"Is there magic that can give such protection?"
"Who knows? But if magic can raise demons and a dark god, why shouldn't it be able to protect a vampire from the sun?"
He frowned as he slid open the van's door. "So now all we have to figure out is what Gautier and his cohorts actually are - and then a way to stop them."
"Well, Jin reads as human and Gautier still reads as a vampire, but maybe that's because their shells still are. Maybe their beings have become something else entirely."
He raised an eyebrow as he helped me into the back of the van. "Spirits of some kind?"
"If I can see souls rising from the dead, and Quinn can be hunted by demons, there's really no saying that an ancient spirit can't be recalled to claim a new body, is there?"
He slid the door shut then waved a hand at the thermos of coffee sitting on a small bench filled with weapons as he moved toward the seat in front of the bank of monitors, "You know, that's an awfully scary thought."
"Yeah, I can see you're shaking in your boots."
"On the inside, I am." His smile belayed any attempt of seriousness. "The Directorate as a whole has no experience in dealing with things non-substantial. I mean, how do you kill a spirit?"
"I don't know." I poured myself a cup of coffee and briefly breathed in the smell. Bliss in a cup. even if it looked like mud and probably tasted just as bad. "But I know someone who might."
He raised an eyebrow. "Who?"
"Quinn."
He glanced at the screens. "He's parked in the right corner of the back garden if you want to talk to him."
I grinned. "That's a might worse than having fairies in the bottom of a garden."
"Trust me, I'm the only fairy around this neighborhood at the moment."
"A good thing with the moon on the rise." I drained the coffee in several gulps, and winced a little at its bitter taste.
"True." He pointed a finger at the screen. "Check out the security lines before you go. Don't want you tripping over any alarms and tipping them off."
"Hey, I'm not a complete novice at this."
He merely grinned and pointed at the screen. So I checked it out and memorized all the hot spots. "That's a whole lot of security happening."
"Makes you wonder what, exactly, they're protecting, doesn't it?"
I looked at the other screens. There were cameras on every angle of the house, but none on the inside. "You able to hear their conversations yet?"
"Some. They've got some sort of shielding around the place. We only pick up things when they're near the windows."
"Frustrating."
"Very. But Jack's working on subverting their internal security system and fast-tracking it into ours."
"Could be handy. We need to know what those bastards are discussing." Because it would be nasty, of that I had no doubt. Whether or not it related to our investigation was the question we had to answer.
But all the indications we'd had so far certainly suggested they would.
I pushed away from the monitors. "I'm off to find Quinn. If you hear anything odd happening, give me a call." I slid the door open, then paused and looked back at my brother. "And lock this door. Gautier may have run, but he could come back. I don't trust him one iota."
"I can take care of myself, Riley."
"But that bastard is out to hurt me, and the best way to hurt me is to hurt you."
"If he wanted to take me out, he could do so without coming anywhere near the van."