Blood Games (Chicagoland Vampires 10)

“Consider the context and the circumstances,” Ethan said. “Does anything seem impossible at this point?” He scanned the floor, walls, ceiling.

“Assuming such a thing is possible,” I said, “why isn’t it affecting us?”

“It could have been calibrated for Darius.”

“So if it’s not working on us, and we can’t feel it, how do we find it?”

“It’s still magic,” Ryan said. “We can all feel magic, so we look for it that way.” Ryan glanced at his watch. “If we’re going to do it, we need to do it quickly. Cord and I will take the bedrooms. You look in here.”

My senses were acute, sometimes distractingly so. I usually kept mental barriers in place so I could function. Dropping my mental shields, I closed my eyes, blew out a breath, and imagined my awareness of the world was a bubble around me, that I was in the center of it. I took a breath, and then another, and with each inhalation imagined the bubble expanding, enclosing more and more of the rooms.

Odors, sounds, and tastes filled my consciousness until I felt like a child in a tempest of sensation.

I walked to the back corner of a room, to the kitchenette, and felt the faintest brush of magic. It was soft, the magic lapping in light and gentle waves, almost comforting to the touch.

I opened my eyes, stared at a closed cabinet door that seemed, now that my barriers were down and I was staring right at it, to faintly pulse with magic, like the wood grain had a heartbeat, pulsing in and out.

I reached out, pulled open the cabinet door.

It was six inches tall, shaped like an obelisk, and looked like stone, matte shades of white and ivory that seemed to glow from within.

“Ethan.”

He walked toward me, brow unfurrowing as he saw it.

“It pulses,” he said, and I was relieved it wasn’t just me.

He called Ryan’s name, and footsteps echoed quickly behind us.

“What did you find?”

Ethan moved aside so he could get a look at it. “Alabaster, I believe. Perhaps a receiver, or an antenna designed to receive and enhance magic.”

“In Darius’s direction,” I said, and Ethan nodded.

Ryan looked at the object, then Ethan. “A vampire could provide the glamour. But not the object.”

Ethan nodded. “He or she would need a sorcerer. Someone with the skill to create this magical—I suppose ‘appliance’ is the most appropriate word, considering.”

“We have friends who are sorcerers,” I said. “We can get it to them, ask them to take a look. Maybe they can ferret out who did it. Reverse engineer it.”

“We should have brought Catcher,” Ethan agreed, and I made a mental note to pass that nugget along. It would make his month.

“Do that,” Ryan said. “But for now, we need to neutralize it. Get it onto the countertop.”

Ethan rubbed his fingertips together, then reached out and touched the object. It glowed with his touch, light shifting within the stone.

“It’s warm,” he said. “Very, very warm.” Holding the obelisk like an actress might carry an Oscar statuette, he lowered it carefully to the marble counter.

In the meantime, Ryan searched drawers until he found a box of plastic bags and a container of margarita salt.

“Magical nullification,” Ryan said. With a flick of the small knife he pulled from his belt, he flipped the plastic lid from the salt and upended it into a zip-top bag. He held the bag open, glanced at Ethan. “Put her in.”

Ethan looked dubious but complied, carefully placing the obelisk in its bed of salt. Orange and blue sparks lit where alabaster and salt met. After a few seconds, the sparks dissipated, and the alabaster’s dull glow faded. A breeze flowed through the room, and the air seemed to thin, as if the obelisk’s glamour had thickened it, weighed it down.

“Damn,” I murmured. “That was heavy magic.”

Ryan carefully closed the bag, rolled the extra plastic around it, and stuffed it into a thin nylon bag he’d pulled from his utility belt. He stuffed the wrapped object into one of the zipped pockets on his cargo pants.

There was a groan from the other room.

“Ryan!” Cord called out. “He’s back.”

We rushed back in. Darius was sitting straight up in his chair, his knuckles white around the arms, his eyes open and blinking, and no longer dilated.

He looked up at us, blinked, his expression equally haughty and confused. “Sullivan? What the hell’s going on?”

“That will be a rather long and involved story.” Ethan went to him, offered a hand to help him out of the chair. “Suffice it to say, we think you’ve been glamoured or charmed in order to get money from the GP coffers, and we need to get you up and out of here.”

Darius looked at Ethan for a moment, eyes searching for truth. “You mean it.”

“All of it. And we need to get out of here. Now.”

“No ‘sire’ from you anymore, Sullivan?” Darius asked, but he let Ethan pull him to his feet.

“Since the GP has deemed us enemies, not a chance in hell.”

The elevator chose that moment to ding its arrival.

The sound of footsteps echoed in the marble hallway outside the suite.

“Cover him,” Ethan said to Cord, then unsheathed his sword and dragged Darius, still unsteady on his feet, back into the corner.

I’d have preferred they switch places, but I couldn’t exactly call him out in the middle of an op.

“Shit,” Ryan said, putting a hand on his ear. His instinct was the same as mine—that someone on the first floor had gone down; that was the only way they could have made it up the elevator.

“Luc here.”

“Lindsey here.”

Their responses echoed through our earpieces, but they were the only ones. Max didn’t respond.

“Goddamn it,” Ryan said, accent even stronger with his fury.

We unsheathed our swords and faced the three men who stepped into the doorway. Two were men we’d seen earlier tonight—the big man and his smaller friend. The third was new. That was five men, altogether, assigned the task of keeping Darius under wraps. Someone had pull . . . and plenty of cash.

The big one bore a long and mean-looking dagger, and the short one held a small handgun, pointed at all of us.

I was getting sick of being on the receiving end of handguns this week.

“If you’re looking for your friend,” the big one said, his voice gravelly and harsh, “he’s in the elevator with a very big headache. He was trespassing, and it looks like you are, too.”