Dangerous Games (Riley Jenson Guardian 4)

"What?"

"Yeah. We did foul the pentagram through which she was calling the demons, which according to him was better than destroying it, because it will force her to expend more energy making a new one."

"In dark spells, it's usually the magician's blood that fuels the summoning. Fouling it won't actually stop her using it, it'll just prevent her from calling through certain types of entities."

"Meaning I should have destroyed it?" That Quinn had spun yet another lie?

"She would have sensed the destruction. It might have driven her - and the rest of them - underground." He paused, and the sound of liquid hissing into a cup came down the line. He was either in the day-shift operations room or the foyer, where the other coffee machine was situated. "What happened after that? How come Quinn kidnapped the mage and why aren't you with him?"

"Because the bastard pulled his vampire wiles on me - embedded an order to go home while our telepathic line was open."

"Game man. Has he still got his balls?"

I grinned, and very much suspected there was nothing pleasant about it. Amusement wasn't high on my list of emotions right now. "For the moment. I did make an interesting discovery in the process of going home, though - becoming a wolf actually transmutes the compulsion."

"Does it? That's interesting."

"Yeah. Once I'd discovered that, I naturally headed back to see what Quinn was up to. That's when I discovered he could not only make himself totally invisible to all senses except scent, but that he could also fly."

"What?"

"Well, I'm not actually sure if he was flying. I couldn't see wings or anything. He seemed to be more drifting."

"Even very old vampires cannot fly."

"But before he was vampire, he was half-human and half something else," I corrected. "And that other half is something that doesn't exist anymore."

"Only birds - or bird-shifters - fly."

"So do gryphons. So do a hundred other things that can't be classified as birds."

"None of which Quinn is."

I raised my eyebrows. "Then you know what he is?"

"Nope. I only know what I've been told."

By his sister, no doubt, who was the next one up the vampire ladder from Quinn. Which, in itself, was a mystery waiting to be solved, because Jack was a whole lot younger in vampire terms than Quinn and his sister. "Quinn's driving a black Porsche." I gave him the license plate number, then added, "He's got GPS in the car - don't suppose you can plug into the satellite and backtrack to see where he is going?"

"It'll take a bit of time to find his car-code and then track him, but we can try."

"And in the meantime, what do you want me to do?"

"Any word from Jin?"

"No." Of course, it was hard to get word when I had the phone off But I wasn't about to mention that because Jack would kill me.

"Any chance that you could get an invite to their dinner party tomorrow night?"

Who'd have guessed that was coming? "Can't you get the infrared working?"

"No. He's got some of the most sophisticated shielding in that house that I've ever come across. We can get their body heat and positioning, but we're still only catching snippets of actual conversation."

"I can try." Turning on my phone would probably be a good start. Given the frustration burning down the telepathic line earlier, Jin was one needy little demon. And while he could go out and get himself another girl, he'd gained a taste for werewolf flesh. And it wasn't a boast to say we did hard sex better than most humans, simply because we had the stamina.

"Then try. We need to get into that house and see what they're up to."

I blew out a breath, and hoped like hell that Jin had learned his lesson and started fucking like a normal psycho rather than an abnormal one.