by Linsey Hall
We crept out from behind the shield. Ares took it from me and held it out in front of us. The man on top of the castle was dressed in brown robes. He was thin as an arrow, but I couldn’t tell anything else from this distance.
The rest of the walk was uneventful, despite the fact that my heart raced the entire time, and I didn’t stop looking for arrows.
When we reached the heavy wooden gate, we kept back, far enough away that any boiling oil wouldn’t splash on us. The gate stayed firmly shut.
I leaned back and looked up. The castle wall rose tall above me. The man in the brown robe leaned over the ramparts forty feet above. His face was broad and plain, with brown hair and eyes that were an identical shade. He didn’t look like a murderer. But then, they often didn’t
“Who are you?” he shouted.
If they were the murderers and they’d framed me, I didn’t want to give them my name.
“I am Caroline Farrow and this is—” I hesitated, mind racing. “This is Kevin Petergrass. We’re here with questions about a man who recently took information from you.”
The man scowled, then disappeared back behind the wall.
“Do you think he’s consulting his buddies?” I asked Ares.
“Probably.”
“I vow not to use magic against you!” I shouted. “I’m just a Conjurer anyway!”
The man leaned back over the castle wall. “You are not just a Conjurer.”
I winced. Ares gave me a told you so look.
“But I really mean you no harm!” I said.
“That, I believe. We will allow you in to ask your questions, but if you use any magic, we will toss you off the castle wall.”
Not very peaceable, but okay. It was all I was going to get. “Thanks!”
The gate groaned as it lifted.
“Kevin Petergrass?” Ares whispered to me.
“It was all I could think of in the moment. I don’t think they would have liked Ares Warhaven. And if they’ve been hiding out here for a millennia, then they don’t know who you are.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Do you think they did it?”
“Maybe. But if so, we won’t have any trouble against some old monks.”
Fair enough.
The gate lifted to reveal a cluster of men, all dressed in identical brown robes. There were twelve of them, and they looked like monks, but the Master of Secrets had called them Perfecti. I sensed a few different magical signatures, but they weren’t prominent.
The man who’d stood at the top of the castle wall stepped forward. “You may enter.”
“Thank you.” My heart thundering, I stepped in alongside Ares, who looked nothing like a Kevin Petergrass.
I sure hoped Ares was right and these guys weren’t the murderers.
Dark had fallen, and flickering torches shed a golden glow over the barren courtyard. Three benches were the only objects in the small space. The castle itself was cramped, the three towers butting up to the small open area in the middle. Not a lot of room on top of a mountain, apparently.
And we were the first interesting thing they’d seen in a while, from the way their gazes were riveted to us.
Actually, scratch that. They looked annoyed.
“We’re here to ask questions about the man who stole information from you.” I wasn’t going to mention that Marin had been ol’ Kevin Petergrass’s buddy.
“You mean the men who stole from us.”
My gaze darted to Ares’s. He shrugged just slightly.
“There was more than one?” I asked.
The Perfecti nodded, then gestured us inside. “Come, we will take a seat.”
I frowned at Ares, not wanting to go deeper into their castle. Ares nodded encouragingly. We’d faced worse odds and come out all right.
He led us across the courtyard toward the back tower. The other Perfecti followed, a silent mass.
Oh, more bad puns.
Were they there to guard us or because we were entertainment in an otherwise quiet life? My skin chilled. Or perhaps they wanted revenge on their stolen secret? But they didn’t know that Ares had been friends with Marin.
The room that we entered was in the base of one of the three towers. It was almost as barren as the courtyard, with two simple trestle tables made of wood. There wasn’t even a fireplace, and it was barely warmer in here than it had been outside.
These Perfecti were really committed to their ascetic lifestyle.
The leader gestured to the table, and we sat on one bench. He sat across from us. The others stood by the wall. Watching.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“You mentioned that there were two men here?” I asked.
“Yes. An older man and a younger one. They came to steal one of our most carefully guarded secrets.”
“What was it?” Ares asked.
The Perfecti raised both brows in an expression that so clearly said, Are you kidding me, Kevin?
Ares raised his hands. “Forget I asked. Could you please tell us about the younger man? What was he doing here?”
“He looked like he was fighting with the older one. Both attempted to steal information from our vault. Only one succeeded—the older man. We came upon them in a scuffle in the vault. Our attack… We are rusty after so many years. They both got away.”
“Could you tell us anything about the younger man?” I begged. “Anything at all. We want to find him. And I vow, when we do, whatever secret he stole, will die with him.”
Okay, maybe I was laying it on a little thick there. But the Perfecti seemed to appreciate it. He smiled, and it was just a bit bloodthirsty.
“What about the older man?” he asked. “Do you not care about him?”
“He is dead.” Ares’s voice was hard. But it was the kind of hard that hid pain. I knew that voice. My deirfiúr and I used it on occasion. “We want vengeance on his killer.”
“The younger man?” the leader guessed.
“Yes,” I said.
The man nodded, understanding glinting in his eyes. “If you kill both, the secret dies with them.”
“Provided that they didn’t pass it on,” I said, trying for honesty that might endear me to them.
Satisfaction glinted in the leader’s eyes. “It is very hard to interpret our information. They stole the information—but it is in code. Some words recognizable, others not. They will have an inkling of the information we sought to protect, but not enough to do damage. They would need more time to understand it. Weeks, months, years, depending upon how clever they are. If you catch him quickly, it will be all right.”
I grinned. “Then if you tell us what you know of the younger man, I vow that we will make sure the secret dies with him.”
Or the Vampire Court would make sure it died with him. I’d be off the hook, back to my normal life.
“We can do better than that.” The leader raised a hand, gesturing to one of the other men. “Please bring the fabric.”
“What fabric?” Ares asked.
“In the scuffle, we stole a piece of his cloak. It had initials sewn into it. And we have an Illusory here. He can play back a past event so that you can see what the man looked like.”
My heart raced. An object linked to the man, plus a view of his face? That should spark my dragon sense. Objects were often the most helpful. This is what I’d been missing in my attempts to track him.
“Thank you,” I said.
A man stepped forward—the Illusory, I presumed. “We must go to the scene of the theft,” he said. “There, I will call up the past.”
Too bad we couldn’t interact with it. Del could bring the past back and interact with it, but it was deadly dangerous.
We followed the monks from the tower and through a corridor. A small doorway led to a dark staircase. I peered down as two of the Perfecti drew torches off the walls. They led the way, with Ares and me in the middle of the pack.
If I’d been claustrophobic, this t
iny spiral staircase built deep into a mountain would have set me off like a firework. It was narrow, and the stone steps were so old that they were worn down to slick, slanted surfaces.
The room that we entered was tiny, with just one large book on a pedestal. That’s where they kept their secrets? Good thing they were hard to interpret.
“We can fight when we need to,” the Lead Perfecti said. “To protect the information in this book, we do fight. But the man who stole from us was quick and clever. He came with magic that we weren’t prepared for.”
“And we’ve grown a bit out of practice these long years,” another Perfecti said.
The leader shot him a sharp glare. He stared right back, hard as stone.
I so did not want to get in the middle of a fight between those two.
The Illusory stepped forward, raising his hands like he was going to conduct an orchestra. Magic fizzled on the air, and two figures appeared. They were shimmery at first, then coalesced until they looked as real as if we were here with them.
Marin stood over the book, reading from the pages. His long cloak fell from his shoulders to the floor. The younger man crept up from behind, his footsteps silent. I wanted to shout to Marin, but knew it would do no good.
The attacker raised a knife that had been hidden in his cloak. I thought he’d plunge it into Marin’s back, but at the last moment, Marin turned.
“Aleric!” Surprise echoed in Marin’s voice. He shot out his hand, sending a blast of wind at his opponent.
The man flew back against the wall.
I whirled to catch sight of his face.
Middle-aged, black hair, blue eyes. Scar across the chin and a nose with the tip missing. I imprinted it on my memory, studying every little detail that I could. As he charged Marin, his cloak flew back from his chest to reveal a tattoo at the base of his neck.
A dragon.
Just like the big man from the attack at Saint Pancras.
Just before the attacker reached Marin, the Perfecti ran into the room. Images of them, at least. They were part of the Illusory’s spell, and were armed with swords and axes. They weren’t bad with their weapons, though a bit rusty, like the one had said. Marin escaped only because of his impressive control over wind.
He blasted the Perfecti out of the way and raced up the stairs, cloak flapping behind him. The other man had a harder time. He barely escaped, but not before one of the Perfecti tore off part of his cloak.
In the real world, the Illusory gestured, and the scene disappeared.
The leader stepped forward and handed me a scrap of cloak. “Does that help?”
I held my breath and called on my dragon sense, keeping my signature repressed. I begged it to find the man who owned this cloak, picturing his face in my mind and the tattoo at his neck. And his name. Aleric.
My dragon sense latched on.
Yes.
“That helps,” I whispered. Armed with a name, a face, and a piece of his clothing—now my dragon sense had enough that it could not fail.
“Then catch him,” the leader said. “Catch him and deliver justice.”
“Oh, I will.” And I’d save myself as well.
Ares transported us back to Magic’s Bend, directly to Ancient Magic. It’d taken some convincing, but he’d agreed when I’d explained that I wanted to confer with my deirfiúr and see if they’d learned anything about the Informas. Plus, we’d need their help.
Because of the time change, it was nearly sunset by the time we arrived. It was a few minutes past closing time, and the shop’s lights were darkened and there was no one within.
“Where do you think they are?” Ares asked. “If we can’t find them, we can always bring in my men. Which I believe we should do anyway. More backup is always good.”
“Agreed, though they’re not as strong as my deirfiúr.”
“That’s some tough friends you’ve got.”
“You have no idea.” I glanced down the street toward P & P. “And at this hour on a Friday, I know just where they are.”
“Lead on.”
I started down the street, Ares at my side. The streetlamps flickered on as dusk settled. The silence was heavy—unusual for us. Not that we were chatty, but there was something else in the air. Almost…sadness.
I’d never been able to sense things like that before, but there was a first time for everything.
“Are you thinking about Marin?” I asked.
Ares hesitated. When he spoke, his voice was just a bit rough. “Yes.”
“You were close.”
“We were.” He hesitated again, as if speaking like this was uncomfortable.
Come on… I wanted to poke him until more information fell out. I wanted to know more about him, even if it might make me like him more. Because any information about an opponent was good, right?
But was he still my opponent?
This collar said yes.
Ares sighed. “Later in life, he was like a surrogate father to me. He helped my Enforcers, and me, with our work. I’m the only vampire who can walk in the light. As such, we need other species for business that only occurs during daylight hours.”
“And Marin did that?”
“Yes. And he became a close friend.”
“You played chess with him,” I guessed, remembering the chess set in his apartment.
“I did.”
We reached P & P. Through the glass, I could see my friends sitting in their usual spot in the ring of comfy chairs in the corner. Even Roarke, Del’s boyfriend, was there. He must have finished his work in the Underworld.
I stopped, looking up at Ares.
“And you miss Marin,” I said.
His eyes darkened. “I find that I do. And I want vengeance.”
“We’ll get it.” I liked his loyalty.
“And we’ll get that collar off you,” he said. “But I still want to know what you are. There’s a lot more you’re not telling me, Nix.”
I shrugged, trying to look like I thought he was suspicious for no reason. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Before he could answer, I pushed the door open and joined my friends in the corner of P & P. It was busy on a Friday night, with Connor and Claire both working behind the bar.
Cass and Aidan sat in their usual comfy chairs, with Del and Roarke next to them. Roarke, with his black hair and eyes and don’t bother trying it demeanor, looked like a proper Warden of the Underworld. It was a tough job, but he was suited for it. He kept the peace between the Kings of Hell, and acted as an intermediary between the Underworld and Earth’s magical governments.
He was a good guy to have on our side, and Del was hardcore smitten with him. And he with her.
“Hey, guys,” I said.
“Hey,” Cass and Del said in unison. Roarke and Aidan got their greetings in slightly behind.
“Did you find out anything helpful?” Cass asked.
“Yeah, thank fates.” I gestured to Ares. “But first, some introductions.”
Ares made the rounds, introducing himself first to my deirfiúr, who gave him suspicious looks.
“We’re not letting you take Nix back to your Vampire Court,” Del said.
“Just so you’re aware,” Cass added.
Ares nodded, but didn’t say anything. What could he say, anyway? He turned to Aidan and Roarke. “It’s been a while.”
“You know each other?” I asked.
“Not well. We’ve met once,” Aidan said.
I had to imagine it was through Aidan’s security business or his limited involvement with the Alpha Council.
“Twice for us,” Roarke said. “Both through work.”
“But we second Del and Cass’s sentiments,” Aidan said. “You won’t take Nix to your Vampire Court.”
Annoyance flashed in Ares’s eyes.
Shit. Apparently he’d bite his tongue once, but maybe not twice. I grabbed his hand, squeezing hard. The action surprised me. What was I hoping to do? C
ontrol him?
Yeah right.
Ares only said, “It is not fully in my control. But I’m committed to proving Nix’s innocence.”
It was the best I could hope for. I glanced at him, but his gaze remained on Roarke and Aidan.
Fortunately, everyone seemed satisfied with that. Even better, Claire arrived to break the tension.
“What’ll you have?” she asked Ares and me. Her British accent was as thick as Connor’s.
I turned to her. She was still dressed in her fighting leathers, but had tied a black apron on top. Fortunately, her clothes were blood-free. “Did you just get off a job?”
She nodded. “Failed though. Another merc nabbed the bounty. So I’ll finish the night helping Connor.” She grinned. “Pay’s not as good, but it’s less deadly.”
Her brother was behind the bar, quickly filling drinks, though not quickly enough. There was a line of supernaturals eagerly awaiting their weekend fuel.
“Thanks for coming over,” I said. “Could I have a latte and whatever cheesy thing you have left over from today? A pasty or whatever?”
Claire and Connor were from Cornwall original, home of the Cornish pasty. Food was usually only a simple breakfast and lunch thing here. Easy things that could be made in their small kitchen, and the pasty fit the bill. The savory delicacies were Cass’s favorite, but I liked them too.
“Sure thing.” Claire looked at Ares. “And you, handsome?”
“A coffee,” Ares said. “Black. And a pasty if you have another.”
Claire nodded and hurried off, weaving expertly through the crowd.
“Coffee on a Friday night?” Cass said. “Must be a fight coming up. You found your murderer?”
“Yeah.” I sat in one of the six plush chairs, immediately feeling every bit of my exhaustion from the day. I should’ve ordered a boost with my coffee. Connor specialized in adding unique potions to the coffees that would give you a bit of extra magical energy.
“Who is he?” Del asked.
“And where is he?” Cass added.
“Aleric. Member of some group of folks with dragon tattoos. And he’s in Magic’s Bend.”
“Dragon tattoos?” Aidan asked.
“Ever heard of a group with those?” Ares asked.
“I haven’t,” Aidan said.
“Neither have I,” Roarke said.
