Blood Games

Chapter Nine WORTH HIS SALT

Darius sat in an armchair, feet on the floor, hands together in his lap. His posture was as meek as his attitude.

“I don’t want to take him out of here until we’re sure it’s safe,” Ryan said. “This looks like magic to me, and there could be a fail-safe.”

“Agreed,” Ethan said. “But let’s be fast about it. Whoever’s done this could be on his way.”

“And we still haven’t seen the two guards we saw in the lobby earlier today.”

“Agreed,” Ryan said, glancing between Ethan and Cord. “Since he’s still my Sire, I’ll take the first stab, if you don’t mind.”

Ethan nodded, and Ryan pulled up a chair in front of Darius.

“Sire. I’m Ryan, New York’s Cabot House, NAVR Number Three.”

Darius nodded. “Ryan.”

“Could you tell us how you came to be here?”

Darius frowned. “Here? I came here from London.”

“Why?”

“Business,” Darius said, crossing one leg over the other, smoothing the fabric over his knee.

That Darius was here on unspecified “business” was becoming a common refrain; he’d told Ethan and Victor the same thing.

“Business?” Ryan asked.

“Transactions that required my attention.”

“I see,” Ryan said. “And what was the nature of those transactions?”

“Financial,” Darius said. “For the good of the Presidium and its Houses.”

“Oh?” Ryan asked. “For new projects?”

“For the good of the Houses,” Darius said again, parroting the phrase like he’d read it from a script. And if someone was working him magically, suggesting his thoughts and emotions, that might just be true.

“Thank you, Sire,” Ryan said, rising. “If you’ll excuse me for just a moment?”

Darius gave him a regal nod, picked another mote of dust from his knee, linked his long fingers together.

Ryan rose, pointed toward Cord, then Darius, assigning him to guard the king. Then he gestured the rest of us into the hallway between the bedrooms.

“Magic,” Ryan said when we were assembled.

I didn’t feel any glamour around us now, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t here. It might have been low-grade but still insidious.

“There’s no one else here but us,” Ethan said.

“Yeah,” Ryan said, “but there aren’t any other options. If no one’s here, they’ve figured out a way to transmit glamour to another location.”

“Like an antenna?” I asked. “Is that even possible?”

“Consider the context and the circumstances,” Ethan said. “Does anything seem impossible at this point?” He scanned the floor, walls, ceiling.

“Assuming such a thing is possible,” I said, “why isn’t it affecting us?”

“It could have been calibrated for Darius.”

“So if it’s not working on us, and we can’t feel it, how do we find it?”

“It’s still magic,” Ryan said. “We can all feel magic, so we look for it that way.” Ryan glanced at his watch. “If we’re going to do it, we need to do it quickly. Cord and I will take the bedrooms. You look in here.”

My senses were acute, sometimes distractingly so. I usually kept mental barriers in place so I could function. Dropping my mental shields, I closed my eyes, blew out a breath, and imagined my awareness of the world was a bubble around me, that I was in the center of it. I took a breath, and then another, and with each inhalation imagined the bubble expanding, enclosing more and more of the rooms.

Odors, sounds, and tastes filled my consciousness until I felt like a child in a tempest of sensation.

I walked to the back corner of a room, to the kitchenette, and felt the faintest brush of magic. It was soft, the magic lapping in light and gentle waves, almost comforting to the touch.

I opened my eyes, stared at a closed cabinet door that seemed, now that my barriers were down and I was staring right at it, to faintly pulse with magic, like the wood grain had a heartbeat, pulsing in and out.

I reached out, pulled open the cabinet door.

It was six inches tall, shaped like an obelisk, and looked like stone, matte shades of white and ivory that seemed to glow from within.

“Ethan.”

He walked toward me, brow unfurrowing as he saw it.

“It pulses,” he said, and I was relieved it wasn’t just me.

He called Ryan’s name, and footsteps echoed quickly behind us.

“What did you find?”

Ethan moved aside so he could get a look at it. “Alabaster, I believe. Perhaps a receiver, or an antenna designed to receive and enhance magic.”

“In Darius’s direction,” I said, and Ethan nodded.

Ryan looked at the object, then Ethan. “A vampire could provide the glamour. But not the object.”

Ethan nodded. “He or she would need a sorcerer. Someone with the skill to create this magical—I suppose ‘appliance’ is the most appropriate word, considering.”

“We have friends who are sorcerers,” I said. “We can get it to them, ask them to take a look. Maybe they can ferret out who did it. Reverse engineer it.”

“We should have brought Catcher,” Ethan agreed, and I made a mental note to pass that nugget along. It would make his month.

“Do that,” Ryan said. “But for now, we need to neutralize it. Get it onto the countertop.”

Ethan rubbed his fingertips together, then reached out and touched the object. It glowed with his touch, light shifting within the stone.

“It’s warm,” he said. “Very, very warm.” Holding the obelisk like an actress might carry an Oscar statuette, he lowered it carefully to the marble counter.

In the meantime, Ryan searched drawers until he found a box of plastic bags and a container of margarita salt.

“Magical nullification,” Ryan said. With a flick of the small knife he pulled from his belt, he flipped the plastic lid from the salt and upended it into a zip-top bag. He held the bag open, glanced at Ethan. “Put her in.”

Ethan looked dubious but complied, carefully placing the obelisk in its bed of salt. Orange and blue sparks lit where alabaster and salt met. After a few seconds, the sparks dissipated, and the alabaster’s dull glow faded. A breeze flowed through the room, and the air seemed to thin, as if the obelisk’s glamour had thickened it, weighed it down.

“Damn,” I murmured. “That was heavy magic.”

Ryan carefully closed the bag, rolled the extra plastic around it, and stuffed it into a thin nylon bag he’d pulled from his utility belt. He stuffed the wrapped object into one of the zipped pockets on his cargo pants.

There was a groan from the other room.

“Ryan!” Cord called out. “He’s back.”

We rushed back in. Darius was sitting straight up in his chair, his knuckles white around the arms, his eyes open and blinking, and no longer dilated.

He looked up at us, blinked, his expression equally haughty and confused. “Sullivan? What the hell’s going on?”

“That will be a rather long and involved story.” Ethan went to him, offered a hand to help him out of the chair. “Suffice it to say, we think you’ve been glamoured or charmed in order to get money from the GP coffers, and we need to get you up and out of here.”

Darius looked at Ethan for a moment, eyes searching for truth. “You mean it.”

“All of it. And we need to get out of here. Now.”

“No ‘sire’ from you anymore, Sullivan?” Darius asked, but he let Ethan pull him to his feet.

“Since the GP has deemed us enemies, not a chance in hell.”

The elevator chose that moment to ding its arrival.

The sound of footsteps echoed in the marble hallway outside the suite.

“Cover him,” Ethan said to Cord, then unsheathed his sword and dragged Darius, still unsteady on his feet, back into the corner.

I’d have preferred they switch places, but I couldn’t exactly call him out in the middle of an op.

“Shit,” Ryan said, putting a hand on his ear. His instinct was the same as mine—that someone on the first floor had gone down; that was the only way they could have made it up the elevator.

“Luc here.”

“Lindsey here.”

Their responses echoed through our earpieces, but they were the only ones. Max didn’t respond.

“Goddamn it,” Ryan said, accent even stronger with his fury.

We unsheathed our swords and faced the three men who stepped into the doorway. Two were men we’d seen earlier tonight—the big man and his smaller friend. The third was new. That was five men, altogether, assigned the task of keeping Darius under wraps. Someone had pull . . . and plenty of cash.

The big one bore a long and mean-looking dagger, and the short one held a small handgun, pointed at all of us.

I was getting sick of being on the receiving end of handguns this week.

“If you’re looking for your friend,” the big one said, his voice gravelly and harsh, “he’s in the elevator with a very big headache. He was trespassing, and it looks like you are, too.”

“This is Darius’s room,” Ryan said, arms extended, the gun in a two-handed grip. With Cord and Ethan watching Darius, I stepped forward, joined the front line, relished the hot rush of adrenaline that silvered my eyes. “So you’re trespassing. Who hired you?”

“Our employer. And speaking of whom, you’ve walked into something that’s none of your business. I suggest you take your girlfriend and walk right out again.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in simply offering you more money to make you walk away right now?”

The man laughed, the sound like rain over rusted metal. “Now, that’s a good one. I enjoyed that. But what kind of businessman would I be if I ditched one deal for another? Not a very loyal one, I’d say.”

“Loyalty doesn’t strike me as one of your better qualities.”

“Maybe not. But I’ve others.” The blade was already in the air before I registered the flick of his hand. Ryan pivoted to dodge the attack, but the dagger’s gleaming edge caught his upper arm, painting a stripe of red across his sleeve.

The fight was on.

“I’ll take him,” I said to Ryan, and let him move toward the little guy.

I launched forward and sliced sideways, but the man was sprier than he looked. He jumped out of the way, stuck out a foot to trip me as I moved forward. I anticipated, jumped, and landed closer to the elevator.

“You’re a pretty little thing,” he said.

“I’m not little,” I promised, swinging a half circle with the sword extended, hoping to throw him off balance if I couldn’t bring him down. He stumbled backward out of the way, barely missing the edge of a console table that would have put him on his ass.

My bad luck there.

He pulled another gleaming dagger from the interior of his jacket, switched it from hand to hand.

“Tell me why a girl with your looks, your fine ass, is playing with a sword?”

He meant to piss me off, and it worked. My eyes silvered, but I’d been in battle before, knew better than to let this dirtbag throw me off.

I ignored the pop of bullets behind me, a groan I thought came from Ethan, tried to slow panic and keep my focus.

I lowered my sword arm, put my other hand on my hip, and grinned at him. “I don’t need to play with a sword. I know how to use one.”

His smile was lascivious, and aimed at my chest. So he didn’t see me kick up the bottom of my katana, launch it into a spin. But he saw the blade catch light, glinting once, then twice, as it spun like a baton. His hand moved, the dagger piercing forward, but I was already gone.

I snapped the handle out of the air, edged to his right, the katana trailing me, and shifted my hands forward against his bulk. The blade caught, slicing him across the chest. He screamed out a curse, stumbled forward, hit the opposite wall with braced arms.

As I finished the rotation, he roared with anger, turned back with his dagger gleaming, his other arm pressed against the bleeding stripe across his chest. He lunged clumsily, but he still had plenty of strength. I whipped aside to dodge the dagger, but it caught the bottom edge of my jacket before digging into the wall, pinning me against it like a scientific specimen.

He’d lost his weapon, but he still had two ham-sized fists. I jerked free with a tear of leather, but the delay took precious seconds. His fist connected with my stomach, sending a wave of nausea through my belly even as the blow pushed the air from my lungs.

I hit the stone floor on my knees, the queasiness matched only by the fury that lashed through me.

I huffed quick breaths through clenched teeth, trying not to hurl, pushed myself to my feet again, and leveled him with the fiercest stare I could manage. “You. Punched. Me.” Every word took effort.

He smiled. “And I’ll do it again, bitch, if you don’t step aside.”

He’d punched me . . . and called me a bitch.

Blood roared through my ears, and everything else faded—the sounds of his labored breathing, the fight in the other room. My vision seemed to dim to the cone where he stood in front of me, grinning maniacally and scenting the air with my fury.

I imagined myself a sword-bearing dervish—I apparently got creative while fighting in a pain-induced frenzy—lifted my sword, and dove into battle.

I moved in with a slice from right to left, and he used the dagger to block it, then rotated his arm, using the momentum against me to push me back. But I didn’t stop. I came in again, sliced upward from the left. He dodged, then kicked out with his right leg, making contact with my knee. The impact made my body shudder, pain radiating like forks of lightning, but I stayed on my feet. He wasn’t the only one who could fight dirty.

I feinted to the left, reaching for my knee like he’d done serious damage. His ugly smile bloomed; he thought he’d won. But I kicked upward with my good leg, made direct contact with his crotch, and sent him moaning to the floor on his knees.

“Bitch,” he muttered again, spittle flying, but he wasn’t down, and he wasn’t done. He flipped his dagger and held it backward, the blade aligned with his forearm, then flipped it out with a motion that just nicked the edge of my thigh as I jumped backward to avoid it. I bumped that damned console table, sent a lamp to the floor with a crash of ceramic and glass.

He pulled his bulk to his feet again, lumbered forward, murder in his eyes.

“Bitch,” he said one more time, the word thick in his mouth, as if it was an incantation, a gleam in his eyes as if saying the word gave him power.

My power wasn’t his to take.

He swiped left, then right. I moved backward, putting space between us, his body between me and the rest of the building. I bumped up against the elevator wall, bluffed surprise, let my katana clank to the ground.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” he said.

He was right. I wasn’t.

He roared, lunged, his body set for a frontal attack, so focused that he didn’t see me kick up the katana and thrust it in front of me.

But he was already moving, and skin and flesh were hardly a barrier to honed steel. He was skewered, the handle of the katana protruding just below his breastbone.

Eyes wide with shock, he looked down, took in the handle sticking out of his gut, then stumbled backward, wrenching the handle—now slippery with blood—from my grip.

“You weren’t playing,” he murmured, before his eyes went dull. He fell backward, hitting the floor with a thud.

I took a shuddering breath, wiping sweat from my eyes. I’d killed before, and would again. But it didn’t get easier, no matter that the death saved lives, including my own.

A crash from the living room pulled me from my shock. I moved forward, pulling out my katana, cleaned it of gore. There were many things required of a vampire warrior; some of them were more disturbing than others.

“Ethan?” I called out.

“I’m good.”

I said a silent prayer of thanks, then glanced around, checked the others. The little guy was on the floor in the foyer. Ryan lay on the floor in front of the kitchenette.

I ran forward. He lay on his back, a nasty wound across his left arm, another across his left leg, and a lot of blood. The scent of it interested my vampire sensibilities, but I ignored the surge of interest and leaned down.

“Ryan.” I tapped his cheeks. “Ryan.”

His eyes fluttered open, focused. “I’m okay.” But he winced with the pain.

Ethan walked toward us, wiping the blood from his sword. There was blood on his right thigh.

“You’re hit?” I asked.

“Glanced me.”

I nodded. “Ryan’s injured. You got the little guy?”

“And his friend. Cord’s got Darius. You got the big guy?”

“I did. Had some unflattering things to say.”

Ethan adjusted his earpiece. “Lucas, we’re done here, and it’s gonna be dirty.”

“Exit’s prepared, van is ready to go. Cleanup crew en route.”

I hadn’t even thought about a cleanup crew, about the necessity of having someone take care of the mess we’d left. I was glad he had.

“Fine,” he said, glanced at Ryan. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

I rose to grab a blanket from the back of a nearby love seat, preparing to drape it across Ryan’s body. I wasn’t sure if vampires could go into shock, but I didn’t feel like it was time to find out.

I saw the instant widening of his eyes, the flare of his irises.

“Behind you,” Ryan cried out, and I snapped my head to look.

The shorter man, blood streaming across his face and his abdomen, had lifted his arm . . . and his gun was pointed at Ethan.

Light and smoke emerged from the barrel.

I didn’t stop to think or plan or evaluate risk. I moved.

I dove in front of Ethan, covering his body with mine as the explosion of sound filled the air. There was only pain, bright and searing, until I hit the ground.

The world spun . . . and went dark.