Heart of Stone (Alice Worth Book 4)

by Lisa Edmonds

  “Between that and the lack of cover in the yard, it’s an ideal location to meet a magical weapons dealer.” I tapped my lip with my fingertip. “If Murphy is willing to go there himself, it’s warded just like any major cabal property would be. The wards will be powerful, but not deeply embedded if he’s only had the property for six months.”

  “How does that help us?” Sean asked. “I don’t know as much about wards as you and Malcolm.”

  “The wards on Murphy’s compound in Baltimore aren’t just powerful: their foundation spells have been rooted into the building and grounds for forty years,” I explained. “That’s what makes them damn near impossible to break—that and the landmines. Imagine a fortress that’s been continuously fortified for four decades with countless layers of protection that have roots that go deep into the earth.”

  “So the wards on the bordello are powerful, but they don’t have all that fortification or the deep roots,” Jack rumbled. “Is that why you think you can break them?”

  “One of the reasons. As I said, though, they’ll still be extremely powerful and chock full of landmines.”

  “Which are what, exactly?” Ben asked.

  “Landmines are hidden spellwork designed to take out anyone who tries to break or unweave wards,” Malcolm told him. “They’re just about the most dangerous hazards mages face when we interact with someone else’s magic because ninety-nine percent of the time, you can’t sense or detect them until it’s too late.”

  The werewolves were silent. “So what’s the plan?” Ben asked finally.

  “Well, that’s where the sand Carly gave me comes into play, as well as a couple of other mage tricks I have up my sleeve,” I said. “But given what we know about this former Best Little Whorehouse in California, I think our strongest asset isn’t going to be anything magical at all.”

  “So what’s our strongest asset?” Malcolm asked.

  I grinned. “You.”

  23

  Bell’s intel indicated that Moses’s meeting with the weapons dealer was scheduled for eleven thirty, so our strike team convened at Northbourne at sunset to plan our attack on the bordello.

  We met in one of the Vampire Court’s opulent second-floor meeting rooms. I sat on one side of the U-shaped table between Sean and Ben. We sat across from Bell’s key personnel: Nora, a fire mage who’d introduced himself as Tomás Ortiz, and—to my surprise—Allan Garrett. As I’d expected, Bell was not coming himself. He didn’t strike me as the sort who liked to get his hands dirty. Just as well, I supposed—one less person to have to worry about trying to stab me in the back.

  On the third side of the table, facing the large wall screens, were Arkady, Matthias, and Amira of the Court. Amira was Niara’s sister. While Niara preferred long, flowing dresses and intricate hairstyles, Amira wore her hair in a halo of natural curls and typically dressed for fighting unless the Court was convened. Amira was the maker and master of the Court’s Hunters—dhampirs, or half-vampires, with especially acute senses of smell, sight, and hearing. As they tended to be ultra-violent if not tightly controlled, Hunters were excellent, if not brutal fighters, and were inclined to leave victims torn limb from limb if given the chance.

  Arkady and I had exchanged quick hellos when we arrived, but there had been no time for us to talk before the meeting began.

  Court mages would get us onto the property undetected, but Bell had agreed to provide the manpower necessary for us to get past the guards and into the house. Instead of sending people who worked for him, however, he’d opted to go a different route.

  “Mercenaries.” Sean’s voice was a low growl.

  The four men standing in front of us wore all black and identical blank expressions. They’d studied each of us in turn as we came in, no doubt cataloguing us according to some ranking system. I saw no reaction whatsoever to any of us. If they were unhappy about working with civilians, I couldn’t see it.

  “Listen up,” the man in the center barked when we were seated. “I am Sergeant Haggar.” He gestured to the men to his left. “These men are Cody, Guy, and Belger.”

  Sean snorted softly. I looked at him quizzically. He bent his head close to mine. “Their names are from an arcade game from the eighties,” he murmured into my ear. “A beat-em-up game called Final Fight.”

  I studied the men. “Killers for hire.”

  He nodded. “Surprised they’re willing to operate on American soil. Usually they stay overseas. Tougher to prosecute.”

  The man who called himself Haggar activated the large screen in front of us, which showed the aerial view of the bordello. “My team’s assignment is twofold: to facilitate entry into the target location and to provide extraction once you’ve fulfilled your objective. First, we will eliminate the exterior perimeter guards. Our intelligence indicates there will be four to six outside the house. Once the guards are down, Ms. Worth will break the house wards. Our Alpha team will then breach the main doors. Our Beta team will do the same for the secondary entrance here.” He indicated the rear of the house, near the conservatory. “At that point, my team will withdraw to a rally point. When you’ve fulfilled your objective, we will facilitate your departure from the scene and return you to this location.”

  His gaze swept our faces. “To be clear, my team will not engage mages or enter the target location for any reason.”

  Nora spoke up. “We have three primary targets tonight: Moses Murphy, Carter Kade, and Stephen Novak.”

  “Who are Kade and Novak?” Arkady asked.

  “Murphy’s most senior lieutenants, now that his daughter Catherine is no longer acting in that role,” Nora replied. She clicked a few buttons on a second remote and the image of the house disappeared, replaced with pictures of two men: one blond and in his late thirties, the other a dark-haired man about my age. “Our intelligence indicates both will be on the premises tonight. While Kade has no magic, Novak is a high-level earth mage.”

  I knew Kade very well, but it took me a minute to remember Stephen Novak. Five years ago, when I escaped the cabal, Stephen was a mage like me, working for Moses against his will after being sold to him by a smaller syndicate. We hadn’t been friends—mages who belonged to cabals didn’t have the luxury of friends—but I might have described us as kindred spirits. He’d seen the inside of a blood mage’s torture room a number of times. It would appear he’d stopped fighting Moses and gotten promoted. He wasn’t the first to do so. The only alternative was usually death, and a highly unpleasant one at that, as Malcolm could attest.

  “Novak must be there to authenticate the weapon,” I said. “No other reason I can think of for Murphy to bring an earth mage to something like this.”

  Nora nodded. “We came to the same conclusion.”

  She switched the screen to a photo of Moses. It was one I hadn’t seen before, taken on a downtown Baltimore street on a cold day. He wore a long black coat over his trademark tailored suit. His attention was on the man next to him, who I recognized as Darren Walker. Walker was one of Moses’s inner circle and was said to be running the syndicate’s new business interests here in the city. I’d seen him with Catherine, having cocktails at Charles’s bar, 1792, a month ago.

  Nora spoke again. “As you are all already aware, Murphy’s primary weapon is high-level fire magic, with which he is particularly adept. He’s also a mid-level blood mage. The threat he poses cannot be overstated. Tomás, your primary duty will be containing him and providing defense against his magic.”

  Ortiz nodded. “Understood.”

  Nora regarded me with a thoughtful expression. “Sergeant, what is our backup plan in case Ms. Worth fails to break the wards?”

  “I’ve never encountered any wards that I couldn’t take down with enough firepower,” Haggar told her. The other mercs nodded in agreement. “However, if we’re forced to resort to mundane weapons, it will take time to get through and we’ll lose the element of surprise. Our likelihood of success decreases dramatically and the odds of losing
personnel go up. Given what we know and what we can surmise about the house and the people in it, I’m anticipating a successful mission with zero casualties on our side…if those wards get taken down as planned.” His eyes went to me. “Your role is not a small one, Ms. Worth.”

  I met his hard stare with one of my own. “You do your job and I’ll do mine.”

  He studied me, then gave me a small nod. “Fair enough.”

  Nora checked her watch. “We have one hour before we head for the target location. Let’s go over the layout of the house and discuss strategy.”

  The vamps and Bell’s mercs staged equipment and personnel in one of Northbourne’s garages. As they loaded the SUVs, we stood in small groups, talking.

  When Garrett went to get a bottle of water from a small fridge, I joined him. “I’m surprised to see you here,” I told him, getting three waters from the fridge.

  “Bell wants me to prove myself.” His voice was flat. “I have to blast some shit or I don’t come back. Nora and Tomás have orders to kill me if I don’t do my part or I so much as look at either of them the wrong way.” He lowered his voice. “Have you seen Aden and Jana?”

  I nodded. “Nora delivered them to me not long after you and I spoke last. I called in a favor and got them out of the city. They’re out of Bell’s hands for good.”

  A long silence. “Thank you, Ms. Worth,” he said finally.

  “What are you two doing back here?”

  We turned at the sound of Nora’s voice. She stood in front of us, her arms crossed and eyebrows raised.

  “We’re starting a book club.” I waved the bottles of water I’d gotten for Sean, Ben, and myself. “What does it look like we’re doing?”

  “Go stand by our SUV,” she ordered Garrett.

  Without a word, he stepped around her and headed for one of the vehicles.

  Nora turned to me, her eyes hard. “He’s Bell’s property now. Unless you want him dead, tell him to follow orders and not get any ideas of his own.”

  “No person is someone else’s property. And sooner or later, people who think they can own people find out they’re wrong.”

  Her mouth quirked. “Strange how someone like you can be so naive. It’s kind of precious, really. My mama would say bless your heart.”

  “My mama would say snakes can’t help but hiss.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Tread lightly, Alice.”

  I smiled. “I’m not afraid of you or your boss. Surely that’s obvious by now.”

  “Don’t rely too much on your friends to protect you. Some of those alliances are looking precarious these days.” She was obviously referring to Valas’s apparent willingness to sell my contract.

  I’d been giving that some thought in the past day and the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced Valas was playing a deeper game than any of us had realized. Valas had been outmaneuvering people like Bell for more than a millennium.

  Since telling Nora that would not be in my best interest, however, I merely shrugged. “Go ahead and think you’ve got the upper hand or some kind of advantage over me if it makes you feel better. Right now, I’m focused on the job we’re here to do. When the dust settles, we’ll figure out where things stand—and who really belongs to who.”

  Nora smirked. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  It looked like they were about finished loading things into the SUVs, so I took the bottles of water to the others, who were standing beside the SUV we would be riding in.

  Sean opened his water and leaned against side of the SUV. “What was all that about?”

  “The usual threats.” I shrugged. “I don’t think Nora likes me.”

  “Just because you cut off her hand? Is she still holding a grudge about that?” he teased.

  Ben snorted. “Women in the workplace never get along.” He winked at me.

  I smiled sweetly. “Ben, did I tell you I’ve been working on my right cross lately?”

  “She has,” Sean said, shaking his hand with an exaggerated grimace. “Her punches used to feel like a butterfly landing on my palm, but now at least it’s like the butterfly got a running start first.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”

  Sean lowered his voice. “Any word from Malcolm?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing yet. I’m hoping no news is good news.”

  “Load up, people,” Haggar called. “We’re moving out in three minutes.”

  Belger, one of Haggar’s mercs, drove our SUV. Ben got into the front passenger seat and Sean and I sat in the middle row. The back was full of unmarked black cases. I could only imagine what they held.

  As our caravan of vehicles drove out of the garage and made its way toward Northbourne’s imposing front gate, Sean’s hand found mine on the seat and squeezed. I squeezed back and kept my breathing slow and even and my shoulders relaxed.

  The night I fled Baltimore, I’d wondered if I would ever come face-to-face with Moses again. At the time I’d hoped not, but as the years went by I’d come to understand that to be free of him, I would have to kill him. I’d certainly never imagined I would be on my way to face him in the company of mercenaries, Vampire Court enforcers, two werewolves, and a ghost.

  Unbidden, an odd memory from my life in Baltimore surfaced. When I was in my teens, some local papers had taken to calling me a “cabal princess”—a riff on “Mafia princess.” I’d hated that nickname. Princesses were the stuff of fairy tales and my life was anything but a fairy tale, unless it was one of the really dark ones. Even at their most gloomy, the Brothers Grimm couldn’t have thought up someone as twisted and terrible as Moses.

  Northbourne’s gate swung open and we drove through, headed farther into the countryside, bound for a heavily warded, ghost-filled former brothel. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have imagined this scenario.

  I’ll show you princess, I thought grimly. In this story, the princess slays the evil king. It wasn’t exactly a happily ever after, but it would be close enough for me.

  Our destination was an abandoned farm about three-quarters of a mile due east from the brothel. The SUVs drove through an open gate, across an overgrown field, and parked inside a sagging old barn.

  We prepped our equipment quickly for the trek to the brothel. Since I was one of the few people in the group who wasn’t supernaturally fast or had elite training, Sean wore my backpack containing the sand Carly had given me plus a few assorted blood magic implements I thought I might need but wouldn’t fit in my jacket. The mercs each carried a large backpack and wore full tactical gear from head to toe, all black.

  Nora and Tomás had guns, but Garrett was empty-handed except for a scary-looking tactical knife he handled like he knew how to use it. Arkady and Matthias, of course, were armed to the teeth; Arkady had at least three guns on her I could see, and Matthias carried two handguns in addition to the rifle on his back.

  No one else carried weapons—Amira and her Hunters, both male dhampirs, didn’t need them, and the mage sent by the Court, who would provide cover for the mercs to approach the brothel, wouldn’t participate in the fight.

  When everyone was ready, Haggar led us out of the barn and across the field to the trees. We covered the distance between the farm and the brothel at a pace that left me winded even though all I carried was my trusty Smith & Wesson and two extra clips, plus a few magical goodies I had stashed in the various zippered pockets of my jacket.

  With their supernaturally enhanced eyesight, the werewolves and vamps had an obvious advantage when it came to running at night, but the rest of us had to make do either with night vision goggles or moonlight. Since the moon was only a few days from being full and the night was clear, I opted on the latter. Focusing on staying on my feet as we ran through the woods kept me from thinking too much about what we were about to face.

  When we got within sight of the edge of the trees, Haggar halted our group. He motioned for Nora, Amira, and me to join him.

  “Our intel is that Murphy has n
ot yet arrived,” he said in an undertone. My watch indicated it was eleven fifteen. I was surprised—I’d figured Moses would have arrived at least an hour ahead of the scheduled meeting to double-check the security of the house.

  Haggar’s next words, however, gave me a chill. “Two vehicles are at the location. We’ve confirmed that Kade and Novak are in the target building, along with a half-dozen guards.”

  My palms started to sweat. Kade was here, in the house whose roof I could just see over the top of the hill in front of me. If there was anyone in the world I wanted dead almost as much as Moses, it was him.

  I felt a familiar buzzing sensation from the bracelet on my wrist. I excused myself and went back to Sean and Ben.

  “Murphy’s not here yet, so we wait,” I told them. “Malcolm just jumped to me.” I touched the green crystal on my bracelet and murmured, “Release.”

  Malcolm appeared beside me. “Hey, guys,” he said softly. “We’re a go.”

  I exhaled. “That is very good news. Any trouble getting in and out?”

  “None whatsoever,” he said. “You were right—there are so many freakin’ ghosts in there that the wards aren’t tuned to detect them. If they were, the damn things would be going off constantly.” He looked grim. “Half the spirits in the house are poltergeists and wraiths. It’s a horror show. If I thought listening to Ashley Brown shriek was bad, it was nothing compared to a dozen wraiths screaming bloody murder. What the wraiths are going to do, I don’t know, but the others are on board. It didn’t take much convincing—they all hate Murphy already for trying to make changes to the house, but they can’t do much to him physically because he’s a blood mage and he’s discorporated any ghosts who get too close to him. Other than messing with his contractors, they didn’t have a way to get back at him—until now.”