Blade Bound (Chicagoland Vampires 13)

;  It was a good view—in color and surprisingly clear for a webcam, especially at night. The ferocity and enormity of the cloud came through loud and clear. For better or worse, it didn’t look like anything had changed. The cloud continued to spin, like a tornado waiting for a moment to strike.

“No change,” Luc said. “Except that the temp continues to drop. It’s fifteen degrees out there right now. The river is solid ice.”

“How wide-ranging is the effect?” Ethan asked.

“Split-screen it, Jules.”

“On that,” she said, catching her lip with her teeth as she typed. An isothermal map appeared on-screen, with bands of color showing each temperature change. Outside Chicago, the temperatures were warm, the bands in shades of green. The closer you got to downtown, the bluer each band, and the colder the temperature.

So the temperature effect was limited to Chicago, and it was centered downtown. This wasn’t the first time we’d seen this kind of geographic focus from Sorcha.

I looked down at Juliet. “Can you superimpose Sorcha’s alchemical web on top of this?”

She frowned, looked down at the tablet again. “I think so? Let me play with this a second . . . I have to find the right image.”

She tapped keys, looked up at the screen. A photo of Captain America hovered above the city.

“And that is clearly the wrong file,” she said. “Someone has been saving graphics files in the work folder again.” Cough. Cough.

We all looked at Luc.

“Why would you blame me for that?”

We kept looking at Luc.

“Just doing my research,” he said. “Captain America versus a vampire. Who wins?”

That actually was an interesting question, but this wasn’t the time or place for it.

“Just a sec,” Juliet said. It took more than a few seconds. It took images of Batman, Black Widow, and the Falcon before the bright green grid lowered itself to the map she’d pulled up.

Sorcha had worked her magic over the city in a very specific pattern of alchemical hot spots intended to form a kind of web around the city. Tonight’s freezing temps coincided with that web almost exactly, with the coldest point centered over the Towerline building.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Luc said.

“Either Sorcha really likes returning to the scene of the crime,” I said, “or she’s making use of what she did before.”

“Maybe she’s taking advantage of something left behind,” Ethan said. “Capitalizing on the magic she spilled into the alchemical web during her last trip?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Catcher thinks that’s what’s causing the delusions, after all.”

“It would take a lot of energy to freeze the river,” Ethan murmured as he peered at the charts.

I wrapped my hands around the mug Margot had filled for me, let my fingers draw warmth from the slick ceramic . . . and realized what was happening.

“Oh,” I said.

Ethan turned to me. “Oh?”

I took his hand, pressed it against the mug. “Warm?”

“Yes?”

“Because your fingers are absorbing the heat?”

“Yes—oh.” He cocked his head at the map. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Luc said, gaze darting from mug to map. “Very good, Sentinel.”