“A lowlife, then,” he muttered. Getting better and better by the minute.
“Pretty much,” she responded. “Not someone any decent person would associate with.”
“You know his record, and where he lives. Why and how do you need us, then?” he asked—not with exasperation or arrogance, but with interest in his tone. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Kseniya’s smirk.
“We need you because we cannot find him. The man seems to have disappeared from the face of the Earth. There’s absolutely no trace of him. Believe me, we’ve tried. And before you can even start, you need to activate his Phoenix side so he can remember who he is and then bind his power so you can safely bring him here. To do this would be the only way to ever ensure Sera’s recovery, as he can bestow the power of rebirth to her through the ritual of Le Pouvoir Du Sang.” She looked between the two of them. “You are our last hope, I believe. Find him, or my daughter will die.”
Her tone sounded calm, flat even, but he smelled the change and movement in the chemicals and composition of her body. Blood rushed to the surface, her heart beat faster, the tang of sweat carried strong to his hyped senses as it created a thin film on her flesh and the mix of fear and dread oozed out of her pores.
He asked the obvious question: “This Power of the Blood—what is it, and what would we need to do to make it work?”
“Damian needs to come into his powers. This is key. Without them, how could he save his daughter’s life? To get you on your way, we must make a stop to the library.”
“And what of Set in this mix? Is he coming after this guy?” Djibril asked.
“No one but us knows about Vadim. And Set is still confined, for now, on another plane, though he will be coming here sooner than later. It is imperative … Sera needs to live …”
An overwhelming cloud of sadness filled the room.
Kseniya, who sat in an armchair a few feet away, had a death grip on her seat, her knuckles turning whiter than her already pale skin. Her jaw was set in a sharp line. As he studied her, she kept her gaze fixed on Adri—perhaps sending a silent message only another woman would understand.
He, on the other hand, thought of what he would do if anything were to happen to Zoe, or his mother …
“We won’t leave a stone unturned, I promise, on my honor.”
Adri smiled. “I know. I have a good feeling about this.”
Kseniya shifted in her seat. “I hope this doesn’t inconvenience you, but before we move on, we were wondering if we could … if we could just see …”
“You want to see Séraphine,” Adri finished.
“Yes.”
Silence. Djibril almost expected a smarting retort or rejection, but after a long pause, she finally said, “Follow me.”
Standing, she walked to the door without looking back to check if they were behind her. They traipsed through hallway after hallway with rooms on both sides. She opened a door, which led to a staircase, probably used by staff. Djibril had noticed an elevator at one point, but maybe she didn’t want to draw attention to where they were going.
Up two flights they went, and then through a couple more corridors. Finally, she stopped at a pair of massive double doors. Laying a hand on the wood, she paused for a bit, as if gathering strength. Then, she opened one and motioned for them to go in.
They found themselves in a welcoming living room, decorated in a wild and colorful bohemian style.
“My daughter is an academic and an artist. Her specialties are cryptology, history, and anthropology, and she loves to collect sculptures and artwork from all over the world, although she doesn’t travel much. She paints, too.” She pointed at the walls, which were covered with interesting artwork in various styles. As a woman who had lived a long life, Séraphine would have had the opportunity to experiment with her talent.
“Wow,” Kseniya said in awe. “This is amazing.”
“She’s in the bedroom,” Adri said.
They followed her into another room in the suite. The smell of something rotten, decaying, assailed Djibril’s nostrils, and he almost passed out from the intensity of it. The tang of copper, and odors of stale air and dirt, mixed together to create a cloying atmosphere that would bring to mind an old, haunted crypt. And there was something else, too—a scent he couldn’t quite identify. The scent of time gone by, of the weight of knowledge passed over centuries through several generations, of the marrying of fire and dirt and air, all mixed together. Is this what Phoenixes smell like? All his life, he’d never met one before as those creatures were very rare, even in their non-human world.
Adri went straight to the bed, seeming unfazed. Then again, it was a dragon’s curse to be so sensitive to smells, especially when magic was involved.
He checked out Kseniya. She seemed to be barely keeping it together. Catching her eye, he smiled at her and briefly squeezed her hand. She took a deep breath, giving him a grateful look.
A few steps later, they were standing on the other side of the queen-sized bed. The woman was stunning, with long and wild red locks falling in whimsical fashion all around her face and over her chest. The crimson curls framed high cheekbones and full lips that might just belong to a fiery Scottish princess. Nestled in the bedsheets amid splashes of color, she made a stunning sight.
If he didn’t know better, she seemed to be simply sleeping.
But all the medical equipment around her served to remind everybody of the gravity of the situation.
Across from them, Adri stood stoically by the bed, her fingers caressing her daughter’s knuckles. Séraphine’s body had been hooked up to several machines, and a feeding tube peeked out from under the blankets, connected to the source next to the bed. The nightstand had been moved a little farther away, the lamp on it giving out a feeble yellow light. The curtains were partially drawn to allow some light, but not too much.
“We have our own doctors taking care of her. Bernum, leader of the fae community here, coordinates visits. I couldn’t thank him enough.” She sniffed. When she turned, her eyes were moist, but her expression determined. “You must do this. We must save my little girl.”
Djibril’s gaze fell on Séraphine’s belly, which visibly protruded under the soft mounds of sheets and blanket. The woman was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. What a somber reminder that they’d didn’t only have one life at risk of death, but two.
Kseniya wasn’t handling this well—he could sense her energy weaken as the fire within him took over—a self-defense mechanism. Reaching for her hand again, he held it longer this time, allowing himself to be the beacon of comfort she needed. As she gripped him like a lifeline, he inched closer to her until their arms touched. He could barely feel the cold.
“And my grandson, too,” Adri added. A tear fell down her cheek now, unchecked.
Sensing Kseniya’s body shake, he grasped her hand tighter. He didn’t have to look at her to register the whirlwind of emotions that dominated her nature in this moment. How he wished to take away all that pain …
“I cannot lose them. Get the help we need. Save them both.”
Please was the unspoken word. Adrasteia Dionysios was also a proud woman who seemed to never show weakness, Djibril noted. But she wasn’t beyond begging for the life of her most precious loved ones if she had to.
He nodded and locked gazes with Kseniya, who squeezed his hand and swallowed, eyes like deep pools of blue, wet and sad.
“We will,” they both said.
6
As she sat on the plane taking them to London, Kseniya stared out the window without really seeing the clouds outside. Her thoughts returned to the last stop they had made in the castle before taking the trip to the nearby airstrip where Adri’s jet had been waiting for them.
They’d been taken down one of the turrets to a spectacular library that housed all of Adri’s private collections of relics and books. There had been a dead lull in the cavernous space, broken soon after by the buoyancy of the boisterous, Barbie-like b
londe witch who had helped them come up with some spells that they’d have to use, and then the playful lion familiar of the other witch who resided in that spot.
She frowned when remembering the spells. Adri had entrusted her with a very potent excerpt from a long-sought papyrus. This magic, called The Kindling, allowed the one speaking the spell to summon magic denied to them or someone else for millennia and acquire this knowledge in the snap of fingers. Dangerous didn’t even start to cover it—in fact, the Originals were after this very scroll, which Adri had been the only one to own and which she had destroyed not too long ago in the eternal fire of Zeus’ temple in Greece.
Nobody was to know she knew those words that she’d need to activate Vadim Damian’s Phoenix side. The blonde witch, Fiona, had come up with a barrage of spells and other self-destructing magical protocols to keep this knowledge secret in her. Even Djibril didn’t know of this aspect of their information, Adri having taken her aside for a brief moment so Fiona could spell her with the awareness.
The two of them now held a binding spell in their arsenal, should Damian prove recalcitrant to follow them, and they also knew the wording for the ritual of The Power of the Blood, in case they’d need to activate that side of his powers before getting back to Shadow Bridge.
A sigh escaped her. So much rested on their shoulders now. Without this fully functioning Phoenix power, Séraphine Dionysios didn’t stand a chance, and neither did her unborn baby. This child was a bit of a miracle already, his very conception something out of this world, and the angels believed he would have a big part to play in bringing the balance of power back onto the side of Good.
In other words, if Kseniya and Djibril failed, the rest of the world was screwed.
She snorted. No pressure at all, right?
“What?” Djibril asked.
She trailed her gaze to him where he sat across from her, a wide table between them. Narrowing her eyes, she took him in, especially the tight grip on the armrests, which paled his knuckles and made the powerful muscles in his forearms tense. A glass of Scotch sat on the table in front of him.
She shook her head at this sight. He’d refused all offers of water so far, except one. Though he’d just taken a sip or two of his drink, any hint of alcohol inside the closed, pressurized confines of a plane would dehydrate the body. The problem was, this happened to be his third glass. Never mind that dragons’ fast metabolism would burn the liquor off in no time. The damage would be the same.
But she should cut him some slack, since that stiff stance told her something else.
She nodded at him. “Not a fan of flying?”
Although they’d flown as dragons so they could pass through the Shadow Bridge veil, their kind would normally travel as humans. Safer that way—and more prudent. Adri had arranged their private flight on a Cessna Citation Sovereign jet from the Shadow Bridge County airstrip.
He glanced up at her, a sardonic smile on his lips. “How’d you guess?”
She stifled a small laugh then. “Unbelievable. You must spend, what? Two thirds of a year travelling from meet to meet.”
“Why do you think I request a seat on an Airbus A380 double decker most of the time? It’s our dragon blood, Kseniya. It doesn’t like small, confined spaces. This so-called flying machine would seem to us to be more suited to a hamster family.”
“True, that.”
Back in the day, keeping dragons in restricted spaces had been deemed efficient imprisonment for their kind. Young dragons had also been forced to remain in cramped confines, thus stunting their growth. She shivered as she thought of that. Thank goodness those times were long over.
“How do you do it?” he asked.
His question pulled her out of her thoughts. “Do what?”
“Travel. Seems to me you’re hardly ever in one spot for long.”
“Last year, I counted my trips. I was on a plane at least once per day for three hundred days.”
He shook his head. “Bloody hell.”
She shrugged and settled down more comfortably in her seat, turning to face him fully. “My sentiments, exactly. But it’s a requirement of the job.”
“How did you get into it, exactly?”
She thought back long and hard, wondering how much to tell him.
“I was seventeen, at a finishing school in Switzerland where my grandmother had sent me, when a modeling scout noticed me. It all picked up from there.”
Unbeknownst to her at the time, said finishing school had been a recruiting ground for Alexis Friedrich, some of the teachers being assets of the Corpus who identified good ‘talent’ for clandestine activities. Alexis had simply been number three in the organization’s hierarchy back then, but she’d already been building her troops, people she’d groomed and could trust, knowing she would take over from the head of the agency, her father, one day.
When Kseniya had landed her first big international modeling contract, that had become her cover as an agent.
She peered at him. “What about you?”
He gave a short laugh. “You know how being accomplished in our world means knowing all sorts of proper sports? Tennis being one of them. My instructor thought I had potential. Just like you, it all picked up from there.”
Well, she doubted that, but she wouldn’t tell him this. The less he knew, the better. The very nature of clandestine meant it operated entirely in the shadows, not even like covert ops and agencies like the CIA and MI-6 whom everyone knew about, though no one had full knowledge of what they actually did. She’d taken the pledge to never divulge their existence unless under extreme duress.
The voice of the captain came over the speakers, telling them they would soon be landing at City airport in the heart of London, a stone throw’s away from Canary Wharf, in fact. She’d heard the strip was a short one, and the nearby skyscrapers meant only specially-trained crew on specific crafts could land and take off there. The costly charging for every fifteen minutes spent on the ground also added to the eyebrow-raising factor.
But money had not been an issue for Adri Dionysios, so here they were, just an hour’s drive away from their destination in Kensington.
The plane landed and taxied along the runway, coming to a stop near a hangar. Kseniya and Djibril alighted from the stairs to find the staff already placing their luggage in the trunk of the stretch Mercedes waiting for them. A light glamor worked to remove their famous factor from the deal for this mission.
Quick steps took her to the car, and she startled a little when Djibril reached out for her elbow to help her get in. A sharp spark of energy jolted through her where his touch lay on her sleeve, and she paused for a second to look into his face.
What she saw there made her lower her head to stuff herself into the backseat and scoot over to the far window as quickly as possible. Those darn flames again, but instead of annoyance burning on their edges, she thought she saw something else now.
Drat, she must be kidding herself, because the Crown Prince loathed her with a vengeance.
Yes, it must be that tiny part of his power in her system making her misjudge things. She hated fire, and the internal heat she despised must be playing tricks on her brain used to the cold and ice.
He got in beside her, and she pulled herself together both in her mind and in her form, putting as much space as she could between them. She needed something to do. Anything …
Quick thinking made her pull out her mobile phone and switch to the encrypted comms mode that allowed access to the Corpus network. She was an international spy for an agency that had global reach—it would be stupid not to use the numerous resources at her disposal to get through this mission.
With quick fingers, she entered her credentials on the secure server portal then dispatched a message to Gaia, the hacker duo behind the informatics network of the whole organization. Their proprietary software, called SkyNet, allowed them to track any phone worldwide, even when switched off. It wouldn’t hurt to attempt finding Vadim Damian this w
ay. If there was any dirt to dig up, she could trust these two to do a thorough job.
At the last second, she paused from tapping ‘Send’ and typed in another line in the message.
Cc: Max Damiani of the Valthrean network in London
They would know who she was talking about without her needing to provide contact details. As a fail-safe, she wanted their allies to have the intel and thus be on the same page fast enough.
The one-hour drive to her family residence in Kensington happened in silence, the crew of both the plane and the car being people Adri had on her books and whose families had been working for her for generations now. She’d seen no point going to a safe house given how this was a simple task, the glamor taking care of the concealment factor.
The vehicle stopped in front of a terraced dwelling set back from the road via a wide stone pavement. Had the buildings been of a burnished brown color and not cool ice gray, it would almost have passed for those townhouses in New York. As she paused at the foot of the stairs leading to the front door, movement across the street caught her eye, and she glanced there to see a white lace curtain being released as the one who’d been watching retreated inside.
A sigh escaped her, at the same time her phone rang. It was a video call from Elena. She swiped the screen, and a second later, could see her cousin across it.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for ages,” Elena said.
She grimaced. “Sorry. Forgot to take it off airplane mode until a few minutes ago in the car.”
“Airplane? Where the hell are you?”
“At our London house.” She paused, then angled her body so her back faced the other side of the road and the front camera on the device saw the house across. “Guess what? That old codger Mr. Nesbitt is still at it spying the neighbors.”
Elena gasped then burst out laughing. “Goodness, how old is he? He was already old when we were kids.”
“I know, right?” She shook her head.
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