Wishing for a mirror down in my secret hidey-hole, I take out my phone and reverse the camera, moving it up and down to examine the fit. Black leather encases my every curve. Yup. I look damn good.
Vanity restored, I return my attention to the blades on the wall. After testing the edge, the throwing knives are the first ones I load into the forearm and bicep sheaths. Next comes the longer, machete-like blade down my spine, and then the daggers and short swords on my thighs. With the full complement of weapons, I should be able to withstand a lengthy battle against many opponents—which is a significant change from the normal one-on-one type of hunting required as an enforcer.
The key to surviving for as a long as I have is adaptation. First, I killed for survival, because I had no choice, it was them or me. Then, when I became an enforcer for the tribunal, I killed out of duty. I couldn’t allow the confirmed rogues to continue hunting humans and murdering at will. Doing so not only endangered innocents, it risked our exposure—because a crazy vampire is not good at hiding what they are.
Once my twenty-year term of service to the tribunal was up, I worked in earnest to accumulate massive amounts of wealth, understanding even back then that having enough cash, however it’s carried, could mean the difference between life and death.
Money usually equates to power, especially within the Tribunal. Their recent financial problems, which left them weak to temptation and willing to accept our proposition to hunt a rogue for profit, could have been avoided if they’d learned to manage their money better. That entire establishment bleeds cash.
And now, now I kill only when I have no other choice. It may seem like I don’t hesitate when I make the choice to end a life, but that’s only because I know if I don’t, the lives of those I care about will be in danger.
Satisfied with my explorations, I grab my work clothes and return to our suite. Today is going to be a busy day. We’ve lots to do before we go after my turns.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RAFE
It’s quarter past nine in the morning and I’m waiting outside the apartment building for the wizard to collect his spell ingredients. We completed a brief employee interview, making sure he knows not to say too much about what he’s doing here, or to mention anything about teaching me magic. His official title will be security consultant.
He told me about his late-night visit with Diane and exploring the greenhouses. It sounds like he’ll settle in okay, especially with her to help him replenish spell ingredients and such.
Justin emerges from the apartment building’s entrance, a large duffle bag in one hand. I wave him over to the jeep before climbing back into the driver’s side. In a moment, the passenger side opens and Justin joins me.
“Where we off to first, boss?” he asks, unknowingly addressing me exactly as his brother Asa does.
I hand him a topographical map of the property. “We’ll be heading to the northwest corner where the windmills are. The plan is to walk the property line and set the wards as far apart as you deem effective.”
Justin nods while studying the map. I start the jeep and drive. In a few minutes he says, “This place is way bigger than I expected. How many acres did you say you guys have?”
“Over ten thousand. Which comes to about fifteen square miles.”
He whistles long and steady. “Holy shit, that’s big. I think the entire town where my mom went to high school was only two square miles.”
“Where was that?”
“New Jersey. Little town in Morris County called Butler.”
I nod, understanding he’s filling the silence with idle chit chat. Which is fine by me. I don’t know the man very well and he’s going to be responsible for training me in magic. Might be good if we got to know each other better. I haven’t had a teacher, besides Vivian, in well over half a century.
I clear my throat, uncharacteristic nerves and anticipation over learning a new skill churning in my middle. “So, what exactly are we going to do today?”
“You said you wanted highly secure protection wards around the property, so I thought we’d begin our lessons at the same time. You can learn as we go. Although, who the hell is going to wander onto your land way up here is beyond me. We’re literally in the middle of nowhere.”
“Yes, that’s true. We’re very isolated up here.” I refrain from telling him unexpected werewolf hunters already made their way onto our land earlier this summer. But then again, those intruders knew where to find us and came looking for our inn specifically. Hopefully, the magical barrier we’re constructing will give us one more line of defense against anything like that occurring again. “You are aware of the threat against Vivian and what Rolando and Persephone are planning, right? It would be highly stupid of us to ignore our weaknesses. That’s where you come in. With your help, our remote resort will become an even greater fortress to protect us.”
“Yes, I know about their crazy bat shit. I never did trust Persephone when I worked there.” He shivers. “She always gave me the creeps. I never knew if my personal talismans were enough against her abilities. And you’re right about not ignoring security weaknesses. I still don’t think they’d be able to attack you here, with or without my help. But hey, it’s your dime.
“We’ll have to physically place each ward and connect them to one another, linking them to create a kind of magical early-warning detection system.”
I nod. “What’s in the bag?”
“Spell ingredients, casting bowls, ritual items… basic magic stuff.” He looks down at the map again. “Your property’s perimeter is bigger than I thought, too. Bad news—I don’t know if we’ll be able to cover all of it today. Good news—at least I’ve got enough supplies on hand to complete the task.”
“How far apart were your wards in the Tribunal’s neighborhood?”
We travel down a paved road and turn onto a narrow gravel drive. “A couple of hundred yards. But there’s no way in hell we want to do that here. Have you done the math on your property line?”
“Yeah, it’s around sixteen miles.”
“Hmm… Is all of it accessible by road?”
“No, it’s not.”
The young wizard looks out the window and sighs. “Great, just great. So we’ll be hoofing it?”
I hold back a smile. He’s been in the city for way too long. “That’s why I told you to wear hiking boots.”
We drive past the windmills, where the seethe staged Emiko’s death last winter. Seems like a lifetime ago, and yet, it’s only been six months.
At least the snow is finally gone. Instead of Spring, we have what I like to call Mud Season. Thankfully, by this time of the year, the worst of it is gone. We’ll find out soon enough if it’s rained recently.
I park the car and grab the satellite GPS, punching in the coordinates for the nearest access point to the edge of our land.
“This it?” Justin asks while peering through the windshield.
“Not quite.” This time I do smile. “Let’s go.” I open my door and get out, hearing his door close a moment after mine.
I head into the trees, Justin trailing behind me with the duffle bag. The ground underfoot is firm, not swamped with water, much to my delight. We’re not normally here in July, and I couldn’t recall if we’d be on solid ground. Glad it’s the latter.
Justin motions his chin toward the woods. “These skinny trees remind me of the scrub pines in south Jersey, in an area called the Pine Barrens. Can’t miss them when you’re at the Jersey Shore.” He pauses as a thought occurs to him. “Did you guys burn the area at one time and this is re-growth? Nothing looks very big. All the trunks are on the thin side.”
“Nope, not here. We did burn to clear for building the inn, but that was decades ago and nowhere near here. Regarding the trees, they don’t get much past thirty feet due to the permafrost.”
“Permafrost? What’s that?”
“Couple of feet below the surface stays frozen all year round.”
“No
shit? That’s pretty damn cold.”
“Made building a bit of a bitch.”
“I bet. Hey, that made me think of something. My grandfather was a contractor, how do the builders up here construct foundations for homes and such?”
“Most homes in Alaska don’t have a deep foundation. They sit on concrete slabs or on above-ground foundations, like pilings.”
“But on the plane, you mentioned the command center for hotel security is in the main building’s basement. That’s below ground, right? How did you build it?”
Justin doesn’t know about the underground system of tunnels, and I’m not sure if he will need to. He’s only going to be here for a year and shouldn’t need access to the master escape system my wife and I designed. “Same way the Army Corp of Engineers built the underground systems up in Barrow: fire, explosives, heavy machinery, and lots of patience.”
“Fascinating. All the homes I knew of in Jersey had basements—well, except for the ones in flood zones. And in Argentina, it seemed hit or miss whether or not a place would have a basement. But most didn’t.”
“Will the existence of permafrost alter what you plan on doing today?”
“Thankfully, no. We’ll be activating the ingredients at each location, then sprinkling them in the soil and on plant life. In essence, your entire resort will be linked through the earth and what lives on it, even in the frozen depths of winter.”
I think about all the concrete, brick, and asphalt in the Tribunal neighborhood. Throughout the city there were only green spaces in parks, private buildings with inner courtyard gardens, and occasionally the rare patch of green, like his old yard, out behind homes. “Is this the same type of approach you used for the ancients?”
Justin shakes his head. “Nope. I had to place already-linked talismans at regular intervals and activate them with magic once they were in place. Since the property here is so vast, and much more organic than what we’d find in a city, we’re taking a different approach. The plan is to bind each location to one another in a chain as the ingredients are scattered. Creating a kind-of magical force field, if you get my drift.”
“Yeah, I think I understand. I’m curious to see how it all works.”
“I’ll have you watch the first two times, and then you’ll take over the beginning steps at the third location.”
“Okay.”
We travel the rest of the way in silence, with me glancing at my GPS every so often and altering our course as needed. In ten minutes we reach the edge of the property line. This section of the resort contains lots of trees, all close to the same diameter in thickness. Justin comments on their size, and I explain how we don’t get really tall, thick trees up here due to the aforementioned permafrost, since their root systems have to stay near the surface.
Justin sets his duffle on the ground and opens it. He removes several fabric bags and a dark purple cloth decorated heavily with embroidered symbols done in gold thread. Meticulously, he unfolds the material, spreads it on the ground and places a copper bowl in the center.
I watch as he adds measured ingredients from each bag, chanting a different phrase with each one he pours in. A part of me wonders if I should be taking notes and now I’m annoyed he didn’t mention to bring a notebook or something. At least the phrases he’s chanting are in English.
I wait until he’s quiet to ask, “What’s the distance we’ll be placing these around the perimeter?”
Justin shoots me a dark look, glancing sharply at the spell bowl.
A light flush heats my cheeks. That’s one way to find out I shouldn’t be talking. Would have been nice if he’d told me in the beginning to be quiet.
The wizard reaches into his pocket and pulls out a glass vial filled with a red liquid. The bottle stopper looks to be a rubberized dropper, and my guess is confirmed when he unscrews it, pinches the top, and then draws out a thin glass tube filled with liquid. I’m assuming it’s blood, but I won’t know for sure until I can ask.
He dispenses two drops into the bowl while repeating “Like binds to like, bring forth protection against all who mean harm” as each drop falls. On the last one, a poof of air, like a wind, pushes against me, its origin appearing to come from the direction of the bowl.
“Wicked,” I say, before I can stop myself. Hey, this stuff is freaking cool. Feels like I’m living a real-life Harry Potter movie and I have to hold back my desire to grunt like Hagrid.
This time I don’t get the dark look, just a small lopsided grin from the wizard to indicate he’s heard me.
“Next, we burn the bowl’s contents and scatter the ashes,” Justin says. He withdraws a lighter from his back pocket and grabs a thin piece of wood from his bag.
“Don’t you have a spell for fire?”
“Yes, but with the amount of work we plan on doing today, I’d rather not exhaust myself. The lighter is a smarter use of limited resources. And to answer your earlier question, we’ll be placing these every half mile. If the boundary feels weak, we’ll come back and place new links at the quarter-mile interval.”
“Geez, that’s an initial thirty-two locations we’ll have to set.”
Justin nods. “Like I said before, I don’t expect us to get it all done in one day.”
I glance at my watch. “It’s early, and we have almost nonstop daylight this time of year. Depending on how often we take breaks, we may be able to do it.”
The wizard picks up the bowl and drops in the lit piece of wood. He repeats the binding phrase again, over and over, while the ingredients steadily burn. Once the fire burns itself out, he uses the heel of his hiking boot to create a long furrow in the soil, and scatters the ashes in.
Justin waits until he’s covered up the ashes before responding, “I was more concerned over the time it would take to travel to each location. It might be worth it to walk along the boundary line from here, rather than to go back to the jeep and drive, and then walk out to the line again.”
“Good point,” I say while mentally calculating how long it will take us to walk and preform the ritual at each half-mile point. Depending on the tundra and frost upheavals, he’s right, this task could take longer than one day. “Should I have been taking notes on the phrases and steps you did?”
“No.” He digs in his pocket and hands me a folded sheet of paper. “This will make it easier. You’ll need to memorize each step and phrase.”
I nod, grateful for the help, and open the page. The steps are neatly mapped out, all the ingredients, in order, with the phrases recorded, too.
Justin carefully repacks all the supplies, tightens each ingredient bag, and folds his ceremonial cloth with precise movements. I watch like a hawk, eager to not make a mistake when it’s finally my turn to try.
“Whose blood did you use?” I ask.
“I used Vivian’s. Figured it made the most sense over using my own since it’s your property.”
“Good call. I’ll make sure your supply is replenished. That’s the payment she gave you in Buenos Aires, right?”
“Yeah, and I’d wanted to use it sparingly, so I appreciate the refill.”
“No problem. Consider it a job perk.” A part of me is curious how much of my own blood it would take to activate and fuel the warding spell, but Justin has a good plan in place with Vivian’s blood and I see no need to muck it up by cutting myself at every half-mile mark. Even if I would like to see the results.
Maybe we could use my blood for the quarter mile points in-between. That might be a good way to bind the ward to both of us.
I take out the GPS unit again and grab my cell phone to call the command center. Better to let them know our progress and keep them updated of our location.
CHAPTER NINE
JON
It’s a late morning when I slip from the cabin, leaving my slumbering girlfriend tucked in bed. With the amount of daylight we have right now, time is kind of relative, especially when you’ve been up all night, and most of the morning, making love.
The quiet of the property wraps me in silence, welcoming me to the secluded peace I always find in the woods. I need to practice and perfect the ability to half-shift, and even though Candy might be a great person to ask because of her mad shifting-skills, I’d prefer to at least make an attempt on my own.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we cleared the air, but I’m still not thrilled at the position she’s put me in with Vivian and Rafe. Not telling them about her and our relationship is clearly a lie by omission. And I know I’ll have to come clean eventually. It’s the when, where, and how that’s giving me the most stress. Not to mention being worried about Vivian’s reaction. Will she freak out? How would any master vampire react to their servant being with someone else intimately? Would it make a difference if the relationship was serious or casual?
Which leads me to the inevitable, is Candy the one? Is she my mate? Would I have felt attraction for Magda if my destiny was with Candy?
Physical attraction to another person does not mean Candy isn’t right for you. Chemistry is just that, chemistry. Not acting on every impulse you experience is called maturity and restraint.
The inner wisdom and my many options roll over in my mind while I venture deeper into the woods, pushing my worries with Candy to the back so I can focus on what needs to be done. With Magda, I practiced the half-shift indoors. And later, when I practiced with Viv and Rafe nearby, we were also inside.
Maybe the key to mastering this ability is connecting with my wolf in a natural setting—at least until I know what the hell I’m doing. Magda showed no problems half-shifting wherever she was, whenever she wanted. Just like any skill, I’m sure that kind of mastery must come only with lots of practice.
Sharpen the Blade (The V V Inn Book 6) Page 8