Hexbound (The Dark Elite 2)

“She’s right,” Jason said. “And we don’t need to go looking for more trouble. We have to tell him about the vamps, and we’ve already got a black mark against the Enclave. We don’t need another one.”

“Yeah, we heard about that,” Detroit said. She opened a pocket in her jacket, then pulled out a pack of gum. After pulling out a stick, she passed it around the room. I took one, unwrapped the foil, and popped it in my mouth. It was an odd flavor—something old-fashioned that tasted like spicy cloves—but it wasn’t bad.

Scout frowned at Detroit. “What exactly did you hear?”

“Just that you guys had some internal issues. That you didn’t follow Varsity’s lead on some mission. You’re kind of a cautionary tale now.”

Scout’s features tightened. “Varsity’s lead was to leave me locked down in a Reaper sanctuary while Jeremiah and his minions ate me for lunch.”

Detroit’s lips parted. “I’m—oh, my God. I’m so sorry. That’s not what they said and I hadn’t heard—”

Scout held up a hand. “Let’s just drop it.”

“I’m really, truly sorry. I didn’t know. They didn’t tell us the whole story.”

Scout nodded, but the hallway went silent, and the tension in the air wasn’t just because of the secret building next door.

8

It was another fifteen or twenty minutes before our ghostly spy made her way back to the doors where we waited. By that point, she was mostly a cold mist, a fuzzy outline of the girl we’d seen a little while ago.

“She’s fading,” Naya said, standing up as Temperance came through the door—literally.

Temperance tried to speak, but the sound was a tinny whisper.

“She’s communicating that the place is big,” Naya said. “She saw only a little of it, but thinks there’s more to see.”

Temperance suddenly pulsed—her light completely fading before she popped back into the visible world again.

I looked around. “Should we try another dose of power?”

Jason stepped beside me, gaze on Temperance. “I’m not crazy about that idea,” he said. “You’re still pretty drained, and we still need to get back to the enclave. If you totally burn out now, that leaves us without even a chance of firespell on the way back. And we’re taking the long way back.” He gave Detroit a pointed look.

“I can fix this,” she said. She opened her bag and pulled out a small black box. She put the box on the floor, then fiddled with it until it began to hum, and the top slid open. A lens emerged from the top and a cone of pale, white light shined upward toward the ceiling.

Detroit frowned at it, probably tuned in to some kind of mechanical details the rest of us couldn’t even see, then sat down on her knees beside it and began to adjust dials and sliding bars on the side. “I wasn’t really keen on using it this go-round—it’s a new prototype. But since we can’t use firespell, might as well try it out.” She sat back on her heels and glanced up at Naya. “Okay, you’re ‘go’ for launch.”

Naya nodded, then closed her eyes and offered an incantation. “By the spirit of St. Michael, the warrior of angels and protector of spirits, I call forth Temperance Bay. Hear my plea, Temperance, and come forth to help us battle that which would tear us asunder.”

The light flickered once, but nothing else happened.

I glanced sideways at Scout, who shrugged.

“Temperance Bay,” Naya called again. “We beseech you to hear our request. There is power in this room. Power to make you visible. Come forth and find it and be seen once more.”

A rush of cold air blew across our little alcove, the box vibrating with the force of it. My hair stood on end, and I clenched Jason’s hand tight. However helpful Temperance might have been, she carried the feeling of something wrong. Maybe it wasn’t because of who she was, but of what she was, of where she’d come from. Whatever the reason, you couldn’t deny that creepy feeling of something other in the room.

“The power is here, among us,” Naya said.

The air began to swirl, the cone of light flickering as Temperance moved among us trying to figure out how to use Detroit’s machine. The light began to flicker wildly like a brilliant strobe before bursting from the box.

And it wasn’t just light.

Temperance floated above us in the cone of light, again in her brown skirt and sweater. I wondered if those were the clothes she’d worn when she died—if she was doomed to wear the same thing forever.

She began to talk, and we could hear the staticky, far-away echo of her voice from Detroit’s machine. “I am here—here—here,” she said, her words stuttering through the machine.

“Temperance,” Naya asked, “what did you see?”

“It is a sanctuary,” she said.

I gnawed on the edge of my lip. That was so not the news we wanted.

“How do you know it’s a sanctuary?” Scout asked. Her voice was soft.

“The mark—mark—mark of the Dark Elite is there, but dust has fallen. The building is quiet. Quiet.”

“Keep going,” Naya said, her voice all-business. Not a request, but a demand. Her own magic at work.

“It’s like a clinic,” Temperance said.

“What do you mean, a clinic?” Michael asked.

“Instruments. Machines. Syringes.”

“That can’t be right,” Jason put in. “The Reapers don’t need medical facilities. Their only medical issue is energy, and they’ve already got that covered.”

A sudden breeze—icy cold and knife sharp—cut across the corridor. Temperance’s image glowed a little brighter, her eyes sharpening. Without warning, her image blossomed and grew, and she was nine feet tall, her arms long and covered in grungy fabric, her hair streaming out, her eyes giant dark orbs. “The unliving do not make mistakes.”

There were gasps. But I remembered what Naya had said—Temperance was an Adept of illusion. The image, however creepy, wasn’t real. Naya’s eyes were closed again, probably as she concentrated on keeping Temperance in the room, so I took action.

“Temperance,” I said.

She turned those black eyes on me. I had to choke down my fear just to push out words again.

“He didn’t mean to offend you. He’s just surprised. Can you drop the illusion and tell us more about what you saw?”