by R. L. King
“Enough fucking talk,” Amber yelled. She gripped both sides of the monitor and bared her teeth at the man’s image. “You let Jason go or I will bring so much hell down on your head that you’ll beg me to rip your throat out.”
Once again, the man seemed undeterred by her threats. “I’m sorry, but I must go now. Things to do. Dr. Stone—feel free to do what you like with Mr. Boyce and my lab. It’s only an auxiliary one anyway, and I’ve scrubbed both it and the boy free of anything the police could attach to me. It’s a shame to lose valuable reference material, but sometimes setbacks are an inevitable part of the scientific process.” He leaned forward, as if reaching for an off switch.
“Wait!” Stone snapped. “Maybe you’re right that we can’t find you—but are you so sure we can’t find your partner in crime? Dr. Summer? Or Dr. Kaiser, or Dr. Novak, who are all the same person? We know about your connection to him. Is he as good at hiding from us as you think you are? Will you care if we track him down and lean on him until he cracks?”
It was a long shot, and he fully expected it to roll off the man the same way Amber’s threats had.
Instead, a brief look of concern—not just concern, but outright worry—flashed across his face. But then it was quickly covered by his usual nonchalant mask. “You won’t find him, Dr. Stone. You know more than I expected, but you still don’t have anything close to the whole story. Good evening to all of you. I hope your friend survives my experiments—I truly do. It will benefit both of us.”
The screen went black.
Amber roared, so loud it echoed through the small room. She ripped the monitor from the stand and flung it into the opposite wall, so hard its plastic casing splintered. Then she rounded on Stone, her eyes blazing with rage. “Find. Him.”
Verity grabbed her arm. “We will, Amber. He’s my brother, remember? I’ve loved him a lot longer than you have.” Her gaze was every bit as cold and intense as Amber’s. “We’ll find him.” Her brow furrowed. “But how are we going to do it if that guy’s taken him through a portal somewhere? They could be in England or China or Africa by now. Even Doc’s range doesn’t reach that far.”
Stone held up a finger, indicating for them to stop. When they both did, still looking angry, he strode to the stand where the monitor had been, carefully avoiding the circle around the bed. As he’d expected, it wasn’t hard to spot a small camera and microphone near it. He pulled them free, tossed them on the floor, and used magic to slag them. “There. Now we can speak freely, without anyone overhearing us.” He faced them again. “I don’t think he is.”
“What do you mean?” Verity demanded. “You don’t think he’s listening?”
“No. I don’t think Jason’s in England or China or Africa. I think he’s nearby.”
“Why do you think that?” Amber was glaring harder at him now. “The guy said—”
“I know what he said. But I don’t think he’s telling the truth.”
“Why not?” She calmed down, but only slightly, a little hope seeping into her anger.
“A hunch. You’re used to reading people using cues you need to be present for, like scent, just as I’m used to doing it with auras. But I’m also not bad at reading faces, and I noticed something when he said that. I can’t describe it, but it was there. I don’t think it would have been easy for him to take Jason through the portal tonight—not that quickly. Remember, he was scrambling because we were on his trail. And Eamon and his people were on the lookout.”
“But he uses illusions—” Verity began.
“Yes, but he doesn’t know all the ways we are—or aren’t—looking for him. I don’t think he’d take the chance.”
“So what’s all that mean?” Amber growled.
“It means Verity should do another ritual, while I dismantle the circle around young Mr. Boyce here so we can get him out safely, and you and I examine this room with a bit more care.”
“Are you going to call the police?” Verity asked. “We should—this kid should be returned to his parents.”
“We will—once we’re out of here. I don’t think any of us want to be directly involved in this.”
“We’re wasting time,” Amber protested. “We need to go. If he’s nearby, maybe I can—”
“I don’t think he’s close enough for you to sniff him out,” Stone said gently. “Please, Amber—you’ve got to trust me. I care about Jason too. We will find him. I think we’ve got an advantage now.”
“What kind of advantage?”
“Our man doesn’t know we suspect he’s nearby, so he won’t be expecting us to look for him—or at least not to find him this quickly. And believe me—I may not know the specific type of experiments he’s planning to do on Jason, but setting up those things takes time. Let Verity work. She’s the best chance we’ve got right now.”
Amber held his gaze for a few seconds, and he thought she might object. Instead, she let out a loud sigh. “Okay. Fine. But I’m not waiting long, so get going, Verity.”
Verity didn’t take offense at Amber’s abruptness. Instead, she looked around the room until she spotted some rudimentary ritual materials on one of the shelves. “I’ll do it out in the hall,” she said, gathering an armload. “More room. You two look around in here and see if you can find any clues about where he might be.”
As soon as she was gone, Stone turned to the circle around Caden Boyce’s bed, already beginning to examine it more closely.
“What do you want me to do?” Amber asked, pacing.
“Look around,” Stone said without moving. “There’s nothing else magical in here that I can see. Check the desk, the shelves—see if you can find anything of a personal nature. Anything that might lead us to any of his other bases. Or anything that looks like it’s got scientific or magical formulae written on it.”
“Yeah. Okay. Good thing I brought some gloves.”
Stone had already focused back on the circle. With magical sight still up, he examined both it and the boy lying in the bed. Caden Boyce looked like the photo Gina had found: blond, skinny, freckled, with a forelock of hair spread out over his wide forehead. His eyes were closed, his breathing regular, and he showed no signs of waking up despite all the yelling and noise around him. He had an IV needle in his arm, its tube leading up to a nearly empty bag of clear liquid. A monitor display showed his blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen saturation, all of which looked normal as far as Stone could tell. His aura certainly didn’t show him to be in anything beyond mild distress.
The circle, he discovered after several minutes of careful study, appeared to be designed to collect information of a magical nature—subtle changes in auric energy, physical anomalies, and faint signs of magic talent. It made sense: if the kidnapper was examining his subjects to see if his magical-infusion techniques were successful, he had to be able to measure it in some quantifiable way. Stone suspected there was more to the technique—not merely doing something to the child in vitro, but applying some sort of catalyst during puberty that was designed to awaken whatever seeds he’d planted. That was likely why he needed to have the child under his control for a number of days, instead of merely doing a relatively quick test.
Stone would never have admitted it to either Verity or Amber, but it was fascinating stuff, and he yearned to get a look at the man’s notes. It was the same sort of curiosity he had about necromancy: wanting to know the theories and practices behind it without having any temptation to try it himself. If the kidnapper had actually managed to do what he’d set out to do, Stone wasn’t sure what the implications of that would be in the greater field of magical science.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Or, more to the point, he wasn’t sure he wanted anyone else to know. If the process was possible, letting that particular cat out of the bag could be devastating.
For now, though, his focus was on determining if it would be dangerous to dismantle the circle—either for Caden Boyce or for the others in the room—and he was
now certain it wasn’t. He wondered if the information it generated was even now being relayed to the kidnapper in his current location, or stored in some repository for later perusal.
“Okay,” he murmured under his breath. “Let’s do this.” He gathered his power, carefully shaped it, and extended it outward into the circle, combining his energy with its own until he’d taken control of it, and then shutting it down. It wasn’t difficult to do, but it did take time and concentration. As the circle winked out and Caden showed no signs of waking, he sighed in relief. “There. That’s done. Have you found anything, Amber?”
She didn’t answer. She’d already pulled all the drawers out of the desk and ripped open a locked file cabinet. With papers and notebooks already spread across the desktop, she’d moved to pulling books off the shelves.
“Amber?”
“Nothing,” she growled, jerking her head toward the desk. “You might want to look at some of that stuff. But there’s nothing about Jason.”
Stone took a look at the scattered papers on the desk. As he suspected, most of them were scrawled with notes and formulae—the former in some coded script he couldn’t read. He wanted to gather all of it up and take it with them, but he didn’t have time. Instead, he settled for grabbing a bag from a corner and stuffing as much of it in as he could manage. He’d read it later, after they had Jason back. “What about the books?”
“Eh, nothing. Just reference stuff, it looks like.” She slammed her fist into the shelf. “Damn it, this isn’t helping! I’m gonna go see if Verity’s found anything.”
“Wait!” Stone pointed. When Amber had hit the wooden shelf, a small stack of papers had dislodged from the top and fluttered to the floor. He bent and snatched them up.
“Anything?” she demanded before he’d even had a chance to look at them.
He paged through them quickly, well aware of her impatience. “They’re photocopies of newspaper articles talking about the clinics. And a few photos.”
“The ones the other guy worked at?” Amber, interested in spite of her growing stress, leaned in for a look.
“Yes. Look—here’s our other man.” He pointed at a grainy image of several white-coated men and women standing together, smiling at the camera. “This is about the grand opening of the clinic in Chicago. See—here’s a mention of Dr. Ernest Novak, a pioneer in fertility research. That’s the name he used in Chicago.” He slipped that one to the bottom of the stack, revealing a black-and-white photo. “And look—here’s the actual photo from the article.” It was a much clearer version of the same grainy image.
“But how is any of this helping?” She clenched her fists, looking like she was ready to tear something else up. “This isn’t getting us any closer to Jason.”
“Just—give me a moment. There’s something about this man—” Absent a magnifying glass, he pulled his phone out and used its magnification function to get a close-up view of Novak’s face. “I can’t put my finger on it, but he looks familiar.”
Amber leaned in. “It’s not the same guy using another name, is it?”
“No, I’m sure it isn’t. But…”
“Doc?”
Verity’s voice came from the doorway. She didn’t sound happy.
Stone snapped his head up. “What is it? Did you find him?”
“Oh, God, he’s not dead, is he?” Amber demanded.
She swallowed hard. “I don’t think he’s dead. But I can’t find him.” She met Stone’s gaze with her own haunted one. “I don’t think the guy was lying about one thing: he’s got him behind much better wards this time, and I can’t get past them. I couldn’t even get close. The trace keeps wandering off like something’s distracting it.”
28
“Damn!” Stone slammed his hand down on the desk, making the papers jump. “I was afraid of that.”
“So…” Amber’s tense gaze shifted between the two of them. “You can’t find him?”
“Not here. Maybe with a better setup, but even then—” She sighed in frustration and shook her head. “I’m not sure I can do it. We’d have to set up a whole new circle—a bigger, more elaborate one. And that will take more time.”
“What about you?” Amber rounded on Stone, making no attempt to hide her growing agitation. “Can you find him? What if you used Verity’s blood? You’re stronger than she is, right?”
“I am. And it could work. Possibly.” Stone forced himself to stay calm. “My range is longer, and I can punch through wards she can’t—but not all wards. Verity’s still got a better chance because of her blood connection.”
“Can’t you—I don’t know—work together?” She was pacing, the drifts of papers crinkling under her feet. “Come on—you’ve got to have something.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Verity said. She sounded miserable. “Tracking spells aren’t group rituals.”
“Well—what can we do, then?” She glared at them and headed for the door. “I’m going outside and see if I can catch a scent I can follow. You two do what you want.”
“Wait, Amber.” Stone held up a hand, but he wasn’t sure he could stop her. Like the beast whose heritage she shared, she was stubborn and difficult to sway once she got her mind fixed on something. “It won’t help to do that. You can’t follow a scent in a car. Just because I believe he’s in the area doesn’t mean he couldn’t be fifty miles away.”
“I. Can’t. Just. Stand here!” she yelled. “My head’s going to explode if I don’t do something. So if you don’t come up with an idea right now, I’m gonna go take a shot.”
“Just—be quiet for a moment!” Stone didn’t mean to snap at her—he certainly understood her frustration, and shared most of it—but something had been swirling around the edges of his mind for a while now. Ever since he’d seen the photograph of Ernest Novak. “Let me think.”
To her credit, Amber didn’t take offense at his abruptness. “I’ll be outside,” she said. “I won’t go anywhere—yet. But if you two don’t come up with some magic way to find Jason, I’m going back to the methods that work for me.” She stalked out of the office.
Verity’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know, Doc,” she said. “I tried as hard as I could. A couple times I thought I had something, but then it drifted away before I could get a fix on it.”
“We’re not giving up. We’ll find him. Just…give me a moment.” He stared down at the photo of Ernest Novak and the other doctors, scanning the faces for anything familiar. He knew from many previous instances that his brain worked like that, spotting something he didn’t notice initially, but worrying away at it as a background process until the answer presented itself. The problem was, that answer usually came in the form of a dream, or a stray thought when he was thinking about something else. Right now, though, no matter how important it might be to do just that, he couldn’t get his mind off what the man—they didn’t even have a name for him yet—might be doing to Jason. Why would he even be interested in Jason? If he was focusing on children, then why change directions this late with a grown man? It didn’t make sense from a scientific standpoint. What had he meant when he said he had something now that he hadn’t had before? Was he talking about Jason himself?
“Damn it,” he muttered, waving the photo. “I feel like it’s right here in front of my nose, but I’m not seeing it!”
Verity approached, peering at the photo. “That’s definitely not the same guy. He’s not in disguise or anything. They do resemble each other, so I see how you might have thought they were the same person, but…what?” She jerked, eyes wide, as Stone flung the photo down on the desk.
“That’s it!” he yelled. “That’s how we can find him!”
“What are you talking about?” She was looking at him with a mixture of hope and confusion. “Have you figured out who the guy in the picture is?”
“No. But I don’t have to.”
“What do you mean? Isn’t that what we were—”
“We don’t have to find Jason. We
can find the kidnapper.”
“What the hell? Doc, you’re not making sense.”
Stone spun, unable to remain still, and crossed the room to Caden Boyce’s bed. The boy slept on, oblivious. “It’s a chance, anyway. Wards powerful enough to keep you from finding Jason even with the sibling bond are bloody difficult to construct, and they require a lot of energy to maintain. That might mean this one isn’t very large. If he’s got Jason under it, he might not be under it himself. Especially if he doesn’t think we’ve got a chance of finding him. But if we do find him, we can find Jason—or at least persuade him to tell us where he is.” He was certain his savage expression revealed everything about the kind of “persuasion” he’d be willing to employ if necessary.
“But how are we going to do that?” She glanced at Stone, then toward the door where Amber had left. “We don’t know anything about him. What would you use as a tether? The photo? I doubt it’s personal enough to—”
“Oh, I plan to use something much more personal than a photo.” With a flourish, he gestured toward the boy in the bed. “I plan to use his son.”
29
Verity gaped at him. “Oh, God…you’re right. Of course! This kid is—”
“Our kidnapper’s biological son. Which means he’s got an even stronger blood connection to him than you have to Jason.” He barked a mirthless laugh. “Our man’s got to be more frazzled than we thought if he forgot about that. Either that, or he was banking on my not knowing about it—or not being willing to exploit it.”
“Exploit what?” Amber strode back in. “Did you two figure anything out?”
“He’s going to use the kid to find his father,” Verity said, pointing at Caden.
Amber’s eyes widened as the implications dawned. “Holy fuck, you’re right. This kid is his. But you can’t—”
“I can and I will. It’s only a bit of blood—it’s not as if I’m planning to sacrifice the boy.”