Blood Games

The guard addressed, Ryan looked back at us, motioned us to the right, where a wide doorway led to the living room. The bedrooms would be beyond it, again to the right, as the penthouse circled around half the building’s top floor.



We formed our line like kindergartners at recess—Ryan, Cord, Ethan, me—and moved silently into the living room.



The room was dark, empty. Ambient light from the surrounding high-rises streamed in through another floor-to-ceiling window. Marble floors and warm, taupe walls were a canvas for pops of color from a crimson sectional sofa and accent rugs. There were no signs of life.



Without a sound but my pulse—which still pounded in my ears like ocean waves—we crept through the great room to the hallway beyond. Pin lights illuminated architectural prints and provided a bit of light in the otherwise dark space, which split off into the two bedrooms.



Ryan and Cord slipped into the first, and we slipped into the second.



Where the hell is Darius? I asked Ethan.



Possibly gone. He could have run or been told to.



I didn’t want to think about gone, not when we were so close to putting closure on our issues with Darius West, so I did what a good investigator would do. I checked the trash can (empty), the drawers (empty), the closet (empty) for any sign of the documents Darius had executed, or any other hint about who’d been manipulating him. Ethan checked the mattress and between the towels in the bathroom for any sign, then walked back into the living room and checked that room as well.



A creak behind me had me spinning around, katana in hand and at the ready.



The curtain on the left side of the wall billowed, its hem rising like the swirling skirt on a dancer, and a breeze blew in.



I blew out a breath, chastised myself for making monsters in the dark, and took a step forward.



I pushed aside the curtain, revealed an open doorway. A cool spring wind blew from the terrace beyond it.



There’s a terrace, I told Ethan. The door’s open. I’m going outside.



There hadn’t been a terrace on the plans Luc had found. Maybe it had been a later addition, an afterthought to make the enormous, marble-floored penthouse even more desirable to the people who preferred their marble-floored penthouses with terraces.



Adjusting the grip on my katana, I walked outside. Moonlight glinted off the surrounding high-rises, casting a glow across the stone floor, the giant urns that lined the stone rail . . . and the lone, lean figure that stood on the other end of the balcony.



I felt Ethan move behind me, held up a fist to stop him, and pointed out the tall, lean vampire who stood in the wedge of moonlight.



Let’s say hello, shall we, Sentinel?



Ethan walked forward, one hand on his katana handle, then passed me as he moved closer to Darius.



If he knew we were there, he didn’t acknowledge it. His hands were braced on the thick stone parapet that sat on turned-stone balusters.



“Darius,” Ethan said, quietly stepping forward.



He looked back at Ethan, eyes widening with an increment of surprise. “Ethan. It’s good to see you again.”



There was no obvious untruth, no apparent duplicity. Darius seemed completely earnest and by all accounts was happy to see Ethan again. That was the part that rang false. But we already knew something was wrong. The issue now was fixing it—and isolating the rest of the issue.



“You as well.”



I felt the team moving quietly behind me, creating gentle ripples in the magic that enveloped us all as they surrounded us.



“Perhaps we should go inside?” Ethan politely asked.



Darius frowned. “We might as well. A chill wind is blowing.”



That was hardly his only problem.



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.”