Biting Cold (Chicagoland Vampires 6)

"They don't understand."

"Then make them understand. But with words, not by turning our lives upside down."

No response.

"Please," I quietly said. "Just come home with me. You can see Catcher and talk to the Order. We can try to get you back on track. I know it wil be hard, but you can do it. I know you. I know who you are and what's in your heart."

Silence. And for a moment, I thought I had her. I thought I might have convinced her to give up her misguided quest for peace of mind and go back with me to Chicago.

But it wasn't to be. She suddenly looked up, like a deer scenting a predator in the woods, then looked at me.

"This isn't over," she said, then disappeared in blue light of her own making.

Chapter Six

SWORDPLAY

The world was quiet again.

"Where did she go?" Todd asked. His hat was dirty and rumpled, and his clothes were torn and filthy. He'd had a hard night.

"I'm not entirely sure." I glanced around, momentarily panicked that I wasn't sure where Ethan had gone. He was rising from the ground at the edge of the trees, a couple of gnomes assisting him. But he stil winced at the apparent pain, and his steps were labored as he joined us.

"Are you al right?"

"Headache," he said. "And stil dizzy."

"Is she stil nearby?"

He closed his eyes and nodded.

"So you're definitely connected to her?"

He opened his eyes again. "Emotionaly, I think. I feel her anger, her stress. Her addiction." He looked at me with apology in his eyes. "Her frustrations."

I think he meant to apologize for grabbing me, but we could have that conversation later. "If she's stil here, where is she?"

"She didn't make it through the trees," Todd said. "So she couldn't have gotten into the silo."

"And Paige?" Ethan wondered. "Where is she?"

"And how did she miss the fight?" I quietly wondered.

But that question answered itself as soon as I'd asked it. I closed my eyes...and smeled the faint aromas of lemon and sugar.

"What is it, Sentinel?"

"Tate is here." My heart began to pound in anticipation.

"How do you know?"

"He has a scent - lemon and sugar." I felt stupid suggesting it  - what supernatural creature smeled like sugar cookies? - but there was no denying the scent, or whom it signaled.

Ethan didn't seem to think it strange. "If he's here, and you already know it, why doesn't Paige?"

"I think we need to get back to the house," I said, and I started running, with Ethan folowing me.

We'd gone far enough in exploring the property that we'd ended up on the other side of the house and silo, and I nearly tripped crossing uneven ground that wasn't familiar. I vaulted two fences, my heart pounding, before the back of the house appeared on the horizon again. I ran around to the front door, which stood wide open, the foyer floor littered with books, their pages open and fluttering gently in the breeze.

Ethan stepped behind me and swore softly.

"Paige?" I caled out, treading carefuly down the halway. The living room was empty and dark, as was the kitchen. I kept walking, then peeked into the room I assumed was the master bedroom. It was empty, the bed neatly made, the light off.

"Paige!" I caled out again, but the house was silent, and there wasn't even a hint of magic in the air. Nothing but the lingering, cloying scent of lemon and sugar.

"She isn't here," I said.

"I don't suppose we need to ask where she's gone," he said.

I didn't think so, either. "The silo," I said. "They want the Maleficium, and that's where it is." And I feared that wasn't the worst of it. Malory had disappeared just before I caught Tate's signature scent on the wind - but she'd been nowhere near the silo or the Maleficium. And we'd been so busy handling her that we hadn't had time to think about Paige or Tate...or the entrance to the silo.

Could Malory and Tate have been working together?

I looked at Ethan. "I think Malory may have been a distraction."

"A distraction?"

"Tate and Malory both want the book. Malory knows it's in the silo, and a little Internet research would have shown her where the door was. If finding it was that easy, why did she pop up so far away from it?"

"She was a distraction," Ethan said. "She was there to draw us away while Tate found Paige and forced her to show them where in the silo the book was. But why would Tate and Malory work together? How would they even have found each other?"

"I don't know," I said. "But why not work together? Malory wants the book, they both want the evil to be released, and there are more of us than there are of them. They both have magic, but so does Paige, and they couldn't have known what kind of security would be waiting for them."

I walked back to the front door and glanced outside, but there was no other sign anything was amiss. The farm looked like a farm at the edge of winter, waiting for snow to fal, and snow to clear, and seed to be planted again.

"The silo?" he asked.

I nodded. "Let's go."

We walked quietly to the field that held the missile silo, eyes peeled for any sign of them. As we neared it, the scents grew stronger, like a cookie factory had opened up shop down the road.

The concrete box looked the same as it had when we'd left it.

The door was closed, and there weren't any supernatural lights or sounds that suggested Tate and Malory were throwing evil around.

Hope blossomed; maybe we weren't too late.

"They're here."

We turned and found Todd behind us, a new patch of crimson on his shoulder.

"Are you al right?"

"I'l heal," he said. "They went in. I took an orb to the shoulder."

"Paige?" I asked.

"Paige, the other witch, and the dark one."

Tate, with his head of dark hair, must have been the dark one.

"While we were fighting Malory," Ethan said, "Tate was nabbing Paige and waiting for Malory to finish us off."

Maybe Paige had been right. With every action she took,

Malory was sliding closer to friendship in the past tense.

"Thank you for your diligence," I told Todd. "And thank you for your help earlier."

He nodded. "We are done with this fight for now. We'l go to ground. We'l regroup. It's the way of our people."

When he looked up again, he looked pissed. "End this tonight."

"That's our every intention," Ethan promised, holding out a hand. "My apologies again for my behavior earlier. My comments were shortsighted and naive. We are better for having met you, and we are honored that we shared a field of battle."