Vanya let out a sound of disgust. "Sacrifice? Did you see just how much we've parted with for this trifle?"
"Enough, Vanya! Go back to the car."
The head troll certainly didn't seem appreciative of Vanya's back talk when he let out a scream that seemed more fitting for the battlefield than the negotiation table. "You'd rather fight for treasure? We can arrange this."
The hair stood up on the back of Mace's neck as he watched Lyra's camera shuffle in the hubbub that ensued. The trolls seemed ready to strike, and Nikolai's father and most of the shifters tried to take the submissive role.
"My son is wrong in head." Nikolai's father put up his hands. "He is only one who wants fight."
"I have been insulted! And someone will pay for his insolence."
Mace watched in horror as Lyra walked right up to the head troll.
Mace gritted his teeth. "Lyra, get out of there."
"You want someone to pay?" The former hunter stood straight up as she spoke. "Consider me the banker."
Chapter 10
Lyra was so close to the head troll she could see movement beneath the outer translucent layer of the unhuman's skin. It was unsettling to say the least.
The creature seemed just as surprised as Nikolai was when she'd stepped forward into the accelerating tension of the room. She expected the surprise, though she didn't anticipate the smell from being that close to the hydrophobic creature.
"This is graver insult." The troll's teeth were black with decay in his mouth. "You send woman as sacrifice?"
Lyra wondered if Mace was pissing himself in the nearby van. "Nobody sent me for anything, Your Eminence. I'm here because I want to see this deal get done without anybody losing their head."
The troll let out what Lyra could only imagine was his version of a hideous laugh. "Lose head? Trolls bludgeon to death and use head as decoration!"
The other trolls by his side cheered, as if this was some kind of rah-rah mantra amongst their community.
Lyra considered the unhuman's weak points. In most cases, she'd be able to use her speed to get such a lumbering monster into a bad situation. But she was on troll turf, which meant that there would be few corners to turn where she could find an advantage. Going hand to hand with the unhuman would most likely turn her head into a troll sculpture. Using her mind was likely the only path to survival this time around.
She ran her hand through her hair. "I heard that trolls have a thing for human women. Do you find me pretty?"
"Do not have sex with that troll!" Mace's voice buzzed in her ear. "You have no idea where he's been."
Lyra made a mental note to stab the vampire the next time she saw him.
The troll examined her like she was a science experiment. "Yes. Is this an offer?"
Lyra shook her head. "Unfortunately, I'm already spoken for. But, I looked inside that chest that these fine gentlemen were willing to provide. You could certainly buy a lot of female companionship for all of those jewels."
The king troll nodded along with his subordinates. "You speak much truth. Are you sure you have no interest in being our first ..."
Lyra stepped away from the troll and lifted the lid of the chest. She picked up a weighty jewel and tossed it toward the king. He easily caught it in his massive slimy hand.
"It's your choice. Either you get shifter blood all over your hideaway, which is notoriously difficult to clean."
The trolls grunted their assent.
"Or, you give them the artifact, which you weren't doing anything interesting with anyway. And you trade these jewels to get a woman's touch around the place. And around whatever place you want a woman's touch."
The troll seemed to be coming around. "I like her plan." He turned toward Nikolai's father. "You send another chest of jewels after this one. Will bring twice as much women."
Yuri smiled. "Of course, Your Eminence. This is worthy cause."
The troll's tone turned joyous as he extended his arm and wrapped it around the head shifter's shoulder. "No fight. Today is celebration!"
The other trolls joined in a slimy fist-pumping hoorah. The other shifters looked toward her as they dragged the chest forward. One of the head troll's subordinates passed the weighty artifact to her. She didn't hesitate to take the gaudy wolf sculpture and covertly place one of Doug's analysis chips in an undetectable crevice.
She proudly presented the artifact to Yuri. "I believe this belongs to you."
Yuri nodded his approval. "It would not have happened without you. Nikolai all of sudden has good eye for women."
Lyra smiled over at her fake boyfriend, and he seemed to grin his thanks back.
On the entire way back to the mobster's suite, she put up with frustrated comments from the vampire on the other side of her comm.
"You could've been killed. Do you know how much force is behind a troll punch? He could've caved your entire body in."
While she wanted to shut off the incessant chatter, it was kind of comforting to hear Mace's voice after she'd put herself in such a dangerous situation.
When they reached the hotel, Lyra held back for a minute in the vehicle to say a few choice words to her own comrade. But when she did, she realized far too late that Vanya had waited for her as well.
Lyra raised an eyebrow. "Did you want to thank me in person? You know, for keeping you and your whole family from getting killed?"
Vanya growled. "I don't trust you. There is something you're hiding."
She smiled as she leaned back against the car. "My love for your brother? A desire to stay alive?"
The Russian stepped toward her, his breath blew against her face from point-blank range. "The second I find out what it is, I will destroy you. It may break brother's heart, but eating yours will make it worth it."
He finished with an in-her-face snarl before turning away and stomping through the hotel's lobby.
Lyra enjoyed being threatened about as much as the next person, but most threats didn't come under surveillance.
Mace huffed on the other end of the comm. "If you don't slit that guy's throat, I'd be happy to do it for you."
She sighed. "I'm way ahead of you." She thought of the long knife concealed in her outfit. "Way ahead of you."
Chapter 11
Doug felt as if he were conducting a symphony as his fingers moved across the keyboard to place the final lines of code in his algorithm. Rhea taught him where magic and mechanics intersected to allow him to track nearly every type of mystical energy they could think of. His tech wizardry and her actual wizardry allowed them to locate the bombs Lyra's former handler had placed around the city just a few months earlier. And now, as he finished off his own fugue state, Doug put the code on a program that would track the artifacts the Russian mobsters were after as well. As soon as the last code was put in place, Doug allowed the program to start compiling to do its work.
He leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Another masterpiece, Dougie Boy." He scrunched up his face. "Great, now Lyra has me saying it too."
He snatched a Sharpie marker from his desk and pulled out a list of shifter questions he'd tried to ask Nikolai before the Russian had left. He crossed out several, though he hadn't been able to find a right way to ask what happens to shifters in wolf form when they need to go to the bathroom.
"Next time. I'm sure there will be a next time."
He glanced over at his much longer list of questions for Lyra. While he'd never told Mace or Rhea, he'd put together the list long ago as part of a file he was collecting on the history of hunters. It had been deep in a forgotten corner of the internet that Doug first discovered the lore of the hunters. Whenever he'd told his parents or friends about their supposed history, he was met with nothing but blank stares and admonitions to stop spreading weird rumors online. But Doug refused to drop his obsession, and as he gained more knowledge on coding and robotics, he likewise pulled together facts from unlikely sources to complete his unabridged history of hunter mythology. Lyra had only b
een somewhat helpful in filling in the gaps, mostly chatting with him to remind him of a time he dropped a sandwich when she pulled a gun on him. But his efforts over the last decade had gotten him far more information than any one person had ever compiled on the women meant to beat back the vampire scourge.
Doug's monitor beeped to signify its first sweep of the city. As Nikolai had said, the Russians were in possession of most of the artifacts they needed to collect to do whatever it was they intended with the ancient sculptures. He could see six hits in the hotel the Russians were camping out in in the South Loop of the city.
He let out a low whistle. "I wonder how many chest of jewels you guys had to give up to gather those."
As he examined the results further, he saw another blip in what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse district. A few Google searches of the area showed nothing of interest in the far northwest corner of the city.
The computer programmer grumbled to himself. "It's always in some kind of abandoned something. Of course, it's never really abandoned, is it?"
Doug saw a strange phenomenon when the computer ran it's second search. He blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes just to make sure he was seeing things right. There were three more dots that appeared on the screen. Only they weren't showing up in some abandoned corner of town. The three additional artifacts he picked up seemed to be coming from the Hancock Tower itself, but more likely was that they were within 100 feet of where he currently sat.
"What in the heck?"
Doug tried to move on to other projects, but over the course of the next hour, his curiosity got the best of him. He took an old handheld tracking device and found a way to program it with the algorithm he just developed. It took some time to get it right, but in this job, there wasn't exactly a boss breathing down his neck. The device began working right away, and a faint beep turned louder as he seemed to get closer to the nearby artifact.
He smiled to himself. "Just follow your nose."
The tracker beeped louder as he entered a walk-in closet he'd never stepped foot in before. The tracker seemed to beep louder and louder as he reached the corner of the dark and dusty room. He flipped off the device as soon as he saw what it was tracking. The design was almost exactly the same as the images Mace had sent over, minus the wolf on the top. Whoever had made the artifacts the mobsters had traded so much for had seemingly made this one as well. And the computer program had accidentally found three of them in their very hideout.
Doug picked up the object in his hands, and even though he had no mystical powers himself, he could feel the buzzing energy emanating from the object.
"I wasn't supposed to find this." He started to breath a little heavier. "And I'm guessing there's only one person who would have hidden this here." He looked from left to right and placed the object back in its corner. "What do you do when the supernatural woman who signs the checks is keeping a major secret from everyone?"
Chapter 12
Lyra tiptoed around Nikolai's condo. While most of his Russian brethren stayed in the massive suite in the South Loop, he'd made sure to give himself a second lodging. Lyra ignored the possibility that this house was somehow connected to their blind date just a few days ago. She looked through the mostly bare shelves and bookcases. Mostly everything was covered in Russian scrawl, which she only had a passing familiarity with.
Mace's voice intruded on her snooping. "You see anything interesting in there?"
Lyra shook her head. "I know vampires don't need sleep, but it seems like you spent an awful lot of time spying on me."
"You're on a covert mission; I'm on surveillance duty. If I spend more time spying on you, I'd say I'm doing my job."
She picked up a weighty book and opened the pages. She was surprised to find photos of Nikolai from when he was a child. "I never really thought mobsters were the sentimental type." She placed the book under her arm and continued to look around. "I don't think you need to worry too much about me, Mace. There aren't anymore trolls for me to confront. Did you really think I would try to have sex with a troll?"
Mace seemed embarrassed over the comm. "Of course not. I was just startled is all."
Lyra threw the book down on the bed and began flipping through it. She suppressed a chuckle when she saw Nicolai as a teenager with braces from ear to ear. "I can handle myself. Besides, nobody died and nobody slept with a troll. I'd say it's a successful day."
"I don't think you're going to find anything in that photo book."
Lyra let out a sigh. "How about you take a break for a bit, because having you narrate my every move is driving me crazy. Why don't we just go and find out where the trolls got that artifact from in the first place?"
She could hear Mace suck on his teeth through the other line. "No can do, Lyra. I need to be there when the Russians turn on you."
"Is this really all about the Twilight thing? That you guys hate wolf shifters for some reason?"
"I'm neither Team Jacob nor Team Edward. Vampires don't sparkle."
Nikolai cleared his throat as he entered the room. "Am I interrupting something? I could pretend to walk around the condo a few more times, but I'm starting to get sleepy."
Lyra waved him forward as she moved to turn off her comm. "We're going dark here, Mace. Good night."
"Wait, Lyra, don't!"
As she flipped off the devices, she held up the photo book to display her findings. "You looked pretty good in a fake tie. I'm not sure if the girl you were dancing with felt the same way though."
Nicolai laughed. She had to admit, he looked pretty good in his silk pajamas.
"I believe you've found what they call the motherload. These pictures could blackmail me quite well."
Lyra looked intently at the photo until she seemed to discover something. There was a little bit of fur on the back of his dance partners neck. "This was a shifter dance, wasn't it?"
Nikolai joined her on the bed and nodded. "Both my family and... condition… make it difficult to find people who understand me."
She laughed. "It's a shame that people like me are only one in a generation. It's like going to Catholic school: one person at a time and narrow prospects." She raised her eyebrows toward the Russian. "Have you dated some shifters?"
Nicolai leaned closer on the bedspread. She could smell his tasty cologne at that distance.
"Are you asking about my history of romance? This seems like territory for second date, no?"
"Call it what you will, Nikolai."
He smiled. "I dated werepanther once. And I have scars to prove it."
She chuckled and rolled away from him on the bed. "That's what I would call too much information." She stood up on the ground and stretched. "I guess I should be getting over to the couch."
Nikolai got up on his knees and put his hands up in the air. "No, no, of course not. I will take couch, you take much more comfortable bed."
She looked at Nikolai in the bed and over into the other room. She nodded to herself.
This is probably a bad idea, but let's see what happens.
She smiled. "You know what, after leaving your family, I could see them storming into the condo. How about we share the bed just to keep up the ruse."
His forehead wrinkled. "And vampire boyfriend won't be mad at this?"
"I don't have a vampire boyfriend. Just a jealous vampire coworker. Scoot over. And expect me to steal the covers."
Nikolai shrugged and moved the photo book to the nightstand as he pulled himself beneath the covers.
Lyra did the same, noticing just then that the entire bedspread smelled of his cologne mixed with something else. She supposed it was the smell of man mixed with beast. She sort of liked it.
Nikolai turned to her, his eyes driving deep into hers. "The more you learn about this mission, the more dangerous it is for you. I could figure out cover if you decided to leave."
She smirked. "Are you getting worried about me, Nikolai?"
"I can't help being sensitive. I develop fo
ndness for people I share bed with."
"I appreciate your concern. But I need to follow this all the way through." She thought back to the troll and holding the artifact in her hands. "The power in that thing was epic. If your dad is planning something with a half dozen of them, I have no idea the implications. But it's not going to be pretty."
Nikolai nodded. "I wish I could be more helpful. My father trust no one with his plans."
She attempted to detect any dishonesty in the shifter's eyes. Unfortunately, he seemed to be telling the truth. "I understand. We better rest up. I have no idea if I'm going to be facing down any trolls or brothers tomorrow."
"Vanya is all talk. Well, talk and knives. But I feel like you can handle it more than most."
"Good night, Nikolai." She smiled softly. "May your dreams be filled with beautiful troll women."
Nicolai shuttered. "Ugh. I hope yours are too."
And as the shifter closed his eyes, Lyra let herself stare at his face for a bit. It would be so easy to wrap her arms and legs around him. She wondered what kind of vigor the unhuman would have in the bedroom.
Let's keep things about the mission. I'm not about to have Mace call me a hypocrite.
She heard the even breaths of sleeping across from her, and she closed her eyes to attempt to do the same.
Chapter 13
Mace hadn't realized just how frustrated he was by Lyra's radio silence until he felt his vampire fangs descend in his mouth. That and the fact that he was halfway between the surveillance van and Nikolai's front door when he felt the sharp teeth coming out his gums. He took a few long deep breaths before retreating back to the van and his solitude. He tried his hardest to ignore any thoughts of Lyra and Nikolai and whatever it was going on in his rented condo.
This is no time to have an imagination.
Instead, he took his friend's advice and flipped through the contents of an email Doug had sent him several hours prior. It turned out the device Lyra had slipped into the artifact had found out a fair bit of information. The sculpture had been crafted from a material that used to be referred to as blessed rock. It was a magical substance, and that made it very, very dangerous. As Mace tried to keep awake through the more boring specifications Doug's device had returned, he remembered something in an ancient text about this supposedly blessed rock and a prophecy. Fortunately, Doug had uploaded so many of these magical books in their database, it only took a few keyword searches to pull up exactly what he wanted.
Myths & Magic: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection Page 34
