As much as fear crawled through her over her own fate, it was fear for her family that had her wide awake. Her Uncle Calder, burned and broken. “On the edge,” Ash had said. The prefects had transferred Calder to a medical facility, but what if treatment had come too late?
Then there was her father. What had happened in that vault? She knew beyond any doubt that Quinn hadn’t betrayed the Consulate by trying to steal the Sahar. If there was a Consul with unshakable honor and integrity, it was her father. But the prefects had been convinced her father had caused the explosion. Even Ash had said the magic signature was haemon, and there’d been only two haemons in that vault.
Lyre had tentatively suggested that Calder wasn’t as innocent as he seemed, but Piper had shot that one down instantly. Calder was the most loyal man she knew.
The most puzzling part of it all was that her father had given her the Sahar before the meeting. That meant, in spite of what the sergeant had said about needing three magicians—meaning Quinn, Calder, and one of the ambassadors—to remove the Sahar, her father had somehow gotten it out of the vault in advance. He’d expected something to go wrong.
She stared at the torn fabric ceiling of the car. Was that why her father had found a reason to send her upstairs? But where was Quinn now? Why had he vanished?
Why had he abandoned her when she needed him most?
She swallowed again before the prick of tears overwhelmed her. Giving up on sleep, she quietly pushed open the car door and stepped into the cool afternoon. Beyond the front bumper of their car, a haphazard pile of crushed cars was stacked fifteen feet high. Halfway up, in a shaded nook created by a car bent nearly in half, Ash sat on a crumpled hood, nearly invisible in the shadows. He’d volunteered to keep watch while she and Lyre slept, but since she wasn’t sleeping anyway, he might as well get some rest.
She knew he was watching her as she climbed wearily to his perch. With a wary peek at his face, she gingerly sat beside him and scooted back into the welcome shade.
“Hey,” she mumbled, feeling awkward.
He slid an appraising glance at her and didn’t answer. She shivered under his cool look, wishing he would drop the creepy aura for once.
Dark smudges created half-circle bruises under his eyes and his arm was covered in dried blood that he’d made a half-hearted effort to rub off. Even in a torn hoodie and black PJ bottoms, he managed to look badass. Maybe it was the bloodstains. He ignored her after his initial assessment, staring across the parking lot, his focus shifting ceaselessly as he watched for signs of life.
Piper was too tired to worry about his unfriendly silence, but soft trills made her look over again. Zwi hopped off the crumpled car behind them and dropped onto Ash’s head. With her little lizard hands gripping fistfuls of his bangs, she trilled a sort of greeting at Piper, then curled her neck to look upside down into Ash’s face. He irritably waved her out of his line of vision.
Piper waited for Ash to move his pet. He looked ridiculous with his dragonet hat and hair sticking everywhere. Ash kept on staring across the lot, oblivious. Maybe he didn’t deliberately cultivate a persona of intimidation; he simply was that way. She didn’t find the thought comforting at all.
Zwi made another cheerful little sound and jumped into Ash’s lap. He absently stroked her head and she closed her eyes blissfully. Piper tried not to stare, befuddled by the sight of the draconian cuddling his pet.
“You can take a break now, if you want,” she said finally, forcing her gaze across the lot. “I can’t sleep.”
“It’s fine,” he murmured. His usually silky voice was as gray as the clouds with fatigue. “You should keep trying. You need rest.”
“You need it more,” she said stubbornly. “You fought a choronzon,” she continued, ticking it off on a finger. “You lost a gallon of blood, broke your handcuffs, blasted off that nasty collar, knocked out two prefects, stole a car, and drove for hours. I think you need sleep more than me.”
He finally really looked at her, his expression bemused. “Do you still have it?”
She patted the top of her shirt. “Yep.”
His gaze dropped to her chest but she couldn’t get offended; he wasn’t sizing her up like Lyre would. He sighed and leaned back. “What a fucking mess.”
With a glum nod, she propped her chin in one hand. “I don’t have a clue what to do.”
“I’ve been thinking it over,” he said, his words coming slow and heavy with thought. He stared at the lot, but this time his gaze was distant. “The prefects assume this was all engineered by Quinn, but we know his involvement was of a different nature; he already had the Stone and he gave it to you.” He brooded for a few seconds. “There must have been a third party at the Consulate last night.”
Piper straightened. “What do you mean?”
“Someone set that choronzon loose, didn’t they? Not only that, but it was being magically controlled; it came after us like a bloodhound on a scent. And who killed the guards outside the vault? If Quinn did it, as the prefects think, would the ambassadors have casually accompanied him into the vault? Unless one of the group joined late, killing the guards secretly on his way in . . .” Ash’s voice dropped into a thoughtful murmur, more to himself than Piper. “It would have been someone unexpected . . . perhaps Calder, but if he was involved, why was he attacked along with the ambassadors? No.” He slowly shook his head. “The choronzon is the giveaway. Neither Calder nor Quinn would have loosed that beast in the house with you in it.”
Piper leaned back slightly, silent as she watched Ash think. She’d never had an actual conversation with him before. It was weird.
“A third party makes sense,” he said. “Someone had to smuggle the choronzon out of the Underworld and transport it to the Consulate. Maybe they thought they needed to keep us too busy to interfere; maybe they didn’t know it was just the three of us in there.” His jaw flexed. “Or maybe they did. Anything less than a choronzon wouldn’t have been enough to distract me.”
She raised her eyebrows but he was still talking.
“While the choronzon was tearing the manor apart, someone, more likely a group, snuck into the vault after Quinn and the team, killing the guards on their way in. Quinn and the ambassadors would have been cornered. The new group probably tried to time it right as Quinn removed the Sahar from its protections. Did they immediately realize the Stone was a fake? It wouldn’t have been hard to tell if they’d opened the box.”
Ash rubbed a hand over his face. “It must have been a desperate situation. Why did Quinn attack like that? Unless . . .” He frowned.
“Unless what?”
He met her frightened stare. “Unless he was attacking the intruders and not the ambassadors. Maybe it was already too late for them. I saw bullet casings on the floor.”
“You think the intruders had already shot the ambassadors and . . . and Uncle Calder?” She hadn’t noticed casings or gunshot wounds but the explosion had mangled the bodies.
“Think about it,” Ash said in a low voice. “No one is expecting them. Three men with guns could have taken out everyone in that vault in seconds. There was nowhere to hide and the element of surprise would have delayed their retaliation long enough for three attackers to shoot multiple people. The would-be thieves would have spared Quinn so he could give them the Sahar in case there was some sort of additional protection on it. Instead of surrendering, and likely being killed as well, Quinn tried to kill them instead.”
“But he must have failed,” she said, her voice quavering. “There weren’t any extra bodies and why else would he have vanished?”
Ash nodded. “I agree. I think the intruders kidnapped Quinn instead. After that explosion, they had to leave quickly but would need to question him on the whereabouts of the real Stone.”
Panic flared through her. She jerked straight. “We have to find him! If they think he knows where the Sahar is, they’ll torture him until he tells them. We have to save him.”
Ash looked at her
without emotion. “And you know where they’ve taken him?”
She wilted. “What do we do?”
“Quinn is a highly intelligent, magically gifted haemon; he’ll have to take care of himself for now. We have our own lives to save first.”
“But—”
“Our enemies are twofold.” He spoke right over her protest. “The daemon and haemon communities are a threat once it gets around that we have the Sahar. Then there’s the threat of the prefects; it will take something significant to clear our names.” He scowled. “If it weren’t for the prefects, we could solve our problems easily enough. We’d just arrange to let the Sahar be stolen from us in a public scene. Once everyone knew we didn’t have it, we’d be safe.”
She wondered how you could “arrange” to be publicly robbed. “But we can’t do that because it will look like we stole the Sahar first.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“So . . . what do we do?”
Ash was silent for a long minute. His gaze was distant, his expression tired, but there was a tightness to his face, a flex of the muscles in his jaw, that spoke of anger—fury even. The cast of the shadows sharpened his cheekbones and hid his eyes, heightening the clinging sense of menace. He seemed calm enough, yet Piper’s instincts thought he wasn’t calm at all . . . more like he was murderously angry.
But when he spoke, his voice was so weary and somber that she doubted her assessment.
“We got screwed. I think they initially intended to take the Sahar and frame Quinn, but we ended up looking guilty instead.”
Piper twisted her hands together. “If we didn’t have the Sahar, we’d only have to prove they stole it. What are we supposed to do?”
He inhaled slowly and let it out in a sigh. “I’m still working on that. We can’t decide anything until we know who is responsible. We have no idea what type of power we’re up against.”
“They’re probably Underworld daemons.” She folded her arms and looked across the lot. “Who else would be able to find and control a choronzon?”
Ash shrugged. “It’s a possibility but the right Underworld allies could have arranged that for them.”
She sighed. What they needed was a witness or something, someone who could provide more clues . . . someone who’d seen these people. But all the witnesses to the crime were dead or missing.
Well, all except for one.
“Uncle Calder,” she said.
“What?”
She turned toward him, excited and anxious at the same time. “Uncle Calder. We need to ask Uncle Calder what happened. He’s the only survivor aside from my father and we won’t find my father until we find the attackers.”
Ash opened his mouth, probably to argue, but closed it again. “I think you’re right,” he finally said. “We need more information and he’s the only source.”
“Excellent! So we find out which medical center he’s at and sneak in to talk to him . . .” She trailed off, her excitement draining away as the enormity of the challenge sunk in.
“We should wait until tomorrow night,” Ash said, “to increase the chances that Calder will have recovered enough to talk. We can’t wait too long or they could move him.”
“Right,” Piper agreed faintly. Medical facilities, as a rule, had tough security. Plus Calder was the only person of interest who wasn’t missing or escaped and would probably have prefect guards day and night. They also had to figure out which facility he was at. They couldn’t start phoning at random; no one would give that kind of information to unidentified callers.
“We can work out the details after we’ve all slept,” Ash said.
She nodded vaguely. The more she thought about it, the more impossible it seemed. “I’ll wake Lyre and send him up so you can sleep too,” she said, shuffling to the edge of the car pile and climbing down. She was almost to the ground when Ash spoke again.
“Piper,” he said, his voice low. “Keep the Stone close.”
She swallowed, staring upward. Maybe it was her imagination but she was sure if she could have seen his face, there would have been a terrible, violent fury written across his features.
. . .
With the beginnings of a plan in place, Piper was finally able to sleep. At some point before she woke, Ash and Zwi stole them some snacks and bottled water from a store a few blocks away. Fed and refreshed, the three of them went over their plan, playing out every scenario they could imagine.
Throughout their discussions, she kept an eye on Ash but he showed no flashes of rage or any other emotion. He looked as inscrutable as ever and slightly creepy with that soul-searing stare. His freaky factor had improved once he got rid of the blood on his arm. He’d even braided the red silk ribbon along the side of his head again to look slightly less disreputable. She hadn’t forgotten his violent reputation, though.
Aside from surreptitiously monitoring Ash, Piper obsessively checked that the ring box was still tightly lodged in her bra. At this rate, she would have a permanent dent in her flesh, but after waking with the box worked halfway out, she wasn’t taking any chances.
They slept through the following day, taking turns to watch for signs of prefects. Ash’s convoluted trail was working; there was no sign of a search. Maybe the prefects had given up, though Piper didn’t put a lot of hope into the thought. She wasn’t that lucky.
Shortly after nine o’clock the following evening, Piper crouched behind a dumpster with Ash and Lyre on either side of her, staring across the street at the brightly lit medical center.
Ash had decided they should start with the medical center closest to the Consulate. Piper’s heart pounded. Aside from the lights, the place looked deserted.
“Ready?” Ash whispered.
Piper nodded, glancing at her comrades. Both were unrecognizable in stolen jeans, black t-shirts, and runners. Both daemons had adopted new glamours, opting to look like normal humans with nondescript brown hair and eyes. Apparently, changing eye color required a lot of effort. Ash looked unremarkable, and hopefully forgettable, but Lyre was the same level of mouthwatering gorgeous as usual, only in a different color scheme—all part of the plan.
She glanced at her own unflattering jeans and blah gray t-shirt. If Ash was keeping his end of the deal, her hair was now tacky bleach blond and her eyes would be blue instead of green. She’d had no idea daemons could apply glamour to other people, but Ash was no regular daemon. Even for him, it was tricky and took a lot of concentration; it also required him to be touching her, which is why they were holding hands. Awkward.
Lyre took a deep breath, rose to his feet, and strode boldly out into the street. She and Ash watched him vanish through the double doors and into the medical center. They waited. After three minutes, Ash tugged her up and, trying to look like holding his hand didn’t bother her at all, she let him lead her to the doors. Her heart felt like it was beating against the back of her throat.
Inside, the bright lights made her. A long counter shielded by thick, scratched plastic overlooked a large waiting room full of mismatched chairs. On either side of the counter, barred doors like jail cells offered glimpses of long halls. Patients being admitted were buzzed through the right side door. Patients on their way out used the left side door. A bored security guard sat on a chair inside the right-hand door, reading a tattered book.
Lyre leaned against the plastic barrier, talking to the middle-aged nurse on the other side of the desk. She was the only other person in the room besides the security guard. Her attention was fixed on the incubus’s face and a bright blush stained her cheeks. Every couple of seconds, her gaze would sweep as much of his torso as was visible before locking on his face again.
Ash steered Piper to two chairs near the security guard’s door and plunked down, managing to look irritated, bored, and anxious at the same time. Piper perched on the edge of her seat, breathing too quickly and knowing she looked anxious, bordering on panicky. Ash cast an impatient look at the desk as though he were waiting his turn t
o talk to the nurse. Piper bit her lip and tried not to stare at Lyre. When an incubus really turned on the charm, it was risky to even look at him.
Lyre leaned against the barrier as if it were the only thing stopping him from swooping down on the woman right where she sat. His eyes smoldered like muted fire, roving across her face as though he couldn’t stop himself, and that sexy half-smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. He murmured through the circle of holes in the plastic that enabled conversations, his words soft and intimate. The woman giggled, pressing one hand to the base of her throat.
Piper looked away, teeth clenched as she suppressed an uncalled-for urge to drape herself over the incubus. That poor woman didn’t stand a chance. A human might have wondered why the nurse was buying it; not only was she twice Lyre’s age, but even in her youth, she’d probably never had such a good-looking young man look twice at her. It was all part of the incubus magic; women always fell for it, no matter how unlikely his attention, how exaggerated his compliments, how farfetched his promises. No girl was immune.
The nurse drank in every one of Lyre’s hot looks and velvet words, blushing even more brightly. Barely two minutes later, she stood and sauntered toward the gate, her wide hips swaying. The light overhead blinked green and a low buzzer sounded. Smiling without breaking eye contact, Lyre pushed the barred door open. The security guard barely glanced up from his book. The incubus stopped inside the door, one hand resting on a steel bar, as he let his worshipful stare travel slowly over the nurse as if she were Aphrodite’s reincarnation. Even Piper was impressed by his acting skills; incubi generally went for the young and gorgeous.
Ash slid from his seat, pulling her by the hand while she shook off the haze of inappropriate fantasies parading through her mind. Damn horny incubus thoughts.
Lyre moved away from the door as Ash took his place. He lured the nurse down the hall so smoothly she never even noticed Ash and Piper coming through the still-open door. The security guard looked up and saw them. His mouth opened furiously. Ash stood in the threshold, staring like he’d forgotten where he was. Panic flashed through Piper. Before the guard could speak, she plastered on a vacant smile and plopped down on his lap. His jaw dropped, his protest forgotten.
Chase the Dark (Steel & Stone Book 1) Page 6