The cast that a gifted had made for him after Club Noir. After he had tried to save all of the shifter kids. After the necromancer’s plot to turn all of them into ghouls had failed.
That’s what will happen if you turn back.
The thought sent Logan into a cold sweat.
He put one bare foot forward, onto the next step. He took his hand off the railing, and held his revolver back in the old position, barrel pointing straight ahead.
I can’t let that happen. Never again.
Up the stairs, sneaking, trying not to make any sounds. The floorboards on the second floor creaked, at the same spot where Lee had stepped and made a noise.
Logan’s friend had been waiting for him, around the corner. Lee saw Logan, pointed at the nearest door. It led to the room that Logan remembered being full of sex equipment. Harnesses, leather straps, swings, and other BDSM devices he’d never known existed.
Logan nodded. Lee put his hand on the doorknob, turned and quickly pulled it open.
The hinge didn’t make a sound, and the room was empty.
Not according to Lee.
He stepped inside, eyes staring at an object in the dark that Logan couldn’t make out.
The light switched on. For a moment, Logan froze. Then he shut the door behind him.
It was a boy. A teenager. Pale and skinny, with a few pimples on his face. Scruffy brown hair. His eyes were wide, a white clothe tied around his both as a gag. Hands bound behind his back, ankles tied in front of him. He was completely naked. Bleeding from dozens of puncture marks across his flesh. The same kind that Logan had.
“Helph! Helph me!” the boy tried to yell.
Lee reached him first, moving quickly across the floor. He put one hand over the boy’s mouth, another to his lips. When the boy calmed down, and met Lee’s eye steadily, Lee removed his hand and pulled down the gag so that it hung around the boy’s neck. Logan set his revolver on the floor and started untying the bonds.
“Please. Please, you have to help me. Get me out of here!” the boy’s voice rose at the end, straining as he pleaded for them to save to his life, yet not wanting to rouse the monster.
“We will,” said Logan with quiet assurance. He untied the last bond, took off his new jacket and put it over the boy’s shoulders. Suddenly self-conscious, the boy drew his knees together and grabbed the jacket like a blanket, hugging it around his body, like a blanket, or a shield.
Logan and Lee shared a glance. Then Logan put a large, hairy hand on the boy’s shoulder. He gripped him tight, letting the boy feel a bit of his strength. That Logan was there, real and solid. A heavy presence that was ready to fight.
The boy looked at Logan, then eyed Lee’s shotgun. He turned his gaze back to the floor and started shaking.
“Can you walk?” Lee asked.
The boy did not reply. Logan was about to pick him up, when the boy lifted his chin. “I-I can walk.” He rose to his feet, still clutching Logan’s leather jacket.
Logan gently took hold of one of the boy’s arm, directed him to relax his grip and put his arm through one of the sleeves. The boy followed, as if only now remembering how. Logan zipped up the jacket. Lee opened the door a crack and peeked out into the hallway.
He slipped out. Logan picked up his revolver, turned out the light and went next.
It was time to go; he had all the evidence he needed. No point in checking the other rooms. Unless…
Logan shook his head. I can’t know for sure if there are other innocents in here. I can’t risk this boy’s life trying to find out.
Lee thought otherwise. As Logan headed down the stairs, he paused at the top, shotgun ready.
At the bottom, their eyes met. Logan motioned with his head for Lee to follow, but his friend looked away, and took off bare foot back down the hall.
“Shit,” Logan muttered, under his breath. He hurried the boy back to the mudroom, out into the yard. He didn’t see any enforcers on patrol, so they made a break for the same part of the wall that he had come over. That dog better be back in its cage.
“Will you be okay?” Logan asked the boy, trying to read his face to get a sense of how he was doing. “I’ve got to go back for my friend. Go over this wall and run for Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral. Do you know it?”
The boy nodded.
“Can you get there? Tell me ‘no’ and I’ll come with you. You say the word.”
The boy hesitated. He glanced at the wall, then back at Logan. He put his hands inside his jacket pockets. “I can do it,” he said, adding a bit of strength to his voice.
Logan nodded. “Good,” he said, noticing that the boy was standing much straighter than back in the mansion. He was tall for his age. A breeze tussled the boy’s scruffy hair. “Don’t let this be the last time I see you,” said Logan. He couldn’t make a boost out of two hands, but he knelt on one knee next to the wall and tapped his raised leg twice with the barrel of his gun.
The boy got the idea. He stepped on Logan’s thigh, reached up, and got his fingers over the top of the wall. Logan grabbed the boys legs with one arm and lifted his shoulder, pushing the boy up until he got his elbow over the top and was able to do the rest himself.
The windows of the mansion’s second floor lit up with bursts of yellow light. A window shattered, and the sound of Lee’s shotgun came leaking out into the night air.
The boy dropped over to the ungifted’s backyard. No barking.
Logan set off at a jog for the mudroom.
“Stop!” a voice from off to the side.
Logan froze, turned to face the enforcer. He had come around from the front of the building. One of his hands crackled with green flame.
“Well, I’ll be damned. It’s the vampire’s little pet.” The enforcer smirked. “Come on, then. Back inside.” The flames in his hand grew brighter, and he took on a mean frown. “The new councillor has been waiting to meet you.”
19
Logan raised his hand. The revolver dangled from his finger. He let it drop to the grass.
Stupid rookie.
He followed the enforcer’s orders and slowly walked across the lawn, to the back of the house, where there was a secondary entrance. Logan and Lee hadn’t used it, because it looked too obvious.
The enforcer was indeed a rookie. Logan knew that because he was threatening fire magic on a badger shifter. Likely he doesn’t know anything about me, other than my vampire’s mark. He was one of the many enforcers that McNaulty had added to the ranks over the last two years. It had struck Logan as odd that McNaulty would add to their numbers when there was already barely enough work for all of the enforcers. But he was an outcast, and not privy to the rumor mill and insider information.
‘What do I care,’ Logan had thought. ‘McNaulty can do whatever he wants.’ And the newcomers had been as much strangers to him as the enforcers he had worked alongside for years. He hadn’t worried about being replaced, because his record was impeccable, and the councillors see to it that good enforcers stay employed.
But the game had changed. The councillor was gone, and McNaulty had full reign over the city. A reign he had handed over to a greater, vampiric power.
Logan and the enforcer went around the side of the building to its back. That was when Logan shifted. The cast around his arm was enchanted, like many shifter items, to expand as he changed in size and refit itself to his new bone structure.
The enforcer’s flame spell left a black mark on Logan’s shoulder and the smell of burning hair. That was all. One spell. Logan growled, leapt at the enforcer tackled him. The man wailed, as if shocked that Logan hadn’t melted into a puddle of goo.
Stupid rookie.
Logan roughed him up a bit. Grabbed the enforcer by the collar, rag-dolled him, bit his arm, clawed his leg. Stepped on the man’s chest for a few seconds to let him feel part of Logan’s full shifter weight. The full weight could have done serious damage.
By the time Logan was finished, the man was panting, trying to c
rawl away. Not for the mansion, just anywhere that wasn’t next to the giant honey badger. Logan wished he knew how to knock the man out with a single blow, in a way that he wouldn’t suffer any long-term damage. Too bad that’s only in the movies.
More gunshots. Logan grabbed the enforcer’s rain jacket with his teeth, swung his head and threw the man across the yard. He left him there and took off in a loping, three-legged run for the mansion’s back door.
Hold on, Lee!
Logan charged right through the doors, smashing them apart and getting glass stuck in his hide. He didn’t even feel it. The wood broke around his bulk like pieces of Lego, and shattered over the white, shag carpet.
Logan tore the carpet with his claws, racing as fast as he could manage with a broken arm over to the stairs.
A spell slammed into him from the side, knocking him off balance and to the floor. More powerful than the wimpy flames that the rookie had thrown at Logan outside. This was a gifted who knew what they were doing.
Years of experience fighting rebel mages and supernatural creatures kicked in. Logan didn’t miss a beat. He took advantage of where the spell had sent him and moved behind one of the pillars. The second spell rocked into it, crunching the stone.
“Move out!” a woman shouted. Small, yellow orbs hovered above the palms of her gloved hands. She wore a long, black trench coat. Not an enforcer that Logan had ever seen, yet she was ordering them around.
Enforcers that Logan had worked with for years, along with a couple of fresh faces, fanned out through the large living room on the main floor.
Lee stopped firing his shotgun. I don’t have time for this!
But there were too many to ignore. Trying to avalanche his way through them would get him killed; not even a honey badger could survive the focused onslaught of five? six? trained enforcers.
Logan couldn’t tell how many there were. They were spread out, coming at him from both sides. Their leader, the woman in the trench coat, stood in the middle of the room. The foundation. The lynchpin. If she falls, so does everyone else.
It sounded good. And Logan didn’t have the luxury of contemplating his next move. He needed to act, immediately.
A shard of ice shattered against the pillar Logan was using as cover. He rushed out from behind it, straight for the leader.
He tried to rush.
He was slow.
Logan tried to put his full weight on his broken arm. It didn’t work out. He knew right away that it would fall out from under him, so he went on at a hobble. Too slow, too direct. An easy target for the woman in the trench coat.
She held her hands out in front of her, palms up with the orbs hovering above. She didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even blink to give Logan warning. The orbs flew straight at Logan, hit him in the face and chest like unbreakable hailstones. He felt a rib crack. His vision blurred, then straightened out. He pressed on.
Logan thought he was moving fast. He was so close to reaching her. Just a bit more…
He was barely limping along. The enforcers blasted their spells at him, an easier target than the side of a barn.
And Logan fell onto his side. Darkness descended on him. The last thing he saw was the heel of the woman’s leather boot, as she stepped in front of his face. “Drag him upstairs,” she ordered. “And keep him alive.”
Logan blinked awake four hours later. He was inside a room in the mansion that he had not seen before. Lee was seated next to him, tied in the same manner as the boy had been. But with enchanted chains instead of simple rope. They were wrapped tight across his chest and arms, digging into his flesh.
From where he lay on his side, face against the wooden floor, Logan saw the portion of the tattoo on Lee’s arm gently shift. But his friend did not strain against the chains. He was patient, conserving his energy. His eyes were closed, and his stomach was sucking in, pushing out. The way it did when Lee was meditating, and breathing deeply. Replenishing his well of magic. He bled from two deep cuts. One on his chest, the other on his leg. The left side of his face had swelled up from a number of bruises.
Lee opened his good eye and peered down at Logan. He grunted. Closed his eye and resumed his breathing exercise.
“Yea, good to see you too,” said Logan. He wriggled himself backwards, feeling chains around his body drag against the floor. He reached the wall and pushed his back against it, wriggled up to a seated position.
The room was lit by many candles set on three tables, which were set against the three walls in front of him. In the middle of the room, which was a bit larger than a large bedroom, had been drawn a number of overlapping circles with runes inscribed along the outside of each one. They looked to be drawn in blood.
No windows. One door, at the other side of the room. Useless to try to escape with the chains wrapped around him.
So they waited. Logan had naturally transformed back to his human form while he’d been unconscious. He hurt, deep in his bones. Felt like a baseball glove that caught fastballs every night.
But Logan had been hurt before, and far worse. And even sitting there on the floor with the chains tight around him, he could feel his badger blood doing its work, quickly healing his wounds. Badger blood was the main ingredient to many healing potions and balms. Honey badger blood even better, and much more hard to come by. Most gifted, even other shifters, think of badgers as being tough like tanks. They don’t know about the healing properties.
In Arkansas, Logan had been bitten by a fifteen-foot cobra. A gifted child had accidentally summoned it when he was going through his grandfather’s attic. The damned thing pumped a gallon of venom into Logan’s bloodstream. Put him in a coma—that he woke from six hours later with a pounding headache and feeling starved. So he wasn’t worried about his cracked rib, burnt arm, and the gashes across his back. No, the circles on the ground were what worried him. That was bad news. It meant someone was planning a ritual that involved Logan and Lee. Whatever it was, Logan didn’t want to find out.
He nudged Lee with his shoulder. “What happened?”
Lee took a last breath, and opened his emerald green eye. “I shot the vampire. Many times, but not enough.”
“Did you use silver bullets?”
Lee gave Logan a blank expression.
“Ok,” said Logan. “Stupid question. So how did they catch you?”
“A woman. She attacked me when I fight the vampire.”
“In a trench coat?”
“Yes.”
“She got me too.”
“Strong magic,” said Lee. “You know her?”
“No. She’s not an enforcer. What else did you see?”
“More like the boy. Three of them, in a different room.”
“How strong is the vampire?”
Lee shifted, making the links of his chains rub against each other. “Strong. But not too strong. I can kill him. I would have killed him.”
They were silent for a few minutes, and listened to the sound of feet going back and forth along the hallway outside. “Can you break those chains?” Logan asked.
Lee took a deep breath. “Maybe. I need more time.”
“This should help,” said Logan. He shuffled himself across the floor on his bum. Kept going, right over the circles drawn in blood. His butt smeared them around, broke the lines and messed up the careful drawing. Logan went back and forth over it a couple of times, then shuffled to his place against the wall. “Hope that fucks up whatever they were planning.”
Lee snorted in amusement. They both knew that it wouldn’t take long for a mage who knew what they were doing to draw a new symbol.
The door opened and McNaulty walked in, fat hands stuffed inside the big pockets of his brown khakis. Two enforcers came after him, standing a step behind and on either side. They stopped just inside the door, hands clasped in front of them like secret service agents. McNaulty strolled across the floor to where Logan sat.
Logan McNaulty’s his smarmy, gloating expression and decided to steal
the first word. “Scared to face me alone,” he said, sitting up as straight as possible. “I’m not surprised.” There was more confidence in those words than he felt, but that was all that mattered at this point. Exuding self-confidence. Not letting McNaulty think he had won.
The enforcer chief scowled. “Keep your mouth shut, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Yeah? You’re gonna kill my anyways, right? May as well take a piss at you, you two-faced motherfucker. Goddamn, your mom must be ashamed.”
McNaulty went beet red. His hands squirmed in their pockets. He hadn’t planned on being the one agitated.
He took a menacing step, setting a big foot next to one of Logan’s legs. Then he chuckled. “You’re lucky.”
“Lucky you’re a bitch for the vampire court?” said Logan, cutting in.
“Lucky,” McNaulty growled, “that I don’t cave your skull in, right here and now.” The enforcers remained motionless in their guard positions by the door.
“Right, because you have orders not to. From a vampire, who is your master. All these years you stupid fucks looked down at me for my Mark. Now look at you. Simpering little shits doing what they say, and you don’t even have the lines in your skin to compel you. Really says something about a man’s character, doesn’t it?”
Logan rattled that off, smooth as silk off his tongue without space or a weak tone to let McNaulty get in a quip. He was smart for a badger shifter. Knew how to lay on the insults when it pleased him. Top banter that he’d learned from the boys in Arkansas. If they were here now, this corrupt shit bag would already be in a thousand different pieces.
McNaulty squatted down to look at Logan close, face-to-face. Psychopathic lust glimmered in his eyes. “I’m going to enjoy hearing you scream,” he said. He grabbed a handful of Logan’s hair and jerk his head back. “The vampire’s said I could watch. They’ll even let me take part in it.” He smiled, greasy lips shining in the candlelight. He roughly let go of Logan’s head, pushing it to the side.
Faerie Empire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Vampire's Bane Book 2) Page 12
