by SA Magnusson
I turned toward the sound. It was above us.
As far as I knew, there wasn’t anything above us.
But then, the warehouse was several stories high, though in the main part of the warehouse, it was completely open. In here, back in the office area, there was a normal ten-foot high ceiling.
There would have to be a staircase to an upper level.
“What is it?” Ariel asked.
“Did you hear the sound?”
“I heard machinery.”
“I’m not convinced that’s machinery.”
“If not machinery, then what?”
“That sounded like screaming.”
Ariel shifted her ears and they swiveled, listening. Her nose elongated even more, and she sniffed. “I don’t detect anything.”
“Would you?”
“I think that I would detect more than you.”
“Maybe not here,” I said. “See if you can’t figure out how we can go upstairs.”
Ariel frowned and then spun, heading back toward the entrance. I followed, and she reached through my barrier and grabbed one of the mages, pulling them toward the edge.
How was she able to simply reach through it?
“Where is the staircase?”
The man stared at her.
She continued to elongate one fingertip, and a razor-sharp claw steadily stretched toward his neck. “I’m not going to ask you again.”
“Third door on the left,” he said.
Ariel shook him and slammed him into the others. Two of them collapsed, but the third one remained standing, and Ariel swiped through the barrier, connecting with the side of his head. He collapsed.
“You can release it now.”
“You could’ve done that earlier.”
“Would you have allowed it?”
“I allow it now?”
“I wouldn’t have been able to penetrate it if you didn’t allow it.”
Could I have wanted her to have done that? I didn’t think so, and I didn’t know that I was in control of it, but it was a barrier, and it should have held.
Maybe I had wanted her to be able to reach through.
We found the door and she pressed on it, unlocking it with a surge of shifter magic. As far as I could tell, there was no staircase here.
She started through when I grabbed her, pulling her back.
“What?”
“There’s a spell on the room,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“I can feel it. I’m not exactly sure what sort of spell it is, only that they have held onto it in such a way that you probably wouldn’t have been able to get out once you went in.”
Ariel growled.
“And if there is a staircase in there—” and I wasn’t sure that there would be. It was possible that the mage had lied, wanting us to head into that room where we would be trapped, a room so much like the one that had held me when I’d been brought here to rescue Rory—“we might not be able to get to it.”
“There is another possibility,” Ariel said.
“What?”
She shifted. Once in wolf form, she grabbed onto the wall and, digging her claws in, she scaled the wall, tearing through the ceiling.
“There is something up here,” she said. Her voice was altered in this form, a little bit more of a growl, but recognizable nonetheless. “Grab onto me and climb up.”
“I don’t think that’s—”
Ariel growled again.
Damn. This had gone from weird to weirder, and if I was going to get answers, I was probably going to have to do exactly what she wanted. I didn’t really want to climb up Ariel’s back, and I very much didn’t want to grab onto her, mostly because I would be thinking too much about how she could shift at any time.
Ariel seemed to sense my hesitation and growled at me.
I grabbed onto her leg and scrambled up, reaching for her foreleg. Poking my head through the ceiling, I looked around. I didn’t see anything that would explain what she had observed. There were floor joists and a space, but nothing else. Ariel scrambled up, dragging me with her, and I held on while she moved, afraid that I might be shaken free.
She crawled forward, moving through the ceiling, somehow managing to find supports that wouldn’t shake either of us off.
She lunged again and pressed through the floor of another room.
Once inside, we discovered a pale-skinned man bound to a chair. Magic surged around him, and though I couldn’t tell what sort of magic was used, it clearly was painful.
I hurried toward him, but Ariel shifted quickly, grabbing me.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Don’t you recognize what that is?”
“That? It’s a man. And they’re torturing him.”
“It’s not a man. That is a vampire.”
I hesitated, looking at him. He had the same pale skin and dark hair as the vampire we had faced the night before.
“I thought you said we couldn’t hold onto them?”
“I said that if we tried, it would be difficult. It seems that the Dark Council has ways of holding vampires. They really are quite clever.”
“From a shifter of your status, I will take that as a compliment.”
I spun around to find Darvish standing in front of me. His face was a mask of irritation and he glared at me before turning his attention to Ariel, his expression softening a little. Darvish had his dark hair combed off to the side, and there was an amused twinkle in his eye. He was a lean, muscular man, and every time I saw him, he intimated that we needed to spar, but there had never been a good time to do so. He was better than me, and might even be better than Master David, and I suspected that I would be able to learn quite a lot from watching a mage use magic and shorin-ryu karate at the same time.
“Why do you have a vampire here?” I asked him.
“I imagine for the same reason that you have broken into our facility. Again.”
“You knew that the runes were markings for vampire familiars?”
Darvish frowned. “Familiars?” He glanced over his shoulder at the vampire. “Not familiars, not that I have recognized. We realized that the vampires were the ones responsible for placing these runes.”
“The vampires can’t place runes without having someone to draw them from.”
"They’ve been scouring the streets, finding anyone with any sort of residual magic, and drawing upon that.”
“Including dark mages,” I said.
His brow knitted in a deep frown. “Unfortunately, even my kind. That is why this one is here. Barden is missing.”
“Barden?”
Darvish clenched his jaw, turning his attention back to the vampire. “This one was found where Barden disappeared. He had been looking into those runes on your behalf and—”
“The vampires grabbed him,” I said. A mage like Barden would be powerful. How many runes could he power? “It’s a battle for supremacy within the vampire families. From what we can tell, they are fighting for position.”
“Are you certain about that?”
“Not really, but Ariel determined that they’re using their familiars, placing the runes on them to allow the familiars to battle.”
“So not a gang war as you were concerned about when you came to Barden.”
“Not a gang war,” I said.
Darvish faced the vampire and a spell built from him. The vampire writhed.
I touched his arm, and he shook me off. “If this is a battle among the families, it’s the reason your patient was killed. And the reason Barden is missing.”
Darvish breathed out heavily, still holding onto his spell.
“How long can you hold him?”
“Until he answers or I destroy him first.”
“Destroying the vampires will create complications for the Veil,” Ariel said.
“Is that my concern?” Darvish asked.
“That should be everyone’s concern,” s
he said.
“I’m not on the mage council and I don’t hold any stake in the Veil. I will find Barden.”
“You don’t need to sit upon the mage council to recognize the need for the Veil to be maintained and secure,” Ariel said. “All you need to do is live within this world to recognize that need. You were there during the last attack. You helped. So you should understand the importance of what we do.”
“Right,” I said, pulling Darvish away from the vampire. “The Siren family has decided they would lead in Minneapolis. And we need to get Barden back before this becomes a vampire war.” And if it did, others would be harmed. Not just people like Aron, but familiars like had come into the hospital, people with only a distant connection to the magical world. It wouldn’t take long for it to spill over to the non-magical. Seeing how Jen had fared with that told me all I needed about how well those without power would do.
And the Veil would be weakened. Again.
The vampire thrashed and a spell built from Darvish, wrapping around the vampire and silencing him. The power Darvish displayed impressed me.
“Have you discovered anything from him?”
“Not yet,” Darvish said, “but give me time. Even a vampire won’t be able to withstand questioning indefinitely.”
“We need answers. We need to know where they’re hiding. And I want to know why Aron died.”
Darvish stiffened. “The archer?”
I told Darvish about what happened. I tried not to choke up, but couldn’t help the tears that welled in the corners of my eyes as I told him about Aron.
“Are you certain about this?”
“I’m certain that they used a weapon that had these runes on it. I’m certain that weapon was what was responsible for Aron dying.”
“Then this one will provide answers. For both of us.”
He stopped in front of the vampire and magic built from him.
I grabbed Darvish by the arm and he glanced over at me.
Taking a moment to wrap the vampire in a barrier, sealing him in, I studied the pale-skinned vampire. Other than his coloring, he looked no different than anyone else I might encounter on the street. Vampires had another form, but I had never seen it, and considering everything, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to see it.
I’d seen that the vampires were refusing to share information. They were willing to sacrifice for this, which suggested the secret they were keeping was significant. Could we go about this a different way?
“Can we use him and track him back to the other vampires of the Siren family?”
“It’s possible,” Ariel said. “I don’t know that I would be able to track him. I told you that vampires don’t have any sense that I can use.”
“What about placing a spell on him?” I asked Darvish. I was unable to place any sort of tracking spell, but that didn’t mean that a dark mage couldn’t.
“Such a thing would be possible.”
“Could you do it so that he wasn’t aware of it?”
“He can hear us talking,” Darvish said. “He’ll know what we’re intending.”
“He can’t hear us talking. I wrapped him inside a spell. Look. Yell at him.”
Darvish started screaming. The vampire didn’t do anything.
“Your style of magic fascinates Barden.”
“Him and me both.”
“If he’s distracted, I think that I could place a complicated type of spell so that I would be able to know where to find him.”
“What do you intend?” Ariel asked me.
“We need to know where the other vampires of the Siren are hiding. It seems they’re the ones who have instigated this, and so if we can figure out where they are, maybe we can put an end to it.”
“I doubt the vampires will be thrilled with any outside involvement,” Ariel said.
“And they should have handled this internally, but seeing as how they haven’t, we need to be the ones to end it.”
“How many vampires do you think you can take on?” Darvish asked.
“I don’t have any idea,” I said.
“Me neither. It would be an interesting challenge.”
“I’m not sure that interesting describes it the way I would like,” I said
“How would you describe it?” Darvish asked.
“Terrifying?”
“Sometimes stepping outside of your comfort zone is the only way to grow. I think that you can handle this, Kate Michaels. Now. If you would like to create a distraction for me?” Ariel said, stalking forward and drawing Darvish’s gaze.
I lowered the barrier and used a different sort of control to my magic, wrapping it around the vampire’s head. I squeezed, threatening to suffocate him, not sure whether vampires even needed oxygen to breathe. The sudden bulging of his eyes suggested that he did.
Magic built from Darvish, swirling out from him, and it lightly touched the vampire, sweeping across his skin. The vampire’s eyes continued to bulge as he struggled.
Magic faded from Darvish and he took a step back.
I relaxed the barrier around the vampire’s head.
“You are going to tell us why you’ve been attacking,” I said.
The vampire started to screech.
Darvish wiggled his finger. “We’ve had words about that, haven’t we?” Another spell built from him, and the vampire screamed before cutting off. “I really don’t know that I can tolerate hearing that sound too much more,” Darvish said.
“You are an impressive individual,” Ariel said.
“I will take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
They stared at each other, practically eye-fucking.
“Gross.”
17
The streets were dark, so I was happy to be in the passenger seat of Darvish’s van. Darvish drove, following the trail of the spell he’d placed. I couldn’t detect anything from it, but apparently Darvish could. It would be valuable to have that ability, to be able to trail after a spell, and I wondered if he had used something like that on me before without my knowledge.
I had to doubt it. With my ability to detect the use of magic, he wouldn’t have been able to simply place a spell on me.
But then, I had felt magic sweeping over me when I had first met Barden in the emergency room that day when I had attempted to save Tony.
“Did Barden place a similar spell on me?”
Darvish shrugged. “It’s a useful spell.”
“Is it still there?”
“It was not my spell.”
“Is it still on me?”
Darvish glanced over, watching me for a long moment. “Your connection to magic is difficult.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is, if you would only pay attention. He has tried to maintain that connection to you, but when you draw upon as much magic as you can, you’ve burned through his ability to track you.”
“She draws magic from the other side of the Veil,” Ariel said.
I shot her a glare. “You’re not helping.”
“I didn’t realize that you needed my help,” she said.
We turned, heading onto the interstate, taking I-494 north. We were on the western edge of the city and driving quickly, though not with the same reckless speed and abandon that Aron would have exhibited. Darvish kept it just above the speed limit, not much more than that. If I were able to detect where the spell lingered, I might be able to simply transport us there.
Twisting in my seat to face Ariel, I stared at her. “Does this direction makes sense?”
“The vampires have a preference for living in northern climates,” Ariel said. “They like the longer nights, and they don’t suffer from the cold or the heat nearly as much as many others.”
“And this way, they’re among their kind in the summer,” I said.
Ariel frowned at me. “Their kind?”
“Other bloodsuckers like them. Mosquitoes.”
She shook her head. “I think if you
equate a vampire to a mosquito, you will find them a much greater nuisance than any mosquito you have ever encountered.”
“I’d still like to swat at them if they’re responsible for what’s taking place.”
“Not much farther and you might get your chance,” Darvish said.
We veered off onto I-94, heading west. If we stayed on this, it would take us to St. Cloud and all the way up into North Dakota. Instead, we pulled off just outside the northwestern suburbs. Darvish navigated the streets, taking us to the end of a long cul-de-sac, and I began to grow tense. How many vampires would we face when we reached this place? Would I be ready? Would there be anything that I could do that would help ensure our safety when we did find them?
“You are doing this alone,” Ariel said.
“You won’t help when we get there?”
“As I said, I cannot. I will accompany you and do what I can, but I imagine it’s no different than how your grandparents felt when they thought I had been defeated by a successful challenge.”
I nodded. “They called it shifter business.”
“And that’s what it could have been. Had there been no involvement of the Great One, they could not have gotten involved. It would have upset my kind, and your grandparents were right in not wanting to get involved. It would disrupt the treaty, and they should know better than to do so.”
“What if the vampires have summoned the equivalent of a Great One?”
“As far as I know, there is no equivalent.”
“Nothing?”
“It’s possible that they have some connection to the other side of the Veil, much the same as the shifters do, and now after what you’ve told me, the same as both the mage council and the Dark Council, but even if they do, they would be remiss to try to get involved. Which is why I cannot get involved.”
“Even if it weakens the Veil?”
“As far as we know, the Veil remains intact.”
“For now. Have you wondered why there have been so many attacks on the Veil lately?”
“Do you think that is a new thing?” Ariel asked.
“I don’t know. From what Aron has said—had said,” I said, correcting myself. “The Veil has been secure, unmolested, for many years. These attacks, including the frequency of them, is unusual.”