Chapter Six
The wait to hear from the kidnappers was excruciating.
The part of Dragos’s mind that was so good at statistics kept running calculations on the odds of Pia’s and Carling’s survival. As time passed, that calculation turned grim.
The person who had texted with him clearly had a sadistic bent. Most kidnappers would have been eager to get to the point. They would have made their demands known by now, because the longer they kept their hostages, the greater their risk of discovery.
No, this person wanted to hurt him. That did not bode well for how they would be treating the women.
As Dragos and the rest of the wedding party combed the city for clues throughout the night, they coalesced into a coherent team. Every casino in Las Vegas agreed to lift their magic dampeners and close their gambling floors. The police assigned a liaison to work with Dragos and the others.
Word of Eva’s condition came back from the hospital. She had needed surgery and was being kept in an induced coma until the swelling in her brain went down, but the doctors were confident she would make a full recovery over time. It was one bright spot in the grim, black night.
The Light Fae Queen, Tatiana, opened the Riverview Casino’s resources to them, and they set up operations in the casino’s conference rooms.
“I do not forget how your sentinel Graydon helped when my daughter was kidnapped,” she told Dragos in a quick phone call. “I also remember the assistance you and Pia gave us when we were attacked by my sister Isabeau. If there is anything more the Light Fae demesne can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”
It was a significant offer. That fact managed to worm its way through the savagery winding like a serpent around Dragos’s heart.
Even the owners of the Bellagio were less than apoplectic at the damage done to their property. Instead, they approached the issue in a businesslike manner and engaged a team of insurance assessors without delay.
Local and national news outlets picked up the film clips of Dragos’s impulsive offer of rewards, and the Wyr crime hotline number was inundated with hundreds of phone calls. That number would soon be in the thousands. The great majority of the calls were useless, but every one that seemed like it could be substantive needed to be verified.
Politicians still condemned the cavalier destruction of public property, but they also expressed their deepest sympathy for the difficulty of the Wyr lord’s situation.
As far as the investigation went, several people were arrested and detained for questioning. Fifteen workers at the Bellagio had been bribed by an unknown party to report details on the wedding party’s activities and whereabouts, which was no doubt why the resort owners were so subdued at the damage Dragos had caused.
And as the night bled away into another fierce desert day, they analyzed the security footage from the Riverview frame by frame.
Dragos and Rune watched the footage of Pia’s kidnapping obsessively. There was no security footage on how Carling had been taken. With facial recognition software, they were able to manipulate individual frames to get partial snapshots of the kidnappers’ faces. They saw something that looked like it might be a logo on a few members of the team, but when they tried to blow the images up, it blurred too much to be legible.
They had several shots of the Elven woman, who was clearly the leader, but the scar across her face prevented the software from analyzing her features enough to get any hits from criminal databases. Either that or she had managed to avoid being caught and catalogued up until now.
That woman. Dragos traced her face with one of his talons that refused to retract. That woman was the most familiar scent from the rooftop. He could feel it in his bones.
Rune was as grim and closed down as Dragos, but aside from the strain of the situation, it was remarkable how easily they fell back into a working relationship.
At one point Dragos stopped what he was doing to look at the other man. “I have missed you.”
Rune’s gaze flared up to meet his. The expression in his eyes was raw. After a moment, he gave a short nod. “Too bad it had to be like this.”
Dragos put his hand on the other man’s shoulder, pressing with his fingers. Too bad, indeed.
When a text came, both of their phones pinged at once. Snatching up his phone, Dragos opened the message and stared at a photo of Pia and a skeletal Vampyre, both unconscious in what looked to be a cave that had been converted into a cell.
The text came next. I wonder how things are going to go when the cellmates wake up?
Rage and terror roared. Pia was trapped with a Vampyre who had been so drained she didn’t look human any longer.
Rune’s face clenched. He whispered, “Goddamn them to hell.”
Dragos growled, unable to speak. The need for violence flashed through his body. When Rune looked up, his expression changed.
Advancing on Dragos, he snapped, “She wouldn’t! Dragos, she won’t. No—don’t lose control!”
His words didn’t penetrate. Dragos looked around the large conference room that was strewn with computers, phones, files, and untouched food in take-out containers. It all looked alien and offensive to his animal nature. His body heated so that his clothes began to smoke. All he could think of was setting everything on fire.
A hard blow hit him in the chest, knocking him back several feet. Even as he recovered his balance, Rune hit him again with the flat of his hand. The gryphon’s expression was hard, his jaw iron tight.
“You listen to me,” he growled. “Carling would die before she laid a finger on Pia and the baby.”
Dragos shoved Rune’s hand away. “The blood thirst,” he snapped. “They’ve pushed her to the edge of her resources.”
“Don’t you think I can see what they’ve done to her? I know!” Rune roared. Tears sprang to his eyes. He got in Dragos’s face. “You’ve always had a prejudice against Carling! She’s too cunning and manipulative for you—because she’s just like you. Well, somehow we all found a way to love you anyway, you asshole, and you know why? Because we see something in you that is worth it, and it’s the same for Carling. I’ve staked my life on it. I know that woman inside and out. And she will. Not. Hurt. Pia. So get a grip. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to respond.”
Gradually Dragos calmed enough for Rune’s angry words to penetrate. “You’re right,” he said, very low. “I’ve not been fair to Carling.”
“Damn right,” Rune snapped. The gryphon looked down at his phone, clenched in one hand. Angrily he swiped the tears from his face. “They are so fucking dead for this. I’m going to slaughter every one of them.”
Dragos became aware that almost everyone had left the conference room except for Aryal, Graydon, and Bayne, who had watched the confrontation with sober attentiveness. With their mates taken, Rune and Dragos were not safe to be around, and the sentinels were watching them for signs of danger.
Dragos forwarded the photo to them. “See if Grace or anybody else can get some kind of psychic hit off this. Find out if Khalil can transport to this place.”
“Wouldn’t that be fucking amazing if the Djinn could drop us all in the middle of that scene?” Bayne said. “I’m on it.”
As the big sentinel strode out, Dragos turned back to Rune. “If we provoke them, they might do worse to the women.”
“Agreed,” Rune gritted.
Dragos texted, Are you ready to talk terms?
No reply. What could he say or do to break the icy impasse on the other end?
You’re a murderous monstrosity that should have been hunted down and exterminated centuries ago.
This whole thing was about him. Not Rune, not Carling, not Pia. Rune hadn’t even gotten a message from the kidnappers until now.
He typed, I’m the one you want. Let the women go and take me instead. We can arrange a trade.
The reply came back quickly. We’re almost ready for you. Wait for my word.
Wait for your word? Dragos thought. A feral smile stretched his lips across hard teeth. Like hell I will.
Finally he understood why Azrael had come to Las Vegas. He hadn’t welcomed Death’s presence before, but he did now.
The dragon turned his attention back to the hunt.
Bayne reported back. Khalil very much regretted he could not transport to the place in the photo. Something about the scene blocked his magic.
Grace had much the same problem, but her message was more cryptic, and she came to deliver it in person. She was a pretty young woman with titian hair and a permanent limp from an old injury, and her lover Khalil stood protectively by her side.
“This may not be useful,” the young Oracle said. “So I don’t want take too much of your time, but there’s something about us that isn’t in focus.”
On the other side of the conference table, Dragos paced as he listened. “What do you mean?”
“I’m trying to put it into words.” She looked frustrated and gestured at the whiteboard on one wall. “They are over there—wherever there is—and we can’t see them properly.”
Rune bit out, “That’s not news.”
“I know.” She gave him a compassionate glance. “Bear with me. I think the concept is important. All we have to do to see them better is… adjust our lens. It’s not just that they’re hidden. That’s on their side of things. I’m talking about our side of things.”
Dragos frowned. “We are not doing something that we could be doing to see them better.”
“Exactly,” the Oracle said. “There is something we are not seeing that we could be seeing. I keep getting a camera image—changing the focus. Changing how we see the focus. Maybe even changing who sees the focus. The point is, we either have information or an image of something that we are not seeing properly.”
Dragos looked at Rune. “That’s a big difference from not having information.”
“Yeah, okay.” Rune ran his fingers through his hair. “But what are we not seeing?”
Dragos looked at Grace. “You said three things. Changing the focus, changing how we see the focus, and changing who sees the focus. And it’s all about the camera.”
She blew out a frustrated sigh and lifted her hands. “That’s all I’ve got. I’m sorry, I wish it was more.”
“Has everybody in the wedding party seen the video footage we have of the kidnappers?” he asked. Graydon’s mate Beluviel, who was also quite pregnant, was an elder from the Elven demesne in South Carolina and had once been one of the leaders. While there were Elven communities all over the world, and it was unrealistic to hope Bel could know all of them, the scar across the Elven woman’s face was distinctive, and it was worth a shot. “Collectively we all hold a great deal of information. Call everyone together. Have them go through the still photos and watch the footage.”
It took almost an hour for all thirteen members of the wedding party to leave their various tasks and converge on the conference room, including Dr. Medina. Bel had been at the hospital, monitoring Eva’s progress, and she was one of the last to arrive.
It was all Dragos could do to keep from snatching her up and physically plopping her into a seat. As soon as Bel stepped inside, he said, “Play the footage and pass the photos around.”
This is probably a waste of time, Rune muttered telepathically.
He shot a glare at the gryphon. We’ve got nothing else to try.
He watched Bel intently. When the footage reached the part where one of the kidnappers slammed the butt of the gun into the back of Eva’s head, the beautiful woman winced. “Concentrate,” he said to her. “Do you recognize that Elf?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. Do you mind if I send one of the photos of her around to some people? Maybe to my stepson, Ferion?”
Ferion was now Lord of the Elven demesne in South Carolina, and while Dragos would never be liked by the Elves, Pia was quite popular with them. They would care about her well-being.
Dragos told Bel, “Please do—but only to those whose discretion you can rely upon. If we go too public with these photos, we might goad them into treating Pia and Carling with more cruelty.”
“I understand.” She gave him a sober look.
As she took pictures of several photos with her cell phone, he turned to the others. “The rest of you—do you see anything?”
“We’re going to watch it again,” Rune said.
No one complained. Every one of them pored over the footage and the photos, Grace too. Dragos sent all the Wyr up to the rooftop to see if any of them got a hit off the scents. As the day plummeted to evening, he summoned Dr. Medina over.
“She had emergency syringes with her, but her purse isn’t with her in the photo,” he said in a low voice.
Medina didn’t sugarcoat anything, which was something that Dragos normally liked about her. She told him, “I’ll assemble an emergency medical team to be on standby. If you have ever been inclined to bargain with a Djinn, now would be the time to do so.”
He closed his eyes. There seemed to be no limit to the depths of this plunge. “Understood. Khalil?”
Instantly, the Djinn left Grace’s side and crossed the room. “Yes?”
“We need another Djinn. Your help is invaluable, but we need someone who will stay exclusively with Medina and her medical team.”
Khalil’s physical form was that of a tall, imperious-looking man with long raven hair and the signature piercing, diamond-like eyes of the Djinn. He frowned. “My daughter is away. I will find someone suitable.”
“Tell them the Lord of the Wyr will owe them a favor,” Dragos said.
“No,” Grace said as she joined them. “I have so many Djinn who owe me favors, I will never be able to use them all in one lifetime. Let me do this for you.”
“Thank you,” Dragos told her. “I won’t forget it.” Raising his voice, he spoke to everyone in the room. “I won’t forget how all of you have helped.”
Sometime later, as he stood at one of the large picture windows watching the sunset, Beluviel stood so quickly her chair toppled over behind her. Dragos spun around.
Waving her phone in the air, she said loudly, “I’ve got it! I’ve got her name! A member of Ferion’s council recognized her. It’s Caerlovena!”
Duncan and Seremela looked at each other, their expressions flaring with excitement. Duncan said, “We know that name, although we never met her. She was in Devil’s Gate when we were there.”
“Where’s Devil’s Gate?” Rune leaped at a computer console and began typing.
“It’s in northwest Nevada. There’s a kind of modern-day gold rush going on out there—only what people are looking for is magic-sensitive silver. We negotiated with Malphas there and got Seremela’s niece out of some serious trouble.”
In another part of the room, Luis rubbed his mouth and said, “That ‘gold rush’ has been going on ever since Claudia and I uncovered the slave ring where they were mining in Nirvana. I heard they’ve been building an actual town in Devil’s Gate.”
Dragos had heard of it too. He always paid attention to anything involving precious metals and jewels. But at the moment none of that mattered. The only thing that did matter was the snick he felt as the information came together. Now he understood what Grace meant by coming into focus.
Rune said with fierce triumph, “I’ve got latitude and longitude coordinates.”
“Caerlovena,” the dragon breathed. Smoke poured out of his mouth and swirled around the conference-room floor.
In that moment there was nothing sweeter than the taste of his prey’s name on his lips.