by Lauren Dane
There were dark magics all around. Still poking at the edges of the bodies of these loved ones of Rowan. Holy fire would close all doors to any malicious intent.
Genevieve’s power lit Brigid’s vision as if she glowed white hot. The workings the witch employed came from a dizzying array of sources. And the witch, a very old one indeed, had established strong protective bonds with the Vessel.
She approved.
Her own magic, flames and heat, rose from the earth, pouring into Brigid until she overflowed. The words caught the energy and sent holy fire, blue and orange, high into the air.
The witch did the same with her own power, creating licks of mage fire that twined with Brigid’s.
The heat was a baptism as well as a pyre.
* * *
When Rowan came back to herself, there was nothing left of the bier or the bodies. The fire She and Genevieve had created burned everything clean.
“Farewell, my brother, sister and her husband. Blessed journey,” Rowan said, tears tracking down her cheeks as she let go of the grief that had attached itself to her like a lodestone.
It too was burned clean. Her sadness and loss would always be with her, but that heaviness, the way it had constricted around her chest had passed into something else.
A new becoming. Much like Rowan as the Vessel.
She took Clive’s hand and squeezed. “Let’s go get some wrath on.”
Chapter Eighteen
They headed straight to the first address. One of the sorcerers in the desert. He lived in an apartment in West Covina.
Pru had picked them up at the private Nation owned airport and driven them straight over as she went through the details with Rowan.
The small complex was pretty old-school Los Angeles. Nothing very fancy. Less than twenty units in a two story building that surrounded a small courtyard with a pool. Some people were out and about, but no one even looked at them twice as they ascended the stairs and headed to the corner unit.
No one had been there since the day before when Pru and her team had searched. Genevieve went through the place looking for magical threads while Clive did his Vampire thing.
“No one has really lived here for at least half a year,” Clive said after an hour or so. “There’s not a lot of human energy here. Nothing Vampire either.”
Genevieve nodded, agreeing with him. “No traps or hiding places either.”
They headed to the second house on the list, a single family home in Norwalk. There’d been human energy there because the sorcerer had a girlfriend who lived with him. She’d been sent away on a work trip so fortunately they were alone for the search.
“There’s a magical imprint here,” Genevieve murmured as she examined the dining room. “Similar to what I found at that working circle in the desert.”
Rowan knelt to look closer at the spot Genevieve had indicated and suddenly found herself shot full of dark, malicious magic. So much her body shifted several feet back.
She couldn’t breathe. That darkness choked her. Rowan fought off panic, the lessons at the hands of The First had given her muscle memory in the face of a violent attack.
A chill came over her then, as if her veins began to fill with ice. Her heart struggled against that cold. Struggling to continue beating.
The fire in her belly that was Brigid flared, fought against that darkness.
* * *
One moment Clive had been trying to figure out just exactly what about the Vampiric energy he’d sensed was so familiar and the next he’d nearly lost his knees as Rowan’s body skidded back into a nearby dining room chair.
Her eyes had gone cloudy, as if she was so far away, and their bond thrummed with adrenaline, arced with pain.
He rushed to pick her up from where she’d slumped into a heap, half sitting, half lying on her side, but Genevieve shot a hand out with a sharply ordered, “Stop.”
She dropped to her knees next to Rowan’s body, looking her over closely. “I know you’re worried but until I figure out what the spell is doing to her, I don’t know if it can spread to you through touch. And I don’t know if your blood would make things worse or better, so don’t push that either. I’ll tell you what I need.” And then she focused everything on Rowan.
The Hunters who’d accompanied them fanned out and set up a protective perimeter.
Genevieve began to mutter while her fingers did a slow dance, speeding up as the witch began to speak louder. Ordering, arguing, taunting.
David stood at Clive’s side, tensed, Clive knew, to stop him if he tried to get to Rowan again before Genevieve gave the approval.
Clive redoubled his efforts to remain still. He plotted the death of everyone involved in any way with the spell currently trying to kill his wife.
“She’s going to be all right,” David said.
Because the words had held a question, Clive nodded and clapped David’s shoulder. “Yes. She’s too stubborn to die.”
He knew it. He knew her. He had to continue to trust the strength of his wife and the power of the witch currently yelling into Rowan’s face at her to fight and wake up in English before going back to whatever mix of languages she’d been working her magic in.
Clive’s senses filled with the scent of blood suddenly so thick in the air his incisors descended and he knew his eyes had gone into bloodlust.
“Bring me that trash can,” Genevieve ordered.
David shifted, moving quickly to obey. Making it to Rowan just before the shouted order from Genevieve. Rowan’s body arched, the pain shredding through their bond.
David put his arms around Clive and dug in, holding him in place. Though both knew that if Clive had wanted to overpower him, it would have happened.
* * *
Rowan came back to herself as she was puking out the grossest looking stuff she’d ever seen. If she hadn’t been currently vomiting, she sure would have after seeing what had been inside her.
“What the fuck!” she managed to croak as Genevieve handed her a handkerchief Rowan recognized as one of Clive’s.
She felt as if she’d been hit by a truck and then dragged behind it for a few miles. Every muscle in her body ached.
“You’re free to move now, Vampire,” Genevieve told Clive, who rushed over so quickly he couldn’t hide the fear and panic on his features.
Clive looked her over carefully before brushing the hair back from her face. “Hunter, darling, I really must insist you stop this nonsense at once. I’m quite sure you took a century off my life just this week.”
“It was a spell. A fairly sophisticated one at that. It unloaded right into you before I could stop it.”
“I didn’t touch it!” Rowan accepted the glass of water David handed her and took several small sips. She tried not to remember that feeling of drowning right before Brigid had taken over that fight.
Genevieve shook her head as she ran her hands over Rowan’s skin once they got her into a chair. “No, you didn’t touch it. But you triggered it anyway.”
“So I set it off because I’m me or because I’m not you? Or because you have special witch shields? Why?”
Genevieve said, “Why indeed? That’s the big question and I think the answer will give us a lot more information as to who is responsible for this.”
“Is it all gone?”
“You fought it off and got rid of it.” Genevieve held up the trash can but it was empty.
“Where did the goo go?” Rowan asked.
“It was magic. It dispelled. It’s gone. I gave you a very thorough once-over. I promise.”
“I feel like a damned weakling,” she muttered.
“Rowan, I don’t want to alarm you, but frankly anyone else would have died from that spell. It was meant to tear you apart. Stop your heart and melt your internal organs. You and your Goddess fought it. With my help of
course.”
“I smelled Vampire blood,” Clive said, still frowning.
“When?” Genevieve demanded.
“Right before you asked for the trash can.”
“He went into bloodlust,” David said. “But I smelled nothing.”
“I didn’t scent anything either. But that moment was one where I broke the hold the spell had on Rowan. Right before I could grab it to pull it free.”
Genevieve moved back to the place the spell had been before it’d exploded all over Rowan. For long moments she fiddled around and did that muttering thing before she turned back to them. “This is a lot like the trapped hiding spot we found in London,” she said of the secret spot they found in a former Hunter’s home. That hidey-hole had been full of evidence damning him and several of his compatriots.
Some of those compatriots had been hunters and some had been sorcerers. Which meant this was all connected.
Genevieve continued speaking. “Vampire blood was the cork. Cork? Sprinkles on the top? It provided the last bit of power used to set that spell into place. I don’t know if it was willing or unwilling blood, though given the strength of that working, I’d say it was willing and full of intent.”
She waved a hand back to that spot. “And now that I got rid of it and the obfuscation spell, you can see there’s a hiding spot. There are no magical traps, but there might be physical ones.”
The expression on Clive’s face as Rowan tried to stand nearly made her laugh. But she knew what it felt like to see someone you loved terribly injured so it wouldn’t have been fair to mock him.
“I’m okay. I promise,” she told him quietly. “You can feel it through the bond, right?”
“I can feel how tired you are,” he said through a clenched jaw.
“This is my hunt. I have to look or the kids will think I’m a pushover and keep trying to set up duels with me on main street. I don’t have the time for that.”
“I’m not in a joking mood, Rowan.”
She risked an eye roll and moved past him. Slowly but surely. He snarled but followed her over as they checked out the hidden space that’d been on the other side of the spell.
There was one last trap she easily disarmed before she pulled out a few stacks of cash with notes on each.
“Payoffs perhaps,” she said. A small notebook filled with weird symbols was next. Genevieve snatched it from Rowan’s hands.
“He shouldn’t have this.” She paged through.
“Was that like his grimoire or whatever?” Rowan asked.
Genevieve scowled. “He was a low level user. He’s the diversion the real power behind all this throws at enemies. Like that real power did against us and that got him killed. Because he’s nothing but meat. There’s no way he could have worked any of this.”
“Did he steal it then? Is it someone else’s?” The whole situation just got weirder and weirder.
“Perhaps.” Genevieve stood. “I have to talk with the Conclave Senate about this. The contents of this book are incredibly dangerous. And I believe some of this at least is connected to the lattice spells from your apartment.”
Rowan would have snatched the book right back if it had been anyone else. “What else can you tell from it? Can you link it back? Find out who wrote the spells or whatever?”
“These are bits and pieces of other spells and workings. A lot of it is older than I am. Arcane. I need to show it to someone who can translate before I can say anything else.”
* * *
Clive let her go to the next two places to search but when they found all they could, he pounced.
“Since I know you won’t do this another night after you’ve rested, I’m going to make a deal with you,” he said once they were in the car headed to the first of the two Vampire clubs they were going to check out that night.
“We don’t have enough room in this car to have sex,” she said.
He sighed. “There’s always enough room to have sex,” he said. “My deal is this. You need me to get into these clubs. Need me to get Vampires to talk to you.”
“I can beat them the fuck up until they talk. I don’t need you for that. I don’t even have a purse for you to hold.”
“I’m at the end of a very frayed rope, Rowan. You were nearly killed tonight. Again. I’m not interested in sexy banter with you while you dance around simply agreeing to do something for me. Which is actually for you.”
“Okay so if a blow job isn’t part of this deal, what do you want?”
“You’ll agree to eat before we go over to the first club. I checked. There’s a restaurant across the way. You can keep watch through the front windows. It’s only ten. A club like that won’t even be half full yet.”
“We have stuff to do. I can’t take a dinner break right now.”
“You bloody well will,” he said, ice in his tone. “I have had to stand by and watch you suffer. Feel your pain, your guilt and grief and loss. Tonight there was nothing I could do while you lay there on the floor, writhing in pain as a spell tried to tear you apart. You will sit down and eat and drink water and not joke about nearly dying. Not tonight. I cannot take any more.”
She took a deep breath and then reached over to take his hand. “Okay.”
Since it was just the two of them in the car with the rest of the group following in another, he brought her wrist to his mouth and kissed it, feasting on her pulse.
“Vampires are part of this. Which means the Blood Front isn’t gone. Or that there’s more than one secret organization of Vampires working with sorcerers using gross dark magic,” Rowan said after a short while.
“Yes. And someone close to me and at high levels within the Nation is involved.”
“When Theo figures this out things might get really bad,” Rowan whispered.
It sent shivers through him. The knowing in her tone. Anger replaced the fear though. Anger at the knowing he had of the things she suffered through her life at the hands of The First.
Complicated didn’t begin to describe his in-laws.
“The Scions can’t beat him,” she said as they pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant he’d told her they were going to.
She meant he shouldn’t try to band together with the other Scions to kill The First and take over leadership. He’d be lying to say he hadn’t thought of it from time to time. Especially once he began to learn more about their leader’s instability.
The closer he’d been to The First, the more Clive believed Rowan was right.
“One problem at a time, Hunter.”
* * *
“Go ahead and get it over with,” Clive said as they settled into a booth with the aforementioned view of the club across the way.
“It’s too easy.” Rowan waved a hand. “You guys name your stuff the most ridiculous things. It’s not even fun to mock. Blood Noir. I mean.” She shrugged after an eye roll.
“I hasten to point out these are not Nation Vampire clubs.”
“Yeah, because there’d be more German if it was. Nothing says totally normal nightclub like some seventeen letter German word for ingesting blood after you ate too much sausage or whatever.”
Clive did laugh then.
Genevieve returned to the table after she’d gone to make a phone call to the Senate. The expression she wore made Rowan smirk. She wasn’t the only one who hated dealing with other people, apparently.
“Trouble?” David asked.
“The Conclave starts day after tomorrow. This was unexpected business to add to the agenda. More lists. More rules. More meetings.” Genevieve sighed.
It was a good thing Rowan wasn’t a witch. They adored rules more than Vampires did. All the meetings ran with a sort of supercharged Robert’s Rules of Order for days on end. It sounded like hell.
“I too need to speak with some of my people here in Los An
geles. Especially because I’m Scion. They need leadership and to be able to trust in the hierarchy that holds us together. If I don’t obey those rules, how can I expect them to?” Clive asked.
“I get it. I promise I’m not going to run over there like a character in a teen horror flick. Go.” Rowan nudged him with a shoulder. “Just don’t expect me to save you any bread.”
She grabbed a slice of the warm, slightly sweet, dark wheat bread and pretended she didn’t see him give David a look that told him to make sure she ate more than just bread.
Rowan knew the spell was gone. Knew it in her heart and her mind. But there was no denying how shaken it had left her. Clive had told her how terrified he’d been when the spell had hit her.
She’d heard the truth in his words. Had seen it on his face when she’d come back to consciousness.
He wasn’t the only one who was terrified.
Being on the verge of death wasn’t a novel experience in her life. It had happened far too frequently. She could combat melee weapons, carried handguns and was excellent at hand-to-hand combat.
But the magic that had attacked her—had gotten inside her—wasn’t something she knew how to fight. Defenseless wasn’t something Rowan did well. When challenged with something, the thought that she could just pummel it to victory was her general assumption.
She needed to find a way to punch magic in the throat.
* * *
An hour and a half later, dealing with the insufferableness of Vampires in a social setting, Rowan just wanted to punch them in the throat.
They’d come into the club and had fanned out, just getting a feel for the situation and who all was there.
“I’m astounded at the variety of cliché Vampire in here,” she muttered to herself as she took the place in. Knots of Vampires feeding from humans clearly way too inebriated or glamoured to have been able to consent were set up at booths lining the far wall and even on the dance floor.
