by SA Magnusson
“We could ask the shifters to come with us,” I said.
“I doubt you would have much luck.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’ve already reached out to Ariel,” Barden said.
That surprised me. But then it shouldn’t. Ariel had been a part of helping to rescue him in the first place, and so I could see that Barden would find value in it, though Ariel might not. It wasn’t shifter business, though if the ley lines were disrupted, it would become shifter business.
“I guess it’s just us again.”
“Who would have guessed that Veran and Cyn Michaels’s granddaughter would end up working with the Dark Council?” Barden asked, a playful smile on his lips.
“Be careful,” I said.
“I’m always careful.”
“If you were always careful, you would never have been caught by the vampires in the first place.”
Florence gasped but Barden, to his credit, only chuckled.
“You see? It’s things like that where I find myself thoroughly enjoying your presence, Dr. Michaels. You make a point of ensuring that I don’t get too full of myself.”
“I doubt that.”
“No. I suppose you’re right. I’ve lived far too long to not have a sense of just how powerful I am. If you would prefer, we can reach out to members of the mage council to see if they would like to come with us, though I doubt they would find accompanying several dark mages and Kate Michaels to be very exciting.”
I considered reaching out my grandparents. Wouldn’t they come with us? But then I looked over at Florence, realizing what she had been through during her life and the way that she had feared the mage council all these years, and decided that maybe that didn’t make sense.
And here I was more concerned about convincing the mage council to work with the Dark Council because of the need to combine their powers, but it was more than that. The mage council needed to be held accountable to what they had done to the Dark Council all these years.
Would they ever be able to hold them accountable? It seemed almost too much to ask for, especially as they—including my grandparents—still didn’t view themselves as having done anything wrong.
“No. We don’t need to reach out to the mage council.”
“Are you ready to proceed?”
“Now? You know, it is night.”
“And your point is?”
“My point is that if we’re going to approach the vampires, we should probably do it during the daylight,” I said.
“Because you believe they would be weaker?”
“Is that how it works?”
“That would be how the rumors would tell you that it works, but with the vampires, they might be sleeping, but they aren’t necessarily weak. And it’s early enough that I think we can pay them a visit without disrupting too much.”
“Why do I have the sense that you look forward to this?”
“Why, Dr. Michaels, I don’t know what you mean.”
“We can’t go to the Siren family. They might be responsible for what happened to you, but not all of the vampires were.”
“Not all of them were, but do you know that we have learned that other families shared the same practice?”
“I didn’t know.”
“And did you know that once the council placed their position that it should not be allowed that many of the families have brought their mage victims underground, making it difficult to rescue them?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, I do know. And I intend to find every last mage that has been captured and brought under the control of the vampires and free them, whether mage council or Dark Council.”
“Maybe it’s not a good idea that you come with me.”
Barden flashed a dark smile. “Ah, but Dr. Michaels, I think it’s imperative that I accompany you.”
12
The van raced along the road, moving with nearly the same speed that Aron once liked to reach. I couldn’t imagine Aron ever taking a vehicle like this, though it wasn’t that this was somehow unpleasant. Far from it, as the van was nice enough and Barden certainly kept it clean. It was just that it wouldn’t have been fast enough for Aron’s tastes.
“How do you know where to go?” I asked, looking over at Darvish. He drove with a serious intensity, focused on the road ahead of him, gripping the steering wheel much more tightly than I would have expected he would need to do.
“The location of the Vangalor family hideout isn’t much of a secret.”
“It’s not? We had to search for the Siren family.”
“The Siren family is more secretive about where they remain, mostly because the Vangalor family is so powerful in this part of the country.”
“I don’t know anything about the vampire families, other than the fact that there are families.” I stared out at the highway blurring by. Street lights flickered as we drove past, everything dark around us. Modest homes lined either side of the road. We were heading east, away from downtown, and making our way generally toward St. Paul.
“There are five separate families,” Barden said, leaning forward from the backseat. I had thought he might want to sit up front, but he had volunteered to sit in the back, leaving me sitting next to Darvish. Did he think that he would pair me off with Darvish? Maybe Barden hadn’t seen the way Darvish had looked at Ariel, though I could imagine Darvish had wanted to hide that interest. “In the Twin Cities, at least. The Vangalor family is the most prominent, though the Siren family has grown in strength and numbers over the years. The three other families are smaller, little more than sects, spinoffs of much greater families found elsewhere. For the most part, the other families want to maintain a presence here on the chance that the Vangalor family fails. That way, they already have a foothold, and thus a claim.”
“Are their powers all that different?”
“You saw firsthand what the Siren family can do. They have a certain type of persuasion.”
“I wasn’t persuaded by them.”
“No, but you are unusual. I suspect whatever your natural protections are allowed you to remain safe. Most don’t have those protections and need to use spells in order to defend themselves from the Siren family.”
It was one more immunity that I had. I suppose that immunity wasn’t quite the right way to describe it. I didn’t necessarily have an immunity to magic, but I did have natural abilities that were different.
“What do you think the fact that I was unaffected by their persuasion means?”
Barden shrugged.
“You have an idea.”
He turned, meeting my eyes. “When it comes to you, Dr. Michaels, I don’t have an idea. I long ago gave up on thinking that I know what you might be. The only way we may learn is if we are ever willing to step across the Veil, but doing so is so incredibly dangerous that it would be basically asking for a death sentence.”
“Even as powerful as you are?”
“I may be powerful on this side of the Veil, but on the other side, I would be of middling power. Perhaps even less than that. I have no misperceptions about what I am capable of doing. Much as I have no misperceptions about the benefit of remaining on this side of the Veil, where I understand the extent of my power, much as I understand the extent of others’ power. At least here, I don’t need to worry about someone surprising me with the nature of their magic.” He flashed a smile. “At least, I hadn’t needed to worry about it. That may have changed.”
I turned my attention back to the road, watching where Darvish drove. After a while, we turned off onto a wider street. A boulevard ran along the middle of it, and tall evergreens grew within the boulevard, swaying slightly with the strong wind that still gusted.
“What are the odds of something going wrong with this?” I asked.
Darvish continued to stare straight ahead. “I would say the odds of something going awry are quite high. The vampires don’t need to accommodate us. They could argue that they weren�
�t fully aware of the concessions made between the two councils, and with you, Kate Michaels, I think that we run the distinct risk that they would want to study you, possibly even use you the same way they used the dark council before.”
“I won’t allow it.”
“No. And neither will we,” Barden said.
“What you mean by that?”
“If it comes down to it, Dr. Michaels, I would like you to stand as close as you can to me. Florence would be on the outside, Darvish next to her, and then me at the center.”
“Circles?”
“A summons. We would tap into the power on the other side of the Veil, much like we did when facing the Siren family.”
“And Florence and Darvish—”
“They would serve as a deterrence.”
“A sacrifice.”
Barden fixed me with a hard-eyed stare. “A deterrence. They have not come along intending to perish here.”
I glanced over at Darvish, noting again the white-knuckled grip he had on the steering wheel. They were more alarmed than they let on, and it had to do with coming into the vampire world, risking ourselves, facing a family that was powerful in their own regard.
The Siren family had been almost too much for us, and then we had the shifters along with dozens of dark mages. What would it be like when facing the Vangalor family?
“If it comes down to it, I want you to leave me.”
“I don’t intend to leave you.”
“I know you don’t intend to, but if it comes down to it, leave me behind. You can go and get help.”
“If we went for help, you would disappear.”
“Then place a spell on me.”
Darvish grinned, but it was Barden who answered. “Do you think we’ve not tried that tactic before? Your magic presents unique challenges, Dr. Michaels. For whatever reason, you tend to burn through it more powerfully than you should. It’s almost as if your magic rejects the presence of something else.”
“Are you sure my magic is the one that’s rejecting it? Maybe I’m the one rejecting it.”
“Why, I’m hurt,” Barden said.
I shook my head. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
“Too late,” Darvish said.
We slowed in front of a driveway. Brick pillars marked either side with an iron gate folded inward. Small lanterns shaped like old-fashioned flames glowed softly. We started forward, turning down the drive, passing rows of shrubs lining either side of the driveway, the leaves long since fallen and swept up. As we drove, my skin itched, tingling for a moment before it passed.
“What sort of protections do they have?”
“The vampires have no intrinsic magic,” Barden said. “They have abilities. They are naturally strong and quick. They can see and smell nearly as well as the shifters. And they are attuned to powers.”
“They have some sort of magic. I felt it as we turned down the driveway.”
“Where?” Barden asked.
I turned and glanced at him. “Was that why you wanted me to sit in the front seat?”
“You do have a unique ability, Dr. Michaels. I thought that we could take advantage of that ability, and we could use it to help us understand what sort of dangers we might be facing here.”
I chuckled softly. I should have known that Barden had something like that in mind, especially when it came to putting me in the front seat. “It was around the second or third shrub along the driveway.”
“Not at the post?”
“Not the post. It wasn’t until we pulled into the driveway that I felt it. It’s like an itching along my skin. It’s different than a spell, though I suspect it’s magical, but I don’t have any other way of explaining it to you.”
“Nor do you need to.”
“The sense is gone, if that matters.”
“And do you feel any ill effects?”
“No. Should I?”
“When it comes to the vampires, I worry. They can be quite devious.”
“I thought you could be quite devious.”
“I can be. They take it to a different level.”
I shivered. Barden was devious, and I knew that he had some underworld dealings that were dangerous, so for him to make that comment about the vampires… “Maybe that’s their magical ability.”
Darvish laughed. “That’s an ability I would like.”
His laughter trailed off as we reached what I could only call a mansion. The building was enormous, shaped something like a horseshoe, with garages on either side of the building. Lights glowed in most windows and bright spotlights shone down on the circular drive. Two enormous men stood guard outside the double door leading into the home.
“Those don’t look like vampires,” I said.
“Familiars,” Darvish whispered.
“They’re huge.”
“Yes. They look like WWE wrestlers,” Darvish said.
“That’s what you go to? You don’t strike me as a WWE kind of guy.”
“When I was younger.”
“Because you’re so old now,” I said.
“It was the WWF then,” Darvish started with a smile.
“Quiet,” Barden said. “They will be listening.”
“They can hear us from inside?”
“I suspect that spell you detected adds to their natural powers.”
Which meant that they could hear us from inside. And likely see us. Could they smell us, too? “Do they have a way of knowing who can use magic?”
“It’s likely they do,” Barden whispered. “We don’t know with much certainty, but it fits what we do know. And the Vangalor family would be the most potent of the vampire families with such an ability.”
Would they know what I could do?
Maybe I needed to see if they did.
I pushed those thoughts away. That wasn’t why we were here. We had come to see if we could discover anything about the runes, not about me. Barden might have a different reason for coming, but I had to remain focused on the reason that I was there.
We stopped in front of the house and I got out, placing a barrier around myself immediately. I should have done so before, and should have taken the time to place one around the van. Maybe that would have prevented the vampires from detecting us sooner, though had I done that, I might not have known about their protections. Knowing about them had to be helpful in some way, though I wasn’t entirely certain how.
The two men standing on either side of the door turned toward us. I flashed a smile, but they crossed their arms over their chests, looking to barricade our entry. Glancing over at Darvish, I could see him tensing, though magic didn’t build through him.
That surprised me. Why wouldn’t he be drawing upon his source of magic at this point?
When I looked back to Barden, I saw the same out of him. They used nothing. No source of magic. No spell held within them.
“Darvish?” I whispered.
“I can’t summon any magic,” he whispered.
“What do you mean?”
Barden joined me, standing at my other shoulder. The tension within him was nearly palpable. “I cannot either.”
“How is it possible that you can’t reach for your magic?”
“Apparently, the Vangalor family has some way of suppressing it.”
I glanced over at Florence, who remained with a hand on the side of the car, watching Barden as if trying to decide whether she would get out of the vehicle. He shook his head at her.
“It seems as if we need to handle this a different way,” Barden said.
“I still have access to my magic,” I said.
“I was hoping that you would,” Barden said. “If you would be so kind as to create a barrier around us?”
“I already have, but what good will that do us if the entirety of the family decides to attack?”
“I’m hoping that it isn’t necessary, but—”
A strange flickering movement caught my attention and I spun, noticing the sudden appearance
of a vampire.
He had pale skin, much like most of the vampires we had encountered, and a long face with slicked-back dark hair. Deep, black, piercing eyes stared at us. He was dressed in a gray jacket with a white shirt unbuttoned one too many buttons, and nearly black jeans. It had a very European feel to it.
“What have we here?”
Barden clenched his jaw. “Roland,” he said, stepping forward. I was careful to maintain my connection to the barrier, keeping it wrapped around him. “Is this really necessary?”
The vampire spread his hands, smiling sweetly. A hint of the fangs within his mouth was visible, gleaming in some of the reflected light. “Is what necessary, Barden Leifan?”
“The protections you placed on your compound.”
“The protections are for just this situation. Do you think I would really allow mages to come onto my property and maintain their connection to power?” He tsked softly. “After what happened with my cousins, I, for one, have learned better.”
“You understand what they were doing.”
“And just what were they doing?”
Barden balled his hand into a fist, the angriest I think that I had ever seen him. If he had some connection to his magic, I could imagine the rage that would be coursing through him.
Could I do anything to reconnect him and the others to their abilities?
It had to be some sort of protection, which meant that it was placed by a mage or someone with a similar type of power, especially if the vampires didn’t have magic of their own.
Focusing my magic, trying to concentrate on the barrier, I tried to shift it. It wasn’t a natural sensation, but what I wanted to do was change it so that the emphasis was more on sealing out outside influences. If I could separate whatever had been done to prevent my friends from reaching their magic, perhaps we could gain the upper hand.
All of a sudden, a surge of magic tingled along my spine. Barden’s shoulders relaxed. Whatever I had done seemed to have worked.
“You were using my people.”
“Your people? You say that as if you have some control over them. I didn’t realize that the Dark Council was so formalized. I thought that you are more concerned about keeping ahead of the mage council.”
