By a Thread

by Jennifer Estep

  Bria drew in a breath, trying to get her temper under control. “I do understand, and most of the time, I’d agree with you. But Randall Dekes doesn’t play by the rules, and he couldn’t care less about the law. So I say we forget the rules and do whatever we have to in order to rescue Callie before Dekes kills her.”

  Donovan shook his head. “You know, you might pretend to be a cop, but deep down, you’re no better than Gin is, always thinking that murdering someone is the only way to solve a problem.”

  “No,” Bria snarled. “My sister’s better than I am because she doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what she is, and she always does exactly what she says she will. She’s better than you are too, even if you’re too much of a dumbass to realize it.”

  Surprised, I looked at my sister. Most of the time, Bria said the same things to me that Donovan had just spouted to her. That I was knife-happy and preferred to kill people rather than actually find another, less violent way to deal with them. Part of me knew that was true, that I did prefer to assassinate first and ask questions later. That’s how Fletcher had trained me, and that’s what had helped me survive so many bad situations over the years. But this was the first time I’d ever heard my sister defend me and my tactics, and I didn’t quite know what to make of it.

  Donovan bristled and opened his mouth to argue with Bria some more, but Sophia let out a loud, earsplitting whistle. Startled, we all looked at the Goth dwarf, who pointed her finger at Jo-Jo.

  “Listen,” Sophia rasped.

  “Enough,” Jo-Jo said, a hint of steel ringing in her soft voice. “That’s enough. Every second that we waste arguing is another one that Callie spends with Dekes. And none of us want that, now, do we?”

  The dwarf’s clear eyes moved from face to face, and one by one, we all shook our heads.

  “I didn’t think so,” Jo-Jo said. “Now, instead of arguing with each other, we are all going to sit down and talk about how we can rescue that poor girl, calmly and rationally, with no more snotty comments or accusations. Is that understood?”

  We all murmured our agreement, except for Donovan. The detective glared at us all in turn before his gaze cut back to Jo-Jo. He gave her the evil eye as well, but the dwarf stared right back at him, her perfectly sculpted eyebrows raised in a silent question. Finally, Donovan sighed and gave in.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Jo-Jo nodded her head, graciously accepting his reluctant acquiescence. “Good. Now let’s get started.”

  We all grumbled a little more, but thanks to Jo-Jo’s chastising we sat down and got to work. Finn fetched his briefcase from one of the bedrooms and spread out all the information that he’d dug up on Dekes. Then he flipped on his laptop and started looking for anything that he’d missed or anything else that might help us rescue Callie.

  I also explained to Donovan about Vanessa and Victoria and how we were going to save the two women as well. I told the detective how Dekes had been using the two sisters, feeding on their blood and the elemental magic that it contained. My intent wasn’t to scare him or to get him to worry even more about Callie but instead to make him realize exactly what kind of monster we were going up against—and that killing Dekes was the only option now.

  Donovan’s features twisted with disgust when I finished. “So Dekes married Vanessa just so he could feed off her Fire magic? That’s despicable.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  The detective’s gaze fell to my neck. “Is that what Dekes did to you last night? Did he try to feed on your elemental power too? You have Ice and Stone magic, right? That’s what all the rumors claim, anyway, the ones I heard after you killed Mab.”

  Once again, I saw that flash of concern in his eyes, and I wondered if maybe Owen was right after all—if Donovan still cared about or wanted me in some small fashion. If he did, he had a hell of a way of showing it.

  “Yes, Dekes fed on me too,” I said in a quiet voice. “It was . . . unpleasant.”

  I didn’t say anything else, and Donovan didn’t ask me any more questions. He didn’t want to know anyway—not really. It would only make him feel guiltier about not being there to stop Dekes and his men from taking Callie. But my words had one positive affect—Donovan didn’t raise any more objections about my killing the vampire.

  “So Dekes has your Ice and Stone magic now, along with Vanessa’s Fire and Victoria’s Air magic? Fuck,” Finn said. “That’s going to make it that much tougher for us to rescue the women and get out of the mansion, if not impossible.”

  The others murmured similar concerns, but I looked at Finn.

  “Nothing’s impossible. Remember Fletcher telling us that?”

  Finn nodded.

  “Besides, you know as well as I do that you don’t need magic to kill someone. Don’t you worry about Dekes. I’ll take care of him.”

  I didn’t tell the others that I had the same concerns they did about Dekes and that my own magic wasn’t a hundred percent. There was no use worrying them. Besides, magic or no magic, I wasn’t leaving the women to the vampire’s mercy. I was getting them away from that bastard no matter what.

  “How do we even know that Callie’s still alive?” Owen asked. “According to what the detective said, Dekes has had her for at least two hours now. He could have killed her already.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think he’s killed her yet. Dekes announced his casino yesterday, and he’s getting ready to break ground on the project, remember? He can’t afford any more delays. Callie has to sign over the restaurant to him first before he gets rids of her. Otherwise, the property would just pass to her next of kin, whoever that is, and be tied up that much longer.”

  Donovan shifted on the far end of the couch. “Actually, that would be me. Callie’s parents died last year, and when we got engaged, she changed her will to make me her sole beneficiary.”

  Finn arched an eyebrow. “Well, how very nice for you, Detective.”

  Donovan’s hands balled into fists in his lap, but he didn’t respond to Finn’s mocking taunt.

  “So he gets Callie to sign over the restaurant to him; then what?” Bria asked.

  I picked up one of the photos that Finn had shown us yesterday when we’d had brunch at the restaurant. This one showed an ashy husk of a man, burned to a crisp inside his own home. “Then, sometime later on tonight, Dekes and his men take Callie out to the restaurant, tie her up inside, and burn the Sea Breeze to the ground around her. Everyone will know what happened, but nobody will be brave enough to do anything about it, not even the cops. Dekes’s stranglehold on the island will finally be complete, and all that will be left to do is clear away the charred rubble so the construction on the casino can start up. Two birds, one stone, and all that.”

  Donovan stared at the gruesome photo in my hands a second before looking away. “So how do we stop that from happening?”

  “We slip into Dekes’s mansion and grab her back,” I said. “The vampire thinks I’m dead, and that Finn, Bria, and Owen are either in hiding or on the run. The bastard thinks he’s already won. He might be wondering whether you’re going to show up at his front door, flashing your badge and demanding to know where Callie is, but that’s all. He’s probably walking through his mansion right now, wondering what poor woman he can feed off next and admiring those creepy collections of his.”

  I’d told the others about the things that Dekes had shown me when we’d been touring the mansion last night. The dolls, the pirate treasure, the open lockets with their curls of hair, and all the other odd knickknacks the vamp had accumulated during his time here on earth—time that was rapidly drawing to a close.

  Finn perked up. “What part of the mansion were the gold and jewels in again? I want to be sure to visit that particular room.”

  Donovan shot him an angry glare.

  “After we’ve rescued Callie, of course,” Finn added in a hasty tone.

  We worked out a simple plan. Finn, Bria, and Sophia would cause a distractio
n in front of the house, drawing the giant guards in that direction, while Donovan, Owen, and I slipped into the back of the mansion. Jo-Jo would be outside the front gate and parked down the street in Finn’s Escalade, waiting to pick everyone up and whisk us back to the beach house after we’d rescued Callie.

  The others focused on where Dekes might have Callie stashed in the mansion, as well as where Vanessa and Victoria might be. I sat there and reviewed the blueprints that Finn had one of his contacts get for him, but my mind was already skipping ahead to what I would do about the vampire once I found him. Rescuing the three women was my first priority—that was the most important thing. I wanted them out of harm’s way before anything else went down, but I had no intention of leaving the mansion until Dekes was dead.

  The problem was that I just didn’t know exactly how I was going to make that happen.

  Dekes was a vampire who’d been sucking down blood for three hundred and some odd years. At the very least, that meant that he was physically stronger than me, his senses were sharper, and his reflexes were quicker, something he’d proved when he shot me with that dart gun last night. Then there was the small matter of the kind of blood that Dekes indulged in on a regular basis—elemental blood. I didn’t know how long he’d been feeding off Vanessa and Victoria, but the vamp had used their Fire and Air magic last night with ease, like he’d been born an elemental himself—and now he had my Ice and Stone power running through his veins as well.

  Any way you looked at it, Dekes would have the advantage. If he didn’t kill me with his stolen elemental magic, he could always finish the job with his fists—or fangs.

  Owen must have sensed some of what I was thinking because he leaned over and threaded his fingers through mine, his simple touch warming my whole body the way it always did.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered in a voice that only I could hear. “You’ll get him, and I’ll be right there to help you.”

  I nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak and voice all the doubts that were swirling through my mind, doubts about whether I could kill Randall Dekes—or if I’d end up being another one of the vampire’s victims before the night was through.

  21

  Just before dusk that evening, I found myself in the marsh once more, staring at the back of Dekes’s enormous estate. Jo-Jo had dropped Donovan, Owen, and me off about a mile away before getting into position closer to the front of the mansion. The three of us had left the road behind and made our way through the marsh, keeping to the high ground as much as possible. Now we huddled in a patch of swamp grass and cattails, watching a pair of giant guards walk a slow circuit around a patio on the back side of the mansion.

  So far, I’d seen only the two men, but I knew there would be more inside the house, if only to keep an eye on Callie, Vanessa, and Victoria. The Fire elemental especially bore watching. Dekes might think he had Vanessa under control as long as he had Victoria for leverage, but I’d seen the hate that flashed in the Fire elemental’s eyes whenever she looked at her dear husband. If Vanessa could have, she would have happily killed Dekes with her bare hands, then used her Fire magic to burn his corpse to cinders.

  I wondered how much Fire power she had left, and if Dekes had weakened her as much as he had me. I had no idea how often the vamp fed from Vanessa, how much power he took when he did, or how long it took her magic to replenish itself. Hopefully, Vanessa would have enough juice left to be of some use to us.

  “What are we waiting for?” Donovan muttered in the grass beside me, slapping at a mosquito that had landed on his arm. “Shouldn’t Finn, Bria, and Sophia be in position already?”

  My cell phone vibrated in my hand before I could tell him to be patient. I hit a button and held it up to my ear. “Talk to me, Finn.”

  “Looks like we’ve got three giant guards in the front of the house.” Finn’s voice was soft in my ear. “Two walking a route along the outer wall and one stationed by the front door. The gate is closed right now, but it won’t be for long.”

  “You ready with the distraction?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah. The poor bastards will never know what hit ’em.” I could hear the smug smile in his voice.

  “All right. Get ready. As soon as you go, so will we. You guys search the ground floor and deal with any opposition there, and we’ll take the third level and do the same. If we don’t find the women there, we’ll go down to the second floor and look there. Hopefully, we’ll meet up somewhere in the middle.”

  “Got it.”

  Finn quit talking, but he didn’t hang up. Neither did I. Instead, I kept the line open and slid the phone into one of the top pockets of my vest so I could get to it in a hurry if I needed to. Whichever group found the women first would signal the others.

  I could feel Donovan’s eyes on me, lingering on the vest that covered my chest. Zippered pockets stuffed with supplies covered the front of the vest, which also had a heavy layer of silverstone embedded in it. The vest was black, just like the rest of my clothes—boots, cargo pants, and a long-sleeved T-shirt. I’d pulled my hair back into a ponytail and smeared two stripes of mud under my eyes to break up the paleness of my skin.

  I knew that it wasn’t really the vest that got Donovan’s attention but rather what it stood for. My wearing the vest meant I was creeping around in the shadows as the Spider once more, stalking my intended prey for the evening—and that he was right here beside me again, whether he wanted to be or not.

  The detective sighed and looked away, checking his gun again. On the other side of me, Owen raised his eyebrows and shifted in the grass, running his fingers up and down the staff in his hands. He had shown me the long silverstone staff right before we left the beach house. Owen made weapons as a hobby, something that his elemental talent for metal helped him excel at, and the staff was his latest creation. He’d decided to bring it along when Finn called and said that Bria and I had gotten into trouble down here. Owen had put the same care into the weapon that he had the silverstone knives he’d made me, so I knew the staff would be more than adequate to help him cave in a few giants’ skulls tonight.

  Owen jerked his head at Donovan, but I just shrugged. I didn’t care what kind of mood the detective was in as long as he helped us rescue Callie and the other two women.

  As for me, Dekes might have taken my regular knives last night in the library, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t armed. I’d packed a couple of spare silverstone knives in my suitcase, just in case something unexpected came up while we were in Blue Marsh. One knife was in my hand, another was up my left sleeve, and the others rested in the pockets of my vest, just waiting for me to grab and use them.

  Donovan let out another sigh and squirmed in the grass. “Any damn day now—”

  In the distance, a sudden roar ripped through the air, and a flash of fire flared upward into the sunset sky before blooming into a black cloud of smoke. In addition to being rather handy with guns, Finn enjoyed making the occasional explosive in his spare time, and he’d just used his expertise to blast open the front gate. A few shouts rose up, followed by the sharp crack-crack-crack of a gun. Finn again, putting down the guards in the front of the house, along with some help from Bria. My baby sister wasn’t quite as good a shot as Finn, but she could hit a giant’s head at a hundred feet, which was all she needed to do tonight.

  The two men guarding the back of the house froze at the sudden explosion of noise, fire, and smoke. They glanced at each other, then ran into the interior, heading for the front of the mansion to find out what the hell was going on. I waited a few seconds to see if any reinforcements would hurry outside and take up their positions, but none did.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and slipped out of the swamp grass.

  I took the lead, followed by Owen, then Donovan. The three of us sprinted around the edge of the pond that butted up against the back of the mansion and pounded up a set of stairs to the third floor. The giant guards had forgotten to lock the door to the patio in their haste to
go help their friends, just like I’d hoped they would. I opened it, and we slipped inside.

  We hurried down the hallway, keeping a lookout for any guards and peering into all the rooms we passed. Every single room, every single wall—hell, every single tabletop—featured some part of Dekes’s collections, whether it was gleaming pirate treasure, stacks of classic albums, or other, weirder, creepier things.

  “Never trust a vampire who collects dolls,” Owen muttered as we passed that particular room.

  We eventually came to a crossway with halls that branched off in four directions. I stopped, looking and listening, but I didn’t hear anything. No footsteps, no shouts, no snaps of gunfire. I grabbed the cell phone out of my vest and held it up to my ear.

  “What’s your position?”

  Some faint pops and crackles sounded through the phone before Finn picked up a second later. “Took out the first three guards in the front of the house, then another one who rushed out to join them. Bria, Sophia, and I are going in the front door now.”

  “We’re on the third floor and about to start searching the wings up here,” I said. “There are probably at least two more guards coming your way. Be careful.”

  “Always.”

  I put the phone back into my vest pocket.

  “Which way?” Donovan asked.

  I thought back, trying to remember as much as I could from the tour Dekes had given me last night.

  “Left,” I said. “The library’s down the right hall, and the one beside that leads down to the pool. I doubt that Callie’s in either one of those places. Dekes would want her to be tucked away somewhere more secure and out of sight.”

  The three of us turned left and did the same procedure as before, walking quickly and quietly, weapons up and ready, keeping a watch out for any guards and peering into all the rooms that we passed. We reached another hallway, and I gestured for the others to hang back a second. I crept up to the edge of the wall, slid down until I was crouched on my knees, and slowly peered around to the other side.