could, preferring to work on practicing drawing upon my own magic, not wanting to be dependent upon someone else—or risk harming him, either.
Back out on the street, I glanced over at Matt. “Now what do you want to do?”
“It’s not far from here.”
He held out his hand, and I hesitated a moment before taking it. He had calloused fingers, and there was strength in his grip. A strange tingling washed over me—the sense of magic getting used near me—and everything tilted. I had felt a similar sensation before and was familiar with what it was and where it came from, but the suddenness of it still jarred me. When the transportation spell ended, I looked over at Matt, prepared to yell at him for not giving me more of a warning, but then I realized that we stood in a building, and there were a dozen people moving around us.
Matt raised a finger to his lips. He leaned toward me. “I have us shielded.”
“I thought you were only a hedge mage.”
“I am.”
“One of these days, you’re going to have to tell me how you are able to use magic as well as you do, even though you are supposedly just a hedge mage.”
He reached into his pocket, then held out a circular object. It looked something like the coin Jean-Pierre had given me, to the point that there was a marking on the surface, also similar to the one the vampire elder had given me.
“Tokens of power,” he whispered. He slipped it back into his pocket, and we stayed in place, not moving.
I surveyed the interior of the building. At first, I had thought it was a massive lobby, almost as if it were a hotel lobby, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Maybe an office building. Someone sat at a desk near a door on the far side of where we stood. People paused at the desk as the entered. Were they flashing credentials?
It wasn’t any building I recognized, though I didn’t get out often anymore and that didn’t surprise me. The people here were dressed in suits or more formal attire—nothing I would have expected. Were we even still in Minneapolis?
A bell dinged, and he jerked me forward, racing along the hall. Everything blurred past, and I had no opportunity to see more than a swirl of lights on either side of me before we came to a stop.
Matt pushed us back against the wall, and he raised a finger to his lips.
It was an elevator, though larger than any elevator I’d been in before. One side appeared to be completely clear, the front of it all glass, while the back of the elevator was covered in a metallic sheen. As I pressed myself against it, a burning sense washed over me, and Matt pulled me forward, shaking his head.
He closed his eyes, focusing on the number pad, and the doors closed. When they did, we started up, the elevator empty, and an enormous complex sweeping out in front of me as we headed upward.
“What’s going on?” I whispered.
“You’ll see.”
When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, Matt guided me out. The floor here was different, a long hallway with doors lining it. He took me straight down the hall, guiding me toward one door at the end of the hallway, and didn’t bother to knock when he reached it.
He pulled something out of his pocket, pressing it against the lock, and the door opened with a flash of light. Magic, and the surge that had come, suggested there were protections placed all around it. If he had something that would allow him to bypass protections, it was all too easy to believe he could use it to break into the condo, as well.
Guiding me into the room, pulling on my hand, we stepped across the threshold. Once there, Matt closed the door, pressing something else against it. Then he breathed out in a heavy sigh. “We can talk more freely now.”
“What’s going on?”
Matt pointed, and my gaze was drawn to a figure lying motionless on the floor. The blood pooled around the figure indicated there was little likelihood I could do anything to help.
“That’s why you brought me here?”
Matt nodded.
“I don’t think there’s anything I can do for him.”
“That’s not why I brought you here. I need to know how he died, and I’m afraid I don’t know who else to trust.”
4
I couldn’t take my eyes off the body. It was a man who appeared to be in his early fifties. His silver hair had a few flecks of black streaking through it, and he was solidly built, a muscularity to him that suggested he had remained a powerful individual up until his death. A neatly groomed beard lined his chin. Much like the people in the lobby of whatever building Matt had brought me to, the man was dressed in a suit. From where I stood, I couldn’t tell what had happened or why he was bleeding.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“He is—was—my boss.”
I turned toward him. “Not your residency boss, so I take it he was your paramilitary boss?”
Matt nodded. “After the attack on the vampires, I stayed connected to the agency.”
“I thought you never lost your connection to them.”
“I separated a little bit. Partly that was to uncover whether there was anything else taking place, but partly it was because I needed a break. He allowed me to have that separation, unmindful of the fact I might not have been as tied into the organization as I was before, but knowing I needed a chance to explore a little.”
“Who is he?”
“His name was John Adams.”
I looked up from the body and glanced at Matt. “John Adams?”
“Not his real name.”
“Obviously.”
“Most of us take on different identities when we join, Dr. Stone. It’s safer that way.”
“Safer for who?”
“For those we leave behind.”
When he didn’t elaborate, I shook off the uncertainty that worked through me, and I made my way to the body, crouching down next to Mr. Adams. It was unusual approaching someone like this. Most of the time when I found someone bleeding, especially as profusely as this man had, I worked with a certain urgency. With him having died, there wasn’t any sense of urgency.
“You don’t need me. You need a pathologist.”
“Unfortunately, what I need is someone I trust.”
I continued to stare at the man. His face
was pale, but there was no sign of injury to him that I could tell. I wasn’t about to remove his clothing to fully evaluate him.
“Why do you need someone you can trust? I thought you trusted your agency.”
“You saw how protected this place was.”
I took a moment to look around. There was a large oak desk situated near a wall. Shelves behind it had various decorations, some of them unusual-looking sculptures and other sorts of items which made me think they were magical in origin. There were a few books, though not as many as I would have expected, given the number of shelves. There was no computer present. With today’s technology and how interconnected everything was, that surprised me.
“You mean because you couldn’t just transport us here?”
“That’s part of it,” he said. “There are various seals on each aspect of this building. Getting into the main level is one such seal. The fact I’m a part of the agency allows me that access. From there, reaching the elevator is another barrier.”
“It didn’t seem like we had that hard a time reaching the elevator.”
“Only because I had the necessary access key.”
I frowned. “I presume you mean some sort of magical access key?”
Matt nodded. “And then on this level, there are two more triggers. The first is stepping off the elevator, and the second is reaching the office itself. Without the proper key, one would find it incredibly difficult to reach.”
“How difficult?”
He fixed me with a hard gaze. “Quite difficult.”
I took a deep breath, turning my attention back to Mr. Adams. “Why don’t you alert somebody else within your agency?”
“Because of a message he sent me.”
Matt reached into his pocket and I thought he might pull out a phone, but instead he pulled out a slip of paper. He unfolded it, and a series of patterns worked on the page glowed with a strange reddish light. He tapped on one after another, before folding up the paper and putting it back into his pocket. “This was a coded message, and it was meant only for me.”
“What did it say?”
Matt shook his head. “He warned me, and sent a summons here, but there wasn’t much else.”
Matt’s sudden urgency and the secrecy and stealth with which he had brought me here were beginning to make sense. “You’re the one who found him.”
He nodded. “As far as I know, no one else knows he is gone. Yet.”
“Then why did you bring me?”
“Because of this,” he said. He grabbed Mr. Adams’s wrist, pulling up the jacket and shirt, revealing his forearm. A tattoo was twined around the inner surface of his forearm, but that wasn’t what drew my attention. Rather, it was a pair of puncture marks over what would be the radial artery. I leaned close, looking at the injury. Blood still oozed from them, and I realized Mr. Adams hadn’t been gone for long. The skin around each of the puncture marks was slightly blackened, but there was nothing else I could discover.
“Do you recognize this?” he asked.
“Should I?”
Matt breathed out a sigh. “This is—or is meant to look like—a vampire bite. There’s another one on his other wrist, and both of them ooze the same way. The vampires supposedly have something in their saliva that works as an anticoagulant, though we haven’t been able to determine the extent of it.”
“A vampire snuck in here and attacked him?”
“Probably not, but it is meant to look that way.”
“Why do you say they likely didn’t?”
Matt leaned back, releasing Mr. Adams’s arm. “Vampires shouldn’t even know about the agency, Dr. Stone. There would be no reason for John to be targeted by them.”
“Other than the fact that your people targeted an elder vampire before.”
“Those were rogue operatives.”
“Do the vampires know that? After what happened, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear the vampires have gone out of their way to try to find out who targeted them.” I hadn’t spoken to Jean-Pierre since the attack, but I had no reason to do so. As he was a vampire elder, and one who wasn’t even stationed in Minneapolis most of the time, I had no reason to visit with him. He might owe me a favor, but I had no interest in demanding he act upon that. From what Barden had told me, it was not a bad thing to have someone of such power owe me, yet I had no intention of ever calling upon him.
“From what I understand, there has been no word from the vampires that they would be aware of it.”
I reached for Mr. Adams’s arm, pulling up the sleeve and staring at it a while longer. I had never seen a vampire bite before, though I had been around several vampires. I was curious about it. The spacing of the two puncture wounds on the wrist was about what I would imagine for vampire incisors, and yet, the stories about vampires always said that they drank their victim’s blood, not that they allowed it to bleed out.
“If this was a vampire, why didn’t they drink his blood?”
“Well…”
I stared at Matt. “If you want my help, you need to be somewhat forthright with me.”
“Those of us in the agency take quinine.”
“Quinine?”
“It’s a low dose, but we have found it effective in staving off vampire attacks from our people. Although the vamps like to convince others within the magical world that they don’t still attack humans, we have seen otherwise. With trace amounts of quinine in our systems, they don’t particularly enjoy drinking our blood. Most of the time, it acts as a deterrent, turning them off our scent in the first place.”
“Wait. You’re telling me vampires can smell the poison you have in your bloodstream?”
“Vampires are animals, Dr. Stone. They’re predators. Hunters. They have enhanced senses of smell and sight. They use those to their advantage. From what we’ve been able to ascertain, even the trace amounts of quinine in our bloodstream are enough that the vampires are repelled.”
“What about garlic?”
“Garlic doesn’t deter vampires the way the movies make it out, and neither do crosses. They aren’t creatures out of religious fiction, and they aren’t the damned. They’re magical, much like shifters and mages are magical.”
I didn’t have as much experience of the magical world as some—well, not as much as most—but I had been around it enough to know that vampires didn’t have the same magic as either shifters or mages. Mages had definite magic, especially those who were powerful like the Dark Council mages who had been working with me. Shifters did as well, though my experience with them was more limited. As I didn’t have any shared magic with them, I didn’t know quite how they used their power. Vampires were different. They borrowed magic from mages, and I had overheard Barden saying one time that he wondered if they borrowed power from shifters as well. That wasn’t to say vampires had no abilities—when I had been trapped by the vampires, I had felt the overwhelming sense of their persuasion. It had nearly drawn me into the vampire world, making me—at least, a part of me—tempted to have them turn me, to become one of their familiars.
“How is it that you discovered quinine works?”
“Testing,” Matt said.
“How do you test with vampires… Oh.”
Matt held my gaze.
After a moment, I looked down, studying Mr. Adams. Maybe it was best I not think about the implications of the work Matt was involved in. Testing to him meant holding and tormenting vampires, working to see what agents might repel them. There was a part of me—the physician part—that was disgusted by this. I had gone into medicine to help people, but ever since learning about magic, I had been conflicted. The magic I had managed to use most successfully was destructive, whereas I would rather have had a healing variety of magic. If only that could be my specialty.
Touching his neck to ensure he didn’t have a carotid pulse, I noticed something inside his mouth. He had deep silver fillings, and they had markings on them. Odd, but then it wasn’t the oddest thing I’d seen. There were p
lenty of people who came into the ER with far odder things.
Getting to my feet, I paced around the office. Mr. Adams had fallen in front of his desk, and I looked down at the surface, searching for signs of a disturbance, but there were none. The office was neat, tidy, and were it not for the pooling blood where he had fallen, it would be pristinely clean.
“Should he have a computer?”
“No.”
“No?”
“There is a central database, but he wouldn’t access it by computer.”
“How would he access it?”
Matt reached into his pocket, pulling out a device that looked something like a phone, only wider. He tapped on the screen, bringing up a series of numbers. “Each of us has something like this, though with someone like John, he would have a higher authority. He would have been able to access the database more directly than me.”
“You have something like that?”
“Like I said, each of us has something like it. Most of the time, we use it to access missions or information about targets.”
I could easily imagine how excited Barden would be to get his hands on such a device. Considering how he traded in information as it was, and given what I had seen of his operation and the way he collected knowledge about various magical resources, I had to suspect this agency would have something similar.
From what I had seen of the lobby—and this office, I realized as I looked around—there was a considerable difference in resources. Barden had significant wealth, but he didn’t appear to have anything quite like this. Whatever this agency was, it was extremely well funded.
Stranger still was that according to Barden, this wasn’t a state-sponsored organization. It wasn’t tied to any country, which meant there was a shadow organization that tracked magical activity, and intervened upon it.
And now, Matt had brought me into it.
I looked for anything that might help me understand more about Mr. Adams. The decorations on the shelves appeared to be just that—decorations. One of them looked to be a silver ball, and I lifted it, finding it considerably heavier than I’d expected. My skin tingled where I had touched the ball, and it reminded me of the sensation I’d had while in the elevator. Possibly another protection, and it would be just my luck to have triggered it.
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