The Stone Warriors: Damian

by D. B. Reynolds

  “All right. We’ll enter through the back.”

  She shrugged. It didn’t matter to her. Not wanting to miss any sudden departures or other activity, she maintained her watch on the house, but tossed him her phone. He caught it, of course. There was no such thing as taking Damian by surprise. “Call Lilia—she’s on my call list—and tell her where we are and what we’re about to do. Just in case.”

  He turned on her phone and smiled way too happily as he started scrolling through every screen.

  “Hey! No snooping.”

  “I wasn’t snooping, I was learning.”

  “Learning what?”

  “About you.”

  Well, shit. That was sort of sweet, wasn’t it? On the other hand, this was Damian, so maybe not. “Instead of being so nosy, you should just call Lilia.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She scowled at him, but he pretended not to see as he finally, finally, did as she asked and hit Lilia’s call-back.

  “Lilia,” Damian crooned in his sexiest voice. “This is Damian.”

  Casey couldn’t hear Lilia’s response, but she could imagine it.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, too, at least over the phone. Cassandra speaks very highly of you.”

  “Just get on with it,” she muttered. The bastard turned to give her a wide grin.

  “I’m sorry, Lilia, I missed that. Cassandra was asking me a question.” He listened for a minute and then laughed, which made Casey very suspicious.

  “What’d she say?” she demanded, but he ignored her and kept talking to Lilia.

  “We’ll definitely be visiting Florida when this is over, and I’d love to get together with you.”

  “What?” What the hell? Was Lilia asking him out on a date? “Give me the phone,” she snapped.

  He shifted the phone to his right hand and leaned away from her. As if she could have taken it from him anyway. He outweighed her by a good hundred pounds of muscle.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to cut this short, Lilia. Cassandra wants to talk to you.” He smiled at whatever Lili said next. “I’d enjoy that. Good-bye for now.”

  Casey snatched the phone that he held out. “Watch the house,” she ordered him, then turned her attention to Lilia. “Did you have a nice chat?” she asked snarkily. “Don’t worry, it’s just the end of the world we’re trying to prevent here.”

  “Oooh, is that jealousy I hear rearing its ugly head?” Lilia teased.

  Casey made a scoffing noise. “Can we get back to saving lives now?”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right,” Lilia said, sounding so abruptly subdued that Casey felt guilty.

  “Look, Lili, I’m—” she start to say, then paused, scowling, when Lili started laughing. “Shit. I almost fell for that.”

  “You like him,” Lilia said in a singsong tone.

  Casey closed her eyes briefly. “Can we just stick to business for now?” she asked quietly.

  “What do you need?” her friend asked. She must have heard something in Casey’s voice. Maybe some of the desperate confusion Casey was feeling, wondering where the hell the relationship was going, if it was a relationship at all, and what the fuck she was doing to herself.

  “This is just a heads-up,” she told Lilia. “Damian and I are sitting a block away from the Sotiris safe house that went live in the last forty-eight hours. It’s thirty minutes from O’Hare. We’re going in there, but if this is the place they’re using for a staging area, we could encounter resistance. It might be a while before we can get back to you.”

  “Maybe you should just sit on the place until I can arrange some backup.”

  “No can do. The timeline’s too short. But, don’t worry, and don’t tell Damian I said this”—he gave her a sardonic look from his seat right next to her—“but he really is a god when it comes to fighting. It’s like having my own personal spec ops team.”

  “Well,” Lili drawled. “Aren’t you the lucky one? Any other tidbits you’d like to share?”

  “No,” Casey said shortly. “We’ll check in as soon as we can.”

  “I’ll keep the lines open. Good luck, Casey. Be careful, and give Damian my—” Casey hung up before she could finish the sentence.

  “Lilia says ‘good luck.’”

  “What else did she say?” he asked, giving her a wink.

  “She offered to send backup.”

  He looked briefly offended, before understanding struck. “And you told her you didn’t need it. What’s spec ops?”

  “Special operations. They’re the most elite of our soldiers.”

  “Hmm. Your description of my skills sounds about right, then.”

  “Oh my God, could you be any more arrogant?”

  “It’s only the truth, Cassandra. You said so yourself.”

  “Right. We should probably get out of this car before you suck up all of the oxygen. Are you ready?”

  “I’m always ready,” he said.

  She would have scoffed at the arrogance in that statement, but in his case, it was probably true.

  DAMIAN STUDIED THE neighborhood as he and Cassandra strolled down the darkened street toward the safe house. They didn’t hold hands—it would take too long to draw a weapon if necessary, and seconds could matter—but their body language was comfortable and affectionate, just another couple out for a stroll. All they needed was a dog to complete the picture. He’d never had a dog, there’d been no time or place for one in the life he and Nico had led, but he thought he might like one when this was over and he was settled in Florida. He frowned at the thought. There was no doubt in his mind that his home, his place, was at Nico’s side. But now there was Cassandra.

  And he needed to focus his attention on their mission tonight, instead of worrying about the future.

  “Are you getting anything?” he asked, leaning in and whispering in her ear. Her shiver made him smile, but he let it go. She needed her mind on what they were doing, too.

  She frowned in concentration, then shook her head. “We might be too far away for me to detect anything, especially if they’re shielding it somehow.” But she didn’t sound very convinced.

  Her report didn’t surprise Damian. He didn’t think they were going to find the Talisman here. Granted, he hadn’t fought against Sotiris in a very long time, but before his imprisonment, he’d battled the sorcerer and his ilk on an almost daily basis. The wars between Nico and the few other sorcerers who were on his level in terms of magical ability had been constant. Damian didn’t know modern technology as well as he’d like, but he sure as hell knew Sotiris. The man was evil, but he was also brilliant. He wouldn’t be caught by something as obvious as turning on the lights in a safe house.

  They walked right past the safe house and up the driveway of its neighbor, then strolled down the yard between the two houses, as if they belonged there. Damian’s senses were on full alert. He picked up the soft movement of people in the neighbor’s house—footsteps, the sound of running water—but there was no sound at all coming from the safe house. Nothing. The drapes were all drawn, the shades dropped. There were two separate light sources, one from the back of the house—probably the kitchen, based on the floor plans from the sales brochure for this development—and another in an upstairs bedroom. But no people. That damn house was empty. He knew it.

  They entered the backyard through the unlocked gate, and crossed the small patio, where Cassandra eased up to the sliding glass door on the back of the house. Pulling a small flashlight, she examined the edges of the door all around, then focused on the handle and lock itself. From the look on her face, she didn’t like what she was seeing. He crouched down next to her.

  “I’m not finding any sensors. No security system.” She paused, her lips tight with irritation or thought, he didn’t know
which. “Let me check something,” she said, then stood without warning and walked quickly and silently over to the nearest window. The flashlight came out again, and she did much the same inspection, before coming back to kneel next to him. “Nothing on the windows either,” she told him.

  Damian waited.

  “It could be they’re only using magical intrusion measures,” she said half-heartedly.

  He nodded. It could mean that. “Are you sensing the Talisman?” He remembered her certainty at the previous house. How she’d known the moment she stepped inside that the Talisman wasn’t there. But maybe she needed to get within the outer walls before she could be sure.

  “Nothing from here,” she admitted. “How about you?”

  He tilted his head curiously. “I told you. I have no ability to sense—”

  “Not magic,” she whispered impatiently. “Breathing, grunting, anything to indicate there are people inside. I know you hear stuff regular people can’t.”

  Damian tried to decide whether he should be insulted or flattered by the “regular people” reference. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be considered regular, but on the other hand . . .

  “Nothing,” he told her.

  “You think it’s empty.”

  He shrugged and nodded.

  “Shit,” she hissed, then she turned without warning and punched a gloved fist at the closed glass door. It didn’t budge, didn’t break. Surely she hadn’t expected that it would? “You’re stronger than I am,” she said moving out of the way. “Break the damn glass.”

  He gave her a puzzled look, but scooted over to examine the door handle himself. He glanced briefly at Cassandra, then gripped the handle and yanked it, breaking the lock and sliding the glass door back several inches.

  “Show-off,” she muttered, then leaned in through the open door and sniffed the interior.

  Damian didn’t know what the hell she was doing, but he knew she wasn’t being very cautious about it. Reaching out, he gripped her upper arms and moved her aside, then pulled the door all the way open. “You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said at her look of outrage. He slipped through the flimsy drapes and into the house.

  He stood for a long moment, ignoring Cassandra fuming at his back, focusing instead on the rest of the house. No, he couldn’t sense magic, but most people weren’t magical. They were just ordinary humans, who made ordinary human noises. And he’d been right. There was nobody here. He walked over to the light switch and flipped it on, flooding the big room with light.

  “It’s empty,” he said, and strode from the kitchen into the main living room of the house, turning on lights as he went. He took the stairs three at a time and quickly searched the upstairs bedrooms and bathrooms, even the walk-in closets. When he went back down the stairs and into the kitchen, he found Cassandra on her phone, having an intense, whispered conversation with Lilia. She shot him an irritated glance, as if it was his fault he’d been right, and they’d been wrong. He wondered how many investigations had just been turned on their heads.

  “Fuck,” Cassandra swore viciously. “No, not you, Lili. That was a generalized fuck. Look, we’re going to clear out of here while we still can. For all I know, they’ve booby-trapped these houses just to make this situation worse. Ping me when you get something more.” She hung up and dropped the phone into her pocket. “You heard,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “We should clear out—”

  “Cassandra,” he said, forcing her to look at him. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “No?” she demanded. “Do you know how many of these damn houses I’ve scoped out before this? And not once did it occur to me that we were being played.”

  “Some of them must have turned up something, or you would have figured it out before now.”

  “Sure, yeah. And it’s not just me. I’m only part of the team. We caught a few of Sotiris’s agents—obviously the ones he considered to be disposable, as we now know. And we picked up an artifact or two. But never anything significant, nothing that comes close to the Talisman.”

  “I doubt there are many devices that do. From what you’ve told me, the Talisman is not your typical target either.”

  “You’re right. And I’m not usually sent on the more dangerous missions. My skills don’t run in that direction.”

  “But you do possess a rather extraordinary ability. One that was absolutely necessary to neutralizing the Talisman.”

  She gave him a grateful smile, then shrugged. “Lucky me.”

  “No. Lucky me,” he said, hooking an arm around her neck and pulling her close. “We’ll get this, Cassandra. We’ll find him.”

  She leaned into him for half a second before straightening. “Okay. I don’t think they bothered to booby trap this place, but I’d rather not amuse them by lingering, either. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The walk back to the car was less of a stroll and more of a determined march. They were both tired, both disgusted at the waste of effort. And although Damian’s theory on the safe houses had essentially been proven, he felt bad for Cassandra and the rest of her team. He was also surprised, frankly, that Nico hadn’t known better. It made him wonder just how much his brother was involved in the activities of his hunters. Maybe he’d ask when he saw him next. Which would be soon. The item that he’d recovered from the treasure room was a heavy weight to bear. Not a physical weight, of course. Nothing that simple. But the knowledge of what was hidden in his scabbard weighed on his soul. He wanted to turn it over to Nico. His brother was the only one who might be able to make use of it.

  “You drive,” Cassandra said, tossing her keys his way and shocking the hell out him. He caught the keys and unlocked the doors with the remote, but then stared at her over the top of the SUV, eyebrows raised in question.

  “I need to call Lili,” she told him. “And I need to be able to focus on the conversation.”

  He shrugged. “Okay.” He settled behind the wheel and dutifully fastened his seatbelt. “Where are we going?”

  “Hotel. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired and hungry, and it just so happens, there are something like a million hotels around here. Give me a minute and I’ll tell you which one we’re going to.”

  The night was cold, so he went ahead and started the engine, letting it idle while Cassandra worked the screen on her cell phone. A few minutes’ worth of muttering later, she entered an address on the navigation screen. “One of my favorite places,” she said. “At least something can be salvaged from this clusterfuck.”

  Damian had no response to that, so he wisely kept quiet and pulled the vehicle away from the curb, following the directions to the first turn. Cassandra, meanwhile, called Lilia and recounted the night’s events.

  “I think the model is still a good one,” she told Lilia finally. “Some of those properties ended with successful raids, and I’m not buying the idea that they were all sacrificed to protect the larger goal. We just have to dig. He must have safe houses, but he’s hidden them deeper than we thought.”

  She listened for a few minutes, and Damian could hear the soft burr of Lilia’s voice, before Cassandra said, “That sounds great. We’re going to find a hotel and sleep for a few hours, but I’ll have my cell phone if anything comes up.” She made a gasping noise in response to something Lilia said, but finished with, “Okay, I’ll tell him. Thanks.”

  “Lilia says hi.”

  “Did she say she misses me?”

  “She’s never even met you.”

  “But we’ve spoken on the phone. I think we made a real connection.”

  Cassandra laughed. “Dream on. Don’t listen to the nav. Turn here instead,” she said, pointing.

  Damian followed her directions and found himself in the drive-through of a restaurant whose name even he recognized. Cassandra ordered, shouting across him at
the machine, much to his amusement. A few minutes after that, they had a bag of food, which they proceeded to scarf down while sitting right there in the parking lot.

  “Damn, we must have been hungry. There’s not even a French fry left in here.” She balled up the empty bag, then opened her door, and walked over to dump it in the trash can.

  “You are a good citizen,” he commented, when she got back into the truck.

  “Fuck that. I just like to keep my truck clean.”

  Damian smiled. “How far to the hotel from here?”

  “Minutes. Pull out that way, and turn right.”

  It was farther than he expected, but before long, he was parking behind a multi-story hotel. A few minutes after that, they were climbing the stairs to their fourth-floor room. Once inside, Damian dumped the heavy duffel, then shrugged out of the scabbard, setting it carefully aside. Once he removed it from his back, it became visible, and so did everything it contained. But Cassandra was too busy with her own things to worry about his, or anything else.

  Damian felt a twinge of guilt at keeping the item from her. There was no reason for it, other than the very bitter and personal relevance of this particular artifact, and Nico’s general preference for secrecy. But, by now, Cassandra was too deeply involved in the battle against Sotiris to keep secrets from her. Damian’s loyalty to Nico went too deep to move ahead without his agreement, but his feelings for Cassandra were strong, too. And growing stronger by the day. Maybe it was time to persuade Nico that it was time to share.

  As he considered the state of his relationships with Nico and with Cassandra, Damian stripped off the rest of his clothes and headed for the shower. Cassandra was already there, enticingly naked as she leaned into the shower to start the hot water. She’d said this hotel was one of her favorites, which meant the bathroom was all marble and glass, with a walk-in shower that could accommodate four people.