“Maybe Zoltan sold the dragon blood after all,” I mused as we drove up in Dimitri’s van. I’d left my Jeep at a park in town, trusting that we wouldn’t need to go off-roading tonight.
Dimitri shook his head, his neck already armored in his white cervical collar. “He didn’t.”
“The real-estate agent must have finally found a sucker. And cleaned up the blood in the driveway and the slightly exploded playhouse in the back. Maybe the owners dropped the price. A lot.”
“It’s not a bad house.” Dimitri looked wistfully at it as he parked on the opposite side of the street, even though it didn’t look like his style. “I mean, it’s a hideous amalgam of architectural styles, and those nubs on the roof don’t make any kind of structural sense, but I’d take it anyway. It’s peaceful out here but not that far to Seattle. You could build a huge workshop in the back.”
Dimitri grabbed a toolbox and a canvas grocery bag with the remainder of Zoltan’s merchandise from the back of the van. His bed and belongings were covered in unsold yard art, but I’d helped him move quite a few pieces. He’d been flummoxed by my method of pricing objects based on what I guessed people could pay, but it had evened out by the end of the day, and I hadn’t shorted him.
Dusk was settling as we strolled past the house—fortunately, neither the real-estate agent nor any HOA patrollers were around to stop us—and to the vampire’s dominion. I eyed the broken door warily, but Dimitri went around to the back, where there was a secret entrance to what had once been a root cellar. He nudged a root in the grass to open it, then clomped down wide earthen stairs, ducking low to keep from hitting his head.
“Any security systems on this side we need to worry about?” I considered summoning Sindari as I followed Dimitri down. I didn’t sense any dark elves this time, or any other magical beings lurking around the property, so the only trouble might come from Zoltan himself. His aura placed him in the laboratory I’d visited before.
“He said they wouldn’t bother me.”
“Will they bother me? I’m unexpected.”
“In all senses of the word.” Dimitri smirked back at me.
“Ha ha. I’m debating if I should summon Sindari. Cats like spiders.”
It had been more than twelve hours since our battle that morning, so he should have had time to magically heal the majority of his wounds.
“Including giant tarantulas?”
“He’s always up for a challenge.”
Dimitri used his phone’s flashlight app as he walked past dusty shelves filled with jars of what I at first thought were tomatoes and pickles from some long past harvest. But they were fetuses, organs, and who knew what other disgusting things a vampire alchemist collected. Did he do biology experiments too? I didn’t want to know. I walked past quickly, also not wanting to know if they were human.
“Great place to bring a date on Halloween,” I muttered. “If the girl you met at the club likes being scared, I highly recommend it.”
He gave me a weird look over his shoulder.
“What? Is there a girl? Or did you make that up because you’re not interested in Nin? I think you could just tell her. She’s got a lot going for her. It’s not like she’d be crushed if you’re not interested.”
“I never said it was a girl.”
“What do you mean?” Sometimes, I was exceedingly swift.
“I mean Sindari would be closer to my type.”
“Animals?”
“Guys.” This time, he gave me an are-you-dense look over his shoulder.
“Oh.” I followed him through a secret door and into a dark tunnel. “In that case, you shouldn’t have been upset about the BMW-lumberjack calling you later.”
“He wanted to call you.”
“You’re the one he gave five dollars. Maybe he swings both ways.”
I couldn’t even interpret the third look. I touched my charm and summoned Sindari, more because I needed a rescue from my bumbling half of the conversation than because I expected another tarantula.
Dimitri had reached the door to Zoltan’s abode, but he waited while the tiger formed.
Is it time for another battle? Sindari asked as soon as he solidified.
I hope not, but be prepared. We’re visiting Zoltan.
I see Dimitri is better armed this time. Sindari wandered up and sniffed the canvas grocery bag with avocados, bananas, and strawberries on the side. This smells like lilacs and rattlesnake venom.
That’s what you get when you carry stuff for an alchemist.
“Sorry I don’t have any cat food.” Dimitri knocked on the door.
Cat food! Sindari glared at me. Does he believe I would eat mush made for small domestic felines?
“Sindari doesn’t need to eat while he’s in our realm,” I informed Dimitri. “But if he were to eat, it would be a steak, not a can of cat food.”
A steak? I would prefer the steaming bloody liver from a fresh kill. A zebra or a syrentitops, perhaps. Yes.
You and Zoltan should get along well. He’s into steaming blood too.
The door opened before Sindari could respond, and the red glow of the laboratory’s infrared lights flowed out into the tunnel.
“Ah, my robber and my business partner.” Zoltan was dressed in a sharp gray suit with a white button-down shirt and red bowtie. “Excellent timing. I’m working on a project you can help me with, Dimitri.” His dark eyes narrowed as he regarded me. “And perhaps you can help me test it when it’s complete.”
“Lucky me.”
Dimitri walked in after him but only took a few steps before staring at a pile of circuit boards and metal parts on the floor. “Is that it?”
“It will be.” Zoltan strolled to a counter that had been full of chemistry equipment the last time I’d been here. Now it held welding tools and a giant metal…
“Is that a spider head?” I asked.
“A fused head and thorax, yes.” Zoltan beamed. “I am replacing my biological tarantula with a robot version that I will infuse with alchemical power. It will be a superior defender of my humble abode. It also will not smell of spiders, and it will make less of a mess if it’s destroyed.” His pleased expression transformed into one of utter distaste. “You do not know how long it took me to get rid of the smell and the stains. And the carcass itself.” He flattened a palm to his chest and shook his head. “I had to drag the body way out to that trail back there. I couldn’t leave it to decompose near my home, or there would have been all manner of rodentia swarming the area.”
“So it’s decomposing on one of the most popular riding trails in town?” I asked.
“I believe some park rangers came one morning and discreetly disposed of it. Thankfully. That whole incident was dreadful. I should have you slain on principle for leaving such a vile mess.”
I rested a hand on Sindari’s back. “I knew I was wise to come with allies.”
Zoltan looked to where Dimitri had fallen to his knees in front of the parts and was already sorting them like someone prepared to build a LEGO structure. “I believe that is my ally.”
“Oh no. I put on a dress and sold metal doohickeys for him all afternoon. He’s definitely my ally.”
“Doohickeys?” Dimitri threw me an aggrieved expression. “Art, Val. Functional, magical, and aesthetically pleasing art.”
“Zoltan,” I said, “I was wondering if you could look at a few things for me.”
“Is our deal not complete? Pardon my rudeness, Ms. Thorvald, but you are not welcome among the magical community, and as you can tell, I haven’t quite forgiven you for removing my loyal guardian from me.”
It sounded like it was more the mess that had aggrieved him than some fondness for the giant tarantula.
“Today, I sold four tins of your Scorpion Stinger, two of the Fount of Youth skin rejuvenator, and nine bars of your no-more-ingrown-hairs ox-horn shaving soap.”
“Please, come tell me what you need.” He flashed his fangs at me and patted the counter beside
him.
Keeping a wary eye on those fangs, I pulled out my purloined cartridges from the Pardus house. “First off, have you heard of the Pardus brothers?”
“Certainly. They sell magical weapons and are high-ranking officers in the Northern Pride.”
It seemed everyone knew about that association but me. I should have come here first.
“I’m hoping you can tell me whose work this is. I believe someone is selling magical cartridges—maybe even the weapons themselves—to the Pardus brothers and that they’re reselling them to clients.” It had occurred to me that I might have an easier time turning the screws on their supplier than on the brothers themselves, and that might give me a bargaining chip when it came to negotiations. If their supplier stopped making things for them, there would be nothing for them to sell. “Also, I have a notebook I got from the dark-elf alchemist when I was in their lair, and I’d like you to translate it for me.”
“You want so much of my valuable time, so much valuable information. How many bars of the ox-horn soap did you say you sold?”
“Nine. All in all, I made two hundred dollars for you.”
“By yourself?” Zoltan looked over his shoulder. “Is this true, Dimitri?”
“Yes. Apparently, I have a face for internet sales.”
Zoltan’s smooth pale brow wrinkled.
“I also got you that vial of dragon blood,” I reminded him. “You mentioned it was worth slightly more than two hundred dollars.”
“Indeed, indeed. So it is. I was delighted to show my interweb protégés how to make lyngurium with it, a stone capable of healing everything from gallbladder stones to jaundice. There’s much misinformation about lyngurium on the interwebs—many sources say it’s solidified lynx urine, can you believe?—but dragon blood is the true key ingredient. My instructional video has already been watched over a million times.”
“There are that many people with jaundice?”
“Gallbladder stones, my dear robber. Unfortunately, none of my young acolytes have access to dragon blood. Yet. I am considering starting a mail-order ingredients business. For the right price, I could part with a few drops of that liquid gold.” Zoltan pressed his fingers to his lips and kissed them flamboyantly, then tapped the cartridges. “I recognize the signature of the enchantment melted into the metal of these projectiles, yes. There’s a local enchanter who works for a fence company here in Woodinville. They install enhanced wrought-iron and chain-link barriers designed to keep out werewolves, zombies, and other savages. Given how easy it is for assassins to intrude upon my domicile, I may have to consider purchasing one of their fences.”
“Don’t you think the new homeowners will believe it odd if their carriage house is behind bars?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m sure they won’t be here for long. They never are. Strange, isn’t it? I’m a charming neighbor. And a deterrent to riffraff. Most riffraff.” Zoltan gave me a pointed look. “Only the Mythic Murderer would wander willingly into a vampire’s abode.”
“Not only.” I pointed to Dimitri, who was now using pliers and a wrench to make a spider leg.
“He’s an invited guest, not riffraff.”
“You found someone who isn’t intimidated by your stature, Dimitri.” I pulled out my phone to look up the fencing businesses. “Is this it?”
I pointed to the only one in the list that mentioned enhanced offerings.
“It is, yes,” Zoltan said distractedly. He’d pulled over the notebook to study.
Assuming it took a while to translate a language, I made myself wait patiently for an entire minute. “Anything interesting?”
“Perhaps, but I’ll have to dig out my academic tomes on languages to find out. Unlike that sigil you brought me, these pages aren’t in the dark-elf alchemical language.”
“One of the other three?” I remembered him explaining that the dark elves had four.
“Yes. The one reserved for religious ceremonies, I believe. It will not be a simple matter to translate it.” Zoltan straightened and looked at me, his gaze drifting to my neck.
“How many bars of shaving soap do I have to sell to make it worth your while? You’re not getting my blood.”
“No? That’s unfortunate. I can tell you’ve been in the presence of dragons again.” His dead eyes gleamed like wet marbles. “More than one. Amazing. It’s like you’re a magnet to them.”
“The only thing amazing is how inadequate my loofah is. I can’t believe I spent twelve dollars on an extra-fibrous one and it doesn’t get dragon aura off me.”
“Believe it or not, I wasn’t going to ask for remuneration. You can simply owe me a favor.”
I shook my head. “I refuse to owe people favors. Or anything else.”
“Yet you ask for them.”
“I’m not asking for a favor. I’ll pay you for your time. Why don’t you translate the pages, find out what the information is, and then give me a fair price? I’ll decide if I’m willing to pay it. If I’m not, maybe someone else will be so you won’t have wasted your time.” I wondered if Willard’s department had funds dog-eared for information on the dark elves.
“Has it occurred to you that the dark elves might want their notebook back, and that I could be in danger while translating it?”
Actually, it hadn’t. The alchemist was dead and their lair was in disarray. Who would even know the notebook was missing?
“I am assuming that you stole it from them,” Zoltan continued. “They wouldn’t give this to their closest ally, much less an enemy. You are a robber, aren’t you?”
“I am not.” Memories of Zav calling me a criminal came to mind. I had stolen the notebook, but my mind refused to accept that it had been an ignoble act. “The alchemist was trying to kill me. I only grabbed that because I was seeking the ingredients to make a concoction to fix my lungs. You were the one to tell me the ingredients for that, by the way. Thank you.”
“You are most welcome, but I am positive I didn’t list dark-elf diary pages among the ingredients.”
“Is that what you think those are? I assumed they were from an alchemy recipe book.”
Zoltan smiled enigmatically. “We shall see.”
11
Sunday morning found me with my bare feet and hands planted on a mat in a downward-dog position. The fence manufacturer in Woodinville, my only lead, wasn’t open on the weekends, and Willard had told me to stay away from the Pardus house, so my investigation was at a stand-still.
What better use of my time than to contort myself into strange positions that caused my T-shirt to dangle about my head? Now I understood the need for a yoga-specific wardrobe. We’d been holding the position for five breaths, supposedly, but I was positive it had been five minutes. I was thinking about my daughter instead of listening to the instructor guide me through an unpronounceable form of breathing that involved channeling Darth Vader and the back of my throat.
While waiting for the class to start, I’d seen a social-media post from Amber, not the usual swim-meet information, but something about a book she was struggling with for her last school essay of the year. I’d read it, even though it had been long ago, and had the urge to call her and ask if she wanted to talk through her ideas for her paper. But it had been ages since we’d spoken, and she would probably hang up or be horrified if I called.
Mary, the therapist I’d seen a few times now, wanted me to reestablish a relationship with my daughter, even though I kept assuring her that was a bad idea. I made new enemies every month—every time I walked into someone’s moss-covered, sagging mobile home. It was better that none of them knew I had a family.
Knowing that didn’t keep me from feeling regretful and wishing things were different. I’d also caught a post from my ex-husband that morning mentioning that he and Amber were planning a trip to a lake in Northern Idaho this summer. I couldn’t help but imagine hanging out with them on some dock, having a normal familial relationship…
“I can’t hear you, Val,” the inst
ructor said in a sweet sing-song voice.
She was walking between the staggered yoga mats, saying a few words to people about their downward dogs—thankfully we were done flipping the dog now—and paused beside me.
“Uh?”
“Breathing. We’re working on our Ujjayi breathing. You need to inhale through your nose, fill your lower belly with air to activate your first and second chakras, then move the air up to exhale through your nose. You move your glottis as the air passes in and out of your throat to make the ocean sound.”
I rolled my eyes at the talk of chakras, made a note to later look up glottis, and wondered what it said about me that I would rather be fighting with the panther brothers than doing this. “Right. Ocean breathing. I’ll work on it.”
“Excellent. I want to hear you.” The instructor wandered off to harass someone else.
A clank, followed by glass breaking, came from a window at the front of the room. I jumped to my feet, reacting before the projectile—a grenade, damn it—hit the bamboo floor. Startled shouts came from the other people in the class. I sprinted up, grabbed the grenade, and threw it back out through the hole it had made in the window.
An explosion roared out in the street, fiery orange light flashing, and the windows shook under the force. The already-broken window shattered inward, glass tinkling across the hard floor. Women screamed and ran for the changing rooms. I ran and jumped out the window, grimacing as glass cut my bare feet.
Not only did I not have shoes, but my weapons were all in the Jeep. Fortunately, I wore my charm necklace and could call Sindari if needed.
The explosion faded as I landed on the sidewalk, crouching behind a mailbox for cover and looking for who had thrown the grenade. Tires squealed at a nearby intersection, and I glimpsed a truck peeling out of sight around the corner. That truck looked a lot like the white one that had been in the Pardus brothers’ driveway.
I was tempted to run after it—horns honked, promising plenty of traffic that would slow down their getaway—but I saw someone walking toward me wearing slippers and a black robe that wouldn’t fit in anywhere except maybe a fantasy gaming convention.
Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons Book 2) Page 8
