Silas leaned forward, bracing his elbows against his knees. “So, how did you stop this witch?”
Only Julius’s eyes shifted toward Silas, the rest of him unnaturally still. “I seduced her and tore her heart from her chest with my bare hands. Sorry, but I doubt that will work on Alex. From what I hear, he doesn’t swing that way.”
“So then, we have to stop him from getting the ingredients for the spell,” Grateful said. “He’ll need a demon, a dragon, and a vampire. We have the only dragon locked in a room in St. Johns.”
“What would he want with unconsecrated bones?” Silas asked.
“If they are a demon’s human bones, they can be used to summon a demon,” Julius said.
“A demon’s human bones? I didn’t think demons had bones, let alone human ones.”
“If a human allows a demon to possess him or her and then dies, the demon will live on but will maintain a connection to the human’s bones. Control the bones and you control the demon.”
“Fuck,” Silas said. “So, he has access to a demon.”
“And he also has a vampire.”
“He does? How do you know?”
“Because two of my coven went missing recently. A couple. Both with ankh tattoos. The vampire Silas saw stab himself in the chest is undoubtedly one of our missing brethren, the male. His mate is still missing.”
“Which means Alex has her.”
Julius nodded slowly.
“He still needs a dragon,” Grateful said. “And we have Nickelova locked down tight. We can still stop this. It’s not like you can find a dragon on every corner.”
“Fuck!” Silas grabbed his head as he bound from the frilly chair and paced the space in front of the fire.
“What is it?” Grateful asked.
Silas turned toward the witch and the vampire. “I no longer have Nickelova’s heart.”
Chapter 21
The last person to have Nickelova’s heart was Meredith. She’d told him she’d put it somewhere safe, but was that before or after she’d aligned herself with Alex? Or was she always helping Alex?
Intuition was the lifeblood of good detective work. You could have all the facts, all the witnesses, but to know the truth took a sixth sense, the ability to ask all the right questions and to fit all the pieces together. Silas’s intuition was humming. There was something off about this Meredith thing.
It wasn’t only that he loved her, and he did love her. He’d never told her as much, but he supposed his heart had leapt out of his chest and ran to her the moment she’d showed up at his stakeout and revealed her Crescent Star tattoo. How could she be helping Alex of her own free will after knowing the man killed her father? No. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that she was infected with sulfralite and under Alex’s control.
He jiggled her key in her lock and let himself into her small home. The stench of melted fabric burned in his throat. Damn. The couch was scorched like a campfire marshmallow. Had Soleil meant to kill him? Would she have stopped if Meredith hadn’t shot her? Maybe. But only because he relinquished Nickelova’s heart.
A scrape came from the bedroom, wood on wood like someone was opening a window.
He froze. Silently drawing his gun, he crept forward, his gaze sweeping into the kitchen. A pot steamed on the stove, smelling of garlic and onions. The burner was off. She was here.
Quickly but silently, he raced for the bedroom. The room was empty. A few pictures lay on the bed. Pictures of Meredith with her father and a woman who must be her mother—he’d never met her. What the fuck was this? A trip down memory lane?
The window was open. He caught a flash of red hair and pale skin in the back yard. With superhuman speed, he holstered his weapon and dove for the window. His foot slipped, his traction suddenly gone, but he pulled himself through the opening fast enough to catch sight of her sprinting toward town.
“Meredith!” He barreled after her.
The suburban neighborhood grew denser as they neared the heart of town. Meredith’s red head merged with a crowd of early evening shoppers, darting in and out of the quaint bistros and bookstores. He nudged through the crowd, zeroing in on her. She saw him. Damn it; she was taunting him on purpose. She glanced over her shoulder, caught his eye, and ducked into a bustling coffee shop.
He followed her inside, toward the back. For a second, he lost sight of her in the crowd.
“Hey! There’s a line,” a middle-aged woman yelled from outside the bathroom. He turned his head to see someone slip inside the ladies’ room.
Silas flashed his badge. The woman raised her hands in the air and backed against the wall. The door was locked. He kicked hard and fast. The wood splintered, the door swinging open on its hinges. Inside, there were two stalls, two sinks and no one in front of either. The toilet flushed, and a blond woman in a blue suit exited one of the stalls and rushed past him into the café. Silas checked the other stall. No sign of Meredith.
A light breeze blew through the restroom, and he glanced up at a small, open window. Too small for a human to fit through, but not too small for a fox. He slapped the wall and rushed for the exit.
“Hey! You’re going to have to pay for that door,” a man behind the counter yelled. Silas ignored him. As fast as he could move, he rounded the building, found the window from the outside, and searched the area. Nothing. Not a single footprint, fox or human. He sniffed the air. Nothing.
Defeated, he returned to her house, alone.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Silas. Nickelova is here, safely behind my enchantment,” Grateful said. “If Meredith has the heart or she gave it to Alex, she hasn’t tried to use it.”
“Weird.” Silas lifted the lid to the pot on Meredith’s stove with one latex-gloved hand. “She was here at her house. I lost her in the crowd when she ran.”
“What do you mean you lost her? You’re a goddamned werewolf. You are your own search-and-rescue dog. How could you lose her?”
Silas’s brows knit. “She had a stew boiling on the stove. It had onions and garlic in it, not to mention this place smells like a chemical fire. It masked her scent.”
“I thought you said you chased her into the street?”
He thought back. “I couldn’t smell her. I lost her in a coffee shop. It’s possible the smell of the coffee interfered with her scent.”
“I don’t like this. There’s something…”
“Off about this whole thing?”
“You feel it too?”
“Like an itch I can’t scratch.”
“Well, you better get a longer coat hanger to scratch that itch, because the lunar eclipse is only days away. If what Julius says is true, Alex will be finishing preparations and trying his best to fly under the radar. If we don’t find him soon, there will be literal hell to pay.”
“I’ve called in a team to collect evidence. I’m going to take a few pictures before I go.”
“Let me know when you leave. I’ll meet you at your house. We need a plan.”
He ended the call, then switched to camera mode to take a few pictures of the pot. The sofa was next, then the bedroom, and the open window. He lifted a picture off the bed, holding it up to the light. Meredith’s graduation from college. She stood between her mother and her father in her cap and gown. He remembered Meredith’s father; his bright red hair was something you didn’t soon forget. Grayson. He was a high-ranking member of Crescent Star. He’d never met Meredith’s mother, who stood on her other side. What was her name again? He didn’t remember. In the picture, he couldn’t help but think she looked like a gypsy with her black hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. He could see where Meredith got her brown eyes and red hair, a rare combination, but not surprising seeing her parents.
Should he call Meredith’s mother? It was possible she’d go to her to hide. He chided himself for not insisting he meet her. He’d have to check with the Lycanthropic Society secretary for her name and address. He returned the picture to its place on the bed
and left for home, right as the crime-scene team arrived.
“Be careful.”
Silas jumped at the whisper, turning from his car to find Grateful standing behind him in his driveway. “When did you get here?”
“Just now. Hey, didn’t you give Meredith a free pass through the enchantment around your house?”
Silas frowned. “Fuck.”
“Yeah. So I say again, be careful.”
He crept up to the front door. He could hear Maggie run to the door, her nails clicking on the hardwood. If Meredith had been there recently, he couldn’t tell. What traces of her scent he could pick up could have been from before. He entered the house with one hand on his gun.
“Looks okay,” he said.
Grateful nodded in agreement but didn’t lower her sword as she entered his living room. Silas scratched Maggie’s head, sniffing the air. “What the hell?” He turned the corner into his kitchen, shaking his head.
“What do you smell?”
“She was here.”
Grateful raised her sword higher.
“She’s not here now. Hours ago. Maybe yesterday. Her scent has faded. But she fed Maggie. She left the kibble out.”
“Why would she come here to feed your dog?”
“I have no idea.” He moved deeper into the room. “The door to my bedroom is closed. I know I left it open.”
“What if it’s a trap? There could be a bomb under the house for all we know, just waiting to be tripped by opening the door.”
“Wouldn’t Nightshade alert you if there was?”
“Nightshade detects supernatural threats, not physical ones.”
“I don’t think there’s a bomb. Why would she feed Maggie and then blow her up?”
“Why would she call an ambulance for Soleil and then inject her with something to kill her?”
“Touché.”
Grateful crowded up behind him with her sword, her pregnant belly bumping into his back. She murmured something and a wave of purple wrapped around both of them. “Protection spell. Stay close to me.”
“What about Maggie?”
She called the dog and Silas lifted the mutt into his arms. “She’s covered.”
“Okay, I’m going in.” He turned the knob and slowly opened the door. What he saw inside made his chest feel heavy. A wave of exhaustion overcame him. The horizon had flipped upside down. Nothing made sense anymore.
“It’s not a bomb,” he said.
Grateful peered around him toward the bed. “Holy crow! That is the one thing I did not expect to see here.”
There, on top of his comforter, was Nickelova’s heart.
Chapter 22
“If Meredith is helping Alex, why would she return the heart?” Silas lifted the fist-sized ruby from the bed, staring at the throbbing internal glow with stark curiosity.
“If she’s not helping Alex, why would she kill Soleil?”
Silas glanced at Grateful. “I have no idea.” He turned the events over in his head, but none of it made sense.
“Maybe she was magically compelled to do what she did, but then when the spell wore off, she returned this to me. Or she returned this to me before she was compelled, but that would mean Meredith purposefully shot Soleil.”
Grateful snorted. “Alex isn’t stupid. If he had Meredith in his employ for five minutes, he’d be sure to get that heart in four.”
Silas sighed. He didn’t like that he couldn’t draw a line from point A to point B. What did this mean? And how should he proceed with the case?
Grateful groaned and sheathed her sword. “I just thought of a reason.”
“Hit me.”
“She returned the heart to you because she wants you to use it.”
“Huh?”
“Nickelova will lead you to Alex. Alex probably needs Nickelova for the spell. She’s the dragon sacrifice. It’s a trap. He needs her, and this is a way to make sure she’s delivered.”
Silas set the heart down and backed up a step.
“What’s wrong? You don’t look so hot.” Grateful placed a hand on his shoulder.
“How could I be so stupid?” He stared at Grateful in horror. “Soleil tried to warn me. She said the heart was a trap. She wanted the heart back so that I couldn’t use it to get to Alex. She was trying to protect me. Alex doesn’t only need the heart; he needs Nickelova too. Everything that’s happened has driven us to bring Nickelova and her heart here. We’ve done his dirty work for him.”
“And Meredith killed her. She must have known Soleil had figured out the plan.”
“So what do we do? We’ve got to do something to stop Alex.” Silas’s pulse pounded like a bass drum against his sternum.
“Simple. You won’t play into his hands. You won’t use Nickelova to find Alex.”
His back pocket vibrated. With a deep breath, he answered his phone.
“Silas?” Kyle’s voice sounded annoyed.
“Yeah?”
“Can I talk to Laina for a minute? She’s not answering her phone.”
“Laina’s not here.” Why would he think Laina was with him?
“What are you talking about? You came by the cottage and picked her up. She left with you not five minutes ago. You said it was an emergency.”
Silas grabbed Grateful’s arm, fear draining all the warmth from his body. “Kyle, that wasn’t me.”
Hours later, it was evident Laina was gone. Silas, Jason, and Selene had searched the city for her while Polina attempted a locator spell. Gerty and Kyle enlisted the trees, sending word out through the forest fae to report any sight of Laina. And Rick and Grateful flew over rural Red Grove in shifts, searching for any clue to where Alex had taken her. But when they all met at Rivergate to discuss the results of their quest, Laina was nowhere to be found.
“He wants Nickelova and the heart. Alex will trade Laina for the dragon he needs,” Grateful said. She’d arrived alone, Rick returning home to watch Lucas.
“If I bring Alex his dragon fae, he’ll be able to complete the spell.” Silas rubbed the back of his neck. He had to do something. He refused to allow Alex to hurt Laina, but he wasn’t going to cave to terrorism either.
“I don’t care what he does with Nickelova. I want my wife back!” Kyle yelled. Gerty and Selene tried to comfort him.
Jason cracked his neck, a deep furrow appearing in his brow. “What if we turn the tables on his plan?”
“What are you suggesting?” Grateful asked.
“If Silas uses Nickelova to find Alex, maybe the rest of us can follow him in secret. Once we know where Alex is, we can act.”
Silas nodded slowly. “Polina, Logan said you couldn't see Alex’s future, but you can see mine, right?” He gestured at his chest.
Grateful held up a finger. “We can use Polina’s magic mirror to follow you. We’ll come to you as soon as we have a location.”
Polina nodded eagerly. “It will work. Logan can reach you in an instant.”
“Rick and I can follow from a distance,” Logan added. “We can cloak ourselves.”
“Build a trap out of Alex’s trap,” Kyle said. “It could work. It has to work.”
“I’ll go with Silas,” Jason said.
“It’s too risky, brother.”
“No, it’s too risky for you to go alone. Nickelova might try something funny. If I’m there, I can have your back.” One thing about Jason, the guy knew how to play the hand he was dealt.
“It’s a plan,” Silas said. “Jason and I will use Nickelova and the heart to find Alex. Grateful and Polina will observe us using magic. Once we lock onto Alex’s location, either Logan or Rick will come to our aid.”
“What about me?” Kyle asked.
“I need you and Gerty to stay at the cottage in case Laina comes back without us or the forest fae learn where she is. Selene needs to help here, managing preparations for the shift tomorrow. No one can know the royal family is at risk. It would cause a panic. We don’t know where he’s holding Laina. If so
mething goes wrong, all of you are our backup.”
After a brief conversation with Gerty, Kyle reluctantly agreed. “Do this for me, Silas. Bring my wife and my baby back alive.”
“I will,” Silas said, and he meant it.
“I’ll make preparations,” Grateful said.
Polina shrugged. “My silver is ready. No preparations are needed.”
“I need to find a babysitter,” Grateful mumbled.
Silas exchanged glances with the rest of the group. “We go first thing in the morning.”
Chapter 23
When Silas arrived at the hospital, he was surprised to find that Nickelova had fully recovered. Her skin was plump, her complexion vigorous. Even her platinum bob was back in place. Considering she’d still been bald less than a week ago, he took her full head of hair as certain evidence that magic was involved in her healing. He’d have to thank Grateful for her help after this was over. Come to think of it, he’d owe Grateful a debt of gratitude for a few things if they all came out of this alive.
“You’re looking better,” Silas said to Nickelova, the heart firmly in his hand. “You’ve gained weight.”
“That will happen when you’re forced to eat sixteen hours a day.” She refused to look at him, choosing to focus intently on a spot on the hospital wall instead. The room was a pit, covered in stacks of trays and strewn clothing. There were only two people who could tend to Nickelova: Grateful and her trusted friend Michelle. No one else could see, hear, or clean up after her, and by the looks of it, Nickelova didn’t feel the need to pick up after herself.
“It’s time to go. We need to find Alex.”
“Tomorrow night is the lunar eclipse. Trying to nip his plan in the bud?” She stage-whispered the last as if she were speaking to a small child. “I’m sorry to tell you, this plan is far beyond the bud stage.”
“Get dressed.”
“You can’t stop him, you know. No one has ever been able to stop Alex. Not even me. He thinks three steps ahead.”
Vengeance: A Knight World Novel (Fireborn Wolves Book 3) Page 15
